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[Andre Leroux]: All right, good evening, everybody. Welcome to the January 13th, 2022 Medford Community Development Board meeting. We're continuing a public hearing from January 5th last week. Pursuant to Chapter 20 of the Acts of 2021, this hearing of the Medford Community Development Board will be conducted via remote means. Members of the public who wish to access the meeting may do so by accessing the meeting link contained herein. No in-person attendance of members of the public will be permitted and public participation in any public hearing during this meeting shall be by remote means only. To participate remotely outside of the virtual platform, questions and comments may be submitted via email to OCD at Medford-MA.gov, that's OCD at Medford-MA.gov, or via phone to 781-393-2480, 781-393-2480. And just to let folks know that we are gonna be talking exclusively about the zoning recommendations of the recodification. We have attorney Mark Bobrowski here with us. He's been working with the Medford city council and we've had a few meetings now where we're discussing this and working our way through some finalizing written recommendations back to the city council to consider on the zoning. And because this is a recodification we're not we're not doing everything with zoning. Those are some things that are more policy oriented changes to the map things like that, that are really going to wait for the Medford comprehensive plan. to finish up, and then there may be some some things to consider at that time. Really what we're trying to do here is modernize the city zoning and bring it into into line with existing practice. Make it more understandable and friendly for everyone involved. So let me take just remind everyone that all votes will be roll call. And before you speak to please introduce yourself and state your address for the record. Let's go first to a roll call of the board members and take attendance. If you're here, just say, just say yay or yes. Christy Dowd. Yes. or present, I guess I should have said. David Blumberg. Present. Deanna Peabody. You're muted, Deanna. Still muted, but I do see you're present. Well, hopefully Amanda will be able to take care of that.
[Amanda Centrella]: Sorry about that, Deanna, you should be able to unmute now. Okay, here. For some reason, it was not letting me.
[Andre Leroux]: Great, thank you. Jackie Furtado, vice chair.
[Jacqueline McPherson]: Present.
[Andre Leroux]: And I believe we have Klaas Andreasen is not present here. Amanda, do you know if he's gonna join us?
[Amanda Centrella]: Let me just check the meeting attendance. It does look like he did not respond to the meeting invite, so perhaps not. I can message him separately.
[Andre Leroux]: Okay, thanks. Well, let's get this is Jackie.
[Jacqueline McPherson]: Just so I recall, Claes wasn't available this evening. Thank you, Jackie.
[Andre Leroux]: Thanks, Jackie. All right. Let's take a roll call vote to reopen the public hearing continued from January 5th. Is there a motion on the floor?
[Jacqueline McPherson]: This is Dan. I'll make the motion.
[Andre Leroux]: Thanks. Is there a second?
[Jacqueline McPherson]: This is Jackie. I'll second the motion.
[Andre Leroux]: Thanks. Roll call. Christy Dowd. To open the meeting public hearing. David Blumberg. Deanna Peabody.
[Jacqueline McPherson]: Aye.
[Andre Leroux]: Jackie Furtado.
[Jacqueline McPherson]: Aye.
[Andre Leroux]: and Amini as well. The meeting is reopened from last week. And let's jump into the document. So last week, Amanda, we had you were able to share your screen and we were able to move things. And let's do that. And maybe we could drop the link into the chat room for folks who are on the Zoom. so they can follow along. And last time we had just been talking about the noise standards, we're in the performance standards section of the zoning. I should also just note for everyone, both board members and members of the public that We're going to end tonight at 8pm and we're going to do our best to hopefully have this be our final meeting on the zoning recommendations. So I'll try to move things along as best as possible.
[Unidentified]: Okay, great.
[Andre Leroux]: We also had, I guess before we entered the transportation piece, let's just talk about a couple of things. One is this hours of operation. Amanda, I know that the city was looking into this, making sure it's consistent with other ordinances. Was there any conclusions on that or changes that are needed?
[Alicia Hunt]: I'm Andre. This is Alicia, the planning director. So one thing that we thought would be particularly, so we did not think we should move the other, the other section about wholesale store hours. There was a suggestion that we move it into this section, which is the performance review. And we did not think we should do that. There's another section in the ordinances that is completely outside of zoning chapter 38, section 34. Um, and so the other, so the, the recommendation for that piece is to put a reference in, um, that, you know, this is not in, uh, Sorry, I didn't come up with the right language, but this does not negate that other section, that the other section exists and it should be referenced. And that the one about wholesale store hours, we should, again, reference. Our concern was that somebody might search for operating hours and find just one section without the others and not be aware that there are other sections that talk about noise hours. They didn't seem completely appropriate to merge all into one.
[Andre Leroux]: Okay. And I think there was the question was that, you know, construction in particular generally starts at 7am and here we have it at 8am.
[Alicia Hunt]: So my understanding is what that this along with a number of other things that came from attorney burrows key were placeholders that we should customize to be appropriate to the city of Medford's operating procedures. Um, if these hours should be 7 a.m. to 7 p.m., if they should, these replaceholders and the board should come up with what would be more appropriate. In the comments, I have shared that wholesale store hours are, by right, 7 a.m. to 11 p.m., and that excessive noise is regulated in the city generally after 6 p.m., but before 7 a.m. So my recommendation would be the earlier hours should be 7 a.m. on here. But maybe there should be some language about the board the board could adjust as appropriate for each location because it might in our industrial locations be okay to have much wider hours. And in a single family home district, we might actually prefer shorter hours.
[Andre Leroux]: Okay, Attorney Bobrowski, any thoughts on this? Would it be easier if we just cited the you know, Medford, uh, you know, noise, general noise ordinance, and then said something about, uh, the SPGA or community development board being able to, uh, adjust if necessary for special circumstances.
[PQNVkYiOrIU_SPEAKER_12]: I think with regard to particular uses, it's okay or wise to list the use and the hours. Otherwise I think a general empowerment to impose hours of operation should just be stated. And if there already are some in the general ordinances, then that should certainly be referenced. So if you're going to treat wholesale operations differently, and I can't remember what 7.2 said, but I think there was a call out there that the hours of operation for one or two specific uses shall be, you know, that's, I kept that where it is because it's a regulation that's special in nature that just applies to those businesses. This is general performance standards you're looking at here that apply to all businesses. So I would just say, you know, the board may set hours of operation and we refer you to general ordinance chapter verse.
[Andre Leroux]: Yeah, I think that makes sense. Any board members have thoughts or comments about this? Okay, and I didn't reiterate at the beginning of this meeting but again for efficiency sake with the members of the public who want to weigh in about different issues, we're going to take it section by section, we'll hear from know, the city attorney Bobrowski, members of the board will weigh in, and then we'll open it after each section for questions and comments that haven't been resolved yet. Or even if they have been resolved, you're welcome to weigh in and express your concern. All right, I don't hear any members of the board chiming in, so let's continue. One other thing, I guess, before we move into the traffic piece, there was a question last week about video signage, and I think we have the Chamber of Commerce, Steve Pompeo is here representing them. I think we wanted to get some feedback from them about the video signage, and I believe the way it was left was that attorney Bobrovsky you're going to look at other examples and I don't know if you have any of that information right now or, or not.
[PQNVkYiOrIU_SPEAKER_12]: No, it's been a busy week and that's not something that made it onto my front burner I apologize for that.
[Andre Leroux]: Well, let me invite Mr. Pompeo. Is there anything further that you'd like to say on that issue right now?
[Amanda Centrella]: I don't know if, Amanda, you are able to... Sorry, I need to... I'm going to stop the share for a moment. Sorry, can you hear me now? Yes, thank you.
[SPEAKER_02]: Okay, yeah, thank you. Steven Pompeo, 18 Newton Road, Medford. No, that's fine. We can wait for the attorney to get that information to us at any point and put something together and weigh in then, if that's okay.
[Andre Leroux]: Okay, if we do finalize the rest of our recommendations tonight, there'll still be time to maybe submit the wording that you recommend directly to the city council. Would that be amenable?
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, I was gonna ask if that's a problem. If you guys wrap up, is it okay if we address that with the city council or should we try to address it now?
[Andre Leroux]: I think it's fine just to bring it to the city council directly.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, that's fine then. Yeah, we can.
[Andre Leroux]: Okay. And I mean, it might be helpful if you, you know, kind of sense your feedback to Planning Development and Sustainability Office and see if they have tried to get on the same page with them. And then if you can get them on board at the city council level, they can, you know, endorse it, hopefully.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, that would be good. And whatever Attorney Bobrowski can get us will definitely be helpful because all we put together before was, This was two years ago. We just put together a, um, more of a more, I guess you could have called it a moratorium because there was no language about video signs and wasn't ready to stop making major changes to the ordinance at that time. Uh, we, what we had drafted was really more of a prohibition until, until this time. So we don't, we don't have specific full language. So if he could, whatever he could get us, we could, that could help us compile something.
[PQNVkYiOrIU_SPEAKER_12]: Mr. Chairman, I'll put together a minimum of three examples. And given the fact that the Patriots are very likely to win easily up in Buffalo, I'll probably have it ready right after the game.
[Alicia Hunt]: Mr. Chair, may I ask Mr. Pompeo one question about this? There is a section in the ordinance that says that moving signs are not allowed. I believe that's the language. I was just sort of searching for the language on my computer. And so I wasn't clear why that didn't cover video or if that is in fact what he is referring to as the moratorium that they thought was attempt, that they didn't intend for the moving signs language to stay there.
[SPEAKER_02]: No, that's a good question. And we may not even have been interpreting it correctly at the time, and maybe the city council wasn't either. It seemed like when moving was put in there back in the day, that applied to mechanically moving signs as opposed to electronically moving videos on the signs. And we're not looking to make a prohibition of video signs. That was just a temporary fix. We just wanna make sure that they're in the proper zones, they're not in residential zones, that type of thing. So if the board here felt that that covered it, then that may be sufficient.
[Alicia Hunt]: But actually I appreciate that because I was under the impression that the chamber was looking for an additional moratorium. You're just asking for some level of regulation and appropriateness, not moratorium. That's really helpful to understand.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yes, yeah, and we thought maybe it would be helpful to have video display as a modern definition, as opposed to just moving, to help it be clearer. And as you say, moving is not allowed. It's not allowed at all. But maybe video signs should be allowed in some places, some areas, and also maybe based on certain sizes. So for instance, in a C1 district, like a neighborhood square, like West Medford, maybe you wouldn't allow large video signs on a store as its main sign. but a restaurant might be able to have a small video sign in their window displaying their menu, for instance.
[Unidentified]: Great.
[Andre Leroux]: Okay, well, let's leave it at, we'll have Attorney Bobrowski will send along some examples, and then I think you can decide whether we need to have additional consideration from the council on it. Thanks a lot. All right, yeah, thank you, Mr. Pompeo. Let's move into the traffic management standards. So we have a couple of, I think there's some technical language improvements. Can you scroll down some more, Amanda? There's some desire to, I think, adjust the language everywhere possible to make sure that we're accommodating pedestrians, bicycles, and public transit, and not just thinking about cars when we talk about traffic and transportation. And then in this transportation plan approval section, there is a significant number of modifications that have been suggested to a few things. One is include in the site plan for developments, the coordination of delivery vehicles, parcels, waste removal and ride services, just to be explicit about that. So that's not just about, you know, driveways in and out of traffic.
[Deanna Peabody]: One second, Amanda, there was a comment up there from Amy, I think that said, I don't know what traffic management, there was one, I think up a little more. at the beginning of the section.
[Andre Leroux]: Oh, traffic management.
[Deanna Peabody]: It's called traffic control devices.
[Unidentified]: Thanks, Deanna.
[Andre Leroux]: And then I don't know, Amanda, was the traffic office able to review this language around the transportation plans to see if that worked for them?
[Amanda Centrella]: So I was able to talk to transportation planner, Amy Ingalls, a little bit about section five, or sorry, this number five here, transportation plan approval. And she, in general, agreed with the content that was in there, but felt that there were opportunities to kind of tighten up the language a little bit. That there might be some redundancy. And so, we were considering if, if the, the general idea behind this was the board was in favor of that potentially. the planning office and the engineering office, if this were voted through, could just administratively kind of tighten up the language without removing any of the substantive piece of it and, you know, be able to polish off that recommendation.
[Andre Leroux]: Okay, I think that's fine for me.
[Amanda Centrella]: Yeah, there was also a note from Director Blake that just came in around five. I haven't had a chance yet to thoroughly review it. I think Vic's gonna take a look at it. Or I could read it to the board now or at some point.
[Andre Leroux]: How long is it?
[Amanda Centrella]: It's a couple paragraphs of text.
[Andre Leroux]: Let me see. Well, if you're OK with reading it, that would be fine, unless you or Victor want to highlight specific aspects of it.
[Amanda Centrella]: OK. I'll just read through if people don't mind. OK. So he wanted to communicate some additional info. The edits are good, but can likely be pared down even more. For instance, a transportation info submitted is not typically referred to as a transportation plan. The set of drawings required by building and engineering would typically include a traffic and parking plan sheet indicating parking, site circulation, etc. The traffic study or traffic memo is other traffic info required but not necessarily referred to as part of the transportation plan. Also, a traffic management plan typically refers to the management of traffic during construction. Traffic demand management typically refers to transportation policies or practices that can contribute to reducing vehicle trips. My recommended thresholds. Oh, and I think this covers slightly different topic. My recommended thresholds would be any commercial space over X amount of square feet or any residential over Y number of units requires a traffic memo. Just kidding. Any commercial space over a certain amount of square feet or any residential over a certain number of units requires a traffic study. both the traffic study and traffic memo should include or follow industry standard practices by ITE, such as transportation, oh, I just got another email from him, sorry. Both the traffic study and traffic memo should include or follow industry standard practices by ITE, such as transportation impact analyses for site development recommended practice, or the new multimodal transportation impact analysis for site development recommended practice. The specific scope and level of effort for either a traffic memo or traffic study is to be determined after consulting with the director of traffic and transportation. In general, the memo or study should follow the practices mentioned above, with the traffic memo requiring less information. For instance, a traffic memo may not include traffic analysis, but should include trip generation estimates and existing traffic count data. Examples are traffic memos that were required for some 10 plus or minus unit redevelopment versus, say, a 300 plus redevelopment. And that was everything. Yes, and I can post that in the meeting materials so that people, the board can refer to the written text, because I know I'm a visual person.
[Jacqueline McPherson]: Andre, this is Jackie. I have a comment on this entire section. One of the things that I'm noticing is that, which would become a semantics to the board, right, is actual there's differences in these plans and these traffic analysis and it's basically to evaluate whether the development is appropriate for a site and what type of transportation approvals may be necessary in order to maintain a satisfactory level of service, right? And then in addition, we're looking at appropriate mixes of transportation modes, including adding public transit, bicycles, pedestrian, so forth, so on, which is out of the scope of the board. And I feel as though it was already recommended that it should probably stick to the transportation department as cleaning up this language for us so that we can be better prepared to look at it in site plan review. I can appreciate all of these changes and things like that, but I just think it's out of the scope and the purview of the city board at this point.
[Andre Leroux]: So your recommendation is to take this language out or to- No, no.
[Jacqueline McPherson]: If we're gonna clean it, no, no, definitely keep it here, but because it's out of the somewhat out of our purview, but to be changing it, it should definitely be led by the traffic department is what I'm saying. Okay, changes as originally proposed at the beginning.
[Andre Leroux]: Okay. That seems that seems to make sense to me. Amanda, could you just scroll down a little bit more so we can see what's under a B.
[Unidentified]: Just go up a tiny bit more. Yeah.
[Andre Leroux]: So I think I mean, I think the general idea here is, you know, this is to require a site plan is to have a traffic study. to encourage transportation demand management and make sure that projects do that, take that into account, just multimodal considerations that they propose mitigation and that major projects have kind of a higher level of responsibility for this. So I think, and then I know there's some examples under D, of like, you know, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7. So do members have any, are we fine with this? I'm fine with what is here and then tasking the transportation planner with the planning office to, you know, to tighten the language up more, but not to make, you know, changes in the, of the substance of what's here.
[Deanna Peabody]: I thought it was all pretty like standard and what you usually see. It's just like those thresholds of when, you know, like where the number 25,000 square feet is what triggers needing to do a full traffic study, like where that came from. And if it's appropriate for Medford, I think, you know, yeah, the traffic department could probably decide what those thresholds are for requiring the full study. versus the memo or what Todd was talking about.
[Jacqueline McPherson]: And that's exactly what I was referring to, Deanna. It's just cleaning it up. Leave the language as is, but as far as where are we getting these numbers from, if they can just expound on that and clean it up for us.
[Deanna Peabody]: 25,000 square feet is a pretty big development. There could be something much smaller that generates a lot of traffic. So I had suggested maybe putting in a number of trips in the peak hour as well. so that we get those smaller developments that generate a lot of traffic. But I don't know what thresholds they want to use.
[Jacqueline McPherson]: How would we even determine VMTs though?
[Deanna Peabody]: It's all based on that ITE trip generation. So you could say if a development will make 50 trips in the peak hour, then they should do a traffic study. or something like that. But those numbers, I think it is best for probably for the transportation department to decide on.
[Jacqueline McPherson]: Yeah. And that's basically what I meant by audit of purview with the numbers.
[Deanna Peabody]: Because 25,000 square feet is a big development. We've gotten plenty of traffic studies in the past with developments smaller than that.
[Unidentified]: Right.
[Deanna Peabody]: So I don't. People were, last week we were talking about requiring a traffic study for like a 10 child daycare, like that definitely wouldn't be required with these numbers. So it kind of isn't jiving with what we have talked about for other things. So.
[Andre Leroux]: Right. Well, can you just scroll up a little bit, Amanda? Because, right, I think there's some confusion about what is being asked for. This is why maybe we, you know, the language can be clarified a little bit. So the traffic impact and assessment study is B. And It seems like every project that comes before the board, it almost seems like is required to do that. And then it says for proposed development in excess of 25,000 gross square feet, it has to meet a higher standard and provide more information. That's how I'm reading how it's written here.
[Deanna Peabody]: I read it as like you only have to do the, because the traffic impact and assessment is the IT, standard. I think I read it as you didn't even have to do anything unless it was 25,000 square feet. Got it.
[Jacqueline McPherson]: And based on what Amanda just, sorry. No, go ahead. Based on the information, the memo that Amanda just read, it's not, the semantics are off for me. To me, the difference between a traffic impact assessment and then a TDM, I'm, I'm just, it's just not clean for me. It's not flowing for me. So, I just think that it needs to be clearer and flowing.
[Andre Leroux]: Well, I think what the traffic engineer was suggesting is that, you know, projects, all projects are required right now, it seems to me, to create a traffic impact memo and then only some projects maybe do have a bigger study. So why don't we let them, I guess, yeah, let's let them figure out how to align it with what their practice is currently and, and then just, I think we can, we can leave that kind of TBD in terms of language.
[Deanna Peabody]: I agree. We usually do get a memo, like a smaller version. I'm not sure if that's laid out anywhere specifically, or if that's you know, if like Todd talks to the development developers beforehand, and that's why that's what we usually get. But you're right, we usually do see a memo for most and not the full blown.
[Andre Leroux]: Right. Yeah. Okay, yeah, I do think this language needs to be cleaned up a little bit. So that's, but I think we've made clear what we're hoping for. Right. Other board members want to weigh in on this. Andre David. Yeah, David.
[David Blumberg]: What's, what's your vision for tonight. If you can articulate that a little bit more, I know you'd like to go through all the materials so that we have a discussion about everything. I wonder, will a revised sort of final version then have to come back to us for kind of an ultimate vote? And if that were the case, maybe this is a section that could be looked at and approved at that time.
[Andre Leroux]: So in order to do that, I was talking to the city staff earlier today. I think what we'd like to do is have all of our recommendations and directives finalized tonight, and then if you're willing, empower me to review any final language with the city staff that we direct them to improve to make sure that it aligns with what the board had had weighed in on so that we don't have to have a separate meeting and come back and vote separately on it. But that's up to the will of the board. If you wanna see the whole thing all together, we can do that, but we don't have another meeting set up at the moment.
[David Blumberg]: Okay, personally, I'd be comfortable with that, but I can't say that I know very much about the formalities of our approval and whether that's sufficient or not. as part of the process that we have along with the city council's decision making and approval process. If it's okay with me, it's okay. But I don't know, maybe Attorney Barabosky would know better if that's a problem.
[PQNVkYiOrIU_SPEAKER_12]: I don't want to, the role of the board going forward would be both political and legal. So legally the planning of the CDB which serves as the planning board is responsible for making a recommendation to the city council. That city council, that recommendation is due relatively soon after the public hearing that we're in tonight is closed finally. The recommendation has within it the authority to make certain changes. After all the purpose of a public hearing is to hear from the public and to make recommended changes. The changes have to stay within what was advertised for the planning board public hearing. Let's call it the four corners of the advertisement. So you can't wholly invent something that wasn't even discussed and added to the recommendations. It has to be related to. And then that goes to the city council for a formal vote. Now, the city council was the drafter of the article as it came to you. And they're entitled to do what they will do in their legislative role. once it comes back to them. So you're free to recommend, your recommendations can include changes and the city council can include or reject those changes.
[Andre Leroux]: So David, it sounds like since, you know, these are recommendations and we do have a public record of the board's opinion about this issue. And when we open to the public, the public will also be able to weigh in on it then. we can ensure that our, you know, the final language recommendation aligns with that. And I feel like that is enough that we need to do to make sure that it's consistent.
[David Blumberg]: That sounds good to me. Thank everyone for airing that out. Cause I think it's worth talking about.
[Andre Leroux]: Yeah. Thank you. Other board members who would like to weigh in on the traffic performance standards and I don't know if Amanda if you can keep scrolling down and make sure we're not anything else here. Transportation demand management plan. Mitigation measures. Yeah, I think there's some a little bit of consolidation needs to happen because there's like TDM is referred to in a couple of these different subsections. If we could put that together, that would integrate it would make sense, I think. These seven items are examples of what could be in a transportation demand management plan required of a developer. It's really illustrative. It's not requiring all of these. It's just creating illustrations of, you know, depending on the project that the board could require and negotiate with the developer. And then this last piece here, well, reduction in parking, we talked a little bit about that last time. The Special Permit Granting Authority, SPGA, that's what that term means for those who are not familiar with it. There's some discretion that the board has, but needs to be justified. this subsection seven here, level of service maintenance or improvement. There are some comments about level of service being an outdated, perhaps metric for us to be using here in Medford. And so I think the thought here is to take this language out so that we can really focus on the, you know, evaluate the intersection and traffic impacts independent of this metric and, you know, require mitigation as appropriate. And, you know, focus on reducing trips, vehicles, mile travel, vehicle miles traveled. So, and I think the city, the traffic engineer was also expressed concern about this. have more specific language from the city transportation planner, and a couple of different places. We took out reference to the road widening really don't want to encourage road widening. So it was actually, Amanda, can you go back up there? Was that cross out there, road and intersection widening, that was a suggestion from the transportation planner?
[Amanda Centrella]: Yes, I'm sorry, I forgot to annotate that.
[Unidentified]: We need to say,
[Deanna Peabody]: I mean, there might be cases where we do want to add like a left turn lane or a right turn lane or something.
[Unidentified]: Exactly.
[Deanna Peabody]: Especially into a development, but I don't know. I guess it is changing a little bit with level of service, but I feel like I probably compute level of service on a daily basis. So it's still used a lot. Yeah. I don't know if it's completely irrelevant, but.
[Andre Leroux]: Well, I think that at least, I don't know, Deanna, what you think about this, but I think that there's a lot of intersections that are already failing and then to require a developer to fix that.
[Deanna Peabody]: Not fix it completely, but try to bring it closely close to what it was before by with through mitigation. I have a question. What if it asks that they should bring it to an A, but if it's a E and they're going to F, try to bring it back to an E type of thing.
[Andre Leroux]: Christy, I... Sorry, I didn't mean to interrupt.
[Jenny Graham]: Yeah, I just had a question on the road widening. What if a development is proposing to widen the road for whatever needs to happen for their development, was the intent of this section to also say, like, if that was to be approved, then here are standards that we want to make sure are incorporated? It's a different perspective.
[Andre Leroux]: I'm sorry, who was speaking?
[Deanna Peabody]: No, I was just saying there are times when a development would definitely want to. wide in a road so that people can get in and out of their development. Whether we should let them is, yeah.
[Andre Leroux]: Right. It's going to be, I think it's on a case-by-case basis, but I do think the language down there, if you can go down a little bit more, Amanda, to see. Actually, what's, can you go back up? I'm sorry. A little bit. Pedestrian and bicycle safety. Okay. So Yeah, I do think we should at least keep in any road modifications into that C, subsection C. So all new traffic signals.
[Deanna Peabody]: Yeah, maybe that's a good term.
[Andre Leroux]: Modification of roadways.
[Deanna Peabody]: Modification, yeah.
[Jenny Graham]: Right, just take out the widening and just say road intersection travels and traffic signal modification.
[Amanda Centrella]: Sorry, could you repeat that one more time?
[Andre Leroux]: Yeah, all new traffic signals or modification of existing traffic signals, comma, and modification of roadway modifications.
[Deanna Peabody]: Or roadway geometry, yeah.
[Andre Leroux]: Yeah, I think that makes sense.
[Deanna Peabody]: Oh, this is all under pedestrian and bicycle. I didn't realize.
[Andre Leroux]: Yeah.
[Deanna Peabody]: Okay. It's probably the same type of language is probably somewhere else than to not under bicycle and pedestrian.
[Unidentified]: Okay. Location of parking areas.
[Jacqueline McPherson]: This is Jackie. I have an unpopular question, and that goes back to the mitigation and what Christy had asked about the widening. As I understand it, one of the things about the intersection widening, actually, we're trying to, and as Deanna has already pointed out, if a developer was going to do mitigation or their development was going to add to the traffic congestion or add to the level of service and make it worse in an area, they would at least, if it was a D, they would bring it to a C or if it was an or they would bring it back to a diesel for so on. Widening is usually not considered a mitigation for traffic congestion. Is that correct? That adds to, it just creates more vehicles. And I just wanted to make sure that we were on the same page with intersection widening in that particular instance, that that's probably why we took that out.
[Deanna Peabody]: I mean, I see a lot of times where we widen, we don't widen the road, but widen at the signal to add lanes, like turn lanes to take them out of like the through movements so that they can queue, the vehicles can queue up. Not necessarily in Medford, but in other towns. So it's definitely, it is a mitigation and then also changing like the signal phasing and timing and that sort of thing.
[Jacqueline McPherson]: A lot of times. I definitely get that. It's just, when I think of widening, of adding.
[Deanna Peabody]: Yes. Okay, I mean, it's it's possible that it could be needed. Yeah.
[Andre Leroux]: And just to be clear, there is up above in the transportation plan approval is further up there when letter D. says that the plan shall include proposed mitigation measures, if any, such as turn lanes, roadway widening or narrowing, signage, signalization, pedestrian enhancements, bicycle and transit facilities, bike sharing, car sharing, transit subsidies, or other measures deemed appropriate by the SPGA. So it's pretty inclusive. So I think the minor change we just captured works. Well, in terms of the level of service, because I feel that we don't need this, the number seven level of service maintenance or improvement language, just because we have all of this other mitigation process and traffic studies and TDM. But Deanna, do you disagree with that?
[Deanna Peabody]: No, you're right, it probably doesn't need to be in here, per se. I think in any traffic study, and you know, they, they would compute the level of service for the future. That's just like a standard thing that's done. So, yeah, I need to be in the ordinance. Yeah.
[Andre Leroux]: Okay. Great. So Amanda, can we scroll down more? Let's keep going. This changed location of parking areas. Let's see. Yeah, I think this really gets into policy around changing dimensions, which is not something we have the capacity to do right now. So I think that would have to wait for after the comprehensive plan. And I had suggested here is just adding this other provision around vehicle charging stations because we I don't think mention it anywhere in these performance standards, and we should. Okay. Well, let's stop there after the transportation piece, and let's open it up if there's any members of the public who want to comment further on this. Amanda, maybe we could stop sharing for a moment. Thanks. Mr. Navarre.
[William Navarre]: William Navarre, 108 Bedford Street, apartment 1B. I had a really quick suggestion on the section about siting of parking. And the idea was just that perhaps the CDB should consider for large developments, or perhaps I should say for large parking lots, the possibility of future redevelopment potential of that parking lot. I know I was really excited to hear that they were actually convert parking area at that 200 Boston Avenue property into usable building. And it would be good if we could plan future developments where that kind of thing is possible, whether or not in a structure as in that case, or surface parking lot, they build a building there. Maybe you should look and see, is that gonna work? And if so, that's really good. If it's not, maybe you can make it so it would.
[Andre Leroux]: So if I'm understanding you, you're suggesting including a phrase that says the site, should it be the site plan takes into account possible future redevelopment of parking areas? Is that what you're suggesting? Yeah, okay, thank you. Other members of the public who have comments on the transportation section? I don't see any, so let's keep going, Amanda, if you wanna share your screen again.
[Amanda Centrella]: Sure, and a quick note, I believe Mr. Paul Moki is on the call, and so I wasn't sure if we wanted, I think he just has a certain window of time where he's available tonight, and if it made sense to have him comment on specific sections while he's here.
[Andre Leroux]: Sure, I think that does make sense, but do we have, were there specific sections you had in mind, Amanda?
[Amanda Centrella]: I think that there was some discussion early on in these meetings, but I think kind of it comes up in different sections as as it applies around. whether the draft or how the draft addresses family and its definition. And talking amongst staff, we had come up with a couple or some ideas, and also there were some proposed ideas by board members, and it might be helpful to kind of flesh those out with Paul here.
[Andre Leroux]: That would be great. So let's skip to that while we have building commissioner here. So this is in reference to the definitions section of the document, which is at the end, I believe section 12, is that right? And definition of family and dwelling units.
[Unidentified]: So Amanda, do you want me to tee this up or did you want to?
[Amanda Centrella]: Sorry, a little housekeeping. Go ahead, Andre. If you'd like me to happen, I can.
[Andre Leroux]: Okay. So there had been at our initial meeting, a lot of conversation about the definition of family and how do we regulate numbers of people who live in buildings and or dwelling units. And so there's been an effort to address this. There were a lot of concerns raised about know, the city shouldn't be in the business of trying to regulate what a family is. At the same time, there were some concerns expressed, I think about, you know, a lot of unrelated people being in units, particularly around the college. So I think what The recommendation is here. This latest one is, and thank you, you know, David Blumberg had suggested, I think replacing a lot of the language in terms of with like the dwelling unit. and trying to take out some of the family language, but there are still references to family here. So when you go to dwelling unit, it says dwelling unit means a room or group of rooms forming a habitable unit for one family, so on. And I think we were thinking about changing family to household and inserting a new definition, a household definition, which is used by the US census. which, if you see in the comments there says a household is defined by the US Census Bureau is all the people who occupy a single housing unit regardless of their relationship to one another. This still leaves open the question of, you know, enforcement if there's some issues and I think in speaking with some of the city planners we were thinking that enforcement really makes more sense not on the subject of family itself, but on in the actual substance, like whether it's noise parking. you know, health and safety issues, and that should really be the place where we have the enforcement. But I think we wanted to get, run this by Paul Moki and get his feedback.
[MjGBHu28DvM_SPEAKER_24]: Okay, thanks everybody. I guess it's a good time for me to jump in, Andre. Did you have anything to add? Yeah, definitely. Okay. Yeah, thank you. We had a little discussion about this earlier in the week also with some of the community development members of that office. So I think from an enforcement point of view, one of the things we went into, it's, you know, the overcrowding. And I think that there's, we had, for example, I'm looking at some of the definitions now and We still have in the proposed definition, the lodging house definition, which is basically caps a number of unrelated people at four. And as you said earlier, when you switch over to the current proposal for the definition of family, that's also states a group of five or more persons not related by blood adoption or marriage should not be deemed to constitute a family. So that's always been a difficult enforcement issue for us. For example, I think it's kind of tough sometimes to tell people that you can limit the number of family members you have in the house. And then by the same token, you get into people having cousins on, second cousins and so on. So I think trying to find family can get kind of tricky from an enforcement point of view. And I think if you also look at, Well, are you going to have 11, 12, 13 people living in one unit then that usually results into that kind of spilling over into the street in terms of how many cars people have and then they're parking in the street and the neighbors get overcrowded so I guess we're trying to focus on the real issue here because this can go off on a lot of tangents but I think Uh, I think, uh, and maybe, uh, uh, Mark Brodsky might be able to, uh, shed a little bit more light on this because on the one hand, uh, I think it's tough to tell people how many family members they can or cannot have living in a single household unit. On the other hand, or where do you draw the line in terms of is it in-laws, cousins, second cousins, and so on, because when we go to enforce this and the complaint, the history we've had with the, uh, enforcing this in court action, It's very difficult to say someone has an illegal lodging house. I don't think we really have much success on that in the past so maybe I can defer a little this to Mark. Mark have you had any, any thoughts on that as far as limiting what we define as a family, how many people can be living in the household unit.
[PQNVkYiOrIU_SPEAKER_12]: Good evening, Paul. My answer is that I wouldn't touch it with a 10 foot pole. I think the year or two after the Supreme Court of the United States decided Belter versus Boris, which restricted the number of unrelated people that could live in Belter to not more than two. Again, a college town, SUNY Stony Brook being nearby. Another case called Moore versus City of East Cleveland, reviewed a local regulation which attempted to limit the definition of family by degree of kinship. And the court said in no uncertain terms that it was a violation of associational rights, privacy rights, and there may be a few others in there. So mindful of that case, which is vintage 1975 or so, I don't think many municipalities have the inclination to do that.
[MjGBHu28DvM_SPEAKER_24]: Yeah. Thank you, Mike. I appreciate that. And just, again, you know, with the housing shortage, and I think it's, and I'm sure you're well aware of the Ernie Block case when they tried to limit the number of kitchens in the house into a single family. But so just basically, Andre, there's a couple of things. I think it's tough to, find a family and tell them, tell a family, you kind of have certain family members living there. And if you look on the flip side of that, we get the complaints, there's eight, nine, 10 people living in this house and it's an overcrowding situation. So this is a tough one. I'm not really sure what the correct answer is to that. I don't mean to be too vague with that, but I think that's the reality of what we're looking at here.
[Andre Leroux]: Yeah. Well, what are the tools that you have for enforcement when you do see an overcrowding situation.
[MjGBHu28DvM_SPEAKER_24]: Well right now, the way zone is currently worded and I mentioned this a little earlier, we still do have a definition of lodging house so for example right now it says five or more. unrelated people. And so we would, if we did get a complaint, and a lot of them, as you said, Andrea, is around the Tufts area, which seems to be with students. So we would go out there and try and work with the post office, see who's getting mail delivered there. And then we would work in cooperation with the police department, they would, you know, have check on license plates and so on. But some of the cases we've had in court, again, it's difficult because we'll say, hey, we have X amount of people living here. Also, whenever we get a copy of the lease, that's also helpful. So we can pinpoint as much as we can that, hey, it's not a family, there are too many unrelated people. If we have some good documentation, then we're successful in resolving some of those situations. Some of the difficulties, as an example that we run into with that will be that Do you know that they're not on the lease, but when you came, my cousin was visiting from Colorado. It was some, you know, it's a different situations like that. People brought in different circumstances. Right.
[Andre Leroux]: Any thoughts from board members? So as what's recommended here, Paul, does that seem okay to you as good a resolution as we might find in terms of replacing that family language with household and then putting the Census Bureau definition for household in there?
[MjGBHu28DvM_SPEAKER_24]: Yeah, I do like that thought on that, Andre. One thing that, Well, maybe I could just get back to Vic with this. I've been trying to, the sanitation code may have some square footage limitations on this. I did not have a chance in such a crazy week, did not have a chance to check with the Board of Health on that, but I'll put a little note here to get Vic some information from Mary Ann O'Connor, and maybe that may be some type of you know, sometimes some type of dimensional number that maybe will help us prevent some overcrowding situations, but at the same time, you know, allowing family members to live together. Right.
[Andre Leroux]: Yeah, it's a tough issue certainly not something that we're going to totally resolve tonight but I think At least resolving this issue around definition of a family makes sense for our times. And then thinking about how, you know, when there are problems, are there better ways of approaching enforcement, right, through some of the other tools that we have based on the actual impacts to surrounding neighbors.
[MjGBHu28DvM_SPEAKER_24]: I'm sorry, I didn't mean to interrupt. Just real quick, one more quick comment on that. We've had several discussions over the years and I knew this topic was coming up with some of our neighboring communities around here with the code enforcement officials in those communities. And I think basically what it comes down, we're all in the same boat. We all seem to be hitting the same difficulties in enforcing those. But again, we're sensitive to the need for housing and we want to, I don't think it's I don't know how we can limit family members. Not that we want to do that, but, you know, kind of we're all with the same struggles, basically. We're all trying to find a solution here. Okay.
[Andre Leroux]: Well, thank you. And before you go, I'm not sure how much time you have, but were there other sections that you wanted to weigh in on?
[MjGBHu28DvM_SPEAKER_24]: So I'm trying to think some of the other things Yeah, Vic mentioned one of the things was multiple dwellings where we have mixed use, where we have residential and commercial uses. And we were just kind of brainstorming the other day about that, where there would be allowed in certain districts by right, in some districts by special permit. I know that's still a work in progress, but One of the things we've had some difficulty with and I don't know how the board wants to address this when we've had multiple drawings allow a certain different districts, a multiple allow a drawing would be allowed by right, however, the current definition that would mean a mixed building for example, if you think of some of the Salem Street corridor, you may have commercial use in the first floor with residential up above that. and that would fall under the definition of multiple drawing and they're allowed by right. However, the underlying commercial use in that zoning district may not be allowed. For example, it may allow retail sales where you would have a sub shop or maybe some type of coffee shop, may not allow professional buildings or offices, medical offices or attorney's offices or consumer service businesses like hair salons, pet grooming, and things like that. So on the one hand, you may be telling an applicant, okay, a multiple dwelling is allowed in that district, which by definition allows them to have commercial, but when you go into the use table and you check specific line items for retail sales, consumer service, there may be a no in that district. So there's sometimes a little bit of a conflict there, and that's just one of the things we started to talk. The board may want to take a look at going forward here.
[Andre Leroux]: Okay, so then basically, just to try to summarize that, your suggestion would be to, in areas where multiple dwelling units are allowed by right to also allow first floor commercial by right in those buildings?
[MjGBHu28DvM_SPEAKER_24]: Yes, that's what we're saying, by the same token, if something is a special permit, just to be consistent with that. And if I could just take one more minute, do I have time to address one other issue, Andrew?
[Andre Leroux]: Yes, of course.
[MjGBHu28DvM_SPEAKER_24]: Okay, thanks. One of the things that, very common thing, and it ends up in front of the zoning board a lot, is two and a half, say for example, a two-story house, a lot of people, when their families are expanding, they want to put a dorm on, and most of the time, probably 90 somewhat percent of the time with that dorm, it consists of a couple of bedrooms and a bathroom, because again, the kids are getting older and the family's expanding and so on. So on that current definition, and this is very consistent throughout a lot of communities, it's two and a half story, one or two family, it's two and a half story limitation on that. So before the half story, was usually defined as 50% of the attic area cannot exceed 50% of the floor area below that. And that's again, pretty standard. So what we did is we amended the definition and just to include how the half story is measured in the building code, for example, it's ceiling height should be seven feet. So we put a definition, a proposal to amend the definition that we measure the ceiling from finished floor, measure the height of the attic area from finished floor to the ceiling and anything that's seven feet or over, that's what's included in a 50% calculation. And in this case, I think it's gonna be, if that amendment to the definition is adopted, I think it will be helpful because a lot of these, one or two families, they were Gable, some type of hip or Gabriel roof. And by allowing that 50% to encompass the seven foot higher measurement, a lot of these sloping ceilings, which are currently counted in some of that square footage, will not be counted. And it just allows these people to do this by right without kicking a lot of them to the Zoning Board of Appeals. And again, it's usually a bathroom, a couple of bedrooms. And the other criteria that keeps it in tune with the design of the neighborhoods is that it will not go above the existing ridgeline. That gets into some structural concerns, which we don't need to talk about in this forum, but basically allows people a little more flexibility to put that house story on and keep the aesthetics in line with what the neighborhood looks like. you know, save some of these applicants from having to go to the board of appeals.
[Andre Leroux]: Okay. Thank you. Appreciate that. And you had, I guess the one last question we haven't gotten to the section yet, the accessory dwelling units, but I wasn't sure if you had any comments about that section or if you thought the language was good as recommended.
[MjGBHu28DvM_SPEAKER_24]: I use a training Bobowski's answer and say I don't want to touch that with a 10 foot pole, I guess I don't have that luxury. Well, one of the things that accessory drawing units, I think we covered it earlier in. Thank you, Andrea. I'll make a quick comment on it. A lot of these accessory dwelling units that are detached structures, like a garage or some type of shed that's out in the backyard, when it does come to that, we're kicking in for a special permit. I think it goes right to ZBA for a special permit, which is good because a lot of these garages are accessory structures that they may want to convert to accessory dwelling units. Most of them in Medford are non-conforming. And again, probably a lot of the way they would convert that is to add some type of drama. The concern I had, we talked about I think this past summer, there's a lot of these are right on top of the lot lines. If we did permit them by right, I think there'd be a lot of privacy concerns with the neighbors. So making it a special permit, sending it to a public meeting type of form is good because that way some of them probably would be fine, but some of them that I think will really create some privacy issues with the neighborhood, at least go into a special permit. Everyone's got input and the board can vote however they wish to on that.
[Andre Leroux]: Yeah. Great. Thank you. I really appreciate your time tonight.
[MjGBHu28DvM_SPEAKER_24]: Thank you guys. You're welcome.
[Andre Leroux]: Take care, Paul. Well, yeah. Why don't we just finish the family piece, Amanda? Why don't we do that one since we just talked about it with the commissioner? and open comments up to other board members and then the public on this issue. Do board members feel that this is a good resolution the way we have it here? So it's taking out the definition of family, replacing references to family with household and having the definition of household follow the US Census Bureau definitions. While this doesn't address some of the overcrowding concerns, I think the Attorney Bobrowski has made it clear that it doesn't seem possible to enforce, you know, overcrowding through definition of family anyways. So we're not really losing a tool. We may have to, you know, focus on some of the other effects of overcrowding through health, safety, noise, parking, et cetera.
[PQNVkYiOrIU_SPEAKER_12]: To the extent it's helpful, Mr. Chairman, this was one of the main sticking points in the Lowell recodification with UMass Lowell. And people were paving their front yards there to allow parking by multiple tenants of a unit. And that's the way they addressed it, basically. They went after the parking and passed regulations to ban that practice rather than They also limited the number of unrelated persons who could constitute a family, but they recognized that that wasn't going to stop large families from paving their front lawns.
[Andre Leroux]: So Amanda, maybe we could make a note of that. And we are keeping just so folks know that even if there are issues that we can't completely address at this point, there'll be a second bite at the apple through the comprehensive plan process and afterwards. So these issues are more policy issues that we may have to revisit then. Deanna, you had unmuted. Did you want to say something?
[Deanna Peabody]: I was going to say that I think it's a good solution. the way we have it now.
[Andre Leroux]: Other comments before I open it to the public?
[David Blumberg]: Andre, David?
[Andre Leroux]: Yes, David.
[David Blumberg]: I like the addition of the census definition. I couldn't find a way to get rid of that family everywhere. So I think that that accomplishes that mission. It seems like the city's in a bind because you can't really regulate the number of family members, but maybe there should be more focus on the lodgers then. Or perhaps, as Mr. Moki was saying, something about square footage might be something to consider. Maybe there's a way to at least limit the number of lodgers that might be on top of family members in a housing unit or dwelling unit. I don't know how to do that exactly, but I feel like the city's free to regulate someone who's paying to be in the dwelling unit. And so I just want to make sure that right now we have it drafted such that there would be two lodgers as of right within any dwelling unit. I just want to make sure like is that the right number. Should they be limited if there's not enough room for them. That sort of thing maybe that's for another day but generally, I like where we're headed. And I feel like we almost have to go in this direction or something similar to this.
[Unidentified]: Thank you, David.
[Andre Leroux]: Let's uh, are there any members of the public who wish to speak on this issue? Okay, I don't see any, so let's, Amanda, go back to where we were in the document.
[Unidentified]: Okay.
[Andre Leroux]: aesthetic standards. I think this is just some of that technical changes to the neighborhood character language. There is this new language here around public art, encouraging public art, as well as local historical elements. And then also some new language about balconies and this is David Bloomberg's language proposed incorporating balconies, encouraging that for maximize fresh air and apartments and and then also down below, maximizing open green space, as well as preserve or restore historic landscape to the extent possible. Any comments or questions from board members or members of the public? Okay, continuing to BB, fiscal analysis standards. This was a place where we, in conversation with the city staff, There's been a suggestion made to simplify this language because it could be challenging and expensive requiring the hiring of a third party consultant to carry this out and I think we want to leave it a little bit more. little less prescriptive. So the current recommendation on the table is that the SPGA or Community Development Board may consider the financial impact of the proposed development. The proposed development shall provide a summary of potential impacts on city services, infrastructure, tax base and employment. And I think, you know, we still have as a board the ability to require additional analyses if we deem that they are necessary to evaluating the project. So I think this doesn't limit us in any way, but it sort of simplifies things and we don't have to require a fiscal analysis that requires an independent consultant, which would really could slow things down. Any questions or comments from board members or members of the public on this?
[David Blumberg]: Andre, David? Yes, David. This is a shall provide a summary. So what does that summary look like? Because I think, at least in my own mind, and what I had proposed was we may require it. And if we do, then you'll provide it. but this as you will provide it.
[Andre Leroux]: Let me invite our director of economic development, Victor Schrader, to weigh in on this one.
[Victor Schrader]: Yeah, hi, everyone. Yeah, it's a good question, David. In my experience in former communities I've worked in have required this information for larger projects. It's a... I think what we'll get with the provision is written is a summary. And likely they'll ask the city to help them produce the summary. So on the tax base and employment, they'll have that information in terms of infrastructure, city services. They'll be asking us for information on the impacts and working together on that. So on a project where there's an item of particular concern, maybe we ask for more information on that. I think it's going to be pretty general and summary rather than providing a lot of detail.
[Andre Leroux]: So maybe my suggestion to tweak this language and address David's issue is, could we say the proposed development shall consult with the Office of Planning Development Sustainability to provide a summary?
[Victor Schrader]: Does that sound are certainly open to that, if you think that's a solution.
[Andre Leroux]: Do you think that helps.
[David Blumberg]: I think that sounds like a pretty good idea because I think Victor has, you know, as an example of one of many I'm sure in that office who would be able to help the developer to say okay this is kind of the picture that the board probably needs to see. given your project, here are some particular concerns. Why don't you go ahead and gather some information on that? That could be really helpful. I see Victor's point is that, hey, it's a summary, give them a snapshot, probably won't be a lot of work. So that combination of describing it as a summary and also pointing them to the office, I think is a good combo.
[Andre Leroux]: Other comments or questions from board members or members of the public?
[Unidentified]: All right, let's keep scrolling down to CC.
[Andre Leroux]: Let's see. That's just, again, replacing kind of the language in line with the new definitions that we're using, the terminology. Let's go down to DD. wireless telecommunications facilities. Again, this is just a tweak to that neighborhood, taking out that neighborhood character language and replacing it with other language. EE. And then this is, again, creating, I think David had suggested some criteria so that if we are if the special permit granting authority does, you know, allow some waivers, that there is a criteria for doing so. Anybody has comments on any of these smaller changes to just jump in, otherwise we'll keep going. Let's go down, Amanda, to FF, which is accessory dwelling units. This is a more significant change. This whole section is new, and based on the language proposed by Attorney Bobrowski, there's some additional recommendations. And the governor. Yes, exactly. Attorney Bobrowski, do you wanna just tee up ADUs? I mean, just real quickly.
[PQNVkYiOrIU_SPEAKER_12]: sure the governor's housing bill passed and effective in about a year ago now added some in an attempt to create smaller dwelling units that would alleviate some of the housing crisis weighed in on accessory dwelling units there's a specific definition for accessory dwelling units it's in number four under 8.2.3 that is it's not more than half the floor area of the principal dwelling and nine and or 900 square feet, whichever is smaller. That's consistent with what the governor's bill says. So that's why it was added. If you go back to the 8.2.2 accessory dwelling units may be allowed by right in an existing principal dwelling or by special permit in a detached structure. Again, that's consistent with the governor's bill To the extent that these provisions are voted as is, I believe that it would only take a 50% of the city council to enact them instead of a two thirds vote. And the special permit, which is referenced here in 8.2.2 would also be a simple majority of the CDB instead of a super majority as with the normal special permit be. And the rest of it is pretty much just performance standards as you look down the list of 8.2.3 under conditions. So parking spaces, internal, external appearance of the building, so forth. There is a provision at the end of number eight that it would expire after five years, but it can be renewed without a public hearing if the permits indicates that there's owner occupancy of one of the two units, not necessarily the accessory dwelling unit, either of the two units would suffice. So this is not a so-called in-law by-law where a family member has to be the tenant. It's open-ended, it's not an affordable by-law in that the occupant of the accessory dwelling unit has to be under HUD income standards. plain and simple, a dwelling unit in conjunction with a principal unit, one of which is occupied by the owner of the premises.
[Andre Leroux]: Great, thank you. And then we have a few additional recommendations on top of the attorney's base language. So Amanda, if you can scroll back up to the top, we can just review those real quick. So one suggestion that I made was to switch the permit granting authority here from the ZBA to the Community Development Board. a couple of reasons. One is that if we're saying that ADUs are going to be allowed as of right in an existing dwelling, then it's really not something that needs to go to the ZBA. It's something that, you know, in our purview and our experience around site design review is, I think that seems more appropriate there. And again, you know, special permit, I think the issues around these dwelling units are going to be more on the design side. And that's seems like this board is the most appropriate board to deal with it. Besides, I don't think we want to ZBA already has a lot on their plate. And I think we're trying to relieve some of some of that burden. But That's just my suggestion. So let me just keep going down through the other revisions and then we can we can get questions and comments about them. There's just reference again for the as of right ones. The building commissioner is really being the person who can do the administrative approval not needing to come to the board. We're just making it added some language saying no accessory apartment shall be held in separate ownership from the principal structure dwelling unit just to be explicit about that. Adding some exceptions language in terms of the size for detached accessory structures that have some preservation value and. as determined by the historical commission. So there are, you know, not a lot, but some carriage houses or barns that may be worth preserving and ADUs is really an opportunity for preserving those, those structures. So as long as the historical commission, you know, the applicant would go to the historical commission first. get kind of a determination from them whether this is it's a structure that has some preservation value, then they come to us and ask us for, you know, an exception, as they're getting their ad use that they can maybe have it a little bit bigger than would otherwise be allowed. So that's that's for that. Down to number five. A couple of other just clarifications to ensure that the exterior design fits in with the neighborhood. No additional entrances facing the principal street. An ADU entrance should be either through that one main door or off to the side or back. And then another important change is this number six, which is new, that requires that where the principle where there's a rental unit, which one of them would be the minimum occupancy shall be 30 days. So this is something that other communities have used as well to ensure that these, you know, accessory dwelling units don't get created just to become Airbnb is that the idea is to create affordable rental units in Medford. So And then in number seven, in terms of the parking, it says that the parking doesn't have to be constructed, it can be accommodated on site. And so if it is constructed, then it has to meet some design criteria. And I think that's it, basically. We also wanted to make sure that the special permit doesn't have to come every five years before the board, that the building commissioner can just renew it administratively. So I think those are some of the recommended changes to Attorney Bobrowski's language. Any comments or questions from board members? Hearing none, let's see if there's any comments or questions from members of the public. Okay, I'll take that as this looks good. Amanda, let's continue. These ones here are also other prior suggestions around ADUs. I think some of that's been incorporated and addressed in the language we just reviewed above. So unless I'm mistaken, I think we can skip these and go down to JJ. Special permit criteria. Again, I think this is dealing with the neighborhood character. And the one note that I had there is I don't know if this was the numbering on this one was correct. I thought it looked like 9.1.11, not 9.1.9, but that's something maybe the attorney can just make sure is correct.
[Amanda Centrella]: Sorry about that. I think I did double check this one and found that the number was consistent with what was in the draft, but we can check that administratively.
[Unidentified]: Okay.
[Andre Leroux]: Planned Development District. This is new language suggested by Attorney Borowski to create a new tool for the zoning in the city, which is called Planned Development District. And the idea is that a development, essentially you can create, oh, what's like a floating zoning district and maybe attorney progress. You can explain this a little bit better than I am right now, but it gives more flexibility to the city to make changes to zoning in conjunction with key development projects.
[PQNVkYiOrIU_SPEAKER_12]: Mr. Chairman, I consider it an invitation So what you're signaling to the community at large and prospective developers is that if you've got a good idea, bring it to us at the community development board and the mayor's office, and let's talk about what it will be. By definition, it doesn't fit into the zoning today, but that's not a problem in that you can write zoning for it. So just to give you a really encouraging example, when Haverhill adopted the zoning that I wrote for them back, I believe it was in, I think it was in the fall of 2020, since then we've had two PDDs. One is at the site of a former banquet facility in Bradford, and that by Princeton Properties is a proposal for 150 apartment units. and a small retail component. Otherwise it wouldn't be allowed in that area. So we wrote zoning for the parcel using Princeton properties, very concrete ideas. It's literally, they gave us the music and I wrote the words. So that's the way it works. And if the city council finds that to be favorable, then it will pass. You can put it on special permit or you can do it by site plan review. Haverhill chose to do that one by site plan review. The new one is even more exciting. It's a redevelopment of the downtown by the Lupoli company. Sal Lupoli is from Lawrence and he has a lot of connections in Haverhill as well. He just recently built a new building on the river, 10 stories with a restaurant on top that we hope will open this year, COVID notwithstanding. And this one will replace a parking garage and it will also change about two or three blocks in the middle of downtown Haverhill. Again, it will be a planned development district. That's one of our options, but it certainly is the most flexible one. So it's to do something which isn't currently envisioned at the request of the developer in partnership with the developer, and it is all by cooperation. So if the city doesn't like the idea, there's one meeting and no more. I suppose a developer is always free to submit their own zoning proposal, but I think it would be DOA if the powers that be rejected. And this is a pattern that has taken root in the city I think that I've worked in most predominantly would be Quincy and the two towns I've worked in would be Burlington and Lexington. I believe Lexington has something like 24 PDDs today.
[Andre Leroux]: And Attorney Wroblewski, when let's say a developer or property owners, you know, comes forward with a proposal to change the zoning on, you know, in a particular area or for a particular parcel, is the development, is the zoning and the development approved at the same time or is the zoning approved first as a PDD and then there's still a project review component?
[PQNVkYiOrIU_SPEAKER_12]: I believe it's, I think it's the latter, although there's temptation when you've got a majority of the city council to immediately move for site plan approval at the CDB. I think the best and most prudent way to do it is to then have step two which is the plan approval process.
[Andre Leroux]: Okay. And Christy you have a you had a comment on this section, could you just explain a little bit more. If you have concerns.
[Jenny Graham]: Yeah, no, I didn't have any concerns. I was just trying to figure out, like, how does this tie to leveraging these opportunities to get back mitigation or not mitigation, but some real benefits to the city. And I'm not familiar with PDDs. Like, I just sort of was trying to relate it to plan development areas that I'm more familiar with. in Boston, which is actually those are very more prescriptive and they have very specific process. But there's, there's like elements of like, if you come in with a proposal, and you want to get, you know, something larger or something, or it's a specific use, you know, the city would like to get, you know, a park out of it, or, you know, some community space. or something like that. So I just wasn't sure like where, how does that get resolved? Is that just within the whole process of a potential developer coming in and saying, you know, here's my plan and then it's just a series of negotiations?
[PQNVkYiOrIU_SPEAKER_12]: You're exactly right. I think it's, there's two answers. For example, in the Lupoli company's now pending proposal, that is land owned by the city for the most part. or pieces of it, certainly the parking garage. So there will be a land disposition agreement that will describe what the Lupoli companies will do down to the nails, as I like to say. That development agreement is an appendix to the purchase and sale agreement. So it's a rider. If it's not land owned by the city, then the usual format is that the initial meeting results in a discussion about potential mitigation, let's keep a list. What do you have to do? That's list A and column B in that list would be what would we like you to do? And it's a negotiation after that. But there's no harm in having a second document that rides along with the zoning amendments and or the plan. I like to do it with the zoning amendment because at the plan approval stage, whether you can ask for certain things in the site plan review or special permit process is dubious. if appealed. So rather than wait until you get to the tail end of the process, if there's to be mitigation, like the examples you gave, I like to do it as a document. So the zoning amendment is accompanied by a development agreement. The development agreement is usually signed by the mayor's office or the city council and or both. And that document is a covenant that runs for the land in that case. And the developer has to step up to the plate.
[Andre Leroux]: So, well, I think that's, this is interesting. So attorney will rescue would it be possible for us to insert language requiring that the developer submit a statement of community benefits.
[PQNVkYiOrIU_SPEAKER_12]: Well, you're, you're, you're certainly looking at the fiscal impact as a result of section 6.4 language, and so I think they'd be giving you community benefits and because they want to sell the project. but they'd also be alerting you to community costs. And so I think that's where the nub of the discussion takes revolves around. I mean, you can do it a number of different ways. Many times when I'm working in a large town, for example, Plymouth Rubber, a parcel of land in Canton that went to Helena Handbasket, formerly a site Paul Revere used to make copper goods When the developer came to the town, we signed a development agreement in which he agreed to put, I don't remember the number, $40,000 into escrow in the treasurer's office, so that the town, in advance of putting this on any kind of an agenda, and in order to have answers for the people who had questions, engaged a peer review for the traffic study, for the stormwater management, it's right on the Charles River, and, New Ponset River, sorry. and there were other things involved. And so if I'm an elected official of a city or town and a proposal is going forward either at the council level or at the town meeting level, and the first question is what about the traffic and I don't know the answer, then I'm not doing my job. So the town negotiated to have people work for it at the developer's expense so that those questions could be answered in advance. Those peer reviewers also identify possible mitigation measures, which feeds column A and column B in the development agreement.
[Andre Leroux]: So I'm just looking at the language a little bit in terms of the ordinance submission. So it says the applicant shall submit a proposed amendment to the ordinance for the PD district rezoning and consultation with the community development board. The proposed amendment shall contain the requirements set forth in section 9.2.5. which is like a, you know, narrative. Okay, so you've potential fiscal impact. And so I guess I'm just, and then it says the community development board shall hold a public hearing. We inserted the public hearing because neither needs to be a public hearing. Prepare the text of the proposed amendment and locate the new district on the zoning. And then the finalized amendment shall be presented to the city council for approval of the proposed PDD. So I guess just getting to Christie's point. I'm not entirely sure like where, like who's doing that negotiating around the community benefits, you know, very good question.
[PQNVkYiOrIU_SPEAKER_12]: I, it will depend on the city or town. My preferred answer is that the chief executive officer. would do that because somebody has to establish priorities. Otherwise it'll be a food festival between the various departments competing for a limited pool of resources. So typically somebody has to make a priority list and check it twice or else I've seen department heads in cities and boards in communities reach out their hands and say, me too, me too, me too. In fact, in one case where I negotiated a development agreement for the Wayland Town Center, a project about 10 or 12 years ago, the developer ultimately said, enough is enough. I'm just gonna give you X million dollars at the issuance of the first building permit. And that's the way we were to the development agreement at the end of it. Because there was no control in that infighting, if you will, on the municipal side. And so the chief executive officer typically is the one who can capture that process best. Every town is different, every city is different.
[Andre Leroux]: Yeah, just wondering whether there's a way of, you know, to indicate how that should happen.
[PQNVkYiOrIU_SPEAKER_12]: I don't know that it's predictable. I mean, I didn't, if you can predict who is most likely at the snapshot to take charge and who would be best suited to do so, God bless you, good luck. I can't do it generically, let me put it that way, in every city or town. I mean, I have worked in some towns especially towns, where the manager was, it's my way or the highway. And the conversation never went to level two unless there was an agreement right up front to that effect. And that's just in terms of organizing mitigation and resources. And then I've worked in other places where there were 23 oars on the boat.
[Andre Leroux]: I don't have any brilliant ideas to, you know, improve the language. Any board members have questions or comments or suggestions. I don't hear any any members of the public want to weigh in on on this issue. All right.
[PQNVkYiOrIU_SPEAKER_12]: Despite the lack of comment I want to tell you that from a land use lawyers perspective, this is the best kind of work there is, because it's all, it's either all agreement, or we all go home. Yeah.
[Jenny Graham]: Just one more clarifying question. So the section that talks about small plan developments has a square footage, but up above, it's sort of like an open, it's open in terms of the size of these PDDs. Like how do you determine that if you're keeping it open in terms of what the size could be? Like there's no minimum size it says above. Am I reading these out of context?
[PQNVkYiOrIU_SPEAKER_12]: I see the less than, I'm trying to watch the scroll here. I see the 15,000 as being less than for a small plan. Where's the open?
[Jenny Graham]: But up above, if you could scroll up, whoever has it. where it talks about the PD district does not have any minimum, okay, so that's a lot size, no minimum lot area. Okay. And then down here is just, what's that, scores footage?
[Andre Leroux]: Yeah. Yeah, it says that in change that could result in, could you scroll a little bit more, Amanda? Thanks. Of buildings, okay. So I guess you'd have to, somebody has got to do like a build out analysis to see whether it's less than 15,000 feet or not, I guess.
[Jenny Graham]: Well, it just seems a little disjointed to me, but I'm probably not understanding because I'm not a land use attorney. But usually like the square footage of a building ties to the lot area. So then you figure out like your density and, you know, And there's then a whole bunch of planning and decisions around that. So it just seems a little confusing to me, but that doesn't mean I know what I'm talking about.
[PQNVkYiOrIU_SPEAKER_12]: Well, if it's confusing, then it should be fixed. So let's put that on the list of things to clarify.
[Andre Leroux]: All right, thanks everyone. I mean, in terms of clarification, I guess, you know, if that's something you want to think about further, Attorney Brabrowski, then maybe at the city council level. But even though it may be a little, a little ambiguous, I guess I feel comfortable with with the language if necessary. And it leaves the discretion in the hands of the city planning office to work with the developer if it happens to be a small one about whether they want to go the small PDD route or not.
[PQNVkYiOrIU_SPEAKER_12]: There actually are some in Lexington that are under 15,000 square feet. Not sure about Burlington. I doubt it very much in Quincy.
[Unidentified]: Well, Amanda, let's keep scrolling down.
[Amanda Centrella]: Sorry for the interruption there. This is just for, I forgot to record at the beginning, but we are streaming on Medford Community Media. This is just for our records. Sorry, everyone.
[Andre Leroux]: All right, so in terms of the plan development district, this is, again, the narrative that would accompany an application for a PDD that would have these seven elements to it. Any questions or comments from the board members? Let's keep going down then. I think there's some questions, Christy, that maybe you had around linkage. I don't know if you want to articulate these.
[Unidentified]: What did I say?
[Jenny Graham]: Where did I tag that to?
[Andre Leroux]: I think it's these questions in purple here.
[Jenny Graham]: Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah, I was just trying to make some sense of like the whole financial analysis section, which is going to suggest that there's like some impact and then. Is that impact? Can that impact be dealt with by linkage? Or is I didn't see any. Where that it addressed, like, getting money for housing and jobs within the city, you know, if. It's particularly like housing. If big commercial developments, you know are approved. Is there a way to get linkage to go into, like an affordable housing fund or something so it's just, just a question I've seen linkage and other cities for housing and jobs and just wondering if that's something that would be considered here in Medford or it's dealt with in a different way.
[Alicia Hunt]: Well, Andre this is Alicia. Do you want me to mind if I address.
[Andre Leroux]: Sure, go ahead. I have a I have a response as well but why don't you take a crack at it.
[Alicia Hunt]: Thank you. Just sort of briefly, the way our link, our linkage the way it is set up through homeworld petition. We are not confident that we could just change it by making edits to zoning here we'd rather take a deeper dive lick with the with some legal assistance on that. That said, the way our, our linkage is set up it does go into funds, none of those funds support housing or jobs, their parks public safety infrastructure type funds, and the linkage was written 30 years ago, and it said that. it would be reviewed and updated every three years. And it has never been, the dollar amounts are the same. So we are actually looking at what would be the best mechanism to review and make proposals to update linkage as a separate effort outside of this recodification. So I just wanted you guys to know that we've been actively discussing what's the best way to move forward on that. I'm sorry, I have a timer going off. But yeah, sorry, I think that's all I have to say on that.
[Andre Leroux]: All right. Thanks, Alicia. And what I was going to say, which I think dovetails with what you just said, is that there have been some questions that have come up about linkage. The way linkage works in Medford is pretty unique around the state. And there's been at least one question that's come up about allowing the CD board approving or not some of the investments that are made by developers and giving them credit towards their linkage payment. So I think that we as a board also just need to understand the linkage ordinance better and maybe talk through some of these questions strategically with the city. And it probably sounds like it's a good time to do so since as Alicia mentioned, they're gonna be looking at this. So what I was gonna suggest is that after the zoning is done sometime in the, you know, winter or spring, we put on our board meeting agenda, a presentation by city staff about the linkage, how linkage works in the city, so that we can just learn more about it. And I think explore some of these issues and maybe provide some helpful feedback to them as they're thinking about any changes.
[Alicia Hunt]: chair, I think that would be excellent once this is put to bed. And actually, that would really help inform any study we do would be for us to first present how it currently exists, hear some feedback on it, and then have that inform a study that we would then do, because we can't change the numbers appropriately without a financial analysis.
[PQNVkYiOrIU_SPEAKER_12]: When you do that, please make sure I get an invitation. You're the only You're the only show in town in terms of linkage, other than Boston and I'd love to see how you do it.
[Jenny Graham]: Absolutely.
[Andre Leroux]: All right. I think we can continue down then to 11.5 community development board rules. So I made a couple of recommendations in terms of additional tweaks to the language. We have right here, like all boards, we have a limitation on terms. You can serve for two terms of three years. And so I'm suggesting here, just as my experience is, I became chair very suddenly. it's helpful to have some experience when you become the chair. And so maybe an exception could be made if someone could serve a third term as chair. And that way they'd already have maybe two terms under their belt, and then they'd have three years as a chair. Because otherwise, you're asking somebody who's in their first or second term to become chair, and I think it's more challenging. So that's a suggestion. Yep, go ahead, David.
[David Blumberg]: I don't think we have the flexibility. I agree with you from everything you said and from the perspective of good governance, that would be, I think, the most prudent approach to make sure that we have a chair with experience. But the acts of 1974 specifically tell us that no member shall serve more than two consecutive terms.
[Andre Leroux]: And that's why I'm not a lawyer. So that's usually a good thing. So no. All right. Thanks, David. I appreciate that clarification. Scrolling down to a little bit here.
[Jacqueline McPherson]: This is Jackie. If you can go back to that. So the, as you know, in my position, I'm appointed by the governor under DHCD. And my term does not expire on the fiscal year, so I don't know if you want to expound on that, or just leave it as is. I think it's.
[Andre Leroux]: I was just gonna say I think it's okay as is because it says members appointed by the mayor shall serve for a term of three years so you'd be excluded for that.
[Jacqueline McPherson]: Okay.
[Andre Leroux]: Oh, I see when you mean no, no member shall serve more than two consecutive terms. Maybe we could just say members appointed by the mayor shall serve for a term of three years and not more than two consecutive terms.
[Jacqueline McPherson]: Okay.
[Andre Leroux]: That would take care of that, Jackie.
[Jacqueline McPherson]: Okay.
[Andre Leroux]: Thanks for bringing that up. Moving down under powers, there's, I added just a few things here, which just to more kind of more comprehensively reflect our job as the CD board. So I wanted to make sure we do a lot of, we review approval, not required plans. We hold public hearings and make recommendations to the city council. And we provide design review feedback as needed to developers. Oh, you know, the one thing that I've forgotten here, maybe we should add is on number three. Oh no, no, nevermind. To hear and decide subdivision applications as well as review approval not required plans. Okay, so that includes the subdivisions.
[zMDmsK0LIsU_SPEAKER_03]: I feel like the design review thing is good. I'm happy to see it. It feels a little vague to me.
[Andre Leroux]: It is a little vague, I think, because we've only done it in terms of, you know, it's informal and it's, I think it's a practice that planning staff is encouraging, but it's not a formal role that we have, unless I guess we want to propose that, but that would be, I think, a more significant policy change.
[zMDmsK0LIsU_SPEAKER_03]: How about to provide design review feedback in parallel with other necessary review and strike the word as needed?
[Andre Leroux]: Is there any, like Alicia or others, any thoughts about that suggestion? Or Victor?
[zMDmsK0LIsU_SPEAKER_03]: I mean, basically I'm just saying as needed sort of makes it even less, inclusive to the process.
[Victor Schrader]: I think this is Victor. One thing to consider is which projects this applies to and whether it's all projects that would come before the city board. And Andrei's right. I think we've asked one group in the past year to come before you, I would like to make it a practice, especially on new construction projects. And so far, developers we're talking to are willing to do that, just the right timing and providing more definition around which projects this would apply to.
[Andre Leroux]: about a language that says to provide design review feedback to developers in coordination with the Office of Planning to Development Sustainability in advance of permit filings.
[zMDmsK0LIsU_SPEAKER_03]: I think that's great. I guess what I'm sort of advocating for is that as part of our holistic review of any project really, whether it involves a built structure or not, is that it's being reviewed not just for conformity to all the applicable codes and regulations, but that it's being considered from a design perspective and a good design and planning perspective. And I understand that's hard to like, you know, these are very mushy topics, but anyway, I've said enough.
[Andre Leroux]: Well, I was just going to say that the, you know, there are many communities that do have a design review board and that it is a formal process, but Medford doesn't have that. So I don't think we can create it just through this recodification. Wouldn't that be nice? So I think this number five is a little bit more informal. It even goes a little beyond probably what our like actual role and responsibility is, but I think this language is okay.
[zMDmsK0LIsU_SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, and I think if nothing else, it puts the proponents on notice that we will be thinking about it and asking questions from a design perspective.
[Andre Leroux]: Yeah, and I think it does, you know, it lays the groundwork for design review process if that's the direction the city wants to go in in the future. All right, the next provision is this around associate member. I just made a suggestion that instead of a term for the associate member, instead of a term of one year, making it a term, a three-year term consistent with the rest of the members so that we're not trying to find us a new associate members every year. I think that would be challenging. And this way, if somebody has to step off the board, have an associate member all the time, that's ready to can step right into that role, and then we can take our time recruiting an associate member, or the mayor can take her time recruiting an associate member.
[David Blumberg]: All right, thanks. Andre it's David looks, it would look like we would actually appoint the member but When we talked about this in connection with our draft rules, board rules, board regulations, I think we had an unsettled question about this associate member. And I wonder maybe Attorney Bobrowski can weigh in. Does that associate member, I think the question we were asking ourselves is, does that member appear every month? They sit through every meeting and they might only vote periodically or participate periodically, but do they always attend? Are they on call? What is the general practice among other municipalities?
[zMDmsK0LIsU_SPEAKER_03]: You know, I can just jump in here quickly because I just went through a ZBA process in Brookline and there was definitely this kind of thing happening. I do remember, you know, he was there at almost all the meetings and It was made very clear at the beginning of each meeting that he was only there as a non-voting voice for that particular meeting.
[PQNVkYiOrIU_SPEAKER_12]: I think that the statute is also, I'm looking at it right now, very prescriptive in terms of what they can and can't vote on. I believe it just applies to special permits. But let me be sure.
[Andre Leroux]: Whoops, Alicia, you have your hand raised. Did you want to jump in on this?
[Alicia Hunt]: Yes, so not on the voting piece, but on the appointment piece. I was just double checking our charter. The Medford City Charter says in section 52, which it's actually only about four pages long, I recommend people read it. Upon the adoption of plan A, all heads of departments and members of municipal boards, except the school committee, officials appointed by the governor and assessors, if elected by vote of the people, as their terms of office expire, shall be appointed by the mayor without confirmation by the city council, which I take to mean that if there was to be an associate member, they would have to be appointed by the mayor per our charter. Done.
[Andre Leroux]: Yeah, no, yeah, I think that's right. I hadn't flagged this at the appointment says by the Community Development Board, but I just assumed that that was our existing language. I hadn't, I don't know if this was new language proposed by Attorney Borowski.
[Alicia Hunt]: I believe this entire section is new language. Attorney Brabowski, can you clarify that?
[PQNVkYiOrIU_SPEAKER_12]: I probably added it, yeah. It says in the statute, chapter 48, section nine, that a zoning ordinance may provide for associate members of a planning board when a planning board has been designated as a special permit granting authority. It doesn't say this, but it suggests that the only role for the associate member is to serve in this capacity when a special permit is before the board. Anyway, it goes on to say one associate member may be authorized when the board is five members and two may be authorized when it's more than five members. The city or town which establishes the position of associate members shall determine the procedure for the filling of such position. If provision for the filling of the position has been made, the chairman may designate an associate member to sit on the board for purposes of acting on a special permit application in the case of absence inability act or conflict of interest or on the part of any member of the planning board in event of vacancy on the board. So there's a limitation here in that if you do choose to add an associate member, you fill it the way you want, but the member can only vote, the associate member can only vote on a special permit. Now, so that means site plan, for example, not mentioned in the statute so question can they vote on a site plan unanswered.
[Alicia Hunt]: Ernie, is this perhaps because you need a super majority to approve those? And if somebody has to step off the board for whatever reason, all those examples, it's much harder to have a super majority. Like it would be unfair to the applicant because somebody had to recuse themselves. The board would now have trouble forming a super majority and therefore this associate member would have the ability to step in.
[PQNVkYiOrIU_SPEAKER_12]: That's certainly a relevant consideration for example on a five member board if one person recuses him or herself. You need all four votes of the remainder. So to have an associate member, able to step in there gives you a full slate in terms of margin of error. But I think there's just as many occasions when there may be occasions when you can't vote because two members are recusing themselves or absent I mean, degree of citizen participation is different from town to town. I've certainly gone home a number of times pre COVID when there's three members, and I need four votes.
[Unidentified]: So,
[Andre Leroux]: I think that, in my opinion, if a person is an associate member in order for them to participate productively like on short notice to get called into a special permit vote or something else they need to be attending and listening and learning. to all the other meetings. So that's why I suggest that they be here. Now they can't vote, but I think it's up to us as a board to decide whether we want to allow them to participate and ask questions. And I think the answer should be yes, but
[PQNVkYiOrIU_SPEAKER_12]: I don't disagree with that. There's another line though, and that would be to participate in deliberations. I think they can certainly participate prior to the close of the public hearing and then leave the deliberation to the voting members.
[zMDmsK0LIsU_SPEAKER_03]: I don't know that I necessarily feel like that's an important distinction. I mean, to me, I think the fact that we're involving them as a part of the board makes their voice important. And as such, I think they should be involved in everything except of course, the voting. Yeah.
[Andre Leroux]: Well, this language doesn't have to actually speak to that. That's maybe that's more just our practice as a board, but to get it, I think where we do have to make a tweak here is around appointment by. So I think we should say the associate member shall be appointed by the mayor. And I don't know if we want to change this since we are larger than a five member board, we could have two associate members. So we could say the community development board shall have not more than two associate members. Does anybody have an opinion about that? Just gives more flexibility.
[David Blumberg]: Andrea, this is Dave. I'd be in favor of that as well. Having the possibility of two associate members.
[zMDmsK0LIsU_SPEAKER_03]: That's fine. Yeah. I mean, we're short a member right now, are we?
[Andre Leroux]: Yeah. More members means more questions and longer meetings. So, you know, we just have to balance that.
[zMDmsK0LIsU_SPEAKER_03]: Well, I mean, I guess where I was going with is, you know, I don't think too many people doing this right now is the problem.
[Andre Leroux]: All right. Well, Amanda, can you scroll down? I don't know if there's any more. No. Okay. Any other comments or questions by board members or members of the public about the Community Development Board language? All right. I don't hear any, so let's keep scrolling, Amanda.
[Unidentified]: special permit criteria.
[Andre Leroux]: I think the change here David that you suggested I don't know if you want to say anything it just again taking out the neighborhood character language and incorporating a reference to the city's forthcoming comprehensive plan.
[David Blumberg]: Correct. And taking out the fiscal impact. feeling that that's not really at the same level of these other items. But that's a discussion we've been having as well.
[Andre Leroux]: Yeah, I'm fine with taking that out since we incorporated into the performance standards and there's an avenue for dealing with it there. But not having it as a threshold criteria.
[Unidentified]: Any other board members with thoughts. Nope, let's keep going then.
[Andre Leroux]: Oh, and Amanda, you were just gonna check this, make sure this was consistent and correct, the number of days here.
[Amanda Centrella]: Yes, haven't done that yet, but will do.
[Andre Leroux]: Okay, I think there was just a question we had whether it should be 35 or 45 days. I don't know if attorney of a broski can help us out with this.
[PQNVkYiOrIU_SPEAKER_12]: I was looking at the next section in advance of you calling it Could you repeat the question.
[Andre Leroux]: Yeah, so here on the referral. The city council and board of appeals shall forward any special permit application within 35 days but there was another, I think there's somewhere else in the zoning ordinance it says 45 yeah down below here 45 days.
[PQNVkYiOrIU_SPEAKER_12]: Yeah, I don't think it meant 45 days is probably better, given the workload everybody has these days.
[Andre Leroux]: But with 35 days, I think the question was if the 35 days is required by state statute.
[PQNVkYiOrIU_SPEAKER_12]: No, there's nothing in the state statute at all about site plan review. The only provision in the state statute about site plan review is added in the governor's recent housing bill. And it says that if somebody appeals a site plan review, you can ask for a bond. That's it. That's the only mention of the words site plan review in the entire chapter 40A.
[Andre Leroux]: But isn't this deal with special permit here, like a site plan review with a special permit.
[PQNVkYiOrIU_SPEAKER_12]: No, please don't know. No, there's no such thing as a site plan review with a special permit. And that was one of the major changes that we made.
[Andre Leroux]: Right, but well it says, I don't know this 11.7 point four here. Amanda has on the screen. In the case of a major project which requires a special permit from the Board of Appeals or city council development board shall perform a site plan review and submit its recommendations within 45 minutes.
[PQNVkYiOrIU_SPEAKER_12]: So it's recommended only so it's and it's by majority vote, which means it's not a special permit. It is a special permit at the other special permit granting authority but when it's in front of the city CDB it's not a special permit it's a site plan recommendation.
[Unidentified]: Okay. And there's no we don't have to make that conform to the special permit timeline.
[PQNVkYiOrIU_SPEAKER_12]: Well if it's 45 days for one and 35 days for the other I would just make them consistent that's all.
[Alicia Hunt]: Excuse me, Mr. Chair, can we, I just want to ask Amanda a question. Don't we need to, don't we typically give department heads 35 days to comment and therefore it would be hard to make a 35 or 45 day window for the meeting because there's comments come in or there's we receive it, we send it out for comment, get comments, send the comments to the boards so they have a few days to review it. And sometimes you just can't schedule it right away. Like you need a two week window to be able to schedule a meeting.
[Amanda Centrella]: So in my understanding, it varies a little bit depending on if the board is the special permit granting authority versus if some other entity is. So in the event when they're not the special permit granting authority, my understanding is actually there is that 35 day window for getting all recommendations to the SPGA.
[Alicia Hunt]: So it's 45 days for the Community Development Board to have the site plan review. While it sounds like a long time, I want to make sure it's reasonable that we're giving everybody enough time to do all the reviews. Because sometimes it may be like, well, you just looked at the plans, right, and wrote a letter. But sometimes a city engineer might go back and forth with an applicant a couple of times during that window. I just want to make sure and is this section and these times this is new to our zoning. Because we had always followed everything that just state law, and not local ordinance.
[PQNVkYiOrIU_SPEAKER_12]: Well there's nothing in the state law about referral periods and consequences for failure to act.
[Andre Leroux]: So I guess I'm not hearing that we have to change this. I'm fine with it as is. Maybe we could just have the planning office double check to make sure that everything's aligned and they're not requesting a change. Does that sound all right?
[Unidentified]: Otherwise, we just keep it as is. Does that sound good to you, Amanda?
[Andre Leroux]: You're muted, I think.
[Amanda Centrella]: So sorry, my dog is causing a scene. Yes, that sounds okay.
[Unidentified]: Okay, thanks. All right, let's keep scrolling down.
[Andre Leroux]: We talked about site plan review, I think that's fine.
[PQNVkYiOrIU_SPEAKER_12]: So there is a typo in the 11-7-11 language. And if you look first at paragraph two above 11-7-5, I don't know if you have it, you don't have it. So I'm looking at the full version. There were some changes that I made at the 11th hour because the land court decided a case that said, if you're going to have a direct appeal on a site plan decision by your CDB to court, which is what we're prescribing, then the matter should be accompanied by a public hearing. That was judge Foster at the land court. And I agree. So if you look at the full version, not the document we've been looking at in the generic section on site plan review and paragraph 11, seven, four, two, in the case of a major project, not requiring a special permit, meaning that CDB is in charge. It shall serve as the site plan review authority and shall conduct a public hearing in accordance with chapter 48, section 11 file it's written decision reached by majority vote within 90 days of the close of the public hearing. And if you look at 11 seven 11 at the very end of the paragraph, the board shall file a written decision with the city clerk within 90 days of the close of no, it's not receipted the application. It's reclose within close of the public hearing. So that language needs to be consistent between the provision I just read and that language there. So the only thing you knew, scratch off of receipt of the application and put close of the public hearing.
[Unidentified]: It's down in 11, seven, 11, Amanda. No, yeah, right. So that last after 90 days, it should say of the close of the public here. And I made similar changes in 11, eight.
[Andre Leroux]: No, wait, no, no, no, no. Amanda, can you, you got to undo what you just did there. It's the sentence before that.
[Unidentified]: Oh, I'm not looking at Amanda's handiwork here. close of the public hearing yet.
[PQNVkYiOrIU_SPEAKER_12]: Yeah, of the clothes Amanda. Oh, you've got it there so go back up to 90 days.
[Unidentified]: Strike close of 90 days Yep, you got it.
[Andre Leroux]: Thanks. I know it's a lot. You've got a lot to manage there Amanda as terms of scrolling the document and doing all the technical stuff so thank you.
[PQNVkYiOrIU_SPEAKER_12]: Yeah, so that's the time standard for a special permit, but site plan review most importantly is not a special permit, it's regulation of the use not it's prohibition. It's a simple majority vote. And the bottom line, most people understand site plan review to mean that you can approve the site plan or approve it with conditions, but the powers of the board do not extend to saying no.
[Unidentified]: And that's the major change that I worked to this section. All right, any questions or comments by anyone? Let's continue down to the Dover amendment. So here, Attorney Bobrowski, you had a change.
[Andre Leroux]: I don't know if you want to, I'm not sure where it is.
[PQNVkYiOrIU_SPEAKER_12]: Let me go back to my version because it's easier for me to see it. So here 1184, It's the same, the board will conduct a hearing in accordance with 4811, file its written decision, reach by majority vote within 90 days after the close of the public hearing. And then you can see that there are provisions for appeal, right? Which are added so that you don't wanna, if you don't have an appeal provision under your site plan regulations, the appeal is to the board of appeals when the building permit is issued or denied. Talk about a bad idea. Not that I don't like the board of appeals, just waiting for the building permit to be issued or denied is bad enough. So this is a direct appeal to a court of competent jurisdiction, which means the superior court of the land court. But you gotta have public hearing.
[Andre Leroux]: Okay. And I think Amanda, there were a few questions that came in from the public on this section. Is that right? That we can want it to, opposed to Attorney Bobrowski?
[Amanda Centrella]: Yes, Vic, I feel like you had some questions lined up on this.
[Victor Schrader]: Yeah. This section, we've obviously been working with Dover for a long time, but the section itself is new to the ordinance. So, Attorney Brabrowski, do you mind walking us through the process for an application? And I have a couple of clarifying questions. One being related to 811.8.2 when a site plan review is required. And reading this, I'm not sure if a project not seeking relief, so by right over use, would that project need to, would that project be subject to site plan review?
[PQNVkYiOrIU_SPEAKER_12]: Yes. I think it should be.
[Victor Schrader]: Okay, so even if it's fully by right, it can receive a building permit, it should still go to site plan.
[PQNVkYiOrIU_SPEAKER_12]: I think it should be. And think of the size of some projects that are Dover related, a high school, those are still Dover related. So they should go through site plan review. And the Dover amendment provision here is designed to treat it a bit more leniently, at least procedurally under our law. Your Tufts College case, for example, says that educational institutions are not subject to site plan approval. Now that's 30 years old at this point. The Bible Speaks case from Lenox says the same thing. My case, Petrucci versus Board of Appeals of Westwood says the same thing with regard to childcare facilities. The genesis here is that Judge Sands at the land court decided roughly 10 years ago that a Jewish cemetery, which is religiously exempt under Dover, could be made subject to site plan approval if the focus of the site plan approval was A, the scope was limited, number one, 11.8.31. In other words, does it qualify? Is it something that's gonna be licensed as childcare? Is it truly an educational use? Does that mean it's a nonprofit? And then number two, the only thing that you're really doing this for is to impose those reasonable regulations concerning bulk height, if any, that are consistent with the Tufts balancing tests, which is basically, is it a legitimate government regulation? What will the impact be on the applicant? And will there be undue impact on the utility of the campus or the financial burden on the applicant? Those are all written out by the SJC in the Tufts College case. That's that's the scope of the test.
[Victor Schrader]: Okay, thank you. And then, if a project Dover use project does require relief. it will have to go to site plan review, through site plan review. Will it also then need to go to ZBA?
[PQNVkYiOrIU_SPEAKER_12]: No, no.
[Victor Schrader]: It's a one-stop process.
[PQNVkYiOrIU_SPEAKER_12]: The same day that the SJC reported the Tufts College case, they reported a case called Campbell versus City of Lynn, and they specifically addressed that question and said, If the building is non-conforming, you don't need to apply for a special permit under section six. If the building is deviant, you don't need to apply for a variance. The balancing test covers the whole matter. When I was representing Joe Petrucci down in Westwood, the board said I needed a special permit. I needed a variance and I needed site plan approval. I'm sorry, and I needed alteration of a non-conforming barn. And I said, no, thank you, no, thank you, and no, thank you. And the case is a pretty simple one. The appeals court in that case ruled that we were correct, so.
[Victor Schrader]: And then finally, we have denial language in here, but I think you've added some language to clarify that. So can you spend a minute on that?
[PQNVkYiOrIU_SPEAKER_12]: Where is that if I could see it on the? Yeah, so that's consistent with what I just said. You can approve, approve with conditions or deny, but the denial has to be predicated upon an application, applicant's failure to provide necessary information. That's right out of Prudential Insurance Company versus Board of Appeals of Westwood. There's a footnote in the back of the case at the appeals court that said you can impose reasonable conditions at the expense of the applicant. Deny it if the application is incomplete. Those are the two existing powers for a CDB in this case.
[Unidentified]: Thank you. You bet. If no other questions or comments, let's continue, Amanda.
[Andre Leroux]: And we're back down to definitions. So we already talked about family, dwelling. David had made some suggestions, which I think make sense to try to neutralize the language. Nothing new here. I think we've talked about this already. So why don't we continue. We do need to add that the Census Bureau household definition, which I think you've noted, but let's just make sure that's, there it is. Okay, thanks. David, you had made a comment about lodging house. Was there any change that you wanted to raise or?
[David Blumberg]: I know I think I was only trying to work the secondary degree of kinship business out of it. And I think I think I struck that I think that could be the answer. Okay, maybe. And I do recall also looking elsewhere in the ordinance to list the proper names of the other items that are dealt with more specifically. So I think when you see hotel or motel, I think I may have added that because motels address somewhere or rest home.
[PQNVkYiOrIU_SPEAKER_12]: In the provision before that convalescent nursing or rest home would be long-term care facility.
[David Blumberg]: So I was trying to be sensitive to where there are other definitions or how the things are defined elsewhere.
[PQNVkYiOrIU_SPEAKER_12]: Yeah. Let me just go back to the, I'm going to look at the use table on my screen, so.
[Unidentified]: just to be sure. Go ahead, I'll catch up.
[Andre Leroux]: I don't have any other comments about this. I don't know if anyone else does. Thanks for reviewing all of this stuff very carefully, David, appreciate it. Amanda, why don't we continue down there? So we have a suggestion for a new definition for open storage that was suggested by a community member.
[PQNVkYiOrIU_SPEAKER_12]: Just to confirm the rest home convalescent language ought to be long term care facility.
[Unidentified]: Thanks.
[Andre Leroux]: Well, Amanda, you gotta finish crossing out the other ones, nursing or rest home there.
[PQNVkYiOrIU_SPEAKER_12]: And convalescent above that as well.
[Andre Leroux]: Yeah, she did that one already.
[PQNVkYiOrIU_SPEAKER_12]: Oh, okay. I'm on a different screen.
[Andre Leroux]: Okay. Thanks, Amanda. Let's go down. So, Attorney Wabrowski, so we have a suggested new definition for open storage. I don't know if you looked at that. I'm looking at it now.
[PQNVkYiOrIU_SPEAKER_12]: Yeah, okay. I'm not sure about the last sentence but. But, but I have no problem up until the last sentence. Yeah.
[Andre Leroux]: Okay, well maybe we should just, maybe we should cross out that last- It reminds me of our discussion on unregistered motor vehicles. Yeah, I think we dealt with that elsewhere, so maybe we cross that part out. I don't know, David or anybody else, do you have any thoughts about that?
[David Blumberg]: Andre, my brain was going the same place. I thought we had already addressed that elsewhere.
[Andre Leroux]: Yeah, all right, so let's cross that out, Amanda, that last sentence in open storage, the term open storage.
[PQNVkYiOrIU_SPEAKER_12]: I mean, is it the intent of the definition to limit what a viable commercial entity can store openly, meaning it's material that will be used as part of the business, or is it an attempt to stop solid waste?
[Andre Leroux]: I don't know. I think that this was a suggestion from a community member. And I think you had also mentioned that the original definition needed some refining. So I think we'll, I mean, we would go with your recommendation on this.
[PQNVkYiOrIU_SPEAKER_12]: Well, if it's going to be the former, I think you should put open commercial storage. And if it's going to be the latter included, then I think it has to be broader where it says, or other materials. including and I think like, for example, I was mindful of a deer field regulation that says solid waste is anything that's not nailed down and you can't have it. And it's a very effective tool if somebody has decided to make their property into a solid waste storage facility.
[Amanda Centrella]: If it's at all helpful, I have, so this came from a community member and they provided some of their logic for why they had the suggestion and I can read that out.
[Andre Leroux]: Yeah, thank you.
[Amanda Centrella]: So open storage, uncovered storage in connection with a retail or wholesale establishment or storage yards in which are stored building or other materials, including without limiting the generality of the foregoing lumber, cement, electrical, heating, plumbing, refrigeration, roofing supplies and equipment. And as referred to in this chapter, also means a use which is completely enclosed except for necessary access and roof by an opaque wall or fence not less than eight feet in height. The term open storage shall include the standing and or parking of vehicles, trailers, and containers for more than 48 hours. And then they offered that recommended change in language.
[Andre Leroux]: Not sure that clarified much for me.
[Amanda Centrella]: That's some, here, maybe I'll put this in the chat just so people can look at the language.
[David Blumberg]: Andre, David.
[Andre Leroux]: Yes, David.
[David Blumberg]: I just pulled up the red line draft and just searched for the term open storage. Assuming that that reflects the full and current draft. We're pretty close to it. It only appears in four places. One, maybe two where it's actually defined. And then, um, twice it appears in connection with screening and screening and buffer requirements. And that table may not be in my search.
[PQNVkYiOrIU_SPEAKER_12]: Okay. Let me, let me, let me do that. Hang on one second.
[SPEAKER_12]: Mark it's under accessory uses use table.
[PQNVkYiOrIU_SPEAKER_12]: Yeah. I think that's where I kind of raised my question. But I didn't know what it meant. And so this contribution is certainly a nice step forward. But I leave it to you.
[Andre Leroux]: I'm fine with this. David, what do you think? I mean, this to me seems like more of a lawyer issue, so I don't have a strong opinion about it.
[David Blumberg]: So if it's an accessory use, then we'd be empowering folks to store vehicles not in regular use, I think, if we make it part of... I think you'd have to look at the use table to see what I'm trying to do.
[PQNVkYiOrIU_SPEAKER_12]: Yeah, I'm fumbling around here. News table, okay, open storage. Well, I put no across the board with the exception of a special permit from the Board of Appeals in the BC district. And that's probably because it was allowed in the BC district in the old zone. So let me look at the old zone.
[Unidentified]: Yeah, it's item 59 in your old use table and it's allowed
[PQNVkYiOrIU_SPEAKER_12]: by right in the district in question. Actually, it's allowed in two districts by right. If your old columns had headings on them, I could tell you what those districts are, but they don't. So I've got to look back till I get a heading here. Maybe there's only one heading at the very beginning. Yeah, I think that's the case. So one, two. So the districts in which open storage was allowed are I and C2. I and C2.
[Victor Schrader]: And that's as it is in the use table draft that I'm looking at.
[PQNVkYiOrIU_SPEAKER_12]: Yeah, that's as it is in the old ordinance use table.
[Victor Schrader]: And the new, in the current draft.
[PQNVkYiOrIU_SPEAKER_12]: Okay, yeah, so I just repeated it. Did I make a special permit? Does it say BA or does it say Y?
[Victor Schrader]: It says Y, it's allowed in both C2 and I.
[PQNVkYiOrIU_SPEAKER_12]: And that's so that's what you have. I don't think that's a good idea. So I don't necessarily want to encourage you to repeat it.
[Andre Leroux]: Your suggestion would be to make that a special permit.
[PQNVkYiOrIU_SPEAKER_12]: Definitely. Yeah, at a minimum.
[Unidentified]: I don't know enough about the districts in question to answer, whether they should.
[Andre Leroux]: be appropriate whether they're appropriate so well I'm fine with that why don't we make that by special permit, is there.
[David Blumberg]: I don't know the board members have an opinion is that it's, it would be not addressing vehicles, it would just be the building materials, if you will. Yes. Okay. That's, I would be in favor of that then, because it does appear that the vehicles are addressed separately.
[Andre Leroux]: Well, I guess, unless, I mean, this is not a rabbit hole I wanted to go down or ever intended going down on this, but when we say open storage, are they also referring to like car dealerships? Is that what he's trying to get at with this sentence here?
[PQNVkYiOrIU_SPEAKER_12]: No, the more specific controls the general. So there's a specific entry for car dealerships that would control. Okay.
[Andre Leroux]: Then I think let's just, let's just recommend that they'd be special permit in those two districts that they already are by right and leave it at that.
[Unidentified]: Okay.
[Andre Leroux]: And then there was, I guess, another community member question about parking garage and the language here. No specific recommendation. I think in that case, I've left it up to you. Yeah. Attorney Mabrowski, do you have any, I mean, this is, is this your language or is this existing language?
[PQNVkYiOrIU_SPEAKER_12]: Parking garage or parking area residential? Yeah, it's in your existing ordinance.
[Andre Leroux]: Okay. I don't have any change here. I don't know if anybody else does. I'm fine leaving it the way that it is. There's not a specific problem that we're solving. I don't wanna try to solve. All right, we already talked with building commissioner Moki about the half story. And I think, I didn't hear anybody raise a question or concern about that. Are we okay with that? All right, let's continue then.
[zMDmsK0LIsU_SPEAKER_03]: I don't have a concern about it per se. There's a worry in my mind that the way that it's written could possibly allow for a more aggressive form of roof sculpture in Medford. Um, but without like actually like digging in and just really thinking about how, what the impact of that is, I can't really, but it, but there, I, there's certainly a, it's triggered a concern in my mind that this somehow may allow, um, a type of construction that is much more conspicuous and less in fitting with the character of the neighborhood than we already have. And that does cause me a little bit of concern. I should say that I just went through this process myself on my own home, where it was a real challenge to make this work and make it meet the requirements. And I worry that this new stating of the law would be less restrictive and allow for things that You know, we're less in keeping with the character of the neighborhoods. I don't know that I have a solution though, but I just wanted to state that.
[Unidentified]: Anybody else have a thought about that?
[Andre Leroux]: Yeah, I see where you're coming from class I'm inclined to accept the building commissioners record and recommended language just because I don't think we can come up with something better right now. You know, potentially it's something we should flag or the planning staff can flag for the comp plan.
[zMDmsK0LIsU_SPEAKER_03]: I mean, I think one way to think about this would be to research what adjacent towns are doing. What does this kind of thing look like in Cambridge or Brookline or in places where residents are very sensitive to construction and historic character of neighborhoods.
[PQNVkYiOrIU_SPEAKER_12]: Mr. Chairman, as I, excuse me, but as I alerted you last time, I've got to jump to another Zoom meeting. So I'm going to do that. I've got to, I want to take a break for five minutes before I go roughly 65 miles South.
[Andre Leroux]: Yeah, understood. Thank you so much, Attorney Bobrowski. We appreciate all the time you put in.
[Amanda Centrella]: Actually, I'm so sorry to interrupt. Just a quick question. If we decide to collectively continue, which we might not do, it might be good just to have a couple of dates from you, Mark, if you're available for one more meeting.
[PQNVkYiOrIU_SPEAKER_12]: Throw out a date.
[Amanda Centrella]: All right, let me pull it here. I think we had, there was the 26th of January.
[Andre Leroux]: Actually, let me just interrupt, because I do think we're going to finish this tonight. I think we should. And so I don't even want to go down that road. And I know Mark has to jump off. So let's not do this.
[PQNVkYiOrIU_SPEAKER_12]: If you do need the 26th, that is open. Assuming we start early, I can do it on that night. But I'm rooting for you, Mr. Chairman. Thanks to all of you for your attention.
[Amanda Centrella]: Thank you, Mark.
[PQNVkYiOrIU_SPEAKER_12]: Thanks a lot. Bye bye. Bye bye.
[Andre Leroux]: Um, and so board members, if we do have to go over a little bit, is everybody okay with maybe 10 more minutes, but let's, I think we're close to the end of wrapping up.
[Unidentified]: Okay.
[Andre Leroux]: So maybe this is something that the planning staff, uh, even if it gets before the, maybe before it even gets to the city council, if you guys want to do any more research on this, uh, to try to improve that language with building commissioner Moki and and indicate to the city council a better language, that's fine. But I think we'll adopt for right now the building commissioner's language. I do know that Alicia is thinking about addressing this issue more comprehensively down the road in a policy way.
[Unidentified]: So let's continuing add the adult use marijuana establishments in the use table that makes sense because now it's a use.
[Andre Leroux]: Victor, Director of Economic Development, can you just explain where things landed with the convenience retail and neighborhood retail based on the question that was raised last time? I think the square footage was very large. You looked into that some more.
[Victor Schrader]: Yeah, happy to we talked about it as a staff, and we suggested some adjustments here in purple or red, I believe. So, based on your conversations and actually conversations with, I think, with the council before it got to you all. The thought was to continue to allow small neighborhood retail, the corner stores in residential areas. But I think we all agreed that the scale of those stores was a little out of whack. So we looked at a couple around town. And think that the neighborhood read the size of neighborhood retail should be up to 2500 square feet. That seems more reasonable. Then resize the convenience retail, which is in the middle between neighborhood and what we might think of as a midsize small box retailer, between 2,500, so just over 2,501 foot to 5,000 square feet. And then retail sales would take care of everything above that square footage, 5,000 and above. I think the one question, so if that kind of fits more with what people were thinking, certainly happy to talk through that. Also, where are we allowing these uses? And we have For neighborhood retail and convenience retail, they're by special permit city council in the apartment districts. But in SF2 for convenience retail, neighborhood retail is currently allowed in SF1, and special permit or site plan review and SF2, and then special permit city council in apartment one, two, three, and allowed in the commercial districts. So the remaining question would be, do we want to make the neighborhood retail by site plan review and the SF1? It's getting late, I'm sorry if that was long winded.
[Andre Leroux]: Yeah, I think my suggestion on this, it makes, thank you for your, the recommendation. And I appreciate the fact that I think these sizes make a lot more sense in class. I know you had raised that so you can weigh in in a moment, but I do, I do think that just allowing it as a right in single family districts would be problematic. So I'd recommend making that a special permit for SF1 and SF2. the neighborhood retail, because I think there should be some level of approval since we're talking about, you know, we don't just want to have single family homes that get converted their first floor into a convenience store and maybe making it easier in some of the other ones. But, you know.
[Victor Schrader]: Andre, just one. clarifying point, I think this goes without saying, but say if, for example, people's food mart would change hands and a new neighborhood retailer would locate in people's food mart, they would not need to go for site plan review.
[Unidentified]: That would be allowed by right under zoning. Is that a question to me?
[Victor Schrader]: It's just a statement.
[Andre Leroux]: Yeah, okay. Right so existing uses would be essentially grandfathered if the property were to change hands.
[Unidentified]: Correct.
[Andre Leroux]: Class do you want to. You have thoughts about this. No, I think this is a much better set of numbers than we saw last time so thank you have a thought thought about the, the permit like for single family SF one and to make that special permit.
[zMDmsK0LIsU_SPEAKER_03]: Is that for the larger stores?
[Andre Leroux]: Right now it's the larger stores are not allowed in the single family one and they are allowed by special permit city council in SF2. The small stores are currently, the proposal is to make it not allowed to allowed by right, a why. in SF1 and then in SF2 site plan, allow them by site plan review. And I'm suggesting that maybe we make it special permit because I think it could be pretty controversial if we just change it to make it allowed. I think that's a big policy change.
[zMDmsK0LIsU_SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, I think I agree.
[Andre Leroux]: Yeah, especially now, like doing something like that before the special part, before the comp plan review. I think maybe we go gently on the use plan changes or the use table changes. And then later there'll be more time to change the map and adjust.
[zMDmsK0LIsU_SPEAKER_03]: Okay. My main concern last time was the sizes of, but these are, they seem much better.
[Andre Leroux]: David, you're unmuted. I don't know if you wanted to say anything.
[David Blumberg]: I know I agree with where you both of you landed on the SF one SF two I, I know you want to complete our mission tonight but I guess I'm having a hard time understanding why these aren't allowed. More generally in the apartment districts but as you said we can, we can discuss that another day.
[Andre Leroux]: Yeah, no David I totally agree with you.
[David Blumberg]: Yeah.
[Andre Leroux]: I agree. I guess I'm just thinking that we, I mean, we could make that recommendation now, if you feel confident in like figuring that out, which districts, but I just think that looking at the uses and the map and that should, you know, wait for the comp plan for the most part.
[David Blumberg]: I think you're right. It's beyond the scope of what we said we were going to attempt to accomplish. So I agree, but I'm still puzzled.
[Andre Leroux]: Yeah, no, I agree with what you say. I think that should be changed, made easier.
[Alicia Hunt]: I think I- It might help to know that there's no retail allowed in those apartment districts, like any kinds at this moment. So turning them into mixed uses, it's a bigger change, not that we don't think maybe it's the right way to go.
[Andre Leroux]: Got it. Thanks, Alicia. That's helpful. Klaas, you were gonna say something?
[zMDmsK0LIsU_SPEAKER_03]: No, I was just gonna say in those apartment use districts, encouraging mixed use is frankly important. But if it's something that needs to be pushed to later, I'm fine with that. But I would definitely agree that not allowing them is not right, is not smart.
[Andre Leroux]: So at least this is an, it represents an incremental step forward, not allowed now, but right now, now we're, we'll be allowing them by special permit under this re-codification. So maybe we can go further later, but for now, I think this is probably what we can do.
[Alicia Hunt]: I just want to raise one thing. These smaller stores are really much smaller businesses. These are not big developments. And I'm concerned that sending them to city council means they actually have to go to site plan review with this board and then the city council. And that's asking a lot of a really small business. And I wonder if, at least that's my assumption, if it would be better if they just were special permit through the planning board. So there wasn't any, at least the residential ones. I just, there wasn't, because what the consideration really is, is the feel for it. And this can become so political. Anything that goes in front of city council can be so political. And I'd hate for people who are trying to start up a small business to get approved or denied because of political reasons.
[Andre Leroux]: So we could, what would the, instead of the CC, what would it be?
[Alicia Hunt]: I was just looking at the rest of our table as it exists. And my recommendation would be planning board. The only other option is board of appeals.
[Andre Leroux]: Well, I'm certainly fine with replacing the CCs and the residential districts with PVs for these two uses.
[Unidentified]: I don't remember what initials we use. I think I think that's right the way Amanda has it there.
[Andre Leroux]: So, but Amanda do you want to make it, I guess replace it for all of them.
[Alicia Hunt]: I will just remind you, it's a recommendation, if the city council says, actually we think they should come to us. They, they can do that.
[Unidentified]: Yep. And Alicia, do you have thoughts about then the slightly larger convenience retail?
[Andre Leroux]: Do you think that's also appropriate for that one?
[Alicia Hunt]: I kind of do. I was just looking at the notes. So we use some examples to help us understand things that were between 2,500 and 5,000 square feet that exist, include Alexander's on Main Street, Oasis, and then actually Bob's and the People's Food Mart and Jim's Market were all under 2,500 square feet. It's the five, the 2500 to 5000 aren't tiny, but they're not developers.
[Andre Leroux]: Well, why don't we change all these those CCS then just to PB and, and then we can, you know, city council can take it or leave it.
[Alicia Hunt]: And I will say I actually agree with you that they should all go to planning board, because the idea is not to allow a tiny, like a Dunkin Donuts or Starbucks in every residential neighborhood, although Medford residents could probably be talked into that. I think there is an intention that these are benefits to the neighborhoods, you know, and that the planning board should have some say or somebody should have a say in not one on every corner, right? You know, what's the appropriate density?
[Andre Leroux]: Yeah, so Alicia, let me introduce you here. So I know that we're losing a board member at eight o'clock and I know Jackie has to go and she is already a little over so I have to leave too.
[Jenny Graham]: I got to pick up my kid.
[Andre Leroux]: Okay, are we, Amanda, can we just scroll down? You know that you can change those. I think these other questions, the ones that we're not going to deal with, I was reviewing those with the planning staff earlier, and I think that those are policy changes that are out of our scope right now. And we're not gonna deal with, I guess, the three-story issue either. So I think we're down at the bottom. And then this last change is just a technical change that recommended by the planning staff to bring it more in line with what those heights, the existing heights actually allow in terms of stories. So I'm fine right now. I think we've finished. If we want to take a vote on sending these recommendations to the city council and then allow the allow empower me as chair just to review them with the planning staff once we have the final language. I think we'd then be ready for a vote, but what do you all think about that?
[David Blumberg]: Audrey, that sounds good to me.
[Deanna Peabody]: Yeah, sounds good to me as well.
[zMDmsK0LIsU_SPEAKER_03]: Me too.
[Deanna Peabody]: Me too.
[Andre Leroux]: So, and I think we have, is there a motion on the floor?
[Amanda Centrella]: I am so sorry to interrupt. I just have a question. There were some comments that came in from the public that were more general and or touched on things that were dealt with in past meetings. I do kind of feel like they should be read into the record before any vote is made.
[Jacqueline McPherson]: How many comments do you have, Amanda?
[Amanda Centrella]: I have two.
[Andre Leroux]: We could do them quickly. We're going to lose two board members, and then I don't think we have a quorum.
[Amanda Centrella]: Yeah.
[Andre Leroux]: Yeah.
[Amanda Centrella]: Okay. One from William Navarre, and just in summary, had some thoughts on William Navarre, 108 Medford Street, number 1B, had some thoughts on parking minimum provisions. So the reduced parking requirement near high frequency transit should include locations where multiple bus lines converge or nearly converge. And then number two, in the event that the parking minimum is one space for some development, that project should be entirely excused from the parking minimum if either the following conditions apply. The property has no suitable curb cut and would need to be installed, or if the property has a curb cut, but the developer is willing to remove it. The second comment is from Sharon Wentworth, 694 Winthrop Street, and she had some concerns about daycares and permitting around daycares. She feels that they should be required for larger daycares. There's supposed to be enough parking for 10 cars in a residential area and driveways are supposed to be restricted. So how are we accommodating that? What if the state changes the definition of large daycares? What happens then? And the home across from my home was renovated for the entire home to accommodate the daycare, shouldn't the home be a percentage of the daycare and not a business in an S1 zone? Those are the comments.
[Andre Leroux]: I feel that we've, you know, we did discuss extensively both the parking and the daycare issue. So unless somebody feels that they wanna revisit it, I think we go with our recommendations. Okay, I'm seeing nodding heads. So is there a motion on the floor to send our, to finalize our recommendations with, I guess, endorsement from... Yeah, go ahead, David, you do it.
[David Blumberg]: Andre, let me give it a try. A motion to approve this set of recommendations, subject to a delegation of authority to you to work with city staff to finalize some of the final language that's needed, and to confirm that the final document submitted to the city council conforms with the board's discussions, deliberations, and decisions.
[Andre Leroux]: Beautifully stated.
[zMDmsK0LIsU_SPEAKER_03]: I will second.
[Andre Leroux]: Thanks, Klaus. Roll call vote. Klaus Andreasen? Yes. Deanna Peabody?
[Jenny Graham]: Aye.
[Andre Leroux]: Christy Dowd?
[Jenny Graham]: Yes.
[Andre Leroux]: David Blumberg? Yes. Jackie Furtado?
[Jacqueline McPherson]: Yes.
[Andre Leroux]: and I'm a yes as well. So I just want to thank everybody. I know you guys got to go amazing work. This was a lot to dig into. So hopefully we won't have three hour meetings next time. All right. Is there a motion to adjourn to close the public hearing? Well, I guess we should have closed the public hearing originally. So I will, I think that was incorporated into David's David's motion implicitly. Is there a motion to adjourn?
[Deanna Peabody]: Yes, motion to adjourn.
[Andre Leroux]: Deanna, do you second? David, I'll second. Thanks, David. Cles Andreson? Aye. Deanna Peabody?
[Jacqueline McPherson]: Aye.
[Andre Leroux]: Christy Dowd?
[Jacqueline McPherson]: Yes.
[Andre Leroux]: David Blumberg? Aye. Jackie Furtado?
[Jacqueline McPherson]: Aye.
[Andre Leroux]: And I'm an aye as well. All right, thank you everybody. I really appreciate it. And Jackie and Christy, thanks for staying later.
[Jenny Graham]: Thank you. Okay. Thanks. Have a good night everyone. Bye.
[Andre Leroux]: Take care of you too.
[Jenny Graham]: Thank you everybody.
[Andre Leroux]: I should say thanks to the staff for all the work you guys put into this. I really do appreciate it. It's a lot.
[Unidentified]: Thanks everyone. Thank you all.
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