AI-generated transcript of Zoning with Zac Bears

[Danielle Balocca]: Hey listeners, this is Danielle. And Shelley. Shelley is a radical Dravidian and racial equity activist.

[Chelli Keshavan]: And Danielle is a community mobilizer and changemaker. And this is the Medford Bites podcast. Every two weeks, we chew on the issues facing Medford and deliver bites of information about the city by lifting the expertise of our guests.

[Danielle Balocca]: Join us in discussion about what you hope for the future of Medford. And as always, tell us where you like to eat. All right, thanks so much for meeting with me today. If you don't mind just starting by introducing yourself with your name, pronouns, and who you are.

[Zac Bears]: Sure. Hi, Danielle. Zach Bears. I'm the city council president here in Medford. He, him pronouns. And the restaurant question I've answered many times. I usually talk about Colleen's, but lately, and I still love Colleen's, I've been getting the Catania sandwich at Deep Cuts.

[Danielle Balocca]: Hmm. Nice. Thank you. Well, you beat me to it the question, but thank you for saving us some time because it's your favorite. And we, I recently took my son to the pinball part of, of deep cuts, which is really fun. Um, okay. So mostly what we're talking about today is not your, um, reelection campaign, but were you talking about last week? Um, you made a statement at, uh, was it the zone? What was it? The.

[Zac Bears]: Planning and Permitting Committee of the City Council.

[Danielle Balocca]: Perfect. Planning and Permitting Committee. About zoning, because it sounds like there's been a lot of talk about zoning. And so I'm wondering maybe you could start just by letting us know why you chose to make that statement at the time you did.

[Zac Bears]: Yeah, so we have been in Medford, you know, for the past several years going through some big conversations about the future of our city. what we want growth and development to look like, creating the city's first ever comprehensive plan, and, you know, for the past five years, and especially the last 18 months in this phase, working on a citywide rezoning effort, and been really excited to work on it. Last election, I talked about it a lot in my campaign. We've talked about it in probably over 40-45 council meetings this term, and one of the proposals for the residential districts here in the city, so a lot of our neighborhoods, that has been under discussion, especially over the last six months, and In May or so, the Community Development Board published some recommendations for changing the council's original proposal for the residential districts. And I think there was a lot of uproar and folks who felt that those recommended changes from the Community Development Board went further than they were comfortable with in terms of what could potentially be allowed in some of our neighborhoods. So we've seen really since May, A lot of discussion about that residential zoning proposal, not being something that residents some residents here want to see other residents are very supportive of it I think one of the reasons that the CD board made its recommendations is that there are a lot of residents talking about the need for more housing, because of the housing crisis that we're in. But I just felt that, especially over the last two months, the conversation that we were having was not as productive as it needs to be to get this work done well, and that there were a lot of folks who wanted the process to continue at the same pace it was continuing in, and I really respect that, but I think taking another five or six months and refocusing the conversation over the original proposal that the council put out was a better foundation for making sure that folks who had good faith questions and concerns and comments could be heard and that we had more time to get more resources from the mayor's office to help communicate this out a little bit better. So that's why I put it forward. I just felt that especially the community development board meeting in July that that that meeting just wasn't going to be, it was a reflection of a process that had become not productive towards achieving the goals that I think a lot of people in this community share about where we should go as a city in terms of development and growth.

[Danielle Balocca]: Yeah. And I mean, I have to say that it seemed to me, at least, it's like a sort of a confusing topic. And it sounds like the zoning was what's proposed is not necessarily like uniform throughout the city. But one of the things that was concerning to me was like, this like text message survey that I got that was actually named you. And your name is spelled incorrectly. But it like, did it did it made some like pretty extreme, like, it poses a questions that didn't seem like they were based in fact and I'm wondering if there's like example was that one of the proposals for changing zoning was to eliminate single occupancy, or like single family homes in Medford which felt like I don't believe that would be true or that I don't, I don't think, I don't know how, why I would, would believe that would be true, but it's, I'm wondering if like some of the intention around making your statement was like to slow things down, but also to maybe make space for some like myth busting. So I wonder if there's any of that that you want to speak to.

[Zac Bears]: Yeah, I mean, the first myth to bust is zoning can't make anyone do anything that they don't want to do with their property. So, you know, there will be single family homes here in Menford for forever, I would assume, as long as Menford exists. But, and, you know, there was not a proposal to end even the zoning to allow single family. So that's misinformation. And I think, you know, your point is really well taken. Zoning is complex. It is a law that affects a major part of development and growth, but it doesn't make the choices about how a community develops and grows by itself. individual people do that, what people want to do with the properties that they own, who they sell their properties to. We have a zoning code right now that doesn't hold developers to account nearly as much as it needs to. And, you know, I think just getting that point across is really important. There are certainly some folks in the city who don't support the comprehensive plan don't want to see change in our community. But I think the reality is changes happening no matter what. And we need to talk about and have a plan for and then implement that plan for. making sure that that change best fits what our goals are as a community. I think our comprehensive plan that was came out in 2023 that you know was, I was part of the steering committee but it, you know, as an effort of the mayor's office talks about how we need more growth for a lot of reasons. More affordable housing. more market rate housing to keep the pressure off of the existing housing that we have now, better mixed use corridors and squares, more walkable neighborhoods, a million things. And zoning is a piece of how we get to that future that we want to see. And I just have really felt that because zoning is complicated, it has been easy and too easy, especially because we haven't had the resources and collaboration on the city side to put out enough good communications with good information. It's been easy for people to kind of twist the zoning effort for their own political purposes. I don't think most people are doing that. Most people I've talked to. say this is complicated i want to understand it better or i generally support the vision of where we're going but i think there are some issues with the specifics a lot of people i've talked to have said um the city council proposal for residential zoning from march makes a lot more sense than the suggested recommended changes that came through the community development board in may so I think with a little more time and some more resources appropriated by the mayor's office, it will, and focusing the conversation around what the council actually proposed, not the kind of more density proposal from the community development board, doing all three of those things will really help us to have the conversation that we need to have as a community and get this done in a timely fashion. Because the other piece of this is that Medford in so many ways has not seen the action that it's needed to see over the last 30 and 40 years. Things have been allowed to stagnate and fall apart. And we don't want to be in a position where we need another override to prevent teacher layoffs. We want growth in a smart and significant way to let us also invest in our city services, our public schools, and make sure that the city can do what it needs to do to provide for its residents. So it's just so important that we get this done. And I felt it was essential that we don't allow the process to get in the way of the substance and let people, a small number of people who want to sabotage this, be able to say that the process wasn't good enough. That's what I'm hoping to see over the next year to 18 months is that we can complete and secure the progress of this project by updating our zoning ordinance and making sure that folks who have some concerns right now are able to voice those and we get a good product at the end of the process as well. Even if everyone's not going to agree, I think people most want to see that we've had voices heard that have good faith concerns.

[Danielle Balocca]: Thank you. So I am trying to understand a little bit about what you're explaining. So the City Council proposed a zoning ordinance and then the Community Development Board also had a say. Who gets the final say? Is it something that people vote on as a community or how does that work?

[Zac Bears]: Sure. So the way zoning works under the state law is in cities, the city council has the authority to amend zoning. In towns, it's town meeting, but we're a city, so it's a city council. And communities have these groups called planning boards. In Medford, our planning board is called the Community Development Board. And any zoning change goes to them so that they can review it, compare it to the city's plans. For example, our comprehensive plan, our climate plan, our housing plan, and some of our different plans for different parts of the city. And they can make recommendations back to the city council and say, you know, we reviewed your proposal and we recommend that you change it in this way. And then the city council can review those recommendations and it can adopt them or adopt some of them. And then the zoning ordinance becomes law. Right now, this process this rezoning project, which is in its kind of third phase, or at least second phase with the council. There are a number of proposals around zoning so. Um, it's not just 1 proposal around rezoning of the whole city. There's a residential districts proposal for residential neighborhoods. There are proposals for Medford square West Medford square. Some of our main commercial corridors. We already approved the mystic Avenue corridor and the Salem street corridor. And then there are some other proposals as well around parking, transportation management. We approved a new green score to make all new developments a lot more environmentally friendly. There's a private tree zoning ordinance that we're looking at to try to protect trees on private property when someone comes in to redevelop a property or expand a home. So there's a lot of different proposals. The main thing that has been the subject of a lot of debate And misinformation over the last couple of months is the residential districts. So proposals for a lot of our neighborhoods. That are not on our main drags main streets and avenues and squares.

[Danielle Balocca]: Yeah, what are some of those, like, what, like, what's some of the misinformation that's been out there?

[Zac Bears]: Sure. Yeah. I mean, you know, people have said they want to put six story apartment buildings in the middle of single family neighborhoods. And, you know, they want to allow, you know, completely destroy and single family housing forever. And, you know, just a lot of things that are just completely not true. The main thing about the residential proposal from the council Is increasing the allowable what I call increment incremental density. So, um, saying if there's places right now that allow a 2 family. Can we allow for three family as long as they meet all of the other requirements, parking requirements setbacks, open space, something we're implementing for the first time ever is actually open space requirements for a lot of the residential neighborhoods right now and people I'm sure have seen it. Someone can come in by a house cut down every tree pave the entire lot. That's something that would never be allowed again under the new zoning if it were to pass. So one of the main things about the new zoning is, yes, say, can we allow a little bit more housing in each of our neighborhoods? And in some places, it's a little more significant than others because of some unique characteristics. This plan really is tailored to our neighborhoods and our neighborhoods are different. uh it's tailored you know there's some more increase around the new green line stations a little bit more change around the west menford commuter rail station um so you know it's not it is neighborhood specific and addressing you know the different characteristics uh but this whole concept of kind of squares corridors and neighborhoods that came out of the comprehensive plan um there's a map in the 2023 medford comprehensive plan that talks about this and that was the basis of About six to nine months of studies and analysis that we did, the Innes Associates zoning consultants team and zoning lawyers, they did a bunch of analysis from January 2024 to about September of 2024 based on the comprehensive plan and the climate plan and the housing plan to come up with proposals. essentially two proposals, a residential framework and a commercial framework. So what do our mixed use corridors and squares look like? And then what do our more residential neighborhoods look like? And that was the starting point for the zoning amendments that we've been working on for for about a year, plus the studies from last January to June. And then, of course, the four years of other planning and zoning conversations we were having before that.

[Danielle Balocca]: I feel like when I started this podcast in 2021, we were talking about zoning. I'm sure some things have changed, but let me give you an example. On my street, in the Fulton Heights, we've had a bunch of families age out of their properties, whatever that means, and then they go out for sale. We had a house like two doors down that this man was like almost 100 years old. His family, he lived there forever. It was like a triple lot. The house got sold after he died. They knocked down his house, built, you know, divided the property. So they built two giant homes on them that I'm sure will be on there that I think will be like over a million dollars. And so it sounds like the zoning could make it so that if somebody wanted to build like like three family homes on that property they could, which would be great. And well, I'm wondering if it's, it sounds like it's, they're making allowances for these things, but is there any sort of incentive for developers to like create those like, you know, more units of housing per property or, because I, you know, I feel like they're, they're mostly driven by how much they can make off selling these properties.

[Zac Bears]: Well, I think that's actually a really great example and the Fulton Heights is tough because of private ways and because of development on wetlands and because of the hills. So there's, you know, some concerns about doing quite as much there. I think we could do more, maybe a little bit than what was proposed, but some of the planners feel differently. But I think that's actually a really great example across the board of how zoning is broken right now. Right now, land is so valuable and the profit incentive is so strong that it makes sense for a developer to come in and whether it's subdivide a large lot and build two large single family homes or more, or even take down or renovate one single family home and make a 1,500-foot starter home into a 3,000-square-foot McMansion, right? Our zoning's incentivizing that right now. So we're getting really bad outcomes no matter what because of the profit incentive. And the idea of the zoning is to change those incentives, right? You know, the example you had in some parts of the city, it might be a little bit different right now in the Heights because of what I said, What we'd want to see is probably two somewhat more modest structures that maybe had two two two families, right? Because you could house more people. The units would be of a lower cost, right? If you, you know, if it was a two family and each unit was 750,000 versus a giant single family at 1.5 million, that's a lot more accessible. You know, it's not accessible for a lot of people, but it's a lot better than a million and a half dollar McMansion, right? So that's one of the big things the zoning is trying to say. Developers are already coming in, but our zoning is incentivizing some pretty bad outcomes. We also have a patchwork zoning where we want to hold, you know, we aren't holding developers to account right now, right? Like, this council is trying to update the development linkage fees for the first time in 35 years. to get developers to pay their fair share. We don't want this pave over thing. We need an open space minimum. We want to protect trees. And we want to say, if the land's already so valuable that the developers are going to do things and build new things anyway, how do we make those things as good as they can be for our community's goals? How can we say we'd rather have a two family or a three family with somewhat more affordable apartments or condos rather than a giant McMansion, right? It's not perfect. I have a lot of, you know, I don't think that the market is the only way or even entirely a way to solve the housing crisis, right? But right now, our city's land use and zoning policies are so out of whack that we're actually making things worse. So that's one of the big initiatives here. How do we get property owners, developers more accountable and have the growth that is going to happen no matter what be more targeted towards the goals that we want to see our community meet?

[Danielle Balocca]: Okay, thank you. And that's helpful to hear. The other question that I have, something that I've seen people talking about is increasing density of neighborhoods. Will that increase number of students in school and how would that be considered? Are there any concerns there of some of our schools being already pretty full?

[Zac Bears]: Yeah, so there's a couple things there. One is a non-development, non-zoning related question at all, which is we have two elementary schools that are near capacity, one that's probably where it should be, and one that's under capacity. And the schools are working on a plan to address that. So there is space in our elementary schools right now. It's just not well distributed. And that needs to be fixed. That's not a zoning problem. This bigger question is around what does it mean if more people live here? And I think that's a real question. You know, one thing there's a lot of information on, Vice Chair of the School Committee Jenny Graham put out a good note on this around the Mass School Building Authority analysis for the new high school. You know, right now, because of demographics, we've seen declining enrollments here in Medford, you know, our high school was built in the 70s in the 60s for. 4,000 people. It has about 1,400 in it right now. So we've seen declining enrollments. One piece of that is demographic trends. Another piece of that is that all of the studies from the Metro Area Planning Council and other social science experts around housing, the Citizens Housing and Policy Alliance, they show that actually adding new housing alone doesn't mean more students in our schools. The thing that actually adds the most students in our schools is when we add more affordable housing because that's the biggest need. What we're seeing right now is, and it's one of the things that's driving this larger thing, declining household sizes. There's fewer people living in the same size structures. We used to have almost 70,000 people here in Medford. We're down to about 60 now. We actually had fewer houses at the time, and it's because there's a lot more one, two, three, four-person households, where in the past you used to have four, five, six, seven-person households. A lot of structures with four bedrooms and only two people living in them, right? Like these things have been really impactful. So building more affordable housing will have an impact. But the other thing is that there's going to be, as the new high school process moves forward, we were able to build in a little more assumption for some growth in there, and then also to move the entire pre-K system to the new high school, and that would free up space in our elementary schools as well. So realistically, you know, in the short term, the 5-, 10- to 15-year term, most of the data and studies that I've seen indicate that new residents and new housing is not going to be a driving factor in our school population. And, you know, if in 5, 10, and 15 years we're in a different position, then we have to start having a conversation about what it looks like to expand an elementary school or renovate one. And that's the conversations that cities and towns have all the time. This city, as is true of many of the things, made a very colossal mistake 25 years ago and sold off all of the old schools for a dime, not a dollar. And that was because we wanted to save some money back then, and it was penny wise and pound foolish. If the city still owned those properties today, we'd have a lot more ability to have conversations about a lot of things. about community centers, about youth centers, about after school, about expanding an elementary school, about pre-K programs, about recreation, about support for youth with disabilities. I mean, this is what we're trying to fix, right? We're trying to fix decades of neglect and missed opportunities and bad choices. That's going to continue to be the conversation we have as a city because it takes decades to correct the mistakes of decades past.

[Danielle Balocca]: Yeah, well, and I appreciate that. I mean, I think some of the ways that the conversation has been framed is like being, you know, being sort of short-sighted and what you're, the way you're describing, it's like, it sounds like you are kind of thinking about the long-term future of the city. And it sounds like if we reached a capacity in our elementary schools, it would mean that our population had increased and hopefully some of our tax dollars increase as well. That would help us fund some of those expansions if we needed them.

[Zac Bears]: Yes, absolutely.

[Danielle Balocca]: Yeah. Well, thank you. Is there anything else that any other points that we haven't talked about that you want to make sure we do?

[Zac Bears]: Yeah, I just really want to reiterate the importance of why we're doing this. We need a Medford that is growing in a smart and significant way. we have proposals before us that they're not the end, they're not the final product, but they are a really good foundation for having these conversations. And I think over the next few months, we're going to see a lot of good conversations, some disagreements, but especially I think being able to reach each other across some differences that we may have and better understand what's being proposed, make some of the tweaks and changes based on some folks, you know, questions and some things that need to be considered. And we're going to come out of this with a strong zoning ordinance that will set Medford up for success for the next 15 to 20 years. And I'm really excited about that.

[Danielle Balocca]: It sounds exciting. Yeah, no, thank you. I think this really helps to kind of clarify some of the questions that I had. And hopefully it's helpful for other folks as well.

[Zac Bears]: Yeah. Thanks, Danielle. And I mean, that's really why I gave the address that I gave. I think we've had a lot of good conversations and we need to, you know, I felt the need to step up and show some leadership because it's really important to get this done the right way.

[Danielle Balocca]: Yeah, and it sounds like, you know, I think that it's easy to watch, kind of easy to see, like what happens on social media, for example, when people start chatting about these things. And there's a lot of I think that making this speech and it sounds like people can find it on your website and also on the city website, maybe through the.

[Zac Bears]: You can find it through Medford TV, Medford Community Media, and then also on my website, Zach Barris dot com.

[Danielle Balocca]: Yeah, that's something a great way for people to be able to sort of hopefully dispel some of the misinformation that they're hearing and just get like a clear answer from you as well. So thank you.

[Zac Bears]: And if it's if folks prefer to read rather than to watch, I'd recommend going to ZachBears.com. The full remarks are there and and probably a shortcut link to a video too. So you don't have to watch the introduction to the meeting either.

[Danielle Balocca]: All right, Zach, well, thank you so much.

[Zac Bears]: Thanks.

[Danielle Balocca]: Thanks so much for listening to today's episode. The Medford Bites podcast is produced and moderated by Danielle Balacca and Shelly Keshaman. Music is made by Hendrik Giedonis. We'd love to hear what you think about the podcast. You can reach out to us by email at medfordpod at gmail.com, or you can rate and review the podcast on Apple Podcasts. Thanks so much for listening. Guys, what's the name of the podcast? Medford Bites. Medford Bites. Good job.

Zac Bears total time: 21.43 minutes total words: 1127