City Council Recap, 11/19/24
- Kit Collins
- Nov 20, 2024
- 3 min read
We referred the proposed Green Score Ordinance to the Community Development Board. “Green Score” is essentially a rubric that cities use to provide developers with various incentives to meet environmental standards in their building projects.
This is one part of the City Council’s systemic review of Medford’s zoning. Like all other parts of that project, this ordinance was first workshopped in the Planning & Permitting Committee; and it was crafted by the City Council’s zoning consultant, Innes Associates, with the collaboration of City staff, especially the Planning, Development & Sustainability Office and Building Commissioner.
The goal of this proposal is to enshrine many of the City’s existing environmental standards for developers, and to incentivize developers to help Medford meet its enhanced environmental and climate goals that are laid out in the 2022 Climate Action and Adaption Plan.
The P&P Committee referred the proposal out of Committee on November 13th. As with any proposed Zoning Ordinance, after this Ordinance is referred out of Committee to a regular meeting of the City Council, the City Council must refer it to the Community Development Board (CDB) for their recommendations, after which the ordinance will go through the standard votes for approval and codification.
For more information about the City Council’s work on Zoning, please visit https://www.medfordma.org/departments/planning-development-sustainability/zoning. Minutes and video from recent meetings are in the section titled, “Phase 2 (In Progress)” (you have to scroll down a bit).
We then took a vote to accept a Parkland Acquisitions and Renovations for Communities (PARC) grant for the Riverside Plaza Improvements Project. The City was granted $198,853. The Community Preservation Committee recommended that we appropriate $144,250 from CPA funds, to fulfill the total project budget of $343,103. (The grant is conditioned on full funding being appropriated at the time of grant acceptance.)
This project will focus on adding more shade to the park, and improving accessibility to the areas that are shaded. Right now the park is well-used and popular, but shade is very scarce; it’s unprotected from direct sunlight during the summer, and the shady areas are neglected and lack walking paths. This project would add shade structures, add a deck so that there’s more seating underneath the shade and the trees, and also add hydration stations.
If you’d like to view the short presentation about the Riverside Plaza Improvements Project, navigate to 12:50 in the YouTube recording.
Standard reminder that CPA funding is eligible to be spent on the following types of purposes: open space protection, historic preservation, affordable housing and outdoor recreation. This one fits the outdoor recreation category.
We then took approved three Supplemental Appropriations to the Medford Public Schools and Department of Public Works, in accordance with the passage of Questions 7 and 8.
The first Supplemental Appropriation allocates $3M to Medford Public Schools for FY25 funding and replaces $1.75M in ARPA funding that was advanced as a one-time, stopgap funding measure to prevent further cuts at the beginning of FY25.
The second Supplemental Appropriation allocates $500,000 to the Department of Public Works for Highway Salaries and Expenses and related Insurance and Capital Expenses to enable additional staff for road and sidewalk infrastructure repair.
The third Supplemental Appropriation allocates $4M to Medford Public Schools to enable such purposes as described in Question 8, including: to create a high school schedule that increases access to arts and vocational programming, expands classroom instructional opportunities, and for classroom teacher and paraprofessional compensation.
More information is included in the Mayor’s memorandum on these items.
We authorized a five-year contract with BlueBikes. (Any contract with a vendor exceeding three years in duration must be approved by the City Council.) This is part of a coordinated effort with the Metropolitan Area Planning Council (MAPC) to expand the regional bikeshare network.
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