Pages
Stay In Touch
More
© 2021 The Somerville Times. All rights reserved.
The Somerville Board of Aldermen Committee on Land Use, and the Somerville Planning Board, invite all interested community members to a joint Public Hearing on the adoption of a new Somerville Zoning Ordinance. The Hearing will take place on Tuesday, October 30, at 6 p.m. in the East Somerville Community School auditorium, 50 Cross Street. The new ordinance would supercede the current ordinance as originally adopted in 1990. Public comments will also be accepted by mail to OSPCD, Planning Division, 93 Highland Avenue, Somerville, MA 02143; by fax to 617-625-0722; or by email to planning@somervillema.gov.
The City’s Planning Division staff introduced the new proposed ordinance to the BOA and the Planning Board at a joint meeting on October 16, 2018. The video of the meeting is available at www.somervillezoning.com, and will be useful for viewing prior to the public hearing.
Copies of the ordinance and maps are available online at www.somervillezoning.com. Copies of the ordinance and maps are also available for review in the Office of Strategic Planning and Community Development, located on the third floor of City Hall, 93 Highland Avenue.
Individuals with disabilities who need auxiliary aids and services for effective communication, written materials in alternative formats, or reasonable modifications in policies and procedures, in order to access the programs and activities of the City of Somerville or to attend meetings, should contact Nency Salamoun, at 617-625-6600 x2323 or NSalamoun@somervillema.gov.
If you found this article of interest, please consider sharing it.
This is everyone’s chance to talk about why high quality green and
open space in SomerVision has been a failure. Grass and plants and
trees do not pay residential and commercial property taxes, so if you
want a green park in your neighborhood, then you’ll need to fight for
it, and street by street if necessary. This new zoning might as well be
a construction map for developers of the different types of buildings
they can design within the new zoning rules[ which do pay property
taxes to a Mayor who has many debts to settle: GLX, infrastructure,
the new High School, etc], and where Somerville has very limited
space as a city which is already full of buildings. One of the problems
of this is that by the time the residential and commercial buildings
have been designated, and so too with the parking garages, there is
little valuable space left, and where developers and the City’s planning
and zoning people mull over fringes of green and open space to fill
the zoned percentage requirements for them. We end up with green
frames around buildings that have little use, possibly an area of a
street intersection or a sidewalk, and once in a while the fabled ‘pocket
park’ that George Proakis likes to talk about. And while congratulations
are to be given to George as the new Executive Director of OSPCD
after Mike Glavin’s retirement, and to Sarah Lewis also as the new
Director of Planning after George’s promotion by the Mayor, I do hope
that George gets a magic wand with his new position, and so those
pocket parks might be larger rather than smaller.
George and Sarah–it certainly appears–have earned their stripes
through years of diligent work, and they are both warm, affable,
people who are approachable. But I’d think that there will be days
when they do wish for magic wands, because determining high quality
green space of significant size is no easy task. This is going to require
other folks in the community to step up and be heard, or there will
be other days where that magic wand of George’s got mysteriously
lost, or was it that the Mayor had pocketed it when he walked past?
I agree that Somervision has been a failure.
It has been a failure because or Mark and his mindless followers like Matt.
You want to know what allows developers to make a real killing? the existing zoning that allows them to pretty much build what ever they want regardless of what it does to the neighborhood.
The new zoning would limit them to only build what fits the surrounding neighborhood.
Mark is right now running out the clock on zoning. Anyone who wasted their time going to all those meeting should be mad as hell at Mark, Matt and the rest of their followers in the Aldermanic chamber for this.
Anyone who thinks it is the Mayor and not the Aldermen who are in the pockets of developers should look at who is happy in tonight’s meeting.
It is all the worst of those who buy up houses and cram 20 people into a two family.
That is who has bought these Aldermen and they should all be challenged in next election if we really want to make this city better for those that actually live here instead of those who profit from it.
Got to agree mostly with DatGruntled. I’m not sure if it’s a pure monetary deal, but we have pay-to-play zoning and there’s a group of aldermen who’ve done everything they can to keep it in place. By pay-to-play I mean it takes cash to get anything done because nothing can be done by right. I’ve always figured aldermen don’t like it because it takes away their power to make or kill a project (even a basic home improvement). Looks like the 90-day clock for this will start on 11/16.
If they don’t pass this, they’ve all got to go.
Villenous, true, I do not know that there is an actual quid pro quo going on, but I have to wonder if it is that, or as you said they see that think that they have some other power with the current zoning.
But I am sure they have more of an interest in keeping these archaic rules than the mayor does, which makes me wonder why everyone thinks the mayor is the one in developer’s pockets when he is pushing for the change none of the developers wants and the aldermen are trying to keep things the way developers like it.
Agree with Villenous. they will not vote and they should all go for their total inability to make progress, but Our Revolution will still list all of them on their hand out at the polls and they will blindly be reelected.