[Doug Carr]: It's Wednesday, July 15th, 2026, approximately 632 PM. My name is Doug Carr. I will call the meeting to order. Before we do that, some obligatory procedural matters. Please know that project materials for all products before the board can be viewed on the city's website medfordmass.org forward slash boards dash commissions forward slash community development board. And by clicking on the current city board filings for those on zoom, you can also find the link in the chat. Okay. The roll call attendance, uh, John Anderson. Present. Sean Began. Present. Page Buldini.
[Theresa Dupont]: Present.
[Doug Carr]: Deana Calagaro.
[Theresa Dupont]: Present.
[Doug Carr]: Ari Goffman-Fishman.
[Ari Fishman]: Present.
[Doug Carr]: And myself, Chair Doug Carr, present. We have Quorum. Danielle, can you introduce any staff at the meeting or on the call?
[Danielle Evans]: Sure. Myself, Danielle Evans, Senior Planner in the Office of Planning, Development, and Sustainability. Our fearless leaders on vacation. And then we have Natalie Rodman, our graduate student intern. And it looks like Laurel Siegel, Um, our CDBG manager, um, who helped, um, craft the, um, inclusionary, the fractional payment ordinance that we'll be talking about sooner, um, in a bit. And she's also our incoming city clerk.
[Doug Carr]: Very good. Congratulations, Laurel. So we have really three items tonight on the agenda. We have an ANR approval, not required plan, which we'll get to in a moment. Then we're going to go to that zoning amendment for the inclusionary housing, which Laura will participate in as well. And then we're going to talk a little bit about the zoning project timeline and admins, but we're not going to discuss anything substantial about zoning amendments. Anything that we did before in Boston Ave or other zoning. We're not, that's not what tonight's about. We're not, um. We can summarize that when we get to that, but it should be a relatively compact evening. So let's start off with the A&R. Danielle, why don't you summarize what this is? And I think we probably want to put some of the plan on the screen as well, right?
[Danielle Evans]: Sure. Yes, I can share the screen. And Attorney Cabral is also here representing the applicant. OK. Let's see. Let me share the screen. It looks like they changed this. Hopefully this works. I feel like they switched things on me here.
[Doug Carr]: For sharing the screen?
[Danielle Evans]: Yeah.
[Doug Carr]: Well, let me know if you have a problem. I can probably get to it if you can't. Oh, there you go.
[Danielle Evans]: Do you see this?
[Doug Carr]: Not yet. There it is. All right, we can see it. OK.
[John Anderson]: Is there a way to make it bigger?
[Danielle Evans]: I'm trying to zoom in, but then you can't see the full. Okay.
[John Anderson]: Okay.
[Danielle Evans]: But it's, it's in the, um, the shared folder if you wanted it to, um, see it yourself.
[Doug Carr]: Yeah. It fronts on two street, obviously Jerome above and I went to street below.
[Danielle Evans]: Yeah. So it, yeah. Fronts on two public ways. It meets the minimum frontage of 35 feet and there's adequate access, but I'll let an attorney explain it.
[Mike Cabral]: Yes, thank you, Attorney Mike Cabral, for the applicant. What the applicant is doing here is taking, there are two existing lots right now, 145 Jerome, which would be at the top of your screen, and 166 Arlington, which is at the bottom of the screen, in order to construct houses on the property, the applicant has reconfigured the two lots. They're staying as two separate lots. But as you, if you can see where it says assessor's map N03 lot 106 towards the right hand side of what would be 145 Jerome Street. Below that says parcel A. and that is 1,736 square feet. That portion of land, parcel A, is being taken from 166 Arlington and being given to 145 Jerome. Once that happens, 145 Jerome, again the lot to the top of your screen, will be a 6,000 square foot lot. So then two new lots have been created. 145 Jerome is known on this plan as 36A, that's 6,000 square feet, and 166 Arlington Street, which is the lot at the bottom of our screen here, that is lot again 3A and is a little over 7,300 square feet, as Danielle said, both about public ways, both meet the minimum frontage requirements, both actually exceed. 145 Jerome is 50 feet in frontage and 166 Arlington is about 165 feet of frontage. So again, keeping it as two lots, just reconfiguring so that parcel A comes off of 166 Arlington, and goes to what is now known as 145 Jerome Street. And I'm happy to answer any questions the board has.
[Doug Carr]: Please raise your hand if anyone on the board has a question. Go ahead, Ari.
[Ari Fishman]: I have no objections, and this is entirely out of curiosity. You mentioned buildings. Are you thinking two single families or what's the vision here?
[Mike Cabral]: I think the vision will be two families. So a two-family house on each lot. And that was the purpose of making 145 Jerome Street, 6,000 square feet to meet the minimum lot area needed. This is a GR district for zoning. So the minimum lot area for a two-family in the GR district is 6,000 square feet. And by way of background, the applicant has already received zoning approval for that lot as well.
[Ari Fishman]: Good to know. Thank you. Thank you. Go ahead, Sean Bacon.
[Sean Beagan]: Yeah. The only thing I noticed on the plot plan was, and you answered the question already, but down in your bottom left corner there, you have lot 3A is 6,000 square feet. So I think it's actually so you answered my question is 7300 square feet.
[Mike Cabral]: Yes, I did note that from the survey or they were putting in the zoning table which technically isn't needed for the plan. I think they were putting what the minimums are but those are not, you're right, not the actual. lot areas for each lot again. 45145 Jerome is 6000 square feet even and 166 Arlington that square footage number is below where it says lot three a that would be the lower left triangular piece under where it says three a 7330 square feet. Right? Yes. Right there in the corner. So those are the actual square footage measurements for the lot area of each lot.
[Sean Beagan]: Yeah, that was the only question I had. It looks like you.
[Mike Cabral]: they're proposing an ADU as well on- That was an old plan, Mr. Began. And so that actually, to my knowledge, will not be constructed. It does show the existing dwelling as well on 1C6 Arlington that has since been demolished. I think the relative location of each of the main dwellings is roughly accurate, but to my knowledge, they are not going to actually construct that ADU. Very good.
[Doug Carr]: Anything else, Sean? No, I'm all set. Okay. Any other board member have any questions or comments?
[John Anderson]: I have a question. Go ahead, John Anderson. For example, the proposed dwelling on Arlington Street, what are those little things sticking out from it that look like sort of buttons?
[Mike Cabral]: Those were likely be the entrances, porches into the units.
[Doug Carr]: Yeah, I think there's stairs and a porch landing at the top, John. That's how I read it.
[Mike Cabral]: Yeah, those would be the front and rear ingress and egress.
[Doug Carr]: Anything else, John? Nope. Attorney Cabral, you said there was one property, one existing building that's been torn down. Is there any other buildings on either property right now?
[Mike Cabral]: No, there was a concrete pad on 145 Jerome Street, but there was no actual structure on that property. Gotcha. Okay. We believe there was at some point in time, but we didn't have any historical data or photographs to show it.
[Doug Carr]: Yeah, I sit on the Historical Commission and normally a teardown would come before us if it was the appropriate age and we were looking at it, but that ship has sailed, obviously.
[Mike Cabral]: And I believe 166 Arlington did come before the Commission, and I can't recall if it was deemed not historically significant or not preferably preserved, but it was not put into demo delay.
[Doug Carr]: Yes, I think you're correct. Okay. Uh, Danielle, I think we're, um, we don't, what's the next step here to get to close this out?
[Danielle Evans]: Uh, you would vote to, um, endorse the plan.
[Unidentified]: Okay.
[Doug Carr]: So I'll take a motion to endorse the plan as, as shown.
[Danielle Evans]: So moved.
[Doug Carr]: Thank you, John. Can I hear a second? Second. Thank you, Sean Began. I'll call the roll. John Anderson? Yes. Sean Began? Yes. Page Buldini?
[Ari Fishman]: Yes.
[Doug Carr]: Dina Calagaro?
[Ari Fishman]: Yes.
[Doug Carr]: Ari Goffman-Fishman?
[Ari Fishman]: Yes.
[Doug Carr]: And myself, Doug Carr. Yes. The motion passes six to zero. Thank you. Good luck, Mr. Cabral. Thank you very much. Thank you all. I appreciate it. Have a good night. Cheers. Good night. All right, next item on the agenda is the continued public hearing that we continued from June 17th, 2026, which I think Danielle was 1 of those brief 2 minute meetings we had with myself and Natalie just to formally continue this. Because we didn't debate anything, because we didn't have a quorum, et cetera. So this is about the inclusionary zoning, obviously. Proposed amendment to the City of Medford zoning ordinance, section 94-8.1, inclusionary zoning, to include a new provision to allow for a fractional payments to the affordable housing trusts. And I'll turn it over to you and Laurel and whoever else to walk us through it.
[Danielle Evans]: Yeah, so I believe I mentioned before that currently our inclusionary housing ordinance doesn't have any provisions for fractional payments and then there's a you round up no matter what you know fraction is created for a required unit so just to take an example an 11 unit building would require 1.1 units and you round up to two so you would have They need to require 2 affordable units, but nobody is doing that. I mean, even 12 is going to happen, but 14 is probably a better example. So. A 14 unit development would require 2 because of 1.4. Units rounds up to 2 and so there's this kind of gaming of. That's why you get mostly like 9 unit projects before the numbers start to kind of tip to where it's still financially viable. So, instead of not getting larger projects, and, you know, under just under these thresholds, we're thinking that if we allowed fractional payments. that they would, uh, or developers would be incentivized to create larger developments, um, where we could at least get a payment to the affordable housing trust, which could be, um, leveraged with other funding sources for creating affordable housing, um, and other parts of the city. So we had originally, um, Written the fractional payment provisions to reference the total development cost. But since then there. We can't find a good source for that number. It used to be published in the qualified allocation plan of the low income housing tax credit program and. They have since stopped develop, like, creating that number or even publishing it because construction costs are, you know, through the roof and volatile that lie tech tax credits are not based on the total development costs anymore. So, while that number was in these plans for the purposes of. administering the federal tax credits. It had been a nice resource to do kind of like cash in lieu and fractional payments. It's kind of like a, it's like kind of a byproduct. So that number was never created for these purposes, but it was a nice source that was there and was updated annually. So the other way to calculate the value of an affordable unit or the difference is market rate minus the affordable price. And then you get that, the Delta, the difference, and that would be the cash in lieu. So the, the difference in the market and affordable. And so if, If it was a 14-unit project, 1.4, the applicant could either elect to round up to two or provide one unit and then make a fractional payment that would be equal to 40% of that delta.
[Doug Carr]: And so we- Do you have an example, Daniel? I thought you had an example that we could show us.
[Danielle Evans]: So Natalie and Izzy helped to create a calculator. Let's see. And then I was kind of playing around with it. Let me see here. Try to share my screen again. Are you seeing Excel at all? Yes.
[Doug Carr]: It's a mortgage down payment. Is that the sale price?
[Danielle Evans]: That's not the right one. Now it is. Dragged to another screen. House price. Oh, can you see this one with my cursor?
[Dina Caloggero]: Yeah, it's called maximum sales price calculator.
[Doug Carr]: This is not affordable. Fractional payment, that's it.
[Danielle Evans]: So can you see this tab, the fractional payment calculation? Yes. With this example, say you have the market rate comparable as $850,000. If the maximum affordable sales price is $350,000, then the difference is $500,000. And say if it was a 0.1 situation, then 10% would be $50,000. So they would submit a cash payment for $50,000. How do we get the maximum affordable sales price? So with a sales price calculator, so if you go by, so the maximum sales price is based, you kind of back into it and it would update, this would change depending on Um, interest rates and then the size of the units. So let's see for this one. I don't know if we made a, what did we figure? Okay. Say if it was a, a one bedroom, two person household, um, so 80% of Area medium income is 109,700 for a family of two. So the monthly income, so you just divide that by 12 is 9,141.67 cents. And the 30% is considered the maximum amount that you can pay on housing and not be considered housing burdens. So basically, the maximum of the $27.42, that's the max of what they can pay for everything. So principal and interest, taxes, private mortgage insurance, homeowner's insurance, condo fees. And so depending on the inputs, that changes what the maximum sales price could be. So let's see. So 2742, so if you kind of like play around with it, okay, that was like 375. It assumes a 5% down payment, you know, a mortgage for the balance of that. going by whatever the average interest rates are. I'm not even sure if that's correct. This is just examples. I guess it's a question, Natalie, was the real estate taxes, was that from the example from the state's website or was that a? Yeah, that was pulled right from the state's website. Yeah, so that's probably not accurate for Medford, but it's just to give you an idea. And the property taxes are lower. The assessor has some kind of, there's some kind of discount factor on the condos in addition to what the price of it is. And then this, I think this is just a placeholder, Um, for the PMI, because in general, if you don't have, um, 20% down initially or the loan to value, uh, um, 20 to 80, then you're going to pay, um, private mortgage insurance and then of course, homeowner's insurance and then condo fees. Um, what we've found is most, um, So, this is, you know, rather low. Compared to what the market rate units pay for condo fees, but we do need to. Make sure that whatever assumptions that we're putting in there are accurate because if. the, you know, if it's artificially high or low, then the sales price would be affected by that. Because that could be a big chunk of the monthly payment. And so the payment, the house price can go up or down depending on that. And I should back up to say that we would be using this We'd be treating it as if they're all for sale, even if it was a rental, because there's no other kind of way to kind of assess what the value is of the difference in an affordable rental versus a market rate rental. There just doesn't seem to be a good way to make that, to assign a value to that without doing a lot of crazy math and I don't know, like going out like 50 years of rent. I don't even know how we would do it. But we, Catherine, our housing planner did talk to other planners in the area and they use this, this method for fractional payments in cash in lieu. So, That's what we're recommending since we can't do the total development costs, which is what I would have preferred.
[Doug Carr]: Well, why don't we open up to the board for questions and comments? Anyone want to feel free to raise your hand if you want to dive in. Go ahead, Ari.
[Ari Fishman]: Thank you. Um, my question is about how much they're allowed to elect to use this. Um, I have, I'm inclined to think that it should only be used for the decimal amounts, because I worry if developers are able to pay for their entire affordable requirement, that it's going to encourage. Kind of segregation and not and choosing to pay in lieu of building.
[Danielle Evans]: Oh, yeah, absolutely. We're not allowing cash in lieu entirely and I just a decimal and I believe. Natalie might correct me wrong or Laurel can correct me if I'm wrong. Let me open the language for the actual. I think we're only allowing this for. Point 5 and under. So you would round up and provide the units.
[Ari Fishman]: It says at 0.6 or higher. And I don't think it goes below.
[Danielle Evans]: What do we have here?
[Doug Carr]: Yeah, Danielle, you circulated that text. It's in the packet.
[Danielle Evans]: Yeah.
[Doug Carr]: It's a half unit or less, right?
[Danielle Evans]: Yes, less than one half of a unit. Yes. So, if you, if it ends up, if the calculation says, you have to do 6 and a half units. Then you need to provide 7, but if it was 6.4. They provide the 6 units and then they can make a 40% payment. Because what we have been found is then they just adjust it so that it works out perfectly just to do the 6. so if we could get even more market rate, because, you know, supply helps and then get 40% payment to the trust, you know, that. Yeah, we're hoping we're hoping that we'll see more of that.
[Doug Carr]: Anything else?
[Ari Fishman]: No, I'm excited to see that we were able to rescue this from the sudden loss of data.
[Doug Carr]: Thank you, Ari. All right, Dina, you're up next.
[Dina Caloggero]: Go ahead. You mentioned that other cities and towns are using this. Which other one has implemented this? You referenced a state. You said you wanted development costs rather than this. Who else is using it? And do it so that the right.
[Danielle Evans]: So Melrose City of Melrose does it this way. When I worked in Watertown as one of the housing planners, we did it sort of this way. But we didn't use comparables. We went through, we did like the median sales price of, a comparable unit, but it was complicated. Laurel and I think actually Melrose said that they'd asked the applicant to provide some comps and then staff wouldn't just accept them. We would either reject them or say these are suitable. And it wouldn't be the, so far it have to be a new unit or something that was recently got renovated. So it can't just be any kind of like, old hasn't been touched, you know, 2 bedroom condo and this is a comparable to a new luxury development. Yeah, so we haven't had a ton of condos lately. I mean, except like Wellington woods was probably the most recent big 1, but there are hundreds of units there and they there's lots of. I think there was 4 recent sales there. So.
[Dina Caloggero]: And I think I put those in the packet. No, I think it's great. I think when you take someone else's solution and then you modify it and make it even better, it's an extremely efficient way to go.
[Danielle Evans]: I don't know if they round up or down, but yeah.
[Dina Caloggero]: I think it's a good idea. And as we go along, this will be very helpful in building up the affordable I was in trust.
[Doug Carr]: You all set, Tina?
[Dina Caloggero]: Oh, yeah. I'm fine. Thank you.
[Doug Carr]: Okay.
[John Anderson]: Go ahead, John Anderson. Thank you. I have a couple of basic questions. Would this apply to someone who's building a two-family?
[Danielle Evans]: No, because they wouldn't be subject to affordable requirements.
[John Anderson]: So at what point do the affordable requirements kick in? A three-family?
[Danielle Evans]: 10 units. Currently it's 10 units.
[John Anderson]: Yeah. So if someone's building a five unit, a nine unit building, you're saying this would not kick in?
[Danielle Evans]: No. Yeah. Inclusionary housing provisions don't kick in until 10 units.
[John Anderson]: So I'm sorry, I'm getting confused. I propose a nine unit development. Right now, I have no requirements for an affordable unit. You're saying I would still have no requirement for an affordable unit?
[Danielle Evans]: Yeah, you'd have no requirement.
[John Anderson]: Okay. Yes. Now, when affordable units are required, if the building has a mixture of apartment sizes, studios, one bedrooms, two bedrooms, three bedrooms, how is it determined what size the affordable unit is?
[Danielle Evans]: So, um, in the. In the main inclusionary housing ordinance, we talk about it has to be proportionate and so it has to be like the same kind of ratio. So, if 20% of the units are 2 bedrooms. Then, you know, 20% of the affordable unit should also be 2 bedrooms and, you know, sometimes, you know, you could negotiate and be like, I would actually rather have, like, a 3 bed and then, you know, 2 extra 1 beds instead of the 3, 2. Like, that's within your purview if you wanted to rejigger that a little bit, but then. basically it would for the rounding up, it would be whatever they're not, they would have required to, to put in there.
[John Anderson]: Cause you know, I'm thinking if you have a major development, you know, a hundred units or something, I can see how that works out. But if it's a 12 unit development and you know, there's three of these and four of those and two of this, how would this work practically in determining what kind of affordable unit needs to be added?
[Danielle Evans]: So currently, without a fractional payment provision, it would just be proportionate. So if it was a 12-unit building, they need to provide two units because you round up. But nobody's building that. So if it was a mix of ones and twos, then you would basically try to make it proportionate. Yeah.
[Doug Carr]: It's an inexact science, John. I've seen this. With larger buildings, it's easy, because you can just say, OK, I need one studio, one one-bedroom, two two-bedrooms, because it's, you know. But for the smaller ones, as Daniela said, it's a judgment call to do your best to get the spirit of the zoning. I think that's the best way to put it.
[Dina Caloggero]: It can't be egregious. It can't be egregious. In the basement.
[Doug Carr]: It also can't be the worst unit in the building either, which is another criteria. It has to be a technical unit.
[John Anderson]: It just seems like this could result in a lot of bickering in terms of, you know, because it could be a substantial amount of money for smaller developments. Right? I mean, if we're talking 4 tenths of a unit would be $200,000. Put it in the calculator. Yeah. Yeah, do it. Okay, well, the Delta was about $500,000 per affordable unit of unspecified size. Yeah, that one example. Yeah. So that's, you know, that's, I can imagine developers wanting to discuss this at some length.
[Danielle Evans]: I mean, it's something that's optional that they can do. Otherwise, they can just provide the unit or they can be doing what they've always done and shrink the size of development so they don't have to do anything. Yeah.
[Dina Caloggero]: And it's probably not feasible to build.
[John Anderson]: Well, that raises another question. I mean, I'm not presenting this as evidence because this is kind of anecdotal. I was over in Chelsea and picked up the Chelsea Record, which is this nice little newspaper they publish weekly. I wish we had one. Me too. And they were talking about proportional payment. And they've had these for a number of years, and they've never received any money from it.
[Dina Caloggero]: Huh. We should look at their calculation.
[John Anderson]: Well, I suspect that the developers tuned the size of the development to avoid it. Do we have any experience from other communities that have used this and actually gotten enough money to make it worthwhile? I'm not going to be waiting here, really.
[Danielle Evans]: No, no. I know in Somerville, they do fractional payments and developers make payments, and it's a steady stream to the trust. What did you say, Watertown and Melrose too, right?
[Dina Caloggero]: Yeah. Yeah. I think it's a good thing. Oh, I know. Yeah, to get around it, you know? They always try to get around, you know, giving you a little.
[Danielle Evans]: Yeah, there's always going to be the gaming it, so. Yeah. Because, you know, it's a big haircut that they take. Yeah. To do this, so you have to.
[John Anderson]: You know, I guess my question is, is the goal of this to provide more affordable units and more money to the affordable trust? Is that the basic goal? Because if it is, then you want to make sure this is going to be effective and actually generate more affordable units and contributions in lieu. Does my question make sense?
[Danielle Evans]: Well, the goal is that This would close the flaw in our inclusionary housing ordinance that incentivizes sizing developments smaller than they would have done otherwise because of the rounding up.
[Theresa Dupont]: Right, like making an 11. Yeah. Yeah, they would do nine. Yeah, they do nine, go low, try to get around it.
[John Anderson]: Right. I'm trying to think of the projects we reviewed the time I've been on the board, and they've either been big projects. Well, Salem Street, Main Street. They've been big projects, or they've been nine units and less. Salem Street.
[Dina Caloggero]: No, Salem Street.
[John Anderson]: Oh, Salem Street.
[Sean Beagan]: 14 units, I think. Oh, good.
[Dina Caloggero]: Good.
[Sean Beagan]: And he had to do two affordable units, which he probably wishes this ordinance existed.
[Dina Caloggero]: Amen, Sean.
[Sean Beagan]: But I'm happy it didn't exist.
[Dina Caloggero]: Right. We got the two rather than the 0.4.
[John Anderson]: Well, so that raises the question of, in that case, it would have gone counter to our objective.
[Danielle Evans]: I actually don't even know if that project is going to go forward, actually, because they're having trouble sourcing windows that meet passive house standards.
[Doug Carr]: What are they? They should be using Intuos windows. Those are the standards.
[Danielle Evans]: When they were crunching the numbers for that, they didn't realize that we were a specialized stretch energy code community. So the numbers aren't, I don't know. They might have to, they were talking with our climate planner who was trying to troubleshoot this for them.
[Doug Carr]: After all that. All right, sorry, let's go back. John, are you all set or do you have any other questions?
[John Anderson]: No, I guess that covers it. We talked about other communities. I'm still not clear what happens when, you know, if you have a 15 unit building and it's a crazy mixture of sizes, it seems like it'll be a bit of a challenge to figure out what sort of affordable unit they're supposed to add.
[Danielle Evans]: Well, 1, if it's 1. if it's a 15 unit building, then this isn't available to them because the 14. yeah, yeah.
[John Anderson]: Well, actually. The same problem exists if it's a 15 unit development, and they have to add 2 affordable units. and the market rate units are a mixture of sizes and square footage, how is it determined what the affordable units look like and how big they are?
[Danielle Evans]: They have to be proportionate. So if it's all... You're saying it's a judgment call, basically. Yeah, I mean, if it's all 2 bedrooms, then there are 2 bedrooms. You can't just make them studios. Yeah.
[Doug Carr]: Sure.
[Danielle Evans]: Okay. And we also review them to make sure that they're, you know, spread out. They're not all like in a corner or the 1st floor. Yeah, it does get challenging with the smaller ones. So, yeah, it is a judgment call. Generally, they end up being some of the better units actually. Okay.
[Doug Carr]: All right, Sean, we'll go to you next and then Paige after that. Go ahead, Sean.
[Sean Beagan]: Yeah, I just wanted to make sure that we understand that this is a payment in lieu of doing the affordable unit. It's not an additional payment on top of an affordable unit. I wanted to make sure everyone... Yeah, so it's... Yeah, so it's...
[Danielle Evans]: It's so they can elect to make a payment for the fractional amount, or they can round up and provide the unit.
[Sean Beagan]: Right. I guess my other question would be, why aren't we just charging everyone at 0.4? Why just because the math comes out to 0.1 do they only have to pay 10%? They're still getting the same benefit.
[Dina Caloggero]: That's a good point.
[Sean Beagan]: They're getting the same benefit as someone at any other percentage.
[Danielle Evans]: I mean, I don't know what the, from a developer side, but. At some point, the numbers don't work, and they'll still just go down, so they don't have to make a payment. I mean, it's a good question. It's a good question.
[Sean Beagan]: No, I understand. I know the answer to the question. I guess I'm just pointing it out that it's a bit of a, we're going from something that was, you know, a fairly strict standard. If you were 0.1, you had to give us a whole unit. And now if you're 0.1, you only have to give us 10% of the difference between. Yeah.
[Danielle Evans]: So the thing is that nobody, nobody builds that unit. The only time we've ever had this rounding up is Salem street. And I think that they did that also by accident. They thought they were getting a bonus for it.
[Unidentified]: Yeah.
[Danielle Evans]: And I had to say, no, actually, you don't get a bonus. That's what you have to do.
[Sean Beagan]: No, I think it may generate some money to the trust fund. I do think it will.
[Theresa Dupont]: I think it's a good idea.
[Sean Beagan]: I think the math probably works out. If they're looking at it from the perspective of I'd have to make another affordable unit if I don't do this, the math is definitely going especially if you're at a 0.1 or a 0.2, the math is definitely going to make a lot of sense. Yeah.
[Danielle Evans]: Cause they, they definitely, they drop it down. Yeah. So hopefully this will get us some of the missing middle housing that we're not seeing huge, huge developments. I don't think they care. This is just noise.
[Unidentified]: Yeah.
[Danielle Evans]: But the missing middle housing where, you know, a full extra unit is a, makes a big deal. And so they dropped something by like four units, six units. I'm hoping, I'm hoping that this kind of tips the scales to not have to do that.
[Doug Carr]: Anything else Sean? No, no, I'm okay. Okay. Go ahead, Paige.
[Page Buldini]: And real quick to kind of speak to I think what everybody's saying, um, section D, that little line I think is a really good safeguard. Any fractional payment made pursuant to, this ordinance shall not be counted toward achieving any development incentive bonus. I think that speaks to exactly what happened with actually on Salem Street and trying to get affordable units. And if you do your affordable unit, it's a better technical incentive, not an added incentive. So I thought that line was really helpful for me to get what it meant. So just to share that.
[Doug Carr]: Thank you, Paige. Any other comments?
[John Anderson]: Okay. Can I get one more bite at the apple here? Go for it, John. The rules and regulations, are we going to discuss them in any detail? I was just, I was just, uh, I noted that this is the first time we've been authorized to come up with rules and regulations that are incorporated in the zoning.
[Danielle Evans]: So, This the rules and regulations wouldn't be in the zoning, but this would. So this was kind of a draft example of what the rules and regulations could look like so that. So that the. The board could have that guides. The payment. Um, methodology, so. Here is where we talk about, like, what the comparables, how do we judge that? It's a. A reasonable comparable that we would accept and that's where. We talked about, you know, for 1 that they have to be in the city of Medford, newly built or substantially renovated. And these are just like ideas like you guys can. Changes, we just would have to have these in effect. by the time this ordinance is used or implemented. But the ordinance or the amendment to the inclusionary housing ordinance would just be what's on that first page. And then the rules and regulations would be, I think it's incorporated by reference. I might need Laurel to unmute and chime in. I might have to Teams message her.
[Laurel Siegel]: I'm here. And yeah, the text does reference, I believe, the rules and regs I have. Yeah, subject to the regulations promulgated by the Community Development Board in paragraph B. And so this is the opportunity rather than it gives the flexibility to determine how are you determining what are fair comparables and these other provisions that are in the regulations so that that can be potentially tweaked, modified as needed going forward rather than codifying it in the actual language of the ordinance. I hope that makes sense.
[John Anderson]: Yeah, that makes sense to me, certainly. And I assume we would have the power to waive or modify these on a case by case basis. If, for example, you had a hard time meeting a requirement two and three, you know, the comparable has to have been built or renovated within one year and sold no longer than six months prior. I don't know how, restrictive that would be. I mean, if we're having a big building boom, that'll be no problem. But if things slow down, that might be a bit harder, particularly if the development had some unusual characteristics like lots of bedrooms or any number of other things. Just saying, well, we have the power to modify these on a case-by-case basis. Is that correct, Daniel?
[Doug Carr]: Can we modify this based on the context of the proposal in front of us?
[Danielle Evans]: I mean, you could put that into rules and regulations. Because right now, what the actual ordinance, as drafted, what it says is that the fair market value of the unit shall be determined by the average of at least two real estate comparables for similar units to be provided by the applicant, which comparables shall be reasonably acceptable to staff. and shall be subject to the regulations prolongated by the Community Development Board. So we could, I mean, these are all up for discussion because we're not having you adopt rules and regs tonight. We just wanted to give you kind of an idea of what could be the rules and regulations.
[John Anderson]: Now, would this be something that, would we have the opportunity to have our rules and regulations reviewed by a legal person, the city solicitor, for example? We could. Okay. I mean, I would think that would be part of our process. I know Sean has been very useful in pointing out to us when we write things down that are sort of ambiguous and have no teeth because we've been sort of mealy-mouthed about it. And he's been very good at pointing out how we have to be more specific in the things we ask for. But he's not our attorney here. Unefficient. Yeah, exactly.
[Sean Beagan]: Pro bono.
[Doug Carr]: I like it. Anything else, John?
[John Anderson]: I guess not.
[Doug Carr]: All right. Ari, go ahead.
[Ari Fishman]: I just wanted to chime in on the topic of comparables. I can't imagine that a developer wouldn't be working with a realtor or real estate agent, and that's their bread and butter. There's an entire set of industry norms about that. What I'm seeing is very in line with any sale. That occurs so, I mean, I'm glad that we're not adopting these exact details, because I know I'm not enough of an expert to be able to say that this is exactly the right way to do it. But the kind of broad strokes of it are in line with the industry standards and methodologies kind of, we're not creating this from scratch.
[John Anderson]: And when would we have to finalize this? I mean, not a year from now, but sooner, right?
[Doug Carr]: And are we trying to wrap this up before the fall?
[Danielle Evans]: I'd love to be able to. Honestly, you don't need regulations until someone wants to use this provision. OK. And we don't have anything in the pipeline.
[Doug Carr]: Nothing right now? It's a quiet month.
[Danielle Evans]: It's quiet. Yeah, I don't know of any large developments in the pipeline right now.
[Doug Carr]: That's that's coming potentially. Right.
[Danielle Evans]: But, like, site plan review, I mean, this that's many, many months, like, you get an application and you've got, you know. at least a month to look at it, then circulate it for like another six weeks of staff and then advertise it. And it goes to you guys and we take a month or two on it. Yeah. Yeah. So end of the year, you could vote, you could approve these in one night. So, but right now it's, you know, real estate comparables, you know, it's reasonably acceptable to, to staff. Um, And shall be subject to regulations if you don't have regulations, then. It's what's acceptable to staff, right? And you can kind of see, like, what we think would be acceptable. Like, we have a pretty high bar. If.
[Doug Carr]: You want that different than yeah, I think the John's point though, we're going to do something as best we can, but then we're going to evaluate it to see what comes what it, what it actually does right after a year or whatever. Well, just like any other part of the zoning, we're going to track it and see, I mean, the intent here is clearly to. not have developers fudge down to avoid something and get the project we want and get some proportional rather than lose out completely on a lost affordable unit potentially, right? I mean, that's clearly one of the major approaches here to fill in that again, that missing middle. So I think, you know, I like what I see so far, but I know it's going to be kind of a first draft until we figure it out. And I like the flexibility that others mentioned as well, that we could, you know, if we see something, we want to waive it because it makes no sense for that site that that property that, like, I think we want that flexibility for sure. I think we've always this board has always been looking to find, you know, we don't want to kill a project if we can make it happen. And it's a good project. That's that's tends to be the consensus I've seen over the last year.
[Danielle Evans]: Yeah, so at a future meeting, we could have some. Draft rules and regulations, like, for your consideration that allow for more flexibility. So, being able to, you know, like, say, they couldn't come up with comps for something that was sold within 6 months that you could be like, okay, here's fine or, you know, or, like, depending on. you know, the current, you know, climate of the market.
[Doug Carr]: Okay. It's, I mean, what I'm seeing here is that what's this, I think it's worth pausing this and continuing this. I don't know if it's too, I guess we need to pick a date, right, to continue it, because obviously there's, we also, do we want to open this for a public comment too? We probably should, right?
[Danielle Evans]: Yeah, it's a public hearing.
[Doug Carr]: Yeah, so we can do that. If there any, if there aren't any other comments, I guess I will open it up for public comments. If anyone would like to speak on behalf of this, please give us your name and you'll have 2 minutes. Erica. Go ahead. Hi.
[Jenny Graham]: Excuse any background noise on my commute, but I wanted to say that I would be in favor of the amendment. This is both a question and a comment, but this is not having read the text. My question part of this is, if the text has been posted somewhere that I could find it. I didn't see it on the zoning website or current measures. I forget what it's called, current filings. Is the text available for review? Just in general, I'd be in favor of it. I agree with Danielle that this would be addressment that missing middle type of development. I also think that it just basically may tip the scales for just more housing creation in general. Because if there's a developer who is considering whether to go ahead with the development in Medford versus another site, they may be may be able to move ahead with development based on, you know, I don't have to add that extra unit or whatever the case may be. Just more opportunity to make the numbers work.
[Doug Carr]: Thank you. I appreciate it.
[Jenny Graham]: Thank you.
[Doug Carr]: Okay, um, and we'll, uh, make sure that this is posted somewhere so we can see the text. Uh, we're not going to vote on it tonight, so there's time to look at it. So appreciate that. Is there anyone else from the public who would like to speak, uh, about this issue? I don't see anybody else who's not part of this meeting. So, um, Seeing none, I guess I'll close the public hearing for tonight, Danielle, and we'll continue to a date. Do we want to choose August or September, you think?
[Danielle Evans]: I mean, I would recommend continuing to the next meeting, and if it's not ready, you can continue it again, but you don't have that option.
[Doug Carr]: Okay. So then I'll entertain a motion to continue to the next meeting, which I believe is August 12th, next month. So moved.
[Dina Caloggero]: I second it.
[Doug Carr]: Thank you, Dina. Thank you, John. All right, roll call. John Anderson? Yes. Sean Began? Yes. Page Buldini?
[Ari Fishman]: Yes.
[Doug Carr]: Dina Calagaro?
[Ari Fishman]: Yes.
[Doug Carr]: Ari Goffman-Fishman?
[Ari Fishman]: Yes.
[Doug Carr]: And myself, Doug Carr, yes. Okay, so this is continued until our next meeting. I think it's four weeks from tonight. All right, Danielle, next item, the last item before the minutes in adjournment is the zoning project timeline and other administrative updates. Do you want to take the lead on that? And we can just talk about schedule first, and then we'll get into some of the what-if scenarios going forward.
[Danielle Evans]: So I'm not actually sure about That's the timeline beyond what was discussed at the last joint public hearing where nothing was going to happen. There was going to be no discussion in July and that we were going to, you know, cause you guys closed the public hearing, you voted on, you know, some of like the big picture, um, you know, issues, um, with the different heights and all that. And we were going to distill that, you know, to update the, the dimensional tables and the various other parts content of the amendment, and then get that to you. Well, in advance of the August 12th meeting. I feel like this deadline is slipping a bit. I would need to connect with Director Hunt about the status of the contract extension. We've been, like, ships passing in the night. I went on vacation, like, immediately, and then she went on vacation, and so I'm not sure if the extension was signed and when that work would commence. I'm not actually sure. So, no, they were taking some vacations too, but maybe next week, because I know there's going to be at least a couple of weeks, but we weren't going to expect anything out of them because they were not available.
[Doug Carr]: Well, you was, you and I were talking before everyone joined. if it was going to get to us a week early from that meeting, it would need to be three weeks from today, which is tight, right? So like, if you have to just let us know, because obviously, if we don't engage it in March, I'm sorry, August, potentially, then it will be September. And we, we, Didn't commit to giving it to the city council on the September 2nd meeting, but we wanted to, I think that was the intent. Yeah, I think, you know, so that's obviously you'll need to fill us in once you get that all that information and find out because we. There's a lot to clean up as, you know, it was very rushed at the end and I know you want to take your time. I don't want it to be rushed. I'd rather take the time to make sure it's tight. And there are other things that go with it, like, going backwards to square and a couple, like, there are some things there that were kind of collateral changes that needed to occur as well. I presume.
[Danielle Evans]: Yeah, so there are some things that we've been staff has been working on in the background and that is. The. The affordable incentives, um, Natalie and Izzy, um, kind of created a new table, um, that we looked at, I think it was last week we met about this. Natalie, I think. Yeah. Um, I think we're in a good spot, um, pretty close to having something that we can, um, you know, insert into the, into the zoning, um, you know, I think putting, making sure that the incentives are proportionate to what they're providing and also trying to really incentivize the deeper affordability, which we feel is really much more needed. And so what we can do to get the deeper affordability, trying to at least, kind of make that more weighted. OK.
[Doug Carr]: Tina, do you have a question?
[Dina Caloggero]: Oh, yeah. I just had a question. So once the Boston Avenue corridor is finalized, or we have the final draft for the city council, is alongside, and maybe perhaps in parallel, are the definitions also being scrubbed up too at the same time?
[Danielle Evans]: The definitions for the Boston Ave zoning?
[Dina Caloggero]: Well, just any definition that would apply to all zoning, because this issue has come up where we need to make sure that any of the definitions that would have an impact on the zoning that we pass are looked at as well. I don't know the impact of ensuring that the definitions are in place. if that's something that should be done in parallel or it should be something that is an afterthought. I'm not sure. I'll leave that up to you when you're ready.
[Danielle Evans]: There's some that will be part of the overall cleanup because there are terms in the ordinance that are not defined. We shouldn't have uses in our use table that has no definition associated with it. There's no really, understanding what it is. Yeah.
[Dina Caloggero]: Without knowing what it is, it's hard to prove that it should be there.
[Danielle Evans]: And also updating definitions so that they reflect new and emerging uses. One example is I got an inquiry from someone wanting to know about whether we allow autonomous vehicle charging stations. So they're like, well, what would this count as? Would this be a, what's our definition for gas stations? We call them light service stations. Yeah, light service stations, right. It's like, they're like, we think that this qualifies as a light service station. Because when you read it, it just talks about a place that dispenses fuel. for motor vehicles, like cells or dispensers. And it doesn't say it has to be for sale.
[Theresa Dupont]: Fuel is fuel. Yeah, fuel is fuel.
[Danielle Evans]: So technically, electricity is fuel, but they operate very, a charging station for autonomous vehicles would operate very differently from your run-of-the-mill gas station. And so clearly, our light service station definition is very old and predates electric cars in general. So it wasn't written with that in mind. So we just kind of need to update things.
[Dina Caloggero]: Yeah. And I just know from like my work with the federal and state governments that when we update any type of regulations, we always keep an eye to the definitions as well. So there's some uniformity between the two.
[Danielle Evans]: Yeah, and, like, ideally, we would have, like, our economic development team. I say team, hopefully we'll have 2 people on board again, mighty group, mighty group to always be kind of like. You know, cognizant of new and emerging uses or uses that have been around that our ordinance doesn't address because if we want them, we want, or if we don't want them. You need to define them and. Call it out, otherwise it could get shoehorned into an existing use. You never want to just ignore it. Yep, I agree. Then you're vulnerable to it. Yep. Defining it and putting it in a use table doesn't mean you're saying you agree with it or want it. You're just defining it. Right. Yeah. I agree.
[Doug Carr]: All right, Daniel, so you'll update us on schedule once you have more information, contract, and we'll adjust accordingly. If we can do it next month, we will. If we can't, we'll do it next year.
[Danielle Evans]: Yeah, so like staff is working on this. Yeah. It's a lot.
[Doug Carr]: There were new maps. There was a whole bunch to go with this. And this has a lot of work to do, from what I can tell.
[Unidentified]: Yeah.
[Doug Carr]: OK. All right, so that's the schedule part. Go ahead, John.
[John Anderson]: Do we have an official published schedule for our meetings, say, through September, October, November?
[Danielle Evans]: Yeah, we have it set for the year.
[John Anderson]: Okay, great. So I can find that on the city calendar.
[Danielle Evans]: Yeah, it should be populated. I give that to our comms department at the beginning of the year.
[Doug Carr]: I think it's been there all along, so it should be there.
[John Anderson]: Because I'm booking theater tickets. Oh, good for you. And you have to do it a few months in advance.
[Doug Carr]: Beware of the Wednesdays, John.
[John Anderson]: I am, believe me. But that's no guarantee.
[Doug Carr]: No, not in June, it wasn't. June was all hands on deck.
[Theresa Dupont]: And Tuesdays, too.
[Doug Carr]: Yep. All right. Any other schedule? Obviously, Danielle and Alicia will update us once they're both back together and they get the information, the contract, et cetera. And we'll get some direction, because I think we want to let the public know as well. If we're going to talk about this in August, we want to let them know. Let's shift gears to talking about the process. It was challenging to say the least in terms of time, compression, et cetera. I know that independently, both Sean Began and John Anderson raised concerns about process with Danielle and Alicia. And I'm going to defer. Why don't you do it first, Sean, because you're the first one to do it. And then maybe, John, you can chime in. And then we'll open it up to the rest of the board to see if we can improve. how we do this the next time. Go ahead, Sean.
[Sean Beagan]: Okay, so just a comparison between Medford Square and Boston Ave. It felt to me like we had more individual meetings of just the CDB board to review their zoning than we got to on Boston Ave. And I think those individual meetings to me are much more, they're more important to me. And I think we get a lot more done in the individual meetings, especially if we can have NS at that meeting than we do in the joint meetings, which I understand the reason for the joint meetings, but I feel like it has more of a, The reason for that meeting is more political than it is technical, let's say. And I think we get more of the technical stuff done in our own meetings. So I'd like going forward to, if we're going to be scheduling, I don't think we need so many joint meetings. I think we need to focus on getting as many individual meetings as we can, reviewing zoning, and then the joint meetings come at the end, which I think was the case in Medford Square. That's how it felt to me anyway. And then, generally, I had had a bigger question of how the process starts for the zoning and why couldn't it start with us and then go to city council as opposed to starting with city council and us getting a product that is, you know, I guess somewhat complete, but then we kind of tear it apart. Why couldn't we just start from the beginning at the CDB level? Because I think either body can refer zoning. It can go either way, in other words, and still get to the same end result.
[Doug Carr]: Danielle, is that correct that we could actually start the process rather than be, you know, halfway done? Maybe for Tufts or the next one after that?
[Danielle Evans]: This board can propose zoning whenever it wants and send recommended zoning amendments to city council Yeah, whenever you want to like, it's just who is initiating it. So, in the contract, or I. The way it was conceived was that, you know, for 1, that there should be some public input, which would, which would inform the crafting of the language in the ordinance. And at some point, I think, because of limited meetings, it was decided that this should happen in the planning and the permitting committee meeting. That's what I recall. So that was supposed to kind of like, serve as that and then. And it wasn't the full council, it was staff, the consultants, and then that committee, and then they were referring it out then. That was the process that was landed on. And the 1st time around, you know, it just, it went to the city board to open the public hearing, and then you went through the whole public hearing process. And then it went to the city council. And I had recommended. Opening the joint public hearing, opening the public hearing as joint, but I didn't envision that every single public hearing would be joint and other places that I have worked, like, in several in Watertown that 1st. Public hearing was joint and it was all kind of. You know, presented and, um. You know, and discussed there and kind of like, set the table for the kid. Now we're going to be talking about these various sections. But it's like, the planning boards, the CD board would work on it and hold their public hearing. And then, I mean, you could rejoin. At different checkpoints and have another joint public hearing, or you could wait to the end, or you could not have another 1 and just have this is our recommendation. Yeah, I'm I'd like. I feel like the joint public hearings were good, but I feel like the pendulum swung too far. It went from nobody's talking to each other and having a big mismatch of ideas and expectations to being really together all the time, and it's really hard to have conversations and get into the weeds. And even as staff, I could never really even get a word in edgewise. I get to be recognized. It didn't lend itself to really working on it. Yeah, I wasn't happy with this being every single time. Like, I feel like with Medford square, where we had our, at least the internal working sessions that was, I thought was really helpful. Like, I feel like we need to have more of those. If we're going to continue this joint public hearing where they're all the public hearings are joint, then there needs to be these working sessions that are peppered through to really get into the weeds because. Um, that is supposed to be like, what you guys really like, drill down into and. The city counts could be more like big picture, like. Policy and then, but informed by the recommendations and expertise. of a planning board and planning staff. So many ways you can do this. None of them are perfect. Let's go around the horn, so to speak.
[Doug Carr]: We'll get Paige next, and then Dina, so we can get all the thoughts on the table. Go ahead, Paige.
[Page Buldini]: Well, thank you. I think, Danielle, you kind of just nailed the notes that I quickly took. I just had a question how Sean, Doug, Danielle, how you felt about those working groups. Because I think reading those notes, although it was probably way more work for you guys to have another meeting, was really helpful for some of the measured square zoning to actually see where people were thinking. So that was one question. But then my other question with process was seeing the planning and permitting being kind of like, and Danielle, you kind of explained this, like the start of this. If I wasn't watching those meetings, there were some things that I would never have known Um, is it possible that there, it would be more work. So I don't know if this is, or even legal, but to almost have like a CD board liaison on one of those meetings. So at least there is, and it wouldn't necessarily be, I don't know how the discussion looks. I don't know. I know that the city council meeting, but just knowing that there is representation from the CD board. To then share with us because I agree. I felt like the. feeling comfortable, the Tuesday, the last Tuesday, and I know it was like a marathon, so much was done as our CD board, that walking into that Wednesday meeting, I felt like I'd never feel prepared, but I just felt like we all had a general, we weren't gonna agree on everything, but we had a general consensus, or we knew where we all were kinda gonna land, and that felt really comfortable. when I watched because I had missed the meeting the night the week before when I saw and I know it wasn't no ill intentions but seeing members being called to recognize questions they had about like gas stations and then having to prove why that was a feeling I feel like that made not for comfortable conversation. And I wouldn't feel comfortable being up there by myself, just trying to describe something that I had a question about, because I'm not the expert. That's what we're asking the experts. So just knowing that process, I feel like is really important. And I do get why scheduling all of the meetings got a little tricky. So there has to also be a way that we look at the city calendar if we can. And I know it's impossible. because there's so much going on. And I know, Danielle, you do yours a year in advance. So yes, thank you for bringing up the process, because that was obviously weighing on myself. But I do think that the CD board, that Tuesday meeting was really inspiring. So walking into that, thank you all, made me feel more comfortable and confident to speak, even though, again, we might not have agreed.
[Doug Carr]: Thank you, Paige. Great point. Go ahead, Dina.
[Dina Caloggero]: I think the public hearing that was, the public meeting that was regarding Boston Avenue corridor, it was held at, I think it was, well, I know it is whatever church it was in Boston Avenue. I think that was premature, I do. I think the better public meeting would have been one when there was a more refined and defined path of what was going to happen with Boston Avenue corridor. I also liked the way we approached Method Square. We had much more engaging meetings together as a board first and technical meetings where we were allowed to discuss our different perspectives on Method Square zoning and come up with some, I thought, very good solutions as a group. Like, again, we didn't all agree, but we came to a very workable solution for Method Square. I think Boston Avenue was rushed towards the end. where we were trying to have those two public meetings, figuring out when how those are going to be timed, as well as a number of joint meetings, which I didn't think was that productive. And we certainly needed more just as a board to work on what we were coming up with this draft proposal. The other thing I just as I'm a Method resident, I was extremely frustrated with overlapping important meetings. There were a number of meetings that I wanted to attend for Method High School, and they were the same exact time. So there needs to be much more coordination. between the city calendar and some of the other really, really critical meetings that are coming up that not only me as a resident, but other Method citizens as well would like to take part in as well. That is all.
[Doug Carr]: Thank you, Dina. Go ahead, John Anderson.
[John Anderson]: First, I agree with Sean about the joint meetings with the city council. I find the very venue not conducive to constructive discussion. It's very echoey. It's sort of like watching C-SPAN and seeing the House of Representatives in action.
[Doug Carr]: I assume that's a negative, John?
[John Anderson]: Yeah, right. But my biggest problem is the way information is presented to us, it's not in a very digestible form. You think about Boston Avenue, we got the draft changes to the zoning. And we also got a PowerPoint presentation. Well, the PowerPoint presentation, you know, done in the city council with all the echoes and stuff and sort of Walking through the slides one at a time without a chance to think about it or ask questions till you got to the end, it's not a very effective way of communicating what's going on. I asked specifically if they could make the PowerPoint presentation available to us with the comments that went along. What's the name of the lady who presented it? Emily. No, it was her. Oh, Paula. Paula from Spain. Paula, yes. With Paula's comments there, because that would give you a chance to look at it, read it, and perhaps understand the thinking behind it, rather than just being presented with this very legalistic document. I also found the lack of, how can I put this? The changes do not stand alone by themselves. They also relate to other things in the zoning, which I'm certainly not aware of. For example, I asked the question, for Boston Avenue, there's a requirement of 80% active facade or something like that, meaning that you need to have a large percentage of what's presented in the street be something attractive like a retail store And I didn't understand how that would work when you can allow three family buildings in the same area. And I asked Emily about that and she sort of smiled at me and said, oh, well, that's covered in another part of the zoning. Well, you know, I didn't know about that. There's a lot of thought that has gone into this between us and the permit and planning committee, but none of that is available to us. And I think we really need to be integrated into the process much earlier on. I like the suggestion of having some observers at the, at the meeting, the PP meetings. I don't see anything else. Um, Yeah, and it all causes the process to be really rushed, which actually ultimately slows things down. That's it.
[Doug Carr]: Thank you, John. Ari, do you have any comments about the process, products, et cetera, based on what you've heard?
[Ari Fishman]: Yes, I certainly don't disagree with anyone that this was a deeply unideal process. I think that there is a happy medium. I think my ideal version would have us open an area with city council to get the kind of big picture vision. And I think it is important to get both the political representation input, and to even have very early community meetings, like before there's a plan to actually get a like, hey, this is your neighborhood, like, what is your vision? I think that is important before a plan is made. And I do think it is important to have another joint meeting as well, kind of with city council before we officially present A proposal, because that last step is where proposals can be rejected and potentially easily modified to recognize whatever political input they. Have I think so, I think 2 meetings rather than like, 4 joint meetings per section feels like a much more useful and manageable. amount with working sessions or just kind of CD meetings in between. The first round of planning burned out an entire committee. It is not a coincidence that I was the only one last standing and I am, you know, right here on the edge of burnout. And, you know, You're also human and I'm afraid that you'll be right behind me after another cycle of this and that doesn't lead to good policy. I like this deserves. I agree. Really this deserves thought and this does deserve institutional memory and it also kind of. we shouldn't have to scrape the bottom of the barrel to see who's willing to throw themselves on the sword of weekly meetings. The city should be able to select people who are qualified and willing and don't have 20 hours a month to put to this. It is very interesting to be saying that as one of the people who agrees that housing is an emergency and that We do need to be acting with a sense of urgency, but like, this is not. And I appreciate that Danielle has been speaking kind of from the inside of the office that this is not how you write good zoning. So, I think maybe moving down to those 2 meetings is 1 concrete. proposal, I think having a representative to the Planning and Permitting Committee is certainly not unprecedented. I sit as the CDB's voting representative on the CPC, which is the Community Preservation Committee that Doug also sits on. Admittedly, doing the two is contributing to the over kind of burnout But that one's statutorily required. We don't have a statutory requirement with planning and permitting, but I think it's a great idea, and I think that that would help us with some of that alignment. But again, that adds burden to another person, although is someone already sitting on that, Doug? I'm not sure. No. Okay. Other things, yeah, I think there's been. A interesting balance of sometimes saying the information we're getting is too technical and other times when it's not technical enough. But I do agree that we need the information, the PowerPoint presentations with the notes, the texts of the drafts, the day, at least the day before. I need at least 24 hours. I have a job. I need to be able to sit down, read it, find references. And so does everyone else, preferably more than a day, but like a fair minimum.
[Danielle Evans]: It should be in your packets. Yeah. Yeah. Which is tough because we need them early enough. Oh, I know. I'm not blaming you. I know you don't get them. Yeah, because we ran into this problem again where it's like Alicia and I are seeing things at the last minute and then needing to forward it to you guys. And it's like, okay, do we just like forward it without having even looked at this, which means it's like we've endorsed this. It's just, it's hard. Like, especially it's like we close at 1230 on Friday. Like I can't even like post an agenda after that time. And then, and that's why I always end up like sending things like on Saturdays, because then I've like gotten something late Friday night.
[Ari Fishman]: You know, can I make a proposal that I don't know if it's feasible, but as you're renewing the contract with innocent co, can it be included as a contractual term that material kind of. Packet materials for committee meetings must be presented X amount of time. Like, I think we can actually define we know what information we need and it is formal content that they're already presenting. Like, we're not asking for anything informal. I think that can be written into a contract.
[Danielle Evans]: And I, I definitely think it can be written to a contract. I think the problem is, is that. At least the city council is like, asking for things to be turned around quickly. And then they're saying, yes, when they should say, no, we can't do it that quickly. I feel like they're getting a little bit better with saying that they can't do things, but just like the. I think the problem with the meetings just on top of each other makes it impossible and. It just yeah.
[Ari Fishman]: So, how many parts of Medford are we planning to do next year? Kind of starting in September kind of school year.
[John Anderson]: I'm sure the city council would like to do it all.
[Ari Fishman]: No, like, 1 would feel. reasonable two would feel rushed but potentially not impossible is the best i can give it but like one feels like the right number if we can pull it off or like the one we already started plus another one so like in addition to the tufts institutional um i think it was
[Danielle Evans]: Yeah, we're waiting for that. There was a study that was being completed, but then now there's also the Wellington transformation study is. close to being finalized. And so, cause we want to write zoning that's, I mean, first, everything's supposed to be informed by the comprehensive plan, but that's still like very high level. Um, and so you go and do these more specific targeted studies. And so we have West Medford square and then Wellington that's finishing up, but no other areas have been really studied yet. So I feel like those two areas could, would be, you know, Teed up because there's some recommended zoning changes or things that could change. But after that, there's the main street area and then neighborhoods and. I had written a grant for Laurel had helped me with it too. An eco 1 stop, but basically, I don't know if we're going to get it. So, I don't even know if they've made their. Awards or not, but I wanted to be able to hire someone that could make recommendations for. The different residential areas kind of balancing climate resiliency with housing production. Just trying to figure out, like. What would make sense like a green score kind of template. For the residential neighborhoods, like, what are what are some ways that we can do housing production that doesn't result in. Tree canopy loss and, like, how can we incentivize. You know, getting back of the sidewalk trees because. There are private ways in the city can't plant trees on private ways, but what can we do? So I was hoping. That we would have something that could inform the residential zoning because, I mean, I do agree that we do need to update, you know, our, our neighborhood zoning, but. It needs to be informed by something. It just, it can't be based on vibes and that's what it was last year. It was vibes.
[Ari Fishman]: Can I suggest that we plan for, like. Tufts Institutional plus those 2 studies. If those are already in the route, those deserve discussion. Tufts Institutional is going to be in the Tufts. That's a year.
[Danielle Evans]: We can do that. So Tufts Institutional zoning and the 2 areas that have been studied. Yeah. Yeah, I feel like that's, yeah, I mean,
[Ari Fishman]: Sorry, I realized I was just wanted to bounce off of that.
[Doug Carr]: Why don't we switch to page and then Sean go ahead page.
[Page Buldini]: No, our great great point. 1 is the Boston at quarter study that Tufts is doing should be done by the end of the year. So that's helpful information. Right. Yeah, that's something that I think is very helpful for that. And then when it comes to West Medford, is West Medford going to be like Boston Ave, where we have West Medford around the commuter rail? But then we also have the business district that's where Joe Pizza is and the Rotary. Is that, in theory, two districts, or is that all one?
[Danielle Evans]: I mean, I think it's all on the table. I mean, that's part of figuring out the different geographic areas. Where should they start? Where should they end? And you all definitely should be able to have some input in that.
[Page Buldini]: I envision that also being similar. Different, though, because it's going to be way, West Medford is so dense right where it is. But that is two totally different neighborhoods. So I think that will take time as well.
[Sean Beagan]: Okay, Sean, go ahead. Yeah, no, I, I liked a lot of what Ari said, and I think I agree with pretty much everything she said. And it seems to me like, you know, the, uh, The final kind of question was, how much are we going to do this year and right now that's being driven as far as I can tell by city council in terms of what they want to put on their planning and permitting subcommittee and that starts a process. So, maybe we have to get a message to them that. What the CD board is willing to consider is X and Y for the fall up to January. And if we're gonna talk about a square, well, we want at least four months to consider a square. We don't wanna do it in two months. We're gonna need at least four months to do something like West Medford Square. And we don't care if the RFP is about to expire. Because I felt like a lot of Boston Ave was driven by kind of what ended up being a false deadline. I think there were two deadlines at play. It was like, for some reason, the end of the fiscal year became a deadline for zoning, which has nothing to do with zoning.
[Ari Fishman]: And then the- That was the mayor's deadline.
[Sean Beagan]: Yeah, right. And then became another deadline with the... with the end of the contract. So maybe we have to, if we can come to some consensus on this board, our fearless leader, Doug can send out a missive to the city council. This is where we are. This is what we'd like to do. This is what we're willing to do, you know, because we also had a tremendous amount of meetings by this board, extra meetings, you know, and, I enjoy this, but it's a lot of hours. And after a certain period of time, to Ari's point, you can't give your full attention to it, because there's just other things we need to do. Yeah.
[Danielle Evans]: And it's an equity issue, too, because it really limits who can participate. If you can forego a second job in the evening, Or don't have a flexible schedule. If you don't work for yourself, you can't be on a board then. It's not fair. So we need to have diverse representation on our boards. And when you work them to death, then you're not going to get that.
[Doug Carr]: Go ahead, Dina.
[Dina Caloggero]: Yeah, Ari, thanks for the comments. I agree with you. I think one of the good things that you said was that we would work on projects where there is a study. So there is a study on Wellington, and then there's also the study that's being produced by Tufts University. Those are great ideas, because those studies would be used as an important tool in making the decisions. More information. And using that information with other pieces of information will always make good decisions. And I think basically just trying to finalize things based on a deadline on an RFP is sloppy. It really is sloppy. I've been on a number of, for the state as well as the federal government, IT projects, and they always go over the deadline. And I know that from working on software development projects is that when you rush them, you get bad code, but when you take time and you do it the right way and you test it, you get good code. So let's be smart, let's use data, and let's make good decisions, and let's just not rush things based on some deadline. I agree.
[Doug Carr]: Thank you, Dean. I appreciate it. I'm hearing a lot of consensus here, which is really good, because I think we're all on the same page. The contrast between Manfred Square, which I think everyone felt really good about after four months, and four months from Manfred Square is quick, even though we were critiqued for sitting on things like, you know, like we'd been there for two years already. But we did Boston Ave in six weeks, essentially, right? And it was ridiculous. It was like, we should never do that again, obviously. I think there's consensus on that. We have to find a way to have a conversation with the city council about about a reasonable schedule about enough time for our own meetings as we talked about less co meetings, but more, but we somehow some way we have to start. We have to leave the starting gate at the same time. You know, like, we can't I don't think us joining the planning subcommittee is the answer because it shouldn't start there. It should start. Together, you know, like, we should, we should like, we're getting a big cake and then asking is it is it tasty and it's just it's just. No, you know, I don't like the crossing start over. I mean, it's like, that's not the right way to do things, you know, and I'm sure there's going to be pressure as well. But I agree with Ari a lot on what you said. And I think, you know, four or five months for each chunk is probably the minimum, which means you can really do to a year, right, essentially at most. You know, so we, I think Danielle and Alicia have to kind of get everyone, getting the schedules together, getting, you know, we need a plan for the next year from September 1st essentially to August 31st, the next year, see what makes sense from the planning studies, from what's available, and what we think we can reasonably do so that we have a better process, a better product, better communications, and that we're there when the zoning is born, not when it's five years old and it's already like we're catching up. So I feel like there's consensus among, I think there's a lot of consensus on this board for a slower process, but a more deliberate process, but a better product in the end that will actually be better for the city, I think. And let's stress on Danielle, you and your staff, you were as stressed as we were, if not 10 times more, you know? Paige and you, I had to talk you off the ledge in those last two days, you know, because it was insane what we were doing.
[Danielle Evans]: I was like, at one point, I was just like, I remember I fired off an email and I was like, I'm going for a walk. And I left City Hall and I just like paced around.
[Doug Carr]: Right. So let's let's not do that again. Go ahead, John.
[John Anderson]: Yeah. Let me just mention one thing. One place where I work, some sort of obnoxious person had this sign on their desk that said, your lack of planning is not my emergency. sort of made the point rather bluntly, but I really felt sort of abused by the city council in essence, by being rushed by them. I thought it was particularly grating when we had this special meeting, I think it was a Thursday night and halfway through the meeting, two or three city council said, oh, we have to go do something else for a while, carry on. I was tempted to suggest to, Chair Carr that we adjourn for the evening. You know, my leg was hurting, I was hungry, and you know, I'm sorry they had other things to do, but so do I. Another thing we might consider doing, much of the rezoning is driven by the housing problem. Quantity, but also affordability, and I don't just mean what the state calls affordable housing. But you know, you see all these new condos being built in Medford and they're all a million dollar plus. Perhaps we could have, we could organize a session with our housing planner. I forget her first name. Her last name is Buckingham. Catherine. Catherine Buckingham. to present her perspective on where we are in addressing housing and maybe even one of the housing, one or two of the housing advocates. You know, there's a very strong housing advocacy group. I know the city council hears from them. We should hear from them too. We should be aware of the issues and how people feel about it. What do you think? I mean, I understand the housing issue very little. I've tried to educate myself, but a lot of the city documents are out of date and it's constantly changing. I just presented for your consideration. We don't have to talk about it tonight. I just wanted to plant the seed.
[Doug Carr]: Yeah. Thank you, John. Danielle, I don't know if I've been taking notes a little bit here as we go along. Do you think you have enough to kind of get a sense of the consensus of this board about the next steps on planning and scheduling and sanity? Yeah. Okay. I think there's a planning session in the future. And by the way, I think there was some discussion about working group. I think some of the conversation about working group was actually intended for the city board working group and our internal work is not the one that's the kind of the mayor and the city council, some of the council members and Sean and myself, that's mostly about Planning dates and logistics, it's not really about zoning. We don't really talk about almost anything in zoning, but the, the working sessions that we had as a board, those were invaluable. And I think everyone agreed with that. I think you say working group. I think that's what people were really talking about. Not the. the other planning session that was run by Matt Leming every other week, just to make sure that we met an arbitrary schedule that just happened to work with the end of this June 30th date. Anyway, I think this is exactly what we needed to do, which is just kind of like pause and say, let's do better next time. So I think we have a lot of good ideas here. I think we need to kind of sort them out and then look at a calendar and look at, Danielle, you and Alicia need to kind of you know, figure out what makes sense for the next 6 to 12 months. And then we can, we can come up with something that we can put in front of the city council and us as a draft schedule that we can all kind of agree on. But knowing that it's, it's still flexible, right? Because if, if Sean and I must have said 10 times to, Councilor Leming and others, it's going to take how long it takes. If we're not ready, we're not going to do it. And we were forced to do it at gunpoint by the end of June. It was far from ideal and the city council shouldn't matter. Matt was the most disappointed person that night because he got almost nothing of what he wanted because he had to, he had to deal with the consensus issue and there wasn't consensus. If there had been more time that the consensus may have changed, but that's just what it was because of, you know, an insane timeline that made no sense. So, unless anyone has any final comments, I think we've given you plenty to chew on Danielle and the PDS staff and let's maybe by next meeting or September, we can, we can come up with something that is a more reasonable roadmap going forward. Okay, next 2 hour meeting. That's right, this is only half our usual, John. Approval of minutes. Danielle, do we, we don't need to put those on screen, right? We just need to take a motion.
[Danielle Evans]: We had quite a- Yeah, there's two sets in there.
[Doug Carr]: Yeah.
[Danielle Evans]: Let's see. Yeah, 623 and 624.
[Doug Carr]: Yeah, that was a hell of a week. Anyway, I'll entertain a motion to accept the minutes.
[John Anderson]: So moved. Second.
[Doug Carr]: Thank you. Thank you, John. All right, John Anderson? Yes. Sean Began? Yes. Page Buldini?
[Ari Fishman]: Yes.
[Doug Carr]: Dina Calagaro?
[Ari Fishman]: Yes.
[Doug Carr]: Ari Goffman-Fishman?
[Ari Fishman]: Yes.
[Doug Carr]: And myself, Doug Carr, yes. Passes six to zero. Danielle, anything else before we adjourn? Any other admin updates, anything? We're good?
[Page Buldini]: No.
[Doug Carr]: All right. I'll entertain a motion to adjourn.
[Page Buldini]: Second.
[Doug Carr]: Thank you. John Anderson?
[John Anderson]: Yes.
[Doug Carr]: Thank you, John. Sean Began? Yes. Page Buldini? Yes. Ari Goffin-Fishman?
[Ari Fishman]: Yes.
[Doug Carr]: Tina Colangiero?
[Ari Fishman]: Yes.
[Doug Carr]: And myself, Doug Carr, yes. Good job, folks. Two hours almost on the button.
[Theresa Dupont]: Cheers.
[Doug Carr]: We'll see you next month. Go to the beach.
[Theresa Dupont]: Yeah, good night.
[Jenny Graham]: Recording stopped.
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