Quincy City Council: November 17, 2025

Good evening. We call the Monday, November 17th, 2025 City Council meeting to order. Madam Clerk, please call the roll.

Councilor Ash. Present. Councilor Campbell. Present. Councilor Devine.

Present.

Councilor DiBona. Present. Harris, Councilor Liang, Councilor McCassey, Councilor Minton, President Cain, nine members.

Thank you, Madam Clerk. Would everyone please stand? observe a moment of silence. Please use this moment as you will. Please turn to the flag for the Pledge of Allegiance.

I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.

Madam Clerk, please read the open meeting law.

Pursuant to the open meeting law, any person may make an audio or video recording of this public meeting or may transmit the meeting through any medium. Attendees are therefore advised that such recordings or transmissions are being made whether perceived or unperceived by those present and deemed acknowledged and permissible.

Thank you very much. First item on the agenda, please.

The Honoring of the North Quincy High Girls Cross Country.

Councilor.

The President recognizes Councilor Campbell. will be honoring the cross-country team tonight.

Thank you, Mr. President. It's a great honor to be up here. You can always tell the sign of a good team based on how punctual they are. And this whole group is here. I think 15 minutes before because Jeff told them to be here 15 minutes beforehand. So that's a great sign. This group of, I want to say the girls because the boys are equally as dedicated over the years, they have really grown. I'm not sure exactly what the numbers are, but there are times where the Quincy North Quincy combined teams really helps and it really pulls people in. And I think that's what's happened here over the years in the fall across country and winter track and the spring track. It's definitely an attraction. in this close to North Quincy Thanksgiving Day. I'm not sure how friendly they are to each other. I hope there's still some animosity. but it's good to have them here and honor them because I wanted to just go through a little bit.

Jeff Hennessy gave me some information here that I thought was really, really special. Close to 1,000 athletes descended on the Rentham Development Center's cross-country course. for the MIA Division I Championships. Three waves divided by school size and the QNQ girls were in wave 1B. racing over a 5K course. The girls placed fourth, qualifying for the Meet of Champions this past Saturday at Fort Devens. My understanding is Maddie McGillicuddy came in 45th. and everybody else that ran all fared much better than expected. And I think that it's really a credit to the work that goes in with Tom Beard, one of the coaches, Jeff Hennessy, one of the coaches, and Percy. Watson, who has helped out over the years. And I know that the entire organization is fueled by the dedication that's shown through the coaching staff and the parent support.

And it's in a great... watching it all develop and come together because this is the type of sport that doesn't get the press and it doesn't get all the people coming in and watching them really develop and become a great team because this is the second Patriot League championship in a row for these girls. And they have not lost a meet since September of 2023. which is incredible. How did you not win in 2023?

If you wanna- We lost by one point.

Oh. I don't know how that works, but maybe you're not as good a coach as I thought you were. Just kidding. So I know it's a whole entire organization. So I wanted to welcome them up, the North Quincy High and girls lacrosse. I'm going to introduce them as they come. And if they could just come up and make their way over to the side. And then we'll try to get a picture afterwards, if possible, Mr. President. Perfect. Awesome. Jeff, do you want to say a couple words before I?

Good evening, everybody. Good evening. Also, I'd like to recognize to my left Carolyn Mulaney, who's been my assistant for 14 years. And Tom. Tom's in his second year, and also Coach Percy Watson, who works with the sprinters during indoor and outdoor. We correctly have not lost a meet since 2023. We lost a situate by one point. and we managed to beat Scituate the next year by one point and this year we shut them out. So we get better. We have 18 girls and 55 boys. It's a program that had 43 total last year. This has gone to 67 or so. Very few seniors, so we expect even more.

From there, we won the Patriot League Championship, got this nice Stanley Cup-sized trophy. So we have to get that engraved and then next year we'll hopefully hang on to it and not have to give it away to another team in the Patriot League. but it's been a great honor to coach this team. I've been coaching cross country between North Quincy and Quincy High since 1988. and many of you here either have run for me or had their children run for me or knew someone that ran for me and it kind of binds us all together. So I think I'll stop there and just say thank you for having us tonight let's honor these girls.

Campbell, I think it must be said, Jeff, you're an institution here in the city of Quincy now. I was a participant in the Quincy Track Club when I was a single-digit-aged Young person. So you've been around for a long time and I want to thank you very much for your service to the city, for the countless kids and families and the work that you do.

Thank you. So if I could, we're going to bring up the girls and if you can just move to the side there as you come up, I'll hand you your award here and then you just make your way over there. But really, congratulations to you all. I'm very proud of you for coming in here and for those that Go to Quincy High School. You're clearly much smarter than the ones that went to North Quincy High School. I'm just kidding. All right. First up, Joanna Chen. Carolyn Zavante.

Julianna Wilkinson, Chloe Chan, Anna Shannara. Grace St. Price. Xiao Tren, Annalise, Nope, not here. We're getting there, though. We can still clap for them, I think, right, yeah? Okay, all right. Marie Boisseron-Canel. Oh, all right, the rest are here, all right. Annettin Sharik.

Jasmine Wu. Piper Yanovich, Isabella Scarnici, Liliana Sanchez. Amelia Slezas. And then we have Zoe Nelson. and she placed 45th. 45th, I think she's been, what?

She literally has placed in 10th and receiving a medal. Maddie McGillicuddy. MVP two years in a row, Maddie McGillicuddy. Congratulations to everybody. This is a very big deal. It's something that you guys should really know that it's done through hard work, and I'm very proud of all of you, and I wish all the best to the rest of you. Ada Cody. All right, thank you very much for coming, and we will take a, well, you do your job, yeah.

Yeah, we'll take a brief recess if the young ladies want to come behind the well here, behind the, whatever the bench, I don't know what that is. Fence, almost, the wooden fence. Come back here, we'll take a picture, and then we'll come back into the meeting. What is it? What do you call that? Rail. Rail, thank you.

You guys might want to line up in two rows, some behind the others.

Thank you for watching!

Thank you.

Thank you for watching!

All right, back to business.

Congratulations, young ladies. Keep making Quincy proud. Madam Clerk, next item on the agenda, please.

Number one, 2025. 124, order adoption of the multi-hazard mitigation plan.

Okay. Presenting to us tonight will be Rob Stevens, Assistant Planning Director. Come on up.

Always good to see the youth sports or the high school sports getting recognized. A lot of the young folks, they're the future, right?

I don't know if there is, I think there isn't a team left for Councilor Campbell to bring up here. He brought them all up this year.

Excellent, excellent. So I'm here tonight to present to you for adoption the latest five-year update to this city's hazard mitigation plan. The Hazard Mitigation Plan is a five-year planning process administered by the Federal Emergency Management Agency or FEMA. It's part of the community rating system that's tied to the National Flood Insurance Program. The community rating system is voluntary. Well, it's a voluntary incentive program. It encourages communities to... to, sorry, it encourages communities to enhance their floodplain management practices that exceed the minimal requirements of the national flood insurance program. Quincy has maintained a seven rating, excuse me.

Quincy has maintained its seven classification rating under the community rating systems 2024 and 2025 certification cycle. that seven rating results in a 15% savings of policies on policies by Quincy homeowners who use national flood insurance. That's a savings of almost a half a million dollars a year. Quincy has the second highest number of policies behind Boston. The number of policies here in the city is 3,447 policies. The number one community is Boston. The third community behind us is the city of Revere. But not all communities do follow the community rating system. For tonight's presentation, you should all have received a binder.

On the inside flap, I gave or provided you information on the community rating system cycle and some more detailed information if you wanted to dive a little bit deeper into that process. Also on the inside flap, you're gonna get FEMA's report card on the hazard mitigation plan. I also tucked that in here. And then the PowerPoint presentation that'll be done is in the back of that binder. So this is the third cycle, five-year cycle I've worked on the hazard mitigation plan. And for this cycle, we've had the benefit of working with the engineering firm of Ty and Bond. We have Dave Murphy, who's here in the audience today. He's the vice president at Ty and Bond. Ty and Bond has done a number of different Coastal Projects in our city. Gabrielle Belfit was a key plan builder. She's not here tonight.

But we do have Kristen Yankowskis. who's here, and she will be making a presentation on the whole hazard mitigation planning process. Before she jumps in, I did want to say a few words. And where I wanted to start is the picture that you're seeing on the screens. For those of you that don't know, that is a picture of C Street back in 2018. We had a wicked storm, a wicked nor'easter, as I think we would refer to. Here, we had wind direction, we had storm surge. We had high amounts of rainfall, and that resulted in nowhere for the water to go. It impacted, I think seawater impacted up to 200 homes.

and when we saw that damage, we worked at the mayor's direction and in partnership with the Affordable Housing Trust Fund Committee to put a million dollars to work on the streets helping folks recover from that storm in 2018. The city ultimately helped 76 households rehome in their houses. and so on. That wasn't the end of our effort to that storm. From that storm, the mayor went ahead and created the Emergency Management Department. and that is now led by Director Allie Sleeman. Allie has been a plan contributor to this hazard mitigation plan. He's engaged with a lot of the emergency management folks in the area, engaged with folks at MEMA.

He, over the last five years, has updated the city SEMP plan, which is the Comprehensive Emergency Management Plan. and he really has enhanced the city's emergency capabilities and communications. And I don't think we've been as prepared before for storms now that we've had that department up and running. The mayor also reorganized the Parks Department and created the Department of Natural Resources. What you folks might not know that I've come to understand is the Parks Department is the steward of many of the city's open spaces. We think of them as just the parks, but there's an awful lot of undeveloped land and marshland out there. and the Department of Natural Resources now has dedicated folks as tree wardens looking at the tree species, doing a lot of planning, checking on diseases. There's also a wetland scientist.

Some of you might have had the chance to work with Julianne Sullivan on the Butler's Pond dredging. She handed off the reins of that. Department or that function to Heather Liss, who's gone and done the sailors' home pond dredging. I think there's a lot more work that's going to follow from that department and I look forward to working with them on that. In fact, one of the plan building elements of this plan tonight was a survey that we did in concert with the update to the city's open space plan. So we got to combine the efforts of both the plans being updated, asking the public, what their priorities are. And in the binder and some of the backup data, we did include the results of that survey.

So from there we look at the Department of Public Works and a large number of the day-to-day work that Public Works does is in this plan and it's in the action plan. Under Commissioner El Grazioso, that office oversees an expansive operation of the city's coastal flood control systems. that's seawalls, that's stormwater. I think one of the more recent best examples that we see from the work out of Public Works would be the Marymount Adam Shore seawall replacement project. That was a pretty exciting project, and that office, we're all trying to help support them in their effort to expand that seawall work as they continue to look at the Manitav seawall project.

Another focus in DPW that came out of this big storm and the last effort on this plan was the creation out of the city engineer's office of a flood indation modeling program. So what we did is we broke down the city into seven major watersheds and the modeling effort further broke down those watersheds into 220 micro watersheds. From there, we analyzed topography and existing infrastructure, and it allows the city to play out a number of weather scenarios. You know, an inch of rainfall in an hour, with a high tide in certain events, what kind of flooding could result as that kind of storm event?

That modeling has been really key with new development coming forward and also key at looking at older areas, whether that's in Quincy Center, whether that's Wollaston area, and all along the coastline. Another plan builder here is Director Casilli from the Health Department. Now, the health department was busy this last five-year cycle with the COVID-19 health emergency, but his team did find the time to attend the workshops. the human effects of heat and cold snaps are real. And his folks really got into the subject matter on heat island effects and the causes and what we could do to mitigate it. They also were looking at some of the air quality issues.

and you know we see especially in the Four River Basin that you know air quality continues to be a concern you know in our city. We challenged the health department to look at some of the invasive species issues, and in particular, kind of like the vector-borne diseases, mosquitoes, ticks. We see, I think, as a community, an uptick in the summer months or late summer of West Nile virus, We know deer populations or coyote populations, ticks could follow those. Lyme's disease became a concern. So we challenged the folks at the health department to keep their eyes and ears open on this subject matter at the state level and be ready to report back on the next five-year update on that subject matter. I also want to point out great leadership from Commissioner Paul Hines.

I recall a story he told me back in that storm of 2018 of the Broadmeadows Marsh School having water crashing up on the back wall. and needing to grab a backhoe and start putting in a barrier there. We know Paul takes this flood readiness serious. There's a number of city assets. all along the coastline. And Paul and his team were great plan builders on this. There is some subject matter that that FEMA wants us to look at earthquakes. It was Paul's team that checked the seismic information on here, so that was a fun exercise with Gary Cuniff and his team. The last two departments I want to acknowledge would be my own, the planning department, and I'm grouping us together with inspectional services. as most folks would figure. We help with the long range planning here in the city.

But we are also part of the management of what I refer to as the big three land use boards. That's going to be Planning Board, Conservation Commission, and the Zoning Board of Appeal. So working with the, whether it's the state building code, working with floodplain zoning ordinances, our two departments are in constant contact. and we obviously participated quite a bit in this planning process with the amount of coastline we have here in the city of Quincy. So with that introduction, I do want to hand it off to Kristen, who will go through the hazard mitigation planning process. And I'll be back at the end with a few closing remarks.

Rob, appreciate the preamble. Just real quick, who's this in the front?

I'm not sure exactly, but that's one of our emergency management personnel. Who is it?

and Michael Matarana.

Oh, great. All right. Wow. Thanks. Here you go. Yeah, we do remember when Housenick turned into an island for a moment in time. Yep. Yep, for sure. Kristen. No, Nick.

Thanks, Rob. I'm Kristen Yankowskis, a planner and project manager at TimeBond, and I'll give a high-level review of the planning process and the contents. So first off, why prepare a hazard mitigation plan? One, this is required to have the city be qualified for hazard mitigation grants through FEMA. It documents historic impacts from natural hazards and then looks at historic and future climate vulnerability. It allows the city to prioritize mitigation projects that meet multiple community goals. As Rob mentioned, it might improve scoring for your community rating system which results in lower flood insurance premiums. Along with that first bullet, it improves the city's chances on obtaining state and federal grants, including CZM grants, MVP grants, many of which are now lumped into the Eco One Stop program that Rob will touch upon at the end of the presentation.

and finally it can serve as a tool to educate the public on natural hazard risk to property life and public health. The HMP planning process can be broken up into four categories. One is to define the potential risk to natural hazards, including impacts of climate change. And those natural hazards are outlined in the state's hazard mitigation plan. We then look at key community assets that are broken up into four different categories and associate vulnerability to risk to those key community assets. We look at mitigation projects from the previous plan and add new projects to improve resiliency in the city. And then we prioritize those projects from low, medium to high. This is an update of the 2019 plan and the reason for this update is to make sure that we are aligned with the 2023 State Hazard Mitigation Plan.

as well as the most recent FEMA policy guidance. We looked at community assets and updated those based on If things were closed, we deleted those assets. We added new assets. And then we looked at the mitigation actions from the previous plan. If those actions were completed, we removed them for the list. and if they were in progress, we moved them to the new list of mitigation actions. And then we also expanded outreach this cycle specifically to vulnerable populations and environmental justice populations. We developed a mission statement with the core team as listed here, and this really guided the entire planning process. and the planning process is as follows. We drafted the HMP. This was then presented to the core team. They reviewed and provided comments then we presented to the planning board and took their comments and opened a 30-day public comment period. This draft was then submitted to MEMA for their review. Their comments were incorporated.

The draft was then sent to FEMA. FEMA reviewed. they sent back comments we addressed those comments and then this is the last step today's meeting is the last step where the community must vote to approve the final plan once this final plan is approved will send documentation of that vote to FEMA and the final approval will be issued. Plan improvements in 2025. As mentioned, we looked at the natural hazard risks in the Massachusetts state plan and made sure that we were up to date with that. The 2023 plan added a few new hazards, including changes to groundwater. We incorporated up-to-date climate change data, including MCFRM data, which I'll talk a little bit more about in a bit. We evaluated and added community assets in the four major categories. We looked at recent storm events since the last planning cycle and updated our vulnerability considerations.

We expanded the mitigation actions, incorporated success stories, and slightly tweaked the goals and objectives. Now that we've covered the planning process and updates we've made, I'll dive into the specifics, starting with the natural hazard risk assessment. We broke up the plan into distinct planning areas as seen here. Geographically based mapping and analysis provides citywide comparison of flooding areas, community assets at risk, and vulnerability to natural hazards. We added two historical flood events during this planning period, including the January 2022 snowstorm and Hurricane Lee in 2023. The greatest flood risks for the city remain pretty consistent to the 2019 plan. Coastal and inland flooding, coastal erosion, and severe winter weather such as nor'easters.

This is a summary of hazard events statewide since 2018, including four presidential disaster declarations, three involving severe winter storm and flooding events, and the COVID-19 pandemic. We've also seen 20 coastal flooding events, 19 tornadoes, and many temperature warnings. This is consistent with the natural hazards that the core team identified. We looked at all the hazards in the state plan and then through a process that included evaluating how these natural events threaten lives, property, and other assets. The core team evaluated the most considered natural hazards in the city. So that include coastal erosion, coastal flooding and storm surge, other severe weather, winter storms, and inland flooding. Not to say that these other natural hazards don't exist in the city, but the ones starred are the most imminent threats.

Talking a little bit about the National Flood Insurance Program, the frequency and location of flood hazard events in the city can be estimated based on the number of reported loss occurrences or repetitive loss properties and from local knowledge of flood hazard areas as well. The city ranks fifth highest in the state with repetitive loss claims only behind Scituate, Revere, Hull, and Marshfield. This is a quick review of the repetitive loss data, and it shows that flooding occurs most often in the low-lying areas along the coast and also along Furnace Brook. This overlaps pretty nicely with the areas of flooding concerns. These areas of flooding concerns were mostly identified through local knowledge. Coastal storms threaten up and down of Quincy's coastline and nor'easters are the biggest threat due to north and east facing shorelines.

Next, the city DPW embarked on a citywide drainage and inundation modeling program to help understand where these future inland flooding might occur. and the frequent flooding occurs even during minor storms, reaches up to four feet during major events. This whole project was actually one of the of mitigation actions that was listed as high priority in the 2019 HMP. So you can see how mitigation actions from that plan have come to life. New this year, we looked at Massachusetts Coast Flood Risk Model or MCFRM data to assess vulnerability to our key assets. This model is an improvement upon models that we've used in the past. It's more dynamic and includes the complex process of storm modeling. It lets us look at flood probabilities in the current planning horizon or 2030, mid planning horizon 2050, and as far into the future as 2070.

So here's an example of the 2030 flood probability using this MCFRM data. You can see that this data was overlaid with critical community assets, and this can be used as a tool for planning in the city. Just quickly touching upon climate change projections, we continue to leverage resilient mass for most of our climate change projections. And just to touch on a few briefly, we're expecting an increase of temperatures between 5.9 to 7.9 degrees Fahrenheit by 2050 we're looking at 12 to 42 percent more winter precipitation such as nor'easters and by 2070 oh sorry and by 2070 we're looking at an increase of severe weather across the board.

So getting into that community asset inventory, we have inventoried, I think, over 300 community assets that fall into these four categories that were determined by FEMA, people, built environment, natural environment, and economy. People contains most of your vulnerable populations and societal assets. Built environment is critical facilities and infrastructure for public health and safety. Natural Environment are things like beaches that reduce magnitude of hazard impact and increase resiliency. And economy are those primary economic sectors and commercial centers. Here's a map of the 370 identified community assets in the city, all within those seven geographic planning areas. and we mapped all of these community assets as well as these flood probabilities into an online dashboard. It's very interactive.

You can zoom in and out, see where all of these critical facilities lie and what they're and the probability for flooding is in 2030, 2050 and 2070. It serves as a great planning tool for the city. So now moving on to the vulnerability assessment. After identifying the community assets, the vulnerability assessment evaluated what properties were impacted by hurricanes, earthquakes, and flooding using FEMA database information. A more detailed exposure assessment was completed for inland and coastal flooding, including future flooding impacts. Existing flood risk was determined using the most recent 100-year floodplain maps. As you can see in these graphics, over 20% of Quincy developed land is in flood hazard area, 13% of which is coastal and 7% of which is inland. This inland property value is nearly $0.63 billion, and the coastal property value is almost $4 billion.

and geographically most inland flooding occurs in that Furness Brook area and most of the coastal flooding occurs in the Marymount Blacks Creek area. The potential for citywide flooding due to sea level rise was evaluated using that MCFRM data to determine flood inundation probabilities with climate change. and with sea level rise. The results from the model were selected for 2030 to represent current conditions, 2050 to represent mid-century conditions, and 2070 to represent late century flood probabilities. the probability for parcel impacted by floods due to future climate change conditions are summarized in a table of the plan. This is just a quick snapshot. We reviewed the data and the graphics for future flood risk for every community asset and every historic property in the city.

and as a result, out of those 370 community assets, 95 of those locations are considered to be essential facilities. And that includes things like cold storage, communication, utilities, Fire and Police Stations, Medical Service, Pump Stations, things of that nature. And based on our GIS mapping, 25 of those critical essential facilities are currently within FEMA flood hazard zones. and looking at future risk, 30% have some probability of flooding by 2030. When we get to 2050, that increases to 38%. And by 2070, we're looking at over 40% of essential facilities being within those FEMA hazard zones. and to evaluate this risk more specifically 8% of essential facility properties have a 50 to 100% chance of flood exposure by 2030 and 14% of sites have a 50 to 100% chance of flood exposure by 2050.

Looking specifically at historic properties, there's over 1,400 historic properties located in the city according to the Mass Historic Commission inventory. You can see that in the figure here. and using GIS mapping again, we overlaid flood exposure using MCFRM on top of those historic properties. And we saw that 193 properties are at risk of coastal flooding by 2030. that increases to 23% by 2050, and by 2070, we're up to 77%. Now moving on to the mitigation strategy, which is really the meat of the plan. That includes the resiliency vision for the city. It's looking at near, mid, and long-term changes that will reduce future climate change impacts.

it's taking all of this data and coming up with a list of projects that are prioritized from high, medium and low to guide the city in this planning horizon for projects that will help keep the city resilient. So the mitigation strategy involved a few steps. First was looking at our goals and objectives, which we updated. And then we had a list of mitigation projects, some of which were carried over from the 2019 plan and some of which are new for the 2025 plan. We have 36 total mitigation actions, 20 of which are labeled as high priority, 10 as medium, and six as low, which shows that the planning team really focused on including those high priority and feasible actions into the plan. and the last step of the mitigation strategy is to adopt and implement, identify city departments that can take charge of those mitigation actions, identify funding sources so that these mitigation strategies become a reality.

I won't include all of the mitigation actions. Those can all be found in the plan. But here are a few that we can highlight. The team identified a need for improvement to emergency generators. So that's a short term high priority action within the next year. Looking at pumps to augment DPW's ability to respond to floods, that's more of a two plus year. And a more longer term high priority project would be SALT. Marsh Restoration. Again, a full list can be found in the plan. So to wrap up my presentation, this city council meeting is the final step to meet that public participation requirement of the HMP process. and if city council votes to adopt the plan tonight, this will result in a FEMA approved HMP and enable the city to receive federal HMP grant funds. Finally, here's a list of city and tie and bond contacts. And if anyone has any questions, I can take them now.

And otherwise, I'll hand it back over to Rob.

Thank you very much.

Thank you.

Any questions? President recognizes Councilor Campbell.

Yeah, I just said thank you, Mr. President. I just had just a quick question. You know, with the corrections that will go on with, you know, seawalls and so forth, I got to believe there's some displacement and sending it in other directions. Is there a way to manage that or predict that in any way, shape or form as far as what will happen if we fix one thing? Does it create a problem somewhere else?

Yeah, like the cascading effect of... Yeah, that's it. Yeah, I think that's somewhat included in the plan, but the mitigation actions that we include are more one-off, not necessarily tied to other actions. They're more standalone actions, but... recognizing that things are very interconnected and the plan is supposed to live as more of a living document. It's not like this is it for the next five years. This can be revisited. once a year, ideally, and be updated accordingly, depending on how projects are completed or how they evolve.

And is there any coordination with surrounding communities, say, you know, Weymouth, Braintree, even Boston, you know,

Yeah.

You do? Okay. All right. Yeah. No. Okay. Great. Thank you very much.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you, Councilor Campbell. The President recognizes Councilor Devona.

Thank you, Mr. President. Thank you for your presentation. I'm happy that we have something that's at the city council level that's very, very good. Just going back on time, 2018 storms, flooding, Islands, Housenac, that particular area. Just getting back on the inception of the Emergency Management Department with new Ali Sleeman, the director, over the years. I've worked collaboratively with that department on just what are we going to do and just trying to have a better understanding as an at-large Councillor what would we do if we were in a situation like we are in 2018. Over the years, especially last year, I was able to go out to Worcester and they had a Massachusetts State Emergency Response Commission Conference. I was able to go with Emergency Management Director Allie Sleeman. which was very informative.

And just over the years, just working with him, and I know some of you I've talked to offline, some of the things we did together that he did. And I came in on just meeting with him, doing lunches, going to his office. Some of the things I just wanted to point out that he did do with this collaboration with all of you guys is the Comprehensive Emergency Management Plan, the CEMP, the City Sheltering and Mass Care Operations Plan. the city evacuation plan, hazardous materials emergency response plan, and the Weymouth compressor station contingency plan, those five plans he kind of put in place in conjunction with all of you guys' hard work. Just wanted to note that, you know, how important that department is for what you guys also do in collaboration. I think it's a big undertaking when you have a particular flooding or storm that comes surging towards us.

A few years ago, I asked when we had a couple of presentations and you may be able to answer a little bit better than me because it's very technical. I watched a special on 60 Minutes, and they talked about having these mechanism, high-tech style machinery, I guess I could call, in the water, where it kind of, it kind of databased when the storms were coming and had a better insight of saying, okay, we're within a 48-hour period, we're within a 72-hour period, we're within 24 hours. And they had these mechanisms in the water that basically were able to mitigate the surges on the coastal lines. It just blew me away. I've asked about it up here. financially, how do you tackle something like that and get it going? And I asked about maybe doing a dual or triple or quad with other towns and cities.

Boston, and particularly being the border to the north of us, could measure out most of the funding for it. I also look at places like Revere and Winthrop and all the coastal towns, even Weymouth on the south side. all the way down to Cohassets and Situates. You hear about it all the time when they have these surges. all these houses are going into the water. And you see it all over the United States, but particularly here in that coast. Is there any way that we could, I guess team up with or doing collaboration with other towns or cities, particularly Boston. Boston, their harbor, their coastal town, is to maybe get involved in a grant that goes nationally to FEMA or MEMA or whatever the case may be and share the load with them through grant funding. So when we do, it's not, if we do, it's when we do have that next storm and that surge comes, how do we mitigate that?

Is there anything in the works with all of you folks? Was there any talk with Boston on whether we could do this type of activity?

Yeah, I don't think there was any talk of that in terms of this planning exercise, but Rob is gonna talk a little bit about grant opportunities that are coming up and communities team up all the time to apply for these type of funding opportunities.

I'd appreciate it because this is, from my point of view, is a proactive approach. I'm glad that we did reactively with 2018 and that storm surge. but everybody I talked to around this particular area, especially when this picture of C Street, I went and talked to the folks out there. They said, listen, this happens like every 10 years. It started in 1978 with the blizzard of 78. in particular, almost every 10 years, they get hit in this particular area. Now, when we did the seawalls right now, we're up two feet. We still have room for another two feet. Obviously, that's... something we can work on down in the down the road. Obviously we've talked about outflow pipes, you know, proper pumping stations, all this stuff. for mitigation purposes to get the water back over into the ocean. But it's something to consider. You folks are more specialized in this with me than I am. But I lived this and I was out there myself walking in this type of water with this firefighter was out there with too.

So I just moving forward into the next, we're going into the end of 2025, we're going into 2026 is, if and when this is going to happen. This happened in January also of 18, and then it happened again very heavy in March of 18. So we're going into that time period of of the months, January and March. So we're going into it now. And not to forget, that also could have caused flooding, which didn't. It's 2015 when we had 111 inches of snow. Where do we put the snow? It just piled up within a time frame of like a month and a half of that much snow. That's another thing to consider when that's out in the city and you can't put it anywhere and you're taking it and putting it somewhere else on the street. the shipyard or whatever the case may be but that can melt and when it melts it can cause a huge amount of flood so these are just things to kind of put at you

you guys are more of the specialists you guys have been working on this for quite a while but it's just what I've been hearing out there from the residents in the city and what I might put in view of moving forward so I want to thank you guys for coming in maybe Mrs. Stevens can help out with some of the the questions that I did have and the thought process that I have moving forward. Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. President. The President recognizes Councilor Liang.

Thank you, Mr. President. I just want to first say thank you to everyone who was involved on this plan, not just for all of the work that you did in putting this together, but obviously the work that you still have to do day to day. across the city in your sort of regular jobs in your departments. And so I know this is a part of it, but this is a behemoth of an effort, obviously across many, many people in many different departments and partnerships. So thank you so much for all your hard work. I am very interested in the community engagement aspect of this and I do see here that you had multiple meetings working with a local nonprofit to do bilingual community meetings which really excites me. and I do see some recommendations in here that there are future partnerships that you all are seeking as well to continue the education piece of this, which is great. And in the booklet that you presented to us, some information about like different power demands that you're going to be increasing as certain shelters and then a list of all those shelters as well. I need to be honest, I didn't know that these were the shelters and then there's some information in here as well from

let me see some of the recommendations about some improvements that you all want to provide to residents and business owners to make on their own properties. So there's a lot of education I feel like in here, even for me, as a resident in the city that is really helpful. So I'm gonna take this booklet home and sort of like, you know, take up bits and pieces that I think could be helpful just as a homeowner, as a resident, and I'd love to share it with folks around me. again this is all really sort of a question about community engagement once this is approved and we have the final plan again I know that there's some efforts already listed out that you're going to continue working with community partners but for all of the residents across the city. Is there going to be a mailer that goes out? Is something really quick and easy that we can put into our drawer or stick up on our fridge, similar to the household waste disposal information that gets sent out? sort of high-level overview of here are the emergency shelters, here are the emergency numbers, and here are some recommendations on how you can protect your home during

any heat emergencies or like high winds, flooding, et cetera that we can also take and try to improve and protect our homes because you all are doing the work, right? And obviously we're funding capital improvements up here. We're doing everything we can, it's a team effort, right? And so what kind of information will be sent out to homeowners afterwards that they can then take initiatives to sort of support the work that you all are doing in the city?

Yeah, that's a great point, and I'll defer to Rob for that one. Okay, great. Thank you. Thank you.

Thanks, Councilor Liang.

Thank you all.

Thank you, Kristen. That was a great job. I greatly appreciate it. Maybe I should have been up behind the microphone for the Q&A, but as I sat there and listened to the presentation, It struck me that we had the first kickoff meeting in January of 2024. That was close to two years ago. It's just a very long, laborious process when you have to engage with the federal government. But we didn't stop and wait for FEMA to come back and say the plan is approved. In fact, the mayor saw to it to go ahead and and I want to recognize her. She's here with us tonight. Margaret is on board as the Director of Coastal Resilience.

and this is a piece out of the mayor's office where she can now cross over the different departments and start helping on some of those public outreach elements. start engaging with the departments to make sure we stay on this because it is a whole host of action items. And it's a full-court press. It's 24-7. That nor'easter could happen next week again. there is an urgency that I felt since 2018. Heck, I even go back to the 2010 floods where we flooded out by the highway. but Margaret has definitely added some capacity here in the last months. In fact, she has me on a bus tour next week with folks from Coastal Zone Management. She's got them coming down to Quincy. We're starting at the Senior Center. We're going up through Marina Bay, down to Ponsett. We're going to be down at the shipyard. So we're going to bring CZM officials here. as well.

And there's another department that's different that is going to be helpful moving forward. And that would be the department run by Jim Scribby, which is the grants coordinator department. And I'll tell you why that's important with my last slide. I do have a couple of more. I do want to read this announcement. It was released November 6 with just a week and a half ago from Governor Healey. The Haley-Driscoll administration on November 6 released its comprehensive statewide strategy to help coastal communities protect residents, strengthen local infrastructure, and safeguard the state's natural resources. develop with direct input from local officials, residents, and regional partners. The final resilient coast plan provides practical community-driven steps to prepare for the future storms, flooding, sea level rise, and erosion.

When we invest in stronger roads, flood protections, and coastal restoration, we're not just preventing damage, Governor Maura Healey said in a prepared statement, we're protecting livelihoods. So a week and a half ago, the state finished its coastal resilience plan and sent that out into the public. Having Margaret on board now is going to help me read through that plan and understand where the state's priorities are going. What we can see here on this image is they've created 15 coastal resilience districts. They're trying to do long-range planning out to 50 years. They're focusing on the coastal issues. One issue that I mentioned earlier in my remarks on public works is the inland flooding modeling. they clearly have that in a future phase, the inland flooding. So the sea level rise is issue one.

Issue 1A is that rainfall and the conveyance of stormwater as it impacts our city. as we look a little bit closer to where Quincy's grouped, they have grouped us both the Neponset and the Weir Watershed. So it's a little piece of Boston. We've got Milton. will be joined with Quincy, Braintree, Weymouth, Hingham, Hull, and even a little bit of Cohasset. And I assume moving forward, some of the inland communities that are in the watershed would be added as well. So this goes to some of the answers. We now have a planning, a state planning district to now work within with our neighbors, community neighbors. as well as our community stakeholders in Quincy and in those other communities. And the other piece the governor's office has initiated is this new eco one-stop grant portal.

So about five years ago, they have bundled together a number of economic and infrastructure grants into the Community One Stop Grant Portal, which put it on a yearly cycle. Quincy's been very successful in the Mass Works program. We're in the inauguration year for the ECO One Stop grant portal. They asked for four expressions of interest and to show where we are, we submitted five. expressions of interest. So we are engaged. We're engaged at the local level with tie and bond, understanding our community, and we're engaged with our state and regional partners on this issue. With that, I would take any more questions and look forward to hopefully an endorsement of the most recent five-year update to the hazard mitigation plan. Thank you.

Not seeing any additional questions, happy to entertain a motion. Motion to approve, made by Councilor Lange, seconded by Councilor Devine. Madam Clerk, please call the roll.

Ash, Campbell, Devine, DiBona, Harris, Liang, McCarthy, Minton, Cain. Nine members.

Rob and team, thank you very much. Thank you. You can see how much work you've done. I know that this document is available on the planning department's website. I'll also ask for the clerk to put this on the councilor's individual web pages so that people can...

That would be a slight correction, Council President. It would be under the residents tab under the front page of the city's website. Yep, the QuincyMA.gov. There's a number of drop-down menus across the top. Under residents, it'll be under multi-hazard mitigation plan. Great. Thank you very much. Thank you all.

Madam Clerk, next item, please.

Number two, 2025-125, Order Housing Development Incentive Program, TIE Agreement, 126 Granite Street Trust.

The President recognizes the Mayor's representative, Mr. Walker.

and through you Mr. President, thank you very much. We'll delay slightly while Ms. Manning provides the clicker. Thank you. Before you tonight, as we've discussed, is the 126 Granite Street tax increment exemption incentive agreement. I will give a brief overview of the program. the state program, the housing development incentive program, coupled together with the TIE agreement that's before the body tonight. Deputy Planning Director Rob Stevens will make a second appearance before the body this evening, give a brief overview of the permitted project at 126 Granite Street, which everyone will know as the former Grossman's Lumberyard, and today a Retail Plaza Director of Community Development, Sean Glennon, will provide a bit of a synopsis of the overall

HDIP program, the Housing Development Incentive Program, and where this would compare to other programs across the state similarly. and Chief Assessor John Rowland will provide the tax schedule that we have proposed here. What is before the body tonight achieves three primary goals. Tax Growth, Housing Creation, and Class A Retail. Those things are interrelated. They meet this body and the mayor's vision for development in the downtown, and they don't happen necessarily without being all together. This state program provides incentives for the developer that provide state tax credits. As part of those state tax credits requires a local incentive as well. and when I say incentive, what you'll see as we go forward, the incentive is to provide and to promote the investment.

It's not a reduction in taxes, it's not less taxes, it is always exponentially more taxes than the city is receiving at the site right now. The original concept, that we had talked about several months ago. It was before this body. We were looking to make a parking garage work, some underground parking upwards of the cost of about $10 million. We've reworked that with the developer. The developer went back to the drawing board understanding from a number of the conversations that we've had and the mayor's had with this body that the math just wasn't going to work for that kind of incentive. So they went back to the drawing board. recalibrated the parking and

believe they are in a place based on this minor incentive that we can still get to where we want to be as a community with Whole Foods or like Calva Retail for that site coupled together with the housing development. in addition to the additional taxes that I'm about to review quickly. This project entails $4 million plus in fees, including building permits and affordable housing contributions. Again, so that's $4 million just in getting the project off the ground. Moving on to the schedule, Mr. Rowland will get into that in a little bit, a little bit more detail. But under this plan, over the course of the next 20 years, it's $32.4 million in taxes. Without any development on the site, $8.9 million in taxes.

That's over the 20-year life of the agreement, $23.47 million in new taxes. That's added growth. In the first year, it's $607,000 in additional taxes after the $100,000 or so reduction. So again, that reduction that we're offering to make this project work is off of the increase in taxes. And you'll see that the reduction of taxes ranges between $100,000 and $140,000 a year over 13 years. There's no reduction in the last 20 years. Typically, these are 20-year agreements. I'll be available to answer any questions when we get through the presentation, but I'll hand it over to Rob.

Good evening, councillors, again. So the 5674 and 126 Granite Street development, that also includes the Burger King parcel as we know it today. The project was before us last year. The planning board approved it in November of 2024 under the Quincy Center zoning districts. The new project consists of 256 residential units with 53,200 square feet of commercial space. How that commercial space is broken down is approximately 42,000 square feet for a anchor retail tenant. another 3,000 square feet for a smaller retail tenant and approximately 8,000 square feet for office.

that development would be supported by 517 surface and structured parking spaces. So that fit within the Quincy Center zoning districts. Part of the Planning Board's decision, the project would need to comply with the Inclusionary Zoning Ordinance, so that is the City of Quincy local ordinance. It's 10% of the units or a fee in lieu. The project would also need to comply with the public art and placemaking ordinance. And the project did contribute $26,000 for a road safety audit of Bergen Parkway as it heads to the Hannon Parkway intersection. The project would also be required to construct new sidewalks along Granite Street and Bergen Parkway.

Tree Line Sidewalks, I might add, in line with the downtown redevelopment guidelines. Here is an overview shot of the site. To the north is headed towards the right. That would be where the former or the current Burger King restaurant sits. They envision a small retailer at that corner. The large box would be a single story commercial box for an anchor tenant. That would be surface parking in this image to the top and to the right. What is off on the left, which would be along the Granite Street connector roadway, would be the parking at ground level with residential above, and that would be the 256 units. As you can see, you can pick up, particularly on Granite Street, we've got tree-lined sidewalks.

There's also some public space elements up at the intersection with Granite and Bergen. Here is a rendition of what the new development is going to look like. This is sort of standing with the Star Market site behind you, looking into probably where the Boston market is now. Thank you very much. Folks in cars will be able to drive through into the surface parking area, which would be the primary parking spot for the commercial tenant. Here's another view from the application. Again, the top image is now you're flying a little bit like a bird. But we're looking down. We're looking north. at that Granite Street side.

We believe that front edge with Granite Street and the Granite Street connector would be a first floor office at that corner, bringing some liveliness there. in that center image you can see that alleyway that sort of is across from the current star market curb cut so we see some potential roadway improvements in there as that second site gets looked at. The picture on the bottom is, where do we got that? That's being taken from the east across Bergen Parkway looking back again to the northwest. You can see how the single story commercial is up on the right side there. And I think we've got, okay, that was it on the... Ariels.

So another report I wanted to present to this board is the city has been successful in securing a $2.7 million MassWorks grant. This is for the intersection of Granite Street and Bergen Parkway itself. that intersection. We're also looking down Granite Street as it intersects with the Whitwell and planning improvements there as well. and that project is currently under design. We feel construction most likely will begin in 2026. So that would summarize the review the planning board did on the project, and I'm going to hand it over to Sean to talk a little bit more about the HDIP program. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Stevens. Good evening, Councilors. Through you, Mr. President. First, I'm compelled to say that I was a former track star under the direction of Coach Hennessy, and I want to wish him and the team Congratulations tonight. The Massachusetts Housing Development Incentive Program provides tax incentives to developers to build market rate housing in the state's 26 gateway cities. The goal is to stimulate residential growth, increase housing stock diversity, support economic development, and stabilize neighborhoods. The program offers a local real estate tax exemption on the new or rehabilitated property value increase and provides state tax credits for qualified project expenses. To emphasize that last point, as Mr. Walker alluded to, the tax exemption only applies to the value increase of the redevelopment. And therefore, even when maximum exemptions are given, HDIP projects generate property tax revenue at an amount equal to or more than their pre-HDIP usage.

The City of Quincy adopted HDIP in 2017 with the creation of Quincy's first HD zone in Quincy Point, consisting of four contiguous parcels on East Howard Street and Winter Street. the East Howard Street parcels were redeveloped to create what is now the Watson, 140 units of primarily workforce and market rate housing. There was a small affordable housing component to the project and as such my division was involved with some of the research and analysis that went into the HD plan. The tie agreement for that project, as illustrated on this slide, started with an 80% exemption for the first five years, a 67% exemption for the following three years, A 59% exemption for one year and a 57% exemption for the final year.

the 10-year tie agreement on that project had an average yearly exemption of 71.7% and to date over the first seven and a half years of the tie has generated over, or excuse me, $170,000 over and above what the city would have collected if the property remained an abandoned eyesore. And of course, that figure will only continue to increase dramatically as the exemption decreases and ultimately expires over the next two and a half years. and researching tie agreements in other gateway cities that have similarities to Quincy, I came across one tie agreement in Malden and three in New Bedford. as illustrated on this same slide in the final columns, all four of those tie agreements had terms between 10 and 20 years and exemptions ranged between 10 and 100%, with the average term being 15 years and the average yearly exemption coming in at 58%. By contrast, the tie agreement before you tonight has a term of only 13 years and has an average yearly exemption of just 10.4%.

making it two years shorter and much more economically advantageous for the city than any of the other tie agreements I've researched for this presentation. And with that, Mr. President, I would yield to Assessor Roland.

Thank you, Sean. This development projects to generate over $32 million in tax revenue over 20 years of this housing development incentive. With this development a projected $23 million in additional tax revenue will be seen over the parcel as is today. In return, a local incentive of $1.5 million in scheduled tax abatements across 13 out of the 20 years of this agreement. Mind you, the city will recapture the $1.5 million in between years two and three of this schedule agreement based on our projections. This averages out to a 5.25% abatement throughout the term of the 20 years.

Typically mixed-use development of this size has a ratio of 90% residential, 10% commercial, 95% residential, 5% commercial. This plan for this development has a ratio of closer to 80-20, 80% residential, 20% commercial. This incentive allows the developer to maintain a sizable commercial footprint on this parcel, which I think is very important as the Chairman of the Board of Assessors. Thank you.

Thank you very much. Any questions for my colleagues? The President recognizes Councilor Liang.

This might be a question for Rob. I just actually want to start by saying that I am reading through this. I appreciate that there's only so much area left in Quincy where there's density of this, I think, both retail and residential that can be built. And somebody who rented and then bought and then rented is looking to buy again. I know market rate isn't even, I mean, it's like the minimum, right? Everything right now is above because I think demand is making it so. And so I appreciate that there is initiative through the state's executive office of housing and livable communities to work with municipalities and private developers to incentivize an increase in housing, but particularly to not enforce, but kind of say, you know, there is this incentive. However, you do need to make sure that it remains market rate. And it looks like off of this, it would be, you know a 20-year standard at this point where they'd have to make all of these units market rate not above not related to demands but saying you know over the course of 20 years even though the incentive is only 13 years over 20 years they're going to make sure that all these units are market rate correct

That is correct, yeah.

Okay. That's fantastic. The other thing that I noticed in here that I really appreciate is the 50,000 square feet of retail. The amount of times that we've looked at projects that, again, I know residential is in higher demand than commercial, especially for the last five years it's it's much more difficult to get developers to work with retailers especially at that size to say yeah let's build out commercial of sort of any type of industry i know that we're you know typically looking at like smaller footprints for 3,000 square feet type retail commercial. And you know me from every time I'm coming and talking to you, especially you and your office. Any type of commercial real estate, or any type of commercial footprint, I'll take always. And to see 50,000 square feet is so much more significant than what we've seen on other projects. and my question to you is really to see like, this is one of the biggest commercial sort of footprints that has come before us at this point, right, in this area.

Correct, in Quincy Center, for sure.

Right, and again, I think that's where density needs to stay, right? Like, I mean, especially with the amount of traffic that flows in and out of our main arteries, I think this, like, I'm thinking geographically across the city, like, where else are we ever going to see a project come in front of us to say, yes, there's an incentive for housing to keep a market rate, and on top of that, we're committing to 50,000 square feet of retail, right? Not 10,000, you know, not... 5,000, but 50,000. This would be one of the biggest commercial additions to our tax base right now, right?

Correct. Okay. Yes. You know, everyone wants to build housing.

Yeah.

I mean, again, I... And just housing.

I just want to make sure because again I'm looking at this number and usually when these numbers come in front of us they're significantly smaller right it's again five thousand ten thousand maybe twenty thousand square feet of retail but even then that was like oh well when it came down to it again the demand just wasn't there so we had to reduce it right and so coming in here and looking at the increase in taxes, just in, yes, the residential piece, but looking long term to secure 50,000 square feet of retail in our city right now is something that I can't turn away from, right? I've been working trying to find creative ways to increase our commercial tax base to offset our residential tax base for years and years and years. And adding 50,000 square feet to our tax roll is not something I can turn away from. And so with that, I'd like to make a motion to approve.

Thank you, Councilor Liang.

Thank you. On the motion.

Second. Second. Councilor Devine on the motion. The President recognizes Councilor Ash.

Thank you. Thank you, Mr. President. Thank you for the presentation. We reviewed the The agreement, of course, and some of the coverage in the news articles over the weekend on this TIE in front of us. I do have a few questions. So it's my understanding that what we're really after as a municipality is the state incentive or the state tax break or incentive that will come down the pike should we give a little bit on the local level. Is that correct?

through you, Mr. President, yeah. Yes, Councilor, absolutely. The HDIP program to qualify for the state incentives there needs to be an agreement of some kind that's before you tonight. There needs to be some local buy-in. There needs to be some local incentive. And what we did was try incredibly hard over the last several months working with are partners to get that number down to where it would work for them potentially to finance. and it would work for this body in terms of the minimum amount over the course of a certain amount of time and we think we found a pretty good sweet spot in terms of where we are. But yes, absolutely, that state tax incentive is worth potentially $3 or $4 million. This tax incentive on the local end is less than half of that. And what's been made clear to us from the folks on the private side is that that really is

where they're gonna go after the financing is to use those state tax credits and they believe that they're hopeful that the markets will see that they have that benefit and then they will be able to finance this project.

if for some reason, if this application or this TIE is sent up, to the appropriate departments within the state, and the state declines that application. And the verbiage, I may be looking for some synonyms here, should this agreement not substantiate the state tax incentive? are we still providing this tax incentive to the developer?

No, no, Councilor, through you again, Mr. President. The state tax credits are necessary for the project to win financing. if the project doesn't get financing, we do not have a project and we do not have this agreement. The two things are married together.

it's my understanding that this percentage abatement is on the increase in the assessed value, correct? That is correct. There is some language in the HDIP, the statute, and some of the related materials that, and I believe Director Glennon alluded to the 26 gateway cities in the state. I know we've talked before when we were considering this project or maybe some of the pre-planning to this particular agreement in front of us. but the language related to, say, a gateway municipality that would similarly it'd be the same premise and I just want to make sure that I'm kind of making it simple enough for the folks at home that are interested in this where if

if for say for any reason we don't qualify if this TIE is sent up to the state level and if we don't qualify for any of for the incentives, whether it be because of the Gateway City designation or just because there are other municipalities, I think, qualifying or trying to qualify for the same funds. This comes back and it's out of our control. And again, we have not... provided any of these incentives should all of those boxes be checked at the state level?

Correct. Is that right? Yes, this plan is approvable only by EOLC, HLC. If it's not approved by the state authority, there is no plan, there is no project.

I think the last time the city that we... applied for and provided a TIE for one of these projects. That was the Watson 2017, is that right?

Correct.

you know one of the questions will be and I know one of the differing characteristics between the Watson project and the project in front of us is going to be that I believe the Watson the affordable housing units were built in the building I know there that the estimated contribution to the affordable housing trust fund on this, I believe is 2.6 million. It has that, have been explored to build the affordable units in this building, or is it the city's administration's position that that money is better off in the fund to be utilized by other entities? or is that not even, has not even been discussed yet?

That has not. in the background material that I provided to the body that the estimated total of the contribution in lieu of the units to the building would be in that ballpark of $2.6 million. That's not to say that it's definitive that it's going to be a payment in lieu of. I think history will show that developers have chosen the payment in lieu of on a regular, more frequent basis, far more frequent basis than the actual construction of the units within any given development. From the city's perspective, We like it both ways. The cash value is incredibly useful. There are a number of projects that the city can get done. with our partner Chodos, the city on its own. We make no real distinction between the two things.

I see you know the the the statute when it comes to TIEs and how they relate to this process and HDIP programs, it states that the municipality should have some incentive have been given to the developer for, I think it's over between five and 20 years, and the lowest amount of incentive have we looked at whether it makes more sense to take that money off of the top and then make make the agreement shorter or the tax incentive shorter as opposed to the 13 years if it was just five but came out to the same Number, I guess I'm just looking to see if that was explored at all as well.

Through you, Mr. President, it was. And our sense on the negotiation was get it out of the way as soon as possible. get full tax load, full tax revenue as soon as possible. And this is the schedule that gets to that goal, getting to the same number of that 5.25%, again, So this is a little bit different than some other HDIPs as well because it has that commercial component to it. tax abatement requirement from the state is a minimum of 10% for a minimum of five years. Now, a little bit longer than the five years here, but if you look at and where we are overall in the tax abatement here, we're just over 5%. So we're on an overall abatement relative to a number of these other HDIP projects, which probably We would have to double check on that, how much of it is commercial, how much of it is not.

But my sense is that primarily like the Watson, folks that are developing housing, retail, and especially retail of this size and this caliber that we're looking for, is not generally part of these programs. And again, that's sort of the unicorn of this particular project and why we've worked so hard to get to a number that works to make it finances, has a vested interest in maintaining and expanding and creating the kind of retail that we believe is going to happen at this site in addition to the creation of housing.

Thank you. And a few more questions here. Should this not go forward and the body doesn't adopt it, what is the potential plan or what is the backup plan for the property or for that site because I know that there's been there's some you know the planning board has reviewed plans already and my question is what would what would the backup be, I guess? Where do we stand if this isn't considered?

To some degree, Council, this is the plan B. Originally, when we talked in the spring, as I mentioned in my opening, that we were looking at potentially creating additional parking on-site and helping to facilitate and finance that parking through an exemption. Again, the developers recalibrated, moving some things around. will try some different things. There's no guarantee at this point that the project is financeable with the market but there is no, my sense is that if we do not have this incentive and the developer does not have the state ability to get the state tax credits. This project is not financeable as is. So what you may see, is nothing happens at the site.

What you also may see is a new proposal that includes exponentially less commercial development, perhaps none, there'd be some zoning issues there, but you would see, as Councilor Liang sort of mentioned, at the very least, some of the more traditional downtown-oriented, small, smaller concept retail, much less of it, and perhaps none in terms of what the developer wanted to do, but essentially we don't believe this project moves forward at this point in time without this incentive.

We noted, I believe Director Stevens noted the plans for the intersection Bergen and Granite Street intersection improvements. Are those... improvements contingent on this plan or are those kind of ongoing or at the same time?

No, I don't think that. I think everyone in the community knows that we need regardless of what happens at this site, Granite Street needs to be looked at, needs to be improved. I think we would move forward if it's a state grant. I think we're pretty locked in on that, but we would move forward with those improvements regardless of what happens at the site, keeping in mind we still have a major retail operation on the other side of that sort of driveway that separates Granite from Bergen Parkway with Star Market and a number of other retailers.

And then I had one question on the document itself. I was looking at, I believe it's page, let's see. Page five into six. This is paragraph G. It says application of exemption if MRRUs constitute a condominium unit. and I did have questions on what that paragraph was trying to accomplish. I don't think that the goal of it, based on my research and some discussions on the document, I don't think that the goal of that paragraph is to

somehow create a tax incentive for residential condominium units, but I would like to try to clarify that within the language if possible. The first sentence on page six reads, the sponsor and the city agree that if the condominium is established for purposes of determining the project's exemption under this agreement, the assessments and taxes of the MRRU unit and commercial unit will be combined and the exemption calculated shall be applied to the real estate taxes assessed on the MRRU unit. I know in related and similar agreements, we're not talking about, and so forth, and then somehow benefiting within these first 13 years on a 10% tax abatement.

Sanity, and for the sake of just it not appearing, that these tax abatement might run with the units or two to future unit owners, if we could clarify that somehow in this paragraph.

Which section?

I'm in section G. page six, the first full sentence. Six or G? I'm sorry, paragraph G, page six. in the agreement? In the, yep.

Do I have something different?

That's your page, sir. It's page five. It's page five.

All right, for anyone that has the agreement in front of them, it's Section 4, Paragraph G. Yeah, apologies.

And, Councilor, you are exactly right, and we will gladly accept language that satisfies your concerns. The definitions here... are so that, as you mentioned, this is condominium meaning the commercial or the residential as blocks. so they could condoize commercial components of it and then condoize the entirety of the residential portion of it not individual condominium units but the point is well taken and if the councilor has some language, the administration would gladly accept it.

Yeah, I would move just to amend it with that language. And I don't know if we need it for the record right now or if that's something that I could get. Or would you rather it read it now? Okay. So if we could, after that first sentence, after the first full sentence in section four, paragraph G, should the residential units,

If I may, I think you're trying to redefine the term condominium, correct? Yeah. Okay. So you'd have to start from the place the sponsor may elect to convert the project because that's where the definition is made. That first sentence is where condominium is defined. Correct? Yep. Mr. Yeah, please.

Thank you, Mr. President. So we could probably move. Councilor Asch, I think I understand your concern. Yep. And I'm going to bring it down to the fourth line of paragraph G. and there's a clause there after the word units that says, with all MRRUs constituting one condominium unit. So what Mr. Walker was saying is that, essentially what they're talking about is having the residential section become one unit. They're trying to separate residential from commercial, and they're going to call them condominiums. But your concern about multiple units being condos, that's not in here. they're specifically intending to keep it as a multi-unit residential entity. So I think your concern, well, warranted, is met here.

And part of the reason for that is this is basically a standard form that comes from EOHLC, and they followed it almost exactly.

Thank you. I know it's defined. MRRU was defined, I don't know that. Yeah, MRRU is defined in that definition section, as are many of the other terms, but condominium is not.

Well, that's because in the standard form, they don't use condominiums. And they did in this form. I think I left it over there. I can come right back, but I know that when they talked about in this particular agreement form, which is the council order before you, when they talked about condominium, they did define it. they're basically defining it as two separate, they're trying to separate the residential part of the project from the commercial side, and that's it.

In the covenants section, in the sponsors covenants section, section three, paragraph B, market rate, residential units. say the project will create a total of 266 residential rental units, all of which shall be MRRUs, meaning singular, bundled. Correct.

but I do think that it's quite specific that the entirety, it's based on what I, began up here at the podium with, based on the entirety of that phrase, they cover the fact that all the units, all the MRRUs shall be one condominium.

That's fine.

I'm fine with it. So we're good? Yeah, we don't need to.

Any other questions? Yes, actually, just one quick one with related to the office space. I think someone mentioned about 8,000 square feet of new office space. Is that right? do we have any potential tenants for the office space or are we anticipating maybe being able to reach out and explore are potential tenants on the line.

My understanding, and there may be potential for expansion of tenants, but my understanding is this would be the home office of the Grossman Companies.

Okay. Thank you. Thank you, Councilor Arsh. The President recognizes Councilor DiBona.

Thank you, Mr. President. Just getting back a little bit to the Watson, and if somebody can elaborate a little bit for me. just talking about affordability. It's been a hot topic out there in the city for the last election cycle is, to my knowledge, the Watson is about 140 units and it was a mixed income property, basically a breakdown of market rate, workforce housing and affordable housing. So they did a blend in that building, I remember doing that. when they first inception. Take us a step back here for a minute before we get into this 256 units. the first initial project to the, I guess it's the north side of the General's Bridge, the first proposal was gonna be a 150 unit building where the Fox Rock property was gonna build 150 units of workforce housing in that particular project. It didn't go into fruition.

We went with the medical use, and that's being built right now. That's OK. Is there any consideration of the 256 units that would be, not only if they go into LUA for affordable housing, but also workforce housing? Is there any talk about any workforce housing in that particular 256 units?

Reed, Mr. President, this is a market rate building. Again, they will make the contribution either via units or via the cash in lieu of to the city's affordable housing trust, which goes to... Workforce Housing, as well as this different, it gets into a semantic argument, Councilor, what's affordable, what's workforce, what's livable, that stuff, but essentially all three things are supported by the Affordable Housing Trust and a lot of great work over the course of the last many years has been done based upon the cash in lieu of considerations. and this project will contribute to that in a pretty substantial way, over $2 million, we think.

Okay, it's just something that's been put out there from the citizens of the city that really want us to just basically put it out there to have not only affordable housing but workforce housing. It's a different tier. obviously have qualifications for it, but it just does help out the affordability factor for some folks out there.

Understood, Councilor. And keep in mind, one of the major priorities of the administration is the top line of affordability, no matter what you do. You can subsidize things through tax credits, you can create subsidized housing, you can provide incentives, but the one thing that is known to work across the board, which we've done here up and down the spine of this city, is create more market rate housing. The more market rate housing you have, the more affordable it becomes. Supply and demand. If we build enough supply, the demand levels off and we're starting to see some of that. The numbers of affordable units are the rate of rent is stabilizing to some degree in a lot of places. But the goal, the first option and the best option when it comes to affordability is to create the housing. And Quincy has done its job.

There are communities across the state that have not. and there's a back and forth about the positives and negatives of development and that's understood, we sit here today, this body, the mayor, everyone together has done more to produce housing in the greater Boston region than virtually any other community. and that's goal one, to get your affordability to a place where it makes some sense.

on the note of the Affordable Housing Trust, does any, or maybe I can go through maybe the Madam Auditor or whatever, whomever, or maybe somebody else can answer this. What do we have in the Affordable Housing Trust right now as of today for funding? Does anybody know that number? I don't off the top of my head. I can certainly get that for you. I know NeighborWorks is another. and a lot of entity out there that's done a real good job with using some of the affordable housing trust funds and building some affordable housing out there. So just for folks to understand is in lieu of, yes, it's in lieu of, but a lot of folks and a lot of companies nonprofits out there have been really doing a lot of work here in the city of Quincy. I know they're doing something on Quincy Ave. I think it's 15 units and they're continuously been doing a lot of work over the years. I've served on the community preservation committee have come to us a few times for affordable housing. So in lieu of, yes, but it does go into that fund.

We were talking about floods just recently, the storm surges and all that stuff. There was funds that came out of the Affordable Housing Trust to help a lot of those folks too. So just because in lieu of doesn't mean that nothing gets put back into these affordable housings down the road from other companies, other entities, other nonprofits. just to let you know. But thank you, Mr. Walker, for answering my questions. I do appreciate it. and I do appreciate the commercial based, there's a high square footage of commercial which is huge, so thank you for answering everything, thank you.

President organizes, Councilor Devine.

Thank you everybody for coming out and giving us all this information. It's a lot to digest. I see a lot of numbers here. I had a few questions. Councilor Ash asked one of them and it was answered, so thank you. And thank you for all your other questions. and Councilor Liang also asked something and answered my question, but I still had a couple other ones. Director Stevens. you mentioned that we received some funds, 20 something thousand to do a study?

Correct, road safety audit.

Sure, now with that, did we do the study already?

I would have to check with the TPAL office. They would have managed that.

I was just wondering because we did also have the apartment buildings over in across from Darcy's and we had them do a study and we got $30,000 from them and we used that money to do a study and then we were granted, awarded some substantial money. Are we allowed to say how much? Do you know how much did we get? Did we get word on how much? It was a housing choice grant. Yeah? Well, we are hopefully getting, we will be getting a grant at some point, right? From that $30,000 that we spent. Anyways, it's good to know that we have that and I was curious if that was what it did because those funds, when we get them, they spark and they make us more money.

Exactly. Well, we already got the mass works. So I think that road safety audit is for over at the Hannon Parkway coming off of Bergen. because the grant we got is for Bergen and Granite sliding down to Whitwell by Nick's Pizza there.

Yeah, it's nice.

So there's a lot more. Obviously, we've had the development up on Whitwell, the development at Corey Hills. Yeah, so there's a lot more cars coming into that area to get access to Bergen Parkway and out to the interstate system.

Yeah. For sure. Well, thank you for all that hard work. And then I'm not sure who this might be for, but... you mentioned the square footage that's intended. What's the square footage that's there now for commercial space?

In total, it is 64,435 square feet. That's between the President's Plaza and the Burger King. It's a slight reduction to 53,200 square feet of commercial between... Yeah, that's not bad. I was just curious. Yeah, it's about a 10,000 square foot reduction, but... as we sort of made a reference earlier, everybody wants to build just housing. In Quincy Center, it's mixed use is by right. So having mixed use, this isn't token mixed use. This is real commercial. A real commercial retailer at 42,000 square feet on that. Hopefully a real office and complementary retail.

Yeah. I mean you go to Europe and these buildings have everybody lives upstairs but then all down below is that where everything is and they do all their shopping and they're to things like that. So it's very normal. The numbers look really good compared to the Watson. I mean, this looks like... 10% over the average. It looks really good for our community. You mentioned that the Watson maybe has two and a half years left. Is that right? Do we know what we'd be getting in the two and a half years, roughly?

I don't have those numbers with me, but I'd be happy to provide them.

Yeah, well, either way, I'm sure they're pretty substantial, so I'm happy that that's...

I believe it was at 67 currently percent, and then going down to 59, so almost double, over double.

Yeah, yeah. In a couple of years, so it'll all be coming to fruition. So I know we had to lose a lot of money in the beginning, but going forward, we're going to be getting all of it. soon enough. So once again, thanks for all your work. Thank you for the presentation. Thank you for all the numbers. And yeah, that's it. Thank you.

Thank you, Councilor Devine. Okay. Can anyone tell me what the estimated project cost is for the developer? No? Okay, so what do we, I'm just trying to understand what we base these estimates on if we don't know the total project cost.

It's based on projected tax values and revenues. projected revenues that we project off of what the value for the commercial space and the residential space during that time.

OK. And I just want to be clear about the tax incentives. We are proposing a $1.5 million tax incentive for 13 years. Goes to the state. Are there additional incentives provided by the state if this project is approved? OK. And what are the estimated? potential tax incentives at the state level?

Three to four million.

Three to four million, okay. So right now by approving, if we approve this, there's not no risk, but there's minimal risk for the $1.5 million commitment that the city would be making unless the project is approved. Separately, I see that the $26,000 road safety audit, which I saw some nodding, so that audit has been completed. Okay. And with that audit, what was recommended? Is there infrastructure or roadway work outside of what would be covered in this mass work grant at that intersection? Or is there more work that's projected, and on that. just keep this in your mind too when you're adding up things. I did not see in this agreement any commitment from the city to provide infrastructure work, but will there be any incurred infrastructure work

by the city just by way of this project generally.

Right. Good question. There is no dedicated infrastructure work specifically for this project.

Right.

There's no commitment to it in the agreement. No commitment other than your normal you know, cut and cap and tie-ins. I think a lot of the work that has been done to date, this project and future projects will get the benefit of that. New subsurface infrastructure and those types of things. as far as the road safety audit is, to tackle that intersection at Ann and Parkway, it's got a restricted left turn lane southbound so we are examining some you know how do we do some lane widening in this very you know congested corridor so The results of a road safety audit gives you an initial list of menu items of some short-term improvements you can do. and then some longer range design directions to go. I believe that's where TPAL is now, is exploring some design suggestions. it's trying to build in some more width and it's difficult to come up with right away where none exists today.

The train tracks and the depressed rail bed really limits some of that width. it's really trying to put in those dedicated left turn lanes and also trying to push the view that all four intersections kind of work harmoniously in and around this entire site. I did mention the residential now coming down Whitwell Street, as well as down Quarry Street as well.

Do you have an estimation for the cost for the sidewalks and trees for those improvements

I do not, but it would probably be a few million dollars on that type of sidewalk. Not your typical concrete slab. We're talking about tree pits, you know, brick strips, so enhanced sidewalk. 2 million, 3 million? I'd say 3 to 5 million. 3 to 5? Yeah, that's a pretty lengthy sidewalk on both Granite Street and Granite Street Connect.

And then if there's $4 million in fees and other contributions to the Affordable Housing Trust, 2.6 of which is going to the Affordable Housing Trust, it's safe to say that the fees are $1.4 million for this project? Pardon?

In that range. Okay.

All right, thank you. I think I just wanted to clarify, I did a little chart up here. It's easy to break things down when you're looking at what the developers bring to the table. and what the city's bringing to the table, okay? So...

I got a couple of numbers for you, Councilor. One, you know, the current assessment for just the retail is at $16 million. I did estimates working with John adding 256 units and having 53,000 square feet of retail. We're looking at an overall assessment of probably about 104 million. 104 million? Yeah. I had about 12.6 on the retail, which is a slight decrease, but the residential would get assessed at upwards of 90 million. Okay. Okay.

90 million res. Okay, so the developer, 260 units, residential, 50,000 square feet of retail. $25 million in taxes will be accrued over the current land usage over 20 years. $2.6 million will be contributed to the affordable housing trust, $1.4 million in fees for development of the project to the city, $26,000 already to the road safety audit, $3 to $5 million in sidewalks and tree improvements. the city contributes then $1.5 million tax incentive over 13 years, which will essentially be recuperated over year two, year two to three. there's a grant that's already been committed that will be applied to an intersection that will already have work done that will essentially benefit this area generally for 2.7 million.

and $0 commitment for additional infrastructure. I just wanna lay that out so that the deal terms are pretty transparent. Okay, thank you very much, everyone, for this presentation. We have a motion to approve by Councilor Liang, seconded by Councilor Devine. Madam Clerk, please call the roll.

Dibona, Councilor Harris, Councilor Liang, Councilor McCarthy, Councilor Minton, President Cain.

Yes. Thank you very much. Okay, that concludes our regularly scheduled items on the agenda tonight. We'll have the previous meeting minutes at the next meeting. Communications and reports of the mayor, other city officers and city boards. Madam Clerk.

Yes, I do have a traffic request to refer to Ordinance Committee for Advertising, Board 1, Councilor McCarthy. Add passenger pickup and drop-off zone in front of Broadmeadows School across from 31 Calvin Road. There's also a utility to refer to Public Works for scheduling and advertising. Utility Grant to Location, Mass Electric, Verizon, 58 Tyler Street.

Thank you, Madam Clerk. Unfinished business and proceeding meeting? Seeing none. Reports of committees? Seeing none, presentation of petitions, memorials, and remonstrance. The President recognizes Councilor Ash.

Thank you, Mr. President. I would like to mention and certainly extend my respects to the family of Sarah, Cefedoni, affectionately known as Sally. She's a longtime Quincy Point resident, beloved wife of the late Robert Sheffordoni, loving mother of Mark Sheffordoni, and Victoria Conley and her husband Ryan, all of Quincy. Sally was born in London, England, to Irish parents. She came to America at the age of six and grew up in South Boston. She spent the last number of decades in Quincy Point raising her family. Sally was a loving mother, devoted wife. cherished aunt and grandmother and a very faithful friend to many. I'm very thankful to be considered one of those family friends and I know that she was a staple in our neighborhood. Wonderful lady, wonderful family, and I hope that they had a very meaningful send-off for her on Friday.

So certainly my condolences to the Shefferdone family. Thank you.

Thank you, Councilor Ash. The President recognizes Councilor Devine.

The constituent in Ward 4, Michael Hartnett, at age 85, passed away Saturday, November 8th. True gentlemen. and he has a daughter that lives in the community also. And I just wanted to let you all know and keep their family and thoughts. Thank you.

Thank you, Councilor Devine. Motions, orders, and resolutions. Seeing none. Scheduling of committee meetings and public hearings. We currently have a next council meeting scheduled for Monday, December 1st that we would like to move to the 8th if that is amenable to the council. The 8th, December 8th. Yeah, if we could move the 1st to the 8th. We'll need a vote. I'll need a motion to approve by Councilor Lange, seconded by Councilor Campbell. Madam Clerk, please call the roll.

Councilor Ash. Campbell, Devine, DiBona, Harris, Liang, McCarthy, Minton, President Cain.

Yes.

Nine members.

Thank you, Madam Clerk. Okay, so our next regularly scheduled City Council meeting will be Monday, December 8th, 6.30 here, be there, be square. motion to adjourn made by Councilor Liang. Happy Thanksgiving to everyone. Motion to adjourn at 8.29.