[Cheryl Rodriguez]: Hi, Cheryl Rodriguez, 281 Park Street. What stands out to me is there's no call for study or analysis in this resolution. So opinions will still be the entire basis for the zoning. There's no set timeline or process outlined here. Why was this not brought forward in the planning and permitting committee in coordination with the mayor's office to create a real timeline and specific processes that might happen before new zoning is written? The zoning should be called back to planning and permitting and properly written. The unstudied Salem Street and Mystic Ave zoning should not remain intact. They were subjected to the same lack of analysis and study, so deserve the same treatment as the NR district's need. Reverting Park and Salem to MX2 added two floors of height and all the uses that were taken out as too close to the neighborhoods. So we resent that you're saying it's one change was not adopted. The parking minimum should be set before any zoning is passed and should reflect actual conditions, as even President Bierce has admitted cars are the primary transportation residents use. So the OR item to remove parking minimums is in direct contradiction of the reality of car ownership in Medford. There is no urgency to rezone and no need to rezone poorly. There are existing conditions analysis that must be done. Impacts must be considered. low to our infrastructure have to be factored in. All of these measures are called for in the comprehensive plan, climate plan, and housing production plan that this body mentions frequently, but is not following. You are not following any of these plans. It is not as simple as quote, we just need density. The new zoning as written encourages luxury housing and discourages affordable housing in many ways. It does not encourage businesses or vibrant commercial areas. Oversimplifying this process will be to our detriment. A strong path forward must include analysis. If Ennis is unable to perform the work appropriately, then perhaps we now should seek a different consultant. Our zoning is too important to be written without any solid basis. Doing something poorly and causing harm is not better than doing nothing. Opinions are not enough, no matter whose opinions they are. That's it. Thanks.
[Cheryl Rodriguez]: Hi. I'm Cheryl Rodriguez, 281 Park Street. So I'm gonna try to be as quick as I can and specific. The zoning is unstudied and should not move forward without our requisite studies and analysis. Gathering public input is great and one part of the process, but not the entire process. I'm a resident of Glenwood and we are being inappropriately upzoned despite the lack of study. It is obvious that too much density is being focused here. I live next door to a mega townhouse that extends into my yard and overlooks my pool and shades part of my yard as well. Now with more lot coverage allowed and smaller setbacks, I can look forward to three units next door that can look into my yard and blot out more sun. That doesn't mean I dislike my neighbors, but that project decreased my privacy and quality of life. The majority of the area is being zoned NR3, despite the south side of Salem Street being an SF2 zone. It is the largest increase for an SF2 zone barring a section near the green line that is being zoned just one level higher. The north side is already very dense and parking can be difficult. There are many narrow streets. The majority of Glenwood is single and two family homes. Glenwood is facing, as Alicia Hunt, the director of planning and permitting calls it, quote, developer pressure. But it is actually rapid gentrification by flippers that will be worsened with an NR3 designation. Glenwood is also home to a large number of UR2 zones, which the board has suggested adding an additional floor to as they are close to rapid transit. But Glenwood is not on rapid transit. We have one bus line. and that is not rapid transit. Your two zones include one side of Riverside Ave, which allows no parking, one side of Fulton, which allows parking on one side, and both sides of Fulton Ave, which is a narrow dead end. The majority of these homes are single and two family homes. None are near rapid transit and do not contain any parking buildings, but are being zoned for them as the lots were too small and the area is already thickly settled. We urge you to study and consider the impacts in Glenwood. We will be harmed by the grossly dense Salem Street corridor and the future reduction of on-street parking on Salem Street currently planned by the city. Please do not allow us to be victimized again by this zoning. We are a neighborhood and we would like to retain some quality of life. So please help us as much as you can. Thank you.
[Cheryl Rodriguez]: Hi, I'm Cheryl Rodriguez, 281 Park Street in Medford. And I know I've said this first part before, but this board and the public have been asking for documentation ahead of meetings. I didn't have time today to look an hour before the meeting, which is actually early for us, as most of the time it's posted during the meeting. How often am I expected to check if I want to look at the data before the meeting? and I often come up empty. It feels deliberate and disrespectful. If we can't keep up, we need to slow down. We aren't setting this pace. The public isn't setting this pace. There is no rush just because people who haven't read this are saying because it isn't available or saying it looks good to them. It doesn't look good because it doesn't really exist. We need to do this right. I had seconds to review part of this, so I'm not sure if this question is valid or not. Is the new building coverage definition going to include the state required to be allowed ADU in the percentage, which I thought was not allowed to be included in the density amount. Could this prevent most homeowners from adding an ADU if they aren't adding it to an existing structure? It appears that a covered porch will count towards the lot coverage and could prevent someone from having an ADU. So that's my one question. And then just another part is that we're keep referring to the comprehensive plan, which was mostly a wishlist and a list of studies to conduct and strategies to come up with before we zoned. It was written by a group of consultants, including Ennis and maybe members of the planning department with slides being created before any community feedback had been gathered that had selected quarters and such already in them. and the pictures and the colored circle stickers at some community events during COVID with a majority of the public participation. I don't know why there's so much confusion that this is being used as a roadmap for zoning changes without any study, even if it was based on community feedback. The old slide decks still exist online and I have read the plan and the slideshows shown to the public and encourage others to do so before claiming it's supposed to be informing our zoning. Please do this properly. Sound Street is an example of doing things poorly and quickly, and that also deserves to be revisited later. Thank you.
[Cheryl Rodriguez]: Let's see.
[Cheryl Rodriguez]: I second.
[Cheryl Rodriguez]: Hi, I'm Cheryl Rodriguez, 281 Park Street, my neighborhood we zoned as NR3. The zoning that is in the current filings folder didn't match the dimensional standards that were presented tonight. The building coverage among other things has changed. It's hard for the public to consistently know what is actually on the table. The map from the city council is what was presented tonight. Is that the map that is now being considered? Is all the density near the commuter rail and green line gone and reverted back? to less than the density at Glenwood with no rapid transit and only one bus? All the discussion of the negatives about density are centered on the least densely zoned areas and none about the more dense areas that already have some of the negatives, the less dense don't want, but we are being pushed further. Why are only private roads in NR1 being kept less dense? There are around 14 private streets in Glenwood and they all find themselves zoned at NR3 with no special attention paid to the fact they are also private ways. If we are rolling back the areas with transit access, then Glenwood should not remain at or above their level of density. We are already dense. We already have flippers knocking on our doors to buy our lots that sell for lower prices because we are an EJ neighborhood and are being zoned to turn into a luxury urban neighborhood. The City has already said Glenwood is facing development pressure and that is why Salem Street Corridor was zoned first. It will happen more quickly for us. There were no studies on infrastructure. Going from one to two units in my neighborhood to three to five per lot will cause issues that we are not prepared for. Parking minimum changes are already being discussed. So it is disingenuous for the consultants to suggest that parking is what will keep this zoning from actually happening. This zoning will happen to us. People will own cars, but they won't have parking for them. Please do something about this. Please send some time on Glenwood and not only talk about the NR1 and the NR2 areas, which will be markedly less dense than we will be. Thank you.
[Cheryl Rodriguez]: Hi, can you hear me? Okay, so Cheryl Rodriguez 21 Park Street. I've just checked with the assessor this week and we have 42,246 cars registered in the city with only 24,572 households. So that means for every adult living in the city, 81% of them own a car. One car. And I'm concerned that now that the tough students are gone, that if we start doing parking studies, we're going to miss thousands of cars. I know the students that live next door to me have six cars. If they're all gone when you do the parking study, then you're going to miss those cars. And it's even worse in South Medford. So I'm concerned about that. I'm also concerned about the fact that not all the streets are equal. If you go to the proposed NR1 neighborhoods, what they have in common is that the majority of them don't have any cars parked on the street. But if you go to the NR3s and the UR1s and UR2s, you'll see that there's cars lining both sides of those streets. So yeah, it's definitely not one size fits all. And I'm concerned that we're trying to fit a round peg in a square hole and that it's really not going to work out for us because we're not even going to get accurate car counts from the start. Thank you.
[Cheryl Rodriguez]: No, I'm very concerned that you're going to lose a lot of strategies because if you look at a city that doesn't have a large.
[Cheryl Rodriguez]: Hi, I'm Cheryl Rodriguez at 281 Park Street. I noticed that some of these extra conversations tonight about things that weren't before the board are a little confusing to members of the public, but I'm curious about how the NR zoning is now being passed. by the square zoning. And the square zoning has some of the areas like, for example, West Medford Square zoned more densely than they are in the NR maps. So I'm wondering how they're going to reconcile that if just the square zoning passes first, then the NR zoning will down zone the square areas, particularly the UR areas. Also, when I'm looking at the Medford Square map, I noticed that the very large lots on the north side of High Street and Square are only zoned as NR2. Um, which is pretty low considering they're right on high street and the sound street corridor was given no such exemptions despite having no rapid transit or a large square that would support the density. So that seems misplaced. I did mention it at the subcommittee meetings and it was ignored and bypassed. Um, NR3 and West in the rapid transit circle exactly matches the density of Glenwood, which again, we don't have any rapid transit. So it seems right inside that quarter mile circle that West is zoned pretty low. And if Glenwood is going to stand, and they should stand taller than us. I noticed tonight we're talking about design and development standards, and Salem Street was placed on one of the maps that you showed that now we're concerned about shadow study. When the Salem Street neighbors rallied and asked for shadow studies, we were told that that wasn't done. We were quite shut down. And it's very concerning that the Salem Street zoning is live right now. It doesn't have any of these design standards. It can happen just the way that it is with no regard for shadow. So I'm not sure why we didn't wait to allow the zoning to be used before the design standards when there's so much developer pressure on Sale Street that we were rushing to get the zoning through so the developers wouldn't miss the summer. And now those buildings can happen without consideration of our sunlight or design standards because those things don't exist. So I feel that it can be too little too late for many of us here on the South Street quarter. And I wish that more attention and study had been paid to us. I'm glad to see that now some of the other areas are getting more attention than we ever got. But I'm concerned that suddenly the city is also notifying about the neighborhood zoning, eight meetings into the neighborhood zoning. so that people didn't find out ahead of time. And now we're scrambling and that's why it's taking extra meetings because people have questions because they're just finding out about this. So I know that there's an urgent rush for the city council and I appreciate that this board is not responding to their pressure and is taking their time and trying to look through these proposals. But I hope that when we do the cleanup that we can remember the areas that we really rushed through and didn't give as much consideration and thought as the areas that we're doing now. Thank you.
[Cheryl Rodriguez]: Hi, Cheryl Rodriguez, 21 Park Street. My question is really just about the Q&A. Is there going to be parking to go to this location? Because this is not a location that I can walk or get a bus to. And I know a lot of people are going to have trouble parking there. And some people want to go in person because Zoom is not adequate for them. And then my second thing was just that People have cars in Medford. We have about two cars per unit. So the conversations about removing parking minimums is just creating more burden on the neighbors and giving the developers more profit by being able to not have to build parking and be responsible for their properties. If you want to remove parking minimums, then you should remove parking privileges first for those new buildings, just so that we can be realistic and not create a situation that we can't walk back from once those buildings exist without parking. Once those residents have three to six cars, those cars are going to be there. I myself live next door to a two family home that has about eight cars and two cars worth of parking, so six cars on the street. That's the reality of the situation here in Medford, and I hope that we can factor in our reality and that people here have cars, even people who've bought condos that come with deeded parking space know that they have cars and they're protected. But those of us that are relying on the streets are not gonna be protected if we just remove all the parking to add the density and it will lower the quality of life for the residents. But I'd like to hear about the parking for tomorrow night too, thanks.
[Cheryl Rodriguez]: Hi, Cheryl Rodriguez, 281 Park Street. So I just noticed a few things that really stuck out were when they were saying that some don't want the nodes to be an overlay because they don't want them to be in areas, quote, where they don't belong sounds kind of like a NIMBY attempt to keep some areas character that is prevalent in the zoning proposals that we have seen this far in any area outside of an environmental justice neighborhood. Some areas are being deliberately less dense and to have them be also excluded from neighborhood nodes seems to be really an issue that you should be having with your own goals. But, and Salem Street was very concerned about the shadows, the loss of solar panel efficiency, and just plain sunlight. And this was brought up by many, many residents, many, many times, and we were dismissed. There was no study. So I hope that now that you're considering this for other corridors, perhaps it'll be time to go back and study on Salem Street, because there is a good deal of sun loss that will be happening here on Salem Street. As many of you have said, even tonight, there is a lot of development pressure on Salem Street, and that will definitely impact our neighbors. And just last one thing is, it's been repeatedly asked of Innis to have their materials available ahead of time, so that people can look at these documents, so that we can have questions answered in real time when we're seeing these presentations, we still didn't see any zoning for ADUs, despite it being voted out of this committee. So there's a real lag in materials being given to the public so that people can have informed conversations. And I'm very concerned that it's not only continuing, but it seems to be worsening as time goes on. Thank you.
[Cheryl Rodriguez]: Hi, Cheryl Rodriguez, 281 Park Street. I'm disappointed that this past month was taken to build a defense of the NR and NR2 districts not having additional density, that they're near private ways or dead ends so they can't have more density because there's no jobs, they're not near a corridor. These seem like NIMBY excuses. The city literally chose what would be corridors. There is no special sauce that makes Salem Street area able to handle this much density. We have one bus. Fountain Street is a dead end with limited connections in our neighborhood and it is singled out as you are too. Why does this matter? It seems like it's a blanket get-out-of-density card. The example given of Fels Ave showed they are being zoned down from needing 35 feet of frontage to needing 40 feet of frontage. If a developer doesn't choose to build on that lot, then they won't. But why are we zoning for NIMBY protectionism, a literal tool created to justify not adding density to chosen neighborhoods? It is remarkable the confidence in saying you don't want to bother certain neighborhoods, whole neighborhoods exempt from density because there are some private ways and some dead ends. But miraculously, none of them are in environmental justice neighborhoods. Somehow already dense areas with small lots are not reason to not increase density there, but large lots with less density is an excuse to keep density down. It does not make sense. It is just an excuse. There is no density balance. There are those who will preserve neighborhood character and those who will be made more dense at the cost of their quality of life. It's funny that more density can't be near some areas of the commuter rail because it runs less frequently on weekends, just like buses. but none of the NR1 or NR2 are near the Salem Street area. I wish more work and study was focused on equitable density and not just protecting some areas from any. If the lot project isn't feasible on a certain lot, the developer won't build, but to exclude something as simple as a two family home and entire swaths of the city is outrageous. Thank you.
[Cheryl Rodriguez]: Aye.
[Cheryl Rodriguez]: Hi, Cheryl Rodriguez, 281 Park Street. I'm disappointed that this past month was taken to build a defense of the NR and NR2 districts not having additional density, that they're near private ways or dead ends so they can't have more density because there's no jobs, they're not near a corridor. These seem like NIMBY excuses. The city literally chose what would be corridors. There is no special sauce that makes Salem Street area able to handle this much density. We have one bus. Fountain Street is a dead end with limited connections in our neighborhood and it is singled out as you are too. Why does this matter? It seems like it's a blanket get-out-of-density card. The example given of Fels Ave showed they are being zoned down from needing 35 feet of frontage to needing 40 feet of frontage. If a developer doesn't choose to build on that lot, then they won't. But why are we zoning for NIMBY protectionism, a literal tool created to justify not adding density to chosen neighborhoods? It is remarkable the confidence in saying you don't want to bother certain neighborhoods, whole neighborhoods exempt from density because there are some private ways and some dead ends. But miraculously, none of them are in environmental justice neighborhoods. Somehow already dense areas with small lots are not reason to not increase density there, but large lots with less density is an excuse to keep density down. It does not make sense. It is just an excuse. There is no density balance. There are those who will preserve neighborhood character and those who will be made more dense at the cost of their quality of life. It's funny that more density can't be near some areas of the commuter rail because it runs less frequently on weekends, just like buses. but none of the NR1 or NR2 are near the Salem Street area. I wish more work and study was focused on equitable density and not just protecting some areas from any. If the lot project isn't feasible on a certain lot, the developer won't build, but to exclude something as simple as a two family home and entire swaths of the city is outrageous. Thank you.
[Cheryl Rodriguez]: Aye.
[Cheryl Rodriguez]: Hi, Cheryl Rodriguez, 281 Park Street. I'm just looking at this proposal, and I see the mixed-use one has been changed to four stories by right and one incentive floor. So it seems that upzoning is happening on Salem Street again. That is not really being pointed out. I just want to verify Salem Street is being upzoned by this change. And then my other point was, why are the large lots on High Street on the north side, just outside the square set at NR2, they have more access than Salem Street and somehow are the second lowest neighborhood density. It doesn't seem like this is consistent and equitable. Since you say it won't happen right away and nothing had changed when Salem Street asked for release. It doesn't really seem appropriate to zone so much lower in areas that have much larger lots and are in the square.
[Cheryl Rodriguez]: Hi, Cheryl Rodriguez, 281 Park Street. I got the link that you posted at 621 that had the zoning language, so I was hope we can get it earlier next time so that we can review it. I would definitely change the name of the MX1 because there are several differences in that opposed to the one on Salem Street. Since you're allowing pot shops in the squares by ZBA approval and they were excluded from Salem Street, this can be very confusing, even to a developer who's trying to go through the zoning. And I noticed in the NR3 in the West Medford Square that you're allowing scientific search, which also was not allowed in the NR3. before the Community Development Board. So I don't know if these are typos, inconsistencies or differences, but I hope that someone will be going through and pulling this all together so that it's consistent and so that people can follow along and understand what's really coming for them. Thank you.
[Cheryl Rodriguez]: Hi, I'm Cheryl Rodriguez, 281 Park Street. So I just had a few procedural questions since we didn't see the new neighborhood zoning tonight. I'm wondering how far in advance you'll receive the copies for the presentation that we heard tonight and then two weeks ago, as well as the updated zoning language? because I felt like when I went to look today just to see what was happening, there was nothing to see. And I know you need to prepare ahead of time and the public would like to have an idea of what's actually in the zoning ahead of time, just because the slides are nice, but don't really provide the in-depth information that you need, like the size of the lots, the amount of things that can be placed on them. So I was hoping that you could get the materials ahead of time for the next meeting so that we can all know what we're discussing in real time. That's it, just simple.
[Cheryl Rodriguez]: Can you hear me? Because I didn't get a request on mute. Okay, great.
[Cheryl Rodriguez]: Cheryl Rodriguez, 281 Park Street. So I was distressed to see that the Glenwood Sand Street area again finds itself being zoned for the highest residential density despite our lack of transit and small lots. We were told all areas were being made more dense, but the reality is that many neighborhoods within the transit circles are being zoned less densely than we are. Our neighborhood is one of the only ones that doesn't have multiple zones. While the South side of Salem Street is currently SF2 and is less dense than the North side, both are set to be the highest neighborhood density. The South side would more appropriately be zoned as NR2. More distressing is that NR3 has the smallest minimum lot size with the largest allowance for housing. As the lot sizes increase in the zones, the amount of housing allowed actually decreases. The decrease is so sharp that NR1 in some cases has literally no change beyond the state required ADU. If density is a good, then why are the areas with the largest lot sizes going to add the least density? The changes to those areas would happen much more slowly, even if they were made more dense in the zoning. The Glenwood area will change more rapidly given the sharp increase in what is allowed here on very small lots. We already have a very active flipper. who is currently using the zoning to add two million plus each townhouses per lot, and the idea of him being allowed three plus a possible two ADUs will be far more enticing and profitable. Please consider changing at least some sections of our NR3 to NR2, especially as there are many single family homes on the south side of Salem Street. Please do not zone us at or greater density than our neighbors who live in transit rich areas and those with much larger lots. Thank you.
[Cheryl Rodriguez]: Can you hear me? Because I didn't get a request on mute. Okay, great.
[Cheryl Rodriguez]: Cheryl Rodriguez, 281 Park Street. So I was distressed to see that the Glenwood Sand Street area again finds itself being zoned for the highest residential density despite our lack of transit and small lots. We were told all areas were being made more dense, but the reality is that many neighborhoods within the transit circles are being zoned less densely than we are. Our neighborhood is one of the only ones that doesn't have multiple zones. While the South side of Salem Street is currently SF2 and is less dense than the North side, both are set to be the highest neighborhood density. The South side would more appropriately be zoned as NR2. More distressing is that NR3 has the smallest minimum lot size with the largest allowance for housing. As the lot sizes increase in the zones, the amount of housing allowed actually decreases. The decrease is so sharp that NR1 in some cases has literally no change beyond the state required ADU. If density is a good, then why are the areas with the largest lot sizes going to add the least density? The changes to those areas would happen much more slowly, even if they were made more dense in the zoning. The Glenwood area will change more rapidly given the sharp increase in what is allowed here on very small lots. We already have a very active flipper. who is currently using the zoning to add two million plus each townhouses per lot, and the idea of him being allowed three plus a possible two ADUs will be far more enticing and profitable. Please consider changing at least some sections of our NR3 to NR2, especially as there are many single family homes on the south side of Salem Street. Please do not zone us at or greater density than our neighbors who live in transit rich areas and those with much larger lots. Thank you.
[Cheryl Rodriguez]: Yeah. Okay, Cheryl. Hi, Cheryl Rodriguez, 281 Park Street, home of the Density Without the Transit. So, and much more is coming to us thanks to this zoning. The neighborhood residential one, based on what the city council and the consultants have said they are interested in, the neighborhood one zone shouldn't exist if you want to add more density, especially since these areas will change so much more slowly than the neighborhood three. zones. So there's really no need to preserve a zone that only allows single families for decades to come. If density is good for the community, then why are the densest areas allowing the most density on the smallest lots of only 3K? While those with lots 40% larger or more will have very low density and are being zoned to maintain the least density with 5,000 square foot minimum by allowing only single family homes with the state required ADU. Those areas should take more density to give those of us already dense some breathing room. We, too, have neighborhood character. We, too, would like to be considered. It is not logical to say that it's because you can't add housing or parking when you're saying you can put three family homes on 3K lots with parking. there should be a minimum two family allowed on every residential lot in the city, and the ADU, as you said, does not count towards that, especially since some of those lots limited to one or two units are within the transit circles, while Glenwood may one day get a bus that will take us to the areas with transit and remain less dense than us while also enjoying that transit. With the exception of the one ring of UR1 near Tufts, we find ourselves more or equally dense to those with easy transit access. In addition to the 140 lot Salem Street corridor that just passed, Glenwood has a very predatory flipper in our neighborhood who is making so much money in our neighborhood alone that he opened a storefront on Salem Street. so he doesn't have to travel far to go to work, along with owning four other Salem Street parcels where he can now build six floors on his slightly over 3,000 square foot lots. So we will see lots of change. It will not take decades for our area to be transformed. This is a guarantee. So we hope that perhaps the neighborhoods where this will happen much more slowly can at least take some of the weight. Please acknowledge that we are a neighborhood, that we do have character, that we do live here, that we like to breathe. We like oxygen. We like trees. So maybe you could have considered that. But I realize this is already passed the Community Development Board, and after the treatment that Salem Street Corridor got, with the suggestions being wiped away with a single motion by Matt Leming, my neighborhood is not holding out much hope. We are very disheartened that we are being dismissed in favor of pushing your density in our area and not others. Thank you.
[Cheryl Rodriguez]: I'm sorry, but I'm sorry. They said this is a conversation. So I'm just gonna finish it.
[Cheryl Rodriguez]: Oh, I'm sorry. I thought this was community input.
[Cheryl Rodriguez]: I'm not yelling at you. I'm speaking into a microphone. Is it interrupt me time because I let you have your piece I'd like to have my piece increasing density in the nr one zone because it's still only allowing the same amount of housing. The lots are not going to be parsed, it will be the exact same amount of housing, because it's 5000 square foot minimum. So if they have a 7000 square foot lot they can still only put a single family home in the nr three and maybe this is confusing for you. in the nr3 you only need a 3 000 square foot lot to put three families currently you need more than that to put a single and even more than that to put a two so we're going down to three we have lots of 3 000 square foot lots there will be lots of density added to our area which you saw in the map that showed the current conditions because nelson has been buying lots and doubling the housing on them and selling them for a million plus each so please can I finish please be honest when you speak if you can be honest that would be great because I can go toe to toe with you on the zoning because I've read it. I've read it.
[Cheryl Rodriguez]: So you can't counter anything that I've said.
[Cheryl Rodriguez]: No, you just said there'll be single family homes on 5,000 square foot lots.
[Cheryl Rodriguez]: Hi, Cheryl Rodriguez, 281 Park Street. I'm concerned that this zoning is not allowing much room for growth. And in many spaces, it's not much different from the current zoning or current on the ground with the exception of a lot from the RFP. I appreciate that the shadow studies and feasibility studies are being done now before the zoning is written and passed to the community development board after how the studies were not a factor in the final vote for Salem Street because they were started too late to be a part of the conversation of writing the zoning. This consideration for the neighbors is nothing more than what Salem Street asked for and did not receive. It is disappointing to see large portions of the square being less or equal to Salem Street with future zoning without us having the support of a major square. I recommend that the community meeting happen for this project before the zoning is passed to the Community Development Board. And the idea of closing the ramp, which we know when they did it temporarily, will force more traffic to the Salem Street area, which I hope would be studied before that is even suggested as it will too have very strong impact on the Salem Street area. Thank you.
[Cheryl Rodriguez]: Hi, Cheryl Rodriguez, 21 Park Street. I'm just looking at this map, and everyone's saying the lots in West Medford are super small. They look substantially larger than Haines Square. I took a sampling from the accessibility database, and I'm not sure why it stopped so abruptly at the the last commercial buildings as they can go all the way down to the rotary if you want corridors. It just seems like you may be treating some neighborhoods different than other neighborhoods. If a busy corner of Park and Salem that can't stand any more traffic is supposed to sustain six story buildings, then I think West Metro can handle it with their commuter rail stop and buses. Thank you.
[Cheryl Rodriguez]: All right, thank you, Jean. And it's unjust and reprehensible.
[Cheryl Rodriguez]: Oh, okay, great. Thank you.
[Cheryl Rodriguez]: Cheryl Rodriguez, 281 Park Street. So I have here the petition from change.org with over 1100 signatures opposed to the Salem Street corridor zoning. We're not asking for no zoning changes. We're asking for the studies to be conducted and the zoning to be written based on that data. This isn't about opinions. It isn't about how many people raise their hands and say, yay. This isn't just about creating housing. There is a large scale increase in zoning concentrated into an area that is already dense and lacking in transit access. Our quality of life, existing conditions and results of the necessary studies are what should largely shape this zoning. The only argument for packing it all in here is that it's already dense. So who cares? If the density was spread more equitably, then our less dense neighbors with larger lots would be able to relieve us of some of the burden to focus so much density here. Residents have been saying that reducing lot size from 10k to 3k makes the planned zoning impossible and at the March 5th CDB meeting Emily Ennis from Innes Associates admitted that there are several infeasibilities in the current zoning proposal which are not resolved before passing it back to you. So one of the reasons she gave for the failure was the small lots that made it impossible to add parking and hope to change the parking minimums after the zoning has passed. Those small lots though also make the buildings too small to require affordable units. So there's no affordable housing coming here. Parking is already difficult here, and a second reduction in the parking minimums will have a profound impact on our quality of life. That 0.8 spaces isn't sounding so far-fetched now, is it? The studies required and outlined in the comprehensive plan, which I urge you to go back and conduct, and not pass impossible zoning, only to later take out parking minimums to try to squeeze it in. These studies should include projected development volume, traffic analysis, shadow studies, environmental impact estimates, and the other studies deemed appropriate to the area. The full picture should be clear before a neighborhood is targeted, or as you like to say, up-zoned moderately. Despite the call for more density near transit, you will note that we aren't near transit. The most frequent bus that runs down Salem Street is the out-of-service bus on the way to the bus yard. Please recognize that we are a neighborhood. We deserve to have quality of life and so do the people you claim to want to build housing for.
[Cheryl Rodriguez]: No one dreams of living in an apartment building with little to no green space because 80% lot coverage is allowed and the green score can be waved away with 12 foot sidewalks that'll exacerbate the heat islands that are already here and to have to play where, where can I park every time they drive their car. Impacts are important to identify and that work, among others, has not been done here. Conduct the studies and use them to inform the zoning. Don't pass impossible zoning. Oh, and give the Glenwood neighborhood a call when you decide to zone transit proximate High Street at the same level that we're getting. But alas, that's not in your zoning plan. One wonders why. Thank you.
[Cheryl Rodriguez]: Hi, I'm Cheryl Rodriguez, 281 Park Street, so I live on the corridor. These changes that we're seeing tonight showed that there was a complete lack of planning and studies involved in writing this zoning in the first place. If residents had it alerted and educated themselves, then this would have passed easily with the initial zoning voted to you. The neighbors would have only found out when the first projects went up. We have still done none of the studies called for in the comprehensive plan that Ennis helped write. These zoning changes are reactive rather than informed. Zoning should not based on opinion and what people tell you that they like, especially from those who will not be impacted as the majority of those speaking in favor are not from this area. We have no real definition for high frequency transit that allows 0.8 parking spaces and the parking minimums are set to be reduced in May and was actually mentioned by Emily as a factor that is limiting this density. So the neighborhood will be severely impacted if parking levels are lowered. along with this zoning and coupled with the neighborhood zoning that places us in the densest neighborhood zone in the city of three units on 3K lots will have a significant and immense impact on our area. The 70% reduction in lot size to 3K that somehow isn't being mentioned, the doubling of the lot coverage to 80% will create the same planned mass and just two stories lower with the changes proposed suggested tonight. in the area zone blue. The step back is eliminated despite the fact that the new max height will be 54 feet up from 35 feet which is an increase of 63 percent. Methadone clinics can still come to the neighborhood medical which only limits number of employees and the size of the center. So Residents have been pointing out that the marijuana uses are in the zoning since December. So we really don't want to keep hearing the excuse that they're poor zoning and lack of type proofreading is a typo. If by version three, you haven't changed it, then you meant to be there. The incentives haven't changed. The lots are really small. All the waivers are in there. The zoning should go back to the beginning and be studied, have community input, and then be written and adjusted. This type of rewrite this late in the process is alarming. I'm right at the end. Thank you. So this type of rewrite this late in the process is really alarming. And for Emily's comment, the research and testing lab is on page seven of the zoning that was presented for this evening. These are not typos. These are a lack of scrutiny and attention to detail. Thank you. Thank you, Cheryl.
[Cheryl Rodriguez]: Hi, I'm Cheryl Rodriguez, 281 Park Street, so I live on the corridor. These changes that we're seeing tonight showed that there was a complete lack of planning and studies involved in writing the zoning in the first place. If residents had it alerted and educated themselves, then this would have passed easily with the initial zoning voted to you. The neighbors would have only found out when the first projects went up. We have still done none of the studies called for in the comprehensive plan that Ennis helped write. These zoning changes are reactive rather than informed. Zoning should not based on opinion and what people tell you that they like, especially from those who will not be impacted as the majority of those speaking in favor are not from this area. We have no real definition for high frequency transit that allows 0.8 parking spaces and the parking minimums are set to be reduced in May and was actually mentioned by Emily as a factor that is limiting this density. So the neighborhood will be severely impacted if parking levels are lowered. along with this zoning and coupled with the neighborhood zoning that places us in the densest neighborhood zone in the city of three units on 3K lots will have a significant and immense impact on our area. The 70% reduction in lot size to 3K that somehow isn't being mentioned, the doubling of the lot coverage to 80% will create the same planned mass and just two stories lower with the changes proposed suggested tonight in the area zone blue. The step back is eliminated despite the fact that the new max height will be 54 feet up from 35 feet which is an increase of 63%. Methadone clinics can still come to the neighborhood medical which only limits number of employees and the size of the center. Residents have been pointing out that the marijuana uses are in the zoning since December. So we really don't want to keep hearing the excuse that they're poor zoning and lack of type proofreading is a typo. If by version three, you haven't changed it, then you meant to be there. The incentives haven't changed. The lots are really small. All the waivers are in there. The zoning should go back to the beginning and be studied, have community input, and then be written and adjusted. This type of rewrite this late in the process is alarming. I'm right at the end. Thank you. So this type of rewrite this late in the process is really alarming. And for Emily's comment, the research and testing lab is on page seven of the zoning that was presented for this evening. These are not typos. These are a lack of scrutiny and attention to detail. Thank you. Thank you, Cheryl.
[Cheryl Rodriguez]: Test one, two, test one, two.
[Cheryl Rodriguez]: Okay. Thank you.
[Cheryl Rodriguez]: Cheryl Rodriguez 281 Park Street. So I noticed that every meeting that we start out mentioning that the comprehensive plan people who participate in it wanted more density. The areas with the larger lots and more parking should be the ones being made more dense. Certainly that land and those streets can hold more than the dense areas. Those in the least dense areas had the most participation in the comprehensive plan. And no zone should disallow two families if your goal is more housing, especially since those singles sit on the largest lots. But instead, the neighborhoods struggling with current density are being increased dramatically, despite having no meaningful transit, despite being already dense and crowded. We have smaller lots than those being zoned for far less. We are already seeing the effects of a prolific flipper in this area with the mega townhouses. The corridor zoning will also impact us here near Salem Street. The unstudied impacts of both of those zoning changes combined will be very harmful to us. We have a neighborhood character that we want to keep too. Outside of Salem Street, Glenwood is consistently mentioned as the best area to trick and treat in, and they get hundreds of kids per year. The neighbors walk their dogs, stop to talk, sit on porches together on a daily basis. They wave to each other and help each other shovel snow. Many sections of this area are a good deal single family. We also know that you will lower the parking minimums in May. So it seems wrong to suggest that parking minimums will be a measure that will slow the density that you are zoning for. And this does not compare to the Cambridge zoning, which has larger lot sizes required and doesn't have sacrificial neighborhoods to spare others. So anyone who compares this to the Cambridge zoning has likely read nor understood neither. Thank you.
[Cheryl Rodriguez]: OK.
[Cheryl Rodriguez]: Hi, my name is Cheryl Rodriguez. I live at 21 Park street. I noticed at the beginning, you showed an item from the comp plan about allowing multifamily into different zoning districts. But the last two meetings I've watched you bend yourself into pretzels to protect West, despite the commuter rail and the buses and the Lawrence estates while pushing a heavier burden onto other denser areas, including Salem street, which is already facing six story buildings, which are out of character for our area. with a lot of waivers baked in to pull out the protections for the neighborhood, as well as allowing much higher on side streets than is reflected currently without having significant transit, just one bus. We are not within walking distance of the T or major bus hubs and some who were spare density and had the city council pushing to ensure their neighborhood character would not be disturbed. So you clearly know that you are disrupting our neighborhoods. Just some are less worthy of care. And reducing zoning barriers is also limited to denser areas with smaller lots and much of your proposal. Setting up tiers of neighborhoods. Why are we not limited to small infill housing? Because we have already done our part. This committee comes off very nimby for those deemed worthy of quality of life, but not one moment was used to consider our neighborhood. South of Sound Street is clusters of singles. NR3 is too much there. If the city overwhelmingly wants more density, as you claim, then catch up the other parts of the city with large lots and plenty of parking. A neighborhood that wasn't likely even a part of the writing of the comprehensive plan does not owe it to much less dense areas to continually lower our quality of life and increase heat islands with the highest density. You are treating us like we are just revenue and other areas are too special to share the burden of density. The consultants and the planning department decided on the quarters. No one who lives over here asked for quarters. We are doing more than our part to add housing and shouldn't have to shoulder burden that belongs to other parts of the city. Have you even studied the impact on a neighborhood facing the N3 zoning and the quarter zoning? We are continuously told density is good. So why do you feel the need to protect those with more space to the further degradation of our tight neighborhoods? This is our second turn and you seem to be coming back to us in May. What other neighborhoods will face this? Only the most dense? This goes against the comp plan and climate resiliency plan. So stop saying you are selecting winning and losing neighborhoods because of the comp plan. Those who participated in that process were mostly from areas being spared now. If you want it, give it to them. You claim it's a good thing, so why not give them a healthy share of this good? Thank you.
[Cheryl Rodriguez]: Hi, my name is Cheryl Rodriguez. I live at 281 Park Street, and I have a different impression of the meeting last night. As with all of the meetings that have been held about the Salem Street Corridor, they're very vague PowerPoint presentations that don't inform about the zoning in any way. What happened last night was that neighbors had educated neighbors, neighbors had notified other neighbors that a meeting was happening and neighbors came in with the knowledge of the zoning and their questions were about the zoning and they were asking the consultant these questions. I don't feel that you have done enough. If you do a public hearing and you're rezoning an entire neighborhood and you're in a room alone and every single person in that room is getting paid, then the neighborhood did not know. This was not done correctly. It should be gone back and gone over the right way with proper processes. And having a Q&A last night and basically not going to take that on board what the neighbors have told you is insincere. People were there and they were knowledgeable about the subject. And that is not the result of Innis. That is not the result of any of these public meetings. That is the result of them going into the zoning and learning it from each other and for themselves. And I think that needs to be acknowledged and it shouldn't have to happen that neighbors citywide have to teach each other the zoning in order to know what is coming to their neighborhood. These PowerPoints that just show blocks stacked on top of each other that say how high buildings are or show what the neighborhood looks like that we've already seen is not education on what is in your zoning proposal. Please consider that we live here. We will have to live with these ramifications. We will have to live with the streets being less safe, with the traffic being heavier. We are a neighborhood and we should matter too. Thank you.
[Cheryl Rodriguez]: Aye.
[Cheryl Rodriguez]: The vision for Salem Street seems to be to transform the area into a corridor that will be filled with dense, tall apartment buildings.
[Cheryl Rodriguez]: Anything about that? Unfortunately for us, even though the comprehensive plan calls for clear studies about traffic, parking, infrastructure, none of those studies have happened, and we're being informed by an urgency for developers who are waiting to pull permits and build on that corridor and want to build the most that they can.
[Cheryl Rodriguez]: Well, the incentive that the city is offering is that they're reducing the lot size to build an apartment building by 70%. So for what half of the land required for a single or two-family home will now be able to hold up to a six-story apartment building without the need for any variances, setbacks, and they're going to require or hope that the developer will allow them to build a 12-foot sidewalk using a piece of their land.
[Cheryl Rodriguez]: Unfortunately, the community has not been given the benefit of any community meetings. In fact, the meetings that the planning committee is having usually have the agenda item of update from Innes Associates. And the meetings themselves seem to be driven by the director of our planning department, Alicia Hunt, who is intent on making sure that the developers don't go ahead and build something that they may find too small.
[Cheryl Rodriguez]: They've decided 35 feet is not enough height for Salem Street and the surrounding side streets.
[Cheryl Rodriguez]: Well, in 2022, a developer did a traffic study there, and they found around 18,000 cars go down Salem Street a day, close to 2,000 on Park Street. And they're going to build 0.8 parking spaces per unit as an incentive to bring in developers without having conducted a parking or a traffic study in that area at all. They're going to leave it up to the individual buildings.
[Cheryl Rodriguez]: I mean, where are people going to park? Well, interestingly enough, if you bring up the graphic for the Salem Street neighborhood known that just focuses on the Salem and Park intersection, you'll see that right in that area, they are primed to add probably 350 plus apartments. So the Medford average is two cars per unit. and they're planning 0.8. So conservatively, we're talking about 350 new cars coming onto that small area with restricted parking already.
[Cheryl Rodriguez]: Well, the most frequent bus you'll see on Salem Street is the non-in-service because they're on their way back to the T-Garage. But we do have one bus that will be changing its route. And the MBTA has already informed the city that that bus will not run on time unless a bus lane is added. But physically, the street is not wide enough to hold a bus lane and two-way traffic.
[Cheryl Rodriguez]: Well, the MBTA is doing a consolidation plan, so they're trying to shift some of the bus routes. So now instead of the bus going from Malden Center to Sullivan Station, when the new change comes in, it'll go from Revere to Union Square, so it's going to pass by Tufts, which is going to harm a lot of people who currently work at Assembly Row and will no longer have access to that area from Salem Street.
[Cheryl Rodriguez]: Going away, the same thing that happened to the commuter bus. we're no longer going to have access to those transportation options, but we're going to have less parking too.
[Cheryl Rodriguez]: Well, they feel that it's a positive that they're giving us dense housing with limited parking to discourage people from owning vehicles. Unfortunately, the transportation options available for this area are so limited that I think people who now live there without cars are probably going to find themselves needing a car. And the incentives that they're asking for to increase height on a building, a fountain, a park bench, are not actually incentives for the community and are just an excuse to allow them to build higher buildings.
[Cheryl Rodriguez]: Well, currently, buildings are allowed to go up to 35 feet. And with this new zoning, the minimum will now be 40, can be 42 feet. We can go up to 54 feet or even as high as 78 feet without needing any kind of variances. This is all going to be site plan review. So they just go in and they say what they want and hopefully for them, they just get granted it without any community notification needed.
[Cheryl Rodriguez]: Unfortunately for two residents that live next to the vacant hole at 290 Salem Street, those single family homes. The only buffer that they require for those small homes is a 5-foot landscaped buffer and an 8-foot tall fence, and there are no further setbacks on the sides or the rear required for these buildings, which can now occupy 80 percent of the lot. From 40 to 50 percent, they're now allowed 80 percent. This is a huge change for people living in that area.
[Cheryl Rodriguez]: Well, they're calling these mixed-use districts, so they're wanting there to be first floor commercial. But when you read the zoning, you find that you don't actually have to provide any commercial. You can, by right, just build a straight-up apartment building with zero economic development. at all in the whole building.
[Cheryl Rodriguez]: And even to call it mixed use, if you put in a lobby that's just for the residents of the building, they're calling that mixed use.
[Cheryl Rodriguez]: Well, unfortunately, uh, the planning committee has decided that rezoning urgently for developers is more important than heat islands, so, which is why they're requiring 12-foot sidewalks and 80% lot coverage in an area that already suffers from heat islands. They're also not pausing to make any kind of affordability plan for this corridor because the need for any housing is more urgent than the need to take the time to plan to make sure we gain affordable housing on these already extremely small lots that will not naturally produce affordable housing.
[Cheryl Rodriguez]: Well, even just the name of this zoning, the Salem Street Corridor District, it takes away the fact that there are neighborhoods here. These are very dense neighborhoods. This is an environmental justice neighborhood with a large amount of people who are not citizens, their residents who may not speak English, a lot of lower income people live here, people who don't have time to scour the city website to look and see what is actually happening. And the bulk of this happened during the month of December, which is a very busy month for most people, and people are not listening to four-hour planning committee meetings to see if the street near their home is being mentioned and being changed in such a dramatic way because there's a fundamental belief that if they're going to do something this dramatic to my neighborhood, surely they will notify us. They'll let us know. They'll come out to the community. They'll meet with us. They'll take in our input and then inform the zoning. But unfortunately, that's not what happened. So none of that took place? No, the meetings happened with one to two people in the room and they just kept moving forward and saying that they had all the community input they needed in 2022 and they were working on the comprehensive plan.
[Cheryl Rodriguez]: Yes. Interestingly enough, the input from 2022 on Salem Street was, the traffic is terrible here. This street is a nightmare. Alicia Hunt herself said, even when I had children in the Roberts, I refused to drive on Salem Street because Salem Street is terrible. So I don't know where they got, you know, that'd be a great place to put a couple thousand apartments.
[Cheryl Rodriguez]: From a brief conversation I had with the fire department, they do not have the equipment nor the manpower to handle a corridor full of 42 to 78 foot skinny, no space between apartment buildings.
[Cheryl Rodriguez]: I did speak to a member of the fire department and they said they didn't know why they were not brought into this conversation.
[Cheryl Rodriguez]: I feel like I've definitely been thrust into the role of the town crier, like, look over here, this something big is happening and, and you're gonna miss it. And it feels like I'm coming against a city council that seems to be run by activists. They're using the mindset of we need housing now with without hesitation, without pause for study. And that's not what our government should be writing. Our government should be saying, we do in fact need housing, but we need to do studies and inform the housing that we build so that we don't overwhelm an area or create the wrong type of housing. Does Medford need this much more luxury housing? If every one of those buildings only has nine units in it, that will be a net of zero affordable units. Will that benefit a community where we have thousands of families that need an affordable unit and we're only creating luxury units?
[Cheryl Rodriguez]: Well, if you do research on these units, you'll find that about 25% of these units have one or more schoolchildren. This is not something that was presented by the city council. This is something that if you do research into the type of housing that's being built and the fact that there aren't homes for all of these families to live in, so they're living in apartments. which is not the same as has always been and the schools that they're planning to feed these children into are already very full. They're high five hundreds and they're only made for 600 children.
[Cheryl Rodriguez]: Unfortunately for us, this plan is on the urgent track and moving very quickly. There are two meetings. They've already advertised the final meeting when they plan to vote this through, so there's a meeting on February 5th, which is the continuation of the Community Development Board meeting, and that is being held on Zoom only. The final vote is set to be taken on February 11th at the City Council meeting at 7 o'clock at City Hall, and people need to speak up. They need to start emailing Councilors. They need to email the mayor. They need to email the Community Development Board. And they need to tell them to pause and appropriately study this zoning before they push it through. The consequences for the neighborhood if they don't could be significant.
[Cheryl Rodriguez]: And I can guarantee you there are permits ready to be submitted as soon as that zoning is live. We have an open pit at 290 Salem Street. In the Park Street graphic, there are five parcels that are owned by one developer. So that's six parcels that could be ready to go by spring.
[Cheryl Rodriguez]: There is a rush to add housing, but we're not doing it strategically. If we go back to the comprehensive plan, there are specific studies that are called for. There's guidelines and things that you're supposed to do to try to prevent displacement. This is an environmental justice neighborhood, and it's not the only neighborhood they're planning to go to. They're planning to go to Boston Ave. They're planning to go to Main Street, which are also environmental justice areas, and push more density on them. Why are only the environmental justice neighborhoods that are already very dense being targeted for such increased density while other neighborhoods are preserved at low density, untouched.
[Cheryl Rodriguez]: Absolutely. Boston Ave and Main Street have already been identified as corridors by the planning committee.
[Cheryl Rodriguez]: Wow. That's all I can say to that. Anyone that's been down Boston Ave knows it's a parking lot most of the time.
[Cheryl Rodriguez]: We know there's six members that are in favor, and they're ready to go. They want their housing on Sale Street, and they want to move on to the next street.
[Cheryl Rodriguez]: It's doing something. Unfortunately, what it's doing is rapidly gentrifying the area. It's going to price people out. People are not going to be able to live here. People are not going to be able to get to work because the bus is changing. People are going to need places to park. You're going to be touring the area looking for a parking space when you get home from work. It's going to be a mess. And this is not a it could happen, this is we have developers who are ready to build, according to Alicia Hunt, they are ready to pull permits, and if they don't urgently pass this zoning, then the buildings may be smaller than the planning committee and the planning department would like. So there's no regard for current residents. There's little regard for future residents as they're not planning any huge infrastructure or parking upgrades for them. There's just an assumption that people won't have children and won't have cars, which is not a realistic assumption to base zoning an entire area on. We need studies. We need them now, before this is passed.
[Cheryl Rodriguez]: Hi, I'm Cheryl Rodriguez. I live at 281 Park Street, which is the epicenter of the neighborhood node. Park Street currently gets about 2,000 cars per day, and Salem Street, according to the 2022 study, was at 18,000 a day. It's important to note that this presentation doesn't match the zoning that is uploaded, so you are voting on whether or not you are recommending the pot. That's not gone. It's gone through three versions and was not removed. The zoning is not informed by any studies. How we came to the point that we're reducing lot size by 70% to 3,000 square feet for a six-story building is extreme. The incentives are so easy to max out height. A bench, a fountain will get you to six feet and a heartbeat. And why is the narrowest, busiest section, Park and Salem, a node for intense zoning, which is their words. How are the desirable uses chosen? Dorms, which Rocco DiRico at Tufts says he doesn't want, and informed the city that he didn't want them, and just wants to build on his own land, but they're still offering dorms, or offering shelters, or offering hotels. I don't think you're getting away from the methadone dispensary with the way that we're wording things. The research and testing labs, the dog daycare has no ordinance written yet. And we don't want a poorly staffed methadone clinic opening because they're trying to squeeze in to some niche employee count. Why are the special permits for pot growing, processing, retails, and labs, whoever thought that was appropriate? And why are we allowing a five-foot buffer with an eight-foot fence to shield a single-family home from a six-story building plus mechanicals, which according to state law can go up to 150% of the original height? The comprehensive plan called for studies. It called for strategies to avoid displacement of the environmental justice neighborhoods. And that's all we're seeing here. The zoning should be informed by facts. The community should have been involved. And Alicia said the zoning was based on developers wants to build. There's at least one demo permit already on the table in the red zone and the hole in the ground will be back for his six stories. And he told your board before that the city said he could build more. Profits should not be more important than the people that live here. Thank you.
[Cheryl Rodriguez]: Hi, can you hear me?
[Cheryl Rodriguez]: Hi, my name is Cheryl Rodriguez and I live at 281 Park Street in Medford. I feel like this application is a for-profit entity. He's put a definite end date on this of 10 years, so he's planning to use this building for something else and he's looking to exploit a loophole here. The city councilor who just spoke said this was a homeless shelter, but the applicant says that it's a domestic violence shelter, and Emily Lazzaro met with the applicant. So that is part of the confusion for the area, is that it keeps changing and fluctuating depending on what they think that we want to hear. Just like you raised with Tufts, if you do pass this, which I do not believe you should, you should ask for a closed trash room. Because we don't want rats running around here either. We would like noise spillage and light spillage to be controlled. Six foot head to head clearances. needed in shelters that are newly opening, although they give exceptions for ones that are already open, there needs to be space. These are people and they should be treated humanely. To have this many families in a 12,000 square foot building with 363 square feet per family is outrageous. The dentist project that the AG mentioned is a 50,000 57,000 square foot building for only 72 families with 790 square feet per family. This is overly large and treating people like cattle rather than human beings. I would also ask you to put a cap on the height in case they decide that they'd like a couple extra floors later. because you gave them Dover protections. So please be mindful that this is a for profit entity. And while he is intending to have a lease for five years, and with an option to renew for an additional five, they're under no obligation to do that. And if funding suddenly disappears, this will be an empty building or a for profit building. So please consider carefully as carefully at least as you consider the Tufts project this evening. Thank you.
[Cheryl Rodriguez]: I'm here. Can you hear me? Yes. Thank you.
[Cheryl Rodriguez]: Do you speak, we're not hearing you.
[Cheryl Rodriguez]: Hi, I'm Cheryl Rodriguez, 281 Park Street, so I'm pretty close to this location. I was on the last meeting and this plan is the same. This is still a shelter. It's not an educational institute. They were supposed to come back with a proposal that right sizes this project and does not attempt to exploit the area by trying to squeeze a square peg into a round hole. This project does not qualify for the Dover Amendment. This building formerly housed less than 10 nuns. It is not large enough to house 34 or 37 families. It is also insulting that you're assuming that grown women need quote classes on how to use the internet. This is very insulting to victims of domestic violence to speak of them in such an infantized way. In one case, you say they aren't homeless and they have housing, but your quote, educational track teaches them how to get housing and how to run a household. These are things they would already know. Your quote, education component is just an attempt to circumvent zoning. Nothing more. You do not qualify. Do not take advantage of us. This sounds like since you have spoken to the state attorney general, that you are working with the governor and her desire to remove homeless people from costly motels and hotels. But we ask you not to take advantage of us and overfill this very small area. Thank you.
[Cheryl Rodriguez]: Hi, Cheryl Rodriguez, 281 Park Street. I reviewed the zoning, pardon my blindness. And what stuck out to me was, I couldn't find the answer to this question, which is, what commercial to residential ratio is required on this corridor, not only for it to be self-sufficient from a taxation standpoint, but to also provide a net benefit to the city finances? As we all know, heavy residential is detrimental to municipal finances without guardrails in place. There seem to be no guardrails. So if you add hundreds of units of housing here with very small first floor commercial, a little coffee shop or something, we're going to find ourself in a bad financial situation because we're not going to be able to afford this density. I'm wondering why that was not considered since we paid an outside consultant. Thank you.
[Cheryl Rodriguez]: Are you ready?
[Cheryl Rodriguez]: Hi, Cheryl Rodriguez, 281 Park Street. I'm pretty much a direct abutter to this. There were a lot of neighbors that were here and left. This meeting started yesterday, five hours and 46 minutes ago, and they couldn't stay any longer. I really don't think this should be voted to go forward today without their input. Because much like you, the last resolution where you say Tufts is bullying the city, many residents in that neighborhood feel that this committee, the planning committee, is bullying us. This zoning is a 70% reduction in the lot size needed to build an apartment building on Salem Street and the side streets. Somerville is the densest city in our nation with a population density of 19,656.8 people per square mile. That translates to 30.7 people per acre. A side street zoning off of Salem Street that was proposed by your committee will have 87 families per acre. That's the side street. Even a family of two would make the minimum you are proposing six times the density that exists in Somerville, the nation's densest city. The Salem Street zoning of six floors on a 3,000 square foot lot would be 174 families per acre. if we guess at 12 units per building, and 12 times what Somerville has. The MBCA Communities Act that many cities are suing to avoid complying with is only 15 units per acre. The minimum zoning on side streets is six times that much. and about 12 times in the six-story zoning. All these buildings are proposed on lots too small for a single family home to be built on. Don't laugh as you live in West Medford with 6,000 square feet to build a single, and my neighborhood is going to have dozens of units. Please direct her not to make faces at me.
[Cheryl Rodriguez]: The lots are so small that most of these lots will add zero affordable units. 10% of six units is zero. Zero units. It's not a full unit. These will all be luxury priced units. The zoning also allows by special permit pot shops. With all this dense residential housing, you have allowed pot shops on this street. Car ownership in Massachusetts is at 87.9%. In Medford specifically, the average car ownership is two cars per household. We are not near rapid transit. We only have one low-frequency bus that takes you to the T. They will own cars. Reducing or removing parking will lead to hundreds of cars on the street looking for parking. These lots are too small for large amounts of parking. 23.6% of households have school age children. We can't support that amount of children added to our schools. This neighborhood can't handle all the density. This is gross negligence and shows a complete lack of care for quality of life for current and future residents in this area. And a lack of understanding of the fact that residential is a negative return for a municipality And if this goes through, we cannot financially support the density you are proposing.
[Cheryl Rodriguez]: One more sentence, please. Sure.
[Cheryl Rodriguez]: There is no commercial percentage requirements to help make this zoning self-sufficient and is far too dense. Please don't push this forward without the community having a chance to survive. Thank you.
[Cheryl Rodriguez]: Cheryl Rodriguez, 281 Park Street. I just want to say that it's disgusting that you just passed that. You should be considering the neighborhood. You don't care about the neighborhood. You don't care about what your density is going to bring. You think it's funny. You're giggling at people that stay here till one in the morning, and it's not nice. It's disgusting. You're going to destroy the neighborhood, and you don't even care because you don't live there.
[Cheryl Rodriguez]: Well, just for clarity, are we going to allow pot shops on Salem Street since it's now a corridor?
[Cheryl Rodriguez]: I'd love confirmation.
[Cheryl Rodriguez]: Cheryl Rodriguez, 281 Park Street, ground zero for this outrageous proposal. I know everyone was looking for a simplification. Simplification is 3,000 square foot lot would allow a minimum of six units of housing, which is an attack on my neighborhood. Currently, you need 5,000 square feet to build a single, and this would be The equivalent of 12 for where you could normally build a single and an area with severely restricted parking and a very narrow, very busy street. If you've asked anyone in any of these neighborhoods, and this is not limited to Salem Street, this is going fingering down all the side streets in that area. all this dense housing, not one single person living in that area, and there's someone here who doesn't live in that area, and we'll tell you it's great, has said we'd love more traffic. We'd love six units of housing on a three foot square lot, and oh, please don't make them build parking because we have so much extra parking. We don't have any parking. Salem Street is not a bustling commercial corridor. It's a mix of convenience stores, smoke shops, pizza places, and lots of already dense housing. It's an always busy cut through street made more narrow recently despite the high volume of trucks and out of service buses that pass through all day. The parking is so scarce that the traffic department didn't remove one single spot when adding in their dangerous bike lane that cars and trucks drive through all day as the lane on the other side is too small to accommodate large vehicles safely. Many side streets, including Park Street, Parris Street, Court Street, have areas where there is no parking allowed on the street. The streets are too narrow. You can't fit cars there. The lots are small, and these joining changes would destroy the area and add so many cars with nowhere to park them and so many people. These tall buildings with little to no parking will destroy the quality of life for the area between shadow and lack of parking and increases to already heavy traffic. A single bus comes down this road once or twice an hour at the busy times. Perhaps you're unfamiliar with Salem Street, but if you go out the parking lot, take a right, go to the second exit around the Rotary, you'll see us. We're there. We're paying taxes. We're a very dense and busy area. What you won't see there is a bustling commercial corridor. Our quality of life can't constantly be on the table in order to only increase density in the areas that are already too dense, the areas that you're dismissing. If you need density, perhaps it's time to look west. Thank you.
[Cheryl Rodriguez]: Hello. Cheryl Rodriguez, 281 Park Street. Can you hear me? Yes, we can hear you. Okay, so. I noticed that the students really weren't considered in this entire presentation, how this is affecting them. It seemed to be more of a logistic thing, but. Right now, there's no bathrooms open in the building and we're talking about hiring a staff member. And only being able to open 1 bathroom. Currently, if all the bathrooms on the schedule are open, that's one stall per 100 students. And the students are not all aware of what bathrooms are open, because the office staff isn't even aware of all the office's bathrooms open, because I have called multiple times and asked them what bathrooms are open, and they've told me it's at the discretion of the principal. And I noticed that it was said that the main foyer key bathroom was available to be used. And when I was in the school last week, the security monitor told me that that key had been taken away from him. The student had come and asked for the key, and he said he didn't have the key. So currently, without any bathrooms open in the B building, students are looking at a two to three minute walk from the B building if they have to go to the cafeteria. And if it's lunchtime, they're probably gonna be gone for 20 to 30 minutes after they wait in line because the only bathrooms open at lunch, which is also period four, are at the cafeteria. And just last week, my student went and tried to use the bathroom and there were at least six students in each stall vaping. And they went into the guidance office and asked for the key and were asked why they couldn't use the regular bathroom. And when they told them that was the first they had heard that there were at least a dozen students in the girls bathroom who were vaping because there was no detector going off. So currently what we have is students are struggling to find open bathrooms. When they do find them, they're full of people vaping. And also the bathrooms are clearly not being monitored now. So I don't know why we would need an entire staff person to watch B3 bathroom when the bathrooms that are open now. are clearly not being monitored and students are not able to use them fully. Using the bathroom is a human right and we need to consider that these students are people and they should be treated humanely. This bathroom situation is going on for far too long and I didn't hear any real resolution in that presentation nor acknowledgement of the difficulties that our students are facing in real time. Thank you.
[Cheryl Rodriguez]: Thank you.
[Cheryl Rodriguez]: Hi, I'm Cheryl Rodriguez. I live on 281 Park Street, the neighborhood that Alicia Hunt said that these people can just park in, which they can't because it's very busy over here. We can't support you. And I think the neighbors have raised a lot of really good points. And it's kind of sad that a city council logged on to dismiss all those points. But this company is very new. And we don't know that they can succeed in this project. If it's too hard to park there, they'll probably just drop the teaching component and just keep the shelter. in place. So this is a real stretch of Dover to say resume help or helping them fill out housing forms would make it an educational facility because that's not true. If you build the shelter, the sidewalk in front of the building, your shelter bus is not going to be able to turn around. It's a very narrow area. So if the parking lot is in use, They're not going to be able to turn around. So I don't think they've done the math on that properly. I'm also wondering about the students that are going to be moving in here. Will they be going to Medford schools? Is this a migrant shelter? Will they all need ELL services? As I'm sure everyone on the meeting knows, yesterday we passed two overrides because our schools are overburdened. and we added 103 ELL students in March of 2024 that we couldn't support. So if this is that, then we're going to be in trouble again. I just want to have some clarity. And if they don't have answers to those questions, then I urge the board to not move forward because this plan isn't fleshed out and they're not ready to go. Thank you.
[Cheryl Rodriguez]: They're not ready to go.
[Cheryl Rodriguez]: I'm a little taller than the one before me. Cheryl Rodriguez, Park Street. I just wanted a little info before my question. Medford's in the top third per people spend for the state. If you factor in the residential exemption, Medford is on the same level as Somerville and Malden for taxation. In 2022-23 school year, in March 1st of 2024, 103 ELL students were added, bringing our percentage of ELL students up from a stable 10% to 15%. These students are very costly to educate, probably contribute to the issues that you're speaking of. The state should be stepping in to help us. That is an enormous increase of students that are very expensive to educate. Two admins were added when the emergency free cash was added to our school budget. And the more money that we add to our school budget, the less state aid we'll get and our bill for the charter school will also increase. So my question is, if we can't pay for basics, why would we extend the school day and increase wages solely based on the extension of the school day, which is how question eight is written. When we can't pay raise the cover rate, because when the next contract comes up. we'll have to do the raises based on these inflated salaries that we can't afford. I got an answer from a school committee member today, and the answer was ultimately, the school committee will decide how this money is spent. So there's no guarantee that what's in the questions is actually even going to happen. Another one told me that the money that we will gain in the school department will be used to have conversations, and we can discuss wish list items. We're way over is the question about the question is, if we can't pay for basics. Why would we extend the school day and increase wages to reflect a longer working period when we can't pay the raises at current levels? This is, of course, contingent on if we're actually planning to follow the words and the questions.
[Cheryl Rodriguez]: I'd just like to follow up, if she's done, about the question on the difference in the students and the cost per student per year.
[Cheryl Rodriguez]: Councilor Callahan mentioned that the students' differences are calculated based on different amounts. But when I looked at the data, Medford appeared in the top third for the entire state. The schools that were below it were approximately $6,000 to $8,000 less per student. Even if we factored in the tech spend of $500,000 that the councilor mentioned, that only averages out to about $1,000 per student. So I haven't seen any evidence that Medford is spending significantly less than other schools, that we're not spending enough. I know no one answered about the whole increase in the ELL students, but these are factors that are actually impacting our budget. And if the council, we're not going to catch up. There's another 15 ELL students waiting to join those schools. And if we don't get more money from the state, this override is going to be nothing. It's good.
[Cheryl Rodriguez]: No, I literally said they are very expensive.
[Cheryl Rodriguez]: The state should be helping pay for those students.
[Cheryl Rodriguez]: That's not what we do.
[Cheryl Rodriguez]: But council shouldn't be attacking residents.
[Cheryl Rodriguez]: So I hope that this council will advocate for more state money.
[Cheryl Rodriguez]: I was told it was to extend the day.
[Cheryl Rodriguez]: Well, community is very convenient.
[Cheryl Rodriguez]: Charles Rodriguez, 281 Park Street. I just wanted to mention the withdrawal letter from Habit. I mentioned adversity as the reason for the withdrawal, which makes an ordinance for methadone even more important than ever. Under our current zoning, this can open with minimal notification and no wide community notice anywhere with a simple permit for a medical facility. An opioid dispensary can just open with virtually no one knowing until it's too late. Only 10 people were notified, that a medical facility was gonna open at 360 Salem Street, and it's actually a methadone dispensary. While they've pulled the application, they can submit it and be on the agenda for the July meeting. So this isn't over, we need an ordinance. Medford needs a specific use on the use table for this methadone dispensary. The obvious limitations already exist in our pot ordinance, only in commercial two or industrial one zone, nowhere else. If we won't allow pot in our neighborhoods, then why would we allow opioid dispensaries? You must move to change the zoning now. Otherwise, a for-profit company will look for the cheapest real estate, even in the middle of a residential area where it doesn't belong, and just seek to open with minimal notice as a medical facility. They need not provide any medical attention or treatment, merely a pill dispensed from a for-profit vendor whose purpose is to file as many claims for as many doses as they can to make a larger profit without regard for the neighborhood. Habit opened in Springfield on a street with two treatment centers in existence with no issues. Suddenly there was open drug use, prostitution, drug dealers, and other crime that was described as an open air drug market. The police chief increased patrols in the area and drove crime into the neighboring streets. which here would all be residential. Efforts by the city to reach Habit were ignored, and then the press moved on and left the neighbors to deal with the pain. Habit has an opioid dispensary at Mass and Cass, and it too is an open air drug market. The Globe and the Herald recently reported that the police attempting to stop the open drug use found that it just moved over a few blocks. and then moved back when they tried to disperse them from the area. What impact will this have on any recovering addicts who live in our neighborhood and now have to be exposed to open drug use where they live? And what impact on others living in the area or the dancing school or the nearby restaurant or the elementary school that has nearly 600 children? The neighborhood has been fighting to be heard and is the only reason that we even know this project was on the agenda. 10 people were notified. Multiple people have printed and delivered flyers, they have picketed, they have collected signatures. Under the current application, as only a medical facility, the city is not required to provide a community meeting as they would with a pot dispensary. This business that will harm entire neighborhoods and the current zoning allows them to only notify 10 people? This is a mistake. This is missing zoning. This should only be allowed in commercial 2 and industrial 1, just as a pot dispensary is limited. A community meeting should also have been required. Regular oversight should occur in order to keep that permit. It should not be an easy process as it could potentially destroy a neighborhood. No neighborhood should have to roll the dice and hope HABIT won't operate as they normally do to the extreme detriment of those around them. We need to be aware that this application will return. They have already said they're coming to Medford. Thank you.
[Cheryl Rodriguez]: Shower Rodriguez, 21 Park Street. I would be approximately 0.2 miles away from the proposed site of 360 Sound Street, but not as close as some people who are about five feet away from this site. So it's pretty easy to not talk about the negative impacts of this dispensary when it's not in your neighborhood. When you don't have to be afraid that your children are walking down the street or waiting for the school bus or across the street at the dance studio. When desperate drug addicted people aren't concentrated in your backyard. It's very easy when you're willing to sacrifice a neighborhood so that you can look like a good person. No neighborhood needs to be the draw for these people. It's unfortunate. We want them to have treatment, but we are wishing for them to be placed in the right location, not supporting an operator who has a negative history of operating similar facilities in other cities. A quick Google search will pull this operator up and find out that there are problems in the areas where he operates. So the petitioner admits that he is going to do harm to the neighborhood. He just claims that the harm is worth the sacrifice. And this neighborhood is saying, we don't have to sacrifice the neighborhood. We can zone them similarly to pot dispensaries. They can be in commercial two and industrial one. If we don't allow a pot dispensary at this location, an opioid dispensary should be treated no differently and should also be zoned in the proper location. Thank you.
[Cheryl Rodriguez]: Hello. Can you hear me? Yes, we can hear you. I'm Cheryl Rodriguez. I live at 281 Park Street. So I'm very close to this project. I was on the community meeting that they had and every neighbor that was on that meeting said that this was not enough parking for this area. This is a highly restricted area. Park Street has restrictions in parking. Parris Street has restrictions on parking. Tainter Street is permit parking, and one spot per unit is unprecedented. We just lowered our parking minimums to one and a half per unit, and this is one. They should take the top off of it. And we lived with the temporary fence for about two years now, and we were very grateful when they took down the, The tarps that they had covering it because the corner was very dangerous. You couldn't see coming around the corner. So I'm concerned that this building is going to replace those tarps and we're not going to be able to see or that jungle that they were showing in their pictures on the corner. is going to replace and make this a very blind corner coming down from Salem Street turning to park. There's no parking at that corner at all so I'm also concerned about coming around that corner and there being a trash truck just in the middle of the street with a dumpster being pulled out to the curb and traffic's not going to be able to flow. Barely two cars can fit around that corner so if someone stopped at the light sometimes you can't make that corner because there's no double yellow there as they had in their paperwork. There's not a yellow line there. Also, it's not a social good to add a convenience store there. There's another convenience store about 50 feet from there. After the house, the next building is a convenience store. There's also a convenience store at the corner of Salem and Fulton. There's also a convenience store at the corner of Salem and Cherry. There's also three convenience stores in Haynes Square. So we really, really don't need another highly expensive food option that's not a social good for us. This project should be, if they can't add parking, they should reduce units. This is a very dense area. We have a lot of students in this area that have a lot of cars. It's a lot of two family homes that have many, many cars and we can't absorb their cars. Are they willing to be deed restricted that if we have to go permit parking so we can park on our own street? that they won't get any permits because they're saying that they're not gonna need cars, even though this is a very low T accessible area. That's my comment. Thank you.
[Cheryl Rodriguez]: I'm Cheryl Rodriguez, 281 Park Street. I just want to clarify that the goal of the demo delay is not necessarily to stop demolition, so it's not failing. The length was increased to 18 months because we had a particular developer in the city who was refusing to engage with the historic mission because the time was short enough that it was profitable enough for him to just ignore them and wait it out. The 18-month period is rarely, if ever, used to its entirety, but it is an encouragement for the to be redirected to rezoning. waiting to be further blighted to increase their odds of gaining variances in the future. Perhaps you could focus on having some fees to prevent these types of developers from leaving these parcels intentionally empty to increase their profit margins in the future. This could immediately add money to the city of Medford coppers to be used in the way that Mr. Knight would like to have them. The sale for flippers is misguided. It's being quickly used to price out residents. These homes that are being purchased are not all in knock-down condition. They are being purchased by flippers because the parcels the homes sit on are large enough for them to squeeze in an additional home on the property. So they're being purchased for spec rather than to be used by end residents. This is not about the home condition. Every flip increases the assessments in those neighborhoods, which are increasing the cost for all of those who live around them. I welcome you to also embrace looking at assessments across the city, because there are some neighborhoods that are being, seeing their assessment jump by leaps and bounds, but despite the fact that our homes are not increasing in value at these rates, but are being increased based on the comps from the flips, there are neighborhoods that are not seeing their assessments jump to this level, and those people seem to think they're paying not enough taxes, and I completely agree with them. So please call for an assessment review in the city so that we can to realize that not everyone's house is worth what the flip next door is saying it is.
[Cheryl Rodriguez]: you are correct. I'm happy to send you some, a few addresses that you can compare to mine and see that my assessment has jumped by a couple of hundred thousand dollars and Maryland's nowhere near that. So it's not being done evenly applied across the city, which is why I asked for an audit.
[Cheryl Rodriguez]: Hi, Cheryl Rodriguez, 281 Park Street. So, I'm listening to the demo delay seems to be a little bit misunderstood here. The delay is at most 18 months. Flipper that already spoke bought a house that was falling down. His delay would not last anywhere near 18 months. He would be released and allowed to demo and build. This is about bigger projects and projects that are slipping under the radar. And I have spoken to Paul Mochi about 277 Park Street, probably five, six times, because this is a Flipper in our community who knows where all the loopholes are. And I hear when I go to the building office that he's a nice guy and he's not a nice guy. He will get a permit for an interior non-structural demo so that he won't trigger any oversight. And then he'll tear off the siding. He'll sledgehammer the porches into the street. And if no one calls, he continues to work. So the person that lives next door or on the street has to keep calling every time he does something unsafe or outside his permit to get someone to come down and check on him. So maybe you need more inspectors, or maybe you need someone else to look at these plans before these projects are approved. He demoed a porch, which he wasn't allowed to demo. They called it an accident. He was supposed to restore the porch. Instead, he built a new room. Another violation of his plans, a violation of the historic commission rules, And the penalty was he was shut down for 24 hours. And I believe he got $1,000 fine. So they know what they can get away with. And they carry on. And what they're doing is they're taking moderate price housing, the house next door works to 1000 square foot apartments. The house costs $600,000 was livable had to working class families living in it. He is now flipping it into two 2,500 square foot homes that he'll sell for $800,000 to $900,000 each. So this is gentrification. This is not talking about end users. These are not residents buying homes and trying to change windows, porches, or decks. This is really a last ditch effort of people saying, help us. City Council, can you work on the zoning? Can you stop the gentrification? You're pushing people out, the people in this community that we say we care about, the low income, The minority demographic are being pushed out of our neighborhoods and we're not doing anything to stop it. Somerville stopped us from being able to buy and moderately priced to family and converted into condos because it was pushing out residents.
[Cheryl Rodriguez]: Absolutely, and a lot of the practices that we do in Medford are just reactionary because we refuse to act before it gets too late. And the Nelson Properties owns at least a dozen homes in this community and is replicating these activities across the community. There's also one on Court Street on a parcel that's probably two thirds the size of the house next door to me going up, but the new house is the same size. I'm really concerned that the lot coverage rules are not being adhered to. And this is something that you need to look at. But yes, Somerville did stop condoization. Articles are being written that say, come to Medford, buy the two families. They will not stop you from condoizing. You can easily gentrify and make lots of money. And that's why people are here. If we care about housing, we want end users and not just high wage end users, the man next door told me these would be quality people because these units would be very expensive. And I would say that that is disgusting. And that's not what we should want. Only people that make high wages are not the only high quality people. So help us. Please do something on zoning before it's too late. Thank you to the historic commission for trying.
[Cheryl Rodriguez]: Hi, this is Jess Farrell from Martin Street, Medford. I just wanted to voice my support for the banner and everybody has already made a lot of great reasons why so I won't take up any more time, but I just wanted to voice my support. Thank you.
[Cheryl Rodriguez]: Hi, Cheryl Rodriguez, 281 Park Street, Medford. I apologize for my absence last week, but I was diagnosed with the flu and I decided to keep it all away from you. So you're welcome. Yep, I went through the Tamiflu, I am not contagious. And I brought. hand sanitizer, so. I just wanted to come up and speak. I live next door to the notorious 277 Park Street. That home was purchased by a flipper, and work commenced on Memorial Day weekend, and I've learned a lot about zoning. I thought I knew a lot about zoning, but now I know even more. So you won't realize how many loopholes there are in our zoning laws until you have someone break ground on construction next door to you. On that Memorial Day weekend, a dumpster was delivered at 7 a.m. and the first sound we heard was a window being tossed out a hole on a second floor and then the entire contents, walls of that house, floors, everything flung from the second floor window. You can just imagine what a dust cloud that is to have that happen for two, three, four months every day because there are no procedures in Medford that require them to mitigate the dust. So once they pull the window out, they can just fling things willy-nilly out the window and cover your home in a cloud. So your heating and air conditioning filters will be clogged with the construction debris. If you have a swimming pool in the backyard, You won't be able to swim in it because you'll never be able to get it clean because there'll be constant debris coming into the pool. There are no requirements to notify you that they're going to be flinging debris out the window for months on end. So you cannot protect your property, you can't protect your vehicle. Nails will fly into your driveway, you'll get flat tires. And this goes on because this is entirely allowed in our zoning. There's no regulation requiring them to mitigate the items that are coming into your yard. So then one day they'll come with a big truck and they'll drop off an excavator because they're going to dig out a foundation behind the house and they'll back the excavator into your fence, knock down the fence, leave your yard entirely exposed, and there's no regulation to require them to fix that fence or put it up. So now your dog is running out into this hole in the ground. There's nearly 600 children going to school on your street and they're going, they can go into the hole because it's not required to be fenced off to the public. I know zoning isn't of much interest to Councilor Knight, so he stepped out. Something else that I found as I tried to go and see the plans for this project that are required to be available for the public to view is that I was told for three months that the plans were out being scanned. So there were no copies for me to view to find out what was going to be happening. Next door, they said all they knew was there was some kind of a renovation going on. When it started, they had a permit to do interior demo. I called the building department when two men with sledgehammers were slamming into the porches on the front of the house until the porches fell into the middle of the street. They had an interior non-structural demo permit. Someone came down around three o'clock, made them stop. By 7 a.m. the next morning, the stop work order was gone and work commenced. But there were no plans, so there's no way to find out what it is. You have 20 days to contest the plans, but there were no plans. I recently saw the plans. I saw the plans two weeks ago. It took that long to see the plans. Even after they said they were done being scanned, they were often unavailable because they were with an inspector. Then I wasn't allowed to see them unless an inspector was present. When I finally did see them, it was with the building commissioner, Paul Moki, and I pointed out that the two plans they had, the initial site plan and the current site plan, showed that there's a two-family house on the front of the property. The new site plan showed perhaps a difference of about 10 feet to scale and included a two-family home converted to a single, a two-car garage with two floors of housing above it, and another home in the back. So a 160-foot lot has a 105-foot, 34-foot, 9-inch building on it. And their paperwork says their lot coverage is 20%. If you look at the dimensional requirements on our zoning, you're not allowed to build without a variance if you exceed 35%. But mathematically, it's impossible that this home is only at 20% because 160 feet 105 feet of that is now house, and it's 30 to 35 feet wide with two driveways. They were able to add a second driveway without needing to get any approvals from the neighborhood, and they'll be removing two on-street parking spaces. So I was very concerned, and I spoke directly to Paul Moki and asked him why they were allowed to exceed lot coverage. I still haven't gotten updated information on the lot coverage. He went out last Friday before the President's Day weekend and ordered them to stop. He took two measurements. The measurement that they had from the back of their new property was 67 feet, 7 and 3 quarter inches. The actual measurement at the job site was 55 feet. He said, so that was a difference of over 12 and a half feet. The work stopped for a week and then it just started back up again. So some easy things that you can do to help us would be If someone's going to build a house that's two to three times the size of what's already on the property, maybe a site plan review. Someone else could have looked at that math and said, there's no way this is 20%. So this permit should not have been issued. They should have had to go to the ZBA. So that's something that's already in there. If you could add, you know, so I'm thinking of things you could do quickly to try to improve quality of life, fencing at work zones. If a person or an animal had fallen into that pit, that would be tragic and could easily be avoided. This pit was open for several months. It would also be nice to have a timeline. When we call and ask about the timeline, they tell us they can take as long as they want, that they can start work at 7 a.m. every single day. work for one to two hours, stop and not come back. And if you do complain about one of this gentleman's projects, he will assign someone to just hammer all day long. They never need to get another board. They never need to get more nails because their job is just to bang and make noise to punish you for reporting them. If we could have a requirement to maybe mitigate the dust or the debris, I do live there. It's not a construction zone for my family. We've been enduring this since May and this home is not near completion. It will probably go through this next summer. Projects of this length of time, it would be nice if maybe Christmas Eve or the day after Thanksgiving, they don't have to start at 7 a.m. There could be a limit to how many days they could disrupt the neighborhood in a week. If we're waiting for plans to be scanned, why can I not see the scan now? Where did they scan it to? So why can't I see it unless the physical plans are there? I've permanently lost sunlight on the side of my yard, and I've lost the privacy in my yard, and there was no site plan review for that. Even though the site plan shows that my yard is still private, the physical building is in my backyard, overlooks my pool, and I no longer have sunlight on that side of my house. I had no rights to stop that. I had no rights to view the plans because of the way that the ordinances are written. So I've had many conversations with the building inspectors and then they'd scream that and told me that this is a nice guy and he does projects all over the city. I've heard from other people all over the city that the projects that they have are exceeding 35% lot coverage there. So why is our building department issuing permits that are exceeding our zoning allowances and not making them go to the ZBA? It's one thing for them to go to the ZBA and be granted a variance, even if you disagree with it, you have the chance to be heard and say this project is larger than it's allowed to be. But it's another thing for the projects to just be approved in the building department because they're skipping the variance process. So the most important thing about this is we're not making these sacrifices for affordable units. These are not affordable housing units. This was a two family modest size home that housed two blue collar families. This house was gutted and an additional house was built right in and the flippers promised me that these will be very expensive units and the quality of the neighbors will be extremely high, meaning that they'll be unaffordable for most people. They're gonna drive up my valuation of my home, but not the actual value of my home. So when you get your zoning consultant, you may want to consider that they actually, in Texas, they had a bunch of flippers that were going in there. They have a show, the Joe and Chip Gaines. And what they did was they were increasing the values of the homes so much and pricing the families out of their homes that they created a separate tax rate for those homes. Because those homes were, you'd have a $900,000 house next to a house that was only worth $400,000. And to increase the property value assessment on that home next door without actual being value added to that home was pricing those people out. So they created a separate structure. So that could be possibly a tiered option that you could look into that would, if these homes are that much greater in value, that they would bear the burden. So I'm hoping that there's some way that someone can look into this because I'm hitting the wall. And I'm just a resident that happens to know a lot about zoning, but this is happening to a lot of people. And the frustration of hitting the wall and seeing that your entire lifestyle is being changed beside you because someone is just building a building that's blotting out the sun. This building is nearly as tall as the apartment buildings being built on Salem Street in a residential neighborhood next to my small single family home. And there was absolutely nothing I could do to stop it.
[Cheryl Rodriguez]: The response that I received from him was he called later that day, he called about 12.45 on the Friday of President's Day weekend and said, I've ordered them to stop working and they won't be working again until this is resolved. As I was on the phone with him, he could hear them hammering in the background, and he came out and had someone, Dennis, come out and issue a fine, but I haven't heard back since then.
[Cheryl Rodriguez]: They didn't do that for us.
[Cheryl Rodriguez]: And one other thing that I noticed is that they can close off your entire street and dig a trench in front of your driveway so that you can't leave your driveway, and there's no city requirement to notify you. So they did that for four days. Someone came out to go to work, there was a hole in front of their driveway, and they were screaming and hollering that they couldn't go to work. They had to get a police detail, that was required by law, but notifying us that we'd be unable to access our driveways for four days. Was not required. Also, what wasn't required is they left their equipment on the street in front of a gentleman with a wheelchair's home so that he couldn't get picked up and dropped off in front of his home. That was left there for the weekend as well. So these are just little tiny loopholes that you would think would be common sense. But if it saves them a dollar, they're going to avoid doing.
[Cheryl Rodriguez]: Now, that's not what I was told by the building commissioner's office, so they're either giving me incorrect information, they don't know the proper information, because I went directly to the building commissioner.
[Cheryl Rodriguez]: When I asked the building commissioner's office when it was going to stop, if I had to have my husband park on another street for the next couple of days, they said they weren't sure. I should probably go over and ask.
[Cheryl Rodriguez]: The fine was issued after they were told to stop work, they ended up having a fine issued because what they did was they knew it was a long holiday weekend, so they packed up and left and came back when they knew City Hall was closed.
[Cheryl Rodriguez]: And that's the second time they've had a stop work order and violated the stop work order.
[Cheryl Rodriguez]: Hi, I'm Cheryl Rodriguez, 281 Park Street. I just came to, I wanted to speak about the bus two at the middle schools. My daughter is a sixth grader at the McGlynn, and we've had a few issues with that bus. One of the issues is the bus is at the Andrews, so the McGlynn students walk over, and last Friday in the wind and the rain, by the time they walked over, the bus was full, and the kids had to sit three and four across. That seems to be a regular Friday occurrence. Right now, the bus is slightly full during the week because the cross-country team, which has 40 members right now, they're not riding the bus on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Thursdays, but I anticipate that that will become an issue at the end of the month when that season ends. A couple of times she's been denied access to the bus. One time she was diverted to a different bus and taken on a ride to Winthrop Street to Goldilocks Bagels, at which point she was on the phone with me telling me she didn't know where she was and I could hear about six or seven other children in the background screaming, don't leave us here, we don't know where we are, don't leave us here. They were returned to the school. I called, I didn't know at the time that it was not going to the McGlynn, it was going to the Andrews. I called the McGlynn and spoke to the secretary who was going to try to page Mr. Tucci, but by the time they got him, the children had been deposited at the Andrews and told that they were on their own and to walk home. At that point they walked across Riverside by themselves, across Salem Street by themselves to get home. There was a handful of kids, luckily one of them was an 8th grader, the rest of them were 6th graders who were shocked in the second week of school to find themselves walking home alone. So they've already moved one stop off of this bus to another bus because of overcrowding But it's continuing to be an issue that we've called Several times asked them to to track and monitor, but they don't ask the children to sign up which bus they're going on so It's kind of a guesstimate how many kids will be on the bus? But I think when winter comes it's going to be more of an issue a couple of kids said that they're sitting on other kids laps Because they're told they can't stand, but there's nowhere for them to sit So it's a real crowding issue.
[Cheryl Rodriguez]: It's bus number two. It goes on downtown Street I've reported it to the principal a few times and I was really upset when they the couple of times that they had to walk home So, okay, so I will definitely be able to follow up with the bus company tomorrow. Okay. Thank you. Thanks. I appreciate very much Thank you
[Cheryl Rodriguez]: Hi, I'm Cheryl Rodriguez. 281 Park Street. My family experienced the lottery this year. We're parents that were from the Roberts Elementary School. We found that the lottery was not evenly split for the Roberts Elementary School because we do have the Yale Welcome Program. Although they are members of our community, they are not members who actually had integrated with our students during their time at the Roberts. So when they split our students in half, What happened was 53 students went to the Andrews, and some were in the neighborhood of the low 20s of the students that they had been in class with daily for six years went to the McGlynn. The students that went to the McGlynn found themselves to be fairly socially isolated because the majority of their friends did go to the Andrews. Anyone who was present for the lottery when they pulled the Roberts' names saw several circles of friends, boys, girls, all the students in the circle would cheer except for one, the one student who chose the McGlynn and found that they were being separated from all of their children, all of their friends. So I'm hoping that when we think about the lottery this year, that we think about while it's great that some of the equity has changed, and I'm not saying that's bad, perhaps we could have offset each of the elementary schools by five children. And instead of having the offset at the Roberts be close to 30 children, in that case, my daughter would have had 15 more friends at the McGlynn. Those students that are also in the low 20s are also split between two sides. She had about two friends that she socialized with that were going to the McGlynn. And one week before school started, one of the friends called her excitedly and said, yes, I got transferred to the Andrews. She quickly went down to one friend. Her first week was really isolated. There's not a lot of opportunities to talk to children, and at lunch and recess, as she walked around the track, she said, a lot of the children are with the friends that they've had for years, which I had hoped for my child as I enrolled her in Medford Public Schools at the age of three, so that she would have long-lasting friendships. So I hope that socio-emotional will factor in this year in the lottery. I know this was a unique situation for the Roberts. And I think that it's vitally important to look at for next year. Thank you.
[Cheryl Rodriguez]: Hi, I'm Cheryl Rodriguez. I'm a member of the Medford Citywide Elementary PTO, which if anyone doesn't know, is a collaboration of the Brooks, the Columbus, the McGlynn, and the Roberts Elementary Schools. We're proud to present our next community event and fundraiser. It's our own piece of March Madness right here in Medford and will feature a variety of fun interactive extras with the Wizards, the Highland Wizards. It's a group that's similar to the Globe Charters. And we're lucky enough to have them come here and play against our own Medford All-Stars, which is a collaboration of teachers, staff, and administrators from all of our elementary schools. So it should be a lot of fun. They're really excited to play. It's next Wednesday, March 13th, at our newly renovated Medford High School basketball gyms. This is everyone's chance to come up and see how that floor turned out. Doors open at 6. And the game starts at 7 and tickets are available at theharlemwizards.com or by contacting any of our elementary school PTOs. And I just wanted to take a moment to thank the people that have helped us. The Hyatt in Medford has provided lodging at no cost for our Wizards team, which is an incredible donation. Bill Blumenreich presents the Chevalier Theatre is sponsoring our team shirts. Wegmans has given us some money to buy concessions. Laurie Crane from Caldwell Banker has donated 20 tickets that will be given away to students at each of the elementary schools. Boston Physical Therapy and Wellness is going to provide training and help everyone stretch and hopefully not get injured during the game, but they'll be there on hand. And McLaughlin Masonry has also helped us out. have a t-shirt. We wanted to welcome our new superintendent and make you an honorary team member. Of course, the honorary is optional.
[Cheryl Rodriguez]: I would, if I, I might have that list, let me check. So I hope you'll come out, that t-shirt gets you in and you can be part of the team. She can coach.
[Cheryl Rodriguez]: We actually have quite a lineup.
[Cheryl Rodriguez]: Okay, so let's see. I'll start with the Roberts Elementary. We have Andy O'Brien, who's our Vice Principal. Hannah O'Brien is a K-Aid. Makayla Kelly is our Grade 4 teacher. Jim Garrity, Grade 4. Mr. Cormio is Grade 5. Diane DeMaio is one of our Connection teachers. We also have Angela. I'm not sure, I don't have her last name. She's a Connections teacher as well. The Brooks Elementary has Suzanne Galussi, the principal, Amanda Butera, grade 5, Jen Conti, grade 5, Mitzi Galante, grade 3, Abby Herman, grade 4, Columbus had a little shake-up, but this is the latest list that I have, so. Kathy Kay, principal. Nancy Sherman-Hudson, assistant principal. Jean Duskin, secretary. Karen Roberto, the nurse. Josh Gleona, the gym teacher. Jason Jinkwater, the ELL teacher. And Christina Tomino, TLP teacher. And the McGlynn, last but not least. Jennifer O'Brien, K teachers. We have three O'Briens. Amazing, right? Lindsey bellow grade one teacher Rocco Grover Sylvester II grade four teacher who used to be at the Brooks and at them the Roberts will come out and see him Christine hunt grade four teacher and Anthony Petrellis grade five We're just elementary this year mayor Burke, maybe we'll expand next year.
[Cheryl Rodriguez]: And the tickets are 15. We also have higher T.O.s, 25 and 40. Those are going fast, actually. They're reserved on the court side. And they're available on the website or by contacting any of the elementary P.T.O.s.
[Cheryl Rodriguez]: What time was it?
[Cheryl Rodriguez]: Thank you. On a Friday.
[Cheryl Rodriguez]: Hi, my name is Katie, I'm 21 Carberry Street. Shaw Rodriguez, 21 Park Street.
[Cheryl Rodriguez]: What an excellent segue, Paulette, into my portion of our fundraising efforts. So the event that we're planning for the spring is something that I've been dreaming about since my daughter was in kindergarten. I'm a fifth grade parent, so unfortunately I'm aging out. So hopefully we'll be replicating this entire thing in middle school after we iron out the cakes. elementary level. So on March 13th we've reserved the brand new high school gym and we'll be welcoming the Harlem Wizards to play against the celebrity teachers and staff from all of our elementary schools. So we announced it at our Roberts PTO meeting and to uproarious applause from the teachers. They're pretty excited and they've already gathered a team and we'll be putting out some promo videos on the various PTO pages that teaches training and getting excited to play. The tickets will be $15 a piece. Each school will have five to seven representatives. We're trying to get hotel rooms. And we already have a trainer that will be there for all of the aches and pains. And that's Boston Physical Therapy and Wellness has donated their time. So we're very excited to see that move forward. So keep an eye out on all the PTO pages. We'll be spreading that information when tickets go on sale in January.
[Cheryl Rodriguez]: Their PTO is conducting their own raffle that evening. So they asked us not to come. But we are going to be at the football game on Friday. All the elementary schools will be selling on election day as well. And we have some other things lined up.
[Cheryl Rodriguez]: I'm Cheryl Rodriguez. I'm here to present the small grant application for the Hickey Park canopy project. I submitted this application through our PTO in cooperation with Brian Kearns, the head of the Medford DPW. I've been a resident about four houses away from this park for more than a decade. I walk there every day with my dog. I bring my daughter there to play and I look at this canopy and I say this is a This is an opportunity to be something. It's like a promise that wasn't quite fulfilled. And pretty much as soon as I moved in there, I started trying to find out a way to make this something. Why is there a canopy over a holy hard mound of dirt and nothing else? And so I found that this canopy was actually donated to the city. This structure is solid and will last us for decades to come. So what we really need to make this a community gathering space, this park is so well loved and used, we could put the canopy right on top of there, put a couple of picnic tables underneath, and we have a community gathering space. We have so many people using this park. We have the Roberts Elementary uses this. The PTO uses it for kindergarten playdates. The MFN is down there. There's at least two daycares that I see walking with the little tow lines down to this park almost daily. We had a pickleball league of seniors this summer that was there that had brought their own folding chairs to sit under the canopy, and they could have sat at a couple of picnic tables and chatted and had a light lunch. The baseball field, the softball field, the tennis court, almost every day there's people there, the basketball courts. This is a well-loved park, and what it's lacking is a place to gather in the shade and just be in your community. a small change that would make such a huge difference in this park and it would be amazing for us. I did check in with the city, Lauren DiLorenzo and community development, the mayor's office and Brian Kearns and the DPW. There are no current projects to on line to change this park. But Brian stressed that if there were suddenly to be some grand plan that he would, this is such a strong canopy structure, that this is something they would uninstall and reinstall either here or somewhere else because this It's just an amazing structure. It's very large. If we put two picnic tables under here, there would still be room for someone to lay out a blanket or for kids to run around. This is just such a huge area that I would love to see more people enjoy. It's kind of a small project, so I don't really know any other questions that you have. The DPW would be installing this. They would be purchasing the materials just through a catalog that we purchased. They would be installed. They would be loved and used by the community.
[Cheryl Rodriguez]: Yes, the DPW would be making that a better area.
[Cheryl Rodriguez]: I know they have to cement in the The tables, but there's not a plan to cement the whole area. But they do realize that they'll have to break that up.
[Cheryl Rodriguez]: There was no indications that they would uninstall it to do this work. Does the canopy need to be replaced? The canopy's got some significant holes. The amazing thing about it is if it's had some holes for 10 years and it's still retained this much. So this is a canvas that pretty much the warranty is about 10 years. But if it's kept well, the DPW thinks it'll last much longer. This one... Had holes in it a decade ago. So it's probably 15 or more years old. So it holds up pretty well It's a durable, you know heavy canvas
[Cheryl Rodriguez]: I know that this park underwent some updates to make it more ADA compliant. Actually, behind that area is where the handicap crosswalk is. They redid some of the pathways, extended them because you couldn't get from Park Street right into the park. You couldn't cross from Brogan to get to the other side for the park. It was harder to access the baseball field. So they did do some changes there already. There is right in front of this is pavement. So I imagine if they had if they needed to put a short jaunt, that could be something that they would achieve. They hadn't really thought that far just What can we put here to make this usable space? Because I wouldn't want to sit under there now. I've seen people put folding tables there and try to jockey them because it's not flat. But right now, it's pretty much unusable. Thank you.
[Cheryl Rodriguez]: OK, thank you. OK.
[Cheryl Rodriguez]: Cheryl Rodriguez, 281 Park Street. I actually have a handout to go with the materials that I'll be discussing. So I am a parent volunteer at the Roberts Elementary School. I'm not employed by the city of Medford. I submitted this grant application on behalf of the Roberts PTO. for benefit of the nearly 600 children that attend the Roberts Elementary School. We're home to the Autism Inclusion Program as well as the ELL Welcome Center. We are the largest elementary school in the city of Medford. So, Kirsten did begin a little bit on our timeline and I definitely went through a lot of processes to get to this estimate and attended a lot of meetings and spoke to several playground vendors. When I heard on the last two days that the bids had come in—this is very loud—double, triple, quadruple, I was very concerned about the predatory nature of this bidding process. And I called the Attorney General for assistance to find out why this was happening, what our alternatives were. Because my conversations with the several vendors that specialize in this playground equipment led me to wonder why we weren't using the Massachusetts Operational Service Division statewide contracts. I was continuously told by the city that the reason we were not using them was because we couldn't spend more than $50,000 to do so. But I was continuously told by the people who do this work that that was not the case. So today I deep dove into it and spoke to someone at the Attorney's General's Office whose information I'm willing to provide to the city so that you can verify. And they told me that in 2016, the Chapter 30B procurement laws were altered. And the alteration meant that it's not a $50,000 cap on materials. The material purchase is unlimited. Let me say that again. The material purchase is unlimited for this. The labor costs prior to 2016 were capped at $10,000. The labor costs for this project now are capped at $50,000. So I found that very interesting. I reached out to a vendor that the Medford Public Schools has used before, the same vendor that I used to create my application. If you turn to the last page of my handout, I have the itemized budget that was presented to the CPC. If you'll note the bottom line before the total, it says installation and rubber interlocking tiles, $87,540. This estimate was for the 5,876 square foot playground at the Roberts Elementary School with rubber interlocking tile with a six foot fall height. So I reached to that vendor and said, we have an urgent issue. Our city is being told that they have to spend triple or quadruple the price that you gave me in February. What happened? and he rushed me out an estimate. In his estimate, he included extra square footage. The square footage that he included was 6,096 square feet. He included the installation and the materials cost at $89,681. The copy machine broke. I don't have copies for everyone. I'm happy to email, and I do have one extra copy that can be passed around. As I told the CPC when I presented my original bid, the labor cost for this project will be no more than 25% of that total price. No more than 25% of that total price is approximately $22,000. $22,000 is $28,000 below the $50,000 labor threshold that would allow us to bypass the open bid process that has not attracted the proper people. So I have the information. We can use the FAC 104. This information is confirmed by the Attorney General's Office, the Operational Service Division, as well as DCAM, which stands for Division of Capital Asset Management and Maintenance. I spent more than an hour and a half on the phone today with Brian O'Donnell at the Attorney General's Office. This process ensures that the labor requirements are met, the fair wage is paid, everything that's required under Chapter 30B is protected here. I beg you, before you go and ask for more money from the CPC to verify this information, I'm told that we can accept this bid and move forward. We can get the full estimate and move forward. We don't have to ask for additional funds, we don't have to wait an additional month, and if there are more CPC funds for an additional hundred or so thousand dollars, I encourage you to do another playground. I encourage you to do something else for the school department. I discourage you from paying more than double the cost of this project to expedite it. Those children deserve this project and I want them to have this project, but I do not want it to come at the cost of one single child in this city. I tried to meet with people in this city to discuss this before this meeting because I do not enjoy coming down to City Hall and And having to say this, I would have preferred to have come here tonight and said, thank you for getting this project underway. Thank you for having this happen as quickly as possible. I just, someone please schedule a meeting with me and I will share more of this information. But please don't spend more money than we need to on this project.
[Cheryl Rodriguez]: When we initially discussed the bids and when I discussed with this vendor and before we applied with the CPC, he said that typically they prefer a landscaper or another company to do the removal because it's they don't want to send certified professional playground installation people to come out with a shovel and remove and they'll charge us much more for that. They said that they that depending on the specialist you get, they can charge you $30,000, $50,000 for the removal because they really don't want to do it. And one of the things that the CPC requested that I do was bring the bid down. So when I submitted the original price, it had with the specialist removing the product, the original product, and it was higher. So by going with a landscaper, it will be less expensive. And he said when he saw the first bid that the bid was unattractive to his company because it included the removal. He did not see the second one.
[Cheryl Rodriguez]: And again, he said he didn't see that bid. I did also speak to Fiona in the procurement office before the bid opened, the second bid. And I also spoke to Kirsten at the school because I went to the first contractor walkthrough. where zero contractors came to measure, and I said, what do we do now? It appears that we're not attracting any bids. And she said, we have bids. And I said, oh, we have bids? Great. And then the next week they opened one bid, and it was in excess of $300,000. I said, if now, what do we do? Well, this time we reach out to vendors and try to encourage them to apply. But we have to reach out to playground vendors. Because this is what happens if you reach out to a general contractor. The general contractor says, I'm not certified to do this. You know what I'm going to do? I'm going to contract a playground specialist to do this. And I'm going to contract him to do the entire thing. And he's going to charge me $150,000. But I want to make money, too. So he's going to charge more. And I don't think that chasing this down, this, my suggestion, and chase, which is not my suggestion, it's the suggestion of the Attorney General's office, and saving the city $100,000 while you can concurrently wait to go to the CPC and tell them you need more money, and if you find out that this is indeed factual, because, I'm sorry, but I don't make things up. I don't need to come here and embarrass myself.
[Cheryl Rodriguez]: No, I talked to someone in the Attorney General's office that works with the fare wager and the construction. So he said that this Massachusetts contracts follow the prevailing wage laws.
[Cheryl Rodriguez]: You're also allowed to do the bid at labor for less than a month.
[Cheryl Rodriguez]: Or we could just go through the MAS contracts, the contract user guide for the FAC 104, which I'm more than willing to share with you. learn how to do it.
[Cheryl Rodriguez]: So you can do the mass contracts. You do not have to open the bid. The labor cost is less than $50,000. You do not have to open a bid. You can go through the mass contracts.
[Cheryl Rodriguez]: They said they did not see it come up the second time. I was out of town. I didn't have time to email everyone and tell them about the process. I did actually ask Fiona to send me the information, and I did not receive an email with the information. So this was not on their radar. But in the handout that I gave you, there's also information on the statewide contract. This contract that I'm handing you falls into the category of statewide contracts. Who may use statewide contracts? Cities, towns, district, counties, and other political subdivisions. I believe Medford is a city. Buyer information. Why would you use it? Because it saves time developing solicitations and issuing bids. evaluating responses and executing contracts. The OSD has negotiated the pricing or required competitive costs, selected the appropriate vendors, and outlined the services the vendors perform relative to the contract. They are subject to the Mass General Law, Chapter 30B. They're also subject to the wage requirements.
[Cheryl Rodriguez]: The included in there is $3,000 for a rubber membrane underneath. The application that we submitted to the CPC also has $10,000 if we have to repair and touch up the substone. It also includes $12,000 for removal and disposal of rubber surfacing. As I said, that estimate includes labor. The labor is approximately 25% of that overall cost. This is not the only vendor that I've spoken to, and we got an approximate pricing for this playground.
[Cheryl Rodriguez]: I attended the PTO Expo. I spoke to two vendors there. I gave them the square footage because I had it for the application. It was all around the same. They said, of course, we'd have to come out and measure and exact.
[Cheryl Rodriguez]: They're registered to FAC 104 company, so they're vetted by the state. They're required to complete the prevailing wage.
[Cheryl Rodriguez]: That $89,000 includes the labor. They do not sell the tiles without the labor because you are required to have a licensed person install the tiles. That's the industry standard. If the labor costs are below $50,000, according to the Mass General Law, Chapter 30B, which was changed in 2016, if the labor cost is under $50,000, you do not have to bid the labor. The labor cost will be under $25,000. I don't know if that's the case. I encourage someone to please meet with me. I will provide the name, number, of the person at the Attorney General's office that I spoke to, who was chasing this down, who said that the Chapter 30B requirements require the prevailing wage, which is included in the MAS contract by law. By law.
[Cheryl Rodriguez]: If I was going to do it tomorrow, I would sit down with John McLaughlin and I would say, um, I remember that you said ground masters could do the removal. So we want to get them lined up to do the removal. We also want to reach back out to, to this company that you've worked with before. And we want to get the itemized bid. We want it to be all laid out with the cost of the tiles. the cost of the installation. We want to know exactly how many days it's going to take. We want to know how long it's going to take.
[Cheryl Rodriguez]: So then we would execute contracts. We would begin work. get invoiced for the work, and the money is ready to be paid out, we would pay it out, and the children would play on a new playground, and my daughter, who's a fifth grader, would actually get to touch the new playground that we've been trying to get since she started kindergarten.
[Cheryl Rodriguez]: That's who was going to do it anyway.
[Cheryl Rodriguez]: $130,000 to put down into locking blocks. That's absurd. For over $200,000, we could tear out the playground equipment, we could put new playground equipment in tile.
[Cheryl Rodriguez]: No, that does include.
[Cheryl Rodriguez]: So this bid includes... Okay. This price includes $3,000 for the rubber membrane that would go underneath the tiles.
[Cheryl Rodriguez]: Yeah, so that's included in the $89,000. So if Groundmasters charges $15,000 and we needed $10,000 to replace substone underneath before we put the membrane in the tiles, we would be within $5,000 of the grant amount.
[Cheryl Rodriguez]: Of course. This is a 24-hour turnaround. Of course. No, no, I know that.
[Cheryl Rodriguez]: Hi, I'm Cheryl Rodriguez. I live at 281 Park Street. I have a school-age daughter who has a lot of friends, and I see all the ZBA meetings and a lot of new projects coming through. The Locust Street is going to have a school bus stop on it with 350 units, so we're going to have families and children living in these buildings, and we're going to have families living in the buildings on Middle 6 Ave. These are all buildings that My daughter could potentially go play in and I want the fire department to be prepared to fight a fire if one breaks out this building. It seems irresponsible to tear down a fire tower without the new tower in place. It seems even more irresponsible when we're talking about creative solutions to say, this building is fine and we're gonna tear it down to put a different building in its place and leave a hole in our infrastructure where we need a training tower. Whose bright idea was that? To tear down a tower that's perfectly good And that right there would have saved us a million dollars that could have gone directly towards building our new fire station, but we threw that away because we apparently don't need it. To go forward with that is ridiculous. And we see all these projects coming through. Every time I'm at a meeting, we see $500,000 going on Riverside Plaza to expedite it so that it could be open in the fall of 2017. And if you go by, it's May of 2018, and I see mismatched furniture that looks like it came from other projects. set up there and it's still not open. That's $500,000 that maybe we could have cut that down and put that towards a new tower. If we're thinking creatively, debt exclusion is not the most creative. That's probably, you know, that just says, let's just take more money. We have to look at the difference going on. Do we need $1.6 million in one park when we have at least a dozen parks in 2011 that were identified in poor condition and those children will continue to play in those poor parks? and look over at that park that you can't park near to go and play in. When I visit people in that neighborhood, I often park in Tiki Island, sorry, Tiki Island, to visit friends because there's no parking on the street. So we're spending money in places that we maybe need to start thinking more creatively of budgets. We can't build the Taj Mahal everywhere and to tell the fire department that they can't have a station and they can't have a training tower while we're building projects at levels We can't afford to maintain, we can't sustain, and we just can't afford is irresponsible. You should move to, maybe you need to spend more money on an architect and tell him he needs to build around that tower because it's irresponsible to tear down that tower. The million dollars that it's gonna cost to put up a new tower versus a million dollars in new architecture fees, maybe that should be the situation, and then our fire department doesn't have interrupted training schedule. Maybe that's a creative solution. I think it's more creative than, Well, we don't want to hold things up, so let's just knock it down and maybe we'll figure it out because the DPW, the sand and salt is coming to Mystic Ave. They've already decided that that's where they want the sand and salt. They said that they negotiated and they sold the sign shops so that they could build a high rise of 500 units, which the firefighters will have to go into if it goes on fire, but they won't be able to train to prepare for. So now they want another piece of Medford land to put sand and salt on. So we need to think about it. If we're not going to get that land, we're going to lose that tower, and we're going to potentially lose lives.
[Cheryl Rodriguez]: Hi, I'm Cheryl Rodriguez, 281 Park Street. I'm here to speak on the resurfacing project for the Roberts Elementary School. It's the second item down on the list. We're very concerned about the timing of this project. School lets out on June 20th and school resumes on the last week of August. This project needs to be done during the school break. We have to go out for bidding and then schedule the work during probably the busiest time of the year, so it's gonna be very hard for us to schedule one week could mean that the children have to wait an extra year for this project, so I'm hoping that perhaps an exception can be made and this project can be approved this evening. I can answer any questions that anyone has. We have photographs of the project as well.
[Cheryl Rodriguez]: I am the-.
[Cheryl Rodriguez]: And I just want to interject that this board council has already approved an off-cycle application. We're not an off-cycle application. I submitted the application on January 5th, the initial application. Then I submitted the full application the first week of March. I've been to several meetings for the CPA and presented this project. I've been to meetings at the school committee to present this project. I've been to subcommittee meetings of the school committee to submit this project. I prepared the 65-page application for this project, collected signatures and support for this project. So I am more than capable of answering any questions that you have on this project. And I think that I'm more than happy to come tomorrow if you have additional questions and answer it again. but this project is very time sensitive, and to tell these children that they could possibly have to wait an additional year for the largest elementary school in the city with the English language learner program, the autism program, this would break a lot of hearts. So please, I ask you to consider us.
[Cheryl Rodriguez]: I've gotten conflicting answers on this, but I'm told that until the money is approved by this council, they won't prepare the bid. I spoke to Cassandra in engineering today. She said it could take 45 days for the bid and that has to be advertised for two weeks, I was told by the procurement office. So we're really pushing up against it. And just getting in the schedules of these people once we do go through that process could really push us up to the end of the summer.
[Cheryl Rodriguez]: The actual work is projected to take between five and 10 days. Five and 10 days, okay. And we were asked to make our application smaller just because this is only for the surfacing. There's not a bench or a flower in this application. So we actually need a landscaper to do removal. And then we need a playground specialist to do the installation because we were told there's very limited funds. Thank you.
[Cheryl Rodriguez]: We're concerned that the city is not going to move forward in preparing the bid until this money is allocated. We're talking about waiting until after Memorial Day. It'll be less than a month before school lets out. So if we do a 45-day bid, we're talking about sometime in July when the bid will end, and then we have to try to get on the schedule. We'll need to be on the schedule. We'll probably have about a 35-day window, less than that, actually, because we need to allocate 10 days to do the work. So we'll have 25 days to get on the schedule of the chosen bid to do the project. So seven days could be, the difference between doing it now and saying, do you have any time in July of 2019? So that's an entire year. Or the kids go back to school, and there's caution tape and construction vehicles, which would complement the construction on the corner of Court Street. So we really don't want to disrupt the children's recess time. It's a very coveted time. well utilized in the area. It's the only playground that has, the school playground has lighting at night. The neighborhood children play there. You'll often see children there till 8 or 9 p.m. because it's a lit area. Hickey Park is down the street, but it's pitch dark. It's not able to be used by the neighbors at night. So it's a difference between now, it could be a difference between now and a year.
[Cheryl Rodriguez]: It's already been signed by the mayor.
[Cheryl Rodriguez]: I understand that if there's controversy with papers tomorrow, that perhaps these papers will stay in committee for a week or two longer. We could be talking about June before this is approved?
[Cheryl Rodriguez]: And will this be voted on as a whole tomorrow, or will there be possibility of parcelization? I'm just trying to find out what's going to happen.
[Cheryl Rodriguez]: And the great thing about doing it in the summer is that it's light out till 8.30 at night, so they'll have a playground a couple of blocks away. If we wait until the fall, when it starts getting dark at 4.30, 5 o'clock, there'll be nothing.
[Cheryl Rodriguez]: I hope, if nothing else, that I've expressed the urgency of this project so that if this paper gets bogged down tomorrow, perhaps you would consider not punishing 550 plus school children and letting this project move forward.
[Cheryl Rodriguez]: point of clarification, what I actually said was I hope that if this paper gets bogged down tomorrow with other issues, that it's not delayed and what will happen is the children will be punished. It's an unintended consequence, so that's just why we're here, to make sure that you're aware that that's a possibility, and we hope that you'll consider and think about that.
[Cheryl Rodriguez]: April 24th.
[Cheryl Rodriguez]: Okay, so hi, I'm Cheryl Rodriguez. I'm representing the Roberts PTO. We put in our application for the surfacing of our playground to be replaced. The surface of the playground was put in around 2003 when the school opened, and it was slated to last for eight to 10 years, so now it's past replacement. I brought the actual pictures if it's easier for the committee to look at, thanks. So we're at a point where this is poor in place and they've been trying to patch, but this is what it looks like today. Close to 600 students play on this playground every day. We're the largest elementary school in the city. So this is very well utilized. Just today on this beautiful day when I went to pick up my daughter, there were probably 30 to 40 younger siblings playing on the playground before dismissal and easily 200 after school. So this is a well-loved and utilized playground to the point that when I went to get my pictures, I could not find a day to take a picture where there wasn't a family playing there. So we're just hoping to have the surfacing done. We made this application as lean as possible. We haven't asked for anything other than the surfacing. The playground equipment was inspected and found to be fine and can continue to be used. We haven't asked for a bench or a planting. We've only asked for the surfacing. We picked rubber interlocking tile, which needs to be professionally installed. The reason we picked that is because it has zero maintenance requirements. So this won't happen again. We won't have the holes. It'll be just like this. So if there is damage to a tile, a tile can be replaced singly. And it'll look like this for the next 15 years. So it's really a great product. It's extremely safe. And we're excited to have a new playground.
[Cheryl Rodriguez]: It's open to the public outside of the school day. So during the school day, it's just the students, but outside of the school day, in the summer, on the weekends, at night, it's very well used. Can I make a comment on it?
[Cheryl Rodriguez]: Yes, it is lit.
[Cheryl Rodriguez]: Well, I started trying to find funding for this project when my daughter was in kindergarten. My daughter is now a fourth grader, so yay, we're hoping she's going to get that one more year at the school. I was told that I could fundraise the money if I had wanted to, and our PTO was not in a position to raise $100,000 extra. We do provide a lot of funding for the school. We do enrichment nights. We're preparing for field day. We buy t-shirts for all the students. We have entertainment, snacks. We do the book fair. We buy books for the library, books for the teachers. We buy school supplies at the beginning of the year. We do in-school enrichment. We pay for buses for field trips. So we're around $25,000 in expenses a year. And it's a very dynamic and involved group that helps to raise these funds and we're very fortunate. But $100,000 we would be raising for the next probably 20 years because we still have to provide that core amount of funding every year.
[Cheryl Rodriguez]: Right, this project has to go out to bid. Unfortunately, I tried to make the application leaner by saying, oh, can we do the demo? Because that was around $30,000 just for the demo. We were able to talk to the playground company, and they said if we hired a landscaper, that would be half the cost. So that's how we took out some there, and they said by having it professionally done, it could decrease the amount of repair we have to do to the substructure when we take it out, but it has to be done by hand. It cannot be done with a machine, unfortunately. So, yeah, unfortunately, because it's city land, we cannot just have volunteers go in there and tear it out and put it in. And because of the intricacy of the installation, it has to be professionally done.
[Cheryl Rodriguez]: I like to be in control, so I hope to leave this meeting and speak to the Building and Grounds Subcommittee and say, we really want to be on the ground the day after, if we make it through this round, the day after the City Council hears this, we want the bid to go out immediately and do it as quickly as possible. They told us it was five to ten days of construction. We would not want to do it in September, it would be very sad. But we really do want to have this done as soon as possible. We have another project where we're going to be painting the rainbow outside the school, so we want this to be a fabulous start to the school year. And I do have a school committee member with me, Aaron DeBenedetto.
[Cheryl Rodriguez]: So our estimate includes $10,000 in repair to the substrate so hopefully it'll be less but they said they did that on the high side so that we wouldn't have a surprise coming in.
[Cheryl Rodriguez]: They actually said they can do it without removing any of the equipment, which is amazing. And I'll be down there watching them do it, because there's a lot of equipment there. And they're going to install the tiles one by one and cut each one to fit. So we're getting a really custom product here.
[Cheryl Rodriguez]: We'll get a report on that one, I'm sure. That's April 24th, the CPA presentation. But yeah, Cheryl Rodriguez, 281 Park Street. I just wanted to bring up the topic of bullying. I noticed that as the children get older, there's a little buzz here.
[Cheryl Rodriguez]: It's on. Okay. So I just wanted to come in and bring up the topic of bullying. I've noticed that as As technology gets more prolific, bullying seems to get more severe. When I was a child, if there was a bully, they were at school and maybe on the bus. But when you got home, you were safe. And now it seems that bullying has extended beyond the school, schoolyard, buses, to your homes if your child is on any kind of social media, texting app, anything like that. Even as a parent of a 22 year old, I didn't have to deal with this and I'm finding it difficult and I'm hoping that the school will be willing to implement some kind of a program, maybe something that the PTOs can help work with or we can work with the computer teachers. the district works with the Michigan model and when I looked them up I found they have a bully free school circle of support type of program. I think what's really important in this type of program would be not only to do the principals, the teachers, the students, but also the parents because we're in a position where we don't exactly know how to guide our children, and if we're not guiding all the children in the same direction, it's great to tell your child to block somebody else, but if they then go on someone else's page and start harassing them. We had a situation in my particular family, and I put a post on Facebook, and I was amazed at how many messages that I got from friends from different schools. It's not a Medford unique problem, Things like that they had bullying and they went to their principal for help and the principal told them, you know, boys will be boys or it's your turn to get bullying. Children that were getting bullied so badly in their schools that they were going online and saying that they were going to commit suicide, or students that were harassed so heavily that they were scratching themselves or cutting themselves as young as elementary school. So I'm really concerned about this problem. It's touched my family personally. One of those stories is about someone in my family. but I prefer not to say which one. So I'm hoping that we can have some kind of collaboration. I know that right now, most of our bullying issues go through either the adjustment Councilor or the principal, and maybe it's not working for everyone. I know that the issue that we were having personally had gone through the adjustment Councilor, and we didn't hear about it for a couple weeks later after a student reported an issue My daughter wasn't spoken to for two additional weeks. And if that had escalated, that could have been a really serious problem. So I'm hoping that maybe we can set up a committee that has parents on it, or you can have a subcommittee. But bullying is something that we, anyone that was at that five hour meeting or watched it on television, probably about half of the people that spoke at that meeting talked about relentless bullying that their students were going through, their children. So I really just wanted to come here and say that I hope that when you go to hire a new superintendent, maybe that's a question of what they want to do about bullying, and we can do something about it, because I need help.
[Cheryl Rodriguez]: This was just the bully-free school circle of support. OK. And it just emphasized that you had to have people at all levels. They had training for the teachers, but they also had training for the parents. This was on their website. I just have one copy that you can have.
[Cheryl Rodriguez]: Yeah, I can email it to you.
[Cheryl Rodriguez]: I think it's all around. I think kids are treating each other horribly. The only reason I suggested a committee is that maybe if a student doesn't feel comfortable talking to their principal, or doesn't have a relationship with that adjustment Councilor, or if the parents have told me that they've gone to the principal and they've hit the wall and they don't know where to go next, so I'm hoping that we can set up the next step. Ms. Vander Kloop.
[Cheryl Rodriguez]: Sure, and I just while we wait for him to walk up, I want to make one point is I didn't come here to be like let's take all the bullies and suspend them out of the school because I think the issue is a lot more complicated than punishing the bully. I'd like more education around the socio and emotional about how to treat each other and that just because you're mad at your friend doesn't mean you relentlessly torture them, and then three days later, they're best friends again, but they've done damage to each other. So I just want to point that out. Thank you, Ms. Rodriguez.
[Cheryl Rodriguez]: Hi, Cheryl Rodriguez, 281 Park Street. So yeah, I went to the subcommittee meeting last week, and Mr. John McLaughlin from the Buildings and Grounds had given us an estimate. I ended up reaching out to that person. During the course of the meeting, it was suggested by Mr. Belson that perhaps rubber tiles would be better. I spoke to him on the phone, and the rubber tiles are far more durable. They'll last us probably close to 20 years. They require zero maintenance. If we get the pour in place, if we want it to last about 12 years, we would need to invest about $10,000 five to seven years in to reseal it. And it's cheaper to actually get the rubber tiles. The estimate was around $85,000 as opposed to $92,000, so it would save money. The playground apparatus doesn't need to come out, and as was discussed, the playground apparatus is right now in very good shape compared to the to the surfacing. The man also suggested, I believe his name was Travis, that we could lower the cost of the estimate by having a landscaping company, or maybe we had people within the city that would be able to take out the old rubber surfacing. Their estimate for that was $25,000. He said that was because he had high-level professionals that do the playgrounds coming in to do that, and it was something that he said could be done with a shovel that a landscaper would know how to do. And they would probably give us an estimate of $10,000 to $12,000. Possibly we could even get that lower if we had a resource in the community or someone that we could reach out to. If the substone is in good shape, that $10,000 that was put in for that could go down or be eliminated. So the goal for us right now is to try to make our application as lean as possible, show as much community support as we can, which would include things like getting workers in the community to help us out. And if the city was able, if there is a line item coming up in our budget for other playground services, if we combined more than one estimate, we would save additional $1 to $2 per square foot, which just for the Roberts playground would be anywhere from $5,400 to $11,000. So it could make a significant difference. I'm hoping that someone in the committee or the mayor is interested in helping work towards this application. I am, again, just a a parent volunteer, trying to do the best that I can. I'm hoping that the Roberts can serve as the model and the first step, and we can get the other schools in place. I know that the other schools do need this done as well. Very good. And the meeting, I'm sorry. The meeting is, we're meeting with the commission for the community preservation on February 13th. Our meeting is at 7.30. It's an open meeting, but we don't have a room. It's here at City Hall.
[Cheryl Rodriguez]: It was it was a seven foot fall height Which was the exact same as the estimate that mr. McLaughlin had presented for the park.
[Cheryl Rodriguez]: It can't be done by farm equipment He said it has to be done by shovels because we don't want to destroy the substone So that was why the estimate was so high from them. Yeah, it's manual labor manual labor. Thank you. I
[Cheryl Rodriguez]: And they're going to ask me for an update on where we are.
[Cheryl Rodriguez]: That's it.
[Cheryl Rodriguez]: Hello. Hi, I'm Cheryl Rodriguez, dean of my address. I live at 281 Park Street. I'm an active parent volunteer involved in the Roberts PTO. And one of the things that I do for the school is that I apply for grants. So since I'm here, I wanted to let everyone know that we did receive a $5,000 grant from the Lowell's Toolbox for Education. It covered about 90% of the cost for 25 Google Chromebooks, the software, and the cart that is now in the school and will be ready for circulation at the end of this week. Excellent.
[Cheryl Rodriguez]: And we used money from the Jingle Bell Festival to cover the rest of that cost. We made, I don't have the exact figure, but it's a little under $7,000. We were the number one school this year.
[Cheryl Rodriguez]: So that was great for them too. So today I'm here to ask for support and help for the Roberts PTO's grant application to the Community Preservation Commission for the restoration of our school playground. The Roberts Elementary School is one of the most populous elementary schools in Medford and our playground, as are all the elementary school playgrounds, is in need of replacement. The worst item in all our playgrounds seems to be the surfacing. So I applied for this grant for a few reasons. One was that I saw the mayor's capital improvement plan at a city council meeting, and it included line items to replace one school playground per year, which was great. And I thought if we coupled it with community preservation money, we could replace two playgrounds per year, and everyone could have a new playground in two to three years. So that would be about 2,400 students in our elementary schools that would all have a shiny new playground to play in. So that benefit would radiate out through the neighborhood that each school is in, because it will allow their family members of the students to enjoy the playgrounds as well as people that just live in the neighborhood. We've gone through the eligibility phase, and we now have to prepare a complete application. So we don't know exactly how much it's going to cost. And we need help from the district in order to figure out the parameters of what you'll require, companies that we have to go through. This is outside of my scope of expertise, as well as my authority as a parent volunteer at the Roberts Elementary School. We were able to apply with a supporting letter from the principal at our school. But in order to go forward, we need approval and help from the school committee and the district. So I'm hoping that we're going to be able to do that. The application needs to be submitted by March 2nd. I'm hoping that we'll make it through the first round because that will allow for completion to happen in the summer when the students are not in school so that they won't have any interrupted recess time and they'll be able to start September with a shiny new playground. If we do receive community preservation funds, there are other grants that we can apply for to help supplement, but we're not eligible to apply for those grants until we receive funding from the community preservation. So I'm hoping that you guys can help me out.
[Cheryl Rodriguez]: Hi, I'm Cheryl Rodriguez again, 281 Park Street. I am an active member of my PTO. No one personally approached me, but I can tell you that my PTO sends constant flyers. They have events almost monthly. Every PTO does this. We have Facebook pages. Some of us have Twitter accounts. We make every effort to have people join. I'm not a board member on a PTO. I went to a PTO meeting and I raised my hand and volunteered. I've added programming to my PTO on a voluntary basis, and people do the best that they can. I've gone to meetings where there's been three people, and I know for a fact that a flyer's gone out, that a flyer's been on the window at the school, that we've posted it on our Facebook page. And there's three people there. And that's not because we're not engaging our community, because we have signs up at every event that things are going on. We send out emails. There's only so much that you can do, but you have to be realistic. When I had my first child, I worked full time, and I did not volunteer at the PTO. I did not have the time or the bandwidth. I'm lucky now that I can and I do. And I appreciate that a lot of people are not able to do that, and I don't think that we should be disparaging people on either side, people that do have the time to volunteer, great. People that don't, you know, that's fine too. We're here for all of the children. We do fundraising for every child. in all the schools, and we're not singling out and go, oh, Johnny's mother didn't help, so he doesn't get a t-shirt on field day. So I think we need to remember that. And I hope that some of your recommendations will include ways to help some of our PTOs, especially those of us that are in high needs districts, high needs areas, where our parents do work two jobs, or our parents don't speak English, or they have special needs children they have to attend to, or they have three or four children, and packing those kids up and coming to a PTO meeting is impossible. We even tried to do our meetings on Facebook Live. And it didn't increase our attendance. So we're all doing the best that we can. And I hope that the district is able to help us. Because from year to year, some PTOs find that it's really hard for them to afford that $8,000 to $10,000 that we need for the buses, or that field day event, or that in-school enrichment. And we do the best that we can. Sometimes you run a fundraiser, and you think you're going to make $1,000, and you make $500. And you have to add another fundraiser on the fly, because you're not going to cover those bills at the end of the year. Thank you.
[Cheryl Rodriguez]: Hi, I'm Cheryl Rodriguez. I live at 281 Park Street. I'm always in favor of expanded notification, and I think I like the part in here about the text message or the phone call. As we all know, reverse 9-1-1 calls cost pennies. So if you ask someone to make 400 reverse 9-1-1 calls, we're talking about $4 to $10, which I don't think is exorbitant. And then 400 neighbors get to get notification of a project. I think that any project that is adding a housing unit, there should be an expanded notification because if you live next door to a single family and it's going to be a two or a three, that's going to be a big difference. If you live half a block down from that house, that's going to be a big difference on your street. A lot of us lives on streets where parking is difficult. We face the Every time there's a snow emergency, it's where am I going to put my car? If you start adding housing units onto streets, people are going to want to have input onto whether or not there's going to be parking, because that's the most common variance that's granted when these units are added.
[Cheryl Rodriguez]: Okay. So I think that we should just strive for more notification. I would love to see the agendas for the zoning board on the front page of the website. I would love to see them read here at meetings. We really need to find a way for people to know because we're chasing these things. I was at the building department last week and I asked them if there was a way for me to find out about permit refusals because the most common question that people are asking online about zoning is how do we find out about these projects before they get to the ZBA? because once they get there, it feels too late. Currently, unless you know the address of a project that's received a permit refusal, you cannot find out what the permit refusals are in the city. So that's an obstacle that we have to face and that we're chasing down as we're seeing more and more units. We're seeing zoning ordinances being written by our mayor and I'm very concerned as are many, many of our residents. Thank you. Thank you.
[Cheryl Rodriguez]: Hi, Cheryl Rodriguez, 21 Park Street. Thanks for taking me. I'm having a little bronchitis, so. So I just wanted to start with a notification. If you live on or near Bellevue Street, Capon Street, Fairmont Street, University Avenue, or Winthrop Street, please be advised that Tufts University intends to convert these properties there into dormitories. I have no further details on this project and have just heard about them. The ZBA meeting for their variances is on Monday, December 4th at 7 p.m. here in Council Chambers. Unless you are an abutter or an abutter to an abutter, you will not be notified of this meeting. Sadly, I'm here again to speak on the gross negligence of our Zoning Board of Appeals with regards to the 87 Medford Street Project. After the October 25th meeting, I and another resident filed a complaint with the Attorney General for violation of open meeting laws and not allowing residents to speak. Two subsequent complaints were filed after the November 13th meeting. I also included in my complaint that our Zoning Board members seem to not understand what their job and limitations are. They are not permitted to create new zoning laws on a parcel-by-parcel basis through variances, which is essentially spot zoning, and frankly are not allowed to create new zoning laws at all. That is the job of the Medford City Council. In the presence of dozens of residents and four sitting city councilors, a member of the ZBA in October stated that the board was forced to grant illegal variances because the Medford City Council has not changed zoning. That's not true, and I again ask this council to set the record straight that this is not in their purview. Variances should be rare and only under legally allowed conditions. These developers time and time again express surprise when they meet resistance to their projects as they say they are being encouraged by the administration to build denser. This council needs to find out where that message is coming from. Is it the Office of Community Development? Whoever it is, why are they encouraging developers to ignore zoning laws? Because projects with nine plus variances aren't bending zoning laws, they're pretending they don't exist. According to the Medford Zoning Ordinances, Chapter 94, Section 173, entitled General Dimensional Requirements, Table 6.3, titled Table of Dimensional Requirements, this project is so grossly outsized for the property provided that it was illegal for it to have passed. A multi-dwelling, which is as close as this mixed use which is not allowed, requires 10,000 square feet to start, 4,500 square feet for the first two units, then 1,000 square feet for each additional unit on floors one through three, 600 square feet for each unit on floors four and above. By this math, the size of the property is about 45,000 square feet and they're only legally permitted to build 32 units as the housing doesn't begin until the second level. If the housing began at the first level, they would only be allowed to build 31. The project approved was 55. Let that sink in. A full 23 units over allowable density if this project was legally allowed to be there. To put that into perspective, the developer threatened if this project didn't go through, he would build a 40B there. I counted that a 40B might be smaller. 40B projects would also provide 25% affordable units instead of the six provided here. but they are legally allowed to go outside the zoning laws, but likely not as far as this. Even though this project is illegal for the sake of argument, even 30% outside of our zoning of 40B would only be 42 units, with at least 10 of those units being affordable, still 13 less than were legally approved by our zoning board. That evidence removes all arguments that this is done to increase affordable housing because it adds 49 luxury price units and only six affordable units. This is a density project and nothing more. The approval of the project was illegal. It shows a fundamental lack of understanding of our zoning laws and the boundaries of the powers of the ZBA. It also runs contrary to the reasons that they stated for breaking our zoning laws without remorse. The entire board should be removed. The decision should be immediately overturned. When a new board is installed, they should be made to watch the open meeting law tapes the Attorney General ordered the board to watch after their last violation of open meeting law. They should also be made to read Massachusetts General Law section 40A, paying particular attention to section 10 entitled variances. These are the only way that this board can legally grant variances, not based on a density agenda, not based on the will of the administration, and definitely not because they feel responsible for solving the greater Boston housing crisis. Yesterday, the meeting of the open meeting law complaints was held by the ZBA at 8.45 a.m. The board affirmed that they feel they are fighting against this council for a greater good. It was again stated that they are forced to grant variances because this council has an updated zoning. Further, it was said that even if this council asks them to expand who they notify for projects, they will refuse to do so. They said they will follow the letter of the Massachusetts law and only notify abutters to abutters within 300 feet and only residents directly across the street from the project. One of the complainants was from a resident who was across the street from the project and one house over. She complained that she was not notified. The ZBA says they are under no obligation to notify her and will not notify people similarly in the future. This project will impact her as much as her next door neighbor. This was highlighted and they asked Solicitor Rumley to back them in this interpretation of the law. This board has consulted with our city solicitor and has made it clear that they intend to do the minimum and will not do more even if an ordinance is passed by this council. The time has passed to talk here at meetings. This is happening and accelerating quickly. We have a ZBA that is moving to increase density through variances and refusing to be checked other than through the filing of court cases. I asked Solicitor Rumley if there was a board I could appeal to that would help, since the ZBA is going outside of zoning and refusing to follow the laws on granting variances, and he angrily told me to hire an attorney. Apparently that is our only recourse. But you need to do it quickly. This last illegal approval allowed density that was 70% more than what is allowed for a parcel of this size in the city of Medford. It provides zero setbacks. Even if zoning was completely modified tomorrow, it is doubtful that a project like this would have been allowed. If you update zoning to allow more density and the ZBA still feels that it isn't dense enough, we'll stop them from approving projects 70% over what you make in the new laws. You've lost complete control of our zoning laws. The time to play nice is over. Our ZBA is doing as they see fit with regard to zoning laws. Our Mayor is meeting with people behind closed doors to write zoning laws the way she wants them to be. Where is the City Council in this conversation? Where is the resident input? This is your area. This is under your control. You have far more power than to make a speech. Please use it. The residents are counting on you. You saw that the ZBA only allowed you to speak at the Medford Street Project in October. And all that you spoke was to say to let the residents speak, which they did not. You need to speak for us now. In 18 months, it will be too late. You've all retained your seats. You can all start the work now. I encourage you to retain an attorney versus loaning laws to help you with this. Not just a group that's charged with increasing density in cities. You need to reign in this board. You need to take control. What are you going to do about this project? It's now passed and the only way to stop it is to file a lawsuit. Is that how it's going to work here in Medford? Either you stop gross overreach or the city continues to sue itself over and over again. Thanks.
[Cheryl Rodriguez]: Hi, I'm Cheryl Rodriguez from 281 Park Street. Thanks to everyone who was waiting to speak on this that stuck around. I wanted to talk about the Zoning Board meeting that happened on Tuesday, October 24th. It was actually a continuation of the meeting that happened on September 26th. I think it's important to note that it was a continuation from that date There was a City Council meeting on that date that was held at the Medford High School So anyone who had business with City Council or city councilors were unable to attend that meeting so A Somerville alderman, I'm going to ruin this name, but Nader Gang was there and he requested that the hearing be postponed so that his constituents could be informed. I heard through the grapevine that there was a meeting being held by this alderman, which was also on the night of a city council meeting, but he's from Somerville, so he's under no obligation to meet around you. I attended that meeting. There were about a hundred people in attendance at that meeting. And a lot of concerns were brought up that I didn't think were mentioned at the October meeting. Since only the elected officials were able to speak, we entrusted the sum of all the men to give us the information that transpired at that meeting, and we didn't hear from that. The biggest thing that the people were talking about is that we want open and transparent government, and the number one way for us to get that is to have open meetings with public participation. When the meeting started, we were in the room. I was in the front row. The room was filled. There were at least 20 people in the hallway. The room was too small. City councilors came in and advised that the chambers were available and that we could move the meeting to that room. The chairman at that point said that he was very comfortable where he was, didn't want to move. There was a lot of dissent in the room at that point. I said, gee, it seems like if a bigger room is available, it may be a violation to deny people the opportunity to be present for a meeting. that they have concerns for. That meeting was then moved into this room. All of the props that were shown were facing away from the audience, the people in the gallery. The Somerville alderman spoke and said that $33,000 in traffic mitigation had been offered to Somerville. But he didn't mention that there were a lot of issues about parking in Somerville. The plan that we presented in Somerville was that overflow parking would be in a public parking lot that was across the street from the development. And many of the Somerville neighbors were upset because when they have the snow emergency parking, they rely on that parking. And they felt that 10 guest spots that also combined as commercial spots were not sufficient and would give them issues. There were also issues from Somerville and Medford residents that that area frequently floods when it rains. There was nothing brought up about that being changed. And when asked about loss of water pressure, about strains on utilities, we were told that that was okay because they were gonna hook into Medford. When they asked about the front door being located on the Broadway side Because they were concerned about ubers backing up. He said that if he had a hard time getting that variance He would just go with the Medford board because the Medford boards easier to get variances through The general tone of the meeting was that he was doing his best to conform with the Somerville zoning but as we've seen in many of the meetings Medford zoning is very flexible and Although it's not supposed to be, because we're under the Massachusetts general law, 40A, section 10, entitled variances, that the reason for variances to be granted are very strict. And none of them are that the piece of land is too small for me to build the project that I want. I also felt that when I looked at the paperwork for this project, they seemed to be assuming a use variance. Rather than asking for a use variance, they're assuming one. This is a general residence commercial one area. In a commercial one area, you are allowed to build residences, but this is a mixed use building, which means that they're combining residences and commercial. So that's a mixed use, which is a special permit that I didn't feel that they were applying for. When I asked that, they said, no, no, it's not. But when you look at the project you can clearly see that this is not two separate buildings. It's one building So I'm concerned about that. I was also concerned that when the meeting start after our elected officials spoke The chairman asked if there were any residents who wanted to speak in opposition to the project. He said let the record reflect that ten residents would like to speak in opposition of the project. At no point did he ask if anyone wanted to speak in favor of the project. Perhaps there were another 10 or 20 that wanted to speak in favor. They also were not given the opportunity to speak in this open and public meeting. The meeting was not recorded. Apparently the recording device is not working. They did say that we could speak if we didn't speak on zoning, parking, density, height, use, traffic, infrastructure, among other items, which precluded any resident from speaking. I'm not even sure we could comment on the color of the building because everything on that list we were not allowed to speak on. There was a certain level of complaint from all of us that we were not able to attend the Somerville meeting. People were not notified of the meeting. We kept being told to come back last September, which is an impossibility. That meeting was missed. The reason that the hearing was held over was so that the residents could get more information. And I thank the Somerville Aldermen for proposing that because our own Councilors were unavailable to do that. But then we were not given the opportunity to speak. One of the other alarming things that happened was one of the Zoning Board members addressed the City Councilors in attendance. I know that you touched on this a little bit earlier, but she said that the reason they were granting this number of variances is because our City Council hasn't updated the zoning. While it's true that you haven't updated the zoning, it is not in the purview of the Zoning Board of Appeals to change the zoning. They are only allowed to grant variances under the strict rules of Chapter 48, Section 10. I think that they should all be made to review that ordinance, that law, it's a state law, and figure out what they're supposed to be doing because they're not doing this properly. I think the only remedy that's going to work is for this hearing to be heard again. We should be able to have the The project presented to us because we did not get the full presentation. People should be able to speak in favor, and people should be able to speak in opposition. Because while the project may be great, we have no idea because we weren't given the opportunity to hear it. We weren't given the opportunity to speak in opposition or in favor. So I just wanted to say that zoning is our most important thing, and we need to protect our neighborhoods. And I think that you should definitely use the reverse 911 system for this. If I can get a call, for the drug take-back, if I can get a call for the Harvester Energy Festival. There's no reason that I can't get a call once a month that says there's a project on here that's 55 units. If you're interested, please come to this meeting on such and such a date and time. Thank you.
[Cheryl Rodriguez]: Hi real quick. Cheryl Rodriguez, 21 par street. I just wanted to mention that the hearing has been closed and the next meeting is for deliberation. So if there are any questions or neighborhood outreach going to happen, then something has to change at the zoning board of appeals or they're going to make the decision between November 6th and November 10th. They have not set. the date of the meeting. There are also two complaints about open meeting law violations that have been filed about this project, about that meeting, not the particular project, just the meeting.
[Cheryl Rodriguez]: Thank you.
[Cheryl Rodriguez]: Hi, my name is Cheryl Rodriguez, and I'm running for a seat on the Medford City Council. Thanks to the Democratic Committee of Ward 6 for hosting us. When I received the email listing the nearly 30 City Council topics, my first reaction was, wow, that's a lot of stuff. I think that's what intrigued me about running for City Council. It's a pretty unique opportunity. You get to wear lots of hats, but it all boils down to quality of life. I'm a graduate of Medford High School. I have a daughter who graduated in 2014, and a nine-year-old in the Roberts. My parents also live in Medford, and my husband Alexis Rodriguez is a candidate for school committee. I'm a mom in the community who is heavily involved in the Roberts School PTO. I'm proud to say that I have committed to creating enrichment nights, running fundraisers, and applying for grants to help our children create memories at school. I'm grateful to the teachers and principal for trusting me and working tirelessly on these inclusive events. And thanks to all the parents who've helped in ways you never thought you would, like lugging a U-Haul's truck worth of yard sale items out of my house, or punching holes in nearly 600 pieces of artwork for our art show. I love Medford because there are so many great volunteer and service-oriented groups in the city. I would really like to find a way to link them all. Often I hear, I wish we had a group that was working on X, and oftentimes we do. I've met many amazing groups of people working to make the lives of people in our community better, and I've tried to help whenever I can. Many of the events that we enjoy throughout the city are run by volunteers. My commitment to the city made me want to run for city council to try to help in a different way. I've attended meetings, met with elected officials for years to try and get assistance on various issues and needs around the city. I've stood with Locust Street of Butters to stop overdevelopment. I've collected signatures outside Stop and Shop for charter review. I've advocated for airplane noise relief, fought for small class sizes, and to this day, I still continue to go to zoning board meetings and stand with residents. I want to be that person that you feel comfortable reaching out to, the one who will not only listen to your issue, but will dig in to find the best solution. I would also like to help push for a portion of our budget to be set aside for future maintenance projects. We all know that roofs don't last forever. It doesn't have to be a scramble every time one springs a leak. This will speed things up and help manage expectations. Money set aside each year in the budget for streets and roads will allow us to fix more in our limited construction season. This is just one part of our needed city plan. We hear that Medford is hot. We need to take control so that the projects being built here enhance our city. Medford needs to be a place where people work, eat, play, and live. A proper plan will keep us from turning into a bedroom community that creates no places for the people who live here to work. I see Mystic Ave as our blank space, our next big opportunity. I know a project with 500 apartments and a tiny amount of commercial is proposed for the center lot. I think placing it there would be a mistake. We need to think bigger. We need to stop the small-town thinking. Projects should not be approved because it is better than what is there now. Yes, most anything is better than nothing. But remember, Medford's hot. Cities that are hot don't just take what is offered. We ask for what we want and what we need. That is how you move the city forward. That's how Medford will come alive. Mystic Ave could be our premier commercial area. It could hold lab space, office space, an entertainment complex, a beer garden, a doggie daycare, restaurants, a hotel. The sky's the limit. If there seems to be a need for some residential, it can be placed at an extreme end of the street to not impact our commercial growth. Picture a center island with trees on it, bike lanes, beautiful wide sidewalks, a shuttle to the train station, another bringing people to the square to enjoy lunch, dinner, a show at the Chevalier Theater. This is the biggest opportunity in Medford to create this shining new district. All we have to do is ask for it. Don't settle. While we're at it, we should move to our zoning reform. In addition to stopping overdevelopment and parcelization that is burdening our neighborhoods, our zoning should be updated so that all new construction housing projects that don't meet the threshold to add affordable units pay into our housing affordability fund to be used in conjunction with CPA money to create affordable housing in Medford. This is a minor ask and one that other cities don't hesitate to require. Medford is growing, but like anything, we need to nurture it and guide it. In a well-planned city, that growth maintains a balance of commercial and residential. We need to leverage enough new commercial to be able to afford needed infrastructure improvements. I'm excited to dig in and be a part of this pivotal time in Medford. I'm a first-time candidate, long-time advocate for Medford. Please cast your vote for Cheryl Rodriguez, November 7th, and you have until 1159 tonight online to register to vote. Please do so. Thank you.
[Cheryl Rodriguez]: Hi, I'm Cheryl Rodriguez. I live at 281 Park Street. I'm glad that we're talking about zoning, and I hope that we move past talking, but when we look for someone to bring in, we need to make sure that that group is independent and non-biased. We need to make sure that the zoning reforms that we make are Medford-centric and benefit Medford. Everyone talked about all the development that's happening in the city, but what I heard was residential, residential, residential. What's different between our development and Somerville and Cambridge's development is that they are very conscious of maintaining a balance of commercial and residential and making sure that they're able to support the infrastructure, the increased needs, the quality of life items that residents require and should have. So I think that's really important. We need to think about that as we move forward. I haven't spoke to one single resident that said, I really hope they sell the house next door to me and put up an apartment building. But we have people living in homes right now that are in apartment zones that that very thing could happen. And if you've ever seen a resident who's heard that there's going to be a 12-unit building shading their home, it's very traumatizing. And there's nothing that we can do because of the way that the zoning is written. Right now, what's happening as we're waiting, this is already happening. developers are coming, they're proposing what they want to do, they're going to the ZBA, they're getting multiple, multiple variances. And we see that when you have variances in commercial areas where you add residential, that it can cause problems adding commercial in later. We had a Dog for Days group that couldn't come in because they were abutting an apartment building. We had a meeting about the Wegmans and there were resident concerns about loading dock hours because the residents were there. So I'm very cautious about what happens with Mystic Ave. Of course, the first proposal that came out was 500 units. of apartments on Mystic Avenue, dead center of nine parcels, which will impact our ability to develop commercially. And we need to stop being the city where developers believe that they can come in and make their own zoning because we haven't updated the zoning. So they're just going to change it and do what they want, and we're going to be left running behind.
[Cheryl Rodriguez]: It's all right. It's all right.
[Cheryl Rodriguez]: I went to Georgetown. Oh, nice. But I'm from the area, so.
[Cheryl Rodriguez]: I don't want to fall down the stairs. Just really quick. Sharma Rodriguez, 281 Park Street. A couple of important takeaways from that meeting for me were that we need to keep filing the complaints. The volume of complaints are what our elected officials, our representatives, our senators use to show that our community is impacted. So while it's great to write letters to our federal delegation, and I encourage you to write to Elizabeth Warren. She is our representative on the Quiet Skies Caucus. So that's in the federal level for making the skies quieter and more livable for all of us. We need to keep filing the complaints. Those are the numbers that they refer to. If the complaints go down, that's how Milton got action was that their complaints were up, unique complaints, multiple complaints. And that's what they're going to use for leverage. So we need to keep filing those complaints. So I hope that reverse 9-1-1, will get us some unique complaints.
[Cheryl Rodriguez]: Hi, I'm Cheryl Rodriguez, 281 4th Street. So I'm not afraid of my Cori check. I get it every year. a very active volunteer at the Roberts Elementary School, and I'm fortunate enough to be a stay-at-home mom and able to go into the school during the school day to submit my CORI. My husband, Alex, works outside the home, and he usually has to work from home or something if he wants to get his CORI. because it's only offered during the school hours. So I'm concerned about possibly hours that people will be able to do quarries. I'm not sure if everyone knows that you do have to submit a quarry in person. You have to show a physical copy of your ID. So if we wanna make sure that this is accessible, there needs to be multiple hours. I'm not sure why if you're not coming in the building, you would need one, but just logistically speaking, it can be difficult for people to do the quarries in person if there are not evening hours, weekend hours, things like that. Thanks.
[Cheryl Rodriguez]: Oh, sorry. I didn't speak at all. Someone else spoke twice.
[Cheryl Rodriguez]: Hi, Cheryl Rodriguez, 281 Park Street. Apparently the game is afoot, but I hope that this is the last thing that we're gonna have.
[Cheryl Rodriguez]: No, not on this side of the table. Let her finish, let her just. It'll be faster, yeah. But I just wanna say that when I was approached about not holding a primary and then about holding a primary, I insisted that all candidates be notified. I wasn't notified about a paper that was signed for people coming here tonight that didn't want to have a primary. So I just caution everyone that all the candidates, we should be working together, because theoretically, we all want what's best for the city. So I hope that there isn't any backroom deals. When I was approached by candidates, I did speak to them. Point of information.
[Cheryl Rodriguez]: I didn't have strong feelings about it either way.
[Cheryl Rodriguez]: So, I thought that everybody put forth solid arguments about it, and we're going to have a primary, so that's fine.
[Cheryl Rodriguez]: Exactly.
[Cheryl Rodriguez]: Yes.
[Cheryl Rodriguez]: Hi, I'm Cheryl Rodriguez. I live at 281 Park Street. And the CPA did pass, much to my dismay. because I didn't feel that the question was as clear and everyone had the information. But now that it has passed, when I heard of the Riverside Plaza, I thought, oh, that's a perfect use of our CPA funds. And I'm hoping that there's some way that maybe this commission can say, you know what, let's pay for that Riverside Plaza, even if we have to delay the start of it a few months. and take that $250,000 and put it back into the budget and maybe pave four or five roads in the city and beautify the area. Because who wants to go to a park that's surrounded by streets that are filled with potholes? Maybe we can cover up that railway line on Salem Street. Because if we have a specific fund that is created for parkland, historic and low income, then that is definitely the first place that we should go for that. A half a million dollar project that's funded partially by grant money could be completely funded if we use the CPA money. And that would be a benefit to the community since that has passed. And I hope that will happen.
[Cheryl Rodriguez]: Hi, I'm Cheryl Rodriguez. I live at 281 Park Street. I'm very close to the Roberts Elementary School, which is also a heavy flyover area. We get a lot of loud traffic. And I want to echo Councilor Falco that we definitely need to keep up the complaints. They do factor those in. And because we were absent for so long, other towns mitigation is our increased suffering. The runway is actually not slated to be completed. completely finished until November. They expect it to open partially. That's what I read on their website as well as when I spoke to someone on the phone there. So this noise isn't going to go away when the runway opens anyway. The altitude is not going to increase when the runway opens. I'm clocking planes between 1,000 and 1,500 feet coming over my house as late as 3 in the morning. It's very loud. My house is shaking. Don't put anything on the edge of a shelf or you're going to find it on the floor. So this is a very serious issue for us. And I hope that we know exactly where the loudest parts are and the noise monitors are placed there. Because if they do give mitigation to the city, They'll do it on a very narrow corridor. They'll do it on very specific streets and addresses. So if a neighborhood that is greatly impacted doesn't have a noise monitor, they may lose out on mitigation if there's not a monitor close enough to them. So that's a really important factor for us. I did price out triple pane windows, which will reduce the noise, and they will run $8,000 to $16,000, and that's just to add a third pane. to your existing windows because I did have all of my windows double pane replaced three years ago and I'm told that that is not enough by Massport to reduce the sound and that we would also have to get special soundproofing caulking so it could run up to $40,000 to make your house 75% quieter, and running noise machines all night. My daughter's neurologist, my nine-year-old daughter, has said it's not good for your brain to not have time to rest at night. So this is a serious issue that I hope will be greatly considered and we can get some action. I did meet Pat Jalen on Salem Street a couple of weeks ago and we stood and watched the planes flying across Salem Street for about 10 minutes and it was insane. Thank you.
[Cheryl Rodriguez]: Hi, I'm Cheryl Rodriguez. I live at 281 Park Street. Our street was the fortunate benefactor of about 13 years ago. We actually did get our street paid, so yay us. We have the school on our street. I'm very happy about that. But I really hope that a million dollars is put into the budget for street paving because it's nice to have ribbon cuttings, it's nice to add nice-to-haves to the city and beautiful parks and things, but we need the roads. The roads are what we use every single day. Every citizen in Medford wants the roads being repaired. My parents did have the cutouts done on their street, but they ran out of the asphalt halfway down and the rest of the street wasn't repaired properly. and serious disrepair. And anyone who knows any street know they're off in the heights yesterday and I couldn't believe some of them. I was actually speaking to people earlier that it's like the surface. So I really hope that some attention is given to our roads. This is a quality of life issue. Thank you. Thank you.
[Cheryl Rodriguez]: Yes.
[Cheryl Rodriguez]: Hi, Cheryl Rodriguez, 281 Park Street. Just real quick, if you're gonna be testing for debris.
[Cheryl Rodriguez]: I'm just responding to the comment. I'm just responding to the comment, it'll be 30 seconds or less. If you can have Alicia Hunt contact me, the back of my house is covered in black soot from plane debris, and if they wanna test that and find out what it is, That'd be great.
[Cheryl Rodriguez]: Hi, I'm Cheryl Rodriguez from 281 Park Street, and I'm just here to promote the Medford Citywide Yard Sale. This is a great eco-friendly fundraiser that will have no negative effects on the city. I got the idea from running the Roberts Elementary Yard Sale. We've run four of them, and each time we've raised $1,000 for enrichment in the schools. So I thought that citywide would be great. We pay for trash, so why throw things out that are still good that others can use? So the plan is on June 10th, People will register ahead of time for $25, and your address will appear on a citywide map. If you don't have a yard, then you can sell at the Condon Shell. So we'll have tables set up there. We have the shell reserved. And people will shop around to all the different yard sales. And it'll be great, because the money will go towards the Friends of Felsmere Heights. Anyone that doesn't know what the Friends of Felsmere Heights is, They approached me after they found me involved with the 61 Locust Street development and the working to right-size the Breakpro project. So we share a common goal of stopping overdevelopment that they think will be detrimental to the quality of life. They want to work with Medford and Malden officials to purchase the Malden Hospital property and return the majority of the land to Parkland with an appropriate size development. The purchase would be made with a combination of CPA funds, grants, as well as donations and fundraisers such as this. So this project, if that project went through, it would have a seriously negative effect on the Fulton Heights area. So it's very relevant to Medford residents to try to move this project forward and stop that area from being overdeveloped. Because several hundred more cars coming down Fulton Spring and Fulton Street would be very detrimental to the quality of life of Medford residents. So this group has also generously agreed to split their proceeds with the abutters for the 61 Locust Street or Old Shaw's project. As residents and myself, I feel it's important to come out and support them in their fight for their neighborhood as well as the rest of our city. Because once there's overdevelopment, overcrowding in our schools, it's going to be too late to turn that back. So we have to be proactive and work hard for that now. So I hope that many of you will join me in registering for this yard sale on June 10th to support our neighborhoods and protect them from overdevelopment. We have a Facebook page, the Medford Citywide Yard Sale Facebook page. We also have an email address, MedfordCityYardSale at gmail.com. So the yard sale will be on June 10th from 9 to 2 and I hope to see many of you there.
[Cheryl Rodriguez]: I don't believe there'll be a reverse 9-1-1. We're going to advertise the event on the billboard, so it'll have our Facebook information so that people can go there for maps. There will be maps available on that day. I'm hoping that there will be some available a little earlier than that, perhaps at the city hall or the library.
[Cheryl Rodriguez]: Hi, I'm Cheryl Rodriguez. I live at 281 Park Street. I did see a couple of versions of the sign that was supposed to close the street down, and residents were going back and forth, and I received a message from a friend asking me if this was a real sign, because people weren't sure if it was a real sign. And if they had to stop parking there at 5 p.m. today till 8 p.m. tomorrow, that was certainly a hardship for people that live in that area. And who wants to try to rearrange your life if it's not a real sign? So I did, in fact, go in person to the mayor's office, and I was helped by Ms. Lauren Felch, who was extremely helpful. She pulled up the flyer, she called the developer, or who she believes was the developer, It was the number on the flyer. It was not a city number and was told that in fact they had gotten all the permissions that they needed and that the home would be being moved tomorrow. And it would be coming in at 7 a.m. She asked him why. People weren't allowed to park there at 5 p.m., and he wasn't sure. When she concluded the call, I asked her if it was possible if she could confirm that there were permissions granted, and if there were permissions, if the city could send out a reverse 911 call, because it was really important that people knew that this really was happening, and this wasn't a sign, a fake sign that had been put up. And Ms. Felch had expressed that a year prior, someone had put up signs that said street cleaning was happening in some neighborhood that were handwritten, And people had moved and it turned out to not be true. So she understood that a lot of people probably wouldn't believe this was a real sign. The last information that I received when she called back after she had called various offices was that the project was halted for now. So anyone that lives in that area can park in that area. They'll be able to go to work in the morning because the house is not being moved now. It's my understanding that this is not the first home that he has moved in this way. So I'm curious to know if he's violating some sort of rule. Is there a department that's supposed to oversee when these homes are being moved, if streets are being closed off? Is safety being factored in? Had this home been moving through the neighborhood at 7 o'clock in the morning, school children would be out and about. People would be trying to go to work. People would be going into their cars to get out of their driveway and find out that they can't leave. And if this has happened before and we didn't know about it shame on us So I hope that you all can look into it and find out what the process is This developer does own two to three more parcels in the city planning on doing similar things to those parcels So it'd be great if he could have a plan From the city on exactly what he is supposed to do step by step before he moves a modular home into our community So that we don't have someone get hurt or miss work or or anything. Thank you.
[Cheryl Rodriguez]: Hi, I'm Cheryl Rodriguez. I live at 281 Park Street. I currently reside under the FAA Airline Highway. The best way for them to reduce the noise complaints was to concentrate the traffic on what they call the Airline Highway. So basically, if you affect less people, you'll get less complaints. I've received several letters in response to my complaints that say, we've concentrated the traffic over your area so that it will affect less people. Well, that's great for them and not so great for me, as my tax bill rolls in and it's exactly the same amount. But I did speak to someone from the soundproofing department at Massport approximately two weeks ago. I called them and asked them some various questions Someone was confused that I spoke to and I ended up speaking to a manager. And what I took away from it was one neighborhood can have one very loud plane come in once a week, just one. In my neighborhood, you can have 40 or 50 planes come in a day. They can be loud, but not as loud as that one plane. The neighbor with the one extremely loud plane may qualify for soundproofing, while my neighborhood may not, because they're not doing it cumulatively. So that's an issue because the past two days I think we had over 100 planes. We had more than 100,000 planes fly over us last year. Our planes fly in at less than 5,000 feet off the ground. Now Milton, who got extensive help from state representatives Their planes fly in at approximately 10,000 square feet, more than double what they're flying over in Medford. And they have had several feature articles in the Globe about how their neighborhoods are suffering. And if anyone saw the two-sentence article that we had in the Globe yesterday, it said, residents get a chance to squawk about airline noise. That was the headline. The next two lines were, apparently it's loud in Medford, according to city officials anyway. come to City Hall at 7 o'clock to hear the meeting. So that's the level of respect that we're getting. And also, Elizabeth Warren is our senator, and she is on a committee that studies the FAA noise. So I encourage people to escalate. and go to your state reps, go to your national senator, get some action, because this is getting worse. But understand that just because it isn't loud in your neighborhood doesn't mean that it isn't loud. They've intentionally concentrated the noise to reduce the complaints. People's homes have shaking. I have things that fall off shelves. I have soot on the back of my home. This is not from traffic. planes flying over my house. My daughter is under treatment in neurology. She's nine years old. She's had severe migraines for three years. She misses more than 20 days of school a year from migraines. She's being followed. She's had medication doubled. She's had medication changed. It's all connected to sleep interruption from the planes that fly over late at night, that start at 5 in the morning, that don't end until midnight. Once in a while, we get a 3 a.m. flyover. This is an issue for people. We need to find some way to get soundproofing or just get them to fly higher. I do not believe that the answer is to disperse the traffic and affect more people. I think that the airlines need to consider that there are people under them and that they're affecting us negatively and keep calling and complaining. But don't stop at just complain to Massport because Massport already knows it's an issue because this is an issue that was intentionally concentrated over specific people. Thank you.
[Cheryl Rodriguez]: Hi, I'm Cheryl Rodriguez. I live at 281 Park Street. And the first thing that everyone says when we talk about Medford is the Medford market is hot. There was an article this Sunday in the Globe about, hey, Medford, move there. That place is great. And Boston Magazine had an article recently about North Medford being great. You know what's great about the city being great already is that we're not desperate. We don't have to sell to the guy who sends you that letter in the mail that says, hey, I'll buy you a house sight unseen for $300,000. Because you know what? There are families with children that want to move to Medford. Because we have a deep history. We have a fabulous community. We have a spirit of volunteerism that is unmatched in other towns. And you know what? Paul Revere rode through here yesterday, and it was a very different Medford. We need to hold on to those pieces of history. Back in the day that I was at Medford High, Dr. Valeriani, AP US History, sent us all out to research our homes, to trace the history. And we went into the tombs of the Cambridge District Court and traced the history. And the home that my childhood home was a beautiful double lot. I won't give the address, because I don't want any developers going and destroying it. When my grandparents moved to Florida, we left the book that I had made in high school that had traced the history all the way back to the shipbuilding days. Because Medford is steeped with history, and it's important to all of us. My parents bought their home, and there were pictures of ships that had been built in the city. And these things are important. These things need to be preserved. I bought my own home here, and I got my own little Medford acre, which is a big yard. And if you add up the square footage, I could probably build four units, but that's not what I want. I want to keep Medford the way that it is. And what we need, we do need to grow and expand, but we don't need to go down the streets and look in people's yards and say, I could put three in there. I could. That's not the kind of building that we're looking for. So I think that you should definitely pass this ordinance to do the 18 to 24 demo display delay, because the fastest way to get a legal opinion back from this administration is to pass something. And that's like, whoa! And then you'll have your answer inside of a week, definitely. And with all due respect, if I put in and I'm looking for information and I don't get follow-up, From the person I sent out to, I'll keep bothering them every two weeks, every month, because August 2016, not having an answer is totally unacceptable. And I understand that people in this administration are busy, but if this is important to us, zoning is important to us.
[Cheryl Rodriguez]: Well, September, that's a big difference. That 30 days, I mean, keep waiting. What are we on, seven months now? I feel like this is important. Every time I go down to the building office and I look through those books, I see demo, demo permit, demo permit, demo permit. This needs to be done now. We don't have time. If you wait six more months to put this in committee, I'm not sure how long that moratorium has been in the committee. I waited, was at a meeting. for your subcommittee and you're waiting for an opinion on that as well. These things are happening and they're happening now. And once these houses are knocked down, they're gone. You can't rebuild. You can't, oh, well, let's rebuild that 1890 house. We never should have knocked it down. It's gonna be too late. So we need to move faster because we don't need any more prefab condos that are going up that cost more than a single family house. And single family houses, people are desperate to get those in this city. So I don't know why we wanna knock them down. Thank you.
[Cheryl Rodriguez]: Hi, I'm Cheryl Rodriguez. I live at 281 Park Street. My street is designated as a main artery. So I think we have the street cleaning is supposed to commence in April and begin end on October 30th. I hope that part of the discussion will include the main arteries, because what we really need on those arteries is enforcement. I, like Councilor Dela Rousseau, get the 1 to 2 a.m. wake-up call, now twice a week for the street cleaners coming in the middle of the night. But I often look out the window and note that even though one night is odd and one night is even, the street cleaner has to go around a car. So if there's no enforcement, then those roads aren't actually getting cleaned, and my husband will go out the next day with the shovel and pick up the debris on the road. broken glass and such, that hasn't been picked up by the street cleaner because someone is parked in front of our house. So that's important as well. Also, when you do the clean sweep in the fall, because street cleaning on the main arteries has ended, we don't get street cleaning after October 30th, so all the leaves are in the streets. And the neighbors will go out and take care of those as well. So if we're not going to have enforcement, then increased street cleaning is not going to work. I know that the police are taxed, but that should be something that is included in the conversation. Because even though we have the signs on our street every 10 to 20 feet, there's a sign that says, move on Wednesday night, move on Thursday night, the cars are not moving and nothing's happening. The street cleaners are just going around them. So that's not really useful for us. I do hope that it will do more street cleaning. My father lives on Garfield Avenue. and he's frequently cleaning out the catch basins because they don't get the regular cleaning. Thank you.
[Cheryl Rodriguez]: Hi, I'm Cheryl Rodriguez, 281 Park Street. I'm a future candidate for the City Council. My involvement in the city came to the public because of development. I had seen the for sale sign on Salem Street at the Break Pro and I started coming into City Hall to see what was happening and accidentally stumbled upon the Locust Street plan. I think a lot of citizens would just really be happy if we knew about these things before they were in the final stage. The Locust Street project, I went to the zoning board meeting. That was pretty much when we saw how this project was going to take place from a supermarket to a 490 unit apartment building, which is now in litigation because they didn't seek community input. The community had no idea that this project was coming to being until Citizens started posting on Facebook and alerting people and encouraging them to come to City Hall and Yahoo groups. If this committee was able to even just let people know that this is coming. I live on Park Street and have lived there for more than a decade and I didn't know that condo development was coming up. at 179 Park Street until it had already started to be built. I had never heard of it. A lot of people that live on my street had no idea that there was even a Salem Street project being discussed because we're not within that 300 feet, even though that will impact us. The parents at the school that is the Roberts Elementary School that is kitty corner to this project didn't know about it until it started to be posted on Facebook. If nothing else, if we can get people to know what is happening, so that we can understand what the downfalls will be, what the benefits will be, the cost analysis, the impact on the schools, the impact on traffic, on parking. These things are all important to us as Medford residents, and we need to know. Just today on Facebook, there's a property that's being listed as a 1,900 unit house, a 1,900 square foot house with three bedrooms and two baths. It's for sale for $1 million. And the listing says, the home and garage are in average to good condition, need updating and rehab work. However, this property is all about the land. The potential to build, Sella does not guarantee this, although any potential buyer should perform due diligence on the potential of this lot. So we're encouraging developers to come and look at this property that's in a single family zoned area and they're telling them that you can probably build several units here. The community needs to be aware of this and we need to be watchful because nobody wants to find out when the ground is being broken on their street because they're outside that 300-foot area, that there's now going to be five families living 10 houses away that may have 10 to 12 more cars that will be on the street because we're giving parking variances. So this is something that's very important to the community as a whole, and I hope that you'll follow up on this. Thank you.
[Cheryl Rodriguez]: Hi, I'm Cheryl Rodriguez. I live at 281 Park Street. And I'm pretty happy to see that this is coming up, because I've spoken here countless times about that we need to follow zoning. But the second part of that is that we also need to look at the zoning that we currently have and see if that zoning is working for us. I pulled out a zoning map of Medford today and I looked around my neighborhood and I saw that all of Salem Street and pretty much every street from Fulton Street to 93 was zoned apartment 1. And as I drove here and took 10 minutes to drive from Park Street to City Hall, which is pretty crazy because it's four blocks, all the traffic, I thought, can we really handle that many apartment buildings? on Salem Street in that area with traffic, with the school that's the largest elementary school in the city, and overcrowded? No, we can't. So we really need to move forward. I know that there is calls for hiring consultants, but that can take a lot of time. Anyone who attended the zoning meeting on the Salem Street project said, well, you know, one apartment building isn't going to do it. But they did have a stack of support letters from people that owned property on Salem Street. that would probably be the next buildings that come up and want to add apartment buildings. So that could be six more buildings in the next year or two, 10 more buildings. Then we'd swing around down Fountain Street and add another 10 or 15 or 20 buildings. And we would cripple that entire side of the city. We would change the dynamic. My parents have lived in that neighborhood for more than 15 years. It's a heavy owner-occupied neighborhood. I live on another side that's also heavily owner-occupied. More than 80% of Medford is owner-occupied. Shifting to more buildings where people are not coming out and talking to their neighbors is really not what Medford is about. And we really need to be cognizant of whether our quality of life is more important than just adding more buildings. Because when you add more buildings, they don't just drop tax money off at the city. They come with infrastructure needs. They come with costs. And do those costs exceed the tax money that we get? Because I know it looks great when it said, look, we got this much more tax money this year. But we really have to factor in our infrastructure costs as we see that we're short police and we're short fire. And I don't believe that these additional tax revenues that we're getting from the Lumiere's or the, I don't even want to say, but the Locust Street that hopefully will never happen, will not exceed the costs that they will add to our city. They'll diminish our quality of life. And we really need to think about that. Thank you.
[Cheryl Rodriguez]: No, that's totally fine. I can do it now. I'm Cheryl Rodriguez at 281 Park Street. And yes, I tried not to say exactly what I was going to say for the petition when I came up earlier. But before I begin, a couple of things. I noticed that Councilor Falco wants to slow down and wait for a consultant. Or no, actually, Councilor Scarpelli slowed slow down. You said to get a consultant. And Councilor Scarpelli said to slow down and get the mayor's opinion. Unfortunately, that doesn't help me. I wrote it down, it's an exact quote.
[Cheryl Rodriguez]: You didn't say to get the administration's opinion? Can we roll the tape back? Absolutely not. Because I wrote it down.
[Cheryl Rodriguez]: OK. So either way, either of those courses is not going to help those of us living in the Salem Street area, because we are currently under siege. The first apartment building is on the block, and the line behind them is stretching all the way from Haines Square to 93, and it's taking a turn down Fountain Street. I can't wait a year. I can't wait six months for a consultant to come in and go, wow, are you crazy? You can't do that. Because there's already going to be six, 10 buildings already approved and ready to go, because it's apartment zoned. And all they have to do is say, we'll do three stories, and they're good to go. Because that's what the zoning says. This is an emergency. This needs to happen now. The Roberts Elementary School currently has 569 children. And just to put that into perspective, more than 100 of those students are ELL students that require extra services. So while the schools are built to hold 600 students, they are not built to hold 600 students where 100 of them need extra services in this and 50 of them need extra services in that, because those are extra spaces. So this is extremely important to me as I have a third grader in that school. and the largest third grade in the entire city at five classes and more than 100 students, just in the third grade, not including the ELL, not including the inclusion classes. So this is very important to me. This is very personal. but just to get back. So I think that we really need to consider this before we think about waiting for a consultant. This is one of the most important things that the city council's in charge of is zoning. And when zoning is going well, zoning is virtually invisible. For years, the zoning in Medford was virtually invisible. A lot of people went in and they got their decks and they added their extra parking spaces, but all of a sudden, some developers noticed a hole and they came in and they're trying to fill us in. And so now we're paying attention. So we need to look realistically at what these neighborhoods can handle. When we saw the traffic loads at the meeting that I attended for Salem Street, they recorded more than 1,000 cars per hour going down Salem Street. Think about that. That's a lot of cars. A lot of times that traffic is backed up. I tried to get to Haines Square over the weekend and the traffic was backed up almost to the Rotary at 93 on just a random Saturday. The zoning there calls for apartment buildings. Those apartment buildings can be three stories high and probably between 12 to 15 units. Imagine them on every plot on Salem Street and the street would just be closed. The neighborhood would be decimated. That is what the zoning intends for that area as a whole. And that may have been true when they created that zoning. It's no longer true. It's emergent that this council act to change that zoning. to a more appropriate scenario. What that scenario is, I can't say, but I can say that it's not apartments up and down Salem Street. We also need to consider the load of those additional residents on our infrastructure. Our police and our fire are understaffed. Our DPW is understaffed. So we really need to consider the quality of life also of people that are living in those areas. What are their expectations when they moved in? Because if you look at Salem Street, most of those buildings are one story. There are some two family houses mixed in. There's a couple of apartment buildings. More of them are closer to 93. These are not areas that we think of as high concentrated residences. basically trying to overcrowd this side of the city if we now target this street to suddenly enact the apartment one zoning. We need to consider, when we keep the zoning, if our infrastructure needs can meet the expanding population that this zoning allows. I would say no. We can't support it. We're not gonna suddenly be able to add one, five, 10% to our population and be able to have enough police and fire to support that. We know that it takes several months to train police and fire, but it also takes tax dollars. While we heard that these new buildings will bring 100,000, or I think Locust Street said they were going to bring a million dollars in new tax revenue, 490 families would bring in an incredible amount of additional needs on the city. even if they just had a small 10% children, that's almost 50 children added to the school system. Can our school system handle that burden? Can our budget handle the additional costs of those students? So I urge you to immediately look at all the streets that are zoned apartment one. Salem Street's not the only street. Fountain Street's not the only street. I'm sure there are pockets in other parts of the city. My map is pretty hard to read out the street names, so I could only pick out the ones that I recognize. This is coming and this isn't just something that is going to maybe happen. This is something that is actively happening. People are watching to see if this project at the old break pro is going to be approved. And while it's great to see something different there as opposed to an abandoned building, we have to consider if the street can handle the load of buildings up and down the street. So I hope that you will take this seriously and responsibly try to change this zoning as quickly as possible before it's too late. Because once those buildings are constructed and sitting on those sites, once those children are going up to the high school to enroll in our schools, it's too late. Thank you.
[Cheryl Rodriguez]: I'll yield.
[Cheryl Rodriguez]: Cheryl Rodriguez, 281 Park Street in Medford. So I've heard a lot of people talking about the combined facility would be $38 million. We heard at the debates that they got $10 million in Malden for their police station, and that this administration didn't apply for any because of time restrictions. But if they had gotten $10 million for the facility, that would have brought our costs down to $28 million, which would be only $6 million more than they were talking about for just building a police station. when we still have a fire station that will be looming over our heads waiting. Do we have any assurances that there'll be time to file for grants for the fire station or are we just going to pay full price for that one too? Because I heard that they're very concerned about us as taxpayers having to shoulder these bills. I haven't heard of any grant applications going out to help us to offset these bills. I've seen grants for libraries. I've seen grants for renovating sidewalks. Yes, we're renovating sidewalks at a cost to the taxpayer of a quarter of a million dollars. So I would encourage, strongly encourage, and I hope that other people do encourage the administration to go after these grants because we just left $10 million on the table for the police station at a minimum. Perhaps there were more grants if we combined a police and fire station. And we could be having a ribbon cutting or a shoveling for a combined police and fire station.
[Cheryl Rodriguez]: When we had the debates, there was a Malden city councilor who was overseeing it at the high school. That was in Malden. And he said that in Malden, they got $9.8 million for their police station. So we know that the mayor is aware of these grants because she was present at the stage and clapped vigorously at the grants that he received. And I would have assumed that a phone call to the mayor would have yielded details. I'm not the mayor. Had I made the phone call, it wouldn't have had any effect on this process. I'm more than happy to make the phone call and call the mayor's office and let her know what the grants are. But What we need to do now is since we're clearly going to go forward on just a police station, before the fire tower is knocked down, a new location should be picked for that fire tower. Money should be allocated for that fire tower. The firefighters should be confident that in conjunction with their tower being torn down, a new one will be placed. They shouldn't wait until 2023 or 2024. or 2022 or whenever to get their tower. They should get their tower immediately because as we're told, our insurance rates will go up if they don't have a tower because they'll not be able to do training here. And we also need to figure out where they're going to store their equipment because the very idea of the police, the fire chief thinking that he has to auction off equipment because he has nowhere to store it is chilling and upsetting to me as a taxpayer. And I, I saw the reaction on some of the councilors' faces, and it was upsetting to them as well. And that's something that would have been addressed had these meetings not taken place behind closed doors with a handful of people who all nodded in unison because they agreed with what was happening. We need diverse voices at the table so that multiple layered conversations can take place. And these things don't come upon us at the last minute. So I encourage the administration to invite people to the table who will give her different ideas, and not just ideas that agree with hers. That's very important to any administration, and I encourage a future administration in Medford to do the same. Thank you.
[Cheryl Rodriguez]: Hi, I'm Cheryl Rodriguez. I live at 281 Park Street. I must say that I think the biggest concern that I have is that when I showed up at this meeting, there were A lot of police and fire here who had questions that they wanted answers to. A lot of us had questions. I was here at the meeting last week and nobody knew anything about this announcement. It's pretty upsetting to hear that when I voted in November of 2015, I selected a mayoral candidate. I selected city councilors and I expected that they would all work together. Both mayoral candidates said that they wanted to run the city open and transparent. So either person who won should have been in a position to go to our city council and have these conversations about the police station. To hear that a text message was sent out that said, hey, show up at this place and I have a great announcement. It's pretty upsetting. That's not how the city is supposed to run. As a citizen, I don't expect to be apprised of everything happening in the city, but I do hope that my city council is involved in big decisions such as this. And to find out that the fire station, the fire department still doesn't know exactly what's going to happen for them with their training tower. And you're being asked to approve $2 million in funding for an architectural study, that the fire station also needs to be repaired. There's only so much money in the city. And if we're going to undertake a huge project on this site, then we need to make sure it's the best possible project for our city and for all of our public safety. I just think that If you don't have the answers to the questions, then this isn't the time to vote for it. You should definitely pursue a combination of police and fire and get the best that we can for all of these hardworking men and women who are keeping us safe. Thank you.
[Cheryl Rodriguez]: Hi, Cheryl Rodriguez. I live at 281 Park Street. I'm glad that we're finally talking about perhaps moving the Board of Appeals meeting. Because this council has such a heavy burden of maintaining our zoning ordinances, it's really important that you're able to attend these meetings at some point. So a Wednesday meeting, or perhaps let the board choose a day that works for them. The next meeting that will have a large crowd will be the Salem Street Development meeting. That is already being held on a Wednesday, on March 8. Perhaps it would be a wonderful time to test out this room, because anyone who's attended any of these ZBA meetings knows that a developer presentation runs in excess of an hour, where they show you pictures of everything from shrubs to fitness equipment to present their entire project from the ground up. And that room is very small. Saying that 20 people fit in it is is an exaggeration. It really doesn't fit that many people. So I'd like to see, since this is probably one of the most important boards in the city as far as shaping the city, these meetings be brought out into the public, be televised, or at least be in a room that's large enough for all of us to know, and perhaps if we can get those agendas online so that people know that these meetings are coming up, because this is very important. Thank you.
[Cheryl Rodriguez]: Name and address for the record. Hi, Cheryl Rodriguez. I live at 281 Park Street. It seems that we have a lot of issues with Park Medford. I know that when we first installed it, we couldn't read the screens. We had a lot of broken meters. We were supposed to have free Saturdays in December and the meters were taking money. The meters were taking money at seven and eight o'clock at night. Those are all contract breaches. So everyone says we can't take out the meters because it'd be a breach of contract and we'd have to pay a million dollars to have the meters taken out. But is there a point that Park Medford is breaching the contract and we can get out? I feel like there are more negatives to Park Medford than positives. As someone else said, when you go down to Haynes Square, it's a ghost town. I talk to people that I used to meet for coffee at the Dunkin' Donuts down there and they say, let's go somewhere where we don't have to pay to park because it's just not worth it to pay and linger over a cup of coffee and have to worry about the meter. So, I mean, this is definitely hurting our businesses. It's hurting our citizens. If all you have to do is go on Facebook to see people talking about, let's not go there, let's not go there. And I really would like to see the opinion from the city solicitor on whether we can break this contract because of all the problems that we've had. Because I think that if we want meters that maybe this isn't the way to go and we need to look at it again. Thank you.
[Cheryl Rodriguez]: just real briefly show Rodriguez 21 Park Street. Um, it's, it sounds like an interesting idea and I hope that it will go hand in hand with possible blight tax for the many businesses buildings that are remaining vacant for years on end for tax purposes. That's how we should fund this. And hopefully the project will go bankrupt quickly as these businesses learn that it's not beneficial to remain empty and the square and the surrounding areas can become vibrant and wonderful and Medford can blossom. Thank you.
[Cheryl Rodriguez]: Hi, my name is Cheryl Rodriguez. I live at 281 Park Street, so I'm fairly close to the project that we're discussing. I'm going to, pardon me as I'm going to read, but I think that the city council has a lot more control over zoning today than they actually believe. According to the Massachusetts law, chapter 40, section 10 on titled ordinances, the permit granting authority, which in our case is the ZBA has the power to have a hearing. And I'll skip through a little bit after they notify all in to right. such permaculture owing to circumstances, so they're only supposed to give us circumstances, variances for circumstances relating to soil conditions, shape, or topography of such land or structures. and especially affecting such land or structures, but not affecting generally the zoning district in which is located. A literal enforcement of the provisions of the ordinance or bylaw would involve substantial hardship, financial or otherwise, to the petitioner or appellate, and that desirable relief may be granted without substantial detriment to the public good, and without nullifying or substantially derogating from the intent or purpose of the ordinance. So, Right now, that's not how our variances are being granted. As you can see, this parcel is fairly rectangular in shape, so the topography is okay. He's allowed to build three levels. There's a reason why we have space around people's houses, because somebody else's house shouldn't be in the shadow of a building. It has to be not developer-centric. It has to be people-centric. So I encourage people to come to these meetings because this is happening now on Salem Street. I was at the same meeting where the developer told us he was encouraged by the administration. He said that he was told that they were hoping to build 10 to 12 buildings on Salem Street. So this isn't just one building. So imagine if we built 10 to 12 buildings, each with 21 units. We're talking about an addition of 210 to approximately 250 units on the overcrowded Salem Street. The surrounding streets in this area are so overcrowded with cars. They're coming in and they're looking for residential parking permits. Everett Street has residential parking. Parts of Tainter have residential parking. Court Street has parking on one side. Park Street at that location has parking on one side. There's a school that's the largest in the entire city, elementary school. It doesn't have room for any more children. So at some point, we have to start considering that These variants being granted are not for the good of the city they're only for the good of the developer. The developer who will cash his check and walk away and leave us hanging on trying to figure out how we're going to cover the extra infrastructure costs that have suddenly been thrust upon us as these people are welcome if they follow zoning. But we can't just keep overbuilding and pretending that the infrastructure costs aren't real, that the cost to people's quality of life aren't real, because they are. So I hope people will come tomorrow to the community development meeting at 6.30, and most importantly, come to the zoning board meeting next Tuesday at 7 p.m. Thank you.
[Cheryl Rodriguez]: Hi, just one quick point. Cheryl Rodriguez, 281 Park Street. Just talking about lighting, I'm hoping that we're gonna have some softer LED lighting for the neighborhoods, that we're not gonna have the harsh lights of the square in people's residential areas, just something to consider, we don't wanna add noise pollution to the neighborhoods.
[Cheryl Rodriguez]: So today I'm here to ask for support and help for the Roberts PTO's grant application to the Community Preservation Commission for the restoration of our school playground. The Roberts Elementary School is one of the most populous elementary schools in Medford and our playground, as are all the elementary school playgrounds, is in need of replacement. The worst item in all our playgrounds seems to be the surfacing. So I applied for this grant for a few reasons. One was that I saw the mayor's capital improvement plan at a city council meeting and it included line items to replace one school playground per year, which is great. And I thought if we coupled it with community preservation money, we could replace two playgrounds per year and everyone could have a new playground in two to three years. So that would be about 2,400 students in our elementary schools that would all have a shiny new playground to play in. So that benefit would radiate out through the neighborhood that each school is in because it will allow their family members of the students to enjoy the playgrounds as well as people that just live in the neighborhood. We've gone through the eligibility phase and we now have to prepare a complete application. So we don't know exactly how much it's going to cost and we need help from the district in order to figure out the parameters of what you'll require, companies that we have to go through. This is outside of my scope of expertise as well as my authority as a parent volunteer at the Roberts Elementary School. We were able to apply with a supporting letter from the principal at our school. But in order to go forward, we need approval and help from the school committee and the district. So I'm hoping that we're going to be able to do that. The application needs to be submitted by March 2nd. I'm hoping that we'll make it through the first round because that will allow for completion to happen in the summer when the students are not in school so that they won't have any interrupted recess time and they'll be able to start September with a shiny new playground. If we do receive community preservation funds, there are other grants that we can apply for to help supplement, but we're not eligible to apply for those grants until we receive funding from the community preservation. I'm hoping that you guys can help me out. That's pretty much why I'm here.
[Cheryl Rodriguez]: Hi, I'm Cheryl Rodriguez again, 281 Park Street. I am an active member of my PTO. No one personally approached me, but I can tell you that my PTO sends constant flyers. They have events almost monthly. Every PTO does this. We have Facebook pages. Some of us have Twitter accounts. We make every effort to have people join. I'm not a board member on a PTO. I went to a PTO meeting and I raised my hand and volunteered, I've added programming to my PTO on a voluntary basis and people do the best that they can. I've gone to meetings where there's been three people and I know for a fact that a flyer's gone out, that a flyer's been on the window at the school, that we've posted it on our Facebook page and there's three people there. And that's not because we're not engaging our community, because we have signs up at every event that things are going on. We send out emails. There's only so much that you can do, but you have to be realistic. When I had my first child, I worked full time and I did not volunteer at the PTO. I did not have the time or the bandwidth. I'm lucky now that I can and I do, and I appreciate that a lot of people are not able to do that, and I don't think that we should be disparaging people on either side. People that do have the time to volunteer, great. People that don't, you know, that's fine too. We're here for all of the children. We do fundraising for every child. all the schools and we're not singling out and go oh Johnny's mother didn't help so he doesn't get a t-shirt on field day. So I think we need to remember that and I hope that some of your recommendations will include ways to help some of our PTOs. Especially those of us that are in high needs districts, high needs areas where our parents do work two jobs or our parents don't speak English. are they have special needs children they have to attend to or they have three or four children and packing those kids up and coming to a PTO meeting is impossible. We even tried to do our meetings on Facebook live and it didn't it didn't increase our attendance. So we're all doing the best that we can and I hope that The district is able to help us because from year to year, some PTOs find that it's really hard for them to afford that $8,000 to $10,000 that we need for the buses or that field day event or that in-school enrichment and we do the best that we can. Sometimes you run a fundraiser and you think you're going to make $1,000 and you make $500 and you have to add another fundraiser on the fly because you're not going to cover those bills at the end of the year. Thanks.
[Cheryl Rodriguez]: Hi, I'm Cheryl Rodriguez, 281 Park Street. I just wanted to come up with, everyone has mentioned development. Of course, I'm gonna mention development as well. But the thing is that all the new developers that come into the city commission the traffic study. For their area, all the traffic studies come out the same, nobody has cars, and there's going to be no increase in traffic. But what they don't tell us is that as a city, we are allowed to turn to that developer and ask them to pay for a traffic study, our own independent traffic study, to determine if that is actually true. And that's something that we should definitely be exercising. I believe Malden was planning to ask the Malden Hospital to pay for a traffic study for them. I know that in the meeting that you all had, the ad hoc committee meeting, you did say that that was a possibility of asking Malden Hospital to pay. for traffic study for us. And MPAC right now is doing their grant and they're suggesting changing three of the streets in the square possibly to being two-way streets. So I imagine they must have gotten a traffic study. So there's a lot of things going on that perhaps we need to get involved in because the piecemeal approach isn't working. I'd hate to see Salem Street, Riverside, Clippership all of a sudden be two-way streets. because they think that's going to be better for the square. And then it trickles out into all the other areas and makes everything else worse. So that's just the big thing is that if things are going on, we should attach ourselves to them. If there is money available from developers, maybe we should be, if we're not immediately doing that study, should be asking for it to be put into a fund for the study. That will happen at some point. So just going forward.
[Cheryl Rodriguez]: Hi, Cheryl Rodriguez, 281 Park Street. I submitted this petition because I find that finding information about what's going on at the Zoning Board of Appeals prior to the meeting is Fairly difficult. I originally found out about the local street project by accident. I happened to see an email that someone had sent saying that there was a hearing amongst. It was a 490 residential unit building as well as, you know, someone trying to add onto their driveway. So it was just thrown in there. I've been back and forth through city hall and trying to find different ways to find out what the agenda, when the agenda will be posted. Is there a way I can get it emailed to me? Is, is there any way that people can really find out other than I heard it's in the paper, but that's not really working out for everyone. But so I think that the best thing to do is since the city council controls the zoning, it would be great if we do not control the zone while you control the zoning ordinances. That would be great if you could draw our attention to the ZBA hearings before they're happening, because a lot of people don't know. And we're chasing these things after they're happening. We currently have four lawsuits for one development, because we're chasing it after it happened, as opposed to having, if we had had 200 or 300 people show up at that hearing, maybe we wouldn't be doing this. I just think that if we want more people to get involved, to make it easier for them to know what's actually happening. A lot of people do watch this meeting, people, and people want to know what's happening. So I think we also need to focus on the fact that variances are supposed to be rare, and they're supposed to be good and sufficient cause, according to the Massachusetts Chapter 40, Section 10 laws. So, we really need to work on making sure that we're not victimizing the public, as it says in the law, and conflicting with our local laws and ordinances when we're granting these. So, the next meeting that's coming up is January 25th. It's at 630. It's a community development meeting. It's on the project on Salem Street at the Break Pro. They've also bought the abutters property to increase their chances of having this passed. They've also not shoveled their snow. So, they're very good neighbors. The following Tuesday will be the ZBA meeting on this project. I encourage anyone who's concerned about a project so close to the Roberts elementary school, which is, um, past capacity that this four level building could possibly eclipse their sunlight earlier than it currently is now at one o'clock. The school building obstructs the sunlight in the playground and makes it shaded and colder for the children. So, We need to try to make these people follow our zoning laws, and I hope the City Council will take the lead on keeping distances from buildings, on keeping height, because it's in the best interest of the community. We're talking about traffic studies, additional cars. We're talking about parking issues. The streets in that area are permanent only because of traffic issues, car parking that is not available. So all these things are things that we can do to help ease these transitions. uh, butters know about these things ahead of time, not just the butters, but people that live in the neighborhood that will be affected by these projects. Then we can get ahead of it. We'll get a more active community. We'll get that open, transparent government that everyone campaigned on last year and we can all try to make Medford a better place to live. Thank you.
[Cheryl Rodriguez]: Hi, I'm shower Rodriguez. I live at 281 Park street. Um, Variances are a very interesting thing in the city of Medford. Anyone who's tried to add a deck, a shed, or anything onto their house knows that it can be quite expensive to get a variance, quite timely, and oftentimes you're refused. But what I've noticed in the trend of attending meetings for the past seven months is that if you're a developer, and you want to come in and change the entire shape of a property and build something completely different, tear down a supermarket and put 490 units, that project will glide through fairly easy. And that's not right. Variances are supposed to be very difficult to get. There's supposed to be a demonstrated hardship before variance is granted. You're not just supposed to say, Well, I'll make less money if I don't do it this way. That's not a hardship. That's not how a variance is supposed to be granted. These variances are flying out right now on Salem Street where we're looking at break pro is going to be turned and they want to build two floors over over what they're allowed to build and their reason for it is because they want to make more money. There's no reason that there's a problem with the property that they need to build higher. They just want variances. It's not just use variances. It's lots of variances. If you go to the planning meetings for the square, you'll hear, we want mixed use. We want lots of residential. They want to change the use of the square. But if you hear the people when they invite us and ask us what we want, we're not asking for that. We're not saying, well, what we really need is, you know, 2,000 more students in our schools. You know, the second grade at the Roberts was closed this year because the class sizes reached 25. The third grade has five classes, and their classes are over 20, 22, 23 per class, because the balance of the building is happening on the east side of town. So any talk about zoning needs to include, is one side getting hammered? Yes, we have the 200 going on Middle Six Avenue, not a small project, 200 condos. We have potentially, 490 on Lucas Street. We have 324 opening up right near Wellington. All of those people will siphon into those streets. They'll siphon into the Roberts. They'll siphon into the McGlynn, and those schools can't take it. while we look at the other side of town with class sizes of 16 and 17, and we add them together and say, oh, the average is under 20. It's not. We really need to look at what's happening here. We also need to balance our commercial and our residential properties. We can't keep turning our commercial into residential. The cost of a residence is far more than the cost of commercial to our infrastructure. You'll never, ever see Hallmark Health send a student to our elementary school. you will definitely see that happen out of a residential. So we really need to look at not only our uses, but also why are we granting variances so easily? I think the only thing I saw that failed in the past seven months was the project on Salem Street and Haynes Square where he was proposing building units on top of a storefront with zero parking and said that they could use the street or stop and shop and that was turned down. But other projects are pushing through. without concern for the neighbors around. If the Salem Street project pushes through, the Roberts Elementary School schoolyard will not see the sun in the winter. Because right now, their own building is four stories, and by one o'clock, there's no more sun. That building will be at least one floor higher, and it will cast us into shadow by probably about 11 a.m. The children will be out in recess, in shadow. It's not just about what the mayor wants. I think if you go out and talk to the people, you're going to find that the density is hurting some of us. Thank you.
[Cheryl Rodriguez]: Hi, I'm Cheryl Rodriguez 281 Park Street. This project sounds exactly like the type of project that we were discussing last year when the election, when we passed the CPA. This was supposed to be so that we wouldn't have to take money out of the general funds and put off things that the city needed because we had this special account that was just for projects like this. And a year later, we're still waiting on that CPA ordinance and we're still waiting on that commission to be drafted.
[Cheryl Rodriguez]: It's been drafted in the past. OK, and we're waiting on the commission. And this project shouldn't take a dollar out of our general money. It should come right out of the CPA funds. We've already paid those funds in. And if this is the project that we want to spend the money on, then that's where the money should come. We have to be leery of some of these grants. I do apply for grants as part of my PTO at my daughter's elementary school. And I've seen grants that look great and say, we're going to give you $60,000, and you can put new playground equipment on your school. But you have to provide $150,000 for surfacing and leveling. And then I say, whoa, we can't do that because we don't have that kind of money. That's something that we need to look at here. Grants are great, but we can't afford all of them. And we have to be choosy. And if we have a fund that's sitting there ripe for projects like this, then that's something we should tap into. Is that something that we can retroactively tap into here? Or is that just money that's going to come out of the general fund and it's just gone?
[Cheryl Rodriguez]: Thank you.
[Cheryl Rodriguez]: We'll also have the Mustang mall will be there to sell their wares. The vocational school is planning to bake some cookies. So there'll be some other tables. The Mackey is planning to have tables there for your last minute holiday needs. So it's really just a community outpouring. We're hoping to see a lot of people there and make this an annual event. Great.
[Cheryl Rodriguez]: And the tickets will be on Eventbrite, and it's Medford Polar is our Facebook page if you want more information. Thank you.
[Cheryl Rodriguez]: Thank you, ladies.
[Cheryl Rodriguez]: Hi, my name is Cheryl Rodriguez. I live at 281 Park Street. My family also saw the lights by the dumpster this weekend. So I'm grateful that it was posted on Facebook. I know that the mayor's office received a lot of calls on Monday morning. So I just want to say that I'm glad the tradition lives on. My daughter will be 21 next year and every year. She'll be 21 tomorrow, actually. Amazing but and every year we've come out to see these lights. These are a source of pride to people that live in the city and Change is great. But sometimes we have to hold on to tradition They're at Hormel and were put up rather quickly from dumpster to Hormel But we're very grateful that they are not going to find their way into the trash and we hope that next year that we'll be able to place them in a more prominent position so that more people will be able to enjoy them and So, thank you and happy holidays. Thanks.
[Cheryl Rodriguez]: That's okay. I guess I want to ask a question to the chair. I don't believe that there actually is a button to push in the middle of the road. So if you get stuck on the island and run out of time, I think you're stuck on the island. I just wanted to throw that out there, but I don't believe there is a button in the middle.
[Cheryl Rodriguez]: I'm also hoping that if they wish to get out of the crossing guard business, that maybe we'll consider getting in the crossing guard business.
[Cheryl Rodriguez]: Hi, my name is Cheryl Rodriguez. I live at 281 Park Street and I'm glad that this issue is coming out, but I think what's really important is we don't have the mass support community advisory committee person. So when they do meet, They ask everyone who's there, I would assume, are you suffering from noise? And if no one from Medford raises their hand, then when they give mitigation to others, they'll give punishment to us. So we need to be really on top of this because I've followed this since they changed the traffic. over two years ago now, and Milton was the first one at the charge that complained. Now, they're very close to the airport, because I hear a lot of complaints from the city that, oh, it's OK, we're in the city, and that's the price of living in the city is airplane noise. Milton is closer than we are to the airport. Their lowest plane is 6,000 feet. Our lowest plane is 2,500 feet. So they have already gotten it raised. When the initial findings came out, their planes were supposed to be at 5,000 feet, and they complained. and they were elevated to 6,000 feet. So the big question is, how come they can go to 6,000 feet there, but we can't even hit 5,000 here? So we really need to start complaining. And if nobody wants to go to that meeting on December 1st, I would love to attend that meeting, because my daughter is on daily medication from the plane noise. Last night as we laid in bed at 11.30 at night, we got a symphony of planes that lasted for approximately one hour. We're tired. We would like the planes to be quiet. We're tired of it being our turn. We're tired of the 6 a.m. wake-up calls. We're tired of the 60 to 90-second intervals of the low-flying planes. And we need somebody that's going to beat the drum for us. And they need to beat it loudly. I really encourage somebody to go. As many people as can go, let's send all those people there. Let's try and tell them that, you know, Medford isn't the dumping ground. We are the pivot point for these planes. These planes fly over Medford, they accelerate, and they turn onto other areas. Where do they turn? They turn to Belmont. So Belmont gets a fraction of the planes that fly over Medford. They turn to Watertown. They turn to all these towns that are going in and complaining. So we're getting nine, ten times the amount of planes that they're getting and we're just saying that's all right because this is the price of living in the city. It's not the price of living in the city. I'm not willing to give you my quality of life because I live in the city. So somebody needs to stand up for us. Thank you.
[Cheryl Rodriguez]: Hi, I'm Cheryl Rodriguez. I live at 281 Park street. My daughter attends the Roberts elementary. I was part of the first parent group that helped to deal with the drop off patterns. I didn't get everything that I wanted, but I did get some of the things. Um, I'm back because I think that some of the places that we went wrong, we should probably include parents in this as well, this meeting, because we're the ones that are dropping off the kids. I know a lot of the parents that have to drop off on the street now are concerned that they're not able to go into the loop anymore. We do have the sawhorses at either side of the parking lot, but it's big enough that people can go around and people are using it as a cut-through. The kindergartners have to be brought in hand into the school and so that's over 100 parents that are dropping off every morning and picking up every afternoon. So I'm hopeful that if we do do something we can notify the neighbors because like I said I do live on Park Street and I see my neighbors backing out of their driveways in the morning. and off until close to 840, the traffic is backed up to the Fellsway, and they're not aware that we had a meeting to discuss having the street be one way towards Salem, so they try to duck and play a little Tetris game to get down the street to get to the Fellsway because they were not made aware of that pattern. So it's really not useful if we're not notifying anyone around. The crossing guard will turn her back and someone will take a right down park. I do encourage anything that we do not only go to the parents but also to the neighbours. So thank you for putting that forward.
[Cheryl Rodriguez]: Hello, I'm Cheryl Rodriguez. I live at 281 Park Street. Thank you for following up on that with the DCR. I just spoke to Matt myself this morning and expressed my concerns that the evaluation is happening when there are two no-school days. It's also happening with the Veterans Day holidays, so the commuters will probably be less likely to be crossing the street. It's also mid-November, it's cold, Mae'r ysgolion ymdrechion yn gwybod bod llawer mwy o farchodau'n cael eu drifo i'r ysgol yn ystod y mlynedd hyn, oherwydd mae'n glir. Mae llawer o'r teuluoedd rydw i wedi sôn amdanyn nhw, gan gynnwys fy hun, yn ymddangos nad ydyn nhw'n ychwanegu'r strwyd hwnnw oherwydd mae'n bwysig. Mae fy nhwyrwyr gwella yn byw ar y ddod o'r strwyd hwnnw ac rydw i ddim yn mynd iddyn nhw. y byddwn yn ymwneud â'r adroddiadau sy'n ymwneud â'r adroddiadau oherwydd mae yna fwyaf o fuddsoddiadwyr, oherwydd nad ydyn nhw'n teimlo'n sicr i'w drosodd yno, er enghraifft, pan roedden ni'n gweithio'n ddiweddarau, roedden nhw'n siŵr ei fod wedi'u gweithio i'r llyfrgellau, ond roedden nhw'n rhaid iddyn nhw'n gweithio ar y ffordd Fulton a Fellsway, oherwydd mae'r llyfrgell wedi'i golygu ar 14 eiliadau. Mae'n ffyrdd gweithredol. Felly mae hynny'n eithaf anhygoel. Rwy'n gwybod bod John Falco wedi'i ysgrifennu ynghylch y yn ystod y cyfnod cyntaf. Felly, rwy'n gobeithio y byddai Matt wedi sylweddoli efallai y byddai'r cynllun hwn yn gallu ysgrifennu llythyr i'w gynhyrchu gyda'n perthynasau. Mae'n ddigon iawn y bydd mwy o fudurwyr yn ymwneud â nhw. Mae'n ddiwrnod ysbrydol, ac mae'r bobl yn ymwneud â'r ffyrdd oherwydd ei fod yn ddim yn ddiogel.
[Cheryl Rodriguez]: Hi, I'm Cheryl Rodriguez. I live at 21 Park Street, which I created a Facebook tag this weekend called Logan Airport Medford. Because the planes are especially loud after the 11 p.m. hour, between 11 and about 1140, we get planes in about one to one and a half minute intervals. We also get the 6 a.m. wake-up. This is probably the sixth day in a row that we've had both those times as well as the during the day times. When I pick my daughter up at school at the Roberts, which is on Park Street as well, conversations often cease as a plane flies overhead quite low. We all look up, see the windows of the plane. Some of the kids wave. It's very low. It's very loud. It's intense. My daughter has migraines. She's going back to the doctor in two weeks. to have her medication increased that they believe was started because of the planes. I'm experiencing headaches and issues. Sleep interruption is serious, and in a prolonged amount of time, it can really lead to health issues. And we need relief. The other towns are rallying and complaining, and we really need a better format than that form online that you fill in and say what time it's loud, and they send you a letter that says, Well, there's an airport. That's not really an answer. I would love to find a way to be more vocal and involved in this problem and try to get us some relief. I know other towns have been quite successful. And what we have to do is we have to be the squeaky wheel. We have to be loud and we have to get some help. And we really have to do it before it gets worse. Because as these other communities get help, if we're not there, then they say, you know what? Medford's not here. We'll just fly those extra planes over you. And then that town can get some relief. And we're going to suffer more. Thank you.
[Cheryl Rodriguez]: Hi, I'm Cheryl Rodriguez. I live at 281 Park Street. The intersection that we're talking about is actually six lanes across with the island. So it's, yeah, it's a jaunt. A lot of the kids that live in Fulton Heights do attend the Roberts Elementary. We do have walking Wednesdays two months out of the year, which encourages the children from Fulton Heights to walk there. And even though there are adults, they definitely can't make it through. We'd love to have a crossing guard there. And it also should be noted that from Salem Street to that point, it's .7 miles with no slow down, no stop. A crosswalk at the intersection of Park and Fellsway could probably slow them down some as well, because I know that's considered a dragway. Anyone who lives near there has witnessed the sprint trying to get from Salem through to the highway without having to stop. So it's a really dangerous intersection. Hopefully we can address that. Thank you.
[Cheryl Rodriguez]: Hi, I'm Cheryl Rodriguez. I live at 281 Park Street, which is the street that the Roberts Elementary School is on. Our principal is one of the principals who is out in the parking lot. Our traffic configuration was changed so that the drop-off loop is now parking because our teachers, our school has expanded to the point that we don't have enough parking for our teachers. They double parked in the parking lot and that overflowed and now they're parked in the the drop-off loop, so our kids are further away from the school when they get dropped off. We have a problem with parents and commuters who've decided that the drop-off loop is a great way to bypass all the cars that are backed up on Park Street down to the Fellsway, so they'll buzz through as the children are trying to cross. So, our principal has taken to standing at the end of the driveway with his arms crossed in an effort to stop people because my child has been one of the children that has almost been mowed down by someone just whipping through. either from Court Street all the way across through the loop and out Park Street or through the loop from Park Street to Park Street. So that's a dangerous situation and I'm sure that if you talk to people at the Columbus, if you talk to people at the Andrews, I had a daughter at the McGlynn, there were issues there. So I just think we need to look at all the schools. I know that the Brooks is having emergent problems right now and I'm happy that they're being addressed. I just hope that the rest of the schools are involved in the conversation. I know that Mr. Johnson has asked the school committee they announced last night that he had asked for an additional crossing guard to help at the loop area. I'm not sure what the status of that is. I also spoke to Chief Sacco at the community meeting and asked him to look again at our traffic configuration. And he said he would get back to me. I'm not sure what the status is on that either. So I just want to inject that in the conversation. Thank you.
[Cheryl Rodriguez]: Hi, I'm Cheryl Rodriguez, 281 Park street. Um, I spoke at the podium last week about the issue that I, I started to speak about the issue that I had at the community meeting and I was interrupted and everyone that I ran into from Medford this week said, wow, I can't believe that that happened at the city council meeting. So I did some research and found out that in the Roberts Rules of Order, I shouldn't have been interrupted because I had the right to speak. I wasn't speaking, saying anything inflammatory. I was sharing my experience from having gone to that meeting. And so I wanted to come up and say that. And I also wanted to share the information that I had from the meeting because I felt that I didn't really get to share it last time because of that. One other interesting thing I found out when I was researching the Roberts Rules of Order was that a point of information is when you have a question for the speaker. It's not actually to give information. I was pretty surprised about that, but when I spoke to my 20-year-old college student who is on the student government at her college, she said, of course, mom, everybody knows that, because she had to take a crash course in Roberts Rules of Law in order to be on student government. I was pretty thrown off when I was interrupted for several minutes, so I just wanted to go back. When I saw the Facebook post about the meeting being in the neighborhoods, I wanted to attend. I came straight from the South Medford Economic Transition meeting to that meeting, so I missed the five-minute introduction. I was sitting in the back of the room. The Brooks parents had a very large showing, and I sat for the first hour and heard them discuss their issues on High Street. After that point, I raised my hand so that I could have an opportunity to speak as everyone else in the room was doing. I had my hand up for several minutes. I swapped my hands back and forth as my arms got tired from being held up. Someone came up behind me and told me to stand up. Perhaps he couldn't see me. I did stand up. Someone I knew across the room waved at me. I waved my arm. I still wasn't called on. Three people around me, I actually leaned over and said to Councilor Falco, I think that perhaps they don't want to call on me. And I kept my hand up. Three people around me raised their hands. They were each called on fairly quickly. Each said, I just raised my hand so that she could have a turn to speak. So I did not feel welcome at that meeting. It's pretty known that I live in East Medford. Maybe that was or was not the reason that I wasn't called on. The only thing that I wished to say at that meeting was what I say when I come here, is that traffic is an issue everywhere in the city. There are dangerous conditions in other parts of the city. What they were stressing at that meeting was calling in the mass DOT to meet about High Street, and I wanted to interject that if we were going to have them come down, they would only come down once. And we should identify all the other mass DOT streets that we have within Medford that have issues and have them all tour those streets at the same time. Because if you go to any school and talk to the parents, they'll all tell you a horror story about a street nearby. If you go to the senior center, they'll tell you a similar story. So I wanted to make sure that we got the best that we could for all of Medford, and that was my point speaking then. At that meeting, we were instructed if we wanted to see accidents, I'm almost done, that we could go on the Mass Highway website and find traffic data. So the latest data that I could find was from 2014. I didn't include any Wellington Circle 93 or the Rotary that's right out here, I'm not sure the name of it, just because those are things we really can't fix. But the big winner, or maybe the loser, depending on how you want to look at it, was Main Street. Main Street had the most accidents, by far, of any other street in our city in 2014. They had 87 accidents, which I thought was wow. I haven't heard anybody come in and complain about accidents on Main Street. Salem Street was at 62. High Street was at 50. I included the entirety of these streets. The Fellsway was at 34. Riverside, 32. Boston Ave, 27. Middlesex Ave, 24. The Winthrop Circle, the infamous Winthrop Circle, was at 17. And Locust Street, where we want to put 490 units as well as Wegman, had 14 accidents. That's a very short strip of street to have 14 accidents in one year. Central lab at the intersection of spring also had 10 accidents that year So I just wanted to point out that there's a lot of issues in the city I know that the police are short-staffed and I know that we're looking to make changes to the infrastructure and that we want to hire someone but Sometimes if you just look at the data and you talk to everyone then you can find out I hope that a lot of people will come to the meeting. I'm not sure the date of the meeting I The first Wednesday of the month, November 5th, according to Councilor Falco, and that will be at St. Francis. So I encourage everyone to attend and make sure that the city knows everything that's going on because there are a lot of issues and we can't just be quiet and hope that someone will notice and fix them. So that's all that I can say. Thank you for your time.
[Cheryl Rodriguez]: Hi, I'm Cheryl Rodriguez. I live at 281 Park Street, and Ms. Caldwell mentioned that we are applying for several grants this year for different enrichment for the students. Those grants don't usually cover the entire event, so this Saturday from 9 to 3, the Roberts Elementary School will be holding a yard sale to try to cover the cost of the rest of these events. It's estimated now that we have three U-Hauls worth of items, and every dollar that we raise will go directly to enrichment for our nearly 600 students. So if anyone can come, we're right down on Park Street.
[Cheryl Rodriguez]: It's from 9 to 3 this Saturday. Thank you, Cheryl. I saw a lot of it on our porch. It all looks good.
[Cheryl Rodriguez]: Hi, my name is Cheryl Rodriguez. I live at 281 Park Street. I attended the meeting at the Brooks School. This is basically, this meeting started from a Facebook post, which seems to be our new way of doing things in this city. And every parent in this city who's on Medford bombs knows that every September starts with, my child was trying to go to the school bus and almost got killed. The first one posted was on the Fellsway. Didn't get much traction. The parents said, yeah, that's happened to me a million times and nothing happened. The one that happened on High Street got more traction. They have a fabulous organization in West Medford that can really rally people to show up in a meeting. And boy, am I jealous. I wish I could have 70 people standing behind me today talking about the problems that we have on my side of the city, on other parts of the city. But the one thing that I got out of that meeting was one of the officers suggested that I go on to the mass.gov website. He suggested that we all go on and that we could get a copy of all the accidents in the city of Medford for the past three years. So I went on this morning. I clicked it in. Within five minutes, I had an email that had three years of accident statistics from Medford by date, had the intersections and everything. I can tell you that the hottest spots are not surprising to anyone. The Fellsway, Salem Street, Locust Street, I was a little bit surprised. A lot of accidents on Locust Street. Spring Street is a big hot issue. Anyone on Medford Moms knows that people are getting hit over there constantly. What else was it? Mystic Ave wasn't too bad. High Street had a lot of accidents as well. The Winthrop Street Circle had accidents. There's a lot of hotspots in the city that are not just on High Street. I mean, I applaud that we had a meeting specifically for High Street. I'm not sure all the other neighborhoods should have to wait the several months for their meetings. What if there were more issues on High Street? Are they not allowed to go to the community meeting because it's supposed to be focused only on their neighborhood? Because that's what's going around.
[Cheryl Rodriguez]: Thank you for making that clear, because I did attend that meeting. I was late. I was at the South Medford Economic Development meeting, which I had to leave in the middle of the mayor's remarks to come to that meeting. But I did attend the meeting with that frame of mind. I've since been told by others that they thought it was inappropriate to speak of anywhere but their neighborhood. So I hope that people heard. that this is supposed to be community-wide. And I hope that at the end of all these meetings that there'll be resolutions about all of these streets and all the neighborhoods, because I did speak about the Fellsway, which I'm sure you're familiar with the Fellsway. We don't have a crossing guard at all, but I see a resolution on here to add an additional crossing guard to another street. So I'm not sure how many months people are gonna have to wait before they're gonna see this kind of rapid action. I mean, 4 a.m. street lining. and lights being ordered and grant money coming in January. I think we need to look at all these streets and we need to look at them quickly and not wait four or six months to get to other neighborhood meetings because there's danger now in other areas of the city. And I think we're hyper-focused on one street and I hope that that is not going to continue to be the case. Thank you.
[Cheryl Rodriguez]: Ymweld â'r adroddiad, please. Helo, rydw i Cheryl Rodriguez. Mae'n adroddiadau 281 Park Street. Roeddwn i'n barod i ddatganiad, oherwydd roeddwn i eisiau gwneud yn siŵr y byddwn i'n cael yr holl beth rydw i eisiau ddweud. Felly, mae fy niferoedd yn myfyrwyr i'r ysgol Roberts. Rydw i'n gweithwyr agwedd ar y ysgol hwnnw. Roeddwn i'n ymweld â'r cyllid hwnnw ym mis Mhryd i gofyn ffyrdd ar gyfer ein mural mosegol. Roeddwn i'n helpu i gyrraedd rai o'r niferoedd ar y ysgol hwnnw a'r rhaglen argyfwng ar gyfer y PTO. Felly, rydw i'n barod iawn i'r ysgol Roedd ymdrech wedi'i wneud y byddai Mr. Johnson wedi rhannu'r myfyrwyr sy'n anoddau'n wahanol i'r ysgolion eraill, ac nid oedd unrhyw un yn gwybod pam. Felly roeddwn i eisiau ysgrifennu ychydig a gofyn cymorth o'r grwp hon. Mae'r Ysgol Roberts yn cael y cyhoeddiad mwyaf o'r ysgolion ysgolion arall yn ein ddinas. Mae hefyd yn cael y rhaglen ddiwethaf ar gyfer y dysgwyr iaith anghywir, sy'n golygu'r rhai sy'n ddiogelwyr anghywir, a'n rhaglen autism. Mae yna ddau gwasanaethau gwahanol, 92 a 75, yn ysgolion, yn ystod Septembre 16, ond mae'r niferoedd yma'n mynd ymlaen ymlaen. I roi hynny'n ysgolion, mae'n rhannu'n unig gan gradd. Byddwn ni'n cael 15.3 o fyfyrwyr ELL ar y gradd, a 12.5 o fyfyrwyr autistig ar y gradd. Felly 17% ELL a 14% autistig. Mae gennym hefyd 51% o gyfrifoldeb. Ym 9 Septembre, roedd ein poblogaeth cymdeithasol wedi'i ymwybyddio ar 547, ond erbyn 16 Septembre, roedd e wedi'i ymwybyddio i 555, ac efallai yw hynny'n fwy nawr. Yn amlwg, mae Brooke's Elementary yn 449. Roedd wedi'i arwain ar y cyfarfod diwethaf y byddai'r ddau ysgolion y byddai'r un sy'n ymwneud â'r poblogaeth ELL wedi'i ddweud y byddai'n ymwneud â'r un sy'n ymwneud â'r poblogaeth ELL wedi'i ymwneud â'r un sy'n ymwneud â'r Mae ein myfyrwyr ELL yn cael ddod allan o'r ysgol i gael gwasanaethau arbennig i'w helpu i ddysgu Ynglis, felly maen nhw'n grwpio yn yr un ysgol er mwyn ysgolio'r argyfwng. Dechreuwch eich mod i ddod allan o'r ysgol ar gyfer ysgolio'r argyfwng unigol i ddod allan o'r myfyrwyr ELL. Mae ein myfyrwyr autism sy'n hollbwysig hefyd wedi'u lleihau, oherwydd rhai o'r myfyrwyr rhai o'r myfyrwyr rhai o'r myfyrwyr rhai o'r myfyrwyr rhai o'r myfyrwyr rhai o'r myfyrwyr rhai o'r myfyrwyr rhai o'r myfyrwyr rhai o'r myfyrwyr rhai o'r myfyrwyr rhai o'r myfyrwyr rhai o'r myfyrwyr rhai o'r myfyrwyr rhai o'r myfyrwyr rhai o'r myfyrwyr rhai o'r myfyrwyr rhai o'r myfyrwyr rhai o'r myfyrwyr rhai o'r myfyrwyr rhai ond mae'r pethau y mae fy nôl wedi'u cyflwyno ers i ddechrau ysgol yn y clas hwn wedi rhoi paws i mi. Mae'n rhaid i ni wneud rhywbeth ar gyfer'r plant. Mae'r wythnoswyr a'r help yn y clas hwn wedi cael ei gael, mae'r gartref wedi cael ei dynnu, mae'r ysgol wedi cael ei ymgyrchu, ac mae'r plant wedi cael eu ymgyrchu'n ffysigol mewn cyfnod cyfnod gweithredol. Pwy yw'n gweithredu o'r hyn? Nid y plant sy'n anoddau'n bwysig wedi'u gwella i mewn i sefydliad argyfwng sy'n nid y myfyrwyr standard sy'n ymwybodol o'r cyfansodau hyn. Nid ydyn nhw'n cael addysg dda i'r holl ddysgu sy'n rhaid i'r un o'r fathau hyn ddechrau. Ond wrth fy mod i'n ceisio sgwrsio'r storïau bywydau y myfyrwyr i mewn i fy myfyrwyr, roeddwn i'n dod i'r wal o broblemau gwirioneddol. Os bydd fy myfyrwyr, unrhyw myfyrwyr, yn cael eu defnyddio ar gyfer cyfansodau sy'n dramatig ac sy'n ofnadwy mewn bywydau, mae angen i'r rhai o'r rhai o'r rhai o'r rhai o' Rydyn ni'n eisiau helpu'n plentyn i brosesu beth sy'n digwydd. Rydyn ni'n ymdrechol i'r holl plentyn. Mae'r holl plentyn yn y sefyllfa angen help. Yw hyn unig i'r ysgolaeth fy mhlent? Rwy'n meddwl na. Yw hyn yn sefydliad cymdeithasol i unrhyw un o'r plentyn hynny? Yn gwirionedd, na. Mae'n amser i ni ddechrau gofyn fel y bydd y poblogaeth o'r Roberts yn yr unig fel ar yr ail ysgolion. Mae ein ysgolion yn cael ddau grwpiau cyhoeddus a'r poblogaeth o blant fwyaf yn y ddinas. Bydd un o'r ysgolion hyn yn mynd i'r ysgol gyda phoblogaeth fawr. Os oedd ein niferoedd y clasau'n ymwneud â'r 15-16 marc y mae rhai o'r ysgolion ysgolion yma, byddwn yn gallu cael niferoedd fach i'n poblogaeth autistig. Gallwn ddangos eu niferoedd y clasau'n 8-10, gydag unrhyw effaith negatif ar unrhyw clasau eraill, ond fel mae'n dod, er mwyn ceisio ddangos niferoedd y clasau'r ysgolion ymwneud â'r 22 oed i'r niferoedd ymwneud â'r autisme, rydyn ni'n cael un niferoedd gael niferoedd 24 o fyfyrwyr. Yn ogystal â hyn, mae'r ysgol llwyddiant ddau ym Mhrydain mewn cyfnod o 17.25. Mae fy myfyrwyr mewn ysgol llwyddiant trwy, sydd ganddyn nhw ddau ysgolion, ac mae cyfnod llwyddiant mewn cyfnod o 19.8. Ymlaen y ddinas, mae Mhrydain mewn ysgolion llwyddiant ffwrdd i ffwrdd, gyda cyfnod llwyddiant mewn cyfnod o 17.5. Bydd y gwahaniaeth y boblogaeth hwn yn ymwneud ag y bydd rhai o'r unitau o'r 800-blwydd yn ymwneud â'r sefydliad ar gyfer yr ysgol Mae angen i bob un o'r plentyn fod yn cael ei ystyried. Rwy'n gobeithio am yr holl un ohonyn nhw. Rwy'n gweithio gyda nhw, felly rwy'n ymdrech drwy'r ffordd naturiol a'n hwyl iawn y byddant yn eu gofyn i'r adnodd ysgol i fynd i mewn a'u helpu nhw. Mae fy mhlaen i'n myfyrwyr yn dynnu'n fawr fel argyfwng ar gyfer y clasau hyn, ac rwy'n dal i ddod o hyd i'r hyn sydd wedi'i gwybod mewn pethau mawr. Mae hi wedi'i ymgyrchu gyda fy mhlaen a'r mhlaen o rai o'i ffrindiau was that she was worried for the children that were having the incidents. The second thing she told me was that she was afraid. No child should be afraid to go to school. Upon hearing that, I started a crusade to help my child and the other children in her class or classes like hers. I spoke to the teacher, who directed me to the principal. I spoke to the principal, and other than the incident that required a student to leave by ambulance, he had heard of no other incidences, nor had the school department, nor the special needs department. Felly, pam? Rwy'n meddwl yw oherwydd nad oes unrhyw beth yn dod o adroddiadu hynny, ond ar hyn o bryd, nid oes unrhyw beth wedi dod o adroddiadu hynny. Nid yw'r adroddiadurwyr ysgol wedi siarad gyda'r plentyn am yr adroddiad sydd wedi'i adroddi a sy'n digwydd yn ystod yr wythnos. ymgyrch sy'n arwain ambulans ar gyfer ymdrechu y myfyrwyr o'r ysgol. Nid yw'r roeddwyr wedi'u gwybod. Beth yw'r protocol? Beth yw'r cyfrifiadau sydd ar gael i helpu'r myfyrwyr autistig sy'n anoddu, neu'r arall myfyrwyr? Mae fy myfyrwyr yn ymdrechu i fynd yn ôl i'r ystafell honno. Rydyn ni wedi ymdrechu i helpu nhw i ymdrechu gyda'r hyn sydd wedi'i gwybod, nes y diwrnod. Mae e wedi bod yn cael golygiadau migraine. Mae e'n anhygoel iawn. Ar hyn o bryd, roedd Mae'n ymwybodol y bydd y myfyrwyr hwnnw wedi'u sicrhau y byddan nhw'n gadw'r plentynau'n ddiogel, ac nid y mae'n rhaid iddyn nhw ystyried, nid y mae'n rhaid iddyn nhw ystyried, nid y mae'n rhaid iddyn nhw ystyried, nid y mae'n rhaid iddyn nhw ystyried, nid y mae'n rhaid iddyn nhw ystyried, nid y mae'n rhaid iddyn nhw ystyried, nid y mae'n rhaid iddyn nhw ystyried, nid y mae'n rhaid iddyn nhw ystyried, nid y mae'n rhaid iddyn nhw ystyried, n Rwy'n deall bod prifatiaethau, ond mae rhai pethau ar gael i'w wneud. Mae'r myfyrwyr a Mr. Johnson yn gwneud y mwyaf y gallan nhw, gyda'r dyluniau sydd gyda nhw. Maen nhw angen mwy o dyluniau. Maen nhw angen poblogaeth ychydig mwyaf er mwyn ymdrechu cymdeithasau y clasau i gysylltu â'n myfyrwyr sy'n hollbwysig. Dydyn ni ddim yn gallu gobeithio unig am fy myfyrwyr, ond rwy'n gobeithio am fy myfyrwyr. Mae angen i ni gobeithio am yr holl myfyrwyr. Nid yw'r myfyrwyr yr holl myfyr
[Cheryl Rodriguez]: Rydyn ni'n gallu gweithio arno i gael y graddau mwyaf o'r EL.
[Cheryl Rodriguez]: Motion passes. Diolch yn fawr iawn. Rydw i am ddysgu rhywbeth am y cyfrifiadau. Roedd y cyfrifiadau nesaf a'r fwyaf yn y diwrnod ddiwethaf yn digwyddiad yn yr ystafell. Roedd cyfrifiadau niferol yn ystod ac ar ôl, ac nid oeddwn ni'n cael ymwybodol o unrhyw un o'r cyfrifiadau. Felly roedd y rheswm rydw i'n dod ymlaen a dechrau siarad â phobl oherwydd y cyfrifiadau fwyaf sydd wedi digwyddiad yn yr ystafell, ond wrth fynd ymlaen a siarad gyda'r princip, a siarad gyda Diane Caldwell, a siarad gyda rhyw Ac roeddwn i'n siarad gyda Mr. Belson, ac nid oedd unrhyw un wedi clywed unrhyw un o'r broblemau yna'r un sydd wedi digwydd yn y cafetariae. Felly mae hynny'n bwysig iawn i mi yw'r broblemau hyn, efallai nad ydyn nhw'n gwybod sut i'w ymwybyddu, a phwy i'w ymwybyddu, oherwydd nid oedd y broblemau hynny'n mynd ymlaen o'r ystafell neu'r tîm amgylchedd. Nid oedd unrhyw un arall yn ymwybodol o'r broblemau hyn, sy'n dweud hynny'n dweud hynny'n dweud hynny'n dweud hyn
[Cheryl Rodriguez]: Hi, I'm Cheryl Rodriguez. I live at 221 Park Street, and C-Click Fix likes to notify you, so I was notified of this thread because of something I had posted. Some of the comments from the responding city person were that they knew that the person was making these pickups at 515 in the morning for the oil, but that he didn't have a long enough hose, and they felt badly, so they were letting him pick up at 515 so he could climb on the sidewalk and move the planter. because it was a financial hardship for him to buy a longer hose. So that was one of the things that they posted. So it seems like Cclick fix is kind of exposing that some of the rules are a little shaky. I know I've gotten responses of well It's easier for him to park on the sidewalk and now that I made one post about parking someone parking on the sidewalk I'm constantly getting email notifications every time someone else does and I noticed that those people are getting similar responses from the city so I Maybe we just need to realize these are overwhelmed. Do we need to change the rules? But there was some harassment going on on that particular thread about neighbors were picking on people and things like that. So Oasis has been an issue for a long time, and maybe we need to just figure out what's going on with that. And if C-Click fixes something that we're just not ready to handle.
[Cheryl Rodriguez]: Hi, my name is Cheryl Rodriguez. I live at 281 Park Street, and I have a skittish rescue dog who's been attacked by an off-leash dog in the city of Medford. But what no one is mentioning is that we do have the sheepfold. We're fortunate enough to have the fowls in the city of Medford, and that is an off-leash area in the natural setting, which I don't go to because my dog is afraid. but it's perfectly fine for people who want their dogs to run loose. The biggest complaint I hear about that is that people don't pick up their dog feces, but it is something that maybe these groups can embrace and take care of and clean up because we're very fortunate to have the Fells. A lot of people don't have all this green space and we should take advantage of it.
[Cheryl Rodriguez]: Hi, I'm Cheryl Rodriguez. I live at 281 Park Street. I attended the Malden Hospital meeting, and they scaled down the project from 350 to 314, 444 parking spaces, and they were also asking to be able to park on street. So we're talking about at least 500 cars. I had another meeting after that meeting and I map quested how to get to 93 from there and it takes you down Murray Hill Road, right onto Fells Ave, right onto Vista Ave, which becomes Fulton Street Road. than left onto Fulton. If you've been down Fulton Street Road, my daughter's best friend lives off of there, the cars are parked on both sides of the street and it is single wide down the middle. So if someone is coming during rush hour, I often see people backing up because two cars can't fit down at the same time. So if you add an additional 500 cars to that road because the traffic engineer there did state, yeah, this is probably not a transit community This is going to be a car-heavy community. We're going to expect hundreds of cars going down these very small roads, and we need to be concerned. I think we need to make strong efforts to make sure that the neighbors are aware so this doesn't sneak up on them. Thank you.
[Cheryl Rodriguez]: Yn ymwneud â'r ysgol. Yn ymwneud â'r ysgol. Yn ymwneud â'r ysgol. Yn ymwneud â'r ysgol I prepared a statement because I want to make sure that I get everything I want to say. So my daughter is a third grade student at the Roberts Elementary. I'm an active parent at that school. I appeared before this body in the spring to request funds for our mosaic mural. I helped run some of the enrichment nights at the school and the after school enrichment program for the PTO. So I'm very invested in the school. At the last school committee meeting, there were questions about the classes at the Roberts. Roedd ymdrech wedi'i wneud y byddai Mr. Johnson wedi rhannu'r myfyrwyr sy'n bwysig i'r ysgolion yn wahanol na'r ysgolion eraill, ac nid ydyn nhw'n gwybod pam. Felly roeddwn i eisiau ysgrifennu ychydig a gofyn cymaint o help o'r grwp hon. Mae'r Ysgol Roberts yn cael y cyhoeddiad mwyaf o'r holl ysgolion ysgolion yn ein ddinas. Mae hefyd yn cael y rhaglen ddiwethaf ar gyfer y dysgwyr iaith anglais, sy'n golygu'r rhai sy'n ddim yn gael ysgolion anglais, ac yn ein rhaglen autism. Dyma ddau ysgolion fawr iawn, 92 a 75, ymdrechion, yn ystod Septembre 16, ond mae'r niferoedd yma'n newid ymdrechion. I roi'r cyfrifiad ymlaen, mae'n rhannu'n unig ar gradd. Byddwn ni'n cael 15.3 o fyfyrwyr ELL ar gradd, a 12.5 o fyfyrwyr autistig ar gradd. Felly 17% ELL a 14% autistig. Rydyn ni hefyd yn cael 51% ychwanegol. Ym 9 Septembre, roedd ein poblogaeth cyfan wedi'i ymwybyddio ar 547, ond erbyn 16 Septembre, roedd e wedi'i ymwybyddio ar 555, ac efallai hefyd yn fwy nawr. Yn amlwg, mae Brooke's Elementary yn 449. Yn ystod yr ulwyddiad ddiwethaf, roedd y ddau ysgolion y byddai'r poblogaeth sydd wedi'i ymwneud â'r ELL yn cael ei gael yn ychydig fwyaf, er mwyn i newydd y myfyrwyr i mewn i'r rhaglen. Mae'r un peth yn wir ar y Roberts, ond dydyn ni ddim yn cael'r buffer o fod yn y ysgol Mae ein myfyrwyr ELL yn cael eu gwneud allan o'r clas i gael gwasanaethau arbennig i'w helpu i ddysgu Ynglis, felly maen nhw'n grwpio mewn y un clas i gysylltu â'r cyflawniadau. Gweldwch eich bod yn ceisio gwneud cymaint o ysgolaethau ystod y 3rd grad ar gyflawniadau identigol i ddod allan o'r myfyrwyr ELL. Mae'n rhaid i'n myfyrwyr autistig hefyd gysylltu ag e, oherwydd rhai ohonyn nhw'n rhannu cymorth. Mae wedi'i wneud'n dda'n amser cyllideb y bydd ganddi'r cynghrair hwnnw ddiddordeb i gael cymorth mewn rhai ysgolion. Rwy'n meddwl y bydd y broses hwn yn arwain at edrych. Mae fy nhywyr wedi cael ei gael yn y clas ysbytai autism yn y flwyddyn hwn. Rwy'n deall bod rhai yn y clasau eraill, ond mae yna myfyrwyr sy'n anhygoel yn y clas hwnnw. Mae'r plentyn ar y Roberts yn y plentyn sy'n ymdrech iawn y byddwch chi'n gwrdd â nhw, ond mae'r pethau y mae fy nhywyr wedi'u cyflwyno ers i ddechrau ysbytai yn y clas hwn wedi rhoi pas i mi. Mae rhai pethau ar gael i'r plentyn hyn. Mae'r wythnoswyr a'r help yn y clas hwn wedi cael ei ddynnu, mae'r ystafell wedi cael ei dynnu, mae'r ystafell wedi cael ei ymgyrchu, ac mae'r plant wedi cael eu hysbysu'n ffysigol mewn cyfnod gweithredol. Pwy ydyn nhw'n gweithredu o hynny? Nid y plant sy'n anoddau'n bwysig, sy'n cael eu gweithredu i mewn i sefydliad mawr, sy'n gweithredu'n amlwg, nid y myfyrwyr standard sy'n ymweld â'r ystafellau hyn. Nid ydyn nhw'n cael addysg dda iawn, ac mae'n rha Ond pan roeddwn i'n ceisio ymdrechu'r storiadau bywydau y mae fy myfyrwyr yn mynd ymlaen gyda nhw, roeddwn i'n cyflawni'r brifysgrifau. Os bydd fy myfyrwyr, unrhyw myfyrwyr, yn cael eu hysbysu ar ymdrechion sy'n dramatig ac sy'n ofnadwy mewn gwirionedd, mae'n rhaid i'r roeddwyr fod yn ymwybodol. Dylai'r roeddwyr ddim yn clywed y storiadau hyn o'u plentyn a ddim yn clywed unrhyw beth o'r ysgol. Rydyn ni'n eisiau helpu'n plentyn i brosesu beth sy'n digwydd. R Yw hyn ddifrif i'r ysgolaeth o'r myfyrwyr? Rwy'n meddwl na. Yw hyn yn sefydliad cymdeithasol ar gyfer unrhyw un o'r myfyrwyr hynny? Yn siwr, na. Mae'n amser i ni ddechrau gofyn fel y bydd y poblogaeth o'r Roberts yn yr un peth fel ar yr ail ysgolau. Mae ein ysgolau'n cael dwy grwpiau cyhoeddus a'r poblogaeth o fyfyrwyr mwyaf yn y ddinas. Bydd un o'r ysgolau hynny'n dod i'r ysgolaeth gyda phoblogaeth fawr. Byddwn yn gallu cael y clasau fachach ar gyfer ein poblogaeth autistig. Byddwn yn gallu gynhyrchu eu clasau'n fawr iawn i 8-10, gydag unrhyw effaith negatif ar unrhyw clasau eraill. Ond, fel mae'n dod, er mwyn ceisio a chyflawni total clasau'r ystafell ddegawd, byddwn yn cael y clasau'n fawr iawn. ymlaen, o'r 22 o'r cyllid ar gyfer y clas amrywiol autism, rydyn ni'n cael un o'r clas cymryd 24 myfyrwyr. Er y cymharu, mae'r clas ddegawd ar y Brookes mewn cyllid 17.25. Mae fy myfyrwyr mewn clas 3, sydd ganddyn nhw 25 ysgolion, ac mae cyllid mewn cyllid mewn cyllid 19.8. Ymlaen, mae y Brookes mewn cyllid mewn cyllid mewn cyllid mewn cyllid mewn cyllid mewn cyllid mewn cyllid mewn cyllid mewn cyllid mewn cyllid mewn cyllid mewn cyllid mewn cyllid mewn cyllid mewn cyllid mewn cyllid mewn cyllid Bydd y gwahoddiad yma'n gweithredu'n unig pan fydd rhai o'r 800-blwydd o adnoddau ar gyfer sefydliad ar gyfer yr Ysgol Elementyr Robertson McGlynn yn dechrau cymryd ymweld â'r bywydau. Mae angen i'r plentyn i gyd fod yn ymweld â nhw. Rwy'n gobeithio am yr holl un ohonyn nhw. Rwy'n gweithio gyda nhw, felly rwy'n ymweld â'r ffordd naturiol a'r ffordd eang y maen nhw'n ymwneud â'r un arall, ac rwy'n gofyn i'r Deyrnas Ysgol i fynd i mewn i'w helpu. Mae fy nhrein fy hun yn ymdrechu'n fawr fel argyfwng ar gyfer y clasau hyn, ac rwy'n dal i ddod o hyd i'r hyn rydw i wedi'i gwybod mewn pethau mawr. Mae wedi'i ymdrechu mewn rhai o'i ffrindiau a rhai mewn fy nhrein a fi. Y peth cyntaf y dywedodd hwnnw i oedd ei fod wedi ymdrechu ar y plant sy'n cael yr argyfwng. Y peth cyntaf y dywedodd hwnnw i oedd ei fod wedi ymdrechu. Nid y bydd y plant yn ymdrechu i fynd i'r ysgol. Yn ysgrifennu hwnnw, ddechreuwais crusaid i helpu fy nhyrwyddynt a'r blaenau eraill o'i ysgrifennu, neu ysgrifennu fel ysgrifennwyr. Ysgrifennwais i'r wythnoswyr, sy'n fy ysgrifennu i'r ysgrifennwyr. Ysgrifennwais i'r ysgrifennwyr, ac yn ystod yr argyfwng y byddai'r myfyrwyr yn rhaid i'r ysgrifennwyr fynd i'r ambulans, nid oedd e'n clywed am unrhyw argyfwngau eraill, nid oedd yn cael y Deyrnas Ysgol, nid oedd yn cael y Deyr Felly, pam? Rwy'n meddwl yw oherwydd nad oes unrhyw beth yn dod o adroddiadu hynny, ond ar hyn o bryd, nid oes unrhyw beth wedi dod o adroddiadu hynny. Nid yw'r adroddiadurwyr ysgol wedi siarad gyda'r plentyn am yr adroddiad sydd wedi'i adroddi a sy'n digwydd yn ystod yr wythnos. ymgyrch sy'n angen ambulans ar gyfer ymdrechu y myfyrwyr o'r ysgol. Nid yw'r roeddwyr wedi'u gwybod. Beth yw'r protocol? Beth yw'r cyfrifiadau sy'n eu cymryd i helpu'r myfyrwyr autistig sy'n anoddu, neu'r arall myfyrwyr? Mae fy myfyrwyr yn ymdrechu i fynd yn ôl i'r ystafell honno. Rydyn ni wedi ceisio helpu nhw i ymdrechu gyda'r hyn rydyn ni wedi'i gwybod, mewn gwirionedd. Mae e wedi bod yn cael golygiadau migraine. Mae e'n anhygoel iawn. Yn ystod y diwrnod Mae'n ymwybodol y bydd ei ddysgwyr wedi'u hygyrchu y byddan nhw'n dal y plant yn ddiogel ac nid y mae'n rhaid iddyn nhw ystyried, nid y byddan nhw'n ystyried, nid y byddan nhw'n ystyried, nid y byddan nhw'n ystyried, nid y byddan nhw'n ystyried, nid y byddan nhw'n ystyried, nid y byddan nhw'n ystyried, nid y byddan nhw'n ystyried, nid y byddan nhw'n ystyried, nid y byddan nhw'n ystyried, nid y byddan nhw'n ystyried, nid y byddan nhw'n y Rwy'n deall bod yna broblemau ymdrechion, ond mae rhai pethau ar gael i'w wneud. Mae'r wythnoswyr a Mr. Johnson yn gwneud y mwyaf mawr y gallan nhw, gyda'r dyluniadau sydd ar gael arnynt. Maen nhw angen mwy o dyluniadau. Maen nhw angen poblogaeth ychydig fwyaf fel y gallan nhw gysylltu â niferoedd y clasau i gysylltu â'r holl angenau o'n plentynau. Nid y gallwn ymwneud â'n un plentyn, ond rwy'n ymwneud â'n plentyn. Mae'n rhaid i ni ymwneud â'r holl plentyn. Dyluniadau yr holl plent
[Cheryl Rodriguez]: Yr unig nifero rydw i wedi clywed oedd 92.
[Cheryl Rodriguez]: unrhyw beth am y cyfleoedd. Roedd y cyfleoedd nesaf a'r cyfleoedd fwyaf yn y diwrnod diwethaf wedi digwydd yn y cafoderiad. Roedd y cyfleoedd mewn nifer yn ogystal â'r cyfleoedd ddiwethaf, ac rydyn ni ddim wedi cael ymwybodol o unrhyw un o'r cyfleoedd. Felly, roedd y rheswm rydw i wedi dod ymlaen a dechrau siarad â phobl oherwydd y cyfleoedd fwyaf sydd wedi digwydd yn y cafoderiad, ond wrth fynd ymlaen a siarad â'r princip, a siarad â Diane Caldwell, a siarad â rhywun yn y Deyrnas Unedig, a siarad â roeddwn wedi clywed unrhyw un o'r broblemau yna'r un sydd wedi digwydd yn y cafetaria. Felly mae hynny'n bwysig iawn i mi fod y broblemau hyn, efallai nad ydyn nhw'n gwybod sut i'w adroddu, sut i'w adroddu, oherwydd nid oedd y broblemau hynny'n mynd ymlaen o'r ystafell neu'r tîm anhygoel. Doedd dim unrhyw un arall yn gwybod am y broblemau hynny, felly dwi'n dweud y byddwn yn rhaid i ni edrych ar beth sy'n digwydd ar gyfer y brotocol a'r hyn sy'n rhaid i ni ei wneud.
[Cheryl Rodriguez]: Hi, I'm Cheryl Rodriguez. I live at 281 Park Street, and I saw this item on the agenda, and in the past couple of months, I've posted a couple of graffiti incidents that happened at the Roberts School. So I posted for two months, someone had written on the side of the school, and the complaint wasn't acknowledged. Finally, this past week, a private citizen messaged me and told me that they had gone down to the school with a bucket and water and a scrub brush and cleaned the graffiti off the school. which thank you very much for cleaning the school. I don't think he should have had to but I appreciate that he did that. There's also a pedestrian crossing sign at the school that has had graffiti on it and the bottom rivet is not connected and that's been there for about two years. I know several parents have called and complained about that. So our DPW, I know, is short-staffed and they really are not able to handle this overflow. So I think the graffiti issue in the city is probably more of a symptom. I can also cite an example of businesses on Spring Street. I drove down Spring Street and there was someone had written their name about 40 or 50 times on one building on Spring Street. And I drove down less than a week later, and the owner had painted over all of it, but that person had graffitied over what he had already painted. So in the span of a week, he had already painted the entire building. They wrapped around the entire side of the building. It was about a foot high, about 40 times. He signed his name, maybe We can find him. His name's on the building. So that's pretty upsetting that the owner was out there that quickly and repaired the damage and then it was done to him again. Again, this is probably a symptom of a larger issue. I know that the police force is down, density is up, and there's less patrol. So this is a symptom and something that we really need to think about. Do we need more DPW? Do we need more police? is just a small level crime, but it is something to think about. Thank you.
[Cheryl Rodriguez]: I live at 281 Park Street and I encourage a moratorium on building because sorry right now there are over 800 units that are approved and either under construction or or pending permits and And they're all on the side of the city where the McGlynn and the Roberts are. The McGlynn and the Roberts are the most highly populated schools in the city. I met with the principal at the Roberts on Friday. The numbers that he had given to the school committee were 547. He's now, as of Friday, he was up to 555. He gets new students almost daily. That school is very full. The McGlynn School is at 495. If you go across town, you'll see the Columbus is at 401, the Brooks is at 449. So the school populations do need to be considered in approving building projects. If 10% of these new units have one child, that's 80 new children, that will go to the Roberts or the Brooks. Schools that, I mean the Roberts or the McGlynn. Schools that are already having a challenge That's the last school committee. We have you know a second grade class at the Roberts that has 24 students in it So that this these are things that are not considered when the zoning board approves things they don't contact the school department and I We're all have hanging over our head Locust Street, which is 490 units being built on six and a half acres. If you look at every city that surrounds Medford that is opposing a building project right now, those projects are all on 12, 14, 18 acres of land and slightly over 300. They were all denied as too dense. But we approved 490 units on six and a half acres with residents standing up and screaming no. They just pulled the Salem Street development, which he wants 25 units on 18,000 square feet, which is, I think, 100 feet from the Roberts Elementary School, and he wants to put 27 parking spaces, but he's withdrawing because he's waiting because we all heard about the possibility of 40R. I just got the schedule for the Zoning Board of Appeals meeting next week, and someone on Main Street wants to tear down, it's either a one or a two-family house, and put up 12 units. The meeting that I attended in June, they had someone who wanted to tear down a single-family house and put up a seven-family. So even if you put a moratorium on 25, taking one family and turning it into seven or 10 or 12 is exploding our population. I went to the Traffic Commission meeting last week, and the people are in saying, you know, I live next door to a two-family house. They have 15 cars. They have no parking. They're all in the street. I think they're running a rooming house. So density is being increased constantly, and this is something that we need to consider as we're approving things like turning a one family into a two, turning a one family into a seven, building another unit. So we really need to stop, because whatever zoning laws are in place, they're not being followed. Variances are being given out very easily. save the city, save the schools. Thank you.
[Cheryl Rodriguez]: I live at 2d1 Park Street and You guys were really fast. I threw out my back, so it took me a little longer to get here. You got through the rights pond thing already, which was what I had come in to speak on. I know you don't want to hear it, but that's too bad. The opening weekend was on June 25th, and I attended the pond. And they had hourly safety checks after 3 p.m., where they kicked everyone out of the beach because all the lifeguards needed to have breaks at the exact same time. I sent several, I made several calls and emails. They were all returned from the mayor's office. I had contacted the parks department because I've been going to the ponds for over 30 years. This was a new rule. Jeanne Camuso told me that these checks were a mandate from the Red Cross. So I called the Red Cross. The Red Cross says we don't make mandates. We just do training. Not sure why she would have said that. And then I read the lifeguard manual. I was lifeguard trained in my youth and they recommended rotations of lifeguards at 20 to 30 minute intervals so that they don't, their eyes don't glaze over. I don't know what the exact language was, just to keep them moving around. They did not recommend hourly breaks. No job recommends hourly breaks. On the 4th of July weekend, I tried to go to the pond again, and I was turned away. I was told that they were at capacity of 70. My mother and daughter were already in the pond. I texted them to say that I was not able to get in. They told me there were less than 30 people in the pond. So even when the crisis of having 70 people at the pond had passed, they did not allow more people into the pond. On Tuesday, July 7th, we had the first MFN concert. If we're only going to allow 70 people in the pond, perhaps we can't have these events because a lot of people do come on that night that don't wish to purchase a pass and swim. And if we're going to shut it off at 70 for people that have paid for a pass, we probably can't have more than 150 were there on the July 7th. On Saturday, July 16th, I again attempted to go to the pond. At 4.30, I went by. I was told it was closed. At 6 o'clock, I drove by again. It was still closed. I find it hard to believe that during that time, no one had left the pond. So I called and spoke to Linda this time at the mayor's office, and although she was very polite, she told me that it must have been for safety and told me that it was a DCR mandate. So I read up on the Massachusetts law on DCR, which is number 302 under section 12. There's no regulations for Cassidy at beaches. I also looked at every single beach controlled by the DCR. None of them had capacity limitations in any of their rules.
[Cheryl Rodriguez]: Which is part of my point, because that's the answer that I was given by the City Hall. that they're pulling at straws, just attempting to give me an answer. I know when I used to call the mayor, the old mayor, I would speak to Rose, and if she didn't know the answer, she would say, I don't know. Let me get back to you, which would have been a very acceptable answer. It would have been the preferred answer, because most citizens won't say, oh, it's a Red Cross mandate. Well, let me look up and see what the Red Cross mandate is. I did. Called back. It's not true. Then I get, it's a DCR mandate. Again, research. Find out. It's not true. Most people just say, oh, that must be the rule. That rule stinks, and I don't like it. So my biggest issue is that they seem to want to protect the new person. Her name is Helen. I was told by the Parks Department that she was hired by the mayor, which is fine, but she needs to learn how to do her job and do it properly.
[Cheryl Rodriguez]: No, it isn't criticism.
[Cheryl Rodriguez]: I think my manner is pretty appropriate. I said that I don't mind who hired her, but I do feel that she should learn to do her job. If she is saying that this is a Red Cross mandate and or a DCR mandate, then she does not know her job. I have researched these laws. You are welcome to do so. I would be more than happy to provide you with links to read them. I've spent quite a bit of time. I read the Lifeguard. I read the management manual. I read the lifeguard training manual. I've gone through lifeguard training. I read the DCR regulations. So now I've learned that the mayor has posted information that she has decided that the pond is now a pool. The reason why the pond is a pool is because there are ropes around the swimming area. That's not what a pool is. A pool is not a body of water that's on, I believe she said, 148 acres. I'm concerned that we have a mayor now that can make ponds into pools. She said it's 148 acres, according to her Facebook page, and they're going to be going by the regulations of CMR 105-435.23, which is about lifeguards in a swimming pool. It also states that if you go further down to the bathing capacity, section 27, the bathing capacity is anything under five feet is considered non-swimmable. Anyone who's been to Wright's Pond knows that the entire swimming area of Wright's Pond is a non-swimming area. It's under five feet. So the regulation would be that each person in the water would need a minimum of 10 square feet of swimming space, which is a capacity greater than 75. So I would welcome you to please have the pond turned back into a pond and not a pool to... Point of information, Councilor Knight.
[Cheryl Rodriguez]: Yes. I was, my mother was at that meeting and the mayor issued this in response to that. They did read this into the record at the meeting, which is why I'm here because the mayor has injected herself into this scenario and declared the pond a pool, which point of information, the pond is not a pool. It is not a pool. It should not be treated as a pool. The pond's been running fine for 30 years, 40 years, however many years, maybe you know. But it's not a pool. And I think that it's ridiculous that they're so bent on being correct that they're making things up in order to be correct. Even if you make them up, they're still not correct. I'm hoping that somebody can fix this issue. I've had three weekends of problems at Wright's Pond. There's only five left. If they can't handle lifeguard management, perhaps we need to turn the pond into swim at your own risk. You can buy the pass. The parks people can check your pass, and you can go in and swim. I know that that's what people who don't like the length of time that the pond is open currently do. So I think that we need to, you know, I don't think her biggest act as mayor in July should be to ruin the pond. Thank you.
[Cheryl Rodriguez]: Hi, I'm Cheryl Rodriguez. I live at 281 Park Street. So it's Logan Airport, Medford. It started really getting bad about two years ago. My daughter's eight now at six years old. She started projectile vomiting in the middle of the night from being woken up by the planes. It took two years of going to specialists and now she's on daily medication because of the sleep interruption causing migraines and vomiting, which they attribute to the planes flying less than 5,000 feet over my house. I don't think the sacrifice is worth it to save them fuel. I think they need to fly higher. My mother-in-law lives in East Boston. You can walk to the airport from her house. She comes to my house and says, I can't believe it's this loud here. You know, Medford needs to stand up and tell them to stop because other towns have stood up and they've been able to get the planes to fly higher. There's no reason for them to be under 5,000 feet in Medford. I don't care what the winds look like.
[Cheryl Rodriguez]: Hi, I'm Cheryl Rodriguez. I live at 281 Park Street. I was the subject of the meeting this morning for the complaint. If anyone doesn't know yet, I think everyone knows, but I attended that meeting. There were more than a dozen residents. Every seat in that room was full. And the abutters were there. They're here tonight again. I recognize them. All stood up and said what address they lived on on Cumming Street and that they were opposed to this project. At approximately 10.30, Chairman Arena said, we have over 1,000 pages of documentation to review. and we will be taking this matter under advisement. At that point, all the citizens and the attorneys, the entire Equity One Army, they brought almost as many people as we had, about 15 people. Rose exited the room. No words were spoken by anyone on this board until the room was cleared. We were in the hallway, and Dennis McDool, I guess their secretary, came, closed the door, and said, we have much to discuss. We were not invited into the room. We did not know what was happening. I am not an attorney, as Chairman Arena told me this morning. I knew, but he reminded me. So I don't know all the rules of open meeting laws. When someone closes a door and says we have much to discuss, a reasonable person would assume that you're not invited into this room. At that point, and every member of the board gave a different amount of time, either 20, 45, or 90 minutes later, 90 minutes would make it June 1st, because the meeting adjourned after 1030, they made the decision to unanimously passed all the variances, 11 variances, unprecedented amount of variances. And in their haste to beat you all today, they sent out their certificate with an incorrect address on it. So they've actually granted a variance to build 490 units at 361 Locust Street. I don't know where that is. I think that may be in the middle of the Mystic, which I'm cool with if they want to build it there. But, you know, the race was on. They were very gleeful this morning that, you know, we're done with this complaint and we'll be filing it right away. And when I said, well, there is a hearing, a meeting going on at City Council tonight, they'll be discussing this, and Chairman Noreen giggled. Several times during the meeting, he said, you know, it was a very informal discussion to vote to approve these variances. And he very proudly said, I believe I said, let's rock and roll. People, did I say let's rock and roll before we voted on this? So he clearly does not take this seriously. He doesn't, he didn't take the consideration of any of the citizenry. And if you read this report, this decision, it reads 100% as if he works for the developer. I mean, let's start on page six. The land is contaminated since the 90s. It's not allowed to be used for residential housing with gardens or playgrounds. It continues on to page seven, but hey, it'd be really expensive if he had to clean the site, so we're just going to pave it. Didn't we just fix the land on the DPW? I believe I sat in meetings where the estimates that the consultants exceeded $500,000 for the cleaning, but they're not going to clean it. Now my kid can't play here, but somebody else's kid is going to live here. So in 10 years, will we be back that these children are developing cancer? I'm concerned. They're not concerned. If you turn over to page 8, the zoning ordinance says if we make them follow the law, it will be a substantial hardship, financial or otherwise, to the appellate. I'm sorry, this is a board that works for the City of Medford. I don't care how much money the developer makes. How much is this going to cost me in extra police? Are we going to have the extra police? Are we going to be short? Are we going to have enough firemen? If something's going on over there and then something happens on the other side of the city, are we going to be short? Are the schools going to be overrun? These are the things that I'm concerned about. I'm not concerned about the man living on Park Avenue in New York City and if he loses a zero off of his project. The literal enforcement of this would reduce the project's capacity. So there would be a substantial loss of dwelling units. Again, I really, I'm not concerned. Why is it that this project is approved and practically applauded when in West Medford 30 units was too much? Way too much. Come back with something smaller. This is 490 units and on page nine it says it's a vibrant mixed use project, 7,000 square feet total retail. 3,000 will be the existing Eastern Bank, which they'll move to the other side of the building. So we're talking 4,000 square feet of retail, convenience retail. When someone asked at that meeting, would this be a coffee shop possibly? Oh, no. We're not going to have a coffee shop. So I think we're looking at a convenience store and a dry cleaner. That's a fabulous addition to the neighborhood. This is the stations landing type development that Burke promised us in the article in the transcript before the May 18th meeting of the Community Coalition. A dry cleaner in a convenience store? I don't know why anyone would want this or say this is anything like stations landing. These are rental units. Millennials, I can tell you they own cars. They're going to park here. They want us to pay to build paths to Hormel so they can park their extra cars there. They want us to pay to build a path to Cumming Street so these residents can have them walking through as they go to park in the neighborhoods. They're charging for the extra parking space for anyone that wants an extra parking space and units. So they'll be paying approximately $3,000 a month for a two-bedroom and an untold amount for a parking space. Do you think that they'll stay on their property or do you think that they'll explore the neighborhood and start parking there? This board did not consider the needs of the neighborhood. They did not consider the needs of the city, and the developers will come. They'll say, this is great. May 18th, they had a meeting, and the community development people said, oh, you're going to expand the water line? We'll give you a $950,000 credit. Done deal. Can we vote on it now? I was at that meeting. That is literally what was said. May 31st, all the residents said no, and apparently, This board does not work for the city of Medford. They work for the developer, because if you read this report, it reads like their attorney wrote it. Oh, it's going to cost us money. Oh, we're going to make less money. That's not the concern of a Medford board. These boards need to work for Medford, or maybe it's time to step aside. Chairman Arena has been on this board for more than two decades. Maybe it's time to go.
[Cheryl Rodriguez]: Hi, I'm Cheryl Rodriguez again from 281 Park Street. I just had one further point that I wanted to make regarding the meeting for the complaint that I had filed that was held this morning. I was not invited to this meeting. An attorney from Equity One was present, so clearly they were invited to this meeting. So this is just further evidence. that this board feels that they work for the developer and not the citizens of Medford. My address was clearly printed on the top of my complaint. My phone number was on the bottom. They actually saw me bring the complaint, Dennis, the secretary. I was not invited to the meeting. I had to find out about the meeting from someone else. So, They're not considering us. They're only considering the developer. If there's a way to unseat this board, it should be explored. More than 20 years, he should feel like Medford is his home and he needs to protect it. But to come down with a decision on the side for the developer this strong, we really need to look at that.
[Cheryl Rodriguez]: Hi, I'm Cheryl Rodriguez. I live at 281 Park Street, which may not sound like in a butter, but I am a perfect cut through from the Fellsway to Riverside will lead right to this development. I attended both meetings, the community development meeting and the zoning board meeting and Bill Brown, Park Avenue, New York represented equity one. And the statement that is ringing in my ears from that meeting at the end, he turned around and looked right at us. All the citizens who'd sat there for an hour and a half presentation, And then he got a rebuttal after that. And he said, it's coming. Just deal with it. It may not be me, but it's coming. You live in Medford, you're close to Boston, and people are going to build and build and build. My response to that was, no, Medford's going to say no. We're not going to let anybody come in and build anything they want. We're going to have some common sense. Unfortunately, I was wrong. But some of the things that he asked for and is granted, I did speak to Dennis McGonnell, I believe it is, and he said that this has passed. They just haven't had time to write it up. He is adding over 1,000 toilets to Locust Street, and the city engineer asked him to expand the water line. He said, sure, I'll expand the water line. It'll cost me about $950,000. I'd like that deducted directly from my linkage fees. The city said yes. He said, I'd also like to build a path to get to Freedom Way, probably because the people renting those units don't want to pay for the second parking space if they want, and he's going to charge rent for that. They'll park at Hormel. He also wants to, the city is going to pay for that pathway because it's cheaper for him to build it, but he shouldn't have to pay for it. He also wants to build a path to Cummings. Someone from Spring Street said, is that so people can park on Spring Street? He asked the city to pay for that because it's on city property, so he shouldn't have to pay for it. He wants to give the city nothing. He wants to take everything. He thinks nobody drives, but he's building 781 parking spaces. He said that the community will not be coming onto this property because he's going to build 7,000 square feet of retail, but it's just going to be convenience. Someone said, will that include a coffee shop? He said, no, that won't include a coffee shop. So we're talking convenience store dry cleaner, possibly, and an Eastern Bank. So we're going to have three new driveways that are going to feed traffic onto Locust. His traffic study only included Locust Street. No other streets. This is going to impact Riverside. This is going to impact 16. This is going to impact Park Street. This is going to impact the square. This is going to impact everywhere. It's too large. More of the room was full of residents. It was 85 degrees. They turned the lights out on us so they could show their PowerPoint presentation. We all sat and we waited and we waited and we all said, we're not opposed to development here. We were told in the transcript article, it said the mayor was expecting a stations landing type development. This is not a stations landing type development. It's too big. It needs to be scaled back. We need to consider the needs of the city. The schools are already crowded. And they're building a pathway to Freedom Way. You think that's not because they're going to have children in the schools? It is. We need to consider this. Seriously, we need to stop this, or everyone else will keep coming. Thank you.
[Cheryl Rodriguez]: Hi, I'm Cheryl Rodriguez at 21 park street. And I had questions. I heard that we could ask questions about the park. Um, I'm concerned about the proximity to the school. I'm wondering if it's going to be closed during school hours, like the cable access, because these children are younger and more vulnerable than the high school students that that rule is protecting. I'm wondering if there's going to be dedicated parking for this, because anyone who's been to that school campus knows that those lots are overflowing during school hours, approximately between 7 a.m. and 3 p.m. So are teachers going to be displaced? I know if you have a sick child at this school, it's nearly impossible to pick your child up because you can't park your car. I'm wondering what the water bill will be to the city for the filtration, the cost of electricity to have lights on at night that we don't have on in the other parks because the local parks don't have lights at night. I don't know if maybe those questions can be answered so we have more perspective.
[Cheryl Rodriguez]: Hi, I'm Cheryl Rodriguez at 281 Park Street and I'm not sure if I can ask through the chair, but is it possible for us to resubmit the home rule and ask that they put the question on? I know that was a stumbling block for a lot of people of if we want charter review on top of electing the commission, because I know a lot of people thought that we took out the choice, and maybe if we put the choice back in, that would help us. I know that it's difficult to collect signatures because a lot of people don't know what the charter is. I'll personally be at the superintendent meeting next week with my clipboard, and if anyone wants to sign, please do. I urge the people that are for charter review to gather your clipboard and start going to these community events. It's spring, and there should be more events coming up. I'd love to see people at the farmer's market collecting signatures and any other events that are happening in the city, because there are people that want charter review, and there are a lot of people who are, what is charter review? And at some point, people need to know what it is so that it can happen.
[Cheryl Rodriguez]: Hi, I'm Cheryl Rodriguez at 281 Park Street and my experience with C-Click Fix in the past week has been at C-Click Harass. I've been here to talk about the car on the sidewalk and someone got very upset that I had posted it on C-Click Fix and the next thing I knew it was, I saw you at the city council meeting speaking. I saw you walking your dog. I saw you with your phone in your hand. And that's not what C-Clicks is supposed to be. And someone else said, it sounds like you're stalking this person. And no one from the city responded. This person harassed me for about three days. And I was like, what is wrong with you? Just park on the street. And it got to the point that the police actually came down and ticketed the car, which is probably the opposite of the reaction that he was hoping for. because this person was unhinged. I'm not the first person that this has happened to. I saw someone else had posted about their toddler getting bitten by a dog and getting knocked to the ground by dogs in the park that were loose. And they got, oh, I know who you are. I've seen you. You're the woman in the hat. You're the woman who does this. Maybe you just shouldn't come to the park. And no one's monitoring these posts. And people shouldn't feel unsafe to use CClickFix. I personally don't feel unsafe, but that's pretty intimidating and crazy. I had to report the individual posts and say, can you take these posts down? Just take the whole thing down if this is the way that this is going to happen, because this is insanity. So it's not right. Somebody has to be looking at this, or you just need to shut it down.
[Cheryl Rodriguez]: Hi, I'm Cheryl Rodriguez. I live at 281 Park Street. I came out to support Anne and her efforts, but that's not the only corner in Medford that's got cars on the sidewalk. It seems to be the culture in Medford. You go on C-Click Fix, and you'll see people posting police cars, other cars, every car is on the sidewalk. I live on Park Street where the Roberts School is, and we have some wonderful parents that do the Walking Wednesdays, which just began last week. And the walking school bus walked up Park Street, and my daughter waited for the walking bus to come by. And they all squeezed by the car that's on the sidewalk. I posted C-Click Fix a month ahead and said, you know, Walking Wednesdays are coming. Maybe this car could move. It hasn't moved in two months. Maybe they could drive around the corner. Barry Clemente responded back, I'll drive by and see. So he comes. He radios in that he's coming down. They come. They move the car. He drives by, takes a picture, posts it, and says there's no car. Within an hour, the car is back. He doesn't come back for a week. The car doesn't move for a week. He radios in again. Four times he did this. I said, maybe don't radio in and just go. So he did that. He went. He knocked on the door. And someone came out, who I'm told works for the city. I can't verify that, and said, oh, my mother's elderly, and it's easier for her if we park on the sidewalk. But we'll leave enough room for a pedestrian to get by, a pedestrian.
[Cheryl Rodriguez]: No, not that. Not that side of the street, no.
[Cheryl Rodriguez]: This is the side of the street where the houses are on.
[Cheryl Rodriguez]: Now he wants the other sidewalk.
[Cheryl Rodriguez]: But he's been parking on that sidewalk for five years.
[Cheryl Rodriguez]: Which is a darn shame, because it broke the new street as they drive up onto the sidewalk. I'm just telling you what it is.
[Cheryl Rodriguez]: Thank you. Actually, Mayor McGlynn said that he didn't agree to that to happen. The person that worked for the DPW said, let's just put this in at an angle. And then they just claimed it because they had parked on that side of the street before and wished to continue to do so. There was no ordinance. I don't remember an ordinance coming through and saying, hey, does everyone agree that we won't have a sidewalk? Because I spent five years of my life meeting with the mayor, meeting with the DPW, meeting with the chief of police to have a path built so that people could walk on that side of the street. They paved in the path in street material. I don't know why. And the very next day, those cars were parked on the path and the sidewalk because they wanted both. Then I spent another year going back to have a fence put so we could have a path. Now when they plow their parking platform, they put the snow on the path. So someone, I don't think we need to wait for someone to get hit by a car. I think we need to get the cars off the sidewalk. I think it's basic. The kindergartners walk by and they say, Mommy, why are there people parked on the sidewalk? The mayor said, oh, this is terrible, and we'll take care of it. The guy's still on the sidewalk. They told me they gave him an exception. So now he has both sides of the street. So I'm going to park on the sidewalk in front of my house. I mean, that would be great. Because they said, because it's easier for his mom, that they can park on the sidewalk. I've never seen this woman get in the car. I've always seen a younger person get in the car. So before someone gets hurt, maybe you should not worry about paving or putting in paint on the ground if we can't get cars off the sidewalk.
[Cheryl Rodriguez]: Shara Rodriguez, 281 Park Street. I'm here on behalf of the students of the Roberts Elementary School. We have received a grant from the Massachusetts Cultural Council to place a mural in our school. We have a resident artist coming in, Susan Altman, who will be helping every single student build this mural. And we'll be unveiling it at our second art night on May 26. And I would like to formally invite the council and anyone in the Roberts community to attend. What time? Thank you very much. What time? It's at 6 PM.
[Cheryl Rodriguez]: On Thursday the 26th.
[Cheryl Rodriguez]: So, my name is Cheryl Rodriguez, and I'm a parent at the Roberts Elementary School, and I'm involved in the art show that's happening in May. I think the teacher was my mom. We were fortunate to get a grant this year from the Massachusetts Cultural Council. We do have arts and residents in here. We have a student author come in, and she's going to be helping the students, every student who's going to participate. and create a mural on the second floor outside the art room. It will be a mosaic. So, he ran probably the entire cost of the art, and we were able to get some funding. But supply would be too, of course, for cover.
[Cheryl Rodriguez]: We do not. All students voted that the final theme is the many cultures of the Roberts. Last week, in one day, our teacher asked everyone in their country of origin, and we had 41 countries from one day. So they're going to have to design something to try to incorporate all those cultures. They'll be a record of them coming out. The project is supposed to start in May. They'll all come together make one they'll be mounted on like separate bars So they'll be able to be removed if so it won't damage the wall But they'll be supported and we have talked to the buildings department to make sure it's safely installed. They'll be installed
[Cheryl Rodriguez]: I did go into Blick personally, and they said they had never heard of that program. Someone did make me aware that this program exists. So that is something I'm still exploring. We also have a membership to extras for creative reuse, which I recommend for all the art teachers. $80 for the year. You can go in 10 times and take as much as you want. I've gone in and gotten a lot of tile that we'll be incorporating into the mosaic. We also use that for the art show, and we're using that for our science night, so it really cuts our supply costs. So I'm doing as much as I can to mitigate the costs, but there will be some.
[Cheryl Rodriguez]: We're actually not painting. This is a tile mosaic and will be grouted. I can certainly reach out to them, see if they have any extra supplies. I definitely reach out as far as I can. Me, I can attest that I reach far and wide.
[Cheryl Rodriguez]: We have already begun the brainstorming. They did the voting. It will be unveiled on May the 26th. So the bills will be in the two to three weeks prior to that.
[Cheryl Rodriguez]: Great.
[Cheryl Rodriguez]: Cheryl Rodriguez, 281 Park Street. I've been following the CPA closely. I've been to the meetings. I did ask this exact question approximately one month ago. I requested that the administration make a great effort to notify the citizens that they needed to apply for this abatement because a lot of information that went out before the election made it seem like this was a magical, automatic abatement, and it is not. I don't think it's enough to put, they were talking about a different color sheet of paper would go in your bill to tell you to come in to apply for this abatement. I think there needs to be some kind of an open community meeting where people can come and be told how to apply for this abatement and actually apply for it. City Hall is open late, one night a week, that would be a perfect night to have people come in and say, we'll help you file for this. This is a tax, a surcharge that people voted in And we need to make sure that the citizens that are not supposed to have to pay this are protected and not having to pay this.
[Cheryl Rodriguez]: I'm Cheryl Rodriguez, 281 Park Street. I think Councilor Marks probably just said what I was going to say, that I think the most important thing, either way we go, signatures or home rule petition, is to make sure that we get this out, that people know what this is, because I can't tell you how many people thought I was collecting signatures to open a charter school. They have no idea what a charter is. They don't know what's in it. They don't know why they would want to change it. And I think it's the responsibility of the city to help get that information out. It's nice that small groups are having little meetings, but it has to come from the city to educate and let people know what's really happening.
[Cheryl Rodriguez]: Hi, I'm Cheryl Rodriguez. I live at 281 Park Street, which is not in a business district. I feel like if it's in a business district, Republic should be raking it in and giving every truck that stops there a ticket. But I live on Park Street, which is the street that the Roberts Elementary School is on, which is the street where they let out the middle school kids off the bus. And they walk up Park Street and around the car that's been on the sidewalk since the first meeting that I came to about sidewalk parking. If that car has moved, I missed it. I walk my dog every day, twice a day, down that street. I walk my daughter to the park almost every day. That car is on the sidewalk, not on the park side, on the other side, and it hasn't moved. Nine and a half years I've been living on the street. Nine and a half years that car has been on the sidewalk. Nine and a half years he's never gotten a ticket. I'm not even sure he drives. He has a handicap placard up there and he hasn't moved. I met with the mayor about it three times. I met with Chief Sacco about it. I've called the police department, and the police department at this point doesn't want to hear from me. When I call, they say, just walk on a different sidewalk. And I say, well, I can't because the other sidewalk is a parking platform. I need the car off the sidewalk. This is basic. Write tickets, tow cars away, get them off the sidewalk. I don't want to witness a student walking to the elementary school getting hit by a car. We have a parent who does walking Wednesdays, And they walk to school in little trains every Wednesday, and one of them's going to get hit by a car. This is important, and someone needs to address this. Thank you.
[Cheryl Rodriguez]: Hi, I'm Cheryl Rodriguez at 21 Park Street. I have met with the charter group and I was glad to see that possibly we can stop collecting signatures. But I think if you decide to have a meeting on this to change this, I would encourage you to televise this. I know the community of whole meetings are not televised. This is probably one of the largest issues that's being discussed in the city because this will shape our entire city. This charter hasn't been looked at since I was in elementary school. I'm not a young person anymore. So I would not want to see any restrictions on this charter. I would love to see the group elected every time to look at the charter, never appointed. I would also like them to be able to look at everything because personally, I hope that these seven people will not be in agreement on what they want to see in this charter. So if I have my list of five or as a person elected, not saying that, but. I would want to say, well, I don't know if I want to let that person's resolution go through, because that's one less that I can get. So I'm going to fight them tooth and nail. And maybe we're not going to get anywhere. Maybe we're just going to go back and forth. Maybe the things that are going to come out of it are going to be so small that they're not going to make a difference. Maybe the things aren't going to go together. And they're just one will pass and one won't pass. And it won't change anything for the better. Maybe things don't need to be changed that much. I just don't think we should handcuff this group in any way, because we want this charter to be really looked at, because we want our city to be as great as it can be. But thank you for putting on this resolution.
[Cheryl Rodriguez]: Hi, Cheryl Rodriguez, 281 Park Street. I am a parent in the community. I've had children in the school for 14 years. I've gone through six principals, and I can attest that the notification system, if it does exist, is not known to these principals, because I've had six very different and unique experiences with notification. I've been complaining about this for years. So I was very excited to see Paul at Vanderclute put this resolution up. And I hope that as parents we find out what the system is and it's implemented. And maybe our PR person can help craft it.
[Cheryl Rodriguez]: Hi, my name is Cheryl Rodriguez. I live at 281 Park street. Um, I heard about this bomb threat online as well. I have a student in the Roberts Elementary, but I pretty much get all of my information about the school online because my school doesn't notify. I know other schools call for snow days. So this call coming in at 630 for a bomb threat is no surprise. There's no clear policy in how schools are supposed to notify parents. I thought this was possibly the PR person's job to kind of unify us because at my school, we've had power outages, we've had heat being out, we've had issues where they can't clean things because there's no hot water, there's no parent notification. Somebody needs to unify this because everyone should know. We had the lockdown drill at my school and nobody notified. We had children having anxiety attacks because their parents couldn't prep them for this. This is just a larger issue that we need as parents. When I drop my child off at the school, I don't give up my parental rights. I found out about the power outage last year because I was volunteering in the school building and had to cancel a program for 100 children with less than two hours, walked in the school and found out they had no power. So something needs to be done on a systematic level of notifying parents. We're still the parent, and I need to know what's going on for my child. I don't want her to come home and give me this wild story of we had no heat and had to wear our winter coats, because I don't know to believe that. School didn't tell me that, so it's probably not true. So I think it's bigger than just bomb threat, and we really need to think about that. It's a bigger issue. Thank you.
[Cheryl Rodriguez]: Hi, I'm Cheryl Rodriguez. I live at 281 Park Street. On my street is Hickey Park on one end and the Roberts School on the other end, which has approximately 600 children, most of which come from the Fellsway area to go to the school. Next to Hickey Park, there is a parking platform that was built by the DPW approximately 10 years ago. The curbstone was built at a slant in order to make it easier for the cars to drive onto the sidewalk. Every day, a DPW worker who lives across the street comes home, parks his car on the sidewalk, and has lunch at home. Every year, there are space savers on that parking lot, and if you walk too close with your dog or anything, they tell you to get away from their car and get off their parking lot. I was yelled at this week for going too close as they were shoveling the snow into the path that I had asked Mayor McGlynn to build. because there was no sidewalk on that side of the street. And on the opposite side of the street, we have a handicapped person who parks blocking the other sidewalk, which was the only reason I was able to get the path built because I was initially told to walk on the other side of the street. It took five years to have that path built. There are still cars parked on there. They had to put a fence between the path and the parking platform because they were parking on the new path. So this is a serious issue and the city workers are doing it too. If you go buy Eddie's pizza, the police cars are on the sidewalk. If you go buy nappies, there's a police car parked on the sidewalk. And Republic doesn't go to my neighborhood because we don't have meters. So Republic will not enforce this. The police will not enforce this. Somebody told me they got a ticket for parking on the sidewalk. but they were able to get it turned around because it's a recognized parking platform. So that's something that you need to look at. A beautiful sidewalk was built and is now a parking lot for city residents.
[Cheryl Rodriguez]: Hi, my name is Cheryl Rodriguez. I live at 281 Park Street. Since you opened the park Medford a little more, um, During the period that you were supposed to have the free Saturday parking, several people reported on Facebook and just parents speaking that they were paying for parking on the Saturday. The meters were not off. Park Medford still hasn't figured out how to turn their meters off. So maybe when you get your report, you might want to see how many people paid when they weren't supposed to. That seems like a breach of contract. And since we're always talking about the contract and how much it'll cost us to get out of it, Maybe there should be some ramifications when they don't honour their contracts. Thank you.
[Cheryl Rodriguez]: I'm Cheryl Rodriguez. I live at 281 Park street. It's a single family home. I live in with my husband and my seven year old daughter, my older daughters in college. Um, I talked to the assessor and my home value is going to increase approximately 10% this year. My home is not worth $500,000 but if it was worth 500 it would be now worth $550,000, which means that even if you gave me an exemption, my property taxes will increase $500 a year, plus the wonderful CPA, which means that my home will now cost me a minimum of $50 extra per month, even with the residential exemption. I think it's important to note that, that you're not giving me a property tax reduction, even if you give me a residential exemption. I have no tenant that I can turn to and say, Can you give me an extra $25 a month so that I can pay only $25 more? Because I know a lot of the renters in this town think that we're all sitting on a money pile. I owe the bank hundreds of thousands of dollars. My home is not going to give me any money. I won't be able to afford to do the new roof on my garage that I need because I'll be paying the city more. So I think you need to factor that in. People need to understand that homeowners aren't getting a reduction.