[SPEAKER_01]: Recording in progress.
[MCM00001745_SPEAKER_03]: All right, let's start the meeting. First is review of the minutes from May 20th, 2025. That was emailed to everybody. We have the hearing at 338 High Street. Update from the Office of Prevention and Outreach. We have the Regional Public Health Grant Initiative. We also approve the Public Health Excellence LMA and designate and we went over the monthly reportable disease report slash update. Motion to approve the minutes, say aye. Aye.
[MaryAnn O'Connor]: Jenny? Do I have a second, Dr. Kladowicz?
[MCM00001745_SPEAKER_03]: Yep.
[MaryAnn O'Connor]: Okay, all in favor, Jenny Vitale? Yes. Dr. Kladowicz?
[MCM00001745_SPEAKER_03]: Yes, see, yes.
[MaryAnn O'Connor]: Okay, motion passes, minutes are approved, thank you.
[MCM00001745_SPEAKER_03]: Item number one for today, go ahead, Mary Ann.
[MaryAnn O'Connor]: All right, so with us today is Danielle Evans, our senior planner for the city and her intern Christian. The city is undertaking a large rezoning initiative and the Community Development Board is actually looking for any input that folks may have, certainly from the community and from department heads, but also from all our boards and commissions as well. So I asked Danielle to join us today to kind of go over really what the three buckets are that they're looking at and what the impact could be and what kind of feedback they're looking to get from folks. So Danielle, do you need me to?
[Danielle Evans]: So I don't have like a presentation or anything. If folks want to So there's a zoning web page that we're trying to keep updated that has a lot of the presentations that the consultants created, as well as links to some of the draft maps and actual amendment language that's currently before the Community Development Board. So basically, just to back up a little bit, this has been going on for, I think, the last year, rezoning the city in phases. So what's already been rezoned is the Mystic Avenue corridor has been rezoned. The Salem Street corridor has been rezoned. We've also added a green score, which is a metric that would apply citywide that regulates Like pervious, impervious surface, landscaping, trees, that sort of thing. Because one of the first things I was surprised about was that there's actually no minimum pervious area requirements, even in the residential neighborhood. So you could pave an entire lot, and that's completely legal. So that's, well, used to be, not anymore. So I'm not sure of everything that's under the purview of the Board of Health, if things like standing water, storm water, things like that, invasives that could be controlled by Green Score, things like that. But one of the bigger things that's happening is kind of upzoning in different areas of the city, or that's what's proposed. So you might have seen, you know, there's a lot of, you know, discussion on both sides about, you know, whether the city should change or not. The current zoning is pretty broken, so we do need to update it and change it because there's a lot of nonconforming structures. Basically, the city was built out, and then they wrote zoning that made everything nonconforming, which doesn't make sense. So you want to do anything to your house, you're going to have to go to the zoning board because you don't comply with the setback requirements or something. So we're trying to bring things into conformance, but then also kind of make updates due to changes to the city, like the green line extension. Probably doesn't make sense to have such low density allowed by a Green Line station that could be an opportunity to have some more denser housing there. But the zoning is implementing the comprehensive plan that was adopted by the Community Development Board and was a long citywide process So the zoning is part of that implementation, but it's a very iterative process. So there's three, Chris, you're correct me if I'm wrong, there's three open public hearings before the Community Development Board. So that's the Medford Square and West Medford Square, which is one bundled amendment. And then there's the residential zoning, which is, basically replacing the single-family one and two, the apartment zone, and the general residential zone, and replacing it with a new framework of neighborhood residential one, two, three, and then urban residential one and two, which have different lot size requirements, unit count, allowances, heights, setbacks, maximum ground coverage, things like that. And what's the third one? Oh, we do not actually have a third open to public hearing. We're expecting one to be referred. Oh, the ADUs, yes. Yeah, so the accessory dwelling units. So we have an existing ordinance regulating ADUs, but it's not compliant with the new state law through the Affordable Homes Act. They now, it's required that any single family district or any district that allows single families, so is allowed to have one ADU by right detached or as part of the structure, like within it or attached. So we need to update our ordinance to align with that because our current ordinance is unenforceable. And there's very few things that we can regulate with that.
[MCM00001745_SPEAKER_03]: I have a question, Daniel, and a couple of comments. One, in your opinion, is the outcome of these zoning regulations upgrade is to increase the population in the city?
[Danielle Evans]: I don't know if it's to increase the population, but one of the, I think one of the goals is to increase housing production in certain areas where it would make sense. Oh, yeah.
[MCM00001745_SPEAKER_03]: I'm not looking for the goal. I'm just looking for the result. I think the result from what I'm hearing is going to result in increased number of people that live in Bedford.
[Danielle Evans]: Well, I think it's also to give housing choices. Oh, it's not.
[MCM00001745_SPEAKER_03]: It's just the initial question. Is it going to result in an increase in the population?
[Danielle Evans]: I don't know. It depends on what right now I have. I live in a single family neighborhood. And until recently, both large single family homes were occupied by one person because they didn't have a smaller unit that they could move to that would be available. So you have, you know, individuals that are living in large homes that a family could live in. And we also have homes that are in roommate situations where those folks would rather have their own unit. So you might have like four grad students that have to, you know, occupy, you know, a rental unit near Tufts, but they'd rather live in studios. So that could be like, you could have four more units there with those folks living by themselves in their units. So it's not, it's a little bit more complicated than, you know, more housing units means more population because household sizes are also decreasing. The population of Medford has decreased a lot over the years just because people aren't having such large families anymore. It used to be you'd have like three or four kids at least, and now, you know, maybe two, lots of only children, no children. So the demographics are also switching. So it's not quite the correlation.
[MCM00001745_SPEAKER_03]: Oh yeah, mindful of the transitory college population, which doesn't count. I would think the end result of building more housing units would be an increase in the population. Mindful of that, is anyone keeping into account the needs for infrastructure that's gonna go along with this, i.e. traffic, parking, even the school system, and also taxes. If more units are going up on the same part of land and more people per that part of land, then increase need for city services. Is the tax base gonna go up if people start adding structures to a certain piece of land? Compensate the city for the additional services.
[Danielle Evans]: Well, with Prop 2.5, the existing taxes for the existing assessed properties can only, is very limited in what it can go up, but new growth can be added to the top of that. The new growth is where you can increase your tax base, especially, we also were trying to focus on commercial tax base. So the upzoning of Mystic Avenue would allow a lot more new growth, hopefully. Because right now it was only, like maximum two stories, one stories in some of these outdated industrial zone kind of areas. So hoping to capture the new growth there to take the pressure off of, you know, just the residents that shoulder, because I live in Medford too. I'm a homeowner here. I have kids in the school too. So I, can appreciate all those aspects.
[MCM00001745_SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, I would just be mindful of the stresses to the infrastructure. A lot of folks planning, you got to take that all into consideration as you move forward.
[Danielle Evans]: Yeah, and so our DPW director was at the, was it this, which meeting was he at? I missed it because I was stuck with a delayed flight. So I missed that meeting.
[SPEAKER_04]: Community development board meeting on July 9th. And he spoke to the zoning impact on infrastructure in terms of water and sewer. And he said, as of right now, you can't say for sure that it will or will not impact. Well, obviously, it will. But you can't say for sure that it will have devastating impacts without because zoning is not a definite. It can happen from anywhere from when it's enacted or 30 years, 50 years from now. So it's not necessarily going to be immediately impacting all these infrastructure things.
[Danielle Evans]: Also, one thing is we do have large developments are subject to linkage fees. So if it's a larger development, they have to pay into various linkage accounts for those roads, police, fire, water, sewer, I believe, and then parks. Granted, those fees haven't been updated since the 90s, so we're actually trying to update the linkage study so that we can get approval from the state to actually increase those fees. It just turns out those studies are very expensive. Yeah.
[MCM00001745_SPEAKER_03]: And another thing you had mentioned about the green score, we absolutely are going to weigh in on anything that we see that's a threat to the health of the community, no matter what it is. So the fact that it's not in there doesn't stop us from weighing in. So I would just try to incorporate a consideration of health issues into any of this planning, i.e. standing water. We're not going to let anyone just asphalt the whole thing. We'll step in and we'll stop that on the health grounds. they should know that right at the get-go. So although it's not officially on our plate, it is on our plate.
[Danielle Evans]: That would be really good to know, Marion. What are some regulations that kind of overlap with zoning that we might not be aware of? And who are enforcing those?
[MCM00001745_SPEAKER_03]: Well, we have mosquito stuff. We have the rodent problem, all that stuff. Yeah, it'll be relevant here.
[MaryAnn O'Connor]: And even going forward with that, you know, talking about like heat islands and, you know.
[MCM00001745_SPEAKER_03]: So these sites aren't off limits to us. If we see something outrageous, we're not going to let it go. Speaking of which, the 101 building here, right at Emerson Street, the corner, these trees would set back, but no one's pruning the trees. So now there's a tree that's trying to take over the entire sidewalk and also the crossing. It's totally obstructing the view of the Emerson Street sign, the streetwalk sign, and you can't even enter the crossing walk because the big branch of the tree's going to take your head off. So that kind of stuff.
[Danielle Evans]: Is this a street tree or a private tree?
[MCM00001745_SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, this is a private tree that is taken over Main Street. And no one's keeping it. This is right across from the police station and the fire station. So you can't even use the crosswalk. It's right in the middle of that. and it's obstructing all the city signs. So that's the kind of stuff that we gotta watch for so we can take care of that. Someone on a bike's gonna go down that sidewalk and get decapitated someday.
[Danielle Evans]: That's how low the tree is. I think that whole section is gonna be part of the DOT upgrades of that intersection. I think that's captured in part of that. So there's gonna be a whole reconfiguration of that cluster.
[MCM00001745_SPEAKER_03]: My point is to keep an eye on some of the private stuff impinging on the city stuff.
[Danielle Evans]: Yeah, that's probably like, you know, it looks good.
[MCM00001745_SPEAKER_03]: It's a tree, but no one's pruning it. And now it's taking over the the crosswalk and the light obstructing street signs. People try to take a right on that corner. They can't see the oncoming traffic coming out of 50 miles an hour sometimes on Main Street.
[MaryAnn O'Connor]: Yeah. The other question I had, Danielle, about the affordable housing units, is that so part of the Greenland extension and all of that, is that that's all part of the zoning issues as well as trying to increase affordable housing?
[Danielle Evans]: I know they get used, but I mean, is there- There's a couple of the sub-state mandates, mandated changes that kind of relate to how we're also responding. So there was the MBTA zoning, which basically any city or town that is served by the MBTA had to create a multifamily district and it had a numerical target and you had to prove that you were rezoning in a manner that would or could produce that many units. So we got that passed two years ago because we were in the first around of that as a rapid transit community. So that's over in Wellington, and that's an overlay. And that has nothing to do with our inclusionary housing. They actually, the state had set a cap that is 10% of the units could be affordable at maximum 80% AMI, which is actually not Our ordinance is actually stronger than that. So we had to do a feasibility analysis to prove that our existing inclusionary zoning, which has higher than 10%, wouldn't hurt housing production. So they reviewed that and found that we could keep our existing inclusionary zoning to apply to that district. So our inclusionary zoning is citywide, including that district, because we got permission. There will be some updates to the inclusionary housing, but it needs to be studied because it does have impacts. And also this would be in conjunction with the linkage study because there was, the affordable housing trust would like to see a linkage payment go to the trust. But if you do that, you need to make sure that the number of units that you're requiring and any payment that it doesn't basically grind things to a halt. Because if a project doesn't pencil out, they're not going to build it. So you end up with nothing. So we have to be careful about that. how much we require, there's a, you know, it changes with the market and, you know, the interest rate climate and things like that.
[MaryAnn O'Connor]: Balancing ethics.
[Danielle Evans]: Right.
[MaryAnn O'Connor]: Any other questions or thoughts? Anybody that's in the meeting is free to ask.
[Danielle Evans]: I'm happy to provide the links to the zoning page, which is being updated. But there's also a viewer. And I can drop that link in. Let's see. Into the Zoom.
[MCM00001745_SPEAKER_03]: Sure. And we can get that in the minutes to the link area.
[Danielle Evans]: And this is also linked from the city website. This might open to a random property because I'm trying to figure out what the... But basically you can click on that link and you can kind of play around with the various layers to see current zoning and what some proposed changes are.
[MCM00001745_SPEAKER_03]: Or maybe you can email it to Mariana, then she can forward it to us.
[MCM00001745_SPEAKER_03]: The link. It was kind of a long link. That's why. Yeah. So there's. You can cut and paste it in.
[Danielle Evans]: I think we might've created a tiny URL. I can email it out.
[MCM00001745_SPEAKER_03]: Yeah. Yeah. Just email it. It'll be easier. I'm interested in looking at it for sure.
[Danielle Evans]: Yeah, so I guess other things that might be like before you are like, Dr. Platzowitz, I'm so sorry. So you had brought up population increases. So like from your perspective, is there other things that we should be concerned about like population?
[MCM00001745_SPEAKER_03]: Just mindful of the infrastructure. I know with some of the immigration, Some of the cities had difficulty because when the population comes up, maybe unexpectedly at times, there's other needs of that population need from the city that need to be taken into account. And if the city's not prepared for it, it can maybe turn into what we don't want, you know.
[Danielle Evans]: But like rodents, like rats and stuff like that, I know- Oh yeah, just the need for more teachers.
[MCM00001745_SPEAKER_03]: If we have more kids moving into these extra units, that's gonna put stresses on the school system. So just mindful of when the people populate these looser zoning restrictions. I would think that outcome's gonna be increased population. I could be wrong, but that's what I would expect if you have more dwelling units. And- Yeah, I think it's not like a- Oh yeah, yeah, we'll come on it sequentially, but just to be mindful of that, because you got all the trash and water and sewer and schools, police, fire, people requiring services on all of them are gonna go up then, and they need to be ready to deliver.
[Danielle Evans]: And I think one of the other things is, you know, is the mismatch between the household sizes and the household units, the unit sizes that we have now, like I was saying, we have, you know, a lot of seniors that are overhoused and would like, yeah. And they, they, you know, can't move because they want to stay in their community, but also it could be very limited because, um, you know, if they want to age in place, you know, they want to live on like one floor, have, accessible units or an elevator served building someplace, but they don't need to be car dependent so they could walk around. We're hoping that some of this upzoning and some of the corridors near amenities would increase production of elevator served buildings that, I think those kick in at like four stories, I believe. Otherwise it's not economical for a developer to have an elevator. So we'd end up not having that type of housing stock for disabled folks or anyone with mobility challenges. So didn't have that density in some of these quarters where there's the services, so you could walk to a coffee shop or, you know, to a corner store, so they're closer and not as isolated from things. I don't know, is that anything like that something that your group focuses on?
[MaryAnn O'Connor]: Well, certainly, yeah, isolation and seniors and mental health is just absolutely something we're looking at. So that would be, yeah, that's great. If those are the types of things that are in the thought process when you're considering the zoning changes, that's great. I mean, obviously, yeah, more density, more trash. something that we battle with every day, the road initiative as well.
[Danielle Evans]: Yeah. So part of that is with site plan review and having strict standards of how things can be handled, like how trash is handled. You can look into what the extent of zoning regulations can help alleviate your bad situations. with trash and things like that. Nobody doesn't touch everything. You can't cure all harms, but it is one tool.
[MCM00001745_SPEAKER_03]: I think the linkage thing is great, mindful of not hampering the development process, but also mindful of benefiting the city itself and city government. to offset some of those other demands that we know are coming. So that it's not a one way effort pays for it type of a deal. That's what I'm trying to say.
[MaryAnn O'Connor]: Some communities have heard to use those linkage fees pretty creatively too. Some would actually like funds job development training and things like that in the business. So it's, you could do a lot with those linkage fees.
[Danielle Evans]: Yeah. Cause I think the Somerville has it so that it's sort of kind of like an anti or a way to offset gentrification. So if you have like a new company that comes in that is going to create high wage jobs, that's great. That's usually they're bringing in people that have higher incomes and then could displace people that couldn't do those jobs that already lived there. So that's where the affordable housing linkage comes in is create more affordable housing stock and then get the job training so that folks that are living there already might be able to get some skills so they could maybe have an employer in town now that they could be qualified to work for. Yes, there's so many different ways that we can look at it.
[MaryAnn O'Connor]: Great. Thank you, Daniel. I really appreciate the update and all the information and I will circulate that link. And then I already did send, I believe, the links to the public hearing, public meetings that are coming up. So.
[Danielle Evans]: So the next one, the next amendments that I expect that they'll vote on would be Medford Square in West Medford Square. And then The residential, I don't expect any votes until the fall, because we're going through this whole input process, and then a whole new kind of draft is going to be created in response to that. So if you have more particular input for the residential areas, there's ample time to provide some more input, as there'll be a whole new iteration that'll before, but if there's something like Medford Square, West Medford Square, those are more imminent if you wanted to. And those are commercial. Yeah.
[MaryAnn O'Connor]: Commercial.
[Danielle Evans]: Yeah, mixed juice, yeah.
[MaryAnn O'Connor]: Juice, OK. Great. And that's coming up soon?
[Danielle Evans]: I think it's the August 6 meeting.
[MaryAnn O'Connor]: OK.
[Danielle Evans]: Yeah. All right. Thank you very much for joining us. And thank you, Christian, as well. Appreciate it. Feel free to reach out to me with any questions or comments. Thank you so much for what you guys do.
[MaryAnn O'Connor]: Okay, next on the agenda. Hi, Kathy, I see you joined us.
[SPEAKER_07]: Nice to see you. Yeah, sorry I was late, Miriam. All of MGB internet is down at 1230 on the nose. It's so bizarre. So sorry, I'm on my phone. Oh my goodness. Yeah, so if it drops off, something terrible happened. But thank you, sorry. OK, no worries.
[MaryAnn O'Connor]: All right, we have an update from the Office of Prevention and Outreach. And first off, I'd like to introduce to you Patrick Dunavant. He's our health equity coordinator. He's leading community liaisons in their efforts to do work around outreach and health equity and bringing issues to our attention. And then Patrick's working with them on creative ways to address the issues, either with outreach or education, or both, communication. So I want to have Patrick say hello, tell us a little bit about himself. And this is our board, Dr. Pradowitz, Jamie Votel, and Kathy Charbonneau.
[SPEAKER_01]: Thank you, Marianne. Good afternoon, everyone. It's a pleasure to meet you. And as Marianne explained so well, my role as the health equity coordinator is supervising and supporting our team of community liaisons and some of our connectors who provide such an important bridge between both outreaching to communities that face access barriers around what services and supports are available through the city or through other avenues, sometimes the state, as well as serving as a way to amplify the voices of those communities to inform the city's policies and practices and the services that we provide. I come to this work after spending a long time doing prevention coordination and prevention management around different health and social challenges, as well as doing some work around systems access. And so I'm really excited. I've been here about two months now, I think, three months. I'm really excited to be working with this great team and ways to sort of dig into both the similarities and the differences that the different communities are facing and building on. So thank you very much.
[MaryAnn O'Connor]: And we're happy to have Patrick. That's great work and Catherine, I don't know if there's anything to inform the board what's going on lately with. So, Patrick works under with Catherine in the office of prevention.
[Catherine Dhingra]: Can you hear me? Okay, we've been having microphone problems. So one of our most exciting updates is a new staff position we created here in Medford. And I'd like to introduce Matisse Monti, who is our new prevention and wellness coordinator. And Matisse can talk about some of the things that she's been coordinating and one of the new grant initiatives we were just awarded.
[SPEAKER_00]: Hi everyone, my name's Matisse. I, yeah, have been here maybe about a month now. I am kind of doing a lot with the youth, really trying to build up our youth programming in Medford. I'll be working with the schools, trying to kind of lead a commission that is really talking about prevention. I think predominantly a lot of what I'm going to do is around substance use, but kind of like the whole spectrum of youth prevention work. And yeah, we got a grant from the Attorney General's office, and I've hired six youth to work with me for the next two months around kind of social media campaigns, events, really learning, doing peer education with the youth in the Medford community. So yeah, we just had an awesome meeting today with those six youth. And I'm really excited to see what they're going to do and all the information that they're going to, resources that they're going to come up with, hopefully do some presentations for the high schoolers. And then in the fall, probably I will be working on the YouthWorks grant. So hiring more youth and placing them into jobs and really doing professional development, in my opinion. Yeah, I come from a background in harm reduction. I worked at a drop-in center for women and trans folks in the Mass and Cass area in Boston that are unhoused and using drugs. So I have a lot of experience around just substance use in general. My degree, my master's in public health, I focused a lot on LGBTQ health. So yeah, that's kind of where my expertise is. And I'm really excited to work with the people that are going to be creating the world after us. So I think it's really cool, cool position to be in. And I'm excited to be here.
[MaryAnn O'Connor]: Thanks, Matisse. Happy to have you. I saw you in a meeting this morning with the kids. I'm going to give you four minutes to tell me what you would do in some sort of icebreaker, sounds great.
[MCM00001745_SPEAKER_07]: I would just say your work sounds super exciting. If you haven't, and maybe you have heard of this Brockton High and Brockton Community Health Center that have partnered on doing similar work, but specifically with the house high schoolers around leading leadership in health care, and then also stepping into other roles within health care. Might want to check that out and see if there's anything there you can learn and maybe implement here, but excited to hear the work that you're doing in Medford. Welcome.
[MaryAnn O'Connor]: Okay, and then I did send you all the June monthly report, reportable disease update. Nothing too much that has changed as far as we still see that the flu, the coronavirus, we're still up there. And we have had a little bit of an uptick in Foodborne illnesses, not huge. But Josh is out there combating that for us with those restaurant inspections and making sure everyone's up to speed and up to code. But we do, you know, and it's this time of year as well when we would see a little bit more of an uptick. But when I say an uptick, it's, you know, just a couple of cases. It's not a plague. So we're good. Any discussion on that? Anyone else have any thoughts?
[MCM00001745_SPEAKER_03]: Well, sure.
[MaryAnn O'Connor]: Um, other business. The only other business I have is like, uh, if, if the board agrees, I would like to, um, cancel August meeting and, um, take month of August, uh, break and we'll see you in September if, if the board's fine with that.
[SPEAKER_07]: Sounds good. Sounds good to me. Sounds good to me.
[MaryAnn O'Connor]: All right. Uh, I think that's it. If no one else has anything, do we have a motion to adjourn?
[MCM00001745_SPEAKER_03]: Motion to adjourn.
[MaryAnn O'Connor]: Do we have a second? Second. Thank you. Take a roll call vote. Jenny Vitale? Yes. Dr. Platowicz?
[MCM00001745_SPEAKER_03]: Yes.
[MaryAnn O'Connor]: Kathy Chapman? Yes. Motion carries. All right. Motion to adjourn. Thank you all very much.
[MCM00001745_SPEAKER_03]: Thank you.
[SPEAKER_07]: See you next time. Thank you. Take care.