Zoning and Planning Committee - January 12, 2026

The first meeting of the Zoning and Planning Committee for the new term. And we are so glad to have you all attending either in person or online. I want to begin by introducing myself. I'm Lyle Baker, Chair of the Committee, and I'm joined by the Vice Chair, Councilor Goy, also Councilor Albright from Ward 2, Councilor Gordon from Ward 6, and President Oliver from Ward 1. And have we got any other counselors online or anything? I've counseled the Vice President Kalis virtually. I think that is it, right? OK. So I thought, because we are

getting underway and a new term that it would be helpful at the very outset to have a presentation on our process for doing these things because we have a new member of the committee although Councilor Gordon has followed our work for a while. And we also have new people who are spending time with us and planning, although we have Mr. LaMelle here and we're grateful for that. And we'll talk about those issues. We're also joined, I see, by John Rice from the mayor's office, so we're glad to see him. And Laura Berman is here virtually as well, as well as Andrew Lee. I think this would be useful for everybody concerned to go around the table and have members of the committee just say a word about themselves from their background and then we can

I move the chair to the presentation about how we go about our business. So let me start with the president. Governor Oliver, I think everybody knows who you are, but just for the public who may have some lingering doubt,

I'm John Oliver, Councilor at LARC from Ward 1, currently serving as City Council President as well. So I started with the City Council in 2001.

Sorry.

It sounded odd. Yes. Thank you. 2021 by a special election. Happy to be here. This is my second term on zoning and planning. I think that might be part of that as well.

Thank you very much. Councilor Albright, your former chair, if you want to introduce yourself.

I'm Councilor Albright, former chair. I'm from Ward 2. I've been with the council for 22 years.

So almost 2,000.

Let's put on his tail. and I got elected. So I said, why don't we get one?

Me too. I'm going to try to do mine.

I don't remember how many terms, but the other half of my time on the council is on land use, so it's a nice combination to have seen first how our ordinances affect actual land use process.

Wright.

I'm Councilor Wright from Ward 3 at large. I was elected in 2020 and I've been on ZAP the whole time. I'm on my second term as a city councillor and this is my second term being building and planning. So I'm at large from one fire.

and Vice President Kalis virtually.

David Kalis, Ward 8 at large. And I've been, this is my 15th year on the council and I think I've been on zoning and planning for 11 of them. This is my 11th year.

You can't decide between finances and growing and planting.

Yeah, that is a tough one.

Lisa Gordon.

I'm Lisa Gordon. I'm at large from Ward 6, and I'm I'm new to this and excited to be here.

Thank you. Hi, I'm Councilor Cyrus Dahmubed, he, him series pronouns. Ward 4 at large, and like Lisa, I've been a councilor since January 1st.

And I think we're joined by another councilor, Councilor Roche, who's not a member of the committee, but we welcome you, a new councilor as well. Do you want to say a word about your background?

Sean Roach. I've been following ZAP as long as Councilor Baker has been arms out. And then I know I've joined the council this morning.

Thank you. We're grateful for all of you being here. I'm Lyle Baker, the chair, and I've been on the council since my 43rd year in this game. But I've been on it for a very long time. So we wanted to start with an introduction by the planning and law departments to our process and I wondered if Mr. Lee and who's going to sort of take us off and explain this, Mr. Lee, Mr. LaMelle. Do you want to come to the table? I can. I'd like you to just be visible on the camera, too, to probably be visible if you're on the sideline. Can we just go there?

Thank you for watching.

I'm going to start the presentation with a kind of just general overview of zoning, what it is, what it isn't, and then I will hand it over to Attorney Lee to talk about specifically process That's relevant to the committee.

And this is all background for the work plan item, which I should read into the record, 2126, the session that was asked.

and this will be I think you know for what is zoning this is really meant to be an overview and since at the end of the month I will other planning staff over to all of you for further questions if this isn't sufficient.

Well, I understand you're saving this at least for the end of the month. Yes, the end of the month. I'm sorry to see you go and wish you well but we'll say more about you later.

Anyways, zoning determines what can and cannot happen on any given property. It regulates the and development of that property. Newton adopted zoning first in the 1920s, along with many other cities. and towns across the country and has been mending and revising that zoning ordinance ever since in some way shape or form sometimes greatly and sometimes very minimally intangible. Zoning all the municipalities that all the cities and towns within Massachusetts. Utilize zoning to kind of again regulate their land use. It's the State Zoning Act. known as Chapter 48 gives the municipalities that ability, that flexibility. It obviously must be consistent with the rules and regulations.

And then there are many things that we'll get into that Can't Do, as well as it offers special pathways for certain uses, religious uses, educational uses. In Newton, the zoning ordinance, which is known as Chapter 30 of the city ordinances, breaks down into the ordinance itself. within which again kind of lays out those rules and regulations. There's the zoning map which goes into the various districts and sub-districts, residential, mixed-use, business, manufacturing, etc. and then it sets the zoning review process with which the law department get a little bit more into. The zoning map shown here. There are a variety of ways you can find the zoning map. And I know when this gets posted, you have links to the assessor's database, the GIS virtual browser,

and then through the new gov system, I know you can look up properties, look up permits and find the zoning that way as well. So the regulations that are within the zoning ordinance, again, they set out the uses that are allowed and where they are allowed within those districts. You can find that information in the various use tables, which the residential districts, the business districts, people setting what is permitted. Within those sections as well, within those different districts, you can find dimensional requirements. The limitations on the lock itself, so setbacks, lock coverage, and it sets the dimensional requirements for the building. It's like height, or FAR floor area ratio, which regulates the mass of the building. And then it gets into various development standards, which are mostly found in chapter five or article five.

It gets into parking requirements, signage, inclusionary zoning, various things like that. Again, these dimensional requirements, pre my time here in 2015, The city undertook a process not to substantively change the zoning ordinance, but it updated The format of the zoning ordinance and provided a lot of tables, a lot of diagrams, I think to make it a lot more user friendly. And so you can find these various diagrams. So when you go and you're looking at, I want to do a single family home or I want to do A manufacturing space facility. You can go find these within the zoning ordinance and get a look at, again, the dimensional controls that are all set out. How big of a lot do you need? How much building can you put? How much can you cover the lot with building?

Open space requirements, setbacks, etc. And then again, related to the building height, floor area ratio, things like that. All of the various uses that are allowed are spelled out. We do have some that are still reserved and aren't defined, but I know over the last bunch of years. We've tried to clean that up a little bit more, make sure the uses are relevant and up to date, and it's also flexible to kind of capture And then I'll just briefly intro the zoning review. So if you are looking at to develop or redevelop,

There are different kind of tiers of review, where the lowest level of review essentially would be something that's allowed by right, where it is administratively approved. You go through the permitting process, you go through inspectional services, ISD, and they would grant you a building permit to build on the Most extreme end of that, there are prohibited uses. And in order to realize that, you would require a variance through the Zoning Board of Appeals, the CDA. It's a very high bar, very Thank you for your time.

and then finally in between you have these conditional land uses which are allowed to discretionary review or through the special permit process which in Newton's case the City Council is the special permit granting authority in 99% of cases. And just quickly, again, I think we've been talking about use and form. That is what zoning's bread and butter is. But I know throughout this process, I think throughout the special permit processes as well that go through land use. There are things that come up. And again, zoning does not regulate materiality. It doesn't set, that a building should be made of brick or it should be made of hardy plank or shingle or what have you. It can't do those things. It can't regulate the internal configuration of the building.

I know there are things within our zoning ordinance, such as lot area per unit, which And then finally, it doesn't regulate ownership structure. I know that's another thing that's come up a lot. But if a private property owner is looking to build and they're doing two-family home, whether it's sold as a two-family home or two separate condos, or if a larger building, they're for rent or for sale. It does not do those things. That is the what is zoning, what is not portion of this. And I'm happy to keep sharing my screen or stop and let attorney Lee share his, whichever he prefers.

So, Mr. Lee, you want to come in or you want to wait until after? You're welcome having you here. And maybe you should just identify yourself again for people who we know you well.

My name is Andrew Lee. I'm an attorney in the city's law department. My preference would be to share my own screen, Zach.

And I see we've been joined by Councilor Sherrill, I believe, online. Is it virtually? Anybody else?

And Block.

And Councilor Block. Welcome both colleagues.

Is everyone able to see that? Yes. Okay. So as Zach mentioned, I'm going to be covering the zoning amendment process. He did mention also that this is dictated by statute chapter 48, but then also I'm going to talk about kind of some Newton-centric processes of how the city council works through a zoning amendment. Here's a very brief chart that shows the relevant steps. I'm gonna cover each one in further detail. But essentially how a zoning amendment begins is not listed here. It is an item is docketed with the city council. Usually the items docketed from city councils themselves or the administration. um depending on how it's how it's docketed exactly what it is there might be some footwork beforehand the planning department they look at it they make some recommendations but that's not always the case which is why I um

started here with what always is the case is once the city council gets a docket item that's a zoning amendment, it gets preferred to ZAP. Discussion and committee, public hearing, deliberation, Zapp, like every other committee, reports its recommendation to the full city council, and then the city council takes action. So When the item first gets reported to ZAP, the planning department usually gives background materials. They usually give a presentation on the item depending on how in-depth it is because of course the zoning amendment can It's also important to note that the proposal is referred to the planning and development board. So this is a statutory requirement and you'll see through this presentation that the Planning and Development Board has a role in all zoning amendments.

they have to make, or they don't have to, but they have to have the opportunity to make a recommendation to the full city council of whether or not to adopt the proposal. One of the first things that the Zoning and Planning Committee does is they have initial deliberations and discussions about the docket item. These are critically important because they set the stage for shaping what exactly is going to go into the public hearing notice. Now, the reason that's important is because a public hearing notice, once it's set out, that dictates what can ultimately be approved by the city council, meaning that the scope of that public hearing notice is a limited scope of the action that the city council can take. and that notice has to have a detail of the subject matter of what the proposed amendment is going to be.

It's also important to note the timing of this publication. It needs to be published 14 days in advance for two consecutive weeks prior to the public hearing itself. And the reason this is so important is under Chapter 48, Section 6, that first date of publication Notwithstanding the fact that the proposed amendment is still proposed, it hadn't been adopted yet, once it eventually does get approved by the City Council and passed as an ordinance, that effective date relates back to the first notice of public hearing, meaning that if a building permit had not been issued prior to that first publication, whatever process they're going through, The controlling zoning is what is eventually passed, notwithstanding that months have gone by.

So because of that, we always make a recommendation of an effective date, unless it's, again, just a cleanup item or something of no real consequence. But the planning department in conjunction with the law department will make recommendations of what an appropriate effective date could be. Also, I mentioned that the Planning and Development Board has a role through this. They also need to hold a public hearing. The Zoning and Planning Committee and the separate body of the Planning and Development Board have to hold public hearings. Usually the way that it works here in Newton is they hold them jointly. So you folks will see planning board members at our public hearings and they at that time are also holding their public hearing. So during the public hearing, the city councilors and the planning board, they get the testimony from the public, what they think about the zoning. And there's no deadline by which the public hearing has to be closed.

That's important because sometimes public hearings They last several meetings. However, once the public meeting is closed, that starts the clock under which the city council needs to act. And that also is true of the Planning and Development Board because once they close a public hearing, they need to make a recommendation to the City Council. And that's this timing piece here. So the City Council with regards to the planning board's recommendation. Even if they close the public hearings, that makes the recommendation to the full council. The full council cannot vote on that recommendation until one of two things happen. Number one, they've gotten the Planning and Development Board's recommendation or 21 days has gone by from the close of the Planning and Development Board's public hearing.

Also, once that public hearing is closed, the city council has to vote within 90 days, not the zoning and planning committee. The zoning and planning committee within those 90 days has to make the recommendation of the full council, but the full council themselves have to vote on what's reported out of the zoning and planning committee. It's also important to note what the voting threshold is. for zoning amendments. Chapter 48 was amended a couple of years ago under the MBTA zoning laws And before it was straightforward. Every zoning amendment required a super majority, two thirds of the full council, 16 out of 24. That's changed for certain types of amendments, which now requires a simple majority of the full council. I've listed here a couple just of the criteria for a zoning amendment to be eligible for a civil majority vote.

I'm not going to go into it in detail, but what I will tell you is a process by which the recommendation for what the quantum of vote is gets to the full council. The state guidelines recommends that the Planning and Development Board, as part of the recommendation to the legislative body, also make a recommendation of what the voting threshold is. We followed that guidance. so what we usually do is we have the planning development board discuss it the law department or the planning department makes that recommendation to the planning board, and they either adopt it, ask some questions, and then again, it's part of the recommendation of the full council. It is very nuanced sometimes. and so on. Once it's voted out of the council, it's treated like any other measure of the city council. You know, 20 days needs to elapse, the mayor needs to approve it.

And then once that happens, depending on what the effective date is, it's an ordinance. So I'm just bookending this again with this process covering each of the steps. And that's the end of my presentation, but I'm happy to answer any questions.

Thank you. I want to just indicate we've also joined tonight by our new clerk, Lyle Starkey, and I'm not sure I introduced you properly last time, but I do want to do it tonight at least. Welcome. Thank you. So members of the committee, any questions for just the background? I have one clarification, Mr. Lee. My understanding is that The city council has to act within 90 days or a new public hearing has to be held, right?

That's correct. That's a consequence if they don't act in that 90 days. And again, ZAP needs to hold a new public hearing. And then after that public hearing is closed, again, that 90 days restarts.

Any questions from members of the committee? Councilor Goetz.

I don't know in the thinking the in the past we used to have like at the top of the docket item we would have like the effective day when we would have all the states you know in our orbit in our sense of knowing um each of these time points And that seems to have been dropped. And I don't know if there's any benefit in terms of adding it back.

I think for our purposes, let me distinguish between special permits. Once an item is filed, it doesn't require an action within a specific time except under our own rules. In other words, if you talk about a zoning amendment, it ultimately is going to be reviewed and then sent out for public hearing, but there's no time limit within which that must happen for a zoning amendment. for a special permit, my understanding is it's different, that once the item is filed, I think you have 60 days to hold a public hearing.

65.

65 days. 65. And then... and then the council has to act within 90 days of the close of the public hearing unless an extension is granted. So there's a different statutory framework for special permits.

I just so vaguely remember that I didn't see, you know, In the old days we used to have the date of the docketing.

I think that If you want to put the date of the documenting back on to these items, the clerk's office can manage that. That's a matter of the president, vice president taking over.

Well, I just sort of remembered the stance. I'm going to sit at the top of the hearing.

Oh, there were dates in the memos generally that the planning department would put together to give us a calendar.

Right, but it used to sit in the other corner and it was like sort of understanding the timeline.

Yeah, and that's a useful point for the Other questions?

Just to call out what is also new, right, is the 180 days notification. because this was an amendment to the rules right last term to make sure that within six months every item has to have begun to have been heard. So that part's new.

Let the record show the president's pointing to a parenthesis under the docket item 2126, just so everybody's clear. Anybody else? I think we have covered it. I'm sure there'll be some follow-up questions at some point, but I'm very grateful to you for doing this because I think it's important not only for all of us to be clear, but the public to be as clear as to our projects. and I just want to thank our predecessors in this committee who started the process of thinking about zoning amendments before we went to public hearing. You could imagine going straight out the public hearing and then having to take it back, redo it and all of that. So I know that Councilor Albright was instrumental in that change. Okay, now the work plan basically is to try and take up items as they come, just for members and committees' information.

I think I've outlined this before, but We tend to meet every week before a ZAP meeting to go over the possible agenda for the upcoming meeting and to look out a few weeks to see what is coming online in our workflow and figure out how to take that up. That's why I'm saying the we meaning the vice chair and the chair and the planning department and the representative law department as well as the clerk's office so that You can try and make as much of our work as farsighted as we can, in other words, of seeing what's coming and then deal with it. We don't have many items yet, but I assume some will be docketed and some have been sort of revived from the prior term that are gonna come back For instance, a question of what to do about commercial properties that are developed for solely residential use. Should they be subject to the road commercial?

dimensional controls or residential dimensional controls and if so that's the kind of thing that was not finished last time but we hope to bring back to us and then there's some continuing items like taking a look at how the enforcement of the of the Short-Term Rental Ordinance is going because that's a continuing inquiry with the Department of Inspectional Services, which reports to its committee. So the work plan is going to be evolved, but I just wanted to indicate that that's If not, then I would then suggest that we entertain a motion to hold that because we will come back and talk about the work plan probably more as we go forward. Is there a motion? Albright, Goose, Holt. All those in favor say aye. Aye. Opposed? Abstention? Okay, the ayes have it. Thank you.

I'd like now to move to item 2326, which is request for ordinance amendments to change oversight of the Economic Development Commission and for discussion on transition of the city's economic development functions and staff to the mayor's office. specifically his honor the mayor requesting to amend city ordinance section 2295 to remove staffing responsibility for the economic development commission from the planning department and relocate the commission ordinance from chapter 22 to chapter 7. and further requesting a discussion of the transition of the city's economic development function staff from the planning department to the mayor's office. So who is going to present this on behalf of the executive?

Mr. Rice, are you doing that? I think, if I'm not mistaken, and Andrew, hi, I'm over here on the side. I think Andrew was going to speak to the ordinance, but I can certainly speak to...

Okay.

I can...

We have a clerk that manages all the furniture here.

BYOC, I love it.

Thank you. Please introduce yourself for the record.

Hey, my name is Dana Hanson. I am Mayor Laredo's Chief of Staff and this is my Debut with the City Council in any of the committee meetings. I'm looking forward to this discussion tonight. I'm grateful that this was brought forward. as I understand it that there are the two issues of one is the ordinance sort of the particulars of the ordinance and and how that relates to the Economic Development Commission. But I'm happy to speak on behalf of Mayor Laredo and sort of his general intent on bringing economic development under the auspices of the mayor's office as opposed to the planning department. Sorry, it's not as opposed to the planning department. We're not looking at this as a... taking away from the planning department.

It's more we're expanding to be more cross-functional across many departments in the city of Newton. I think that All of us realize that economic development is a vital function here in the city. I think that as I'm not a subject matter expert in economic development but as the mayor's chief of staff I've been tasked with supporting our economic development team and with your permission in a few minutes I would love to introduce them as well so they can talk about more of the particulars about their vision. But as city councilors and myself as a everyday Newtonian, you know, driving around the cities, walking through our village centers, I think that we can envision more for economic development and think about ways to improve the viability of businesses in Newton, make City Hall more easily navigated. through working across departments.

Certainly the planning department has been a true partner and leader in economic development and bringing the economic development function within Underneath the wing of Mayor Laredo's mayor's office and executive team is really just to elevate and amplify the message that economic development is vitally important in Newton and that the mayor and the mayor's team are here to support our city's businesses and any initiatives and really try to work through existing channels and channels that we have not yet fully explored to support economic development in the city. That's sort of like a broad bird's eye view of this and Andrew eventually will get into the ordinance particulars of the Economic Development Commission.

But I'm here just to sort of speak to how we plan on broadening the scope of economic development and really, you know, sort of working towards our shared vision, councilors and the mayor alike, of what we can do to improve business vitality.

Thank you for that introduction. Maybe Mr. Lee, you can explain Baker. This change, and my understanding is this is not a zoning work exchange, so it is not, you're going to have to worry about the threshold disabled.

This says not a zoning amendment at all, Councilor Baker. And also, I When we had met earlier, you thought it would be helpful if I kind of really delineate what city council action is being asked by the administration. because the chief of staff did mention that there's kind of two parts to this of this docket item, which is correct, right? It's the ordinance amendment itself, but then also the plan. The plan with regards to how economic development functions and staff are going to be located and how they're going to move forward under the administration in the mayor's office. So I just want to be very clear that what's before the zoning and planning committee tonight is the ordinance amendment itself. The determination with regards to having the economic development staff and those functions being overseen and supervised by the administration as opposed to the planning department It's not a reorganization, so that doesn't require any city council authority.

However, because that is changing and then the ordinance itself about the Economic Development Commission explicitly states that they are staffed by Planning Department staff themselves, we obviously need to clean that up. And that's why the discussion item is really important. So you understand the why. Why is the ordinance being amended? And of course, the administration's desire to make sure that The city council is fully apprised of what's happening. So I hope that clears up exactly what it is that the city council is voting on. The ordinance amendments themselves are not very complicated. It only does two things. The first one is it makes it clear that the staff for the Economic Development Commission is not a planning department, someone in the planning department. It's simply staffed by the city's economic development director.

The second piece of it is the current Economic Development Commission ordinance is in Chapter 22, the planning and planning department's chapter. So obviously, because it's not going to be staff that is in the planning department directly under their supervision. We're moving it to chapter seven boards of commissions. Again, not much more to it, but again, happy to answer any questions.

So do you have for us at some point?

It's in the packet. I don't have a slide for it though.

Okay. All right. Questions? Yes.

So, Attorney Lee, what's the definition of a reorganization? If taking a section of one department and moving it to another part of administration is not reorganization, then what is reorganization?

Reorganization is something more, meaning that it needs to be changing a core function of a department. It needs to be creating a new department. Simply changing something that is supervision of an existing function isn't a reorganization. and so on. it's more of a function of Parks and Rec than economic development is for planning and then more importantly for the arts and culture example is it's creating a whole new department with a new department

Their definition of charter, is that what it is about reorganization?

I believe so. And also just in, so I know this, for sure, because in helping the administration put together the docket items for not just this, but for the arts and culture department to make sure that everything that's moving around met all of the charter requirements. We looked, the law department looked very closely at prior reorganizations, what the statuses were, read through various law department memos. So this is all consistent with prior practice and the charter.

Thank you for that. Thank you. Attorney Lee, I'm just being comparative with the two languages in terms of the current versus the new proposed.

Yes.

The one piece that popped out at me was that the new economic development director shall serve as the executive director to the commission. So that's something that's shifting, correct? Because they, within themselves, within the commission, You know, in their agenda for tomorrow night, they're actually nominating their officers. So this piece didn't seem to transfer, right?

in language you're correct in the sense that that language is no longer going to be their executive director but in practice nothing is changing and the reason that is is There really was no executive director role. I don't know who wrote this ordinance in the first place. My guess is that they mirrored the enabling language for the planning board. and also the New Community Development Authority that does call for an executive director that has a different specific function. My understanding is the executive director for the economic planning, economic, Development Commission didn't do anything as an executive director. The commission, they voted their own officers the same way other boards and commissions The staff, executive director, whatever it is that you want to call, they didn't do anything as an executive director would. So I think if anything, this is more of a cleanup and codification of practice.

Okay. And then just to follow up, there's another line that doesn't show up in the new language, such staffs to be provided for in the city's budget, in terms of the current people that are being proposed. So it sort of seemed like that was obvious and it didn't need to transfer. So I was just trying to be You know, in terms of just understanding comparatively between the two versions, you know, what exactly is changing in the ordinance language?

Right. And again, that's Although the language may be changing, that language was superfluous. It's of course, it's the staff that's being provided for in the budget because that's what the economic development director has to be. So really in terms of substance of the change, there is not.

Okay.

So, Mr. Lee, I know we have the document, and you probably pointed out and reminded me of the, we have the not red line in the conventional sense, but we have a, well, it's red line in the I think it would be helpful to us to understand what, if anything, you've indicated a couple of changes about the Economic Development Commission itself. Is there any things that you haven't mentioned that we should be aware of?

I don't believe so. Give me a minute. I'm going to look to see if I can find the red line that would highlight the changes that Councilor Getz just asked about and see if I can share my screen, but I'm doing this in real time. No, no, I understand because in the red line that's in the packet, it's simply a relocation of it. And you're asking for the text changes as opposed to just a relocation. Is this right?

No, that's not it. Two dashes.

Let me do it this way. Let the record show you pays to show up in person for said fuel.

Unfortunately, I can't find it. There are no other changes that I'm aware of. Would it be helpful if I can send out and supplement the materials that's provided to the city council with the cut type of red line that you're asking for it's not going to show just the relocation it's going to show the text compared to what is currently there and whatever changes there are that's going to be very easy to to see

I think that would be just for our colleagues. We always like to know what, not just the new tech, but what the changes are. So other questions from members? Councilor Alderman.

I was doing some research about what people were thinking about moving economic development into the executive branch. and some things that came up were interesting that I didn't see in the letter from Josh Morse and they were coordination with housing availability and affordability, transportation access, Climate Resilience and Workforce Development, which I thought was kind of interesting. Especially the workforce development where we could work with schools.

Where was that coming from?

It was some research that I did on just using AI to find out what... Oh, economic development could be.

Yeah. Okay, but that's not drawn from anything specific.

No.

No, I just need to understand.

Probably I couldn't figure that out, but... I would just recommend, I know that that's not part of our purview because we're just looking at the changes in the ordinance, but I thought I would recommend those four things for you guys to think about. and I think, I love all the, I know Cheryl Lappin and I know Katie Wewell. I don't know Laurel Berman yet, but I'm sure I will meet her. And I have every... Expectation that this would be a successful move.

So maybe it would be appropriate if you're agreeable members of the committee to hear from the chief of staff and have her introduce our Gaskin.

The only other piece that I thought, you know, in terms of just the benefit of having the planning department involved, you know, in the sense of just being actually of Economic Development Commission. Because I sort of felt as if that would then sort of give wider context. And I somewhat felt that in listening to a lot of these meetings, um there's a wide breadth within the current DC commission you know and they're very strong there's a lot of potential you know within that commission so I just sort of felt as if Once this move happens, there's the potential of not having that present during the meetings. And I think that's a pretty critical piece, and it leads to really the top of your list here.

I've talked to the mayor a little bit about this because I think he's very eager to do this change, but I think that part of the value of having planning involved is that they're available to us in other contexts. So I'd like to hear from the administration how you will preserve what we need. We'd like this to be edited, not subtracted. Excuse me.

To kind of second Councilor Getz's thoughts, I agree that I think it's really important that planning and economic development happen in conversation and in tandem with each other, and especially given the context of being We're still down two leaders of our planning department and soon to be down a third. I think that I'd like to have a good sense of how that synergy is going to continue to happen and making sure whether it's thrown

Anybody else in the committee? All right. Would you like to respond and introduce your colleague?

If I may, thank you. Thank you, Chair Baker. A lot of thoughts here. One is certainly when the Economic Development Commission, and I have to admit I'm sort of returning to City Hall, but my understanding is that it has been the Economic Development Director. who has been the staff of that commission all along. So the staffing is not changing. In fact, we're having a second economic development full-time employee. So we're adding horsepower to that function of staffing the Economic Development Commission. I would say, and I don't want to speak on behalf of the planning department, however,

Just as any board or commission in the city that needs to draw on expertise or engage in collaboration with any department in the city, We are going to be in lockstep communication. Certainly, if there's something happening either generally under economic development with our staff, and they are liaising with the economic, with the planning department, that will be natural. And like literally they are, their cubicles are in the planning department or like within the planning neighborhood in the ISD. Office Suite. But then on the commission itself, we will certainly have, you know, open door invitation collaboration with our planners as well.

because as Chair Baker said, this is an additive move. This is not taking like planning away. This is sort of just enriching the cross function There certainly is nothing having to do with economic development that is not going to be fully engaging with planning. That said, we're also going to be thinking about other departments such as, you know, Department of Public Works and how that interfaces sustainability to Councilor Albright's point on thinking about workforce development. Certainly this can sort of give us a little more breathing room within the economic development function in order to just connect the dots more among the different disciplines that are very important for fostering strong economic development in municipalities.

So how we're going to sort of formalize Those connections, we're working on it. But I mean, we have department heads meetings. We're going to be having cluster meetings with Josh Morse and John Rice. We're working sort of all fronts together in a variety of different functions in City Hall. And economic development is really something that Mayor Laredo heard about a lot during his campaign. And as I said, again, just as a lay person, just traveling around Newton, we want to infuse that function with as much energy and expertise as we can from the planning department, and all other departments at City Hall.

I'd like to introduce the...

Yes, please. I will start with Lauren Berman, who is our Economic Development Director. and she would have been here in person, but she's feeling a little under the weather, so I'm sure we're all happy that she is taking the Zoom from home. So, Chair Baker, may the alarm begin?

Sure. Ms. Berman, welcome. We're sorry you're feeling I'm feeling good enough.

I'm happy to be here, thrilled to be stepping into this new role and to be part of the city's economic development team. working to make Newton a vibrant business environment. I'd like to tell you a little bit about me and then we'll go into the Economic Development Priorities. So after business school, I worked in marketing and sales for large global corporations, including IBM, Gartner, and WestVaco. But over the past several years, I've worked with considerably smaller businesses and organizations across the city of Newton, ones like Green Tail Table, Salt Petisserie, The Newton Theater Company, and Johnny's Luncheonette as I founded and grew a marketing platform exclusively for Newton's businesses called Oliver Newton.

And I founded Oliver Newton because I felt more could be done to support the city's businesses. especially given the current challenging economic environment. And over the past few years, I've worked with hundreds of businesses in Newton, connecting them with residents, with each other, driving eyeballs, foot traffic and revenues their way. while doing my best to represent their concerns and interest to the city. So now stepping into my new role as the city's director of economic development and working alongside Cheryl and collaborating with a bunch of different departments like the new arts and culture department, planning, parks and rec, We will, without a doubt, move the needle on the economic development front. So let me talk briefly about our top priorities, and we have five of them.

So first, we will support and retain existing businesses because they're the bedrock of Newton's local economy. We want to make sure that existing businesses stay in Newton, prosper in Newton, and they grow here. We'll attract new businesses by positioning Newton as a premier place to do business in greater Boston. We'll identify target industries and recruit businesses to set up shop here. We are in the process of addressing vacant storefronts, our third priority. Vacant storefronts weaken our village centers and they drain community vitality. We've only been in the job for seven days and we're already fielding calls about what can be done in West Newton, what can be done in Auburndale, which is where I live. and what can be done in Waban. So we're exploring the mass vacant store fund program and looking at what other communities are doing to address vacancies.

We'll work to streamline processes for new and expanding businesses because we want to roll out the welcome mat and make it fast, simple, painless, and maybe even ideally a little fun to do business in Newton. And then last, we'll increase businesses visibility and encourage foot traffic to village centers, which in part picks up where Oliver Newton left off. and we'll do this by partnering with the new arts and culture department as I mentioned planning parks and rec and other departments so we can work as a cohesive unit with aligned objectives and I'd say we can't wait to get going, but the fact is we've already started. And that's what Cheryl is going to talk about what we've accomplished over the last week.

I have a question about your goals, but let's hear from a former fellow. Do you want to come up where we can see you and hear you?

I'm happy to be sitting next to you as I did for 18 years. And I'm happy to have you.

Just identify yourself again for the public who haven't seen you until now.

That will happen. I served on the city council for 18 years starting in 2002. And my background is in marketing. And I had a consulting business for 30 years helping small businesses. and most recently I ran a business for the last eight years through COVID and through a business model change. So I am Really thrilled to be here and to be helping Newton in another way. I'm happy to be working with Lauren. It's amazing. And I just wanted to share a little bit about What we have. And even have music.

This is the coordination with our culture.

So when Lauren and I got here, we determined that there was no cohesive database of Newton businesses or listings of vacant storefronts. So that was Friday. And then on Monday, we were gifted with two wonderful interns from Harvard. And Brianna is right here. She's wonderful. And she and Artemis have been incredible. and they have helped us to put together databases. The one we're focusing on is the vacant store database. and so talk about working across departments. We have already worked with Drew Wilson and Jennifer Breslov in the city clerk's office and they gave us data for business certificates.

We worked with Jim Shaughnessy and Ellen Cohen in the assessor's office to get that data. Devin Finnamore from ISD for additional health permit information for restaurants and Doug Greenfield from GIS for mapping and Greg Ansaldi and Rufin and Rachel Sherman from ISD, not from ISD, from IT, have helped us with access to OpenGov and Zoom and website updates. and we have connected with planning on working together and our wonderful interns have aggregated all of that information. It wasn't a cohesive database and they've done an incredible job and we're not It's only been a few days, but they've really done an incredible job.

And this database will exist on the city's website. So anybody who's looking to relocate here, We'll see where the bacon storefronts are and the information and a wonderful interactive map. Thank you. And so that's what we've been doing. We've also connected with Andrew and Jonah in the legal department to discuss parameters for a future economic development website that we are talking about coordinating with arts and culture because When you do an event in a village center, it brings business to the villages. And we are looking forward to partnering with them. Yeah, we've been collaborating with Merrill Kessler from the Arts and Culture Department. We've met with Greg Reedman and Max Wolff about how best to work with the chamber.

We've met with Alison Yee regarding pop-ups, which is another Interesting thing you can do. And we have prepared for tomorrow night's EDC meeting because we now are staffing that. So talk about, there's more, but I don't, Oh, and we've reached out to our state reps and have spoken to and have meetings with others regarding state programs, including the math, the Mass vacant storefront community program that offers $50,000 in tax credits for participating small businesses. So we've been very busy.

and it's just really exciting to be, first of all, working with the city departments again and to be elevating economic development.

I should say that I recall sitting next to you when you asked for databases from time to time. Yes. Glad to have you back. Questions from members of the committee? I have one myself.

So this is from Josh Moore's memo. so you put things in here which didn't really discuss I was just wondering how that works and what you're going to be doing for the core element of economic development includes One of the things to throw down there was quality of life for employees. So is it for business employees, city employees, or any idea?

I would say employees are oddly City Hall employees count as employees in Newton. So internally, externally, employees are stakeholders in this equation of economic development. We want to have synergies in the city so that way employers want to bring businesses here. We want to have great transportation and amenities and Navigation of City Hall processes. But yes, with respect to that question about Josh Morse's memo, uh certainly quality of life for employees is employees of businesses uh existing and hopefully to come someday soon okay and i think it'd be good um great to have a

your own web page, the city web page.

We are working on that. It's already actually been moved to the as a under, when you go to government, if you drop down, now we exist there. We're not very under.

Yeah, there's been anything.

So we have already have been elevated and are working on the webpage. Okay, that's good. Thank you.

I should note, for the record, we've been joined by Councilor Malakie and Greenberg for this discussion. Other questions?

I just wanted to ask you, Lauren, what did you think about those four elements that weren't particularly brought out in Josh's letter about housing availability and affordability, transportation access, climate resilience, and workforce development. Do you see those things that you'll be addressing?

I think they're really important and I think it's all tied together. So yes.

Thank you.

I'm sort of trying to Dovetail this with what's happening in the U.S. now. In terms of what? With the EDC. They may need to borrow money. And on their agenda is the discussion of the development strategy. And so I just sort of feel as if Something is moving a little too quickly, you know, in terms of this reorganization versus getting the agency to sort of talk about the overall development of the plan. I'd like to have heard from them, you know, and have the full reading of what their, you know, this recently issued strategic plan is because it's got a date of December 2025. So this needs to come into what you are tentatively proposing in the sense of just how this is working and how both groups are working in a new role.

And I, at some level, wishing that that discussion didn't happen before this discussion. You know, just so that then I would have the benefit of their perspective and the benefit of this recent plan that was issued. So, yeah, you don't need to comment.

We have read the plan. It's an update from the 2019 plan. Yeah, this was just issued. Yeah. And it incorporates a lot of what we've been talking about. So we have incorporated a lot. We have a few more things on our priorities list, but those are all part of it.

Yeah, those are, as Cheryl said, our priorities were partly informed by reviewing that plan. So they weren't necessarily, so they are linked together and we're looking forward to the ED's Economic Development Commission meeting tomorrow night so we can discuss it further. We haven't met with them yet.

And then the only other thought that I was having was, you know, just understanding how economic development in other communities around us are, you know, because I was looking around and I was looking specifically at Natick, and their sort of organization is a little bit different. so I just wondered you know in terms of and this sort of seems as if it's part of how the executive is organized you know and whether or not this is even a bigger question or bigger you're sort of you know referring in terms of the other pieces you need to work together. within the executive and whether or not economic development is actually getting its own understanding. But that's a bigger question. and I don't think it's a review of what's on the list.

There are questions, there's an ordinance amendment, but it's being informed by all of us.

Yeah, I just have a couple of things to think about. I don't expect you necessarily to answer them. I'm very excited about this because just personally for the last 20 years, I've been acting as My own form of the EDC, when I see a storefront vacant, I've been calling businesses and saying, yeah, can you come and look and see if your business would fit here? For example, a little grocery store in the center, which we'll finally get. So I was just curious, you did talk about having things available for people who are looking to come to Newton. Is this department going to be more proactive in doing more of that kind of what are we looking for in our village centers that we'd like to see back again? You've been here a long time so you know the center had a movie theater, a hardware store, a bookstore, a grocery store. So there are amenities that I think would be nice to see if we could court those.

My other question is my husband used to work over in West Newton and we live in Newton Center. and it was onerous getting, we actually had to get another car so that it didn't take him an hour and a half to get from Newton Center by public transportation because we had little kids and I wanted him home for dinner. There are grants. I work in Acton. You may have received grants for transportation that links up the entire community. So I'm just putting that out there as something maybe to think about. I think it would help our businesses if we had Some kind of access between the village centers, in particular Neum Street, where a lot of kids go. And so then we start talking about climate and car trips. So the single use to drop kids off there and just integrate that. The other question I have, oh, so Lauren is the economic development director. Are you the co-director?

The deputy director.

What's that?

The deputy director.

The deputy director, okay. And then lastly, how does it work? You're going to be staffing EDC. So how do you work out your priorities? So you're in your own office, and then you're also going to be responsible to this group of 15 EDC members. So I'm just curious how that works so that you all are able to figure out your priorities without these two competing interests.

Well, I don't know if Andrew wants to weigh in on this, but I mean, so in the past, the economic development director would show up at the meetings and the committee would really do the work. and I guess it was kind of advisory but we're happy to still do that and we can do I can do two more than one thing at a time so

I think I think it'll work fine there are just two of us and there used to be one of us so I have a couple questions but I want to make sure everybody else um there's There are two issues that are not directly related, but I think important because the council will consider this in the longer run. One is we're adding another person. We're looking at a budget coming up. soon which is going to be challenged by health insurance costs by themselves and then the schools and we're all we're all concerned about and that and so adding someone as able as you is another position. Replacing the director is one thing but to add a position is something I think we have to The other is the impact on the department. I know we have this view all here and I've talked to the mayor.

The economic development department was part of planning and could under emergency conditions fill in for other things. Part of what I'm concerned about is we're going to be down two senior people in the department itself, and we're going to lose the economic development position itself to be filled. It'll be in the mayor's office. and we want to see that role succeed but I am as we are the committee in charge with the oversight of the planning department and all the work that goes on and we just heard about what we have to do for zoning I want to make sure that to the extent we can, we're not going to be even further behind because we lose these functions to the mayor's office. So there's a fiscal as well as a resource question The mayor has assured me that his office will stand in if there's a need.

We talked about cross training and service, but I know that for instance in the historic commissions they're short on staff because they haven't gotten minutes done and things like that and I want to make sure that that while we want to see this role succeed, we're not losing ground in the other places. And so I don't know if there's a comment from the chief of staff to that or the members who are here representing the mayor, but...

May I respond? Sure. Chair Baker, thank you. Obviously, budget is top of mind for everyone 24-7 in this city. Please know that the positions are currently being funded through the end of the fiscal year. And in terms of forward thinking, obviously the budget season is coming up. but to your point in terms of you know this is economic development so the idea is that this is going to be something that over time is going to be adding to the coffers in the city and you know a little bit of you know extra oomph on this end hopefully is going to have some benefits on the other side in terms of revenue for the city in terms of sort of bolstering the planning department We are a very collaborative team.

In terms of the functions of historically the economic development director, they were focused on economic development. Certainly, you know, maybe sometimes they would pick up phones in the planning department.

I don't know.

But I think that we were, you know, The entire team of City Hall, quite frankly, we do sort of jump in and support one another in every endeavor. But in terms of planning expertise from I've known the past three economic development directors. I'm not sure if any of them had a specific role in some of the other functions of the planning department.

just a couple of thoughts or reactions I guess there are many of us here on Zapp and throughout City Council who really want to see this succeed. I'm supportive of this. If this is how Mayor Laredo thinks that this is the best way to kind of I'm all for it. I am looking forward to the day when we can have that conversation around things like and I do see it in here. I heard the words. I think that's great. The streamlining of processes, right? In the city, everything that leads up to a permit and so on and so forth. Not only selfishly because

I'm tired of the City Council getting blamed for all of this. It's not entirely our fault. Some of it, granted, might be from time to time, but not all of it. I'm really looking forward to seeing those details. One other thing that I want to see, I had to read the memo from COO Morris twice before I saw it, but it's in there. Let's go out there and compete like crazy. I'm tired of seeing all these large businesses move into adjacent cities and towns when we've got that kind of space here. So I'd love to see the word compete show up a few more times Not only in our documentation, but perhaps in the conversation tomorrow night. One other, one thing I do want to just clarify here as well. And I'm assuming I know the answer to this, but assuming it's a really bad idea.

We're talking about all commercial here, correct? Not just the small business. I just want to make sure. Yes.

Yes? Yes. 100%. And in fact, if I may, having just served for a congressional district, I was, you know, in that role, I think one of the reasons why I'm going to be supporting our economic development team is that, you know, we were meeting with, you know, the local consulates, if we can think about international you know partnerships we can think about more regional economic development initiatives I mean obviously the Charles River Chamber is a great example of of an entity that's really thinking about about the needs of businesses You know, not based on just municipal borders and identities, but on a larger basis. But absolutely, small businesses are important and So are, you know, Dunkin' Donuts and Subway. I mean, these are other important entities

I think that we all have a lot of sentimental feelings and a lot of pride in our very local businesses and you need a full ecosystem as well. So that's something that we're going to be thinking about, you know, in general. I mean, Trader Joe's, it's not a local business, but oh my gosh, could you imagine if we didn't have two Trader Joe's in Newton now?

Well, I'm actually thinking office space type. Right? Yep. Bingo. And one other thing that I'll, I believe it was Councillor Kalis who said this somewhere towards the end of last term. A lot of this is a marketing problem, right? I mean, we've got to promote this city. We've got to get our ducks in a row. We've got to get the messages out there. It's all found on data. Couldn't agree more. With that said, happy to kind of be able to support this and really looking forward to understanding a little bit more of what's kind of behind what I'm seeing.

And speaking of Councilor Kalis, his hand is raised, his actual hand.

Yeah, I don't know. I think my computer is saying you need to go into these meetings because it's not allowing me to raise my hand digitally. You will be seeing me. But I just wanted to say that I'm very excited about the people that we're bringing on here. You know, Councilor Oliver just went through it. There is so much to do. And I do remember last year seeing Mr. Sisson just out of his mind with so many things to do. The streamlining, the attracting, the retaining, the competing. There's so much there. One idea that I think has been lost since SETI was mayor is this idea of an incubator. and trying to help small businesses because that can really help us attract as well and retain and grow different businesses. So I'd love you to Look into that.

And then to Councillor Gordon's question, a challenge would be, you know, You talked about the EDC being advisory, which they always have been, but there's so much brainpower there. Can they do more? and always how do we push them to do more because the expertise and the brainpower is so vast there that I just think between the both of you and them there's a lot that can be done so I'm excited to see what happens.

I want to recognize Councilor Farrell, not a member of the committee, but welcome.

Thank you, Chair.

I mean, your background light is yellow and the hand was yellow, so I didn't see it.

It's different. I too want to join this perfectly appropriate bandwagon to say thank you to Ms. Berman and Ms. Lapp and we're very excited that you're both here. We think that this certainly is at least doubling the power of the Business Development Office. In terms of manpower, one of the things I would like to suggest to the Mayor and to you through you is that the business development is critical to growing our financial base. and it may be necessary to take a very hard look. I mean, I don't think there's fat in the Newton budget. I've defended this to residents for a couple of years now

But maybe it's necessary to look at which positions may be significantly more important at the moment than current ones. And I certainly don't want to put anybody on a job. The allocation of those resources in order to improve our opportunities, not only to help the local village centers and businesses, but Every couple of weeks, I for one get very, and I think some other members do too, and speaking to Councilor Oliver's point, we get very frustrated to learn, like as we did this past week, that Keurig, Dr. Pepper is moving to 270,000 square feet of space in Burlington. We just gave up 200,000 square feet of space in Northland. that was supposed to be for commercial space.

We also just negotiated with Riverside. Not to encourage them to do more commercial space. These are large developments with lots of room and I'm not suggesting that your predecessors didn't do this work, but it clearly takes a lot of manpower, person power. to get out there and not only find help for the local businesses, but to go out and really knock on some big doors for the corporations that are looking for space and it happens as Councilor Oliver mentioned regularly in our area Watertown and other areas so I'm very heartened that you are here. I'm also, as I said to you, Councilor Lapin the other night, very excited that we're going to look at the economic power of of culture, arts and culture.

I mean, I was so excited the day that we learned that the West Newton Cinema was able to purchase its property back. and what an incentive I think that can be for all of West Newton. I truly mean that. I hope We will continue to look at not only cinema, but other arts forms that might be included in this area. Thank you for allowing me to go on, but grabbing some of these larger Corporate entities that are moving into nearby towns would do an enormous amount for our budget. not only to meet the current needs but also to expand the business programs, I hope. Thank you again for letting me speak. I appreciate it, Chancellor. Chairman, thank you.

Thank you. Mr. Lee, you wanted your hand in front?

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I just wanted to bring everyone back to the ordinance because I didn't want to leave A potential question of what exactly were the changes. So I did the compare and I made sure it's showing up on red lines. Can everyone see this? So this is exactly what Councilor Getz had put her fingers on. This is it. This is the only red line aside from the relocation and the change in the number because it was relocated. So as you can see, everyone has every, Redline change, I believe, has been discussed. But I just wanted to make sure that I could show the committee what these exact changes are in the format that they were asking for.

So the net of the changes that The director can staff the Economic Development Commission or the designee, which I assume would be the deputy, correct?

It would be the deputy, and that's exactly the reason for it, because before there was one, now there's two.

Okay, thank you for doing that clarification. It's good to know that. I have a comment that I want to yield back to my colleagues.

So two things related to the budget issue. I'm always I grew up with the idea, sometimes you have to spend money to make money, and I think that's what we're doing here. We're putting forth a little bit more budget, but the rewards could be tremendous in terms of our tax base. So that was one thing to support that issue. And the other one relates to what Councilor Farrell spoke about with the big companies going somewhere else. I don't think Newton has the best reputation for being an easy place for businesses to operate and I remember a recent small example of a business that was just trying to change their sign and it took them six months to get their sign changed so I mean and we made this offer to Mr. Sisson if you know if it's just procedures in Newton that can be changed.

That's one thing. But if there's an ordinance change that needs to happen, please come back to us and we will help you move it through. Oh, we will. Okay, good.

Albright, Councilor Oliver, and Councilor Farrell's comments. It's just to say that enabling the kind of real estate that might be necessary to attract the kind of businesses that Councilor Oliver might have been talking about is the kind of thing that can happen through planning and zoning. And so it just serves to highlight the importance of maintaining that connection and the open dialogue between the two.

So anybody else? So I want to just add a couple of things, if I can, and try and share to go last in the conversation. The question about streamlining processes that you mentioned as part of the We had had a conversation in the committee before the term ended about this and with the EDC, and they were doing some homework on these questions. There is a reference, I understand, in the plan to a review of the whole zoning ordinance, which I think is beyond the scope of anybody's capacity. But if there's specific adjustments to the ordinance, I think their committee was willing to certainly entertain those and be clear about. I do think, though, that part of the process that we're trying to work here is that the city is really a village-oriented community. This is not like downtown Boston.

And the villages are an ecosystem of not only businesses, but residences and how they all work together. Businesses bring traffic. Business activity brings more activity, which is traffic, parking, and all those questions we're trying to solve. We had relieved businesses of some of their parking requirements as part of the last round of ordinance amendments but I think it's important that as part of this work that be sensitive to the fact that the value of these businesses primarily we hope is going to be to serve the communities that surround them and that we want to make sure that they serve them well and it would be I think unfortunate to have one part of the city saying go team and another part of the city saying no and we need to have that conversation I think in advance rather than after the fact so I hope in the process of doing that work you'll be sensitive to the impacts of what is of success not just the impacts of

of difficulty, which is part of what we've been hearing about. So we wish you success, but we also want you to be within the framework that makes the city as successful as possible. That's, you know, a big principle that doesn't have an application yet, but I think it's important to keep in mind that we are talking about a balance in the community, not just one particular activity to the exclusion of others. So that's my Any other comments? And so the narrow item before us is to move the amendment. President Oliver, do you have a comment? I thought you were going to ask a motion. Is there a motion to? to entertain the change recommended by the administration. All those in favor will say aye. Aye. Abstention? I think that's a zip.

Kalis, we're always glad to have you virtually otherwise.

Thank you.

Anyway, I think that concludes our business for the evening unless anyone has any questions or other comments. I want to say we're grateful to the administration for bringing to us this proposal and these able colleagues to me, or they're already aboard, but in a sense, part of the City Community. And again, we're sorry to see you go, Mr. Bunnell. I mean, we have one more chance at you. so to speak, but it won't seem the same. So anyway, we'll talk more about that next. All right, Ed. Okay, thank you all. Thank you. Thank you.

Motion to adjourn. Thank you to adjourn. Yeah, there you go.