Public Comment

Transcript (~18 min @ 9:15)

Speakers identified by voice; unnamed voices are numbered within this recording. Auto-caption text — verify against the video.

▶ 9:22 Speaker 2: before us tonight good evening madam chair good evening let's see um i actually have some written

▶ 9:45 Speaker 2: comments that uh i was anticipating the legal and other legislative so i'm not sure if i have enough copies for everybody but i do have multiple copies so let me deliver the original to you Thank you, Madam Vice Chair. Thank you. And let's see, maybe show a community member.

▶ 10:03 Manisha Bewtra: Alderman Medeiros and Alderman Zorco are the voting members, and Alderman Lipper-Garabedian is the sponsor.

▶ 10:09 Speaker 2: Thank you. So I think there'll be one more.

▶ 10:16 Speaker 1: President Lemmerman is ex-officio also. Correct.

▶ 10:20 Speaker 2: I apologize.

▶ 10:25 Speaker 3: I'll see you. Give us an agenda. one james oh i'm sorry okay

▶ 10:36 Speaker 2: looks like you might have exactly enough except for myself thank you get along as long as you're keeping a copy keep that one i'll look on with sean

▶ 10:47 Manisha Bewtra: we can make sure to circulate afterwards

▶ 10:52 Speaker 2: Well, to cut to the chase, I mean, I think I disagree with the principles behind the vacancy ordinance for a few, I think, fundamental reasons.

▶ 11:16 Speaker 2: I think the concept of it, we all can agree on, which is to make Melrose as beautiful a community as we can do. I think this crosses over the line between public interest and private property rights. The reason why I say that is for a very fundamental point that this is a use, a public use of private property for a public purpose without any compensation. In lawyer terms, that's called a regulatory taking. It's a violation of the Constitution. I think there is a way of achieving the aim with getting into a constitutional question. I'm well aware that there are other towns that have these, which brings to a second point that I think you'll find that the towns that have them have much larger planning departments than we do. They have economic development directors and they have a way of superintending it. Rita now, although you may not be aware of it, the planning office is up to its eyeballs in pending projects. You all saw the letter of the city to the mass housing people on the 4DB project on Swains Pond, and I think if you read that, you realize that there is a magnitude of projects in the works that the city planner is working on that are gonna bring substantial new growth revenue two and a half exempt to the city, but that require all the staff time. In the meantime, the same office handles grant applications and rezoning efforts and all the myriad of things. Honestly, I don't think they have time to administer the vacancy ordinance, nor does the building inspector, who, again, is totally up to his eyeballs, and he'd be the first to tell you that is true. I think they've just hired some additional help to try and work down the backlog of project applications that have to be reviewed. These are the people who would be, you know, supervising this, and they, you know, I know that they feel they just don't have the time. The other thing is that there is no vacancy problem in Melrose. For every vacancy you think exists, believe me, there are all kinds of competing potential development projects, landlords who are in negotiations, property owners that are trying to make the deals. It's a well-known rule of thumb in greater Boston real estate development circles that it takes seven years from the inception of a project in the developer's brain to actual reality of opening it up for occupancy. and that's because there is just an amazing as the chair can tell you network of regulatory reviews that have to be done through so if you see a vacant property and you think to yourself why is this vacant you can rest assured that it's it's not because the owner is not trying to get it occupied it's au contraire and you know adding another layer of bureaucratic mandate to a situation where property owners believe me already feel quite stressed by the recent increase in the affordable component from 10 to 15 percent there But I would point out to you that in that ordinance, there is compensation because for every affordable unit that you have to create by mandate, you get a bonus unit because of the same issue that we're talking about right now, which is the constitutional issue. You can't just put the burden of complying with some perceived public need on a developer of private property without giving some thought to the idea of there has to be a quid pro quo. I'm not seeing that there is one here. On the other hand, I think there's a tremendous opportunity for some kind of voluntary program. I know that the Arts Council is very interested in this and I think that's great I think there are people who would you know provide the art and set it up for the landlords when they have vacant property I think there would be many if not all landlords who would think that was great but making it a mandate with the penalty no I don't think that this that's going to get great acceptance and I'm gonna remind some of you of the anecdote that happened back in the Milano era on the building right across the street from us at the corner of Essex and Main. At that property, the landlord, the owner of that property tried to put a tenant in with a pizza shop. And funny thing, you know, the Board of Altamont felt we had quite enough pizza shop and they would not grant the common victuals license. That was clearly an illegal decision, but they made it anyway and it stuck. And the landlord went into a 30 year snit where he would not rehab this property, where he just kept it exactly the way it was. And until Mark Carroll was able to convince him to sell it to him and redid the building, that was the eyesore building of the downtown Melrose that we just couldn't solve. So don't think that landlords or property owners are passively accepting of regulations that come down. So if you're going to put them into effect, you really have to do what we normally do in town which is is try to get some kind of partnership going with the private owners to make it voluntary program and see if that works before you go to a mandatory program so I appreciate the time I'm sure that there are other points of view but that's that's mine and I believe it's the point of view of you know the real estate owners and developers and landlord clients that i have thank you um mr bell uh i see you signed in but would you mind just

▶ 18:41 Speaker 2: stating your name and address for the record thank you robert bell 173 ashland street thank you

▶ 18:46 Manisha Bewtra: any further members of the public wishing to comment

▶ 18:56 Speaker 3: met if i share thank you very much um my name is eric slagle i live at 3 lincoln street by way of background I thought folks should know I'm a former member of the zoning board for the city of Melrose I've lived in the city for 15 years I am a land use attorney I practice in private practice for a firm in Boston called women page and then I worked for seven years in the law department for the city of Lowell and I'm currently the director of development services for the city of Lowell I was contacted by Alderman liver Garipay Bedean concerning this this ordinance and I'm here to speak in favor of it we in Lowell which is obviously a different different municipality than Melrose a lot of a lot of different ways have a vacant foreclosed ordinance that has been on

▶ 20:00 Speaker 3: book since 2010 while we focus primarily on residential vacancies because of kind of the blight issues and neighborhoods that they caused our ordinance also does apply to commercial vacancies so I wanted to talk a little bit about some of the issues that were raised both by the mayor staff and their memo to the board and by the head of the planning department in her letter to the board as well it's my opinion based on having operated one of these ordinances for approximately a pool of between 500 and 800 vacant and foreclosed properties in the city of lowell that the administration for a this sort of program for commercial properties in melrose would be be minimal there's only a pool of a couple of hundred commercial properties in the city as it is and as folks have mentioned there's not necessarily a large number of those are going to be vacant at any time so the maintenance of the program certainly not be a daily issue not even a weekly issue maybe a monthly issue and so as as far as as overtaxing an already overtaxed which i understand i i don't think that this would increase the the workload on those folks sufficient to to um to create any kind of problems in the department um while i do appreciate some of the issues that folks have brought up and i think attorney bell has an interesting perspective on it i i do think that in its current form what we're talking about is anticipating a relatively minor annual fee that would could be waived if a property owner voluntarily agrees to put public art in them on the property that to me um is not um imposing something on a property owner for uh to to demand a public good but rather is allowing a property owner to take steps to offset a public problem which is a vacant building in a commercial district we all know we all drove past caruso's for years we understand that that had an effect on that corner it had effect on that strip i know when the building where coffee tea and me was had the structural problems and that was vacant that created a problem for for downtown and in a city like melrose that has such a limited supply of commercial properties i think the impact of of individual vacancies like that it is greater than in a city like lowell that has you know 24 000 properties where one commercial vacancy might be lost in the in the shuffle um here because there's fewer they have a greater impact um uh i'm reading the the ordinance this does not feel to me like an overreach it doesn't feel to me like an onerous burden while i i do agree that a voluntary program if it were to go into effect could have positive impacts i also think that the the problems that you get from vacant properties often come with the people who wouldn't wouldn't join a voluntary program landlords who are not willing to participate or not willing to step up to the plate to take the um the responsibility for for updating rehabbing filling their buildings are the same landlords that wouldn't participate in a voluntary program so i think that you would find kind of the venn diagram of folks who have long-term vacancies but are willing to step up and participate in a voluntary program might not be great and it's the ones that aren't in that group that are the ones that cause the problems so for my professional experience with this my personal experience alone in the city for for for a while um i think that this is a kind of a low burden for uh you know a positive impact um i certainly hope as i think all the members of the board do that it never becomes an issue that we don't have commercial vacancies that extend over 100 days but when we do it would be nice if the city had some recourse to at least bring that property owner to the table and maybe the result is not public art maybe the result is a conversation with the planning department that allows them to to work to get a better tenant in there but giving this kind of ordinance some some backing of the board at least makes that property owner be responsive to the city when there's a vacancy like this whereas now um as as we've seen in some of the

▶ 24:49 Speaker 3: long-term vacancies that have happened they might just blow the city off um so that's uh those are my thoughts and i appreciate the time to speak to the board thank you any further members of the

▶ 25:15 Speaker 1: public thank you hi good evening um my name is deb corbett and i'm a artist in the community and a founding member of melrose arts and i'm also here to i guess sort of represent the other new art groups that are happening follow your art as you probably know we'll be opening an art center the end of the summer and that's a very exciting development for our town and also last year was our second open studio tour under most MOST those two women were unavailable to come tonight so I'm speaking for them just really speaking as an artist I mean we live and work in isolation often and to be able to have the opportunity to show our work is pretty exciting I mean Melrose Arts does have the festival but we also do have an annual window walk anyway where merchants are paired up with artists and that's that sort of beautifies the downtown and believe it or not we have over 60 artists in our community that are working in various media and they don't often have the opportunity to you know to show their work so if it comes to be that there's an empty property I'm all for decorating and I guess oh decorating is not the right word but you know for an artist to lend their work and you know it's kind of a privilege for them but it's also you know it's

▶ 26:49 Speaker 1: it's great exposure and I think visually it would be interesting so I don't really have a whole lot more to add unless you have any questions or this is

▶ 26:57 Manisha Bewtra: a we're just taking public comment right now okay all right I'll just so I guess I'm done yep thank you all right yes I understand it's a little thank you for

▶ 27:27 Manisha Bewtra: coming in yes thank you thank you any further members of the public wishing to

▶ 27:32 Speaker 4: comment on this order motion to close public comment madam chair second

▶ 27:36 Manisha Bewtra: public comment is now closed so again there's one order before us this evening order 2019-82 an ordinance regulating the registration and maintenance of vacant commercial properties in the city of Melrose sponsored by non voting member alderman Kate Letter Garabedian sir motion to suspend the rule so that we may hear from the sponsor of the order so move second Alderman