total time: 10.13 minutes
total words: 904
[John Petrella]: Hello, everyone, and welcome to your show, Medford Happenings. And the purpose of this program is to give Medford citizens facts and information to help you make informed choices. And today, our guest is Nate Merritt, who is running for city council. And he's also what we call, or we call him the kid from Riverside. So welcome to the show, Nate. How you doing?
[Nate Merritt]: Doing well, John. How are you? Thanks for having me. Doing good.
[John Petrella]: As you know, we're just going to do a quick, we're having you back on just to answer a quick couple of questions. There's so much going on with MedFed. So we just want to get into a couple of questions. So we're just going to go ahead and do this. I'm going to repeat again. Nice to have you back with us. All right. The topic that I hear all the time, everywhere I go, really is the zoning and method. Boy, it's just between what's going on with the council, people in the streets, neighborhoods, you name it, the squares, I don't have to tell you, you know what's going on, but, you know, what's your, you know, how do you feel about it right now, Nate? You know, give us, a good honest look at how you feel about the zoning. I'll let you go from there.
[Nate Merritt]: Sure, I think that it was a very good thing that the mayor helped basically hit the pause button on the way things were progressing based on the turnout of folks where they basically were not informed. There was a lot of confusion, a lot of jargon thrown in there. I had come out and spoke at CDB board meetings as well as even the initial meeting over at the Roberts. when this started with the Salem Street rezoning. And I asked some pointed questions that I don't think were ever answered. One of those was property tax implications for current homeowners, right? All of a sudden they're in a single family home, a single family zone, and it gets up zoned to a MX pick a number. Now is their house that they're just trying to live in and get by day by day, right? Now all of a sudden worth, say hundreds of thousands of dollars more, they have no intention to sell. They just want to live, right? Maybe they got kids, maybe they're elderly, who knows. But now that raises their property value, which sounds great if they want to sell. But a lot of people I know don't want to sell. So they just want to live their lives here. I've met so many people on the campaign trail now who have told me where they grew up in the house they were in, or their families in that house. And I don't think they have any intention of necessarily leaving. There's generations of people in Medford. It's pretty awesome. So I was concerned about the negative impacts to those people. It was kind of ignored, to be quite honest. I never heard a definitive answer. The other thing I never saw along the way were goals. Like, why are we doing all this zoning? What is the intent? You want to build X number of quote-unquote affordable units. Alright, so first we have to define what is affordable, because that's something that changes to everybody, but for some people a $700,000 house is not affordable.
[John Petrella]: Correct.
[Nate Merritt]: Is it rentals? Is it ownership? Is it condos? And what's the volume that you're looking for? I never saw those actual goals. It seemed very much ready, fire, aim.
[John Petrella]: Yeah.
[Nate Merritt]: Just a lot of other things that have been happening over the past couple of years. It's been ready, fire, aim. So I was really glad to see that this has the pause button put on it. But I guess I would caution people where I don't think there's any intention of stopping. right now. So that's the word of caution. People have paused, but let's be real. It's an election season. And it certainly did not go over well with folks on the city council. So I think they were inclined to hit the pause button until at least November.
[John Petrella]: OK. Yep. So just so I can clarify, I understand what you're saying. What you're basically saying is it's not that you're against zoning, okay? I mean, you're against what they want to do in the neighborhoods. I mean, do you agree? And I'm not, I don't know what's going to happen in Medford Square, West Medford Square, you know, all these squares. But I guess my question to you, just this is the follow up and then we'll get off the subject. But my question to you is, you want zoning.
[Nate Merritt]: It's just how we get- It's how and what are the goals and what are we trying to achieve? So, right, this was a, you know, I have a hammer and let's whack the whole city. And it was literally one size fits all. You have a proposal and RFP came in for Medford Square and to redevelop Medford Square and people want that to happen and that's fine. And some of it probably should, let's be honest. But there's no opportunity to take that in and see what the effects are. And same with perhaps parts of Mystic Ave. I'm a little mixed on Mystic Ave because you could turn it into all housing, but then you lose all your commercial space. One of the best things that happened in recent history was I think it was Herb Chambers, right? That bought the property there. That's commercial property.
[John Petrella]: Yes.
[Nate Merritt]: One of the worst things that happened was the MBTA came in and took the Budweiser property. So that's a million dollars a year in revenue gone from the city. And then it will do it. It'll be a pilot maybe, but it's never going to be a million bucks. So there's a practical side to this where commercial pays twice the rate that residential does and a lot of other net benefits. They also don't draw on your services versus residential tends to draw on your services for a reason. People have children, people have medical emergencies, people, right? So it's not just putting people in houses, it's can the system absorb it? So absolutely, I think there are areas to look at, but the one size fits all approach was obviously not popular for many reasons, but I think part of it's the, without understanding the cons, you always got to pay the pros and the cons.
[John Petrella]: Right. Yep. And I guess that's what I hear. I mean, I think everyone that I talk to anyhow, they're for zoning. It's just, they're not for the way they want to do it. And the one size fits all and coming into these You know, people bought single family homes for a reason. They want to live on the streets they live on.
[Nate Merritt]: And yeah, I bought a single family home in Medford in 2014. because that's where I could afford responsibly a single family home. I mean, I didn't wanna have an apartment and I didn't wanna have a two family. Now I'm in a neighborhood that's been very well developed up, right? I'm in Wellington, right near Locust Street. And the Locust Street project came online. You had apartments come online in Middlesex. You've had a lot of development. There's, I know Cappy's now, I guess, right? That's gonna be part of the, is it 40B that that's coming under? So, right, that's gonna be 200 something units. So it's not like there's no development happening. There is. It's maybe not seen by a lot of people within the city, but when you couple that with the square, we don't know the ramifications. And again, you haven't stated the goals. So once the goal is stated, then we can figure out what is the best path to work for the goals and are the goals tenable.
[John Petrella]: Right. Good answers. I'm glad we got the zoning issue. I think you answered some important questions. The next thing, and this will be the last question. These are just going to be sort of quick shows. The next thing in the last question for you is another major issue. is the new school. We keep hearing about the new high school, the new high school. Are we going to build a new one? Are we going to refurbish? I mean, there's things being thrown. And I'm no expert, but I try to stay up to date with a lot of these things. And there's so many things being thrown out. I don't think anyone disagrees that it'd be nice to get a new high school, all right? I don't think that's part of the issue. And I know the vocational school is incredible up there, what they've done to that side of the building. So anyhow, I'll stop talking now and just basically ask you, what do you think is a solution to the high school problem?
[Nate Merritt]: So, I mean, the good news is that a lot of this responsibility is in the purview of the school committee, okay? So city council gets an up or down vote to do we put it to a ballot if we need to somehow fund it, right, by raising the tax levy. So that said, yes, I have also seen, in fact, the city published on Facebook, I believe, saying, we are getting a new high school. And that was the headline, new high school. And then buried way down after they talk about how the architect or the developer had been identified, there's a long process that happens. says, in there, we're gonna rack and stack the options, courses of action, right? COA1 is you get, tear down the building, something on top of it. COA2 is we go and renovate, right? I think everybody wants a modern high school, right? But there's a very difference between saying modern and new. New to me is knock it down, wrecking ball, build on top of it. So, I think I'm concerned with the fact that that has been said and stated both by Jenny Graham in material that she has published and trying to say some of us are not for a new high school. I have two kids. I've got a two-year-old and a five-year-old. I want them to go to good schools. I want all the kids in the city to have a great opportunity to learn and get a good education. That said, the school that I went to, right, was built in the 70s, and you're talking to a guy that was accepted to the Naval and Air Force Academies, okay? So the school wasn't much to look at. It's not necessarily the outside of the building that matters, it's the quality of the education. That should always be number one focus. And if that's your goal, this is gonna come back just like the zoning. What are the goals? then how do we get there? And how do we get there responsibly? Because there are elderly people, for instance, where if they see their taxes go up $2,000 a year, that might not be tenable for them if they're on fixed incomes. So if I, I'm gonna try to do some memory recall on math here, so I might have this a little wrong. I believe the Somerville High School project, so that was a, it was new, but it wasn't. I believe they did it in phases and built on top of the existing location. That one, I think, ran to the tune of $260 million. Chelsea, within the last 20 years, I think, rebuilt a high school or built a new high school. I don't know if that was in the same place or not. Malden renovated theirs, and they chose to renovate it. And I believe they did it with 90% actually paid by the MSBA. There's a whole bunch of options, but when the rhetoric out there is new, and then you say, oh, but we're going to go do a study to see which is the better course of action. Now do you really trust the process when you say, I want new, but we're going to look at all the options? There was a saying that they had when I was back in high school and we were in biology class, I remember, and you don't get the things to work out just right. When all else fails, manipulate the data.
[John Petrella]: Right, exactly.
[Nate Merritt]: It's disingenuous to the process when people come out and word choice matters here. I think we all want a modern school. We all want a good education for our children. But how we get there, we have to get there responsibly. And you can't have our elderly people losing their homes over this. There has to be a good way to, yes, bring up, maybe it's public-private partnerships. Maybe if we had a million dollars a year coming in, that would help offset the cost of that high school. So you're talking at least 260 million because everything got more expensive since Somerville started. Somerville started their project in 2018. Now it was before COVID. Building materials have doubled since then. We're lucky you're talking 260 million plus 4% interest. I did some math ahead of time. It's about $350 million. I haven't seen a number or a guesstimate a ROM put to this project to begin with. So that's where I think it's very dangerous to say new, new, new, and then you could be setting people up for disappointment, just like the overrides. This is where communication matters, word choice matters. I'm not against a new anything, but again, I wanna see the options and we rack and stack the pros and cons. And what do we get? It's really value for taxpayer money, which I think is important and a valuable education, which is most important for our youth.
[John Petrella]: We want what's best for everyone, all the kids that attend Medford schools. And we just want to do it responsibly.
[Nate Merritt]: John, I live in a 1908 house. Yeah. I would love to have a brand new house. But you know what? It was a 1908. Harvard University teaches kids in buildings that are from the 1800s. Right.
[John Petrella]: I hear you. No, I know. I hear you. I hear you. I want to thank you for coming on the show again. And really, best of luck to you. I know you're out there campaigning. I know it's a lot of work. All I can say is keep it up. And really, best wishes. You're a good candidate. You're a great candidate. And hopefully the people of Method come out for you. And, you know, it was nice to have you. It was good. to hear your thoughts on the zoning and on the school. I wish we had a lot more time, Nate, but we don't. So I want to thank you very much. And that's it. I want to thank everyone that's watching the show. And I want everyone to make sure they check out our website, methodhappenings.com. I can't even begin to explain how good it's going for the show. And I want people to know, boy, we got some great shows coming up. We got a lot of people looking to come on. It makes us feel great. The whole crew, everyone that works on this show. And I want to thank you because it's guests like you help make the show what it is, Nate. So have a great weekend and thanks for joining us tonight. Thanks for having me, John.
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total time: 10.13 minutes total words: 904 |
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