[Roberta Cameron]: All right, I'm calling the meeting to order. This is the meeting of Medford's Community Preservation Committee on Tuesday, March 12, 6.30 p.m., and today is our annual public hearing. So this meeting of Medford's Community Preservation Committee is being conducted via remote participation. No in-person attendance of members of the public is permitted, but every effort will be made to ensure that the public can adequately access the proceedings as provided for in the order. And we will post a recording of this meeting on the city website as soon as possible after the meeting. So with that, welcome to everyone. We're going to begin with a very brief presentation with a background about CPA. I know we have a few new committee members and some staff in attendance who may not be familiar with all of it. So Teresa, we didn't discuss, are you planning to give the presentation or am I giving the presentation?
[Theresa Dupont]: I can certainly do that if you'd like. Okay, sure. Okay, so everybody should be seeing my screen right now. So again, thank you all so much for coming out tonight. Let's give us a little overview of 2023. So just as a quick overview of CPA for those who are unfamiliar, could use a refresher. It is a state act program that was enacted in year 2000. It allows communities to raise funds at the local level for local projects with local input. So it's all very local. Here in Medford, it was voted in by voters in 2015. And we started collecting surcharge in fiscal year 2017. At that point, we also appointed a committee. The committee is made up of experts of most of our boards and commissions, our conservation, historical, our community development, which is our planning board, our parks commission, as well as the local housing authority person. And then we do have two mayoral appointees, which at this point, I will plug saying that we do have two openings on our committee. So anybody who is watching this and would be more interested in getting involved, please, we'd love to see your application. So again, just as overview of CPA here, this is nothing new. So in terms of the applications we get, we have to look at them in terms of eligibility and the letters of the law of how we can spend money. So this chart is my best friend at work. even though I've been immersed in CPA for a while, it's very nice, very specific as to what we can do here. So I won't dive into everything here, but it's just, this is available on our website and it's just very clearly identifies how we can spend the money on our specific categories. CPA focuses on open space and recreation. Those are gonna be your parks, your athletic fields, anything that is out in the open. Historic preservation is another big bucket that CPA can help fund. You know, those are your public buildings here in the area that have historic value to the community. And lastly, we also focus on housing and ways to produce, support, create affordable housing here in our community for our members. So here is just a graphic overview of the funds that projects that were funded in fiscal year 24, which is our previous year here. So the graph just depicts how this money was distributed. I wouldn't say it's completely evenly, but that's a nice healthy kind of two third or three thirds here pie graph here. The green on the left where we spent $944, 944,000 is for open space and recreation. We'll go over the specific projects here shortly just to give you an overview of how the pot of money was divided. So again, about 944,000 for open space and recreation. In affordable housing there, we spent about 869,000. And in historic preservation, the orange slice at the bottom about 728,000 went towards preserving historic properties here in Medford. So all told, all that math adds up to just over about $2.5 million. We were blessed last year to be able to have some rollover funds that were carried over and able to be spent out. So we spent about $2.5 million last year. We received 19 applications 16 of which we were found to be eligible. We always kind of get some great projects that we absolutely would love to fund, but unfortunately, it has to be eligible by the ACT legal language there. So nine of which of those 16 applications that we funded, nine were for historic preservation projects around the city, five were for open space, and then two were for affordable housing. So let's get into the specifics here as we're looking into the actual projects that were funded. This slide makes me so happy to talk about just because you can see how the funding is distributed across the city. A couple of our applicants, they've returned to us and asked for more funding. Like the Royal House, we were happy to help them with a project a couple of years ago for the slave quarters building. Now the Royal Mansion needed some work here. friends over at M-BELT, which is the Medford Brooks Estate Land Trust. We're able to fund a couple more projects at the Brooks Estate, which is great. As well as we're going into like our parks projects here, Tufts and Cape and Park, their basketball court is going to be resurfaced. Yay, we're very excited about that. And in Logan Park, is going to be seeing a playground refacing with some natural play elements, which we're really excited about, as well as, you know, big one, the big ones, the McGlynn School universally accessible playground, broke ground. Gosh, I want to say it was November, it may have been December, there was snow on the ground. But we're happy to see that that project is underway. And it's going to be such a great asset for our community here to be able to have an accessible playground. Um, and in our housing, you know, I'm not going to dive into every single project here, but, um, for our housing projects here, we continue to support the homelessness prevention program, which is a program. Oops. I actually have ABCD here. That's unfortunate. I'm sorry. It's it's housing families, my error there. Um, so housing families helps with, uh, folks they're facing eviction. Um, if they have rental arrears, it helps them with any back rent that's due. So they're a great, great resource here in the city and we're so happy for their partnership. The Medford Housing Authority, we continue to fund the development there by funding another 800,000 and we're very excited about that project. There's a lot of excitement going on, but we're very excited about it because that's going to bring 90, I believe it's 94 new units to that development that's so hugely needed here in the city. We were honored to be partnered on that. So next steps. That's all the great stuff we did last year. Guess what? We get to do it again this year. So we're happy to report out our timeline with our dates here. So 2024 applications will be available on July 8th. For those who are watching that our repeat applicants or have reached out to me with interest, we will be sending out reminders on this. So don't feel like you need to scribble it on a post-it note, but July 8th, sorry, I'm letting somebody in from the waiting room, applications will be available. We'll have our eligibility determination forms due on July 31st. And again, reminders will go out. I'll be your partner throughout this whole process. Full applications will be due September 10th. We've already got the applicant presentation dates picked out for October 8th and 22nd. We're really trying to firm up those dates so people can plan their lives, especially the fall is always a very busy time for folks. And again, November, December this year will deliberate. Um internally is as well as in public. Um it will deliberate after hearing the presentations and then submit to City Council for their approval. And that's that's pretty much our timeline here for 2024. So here are some of the elements that are available in the city that we use as we look at our our our priorities as a committee and hearing back feedback from our community. So in 2017, at the establishment of this committee, we wrote a community preservation plan, which I'm not sure when we'll be looking to update that again, but every year we do an annual plan update where we take pieces of that 2017 community preservation plan. We also utilize these next three, open space and recreation plan, housing production plan, and comprehensive plan. Those all were citywide efforts led by the Office of Planning Development and Sustainability and Community Development, as it was before. So these highlight what specific needs are in each neighborhood, as well as a total citywide plan of how we're going to improve across the city. I will also tout that we have published our survey. This is great that if you're here with us right now, if you're watching it back, we would love your feedback. Our survey is live and it is available on the city's website as well as here on the screen, tinyurl.com forward slash CPA 02155. So we're gonna take feedback from that survey as well as any feedback that we gain here at the public hearing. And use that as we formulate our plan for the coming year. And just a little graphic here that's highlighting some of our upcoming listening sessions. There was one held on Zoom Sunday evening. We will be at the public library tomorrow from five to seven. Come hang out with me on the second floor. And then next Tuesday, March 19th, from 11 to 12, we will be at the senior center taking more of kind of casual one-on-one conversations, not so much of a formal presentation. But we want to be hearing from folks about what they'd like to be seeing in our community. And with that, I think I'll turn it back over to Roberta.
[Roberta Cameron]: Thank you very much, Teresa. So before we move on to ask for your input, I just wanted to see if there are any questions about the information that Teresa's just presented to us. All right, well, thank you everyone who is attending this evening. I just wanted to frame the conversation that we're going to have. So as Teresa mentioned, every year we give an update to the community preservation plan. So what the committee is looking for is to think about overall whether there are to look at changes in the context, what's going on in the city, what's happened recently, what's on the horizon, what do we anticipate coming up that affects each of these program areas so that the committee can think about whether we want to tweak our priorities or our procedures to reflect on how things are going in the city. You know, we may not have, you know, we're obviously not going to have answers about what are we going to fund this year, but we're really interested in hearing about what does the committee need to know? What do we anticipate coming up and what kinds of questions should we be prepared to discuss and consider this year as we evaluate the proposals coming forward? And I wanted with, um, thank you to the PDS staff who are here. I wanted to begin the conversation with on the subject of open space recreation. Um, and then, um. Well, first we can begin with open space recreation and just kind of an overall, what do we see going on around the city? And then I'd like to delve a little more deeply into affordable housing and historic preservation. So with that, I'd like to open the floor and ask if Alicia, Amanda, you want to share anything that's going on? Thanks.
[Alicia Hunt]: Amanda was waiting for me to start.
[Theresa Dupont]: Well, you unmuted first, so I think you should take it away. Thanks, Alicia, for joining us tonight. So yeah, as Roberta mentioned, if you want to give us kind of an overview of your experience with CPA, and then kind of take it from there, just talk about your experience with CPA.
[Alicia Hunt]: Right, so I think that Amanda can really get into the weeds on a lot of the stuff so for those of you who aren't aware, our office has been managing parks and open space upgrades renovations etc for the city, like capital improvements. We've been doing projects that include partnerships with like DCR and MassDOT for like shared paths, as well as park renovations. We've done everything. When it's very little park renovation, very small, like get a quote and have it installed, then usually DPW will handle that kind of project. But when it needs design work, when we need to hire a designer, when we need to do community outreach and get input, then our office oversees it. One of the things that in a very big picture way, I really like the CPA for is because we can use this money for things. Often when we go for a grant, construction grants, they expect shovel ready projects. They want, if not full designs ready to go to bid, they want like detailed conceptuals. sketches, they want strong estimates, and they want to know that there's community support. So Medford has, relatively speaking, a small staff. So we look to CPA funding to actually fund that work, right, to hire the consultants to go out and talk to the public along with our staff. to understand the needs of the community, the needs of the park or the area or the open space, and to get the conceptual sketches done that we can then use to get bigger grants. And Amanda could speak very specifically, I think, but the model that we, if anybody has specific questions about the project, but the model that we used at Carr Park where the CPA funded upfront money where all we knew was that Carr Park was old and needed new stuff and needed renovation. And we were able to hire a consultant who could help us do extensive community outreach, understand community needs, draw up concept sketches, do some iterations, and help us put together. And then Amanda was able to apply for millions in dollars in state and federal grants to then be able to do the construction on that project. And then we ask CPA to help with some of the pockets of things, the smaller things in that park, particularly whenever there are things that are harder to get federal and state funding for. So conceptually, that's what we're looking at and what we like to see. There are some, we've been hearing about if people are like, well, what's next? There's some noise about Placedead Park. There's some noise about Tufts Park. We've also, we had been hearing about Barry Park, are all some things and we need to figure out what are the priorities of the city as to where we're going to go next. I say that because we have been hearing from the schools about Placedead and its importance with the baseball field to the Medford High School. But we've been hearing from the rec department that is basing a lot of rec programs out of Tufts Park, because of the proximity of Tufts pool, it gives them a building that they can run operations out of during the summer. So I just sort of, it's sort of like whetting your appetite for what's to come we still need to determine where we're going to be applying for things. And then I'd be happy to actually speak as well about some of the more the cross between historic and open space. And I just wanted to mention that because of Oak Grove our cemetery and the Brooks estate are both very historic things that the city owns and not all the members of the public realize that we own it. and we need to maintain it, and it has future potential for revenue generating. But there are also big open spaces there, and people go there for walks and for exercise. In addition to, we have really found that particularly, I've heard from older people who want to walk someplace that they feel is a little bit more safe. that Oak Grove is a good place to walk around because they're not fighting with traffic, et cetera, particularly the paved roads in there. So I just kind of mentioned that because a lot of, usually those applications come in under historic, but they really, they can go both ways. So I can also talk a little bit about that when we come to historic, if you want, although I see that we have some of our historic experts on the call tonight. Amanda, do you want to add some more specifics about where we are with parks and open space and planning?
[Amanda Centrella]: Sure, I think you gave a really great overview, and I can just add that One of the things that we'll be looking at, I don't think it'll be so applicable this funding round for CPA, but our current open space and recreation plan is slotted for 2019 through 2026. And so we're going to need a plan update in the nearest term. I think realistically, we, the city will ought to be looking at. Starting that process in the fall and winter of this year, so that, you know, come early 2026 we're all set with a plan. And I think CPC, the CPC should be part of that conversation that the city will have with Likely a consultant team and with the greater community at large, a part of that effort, I think, ought to also include sort of an inventory of all of our open space spaces and facilities. So looking at some of. that kind of you know in a conceptual way but also looking at like the specifics of what we have in our open spaces and you know maybe going so far as understanding you know maintenance timelines in a kind of big picture way for various things so just sort of wanted to flag that as something that's going to be coming up on the horizon and that will really inform city steps moving forward on that. And I think also to add to what Alicia was saying, this sort of model of applying for CPA funds to fund design and outreach has been extremely successful on our end. It really sets up the city for being able to apply for other funding out there. And other grant timelines make it very difficult to apply for design With construction, you sort of would have to do, you'd probably probably apply for design only and then would have to wait for, you know, a new funding period or a different opportunity to figure out the construction piece of it. So in the case of both Carr Park and Ylis, which design was funded by CPA, it's been extremely helpful. And I could see that being a model we use going forward, in particular for some of the larger renovations that are on the horizon that Alicia mentioned. So potentially Tufts or Playstead. And I'll break there. If there are any specific questions, I'm happy to answer them. But I also know we've got other folks who have great insight to share.
[Roberta Cameron]: Thank you. Are there questions from committee members about the open space recreation projects? I wanted to make a request, and you're probably already doing this, but it would be very helpful to include a mention in our plan update And maybe to keep track of how much funding has been leveraged for these projects. So for each of the CPA projects that was part of funding that other, we had other funding sources that contributed to it. I would love to be able to see what the whole numbers are for those projects and how much CPA has actually leveraged for each of the program areas. Doug, thank you.
[Doug Carr]: Yeah, just a quick question. Something that's come up, I think, a couple of times over the last few years was looking at when we're evaluating the city of Medford, you know, it's a new park, you know, a resurfacing of a lot, rehab of, you know, it seems like there's a big park every year, which has been understandable and appreciated. Should we be looking to the The last open space plan to be our guide for the context in which that request is made in terms of priorities and potential budgets. I don't know if that's a question for you, Amanda, or somebody else.
[Amanda Centrella]: I'm happy to jump in. I think absolutely that the Open Space and Recreation Plan ought to guide what we prioritize. And that's something that we've been looking to in the conversations that we've been having about Playstead Barrie, Tufts, and in thinking about to that we are putting out a new request for qualifications for on-call landscape architect firms. We did that about three years ago. And those contracts are about to be up at the end of April. So we thought it was a very successful model for getting work done efficiently. So we're doing it again. And in thinking about that, one of the things that we flagged in looking through the open space plan is, you know, is opportunities to integrate green infrastructure and resilient resiliency into our existing open spaces. and facilities, and that the OSRP is a really excellent guide for doing that work. And I think we'll need to, as part of the next plan update, sort of assess what's been accomplished of the plan and, you know, prioritize or reevaluate what our most urgent next steps ought to be.
[Alicia Hunt]: Right. And I might add for that just so I was one of the department heads that worked on the old open space plan. And I did it in my role as the sustainability director. And then also our Office of Community Development, which they're planning the department. They managed it. I was not in that department at that time. And the that plan was really good at the resiliency because we got an additional add on grant to look at climate resiliency and green infrastructure. And it was one of the first OSRPs in the state that did that. Now it's required of OSRPs. What we didn't really have the funding to do was a huge amount of outreach. We talked to stakeholders, there was some surveys, but it wasn't. So when we say looking at it to guide what we're doing, it's really good at saying, this is where this infrastructure, this park needs a renovation. But when it starts to say, what should you actually do to it? Well, if you're just going to upgrade it in kind, you can just kind of use that. But if you want to say, what does the community want and need at this location, that outreach still needs to be done. That's a level of depth that we just couldn't. And you couldn't really do it in OSRP because it's one, it's really targeted. And two, you really need to do it closer in time to when you're doing the project. I think we can all agree that what people wanna see in their open spaces has changed from 2015, 16 when we were working on that to today when we're actually using that plan. So I just, I wanna caution, yes, in a big picture, get us there, but then we do wanna be careful about not skimping on community outreach. I wouldn't want anybody to say, oh, we did that when we did the plan.
[Doug Carr]: I appreciate that clarity. I won't take it, for anything more than it is. But I guess my question is, in terms of dollars, you know, because I've been asked to do the same kind of thing for the Brooks Estate, frankly. You know, we had a master plan that's 12 years old now. I just dug up the old estimate from 2011, 2012. And I've been asked by Robert and others to try to guesstimate what it would be today based on what CPC has funded in the last five years plus inflation, plus other things. And I'm in the process of doing that. It's going to take me a month or so to do that, maybe a little longer because I'm getting an estimate on the road from the actual consultant, Binesh. But I feel like there's almost going to be a one page, maybe a one page just list of projects and numbers, big picture, like just one page that would say, here's the list of priorities as they were, here's what we've checked off, here's 400,000, 800,000, million, just so we get a nice context when we see something coming, we know that it's in this context. And I know the plan is about to begin updated, but it's, I find that useful. And I think other people would too, to understand that we're not looking at things in a vacuum anymore.
[Roberta Cameron]: Even by order of magnitude. So, you know, we can tell if this is a hundred thousand dollar kind of improvement, or if we're talking about a million plus or something like that.
[Alicia Hunt]: Yeah, and maybe I can't flip through it right this moment, but my instinct is that all the numbers in there are low. And what's scary to me is that I remember thinking, wow, these are really big, expensive park renovations when I first flipped through that book. But it tended to be things I want to say, maybe you have it, that it was saying like that a park renovation was like one and a half million dollars. Well, when you do what we're doing with car park, it's closer to seven and a half or $8 million. But they didn't envision adding a covered basketball court with solar panels. They didn't envision water play in the playground. They didn't envision pickleball courts. We're setting our sights a lot higher than we did when we first did this plan. And I will share, I dropped this in the chat. So we have a Go Green, we manage the website Go Green Medford, gogreenmedford.org. And on that web page is a parks update web page, which we try to keep updated, but it has like the big picture stuff that's going on. But really useful on that, at the top of that is a link to our ongoing a spreadsheet, how does it say? The status of ongoing parks projects can be reviewed in this Google spreadsheet. And we try to use that and update that once a month or every other month to help the public know. And honestly, it was our tracking spreadsheet in-house to understand what's going on and who's the point person, et cetera. that we meet usually monthly with the mayor, our staff, DPW, recreation, forestry, finance to go through this spreadsheet and say, where do these projects stand? Plus some of our funders, like Teresa comes for CPA, Laurel for CDBG. So we use this to keep us on track as to where things go. So I just wanted to share that there should be a link to the open space and rec plan on that webpage, but I just found that it was broken, probably happened when we updated the city's website. We'll have to get that fixed when we're back in the office tomorrow.
[Roberta Cameron]: I just wanna say that I really appreciate how much we've leveled up our park open space planning since 2017 when we started doing this. Um, so the current OSRP was developed during, you know, since we had CPA and developing a new one. So I, um, I appreciate how much more experience we all have at this. And, um, like it just feels like the decisions are so much better coordinated than in the very beginning. So. kudos to all of the city staff for making that happen. More questions on this subject or we can, I think, maybe Move to housing next. I'm just thinking of having Alicia and or Amanda available. What topics we may have the most overlap with them?
[Alicia Hunt]: I know we're being recorded and people will watch it, but I still have to crack the joke that, oh no, keep me here, because as long as I'm here, I can't be at city council. Okay, we've actually sent Danielle to cover City Council for us tonight.
[Roberta Cameron]: Oh, I really appreciate your making yourself available.
[Theresa Dupont]: Okay, do we want to?
[Moogoor]: Shall I jump in? Yes. Yes. Yeah.
[Roberta Cameron]: Take it away. Introduce yourself, please. Thank you.
[Moogoor]: Yeah. Hello, everyone. I'm Aditi Mugur. I'm the housing planner, and I joined the city of Medford early this year. So happy to meet all of you. And I'd like to take this opportunity to briefly introduce Affordable Housing Trust Fund. I've heard that CPC is excited about the trust fund, so I just want to briefly talk about it and provide you some updates on where we are with the city's Affordable Housing Trust Fund. So just to give you the main goals of Affordable Housing Trust Fund is it would provide for the creation and preservation of affordable housing in a city. So some of its roles could entail providing financial support in construction of affordable homes by profit or not-for-profit developers. implement rehabilitation programs that would convert existing home units into affordable housing, provide financial support to Medford Housing Authority, accept city-owned lands to provide infill developments for affordable housing, provide rental assistance support to low- and moderate-income households. But apart from this, the Affordable Housing Trust could act as an advocate or as a role of advocacy, planning, and even policy development. So in particular, the Medford's Affordable Housing Trust Fund would primarily address some of the housing production strategies that have been outlined in the housing production plan. So as some of you may know that We've already had affordable housing trust fund within this region and met in Cambridge and Somerville for nearly 35 years. And they've had great success with it. Specifically, Cambridge was able to create 1500 affordable units and around 250 affordable home ownership units for first time home buyers. So we are really hoping that The city's affordable housing trust fund would be able to have a similar impact. So fingers crossed. And Daniel and I are currently working to review applicants who applied for the board of trustees. So this process would probably take another month or two. And we are hoping to have the board of trustees up and running by end of spring, early summer. And we are looking to apply for CPC funds. So we are hoping that, CPA funds. So we are hoping that CPA would support in our funding applications. If you have any questions, yeah, I'm happy to answer.
[Theresa Dupont]: See if anybody from the committee has any questions. Well, we thought it was very important to get that. Thank you, first of all, for giving us that overview of that affordable housing trust, you know, it is still so very new. So learning more about it is just incredibly helpful, especially since, you know, the whole point of this, this hearing here is to get feedback so that we can formulate our plan later in the year, as we're looking at applications. So it's really good for us to understand the relationship that will be there between the CPC and the Affordable Housing Trust. You know, what kind of collaboration we'll have in establishing, you know, reporting and, you know, and whatnot, those type of little questions, I'm sure will, there'll be a bunch of those, I'm sure down the road. Absolutely.
[Moogoor]: We are really hoping that we'll apply for some funding this year. So yeah, looking forward to working together with CPC.
[Roberta Cameron]: Great. I just wanted to ask maybe if you didn't already mention, what is the timeline you anticipate for having the Affordable Housing Trust Board established and for the board to be ready to start working on answering those questions in collaboration with the CPC?
[Moogoor]: So we're really hoping that by end of summer or end of spring and early summer, we'll get the board running. And then one of the primary tasks would be to have an action plan and then also set up a trust fund account. So we need funding to set up a trust fund account. So probably that'll be one of the first conversations that we are going to have. So really looking forward to having this Conversation sometime in end of summer.
[Theresa Dupont]: Yeah, which is perfect because that aligns with our application period.
[Moogoor]: That's great.
[Roberta Cameron]: And I'm curious whether, um. Maybe I can take Alicia your question first and then I'll, okay. I'm curious whether committee members have questions or concerns about the future relationship between the CPC and the Affordable Housing Trust. Not that we'll have answers now, but I'm thinking ahead about what are the questions that we want to, that the Affordable Housing Trust will want to have in mind as they prepare their action plan.
[Ari Fishman]: I mean, I assume that that will be so dependent on how the incoming board decides they want the fund to function. But I'm super excited that it's getting off the ground and look forward to kind of collaborating and seeing where those opportunities are. They're going to be there. I can't say that I have a clear vision in my head of what they are. And it's possible that other folks have, you know, worked more closely with Somerville and Cambridge and have a clearer vision. But Maybe we'll do it differently.
[Theresa Dupont]: Thanks, Ari.
[Craig Drennan]: I can jump in. I would, off the top of my head, don't have questions. I'd want to see what the application and how things are worded looks like in terms of how money is getting allocated. So I'm probably going to hold off until then.
[Roberta Cameron]: OK, that's fair. One of the questions that I think the committee is going to need to consider before the time comes that we receive an application from the Affordable Housing Trust is when we determine in May what our annual budget is going to be in terms of putting money into the reserve accounts. Typically, in most years, we've put the minimum 10% into each of the reserves in our annual budget. There was at least one year when we made that 20% anticipating that or having observed that the affordable housing requests the previous year there hadn't been any requests in the previous year. So trying to make sure that we kept up our pace in affordable housing spending, we front loaded the money that we put into reserve for affordable housing. So we may as a committee be thinking about whether we want to continue the minimum 10, 10, 10, Distribution or whether we want to consider some other distribution. Some communities have give 50% or more into affordable housing with the remaining being divided between open space and recreation and historic preservation. But some communities prefer to have the flexibility of each year deciding where the money is most needed. And Medford, although we have distributed the funds overall fairly evenly between the three program areas, that's mostly been with flexible response to the applications that are received rather than deciding, determining in advance that we're going to use the funds, distribute them evenly. So that's a question that the committee is going to need to reflect on in the next month.
[Theresa Dupont]: And I think another thing to think on is, Aditi, from what you were saying, it sounds like there might be overlap, like we might have similar applications that you will hear for funding that we would also hear under housing. So, you know, I know you mentioned that there will be an action plan, but maybe that's something we can think of is how would we, you know, mitigate overlap? Is that just front loading? I'm not sure exactly what it would be, but we might have to, I think we should think on that.
[Moogoor]: we should find a way to streamline the process. So all of the applications on affordable housing developments would come through the affordable housing trust fund, but that is something the board needs to also decide and work on. But it's a good question to think about.
[Roberta Cameron]: Are there more questions or comments with respect to the affordable housing trust?
[Alicia Hunt]: Maybe then I'll segue if I might. because one of the things that I did wanna just sort of mention sort of somewhat for the record. So we met last week with the Medford Housing Authority. And one of the things that they talk about that I will say to be clear, so Aditi works in my office. I've asked her to become the expert on the Affordable Housing Trust. I cannot answer any questions she cannot answer. But one of the things is this idea, just like the parks, of pre-development money. That's actually a legitimate actual term in housing development is pre-development. And that is this idea of saying, I have an idea and I need to pay somebody to get sketches and drawings and to run finances and to understand what we can and cannot do here. and to get things that are into a place where you can apply for multi-million dollar grants. The housing authority, we're talking tens of millions and hundreds of millions. not the little bits that we apply for, for the parks. But we have been working with affordable housing developers and starting, and some of them may have their own pre-development money, some may come to us for some pre-development, and some of it is simply that, yes, they have staff, but the state looks to see that the city is invested in these projects. And so whether the money comes from the Affordable Housing Trust or from the CPA or from the city's general fund, which we all know right now is not happening in the short run, we need, is that there is city skin in the game for doing these affordable housing projects. We've also written letters of support for the Medford Housing Authority to get state grants saying the city wants to see this. but the money talks louder than the words. And so having, even though it feels like the hundreds of thousands of dollars we give them is nothing compared to the tens of millions of dollars and hundreds of millions in some cases that they need for their projects, it actually is meaningful in terms of showing to the state that we are part of this project. And so whether it's the Medford Housing Authority or a non-profit housing developer that we might be talking to or might come independently, I will say that if a non-profit housing authority comes to the CPA, we would ask that they come and talk to my office and work with Aditi so that we're all on the same page, so we're not working at cross-purposes with each other, Um, so that if you're getting an application from one of them, you should actually also have our backing saying we want to see this project move forward. Um, and we will be looking at municipal property that may be available that we could use for affordable housing. So that's one of the things that's on our radar for the coming years.
[Roberta Cameron]: Thank you. That's helpful to know. Doug?
[Doug Carr]: Uh, yeah, Alicia. One of the, at our very last meeting, we were having kind of a lessons learned debrief for the last year, and in some ways, the first five years of CPC. And one of the things we batted around was what is the best way to leverage affordable housing funds to get the most units out of the system, whatever system we're plugging into, whether it's, you know, there's so many different ways you can do it. I think every affordable housing project ever built has been a unique model, it seems. Like for example, you know, we did a couple hundred thousand, you know, the round before this, and we did 600,000 for, or more than that, actually, for this, the last round off cycle. But the first was really kickstart the project and really show the local, and it was, that was the one that was noted in the Boston Globe as a very positive way the Method's doing it. The second one was, I viewed it as, 2% of a much larger project and I was just wondering out loud and I would ask the DT and yourself and anyone else there is like, what can you recommend. Where we spend our dollars to get the most units, the most leverage, the most affordable housing here. Based on what, you know, what you've seen so far.
[Alicia Hunt]: Right, that's a great question and something we've been thinking about. And I will just preface it and be honest in that Medford's new in the affordable housing game. This is not something that anybody in the city on staff, I've got to say, we have affordable housing developers who are residents in the city and I encourage them to come talk to my office, volunteer with us, volunteer with the affordable housing trust in this board. But that said, it's new to the administration. So we have been trying to figure out what's the best way to do this. We have an instinct that what we should be doing is working with affordable housing developers and looking at projects that are like 30 to 60 units, because that would be all affordable. On the other hand, there is a lot to be said about projects where that's where the people live who couldn't afford their own housing at market rate. We might not love the way the 40Bs came to us and are happening, we might in the future bring forward a friendly 40B where we actually encourage a developer to do something that is 75% market rate and 25% affordable, because that's a lot of affordable housing And there's no stigma attached to any of it, right? You don't know who in that building is in an affordable unit versus the market rate unit. So it's not a bad thing to be doing. We wouldn't be asking for CPA money for that, would be looking for CPA money If we had a affordable housing developer who wanted to do 30 or 40 units, that's pretty standard in our surrounding communities, and Medford's never done it. Never intentionally, as far as we have an awareness of, done it. So that's something that we are working on. I think, frankly, our Medford Housing Authority is excellent in what they're doing, and they're doing the smartest thing possible, is that they have Cambridge, who is tons of money and tons of experience, working as their project managers and advisors to do it. They're not reinventing the wheel. They have somebody super experienced helping them. And it's not a for-profit developer who is, or for-profit consultant advising them, right? It's another housing authority. So I have to say, if you were questioning between the first round and the second round, well, if you hadn't done that first round 100,000, that project would not have happened. The other thing that I think CPA is particularly useful for and should think about is the gap funding, right? Somebody goes out and gets millions of dollars, and now they've had a change order, or the design shifted and they're short a couple of hundred thousand dollars here, or there's something that's not allowable under the grant that they got. Like, where were the places that CPA can fill in for the Affordable Housing Trust, which we're still learning about, that, like, they can't use other money or they can't use their tax credits on? And sometimes that might be the thing that makes the building a little bit better, right? Like, CDBG is paying for community gardens at public housing, right? They're not going to get federal funds for that, I don't think, although CDBG is federal. But, right, it's different. So thinking about what can, what do they need that, and asking them straight up, like, what are the things you need that other grants can't pay for? Or, you know, that's where I think we're the most useful because we're small, but we're so flexible.
[Doug Carr]: I appreciate it. Thank you. That's helpful.
[Roberta Cameron]: Your question and response bring to mind maybe it could be helpful to hear a little more about the context and what do you see on the horizon for affordable housing? Like what has changed in the last year or two and what do you see coming?
[Alicia Hunt]: First thing I'm gonna say, we have a full-time housing planner for the first time. There was like a full-time housing specialist in the city back before 2014, but it's been a very long time since the city's had a full-time housing planner. So that has changed. But that said, DT has only been with us since mid-January. So Aditi, are you comfortable talking about like any of the developers you've been talking to, sites you've been like, I don't know how detailed about sites we want to be, but other than we own property, but.
[Moogoor]: Yeah, we are looking at two, three different city owned lands. And then there are some developers who are interested to propose affordable housing units. but we're also figuring out how to convey city-owned lands to affordable housing developers, and this is a conversation that's been ongoing, but we're really excited to see how this process goes, but also looking at the housing production plan and seeing how The affordable housing trust funds action plan aligns with the housing production plan is also pretty important. So we are hoping that these initiatives will fill the gaps and move things forward.
[Alicia Hunt]: Thank you. That's actually really helpful. Go ahead. Right. Those are not the Medford square lots. These are other smaller properties that we're looking at.
[Roberta Cameron]: But that's actually really helpful for us to know that there are conversations that are on the horizon in the pipeline that could result in CPA requests in the next year or two. So just to think that what we've seen as a pace for affordable housing requests might not reflect what's coming in the future given the increased effort that we're making in PDS to generate more activity in that area.
[Doug Carr]: If I could just echo what Alicia said earlier about the Friendly 40B, I actually was the project manager for Davis companies when they built 270 units in an office park. They converted an empty lot into affordable housing in the The reason it was a friendly 40B is they were no abutters, they were the abutters, they own the whole thing. So there was literally no opposition because there was no one, the abutters was their own property and it gave them quite a number of affordable units in a relatively short period of time. And the quality of the building was as good as any market rate building I've ever built. And there's no distinction at all. Legally, it's impossible to do that. You don't have an affordable unit that's one quality and everything else, every unit is the same. And they don't even decide which are affordable until they're almost done with construction because it doesn't matter. So it's really a win-win for everyone. If we can make it work at Medford, it's a great idea.
[Roberta Cameron]: Great. Any more questions or observations with respect to affordable housing? Then I would like to move the conversation on to historic preservation, and we have Ryan Hayward and Doug. both representing the Historical Commission. And I'd be very interested to hear what you see on the horizon, what changes have occurred, as well as from PDS. What changes have occurred or do we anticipate in this area? in the near future. And I'm interested in particularly city buildings that have need for historic preservation, city properties, as we've been making improvements to some historic parks and cemeteries. So I would love to invite you to share what you know.
[Doug Carr]: Ryan, do you want to jump in on this? I can start with the things that I'm close to, obviously, with the Brooks Estate and the Oak Grove Cemetery. I think those are two, it was mentioned earlier, that those are definitely city assets that are, you know, not a lot of people, a lot of people use them, but a lot of people just can't or don't know about it. So the continuity between them, physical and otherwise, and the kind of rebirth of the historic components of those cemeteries, are something that has come before Ryan and myself on the commission a number of times. We're obviously actively working with both the inbound board and the cemetery board as well to try to move those pieces forward. I think, Roberta, you've emphasized the need for the master plan overlook on both properties, I think, to really make sure that what's being done fits into a larger story and context. I think that's been a positive move.
[Adam Hurtubise]: Yeah, just to continue on with that conversation, you know, the commission's big project right now, as you guys know, is Thomas Brooks Park and just staying focused on working through and following through with the master plan that CPC was generous enough to fund. But I am currently working with the cemetery trustees to work on an assessment for cross street cemetery that will ultimately lead to its restoration. That will be a several year, several thousand dollar project that easily, as the consultant has told me, there's at least five years worth of restoration work that will take place over multiple years. So, you know, and that's, you know, just one cemetery of three cemeteries in the city of Medford. I know Salem Street has been addressed before they receive work, but there's definitely ongoing maintenance there. To keep up with the deterioration and weathering of headstones, and then we will have to turn our attention to the larger cemetery Oak Grove. And there's already pieces that are coming into place there as we talked about the master plan and getting a plan in place for that. In terms of other city buildings, you know, I think the Historical Commission and CPC has been a partner in preservation with almost every department in the city. We funded and supported work on all the historic fire stations. There's the Curtis Tufts School, which is the oldest school in Medford that still is functioning as a school. We supported preservation efforts there. We are working with the Cemetery Department and have kind of encouraged them to restore their buildings. So, you know, City Hall will probably need some maintenance too in the future. I could imagine, you know, they did a lot of work on the exterior of the building, but there were conversations about window restorations and I'm sure the building will need repointing, that sort of thing. You know, and there are other buildings that in Medford, I'm sure that will be deserving of attention. You know, so I think that there's always going to be a need for preservation. There could be a way to partner preservation funding with, say, if they decide to do a facade improvement program, that might be a good use of CPC funding to kind of partner. If, say, you wanted to do something with a consistent community look in Haines Square or several of the Medford's commercial districts, that might be a good use of. CPC funding but otherwise just sticking to these smaller more focused projects might be the way to go for a while.
[Theresa Dupont]: Thank you. I'll chime in here that I've started some initial conversations with our facilities director to highlight and or to bring to light any projects that he has in mind in our historic buildings. We've been unable to connect this week. It's budget season at City Hall, so if anybody has been trying to get in touch with anybody and experiencing delay, that might be the reason why. But I do know that there are a couple of projects at City Hall, namely the bathrooms, water fountains, as well as the windows that that Ryan mentioned there. Those have been highlighted as ones to perhaps attack in the near future.
[Adam Hurtubise]: Does our clock work in the tower?
[Theresa Dupont]: Somebody was just talking to me about the internal clock management system. Alicia, would you like to take that one?
[Alicia Hunt]: I, so let me put it this way. I think it does. As I'm saying this out loud I realized that maybe I should check in with Paul I feel that he knows about the clock system. So we have in the city hall clocks that are wired into an internal clock timer, and I believe that it's the same one that that, you know, the one up there, right? You have to flip a switch in the City Hall break room to stop the clocks and then you should turn it back on at the right time to set them. And I should just check in with him that he has thought about that because I only think about it because that was my first office in City Hall was that little room. And so I was very aware not to flip that switch or I'd screw up all the clocks in the city.
[Doug Carr]: I hope that little clock thing goes viral because I think that would get a lot more, a lot more eyes on these meetings than we've ever had before. This might be a loaded question, but I've had a lot of meetings in my day within eastern Massachusetts, within buildings that are about the same vintage as the City Hall building that you're in now, Alicia. And most of them have an annex or something because you guys must not have enough space. If I had to, if I'm, my instincts are correct. And I don't, is there any thought given to how to expand that building? Because it certainly seems like it has needed it for most of my lifetime, if you want to be, if I'm going to be honest here.
[Alicia Hunt]: So we've talked about a few things here and there, but honestly, since I've been in this role, we've been in pandemic mode. So we've been focusing more on expanding the staff and keeping the staff that we have before we talk about expanding the spaces. It feels like expanding the space is a luxury. One of the things that we talked about is, In the plans for redeveloping the lots at City Hall, one of them is to build a parking garage between City Hall and I-93. And if one did that, we've been talking about attaching a gym and putting some rec department space there, except that doesn't actually offload space from within City Hall, but it might also make sense for parking department space in there. if we had that kind of a building at that location. I've floated some ideas around buying the little tiny building behind City Hall, but really I want to buy it, use it as temporary annex, and then knock it down and make it part of the redevelopment of those lots because it would make a nice square.
[Doug Carr]: It would.
[Alicia Hunt]: But there hasn't been the money to do that.
[Doug Carr]: Right, but I think What about a feasibility study to expand the existing building footprint and take it from a T-shaped building to a much bigger volume behind it? Because you could easily do that.
[Alicia Hunt]: I feel like that that falls into the level of wishlist, that there are so many other things. If we floated that before, so I will tell you that I go to meetings about rebuilding or building a new fire headquarters. We have an OPM and an architect, contrary to what people might be saying. They exist and I've been meeting with them. So, but like that needs to move forward and that is urgent. The city needs a new high school, right? We're not so crowded in city hall that it's a serious problem. Like, you know, there are people who are in shared spaces. I mean, Amanda and Aditi are not laughing at me and they don't look like they're gonna string me up, but they're two of four planners that share an office. Now I've offered that we could put dividers or cubes if that would help in there. But is it crowded? Yeah. Is it too crowded? I think that people would say we actually need enough staff to do all the work before we want to complain about all we need. It feels right now like a building would be a luxury. There are things that we need first.
[Adam Hurtubise]: I was just going to say you could hire a lot of staff for the cost that you can build a building addition.
[Alicia Hunt]: And at the risk of a policy that is not on the table right now, the way some of our peers are handling staffing, crowding is allowing, is having swing space and hoteling and stuff, which honestly, a lot of I've heard, if you're hoteling, people don't love it. They like having their own desk, but it is not unheard of.
[Roberta Cameron]: That's what we do in Somerville. But I wanted to ask two things. To add to the list of potential projects related to city assets that we need improvements is archives, not to overlook the need to create a space that we can safely store all of the archives that are stuffed in the basement right now. So that should we restore those pieces of paper, preserve those pieces of paper that we have a place to safely store them. And also, I wonder whether the Hagner Center could fulfill any of those needs. I'm not sure whether the Hagner Center has any historic preservation potential as a building, but whether it has enough space to either fulfill the need for an annex, an archive, or some other community need that we have right now.
[Alicia Hunt]: So we have requested, somebody tell me, has there been a press release by our congressional delegation about earmarks recently?
[Theresa Dupont]: I believe I remember seeing a press release about earmark for Hegner.
[Alicia Hunt]: Okay. It's the difficulty of being in my job is knowing what is public news and what isn't. So we had requested an earmark from the federal government to use the Hagner Center as a recreation location for after school programming and recreation office space for the city of Medford. And that is what we're looking at. I theory. I don't want to look at whether that's a historic building. Historically, it was the field house for a football stadium, for a football field that doesn't exist. It was then used as a residential center and school. So it doesn't look at all the way it did when it was originally built as the field house. And honestly, that property, if we could take that and read to rebuild that as a, like a totally new larger building so it's two floors, and it's not accessible. There's no lift to the second floor. So if, if I had. $10 million and not the $850,000 we requested in the earmark, I would knock that building down and build like a four-story building there, fully accessible, that we could really use for some of these public spaces and recreation space. And we need a resilience hub, like a location for social services and stuff. It would be lovely. There's one house on the corner there. If that gentleman would like to sell to us at some point or will that property to the city, that would be amazing because that would give us like that whole corner because it butts up against Gillis. So I have a big imagination. But it's partially and I think Ryan popped something into the chat about the They've determined it is they've already determined it was significant for CPC. Yeah, that's kind of what I was like, I see really, I don't want to invest historic money into this building. I think there's so much more long term potential in this location.
[Adam Hurtubise]: Yeah, I think your vision is good. I think, you know, this is the type of thing that we can say, you know, we're prioritizing preservation at other areas, so you can document it. It'll be available for study. We knew what it was, and now you have this bigger building and more functional use of the site. I'm very much behind that.
[Doug Carr]: Yeah, significance doesn't mean it's off-limits. It's just something we needed. We've done plenty of significant buildings that we just did exactly what Ryan said. That should not be a hurdle to any planning you might be thinking of there.
[Alicia Hunt]: I've had members of the public ask me if they should try and get it designated so they could apply for CPC money to restore that building so they could use it for like childcare. And I'm like, if we're serious about using this building for childcare, we want it a lot bigger. We don't want our hands tied by having used historic money on it.
[Doug Carr]: I agree with that. It's too small and too inefficient. You won't get enough kids in there to make it meaningful.
[Alicia Hunt]: Right. And honestly, if we can do a renovation and open up after school programming in the short run, we need that. But in the long run, we should be looking for $10 or $20 million to really do something real there.
[Roberta Cameron]: These other needs that we're talking about, the need for a childcare space, recreation space, for archives, maybe some city offices, I don't know. I wonder whether any of those needs could be met in a new high school building or a new fire station for that matter. Could we stuff a little bit of extra room into any of those new buildings to fulfill any of these other community needs?
[Alicia Hunt]: Well, so while I love that, and I wish, the difficulty is the cost per square foot of buildings. And as they started working on the fire station, what happened was they had, here's what we'd love to have, here's the stuff. Okay, what are those square foots? And Doug could probably explain this process better than I can. But in layman's terms, you know, what are the what is the program, what do we need with a square foot, and then they put a number in front of the mayor, and then she went, we can't we can't bond for that we can't afford that, along with doing a new high school, we need to trim back. to what do we need in a fire headquarters? So the most recent iteration I saw had space that was actually designated as future building expansion space in the event that the city needed more space and had the funding, right? You know, like two stories, it was like two and a half stories. I guess there's this weird mezzanine because you need a high. And then like, but the second story didn't go out the whole of the first story because it's more expensive to build that. So, but it was designed so that you could then go out and build more. And when you work, so that's sort of like the, we already had a heart attack at the price there, and so we're kind of designing what we can, but expandable. The high school, I haven't gotten into the weeds yet, and I'm afraid I'm gonna, but my understanding with MSBA, the Master School Building Authority, which is a big funder, is that they have formulas about square footage per student, and how big they think your building needs to be. And I think the city of Medford is going to be extremely sad when they see what the square footage per student is and what that means for our extremely massive high school. And that may actually be a reason why we might convince the community that we want to actually gut renovate rather than knock down and rebuild. If we got renovated, I would argue that there could be space for stuff. So right now we have the all school administration, all the superintendents and stuff, central finance for the schools, central facilities. They even have a facility shop in the back where like the mechanics have a workshop, right? Like that all is built into that existing building. And there are some underutilized spaces in that building that perhaps could be better utilized. We have some massive old water tanks for the heating system that we couldn't afford to cut up into little pieces and carry out, so they're still there. But in a gut renovation, you'd take that stuff out and reclaim the space. So there might, it might actually be rational if we were to move forward in that direction rather than a ground up new building. But I'm, this is very early stages.
[Roberta Cameron]: Understood.
[Adam Hurtubise]: So just a quick question on the school. So not to get distracted. Are you saying that the square footage for student would mean that the high school would get smaller because we don't have as many students?
[Alicia Hunt]: Yes, and it's the formulas how they did it back when they built this building in 68 69 is different. But yeah, it was designed for 4000 students. Yeah. And we have massive, I am told that our vocational shops are massive compared to other schools. I have not personally toured them, but I've had people from other school systems tell me that we should be prepared for what actually MSBA thinks we need.
[Doug Carr]: So is it possible that half of that building could become an annex for other uses?
[Alicia Hunt]: I don't know. I mean, I wonder if there's, so we've talked about putting recreation up there, you know, if there was the space. Yeah.
[Adam Hurtubise]: Or closing some of the, like, you know, the logical would tell you to close the Curtis tough school, the oldest building in the system and move them up to the high school and give them their own separate building wing. Right. And then that would allow, then that would allow the city to take over the Curtis tough school as a annex right next to the park and rec or rec. You know, it'd be like shuffling schools around like they did in 2000 and 2001. Right.
[Alicia Hunt]: It's an interesting question. I wonder if it's possible. So the Curtis Tufts is an alternative high school and it's for Students who are not function, I'm not exactly sure the terminology, but it's not like you're special needs, you're developmentally disabled. It's not that. It's you're like, you are a danger or you can't function. You have such high anxiety, you can't function in a large school environment. It's for kids who need something different. I haven't, In the past, they used to have girls who were pregnant go there. I don't know that that's something they still do today, but it actually allowed like for dramatic more flexibility around now you're not pregnant, but you have a baby and you can bring your baby to class. And it's very small kind of school kind of concept. I don't know if that's still happening, but you could imagine that if somebody was carrying their baby around Medford High, that would become like, It's such a stressful situation for everybody.
[Adam Hurtubise]: Yeah, there would need to be a well thought out plan as to how the logistics of that would work. Certainly, yes. No, I totally understand. I also do think that if we're pouring money into our school system, we might as well give all of the students equal treatment.
[Alicia Hunt]: And that building got all new LED lights in 2016 or 17, give or take, the Curtis Tufts did. So we got a grant for that.
[Roberta Cameron]: But it could use a facelift on its cupola. And I don't know what condition the roof is.
[Adam Hurtubise]: Or even the interior. Having gone through and traveled all the original schools, I could imagine what the condition of the interior looks like.
[Alicia Hunt]: It got an HVAC upgrade too, because it was oil until somewhere in the 2000s. It got a natural gas heating system and there's a computer room in there. It's better than you would think.
[Adam Hurtubise]: Yeah, I mean, Medford must have, I guess this is just a good question, and maybe this is the thing that the city should fund. Medford must have a facilities assessment of all of their city-owned buildings, right? And if not, that might be something that they consider getting, right? So, I mean, I worked with the town of Watertown. They just took all of their buildings. We assessed them one by one, and they had a life cycle. They talked about what they needed over 10 years. then the city went forth and started to apply for funding and the taxpayers knew what they needed to get.
[Alicia Hunt]: I would love to know what the assessment costs so we can start budgeting for it. We've been doing it more as needed, right? Like the fire stations had a level of assessment done so we could do the upgrades that we knew we needed there.
[Adam Hurtubise]: Yeah, I could imagine there's probably different pieces already there. Like I could imagine the schools had one, you know, the fire stations have another, the police has a brand new building. So that's got one, you know, that sort of thing. So, yeah.
[Roberta Cameron]: I really appreciate seeing the big picture, knowing how the specific requests that we receive fit into what the overall needs are. So, um, Yeah, I second that. And that's also why we're looking at master planning for the Brooks and for the Oak Grove Cemetery, just so that we understand what is the priority of the thing that we're being asked for. Any other questions, comments with respect to historic preservation or any of the program areas? Or the application process and the observations from those of you who have participated in the application process about how that works.
[Adam Hurtubise]: I think for application process, I do it myself, but I think it would be super helpful to have a document that you can fill out ahead of time and then just copy and paste into Smartsheets. I made one, but it might be nice just to make a PDF of your Smartsheets just so people can copy and paste that ahead of time so they know what questions they're answering. Because there's no way to save the application. So having that would be super helpful.
[Theresa Dupont]: You got it. That'll happen. Thanks Ryan.
[Amanda Centrella]: This might be a. I think in previous years, the CPC has taken different approaches to sort of some distinct feedback and also. the setting up conversations with various entities to get ready ahead of the application period. I wonder if it would make sense this year, we have like a monthly internal parks updates meeting where we convene a lot of the department um, heads and staff that work on parks projects to discuss, and maybe it's a matter of, um, I just feel like it could be good if, whether it's Teresa or Roberta, um, if we, like, had a conversation maybe with, um, with that staff as an opportunity to sort of hear, like, ahead of or right around the application period, you know, what, what are people thinking? Um, it might be an opportunity to sort of vet stuff and also check in on what else the committee, from where else the committee has heard so that the city can get an understanding of how to prioritize their applications. Just a thought.
[Theresa Dupont]: Absolutely, that's a great thought. I do attend those meetings, but I like the idea of like formally just instead of being passive on it being like CPA applications coming up. So absolutely, I'll add that in on my schedule.
[Roberta Cameron]: And since the I'm sorry. I'm, you know, I never mind.
[Theresa Dupont]: I was also going to just to mention that this year will hold an info session for folks like yes, we're talking to to folks that have repeatedly applied for CPA funding, but We want to open it up for everybody, so there will be an info session just to talk a little bit more about the program, help folks with application questions that they may have this year.
[Roberta Cameron]: All right, well, thank you to all of you. This has been a great discussion and really helpful to learn more about what's going on and talk about kind of what it is that we need to keep in mind as we consider funding possibilities for this year. Any last thoughts or comments before we close the public hearing?
[Doug Carr]: Just that I hit the link for the parks Excel spreadsheet that was posted earlier. And it's exactly what I was looking for. That's a great document. Didn't know it existed. I'm glad I saw it. And it really answers all my questions about the context of all the projects going on in the city. only a fraction of them are funded by CPA, CPC, but it's good to see the context. That's exactly what I was looking for. So thank you for that.
[Alicia Hunt]: I'm sure that it can feel like you must be funding everything in the city. The reality is the amount of things we're moving forward are just insane. Like we can't put press releases out about everything we do.
[Doug Carr]: Right. No, it's an impressive list.
[Roberta Cameron]: And we would love to do more ourselves to talk about what we're doing. So yeah, thank you for helping us get the message out.
[Theresa Dupont]: Do we need a motion to close the public hearing?
[Roberta Cameron]: I think so. I think that's the way it works. I'm not the expert though.
[Theresa Dupont]: Removed. Oh, I think I heard. Seconded. Reg first with Ari second.
[Roberta Cameron]: All right. And then I will call the roll. Doug? Yes. Ari? Yes. Craig?
[Reggie Graham]: Yes.
[Roberta Cameron]: Reg?
[Reggie Graham]: Yes.
[Roberta Cameron]: And myself, yes. So thank you very much to everyone. And that concludes our public hearing, but we do still have one item. to cover on the agenda, which is when we recommended funding for Duggar, the tennis courts for the, there was an, yeah, the back wall for the courts. We added on $2,000 to make sure that there was a, a memorial signage that memorialized Clarence Roan, for whom the tennis courts are named. And as it turns out, I was really late to the game because there's already a memorial to honor Clarence Roan. So Teresa, do you want to share with us?
[Theresa Dupont]: Yes. it was, again, a condition of the Bounce Back Wall award. So the ideas here are, since the condition was to put in this plaque that's already preexisting, we could, here are our options. Options three, the first one is, we could put up an updated plaque for Clarence Rhone. The one that's there, I believe, was placed in the 70s. Still very lovely, but we could do a secondary one. So that's option one. Option two would be to return the funds back into the CPA coffers. This is estimated about $2,000. So that would come back into our reserves to be able to be used on another project. Or options three would be to actually put up a plaque for Lieutenant Colonel Edward Dugger, who the park is named after. He was the first African-American To have a park named after him. I believe in the state of Massachusetts. I don't believe it was the Yeah, in the state of Massachusetts. Local Very prominent and I believe he was born in like 1924 served overseas and World War One to World War Two. So again, options to of button this one up is we could they could still proceed with putting a plaque in for Clarence Roan just it would be secondary to the existing we could return the money to the coffers or options three would be to commemorate another prominent member of the West Medford history. So at this point PDS has no preference really what it made most sense from our conversations perhaps to to think of a new placard for and Colonel Edward Duggar, but I will open it up to the committee to see if anybody has any strong opinions either way.
[Ari Fishman]: I feel strongly that it should not be one. I feel good about either two or three.
[Craig Drennan]: I would agree with that.
[Theresa Dupont]: Figured that would be an easy one. OK, Roberta?
[Reggie Graham]: I can't raise my hand for some reason.
[Theresa Dupont]: But we can hear you, Reg, which is great.
[Reggie Graham]: Oh. I, the, uh, the existing memorial for, um, Mr. Rome, uh, is outside of the, outside of the, uh, actual tennis court. Um, it's primarily facing the tennis court. Um, it's an, it's in an awkward position right now. Um, I don't know that the wording could be updated or anything of that nature. I'm not really sure that. anything's changed since the original memorial was put up. In regards to the memorial for Colonel Duggar, I do believe that if you look over there by the bridge, the top of the bridge, there's a memorial for Colonel Duggar.
[Theresa Dupont]: Oh, is there?
[Reggie Graham]: I'll have to check it again tomorrow morning, but I believe, I mean, when I was a kid, there was a memorial there. on a rock for, excuse me, a stone for Colonel Duggar. So that might not be something that's appropriate to put up a second one. I'm not really sure. And then you were talking about the tennis buyback or playback or whatever you call it.
[Theresa Dupont]: Bounce back.
[Reggie Graham]: Bounce back, okay. That might be something that would be more appropriate for that particular space. I just think that that'd probably be a better use of our funds than memorializing something that's already there, to be honest with you.
[Theresa Dupont]: Right, just to clarify, and my mistake for not clarifying this, the award was for the bounce back. Well, there was just a condition that that here's here's the funding for the bounce back well but you also must use a portion of this funding to put in a plaque.
[Roberta Cameron]: And we added to the budget. So the funding was requested for the bounce back wall and we awarded that plus $2,000 to be able to add the sign.
[Reggie Graham]: So how big does the sign have to be?
[Roberta Cameron]: We didn't put parameters on it. But we wanted it to be enough to actually design a nice sign and not just
[Theresa Dupont]: you know, a metal stuck into a rock plaque.
[Doug Carr]: The only thing I would add to pick up on what Reggie said is that, and Ryan as well, we've discovered in the course of the Thomas Brooks Park project and others, that many of the plaques around Medford are actually historically inaccurate and need updating and correction on the historical record. And I don't know if that's the case for Colonel Douglas Black. He was a World War I veteran, commander.
[Reggie Graham]: World War I didn't start in 1926. No, I think he was born in 1924.
[Theresa Dupont]: I think- I had the numbers wrong. I tried to memorize them, Doug, I'm sorry.
[Doug Carr]: Well, you know, there's like 50 Blacks in the city, so you're going to have to be Rain Man to make that happen, young lady, but that's fine. So I think we should look at what we've got first and just see if there's a way to improve or something that might be wrong that we can improve on it. We can, I don't know if we need to figure it out right now, but I think we need to do a little bit of research of the context myself.
[Craig Drennan]: I would just put forward that if, if there's placards for, for both people there and they're both relatively accurate, I'd be a proponent of returning that funding to be used elsewhere. for things that we don't yet have, if what's out there is relatively accurate to start.
[Roberta Cameron]: Thank you, Alicia. Did you have something or you just wanted to say that you're leaving? Okay, bye. I would agree with all of you that we've probably it would be probably the most appropriate to put the funding back. But I just wanted to weigh in with respect to the signs. The thinking was that the, so signage is not a standalone project for CPA. It can be, we can use CPA funds to make appropriate signage for a project that's all that is an eligible project. So building the tennis courts or adding this last feature to the tennis courts or any other playground improvement or building improvement for that matter is an eligible project. We can add signage to that where appropriate. So Even using that $2,000 to commemorate somebody who's not associated with the tennis courts themselves, I'm not sure that I would have been comfortable with that solution. I would love to fund another playground, whether it's Duggar or another playground, and commemorate a person who's associated with the history of that site. Yeah, that was the thinking behind adding the funds for the sign in the first place.
[Reggie Graham]: So, Roberta, the actual tennis courts of themselves don't have a sign. They always did have a sign that indicated that it was the Clarence Rhone tennis courts. It had been memorialized at that point, but since the new fencing and resurfacing and so on and so forth, there is no sign indicating that that specific tennis court is memorialized for. Thank you.
[Roberta Cameron]: Okay. So maybe what's missing is just So we already have this nice plaque. Yeah, I think you're right. We don't need to duplicate the plaque in the stone, the memorial. But we could just have an aluminum dibond sign on the fence of the tennis court that says it's Clarence Roan Tennis Court. And so we don't, that can probably be accomplished in less than $50, I imagine.
[Reggie Graham]: And then we can put the rest of the money back in.
[Roberta Cameron]: Yeah. Unless we want to design something nicer than just the words Clarence Roan Tennis Court, since Doug made that face. I'm not a designer, nor Do I have a lot of experience pricing things like this?
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, I think your $50 might be a little low, but you're on the right track.
[Reggie Graham]: Now, for those of you who don't know Mr. Rome, he was a pretty fascinating individual. Back in my time, there were two clay courts down at Duggar Park. Mr. Rome was there just about every day, giving anybody who needed to a lesson. So a lot of young kids and some not so young kids got tennis lessons from him, gratis. And like the pickleball folks that are using the Tenex foot now, it was a social gathering, if you will, brought everybody in the neighborhood together that wanted to play tennis.
[Roberta Cameron]: Nice. Thank you.
[Reggie Graham]: Oh, by the way, his great grandson still lives across the street.
[Theresa Dupont]: Oh, that's wonderful.
[Roberta Cameron]: I love it. So Teresa, I don't know if you're able to arrange for that design of a sign that just simply says Clarence Rowan Tennis Courts.
[Theresa Dupont]: Yep, I can work with Amanda on that one. Perfect. We don't have to take a motion on that, right? It's still fulfilling the condition. It's a sign.
[Roberta Cameron]: Yes, I think so. And then, yeah, so we'll have a sign, we'll use the money for the sign, and then you just return all the unspent funds and we don't need a motion.
[Theresa Dupont]: Fantastic. Thank you, everybody. Appreciate that.
[Roberta Cameron]: Thank you. Does that cover the remainder of our agenda? It does. All right. So is there a motion to adjourn? Doug moved.
[SPEAKER_03]: So moved.
[Roberta Cameron]: 2nd, thank you and I will call the roll again. Uh, Doug yes, sorry. Yes, Craig yes, Fred. Yes, and myself yes, thank you everyone. This is a good annual hearing. I felt like it was a really. useful conversation. And I hope everyone who wasn't here is able to listen to the recording afterward and catch up on what we learned.
[Doug Carr]: Yeah, having the city folks who were here was really helpful. That was excellent.
[Theresa Dupont]: Yeah. Awesome. All right. Well, thank you, everybody. We'll see you all next month. Have a good night. All right. Thanks. Bye bye.