Appropriations & Oversight Committee — 2019-01-14
Attendance
Manisha Bewtra ; Robert A. Boisselle ; Scott M. Forbes ; Jennifer L. Lemmerman ; Kate Lipper-Garabedian ; Shawn M. MacMaster ; Monica C. Medeiros ; Peter D. Mortimer ; John N. Tramontozzi ; Francis X. Wright Jr. ; Michael P. Zwirko
Agenda
Minutes
CITY OF MELROSE APPROPRIATIONS COMMITTEE CALENDAR● JANUARY 14, 2019 Aldermanic Chamber, Melrose City HallJoint Meeting with the Planning Board 8:30 PM 562 Main Street, Melrose, MA 02176 The public should take notice that the Melrose Board of Aldermen may, on certain occasions, have a quorum in attendance due to standing committees of the Board of Aldermen consisting of both voting and non-voting members. Members attending this duly posted meeting are participating and deliberating only in conjunction with the business of the standing committee. Attendee Name Title Status Arrived Kate Lipper-Garabedian Chair Present Robert A. Boisselle Vice Chair Present Peter D. Mortimer Voting Present John N. Tramontozzi Voting Present Francis X. Wright Jr. Voting Absent Monica C. Medeiros Voting Present Scott M. Forbes Voting Present Michael P. Zwirko Voting Present Manisha Bewtra Voting Present Shawn M. MacMaster Voting Present Jennifer L. Lemmerman President/Ex Officio Member Present
ORDER-2019-31 Amending Revised Zoning Ordinances Amending Melrose Revised Zoning Ordinance, Chapter 235, Article XI to create a new Section 235-73.4 and amend Section 235-5 (Definitions), Section 235-16.1 (Site Plan Review), Section 235-17 (Table of Use and Parking Regulations) and Section 235-61 (Special Permit Granting Authorities) to regulate Marijuana Establishments Hold City of Melrose Page 1 Updated 1/28/2019 12:53 PM
Transcript
▶ 0:19 Kate Lipper-Garabedian: Good evening. Good evening. The hour being 730, the joint hearing of the Appropriations Committee of the Melrose Board of Aldermen, and the Planning Board is called to order. The Melrose Board of Aldermen Appropriations Committee is a committee of the whole. I am Chair Lipper-Garabedian, and present tonight are members Vice Chair Boisselle, Alderman Mortimer, Alderman Tramontozzi, Alderman Wright, Alderman Medeiros, Alderman Forbes, Alderman work Oh alderman Bewtra alderman McMaster and president Lemmerman madam clerk of committees could you please call the roll of the planning board chairman and D'Souza Ward here Greg Sampson Michael Cassavoy Paul King Robert Mercado here Carla Morelli Sharon Petrillo John Sadowski Jack Welch thank you
▶ 1:18 Kate Lipper-Garabedian: pursuant to the open meeting law this meeting is being recorded and will be available on the city of Melrose website it also is being broadcast live on MMTV and is streamed live on MMTV3.org at this time is there a motion to open public comment so moved madam chair second motion to open public comment made by Alderman Mortimer seconded by Alderman Forbes all in favor opposed we are now open for public comment this is the portion of our meeting where any member of the public can come forward to speak on any item on our agenda for the 730 meeting that is an ordinance to be proposed around affordable housing you would place your name and address on the piece of paper at the table and also the rules of our board limit public comment to 10 minutes so please be mindful of
▶ 2:05 Kate Lipper-Garabedian: that because tonight is a bit different from our typical meeting I just wanted to explain the format we'll have an opportunity for a public comment now then I anticipate that we will have our hearing on this ordinance the planning department will come forward to do a presentation and after that presentation there will be another opportunity for members of the public to speak to this particular proposal are there any members who have the public who would to come forward at this time good evening i'm james osterman i live at 54 ellis farm lane in melrose i'm the senior vice president at melrose bank and the chief lending officer but i'm here tonight to speak in favor of the zoning ordinance as a representative board member of the melrose
▶ 3:08 affordable housing corporation a non-profit organization established to acquire hold and manage affordable rental housing in the city of melrose we were established and acquired we we were established and we acquired our first property back in 2004. we currently own and manage 15 affordable rental units in the city i was the co-chair of the melrose affordable housing task force established back in 1998 by local citizens to promote the responsible creation of affordable housing here in melrose we advocated for and worked closely with the city to create the current affordable housing zoning ordinance at the time our goal was that at least 10 percent of our housing stock would be considered affordable in perpetuity we were all quite pleased
▶ 4:00 that in night in 2004 the melrose affordable housing incentive program was adopted subsequently a number of new developments were approved and each of these developments included provisions for affordable units or were granted a waiver and instead provided a fee in lieu of units unfortunately as we soon discovered the incentive portion of the zoning ordinance failed to keep the city's stock of affordable housing from growing as a percentage of total units the intent was great but the math just didn't work in our favor so we never really got closer to that 10 than we were when we started every unit that we added was offset by an additional unit that didn't really help the goal we knew early on that in order to make significant headway the ordinance
▶ 4:50 would need to be updated so here we are some 14 years later now standing in support of this updated zoning ordinance personally i'd like to see the required percentage be more than 15 so much of since much of our available land for significant development is already gone but that 15 will continue to make a difference in our community and i don't think it's going to present an excessive burden to developers as it's shown that it hasn't in the past 14 years i also strongly support the changes to the ordinance that no longer allow a cashed contribution for projects of eight or more units and for making the option of cash in lieu of units acceptable for projects of five to seven units i also support the increase of the fee from two
▶ 5:39 to three percent of the sale price or market value of all units in the project again i think as a group we'd like to see that higher because it's just never enough money to get anything done but we do understand that that two to three percent uh is a start in the right direction there are other administrative details of the proposed ordinance and those two are all strongly endorsed finally as it is noted in a footnote of the summary the board of directors of the melrose affordable housing corporation strongly request that the city make a priority to finally create the affordable housing trust so that housing organizations like ours might take advantage of the funds currently set aside from fees in lieu of units that
▶ 6:23 have been created over the past 14 years thank you for your time as we make changes to our zoning ordinance specifically to make Melrose more affordable to those whose income is at or below 80% of the area media income thank you good evening to the chairs my name is Jeff Eugenio and I'm here with Jim Keene and we're both members of the mayor's veteran services advisory board and we're here tonight just to say that as you may know and as you may guess a large portion of people our community who need affordable housing our veterans and to the extent that the the board is able either through regulations or otherwise just to set aside any portions of housing units that are coming up as affordable through the development processes in the city we're
▶ 7:26 strongly in support of that although the board is not taking a position per se on the zoning ordinance before the board generally in favor of any initiatives in the city to create more affordable housing to the extent that that there are veterans in our community that need such housing I'd also like to point out that just in speaking with Department of Housing Community Development DHCD as I know Ms. Gaffney is likely familiar in the board Planning Board that there's a local initiative program which is also an alternative to an ordinance as we're discussing tonight and through the they called a lit program developer comes forward it's it's almost like a 40 B but it's it's it's it's voluntary on the community's part the percentages are
▶ 8:12 similar word development would be actually 25 percent income requirements in line like just like a 40 B but it's it's more of a collaborative effort and DHCD and informs us that that you can have a set aside for an affordable unit through that process be a veteran unit like it would be a red city resident unit or applicant and that sort of thing so you know to the extent that that's an option for the planning department to have developers come forward through the lip program we think that's an option to increase affordable housing beyond what amendment calls for and and if you can designate some of those units as a veteran affordable otherwise meeting the income requirements that that's that would be a great result thank you
▶ 9:15 hello my name is corey allen and i live at 179 east foster street this past spring i was one of several melrose residents to take a multi-week course on racism and housing that was developed by white people challenging racism as part of this class we were able to meet with officials from Melrose and learn about the city's approach to affordable housing from this education I've come to the conclusion that we must focus on affordable housing units not fees the fees have only generated two hundred thousand dollars in 14 years approximate to the amount one single family home in Melrose has appreciated over that time and in that time no projects of eight units or fewer has created a single unit of affordable housing i doubt that increasing the
▶ 10:01 fee from two percent to three percent will generate enough revenue to meet affordable housing needs and i should note it is hard to track where and how these fees will be used the affordable housing funding has not yet been covered in the extensive series of emails about melrose funding sources and services i hope it will be soon the affordable housing policy is one of the few tools that can be used to begin to correct the systemic racism that has shaped melrose minorities were redlined out of melrose no government-backed mortgages were approved for them to buy homes in our towns melrose was not open to all as recently as 1968. when i read the master plan and the new proposals for larger projects i get the feeling i'm reading blueprints for a boom in senior housing development
▶ 10:51 as mentioned in the master plan developers want to build these buildings so the main challenge is making sure enough of those units are affordable but this type of development would get us no further in correcting unfair unjust and discriminatory housing practices and i believe that is the goal we should be working towards thank you thank you good evening my name is dana lewinter i'm a new melrose resident and i am the director of municipal engagement at citizens housing and planning association we're a statewide affordable housing organization but these comments are my own but they come from my background as an affordable housing professional working with a lot of municipalities on this kind of work
▶ 11:41 um so i want to first of all applaud melrose's efforts to increase affordable housing units in our city i don't need to highlight how expensive the housing market is for all of you but that's in melrose and all of our surrounding communities and inclusionary zoning is one tool at our disposal to meet the needs of our community and i'm really excited to see a thoughtful process around this tool to make it as effective as possible i think this proposal does several things really well one it brings melrose into line with surrounding communities um while helping us to make quicker progress towards our state mandated goal of having a housing stock in which ten percent of our units are affordable ten percent is the to me is the bare minimum we know that there's more
▶ 12:28 need than that ten percent but but we really do need to be working towards that goal and i think that melrose has been been doing great work doing that but this will help us get there in a quicker and more effective way um arlington everett peabody winchester new wuber newton brookline somerville all have 15 inclusionary housing or higher and i think it took a quick look at the the units that were highlighted in melrose forward between 2015 and 2018 minus the assisted living project which i think didn't have any inclusionary units in it that simple difference from 10% to 15% would have been an increase of 17 units going from 26 to 43 so that's that's real that's 17 families that that might have been able to afford a home here in Melrose and to
▶ 13:19 the gentleman who spoke before me people who might not have had an opportunity to make Melrose their home otherwise second I think by requiring developments with eight or more units to provide units on site and automatically rounding up there's going to be more predictability for developers and it's also going to be a more seamless creation of units fees in lieu yes they're fees but creating a unit is hard work finding the scarcity of land that's out there high development costs the ability of non-profit developers to access all of the funds they need to put a project together a unit is going to be more effective at creating a unit that's built in a development is going to be more effective than than fees in lieu um and it also there's
▶ 14:03 also value in providing units on site in every development as if we want to be an inclusive community there's a diversity of income ranges and housing types within each development as opposed to just city-wide so i think that's important a couple of things i want to just explore further and i'm i'm interested to see the planning department's presentation but i think the payout fee for developments with less than eight units might not be sufficient to create a unit I think that it's again with the the idea that if the goal is to you know not stifle development and not make those those four to seven unit developments infeasible we need to look at the numbers but I also think that to create an affordable unit the the 3% calculation even though it's more and I
▶ 14:46 think that's that's wonderful might not be enough to actually result in the units that that they might have been required to do and the other thing i think it worth exploring whether through this provision or maybe in another another look at the ordinance is some deeper affordability several communities that surround this area set affordability some of the units at 80 percent of area median income some at 50 or 60 percent of area median income we all know it's going to be even harder for people who are lower income to find housing here in melrose and around around our community and so we can take this opportunity to explore slightly deeper levels of affordability um and lastly i i want to just make sure that we don't view this as the only
▶ 15:29 tool we have at our disposal i i'm really excited to be part of melrose's community and i thought melrose forward set some really ambitious goals um to to meet the housing needs of our community inclusionary zoning is just one of those tools and we can we can do a lot with it but we also can can do more um so thank you for your attention thank you thank you good evening all my name is robert bell i live at 173 ashland street and starting off i'd like to say that generally speaking i i've reviewed it i think that the ordinance has some decent improvements and that it's workable in my opinion and the out in the general marketplace. I do want to focus in on a couple of issues that I see, but I want to start by reminding everybody
▶ 16:46 what we're doing here, which is that we are taking private property for a public purpose. And in order to do that, in my opinion, there's a constitutional question that there has to be some kind of fair compensation to the developer for doing that. Otherwise, the whole ordinance is open to challenge and could get set aside. That was the genius of the original affordable incentive program that we put in. Remember that there's the word incentive there. And so if you create affordable units, You have the incentive of having available an additional unit for every affordable that you create. We've been consistent with doing that through the revised ordinance, which I think is appropriate, but why are we cutting out the five to seven unit project from that in making it that those
▶ 17:54 projects only pay money, they don't get extra units? Now, as a practical matter, I think that the answer to that is probably that, for the most part, you just can't stuff another unit into the sites that we're talking about. But I think at least as a matter of what the ordinance should be, that there should be equal treatment. Because otherwise, you are definitely singling out that particular category of five to seven units, which, by the way, is a very popular category of potential redevelopment. When we redevelop, for instance, former retail stores that are in the middle of a residential area, and the convenience store or whatever goes out and it's no longer economically feasible, those properties want to convert to residential.
▶ 18:49 and there have been some of those and they have been in the five to seven unit count and I think you know if you've been here long enough like Jack has for instance to to know where all these stores were most of them you know are now residential in that five to seven unit category so I don't think you want to create a disincentive to the appropriate redevelopment of those you of those properties because what we really want to do more than anything is create more units the whole idea of the housing crisis is that it's a supply demand the inequity of huge proportions so decreasing supply by disincentivizing you know redevelopers is not in anybody's long-term interest and it's certainly not doing our part to address the overall housing crisis in general, of which
▶ 19:47 the affordability is a symptom and not a fundamental cause, it's a supply demand issue. I don't want to see that five to seven unit category be unfairly treated. It may be, and I have tremendous faith in Denise's analysis of the situation, it may be that there won't really be anybody who tries to take advantage of putting in a bonus unit on a five to seven unit project, but they should at least have that option, otherwise that section of the ordinance, in my opinion, becomes potentially unconstitutional. The other thing that I'd like to zone in on is this, is that I didn't follow the evaluation difference in the ordinance between rental housing and for sale housing. I assume that everybody understands
▶ 21:02 that you assess those properties differently, that income-producing property is assessed based on its income stream, and for sale inventory housing is assessed based on comparative sales prices. And I think that we need to, I think that needs to be a little bit clarified so that, I don't know who's going to make this determination. Is this coming out of the assessor's office? How is it to be determined? I think that we need to focus on that or else we end up potentially ... Well, if you assess an income producing rental property, the same as you do a for sale unit, you're going to produce a real inequity for that particular property owner. So, you know, which then gives rise to, you know, the potential of abatement applications
▶ 22:03 and other, you know, sort of tax remedies. Flowing back to my original point on the five to seven units, which is that the—I've lost my train, and I apologize. So I'll just end this by saying there's one more thing that I do want to get clarified, which is the effect of this ordinance on projects that are in in the pipeline the state law on the subject is that if you if you've commenced a permitting application prior to the first advertising of this ordinance change that you you are under the old rules the way that the ordinance actually reads is different than that and I think it needs to get clarified before it gets passed I think that the language on that particular point was you know what more
▶ 23:19 generic and not specific enough to comply with the existing state law on the subject and you know i think that it's unfair usually the way we take we look at it is that once you've applied to the building inspector for a zoning ruling which is the first step in applying for the process of getting you know going through the permitting process he issues a formal letter stating what you need to comply with that that's normally considered in Melrose terms the commencement of the process and I just like to get clarified that that because there are I am aware that there are certain projects that would be exactly in that position and i think it's unfair you know those that means the tremendous amounts of money and planning has already been done before you submit it to the building inspector
▶ 24:19 it would be unfair to those particular projects that they have to redo all their math and it could conceivably make a project that was feasible you know become not feasible thank you i appreciate it thank you thank you hi my name is mary sparks i live at 8 south cedar park and i am a melrose parent i have been working hard on the override and i'm also the vice chair of the special ed parent advisory council and i apologize i don't have any prepared comments but i happened to catch this in the paper this evening and i ran down because i am concerned that as we look to increase affordable housing in our community that that's going to increase school enrollment and i would just ask that all of you at
▶ 25:26 least address how this is going to impact school enrollment going forward and i as the vice chair of the special ed parent advisory council i can also tell you that one of the biggest challenges facing not only the melrose public schools but all schools is the increase in the number of students who have social and emotional issues and that is a very real burden our schools have to deal with and when you invite more people into your community you're going to increase that demand which we are barely meeting right now so um i just hope that that is part of the discussion you're going to have tonight and thank you for letting me speak thank you good evening thank you for inviting us all here tonight i'm ellen conley and i live at 7 union street in melrose
▶ 26:30 here i'm here mainly as a concerned citizen however i am a commissioner on the board on the melrose housing authority i am a member of the melrose affordable housing corporation and i work at the the massachusetts housing investment corporation which is a private nonprofit uh financer of affordable housing and economic development throughout new england but as i said i am here representing myself none of the those organizations but i have worked in affordable housing for 25 years and therefore i'm very interested in enhancing and supporting promoting affordable housing here in the city as you must all know melrose has never even gotten close to reaching the 10 mandate through the massachusetts body um the or 40 general laws
▶ 27:28 of the commonwealth of massachusetts i wanted to highlight some statistics that i have looked at recently when i knew that i should come down here to talk to you i reviewed the wait list of the melrose housing authority that was just recently given to me melrose family housing units the wait list of those family people are 2281 households of which 63 percent are categorized as Melrose residents are those with a veteran's preference. In fact, there are 31 families on this list today that are homeless because of some sort of natural disaster. The elderly list has 788 names on it and 92% of those households are either Melrose residents I have a veteran's preference finally the handicapped list has 404 members on
▶ 28:41 it and none of these people are getting housed in Melrose today some of the other statistics that I looked at when I went through the housing section of the master plan all the materials submitted to you tonight was that since 2015 398 units were considered under development only 26 of those units are affordable that's 6.5 percent not even close to the 10% that we are trying to achieve here in the city from the master plan also there are 32% of the households in Melrose today that are cost burdened that means that those families are paying more than 30% of of their income for housing more concerning there are 1600 households in melrose that are considered severely cost burdened those households spend an excess of 50 percent of their income on housing
▶ 30:07 it's obvious to anybody that leaves any housing uh information or data that we are not serving the citizens of melrose adequately to provide affordable housing even according to data in the master plan the median rent in the city of melrose in may of 2016 was twenty five hundred dollars now how many of our seniors citizens looking for housing can afford a rent of twenty five hundred dollars i'm i'm not one of the people that wants to spend twenty five hundred dollars on a rental house So we will never really reach the 10% level that the current ordinance is designed to reach. And we will even not make really minimal progress at the 15% level unless we do something more significant. According to the master plan that we have all been quoting here, we are 250 units short
▶ 31:32 of the 10% goal. I suggest that perhaps a 20% affordability requirement for larger developments might help us reach the goal, at least in the near term. We could structure the ordinance to provide for this higher affordability level until we reached the 10 level and then we could lower the level so that we could maintain the 10 level in the city so in conclusion i simply want to express my support all the changes in the current proposal and that i overall support the creation of more affordable housing here in melrose thank you thank you is there any other member of the public wishing to speak on this ordinance motion to close public comment madam chair second motion to close public comment made by alderman mortimer seconded by vice chair Boisselle all in favor aye aye all opposed
▶ 32:46 Kate Lipper-Garabedian: that motion carries public comment is now closed we move now to the orders before us we have one order tonight it is order 2019-30 amending melrose revised zoning ordinance chapter 235 article 11 section 235-73.1 affordable housing incentive program madam chair i make a motion to suspend the rules that we may hear from members of the planning board and the planning department second that motion to suspend the rules has been made by alderman mortimer seconded by president Lemmerman all in favor opposed thank you the rules that we are now under suspension of rules and as the Planning Department comes up I thought I would just make one more procedural note for those of you who are here tonight are watching at
▶ 33:34 Denise Gaffey: home our rules require that all posted minutes begin within one half hour of the time posted so we do have a second hearing before us tonight because that is posted to begin at 830 we will need to start that no later than 9 o'clock so would recess this meeting if we need to we may not but just to let everyone know thank you good evening my name is denise gaffey i'm the director of planning and community development and i'm here with greg samson who is the chairman of the zoning subcommittee the zoning subcommittee is a subcommittee of the planning board we have four members from the planning board who work on separately from planning board meetings to address any zoning challenges or changes that
▶ 34:23 Denise Gaffey: we're interested in making so greg is chair chairperson of that committee and we put together a slide presentation so i thought it would probably be best just to start out by going through the slides you've heard some background here tonight from some of the speakers i am I was sitting at this table back in 2004 when we proposed our initial affordable housing incentive zoning program and many of the planning board members as well who are sitting around the table here tonight were part of that so we it was one of our it was actually our first zoning tool that came out of the master plan process that precedes the most recent Melrose forward master plan and And at that time, we had very few zoning tools at our disposal, and especially around affordable housing.
▶ 35:17 Denise Gaffey: And this was the most important priority for us at the time. So we put a lot of effort and time. We worked very closely with affordable housing advocates, some of whom are in this room tonight. And the program, I can say, has been incredibly effective. And it is true, when we developed it, we tried to be extremely balanced in our approach. We didn't want this to be perceived as a taking, as it's been described tonight, or punitive to developers. We wanted to be able to work cooperatively with developers in trying to attain our goals of creating affordable units. And so we created it in this incentive type of way where we allow for a bonus unit and additional for all the required units. And it's been very effective.
▶ 36:07 Denise Gaffey: It's been a really effective tool, but of course at the 10% rate, since the program itself doesn't necessarily capture every housing unit that's created, it's triggered at five units or more. So we do sort of over time find ourselves slipping a little bit, and it becomes harder and harder to get to the 10% goal. So that's what we attempted to remedy with this process, with the zoning amendment. this was talked about in quite a lot of detail during the mellows forward master plan process again affordable housing is a is a is a you know it's it's i think reese reached crisis proportions in our community and in this region and um it behooves us to to look at the tools that we have to see if we can't do better to try to um to increase affordable housing opportunities
▶ 37:02 Denise Gaffey: for for our residents so i'm going to try to use this device share with me ah there it is okay so first slide um again this is we're going we go back to 2004 when we first created the incentive zoning program the threshold for zoning for the affordable um contribution is five residential units or more and currently and the contribution requirement is ten percent these are some of the the current provisions the goal with the the way the the program works is that the affordable units that ultimately come reach the public through a competitive lottery process the goal is that those units whether they be rental or home ownership are priced in a way so that a household is not paying more than 30% of their income in housing and that's kind of a
▶ 38:10 Denise Gaffey: standard in the industry we did we do allow in our current zoning for the opportunity to provide a monetary contribution in lieu of providing units it is structured in a way that gives the planning board discretion to allow for monetary contribution we have always felt from the very beginning that we're well aware that the monetary contribution is not as valuable as an actual unit it takes a very long time to to create a unit through monetary contributions and so that tool has been used very infrequently the one thing we have found is that on the very small projects between five and seven units um those projects are very it is very difficult with those projects to provide a unit oftentimes there are small sites in in very constrained dense locations so the idea of allowing for a bonus unit
▶ 39:05 Denise Gaffey: just isn't feasible and financially those smaller projects are also um they're a little bit more challenging to to work to make the numbers work so the planning board has traditionally found it compelling to allow for the monetary contribution for those for those small projects um universally actually for the for the six projects that we have since that time that have been in that five to seven unit range they've allowed for the financial contribution so that that is um that sort of feeds in a little bit into how we've you know our thinking and some of the changes that we're making which we'll get into shortly um and the other the and again as the last bullet points out we allow for the density bonus on that additional unit for every unit that is required
▶ 39:57 Denise Gaffey: to be contributed and then there's some as a provision in there around a bonus for parking as well so some of the results the the we have created 55 affordable units through this through this program these are these are units that have been either provided to homeowners through as rentals or homeownership of opportunities through competitive lotteries which are always we always have a tremendous interest in, and we've generated a little over $200,000 in financial contributions from those smaller projects that I talked about. This program has contributed, it is not the only factor, but it has contributed to increasing our subsidized housing inventory from 6.94, which is where it was in 2004, to 8% today.
▶ 40:58 Denise Gaffey: And I know 8% is still a far cry from 10%, but we actually are pretty proud of that because it's very hard to move the needle unless you're doing really big projects or you have a very large affordability component like a 40B project. It's very, very difficult to get to 10%. So through this program and through some of the efforts by the Affordable Housing Corporation and in some other mechanisms we have been part of part of this picture of increasing affordability and increasing our percentage on the subsidized housing inventory and those are pictures of some of the projects that have helped to contribute so master plan the melrose forward plan last year this increasing the supply of housing affordable housing was seen as a high priority in the plan
▶ 41:53 Denise Gaffey: and you've heard tonight some of the speakers talk about some of the statistics from the plan so you have a little bit of a foundation there but we were all aware of the affordable housing crisis I think again a goal is to meet the state's mandate for 10% of the housing units as low moderate income housing and we're at 8% right now we continue to have this goal that we don't want to stifle housing development we have to be very careful when we craft this to balance developers needs to make a profit and with art with our goals and the other thing we attempt to do with this revision is to current clarify some of the current processes and some of the language we make quite a few sort of what I will call housekeeping modifications just to better align our
▶ 42:44 Denise Gaffey: program with the state's regulations and the state's policies around affordable units and the local action program and and there's a lot of jargon out there and there's a lot of jargon in the ordinance as you've seen and we trying to we just trying to clean a lot of that up in fact I'll point out in the in the copy that you received we decided to give you two different copies one that has it all in track changes so you can see how things have moved around but since that has it looks like it's very overwhelming we also submitted a clean copy that you can read but the reason why it looks overwhelming is just because we are making a lot of those housekeeping type of changes okay so one of the I'd say the primary goal here the primary change with this zoning
▶ 43:31 Denise Gaffey: amendment is to increase the required percentage from 10% to 15% and this chart just gives you a very quick breakdown of how that 15% requirement impacts projects developments of different of a different size so you can see that we're talking about the changes we we do increase you know the number of units that are contributed with a project by one or two and obviously it increases is the size and scale of the project increases but this chart gives you a sense of how that what kind of impact we're looking at and I did want to point out that we spent a lot of time thinking about what this percentage should be it was not you know we know again it's a balance we want to be fair we looked at what a lot of other communities were doing most of the communities around us
▶ 44:30 Denise Gaffey: are about that 15% mark so there are there are several communities including including Wakefield to the north that are in the 18 to 20 percent range so you know we're mindful of that we could go we could go higher and I know there's some community interest in that but again we're we thought we would at this juncture if we make a proposal that we felt was fair and reasonable at 15% so some of the other modifications we so we sort of have structured it a little bit differently this time to have this two-tiered approach because because these smaller projects the five and six and seven unit projects consistently you know we find cannot accommodate the extra density of a bonus unit we wanted to make it very clear and it's it's also it's always nice in zoning if you can be
▶ 45:34 Denise Gaffey: very clear so when developers and residents read the zoning they understanding exactly what the impacts going to be so instead of taking out the discretionary piece that's in there right now we make it we just just we recommending that it's very clear if you're if you're a small project five six or seven units you will be allowed to provide the payment in lieu so it's something that's there today and it's at the planning board's discretion and we would eliminate that discretional piece that way discretionary piece conversely anything that's greater than eight units eight or above can no longer take advantage if you will of the of that potential opportunity to contribute a payment because again we don't we know that the payment isn't really getting us
▶ 46:20 Denise Gaffey: where we need to be we need we need the units and for those larger projects it's often much easier for them to contribute the unit and get the bonus unit and make it work into their development so we also make that very clear so again it's so a developer and any property owner knows exactly what what they are allowed to do and not allowed to do we are also proposing for a fractional payout you know get into that in just a second so again just to be clear the eight plus unit projects will no longer have the opportunity for the payment in lieu it be strictly the units so again these are some of the reasons as i just went through keep it in there but make it and make it a buy right option it's more viable for the small developments and
▶ 47:12 Denise Gaffey: it won't stifle those projects planning board has allowed these payments in the past for all the projects of that size and then we do recommend increasing the the payment from two percent to three percent of the sale price or market value to better reflect market conditions the two percent rate is um we have found is is it isn't particularly high and um three percent i think there's a calculation here would um this this would show you the difference if we had done three percent for the six unit projects um that have been approved in the past with a financial contribution or a a payment in lieu these are the increases that you would see so again they're also not overwhelming and I have heard some people recommend that this
▶ 48:02 Denise Gaffey: fee payment is not high enough it should be much higher it should be the difference between what a market rate unit would be and you know if they had or an affordable unit if they had to contribute affordable unit we are trying to be more balanced with our approach to that recognizing that with these small projects we're not allowing them for the we're not providing the opportunity for density or any kind of incentive so this is you know it is a payment that's required so we're trying to be fair we want the projects to be viable we don't also don't want to create perverse infant incentives where developers decide to just do smaller projects because you know as it's been pointed out any housing creation is is helpful when you talk about affordability the
▶ 48:48 Denise Gaffey: more more housing housing you can create even if it's market rate housing is helpful in keeping the band prices you know somewhat competitive so we were very we're very mindful of this when we gave a lot of thought to the percentage and felt like this that was very fair so again for the eight plus unit developments we eliminate the payment in lieu option that was previously at the planning board's discretion we still allow for fraction we still require So if you do the calculation, you're a 16-unit development and you have to or a 12 or 15-unit development and you're contributing 1.8 units, whatever it is, it rounds up to 2 as the number of units you have to contribute as affordable units. units but if the calculation rounds down it rounds if it's a less than five
▶ 49:39 Denise Gaffey: calculation and it rounds down then we're actually recommending that there is a that fractional unit requires a financial contribution so in some cases we would have a hybrid situation where a developer is providing units and also a small financial contribution and we thought this was a fair method of increasing affordable housing contributions and depending on the size of the development and it would also it's helpful to have funding that that does come into the affordable housing trust because that will allow for for affordable housing you know activities and initiatives and and it just seemed SEEMED FAIR SO THIS IS AN EXAMPLE WHICH I CAN WALK THROUGH REAL QUICK SO IF YOU HAVE A 16-UNIT DEVELOPMENT FOR EXAMPLE THE 15% AFFORDABLE HOUSING CONTRIBUTION
▶ 50:41 Denise Gaffey: IS 2.4 UNITS SO ROUNDING DOWN THAT MEANS THAT THE DEVELOPER WOULD CONTRIBUTE TWO units of that 16 unit development as affordable units and then he or she would make a payment for the 0.4 units which would work out to be 0.4 times the difference in profit from the market rate versus the affordable unit so for example if the difference was $100,000 that would require a payment of $40,000 and that's how that would work so again to reiterate in this revised program we would eliminate the density bonus in the parking we would eliminate the density bonus in the parking reduction for those small projects the five to seven which would be providing the payment in lieu and because those projects are typically
▶ 51:45 Denise Gaffey: in pretty established neighborhoods we would continue with the density bonus and the parking reduction allowance for the larger projects there is a special permit process for this so that would we are maintaining the special permit permit process we are adding in some language that require it would require developers to provide justification for a parking reduction and this is something the planning board doesn't on an informal basis now but the language that we're proposing kind of makes it clear you know if you're asking for a parking reduction there should be validity to that you're near public transportation you're near municipal parking you might have an opportunity for shared parking with you know that you can demonstrate so there are a lot
▶ 52:34 Denise Gaffey: of different ways that that the board might be convinced that a parking reduction in a in the right location makes some sense and we also clarify the that number of spaces right now the way it's written is the board has the discretion to reduce the parking to not less than 1.5 in the development per unit 1.5 spaces per unit in a development that doesn't acknowledge the fact that there are many there are zoning districts where we allow for one space per unit so we wanted to just change that language to make it consistent with what the Planning Board already is you know dealing with in zoning ordinance it's not to say that all development all developers are going to be able to justify one space per unit and the planning board is going to be like that's great
▶ 53:21 Denise Gaffey: it's you know there's still going to be this review process but it's just clarifying the language to be consistent with zoning as it is today okay these are sort of some of the other sort of housekeeping things we move some definitions around or eliminate we take them out if they don't there's no reason for them to be there and we codify the process that we use right now where the developers are required the developers who are contributing units they are required to work with affordable housing consultants and and do the marketing we we oversee it with them and make to make sure that these units are stay on the local action or they get on to our local on our subsidized housing inventory but it just
▶ 54:15 Denise Gaffey: makes the process much clearer and so we're not changing the income limits we haven't or at least we're not proposing to do that we're not proposing to change the threshold we're not changing the local preference we do have a 70% local preference which is the maximum amount that dhcd will allow us to have and a local preference meaning this is the local preference for the lotteries if if there's if there's an affordable unit component to a project and they they're doing an affordable housing lottery we can require that 70 of those units be set aside for melrose residents people who work in melrose households who have children who go to school in melrose those are are the categories right now that we can set aside for the 70% local preference
▶ 55:09 Denise Gaffey: so we maintain that that's that's a great thing to have in there we we don't make any changes to the to the the target that we're looking at for this program at the 80% of median income and we've we've had plenty we've had a lot of we've had a track record now of doing these affordable housing lotteries and at these rates we have no trouble filling the units there's always a long list of people who are interested in them in summary our goal is to increase the number of affordable units through this program and we think the 15% that's probably the most significant aspect of that which will really help to get us closer to the 10% mandate we maintain the incentive program by providing the bonus unit for each required affordable unit we maintain the 70% local
▶ 56:09 Denise Gaffey: preference as I just mentioned we will have an opportunity if it's approved as it's being presented to you to increase the financial contribution towards the housing trust and all in a way to that provides developers with more clarity and more certainty we established this two-tiered approach which we think is very fair and we clarify the current processes and language in the ordinance to reflect the way it's actually been working when we when we were creating this back in 2004 we we had no we really didn't have any kind of we hadn't done it before so we have found over time that many of those housekeeping changes are long overdue because the state regulations work differently or just the way the program works on the ground is a little bit differently when it comes to
▶ 57:00 Denise Gaffey: actually marketing these affordable units and and holding lotteries so we we try to fix all that I think that's it yeah that's it so happy to answer any of your questions I know it's a I know it's a lot of information we're running out time so as I mentioned before we do need to start the next hearing or our next meeting at 9 o'clock to be within the but we do have time now if there are questions from yes president Lemmerman thank you madam chair I believe if I'm right through our process that we should ask our presenters to step back for a moment and see if we have further since we are in the public hearing portion of the meeting if we have further public comment following your presentation and
▶ 57:47 And then maybe we can bring them back up for questions from the committees. Thank you. And just that's a great clarification. And this would be for any further public comments on the proposed affordable housing ordinance. So thank you. Looks like we do. I also just heard about this this evening. Please speak into the microphone so we can. My name is Eileen. I live in one of these that you had on the. So I don't think this is the right forum for my question, but it's something that I've been thinking about with these affordable housing and with the condominium fees and things like that I understand that those never change is that correct so this is a period where we are what you're welcome to provide us with comments but we don't actually do a
▶ 58:38 question and answer right now I thank you sure so um my concern is is that I'm two years from retiring and I am a nurse and I'm just a nurse not that long but I'm concerned that I might not be able to keep my unit because I've been there from the beginning that this building was new and my condo fees are going up high and everyone else is staying the same the affordable housing and now I may leave and I don't really know where I will go and I feel like it's a small population that people don't realize or know about or is there somewhere for us to go do you know what I mean like I've been so that's my I don't think this is the right forum and apologies for being so informal but it is something I do think about and I'm not sure if anyone it's all about
▶ 59:29 affordable housing well in two years I won't have affordable anything and I've been so just if you thank you thank you for being here if you want to put down your name and it's sure sign in thank you thank you any other member of the public wishing to speak about the affordable housing ordinance proposed president Lemmerman has moved to close the public comment period of the hearing seconded by alderman Mortimer all in favor any opposed okay so the public comment is closed and we could invite the city planner and the subcommittee chair back up president Lemmerman thank you thank you madam chair thank you very much for this presentation this evening this is very helpful and obviously the result of a lot of work I would first like to just start by making
▶ 1:00:36 Jennifer L. Lemmerman: a motion that we attach this presentation to the order in IQ m2 second the motion president Lemmerman has made him has moved that we accept the PowerPoint and put it into our record a seconded by alderman Mortimer all in favor any opposed this will be added to the public record and uploaded accordingly thank you we did hear a few questions from members of public today during the public comment period that I want to just bring before you to get your your take on a few of these issues you did reference and address somewhat question about whether this could open any legal challenges in terms of the incentive taking away any incentives and you know whether there are any concerns there are you able to address that piece specifically of whether that was
▶ 1:01:32 Denise Gaffey: discussed for these changes and whether that might open up any concerns that way well we we feel like by the way that it's structured because it is very much done in a in a fair way with the incentive and bonus piece that we wouldn't get challenges like that and we haven't gotten any challenges in the 14 years and I think with respect to the smaller five to seven and the removal of the incentive unit from that and generally speaking I don't think the ordinance alone the removal of the incentive unit would by default create a taking issue at all but even if we're in almost every one of those cases that we've seen in the Planning Board has required other discretionary relief and so that the fact that there they have variance requirements or site plan
▶ 1:02:27 Denise Gaffey: approvals and other needs that are required to be contemplated by the Planning Board or the zoning board appeals that minimizes any potential of that question coming up okay and I will also just add one more thing is that we scrutinize a lot of these ordinances and they're they're very there are quite a few that don't provide any incentive they're not structured that way at all they're simply okay you're doing you're building a big building in town you have to provide units and that's it they don't get any bonus they don't get the density bonus and that's not the way we want to do it we wanted to we wanted to bit work kind of more cooperatively or more fairly with developers it's been really effective I think so we don't we haven't gotten any resistance and the
▶ 1:03:17 Denise Gaffey: effect of this on projects in the pipeline already so so my based on my conversation with the building commissioner on that question and I think building commissioners do vary in their their approaches I my based on he told me I think he's more than fair if a developer has already submitted their building permit application just to get their denial letter and I know there are several in the pipeline that have done that he would consider them having you know been granted be grandfathered with the existing zoning so not to be caught by the changes that are envisioned here does any of this deal with the condo fees of the units after after the development happens and after they're sold well the prices have to include the fees okay they have to
▶ 1:04:18 Denise Gaffey: include the utilities okay I think I think that's all I have for now thank you thank you Alderman Bewtra thank you I think Alderman Lemmerman asked many of my questions but if you could touch a little bit upon the school enrollment question that was brought up I know the planning department and school department recently did a study of recent development and its impact on enrollment we did we looked at all the data that the school department gave us with all the apartments that have been built in the last 10-15 years and the the number of school children that are tied to those apartments is I would say less than 10% what we've what we determined based on analyzing the data bless you is that the the most of the enrollment pressure is coming from
▶ 1:05:18 Denise Gaffey: turnover in the existing housing stock so it's not coming from it's really not coming from new development most of the new development is they're not the kind of units that families tend to reside in for long so so I in the numbers Denise mentioned actually were for all of the units not yeah across the board all the unit the 700 or 800 units that have been created over the last 10 years there were less than 10% of those which I thought was a really remarkably low percentage but not inconsistent with what the studies will bear out about this this type of housing did you consider you know how did you arrive at the 15% and kind of did you consider deeper affordability both whether requiring maybe a higher percentage than 15% or allowing an option for 15% if you
▶ 1:06:24 Denise Gaffey: provide units at 60% of area median income and 20 if it's 80% or you know did you play with around with different options like that we did to to to some extent we did look at a couple of different scenarios around the percentage but we we didn't want to get I think I think the consensus was that we didn't want to get too complex with the ordinance in terms of you know modifying the percentage based on size or based on affordability and all that we were trying we we kind of feel like the ordinance we created in 2004 essentially was really sound so we didn't want to deviate too far from that and felt like this was a pretty straightforward you know looking at all these other communities that are similar or like communities to a Melrose the 15%
▶ 1:07:16 Manisha Bewtra: seemed quite in line well I wanted to applaud you for all the good work that you can the Planning Board and Office of Planning and Community Development put into this I think the changes are very good of course my personal hope is I wish we could go a little further because the need is so great both in terms of deeper affordability as well as perhaps a higher percentage in the uh formula for payment in lieu although i really appreciate the the sort of the the rounding um the way the rounding works and the option for or the requirement for a marginal payment um for for 0.4 or below 0.5 units um i think you know we're at this critical juncture with our city budget and conversations around affordability in our community and i think preserving income diversity
▶ 1:08:12 Manisha Bewtra: is um is very very critical and this is one step in that direction i'm hopeful and supportive of additional efforts you mentioned creation of an affordable housing trust in my experience affordable housing trusts are all the more effective if you have a community preservation act in place so i would love to see us exploring that over the next year or two perhaps and um and thinking about other measures we can take to increase our housing stock diversity thinking about our various zoning districts and getting us not only to our 10 percent of subsidized housing inventory but really thinking about how we can maintain um affordability both in terms of subsidized housing but affordability across the board in terms of unrestricted homes as well
▶ 1:09:06 Robert A. Boisselle: thank you so much for all your time and i really i i know you know i've shown this to some folks who work in affordable housing and they were all very complimentary in terms of the straightforwardness um and the effort that went into how this was written so i appreciate that very much thanks thank you vice chair Passed first of all i'd like to uh thank the planning board and the planning members for their work in this projects and we have another meeting hopefully another 20 minutes i'll continue on uh the area medium income you mentioned started in 2004 in this whole project that you use as a baseline what is that area medium income now what's what's that number it's a good question i did pull that pull that out thinking somebody might ask and that's a
▶ 1:09:56 Denise Gaffey: and that's a standard um it's 80 000 for a family of four right it's 80 for a little over 80 000 for a family of four i had a range in here but that's eighty percent of what number so so eighty eighty eighty thousand eighty one thousand is the income for our family of four at eighty percent of the ami so those are the those are the family that's a household that household would be eligible for an affordable housing unit okay so they can't earn is that number generated from will say the north shore area rated by hud by the housing department of housing and urban development okay yeah now in contributions in lieu you said you have about two hundred thousand dollars at this point where is that money so it's a very good question um it is being held in a community
▶ 1:10:48 Denise Gaffey: development account in the office of planning community development because we have never created the trust so the idea is to as soon as this is complete our next effort is to create that trust and then we can shift the funding into it now that account is reviewed every year by the auditor i assume yeah it is yes okay in that process from 2004 to 2018 i believe is the number that you had you had we have 55 units of affordable housing what's the goal that we're looking for 100 105 200 what's the number that we're looking for beyond 55. well the goal is the goal if if we're talking about the goal the state's mandate which is 10 percent what is that number that goal i heard somebody mentioned is about 250 that's what we said in the master plan
▶ 1:11:44 Robert A. Boisselle: that's about right yeah that's right 250. 250. okay now the projects that are developed in on washington street and near the uh orange line area how many units were in how many housing units were established in those buildings that were constructed how many um how many mark just total units um just shy of 400 400. how many of those 400 are affordable units 10 40. so it's not quite 400 it's a little less is there a contribution in lieu of that no no not enough 40 units and this is not project alone there there are several projects that are there there's there's yeah that includes on the east side of the where the old fidelity is no no no no I'm not counting that that's that 40 included in the 55 yeah and it's probably it's not really 40 it's probably more like 38 or
▶ 1:12:50 Denise Gaffey: 37 so yes it is yeah so those particular projects were the basic major contributors those are the big developments we've had right yes those are the major contributors for this 55 units and I'm not counting any units that were a part of Oak Grove Village because Oak Grove Village preceded affordable housing zoning that's in fact we found ourselves kind of on our heels with Oak Grove Village because we didn't have this tool and we had to negotiate with the developer there and we were able to get some units at Ogro Village as affordable units through our negotiations but we didn't have a tool that required it so so they don't count in our I'm not counting them all not 55 that you're seeing they're real units but they're just not on that list
▶ 1:13:34 Robert A. Boisselle: because they weren't created through this process and I'm just trying to be clear all right I noticed in your now with this the presentation be on your website on the website also sure parking reduction you're going to give some easy or you may be more lenient to some of these individuals you your number is 1.5 and is that per bedroom or just per unit per unit per unit yeah so when you eliminate these numbers of 0.5 where does this where do these vehicles go if you're restricting if a particular housing unit is 10 units or 20 units and you multiply that by 1.5 they're going to be required to have what 30 spots so you're going to reduce those 10 spots down to 20 what happens to those other attend vehicles where do they park so we're not we're not proposing that here
▶ 1:14:38 Denise Gaffey: that the Planning Board's going to do that it's simply saying that the Planning Board may reduce they may use their discretion to allow for a parking reduction more units will be allowed to continue utilizing density bonuses and parking reduction incentives by special permit so you are considering we do today we do that they already do that that's the way the program works there's a provision in the ordinance today that through the special permit process that allows for the potential parking reduction to be not less than 1.5 space per unit okay so there's still no parking on the streets after a certain hour that's right nope it's just a recognition that a lot of these projects are in very transit rich locations where where are two unit two spaces per unit requirement
▶ 1:15:30 Robert A. Boisselle: which is conventional in our zoning is more than is needed well let's put it this way if you're standing on main street between 7 30 and 9 o'clock in the morning there seems to be a lot of people traveling on vehicles instead of taking public transit and the buses are so slow they're late getting to the stations so i just want to make sure that this restriction doesn't cause more problems in the future that we're going to have to build a central parking lot just to house these extra vehicles that are going to be there right so all right well thank you very much and again thank you for the planning planning board and planning members thank you madam chair Alderman Medeiros thank you I just wanted to clarify a little bit on some one of the
▶ 1:16:20 Monica C. Medeiros: questions that we had so we've had 55 affordable units created since the incentive of the 2004 census program through this program correct that the existing program do you have any kind of like breakdown on how many of those units were you know bought by single people families and you know whether or not there were children yes yeah that was what we were talking about that earlier about how we've analyzed I thought that was just for all of the units in general that but it included so I guess I'm starting specifically for this 55 I don't know the breakdown of all for for all of them I don't know no and they're a mix of one bedrooms in two bedrooms so summer for sale and summer for rent so it would probably be similar to some kind of percentage that that the
▶ 1:17:19 Monica C. Medeiros: other units oh I would think so yes in those they're in those types of buildings in that type of housing probably this would be yeah and the units have to be comparable to the existing houses if it's a mixture of one and two bedrooms it has to be a one or two bedroom unit so in the same ratio and and I didn't quite get it clearly so the condo fees so if somebody was buying an affordable unit and the condo fees are reduced to reflect that person's affordability level or no my understanding is that the price is includes the condo fees I mean I can I can verify that yeah I think that would be helpful and just to kind of see you know what does that mean you know moving forward and how do the the property taxes if somebody's buying a condominium
▶ 1:18:21 Monica C. Medeiros: the value of that unit is less than the free market value yes so the the real estate taxes would be a little bit less also I believe they reflect the sales price and and that would moving forward with the assessor's office if there are are affordably designated units they have to stay affordable units even if one owner sells them oh yeah yeah they're required in perpetuity right so they're always at a little bit of a reduced market value correct that is true and uh just in general i just wanted to kind of make those those clarifications and i think overall i think this is a very good proposal i think it's very fair and balanced and I think you know it's we do want to get affordable housing is it
▶ 1:19:16 Monica C. Medeiros: isn't at a crisis level we want to get there but it it's tough to maintain that balance between making it desirable for especially with the tough financing market making it desirable for a developer to actually create units but stay within what we want to see in Melrose for types of developments and size and scope. So I think not overburdening the developers is the right way to go, and at the same time encouraging and increasing the affordable housing proposal, and I think this is very balanced and you did a good job of that. I share Auburn Boisselle's concerns about parking. I understand that this is more of an administrative piece that in some areas like say the Tremont Street overlay, we can go down to that zoning calls for just one.
▶ 1:20:19 Denise Gaffey: It allows for one. That's correct. One per unit. Which is a concern that I had that that's maybe a little bit too low all along. obviously you can't have an ordinance that says you can only give a bonus of 1.5 if space exactly and that's what we were trying to we were just picking fixing that inconsistency it doesn't mean the planning board is automatically gonna say to every developer oh sure one space you know they're really gonna and they're gonna also use that the language that we've added about demonstrating you know why a reduced reduction makes sense so and can you just talk a little bit about um it's mentioned many times here tonight in affordable housing trust about what that would
▶ 1:21:00 Denise Gaffey: look like if that were in fact in creation you know so when affordable housing trust is another tool at a community's disposal it would look like it would be um a group of people like five individuals the including the mayor and then presumably affordable housing advocates who would work together on deciding how to use the funds that are at the disposal and we're in the process of looking at what that you know of putting that together so so looking at exactly how what the priorities will be for this for using funds and the entity itself has to be approved by the Board of Aldermen so we'll be coming your way over the next couple of months that at least that's our hope and so it's just it's another tool and just one last thing I do think
▶ 1:21:49 Monica C. Medeiros: this provides a little bit more consistency I mean it certainly says that you know units of this size will be treated this way and units of this size will be treated this way and it involves less discretion so in terms of any kind of legal challenge the less discretion there is it's usually better right think you're right everybody's treated more fairly if it's written out Alderman Tramontozzi Thank You madam chair my questions were somewhat addressed involving the affordable housing trust fund so what this ordinance does not create a affordable housing trust fund and mentions affordable housing trust fund but there's no entity in existence correct so that still has to be done that would be like a next step okay but fees have been generated from in lieu
▶ 1:22:48 Denise Gaffey: payments for 14 years I thought yeah yeah so is where so where is that money that's very valid question so I have to say for the very for probably the first 10 years or so we had very few funds that were being contributed it's just Again, we our goal is always to create units. We don't we never really wanted the funds We wanted the units and it was really only these smaller projects that the tap that where it became, you know It was more compelling to allow for the financial contribution So so we hadn't had that many that much fund in that much money in that fund for a really long time Which is why it was never with all of our other kind of responsibilities. It was not our priority It's a it's a kind of a complicated process to create this trust
▶ 1:23:34 John N. Tramontozzi: and so we just didn't we just hadn't done it so who currently has possession who's the administrator of those funds so the funds are just sitting in an account that was Alderman Boisselle just asked that question it just sits in our community development account is it part of the operating budget no no so hasn't been touched the funds are there is it part of the planning and development budget it's in our it's in one of our accounts but it's not money that we is is it segregated from other operating funds yes and is it in this you know is it a separate bank account with the particular bank it is in a bank account a separate account yes so so you have visions that this affordable housing trust fund would be consist of a committee of representatives of the
▶ 1:24:22 Denise Gaffey: community what would that fund what would the funds be used for so it can be be it could be used for to purchase housing to renovate or to purchase to purchase a small you know residential housing sort of you know consistent with the affordable housing corporations approach which is to buy a three family or four family renovate it and then convert those units to affordable units so you know that would be a natural way to you might I mean there's not I mean there's about $237,000 that's not nothing it's just not a lot of money to create housing it's to build you know so other things you could but there are other things you can do with it you could also create a first-time homebuyer program right and help help buyers who are trying to you know get into the
▶ 1:25:18 Peter D. Mortimer: Melrose market which is really difficult to try to sort of buy down their you know mortgage a little bit so I think there's a lot of a lot of ways you can use that funding we haven't that's for really for another discussion because we haven't those funds would be available and used specifically yes specifically for affordable only for affordable housing that's right all right thank you alderman mortimer am i lost in q you're not all right i'll make it very quick um hoping we will be able to uh meet the uh time constraint of nine o'clock But as a macro issue, the parking is a concern. A lot of people get the one spot, and then they rent a spot from a homeowner in a remote location, but that gets old.
▶ 1:26:08 Peter D. Mortimer: People get tired of it, and then they start clamoring to repeal the ban on overnight parking in Melrose. Or they have no parking, and then they have visitors coming to see them. I definitely think this is something we're going to have to address 90% of the people I speak with do not wish to reveal repeal the ban on overnight parking so I think this is something where we have to step very very carefully we do have great public transportation but you know we're not a car-free zone like a lot of places in Cambridge or Somerville Central Square Davis Square, Harvard Square. People who live in the suburbs still like to think of Melrose as a suburb and it's not at the point of urban living and I think a
▶ 1:26:56 Peter D. Mortimer: lot of the sentiment in Melrose is we want to have affordable housing but we want to have also the balance to make sure that Melrose remains with the suburban feel as much as possible. So just as a macro issue I would respectfully suggest that we keep that in mind and all of you keep that in mind in your deliberations as you send this back to us members of the planning board the other thing I would like to say is somebody has the name on that bank book that the 237 dollars is do you know I'm not gonna ask for the name but is there a name on that bank book I can't answer that question right now I don't okay I'm I'm going to speak to Mr. Della Russo, our city chief financial officer and the city auditor offline.
▶ 1:27:47 Peter D. Mortimer: But I haven't seen this in the budget, as Alderman Tramontozzi pointed out. And I would respectfully say that in the interest of transparency and best practices, that money should be put into a revolving account. At the very least, like we do with the BV estate, the senior center, Recreation Department because in the interest of transparency and best practices, it's not the best idea to have money just sitting in an account somewhere and who can deposit there, who can withdraw from there, that's not in the interest of best practices. Thank you. That's all I have. Okay. Alderman Search. Thank you, Madam Chair. In the interest of time, I'll try to be as quick as possible. for your time and the time of the planning uh the planning board subcommittee on this this issue um
▶ 1:28:43 Michael P. Zwirko: my understanding is that we'll be reassessed in 2020 on the threshold for affordable housing is that correct do you know when we'll be reassessed every year oh yes they they update our list so it's so um we have one forthcoming this year then yes yeah the the you're talking about the subsidized housing inventory where we are so the eight percent is as of um either october November okay so it's recently yeah so I my question to that is the the units if you take away since 2004 the large developments that we've had what types of properties or developments generally speaking are the average of the size so when a developer comes into town okra villages are done the jack flats are done the the large projects that have taken lots of housing the developable
▶ 1:29:38 Michael P. Zwirko: land we're now looking at subdivision developments that have occurred as well as some townhomes condos so where in the future do we think that most of the projects or even the last two years the projects the sizes have been so we're running the gamut where do I think the future I guess my question is is generally speaking when a development occurs in Melrose because there's very little developable land what type of size are we looking at what are the what the developments that are coming in if you if you break away the very large transit oriented you know yes 16 to 25 maybe you know and then small ones yep the I do support the trust I do think the trust should be established I also in the interim until a trust is established there certainly should be
▶ 1:30:25 Michael P. Zwirko: some controls on those funds of course do you feel that the 3% fee that we've or at least has been proposed under this ordinance before us what would be the detriment to raising that you landed on three percent but others that have spoken tonight have stated that maybe it's too low obviously it's going up so that's a move in the right direction but is there any further room for growth or why did you land on three so you know I guess one detriment would be that it might as I said earlier create perverse incentives instead of doing a five unit development maybe somebody would just forget the financial contribution if they felt it was too high do something smaller and you know that could be kind
▶ 1:31:09 Denise Gaffey: of productive right and because we've taken away the sort of the bonus or density kind of aspect of it it just it felt like we didn't want to be overly burdensome and my final question is if you could just could you explain to folks the benefit or the reason as to why we want to hit that 10% I mean I think I know the answer but I think it'd be helpful we're at 8 we want to get higher we propose to be somewhere in the 15 under these new changes so it just explained that 10% threshold so you know I think obviously if we can I think it's important as a community if we can provide opportunities for more affordability it's good it you know it helps to maintain the diversity in the community which I think is really important but I'm gonna shield from
▶ 1:32:11 Denise Gaffey: potential 40 B projects yeah but yeah the I mean at the end of the day really that's why that's what's one of our biggest concerns I mean if we have less than 10 percent affordable housing then we are always susceptible to a 40b development and um and that's a real concern you know we have some areas in our community that are very difficult to develop but if a developer could come in and just blast the the land away and put you know 150 units then they might be worthwhile for them to do that and as long as we are less than 10 percent we are vulnerable to that and so I think it's really important for us to always be doing what we can to try to further our excuse me madam chair it is nine o'clock unfortunately we've gone beyond the 30 minutes that's required so
▶ 1:33:05 at this point in time I think we should make a motion to recess this committee meeting in order to pursue the agenda thank you madam sheriff if there's no else I would ask if you'd find an order a motion to remand this order to the Planning Board to hold it in committee for the appropriations and there's someone and then adjourn oh there was more acute adjourn for now or okay so thank you for recess second recess me by alderman Forbes seconded by President Lemmerman all in favor okay so we are being recessed and we're going to start the next public hearing now thank you the hour being nine o'clock the joint meeting of the Appropriations Committee committee of the Melrose Board of Aldermen and the Planning Board is
▶ 4:05:44 we are now adjourned and we will resume the other public hearing thank you oh thank you i appreciate that and again thank you for spending four hours of your evening 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 who are here and if you'd be so kind as to take your conversations in the hallway we'd appreciate it so quiet please quiet please so thank you alderman's work oh you have the floor i have the great opportunity to find out where i left off um i believe uh when we recessed
▶ 4:07:30 Michael P. Zwirko: 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 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
▶ 4:09:10 Michael P. Zwirko: can do to show progress it's very hard for Melrose to get to 10 or a community to get there are a few communities that are at 10 we shouldn't try no we 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 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
▶ 4:10:09 Scott M. Forbes: 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? Sorry, do you mind asking that question again? 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 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 provide the payment in lieu okay yeah because it's the reason why is like I
▶ 4:10:57 Denise Gaffey: said one unit out of seven would equal 14 percent which would be that 15 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 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
▶ 4:11:52 Scott M. Forbes: 70% for the local preference okay I know that we've had conversations in the past 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 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 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
▶ 4:12:41 Manisha Bewtra: 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 come out of it so as residents they would have that preference as a veteran who resides here okay thank you thank you certainly any other alderman wishing to speak for the first time on this matter alderman Bewtra thank you I just 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
▶ 4:13:37 Manisha Bewtra: 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
▶ 4:14:31 Manisha Bewtra: 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 is there a motion motion to hold this order in committee second whole disorder and committee made by alderman mortimer seconded by vice chair Boisselle all in favor aye aye opposed motion to adjourn madam chair second motion to adjourn made by alderman mortimer seconded by vice chair Boisselle
▶ 4:15:21 all in favor opposed we are adjourned thank you