AI-generated transcript of Community Development Board 02-07-24

[Paulette Van der Kloot]: Good evening, and welcome to tonight's meeting of the Medford Community Development Board. I'll call the meeting to order. Let's begin with some obligatory procedural matters. This hearing of the Medford Community Development Board is being conducted via remote means. No in-person attendance of members of the public will be permitted, but every effort will be made to ensure that the public can adequately access the proceedings as provided for in Chapter 2 of the Acts of 2023. A reminder that anyone who would like to listen to or view this meeting while in process may do so by accessing the link that was provided on the meeting agenda posted on the City of Medford's website. If despite our best efforts we are not able to provide real-time access, we will post a recording of this meeting on the City's website as soon as possible. A reminder that given the remote nature of this meeting, tonight all votes from the board will be made by roll call. Please also know that the project materials for all projects before the board can be viewed on the city's website, which is medfordma.org. Danielle will provide the link in the chat. I'm gonna do a roll call attendance for the board. Starting with Ari Fishman. Present. Pam Marianski. Present. Sally Akiki. Present. And myself, Jackie McPherson. We have absent members. Danielle, can you please introduce any staff on the call?

[Danielle Evans]: Yes, I'm Danielle Evans, senior planner in the Office of Planning, Development and Sustainability. Alicia Hunt, the director of our department is here, as well as Teresa DuPont, who is our CPA coordinator, and Clem Doucette, who is our graduate student intern in our office.

[Paulette Van der Kloot]: Thank you. Our first item is Walkley Court PDE for special permit for site plan review as well as special permit review. I will read the public hearing notice for it. The Method Community Development Board shall conduct a public hearing on February 7, 2016. 24, after 6.30 p.m. via Zoom remote video conferencing relative to an application for site plan review. Submitted by the Medford Housing Authority for the demolition of all existing buildings on the site to be replaced by a mid-rise building with 198 apartments for elders and seniors and four buildings with 40 family units, 24 units in a low-rise building and 16 townhomes and three buildings. The CDB board will also hold a public meeting relative to the application for plan development permit, special permit for the same matter. A subsequent public hearing for the application of the plan development special permit on the same matter will be held by the Medford City Council on February 20th, 2024 at 7 p.m. in Medford City Council Chambers, which is located on the second floor of Medford City Hall. Danielle, can you please introduce Anyone from the Medford Housing Authority?

[Danielle Evans]: They're a large team, so I'll let them introduce themselves, but I just want to... just provide a little context for the evening. So you may recall that back in the fall, Medford Housing Authority applied for a plan development district and that went through the process and that overlay was approved by city council in the fall and which essentially creates a different zoning that would allow the uses and the dimensions of the proposed project to be built However, there's the subsequent step, which is beginning tonight, which is to have their site plan approved. And they also need a special permit for a plan development special permit, where the city council is the special permit granting authority, but the Community Development Board will be issuing a recommendation on how they should vote for that.

[Paulette Van der Kloot]: Thank you very much. And, uh, just to quickly clarify, uh, the approval of the zoning does not necessarily approve the project. That's what we will be doing our due diligence this evening along with the public. And in saying that I invite the Redford House or whoever the representative from Redford House Authority to please present. Mr. Cicerello. Hi. Oh, Daniel, can you please unmute?

[Danielle Evans]: Yeah, I think we're clicking at the same time. So I clicked ask to unmute. So you should be able to unmute, yes.

[Ciccariello]: Thank you. And could we allow Maura Barry Gartland to pull up the presentation?

[Danielle Evans]: I'm trying to, okay, Maura Berry Garland?

[Unidentified]: Yes.

[Danielle Evans]: Okay, I'll make her.

[SPEAKER_16]: Great, thank you. Can everyone see my screen? Perfect, yeah, I'll let Gabe begin.

[Ciccariello]: Okay, good evening everyone. My name's Gabe Ciccariello. I'm the director of modernization and procurement for the Medford Housing Authority. And thank you for meeting with us. We're here before you as was described to go through our site plan review and special permit presentation. If you want to go to the next slide. So, as I said, Gabe Ciccariello, Director of Modernization Procurement, and so we are the applicant and I also have with me this evening, Jeffrey Driscoll, who is our Executive Director. The Cambridge Housing Authority is assisting us as our development consultant and with Cambridge Housing Authority, we have Margaret Donnelly-Moran with us and Maura Barry-Gartland. And for our counsel, known she and patent is our counseling of Hannah Kilson, who will be assisting with the presentation. And we also have Veronica. with Nolan Sheehan-Patton, and our architect is Dietz & Company Architects. Lee Morissette is here, who's a principal architect, and Danny Gerber-Luticia. We also have our civil engineer, Fuston O'Neill, and Josue Valdez will be assisting us also with the presentation, and our traffic engineer was Niche Engineering, and Brian Zimolka will be doing a couple slides. So through this presentation, we'll start off with the current existing conditions of Walkman Corp. Then we're going to go through the neighborhood context, our goals and outreach during our feasibility and design process. We're going to go through the zoning table, the size and scale of the development, building layout, unit counts and lot usage, site access and traffic impact. landscape and trees, resiliency, sustainability, environmental issues, exterior facades, materials, and shadow studies. And we have plenty of time for questions and comments. And if anyone has any questions, I don't know how you guys want to do it as we go through the slides or we just wait till the end. I'm happy to take questions. So these are just some, some of you have seen these few of these pictures before. These are just some of the existing conditions we see around Walkling Court. So it's currently 144 units of state aided public housing for low income seniors and disabled households. All of our units are deeply affordable with our residents income calculated at 30%. So their rent is 30% of their income. And to date, and historically, Walkland Court has not received sufficient operating subsidy to address the physical needs. And specifically because it is state-run public housing, generally federal public housing receives a higher subsidy per unit, which is able to maintain federal developments a lot better than state developments. So Walkman Court was built in 1963 and suffers from a lot of deficiencies, just poor physical conditions. The units, even for public housing, it's the undersized units. It has not been comprehensively modernized. All the electrical is original to the building. The plumbing's original to the building. And one of the biggest things is that it lacks accessibility features needed for seniors and disabled households, no elevators. So half of the units, which are 72 units, need to be assessed by stairs. And as we've explained, as residents age and place there, we get a lot of, it's called reasonable accommodations for residents to move from a second floor unit to a first floor unit, just because the stairs become a real hindrance for our elderly and disabled population. Go to the next slide. This is an aerial view of Walkland Court. There are a total of 11 structures on the site. There's nine residential buildings. They're all pretty much identical, 16 units per building. There is a round community center towards the middle of the site, and on the southeast corner of the site, there's a maintenance garage. And to try to explain, it's a real interesting site because of what borders it. To the West, we have a commercial usage with Whole Foods and Starbucks. To the south is kind of industrial and commercial. You have the MBTA commuter rail. There's the Tufts buildings owned by Cummings. There used to be the the school for cosmetics, and I can't think of the name of the school right now, but just a lot of industrial mid-rise type buildings, Zuhall building. To the east is your typical Medford residential neighborhood, mainly comprising of two family homes, and to our north is the Mystic River Reservation. And the next slide, this shows us from so the top left picture shows from kind of our property line looking West. You can see the parking lot of Whole Foods and Starbucks. That's their loading dock area. On your top right, that is a view looking northeast from Auburn Street, looking towards North Street that just shows the typical two-family Medford residential area. The picture on the bottom is from the North Street bridge showing what that industrial commercial across from the train tracks, mid-rise type buildings. So, the overview of walking court, the goals of the redevelopment are number 1 to provide high quality, accessible and deeply affordable units to our existing 144 residents, 144 units. We're also looking to build 94 net new, deeply affordable units. Within the site and 54 of those being within the 1st phase is going to be 2 phases of this project. The 1st phase is to replace the 144 units and add 54 units of elderly disabled housing in a mid rise building towards the South of the site. We're looking to improve the resiliency and sustainability of the units on the site. And improve the site's connection to the surrounding neighborhood. This site is used as a pedestrian cut through a lot of people coming from North street. Or Boston have like to cut through the site to get to whole foods and to Starbucks. Um, so we're looking to try to improve on that connectivity to the neighborhood and, um, and welcome pedestrian traffic through the site. And the redevelopment of Walkman court is a local priority. The replacement of the existing 144 units and then construction of new units on the site is included in the fiscal year 21 to 25 city of Medford's housing production plan as a strategy to meet the city's housing goals. And all units on the site will remain and will continue to be deeply affordable units. So every single unit is going to be a deeply affordable unit. Tenants rents, residents rents limited to 30% of their income. And if you just go back, so you just want to just show this, this picture is just kind of an elevated view from the corner, kind of from the corner of North street and Auburn street. Showing what the proposed redevelopment would look like with the senior mid rise building towards the south of the site. Then you have the, there's a family so that that building is a 6 story building. The 1st. Story being podium parking and some community and administrative spaces and then 5 floors of residential. Then there's a smaller mid rise building, which is 4 stories. 1st floor being podium parking, possibly podium parking, some community space, and then 3 floors of residential units and then 3 townhouse houses that. directly abut the kind of typical, you know, right along our butters to family homes, which these structures are would be similar to kind of what is it putting them right now? The height, at least, is similar to what's abutting those neighbors right now. So, the resident and neighborhood engagement process started back in the late summer, early fall of 2022. We've had a very active and well attended resident neighborhood engagement process. We've held at least 7 resident meetings. We've held 5 full community or neighborhood meetings. For all of the community meetings, mailings to property owners went out to any abutter touching within 400 feet of any property line. And then we also just went out and delivered flyers to get, we flyer the neighborhoods and went out kind of the blue in this just shows past the 400 feet where we flyer to houses, to households between West Street, Lyman Street, Boston Ave. We also tried to post notices in some of the more heavily trafficked areas through Walkland Court and around Walkland Court on some telephone poles. The MHA has met to date with a variety of city departments, including the fire department, building department, engineering department, DPW. There's also been a lot of public meetings held in relation to the Community Preservation Act funding we received and the zoning that we received back in the fall. And I believe at this time, I'm turning the presentation now over to Hannah Pilsen. If there's a way you could unmute Hannah. Thank you.

[Kilson]: Thanks very much. Good evening, Madam Chair and members of the board. My name is Hannah Kilson. I'm a partner at the law firm of Nolan Sheehan Patton in Boston. I'm in counsel to the Medford Housing Authority. This evening, as we've noted, we're here for site plan review by the board under the Walkland Court Plan Development District provisions of the Medford Zoning Ordinance, which were adopted and approved by Council, the City Council, on November 4th of 2023. We use a shorthand to describe this as the PDD 3. As you know, under the PDD-3, the Community Development Board does perform its site plan review in accordance with Section 94-11.7 of the Zoning Ordinance, and it makes recommendations concerning approval or approval with conditions of the site plan application to the city council, who, acting in its capacity as the special permit granting authority, will issue a special permit for the project. The ordinance specifically notes that any recommended conditions are to take account of the purpose of the PDD-3 and aren't to directly contravene it. The PDD-3 sets forth the purpose, and I think Gabe kind of outlined clearly the purpose of the development of Walkling Court, which is to add to the existing 144 units at the site, another 96 units in order to create 238 deeply affordable units, which will exist in five buildings. The 40 of these units will be family units, as noted, being located in the three townhomes and the four-story mid-rise building. And the balance of these units will be senior and disabled units that are going to be located at that six-story building on the parcel. and this will result in 83% of the units at the site being for seniors and the disabled. This objective, as noted on the slide, is consistent with the City of Medford's 2023 Comprehensive Plan and the City's Housing Production Plan for fiscal year 21 through 2025. I'd like to allow the design team to walk you through the site application to demonstrate its satisfaction of the zoning requirements that are set out in the zoning table and to enable you to make the necessary findings under section 94-11.7.10 of the board. Following that presentation, we'd really welcome any questions or comments concerning the project as a result of the presentation. Thank you. And I think at this point, I'm turning it over to the design team.

[SPEAKER_16]: OK, but would Danny need to be unmuted then? Lee needs to be unmuted. Oh, Lee, sorry. Yeah.

[SPEAKER_12]: Thank you very much, and thank you for meeting with us tonight, Madam Chair and board members. I'd like to continue as both Gabe and Hannah have begun to set forth the description of the property and the description of the project as we have described here. This, I don't want to reiterate too much of what's already been said, so I'll try to speak to other aspects. I have quite a few slides to go through tonight, so I appreciate your attention and your patience, and we'll try to move through them very succinctly. If at any point there's a question or clarification, please do stop me. So, beginning here, this is the overview that you saw earlier that Gabe was presenting of the proposed site development. In the rear is the six-story building. It's actually one building with two wings. They're connected in the middle with a sky bridge on all levels, but that's one building in the rear of podium construction. In the middle of the site is the family building for families with disabilities. And the real benefit of that particular building is it is, like the senior building, it is served by an elevator, which is extremely important for families who have a member of the family with a disability. It's an extremely shortcoming in public housing supply and this is an occasion where we can finally address that great need within the city of Medford. In addition, the balance of the family housing is made up in townhouses as Gabe described. Now the placement of these buildings on the site is critical, we believe, to the project's success because What we're doing here is stitching the neighborhood back together with increased housing units to supply affordable housing that are deeply needed. But in doing so, we're doing our best to mimic the scale and the proportions of the neighborhood. And what I mean by that is the six-story buildings in the back are very similar to the scale of the buildings on the other side of the train tracks from them. That's the Tufts building, the Elizabeth Grady building, the U-Haul storage building. Those are all industrial reuse buildings. They were built for something else before and have been developed to continue their lives and are four to six stories tall and are actually quite large. Our proposed senior building right next to the tracks, in this case, on the other side, is a similar scale. In fact, a little smaller in footprint. As we move toward Auburn Street, toward the right side of the image in this picture, we step down the scale of the buildings very purposefully to match the adjacent construction, the adjacent neighborhoods. By the time you get to backing up to the immediate abutters, the townhouses are the same size as the immediate abutters. The townhouses are two-story buildings with pitch roofs, They're very similar to the double-deckers or triple-deckers in the neighborhood, or even the single-family houses with two, two-and-a-half stories. At that point, you have a backyard to backyard condition like you'd expect to see throughout the neighborhood. In between, the apartment building that sits in the middle is protected from the property edges by pulling it away so that it does not overshadow its neighbors. All of these design moves come from well-established best practices of urban design for walkable neighborhoods and transit-oriented development. Particularly, you saw in an earlier slide, Gabe was showing how the T runs through here and is projected hopefully someday, fingers crossed, that the Green Line extension comes through here as well. This all feeds into that walkable neighborhood philosophy. We'll show you more on the pedestrian safety and traffic calming in the next few slides. Next slide. Thank you. To the left is a footprint plan of the buildings. Building A, all the way to the left, it's a six-story building. That's the big Pisces-shaped building. In the middle building, B is the four-story building, and then C, D, and E are each of those townhouses. The image on the right is what the backyard might look like of the senior building. Looking back toward the track side, back toward the building, it's a protected space just for seniors. Then the bottom right image is a view of what the entrance into Walklane Court may look like. Well, we hope it looks like when this is fully completed with a six-story building in the back and the townhouses in the front. This is actually the same point of view reference that you have currently when you come into Walklane Court off of Auburn Street. Next slide. So the overview of the development in this case is what has already been presented as part of the PDD-3. And this is just showing an illustration of all those numbers and figures to show coverage and poor area and total land area and representations of those various stories. So this is just for reference more than anything. Next slide. When it comes to the exterior of the building, we were very careful to design both the senior apartments, the six-story building, as well as the rest of the buildings on the site. We were deliberately careful to incorporate them into the vocabulary that already exists in the neighborhood. What I mean by that is, architects speak for, we wanted to mimic the building so it feels like it's a part of the context. It's extremely important not only for the residents to feel that they're at home and in a familiar place, but also for the neighborhood to feel like it maybe was always there, hopefully, when it's done. And so we do that through mimicking window size and shape, as you see in the top image, window rhythm of the larger buildings across the tracks with the middle images. And then we also wanted to pull in on some of the The more local aspects of the characteristics of Medford, like bay windows, are extremely prevalent in the residential architecture design of the neighborhood. You see bay windows all over the place. And so we wanted to try to emulate that on a larger scale. And so that's what you're seeing here. And you'll see more of that in the presentation. Next slide. We're achieving the exterior design through familiar and well-observed materials that you see throughout the neighborhood. These are robust versions of residential materials, typically used for buildings of this size. They're lower maintenance, they're very durable and meant to last a long time, but they're very familiar to residential neighborhoods. Board and batten siding, clabbered siding. bricks, cement board panels, and high-quality windows. These are the things that you would want your home made out of, and it's very similar to the context. The only difference is that the quality is of a higher quality grade so that it will last longer and reduce the required maintenance by the housing authority. Next slide. This is the artist rendering, our artist rendering view of the entrance from the North Street Bridge. This is kind of up as you're coming off the bridge, and you'd be turning in. So this is looking north. You can see really carefully, this view shows off really well the scale stepping. So what I mean by that is the big the big building is to the left at six stories and it steps down so that in the back you see the four-story building middle of the site and then over to the right you see through the trees just a little bit that townhouse which is a two-story scale so your your bills with grady building in this case is right to your left and it definitely steps down as you move into the site and uh you're also beginning to see some of the pedestrian calming features and the walkable neighborhood that we're promoting here the crosswalk for example is raised um uh, as you cross over. So it's, it's, it's kind of like a large speed hump called a speed table. And, uh, this, uh, discourages speedy traffic because if you go too fast, you'll bottom out. Um, but also the, the road next down at that point, so there's not parking and a crosswalk. The crosswalk happens at the narrowest portion of the road, which protects pedestrian safety. There's also continuity of sidewalks and curbs and places to sit, all giving drivers the indication that this is a place to slow down. We believe it will discourage cut-throughs, which we'll show a little bit more of later. Next. As we then step away from the senior building and move into the rest of the development, you see here now a little bit of a zoom in on the townhouses. For the townhouses, it's very easy to relate their architecture to the neighborhood because it really is the same stuff. We were very specific in the way we chose shingle roof, asphalt shingle roofs, which are common throughout the neighborhood. Really playing up that bay window right in the middle of the view is a major feature of the townhouses, and also the columned porches. In this case, the townhouses, the middle of each of the townhouses share a columned porch for protected entry for each of the townhouses, but it's a scale-up version of what you'd see throughout the neighborhood. Then lastly, The way that we orient the roof actually helps maintain the character of the neighborhood. As we drove around the neighborhood and walked around and took photos, we found that a lot of the roof's peaks face the street as opposed to just the wide part of the roof. And so we turned each of the ends of the peaks of the townhouses to mimic that proportion so that it looks very much like a single-family or double-family residence throughout the neighborhood. These materials seem very similar to the previous materials because we're using them throughout the site to create continuity and also a homogeneity of architectural expressions so that it really does feel like they belong to each other. The difference would be, of course, we can pick a number of colors from the manufacturer's standard colors and textures to give the whole development a sense of variety and natural construction. So it kind of grows over time kind of thing. And then finally, the last building we're going to talk about is in the middle of the site. And this is the four-story building that Kate mentioned a little bit ago. It's the family building. And this one is very much like a tall townhouse, really. It's like a three-story townhouse on a base or a podium, which is what we call it. And in this one, it was just a play of tall bay windows and kind of a repeating pattern that seems very much like you'd see in kind of a middle-sized building. We also see double hung windows to mimic the standard windows you'd see in residential houses around to try to bring the scale down and make it still personable. Next question. Next one, please. Excellent. And so here's the artist's rendering of that view, a little bit more polished and give you a better sense of what it might be like. You can see we're heavily prioritizing the pedestrian experience. And this shot is really the heart of the neighborhood as it's being redeveloped. offering both parking but also a place to sit, a main entrance to the central building, and also you can see how the buildings around the central family apartment building contribute to the feeling of neighborhood through their scale, placement of street trees, planters, and that kind of thing. I'll walk you through this. We have three different illustrations of a shadow analysis. What we mean by shadow analysis is we take three different times of year and we plot how the shadows will move around the site based on the buildings, the trees, and the neighborhood. We have a spring, fall, equinox here. They're the same, so we just do one of them. Then we have two others, but I'll go through this one first and we can compare. We take a number of times a day. We start with 9 a.m., noon, and 3 p.m., and we see how the shadows swing across the site. Now, at the equinox, the sun's about halfway up of where it'll be throughout the year, so this gives us a pretty good sense of the median. Most of the time, it's somewhere around this. The blue shadows that you're seeing represent the darker the blue color is, the more frequently the area is shadowed. On the left is the existing conditions, and on the right is the proposed condition. You can see by putting the larger buildings toward the bottom of the screen or closer to the tracks, most of the shadows stay on the property most of the time, and the deepest of the shadows remain on the property. You can see that by the dark blue areas around the senior building and also around the family building in the middle. But you can also see the shadows are not substantially larger than what's there now due to the mature trees and to the two plus story apartment buildings. So if we go to the next slide. there's not many shadows at all and that's because this is the summer solstice and this is when the sun is the highest and it's not very hard to keep your shadows on your own site because the sun is very much the highest angle in the sky. But you can see in this case that almost no shadows from our buildings trespass across the property lines. You'll also notice that some of the shade, well actually we'll see that in the next one. Let's go to the last one more. Thank you very much. This is a big comparison. This is showing the winter solstice. In the case of the winter solstice, the sun is always at a low angle. I don't really need to tell you that right now. It's dark outside, but the sun is at a low angle. Much of the shadowing that's happening on the site is actually due to the trees. And the shadows in the neighbors' houses are a combination of the trees and each other's houses. And you'll see that there is a pretty dark section of shadow around the senior building and the family buildings, but so too around the neighborhood. The houses are close enough together in this neighborhood, which is typical in an urban neighborhood like this, that they shadow each other in the winter along with the trees. And so we were very careful in placing the buildings on site to make sure that we would still maintain good solar access for the neighbors and for the buildings ourselves. You can see we're not actually shadowing the middle family building all that much with the senior building, and we made sure to maintain enough space between them so that we could still have really beautifully landscaped areas, trees, and wonderful places to sit even in the winter. Next slide. And so what we're hoping to show here is that through the bulk, meaning size and placement of these buildings and their relative height to each other in the neighborhood, that we have not presented a detrimental effect on the neighborhood, on the private development of it, and on the neighbors as a whole. And I hope you'll find that too. All right, so for this next one, I'm actually going to speak briefly on this, and then we're going to move over to Josue in a couple of slides to get into some more of the more technical site information. But for this first one, this is really just talking about parking. And parking, we know, really boils down to the numbers. Excuse me, Brian, did you? No, oh, you're coming.

[SPEAKER_15]: Just on muted.

[SPEAKER_12]: Okay, very good. No worries. Brian. Brian will join us in just a second to talk about traffic as well. For this 1st, 1. It boils down to the numbers. And in this case, what we're doing is we're providing 153 total parking spaces, which is a little bit more than. the required parking ratio. It's a little bit more, but in actuality ends up being quite a lot more parking spaces more. And so, in this case, we are providing 0.65 parking spaces per unit, which is greater than the 0.5 ratio required by affordable housing. And it's, we're also adding a total of, excuse me, Sorry, I misspoke. For the family, for the senior parking, there'll be the 40 spaces in the building as well as the 99 spaces overall, and then additional 40 spaces for the families. Also included in this count is parking for maintenance, management, and residential staff. So this is commensurate to the parking that's provided at other NHA sites and as well above what is required. Next slide. Thank you. And so now I'd like to bring in Brian to speak a little bit more about the site analysis and traffic.

[SPEAKER_15]: There we go. Thank you. Sorry about that. I was trying to follow directions and raise my hand. My name is Brian Zamocca. I'm a senior project manager at Niche Engineering, where I focus on transportation permitting and planning. So Niche was tasked with developing the traffic study for this project to determine any potential impacts to the neighborhood and the adjacent roadways. This was conducted in November 23. So first, I just want to talk about access and circulation. So this, I mean, it was kind of discussed by Lee a little bit, but the existing access configuration is to maintain a long urban street, which is really essential to understanding, you know, the future circulation. Additional access is proposed on North Street across from Marshall Street, and that's going to be a secondary access that we have determined is going to be less utilized than the Auburn one. I will go into that in a minute. But what I do want to point out on this slide is you can see that the fire department did have input on the access and circulation patterns as well as the width and the team coordinated very well with them to make sure that all the fire department requirements. we're met. I'm going to give you kind of a super high level overview of the traffic study in itself in terms of the data. So what we did, we did our safety analysis. We reviewed crash reports from 2015 to 2019, which is the available acceptable data to the state. And what we found is they're all below state averages. It's not really probably that alarming, but most of the higher number of crashes occurred at Auburn and Mystic Valley and North Street and Boston Ave, which are basically the two main intersections in the neighborhood. There were low number of crashes at all the other intersections. In terms of safety, we're not proposing any mitigation measures anywhere along the site, at least with regard to geometric changes in infrastructure. So let's talk about the amount of trips that this will generate. This is going to generate approximately at the end of the day, about 1,000 daily trips, which sounds a lot more than it is. Because when you think about it in terms of your peak commuter times, you're going to be seeing about 60 in the morning, 70 in the evening. And to just put that in context, that's coming in and out of the site. In one hour, you're going to see one car per minute, which is fairly negligible. And just as a pure context from the actual neighborhood in itself to the east, from Connington Street and West Street, there's going to be one car about 10 minutes. So in essence, you're not going to feel, from a neighborhood perspective, any impact to traffic as a result of this project. What we kind of found for trip distribution. So we do our trip distribution based on the existing travel pattern and access locations. for where the most site-generated traffic will be. We determined, based on the travel patterns, that Auburn Street is going to be the main access driveway, which is then going to lead to any impacts that will occur will occur at Auburn Street and Mystic Valley. We're only estimating about 25% of trips will leave out of the North Street driveway, which is across from Marshall Street, and they will be primarily using the North Street and Boston Ave. So what does that mean in terms of impacts? Very little. There's going to be a slight minor increase in delay at Auburn Street and Mystic Valley, a very, very busy intersection as is. We determined that it could alleviate some congestion and delay by adjusting some minor signal timing changes, but any kind of signal timing changes would have to be, you know, go through City of Medford and the Transportation Department there. Next slide, please. So this one, I'm going to keep it short because Lee pretty much summed up all the pedestrian and safety improvements that are being made on site. Just to kind of rehash what he was saying, you could see that at the gateway midway, narrowing the effective roadway width with bump out shortens the pedestrian crossings and encourages lower speeds. The speed tables, the chicanes that are shown, they're all effective means of slowing traffic. Obviously, going over a speed table, you hit that bump, as Lee mentioned. And then the raised crosswalks that are being shown, similar to the speed tables, they force cars to slow down. And as it relates to pedestrians, they actually encourage a continuous path of travel across the site driveways. And that's really beneficial to make sure that We maintain that ADA compliance and maintain a safe crossing for anybody just walking along the road and not necessarily going into the actual site. I'm going to stop there and I'll pass it on to the next person.

[SPEAKER_12]: Thank you very much. Thank you, Brian. I really appreciate that. In addition, I want to push home that last point a little bit more. using technical description of gateways is it's going to feel more like you're driving into a driveway coming into the site on Walkland Court, either from North Street or from Auburn, than it will feel like a road intersection. That's because you're going to drive up and into the site rather than it being fully flush. So you drive essentially up over the sidewalk, the ramp of course, but it feels more like a driveway. And that will So that was a request the city had in our meeting that we had with them with the department heads and we really appreciate that suggestion because that really helps us refine how we're going to pull this off so thank you Brian for reminding me of that. The next slide more. Thank you very much. So trash disposal, this is a huge issue in the city. And I know that because rodent controls is a big issue. The big takeaway here is that buildings A and B, so the six story senior building and the four story family building that are in the middle of site will both be served by enclosed trash rooms inside the building. They'll have trash chutes, trash compactors and contain trash rooms. So no trash will be outside the site until trash day when the bins are wheeled out there, taken by the trash trucks and then they're wheeled back in. The three townhouse buildings, a total of 16 units, will share one dumpster enclosure that's indicated here far away from the adjacent neighbors, well within the site. And that is an effective reduction of households using exterior trash storage from 144, which it is now, down to just 16. So this is a huge improvement as far as road control and trash and waste control on the site. These trash rooms, chutes, and waste structures like the dumpster caddy, if you will, were coordinated with the city and coordinated with MHA to accommodate easy pickup and delivery. moving through the site with the trash trucks. Sorry, it's getting late. Next slide, please. So for this slide, I am actually going to bring Josue Valdez into the conversation from Professor O'Neill, and he's going to talk a little bit about the public infrastructure. Thank you, Josue.

[3gvhm0AovZU_SPEAKER_19]: Do I have my hand raised? Sorry for that. Thank you. My name is Josue Valdez. I'm a civil engineer with FOSA O'Neill, and we are pretty much the side civil consultants for the project, working closely with DEETS and the rest of the design team. So overall for the site, I'm here to speak a little bit on the utilities and how we are servicing the site. Overall, we are proposing all new utilities for the site. I'm going to start by talking a little bit about stormwater. It's an important one here. Currently, the site has no stormwater treatment or storage on site. which in the long run could affect properties that are kind of downstream because they're being impacted by the runoff from the site. Under the proposed condition, we are proposing multiple best management practices from a stormwater standpoint to promote stormwater storage. treatment, and infiltration on site. So all of that is going to happen before the stormwater actually leaves our property, to put it in simple ways. So that will help decrease any downstream stormwater problems that could be happening on the neighborhood. From a water perspective, we're going to be proposing a new 8-inch water line that is going to be looping throughout the site. What we mean by looping is that we are actually going to be connecting Auburn and North Street with the 8-inch water main. Why is this important to note? Because by doing this, we're actually providing a new have for the water service, that if any maintenance or repairs needs to happen within the intersection of Alvern and North Street, technically our 8-inch main shore site could be used as a temporary water main for the rest of the adjacent properties. Telecom, gas and electric will also be new services connecting to the existing services on Auburn and North Street. And from a sewer perspective, we're going to be also providing new services half of the site and by half I actually mean the senior building is going to be actually connecting to the existing public sewer main on North Street. Meanwhile, the family buildings are the one more towards the north where you have the townhomes and the four-story family building are going to be serviced from Elroy Street. Overall, our findings showed, after coordination with the city, city engineer, DPW, and all the entities involved, and our own calculations, that the proposed project should not create an adverse impact on the public services of the city, and that the current public services should be sufficient to provide enough of these utilities for the proposed project. So now I will handle back to Dingis Lee again. Thank you.

[SPEAKER_12]: Thank you very much. I really appreciate that. At this point, we'd like to bring in Kelly Ashton from Terra Inc. Kelly is our landscape architect. She's going to speak to a number of landscape design aspects and the tree characteristics over the next four or five slides. Kelly.

[SPEAKER_02]: Thank you, Lee. Good evening, everyone. Thank you for having me here. My name is Kelly Ashton. I'm with Terra Inc. We're the landscape architects on the project working closely with DEETS and the design team. So I'm just going to do a quick little overview here of the landscape plan. The overall goal was to really just enhance what's already there by creating a welcoming sense of place for both the residents, the neighbors, and the visitors. We're doing that by creating some accessible walkways throughout with some spaces for gathering. As we know, the existing trees here are a very cherished amenity. So we're trying hard to preserve as many as we possibly can, while being very mindful of safety. So we'll get into a slide about that shortly. And then we're also introducing some new trees of varying species to provide shade, provide seasonal interest, and then also just to really harness this sense of place. Next slide, please. So here, this is just, that's just again, zooming in on the landscape plan here. So you can really see some of the existing trees or the larger canopies. And then some gathering nodes throughout and then the accessible walkways. Next slide. So here is an overview of. Basically, when we looked at the site, you know, we do a thorough evaluation of given the strict constraints of where construction is happening in proximity to root zones. Also, in conjunction with a thorough arborist report of the health and vigor of each existing tree on site, we were able to assess 52 mature trees on site, eight of which will be able to safely preserve. And then 12 are actually pear trees that were recently planted that will be relocated to another property. And so those trees are highlighted in green that we are preserving. Next slide, please. And then here is just a really brief conceptual overview showing what the trees will look like in canopy from an aerial view over time. So the first three images at the top are actually a graphic of the welcome port development. showing phase 1 of the senior housing, what the trees will look like at installation. The next photo to the right is what they will look like in 10 years from installation. And then the final image to the far right is what they would look like in about 20 years. So it's a graphic representation to conceptually illustrate over time what those trees will look like from canopy. Below that is an example of a project in real, imagery of similar to compare what that looks like from install three years, 10 years to 20 years. And from there, I'll hand it back over to the team. Thank you.

[SPEAKER_12]: Thank you, Kelly. I really appreciate that. I look forward to the discussion about this as well. But this is a wonderful prediction of where we're going with the site. So the next slide, please, Maura. So I thank everyone for your patience. I see we're coming up on about an hour now since the beginning of the meeting. And I know we've gone over a lot. We're almost finished with the architectural presentation at this point. But there are a couple of really important things that we want to talk about. One of them is the site lighting and safety. The site lighting is so key to both a safe environment in an urban context, but also a healthy environment. And what I mean by that is we don't want the lighting that we use to illuminate the site at night. to spill over onto the neighbor's properties, what's called light trespass. It's not allowed and it's not good for plants and other animals, especially ourselves if you happen to have a bedroom near the site. So what we're designing for the site is a two-tiered lighting structure, which you can see here. There's pedestrian lighting at just 10 feet above the sidewalks, which is a wonderful height because it's tall enough to be out of reach, but not so tall that that it feels like you're flooding the entire area with light. So it's a human scale pedestrian lighting, and those will be on poles, as you're seeing in this illustration. And then just a little bit further up at 14 feet is the site parking lighting. And 14 feet is actually pretty low for site parking lighting, but it was deliberately set at that height because that's the height of the second floor of our buildings, both the senior building and the mid-rise family building, and we don't want the lights to shine into people's apartments there either. These are 100% full cut-off fixtures. What that means is no light goes up from these fixtures. All the light is going down. If you take a look around on your way home tonight through your neighborhood, you'll notice that a lot of the light coming off of street lights and other kinds of site lights tends to go way up in the air and flood the sides of buildings and the atmosphere. And we're taking a very proactive approach here to use full cutoff fixtures to light only what we need to, the site we're actually walking and parking. with adequate light for safety and nothing else. And to prove that out a little bit more, the next slide shows what that looks like through photometric analysis. So this is an actual analysis done by a lighting engineer for our project, showing where the cutoff of those lights sits on the site. So these lights have a rather focused spread, and you can see here that almost none of this light goes across the property line. There's a little trespass on the far left side onto the MBTA site where the train tracks are, but no one's actually living there, so that shouldn't be an issue. And also, it is at the exit point of one of our drives coming out of the parking garage, so we want to make sure that's adequately lit. There's a little trespass also on North Street up against that retaining wall, but the retaining wall rises, so that may not be trespassing at all. But you can see that all the pedestrian and vehicular areas are adequately lit for safety in the public realm. Not the backyards, but the front yards. And that is actually, I think, the end of the design presentation. You'll see through the site design that you've seen today that we hope you can find that we're protecting the natural resources and that we're providing a safe and well-lit environment that is adequate for the neighborhood safety and does not diminish the usability of the adjacent properties. I think that's it. Next slide. For this, I'm going to go back to, is it Gabe or Jeff? Are you going to finish up on this one?

[Unidentified]: Sorry.

[SPEAKER_12]: It's still me. Pardon me. I'll do one more.

[Ciccariello]: Jeff was gonna wrap it up.

[SPEAKER_12]: Okay. So if we could give Jeffrey Driscoll the mic. Thank you. Thank you, Jeff.

[Jeffrey Driscoll]: I'm having difficulty. Okay. Can you hear me? Yes, we can. Thank you. OK, great. The overview of what can let me first start and say again, my name is Jeffrey Driscoll. I'm the executive director of the Housing Authority. And as he of the Medford Housing Authority, I'm cognizant of the impact the authority has upon the community. Housing authorities provide a lifeline. for low-income individuals and families who, in many instances, may otherwise face housing insecurity and even homelessness. And this is what we deal with on a daily basis. What's different in Medford is through our efforts, and you've seen a number, or heard from a number of skilled designers today who have assisted us to get to this point. And I'm very appreciative. Madam Chair and board members to be before you today and hopefully being able to carry on, allow us to carry on with our mission. Our efforts have gone beyond that which a housing authority ordinarily would be undertaking. I like to say that we're one of, if not the most progressive housing authority in an apolitical way in Massachusetts and even beyond those borders. between what we are doing at 121 Riverside at Saltonstall Apartments, increasing from 200 units to 222 units, $146 million project that we're undertaking there, and then coming forward with the redevelopment of Walkling Court. which has traditionally, in my experience, and I go back with the Housing Authority into the 80s, I became directly involved as legal counsel in 2009 and executive director and legal counsel in 2017, and what sets us apart is the fact that we're not looking to maintain, only maintain our units, we're looking to extend those beyond the boundaries that most housing authorities are able to undertake and accomplish. And Walker & Court in my estimation, and that of others, has oftentimes been thought of as the poor sister of the housing authority. And Gabe alluded to that earlier this evening by indicating that the support that the housing authority received from the state was of a lesser degree than that of our federal properties. And the vast majority of our properties our federal, this project will transfer the subsidy for this from state to federal, which will allow the Housing Authority to affirmatively impact the lives of numerous individuals and families for many years to come. As far as the The conclusion, my conclusion is to discuss that, and I think Hannah, was Hannah going to discuss the zoning aspect of it? I don't want to jump on your slide, Hannah. Jeff, I'm going to talk to the zoning at the end if you're done, but let me go through the conclusion on the local social and economic benefits, and then you can wrap up on the zoning. How's that sound? Okay, great. All right. As Gabe mentioned, and Lee also, we're preserving 144 existing deeply affordable units for low-income seniors and disabled individuals. Those units are not capable of providing adequate assistance and housing services to the individuals who are there at this point in time. The authority has attempted through the years with the limited funding to address the situation. The authority's walking court today is in a much better condition than it was just a few years ago. Still doesn't compare with our federally subsidized developments. Building 94 additional deeply affordable units. Again, this was stated by both Gabe and Lee in a transit rich community and within walking distance of the new Tufts Green Line stop. Providing a range of housing through the inclusion of elevator-accessible family units and smaller family units. This is something that Lee touched upon. In the housing industry, it is extraordinarily rare to find accessible units on the private market, never mind on a publicly subsidized market. And so this is in dire need of this being provided. And as Lee indicated, there is a building that will be elevated assistance for families, improving sustainability and resiliency to climate change, meeting state and city sustainability requirements in the enterprise green communities, and improving energy efficiency, ventilation, and HVAC, stormwater management, and removing hazardous materials on site. Let's step away from the engineering aspect of this and think about the impact that this has upon the quality of lives of the individuals who will be living in these units in comparison, in particular, to the folks who are presently living in the units that we're looking to transfer them into these new units. The quality of life will improve significantly. In integrating Walkling Court site into the neighborhood, I've said from the very beginning that the Medford Housing Authority wants to be a good neighbor, and we have taken great strides, at least in my opinion, and those of our team. We've made great strides in attempting to take into consideration the comments and the input from the community, and I believe with the strongest belief I have that the designers have taken that into consideration with what you see tonight. And this has been done through the new street design which was stated was the recommendation and the requirement of the fire department, residential streetscapes, the landscaping, and the transition of density across the site. In addition to that we've had numerous discussions as far as the landscaping and in particular trying to save and maintain as as many of the trees as possible. What hasn't been mentioned, what hasn't been mentioned is the economic benefit. The fact that $166 million in local economic activity through the construction will generate or support up to 968 jobs. That's what we forecast. That's what we forecast. This is an economic vehicle for the city. And with the participation of the city to this point, it has enabled the Housing Authority to receive millions of dollars projected and committed at this point from the state for us to be able to transition this. In addition to that, Walkling Court is something that I envision the neighborhood and the community to be able to utilize. And so that we fully anticipate, and I've had communications with the mayor as recently as within a week or two, prior to this, that Walkling Court is a polling place at this point in time. It'll continue to be a polling place upon completion of construction, and it will be for the March 5th election that is coming up. But in addition to that, it's my hope that the facilities we have here, the community room that can be divided into two and hold up to or the vicinity between 150 and 200 people, can be something that can be utilized not only by the local neighborhood, but also by the community as a whole. So that aspect of being a good neighbor is extraordinarily important to me. And that is one of the reasons why the Housing Authority has had numerous meetings with the with the residents on site, with the neighbors, with every department in the city that has a say in this, and also some interest groups. So I'd like to just end on my aspect is on behalf of the Housing Authority as a whole, in our board of commissioners, our employees, our residents, our current residents, and for those individuals and families who will one day live in one of these apartments here at Walkling Court, I thank you for the opportunity to be before you tonight and ask you for your support. And I say thank you very much from the bottom of my heart.

[Kilson]: Thanks, Jeff. I will try to be brief, because as Lee alluded, we know that we've been in discussion with you for about the last hour and a half, and we want to leave room for questions. At this point, through the presentation, I do think that now the findings that the board needs to make in its site plan review process, the design team has really given you, I think, sufficient information to find that the project does not create any of the hazards or safety concerns relative to parking or vehicle usage, that the bulk location and height of the buildings are consistent with what's permitted under the PDD-3 in terms of the zoning, in terms of the density and the positioning. We submitted a preliminary site plan when the PDD-3 was approved and the site plan application and the plans provided to the board are consistent with that and therefore continue to be consistent with the PDD-3 approval. and all the dimensional requirements have been satisfied. And so at this point, I think we would like to open the floor for any questions from the board, as we do think that the information provided to the presentation will enable you to satisfy the seven findings that are required under the site plan review.

[Paulette Van der Kloot]: Thank you so much, Attorney Kilson and Mr. Driscoll and the entire team of representatives of MHA. We appreciate you going through the details of this proposed project. I do, before I open it up to others, I have one clarifying question. We did not hear more about the noise. I want to make sure I didn't miss something on noise standards. And if there was previously, there was a concern with tenants being too close to a railroad or something like that, and I want to make sure that we have already accounted for that instance as far as noise. Noise as a nuisance, pretty much.

[Kilson]: So I can start with that, but I also think Lee, if you're on, Lee and Margaret can come in. In terms of the site plan, criteria, noise isn't specifically called out, but at this project for the property, for the building that abuts the railroad, it has been designed to ensure that it satisfies actually the HUD requirements relative to decibel levels inside each of the units. And Lee, maybe you can speak to the glass painting that we're utilizing and the insulation to meet those requirements.

[SPEAKER_12]: Absolutely. Thank you, Hannah. Yes, the windows and if actually if we could more equate a backup to just an overall site plan that might be helpful. Anyone will do. Beautiful. The windows and the walls that face, in this case, left on the screen in the senior building are, for lack of a more technical term, they're beefed up so that they can resist the sound coming in from the train as it passes by both the commuter rail and the Nor'easter on the commuter rail tracks. In particular, I have some samples behind me actually. In particular, the windows that we're using are a higher quality and higher weight window than you normally see in residential application. And the glass is actually a laminated glass to help resist the sound infiltrating through. The exterior wall itself is made of a durable cement board siding. with additional insulation and there's actually two layers of drywall on the inside of that wall to help resist the sound coming through. This is all as the result of recommendations by an acoustical engineer brought specifically onto the project to address the noise coming in from the railroad track side of the property. Additionally, the acoustical engineer gave us a wonderful review and feedback along the way from the very earliest stages of design, commenting even on the shape of the building back during feasibility study over a year ago, to help select a building shape that would not reverberate or make the sound worse as the train went by. And this is two things that it protects, it helps to protect the sound from the residents living in that building, but it also, because it's a six-story building, and as you can see, covers most of the property line adjacency, With the railroad tracks, that six-story building reflects the sound away for the rest of the site and helps protect the rest of the site as well. I do want to say that we are actually in discussion with the MBTA right now on logistics of additional sound mitigation, but that's still to be determined with the MBTA as far as site mitigation is concerned.

[Paulette Van der Kloot]: Thank you. I appreciate it. And at this point, I do know that there was some feedback from the department heads, and I'm not sure if you've all had a chance to read those. And so instead of going through them as the conditions, I'm going to open up to the board to see if the board has any clarifying questions prior to me opening up to the public. Does anyone from the board have questions? And I can't see. And if I can please ask, just so that we can see everyone, whoever is sharing the screen, if you can please stop sharing at this point. If there's any members of the board that have questions prior to opening it up to the public. Any clarifying questions? Okay, seeing none. This is a public hearing, so I will now open it up for public comment. Those who wish to provide comments can use the raise hand feature or message Danielle in the comments. You can also send an email to OCD at Medford-MA.gov. Before providing your comments, please state your name and address for the record. A reminder to all meeting participants to please refrain from using the chat function to provide comments as it's not part of the public record. However, if a participant is having audio or other technical difficulties, this may be entered into the chat to alert myself or staff. Danielle, can you please manage the public comment queue and read any previously sent emails or letters in the order in which you choose?

[Danielle Evans]: I just unmuted Tom Lincoln.

[Tom Lincoln]: Yes. Okay, I have the floor. My name is Tom Lincoln. I live at 27 Gleason Street. I'm here with Sue Gerald from trees Medford regarding tree mitigation for the. walk-in court redevelopment. We sent the board and Danielle our proposal and a letter on January 8th. So you've had it for about a month. We also had a fruitful discussion actually yesterday with the Medford Housing Authority. Basically our concern is that in removing 30 mature trees the project while having many, many other wonderful environmental benefits will result in a deficit on tree canopy. And it's the stated policy of the city of Medford to protect our tree canopy. If you've lived in Medford for any amount of time, you know, trees have been a perennial, make a bad pun here, a perennial issue, something that the city at least in my opinion and opinion of many others has struggled with making some progress, but certainly in the context of general aesthetics and environment, as well as climate change and resiliency, something that we really need to ramp up here. So what we concluded and discussed with the Medford Housing Authority yesterday using really a methodology that is perfectly sensible and based entirely on information received from the Medford Housing Authority. We concluded that and are requesting that a condition be added to permission and we will also do this at the Medford City Council. I'm not sure exactly of the formalities here in this situation, that a mitigation payment be made into a tree fund to fund additional tree plantings outside the site. We have proposed two amounts based on two different logical ways of calculating this of $90,000 and change and $108,000 and change. The Housing Authority in the discussion yesterday committed to a payment of $50,000 towards this purpose. And so we think that's a wonderful starting point. I really appreciate their interest in serving the broader community interests and environmental interests here in the city of Medford. So we want to be sure that that is part of your consideration of the permit, and we're certainly will be pursuing the same tactic at the Medford City Council on February 20th. One last thing here, this basically, as far as we can tell, basically pays for about half of what is needed to make up the deficit in tree size, tree girth, tree diameter, I guess is the right word, excuse me, And so we will be pursuing with the city and in cooperation with the Medford Housing Authority for our discussion yesterday, other sources to make up the difference between $50,000 and what is needed for full mitigation. So I wanna be sure that that is on the record here. Yeah.

[Paulette Van der Kloot]: Sorry, I don't mean to cut you off, but I wanna make sure that everyone is limited and able to get through with their comment.

[Tom Lincoln]: Okay, so I just wanna be sure this happens because it already has happened.

[Paulette Van der Kloot]: Thank you.

[Danielle Evans]: The next speaker I have is Ken Kraus.

[Krause]: Thank you. My name is Ken Krause. I live at 50 Mystic Street, about four blocks from the site, albeit on the other side of the river and Mystic Valley Parkway. I just wanted to express my 100% support for this project. I feel it's 40 years overdue, badly needed, particularly in terms of accessibility improvements. I feel it's been carefully designed and a lot of consideration has been given to input from the community. And I thank you for that. I'm very excited that the family units are part of the proposal, because I think that's an urgently needed aspect of housing in Medford. And it's also going to add some vibrancy to this site that I think is very exciting to see in the future. I didn't see the whole presentation, but I had a couple of other observations. One, I did hear that 153 parking spaces was a little higher than required. I was kind of curious why they felt that was necessary given the nature of the people that will be living here and probably not a big parking driving demand. I also didn't see, and I hope there's bicycle parking, included, both for residents and visitors. Also hope that the community center will continue to be part of this. I heard a mention that this voting place and there is a community center now, as was mentioned at the beginning. And then last, I'd just like to encourage the city to continue to improve the pedestrian network in the vicinity of the complex because it's badly lacking, particularly along the Mystic River on the Auburn Street side. And in terms of accessibility, while it's nice to have the West Medford commuter rail station there, it's useless now because it's not handicap accessible at all. So if you're have accessibility needs or in a wheelchair, you can't use the train. So hopefully there'll be continued effort to improve the accessibility of the train station there and other accommodations in the vicinity so people can get to the many other destinations nearby. So those are my comments and I urge the board to approve the project as presented. Thank you.

[Paulette Van der Kloot]: Thank you, Mr. Krause.

[Danielle Evans]: Next person is Teresa DuPont.

[Theresa Dupont]: Hi everybody. As Daniel mentioned, my name is Teresa DuPont. I am the Community Preservation Act Coordinator here in the City of Medford, and what that means is I help support the Community Preservation Committee that helps award funding to various projects. I'm here to speak on behalf of the CPC in support of this project, and we've put our money where our mouth is here. We've had the opportunity to not once, twice, but actually three times help support Walkling Court in their pre-development costs. CPA is super focused on affordable housing, supporting it, generating it here in the city. And we're happy to have helped bring it to this point. And I'm excited to hear that we're going to be able to welcome 94 more families into the Medford community. So again, I just wanted to speak in support of this application. Thank you.

[Paulette Van der Kloot]: Thank you, Mr. Pugh. I don't see any other hands raised. Daniel, do you have public comments to read?

[Danielle Evans]: We did receive two emails that came in since I had sent out the packets with the other public comment. We have a email from from Susan's rod. I tutored a sick elderly immigrant there. She couldn't manage without an elevator. Don't listen to the NIMBY Neighbors. It's a beautiful project, long overdue. Complaints about six stories being too tall are laughable, especially when one looks at the extra floors being put on Riverside Ave or New York City. Thank you. Susan Gerard, long-term Medford resident, 26 Farragut Ave, Medford. And then I have one from William Navarre. We live at 108 Medford Street, apartment 1B. I support the walk and court project. I think it's good and that there'll be more housing for people to live here in Medford. Even good if families can live in Medford. It's also okay if there are taller buildings than there were before. Our cities became more desirable and prosperous than they were in the past. And those are the ones that I saw in the inbox. I don't see any other raised hands.

[Paulette Van der Kloot]: Okay, seeing none, I'm going to close the public comments portion and ask the board again if there's any other information that they want to have clarified. before deliberation?

[Alicia Hunt]: Jackie, I just want to, as part of the public comment for the record, you do have the, to acknowledge that you guys received the letter from Therese Medford, you've reviewed it. I just thought we should confirm that. And then there was a paper letter that was dropped off today and scanned in. So it was in your packet that I wanted to confirm also for the public record that you have that.

[Paulette Van der Kloot]: Thank you, Alicia. I appreciate that. I've been remiss on the actual public comments, but I'm hoping that from your end, you can share that information.

[Alicia Hunt]: Okay. So there was also a previous email that was received several days ago. Sorry, it's forwarded by one of our staff, so I was just reviewing that. January 24th. Do we want I haven't read it. This one goes on for five pages, four or five pages. So I'm not sure that we can read the whole thing rather summarize. And then there was the one that I don't know if Danielle, if you were, sorry, I had them open, there we go. I'm afraid of mispronouncing her last name. Marianne Andonucci submitted a paper letter today that we scanned in and provided to the board. It also goes on for two and a half pages. Do you want us to read the whole thing for the record?

[Paulette Van der Kloot]: What is the legality of it? Do you have to acknowledge it or read the entire?

[Alicia Hunt]: Summarize it, Ms. Antonucci requested that you reread her letter that she submitted previously with all of her concerns for the previous public hearing. She was reiterating them. She had concerns about how the traffic study was conducted. She felt that it wasn't a long enough traffic study, that it was only conducted during weekdays and not on the weekend. And sorry, I'm skimming and reading. She is very concerned that the residents in the neighborhood haven't been heard, that the design doesn't reflect that. She again does not like that the design has people facing train tracks and buildings, and that that's what they're gonna be looking at, the industrial buildings. and she's concerned about the additional traffic impacts on the neighborhood, and she was concerned about the shadows that are planned that the six-story building would cast on the abutting residential neighborhood. Again, I'm only repeating what she said. There was no way to... And then the... the connecting street, there was some concern about fire truck access, and she felt there wasn't space for the fire truck. in addition to passenger vehicles, and that there are large 18-wheel trucks that come down North Street, and that there's a steep incline of North Street, and that a fully loaded 18-wheel truck would have trouble stopping at the bottom where people are crossing the street. And so she asks that you not approve the development. I'm hoping that if anybody feels I haven't summarized that pretty well.

[Paulette Van der Kloot]: This is not to negate any kind of concerns or anything, but as far as not having enough space for a fire truck, I am sure at this point the fire chief would have address that at this point. So I would look to the city to make sure that that was handled. And then the traffic engineer for the traffic study has accepted the traffic study with conditions. As far as the height, the whole idea of it being a zoning amendment was to accommodate the project for a path forward. So I'm not sure how to address the comments. going forward if they've been sufficiently covered.

[Alicia Hunt]: Right. And you don't need to respond to public comments. You only need to hear them.

[Paulette Van der Kloot]: You don't need to respond to them. I just, I don't want the public to think that we're not taking their concerns into question, but I'm just trying to highlight that these are things that have been fully vetted and addressed by city officials and Method House and in their team. Yeah.

[Alicia Hunt]: I agree with you. I refrained from actually commenting as I read the letter, but I agree many of those were addressed by the team. And did you have anything else that you wanted to highlight? The other letter came in a week or two ago, so I'm assuming the board had a chance to see it. And it's primarily about building heights and traffic issues, concerns about increased traffic, increased about the shadows again, which I mean, we saw from the shadow studies, but the resident was concerned and increased traffic in the area was concerned. Personal attacks on staff members. So I'm choosing not to actually read that. I don't think we need to read those out loud. Making sure there's sufficient traffic calming was the big concern in that section. She did not like the community meetings, but again, that's not what you're looking at in the state plan review. So that generally summarized. And that letter, the housing authority saw in advance as well. It was provided to them because it came in early enough for them to see it.

[Paulette Van der Kloot]: At this point, I would, if Medford Housing or any of its representatives would like to touch upon any of the concerns that have been placed before them, they're more than welcome to. I personally don't find it necessary because it has been presented in detail. And then following up with the conditions, I think that will cover most of the other concerns. But I'm going to leave that up to my fellow.

[Kilson]: Madam Chair, I think that we would agree that all of the concerns that were raised in the public comment we have, we've addressed in the site plan application and in the presentation done today. So, I think the only question, it may be the question of biking. There was a question made about providing centrifugal biking, and maybe you can speak to that. I think we advised people before about that there will continue to be a community center as a component of the project. And Lee can speak to the biking net spaces that's being provided.

[SPEAKER_12]: Thank you, Anna, and thank you Madam Chair. Yes, we are accommodating bikes on site and within the senior building. Within the senior building, in the podium level of the parking on the first floor, there's an enclosed bike storage area for residents to use to encourage uh bike transportation and also to reduce the the need of cars hopefully but it is a substantial amenity it's a locked bike storage facility within the senior building similarly on site next to the proposed family apartment building there's also a bike rack there as well and so there's encouragement for for bike use throughout the site as well as as we discussed earlier best practices for site development for safe streets so that biking would be accommodated there In regard to the community center, we didn't really get much into the actual insides of the architecture today, but facing. Walkland Court, as you come in, that view as you come in from the Auburn Street past the townhouses and facing the Bain Senior Building, the very first thing you're met with is the community center on the first floor. It is the front door of the new senior building and it is at the center and the heart of the community at Walkland Court. And it features both the offices, the administrative offices for the Housing Authority for Walkland Court and also for the family buildings, but it also has a multi-use community room. And I think it was Jeff that mentioned that that community room is actually flexible and can be divided in two to accommodate either voting as a polling place, it can be opened up for the entire building for large events for bingo night or whatever it may be. But that community room is directly accessible from the exterior, as well as securely through the building, and is meant as a resource for the building and the community as a whole. And it's also directly adjacent to an outdoor patio space that it spills out onto. And so this is really meant to be the heart of the neighborhood and something that not only the residents can pull on, but the neighborhood can feel connected to.

[Paulette Van der Kloot]: Thank you. So again, at this time, I am going to open up to the board again for clarifying comments and deliberation. Ari, I had seen your hand raised first. Do you want to go ahead and speak, Ari?

[Ari Fishman]: Sure. It was a clarification question that arose during the public comment about traffic that The presentation of the traffic study said that no additional traffic calming measures were suggested beyond the plateau tables on the street. Can you just clarify those? There's more than one of those. They're spaced evenly throughout the complex, correct?

[SPEAKER_12]: Yes, thank you. I can also bring Brian in, but the basic design is there's a raised table cross at the center of where the road bends, and then also there are raised sidewalks and raised crosswalks, excuse me, at either end as you come in. So those are elements within the traffic calming as well as the apron that we talked about that you drive over to get in and the narrowing of the street. Brian, did I represent that accurately?

[SPEAKER_15]: Yeah, but I just want to note the reference to the no traffic calming measures in the traffic study is in reference to on the adjacent roadways, not the site itself. So there's traffic calming measures on site, but we're planning no infrastructure modifications in the roadways. Thank you.

[Ari Fishman]: Thank you for the clarification.

[SPEAKER_15]: No problem.

[Danielle Evans]: If I may, through the chair, The Director of Traffic and Transportation recommended some pedestrian safety improvements at the intersection of Route 16 and Auburn Street, which included replacing the pedestrian signal heads that are missing and to upgrade the ones that don't have the countdowns, to upgrade those to include the countdown, and also to put pedestrian warning signage at that free right turn when traveling on Route 16. route 16 on to Auburn Street, and also to paint some yield striping or however, whatever the appropriate treatment is. Just to clarify that there will be some mitigation there.

[Paulette Van der Kloot]: Yes, thank you, Daniel. I was actually, my question was when I heard that there was not going to be a proposal in traffic mitigation, that's what I want to go back and want to know what the proponent had, if you had had a chance to read the department head comments, or if that was something that we were going to collectively do at the end with conditions, if there was approval. But there are a significant amount of conditions that we'll have to go over prior to us being able to approved site plan or recommend to the city council for a special permit at this point. And hearing no other comments from the board, I do know, and based on my review and based on confirmation from the city, the plans have not changed based on what was adopted and recommended by the CDB board, by the city council previously. So at this point, if we did want to approve, I'm guessing we would be looking at the conditions as presented. And if Danielle, I know that in lieu of saying comply with this person's memo dated X or that person's memo, if you can neatly collect them and pretty much go down the line for us so we're all on the same page and understand what those conditions are before the proponent.

[Danielle Evans]: Yes. So I tried to kind of parse these out, also weighing some of the recommendations versus requirements and what would be appropriate for this project. So the, I'm wondering, should I share the screen so these are visible? Or what do you prefer?

[Paulette Van der Kloot]: Yes, that would be helpful.

[Danielle Evans]: Hey, is this too small? Should I make it one page?

[Alicia Hunt]: Yes.

[Danielle Evans]: You couldn't see us nodding our heads. I don't know how to do that. Why does it want to do that? Here we go. So some of this is like the boilerplate, you know, we'll put in the control plans, whether not to be modified, that has to be recorded. So for the meat of the condition, so traffic and transportation conditions, so in coordination with the director of traffic and transportation and subject to DCR approval, because Route 16 is a DCR road, so, In the end, it comes down to whether DCR will allow it. The applicant shall add and incorporate into phasing any missing pedestrian signal heads buttons at the signalized approaches at the intersection of Route 16 and Auburn Street. The applicant shall upgrade non-countdown pedestrian signal heads to countdown type heads. The second traffic condition is in coordination with the director of traffic and transportation. So to DCR approval, the applicant shall add pedestrian warning signage on the un-signalized approaches to the intersection, free right turn from Route 16 to Auburn Street, and yield markings prior to the crosswalk. And pedestrian warning signage is essentially, it could be just a sign, just a standard aluminum sign that has some kind of warning, or it could be in conjunction with those standing signs that you see in crosswalks that if you hit it, it flings back. It kind of slows people down and alerts you that folks could be crossing there. So little treatments like that could really help the pedestrian experience there. And then for the engineering division conditions. Some of these might have been addressed. Since these were drafted by the city engineer. Most of these are requirements. So there's engineering directive number three. that all the existing concrete curbing be replaced with granite curbing and that the curbing and sidewalk between the development and Auburn Street would be realigned. So the walking core and then there's like a gap and then it's the public street that all be aligned to be one cohesive sidewalk system that's all been replaced. And then several of these are about revising the modeling for the stormwater drainage system, just to confirm pipe sizing, updates to plan sets to show that sewer and stormwater piping crossing locations have the correct separation of six inches, that the water quality structures are sized appropriately, that roof drains, you know, direct to infiltration systems and that they're sized appropriately. Fire services shall be triple gated to allow individual building isolation. There was a request to change the water main materials. It was shown to be concrete concrete encased or something like that I'm not the engineer, but it's the water main shall be encapsulated in a polyethylene casement in accordance with city standards. Basically, the things that the city engineer picked up I see Jose has raised his hand. Shall I unmute him. Yes. Okay.

[3gvhm0AovZU_SPEAKER_19]: Okay. Can you guys hear me? Yeah. Thank you, Daniel. So I thought that it would like, um, helpful to mention that, um, um, or when I'm sitting in here has been pretty, you know, helpful and like, we've worked together with him. Um, and there is an email from Owen. Um, he sent to us, um, yesterday, um, when we had the last call with him, he said that he was going to be reaching to you, Daniel. I'm not really sure if he did. to let you know that we have met the engineering division conditions with our latest review or revisions of the plan set and our response to comments letter and that the engineering division will do one last review of the entire, you know, stormwater and plans once we are submitting for building permits application, but that will be like a separate kind of like review from this. So I'm not sure if he has reached out to you, but, um, I do know that's what, um, he, he told me on an email.

[Danielle Evans]: Oh yeah. Cause I did send these to him. Um, but that was, um, this morning. So, but I think if you guys were communicating yesterday, today, then yeah, that's probably what happened. Yeah. So if you're complying with these, then it doesn't matter because it's, you're complying. Okay. So we can skip down so there's the fire department conditions, which are, I have not put them in here, but it'd be what the. The letter stated, which are all pretty standard, the health department. And these are all in the. the file, the online file, if any folks want to look at the comments and read them themselves, they are available along with all the public comment. And then one of the miscellaneous conditions is regarding a payment to a tree fund and the amount of $50,000 for the purpose of purchasing and installing public trees throughout the city. I believe that encapsulates the agreement between the housing authority and the meeting yesterday with Therese Medford. I don't know if there is an established fund, so I left it kind of vague, but we can make it more specific, or we can leave this for the special permit decision condition as a recommendation for the city council to put as a condition. I think it could live on either decision. Since these are the conditions for the site plan approval, where you're the site plan review authority, and then you'll be recommending you board at the city council's action for the special permit. And you could sever this from this decision if we're not positive on how that one should be written. since it was just hashed out yesterday. And then for the historical commission conditions, there is a letter and it has to do with, let me find it. They have a letter dated August 29th, 2023. Are there any other questions? I thought I saw a hand raised.

[Paulette Van der Kloot]: Mr. Driscoll?

[Jeffrey Driscoll]: Yes, Danielle, as far as the $50,000 to the city, the Housing Authority has agreed with the folks we met with yesterday to make that payment. The only question I would have is, does that payment go to the city or does it go to another organization? But I think it was pretty clear, though, the Housing Authority's willingness, as I said earlier, to be a good neighbor. and contribute that $50,000. What I don't think is part of the miscellaneous conditions is that we agree to continue to work with them to see if there's additional funding available. I don't know that Mr. Lincoln mentioned that. Um, I would think that, um, in having met with all of the, uh, the city departments, we've tried to address all the concerns and I would be hesitant to, to not also address the issue of the trees in this, if that's to be included.

[Danielle Evans]: Madam chair. I see Alicia has her hand raised.

[Alicia Hunt]: Yes, I can just address the question about the fund and money. So it is the intention of the city and the city council to create a tree fund as part of the creation of the tree ordinance that the council is working on. And I did actually have the opportunity to speak with the city council president earlier today. And we can either move forward more quickly on literally just a creation of the tree fund so that it exists as an entity. It would not be separate from the city. It would be a check made out to the city of Medford for the tree fund. And then it would only be deposited into that fund, which will be set up as what is typically referred to as a revolving account for tree purposes. that it's our intention as part of the ordinance, but we can fast track the fund piece in order to move everything forward more quickly.

[Paulette Van der Kloot]: Meaning if we were to decide on it as part of the site plan review?

[Alicia Hunt]: Right, if the CD board wanted to make that one of, so I would say that they could either be a requirement here or it could be a requirement at the city council special permit granting stage, but we would move forward with setting up a tree fund sooner rather than later if there were monies to deposit in that fund sooner rather than later.

[Kilson]: Is there a reason that this condition isn't to be satisfied prior to the issuance of the building permit?

[Alicia Hunt]: That would be my expectation. All of our conditions with site plan review would be prior to the issuance of the building permit. The tree ordinance, it could be approved in a month or it could take us six more months. We've been working through various details on it. And I would absolutely not allow that technicality to hold up this project. We would figure that out. At the very least, the city could hold it in internal escrow until the fund was set up.

[Kilson]: That would be our expectation that that would work to have it as a condition of issuing the building permit and then that we would be in a fund that the city would establish and maybe adjusted when the ordinance is enacted.

[Alicia Hunt]: Are you suggesting adjust the amount?

[Kilson]: No, I'm just suggesting that your fund may be different from what we, you know, at the time that the building permit is issued, the fund into which those funds are deposited may change once you actually establish the ordinance and establish the fund under the ordinance.

[Alicia Hunt]: right? And so it seems to me that if the language, uh, yes. So a statement that contribute 50,000 in the city for the dedicated purposes of purchasing installing public trees throughout the city. Um, the fund may have mildly broader uses than that. It may be used to, uh, um, support the enactment of the tree ordinance, right? There is some thought that it's going to take some staff time and it may, the money that comes in through the tree fund may help pay for the staff that are needed to protect the trees. They may pay for an arborist to make sure that only trees should be cut down that should be cut down in the future. But if everybody's comfortable with the language of purchasing and installing public trees throughout the city, we absolutely have line items for that and we need that very badly.

[Paulette Van der Kloot]: I can see that as protecting the natural resources at this point, but I'm just not seeing how it would be incorporated into the site plan review, but maybe definitely the special permit. As a recommendation, I would like to know the temperature of the rest of the board.

[Evangelista]: And this is Sally. Yeah, I agree with you, Jackie, that I don't see it as part of the site plan review at this stage, but part of the special permit at a later stage.

[Paulette Van der Kloot]: Thank you, Sally. Anyone else?

[Ari Fishman]: Yes. have a prep yeah sorry thank you madam chair um i have a preference for allowing the broader use over the very narrow use but i am open to the kind of logistics of that being done at another meeting if we do not feel that that's appropriate at this moment but figured it was worth saying that

[Paulette Van der Kloot]: And as far as the board approving this evening, There's no pressure, because we have the purview to continue till a date certain if there's a lot of information here that you need to digest, especially with hearing new information that has not been shared with the entire PDS staff as of now. But if we feel comfortable, which I can only speak for myself, feel comfortable with knowing that the proponent will work with the department heads and the city, and as long as the proponent is amenable to these conditions, that these are not something that they're not amenable to, or what was going to cause an issue or something like that. But as long as you're willing to work together going forward, I'm okay with the approvals tonight, but I don't know how the board is failing.

[Kilson]: Madam Chair, can we note that the conditions have been reviewed by the proponent and the proponent has accepted the conditions. So we would not like the board to think that we have any issues. We've worked through them in the Medford and the consultant and the design team have been in consultation and we have settled on these conditions.

[Paulette Van der Kloot]: Thank you very much, Attorney Kilson.

[Evangelista]: This is Sally again. I feel comfortable setting a motion to move forward. The presentation basically covered all the aspects, if not most of the aspects that are usually concerning when doing a site plan review. And the presentation was clear, answered concerns when it comes to the neighboring houses and the neighbors. So I personally feel comfortable to move forward.

[Danielle Evans]: So Madam Chair, if I may, so there's two matters that you need to vote on tonight. One is to make the findings that this meets the criteria for moving a site plan. and adopting the conditions. And then there's the matter of the plan development special permit, whether you want to recommend that city council approve it.

[Paulette Van der Kloot]: Yes, so at this point, what I'm looking for is a motion to approve with conditions as set forth. Site plan review for one in three to 20 walk-in court from Merford Housing Authority, and that excludes miscellaneous conditions. I'm not even sure if that's proper language, but approve with conditions minus the miscellaneous condition for site plan approval.

[Evangelista]: I second the motion.

[Paulette Van der Kloot]: I second. And before we actually do the motion, does that even capture the approval properly?

[Danielle Evans]: You find that it meets the criteria outlined in the ordinance for approval of a site plan subject to the conditions.

[Paulette Van der Kloot]: Yes, and according to the zoning ordinance, the Community Development Board has approved, has found approval that is consistent with the performance standards as described in section 6.4 of section 11.7.10. Does that need to be stated for the record? It also meets the proposed development standards as listed in section 11.7.10. You think that captures it? State it out again, and we'll do it one more time, a motion to approve both conditions minus the miscellaneous condition as set forth for the site plan review for one and three to 20 Walkland Court for Medford House with Dawn.

[Evangelista]: Aye, Sally, motion. I second. I second.

[Ari Fishman]: Happy to give that to the person who said it simultaneously. I think that was Pam.

[Paulette Van der Kloot]: Roll call. Ari Fishman. Aye. Sally Akiki. Yes. Pam Mariabansky. Yes. And myself, Jackie McPherson. I'm a yes. And now I'm looking for a motion to recommend as a referral board to the city council for plan development district special permit, micro housing authorities one and three to 20 walk on court along with the miscellaneous condition that the applicant shall contribute $50,000 to the city for the dedicated purpose of purchasing and installing public trees throughout the city.

[Evangelista]: All right, so any motion?

[Paulette Van der Kloot]: Second.

[Evangelista]: Second.

[Paulette Van der Kloot]: Ari Fishman? Aye. Sally Akiki? Yes. Pam Marionski? Yes. And myself, Jackie McPherson. I'm a yes. Thank you so much to Medford Housing Authority, to Ms. Kilson, Attorney Kilson, and to Mr. Morissette and to everyone else that has prepared and Mr. Driscoll. There's so many of you, but thank you so much for all of your, your detailed information this evening and for such a great project. Thank you.

[Danielle Evans]: very much for the, for the public this will be going to the special permit will be going to city council on Wednesday meeting date, February 24. That sounds right. For the hearing this. I think their next meeting. 20th. 7pm.

[Kilson]: Okay, thank you.

[Paulette Van der Kloot]: Okay, so for the board's order of business, the next is approval of minutes. A motion to approve, let's see what the minutes are. What date?

[Danielle Evans]: So there's December 6th and December 20th.

[Paulette Van der Kloot]: Can we do them collectively or do they have to be called out individually?

[Danielle Evans]: In case, you might want to do it separately in case there's anyone that wanted to recuse themselves, but you are just voting to accept them.

[Paulette Van der Kloot]: To follow, right? Yeah. Yeah. a motion to accept the meeting minutes from 12, 2023.

[Evangelista]: I second. We'll call Ari Fishman.

[Paulette Van der Kloot]: Yes. Sally Akiki. Yeah. Pam Marianski? Yes. And myself, Jackie McPherson, yes. And actually I went backwards and I apologize, but a motion to accept the meeting minutes from 12-6-23. I motion, Sally. Second. Let's see, roll call. Ari Fishman?

[Ari Fishman]: Yes.

[Paulette Van der Kloot]: Sally Kiki? Yes. Pam Marianski? Yes. And myself, Jackie McPherson, I'm a yes. And the next item, miscellaneous or any other updates that the city may want to share with us?

[Alicia Hunt]: I think that it would be appropriate to share. So the city council and our office are jointly hiring a zoning consultant. We've mentioned that before here. So I'm gonna let you know that I am just reviewing and signing the contract on my end tonight. It still has to be signed by other people, mayor, et cetera. Um, but we're splitting the cost between our office and city council's budget. Um, the consultant is Emily Ennis, who was the project manager on our comprehensive plan. So we really appreciate that she already has all the background. She's done all the reading. She's familiar with all the public outreach that occurred. And in fact, the recommendations on how we should move forward with changing zoning where she had written in our comprehensive plan, and we liked that. She is also partnering with Jonathan Silverstein as a lawyer with I cannot remember the full name of the firm off the top of my head. He is a partner with Mark Bobrowski, one of the leading land use lawyers, who's actually the lawyer who did our recodification. And so the ask is that Jonathan help with actual drafting of zoning language and making sure that the zoning language is all legal. And Emily do help us, guide us through the changes, recommendations, et cetera. I'm putting out to you all, to the public, to everybody, we will be doing a press release. And in the press release, one of the things that we're planning to do is to ask two questions. One is, if you're familiar with Medford zoning, is there something, one or more things that you would like to see changed? Please share that with us. If there's something that you'd like to see that say the same, please share that with us. And I feel like that would help just flush out if there are things that we hadn't heard yet, we really have heard a lot from the public over the past few years with regards to our zoning. And it's sort of like one more chance at that. The city council has worked to put together a schedule of subcommittee and committee meetings, such that they would do over the course of a month, regularly scheduled meetings for a zoning and planning subcommittee, for example, an administration and finance committee, a governance committee. And they actually worked with us to schedule the zoning and planning subcommittee to be Wednesday nights opposite the weeks of our CD board meetings. So that it's a time that Danielle and I are already working to facilitate us being able to meet with them regularly at public meetings without us having to come in any extra time other than our already planned work hours. So I will say we really appreciated that. But their intention right now is to actually have that subcommittee meet twice a month so that we can bring things from the zoning consultant there so that there would be regular public meetings where people could talk about zoning issues, things that they want to see changed, etc. So we wanted to let you guys know that. Danielle and I have been working on a very long document From everything from like little changes like looking at pronouns in the zoning. I mean, it's not little, but it is, you know, just a formality as opposed to substantive changes and we've been working through that document. If there are things you'd like us to be adding to that. It's not really a public document. It's like a working thing. So we don't forget any any of the ideas that have come to us and that have been raised to us in the past. And we'll be sharing that with Emily so that she's like here are the ideas, the things that we need to get going. Emily's intention, our intention. is to do this in a couple of phases, where the first phase is to do an additional round of what we call small changes, but just things where we change some language, we make changes that are not like completely rezoning the entire city, and that we make these smaller changes that might be impactful, but they've already been discussed, they've been hashed out, and they need to, they just need language changes to do those soon over the next three to five, three to six months, and then do more impactful, bigger changes, things that might need some studies. She's prepared to do massing studies for us to help understand some of the changes that we might wanna make. And just so you all know, every single zoning change must come to this board for approval or for review and comment before it goes to city council for voting. So whether you are able to come to any of what I'm starting to think of as working sessions with the city councilors on their committee meeting nights or not, you will see every change will go through this board. But if there's stuff you want to talk to us, if anybody wants to talk to me or Danielle individually about stuff, we're happy to set that up as well. Sometimes it's easier to talk through ideas that are half-baked on a one-on-one basis before, you know, putting things forward in a public meeting. Questions?

[Evangelista]: Thoughts?

[Alicia Hunt]: All right, really, nothing? I tried to be quiet long enough. This is great. Thank you, Alicia. I'm excited to see how it works out. Great. And I just thought I would share, I sort of said this to some of the members before the meeting started, that in fact, we have several new staff have joined our office. We have a new housing planner. I think I should do this, I can name them all for you, but I'm always afraid of being like off the cuff and misspeaking. Adithi Mugar, we have a new economic development planner, Jessica Martinez, and we have a new economic development director, Sal DiStefano. So we're very excited to have all this new staff on board.

[Paulette Van der Kloot]: I wanted to put a shameless but very, very beneficial plug out for CPTC, the Citizens Planner Training Collaborative. We're having our annual conference at the Holy Cross on Saturday, March 16th. I say we because I'm a board member, and it's been a lifesaver for me, especially being a new board member previously and not working at the local, being a planner but not working directly in a local level and knowing how to, handle municipal planning and land use and that's pretty much what it is. It trains up planning boards and municipal planning staff on the use of land, on land use, like the newest trends and part of what the annual conference, what I like about the annual conference as opposed to like just the webinars or the on-demand training Is that there's going to be everything there you mentioned emily and she's doing like a site plan review. So again, this is a shameless plug for march 16th It's I think not only for your staff alicia, but for the so but not that you want to give up your saturday like I am um, but It's a wealth of information that um that people can really get into you who's going forward here on the board or In your planning career like if you are a plan I agree i've been i've attended those in the past and um

[Danielle Evans]: As a board member and as a city planner, and there's like a board track and there's the planner track. they're really useful to feed you. And we will, our office will pay the registration fees for you to go. And another good thing, actually, if our board members, if a certain percentage of our board members attend these, we actually get bonus points on our grant applications. It's actually a box to tick, like, do your city land use boards attend trainings? Like, are they trained at all, basically? Because there are municipalities where people don't know what they're doing at all. And we pride ourselves in having really great boards, educated boards that really contribute. And anytime that you can get more knowledge and also get us those bonus points for grants is always fantastic.

[Alicia Hunt]: Jackie, I googled it while you were talking, and I came to a page about the conference, and there's an email address, but there doesn't seem to be any link for registration.

[Paulette Van der Kloot]: Of course there's not, Alan. Only because they were so, it's like, get the information.

[Danielle Evans]: Blame it, Alan.

[Paulette Van der Kloot]: And it's like you wanted everyone to save the date, but it's like you're going to have to save the date. You got to build up this interest. You got to go to the thing and we're still trying to figure out where to plug people in. We're still trying to get keynote speakers. Last year, we were able to get the lieutenant governor. We jumped on her because, you know, she was coming into office and she's a planner, literally. Well, she's a lawyer, but she's she's a planner so and it's one of those things where she loved the opportunity so she came right into it being you know in her role but now we can't even get a keynote so we're trying to figure everything out this year and we said don't put anything on the on the website don't tell anyone about the registration and it looks like they did so i'm telling you word of mouth because i didn't think that there was anything on the website yet But just more of a state of the date. I mean, but Alicia, if you want, I can pretty much email you what's on there. Like I know MBTA communities and 3A and stuff like that. There's a lot of interest that planners have said over the course of these sessions. And I pride myself in being a planner, and I have AICP, but at the same time, I lose my skills because I don't use it at the local level the way you guys do. And being in this role right now, it's like I'm always, I feel so intimidated because I'm with these other chairs sitting around Massachusetts. I'm like, oh, they're going to know so much more than me. And I sat next to someone who was like, are you excited about 3A legislation? He was like, what's that? And I'm like, oh, so I do know more than you. Wait, that's impossible. So this is hugely needed. I want to humble myself and say there's a lot of things I'm still learning, too. Boys just need it, boys.

[Alicia Hunt]: So again, if anyone's interested. Right, if you want to send something around to the whole board, because we are missing several members today. I'd like to invite all of our staff, any of them who want to attend. I mean, there's no price there, but these are not expensive compared to some things. No, so they're different. This is going to break my bank.

[Paulette Van der Kloot]: This is different from the webinar. In our conference now, not only is it in Worcester and Central Massachusetts, but you do get fed, like Daniel said, but it's an all-day event, 8 to 3.30. But we've gone up to $100 for the registration now, just to let you know. So when you said it's still pretty much affordable, but it's a little bit more than what people- You know, APA charges like $1,800 for registration. And except for the core courses, like the comprehensive planning, zoning, and things like that, you get AICP credits, if you're AICP. I mean, if anyone cares about that. So I just wanted to let everyone know. I don't want to drone on and on about that, but I did want to send that plug out, especially when Alicia mentioned Emily Ennis, because she is there, and some of the other people that are hands-on with helping planners, like Julie Barrett, they'll be there. My agency is there. We can't get the secretary to do economic development plan, but we are going to do a one-stop session like we did last year. That's AICP credit, too.

[Alicia Hunt]: Yeah, we can pay for any of the board members who want to go. And any of our staff who want to go. Is it sounds like it might be appropriate for zoning board members. And so we have definitely this is for all municipal zoning.

[Paulette Van der Kloot]: And I'm definitely definitely zoning board of appeals and, and planning board officials, pretty much.

[Danielle Evans]: Yeah, there's usually like a session like, like how to write a defensible decision, you know, just things like that are like super, super important for us. Yeah.

[Paulette Van der Kloot]: Yeah, there's this real cool one this year. They're doing a Laurel and Hardy go to planning school pretty much. It's going to be a play on how you arrive at that decision. So that's pretty cool. So anyways, again, not to hold you up any longer, but I just wanted to throw that out there because I thought it was pretty awesome.

[Alicia Hunt]: Great. And I will say that if any of the board members over the course, see other training that you feel is appropriate because of your membership here, you're always welcome to raise that to us to see if we have funding to pay for your registration and stuff. Usually, we'll know about them and we'll share them out, but you're also welcome to bring them to our attention.

[Paulette Van der Kloot]: All right. Thank you, Alicia. Okay, so hearing no other updates, a motion to adjourn.

[Ari Fishman]: I so move. Second.

[Unidentified]: If you don't want to go home, we'll hang out.

[Evangelista]: I second. Did anyone second that? Yeah.

[Paulette Van der Kloot]: So Ari Fishman? Yep. Polly Akiki. Yeah. Pam Mariansky. Yes. And myself, Jackie McPherson. I'm a yes. Good night, everyone. Thank you. Bye, everyone.

Paulette Van der Kloot total time: 20.08 minutes total words: 1804