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Introductory note: Today at City Council, we took a vote on whether to uphold or repeal the previous Council’s re-zoning of the Northland project (it was not repealed) and another vote on what date to hold the citywide referendum on the Northland re-zoning. (It was decided in committee of the whole, but not yet the full council, to hold it on March 3, 2020, which has the advantage of being concurrent with a presidential primary that is expected to generate very high turnout so that everyone knows this referendum is happening and which unusually for a city election will allow 5 days of in-person early voting, instead of just absentee voting. I only received emails in favor of that date, I think.) I wanted to explain my thoughts on all of this to my constituents, so I did give a speech. There were some other things I could not discuss in detail on the floor due to time limits, but I have included them in the text below, most of which was in my speech. I am posting it on my website for greater access, if people could not be at the speech in person.
I was a bit reluctant to get up and make a maiden speech this early and on this topic, but I felt that I owed it to my constituents, as the new ward councilor for this project’s area, to offer a few comments about my thought process here.
Upper Falls is an integral part of my community; it’s a place where I spent a lot of my time growing up and where I still often go out to eat, shop, or to meet up with my friends who live there.
In last year’s ward election campaign, where I advocated for affordable housing across the entire ward, I believe I spoke personally, door to door, with more nearby residents than anyone else on this council, and I won Upper Falls. I know not all of the people there who voted for me agree with me on this matter, but I promised I would listen to them, advocate for them, and support a negotiated solution that avoided the very real possibilities of an all-commercial development or a 40B process that’s out of our hands.
A lot of folks told me even if they weren’t happy with the project – although many were happy with it – they saw a negotiated solution as a better outcome than a 40B or a by-right development. Many people didn’t have time to attend the numerous Land Use hearings over the course of the past two calendar years, and they elected me to do this work on their behalf, or follow through on work done before I arrived.
First, while I was not part of the negotiation process, I have a great deal of respect for the process that the previous council went through on this, especially for my predecessor Councilor John Rice, who spent years working to find a proposal that could actually work for this site and be a net positive for the neighborhood compared to a previous all-commercial and traffic nightmare proposal. He then spent years working to get people on board with this idea and getting their input on refinements and changes. He suggested significant changes throughout the process, which I followed closely before joining the council, and many of his suggestions got adopted.
Second, while I was not part of the negotiations and didn’t get 100% of what I would have wanted – like the Oak Street configuration – nevertheless, I respect the fact that there have been many improvements made in response to public input, over more than a year of hearings and many community meetings long before that. This project is substantially different from –and better than– what was originally proposed. Even if not every concern was addressed exactly how everyone wanted, the developers and City Council did listen.
One of the best changes was to the proposed shuttle system. The original concept I said publicly was unworkable and non-credible. Fortunately, we now have a much more straightforward, feasible, and useful proposal to provide free service to everyone, leaving every 10 minutes, to get to the Green Line. This is the kind of thing I have wanted to have here my entire life, so that I don’t have to walk along the whole length of Needham Street.
Toward the end of the process, I heard from numerous residents who were not impressed with the initial shuttle plan that was expensive, infrequent, and overly ambitious – but when I told them about the final version of the shuttle plan they said “Ok, that’s something I would use.” However, we wouldn’t get that with a smaller project, and the city’s peer reviewers say we would actually get worse traffic from a smaller project due to lack of mitigation.
Third, this is a complicated negotiation, not a unilateral dictation. This is private property, owned by a company that is based in Newton and is already part of our community, and it’s property that they have held for many years at this point. Some residents I spoke to while knocking doors were not aware of that; they had heard that the city had all the leverage and bargaining power on this project, or that this was city property where someone outside was offering to develop semi-public housing for us. This is not the case, and once residents realized that, I usually found they were more amenable to the proposal – which is that a private company is offering to work with us to develop their own property in a productive and positive way for our community especially compared to they could otherwise legally do.
I’m here as the ward councilor for Ward 5 and for this neighborhood, trying to represent this area and find the best negotiated solution for us. I have to conclude that of the various potential outcomes that are actually on the table, the best one for our community is the plan approved last year, even if we don’t get everything we want. We’ve had an exhaustive negotiation process and made many changes, based on public feedback.
I know not everyone in my ward will agree with my view that this proposal was finalized last term, but everyone will get a say on the upcoming referendum.
I’m here to fight for my constituents on a wide range of issues, and when this project is resolved, we’ll have a lot more unrelated issues left to tackle together. And I hope we will all be welcoming new neighbors to our Ward 5 community in a few years.