Housing and Community Development Committee - Regular Meeting

Good evening. This is the Housing and Community Development Committee. I am city councilor at large, Kristen Strazo. Tonight is Tuesday, 11/18/2025. It is 06:32PM, and we are in the subcommittee room broadcasting live in Sunnyvale City Hall and also hybrid virtually.

Pursuant to chapter two of the act of act of 2025, this meeting of the city council committee will be conducted via remote participation. We will post an audio recording, audio video recording, transcript, or other comprehensive record of these proceedings as soon as possible after the meeting on the city of Somerville website and local cable access government channels. Madam clerk, may I please direct the call to the roll? Mhmm.

Pencil Hark. Here. Pencil, you in Camden.

Here.

First, Rosa. Present.

Yep. We do have everyone here, so they're informed. Wonderful. Thank you. Our first agenda item is a an approval of the committee unit minutes, ID number 251224. And please call. My mother's call is all now.

Yep. On item number 25Dash1224,

I approve of this. Of the 06/30/2025.

Yeah. Councilor Morag. Yes. Councilor Yunhee?

Yes.

Chair Stozzo? Yes. Okay. That is all those in favor.

Thank you. Okay. So the first item on our agenda, two four zero zero seven five, that the director of office of housing stability appear before the housing and community development committee to discuss the current status of residents facing displacement and the number of households seeking rental assistance. Typically, the years in in HCD, come on in wherever you feel comfortable, director. Over the years in HCD, we've we've kept the decision ongoing agenda, Clayton.

Just so we can every quarter, so check-in and see what the Office of Housing Stability is is seeing and experiencing and what we should plan and fund for in the months and days to come. So with that, I have the blessing of having executive director of the Office of Housing Stability, Ellen Schachter. Thank you very much to the chair

for inviting me and to our new member of the council and to venue and cabin, from afar. I'm really glad to be able to come here before you today just to share a little bit about what we're seeing, some of which is good news. The first thing, just in terms of volume, to let you know, the period that I looked at for this data for the most part was January 2025 to the September 2025. And during that time, we had 637 unique Somerville households seeking assistance, sometimes households seek our assistance multiple times during the year with those unique households. And about, 49% or 312 of these households were imminent risk of displacement.

And out of these, a 118 had already received a notice to quit or court summons, for eviction. About 41% of all our referrals recorded a monthly household income below $2,000. And within this, nearly one third recorded having no income whatsoever. So that's kind of just a little look at the volume of the cases that are coming into our office, and then I'm gonna talk to you a little bit about rental assistance and what we're seeing on the eviction front. So first, for rental assistance, when push comes to shove through all of this, OHS assisted a 102 unique families with obtaining rental assistance from from federal, state, and, city resources.

This smaller amount, 42,674, was obtained through the state grant program. And I will just note for those who may not remember that our rental assistance program here was really a more robust rental assistance program that was designed to kind of wrap around that state program and to fill in gaps, and especially to be able to help with prospective rent if a person looked like at some reasonable period of time, they would be increasing their income or there would be some other way for them to be sustainable. So all totaled, our main rental assistance programs are administered by the Community Action Agency of Somerville, CAS, and the Somerville Homeless Coalition. And combined during this period, with both OHS cases and the other cases that they had more independently, $2,593,000, and 9 $595, sorry, in the first nine months of 2025. So this is obviously a fair amount of money, and it is robust.

And one of the things that I'm sure we'll be talking about in the next year to come is what are the various ways that we can sustain, some of the funding for this program, even if not all. And I will just say over the last few years, we have been tightening the restrictions a little bit as we looked at, not having the same kind of guaranteed revenue sources from free cash and from, ARPA and other sources that we had had previously. So, and then from there, just eviction data. And I want to walk you through this because I'm really proud of this. So, so first, you can see we looked at the number overall of eviction cases.

This was two through the October, so a ten month period instead of a nine month period. And there were a 167 eviction cases filed. And what I do wanna say for those that aren't as familiar with the eviction process, a, it's always bad if a case gets filed because then you have a case in court. B, there's now eviction record ceiling thanks to a long effort by having advocates so that in some cases, we can get those evictions taken off. But there are many more cases filed that actually result in eviction, and I think that's an important thing to understand.

So the measure that we look at most frequently to really assess who is really getting evicted here as opposed to a case being filed, and there were 42 executions filed during this time. And an execution is the document that essentially tells the constable the judge has given you the authority to move this person's. So it's the final stage of the eviction process. And what I did here was to compare what our rate of executions to the rate of executions in neighboring cities and towns. And I broke it down to look at it by poverty population because, obviously, areas that have a more dense poverty are gonna have a lot more eviction cases because about 85% of all cases are for nonpayment of rent.

So with that, what I really am proud of is that as you can see, Summerville has a rate of four point one per 1,000 households in poverty. Malden is more than three times that amount. Medford is 50 over 50% more than that. We are significantly under Cambridge, not as big of a difference because they also have some pretty ample rental assistance and other anti displacement measures. And we are about one third of what the rate is in Waltham.

So from my perspective, this is evidence that the programs that we have and the investments that we make are working. We would like to see that number be zero, but that's not ever gonna happen for a lot of reasons. So, yeah, so that was a little bit to tell you about where we are with evictions. And I know that Yasmeen had shared that one of the things you were interested in too was what we know about the federal landscape, how that federal landscape is impacting things now. And what I will say is the single thing that is most concrete that has just happened comes within the realm of what we call COC funding or continuum of care funding.

And this is primarily the funding that is directed towards thing getting people off the streets and into housing. So you may have heard all of you of the notion of housing first. Right? There's been for the last, oh god, ten, fifteen years of big surge in a movement around housing first saying that we first, we focus on permanent housing, then we're in a better shape to get people into treatment and mental health services, whatever else they need to stabilize. So HUD just issued its new NOPA.

I think it went out about two days, which is a request for funding for the next annual allotment Mhmm. Of its continuum of care funding. And what has been made clear is only 30% of all funding can go towards permanent housing of any kind, including the kinds of section eight housing vouchers that we have been using, that some of the homelessness has been using to get people out of Davis Square and into housing. And what is really scary about this, I did create this this chart that I didn't create this. Sorry.

This came to me, and I put it in this chart here to show if you look, we are in the what's called the balance of state where it says Massachusetts balance of state, COC. And the home the homeless coalition is the main convener for our area in that continuum of care. But if you essentially look, the funding for current the PSH means permanent supportive housing, and RRH means rapid re housing. Those are, like, for security deposits, first month's rent, all of that, and the actual vouchers that keep people housed that pay for their rent. The amount that we will be able to use for that purpose is going to go down from 27 plus million to less than 10,000,000.

So cut by almost two thirds. And, they're not cutting the funding, but they are redirecting and reorienting so that the funding can really only be used for supportive services, the other 70% supportive services, mental health treatment, substance abuse, etcetera. They also made clear that none of it can be used for homelessness prevention at this time. So the pot has really, really changed. And, I, you know, I would just say for if anybody does look at it, it's it's it's an incredibly ironic document because on the one hand, it sets these goals, and the goals are to get people off the streets.

It should make sure that there's nobody living. But, essentially, it's focused on clearing encampments and forcibly putting people into treatment and then sort of putting them away in shelters somewhere where people won't see them. That's my editorial comment on it, but that's basically what it is saying will be funded and how they intend to pursue COC going forward. So, you know, my guess is that this is gonna mean that there's some population of I know that it will mean there's some population in Somerville that have these section eight vouchers, and I think, you know, we'll yet to be seen if there will be a lawsuit or any legal challenges or what will happen or if they'll actually be yanking those subsidies away from people. And then the question is, what do we do?

What do we do as a city? And, again, you know, there's so many needs and and only ultimately, only so much revenue. So having to figure out how, as a city, we make priorities about how we spend our housing dollars is is really challenging. So I think the only other thing that I will just add that isn't on this form because, Emily, especially because this is your first meeting here, is we do have, and you may have heard of this, but a robust fully municipally funded voucher program and very proud to say we're the first of its kind in the country of of the way who we are funding and how we are funded. We're tied with the public schools.

And for the most, there's a big priority given to families with children in the public schools who are not eligible for federal housing due to immigration status. So we have all there's 29 of the 30 families housed. There's one person who we're trying to re relocate. But, again, this is gonna be something we do have funding through FY '27, but we are already contracting for money through them and are gonna need to be thinking very creatively and very quickly about how to how to shore up those accounts because these are meant to be permanent vouchers. There's no expectation that these households are gonna be able to increase their income sufficient to pay market market rents.

So that's been a really good program. And I'll say one more thing since I said last, which some of you know, but we did have the first in in state pilot for something called the older adult bridge program. And this is a program which we were funded, through Pat earmarked through Pat Senator Jalen. We're very grateful for at a $100,000 last year, in f y twenty five. And we did find out finally that the governor had released funds for FY '27.

So the FY '26, so there's now, $220,000 for this year. So we are going to be admitting new people into the program, and this really is for seniors who fixed income over 60 or older, they are applying for public or subsidized housing, and they have a reasonable shot within a year, eighteen months of getting into a unit that we will pay to keep them in their homes, collaborate around with Council on Aging and other resources to get them whatever kinds of other services they need, but then allow them to avoid homelessness and transition smoothly into that permanent affordable housing. So we're really excited to be opening that up again because when you have a program, but it's fully subscribed, it's great to talk about, but it doesn't help new people who are, you know, who are out there needing help. So I'm available for any questions, but that's an update. Thank you.

I'll open it up before. Counselors, do

you have any counselor here in Camden? Yeah.

Thank you, madam chair. And through you, thank you, director Schachter, as always. I guess I have two questions. When we talk about these federal funding cuts, can you just help me the numbers that we're seeing on this memo, is this like, this is done? This money is not going to be there a 100%. We know that we're planning, or is this you know, I I work at Harvard. Right? Like, we're you're constantly headlines that the the funding is gone, and then maybe it's real can you just help me understand, like, where we are in the reality of we are going to have $10,000,000 less guaranteed next year? I'm sorry. The room is muted.

Can you hear now?

Counselor, you encamping? Okay.

All good.

So through the chair, thanks for this question. It's a good one. First, I do wanna point out that these numbers here, just so you can see them, it's actually a loss of almost 20,000,000, but it's for the entire balance of state COCs. So it's not just for Somerville. It's for the other cities and towns as well.

I don't know yet, but can certainly find that out exactly what the impact is in Somerville. What did happen is that this notebook for funding went out. It's live, and applications are due in January. The only thing I can think of is if there's any let legislation strategy around defunding programs where people are already housed. And I can't pretend to know if something like that would be successful, but I do think that HUD and president Trump and his administration have the legal authority to change the rules for funding for their NOPAs as part of their executive power.

So I don't know if there's a litigation strategy that somebody's gonna be able to think up. But at this time, because it's not this is not dependent on a statute or a regulation or anything, it's just funding, and the funding is being targeted differently. So I do think, you know, there's a lot of organizing around this by national organizations and others really trying to combat this. There's a lot of fear that this is there's a lot of fear that this may be in part designed to make homeless encampment situations worse in large urban Eastern and Western cities. I don't know if that's conspiratorial or not, but in any event, the note is out.

The funding is changing unless there's some kind of litigation or other strategy to get HUD to turn around on it. But it doesn't have to be, like, with regulations where you have a con notice period and a comment period, and it suggested this is out there. And I will just add one other thing besides this that I didn't say the first time this is important. The other big place that we're seeing impact currently is from section eight funding changes so that for the last we met with with Summerville Housing Authority in October for something called the resident advisory board process. They had not given out a single section eight, what we call regular general section eights.

There's some, like, niche ones, like, veterans, for some people in DCF custody. But for just regular section aids, which the vast majority of folks with with rental with vouchers use, there had been none issued in the last six months, including turnover vouchers. So as people were moving out, giving up their vouchers, they were not able to reissue them, and they also are not do not believe they will be able to issue any in the next six months. And part of what this impacts, it impacts, obviously, our ability to help people who are in need of section eight vouchers, but it also potentially impacts on the revenue sources that are available for corticospasm development. So for example, you know, any many developments that have come in want to try to rely on project based subsidies to, you know, be able to reach the most lowest income folks, and there really are no vouchers available anywhere.

Letters went out to all the landlords asking them voluntarily to not not increase any rents. To the best of my knowledge, nobody has been terminated because of funding shortfall yet, And that is not anticipated immediately, but just means it's shut down. That's not an option or a resource available for folks going forward, which is a big a big loss, that I didn't mention. And I one, yeah, one other thing I'm just gonna say orally, it's not in your paper here is some of the really big dramatic cuts and things you may have heard about, like they're they're talking about time limiting public housing. So if goes into public housing, let's say, get their three years and then they have to leave because they're gonna gonna be self sufficient.

We did see there was a memo that was an informal memo, and we did see from that that it looks like these really big changes might be up to the discretion of the housing authorities. We are really hoping that that is the case because, you know, we we have faith in in our Summerville Housing Authority. Her the director there is very, very supportive with the advocacy community and very engaged that if it is voluntary, even if this happens, that it may not impact us. That was the thing I was sort of the most worried about of all is what happens if they time limit public housing. And the last thing I'll mention on this, then I know I went off track on your one question, but just filling you in on a few others is that, you know, there is a movement now which may say that they may still kick out mixed immigrant households from housing if any one member of the household doesn't have their green card.

So that is still, like, a wait and see, and we're kind of on bated breath waiting and seeing how that plays out, because that may be another situation situation where we're seeing people who've been housed for a long time, successfully at risk. But so far, that hasn't happened yet, if there's just a lot of saying that it probably will. But that's what I can tell you about the

federal federal stuff.

Well, madam chair, through you, I mean, it's just sickening. I mean, you there's obviously a talking point you hear a lot. They're they're they're screwing over poor people to give tax cuts to the rich, and that sounds sometimes like a radical statement or something, but it's just like this is exactly what's happening. Right? We're looking at this document in front of us. They're just cutting money from the poorest people in the community. It's just completely, it's despicable. It's really horrifying to hear. I I guess the only other thing that I'll just I wanted to well, I think intergovernmental affairs is there. Our warming center is opening on December 8, the overnight warming center. Is that correct?

With a chair. My name,

Jasmine Rudessi from IGH for the record. Yes. That's correct.

Okay. Well, I'm grateful that they have not been able to destroy that yet. And through you, madam chair, thank you, director. Please, obviously, always let us know whatever we can do to help on the city council.

Thank you very much, Ken. And, director, yes, I I have to say that when I read this paragraph, just this from the memo. In addition, I'm just going to read it out loud because my my hard time. In addition, no general section eights are being issued by the Summerville Housing Authority. Landlords have been asked not to raise rents. There have been no terminations to due date by any. What are we gonna do? So as you're saying that it's going to be potentially at the behest of regional, like, housing authorities whether or not they do that?

So in terms of the time limit, the big changes to work requirements, time limits, far, it looks like it's gonna be discretionary, but there has been no actual rule issued. And so we don't really know this was from drafts that were released, that we saw that it was hopefully going to be at the option of the housing authority. So I am just hoping that that is the case. I do know the one other thing I do know is I did I believe it was 30 households. I did ask at one point, Diane Cohen from the Housing Authority.

It was close to that. I might I'm estimating now the number of households that had mixed immigrant status that were sort of, like, the most likely to be at risk, and that, yeah, that number was around 30. So and what we we did yeah. So that's still on hold. And, obviously, that is a big issue.

And if that happens, we will have to brainstorm as a community what resources we have and how we wanna prioritize funds. And and some of it may be up to ultimately the Affordable Housing Trust Fund to make some decisions about funding that they have at their disposal. But, again, we're looking to that fund for a lot of different purposes, and I think you know that every single affordable housing development project right now needs so much more local match than they used to. So even when we have, you know, what looks like a good amount of resources in the affordable housing trust when there are so many competing needs and will be including my probably rental assistance and MVP program and all these other things. So but for now, I think, you know, it's critical that as there are populations really impacted that we look together and see if there's a way to help those commute you know, those families stay in the city.

But it yeah. Each day is a new a new thing to worry about. Yeah.

And and with that, just to clarify, are these section eight voucher holders already, or are they

No. So there's no new voucher holders being issued except, like I said, a few of those specialized for veterans and and DCF families. So, basically, right now, when somebody loses their voucher either because they're terminated, which are very few, but some, or they move and they don't need it anymore, they buy a house or whatever happens, they're not reissuing those vouchers. So not only aren't they issuing new vouchers. And just to be clear, over the past, you know, five years before this started, so, you know, some of the housing authority was aggressively giving out vouchers.

So we had at our disposal, there were vouchers going to people in, you know, domestic violence shelters. There were vouchers going to people in open shelters. There were vouchers for prevention available. We have so many of our clients over the last five years through that resource, which is just gone. So yeah.

And and I I will say that, you know, part of what happened is too is that as rents went up, what we call payment standards, right, which is the maximum that you're allowed to pay with the section eight voucher, we kept pushing those up and up because tenants couldn't find housing in Somerville. So we really increased those payment standards to make our section eight vouchers more usable, but that also made the program a lot more expensive. And in the end, when this all, you know, came out, they were able to basically able to administer fewer vouchers than they had hoped or anticipated because of the increased in increase in rents and payment standards. So so that is also another reason why we're seeing this retrenchment is just because of the escalation of rents. Yeah.

I think that I think that we have to get really creative and really go inward of our insular of our 44 miles and figure this out very hyper locally. And, director, you've you've been on the forefront of that. The the policies and ideas you've put forward for years have always been just different and and, like, over under through to a roadblock that the state had or even federally. So I I do believe in us, I believe in you. But I can't see us not being like, it we have to be four square miles right now. I can't figure out any other way that we're gonna get through this, and I'm this scares me. But we will figure this out, I guess. I'm so scared. I wanna stop right now.

Counselor Hart.

Thank you. Through you. This this I won't repeat it. This is really upsetting information. But could you help me understand in terms of not having your section eight going forward, like, what percentage of our overall housing kind of support are

we talking about or So I think what I wanna be clear is that this doesn't take money away from anything that is currently funded, the section eight voucher. So there's many affordable housing developments that have project based vouchers, many people that have mobile vouchers. So, you know, I don't know how to answer you know, maybe I could say that in many year in the past, like, four years before six months ago or eight months ago, you know, maybe I would estimate that there were, you know, 50 to a 100 vouchers being administered per year. So it was very substantial for our client base and for who we see in the in the prevention world. Now some of those people had been on waitlist for a long time, so it wasn't like they were all available to the 50 people that walked into my office.

But but it was a big part of meeting the need. I will say, of all the section eights that Somerville Housing Authority does give out, only one third of those stay in the city. And that in part is because it is so difficult to find housing here. So many are sort of forced out into other localities where rents are lower, and there's some higher vacancy rates. So it is substantial. Mhmm. But I will say that the, you know, the good news really is that there's been no terminations, and that ultimately is sort of the most, you know, the most important thing is at least not taking away what people have been counting on

for so long. So Yeah. With that, barring no other questions, happy to keep this in committee, and thank you very much. Of course. Thank you so much, doctor. And thank you for your

time, chairwoman, and very, very nice to see you in person. Thank you, counselor. And Thank you. Counselor, you would camp, and I will see you tomorrow at the state now.

Thank you. Alright. Well, with that, we're gonna put this item in committee. Our next agenda item Okay. It's a resolution two five zero one four zero by councilor and councilor Davis that the memorialization committee dedicate a memorial to Kenneth Lonergan. Here to speak on this item is the IGA department, the mayor's office. Welcome.

Thank you, madam chair. I've introduced myself. So, unfortunately, I don't have a significant update on this item. There's still some coordination that needs to happen with school committee members and with our memorialization committee. I've reached out to the sponsor to get a bit more information about the request. I haven't heard back yet, but happy to follow-up with the sponsor when we have any subsequent updates to provide.

Absolutely. Thank you. Yeah. I I don't recall how this ended up in the HCD, but it I was hoping that there was a win for the end of the year, and that's fine. So we can keep this in committee. And thank you very much for checking in on it, and, hopefully, we'll we'll get an update later, but until then, yeah, thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you. Okay. With that, we'll just keep it in committee.

Order number 240070 that the director of parks and recreation discuss how inclusive playground accessibility is being considered in future playground plans and redesign projects. Here to speak on this item from my floor is, director Luisa Oliveira. I'm happy for you to introduce yourself. And, yep, I I believe there is a on this.

Good evening. Hi. Through the chair, welcome, councilor Hart. My name is Louisa Oliveira, and I'm not the director of parks and recreation, but I am the director of public space and urban forestry. And we are the ones who design and manage the construction of our parks as well as over 350 trees every year.

So I did send some slides earlier today just to get a so that we are all kind of on the same page. Sometimes folks will say that our parks are not ADA. They're not in compliance with the American Disabilities Act, and that is not true, at least not for the last fifteen years since I have worked here, and I know for a fact beyond that. So the American with Disabilities Act was passed in 1990, updated in 2008, and it is a set of standards that that rules that have to be followed is a it's a law for the physical layout of certain things. And and I can we can talk about what the ADA touches in terms of public space, but it's a minimum.

And I think everyone would agree that it is not enough, but it is something that the federal government has determined we have to do in order for people to be able to to move through public space. I don't know who's controlling the slides, but yeah. So the types of physical things that are touched by the ADA are ramps, walkways, the the width of walkways has to be a minimum of 36 inches. There has to be a grade that is under 5% unless it's a ramp, then it requires a number a number of other things. There are requirements for stairs and handrails, all of this.

There are requirements for surfaces and playgrounds to that make playgrounds accessible. So and that make them easy for a wheelchair to go on. In the case of playgrounds, there's poured in place rubber, which you have seen in many of our playgrounds. Some people love it. Some people hate it.

Rubber tiles, which we don't use very often, but is that's also an ADA accessible surface. And engineered wood fiber, which is looks like wood chips, but it's actually not wood. It's made out of a an engineered fiber or synthetic turf, which we don't use in our playgrounds. But so there's a number of different things that are considered to be ADA compliant surfaces. There is parking.

To be honest, we don't really are not very involved in that because we don't usually have parking lots or garages adjacent or in our playgrounds. And then facilities. For example, if you have a bathroom, they have to be ADA. Drinking fountains must comply with ADA, and a number of other things that we do as well, making sure that handles are easy, easily lifted, things like this. So I just bring this background to say that I personally get very upset when people say our parks are not ADA because we go we are absolute sticklers about this landscape architects the landscape architects that work for us are licensed and are held by their license to to make parks ADA.

We go out and check all of the grades with a smart level, so they are ADA. I promise you that the parks that have been built at least for the last twenty years are ADA. Now what happens is that sometimes they are fall out of compliance. You may have a tree tree root that rips through a surface. I mean, we see this all over the city.

So that is another issue that has to do with maintaining them. And sometimes they're not easy fixes. But I just you know, if there are any questions about the Americans with disabilities laws as they pertain to parks, I would love to hear them. Okay. Great.

So now that we got out of that got that out of the way, there are the next slide, please. There is somewhat recent, but not that recent idea concept of inclusive play. And inclusive play first, it was accessible play. Now the the word that's being used is inclusive play is is much broader than that. Right?

So if the ADA is a minimum, then what we're looking towards is trying to create things where everyone of all physical abilities is able to participate in play. And we know that many disabilities are not physical. They're there's a large range of them. But in terms of what we can design in a playground, we are trying to create things that all children can use. And we have just recently finished had a ribbon cutting.

Can I ask for that next slide, please? With our with our back one, please. With our swings where and this was an initiative by the Somerville Commission for Persons with Disabilities and also funded by them where we inventoried all of our swing, all of our parks, and went from having 23% that had an ADA swing to 83% of them. And we looked at each of them with a certain criteria. Where we were able to put a new swing, we put a new swing.

Next slide, please. We chose a swing that has all of the safety, international and national meets all the safety requirements, has a hard yoke, but also an additional strap if a child doesn't have the muscle tone to hold themselves up or is too small, and we are working now to distribute those to folks that have that need. We're happy to give them strap. So we'd love to hear from folks, and we're trying a number of different ways to get in touch with people who may have that need. And then in addition to this, the inclusive swings project, we are in the process of designing Centerville's first inclusive playground, and this playground is at the Kennedy Schoolyard.

Kennedy Schoolyard has a larger percentage of uh-huh. Sorry about that. It's okay. Of children with disabilities. And so we have been the project manager's named John Brownenkant.

He has been at every Kennedy School event for the last six months or so. Back to school night, the professional development days, harvest fair drop off and pick up, teacher surveys, community he sent out a teacher survey, sent out a community survey. And then we have a number of things that are that are community meetings that are happening, two of them, to really start to take all of those ideas and put a physical form to them. And we invite everybody to please participate in them because like all of our schoolyards, when they're out of when their school is not in session, they become a playground and a and a park for everyone. So there will be a September 2 community meeting.

We have made it virtual so that more people can participate, but we hope that everyone will come. And we are working towards getting a set of construction construction documents to put the project out to bid in the winter so that we can begin construction on this in the 2026.

Pardon me, director. Any other attendee school student there, and I thought this is very exciting. Yes. It is very exciting. I think it's really cool that he's watching it happen live. And I I don't know. It's just amazing. So Through the chair,

he is probably engaged with John because John will go out for recess and talk to the kids about their playground. So

So, yes, sorry to interrupt.

No problem. I do wanna mention that this project has not yet we are still it's has not yet been funded, so we are still looking for funding. And it is in the capital improvement plan, but I also understand that's influx in a lot of different ways. But so so the to the question of where are we going with inclusive play, I think that we are constantly learning more about what can be done. We it's sometimes difficult because some of our playgrounds are very small, so it's hard to do some of the things that require more space.

For example, with walkways, which all of them have to have. If you visit some of our newer parks, they have kind of switchbacks because 5% slope means that it goes up one foot in 20 feet. So it's quite long. So we I am very confident that we do our absolute best on this front for sure. And we would like to do better. We would like to engage more with families that have children with disabilities and to understand more and to go above and beyond the ADA law.

And on that, especially with the Kennedy School playground, I know that there are say that we have some students here that are very physical and and need to play. They need to play football. They need to play if they get that energy out. And although there is it's a tight space, have has there been conversations or considerations of expanding the the space past the green, the grass, closer to the sidewalk. You know how it is.

Because I I hear that there's some rumblings. I mean, this is third person, but possibly fourth. Who knows? That some parents at at Kennedy School are concerned of will there be enough space for for everything within it. So I'm just spitballing the question that are we really bound by the grass area, or can we push out the area a little further closer to the sidewalks to where there is a little more space for both the high energy games of a football or basketball?

And then, additionally, making sure that it is absolute enough space. Having sure that it's inclusive is a necessity and a bottom line. Can we have all the things?

Through the chair. We can't ever have all the things all the time.

Darn it.

But we have been looking at expanding the playground, yes, and looking at different variations of changing the parking parking configuration and removing some parking spaces. And you can imagine that there are people who are not happy about that. Kennedy has the most parking of all of the schools, and there's a a lot of street parking. So we are looking at different configurations, and those will be shown at the December 2 meeting about if we did this, we could have this much more space.

If we did this, we could have

this much more space. While also trying to be to listen to the teachers who, in my experience doing schoolyards in Somerville, this is the point where they get very upset. But, you know, there is a balance here between retaining parking and increasing the schoolyard.

Is it so although with the the all the things, is there a possibility of expanding the parameters of the the school yard currently where it is to go on further and further grass? Or is that is that a is that a a a is that an intentional square footage where we must abide by that?

The chair. No. No. No. Absolutely not. We're trying to expand it, and we may expand it beyond the grass. Mhmm. And we're trying to expand it beyond the grass to get the maximum that we can Mhmm. While eliminating minimal parking. So, yes, we we think it should be expanded. That's it's the schoolyard. It's important. Play is not only important for our present Kennedy schoolyard student, but for all children, that is their work.

Right. Right. Right. So we can kinda have a little bit of all of things. We

can through the chair, we can have some of the things, some of the time, and all of the things, some of the time, but we cannot make everyone happy. That that is Start it again. Yeah. Alright. But we try. I think parks is one of the area where we can make many people happy.

Thank you, director. Colleagues, do you have any comments, questions, thoughts on this?

No? So through the chair, if you can please just let any constituents know about the December 2 meeting. We would love to have as much participation as possible. We've our outreach right now has focused most mostly on the school community because that is who the park serves. But, of course, we want also to hear from the neighborhood. The Kennedy School parents have been incredibly supportive with CPA applications and other things. So we're very excited about this project.

That's wonderful. And I do

want

to give a wonderful compliment to the fact that, yes, I was there at the at our unveiling and and swinging of the of the the Floyd Sullivan playground, the new swing of the Inclusive Swings yesterday. I've been yesterday about it. Yesterday. And even it all kinda worse together after a while. But recently, this week, it was cold and windy, and it was wonderful to see the see these models out.

So I do wanna thank you for that, for your work on that and the fact that they're out there. I'm honestly disappointed that and this is not in any of us to take a view. But with the sites of the new inclusive things, seeing how Trump Field is a state owned property, I'm kind of bummed that they wouldn't, like, help us pay for that or pay for it.

Through the chair, Trum Field.

Oh, I'm sorry. Trum. I'm sorry. I was thinking of FOSS. You're right. I think get it right. Through FOSS. I don't know if

FOSS has swings, but I know that they recently put new swings at the Dilboy property, the DCR Dilboy property. And they were the same model as this one. So we were really happy to see that. It's possible they've done that everywhere just to kind of get to safety standards.

That would be tremendous. Yes. My apologies. You're one soulful, and Yes. I I saw thoughts in my mind and saw trauma as the word.

So

We'll have to we'll have to take a look. It's possible they did that.

That that would be really exciting. So thank you very much for your

work, Alex.

You're welcome. And, also, from what we hear, all children like these swings. So it's great.

Thank you. Thank you very much. Thank you. Well, with this, I'm going to close this and mark it over complete. And our next agenda item yes. Oh, I'm sorry. I'm sorry. We have to be motioned. Okay. Vincent?

Order number 241008 that the director of economic development discussed with this council ways to provide small businesses with financial and technical support when impacted by construction and other emergencies. This was a order put forward by councilor Canadian Linfeld, And I think it is oh, we lost it. I'm pulling up the Oh, we're both. But we're still in the meeting. Hopefully, everything's full. Alright. Cool. Here. Happy Mercury and retrograde, everyone. Have a happy holiday, sir. Have a happy Thanksgiving. Alright. Hey. There we are.

Sorry. I don't wanna put my email on public Internet.

Alright. Oh, yeah. A gondola.

I was I was wondering if we might take up the two items since they're both related to small business together if if you're amenable to that.

I I I hear you, but I prefer not to because because of the I I wanna talk more about construction and other emergencies. I think that that really needs to be said on its own. I hear you, but yeah, let if if we can, I'd really like to focus on construction. Okay. Sorry. Hi, director. Thank you for being here.

Director, director of economic development. I will be joined momentarily by Dana White, our deputy director of economic development. He is wrapping up with an East Central Main Street board meeting. So he'll be down shortly. Welcome.

Okay. Thank you for being here. Sure. So there was a third presentation. Correct. Never. I I I didn't get it. I'm sorry. Just finished. Okay. Oh, no. Thank you. No. No. No issues. I was like I I'm a paper gal. Sorry about that. Yeah. No. There's nothing to just yeah. Okay. Well, welcome. Glad to have you here. So, yes, I the I I I could see where where

the cancer was going with this

because because I I've had more than a few conversations with small business owners. Okay. When it comes to construction, when construction happens in in front of a a on the street or down the street sometimes or when street design is happening sometimes. And I've heard numerous times definitely a pattern where businesses may or may not be informed with enough time. The most the word one of the worst examples I've heard was in councilor Yoon Kamban's work in the the strip of of businesses on on not school.

Well, actually, school in Summer Street where that very, very a lot of

construction was happening for months.

And the businesses weren't sure when they could open or not because on Mondays is when they were drilling. And Tuesdays, blah blah blah was happening, and it was very the the customers were coming and going. The sidewalk was blocked or or or was no longer a sidewalk. It was gravel, and so it became inaccessible for anyone with with with intermediates, and that that was a a part of the customer base with the hair salon. But then also, the sound was so unavoidable that it it impacted the business.

It was indisputable. And and and I heard from these residents I'm sorry, these businesses that they they they couldn't get ahead. They could they're they did not have there was no communication plan. And, again, this is no slide, but just it was so hard for them to keep ahead of it. It was it was such a take for the those months that this was happening, and it felt very just omnipresent for them. I see hand up. And although I I want the director to present, I'm I'm happy to to have you speak if you wish.

Oh, thank you, madam chair. No. I'm happy to hear the presentation, and then I have a even more specific ask.

Super. So so construction is can be very devastating for the small business. I mean, you know, you're the director. You know this, but I I do hear about it enough to to know that we need to to get a get a a good friend, like, discuss what we're doing with that as well. So please, doctor.

Thank you, and welcome. Yes. The presentation I have is more on the technical assistance front, so we can hold that for a moment. On the construction side, typically, economic development is not in the role of construction communication with with community. That that really falls to the contractor, the the engineering team with the city project, and up perfect. I was talking about construction.

K.

Or, often, what we find is there's there's a range of construction challenges. Right? So there are city projects where we're we have a product that's out there, and our contractors are the ones causing that disruption. The engineering department is handling most of the communication with residents and businesses through all of that. Typically, all that comes to us in these moments where there's something that is they're they're it it's getting to the point where it's it's a broader neighborhood issue. That's when it usually lands with us. Then we have a lot of other construction that happens. There's private construction that disrupts things. We have this conversation in the Davis Square neighborhood. And literally the next day after we worked with the Davis Square merchants, a a bit merchant could not get in their door and searching high and low.

What the heck is happening? Why can't they get to the door? It was the landlord had scheduled something and hadn't told the tenant that this utility work was gonna be happening and and preventing them from opening for the day. So it isn't it is definitely an issue. It's an issue on city projects.

It's an issue on Eversource projects. It's an issue when it comes to private projects. We know there's a there's a need to do better coordination, especially when it comes to the city products on the communication front. But because so much of that is really lives with the contractor, what they're showing up for that day, what they're showing up for that week, Engineering really has been the center point for those communications. So I do think we should probably schedule a second conversation where we're bringing engineering to this conversation as well so they can really talk you through what they do because they do try and be as proactive as possible in getting out there and giving all the information that they can.

Again, they don't always have all the information from the contractor in the time of the city would like or that the the community would like as well. So it's a challenge. What we've discussed in the past is a part of it is that also, you know, if we want more lead time on some of these things, we also have to structure that in our RFPs in a way that is showing that we wanna we wanna invest more dollars in having that clarity of the timeline ahead of the time. Sometimes they are gonna be shifting things on a date literally on a day to day hour by hour basis. If it's gonna be raining, they're moving over there.

They're gonna shift what they're doing. If they don't have the three days of clear forecast, they're gonna do something different for that week. So because this is such live information, it really comes down to the contractor being in a position to be able to share that in a way that we can communicate out to the constituent. So it starts with the early stages of the RFP, and there's contractor selection of getting that contractor engagement that we're looking for. So looking at current projects is a lot harder than looking at future projects.

And, again, I do think we should really bring engineering into a deeper conversation about what that could look like, and it is definitely something on their radar, on our radar. We'd love to be able to work on, but it's it's hard to do in the moment with an active contractor because we don't necessarily have the tools that we'd like available.

Thank you. And I I do wanna I I'm just gonna I know you have a presentation plan, but and I do wanna say that, yeah, I I know. It's not like, oh, just here's a wand. Go fix it. I know it is extremely complicated because, right, Eversource and has their plan, and then there's the prior contractors that have their own separate plans and etcetera, and then there's the city work. I I get that. But I I'm hoping that, yeah, in the New Year that we can have a conversation, I think, bringing in engineering as well because right. I I hear that. I and and I know that that construction work is irritating. It's irritating to residents, to business owners.

So I I know it's it's it is tough, but I I do know that that there has to be some room for streamlining it. And this is not this is not a critique. And I know, like you said, you're you have there are different departments, but maybe we can. And and it's it's helpful to clarify that it it does begin with the RFPs. That's kind of exciting because maybe we could heighten the standards now without, you know, expecting more. But but we can figure out a way to do that so that we can get some esteem some raise the esteem of of our small business community on it. That's at least who I hear the most from it on. But thank you for that. Yeah.

Yeah. So on the technical assistance front, and I think this was where it maybe leads a little bit more into the second item. I don't know if it's worth I don't know how this works for.

Okay. Well yeah. So did

I'm trying to remember what the second item

So let's see. No. It's alright. Because, yeah, we're not discussing the the second item yet. So this this order, the fifth one. So technical support when impacted in construction of emergencies, Kind of wanted to focus on that. Did you aside from what what you said is the should I close this item and then move on to the next? Or

Madam chair, can I ask you a construction question before we move on?

Oh, okay. Yeah. Alright. Yes, councilor. Go ahead.

Thank you very much. Through you, I have a very specific ask that the city absolutely can directly help with. It's fortuitous that this is on tonight's agenda. There's a stretch of businesses along Bow Street, where there's a there's a large utility work is happening right now. This is, like, the block that has Block Cafe on it, but it also has, Barra, Celeste, Fuki, Siam Ginger.

And what makes them relevant here is that they have outdoor dining, and they paid a permit for the full year to have outdoor dining. And this construction project has made that impossible for the rest of the year. So as it's been communicated to me, and I I think staff may already know this, they got less than half of the days for their outdoor dining. And so they've made a direct request. They originally made it to the city clerk and then were directed to the mayor's office directly to to get a half reimbursement for the year.

You know, I don't know the law around this, but just from first principles like this, absolutely, I I would I would be shocked and appalled if if the mayor can't do this. So I'm I just wanna take this opportunity to just kind of on the record with a bunch of staff here to ask that that please happen. I think some of these businesses, you know, are are it it's not abstract. Right? Like, they're they had outdoor dining, and it was taken away. We all understand the importance of the work, but there's there's no way that these people should be made to pay for a full season of outdoor dining. So I just wanted to make that ask tonight. I don't know who's authorized to actually do it, but if that could be communicated to the mayor's office, I'd greatly appreciate it.

I'm pretty much sure. I can definitely we can definitely convey that message on. It is not economic development's decision. It would be with the licensing. It's with licensing and and within the city clerk's office. I don't actually and it might be with the mayor. We did have this conversation out. We did an larger outdoor dining conversation with the community a few a couple years ago. We are due to reset the outdoor dining fees in 2026. We're gearing up to start that engagement sometime early spring.

One of the things that we discussed actually when we did that reset was what do we do about construction. And at the time where we had landed was if it is disruptive for if it's known early enough to say it's definitely gonna be disruptive for that, you know, majority of the season, we would not charge them the fee. There is some, like, procedural thing that needs to be figured out around this reimbursement question. And at the least of the time, two and half years ago, we weren't we didn't have that mechanism available. So I will reach out to, Michael who sacks the licensing, side of the clerk's office and ask what what possibilities might exist at this moment.

And it's definitely something we should be talking about more for the next year's round of, you know, what adjustments are we making to the fee structure.

Madam Sherwood, through you, thank you for that. And just what what's been communicated to me is that Union Square Main Street's they've already talked to licensing commission, city clerk's office. They've been told directly, like, it is a decision of the mayor's office. So, you know, with intergovernmental affairs here, I just wanted to kind of raise this on the record and hope that this can get done soon. So thank you.

Did we catch that?

If I may on the

same on the same street. Absolutely. So we did receive an email from a business owner on Bow Street about just the disruption to short term parking. I know Jesse was from the engineering department. Engineering team is connecting with them, and we are trying to get that we'll be getting that message out to back to the main street than everyone else so that issue the same information. There's been a lot of disruption to short term parking over the last week. It's a busy, busy, busy time, especially with Thanksgiving orders coming up for next next week. They are hoping that it will they are expecting that the contractor will be pulling in some of their equipment so that the short term parking is available for next week. So I just wanna share that as well. But, again, there'll be more detail going information going to the business owners.

Counsel, anything further on that? Okay. Counselor Hart, how are you doing with her? You're going in? Alright. Yeah. Thank you. Alright. Well, I'll I'll I'll close this agenda item, and then happy to discuss the next agenda item, the last agenda item tonight, order 241488. The director of economic development appear before

the council's committee and housing community development to discuss

the immediate plans and short term response efforts to best support and sustain small businesses post COVID. So plans, plans, plans. My I wrote this, and I think my my goal of this was, oh my gosh. The ARPA funds are are drying up. What's the plan? How now that things are on the complete other side of that, how are we doing? What are we looking like? What what's stuck within what how how do we insulate our small business community and help them thrive on the other side of this? So So that's the presentation now. The link make lot more a

lot of sense to this item, and because it gets into our technical assistance. Right? Alright. So

we can go ahead to

the next one, I think. In general sorry. 2024 twenty twenty twenty five was a unique time. We had a huge peak in funding that cities were allowed to spend on direct business support in a way that we never were before and we never. So do you wanna just sort of, like, put that in a frame of this is a really unique opportunity, and we left at it to be able to help stabilize our businesses during COVID and help them with recovery?

Before 2020, cities city governments were really only allowed to spend CDBG dollars and grants as direct to business support. If I may, we have an absolute new concept. Could you possibly Lastly, Explain those acronyms. You got it. Yeah. So can you so

First of Yeah.

So CDG is the community development block grant. It's a federal program coming out of HUD. Mhmm. Same programs that support affordable housing and Mhmm. Work.

You could use federal dollars to invest directly in businesses, but the anti aid amendment in Massachusetts means that you cannot send municipal dollars directly to support a business. That's a a tricky layer to our economic development work that we're constantly trying to find the gray edges of. During COVID, there was a little bit of a relaxation, understanding that this is a major, like, economic crisis, huge disruption to everything. We allocated as a city 5,000,000 that we spent on direct business support to stabilize our business community here. We then also invested 2,300,000.0 in ARPA funding to support businesses.

So all that ARPA money, that 2.3, that all went out the door in 2024. So we see this, you know, 2020 to 2023 where you gave out a little bit of money at a time, a lot of stability money, a lot of money to support outdoor dining and the transition of a restaurant community out to the outside. And then in 2024, we had this massive influx of cash going out to the businesses to, one, support folks who are opening brand new businesses in this wild and crazy era. We had 30 awards to new businesses who are opening. That was a rent rent support, helped a lot of small businesses get started and sort of get get their sea legs.

And then we also spent 1.8 on business enrichment grants to 60 existing businesses. That was in the form of technical support and cash for equipment. Now we're back really to that normal that old normal. Right? We're back to the normal place of we can only spend CDBG funding and grants. If you go to the next, Dana will walk you through where we are in the in the new what we've been

doing with this this year.

So as Rachel mentioned earlier welcome, counselor. It's good to be. My name is Dana Whiteside. I'm deputy director of economic development. I'm

so sorry.

Thank you. Congratulations on your new role.

Thank you.

So happy to help explain, as Rachel mentioned, amplifying the fact that with twenty four twenty four eight to twenty twenty five, we're in what we what I would call our new normal. And one thing that I'll I'll reference is, number one, our use of the community development block grant to support businesses and to provide, particularly the help of technical assistance, help with operational considerations, and also focus on business retention, making sure the businesses have a date to sort of stay in place. And so the primary venues through which the CDBG block grant funds are through our main Streets, 2 Point East, some of the Main Streets district, as well as the Union Square Main Streets district. Those are the primary vehicles to which we do they are what I like to what I I'd like to describe as the two critical forms through which those funds can be can be given. I'm literally just coming from the East Liverpool Main Street sporting just before this heads my being late.

So my apologies for that. Really useful opportunity to sort of talk through how resources can be can be utilized and how we can make sure that the staff of those particular districts have what they need to sort of give give the businesses that kind of support. So that is one of our one of the pieces of our of our new normal. If you wouldn't mind going to the next slide, I'll describe the next component of In addition to providing those funding sources, given the fact that the funding is gone, one thing I will mention that we also it's not articulated on the slide necessarily. We are thinking about what are some new sources, entities like master governments, entities like metropolitan area planning council that look at ways to provide opportunities so that we're we're not only thinking about ARPA being done or CVG being having being limited, but also where are some opportunities, especially long range gearing.

In the midst of that, we're also doing a fair amount of what our practice really is in economic development is to meet our business owners where they are and really focusing on what we like to call the principal touch and through means of interaction and communication that make it easy for them to sort of peel back the layers of consideration around policies and practices and how best to access information. So one tool for that is our small business office hours. They are weekly opportunities that are convened by us, hosted by us, which bring together economic development staff, but also, more importantly, licensing, engineering, ISD health, ISD building, and other staff. What we like to call ourselves in many ways is we are the conveners. While we're not the regulators or the decision makers, we do have the good fortune of having really a fairly good rapport with our sister agencies and representatives from those departments to have these regular meetings where businesses can come and have their questions answered in a Philly in a nonpressurized format and really get access to to to the great help that's needed.

And it's really we found it to be incredibly successful. The slides articulate some of the statistics, the three to five attendees usually. And the result is, again, that opportunity to really have that personal touch and opportunity to have questions answered. The next slide goes to another aspect of what we try to do as well in addition to having those but I should say the small business office hours are via Zoom. They're virtual.

Mhmm. In the context of that, we also have utilized language services to for those folks who are which is not a first language. The other part of, you know, meeting people where they are, meeting businesses where they are, is through small business block locking. We do that in conjunction with we we were talking earlier about construction and concessions like that. Many times, there are other departments that are doing work in the districts like our mobility departments on transportation issues.

So it's not uncommon for us to do block walking in conjunction with our mobility departments. So if there's issues around parking, issues around mobility projects, our small business team as well as the mobility team will go and meet those businesses and talk through the issues that they might have. What we've found is that the rapport that our team is able to build with owners there has been incredibly impactful because it's they're providing providing answers to questions, providing access to resources, and making sort of demystifying what it means to sort of be able to do business here. And we found that that's incredibly, incredibly useful. It's not money, but it is access.

It is information. And I think the other thing that I would probably say is education. And many times, it's that ability to provide people with the input and information that they need to make their business successful. There's one more piece of information on the next slide that is probably going to a yearly success on the bridge, which I will probably tag team on this one. And we mentioned earlier about looking for new funding sources.

We were able to, this year, access through the Commonwealth's economic executive office of economic development, the urban agenda grant, which allows for municipality to partner and utilize a $100,000, which doesn't sound like a lot of money, but it was a it it was quite a bit. And as these statistics show here on the slide, we were able to have a really strong impact in using those dollars to do two things, and then I'll then I'll turn back to Rachel, provide education, provide information on some important certification, and also provide a a one particular constituency based, I. E, home based day care, which is huge in in this neighborhood, making certain that those individuals and those that those forms of small business could could thrive and have room for the opportunity.

Yeah. So something that home based child care

was really the one of

the focal groups that we were targeting with this program. That was we were able to do a small amount of stipends, and the stipends we targeted to that that constituency. We were our goal was to get as many as possible into these training opportunities. There's already a group convenes through summer promise to help them sort of learn about chat latest information about, you know, teaching methodologies and what it's like to run a child care center and and really help bolster their ability to do the job. Our end of it is how can we support them in the business side of it?

So things like the certifications on food safety was the main one, right? So getting that food safety training out there. We already offer food safety training actually not in English in this round. We only offer food safety training in Spanish and Portuguese. There definitely is an appetite out there for food safety training in English, not only for these home based providers, but also all of our cottage industry folks who are doing baked goods in their house and selling, as well as actually, most of that, you do need at least two people on staff at all food service businesses to be food safety trained.

So there's always somebody on-site with that training. So that's all the allergen training. Right? So that is a service that we definitely saw through this program could be bolstered to put on more programming around food safety training. But one of the things I think that's also really helpful here that for where we could go next is to think about it as more training format because that is something that will probably pass muster with anti aid.

We can probably put on you know, if we can thinking about funding for next year, be thinking about programs that are group based and all businesses can apply and participate. It's not the same as that direct aid. That direct aid is really where we were limited in the 2020 to 2024 range. But now our future is probably gonna look more like this. A tricky layer on this grant speaking.

A lot of what we the grants that had it had existed, again, they are pulling from ARPA funding. So we are seeing it contracting in the small business sphere for for grants as well. We are also seeing more of these grants shift to have a focal point of not the municipal government, but nonprofits directly. Nonprofits being where the the training is happening and who's putting on those programs. So the urban agenda grant actually no longer exists. It has been a rechristened community workforce something. I think we're getting the back wording. But, also, municipalities are no longer eligible. It under the new standard of it, it is only going to nonprofits. So, like, again, we're working really closely with our mainstream partners.

We're working closely with the chamber, making sure that as we find grants that are not applicable to us, but may be applicable to them, that they're able to apply and help for the community.

And I would say to to Rachel's point, one of the things that we have been that has made us as successful as we were during the the times of ARPA and COVID, but also as part of our success now in the post ARPA world is this real real focus on partnership, being able to connect with main streets, being able to connect with the chamber, being able to connect with those nonprofits that do that service orientation. I used the term convener earlier. It really is a a principle of ours that really holds to because we become the trusted advisers, if you will, who can bring parties to the table and enable our work with our colleagues at the state to channel funds where appropriate to to those partners. And in many cases, what we what likely will find in the next coming fiscal year or so is it will be a co a co sponsor or a co applicant with those various nonprofits. And that's a really good model to enable us, in some ways, to get out of the business having to administer funds and more business educating people.

Because I think with that education and getting kind with folks, we were it makes us that much more, but, know, I I think our impact as a team is multiplier.

And I think one of the other ones to highlight since we're talking about this the home based child care, the summer performance team, again, they've already been doing a lot of convening with those particular businesses. They received a grant from the job creation and retention trust to extend their work on that and continue doing a lot of that education and building and certification work with that specific targeted population. Again, child care being foundational to all economic activity in our community. Right. Everybody needs it before they can do the next thing. So we're really trying to make sure that that is foundational to our support.

One final piece on the education that I'll mention that is important. With these really successful workshops that we held that were in different languages, etcetera, they're also on video. So we we have this is a long range thinking, but as we do more of this educational work on various topics, bringing technical expertise, having it in a digital library of sorts so that if a person can't make it, we can point them to our websites, etcetera, to anyone to

have access for a long period of time.

And that video library is currently on YouTube, Citi's YouTube channel. So that's definitely something that, you know, if you all have your social media and federally, you wanna be able to share that to constituents, but happy to pass that on. Some of them were in person in, some Spanish, some English, but they all Portuguese to be had all those. If we could go to the next. Do you also wanna focus on a couple of sort of latest and greatest efforts? These are things that I've really been launching in the last month, even three weeks. First one, I know, counselor, you have been pushing us towards how do we do some media? How do you

We've got some like this one.

So so this this

idea has really blossomed out of a conversation with a couple of businesses in DataSquare. A couple of businesses in Data Square have really said, hey. We want to change the narrative. If you Google Data Square today, it is not the same as if you Google Data Square ten years ago. And that is that there is a negative media circus, but it you know, we're we're in the middle of that vortex.

We really wanna shift that narrative. And so we've been working very closely with the communications team here at the city to develop a a broader what we can do as a citywide effort that can then amplify any messages that the Davis Square folks are putting up, East Somerville, Union Square, Magoon, anybody will amplify it in this season. And so what we've got is a campaign that we're launching called be loyal to local this winter, love your small businesses. Again, this is building up of our loyal to local campaigns that we've run before. We ran a big loyal to local campaign when the bridges were out Right.

In the middle of elsewhere. We printed loyal to local bags in 2019 that we've been using at every Civic Day and other event for a while. It's like, can you tell us about some small businesses you love here? We'll give you a loyal to local back. So this is a coordinated effort that the communications team is gonna be leading on our social media channels, in our print media, in our press releases, and in the physical world.

So rats on the Big bellies. Yeah. At the we're trying to figure out if we can pull off quickly enough on the Blue Book ads. So we're trying to put out a really big series of messages all on all channels that says, stay loyal to your local businesses throughout the winter season. We are going beyond small business Saturday. Our goal is to start some of these messages going out for small business Saturday and extend it all the way through February. Businesses hurt in January and February. So our goal here is really just to help folks, what can you be doing to support your local businesses throughout this season? If you go to the next one, I wanted to highlight a couple of important things. First are these key dates.

So small business Saturday, Saturday after Thanksgiving, coming up in just a couple weeks. The Davis Square Merchants, we've been working with the Davis Square merchants for a year plus on a monthly basis, and they have put together the Data Square holiday. So huge good up there. They're self organizing that effort. They don't have main streets, but they are pulling it all together, the merchants themselves, without a staff supporting them. So that's gonna be on the sixth. So send folks out to Dave Square to shop. I think some folks in Teal Square and Holland are also participating. Okay. Great.

Union Square Jingle is on the seventh. So Union Square Main Troop is organizing the Union Square Jingle shop, tip and mingle, something like that. So, again, head out to State Union on the seventh. And then eat out on East is an every Wednesday promotional activity that the East Summer of Main Street is really trying to coordinate. Then your Wednesday out, go out to eat on East Broadway on Wednesday night. But we're gonna be highlighting those those key dates throughout this next month as folks get up to it. The other messages that we're gonna be putting out on social media and in these places are, why should you shop local? What does it matter? It matters a ton. And so we've got a lot of different messages around, you know, why are the different reasons that you should invest your dollars locally in your community?

That doesn't necessarily get everybody to shop locally. Some people are gonna respond to that. Some people are not. So we also have a few other things that we're gonna be targeting. One is a way to support your local businesses that don't cost a penny. So things like leaving a five star review, not leaving a one star review. Please tell complain complain quietly, like, share successes loudly. So we wanna share like, give those tips to folks, you know, maybe you might wanna change from your Bank of America bank to a local bank here in Somerville even if you are moving from somewhere else. All of those kinds of messages are what we wanna put out there. The last thing that we're gonna do, this is really gonna be on social media, is some questions that are gonna encourage business discovery.

Again, we are limited by anti aid in doing a business promotion of a specific business. But we can highlight our districts. We can highlight a couple of writing things, and

we can have

some nice opening props. We have a super sharp communication student who was working with us off of the summer who put together a lot of good social media content, and we're gonna be building off of that. And one the things that we're doing is a whole series of these question campaigns doing. Do you think you know the wellness business in Somerville? Do you have like, what's your favorite new client deal? What's your favorite student deal? Where do you get your haircut? Like, getting people to help each other discover things. We have a a specific at Somerville Businesses Instagram that is really this is the this is what that is for. That has really been the shift that we made.

We did a as part of the ARPA programs for small businesses, we did a professional campaign around shopping locally. And that is going to we've sort of, like, morphing that and using the same color themes, the same, like, content, but turning it using that really to reach an audience that wants to shop local and amplify our local businesses. So that is what that we're gonna be using that for, and we are gonna also have that on the summer you'll see it on the Somerville citywide social media as well. So because that's such a such a larger reach. So this is gonna be a big coordinated effort for the next three months. That's really exciting.

Okay. Can I talk? This is so exciting. Okay. I thank you. This is thank you. And by the way, I totally see the emojis. No. I I appreciate all the work you're doing, of course. And and just a couple of thoughts.

Also, I love the the loyalty local be oh, I'm just a little would you consider I know that we have the Christmas tree lighting, and we have the manure lighting happening as well. Would you consider having a presence or at least flyer or something on the tables? It's hard with the manure lighting because it's dark and cold, always cold, but very important. And although, you know, Hanukkah is not about gift giving, we're just kinda trying to have our children catch up to, you know, Santa's big haul. But they're still purchasing for Monica, so just an idea to put that wraparound special and and with the the Christmas tree lighting as well.

Just a thought. I know. I know. It's about it's the spirit of the season. Of course, that's quite important. But, also, it's on the parents' minds. Just a thought. If I can actually respond. Yeah. There is one thing that we've been we're also working on that's more

of a physical flyer that will work well for that. We're trying to put together a calendar. We're still waiting to pay just November, December calendar, like, December calendar, or if it's, all three months. Mhmm. But the idea is to have a flyer that's, like, a thing you could do every day to support your local businesses. So that would be the perfect thing that

we could bring. That's awesome. Yep. And and just I know that I don't I think we talked about this maybe a couple of years ago or or someone said it or we said it or someone said it somewhere. The concept of the reward based consumer driving activity of a punch card or an app or or something that purchased 10 items at a local business somewhere in Somerville and get, I don't know, something. I'm very reward based at times, so I I could see that being useful. And then for the tenth purchase or whatever, they can get a tote bag or a toy or, I don't know, whatever.

We Renee, we are thinking about the within this campaign. So the first one is is the date of holiday. The DataSquare holiday is going to be a raffle. So it's you make a purchase at one of the participating businesses. They'll give you a raffle ticket, and you'll be able to enter to win a prize of thing, like gift cards and things from local businesses in DataSquare. So they are definitely on that track. With the broader campaign, we're trying to figure out how we would structure the event. There's so much that the social media base, but we are looking at we still have to figure out how to we haven't pulled up the venue yet. But if if we can, if there's still space available, the community tabling events, tabling space at the art Farm at the Winter Farmers Market Mhmm. We're gonna see if we can get a table for one Saturday certainly late in this campaign.

Mhmm. They aren't already taken, which is possible because we're so late at this, to actually have a physical presence where we can have flyers. And then I'll say, hey. Have you engaged with our campaign? If you've done a couple of things, snag

a tote bag, snag a sticker.

We've got some cool stickers of different neighborhood names and business street names that people might be

able to snag on that are linked to the campaign color theme. Neat. Neat. And the business that you think of the oldest in Somerville? I don't know, but I know that Lindell's has to be out there.

You have a shockingly large number of businesses that you probably would never interact with that are over 50 years old.

And funeral home. Right? I actually don't know that we know the oldest yet.

We're, like, generally not playing, like,

stuff stuff that I cannot do all of the knowledge. We

we do have folks who are working on trying to figure this out.

One of the things that's been considered as a as a an offshoot of this and related to the business in Seminole is whether, you know, what we can't promote a business, what we might consider doing within without breaking any anti aid rules or that sort of thing is thinking about honoring of, you know, legacy businesses. Mhmm. And so I'm thinking about how to do that as a way to celebrate a normal development, but in a way that's really community based and community oriented. So

Okay. So what we're

putting together that proposal, that's something probably for next year timeline of what how it'd structured. Is it a declaration of the city council of the mayor? Is there a plaque? Is there a this we're still putting that together. And then how are we tracking so that when someone goes from their five year milestone to their ten

year milestone, it's, like, seamless. Love that. Love that. That's great. And I I love to be I'd love to find a vitamin city council too. Think that's a great idea. This is really exciting. I I don't know what else to. Versus

I forgot. Anyway. We do have a couple more slides too on one other thing that's not related to marketing. If right. So the last thing is, again, this is sort of live and, like, really early stages. But I wanted to give you sort of a preview of what's coming. Again, this is this is in our budget also. This is won't be this isn't new, but we are really at the point of starting. So we are launching a a a really, like, city process review for how small businesses engage with us. And that's really around licensing and permitting and all the things that they need to be able to resist at the business and their interactions with the city.

And so we're starting on the internal front. We definitely will be doing engagement with the people, with all of you on the city council as well as with the business community in the course of the next year, but we're really at the very early stages of engaging with all the internal depart internal departments who have say and sway over housing offers. And what we're looking for really are where does missing communication happen? Is there a process change that would make that easier? And is there an educational or informational moment that could be found to, again, have the business show up prepared, ready, and also make it easy for the department that's reviewing whatever the thing is to be able to give them a quick answer.

A lot of this, it ultimately comes down to miscommunications. It's usually what we find. There's miscommunication between the business owner and and their contractor and the city. Usually, there are three, maybe four party situations, and somebody missed somebody missed an email. Mhmm.

It's typically how Mhmm. Delay happens, and we're trying to find where those places are and figure out if there's anything that can be done, whether that is on the system side, a policy side, or simply a, like, personal touch side that would make it possible to reduce that. So that's something we're really, again, as of two weeks ago, have kicked off and are really starting to get into we're expecting this is a ongoing process that's we will probably never be done with making it better. But we wanna really focus on this for over the next year Oh, wow. And getting our teams all aligned on this.

Is This something you'll see in the economic development budget goals. We'll see it in the PPD budget goals, the licensing budget goals, the court's office. There's a lot of alignment of departments who are trying to really look at how does that engagement look and are there things that could be fixed. I do wanna highlight one that's been really impactful so far, and this is a collaboration that we are really not a part of, but we are we get to shout it from the rooftops for them, and that is that licensing city clerks and IST have made some important changes to the citizens of. So if you looked at citizen serve a month ago, you would have seen a like, you would just scrolled by, I don't know, a foot of text before you got to anything you could click on.

They have made that a lot cleaner, a lot simpler, a lot easier to follow. So that landing page for citizen service is much better than it was two weeks ago. Really quiet change. Really important change. Right. Another one is the license renewal process. License renewals happen in November, December because they go into effect for the calendar year. The license renewal process this year has had a some seriously important improvements. This is the first time you can do your license renewal and pay for it without a check and having to walk in the city hall. A huge time savings for every business that encounters a license.

The other thing is that you can do the application for the licensed alcohol license and the inspection for the alcohol license at the same time. So you don't have to do those in sequential order. There's a ton of time. Wow. So this has been a really big, impactful change. There's a lot of folks who are involved in this major team effort. A license again, licensing city clerk's IST, but also IT, all of our systems folks who've been really working in the background, the treasury department who accept those checks. There's a ton of folks who've been involved in making that work. Again, we wanna where we can highlight those moments through this process and say, we are making incremental change. It is gonna get a little easier.

They've seen the especially the application happening online for folks who don't have a lot of time, it's making a big difference, a lot of less a lot of reduced missed paperwork in the process. So that's ultimately our goal is find those places where the paper exchange isn't happening and make it a little bit smoother. That's all we have to. That's our close-up approach.

That that is wonderful. Colleagues, have any thoughts, comments, questions? I have. I have to work.

Yes. Through you, madam chair. Super helpful and very informative. Thank you. And it's so much exciting stuff going on. I was wondering about the the Davis Square holidays and if Teal Square, you know, was gonna be involved. So it's great to hear that there is some of that. And prior to that, you had mentioned that the Union Square Main Streets and the East Harbor Main Streets were the way that the the DVD money was going out. So in parts of the city like West Somerville where we don't have an organization like that, does that mean that they're not able to access

those funds? Or what again?

That's a really good question. The the short answer is those districts do have access. It's more indirect by virtue of, quite frankly, our. So our staff, when they're doing block walking, our staff, when they're doing that big ops hours, when they're doing responses to phone calls or emails and visits, in many ways, our staff serve as a sort of conduit that a main street staff person would serve. Mhmm.

So we we we don't want a situation where those districts that don't have a main streets don't have access to tech technical assistance. Would that have more main streets districts? Because we could distribute more directly distribute CDBG money to those districts. But our way of sort of working around that, I hate to use the word working around, is to enable staff to really spend more time in our our our, you know, go to. They go to many other districts that don't have the designation of the main streets, and they give the same level of service.

Now in in in in all in all candor, but the concentration of activity that happens in the main streets district is gonna be very different than the concentration of data that happens in a Laguna or Davis. But as we're fighting with the Davis Square team, for example, then there's not a main streets there either, but our staff interacts with them fairly fairly regularly. So we're trying to just make sure that there's a regular interaction on

the backlog stack. Mhmm. And, also, this is one of the

things that we've been talking with the data score merchants at the meeting. The data score merchants includes, like, PJ Ryan's, Connor's, all of of regular presence there. Mhmm. I think they are open to the idea of Mhmm. Collaboration with the Teal Square businesses. There's been a long standing idea of developing some sort of organization of business owners in Davis and Teo. There's a lot of things that the Main Street Organization can do that we we are not allowed to do. Mhmm. So things like, you know, some of the event organizing that happens, some of these kinds of things that they get to do more of. The other thing that the main streets organization does is some of the support that they're doing, again, I think that we are not allowed to do.

They can intervene when there's a landlord tenant dispute. We can't. They can advocate for the business working directly with lawyer. We can we can point them to legal legal clinics, resources, but we can't serve in that way. Those are our main strategic organizations are phenomenal at and generous with their services. They generally will go beyond the scope of their area to support somebody that's struggling. We went through this with a business on Beacon Street. Beacon Street. They were being supported with the East Summerlin Street, so they were to connect them with resources Mhmm. Much more quickly than we could because of the limitations that we are under.

So there is definitely a a sphere where I could see either an expansion of main street organizations across the city, expansion of business improvement districts. Union Square Main Street used a lot of their ARPA grants to explore what what a business improvement district would look like for Union Square, but also they wanted that to be a model for other districts that would consider being a business improvement district. That might be a Davis. That might be brick bottom. That could be a there's a variety of districts where assembly event, where business improvement district may be a useful tool.

But, again, that idea of having that, like, place based organizing is there. The chamber is another resource. The chamber has new leadership. We're really excited to be partnering with their new leadership, and they're getting really in the groove of having some more technical assistance activities as well. They did a, like, AI for your business workshop recently that was a mention on webinar. Yeah. Cybersecurity.

They also as Rich is mentioning, the chamber, they also, this past year, their taste of Somerville, included upwards of 50 new small business who had never participated before. Great. And so that opportunity to connect where there's not main streets to connect businesses with those other organizations that have that nonprofit staff that could do more than we can do. The other thing I mentioned too in in in this business district thing, it is a a a goal of ours in the coming year to, yes, think about those districts that don't have a main street designation, like the Laguna's, like the Teals, like the you know? K.

To to not so much push a main street main street's district designation on them necessarily, but to think more intentionally about how we internally interact with them in Blue Square or with a I'm saying we're good just as as an example. So much like we're thinking about the small business streamlining, we're also thinking about business district. Not so much designation, but acknowledging, okay. Where are those areas where are those are there areas where there isn't a concentration of nonprofit activity? That's what small business. But we can, a city team, intentionally have those, you know, those those touch points.

And so the organ self organization of Data Square over the last year or so has been really telling for us that, like, what they're looking for is a lot of information and engagement, and it's not typically, it's not a. We're we're, again, we're the convener, and we're we always have a presence, and there are some questions that they have that are in our wheelhouse that they often are looking for information around, hey. What's the police activity going on? Mhmm. What is going on in terms of development activity in our neighborhood?

What's happening with the mobility part of the neighborhood? And is there a space where we can convene it on a regular basis and have those conversations? So, again, we're really thinking that through as a what could it look like? Could it look differently for there to be a more standing, invited conversation for all businesses in in Difference Square? Gonna take a that's a shift that's gonna take a long time to shift because we got a lot we got a lot of folks involved, and we gotta get those businesses, like, organizing and coalescing around when do we do this meeting, how do we have this meeting, all those kinds of things. So that's a a growth area that we're hoping to do. And we do think that also, in terms of the construction, that might be a layer again that we might be able to improve on as well.

So thank you. Hans, are you gonna happen? Do you have any you good? Alright. This is exciting. Very much information out. Do you know when you will have the calendar or everything finalized?

I will check the communications. Probably, we'll I expect it'll probably be into next week. And, also, we'll have some things that are ready for some of the Saturday and some things that follow more in December. We'll bring on a graphic designer with using the materials that that stuff might follow. We might have a November, December look and an updated look in January just depending on how their timeline work.

And, please, I I here in here just even with city hall, I don't know. I'm sure you leave things here. You know, it's just people in and out all the time, especially with the holidays coming, that'll increase. But it would be even great if if if say, for instance, the punch card idea or whatever, 10 visit 10, some of the businesses, and, yeah, maybe you do stop in city hall and pick up or whatever, you know, or some go buck, whatever. You don't really have a mascot in store for.

Whatever. But I I think, in my opinion, IMO, I think going to 2026, we're gonna have to really just go totally full on Somerville centric and pull in all of us big old four square mile hug and get really creative. I think that, you know, our Somerville well, you know, we know our Somerville and our values of of of really supporting each other. We can really stoke that plan in in years, probably 2026. And we're just unlocking our some of the residents to do so.

I I I love the guidance on this, and I'm really looking forward to seeing where we go there. We'd love we'd love we can talk more about the updates at the in the beginning of spring, but exciting to hear this. Even if we go Happy Love Day and and and get all Valentine's Day up in February. I mean, I like the sky's the limit. Let's just let's just entice everyone to shop somewhere, though. And and so thank you. Okay. Pleasure. Yeah. Always.

Alright. So with that, happy to close this item. We ran out of the. So with that, if I may, I'm allowed to move to adjourn, please. So it's adjourned. Alright. And so we're we're completing this? We're complete. Perfect. Okay. Alright.

On the German. Councilor Hart. Yes. Councilor Yuncan.

Yes.

Chair Stoetzen. Yes. Alright. That is all

on Good Road Of The German.

Thank you. Thank you. Happy Thanksgiving, and I hope you all have a good And a nice safe, fun holiday.

Yes. Same to you.

Thank you. Bye bye. Thank you.