City Council
City Council
lun, 17 de noviembre de 2025
Puntos de agenda
Registros de votación
Resumen del debate
Transcripción
RESUMEN DE REUNIÓNGenerado por IA
Concejo Municipal — 17 de noviembre de 2025
Esta fue una reunión ordinaria del Concejo Municipal en la que se trataron dos asuntos sustantivos de política: la adopción del plan actualizado de mitigación de riesgos de la ciudad y la aprobación de un acuerdo de incentivo fiscal para un importante desarrollo mixto en el centro, así como un reconocimiento ceremonial. Los nueve concejales estuvieron presentes. (Nota: La transcripción de voz a texto contiene nombres de concejales distorsionados a lo largo del documento; los nombres se han cotejado con los concejales conocidos cuando el contexto lo permite, aunque algunas atribuciones siguen siendo inciertas.)
Ceremonia: Homenaje al equipo femenino de cross country de QHS/NQHS
El concejo reconoció al equipo combinado de cross country femenino de Quincy High / North Quincy High por ganar su segundo campeonato consecutivo de la Patriot League y por quedar en cuarto lugar en el Campeonato de División 1 de la MIAA, clasificándose para el Meet of Champions. El entrenador Jeff Hennessy — quien ha entrenado el cross country de Quincy desde 1988 — señaló que el programa no ha perdido ningún encuentro desde septiembre de 2023 y ha crecido de 43 atletas en total el año pasado a aproximadamente 73 este año. Las atletas fueron llamadas al frente y recibieron premios de reconocimiento. La concejala Campbell encabezó el homenaje y elogió a Hennessy como "una institución en la ciudad de Quincy."
Punto 1: Adopción del Plan de Mitigación de Múltiples Riesgos (Order 2025-124)
De qué se trata: Se solicitó al Concejo Municipal que adoptara el Plan de Mitigación de Múltiples Riesgos (HMP) actualizado de cinco años de la ciudad, un documento de planificación de carácter federal administrado por FEMA. La adopción es el paso final de un proceso que comenzó en enero de 2024 y habilita a la ciudad para acceder a fondos federales de subvenciones para mitigación de riesgos.
Presentación: El Subdirector de Planificación Rob Stevens y Kristen Yankowski de la firma de ingeniería Tyn Bond (la transcripción distorsiona el nombre de la firma; probablemente "Tyn Bond" o similar) presentaron el plan. Los puntos principales incluyeron:
Quincy posee una calificación Clase 7 en el Sistema de Calificación Comunitaria de FEMA, lo que resulta en un descuento del 15% en las primas del seguro contra inundaciones para los 3,447 asegurados del Programa Nacional de Seguro contra Inundaciones (NFIP) de la ciudad — un ahorro de casi $500,000 por año. Quincy tiene el segundo mayor número de pólizas del NFIP en Massachusetts, después de Boston.
El plan identifica las inundaciones costeras, la marejada ciclónica, la erosión costera y los fenómenos severos de clima invernal como los principales riesgos de la ciudad. Incorpora nuevos datos del Massachusetts Coast Flood Risk Model (MCFRM) que proyectan el riesgo de inundaciones hasta 2070.
Más del 20% del suelo desarrollado de Quincy se encuentra en una zona de riesgo de inundación, con un valor de propiedad costera en riesgo que se acerca a los $4 mil millones.
De las 95 instalaciones esenciales inventariadas, 25 se encuentran actualmente en zonas de inundación de FEMA. Para 2050, el 38% tendrá alguna probabilidad de exposición a inundaciones; para 2070, más del 40%.
El plan incluye 36 acciones de mitigación (20 de alta prioridad, 10 de prioridad media y 6 de baja prioridad), que van desde mejoras a corto plazo en generadores eléctricos hasta la restauración a largo plazo de marismas salinas.
La ciudad ha completado modelos de inundación en 7 cuencas hidrográficas y 220 microcuencas — lo cual fue en sí mismo una acción de alta prioridad del plan de 2019.
Stevens destacó los avances institucionales desde la devastadora tormenta de nieve de 2018 que inundó hasta 200 viviendas en Sea Street: la creación del Departamento de Gestión de Emergencias (Director Ali Sleman), la reorganización de los parques en un Departamento de Recursos Naturales, y la reciente contratación de Margaret Forest como Directora de Resiliencia Costera. También mencionó la publicación el 6 de noviembre por parte de la Gobernadora Healey de un Plan de Costa Resiliente a nivel estatal, que ubica a Quincy dentro de un distrito de resiliencia costera junto con Boston, Milton, Braintree, Weymouth, Hingham, Hull y Cohasset.
Debate en el concejo: La concejala Campbell preguntó sobre los efectos en cascada de las intervenciones en infraestructura (por ejemplo, los muros de contención que redirigen el agua de inundación hacia otros lugares); el presentador reconoció que el plan está concebido como un documento vivo que se actualiza anualmente. El concejal DiBona (identificado en la transcripción como "Dono/Debana") planteó la idea de una colaboración regional con Boston y otras comunidades costeras para el uso de tecnología en la mitigación de marejadas ciclónicas, y mencionó cinco planes que el Director Sleman ha desarrollado, entre ellos un plan integral de gestión de emergencias y un plan de evacuación. La concejala Leang elogió el componente de divulgación comunitaria bilingüe y preguntó si se podría distribuir a los residentes, tras la adopción del plan, un boletín sencillo con información sobre refugios y consejos para la protección del hogar; Stevens indicó que la nueva Directora de Resiliencia Costera asumiría ese tipo de labor de difusión pública.
Votación: La moción de aprobación fue presentada por la concejala Leang y secundada por la concejala Campbell (la transcripción no es clara sobre quién secundó la moción). Aprobada por 9 votos a 0.
Punto 2: Acuerdo de Exención de Incremento Tributario (TIE) del Programa de Incentivos para el Desarrollo de Vivienda (HDIP) — 126 Granite Street Trust (Order 2025-125)
De qué se trata: El concejo consideró un acuerdo de Exención de Incremento Tributario (TIE) bajo el Programa de Incentivos para el Desarrollo de Vivienda (HDIP) del estado para un propuesto desarrollo de uso mixto en 126 Granite Street — el sitio del antiguo Grossman's Lumberyard, actualmente una plaza comercial que incluye un Burger King. La aprobación es necesaria para permitir que el desarrollador solicite créditos fiscales estatales, los cuales son indispensables para el financiamiento del proyecto.
El proyecto: Según lo descrito por el Subdirector de Planificación Stevens, la junta de planificación aprobó el proyecto en noviembre de 2024. Consiste en:
256 unidades residenciales de alquiler a precio de mercado
Aproximadamente 53,200 pies cuadrados de espacio comercial, que incluyen aproximadamente 42,000 pies cuadrados para un inquilino ancla de comercio minorista (el objetivo es un supermercado de la categoría de Whole Foods), ~3,000 pies cuadrados para un comercio más pequeño, y ~8,000 pies cuadrados de espacio de oficinas (se prevé que sea la oficina central de Grossman Companies)
517 espacios de estacionamiento en superficie y en estructura
Mejoras en las aceras con árboles a lo largo de Granite Street y Bergen Parkway
Un espacio público en la intersección de Granite y Bergen
La ciudad ha obtenido por separado una subvención MassWorks de $2.7 millones para mejoras en la intersección de Granite Street y Bergen Parkway, las cuales se llevarán a cabo independientemente de este desarrollo.
El acuerdo TIE: Presentado por el representante del Alcalde (nombre no claro en la transcripción), el Director de Desarrollo Comunitario Sean Glennon y el Tasador Jefe John Roland:
La exención se aplica únicamente al incremento en el valor catastral derivado del desarrollo — nunca a la base tributaria preexistente.
El valor catastral actual del terreno es de aproximadamente $16 millones. Con el desarrollo, el valor catastral total se proyecta en aproximadamente $104 millones ($90M residencial, $12.6M comercial).
En 20 años, se proyecta que el proyecto generará $32.4 millones en impuestos, en comparación con $8.9 millones si el terreno permanece como está — una ganancia neta de $23.47 millones.
La ciudad otorga un incentivo fiscal de $1.5 millones distribuido en 13 años (exención anual promedio de aproximadamente 10.4%), que la ciudad proyecta recuperar en los años 2 o 3 del acuerdo.
En comparación, acuerdos TIE similares en Malden y New Bedford tuvieron plazos promedio de 15 años y exenciones anuales del 58%; este acuerdo es más corto y significativamente menos generoso para el desarrollador.
El desarrollador aportará aproximadamente $2.6 millones al Fondo Fiduciario de Vivienda Asequible (en lugar de unidades asequibles en el propio sitio), más $1.4 millones en otras tarifas de desarrollo, con un total de más de $4 millones en tarifas y contribuciones.
Los créditos fiscales estatales habilitados por este acuerdo se estiman en $3–4 millones.
Glennon señaló que el único proyecto HDIP previo de Quincy — el Watson en East Howard Street (140 unidades, aprobado en 2017) — ya ha generado $170,000 más que los ingresos fiscales previos al desarrollo en sus primeros 7.5 años, y su exención vencerá en aproximadamente 2.5 años.
Debate en el concejo: El concejal Ash planteó varias preguntas de fondo: confirmó que ningún incentivo fiscal local entra en vigor si el estado rechaza la solicitud HDIP (confirmado); exploró si las unidades asequibles podrían construirse en el propio sitio en lugar de pagarse mediante compensación monetaria (la administración indicó que ambas opciones son aceptables, aunque el pago en sustitución es mucho más común); y señaló una posible ambigüedad en la Sección 4, Párrafo G con respecto al término "condominio" — expresando su preocupación de que pudiera interpretarse como una extensión de los beneficios fiscales a los compradores individuales de unidades de condominio. El Procurador de la Ciudad y el representante del Alcalde aclararon que el lenguaje define el componente residencial completo como una sola unidad de condominio a efectos de cálculo (separándolo del componente comercial), no como unidades individuales, y que esto sigue el formulario estándar del EOHLC. El concejal Ash quedó satisfecho con la aclaración y no se adoptó ninguna enmienda. El concejal Ash también confirmó que si el proyecto no avanza, el resultado probable sería o bien ningún desarrollo o bien una propuesta con mucho menos espacio comercial (o ninguno). La concejala Leang destacó la rareza de un compromiso comercial de 50,000 pies cuadrados en un proyecto del centro y la importancia de ampliar la base tributaria comercial. El concejal DiBona preguntó sobre vivienda para la fuerza laboral; la administración explicó que el Fondo Fiduciario de Vivienda Asequible respalda la vivienda para la fuerza laboral y que la mejor herramienta de asequibilidad a largo plazo es incrementar la oferta total de vivienda.
El Presidente del Concejo (identificado como "Kane" en la transcripción — probablemente un error de voz a texto correspondiente a un nombre no incluido entre los miembros conocidos enumerados) resumió claramente los términos del acuerdo: $25 millones en nuevos impuestos acumulados en 20 años, $4 millones en tarifas y contribuciones, una subvención de infraestructura de $2.7 millones ya asegurada, entre $3 y $5 millones en mejoras de aceras pagadas por el desarrollador, y solo $1.5 millones en incentivo de la ciudad — recuperados en los años 2 o 3.
Votación: La moción de aprobación fue presentada por la concejala Leang y secundada por el concejal Divine. Aprobada por 9 votos a 0.
Punto 3: Ordenanza que modifica el Capítulo 134 – Drogas Sintéticas / Kratom (Order 2025-126)
Este punto figuraba en el orden del día, pero no fue abordado durante la reunión. No se registró ningún debate, moción ni votación en la transcripción.
Trámites Administrativos
Una solicitud de tránsito para una zona de carga y descarga frente a Broad Meadow School (Concejal McCarthy) fue remitida al Comité de Ordenanzas.
Una solicitud de subsidio de servicios públicos para Mass Electric/Verizon en 58 Tyler Street fue remitida a Obras Públicas.
La próxima reunión del concejo fue pospuesta del 1 de diciembre al 8 de diciembre por votación de 9 a 0.
Condolencias
El concejal Ash expresó sus condolencias a la familia de Sarah "Sally" Shefferoni, residente de larga data de Quincy Point. El concejal Divine tomó nota del fallecimiento del residente del Distrito 4 Michael Hart, de 85 años.
Puntos clave
El Plan de Mitigación de Múltiples Riesgos fue adoptado por unanimidad, completando un proceso federal de dos años y restableciendo la elegibilidad de Quincy para las subvenciones de mitigación de riesgos de FEMA. El plan proyecta que el 40% de las instalaciones esenciales de la ciudad enfrentará algún riesgo de inundación para 2070, y documenta un valor de propiedad costera en riesgo de casi $4 mil millones.
El acuerdo HDIP/TIE de 126 Granite Street fue aprobado por unanimidad, allanando el camino para un desarrollo residencial de 256 unidades y 53,200 pies cuadrados de espacio comercial en el antiguo sitio de Grossman's — sujeto a la aprobación estatal de la solicitud HDIP del desarrollador. La ganancia neta de la ciudad en 20 años se proyecta en $23.47 millones en nuevos impuestos.
El componente comercial del proyecto de Granite Street es inusualmente grande: un inquilino ancla de comercio minorista de 42,000 pies cuadrados (con miras a un supermercado de la categoría de Whole Foods) representaría una de las incorporaciones comerciales más significativas a la base tributaria del centro de Quincy en años.
Se proyecta que el incentivo fiscal de $1.5 millones de la ciudad en el acuerdo TIE será recuperado íntegramente en un plazo de 2 a 3 años, y la estructura es significativamente más favorable para la ciudad que los acuerdos HDIP comparables en otras partes del estado.
La ordenanza sobre Kratom/Drogas Sintéticas (Punto 3) no fue abordada en esta reunión y presumiblemente será tratada en una sesión futura.
Resumen generado por IA a partir de una transcripción de voz a texto. No es el registro oficial. Verifique los detalles importantes con los documentos fuente vinculados arriba.
Puntos de agenda (3)
Procedural (3)
1Procedural2025 – 124 - Orden – Adopción – Plan de Mitigación de Múltiples Peligros Mayor Koch
2Procedural2025 – 125 - Orden – Programa de Incentivos para el Desarrollo de Vivienda Acuerdo TIE – Mayor Koch 126 Granite Street Trust
3Procedural2025 – 126 - Ordenanza – Modificación del Código Municipal Capítulo 134 – Drogas, Councillor Minton Artículo 1 Drogas Sintéticas – Kratom
Votos adicionales registrados en actas
Adopt Multi-Hazard Mitigation Plan (2025-124)
aye 9
Campbellaye
Debanaaye
Divineaye
Harrisaye
Kaneaye
Leangaye
McCarthyaye
Mittenaye
Richard Ashaye
Approve Housing Development Incentive Program TIE Agreement - 126 Granite Street (2025-125)
aye 9
Campbellaye
Debanaaye
Divineaye
Harrisaye
Kaneaye
Leangaye
McCarthyaye
Mittenaye
Richard Ashaye
Move next council meeting from December 1 to December 8
aye 9
Campbellaye
Deonaaye
Divineaye
Harrisaye
Kaneaye
Leangaye
McCarthyaye
Mittenaye
Richard Ashaye
Transcripción literal disponible
356 segmentos de transcripción indexados
[Music] Good evening. Uh we call the Monday, November 17th, 2025 city council meeting to order. Madame clerk, please call the role. Councelor Ash. Councelor Campbell. Councelor Divine. Council Debana.
Council Harris. Council Leang. Council Macazy pres. Councelor Mitten President Kaine present. Nine members. Thank you, Madam Clerk. Would everyone please stand and observe a moment of silence. Please use this moment as you will.
Please turn to the flag for the pledge of allegiance. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.
Madame clerk, please read the open meeting law. Pursuant to the open meeting law, any person may make an audio or video recording of this public meeting or may transmit the meeting through any medium.
Attendees are therefore advised that such recordings or transmissions are being made whether perceived or unpersceived by those present and deemed acknowledged and permissible. Thank you very much. Uh first item on the agenda, please.
The honoring of the Quinsey North Quinsey High girls cross country. President recognizes councelor Campbell. We'll be honoring the cross country team tonight. Thank you, Mr. President. It's a great honor to be up here.
You can always tell the sign of a good team based on how punctual they are. And uh this whole group was here I think 15 minutes before because Jeff told them to be here 15 minutes beforehand. So that's a that's a great sign.
Um this group of of of I want to say the girls because the boys are equally as dedicated uh over the years. they have really grown. Uh I'm I'm not sure exactly what the numbers are, but um the when there are times where the Quinsey North Quinsey combined teams really helps and it it really pulls people in and I think that's what's happened here over the years in the fall uh cross country and winter track and and the spring track.
It's definitely an attraction um in in this close to North Quinzy uh Thanksgiving Day. I'm not sure how friendly they are to each other. I hope there there's still some animosity, but um but it's good to have them here and and honor them because um I wanted to just go through a little bit.
Jeff gave me Jeff um Hennessy gave me some information here that I thought was really really special. Um close to a thousand athletes descended on the Rethm Development Cent's uh cross country course for the MIA Division One Championships.
uh three waves divided by school size and the QNQ girls were in wave 1B racing over a 5k course. The girls placed fourth qualifying for the uh meet of champions this past Saturday uh at Fort Deans. Um my understanding is Matt McGilly came in 45th and that the everybody else that that ran uh all fared much better than expected.
Um, and I think that that's it's really a credit to the work that goes in with Tom Beard, one of the coaches, Jeff Hennessy, one of the coaches, and Percy, um, Watson, who has helped out over the years.
And I know that that the, um, uh, entire organization is is fueled by the the, uh, dedication that that's shown through the coaching staff and the parent support. Uh, and it and it's it's in a great um uh watching it all develop and come together because this is the type of sport that doesn't get the press and it doesn't get the all the people coming in and uh and um watching them really um develop and become a great team cuz this is the second Patriot League championship in a row for these girls and they have not lost a meet uh since September 2023 which is incredible.
which how did you not win in 2023 if you want to lost by one point. Oh, I don't know how that works, but maybe you're not as good a coach as I thought you were. Just kidding. Jeff, Tom, I know it's and it's it's a a whole entire uh organization.
So, I wanted to welcome them up, the Quincy High, North Quinsey High um girls lacrosse. I'm going to introduce them as they come and if they could just come up and make their way over to the side uh and then we'll try to get a picture afterwards if possible.
Mr. Perfect. Awesome. Uh Jeff, did you want to say a couple words before I Good evening everybody. Good evening. Uh also I'd like to recognize to my left uh Carolyn Mlany who's been my assistant for 14 years.
And Tom Tom's in his second year. and also uh coach Percy Watson who works with the sprinters during indoor and outdoor. Uh we correctly have not lost a meet since 2023. We lost to Situit by one point and we managed to beat Situit the next year by one point and this year we shut them out.
So we we get better. Uh we have 18 girls and 55 boys. It's a program that had 43 total last year. this kind of 67 or so and very few seniors. So, we expect even even more. Uh from there, we won the Patriot League championship, got this nice Stanley Cup size trophy.
So, we we have to get that engraved and then next year we'll hopefully hang on to it and not have to give it away to another team in the Patriot League. But, uh, it's been a great honor to coach this team.
I've been coaching cross country between North Quinsey and Quinsey High since 1988. Many, many of you here either have run for me or had their children run for me or knew someone that ran for me. and it kind of binds us all together.
So, I think I'll stop there and just say thank you for having us tonight and let's honor these girls. And councelor Campbell, I think it must be said, Jeff, uh, you know, you're an institution here in the city of Quinsey now.
Uh, you know, I was a participant in the Quinsey Track Club when I was a single-digit aged young person. Uh, so you've been around for a long time and I want to thank you very much for your service to the city, for the countless kids and families in the work that you do.
[Applause] Thank you. Uh, so if I could, we're going to bring up the girls and if if you can just move to the side there as you come up, I'll hand you your your award here and then you um uh just make your way over there.
Um, but really congratulations to you all. I'm very proud of you uh for coming in here. And for those that um go to Quinsey High School, you're clearly much smarter than the ones that went to North Quincsey High School.
I'm just kidding. All right, first up, uh Joanna Chen. [Applause] Um Carolyn Zvante Juliana Wilkinson, Khloe Chin, Anna Shinara [Applause] Grace St. Price [Applause] Xiao Trin here Anelise Deis. No, not here.
We're getting there though. We can still clap for them, I think. Right. Okay. All right. Uh, Marie Bosan Canal. Oh, all right. The rest of here. All right. Anna Tentaric, [Applause] Jasmine Woo, [Applause] Piper Yanovich, Isabella Scanichi, Liliana Sanchez, [Applause] Amelia Sleses And then we have uh Zoe Nelson [Applause] and the she placed 45 45th I think she's been what um Shal has placed in 10th and receiving a medal.
Mattie Miguel Lucati [Applause] MVP two years in a row. Madame Gily, congratulations to everybody. This is a this is a very big deal. It's something you guys should really know that it's it's it's done through hard work and I'm very proud of all of you and I wish you all the best for the rest of [Applause] [Music] You heard this just a Cody.
[Applause] All right. Thank you very much for coming and uh we will uh take a Yeah. You want to run the You do you do your job? Yeah. Yeah. We'll take a brief recess if uh the young ladies want to come behind the well here, behind the uh whatever the bench.
I don't know what that is. uh fence almost a wooden fence. Come back here. We'll take a picture and then we'll come back into the meeting. What is it? What do you call that? Rail. Thank you. Yeah. Guys might want to make line up in two rows.
Make some behind the others. Heat. Heat. [Music] Heat. [Music] Hey. Hey. [Music] All right, back to business. Uh, congratulations young ladies. Keep making Quincy proud. Madam clerk, next item on the agenda, please.
Number one, 2025-124 order adoption of the multi-hazard mitigation plan. Okay. Uh, presenting to us tonight will be Rob Stevens, the assistant planning director. Come on up. [Music] Just there. Always good to see the uh youth sports or the high school sports getting recognized.
Uh a lot of the young folks, they're the future, right? I don't know if there uh is I think there isn't a team left for Councelor Campbell to bring up here. He's brought them all up this year. Excellent.
Excellent. Um, so I'm here tonight um to present to you uh for adoption uh the latest 5-year update to this city's hazard mitigation plan. The hazard mitigation plan is a 5-year uh planning process administered by the Federal Emergency Management Agency or FEMA.
It's part of the community rating system that's tied to the National Flood Insurance Program. Um the community rating system is voluntary. Uh is it well it's a voluntary incentive program. It encourages communities to uh to uh sorry, it encourages communities uh to enhance their flood plane management practices that exceed the minimal requirements of the national flood insurance program.
Uh Quinsey has maintained a seven rating, excuse me. Uh Quinsey has maintained its seven classification rating under the community rating systems 2024 and 2025 uh certification cycle. That seven rating results in a 15% savings of policies uh on policies uh by Quinsey homeowners who use national flood insurance.
That's a savings of almost a half a million dollars a year. Excuse me. Um Quinsey has the second highest number of policies behind Boston. Uh the number of policies here in the city is uh 3,447 policies.
Uh the number one uh community is Boston. Uh the third community behind us is the city of River. Uh but not all communities uh do follow the community rating system. Um, for tonight's presentation, you should all have received a binder.
Uh, on the inside flap, I uh gave or provided you information on the community rating system cycle and uh some more detailed information if you wanted to dive a little bit deeper into that process. Um, also on the inside flap, you're going to get FEMA's um report card on the hazard mitigation plan.
Uh, I also tuck that in here. And then the PowerPoint presentation uh that'll be done uh is in the back of that binder. Um so this is the third uh cycle uh five-year cycle I've worked on the hazard mitigation plan and for this cycle we've had the benefit of working with uh the engineering firm of Tyen Bond.
Uh we have Dave Murphy who's here in the audience today. Uh he's the vice president at Tyen Bond. Tyen Bond has done a number of different uh coastal projects in our city. Uh Gabrielle uh Belelfford uh was a key plan builder.
She's not here tonight. Uh but we do have uh Kristen uh Yen Kowskis uh who's here and she will uh be making a presentation on the whole hazard mitigation uh planning process. Um before she jumps in, I did want to say uh a few words and a number uh where I wanted to start is the picture that you're seeing on the screens.
For those of you that don't know, that is a picture of Sea Street uh back in 2018. Uh we had a a wicked storm um a wicked nor easter as I think uh we would refer to here. Uh we had wind direction, we had storm surge, uh we had high amounts of rainfall and that resulted in nowhere uh for the water to go.
Uh it impacted or I think seawater impacted up to 200 homes. Um, and when we saw that damage, uh, we worked, uh, at the mayor's direction of and, uh, in partnership with the affordable housing trust fund committee to put a million dollars to work on the streets helping folks recover, uh, from that storm in 2018.
Uh, the city ultimately helped 76 households uh, rehome in their houses. uh that, you know, part of that money included temporary housing while houses were fixed and and cleaned and those things uh those types of things.
Uh but that wasn't the end of uh our effort uh to that storm. Uh from that storm, the mayor went ahead and uh created the emergency management department and that is now led by uh director Ally Sleman.
Um Ally is been a plan contributor to this hazard mitigation plan. He's engaged with a lot of the emergency management folks in the area, engaged with folks at MIMA. He uh in over the last five years has updated the city SEMP plan, which is the comprehensive emergency management plan, and he really has enhanced the city's uh emergency capabilities and communications.
Uh and I don't think we've been as prepared before for storms uh now that we've had uh that uh department up and running. Uh the mayor also uh reorganized uh the parks department and created uh the department of natural resources.
Um what you folks might not know uh that I've come to understand is the parks department is the steward of many of the city's open spaces. We think of them as just the parks, but there's an awful lot of undeveloped land and marsh land out there.
And the department of natural uh resources now has dedicated uh folks uh as tree wardens looking at um you know the tree species doing a lot of planning, checking on diseases. Uh there's also a wetland scientist.
Uh some of you might have uh had the chance to work with Julianne Sullivan on the Butler's Pond dredging. uh she handed off the reigns of that uh uh uh department or that function to Heather Liss who's uh gone and done the sailor's home pond dredging.
I think there's a lot more work uh that's going to follow from that department and you know I look forward to working uh with them on that. In fact, one of the plan building elements of this plan uh tonight was uh a survey that we did in concert with the update to the city's open space plan.
So we got to you know combine the efforts of both of the plans being updated asking the public what their priority are priorities are and in the binder and some of the backup uh data we did include the results of that survey.
Um, so from there we uh look at the Department of Public Works and a large number of the day-to-day work uh that public works does is in this plan and it's in the action plan uh under Commissioner El Grazioso.
Uh that office oversees an expansive operation of the city's um coastal flood control systems that seaw walls that storm water. Uh I think one of the more recent best examples that we see from the work out of public works would be the Mry Mount Adam Shore um seaw wall uh replacement project.
Um that was a pretty exciting project and that office uh you know we're all trying to help support them in their effort to expand that seaw wall work uh as they continue to look at the Manadav uh seaw wall project.
Um, another focus in DPW that came out of the last uh this big storm and the last uh effort on this plan was the creation out of the city engineers office of a floodation modeling program. Uh so what we did is we broke down the city into seven major watersheds and uh the modeling effort further broke down those wersheds into 220 microh.
From there we uh analyze topography and existing infrastructure and it allows the city to play out a number of weather scenarios. Uh you know 10 or an inch of rainfall in an hour with a high tide uh in certain events what kind of flooding could result as a as a as that uh kind of storm event.
Um that modeling has been really key uh with new development uh coming forward and also key at looking at older areas whether that's in Quinsey Center, whether that's uh Wallist area uh and all along the coastline.
Uh another plan um builder here is uh is Director Casill uh from the health department. Now, uh the health department was busy this last five-year cycle with the COVID 19 uh emergency uh health emergency, but his team did find the time to attend the workshops.
Um the human effects of heat and uh cold snaps are real and his folks, you know, really got into the subject matter on heat island effects and and and the causes uh and what could we could do to mitigate it.
They also were looking at some of the air quality issues and you know we see especially in the four river basin that you know air quality continues to be a concern you know in our city. Um we uh challenged the health department um to look at some of the invasive species issues and in particular um kind of like the vectorbor diseases, mosquitoes, ticks.
Uh we see I think as a community an uptick uh in the summer months or late summer of uh you know westnile vivors turf um we know deer populations uh or coyote populations ticks could could follow those.
ly disease became a concern. So, we challenged uh the folks at the health department uh to keep their eyes and ears open on this subject matter at the state level and be ready to report back on the next uh 5-year update on that subject matter.
Um I also want to point out uh great leadership from Commissioner Paul Hines. I recall a story he told me back in that storm of 2018 of the Broad Meadows Marsh School having water crashing uh up on the back wall and needing, you know, to grab a backhoe and start, you know, um putting in a barrier there.
We know uh Paul takes this uh flood uh readiness serious. Uh there's a number of city assets all along the coastline and and Paul and his team uh were great plan builders on this. Um there is some subject matter uh that FEMA wants us to look at earthquakes.
It was Paul's team that you know checked the seismol uh the seismic uh information on here. So that was a fun exercise with Gary Kuniff uh and and his team. Um, the last two departments I want to acknowledge would be my own, the planning department, and I'm grouping us together with inspectional services.
Um, as most folks would figure, we help with the long range planning here in the city. Uh, but we are also part of the management of what I refer to as the big three land use boards. That's going to be planning board, conservation commission, and the zoning board of appeal.
So uh working with the you know whether it's the state building code working with flood plane uh zoning ordinances um our two departments are in constant contact and uh you know we have obviously uh participated quite a bit in this planning process uh with the amount of coastline we have uh here in the city of Quinsey.
So, with that introduction, I do want to hand it off to Kristen, who will go through the hazard mitigation planning process, and I'll be back at the end with a few closing remarks. Rob, appreciate the preamble.
Just real quick, who's this in the front? Uh, that's I'm I'm not sure exactly, but that's uh one of our emergency management p personnel. Michael, who is it? Firefighter Michael Morana. Oh, great. All right.
Wow. There you go. Yeah. Well, yeah, we do remember when uh House Neck uh turned into an island for a moment in time. Yep. Yep. For sure. Kristen Noak. Thanks, Rob. I'm Kristen Yankowskis, a planner and project manager at Time Bond.
And I'll give a highle review of the planning process and the contents. So, first off, why prepare a hazard mitigation plan? One, this is required to have the city be qualified for hazard mitigation grants through FEMA.
It documents historic impacts from natural hazards and then looks at historic and future climate vulnerability. It allows the city to prioritize mitigation projects that meet multiple community goals.
As Rob mentioned, it might improve scoring for your community rating system, which results in lower flood insurance premiums. Along with that first bullet, it improves the city's chances on obtaining state and federal grants, including CZM grants, MVP grants, um, many of which are now lumped into the ECO onetop program that Rob will touch upon at the end of the presentation.
And finally, it can serve as a tool to educate the public on natural hazard risk to property life and public health. The HMP planning process can be broken up into four categories. Um, one is to define the potential risk to natural hazards, including impacts of climate change, and those natural hazards are outlined in the state's hazard mitigation plan.
We then look at key community assets that are broken up into four different categories and associate uh vulnerability to risk to those key community assets. We look at uh mitigation projects from the previous plan and add new projects to improve resiliency in the city and then we prioritize those projects from low, medium to high.
This is an update of the 2019 plan and the reason for this update is to make sure that we are aligned with the 2023 state hazard mitigation plan as well as the most recent FEMA um policy guidance. We looked at community assets and updated those based on if things were closed, we deleted those assets.
We added new assets. And then we looked at the mitigation actions from the previous plan. If those actions were completed, we removed them from the list. Um, and if they were in progress, we moved them to the new list of mitigation actions.
And then we also expanded outreach this uh cycle specifically to vulnerable populations and environmental justice populations. We developed a mission statement with the core team um as listed here and this really guided the entire planning process and the planning process is as follows.
We drafted the HMP. Um, this was then presented to the core team. They reviewed and provided comments. Then we presented to the planning board and took their comments and opened a 30-day public comment period.
This draft was then submitted to MIMA for their review. Their comments were incorporated. The draft was then sent to FEMA. FEMA reviewed. They sent back comments. We addressed those comments. And then this is the last step.
Today's meeting is the last step where the community must vote to approve the final plan. Once this uh final plan is approved, we'll send documentation of that vote to FEMA and the final approval will be issued.
Plan improvements in 2025. As mentioned, we looked at the natural hazard risks in the Mass Massachusetts state plan and made sure that we were up to date with that. Uh the 2023 plan added a few new hazards, including changes to groundwater.
We incorporated up-to-date climate change data including uh MCFRM data which I'll talk a little bit more about on in a bit. We evaluated and added community assets in the four major categories. We looked at recent storm events since the last planning cycle and updated our vulnerability considerations.
We expanded the mitigation actions, incorporated success stories, and slightly tweaked the goals and objectives. Now that we've covered the planning process and updates we've made, I'll dive into the specifics.
Starting with the natural hazard risk assessment, we broke up the plan into distinct planning areas. As seen here, um, geographically based mapping and analysis provides city-wide comparison of flooding areas, community assets at risk, and vulnerability to natural hazards.
We added two historical flood events during this planning period, including the January 2022 snowstorm and Hurricane Lee in 2023. The greatest flood risks for the city remain pretty consistent to the 2019 plan.
Uh coastal and inland flooding, coastal erosion, and severe winter weather such as norers. This is a summary of hazard events uh statewide since 2019 or 2018, including four presidential disaster declarations, three involving severe winter storm and flooding events, and the CO 19 pandemic.
We've also seen 20 coastal flooding events, 19 tornadoes, and many temperature warnings. This is consistent with the natural hazards that the core team identified. We looked at all the hazards in the state plan and then through um a process that included uh evaluating how these natural events threaten lives, property and other assets, the core team evaluated the um most considered natural hazards in the city.
So that include coastal erosion, coastal flooding and storm surge, other severe weather, winter storms, and inland flooding. Not to say that these other natural hazards don't exist in the city, but the ones starred are the most um imminent threats.
Talking a little bit about the National Flood Insurance Program, um the frequency and location of flood hazard events in the city can be estimated based on the number of reported loss occurrences or repetitive loss properties and from local knowledge of of flood hazard areas as well.
Um the city ranks fifth highest in the state with repetitive loss claims only behind Situit Revier Hall and Marshfield. This is a quick review of the repetitive loss data. Um and it shows that flooding occurs most often in the lowlying areas along the coast and also along Furnisbrook.
This overlaps pretty nicely with the areas of flooding concerns. These areas of flooding concerns were mostly identified um through local knowledge. Uh coastal storms threaten up and down of Quinsey's coastline and norers are the biggest threat due to north and east facing shorelines.
Next, the city uh DPW embarked on a citywide drainage inundation modeling program to help understand where these future inland flooding might occur. And the frequent flooding occurs even during minor minor storms reaches up to four feet during major events.
Um, this whole project was actually one of the uh, uh, mitigation actions that was listed as high priority in the 2019 HMP. So, you can see how mitigation actions from that plan have come to life. New this year, we looked at uh, Massachusetts Coast Flood Risk Model or MCFRM data to uh, assess vulnerability to our key assets.
Um, this model is an improvement upon models that we've used in the past. It's more dynamic and includes the complex process of storm modeling. It lets us look at flood probabilities in the current planning horizon or 2030, midplanning horizon, 2050, and as far into the future as 2070.
So, here's an example of the 2030 flood probability using this MCFRM data. Um you can see that this data was overlaid with critical community assets and this can be used as a tool for planning in the city.
Just quickly touching upon climate change projections, we continue to leverage resilient mass for most of our climate change projections. And just to touch on a few briefly, we're expecting an increase of temperatures between uh 5.9 to 7.9 degrees Fahrenheit by 2050.
we're looking at 12 to 42% more winter precipitation such as norers and by70 oh sorry and by70 um we're looking at uh increase of severe weather across the board. So getting into that community asset inventory, we have inventoried um I think over 300 community assets that fall into these four categories that were determined by FEMA.
people, built environment, natural environment, and economy. People contains most of your vulnerable populations and societal assets. Built environment is critical facilities and infrastructure for public health and safety.
Natural environment are things like beaches that reduce u magnitude of hazard impact and increase resiliency. And economy economy are those primary um economic sectors and commercial centers. Here's a map of the 370 identified community assets in the city, all within those seven geographic planning areas.
And we mapped all of these community assets as well as these flood probabilities into an online dashboard. It's very interactive. You can zoom in and out, see where all of these critical facilities lie and what their probability for flooding is in 2030, 2050, and 2070.
serves as a great planning tool for the city. So now moving on to the vulnerability assessment. After identifying the community assets, the vulnerability assessment evaluated what properties were impacted by hurricanes, earthquakes, and flooding using FEMA database information.
Um, a more detailed exposure assessment was completed for inland and coastal flooding, including future flooding impacts. Existing flood risk was determined using the most recent 100-year flood plane maps.
Um, as you can see in these graphics, over 20% of Quinsey developed land is in flood hazard area, 13% of which is coastal and 7% of which is inland. This inland property value is nearly 0.363 billion and the coastal property value is almost $4 billion.
And geographically, most inland flooding occurs in that Furnus Brook area and most of the coastal flooding occurs in the Mry Mount Blacks Creek area. The potential for citywide flooding due to sea level rise was evaluated using that MCFRM data to determine flood inundation properties with climate change and with sea level rise.
Um the results from the model were selected for 2030 to represent current conditions, 2050 to represent midentury conditions and 2070 to represent late century flood probabilities. The probability for parcel impacted by floods due to future climate uh change conditions are summarized in a table of the plan.
This is just a quick snapshot. We reviewed the data and the graphics for future flood risk for every community asset and every historic property in the city. Um, and as a result, out of those 370 community assets, 95 of those locations are considered to be essential facilities.
And that includes things like cold storage, communication, uh, utilities, fire and police stations, medical service, pump stations, things of that nature. And based on our GIS mapping, 25 of those critical essential facilities are currently within FEMA flood hazard zones.
And looking at future risk, 30% have some probability of flooding by 2030. When we get to 2050, that increases to 38%. And by 2070, we're looking at over 40% of essential facilities being within those FEMA hazard zones.
And to evaluate this risk more specifically, 8% of essential facility properties have a 50 to 100% chance of flood exposure by 2030 and 14% of sites have a 50 to 100% chance of flood exposure by 2050.
Looking specifically at historic properties, there's over 1,400 historic properties located in the city according to the Mass Historic Commission inventory. You can see that in the figure here. And using our GS GIS mapping again, we overlaid flood exposure using MCFRM on top of those historic properties.
And we saw that 193 properties are at risk of coastal flooding by 2030. That increases to 23% by 2050 and by we're up to 77%. Now, moving on to the mitigation strategy, which is really the meat of the plan.
Um, that includes the resiliency vision for the city. It's looking at near, mid, and long-term changes that will reduce future climate change impacts. It's taking all of this data and coming up with a list of projects that are prioritized from high, medium, and low to guide the city in this planning horizon um for projects that will help keep the city resilient.
So the mitigation strategy involved a few steps. First was looking at our goals and objectives which we updated and then we had a list of mitigation projects, some of which were carried over from the 2019 plan and some of which are new for the 2025 plan.
We have 36 total mitigation actions, 20 of which are labeled as high priority, 10 as medium, and six as low, which shows that the planning team really focused on including those high priority and feasible actions into the plan.
And the last step of the mitigation strategy is to adopt and implement, identify city departments that can take charge of those mitigation actions, identify funding sources so that these mitigation strategies become a reality.
I won't include all of the mitigation actions. Those can all be found in the plan. But here are a few that we can highlight. Um the team identified a needed a need for improvement to emergency generators.
So that's a short-term high priority action within the next year. Um looking at pumps to augment DPW's ability to respond to floods. That's more of a two plus year. and a more longer term high priority project would be uh salt marsh restoration.
Again, a full list can be found in the plan. So, to wrap up my presentation, uh this city council meeting is the final step to meet that public participation requirement of the HMP process. And if city council votes to adopt the plan tonight, this will result in a FEMA approved HMP and enable the city to receive federal HMP grant funds.
Um, finally, here's a list of city and tie and bond contacts. And if anyone has any questions, I can take them now. And otherwise, I'll hand it back over to Rob. Thank you very much. Thank you. Any questions?
President recognizes Councelor Campbell. Yeah, I just had Thank you, Mr. President. I just had a just a quick question. You know, with with the corrections that will go on uh with, you know, seaw walls and so forth, I I got to believe there's some displacement, you know, and sending it in other other directions.
Is there a way to manage that or predict that in any way, shape or form? And uh as far as what what will happen if you know we fix one thing, does it create a problem somewhere else? Yeah, like the cascading effect of Yeah, that's it.
Yeah, I think that can that's that's somewhat included in the plan, but the mitigation actions that we include are more um oneoff, not necessarily tied to other actions. They're more standalone actions, but recognizing that things are very interconnected and the plan is supposed to live as more of a living document.
It's not like this is it for the next 5 years. This can be revisited once a year ideally and be updated accordingly depending on how projects are completed or how they evolve. And and is there any coordination with surrounding communities say you know way even Boston you know that?
Yeah, you do. Okay. All right. Yeah. No. Okay, great. Thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you, Council GL. President recognizes Councelor Dono. Thank you, Mr. President. Um, thank you for your presentation.
I'm I'm happy that we have something that's at the city council level that's very very good. Um just just going back on on time 2018 storms um flooding um islands hous um that particular area uh just getting back on um the inception of uh the emergency management department uh with new Ali Sleman the director over the years um I've worked collaboratively with that department on um just what are we going to do and and and just trying to be have a better understanding as an atlarge counselor what we do if we were in a situation like we are in 2018.
Um over the years, especially last year, I was able to go out to uh Worcester um and they had a uh Massachusetts State Emergency Response Commission conference. was able to go with um emergency management um director Alli Sleman u which was very informative and and just over the years just working with him and I know uh some of you I I've talked to off offline but um some of the things we did together um that he did and I I I came in on on on just meeting with him doing lunches going to his office.
Um some of the things I just wanted to point out that he did do with this collaboration with all of you guys um is the uh comprehensive emergency management plan, the CMP, the city sheltering and mass care operations plan, the city uh ACU evacuation plan, hazardous materials emergency response plan, and the way compressor station contingency plan.
Those five plans he he kind of put in place in conjunction with all of you guys' hard work. U just wanted to note that you know um how important that that department is for what you guys also do in collaboration.
Um I think it's it's it's a big undertaking um when you have a particular flooding or storm that comes surging towards us. Um few years ago I asked when we had a couple presentations and you may be able to answer it a little bit better than me because it's very technical.
I watched a a special on 60 minutes and they talked about having these mechanism um high techch style um machinery I guess I could call in the water where it kind of um it kind of databased when the storms were coming.
It had a better insight of saying, "Okay, we're within we're within a 48 hour period. We're within a 72-h hour period. We're within 24 hours." and they had these mechanisms in the water that basically were able to uh mitigate the surges on the on the coastal lines.
Uh it was very it just blew me blew me away. I've asked about it up here um financially. How do you how do you tackle something like that and get it going? And I asked about maybe doing a duel or triple or quad with other towns and cities.
Boston in particularly being the border to the north of us um could could measure out most of the funding for it. Um I also look at places like River and Winthrop and all the coastal towns even way on on the south side all the way down to Cohassets and Situits and you hear about it all the time when they have these surges all these houses are going into the water.
Um and you see it all over the all over the United States but particularly here in that coast. Is there any way that we could, I guess, team up with or do in collaboration with other towns or cities, particularly Boston, Boston, their harbor, their their coastal town, is to to maybe get involved in a grant that goes nationally to FEMA or MIMA or whatever the case may be, and and share the load with them through grant funding.
So when we do, it's not if we do, it's when we do have that next storm and that surge comes, how do we mitigate that? Is is there anything in the works with all of you folks? Was there any talk with Boston on whether we could do this type of um activity?
Yeah, I don't think there was any talk of that of the in terms of this planning exercise, but Rob is going to talk a little bit about grant opportunities that are coming up and communities team up all the time to apply for these type of funding opportunities.
I'd appreciate it because this is a from my point of view is a proactive approach. Um I'm glad that we did reactively with 2018 and that storm surge, but everybody I talked to around this particular area, especially when this picture of Sea Street, I went and talked to the folks out there, they said, "Listen, this happens like every 10 years." It started in 1978 with the blizzard of 78 and particular almost every 10 years they were hit get hit in this particular area.
Now, when we did the seaw walls, right now we're we're at we're up two feet. We still have room for another two feet. Um, obviously that's that's something we can work on down in the down the road. Obviously, we've talked about alpha pipes, um, you know, proper pumping stations, all this stuff um, for mitigation purposes to get the water back over into the into the ocean.
But, it's something to consider. you folks are more specialized in in this with me than I am, but I live this and I was out there myself um walking in this type of water with this this this um firefighter was out there with too.
So I I I just moving forward into the next we're going into the end of 2025. We're going into 2026 is um if if and when this is going to happen. This happened in January also of 18 and then it happened again very heavy in March of 18.
So, we're going into that time period of of of the months, January and March. So, we're we're going into it now. And not to forget, um that also could have caused flooding, which didn't. Um is 2015 when we had 111 in of snow.
Uh where do we put the snow? Um it just piled up within a within a time frame of like a month and a half of that much snow. So, that's another thing to consider when that's on these when it's out in the city and you can't put it anywhere and you're you're taking it and putting it somewhere else on, you know, the shipyard or whatever the case may be.
But that can melt and when it melts, it can cause a huge amount of flood. So, these are just things to kind of put at you. You guys are more of the specialists. You guys been working on this for quite a while, but it's just what I've been hearing out there from the residents in the city and what I my point of view of moving forward.
So, I want to thank you guys for coming in. Maybe Mr. Stevens could help out with some of the the questions that I did have and the and the thought process that I have moving forward. Thank you. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. President. President recognizes Councelor Leang. Thank you, Mr. President. Um I just want to first uh say thank you to everyone who's involved on this plan um not just for, you know, all the work that you did in putting this together, but obviously the work that you still have to do dayto-day um across the city in your sort of regular jobs in your departments.
And so I know this is a part of it, but this is a behemoth of an effort obviously across many many people in many different departments and partnerships. So, thank you so much for all your hard work. Um, I am very interested in the community engagement aspect of this and I do see here that you had multiple meetings uh working with a local nonprofit to do uh bilingual community meetings which really excites me and um I do see some recommendations in here that there are future partnerships that you all are seeking as well to continue the education piece of this which is great.
Um, and in the booklet that you presented to us, there's um, some information about like uh, different power uh, demands that you're going to be increasing at certain shelters and then a list of all those shelters as well.
I need to be honest, I didn't know that these were the shelters and then there's some information in here as well from um, let me see some of the recommendations about some improvements that you all want to provide to residents and business owners to make on their own properties.
So there's a lot of education I feel like in here even for me um as a resident in the city that is really helpful. So I'm going to take this booklet home and sort of like you know take up bits and pieces that I think could be helpful just as a homeowner as a resident and I'd love to share it with folks around me.
And so again this is all really sort of a question about community engagement once this is approved and we have the final plan. Um, again, I know that there's um some efforts already listed out that you're going to continue working with community partners, but for all of the residents across the city, is there going to be like a mailer that goes out to something really quick and easy that we can like put into our drawer, right?
Or like stick up on our fridge similar to like the um the household waste disposal information that gets sent out, right? a just sort of highlevel overview of here are the emergency shelters, here are the emergency numbers, um and here are some recommendations on how you can protect your home during, you know, any heat emergencies or um like high winds, flooding, etc.
that we can also take and try to improve and protect our homes because you all are doing the work, right? And obviously we're funding capital improvements up here. We're doing everything we can, but it it's a team effort, right?
And so what kind of information will be sent out to homeowners afterwards that they can then take initiatives to sort of support the work that you all are doing in the city? Yeah, that's a great point and I'll defer to Rob for that one.
Okay, great. Thank you. Thank you. Thanks, Council. [Music] Thank you all. Excellent. Um, thank you Kristen. Um, that was a great job. I I greatly appreciate it. Uh maybe I should have been up behind the microphone for the Q&A, but you know, as I sat there and listened to the presentation, you know, it it struck me that we had the first kickoff meeting in January of 2024.
That was close to two years ago. It's it's just a very long, you know, laborious process when you have to engage with the federal government. But we didn't stop and wait for FEMA to come back and say the plan is approved.
In fact, the mayor saw to it to go ahead and um uh uh hire Margaret Forest. And I want to recognize her. She's here uh with us uh tonight. Margaret is on board as the director of coastal resilience. And this is a piece um out of the mayor's office where she can now cross over the different departments and start helping on some of those public outreach elements, start engaging with the departments to make sure we stay on this because it is a whole host of a action items and it's it's a fullcourt press.
It's 24/7. You know, that nor easter could happen next week again. Um you know, there is an urgency that that I felt uh since 2018. Heck, I even go back to the 2010 floods where we flooded out by the highway.
Um, but Margaret is is is definitely uh added some capacity here in the last months. In fact, she has me on a bus tour next week with folks from Coastal Zone Management. She's got them coming down to Quinsey.
We're starting at the senior center. Uh we're going uh up uh up through uh Marina Bay, down to Ponet. We're going to be down at the shipyard. Uh so we're going to bring CZM officials here um as well. And I there's another department that's different uh that is going to be helpful moving forward and that would be uh the department run by Jim Scribby which is the grants coordinator department.
And I'll tell you why that's important with my last slide. I do have a couple of more. Um I do want to read this announcement. It was released November 6 with just a week and a half ago from uh Governor Healey.
Uh the Haley Driscoll administration on November 6 released its comprehensive statewide strategy to help coastal communities protect residents, strengthen local infrastructure, and safeguard the state's natural resources.
Developed with direct input from local officials, residents, and regional partners, the final resilient coast plan provides practical communitydriven steps to prepare prepare for the future storms, flooding, sea level rise, and erosion.
Uh when we invest in stronger roads, flood protections, and coastal restoration, we're not just preventing damage. Governor Mora Healey said in a prepared statement, we're protecting livelihoods. So, a week and a half ago ago, the state finished its uh coastal resilience plan and and sent that out into the public.
Having Margaret on board now is going to help me read through that plan and and understand where the state's priorities are going. Uh what we can see here on this image is, you know, they've uh they've created uh 15 coastal resilience districts.
Um they're trying to do long range planning out to 50 years. They're focusing on on the coastal issues. Uh one issue that um I mentioned earlier in my remarks on public works is the inland flooding modeling.
They clearly um have that in a future phase, the inland flooding. So that that the sea level rise is uh issue one. Issue 1 A is that rainfall and this and the conveyance of storm water uh as it impacts our city.
As we look a little bit closer to uh where Quinsey's grouped they have grouped us uh both the Neponet and the wear uh watershed. So it's pieces a little piece of Boston. We've got Milton. Uh we'll be joined with Quinsey, uh Brainree, Weimoth, Hingham, Hull, and even a little bit of Cohasset.
And I uh assume moving forward some of the inland communities that are in the watershed would be added as well. So this is goes to some of the answers. we're we're now have a planning a state planning district to now work within with our neighbors um you know community neighbors uh as well as our community stakeholders in Quinsey and uh in those other communities and the other piece the uh governor's office has uh initiated is this new eco one-stop grant portal.
So about 5 years ago, they have bundled together a number of economic and infrastructure grants into the community one-stop grant portal, which uh put it on a yearly cycle. Quinseay's been very successful in the Mass Works program.
We're in the inauguration year for the um uh ECO onetop grant portal. They asked for four expressions of interest and to show uh where we are we submitted five uh expressions of interest. So um we are engaged uh we're engaged at the local level uh with Thai and bond understanding our community and we're engaged uh with our state and regional partners on this issue.
Uh with that I I would take any more questions um and look forward to hopefully an endorsement of the most recent five-year update to the hazard mitigation plan. All right. Thank you. Not seeing any additional questions.
Happy to entertain a motion. Motion to approve made by councelor L. Executive by Councelor Divine. Madam Cler, please call a role. Councelor Ash, yes. Councelor Campbell, yes. Council Divine, yes. Council Deon, yes.
Council Harris, Council Leang, yes. Council McCarthy, yes. Council Minton, yes. President Kane, yes. Nine members. Robin team, thank you very much. uh you can see how much work you've done there. I know that this document is available on the planning department's website.
I'll also ask for the clerk to put this on the council's individual web pages uh so that people can that would be to a slight correction. Uh council president, it would be under the residents tab under the front page of the city's website under the Yep.
the quinseymma.gov. Um there's a number of drop- down menus across the top under residents. It'll be under multihazard mitigation plan. Great. Thank you very much. Thank you all, Madame Clerk. Next item, please.
Number two, 2025125. Order, housing development incentive program, TIE Agreement, 126 Granite Street Trust. The president recognizes the mayor's representative, Mr. Walker. Through you, Mr. President.
Thank you very much. Uh, we'll delay slightly while Miss Manning provides the clicker. Thank you. Uh before you tonight, as we've discussed, is the 126 Granite Street tax increment exemption incentive agreement.
Um I will give a brief overview of the program, the state program, the housing development incentive program coupled together with the TIE agreement that's before the body tonight. Deputy Planning Director Rob Stevens will make a second appearance before the body this evening.
Give a brief overview of the permitted project uh on at 126 Granite Street, which everyone will know as the former Grossman's Lumberyard. Uh today, a retail plaza. uh director of community development Sean Glennon will provide a bit of a synopsis of the overall HD DIP program, the housing development incentive program and where this would compare to other programs uh across the state.
Similarly, and chief assessor John Roland will provide the the tax schedule uh that we have proposed here. Um what is before the body tonight achieves three primary goals. tax growth, housing creation, and class A retail.
Uh those things are interrelated. They meet this body and the mayor's vision for development in the downtown. Uh and they don't happen necessarily all to without being all together. Um this state program provides incentives for the developer that provide state tax credits as part of those state credit stats requires a local incentive as well.
And when I say incentive, what you'll see as we go forward, the incentive is to provide and to promote the investment. There's not a reduction in taxes. It's not less taxes. It is always exponentially more taxes than what this than the city is receiving at the site right now.
Um the original concept that we had talked about several months ago was before this body. We were looking to make a parking garage work, some underground parking upwards of the cost of about $10 million.
We've reworked that with the developer. The developer went back to the drawing board understanding from a number of the conversations that we've had uh and the mayor's had with with this body that uh the math just wasn't going to work for that kind of incentive.
So, they went back to the drawing board, um, recalibrated the parking, and believe they're in a place based on this minor incentive that we can still get to where we want to be as a community with a Whole Foods or like Caliber Retail for that site coupled together uh, with the housing development.
In addition to the additional taxes that I'm about to review quickly, this project entails $4 million plus in fees, including building permits and affordable housing contributions. Uh again, so that's $4 million just in getting the project off the ground.
Moving on to the schedule, uh Mr. wrong. We'll get into that in a little bit, a little bit more detail, but under this plan over the course of the next 20 years, it's $32.4 million in taxes without any development on the site.
$8.9 million in taxes. That's over the 20-year life of the agreement, $23.47 million in new taxes. That's added growth. In the first year, it's $67,000 in additional taxes after the hundred or so thousand reduction.
So again, that reduction that we're offering to make this project work is off of the increase in taxes. And you'll see that the reduction of taxes ranges between 100 and $140,000 year $140,000 a year over 13 years.
There's no reduction in the last 20 years. Typically, these are 20-year agreements. I'll uh be available to answer any questions we get through the presentation, but I'll hand it over to Rob. [Music] Great.
Great. Uh, good evening councilors again. Um, so the uh 5674 and 126 Granite Street development that also includes the Burger King parcel as we know it today. Um, the project was before uh us last year.
The planning board approved it in November of 2024 under the Quinsey Center zoning districts. Um the new project consists of 256 residential units with uh 53,200 square ft of commercial space. Uh how that commercial space is broken down is approximately 42,000 square ft for a anchor retail tenant.
Um another 3,000 square ft for a smaller uh retail tenant and approximately 8,000 square feet for office. Um that development would be supported by 517 surface and structured parking spaces. Um so that fit within the Quinsey Center zoning districts.
Um part of the planning board's decision. Uh the project would need to comply with the inclusionary zoning ordinance. So that uh is the city of Quinsey local ordinance. uh it's 10% of the units or a fee inl uh the uh project would also need to comply with the public art and placemaking ordinance.
Um and the project did contribute $26,000 for a road safety audit of uh a portion of Bergen Parkway as it heads to the Hannon Parkway intersection. The project would also uh be required to construct new sidewalks along Granite Street uh and Bergen Parkway uh treeline sidewalks I might add.
Uh in line with the downtown uh redevelopment guidelines. Uh here is an overview uh shot of the site. Uh to the north is headed towards the right. Um that would be where the uh former or the current Burger King uh restaurant sits.
Uh they envision a small retailer at that uh corner. Uh the large box uh would be a singlestory uh commercial box for an anchor tenant. That would be surface parking in this image to the you know to the top and to the right.
Uh what is off on the left which would be along the Granite Street connector roadway would be the uh parking at ground level with residential above and that would be the 256 units as you can see. Uh you well you can pick up particularly on Granite Street we got treelined uh sidewalks.
Uh there's also some public space elements up at uh the intersection with uh Granite and Bergen. Here is a uh rendition of what the new development uh is going to look like. This is sort of standing with the Star Market site behind you.
Uh looking into, you know, probably where the Boston Market is now. Uh there's plans for an alleyway similar to what's at West of Chestnut uh to drive under and access some of the parking for the residential.
Um, folks in cars will be able to drive through into the surface parking area, which would be uh the primary parking spot for the commercial tenant. Uh, here's another uh view from the application. Again, uh the top image is uh now you're flying a little bit like a bird.
Uh but we're looking down, we're looking north at that Granite Street side. Uh we believe that front edge uh with Granite Street and the Granite Street connector would be a firstf flooror office at that corner.
Uh bring in some liveless there. In that center image you can see that alleyway that sort of uh is across from the current Star Market curb cut. Um so we see some uh uh potential roadway improvements in there as that second site uh uh gets looked at.
Uh the picture on the bottom is uh where do we got that? That's uh being uh taken from uh the east across Bergen Parkway looking back uh again to the northwest. You can see how the singlestory commercial is is uh up on the right side there.
And I think we've got Okay, that was it on the um aerials. So, another report I wanted to present to this board is the city has been successful in securing a $2.7 million Mass Works grant. This is for the intersection of uh Granite Street and Bergen Parkway itself.
Um that intersection uh we're also looking down Granite Street as it intersects with the Witwell and planning improvements uh there as well. and that project is currently under design. Uh we feel construction uh most likely will begin in uh 2026.
So that would summarize uh the review uh the planning board did on the project and I'm going to hand it over to Sean talk a little bit more about the HDIP program. Thank you. [Music] Thank you, Mr. Stevens.
Good evening, counselors. Three, Mr. President. First, I'm compelled to say that I was a former track star under the direction of coach Hennessy, and I want to wish him and the team congratulations tonight.
Um, the Massachusetts Housing Development Incentive Program provides tax incentives to developers to build market rate housing in the state's 26 gateway cities. The goal is to stimulate residential growth, increase housing stock diversity, support economic development, and stabilize neighborhoods.
The program offers a local real estate tax exemption on the new or rehabilitated property value increase, and provides state tax credits for qualified project expenses. To emphasize that last point, as Mr.
Walker alluded to, the tax exemption only applies to the value increase of the redevelopment. And therefore, even when maximum exemptions are given, H DIP projects generate property tax revenue at an amount equal to or more than their pre H dip usage.
City of Quinsey adopted HIPP in 2017 with the creation of Quinsey's first HD zone in Quinsey Point, consisting of four contiguous parcels on East Howard Street and Winter Street. The East Tower Street parcels were redeveloped to create what is now the Watson 140 units of primarily workforce and market rate housing.
Though there was a small affordable housing component to the project and as such my division was involved with some of the research and analysis that went into the HD plan. The tie agreement for that project, as illustrated on this slide, started with an 80% exemption for the first five years, a 67% exemption for the following three years, a 59% exemption for one year, and a 57% exemption for the final year.
The 10-year tie agreement on that project had an average yearly exemption of 71.7% and to date over the first 7 and a half years of the tie has generated over or excuse me $170,000 over and above what the city would have collected if the property remained an abandoned isore.
And of course, that figure will only continue to increase dramatically as the exemption decreases and ultimately expires over the next two and a half years. In researching tie agreements in other gateway cities that have similarities to Quinsey, I came across one tie agreement in Malden and three in New Bedford.
As illustrated on this same slide in the final columns, all four of those tie agreements had terms between 10 and 20 years and exemptions range between 10 and 100%. With the average term being 15 years and the average yearly exemption coming in at 58%.
By contrast, the TAI agreement before you tonight has a term of only 13 years and has an average yearly exemption of just 10.4% making it 2 years shorter and much more economically advantageous for the city than any of the other tie agreements I've researched for this presentation.
And with that, Mr. President, I would yield to Assessor Roland. Thank you, Sean. This development projects to generate over $32 million in tax revenue over 20 years of this housing development incentive.
With this development, a projected $23 million in additional tax revenue will be seen over the parcel as is today. In return, a local incentive of $1.5 million and scheduled tax abatements across 13 out of the 20 years of this agreement.
Mind you, the city will c recapture the $ 1.5 million in between years two and three of this schedule agreement based on our projections. This averages out to a 5.25% abatement throughout the term of the 20 years.
Typically mixeduse development and of this size generate has a ratio of 90% residential 10% commercial 95 residential 95% commercial. This plan for this development has a ratio of closer to 8020. 80% residential 20% commercial.
This incentive allows this developer to maintain a sizable commercial footprint on this parcel which I think is very important as the chairman of the board of assessors. Thank you. Thank you very much.
Any questions for my colleagues? President recognizes councelor Leang. Might be a question for Rob again. Um I just actually want to start by saying that I in reading through this I appreciate that uh there's only so much area left in Quinsey where there's density of this I I think size uh both retail and residential um that can be built, right?
And as somebody who rented and then bought and then rented is looking to buy again like I know market rate isn't even I mean it's like the the the minimum right everything right now is above because I think demand is making it so and so I appreciate that there is you know initiative through the state's um executive office of housing and livable communities to work with municipalities and and private developers to incentivize an increase in housing um but particularly to not enforce but to kind of say you know there is this incentive however you do need to make sure that it remains market rate and it looks like off of this it would be you know a 20 year standard at this point where they'd have to make all of these units market rate not above not related to demands but saying you know over the course of 20 years even though that the incentive is only 13 years over 20 years they're going to make sure that all these units are market rate correct that's correct that is correct yeah okay that's fantastic um the other thing that I noticed in here that I really appreciate is the 50,000 square ft of retail the amount of times that we've looked at projects that again I know residential is in higher demand than commercial especially for the last 5 years, it's it's much more difficult to get developers um to work with retailers, especially at that size, to say, "Yeah, let's build out commercial of sort of any type of industry.
I know that we're, you know, typically looking at like smaller footprints for um you know, 3,000 square feet type, you know, retail, commercial, and you know me from every time I'm coming and talking to you, especially you and your offer, right?
Like I any type of commercial real estate um like or any type of um commercial footprint I'll take always. and to see 50,000 square feet is so much more significant than what we've seen on other projects.
And so I think um my question to you was really to see like this is one of the biggest commercial uh sort of footprints that has come before us at this point right in this area. Correct. In in Quinsey Center for sure, right?
And again I think that's where density needs to stay, right? Like I mean especially with the amount of traffic that flows in and out of our main arteries. I think this like the I'm thinking geographically across the city like where else are we ever going to see a project come in front of us to say yes there's incentive for housing to keep a market rate and on top of that we're committing to 50,000 square feet of retail right not 10,000 you know not 5,000 but 50,000 this would be one of the biggest commercial additions to our tax base right now right correct okay yes it's it's you know everyone wants to build housing and yeah I mean again I I and just housing I just want to make sure because I'm looking at this number and and usually when these numbers come in front of us, they're significantly smaller, right?
It it's again 5,000 10,000 maybe 20,000 square feet of retail, but even then that was like, h well, when it came down to it, again, the demand just wasn't there, so we had to reduce it, right? And so coming in here and looking at the increase in taxes just in yes, the residential piece, but looking longterm to secure 50,000 square feet of retail in our city right now is something that I can't turn away from, right?
I've been working trying to find creative ways to increase our commercial tax base to offset our residential tax base for, you know, years and years and years, right? And adding 50,000 square feet to our tax role is not something I can turn away from.
And so with that, I'd like to make a motion to approve. Thank you, Council Leang. On the motion, seconded to U Council Divine on the motion. President recognizes Councelor Ash. Thank you. Thank you, Mr.
President. Um, thank you for the presentation. Uh, reviewed the um the agreement of course and some some of the coverage and the news articles over the weekend on this tie in front of us. I do have a few questions.
Um, so it's my understanding that what we're really after as a municipality is the state incentive or the state tax uh break or incentive that will come down the pike should we um give a little bit on the on the local level.
Is that correct? You Mr. President. Yeah. Yes, council. Absolutely. the the HDIP program to qualify for these state incentives, there needs to be an agreement of some kind that's before you tonight. There needs to be some local buyin.
There needs to be some local incentive. And what we did was try uh incredibly hard over the last several months working with our partners to get that number down to where it would work for them potentially for to finance and it would work for this body in terms of the minimum amount over the course of a certain amount of time.
And we think we found a pretty good sweet spot um in terms of where we are. But yes, absolutely. That state tax incentive is worth potentially three or4 million. This tax incentive on the local end is less than half of that.
Um and what's been made clear to us from um the folks on the private side is that that really is where they're going to go after um the financing is to use those state tax tax credits. And they believe that they're hopeful that the markets will see that they have that benefit and then that we'll be able to finance this project.
If um if for some reason if this application or this TIE is sent up um to the appropriate departments within the state and the state declines that application and and the verbiage I I may be looking for some some synonyms here, but should this agreement not substantiate the state tax incentive, are we are we still providing this tax incentive to the developer?
No. No, councelor through you again, Mr. President, the state tax credits are necessary for the project to win financing. If the project doesn't get financing, we do not have a project and we do not have this agreement.
Um the two things are are married together. Um it's my understanding that the this percentage abatement is on the um increase in the assessed value. Correct. That is correct. Okay. Um there is some language in the HDIP uh the statute and and some of the related materials um that and I believe director Glennon alluded to the 26 gateway cities in the state.
Um I know we've we've talked before when we were considering um a pro this project or or maybe some of the the pre-planning to this particular um agreement in front of us. But the language related to say a gateway municipality that would similarly um it'd be the same premise.
And I just want to make sure that I'm I'm kind of making it uh simple enough for the folks at home that are interested in this where if if for say for any reason we don't qualify if this tie is sent up to the state level and if we don't qualify for any of the incentives whether it be because of a um you know the gateway city designation or um be just because there are other municipalities I think qualifying or trying to qualify for the same funds.
This comes back and it's it's out of our control and we're we again we have not provided any of these incentives should all of those um boxes be checked at the state level. Correct. Is that right? Yes.
This plan is approvable only by EOLC HLC. If it's not approved by the state authority, there is no plan, there is no project. Um I think the last time the city um that we applied for and provided a tie for one of these projects was that is that that was the Watson uh 2017.
Is that right? Correct. Um, you know, one of the questions will be, and I know one of the differing, um, uh, characteristics between the Watson project and the project in front of us is going to be that I believe the Watson the affordable housing units were built in the building.
Um, I know there that the estimated uh, contribution to the affordable housing trust fund on this, I believe, I believe, is 2.6 million. M um is has that been explored to to build the affordable units in this um this building or is it the city's uh administration's position that that money is better off in the fund to be utilized by other entities or is that not even has not even been that has not I provided um in the background material that I provided uh to the body that the estimated total of the contribution in lie of the units to the building would be in that ballpark of $2.6 million.
Um that's not to say uh that it's definitive that it's going to be a payment in lie of um I think history will show that u developers have chosen uh the payment in lie of um on a regular more frequent basis far more frequent basis than the actual um construction of the units within when any any uh given development.
Um, from the city's perspective, we like it both ways. Um, the the cash value is incredibly useful. Uh, there are a number of projects that the city can get done with our partner CHTO. Um, the city on its own.
Um, we make we make no real distinction between the two things. I see. um you know the the the statute when it comes to tie and and how they relate to this process and and HD programs um you know it it states that the the municipality should have um some incentive given to the developer for I think it's over between 5 and 20 years um and you know the lowest amount of incent of incentive or abatement would be the 10% Have we um looked at whether it makes more sense to take that money off of the off of the top and I then make make the agreement shorter or the tax incentive shorter as opposed to the 13 years if it was just five but came out to the same number.
I I guess I'm just looking to to see if that was explored at all as well through you Mr. President. was and our sense on the negotiation was get it out of the way as soon as possible. Get full tax load, full tax revenue as soon as possible.
And this is the schedule that gets to that goal, getting to the same number of that 5.25% again. So this is this is a little bit different than some other H dips as well because it has that commercial component to it.
The tax abatement requirement from the state is a minimum of 10% for a minimum of five years. Now, we're a little bit longer than the five years here, but if you look at where we are overall on the tax abatement here, we're just over five 5%.
So, we're on an overall abatement relative to a number of these other H dip projects, which probably we would have to double check on that. how much of it is is commercial, how much of it is not. But my sense is is that primarily like the Watson, um folks that are developing housing, retail, and especially retail of this size in this caliber that we're looking for is not generally part of these programs.
And again, that's sort of the the unicorn of of this particular project and why we work so hard to get to a number that works to make it finances because the city has a vested interest in maintaining and expanding and creating the kind of retail that we believe is going to happen at this site in addition to the creation of housing.
Thank you. Um and a few more questions here. Should uh so should the this incentive, you know, should this not go forward and and the body doesn't adopt it, what what is the potential plan or like what is the backup plan for the property or for that site?
Um cuz I know that there's been there's some you know the planning board has reviewed plans already and um my question is what would what would the backup be? I guess where do we stand if if this isn't considered to to some degree council this is the plan B.
Uh originally when we talked in the spring as I mentioned in my my opening that we were looking at potentially creating additional parking on site and helping to facilitate and finance that parking through an exemption.
Um again the developers recalibrated um moving some things around. Um we'll try some different things. There's no guarantee at this point that the project is financable with the market. But there is no my sense is that if we do not have this incentive and the the developer does not have the state ability to get the state tax credits, this project is not financable as is.
So what you may see uh is nothing happens at the site. Uh what you also may see is a new proposal that includes exponentially less commercial development, perhaps none. Um there are some there'd be some zoning issues there, but you would see um as council Leang sort of mentioned um at the very least some of the more traditional downtown oriented small um smaller concept retail, much less of it.
um and perhaps none uh in terms of what the developer wanted to do, but essentially we don't believe this project moves forward uh at this point in time um without this incentive. Uh, we noted um I believe director Stevens noted um the the um plans for the intersection Bergen and Granite Street intersection improvements.
Um are those improvements contingent on this plan or are those kind of ongoing or at the same time? No, I don't I don't think that um I think everyone in the community knows that we need regardless of what happens at this site, Granite Street, uh needs to be looked at, needs to be improved.
I think we would move forward um and if it's a state grant um I think we're pretty locked in on that, but we would move forward with those improvements regardless of what happens at the site. Keeping in mind we still have a major retail operation on the other side of that sort of driveway that separates Granite from Bergen Parkway with Star Market and a number of other retailers.
And then I had one one question um on the document itself. Um, I was looking at I believe it's page, let's see, [Music] page five into six. This is paragraph G. It says, "Application of exemption if MRRUS constitute a condominium unit." Um, and I I did have have questions on on what that paragraph um was trying to accomplish.
I don't think that the goal of it, based on my my research and some discussions on the document, I don't think that the goal of that paragraph is to um somehow create a tax incentive for residential condominium units.
Um, but I would like to try to clarify that within the language if possible. Um, so this the the first sentence on page six reads, uh, the sponsor and the city agree that if the condominium is established for purposes of determining the project's exemption under this agreement, the assessments and taxes of the MRU unit and commercial unit will be combined and the exemption calculated shall be applied to the real estate taxes assessed on the MRU unit.
Um, I know in in related and similar uh agreements that's we're not talking about a condominium being purchased by uh by a homeowner or by a condominium owner and then somehow benefiting within these first 13 years on a 10% tax abatement.
um for for my own sanity, I I would and for sake of just you know not not it not appearing that these tax uh uh for tax abatement might run with the units or to future to future future excuse me unit owners.
if we could clarify that somehow in um in this paragraph. Which section? I'm on I'm in uh section G, page six, the first full sentence. G six or G? Uh I'm sorry. Paragraph G, page six. In the agreement in the Yep.
find something different. Let's see. Yeah, you see. I think it's I think it's page five. That's your page right here. section four section. All right. For anyone that has the agreement in front of them, it's it's section 4, paragraph G.
Yeah. Apologies. And C council, you are exactly right. Um and we will gladly accept language uh that satisfies your concerns. The definitions here are so that as you mentioned this is condominium meaning the commercial or the residential as one as blocks.
So they could condise commercial components of it and then condoise the entirety of the residential portion of it not individual condominium units. But um the point is well taken and if the councelor has some language the administration would gladly accept it.
Okay. Um motion to amend. Yeah. I would move just to amend it with with that language and um I don't know if we need it for the record right now or if that's something that I could get or would you rather it read in now?
Okay. Um, so if we could after that first sentence, after the first full sentence in section four, paragraph G, um, should the residential units, but if I may, I think you're trying to redefine the term condominium, correct?
Yeah. Okay. So you'd have to start from the the place the sponsor may elect to convert the project because that's where the definition is is made. That first sentence is where condominium is defined. Correct.
Yep. Mr. uh Yeah, please. Thank you, Mr. President. So, we could probably council Ash, I think I understand your concern. Yep. And I'm going to bring you down to the uh fourth line of paragraph G. And there's a clause there after the word units.
It says with all MRUs constituting one condominium unit. So, what uh Mr. Walker was saying is that essentially what they're talking about is having the residential section become one unit. They're trying to separate residential from commercial and they're going to call them condominiums.
Uh but that your concern about multiple units being condos. That's not in here. They're specifically intending to keep it as a multi-unit uh residential entity. So I think your concern well you know warranted is met here and part of the reason for that is this is basically a standard form that comes from um EOHLC and they followed it almost exactly the developer did here.
Okay. Would it be cleaner to put the definition of condominium in the section that calls for definitions in section two? Um, I know it's defined. I Well, Mr. Ru was defined. I don't know that. Yeah, Mr.
Ru is defined in that in the definition sections as are many of the other terms, but condominium is not. Well, that's cuz in the standard form they don't use condominiums and they they did in this form.
Uh, I think I left it over there. I can come right back. But I know that when they they talked about in this particular agreement form, which is the council order before you, um when they talked about condominium, they did define it.
They're basically defining it as uh too separate. They're trying to separate the residential part of the project from the commercial project uh commercial side and that's it. in in the covenant section in the sponsor's covenant section section three uh paragraph B market rate residential units uh it does say the project will create a total of 266 residential rental units all of which shall be MRUS meaning singular bundle correct But I I do think that it's quite specific um that the entirety it's ba based on what I began up here at the podium with based on the entirety of that phrase they cover the fact that all the units all the MRUs uh shall be one condominium.
That's fine. I'm I'm fine with it. So So good. Yeah. No need to Any other questions? Um yes. Actually, just one quick one with related to the office space. I think um someone mentioned about 8,000 square ft of new office space.
Is that right? Correct. Do we have um like any potential tenants for the office space or um is are are we anticipating maybe um being able to explore the for to reach out and explore uh potential tenants on the line?
My my understanding and there may be potential for uh expansion of tenants but my understanding is this would be the the home office of the grossman companies. Okay. Thank you. Thank you, councelor Ash.
President recognizes councelor Dona. Thank you, Mr. President. Um, just getting back a little bit to the Watson and if somebody can elaborate a little bit for me. Um, just talking about affordability.
It's been a hot topic out there in the city for the last election cycle is um to my knowledge the Watson is about 140 units and it was a mixed income property basically a breakdown of market rate workforce housing and affordable housing.
So they did a blend in that in that building. I remember doing that um when they first inception um you know take us a step back here for a minute before we get into this um 256 units. The first initial project to the I guess it's the north side of the General's Bridge.
The first proposal was going to be 150 unit building where the Fox Rock property was going to build 150 units of workforce housing in that particular project. Um it didn't didn't go into fruition. We went with the mix uh we went with the medical use and that's being built right now.
That's okay. However, um is there any consideration of the 256 units that would be of not only if they go in the lua for affordable housing but also workforce housing? Is there any talk about any workforce housing in that particular 256 units through Mr.
President? This is a a market rate building. Um again they will make the contribution either via units or via the cash in lie of to the city's affordable housing trust which goes to workforce housing as well as there's different it's gets into a semantic argument council what's affordable what's workforce what's live that stuff but essentially all three things um are supported by the affordable housing trust and you know a lot of great work over the course of the last many years has been done based upon on the cash in lie of um considerations.
Um and this project will will contribute to that in a in a pretty substantial way over $2 million we think. Okay. It's just it's just something that's been put out there from the from the citizens of the city that that really want us to to to just just basically put it out there to have not only affordable housing, but workforce house.
a different tier obviously of qualifications for it, but it just does help out the affordability factor uh for for for some folks out there. Understood, counselor. And keep in mind, you know, one of the major priorities of the administration is the the top line of affordability.
No matter what you do, you can subsidize things through tax credits. You can create subsidized housing. You can provide incentives. But the one thing that is known to work across the board, which we've done here up and down the spine of this city, is create more market rate housing.
The more market rate housing you have, the more affordable it becomes. Supply and demand. If we build enough supply, the demand levels off. And we're starting to see some of that. Um the numbers of affordable units are are the rate of rent is is stabilizing to some degree in a lot of places.
Um but the goal the the first option and the best option when it comes to affordability is to create the housing. Uh and Quinsey has done its job. Um there are communities across the state that have not.
Um and you know there there is a back and forth about the the positives and negatives of development. That's understood. But we sit here today, this body, the mayor, everyone together, uh, has done more to produce housing in the greater Boston region than virtually any other community.
Um, and that's that's goal one to to get your affordability to a place where it makes some sense. On the note of the affordable housing trust, um, does any does any or maybe I can go through maybe the madam auditor or whatever, whomever or maybe somebody else can answer this.
What do we have in the affordable housing trust right now as of today uh for funding? Does anybody know that number? I don't off the top of my head. I can certainly get that for you. Okay. Um I know neighbor works is is another um entity out there that's done a real good job with using some of the affordable housing trust funds and building some affordable housing out there.
So just for folks to understand is in lie of yes it's in lie of but a lot of folks and a lot of companies and um nonprofits out there have been really doing a lot of work here in the city of Quinsey. I know they're doing something on Quinsey A.
I think it's 15 units um and they're continuously been doing a lot of work over the years on the I've served on the community preservation committee. They've come to us a few times for affordable housing.
So um in lie of Yes. Um but it does go into that fund. Um we were talking about floods just recently um the storm surges and all that stuff. Um there was funds that came out of the affordable housing trust to help a lot of those folks too.
So just because in lie of doesn't mean that nothing gets put back into these affordable housings down the road from other other companies, other entities, other other nonprofits. So just just to let you know.
Um but thank you Mr. Walker for answering my questions. I I do appreciate it. Um um and I do appreciate the the commercialbased um there's a there's a high square footage of commercial which is huge. So thank you for answering everything.
Thank you. President recognizes Councelor Divine. Thank you everybody for coming out and uh giving us all this information. It's a lot to digest. Um I see a lot of numbers here. Um I had a few questions.
Uh, Council Ash asked one of them and it was answered. So, thank you and thank you for all your other questions. And, uh, Councelor Leang also asked something and, uh, it answered my question, but, I still had a couple other ones.
Um, Director Stevens, um, you mentioned that we did we received some funds, 20some thousand to do a study, correct? Road safety audit. Sure. Now, uh, with that, did we do the study already? Uh I would have to check with uh the TPAL office.
They would would have managed that. Um I was just wondering because we um we did um also have the apartment buildings over in um across from Darcy's and we we had them do a study and we we got $30,000 from them and we used that money to do a study and then we were granted uh awarded some substantial money.
Are we allowed to say how much? Do you know how much do we get? Um, did we get word on how much? It was a housing choice grant. Um, so yeah, well, we are hopefully getting a we will be getting a grant at some point, right?
Mhm. From that $30,000 that we spent. So, um, anyways, it's good to know that we have that and I was curious if that was what it did because, um, those those funds when we get them, they spark and they they make us more money.
Uh, so Exactly. Well, we already got the mass works. So, that think that road safety audit is for over at the Hannon Parkway coming off of Bergen because the grant we got is for Bergen and Granite sliding down to Witwell, you know, by uh Nick's Pizza there.
Yeah. So, uh you know, there's a lot more obviously we've had the development up on Witwell, the development um at Corey Hills, you know, so there's a lot more cars coming into that area to get access to Bergen Parkway and out to the interstate system.
Yeah, for sure. Well, thank you for all that hard work. And then um I'm not sure who this might be for, but um you know, you mentioned the square footage that's intended. Uh what's the square footage that's there now for commercial space?
Uh in total, it is uh 64,435 ft. That's between the president's plaza uh and the Burger King. Uh it's a slight reduction to 53,200 square feet of commercial uh between Yeah, that's not bad. I was I was just curious.
Yeah, it's about a 10,000 square foot reduction, but as we sort of made a reference earlier, everybody wants to build just housing in in Quinsey Center. It's mixed uses by right. So having mixed use, it's this isn't toking mixed use.
This is real, you know, commercial uh a real commercial retailer at 42,000 square ft on that. Hopefully a real office and and and and complimentary retail. Yeah. Um I mean, you go to Europe and uh these buildings, they have a everybody lives upstairs, but then all down below is that where everything is and they do all their shopping and their their things like that.
So, it's uh it's very normal. Um the numbers are look really good uh compared to the Watson. I mean, this this looks like um uh five, you know, 10% over the average. It's it looks really good for our community.
Um you mentioned that the Watson maybe has two and a half years left. Is that right? Do Yeah. Do we know what we'd be getting from in the two and a half years roughly for I don't I don't have those numbers with me, but I'd be happy to provide them.
Yeah. Well, either way, I'm sure they're pretty substantial. So, I'm happy that that's I believe it was it 67 currently percent and then going down to 59. So, almost double over double what we're in a couple of years.
So, be all be coming to fruition. So, uh I know we had to lose a lot of money in the beginning, but uh going forward, we're going to be getting all of it soon enough. So, uh once again, thanks for all your work.
Thank you for the presentation. Thank you for all the numbers. And uh yeah, that's it. Thank you. Thank you, councelor Divine. Okay. Um, anyone can anyone tell me what the estimated project cost is for the developer?
No. Okay. So, what do we I'm just trying to understand what we base these estimates on if we don't know the total project cost. It's based on projected tax values and revenues. Projected revenues that we we that we project off of the what the value for the commercial space and the residential space during that time.
Okay. Yeah. And I just want to be clear about the tax incentives. So, um we are proposing a $ 1.5 million tax incentive for 13 years goes to the state. Are there additional incentives provided by the state if this project is approved or Okay.
And what are we what are what are the estimated uh potential uh tax incentives at the state level then? Three to three to four million. Three to four million. Okay. So right now by approving if we approve this um there's not no risk but there's minimal risk to for the $ 1.5 million commitment that the city would be making unless the project is approved.
Um, separately, I see that the $26,000 road safety audit, which I saw some nodding, so that audit has been completed. Okay. And uh, with that audit, what was recommended? Is there infrastructure or roadway work outside of what would be covered in this mass work grant at that intersection, or is there more work that's projected?
And on that, just keep this in your mind too when you're adding up things. Uh I did not see in this agreement any commitment from the city to provide infrastructure work. Um but will there be any incurred infrastructure work by the city just by way of this project generally?
Right. Good question. Uh there is no dedicated uh infrastructure work uh specifically for there's no commitment to it in the No commitment other than your normal, you know, cut and cap and tie-ins. Yeah, I I think a lot of the the work that has been done to date um this project and future projects will get the benefit of that, you know, new new subsurface infrastructure and those types of things.
As far as the road safety audit is, um you know, to tackle that intersection at Anen Parkway, it's got a restricted left turn lane southbound. Y so we are examining some you know, how do we do some lane widening in this very, you know, congested corridor.
So, the results of a road safety audit gives you an initial um uh list of menu items of some short-term improvements you can do and then some longer range uh design directions to go. I believe that's you know the you know where TPAL is now is exploring some design suggestions.
It's trying to build in some more with and it's difficult to come up with right away where none exists today. uh that that train tracks, you know, and the depressed uh rail bed uh really limits, you know, some of that width.
But it's really trying to do the um try to put in those dedicated left turn lanes and also trying to push the view that the all four intersections kind of work harmoniously in and around this entire site.
I did mention um you know the the residential uh now coming down Whitwell Street uh as well as uh down Corey uh Street as well. Do you have an estimation for the cost um for the sidewalks and trees for those improvements that'll be made?
Uh I do not, but it would probably be a few million dollars on that type of sidewalk. Not your typical concrete um slab. We're talking about tree pits, you know, brick strips. So enhanced sidewalk 2 million 3 million I'd say 3 to 5 million 3 to five yeah that's a that's a pretty lengthy okay sidewalk on both uh Granite Street and the Granite Street connect and then if there's $4 million in fees and other contributions to the affordable housing trust 2.6 of which is going to the affordable housing trust it's safe to say that the fees are $1.4 million y for this project that range pardon in that range.
Okay. All right. Thank you. I think um I just wanted to clarify I did a little chart up here. Uh it's easy to break things down when you're looking at what the developers bring to the table and what the city's bringing to the table.
Okay. So, um I got a couple of numbers for you, counselor. One, um you know, the current assessment uh for just the retail is at $16 million. Um, I did estimates uh working with John adding 256 units and having 53 uh,000 square ft of retail.
We're looking at an overall assessment of probably about 104 million. 104 million. Yeah. Assessed property value 12.6 on the retail, which is a slight decrease, but the the residential would get assessed at upwards of 90 million.
Okay. 90 million res. Okay. So, the developer 260 units residential, 50,000 square ft of retail. Uh $25 million in taxes will be accured over the current land usage over 20 years. $2.6 million will be contributed to the affordable housing trust.
$1.4 $4 million in fees for development of the project to the city, $26,000 already to the road safety audit, $3 to5 million in sidewalks and tree improvements. The city contributes then $1.5 million tax incentive over 13 years, which will essentially be recuperated over year two, year 2 to three.
Uh there's a grant that's already been committed that will be applied to an intersection that will already have work done that will essentially benefit this area generally for 2.7 million uh and 0 commitment for additional infrastructure.
I just want to lay that out so that the deal terms are pretty uh transparent. Okay. Thank you very much everyone for this presentation. We have a motion to approve by councelor Leang, seconded by councelor Divine.
Madame clerk, please call the role. Councelor Ash, yes. Councelor Campbell, yes. Council Divine, yes. Council Debana, yes. Councelor Harris, yes. Council Leang, yes. Council McCarthy, Councelor Mitten, yes.
President Kane, yes. Nine members, thank you very much. Okay, that concludes our regularly scheduled items on the agenda tonight. Uh we'll have the previous meeting minutes at the next meeting minute at the next meeting.
Uh communications and reports of the mayor, other city officers and city boards. Madame clerk. Yes, I do have um a traffic request to refer to ordinance committee for advertising board one council mccathy at passage of pickup and drop off zone in front of Broad Meadow School across from 31 Calvin Road.
There's also a utility to uh refer to public works for scheduling and advertising. Utility grant to location Mass Electric Verizon 58 Tyler Street. Okay. Thank you, Madam Clerk. Unfinished business and proceeding meeting.
Seeing none. Reports of committees. Seeing none. Presentation of petitions, memorials, and remmonstrants. President recognizes councelor Ash. Thank you, Mr. President. Um, I would like to um mention and certainly extend uh my respects to the family of Sarah Sheffidoni.
Um, affectionately known as Sally. Um, she's a longtime Quinsey Point resident, um, beloved wife of the late Robert Sheffidoni, uh, loving mother of Mark Sheffidoni and, uh, Victoria Connley and her husband Ryan, all of Quinsey.
Um, Sally was born in London, England to Irish parents. She came to America at the age of six and grew up in South Boston. Um she spent the last uh number of decades in Quincy Point raising her family.
Sally was a loving mother, devoted wife, cherished aunt and grandmother, and a very faithful friend to many. Um I'm uh very um thankful to be considered um you know, one of those family friends. And I know that she was a staple in our neighborhood.
Uh wonderful lady, wonderful family. and um I hope that they had a very meaningful sendoff for her on Friday. So certainly my condolences to the Shefferoni family. Um thank you. Thank you, Council Rash.
President recognizes councelor Divine. Sure. Um uh the constituent in Ward 4, Michael Hart at age 85 passed away um Saturday, November 8th. Um, we have to take a true gentleman and uh he has a daughter that lives in the community also and uh I just wanted to let you all know and keep their family and thoughts.
Thank you. Thank you, council. Uh motions, orders, and resolutions. Seeing none, scheduling of committee meetings and public hearings. Um, we currently have a a next council meeting scheduled for Monday, December 1st that we would like to move to the 8th if that is amendable to the council.
Uh, the 8th. December 8th. Yeah. If we could move the the 1st to the ETH. Uh, we'll need a vote. I'll need a motion to approved by Council Lang. Seconded by Councelor Campbell. Madam Clerk, please call the RO.
Councelor Ash, yes. Councelor Campbell, yes. Councelor Divine, yes. Councelor Deona, yes. Council Harris, yes. Council Leang, yes. Council McCarthy, yes. Councelor Mitten, yes. President King, yes. Nine members.
Thank you, Madam Clerk. Okay, so our next regularly scheduled city council meeting will be Monday, December 8th, 6:30. Here, be there. Be square. Motion to adjourn made by Councelor Leang. Happy Thanksgiving to everyone.