The agenda for the Cambridge City Council meeting on Monday, February 13, 2017, is posted on the City’s Open Meeting Portal. It is an unusually short agenda, perhaps because the deadline for submitting items was advanced by a day due to the snow storm. (Normally the deadline is 3:00 on the Thursday before the meeting; this week all items were due to the clerk by Wednesday at 3.) City buildings were closed on Thursday, and Friday is always a half day for city employees, so advancing the deadline was necessary to ensure the required public notice for the agenda. UPDATE: On Friday morning three supplemental items were added to the City Manager’s Agenda. I have added them to the list.
My summary of Monday’s agenda follows. In honor of Valentine’s Day I will try to use the word “love” as often as possible! (I love getting the agenda a day early and having a bonus snow day to write the summary.) Speaking of Valentine’s Day, I will chair an Economic Development Committee hearing at 10:00am to meet the NYC-based consultant (Larisa Ortiz) the city hired to conduct a Retail Strategic Plan. (It will be held at City hall Annex, not City Hall, due to a space conflicts.) That evening the mayor scheduled a roundtable meeting with the School Committee to discuss the school budget from 6-8pm at CRLS. Some people may not love that timing, or the fact that roundtables are not required to be recorded and televised.
City Manager’s Agenda
#1 Additional payment to CCTV: Cambridge Community Television (CCTV) receives 60% of the municipal access fees that Comcast pays the City each year. For FY17 that will total a little over $900K. There’s no love lost for Comcast and its stranglehold over most of us for broadband and cable service. I suppose the silver lining is that a sliver of the exorbitant fees we fork over every month goes to the City and CCTV. Given consumers’ desire for more affordable Internet service and heightened concerns over restrictive policies that may follow the appointment of Ajit Pai as FCC chair, I agree with Broadband Task Force member Saul Tannenbaum that a municipal broadband network is a critical public investment to ensure equitable access. Read Saul’s recent editorial.
#2 Food Pantry Grant: This item appropriates $15K of funding to the Cambridge Economic Opportunity Committee (CEOC) to stock its 11-member food pantry network. This small additional grant brings the total of the food contract with the CEOC to $151K. Food pantries are busier than ever. As the comprehensive Community Needs Assessment on last week’s agenda revealed, almost half of residents (43%) are financially insecure. In addition to its work staving off hunger, the CEOC also helps low-income residents access affordable housing, health care and public benefits, and offers free tax preparation services and financial coaching. Trivia question: What local chef branded the slogan “Food is love“? (Answer in the comments section below.)
#3 Funding for the Community Schools: This item allocates $190K in fee revenues from Community Schools back into the program, which will fund four additional weeks of programming. The twelve Community Schools, which are operated through the Human Services Department, offer after-school and extended day programs as well as activities during school breaks and summer vacation. Families love that affordable after-school enrichment programs are available in every elementary school.
#5 Central Square Restoration Zoning Petition: This items provides the amended text of the petition to re-zone the Central Square Business B Overlay District along Mass Ave. At the most recent Ordinance Committee hearing on the petition (on Feb. 2), we ironed out a few remaining concerns to everyone’s agreement. Rare for a discussion of an up-zoning petition, there was a lot of love in the room. The one remaining question is whether to include a provision that would require any “formula business” (essentially a chain or franchise retail store) to go through the Planning Board’s special permit review process. The City Solicitor has expressed concern about whether such a provision would withstand appeal, but the petitioner has made a strong case that the criteria are not so burdensome as to inhibit competition by prohibiting certain uses, and only to allow the Planning Board to set reasonable conditions for esthetics (facade, signage etc) that are appropriate for the Central Square Cultural District. This would replace the existing fast order food cap in Central Square, which has proven unworkable since takeout orders account for 20% or more of many restaurants’ sales. The Committee Report for our Feb. 2 Ordinance Committee hearing is also on this agenda, and gives more information on the petition.
Supplemental City Manager’s Agenda (added on 2/10):
#6 Planning Board memo on Inclusionary Zoning Ordinance: The Planning Board expresses its support for adopting the petition, which would increase the inclusionary housing requirement for large developments to 20%, effective June 30, 2017 (and to 15% in any interim period between passage and the end of June). The Planning Board suggests that the Council further consider: 1) setting an expiration date for “grandfathering” the exemption for PUDs to comply with the new requirement 2) reducing from 50K sf to 30K sf the size of project that triggers the requirement that 20% of the affordable floor area be family-sized (3BR) units; and 3) reconsidering whether the bonus square footage should count toward the threshold for requiring a special permit.
#7 CDD memo on Inclusionary Zoning Ordinance: This memo responds to a number of suggestions and questions that arose during our last Ordinance Committee hearing. The memo also responds to the Planning Board’s suggestions above. There is a chart that lays out the suggested changes and the recommended response. The changes to the petition that CDD supports are: 1) the inclusionary program would be evaluated annually and the requirement subject to re-evaluation no more than every 5 years; 2) require family-sized 3 BR units for projects of 30K sf by dividing total affordable dwelling area by 6K sf to calculate the number of 3 BR affordable units; 3) clarifying how inclusionary tenants can transfer (move to a different unit) within the same property; 4) requiring 30 days of public notice comment and a hearing before making any changes to inclusionary program procedures or standards for tenants; 5) counting the bonus floor area toward the threshold at which special permit review is triggered. CDD continues to defer to the City Solicitor’s opinion that PUD that have already received their special permits be exempt from the increase unless they apply for a major amendment to reduce the permitted amount of residential development or increase the amount of non-residential development in the PUD.
The Ordinance Committee has another hearing to discuss the inclusionary petition on Tues., Feb. 28 from 3-5pm. It will be televised.
#8 Rules for rebuilding houses destroyed by fire: This is a response to a policy order I sponsored asking whether non-conforming homes partially or wholly destroyed by fire can be rebuilt as they were rather than having to comply with the current zoning.Currently this would not be legal. This question arose in the aftermath of the massive fire in December in a neighborhood of mostly non-conforming structures. The staff’s recommendation is that we change the ordinance to allow owners to rebuild to the original specifications within 24 months.
Policy Orders
#1 Create a Tree Task Force: I sponsored the only policy order on the agenda: a request that the City Manager form a Tree Task Force to support the city’s arborist, DPW and other staff in their work to protect our tree canopy from the impact of climate change (heat and drought). This was inspired by conversations I’ve been having with members of Green Cambridge, whose online petition for a Tree Task Force has collected over 120 signatures. I love trees and wish everyone felt the same way; recently I learned that 20% of residents who were asked recently if they wanted a street tree planted in front of their property declined. A professor at the University of Calcutta has calculated the value of a tree over a 50-year lifetime as $193,250. Whatever the actual dollar value, no one can dispute that trees will be an even more critical public investment as our climate changes. Save the date: I’ve scheduled a Health and Environment Committee hearing to discuss our tree planting and protection efforts for Wed., April 26 at 3:00pm.
Committee Reports
#1 Sandwich Board Signs: I chaired a hearing of the University Relations and Economic Development Committee last month to discuss possible changes to the regulations and permitting process for sandwich board and A-frame signs on public sidewalks. We asked the staff to come back with recommendations for streamlining the application and approval process and for improving enforcement. I hope we can strike a balance between keeping sidewalks clear of obstructions and allowing retail businesses the flexibility to promote special offers. One sandwich board sign that I love is Central Square Florist’s, which changes daily with an offer of a free rose to a person whose first name is on the sign. Still waiting for “Jan.”
#2 Central Square Restoration Zoning Petition: This is the report on the last Ordinance Committee hearing we held on this petition (see CMA #5 above). If the petition passes, more housing will be built along Mass Ave and more people will come to love Central Square.
Public Comment and Viewing Meetings:
Public comment begins at 5:30 pm. Each person is allowed to speak for up to 3 minutes on any agenda item except for communications from other members of the public. You may call 617-349-4280 on Monday from 9:00 am to 3:00 pm to sign up to speak, or sign in when you arrive (before 6:00 pm). To submit written comments, please email council@cambridgema.gov and cc City Clerk Donna Lopez at dlopez@cambridgema.gov. Your comments will appear on the public record (under “Communications”) at the next regular Council meeting.
City Council meetings are televised on Channel 22-CityView and live-streamed on the City Council’s website. Recorded versions of all Council meetings may be found on the city’s Open Meeting Portal.