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[UHZzywcUcK0_SPEAKER_03]: I'd like to call to order the Medical Affordable Housing Trust Funds Wednesday, October 1st meeting. We're meeting in room 201 in a hybrid meeting called attendance, I guess. Penny? Kayla? Here. Roberta? Here. Harry? Teta? Here. Madam Mayor? And Lisa?
[SPEAKER_09]: Here.
[UHZzywcUcK0_SPEAKER_03]: Oh, the Mayor is in the meeting room.
[Theresa Dupont]: This is fantastic.
[Breanna Lungo-Koehn]: Good evening, Madam Mayor. Good evening, everybody. Thank you for joining. Oh, sorry, I'm late and I have an event to go to. So that's why I'm just going to hang in so I can commute while listening in too. Thank you.
[UHZzywcUcK0_SPEAKER_03]: Thank you. All right, so announcements we have I want to officially welcome Rosa to the affordable housing trust fund. She was confirmed at the city council meeting on September 9th. It's a long council meeting. It was.
[Teda DeRosa]: I stayed as long as I could. Actually, it wasn't long after you had left, that maybe I solved the app. So it was pretty good. And it was nice to see the meeting in person. Yes. Congratulations.
[UHZzywcUcK0_SPEAKER_03]: Thank you. Welcome. Does everybody, we did introductions, brief, once you know everybody around the table. Yes.
[Teda DeRosa]: And we just introduced ourselves then. Perfect.
[UHZzywcUcK0_SPEAKER_03]: All right. So has everybody gotten a chance to review the September 30th minutes? Yes. Yes. Okay, if there are no edits to the board minutes from September 3rd, I'd like to request a motion to approve the meeting minutes. So moved. Second. All right, and we're gonna do a roll call. Kayla? Yes. Roberta? Yes. Teda? Yes. Madam Mayor?
[Breanna Lungo-Koehn]: Yes.
[UHZzywcUcK0_SPEAKER_03]: Okay, and Lisa, yes. Okay, and item four on the agenda is Councilor Leming's Fractional Payment Resolution. We're joined tonight with Councilor Leming to discuss his resolution regarding allowing fractional payments to be made to the Affordable Housing Trust, rather than rounding up to the next affordable unit. I'll open the floor to discussion. Is there anything I'm not seeing? First of all, thank you for the resolution. For the, having the fractional payments, if I'm understanding, would be made to the Affordable Housing Trust. Yes. Can I ask a question before we start the conversation? Yes. I am embarrassed to say I'm not 100% afloat in the ordinance right now. If the fractional, is it, is there a certain threshold that happens before they round up? So if it's less than 50%, is it no pay, nothing happens, or if it is, no matter what the fractional unit is, they have to round up?
[Matt Leming]: My reading of the language, and I went over this a few times, that it's rounded up, which is- It doesn't matter, right? Yeah, so it's like, you know, if it comes out to like 20%, then it's, yeah, yeah, it's always rounded up.
[UHZzywcUcK0_SPEAKER_03]: It's always rounded. So if it's like 1.2 units, it automatically goes to the two units.
[Matt Leming]: And that, yeah, that's an issue. Thank you.
[UHZzywcUcK0_SPEAKER_03]: Roberta did a slide show. Thank you for comparing the different ordinance. I don't know if we want to just jump right in there.
[Roberta Cameron]: I don't sure how to press and it's the purpose of this slide show is just to. Demonstrate to everyone that our ordinances are different and we can kind of see at a very high level what they look like, because I really haven't spent a lot of time with this, but I thought even this little cursory look would be very instructive. So next slide please. So just kind of some basic facts of what Medford's Inclusionary Ordinance looks like. At the bottom, we see what it applies to. Any development with 10 or more units has to provide some inclusionary units, and it is the proportion of inclusionary units required increases with the number of units. So, at 10 to 24 units, it's 10%, 25 to 49 units, 13%, and 50 or more units, it's 15%. All of the affordability is set at 80% of area median income. We have no fractional units. Anything that falls in between is rounded up, which I think An argument is that this discourages unit creation because developers would rather eliminate a unit than have to round up or eliminate nine units rather than round up. Let me just go back to that side a little bit more. Units have to be, there are no bonuses or incentives built into our ordinance and the units must be onsite. There's no alternative to onsite. mentioned. So the next slide is Watertown I looked at. The affordability in Watertown is also 80% of area median income. They also have different levels of proportion of units required. Theirs start a little bit lower. It's 6 to 19 units. in a development, it's 12.5%, 20 units is 15%. They also round up to the nearest full number, but they do allow for cash payment in lieu if it's a very small, less than 10 units in a development can make cash and lieu payments optionally. And they provide, I'm sorry, yeah, go ahead.
[Danielle Evans]: I'm pretty sure they round down or round up I missed that, okay. There's a cash-in-lieu option, but you need a special permit. Okay, thank you. Thank you.
[Roberta Cameron]: Thank you. Yeah, this is such a quick cursory view that I stand to be corrected also when I get to Somerville, too. Somerville, yeah.
[Danielle Evans]: Watertown doesn't actually have a fractional payment, like cash payment provision because you round down, so it would be correct. Yeah, got it.
[Roberta Cameron]: And so a formula is provided for calculating the cash in lieu payment, which is based on, that's a lot of letters. Massachusetts Department of Housing and Community Development Qualified Allocation Plan.
[Unidentified]: for low income housing tax credits.
[Roberta Cameron]: So basically, their formula is pegging to a published standard by the state. That's what all those letters mean. And they do provide some incentive, which is affordable units are exempted for minimum lot area for or the Floor area ratio that determines the amount of development that can take place and they rental units to be exempted. So if you build more than required number of rental units and those more than required units are affordable to households below 65% area median income, you can you can obtain this incentive of additional units. And also I understood, maybe I'm wrong, that small scale of affordable housing developments can be allowed by right. So I assume that means that there must be a special permit required for some uses. So that's Watertown. Somerville I looked at and Somerville has three tiers of affordability required defined by the size of the development. offsite units or alternative methods of compliance are strongly discouraged, but several different options are spelled out in the ordinance. And there's a procedure given for determining when it's in the city's best interest. Fractional units, you're about to correct me, Lisa, and I was looking at your chart. I'm sorry. Oh, it's wrong. So some of those 20 percent across the board.
[UHZzywcUcK0_SPEAKER_03]: I might be looking at an old version of 2019. 2019, they had a new ordinance that went in place. 2019's ordinance is anything with four or more units, again, depends on what's it called, the zone that they're in, essentially you are in.
[Roberta Cameron]: So ignore the table.
[UHZzywcUcK0_SPEAKER_03]: But all the other stop ups, the 1, 2, 3, 1st, 4th. It is 20% and it does do, we do, Summerville does do fractional payments. And it is, there's a fun calculation that it does with the fractional payments too.
[Roberta Cameron]: And there's also bonuses for additional units and additional incentives for a plus plus students. That's not true. It doesn't sound like I could be wrong. Okay. I could be reading a wrong version of the ordinance when I looked at this. So, um. This is to be determined. This is just really to show contrasting the simplicity of Medford's to the subtlety that is in some of these other ordinances, and that it's not only a matter of, like, fractional payments aren't the only way of generating revenue through the Inclusionary Ordinance. Watertown is also doing it by allowing for, you know, the payment in lieu for small developments. And so there are questions to be explored about how we can generate revenue with the Inclusionary Zoning Ordinance and maybe make some tweaks to the ordinance to encourage more larger scale development that's going to use that ordinance to create these units. So that was my case to be made. Thank you. Thank you.
[Breanna Lungo-Koehn]: Can I ask a question for clarity? Through the chair, thank you. I like the idea of both, but are we talking about having a developer round up if there's a fraction or to make a payment or are we proposing or Councilor Lemme, are you proposing that we let them choose, but they have to do one or the other? I just want to be clear. Cause I like the concept of this and what it's leading to. I just want clarity.
[Matt Leming]: Well, the current system is to round up. which sort of discourages them from developing more units. It kind of just makes it so that they're incentivized to build nine units instead of 10 on the current system, whereas they Whereas if we switch to a fractional payment system, they could be encouraged to build 10. That last unit's not affordable, but then they give some sort of a payment to the affordable housing trust. Or if they're building a 20-unit property, they're currently very discouraged from building 21 units, that would be an additional affordable unit. But if it were a fractional payment system, then they wouldn't really have that disincentive from building at that discrete threshold. They would have the option to just put some cash in the Affordable Housing Trust instead. Does that make sense?
[Breanna Lungo-Koehn]: Yes, that's great. Thank you.
[Danielle Evans]: There's two things you're talking about. There's cash in lieu where do you have a whole unit you're supposed to provide and then a cash payment in lieu of providing the unit or the fractional payment where it's, you know, say the number comes up to 2.2 units must be provided through the formula, which that would be the 15% or 20%.
[UHZzywcUcK0_SPEAKER_03]: I just did it using the numbers on the resolution The 10 to 24 units at 10%, I use the 24, that would be 2.4 units.
[Danielle Evans]: Yes, I'm trying to give an example where a developer has like a 314 unit project. And I'm not good at math, that's why I'm a planner, not an engineer. And so it'll come up to a fraction. And as the senior planner who reviews all the development that comes in, Nobody is creating a unit count that results in a fractional payment where they're going to lose more money. So they size the total unit count to be just under. So nobody is rounding up. That's just not happening. But if it was 0.1, 0.2 of a unit, we could have basically doing a cash and move calculation and taking that percentage of it. So like 10% of the cost, either the development cost of a unit or the subsidy gap. So the gap between, which the subsidy gap works better for ownership because that's very clear price difference. What's affordable to, the affordable price versus the market rate price. And then that's the payment or the development costs under the
[Matt Leming]: Well, yeah, yeah, I think in order to solve this, to solve this problem, like, the, the, the, the issue is that developers are sort of like discouraged from building like a certain number of units and I just kind of like makes these very weird. Step off saying, so the point of the resolution, like, the intention behind it is to make it this sort of like, give the affordable housing trust, like, broad. like broad like authority to recommend to council a policy that fixes this issue. So it could be something similar they're doing in Somerville, Watertown or another municipality or could be completely original policy just as long as it solves that discrete like number of units problem and can potentially get some cash in to be into the affordable housing trust. So the way that I was envisioning it was give the AHT time to discuss, come up with something that you can agree upon, and it would be voted and sent back to Council in the form of a recommendation. Council could Council could, you know, refer it to legal if we have the authority to do that. So it could be looked over in that sense. And then it would go through the normal process for updating a zoning ordinance, which is Council votes it out to recommend to the Community Development Board, which would then hold their own public hearings on it, refer it back to Council, and then Council could potentially pass that with a two-thirds vote, and then it would be ordained. The point of this is that, like, I have been hearing planners rightfully talk about this particular policy.
[Danielle Evans]: We talked about it.
[Matt Leming]: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Our office hired us years ago. And so this is sort of like saying, OK, please tell council how to fix this. That's kind of the intention here.
[UHZzywcUcK0_SPEAKER_03]: So thank you for the clarification. I appreciate that. With the attention, because what I'm hearing, I just want to make sure I heard it correctly. The intention is getting affordable, getting units built in the city of Medford, as many as the developer wishes. And then if there's a, if instead of losing a certain number of units, we want them to be able to do a fractional, possibly do a fractional payment. I have got to, and I think, I think what I'm also hearing is that your resolution is asking for the Affordable Housing Trust Fund to do some brainstorming and to sort of look at whether or not, you know, do we, if there is a fractional payment, is that fractional payment, does the fractional, do you look at whether it's a fractional payment, anything below 50% or, and then round up 50, if the fractional is 50, you round up and you kind of get a twofer, or just a fractional payment straight across the board. And if that's the case, looking at the formula, because Somerville has a formula. Somerville changed its formula in the 2019 ordinance because in Somerville, We wanted, once upon a time, we wanted the units. I mean, we wanted the money for it to do the trust. And then we really wanted them to encourage, by we, I mean Somerville, I'm sorry, I've got to think of the word, ma'am. The Somerville wanted the unit. So the formula for the fractional payment, let's say that it is, a homeownership, it is actually looking at the comparable units, sale prices by the difference between the, oh my God, the affordable unit multiplied by the fractional. So in some cases, it doesn't matter what the fractional payment is. There are some cases where they may owe the affordable housing trust fund, the developer owes the trust fund. When I'd like millions of dollars or close to millions of dollars for that fractional payment, which adds to the developer, right? It adds to the cost. And if you're thinking about the pipeline right now, or what's coming in and the cost of developing property is very expensive. So just. I don't know if that's what you're looking for.
[Matt Leming]: I would say it would be fine to just recommend a complete update to the policy as overall. Again, I guess not just looking at the fractional payments issue in a vacuum, but if there is a consensus that the 10 to 24, 25 to 49, or 50 plus is working, then I would view this as an opportunity to just, like, recommend something completely different. Just, like, I think the important thing from Council's perspective is that there's consensus and solid reasoning behind it. And I think that the AHT is a good board to, a good body to provide that.
[Maria D'Orsi]: Okay, thank you.
[Roberta Cameron]: I have a question. Is the city putting out an RFP for a consultant to study this issue? I thought I read in the minutes that there would be a consultant. I might have misunderstood or misremembered that.
[Matt Leming]: I believe Teresa is making an RFP at the moment for the affordable housing access study, which is a little bit different. Okay. That's related to the linkage fee, that's not related to.
[Roberta Cameron]: So we're looking for community and affordable housing trust input on what we think the inclusionary zoning should look like and maybe coordinating with the city staff to develop that.
[Matt Leming]: Yes. Yeah, if you think that it is only within the capacity to recommend a small change, like a small common sense changes that the city staff could support, that's fine. If you think that the whole policy just needs to be overthrown and that it is within the capacity of city staff to do that, that's fine too. So, Danielle, yeah, sorry.
[Danielle Evans]: the thresholds, we need to do an economic feasibility analysis because you don't want to run into the problems that Somerville did. We had to walk back the requirements because if you require too much, you don't rebuild anything. So there's kind of, you know. And we're in the mess, Somerville's in the mess of doing a financial feasibility analysis. Yes, we have to do that. The MBTA zoning, like we had to do an economic feasibility analysis to even let them to, allow us to even use our existing ordinance because it's more, I don't know, onerous, I guess, because it's more than 10%. So the state basically said, you have to prove that requiring anything more than 10%, 80% of your AMI wouldn't sign in development. And so did the study show that our The ordinance that we have now, in combination with linkage too, because right now residential development is out of linkage. So you have to be careful with the levers that you're pulling, otherwise you get nothing. So I would not be changing the percentages, especially where we're trying to get our linkage fees.
[Matt Leming]: Yeah. And that's, again, I'd say that's a decision that the AHT can make, but yeah. I'm just basically Council's just looking for a recommendation to get another revenue stream into the AHT.
[Danielle Evans]: Yeah, the fractional payments. Our office completely supports this. I think I, yeah. was telling you about the concepts.
[Roberta Cameron]: It's just helpful to understand what has already gone into thinking about this, and then what we imagine the process is going to look like to develop it.
[Teda DeRosa]: I'm just listening and wrapping my head around it. Because when I read this, I was like, OK, paying in lieu of having a unit, right? So trying to visualize West Method Square, we have luxury condos going up and they're doing nine units. Had they did 10 units, they would have to have one, at least one affordable unit. So when I first read this, I was thinking, okay, so why would, somebody like developers because they want to make the most money that they possibly can you know they're you know staying underneath so if they're going to stay at nine and instead of rounding up to the 10 they're going to give a fractional amount or
[UHZzywcUcK0_SPEAKER_03]: They may have gone in and may have, because I'm not the developer, I don't know, they may have thought, you know what, this is a perfect site for 10 units. And they did the math. And well, no, because they would have been even. They wanted to avoid. Yeah.
[Danielle Evans]: But then you would have to buy two. Yeah. Yeah.
[Teda DeRosa]: But are you asking, like, why they wouldn't even consider an affordable at all? Well, right. Because, like, so why would a developer come in if they know if I stand or a certain amount of numbers, you know what I mean? And then my other thought was, so if they have 9 units, and then they have. they're going to have store like commercial unit underneath. Is that considered a unit or is that completely separate because it's mixed use? So, you know, if they have one store or two stores, essentially that's like two income generating units. So instead of it being nine, it's actually 11. Right. And I don't know. I mean, that's where my head was going and I'm like listening and I'm like, yeah, Trying to figure out where that balance is and, you know, are we going to have a bunch of nine-unit developments going up so that they don't have to put affordable housing?
[Maria D'Orsi]: Anytime that there's a cliff, there's going to be a natural progression, a natural indication to go underneath. So that's going to be hard to avoid whatever we craft. I don't know about the mixed unit, the commercial unit question, I'm assuming
[Danielle Evans]: residential only. They usually lose money on the ground floor. It's sort of like doing us a favor to put it in there so you can have like a walkable nice square so I wouldn't want to disincentivize. Do they pay linkage on the commercial space? There's no, that one didn't require, well actually, because linkage kicks in at six units and there's a threshold for size for commercials this i'm not sure if it rises to that because the commercial space of that one example is actually quite small that's there's um you know other stuff there's a unit down there too so the the link i just want to because i'm just not used to the linkage being tagged to residential i'm used to the linkage being tagged to commercial so i just want to make sure that that's what i'm hearing so the linkage is
[UHZzywcUcK0_SPEAKER_03]: There's no linkage being tapped to cook. Well, there may not be linkage attached to commercial, but there's definitely linkage payments.
[Danielle Evans]: Attached to residential and not don't pay linkage and the. The commercial, there's size requirements. A small commercial space would not be subject to it. I think it's 10,000.
[UHZzywcUcK0_SPEAKER_03]: So if a developer is coming into Method and they're developing a 50-unit residential mixed first floor, storefronts, 50 units, the developer may be required, I don't want to use absolutes, but may be required to pay linkage for commercial, linkage for residential, and provide affordable units.
[Danielle Evans]: Yeah, possibly.
[Matt Leming]: I think that's kind of in the scope of the NEXUS study that Teresa is currently writing up the RFP for, because I would end up considering a fusion of all those. Sorry, I'd like to, I mean, to illustrate where the fractional payments issue come in. So, if you have you have a 10 unit property, then that's where it starts to kick and that's never. to be affordable, which is one unit. You have 11 units, 10% of those is 1.1 units, which under the current policy ends up being rounded up to two. So if you want to build an 11 unit property, suddenly two of those have to be affordable under the current policy. Want to build 13, same difference. It's 1.3 units, you have to build two of them to be affordable. So if you want to build a 13 unit property under a fractional incentive policy, it's It would be slightly more appealing because you would still have to build one affordable unit, but you can take the 0.3 and then basically take whatever 0.3 of an affordable unit would end up being and put that into the housing trust. Then developers would be strongly incentivized from building anything above nine units, and you would get more affordable units as a result of that, and you get money into the housing trust. So it's kind of a win-win for everybody.
[Roberta Cameron]: Yes, Roberta.
[UHZzywcUcK0_SPEAKER_03]: Is there a timeline for the linkage nexus study? That's on our agenda to give an update on.
[Theresa Dupont]: It is, right? Yeah, sort of. Katherine asked if I could maybe address it on our next agenda items at the end of it. Yeah, OK.
[UHZzywcUcK0_SPEAKER_03]: All right, does anybody else have any other questions for the council? So what I'm here, I just want to restate what I heard was the ask from the, from the resolution is just for this, for the affordable housing trust fund to have a conversation about the benefits of receiving, of adding a fractional payment. And then may, and then if we all agree, weigh the benefits and the bonds benefits, then make the recommendation to the city council and then what I heard was maybe city staff is the one that will be making the, working on changing the ordinance and all of that. Like that, you're not asking us to do that. You're asking us.
[Matt Leming]: Well, draft language would be nice. Okay. It would save time. Okay. But usually it's like any changes would have to be introduced by a Councilor. And we could like just use this paper to end up introducing language for the ordinance. If it needs to be referred to legal at that point, we could hand it to the solicitor, then at the same time refer it to the community development board who would go through their own process, potentially offer recommendations on it, go back to council, and then we would ordain it by a two-thirds vote.
[Maria D'Orsi]: Sorry, I did have one more question then. Did the bonus Um, inclusionary zoning get included in this last draft, like bonus, um, density. You came to us like a couple months ago and talked about like the rezoning progress and there were some bonus density percentages in that as well.
[Danielle Evans]: Yes. We have, um, we added density bonuses the first time in our. MBTA zoning overlay. Okay. And the redevelopment that's happening or is before the community development board, the former Cathy site that one that 10 to 20, the Veer Beach Parkway is actually availing themselves to that. They're going to do a deeper affordability for a subset of their units in exchange for getting, I think it's an extra floor. But that was only for the MBTA overlay district. But we also added it to the Mystic Avenue Corridor District as well as the Salish Street Corridor District. So currently those three stand-alone districts have their own kind of rules.
[Maria D'Orsi]: Yeah, those are separate overlay districts for density bonuses for affordable units in those districts only. So those would be separate from the inclusionary zoning percentages.
[Danielle Evans]: Okay, thanks. And then one thing we thought about is we could eventually overhaul. We do want to change the inclusionary zoning. One of the things we wanted to change was to have fractional units and density bonuses. It's going to take longer to get to this. We need revenue now to increase the housing production. It would make sense, low-hanging fruit, to just stop the crash limit. We would love to roll out the density bonuses citywide. Thank you.
[UHZzywcUcK0_SPEAKER_03]: Thank you for the clarification. I appreciate it. If we're all set with this topic, we can go on to the next item on the agenda. Thank you all for your work. Thank you. Thank you. It was nice seeing you. Okay, the CPA application. This here says that one of the staff is going to provide an update. Is one of the staff able to provide an update or I can certainly do it.
[Theresa Dupont]: Just to reintroduce myself to anybody who's watching or in the room. Teresa Dupont, I'm the Community Preservation Act Manager for the City. I'm helping out running this meeting tonight, but my day job is to manage our program over there. The Affordable Housing Trust has once again come to us for a tranche of funding. We have applications that we solicit annually, as well as we do have an off-cycle application for urgent or emergency needs. Pertaining to your application for fiscal 26 funding, the trust has asked for $550,000, which happens to align with our minimum that the CPA has set to spend in housing. Don't want to bore you with details, but CPA can only be spent on three different things, historic preservation, open space and recreation projects, like our park projects, and affordable housing. So every year we set a budget of how much we can set aside from our overall budget into each one of those buckets. This year we elected to increase our contribution to 25%, which equals $550,000, which is what you're asking for. So as an update to that, the application has been submitted and accepted. There are presentations that all grant applicants must do. So you are scheduled for November 18. I will also send along a courtesy invite to everybody. But Tuesday, November 18th, that is not the week of Thanksgiving. It's the one before. Similar to how you meet at the trust, we meet hybridly. So folks can certainly join via Zoom or join us in person. But there will just be a small presentation to the committee to support the funding request. It'll be very similar to the one that was presented to the committee last year, because I don't think at this point we have really finite projects, but y'all need money, and we're a funding source. So happy to answer any specific questions folks may have, but that's just kind of a general overview. Application's good, accepted. Our voting on our decision-making will be in December. So you'll be informed in December where that funding request lands. Um, I do not speak on behalf of the committee. I think it was a good application. We've funded you before we're, we're very much in partnership with the affordable housing trust. So I think it will be a favorable outcome. Um, we do have, this is probably our most competitive round. Just want to share with everybody, our most competitive round since I've been there. Certainly, um, we have a budget of about 2 million. And right now, we're about 3.9 million in requests. So we will be breaking some hearts this year. But just as a brief update as to CPA. So hopefully, even if you don't need to be there to speak, I mean, I think Lisa and Kathleen have kind of fleshed out who will be running that. But we would love to have you all join to help support if you can. I know evenings after work can be tough. But you're obviously all invited to come and support that. Any questions in particular?
[Maria D'Orsi]: Thank you for the update. I think, um, just one, any follow up on the discussion that we had with them in the joint meeting regarding, um, standardizing percentages or things like that going forward.
[Theresa Dupont]: Um, not as of yet, but, um, I think. We're in, since we're in our funding round, the next three meetings, um, so the rest of the year will be pretty much devoted to reviewing our funding. applications. This is a great topic for us to address in our January-February meetings, which is typically when we re-evaluate how the funding round went, see if there's any opportunities for improvements. So those would be great discussions. And again, it's a public meeting. Everybody's welcome. But we can certainly set up a formal invite to have any members that want to join us. But that'll be something we'll flesh out late winter, early spring.
[UHZzywcUcK0_SPEAKER_03]: Thank you. Thank you. That's a great question. Thank you. Great question. which I have a follow-up question, as you could see my brain thinking. Should there be joint minutes for that meeting? Should the trust, because that was a joint meeting.
[Theresa Dupont]: I was intending to write up meeting minutes. I will check with our legal counsel on whether, since we were hosting it, like do you all need to accept it? I'm sorry, I keep saying y'all.
[UHZzywcUcK0_SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, no, no, no, that's fine.
[SPEAKER_09]: Because I know you, we did the joint meeting and then we adjourned that meeting and then you did another. Yeah, we rolled into our CPC meeting. I think we might need to be at least have that on record. Yes.
[Theresa Dupont]: So we will be meeting CPC meets on the 14th of October. I feel like that's a quick, easy agenda item I can get in there. But I'll also check with our legal counsel because it's unprecedented for me and I should have that answer. So thank you for flagging me. It was just thought of it. I didn't even think of it. Yeah, it was in the back of my mind of like, I should do those minutes. I think just the CPS, but I will legally confirm where that should land. Thank you for that. Awesome. Thank you.
[UHZzywcUcK0_SPEAKER_03]: All right, item number six on the agenda is the five-year action plan update timeline for plan submission to the City Council. Updates we discussed in previous meetings we've made to the action plan, and we will likely submit the plan to the City Council in January. The goal, if memory serves correctly and the reason why we're holding off, is we want to get a picture of the Fellsway West development on our cover page. Am I misremembering?
[Roberta Cameron]: I agree we would ideally like to have that. Is it worth holding the action plan back from presenting it to city council until then? I didn't understand.
[SPEAKER_12]: We voted on it. I thought we said we'd like it. I don't think we said we must. I think we voted to be included. We should look back.
[Roberta Cameron]: I asked actually for Catherine, I had a conversation with her about what we actually voted on the last time or if we voted on the action plan. And what she recalled was that we said, let's come back this month because we were making some changes, including a couple of substantive ones. So those substantive changes have been made. And some minor formatting changes have been made. So what I think what we said was that we would approve it this month. Pending the with with just adding the photograph after we approve it this month.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.
[Roberta Cameron]: So that the only change after our approval now is to make the cover.
[UHZzywcUcK0_SPEAKER_03]: Thank you for the reminder. I thought we voted on it, but lots of conversations about whether or not to vote to approve as amended or vote to wait. So I guess, does anybody have any strong feelings about whether or not we should wait for and get a picture of the development of Eiffel's Way or submit?
[Teda DeRosa]: My thought is, what if they have to push it back more? you know, because of delays, then it delays submitting the plan.
[Maria D'Orsi]: I was going to say, I think even like a partially finished in action photo would be fine.
[Theresa Dupont]: Yeah. Honestly, whenever I'm sorry. Yeah. CPC side anytime I've been advertising those were less they have some really fun like renderings that I've been using because, you know, construction blueprints. Yeah. you know, there are some collateral images out there.
[UHZzywcUcK0_SPEAKER_03]: Yeah. It doesn't have to be the actual thing. It could be the design.
[Roberta Cameron]: I have strong feelings that I'd like to roll this out with fanfare as soon as possible. This is like the two big firsts for this committee are funding our first project and completing this plan that we spent a year writing. And so we can, it would be, perfect if we could put a ribbon cutting on the photo that we submit to city council. But like you said, a nearly finished photo of the building would also say that, and we can later sneak in a change. But I would love to be able to post the final version on our website and present it to city council. So
[UHZzywcUcK0_SPEAKER_03]: Do I, is that an emotion?
[Roberta Cameron]: I make a motion to accept the final housing trust action plan.
[Maria D'Orsi]: I'll just offer one friendly amendment and I will, let's delegate picture approval to Roberta.
[SPEAKER_08]: She's the master of the document. I believe you'll be able to find a photo that works for the front so we don't have to re-evaluate it again.
[Theresa Dupont]: Okay. I'd like clarification for that motion. Do we need to add in a timeline into that motion? It's just on the agenda. So it's like update and timeline for plan submissions.
[Roberta Cameron]: I think that so I think we could vote to approve the final and then we can have a discussion about when can we get this to City Council? And I don't think we need to ask for City Council's approval. We're just giving it to them for informational purposes.
[UHZzywcUcK0_SPEAKER_03]: All right, so the motion as I heard it is, there's been a motion made to accept the final version of the five year action plan five year affordable housing action plan for. How am I going to say it? And Roberta's choice of pictures.
[Roberta Cameron]: Roberta's pending cover. Yes.
[UHZzywcUcK0_SPEAKER_03]: Pending cover designed by Roberta. There we go. Pending cover designed by Roberta. There is a motion there. Do I hear a second? Second.
[SPEAKER_02]: Come see it go.
[UHZzywcUcK0_SPEAKER_03]: Okay. So we do not need to actually do a roll call. All in favor say aye. Aye. There we go.
[Roberta Cameron]: I probably should have asked this before we approved the plan. I have a really minor question. If anybody has looked at the plan, is there anything that you dislike about the formatting, color scheme, or anything? Did you find it hard to read?
[UHZzywcUcK0_SPEAKER_03]: I will again offer my sincerest appreciation to Roberta for, I mean, she did it. Thank you, Roberta. That was a lot of work and a lot of data and going in and put a lot of this rubbish. So thank you. Really appreciate the work that you did on that. So the part two of the conversation, I do not think we need a vote more so than we just need to talk to, we would like to talk to staff about when can we get it to the city council.
[Theresa Dupont]: They meet October the 7th. which is next Tuesday and then meeting after that. So we could scramble certainly to get it onto the agenda that is pending the mayor's office. There's just procedures on how to get things onto the agenda. And then I believe the next time they meet again will be the 21st of October. So best case scenario, we can work on getting it onto next Tuesday's council agenda, but more realistically, it would probably land on the October 21st agenda. But I know we want to try and get this through, so I'll ask. I anticipate Catherine will be out for the rest of the week, so I'm happy to.
[UHZzywcUcK0_SPEAKER_03]: Yes. If nobody has any objections, I'm fine with waiting until October. It's still before January, right? getting things on and moving things, I know can be cumbersome. So if there's no objections, October 21st would work.
[Theresa Dupont]: If I may ask as well, would representatives from this trust, the trustees be in attendance as well, be available, somebody? Yeah, I think I will.
[UHZzywcUcK0_SPEAKER_03]: I'll say yes, as the chair. I won't volunteer anybody else, but welcome to have them.
[Theresa Dupont]: I anticipate that they will have questions, active questions, constructive. I don't know.
[Roberta Cameron]: Maybe not that way. I can be there. And I'd love to talk about data all day long. I would really very happily defer to talk about the trust policy choices that we made as a group. I think that you'd be the best person to represent that. just in case they have to get out of place.
[UHZzywcUcK0_SPEAKER_03]: I'm in love with it. All right, item number seven, the loan. Medford Community Housing loan update and discussion of terms on the topic of 703 Felsbury West. City staff and I have been working, it is late, I was like, did I do this? City staff and I have been working with the city attorneys regarding putting together the loan documents for the Medford Community Housing. Documents have been shared with the board. Does anybody have any questions or comments about the terms, conditions of the loans that they've been drafted? Yeah, so has everybody been able to take a sneak a peek at the mortgage, the loan, the loan note, as well as the loan agreement? Yes. And does anybody have any questions, comments? We do have paper copies as well of everything.
[9fui-IqEKvo_SPEAKER_08]: And just as a reminder, I think before it's always nice to be alive and then color. When is the. It's a really bad one. It's a wedding. It's a wedding. Oh, that's so exciting.
[Danielle Evans]: She's not a happy camper. She's discreet because Teresa and I sit next to the nurse's office, and the kids come in for their vaccination. It's like, bless her, bless her. Yeah.
[UHZzywcUcK0_SPEAKER_03]: just a little reminder i know it's in the meetings uh in the minutes but we did vote um to approve a hundred thousand dollar award as a loan with a two percent interest rate with payments based on a 25 cash flow the first payment will be due a year after the units are fully occupied and the city staff will work about it and it does that but The rest is like normal, but it's really the term. So it is $100,000. It's 2%. It is 25% based out of cash flow. And the first payment is due at occupancy. I am saying that because I saw something that in the loan promissory notes that maybe it wasn't exactly that. Does anybody have any questions, comments, or do you want to chat?
[Maria D'Orsi]: Yeah, if you want to start with a promissory note for the chair. Yes, I think the interest payment amount should probably be specified that we're talking about the 25% cash flow in this. I'm not. We'll start there. Yeah, I'm not sure that it was. They talk about an interest payment start date. They do have the 2%. annual interest. So I think there should just be a definition added what the interest payment is on top of the interest rate. And I suppose if the interest payment is not enough to actually pay for the full accrual of interest, there might need to be an additional accrual going forward. So I think those are a couple main points that we should add to the promissory note. You also did it as simple interest. Oh, correct. Simple interest. Simple interest. OK. So it wouldn't be compounded on the interest that you didn't pay last year, but it could still be accrued separately. Exactly. Exactly. Correct.
[UHZzywcUcK0_SPEAKER_03]: That would be helpful to share. This, yeah, it works. I'm just looking because Catherine and I were doing a lot of back and forth along on the loan language. And I remember going, that sounds perfect, but I don't think it was this. But I could provide. So does anybody else have any questions? I feel like we should talk to Catherine about the language here. Ask for a legal point of view. I know there was a lot of back and forth with the legal about what happens if they don't have cash flow. And if they don't have cash flow, they don't have a payment owed. Or when they do have cash flow, that's when they start making the payments. Can't find it in my emails to grab my apologies for back and forth. And we talked about like, what is cashflow? What is- Yeah, it should be defined somewhere. Exactly, the operating expenses. So we'll go back.
[SPEAKER_02]: I'll also go back with Catherine on this.
[9fui-IqEKvo_SPEAKER_08]: So I have a question.
[Teda DeRosa]: kind of off of that, like, regarding defining what the cash flow is, right? And how do we know if they're, if they have cash flow, do they have to, like, report, like, with a business, you have to report how much you make every year, like, you know?
[Maria D'Orsi]: Yeah, there's usually some sort of audit. or unaudited financial statements. I'm not sure how far this organization can go. There's also usually a regulatory agreement that goes along with some of these affordable housing developments. And that usually gets more into what is cash flow, what income is included, what expenses are included, and how you get to a number. So this is kind of just the loan documents. And usually there's maybe one other missing piece which they might already have.
[UHZzywcUcK0_SPEAKER_03]: I was just going to say, I wonder if we can ask them for copies of their home, because they got home money. I wonder what those terms were.
[Theresa Dupont]: I think we may have a copy of their home.
[UHZzywcUcK0_SPEAKER_03]: We can look at the terms to see if that was a cash flow payment, probably that was. And maybe just mirror that. We should refer to that affordable housing. Exactly. Yeah. And then we could all be using the same calculation for cash flow. That way they're not doing it twice. Because if I remember correctly, they do not do an all-candle audit. But it's not an organization. No, but they should do it of the property. They should do it of the property.
[Maria D'Orsi]: So we had simple interest, accrual of unpaid interest annually, maybe a specific definition of payment since we're linking it to 25% of cash flow. And then I think also if we wanted to talk about the interest payment start date, So as it's drafted right now, it doesn't say.
[SPEAKER_02]: It doesn't say. It says interest payment start date and therefore after.
[Maria D'Orsi]: On the date that all three units have been constructed and rented.
[SPEAKER_02]: Where's that?
[Maria D'Orsi]: So right before interest payment start date. Oh, there we go. All units have been constructed and rented. the borrower shall pay interest of 2% per year, but only after the first year. It does say that.
[UHZzywcUcK0_SPEAKER_03]: I mean, they can't say it does start paid until we know when they're actually going to be fully paid. Yeah.
[SPEAKER_02]: OK.
[UHZzywcUcK0_SPEAKER_03]: Any other? Kayla, if it's OK, I may move you into a conversation. Yeah, of course.
[Maria D'Orsi]: Do you want to pick up any of the other documents as well? Yes.
[Roberta Cameron]: On the mortgage document, I picked up what might be a typo. I'm not sure. It said, under affordable housing restrictions, and it makes reference to the Medway Redevelopment Authority as agent and represented to the North Suburban Consortium. I don't think many of those. Yeah. Yeah. It would make more sense.
[UHZzywcUcK0_SPEAKER_03]: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
[Maria D'Orsi]: Well, yeah. The loan agreement talks to it says to Maldon. Yeah.
[UHZzywcUcK0_SPEAKER_03]: Yeah. Referring to the restriction that I didn't even think to look up the rate that we the restriction. Anyways, we want to double check, but I think that's what we want to double check is the restriction is the restriction that is referred to in that section. What was it done? Anybody else notice anything else in the red?
[Maria D'Orsi]: We're some insurance requirements. They don't think we're onerous, but. At the time of the closing and we're not, I guess larger question, we're going to have like an actual closing or we just kind of. finishing these documents and sending them money because there's usually like a larger construction loan closing or permanent loan closing. This is fairly small and like subordinate. So if there's not going to be like a process of loan closing, I think the insurance certificates should probably be sent to staff and just ensure that they are compliant with requirements. Thanks. Oh, no, they have it, right. Medway? Maldonets. Maldonets. Maldonets. Maldonets. Maldonets. Maldonets. Maldonets. Maldonets. Maldonets. Maldonets.
[Matt Leming]: Maldonets.
[Maria D'Orsi]: Maldonets. Maldonets. Maldonets. Maldonets. Maldonets. Maldonets. Maldonets. Maldonets. Maldonets. Maldonets. Maldonets. Maldonets. Maldonets. Maldonets. Maldonets. Maldonets. Maldonets. Maldonets. Maldonets. Maldonets. Maldonets. Maldonets. Maldonets. Maldonets. Maldonets. Maldonets. Maldonets. Maldonets. Maldonets. Maldonets. M One more section. On the mortgage? Not on the mortgage. So if there are any other questions on the mortgage, I can hold.
[UHZzywcUcK0_SPEAKER_03]: Can we just ask them to double check under the affordable housing restriction? Yes. I'm looking at the restriction and it has referred to Metro Community Housing.
[Maria D'Orsi]: Oh, I think that's not the developer, Metro Community Housing and Grand Tour.
[UHZzywcUcK0_SPEAKER_03]: But the other side of it, I think you understand, I think it did say They both said it said that, um, you're looking at the actual restriction on the, yeah, here to mold and redevelopment authority at the end was they're both grantors.
[Maria D'Orsi]: Hey, like the signature page at the end or yeah, we weren't here, but maybe just if there's we ask it to the.
[UHZzywcUcK0_SPEAKER_03]: Because the mortgage is actually with Medford Community Housing, and so therefore, shh.
[SPEAKER_02]: Who signs that? Treasurer.
[UHZzywcUcK0_SPEAKER_03]: Medford Community Housing is signing that. Yeah. I think it should be met.
[Maria D'Orsi]: But there should be a counterparty that you're giving the restriction to.
[UHZzywcUcK0_SPEAKER_03]: In favor of the lender and Medford Development Housing. as agent or representatives.
[Maria D'Orsi]: Yeah, I am. Malden, yeah, Malden Redevelopment Authority. Yeah. As agent and representative of the North Suburban Consortium. Yeah, I think, I think, I think that was just such a great a typo. Yes.
[UHZzywcUcK0_SPEAKER_03]: Medway instead of Malden. Yeah. Or you could just refer to the deed restriction and don't even have to do all of that. You would just say the deed restriction recorded at the middle of sex registry of deeds and we found that broken page. Yeah.
[SPEAKER_09]: Keep it simple. Sure, I'm just get striking granted by borrower. Yeah, I would just keep it. Just providing that legal is okay with that. Yeah.
[Maria D'Orsi]: Great. Thank you. So low agreements. Yes. Most of sections 3.2.
[UHZzywcUcK0_SPEAKER_03]: The signature page, do you want to change the signature page on the mortgage? It is Medford Redevelopment Authorization. We want it to be Medford Community Housing.
[SPEAKER_02]: I think this is... That's the consent to mortgage.
[Maria D'Orsi]: Yeah, yeah. So that's the... primary, they're consenting to a subordinate loan, I believe is what they're doing.
[SPEAKER_02]: Okay.
[Maria D'Orsi]: Don't forget that. I'm sorry.
[SPEAKER_02]: Okay. I was looking at it.
[Theresa Dupont]: No worries.
[Maria D'Orsi]: Yeah, 3.2. I think these were, again, normal for the big construction closing. I'm not sure if we want to just specify that most of these have been, most or all have already been met. Um, I think again, legal committee weigh in and just cross them off and, you know, say, you know, we all agree and represent and warranty that these conditions have already been met. Um, so we don't have like a missing and. Because I think normally you would want to see all of this before you get the money. And then I think. And then I think the certificates of occupancy, which is on page four. I'm not sure that they have that until after this is going to happen anyway. So I think that one might be one that we might need to remove.
[Unidentified]: Okay.
[UHZzywcUcK0_SPEAKER_03]: I don't know. I feel like the submission, the COs show that they actually did the job and it's the... Yeah, but I was just saying that these are conditions to close out the loan, not... Oh, okay.
[Maria D'Orsi]: So yeah, that's a good answer. So I think
[Theresa Dupont]: they won't be able to give us a certificate of occupancy at the time of the closing.
[Maria D'Orsi]: That was it for me. Thank you. No problem.
[SPEAKER_02]: And so there's a focus on the television.
[Maria D'Orsi]: That's where they get you, Lisa. That's where they get you in all representations and warranties. I have other people, too, for televisions.
[UHZzywcUcK0_SPEAKER_03]: All right. Anybody else have any other comments, feedback that we've gotten? Okay. Thank you. Thank you. Please express appreciation to the legal department for doing all of that. Thank you. Okay, continuing talking about a continuation of conversation about funding cycles. The board may continue discussing the discussion from August meeting about how to proceed with issuing future rounds of funding, including whether or not to accept applications on a rolling basis throughout the year or a time schedule. In my conversations with Penny when she was telling me she was going to be here, she reminded me that our declaration of trust actually lays out how we're going to accept applications. And I think it does say rolling basis on that.
[Maria D'Orsi]: I think it does say rolling basis. I think it says both that we can issue RFPs from time to time for annual funding, but then it does say also rolling basis. So we kind of gave ourselves both, I guess, is how I... Excellent. I wonder who drafted it.
[UHZzywcUcK0_SPEAKER_03]: All right. So I think this discussion point is actually closed and we're all set with this one. I don't think we need to vote on it because it's already, we voted on it in our declaration, right? Yeah. Okay, proposed meeting schedule for the upcoming year based on conversations from previous meetings, the board would continue to meet the first Wednesday of every month at six o'clock with a few exceptions as previously discussed. Recommendation to meet only via Zoom in December of 2020, yeah, 2025. At least I thought we were in 26 already. Recommendation to meet in June and on Zoom in December of 25. The meeting for June of 26 would serve as our social gathering, so no meeting per se, so no trusted topics being discussed more, get to know you, how's everything going. When did you say that was? June of 26. I don't know.
[Teda DeRosa]: I'm like, wait a minute. Yeah, I know. I'm done talking. December is the Zoom meeting. Yes, I have that.
[UHZzywcUcK0_SPEAKER_03]: And June would be the social. And I would assume the social would be in a different location, but we, when the time comes, we'll figure that out. It was suggested that there could be a recess in the summer, potentially August, no meeting. In light of our discussion about the future funding is a good part of the agenda item above. How does the schedule sound? Everybody good with the schedule? All right. Would change, no, that doesn't matter because you don't have to worry about the funding cycle at all. So everybody is, I'm hearing we're all good with continuing the first Wednesday at six o'clock. I'm hearing a Zoom meeting, December is good. I'm also hearing a June 2026 social is good and a possible recess in August. Perfect, yeah.
[Roberta Cameron]: I would just caution that since we have a rolling application cycle, there is every possibility that our plans for next year are changed when something comes along that necessitates our attention.
[UHZzywcUcK0_SPEAKER_03]: I appreciate that, thank you, but I also If there's no meeting scheduled, then the application would go to the next meeting of the next. All right. Hey, we are at the end. Do I have a motion to adjourn? We both do it simultaneously. All right. All in favor of adjourn? Aye. Awesome. Thanks guys for a great meeting. Thank you.
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