← Legal & Legislative Committee · 2017-10-30 · Legal & Legislative Rescheduled Meeting
Public Participation
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Transcript
▶ 0:39 John N. Tramontozzi: Alderman Robert Boisselle, Alderman Gail Inferna, Alderman Mary Beth McAteer-Margolis. As customary and usual with our meetings, this meeting is open to the public and being recorded pursuant to the commonwealth of massachusetts open meeting law and is a view available for viewing uh through mmtv motion to open the floor for public
▶ 1:05 John N. Tramontozzi: participation mr chairman secondly thank you we have a motion to open the floor for public participation by alderman mortimer seconded by alderman forbes on the motion all in favor seeing no um nobody against that um motion we do now open the floor for public participation And what that is, is any members of the public who wish to come forward to speak on one order on the agenda, I'll read that order as well. You can come to the table, sit down, write your name and address on the paper, and you may speak on any matter on the agenda this evening. So please, anybody in the public who wishes to come forward?
▶ 1:42 Peter D. Mortimer: Motion to close public participation, Mr. Chairman. Wait a minute, wait a minute. I withdraw the motion.
▶ 1:49 Speaker 1: so waiting to see if anybody else wants to speak first gracious of you counselor attorney bell
▶ 2:07 Speaker 1: good to see you this evening uh mr chair and members of the board i'm here tonight and you know my private capacity as a citizen of maurice not as an attorney and i do have some written submission to go along with my oral comments so they can pass it out now please do we would like we will accept those through for you Peter thank you oh okay fair enough thank you sir thank you sir
▶ 2:49 Speaker 1: to be a 12th and not a 11th.
▶ 2:55 Speaker 1: Do you have one moment to go? Pardon me? I do, I do, I do. So I apologize to Alderman Inferno and to the rest of you about the size of the font, but this is something I did myself five minutes before I got over here. I do wanna emphasize that I am in support of a demolition delay. I think it's a useful tool, and we all do very much revere and care for Melrose as it is Melrose. We don't want to see it radically changed. That being said, however, I do have some issues with the proposal as it currently stands based on i i would say a lot of experience you know dealing with development issues in the city i have i think a strong record in support of historic preservation along with the original city planner jerry mimno i did in fact write the historic district regulations that became the framework for the rebirth of downtown in the architectural control that has made downtown really a model in you know Eastern Mass if not you know even greater geographical areas and I was a founding member and in fact incorporated the Victorian Melrose Society and the Melrose Historic Society both of which particularly the Victorian Society had a lot of influence in hoping helping to bring Melrose to consciousness of its architectural heritage in that it was worth preserving in in 1976 when this effort all started the Victorian properties both commercial and residential did not get the respect that they deserve when we Melrose had lost out on the earlier waves of urban renewal Allah Malden for instance that involve tearing down and rebuilding from scratch and thank goodness that you know we didn't get in on that so when we took a look at trying to raise up Melrose which which in the from its you know high point in the 60s when I was in high school you know into the 70s the city had somewhat of a loss of morale and optimism about its future and a bunch of us got together and said how can we how
▶ 5:57 Speaker 1: can we improve our city well if everyone felt a lot better about their property values they'd feel better about the taxes that they were paying and there'd be a general you know lifting of spirits and that basically was the mission of the Victorian Society which is very active for those of you who old enough remember very active for you know 15 or 20 years or so and and brought about a real deeper consciousness of our built environment so that being said you know I think I have a track record for preservation but I do have some problems with the ordinance as it's presented and they're they're in the bullet points of member I have a problem with 1940 you know it's just too recent if you use 1940 you're gonna capture about 85% of all the buildings in the city I mean my partner lives in a nice little Cape of no particular architectural distinction you know I like capes it's built in 1926 you know I'm not sure that's the kind of property that we're really looking to necessarily prevent from being you know if somebody chooses to to being rebuilt in a in a way that isn't in keeping with its exact style right now the other thing that bothers me another thing that bothers me about it there is a circuit breaker process within the ordinance that allows a property to be determined insignificant and therefore not subject to the delay. But if you look at that, the timing of it, it really, it's 15 days for the building inspector to determine the age and therefore refer it to the historical commission and then they have 45 days to have a hearing, but then if they can't determine it within their 45 days, it extends out another 75 days. Well you add those up, there's your six months right there. If we're going to have a circuit breaker, it really should be a much more summary process to determine that a property is not significant enough to have the idea of a delay put upon it and so i'd like to see that speed it up significantly i'm also bothered by the fact that there's no defined standard of what's preservation worthy it really comes down to more or less for the members of the commission to know it when they see it well i don't really feel that's that's appropriate i think there should be some kind of defined standard i leave it up to your wisdom but it could be something as as simple as that the building is either architecturally significant on its own or that's significant in the context of its immediately adjoining properties or something of that nature but there should be some you know defined standard rather than just the individual tastes of the members of the historical commission
▶ 9:22 Speaker 1: I'm also concerned that there's no definition of who should be the decision makers. On every other board that is in the permitting process in the city, there is a list of people who should be on the board, whether it be the Board of Appeals or the Planning Board, that there are within the ordinance, and actually in some cases within state law, that it should be composed of like the planning board has design professionals a municipal law attorney a real estate attorney and the board of appeals is likewise it's stipulated who should make make up the membership and i think that should also apply to this i mean there are you know serious property rights at stake here and i think it should be by the decision should be made by people
▶ 10:22 Speaker 1: with some experience in the field the the other thing that i'd like to touch on is i have a i have a suggestion that properties in the b zones the business zones be exempt from this process the properties in the b zones are already tightly regulated by existing processes in terms of any kind of reuse that they go into you know that that happens to them they're going to go through an extensive process in the planning board at the very least and i think the planning board has an exemplary record of guiding those proposals through those so that the designs come out in keeping with you know the existing fabric of melrose there isn't any of us who want things that are detrimental to what we've already got but by the same token you know we don't want to impose a new delay upon projects upon developers for the on top of an existing process that is extremely if you're not aware of it it's extremely expensive for developers to go through the planning process for site plan approval it involves not just architectural design review it involves impact review of every conceivable impact it may have upon the city and the neighborhood it includes traffic studies it includes sound studies you know of the the noise created by the hvac and similar systems i mean everything that you can think of from an impact point of view is mandated to be studied and they all cost significant money because you've got to have professionals involved in it. So adding six months to the process on developers who are already facing significant expense, you've got to realize that although the Melrose market is hot, it will not always remain hot.
▶ 12:33 Speaker 1: Although it's hot, it's partly hot in the commercial area because we've had a great history of public-private partnership that has gone forward, has brought these projects forward. The development community has to contend with the fact that sellers of properties are extremely impatient to get transactions done and it's really hard to hold deals together for long periods of time while the proponents of a project are trying to get their permitting done and I'm concerned that we not kill the golden goose here because we've got to remember that when all is said and done, Melrose, to continue to be Melrose and to pay for the the things that people want. People in Melrose want a full service community. They don't necessarily want to pay for it. Development is a way that some guy from out of town is paying for the things that we need. When a property gets redeveloped and people come into it, our tax yields go up exponentially. That's what helps us to defeat the inexorable mathematics of two and a half, which keep us from ... When we have costs that are constantly raising at more than 3% plus per year, and we only have an income stream that can increase by two and a half percent you know we ultimately have to either cut back on services as other communities have done or in order to maintain services we have to have new forms of revenue and controlled growth is the only way that you can beat two and a half because as you know growth revenue is exempt from the cap and so i am concerned that we not um we not
▶ 14:45 Speaker 1: upset the fragile marketplace that has been bringing us great benefits without a great deal of thought. Beyond that, I leave it to your discretion. I know that this will be a process that you give serious consideration. I thank you for the chance to talk to you.
▶ 15:05 Speaker 2: Very good. Thank you. Thank you very much.
▶ 15:11 John N. Tramontozzi: Is there any other members of the public who wish to come forward, please?
▶ 15:23 Speaker 2: Good evening.
▶ 15:40 Speaker 1: My name is Richard Chase, I live at 60 Orris Street.
▶ 15:42 Speaker 2: Good evening, Mr. Chase.
▶ 15:44 Speaker 1: I came here 24 years ago. I have to say that I respect Mr. Bell for who he is, and I disagree with 80% of what he just said. I think that if we allow the real estate attorneys and real estate agents to govern what goes into this bill, it'll gut it. We came to this city for three reasons.
▶ 16:12 Speaker 1: Because it had a real downtown, because of its topography, which was brought here by nature, and most importantly, because of the housing stock. Melrose has a wonderful housing stock. It is not just like any other city.
▶ 16:32 Speaker 1: It has cottages, ranches, Victorians, rich people's houses, little people's houses, working class housing. We have everything here and you can go to Bellevue Avenue and two blocks from there you can find a little house that doesn't compare at all to the mansions on Bellevue Avenue. That's an advantage. We are not like Newton or Dover or Wellesley where the housing is pretty uniform. Now in the United States, so far as I know there is no crisis for rich people not having enough housing but
▶ 17:10 Speaker 1: there is for middle class working class and poor people and that's where Mel Rose comes in it still has housing available to some almost everybody the recent housing surge prices have made that harder for everybody Mel Rose is now not for everybody because of the housing surge because I understand that a major magazine in the country said we were the number one zip code when I first heard this I started laughing because I had to say to myself where's
▶ 17:49 Speaker 1: the beach now we also have torn down a number of houses Melrose Wakefield hospital toward a bunch of them down recently to build a parking lot people
▶ 18:01 Speaker 1: do not come to Melrose for its parking lots they come here for its housing if we don't save it it will disappear and we don't want to become another Framingham I realize that developers have to go through a bunch of hoops to build something and I'm fine with that the more hoops the better there are a a lot of cities in the United States and towns and villages and in Europe as well who basically
▶ 18:35 Speaker 1: have tried to stop all development because they realize that it is a good place to live already. And I think that any of the fear that may be engendered tonight that this bill is going to be overreaching or onerous for some people is misplaced i live in a house that was
▶ 19:02 Speaker 1: built in 1882 it's the oldest in the neighborhood it was a fixer-upper as they say when i moved in so there would have been people today that would have wanted to tear it down You're welcome to come over and see what it looks like now. It's taken a while, but we've got it in good shape. And that goes for any house in Melrose can be redeemed. So I would encourage people here to look at your housing stock and say it's one of your jewels and that it shouldn't be messed with. It should be saved. And thank you for listening to me.
▶ 19:39 Speaker 2: Thank you.
▶ 19:48 John N. Tramontozzi: Is there anybody else who wishes to come forward at this time, any members of the public?
▶ 19:53 Peter D. Mortimer: Motion to close public participation, Mr. Chairman.
▶ 19:56 John N. Tramontozzi: Seeing no other members of the public wishing to come forward, there is a motion on the floor by Alderman Mortimer to close public participation. Seconded by Alderman Forbes. On the motion, all in favor? Aye. Any opposed? Seeing none, that will conclude public participation.