Zoning & Planning Committee - July 20, 2026

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Recording in Progress

Okay, welcome everyone. This is a meeting of the zoning and planning committee. It's July 20th

This meeting is both audio and video recorded, and we're joined at the beginning of the meeting by several members of the committee. We are joined by the Vice Chair, Councilor Here's my left . Councilor Oliver from Ward 1, Councilor Dahmubed is from Ward 4. Councilor Getz from Ward 5. Online by Councilor Gordon from Ward 6. Also, we're joined by I believe the Councilor Albright is joining virtually from Ward 2 We've also joined by Councilor Kelley, not a member of the committee but chair of land use and always welcome. And I think that's the councilors. Have I missed any councillors? Gordon. I got her now.

and we've also been joined by Peter Bowman, representative of Eversource. So the, we've got several items that I'll explain them as we go through them but the first order of business is to have a discussion on item 6526 requesting discussions. We're not, we're not

Personally, in fact.

No apologies. Councilor Block and Councilor Farrell are here in the room and they are not members of the committee. So you're still looking at the screen. Thank you for the correction. The first item of business is Item 6526, Requesting Discussion and Amendment of Section 1.53 of Chapter 30 Zoning. It's honored the Mayor requesting discussion in possible amendments to section 1.5 We've been joined by, as I indicated, Peter Bowman, I believe from Eversource. and we have a memo from the planning department. And in order to provide some context, in addition to the memo I asked the clerk to just attach our prior discussion which also had some photographs of transformers that provided by Councilor Gordon.

So we'd have a little more background about what this item involves, but who's going to present this at this stage for the department? And then we'll release Mr. Bowman.

We have Chief Planner for Current Planning, Cat Temet.

Ms. Temet, how nice to see you. Please come up to the table where you can be seen and heard. I'm going to suggest you sit where the camera can pick you up and just ask you to please speak up because we've had some questions about audibility of people in the room.

I will do my best and let me know if I'm not speaking loudly enough. I'm just going to pull up my presentation. Just give me one moment.

Again, just identify yourself for the public in the record.

Sure. Here we go. Here we go, great. Thank you everyone my name is Kat Kemet and I'm chief planner for current planning this is a discussion of transformers in setbacks the docket item is 65-26 which is a discussion of electrical transformers and setbacks. To overview a bit what I'll cover, I'm gonna talk about the background We thought that this was something that was worth some discussion and potential amendment. The function of transformers, how they're placed on a site and what goes into those decisions, how zoning comes into the

assessment of the citing of transformers and a few examples that we have seen on current planning. By the way, we have a little bit of backgrounds. In 2019, the city adopted several exemptions that helped address some of the changes related to sustainability that the city was moving in moving towards, including allowing heat pumps in setbacks, insulation. and its impact on FAR, and allowing small vestibules. But there were no changes pertaining to transformers that were included at that time. The city has adopted policies to further our sustainability goals and encourage electrification and the stretch code to make buildings more energy efficient. We're seeing more need and demand for transformers in residential and commercial projects.

This has led to an increase in the need for zoning relief for Transformers, where they need to be located sometimes within a setback. I am not an expert, but just a really brief overview for those who might not be familiar with transformers. Electrical transformers are devices that change the voltage of electricity so they allow high voltage energy coming in from the grid to be conveyed to homes and businesses at a smaller voltage that's suitable for everyday appliances and things like that. Depending on the site and how much electricity is needed on the side, it could be pole mounted, pad mounted or installed underground. I most commonly see them being pad mounted in my work. In my observation, there's no hard and fast rule but it seems at this point most single family homes generally do not need a transformer although some do have them. And they are...

But they're more common in mid to large projects that are over a few units in size. Transformers vary in size, but they're usually at least a few feet wide by a few So they have a footprint sometimes from 15 to 20 square feet, though it varies quite a bit. But just to give you a sense of the size that we sometimes see on the current planning side of things, they sometimes also require other infrastructure, depending on the site like protective bollards if it's a highly trafficked site or somewhere near where cars are driving. For placement, there are a lot of non-zoning things that come into play before we even talk about the zoning aspect of things. Transformers need to be easily accessible for maintenance and repair. And anecdotally it seems like Eversource and other providers like them to be close to the front of a building where trucks and personnel can easily access them.

Things like the topography of the site, if there's ledge, existing wiring and infrastructure and stormwater systems also influence where transformers can be placed. For the zoning, transformers are considered structures and they must meet the same setback requirements that apply to principal buildings. So that has pretty important implications for how and where they can be placed when it pertains to zoning. We always on the current planning team, we underscore the importance of clarifying early and often where transformers will be placed on the site because we don't have a lot of flexibility because they need to meet the principal setbacks. So we bring it up as early as we can in the process so that no one is ever surprised when we request the location of transformers, however final transformer locations

sometimes involved due to unforeseen field conditions, things like the topography, things that infrastructure that might be underground. I think folks do the best they can to give us a full and so on. Transformers do need to be moved and it does introduce issues. There can be delays that are caused by that. Projects may need additional special permit relief, they may need a variance. It adds some uncertainty and time to the process that we see very often in the current planning side of things. For setbacks that can vary by district for very similar building types, which adds to some of the complications here.

For example, the front setback is 25 feet for pre-1953 lots in B single residence districts but it can be as small as zero feet in the MU4 district and in the VC2 and VC3 districts. A single family attached dwelling in MR1 requires 25 foot setback on all sides but that can be waived or reduced with additional special permit relief from city council. Small sites and sites in denser areas are often strongly impacted by this requirement to not be in the setbacks and often have limited options to comply with what is required by right. In multi-residence districts, single family attached developments can get relief No special permit option is available for other projects like commercial or single family detached projects as they would require.

Even it's a matter of a few inches into the setback, we don't have the leeway to approve Those encroachments administratively. Projects that pursue a comprehensive permit can waive setback requirements through the 40B process There's also a pathway for the public service providers to petition the city for an exemption where a special permit is not allowed. Though in my experience, I have not seen anyone pursue that option but it is possible and where there is no special permit allowed, folks can seek relief through a variance. Previously variances were pretty challenging to get. There's a pretty high threshold for approval of variances There actually was sort of late breaking news, a change to 40A that changes the standard of review for variances. So this is actually likely to be an easier pathway to approval for being in the setback. Ben was previously allowed.

So that's something that we're keeping an eye on as these issues with setback, with transformers and setbacks come up. Previously variances were pretty challenging but now it might not be quite as challenging as I was before. Just a couple of quick examples that I'm happy to get into more at the will of the committee. This is 15 Lexington Street, it's a 24 unit multifamily in the MR3 district and the plans approved for a special permit, the transformer was in a compliant location. It's just a hair outside of the setback but it was outside the setbacks so there was no zoning issue. In the process of building electricity provider required the transformer to be moved. So it was slightly moved and it's currently 0.6 feet within the setback, whereas before it was just outside. So even though that's a pretty small change

It may require a variance to allow that encroachment because there's no pathway for us to administratively determine that this is a pretty small encouragement. Okay, we can't do that. It needs some relief. This is another example on Walnut Street, 1149-1151 Walnut street. It's a 25 unit mixed use project in the MU4 district It's a pretty similar size to the previous project and of fairly similar use, but because it's in the MU4 zone where there is no required front setback. The front set back requires zero feet Because of that, it doesn't need any relief even though the transformer is quite close to the street. So though it didn't need any relief, in most other districts, it would likely need a variance. And this is an example where even though from a policy perspective, it might make sense to have something more than zero feet of setback be required

because the same setback that applies to the building, which is zero feet, applies to transformer. There's nothing required so it can be right up to the line. And lastly, we have 790 Watertown Street which is in the MR1 zone. It's a three-unit single family attached residential project and this district for this use of 25 foot setback is required on all sides but because it's a single family attached project, they are able to reduce the setback down to five feet specifically because of this use. So if it were a single-family home multifamily, they could not get this relief. They can only get it because in single family attached. So a couple of questions posed to the committee is

Should transformers be treated differently from structures simply just for the purposes of setbacks similar to heat pumps which would help potentially facilitate some of our sustainability goals, make it a little bit easier to add transformers as there is an increased speed for them. What level of encroachment into the setback is appropriate? Should there be screening requirements incorporated if we do go down that path and how we should balance electrification goals The requirements of the utility companies, the impact to the neighborhood and having a predictable and fair zoning administration. That is all I have but I welcome your questions.

and you've been gracious to come. And I believe you're here at the invitation of the city, and I would like to offer you an opportunity to comment a little bit having heard the presentation about The utility perspective on this problem, if you feel comfortable doing it.

Yes, thank you Mr. Chairman. Peter Bowman from Eversource and I'm also joined by Jason Kaminski our lead engineer for Eversources Rick Chiffon, who does all our rights and survey and also works for Oversource and responsible for the City of Newton. I think that was a comprehensive presentation on the fundamentally transformers now being viewed as buildings and then creating some of this Tension, if you will, around transformers being in the setbacks. When a customer comes to us with either a new building or some of these examples that were just raised We go through a process where they issue a work request to us. We then assess load and then we figure out what needs to be deployed, can it be deployed on a A pole mounted transformer.

Do you, in fact, need a transformer that's sitting on the customer's property? Jason Kaminsky was on the line with us could give more detail around that. I mean, I think the issues that we have experienced a little bit is maybe that transformer wasn't identified on the plans early enough and then when it came time to constructed, there were issues. So either on a site plan or when you get a building permit and the resident or business owner is getting a building You know, you want it to be clearly marked there. I mean we have been dealing with Councilor Albright on some other electrification issues so we get that the City of Newton is working hard you know promote their electrification goals so we do want to you know work cooperatively with the city of Newton but you know we have to place the transformer where it'll functionally work

but then also clearly work within your zoning regulations. Jason Kaminski you know just take a minute or two and then we can uh you know take Rick, Jason and myself here to answer any questions Mr. Chairman if that's okay with you I think that would be helpful and I would just ask both of you to speak as loudly as you can we're just trying to make sure that you're heard Thank you, sir. We will. Go ahead, Jason.

And by the way, excuse me, just to introduce, we've had to join by a few other members of the Council, the Vice President, the Member of the Preventive Council of Canada, and

We've got about three of us here. Malakie, Lucas and Roche. Sounds like a new team.

Anyways, all right. Or folk trio. Albright, you raised your hand. I just said before I was going to hear more from Eversource would you want to wait a minute?

I'm happy to wait.

Okay and could you unmute Jason Kaminsky please?

Thank you. Can everybody hear me?

Yes.

Sorry, technical difficulties I apologize. Yeah, so that presentation pretty much sums up the process accurately. A few discrepancies here and there but ultimately applicants to Eversource for Power, either renovating or building brand new submit their load letters and typically a site plan. and ultimately Eversource's role is to determine what equipment is necessary to supply the customer and the customer ultimately makes the decision in most cases as to where our equipment can fit on their property given the restrictions that we as Eversource have on limiting How the proximity of a transformer to a building, how accessible it is.

Somebody mentioned obviously we want to keep all of our equipment as close to the public way as possible for accessibility purposes and also to limit unnecessary infrastructure on private property. So The setback issue has come up more recently, and I would say that there are affluent areas of Newton where it's becoming more and more frequent that each home May or may not require a transformer given the increase in DER or solar and battery systems that are installed throughout. And We simply want to make sure that when the customer submits plans to the town, they include all of the information available and and understand that it's not necessarily Eversource requesting a location of equipment. We're simply giving the customer So I believe in example number one, right?

The transformer was okay where it was but it had to be moved. It had to move because of its location and proximity to the building and a safety Thank you for joining us. The request wasn't necessarily that Eversource wanted to put it in the setback. It was simply that where it was couldn't meet the safety need and so it had to be relocated. So I think we want to be collaborative. I think We want to work with the town and developers to help them understand our and then make sure they understand your requirements, whether that's setback rules or an alleviation of setback for transformation on private property.

Before I go to Councilor Albright, let me just ask one clarifying question. So my understanding is that there are certain technical matters that decide how close a transformer can be to a building for example, for safety reasons or maybe to another structure. Is that correct?

Yes, so we follow OSHA rules in regards to how close a transformer can be to a building How close it can be To a window And how close it could be to the doorway Whether that's an active walkway or an emergency exit Inactive Walkway.

So I guess the question is, are those standards available to us because it would be useful for people in our city departments to know those clearly so that can be informed in advance and they'll ultimately come to you. But I guess the question is, can we make sure that those standards are available to us as well as to you?

Yes, those are publicly available in something we call a blue book. It's available in physical form or on the internet and it includes access to all types of different pad mount equipment so pad mount transformers have clearance around the sides and then an elongated clearance in front of the doors for safety, for utility workers to access. And somebody like earlier they mentioned the bollards that may be placed within that 10 foot window and then for switches, switches have access from two different sides so it's 10 foot clearance on two different sites. But yes all of that is publicly available and we can make sure that Peter gets that to the right folks.

Thank you. Let me go to Councilor Allwright who had her hand up first and then go to Councillor Wright.

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair. So we didn't have the electrification ordinance when we did those first changes The setbacks for sustainability issues. So it's appropriate that we're dealing with this now, but I just had a few clarifying questions of my own as well Are these things more expensive or more difficult if they're underground than if they are pad mounted?

So I heard reference to overhead transformation, pad-mounted transformation and underground transformation. And it should be clear that while our network in downtown Boston has a significant amount of underground equipment in manholes, In Newton, we are restricted to overhead transformers and pad-mounted transformers. There are very few exclusions to that rule in cases where we've had issues with developers essentially Move the goalposts on where they propose transformation and ultimately built around the location that was supposed to be clear and accessible. But I can count on my hand in my 12 years the number of times we've allowed for transformation in a manhole on private property.

Okay, that's helpful. And how frequently and under what conditions do they need attention and maintenance?

So pad-mounted transformers are installed similarly to the overhead. We have a program for monitoring the system. There's no proactive... annual, biannual yearly inspection of pad mounted equipment. But pad mounts are installed in easements and the agreement with The property owners for those easements is that they are maintained in such a fashion that the Transformers should be... Thank you for watching! A pad mounted transformer is a very robust design and is built to weather the elements for a long period of time without needing any kind of regular maintenance.

OK, but that seems to be one of the issues that the planning department brought up is that they need to be accessible for maintenance. So that's why I was asking the question

Okay, I apologize. So yeah, so maintenance is a pretty broad term. Maintenance can mean a lot of different things. We have customers who want to proactively do work on their property where their secondary wires, the wires that run from the building to the transformer are owned and maintained by the customer. And so maintenance means accessing the doors to the transformer, opening them up, de-energizing the transformer for the purposes of allowing the customer to do work on their side. and some customers do that annually, some do it biannually, some don't do it at all. So it kind of varies situation by situation.

Okay, just two other quick ones. So the one on Walnut Street seems to be the most egregious I think For most people, it's right in front of the building and on a streetscape. Does it have to be in front? Can it be on the side or back of the

So we typically want the Transformers to be accessible and we provide our are best guests to developers. Unfortunately, it's a growing trend to build right up to the property line and You know, typically pad mount transformers were put in green spaces that used to be adjacent to parking lots. And in some cases, that's still the case and we're able to do that. And In other cases since they're building up to the lot line from whatever permissions they have They limit the ability to locate a pad-mount transformer and ultimately have no incentive to decrease the building's footprint to make space for it. We work with developers to make sure they understand the requirements for safety and access. It can be placed in the back of a property if it had to as long as

the cable path from wherever it's being fed from whether that's a pole or a manhole out in the street is accessible and not covered so they're not allowed to build on top of the cable that runs from the pole to the transformer. It's got to be a clear path and the conduit that runs from the pole to the transformer that the wire runs through has to be encased in concrete and has to inspected.

Okay, thank you. And the last question is so that one on Walnut Street is obviously a big building but then there's the multi-residence buildings with maybe just three units and I think One of you from Eversource said maybe even single family residences might need one. So how frequently, with our new electrification ordinance that everything is going to be electrified that's built now. How frequently will we need transformers? with a new construction project I'm talking about. Yeah, so the leading factor is

For transformation and the increase in the number of transformers you may see on the street, pole mounted or pad mounted is mostly driven by... Not necessarily electrical demand, more so solar and battery systems where customers are pursuing exporting power. So essentially for those that may not know, if you have a solar system on your roof and you have battery in your basement you may produce more electricity than you use. Like any smart entrepreneur, you want to export your excess and if nobody is in your home, you're completely exporting the size of your system. and those exports wind up on systems where other homes are located. And we have a cap on the number, the amount of electricity that's allowed to be backfed onto each transformer.

And so if you have a neighborhood where you have five homes in a row that 15 years ago may have all been on one transformer, and there's a poll in front of each home, you may run into a scenario where each poll winds up with a dedicated transformer to each home because each home is trying to export in excess of what we allow on the shared secondary that used to exist from the one transformer. So, that's a worst case scenario. We do see it growing for the most part Single Phase Transformation is still a vast majority of it's pole mounted. The pad mounts are more frequent on bigger homes that usually have more property and more space to allocate a transformer, but for these big residential buildings

they typically require three-phase service so not the normal 120 240 single phase that you may have on a single home due to the size of their air conditioners or whatever equipment they may have on the property. They may want three phase and three-phase transformers are by rule installed on private property and not in the public way. So there may be an increase in the number of devices average per person. I could work with Peter on getting you like general averages, I wouldn't have any of that handy but we can get that information to you

Thank you. So just in summary, it feels to me like we're going to have to do something to our zoning to make it work but I think we need to really understand I mean, you helped a lot from my understanding. But I'm sure there's more technical issues that we're going to have to deal with. So we have to figure it all out and I'm-I'm sure we'll be able to but so thank you very much for all of that.

Yep no problem. Thank you. Before I go to Councilor Wright, just to clarify, you mentioned a clear conduit or a cap on the number of transformers. Are those part of the blue book that you mentioned? Or are they separate kind of standards? So we're aware of all the manuals.

The Blue Book has language to instruct a developer or electrical contractor on the general rules for new service depending upon whatever criteria they're evaluating. New Service to be for a home or commercial property. Once you get in excess of four units, your demand puts you in a different category where you may be You may have additional questions and those type of projects typically work their way into discussions with engineers who report to me. to evaluate. So there are some hard and fast rules, there are standards about clearances and access and general information about service and some, but most of the nuance on locating of equipment is dealt with during conversations with engineering. Thank you. Councilor Wright?

Thank you so Eversource, at least what I hear is getting a bad rap saying the Transformers are going into setback because Eversources told us we have to do it. But it sounds like with The Blue Book there's specs out there and people aren't designing their building to accommodate the transformer within, with its specs. Is that true? Is that where the problem is or does it, the size of the Transformer or the power of the transformer changes so much during the design and the building? I would think they would have a good idea of what their power requirements would be and so what transformer it would be. And then there's the blue book that tells them they have to be this far from a window and doors and that, That all could be part of the design process. So there shouldn't be any surprises later on where you guys say, well, you know, you're too close to the building, you now move it.

Yeah, I don't know enough about Newton's requirements from the building inspector when customers submit plans and electrical plans and what gets reviewed. So I'm not pointing any fingers but I would say that The processes of our company and the process of a customer working with the city are different, and there's an opportunity to work together to make sure that it's understood what our requirements are. And perhaps in earlier Thank you. if that makes sense.

Yeah, so it sounds like to me for a new project starting with Lee's slate they shouldn't have to put the transformer in the setback but if it's an existing house and they're putting up solar and you know selling it back then they're kind of stuck there and they may have to Thank you for joining us. I see in planning and having those rules or the blue book there so that these designers and architects, which they should know all this stuff too, that they have it from the get-go. Wouldn't you say that's correct?

Well, I think there's two things going on. One is knowing the rules, and this is Peter Bowman again, it's to make sure that developers know the rules where you have total coordination up front with a developer does with the city of Newton you know when the plans come to Eversource we see that the Transformer is located on, you know, on the land but as Jason had said earlier you know the max or may have been in the earlier presentation the maximization of the length of the lot where a building is taking up so much of the that I think sometimes that's why Transformers are going into the setbacks. And it's really that the Transformer has now been viewed as a building and we're not here to determine whether that's right or wrong, but that's what Newton has done is determined a transformer as a building. In most communities, the transformer

is not, to my knowledge looked at as a building but it's looked out as a piece of equipment and I think Jason keep me honest or Rick that in Boston for example transformers can sit in the setback so I think it's a combination of factors. The one that clearly can be fixed is early coordination, making sure that they're on the plans. As Jason said, the engineers that are co-located with Rick and myself and Jason in our Waltham Works Center go out meet in the field with developers to see all of that. But sometimes there is this pressure around maximizing a lot and therefore the transformer ends up in the setback because you need to have all those safety clearances and things like that.

Yeah, but that's on the designer and the developer. Correct. One other question are these transformers what kind of noise is that giving off? Any noise some noise

I am not the expert, and so I would defer to getting you that information through Peter so that you had actual values.

Is it like

It should be a low white noise, if at all recognizable. It should not be Any kind of general hum, and those type of general hams are usually an indication of something that may require taking a look at. But by and large, Transformers are... are significantly quieter than, you know, being next to a substation. So if you're like equating the hum of a substration to a transformer, they're not it's not close. But again, I'm not an expert. And so decibel wise we can get you the number no problem.

Okay, thank you. So, Councilor Kelley and Chair Glanews had a question?

Thank you. Can you hear me?

I can hear that.

You can hear me. A little louder. Can you hear me better now? No. Just yell. Okay, I'll try and speak loudly! This is another really great example of the coordination between ZAP and land use because we have had several recent special permits before us that are now relying on the location of the transformers and understanding how that fits into Newton's zoning ordinance doesn't What if it has to be located in the front setback? How far does Eversource need it to be from the main road? We will very much appreciate when we coordinate or when you guys figure out how to word this Sorry, I am shouting. I hope you can hear me. It feels weird to yell.

but I can think of two recent ones and it has come up where the final decision has said oh well you know Eversource really wants them right up by the street and they won't want it further back on the site. So we at Land Use would love some clarity and clarification around this. Jason, I have appreciated everything you've said. It's so weird to hear you speak without seeing your picture.

I do apologize. It's summertime in New England and so... You're in your bathing suit, I get it. No, I'm adjacent to a ball game. But I'd be happy to come in and have a further discussion. It's in no means on purpose to not be on screen. This is not an isolated... The setback issue is unique to Newton, but the discrepancy between what a developer produces for municipalities and what they come to the utility with... goes across my 11 towns. So it is not new for developers to squeeze every bit out of the property they own and don't want to give up the parking space for a pad mount transformer and beg, borrow and steal to try to get as big as they can given what they're limited with. And so we try to work with them but it is in no means our

intent to dictate to the customer hard and fast rules on, you know, we want you to put the transformer in an inconvenient spot or where we want them to put it on their property. It's completely under their control. We simply work with them at a point at which in your process they've already essentially been given a pretty firm approval of the building footprint. and so there's oftentimes an issue with you know consolidating what we inform them of which they should know and what you know, what they want. So again, coordination is key. We wanna make sure that we work with the town and any information we can provide up front.

Thank you. Planning and ISD and ZAP and land use do need to be better coordinated on this. We have two special permits right now kind of hanging on the location of the transformers. I would say neither of them are quote unquote affluent property owners. Neither of them have tried to export any Energy, Power elsewhere. It's all about where they're located how close can it be does it need to be screened is there a fire hazard? Is that close to the street at land use these are the issues that we're dealing with so I just want to Thank you very much. I think Councilor Dahmubed had something to add?

I completely agree with Councilor Wright.

I think this is a developer issue. I understand they want to build the maximum, but you know what? There are rules and they have to plan ahead and get all that information and work within them. The only question to me is, do we redefine what a structure is? And then that changes everything. But at this point I don't think we redefined what the structure is. We leave it as it is. We might add some fenestration. I think that would be a good idea, but it feels like this is being pushed on the city council because of developers to figure out where these go or where they could go. And to me, that's on them.

Well, I just want to dovetail on what both Chair Kelley as well as Councilors Wright and Kalis have just spoken to. what the requirements of the blue book is because I want public safety to be I also am really concerned about when we fit this into the planning phase, I just sort of feel as if you talked a little bit about not allowing them to You want them as proximal to the public way, but then they're not allowed in it to be undergrounded in the city of Newt which had just seemed bizarre to me because I thought that we were considering something like this in PF. So I just don't understand What all the rules are, you know in terms of localizing these transformers. So I think that's number one for me is safety as well as where they can be located and then also too

You know, the pole-mounted versus the underground ones, the sizing. I don't think, you know, in terms of public safety, the one that's like with the bollards on the street seemed perfect, you nails that transformer box, you know, just whipping around that corner. That's going to be a real problem. So I think I need to understand what the Blue Book says I think we need to in PF discuss this, you know, in terms of just transformers generally. You know, just so that we understand the differences between a pole mounted versus the ones that are required to be in those larger boxes. And then the whole system, it sort of seems as if you were talking a little bit about The utility requiring an easement in order to access on private property so that then you could go through the process of De-energizing them.

So it just sort of seemed like got really complicated pretty quickly and I think we need to understand all those nuances.

You have one, oh go ahead Jason.

If I might jump in, Newton's pretty built out but there is still some residential development going on and you have multiple lots being fed by one transformer. In those cases we always put the transformer The property line to feed both properties. If we hold on to this has to be within the setback, you'll end up having to put two transformers in which normally could be served by one transformer for both properties. And that's where we usually get a cross easement between the two customers to be able to both be fed off of one transformer and cut down the amount of transformers in the town. So Newton's a little bit of an outlier with calling them a structure and then bringing the whole zoning and setback in, which is fine. That's a town's call, a city's call. It can cause problems that you don't want to close the door on the ability for a builder to have a variance to get around being able to set it in a setback.

Like everything else, having a hard rule creates problems down the road. We're done with that.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Yeah, it's Mr. Schiaffone. It sounds like you actually started to answer one of my questions which was if we have a transformer on one property and then there's a project that gets built next door, and then that product also needs a transformer. Is there a reason that we couldn't utilize because I know when we have a poll, we can put, I think three Transformers on that. usually three or four I don't know if anyone from BF remembers but um I think it's three right so I guess I'm trying to did is what you're saying then that If these are allowed within the setback, that then they can go kind of on the property line and therefore be utilized by multiple properties and thereby reduce the number of overall transformers.

Correct, but that would have to be done up front. If somebody has a pad mounted transformer on their property We can't just go and dig up to it to serve their neighbor 50 feet away and cut through the yard. That's why setting it on the property line and getting an easement upfront Thank you for watching. Now, if it's up against the public way, it makes it a heck of a lot easier for us to serve the other property coming back out in the public away and then serving the next one neighbor from that pad. But if it is in their backyard You're pretty much locked out without an additional easement to serve the neighbor.

Okay, I think that's important for all of us. I had not understood that until just now. So that's very helpful. It seems to me like we have kind of two side-by-side issues here. One is that we want to... ensure that somehow in the site plan review process or earlier in the planning process as part of developers and architects and builders are going through they need to say this is where the transform is going to go does that seem kosher to you know, with this process and how we want where we want them in the city. And then secondarily it seems like there is a need that's a little bit separate from Ms. Kemen's presentation that says, okay well sometimes because of construction processes and those kinds of things we do need a tolerance That seems like a slightly separate issue from the planned placement of transformers.

So I'm not sure how we kind of disentangle these, but it does seem like we need to understand more to your point, Councilor Getz.

So in the interest of time and and the generosity of our guests on the line. Councilor Albright, you have another question?

Well, I was going to ask if that... Hang on a second.

I got people in the room that have questions. I just wanted to make sure. Sorry. Okay.

Thank you, Chair. I think I found the BB 2008 blue book. I'm assuming it's what BB is for and it says that it was last revised in 2009 and I'm just curious, are these revised? I don't know. In anything under 20 year increments? And I'm not trying to be snarky when I say that. I'm jut curious like if we go ahead and we start to rethink some aspect of our zoning code based on a document that was written in 2009. Is there a version that's coming out in 2020, Matt? for example.

Yeah, so that's something I can work with Peter and the standards folks on to make sure they have the latest and greatest. I do know that the existing has what some may call a stale date but essentially a lot of The basic rules have not changed. There are some considerations to be made for newer types of installations but by and large the What you found I believe to be is what is publicly accessible to electrical contractors and developers.

Even though there are Updates past 2009, did I hear that right?

So I would say like the... the increase in the number of like DER systems so the PV, the battery and solar those won't be found in there that kind of allude to the rules on how much is allowed to be exported on shared secondary, but The Blue Book's not intended to be super technical, so what you found is I believe to be again what's publicly accessible. I'll work with Peter to make sure that We determine whether or not anything's coming out in the near term and get you the latest and greatest.

Roy, who else is there? Councilor Roy. Let me recognize you and then go to council.

Okay. So this is good because as a member of land use and talking about the Walnut Street It seemed like the imposition of rules came late in the game and seemed like it was arbitrary or ad hoc. And what we're learning, and I want to make sure that we're all clear on is these rules are available ahead of time and should not be a surprise. I know I'm repeating what we said but it's an important It's an important lesson we've learned in relatively short weeks. So a few questions. Is Eversource more stringently enforcing those guidelines now than they have been even the recent past? because as I drive around, I see Transformers that don't appear to be compliant with what I understand now the rules to me.

Did you hear the question?

So no, I've been supporting distribution engineering for this area over 10 years. And we have by and large stayed consistent with instructions that we give developers whether or not what gets written on paper winds up how it's built in the field sometimes there are adjustments but our standards have not changed and so there hasn't been any kind of you know, restriction back to a baseline. It should have been that way.

Okay and then my next question is Is Eversource willing and does Eversources provide guidance in the design stage? Because it does sound, in this conversation like you're proposing that once the developer has a plan, you're ready. You'll review it but is there something more like can we recommend or insist

Yeah, we always welcome customers to supply applications when they have load letters and site plans that indicate what they're building, where they're Thank you for joining us. engage with the customer sooner so long as they have the necessary documentation to do so, which is typically something from an electrical contractor that indicates

Projected Demand, a one-line diagram of what they intend on installing and a site plan that reflects how they intend to be supplied by the utility. and in earnest, you know the delay on a customer side when an application is submitted to generate a work order in our system often you know wait for that accurate information because they're quick to have a land layout without necessarily a utility plan.

Yeah so it sounds like they could be pretty early in the process okay and then um There's mention of screening as a requirement in our zoning, but the Blue Book also has rules governing screening and what and what kind of screening is allowed, and the distance between the transformer or the pad in the screening. Is that correct? both you know greens like trees and bushes, and fencing right?

Yeah.

Okay um and then is decoration allowed on the boxes themselves

Typically no. Obviously there are locations where... People want to decorate or people don't want to see the green box and we can work with the municipality to determine what suitable course of action can take place for those transformers that might be adjacent to parks and things like that but by and large Transformers are not allowed to be painted for a multitude of reasons.

That typically seems to be doing a lot of heavy lifting maybe we can follow up on that thank you very much

Albright, and then I want to make a comment and see if we can bring the discussion as well.

So we're fortunate that we have several examples of projects right before us right now where there are issues with the transformer and its location. I was wondering if the planning department could do some work, I don't know with the developers or not but certainly with Eversource to see what options there might have been or there might still be to put Transformers in different places and not in the setback. So I'm just saying that we have some good examples of projects, and it would be great to learn from them about what could be different without a change in the setbacks or with a change and the set backs. Would that be possible, Ms. Gamet?

I think for the Land Use Committee down here

Well, not for the land use committee but I mean for us so that we can learn from these things about whether if the project had been designed differently it wouldn't need to have the setback involved. Or is the project in such, like for instance, the one on Walnut Street where it doesn't seem like there's any other place to put that. I just think we have a lot to learn from those examples that are before the council right now.

I would agree with that.

This is Peter, if there any projects in play Jason's team most likely is aware of them already, but if not we can look at them. If there's anything that's right live at the moment so to speak and there's some heartache Please get them over to me and Jason. We can make sure that Jason's team takes another look at them, and Rick Chiffon manages all the easements for us. If there's something that's really right at the moment, we'll get those to us and we can take an extra look at it.

I mean, including the one on Walnut Street to say well perhaps The Transformer could have been here instead of there. That would be very useful.

So what I'm hearing is that there's an opportunity for early conversation with Eversource between the particular proponent of a project, rather than coming in at the end of the process and saying this is where Eversources tells us what has to go. And I guess what I'm wondering is the department for either inspectional services or planning, or both might have kind of an early conversation with Eversource about any project that looks like it's going to require extra and Transformer Capability. And that's independent of our requirements, but I don't know if the department has . Is that your area? Where would that conversation occur now?

I think we do the best we can in alerting projects that we see are multifamily to consider where their mechanicals, transformers, heat pumps, anything, where those are going to go. I don't know that we have the specific knowledge of sort of electrical loads and capacity to like formally kind of, I flag them all the time. And these would also apply to buy right projects so I think it could be a discussion between planning and inspectional services as well.

I guess there's an early review that someone comes in and says, I think I want to build something and has a conversational plan, right?

Pre-zoning really. Pre- zoning.

And I guess the question is can that early conversation involve every sort in a way much more actively than waiting until the project is cooked along and then you come in and say, well here's what our options are. And they're very limited. That's when I guess I'm hearing Yes.

Yeah, if I can add... Please just identify yourself. Oh sorry, I'm Amanda Wolfe. I'm a senior planner with Long Range. So one of the things that can happen is especially if they're looking for discretionary approval. So in other words, the developer's not even sure the project will be allowed They might not even enlist an electrical engineer to even develop that plan at that phase. because that's an added cost for a project that might not get approved. So the developer might not be willing to or ready to have that conversation about it Not always, but especially with a more discretionary project. Electrical is not always a factor at the beginning.

Again, I would totally echo that we see that a lot. especially for special permits, there is some risk involved in pursuing that process. So that factors into it. I can't emphasize enough how often I bring up transformers Early in the process, often like I think I annoy people with how often I bring it up because it is so often a problem. And I think folks don't fully understand how they are treated. They are treated when it comes to setbacks the same as buildings and that is fairly rare in my experience. So I'm not, you know from a policy perspective that is what it is but we do bring it up a lot. We do not bring Eversource into those conversations, maybe there's a way in which that can be brought in a bit but I do worry that could add Unnecessary time to the process.

Maybe there's another way that doesn't involve bringing us being an interloper or like having conversations with the developer and Eversource where I as a planner am not necessarily empowered with the knowledge of what the voltage is. I think we could have more conversations about it, but those are things that come to mind for me.

And I think This is a much longer conversation, to be honest. But my understanding is that we do have as part of our ordinance something that basically says before an item comes before us before land use, their special permit needs to be complete. And if part of that now needs to become and by the way, if you're 100% electrical or that's a crummy criteria But at some point, maybe what we do need to do is modify that list of criteria to include. And by the way, if there's a transformer, you have to be able to tell us if there going to be a transformer and if so does it meet and where is it? Or something to that effect. And that might be the solution

Kelley and Albright have been talking about in terms of how do we approach the solve here.

Thank you.

Ms. Colello, Chief of Long Range Planning if I may just ask a question of the Eversource representatives while we have them present I was just wondering if you could add some clarification I think I heard that There are instances in which the Blue Book guidance applies and instances in it doesn't for larger projects. And I was just wondering if you could elaborate a little bit on when it does and doesn't apply, and how folks know placements for those that may not apply if I heard correctly.

So perhaps it was misinterpreted. It's not that it doesn't apply, it's simply that it and complexities that may happen on projects that are larger. So if you have a residential development, that's a multi-story Thank you for watching! you know, on specifics to different scenarios. So the blue book generally speaking provides information and anything on a more complex level where it's more than one transformer or It's beyond an 800 amp service. The Blue Book indicates to reach out to Eversource Engineering to work with them on evaluating the project. It's not that the Blue Book applies or doesn't apply in some cases.

It always applies. It's simply that its instructions are intended to help on smaller scale projects without necessarily needing an Eversource engineer to help review, but anything larger it specifically calls out to contact Eversources and to work with engineering on a review.

Sorry if I misspoke, I guess. So is it accurate that there are cases when the location of the transformer requires conversation with Eversource beyond what is in the blue book.

Absolutely, there are cases where you know the expectation from the utility is that Somebody's reviewed electrically the building's load, the demand and has forecasted what is required on private property to supply a load to the building. There are times, and I think somebody in the room alluded to the idea that some of these projects get farther than they intend on the onset without having ever contacted an electrical contractor. or an electrician to review and give feedback on that perspective and part of building service. Somebody goes through the effort, an architect goes through The effort of spotting a building on a property Up to the property line or up to the setback Because nobody's telling them they can't build them up that big Thank you for watching!

on the development side of how does the building footprint get smaller to make room for the transformer. And ultimately, I think sometimes what happens is they see the setback as an opportunity because they're not allowed to build there but it's open land and they understand that our equipment has to go somewhere and so they try to you know leverage the conversation to say well Eversource says we need a transformer and that's all that's the only place it can go. So I think on larger projects, there's always a collaboration with developers and their electrical contractors understanding the demand of the building, sizing the equipment based on our evaluation of their proposed demand and then making sure that Our recommendations and our definition of what equipment is necessary goes to them, and they have your restrictions on where they can put things. And it's ultimately on them Thank you very much. That was helpful.

Okay, so what I'm hearing it again members of the committee directly is that there is some sense that an early conversation with Eversource is important. Ms. Kemmett you've been very vigorous about saying such conversations are valuable. I guess the question is, can we put anything more into the process formally to make sure that those conversations occur? Because obviously if they occur late Then we're in a situation where we're chasing an outcome after the fact. The second question that I think you raised in your presentation is, are there situations where it is appropriate to allow somehow not rely on the variance process, but to have a standard that allows some opportunity for a transformer to be in the setback. Notwithstanding it's maybe of a certain size or

Certainly if we've gone to the trouble of making it possible for raised flower beds to be located somewhere, you can figure out how to deal with transformers. So I hope that as I'm hearing this conversation I'd entertain a motion to hold this item, but also to ask the planning department to think about both the early action conversation with Eversource and how to make that more formalized. And even with people who have got small projects We understand that they may be concerned about not extending great resources, but Eversource is at least as far as I can understand free at the moment, at least for those conversations. And maybe that can save everybody time and trouble up front but also look at our standards for setbacks and whether there are some that might be modified so we can preserve some of the setback for a transformer rather than have it on the street like in the example over in the Highlands. Is that a fair summary of the conversation so far? Okay.

I move whole. Move whole, thank you very much. All those in favor say aye. Aye. Opposed? Abstain? I want to thank very much the representatives of our resource for taking time out of your evening and perhaps your dinner or whatever post-dinner plans you had. Come spend it with the wonderful folks at the Development Planning Committee Thank you very much. We are grateful to have you and I think that there are continued conversations that will save everybody time and trouble, and we're very grateful for you being available for this purpose. And I thank the planning department for having arranged this. Anything I've forgotten, folks? Okay. Thank you very much. Okay.

Mr. Chairman, thank you for the thoughtful questions and dialogue. We appreciate it. And we're available for other discussions when appropriate.

Wonderful.

Thank Have a good evening.

You're welcome to stay for the rest of the meeting.

I'll be right back, I promise.

So I'm very pleased to move to the next item. which is 24426, the appointment of Catherine Herrick. I hope I'm pronouncing that right. As Director of Planning, it's an honor to the Mayor appointing Catherine Herick as Director of Newton's Planning Department pursuant to Section 3.3 of the City Charter. Now, we're joined by the Chief Administrative Officer and well as the Vice Director of Planning as well as other members of the planning department and as well it was Keurig. So I would ask the Chief Administrative Officer, how do you intend to proceed for this? Would you like Frida come and be subject of a conversation straight away or do you want us to introduce her?

I think that, so we are from the administrator's perspective We're very happy to introduce Catherine to the Zoning and Planning Committee. We are excited for her, and we're excited for the planning department. We look forward to a wonderful discussion this evening, but otherwise I think The floor would be yours and hers, and we're here to support and answer any questions as they might come up.

Thank you very much. Would you mind coming and sitting over here, because we'd like you to be not only audible but visible for those who are watching on the home screen. So welcome. We have, as members of the committee will notice in the attachments, a letter from the mayor as well as Mr. Herrick's resume but this is an appointment that has to go through the city council under our arrangements that we have here. And therefore, we would like to entertain an opportunity to hear from you as well as to have people ask some questions and then move to, I hope, a vote on the expedition for now. So would you like to start by just saying something in addition to what is in the writing that you would like us to know about yourself and your intent for this role?

Sure. You did pronounce my name correctly. It's Feerick. I know it's a strange one, but I appreciate the effort. Yeah, I'm very excited to better get to know Newton, all of the staff, all the council. This is the kind of community that has so much to build from. I'm definitely an asset-based planner, my background being economic development. I always look around myself and think and what can be built from what's already there because the worst thing you could ever do in planning economic development any kind of related field is to try and replicate something that works somewhere else if it isn't who you authentically are. You can create Silicon Valley here, you can't create Hollywood here but you can create the best Newton This is a community with an incredible diversity and depth of neighborhood culture, architecture A diversity of residents and building stock.

It's really exciting for me to be able to dig into all of that, to learn a lot more about it, and to hear from all of you your ideas on where to go.

I'd entertain questions from the committee and Vice President Kalis.

So welcome, David Kalis

The first rule of planning is mapping, right? I love your background.

Especially the revitalization specialist or expert you are and the economic development and I just wonder, in broad stroke as you look at the 13 villages we have, some said there's 14. Is there anything that you're just done because economic development is an area where we're really focused on. We need to attract and retain our businesses So I just want you to talk a little bit about that if you could.

Sure, one of the things that really interests me fascinates me my husband who also has a planning degree though he doesn't really use it. We took a drive-through of several of the villages. I have not yet hit all of them, but Very impressed by the presence of some sort of recreational land use as well as a commercial land use in each one of those. That's something that gives people identity, meaning, purpose and Things to do. So I very much am interested in those, those hallmark pieces of each one of the villages and what I'd like to do really ideally is to get staff as well as you know, counselors that live in the different villages and prominent business owners or individuals who bring a lot of projects before our boards. Just get them out in the wild and just teach me about what makes each of those villages work. What are some of the areas that you see as choke points?

And when it comes to the staff and internally, a lot of the processes because I think It's a very deep and technically proficient staff, which is a little intimidating for me coming into that. But the process work is something that we can all dig into together like what's working How do we streamline things if there are areas that we're seeing time and time again, that are getting in the way? Because what I'm hearing from a lot of people I've spoken to so far. A lot of them are mentioning some of Same areas that need improvement. And I think that a lot of those can be addressed through just taking a long, hard look at how the sausage is made and how we can make it better.

Councilor Getz?

Yeah, welcome. I actually think that of value in our community is the historic resources and the uniqueness of our constructs in our 13 villages So I think that each of our villages is incredibly unique and truly needs to be appreciated, you know, as single standing villages. And I think really needs to be held at the same time as, you know, looking at the overall city perspective. But I wonder if you have any thoughts about, you either redevelopment or the value of historic? Would you speak a little bit to that?

Absolutely. History, in my experience It can be such an asset, but it can also work against you. And I'll explain what I mean. Massachusetts was built before automobiles and I think that a lot of how people use transportation in their daily lives has kind of negatively impacted some of the urban fabric surrounding historic centers. So you see that when it comes to like very narrow roadways where you would love to have a more active, vibrant Participatory Landscape in certain areas but that's kind of push to the wayside because people still need to get back and forth, and they're using those roads and they are using their cars. And it's hard to find workarounds for situations like that. That can lead kind of a loss of revenue to the small storefront businesses that rely on foot traffic,

The history rather than the present day approaches that people have to retail. And we saw this shift twice in my lifetime, first from The shop that everybody knows that their uncle runs to the big box stores that are on the commercial strip on a state route somewhere to online. and how to recapture that growth is really in like cultivating activity. Secondarily, when it comes to the architectural side of things I've seen so many successful projects that have used that architecture and existing buildings either into a lack of use or maybe there are some issues where they're harder to adapt to contemporary life and they found new life for them. for example there's a project I worked on that was just such a cool project down in Toccoa, Georgia of all places and There was a group of residents that said, you know, we want to restore this historic theater.

We know that we can't make money on movies in this theater. This is no way. But what we can do is movie theater with one screen and then use the rest of those rooms for community activities that foster youth development Professional Skills and things like that. And they were so successful, and they brought a lot of people downtown. They did business surveys for me a year after that project that showed Every single business saw an uptick in people who came in and people who were spending money. So sometimes the historic assets need to be loved in a different way, and I think that's kind of that double edge that I'm talking about.

Thank you. I recognize Councilor Albright.

Oh, thank you, Mr. Chair. So it's interesting that you talked about the cinema because we have a situation where there is a cinema that we almost lost in West Newton. Maybe you've heard about it, but the nonprofit group got together and they raised the money and so far they're making a go of it. And I'm sure it will help West and I want to welcome you. And I'm sorry, I'm not there in person but I'm so happy to have you with us. A question for you would be that we are in our village centers We worry about economic development. And I'm wondering what you think is the relationship between housing in village centers and business development Village Centers. And if there is any relationship and could you describe it?

Yeah, absolutely. In order for any of these small businesses and village centers to be successful they need to have enough customers and that's just the simple calculus of businesses. My experience in Attleboro was I was stepping in at a time when the mills had kind of shut down and withdrawn from the downtown area. and that led to over time an increase in vacancy rates, a decrease in kind of the quality end quotes of the businesses that were there. Maybe you had Several convenience cookie shops, but you lost your specialty shops. And a lot of them were like service-based necessary things so When we set about reviving the downtown district, residential was a vital component of that. We wanted to create an 18-hour economy There were a couple of large employers during the day, the city being prime among them, but also there was a hospital nearby that we could leverage.

But those people arrived around 8 to 9 in the morning and they were all gone by 5. In order to get the nightlife going, to spur people to visit the restaurants, things like that. You really need kind of that captive audience. because you have to admit that these old historic areas are kind of challenging to get to. You're irritated when you have the drive around a park and things like that so when you had a captive base, That's your people that you can relatively rely on to go out and walk down the street and buy a burrito or a cup of coffee or whatever it might be. and once you get that backbone in there, we found the quality and diversity of businesses really blossomed. We were able to create a lot of housing in our downtown area to support it Each neighborhood's different. Sometimes you have enough of that

that office culture or a large enough employer that you can really have a solid and sustainable business district without having a lot of residential. And that's something that You know, you can kind of assess by looking at how many vacancies are in a certain area or is this just an essential service corridor? Is there something else that would draw people to it? but yeah, that's one of those things that I really look forward to digging into and kind of do more quantitative analysis rather than just my dashboard review.

Yeah, we have the MBTA Communities Act where we did a lot with our village centers and housing. But we have some villages that weren't impacted by that. And I'd love to hear your take not tonight but as you learn more about our villages what we should do for those villages that weren't part of the MBTA Communities Act. And so thank you very much for joining our team

Tariq Lewis, Ward 2. I don't have a name right now on this committee but welcome to Newton. I understand you have a long history across the country and working with economic development in Newton. We certainly need some of that economic development, particularly commercial development where we lose more and more of it every year That's going to be a challenge for Newton that you're gonna be part of in the coming future. Another thing I want to mention is, for a long time folks have talked about Building Over the Pike. Right now we only have a Star Market, which is our national landmark and the hotel in Newton Corner. That, you know, I'm not saying there are no proposals out there right now but it certainly needs to be studied. And I just want to say that our state rep

are backing over the pipe to the tune of $100,000. So hopefully you'll be part of that conversation in the near or distant future but other than that welcome to Newton, thank you.

We want to make sure that we get a chance to vote for you. Councilor?

I created a little name. So I'm interested expanding on what Councilor Albright said, what your thoughts are about economic development and revenue in housing in general. Discuss.

All right, I'll take off my planning hat and put on my economic development hat then.

Perfect. Although I want you to wear both.

And I should also mention up front that I do recognize that Economic Development has been moved directly under the mayor and I will absolutely respect and support that. I think that's actually a very shrewd move but My economic development, what I like to tell people is my boilerplate of what is economic development. What you're trying to do ultimately is increase the tax base without increasing the tax burden on individual rate payers So when you look at that from the context of commercial growth, industrial growth, residential growth. You look at it by acreage and it becomes really clear Commercial and industrial uses are absolutely vital to preserving and strengthening services that any community can provide. You have to moderate that with the impacts on property values to the residents surrounding that, obviously you don't You don't really want to remove half of somebody's property value by having something really smelly or dirty or noisy right next door, right?

At the end of the day, the bang for your buck with industrial and commercial is the highest there could be. When it comes to residential, again, it's by acreage. You can fund the same frontage of roadways, sidewalks, pipes all of that infrastructure which costs even more than people and you can do it for one house on a very large lot or you can do it for townhomes, or you could do it a larger type of residential use. And the numbers are pretty clear there. I actually studied this in depth for the MBTA communities run in Foxborough because one of the biggest things you always hear in planning, even though you're technically not supposed to discuss it as a matter of legality is the number of school children that multifamily residential brings. but we actually did the numbers on some 40 bees that were about the densest residential that we had in Foxborough, we found 0.125 students per unit as an average across these 40 units.

They're very small kids use a small demo. Very small.

But it's negligible in terms of the impact. Obviously, you hear that police or fire might go to the multifamily more. Well, that's kind of a function of the fact that there are more households in those buildings. But it gives that idea that they're troublesome in some sense. But when you do the math, every time I've run an impact analysis on multifamily residential, it more than pays for itself in terms of its returns to So it's healthy to have in a budget. More than that, if it's strategically deployed, it can revive the walkable commercial centers that everybody wants to see. Everything is a measure of wanting to preserve, you know the wealth of residents while also wanting to make sure that in the future budgets balance. It's not necessarily glamorous at the end of it all but

but I'm definitely one that supports a diversity of uses and I'm certainly one that looks at situations rather than just saying blanket like What I'm telling you is like how the dollars and cents line up. But when you're looking at any specific project in a specific location, there's always way more to consider beyond it too.

Thank you.

Councilor Wright?

Thank you and welcome. In Newton, our statistics are a little bit different and you can go to the school committee's books. And for our 40Bs we have about 0.25-0.3 kids so out of every three or four apartments We do get one child into it. About half of them goes to the elementary, and a quarter to middle school, and quarter to high school. They see all the data every year if they keep it up-to-date. for the large projects that are out there. So right now we have have approved over 5,000 units which is like 12% of our housing stock since 2020 and a lot of people are worried with the groin pains just in a mild section, a little over a mile of Washington Street.

proposed and approved over 1,000 units in the cars and the traffic and things like that. Have you dealt with those kind of things yet? And what have you done about that? As a city councilor on the north side, I hear a lot of those complaints is the traffic.

Yeah and traffic is absolutely a concern in this area. Newton is serviced by public transportation but more so to connect Newton to Boston and less so to connects different parts of Newton to other parts of new necessarily. So yeah, you have to consider that when you're looking at projects. I think that again if it's in an area where people can more or less walk to whatever they need in their area then you're going to not see as much of the traffic impacts. But if there are weaknesses in the market, like for example where I live in downtown Attleboro, I can walk through pretty much everything that I need. Not necessarily the most glamorous option but pretty much with one glaring exception a pharmacy. Everybody needs a pharmacy I have to walk a mile to get to a pharmacy from where I am. So, you know, obviously then you use the car and that's more vehicle miles traveled and that is more traffic so if you're looking at like the cohesive

bricks and mortar of a different neighborhood. Yeah, you absolutely have to consider traffic. I still think that often the economic benefits of the new growth outweigh the pain points But you have to make sure that you're looking at building. If the community isn't already a complete community where people can get mostly what they need, then you've got to work towards making it that complete community.

Okay, anyone else? Because I'd like to manage to get her. Councilor Gordon.

Yeah, thank you. So nice to meet you, Ms. Furyk. I'm Lisa Gordon, councilor in Ward 6. I know all of our ward counselors would love to meet with you and take a walk around Newton Center and Newton Highlands when it suits you. And again, like Councilor Albright, I'm sorry I couldn't be with you this evening but it's great to meet you. As Pam just spoke about, Newton is accommodating a lot of additional housing and we're also trying to preserve the character of our villages. Could you describe a situation where you successfully balance competing objectives such as housing production, historic preservation, traffic impacts and neighborhood concerns? And what kind of criteria do you use to guide your decision making in those instances?

That's a lot, so hopefully I'm able to answer. So I'll take the Mill District, Union Street and Attleboro for an example. When I first got off the train station for my interview there I looked around myself and I thought this has so much potential, but I noticed that there were all these vacant mill buildings. Now of course that was a community that really was embracing the growth in the downtown area to this day residents are like yeah please more So it's a little different situation, I think maybe. But we were able to restore one two three one is underway right now. So four mills along a block and a half within the downtown area, and most of those were entirely residential One was mixed use. But one of the things that I really learned from that project was because it was also a mix of market rate but very, very small units.

Something that was very new for Attleboro. That actually attracted a lot of Brown students strangely enough who take the train down to Providence. But what we found was that the car ratio that we were requiring in our downtown was actually too high because we ended up with a lot of vacant parking spaces. The traffic really has not increased, cause I've lived in the downtown before and after those developments brought 500 new people to our neighborhood The traffic hasn't really increased, but I think that a lot of that is because like I said it's practically a complete community. It doesn't have pharmacy. Also a lot the units were affordable like two of the units were entirely affordable. The other one was mixed income, one was market rate. So I think that the combination of factors really helped that to pan out. The one thing that I will say is a weakness there We have a sea of parking that's not used now and it's right by

I would call it an old building, but not historic and not of any kind of character. Something that could easily be torn down and redeveloped like the cinder blocks in the 80s kind of thing. But ideally hopefully in the future The parking ratio requirements in Attleboro will be eased to allow subdivision and redevelopment of that portion of the lot. and then I forget the second part of your question now, so I'm sorry. Well there were seven parts.

Well, I'm not going to go into it with that comment. And thank you very much, John. But it was just about balancing basically competing needs and you bring up traffic, parking is a much bigger discussion so I won't go down there. I would say it's a very active discussion in Newton right now balancing parking and housing

I would say like with that one, there's another area within the downtown that's all new builds pretty much and that's an area where we encountered a lot more challenges. New builds have larger footprints and A lot of them require the podium style parking in order to meet their requirements. They're ugly on the back end and on the front end, often they have a lot of time finding tenants. That's probably not gonna be an issue in Newton because your demographics here are wonderful Deep Pocket, Regional and National Chains will be desperate to locate in new builds. In Attleboro we don't have that so they're all dentists offices and physical therapists and things like small businesses that have the money but with that area, when we were talking to developers about what's the ideal parking ratio within the transit oriented development district. We were actually shocked because we had a one-to-one in mind

and they said in our area, they would actually do a 1.4 ratio because the, you know, live here, work here, take the train to work, whatever it might be. Have one car for your family. They said that was really more of an ideal and kind of a personality type of trait rather than the reality that a lot of the tenants So that was a very interesting conversation. It changed my mind about a lot of things. The infill development projects versus the historic rehabilitation projects, they have vastly different outcomes in every possible way. So I'd say I had a lot more of those challenges and it's more of a struggle to find a balance. I still sit on that over every development authority board, and that land is now I have one fifth of the responsibility for it.

So we're in the final stages with the master developer now, hopefully we'll have an agreement but these are all conversations that we're still having on a daily basis of trying to find that balance because when you're talking about 1.4 units Whereas this other street that I was talking about, the Mill District, we found that one-to-one was actually too much. So every single area you go to is going to be completely different and those two districts in Attleboro are like two blocks apart. So we're not talking about far away.

I would say that's true in Newton. In my neighborhood, one parking space per unit is turning out not to be enough. It's nice to know you're open to having your mind changed and listening to what The input is from others. I will just jump off, but I will say you might want to talk to Union Pharmacy about bringing a pharmacy to Attleboro. They are opening pharmacies all over the place and they're amazing. So I'll just end it there.

Thank you, Chair. Welcome. Sorry I didn't get a chance to make the session Thursday last week. Technology got in my way. Quick question, one of the completely separate topic because I think a lot of the topics that we've been discussing to this point have kind of been the really big like Gordon just mentioned parking. When I first joined City Council, I had no idea that parking was actually the third rail topic in Newport. But I really do think it is. But I kind of want to go a slightly different direction. And that is regarding transparency, clarity in terms of reporting and information that's made available to the public. We have a challenge here.

We are in the process of reworking our city's website. I'm kind of curious if you could maybe think of an example or how do you think about The information that the planning department, I believe in particular has access to and therefore has a responsibility to kind of put out there for people to see. And I'm just curious how you think about that or examples in your past where you've really kind of brought that to the surface.

Yeah, communication is vital. Communities and their planners. It's a delicate dance always, and if there's trust lost in either direction it can spell very negative consequences on both sides. so obviously we have the public records law and I'm very much 100% always in support of providing the records that are requested there. But then when you talk about like the softer communication, I actually, when I was in Attleboro, I had them add a position for community engagement Specialist, and that position was kind of twofold. One was to provide a sense of community events and connectivity like a shared calendar for different events and activities going on. And the second part of it was running social media, making sure that

Everybody in the city knew what was going on online and what people were chattering about without all of us needing to pull our hair out, having to be on Facebook. But secondly, to communicate outwardly. So if there was a big project that was going people noticed. For example, when a crane went up for the first time for a given project she would make sure to do a post saying are you wondering what this is? This is blah blah blah and it's going to have this kind of use at the end of the day People loved that. I mean, even if it was something we had a Superfund site and you would think, oh, people don't want to hear about that. People loved hearing about the Superfund sites cleanup. And I'm not going to say you can please everybody. Obviously, Facebook in particular is an absolute war zone and people fight over absolutely anything they possibly can. And it can be really easy to get discouraged if you spend too much time in there.

So I don't really agree with any kind of approach that would be like answering every single question that pops up or addressing every single complaint necessarily in that format. As a matter of fact, I instructed her to have an autorespond if somebody sent a message to the social media account saying, please direct all questions, inquiries and complaints to the actual staff using this approach. Because otherwise you get bogged down in that all the time. But I find that when you're communicating proactively about things that people may or may not be noticing, but if they open their eyes, they'll see them. People get very excited about that. So I think it's not just A responsivity to the public thing. It's also kind of getting a chance to share your joy of what's happening in your community with everyone around you.

Great, I do appreciate that.

Looking forward to it. That's fine, but finish up what you're

That was the last comment I wanted to make. Oh, all right. I thought that might be furthering your goals.

Yes, it does, although I've got a couple of hands up. So Councilor Dahmubed, we've got several back, but we'll have to make sure everybody gets through.

Nice to meet you, Mr. Farrakhan. Thank you, Mister Chair. My name is Cyrus Dahmubed. My nametag has evaporated somehow. Yeah, so I'm not supposed to be here. Very nice to meet and thank you for being here. Could you just...I'm just gonna give you a chance to tell us, I'm sure this came up in your interview You've talked a lot about how clever you are and how great you're going to be at this job, but could you just tell us why you wanted this job?

That's a very good question. I'm a neighborhood planner at the end of the day. I love neighborhoods and as I would say in Foxboro, we have 1.5 neighborhoods and my predecessor in the current town manager page did such a good job in the town common area there wasn't really a ton for me to do, it was really just maintenance stuff. And you know how like sometimes you have a startup CEO and then you have continuity CEO and an IPO CEO? and then a wind down one, right? Like there are different skill sets and different levels of interest at different levels. I've always kind of been like the The kind of person that really likes to see things from the ground up. And there's enough happening right now, even though Newton has had a well-run machine for a long time, there's there are some fresh starts in different places and to have an opportunity to just dig back into neighborhood planning and how people live on a daily basis that's

That's kind of, in my mind, that's something that gives me a lot of satisfaction. A lot more than planning subdivisions for people who are going to drive an hour to get to work. Now I'm going to

Thank you very much. Councilor Vaughn? Sorry to be sitting right behind you. Thank you for I hear that from a fair number of architects, that our villages need to keep Tell me what you think about that concept. Have you applied it in some of your work?

I 100% agree with an endorsed that approach for a city like Newton. It's one of those lessons that I wish I'd learned earlier, to be honest with you. Things like requirements on developers when it comes to new retail are so important. And like I said, these new infill structures tend to be very large and how you break up that facade and make it look like a human scale structure rather than a monolith as you're walking down the street. I mean, where I lived in D.C., you see a lot of monoliths and that's kind of defeating the purpose. It's not really a neighborhood at that point, it's just an IKEA in an urban format. And again in Attleboro like what we learned with our first couple of buildings right by the train station because The floor plans for the commercial were too large.

They didn't really suit the need of small businesses. They were too expensive and they weren't fully built out. They weren't even vanilla boxes, they were just studs. and our demographics being what they were at the time, and what they will be until the next census comes out. We really couldn't attract the kinds of deep pockets to fill those spaces that weren't Doctor's offices, and other practical things that people need. And the business owners had money. So what you got was a hodgepodge of large vacant storefronts in these new builds one which is still vacant after eight years now since it was constructed. And not glamorous and not really attractive, and businesses like dentists offices. So that human scale is really important, we're talking about it when it comes to the construction of the rest of the transit oriented development district trying to reduce the storefront size and make certain requirements on developers.

replicate that organic pattern of development. You can't do it these days with everybody driving a car, like that's something that should be cherished because you can't get that feel in me walking down an older street and having the different storefronts. They all look different, and the housing options around them You don't really get that in a modern area, even within field development, even if it's very carefully planned. So 100% in support. How to do it is a bigger question and I'm not 100% an expert yet, I'll be honest with you there.

Hi, Julia Malakie. I'm a ward counselor from Ward 3 West Newton and fascinating to hear your background. I'd like your thoughts on teardowns because I don't know if that's an issue in either Foxborough or Attleboro, but it sure is here and it's kind of like Thank you. you know 1500 square foot bungalows and 2500 square foot colonials and even two million dollar houses on Rustlewood Hill are getting torn down because a developer can build a bigger house so we're kind of

becoming a city where instead of people living in the kind of houses that were thought to be adequate when I was growing up, certainly, you know, they're building love. 4,000, 5,000 6,000 square foot houses basically maximizing footprints and this committee which I'm not on you know they've been trying for This is really about the third year of having enough counselors who are interested in trying to address that issue, but it's been very slow waiting for responses from Do you have any thoughts on how to address the issue and how we would make that process go faster?

So it is an issue that I've had to encounter in Foxborough, but slightly different. In Foxborough the small a affordable housing and it's just It's a similar community in terms of, I mean not to the extent but you know small and affordable is not actually that affordable. But smaller bungalows near center town older historic homes would be purchased by developer or down replaced with duplexes, each one of which would be more expensive than the original structure.

Exactly what's happening.

Yeah, but it's my understanding that single-family homes are also... popping up in the wake of this as well, which we don't have much of that in Fox.

Popping up is an understatement.

OK? Yeah so I understand like According to my understanding of Newton's specific situation, I've encountered some of it but not that portion of it. It's really hard to say there's a solution to knocking down a single-family home and building a single family home. There are certain approaches. technically aware of Silver Bullet in that area. There are some areas that I know that the planning department is currently working on trying to find some solutions from other communities and elsewhere and I'm very happy to review all of them. I do think that there's some problems, especially when it's replacing one unit with another that's just more expensive like you can at least make the case if it's replaced with a duplex Over time, if there are more units then people will be displaced into the more expensive units and that'll free up more affordable housing down food chain.

whether or not I buy it in the current housing climate is another matter, right? But when it comes to the single family for single family that's a much more tricky situation than the one that we're dealing with and Fox growth. It is something that obviously you want to preserve small, affordable housing where you can. Obviously there's usually some architectural and historical significance to the homes that are being torn down and not much architectural Charm to the new builds in most cases. So it's certainly, I think that most residents would rather see what's there and what has maybe more craftsmanship in it. So I would say yes, I would agree that there's a solution that we should work towards on that situation. I'm not at a point where I can say yes this is the way we should go boldly marching and I'm Thank you. I'd love to walk around with you. Oh, I'd like that, yeah. Okay, anybody else?

Yes, thank you.

Um, two questions. One is a follow up to a couple of things that you said in the other one. That's a new one. So the one that's a So Roxburgh is a tricky place to do planning because you've got huge economic driver in the form of Gillette that is also adjacent to your transition. You have to navigate implementing 3A with that. Can you just talk a little bit We're relatively easy to work with on that situation, to be honest with you.

Their motivation is money. They would have been happy to build luxury suites targeting their season ticket holders or whatever else, concert goers The craft group wasn't really an issue when it came to 3A So the front zoning around the station is S1, a special use district. And it allows things like hotels and larger big box type retail and things like that Lots of parking requirements. The whole place is a parking lot, the whole group on there. No sewer. So that's another consideration. So I think I was the only one in the state that submitted two proposals at town meeting and because I kept holding out hope in Foxborough but the town meeting form of government um you really need a majority, not just a majority usually two-thirds of the vote but on this issue it was a simple majority because it's housing related. to get anything passed at town meeting.

And there was a lot of opposition, we were in the second round of community so people had already been hearing about it for a year they saw it as an unfunded mandate even though property taxes pay for services and theory and zoning doesn't actually construct anything out of thin air but it doesn't matter any of that logic goes out the window when you're working with town meeting. So I proposed two different strategies, one that I called the low impact model which was what The other was the economic development model. The economic development would have allowed for residential above the existing Patriot Place and Rail Station through what is now surface lot parking. It would have allowed for ground floor commercial with residential above, you could not build the residential without the ground floor really under the scenario that I had developed It was not even discussed on the floor of town.

They just skipped right over that one and they voted for the low impact model, which was a paper district in essence, allowing residential above the existing Patriot Place and then over to existing 40Bs. So it was not an... Optimal outcome from like an economic development perspective and the revenues. I don't believe that that amount of housing would have affected the quality of life down there, the quality life around the stadium is already deeply impacted by that land use you can't argue that Having a couple hundred or even thousand residents is going to make that much of a difference considering they get tens of thousands of cars driving for events on a regular basis for concerts and sporting events. So I think it could have been a slam dunk, but unfortunately the residents did not see it that way. We ended up in compliance, but only by 11 votes.

Here's my second question. I've got to ask your indulgence in time. Sure.

You're asking me. Yes, go ahead and ask it but I just want to be sensitive to the fact that she has an hour commute to go home.

You talked a little bit about the backside of buildings that were kind of ugly and about charm. those kinds of things and I'm curious to know what is your sense of how a planning department regulates for aesthetics and the way that a place looks because those are pretty subjective Even the words that you use in the character, those are subjective things. So I'm kind of curious to know how do you think about, you know, the level of detail or granularity that you think is appropriate for your team to be getting into?

Yeah, form-based codes can have their charm but there are drawbacks too. In Central Ohio where I got my planning degree for example, there's a community called New Albany and you can only use five colors on the sign so you have this Light blue Burger King sign, very welcoming. And they have a white picket fence in front of the Burger King and it can be a little tacky, you know what I mean? and certainly when you're talking about an existing historic neighborhood, you're going to have businesses that look different and have different clientele in the same area. So it's dangerous to be overly prescriptive but there are certain things that can affect how properties are built, frontage requirements, setbacks even things like lighting and Parking considerations, all of those things can affect how an area looks. So I'm not going to get too deep into it but I will say

There can be utility in form-based codes, but you don't want to get so prescriptive that everything looks exactly the same and it's ticky tacky and surreal like a light blue McDonald's with a Oliver. Your time has come again.

I'd like to make a motion to approve. Thank you very much. Any discussion further on the motion? Anybody I missed it, I really want to be fair to everybody in one. Okay. If not, all those in favor will say aye.

Aye.

Opposed? Abstention? The ayes have it. Thank you very much. We will present this to the council meeting, the first meetings and well actually only meeting in August I think is the 10th If you can pry yourself loose to come and be introduced to the forecastle, we'd love to see you in person. Although we want to ask you to come back again every night. Thank you very much for taking the time, but also thank you very With that, I would entertain a moment for recess and let everybody who needs to leave or wants to leave, leave. And then we'll take up the next item. Okay? Thank you all.

Recording stopped.

and so on.

Recording in progress

Miles, are we live again? Alright folks.

Thank you all for your patience. I know that the first conversation was about electricity, the second conversation was electric and now we've come to historic preservation so we'll just see where we go but we have Two items before us that relate to this matter and we're joined by several members of the planning department as well as the executive office. There are Two items that I'm going to ask for discussion in parallel, and I want to just explain a little of the background. This is item 242-26, Discussion on Historic District Commissions. This Councilor Block, Baker, Getz, Wright, Gordon, Farrell and others, and Roche, excuse me. Requesting discussion of the workload of the historic history commissions to process for the appointment of commissioners including how they can be nominated by counselors the number of vacancies on the various commissions that qualifications saw to be administrative support provided for the commission.

And then, the second is 292-3926, request to amend ordinances to create a local historic district's commission his honor the mayor requesting discussion and possible amendment to the Newton revised ordinances that will allow the Armadale, Newtonville, and Upper Falls local historic districts to be governed by a single local historic district permission. and as part of the background for that, we'll have comment in a minute. I just want to explain what's in the packet. There is at the beginning there is a memorandum that came, I believe through this year Block, which involves workload. You can see that then there's a tabulation I think it was done by Councilor Block. There is a copy of the letter that came to the various historic district commissions from Ms. Derrick

There is a copy of the state law that governs the historic district process and the changes, which basically says that any ordinance respecting a local historic district may be have all been adopted, but it first requires a submission of the substance of the change to the district commission and a response or 60 days whichever comes sooner before the city council will act on it. My understanding is that we have, as you will see the last item of the Auburndale District Commission has given its views in opposition to the change I understand that Upper Falls may have voted to oppose it. I don't have any information about Newtonville, I think the meeting was not able to be held but there maybe people here from each of those commissions

and if at the appropriate point I may entertain a comment from them rather than just a general public comment, but certainly just to hear from those representatives. So we also have in addition attached to the agenda a copy of the proposed amendment which includes all of the provisions relating to the local historic district so that members of council will be able to follow what's involved in each of those Aspect. So with that, I think it's appropriate, Councilor Block, you were the lead doctor on this and say a word about what led you to this but also I want to recognize we just recognized it here and Derek, my apologies. Who will talk a little bit about the background of the appointments process and leads us to consider this particular idea

I don't expect either idea to be voted tonight because we haven't heard, as I said, from all of the commissions. And then I think it's important to have that before the council does. But I think to the administration of where members of the committee are, if they have views on this as well as other councillors so that we can guide them in wherever we go. So Councillor Block you want us to say a word about your item?

I'll join you at the table here a little bit so the camera can...

Can I just go on record saying my correct last name is Kerwin Derrick, just so that people are like who's Ms. Derick? But my correct proper legal last name

Thank you for that reminder. We certainly need it. The Auburndale Historic District Commission is the one that's in my district and the one which I follow most closely. They've had a problem holding meetings and having a quorum from time to time. And I've talked with Chair Richard Alfred several times about recruiting more people to serve on this came with Kerwin Derrick's proposal or letter and backup material.

So that's what drew me to and I've met with you at least once, maybe twice on this. And I think everybody is looking forward to hearing from you so I don't think I'll withhold Present the issues.

Mr. Chairman, would you like to come to the table where you can be seated?

Why don't you take this spot? I'll come back.

So I am prepared to talk about the item that we presented as a department, but I did not get the materials for the docket. I wasn't invited for the first docket item.

Well, you're invited to both of them. So I mean, you are right here. And I think we should just stipulate through the energy and goodwill that animates your role

Yes, I knew. I hope that's appropriate. So in my role as Director of Community Engagement and Inclusion, part of what I do is oversee our numerous boards and commissions I have been here almost eight years maybe? Sounds good. For an extended period of time doing this and it has been harder and harder to find people for our historic Districts, I think that and all of our boards and commissions for that matter. I think we took a hit during COVID you know we were all online People are starting to come back but have not fully come back and have found other things to do with their time.

and I say this as prior to my role, I chaired the Human Rights Commission for about 10 to 15 years. So I'm not new to our boards and commissions and then when I started this role, I had to give that up obviously. And then have been overseeing our boards and commissions. So a couple of years in, I actually had requested this of our former planning director who didn't think the time was right just for a variety of reasons. Again, most recently it's been hard for as has been mentioned by Councilor Block For Auburndale to meet for quorum issues, which means our residents are not getting their projects that they bring forward to our historic districts. They're not able to move forward. which, you know in many cases costs them money if they have an architect or whomever attending a meeting with them. So I asked to bring this

forward again, seeing if we could combine the three districts. And I will address the letter issue So Upper Falls did meet. There were two members who supported the idea of combining who are getting their information to David Lewis, the chief planner. and a group who did not oppose it for a variety of reasons, one of which they felt it was hard to leave there. They wanted to be able to leave their house and go look at the historic site rather than get in their car and go to another district. So that group of people need to submit their information to Mr. Lewis and then as you had indicated Newtonville because of a quorum issue had to cancel the meeting

and they have not been able to find a time where they can all come back together to write a letter, which the letter has to be written in a formal meeting. So that's what we are for. OK so

One thing I just want to mention that maybe is important to understand, the historic district ordinance as I read it provides that if an applicant cannot be acted on in 60 days that a certificate of hardship is issued and the editors approved. In other words, so there may be difficulty for someone in terms of coming to a meeting but their project is not held up if we can't meet.

In some cases it has been or it hasn't been moved forward with provisions so But that's not for the purpose of our meeting.

No, I understand. But I just think it's important to understand that there is a safeguard in these ordinance to try and protect property owners if they're, for some reason, commissioned can't be. Well, I think the question that is really before us in the first instance is to think about where we go with this and a sense of what What outreach do you normally do for, can you describe the outreach you've done for getting people to serve?

So we have put things in both this administration's newsletter as well as the previous administration's Newsletter, and the planning department that also has a newsletter. So we've done that. I think that everyone knows we often walk around with business cards and we're like oh are you interested in serving? We've done some direct contact with people. It was interesting at the Upper Falls meeting, I think Councilor Getz was there. They asked about what I've done for reaching out and one of, I asked, you know, has anyone asked? And one of the commissioners said they asked two people and the people declined. It is a commitment, a time commitment for some people One of the things that we're looking at for all of our boards and commissions, not just our historic districts is to represent the community that we live in.

both different socioeconomics, cultural diversity, what have you. So and it's again been harder and harder to attain that.

Good. Questions for Indira? So I read through everything, and I'm a little flummoxed.

Flummoxt? And I want to feel one way, but I feel another. OK? So to me, I feel like this is similar to the charter commission when the Charter Commission was getting rid of the ward representative. It's important to have these historic districts, but I realized and I read through everything that there's a lot of meetings. It's hard to get people. So my question is really beyond asking people

So maybe there's a down period of a few years and then more people want to come back.

Addresses at several levels. So I don't know if it's in what you have, but it's not like suddenly this year we had this issue or There has been a decline over the last several years in our membership for historic districts across different administrations. So it's not just now. Under the new structure that we're looking at, residents from each of the districts to be on the main board. So I don't know if that was clear in what you read, okay. So it's not as though you're losing representation. Yes, if say someone from Upper Falls is on there they would have to go to Auburn, Darrell or Newtonville to look at a project but they should be doing that anyway in their neighborhood Yes, you might have to get in the car. Sorry for the green people. But it is a reality to make sure.

Having this group, so right now if we were at max for all three, we would have seven regular members, seven alternates. So across three commissions that's 42 people. David Lewis and Kim Crocker have to maintain. It's you're sending out the meeting notices if the meeting doesn't meet. So that we were at capacity, that's what it would be. But my recommendation is that we're not losing The historic district representation, we're kind of changing the makeup a little bit. Having a smaller group would also allow Mr. Lewis and Ms. Crocker to also spend some time training So say we have this foundational group of people. and they would get the same training across the board of here's what Newtonville is, here's

know what's out there.

I hear you and I saw the makeup of the Those different areas.

But if you look at the Upper Falls right now, not everyone who's in Upper Falls on the Historic Commission lives in the district. So you have two people currently who live in the district on Upper, so you can be part of a historic district. You don't have to live there.

And what I'm looking for also is and I'll stop with this. Instead of them looking for times to meet, there should just be these are the times that we meet as this is a commitment. And... Moving meetings around, it makes it a lot more difficult. But if there are standards and rules of them, then I think it's easier.

So there are standard meeting days and times.

So, okay. I'm gonna recognize Councilor Dahmubed and Councilor Getz then Councilor Albright.

Thank you Mr. Chair. I'm thanking Ms. Kerman there for being here, for explaining this to us. So I have a few questions because similar to Councilor Kalis, I want to feel in a certain way and I think I mostly do but I'd like to just kind of understand some things that I think will put my mind at ease And some of these you may not have answers to yet, but is the idea that the commissioners for the recon would be selected from the current commissioners.

So they would have to reapply because we would be eliminating, so they would need to reappy I did, you know, not knowing what was going to happen and not wanting a leg notified everyone of that from the three that would be affected. So they would have to be reapplied. We would be spending some time interviewing everyone and picking the members. And really making sure that we, again as I mentioned, not everyone is in the districts that are represented but making sure there are residents in the district. Making sure we have an architect and other qualifications that are listed

Got it. And so there would be, if I understand correctly, seven members of this and five alternate? Yep. Okay your first answer answered a bunch of my questions. Is there a requirement that the neighborhood representatives and the architect attorney, realtor, and NACA nominated member be distinct from each other? So what I'm saying is if you're...

Could my architect also be a realtor and something else? So there isn't, but we've always had separate... They've worn separate hats. Okay.

We've got our Auburndale person, but they might be an architect. We need another architect. Got it.

because then that representation isn't there.

Right, is the workload expected to increase or decrease or as a result of this, are we planning for more and longer HTC meetings?

We would not have longer HTCs. So I did not go into this just blindly. Again, I went to the planning department and said, you know, I'm having a hard time. This is what I'd like to do. So they feel as though their workload would be manageable. And because they're not maintaining 42 people and the scope of what they're working on is more defined, that they can A, be working with residents on this is what you need to bring forward to the historic district and so that the residents are better prepared and may not have to come back to them at all. So, and then they can also work on other administrative.

And the last thing is I wanted to share a thought that came from a resident's email that seemed to make a lot of sense to me in a way, which was the suggestion or the idea of a fixed core of the architect attorney realtor and NHC nominated member. And then additional members representing each of the neighborhood areas. So for example, you could have three from Auburndale, three from Newtonville, three form Upper Falls and, you know, in the course of a meeting, you might deal with all the Auburndale things. And then those three from Auburdale would be able to go and we'd deal with other Newtonville things. Those three from Newtonville will be able go so you increase the amount of neighborhood representation without drastically increasing The amount of sort of work for any individual member, but you would be asking a little bit more of those four core members. Just putting that out there as a thought Thank you.

I actually was in the same meeting with the Upper Falls and the chair is here

I'm just going to speak to the meeting in terms of what I heard. And I think that the one of the most well, in fact, the outcome was that there were two that were supportive. There were four against and then there was the chair was not present So, and I think that the overall theme that was coming through you know in terms of the meeting itself was that in fact that they have the best and quite a few of those members are actually, you know, Upper Falls residents. I feel as if they have the better sense of the neighborhood and they also like the ability to be able to walk the neighborhood You know the context, you know for the lack of a better word. But I go back to something that I learned long ago about the origins of each of the different villages and I think there was an idea that was floated by

Alice Ingersoll, 2014-2017 I believe where you would actually consolidate based on the developmental pattern of each of the villages. You know, so that then you would consider you would combine if you had to Auburndale and Newtonville just because they were similar in terms of being 1840s to 1870s Rayburn villages. Lower Falls and Upper Falls are river-filled villages. And then Chestnut Hill with everything else that develops along the way, Waban, Newton Highlands, New York Center were all the 1880s to 1920 Railroad Suburb Villages. So that semblance would give you a context so then you could actually have a better sense of the hysteric origins of each of those historic districts. But the main piece that I got was the pushback in terms of people feeling as if it is

An increase in workload, you know, for if you combine all of the three current districts that in fact it would require each of the commissioners to have much more of a workload. But I also feel as if you lose so much when you take away the individuals that actually are residents of that specific historic district and I think of it as you know just in terms of just the working knowledge that they hold so I just sort of feel as if It's not a supported idea in terms of what I'm hearing from individuals in each of the historic districts, and I think it's counterproductive in terms ultimately with this. What we are trying to do is in terms trying to maintain and keep a certain continuity of the historic resources in each of those historic districts.

So I'm just giving you what I hear, and then I think that What I also was hearing that people on the commissions, they really felt as if there needed to be better outreach. That they felt as though they had their own pools of potential applicants that they could tap. They're also feeling You know that there needs to be better coordination with the city preservation staff so that they're better educated and there's more current, you know in terms of just periodic sort of either meeting with the other historic districts as well as getting training. You know, because I felt as if some of them feel that they're not as current as it could be. So I do think and then there was one specifically in the Upper Falls meeting that talked about a certain amount of approvals you had some sort of standard or criteria that became a threshold like we do have, in terms of the percent of renovation or view from a public way.

So then you could sort of then But I'm reluctant to accept something like that because then it takes it out of the public process. You know, and I think especially in most historic districts, it really matters to people that they you know the abutters and all the other residents have a moment or an opportunity to speak I don't think this is a good idea, just to be honest. I think of it as being a real loss. I we have to solve the problem on a bigger scale in terms of thinking about What do we need to do in order to reach the residents that would potentially be interested in joining one of these historic district commissions? I mean, I just feel like that's the problem to solve. And, you know, and I'm sort of thinking that I would like for us to sort of focus on that. You know, because I don't think that it's going to be a benefit to the ultimate goals with the creation of these historic districts

I think so, for now.

I've got Councilor Wright and Councilor Oliver, Councilor Block. And I don't want to say a word but wait.

Councilor Gordon.

Okay.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. So I must say that my remarks will be colored by a little bit by an irate conversation I had about a month ago with a constituent who was scheduled to go before the historic commission, not the local historic commission. And the meeting was canceled the afternoon before the meeting has to happen and he had all kinds of things set up to happen and although your correct chair that people have 60 days, that doesn't always fit into people's lifestyles or hopes and dreams for their homes. to wait 60 days for approval if there's no meeting. So he was very, very upset and I wanna thank Ms. Crowe and Derek for dealing with A problem which is a long-standing issue. And I don't want to take away from any of the local historic districts.

I think they're serving an important purpose, but for some reason... We know what it is. It's a lot of work for these people to give up their time to come to these meetings. and it's not everybody wants to do that. I kind of like the tack that Councilor Dahmubed was taking when he was mentioning someone's idea for how to redo the membership of this Central, Local Historic Commission. And I was wondering if, you know, it's, I think it's the CPC committee that you have to be or one of these committees, you have from a ward and you also have to have some kind of background professional background so rather than having a core of an architect, a lawyer and I forget what the other ones are could you have two from each historic district? So two from Auburnail, two from Newtonville Two from Upper Falls.

And somebody, one of those two from each of those districts has to be a lawyer. One of them has to an architect so that you have more representation from the local historic districts. I understand Councilor Getz's opinion that it's all very local and we can't have... People from Newtonville dealing with people from Upper Falls. And I understand that idea, but I think there's also a practical issue to deal with and that people's meetings are being canceled in the last minute, and they're not getting their projects through in a timely fashion. I'm always amazed that our citywide historic commission does so well to keep so many projects moving and keep so much projects taken up at each meeting.

they do a fabulous job and I think I just feel like I think Ms. Kerwin-Derek may not have the right composition of the committee it may not be exactly the right idea yet but I think it's the right way to go to make This work for our constituents who really want to move their projects forward in a timely fashion. So I'm interested in pursuing this. We may not have the right solution yet, but I'm

Thank you. Councilor Oliver is next.

Thank you, Chair. So I'm not quite sure if I'm in the same place with either of the councillors who are of one heart and a different mind.

I'll pause for a second. I just noticed we've been joined by Andrew Lee, the law department has raised his hand. I didn't know if there was a clarification Mr. Lee Thank you, Mr.

Chair. There is one point of clarification which is the composition of the historical commission as dictated by statute there's some variation that's allowable I just want that to be kept in mind so that If there is a proposal from the committee as to what a different composition should be, it just does need to be reviewed to make sure it's consistent with the statute. Just wanted to make that note. Thank you.

I apologize, Mr. President, but I just wondered. Mr. Lee generally doesn't raise his hand unless there's something we have to clarify. Okay, so please carry on.

No worries. Thank you I do not consider myself anywhere near the preservationist that some people on this committee and certainly on city council, and a lot of the folks in our audience are in terms of their What I am passionate about is paying attention to the people who are passionate about the topic. And what I'm hearing here are two groups of folks who want to solve the problem. And it's a legit problem. As Councilor Albrecht just said, we've got residents who can't get the project heard for an additional 60 days. And they sit there and they twiddle their thumbs theoretically until

The clock stops ticking or the sand runs out and boom, you get your approval and you go on your merry way. Well think about that from the other way around. What if it's not a great idea in this city loses out because no one was able to hear the project and it wasn't a great project. And it's gone forever, right? It's done. It's moved in the wrong direction. Again, I'm talking theoretically. I guess at the end of this, I am going to put equal value on the importance of each individual historic districts and their membership and what they're trying to achieve. I have a great respect for the uniqueness of their districts, just like I do our village centers. And I also want to make sure that we're not losing sight because no one else has brought this up. The city has a completely legitimate concern here

and that they are burning tons of planning hours in time that could be reutilized in other ways that might help not only this group but the entire city achieve other goals. So I'm going to suggest that before we get too far down this road, then we throw these folks into a room and of course they're gonna come out with some ideas or solutions. No offense but I don't think we have the solution out there, because we don't understand the challenges that are out there in enough detail. We've got 20 some odd pages of content here. All of it is great. But I still have more questions than I have answers here. I'd like to see the heads of these historic commissions work with Hattie and her team to kind of, hey, here are some Things the city has to get out of this.

And I want the historic districts to get what they need on this. Andrew Lee is basically, Councilor Lee is telling us hey there's some things that have to happen by state statute. Okay well those are the guardrails. Let's go do that. Like, there's a win here for everyone. We just have to find it. I don't think we're there yet. I mean, that's why the chair is basically suggesting we're probably going to end up holding these two items tonight. Let's do that Block, and then a

Gordon, and who else? Councilor Farrell. And I want to be heard first, but I'll go for Wright.

Yes. I don't want to sit behind you. You've described the problem of recruiting

So I have to ask you about Overdale. How many applicants did whatever outreach happens How many people have applied for So I think you know the answer to that.

We have two applications, but because we have not moved forward because I brought this forward and it would be disingenuous to interview those and place people on a commission that I didn't know the outcome for this. Right. And there and I would not again, it's not just me interviewing. It's you know, I am with the planning department other people doing that. And when we're looking at people who apply We need to ensure that our applicants don't refuse themselves at some point. So again, it would be kind of disingenuous to appoint people who might have to recuse themselves or have ethics issues at some point. Can I also address the question that was raised about Recruiting people.

I think that all city councilors know that we're open to applications and again, it's not just a problem that's happened in the last week or the last six months or year But at any point, we're welcome. Councilors always say, oh, I gave information to this person. It's up to the residents to apply for the commission. and sometimes, like you know Oliver might say to me, hey, I think you should be on XYZ. Oh yeah, yeah, I would love to do that but in my head I'm like, you've got to be kidding because I've seen those meetings on YouTube or what have you and but I don't feel as comfortable saying to a space sorry no you're crazy but yeah so I think

But, you know, I think that this has been an issue for a number of years. We have not had a number We have not been getting those applications. In the last three weeks, I believe, I received two and again had already brought this forward again would be disingenuous to interview and give hope for you know not knowing where this process would go.

So what I'm about to say is with all due Keep that in mind. Two people have applied to be on the Auburndale Historic District Commission. in part so that this commission can meet, have a quorum and do the work that it's supposed to. But you don't want to consider them because of this proposal which might or might not happen or might take longer to have. So why is it that we can't do two things at the same time? Why is that?

In addition, so again I don't just interview myself, I interview with a team. So say they had applied whatever and I bring them forward we interview what so we meet today when is the next meeting

But when is the next meeting? So like today you're seeing we're doing two reappointments at the end of this

Right? So say I interview, I make a recommendation that it gets docketed. It would get docket at the next time which i think is August 3rd Would they make it forward for September? Or will we have a sense of where we're going to fall for this? That is, you know, that is how I'm looking at it.

Let me just say, Chair, I hope at the end of this conversation we get a sense So you have a sense of where we're going. This proposal requires 16 affirmative votes. Yes, I understand. At least my current instinct is there are not 16 affirmative for this proposal. But I want to have people have a conversation about where they are. Are you finished?

but I, and again, I emphasize most of my time is focused on Auburndale. That's in my district. I know the chair very well I go to all those meetings, I watch them. They spend a lot of time talking very thoughtfully about all the proposals that come before them I know that they are very upset when they can't make a court. They feel that they're letting down their neighborhood, they're and that's one reason why you have two applicants. It's their outreach, it wasn't my outreach. And I don't even think it was whatever you did. It was the members of this commission knowing people who could be interested and they've applied.

Now, whether they pass through your vetting process You certainly need to have that process. And I understand that takes time. It's also going to take time starting over with some new number. So it feels to me like it's not at all disingenuous to inform people that they may be desired and maybe nominated to serve on one of these historic I just don't see why this has to be a catch-22.

Why can't we help these district commissions reach a forum, have vetted people who are interested and will make a positive contribution at the same time as we talk about whether I know that the Auburndale Historic Commission very much wants to have quorums. They want to do their work and I feel like We need help to do that work. I mean, why not? That's why they're there. So I really beseech you to think and the other historic district commissions which I don't follow really, Upper Falls and Newtonville. If they haven't been challenged to

Recruit people who will be willing to serve in this capacity. Well, they need to work harder at that and the city councilors especially the City Councilors that represent those areas They should be challenged too. It's all of our responsibility to try and make these things happen I'll just say this also about Auburn, I don't know if anybody I think the time they spend understanding their neighborhood and in the case of Auburndale, developing a relationship with The Sound which is a major sort of factor in a lot of proposals that they feel there's a lot benefit to that.

and if we changed it in a way so that there was just a single city-wide group They've worked hard at that. They spend a lot of time on LaSalle-related issues, which are which are unique. I mean, there's Boston College at the other end but Chestnut Hill isn't part of this proposal so I think they also feel that that's part of the game I think right now. and I'm not arguing that it should be the case.

But even if they don't live in Auburndale, seeing the LaSalle proposals and seeing how that plays out in the neighborhood I've been very, very useful to them. So that's my... Thank you, Chair. Appreciate it. You don't have to leave. Okay.

Councilor Gordon, you're up next.

Thank you, Chair Baker. I want to thank you, Ms. Kerwin-Derek for bringing this up because I had no idea that this was an issue and I'd like to associate John, Councilor Oliver's comments because there are a lot of issues obviously that have come up about the different districts that need to be solved. meetings being canceled. I have a lot of questions around that, why that is happening and who are on these commissions and why they aren't able to make meetings. I Have a quick question on the historic district commission workload. Randy did you put that . I tabulated just the number of items So that's the number of items that come up in each meeting?

On the agenda, right. It didn't weigh how serious they were or how long it took. These are the number

So I personally, I feel like this has to be looked into a lot more. I think that village identity is incredibly important. I for one did not know that you didn't have to be from the village where the historic Commission is, so that's new information. As far as I know, I don't know if city councilors they weren't mentioned newsletters and direct contact that we were utilizing our city councilors to try and recruit people to be on these boards and commissions. I can only speak for the last, you know things have changed under Mayor Laredo my experience of boards And so I think maybe that's something we could look at.

and I see having these different area councils as an opportunity to involve more people in our local politics and if we combine them all into one, there's actually fewer spots here. So I am interested in maybe a renewed effort to see if we could fill these slots, if we can find out why they're being canceled in an effort to be more inclusive and involve more people, and maybe not the typical people that we all think of when we're recruiting people to be on boards and commissions. So I don't want to negate your idea, Ms. Crowe and Derek. I just think that we do need more people in the room and we need to really look at what the big problems are and whether our local community and villages can solve those before we go to something that's bigger and not as village oriented. Thank you.

Thank You, I have Councilor Wright

So we had a discussion and I was supportive of it, but I didn't Talk to the other people on those commissions. So now I'm torn, I'm not as supportive now and I think we need some more information before disbanded or combined into one group. I mean, I heard through other people that the people you have there now if you combine it they're going to leave and so there's gonna be less people You talk about what it is, seven people on each of these and seven alternates. I don't think you're ever going to have that many people, so it's really not quite that big. If you got half of them, that would be great. So yeah at this point I'm up in the air, but I'm leaning against supporting what it is right now where this is at.

Okay, Councilor Farrell?

Thank you, Chair. There are other conversations that need to happen. First, I don't know whether we have had a chance or the staff has had the chance to really sit down with each of the chairs of several commissions and find out what their impression is about how hard it is The other thing is with regard to that I find it hard to believe that the three commissions between 42 people and you're going to an audience of 20,000 people. If there aren't people in that audience if they know about this might have some interest and secondly and thirdly where I am uh i do know of people who apply for commissions

and they got rejected. And they're qualified people, and they get discouraged and then let it be known around the community that you know, it's not necessarily a great thing to do. I think we need to look at the process. Not only do we need some of the process, I need to commission some local processes. I very much believe that we ought to have a local and local historical commissions. I think it's a reason to say that it's critical Particularly when we're talking about trying to save local housing as it is and get a real idea of what's happening in the community. and what should be saved and what shouldn't be saved. And one of the things that we look at is giving each of these commissions much more power than just either landmarking or

Demolition Delay. There ought to be some million-round opportunities for commissions to save properties that we all think are worth saving. But mostly, I really think we all will be listening soon. Thank you very much. We've all been listening to the chairs or the commissions themselves and talking about what are their problems. We're not hearing that, I don't believe we're hearing that. Thank you.

So I'm sympathetic to the concerns of this panel I think that the members of commission, I think it's important to maintain a and significant local presence. The statute or the ordinance requires at least two people be residents of the district as part of that, but I think that local presence is an important part. There's also, The potential risk of losing the interest of people who've already been willing to serve in a transition. And we want to make sure, pick up on Councilor Oliver's point that things are not passed by that really should be looked at much more critically But I think the challenge, I think of this is that the local districts have served the city well. I remember each one of them coming through the process of being created except Upper Falls.

Upper Falls was here before even I was here That's back in the world. The memory of a man, whether it's not for the contrary, whatever it is. And I think they've served the city well, and I think it really is important to pick up on Councilor Farrell's point. It's the one place in the city that there is an opportunity to actually prevent demolition rather than just delay it. and that's an important aspect of what these commissions have done over the year. We do have a representative, at least one of the chairs is here and maybe another chair But wait a minute, I've got a couple of councilors and I wanted to make sure we heard from all the councilors first. And then I'll come back. I'm sorry, I thought I was the last speaker but I'm not. But I'll go to the representatives of commissions in a minute But I want to hear from Councilor Lucas, and I think that's the other councilor who wanted to speak. Councilor

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. First of all let me just say the Sox won 6-5 or 7-6 so they have a 14 game winning streak since we're talking about history that is history Anyway, anyway, anyway. So I just want to... I agree with the comments that I heard from Councilors Oliver, Getz, Gordon, Farrell, Wright... Bottom line, this really doesn't seem like a good idea. I do have some questions though, because I am utterly confused on the residency requirement for the local historic district commissions. I'll say that I joined the Newtonville Historic District Commission in 2018.

and when I joined there were, I was the third member of the commission who lived in the district. One of them is on the call right now and another one moved out of Newton. So there were only two regular members who were commission members, and I am just utterly confused What is the residency requirement for local historic districts?

Mr. Chair, I can answer that. So under our ordinance, the residency requirement is each historic district has to have two members that are residents. Under the statute, the requirement is one The law is one, but we require two. The minimum requirement under the statute and Newton through our ordinances have decided that it's two currently.

Thank you, Mr. Lee. So we can go outside of Newton or outside of Newtownville, Auburndale and Upper Falls to find qualified applicants and I believe the, um, I'm going off of memory again but it's you need a realtor, a combination of a lawyer and an architect. to serve on these commissions. And I've been on the council for five years, boy does Newton have a lot of realtors, architects and lawyers. So I don't see how we're having a difficult time finding qualified people. I understand that the Mayor Fuller and Mayor Laredo have put boards and commissions I encourage all counselors who have newsletters, including myself to put this in their respective newsletter so that we can find qualified people and I'll do that in my next one.

And then we can also use the Fig City News and the Newton Beacon to help us find qualified people. but I also see that we have some other folks on this call who have their hand raised and hands raised, and I really want to listen to them. Thank you Mr. Chairman.

So I'd like to address the comment about lawyers, architects and we have plenty of them. We do have plenty but because they do work in Newton We have to be careful in which and who we accept because they would have to refuse themselves or there's an ethics issue. We had someone who lived in Auburndale, was an architect in Auburendale wanted to be on Auburndeal but because they do work in Arbordale could not, they would have to recuse themselves. So yes we do have a number but we also have to be mindful that many of you know the our architects or you know realtors work in many of our villages. So just to mention that.

Well, I think recusal does not mean disqualified. I think there are times when somebody is next door to you and you have to recuse yourself if they're a member of the commission, that sort of thing. We've run into that on the council. Let me go to the representatives of the commissions who are here. I think we have Upper Falls, is that correct? You want to just come to the table where you can be heard and identify yourself? Thank you Mr. Chair.

I want to thank Miles for inviting me. So I'm Jeff Kirkland, and I've listened to what you all have to say. I've been a member of the... Sorry, just give your name and address as well. Oh, sorry. I'm Jeff Bricklin, 37 High Street, Newton-Everett Falls. And you are the Chair of the Upper Pulse. Everybody be clear on who you are. Sorry. So I've been a member of the upper pulse historic commission for over 26 years. I've I'm also a member of the Upper Falls Area Council, and I'm the current president of the area council. And I'm vice-president of the Community Development Corporation of Upper Falls. I've lived there for 28 years. I want to just address your attention to the letter from the Auburndale Historic Commission that's in your folder. I think they articulated really well the sense of the commissions.

I will tell you in my 26 years, we had a canceled meeting once and that was because of the which was in the packet of improper notification. There wasn't enough time, improper notifications. So the meeting was canceled. We have had full membership all the time I've been there. I will say that a number of the members are not Upper Falls residents, but they are passionate about Upper Falls and they have worked judiciously to be there address every application that has come forward to us. I'm not sure that Newtonville has trouble having people on the commission. I think it's just Auburndale that's really having trouble.

I think in each district, the commission members are passionate about their district because they've come to know it. My wife Tells me we can't, she won't walk with me in the neighborhood because somebody is always stopping. I have a question for you. So, you know, you live in the area and everybody always asks you questions so you know it's fine and I think that some of the flavor of what being on the Historic Commission has to do. You know, is that you know the neighborhood, you know most of the people. I had recused myself one time because my next door neighbor wanted to build something. And that was about the only time I had a recurrence. I was not at least one speeding because I had job conflict, but I know that there are five of the commission members who oppose this proposal.

And maybe there are two who are supporting it, but the vast majority oppose it. I think the other thing that's been spoken on is You have history of people who've worked on it. There's, you know, there's history here. There is experience and if you go and re-juggle this thing, you're going to lose some of the experience of people, you now, who know the areas and all that. and I think that some of the questions you know from my commission because i've talked to uh four of the members is you know why wasn't Chestnut Hill, you know, why isn't Chestnuts Hill included in this is one of the questions. And what's the real reason for this proposal? Is it just that Auburndale can't get quorum or that the staff doesn't have enough staff to do this and maybe we need you hire another staff person.

And then, you know, the last thing is my mom used to say if it ain't broke don't fix it. And I think that, you The commission's work. And if you have any questions, I'm happy to answer.

Thank you. I do want to see, I think Mr. Abley is here from someone from Newtonville? Is that correct?

Yeah, my name is Ralph Abel. And like the previous speaker, I'm a dual, I guess, volunteer. I've been on the local Historic Commission since its inception.

So that's almost 25 years. Yeah, Mr. Abley, I just wanted to identify yourself again.

Oh, I'm sorry. My name is Ralph Abel. Hey, my apologies. Yeah, that's okay. No one can pronounce it. It's a lifelong thing with me. And I live on Page Road right in the middle of the district. I helped set the district up and I've been on it since 2002. For the last have also been on the Newtonville Area Council. And on the historic districts, we're meeting on the 6th to take a position on this. But I will just say, as somebody who's been through hundreds of meetings We've made many, many projects better than when they walked in the door for the meeting. And it happened at the meeting and in large part it was because we had really skilled architects

Unfortunately, one of our architects passed away. Another one stepped down and I will just say that whatever comes out of this when you're dealing with people and propose changes to the architecture of their home You need people who can speak that language. And so, that's really important. I think that in terms of recruiting people, there's a lot can be done. And I'll just note that on the area council that I sit on In the last, in this year alone we've added three new members. I realize people have to get elected but we have the authority to appoint people when people move out of town and all that and we've done that through our website, through Facebook My last thing, I agree with Councilor Oliver. I think you need to get some people in the room that have been through

I guess a lot of these meetings and with all due respect to Councilor Albright, I'm not aware of that project but I've seen hundreds of projects that have been kind of gone through on a timely basis. I'll stop there.

Okay, thank you. I want to recognize the chairs of the commission. We have other people who raise their hands, but I'm not trying to entertain a whole public comment. But are you a member of the Historic Commission? If you are, Nancy Grissom, if you are I recognize you and we may have public comment later, but I just want to make sure they start distributing. Mr. LeBlanc is okay. Ms. Grissom do you wanna be heard? Can you unmute there, Mr. Rommel? Miles can you do that?

Can you unmute her? I think you unmuted Nancy Greenberg and not Nancy Grissom.

Yes, I know. Okay now i'm unmuted I think I actually started in the late 90s on the Newton Historical Commission, which does the whole city. I'm still on that commission and so During the time on that commission was when Newtonville became a commission and I was involved in that and became a member of that commission along with Tarek and various other people. and then Auburndale. I live in Auburrdale, although not in the district but I live

I am also a realtor and I was involved in the Auburndale setting up, so I became member of that. At some point a couple of years ago, Ruthann called me and said I could only be on two not three. And I could choose So I chose to stay on Auburndale because I live in there and the Newton Historical Commission. I and I would be willing if somebody needed me to go back on to Newtonville, if they need people. I've only recused myself when I was

I don't think I've ever recused myself on, or maybe once on a district one when I had something to do with the real estate work relative to a property. and I had to on the historical commission because something on my street was being worked on. But... My feeling is these districts are very different, each one. But and the districts are very different from the historical commission. The Historical Commission, which covers the whole city, has a long agenda every month and goes through things much more quickly. in a different way.

The local historic district doesn't really have to decide whether they can demolish or not, they have to help them decide what to do with what they've got and so they are very different. And each district though is very different one from the other, We have lost people over time because they moved away or whatever, but we have it. Nobody's really actively been recruiting people and that I'm aware of. And that's, I think what is important to be done and I think that's my comments.

Thank you. Mr. LeBlanc, are you a member of the commission? I'm sorry?

No, thank you.

Newtonville. All right, thank Thank you.

OK, thank you for taking me as I'll keep this short. So so I lived in Newton about 20 years. I lived West Newton for 13 years, I lived at Newtonville for 11 years and now I live in Obendale When I lived in Newtonville, I currently sit on the Historical Commission for Newtonville. I've also served as the Newtonville Area Consul and I've also helped out with Village Day multiple years. I've sent multiple letters requesting to be on the Obendale district. I live in Obendal now I have never got a response.

So if there was a reason why I wasn't selected or because something might change in 60 days, I still deserved a letter. I should have got a letter back that said, hey Tim you know we would have liked to pursue your resume but were not because we might change the districts in 60 days. I think not getting any feedback whatsoever was disrespectful for me. I think the amount of effort that I put into Newton Newtonville, Aubendale and West Newton shows my dedication to this city. and oh, and Ian also last statement. Newenville did a straw vote

Oh, at the end of the last meeting that we had which was actually two months ago and no one in Newtonville supported the joining of My mind just went blank. The historical commissions. So I know everyone in Obendale does not support it, and everyone in Newtonville does not. I don't know about Upper Falls. And every month I attend Newtonville, Auburndale and Chestnut Hill. So I put a lot of effort into this city and I think that we could do a lot more to recruit people. I've never seen someone recruiting in Newtonville I'd never seen anything written up in the fig.

I've never seen a business card trying to recruit people. I don't think we are recruiting well. So thank you. I think I said enough. My point should be taken.

OK. Thank you. I see a couple other hands, but I want to just recognize the fact that I'm trying to limit this as much as possible to people who are members of commissions. Anybody? Ms. Greenberg, are you a member of commission? He's in Chestnut Hill, which...

Hi, everyone. My name is Nancy Greenberg and I am on the Chestnut Hill Historic District. Although I live in Auburndale and would like to be on the Auburldale Historic district, I just want to say three short things. One, as far as recruitment let's try before we go forward and make drastic changes to how the boards are organized Let's try to do a better job with recruitment. And if it doesn't work in a year and we still have these problems, then it's time to revisit okay that didn't work maybe we need to think of another way The second point I want to bring up as a member of the Chestnut Hill Historic Commission, I don't think the The process to apply is easy. It's not easy to find the historic commissions on the government website, and it's not Send in your resume and then it kind of goes off to vaporware.

I don't know what the status of it is, but it's not easy to apply. And the last thing that I want to bring up is, I think it's critical that we retain the local flavor of our villages and not combine them into one historic commission.

Okay, thank you very much. So I think that includes comments from all the commissioners. And I don't think we've heard comments from other councillors. Councilor Dahmubed?

Yeah, one last one. This has helped me understand something a little bit better actually. I went into this with a lot of concern that I think we all share about the local aspect of representation on these commissions. But what I'm hearing is That actually isn't the case in the way that perhaps I thought it was. What I'm hearing is we require two out of five, seven members to be local to their districts and how many is it? Sorry. Two out of seven. And I even heard one counselor tonight suggest that we start recruiting from outside of the three districts entirely So I guess now I'm just confused because it seems like the problem we all think we're creating of eliminating local representation is actually not currently there. There's no local representation in the way that...

So maybe the thing is that we should just be requiring that everybody on these is local to their district. or something like that, which I understand not the question here. But I feel like the conversation that we've had has drastically changed my understanding of what we're dealing with actually.

So let me just give a little bit more historical perspective, which is that in earlier days and not so much now, the historic district commissions were very much locally staffed. In other words we tried to get people from the districts which had those various qualifications We're delighted that Greenberg is willing to serve in Chestnut Hill, for example, and others who have been willing to come across town, so to speak. But I think that part of the value of the commissions historically has been that they've encouraged local representation. So the two is a minimum, but not a maximum. And that's been my experience over the years. Now it's modified over time, but that's where we are.

I would just say even though three out of the seven are local in Upper Falls, the four who are foreigners who aren't are Canadian. Most of them have been on the commission for years and really understand that district, are happy to travel from whatever village they live in to be on that commission every month. and are committed to work hard on it, and have the flavor of my case Upper Falls even though they don't live there because they've worked on cases for years. So we consider them residents.

They're adopted. So let me conclude. I see a former member of the commission, Ellen Fitzpatrick. I do want to recognize her if you wish to speak. Ms. Fitzpatrich?

Yes, thank you Lyle.

You just muted yourself or somebody muted you I don't know which can you help her? Okay, can you hear me? Please identify yourself.

My name's Ellen Fitzpatrick. I live in Newton. I've lived here for 45 years, in Newtonville. I was the first chair of the Newtonville Local Historic District Commission Nice to see some of the current and former members, and Ralph has been there the whole time. Nancy and I worked together a long time. I was very involved in helping to establish uh the district and i'm not trying to Pat myself on the back, but just give you a little bit of give myself a little credibility and the point that I want to make. A couple of points One is that let's not forget what the goal is here. These local historic districts were established to preserve areas, local areas within the city of Newton that through a long and arduous process determined they were worthy of historic preservation.

And the role of the commission is to ensure that they are preserved over many generations and into the future and to work with the residents who live in these neighborhoods, and who are always changing and moving in and out. And it's a really fun and interesting process Many of the people that buy homes in the districts are very interested in history themselves. They want to preserve historic features of their home and they get a lot of really good free advice from architects, realtors, lawyers. other residents who are members of the commission. So when it works and I would argue very strongly that over a 60 year period, the record is that it has worked beautifully.

These neighborhoods, these districts continue they still very much fulfill the purpose that they were created to Do, which is to keep these wonderful structures going. In the time that I was the chair I don't think a single time did we ever Delay Anybody's Project. I'm sorry to hear Susan's story, but I really wonder how often that happens. Many times the homeowners are are a little irritated. They have to go through the process, but many of them by the end of it I think in my experience anyway felt very gratified that They had had this opportunity and they learned more about it through the process. All that said, I think that Ms. Kerwin-Derek has raised some very good points to put on the table and for everybody to think about.

Particularly, I think that her point about training is a valuable one. And I also, I think that's something that I felt as chair of the commission could have been done better. I know it's the hour is late, and I've written all of you a letter about all this. But what I want to say is that I think there's a solution to this that does not involve you know, getting rid of the local historic district commissions. I'm a historian myself by profession And I would be more than happy if Ms. Kirwan Derrick would have a coffee with me someday to give her some ideas that I have about this, but I think the real

The crux of the matter is coming up with a better process for ensuring full membership of the commission, with appropriate people that are engaged and interested. that will attend, that will make this a priority, a civic duty if you will. I think that can be done much better than it's being done now. I'm not blaming anyone. It's not an easy thing But I think there are creative solutions to be found. And I volunteer myself to help in any way I can with that process, but that to me is the crux of the issue. that it does not require radical reorganization. It requires really a return to fundamentals,

Your point, Ms. Kerwin-Derek about education has been amply demonstrated at this meeting itself that is the idea isn't that everybody on the commission has to be from the neighborhood they have to have an understanding, a commitment and a desire to preserve these local historic districts. They need to know what the district is They need to know something about the homes that are in them or the structures that are and you don't have to live there. There needs to be two residents, yes but I think that the city is full of people that if invited and drawn into the process would be interested in engaging in it. It was a great experience being on the commission and we had a lot of, I think we did a lot good.

And Ralph assures us that the commissions continue to do good so I'd urge you to think about that bigger goal here and to think about a better process for finding appropriate people. Thank you.

So I think that's everybody, let me summarize where I think we are. I wanted to get this in front of the committee early because I think her and Derek indicated that we're concerned about one being in the process of some kind of change. I said before, and I think I'm accurate. I don't think there are 16 affirmative votes for this change. And I don' t think that's going to change over time. And i think the better effort by the administration is to focus on Outreach to gain new members, make sure we have enough alternates as well as regular people. I understood from the budget process initially that planning department had asked for an additional half person to assist The historical planners, and I would certainly support that if that's a possibility. But I think that these have been really strong elements of the fabric of the city and need to be maintained in their current

Arrangements, but strengthened and improved rather than changed. That's just my view. But I think that's, I suspect as I say, anybody disagrees with me, straw poll among committee about how many people are in favor of moving forward with this proposal and we're not going to do it tonight because we have to hold it. We can't act on it, but I just want to just get a sense of the committee. All those who are in favor of carrying forward with the proposal of changing the commission? Anyone? One. Two. Okay, opposed? Four. Wright, which way were you? She was one of the three. So a majority of the committee is not at the moment supportive of this idea.

I think that might be replicated in the full council, you need 16 affirmative vote. So I'm gonna move whole on this. and the other both items. All those in favor say aye.

Aye.

Opposed? Abstention? Okay, thank you all very much for your time and attention.

So, I have a question. We're holding this item. Is Ms. Carman there? Before you go. I meant what I said earlier I suspect everybody assumes I did. So, I'd still like to understand if these groups can come together and find a solution that works for both. Is that your intent?

No, I don't think so. I think that you're talking about a solution. The problem is I hear it they are not enough participants and the meetings and their staffing Those are issues that can be resolved by having enough participants and enough staff. It's not a matter of trying to put people together to find a compromise between one version of the world and another. So no, I don't support that.

I do. Okay, I understand also the vote to hold it is in place but you sir are actually advocating for its I would like to ask for that. But I don't think that's appropriate because what groups get together who also has concerns and challenges like you. And we have three historic districts, four if you want to include the commentary or input from... Thank you very much. Chestnut Hill and it does seem to me that we haven't given this the opportunity to breathe a little bit. We've heard their concerns from the city, we've heard concerns from

I'd like to see if there, I mean, if no one's willing to push on this and try and move it forward as opposed to leave it alone. So be it. It's not a hill that I intend to die on if nobody else is, but I'm just concerned at the process we just went through. What is the hold going to accomplish?

Well, the hold is we can't legally go ahead and do anything until we get or hear from all formerly only commissions. But that's... We haven't gotten a letter from Newtonville or Upper Falls.

All right, so there are two additional letters that we are waiting for. So we received those letters And the goal there would be to change the whole vote to what? Take it forward and come see if there is enough preponderance of people who want to actually find a solution.

What am I missing? We just heard that all three of the existing commissions are not supportive of this initiative.

The way it currently is defined and what I'm saying and I'm sorry, but if I'm missing something someone needs to jump to that point. But what I'm finding very frustrating here is that we just took a vote to hold something right? Two items same topic We're waiting on two letters to come in. Okay, let's say those letters come in and they are I think we just heard from some of their members like they don't like what the city wants to do. Are we done? Like that's the actual question.

I think we're done on a proposal, but it doesn't mean we're down on the process of having an improvement in the recruitment process and improvement in training process The improvement of the ability of commissioners to be supported by the administration, those things can all happen. It's just that the idea of combining the commissions is not going anywhere

Mr. Chairman, why can't we bring the groups together while we're holding so they can discuss the process and potentially improve it?

Well, the question is what is the it? If the it is combining recruitions.

Everything you're just not combining. It's all the issues that were kind of discussed.

That part can certainly go on.

Right, and we should ask Ms. Kerwin-Darragh if she could help lead that.

Yeah, Councilor Kalis I would suggest that's actually another docket item.

I think that needs to be part of the first item but I think the question The question you're asking is, is there a possibility of having a conversation about improving recruitment or improving support without changing the commissions? Is that fair?

Not necessarily. I mean, I suppose that's a possibility. But I think we've also heard, let me... If they're nice. Again, I'm frustrated by the problem. Like, I don't think, okay, we're going to hold the item fine as this committee, fine we'll hold it. I'm now speaking to all the members of the historic commissions and to the city and the representatives here if you want this to succeed on the city side or work better on the city side for the historic commissions, please get together and talk it out. Bring back a better proposal.

Well I think the question is what is the Is there a proposal involving the restructuring as opposed to a proposal, involving the revitalization of the process?

We don't know. They need to get together in a room and decide.

I'm sorry.

People can't just wave a magic wand and all these people are going to start applying again. If the historic commissions have not been doing the recruiting like we heard several people talk about, and the city is saying But they're not applying. Go figure that out. Like, there's a there there is all I'm saying.

There may be indeed a there-there and that I would certainly encourage but we moved to holy items And we are effectively done. But I think your point is that there are things that can be done behind the scenes and offline that will be a benefit to the city. Am I correct?

And the historic district. Yes, and both. So what I'm at, basically, I guess I've said what I need to say because they all heard me. Yeah, I think everybody heard you.

And I hope that that conversation will go forward and I'm perfectly willing to try and help facilitate it just as we're going. All right.

I think what's missing too is we didn't really have the chance to present kind of data and examples We have a document called Meetings Gone Wrong. I think this was placed on the agenda very quickly, so we didn't really have the opportunity to pull together the materials that kind of support this decision. And I think a lot of people will be interested in that and I'm happy to revisit this, explain it with the appropriate audience.

I think that we are folks, at least at the moment, I think we're done for tonight. I mean you expressed your first call on this when I'm pleased. We've got two things left to do.

I just wanted to say that I totally agree with President Oliver and I want to hear the data that Ms. Wewell wanted to present, and it's a pity that it wasn't presented tonight So I hope that work will go on behind the scenes and when it's put back on the agenda, I hope we'll have a better discussion.

Okay, thank you. We have item 193.26, reappointment of Michael Alperin to the Newton Affordable Housing Trust and 194.26 reappointing Judy Weber to the new affordable housing trust All those in favor say aye. Opposed? Abstention?

Okay.

That does it. I think we are adjourned, folks.

Recording stopped.

and so on.

Thank you for watching!