Public Participation

Transcript (~17 min @ 3:51)

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

▶ 3:50 Gail Infurna: present and that being the necessary quorum the board will proceed to

▶ 4:00 Peter D. Mortimer: business please rise and salute the flag motion to open the floor for public

▶ 4:15 Gail Infurna: participation madam president Pro Temp Alderman Mortimer makes a motion to open for public participation seconded by Alderman Boisselle all those in favor of opening for public participation say aye aye all those opposed we are now in public participation if anybody out there would like to come before us and talk about anything on the agenda this evening please sit at the table sign the blue piece of paper and and you can begin

▶ 4:42 Speaker 2: thank you i've already signed in my name is paul grover i live at 195 mower street and i'd like to talk about the overlay my main concern is about the parking that was expressed at the previous meeting and for apartments and condos it was supposedly one space per family in an apartment I would be thinking there would be a mother father son and daughter and with only one car space doesn't seem to be realistic a birthday party Christmas visit or Thanksgiving dinner one visit a parking space for ten apartments is not realistic either and I wrote the do you really think that only people who live alone without family or friends will be the residents of those apartments or condos two spaces per unit for residents and one space per unit for visitors is what today's needs are and should be the minimum requirement allowed the surrounding neighborhoods of these developments will catch the blunt of the overflow of vehicles caused by the inadequate allotment of parking spaces on the site at these developments assisted living and I'll switch to my reading glasses as I should have assisted living one space per four units or apartments do seniors stop living at these places if so I'll never go there seniors are people who might need a place where they don't have to shovel snow or mow a lawn or keep their home in repair they might have some medical problems but that doesn't mean they They stop going out shopping or visiting family or friends. I know as a senior I will hold on to my driver's license for as long as I can. I enjoy my independence as a safe driver of cars, trucks, and my motorcycle.

▶ 6:51 Speaker 2: To say that seniors in assisted living should not have a car is a slap in our faces. To say that seniors in assisted living units should not have visitors for Mother's Day or Father's Day or grandchildren over to spend time with grandma or grandpa that they love and care about is a complete lack of knowledge of what a family is all about. To put a limit of one space per four assisted living units is unrealistic. For the seniors who live there, or for the visitors, family, friends, or people who might need to come to visit the seniors about personal matters, this is very inadequate. One space per unit and one visitor space per three units, minimum requirement, is a more realistic for today's seniors. There will be seniors without cars, but that will only add to help the visitors parking at these developments. whether the parking lots are combined or not. I have read and heard how long and hard Ms. Gaffey and the members of the Planning Board have worked on this overlay proposal, but you have to add the needs of the people who will live in these developments, as well as you have tried to give the developers more flexibility in their designs and investments. I feel that if these

▶ 8:32 Speaker 2: developments are built, as the overlay plan for parking space allotment suggests, a problem will be created for surrounding neighborhood streets and I'm sure you will hear complaints from your constituents about no parking available in front of their homes because of the overflow. But it be too late to correct the problem. The time is now to look hard at this before you vote

▶ 9:03 Speaker 2: on it. And finally, I'd like to ask about this underlying issue that is bothering me, and that is the fire station at Tremont and Mellow Street. I've heard in the past years of a possibility creating a central fire system involving Stoneham, Wakefield, Saugus and metals with mellows keeping one of its stations possibly the central or east side station is there any plan or plans now or in the future for this to happen as part of the overlay report the public works yard I also asked that question is there any plan now or in the future to move the public works yard to a new location as part of the overlay plan in the past people in charge of that at that time the late 60s and early 70s proposed a plan but it was proven to be to proven to create more problems than it would have solved I would also state

▶ 10:01 Speaker 2: as the president of the Board of Aldermen mr. Kahn said it would not be a place for commercial businesses that would sell liquor in any fashion as part of this overlay plan the citizens of mellows invite development and revitalization to the city but not at the expense of the residents or neighborhoods just to build a development you must guard what just to build a development you must guard what we have now and in the future thank you very much for listening to me thank you very much mr grover i'm moving as fast as

▶ 10:39 Speaker 3: the old boy take your time take your time is there anybody else that wishes

▶ 10:44 Gail Infurna: to come before us this evening on any items on our agenda get the chair good

▶ 10:59 Speaker 4: evening madam president and members of the board my name is Robert Bell I live at 173 Ashton Street and I'm here also to speak in relation to the rezoning proposal this before you tonight at the depth of the real estate collapse back in March of 08 man Atlantic Monthly wrote an article about which which cities would be the first to recover and they picked Boston the DC area in Hawaii well Hawaii for there's only so much supply there and a lot of demand in DC of course, as the center of the universe. In Boston, because of the intellectual innovation in the great public transportation, and this has proven true in the years that have gone by, the Boston market was one of the first to recover. And within the Boston market, Melrose was one of the first to recover. When the market began to shift, which towns began to recover first? Brookline, Arlington, Melrose. What do they share? They share great public transportation, and they share easy access to where the jobs are. The jobs being in bioengineering, in medical, in technical, the fields where the intellectual innovation is being done and and because

▶ 12:42 Speaker 4: of decisions that have been made by Alderman in the past they've been some significant moments that have happened that have made Melrose what it is the first was the city planner vote back in 76 we didn't have city planner before that and that was an extremely divisive moment in Melrose history the meeting had to be moved from the aldermanic chambers to Memorial Hall which was absolutely packed they were the feelings were running high there was fistfights there was a heart attack people were taken away in ambulance but the alderman at the time stood up and created the job of a city planner for the first time and And that was a really important moment, because that was the first time that Melrose began to plan for the future in any kind of coordinated way, and we were lucky that our first city planner was a visionary person, and some of the things that we've all benefited from today were put in place and first thought through at that time. Another major Melrose moment was the two-and-a-half override, which was the first general override in Massachusetts history, where the aldermen supported a vote to the public, and where the public stepped up in a very close vote and decided to tax ourselves so as to pay for the things that we want that make Melrose what it is. The next major moment was the controversy over Oak Grove Village, which many of you will recall was a controversy. They were those who were against it. They believed that private developers wouldn't do the job right, that they would be trying to do things on the cheap, and they believed that the city didn't have the capacity to manage development in a way as to make it happen correctly. know that both of those prove wrong a further Melrose moment was the creation of the smart growth district which was done entirely locally without any assistance from the state we created our own version of transit oriented development and we've we've been recognized for a forward thinking Mel Melrose was the prototype community, along with Westford, that were used for the studies that became the state smart growth law. We didn't take advantage of the way the state wrote it. We figured it out for ourselves how we wanted to do it, and it's been so successful that But it has now reached the eyes and ears of the people at Beacon Hill who have funded us with money in recognition of the fact that we're doing things in the right way, they've funded us with money to continue the effort along this corridor and in the adjacent business nodes. This rail corridor rezoning is one of those Melrose moments, and it's up to you to decide whether we're going to be proactive in dealing with the future or whether we're going to be reactive. And whenever we've made the municipal decision to embrace the future, it has always worked out and the city's prospered by those decisions. There's nothing that we can do in terms of redevelopment in Melrose that's going to change the essential fabric of the city. The city, Melrose is Melrose. It's a fully built out community. We're talking about the reuse of underutilized properties to bring them into contemporary standards of building codes, of energy codes, and create the uses that people want. Transit-oriented development is not an experimental type of development, nor is assisted living, and Melrose needs both of those, and needs it badly. And we need to adapt. So we're at a point in time where we've been fully recognized as a well-thought-out community that's doing its best to address the needs of the marketplace. I see every day in my law practice that brokers, real estate agents from Winchester, Arlington, Belmont, even Newton, are bringing their customers over to Melrose because it's a high-value town. and it's been a long time when I was you know when I was growing up in town we did compare ourselves to those communities and it's been a long time in between that we're now being compared and there's nothing like getting recognition from people out of town because you know it validates so we we tend to you know look inwardly and not think of ourselves in these terms but people from outside are saying hey Melrose has got it going this this rezoning will enable us to ride the wave of the future which is transit oriented development green buildings and new residents who come here for all the right reasons and if we miss this wave we're going to miss a great opportunity we'll miss the opportunity to bring needed revenue increases that are exempt from top two and a half because they are growth revenue and we're going to miss the opportunity to have a wider array of uses such as assisted living which is not currently allowed in the city the zoning board and the Planning Board have this demonstrated their own expertise at managing development in the city they're certainly not going to allow projects that are under parked to get permitted but they also recognize that there is a tipping point that's been reached and I see it constantly with the both the developers and the new residents that I deal with that there is a tipping point that's being reached if you take the building across the street the Essex building that Mark Carroll did 40% of his occupants do not have cars and that's typical the the statistics are similar down at Oak Grove Village so over providing over parking simply creates a sea of asphalt and it isn't to anybody's benefit and I'm gonna just leave you you know it may be somewhat cornball but I'm gonna lead leave you with the fact that you know I got back at Melrose High School as a freshman in Miss Westervelt's class about the so-called opportunity speech from Julia Caesar there's a tide in the affairs of men which taken at the flood leads on to fortune omitted all the voyage of their lives is bound in shallows and in miseries on such a full sea we now afloat we must take the current when it serves or lose our ventures and that's exactly where we are now there is a wave in Melrose is on the verge of riding that wave but this rezoning is essential to keeping the momentum going thank you thank you thank you very much mr. Bell

▶ 20:51 Gail Infurna: is there anybody else that would like to come before us this evening motion to

▶ 20:54 Speaker 1: close public participation madam president motion to close public

▶ 20:57 Gail Infurna: participation seconded by alderman Boisselle all those in favor of closing public participation say aye aye all those opposed public participation is now closed and the clerk of committees will now read communications from his