ORDER-2015-172 : Authorization to Accept a Grant and Authorize the Mayor to Execute an Agreement with the Metropolitan Area Planning Council

Transcript (~5 min @ 1:56)

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▶ 1:42 Peter D. Mortimer: Aye. Any opposed, hearing none, public participation is now closed. The first order we have before us tonight in the Appropriations Committee is order 2015-172. It is an authorization to accept a grant and authorize the Mayor to accept, to execute an agreement with the Metropolitan Area Planning Council.

▶ 2:08 Speaker 2: Is there a motion to suspend the rules?

▶ 2:11 Peter D. Mortimer: Motion to suspend the rules to respond to the appropriate promise. We have a motion to suspend the rules to hear from the appropriate city officials from all the Mayor, mcintyre-margolis duly seconded by alderman boycelle all in favor please say aye aye any opposed hearing none ms gaffey i see you're ready to approach this is denise gaffey our city planner whose office is right here in city hall would you like to make some opening comments that'd

▶ 2:39 Denise Gaffey: be great thank you thank you very much um so this is a this is a very exciting opportunity for us to um to update uh the city's master plan which was last updated in 2004 so it's about 11 years old and 10 years is about the time frame that it's suggested that you go back and take a look at your priorities and and do some more detailed current demographic analysis of trends in the community so we um we approached the mapc back in december of this um 2014 and asked about the the availability of grant funding through their district local technical assistance program and they liked our idea and they awarded us a grant so it's actually a technical assistance grant it's there's no funding that's changing hands but they will provide us with forty thousand dollars worth of services and as part of the arrangement the city is contributing twenty five thousand dollars, so that we would have a $65,000 effort, essentially. And that's considered kind of modest for a master plan initiative. We think it's completely sufficient for us, because we have an excellent plan to build off of. The one that was done in 2004 was a comprehensive plan, so we know we have some good material to build from. have some great staff expertise that we can lend towards this project so we think the sixty sixty five thousand dollars is going to give us sufficient master plan product and I did I did attach to the order a copy of the scope of work so hopefully you've all had a chance to look at that but that pretty much outlines all the tasks and timelines that are envisioned for this this is technical assistance grant with the metropolitan area planning council and as you can see from the from this document it'll be the final master plan document will contain all the typical elements of a master plan a chapter on housing a chapter on economic development a detailed land use and zoning assessment chapter on transportation energy since that's such a big component of the work that we do here in Melrose open space and recreation which will basically just be building off of the most recent open Space and Recreation Plan. We won't have to do a lot of new work for that chapter. And historic and cultural resources and public facilities and services. Most of these categories are categories that are outlined in the Mass General Law for what a standard master plan needs to consist of. Ours is uniquely tailored to Melrose, for example, like that energy component. That's something that we want to add in to the master plan. So we also talk about a timeline in here. We think this entire initiative will take about a year. We hope to be complete by June of 2016. We hope to get underway with forming the committee and having a couple of committee meetings this summer and then really sort of opening up the process, kicking off the process in a sense in the fall with the Victorian Fair, getting a booth and trying to do some outreach to the community and get some feedback that we would then use part of a community-wide vision process and public meeting process a little bit later in the fall so we intend for this to be very interactive and to reach out to the community and get as much feedback as we can and we'll also be also be getting in touch with the president of the Alderman to talk about a representative from the Board of Aldermen the way we structured this ten years ago we had representation from the Board of Aldermen from the school committee and then we try to target we tried to target all those different elements and get some expertise from the various subject matters so that's the approach we were contemplating this time as well it's pretty much my overview and I just I wanted to mention that associated with this order is the order number 173 which is where the funding right now is being requested the $25,000 match so I don't know if you want to talk about that piece of it now