Planning Commission - Regular Meeting

If you want to have chocolate. WELCOME, EVERYONE.

I BELIEVE WE'RE GOING TO BE JOINED BY THE VICE CHAIR ON ZOOM. AND WE'RE ALSO JOINED BY THE PRESIDENT, COUNCILOR OLIVER, MEMBER OF THE COMMITTEE, THE VICE PRESIDENT, COUNCILOR KALIS, MEMBER OF THE COMMITTEE, COUNCILOR ALBRIGHT FROM WARD 2, and Councilor Gordon from Ward 6. And also I'm informed by Councilor Getz that she is traveling and will not be able to attend remotely or otherwise. So we will miss her. And also joined by Representative of the Planning Department and our honored guest from the Newton Housing Authority. So we've got a number of items to go through tonight, but I would like to start with item 125.26, discussion with the Newton Housing Authority. This is Councillor Crensman, and I hope Councillor Crensman is able to attend with his item. But requesting discussion with the Executive Director of the Newton Housing Authority to receive an update of the work of the Newton Housing Authority. So would you like to come up to the table and identify yourself with a public record? And we'll be glad to hear from you. Either way, right there is fine.

welcome thank you mr chair appreciate the opportunity to address uh the zoning and planning committee i was able to share a couple materials before the meeting to uh put up a slide to kind of summarize the work we're up to and just honestly the general makeup of the housing authority a lot of people as i'm sure a lot of the counselors know confuse the housing authority with the city um and we're a very separate entity public body that is locally incorporated with board of commissioners appointed through newton identity of course but i do want to sort of highlight our properties and our portfolio which has matured over the years so but just identify yourself for the point i just want to yeah i'm mike laura i'm the executive director of the housing board thank you we just want to make sure that you're part of this thank you and let's just say he's a former graduate of mine oh all pretty well in the class. But I do want to add, I've been at the Housing Authority since January of last year. We were fortunate enough to hang out with Amy Sarichian, who was the executive director for 10 years and has been at the Housing Authority for 20 years. And she remains on as our deputy executive director. We've grown the staff. We brought in a new director of finance. planning, which I can get to later, who is really taking the lead on some of our bigger development projects. But to start, I just wanted to go over some general information. So the Housing Authority was incorporated in 1959 under 121B of the general laws, and that provides a lot of the guidance for the Housing Authority, including pay to live in taxes and how the subsidy operates. We're the large provider of affordable housing in the city of Newton. and we subsidize over a thousand units of housing we serve over 1300 residents i do want to highlight the fact that our tenants typically pay 30 of the monthly rent from their gross income 30 of the gross income is something we see across most of our properties most of our portfolios with very few exceptions so if somebody loses their job if somebody has very little income in the household then obviously the rent is very low and we cover the difference It's not like a typical tax credit property where there's a set rent. We will flex if the family or senior is going through a tough time. Next slide, please. Thank you. And a little bit about our tenant statistics. So the federal public housing, as you can see, the average age is 71 years. We have 289 federal public housing senior units, which I'll show in the next slide. And the average income of those individuals, as you can see, is under $18,000 a year, as we can all imagine. That's a very difficult task to live in Newton with that little income coming in, and we're taking 30% of the gross ourselves for rent. So we are constantly attaching these people to resources and helping them any way we can. We have a resident service department with four licensed clinicians headed off by a licensed independent clinical social worker who does a lot of our resident service work. Then we have state public housing, which is 180 units, average age is 39, higher income, of course, because we're working with families, although we do have some seniors. It's a mixed portfolio, and the average tenant rent is about $667. As you'll see later with the Section 8 program, which uses the fair market rent, the average tenant rent of a one-, two-, three-bedroom is far higher. So we are picking up a heavy cost as a housing authority to maintain operating duty capital for very little money from the tenant. And then lastly, Section 8, we have 446 vouchers, again, a mixed program, some seniors, some family, average age around 39 years of age, a little bit lower than the annual income, but very comparable to the families in state public housing. And then average half, that means housing assistance payment. Again, the tenant pays their share of the rent, but the difference in Section 8 is that the federal government provides a subsidy that will make up that difference to get to the full contract rents. And then I did want to reference the 100% area median income for a one-person household in Newton is about $112,000, and a four-person household is $160,000. So you can see that our average income is what we call extremely low income, under 30% AMI, so we qualify for a lot of different programs as a result.

How many units were the total housing?

289. Thank you. Or 298, my apologies. We'll just collect it there. But the federal public housing, which is the next slide. Thank you. The 298 units for seniors and individuals with disabilities as well. So we just get operating capital. Your traditional public housing makeup provides you operating to maintain the units and to run the administration. And you get a capital component, which is a separate funding stream for our capital improvements. I do always take it aside to mention, because it's very important, that we receive a little less than $0.05 on the dollar for our capital needs. That includes both the state and federal capital needs assessment so we do needs assessments one is a big contract to the state that does all state public housing and then on federal public housing we brought on our own people when i started to do a needs assessment and the health and safety needs of our capital components we don't even have the money to carry what we call priority one projects so our priority two priority three priority four projects like kitchens baths flooring obviously fall to the wayside because the cost of doing the public bid and public procurement and the prevailing wage but again we're just funded so little that on the operating capital is sort of notoriously underfunded program public housing. We have six main locations for federal public housing across the sites that are mentioned here. As you can see, it's pretty dense. It's unlike most of our portfolio, which is very scattered. So Horace Mann, 72 units of senior housing there, Jackson Gardens, which neighbors Haywood House, which if you recall was a 9% tax credit deal And then on the next slide, on state public housing, we have 180 units, again, operating capital subsidies from the state of Massachusetts, which even in the current federal climate is still less than we're getting on federal public housing. The state obviously has access to less resources, is very constrained by the budget, so we are very underfunded on these programs. State family housing, we do have 79, two, three, and four bedroom units, so a large provider of deeply affordable family housing. in Newton, and then we have state elderly and disabled housing and special needs and a multifamily program at our Hamilton Grove site. But again, that's 180 units on that portfolio. And then the next slide is the vouchers. So we have 446 vouchers, of which around 430 are leased currently. The reason being is that we're being underfunded in this program. which is extremely challenging because we have to pay out the landlord. So we have to be very delicate on how many vouchers we can lease up in one given year, or we run the risk of a shortfall, which is an epidemic right now in the current administration. I can say that there are ongoing conversations with Boston was in shortfall, just a myriad of other neighbors, Watertown, Brookline, all do not have enough money to issue new vouchers. So don't expect to see any new Section 8 vouchers in the next couple of years if this continues, because they're underfunding the program, which means as people leave the program to attrition, whether they passed away or they moved on to different housing, we're not able to reissue. So we are shrinking the purposefully at a federal level. So very concerning, of course, and we're doing our best to maximize and kind of weather the storm to make sure that we're least at the highest level that we can, but not run the risk of a shortfall, which we would have to then pick up the difference ourselves. So for short, the money to operate the program, the federal government would look to the new housing authority to pick up the bill. And obviously, if we're this underfunded, we do not have that subsidy available. And then the NHA does pay about $800,000 a month in housing assistance payment primarily within Newton. We serve about over 50% of the program within Newton, which is, as you can imagine, very challenging. to find the apartments, so credit to the team and their ability to always help our voucher holders lease up in Newton. And then the payment standards, as you can see, very competitive. As of recently, this is 106% of the fair market rents they were able to provide for our voucher holders to keep them competitive. So we have $2,500 just for a studio, jumps up to $3,100 for a two bedroom, and as high as $4,700 for a four bedroom. If you're a tenant and you are struggling with income and your tenant rent is under $600, that means we're covering that difference through federal subsidy. But again, as you can see, that's what's strangleholding the program. We have such a difference to make up per unit. And then we have a small MRVP program, which is the state equivalent of a voucher program. We have 32 vouchers, 20 right now are through NCDF at Houghton Village. Next slide, please. And then it's our management portfolio, so I do separate our components into three main departments. We have state public housing, federal public housing, and then management. Management is very exciting because we own and operate these units unsubsidized, although some of our vouchers are in there to help pick up the operating costs. Essentially, we don't have HUD reporting on inspection outside of Section 8 inspections, and it's not a state program. So we're not reporting to EOHLC or HUD for these properties. We maintain them ourselves as a landlord. And again, we keep them all equally affordable. Here are some of the locations we have. We even have 25 single-room occupancies at the YMCA that are project-based for single homeless men, typically chronically homeless men. And then I didn't include in this program our 55 senior units at Haywood House, which is in Noniantum. That's a tax credit property that closed not too many years ago. Again, it's been occupied for two years now, and that is cash flowing. very proud of the fact that the Housing Authority was able to close a tax credit deal, which is fairly rare. Housing authorities are only now getting into this realm of being sort of the developer themselves. We see Boston Housing Authority do public-private partnerships, like a Charlestown deal, which is over 1,000 units. But we also see Cambridge Housing Authority doing this on their own. They're self-developing. They're not bringing in a partner. They're taking the lead on these tax credit deals. It's becoming very competitive to see what we call the 4% and 9% tax credit deals. and we can go more in the weeds later, but I did want to just sort of tip the hat to the people who've been at the Newton Housing Authority for many years, Amy and her team, who were able to close this tax credit deal sort of ahead of the curve in Greater Boston. So that was the general overview.

Some of the mechanisms- Let me just pause for a minute. Does anybody have questions about this section of the- I mean, the only question I have is how the heck do you do this?

I mean, really everything, Everything you do is not bringing in enough money to subsidize it. How do you keep afloat?

I think prioritizing is the best way to say that. You know, everything's a priority one, but the audit findings, making sure you're inspecting every unit. We have a 12-person maintenance team in-house. So by sort of taking the lead with a very experienced foreman who's been there 36 years, those are properties inside out, but we're always up against it. It's always putting out the fire quite literally. Last Friday, we had a fire at one of our units and we have two displaced families that we're trying to triage in-house. So again, quite literally putting out the fires because we don't have the funding to...

Can I just ask one more question? Sure. Would the tax credit programs, if you do them yourself, would that help?

Yes. So I won't get to the fact that we're putting together right now two projects that we're hoping to do an RFP for to bring in one possibly private-public partnership to help redevelop a family site that we have far more dense. to operate by itself and we've selected sites based on the fact that some of them have hit a part where the capital needs of that property are too far gone to put in a couple modernization awards would be sort of putting lipstick on the pig so we sort of selected the ones that make the most sense in terms of location in terms of neighborhood does it make sense to have more density of course these are projects that were just in the inception stage but we're doing our piece now to bring in the development partner for one and then architect engineering full redevelopment where you knock down and rebuild without the loans from housing tax credit is the key piece of the funding.

Thank you. Oh, somebody, Councilor Wright, Vice Chair.

Thank you. And thank you for all this information. Could you explain the Hayward House? Because it's in your slides in a couple different places, but I think there's even more units. So how is the Hayward House broken up or the different pieces or what? And how many units are in the Hayward House?

It's 55 units of senior housing. It is very complex in its structure, as most of these tax credit deals are, but we are the owner. Maloney Properties manages the day-to-day. They have a resident service coordinator, and they maintain the day-to-day. We're responsible for the capital improvement, and again, being on the owner's side, we're responsible for audits as well, and to make sure that Mass Housing Incorporated has a yearly audited financials. So those are our responsibilities as the owner. Our hope is that we can look at future deals where we self-develop and self-manage if we have that capacity. But for now, Haywood House, again, is something that's managed by Maloney, I guess. And we sit back as the owner with these 55 senior units.

And is the Hayward House only have 55 units or is that just the addition a couple of years ago?

No, that's just 55. It's adjacent to a federal public housing site called Jackson Gardens.

Oh, I didn't realize.

They always go for Memorial Day and they go to the John F. Kennedy statue. That is federal public housing.

And how many units are in that one?

Thank you. 64.

Okay. That was my confusion. Thank you. And thank you for all the work that you do on this. Thank you.

Thank you. And we've been joined by Councilor Damavid from board four on Zoom. Have I got everybody? Councilor Kalas, a question?

So I don't fully understand. Is every, what is your structure? And is it different for every property? And then how do you pay to maintain these buildings?

There may be things that are coming later that We'll bear on this. So I just want to know if you want to answer that now or defer it until you get through everything.

It dovetails with what Councilor Albright was saying.

I appreciate that. This could be answered now because I think the other things are more development focused. But to your question, there's sort of two parts to that. One, as far as staffing, we don't have on-site property. So we can't afford to have somebody on-site at all these facilities as much as it needs a property manager to do the lease of a property maintenance and then somebody separate to do resident services. Given our population accordingly these days, of course, we need that supportive service level but we don't have the money to do that but then to the bigger part is the financing as you said you cannot cross subsidize so these are all unique programs and we're restricted with the funds of course so if federal public housing is doing very well as the public housing is struggling which is very consistent with most housing authorities massachusetts you can't just be taking federal public housing reserve and paying down state and vice versa and the somewhat isolated. That's why management is such an interesting program because that one, we're just the owner and we have access to unrestricted dollars. Again, unrestricted being that we can spend it on our other properties, but we've always felt that we have to have a dialogue with the state to say these properties are in need and we need emergency awards. An example, we have $200,000 that we get per year for capital on state, which is very, very, very low. And we received, as of last year, about $1.2 million in special awards. the city. Helps us a lot with CDBG money or home or CPA when we need it. Trust funds if we need it for development. So I can't say part of the appeal to come over to Noon was the fact that there was such a partnership with the city planning office and all the city departments when we're in a bind. But we do have to look to all different state, federal, and local resources because that's 90% of my job. And do you have staff? We actually have a pretty sizable staff for Noon Housing Authority. We're a large housing authority, so we have staff about 31 people full-time. Do you pay them? No, the labor mechanics are very competitive rates. So we bring in a really good, strong maintenance team that can do an apartment soup to nuts. And I think over the last few years, yeah, we've been bringing in and building a good team. But the hope is that we can create properties that are cash flowing in a way that can afford these expansions that we're doing right now. But it's very difficult on traditional public housing. So it segues very well to what are the programs that can get you more cash the full contract rent the federal government can help you to operate because essentially we get less than anywhere it's going away you know shrinking it's shrinking it's not going away by any means it's still funded at about 10 times the level of public housing on the federal budget the federal budget for public housing united states is around 4 billion for operating and 4 billion for capital yet section 8 renewals are about 38 billion so you know you can see The federal government is not wanting to be in the business of owning property because of the capital backlog they have. So public housing is possibly the least appealing program the federal government runs. Section 8 vouchers make sense to them because it's a private landlord that's benefiting and commercial real estate developers, but there's still some unpopularity with the cost of it. It's a very expensive program. But there are programs for us to apply to that can help us convert

So I want to recognize Councilor Gordon, and I'll come back to Councilor Wright again. But I want to ask, you had a question?

Yeah, thank you, Mr. Pickham. I don't know if we're going to get to this. I'm just curious, in terms of the properties that you own and operate, if you were to be given land, would you build on that? Would that be a project you'd take on?

Site acquisition, if you had free site acquisition, that would go so far. That would be a huge thing to be able to develop. But the problem is we need the capital and operating, too. How are we going to afford to design it, build it? And then most importantly, I think the thing people often forget is operating. If you're going extremely low income, how can those rents sustain the operating costs long term, in particular the capital components? So that's the challenge. It's not just the land. Because we have this land. It's debt-free land that we own. The challenge for us is to find a way to build and then to operate.

So you're not necessarily interested at this point in acquiring more land?

We would look at some of our development deals that make sense to do some site acquisition. The problem is how do we tie that into some capital offering? So if there was some unbelievable situation where we get a site, but we're also getting a commitment of some sort to also develop on that site, that would be something we're interested in. We would never stand out to a piece of vacant land. We'd look into it, but we'd have to bring in possibly a private partner or do mixed income development, which is not our primary goal. We want to keep all these products 100% affordable.

Okay. Councilor Wright, that's back to you.

Thank you. I was wondering, are you familiar with the Armory? They're bringing in an organization, I think, for the Metro West to provide services and help in low income and the people there. And they're going to be physically in the Armory with offices. I don't know if you're familiar with or you're connecting with them to help with services and stuff.

Yeah, so Metro West Collaborative put together a fantastic affordable deal there. That's Barney now, as we know, who's the executive director of Metro West Collaborative. But a very different situation, both in terms of their structure. They are a nonprofit, so they are not subject to prevailing wage. And public procurement, which, again, nothing wrong with living wage. It just increases the cost of our project. So they're able to do that. Let me just say that for Greater Boston, that's an unbelievable deal. What's happening in Washington Street right now is really significant.

Well, why I was bringing it up, but Metro West is having an office there, and they provide different services for low-income residents. And I don't know if you can kind of get connected with them for some services or something like that.

Yeah. I do talk to Barney and we talked to a lot of the other supportive service leaders. So we'll talk more about that. I will say that our goal for our future developments is to have what they do to have that again, built in leasing office, management office in house. People can put in their maintenance work orders and feel like they can get somebody if they have a change in their rent and then resident services to have activities to have somebody to talk to for counseling. That is sort of the standard that you're seeing in most of these new developments, even housing authorities, not just nonprofits where they have that built in staff. We just, So we'd have to.

But I was wondering if you can piggyback on that because when they're going through all that, you know, to be able to expand to help other people who are in low income housing with some of those services and having offices right there because Newton has itself does not provide is limited in their resources and what they provide to those people living in those housing areas. Outside of what's provided specifically for the building, but there's other services that are helping low-income people. And that's what I was wondering, being able to connect with them through that.

I think that person for that conversation would be our Director of Resident Services. So I will make a note to talk to Cypher to get in contact with Metro West about that. But thank you, Council.

Okay. And I was extremely surprised about Section 8 vouchers and how much they pay up to for rent. I mean, that is actually, like you said, I mean, it's not quite market rate rents, but, you know, I rent apartments and they're higher than what I rent for. So, yeah.

is we're trying to keep it at a competitive level, mostly because if we did have to reissue a project-based, which we are allowed to reissue because those are contract-based, but we can't do it on the mobile. So hopefully when the time comes, when we all get out of shortfall and we're able to issue new vouchers, that this payment standard can get people leased up very quickly. But it is a very competitive number, I agree.

And one other thing though, from experience and not my experience, my brother-in-law experience with Section 8, the one thing that landlords don't like about Section 8 is that in order to qualify, you got to go through this inspection and it takes so long for an inspection. And then there's like little things that you need to fix. So your apartment may be open for two or three months before Section 8 tenant appears. And like for me as a landlord, I turn it over. Tenants go out that, you know, the day before and new tenants come in. And my rents are cheap, so then I can't afford to have an open apartment for months on end. And I've heard from other people, too, that if, you know, the Section 8 program itself, they really need to – to be much quicker on the front end.

I appreciate saying that because that is a priority when I hear that we have a potential request for tenancy approval to make sure that inspection happens quickly because that's contracted out to a third party. So we're usually sort of sitting on them for a few days because, like you said, people can lose apartments, although technically it's housing discrimination if they deny them facing the voucher. Like you said, there are frustrations you don't want to have a landlord go through at the beginning of a process. And I think landlords are clever enough now to use credit as a way of trying to reject Section 8 voucher holders because they are trained enough now to know they can't say, we don't take vouchers because that's illegal. But they find other ways to try to discriminate against that population.

Yeah, but on the front end, though, it takes months to get that new tenant in. Thank you.

Thank you. I want to let him carry on.

Just a quick question about Section 8. I was talking to a landlord not too long ago, and it felt a little bit like he liked Section 8 a lot because of what it pays and because it assures a rent. And it had a little bit of the flavor of maybe he was taking advantage of the Section 8 program, raising his rent a bit because he could.

If it's within the rules, I think it is a smart part of the program that no matter what, you're getting your check third, fourth day of the month. That's how we sort of help to sell it is that you have people and staff you can call anytime a rent check doesn't come through. And again, the tenant's not picking up that big a share and they know we're coming through because we're acquired to you by federal subsidy. So if they increase the contract rent based on the market, there's a pretty high threshold on what is reasonable because they could show the

Okay, so you're checking, you're making sure that the rents are reasonable. That's correct.

We do that reasonableness test.

That's the exact time. Got it.

Thank you. I'm glad it materialized in person. In your individual personal capacity as opposed to your virtual capacity. Thank you. So why don't you carry on just to take us through and then we'll try and get some questions at the end that we'll hand this over.

No, this is just for you. Yes. So just a couple slides at the beginning are very helpful. They're from HUD, the Housing and Urban Development Department that runs the federal government's public housing in Section 8 Division. So this is a program called RAD, Rental Assistance Demonstration. These are, again, I won't go through each one in detail, but having the first one up is actually kind of perfect. because it does highlight well we're talking about you have the operating and the capital and again this is a hud document and it it recognizes that historically congress has not adequately funded the program so you have to look to possibly look at a rad deal um i guess we go to the next slide the the purpose for a rad deal is long-term preservation affordability public stewardship and it has a lot of built-in resident protections As far as changing their rent, what's going to happen if they're relocated when you do a bigger rebuild? And then the next slide will show that before conversion, we're just a public housing authority. But after conversion, especially when you've all tax credits, you have possibly a different entity that maintains its control and instrumentality or possibly a full nonprofit affiliate where it has different controlling people or once we convert. And the next slide can kind of show you the traditional model of public housing and multifamily, which will only have one property like that. You go through a RAD conversion, and now you have either project-based vouchers or project-based rental assistance. I won't explain the difference because that's a whole other subject, but again, section 8 project-based vouchers are possibly the golden ticket when it comes to affordable development, whether it's a nonprofit and it's Wynn doing something in vouchers whether it's the housing authority or it's metro housing boston or the city that's administering these this is the key because again it makes up that gap if somebody's in a 30 extremely low income unit and they can only afford to pay 300 the developer wants to assure that they have something that's going to pick up that difference the subsidy that's deep and can move no matter what happens the income of that resident's going to be that's essentially a project based voucher again tax credits they'll set it at a certain level let's say this is a 1500 rent it's low it's what can you do? You'll have to pay your rent or you get evicted. Again, these programs, when it's Section 8, that doesn't happen. So that is sort of the brass tacks of why you do the RAD conversion. And RAD underwrites $50,000 per unit in sources. There are blends that are different. Again, without getting too in the weeds of RAD, it's just a nice way of saying that we're looking to do a lot in each unit because the needs are so deep. I'm sorry, the next slide will show you the breakdown. So just a sample, if you have a hundred unit building, you get a $50,000 per unit. What are you doing? Well, an HVAC system, a full roof, new kitchens, ADA accessibility. I will say the bane of existence of our properties that are all built in the 1960s is accessibility. There's no elevator. There's a bunch of walk-ups. Everybody has mobility issues and people that are in an extreme situation need to accept housing. We'll take a second floor unit, even though they have knee surgery around the current corner, you know, they just need to get into housing. So we're doing our best to look at developments. I would, of course, the elevator buildings. We need new windows and doors. These properties are hardly energy efficient. They do a lot of programs that try to offer ways of doing air source heat pumps. They're ductless. We do everything we can to be energy efficient. walkways, lighting. And this is a conservative estimate if you did a 100-unit building in 50,000 per unit. And then Massachusetts in red, these are great examples to show how Massachusetts is already one of the leaders. Just so everybody knows, as far as state public housing, I forgot to mention this earlier, but there are only four states in the United States that have state public housing, and Massachusetts is bar none the biggest of those four. So credit to Massachusetts for, again, being leader in housing authorities. There's 240 housing authorities in Only Texas could compare. So that means approximately 88, 60 people have had assisted housing secured and preserved for the long term on the Section 8 platform. Again, moving your resources from public housing to Section 8. And they are looking to improve the program, believe it or not. There are some subsets of... federal conversions that are kind of dying down as a result of the current administration. They're just too good of deals, if you would, for housing authorities. The rat is still there. They see it, I think, as a way of privatizing. And once you say they were privatized in the current climate in D.C., they get a little excited because they just want the public housing aspect to go away. They do not want to have that asset. sort of resource to privatize. What I always find shocking is that public housing is technically the best affordable housing model. If you're actually to do it the right way, you buy the land, you bond, and you do operating capital, that's the cheapest way of doing housing. As I said earlier, it's $4 billion for capital, $4 billion for operating across the entire United States, yet the Section 8 program is close to $39, $40 billion, yet they're telling us to go to the Section 8 platform. growing Section 8 long-term.

Carry on. I'll save my comment for later.

That's okay. Just the last couple slides. These transactions, you can see the amount is $477 million in construction investment just in Massachusetts, including the initial reserve deposits. And to date, Massachusetts ranks 38th in the country on the percentage of former public housing units that have been preserved. I will skip the financing part and just go to question because there's a lot of complexities on financing these deals, and you have all the slides. And the last attachment was a dream collaborative study that was done through the Housing Trust and Housing Authority last year, where we looked at a lot of the vacant public properties that we had in the city of Newton, including six of the public housing authority properties, to see which made the most sense, at least from a feasibility stage, to redevelop and to increase the density. So I just shared the entire dream collaborative study. That's a public document that's been distributed for a while. that makes sense to redevelop. So we have selected a handful of properties that make the most sense, and we're moving those towards RFP now. We are hoping to get out an RFP for any services on Parker House, which is right near Newton Center, by the end of the summer. And then we're hoping also to do an RFP for a development partner by the fall for our state public housing, because we have had a signal from the housing trust, and specifically the chair in Houston, that they want to see more family. And we have Two Life, we have Metro West, we have a lot of senior housing. And the housing authority is one of the few that has deeply affordable family housing, which there's a huge need in greater Boston. And you are sometimes more attractive to receive tax credits when you have these deeper affordable family properties that are increasing a lot of density. When you say you're doubling the density, you're tripling the density. But I can say, once we do an RFP and have an architect on board, the first step is working with the residents more. We're aware of this, and we've had several resident meetings, and they're very supportive. And then the neighbors. We want to get our ducks in a row and make sure that we have not only a systematic design, but again, designers who are on for contract for the years to come with this long project that can then go to the neighbors and start working with them and hearing their feedback and work in a very collaborative way. But I do want to just sort of mention why I attached the dream collaborative study.

Okay, that's a lot to absorb. But just to summarize what I'm hearing you say, that if you had public funds and you could spend them the most efficiently way possible, you would be in the business of being the landlord and operating the properties as a public entity. The problem is that you can't get those subsidies. And what you can get are these subsidies to private from the federal government of a much higher range. So you have to privatize your resources in order to get your housing opportunity to people.

That's spot on with the one caveat that there is an ability for us to create a nonprofit or instrumentality and to breed that private entity. So we can be the person receiving the vouchers and getting both the housing assistance payments. We can get the tenant rents, the admin fee to operate those vouchers, and we would be the owner or the operator. And we would again have an instrumentality or a nonprofit affiliate that will own the property, which is the case in Haywood House. So that gives us that flexibility to actually get the vouchers. You said it has to be a private entity, but there's ways of doing that where we maintain ourselves as that entity and keep the ownership, which is the key piece of RAD. We are not giving up the ownership necessarily if we do it the way we plan to. There are some RAD projects where they just give it away and say, hey, we've got to give it to a private entity. We can't make it work. But we are of a size. We've closed the tax credit deal, so we're looking to expand ourselves in a way where

All right, enough for me. Comments, questions, colleagues? Councilor Gord?

Thank you, Chair. I'm curious about the Crescent Street Municipal Yard and where that stands, because that is actually what prompted my question earlier. Because I know at one point the city was looking to do this. Nothing happened. So it's this land that maybe by now could have had housing for people. So is this anywhere in the priority list? And is there something the city needs to do to maybe trying to get something done here?

I would defer to the city. It is a city property. They looked at a lot of municipal yards and different parking lots. I think it's a great site. I think everybody was very excited when we talked about it, both planning and the housing authority. But there's forms of public procurement you'd have to go through. Obviously, the housing authority cannot just be sort of handed or transfer that land. But again, through procurement, there's ways of sort of making sure that you have some local Newton leaders and nonprofits that are in the businesses But it's up to the city. They drive the bus there. And like I said, as long as there's a plan, it's a lot to plan. It's not typically something where you see a city saying, well, this is how we want to develop it. They usually are, here's the land. We want to see it used affordable housing resources for the purposes in perpetuity, which are made in affordable housing. And again, that's the city's prerogative to do that. I'm retired.

Councilor Albright.

So the Crescent Street property, as well as the other city-owned properties, all would have to go through real property reuse. So we have a role to play in that. And I think that the affordable housing trust is looking at those properties to see which one might be more viable than the other in terms of the council's interests. So it didn't go through that before when it had come up? It went that far. Okay. It went far, but not far enough.

Okay. Remember, it went pretty far. We had a whole lot of conversation. What?

Well, there was a lot of problems with it. It was only for eight units. It was a big piece of property for only eight units.

Right, so there's new proposals on here. So this is a question about maybe bringing this back up. Exactly.

And the only thing I'd add is that when you'd be surprised, when the private developers get involved, and some do this in non-profit developers that do it for the right reasons, sometimes they'll ask for a local housing authority to step in as a partner for part of the deal. Can you offer your vouchers? How can we work you in as a local housing authority? So it's not necessarily primarily the housing authority that had to be the leader driving the bus to take on a new development project. But it's the city to decide how they want to use this property.

So I won't take up time here, but I'd like to know then how you go to the next step at some point.

I think the Affordable Housing Trust is going to make some recommendations to us.

Well, the one question I have to follow up on that, because Councillor Albright is our representative of the Affordable Housing Trust, and we'll try to resource them through the city council with CPA funds so they can move more quickly on certain things. But is there any specific legislation that a home rule petition would assist you with? Because you're dealing with a state framework which is designed for every city and town, but there might be some wrinkles because of the way Newton operates and can operate that some special legislation would aid you? And I just don't know the answer to that, but what occurred to me.

That's a great question. Thinking long term, the only thing that comes to mind that we were considering in my previous role in Watertown when we did a large-scale development there was a home rule petition for payment of lewd taxes. And the fact that we were hoping to go beyond just the city But I do think that when we have that conversation and say, well, if we're going to tax the property because that's an LLC or private investor, which usually does trigger problems as far as the taxation, the local assessors do have a lot of control, but you may need a homeowner petition to assist with that as well. But that's the only thing I can think of, you know, because on the 40B side, I forget if Newton Safe Harbor, I remember seeing it was, yeah, exactly. It's not by land area though, it's by the 10%. And so that would have a big impact into

I guess the point is that I think many members of the committee here and others on the council are so credit to what you're trying to do with very little resources. And the question is, is there some piece of the puzzle that is going to assist you that might make a difference in some context? I think the conversations with neighbors, of course, around these projects that you're thinking about is really critical because the members of the council who will sit here and support you in general also have to represent and be responsive to the people in particular who are there.

That factored into the sites we decided to go with as far as sort of minimizing the neighbor impact. One's by Cold Spring Park. The other one is by the Beaconwood, by the Duncan there. And so we have large pieces of land where we wouldn't be serving too many neighbors. more projects to take shape, but we have received that support from a lot of counselors. You know, we're excited. How can we help you? What are the resources you do need since you're so limited? I do always point to the fact that it will eventually be money for the construction. It'll be the major design construction costs. The reason being that if you get a low Whether the CPA fund funnels the trust or whether it's the CPC directly, I leave to the city to direct us somewhere to go. But yes, it would be in the millions, you know, a few million that we need in terms of design and construction eventually. Okay.

And just real quick, when you mentioned, when you say competitive, do you mean just like the market for like, like the, Competition for the price of the land? Is that what you mean by competitive?

No, my apologies. The competitiveness of getting the tax credits. There are a lot of projects in the pipeline, both for 4% and 9% tax credits. In particular, 9%, that's highly competitive. And then 4%, equally competitive, I would say. These days, it used to not be that way. Six, seven years ago, they say, you'll have to wait your turn for it. uh now not as certain it's become that competitive but we always want to see the project it's never a loss if boston or cambridge wins we all win um but of course newton wants to make put itself at the front then the key would be that local funding coming in first and the projects aren't winning exactly but it'd be a little bit more of a win be more linear i feel the same yeah right i would hope so thank you and by the way that wasn't clear at all so i'm

Glad I asked, but don't apologize. Competition is coming from everywhere. I just didn't know what we were referring to.

And as far as the competitiveness for the land, sorry, the good news is that because it's a dry market for the developers, but it's a little tougher. So I think when we do an RFP to seek a development partner in the properties that we do have right now, we certainly will get good interest from, yeah, development.

Okay. Anybody else have questions? Councilor Block, I see your hand. I'm sorry.

Okay, thank you, Chair. This has been a wonderful presentation, and it sort of builds on meetings that I've visited with the Housing Authority. But you just said something that made me think I'm actually putting two and two together here. And you tell me if sort of where this observation is. During the Riverside development, we started hearing that the developer was going to the state and needed low-income tax credits in order to make the project viable. And the number that I've heard, I don't know if this is true or not, but there was $15 million of low-income tax credits which the state is providing to the developer in order to make it financially feasible i see you kind of nodding your head um how i mean first of all does that make sense to you second of all um when you talk about competition i'm guessing there's just a finite pool and The disallocation for Riverside means that somebody else somewhere, I guess in the state, isn't getting low income tax credits out of the whole pool. So I'm wondering just how big is that pool? How big is the low income tax credit pool that the state has at its discretion? But why did I just stop there? Help me – just help me understand how a development like Riverside interacts with the low-income tax credit market that the state, I guess, operates.

there's a there's a qap that's sort of the guiding document for the tax credit in the one-stop application it does sound about right that they need that um you know 10 50 millions of low-income housing tax credit and as far as the full amount if i could ask the chair i see that vince o'donnell my chairperson is on and he is a consultant affordable housing and vince is excellent knowing this vince i don't know if you know the overall amount it was probably the only good thing that came about in the big beautiful bill was that it did increase the volume path on tax credit significantly. Vince, it was 450 million per year? Does that sound about right?

Yeah, they're two separate pots. None of this is state money, it's really federal money. For the 9% tax credit, there's an annual allocation that's based on a percentage of the state's population. And I honestly don't recall the global number for the state per year. But the $15 million sounds about right for, I'm going to guess, maybe 40 affordable units that it would support. And then the other category is what they call the 4% credit. And the numbers mean a different thing for that. The numbers for that, also based on population, scale up to determine the amount of tax-exempt debt that is allowed to be issued, and that in turn in a proportional way generates the tax credits which provide equity for the developer. So I'm sorry I don't have the statewide numbers there, but every year the state will fund something on the order of 10 or so 9% tax credit deals and a comparable number of 4% deals.

We just have Council block the only other caveat that makes us a little more difficult for housing authorities against that. We're not a nonprofit private developer. So we have to adhere to public procurement and the prevailing wage. And it does make it a little more difficult for us to get it because they'll see the same. Well, if I give the same hundred million dollars, the nonprofit developer, I'm getting more units of housing.

again but are there restrictions that'll make sure that that's deeply affordable as long as a housing authority probably not but again it's a finite amount of money as you said so they i don't envy them they have to choose which projects to pick great okay um okay we've got some other items on the agenda i want to move to but i do want to make sure that we get a chance to ask any more questions about this particular issue counselor oliver yeah um before um

motion to hold. I'm curious, is there enough change over the course of, say, another six months to have you come back? In other words, to keep this item open? Or should we wait until the following month to get any returns? I have a motion to hold.

Well, I was going to ask if that's the appropriate motion as opposed to NAN, because if we're done with this one, We can clear our docket, but if the committee would like to have a reprise at a future point, we can hold it. Motion to hold.

All right. I figure at least one year from now, there'll be enough travel to update our warranted. Fine with me. I just want to make sure. Thank you, Mr. Chair.

You mentioned earlier while I was And those, if I remember correctly, those are situations where existing affordable housing is being taken, demolished, and they're increasing the overall number of affordable units, but they're also introducing market rate as part of the math, because that's how their public-private partnership is working. Is that the kind of thing that in your layout of your math, is that the kind of thing that makes sense for anything that you're looking at, or

in right now? I'll give the briefest answer in respect to time. I think for our federal public housing deal, it makes sense to do deeply affordable across the board. So we have 33 one-bedroom units at the current site we're looking to redevelop, and again, keep all deeply affordable, and we can maybe put 60 or 70, all 30% AMI and self-development. That's a golden goal we want to keep for that project. I would think it's going to be a little harder on the state program because it doesn't have a program where you're going and have pockets like the federal government to do that, I would assume a private-public partnership could lead to mixed income, where there's an 80% AMI component, possibly. We don't want to see the market rate, not enough money against market rate, but I would think, I've often said, if we get to a point where there's gap funding, this thing we can't predict three years from now, another war, another tariff, who knows, and the costs go through the roof, and perhaps to make up the gap funding, we have to change our financing structure to take on that market rate. Or maybe there's a developer that approaches us and said, no, we're going to do a lot of density, and this is how we're going to do it. We're going to do a lot of market rate, that's going to cover the cost the board would eventually review and approve whether they think that meets the mission of the housing authority i think everything's on the table but we're sort of the starting for us is deeply affordable passive house all the things you want here and then we'll let the financing dictate over time i think okay now we're on the motion to hold yes well there's a question that follows up when counts are down so if we're looking at family housing so one bedroom units won't do won't do that will they There are one bedroom families. There'd be a few in there. Sometimes I do see those in some of the deals, but we're looking to do mostly twos and threes. But there are one bedroom families in single individuals that are considered families by definition.

So you're considering a one person family?

I can't speak to that yet because we're so preliminary in the stage, but we'll see what models we get for that particular property. And again, our hope is to bring in possibly a private partner that can kind of approach us for the design and possibly woo us on what they're putting together. We'll see.

Very much so.

I have a discussion on the motion. We have a motion to hold. All those in favor say aye. Aye. Thank you very much for coming in and talking to us about this. I think the first point you made is really a vital one. The housing authority is not the city of Newton. It sounds like the city of Newton, but it's not the city of Newton. It's a separate legal entity that has its own structure, organization, mission, and resources.

Can I ask one more question, even though we've already held it? Sure. Oftentimes, a developer that's doing a project will come to us and say, look, I really don't, for whatever reasons, I don't wanna do the affordable units here. I'd rather give you the money. And the money we split between the Housing Authority and the Affordable Housing Trust. So do you have an opinion about, if you can turn, I don't know, 10 or 15 affordable units into $500,000 for the Housing Authority, do you have an opinion which goes further

The inclusionary zoning money is extremely helpful. That's actually what's bankroll in the current work that we're doing. So these, I think, times when we have big projects where we're very hesitant as a city to take a payment in lieu because we think private development, all senior housing, that doesn't make sense. We want to see affordable component. We agree, we're a mission-based organization. However, I would say that it's not one size fits all. I think there are times when it may make sense to take that because the money that goes to the trust and housing authority So I think there are unique situations where there is an unusual net benefit. I believe that the language in the IZ ordinance and that benefit is possibly the fact that we're going to develop bigger housing.

That's very helpful to know that.

I did send a letter to the committees last year, and I think, you know, what the housing board was just pointing out is that don't forget that we're here to help, and we can receive this money, but that is, to be very clear, what is paying for the feasibility development work, the environmental studies, the surveys, and now eventually the architect engineers, the consultants, the lawyers that have to help us. This is the IZ funds.

Definitely to good use.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Thank you, Councilors.

Okay, colleagues, we now have a very interesting item, 133.26, discussion of established uses within Chapter 30. This is Councilors Oliver, Baker, Silver, Kalis, Lucas, Leary, Farrell, Malachy, Wright, and Getz requesting discussion and possible amendments to provide new or updated definitions in the Newton zoning ordinances for allowed uses. And the planning department is prepared to make a presentation. I understand. Ms. Colallo, are you the designated?

I am. You're welcome.

It gets settled. A lot to think about about housing. This is a big topic which we sort of

blew through here even with the question so um my children text me and i don't know

We have this docket item from Councilors Oliver, Baker, Silver, Kalis, Lucas, Leary, Farrell, a list. Discussion and possible amendments to provide new or updated definitions in Newton's zoning ordinance for allowed uses. I figured it would be prudent to begin with the process for how uses are determined. So when a new business comes in and wants to open in Newton, they will describe said business to the commissioner. The commissioner will determine whether this falls under an existing use. If it's yes, it's pretty easy. We see if that is an allowed use under the zoning district of their proposed location. Again, if yes, great, they can move on into probably getting their signing permit realistically, but I put allowed to open there. There's a chance it's allowed, but by special permit. And then there's a chance that it is not allowed and therefore they can't open in that specific location. In the case that it does not fall under an existing use, we come to the interpretation by the commissioner. This section outlines the commissioner's determination process, ultimately saying that if a use is not explicitly listed but is similar to a listed use, the commissioner can consider that use one and the same based off of the numbered criteria in this section. We, as this docket item alludes to, have a number of undefined uses in our ordinance. So here you can see various residential uses that are not defined, which includes the live work use, which I believe came up in land use recently and may be part of the genesis of this docket item. Various civic and institutional uses, commercial and industrial. I'm happy to come back to these slides throughout discussion if any specific use comes up in the committee's deliberation. But to focus the conversation, I just wanted to talk through a few of the components of committee's consideration in defining uses, there are various benefits and drawbacks to the specificity of language. So benefits of specificity when we're defining uses in the zoning ordinance are consistency in decisions. You know, staff, boards, committees, applicants, we're all working with that same playbook. And this can reduce case by case interpretation. So that ties into the next benefit, which is legal defensibility. It's a whole lot easier for our attorneys to defend something that is clear and courts generally prefer objective standards over interpretations. There can be more predictability for applicants. If someone says, well, I think my business is X, Y, Z, they can look and see if our language and our ordinance aligns with their understanding of their business. And it can lower friction and speed up permitting. You can hang out by the counter and just hear some of the back and forth occasionally of, well, my use is kind of this. And then the commissioner, it turns into a longer dialogue.

The record shows that the commissioner is on Zoom here. He is the person who is involved in this dialogue you just described.

Thank you. And then there are drawbacks to specificity. We can lose flexibility. I know economic development is a big focus of the city. And once something is defined, it can exclude unanticipated edge cases. It can also become outdated more quickly. So if you think of kind of all of the new technologies we have today and the various uses that go along with societal shifts, uses can become outdated if they're more specific. And then it can also cause confusion and hardship for businesses. Just the more narrow you make a definition, the fewer businesses you're capturing in that use definition. And unfortunately, though, it would be wonderful if everybody Who ever wanted to open a business knew about zoning. That's not knowledge. Anyone's born with and so This can lead to, you know, real problems for folks if they thought that, oh yeah, I can open a business. You know, it's similar enough to other things nearby. Maybe they've already put a down payment on a lease and it turns out, nope, we've got a more specific definition that doesn't include their business. Now they are either, you know, delayed in occupancy or they're unable to occupy in their location. And here I am testing my hand at animation, so this is just super high level, you know it's too broad you're getting both. businesses that are desired and undesired for that location, you know any business could be desirable, depending on location, but this is for the location. Our ideal, right, is we're capturing the desired uses, but not the undesired uses. And then too narrow, right, you're not capturing the undesired uses, but you're also missing out on some businesses that you do want to locate in. Thank you. I was trying to think of different ways to communicate. So with that, I will leave it to committee discussion.

Before we begin, I just want to point out that, and I think it's helpful to have the sort of Goldilocks point eloquently made with the dynamic slide. We're not used to that. Is that the lib workspace is, if you look down the list of undefined uses, there are a lot of them that are not defined, but they seem relatively straightforward. Hospital. I think we understand what it is and so forth but live work is one of those that that doesn't have a self referential nature and I think that's part of the challenge and I think the question before us is is how do we go forward with this and especially that the land use committee is trying to make sense out of this in real time and we have I think you've got, Councilor Gordon has a photograph that she had sent of this lease, what's, is that it? No?

No, it's for the next item.

Oh, it's the next item. Sorry, wrong one. Sorry, I apologize. So I guess the question is, how do we as a committee assist the process going forward of figuring out definitions for something like this, or does the department have A RECOMMENDATION THAT FITS IN THE NARROW OR THE MIDDLE FUNNEL IF YOU'RE USING YOUR ANIMATION. AND SO THOSE ARE THE KIND OF ISSUES I THINK BEFORE US. LET ME GO TO COUNCILOR ULVER FIRST.

YOU'RE RIGHT. WE DEFINITELY DID DOCKET THIS IN REACTION TO OR AS AN OUTCOME OF THE ITEM 1100 BEACON THAT'S IN FRONT OF LAND USE AGAIN TOMORROW NIGHT. AND I COULDN'T AGREE MORE WITH THE CHAIR Like, if you look at this list there, there are two or three that I would consider me I don't know what that means all the others and like I know what a paint store is I suppose I could write up two sentences that would define it even further. But there are also a couple that really do scream out for what is this because otherwise if they're the one. You have created for us some guides in terms of. overly strict or narrow definitions, overly broad, I would argue that there's another slide that's missing, and what if we don't define it at all, which is where I am and where I'm more or less concerned because of some of the reasons that are listed on, I think that's page 10, I think the page number's at the bottom, the benefits of having a definition I think are all of the things that, quite frankly, the City Council and land use in particular is accused of being, in not so friendly a way, being inconsistent, being unclear, changing our minds regularly. Those are the things that we have heard time and time again We would benefit from and applicants would benefit from a little more specificity, so I do think that there is. Because a clear benefit to having a definition versus no definition and then I think we get into the well how defined, do we need to be or should we be. And I think there's one other attribute here that we isn't represented here and maybe that's something that would be subsequent. And that is in the use tables and you do kind of, you kind of talk about it here on slide. Well, it says page six and then there's a three in the corner. So I'm not quite sure which way to go, but really it's, how do we define it? Like for me, if something is undefined, it should not be by right, because that And I've spoken to the legal department about this. I've spoken to, I don't know if Chair Kelly is here or not, but I have had a few conversations where it's kind of putting people in an awkward place. But at the end of the day, like the law department reminded me, if a use, for example, of this lit work, if the If the special permit defines what live work is, it's limited to that property, to that law, which is great, but also concerning from the consistency perspective. So from my perspective, where I net out with all of this information is you might not need to define all of these because, again, some of them are pretty straightforward. Some of them I would... Some of them, I think, fall into your undesirable category, like 656, feed and seed store. A lot of those here, Newton. I don't know. Maybe worth a conversation. I can also tell you that there's another one on here somewhere. There it is. 659, laundry, cleaning, and dyeing, with an E, establishment. I have an entire ward that would really like to see dyeing removed from that. TCE contamination, blah, blah, blah, all that great stuff going on in Ward 1. So I do think that kind of wrapping up this long-winded point I'm trying to make, some of these are screaming for a definition, some are not. Some of the others might need to be winnowed down, perhaps. But it does seem to me that the ones that are like live work could be anything. My property could be at work because I work at home. Or maybe I work on my house, which most of us do. So does that mean, like, I don't know what that means. So therefore, it can mean anything. And I don't see that as a good thing.

I'll stop there. All right. I'm just trying to recognize people in order. Councilor Kalis, then I have Councilor Wright, Councilor Block, and then Councilor Albright.

I agree with that whole thing. But I would say the three that he identified, let's get some definitions and talk about the next time.

So just live, work, laundry and dye and feed and seed.

Okay. Councillor Wright.

Thank you. Actually, I don't think we need to address those three in order, like the feed and seed. I don't think of any feed and seed story about to come into Newton, but the live work is very important. What would have been interesting and some of the key ones here is what are some of our peer groups in Boston, Cambridge and Brookline? doing about these definitions. And there's a lot of them, which I think we need to go one by one. Which one I was just looking at. 654, building material sales yard and storage building. Is that two, like there's storage buildings and then there's like a Home Depot type thing. I think those are two different things. And so having them both together seems a little... I would think they would be separated out. But, um, I agree that, you know, some, I was shocked to see things like paint store defined and funeral home that defined, um, And so it would be interesting what our peers are doing in Boston and Cambridge, how they go about it. I don't want to see more special permit per se. So, again, we would want to define as much, but keeping it kind of broad, but define it better than just leaving it blank. And it takes some of the... work from ISD, which means more work for them versus just looking something up and saying, yeah, that's fine. Because they need to determine what that is and then it may get contentious with the neighborhood because other people will look at the definition differently. So I think for a lot of these, I think we should go down and it could be just one or two sentences. and looking at other communities and how they define veterinary hospital or something like that. I think hospital is another issue that's coming up in Newton that, and I don't know if there's a separate docket item for it, but that's something we need to define better too. And maybe short term is just this work life, but I think all of this should be looked at. Thank you.

Okay, I have Councillor Block and then Councillor O'Brien.

Thank you, Chair. I am a member of land use, as I think you all know, and I'm really glad that you're talking about this. It feels at the very least awkward to not have the live work function defined when land use, and indeed all of us, need to make a quasi-judicial determination regarding whether the proposal will have a negative impact on the neighborhood. I mean, how do we do that under the current circumstance? And to be blunt, it feels like... On the one hand, it feels like a developer may be taking advantage of this ambiguity and making a proposal to have a live work basis for building in a business unit zone when it's really residential that that they're actually proposing, or it's really going to turn out to be just residential with people working from home, which is a pretty common situation. I don't want to prejudge the Land Use Committee's determination. I keep as open a mind as I can, but it just feels very, I feel like I'm not standing on firm ground as I think about this specific proposal using this specific live-work option that we haven't defined. That just, like, I'm still trying to wrap my mind around that. So I that's all I have to say. Thank you.

I think that there was a reference to the fact that we have some parallel language in the zoning ordinance for home businesses and residential zones, things like that. The basic idea that I think animated a number of these provisions over the years in my memory has been to try and make sure that the residential areas felt and acted residential, not became basically centers of commerce and have the commercial uses clustered together. That's the whole idea of zoning, that you put residences together and commercial businesses in another place and they each do their separate function, but they're not overlapping each other. So you don't have a gas station right next to you in your neighborhood. So it seems to me that the premise for this particular idea should be somewhat context-driven. Is it in a commercial area? If so, having some people live in a commercial area is less problem for me than having a commercial business in a residential area. Some people may say that's the distinction, but not a difference. I think someone has, you know, never mind. I was about to make a bad joke, but I won't be.

The only one making bad jokes.

But anyway, it seems to me that part of the question here is impact-driven and context-driven. And so we need to give some guidance for what this means. And where is this coming up? Is it coming up in a residential area or coming up in a commercial area? And if so, that may guide your decision making in terms of the land use committee, but also we should give some guidance from our committee to the full council and the council will decide this. So that's just context I wanted to put up on the table. Councilor Alderman.

Thank you. So a couple of things in relation to what you just said. I think some of these things have to do with the time that they came into the use table. You know, at the time when work was put in there, it meant something. times, and then the times change, and then you forgot, well, what was it originally? So when things go undefined, you lose the memory of what it was supposed to be in the first place. I mean, I frankly, I doubt that we're going to have any feed and seed stores in Newton. You know, on the Cape, they do have some feed and seed stores because it's a little bit more rural, but I don't think it's going to happen here in the near future. But a question I have is, Does this include uses that don't exist in the use table that should be? Like we did a whole thing on breweries that didn't exist in the use table. So when we look at uses that should exist that don't exist at the same time, because I think there's some value in doing that. It's the timeliness, things that we didn't want a brewery back 30 years ago, but now it's okay because it's popular in a village context and have a drinking brewery place. So I'm hoping that maybe some of those issues can come up as well.

So let me recognize you. Thank you, Mr.

Chair.

I'm sorry. No, you finish up. I apologize.

I just want to mention one other thing and that the uses have something to do with where they can happen. No, not Council Gordon. I'm sorry. I had a blank in my head for a minute. There was an issue of a Ward 6 business that wanted a storage facility in her village store, and it's not allowed, but the storage facility is facing the back in a parking lot. So why can't we have them allow them to have stored facility in the backyard, so to speak, not in the village. So besides the uses, there's where they're allowed and where they're not that needs to be looked at.

Yeah, can I just, it might be helpful to kind of outline exact, there's sort of four categories that we're talking about here. One is uses that are so well-defined that have their own section with various regulations. One is uses that are defined with definitions. One is uses that do not have definitions but are listed. And then the other is uses that can occur that, you know, maybe something that came up in my previous work was a hydroponic growing facility, right? That's not something that ever existed in the past. It wasn't, you know, it didn't have the similar impacts to another agricultural use because it was all happening contained in a building. But it wasn't in the ordinance because they couldn't have told the future. And so it wasn't in there yet. And so there's various things that don't have a use listed.

Well, we also had situations where you define a use so that you can very carefully specify where it can and cannot go. We did that with firearms. And data centers are now sort of another thing.

Can I just say one more thing? And the commissioner, I'd be curious if the commissioner could comment, what are the, I mean, maybe not tonight, but as we go along with this, what are the areas that he has the most problems with? when someone tries to say, I'm a this, and he says, no, you're not a this, you're a that. I'd love to have his input.

Well, maybe this is an appropriate time to recognize us, Commissioner, since we're taking your name in vain constantly about this matter.

Thank you, Chair. I usually have the hardest time is when there is no definition. I do like some sort of a definition. I sort of agree with... nor as far as maybe being a little vague. And that way there we can, or I can ask for a, typically what I'll do is I'll ask for a written description of the business and what their function is. And then I try and match it up the best I can to whatever's in the use table, especially if I have some sort of a use description to go by. It does make it a bit easier.

Commissioner, can I ask you to bear with me a second? You have the authority under the section of the ordinance that Ms. Caldwell pointed us to, to make these judgments with a whole number of factors involved. This is the Section 6 use determination. And when we go forward with this, when you make such a use determination, do you turn it into a short memo so that it lives in the file? Or is it just to say this particular use goes forward and gets a building permit In other words, is there any way to capture the kind of information and thought that you put into this?

Something like this would probably come under a zoning determination, which is a letter that I would write determining what the use would be. And it would go into the file.

That's what it might be. So it might be useful to just take a look at some of those zoning determinations just to see how it's done at some point. Excuse me, Counselor, do you want to?

Yeah, just on that exact point, I am kind of curious because part of the interesting aspect of the land use item, right, this 1100-1102 beacon that I think is compelling here is because live work is allowed by right, that's not why they're in front of land use for the special permit. It's for height, I believe. maybe a setback, I forget. Would that then be inappropriate? I don't know if anyone here can answer this question. Is it inappropriate to put in the council order and what we mean by live work is X, A, B, C, and D, but not E or F? I have no idea how to answer that. But I do think that we kind of should.

Well, I think that's, yeah, it's sort of our job to do that because if it's coming through that gate as an allowed use and it's the special permit is for some dimension, I don't think the grant of the special permit is likely to have that.

Chair, are we talking about live work or are we talking about the whole thing?

Well, we're talking about both of them, but that's the example that drove this.

I know, but they're two different discussions. I think you need to focus the conversation. If we're going to focus on live work and solve that, let's do that. Otherwise, you're talking about boiling the ocean.

Well, unfortunately, for better or worse, the docket item is boiling the ocean. So I'm trying to figure out how to manage that. But we do have a counselor who has his hand up and I want to recognize.

So let me address your concern. I'm going to address it as a concern. The live work is not driving a special permit application. It is a probably ill-considered effort to gain support for the item in land use because of concerns about the loss of commercial space. I don't think the developer understood. I think the developer thought that it was kind of a concern about the commercial vibe as opposed to the commercial tax base. And so the developer thought, oh, if I do work, live work and then works on the ground floor, that would be vibey. My effort tomorrow morning is to say, look, let's take this live work off the table because that's not really the basis for the concern. So I think our concern here about live work may be mooted by what we do in land use tomorrow. I don't think it'll get resolved tomorrow because there's too much other stuff going on, but I do think we may be and bring down the stakes a little bit here that was my that's my response to your your concern questions I don't think it's going to be I think it's gonna be that relevant to the special permit after tomorrow. To that one. Yes, to that one, which brings me to the larger boiling the ocean question, and this is a question through the Chair to Mr Lee. I had this question.

Tell me the question.

The question is, what is the notice required for changes to the uses? Because, in fact, it may be better to tee up these conversations about use definitions in land use when we're facing some particular set of facts, as opposed to the abstraction of, you know, what is... live work in the larger question. Now, the countervailing argument is if you do it in the context of a specific case, then you get two case determined. I think there are enough of us here that we can say, all right, how does this broaden? But I think absent a specific case to anchor the discussion, things like live work maybe end up just too difficult to address.

So before we end, Mr. Lee responds, I just appreciate the comment. I think, as I understand it, the challenge is that if something is a defined term and it's a use as a right, the building commissioner, I mean, the inspectional services makes that call without ever seeing the land use committee, right? If that's the case tomorrow night, you're seeing it only because the land use committee is being asked for a dimensional difference, not a huge difference. Only if something is a special permit category, I think, would you have that opportunity. And that might be a very narrow class. So I'm not sure that that would solve it. But I think the question has been posed to Mr. Lee. If you would like to respond and can, I'd be welcome there.

So, Mr. Chair, thank you. I'm going to actually have to hear the question again. I was on the phone with Jonah Temple, the deputy city solicitor who regularly staffs land use. I had a specific question for him I wanted to just check, which was, I think that this item that's before ZAP tonight is really about uses in zoning and their definitions. There shouldn't really be any discussion about the land use petition that's currently pending before the land use committee. So I just wanted to touch base with him, see if he agreed. He did. So that's what I was focusing on when the question was being asked. Now, if the question is something different and it is specifically about the zoning definition or things of that nature, I'm happy to answer it. But if someone could repeat it, I'd appreciate it.

Let me rephrase the question, if I may, in light of your comment. Because I think you make a fair point. What are the what's the notice requirement to make a change to a zoning definition, either in response to a an issue raised through the land use process or. In response to questions or issues that get. identified through the by right process, so if this committee that if the City Council want to say Oh, you know what we just heard. that there's some ambiguity about this thing. So let's nail it down. What do we, do we have, is this like a, do we have to have a, what are the notice requirements for this body to then say, okay, let's, you know, as quickly as we can clarify this item?

The impetus is irrelevant. You have to check, you have to follow chapter 48. You have to follow the normal process for the amendment of the zoning. There's no difference because of the reason.

Okay.

Okay.

I don't want to belabor this point any more than perhaps you already have. While the particular item in land use drew my attention to this, I'm not trying to assess these uses and the lack of definition for that item. I want to make sure these are separate things like I couldn't agree with you know, Vice President Kalis anymore, like am I boiling the ocean by asking this question? Apologies, but maybe a little bit, but it's certainly not because of this one item. I just want to be really clear about that. I just it was an example that came up. I was like, oh, that's interesting. How can we possibly have a by right use that If we asked everybody in this room to define, I'll guarantee pretty much all of us would have some overlap, but they would not be identical at all.

So I'm going to try and pick up on Councilor Davis. I hope I'm going to be responsive to your question, although we'll wait and see if you can tell me. It seems to me that there are some things where the commissioner says, someone comes in and says, I have a ban as of right use, and it's this. And he says, let me see which category you fit into and he goes through a process and he says, I think this is close enough to be one of these sort of like horseshoes you get close enough and you're in. Right. But in a case where he is really has no guidance, he has nothing to look at. I think live work is one example of that. Then the question is, can we offer guidance as a committee? to the commissioner in some way of defining these things. So it seems to me to try and manage this discussion without getting us all completely beyond ourselves in one night. I think we should give the guidance to the department to say, can we follow what the president had indicated and look and see what other communities are doing? I think it was you. or something like this, or these particular definitions which appear to be unclear enough that they don't have any content that we can fully articulate. A hospital, we sort of have an idea what a hospital is. We know what a feed store looks like even if it's not going to arrive on our doorstep. So I don't think we have to define all the undefined uses, which would be a really challenging process. But I think if we take this particular a test case so to speak and say can we find out how this term is defined elsewhere or look at the zoning definitions for business use like we currently have so that maybe the department could come back and say here's a potential definition that you could look at as a way of test driving this whole process of doing a clarifying definition would that be something that Would it be variable to the committee?

So I like where you're going. I want to be careful because I think that we have to be even more specific because they could look at every use and find that there's some gray area. And then you have a project that is going to take too much time.

I'm just saying one definition that seems to be unclear. This one here.

Right. And maybe there's five that are in there that need. define it as best we can, which ones and what their charges, because otherwise I don't want them spending a whole lot of time.

I agree. I don't think they want to either. No disrespect to your point. Let me go back to Councilor Donovan and come back to Councilor Rowe.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. A couple of thoughts. For everyone in Newton that has chickens, we're all familiar with the feed and seed store, which is in Waltham. Waltham Farm and Home, it used to be Agway. I would think of it as like the place that's like, it's a pet store, but a little bit more. That's my zoning definition of a feed and seed store, pet store plus. The topic of, I'm very glad Mr. Chair that you suggested that we kind of look at what are similar communities or other communities doing around some of these definitions. In particular for live work, take that tax? Do we have a way of taxing the commercial component of something like that?

This gets a very interesting question. We tax in Newton commercial property at a more severe rate than we do for residential. So it's to an advantage of a property owner to say, I'm really residential, I'm not a business, because then you're taxed at a lower rate. So yes, there is a value. Now, what the assessors do is not necessarily what You're doing the zoning side.

So it's I don't want to just because I was reading through that was the one that seemed like it had two definitions that could be due in two different tax directions, which I thought was kind of interesting. But I would say that the other if I could make a suggestion to the planning team. The other place that I would look to or have a conversation with is with our own Office of Arts and Culture, because in the world of thinking about zoning for what we want to see in Newton, I think of artist spaces, artist studios, or craftspeople studios, and I think there are many cities around that have programs that tie

artists to be here be in their communities or what have you so maybe a conversation would be helpful yeah your point is the one that counselor albright i think raised which is the definition that's not there you know as opposed to the definition it is it's unclear well there's no definition right now yeah i understand but there's no definition to even be ambiguous about right so i mean that's um that's a that's a little different territory but i think it's a fair point Okay, Councilor Rosha, then I want to try and, and Councilor Gordon, I want to try and bring this conversation to a close because otherwise we'll be here.

I'm just a little concerned about your suggestion that the commissioner could come to either zoning and planning or the full council for kind of definitional guidance without, because won't that essentially be defining the zoning?

No, I'm not suggesting you just make an ad hoc There are times when he goes through land use and has a consistency ruling. He's got a special permit and says, is this use that is being adjusted here, is this consistent with the original grant? That's one thing. He can get advice from the council. But I don't think he can come to us and say, what do you think live work means? And then we say, well, five of us agree it's this. And then he takes it home. We've got to get in there. I don't understand what you are suggesting. No, I think we have... We can talk about it, but until we turn it into a definition, he can't pay much attention to it legally.

So that gets back to my question to Mr. Lee. All right. I didn't understand what you were saying.

Councillor Gordon and then I want to come back to this.

I wanted to bring this up at the 11th hour, but Councillor Albright did bring this up and I realize it does fall under this very broad docket item, which is that there is a business in the Highlands that's in BU1. that is in a weird position with wanting to rent out space in a basement unit. And I've been in discussions with the planning department and with commissioner. And the question was, are there more than one businesses that are interested in this? So I'm wondering if it's worth holding this item and where anyone's going with this to potentially discuss this issue under making amendments to the zoning. One minute.

We can discuss a bunch of things. I guess what I, let me pause for a second and Ms. Colello, you raised your hand and wanted to say something.

Yeah, Claire, where to begin? A lot of us. First off, I had an inkling this may be the direction the conversation went. So I actually did take the liberty of looking at how different municipalities have defined live work. I will say some definitions are so broad, they may as well not have one. For example, primarily residential with incidental work activity. As Council President Oliver said, that would count as my apartment because I work there on Wednesdays. Others had some more kind of parameters. Let's see, what was a decent one? A residential occupancy with adequate workspace reserved for and regularly used by one or more persons residing there. Again, that could just be any kind of work from home situation. This is actually something that I came up against pretty often in my previous work when I actually did zoning code enforcement or not enforcement. I was reviewing business permits. And the way that we distinguished standard home occupation. So that might be more of some of our homes where we live and work there was whether or not you're allowing employees who are not residents of the home. Whether or not customers are visiting and whether there's designated commercial floor area. So if you have like a showroom or a storage area that you're shipping things out of because you have a online business, let's say. All of that said, I'm happy to kind of come back to the committee if you have any initial thoughts on any of those points, whether you think our definition should include those components or not. I definitely heard you on the arts and culture. I think I was speaking with acting director and she was saying that in her experience this has come up with artists who have in-home studios and I think that's something we all want to support and promote. And to your point, Councillor Gordon, as well, I am actually going to the Economic Development Commission tomorrow and hearing some of their recommendations and i think it would be great for me to connect with the um economic development director as well and say you know is this storage situation where it's an accessory use and it's not visible um something you've seen are there other kind of requests that you've received from businesses um for accessory uses specifically um that we should know about so so um

I appreciate that. Let me just offer a comment if I can. It seems to me that we have a provision on our own as for a home business, which is fairly well articulated. If there are modifications to that, we can take those up, but that's a big effort. What I'm hearing is more of the opposite, which is in a business zone, is there some live work Arrangement where that is appropriate. And what does that mean? You know, how much living can you do in the working space as opposed to working in the living space? And so we're live where commercial is primary. And so it seems to me that I don't want to open a whole revision for our current home business ordinance by this process. It seems to me what we're asking really is the converse, which is What is the residential opportunity in a business zone without getting into a fully, you know, Councilor Oliver has been working on this whole problem of residential uses in commercial zones. But if there's, it seems to me that's the frame that I would recommend you look to.

To just clarify, so home occupation or home business, that's a whole separate thing. I'm not suggesting we touch that. There's live work where it's a home business, but you're allowing customers. And it's primarily a space for living. But again, you could have your artist studio where people come in and buy your pottery.

So live work is confined to business zones, whereas home office is more residential.

That's what I'm saying.

That's why I'm making it really work is by permit or sorry, by right in every zone.

Yeah, business manufacturing in the non-residential zone.

And then just to, I think the way that I've seen it play out based off my initial research is more of what you're referring to is And I know this is confusing, but it's work-live, where it's a primarily working space and there might be a living component.

I think that's what we're really talking about. Because I don't, as you say, I don't want to open up the door about home business.

No.

That's residential.

I'm not suggesting that. I think there's three different things, right? Home, business, work-live, and live-work. And we're only talking about the latter two.

well i think you're really talking about work live because if you're in the or live work out and carry it but if you're in a commercial zone live work is only in commercial zones okay so um i mean we can talk about this a lot but i want to just get us to clarity i think what what i i'm hearing is that councilor kalish made an initial suggestion to at least boil a teacup as opposed to the ocean. And so I'm trying to figure out what's in the teacup. And the teacup at least is the live-work definition. Is there any other definition we want to ask the department to worry about? Work-live. Well... Live-work and work-live.

Creating a work-live. Yeah.

Possibly, yeah. Which would be... A commercial use in a residential district.

That I'm not ready to go to personally, but we can ask for those definitions. I'm not ready to go there either, but we should define it so we know what we don't want. Well, but right now the definition only applies in a commercial district. That's why I'm saying we don't have to go to the residential. We don't.

The work live is actually more of a commercial district commercial use with a secondary residential use.

So we're only talking about commercial. So if we can just limit it to that for the time being. Okay. Okay. And is there any other definition in the system of the list that we have that we want to ask the department? The second one you mentioned.

I think we get what that is.

Dyeing.

Dyeing. Dyeing? Okay. Paint its color, change the color of leather.

Is what you really want for them to stop dyeing things? As opposed to have to die. I mean, I think we know what dying means. Maybe you just don't want them to do dying anymore.

Or maybe it's just being died with things that aren't going to make you sick. Like if you're dying, you're clothed with beet juice or whatever.

Let me suggest that we, I think the live work wouldn't be enough work If I can put it that way for the council, I don't think the risk of dying, D-Y-E, D-Y-I-N-G, is great. D-Y-I-N-G is always present. But I would think that we wouldn't want to ask the department to go there. I'd like to give them, in other words, a small enough task that can bring back a small enough win that we can move forward. Yeah.

But I suggest to Councilor Gordon that you docket something specifically about that one. Yeah. So that is.

Let me just respond to that. I've already talked to the EDC. Several people have contacted them about this one item. So they have not heard from multiple businesses about this item. But they've heard from multiple people. So we can continue that chat.

There's something we need. If there turns out to be the culturalists want to come to us for the definition that's not in the system, but right now, that's a separate item. Right now, I just want to focus on responding to the initial effort by the president to get some conversation around undefined terms. And we give the department a charge to come back with a definition for a live word, a word live, in a commercial context, right? We're talking about commercial zone. Is that fair, everybody? Yeah, Councilor Malibu.

The one I would, the other I would add, I don't know if you were finished with that thought, though. Yeah, I'm finished with it. Okay. I don't think I understand what job printing is versus printing, publishing, and production establishments. Job printing? Those are two separate things for some reason. Job printing is 6, 4, 18, and printing, publishing, and reproduction establishments is 6, 5, 12. I don't know if printing and publishing means like a publishing house.

by industrial which is the printing publishing reproduction and then business is the other one let me make a suggestion while there i grant you there may not be an easy distinction between the two

I don't think we're faced with an imminent problem with that use. So I'm going to suggest that we solve one problem first if we can. And if we have the time and the bandwidth, we come back to another one. Councilor Allen.

I see parens in our future.

I'm sure there will be. But if that's agreeable to the committee, I'd just like to get this one started. Motion to hold. Motion to hold. All right. Ms. Canelo, are you clear on where you're going?

Live, work, work, live.

Okay. But we're talking about in the commercial zone. Yep. Okay.

I think we're only looking at the definition. We're not changing this location.

Yeah. Okay. All right. A motion to hold. All those in favor say aye. Aye. Opposed?

Aye.

Okay. Any abstentions? All right. That has a vote. Thank you very much. Okay. Onward. The next item is the honor of the mayor. This is at 6546. How are we doing, folks? Anybody need a break here for a minute? Let's take a short bio break and come back in five minutes, okay? Stand, move around.

Recording stopped.

so you Recording in progress

Discussion and amendment to Section 1.53 of Chapter 30, Zoning. In honor of the mayor requesting discussion on possible zoning amendments. to allow for transformers to project into the setback. And just a point of clarification, we're talking about electrical equipment, not toys.

All right? I want to hear the other joke, because that one was good. I don't know. Why don't you be negative? Why was he negative? I think he was real distracted. All right. That was fine work.

So there's the docket item that the chair just read out. We'll quickly go through why this was raised, policy considerations, a couple examples, and then some questions for you all to consider as you discuss. We're seeing more and more transformers come through requesting setback relief due to a number of factors, including increased electrification of buildings, utility companies citing inaccessibility standards, and tied to electrification, just the city's enhanced energy code requirements, including the stretch code and the fossil fuel ban.

Do we have a picture of this transformer?

I have one.

I think it may be useful. Is your picture a transformer?

My picture is a picture of exactly this happening.

Can you send it to everybody? Can we just see a picture? Then we know. Transformers come in all shapes and sizes.

The green box.

Oh, that's the worst transformer in the world. Wait, that's the one? Yeah, I know. This one? Yeah, I talked about this, Cyrus. Wow. That's the new thing in front of the station. That's the, what, 1149 or something?

Yeah. I can't ask for it.

Well, it's a good example.

So we're talking about basically a box that's full of electrical equipment, right? I just need to understand when we're talking about transformers. Do we have a definition of a transformer, by the way?

No, I don't think we do.

it's considered a structure maybe this is yeah this is it so yeah transformers are considered a structure and therefore as we all know from previous discussions structures are not allowed in the setback um which would be a non-issue however because utility companies often dictate transformer placement based off of operational and accessibility requirements the final transformer location coordination may not happen until construction which leads to minor shifts in transformer placement and can unintentionally create zoning violations for which relief is required for otherwise minor encroachment. So let's say, you know, an inch to the left, a couple inches forward. Therefore, we have more special permit requests. And as you all know, that leads to more administrative review for applicants and staff and land use, inspectional services. It can delay occupancy and project closeout. and can create possible conflicts between the utility's safety requirements and zoning compliance. So all this boils down to kind of two key points. Just to summarize, electrification is increasing transport demand, so we're just seeing these more, you know, EV chargers require a lot of electricity, our fossil fuel ban, which means they're often larger, unnecessary. And ground mounted equipment is becoming more common. So as they become larger, they're less able to put them on the roof. And again, utility companies have a significant hand in where those are placed for clearance, access, safety, maintenance operations. There's required distance from buildings and other infrastructure. And that can conflict with approved site plans, landscaping requirements, parking layouts, and as we're discussing today, setback requirements. So to kind of bring this home, I will pass it off to Katie for some examples, which we can also pull up and share our screen with.

Yeah. So prior to joining you all at Zach this year, I stopped land use for the past seven years that I've been with the city. And with that comes seeing a project from beginning to end. So permitting at land use and city council at building permit, and then occupancy. So what I found in my team has found is projects running into issues with placement of these transformers as Nora noted with electrification requirements, stretch energy code, this conflict between transformers and the setbacks. So, you know, we have tried to remedy that. Staff have begun to alert petitioners, developers, and land use attorneys to the requirements for mechanical equipment such as transformers. and ask that they show these on a site plan very early, even with the final location unknown. That way we have something to kind of work with and identify any zoning relief if needed, if we know the likely location. So 790 Watertown Street is an approved special permit for a three unit single family attached dwelling. The single family attached dwelling building type allows for reduced setbacks by special permit in multi-resident zones. And the single-family attached dwelling building type requires every setback be 25 feet. So it's quite a rigid setback, but again, it can be reduced. So the petitioner received approval to reduce the required setback for the transformer from 25 feet to 5 feet from the Eddy Street frontage, it's a corner lot, to try to meet the utility company's requirements, which are further usually further along the construction process. The project is under construction, so it remains to be seen whether any deviations from the approved location will occur. So this is one example of it, the transformer being brought up at the permitting phase and allowed to be five feet from the lot line. So next slide. 145 Warren Street is a landmark property also subject to a special permit. This one was to allow five single family attached dwellings in one building. Throughout construction, a concrete pad and transformer were installed in the front setback. This would have required both zoning relief and historic review due to the status as a landmark property. So while this is a more sensitive property due to those two components, it still illustrates the challenge in siting utility equipment. So ultimately, after meeting on site with city staff, counselors, we met with the utility and the developer to see what other options there were for this, and it ended up pull mounting the transformer. So that was the end result of that one. But just to illustrate the sort of conflict, the sighting plays here. And then next slide. So 15 Lexington Street, this is a 24 unit multifamily project approved by special permit in 2019. While trying to close out their building permit and seek occupancy, staff observed transformer locations shifted on the plans about two feet, placing it within a required setback, but still 9.1 feet from the side property line on that same edge. the building maintains a 58 foot setback. This one's a little bit different because it's an MR3 zoning district, which ties setbacks to the building height. So in this case, the building was 35 feet and the side setback is required to be one third of the building height and that's 11, about 11.6 feet. However, the transformer was placed nine feet from the setback. So they have an issue there. And the rear setback is half of the building there. So another example of where these end up being cited and how close they are to the lot line. So the next slide.

Can I just ask a question? Is this one done or is it in process?

It's the 15 Lexington. So I think it's pretty much close to being done. So we've been kind of pulled to review for occupancy and that's where we find any deviations from the approved plans.

No, but where you found a deviation here, because it was approved at 11, and then it ended up at 9.

No, they had to remedy it somehow. It might be a variance.

Or they had to amend a special permit? There was a special permit?

I'd have to check. This was a newer example that was just brought to my attention. So it If they're allowed to reduce setbacks for the MR3 building, that would be an avenue via special permit. However, if it's just a straight zoning violation, that's a variance. So they have to fix that, move the equipment.

So I'm not sure what the problem is. They either have to get a permitting approval or move it. They can't just move it.

yeah yeah so they so that the resolution isn't clear yet yes it's an ongoing issue um and yeah just to illustrate that you know this these types of deviations and especially one here that's driven by new requirements for electrification and energy um can hold up housing units from coming online including inclusionary units So lastly, it's important to note this is a reoccurring issue for maybe the law, if the zoning law is not quite kept up with innovation and technology. So while we can ask applicants to demonstrate the location on plans early on in the permitting process, The location of the equipment is ultimately up to the utility. The questions on this slide are important to consider with the current energy requirements through the stretch code and electrification. So should transformers be treated differently from structures and buildings for setback purposes? What level of encroachment is appropriate, if any? Should any screening requirements be incorporated if there were to be a change made? And how should the ordinance balance the following goals? So that concludes the planning presentation.

Okay. Before we get into comment on this comment that even in a historic district, I had to get approval to install a charging device, even though I don't have an electric car. Someday I'll have one, you know, for that purpose. A lot of hands went up here, but I'll start with Ms. Gordon because you brought us the picture, or Councilman Gordon.

I think it's important, a couple of things. One, I would love to see photos of the examples there. I'm very visual. And as you know, I also like to know what, I guess you're saying where they were put is the only place they were allowed according to working with the electric company and the builders. So they had to kind of go there.

Yeah, I think what I've heard is they like easy access. They don't want to have to go through the property or, you know, kind of not trespass, but, you know, go further into the property than they need to. Um, that's also something we can follow up on.

Yeah. So it'd be good to see pictures of it. Also why putting them on poles wasn't available and also can they be undergrounded? But, um, Also, for some of these, as the first picture showed, you need to have bollards. And I think we need to consider that because if you're talking about someone's front yard, not only do they have a box, but then they're going to have bollards all around it. So, yeah, I think that that needs to be in the discussion. And I'll hold it there. I'm sure we'll have other things.

Okay. I'm just going to go down this side of the table. Councillor Oliver.

Great. Thank you. So I've heard that the utilities kind of dictate where they go so how can they let so why are we trying to figure out if they can go in the setbacks if the utilities are saying that they must have them there or within five feet i'd like to know more about what their uh requirements are i guess as part of this and i do think that there's also a question of you know like the example we saw from uh 1149 Walnut, obviously they're all shapes and sizes. They're not all going to be that large. I'm kind of curious about just what are we basically signing ourselves up for if we say, yeah, okay, if the utilities have to have them there, I'd like to know, well, what are we opening the floodgates to? In what cases do they require bollards? I mean, I just find it really interesting. Like, do the utilities have to have access to these at 3 o'clock in the morning when the homeowners have invited them? Hey, I've got a problem in my house that is related to the transformer, and the utility says, all right, I'll be there tomorrow at 2. Well, then put it in the backyard. I don't care. It's a service call. Love John, but it doesn't mean you have to put it by the street. I don't think. No, for real.

We're going to move around here. Are you done?

I am so done.

Well, just to cancel Oliver's point, I think part of it is they need access during fires. What? During fires, they need to be able to shut things off easily and quickly. This is my experience. This is the bane of every architect's existence right now. And part of it is that they need to be able to get right up to it as quickly as possible and turn the power off in buildings.

Okay.

I'm just curious if that's the case. Why? Because I think it was mentioned that they used to be on the roofs and that wasn't an issue.

I think it's a scale issue. So it depends on the size. So for as buildings electrify, you can't, you know, based off the scale of the building, the mechanical can't all sit on the roof. If it's a larger mechanical box, it needs to sit on the ground.

Got it. Okay. Councilor Albright, moving down the page.

So just to add to the conversation, we have these transformers all over the city in public spaces and Parks and Rec takes great pains to wrap them in something that's beautiful. as opposed to the way that walks look there. So whatever we do, if they have to be in that spot, can we make sure that they are something beautiful as opposed to that? So that's a suggestion I would like you to look into.

Yes.

I had four or five questions that you guys all asked them. Sorry about that. I have one left. It's only for multifamily buildings.

That's my observation on seeing them, but it could be two unit, but those setbacks are generally more forgiving.

I think also just, again, the scale of the building. So right now we're only seeing multifamily buildings on this scale. If hypothetically we had an office building get constructed, I would imagine it would face the same issue.

I just want to be careful. I want to really understand... all of the examples and as much as we can, because this could become something that grows. And I'd love to know what other communities are doing to manage it. I think art is great on a lot of these, but we just need to know as much as we can so we can, I think we need to regulate in some way and make sure we're not, we don't end up as a city with all these boxes all over the place.

We of course want to meet our electrification goals, but at least two of these examples are really residential neighborhoods. So I think just going back to wanting to see pictures, I think that makes a difference. Like I'm not sure in my house, if I went electrified, I'd want, you know, beautiful Newton Center on my electric unit in the front of my yard, even though I think they're lost in there. Well, I'm saying I know I live in Newton Center and if I did something and they said I have to have a transformer in my front yard. I like your suggestion, but I think it works in public spaces. I don't know how well it translates into neighborhoods and at least two of these addresses are in very residential neighborhoods.

It could be a picture of me.

I would definitely do a picture of you.

Could we buy raised beds around the transformer?

Yes.

What if that's a transformer in the raised bed?

Actually, you couldn't close it, and it would be considered an accessory building, the transformer.

Oh.

That's already legal, too.

Let me ask the commissioner for a moment. Commissioner.

Yes. For a couple of things. You cannot wrap the transformer in any kind of picture or

wallpaper, so to speak. It's not allowed. We tried to do that over at 1147 Walnut and the Eversource vetoed that. They said you can't do it. What other questions did you have about the transformers? Bollards are usually required. Transformers have to be a certain distance away from a building. And landscaping has to be a certain distance away also.

Commissioner, do you know where these standards come from?

They come from the Eversource codebook. Say again? It comes from the utilities codebook.

The code book is something they write?

It's the requirements for distributing power to everyone, pretty much. These transformers have to cool. Like anything else, they have to have some sort of area around it so it gets air and it has a chance to cool because they do generate a lot of heat.

Okay, so I guess at some point we'll learn a little more about what the eversource codebook looks like because that may be an important resource for us to understand and how it's modified change counselor right thank you i have a few questions i don't think we they could build a um something around it to make it into a structure or whatever um a little um

something around it because then you need some air source flowing. A couple of things. First off, I think it's poor planning on the developer. If they didn't build right to the setbacks, they would have more room to put it in the setbacks. So that should, I mean, that should be put on them and that they should be thinking about it ahead of time. A question for the commissioner maybe has a rough idea. How much ampage do you need going into the building that you need a transformer? I have 400 amps coming into my house, and I don't need a transformer. And I think we should always push back. If they need a transformer, put it on the pole if you can. Now, a bigger building, I think they're going to have to have a bigger box. But the historic building, there was, what, six units on there? Yeah. You know, they could put the transformer up on the on the pole I don't know if that's more expensive or not, but that's a possibility i'm I wrote down a few more questions, some of them have been asked. yeah well any yeah and what what's what's the current or the low they need in order to get a transformer and. What about generators? Is it kind of similar to this? I mean, I have a backyard generator too. And do transformers, are they noisy or not? Because I've had complaints about transformers. And how often are we getting this being an issue? I mean, are there problems? other people that are putting transformers within their setbacks. And so therefore it is not an issue. And let's see, I'm just going through my notes. Yeah. I think that's about it for right now. Yep. That's it for right now. Thank you. And I was wondering if the commissioner could answer a couple of questions that I did raise.

To answer one of your first questions, if the transformer was put under an accessory building or some sort of a cabana opened on all sides, it would be allowed in the setback.

Yeah, but that doesn't really hide.

Just letting you know, I'm answering your question.

Yeah, no, because it needs air circulation. So that's why a normal shed would not work.

We actually have one already in the city like that.

So just to give you a heads up.

Also, noise, they hum. So I'm not sure what the decibel range is, but they do tend to hum or give you some sort of a tonal noise. As far as putting them on the pole, some can go on the pole, depending upon the size of the pole and how new it is and how many cans. Because typically when you see a box like that, that usually takes the place of that particular size. You ever see those three gray cans on the telephone poles? They're pretty big. That is a transformer, and you can put up to three on a pole. So the one at 145 Warren Street that Katie was just talking about, we were able to get that one on the pole, and that was three cans, and that's the max you could put on a pole.

And that's for, what, six units?

That was five units.

five units, and how much power is going into that?

I don't know. I don't know. More than likely, we're seeing more homes, I think, now having 600-amp services for the load that the homes are now carrying, even for single-family homes. I'm not sure what requires a transformer. That would be a great question for the utility. You did have questions about generators. Generators have to be outside of the setback. We already require that. I think that was all you were asking.

So generators, as I hear it, can't go in the setback, right?

Correct. They cannot be in the setback.

So they have to be next to the house. I guess the question is... whether we can require transformers to be treated the same especially if a noise issue oh they are okay so the question is whether they should be an exception but they they cannot be in the set bed they cannot be in the center okay um the noise is a concern especially with the neighbors and stuff yeah we have a The noise ordinance talks about a tonal noise of a certain decibel level above background, right? I've forgotten whether it's five or 15. It's five.

Five?

Yeah. Yeah. And, you know, that can be really annoying to a neighbor if it's very close to them because it decreases with time. Ms. Weaver?

Yeah, I just wanted to kind of address some of Councilor Wright's points. I think, for me, this has always been an issue of we have all these Other regulations in terms of electrification and you know what are the unintended consequences of those and it is the are these Equipment to provide the service. But I also, you know, I don't know if it's exactly right to say the developers are building to the max. The 15 Lexington Street. The transformer is 9.1 feet from the side property line. But when you go further back, the building maintains a 58 foot setback. So that's not really accurate to say they're building to the full extent of the property lines. And then I think the 1149, 1151 project approved by special permit was also a rezoning to mixed use four that actually allows a zero foot Front setback. So it's very important to consider the zone you're in. I do see it being a little bit more sensitive when it's a single family attached in a multi-resident zone. Because that context is probably a little bit more residential. It's typically, you know, converting a single or a two family used to more, whether it's four or five or three. So I just wanted to address some of those points.

Okay. Councillor Gordon, then I'll come to Councillor Albright.

Oh, I'm sorry.

I didn't see that. Probably just Councillor Rook.

I just wanted to make the point that, thank you, Councillor Gordon, that EV uptake is probably going to drive, and our demand for, and rewarding developers for or you know requiring developers to to do ev chargers going to draw the draw raise the draw um i went into this and read this thinking that we so just want to make that point moving on i read this today and thought we're kind of like well you know the the utilities come in and they kind of say we prefer to have it here than there if this is code this is entirely And I think that we can have a harder line on this because it can be built into the design. It sounds like this isn't coming up as a surprise because it's coming as a surprise because there wasn't there wasn't planned properly so um i'm inclined to think that we should not be making exceptions for something that's knowable and i know that that has some consequence too because that's going to reduce that's going to increase the effect of setbacks because if you have to have the transformer a certain distance from the and you have to have the building a certain distance from the transformer, that is creating a smaller envelope. What's that, Councilor Wright?

Oh, sorry about that. I was saying you're agreeing with me.

I'm not sure that that was recognized. No, we are agreeing in the consequence. I'm not sure. I'm a little more, perhaps a little more upset about it than you are. But no, I think that this is all knowable. And we should then take that into consideration and say, if the transformer is required, do we, you know, it's not the way I understood it where it's coming up at the last minute. This is all knowable in the first instance. Okay.

I will just say that I find myself agreeing with Councilor Roach. How does it feel? Amazing. Here we are. But I do think the question is if you design into the project from the outset and say we're going to need this, then design it appropriately rather than say to the neighbor next door, guess what? Utility showed up and tell us we've got to put this here.

Yeah, I think I would just say that it is not as knowable as it might seem. This is one of the challenges that just makes basically every project really hard. And I think there are some instances in which an architect can maybe get the power company to commit to or to mostly commit to it, but they still Totally. They can just change it. And you might design a whole corner of your building to be missing to put that transformer in and lose out on three units that could have gone there. And then they'll say, actually, that's nice that you made a space for it, but we do really need it.

Councilor Gordon and then go to Councilor Roach.

I guess to follow up on Councilor Roach's point. So in public facilities, we're always approving polls and transformers and adding polls. I don't like polls, so I'm not saying that's a great solution. However, that is something that you would know when you're planning what you can put on the poll because you can see how many transformers you already have and whether you need to add another poll and This may come down to, and I think at least in PF, sometimes it's just a question of money, right? How much it costs to put up another poll, who's putting up the poll. So I think as much as this could be planned for ahead is an important aspect to making this decision.

Thank you. To your point, Councillor Dunlap, it does seem to me that We've already heard that, you know, from Commissioner, there's a book published by, you know, Eversource that says, hey, these are our rules. I want to know what those are because I agree with Councilor Roach. If we're in a position that these are knowable problems, then those are the rules. And if somebody comes along and says, oh, I got to bend the rules, like you're pointing out, Maybe, maybe not. They could come in and tell us, no, I got to follow my own rule book instead. We should be following their rule book or at least consulting with it because they're knowable. These are challenges that we can address, and I think we should. And I think for us to simply say, without doing that level of homework and simply say, Oh, well, if the utility says so, then yeah, you can put it right up here by the street and we'll put two, you know, big, ugly yellow bollards right in front of it every time. Hang on, let's be a lot more thoughtful about it. And I might be saying, I don't really care if an architect says, oh, I got them to agree to something that they shouldn't have or that's an exception to their own rule. No, let's just follow the rules. And if they make an exception that is, helpful to us, all the better. But our standard should be. How did you like that? Not to go in the back room. Anyway.

Okay. That's all right. Now I want to bring this discussion to a close.

I'm curious, Newton Crossing, which is, you know, I haven't seen any bollards or transformers on Washington Street.

They're being helicoptered.

Do you know where they're going on that? It's 40B, not a special permit, but.

I know there's a lot of internal roadway, or not a lot, but there's an internal roadway to that project. So I can check the plans and see.

So we're working, as you know, with Eversource and National Grid on this energy planning project. And there's a guy named Chris Comack who's in charge of integrated energy planning. So I think he would be a good person. I just wrote him an email asking him if he can talk to us about that. I think he would be the right person.

So I'm going to entertain a motion to hold on this item, I think, because I don't think we're ready to go to a public hearing, because I don't think the questions have been clarified yet to the point of satisfaction of the committee. I'll just say that I'm cautious about anything moving into the setback generally, unless there's really very powerful good cause. But especially if we're talking about not just a box but associated safety equipment, I mean that really changed the character of that frontage in that street. And maybe that's the future we have to live with, but at least we ought to know what the future is and how we can live with it.

Could you, when you come back to us, could you remind, when we were doing some work before about energy planning, We did make some exceptions and allowed certain things to get into the setback, and they had to do with energy. I forget what they are at the moment, but we've already made some exceptions, and if you could bring those to us so we can see.

I think we said that heat pumps could operate.

And insulation, too. Insulation and heat pumps were the two.

So... I think, you know, I just said one other thing. It was helpful that regardless of where you come out on raised bets to have the illustrations you did and some examples. And it seems to me that the code book is an important piece of understanding about what it says about, it may, every source, and again, whether, where the code book comes from is also important. I mean, is it made up by other sources, made up by national standards of the industry? I just don't know. But at least we ought to know what their rules are, as Congressman Oliver said, before we make our own rules in the response. So I hope that part of your research, Commissioner, you may be able to help this conversation along, at least understand what we're talking about.

I have the code book.

Okay.

All right.

Yeah. That's easy. You're just down the hall or across the street.

I'd like to know if the proposed vote includes anything on raised beds.

Secondly, and both. Oh, the councilor wants to make a point, and then we'll take the vote.

I just wanted to say in the memorandum from Ms. Whewell, et cetera, there is the mention of the related exemptions. So it's in the packet.

The picture that you showed us. Yes. Is that a transformer and why? It has no bollards and it got us.

And you can put the picture up again.

I will share that this came up last week in the Newton Highlands Area Council. People are very, very upset about it. So I didn't even know this was documented when that came up. So I went to the picture.

How did that get approved? That's the property that's the mixed use. But I think we're still working with that applicant to close out their permit based on some of these issues.

It was a special permit too.

Yeah, so that's why I'm wondering, is there any occupancy in that building?

No. Because of the transfer? Yeah, there's a number of things we're waiting on.

Is there a tree next to it?

There is.

A tree grows in Newton Highlands. But that's also right in the middle of the sidewalk. It is the world's ugliest box.

Oh, come on. I'm entitled to my hyperbole. Walk through it in the sidewalk. It's a box.

It's a box.

You have to walk between the bars.

Oh, that's not good.

It's in front of an ugly blank wall. Right.

Okay, so it's too ugly.

There we are. Okay. All right. You move, Cole. All those in favor, say aye. Aye. Opposed?

Aye.

All right. The ayes have it. Thank you very much. It's an interesting matter. We've got one other item on the agenda. This is 12926, the reappointment of Marcella Mariano to the Economic Development Commission. 66 Cloverdale Road for term of office to expire on November 30th, 2028. This is a reappointment. Unless anyone wishes to meet the candidate, we generally do these pretty much pro forma, but I need a motion. Is there a Ward 8? I think this is your Ward, right? I need a Ward 6. Is this a Cloverdale 6? I'm sorry. Do you want to move it?

I have a motion to approve.

All right. There's a motion to approve. All those in favor, say aye.

Aye.

Attention. Okay. I think we're done. Thank you, folks. Thank you, Miles. Thank you, Commissioner. I agree. thank you count for right this is now lunchtime recording stopped

Thank you.