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Coming Up (Jan 13-20) - Not a comprehensive list:
Monday (tonight): Union Twist Four Corners Retail Marijuana Proposal Community Meeting at the Waban Library Center at 7:30 PM, sponsored by two of the Area Councils, with a presentation by the petitioners and background information on the public process by former City Councilor Greg Schwartz.
Wednesday:
Programs & Services Special Committee Meeting at the Ed Center Room 304 at 6:30 PM to allow the Clerk of the City of Newton to provide voters with a state-authorize guide containing (1) the full text of the Northland referendum ballot question; (2) a fair and concise summary of each question, including a 1 sentence statement describing the effect of a yes or no vote, which shall be prepared by the city solicitor; and (3) arguments for and against the question.
By the way, the referendum text will be as follows, according to Clerk David Olson: Shall the following measure which was passed by the City Council be approved? A measure which changes the zoning of parcels of land located at 156 Oak Street, 275-281 Needham Street and 55 Tower Road (commonly known as the Northland Project) from Mixed Use 1 District (MU1) to Business 4 District (BU4). The zoning change would allow for the construction of the Northland Project as described in a special permit and site plan approval granted by the City Council. [Yes/No]
Joint School Committee & City Council Meeting at the Ed Center Room 111 at 7 PM (to go over the new enrollment report and projections as well as school building projects)
UPDATE: POSTPONED TO JAN 23 — Thursday: Upper Falls Area Council Meeting at 7 PM at the Emerson Community Center including appointment to vacant seats and election of officers; NewCAL (Senior Center) Community Meeting at the Ed Center Room 111 at 7 PM “reviewing the Newton Centre triangle parking lot and a number of other potential sites” now that Albemarle and other parks are off the list of site ideas. I will try to get to the second one after the first is done.
Saturday: Councilor Humphrey Upper Falls Office Hours - I will be holding my first Office Hours from 3 to 5 PM on Saturday Jan 18 in Upper Falls (or technically across the street) at the Needham St Starbucks. (I had to move it last-minute before this newsletter, but I hope next time to be back in Upper Falls itself, at one of our fine establishments.) This is a good opportunity to drop by and talk to me in person about what’s on your mind. Next month, I will be in one of the other villages of Ward 5 and rotating accordingly each month.
MLK Day (Jan 20): MLK Community Celebration at First Baptist Church in Newton at 9:30 AM
Note: In the future, if you have a Ward 5 or Newton event coming up that you would like me to mention in the newsletter, please let me know. So far I’m generally just listing some of the events I plan to or am scheduled to attend. There are other important community events at the same time as some of these meetings, and I left them off because I can’t personally be there, but in future I’m happy to include them in the newsletter to inform people.
Week-in-Review, Key Items:
It was a busy week with a lot of one on one or group meetings, as well as several political events outside of my Council work, but the three key items from the past week I wanted to highlight were about Northland, the Wellesley Office Park redevelopment, and the N-Squared Innovation District.
Jan 8: City Council & Committee of the Whole Meeting on Northland:
On Wednesday at City Council, I gave my “maiden” (first) speech to the full Council, which everyone has to stand for and applaud, but which usually occurs much later in a Councilor’s first term, except in unusual circumstances such as this past week. We took a vote on whether to uphold or repeal the previous Council’s re-zoning in Ward 5 for the Northland Needham St project (it was not repealed) and another vote on what date to hold the citywide referendum on the Northland re-zoning. (It was decided in committee of the whole, but not yet the full council, to hold it on March 3, 2020, which has the advantage of being concurrent with a presidential primary that is expected to generate very high turnout so that everyone knows this referendum is happening and which unusually for a city election will allow 5 days of in-person early voting, instead of just absentee voting. I believe I only received emails in favor of that date.) I wanted to explain my thoughts on all of this to my constituents, so I did give a speech. There were some other things I could not discuss in detail on the floor due to time limits, but I have included them in the text below, most of which was in my speech. I posted it on my website for greater access (and included it in the weekly newsletter email), for people who could not be at the speech in person.
Jan 9: Waban Area Council Meeting (Councilor Crossley also in attendance):
The focus of the Waban Area Council meeting this month (apart from the election of new officers, including Chris Pitts as president, and appointments of new members) was an informational presentation by the developers of the Wellesley Office Park Re-Development project as part of Wellesley’s 40R affordable housing and “smart growth” zoning overlay for the park.
This is not something that requires approval from Newton (so it was not an opportunity for public input from Newton residents) but is obviously proximate to Waban and Upper Falls and will have some traffic effects on Ward 5. The reason they were presenting on this to the WAC (after several prior discussions without presenters) is that this site is only accessible from Williams St which is itself only accessible in one direction from the Rte 9 frontage road/on-ramp that comes across from Newton at Quinobequin Rd.
The housing development component in Phase 1 of the project will satisfy Wellesley's affordable housing requirements under state law. The rest of the office park site is also part of the 40R "smart growth" overlay.
As discussed in prior meetings, traffic impact should be re-aligned, because it will shift out-flow to the morning instead of the evening (alleviating the Rte 9/128 interchange rush hour problems) & reducing traffic by shifting office use to residential. However, the existing traffic pattern where people coming to the site have to cross into Newton, under Rte 9, and back out to Wellesley will continue since there's no other way to configure it. There is also a pre-existing office park shuttle connecting the site to the Riverside T station. But in order to make the housing redevelopment qualify as transit-oriented, the development will become integrated into the 128 Business Council shuttle network already in that area. The shuttles should also become more efficient because residential reverse-peak trips will reduce the number of shuttles that are returning empty after delivering office workers to this and other various nearby office park sites.
Also of course in theory, this site is actually fairly close to the Eliot Green Line station on foot, so they're hoping to work with Newton and the state to improve pedestrian connectivity either directly up the hill or to our soon to be opened aqueduct access. (I'm a bit skeptical of that element since it's about a mile away from the center of the office park. Google says it’s about a 20 minute walk. Not terrible, but not great, especially with the hill.)
Part of the negotiation with Wellesley to establish the 40R overlay was that all the design for phase 1 had to include preserving the space necessary to make further changes to the exit/entrance/highway configuration in future phases. Future phases can't happen without more fixes.) In phase 1, one office building will be demolished and replaced with housing but the other office buildings remain. (Overall office space vacancies in the park are now ~50% if I recall correctly from a previous meeting.) Future phases would change that, according to the overlay district allowances, which authorize various other redevelopment including building a hotel. But the owners said that they have no specific plans right now. (Remember that traffic patterns and exit configurations are such a huge limiter on a project like this that it’s not something they can automatically build up in one fell swoop.)
One interesting thing is that they're not including natural gas hookups to the new buildings. The Town of Wellesley apparently pushed hard on some of the environmental points when designing the overlay district. (The fact that the Town of Wellesley owns their own municipal power & light dramatically cuts the cost of electrification to substitute for natural gas, which is a key distinction compared to similar projects in Newton.)
There was some discussion of a suggested pedestrian bridge to better connect the project to Waban over the river, but this is not part of the plan.
Jan 10: N-Squared Innovation District Meeting: I have been asked to serve as the City Council’s representative to the N-Squared Innovation District’s steering group, succeeding Ward 8 Councilor-at-Large Rick Lipof, who is now the Council Vice President and Land Use Committee Chair. This was my first meeting and by coincidence the topic focused on pedestrian connections across the river to improve linkages between the Newton and Needham sides of the N-Squared district, including the issue of the abandoned rail bridge at Christina Street, which has come up as a topic at several recent Highlands Area Council meetings. The City of Newton will be working with DCR to try to establish permanent access.
Also on Jan 11, I stopped by the annual Newton South tournament for the Massachusetts Speech & Debate League this afternoon to show my support for the old home team! I also plan to return to assistant coaching with the team some time very soon, and I’m looking forward to that.
A reminder from DPW despite our recent unseasonably warm weather:
The City Council recently supported an Ordinance to require property owners to clear their sidewalks of snow and ice. If you own a property or business please clear all concrete and asphalt sidewalks that abut your property of ice and snow within 24 hours of a winter weather event. There are fines associated with non-compliance. Click here for the winter weather information brochure.
The City's winter parking ban was amended in September to shorten the duration of the winter parking ban. The ban is now in effect from December 1 through March 31st. Vehicles cannot park on any street, way, highway, road, parkway, or private way dedicated or open to the use of the public for a period of time longer than one hour between the hours of 2:00 a.m. and 6:00 a.m.