ORDER-2022-80 : Request to Approve the Melrose Housing Production Plan

Transcript (~7 min @ 47:40)

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▶ 47:38 Speaker 6: ALL THOSE IN FAVOR AYE ANY OPPOSED ALL RIGHT EXCITING GROUP TONIGHT ORDER 2022-80

▶ 47:47 Speaker 5: request to approve the melrose housing production plan councilor Grigoraitis mr president this comes

▶ 47:55 Jen Grigoraitis: from the appropriations and oversight committee with a recommendation for passage but the recommendation was not unanimous so i would respectfully request a roll call vote so that we can all be on the record yep at this time i would uh motion for passage motion for passage

▶ 48:11 Christopher Cinella: made by council Grigoraitis seconded by counselor eccles any discussion seeing

▶ 48:24 Robb Stewart: thank you thank you mr president um i just wanted to clarify uh what i was talking about the last time that we were here through the chair as you recall um i had brought up the the question about the funding coming from the state and the the people that represented the housing production plan they indicated that it no it came from local funding sources well i looked into it and it turns out that we're both partially correct so i just wanted to be clear to the council so that there's no misunderstanding about what i was talking about the funding comes from two separate distinct sources one is uh basically levy against the um taxable revenue on your property so if you have a if you pay a thousand dollars a year in taxes for your property it's a certain percentage of that so if it was one percent it would be ten dollars um in addition when you go to the registry of deeds every time you submit a document to the registry of deeds there is a fee that goes to the cpa fund and that goes into a state treasury and that collects and it's either 25 or 50 fee depending on the kind of document that it is in addition to that trust fund at the end of the fiscal year the state as is at its discretion may also contribute for example this past year governor baker contributed 10 million dollars to that fund and that fund that state trust fund gets distributed to cpa but that is getting paid from everybody in the state so we're both correct but i just want to you to understand why i feel there's a disparity in equity because there are people that are paying into this fund in towns that may not be as affluent as others that receive no benefit from that um additionally when uh when i and i talked to this gentleman chase mack over We're at the Community for Preservation Coalition, who basically runs a website that talks about all this. Very nice, talking for about 20 minutes on this. There's accelerators, depending on the percentage that you tax at the local level. So the state will give more money to people that have a higher percentage. And Cambridge, since the succession, has always had the max of 3%. So they have been getting tremendous benefit over many years. So just wanted to clarify that, Mr. President, for the council and for the public on how that works and where I really, it's not such an easy decision for me because on a local level, it sounds great. You know, you tax people 100 bucks a year and you get all this free money. But from a more moral and equitable standpoint, It's not so clear because the more affluent towns, and there's only about half, I think there's 177 cities and towns in Massachusetts right now that take advantage of this out of 351. So there are half of the cities and towns that get no benefit, including Melrose, that get no benefit from this. And a lot of it is because it goes to vote, a lot of people will not want to pay more taxes. to me it feels like it's not fair so i just want to make that point mr president thank you

▶ 51:55 Ryan Williams: councilman a discussion through the chair um i wanted to provide a little bit of feedback through the chair so first of all the community preservation act deeds surcharge has been around for 20 years it's paid by everybody in the state we have all probably paid it at some point or another the community preservation act has exemptions for low-income households for seniors it has other exemptions that can be voted on by the public and I have also talked to the same gentleman at the Community Preservation Act Coalition and he drew up some numbers for me about a year ago when I was exploring this issue before I joined the City Council and the figure that he gave me based on the average Melrose home assessment was about $56 a year it's not a tax it's a surcharge which is you know a distinction and possibly in semantics but the the difference is that it doesn't go up um and the city can't increase it after it is implemented um and so the the way that it works is we pay 56 a year on average into our property tax bill and then the state gives us back all of that money and on top of it they uh throw in something like 26 to 30 i don't believe that there are any cities and towns that are paying into the cpa that are not getting cpa funding back um if they're paying into it they're getting it in melrose it would be about a million dollars a year all told for affordable housing okay thank you council records

▶ 53:17 Jack Eccles: thank you mr president um i i as i mentioned the other night was the counselor on the advisory committee i'm really looking forward to moving into the implementation phase of this and regardless how anyone votes tonight we all have a responsibility to shape the future of housing in melrose and we're going to be the 11 of us will be involved in that so for those with concerns i look forward to kind of working through the public process of making any zoning amendments or or any of the other implementation steps and i look forward to working with you all on that

▶ 53:57 Speaker 3: okay anybody else on discussion madam clerk call the roll counselor eccles yes councillor Garipay no councillor Grigoraitis yes councillor Jamaleddine yes councillor karam chetty yes councillor mcmaster yes councillor Migliorelli yes councillor Obremski no councillor stewart no councillor williams yes president sanella no