AI-generated transcript of Zoning Q&A/Info Session - Medford Square 05-08-25

[Alicia Hunt]: Welcome. I don't know if anybody is completely new to this office. I'm Alicia Hunt. I'm the Director of Planning, Development, and Sustainability for the city. I am here this evening with Zach Bares, President of the City Council, Kate Collins, Vice President of the City Council, our consultant, Paola Ramos Martinez, and my brain is not going to manage to say Jimmy's name, the black name off the top of his head, Jimmy Rocha from Innis is a consultant, and Emily Innis is remote this evening, managing the senior planner Danielle Evans with us this evening. So the plan, as we've done it with other Q&As, is that the consultants are going to give a presentation. Um, what we're looking at what what the proposal is at this time, and we will open it up for Q and a, in this room, it's pretty hard to have conversations over there. We'll see how that goes. Answer or visual questions. Alicia, you're breaking up a little bit.

[Unidentified]: You can point it out. You can be very specific about stuff over there.

[Alicia Hunt]: When we do the general Q&A, it's really helpful, particularly for the people in the room, if your questions are about the big picture or your comments in the general. If you want to know exactly what's going on at your house location, that would be an individual conversation that you can have over there. And at some point, Jimmy could go over there, too, to help you find. Jimmy's our mapping expert. Literally, that's his job. So we can look at very specific questions and very specific parcels over there on the map, and then we can catch those in writing for the consultants.

[SPEAKER_24]: Are we ready for the presentation? Do you want to say anything?

[Unidentified]: Some people are using Wi-Fi. Maybe they can turn it on.

[SPEAKER_24]: We're having some trouble with Wi-Fi. Internet service.

[Alicia Hunt]: We're all on the guest Wi-Fi. Okay. And I just want to say to the people on Zoom, if you're having trouble with anything, please message Emily because she is remote and it's easier for her to see that that message came in. You're welcome to try and message me, but I may not notice it and I apologize.

[Paula Ramos Martinez]: Hello, everyone. Is everyone hearing me fine?

[Emily Innes]: There is an echo when you speak, Paola. The sound has been going in and out.

[Paula Ramos Martinez]: Is it now better?

[Emily Innes]: That is better.

[Paula Ramos Martinez]: OK. Interrupt me whenever you want. Just let me know. And I will start now with the presentation. So our agenda, we will do a little bit of the introduction, some of the process timeline. So what are we doing? What are the topics that we are going to talk about? What are the future topics that we will talk about? When are those opportunities for the public comments? It's not late. We still have a lot of different uh, meetings and different types of meetings, uh, where we can talk and continue to read public comments. Um, and then we will go to the topic of tonight, which is the square, Medford square and the 80s. Um, so I know that a lot of the people that are using things already know just for the new people, the people that are joining for the first time. Uh, I just want to talk a little bit of it. what are we doing. We are taking a look into the zoning, the current zoning of Manifold. We are bringing from the comprehensive plan that was signed and released in January 2023. We are also looking at climate action and adaptation plan in 2022. And we are bringing all the principles and all of the all of the things and topics that were identified and problems that the zoning had, and we are bringing it in and looking at how can we comply with those principles that were identified in these plans. They have a vision map. This is the one you see right now. And here they divided the city in different areas. So the corridors, the squares, the special districts, institutional, and the residential districts. And that's how we are approaching this process. So we are going in with corridors. We did a City Avenue and Salem Street corridors, and those are already improved. We are looking at the residential districts, Um, we are now at the city board. Um, and then today we're looking at the squares. I don't want to look at the rest of the quarters and the description of the street. And well, it will be, um. So what's this process? How do we do this process until we have an improved district or a new change in the zoning? We do it in four steps. We first present to the city council a new topic. We get comments from the public. We present it at least a second time. And then it gets referred from the city council to the city board. We go to the city board, we present the city recommendations with our own recommendations and public comments, and when they feel that they are prepared, they vote it, and they refer it back to the city council. Again, this topic in the city council, we see the public opinion, and then it gets voted, and then it's approved. So there is a lot of steps before it gets approved. So right now in the planning and permitting committee meeting is that first step we present the topics and the city council gets prepared to vote and to refer to the city, to the city board. And right now we are in the commercial. We did the, we presented the squares. The squares are referred to the city board. and we are, so they were presented to the city board. We had a yesterday presentation to the city board about residential districts, in a different process, a little bit of parallel, because a lot of times we have to go a little bit back and forth. And then we have public meetings. So right now we have, well, we don't see it, but today we're doing the squares. Later on, May 29th, we'll see the other corridors, and then the 9th, parking and TDM. These are the ones that are planned. Again, some of the topics, and just to skip this one, so that we can have it. Yeah.

[Alicia Hunt]: Can we try one thing? If you try without this mic and see if you can project and the people in the room can hear you sufficiently. If that works better?

[Paula Ramos Martinez]: Yeah, because it's really echoey for the Zoom. Okay. Emily, like this, do you hear me better?

[Emily Innes]: Much, much better.

[Paula Ramos Martinez]: Okay. Do you hear me? If you come closer, that will help me a lot. Sorry. If you hear me, you're fine. I will try to project if I get down, just shout and let me know. So this, for example, is the latest proposal that we gave to the Community Development Board yesterday about the residential districts. I just wanted to show it because it always has to do with what we are doing now. This map is with the proposal for the squares, the commercial framework in the other corridors. We have approved Salem Street and Mystic. We are still working on the other corridors, the institutional Medford Tufts and Wellington. So you here see more or less how the map is coming together. The non-residential districts, these are all the non-residential districts. They can have mixed use, commercial, and some are going to be residential, but there are mainly service and higher density areas. So this was the first proposal for the rest for the commercial framework. And we are going to see right now the Medford Square. Um, so we're going to look into the current zoning, what it is there already. Um, we have commercial one, and that is the pinkish area. Um, it allows six stories by right for multifamily residential building. For commercial building, it allows four stories by right. And then any unpermitted structures are 15 stories by right. The orange, the dark orange we see in apartment two also allows residential building six stories by right. Commercial use is not allowed and hotel use is 15 stories by right. Then we have a lighter orange color in this area that is general residential, that is single unit and two units dwelling. Right now, it's also without ADU. And then single family one, this is in the higher area, single unit dwelling and ADU. So that's the current zoning. It's not exactly what it is going on today in there, very far from what we see today. This is a little bit of the summary for those I mentioned standards. This was the first proposal that we did in March 26. And what we have done is mixed use 1, mixed use 2A, mixed use 2B, and mixed use 3. This was the first proposal. I'm going to go to the latest one, and this is the one that was referred now from the City Council to the Community Development Board. So again, the same districts for the mixed uses. The difference was as In the map, it was to enlarge this area from 2B to 3, and that allows higher buildings right now. So it mixes one and then it will also change.

[Emily Innes]: I'm sorry to interrupt. You're about two slides behind us.

[Paula Ramos Martinez]: No, that's okay.

[Emily Innes]: Okay.

[Paula Ramos Martinez]: Does it catch up now?

[Emily Innes]: We can see the current or I can see the current zoning spreadsheet.

[Unidentified]: It's not you, it's the internet.

[Haggerty]: Yeah.

[Unidentified]: Yeah. I just switched. You're on your hotspot.

[Emily Innes]: Paolo, what might be worth it is I'm just wondering if I share my screen and just keep up with the slides. If I just keep up with you. Yep. Okay. I'm just opening it up now. Just a sec everyone, we'll get this sorted.

[SPEAKER_13]: Sorry, I'm trying to get my patience.

[Emily Innes]: Okay, I'm going to share. Bring it up. Okay, full screen mode. So I'm going to catch up. Last thing I saw everyone was. This was the zoning we saw that we saw this so. If you just don't mind repeating slightly for this 1.

[Paula Ramos Martinez]: Yeah, so this one was made to the table of the current zoning. So a little bit of what I just said. And here we have the first proposal that we did for the planning and permitting in March 26. We did some new analysis and some suggestions from the councillors and the public. And so you can go to the next one

[Emily Innes]: Emily, yes, this is I just switched to April 30th. Okay. Just go with yours and tell me when you slide. So, I'm on if you tell me when. Yeah, when you're off, when you go to side, so speak to slide 20 and just tell me when you move to slide 21, and then we'll move each of our presentations separately.

[Paula Ramos Martinez]: This is perfect right now. So what we did in the changes, as I said, was on the really right and next to the 93, we extended that mixed use three. We did some section and analysis, and we saw that that was perfectly possible. So that is one of the changes, and the next changes are in the permitted heights of the districts. So for mixed use one with density or intensity, we have four stories by right and just one story as an incentive zoning, so it can go up to five with incentive zoning. And that is only the area south of High Street, that very historical buildings. Yeah, thank you. Then we have mixed use 2A. This allows five stories by right plus two with incentive zoning, allowing us seven. Mixed use 2B, that is seven stories by right, plus two, that is nine with incentive zoning. Mixed use 3, eight stories by right, plus four, that's 12 with incentive zoning. Um, then we have, uh, some neighborhood residential three, um, on the north part of an existing single-family, uh, currently district that is up some to NR3. And then we have some urban residential one to transition towards the NR3, um, then from the other side to the UL2 areas. Um, So that will be the map. This is the map that we have on the back. So any comments is the maps. You can go to the next one. Yes, so the development standards we are using is how we can protect the residential districts, the residential neighborhoods with these developments. What we want to make sure is the proper height when it's abutting a residential house So, for example, the 1st thing that we do is for the residential districts, what we have is the maximum height. and then from the lot line that is in front of the mixed district, and then we go on a 45 degree angle, and that will give us that maximum height. Not only that, then it needs to be respectful with the shadow, so how much daylight they are, they are blocking. So we don't want that to happen. So we will ask in the site plan review to add a condition of daylight. So that's the minimum daylight standard and we need to that's something that we want to see how that can be drafted. But that's something that we want to also include. So with this, we will protect so we have, uh, seven stories high by right. But with these things, it might not be able to go within four, and that is to protect, um, the

[Emily Innes]: OK, and Pella, if you all can turn off your video, I think that might be using too much bandwidth. And the sound quality has dropped a little bit. Ah, there we go. Let's see how that does.

[Paula Ramos Martinez]: OK.

[Emily Innes]: Perfect. OK, go ahead.

[Paula Ramos Martinez]: And then, for example, in this option If the lots are being combined, sometimes it makes it easier to have some setback from the street and be able to have a higher, to get the building more height, but having some setback and setbacks. And then if you share parking, a lot of more interesting things are able to happen. Can you go to the next one? So here is from Medford Square. We are not going to look into West Medford Square. If you have any questions at the end, you can absolutely ask. We will see the existing zoning as well for West Medford. Can you go to the next one?

[Emily Innes]: It should be on 25.

[Paula Ramos Martinez]: Thank you. Yes, this is perfect. So, as you see, these are the same districts that we saw before. Commercial one, allowing 6 stories by right for residential building, 4 stories by right for commercial, and 15 stories by right for any other structures. Here we have apartment one, that is that salmon kind of color. And that is three stories by right and not commercial allowed. And then we have the least, the less than 60 neighborhoods, which is general residential and single family. If you go to the next one, 26. We will see the table, I think, as well as we did in the previous one. If you can go to the next.

[Elizabeth Bayle]: It'd be up.

[Paula Ramos Martinez]: Yes, this is the first proposal. We can go to the next one already, so I can explain the latest one. In the presentation it is, so if anyone is interested. So as you can see, we are going to leave the highest intensity along highest street, and then along the rail tracks, along the commuter rail. And that is your MX mixed use 2B. that allows the same as in Medford Square, seven stories by right plus two with incentive zoning. Then we have going towards the neighborhoods, we have the residential districts. we have the mixed use 2A, so that is five stories by right and two incentive zoning that makes it seven. Then going further, we have the urban residential. These are only residential uses. That is that red color that allows from three units up to, there is no limit, multifamily with no limit of units. And this will be three stories by right. Then we have some. This was a previous residential proposal. We have the updated version on the maps. but mainly was to increase as well the intensity along the tracks from the previous proposal. And we had the same upgrade for each of the districts with that extra height. If you can go to the next one. We don't see it. Just, okay. You can go to the next one. Now we're going to start accessory dwelling units. Yeah. The accessory dwelling unit, This comes from a document that is the Accessory Drawing Unit Guide from Boston. It is a very good book and guide, so if anyone is interested, they have a lot of examples. plans, etc. So it's very interesting you can look at that. The accessory dwelling unit is an accessory used to the principal use of a residential district to allow to have an extra dwelling without counting as another dwelling so that is permitted. It can be internal, it can be attached, and it can be detached. These you already have in your zoning. You can have accessory units are permitted. The conditions are a little bit different. So right now, not, I think it was in February, there was a new law from Massachusetts, general law, and they changed a little bit of what you can permit or not. And they created this new protected use ADUs. And so we need to tweak the current zoning for the ADUs in the Medford zoning. So that is also going along the mass general law. You can go to the next one. You can go to the next one. Right now what it's going to do is a lot of examples. This is from this guide. How can you do if you have a lot different ways of adding a new ADU into your house. So this is like the small lot size, then you can go to the medium, and then we can see the large option. So when it's small Emily, you can go, I will just talk through it, but you can continue. So usually with this ones, they will use your half a story or in medium will be attached more easily. And then on the very large will be detached. So all the different ways that you can build an ADU. If you can go to the next one, So we will be adding new definitions and that is what is a protected use ADUs? What is a single dwelling residential zoning district? That is how the law says that it is allowed the protected ADUs in a single dwelling residential zoning district. What does it mean? It means any district allowed to write or by special permit a single unit dwelling. And then we have a local IDU, and that is, it's a use that is not protected, so that you can use to get more flexibility of where do you want to have them. So for example, if we want to add it to other areas where we do not have the single unit, so the protected use is not enforced, we can have a local IDU so that they can also use it. Yeah. Next one. Um, so from the state law, this is the, uh, the actual state law. Um, there are some regulations that for example, meant for some of those had those regulations like owner occupancy requirements. Um, there are some minimum parking, uh, use and acute restriction unit caps. What is the relationship between the principal dwelling? So if it's attached or detached, right now we cannot make any difference and we cannot enforce those rules. Anything that the current zoning has about that needs to be taken out. Then we have some dimensionless standards. It talks about historic districts, how we could have some design standards and dimensionless standards that are different for those areas, for existing non-conforming structures, or these special permits for multiple ADUs. Go to the next one. Any questions that you have about this, you can ask any of us and your team, we will answer them. So what are, yeah. No, no, no, no, no. Those are that we have those regulations. So everything that, for example, the building coverage, the open space. Now we have permeable open space, anything that's required. can still be required to allow the 80 years. It needs to follow the same rules. Yes. The only thing are certain requirements that we cannot ask anymore for the protected areas. And that is, for example, the owner of QMC. So that in the principal building has to leave the owner of the building and then the 80 or the other way around. We cannot ask that anymore.

[Unidentified]: They can be to rental. Yes. they can't hear him on Zoom, so he will want to repeat the questions.

[Paula Ramos Martinez]: Okay, so he's asking from the public, we have a question about if any of the residential requirements apply to the ADUs. So we are answering that absolutely, yes. The requirements of the setbacks, the height restrictions, it is a little bit different for some of them, and we can look at that later. But your building coverage, our open space requirement, permeability, all of this are going to apply. Parking minimums, we do have some parking minimums, depending if you are within or out of the half a mile of high frequent transit.

[Unidentified]: So all of those.

[Paula Ramos Martinez]: Can you back one slide, Emily?

[Emily Innes]: Go back one slide.

[Paula Ramos Martinez]: Please. So they have their own parking regulations. It does apply the parking regulations for the dwelling. So for example, for one family, for single unit dwelling, you need two parking places. For an ADU, you won't need two. You will need one. So they are different for the parking.

[Unidentified]: This is a prohibited regulation.

[Paula Ramos Martinez]: because you cannot ask them to do a minimum requirement that is higher than what they ask. So they ask for, from the state law, protected use, AD use, will have, will ask for within a half a mile of a high transit, high frequency transit, they will ask zero in places. And for outside, it's one. So what you can do is ask for that one if you are outside, but you cannot ask for two. For example, you cannot ask for your own part in regulations. You have to follow the ones that the states have. That is not the whole text of law. It's just the things that I think I did the bullet points for sure. But we do have the regulation. I can show it to you later if you want to see it all. But they do have some parking minimums. The thing is that you cannot ask for more than those minimums. More than maximum minimums.

[Emily Innes]: I think we may have lost sound everyone.

[Haggerty]: I'm just checking in with the people in the room.

[Paula Ramos Martinez]: Sorry, so if they are asking about the minimum parking requirement that we see in here as a prohibited regulation, so we are So we are telling that the minimum parking regulation cannot be more restrictive than what they ask. So in the case of ADU outside of the half a mile of that high transit, then you would be asking for one. You can ask for zero, but you can ask for two. That's what you can ask.

[SPEAKER_24]: Yeah, we are going to continue and if you have more questions, we can do it at the end, but feel free to continue with that.

[Paula Ramos Martinez]: Can you go to the next one? The local ADUs? Yes, this is the municipal decisions that you can do to the local ADUs. So you can allow accessory dwelling units in any district, any residential district, by right or special permit. You can allow bigger ADUs than those with 900 square foot restriction. Municipalities can allow additional ADUs on the same lot, but you will need a special permit for that second ADU. In short-term rentals, each municipality will establish if that is something that they would like to restrict or prohibit those short-term rentals

[Emily Innes]: The people in the room, we can no longer hear anyone speaking.

[Paula Ramos Martinez]: Here we are. Sorry, I just was kicked out. Sorry. Can you hear us now?

[Unidentified]: Yes.

[Paula Ramos Martinez]: Thank you. So now the protected ADUs, we have some dimensional standards, and that is 900 square feet or half the gross floor area of the principal dwelling, whichever is smaller, so whichever is more restricted. They have some dimensional requirements and standards, and it cannot be more restricted than whatever the dimensional standards are for principal dwelling. for the single family residential or for accessory structure. So whatever is more permissive from those three, that's the one you can use for the ADU. So for example, if my principal dwelling is a duplex, and then I have two and a half stories high, my ADU can be two stories, two and a half stories high.

[Alicia Hunt]: But it's still, wow. but it still can't be larger than that 900 square feet. It's a crazy example, but it's legal.

[Unidentified]: Sometimes the state laws don't make as much sense as you'd like them to.

[Paula Ramos Martinez]: Sometimes they just want to do a lot of flexibility and so in that it ends up.

[Emily Innes]: I think it's so, for example, you can convert an existing building. Yeah.

[Paula Ramos Martinez]: And so if we have the. residential districts, what is permitted in each of them, and then what type of aid would apply, and then how many maximum units would have by date. So, NR1, Neighborhood Residential 1, you have single unit dwelling and historic conversion. We can talk about historic conversion as well, if you have that question that you have. But mainly, it would be if you have a warehouse that is historic and that means it doesn't have to be registered anywhere, it's just it has to be older than 75 years. If that is the case, then it's historic and then you can convert it into a multi-unit. you would have protected ADU, that is a check, because you do have single unit dwelling in your district as permitted by right. And then you could add a second ADU that will be local ADU by special permit. For an energy, we have similar, so we have single unit dwelling that gives us the right to that protected ADUs, and you will have two units and historic conversion. You could have local ADUs, this will make that, it would be possible by two units plus the ADU, that is like three units, and vice versa, you could have a fourth one. Nr3, you have some 1-3 units. So because you have the single unit, again, you have that protected use ADU. And then you can have a second BU by right. This BU is for any principal structure district, the protected ADU. That means that for a single family, for a duplex, and for a three-unit, you could add that protected ADU, extra special permit ADU. And so you're able to have five in total in one lot. And then for UR1 and UR2, and this is why, as well, we take out the single-use ones, is because we also want to control a little bit that ADU. Otherwise, in any of the permitted principle structures, you can do these two extra ADUs. And so we have two-unit dwelling, three-unit dwelling, a multiplex that goes up to six, and then the other two. So this goes from two to six units. You could add a local ADU but only to one, two units, and three units. And then you could add another one to local ADU by a special permit. UR2 would be the same. You can go here from three and there is no limit. This is multi-family area. So or between it, you can have an ADU. In these two neighborhoods, you are one and you are two. If it is an existing single family, you can add the ADUs to those single families. They are protected in those. Can we go to the next one? I'm going to add one more, I think. So this was to be decided, it is decided now, or at least it's been referred to the City Development Board. The second ADU will be allowed by social permit. The local ADU by social permit is protected ADUs. Maximum is 900 square foot. We want to allow bigger AUs for the tax history structure. So we are incentivizing that, really. rehabilitation of historic structures. Again, this needs to be more than 75 years old. And then the dimensions, the dimension of standards, we need to first approve the residential districts that we are working on at this moment in the Community Development Board. approved, then we can come back with national standards so that we have the newest ones. And we can look at those in the draft languages that we have there. So if you're interested, we can totally pull that. And I think that would be the last one. Can you check, Emily, please?

[Emily Innes]: That is the last one.

[Paula Ramos Martinez]: Yes, thank you. So, we want to talk about the interactive tool. I don't know if you want to do that before or after the Q&A.

[Alicia Hunt]: I think, can we just mention that we have it and not present it right now, because we've been talking for an hour. It's 7.40, so I want to give people a chance to ask questions.

[Paula Ramos Martinez]: So Jimmy will be there with the interactive tool that we have. This is a map that we have on the internet. It's public for everyone. And it has all the information of your current zoning, your current dimensions of your lot. So you can search your lot. go into your lot, see what are your existing, the current situation of that, what is the current zoning, what are the proposed or approved zonings in that, in that lot. So what are we suggesting? So if you want, and if you're interested in that, it has a lot of information. It's going to be updated every time that we update any of the proposals. So if you're interested in that, he can explain that. can be used.

[Unidentified]: I posted it in the chat.

[Emily Innes]: We have lost sound.

[Paula Ramos Martinez]: The sound went off. It went off for about 30 seconds. OK.

[Emily Innes]: Yeah, link to the to the chat for those who are online. So they can look at it.

[Paula Ramos Martinez]: Yeah, that's great. Thank you. Yeah, you take this. Yeah. All right.

[Alicia Hunt]: So, I was just moving our mic that they're using to hear us on the zoom. So, we'll put the link to this will be on the website tomorrow and we can work down. Honestly, some of those letters are always or 0 is like, in order to read it out. Okay, but I mean, for the people who were the ones asking. Talk to Jimmy, he'll give it to you when we split up here. So we did want to sort of move into some Q&As because this was advertised as a Q&A and there's been a whole lot of presentation and it's late. So I think what we've done in the past that works pretty well is to try and take alternate between Zoom and in the room. If people in the zoom want to raise their hand, if they want to ask questions, and I know that people in the room have questions.

[Zac Bears]: I just say 1 thing before we do that. Hi, everyone. Zachary's here. Just want to say 1 thing. And to remind everyone, I think something we have these lines when we talk zoning of the maps and what are the maximum heights and incentive zoning. I think it's really important to remember that just what the zone is and what the maximum height is does not define what can happen on a lot. you have to take what the zoning is the zone is and what the zone allows also the dimensional requirements the performance standards parking requirements you know you can't build a seven-story plus two-story incentive structure on a 3,000 square foot lot because there's not enough room for the dimensional and the parking and the daylight and that's really important to remember it's a combined assessment of all of the zoning rules that we're doing not just the top level So, if anyone has seen the presentation and says, oh, this is I don't like it. They're going to put a 7 story building on this very tiny lot next to me. It's not going to happen because the dimensional requirements don't allow it and the other requirements don't allow it. And I say that in both directions, right? If people are worried that buildings that they want to see built will be too small. or too big, right? It comes down to more than just what the zone is and the maximum. It's also about the other dimensional and performance requirements that are part of the zoning ordinance. So it's just important to recognize that and I think that's important for us to state and include as part of our presentation because I think a lot of conversation focuses on just this top line number and figure for a zone.

[Alicia Hunt]: So I don't know, Jimmy, you want to talk to the tool a little. So the tool doesn't show you buildings built. It shows you what exists. It shows you the numbers of what is allowed currently under zoning for the dimensions. And it shows you the numbers that would be allowed. But some of that is that you have to put Then you have to put sort of, and I don't want to say common sense, but you have to like critical thinking on it and say, well, this says seven stories so that if somebody put together three or four lots or that 10,000 square foot lot, they could fit seven stories on it. on the 3,000 square foot lot they probably could only fit three or four stories because of the parking required and then it also depends right is it four stories of commercial that has a lower amount of parking required or those apartments where you have to have to parking. So some people like to say to me, well, how many units can they build? And I said, well, it depends. Are they going to build 2,000 square foot, three bedroom units? Or are they going to build 800 square foot, one bedroom units, right? You clearly, right there, you can have twice as many units if they're smaller. And so it depends on what the developer is looking to do. And we meet with different developers who have different things that they want to do and that they specialize in. Like I said, I prefer to do studios in bedrooms, keep them small and simple and lower cost. I talk to other people who are like, we're going for two two bedrooms, and we want a pool, and this is going to be luxury condos, right? Developers are looking for different things.

[Unidentified]: Yeah, I think I agree with that. I do think that Saki said this last week. I think it's important that I take a response to that. The nuance that you said, I think it's important that people have better access to what that is, because I agree with you. It makes some people feel better. I live on just out of my neighbor's backyard. It's a really great place. And I don't want to look at his stories, but actually listening to what you say, they couldn't be the same stories there anyway. I think we're going to need people to come up here for the Q&A to speak into the microphone so everyone can hear you.

[Zac Bears]: Right. They're saying to me that they can't hear the questions, but the Zoom

[Alicia Hunt]: Closed captions is catching and catch caught almost everywhere.

[Emily Innes]: There's probably a resident. Guys, the last one, the zoom closed caption is not catching the questions from the people in the room. It's only catching information that's coming through the mic and it's not perfect, but it's, it is catching most of it.

[Alicia Hunt]: So people really basically she made a comment to us about the it's sad right that she spreads her opinion on this. We would really like to hear everybody's opinions um so why don't we now move to one of the questions we have a couple of our hands on zoom so why don't we move to iPhone 3 and uh I've asked iPhone 3 to unmute.

[Emily Innes]: Hi

[Elizabeth Bayle]: Am I iPhone 3?

[Emily Innes]: You are. Name and address, please.

[Elizabeth Bayle]: Yes. Robyn Iretano, 50 Cherry Street, Medford. Welcome. Thank you. Go ahead.

[Alicia Hunt]: Oh, right. And we've got the timer for questions.

[Elizabeth Bayle]: OK, so I have a question.

[Alicia Hunt]: Oh, she muted herself.

[Elizabeth Bayle]: Oh, no. I'm here.

[Unidentified]: We can hear you. We can hear you.

[Elizabeth Bayle]: Okay, great. I have a question about turning a two-family into a three-family, conveying the basement, and then about parking. Go ahead with your questions.

[Alicia Hunt]: Is there more to the question? What is the question? could the question is can I convert my basement to an apartment in a two-family house and then the question it depends what zone right zone you're in right so some zones allow three but if you're if you're asking if that would be an ADU then that would be, if you considered that an ADU and followed the rules where it was small enough, so it would have to be under 900 square feet. And so one of the things we also haven't quite mentioned is that all the building code requirements, so the building code looks at ADUs as a unit. The building code doesn't understand the idea of an ADU. So, any building code rules for making us another unit apply and the one that there are two that have been brought up to me by the building commissioner that people should realize one is that all units must have two entrances and exit two exits. Right? So that you have to figure that out. And they have to be, you can't like exit through the other apartment, right? Like they can't come up into your kitchen as one of their two exits. The exits both have to be to the exterior of the building or a shared vestibule. And the other is that when you hit three units, that triggers some, that makes it technically multifamily under the building code. You have to put in sprinklers in all the units. which can be a very expensive upgrade. And that is not addressed at all under the ADU law. We're not expecting it. ADU law is state law. That's not a city, like the city could not exempt that. The city cannot ever change anything that is in building code. It has to be changed at the state level.

[SPEAKER_16]: Sorry, I didn't hear you.

[Alicia Hunt]: The detached would be a separate building. So now that's a separate building, that's not suddenly make your two-family, a three-family building, right? That would be two buildings on one property as opposed to a multi-family building.

[Elizabeth Bayle]: Okay.

[Alicia Hunt]: And then you had a question about parking.

[Elizabeth Bayle]: Yes. Does it have to be one car per unit?

[Alicia Hunt]: So we're allowed to require one parking spot for the additional unit. And if it's an ADU and Medford will be doing it right. If you're within a half mile of high frequency transit, then we cannot require an additional parking spot. If you're within, if you're outside of the half mile of transit, then we can.

[Zac Bears]: questions like these are you should contact the building department and they may be able to provide you more guidance um and you might have to wait until the the new zoning is in effect um at least in some cases and when is that is that in august the new zoning well this is getting going to get referred to the cd board it's going to go through a public hearing process it's going to take a month or two months

[Alicia Hunt]: By August, probably. That's our goal.

[Elizabeth Bayle]: I was a little confused about the parking still. So could I get away with not having any parking spots? Can't they park on the street with the permit parking?

[Alicia Hunt]: No, so the whole whether or not you can just use street parking. Street parking does not count as private parking, that's whether or not it's permitted. Unless you happen to be within a half mile of one of the T stops.

[Elizabeth Bayle]: Which I believe I am.

[Alicia Hunt]: Right now in Medford, it doesn't say if you're in the green line zone, you're within a half mile. Danielle says she knows where that is and that is within the half mile.

[Elizabeth Bayle]: Right, with Wellington station, correct?

[Alicia Hunt]: Yes, Century Street. Buses can also count high frequency, but we'd have to look at the the actual i would for individual very specific location questions you'll need to email us in i mean i don't know that we can understand that but given that we were okay with

[SPEAKER_16]: I don't know.

[Alicia Hunt]: So I mean this is part of what we're looking for input on. So it's more helpful for us to hear what do you want or not want, right? Like it's we're in a space where there are certain things that are required by the state law and we can answer those kind of yes or no. But if it's like will the things that are Medford options will we will we require that? I actually don't know, and we would like people's opinions on whether or not we should acquire them. That is part of the point of some of this, is to get input on it. So let me now put a question in. Should we move to a question in the room? Yeah. We can come back if people have additional stuff.

[Zac Bears]: You can also email OCD at Medford-MA.gov, and we can work on specific questions.

[Alicia Hunt]: Right. So why don't we take a question in the room? I have a feeling we've got several going on. People look like they have questions.

[SPEAKER_16]: Why don't we start over here?

[Unidentified]: We'll make things much simpler.

[Haggerty]: Hi, Anne from West Medford. So there seems like a big difference in the map from when I last saw you guys with the expansion of urban residential districts. And I was curious how that came to be and how, there's very few people in this room, I would think a lot of people who live in that area would be very interested, but I don't think they know that this is going on. How are you guys, we don't have a local newspaper anymore, how are we getting word out so people can, you wanna hear from people? I think you are hearing from the same people I recognize, I've been here before, I see a lot of people, but we're not hearing from enough.

[Alicia Hunt]: So if I might, there are also 30 people on Zoom tonight, which is one of the reasons why we're trying to make a good effort for them to be able to hear us. And that the resident districts have been going through the public hearing process. So that's what's been happening at the Community Development Board. So last night, there was another hearing with 40 or 50 people on it. at the Community Development Board, looking at the residential districts and the changes. So we've been trying to get the word out through the patch through Facebook through the mayor's robocalls in some cases the newsletters that we've been putting out I know that kit has been shared in other mediums as well to let people know. It costs us about $20,000 to mail them to the city. We can't keep doing it. We don't have the funding to do paper mailings to the citywide. I mean, that is completely the untruth.

[Zac Bears]: We've expanded significantly communication to the many channels we have available to us.

[Haggerty]: I was last night at a book club with 13 people, and I was the only one who knew about this. All right, yeah.

[Alicia Hunt]: And so part of what we do is tell other people. There has been a really strong grassroots effort. I saw that there were flyers that went out in West Medford about this for this evening. We didn't put those out. I don't know who did. We appreciate that somebody did, because we don't have the funding, the staff, the bandwidth to be doing paper outreach to people.

[Kit Collins]: so because i thought when there was going to be some tweaks to the boundaries and stuff i didn't expect the urban residential zoning to go in as far as it has and just to clarify and i think the map we're looking at are the ones that were presented last night at the community development board which one these are not i mean obviously it's germane to the discussion those are already at ceb that's what we're looking at tonight are the ones that are have not yet started their public hearing process with these are all of the topics in zoning process are kind of occurring in tandem um i hope that some of the folks who are interested in those maps attended last night and will attend the next cdb public hearing date on that proposal specifically what is that um so the next in person it's no the community development board meetings are all remote a lot of older people they don't have

[Alicia Hunt]: We haven't been hearing from anybody who's been, I mean the people have asked for in-person and then they say do them in hybrid and then they say do them in the neighborhoods. So we're doing our best. The Berks school was booked tonight and so was the library. So we're trying to get out into the neighborhoods like people have asked for but it's really technically difficult. We even have Medford TV here trying to help us with the technology, and it's just not as visible. I'm sorry, I'm a little bit reflecting that people keep saying, it's so easy to do hybrid, why don't they do more hybrid meetings? Like, well, it's literally not.

[Unidentified]: Yeah.

[Alicia Hunt]: We started half an hour late. So let's focus on the zoning. So I would strongly recommend that comments on the zoning, on the residential, you send email to OCD, Office of Community Development, at medford-ma.gov, the city email, because the board is considering that. And they've actually, every single comment last night, except for one, and we probably had 25 comments, maybe? between the written and the verbal, said we want more density. Like, we want you to be more aggressive about more density in the zoning. And so there was only one person said they did this.

[Haggerty]: I know, it took me 35 minutes to drive from West Medford to this meeting tonight. Right, because of traffic.

[SPEAKER_11]: This is

[Alicia Hunt]: I'm conveying to you what we're hearing at the board meetings. We had had a less dense version of the residential and people kept saying housing is too expensive. Younger people want to live in smaller units. They want to live in apartments. They want to live near the squares and districts. And this is what they want. And they don't all want to have cars.

[SPEAKER_16]: The ones that don't speak, don't speak. Well, that's true no matter what the outcome is. You can always criticize the outcome. I don't think you should.

[Haggerty]: It's not scientific. I think we're evolving here.

[Zac Bears]: I manage a lot of meetings. I think if we could have one voice, and if we could go back to going back to early, back and forth comments, and if we could try to keep questions to one to two minutes so that we can get a question heard, that'd be ideal. So if we could go back to Zoom and ask the next question. I hear that, but we have a civil process. We're going to try to take an orderly process and we'll sit here as Rick. We're going to sit here as long as we can hear everybody, but I want to hear everybody in orderly process.

[Alicia Hunt]: All right, so we have a couple people on zoom as well with their hands up and they literally can't speak up unless we hit the unmute button. So like they don't have the opportunity to to do this. So we're going to go to Liam. I'm going to ask you to unmute.

[Emily Innes]: Yeah, I'm going to let Before Liam speaks, I just want to let you know that people online do not hear what is happening in the room, and they certainly can't hear when people are talking over each other. So, for the sake of the people online, please be clear. Liam, you should be able to unmute now.

[SPEAKER_17]: Hi, can you hear me? Yes. Hi, thank you. This is Bill Gunning. I'm from Hatch Road in Medford. I was curious. I currently live on a private way with 11 houses. I was curious if the city had any plan to help improve the infrastructure of private ways. Our private way in the last 15 years has completely deteriorated with the number of traffic. and delivery trucks, and whenever there was work on Woburn Street, they diverted traffic down our street. And within a year or two, I saw the street just deteriorate. Are there any plans to help improve the quality of private ways with this increased density? I know our street just does not have the sand or gravel that is needed to support vehicles on the road.

[Zac Bears]: I can say two things about this. Number one, this is, tonight we're talking about the Medford Square, West Medford Square, and the ADU proposal. I just want to bring that up. I will quickly answer your question. Hatch Road is in the residential district proposal. Part of the discussions with the Community Development Board and the planning staff around the residential district proposal was to address and put different districts in, specifically based on the issue is have a lot of issues, some of them are topographically difficult. Essentially, they're not built up to the standard that's required by law for a public way. My understanding of the residential district proposal proposed last night is that areas with private ways are generally. One district of lower for that reason, in general on private ways, I would refer you to a couple of things on the city website. There's, I believe, something from our traffic and folks talking about private ways as well as maybe a police police meeting about private winners. My understanding of the mayor's policy is that we do not have the funding to currently even maintain and improve our public ways and that the city is not using funds on private ways unless it is essentially an emergency condition where a police or fire vehicle would not be able to go down that street if it wasn't repaired.

[SPEAKER_17]: Yeah, my biggest concern is the density around increasing from West Medford, because there's so much traffic that goes from with the street to high street to 16. it feels like I live between 3 highways during rush hour. And now, when the density doubles, or even increase more than doubles, I just feel like the traffic is going to go beyond the quality of the roads.

[Zac Bears]: option that is available to property owners on private ways is to work you know technically everyone who lives on a private way owns the private way collectively and the people who own private ways can put additional restrictions on access to their um parking and access to their private way uh so that's one difference between the private and the public way as well all right thank you um i will i mean

[Alicia Hunt]: I'm going to post in the chat the link that Zach was talking about. So do we want to go to one in the room? You have to put a comment on the topic. Thank you. You want to be heard by the Zoom.

[Richard Orlando]: Could you just come to the microphone? Who complied to the moment's additional pay review which would be requiring a special permit? Who is the authority that grants those special permits to me?

[Alicia Hunt]: I think that's an open question right now, but I think we're leaning towards Community Development Board.

[Richard Orlando]: Not the Appeals Board?

[Alicia Hunt]: No, the zoning board tends to be more about legal issues and the community development board tends to be more about how do things impact the community and the quality of life in the community. So they tend to do things that are more planning and judgment related and the zoning board. So we've been trying to have more lawyer type on the zoning board and more people with experience in the planning and transportation and stuff on the board.

[Richard Orlando]: It's somewhat related to this. Is the city giving up more control over what is done at city to the state? I mean, this is similar to my chapter five projects where the state has more authority. Is this giving

[Alicia Hunt]: It is my understanding that we don't have, there's a certain number of things that we don't have a choice in, not choosing to give up authority, but rather the state has come in and made rules about ADUs that we don't have a choice in.

[Zac Bears]: I think very simply, the state is reducing local control under 48. Right.

[Alicia Hunt]: They're reducing local control. We are not giving it up. It's not a choice that we're making. And Emily, can you call who's next because my Zoom dropped.

[Emily Innes]: Yes, absolutely. Sheila Ahrens, I'm going to ask you to unmute. Please give your name and address.

[Sheila Ehrens]: Sheila Aarons, 19 Sagamore Park. I do have to agree with Anne that it is very hard to get information about these meetings. I am on the list from the city that I get any sort of announcements and it never came across my phone about this meeting. I know there's several Facebook pages that have to do with Medford, they should be posted there. I don't have a landline, a lot of older people still do robocalls because I do think a lot of people don't know about the meeting and if they can't come in person they would definitely, I imagine, go to a Zoom meeting. So I have a couple of questions. I don't know if it's this an appropriate time. I thought we were going to be specifically talking about West Medford Square. I saw that Steve Pompeo was on Zoom and he's one of the best landlords in West Medford. He really takes pride in his property. It's the best block in West Medford. And I guess my question is, we know that developers mostly are focused on their profit and don't live in our neighborhoods, come into the neighborhood and develop buildings. And I guess my question is, how are we going to make sure that that visually the buildings that they do develop fit in with the quality of the square. And there's pride of ownership. I think it's wonderful. I mean, I'm all for increased density, but I think it's very important to create beautiful spaces that people want to come and visit. And it's awful you go into west medford square and there's so many of the buildings that are empty and there's trash there The landlords don't really give a darn about their buildings and they need paint. They need new awnings So what can the city do? to encourage the the uh landlords to take pride in their buildings like steve pompeo does and um, I think I think if the landlords would care about their buildings that there would be more interest in renting these spaces because people will want to come to West Medford and visit. You go to some of the other neighborhoods that that are more well-maintained. You go into Winchester, you go into Newburyport, the list goes on, and there's a real pride in ownership. There's beautiful planters every summer. Arlington, you know, I do yoga in Arlington. They do beautiful planters out on Mass Ave. It's summer planters, winter they put greens, and I think those little things make a square and an area more attractive, and it encourages people to want to rent the spaces. When they see that it looks shoddy, they don't want to come.

[Alicia Hunt]: So I'm asking, I guess... Sheila, we totally agree with you. We totally agree with you. Our economic development staff have been trying to work on this. And the reality is that there are property owners in Medford who are amazing and excellent care of their building. You're right. Steve is one of those excellent property owners. And there are others who are not. They're not good landlords. We are at the point where we're just saying straight up, the vacant spaces in West Medford are there because the landlord is looking for a new tenant who will pay $100,000 in building repairs as part of renting that space. They're leaking in this space. It's a wealthy family that has owned it for a long time. They own a lot of property and they have no interest in putting investment in there. They've shown no interest in selling the property to other people. And there's just so much that we can do. There is an issue where if we said, oh, now vacancy taxes, it would apply to everybody. And it would be, you have to be very careful that you don't drive people to do things that you don't want them to do. You don't want them to just fill it with something very, I don't know that they even would. I don't know that a vacancy tax would even hit them. We're looking at a vacant storefront program. We can help provide grants to people moving into storefronts that have been vacant for more than six months. But when the landlords won't call you back, the other storefront that's vacant in West Medford, my office has been trying to reach the owners of that property and the real estate people listed on their sign for months and they are not returning our calls.

[Sheila Ehrens]: What are we supposed to do if they won't even talk to us? The dry cleaners. Yes. I am. Yeah, I mean, yes, I was talking to one of my neighbors and a friend of his Wanted to rent that space and put a gym in there, which would have been a lovely addition And the landlord that the I guess I didn't realize that there were all sorts of chemicals um dumped in that building and I don't understand why the landlord isn't responsible for paying the cleanup fees for that property?

[Alicia Hunt]: They would be if they rented it. So now they're not motivated to rent it. And this is the problem we're dealing with. So we're looking at some ideas about doing some art programs where can we put things in the windows to not make them look so bad? Like, what is it that we could possibly do?

[Zac Bears]: I just want to add one thing, Sheila. Thanks for the question about sewing. this relates to zoning by allowing especially i think in these vacant storefronts we have a lot of buildings that i don't think anyone would say are particularly attractive or that we want to keep in the long run certainly there are some but by changing the zoning use the calculus for some of these property owners um to potentially sell the property to someone who would maintain them better um and it's not um you know again we have limited tools at our disposal because private property owners do fundamentally have the right to do what they want with their properties including if they're very wealthy to keep them unrented um but we are looking at a vacant building ordinance and other ordinances to try to address problems and the problems that you raised are two of them but specifically for zoning um right now people don't want to sell maybe if we change the zoning someone comes in and can convince them to sell that it doesn't currently

[Alicia Hunt]: And the problem is not that there aren't people who don't want to rent in Medford. We have a lot of businesses. We're trying to help find spaces. The problem is actually our business vacancy rate is pretty low. And the ones that everybody knows about, everybody knows about because they're very visible. They're very much in everybody's face. And we have difficulty with the property owners.

[Paula Ramos Martinez]: There are development standards that we have in the language in the code that applies to multifamily especially. And on those we can set some standards to make it as good as possible like saying parking go on the rear of the lot and not in the front. In the front you could have um according we also have the green so we want to have more planting more trees um so we have incentives to to have those things and if they are standard they can be enforced development standards and then there is the sign guidelines that could come after this process those design guidelines will help to show developers what the city wants um and so they are not to be it's not that easy to enforce design guidelines but it tells what the community wants and so that is another thing that um and you can talk about materials about openings about style um all these type of things and that's what i'm talking about

[Sheila Ehrens]: I think we should look at Steve Pompeo's building and use that as a template, because what he's done is the way the rest of the square should look. I mean, it's gorgeous, and there's no reason that the rest of the square shouldn't look like that. I lived in Somerville, just quickly enough. All right, I know you need to move on to other people, but I really hope that we'll hold the bar high and have beautiful development instead of just, you know, patching things up so we can get more dense development. That's all. Thank you.

[Alicia Hunt]: And I think we have some more hands in the room. Okay, Will.

[William Navarre]: I really like the way that things are going here. I mean, it's good we're allowing for housing, which helps with some of the revitalization, as well as contribute to the regional housing crisis. Excuse me, sorry. Basically, I noticed that West Bedford Square clearly has a good ring of residential intensity surrounding it, and I noticed there's a little bit less of an intense ring of residential surrounding Bedford Square, which is uh obviously our most important square uh and i'm just wondering if you guys looked at that you know how we can make sure there's enough uh customers uh to um and so on to um really revitalize that fairly large commercial area right thank you

[Zac Bears]: I don't want to say too much on the residential district proposal, but as it relates to Medford Square, we had a lot of discussions. Medford Square is circled, essentially, by the river and the highway, which create barriers. The other issue is that on the north side of the square, you have really difficult both topographical situation with the summit road, et cetera. I think the residential district proposal proposed some changes in those residential zoning along high street, but we didn't think about it and those were the major issues.

[Paula Ramos Martinez]: Also a lot of partners. So in that area, the more thing to know is that that area has an immense amount, very intense amount of private rooms. They are mainly almost all of them private ways and so that is very difficult to rezone. The moment that they are a standard and they are made public ways, then it could be rezoned as higher. I totally agree with you because it's exactly, they have the services, right? They have also bus lines that are, that makes it quite frequent. But at this point right now, they are mainly private ways. And it's something that happens a lot in all the North area of- Yeah, Governors Avenue, there is quite a deep, steep topography, so parking makes it very difficult in that area that is in here.

[SPEAKER_16]: So everything behind the high school is a private way.

[Paula Ramos Martinez]: So we are really looking at every area that can be densified in this area. We totally understand people being why there is still a neighborhood one or a neighborhood two, especially in certain areas, but really the private ways are difficult to to to we will continue to look um so but yeah thank you for that.

[Richard Orlando]: I don't necessarily see private ways that have any presidential significance as a negative that could be destroyed Okay, I'm going to ask Caroline to unmute.

[Alicia Hunt]: Caroline, you should be able to unmute now.

[SPEAKER_18]: Hi, thank you. I just wanted to, one comment, one question. I am of the younger generation in Medford and I'm really looking for the city to lean into this new ADU law and take advantage of the changes from the state. I am priced out. I've lived in Medford for 30 years, but I cannot purchase in Medford anymore. And so this introduction of the new ADU law may allow me to offset some of the housing costs and stay in this area, if not in Medford. I did also want to comment that this ADU law is, ADUs are now protected under the Dover Amendment, as it's known. I am assuming the city officials probably know what I'm talking about, but Dover Amendment uses such as education, religion, solar, and now ADUs are some of the most liberally regulated at the local level because the state has determined that It needs to take control a little bit away from the municipalities. So I just want the city officials to keep that in mind when applying the new state law. I thought I heard one of the speakers say that unless it's explicitly. listed as one of those unreasonable regulations in the new state law that it is, that the zoning, Medford zoning still applies. And I don't think, I do have a legal background in land use and zoning. I don't think that's the correct analysis. And that segues into my question, who is the individual in Medford that is doing that analysis under the regulations 760 CMR 71? of determining whether the current zoning unreasonably is regulating these ADUs, because the city is supposed to be conducting a fact-intensive analysis. So who is that point person?

[Alicia Hunt]: I'm waiting to see if Emily wanted to speak about. So I just, to be clear what you're talking about, you mean we should be looking at our current zoning and saying how, what is reasonable, unreasonable under the new ADU law. That's the presentation we just gave you was the analysis that was done by our zoning consultants. And we do have a lawyer, part of the law that did the recalcification a few years ago on our on our zoning is part of that team as well. So they've been looking at the zoning to see what needs to change to be in compliance with the new ADU law. That is in fact what the presentation was that we just gave.

[Emily Innes]: Yeah I'll just add to that.

[Alicia Hunt]: So we explained which pieces of the need to be changed because of the law and which things are still an option for us to adopt or not adopt. If you wanted to add anything, Emily?

[Emily Innes]: Sure, that'd be great. So Caroline, as Alicia said, the analysis that Pally gave is that we've looked at the current ordinance. The current ordinance does not comply. And so we are making recommendations to bring the city into compliance, A, with the protected ADU requirements, and then B, with the ability for the local options. And so that was, as Alicia said, that was the full presentation that was made as our recommendations to address both of those.

[SPEAKER_18]: I guess my question more specifically is in the interim, who is making those

[Emily Innes]: Judgment calls you mean if somebody applies now, uh, correct. Yeah, got it.

[Alicia Hunt]: Um, alicia, do you want to handle who you are, uh at the city level actually, um It's always building commissioner is the building commissioner is the legal entity responsible for zoning and for enforcing enforcement of the zoning Thank you Did you have an opinion about the zoning you wanted to share or you just wanted? to ask a question, because we have another question in the room we could go to. Thank you.

[SPEAKER_18]: I'm sorry, what was that question to me?

[Emily Innes]: I think they were just wondering if you were done, Caroline. Yes, thank you. Thank you very much. Go ahead in the room then. Actually, room, we can't hear you. I'm just going to message the room and let them know that we can't hear them. I'm not sure if we've lost the room. So, Sharon, I am going to ask you to unmute so at least I can hear your question and maybe answer it. And then maybe in the meantime, we will get the room back. So, Sharon, if you can unmute.

[Sharon Wentworth]: I just, it's more of a comment. It was talk about the ways.

[Emily Innes]: Okay. Um, hang on. We can now. Sorry. Yeah, we can. Sharon was just in the middle of her question, but this, we could not hear you at all. So I'm just going to let her finish and then we can go back to you all because go ahead.

[Sharon Wentworth]: Okay. So it's more of a statement about the private ways. Just want to let you know that with the bike paths, some people have lost their parking. And so they're there. We were told during meetings to park, on the private ways. Okay. So I just think that you need to look into that. Because if you're adding more parking, everyone's going to be going over to the private ways. And I'm on Winthrop Street.

[Emily Innes]: Thank you for that comment, Sharon. I'll pass it back to the rest of the team. I will say that for any new projects that may be proposed, people have to, if they're going to make a change, they have to have all of their parking on site. They are not allowed to rely on on-street parking. But I will pass your comment back. Thank you very much. Okay, thanks. Alicia, I'm going to turn it back to you and I see Paola also has her hand up. I don't know if you can hear us. We cannot hear you. Okay, you had just unmuted and you remuted yourself. I'm going to ask you to unmute. I'm trying to ask you to unmute.

[Zac Bears]: Okay, now, all right, we just disconnected for about a minute. Sorry. Again, the hybrid Internet situation. It's not really incredibly feasible to be doing these meetings. We had a question in the room and the question in the room was, can we talk about the process going forward? and upcoming moments for people to further engage. And we also confirmed that the Medford Square, West Medford Square and ADU proposals have not been approved yet. Right now they are going to be at the city council to then be referred to the community development board. So there's many public meetings ahead, but go back to Kit for that. Thank you.

[Kit Collins]: Well, our one minute of lapse is a good segue into me saying just first of all, thank you everybody for hanging with us tonight. This is a new part of the overall zoning timeline that we added in around January, February. This is probably the one that's gotten the worst so far, so I apologize. Here's the thing, folks have been asking, to your point, folks have been asking for lots of opportunities to participate in this process, which is exactly what we want. Thank you all for being here today in person and on Zoom, especially tonight when it's been not as smooth as it usually goes. Folks have been asking us to be in community spaces and to be hybrid. And clearly there are some spaces in the community where that works a heck of a lot better than others. And all of those spaces were not available tonight. So we apologize. We will not be having a zoning Q&A at the school in the future. And thank you for being here anyway. The recording of this meeting will be available on the zoning website as soon as possible, in addition to all of the other materials about the topics that we're talking about tonight. To the question about process, this is something that people have probably heard before or read on the website or seen in Paola's presentations if you've attended a CBP public hearing or a planning or permanent committee meeting. The overall timeline for every zoning topic is it originates in the planning and permanent committee. We talk about it for as many meetings as we need to, sometimes two, sometimes four. It is then referred to the community development board. to the regular meeting where it is immediately referred to the Community Development Board, because that is a statutorily required process for any zoning update or amendment or new zoning. It has to go through not only the City Council, but also a public hearing before the Community Development Board. And then when they are done and they have voted on it, They send it back with their recommendations to the City Council and the City Council then takes a vote on it. We vote on the proposal, we vote to adopt or not adopt the recommendation. So how does that apply to what we're talking about tonight? I'll just give an overview of the timeline so far. I know there's a lot of proposals that we've discussed over the past several months. We approved on, these are all on the website and I'll talk about that at the end. What have we approved so far? Phase one updates, which were mostly technical, Mystic Avenue Corridor District, Salem Street Corridor District. And we have a lot that are somewhere in the middle of that pipeline right now. Last night, the Community Development Board met on the Neighborhood and Urban Residential Zoning Proposal that is in the CDB that remains in the CDB. They have not referred it back to the City Council. The proposals that we're talking about tonight, those were just referred out of the Planning and Permitting Committee. They have not yet been referred to the Community Development Board, but that is where they're going next for the public hearings in the CDB. After that, they will go back to the City Council. Same for the Neighborhood and Urban Residential proposals. All of the proposals that you've seen on the timelines that we haven't yet talked about, those will start in Planning and Permanent Committee, and then go to City Council, and then go to CDB, and then go back to City Council. In addition, we're doing these Q&As as much as possible in a more informal way, sharing what we're working on and hearing from you. I say all this not to just say a lot of words but to try to remind people of the opportunities along the process for plugging in and we really do appreciate you all for being here and want people to participate in as many of those modes that are accessible to you. In addition to all of that, so for example the meeting tonight a little bit difficult for folks to participate in the way that they usually do. We will have a recording of this available on the website that people can reference. Our inboxes are always open for receiving comments, whether it's something that's in committee or in CDB or if it's something that's on its way back to the city council. I find a lot of value in the, you know, kind of synchronous back and forth for getting comments. But if that doesn't work for you, if it's like tonight, the hybrid, it's a little bit hard to get information. please contact us through whatever ways are doable for you and we do our best to get you information.

[Unidentified]: That's it. So the big takeaway is we saw a lot of time.

[Zac Bears]: Yeah.

[Unidentified]: Yeah.

[Zac Bears]: Can I just add to that? So really there's two parts of this. There's creating a proposal and then the state law required public hearings. and then it being approved. Right now, we have two sets of things. We have the residential districts. We created a proposal that went to the Community Development Board. They opened a public hearing. That has now been happening over the course of three Community Development Board meetings. And there will be a fourth Community Development Board meeting on May 21st. where they may choose to make recommendations and then send that to the council and then the council would have a public hearing and then the council would vote to adopt the residential districts and consider the recommendations or make further amendments based so that's the residential districts

[Haggerty]: And those meetings are not first.

[Zac Bears]: Those are the community board meetings are on zoom. The city council is in city council. So that will be a public hearing and city council hybrid in person in the chambers and also on zoom. And that's the final meeting where a decision is made to approve or reject the amendment. So that's the residential districts which we weren't talking about here tonight. Although we ended up talking about it. Then there's a second grouping right now for some proposals. Medford Square, West Medford Square and the accessory dwelling unit changes. Those are we've essentially we've come to the point where we have a proposal. That's what we're talking about tonight in this Q&A. This is just a Q&A. It's not part of the formal process. The City Council is going to, it will be on the agenda next Tuesday for the City Council to send this to the Community Development Board for Medford Square, West Medford Square and the ADUs. Then they will start their public hearings on that. Then they will make their recommendations and that will come back to the Council. And then there are three or four additional topics The Medford Tufts institutional zoning, the other other corridors, which essentially is just Boston Avenue and Main Street corridor, the Wellington district. And then kind of a grouping of city wide regulations around parking and some other regulatory items. Those have yet to be. We're still at that starting in the city council planning and permitting committee, and then it would go to the community development board and then it will go to the. Come back to the city council for approval. Basically, what I'm saying is. look out on the city website for the community development board agendas look out on the city website for the city council agendas and then there's also a page medfordma.org zoning where we are doing our best to as quickly as possible add all of the links to upcoming meetings recordings of meetings meeting materials and everything else related to zoning immediately upcoming The May 21st community development board hearing on the residential districts. That is a. you know, another moment to be heard. And then they will make a recommendation after that, that will come back to the city council as early as May 27. And then these proposals need to be advertised throughout the whole zoning process. So we will probably refer them out to the community development board next week, but the community development board meetings on those are likely to be in June and then come back to the council after that.

[SPEAKER_11]: Yeah.

[Zac Bears]: So we're hearing from Daniel Evans that Medford Square, West Medford Square, and the ADUs would likely first be considered by the Community Development Board on June 7th. That's their first opening of their public hearing. Thank you.

[Haggerty]: That's good. residents. That's right. That's an ordinance. It seems like the zoning changes are pretty impactful, at least as much as the prop 2.5 for charter review. Why aren't we changing the characters of neighborhoods to be voted on by the residents?

[Zac Bears]: changes to the zoning ordinance, why did they not occur by referendum? Essentially the state, so all of our other ordinances are outlined by the charter, et cetera. Zoning, the state gives cities and towns the power to set their own land use and zoning under Chapter 40A, Mass General Law Chapter 48. Mass General Law Chapter 48 outlines the process for how zoning is adopted. And it is through, essentially, it is actually the city council That is the mayor doesn't even have to sign the zoning ordinance. City councils, legislative bodies of cities and towns, so town meetings and city councils set zoning by state law.

[Unidentified]: So we do have one more hand online and then we have one more in the room.

[Alicia Hunt]: So why don't we do the online one. And then we have two more in the room. And Alicia, you want to handle the online part?

[Emily Innes]: Thank you, Alicia. Roberta Cameron, I'm going to ask you to unmute.

[Roberta Cameron]: Thank you very much. Actually, Zach just answered one of my questions, which was going to be whether the Boston Ave corridor is in the queue. But I would still be interested to hear whether the Broadway corridor is In the queue for zoning change to align with the Somerville Medford collab, the Broadway corridor plan that that was just really the other.

[Zac Bears]: Yeah, yeah, that'll be in the other corridors as well.

[Unidentified]: Okay. And we will look at the summer.

[Alicia Hunt]: We are looking at the summer.

[Zac Bears]: The joint, the joint proposed.

[Alicia Hunt]: So for those who don't know, there was a Somerville got a grant for Medford and Somerville to look together at Broadway's corridor. And that was a, I'm going to say an 18 month project where we went with some of their staff and consultants on and Paola and Emily have that report and those recommendations. And so they're taking those into, And that is actually the public meeting that we're planning to have. May 29th at Reed Hall at Tufts. And we'll see about whether or not we can make that hybrid. We're looking into it.

[Zac Bears]: And I'll just add for people who don't have the context, the reason that they're brought the city line between Medford and Somerville is about 10 or 20 feet behind Broadway. So most of the lots are in both cities. So this both of the cities zoning needs to be the same or similar so that they can build on those lots.

[Alicia Hunt]: And they're not. It's the best. Okay, so we're going to go to one in the room.

[Roberta Cameron]: Wait, I had another question. I didn't finish. My other question was whether the zoning that you presented this evening, my apologies if this was covered in the beginning and I didn't catch it, but did the areas or has the zoning in any way been updated to reflect the existing condition of mixed use development along High Street west of West Medford Square toward the border with Arlington? and Boston Avenue toward the river.

[Paula Ramos Martinez]: That's something that we will look in the next meeting as well. So that will be part of the other corridors and we will be looking at exactly those.

[Roberta Cameron]: So the high street west of West Medford Square will be in the other corridors section? Yes.

[Alicia Hunt]: To be clear, all of those that are literally corridors are being considered together other than Mystic Ave and Salem Street, which we had very active development pressure on. I'm actually now meeting with a developer who has been very anxious to build on Salem Street, who is looking to do exactly what we talked about with ground floor commercial and a couple of stories of apartments on top. And he's looking to exactly do that. It was not allowed under our previous zoning on that stretch. And it is a building that is right now ground floor commercial with nothing on top of it. And so that is exactly what we were looking for. So because we'd had some developers who were trying to do stuff and they were trying to go through zoning and people were trying to ram things down our throats, we said, let's get that zoned. So let's go to, we're good Roberta, we're gonna go to one in the room.

[Milva McDonald]: Thank you. Mildred McDonald, 61 Monument Street. I just have three quick questions and I'll be brief. One is about the interactive map. Thank you for making it. It's really awesome. My question about it is... dived in too heavily, but the nuances that were referred to earlier, will those be, will those show in the interactive map? If you're looking at the interactive map at a particular property, will you be able to tell some of the nuances that were mentioned earlier about, or will you just see, oh, they can go seven stories, but the nuances that might prevent that, will those show in the interactive map? That's one question. My other question is for the squares. Does this process at all look at some of the traffic issues or particular hairy intersections? I'm thinking in particular of the Route 60 and Playstead and Harvard Ave where the commuter rail crosses, where the train crosses, and it's pretty precarious right now. So I think there's some concern of residents that increased density could create safety issues and difficulties. And so how does this process incorporate that? And I know you don't know what's going to happen exactly as a result of the zoning. So I know that's part of it. But just wondering where along the line, maybe does that come in? And my third question is a little unrelated to the squares, but since private ways have come up. I could be wrong about this, but my understanding is that there's a process to change private ways to public ways, and that could potentially be initiated by the City Council. And since we have so many, and based on the map I looked at, sometimes they cover a whole neighborhood, like Lawrence Estates, for instance. Has the City Council ever considered trying to make some of those roads that really do function as public ways, public ways? So those are my questions.

[Zac Bears]: On private ways, the answer is we've looked at it, and it's the cost is exorbitant. So, 100 to 500Million dollars, potentially more than that to bring all the public and that's like ballparky. We don't that's not what tariffs. But, uh. Yeah, so either the city could, if the city somehow came into a couple billion dollars, we'd all be very happy. And maybe that would be a project we could consider. But the other thing is that the owners of a private way currently can pay to bring it up to a standard to be adopted as a public way. So that's how that would work. But we have looked at it and the issue is the infrastructure cost. The city can't adopt a private way as a public way unless it is outfitted to the standard of a public way. which includes stormwater, sidewalks, ADA compliant, I mean the whole thing. It's also one of the reasons that full street reconstruction costs so much right now these days. On the traffic question, the main answer is the traffic impact of specific projects would be determined based on a project proposal and the site plan review process. But we have a we have development linkage fees for that go towards this infrastructure so that pay into a linkage fee structure which we're trying to update hasn't been updated in 35 years. So we're trying to update it to reflect current day prices and not 1990 prices, but that money can be used by the city for infrastructure improvements. And the other piece of this is that we've also included it through the incentive zoning that one of the potential And we have seen this as part of several developments in the area that a big piece of what they do is they do kind of bring the street into a modern street design so either just the pure infrastructure improvements and potentially like implementation of designs at the need to actually do the construction could be part of new structures in the neighborhood. So if, for example, the Walgreens area was redeveloped into something more significant, one of the benefits could be we need to redo this corridor to make it much cleaner and safer for traffic. But one of the flip side issues that Emily or Paolo could explain much better than I Is we can make an assumption that everything that could possibly get built will get built, but we know that that's not going to happen. So that's where the trying to figure out what the traffic impact is without project proposals is kind of a hypothetical. Right.

[Alicia Hunt]: And I think I might actually just add that there's something that we. been learning more we've been getting more versed about under this mayor and with our new economic development director and that there are mass development grants that can help with some of this major infrastructure improvements but they have to be tied to a new development or a potential new development so if we did have a developer who said I want to do this building at Walgreens site and it's going to be big And we said, yeah, but we really need to upgrade this railroad crossing. And the developer says, but I don't want to pay for that. That is exactly what a mass development grant would be for. So sorry, but there is no new building going in the west.

[Zac Bears]: The condos at the old funeral home.

[Alicia Hunt]: Oh, the condos at the old funeral home. Sorry, that is not a big enough development, right? So that's actually quite small. It's eight or nine units with one with a cafe on the first floor. That's not big enough to trigger a mass development grant and to look for it. deeper, it would be for much bigger projects but like the kind that might have a real impact on the water and sewer system, you can get a mass development grant to help with that. I will also say that this is something that I think the city may have done quietly in the past, and maybe lost track of because we haven't seen it all in in the last 10 years. Our current economic development director has extensive experience and connections with mass development. So we talk with them extremely frequently about projects. And actually the Medford Square RFP, for example, we have had staff from mass development who have been meeting with us at every single meeting, interview with developers. They actually paid for the consultant to write the RFP. for the city-owned parking lots in Medford Square, right? So this is the kind of thing that we have been really taking advantage of in the last couple of years that we haven't seen on this scale before. And they're saying, you know, depending what we need there, like, those are the kinds of things we could see these bigger grants for. But there has to be an associated project, right? There has to be a developer saying, I want to do this here in order for us to be eligible for those kinds of grants. So I'm hoping we'll see more of them. And there was the last question with the interactive map, and Jimmy will tell us what it can do. Jimmy Nader.

[SPEAKER_12]: Yes, I'll answer the question on, does it show the nuance in the zoning that we're proposing? That's the question.

[Milva McDonald]: Yeah, like what Zach earlier was saying how, you know, if you look and see, oh, nine stories can go up here. with the incentive and you live near it and you're freaked out about that, it might not necessarily be true because there's other factors that would prevent that from going up.

[Jimmy Rocha]: Exactly, that's a good question. So it doesn't show the exact nuance that's in the zoning code, the proposed or approved. For that, I would recommend there's a link on the map that you can click on to get more information of what Paola and Emily and the city are suggesting. The map is meant to show existing conditions, our existing conditions analysis of Medford for each parcel, as well as what we're proposing just for dimensions. So it doesn't show the specific nuances, but for that, I would just refer to the city's website.

[SPEAKER_24]: Can I- Quickly, I think- Yeah.

[Kit Collins]: So I think somebody else asked this earlier, which is if you're trying to do that overlay, like, okay, I see that this is proposed for this subdistrict. What are the lot size requirements for x type of building in this subdistrict? I think that would be a cross-referencing exercise because I think that would be bulky for Jimmy's map to accommodate. So in that case, I think the thing to do would be to refer to the proposed zoning, which is linked to the zoning website attached to meeting agendas. Obviously, I wish it was simpler. It's a lot to fit into the ArcGIS, but hopefully being able to reference this is a sub-district that's proposed, and over here in the dimensionals, these are the lot size, et cetera, for example, the setback requirement. For this type of lot for the sub district to at least give you an idea of what is what is ineligible here, even though it's in the sub district.

[Milva McDonald]: No, I think the map is awesome. Thank you so much.

[Zac Bears]: The other thing I'll point to is, and it's more for the squares. I think I haven't I don't know if I saw them for residential districts, but you've put together some kind of cross sections. Like, what what would. it looked like between Mystic Valley Parkway and High Street under this new zoning. There was also, I think, a couple of references to some of these and then some of the daylight standards to illustrate more. The real problem is it's all layered on top of each other. It's like, what is the daylight standard? What's the dimensional? What's the allowed zone? What's the neighboring condition of the neighboring lots?

[Paula Ramos Martinez]: And also we need to also give some flexibility because you could say you need X amount of parking. But then with the parking, you could share it. You could say the next lot will have the parking so I could go higher. There is a lot of things that could happen. So we cannot say yes, no, because it's not so much black or white. It has a lot of variables that needs to be taken into account. So it makes it quite difficult.

[Milva McDonald]: So basically the map is great and it gives you good general information, but don't make assumptions about individual parcels based on the general information.

[Paula Ramos Martinez]: And you can look, it does have the dimensional standard. So you can look very easily if you are under that minimum required. So those kinds of things, it's very easy to setbacks. That is all there. But then there are other things as parking requirement and development standards as in the section that also protects more the residential neighborhoods.

[Alicia Hunt]: Thank you. We have one more question online. I feel like I keep saying that, but then there's always, I don't know if you guys have noticed this, but one more person just raises their hand every time there's the last person. So let's go to the one online and then we have another in the room.

[Emily Innes]: Okay, great. I'm going to ask Loretta James to unmute. Loretta, you should be able to unmute now.

[SPEAKER_21]: Hi, thank you. Can you hear me?

[Emily Innes]: Yes, I can.

[SPEAKER_21]: Oh, good. I just have some general questions. I'll be quick. Does the new proposed zoning change or abolish the historic commission review? Not at all. Okay, I was curious about that. So homes 75 years or older they're proposed for demolition, so we have to go through them? Absolutely, yes. Oh, okay. And I have... Did someone else say something? No, you're okay, Laura. Oh, okay. So I have questions about when you're writing suggestions or comments to the Community Development Board or the City Council,

[Emily Innes]: If the room can mute so that Loretta can speak, that'd be helpful. Go ahead.

[Unidentified]: We can hear Loretta.

[SPEAKER_21]: Okay. Yeah. Okay. So when you're writing comments or suggestions to the community development board or the city council, I never know how those are answered or how are those addressed.

[Alicia Hunt]: So if it's addressed to the Community Development Board, then we put all of those in a packet for the Community Development Board members to read all of those messages. Sometimes we'll get a message with a very specific individual question and one of the staff will be able to answer it. Sometimes we get very long messages with 30 questions in them and we do not have the bandwidth to answer all of those, but we have been trying to sort of shoot back responses to straightforward questions. The city Councilors all answer theirs individually. Zach is offering that.

[Zac Bears]: Comments made to the City Council, written comments. Each individual Councilor reads them. They can choose to respond individually or not. If someone in their written comment requests that it be read out loud in a meeting and it's not 20 pages long, we generally do our best to read them out at the meeting. If you really are intent on a written comment being read during the meeting, I would recommend including the City Clerk on your comment and mentioning, please read this in the meeting. maybe even emailing the city clerk directly, he can help us just keep that organized as well. But it's a little bit different than how it works for the Community Development Board. Each councilor handles that in their own way.

[SPEAKER_21]: Whether or not they choose to respond. I guess I get why, because sometimes city council say, oh, you should write in to us, and then the Community Development Board go, oh, write in to us. And then I don't know what happens to the suggestions.

[Alicia Hunt]: So, we just don't have the bandwidth to respond individually to all of them. So we tend to put all that information together for the board. Sometimes we'll do some verbal summaries during the meeting, depending on. sort of what the situation is um the other thing is we're not sending every single comment to the consultants because the consultants don't need to see the same comments over and over again however sometimes when there's something that's robust or different or a different perspective or if we feel that it highlights what we want them to change so part of it is also what we've talked with the consultants about is just because a resident says they want something doesn't mean they should incorporate it Because you might imagine that we get directly conflicting comments from the public. So they need to hear from either the board, the staff, or the Councilors. this we want you to incorporate. This is one that we want you to accommodate. And so we do filter what goes to them because also we pay them by the hour and nobody wants us to pay them to read every single comment. So we try to give them more direction from us rather than them seeing all the comments.

[SPEAKER_21]: Right. And I understand that. The same with residents and myself in particular, I didn't want to repeat because I've already mentioned a few things to do, you know, the city council or the community development board. So I don't know where they went. So that's why I was asking the question, do I have to keep coming in? So I'll give you an example for parking for ADUs. I had asked, well, can we share a driveway? And is that considered a space for a required parking space for an ADU? And I never heard back. So I'm like,

[Alicia Hunt]: I think this is part of where we're trying to work through what is legally required, what we're allowed to do through the state, and what's allowed by the building code. And some of these things, we have had questions, we go back to consultants, we go back to the state, and then we get told by the lawyers that somebody is going to have to decide this or that issue in the courts. it is not all very completely clear so the question about shared it depends do you mean you share it with your neighbor or do you mean that you have a driveway that accommodates four cars already in your single family house and you're adding an adu right then you're all so it's very very specific right so in that case the single family house requires two The adu Probably can requires one depending on where it is. You have four spots in your driveway Um, so you're good, right if you're saying we have two spots in our driveway and your single family house requires two Can the adu require one? No, no, no, that's it. There should be one for the adu and two for the single family house That's but this is the kind of like, it's more complicated than just can we share it or not.

[Haggerty]: And that's even if they don't have a car.

[Alicia Hunt]: Right. It doesn't have anything to do about what the current people own at that time. Because you never know who's going to move in next. Right.

[Zac Bears]: Yeah, I would also just add that if people have a question like, what can I do? At least what can I do now? The building department is really responsive on questions like that. And they're the ones who can tell you. They enforce the zoning bill.

[Alicia Hunt]: I think that's a good thing to say. If anybody is looking or curious about whether they can do the ADU thing, ask the building department. But you actually have to show them, this is my house, this is my driveway, this is my land, this is what I'm thinking about. Because every single answer is, it depends on your very specific situation.

[SPEAKER_21]: I was thinking of like, often in South Medford, you know, where there's two families or three families that are condos, they share the driveways. So there's two or three spots. And I'm like, well, can we do the same? If it's a residential single family, and you have, you know, a three car driveway, would that apply to the same?

[Zac Bears]: And this is one of the really challenging things about parking mandates and minimums is like a lot of what people do, right? You might have a three car, like you can fit three car lengths in a driveway, but in order to, you know, actually you'd have to move a car to get another car out. I'm basically pretty sure that doesn't count as a parking space, right? Yeah, so I believe under the code, and I could be corrected if everyone else can correct me, that you have to be able to get the car in and out independently. So that's what constitutes a parking space. So when you mandate free parking spaces, it's not, oh, the people in the building will work it out, and someone will move out at 8 AM, and someone will move their car back in. You have to be able to independently access that space at any time. So free parking spaces is actually you know, maybe all this square footage in your backyard, and then maybe you're over the open space requirement, or you have to do a permeable service, but it's like, it doesn't account for all of the actual heuristic behaviors that we all do every day, or that we do because we're like, trying to cooperate with each other in society. It's literally just saying, like, you have to be able to get in and out independently, completely, and if you can't do that, mandate it balloons the amount of parking that you might actually think you might be saying that like a new parking space under like building a new parking space under the zoning it's very different than what we might consider as like a parking space that we use in an existing house every day because it doesn't factor in that use it's like you need this person who you know the parking space needs to be accessible at all times it has to be a minimum size and dimension it doesn't matter if you all have smart cars you all have escalades right it's like you have to

[Emily Innes]: Just to interrupt, I think Loretta was our last question online. I think there was somebody else in the room. Is that correct?

[Unidentified]: We do have a question.

[Alicia Hunt]: Yes, and we need to start to wrap things up because we're going to get kicked out of this space pretty soon.

[Roberta Cameron]: Yes, I want to leave desperately.

[Elizabeth Bayle]: I'm not kidding. I'm not joking. I've had it with these two and three hour meetings, but I just want to know, I'm still confused about the 15 story thing and whether that was only in the abysmal current zoning or whether it's still going to be allowed anywhere. Anything between 10 and 15 stories, can you tell me whether these proposals allow it, and if so, where?

[Zac Bears]: uh the 15 the 15 story element where it said other permanent structures 15 story that's the current zoning okay in certain districts and we are not allowing that um there are some things in the approved mystic avenue corridor district between mystic avenue and the highway that i think approach that that are above 10 12 stories with incentives zoning so it's age by right and then

[Paula Ramos Martinez]: with incentive zones but it's very specific areas we are having mixed use three on mystic avenue and that even goes higher i think that it reaches the 15 or 14 well it's 14 i think it's 14 but it's up against the highway yes yes exactly so it's in mystic uh on the mixed use three and in next to the city hall uh next to the 93 so those are the spots where we have that higher than 10 for the other areas we are not having that so it was in commercial one for hotel and apartment to other permitted yeah other permitted structures were up to 15 that's not happening in the current in our proposal we want to check that out

[Elizabeth Bayle]: Okay, and I'm just going to say one more thing because I want everyone to hear it which is that those sheets that you had of your memorandum that have the tables and those details are super helpful and it's really hard to for individuals to print out 20 to 40 page things themselves and have that accessible and if I realize you can't you know, you can't send out use the city street sweeping notifications to let people know when zoning meetings are going to happen that affect their area and please have a way that people can get those printed sets of recommendations so that they can take them home and look at them and have the kind of official, this is the proposal with the details. Because even your excellent presentations don't have all the details that are in there. So that would be super helpful.

[Alicia Hunt]: Thanks. So we're starting to be able to just print out versions out of my office and hand them to you if you walk in. Part of the difficulty is just making sure that the staff who are at the desk know what's the most recent version. And then I always end up with this, but it depends, right? So there was a CD board meeting last night and we can give you the version that was presented at that meeting, but the board asked Paola and Emily to make some updates to it. So. So we can hand you the version that was permit shown at that meeting, but none of us have that version yet And we're not sure when we're you know, how quickly we're going to get that then right?

[Elizabeth Bayle]: Well, that was the other problem was that I was spending Hours on the 5th, which was the day that I had time. I was not able to do things on the 6th um and looking all over for what is going to be presented at this meeting so that I can you know, be articulate instead of just saying something muddled. And I couldn't find anything. And as the meeting was going on, stuff was popping up, right? And that doesn't help.

[Alicia Hunt]: And we apologize, but that occurred because there are so many things, the materials weren't ready on the 5th. They literally, they weren't ready. They weren't given to the board until the 6th. That is why we told the board and we said upfront, we can't ask you to vote because the materials weren't ready early enough for anybody to look at.

[Elizabeth Bayle]: Well, I just want you to realize how hard it is for a resident to try and figure out what's going on here. And you're making what I consider drastic changes and more people have to know and more people have to have access to forms that are comprehensible by somebody that doesn't have an urban planning degree.

[Alicia Hunt]: And so we are trying to get these in the robocalls. I do know that tonight's meeting was in the robocall that went out today. It was actually checking my past messages to see if it went out in the last one that the mayor's office did, but we are trying to get them in the robocalls. The difficulty is everybody cares about West Medford and Medford Square. right this is not well just your neighborhood we want everybody to know about it and everybody who lives in medford cares about the residential zoning um when we did the the individual when we did salem street we did a robocall around just salem street area um so we are trying to do those targeted ones when it makes sense but everybody cares about these okay but i didn't see this in any of the mayor's um

[Elizabeth Bayle]: emails about, you know, these zoning meetings and it's really a big deal.

[Alicia Hunt]: I do want to tell you that there is a new news outlet in Medford doing online only. And I want you to know they've been on this meeting all night.

[Zac Bears]: Great. It's hard to remember their name. You've just got to know it.

[Alicia Hunt]: But they're on here tonight, and they're trying. But they are, again, only online. We tried really hard to bring in a print newspaper. I worked with Dan. We actually toured a potential newspaper around the city trying to convince them. Literally, I drove a guy around the city trying to convince him to bring a newspaper to Medford. And they ended up deciding not to do a print newspaper here.

[Haggerty]: And it's not just Medford that this is happening. It's everywhere. It's tough. I know.

[Elizabeth Bayle]: If there was notification about last night's meeting, there were like 24 people on Zoom. I mean, that's not at all anything like the people that are gonna be affected by this.

[Haggerty]: And I think we all have to spread the word in our communities. It's unfortunate, but I think we have to.

[Elizabeth Bayle]: Well, I would just say at the beginning of every meeting, if you can have a rundown, I know that you've got it on the timeline and stuff like that, Following on the timeline, even when I look at it myself, and I try to go, okay, who is this? And black is this other thing. If you could just list them, just list that this date in chronological order of the dates coming up are May 21st is whatever it's. So differentiate between the community development board meetings, the planning and permitting committee meetings, the city council meetings, and just say what the dates that you expect. I know that sometimes they change because this CDB doesn't get through what they thought they were going to get through. So they bump it out again, and this goes on forever. And people like me are tearing their spinning hair out.

[Zac Bears]: We've really been trying to iterate through this process and make it better. I personally feel like we're in a much better position than we were a year ago in terms of getting the word out. It is basically really been coordinating that effort. Something I think we can try to maybe do instead of the timeline this way is her top, like, have it be each topic and we go over to the beginning of each meeting. So we can say residential districts. Here's upcoming for residential districts. Square by square, ADU, here's upcoming, and then it's not all mixed together. And that might be easier to read. That might be a different way to format the schedule so that people can know what topic is coming up.

[Unidentified]: Chronological order really works for dates.

[Zac Bears]: Chronological order by topic might also then spread it, like not have it all. Layered on top of each other.

[Alicia Hunt]: I will say we're trying real hard. So kit has been working very directly with our communication staff to keep this web page updated. Um, and so it's, but it is hard, right? So, for example, last night, the community development board met on May 7. And they didn't vote, so they continue to May 21st. So we, as of this morning, know that there's going to be, the next meeting is May 21st. We didn't actually know that yesterday. We could have guessed, maybe, but do you really want us to post, I mean, we could put like tentative, like this is out of control.

[Elizabeth Bayle]: You know, that particular thing, since you're bringing it up, it said May 7th at the top of the page, but down under neighborhood and whatever it is.

[Kit Collins]: That was something that I missed.

[Elizabeth Bayle]: yeah but i mean i'm just saying it's hard it's it it's hard for people to keep track of so if at the beginning of every meeting you could just put the upcoming like next week or something um in chronological order what kind of meeting it is and on the date it would be at least give us a heads up that you've got to watch your calendar for that. I'm not blaming anybody. I mean, it's really hard. It's obvious reminding people and I appreciate it.

[SPEAKER_13]: Did someone say why this can't be robocalls? We get robocalls on the streets.

[Zac Bears]: We've asked the mayor's office and when we say the communication stuff, I want to be the mayor's communication staff because we don't always get to communicate what the council would like to communicate through them and we do not have communication staff. Yes, so we have been asking them to include this in more of the communications. They have included them in more of the communications. We've been working collaboratively with them. They won't have more just that part of the problem. So, like, the mayor's newsletter goes out every 2 weeks. So it's included in the thing that goes out every 2 weeks. But I think we've asked for, can you send out communication specifically about this project? And it's. It's just that we're going to include it in the things we already send out. And that may be a communication strategy. Maybe it goes down in readership the more things they send or something. I don't know what they're trying to balance there. So I don't mean to say that they're just not listening to us, but that's been kind of the response.

[Alicia Hunt]: So I will just make it clear that please look at the wider news. The rat issue is not a Medford problem. It is a New England problem. It's a New England problem. But part of what helps is when there's, so what doesn't help is older rundown buildings that are half abandoned. Those are havens for rats. I literally had somebody say to me recently that they were very upset because they heard that the property next door to them that was run down and had run down garages and abandoned stuff on it was going was slated to be redeveloped. And I'll tell you that it's not permitted. It's not nothing. It's just a developer was looking at doing it. And she was afraid that when it was redeveloped, all the rats would run on her property. So the reality is the rats are living in those run down spaces. And yes, the moment the shovel hits on the ground, and while they're living there, they're going on everybody else's property. They don't respect property boundaries. And the minute the shovel hits the ground, yes, they'll get a little stirred up and there'll be some activity. But once it's a nice, new, clean, well-maintained by somebody who cares about that property, there will no longer be a home for the rats on that property.

[Zac Bears]: I just, I just want to add.

[SPEAKER_11]: That's true. I have a beautifully maintained landscape property and I have the lovely advocacy network for paying, helping get that company out twice, but they're still around. There's still so much we can do.

[Zac Bears]: We are working, the Board of Health, the Health Director, you had Yankee passed out. Yes. We're working on that. We passed a new rodent control ordinance three years ago that's now started to build up through fees. Some more funds to to help in addition to what the city budgets were. We had the health budget on Tuesday, health budget on Tuesday. We were talking to the health director about this and we want to further amend the ordinance. There's an issue with the fine structure for the ordinance. We need to make an amendment to it to start finding problem properties as well, which we think will help more. And another piece of that ordinance that went into effect that the health director has been working along is requiring integrated pest management plans for developments over a certain size. The new Davis on building companies project on Fellsway, for example, there's a ton of information that went out they just started. And there's a ton of information about their integrated pest management plan and how that project specifically is going to mitigate rodents. That's not to say that Alicia's not you know there is a climate and regional issue with rats and you know but trying to address the problem properties trying to get people to not overfill the trash cans having the integrated pest management plans for these projects um and hopefully through fees and fine timing more resources for yankee pests to help out on more properties is generally the city's approach um but hopefully with the development some of these things are

[Alicia Hunt]: Yes, yeah, they're absolutely what I just said especially is required for new for every new development Every build right they need to have integrated pest management plans Every project like the health department signs off on every building permit. They're constant like I sign them too. So Sometimes I pay attention and see the health department sends every one of them rules. It's they have to submit plans and and then we always

[Zac Bears]: Right, we try to also talk more about this than I could part of the news trash contract and part of the new solid waste ordinance we passed is trying to a and the practice where we have open trash in the squares, which has been a huge issue for a long time, but also much more strict requirements on dumpsters and ballers. for private businesses. So that's another way that we're trying to go after this problem. So the DPW Health Planning Council Mayor, we are super aware of the rat problem and we're trying to hit it from every angle.

[Alicia Hunt]: And I may actually even just add one of the things that is a problem can be is the backyard composting. It's part of why we're providing the paid, the new composting program. And we encourage people because those are locked bins that are harder for the rats and the raccoons to get into than the regular garbage cans. So I strongly urge you to, it's free for everybody. Everybody can sign up. We would like everybody to sign up, encourage people to do the composting where we pick it up for you. Plus you can put a lot more in them than you can, right? You can put all your grease in your bones and your cooked foods and stuff. It's really nice. Paper towels.

[Zac Bears]: I will say if we don't have another question, this might be a good... uh wrapping up it's 9 20.

[Richard Orlando]: The question that comes to mind though is how do you look at all that and begin to see a theme on a particular topic. They've reached a certain critical mass on whether it's single family housing, height in a particular neighborhood. How do you accumulate the mass information you're getting? So it's just not, oh, I'm just responding. It's actually being interpreted so you know, this is the real issue in the city and the council needs to understand it. How do you do that?

[Alicia Hunt]: Well, that's what they train us for as planners in planning school, is how do you take all of this in and start to process it? Well, I just heard you say you can't deal with all of it. You get overwhelmed. We can't respond to every individual message. We can't hit reply on every, if we spent time answering every individual small message or long message, That's that is you just don't have the time. Then we don't have the time to sit there and look at the big picture. And 1 of the things that's come up is this whole, we got pull your request for the studies that did. I'm like, you don't understand. She studies it. She puts different dimensions up on her screen. She puts different blocks together. She looks at these. She does measurements. She studies it. And then she says, OK, I see what works here, but doesn't. Sorry if I'm speaking for you. No, no. That's sort of like she doesn't then write a report that we can then share with somebody. She says, I looked at all of this. And as I processed it with her background and her training and her knowledge, this is what I now recommend at this location. And that is literally what we're paying her and Emily and their other staff to be doing. Jimmy did to be doing some of this, the mapping analysis of it and overlay. If you are in any way good with maps or like maps, looking at Jimmy's tool online, the various layers that you can turn on, the setbacks, and the size of the lots, and the slopes, and so much goes into this. That's what we pay them to spend all day, every day looking at. Did you spend your full-time Medford for the past couple of months, haven't you been?

[Paula Ramos Martinez]: It's not only a matter, but it's a substantial amount of my time in this project that is very much time consuming. We looked at, for example, Um, we have the analysis for the dimensions. So where are the current state in the lot dimensions in the frontage, uh, on the setbacks. And then we make an analysis of how can we make it conforming for as much as possible for what is there and existing, but at the same time that is feasible, that is possible. So we do some analysis of the lots and how many for those minimum dimensions and, and, and requirements.

[Richard Orlando]: And that's all comes out of our response to what the community wants. That's the mechanics of how we actually deliver something that's successful.

[Paula Ramos Martinez]: So we also have the METFOR comprehensive plan. And that is the, we will say, where we come from, where we start from. So we see those principles that are in that plan, which was done two years ago and it had plenty of community participation so we start from those what are the goals and the principles of the city ones right and the community ones from there we start to we did this in the very beginning this big analysis of all the lots of the conformities non-conformities what is there in the existing zoning and what is what you actually have And so we try to you see what is there so a little bit of that past the present and then the trends for the future So it's not engineering that you do put in the computer in a program and then it gives you yes or no It is really looking at a lot of variables that you need to put on and back We do a lot of back and forth. We come to the community. We present for the city staff the planning and permitting So there is a lot of back and forth I don't know the I don't live here Jimmy does. I don't live here. So I don't know exactly the full reality of the problems that this community face, right? So the city staff will tell us what are those problems. Sal, for example, the director of economical development, he will tell us the problems that he's facing. The building commissioner, what are the issues? The city councillors, what the community tells them. And so we meet once a week to talk about the next steps and the projects and what we are presenting. So then we go to the planning and permitting committee meeting. And then there, the other councillors tell us, the public, we hear all the public. And usually, the comments are on the same thread. So we have two types of comments, or too dense or too little. So we try to see what is feasible in all of the studies that we have done and to look at, You can give me new perspectives. You can give me new reasons that we didn't take into account or a lot of people is feeling this way. And so we bring new recommendations. So that is the process of a lot of back and forth and trying to, we listen to everyone and then we see what is really possible and what is not.

[Alicia Hunt]: We really should wrap up because they really are going to kick us out.

[Unidentified]: Yeah.

Zac Bears total time: 21.92 minutes total words: 1587	Kit Collins total time: 6.04 minutes total words: 272	Milva McDonald total time: 2.32 minutes total words: 237