Remarks by Jon Link
53 remarks on the record, newest first · Page 2 of 3
Mr. President, I would love to talk about the blaster until it's fixed.
Thank you, Mr. President. So the School Building Facilities and Maintenance Committee met for just a tad under 50 minutes. We discussed with the commissioner of DPW and the director of PSOF how to deal with snow. Kind of closing out an old item. So we've learned that the DPW has created a three-step process where step one is, you know, while the storm is happening or shortly thereafter, making sure the doors and ADA ramps are clear and culminating with step three, which is where, which happens after the storm. And that's where we see the schoolyards and parking and whatnot being cleared. And…
Mr. President, if I could answer that. So just for that item, I just wanted to call out that, where is it? Here we are. So Union Square Neighborhood Council has a CBA with them, and also that any change here potentially changes the amount, or not potentially, does change the amount of aid space.
Mr. President, through you. So the ACE space, which is the Arts and Creative Enterprises space. So in this Boynton Yards overlay, this zoning amendment reduces the amount of residential space. And the ACE space is a percentage of that. So therefore, it would further reduce that.
Okay. Councilor Lake. Thank you, Mr. President. First of all, thanks for all these. These are great. I love everything that I see. I'm just curious, 4.8, the bike racks, is there a way to... without making it a big deal, have it also a copy sent to school buildings so there's a maintenance that the school committee could also.
thank you mr. president through you I'd also like to thank my colleague from Ward 5 for bringing this I have so the the school the coming school impossibility that was you know one of my dreams that got shattered so I really think we do need to consider like any and all options that we might have in front of us especially considering the feasibility of financially of creating a new space right now doesn't seem to be in the realm of possibility but I think that there's still we then have to just buckle down to kind of figure it out as I said in the last one you know it's anything you know…
Thank you. This was something that I caught wind of where there's an unfortunate situation where a resident discovered that they would no longer be able to get into their driveway and they didn't have a city parking pass and there wasn't really a good solution for them. I think in the situation where the city is essentially telling them that their own private parking is no longer available to them. For good reasons. I mean, we need to fix our sidewalks. But we should also make sure that we're doing right by the resident and that they've got some sort of way to park without facing, you know,…
Yeah, we're going to track from parking. All right.
Councilor Link. Yes in God's Backyard is meant to bring affordable housing into places that are, you know, that have churches on those oftentimes large inactive spaces. And throughout this legislation, throughout the Commonwealth, it would actually create quite a boon. And while I was originally skeptical that it would make much of a difference here in Somerville, I was given some numbers that were actually quite substantial. Actually, no, I'm not going to be able to find it in a second. I should have looked. So yeah, but it was potentially thousands of affordable housing units in Somerville.…
Councillor Link. Thank you, Mr. President. So this one, I came across it. It's happened here in Somerville at least once now. where perfectly healthy trees are required to be removed in order to maintain home insurance. You know, in Somerville, we don't have tons and tons of trees. We certainly, and a large number of them are on private property. So we certainly don't want to allow home insurers to just make these kind of decisions where it doesn't actually relate to safety. So I'm trying to get some support for that one.
Thank you, Mr. President. I think the good counsel from Ward 1 hit the nail on the head. We are often promised to our community good paying jobs. The reason that we should put up with all the other pains of this casino, of a future stadium, good paying jobs, good paying jobs. If those aren't coming, yeah, what are we doing? So 100%, you know, we need to actually hold these employers' feet to the fire. And, yeah, thank you for saying it so well.
Thank you Because I just I just would like to quickly just say thank you to the administration for for 7.3 which was properly Noticed so I just want to say yeah, thank you for that and it's really appreciated that that we're we're addressing this so quickly I really like it
Thank you, Mr. President. I'll just say that I'm very glad to see this coming on the heels of body-worn cameras. This was something that I was very concerned about, as were several of my colleagues pointed this out. So it's really heartening to see that we are approaching this with sincerity. As some others have already said, it's really important that as we do this, it's more than theater. This body has to create true accountability, true transparency, and continue to speak more broadly at the moment. I'll just say that, you know, another part that's really top of mind for me is, you know,…
Thank You mr. President yeah just to echo the council for more to said I really appreciate the efforts on both of these items but I think that the tougher the tougher one is the is making sure that we've got shelters by right through a lot of the city and you know I think that the being able to see that that's something that, you know, we've got a welcoming communities ordinance where we want to be a welcoming community. This is part of being a welcoming community. And, you know, making sure that other, that organizations see that they're not going to have to fight tooth and nail with the…
Thank you, Mr. President. We met on Tuesday, September 8th, and we had an hour and a half-ish, hour and 45-minute meeting. In that, we discussed several things. covered several items related to custodians in schools, roading control, temperature control, and all of those were closed with deep appreciation to the DPW. We continued to monitor the safety improvements at the Argenziano since the Argenziano has taken on the AIM program. We also received an update on the Winterhill School where we discussed the site's ledge, how deep it was, what it was composed of, and if it would allow us to…
Thank you, Mr. President. I just want to point out that, you know, so one of the things that it clearly, that I think we all knew was that a big problem is capacity, that we're continuously over capacity and that the lines that are created because of people worrying about capacity are probably one of the big causes of many of the issues that abutters are facing. And I just want to point out that this isn't, we've talked about how Somerville's not a unique snowflake. This isn't new to shelters. This isn't new to shelters even in Somerville. So while I'm happy that we've identified this issue…
If I could just tack on to that PSA there, Mr. President. Last meeting, we saw that there was in there a... batch by one resident of block parties this happens to be in my neighborhood and it's something called play streets and I would encourage if anyone else wants to like if you want it if anyone in the community is interested in this talk to me I can I hook you up with that person it's a really great opportunity to like just have community right the idea is that there's people having dinner kids playing in the street like we all romanticize that we had maybe as in our childhood and it's a…
Not quoted here: it may name a member of the public. Hear it at the meeting.
Thank you, Mr. President. I just want to say that I sat in a meeting with this union and I heard all these stories, these really, really powerful stories. Stories about people who are skipping doses of their medications so that they can still pay their rent. And, you know, when I think about these things, you know, we're talking about the SNAP benefits earlier, this corporate welfare that, you know, we've been subsidizing and just kind of begging for more. It's just so incredibly frustrating to hear these stories again and again. And I really, really hope that it's a whole diaspora of…
If it's possible, could we just take one more item out of order? 4.10, I apologize.
Councilor Link. Thank you, Mr. President. The city has a dearth of accessible housing, and we know that we need to do more. And to be clear, this resolution is not going to be enough. But my hope is that it's a start. It's a hopeful start. to the city, putting in some more effort where we really need to, which is to create more accessible housing. This came from some great discussions I had with one of our great residents, Crystal Huff, and it's asking the city to just create incentives for more accessible housing from private developers to make sure that we are just that we're adding and…
Councilor Link, you wanted to speak on this? Thank you very much, yes please. So just real quick here, this is an ordinance that is going to, or proposed ordinance that would remove the two foot minimum. So there's a lot of people who are interested in it. This came through as a public comment. There is a slightly different process.
Oh that's a good yes sorry thank you so buildings by ordinance have to be raised two feet off the ground and this probably made sense at some point in our past and doesn't there's not really super great arguments for it now and Conversely, it creates some pretty significant issues in terms of accessibility because that means that you need to have a ramp going up at least two feet, which means that you're either eating into what could be used for more space in the units or creating a really large cost barrier. that's a problem we talked a little bit about trying to incentivize accessible…
thank you I think that all these these things are extremely important obviously and you know making sure that that our our residents particularly who live on or around the the street and are able to to feel safe and comfortable I also just want to make sure we're reflecting on that you know We're talking about maybe many of the people that are at this forming center are elderly, there's a large group of people. And we're doing a really great thing. So I just want to make sure that we're focusing on not just, you know, the safety of the people who are on the street, but also the safety of the…
thank you mr. president so I've had a few too many residents ask me about legal short-term rentals so I'm just trying to get some sort of sense of what we know and what we don't and I want to stress that I don't believe this is a case of you know the city sitting on their hands we have a short-term rental ordinance I want us to you know consider I guess what we're currently able to do what we're doing and you know what more we might be able to do you know we've know we've got a regional housing crisis and we've got from what my viewpoint seems to be a problem that we haven't quite pinned down…