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On Tuesday, I officially announced my re-election bid. I hope to have your support this fall for a second term as your Ward Councilor. You can register here to be one of 50-75 people to sign my nomination papers if you live in Ward 5, as well as sign up for other ways to help my campaign, and I will get in touch with you to follow up.
I have already amassed more than 40 endorsements from community members, including from City Council President Susan Albright and 7 other City Councilors so far. You can add your name to this list at the same form linked above.
School Committee Vice Chair and Member-at-Large for Ward 5 Emily Prenner has joined that list today as well. She has, along with Councilors Crossley, Downs, and me, been part of a dedicated team of four Ward 5 representatives this term, working in close concert to serve your interests.
This past weekend, I participated in Newton SERVES helping prune and clean up the Upper Falls Greenway. (And the previous weekend I participated in the Hemlock Gorge cleanup.)
I also joined State Representative Ruth Balser at the virtual monthly meeting of the Friends of Hemlock Gorge this week. She reported confirmation that “MassDOT will be improving the [double] intersection of Ellis Street/Quinobequin Road/Route 9 to improve the safety and access for pedestrians and bikers between the Charles River Reservation and Hemlock Gorge.”
Technology & public access upgrades for the Council?
NewTV has announced a plan (arriving September) to install technologies such as TVs, cameras, and microphones throughout various meeting rooms in City Hall (not just the main Council chamber) that would be integrated with computers running Zoom (or similar) to allow for “hybrid connectivity” meetings. The project would make remote participation for constituents, officials, and employees possible during in-person meetings, enhance the overall audio and video coverage of meetings, and allow more meetings to be distributed on cable channels and on-demand/streaming platforms.
Meanwhile, the Council Rules Subcommittee (on which I serve) is continuing to review our rules of proceedings to make Council and committee meetings more understandable and efficient for the general public following along.
Another update on gun store regulations
The City Council’s Zoning & Planning Committee met last week to talk about emergency zoning reform to regulate the firearms industry in Newton. As noted in previous newsletters, the city is restricted by the state and federal government on what changes we can make, although some members of the public continue to debate reasonably how far those restrictions actually go.
I would expect the final draft of allowable locations (and only by special permit approval of 2/3rds of the City Council) to be fairly strict. We have not yet settled on those locations, if you have heard any that concern you. There is a narrowing-down process happening.
Per a Planning Department memo yesterday: Needham St and Wells Ave will not be included in further consideration for potential zone locations for firearms industry businesses in Newton because they fall fully within proposed buffer zones. Buffer zones under the latest proposal would be 150 feet from lots with residents or 1000 feet from k-12 schools, all childcare uses, religious uses, parks and playgrounds, colleges and universities, and nursing homes. Various distances and other potential sensitive uses were analyzed. (See the latest map here.)
Moreover, it should be noted that creating a zoning plan for this use does not mean a business is guaranteed to open, due to the special permit permit process.
Councilors had the opportunity last week to weigh in on suggested components for the draft, so that we can all look at a more complete draft (and hold a public hearing) on Monday May 10 at 7 PM.
By state law we effectively can’t debate legislative text between meetings, if you were wondering why we didn’t have a finished product already on the table last week. We are moving as quickly as possible within the law, and no store opened before we filed the local legislation and announced a public hearing, so any new store would be subject to the new regulations.
Dog ordinance reforms continue
The Programs & Services Committee met on Wednesday night to take up dog ordinances reform, among other issues.
The committee recommended a rising system of fines for off-leash violations, with repeated offenses being fined more. The committee also recommended a $10 increase to the two annual dog license types, which would go towards the cost of waste disposal bins throughout the city. Finally, we decided we would request the Dog Ordinances Working Group debate and make a recommendation on whether off-leash dog registrations should require dogs to be spayed and neutered.
Police Chief confirmation hearing
On Thursday evening, the City Council met virtually under the direction of Public Safety & Transportation Committee Chair Andreae Downs of Ward 5 to hold a confirmation hearing for the Mayor's nominee for Newton's new permanent Chief of Police. The Mayor gave an introduction on the current moment, the hiring process, and Chief John Carmichael (currently Chief of Walpole PD) as her nominee. We had a very wide-ranging discussion with Chief Carmichael, and I think perhaps all but two Councilors spoke.
Many questions centered on his philosophy on policing in the current climate (and given the history of policing), how he plans to approach the department as an outsider (especially in light of long-term morale problems), what role police should play on mental health crises and non-criminal matters from citations to traffic details, addressing bias, and so on. I focused my questions on the need for civilian control and oversight and moving us away from the notion that police represent some kind of last line of defense against total lawlessness and chaos. I also look forward to meeting with the new Chief again soon to talk in greater depth about some of the controversies of the past year.
There remained some wide disagreements among City Councilors speaking last night on the question of police budgeting. Some Councilors feel that police need more money for more training and technologies, but some of us feel that the public (and public safety) would be better served by partitioning the police department and redistributing the budget to go with those reallocated functions. Additionally, as one Councilor observed, when budgets get cut during tough fiscal times, the public expects to see every department pitch in on those reductions and not to see continual defunding of our parks, schools, roads, etc while the police budget continues to grow. In lean times, extra police funding is coming at the expense of our other departments who are losing out on funding, and the employees of those departments have been much less inclined to take proposed cuts as personal attacks, even though they definitely feel the pinch and it hurts their morale too.
To close out this section: Chief Carmichael noted that he had no reason to leave Walpole and loves working there, but he had felt compelled professionally to take on the ambitious challenge of taking forward and implementing the reforms the community is asking for in Newton, as recommended by the Police Reform Task Force and others. Policing needs to adapt, and he feels like he can play a part in that, especially after some of the reforms he has advanced in Walpole.
Green Line Accessibility updates
Last Thursday, I sat in virtually on the MBTA’s community webinar discussing its plans for D Line station accessibility improvements in and near Newton. The Newton stations under discussion were Waban, Eliot, and Chestnut Hill. (Newton Highlands is a separate already ongoing project.) After improvements, the D Line will be the first Green Line branch where every station is fully accessible.
The most important changes for the stations would be an adjustment to platform heights to allow for level-boarding of wheelchairs/strollers with no ramps or operator assistance. The platforms would first be 8 inches, an interim upgrade that would still require ramps, until they would be raised to 14 inches, becoming fully accessible. (They are taking the upgrades in stages to phase out equipment that can’t tolerate the fully raised platform height and replace it with newer, more accessible, higher-capacity trains.) There would also be accessible pathways and second exit pathways from each platform, as well as increased lighting levels.
The MBTA GLT team will be soliciting community feedback through late 2021 on the accessibility projects for these four D Line stations. Their detailed presentation can be found here.
Specifically for the Eliot station, the MBTA is planning to remove the unused/disconnected stair and pier on the other side of Route 9 and renovate pedestrian access from the station to Route 9. Your City Councilors will continue to provide feedback and suggestions on how best to do that.
The MBTA is hoping to be able to minimize service disruption during these station accessibility projects by having minimal weekend service replacement and regular weekday service. There were some comments from the public frustrated about nighttime construction work noise that they felt the MBTA has not done enough to mitigate.
The estimated construction start time is Fall/Winter 2022.
1149-1151 Walnut St Project Passed at City Council
After well over a year of community meetings and City Council negotiations to make appropriate revisions and make the project better, the full City Council this week approved by a vote of 20-4 a proposed four-story mixed-use development consisting of ground floor retail space and rental apartment building 48 feet in height, containing 25 units and 23 underground parking stalls, located basically across the street from the Newton Highlands Green Line Station. Car-free residents will be provided with T passes for the first several years.
As required under Newton’s “inclusionary zoning ordinance,” five of the 25 units (20%) will be reserved as affordable apartments assigned through the lottery system: four lower-income (for applicants below 80% of area median income) and one middle income (for applicants 80-110% of area median income).
Details from a Planning Department memo:
“The subject site is comprised of two parcels, 1149 and 1151 Walnut Street, located along the west side of Walnut Street just north of Lincoln Street. The combined two-lot site [currently] consists of 13,200 square feet improved with two multi-tenanted single-story commercial buildings built in the early 1900s with parking in the front and rear.
The petitioner proposes to demolish the existing buildings and construct, as now designed, a 25-unit, four-story, 26,300 square foot mixed-use building with 23 at-grade parking stalls on the assembled site. In order to construct the proposed project, the petitioner is seeking to have the subject parcels rezoned from Business 2 (BU2) to Mixed Use 4 (MU4). As designed, several aspects of the project would also require a special permit under MU4 zoning district requirements.”
(As a reminder, a special permit allows for certain things by Council approval within designated areas. As such, anything covered by a special permit is not a “variance” because it is an intended, pre-defined usage of a zone type, but with an additional layer of review by the City Council.)
There were some debates in the Council about lot line setbacks and slight increases in shadows in deep winter, but only four Councilors (Baker, Gentile, Lucas, and Malakie) ultimately voted against the special permit (and everyone voted for the zone change). Most Councilors felt this was a good project for a village center across from a light rail station – and a helpful idea of how to rezone and expand our village centers as part of comprehensive zoning redesign. I would not be surprised to see the zoning expand further beyond this lot as part of that process.
Improvements on housing in revised Riverside proposal
As noted in my newsletter on April 2, “there is a request by Mark Development to change their previously approved special permit proposal from last year ... at the Riverside Green Line station to eliminate the planned hotel and some housing in favor of a Life Sciences facility. Part of the reasoning for the request is because hotel and traditional office space is seen as being on a different trajectory after the pandemic compared to Life Sciences.”
At the time, I observed that “Market-rate housing units would be reduced from 582 to 550 because the Life Sciences facility would be larger than the canceled hotel, requiring some of the residential square footage to be removed.” As part of that overall change on the housing numbers as submitted in March, “There would also be… slightly fewer affordable units ... than previously approved” and I remarked that “I would like us to explore retaining the number of lower-income units previously approved...”
I was not alone in that goal among City Councilors, and I have some good news to report back now. The request to revise the Riverside Station development project has been amended to address that point. Under the latest proposal, there would be no reduction in the number of low-income housing units compared to the plan approved last year. This was a key point for me in considering the requested revision.
The Riverside Station revision on the table now is for 44 units reserved for lottery-selected residents at or below 50% of regional area median income, 44 units between 50% & 80% of AMI, totaling 88 lower-income units (16% of the project overall), as well as 23 units between 80% & 110% of AMI as middle-income units (4% of all units).
The Riverside proposal approved last year included 88 units of lower-income housing in the tiers below 80% & below 50% of AMI; this would remain the same in the new plan. Last year's approved plan had 15 middle-income units (80-110% AMI); it would now be 23. That represents a total rise of 103 to 111.