Adjournment
Agenda original PDF
Minutes original PDF
Transcript
▶ 4:05:36 Kate Lipper-Garabedian: second the motion to adjourn okay we have a motion to adjourn made by president Lemmerman seconded by alderman mortimer all in favor aye any opposed this motion uh this motion carries we are now adjourned and we will resume the other public hearing thank you
▶ 4:05:58 Speaker 8: oh thank you i appreciate that and again thank you for spending four hours of your evening
▶ 4:06:34 Speaker 4: We are going to reconvene our first public hearing which we were in recess for. This was the proposed ordinance for affordable housing. Alderman Zwirko, had you completed your questions or were you still, do you still have the floor? So thank you to the members of the public
▶ 4:06:54 Kate Lipper-Garabedian: who are here and if you'd be so kind as to take your conversations in the
▶ 4:07:07 Speaker 1: hallway we'd appreciate it so quiet please quiet please so thank you alderman's work oh you have
▶ 4:07:27 Michael P. Zwirko: the floor i have the great opportunity to find out where i left off um i believe uh when we recessed i was asking you um miss gaffey um the the the importance of hitting or attempting to hit the ten percent threshold and I know this is somewhat of a crystal ball question but
▶ 4:07:44 Michael P. Zwirko: the reason I ask that is is under these new thresholds that we're creating and guidelines how long do you think under normal circumstances it would take us to get there I know that it took us quite a while to get I think I think you on your table earlier you said six point nine seven to eight percent over a fourteen year period and we know that obviously if there's a big development like we've had you can hit those numbers sooner but that's why previously I had asked the question outside of those developments that we've had what's our average yeah
▶ 4:08:20 Denise Gaffey: so I think we need to and we also need to look at other tools sorry this particular zoning amendment is one tool the housing trust is another tool I mean we work really closely with the housing corporation we try to leverage funds from our relationship with the North Suburban Consortium because they have HUD funding that we can access so we we you know and then there are other things that we recommend in the in the master plan there's some other zoning work that we can done to do to try to create you know more housing through accessory dwelling units and things like that so you know hopefully we're doing we're using every tool at our disposal and we can kind of get closer to ten but it's really hard to get to 10% okay I do think it's very helpful everything we
▶ 4:09:11 Michael P. Zwirko: can do to show progress it's very hard for Melrose to get to 10 or a community
▶ 4:09:18 Denise Gaffey: to get there are a few communities that are at 10 we shouldn't try no we
▶ 4:09:31 Michael P. Zwirko: certainly I mean we certainly should because I know that in past issues that have come before the Planning Board there have been potential of maybe suitors or developers that in certain areas would like to exacerbate the fact that we're not at the 10% I guess I'll just put it that way so all right those are all the questions I had Thank You madam chair certainly alderman Forbes
▶ 4:09:55 Scott M. Forbes: Thank you, and I will be very brief. On page four in your packet of materials where it has the development chart, it starts at eight to nine units, where you would have a number of affordable units with a 15 percent requirement would be one. Is there a reason why it wouldn't be seven to nine units, since one of those units would equal 14 percent of the overall project?
▶ 4:10:18 Denise Gaffey: Sorry, do you mind asking that question again?
▶ 4:10:21 Scott M. Forbes: Sure. page four the packet has the chart where it has development in the number of units and then the number of affordable units with the 15 requirement yes all right so you start off at eight to nine yeah is there a reason why you don't start off at seven five to seven are exempt yeah because we're
▶ 4:10:37 Denise Gaffey: you know those five to seven units aren't providing you those five to seven unit developments aren't providing any units aren't providing any unit units they're going to only
▶ 4:10:49 Speaker 6: provide the payment in lieu okay yeah because it's the reason why is like I
▶ 4:10:54 Scott M. Forbes: said one unit out of seven would equal 14 percent which would be that 15
▶ 4:11:08 Scott M. Forbes: percent threshold so last one is that it said 70 percent was local preference as far as the criteria was concerned would there ever be consideration to include a
▶ 4:11:21 Denise Gaffey: a veteran preference in that criteria so we have tried to do that in the past we have made an inquiry to see if that would be allowed and we have been told that it's not allowed they have certain categories you know I think I mentioned them earlier you have to be a current resident you have to work for an establishment in Melrose so work in Melrose and then you or you can be a household that has school children that are in the school system so children are in the school system and those are the only categories that they permit for the 70% for the local preference okay I know that we've had conversations in the past
▶ 4:11:55 Scott M. Forbes: about adding a veteran preference or talking about it and we were told to go to the state level and talking to our state representative and state senators they told us to come back to the local level so maybe that's so maybe that's a
▶ 4:12:12 Denise Gaffey: discussion that we can have later on absolutely okay very amenable to that we we try very hard when we do have a when there's a lottery we make sure to coordinate with the Veterans Department and because we know you know that's a that is definitely a population yeah I know as you know we have a local we're
▶ 4:12:28 Scott M. Forbes: very active Veterans Advisory Board here our veteran population one of the concerns they have is housing and there are veterans here that are either near homelessness or some people are experiencing homelessness and it's just one of those situations where if we can you know if we're talking about this ordinance if we can have some dialogue and maybe you know some good things can
▶ 4:12:52 Denise Gaffey: come out of it so as residents they would have that preference as a veteran
▶ 4:13:04 Speaker 6: who resides here okay thank you thank you certainly any other alderman wishing
▶ 4:13:07 Kate Lipper-Garabedian: to speak for the first time on this matter alderman Bewtra thank you I just
▶ 4:13:19 Manisha Bewtra: wanted to offer a little bit of more information on the subsidized housing inventory if you were to google subsidized housing inventory it'll like annoying to get to it but it's basically the Massachusetts Department of Housing and Community Development keeps track of all 351 cities and towns and there's a a pdf document from september 2017 that shows where all cities and towns are i just wanted to sort of challenge the idea that it's only larger cities that are meeting their 10 percent um it's an alphabetical order and it's a pdf so i can't sort but um just sort of naming a few andover bedford concord danvers dedham burlington canton foxborough effectively communities of all sizes are meeting their their responsibilities with regards to affordable housing the other point i wanted to make with regards to the subsidized housing inventory is that it is a numerator and a denominator so you know part of the thing we need to do generally is build more housing but if we build more housing without affordability our denominator will increase and in 2020 um when we have a new census our denominator is almost definitely going to increase because we've had population growth and we've had an increase in housing units so although we're at eight percent right now we're definitely at risk of following falling even further behind with the new census count as well as you know if we if we aren't a little more aggressive um in terms of uh programs such as the incentive program thanks that's all thank you
▶ 4:15:05 Peter D. Mortimer: is there a motion motion to hold this order in committee second whole disorder and committee
▶ 4:15:09 Kate Lipper-Garabedian: made by alderman mortimer seconded by vice chair Boisselle all in favor aye aye opposed motion to
▶ 4:15:18 Speaker 4: adjourn madam chair second motion to adjourn made by alderman mortimer seconded by vice chair Boisselle all in favor opposed we are adjourned thank you