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Summer has drawn to a close, and Autumn is evidently already in full swing. Today’s newsletter includes a recap of some key things that happened this summer, requests for public input on ongoing policy debates this fall, and reminders about upcoming events and changes in Ward 5 and beyond.
This week’s newsletter specifically covers Chestnut St from Beacon St to Comm Ave, Chestnut St @ Amherst Rd, MBTA D Line work, Upper Falls Village Day (office hours!) and Indigenous Peoples Day reminders, the approval of the new Senior Center, the proposed cannabis retailer in Upper Falls, Accessory Dwelling Unit reform, potential tree ordinance reforms, and my recent trip to Cuba. I’ll have to defer some other local policy debates to a future newsletter.
If you are marking the Jewish high holidays this weekend or next week, I wish you a happy new year and an easy fast.
A few recent Summer events
Don't miss your opportunity to sign up for bivalent Covid-19 boosters at Newton City Hall (via the Holtzman Medical Group) to better protect yourself against the prevailing strain of the pandemic virus. I just got mine this past week! It was very convenient (if not entirely painless).
As I mentioned in a newsletter in June, Starbucks workers at the Waban location recently unionized, and in July, other Starbucks workers from the area invited me and Newton City Councilors Alicia Bowman, Holly Ryan, and Maria Greenberg to spend the afternoon in solidarity criss-crossing Newton with them, as they talked to their fellow workers at various locations about organizing themselves into the growing union.
Last weekend, it was a delight to attend the Newton Conservators' 2nd Annual family-oriented "Monarch Festival" at Wellington Park in West Newton, which was positively buzzing with attendance. I learned a lot about how to attract and support monarch butterflies locally here in eastern Massachusetts!
I stopped by the first-ever Upper Falls Oktoberfest at Dunn-Gaherins, and I also dropped by the Newton Community Pride concert at the Upper Falls Depot, where I heard feedback from various constituents about pending issues.
Chestnut St from Beacon St to Comm Ave
Preparatory utility work for repaving and extensive sidewalk upgrades has been continuing this summer on the section of Chestnut St between Beacon St and Commonwealth Ave. This is not only a complicated street for road traffic – a major north-south artery and chokepoint with a 20 MPH zone, winding back and forth between glacial ledges along a “scenic” residential route – but it has also been a major problem for pedestrians for years. (And most cyclists avoid it completely.)
A few years ago, at the requests of residents, live speed detection signage was installed, but accident risk remained high and as of this spring, the City of Newton considered this section of Chestnut St to be the highest-ranked area of the entire city for traffic calming needs.
The minimum goal set in the most recent community meeting at the end of June was to get modern, accessible sidewalks along almost the entire stretch on both sides, except for a short section where it was deemed too difficult and expensive to deal with in a regular repaving project, and to add a number of crosswalks. Lanes would also be narrowed slightly to further encourage drivers to slow down instinctively. The hope has been to try to complete that work this year. There were other improvements that the city staff wanted to do in an ideal world, based in part on resident input, that could not be done through the repaving project and its narrower budget.
However, in the September round of federal ARPA funding allocations, the Mayor set aside $2 million for traffic calming in the five most urgent locations in Newton, with this section of Chestnut St being scheduled for work first. We should know more soon about what that would entail specifically, and what the timeline would be. But it is certainly welcome news for those who live nearby, as well as anyone who has to drive through that section from somewhere else and wants to be safer while doing so.
Chestnut St @ Amherst Rd
The Chestnut St section described above is not the only place where residents have made their voices heard. For many years, Waban residents near the intersection of Chestnut St and Amherst Rd (and Tamworth Rd) have been asking the City of Newton to improve pedestrian safety and road safety in general at that section. Although the City did add some features there during recent repaving, many residents still felt that it was insufficient and asked what more could be done. Amherst Rd resident Jonathan Goldenberg recently organized a petition from more than 80 residents in the immediate area asking that this be made a high priority for funding, since City staff agreed about the safety concerns. The specific request was for a Rectangular Rapid Flashing Beacon (RRFB) at the crosswalk to help children cross more safely, which is something that we have gradually been installing around Newton more and more as money became available.
I’m pleased to report that Isaac Prizant, Newton’s City Transportation Engineer, was able to make a specific commitment this month on that intersection, based on the Mayor’s latest round of federal ARPA funding allocations: “Newton DPW has been evaluating and prioritizing potential locations for Rectangular Rapid Flashing Beacons (RRFB) city-wide and the existing crossing at the Chestnut/Amherst/Tamworth intersection ranks high in our ongoing evaluation. [...] we have agreed that this location would be a good fit for a RRFB and it was a matter of identifying funding to move ahead. Last week, Mayor Fuller announced ARPA investment into city-wide traffic calming. While DPW will be working with the City’s Complete Streets Working Group to finalize the new RRFB locations, we are confident that an RRFB will be installed at the Chestnut/Amherst/Tamworth intersection as part of this work.”
Great work by the many advocates over the years who have organized their neighbors to try to make this intersection safer! With fixed and limited resources in the municipal budget each year, it can be a challenge to pick and choose what to set aside and where to spend money. City staff do maintain records of problem intersections and crossings and use various criteria to evaluate as objectively as possible where to prioritize funding for safety improvements, but this kind of neighborhood advocacy can help draw attention to specific spots and keep up the public demand for increasing the allocation of funding to these safety measures broadly.
MBTA D Line reminders
Once again, the D Line is temporarily shut down with shuttle replacement service beginning yesterday (September 24), in three bursts, wrapping up on October 30. During these three nine-day closures, the MBTA will install GLTPS Train Protection kits along the branch, replace more than 6,000 feet of track, and upgrade 6 station crossings at Waban, Eliot, and Woodland Stations, all in Ward 5. This work is a precursor to upgrading many D Line stations for improved accessibility and for much longer Green Line train sets that will finally carry many more passengers, which is greatly needed.
Free, accessible shuttles will replace Green Line service between Riverside and Kenmore (except Beaconsfield station) for the three nine-day periods, which are as follows:
Saturday, September 24 – Sunday, October 2
Saturday, October 8 – Sunday, October 16
Saturday, October 22 – Sunday, October 30
Upper Falls Village Day reminder
The annual Upper Falls Village Day will be happening at the end of Chestnut St (next to Pettee Square and the Greenway) next Sunday, October 2, from 11-2. As usual, I will be there with my pushcart booth, holding office hours for anyone who wants to chat with me.
Indigenous Peoples Day reminder
On Monday, October 10, Newton will hold its 2nd annual Indigenous Peoples Day festival from 11-5 at Albemarle Field: “Join us for this annual event to celebrate and honor Indigenous people. This fun, family-friendly outdoor event will feature dozens of Indigenous artists and over 20 Indigenous vendors!” It was a huge success last year, and I hope even more Newton residents will attend this year. Learn more at https://www.ipdnewton.org/
New Senior Center approved
A brand-new Newton Senior Center should be opening on Walnut St in Newtonville between the summer and fall of 2024, two years from now! (In the meantime, Senior Center activities and services will temporarily be housed at the Brigham House and Hyde Community Center in Newton Highlands village center.) The new building will be a keystone addition to the Newtonville village center and a major facelift compared to the existing Senior Center building, which is no longer in very good shape and which would have been difficult to renovate any further. The design will be very contextually appropriate for both Newtonville and Newton’s public buildings as a whole.
The new Senior Center represents a $20 million investment in our growing senior population, their services, and a broad-range of offerings and spaces for them. There has been more public input solicited and received on this project than on any other public building project in Newton’s history – yes, even more than some of our hot-button school construction projects of the past. This is also an investment in all of us because it will bring Newton into line with peer communities on senior services and keep Newton an attractive place to live.
The City of Newton also reached an agreement with an abutting resident to acquire her property when she eventually is no longer living there, which should allow for the opening up of community open space behind the new facility.
I’ve long been an enthusiastic supporter of a new senior center for Newton, and I’m excited that the City Council was able to give the final approval in early August this year. Unfortunately, I actually was unable to attend the votes in the Finance Committee or full Council, due to the meetings being added to the schedule late to accommodate the votes, and I was in the Sierra Nevada Mountains and Rocky Mountains respectively, without cell service, when each meeting occurred. But, fortunately, the outcome was not in doubt after years of debate and deliberation!
Newton is also moving ahead steadily on several major school renovation and reconstruction projects as well at the moment, but I’ll have to leave those for another newsletter.
Cannabis location in Upper Falls
The City Council appears to be close to approving a proposal for a small retail cannabis shop on Chestnut St in Newton Upper Falls in a building that used to be a pet groomer business. The petitioners reached a resolution with a neighboring daycare to strengthen their planned barriers between the two parking lots, and they have made a number of other changes in response to neighborhood feedback. The Land Use Committee recently unanimously voted to recommend the proposal, but it was returned to the committee for further work earlier this week when a few documents were not finalized in time for the full Council to hold a vote. I would still anticipate a Council approval fairly soon, and we really have not heard much public objection to the plan.
Recent cannabis proposals have been passed unanimously in the City Council, now that demand seems to have declined to a more manageable level and several sites in Newton no longer have any traffic effects at all. In fact, one approved proposal for Four Corners now appears to be canceled by the petitioners after all, presumably for projected lack of demand, and they seem to be selling the property (unfortunately after closing the longtime Chinese takeout shop in the building, in response to neighbor objections to the initial traffic plan). In fact, even the month we approved that proposal in City Council, I told several of the nearby residents that I was not actually expecting it to get built even if we did approve it, and that prediction seems to be coming to pass. Now that Massachusetts allows delivery services for cannabis – and with the continued high prices of legal cannabis products due to continued federal prohibitions on interstate transportation of those products – the customer demand for physical retail spaces seems likely to remain pretty low, especially now that the hype has died down…
Accessory Dwelling Unit Reforms
The Newton City Council is on the verge of passing another round of reforms to our ordinances on the construction of accessory dwelling units (ADUs), sometimes colloquially known as “in-law apartments.” These smaller, separated units of housing on existing lots, usually primarily occupied by a Single-Family Home, not only add to Newton’s overall housing stock without much wider impact, but they also specifically help families find proximate housing for elder relatives and adult children (including those with disabilities) or help “big house” elder owner-occupants find a bit of extra rental income to be able to stay in their homes longer or to be able to afford historic preservation (especially if the unit is a traditional carriage house). But, with the partial exception of the latter carriage house examples, which are already allowed by-right in non-historic districts, these ADUs have not always been easy to build or set up under Newton’s rules, which has discouraged them from being created. So, the purpose of the proposed amendments to our ADU ordinance is to make them easier to create in Newton.
You can read a summary of the proposed Accessory Dwelling Unit reform here. The basics are as follows: The first proposed change is to remove a four-year “lookback” period that is currently required, which would allow for planning and building of ADUs in new construction, rather than only allowing them after the main house has existed for at least four years. This would allow, for example, a family that is building a new home to plan from the beginning to have an ADU space for their parents or children, without having to wait.
The second proposed amendment is to allow more detached ADUs by-right (instead of by special permit), like we already allow for many carriage houses, if limited to 250sf – 900 sf, or 50% of total habitable space, whichever is less.
The third proposed amendment, because these detached ADUs are smaller buildings than the main house but are still sometimes larger than a typical shed or garage, is to modify the setback requirements from the property line for detached ADUs to equal either half of the setback required for the principal building in that zone, or 7.5 feet, whichever is greater. (Currently, accessory buildings of all other uses require only a 5 foot rear and side yard setback, with the front setback equal to that of the principle building.) This should also help mitigate issues like air conditioner noise, light spillover, and the like from bothering neighbors across the property line. However, the Zoning & Planning Committee removed a draft provision that would have required fencing or screening plantings between these ADUs and the property line when the accessory structure was built as close to the line as allowed (if closer than the main building).
Some other rules remained unchanged. For example, although the wording will be clarified, the requirement of owner-occupancy on the site is not being dropped. An accessory apartment can only exist on a lot if the owner is actually living in one of the buildings there. This is controversial because while it is intended to discourage construction of large numbers of ADUs for investment properties by absentee owners, it also means that homeowners who have to relocate permanently to an assisted-living or nursing home facility will have to close down their ADU once they have moved away, and they will no longer be able to generate that extra rental income that might help them pay their bills.
Your Feedback Needed: Tree protection improvements?
There are several pending policy decisions before the City Council where we could really use some input from the public to help shape our final drafts. The one I will cover this week is: Tree protection on private lots.
Newton City Council is currently debating how to reform our “Tree Ordinance” for what we might call “elective” removal of trees on privately-owned lots. The proposals do not really affect the removal of dead or diseased trees, or trees with an imminent hazard, and they do not affect special permit or 40B projects. But they do govern how the City regulates the optional removal of trees, as is the property right of the owners. In some cases these owners are development companies or rental property landlords, or even commercial building owners, while in other cases they are owner-occupants. When a mature tree is removed, it takes decades for a newly planted tree to get back to the same level of air quality improvement, decarbonization, and water runoff retention.
Should owners have to re-plant new trees when they choose to remove a mature and healthy tree? Should they have to pay a mitigation fee reflecting how long it takes to regain the benefits of the removed tree? How should such a fee be scaled based on the size of the tree, while still being reasonable? What should the minimum-sized tree covered by this ordinance be? How do we discourage needless clear-cutting of lots for construction projects while still meeting our housing goals? How do we balance tree protection with other needs like wheelchair ramps, minor additions, or accessory dwelling unit construction? Should abutters be guaranteed a notification of a tree removal permit request, so that they can discuss it with the owner in a neighborly way or ensure their own property is not damaged during a removal? How can we reduce or mitigate costly water runoff changes for adjacent properties when large trees are removed? What regulations need to exist for construction projects to prevent damage to healthy trees’ root systems, especially when they cross property lines?
These and other thorny questions are the ones being considered by the Programs & Services Committee of the City Council, as well as the Parks, Recreation, & Culture Department’s urban forester, and various citizen volunteers. It can be very challenging to balance the private property rights with the community needs and good relations between neighbors. Do you have thoughts on any of these questions, or others I didn’t lay out here? What have your experiences with tree removals (on your property or nearby) been like? I’d like to hear from you!
Cuba Report
In late August and early September, I had the incredible privilege to take a 10-day delegation trip to Cuba with a diverse group of folks from Minneapolis and Greater Boston, including other City Councilors and various peace activists. The trip was organized by the Witness for Peace Solidarity Collective through the US State Department’s “Support for the Cuban People” license, which allows travel to Cuba under specific, strict conditions, including maintaining a packed daily schedule and not meeting with political officials or government officials. We were hosted at the Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial Center’s dormitories in Havana; they are an ecumenical faith-based organization on the island.
We toured Havana and visited the Bay of Pigs on an amazing educational trip to learn about Cuban history, the country’s arts and culture scene, and the extremely damaging effect of the longstanding US economic blockade. This type of blockade has never been applied as sweepingly, as vigorously, as consistently, or for as long against any other country in the world. Many other countries with which the US government disagrees have been able to reach accommodation with US officials to trade freely without being forced to make significant political changes domestically, which is the condition under which the US blockade would end unless otherwise repealed.
Not only does the extremely strict economic blockade on Cuba create immense hardship and suffering for the Cuban people (without actually forcing that political outcome preferred by the Americans), but it also hurts many people in the United States, from US farmers to biotechnology sector workers to ordinary Americans.
For example, Cuba’s state-owned biotechnology research and development teams have been unable to partner with American firms to complete development of and mass-produce low-cost medication to forestall the need for amputation in people with diabetes, especially poor patients. They have also been working on vaccines for various cancers, Alzheimers, and Parkinsons, which could at the very least improve the quality of life of many Americans, but our government will not currently allow these kinds of scientific partnerships. (The Obama Administration briefly eased some of these rules, and agreements were signed in places like Massachusetts, before the Trump Administration banned them again, but the Obama-era rules have not been restored.)
The political and economic system of Cuba is a matter for the Cuban people to decide internally, and in many respects it is already a country and society like many others around the world, despite the exaggerations of the American media. Decades of US military incursions and US-backed terrorist attacks by Cuban exiles as part of an undeclared war since 1959 have left the country on a kind of permanent war footing, unsurprisingly.
We were able to see this firsthand and speak freely with many people to understand their perspectives and the systems of popular consultation that exist in the Cuban system, even if it is set up differently from our own system. (For example, today Cuba will hold a national referendum on sweeping reforms to the country’s laws on families, including marriage, adoption, and custody, but the outcome is not a foregone conclusion and follows years of public debate and feedback.)
The blockade’s continuation is unconscionable, not only for the Cubans, but also for our own people. A political choice compelled by economic siege is not a choice at all. It is well beyond time to make peace and end the blockade.
You can hear more from me on my trip in my recent podcast episode about it, and I will also be appearing on a panel in Somerville on Sunday October 9 with my fellow Boston-area delegation members (moderated by Boston City Councilor Kendra Lara, another opponent of the US blockade.)
The best way to learn about Cuba is to visit, if you can. This is most easily done through group trips that can obtain all the necessary US government approvals. (I can’t speak to the specific content of the trip, compared to the one I went on, but the Mayor’s Newsletter earlier this year mentioned that Newton Community Education is sponsoring a trip for Newton residents later this year focused on arts and feminism in Cuba. I think it is already sold out now.) And Witness For Peace Solidarity Collective regularly runs delegation trips to Cuba, as well as Colombia and Honduras, to show American policymakers and activists the harmful effects of US foreign policy in Latin America.