[Roberta Cameron]: In accordance with the Massachusetts Community Preservation Act, Massachusetts General Laws, Chapter 44B, and the City of Medford Community Preservation Ordinance, the City of Medford Community Preservation Committee will hold a public hearing to obtain public input on Medford's needs and priorities with respect to the future use of Community Preservation Act funds for affordable housing, open space and recreation, and historic preservation. I just realized I read in the wrong order the things that I'm supposed to read. I'll just go back and call the meeting to order with the statement regarding the open meeting law. Pursuant to Chapter 20 of the Acts of 2021, this meeting of Medford Community Preservation Committee will be conducted by a remote means. Members of the public who wish to access the meeting may do so by accessing the meeting link contained here and no in-person attendance of the members of the public is permitted, but public participation in this public hearing is by remote means only. Did I cover everything? So the first thing that I would like to do is to give a brief presentation. I know that most of the people with us today are pretty familiar with the Community Preservation Act, but I'll just go over the general basics in case there is anyone who is not. So I'm going to share my screen and then start my presentation.
[Unidentified]: Can you see the screen now? Are you able to see that? We can see it.
[Roberta Cameron]: All right, here we are. I wish that I had actually a picture of the ribbon cutting for the tennis court, which I think is the most recent ribbon cutting that we have at Duggar Park. So if anyone has a picture of the tennis court ribbon cutting, please send it along to us. I've lost the pictures that I took on that day, unfortunately. So, A quick overview, say my slides are not advanced and here we go. So first an introduction to the Community Preservation Committee, the committee has nine members. five of whom are representatives from different boards, other boards and commissions, and four of us are just appointees from the general public. So myself, the chair, Joan Cyr is vice chair, Doug Carr is our commissioner who represents the historical commission. Heidi Davis represents the Conservation Commission. Danielle DeRusso, who could not be with us this evening, represents the Park Commission. Christy Dowd represents the Community Development Board. Losa Johnfier represents the Housing Authority. And Casey Haggerty and Steven Pacini are both representatives from the general public. So what is CPA? CPA or the Community Preservation Act is a state program that was enacted in 2000 with legislation that I mentioned earlier, chapter 44B. This program enables communities to raise funds for local projects for specific program areas, which we will talk about. Communities are, can, can take part in the Community Preservation Act by adopting it locally, which Medford did in 2015. In 2015, we voted to adopt it at the ballot, and then we began collecting the surcharge, to the CPA Trust Fund in FY17. Medford adopted CPA with 1.5% surcharge on local property tax revenue. which is partially matched with state funds, which we'll talk about later. At the same time, this Community Preservation Committee was appointed in 2017 with the responsibility to prepare a community preservation plan and then update that plan annually, which is why we're here this evening to work on updating the plan. And then we establish an application process through which we determine how we're going to use the funds every year. So entities will apply for funding and the Community Preservation Committee reviews the applications and determines whether to recommend the projects for funding. In order to be funded, projects have to be also approved by city council after being recommended by the committee. So in the first four years, we have funded over 70 projects, which is just pretty incredible. Kudos to our CPA staff and to the committee and to all of the City departments and stakeholder entities who have applied for and used the funding in the first four years. Just a few slides with some highlights of some of the projects that we have accomplished over this time. Planting trees in several of the parks, improvements to the Brooks Estate, both the Brooks Estate Manor and the landscaping, and we resurfaced several playgrounds, including the elementary schools and some of the play areas in the tot lots around the city. We renovated the condens shell, we restored the windows at the royal house, and we also replaced the roof of the slave quarters building at the royal house. Um, we cleaned up, um, contaminated soil along at Riverbend Park, making way for the Clippership Connector that we're looking forward to. Um, we are going to be replacing dead and dying trees to restore the landscaping at Oak Grove Cemetery. We will be restoring the, um, Supreme Sacrifice Monument at Oak Grove Cemetery. We've made several improvements to Chevalier Theater. We've restored features of doors of Grace Church and I'll show on the next slide, the Osgood House across the street and installed a water feature and park renovation at Harris Park. And this is the Osgood house, and we've replaced already several basketball courts and the tennis courts at Duggar Park, and we'll be doing more with this funding round. And of course, during the 2020. pandemic, we provided $250,000 of rental assistance for people who were affected by loss of income during the pandemic, and we've also funded several other affordable housing projects. So that's just a lightening overview. So, during the history of collecting revenue we've been collecting revenue for CPA over the past five years, and we went from collecting so in the blue is the local revenues that CPA has generated from the surcharge, and in the red is state match. So to date, and I didn't think to grab before talking, speaking tonight, what is the total of all of the funds that we've raised to date? But we started at $1.2 million in our first year to now $1.5 million of local revenue. And in the past year, the state match was over 43% that is probably going to be a watershed amount of state funding that we received. That's $669,000 of state funding that we received in 2021. That's a lot of money that we've been generating for projects in Medford. So projecting, looking forward at how much funding we think is going to be available next year, this is still a rough ballpark estimate. We don't have yet the estimated revenue for FY23. But just given a ballpark estimate, over $2 million will be available in FY23, conservatively speaking. And this includes about $1.6 million in local surcharge revenue and over $500,000 state match. The state match is estimated to be 35% for this year. This number just came out yesterday, in fact. So CPA requires that we spend a minimum spend or set aside a minimum of 10% in each program area each year so that's about $215,000. for each of the three program areas, Open Space and Recreation, Affordable Housing, and Historic Preservation. Then about a maximum of 5% can be used on administration each year. The remainder, 65%, is general reserves. This is flexible funding that we can use for any of the three program areas. So that just gives a ballpark projection of the funding that will be available for each of the three program areas for the coming year. I'm trying to figure out how to make my slide advance. There we go. So who can apply for CPA funds? Obviously, a list of all of the prior applicants and community stakeholders, partners will be in our plan. But just overall, it's generally the city of Medford or other government entities, organizations, and individuals for projects that provide a public benefit. The instructions for application will be provided when we release our plan, hopefully next month. And it will provide some instructions about details of project eligibility, but on this slide is just a summary of what types of projects are eligible within each program area. They need to be capital improvements for open space recreation and historic preservation or capital improvements and certain types of programs in affordable housing that create or expand resources to support affordable housing needs. And on the screen is our estimated timeline for 2022. I'm not sure whether any of these dates are going to change in our final application packet when it comes out next month. But the process is generally that applicants will submit eligibility determination forms, which will enable the committee to determine whether this is an eligible project, after which we will invite the applicants to submit a full application. So the eligibility determination forms are due the end of July, and the full applications are due the end of September. And then typically in November, the applicants will present their projects at a community meeting where we can ask questions and learn more about the what's being proposed. And we try to make our And then the city council. Decisions at our December meeting, although the last couple of years it's required a little bit more time to make the funding decisions. So that the CPC by January. At a subsequent meeting and then after that we will go through the process of drafting and executing grant agreements so that the funds can be distributed to the people who are awarded the funds. So just another slide looking at the results of CPA funding to date. On the screen are dots representing all of the projects that have been funded so far. And in the history of CPA in Medford from 2017 to 2021, this pie chart represents the proportion of funds that have gone to each of the three program areas. Last year alone, it's pretty interesting, we ended up with almost an even mix between affordable housing, open space and recreation and historic preservation with the list of projects that we approved funding for on the left. That was about, this number at the top is, oops, I'm sorry. Incorrect. It was $2.3 million of total funds committed with 16, I think, is it 16? 17 projects funded. So now I'm going to hand it over to, will it be Amanda speaking?
[Unidentified]: Yeah, I can tap in.
[Amanda Centrella]: So, Um. Listed here. You see a list of, um, you know, a number of plans that will be kind of pouring through when we're considering the plan update this year. Pulling from. I mean, a lot of this is already in the, um, the currency CPA plan. But I can speak a little bit to, um, I guess before we dive into the survey, the city has already undergone a number of outreach events and particularly aware of the ones around parks and open space. We had just this past March, late March, there was an all parks public meeting that kind of provided an overview of what was going on and an opportunity to hear back from folks. So we'll be evaluating feedback from there. Um, even for, for there was a lot of outreach for specific parks projects last year, many of which funded by CPA, um, that we will be able to pull a lot of, um, information from that feedback that we received because it wasn't always just specific to one particular park. Um, I want to say, so we had over well over 11 tabling sessions that had to do around parks, um, situated in parks and at public events and fun spaces where we collected feedback. There were, I think, over four, maybe five online surveys that we can pull from. Most of the folks on here may know that there's been a comprehensive planning process underway in the city and we can look to there for some feedback. in all of the program areas. And then, of course, on top of that, any submitted comments that have been sent to our office, the Planning, Development, and Sustainability Office, can be used as we kind of evaluate all this feedback. So next slide, we can talk a little bit about the survey. So the survey so far has received 40 responses, and we will be continuing to push this out for more feedback, but in the meantime this is kind of what we've gathered. As you can see, so in the survey we ask participants to rank on a scale of one to three with the higher priority being one to score each project category. And so the average of those scores are listed here below. You can see open space and recreation as well as affordable housing are kind of in the same space there around 1.6. and then historic preservation lagging a little bit at 2.46. The demographics of respondents. This sample we have 17 percent of which are renters. You can see there's some skewing here in the sample. Eighty percent of respondents identify as white, and you can see the further breakouts there. The most common age range of respondents were between the ages of 35 and 49, and that was 50 percent of those respondents. and 61% of respondents' household incomes are equal to or greater than $100,000 annually. And you can see in the bar chart there is how our distribution breaks out in terms of neighborhoods, with a strong showing from North Medford as well as West Medford in particular. We can go to the next slide. So in the survey, there's an opportunity to hear or to write written feedback about what you would specifically like to see as a community member. And I've just pulled kind of some common themes that emerge from those. So we got a lot of feedback from folks thinking about open space and recreation. So some of the themes there include improving connectivity between parks and pedestrian and bike paths. So thinking about kind of the network we have and how to maintain and grow it. Intentional spaces or off-leash hours for dogs is something that's been raised in a couple of different forums. integrating public art into open spaces, thinking about ways for cooling spaces. And we've heard a lot about the use of water elements as splash pad or misting sprinklers. We've also heard quite a bit about introducing more trees, activation of the riverfront. Renovation and updating of park facilities and athletic fields and courts. And they've called out a couple of specific examples here. Some increasing native plantings, trash cleanup, maintenance, and more trash receptacles around our public spaces. And focusing on green spaces and recreation that are enjoyable by all and that have an emphasis on climate change and mitigation strategies. For historic preservation, we got significantly fewer written comments, but of the ones we received, they seem to be pointing to thinking about accessibility for our historic assets in the city and accessibility in terms of, I mean, there's many different ways for a space to be accessible. multimodality, so catering to cyclists or pedestrians, and also thinking about folks with disabilities and how they're able to use or participate in this space. And for affordable housing, instead of asking for written comments, which people could also provide, we gave them a list of different programs or projects that would support affordable housing. And as you can see by those numbers, most folks were in support of all of those various options.
[Unidentified]: And we can go to the next slide.
[Amanda Centrella]: Oh, there it is. Thank you. So just a quick note here. Some of our lovely committee staff or staff and committee members. did tabling sessions at the senior center and library, and we are scheduling one at the West Manford Community Center as well. These are just a couple of things that were pulled from those notes. I think you'll see that there's a tie to what's already been pulled out before. More dog waste receptacles along the river, water fountain perhaps turned on or in new spaces. invasive plants at Bellevue Pond. So yeah, speaking kind of to what others are saying in the survey. And this is an open invitation to please reach out to us and consider taking our survey. The link is at the bottom of the PowerPoint slide there and I'll put it in the chat after I'm done talking. We definitely want to hear from folks and it will continue to be open for I want to say at least the next two weeks.
[Unidentified]: And that's all I got. Sorry to mute myself.
[Roberta Cameron]: Thank you very much, Amanda. Let's see if I am able to advance the slide. Okay, so the way that I should have introduced before Amanda spoke, the way that we're going to be using all of this public engagement that we've been doing and looking at other planning that the city has been doing over the past year is to bring this together in our annual plan update, which is going to, guide us in determining how to use the funds for next year. This annual plan update also helps to generate thinking among city departments and among community stakeholders about what kinds of projects might be right for CPA funds this coming year. So this whole process is really meant to generate some fresh ideas, fresh thinking, and help us to prioritize how to use the funds that are available this year. So that's why we are holding the annual public hearing. This is actually required, as was mentioned at the beginning of the evening, required through our ordinance and under state law, but also the public hearing is our chance to bring people together to talk about what our needs are with respect to each of the program areas and our application process in general. So that concludes my presentation. Let me just unshare my screen. and kill my presentation. And back to the agenda. Next on the agenda, we invited members of different city departments to speak with us this evening. Some invited testimony to share with us what you see this evening. The needs are what you've learned over the past year and what you anticipate will be the needs in each of the program areas. So we don't have a particular order for city staff to speak. Danielle, maybe I'll hand over to you to manage the invited testimony portion of our hearing.
[Danielle Evans]: Okay. Alicia, did you want to start? The director of Planning Development Sustainability is here. There were several people that couldn't make it tonight due to some conflicts. So we did get some emailed comments that I can share when we get to some of the different categories, funding categories.
[Alicia Hunt]: Hi. Good evening. Yes, I'm Alicia Hunn. I think everybody on the call, but people will watch on TV as well, are aware I'm the Director of Planning, Development and Sustainability. I have a very long history with this program. So I just wanted to share a few things. I know I've actually contributed in to the original plans. A lot of the plans that you all are consulting are ones that I or some of my staff have worked on. And I appreciate all the outreach that everybody has been doing. I just wanted to touch on sort of a few more interesting things and a couple of just big picture, because a lot of the things that we've been learning in the details are things that Amanda will be sort of sharing and processing through some of that tabling. The sessions, some of the tabling occurred because of the grant this group gave to car park to do outreach, but we also did tabling for Morrison Park and for Logan Park as well as well as outreach in general for the comprehensive plan and for our climate plan. And all the time as many of you are aware, you go out with we want to get information on this particular topic, but really people want to tell you about what they want in general, and it may or may not be related to specifically the park or project at hand. So one of the things that we have been trying to make an extra effort to do is make a note of those things that may not be appropriate for this project, but are actually really worthy of the city's consideration and knowledge for future things. One of the things that we did here, and I will apologize, I am kind of repeating a few things that Amanda has said, but she tended to actually touch on some of the big highlights. that I think are important. And in fact, this one. So water play with the climate work we're doing, we are really aware that heat is becoming more of an issue. People need opportunities to get outside and do things in the heat. It's better for people to be outside. Because I haven't done it yet. Peter, you're not needed. So yeah, so the getting outside into the spaces and one of the things that we have realized is that a lot of our parks, we don't have space for a separate splash pad that is only use a couple of months a year. And so we have been really thinking about how do we integrate water play and water features into parts of the park that are playgrounds or patio areas where that space is usable year round, but during appropriate times of year, the water can be turned on as a water feature. And another sort of tie into that that we've been talking about a lot and trying to figure out where to integrate into our parks is spray misting features. I am personally familiar with them from many years ago when I was at Disney World. There were places where there would be like an archway and you could walk through it and you'd get a mist going on and it would be like a cooling and an older person could walk through there or somebody with a baby carriage. And you weren't committing to getting wet. You weren't wearing a bathing suit, but it was a cooling thing. and that we should be thinking about are there appropriate places to be putting these into Medford open space projects to help with some of that, as well as coverings for in our parks. So it's really nice. We've really heard from people like when we were tabling from car park, it was this big thing about we really prefer it over here under the roof or under the trees. We want more shade. We get so hot watching this or doing that. And what can we do about it? So actually that design is incorporated a large pavilion with picnic tables under it. The current car park has a small pavilion with a small tables under it. We've also we heard very specifically from youth, they love to play basketball up there, and they love the idea of a covered basketball court. They actually brought that to us. And that way they could play in the rain, it would keep the sun off of them when it gets too hot. It would keep the basketball court, a little better snow free so if it snowed, they could not too long to be able to play again. For that particular park, we are looking at some grant opportunities. I've actually tried to combine some worlds here and I'm trying to get a design for a covered basketball court with solar panels on the roof because what a great use of that space. I am hopeful that I wouldn't actually be coming to this group. I'm looking for larger capital grants than the CPC can provide for that. But I mention it because as we look at other locations, I think these are the kinds of things that we should be open-minded to and be thinking about and making these things We're really interested in seeing our playgrounds and our open spaces be for season and stuff that you can use in the winter, that they're accessible, and in the summer when it's so hot to help with some of these things. Another thing we've been talking about lately is the idea that the sun does set here, and in the winter we have shorter days. Right now, it's still sunny out. And what is appropriate lighting so these spaces can be used later in the evenings. And we're actually talking to a nonprofit, the Design Lights Consortium that certifies lighting standard, they do lighting standards around ecologically sensitive lighting. How can you light the path and not impact the wildlife around it so that people can continue to use the path and feel comfortable using the path, you know, when it's five o'clock at night and pitch dark out. so that we can continue to move people out of vehicles and onto shared use spaces. When it's dark in the evening, but it's a lovely warm out and you want to play basketball, but the neighbors don't want to see the lights shining in there, how do we appropriately light these spaces is something that we are working with. This particular consortium, their headquarters is in Medford Square, so they've expressed particular interest in working with us to pilot some things. So we're continuing to talk with them about stuff. That idea of the appropriate lighting, because I think there's been a reluctance. People don't want lights shining in their eyes late at night. We don't want them impacting the wildlife, but how do we do it in a way that we can use the open spaces even after dark? The other piece that we need to really figure out and be sensitive of is that we've gotten pushback from residents who don't like the sound of I've specifically been told tennis and basketball when they're putting kids to bed at eight o'clock in the evening. But our teenagers and our youth need some place to go and they want to be able to be out playing basketball and tennis. These are legitimate uses of our public spaces. How do we have this coexisting? The request that I had gotten mostly from neighbors is turn the lights off so they'll leave. My concern is, around if the lights are on they're doing things in the park there that we want them to be doing in the park and if we turn the lights off those good kids go somewhere else and maybe somebody else is going to come in and do things that aren't perhaps so socially acceptable in those spaces. That's my lighting spiel. I will specifically say there are a couple of open spaces that have hit my radar specifically and CPA might be a good fit for them. One is Gillis Park. This group funded the design and a lot of the design needs there, a lot of this is ADA accessibility. It is our intention to look at the city's CDBG, Community Development Block Grant funding, for accessibility. And so for things that straight up meet the accessibility needs, that's an appropriate use. This park isn't otherwise eligible for CDBG funds because it's not in an official low income neighborhood. So my thought has been that as we're moving forward and identifying what can we do with CDBG, what are the other things that completely make sense to be doing at the same time? that might appropriately be funded by CPA and try and pair those two together so that we could do all the work at once. For example, something that's been floated is that maybe there'd be a good space for an adult exercise fitness equipment. that would not be CDBG eligible. But if we're redoing the path layout, that may actually be a really good time to install the adult fitness equipment. We'll be working through what we can fund with CDBG, and then what are the pieces that we can't, and probably coming back to CPA and asking for some of that funding. Then the other one that has sort of come on my radar, some of you may know about the Malden Hospital site. It is on the very edge of North Medford. It is mostly in Malden, but there is a chunk of it that is in Medford, and the portion that is in the city of Medford is the wooded area, the area with water above ground. So it's going to be more of the protected open space up there. We are trying to work with friends of Felsmere Heights. We're trying to work with the city of Malden about sort of what are the plans, what would like to happen up there, what is the Malden Hospital company doing themselves, whether or not there is... ends up being public open space up there that we want to be partnering with and how is that eligible. So I just sort of want to put it on your radar because what we would be looking at in the city of Medford is a very small portion of the site. It's unlikely that as a city we would be driving the design, we would be more of a partner. and it would be really hard to go get grants. We could support Nalden with grants, we could partner with them on things, but it would be very awkward to be the lead agency on a grant to the state or to an outside entity for this small sliver of what's in the city. So that's on my radar. And then just to sort of flip a little bit, creating housing is very expensive, and we realize that. That's something that our office has been really interested in. How do we work with this? We have been working with the Medford Housing Authority to add units at the housing authority. You guys are aware of some of their projects. We continue to talk to them and see how we can assist with projects. And then we are starting to talk with mission based developers to understand what are good ways to develop some more affordable housing here in the city of Medford. and being able to bring city money to those projects. We are working with the City Council on an affordable housing trust that does seem to be moving forward. They've asked us for an ordinance and that is in review in City Hall and then we're sending it on to the Council, but there is a lot of space for partnership. between the CPC and an affordable housing trust. Based on the way that the city council responded the other week to Danielle, is my expectation that this will get passed in the next weeks to months, but certainly during this calendar year, and that we're hoping to support that. I know there's a lot of interest and support in historic preservation and historic renovation. I do think we're going to be seeing some stuff come out of the comprehensive plan that'll be supporting some of that. We had a long meeting with the consultants today and touched a little bit on the Brooks Estate to get some of their recommendations, and they were actually very enthusiastic about the Brooks Estate master plan. I asked them to just give us an outside third party since this is part of the whole scale they're looking at, but they were very enthusiastic about its development as a event space for the city of Medford if that was possible. Not to steal thunder from what I think will be coming out in the comprehensive plan in a few months. I think that I'll leave it as that. I feel like I could talk for hours and hours and hours, but I think that's probably good enough. We will, of course, be providing additional information through a lot of the outreach that we've been doing over the past year.
[Roberta Cameron]: Thank you, Alicia. Are you able to hang on for a little bit longer if we collect some more input and then ask questions all at the same time?
[Alicia Hunt]: I would like to, I think that I might tune in and out a little bit. Actually, I'll just tell you that the city council has on its agenda tonight, the polystyrene ban. And that was an initiative that came out of our office and actually my daughter was the proponent of that out of the school system. And there's an expectation that might get voted on tonight. So I'm gonna put, zoom that on a different device just to see how that's going.
[Roberta Cameron]: Okay.
[Alicia Hunt]: But I should be around. Thank you.
[Danielle Evans]: And so next. Thanks. Well, so Alicia, um, you know, spoke to, um, some other, um, aspects of our department that I could piggyback on, um, regarding, um, housing. Definitely. We want to, um, Um. To create units. It is expensive, so it would be, you know, collaborating with the mission driven. Developers to, um, you know, Be, you know, filling a gap. Um. There are some vacant buildings that could potentially be reused. I'm not sure if it's going to be in use for a long time. The like the Saint elementary school in the high school that they haven't in use for some time those could be a possibility to create housing there. We also although it is not been approved yet the housing production plan. There are a lot of draft. Recommendations in there that we want to get affordable infill housing and dispersing affordable units throughout the city. Particularly, I want to focus on affordable home ownership opportunities in small scale throughout the neighborhoods to further diversify our neighborhoods socioeconomically. And again, Alicia also mentioned the affordable housing trust that we're hoping will pass and we would hope that we'd be seeding the trust with a substantial portion of CPA funds, as is the case in other cities such as Somerville and Cambridge. And do we want to move to the schools?
[Unidentified]: Sure.
[Danielle Evans]: Assistant Superintendent Cushing, are you here? I guess we can give him a second. Alicia did touch upon historic preservation. I see that Ryan Hayward is here. Ryan, are you available to speak to what you I don't know if there's anything else that you feel are some needs and priorities regarding historic preservation in the city that we might want to include in an updated plan. Maybe he's not.
[Doug Carr]: I was texting Ryan just a few minutes ago because I was cured. He said he was traveling. Listening in, but I can speak on behalf of the commissions. We had a meeting last night. Okay We talked about it. I don't
[Roberta Cameron]: How about the Housing Authority?
[Unidentified]: Gabe, are you on the line? Are you here? Yeah, I'm here. Great.
[Roberta Cameron]: Do you wanna give us an overview of what you're seeing at the Housing Authority in terms of needs and expectations over the next year or few years?
[Ciccariello]: Sure. So we have two major projects going on. The first is the Salt and Stall building. which is where our main administrative offices are located. It is a 200-unit, high-rise, 11-story brick building. And we are at 100% schematic design, and we are going to be going out to bid in June of this year. We're not going to be having asks from the CPA for this project, but we may be looking for some support from the city of Medford in regards to possibly getting some like relief from permitting. In terms of CPA asks, it's the Walkland Court is the major project that is taking the 144 units, currently it's 144 units of elderly disabled housing that is within nine two-story walk-up garden flat buildings. And because they're walk-up garden flats, they just, they're tough for the population that they serve. And so we're looking to take those two-story garden flats and construct two mid-rise buildings with elevators so that the elderly can age in place there. And CPA has already awarded us $350,000 for preliminary kind of design and feasibility work. We are out. With an RFP right now for architectural services. Those are coming in on April 20, and we're going through the DH CD designer selection process to determine who the architect is going to be. We just submitted to DHCD a application on April 1st for their, what is called a no for notice of funding availability, which we are in the running with four other housing authorities to receive up to $15 million for Walkman Court. We should know if we're going to receive that grant or that award by mid-May. If we get that award, that really means that things are plugging away and we would be coming back to CPA or the city of Medford for some more local subsidy to fund Walkman Court. Now, Walkman Court is in two phases. So we have the first phase is the replacement of the 144 elderly disabled units, but also adding Another 54 units so so the total of elderly disabled units would be about just under 200 in the mid rise buildings. And so that's the phase one project total construction for phase one is anticipated at about 140 million. our local subsidy ask, however it comes, whether it's in CPA, ARPA funding, throughout the duration of the project, we're gonna be looking for close to $5 million in local subsidy for Walkman Corp.
[Unidentified]: Okay.
[Roberta Cameron]: Thank you, that's helpful to have that perspective. At an amount like $5 million, I don't know how much of that you would be looking for from CPA, but that sounds like a project that might require bonding. That's certainly not within any given year. So it might be a way to familiarize ourselves with bonding in order to understand how to apply CPA funds that way.
[Ciccariello]: Yeah, and just to fill in everyone else on this call too. So as I stated, Walkman Court is an existing state site. So it's run by the Department of Housing and Community Development. with 144 units of elderly disabled, we're looking to kind of split the site up and really increase density there. So we're looking to replace the 144 units of elderly disabled, add another 40 or 50 or so elderly to get the elderly disabled count up to 200, but also within the same site add approximately 40 family units on that site, because there's about 4.4 acres there. So we can increase density. We have a really good plan that takes the neighborhood into account. So I think it's a really great opportunity for the city of Medford, for the Medford Housing Authority. And we think it's a really attractive project, as I stated, for this application that we submitted to DHCD because we have that family aspect to our submission.
[Roberta Cameron]: That's great, and is that included within the estimated $5 million local subsidy that you said you'd be looking for, or would you need a further funding round to be able to complete that?
[Ciccariello]: Yeah, so that $5 million would just be for the phase one. For the 200 or so elderly disabled units within the mid-rise buildings.
[Roberta Cameron]: It's premature for us to be really getting into depth about that plan at the moment since we're just looking at the big picture right now and we're not talking about any specific proposals that are in front of us. But I just wanted to get an idea about what is in the pipeline that could be impacting the projects that we consider over the next couple of years. Are there other... No, thank you.
[Unidentified]: ...from committee members for Gabe? Thank you, Gabe.
[Michael Ward]: No, thank you. Thank you for letting me speak about Salt and Saw and the Walkman projects.
[Unidentified]: Yeah.
[Roberta Cameron]: So I don't see anyone else from the city. It seems that we lost Pete, the assistant superintendent. So maybe Doug, you could give us a little bit of an overview of historic preservation and then we can go on to. Yeah, sure.
[Doug Carr]: I'm happy to do that. Again, Doug Carr representing the Medford Historic Commission. We had a meeting last night. We talked a little bit about CPC. The commission has obviously come up with its own projects over the course of the last couple of years, the most prominent being the Thomas Brooks Park planning, and now to start the execution of it, which will be a multi-year project, which is an important piece. Obviously, this committee has been very generous with the Brooks estate over every round of funding we've had so far, so we appreciate that. There were two specific items that came up last night that I'll mention, we talked about. One was a couple of the commission members asked about, there's so many historic buildings in Medford that are privately owned, that they're wondering if there's any way that they could somehow have some kind of funding be used either as a matching grant or whatever to help bring back buildings that they think are important that we may have designated as significant and perfectly preserved, which is probably, it's probably 100 buildings at this point, if not more, plus the properties that are on the national and state registry of historic places. It's the whole thing about public benefit that is the challenge, I think, because it's a private home. It's not the same thing as the Brooks Estate or a public church, something where the public engages that building. And I just wanted, maybe it's a question for Danielle or Joan or you, Roberta, as someone who's lives in this world, is there any ability there to have some funds to restore houses that we think are highly historic in nature that we think are worth putting some funds on?
[Roberta Cameron]: Yeah, actually I could speak to that because I'm working right now with the city of Somerville to implement a small grant program, which they funded about four years ago and just actually never, never got off the ground until now. And that small grant program offers up to $15,000 to owners of historic properties. There's a criteria that has to be met for the properties to qualify. And so it's a reimbursement grant. The homeowners will develop a project that meets the approval of the historic preservation In Somerville, it's the store preservation staff. In Medford, I think we'd be dependent on the committee to be able to evaluate the projects. If the projects meet their approval, then the homeowner can be reimbursed for up to $15,000 of the cost of the project. There's an example of a program that I think could meet the need that you're speaking about.
[Doug Carr]: Okay, I think we'd like to explore that. I can speak on behalf of the commission, and I'm sure reviewing those grants would not be that big a burden for us. It'd probably be one or two per meeting at most, I imagine. They'd probably be limited funds. It wouldn't be open-ended, obviously. You'd probably put a cap on it. So I think getting that documentation and criteria from you, from Somerville as an example, would be good. We're interested in exploring that, and we're certainly willing to do our share of the work to make it happen.
[Danielle Evans]: There's Cambridge also has a program for historic preservation of private residences. And that's funded by CPA. And one of the things I'm doing with my other housing planner hat on is trying to revive our old home improvement program. And I've been talking with the folks in Cambridge and who they outsource their program to that runs the program for them, which is what we would want to do since we don't have the in-house staff to run a program like that. Um, for example, you'd have an outside agency. One of the agencies that, um, Cambridge uses is just to start. And so they would cobble together all of the various funding sources. So, um, so if it's an income eligible household, they could use some of the home improvement funds with the CDBG funds to, you know, do some internal stuff, but it's also historic structure. Then they could draw from CPA to the exterior. So I'm thinking that they could dovetail. with the Home Improvement Program, if we also launch that. And we did have this conversation, I think it was probably two years ago now, that the concept of having like a small grant program for historic homes for the local historic districts, and that this could be kind of an incentive to want to be in a local historic district, buy a home in a historic district, fix it up. I think there is a lot of public benefit for that to be able to preserve that historic fabric of the city. And as we all know, it's impossibly expensive to do these things. So if we want... That's really helpful, Danielle.
[Doug Carr]: I appreciate that. There's only a few historic districts in Medford, but we have been exploring, and it's not our commission, it's a separate commission as you know, the Historic District Commission, a series of one property historic sites that would accomplish what you're talking about. Because it's really hard to do a whole region, a whole district, But a single property one requires the cooperation and enthusiastic endorsement by the homeowner, obviously. And that could be a condition of getting some of these funds. I would imagine if they're willing to take the funds, they should be willing to protect the character of the building that we're helping to fund, preserve. I think there's a good synergy there. So I think it's a great concept and I would like to you know, put that on the table this year on behalf of the commission and I know Ryan would agree with that as well. Another commissioners who endorsed that idea, they've been thinking about that for a while and I think this is the time to kind of see if we can move it from concept to action for this calendar year. The only other comments we had is there were two historic churches in Medford, the New England Baptist Church and Shiloh Baptist Church and West Medford, respectively, that are missing their steeples or tops and something we've been looking at for a couple of years. We haven't seen anything from them. So I think we're gonna try to reach out and try to get design work done on their behalf, maybe, and see if, you know, it could be at least get the concept drawn and then look for funding sources down the road. At least getting those two kind of out of the gate was another thing that we talked about last night.
[Unidentified]: And that is it for my comments. Roberta, you're muted. Thank you.
[Roberta Cameron]: So it looks as though Peter Cushing, assistant superintendent, is back with us. So would you like to share with us your perspective on what the needs are?
[Peter Cushing]: Sure. I just want to say I apologize for being unmuted earlier. I was doing double duty with my three and five year old when all I wanted to do was to get them in the house and they wanted to go out and swing from the rope swing in the backyard. So we've all been there. My apologies. So the priority, the clear priority is to finish the design, well, start the design work. We are currently contracted with Copley-Wolf and are building a committee. We're just trying to find the last couple of members to round out our committee for the redesigned McGlynn Playground. We presented, we've had some thorough inspections done of the playground. And needless to say, it's at the end of its useful life. That's been confirmed to us. And I'll present in early May to the school committee the findings, nothing of great concern. It's just the equipment game time has an end of its useful life and we're approaching that. The other thing is that, so that would be the first priority, but the other is really the Curtis Tufts High School. The front steps, the cupola, and I would say the facade, including the front door, the windows, those types of things are really critical to help to rejuvenate that area of South Medford. And as a civic structure to really help you know, all civic enterprises across the city. It's the last of that era of schools that is still functioning as a school. There was recent road work and square work done down there just in front of the Tufts pool, which I think really helps all that. I think just that building itself lends itself to, it'll be 100 years old in two years. based on the plaques and various things in the building. I think restoring the cupola, really getting the front door to something that is more of a period front door, replacing, refurbishing the front steps and the fence work are the things that we would be looking for in a phased approach. Realizing that none of those would be low ticket items, but that those would be things in a phased approach for the Curtis Tufts.
[Unidentified]: and those would be our top priorities at this time. Sorry, it's loud in my house.
[Roberta Cameron]: Thank you. Any questions for Assistant Superintendent Cushion?
[Unidentified]: Thank you so much.
[Roberta Cameron]: I agree that these would be nice projects to be able to get in the pipeline and to be able to make them happen over the next year. So I just am curious how the public engagement is going around design of the McGlynn playground and what you see as a potential timeline for that.
[Peter Cushing]: Yeah, so I actually see us really kicking off in early May. Copley-Wolf is on board and ready to go. We will have a 14-member committee, which is two people larger than we wanted to, but that's within Copley-Wolf's wheelhouse. They were hoping for somewhere between 10 and 12, but knowing how public involvement goes, There were a lot of really good voices to build this committee. We're looking at current teachers, OTs, PTs. Right now we're trying to make sure that we've rounded out a good diverse group as well. So we've got people actively recruiting some parents and other people from the McGlynn itself to be members of the committee. And so we'd really see that happening in, sorry, pardon me. really happening May and June and design happening probably over the summer with a lot of comment and feedback and having people understand that this isn't just a playground for the McGlynn School. And I realized that if you look at the other three elementary schools in the community, I would say that more so than not, those are playgrounds for the school community. The McGlynn Playground is a regional destination community. It is something that people who are riding their bikes along the river or running or whatever will bring their children to. The towers and the vast housing that is there services that playground, services that area during the summertime. I've never seen children not on it when driving by. So, you know, this is a it's a marquee playground and what we're trying to do just so everybody's aware is we're trying to go with a universally accessible playground, so that students with various levels of. you know, challenges, disabilities, whatever it may be, can enjoy the playground as much as their neurotypical and physically abled peers. And want to make sure that this playground is truly universally accessible. And I think the best thing to look at locally is the new Dana Hay playground in Cambridge, which was just opened I think in, it formally opened I think in November, I could be wrong on that, but it really opened for foot traffic just about a month, month and a half ago. And so trying to create a space that resolves some of the challenges that the McGlynn playground faces, in particular flooding, and the concrete structure that is there designed to mimic the river, which actually just provides a barrier for school personnel to actually be able to effectively supervise the playground at times if kids are running around or behind it. So the timeline, I would say that we're hopeful to be God, hopefully, I want that to be clear to everybody who may play this over and over again when it does or doesn't happen, but hopeful that we have a new playground in and ready to go for the start of the next school year, not this one coming up, but the one after. So we go through the design set phase, get the preferred design, and then work with the community to really figure out the funding mechanisms to support this extraordinarily large playground. And I've had great conversations with many people across the city about this. And I think it's really helped to get the public schools thus far to really be more of a community member and trying to figure out ways that we can make this a true community park.
[Roberta Cameron]: Thank you very much. That's great. All right, well, thank you to Assistant Superintendent and to all of the city staff who have joined us to speak this evening. I did want to come back and just give a chance to bring any questions to Director Alicia Hunt, if we have any committee questions.
[Danielle Evans]: And I also have some email comments that I can provide when you read those.
[Alicia Hunt]: Can you do the email comments first? I have to take care of something here that'll take me about five minutes. All right. Thank you. Yes.
[Danielle Evans]: Yeah, so the mayor was actually very proactive in trying to round up comments, and she's been forwarding them as they come in. Steve Brogan, who is the superintendent of the Oak Grove Cemetery. I believe that's his title. He had identified the World War II fountain. I guess that doesn't function. It could possibly be restored with CPA funds. In addition, as you all know, provide a grant to do a design study for the service building, the WPA garage. And so actually implementing that study would be something that would come down the road. The DPW commissioner had brought up archival work. I'm not sure exactly what that would look like, but you know, very old, like historic plans, maybe like preserving those, providing for appropriate archival storage of those historic plans. So those were some of the feedback that I had heard. Also, our new Director of Diversity and Inclusion, Um, wanted to comment that she was hoping that the marker for Palm's Wall, which currently just describes it as the old slave wall, could, um, you know, have to call it the term that it goes by now, which is Palm's Wall, and is the more appropriate way to refer to, um, the enslaved person who built that wall.
[Doug Carr]: I 100% agree, Danielle. I'm hoping that the grant that was written for Thomas Brooks Park includes some money for that. That plaque has got to be replaced. It's just outdated, as you said.
[Unidentified]: And so I expect that some more comments will trickle in. But that's what we've heard so far. Thank you.
[Roberta Cameron]: As we give Alicia a bit more time to come back, I wanted to... Are you prepared? Okay. Sure. I'm sorry. Thank you. I got myself in the middle of something. Sorry, I should have taken questions first, but I didn't want to take time away from everyone else who wanted to speak. Any questions for Alicia about what's on the horizon for the... I cannot let the name of your department now roll off the tip of my tongue anymore.
[Alicia Hunt]: It's okay. Planning, development, and sustainability. Planning, development, and sustainability. Thank you. Yes. I covered everything. I know you must have a million questions for relevant projects.
[Roberta Cameron]: I'm sure we do and my interrupting. Your presentation from the Q&A probably was a distraction.
[Alicia Hunt]: Shall I just give the quick on Carr Park, the additional pieces that we have applied to some grants. We applied for a million dollars from the land and water grant, which is a federal grant. The way it works is that the state gets an allocation, so we apply to the state. The state will decide fairly soon, we should hear pretty soon, whether or not we're recommended to the federal level. I asked if they ever recommend things to the federal level that don't get funded then, and they said no. Basically, the state gets to decide and it would be extremely unusual to be sent to the federal level and not then get funded. So we're very hopeful about that one. We also have applied. So we are asked again for federal earmarks from our US delegation. And we had a preliminary conversation with Catherine Clark's office about the idea of funding a solar covered basketball court and a four season playground. And they were actually pretty enthusiastic So we've put into them that we would want between $1 and $1.5 million for those portions of the park. The land and water grant is for the baseball fields and the path around and a bunch of the infrastructure that would go in first. Each of those, if we did receive them, would require match money. So we are talking with the mayor about would that be ARPA funding? Would we look at a bond? And the other thing that is on our plate to apply for is that major league baseball does youth sports grants. to fund youth fields. And so actually we have no belief that Medford's ever applied for one of those. So our thought was to actually apply for that to use as the match money to a potential land and water grant. I thought you guys would all want to know where things stand with that. We would look to use some money in-house to do, if we find out that we're getting the grants, to do the engineering and bid documents. Those are not ready yet. When we go to do the bid documents, there'll be another round of outreach. We'll be looking at different parts of city money to fund those while we wait for those grants to become official with the hope of going out to bid over the winter to construct next year. The project is designed as very expensive and that actually would not cover all the elements we would like to do. We're going to continue to look for additional funding sources to do everything that is on the very gorgeous vision plan that came out of that. Thank you.
[Joan Cyr]: Whatever you do, preserve the pickleball courts.
[Alicia Hunt]: They're in the plan. They're not in the first round of funding.
[Daniel Nuzzo-Mueller]: The one thing that parents ask me about over and over again is if a skate park is going to enter into that final design.
[Alicia Hunt]: The pickleball courts are in there, skate park is in there. I'm trying to get the skate park in with the federal earmark request because I feel it pairs very well with the basketball courts and it's actually right next to the basketball courts. Actually, if anybody knows of funding specifically for things like pickleball or senior recreation, that would be a great one to find some additional funding to fold in sooner rather than later.
[Roberta Cameron]: Does AARP have funding for
[Alicia Hunt]: I did see a member of the Disability Commission raise my attention to an AARP grant, but they're relatively small. They're about $10,000 and they're for mobility type things. I haven't looked at it too closely. They said their average grant amount is $11,500. The largest ever awarded was $50,000. That is something that it is actually, in fact, open on my computer to be looking into more closely. That's how I came up with those numbers that fast. But yeah, I'm not sure that the timing works for that one either. I think that it's already closed for 22.
[Unidentified]: All right. Thank you. Anything else for Alicia?
[Roberta Cameron]: Then as the next part of our public hearing, I'd like to open up for public comment and question. Is there anyone attending from the public who would like to share comments?
[Unidentified]: Chuck Wilworth?
[MCM00001514_SPEAKER_02]: I'm part of the board of Medford Youth Girls Softball. And we had a couple items on some fields that we're hoping to get some help with. And we sort of talked about it at our last board meeting on Monday. And we thought of this committee and then kind of found out very recently that this meeting was happening tonight. But specifically at Tufts Park and also possibly at Hickey Park. We have, we've had a lot of growth in our program in the last three years we have. We have 102 girls from five to eight years old playing the spring this year and that's up from 44 girls three years ago. And we've had a hard time, we're able to play on a number of fields this year, but if we keep having more girls, we're gonna run out of space, I think. So, which is a good problem. specifically at Tusk Park, there are officially four fields there. If you look at the open space plan, it says there are four softball fields. One of the fields is really unusable at this point. It hasn't been, you know, the home plate and the pitcher's mound are not really there anymore. But the overarching issue with the fields is it does not drain. You know, DPW comes in, will pump water off the field sometimes to get the fields ready for us. But we're really hoping to get four playable fields there. We'd be able to have 100 girls playing at the same time. And also that fourth field is really just kind of not used because it can't be used, but it's also, DBW does try at the beginning of the year to sort of rototill it and things like that. So we're hoping to get some help in the process of trying to figure out how to do that. There are two adult fields, there are basically two adult fields there that are heavily used. The high school, I think maybe JV had a game there today. There was a girls team practicing there tonight. And, you know, I know what I used to play when I was as an adult as we play there too. But then the two other fields are really built for children. They're smaller in size. And those are the ones that have a harder time with the surface of them. There are other, you know, sort of, I would say, smaller issues, like we would need benches at one of the fields, or possibly dugouts. And that's also a similar issue at Hickey Park. I spend a lot of time at Tufts Park, so I'm very familiar with the issues there, but from what I understand, Hickey Park could really use some dugouts, some smaller maintenance with the field there where some grasses sort of encroached from either side of the fields. So we'd be really We're just looking for some help on kind of walking through that process and getting these fields up. I looked at the, during the meeting, I looked at the 2019 open space plan, and it did mention that, you know, irrigation is really needed at Tufts Park. And that it also mentioned that that was also mentioned in the 2011 plan for open space too, that Tufts Park needed irrigation. So that's my comment on that.
[Roberta Cameron]: Thank you. So, just to let you know that some of the CPA projects that we've had in the past have been, and there's a process through which community groups can apply in partnership with the city so you can initiate a project bring it to the city, and I think that the best process would be to go through the mayor's office and be assigned to a department that can work with you to oversee the project. You could also approach a department directly, but it's still important to coordinate through the mayor's office just so that the left hand always knows where the right hand is. So a group like yourself could initiate a project and be able to apply for the CPA funds and partner with the city who would then oversee the project. So that's similar to how, for example, one of the projects that we funded this past year is Excuse me, the replacement of the concession stand and storage shed at Memorial Field. And it was the Medford Youth Baseball that initiated that application process, which then the city is partnering to carry out.
[Unidentified]: Okay, thank you.
[Roberta Cameron]: Thank you so are there other members from the public who would like to speak. Well, thank you to all of the people again who came to speak with us this evening from city staff as well as the public. Now I'd like to close the hearing and move on to the next item on our agenda. I'm just going to pull up my agenda again, which is I'm going to move on to actually the off cycle application. So I believe that Victor Schroeder is here to talk with us about the off cycle application that was submitted to us.
[Victor Schrader]: Yeah, good evening. Thank you, Roberta. I'll give you a quick presentation. Thanks for having me back. This soft cycle application is for $100,000 to fund a critical repair project at the Chevalier Theater. We've been planning for about a year now, but have just received a bid on the project, and it came in significantly higher than we were expecting. We're hoping for some support. Just to give you a quick thumbnail on the project, it would be to replace the precast cornice, which is on the front of the building above the three entryway doors. Just to give you a sense of scale, there's about 22 pieces of precast stonework above those doors, each weighing about 1,000 pounds. So this is a big project. It's that cornice area that is in pretty bad shape at the moment, it's flaking. We'd really like to move forward with this project and not have the price go up again next year when we're coming back to it. It's pretty shovel-ready. Like I said, we have a bid, we have a qualified contractor, PJ Spillane, which is out of Everett. And they are able to do the work this year. So we're trying to piece together funding sources to cover the project. Initially, we we thought that it would be based on some estimates around $180,000. And it actually came in at around $373,000. So yeah, that's a It's a tough one, but it's important. So I can show you some images of the work that'll be done and current conditions and can talk about how the project will be staged and phased over the course of the six to 10 months that it'll take. I'm happy to answer questions about budget. or anything else that comes to mind. We do have, I think we submitted letters of support from friends of the Chevalier and the historic commission who reviewed this project last spring and was very supportive. So you should have those in your packet. But would you like, Roberta, would you like me to show an image of?
[Roberta Cameron]: Sure, an image would be great.
[Victor Schrader]: Okay.
[SPEAKER_08]: One second.
[Victor Schrader]: Can you all see that?
[Roberta Cameron]: It looks really sad.
[Victor Schrader]: This is, if you can see my cursor, this is the cornice that will be replaced. Especially under the pillars here, you can see the stones fractured, flaking away. It doesn't look good, but also structurally is becoming an issue. These are the pieces that would be replaced here. It will need to be anchored into the steel behind the cornice. The first phase will be to remove the existing precast, clean it up, take a look at what's behind there, and then they'll actually have to create the precast stone, which will take a couple of months, and then installation will be next fall. During that time, the entire time, this will be scaffolded and protected, but we'll be able to maintain access to the front doors. As we all know, the theater's very busy these days, so we wanna keep it open, but also make sure it's safe.
[Roberta Cameron]: Doug, do you have a question?
[Doug Carr]: Just a quick comment. I think, you know, the Historic Commission did review and approve these drawings. Victor's correct about that. I noticed that Ken Kraus was on this call earlier. He must've had to drop, but I mean, well, obviously, Chevalier is one of those things that I think the commission views as obviously a citywide asset. And I think this is a really easy call to make this, you know, it's all based on escalating cost elements, which has been true for anything on the construction of anything right now is going through the roof. So there's just nothing they could have done. They've got great documents. The architect is well-respected. So all the pieces are in place. My question to Victor was, as the CPC, part of the funding Delta or as another player involved? One of the sources.
[Victor Schrader]: Yeah, thanks Doug. We have a couple of sources. So we have received a cultural facilities fund grant for $90,000. And we'll be using a couple of sources that the theater has available to it through the casino and we receive a dollar per ticket from the management company bill blumenreich presents so those are the other funding sources the casino funds and bill the the dollar particular are more fungible so we do have a lot of other projects going on at the theater we'd like to maintain uh as as much of those funds that are are flexible as possible to to fix other things and make make other improvements so this would um If we're lucky enough to get your support for $100,000, that would go a long way in covering this project, but also freeing up some of the other funding that the leader has available.
[Doug Carr]: I appreciate you looking for other sources when you have overruns. We've had a few products where we're the only game in town, so we really appreciate the effort to spread the pain, if you will, to multiple sources. I appreciate that. So the 100,000 is what percentage of the total overrun, roughly? Oh. 40%, I think. It felt like a little less than half when you were running the numbers, but I'm just guessing. It is. Yeah, that's right.
[SPEAKER_08]: Let's see. So initial minus.
[Victor Schrader]: You caught me on camera, Doug. Let me work on that.
[Doug Carr]: It wasn't meant to be a gotcha question. It's not that important. Obviously, we can do the numbers later, but I strongly endorse this project. I look forward to hopefully supporting it soon.
[Joan Cyr]: Thanks. Joan? My question or my comment is the same around these kinds of applications that are called repairs and that these are not just incidental repairs, that they seem to be extraordinary repairs that basically rehabilitate the facade. Is that a true statement?
[Victor Schrader]: Yes, absolutely.
[Joan Cyr]: Because CPA funds can't be used for repair, but they can be used for extraordinary repairs that basically rehabs. Doug, you look like you want to say something.
[Doug Carr]: I think it's historic restoration at this point too. It's as much of that as anything else. It's like the slate roof of the estate or other places. It seems like it's pretty black and white from what I see being beyond just repairs. That's just my reading of it.
[Danielle Evans]: It's not maintenance, which is what. Absolutely.
[Victor Schrader]: Joan, to that point, we will be creating an accurate replica and there'll be drawings done once they're able to pull the stone, the precast stone down, shop drawings, and then actual replica drawings done so that it is matching. color, texture, the grout will match to the best of our ability. There is absolutely a historic preservation component in this.
[Roberta Cameron]: Thanks. Did you have a question, Losa? Okay. I wanted to ask Danielle about the availability of funds.
[Danielle Evans]: So this would come out of the FY 22 funds, which we're not sure what's left over the FY 21, which is what our last funding round covered. When our new finance director starts at the end of the month, hopefully we can find out what was left from that. But I expected that this was going to come from the FY 22 funds. It has not been touched, which would be for our next funding cycle. which is what we historically have done in the past when we've done off cycles in between funding rounds. So we're looking forward to... Yeah, like I think we might be able to scrape up what was left over, but again, not having the finance director, we don't know down to the penny what we had. I expect that we could get some from FY21, but yeah, it would be... the FY22 funds. Okay. That, you know, are nearly entirely collected. We're getting close to the end of the fiscal year. We'll start collecting FY23. So we have the funds. Okay. Just wanted to make sure.
[Joan Cyr]: Thank you. So this would take like six to nine months, did I hear? Or six to eight months?
[Victor Schrader]: Yeah. Most of that time will be spent with no work happening at the theater. The scaffolding will be up just to protect patrons, but the creating of the new precast stone will take three or four months and the drawings. And then installation will take another couple of months. October to December is what we were told last week when we met with the contractor. So folks will see a lot going on for a little while this spring and then nothing going on all summer. But it's really not cost effective to take the scaffolding down and then put it back up. So we would leave it up and and then they'd complete the work at the end of the season.
[Joan Cyr]: I only asked because I was looking at the schedule earlier today and I didn't see any shows in July and I thought, what are they going to be doing in July such that there's no shows?
[Victor Schrader]: Yeah, not this. I think they are trying to book July. Now that we have air conditioning in the theater, it's a comfortable place to see a show.
[SPEAKER_14]: How long is the contract or how much is left with the existing vendor of the theater? Do you know?
[Victor Schrader]: There is a benchmark coming up this fall with Bill Blumenreich presents. So there's an option to extend, which will be discussed and decided on in September around that time frame.
[Roberta Cameron]: Thank you all. If there's no more questions, would anyone so I think what the way we've done this in the past was first take a vote to accept the application as an off cycle application so that is acknowledging that this is an application which. has an extraordinary reason for coming to us outside of the normal funding cycle. And then after accepting the application off cycle, then we can entertain a motion to approve the funding for the project. If there's anything else that we need to and consider whether there are any conditions or any further considerations that need to be made. But first, would anyone like to make a motion to accept this application off-cycle?
[Unidentified]: I'll make a motion to accept the application off-cycle.
[SPEAKER_08]: Second.
[Roberta Cameron]: All right, all in favor, I'll call the roll. Joan? Yes. Sorry, I have to find all of you. Doug? Yes. Christy? Yes. Casey?
[Unidentified]: Yes.
[Roberta Cameron]: Heidi? Yes. Losa? She was here a moment ago and her video's turned off, so perhaps she had to step away for a moment. Steve? Yes. And myself, yes. And so secondly, is there, would anyone, first of all, do we see the need for any conditions on this project? I think because this is a site that has already been funded in the past, I feel as though any of our typical conditions would have already been applied and met in prior projects.
[Doug Carr]: I agree.
[Roberta Cameron]: Yes. Okay. So is there a motion to approve the funding of $100,000 for the restoration of the facade?
[Doug Carr]: I'll make the motion to approve $100,000 of emergency funds for the facade of the Chevalier Auditorium.
[Roberta Cameron]: Thank you. Second? I'll second. All right. I think Heidi got in there first. So I will call the roll again. Joan? She's frozen. Doug? Yes. Christy? Yes. Casey?
[SPEAKER_14]: Yes.
[Roberta Cameron]: Heidi? Yes. Losa, are you there? Steve? Yes. And myself, yes, but I really don't want to go on and then. Okay.
[Joan Cyr]: Joan. My computer just died, right? It was being taken, so please say yes. Okay, thank you.
[Roberta Cameron]: All right, so the funding, so we've, oh, Losa, we just, I don't know if you heard just what you were, we voted first to accept the off-cycle application, and then we voted to recommend the funding of $100,000. Did you want to, how did you want to vote for both of those?
[Joan Cyr]: Sorry, I had to run away from the thing. Sorry. I got sick a little bit. Sorry.
[Roberta Cameron]: Yeah. I'm all for it. Thank you. Great. Thank you very much. Okay. So that's a yes from all of us. Yes.
[Victor Schrader]: I just wanted to say thank you. And I hope it wasn't my presentation, Losa.
[Danielle Evans]: Not at all. I'll try to turn around this decision letter and the appropriation request to get it on a future city council meeting. I'll talk to Anita. Sometimes they want a little bit more time, but maybe we could get it on next week if we hustle.
[Victor Schrader]: Okay, we can talk tomorrow. Thank you.
[Roberta Cameron]: Well, thank you to everyone. Is that, oh, do we have minutes to approve this month?
[Danielle Evans]: Yes. The February minutes. Yeah, those are in the folder. I threw those in today. Okay. We had done the March ones, and I hadn't put the March on the agenda, and somehow we'd skipped February. So yeah, so we have the March minutes are done, but we couldn't, we can't vote on them because I didn't have them on the agenda. So it was, yeah.
[Roberta Cameron]: I still don't see the meeting minutes.
[Joan Cyr]: Go back into the folder before they're there. Okay.
[Roberta Cameron]: So do we, is there a motion? Is there any comment or question or corrections on the minutes from which month was it that we said? February. February? February 8th. Is there a motion to approve the minutes?
[Joan Cyr]: I'll make a motion to approve the minutes from the February 8th meeting. I'll second that.
[Roberta Cameron]: All right, and let me call the roll again. Doug?
[Michael Ward]: Yes.
[Roberta Cameron]: Casey?
[SPEAKER_14]: Yes.
[Roberta Cameron]: Heidi? Yes. Losa? Yes. Joan?
[Joan Cyr]: Yes.
[Roberta Cameron]: Christy? Yes. And Steve?
[Daniel Nuzzo-Mueller]: Yes.
[Roberta Cameron]: All right, and myself, yes. So the February minutes are approved, and you said that we're waiting on the March minutes, Because I didn't put them on the agenda. OK. All right. So we can wait till next month for the March minutes. All right. Is that everything this evening? Yes, it is. OK. So before we go, I just wanted to comment that that Casey had said that you'd like to step down from the committee if we're able to find a replacement. Thank you very much, Casey, for the time that you've been with us. I know that the city has advertised to fill the community seat. and are collecting applications from people right now. So thank you very much for the time that you've served. I think it's been a full term plus a year.
[SPEAKER_13]: I think it's been even longer. It was pre-pandemic. So it's time to get some fresh blood on here. But I'm happy to stay, you know, keep coming to meetings until you have a replacement. You don't have an issue with the quorum.
[Roberta Cameron]: Thank you for that as well. Great having you here. And so when we have our social meeting sometime later in the year, you'll be invited back as our most recent alum.
[SPEAKER_14]: Awesome, yeah, keep me posted on that.
[Roberta Cameron]: Hopefully we'll have a new member by then. Yeah.
[Doug Carr]: And maybe t-shirts too, that would be good.
[Roberta Cameron]: That'd be fun. So all right, well, thank you to everybody for tonight. I can't believe that we had. Is there more, Amanda?
[Amanda Centrella]: I just I had a question and maybe it's better to to do an email offline. But we had talked a little bit about having another tabling session at the West Medford Community Center and a couple of dates. And I wondered if we could pose to committee members if folks had any availability or interest in staffing that.
[Roberta Cameron]: Thank you for bringing that up. The dates that were in question were April 20 or 21.
[Amanda Centrella]: Yes, yes. On 420, we will have a group of about 25 seniors for a meeting. And then on the 21st, there will be another group going on. And yes, that was all of it.
[Roberta Cameron]: Okay, so yeah, we can coordinate by email later. It would be great if some other committee members, Joan and Doug tabled at the library a couple weeks ago. Thank you so much.
[Joan Cyr]: The stickers came in. I wanted a t-shirt. I just stick that on a white t-shirt.
[Roberta Cameron]: Yeah, so that was extremely helpful and thank you guys for doing that. And we, I have also agreed to table at Circle the Square in June. I don't happen to have the date in... The 18th. The 18th. So we'll be looking for help on June 18 as well. So there are a couple of opportunities and it's a lot of fun. Hopefully, we can have a few more faces to talk with people and get a feel for what people have to say when we talk about CPA. Did we mention when the survey is closing?
[Amanda Centrella]: We didn't. Yeah, I didn't have a date. If it pleases the committee, we'd want to keep it open for another couple of weeks. But is it the second week of May? We were aiming to have the plan update available to the committee. So it would have to be before then. Yeah. So maybe like through the end of April.
[Danielle Evans]: Yeah, that makes sense. If folks could push that out to your network so that we can get a better response. Yeah, great.
[Joan Cyr]: And let's try to focus on those areas of the city that we have low response from. I know I think I saw West Medford, North Medford, and maybe Hillside had a fair representation. Yeah.
[Doug Carr]: 40 responses is a very low number regardless. Can the city do anything to boost it on its own website? We get great emails and texts from the city.
[Joan Cyr]: But do a robocall?
[Doug Carr]: I don't know. My favorite police officer there, he's been known to rile them up, you know, get some ruffle the feathers here. We need more input. I mean, we had a good time at the library, but it was every child under eight was running in and out of that library all for the two hours we were there. It was fantastic. The building is already a smashing success.
[Joan Cyr]: Yep. So wonderful.
[Michael Ward]: incredible.
[Roberta Cameron]: Yeah. Yeah. Perhaps the, um, the Sufa signs, um, could have, uh, like a QR code or we could, um, certainly send it out again via social media. Yep. So any other closing thoughts, ideas, questions, comments? Okay, is there a motion to close the meeting? I just made one. Joan, okay. Second?
[Daniel Nuzzo-Mueller]: I'll second it.
[Roberta Cameron]: Steve got there first. Okay, then I'll call the roll. Doug?
[Michael Ward]: Yes, please.
[Roberta Cameron]: Casey? Yes. Heidi? Yes. Losa? Yes. Joan.
[Unidentified]: Yes.
[Roberta Cameron]: Yes. Christy. Yes. And Steve. Yes. Thank you all. We'll see you.