[Jack Buckley]: April 9, 2020, 2024, and the time is 5.14 p.m. The meeting will now come to order. Roll call of the commissioners. I will have to apologize, Alba is not present tonight, she had a death in the family. Commissioner Hunt?
[Ann Fretts]: Here.
[Jack Buckley]: Commissioner McGiven?
[Ann Fretts]: Here.
[Jack Buckley]: Here. Commissioner Brzezinski? I'm here. And Commissioner Falasca?
[Unidentified]: Here.
[Jack Buckley]: Thank you. And I myself am obviously present. We have a quorum. Also present this evening is going to be Sergeant Larry Rogers from the Medford Police Traffic Team, along with Sergeant Jordan Canava, Director of Traffic and Engineering. Todd Blake is present at the meeting, as well as Special Projects Coordinator Jim Silva. To the commissioners, the minutes of the February traffic commission meeting have been distributed. Did you all have a chance to review them? And if so, I'll entertain a motion to accept or modify or retract anything that needs to be.
[Alicia Hunt]: A motion to approve.
[Jack Buckley]: I'll second that. Can you guys hear me? Yeah, we can now, yep. It was very light in the beginning, now we got it. On the motion of Commissioner Hunt, seconded by Commissioner McGiven, to approve the minutes of the February Traffic Commission meeting, roll call vote. Why don't you call the roll call, so I can vote. Commissioner Hunt?
[Alicia Hunt]: Yes.
[MCM00001829_SPEAKER_08]: Commissioner Brzezinski?
[SPEAKER_18]: I was abstinent at the meeting.
[MCM00001829_SPEAKER_08]: Steve, it's pretty tough to hear you. You're breaking up.
[Jack Buckley]: Commissioner Brzezinski, you're breaking up a little.
[Todd Blake]: Just so it was, he's absent.
[Jack Buckley]: He's still talking.
[SPEAKER_18]: I did read them, but I have no idea. OK. Can you hear me now?
[Jack Buckley]: Can you hear me now?
[SPEAKER_18]: Yes, we can hear you now.
[Jack Buckley]: Can you hear me now? Yes, can you hear us? Can you hear us? All right, Commissioner Brzezinski, we're gonna have you abstain because we did pick up that you were not present. Commissioner McGibbon?
[MCM00001829_SPEAKER_08]: Yes. And Commissioner Velasco?
[Jack Buckley]: Wow, I'm having a tough time hearing tonight. This is interesting.
[Todd Blake]: I think she may have been absent, too.
[Jack Buckley]: Okay, sure. And Chief Buckley? I reviewed all in order on a vote of 3 to 0 to 2 abstaining. The motion passes. The minutes have been approved. We did not have a March meeting. It was canceled. And so we are here tonight on new business. and it's quite an agenda tonight. I know there was some conversation from some of the commissioners. Commissioners want to take a particular item out of order?
[Alicia Hunt]: Chief, can I take the GLX parking zone 2024-21? Can we take that item first since perhaps a lot of people are here for that and there may be some overlap with some of the other items on here with that?
[Jack Buckley]: On the motion of Commissioner Hunt to take 2024-21 out of order, do I have a second? Second. Seconded by Commissioner McGiven. I don't think we need to take a roll call vote. All those in favor, aye? Aye. All those opposed? The ayes have it. 24-21, GLX parking zone, pilot, South Medford, proposed conditions. For this, we'll go to Director Todd Blake and Jim Silva. Which one do you want to start? And I believe you can unmute yourselves.
[Jim Silva]: Todd seemed to have dropped out of the meeting. I don't know if they're having some technical issues at City Hall, but I'll start the process. I'm sure there's a clip.
[Jack Buckley]: It's throwing off everything.
[Jim Silva]: I just wanted to mention that just a little overview of the GL zone. If possible, there's Todd coming up now. This is a trial. This is a one-year trial. If this is approved, it will be implemented on July 1st, 2024. These are for location that already has resident parking and is within roughly a quarter mile of the three Green Line transit stations. The 2024 resident permit will not change. The visitor pass program will only be valid for the street that the pass was issued on. The current hour of enforcement is 24-7, unless otherwise posted on the resident parking sign. Those streets outside of the zone will continue to be street by street. Enforcing the zone approach allows a much more efficient use of resources and will not require so many annual variances and approvals. It will be location versus where the individual lives. The data and feedback will be reviewed over the year and will help us to improve our response and resourcing to resident parking. And if it is approved tonight, The C-Click Fix will add the GL Zone for residents to report related issues. The street data will be loaded and beta testing will begin with handheld enforcement devices. Information review on private ways will be revisited throughout the community. The G will be added to the zone on the resident parking signs, so you'll know what zone you're in. And the website and informational materials will be distributed to residents in the zone. Todd, I'm gonna have you speak.
[MCM00001829_SPEAKER_08]: Director Blake. Must be having difficulties. He's a co-host. He should be able to be upset.
[Todd Blake]: Yeah. Sorry. I was just opening up the PowerPoint. Can you see the shared screen?
[Jack Buckley]: We can, yes.
[Todd Blake]: OK. All right. So as Jim Silver said, this is a short presentation explaining what the Greenland transit area parking zone will be. This is the exact copy of the meeting presentation we gave. as a public information meeting on March 13, 2024. So some of you may have attended that. So if so, this will be a repeat for you. But others that may not have, this will be the first time. Hopefully it gives you information about what we're proposing. We're just going to flash up the map fairly quickly just to, again, give an idea of what Jim had alluded to. It's only the area closest to the transit stations located in Medford 1 and Somerville. So it's roughly a quarter mile, not exactly, and it's roughly two to four blocks within the transit stations depending on where you are. In some cases, one block. So it's a very small tight knit area within very reasonable walking distance of the transit zones and within each other's each other's streets as well. It's not the larger zone just to this dismiss any. misinformation about it. It's not the larger zone that includes South Medford and Hillside, the entire South Medford and Hillside. It's only bordered by Winthrop Street, George Street, Main Street, Bow Street, and then the City Line. So the project timeline, this just gives you an idea that it's not a new idea. It's not something that we just came up with this year that we're proposing this conversations and start way back at least since 2016, some say even before that. Hey, Todd, can you advance the slides? Oh, it didn't. I advanced mine, but didn't advance.
[Alicia Hunt]: We're seeing all the slides down the side.
[Todd Blake]: If you're using the wrong view. Yeah, I just had the presentation view on and I could see that. OK. We couldn't.
[Tim McGivern]: OK. You have to change your window if you want to present that.
[Todd Blake]: Okay, which slide do you see right now as large on the screen? Timeline. Timeline. All right, we'll just leave it like this. So the project timeline, so as far back as 2016 and even before that potentially, there was a study commissioned by the city. It was a private third-party consultant firm that does the stuff for a living, looks at parking studies, and they looked at an on-street residential parking program And out of that process, it recommended some system other than street-by-street parking system. formed this advisory commission called the Commission on Parking Policy and Enforcement. And if Jim or someone else could post that link to the city website for that page into the chat, that might be useful for a lot of people. So that there was a very in-depth report done in 2020. And that advisory commission was made up of residents and business owners, not city staff. City staff is available for resources. but it was made up of several residents and business owners. And they did a lot of legwork and had multiple meetings per week, met with the residents, did surveys, collected data, and they took time out of their busy lives to contribute to the community and recommend parking solutions. And this is one of their recommendations as well out of that report. So you can find that at the city's website. In 2021, that report was issued. The final conclusion that recommended that. In June 2022, the chief and I held a meeting explaining parking regulation on private ways. Anyone can visit that as well on the city webpage if we post that into the chat as well. Then in July through September, we had a community meeting about the GLX opening. Then we had some revisions to the processes to try to streamline some of the processes involved in parking, permanent parking. In March 2024, we looked into the adjustment to allow this GL zone, and now we're going into the April 20. So I think one point I want to make is. established as jim mentioned in this zone any street that was not permanent parking through a resident signature process was updated all at once within this zone several months back and so every street in the zone that's being proposed is already resident parking so the list of benefits in that study that was done in 2016-17 as well as from the parking, the Commission on Park Policy and Enforcement lists all these benefits, but we'll say them again. It's preferential access to on-street parking, prevents long-term parking by non-residents or residential street, provides alternative parking locations within short distance. So if your street that you currently live on has term parking is for whatever reason full, you don't have to worry about getting a ticket. You could park on a neighboring street and you'll be fine. Obviously, people are gonna prefer to park on their own streets, so we don't foresee people looking to park on a neighboring street. It's only in those cases where it's helpful to the people that live in this area. Enforcing by zone is much more efficient and resource efficient for the parking control staff, as well as this traffic commission process, because it eliminates some unnecessary variances that happen each month. And we might see that on tonight's agenda as well. Equitable parking, without eliminating the number permits issued, no changes to the current permit system, just like Jim alluded to at the beginning. Pretty much everything will stay the same before and after this proposal. The only difference is you'll have a little more flexibility to park instead of just in your street and neighboring street within the zone. And they're all very short walking distance from one another. So we don't foresee someone parking on one end to go to another end, because it's only two blocks away. So no change to visitor pass program, same thing as Jim alluded to. The visitor pass would only be valid for the street that you live on. The permit, you could park anywhere in the zone if you have a permit, you're a resident, but the visitor pass would just be on the street that your address is on. And then we'll, this will allow us, you know, we'll collect data and feedback this whole year of the pilot if it's approved, and then we'll revisit the system next year. Here's the map again, we'll go into a little more detail. Winthrop Street on the west end, which currently has no parking on either side, as people know. George Street on the north end, but it does not include George Street itself. The northeast side, Main Street, that's the border, but it does not include Main Street. Medford Street includes the west side of Medford Street from Tufts Square up to Magoon Square. It includes Bow Street from Dexter to the City Line. And then the bottom border is essentially Broadway, Somerville, but doesn't include Broadway, and Pearson Road does not include Pearson Road, and the City Line along the Tufts campus along Boston Avenue. The three green symbols here are the transit stations, so you can see how close proximity this area is to that. The pink-red area are streets that currently have pay-to-park. Those will remain pay-to-park. The light blue are resident-permanent parking streets. So those are all the public streets that we're speaking of tonight that all already have resident-permanent. The pink streets in the area, the lighter pink, versus the darker pink of the red, the lighter pink of private ways within the area, and whatever rules exist for private ways will still exist for that. And again, you could go to the city webpage regarding parking on private ways if you need more information about that. We could refer back to this if people need to at the commission, but that's essentially it. It's just the areas right near the GLX stations. I think we already touched upon this, what doesn't change, basically everything else stays the same, was before and after. So the process of how you buy a permit, things like that, the visitor pass process, all that stuff stays the same. The signs themselves will essentially be the same with the exception of a symbol on the sign, likely a G. So whatever street you may be on, if it's 24-7, 24-6, that's what it's gonna remain to be before or after this proposal or if it gets passed. The next steps were here tonight, obviously, that was from the public information. If it got approved, then it would be implemented in July, but it would give us time to order any materials necessary to update the signs. And then the start date, as Jim alluded to, is July 1st, 2024. And then we re-evaluate about a year later in 2025. So these were some of the commonly asked questions. And then there were maybe a couple more in the public meeting that we received. I don't want to spend too much time on this, but if the commission members or others want to hear more about this, we can. But I think. Since we had the public information meeting, this is potentially more for the commission members themselves, unless someone happened to not attend that meeting. But there were a lot of questions asked by residents and your neighbors. So we've already answered most of them, we expect. Certain questions, we've already answered a bunch of them. Lastly, the contact information is jfsilva at medford-ma.gov. As Jim mentioned, there will also be C-Click Fix categories, so that might be the easiest way for folks to just chime in on what they think over the course of the year. That's about it. I'll just open it up to questions. And these are what the signs could look like. So these are existing signs in that area. And they would just have the addition of this green decal showing the letter G.
[Jack Buckley]: Thank you, Director Blake. Jim Silva, quick, do you have anything you want to add to that presentation before I open it up to the commissioners? And as we have done in the past, we'll let the commissioners ask a few questions and then we'll open it up to public comment. I just note you did have a public meeting on this already, and I'm sure some of that feedback will be played into some of these questions. But, Jim, anything further?
[Jim Silva]: Yeah, I just want to mention that I've ordered all of the questions and including the chat link with the Traffic Commission members, I believe on the 28th of March. So you should have received that email that had that information and feedback from that meeting.
[Jack Buckley]: Correct, thank you. To the commissioners, comments, questions of either Todd or Jim Silva.
[Tim McGivern]: Jim, you're just referencing some feedback that we received. Can you summarize it for us since the last meeting?
[Jim Silva]: When you say summarize, it's basically as detailed, people asking specific questions, specifically enforcement, and the concern certainly about fairness in the program, and people outside of the district and how they were interpreting how they were going to park there. And so anyone outside of the zone or district would not be, would have to still be issued a visitor pass. Those nuances like that, just sort of clearly. And as we go through this process, and if this is approved, that information again will be forthcoming and sort of reinforced. So those were primarily the enforcement piece was very important. The issue of those who live outside of the zone as well.
[Todd Blake]: Yeah, I'll just add briefly to that. There were some questions about... you know, the current levels of enforcement or what they would be before and after this. And regardless of this, it's independent of this proposal. So whether this gets approved or not, the enforcement levels, we're trying to increase that over time in the city, but it's not tied to this proposal or not. That's a goal that the city has in general. And then in terms of some, a lot of folks had suggested the use of a sticker to denote who has a permit and who doesn't. And we said we'd take that under advisement. But at this time, there's no plans to use a sticker. But again, that question or that policy regarding something like that isn't dependent on this proposal. So it's independent of this. But that was a common question folks had.
[Jack Buckley]: Excellent. Commissioners, anything else? Any other questions? There are a few hands up, but I'd prefer to start with the commissioners. Can you hear me, Chief? I can hear you now, Commissioner Brzezinski. You go ahead. All right.
[SPEAKER_18]: I just have one question.
[Jack Buckley]: All right, just went bad, Steve. Hold on. Better? A little better right there at the end. Yep. You're in and out, Commissioner Brzezinski. Commissioner Brzezinski, if you can hear us, I'm not sure, but you're not coming through at all. having a hard time even just muting him. We'll see if we can figure out his technical difficulties. Commissioner Hunt, Commissioner Flasker, anything before I open it up, public comment? Okay, we'll... Sarah. Sarah, you have your hand up. You appear first on our screen. Can you unmute yourself? Just give us your name and address. And the floor is yours, welcome. Sarah, we can't hear you.
[Jean Nuzzo]: I just want to turn my phone off.
[ir8Km2ErkFk_SPEAKER_24]: Sorry, I was trying to call my phone. I apologize. You're welcome. Please let me know if I'm cutting out.
[Jack Buckley]: We have you now. Go ahead.
[ir8Km2ErkFk_SPEAKER_24]: Can you hear me now?
[Jack Buckley]: Yes. Name and address for the record, and then you can proceed.
[ir8Km2ErkFk_SPEAKER_24]: Can you hear me?
[Jack Buckley]: Yes, can you hear us.
[ir8Km2ErkFk_SPEAKER_24]: I apologize. I just want to. I live on 35 burger Avenue. Some of my neighbors are out of town. I'm not sure if my input will be valuable or not for input, but we strongly disagree on burger Avenue. We already have an ongoing issue with people who do not this being regulated appropriately and As a result, other neighbors parking, now that we have the green line, it's just been increased congestion. I don't necessarily think all of the presentation and what we discussed in the last meeting was accurately described. I just want to verbalize that communication.
[Jack Buckley]: Thank you for your comments and for your participation. I appreciate it.
[Alicia Hunt]: Chief, can we ask her what was not accurately described?
[Jack Buckley]: you know, can we have to ask you to unmute? Yeah, we have to get you to unmute again.
[ir8Km2ErkFk_SPEAKER_24]: Sorry, I just I'm used to like in work meetings when you have to mute yourself every time. Um, I think it was described that we were all in agreement and that these about the discussions we had and it was not 100% supportive from the last previous the previous meeting. And there were some suggestions for things that neighbors who have lived here for 30 plus years, what has worked and um, I don't necessarily think that was accurately depicted in the presentation. I have lived in other areas, which I said in the last meeting, where this has gone into effect, and it does impact the people who live on those streets and communities. So saying people aren't going to drive four streets over when there's a blizzard or their car gets then trapped on a street near the green line, are real huge concerns for us because we do not have that problem right now. And yeah, we're worried about that.
[Jack Buckley]: Yeah. So can I ask real quick, is there a larger portion of this an enforcement question? Because I mean, we do have two divisions and we're going to have to pick that up. And I say that as chief of police.
[ir8Km2ErkFk_SPEAKER_24]: It's honestly, it's a combination. I just want to mention that it's also the enforcement as well. But it Even if it's an enforcement, there was comments that people aren't going to pull a couple streets over for this or that. And I'm not sure where they receive their data from. I've lived in Boston and Brooklyn and other communities where this has happened and that data is not accurate.
[Jack Buckley]: Okay, thank you. I appreciate it. Thanks for your comment and thanks for participation. El Rocco, we have you next. We're going to ask you to unmute. Just introduce yourself, name and address for the record.
[Rocco]: Hi, yeah. I live on University Ave. And what does that mean? We have a private street. It's a dead-end street. And it's bad enough that we have the college students parking on the street that they should not be parking on the street. So what does that mean regarding the T station? Are you saying anybody can park on University Ave now?
[Jack Buckley]: Director Blake, I think that's probably best for you to respond. I think it's pretty straightforward.
[Todd Blake]: If University Ave is a private way, whatever rules exist for private way that that still would exist this this proposal wouldn't change anything on university app whatsoever so university of it's a private way any private way in this zone has the ability to create their own parking rules in terms of permits and visitors and post it, their own signs and enforce it as often as they want to with a third party. So actually private way owners in that respect for parking anyways, have much more control, direct control over enforcement and signage on their own street. So you could restrict it a private way, could restrict it to just private way residents and nobody else, and they can enforce it with the tow company.
[Rocco]: Well, wouldn't that be the city of Medford to do that? What do you, why do you mean the residents of the university? Yeah, that's the city of Medford. They're going to have to reinforce that.
[Todd Blake]: I thought I heard you say that it was a private way and you lived on a private way. If that's the case, then. Yeah, there's a private way. So I posted in the chat www.medfordma.org slash department slash parking slash parking on private ways. That'll answer all your questions regarding private ways. I'm just trying to clarify that the parking on private way, this proposal for the, Green Line Zone for resident-prone parking will not change anything like the day before it's approved or not and the day after it's approved or not. It won't change anything for you on University Ave.
[Rocco]: Okay.
[Jack Buckley]: Thank you for your participation. Sergeant, you want to go to the next ECM thing? Rich Moretti. I'm going to unmute. Unmute. Give us the name and address, Mr. Rich Moretti.
[SPEAKER_12]: Hello, Rich Moretti, 126 Burgadow. You guys are laser-focused on the GLX parking. The dead-end portion of Burgett Ave has another issue altogether. We have tough students in the area. This is why we went to permits long before the GLX project began. Our street always has and always will be the preferred street for tough students again. We had this issue for years. Students that lived right on Greenleaf have a block and a half away. They'd come down, park down the end of the street, and every day I'd come home from work, just street lined with students' cars. And these are all students that live in the area. They're not coming from out of state or another city. These are students that live within this zone. They're college students, and they're lazy. I got a couple of kids, college students. They don't want to walk if they don't have to. And I think this is going to be a huge problem for us down here.
[Jack Buckley]: OK. Do you have a, Todd, any response or?
[Todd Blake]: Yeah, I have a quick response. I mean, I could share my screen again, just so we get a little perspective here. And, you know, and these concerns about, we're not saying anyone's concern is invalid, but I'm trying to see. Basically, my point was gonna be that, you know, there are many streets within, that are actually closer to many addresses on Burgadab itself.
[SPEAKER_12]: So that the- Yeah, I'm telling you from personal experience though, I've lived here my whole life.
[Todd Blake]: Can I speak for a sec? Yeah. I just wanna, so Hume is closer to the dead end of Burgadab than several blocks of Burgadab are. So I'm just saying the current process, it's outlined by street address. But it doesn't necessarily mean the houses closest to that area. Because Hume, that's why I wanted to bring up Google Maps. Hume, Sunset Ave, Greenleaf are all closer to the dead end portion of Burgadab than 106 Burgadab, or number 10, number 14, number 9, number 13, number 16, the Burgadab houses closest to George Street. It's, this just enables those on Sunset or Hume that are closer distance-wise to the dead end than the other ends of Burgett Avenue to also be able to utilize that area. Again, they're not necessarily gonna look to use those sections of street. People are gonna park closest to their house. It doesn't mean that it'll never happen, but it's, think about where you park. You're likely gonna try to park near your house. You're only gonna seek other areas if it's full in your area, but it's making it equitable and fair. You know, it just gives more options to the people that already live there. These aren't outsides, they're your neighbors. They already live in this area. So Hume, as I said, so the dead end portion of Hume, I wanted to have this on there. So dead end portion of Hume is 367 feet. So house number 89, Hume is 462 feet away from the dead end. Yet, Birgit Ave house number 89, 10 is 1,500 feet away from the Denver gap. The 1,500 feet away number 10 is allowed to park at that end of the gap, but the Hume folks aren't. It's just the way the system is structured, it doesn't necessarily follow logic currently. So this is a parking policy that's very common in other cities and towns throughout the region. And it's the street by street is actually the most uncommon system in the region, if not the country. So we're just trying to update metrics to current standards. And I get that there's resistance and some fear associated with that. That's why it's a pilot. We can revisit it. If all of a sudden, all your fears come true, then we can have that discussion next year. That's what I would say to that.
[Jack Buckley]: Thank you. And Mr. Murray, thank you for your participation. Sajid, next. Lisa Ranallo. to ask you to unmute, give us your name and address, please, for the record.
[SPEAKER_00]: Hi, thank you for letting me speak. Lisa Rinella, 12 Stearns Avenue, Medford. I've lived here my whole life, grown up, and now I have a family here. I agree with some of the comments and the concerns that the residents have had, especially Sarah. I just wish that Medford residents would be considered because I think that it's going to be very chaotic for individuals that have chosen to buy property here in Medford, and live here in Medford. And I just wish that everyone would give the residents some preference because we choose to live here. We're not just students. We're not just commuting. We're not just coming to the city to work. I do believe that, you know, winter months are very difficult here. in Medford, neighbors that are neighborly during the summer kind of turn on you. And I just have some of the same concerns that I've heard other longtime residents. And I'm just afraid that once this goes on as a pilot, we will not have an opportunity to turn back. I do appreciate being given the opportunity to speak and voice my concerns. Thank you.
[Jack Buckley]: I appreciate your comments and your participation. So just unmute yourself if you have a comment. Otherwise, I'm just going to move on to the next speaker. Yeah, Eunice, we're going to ask you to unmute and just state your name and address for the record. Welcome.
[Eunice Browne]: Hi, thanks Eunice brown green leaf have totally in agreement with the previous speakers who all live in the surrounding streets to me. We are a very clogged street as it is with cars. We have several many 2 and 3 families. And many of the residents have multiple cars, so it makes it very clogged as it is. We may or may not still have students parking on the street, which is the reason why we got permit parking back in the spring of. 2021 in the 1st place, but we can't really tell who belongs here or not because there are no stickers. So the idea of getting rid of those, we can't tell. Who's on the street in the 1st place that belongs there. and allowing other streets to, when they don't have parking available, to park on Greenleaf is going to clog an already very clogged street as it is. And my understanding is that we're known by the Medford Fire Department as one of the worst streets in the city to navigate. And I think that became very apparent when there was a very large fire on green leaf just before Christmas. So, for those all of those reasons, I vehemently oppose this. And the other thing that I would mention is. I don't think I have ever seen, or at least not in quite some time parking enforcement coming through the streets. I know that's not necessarily your bailiwick, but if they're not patrolling. You know, what good is it doing? I'd be interested in, excuse me, submitting a public records request to them to find out what their actual routes are, how frequently they patrol their routes, and are they actually patrolling them? Because I haven't seen anybody down here at all in heaven knows how long. So, I'm, I'm strongly opposed to this, but I mean, it's pretty apparent listening to the conversation from the city folks tonight and I watched some of the last meeting as well on replay. This is going to pass no matter what and regarding what the speaker prior to me said. is that even though it's a pilot program and we can revisit it in a year, I don't have any faith that no matter what the residents say, once we start this, we're in it forever. So I'm sorry, but this is a bad idea. Thank you.
[Jack Buckley]: Unis, thank you for the comments. Thank you for your participation. I can't comment on enforcement to one degree. I have my two sergeants here who handle the traffic division and I bring them here for the very important reason to hear people like you say that they need enforcement because they can also do certain parking enforcements and they take notes and they can kind of address the issues and they know I'm here listening too. So I expect some sort of response out of that. So hopefully, at least from the police side of things, we can give you a little bit more. response to that.
[MCM00001829_SPEAKER_08]: I'm going to ask you on mute and then just state your name and address.
[SPEAKER_22]: Okay, I'm Maria Stella Cocchiara. I live at 3610 Le Havre. And although we have a driveway, the number of streets of cars in the street is very, very high. And on both sides of the street, especially in the winter, parking becomes very difficult. You opened the meeting by saying that the street-by-street has been changed to a zone because it's more efficient, because it is the thing that other communities around here are doing, because you will be able to better enforce the system. However, not the whole city is going under this. If it's so beneficial, why are you limiting this system to the area around the GLX? One, the enforcement on our street on Stanley Ave is non-existent. Students that park and have guests for not just hours, but days. And City Hall has been called that these students are parking here for days and weeks, and nothing has been done to enforce that parking. So it leads me to believe that this is only going to get worse, never better. When the GLX was being approved and built, in other words, the last several years, we were assured that things in the community wouldn't change. Well, they have changed and they continue to change. And like the person before me said, nothing is giving us any confidence that even the one year trial, thank you, the one-year trial is going to be to make any difference. We are already assuming that this is law and that no one is really considering what's happening on these streets and to us.
[MCM00001829_SPEAKER_08]: Thank you for your comment. We appreciate it and just move on here at NAD. you on mute and just state your name and address for the record, please.
[Nadeen Moretti]: Hi, yes, thank you. Nadine Moretti, Burgadow. Can you hear me okay?
[MCM00001829_SPEAKER_08]: Yes, we can. Good afternoon.
[Nadeen Moretti]: Okay, great. Thank you. Good afternoon. I am in Chiming Inn. I live on the dead end of Burgadow and We already have an issue with parking on this road, especially down this dead end with the students of Tufts. We are constantly seeing students park their cars and leave to go to their classes for however many hours of the day. It's been an ongoing problem, hence the reason why we also got the permit parking. It doesn't seem to stop anybody from choosing to do this though. And it's been an ongoing problem for as long as I've been here and I've lived here for 21 years. And so to add the threat of more people being able to park here for the day while they go to work and take up our spaces in front of our homes. It's just an unfair, it's an unfair ask. I really don't understand, and I have to agree with the previous callers, that the pilot program could all be well and done in a year, but it is not going to change anything. I think that before this can even, or should have been considered, The parking permits and the parking issues that we have, especially on burgundy. You know, should be taken care of and we can call the parking people and things are never done. So, it really is a big concern to think of. People coming here and parking for the day, or rather green line users rather and. you know, as losing our parking spaces in front of our own homes. So I'm really 100% opposed to this as well. And I wish that there was something different that could be proposed, especially in light of all the people speaking against this. So again, the problem on the dead end of Burgadave remains, I don't think it's ever going to get better, it's just going to get worse. So this is a huge concern, and I'm completely opposed to this proposal. Thank you very much.
[MCM00001829_SPEAKER_08]: Thank you. We appreciate that.
[Nadeen Moretti]: Okay. Thank you.
[MCM00001829_SPEAKER_08]: So that is it for the hands are being raised that I can see. I'd like to bounce it back to the commissioners.
[Todd Blake]: So, yeah, Jordan, I just had a quick thought to share. We do value residents' comments, but if we took a tally of who spoke so far, which again, the comments are valid, and we appreciate you attending and giving your thoughts, but Just as someone mentioned, I don't think I said everyone was in agreement in the meeting, but we were just highlighting what was discussed. But if we tally up who spoke so far, a number of people are from Burgadav, obviously, right? But as a city, we make decisions for the whole community, not necessarily just for one street. So obviously, Burgadav has you know, concerns and those are valid, but we got to look at other streets that may not have any parking at all. Like Winthrop Street has no parking at all. College Ave has no parking at all in some stretches. So the current system, those people would come here request a variance to park on one of the side streets that we're talking about anyways, and then the commission has to, in the current system, select one of those streets for those folks to go park on. And then that one street gets overloaded, and then the problems kind of domino effect into the neighboring street. So this is taking a more holistic neighborhood approach to think of those other streets that may not be speaking up or may not be in attendance that have issues in the sense that they don't even have the option to park on this street. So we're just trying to highlight that for folks that, and again, we appreciate people showing up and not trying to be argumentative or anything with people from Burgerdap. It's just highlighting that that's one streets, one perspective. So we got to look at the whole of all of this system. Any issues regarding lack of enforcement or people that don't have permits that are there for a long time, they're not getting ticketed, those exist even if this didn't come forward as a proposal, right? So it's independent of this process. In terms of the green line and the parking getting worse, One of the tools the city has, like Medford, is to have a resident-prone parking program so that we block out non-Medford residents from driving from Arlington, Belmont, wherever, to park near the Green Line, to hop on the T for the whole day. So that's why we have a system like resident-prone parking, to restrict it to just Medford residents, to help Medford residents. So this is kind of being discussed as something anti-Medford resident, and a permanent parking program is for Medford residents. So I just wanted to highlight some of those things. Appreciate everyone's comments and time that they've taken to attend the meeting.
[MCM00001829_SPEAKER_08]: Hey, Todd. Thank you, Todd. Appreciate it. We do have a couple more hands up. Council of the commissioners if you want to speak on this or if you want me to continue with the public comment.
[Tim McGivern]: Jordan, let's continue. I want to continue the public comment, but I just want to ask a couple of clarifying questions to Todd, because from what it sounded like, I'm not sure if everybody understands what we're trying to do here, because we're not inviting more users to the area, to the G area. The city wouldn't be planning on doing that. It's actually doing the opposite. It's restricting users. Correct me if I'm wrong, but if you have a permit today, you live on a permanent streets, this system means you're going to have a permit in the future as well, just going to be a little bit different. Then the other thing I think you already touched upon, that enforcement issues, sure, they exist and we acknowledge them, I believe. But we're not talking about enforcement right now. This is something different and this actually should make enforcement easier. That has to do with the more efficient piece we talked about earlier. Then as far as students parking, this should help that issue too because if they don't have permits, so they don't live in Medford or whatever, then this would restrict them from parking on Burgett like it is today. But again, that goes back to an enforcement piece. This is going to have to be enforced just like the current situation needs to be enforced for it to be effective.
[Todd Blake]: I just wanted to bring up the Google map to share. I'm trying to come up with the correct terminology. You can kind of look at it as glass half full, glass half empty type thing. A lot of comments are like this end of Burgadab, if you can see that hopefully. is the desired section, I guess, of Burgett Ave, because it's the closest as the crow flies to the Green Lines. So what I was pointing out earlier today, or earlier in the meeting, is a house way up here near George Street currently has a permit for Burgett, so they could, you know, the fear, drive down here and park over here instead. But this person, Humab, which is actually closer, cannot. But if in those chances, in those times when this is full for someone who lives in say number 132, right now, you only have the option to look on Burgett and you might end up having to park up near number 22 or up near George Street. But in this system, you'd be able to park right on the corner on Hume or Sunset. Each time we're looking at the potential negative, but we're not looking at the positive side of the equation. So if you find yourself in trouble parking at the dead end of Burger Avenue or your house, you yourself could park on Hume or Sunset, which is closer to your house than Greenleaf or Chester or way up near George Street. So there's two sides to this coin. You can look at it both ways, right? And we're focusing on one end of it right now, it seems.
[Tim McGivern]: Yeah. The last thing I want to say before I go back to public is that I know that I, for one, am very much interested in this being a pilot, because there are going to be issues. The whole purpose of a pilot is to make sure we're paying attention, understand what the issues are, so we can try to resolve those issues. Or there is the option of scrapping the whole program if it just doesn't work. We don't think that's going to happen. But the pilot program, the purpose of that is to understand what issues arise during implementation, which are hard to foresee.
[MCM00001829_SPEAKER_08]: Thank you, Commissioner McKibbin and Todd, and we'll go back to public comment. I think Jenny, Lynn's iPhone, and then we have Carol's iPad, Sarah, Nadine, we have you guys, so I'll just ask you to unmute, and please just state your name and address.
[SPEAKER_13]: Hi, my name is Jane Lynn Pagan. My address is 459 Broadway, Medford, Mass. And I was just curious, is Strathmore, Braemore and Killsite streets going to be affected within the pilot program?
[MCM00001829_SPEAKER_08]: That would probably be, or Jim, that would probably be.
[Jim Silva]: To your question, those streets are part of the resident parking program. So you're at 459 Broadway. You currently have your variances to park on Bow Street.
[SPEAKER_13]: No, my variance is to park on brain more. I'm the exemption. I'm a corner lot.
[Jim Silva]: Okay, so that allows you to park on brain more still and then obviously, if there isn't parking on brain more, you can park on bow. Dexter kill sites. So you have some options, so you're not. I think maybe at some point, you might come home and not find a place to park on that street. So you have looked for parking that you may have actually been ticketed, et cetera. This will give you an opportunity to park on some of the other streets in the area.
[SPEAKER_13]: So I'm not sure if you're familiar with the South Medford, that area?
[Jim Silva]: I live in South Medford, yes.
[SPEAKER_13]: Okay, so do you live within those streets because if you lived on braymore road You would know that there's four exemptions on that street because there's four corner lots. Yep Two on bow two on broadway. There's also two handicap parking exemptions on that street And I have four kids so i'm not Going to want to park three streets over to park So I can walk to bring more road. You know, that that that's ridiculous and I appreciate your comment.
[Todd Blake]: So I don't think we're suggesting you would have to walk that far, right? We're saying that if the chance, if the case arises where you're only allowed to park on Braymont and there are no spaces available, what do you do in that case? You circle the block until you find one. This program would enable you to park like around the corner to one street on a different street. So it's to help you, not to hurt you.
[SPEAKER_13]: No, no, because how it works is perfect because there's no issues, okay? You don't know our street. The people across the street, they have Parkinson's and an elderly woman who needs a wheelchair. The people next to us on the first floor, they have a chemo patient. Their parents come down and take care of them multiple times a week. but they can't use their driveway because the people on the third floor is an Airbnb, so they have privilege to their driveway. The second floor is a single mom with two kids, so she deserves to park in front of her house. The people next to them, the first floor is an elderly couple. who rent out their second floor and allow the people to park in their driveway. They still need parking in front of their house. The people down the street have a handicapped child who need privilege to park in front of their house.
[Todd Blake]: So if I may, ma'am, these are good points you're bringing up, but we have existing programs that could help a lot of these issues.
[SPEAKER_13]: What programs are there? Because I don't know those programs.
[Todd Blake]: If I may, there's a program that you can request to get an accessible parking space sign near a house of someone that has needs and shows that they have a plaque or a plate. So then that would ensure them to have a accessible space very close to the house, if not in front of their house. So there are programs like that that exist that many of the people that you just mentioned, the examples, could benefit from something like that.
[SPEAKER_13]: So basically, Braymore Road will become full of handicapped spaces, but I am a tenant with four kids. So I have one parking space, but my husband, who works multiple shifts, who needs to park on this street, so he should park on three streets over because someone on Strathmore couldn't find parking and they need to park in front of my house. How does that work? How is that fair?
[Todd Blake]: I think we haven't mentioned this earlier. This is a good conversation to have. We haven't mentioned this in terms of, you know, there's some impression, and this isn't just South Metro, this jail zone, this is like citywide. Does this, kind of understanding this expectation of having the parking space in front of your house and the density that exists in the car ownership that exists in Medford, the number of spaces on the street does not afford that to happen. So policies like resident parking exists to weed out the non-Medford residents to only have you compete with Medford residents and not other people. Because if we didn't have that policy, you'd be competing with people from Somerville and everywhere else. So, the number of on-street spaces is not enough to guarantee everyone a spot on the street. It's just not. And it's just with car ownership over time, over the decades, that's the way it's gone. It's not anything bad about Medford or any Medford residents per se at all. What we're trying to explain in your particular area, in any areas that these issues, challenges exist. The current system is that the traffic commission could grant a variance to say someone in Sherbrooke Court to park either at Strathmore or Braymore or Bow Street. That already exists today. So instead of the traffic commission deciding which street that variance should park on, by having a zone, it allows that supply and demand to reach an equilibrium. So if the traffic commission, for instance, I'm not saying they would, but if over time there's enough variances and they added five variances to Braymore, you'd have more of an issue, right? But if it wasn't dedicated to just Braymore and it was allowed to all those streets, it would be able to spread out and go where it's available. So do you see what we're saying? Like these existing processes might contribute to more congestion on one street versus another. This is kind of spreading it out within the neighborhood. It's not meant to hurt anyone or make it worse. It's meant to help.
[SPEAKER_13]: Sherbourne Court, first of all, has parking. The tenants just don't want to pay for the extra parking for their parking spot. So they'd rather pay the $10 to park on Bow and then just try to park on Bow or Strathmore. I'm sorry, Braymore or Strathmore.
[4FrRjkCyMqA_SPEAKER_06]: Now, if I could interrupt Sergeant Rogers. The numerous people in Sherbourne Court and on Broadway are forced to park on Bow Street because there is extremely limited parking on Braymore, Strathmore, and Killsife. This program will now bring everyone on Broadway be able to park on Braymore, Strathmore, and Killsife, and there'll be absolutely no room for the residents of these streets. They will put down on the Bow Street because Bow Street can handle the overflow and parking. These side streets cannot handle it. So the variances were for Bow Street only. This program will now flood the side streets. And the residents of those streets will have nowhere to park.
[MCM00001829_SPEAKER_08]: Right, so we have a couple more hands here. We'll get through them and then we'll go back to the commissioners. So Carol.
[Alicia Hunt]: Can I just ask one clarifying question on that?
[MCM00001829_SPEAKER_08]: Go ahead, give it a shot.
[Alicia Hunt]: Are the residents of Broadway automatically allowed to get, they're not automatically allowed under this new program that Broadway is the border. Are the residents of Broadway able to get parking permits? Because we know we can't give them parking permits on Broadway because that's a Somerville street.
[4FrRjkCyMqA_SPEAKER_06]: So they will get a variance, Alicia, because these apartments are in Medford.
[Alicia Hunt]: So I guess my question is about this program. They would still need to come get a variance to be able to park on a Medford street. And would the variance be for one street or would it be for the whole area?
[4FrRjkCyMqA_SPEAKER_06]: If this program is full, they'll be able to park anywhere in that zone.
[Jim Silva]: So Alicia, we're honoring variances. There's no change to the variance and the variance has already been granted for that you speak of. So yes, as Sergeant Rogers alluded to, they would have the availability of parking in the zone.
[Alicia Hunt]: That's existing variances. A new person moves in, they'd still have to come get a variance.
[Jim Silva]: Variance is based on the address, not individual. Correct.
[Todd Blake]: So if your address is a Medford address within the zone, you should be eligible for a permit. Not necessarily a visitor, because visitor on Broadway, we don't control the space on Broadway, right? But a sticker or a permit, then if they're Medford residents within the zone, they would be eligible.
[Alicia Hunt]: That's the weird thing. Most of those Broadway, the houses are in Medford, but their addresses, a lot of them, their addresses are actually Somerville. It's a very unusual situation.
[4FrRjkCyMqA_SPEAKER_06]: Alicia, it was always Somerville until 9-1-1, obviously, and a lot of things had changed since then. And the post office required the exact city where your property lied in. And a lot of them had to change back to Medford.
[Jim Silva]: And Alicia, the parking program goes by the assessor's office. And so those buildings are Medford. And as Todd alluded to, because they are on Broadway, we cannot issue visitor passes on Broadway. They can only have resident parking in the zone.
[MCM00001829_SPEAKER_08]: Okay, so we'll go through to Carol's iPad, unless the commissioners have anything else we want to keep flowing through here. It seems like we got a couple of heads up. So I'll just ask you to unmute Carol and you can speak your name and address for the commissioners, please. Hello? Hey, good evening.
[SPEAKER_10]: Can you hear me?
[MCM00001829_SPEAKER_08]: We do.
[SPEAKER_10]: Okay, Carol Galoni, I'm on St. Clement's Road in Medford. And we have a unique problem here because we not only have the tough students that park in our street because of the academic program right across the street, we also have a very active church community now that has something going on six to seven days a week. And we have Semolina's restaurant. And we are also surrounded mainly by Somerville streets. And it's a pretty known fact that if you park on the Medford sides, you get no ticket. If you park in Somerville, you get a ticket. And there is no enforcement. And I know this is something that's been brought up. But we have also called many times when there have been cars parked here several days. and there's no enforcement of that. Now with this zoning, what I anticipate is we already have a problem. Bristol Road is very congested, so people up there already come down here to park and they never get ticketed, so that's not gonna change. So if you can't find a place on St. Clements Road, your only alternative is Bristol Road or Boston Avenue. And most of the time, there's no parking spaces there. And if it's in the winter, you can't park on Boston Ave if it's a snow emergency. And to think that somebody from St. Clements Road or Bristol Road is going to go walk under the Harvard Street Bridge and go down into the South Medford streets to find a parking space and then walk back home is unrealistic. And my other question that I've asked several times and I've never given the answer to it is, what other city or town has permit parking without issuing stickers? Does anybody know? My silence tells me that there aren't any. And if, you know, living right next to Somerville, I mean, the people that go to church here, they get upset when they park on Warner Street because they're not even there five minutes and they get a ticket. Somerville is very active in enforcing, and the tough students know that. We've had tough students tell us that. So, I mean, I'm not sure why St. Clements Road was included in this. The only benefit is that you're gonna have people that are gonna come from other parts of the city, even though you say they're not, they're gonna park here and walk up to the green line because they're not gonna wait and go, like someone said last meeting, in the winter or bad weather, walk, 10 to 15 minutes when they can park here and just walk up the street. So I really don't see any benefit that this is going to have for our street other than it just adds another layer of traffic that we have to deal with all the time. Thank you.
[MCM00001829_SPEAKER_08]: Thank you for your comments.
[Tim McGivern]: The misunderstanding is continuing out there. If someone from another part of the city wouldn't be able to park in St. Clements, so it's only someone in the zone would be able to park on St. Clements. So I just wanted to clear that up.
[4FrRjkCyMqA_SPEAKER_06]: Can I address? I want to address the enforcement. Go ahead. Commissioners, Sergeant Rogers again. As far as the enforcement goes, we do our best. My traffic cars go to all accidents. calls backing up the sector cars, and I will assign them specific areas, mostly which I get on C-Clicket. I'm relying on the parking department to do the resident parking as well. We respond when we get a complaint. If we have time, I will assign certain streets, again, if we have time. So that's the enforcement.
[MCM00001829_SPEAKER_08]: Sarah, you have your hand up. I just don't know if it's from before, or if you have another question, I'll just ask you to unmute.
[ir8Km2ErkFk_SPEAKER_24]: Yes, I just wanted another comment from listening to others. First of all, I want to say thank you to the police department. And I don't think any of us are saying we don't want you to respond to things more urgent than parking. I know I'm a nurse and that's for sure not my intent. But I do want to reiterate, and while I hear globally what the commission is trying to state, but we all live where we live and I won't just speak to my own street, I'll speak to all the others. We have figured out what works and it works to the best of our ability. We're not saying, I think Tim commented about reminding us that we're not talking about other aspects of the city. I'm not talking about that either. People can walk a 10-minute walk from a few streets over during a blizzard, in theory, and park in front of our street or one of these other streets, and that's what we're all concerned about. Like, we all have our assigned parking today. And again, it works the best for ability. There are things that already exist, and we already have permit parking. So that is what we are all globally stating to you. And what affects all of our lives, whether it be people with needs, special needs, wheelchairs, etc. Like, I'm just trying to advocate for my neighbors. I fortunately do have parking and for my own in my own driveway. But I see what happens, and I see the dead-end aspect of Burgett, so then eliminate us from the circle and expand it to somewhere else. Like, happy to have that occur, because we haven't figured it out, and it sounds like a couple other tight neighborhoods do too. This isn't helping any of us. We have the situation figured out. Other than, I don't know, outsourcing and reducing costs for things, maybe that's what really the big picture is, but like, it's, It's difficult to listen to you all say back to us some of these things when it's affecting people's daily lives when they want to come home and things and we experienced it. I'm sorry, someone else is unmuted, but I just want to advocate for us all day and I. I hope that you're all listening to us and how it affects. Each individual who lives in Medford in these areas and, like, I get it. We don't live in other aspects of Medford. So it's not impacting them. And maybe they filled out the survey, which, by the way, none of my neighbors receive. So, we weren't part of that survey that data was produced on. That's super frustrating. I don't know. I just want to put a plea that, like, you'll please listen to us.
[MCM00001829_SPEAKER_08]: Thank you.
[ir8Km2ErkFk_SPEAKER_24]: Can we put a date on like six months from X date when this passes that we're gonna reevaluate and get input? Because yeah, I absolutely am worried that this is just gonna get passed like many other things have happened that my neighbors have advocated for that we just, we vote and then a group of votes above us. It's really frustrating.
[MCM00001829_SPEAKER_08]: There is as, Jim and Todd and Commissioner McKibben has explained that this is a pilot program. So as stated before, this program that if it is to pass, that it can be revisited in any aspect that may occur, whether that's other things that are going well or other things that may not be. So there is a program in place for that.
[ir8Km2ErkFk_SPEAKER_24]: Yeah, I mean, there's a lot that the neighbors of the dead end street are dealing with. Those people already don't have, they don't care where they're assigned spots. They're already parking there. They're not going to change because now they can park on whatever that one street over is. That's not going to get better. Give us some help here. December 31st, we're going to reevaluate the program and we get a say. I don't know. This sounds like a blanketed, Let's see, I have not found that successful as a person.
[Todd Blake]: I just brought up the slides and we indicated that it would be re-evaluated in July 2025, one year later.
[ir8Km2ErkFk_SPEAKER_24]: Okay, well, that's a long time, like one year. It's a long time to live, like, we have something working in our areas. Why? I get that it's reducing costs for your team, But how much does a parking sticker really cost in the grand scheme?
[Alicia Hunt]: I think Jim might be able to better speak to this, that it's not so much when we talk about efficiencies, it's not so much the cost of things like stickers, it's when they are going out and patrolling for the tickets, they can move much faster and they can cover a broader area more quickly using the zoned approach than they can when it's street by street. And I don't fully understand the technology. I know Jim's worked with the technology some, But that was my understanding from our parking division.
[Jim Silva]: That's correct, Alicia. It will now be popping up on as we drive down the street and scan license plate, it pops up and says G zone or GL zone versus street by street. So again, if if a person in your street could not find parking and was parked on Hume, It would pop up, person would have to get out, sign, do a ticket, etc. So the efficiency is a little bit better. It allows more of a patrolling aspect and things are done with the resources we have more efficiently. To your point of Burgett Ave, I was the co-chair of parking policy and enforcement, which this is part of the recommendations that were presented to the city on behalf of 1,000 residents, and my co-chair lived on Burgett Avenue, Laura Ruma, so I just want to mention that.
[Tim McGivern]: Hey, Todd, can I ask you a question?
[Jim Silva]: No.
[Tim McGivern]: All right, because this is a pilot, maybe we could... Ease some concerns with talking through a hypothetical of what a potential solution could be to a unanticipated concentration of vehicles within zone G concentrating on a street like Burgett or St. Clements or Braymore or one of these roads. Correct me if I'm wrong, but couldn't large zones be broken down into smaller zones to address an issue such as that while maintaining the integrity of the zoned system?
[Todd Blake]: I believe the current proposal was already broken down smaller from what the original consultant proposals were back in 15-16. So usually, so at that time it might have recommended two to four zones in the entirety of South Medford Hillside. And this is essentially less, smaller, this zone is smaller and within closer walking distance than any of those would have been. So, but that's a good, and it's good to, as you mentioned, like talk through with people what could happen in a year. If for some reason it wasn't working, it was broken, and it was going to switch back. One of the reasons for going forward with the decal approach to the sign is that if it didn't work, we could easily switch the sign back with the decal over the decal to reuse the same materials and not buy new poles and signs and things like that. So there's some, you know, we're trying to be smart about things like that to not waste city's resources in terms of buying signs and then may not. They may only be used for a year. It's like we buy a decal, so it's a way to get the program signed without a huge cost. So we're actually trying to save costs. For things like that, we're cognizant of that, but we're cognizant of the ability to implement it or take it away if that ever came to fruition next year.
[Tim McGivern]: Is that the only option though? Would we be able to change something about the program to address Unanticipated concentration.
[Todd Blake]: I mean, I think anything's on the table. You know, anything could be revaluing to get proposed. But again, what we're trying to do here is look more as a neighborhood. And look out for, so we've only. In my opinion, we've only primarily heard from streets that are more concerned because they're closest to the Green Line. We haven't heard from people that are in the zone that are midway or at the peripheral of the zone or on a street that doesn't have on-street parking. So if you're a Winthrop Street, you have no on-street parking whatsoever, where do you park? If you're on College Ave where there's no parking allowed in that certain block near Stanley and Stearns, where do you park? They come to this commission, You know, they take time away from this commission that could be spent on other things to get a variance each year to park on Stearns and Stanley anyways. So there's this concern that there's more people will be parking on, say, Stearns and Stanley than currently are. If they're there, they're already parking on Stearns and Stanley with a variance. I apologize, folks. So it's just eliminating some bureaucracy, right? It's not adding, like Tim mentioned earlier, it's not new people. The people that exist that have permits already exist in your zone. So some of them may have variances because their street does not have. So Burgett and St. Clemens and these other streets have the luxury of having on-street parking on both sides of the street. Some streets have no parking on either side or parking only on one side. So do you think it's fair to those streets or those residents to not have any options or to have to go through this extra bureaucracy to use the same resident permit program? Again, Medford's not blazing new trails here. These are systems that have done in other localities in the region and they've been in place for decades, not just a year. Thank you.
[MCM00001829_SPEAKER_08]: We have Nadine. I think you have your hand up. I don't know if it's from previous. You have a comment.
[Nadeen Moretti]: Yes, no, this is the second time speaking. Thank you very much. This is for Todd. I want to try and understand what you were saying a little bit ago, that if I can't park in front of my home after coming home from work, that it's acceptable for me to have to park on Sunset and or Hume. I wanted to make sure that's what I was understanding you correctly when you said that. Was that right?
[Todd Blake]: Yeah, I just wanted to bring up Ariel to properly explain it. So I'm just trying to point out the opposite, like it could be beneficial. So say for instance, even in the existing circumstances, you live at 126 Burgett right here, right on the dead end portion. And all this is full and all this is full, all the spaces here. Right now in the current system, you have to walk up Burgett around the corner, maybe it's still full here. Maybe you have to go all the way up to number 55 to find a spot yourself. Now, instead of going up to number 55 or beyond green leaf, you could potentially walk around the corner onto Hume and there might be a spot in front of number 85 Hume and you could park there. That would be shorter for you than parking on Burgett way up near Chester, for instance. So, you know, this is the glass half full glass of empty thing. You know, you're looking at all the potential negative of people coming to you, but not the potential positive of, oh, I could find a space for myself closer to my house than I might normally be able to find. So it's just pointing out that it could go both ways, you know.
[Nadeen Moretti]: Yeah, let me interject. There's nothing positive about that scenario you just presented. So someone like it's a very unrealistic ask for anyone to ask someone who owns their home and coming home from a long day of work. to go up the street around the corner, park for the night, to then walk back to my house. So for instance, someone like me, I have very bad knees. I am not willing to do that, nor should I be asked to do that. I don't know why. And for the girl that spoke earlier,
[Todd Blake]: Maybe I misspoke because I just want to clarify something. We're not suggesting that you should have to do that. I'm saying in the scenario that all the spaces near your house were full, in the current system, you have to walk further away from your house to find a spot. That's when I'm saying you could find a closer spot in a different street. That's the only thing I'm suggesting. I'm not suggesting that you should have to do that. I'm saying if it were full, like a lot of you say it is full a lot of times on the dead end, Instead of walking only up Burgett, you could walk up Burgett or Hume. It's your choice. It's to your benefit, whatever is closer. It's not to suggest that you should walk further. I think there's some sort of miscommunication happening here.
[Nadeen Moretti]: No, there's definitely no miscommunication. I know exactly what you're saying, but it's ludicrous to think that anybody would be happy or willing to even do that. Like I said, we've been fighting students parking here, hence the reason why at least the dead-end part of Burgett got the parking permits to help alleviate that problem, because this was a free-for-all. It still is. But again, if this pilot program goes through, which I agree with everybody else saying, I don't see a light at the end of the tunnel here where we're concerned or our concerns are going to even be I don't think that anybody on here would want to come home, including the people that are running this, and have to do that. It doesn't sweeten the pot. It doesn't make this any better. It's just a maddening theory to think that anybody would be willing to do that. And if we come home to streets full of cars that, even if they're Medford residents, that doesn't matter to me. If they live on the whole other side of Medford but now can park over here because of this program, it's still taking away our own ability to park in front of our homes, come home. I know where I live, I know the options available to me, and that's unrealistic. It just makes no sense.
[Todd Blake]: Let's try this one more time. Hopefully the commission members who are going to vote will understand this. So if you live at 71 Hume right now, and for whatever reason, it's on the screen, the spaces in this end of Hume near Sunset and Burgett are full, for whatever reason, if existing, if that's the case, the current system you'd have to walk up Hume and maybe you might find the space way up here at number 13 Hume which is 650 feet away. But with this proposal, that house number 71 could potentially find a spot next to 5 Sunset, which is 127 feet away. That would be better for that person. So again, that's just one example. But it's not always the glass half full negative side of things, I guess, is what we're trying to explain.
[MCM00001829_SPEAKER_08]: Thank you.
[Alicia Hunt]: Part of it. Ma'am, it sounds like you don't currently have trouble parking in front of your house, is that correct? And you're concerned under the new system you would have trouble finding parking. Sorry, you're muted.
[Nadeen Moretti]: I'm sorry, I was muted and then unmuted. Are you talking to me?
[Alicia Hunt]: Yeah, it sounds like right now you don't have trouble finding parking in front of your house, is that correct?
[Nadeen Moretti]: Not all the time, but sometimes. This would exacerbate that potential issue, and it's a huge ask. I mean, I would speak for the whole area, because I don't think anybody on this, except for the people proposing this, are for this pilot program. But I don't know anyone that would be okay with this proposal. walking 120 feet, 600 feet. Yeah, it's a big ask. I mean, ask yourself, would you be okay with this in front of your own homes, wherever you live? And I don't think you will be.
[Tim McGivern]: That's not what we're saying. We're saying like under the existing system, you are restricted to parking on So you may have to park very far away under the existing system if you can't find a spot. Under the new system that we're proposing, you may be able to park a lot closer to your house because it's zoned parking versus street parking. I think the fear that they have.
[MCM00001829_SPEAKER_08]: I don't think you're understanding. We need to have one person speak at a time. We're going to answer this.
[Todd Blake]: I think the fear that folks have, Tim, is that, for instance, people that live on Chester Street, which is two to three blocks away, will all of a sudden, all the people on Chester Street will all park at the dead end of Berger, and then they'll have no parking available on the dead end of Berger. That's the fear. But it's only two blocks away. We picked a zone that's within short distance from each other to not capture all of South Middlebury Hillside, to reduce that. potential, right? So, that's what, you know, the streets that we're hearing from are Burgett, St. Clemens, the streets that are closest to the edge, the Braymore, and the fear is that someone from Pearl Street is going to drive and park on St. Clemens Road, you know, and it's, yeah.
[Tim McGivern]: I get it. I'm just trying to understand the fear because despite what folks are saying, we do want to understand concerns, so.
[MCM00001829_SPEAKER_08]: And just kind of reiterate the reason we're having this amongst meetings or this is to have everybody understand this is a pilot program as Todd and Jim, everyone has explained that this is, you guys do live in this area and this is a pilot program. So we're all trying to get on, you know, the same understanding as everybody else here. So can understand that, that'd be great. keep moving forward. I have Lynn with her, or his hand up. We just ask you to unmute, and then you can just state your name and address for us.
[Jean Nuzzo]: Hi, my name is Lynn Freitas. I live at 26 Jern-Sam. We had trouble with college students parking on our street and we had to get the whole street on board to get permit parking. I don't understand why this commission didn't have to go to every single person in this zone area to see how they felt. about this zone parking. You can clearly see most of the residents are not in favor of this. And one year for a pilot program is a long time if you're living in the area. My brother, you keep mentioning other cities. My brother lives in Cambridge. He can barely park on his street. And when he does park there, he'll leave the car there, and then he gets a ticket for not moving it within 48 hours. So you keep mentioning Somerville and Cambridge, how they have this. Permit parking has been working. Every street has a different They're not all the same. So to throw this zone parking at all of us is not fair. Walking with a bag of groceries from three streets over, that's not fair. No stickers on windshields to know who is who. Every town has a sticker, not Medford. It seems like the commissioners are trying to make it easier for themselves or the parking people, but it's not going to make it easy for the residents. We've had to deal with a lot with tough students being so close to us, and a lot of things have been thrown at us. you know, I hope you really see that the residents don't want this and don't vote for it. Thank you.
[MCM00001829_SPEAKER_08]: Thank you as well. And, uh, Nadine, it seems like you were cut off, so we will come back to you, uh, as you're on mute. Nadine, if you're still there, I think you posted in there you weren't done speaking.
[Nadeen Moretti]: Yes. So thank you for allowing me to continue. The questions I was asking, you know, to Todd, I wanted to go back and forth a little bit. And what I just want to say is this. I understand what you guys are saying and trying to explain to us, but Again, to reiterate what the woman just said in the previous people that that is no consolation to us what you're suggesting. So you really, I implore you to really rethink this or rezone or do something different because it is doing nothing positive for this area, even if in your minds you think it is. So that's, what I would like to just end with. And thank you for unmuting me so I could continue. Okay, thank you very much.
[Todd Blake]: Sure, and just briefly, thank you Nadine, I really appreciate it too. It's okay to have professional conversation like this and hear different opinions, it's great. So what I'm trying to do as a city staff member is to speak for those who may not have spoken like for, again, someone on Winthrop Street, College Ave, other streets that may not have any parking at all on that street or parking only on one side, they have limited options. They currently have to go through a very cumbersome process to get variances and things like that. And if and when they do get a variance and they're approved, they're already on the streets that you're concerned about. So like, for instance, Stearns Ave, if they're worried about people from College Ave parking on the street, there already are people that apply for variances to get variances to park on one of those streets on either Stern, Stanley, or Pearl already. They're not new people, they're people, it's just a less of a bureaucracy process, that's all. Think of your neighbor that lives on that street, that's what I'm trying to speak for those folks because they're not here apparently. People that have more troubles because they just happen to live on a street that doesn't have parking. Just trying to bring that perspective to the commission members.
[MCM00001829_SPEAKER_08]: Thank you. We just have a couple more hands. Obviously commissioners, if you want to chime in, please.
[Todd Blake]: One quick note about enforcement in relation to the other neighboring communities. It's a little unfair comparison just because the difference in resources is substantial so that to expect the same level from one community to another that might have a much bigger budget and much more staff is not necessarily apples to apples.
[MCM00001829_SPEAKER_08]: You notice, I believe you have your hand up. I don't know if it's from prior, but I'll just ask you to unmute if you've already spoken and just go from there.
[Eunice Browne]: Thanks very much. Eunice Brown Greenleaf. A few different things here that I'm thinking about. Todd mentions those who live on Winthrop Street or College Ave or whatever. I mean, I'm of the mind that if you buy or rent a house on a main drag like that, then you know just by looking at it when you're inquiring that there's no parking there. If you wanted you know, parking, then you should be buying or renting a place that has parking on a side street or something and not on a main drag. Why should that be the problem of the people who own homes in places where there is available on street parking? So that would be number one. You know, regarding the, like the Burgett area, If the people who live on the Burgett area on that. area down there at the end of the dead end, if the people who own homes there, and there's probably about a half a dozen or so homes on either side, if they're the ones that are parking there, and they've been parking there all those years, then it's not likely that they're filling up the street. It's the Tufts students that are coming and parking at will that are filling it up and causing a problem. And if you're opening this up, then to. Sunset and human green leaf and wherever else that's what's going to cause them the problems if it's just the houses. That are in that area, then. That should be what's allowed in that area. And if it's just those people packing, then there's not likely to be a problem unless somebody has a rock and wild party or something and invites 40 of their nearest and dearest friends. So if you're just limiting the parking to the people that live in that area, there isn't likely to be a problem. At least that's how I see it. And the residents can correct me if I'm wrong. You've had several people on here tonight who have spoken strongly against this. I can't figure out who you're trying to cater to. It's certainly not the people that live on the streets. And you've made it pretty clear and you've pushed back on every single point that the resident speakers have brought up that you're going to do this and That's that that's crystal clear and like others, I don't believe that this is just a pilot. We're going to come back here in 6 months or a year. And in all likelihood, push back even more strongly and yet. It's going to continue on and to bring up a point that people had with the snow. We got a decent sized storm and people are. Shoveling mountains of snow into various areas of the street, because there's no place else to put it. Mind you, we've all. Put all of the snow that we can in our front gardens or side yards or whatever. The amount of parking on these streets shrinks considerably. And so that's going to cause an even bigger problem. I just. I, I can't see how this is a good idea at all. And without the stickers, there's no way for us to know. who's belonging here and not. And we need two things. We need the stickers and we need the enforcement. And nobody's asking the Medford police who do an awesome job protecting us to take time out of their shifts when there are more important things going on. I think we need to take a closer look at the actual parking department. and figure out what's going on there with or without stickers. I mean, we don't have the stickers now, so they're not coming around to enforce. At least with the stickers, we'd have the ability, the residents to be proactive and make a call and then see where that goes. But I can't see that they're certainly not patrolling around here. So again, You know, this is not the right thing for this area. Thank you.
[MCM00001829_SPEAKER_08]: Thank you for your time and we just have 1 more hand up. Jenny Lynn, if you'd like to speak again. You're going to end up efforts from prior.
[SPEAKER_13]: Hi, my name is Jaylin Pagan. I live at 459 Broadway. This is my second time speaking. I just also want to reiterate a lot of what people said about the parking department is not very enforceable. Also, a lot of the exemptions on Strathmore, Braymore and Killside, those corner lots are not allowed visitor passes. So anytime we want to have people over, we either have to move our cars or we need to have it on a Sunday where there is no enforcement. Also, I'm just curious of why this is being proposed in South Medford. Like, is it just because of the green line? In the train station, because what's never has a commuter rail. So, was this ever proposed in West Medford.
[Todd Blake]: So that's a good question. I think we answered that at the public information meeting, but you know, for those who didn't attend that, we can answer that here. It's not, you know, for any nefarious reason to pick on South Medford. South Medford just happens to be the most densely populated area of Medford, right? It's along the Somerville border. We get the spillover. It's the most densely populated area. So that's the most, typically the most parking issues when it's more dense neighborhood. So when we compare it to North or West, those are, more sparsely densely populated areas right so they don't necessarily have the same parking issues so that the southern end of Medford is more city-like for lack of a better term and northern parts are more suburban in the sense that they may not have to deal with the same issues that all of you are bringing up as issues for you when you park so so that's that's why and then the green line coming in could have potentially exacerbated that. But again, the permanent parking system is a system that we have to prevent others from other communities from coming here to park for those purposes. And those green line stations were explicitly built without parking garages to not become another airway. So, that's why it's ultimate for it. It's the most densely populated portion with the most parking type issues in the city.
[SPEAKER_13]: right but the problem i'm having is like there's a house across the street from me and they pretty much rent beds by the handfuls and they reuse their visitor passes and i i'm pretty sure Of the 12 people that live there, only 2 of them have perma parking because they reuse their visitor passes. And then we have their girlfriends and boyfriends and whoever else wants to come visit them parking there, even though they have a driveway.
[Todd Blake]: Multiple cars, those are good points, but those are existing. Enforcement type things and. this proposal is independent.
[SPEAKER_13]: But it's also bringing up the parking issues that are happening already.
[Todd Blake]: I think we mentioned earlier in the meeting and we'll reiterate You know, we obviously feel like enforcement's important as well, and we think they do a good job with the resources they have. The intent is to grow the parking department over time so that we could have more and more enforcement to rise to the level of the expectations of the community. And in comparison to other neighboring cities, we don't have nearly the same amount of staff doing that. So that's one of the intents over time to grow that to help with all of these enforcement type related questions and comments. But we're trying to keep that independent of this process because If there's a lack of, you know, or perceived or real lack of enforcement due to resources before or after this proposal, that's not, you know, going to change. If this didn't get approved, you're still going to have those issues, right, regardless if it gets approved or not. So we're trying to keep that separate, but it's been heard loud and clear at the public information meeting and this meeting as well. So we that work for the city, I hope I can speak for others, we work here to help. We're trying to improve things. We're not trying to make things more difficult for people. And we're some of the people that are helping and we're at times we could use more as well, but we're all doing the best we can and the parking staff does the best they can as well.
[SPEAKER_13]: I'm very grateful for the parking department and the police department, obviously. But what I'm saying is adding on to this pilot program, you're going to add on more issues into the parking issues that are happening in South Medford is what I'm trying to say and a lot of other people are trying to say.
[MCM00001829_SPEAKER_08]: Thank you. Thank you. And then looks like we have one more hand. Our Estella again here, just ask you to unmute.
[SPEAKER_22]: Yes, unmute. And this is the second time that I speak exactly what the previous speaker said. If you were truly interested in solving some of the problems of South Medford, you would solve the existing problems. What you're doing is sugarcoating a program that will become enforced in law for the rest of us in a year and we will not have any say. We don't have any say now, we will not have any say in the future. It sounds like everything is already set in a trajectory and we are made, I don't know if you want to call the program victim of the whole city, if the zone program was good for was better than the existing street program, you would do it for the whole city, not just for South Medford.
[MCM00001829_SPEAKER_08]: Thank you. That looks to be the only hands I can see that are up for the public. Pass it off to the commissioners. Questions, comments? Do we have a motion? Seeing none, Jim and Todd, if there's any other comments you have.
[Tim McGivern]: I'm wondering if there's any benefit. You know, one of the things that I'm hearing is 12 months might be a long time. Do we want to do an interim check-in period at like six months or something like that, if this were to pass?
[Alicia Hunt]: I think that we may want to get data at six months. The difficulty is that we're dealing with both a change to a system but change to people's behaviors and that it takes a while for people to adjust to having something new happening and how they adjust their behavior. So it's likely that we wouldn't see much shifting of behaviors for the first few months. Maybe the first week, but it takes a while for people to settle into a new normal and figure out their new places and stuff. While we certainly should get data, and I'd love to get, I think that Jim's already working on getting us more data about the current state. with the new systems that they're getting into the parking vehicles, because I'd love to see that, and that we can compare that. But I'm hesitant to say that we would make a decision after only six months, simply because that'll also be the middle of the winter. If it's a winter like this winter, it was like a non-issue. But if we ended up with a lot of snow, that could really just change behaviors really dramatically during that window of time. I wouldn't want to say it's make or break in six months. I see Steve's raising his hand and I'm hoping he has enough connection. We couldn't hear him at the beginning of the meeting.
[Unidentified]: Can you hear me? Can you hear me?
[Alicia Hunt]: Yes, barely. Can you hear us?
[Unidentified]: Can you hear me now?
[Todd Blake]: It's worse. We're not, we're still not able to hear you. I wonder, Steve, I wonder if he could call in separately from us.
[MCM00001829_SPEAKER_08]: Commissioner Rosensky, if you want to try, maybe call in just... I'm just going to mute him again, guys.
[Alicia Hunt]: I'm not really... I'm going to send him a message, like the chat message, suggesting he tried dialing in on his phone.
[Unidentified]: The problem is that it's delayed and so it's still trying to pass through his sound
[Alicia Hunt]: And does somebody have, one of us has his cell number to text him the phone number? Yep.
[Todd Blake]: If we're waiting on that, does Commissioner Patti Velasca have any questions for us?
[4FrRjkCyMqA_SPEAKER_06]: Can I call in separately? Yes.
[Alicia Hunt]: If a new phone number shows up, we can just, actually, it sounds like you have his number, so you might recognize it as his.
[SPEAKER_09]: question i have is that does the patent change at all when the tough students leave in may is there any break in between for the residents with the parking on the side streets and such if you're asking me and jim um yeah obviously there are waves in terms of traffic and parking different densities different
[Todd Blake]: throughout different times of the year. So like when Tufts, for instance, because they're a university straddling the city, when they leave, they have the finals late April, and then they have commencement in May, mid-May. Usually from mid-May to September, overall in the city, there's less traffic because it's vacation schools, elementary school, high school, out in the summer. So combined with the university gone, Parking and traffic overall is lower usually during those times. So that's another reason. I think kind of what Alicia was alluding to, like having a longer period of like kind of testing things out because there, you know, you may think things are different, but really September, the fall would be the time to kind of evaluate and then, you know, collect data through the spring, say. But if that was your question, Patty, I don't know.
[SPEAKER_09]: Yes, thank you.
[MCM00001829_SPEAKER_08]: I think Nadine has her hand up again. Commissioners.
[Alicia Hunt]: Is the new cell phone that just joined, is that Steve's number? Oh, yes, he just messaged me. That's Steve. So maybe we could hear from the commissioner first.
[Adam Hurtubise]: Yep, great.
[Alicia Hunt]: It's the new, the 0067 number. I don't know if you're able to make that a co-host.
[Adam Hurtubise]: Yep, I'm scrolling down.
[MCM00001829_SPEAKER_08]: You say 0067, I'll make that.
[Alicia Hunt]: It's the only actual, well, it's the other one says phone number.
[MCM00001829_SPEAKER_08]: I don't think I'm able to make that a co-host, but I'll ask that number to unmute.
[Todd Blake]: Unmute it, yeah.
[Alicia Hunt]: And Steve, while you're there, you can use star nine to raise your hand at any point.
[SPEAKER_18]: Can you hear me now?
[Alicia Hunt]: Yes.
[SPEAKER_18]: modern technology at its best. Can you hear me? Can I speak now?
[MCM00001829_SPEAKER_08]: I'm sorry. Yeah, we have you. We have you clear now. Are you all on the floor, George?
[SPEAKER_18]: You know, the only thing I'll add to this is like other projects, and I truly do appreciate Todd and Jim and all the work they do, but this thing needs work. It still needs work. And whereas we did open up the public comment, which I was not aware we, We had a public meeting about this. If we're still using the phone system, I think this is further evidence that that just still doesn't work properly. But I like the program. I wish people would embrace it. But I do think that we should take a little bit more time to let people talk a little bit more and see, because there are no positive people on the phone again. just only the negative people. And this is what happened the last time we implemented a program like this. And so I don't know what else to do, but giving people a further opportunity to provide some input, another avenue for them to provide input, I think is beneficial to everybody. Because again, I do like the program, but I don't like that there are people with genuine concerns that don't feel heard. So, and I'll stop there.
[Todd Blake]: I mean, if I may with this, I'm gonna probably share some thoughts here on my professional experience. I attend a lot of public meetings and it's very common for the people opposed to something to, you know, come out and attend things more so than people that are for something. So, I mean, we can look back in this meeting, you know, whatever happens, the rest of this meeting, we can look back to see how many different comments there were. I think it was less than 10. because several people spoke several times over and over and of those less than 10 it was only representative of say three or four streets not necessarily the 50 plus streets right so so just keep that in mind when we have public meetings like this and this isn't like a one-off this is like my experience throughout the 25-year career This is typically what happens. We went, we did more than typical trying to have a public information meeting about this one topic a month prior, and that was well attended. It was about 50 people attended. So, you know, which for a public meeting of this type of topic, that's pretty good attendance. So, we have taken measures. We did do the robocall, Steve, but we did hold a public meeting just for that sole topic. to help answer questions. And a lot of the same people that are attending this making a lot of the same comments, which again, is very valuable. But as city staff and as a commission, I would say that that's not necessarily represented when, in my opinion, when people say the majority are against it. The majority of people spoke, which seems like less than 10 people or so. And that's not to mean that their voices don't count for anything. I'm just trying to put in perspective, is that truly a majority? So just keep that in mind. Thanks.
[Alicia Hunt]: As another commissioner, I feel like When we first started talking about doing the permit parking for all the streets, one of the comments that we heard was, why are we doing them street by street? Why isn't it a zone? And there have been a lot of people who move in here and don't understand why it's street by street, and they end up getting tickets. It has been a hassle for a lot of people and it is a very unusual situation. It is clearly grown as Medford does organically, where there is an individual who doesn't like something, so they request to something to be changed, and then they get a group of people together to agree that they want that change, and then that location gets the change they asked for. And that is how Medford has been conducting business for the past 35 years. It's very, very responsive to the people who speak up and have agency and ask for change. And then it's not responsive to everybody else. I think that's part of my concern. One of the reasons why I've really liked a zone parking is because people feel that they should have the ability to park in front of their own home. I lived for years in Somerville and Cambridge, and it's a dense area, and that's just not a choice. I feel the worst for people who have lived here a long time and the neighborhood has changed around them. And that is just a very hard situation when you live somewhere. And unfortunately, now we are in a car centric world and people expect to have cars and they expect to be able to drive and cars are cheaper and more and more people can afford them. And I'm frankly stunned by the number of college students who have vehicles. and you have no idea the number of times I've had to say no in this crazed voice to my own two college students when they think that they should be allowed to have a car at college. It's the most bizarre thing and it's the changing world around us and it's really hard for people to see their neighborhoods changing around them. Unfortunately, this is a very dense area. I do want to address the question about not applying it to the rest of Medford. We did look at doing this in other parts of South Medford. It has been discussed because they also have a lot of areas with resident permit parking. There are other parts of Medford that aren't like this and are so spread out that they don't have permit parking. And they don't need it because there's not issues from people coming and parking at their homes. I mean, maybe if our commuter rail ran more frequently and more reliably, we'd have a problem in West Medford. They don't have problems this way, the same way in that area. But we do have a plan that could get implemented and we could continue to roll this out in the rest of the city for zones. I would not, I strongly object to adding more street by street parking. permit parking in the city of Medford, because it's not the way to run a city. So it looks like the chief had to step away.
[MCM00001829_SPEAKER_08]: He did. He should be back in a short period.
[Alicia Hunt]: We know he had to go to city council for a bit tonight.
[MCM00001829_SPEAKER_08]: Yeah, he should be back. I'm not sure exactly when. He's advised me if the vote is to happen tonight. We will vote for him as his designee. It seems like we have no motion. That's it, the motion is passed, but it seems like we have... some hands still raised, so it seems like we'll get through to that.
[Alicia Hunt]: I do want us to limit, at this point, hearing from people over and over again. There is one person who's joined us late who hasn't spoken yet, who has his hands up. I am very open to hearing from people, but there is a point that we're just hearing the same things over and over again.
[MCM00001829_SPEAKER_08]: Let's go to Dave. It seems like you just joined. I'll just ask you on mute and then just say your name and address.
[SPEAKER_25]: Name is David Blackyear, 96 College Ave. And I've been listening here and I've heard quite a few things that I don't agree with. The first thing is the person who said that you buy a house on a main drag and you can't expect parking. I live on College Ave. My family has owned this house for 67 years. There was parking on College Ave, but because of Tufts abusing that, it was taken away. So you can't make that statement that you buy a house on a main drag and you can't expect parking. The main situation here that we have to deal with in South Medford, College Ave, Hillside is Tufts. Let's just say it. Tufts students are taking advantage of us because they do not wanna pay the enormous parking fee that Tufts wants to charge. So they park wherever they can park and they'll take the tickets and they'll take the toll. That's just the way it is. I mean, I'm right in the middle between Stearns and Stanley. I have no place to park. I have guest permit that I can't, I can't use because now all of a sudden I'm getting tickets on the side streets on either side. So I agree with the zone parking. I mean, but the first thing we need to do is address the students parking willy-nilly all over this area. I mean, that's the gorilla in the room. I don't know why everybody can't agree to that. I see it every day. They pull up, they park on Stanley Ave, they run in, they go do whatever they do. They're there for four or five hours. Meanwhile, the residents, you can't do anything. I understand that there's more cars. Everyone has three or four cars now. I have a driveway, but if I have a guest, I don't know where they park. We used to be able to park at Tufts across the street, Elliott Pearson, no more. Even though all night long that lot is empty, Tufts will not allow it. For years and years, it was allowed. We got a permit from Tufts to park in Elliott Pearson parking lot. Tufts is not the good neighbor that they used to be, believe me. Not at all. They're disruptive. They take advantage of things in the city that we allow to happen. I don't know why, but we do. We allow it to happen. That's all I have to say. I have a variance up here to try to get some kind of parking on one of the side streets here, the Stearns or Stanley, because I've got $600 worth of tickets last year that no one could seem to explain why I had a permit for College Ave that has no parking on it. They told me I could park on Stanley, which I did, but then they proceeded to give me a ticket every single day. I got no relief from the city. I went to the parking department. It was like I was invisible. I understand how hard this is for this area because of the number of cars. in these little streets that we have, Birgit Av is a nightmare. I drove down Birgit Av and I couldn't even turn around to get out of it. So we have to get rid of that first problem, tough students. Soon as they're parked, tow them, get rid of them. No leniency, no 48 hours. They know exactly what they're doing. That's all I have to say. I don't envy your positions here. I do not envy it at all.
[MCM00001829_SPEAKER_08]: Thank you. Appreciate that. And we'll get to your variance when it's on the board here. So I appreciate it. The two other hands have spoken. You stated as commissioners, if you have anything else.
[Tim McGivern]: The only other thing I have, Jordan, is two things. I mean, A, we should probably try to move things along. And B, I think we're listening to you folks that are opposed to this. And I know, for one, I want to try to figure out a way to monitor those issues to see if they actually become reality. And you folks are convinced they will become reality. I want to know if they actually do become reality and then what we can do about it. Because as Todd has stated, Jim has talked about the work that his group did. This is the way to better manage the parking space in a city, the parking lanes in the city. Anyway, I'd say we try to move things along. I think we're hearing the same comments. If there's novel comments, we can hear them, but I think we get the gist of the commentary tonight.
[MCM00001829_SPEAKER_08]: Yeah, so the two hands that we have up, we'll go back to your questions. If it is something that has already been brought up, we are going to move forward here.
[Todd Blake]: We're going to- Jordan, I think Steve, a commission member, was trying to- he had his hand raised the last time- Yeah, he came through.
[MCM00001829_SPEAKER_08]: Steve, you should be unmuted if you want to- I did unmute his cell phone. I can't make his cell phone a call.
[SPEAKER_18]: I don't, you know, I don't have anything to say. I like Tim's position of continuing to monitor this and providing citizens a chance to continue to actually provide input and not wait till 12 months are out before we look back on this. And even to the point where I'd like to start looking at making a decision maybe at month 10 and let the 12-month program kind of go all the way through, I do agree 12 months is probably better because you get a spring, you get a summer, you get a fall, and you get a winter in your data. But that's all I had to add. I think I put my hand down, but that's all I had to add.
[MCM00001829_SPEAKER_08]: Thank you. So we'll go to Nadine. Nadine, we're going to limit this to 30 seconds and just ask you to unmute.
[Nadeen Moretti]: Okay, thank you. Yep, I know it's my third time speaking, but I just had a question. I wanted a little clarification on what Alicia said about people changing behaviors or behaviors, something to that effect. I'd like to understand more of that, please. Thank you.
[Alicia Hunt]: So, for example, what I was talking about is that, you know, if there are many residents, like the gentleman who spoke, who live on crowded streets, and I suspect that there are residents right now who are walking in this neighborhood two blocks from their car to where they live. And some of them may start to say, geez, I don't have to walk two blocks anymore. I can just go around the corner now and get parking. And that those people will change their behaviors about where they park on a regular basis. And I think that it'll take a while. Some people may not realize right away that they could do that or they have options like that. So that's sort of what I was talking about is for people changing their behaviors. And I think that the behaviors that people are concerned we're going to see, people deciding, well, gee, I actually can now drive closer to a T station. that those people might not do that right away. They might not realize it. And if that's going to be a problem of people in the middle of the district going to near the Green Line stations to park, it might take a few months before they start doing that. And we realize that it's actually a problem and not just a one-off thing. And nobody minds if one person does it once every six months. It's when the people are doing it every day and everybody's doing it every week that it becomes a problem. So that's what I meant about it. It'll take time for people to sort of change. And I do think that some of the more crowded streets will see relief as people who are on, who are near less crowded streets will start to choose to park on side streets rather than the street in front of them.
[Nadeen Moretti]: Okay, so thank you for the clarification. And again, you know, I understand the things that you're saying about that, but. You know, I guess I'm just speaking for myself as the resident homeowner on which, you know, like the gentleman that other gentleman that spoke said, it's, you know, it really is a tough area where we are and. You know, I'm 51 years old and, you know, I don't want to be expected to change my me. I'm speaking for myself, my behavior of anything. I want to come home. I want to be able to park in front of my house like I have for 20 years and call it a day. So, you know, I. I don't agree with anything you just said with that, but I understand you guys all have your job to get this push through. The only other thing I'll say, I know you guys said 30 seconds is. I understand the pilot program, so it seems you are going to allow it for a year. So you can have data from all those seasons. but you're hearing from the residents, and we might be a few, but we're mighty, because we're really opposed to this, and I know there's other people that are, that for whatever reason aren't on here, so just don't belittle the amount of people that are taking the time to sit here tonight. Yes, this is my third time speaking. I'd speak 15 times if I could, but that's all I have to say. Thanks for letting me speak for the third time.
[MCM00001829_SPEAKER_08]: Thank you, I appreciate your comments, and Lynn, were you last year on mute as well?
[Jean Nuzzo]: Hi, yes, I just wanted to address the comment that there were only like 10 people on the call. A lot of people don't have computers and can't do Zoom. I had to use someone's phone to do this. Because my phone, I couldn't get them to hear. I had over 100 signatures of people that were against this. And a lot of them, they don't have computers. And you have, you say it's easier for people to do Zoom, but then you've taken away the privilege to people who cannot do Zoom. And that is not fair at all. So I think if you just did not pass this and open it up to all the residents in this zone area, you would have a lot more people against it, not just the 10 or so that are on this Zoom call. So that's all I had to say and thank you.
[MCM00001829_SPEAKER_08]: Thank you as well. or hands up, I think that is all commissioners. If there is a motion forward or if there was any comments for him or Todd.
[Tim McGivern]: The other commission is open to a periodic agenda item for this meeting where we invite folks from the neighborhood who are having issues to come here, tell us about those issues so we can brainstorm solutions.
[SPEAKER_18]: This is Steve, I'd absolutely support that. Okay.
[SPEAKER_09]: Yes.
[Tim McGivern]: All right. I mean, we could do it every three months, and we could have a regular agenda item for that year. Every three months, we can open it up to the neighborhood, publicize it, let it be known out there. So I would make the motion to approve this with regular agenda items every three months until the year is up to check in on issues and let the residents speak.
[MCM00001829_SPEAKER_08]: Okay. All right. So let me read it. The motion that you're proposing is to be, uh, every three months would be a agenda item here for the commission with the public in this zone. you speak on this behalf. Am I correct?
[Alicia Hunt]: To approve the motion and add a, with the amendment of adding an agenda item to hear from people within the zone.
[MCM00001829_SPEAKER_08]: Correct. By Commissioner McKibbin and seconded by. I'll second it. Commissioner Hunt. Roll call. Sergeant Rogers. Commissioner Hunt.
[Unidentified]: Yes.
[MCM00001829_SPEAKER_08]: Commissioner McGiven? Yes. Commissioner Velasca?
[SPEAKER_09]: Yes.
[MCM00001829_SPEAKER_08]: Commissioner Brzezinski? Steve, I just... I still have a vote, yes. Just asking if you approve the motion by Commissioner McGiven. Yes. Yes, and as Chief Buckley's designee, we will also vote yes. Motion passes. Motion passes, five to nothing. So the next agenda item we'll move forward. Motion to go back to the list. If I can have Commissioner Schwartz to go to the top of the list. 24-13 is handicaps based on Riverside.
[Tim McGivern]: Did he say I need a motion to go back to order? Correct.
[MCM00001829_SPEAKER_08]: Motion to go back to order. Second. Second. By Commissioner Brzezinski. And I think we'll just do an aye instead of a roll call.
[Unidentified]: Aye.
[MCM00001829_SPEAKER_08]: Aye. Anybody opposed? Aye. Aye. Okay, no one opposed. We are now moving forward to 2024-13 move Handicap Space in front of 42 Riverside Ave. of this handicapped spot is presently at a meter. New space will have no meter. Mr. Schiller, you're up.
[Jim Silva]: Yes, this is the space in the corner of River Street. and Riverside Avenue. The meter is placed in the handicap space. We'd like to move it one spot to the corner, which does not have a meter, so the sign needs to move and the signage on the paint needs to be included in the space.
[Todd Blake]: I'm supportive of that change as well. Motion approved.
[MCM00001829_SPEAKER_08]: Motion to approve. Seconded. Seconded by Commissioner Brzezinski. Roll call.
[4FrRjkCyMqA_SPEAKER_06]: Commissioner Hunt? Yes. Commissioner McGiven?
[Tim McGivern]: Yes.
[4FrRjkCyMqA_SPEAKER_06]: Commissioner Brzezinski? Yes. Commissioner Velasco?
[SPEAKER_09]: Yes.
[MCM00001829_SPEAKER_08]: Chief Buckley? This is Desnee. Yes, 5-0 vote. Motion passes for 2024-13. Let's take a motion to combine 15-16 and 14-15-16 combine them and be at the table for three months because the
[Alicia Hunt]: So can I just get clarity, all of these people, their variances won't be necessary once the Green Line thing goes into effect, but between now, April, May, June, they actually don't have an option here. I mean, I don't know why any of them want their variances, but all of them are people for whom are in the zone. Is that why you're suggesting we table them?
[MCM00001829_SPEAKER_08]: So yeah, the pilot program would eliminate their issues. I didn't realize it was three months. So they still have an issue that we have. And so let's move forward with going with 2024-14 parking variance for David Black here, 96 College Ave. And I will ask you to unmute again.
[Alicia Hunt]: I can summarize this time.
[SPEAKER_25]: David Blackyear, 96 College Ave. I live between Stearns and Stanley. I was issued parking permits that say College Ave, and I was told that I could park on Stanley or Stearns, come to find out that's not the case. I was given tickets on both streets. So just two weeks ago, I got more tickets because they said I need to get a variance. I assumed that because they issued the permit to call a JAB, that they understood that there's no parking on College Ave, but that they don't seem to understand that. We go by the letter of the law, they said. And so here I am, I, I, I have parking permits for three cars, which I paid for. I have guest permits, which I guess now are no good as well because they say call a jab on, I asked about why they said call a jab. They said, well, that's where you live. So,
[Alicia Hunt]: So I would move approval, but I just, I don't, I can never keep track of the rule on visitors permits. I mean, I understand the issue. There's no parking on College Ave. He needs a permit, so let's park on one of the side streets. I'm not gonna, it seems to me this has been a long saying that you used to have options for parking there. I do actually tend to ask people why do they live somewhere and have cars when there's no parking in that location. But you mentioned earlier that Tufts used to accommodate you with parking. And it's recent that the permit parking has come into effect.
[SPEAKER_25]: Correct.
[Alicia Hunt]: Right.
[SPEAKER_25]: And like I said, not many people remember it, but there was parking on both sides of College Ave in front of Elliot Pearson and in front of my house.
[Tim McGivern]: Yeah. that we take away. I think there is parking on college. It's just further down on one side now. I understand that. It's irrelevant. It's not really near you. That's correct. I second the motion for approval.
[MCM00001829_SPEAKER_08]: Commissioner Hunt is making the motion and Commissioner McGiven second it. Roll call. Commissioner Brzezinski? Approve. Commissioner McGiven? Yes. Commissioner Hunt? Yes. Commissioner Villescaz?
[SPEAKER_09]: Yes.
[MCM00001829_SPEAKER_08]: And myself, as Chief Buckley's designee, yes, that's 5-0 for the permit for David Black here, 96 College Ave.
[SPEAKER_25]: Can I ask what I need to do now? Go back and get new permits? Or am I still, am I good with the ones I have? Well, Jim, you want to speak on that?
[Jim Silva]: Yes. So for this year, you will need to go to the parking department and actually get your permits so that we will also issue the variance, which we will do when we get the minutes. So you have to give it a few days. I would recommend next week, starting Monday. This gives us an opportunity to update the database so that the parking department sees this variance was approved. Tuesday, Monday is a holiday. Sorry, Tuesday. Thank you, Todd.
[SPEAKER_25]: Okay, but what are these parking permits going to say now?
[Jim Silva]: Your variance on the street of variance, so was the variance granted to Stanley of Stearns
[SPEAKER_25]: Well, right now you have a pilot program, so it doesn't matter. For three months it matters.
[Jim Silva]: That's not until July 1st, unfortunately. But you still need to buy those resident parking passes so that you will, your car will, for the year 2024, when this is implemented in July, that you will be able to park. So I can buy them again? No, you buy them once this year. You bought them in January. In January. In January 2024. Okay, so you don't need to go back. The variants will be issued on our database and parking will have that. So they should stop ticketing your process.
[SPEAKER_25]: Okay, now let me ask this. What do I do with all the tickets I've gotten since January?
[Todd Blake]: We should take that question offline from the commission meeting.
[Alicia Hunt]: The commission doesn't have anything to do with parking tickets.
[MCM00001829_SPEAKER_08]: Any tickets that were issued, if you have a ticket that was issued and it was either you have appealed it and it was declined, then the issue would be bringing it back up through the city. We can go over that. You and I, Dave, over that.
[Todd Blake]: In regard to this current process, I think I would suggest that If I may, to either Tim or Alicia, re-motion to pick Stearns or Stanley for the three months until we get to July.
[Alicia Hunt]: The motion was for Stanley, yeah.
[Todd Blake]: Okay, because I do have data that says Stanley currently has more permits than Stearns, so Stearns might be the better street.
[Alicia Hunt]: David, if you live there and Your request had Stanley Ave on it. I assume that's because you feel there's more parking on Stanley Ave and you'd be able to find spaces there.
[SPEAKER_25]: You know, the data you have doesn't support what I see every day. There is much more, many more cars on Stearns than there is on Stanley.
[MCM00001829_SPEAKER_08]: Okay, let's see. The variance states Stanley Ave. We're sticking with the Stanley Ave. We've moved over. We're going with that. You've been explained there. If you have any questions offline, Dave, we can talk on that.
[SPEAKER_25]: Absolutely. I appreciate it.
[MCM00001829_SPEAKER_08]: Thanks. Moving forward to 2024-15, permit parking variance for 9 Edwards Place or Edwards Streets. I just asked you on mute.
[SPEAKER_01]: Hi, yeah, that's me. So, I'm residing in a 9 Edward place. So, my thing is actually, I need a. Parking permit for my vehicle. And I need a variance because as for the records, there are two parking spots in Edward Place, the 9 Edward Place. However, the thing is like the parking spots are like very narrow. So second thing, there's already one vehicle that's parked over here and Because my vehicle is quite bigger than that, I have Nishan Roog. It doesn't enter the parking spot at all. If we try to park it or take it out, there are high chances that we are going to collide with the other vehicle. That's why I was requesting a variance in order to have a parking permit for Edward Street instead.
[Tim McGivern]: Any questions? So your car is too big to fit in the spot that you currently have.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, exactly. And also, like, there is a bar on the other side, because, like, on the other side of the, you know, like, there's a parking spot, but, like, they have the bar over there in order to separate their parking spot and our parking spot, and our side has two spots, and that makes it really difficult for us to park. Like, we have tried, but we cannot park inside it.
[Alicia Hunt]: This is, again, an issue of why do you live somewhere where you don't have space for your vehicle?
[SPEAKER_01]: Because the thing is like we have to rent first thing. Second thing we also want to see things like my mom and dad they have to like go for work. So I also want to see my dad is the one who rides the vehicle and my mom is the one who needs to like take the bus. She's not very well but she's like she needs to work also. So we were trying to find somewhere like affordable somewhere reasonable and somewhere like she can easily have the bus access as well. So that was the reason. When I tried speaking with the parking team first, they advised me that to come to the city halls and ask for the parking permit. They didn't talk about the variance with me. This is one of the thing I spoke with them, they didn't talk about variance or anything at all. Once I reached that then, the issue of the variance was brought up. And honestly, I don't know. Is it like you guys or something? But it's been really difficult for us with the Medford city. We were residing before in Somerville and we never had something like these kind of issues. But yeah, with Medford, like there has always been like something going on again and again and again. So I don't know what to say more than that.
[Todd Blake]: So the reason why you wouldn't have the issue in Somerville is because it's city-wide resident permit parking, so you would have got a permit to park on any street in Somerville that has a resident permit. Edward Place is a private way, it looks like, and it's too narrow to provide on-street parking, it looks like. It looks like it's essentially an alleyway, if that helps anybody. You can't get street view on it because it's a private way, so it's hard to see the situation. Is there capacity on Edward Street? I don't know the answer to that.
[MCM00001829_SPEAKER_08]: Commissioner, I didn't hear what you said. What was it?
[Tim McGivern]: Is it capacity on Edward Street?
[Adam Hurtubise]: I don't think so. No, I don't think so either.
[Todd Blake]: I mean, it's 1,500 feet long, five blocks worth of spaces, whatever that's worth.
[Tim McGivern]: And what kind of car did you have, ma'am, that is too big? Nissan Rogue.
[SPEAKER_01]: A Nissan Rogue.
[Tim McGivern]: Rogue. Is that just a typical SUV? Yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: The things like, if there was not other vehicle that was like, parked over here, we won't have the issue or like, for the matter of fact, if there was like, not the bar that they have, like, said the other houses that we could have adjusted it actually, but like, they, we were told that they recently created a bar over there, which like, really narrows down the space for us.
[Todd Blake]: If you didn't get a variance, it looks like you would park on Main Street is the closest street probably without permit. Is that where you currently park?
[SPEAKER_01]: Actually, right now we are doing that too in our uncle's house who lives in Somerville. But it's been kind of difficult because like my dad has to go to his place to like get the car if he has to go for the work. And that's also not much possible because they were thinking this was a temporary thing, but it's been quite a while now.
[MCM00001829_SPEAKER_08]: Yeah, Todd, I wasn't able to pull it up.
[Todd Blake]: So yeah, so can you see that screen, the area? Yeah. Edwards Place 9 is back here. This is, if you look street view from here, it's like essentially an alleyway. So it's not like this on street that the private way can institute. But from above, I was looking at this section of Maine doesn't have permit parking and that's, if you go out here and walk around the block, You could park right here is probably what they'd have to do if they didn't get a variance somewhere over here. Because main street does not have restrictions, just street sweeping.
[Tim McGivern]: I'm okay with the variance. My question, I think all the time with these is, is there enough room for another car?
[MCM00001829_SPEAKER_08]: Are you saying that just the capacity are you saying the size because she's having issues as well, not the size of the vehicle.
[Tim McGivern]: I just wanted to make sure she wasn't talking about like a Mac truck or something. It's a normal size as far as I can tell. And I don't necessarily have an issue with a variance to park on Edward street for for this young lady and her family. It's more of, are we pushing out another car if we do that? Any issues?
[Alicia Hunt]: Is that street already full? One of the things that our process does not do is notify neighbors when somebody is asking for a variance, because then you know we'd be, hey, here, every neighbor would say, we don't want another car parking on our street.
[MCM00001829_SPEAKER_08]: Correct. Edward, the place we've never had an issue, I can't say for certain, that is on Edward Street? Is full or not?
[4FrRjkCyMqA_SPEAKER_06]: Commission is Sergeant Rogers. I don't see a problem on Edward Street. No. I patrol it every so often, and there's plenty of room. OK. I move approval then.
[MCM00001829_SPEAKER_08]: All right. Second. Seconded by Commissioner Hunt. Roll call.
[4FrRjkCyMqA_SPEAKER_06]: Commissioner Brzezinski? Yes. Commissioner Hunt?
[Alicia Hunt]: Yes.
[4FrRjkCyMqA_SPEAKER_06]: Commissioner McGibbon? Yes. Commissioner Falasca?
[MCM00001829_SPEAKER_08]: Yes. Sergeant Canaldo? Yes, 5-0, the clearance passes. Okay, as stated before, you know, just the holiday is on Monday, so give it some time and should be there on Tuesday. And we're moving on to 2024-16 for 48 Winthrop Street for Capon or Emery Street.
[Adam Hurtubise]: Ryan, if you are, there you are.
[MCM00001829_SPEAKER_08]: I'm going to ask you on mute.
[SPEAKER_21]: Hello, everyone. Can you hear me just fine?
[MCM00001829_SPEAKER_08]: Yes.
[SPEAKER_21]: Perfect. Thank you so much. My name's Ryan Rocket, 48 Winthrop Street. Pretty straightforward. I live on Winthrop Street in an area where there is no street parking, and Capon Street and Emory Street are the two side streets in between. And so parking variance for either one of those streets will be very appreciated. Thank you.
[MCM00001829_SPEAKER_08]: I'm just trying to pull it up as well here.
[Todd Blake]: You want me to put it up, Jordan?
[MCM00001829_SPEAKER_08]: Yeah, if you got it, that would be awesome, Todd. Thank you.
[Alicia Hunt]: I know that Chapin Street is not, so when I was looking at our green line, it says excludes Chapin Street for the new map. Do they not have permit parking or it's just outside of the new zone?
[Todd Blake]: It's out regular keeping streets outside the new zone East keeping is is a private way on the side of winter that is within the zone.
[Alicia Hunt]: Because there was some comment earlier that this would be handled by the new Green Line zone.
[Todd Blake]: No, it wouldn't.
[Alicia Hunt]: His address on that side of the street be eligible to be in the Green Line zone. It's just that then none of these streets The streets near him are not in the zone, which is weird.
[Todd Blake]: The current map that we have for the geo zones is the odd side of Wentworth Street.
[Alicia Hunt]: So this would not actually be covered by the new zone we were just discussing.
[Todd Blake]: No. If we ever went to more zones or an expanded zone, then the west side would likely be captured by another zone, if and when that ever came to fruition.
[Alicia Hunt]: I feel like that it's the right thing to do is that I need to keep asking people, why are you living somewhere and have a car but there's no parking? How does this happen? Part of that is because as the planning director, I need to understand how this happens so we can plan appropriately in the future.
[MCM00001829_SPEAKER_08]: I think Ryan, I don't know if he's... I'm asking him to unmute, so if you want to unmute.
[SPEAKER_21]: Hi, sorry, yeah, I can, I can meet myself now. Yeah, I, I was not made aware. I'm a tenant who is renting in this house and I was made aware that there is a driveway, which is great. However, there are also 7 other tenants in this house and there are more cars. more people own cars in this house than there are available driveway spaces, so that leaves a few odd people out, unfortunately.
[Alicia Hunt]: Right. Perhaps, does that come back to the real estate agent or the landlord? I'm just partially trying to understand where these disconnects are happening.
[MCM00001829_SPEAKER_08]: We did go out there when we were talking about this and we went over some of the things for an issue with the landlords. were never advising people when they were sending renting programs out. There was never any mention of parking or no parking. There was never mentioning of that. I can only speak for those, but it seems like the landlords weren't issuing no parking and were saying that they were on street parking, even though there wasn't on street parking in some of the issues that we were going over a couple months back. So I would assume it would probably be the landlord.
[Adam Hurtubise]: at this point.
[Alicia Hunt]: Thank you. I mean, it's helpful to understand that. So I guess the question is, does one of these streets have space?
[4FrRjkCyMqA_SPEAKER_06]: Alicia, if I can comment, both streets are tight. Capen Street is one side parking. But in the end, there's no parking on one side of the street.
[Alicia Hunt]: Well, I think my question is mostly he's asking for us to decide whether he should have parked, you know, which street he gets the permit parking on. So my question is, which street has space?
[4FrRjkCyMqA_SPEAKER_06]: I would say Capon.
[MCM00001829_SPEAKER_08]: So we'll move in promotion. I would approve it for Capon, I think would be the better option than Emory.
[Alicia Hunt]: All right. What do the other commissioners think?
[SPEAKER_18]: Or I'll move to... Commissioner Brzezinski, I would support the motion. Alicia, you do bring up a good point about this, you know, who's not disclosing to these tenants in these high volume parts of town, whether you have on-site parking or not. This is not the first time we've dealt with this issue. It's actually multiple times. I'd implore the city to actually look into this a little bit more and try to bring down some, you know, some restrictions on these landlords and these leasing agents on these kids, particularly those who are leasing these properties from out of town, these tough kids who are just leasing them online and not really getting a chance to see these properties up front. But I'd support the motion and make the motion if need be. Okay. Do we have a motion?
[MCM00001829_SPEAKER_08]: That was by Commissioner Brzezinski and seconded by Commissioner Hunt, roll call.
[4FrRjkCyMqA_SPEAKER_06]: Commissioner Brzezinski. Yes. Commissioner Hunt.
[SPEAKER_13]: Yes.
[4FrRjkCyMqA_SPEAKER_06]: Commissioner McGiven. Yes. Commissioner Velasco.
[Alicia Hunt]: Yes.
[MCM00001829_SPEAKER_08]: Vice President Cannava. Yes, five nothing, then our vote passes.
[Alicia Hunt]: Before you move to the next item, I'm just gonna say this. It's for things like the city does not know who all the landlords are. We do not have a list of them. We do not have any way to contact them reliably. We can send paper mail to owners, property owners. It is one of the reasons why my office and the health office and the building office have asked the city council to adopt a rental registry like they have in a lot of other communities that have high numbers of renters so that we have a way to communicate reliably to the landlords and to to connect to who they are or their management agencies. And there has, so people should know that that's in front of city council and there's all sorts of misinformation and hate spewing about that from groups of people who do not want us to have a list of who all the landlords in the city are. So I just want you to know that we don't know who they are.
[MCM00001829_SPEAKER_08]: Okay, yep, that's. Is it something that's been brought up at Tufts as well for the students to be?
[Alicia Hunt]: We do get a list of addresses that students live at, but what we don't get with that is contact for the landlord or rental agency.
[MCM00001829_SPEAKER_08]: So, we have done this in the past with some projects that are coming up for just police and I don't know if this would be helpful, but we've worked with the communications department at tops. If we have a detail, we're going to have a detour or something where they would send an email out and blast and email to the students and maybe that. would be helpful for them if they're understanding that this is coming from Tufts and somebody that they're receiving emails from, they would be more apt to understand the process of parking throughout Medford. And if they can get it directed to a website, that would probably be helpful on everyone's end.
[Todd Blake]: And if I could take 30 seconds to give a plug, if you're a Tufts student who's full-time student that doesn't have a full-time job and doesn't necessarily need a car to get to a job further away, I'd strongly encourage you to walk, bike, or transit if you don't need to bring that car to Medford. Thanks.
[Alicia Hunt]: Students can get parking at Tufts for $50 a month.
[MCM00001829_SPEAKER_08]: But they're not because they're renting and the rental agreements that we've spoke to them about their issues when we either we've tagged multiple issues and multiple locations and their statements are that. When they originally rented these properties, they're stating that they can park on street and or they have parking and that is not the case. Right.
[Alicia Hunt]: But I'm just saying after the fact, it doesn't matter where you live, any Tufts student can pay $50 a month to park in the garage. That's something I've confirmed with university relations with Rocco. The off-campus students could keep their cars in the parking garage at Tufts.
[MCM00001829_SPEAKER_08]: They're never going to do that. God will give them a ride to work. So next is 2024-17, 11 Walcart commercial vehicle parking issue for Paula. I'm not sure if I saw her. Paula, if you're here, please raise your hand and or I think there's only two people left. It's S-T-U-A-R and Fred. So I'll give it a minute here. If you're having issues and you haven't called in, you can send in the chat if you're having issues. But if not, we're going to move to table this. I think we'll move the motion to table this. If anybody would like to motion.
[Alicia Hunt]: Yeah, motion to table.
[MCM00001829_SPEAKER_08]: Second. Second. Commissioner Brzezinski. And no need for a roll call, just an aye. How's that?
[Alicia Hunt]: Yes, aye.
[MCM00001829_SPEAKER_08]: Aye. Aye. And no nays. There we go. Five, nothing. We're going to table this as the party is not there. We're just taking it off? No, no, I just asked you to go.
[Jack Buckley]: Oh yeah, go ahead, sorry. Chief Buckley's back. You're doing a good job. 2024-18 on petition, no parking here to corner of Fulton Street at each corner of Maple Park Avenue. Todd, is this you?
[Todd Blake]: No, it's not me. I think it was a resident.
[Jack Buckley]: Petitioner present, can you raise your hand? indicate somehow your willingness to speak. STUAR is the only one that we don't know who it is. Bolton Street to Connor of Maple Park Ave.
[Tim McGivern]: The petition was submitted by someone named Stuart, and that's S-T-U-A-R.
[MCM00001829_SPEAKER_08]: I will ask Stuart to unmute. How's that? I'm not seeing... S-T-U-A-R is mute. Hello. Hi.
[Jack Buckley]: Hello. There we go. Welcome. Is this your petition? No parking on Bradshaw. No, sorry. No parking on Fulton Street.
[SPEAKER_24]: No parking sign to the corner from Fulton Street to Maple Park on both sides. My name is Stuart Gordon. I live at 65 Valley Street, apartment 5C. Welcome. And it's very hard to get out of Maple Park Ave when you're going right or left onto Fulton Street. You cannot see the cars or vehicles coming down until the last car, they're passing the last car and they're doing 20, 25 miles an hour. And you have to pull out a little bit and most of the cars have to swerve around you so they don't hit you. And now with the Gillis Park redone and the Heckner Center going into effect and being redone, we're gonna have a lot of traffic on Maple Park Ave. And it would be easier for us to get out of, um, and the cards to get out of, um, maybe, um, maple Park Ave. If we have a little more room to see what's going on on, uh, from the fells way, all the way down to maple Park Ave.
[Unidentified]: Right.
[Jack Buckley]: Yeah, we're looking at it now. I don't know if you could see a screen, but we're just the commission.
[SPEAKER_24]: I can see it. I can see it. It's, uh, on the picture. It's, uh, um, the, the picture they have now, they always parked at the curb. And if you across from the building across the street, that whole line is, um, covered with cars and you can't see him coming down when the cars are there. Okay. coming down from the Fellsway down to Maple Park Ave. And it's hard to get out. Plenty of times I've gone out and had to stop and look pretty good and all of a sudden they come down and I've had to put on the brakes pretty quick and they've had to swerve. I think I sent a video to Alva Erickson showing what it looks like with all the cars parked there and how at the last minute you can see the cars coming down the road.
[Jack Buckley]: Yeah, you may have, and I apologize, but Ms. Erickson had a death in the family. We don't have that access to that right now, but we're going to try to look at this, see if we can change a date, maybe catch a glimpse of all the cars that might be parked there. But having said that, I mean, we naturally have restrictions on parking near corners. Now, I state that and understand that it doesn't always happen, and sometimes having signs placed there is a great reminder and will clear up for safety purposes. Director of Transportation Todd, have you looked at this? I mean, I know my traffic guys have gone out there and looked at it.
[4FrRjkCyMqA_SPEAKER_06]: Chief, if I could just comment, I think majority of the owner of those cars live in Maple Park.
[SPEAKER_24]: No, they don't. They live across the street in the other building.
[MCM00001829_SPEAKER_08]: On the Fellsway?
[SPEAKER_24]: Yeah, we have 57 indoor spaces in our parking lot. So the people who live in Maple Park usually park in the parking lot or in their indoor parking spaces. And we only have 44 units.
[Todd Blake]: Yeah, Chief, I did look at it. I think it would be helpful, especially towards Fellsway, that one in particular, because that's the same side of the street as you, whereas the other side, even if it's crowded, you have a little buffer because the traffic's in the opposite traveling. But there's an existing 20-foot rule from the corner, as we all know. In this case, I think both could use 30 feet at least.
[SPEAKER_24]: Yeah, that's the area there, across from the highway. Yep.
[Todd Blake]: That's the worst. I think that corner is the more egregious of the two because it's the same side. It's the immediate travel lane that's closest to you when you're trying to exit Maple.
[SPEAKER_24]: Yeah. Nobody's parked. This picture shows no one parked there, but you cannot see cars coming down from the Felsworth when they're all parked along that side.
[Todd Blake]: Yeah, if it's 30 feet, it would be like two squares over from the telephone pole, roughly, Jordan, or whoever's navigating.
[SPEAKER_24]: I mean, you can look at the video when she comes back. You know, I sent it to her, I can send it again. And it's a short video, maybe 10, 15 seconds. And you can see two or three cars coming down, and you can't see them until the last minute, or last second, really.
[Jack Buckley]: I like the idea of the 30 feet. That other corner, though, is such an odd radius that it's probably, I think that probably is contributing to it. Not that we're going to change that sidewalk, but I mean, that may only be 20 feet, just a reminder sign.
[SPEAKER_24]: No, they can park at the corner. During ball games and things, they park around this corner here, where the cone is, and they stick out. It's not too bad, but the thing is, you still can't see the crowds coming down from the Feldway to make a right turn.
[Todd Blake]: Yeah, Chief, I'd almost say 25 feet on this side and maybe 35 on the other side. I think 25 would get you to maybe the one pull over from the walkway to that house there.
[SPEAKER_24]: Yeah. You only have, we only have two seconds at the most to react when, when they're coming down from the Fellsway and just trying to, we're trying to pull out.
[Jack Buckley]: Okay. And thank you for presenting this and for the comments. To the commissioners, any questions of the petitioner or of Director Blake, who's probably our expert in this area?
[Tim McGivern]: Just some clarifying stuff. It sounds like this is a sight line issue making left and a right turn out of Maple Park onto Fulton, and it sounds like the primary obstruction is a car parked closest to the corner. And it sounds like that, I'm just hearing from Todd and you folks, traffic sergeants, that a 30 foot as opposed to a 20 foot no parking zone between the sign and the corner would alleviate that obstruction and make the turn safer.
[SPEAKER_24]: It would help and allow us to be able to see vehicles coming down.
[Tim McGivern]: Yep, yep. Yeah, there are rules associated with this stuff. Sight distance, there needs to be a certain amount of sight distance to have a safe turn with no control. This is an uncontrolled intersection, so we need to have the sight distances. What's the problem on the other side? I don't understand the other side of the large radius.
[SPEAKER_24]: The other side is, first of all, they're all doing a game or something. They all park on the curb. Second of all, it's the same thing. If you're going to make a right turn, you can't see the cars coming from the Fellsway.
[Tim McGivern]: There's a rule that you can't park 20 feet close to a rounding, is that correct, traffic sergeants?
[SPEAKER_24]: But they do, they do.
[Tim McGivern]: I know, the question is for the sergeants because I'm wondering if that side is an enforcement issue and then the other side is a increased 20 to 30, which we would then want to have a sign there.
[SPEAKER_24]: Anything you could do would be fine with me.
[Jack Buckley]: It's an option and then we could monitor and if it doesn't improve with enforcement, but sure.
[Tim McGivern]: And I'll move to install a 30 foot offset line from the rounding on Fulton street. No parking to corner.
[Jack Buckley]: I'm sorry, Commissioner McGibbon. Director Blank, was it 30 or 35 feet?
[Todd Blake]: I'm sorry, I don't remember. When I was looking at it again, I was saying maybe that side needs to be longer, the other side needs to be less, so maybe 35. I haven't measured it in the field, but looking at the situation, it looks to call for somewhere between 30 and 40. I'm trying to be reasonable with the parking and everything as well.
[Tim McGivern]: let's do it this way. I could make the motion to approve it, field located by you with the understanding that it's over 20. So it's not just enforcement, it's something that needs to be signed. Yeah, that's perfectly fine, yeah.
[Todd Blake]: All right, I'll make that motion. So that would be the west, the northwest side. Yeah, northwest side of Fulton, north of Maple Park.
[SPEAKER_24]: Northwest side, yeah. And the video might help you.
[Jack Buckley]: Okay, and we'll take a look at that. I'll be able to get that from Ms. Erickson afterwards. So Commissioner McGiven, would the motion sound something like on the motion of Commissioner McGiven to increase the no parking here to corner on the west side of Fulton Street north of Maple Park to greater than 20 feet at the recommendation of the Director of Parking and Transportation? Correct. Okay, do I have a second? Second. Commissioner Brzezinski on a second. Roll call vote, Seth.
[4FrRjkCyMqA_SPEAKER_06]: Commissioner Brzezinski. Yes. Commissioner Hunt. Yes. Commissioner McGiven. Yes. Commissioner Velasquez.
[SPEAKER_09]: Yes.
[Jack Buckley]: Chief. Yes, five to nothing, the motion passes. Sir, I appreciate your participation and what we're going to do is put that sign up on, as you're looking to the left side, the side closest to the Fulton, we're going to have our traffic engineer decide it's going to be greater than 20 feet. And then on the far right side, we're going to do a little bit of enforcement. Now, if that doesn't improve, we expect we'll hear from you anyway and we can adjust as we go forward. Now, that'll take a little bit of time. We have to order the signs, but it's been approved by the Traffic Commission. And by late spring, summer, you'll have a sign in place and hopefully improve the safety for that area.
[SPEAKER_24]: I appreciate it. I don't want to be a pain and not let people across the street and the other building not park there. But it's going to get worse with all the activity on Maple Park Ave.
[Jack Buckley]: have to make sure it's safe for them, too. You may have saved a life here, sir, so thank you.
[SPEAKER_24]: I saved mine, probably.
[Jack Buckley]: All right. Thank you for your participation. 2024-19, no parking here at the corner on Bradshaw Street, south side, a distance of 40 feet from Spring Street. Director Blake.
[Todd Blake]: You're muted, Todd. Sorry, similar situation. Because it's tight two-way street parking on both sides of Bradshaw at the throat of Spring Street, it's just recommended to eliminate the parking up to this first driveway here. So where my, if you could see that measurement there. So it's roughly 40 feet from the intersection. So if someone parks there right now, it can be really challenging for people going in and out of Spring to Bradshaw and vice versa. So it creates a little safety issue there by eliminating that one spot, which is, Maybe not even technically a spot once you factor in the 20 and the three foot rule from the driveway. So it's marginal at best anyways. So if we just formally restrict that. It's this right here.
[Alicia Hunt]: People are actually squeezing between that driveway and the stop sign.
[Todd Blake]: Correct, yeah. And then when people are trying to exit this two-way street, it kicks them over to the center and kind of makes it an unsafe situation. This came up through resident inquiry.
[Alicia Hunt]: By any chance, is it the resident of that house who's asking for it?
[Todd Blake]: It looks like they... No, this is more about safety versus parking. It was about challenging to get in and out without getting potentially hit head-on.
[Alicia Hunt]: Right. And obviously it's, well, if it's that person parking there, they have a very large driveway to park in.
[Jack Buckley]: To the commissioners, I just add one quick point. It is on a corner, it is a crosswalk, and therefore it is already restricted 20 feet, but it's also restricted three feet and the other way from the driveway. So, in theory, it looks like a really nice parking spot, but in practicality or by practice of the law, there's no place to park a car there. A vote to put a sign up there, it's probably a foregone conclusion because I don't believe anyone could park there anyway, legally. That's the Chief's opinion on that.
[Tim McGivern]: Well, I don't like putting up signs if it can be enforced anyway, but it would help communicate. If we think it's going to help communicate, Todd, if we think that this is a recommendation from you, which I think it is. Other options would be to stripe it, but that doesn't really clearly indicate no parking. So I'm always trying to figure out ways to have less signs. Sometimes I needed.
[Todd Blake]: Yeah, if we striped it, you could consider doing a short 10-foot double yellow to indicate a two-way street. And then the distance between the yellow and the curve would be such that it might be obvious. But it may not be obvious to people who have not parked there. But we could try that as well.
[Tim McGivern]: Signs are clear, I mean, yeah.
[Jack Buckley]: Yeah, signs are clear and it's just, I think it's just a sort of, I don't want to call it an anomaly, but it looks like a pretty nice parking spot, right? And I think people just kind of are not putting everything together as far as, you know, what would legal, because it can fit there. So a sign may be more reasonable to advise people, but I am also not against the paint. So I'll leave it to the commissioners on however you want to I don't know if that's something that we need to provide that for a motion. I'm good with either or, but I do think it needs to be addressed.
[Alicia Hunt]: Would we also be painting the curb? I feel like I grew up with this idea that if the curb is yellow, you know you're not allowed to park there. and whether that's worse?
[Todd Blake]: Yeah, we don't paint curves in Everett. And granite curves are tough. That's more like California concrete curve. They have a tendency to do red or green on the curves. But this would be yellow in the street with a double yellow to indicate like two-way travel.
[Alicia Hunt]: Oh, you're saying painting the street.
[Todd Blake]: Painting the double yellow, and then it would indicate that it's a travel lane versus a parking space. But if we just did the paint, it wouldn't need approval necessarily. if we do the no parking sign to make it, yeah.
[Tim McGivern]: I'll move approval for the sign because I think that's the clearest way to do this without putting paint down on a road that doesn't need paint.
[Alicia Hunt]: Okay, then I'll second it.
[Jack Buckley]: On the motion of Commissioner McGiven, on 2024-19, no parking here to corner on Bradshaw Street, south side, a distance of 40 feet from Spring Street. Seconded by Commissioner Hunt. Roll call vote, Sergeant?
[4FrRjkCyMqA_SPEAKER_06]: Commissioner Brzezinski? Yes. Commissioner Hunt? Yes. Commissioner McGiven? Yes. Commissioner Villescaz?
[SPEAKER_09]: Yes.
[Jack Buckley]: Chief? Yes. A vote of five to nothing. The motion is approved. 2024-20, bike lanes, Grove Street from Winchester Line to 70 feet north of Bustle Road. Director Blake.
[Todd Blake]: Sorry, can you see that?
[Jack Buckley]: We can, yes.
[Todd Blake]: Okay, so it's just from the Winchester Line, which is just north of the northern end of the U-shaped street Norwich Circle. down by the cemetery, all the way down to the bridge, or just north of the bridge in Bustle Road. It's a stretch of Grove Street that currently has no parking either side anyways. So it's unlike other parts of this meeting tonight. It does not take away any parking whatsoever from the community. It's just a matter of striping lines. So currently, this is an aerial of the situation here. And then this kind of gives you a sense of what's there now. There's a yellow line in the middle of the street. It's essentially a 15-foot travel lane from the yellow to the curb in each direction. It doesn't need to be 15 feet. We have enough space to do a five-foot minimum bike lane in each direction, which would be 10-foot travel lanes. And then it would provide bicycle accommodation. And at the same time, we believe traffic calm the road as well, because when it's a wide traveling like that, people tend to speed more. So by having a 10-foot travel lane versus a 15-foot traveling, it might occur some slower speeds on the street, we hope. But it would add to the bicycle infrastructure in the city.
[Alicia Hunt]: I love it. Is there anybody from the public to speak on it? Because I love it.
[Jack Buckley]: I want to put a commissioners first, but I do have a question. Are we losing any parking? You may have said that.
[Todd Blake]: Zero parking loss. There's no parking on either side of that section of growth existing. So there's no change. So this is from Todd North of Brussels to the Winchester line. And we're going to communicate with Winchester and let them know what we're doing so that, you know, if it gets approved so that they could potentially continue on Winchester, just like they did on Winthrop Street when we did that. Right now it looks like they have shoulders painted. I don't think we have shoulders painted, correct? Yeah, I don't believe so. They have like one, one or two, like a two foot edge line. Yeah. We have nothing. Yeah. So when we did Winthrop Street, they followed suit and got their, got into gear and then continued the bike lanes into Winchester to try to provide a more cohesive network for everyone. Looks like they got 11 or 12 foot lanes too, probably 12 foot. Yeah, I measure at least where it meets up and they do have the space, yeah, but
[Alicia Hunt]: It looks like when I was doing street view that there was a car parked in the shoulder, in the travel lane. Do we see that happening in Medford? I feel like Medford's more narrow. When I've been at, this is the street, I'm correct, right? It's the entrance to the Brooks Estate up there, right? Yeah. I've never seen anybody try and park on the street, but I'm not there very often. And it would be nice if people could feel that they had bike lanes leading up to the Brooks Estate.
[Todd Blake]: So I'll share this because it looks like that Seinfeld Kramer type episode where there's a luxury, like a wide lane for people to start speeding when you travel from Winchester into Medford. It would narrow that and it would be, ours would be more narrow than the Winchester side. Anyway, to bring some uniformity, some definition, it wouldn't seem like a raceway anymore while at the same time providing valuable bicycle infrastructure.
[Jack Buckley]: have a hand up. Commissioner Brzezinski do you have your hand up?
[SPEAKER_18]: I do. Todd are we going to have the normal paint on the ground denoting this is such a horrible high volume, high speed area. I presume we're going to put nice markings on the ground to kind of denote what's happening.
[Todd Blake]: in the area and then the second question is why are we stopping where you've delineated to stop is there just no need to take it forward any more than it is no i'd love to go south with it because there's no parking on either side of grove south of the bridge either up until maybe johnson but that southern portion of grove between johnson and the bridge is more narrow than that northern portion so it doesn't provide the width to do a bike lane each direction which we might be able to to provide in one direction. So once you cross over the bridge going south from Winchester to Medford, it gets more narrow. So right now that upper section that we're proposing is 30 feet wide, so it enables us to do 10 foot travel lanes and five foot minimum bike lanes. So they won't have the buffer like Winthrop Street, they'll just be a line, but very nicely painted line with the bike symbols and all that. So it will be painted properly.
[SPEAKER_18]: At the intersections of the street and the cross streets where you have the green demarcations like we see on winter street.
[Todd Blake]: In a perfect world, yes, but in our budget, probably not in this case. No. So it's very high end, high quality material to do that. And it's an extra expense. So we had a third party do winter street, right? We were lucky to have that. So we will, that's our goal. We would strive for that, but I wouldn't want to promise the green across every side street and every bike lane we do just because of the added expense in our budget. We barely have enough to do what we have striped now, so.
[SPEAKER_18]: I agree with Alicia. I like this idea. It's just Grove Street is such a, again, it's such a very busy street and everybody's usually driving so incredibly fast. And so just trying to figure out how we make people aware that, you know, there is a change in this area.
[Todd Blake]: Yeah, depending on budget, we hope to add radar feedback signs in that area as well. So it's an overall calming effect that we're trying to change the character of that section.
[SPEAKER_18]: All right, thank you.
[Jack Buckley]: Any other commissioners, questions, comments?
[Adam Hurtubise]: Seeing none, anyone from the public have a question or comment?
[Jack Buckley]: Okay, also seeing none.
[Alicia Hunt]: There is one.
[Jack Buckley]: Welcome. We're going to ask you to unmute.
[MCM00001804_SPEAKER_04]: Welcome, it's it's Leah, not Peter. We literally just joined. I was wondering if we could look where the plans are. How do we look at them?
[Jack Buckley]: Yeah, can you put them right back up?
[Todd Blake]: Yeah, what we had presented was a concept plan. So that's not the actual engineer plan that we'll use to strike it with. But let's see. So it's from the Winchester line down to, past the cemetery down to roughly Bustle Road, because that's the stretch of road or grove that's wide enough to accommodate it. South of there becomes too narrow. So currently there's about 15 foot travel lanes, and it would become five foot minimum bike lane with 10 foot travel lanes in that segment there.
[MCM00001804_SPEAKER_04]: And so I think I saw.
[Todd Blake]: Essentially, it looks something like this. Obviously, it's a crude mock-up, but it's trying to get people to envision the wider pavement into a more narrow lane here.
[MCM00001804_SPEAKER_04]: So we have a one-way bike lane on both sides now?
[Todd Blake]: Yeah, this would be both sides of the street, yeah. OK. So if the question was south of there, if we could continue the bike lanes. But Grove Street is more narrow south of there. So we'd only be able to consider one direction if we further that further south.
[Alicia Hunt]: Oh, we have to unmute them.
[MCM00001829_SPEAKER_08]: Sorry, you don't have to.
[MCM00001804_SPEAKER_04]: Keep yourself and you're going to sorry, I was trying to not let any background noise in. I guess I think when we saw the. Plans earlier, like, a couple of months ago at the commission, I remembered there being some protection. What happened to that?
[Todd Blake]: I couldn't recall if Amy had shown this to any folks at all or not.
[MCM00001804_SPEAKER_04]: I guess we saw one that Lily showed us.
[Todd Blake]: Okay, because protection usually, well, that's also a cost and resource thing as well. So, situations like Winthrop Street that have a buffer, we could put a flex post more permanently if we had the resources, you know, would potentially do that. There's other considerations, other maintenance considerations, plowing and street sweep, and it's an ongoing discussion with DPW. So I don't want to make any promises, but there's resource and other limitations. So in this particular case, when there's a single line and no buffer, there would be no space to provide flex posts that would be permanently there. So yeah, there are definitely many more improvements that we want to do to bicycle infrastructure, but sometimes it's restricted to resources and other factors.
[Tim McGivern]: We get more length. When we do less items in the cross section, so if we have less protection, like. We can have more distance more like the bike lanes. So, with time, our budget should grow. Uh, so just. This is an incremental step, because I think everybody who rides bikes. In the city, most cities want the full protection. But there's just a step in the right direction, slow some cars down, make a dedicated lane for bicycles. So.
[MCM00001804_SPEAKER_04]: Okay, 1st, small step. Yeah, right.
[Tim McGivern]: Understand it's advocate for more funding for highway maintenance.
[MCM00001804_SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, I would I mean, I guess the 1 ask I'll make in the future is. Todd, if we could, like, see some of these things in the commission. Kind of in advance, I know that's something that used to happen. I'll bet you're pretty busy, but, you know, if you can. Thanks.
[Todd Blake]: Yeah, definitely.
[Jack Buckley]: Here as well, thank you for your comments and participation. Any other comments questions. It's up to you.
[Alicia Hunt]: I'll move approval.
[Jack Buckley]: Second.
[Tim McGivern]: Second. Give it to Steve. Give the second to Steve.
[MCM00001829_SPEAKER_08]: Delayed response in this vehicle.
[SPEAKER_18]: Right. Punishment for my technical difficulties tonight.
[Jack Buckley]: On the motion of Commissioner Hunt to approve 2024-20, bike lanes, Grove Street from Winchester Lane to 70 feet north of Bustle Road, seconded by Commissioner Brzezinski. Roll call, Sergeant.
[4FrRjkCyMqA_SPEAKER_06]: Commissioner Brzezinski. Yes. Commissioner Hunt.
[Alicia Hunt]: Yes.
[4FrRjkCyMqA_SPEAKER_06]: Commissioner McGibbon. Yes. Commissioner Velasca.
[SPEAKER_09]: Yes.
[Jack Buckley]: Chief. Since we're not losing any parking on me, yes. 2024-22 discussion of operating procedures of the traffic commission, including public notification requirements commissioned.
[Alicia Hunt]: Thank you. I wanted us to put this on here. We talked a couple of times about the rules and regulations. And I dug into it a little bit and realized that what's in the traffic rules and regulations has almost nothing that's about the operating of this board. And so I did send around an email. I apologize I didn't get to it till this afternoon. around lunchtime today, sort of a statement about that for background, that many of our boards and commissions have a document that is considered how the organization is operated, what the positions are, like is there a clerk, is there a vice chair, what are those roles, what's the role of the staff, how often does the board meet? And I think that this body would really benefit from having something like that. And I sent around the one that is being used by the CD board. And I will say I staff the CD board, technically my staff do, but I had nothing to do with writing this. This was actually some of the members of the board who are lawyers and are on other organizations. came up with this structure and I think it would be benefit to us and that a second step would then be then to identify the types of items that come into this board and we might then say let's list those out and then have a document that lists what are the things that people might be applying for, what is the process for doing that and then what are our guidelines and policies in writing of notification for different kinds of things, as I do feel like sometimes staff Todd brings us changes, and he goes, this one I know you guys want a notification I guess you would want it so I did the notification, and sometimes he brings it we're like oh you should have notified and sometimes we have other things and we're like well. So my proposal this evening is that everybody take a look at the rules and regulations. It's called rules and regulations. It's rules of the Medford Community Development Board governing organization and procedure. And what it does is it references the acts that established the CD board and then these operating policies of it. I did look at the traffic commission rules and regulations and there are three paragraphs that speak to the operating of this body in there. One of them is a paragraph that says that petitions, complaints, and requests for studies should be in writing and addressed to the Traffic Commission Police Headquarters Medford. Such petitions should be signed by one or more interested persons. That exists as a statement, that's a fine statement. The other two paragraphs are actually lifted directly from the acts of 1958 which create this body. And I'm going with the assumption that we're not changing anything that's in the acts of 1958, that's an act of the legislature, so I'm not proposing that. I'm simply suggesting that we should vote tonight, that we should take a look at these operating procedures separate and independent of the traffic rules and regulations for the city of Medford and move these forward. and that the traffic rules and regulations need to be updated. And I'm trying to separate the two of these things.
[Jack Buckley]: Okay, so for clarification, are you asking us to review it or vote on it tonight?
[Alicia Hunt]: So what we would, in theory, what we would vote is that yes, we would like somebody, and we'll need to delegate who is that somebody, to come back with a draft, like I wasn't about to prepare draft rules and regulations of this board if the rest of you were gonna say forget it. I keep saying rules and regs, but it's operating procedures. And my goal is not to change things with the creation of it, but to write down what we're doing, so that we might then decide to change things once we have it in writing, so we can all look at the same thing.
[Jack Buckley]: Okay. And do you have a time frame? And the reason I ask that is I have attempted this in the past, so I would say that I'm maybe 50% done. I have to just find some time to do it, so I would volunteer.
[Alicia Hunt]: Or you can send me what you have, and then I could take it the next step. Because I'm not talking about that 80-page document, right? Correct. I just want to be very clear. That's not what I'm discussing.
[Jack Buckley]: But there's portions of that that actually address some of this, so that's good. I just don't know how to proceed. I think, I agree we should do this, at least from my perspective. I'm just trying to think what sort of, well, let me ask the other commissioners what your thoughts are while I kind of ponder.
[Tim McGivern]: I think someone needs to create a draft and then we can talk about the draft and then send it back for final.
[SPEAKER_18]: Yeah, I agree. I hate to pawn it off on the people with the most experience, but I think the people with the most experience would be the better ones to take a first crack at it.
[Alicia Hunt]: And I guess if I was doing it from scratch, I would take the CD board ones and edit them to make it look like the traffic commission. Alternatively, I could take what you have and merge it into this. rather than just starting, I could never write something like this from a blank piece of paper.
[Jack Buckley]: Can I suggest that if we do this, debating if I really want to say what I will say. Once we're prepared that we hold a special traffic commission just to discuss that, It would have to be public, of course, right? But it would be the only issue on the agenda to kind of iron out those issues.
[Alicia Hunt]: Right, because technically, as a public body, like if this was some other organization that wasn't regulated by open meeting law, I'd say, why don't I make a draft and I'll circulate it and we can all make edits on it. Technically, that's not allowed, although I would check. Operating rules may not be covered by open meeting law. Like if we were scheduling, we could doodle poll offline, right? That's legal.
[Tim McGivern]: Because we're not- We couldn't discuss them and we'd have to vote on them in a public setting.
[SPEAKER_18]: Right. Alicia, could you not post them in the public forum and then we all just go out there and grab them down and make comments on them?
[Jack Buckley]: So instead of emailing it to us, you could... Well, for example, the chair could send individually to each member just a copy of what is worked on. And then when we hold a, as I suggested, special public, then we could discuss them openly.
[Alicia Hunt]: Right.
[Jack Buckley]: You'd have it in advance, in other words. Yeah.
[Alicia Hunt]: And that would work. I think that would be fine. I think it would be good because it would be this first step towards, I think, improving the processes.
[Jack Buckley]: I'm not so sure we need a vote on this, but what I suggest is that I'll kind of gather up what I have, send it to you, you can kind of do the merge document. When you're done, you can individually send it to the commissioners and then we can say we're going to hold a special meeting of the Traffic Commission to discuss these operating procedures and just get it done. I don't hear a commissioner saying they're against this, right? I mean, we don't have anyone saying that this is It could not so good idea. I think we all think it should be done. But am I wrong to assume that we don't need a vote on this? It's just kind of.
[Alicia Hunt]: Doesn't matter.
[Tim McGivern]: I don't think we need to the vote could come at a time later on if. A draft comes up, you know, we could we could vote it down. But I don't think there's anything to vote on now. There's nothing of substance.
[Alicia Hunt]: No. Any vote would be to just move forward with making edits or drafting a document.
[Tim McGivern]: Yeah, and I don't think we need to approve that. I think that could just happen.
[4FrRjkCyMqA_SPEAKER_06]: All right. Do we want to continue it for three months? No.
[Jack Buckley]: Yeah, because we'll put it on a special agenda at that time. That creates a whole other thing of having to pull it off a table, et cetera. Let's just go. We have a plan. It calls for a discussion. We had a discussion. We give up a plan, and we move forward. I just mark it as resolved. All right, we comfortable with that one? Yep, I am. 2024-23. Clarification of the Traffic Commission agenda item 2022-21. Visitor passes for Yale Street for Lincoln Kennedy Condo Residence. Commissioner Hunt.
[Alicia Hunt]: Right, it came to my attention that we had voted on this in 2022, authorizing passes for Lincoln Kennedy, it came to my attention that the parking office was denying the visitor passes. And I asked internally in City Hall, whether this was something that could be handled in city internally. And it sounded like it needed to actually come back to the Traffic Commission to clarify what we meant. And Jim, you can tell me if I am misspeaking on any of that.
[Jim Silva]: No, Alicia, I think there was the clarity that was necessary to be able to issue these passes. And what the variance said is two visitor passes per resident for Yale Street. So we just needed some clarity on that, whereas the resident parking itself is limited to 10 residents.
[Alicia Hunt]: So the variance for Lincoln Kennedy for residents to get parking says that only up to 10 residents can get parking permits because they do have a parking lot, right? And it was my understanding that the visitors passes did not need to be associated with, like you didn't have to get a resident permit parking in order to get the visitors pass.
[Jim Silva]: That is a gray area because the 2011, which limited the resident parking to 10, was somewhat different than the May of 2022. And again, it's sort of open-ended, and I think that was just the concern of parking, and I think that just needs to have some clarity.
[Alicia Hunt]: So that's why I put this on here, that the residents who over the last couple of years were getting the visitor parking permit, went to the parking office and we're told no.
[Jack Buckley]: And it's from my perspective, it's Had a long term plan to allow this and the traffic commission 2022 reinforced that, but we've always had this agreement about 10. Visitor passes, right? So 10 residents eligible visitor passes and in 2022. For however, they are written up, I don't think it changed. right and I don't think that was ever intended to change what that process was and I can see how that someone from the parking department may want that sort of clarified and clear and put in writing somewhere so there's no question of a future. That being said, I think things have changed since 2022 in that area. The, a lot of this was, this is specifically related to the residents of the Lincoln-Kennedy Condo Association, deals that were agreed upon many years ago, and it's just that, like anything else, they weren't formally, you know, written down, and now we're trying to clear them up, and we spent some time, but a couple of months ago, We turned Harvard Street from Main Street to Winchester Street into a resident permit parking street. The residents of the Lincoln-Kennedy Condo Association are residents of Harvard Street. I think, therefore, very clearly and plainly, they are entitled to resident permit parking passes. or Hobbit Street as residents, they get all that comes with that. I don't see how this traffic commission could make an argument against that. Now, I get it, this is kind of flipping this thing over for we're talking about Yale Street, but back then in 2022 even, Hobbit Street was not a resident permit parking street. It is now. And because Hobbit Street is a resident permit parking, The residents of the Lincoln County Condo Associations already have resident parking rights. And so I'm not sure we need a variance for anything. Now, I'm sure, and I know Anne is on board, there may be some that say, no, wait, we want to park on Yale Street. That's a totally different argument now that we have a new rule in place several months ago. We have resident permit parking on Harvard Street. They're residents of Harvard Street. They're entitled. We wouldn't grant any other street a variance to park on another street simply because they wanted to, because we sort of controlled this. Having said all of this, what is the impact of the vote earlier tonight? On the zone now, I get it. This is going to be kind of a couple of months later. Right? So it's almost all irrelevant. Right. And I hope that kind of made sense because it's just going back and forth, but. If they are in the zone, right? This new zone that we created. Correct. Yep, so their residents within the zone, they can park. anywhere they want if they get a resident permit parking sticker. Separate from that, they're currently residents of Harvard Street and have a resident permit, the right to resident permit parking on Harvard Street. I don't know if we have to entertain variances anymore. So I throw that out for food for thought. The rules have changed over the last couple of months. Did I confuse it or help it?
[SPEAKER_13]: A little of this, a little of that.
[Jim Silva]: I will.
[Unidentified]: I will.
[Jim Silva]: I apologize. I will say I believe it is this part of the equation and clarity is the visitor pass program. And I think that is the issue. It's not being visitor passes are not being issued for Yale Street because there's no clarity as to what they are. But I think what you're saying, Chief, is we generally have visitor parking on the street that is issued on. Am I correct?
[Jack Buckley]: Correct. Okay, so they would be entitled, they're entitled to the full powers of parking that any other resident on a resident permit parking sticker. Resident permit and two visitor passes. When we do variances, we restrict most times the visitor permit parking. Here, Like, I don't know why, I mean, we have dealt with variances with corner homes for different reasons, or there's just certainly no parking there. And I get it, Harvard Street isn't a whole lot of parking, but there aren't a whole lot of residents of the 215 Harvard Street who are actually taking advantage of this. So I don't see historically that this would change things. I also think that this becomes a moot point in a couple of months when we are in a zone park.
[Alicia Hunt]: But the zone parking, so if I can channel what I think the objection is going to be, and then if we want to table it because we've been here for almost four hours, so it's hard to make an intelligent decision after four hours of a meeting, let alone on top of an eight-hour workday, is that They would say that there's not very much parking on Harvard, and where they are is the end of the allowed parking. It's very narrow. They want to be able to park on Yale Street, which is safer and wider, and their building stretches between the two. Unlike most people who would have to go to another street, you just exit the other end of the building. They would say that's why they want the visitor permits are only allowed still even under the new zone, only on the street you live on. So they'll only be allowed to get visitor permit parks parking on Harvard. I don't know that we need to finish this. I realize that Anne is on here. She's raising her hand. She had indicated that she was unable to attend this evening. And could we table this to another night? I thought it was a simple clarification, but it sounds like it's even more complicated. I am somewhat mildly concerned that they're unable to get visitor passes in the meantime, but it's a visitor passes and they have a lot. And there's a work around, even though they don't like it. And they do live right next to a public parking lot. Like literally, right next to a public parking lot. So there's work around in the short term if we wanna think about this one some more.
[Jack Buckley]: Yeah, and I don't disagree, but I want to hear from, uh, but I just want to make sure that the commission is have their comments for us as we historically do. But if you're. If if anyone has any other questions. Well, that we can hear from the resident 1st and see what their thoughts are on this whole process.
[Tim McGivern]: I would just like to say that I agree with your point, Chief, about the Harvard Street rejurisdiction that exists now, that didn't exist before. So that's a strong point.
[Jack Buckley]: It's interesting that, you know, I mean, I don't think when we did all this that we considered that, you know, this specific situation, but we did make 215 Harvard Street a part of a resident permit parking program of Harvard Street, just By by rules, but also, like, we're changing the process in a couple of months, right? They're going to get his own pocket. They're going to be eligible to do that. And I don't know in the zone pocket tickets if they're part of a resident private pocket that we have the right to deny them. This is the best. Oh, um. It's interesting. So if there's no further comment, I'd like to hear from the resident. Ms. Fretz, welcome. Thank you for being patient. I hope all is well and that you're doing fine today. But I think you've heard everything we've said. What are your thoughts? We're just going to ask you to unmute. And are you able to unmute?
[MCM00001829_SPEAKER_08]: If you're not, just type into the chat so we know. No, she did state that she was having some sort of, so she may not be able to.
[Jack Buckley]: She did log off and log back on. Or it could be Larry too. Anne, can you type a message just to let us know that you are there working on an issue?
[Adam Hurtubise]: This is interesting.
[Jack Buckley]: Well, while she's working on this and if she is able to, you know, unmute this in the course of resolve the technical difficulties, I believe what Commissioner Hunter's suggestion is that, you know, can we just kind of put this aside and take a deeper look into it in the meantime? And I don't think that will hurt Ms. Fretz's status as of right now, and I don't think things will change anything really quickly if we did that. I am hoping that in the next few minutes while I talk, she's able to log in. But if she's not, it's the only other issue we have on the table. And so I would suggest that we do something, we do table this event.
[Unidentified]: Oh, Anne?
[Jack Buckley]: You hear us? No. Yes.
[Ann Fretts]: Yeah, can you hear me?
[Jack Buckley]: We can hear you now. Perfect.
[Ann Fretts]: Great. I'm so sorry, it's me on medication and yeah, that doesn't always help. Just very quickly, we need the parking passes for Yale Street visitor parking passes in order to be able to service the Lincoln building. We can't service it from Harvard Street because there's no parking on our side of the street. And as Alicia said, The secondary issue is that there's limited parking on Harvard Street. We have all the cars that are parked on the sidewalk, and if you drive down the street at night, there's issues, and it's not a safe street to park on. We do have the Yale Street parking lot, but that doesn't accommodate visitors. or the visitors that would be there for overnights or a week long visit, which would be able to be accommodated on Yale Street as opposed to just being relegated to Harvard Street. I don't have an issue with being in the zone that changes the whole perspective. But the question is, how do we accommodate people who are coming to visit and we are stuffed to the gills with cars parking here in the lot. We do have our own lot, but we also have, as I wrote in one of the emails I wrote to the gentleman yesterday, is that we have multiple three-bedroom units where they're full, sometimes with as many as six people, and I don't know where they put their cars. We have one bedroom unit, an affordable unit, that has five people living in it with three cars, and they only have two parking spaces. We can't use our visitor parking spaces for trucks. We can't use them for long-term overnight guests, like if you have a girlfriend or a boyfriend that stays over. So we do need visitor parking passes. The question arises for you, could we continue to use, actually we don't have any anymore, Yale Street visitor parking passes in order to be able to provide our landscapers, plumbers, and all the people that service the Lincoln Building from that side of the building, and other people as well?
[Jack Buckley]: Okay, thank you very much for at least clarifying the position of the residents there. I have another thought, and even though I'm the one who kind of pushed this question forward, and this is to the commissioners to kind of think about, the flip side is the reality is in two months, like if we are, if this GL zone goes in at two months, Is there a harm, and I know I'm contradicting myself, in just restating what we've done for the last year, for this calendar year, that it's 10 residents are eligible for the visitor passes. I know it's an odd little rule, and we continue what we've been doing. Yes, Anne, go ahead.
[Ann Fretts]: We've only had use of five in the past three years.
[Jack Buckley]: Two years, rather. It's not being used too often, right? Yes.
[Ann Fretts]: No.
[Jack Buckley]: I mean, to the commissioners, I understand that what I'm saying now is in direct contrast to what I just said, but it's almost irrelevant if the jail zone goes into effect July 1st. Is it smarter to just say, let's reinforce what we've done in the past, get to July 1st and move on, or to change it again and again and again? So I throw that back out to you. I know I'm the one who's causing this. of chaos, but I think there's a set of rules that apply now that were different than in 2022, but we also voted tonight to change the whole makeup of it from July 1st. Thoughts on that?
[Tim McGivern]: When we go to the G Zone and folks get visitor passes, is it just for the street or is it for the whole G Zone?
[Jim Silva]: If I may speak on this, it's per street of issue. So Yale Street residents can park anywhere in the G zone, for instance, but they can only apply the visitor pass for Yale Street.
[Jack Buckley]: Okay. and we can have further discussion, but at least at that time, for the two or three residents who get visitor passes, they would be for Harvard Street. And I mean, there's not that many. Now, at that point, we may say, this is what you get. Individually, you could come to the traffic commission for a variance. We would entertain it differently then. But I do think that should be some of the conversations we have after tonight's meeting. But it's really just a question of how do we preserve How do we preserve rights of those residents between now and July 1st? And we can do it two ways. Tell them that they're entitled, by rule, to a resident permit parking sticker on Harvard Street with two visitor passes, or reinforce what we had voted on in 2022, which is and we're not going to be able to get up to 10 visitor passes up to 10 visitor passes or 10 residents, but these are passes of Hill Street and get us to July 1st where it all changes.
[Ann Fretts]: It it doesn't. Help the fact that we need visitor passes in order to
[Alicia Hunt]: like a repair vehicle type, like the plumber or so to serve, HVAC or somebody.
[Ann Fretts]: Cranes, landscapers, et cetera.
[Alicia Hunt]: And it's coming into that season right now. I will say I don't understand why Cranes Landscaper can't park across the street and walk his equipment across the street. I see them all over the city.
[Ann Fretts]: How would they get the barge milk from the other side of the street or another parking lot. It adds to their life. We have a whole 100-yard stretch of use that needs, I'm sorry, park mulch, and they bring it in from that side.
[Jack Buckley]: Ian, not to be contrarian, but don't you have visitor parking spots in the property where they could park?
[Ann Fretts]: If they're servicing a different part of the area? I mean, it's a three-acre property.
[Jack Buckley]: I mean, look, we can't We can be accommodating and then there's, I mean, that's a private piece of property. The city is not really required or entitled to give every little assistance to a private piece of property. We can be helpful in accommodating, but that problem there is a reason I think I would vote to change things when you could pull that vehicle right into your own property and service all you want. If your landscapers have to go a little bit further,
[Ann Fretts]: I mean, come on chief, that's not really fair. These guys work really hard and they have to pull the trucks up when they're cutting the grass.
[Jack Buckley]: I get it, it becomes hard work, but it doesn't become the obligation of the municipality to provide them with parking, contrary to our rules. It's not a question of like being nice to the workers and we have to provide parking to a municipality and we have to do it appropriately. And if you ask for that, every contractor in the city and the builder in the city is gonna.
[Ann Fretts]: So basically you're negating the agreement that we signed with the city that we would be able to park on Yale Street and park in the Yale Street lot if we put the traffic gates up and maintain the traffic gates at our expense, you're basically wiping that out. And that's what I'm getting back to. And this was part of the reason why we asked for that so that we could totally service our building. And servicing our building and making the guys work harder increases our costs because of time and effort and labor costs. It's that simple.
[Jack Buckley]: We've talked about this agreement for years, and we've been very sort of understanding and accommodating, but I don't think this final agreement has ever been... It was a debate some, what, 2011, 2014? It was conversations, none of us were around. It was an agreement with the city that we would accommodate
[Ann Fretts]: blocking traffic getting through from Yale to Harvard Street by putting up the traffic gates. And we would have rights to the Yale Street. rights to park on Yale Street.
[Alicia Hunt]: That's really interesting. I don't know that we're going to be able to settle this tonight. Honestly, I can't understand why the city would require a private company to do that, that set the discretion of the developer. We would never tell a developer to put up private gates. I always assumed they were there for the benefit of the Lincoln County residents.
[Ann Fretts]: No, they're there for the benefit of the city because neighbors complained. And I don't think that Luciano, Lorenzo rather, would want cars streaming through into his living room every night. Or Dave Perella wants people driving next to his fence. He doesn't like it as it is with people just cutting through the property.
[Tim McGivern]: Well, if there's an agreement, then can you give it to us so we can read it?
[Ann Fretts]: Chief's got a couple of copies. It was signed by Mayor McGlynn. It was executed through the city. Mayor Burke tried to negate it and have us responsible for the Yale Street public parking lot. This all came about because Mayor McGlynn wanted us responsible for the maintenance and snow removal in the Yale Street public parking lot. That was part of the deal that I negotiated.
[Jack Buckley]: So Ann, the last time we talked about this, the document that was sent was, I forget your attorney's name, was it Harrington, Dan Harrington, was he? Dan Harrington was the- We have a letter from him to the city making this suggestion offer, but we don't have- It was signed by Mayor McGlynn.
[Ann Fretts]: I have a copy of it, of the signature by Mayor McGlynn. It was accepted.
[Tim McGivern]: We need that.
[Ann Fretts]: You have it. It's on file.
[Tim McGivern]: I have not seen it. If the chief has it or if you have it or Alba has it, it needs to make it to us as commission members so we can fully understand the issue and we can intelligently discuss it. This apartment building is- It's a condominium. Condominium, sorry. This building has a parking lot. Is the parking lot on the Benton Street side also part of this complex?
[Unidentified]: Yes.
[Tim McGivern]: So most buildings in the city do not have parking lots like this. And typically, if there's private parking lots, the behavior of this commission since I've been on, if there are private parking lots, people don't get variances, people don't get extra things because they have private parking lots. So I think we really need that agreement to make any sort of decision here. So I'd like to table this until we can read that.
[Ann Fretts]: The chief has it, he's had it for two years now.
[Tim McGivern]: I believe he just indicated he has not seen it, Anne.
[Jack Buckley]: I don't have one with McGlynn's signature on it, but I will re-look, Anne, because we've had a few conversations over the past few years. I'll take a look. And we did just check with the legal department last week also to find it.
[Ann Fretts]: And? And the legal department said?
[Jack Buckley]: We couldn't find the document. I was looking for the document.
[Ann Fretts]: Okay, we'll get a copy, and I'll bring in Ron Lopez to the situation as well.
[Tim McGivern]: Okay, we don't need Ron, we just need the agreement. If it's a black and white agreement signed by a mayor, we will do our best to honor that decision. I do that all the time with PBW, so we just need the agreement.
[Ann Fretts]: Sure. soon as I'm able to get around and get a copy of that.
[Jack Buckley]: Larry, that's- And I'll check anyway, I'll recheck the records anyway that threw myself into Alba. You know that she's just gonna be, she's got a situation going on now too, so.
[Ann Fretts]: Yeah, and I appreciate that. I did speak with her right afterwards. Yeah, when he passed.
[Jack Buckley]: Yeah. So we'll come up with a resolution to try to find the right way to do this.
[Ann Fretts]: I think the one thing that I would like to ask is that if it comes to we can't park on Yale Street, and that's your decision, and there's no legal way around it, that the Management company or Larry Fretz has a variance that allows them to have two visitor parking passes for Yale Street in order to service the company here.
[Alicia Hunt]: So we'll take that into consideration. It sounds like we don't have to make these decisions tonight, and I don't know if you caught this part, Anne, but after four hours of a meeting on top of an eight-hour day, I'm having a hard time being creative or rational, so.
[Ann Fretts]: Well, I listened to the whole meeting waiting to see if we could get in early, but, and I'm pretty much incapacitated here, so I'm not on my game. Yeah. Tim, I will look for that as soon as I'm able to get up into my files, and I will contact Ron Lopez, because he negotiated the deal with Larry and I, and Dan Harrington, and then approached the mayor. So I remember all of this stuff, which is why the only, this is the only reason why I'm involved in it. Otherwise, they would just say, oh, we can't park there? Sure, we'll just park in the Yale Street parking lot. And as far as our parking lots, we have 50 condos, 100 parking spaces, everyone has two cars, and we have nine visitor parking spaces. And those are often used by people on Harvard Street because they have no place to park. We don't bother towing them anymore. It's an emergency.
[Tim McGivern]: You've got way more parking than most people in Medford, let's put it that way, way more. Let's get the agreement and let's have an intelligent conversation about this, please. We got to have the agreement. Ron has it.
[Ann Fretts]: Should we be bringing our property manager in their legal department too?
[Tim McGivern]: I don't think it's necessarily needed, but you can do what you want. I think we just need the black and white agreement signed by a mayor and signed by someone representing Lincoln Kennedy.
[Ann Fretts]: That was at the time was North Shore Development.
[Tim McGivern]: sure that we need to see that so we can discuss it. Okay.
[Jack Buckley]: All right. Get some rest. Good luck with your recovery. We'll talk on the motion of Commissioner Hunt, seconded by Commissioner McGiven. The table was set up. I'm sorry. 23-24-23 2024-23 roll call vote. Sergeant. Commissioner Brzezinski. Yes.
[4FrRjkCyMqA_SPEAKER_06]: Commissioner Hunt? Yes. Commissioner McGiven? Yes. Commissioner Velasca?
[SPEAKER_09]: Yes.
[4FrRjkCyMqA_SPEAKER_06]: Chief?
[Jack Buckley]: Yes. That is everything, right? Yeah. It's amazing that I could go to a city council meeting and come back and still be a part of the traffic. So I really appreciate all your hard work tonight, as usual. There's some challenging things You know, four hours. Speak for themselves. Yeah. Yeah, we're breaking records that we don't need to break. But I thank you all. Thanks for your participation. Steve, Patty, Jim, Tim, Alicia, thanks very, very much. Go try to enjoy the rest of your night.
[Todd Blake]: We'll do it again in a month or so.
[Jack Buckley]: On Jackson Drive. I don't even know where it is anymore. But thanks all. Appreciate it.
[4FrRjkCyMqA_SPEAKER_06]: All right. Thanks, Shane. Motion to adjourn. Motion to adjourn.
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