Licenses and Permits Committee

Hello, everybody. Welcome to the November meeting of the Licenses and Permit Committee for the Somerville City Council. My name is Willie Burnley Jr., Somerville City Councilor-at-Large, and Can the clerk scroll up so I may read the full proclamation? Thank you. Pursuant to Chapter 2 of the Act of 2025, this meeting of a City Council Committee will be conducted via remote participation. We will post an audio recording, audio video recording, transcript, or other comprehensive record of these proceedings as soon as possible after the meeting on the city. of Somerville website and local cable access government channels. Clerk, can you please call the roll to establish quorum?

This is roll call. Call. Councilor Davis.

Here.

Councilor Clingan. or Chair Burnley.

Present.

All right. With two present and one absent, we have quorum.

Thank you. We have a relatively short agenda. The clerk can scroll down really quickly. Simply two items, the first of which is approval of the minutes of our October 8th meeting. Let's take that up. Do I hear any comments on the motion, any questions, any concerns? Move to approve. Okay. Motion on the floor, movement to approve with no... Questions or comments or discussion on the matter, we're going to put that on the table for approval at the end of the meeting and move on to item two, which is a grant of location by Comcast. and this is for the record of the public this is not a public hearing but we do want to hear from the representatives of this application so if we could just have

Representatives from Comcast raise our hand using the raise hand feature and we can promote you to speak on the item.

I do not see any hands right now. If you're here to speak on item number two, please raise your hand.

There we go. Seeing one. Please identify. You are unmuted. Yeah, please, please identify yourself, your relationship to this application and then describe what its purpose is.

I'm not from Comcast. I'm sorry. I'm Lisa White. I live at 4 Houghton Street. And I wrote to you all yesterday. I sent you an email outlining our concerns about this.

Hello, Lisa White. I did get your email. I did have a chance to read it. As we mentioned, this is not a public hearing. I know. But I do think that as an abutter and as someone in our community, Erase some important points which are worth addressing. So I'd be happy to sponsor you to speak briefly towards those issues and what you'd like to see happen with this application.

Okay, thanks.

Go ahead.

Well, we live at 4 Houghton Street, and if you're aware, this 121 Prospect project has been under construction for the past two years. And the day that we received this notification... We were also advised that Eversource was going to be digging up and repaving the streets from their gas line work, in addition to the constant digging up of the street from this construction project. So I wrote to J.T. Scott. I was completely frustrated that we were going to have the street repaved and then Comcast was going to come in at some point and dig it up yet again. And my biggest question is... Why does 121 Prospect Street get a conduit buried underground and the rest of us get all of this wiring, wiring in front of my house on this actual pole? There are just dangling things that Comcast leaves there.

and if the project is 121 Prospect, why is everything happening on Houghton Street? So I would hope the Comcast will put it through a conduit on Prospect Street and not dig up our newly repaved street. and if that's not possible then I want it to be done expeditiously you know this street is closed probably every single day of the week during construction for one reason or another So just mostly frustrated.

Ms. White, thank you for attending and for voicing these concerns. Scott, Ward 2, who's also listening on during this meeting, did raise these concerns previously and, you know, As residents, I think we can all understand the rarity of when streets actually are repaved and the kind of frustration that all the work that it takes to do that might just be undone for One a single project, but just immediately after that work has been done in general. I have some ideas about how to potentially condition this project. Grant of Location, but I also would like to hear from Comcast to just have some certainty that any conditions placed on them would be feasible on their end.

We could say, for example, condition this grant location so that work has to be done on a prospect, not Houghton, but I don't. I don't actually dig up the ground. I don't place wires. I don't want to speak out of turn for a company that does that work. So frankly, I would rather have them as part of this conversation than try to speed past them. With that in the air, I want to... Open up to my colleague to see if he has any thoughts about how we may proceed on this item.

Yeah, thank you, Mr. Chair. No, I'm in line with you. I don't know if we do have an attendee from... I think, you know, if not, I'm inclined to leave this in committee and maybe get a communication out to them with some. Specific questions and instruction to appear, but if they are, then great. I, like you, would like to hear their thoughts and see if there's something we can do because it seems like reasonable concerns that have been raised.

Great. And I'll just note again for the record, counselors are aware of this, but Comcast was made aware of this meeting. We reached out to via phone and likely email as well. So I just want to be clear that we're not hosting a meeting hoping they're going to show up without actually asking them to be here. I do see that Councilor Scott, who is attending, has his hand raised. Clerk, could you unmute the Councilor since we're Thank you, Mr.

Chair. Yeah, I appreciate you guys taking this up. I'm Dismayed, I suppose, that Comcast wouldn't choose to attend the meeting. But As Ms. White points out, I mean, this is not just Ms. White's house, but the Morera's and everybody else who lives down in Houghton, you know, there's no less than 20 Comcast low voltage lines coming off the pole that already exists there. and in addition to the concerns about digging up the freshly paved street in the midst of all the other disruption that's been down there, I'd also point out that Previously, the 125 Prospect Street property had a private pole on it that actually extended Comcast lines from the other side of Prospect Street. So the line had already been run there previously. So I

I think conditioning it and approving it with conditions would be a tricky one, especially without say engineering department here to talk about the feasibility of what's underground in Prospect Street right now. and certainly I wouldn't feel comfortable about proving something for an applicant that doesn't even show up for the meeting. So I would be inclined to that. Thank you and our colleague from Ward 6 for your time on it tonight. Apologize to the public for having wasted everybody's time here. I appreciate the opportunity, sir.

As the ward counselor, we appreciate your thoughts. I'm pretty sure you're not an abutter. Do you want to get that on the record if that's the case? Not at all. Not at all. Thank you. You're a neighbor, but not an abutter. And that's an important legal distinction there. So given what we've heard today, you know, I think my thoughts is to leave this in the committee. to just ensure that we have a robust discussion with the applicant to ensure that they can carry out this work without causing undue disruption to the abutters and without undoing the work that has caused so much frustration and delay within the community on this street in particular.

You feel good about that?

You have concerns? Absolutely, Mr. Chair. I agree with you and follow your lead on this one.

All right. Well, with that, then we will keep this item in committee. And I see a motion from Councilor Davis to take up item meeting minutes off of the table and vote on adjournment. Yes, sir.

All right, on adjournment and approval of the minutes, Councilor Davis. Yes. Councilor Clingan, Chair Burnley. Aye. With two in favor and one absent. The minutes are taken up and the chairman is approved.

Expeditious. Thank you, everybody.

Thank you.