Recap of March 11, 2025 Regular Meeting of the City Council

Agenda on City Council Public Portal

Recording on Youtube

Recording on MCM

We passed a remembrance resolution for Maxwell Liner, a Medford High grad. 

We heard from Superintendent Cushing and team about Statements of Interests for the MSBA Accelerated Repair Program for the roofing and HVAC work for the Roberts, Brooks and Missituk Elementary Schools. A project overview is given in the request cover letter. The upshot is MPS is seeking MSBA funding to try and mitigate impact on taxpayers for these unambiguously necessary repair projects. This is separate from the loan order for roofing and HVAC at the Andrews and McGlynn; those projects got pushed forward faster because the conditions are worse there than at the elementary schools. The Council approved all three statements of interest. 

The main topic for this evening was the Salem Street Corridor District zoning. On March 5th, the second date of the Community Development Board’s Public Hearing on this proposal, they voted unanimously to recommend that the City Council approve the draft zoning, as presented by the zoning consultant, with two recommended revisions: to revise the “Multifamily Residential” subdistrict to align closer to the “Urban Residential” with regards to allowed uses and dimensional standards; and to adjust the Development Incentives by reducing the incentive for indoor seating, outdoor pedestrian plaza, and fountains from a half-story to a quarter-story.

I began my remarks by outlining the public meetings on this zoning proposal that preceded this meeting, which I will repeat here. This outline can also be seen in the record of Public Meeting Documents for this proposal on medfordma.org/zoning under “Salem Street Corridor District (SSCD).” 

1. The proposal was developed at the December 3 and December 11 Planning & Permitting Committee meetings. 

2. The CDB began its Public Hearing on January 22nd. Because there was a lot of community feedback, the public hearing was continued to March 5th to allow more time for the board to deliberate, and another opportunity for public comment. 

3. With the SSCD, we added a new step to the public zoning review timeline (beyond the public committee meetings, CDB Public Hearing, and City Council vote): a public Q&A. We held one for the SSCD on February 10th. This wasn’t something that we did for our Phase 1 zoning updates in the spring, nor for the Mystic Avenue Corridor District proposal which passed in December. But with Salem Street, we heard loud and clear that people wanted more information, more opportunities to ask questions, and more opportunities to give public comment. I thank City staff and Innes Associates for their flexibility, and for ensuring that we were able to hold a local, in-person Q&A at the Roberts School for this proposal, which a lot of residents attended. 

4. That brings us to this meeting, where the City Council discusses as a full body and hears additional public comment before a vote. 

I also took this as an opportunity to highlight the new online resources for the zoning project that were onboarded since the start of this year. Since the beginning of the year, I have worked hard alongside City staff, President Bears and the zoning consultant to overhaul the City’s online resources relating to zoning. We completely redesigned the zoning website to make it easier for residents to learn about the proposals, upcoming meeting dates, and consult visuals and diagrams. 

I say this constantly: Zoning is inherently, detailed, and confusing – but to our credit, Medford residents are not scared off by this. It’s because people were calling for more and better information that we put so much effort into creating a hub for zoning information, so that people would have an easier time doing the investigation and participation that they were committed to doing. The goal is to make it easier for folks to be informed and involved, and I am glad to see people taking advantage of it. Going forward, with every proposal, we are continuing to work with the Mayor’s Office to use all of the communication tools available so that the community can continue to be active in this process going forward.

Next, I gave a high-level overview of the zoning proposal. 

The Salem Street Corridor District is one part of the City’s comprehensive, citywide zoning overhaul. This process began in the spring of 2024; Green Score and the SSCD are the third and fourth major packages to come out of this process. Overall, the goal of this process is to take the goals and visions of the Housing Production Plan, Comprehensive Plan, and Climate Action and Adaptation Plan, and change zoning so that those goals can, over time, become reality. 

Those plans were not written by the City Council. They are the results of years of community meetings, community feedback and community visioning. They speak to our shared goals for the future of the city we love: a future where there are homes that young adults can afford to settle in; apartments where students and workers can live comfortably, and where our elders can downsize; neighborhood squares that are lively and full of businesses and people running errands and meeting friends close to where they live; where we are more climate-resilient than we are today. 

So, what do these citywide goals mean for Salem Street zoning? 

This proposal allowed for moderately increased residential housing on Salem Street, from the 93 rotary up to Haines Square. It provides for moderate increases in housing by regulating height, density, and lot size. By-right densities are moderately increased. By-right heights are also moderately changed, but they are not always increased. 

Prior to any changes, maximum by-right heights for most of the corridor was 3 stories. Under the SSCD zoning, it remains 3 stories maximum everywhere except for Mixed-Use 2 subdistricts. In Mixed-Use 2, it increases by 1 story: you can now build 4 stories maximum by-right. 

In Haines Square, this proposal actually lowers maximum heights. Prior to this zoning, one could build a 6-story apartment building, or a fifteen-story hotel. This proposal brings that down to scale. (This proposal actually prohibits hotels outright, all along the corridor.) 

Regarding commercial uses: 

Salem Street is characterized by beloved small businesses – from convenience stories, to karate dojos, to bike shops – and all of them are non-conforming under our current zoning. This proposal allows ground-level commercial by-right to encourage small business development.

Regarding Incentive Zoning: 

Under this proposal, it is possible to build above 3 and 4 stories through Incentive Zoning. Developers can build up to 4 stories in Mixed-Use 1, and up to 6 stories in Mixed-Use 2 and Commercial, if they maximally satisfy certain community benefit conditions. Incentive Zoning increases are not allowed in Multi-Unit Residential zones: in this proposal, those areas top out at 3 stories, permanently. 

Incentive Zoning is not a blank check for developers. Any uses that are not by-right will go through Site Plan Review and public permitting procedures that involve studies, negotiation of benefits, and impact mitigation agreements, on a case-by-case basis. The SSCD zoning also includes development context standards – regulations for how upper floors must be built and shaped – to ensure that new buildings don’t feel out of place nor block light from existing residential homes.  

The Planning & Permitting Committee, zoning consultant, and CDB also paid special consideration to what kind of commercial uses the community did and didn’t want on Salem Street. In response to community feedback, this zoning proposal reflected changes to allowed uses. The only medical uses in the district will be “neighborhood medical” uses, which means no more than 1500 square feet and no more than 5 employees. Neighborhood medical will be allowed by special permit only, and only in MX2 and in Commercial. And hotels, which are allowed under our current zoning, are prohibited under this proposal throughout the whole corridor. 

I also spoke to what this proposal doesn’t allow, because while there has been a lot of conversation about this zoning in the community, some of it was inflected with misinformation. 

• There was talk that this zoning allows large dorms on Salem Street. This zoning allows no dorms all along the corridor. 

• Neither would it foment pot shops: All marijuana commercial uses, including retail, are prohibited in the corridor. 

• Boarding houses are allowed but only by special permit, and are disallowed in Multi-Unit Residential. 

• Buildings over 75 years old are protected by the city’s demo delay ordinance. Buildings can be further protected by the establishment of historic districts, whereby changes are regulated by HDC. This Council has been supportive of those measures in the recent past, and speaking as one Councilor, I would welcome further collaboration on historic preservation. 

• Broadly speaking, if any existing use or structure is rendered nonconforming because of zoning changes, they can continue. There are specific rules that govern nonconforming uses, but right now, Salem Street - and much of the city - is peppered with nonconforming buildings and lots, which may remain in perpetuity except as outlined under MGL Ch40A. There’s more information about this on the zoning website at the General FAQs section at the bottom. 

I am also grateful to the Committee, consultant, and City staff for repeatedly speaking to the concern about traffic and impact studies. Developers pay for impact studies, including traffic studies, when they propose projects – not at the zoning stage. Development under this zoning will likely take place over the next 5-25 years. A study done today (or a month ago) would not be useful nor relevant for a project proposed in 2035 or 2055. 

We then passed the mic to Emily Innes from Innes Associates for a more detailed and technical overview of the proposal, and the proposed changes made to the zoning, since it was first referred to the CDB from the City Council. Some of those were suggestions from City staff; many were suggestions based on feedback gathered at the February 5th Q&A. 

Then we had public comment. More than 70 people spoke! We also received many emails about the proposal before the meeting. 

Since this is my blog, I will share some of my favorite (paraphrased due to imperfect note-taking) tidbits that I wrote down from public comment: 

• “Let’s plan for more people, not just more cars, because Medford ISN’T full!”

• “People think not changing zoning will cause nothing to change, but doing nothing will turn us into an exclusive suburb like Winchester.” 

• “Adult children should be able to move back. Teachers, police officers, city staff, should be able to live in the place they serve.”

• “I want more restaurants, more commercial, more cafes, shops, I want to be able to walk to them. And we need more housing. Businesses don’t move to areas with a lack of housing or that are not growing.”

Of course, we also heard many comments against the zoning. I noted that there were many concerns about problems that people feel zoning will worsen; or that, since zoning will not directly solve these problems, we should not do the zoning. 

Indeed, there are many things that are far outside the scope of zoning, but still directly experience our experiences of our neighborhoods. Zoning alone will not directly solve many concerns, including: low parking enforcement, slow traffic, too many cars, sidewalks needing repair, crosswalks needing improvements, business displacement due to high rent, resident displacement due to high rent, high cost to buy a home in Medford, heat islands and air pollution, bus access, and so on.

But critically, declining to zone will not only earn us no progress, on these problems, it will hamper us by kneecapping our City capacity. Zoning alone will fix few problems; that is why it is one important part of a multi-part strategy. Zoning collaborates with: 

• Linkage fees

• Impact fees

• Increasing our schools’ capacity

• Improving our water and sewer infrastructure

• Improving our roads

• Holding utility companies accountable

• Expanding our tree canopy

• Holding developers to higher environmental standards

• Recruiting new businesses to Medford

• Traffic calming, road improvements, and holding the DOT and DCR accountable to making state roads safer

And all of these projects are underway, occurring parallel to this zoning effort. Stopping a decades-overdue zoning project will not help any of these projects that are occurring in tandem. Rather, updating zoning will help. New growth, the tax base, and permitting fees are not the reason we zone; but it is still a simple fact that updating zoning does improve new growth, improve the tax base, and bring in permitting fees; and we need these revenue sources to do all the things we know we need, from  infrastructure improvements, to paying our public workers better and attracting great new workers to city hall, to stump removal and planting trees, to parking enforcement. 

Finally, we got to the vote-taking part of the night. Many residents, in public comment and in email, had requested that we reject a specific recommended amendment to the Salem Street zoning map, which would have changed the Salem x Park node from an MX2 to an MX1 subdistrict. We approved a motion to not adopt that one specific recommendation. We then approved a motion to adopt the remainder of the CDB’s recommendations and approve the zoning ordinance amendment. 

Then, it was on to the second zoning amendment of the night. We took up the Green Score zoning proposal. This was also referred to in the CDB on March 5th. 

What is Green Score? Here is a quick overview similar to the one I shared at this meeting. 

• “Green Score” is a rubric for grading and rewarding developers based on various requirements and incentives that they meet for environmental standards in building projects. This proposal incorporates Green Score into our Site Plan Review process and includes development waivers that are new as of this proposal. 

• Green Score does not apply to every development. It applies to projects that are located in certain zones within the FEMA National Flood Hazard Layer; and projects subject to SPR. 

• This Green Score proposal includes and builds upon Medford’s existing environmental standards for developers. It goes beyond that to create additional, flexible new ways for developers to meet environmental standards. In return for meeting specific environmental and climate resiliency criteria, developers may receive such “rewards” as development waivers or bonuses. This is our way of enticing developers to be ever-more climate friendly than they would be otherwise, within a defined structure of waivers and rewards that still fit our vision for our community. 

• This incentive structure is a menu of different landscape and infrastructural elements that provide options that can be tailored to different building and site conditions. These include:

  • Planted areas

  • Different types of plantings (mulch, groundcovers, shrubs, trees, preservation of mature trees)

  • Green roofs

  • Vegetated walls

  • Permeable paving

I also offered some clarifications to frequently asked questions: 

• Would Green Score allow developers to exceed height/story maximums? 

  • No, incentives or waivers earned through Incentive Zoning or Green Score are still constrained by total height maximums. 

• Does Green Score regulate building energy efficiency standards? 

  • No, Green Score is a separate process from building energy efficiency standards. Medford has already adopted the State Specialized Energy Code.

After public comment, we approved the zoning ordinance amendment with the CDB’s recommendations. 

We took up the draft City Charter. This was the draft that had been given to the Governance Committee by the Charter Review Committee; workshopped, debated and amended; referred to Committee of the Whole and further debated and amended; and then referred out of Committee. We voted to approve this draft and refer it to the Mayor. (At this stage, the amended draft still called for 4 district Councilors and 5 at-large Councilors – the switch back to 8-3 was made later in the process.)  

We reviewed the draft schedule for the FY26 Budget Process, which began with preliminary (nonbinding) budget requests from City Councilors on March 18; and we tabled two final resolutions to the following regular meeting. 

We adjourned at 12:30am.