Planning Board - Planning Board Meeting

Good evening, everyone.

Welcome to the September 30th, 2025 meeting of the Cambridge Planning Board. My name is Mary Flynn and I am the chair. Pursuant to Chapter 2 of the Acts of 2025, adopted by the Massachusetts General Court and approved by the governor, the city is authorized to use remote participation at meetings of the Cambridge Planning Board. All board members, applicants, and members of the public will state their name before speaking, and all votes will be taken by roll call. Members of the public will be kept on mute until it is time for public comment. I will give instructions for public comment at that time. And you can also find instructions on the city's webpage for remote planning board meetings. This meeting is being video and audio recorded. There will also be a transcript of the proceedings. Please note that this meeting is not being streamed live on the City of Cambridge online meeting portal. and Cambridge Television Channel 22. I'll start by asking staff to take board member attendance and verify that all members are audible. For that, I'm gonna turn to Jeff.

Thank you, Mary. It's Jeff Roberts, Community Development. H. Theodore Cohen, are you present and is the meeting visible and audible to you?

Present, visible, and audible.

Thank you, Ted. Mary Lydecker, are you present and is the meeting visible and audible to you?

Present, visible, and audible.

Thank you, Mary. Diego Macias, are you present? And is the meeting visible and audible to you?

Present, visible, and audible.

Thank you, Diego. Thompson Avich, are you present? Is the meeting visible and audible to you? Tom is absent. Ashley Tan, are you present? And is the meeting visible and audible to you? Ashley is absent. Carolyn Zern, are you present? And is the meeting visible and audible to you?

Present, visible, and audible.

Thank you, Carolyn. And to our associate members, Dan Anderson, are you present? Is the meeting visible and audible to you? Dan is absent. Joy Jackson, are you present? Is the meeting visible and audible to you?

Present, visible and audible.

Thank you, Joy. And Mary Flynn, can you confirm that you're present and the meeting is visible and audible to you?

Yes, to all three.

Thank you, Mary. So that means we have six planning board members present and one associate member.

Excellent, all right.

Oh wait, I'm sorry. I put something in the wrong place. It's five planning board members present and one associate member.

Very good, thank you. The first item tonight is an update from the community development department. And for that, I'm gonna go right back to Jeff. And Jeff, if you introduce any other staff who are present with you tonight at the meeting.

Thank you, Mary. Jeff Roberts, Director of Zoning and Development here at CDD. And it's a fairly light crowd today here on my team, our Swathi Joseph and the newest addition to our team, Emily Hutchings, who's a project manager. zoning project planner in our division. So welcome, Emily. You'll be seeing more of her as time goes on. Just shifting to updates, I'll just quickly go over the schedule. I know it's been a little bit of time since we were last together, but we've got a series of meetings coming up and a lot to look at. So we do have one public hearing tonight, which we'll get to in just a second after a couple items of business, only one hearing and no other general business items. On next week's planning board agenda, October 7th, we have a advisory design consultation on an affordable housing overlay. project that's at 2072 Mass Ave. So that's one that we'll be reviewing. This will be the first of the two required sessions for planning board advisory consultation. There is no meeting scheduled for October 14th, but coming back to October 21st, we have scheduled our public hearings on two zoning petitions, which are city council zoning petitions. These are items that we spoke about with the planning board over the summer. They are rezoning petitions for Massachusetts Avenue. That's the northern part of Massachusetts Avenue. and Cambridge Street. So that's Cambridge Street, Inman Square and to the east. So we'll be talking about those zoning petitions and holding hearings on those. And we're very excited to be doing that. And at the following meeting, October 28th, we are currently looking to hold our continued public hearing on a proposal for the infill development concept plan in the MXD zoning district. So this is a case that the planning board had heard previously for an alternative development scheme for that area. reallocating some of the allowable commercial development from one site to another, and we'll be reviewing that. We plan to have a continuation of that, and as with the previous hearing on that, it would be a jointly held meeting with the Cambridge Redevelopment Authority. So a lot going on in October. In November, I will just note that we don't have anything currently scheduled, but November 4th is election day. We hope everyone votes and there will be no planning board meeting that day. November 11th is a holiday and there will also be no meeting that day. So if we do have items scheduled in November, it won't be till the second half of November. And before I go, I'll just point out joining us is Daniel Mesplay, the Director of Community Planning and Design here at CDD. So unless there's no other questions, I can turn it back over.

Hey, do board members have any questions for Jeff at this point on the updates or schedule?

No?

Okay. I'd just like to briefly say the board wants to just welcome Emily. It's nice she's just joined the staff recently. So I think we're gonna have many opportunities to speak with her. I know Jeff and Swathi are delighted because this now I think brings the zoning staff back up to full force. And so that's great news. It'll make life a little bit easier for them hopefully. So welcome Emily. Okay, so seeing no questions, let me move on to the next item, which is approval of meeting minutes. The board has received certified transcripts for the meetings held on June 10 and July 8 of 2025. Do board members have any questions on either set of transcripts? no okay well seeing none uh we're going to take a motion uh to accept uh the transcript um this vote is for full board members only so would um someone like to make a motion to accept the transcripts as the meeting minutes so moved this is carolyn carolyn thank you didn't see you fast enough appreciate that caroline is there a second please ted second Great. Jeff, could we have a roll call vote, please?

Yes. On that motion, Ted Cohen? Yes. Mary Lydecker?

Yes.

Diego Macias? Yes. Carolyn Zern?

Yes.

And Mary Flynn?

Yes.

That's all members present voting in favor. Great.

Thank you all very much. The next item on the agenda is the main item for this evening, and that is a public hearing on a zoning petition by Martin Bacall et al. to amend sections 4.30 and 4.40 to restrict increasing pavement in open space districts by establishing a category paved way greater than 10 feet wide as principal use within the table of use regulations that would be prohibited in open space districts and permitted in all other zoning districts with a footnote providing further clarifications and restrictions on the establishment of paved waves, paved waves. First, CDD staff will begin by explaining why this is before us. Then we're going to hear from the petitioners, take public comment, and then the planning board will ask any questions that it has of either staff or the petitioner, and then we will decide on how we're going to proceed this evening. So with that, let me turn it over to Jack.

Thank you, Mary. Just very briefly. So this is a new zoning petition and it's a petition from a group of at least 10 people registered to vote in Cambridge, which is the state law threshold for proposing an amendment to the zoning ordinance. And just for the smallest bit of context, this petition deals with open space zoning districts, which are a bit unique. within our zoning. They are intended to regulate land use in designated parks and public spaces that are primarily owned by the city or state. And staff provided a memo with some additional context and some comments and we're available to answer questions. Thanks.

Great, thank you. The petitioner is being represented by Martin Bacall. I hope I'm saying your name correctly, but if not, please correct me for the record. If you would begin by introducing yourself and any other speakers on your team, you'll have up to 30 minutes for your presentation, but we ask that you be as concise as possible. And with that, we'll turn it over to the petitioner.

Sure, you got my name perfectly. My name is Marty or Martin Bacall. With me today, I have Charles Teague, And also Heather Hoffman, who's an attorney. All three of us are petitioners. Those are the people I have in it. So now on to the actual stuff we're going to talk about. limiting pavement in parks. This picture just sort of says what a park could be. I mean, there's a lot of different types of parks. It includes some shade, the ability for dogs to walk around and just ways for people to relax. It's not the only type of park. So we're going to discuss some of that in a few minutes. But we just figured we'd start off with a pretty picture that sort of hones in on what the importance of parks. Now, there is the UFMP, which a lot of people here probably have heard of, the Urban Forest Master Plan, which really says amend zoning code to encourage preserving and planting trees, which is really what we're attempting to do here. Amend zoning to preserving trees, reduction in impervious surfaces in the city. And these action items were signed to the CDD and City Council. The city manager was supposed to coordinate those actions among city agencies. And in general, it was to encourage new public parks and open spaces. It's supposed to be encouraged in those places. There's a lot of work to actually do this and make sure it all works. And this is an amazing document, we think, that really sort of set the stage for a lot of good things to happen. But we haven't seen them as much and it came out five years ago. So that's part of the reason for this petition is because we think it's something we should be thinking about some more. So when we talk about planting in parks, It should be in all available areas. Plant a thick buffer. Again, this is more from the UFMP. We need to pack in as many as possible trees. Parks are safe space for trees. They're a lot better than streets, even though I encourage planting in streets too, of course, because they can live and there's a lot more dirt for them. And there's places where they can actually be multiple trees and everything else. And so... You also want to integrate urban forest principles into street and sidewalk road reconstruction projects. That's something that I agree, and it's very important to make sure that we also incorporate in there. And redesign streets and sidewalks, along with, I'd say, parks, for more trees, old and new. So those are all things that come from the UFMP, and we think they're all very important. And that's a major reason why we're actually bringing this petition here today. So when we talk about that, we're really only talking about paved ways in this whole thing. We're not talking about basketball courts and other things like that. So add the following inside in table 4.30 under transportation below 4.32. Paveway greater than 10 feet wide is not allowed. And so then we add the following to the footnotes in the table, table use regulations. Baved includes all forms of paving material permeable, impermeable, including but not limited to concrete, continuous concrete, stone, curbstones, pavers, bricks, stone dust, wood, plastic, and metal. So ways in all forms, remember these are specifically ways for transportation, all forms of ways, including but not limited public ways, private ways, streets, roadways, highways, driveways, sidewalks, all forms of paths, pathways, walkways, alleys, courts, and any curbs, curbstones, and paved shoulders thereof. It should be in an open space district or contiguous area of open space bounded by trees, roadways, highways, or non-open space districts. The area of paved ways within said area should not be increased by more than 2% of the total of, say, a contiguous area within a two-year period. You still can grow it. You just have to grow it. um every two years so so that's that's the actual con context and the whole text of what of what was written the rest of the slides i will not read word for word that one we thought was important to read for word for word that's actually what the language we're recommending so there was a memo as you mentioned the planning board One thing it lacked was specific examples, which we found a little bit hard to understand what it was talking about. But we'll be clear, it does not include play courts such as basketball and tennis. The courts is under transportation refers to ways. There's Tyler Court. There are a lot of places that are sort of endpoints that people call courts. And that's what it means. The ADA minimum walkway width is three feet. Various standards, minimum shared path is 10 feet. So we went with 10 feet because we want to plant as much as possible. And when people mention things like fresh pond, unpaved or mulched sections of the path, not defined as pavement in plain text. So again, those were not hit. So the Urban Master Forest Plan really was created after Envision. That's an important thing to think about because that's when we were realizing the canopy was really collapsing. So we also think that the BZA is made up of committed volunteers and they do a great job with what they're doing. And so we want to make sure that people understand principal land uses and what that actually means in the table. So here's just an example of some pieces of the table. What we're showing in this example is we're using Denny Park as an example. which has a principle, it has a mix of principle and accessory use cases. Talk about principle uses, public park, playground, or public recreation building. That makes sense. That's about what it is. There's also the municipal service facility as accessory use. The salt area where the salt work is technically inside the open space. It has public bike sharing stations. It has automobile parking. There are probably some other ones too, accessory uses, but we wanted to show that. Now, in the same table, you also have things for office buildings and parking lots, which don't affect what we're talking about here. But this table has multiple types of things, including open space and non-open space. We just want to discuss what principal uses are versus what accessory uses are. Now, why do we care so much about this? We already mentioned the planting of trees, and I'll get into that in a minute. But another big reason is speed kills. We see that in road accidents. We see that in many different places. But what do we mean? Motor vehicles shall not include electric bikes or motorized bicycles. What is that saying? That's really saying that motorized bicycles are allowed on these types of shared ways. And so a motor with a cylinder capacity not exceeding 50 cubic meters, still pretty large, and they get up to 30 miles per hour. his definition of a motorized bicycle. I mean, that's kind of terrifying. And for anybody who walks a dog, like I do all the time, and people come 25, 27 miles an hour on a big electric bike, and they're coming flying down a path, that's pretty scary. And that's part of what this is a right. And by the way, the state says that people using those have the right to use all public ways in the Commonwealth except limited access or express state ways. So that's a pretty big thing. And when you widen the path, they go faster. And that's the real problem with that. But that's just one piece of it. Another piece we talked about, what does this really entail when we talk about this? Well, Denny Park is 50 acres. That means you can get 0.83 miles of 10 foot wide path every two years. This entire path here is 0.3 miles. So you could easily make this plus a lot more right there. Now, when we talked about the speed, which we just mentioned a few minutes ago, walking time across that timeframe, three miles per hour, it takes six minutes. If we go to the actual minimum, which is about the slowest bikes usually go, it's about 12 miles per hour. We're talking about 90 seconds. But when you look at this from 90 seconds down to 36 seconds, which is 30 miles an hour, it's terrifying. Isn't that much of a change to get through an open space? So there's just a lot of things here that we're thinking about that it doesn't really help people that much in a lot of these open spaces and parks that we're talking about to go bombing through at a high speed. But how do we limit that? The city says they're not going to put signs up that say go slower, yield to pedestrians. They're not going to put speed limits. They're not going to actually monitor it. So how do we actually do that? Well, one way we do that in roads is we thin the roads a little bit. Why is that happening here? And why can't we plant more trees when we do that? So... Staying with Denny Park for a minute, there was tree loss with the 2022 drought, primarily because of irrigation system failure, but nobody noticed it. You can see the trees here. I mean, we're losing a lot of trees already, no matter what we do. with climate change, with everything else going on. Here's ex-councilor Zonderman actually standing on one of the big stumps that that happened to. It's very sad for anybody who lives close to that. I live close to that. I go there a lot. Just a very sad, sad occurrence. And we really just can't afford to lose more trees. We have to plant more and we also have to make sure the existing ones are kept safe. And we work around them because existing trees provide so much more to the atmosphere, which we're going to see in a minute. The next couple slides. So, but that's just one park. What do we actually mean by that? Well, the city lost 18% of the tree canopy since 2009. This was in 2018. This report came out. This is by the Urban Forest Task Force, so basically by the city. So in nine years, it lost 18%. Like that's a lot, a high percentage to lose. So healthy forests create healthy cities. Now, why? There's a lot of things that trees do. Everyone knows that it releases H2O so we can actually breathe, right? It also gives shade, and shade helps us for walking down in parks, doing things like that. But more than shade, which a lot of those you can get from structures, it actually releases water vapor. It does it through transpiration. Transpiration is a very important thing. It actually cools the environment even further away. So there's a huge amount it does. And in the final analysis, If somebody is either under a tree and gets a transpiration, it could be 86 degrees when it's 96 degrees out in the sun. That's a huge difference when you think about that 90 to 100, that type of range. That's dangerous. People get sick from being in that heat if they can be in the shade instead. And we have actual case studies that show this. Professor... Muma, who was a very well-known scholar all about climate research, has done a lot of climate research, is the one who produced this. So very sad case where they had to eliminate the Asian longhorn beetle in Worcester and the removal of 30,000 trees. That's a lot of trees. What did it wind up with? 15% in electricity use for cooling the following... 15% increase in electricity use for cooling the following summer. That's a lot of extra... Cost to everybody and a lot of extra cooling that you had to do. It was nine degrees difference, which is pretty close to 10 degree mentioned earlier. So if the temperature is 100, it's closer to 90 with the shade. Huge difference there. And just look at this, which we prefer to live on. I'd say this area here, just so much more beautiful. This is the same location. Right there. I mean, I know I'm showing Worcester because that was a very noticeable case where a lot were killed all at once. But it comes up to basically the same amount. But also, let's dive in a little bit here and think about this for a couple of minutes here. The fact is that the city has put in a number of policy orders. This has become basically rules that you're supposed to follow about this whole thing. Trees as essential infrastructure. And these are all through 2021 to 2023. The city council recognizes that there's a climate emergency. Canopy loss and developing a replacement strategy. We have to make sure we develop a replacement strategy. We also save the current ones. It's very important. These were all adopted. These are orders that the city is supposed to do. These all kind of fit the UFMP in a very strong way, but we don't see it happening. And that's part of the reason why this whole petition is here. So we keep saying, let's encourage deep paving throughout the city. This is another order that was adopted. Well, great. We encourage residents to do it, which I think is great. I'm all for that. But you're supposed to minimize new and additional pavement, but it's supposed to include public and private construction throughout the city. So where are we doing it in public? Where are we deep paving throughout the city? I haven't seen it. I've seen extra pavement added a lot of places. I really haven't seen deep pavements. in many places. There are a few parks we added maybe, but overall, we're adding pavement if we're doing anything. And so that's part of the real complaint here. Now, this is just a challenge. This is a new park that's been put in, Raymond Park, and there's a whole loop path here, and there's a bunch of other things here that's all paved. Could they have done it non paid, could they have packed in some more trees by doing that here? I mean, I think there's a lot of things to think about. Could we have an equally good design with less pavement, more trees, and still get the community garden, the playground, the multipurpose field, and of course, the basketball. That's the question we're trying to answer here. And that's what this petition, this amendment is all about. So Let's discuss trees for a little more because it's something very important. Sometimes you get too close to a tree and people say, well, I mean, the tree can survive and all this type of stuff. Look, there are support roots underneath the tree, which really can't be cut because then it can be blown down or get declared as a danger and then they cut it down. But more than that, there's a drip line and then there's feeder roots even beyond that. So the drip line, approximately the traditional critical root zone, as they call it, which is one foot for every one inch in diameter of the tree itself. This is the same as the Boston Tree Protection Ordinance. That's what it has. The roots are 12 inches to 18 inches below grade, but they also come all the way up, too, as people have seen them right there. And structural connector roots go inside the CRZ, the critical root zone, which is all inside there. But a lot of the watering actually occurs outside the critical root zone. That's the critical root zone industry standard and expanding to one and a half feet per one inch diameter. So really, we should go further than we even go. And we a lot of times don't even go to like the basic drip line, never mind getting outside of it. When we think about trimming back trees. Let's give a concrete example of this. This is linear park. And as you know, they're planning that right now. They're planning to start the work on it. I live about a block from here. This is actually Wesley Ave, where they're talking about putting in an extra gate. So the gate, we're guessing where exactly it's going to be, but it'll be 14 feet. It'll be somewhere like here. Well, the critical root zone for this tree, only going by the one inch to one foot, is here. Never mind the one and a half feet, which would be out here somewhere. And never mind the fact that this tree will be over here, would cut all the way over to here. So really, what are we talking about here? Real world example here. And by the way, when they build this extra path, it's going to be one foot down, but it's actually two feet because it has to be level with the road itself, which is about a foot below that. And this is directly from the actual plan set where they do this. But really, the real problem is, according to the task force of the UFMP, 25% disturbance critical root zone, if that happens, you must change the design for tree survival. This is a lot more than 25% when you talk about all this. And also, by the way, this path is getting widened out. And they're going to have to move this light post somewhere, because the path will be right there, probably over to here, which also causes disturbance in both trees. So we haven't seen where the moon and light post. I don't think they put that in the plan that I've seen. So, I mean, really, that's danger to two trees right there from this one side path and from the main path. Far above, this is only disturbance. So even if you just repave above it, you're causing problems that way. Above roots. And all this stuff is impermeable. It causes a lot of trouble. So that's an example from Linear Park of it. And people say, well, we can do a good job. We do this in street trees all the time. I mean, street trees are fundamentally different. They have a curb stone and they've grown up only to the curb stone. They haven't grown below that. There's also usually smaller trees, not always. And they have these pits that they've designed where they actually go. So the root structure is just different. And by the way, they don't live as long in most cases. You can look at numbers for street trees versus park trees, and street trees generally don't live as long. And we want our trees to grow, prosper. The big trees are the ones who really provide the carbon. They provide the shade. They provide more transpiration. But it takes years to get anywhere near that level of trees. So what's the summary of what I'm trying to say here? Wider is faster, and faster is not safer. The UFMP plant trees in parks using all the available space. More pavement equals less space. You just can't plant as many trees when you do that, never mind the fact that the roots of existing trees also get cut off and everything. So the first priority is preserving mature trees using best practices. Cutting off roots is not a best practice by any standard, no matter what you do. So now I'm going to hand it over to Heather Hoffman just to talk for a couple minutes and then we'll be ready to go. That sound good? Heather?

Yes, that's fine. Thank you. I want to talk for one moment about the judicial process because I saw CDD raising all kinds of issues about people suing and people in public comment in court like the past year or so, keep raising the issue of the reason we have to make everything as of right is so that nobody will sue. I went to the city council meeting last night, and there were several pages of lawsuits that the city of Cambridge is part of against the Trump administration. I think that all of us are very glad that the city is doing that. That is part of our basic constitutional right to due process. Vice Mayor McGovern has said in the past that people have different opinions on whether there should be process for challenging something depending on whether they like it or they don't. And I think that all of us would say that that might be true, but it shouldn't be the legal standard. The legal standard for bringing a lawsuit is whether you have standing. And standing does not mean that you are unhappy that something happened. You have to have a legally cognizable injury to bring to court. And I gotta say, I find it hard to imagine how many people are going to have a legally cognizable injury over a path in a park. I'm perfectly happy to be shown how that happens. But anyway, that's why I think that's a specious argument and really shouldn't weigh anyone's decision on this. Thank you.

Thank you, Heather. So does that conclude then your presentation? Yes. Okay. Thank you so much. Appreciate it. We're going to move on then to public comment since this is a public hearing. Any members of the public who wish to speak should now click the button that says raise hand. If you're calling in by phone, you can raise your hand by pressing star nine. As of 5 p.m. yesterday, the board had received 31 comments on this petition. Written communications received after 5 p.m. yesterday will be entered into the record. So I would ask anyone who is interested in speaking to... Please raise your hand now. I see that there are quite a few people on the Zoom. And so I just want to get a sense. Anybody who's interested, if you would raise your hand right now, please, that would be helpful. All right. I'm only seeing two people at the moment. So we're going to move forward. I'll ask Steph to unmute. speakers one at a time. Please begin by saying your name and address and staff will confirm that we can hear you. After that, you will have up to three minutes to speak before I ask you to wrap up. And with that, let me turn it over to Jeff.

Thank you. I'll just go ahead and read the speakers whose hands are raised. Just note that I'm reading the name that comes off the Zoom. So please repeat your name and give your address in case I, and I apologize if I mispronounce your name. So the first speaker is Jeb Mays.

Hello, can you hear me?

Yes.

My name is Jeb Mays. I live at 175 Harvey Street in North Cambridge. I live in the Cornerstone Co-Housing community. We are 80 people on Harvey Street, a budding linear park, Russell Field, and many other amenities in the North Cambridge area. But we also live in a heat island. North Cambridge is the one place in Cambridge that has been identified as suffering from too much heat. And we know when that's the case that trees make a huge difference. And the city, as has been described, has at various times made a commitment to preserving and increasing our tree canopy. Right now, paths in parks, there's no limit on how wide they can be. The proposal for linear park, which we abut, is the result of that. Linear park, the plan is to widen it from approximately 10 feet to 14 feet with two feet of stone dust on either side, meaning 18 feet. Stone dust starts out as permeable but quickly compacts and becomes impermeable. This petition looks at a 10-foot width, which is what we have, because it does not encourage speed. It, in fact, encourages people to respect all the users of these paths and keep everyone safe. We have done speed studies on linear path and we have clocked people at 26, 25, 24 miles an hour. We hear Vespas and we hear lots of other motorized vehicles back and forth on the path at all hours of the day and night. Widening it is only going to encourage more people to take the path and to make it less safe. We recognize that different parts of the city plan different aspects of transportation, but our parks are not transportation corridors. They are not commuter throughways. They are designed for the enjoyment of everyone. Strollers, wheelchairs, people on crutches, toddlers. bicyclists, scooter users, as well as bicycles. So I urge you to approve this proposal and help us preserve both our tree canopy and the safety of our park users. Thank you.

Thank you. The next speaker is Marina Atlas.

Hi, everyone. Thank you so much for this hearing. So I'm trying to comment about APP 2025 number 31. I'm Marina Grow Atlas of 37 Pleasant Street in Cambridge and 49 Newton Street in Belmont. I live between the two mostly, but I'm from Cambridge. I'm a mother of a toddler. I'm a native plant gardening advocate and environmental health scientist and researcher. And I'm commenting today in support of the use of permeable pavers. I hope to encourage the further use of this technology based on scientific methods that have successfully been studied and pioneered in Cambridge and now are the basis of programs that contribute to the safe and healthy use of open space in the city of Somerville and the city of Watertown. There are examples of technologies of open pavers that resist road dust and are ideally suited not just for bicycles, but also pedestrians. And these can handle the types of uses and open space requirements. And they also cannot support cars. They're supportive of potential needs of residents, recreators, and people who are interested in carbon neutral modes of transportation. These represent technologies that are mature at market and may allow the city to prioritize and make good on the goals and support of this amendment and support the needs of people being considered in this amendment. I believe these best practices and technological methods are scientifically sound, locally appropriate and absolutely community supportive. Such methods are critical to support pedestrian bike safety and of course, community and environmental health. and we're aware of the needs and utility of bikes, especially in North Cambridge. But I really want to comment on the need to support open space preservation and biodiversity and support small-scale environmental restoration opportunities and co-benefits, such as air and water pollution reductions in parks and shared spaces, and support of air pollution improvement benefits, quality of life, and to really harness ecosystem services of green infrastructure, specifically like deep-rooted native plant guilds, planted berms and swales, and plenty of root space in the drip line, and adding rock powders, like was mentioned, for carbon sequestration benefits and rainwater. I think that the permeable pavers are really great. I want to warn you about one thing as a PFAS researcher, that a lot of the plastics and tire shreds represent a contamination issue. They emit not only PFAS, but petrochemicals and microplastic pollutions. And I want to comment that really the rock options represent an amazing opportunity to also sequester and support tree cover and open space with the open pavers and pedestrian uses and recreators. I think everybody has done significant work to consider. For example, the open pavers were studied by experts out of the Netherlands, and these studies are available. I'd also like to share some resources referenced. Maybe I can follow up in an email after with these links. from the original depaving studies from biodiversity for a livable climate reference, just so everybody has access to the same scientific information. And as well as information on depaving programs, by the city of Somerville and the city of Watertown. The state of Massachusetts also has significant resources, and I would love to follow up, and I thank CDD and the city for a focus on real-time needs, environmental conditions, and support for pedestrians, cyclists, biodiversity, open space, our water table, our pollution issues, and our health. Thank you.

Thank you. The next speaker is Thomas Gouraud.

Yes. Hello. Can you hear me? Hello. Can you hear me? Yes. Okay. My name is Tom Goro. I live at 37 Pleasant Street. I've been here for almost 60 years. It's been a long time. I wish to support strongly the a strategy for Cambridge to maximize permeability because we're on the edge of a serious crisis. The groundwater tables are rising everywhere here. In my house, we've always had a dry basement for nearly 60 years, but now we have a rising water table. And with the overbuilding of Cambridge, the paving over, the high rises, the lack of infiltration space, we're facing flooding of basements. We're facing sewage backups into basements and so forth on a larger scale because the groundwater level, the sea, okay, so global sea level rise is causing the groundwater tables to rise everywhere. global warming is causing rainfall to increase everywhere. So we're facing a situation where there's going to be more rain. And if we overpay, there's less space for it to go. So we're guaranteeing a future of flooding and sewage backups into the streets, you know, when there's heavy rain. So my point fundamentally is that bicycle paths and all paved areas need to be part of a larger strategy of groundwater management for the future because we're facing a climate change crisis that we seem to be unprepared for and the new zoning laws are going to make that much worse. So in the Netherlands they have made bicycle paths sort of an integral part of their strategy for infiltration by using permeable you know, pavement, and that's really critical for the health of bicycles because they certainly don't want to hit a puddle, you know, that's very dangerous for them. But I can see reasons why with increasing bicycles, which Cambridge is encouraging, that there might be places that are simply not wide enough for the bicycle traffic that is going to be there. So I can see that there may be a need, you know, in certain places to widen the bicycle paths, but we need to be sure that... That can be done if we don't lose permeability. And so my key point is that Cambridge needs to have a long-term strategy of monitoring the groundwater, measuring changes in it, and making sure that all developments in the city from now on make the city more sustainable and not less sustainable. Thank you very much.

Thank you. That appears to be all the hands that are raised, so I'll... Jeffri Boisvert- i'll just give it one second if maybe you thought your head your hand raised and you didn't and you would still like to speak now's the time to raise your hand and you again, you can if you're on phone you can press star nine or there should be a button with a picture of a hand. Jeffri Boisvert- So that appears to be all of the speakers i'll turn it back over to the Chair.

Elizabeth North , The Capacity Collective, Thank you Jeff. um we're going to now move on to board member questions on that petition um so i'd just like to start um asking if board members have questions for either staff or for the petitioners diego

Sure, I'll start. I guess I have a question for the petitioners. I had two public comments that were talking about the benefits of permeable pavement. And I noticed in your memo or the CDD memo that this paved way greater than 10 feet wide would include permeable. So I guess I'm a little confused in terms of the If if wouldn't you exclude permeable pavement in that case if you don't want to restrict that or am I am I reading that wrong.

No um i'll take that the fundamental issue is. Pavement is pavement. And so it contributes to the heat island effect. And the second part is you still have to excavate the same amount. In fact, for permeable, I put in permeable pavers in my driveway at my home. And you actually excavate deeper because the way it all works is that there's storage space underneath the driveway, and the storage space is varying size of crushed rock. So In some senses, it could be worse for trees and worse for living objects. And the last thing is DPW told me at the time, why bother? Because it's a maintenance issue. And DPW actually... has recited, I've gone on their tours, and they go, well, we're surprised when we excavate this, the permeable pavement is still working because we never maintain it. And that's one of the issues. And there was the issue on the renovation of Copley Square. They're going like, they put in all this pavement. Well, the pavement is lower maintenance. And so... But at the end of the day, pavement is pavement. It heats up and it requires a base. Thank you.

Ted, what question do you have?

This is a question for the petitioner. Can you explain what the last sentence of the footnote 66 means? It makes no sense to me whatsoever in light of the fact that you're starting out with paving in greater than 10 feet wide is prohibited. And if you have some rationale for it, Why are you limiting it to 2% over a two-year period when if there is a project that's going on, are you intending the project stops and has to wait for another year or two to pass before they can complete the project?

That whole function was to eliminate someone going, OK, well, we'll install two parallel 10-foot paths. And so it was just limiting the total amount of surface area you could pave over. And you have to put a time limit on that because everything changes. Life changes. So you're not going to do it forever. So it's an arbitrary number. It could be, if you have some thought on that, it could be adjusted. But it's to go in this degenerate case where people really, really, really want to put a, you know, Right here, right now, there is no limits on the size of a path. You could have a path 100 feet wide. You could have a freeway going through a park. And that's obviously not what is intended for open space. So this is just trying to set some numeric limits, some dimensional requirements that have solid numbers on them. And as you see in the Danahy Park example, it's not that much. If something's absolutely required, you could do it. And then as an alternative, you could just go get a variance and be done with it. Thank you.

Carolyn, let's go to you next. Thank you. And Ted, were you done? I don't mean to.

Yes, for the moment.

Thank you, I have a question for city staff there seemed to be some disagreement between your memo and the petitioners definitions of way and of how that. would be interpreted going forward and whether that includes basketball courts sports courts. tot lot playground areas. Can you speak to that? And also, the other question that I had, and maybe we're supposed to only ask one question at a time, but I also was just curious to hear city staff response to the motorized vehicles and if there's any thing that staff is doing on that or not. Thank you.

I'm sorry, I'll have to ask to repeat that second question, but I was just on the first question. This is Jeff Roberts again. So I did look back to confirm way is not a defined term in the zoning ordinance or in in the building code. And I was basically trying to look at how it's described in the zoning petition which um says way includes all forms of ways including but not limited to public ways private ways streets roadways highways driveways sidewalks all forms of paths pathways walkways alleys courts and any curbs curbstones and paved shoulders thereof so it's a fairly All encompassing definition does say courts. And again, it's, you know, I think it would, you know, I'm not sure exactly what and it seems like the petitioners are have said in the presentation that their intent was to be more circumscribed, but just reading the language of the petition would raise a number of questions as to if there were a basketball court, does that count as a court? If there were a plaza, for example, that people walk through, does that count as a sidewalk or a court of some sort? It's a fairly expansive definition and therefore it would at least raise the question if any kind of paved area were created in a park, I would probably be asked by somebody, well, would this count as under this definition in the zoning of a paved way? And how would we then have to navigate the zoning around it? So I think that's the general concern is that there could be examples that we, I mean, I can think of several things in parks, but there could be unanticipated examples of things that would trigger questions at the very least as to whether this would apply.

Okay, thank you. Yeah, the inclusion of court there leaves a lot open. My question on the motorized vehicles was just, I imagine you guys get a fair number of complaints about that. And I'm curious if there's anything that has been contemplated about trying to reduce the number of motorized vehicles on the linear path or elsewhere.

That last part, I don't know the answer to that. You know, our focus was really on this zoning petition and not on some, you know, some of the questions that I think have been raised in other contexts around linear park. I know that there's applicable state law provisions about what constitutes different kinds of vehicles. And I know they've been updated at different points in time. So I, you know, I can't speak specifically to what the regulations are applicable to a specific case.

Totally fair. Thank you. It might be helpful down the road for us to just get an update on sort of what is happening with transportation planning, because I think it is kind of an issue citywide, particularly the motorized items. But as you say, that's not really the topic of the petition. Mr. Teague, did you want to add something?

Attorney Hoffman wanted to speak on courts.

Court is actually included in the legal litany of types of ways. As any lawyer knows, having more words in a phrase just makes it more legal sounding. So court is just another type of way. There's plenty of jurisprudence on what constitutes a way. And I think that I would be willing to sign a legal opinion that a basketball court is not a way.

Thanks. So I just wanted to jump in on that. In the presentation, way is defined in Mass General Law's Chapter 90, Section 1. And we have that citation there. And then the second part is on the motorized bicycles, otherwise known as mopeds. And if you ever went to the vineyard, mopeds are considered the ultimate evil. That was a citation from various sections. Unfortunately, the whole, as I call it, alternative vehicles is just scattered across various chapters and sections. We excerpted that just to help everyone follow through. But Middlesex Superior Court justice did say that mopeds are allowed. So anyways, it's unfortunate. This could be restricted by the city council on passing an ordinance. But it's been around this way forever. And we don't see any changes coming. Thank you.

Thank you. All right, any other questions from board members? And if not, then let's move on to discussion. All right, I'm not seeing any questions. Who would like to begin the discussion of this evening's petition, the petition for us? Ted.

Sure, I'll start. Well, when I read this, I... thought it made no sense, that it's not appropriate in the zoning ordinance, which deals with uses. And then I read the CDD's memo, which confirmed all of my thoughts about this. I think one, it is ambiguous as to whether various recreational facilities would be included or not. And conceivably that could be amended to take care of it. But basically, this is something that limits what the city can do. because it's really the city that's controlling the open space, except I'd say probably on Memorial Drive and along the river, the state, and maybe the feds get involved too, and they're not subject to our zoning. So it's really, this is a zoning amendment that's to limit what the city can do. And it seems to me the city has many, uh constituents and concerns that it needs to address and it may be that a paved way in excess of 10 feet is appropriate in certain circumstances it may be that something less than 10 feet is appropriate but they have to the city has to uh determine, you know, who's using these paths, what are they best suited for. You know, a lot of the paths linear way certainly has a lot of pedestrians, a lot of baby carriages, a lot of bicycles, and in their determination, maybe it should be wider. And so I think the fact that this intends to tie the hands of the city in weighing all the different uses of the residents of the city and the needs of the city itself doesn't make sense. I clearly do not understand this last sentence of the footnote. And I think, you know, The concept that the city, since that's who this is aimed for aimed at is going to put into parallel pathways to try to get around the 10 foot restriction. doesn't make sense to me. I also think that if there is a project. uh saying a new park or you know renovating danahy or renovating any other uh open space that they can't do it all at once because they can only do no more than two percent of contiguous area within a two-year period um it just You know, it seems that zoning is not the place for this. It also seems that there are two issues that are trying to be addressed. One is the loss of trees. And I doubt that anybody here is going to say we want to cut down more trees. We want to have less tree canopy, but You know, again, the city, public works, CDD, city council are going to have to weigh the needs of doing something versus whether they're going to remove or cut back a tree or not. Similarly, the idea of limiting space So we will cut down on the speed of some vehicles seems to me is not something that ought to be a rationale for a zoning change. You know it's Department of Transportation. or public works or the city council can't figure out some other means of making these facilities amenable to electric bike users, electric scooter users, regular bicycles, pedestrians, baby carriages, um you know that's something yes they ought to work on and um you know maybe it's regulations from one or more uh different boards in the city um but i think simply saying arbitrarily well if we limit this to 10 feet things are going to go slower And I just don't think that's correct. You know, maybe at some point they want to put in a separate bike lane and open space to get the bikes away from the pedestrians. I don't know what the city wants to do and may want to do. Zoning looks forward to the future. And I think This is just not appropriate in the zoning ordinance and that we ought to be able to trust all the various boards and officials in the city to weigh what is needed in any particular open space area. Ted Kinsman, that's my attitude towards this, I mean, I think you know it's great to think about the trees and to protect them and it's great to protect the people who are using the various paths, but I don't think this is the right way to go about it.

Karen Hollweg, Okay, thank you so much, Ted comments are very, very helpful. Karen Hollweg, Other board members. Karen Hollweg, thoughts. All right, Mary.

Thank you. So I'll just add on. I think everything Ted just outlined was very articulate and lays out abundantly the reasons why. I also agree, and I am not the lawyer here, that the zoning code is not the place to put this. Laying into that is it as Ted described, it's primarily city land. And I think the CDD memo and I think our community process generally would hopefully lean on what they describe as neighborhood planning, community engagement, meetings, design process to evaluate and as a community decide on what is always the case in physical space or trade-offs. And I think this would inhibit the community's flexibility to weigh in and participate in that. I think it needs to be more than just the number of people required to pass a zoning change. And to that point, I think many of the things that might happen are within what you put as your, I think your chief objective, which I think is laudable and would urge that you keep working with the city to figure out what you said is how to preserve and plant more trees. Of course. That's great. It just feels like hitting the paving and coming up with a very narrow solution. uh, definition of that is not necessarily going to do what you want, right? I always think of the worst case scenario when there's a zoning thing. So sure, maybe you get a bunch of eight foot pathways or 10 foot pathways, but no one plants trees, right? There's nothing in this that requires tree planting. Um, and so I think that's a concern to me is it, um, it limits the creativity of the community and design. So also imagine you could have a 15 foot pathway on the side of a park and no other minor pathways, or you could have four, 10 foot pathways through the park, you know, like sometimes a broader area, you know, promenade, and I'm not positing what this is, I'm saying conceptually, I want to leave the city and the community the choice to decide where that might be appropriate. And in addition to play courts or playgrounds, other things that, you know, might fall into this Is it a way? Is it not a way? I think plazas are the biggest concern there. Sometimes plazas can really consolidate where you're keeping people's foot traffic so that soils don't get compacted and you are able to do a really dense, rich, you know, biodiverse planting elsewhere on the site, kind of consolidating. your paper and again not positing but i'm just thinking through what would be worst case beer to to ted's point that the city comes up with you know if if we're thinking about the linear park um without positing an approach to that well you could do two 10 foot pathways separated by five foot in the middle and build it out over however many years to keep it within two percent per year you see what i mean it's like you could it just feels like it's um two course a tool for something that really needs to be flexible and adaptable. I was also struck by one thing that one of the public commenters said, that this is not a commuter throughway. And I do appreciate that, but a pathway like that, which is one of the only open space, right? It feels also like this is something that addresses a shared use trail landscape typology more than like a Danahy Park, more than a Raymond Park. That's over the Red Line Ale Wave. So I also want to keep in mind that sometimes maybe at least from, you know, as a community member, sometimes a public space is also for commuters. And I think that's one of the best kind of characteristics of something like that, because it's encouraging and layering the other things we want to see in the community, like people safely getting to the T and being able to commute not by car. And so I think I'm just kind of layering on to Ted's and others that I think that what Mary brought up, which it would be great to get a kind of update on how is the city approaching more motorized vehicles on these paths, right? Because those, they go fast, whether it's an eight foot, 10 foot, 12 foot, they're going fast. And so I think it would be great to get an update and be thinking about that. It's a really laudable topic to bring up. And then finally, again, I would just urge that I think the point you're bringing up is that the Urban Forest Master Plan said we should be thinking about how zoning builds these this urge to preserve and plant more trees. I would encourage the city to figure out how you get that more and more into your zoning because there are other, you know, priorities and trade-offs, right, that might be diminishing. some of those opportunities so just to be thinking about that and certainly what the commenters mentioned about stormwater infiltration storage thinking about that how that happens using leveraging the open space is great and permeable paving I agree it's a tough one because it does require maintenance and so the city continuing to push to be at the forefront of what's the next best version and implementation of permeable paving in the city Thank you.

Thank you, Mary. Appreciate your comments. Carolyn, let's hear from you next.

Thank you. So I agree a lot with what Ted and Mary said, which is to say that I don't think this is the right tool to achieve what you guys are looking for. I similarly applaud the efforts to maintain trees and to decrease motorized vehicles on these kind of multi-use paths. But but I do worry about about that. I don't think this is the right vehicle to do that through. And I worry I worry as as a developer that the 10 foot. Regulation would set the rule and that any path that if designed today might be five or six feet wide would be. automatically created at 10 feet wide. We were ultimately creating more paved area just to avoid any issues in the future and to kind of say, look, let's plan for future growth now since we know that there might be problems later. And I worry about unintended consequences on that side. Private developers are building more and more open spaces throughout the city these days. But keep on fighting for trees and multi-use paths.

Thank you. um does anyone else have anything they want to add or any disagreements in uh the uh the position that's been laid out so far no okay i um i think ted and you've all done a great job of really summarizing uh why this is not in my opinion the appropriate place to deal with these issues, though I do think the issues are of concern to the city and definitely worth pursuing through other appropriate means. So I applaud the petitioners for thinking about how to move the city forward on some of those, but I would agree that this is not the place. So I think then that we... have a recommendation, which would be that the city council not adopt this petition. I know Jeff has been taking notes very, very studiously. So I think, you know, the memo should include a lot of the comments that both Ted, Mary and Carol that all of them have made and focus on the importance of the issues that have been raised. But again, just really signifying that this could have unintended consequences and it really is not appropriate for the zoning ordinance, this type of restriction. Um, so our people are board members in agreement that we would send a negative recommendation to the city council with the background that, that we've talked about tonight. Okay. Yes. Okay. Um, so then could I have someone make a motion, uh, to that effect that we will not be adopting the petition and we'll move forward from there.

This is Ted. I so move.

Thank you, Ted. And is there a second, please? Is Mary second? Thank you. And Jeff, may we have a roll call vote, please?

On that motion, Ted Cohen? Yes. Mary Lydecker?

Yes.

Diego Macias? Yes. Carolyn Zern?

Yes.

Mary Flynn?

Yes.

It's all five members present voting in favor.

Great. Thank you. And thank you to the petitioners as well for the time and effort you put into thinking about these issues. And as one of my fellow board members stated, I think it's worth you trying to continue to work with the city on the issues to be sure that the things that are in the urban forest master plan, et cetera, actually do come to fruition. So thank you. So that concludes the business on the agenda for this evening. Any additional comments from staff?

No. Just a reminder that we do have a meeting again next week. So we'll see you then.

Okay. Very good. Board members, anything before we adjourn for the evening? No? All right. Well, great to see everyone. The meeting is adjourned. I'll see you next week. Good night, everyone.