##VIDEO ID:fgmjrh4sL-w## welcome to the uh zoning subcommittee of February 3rd 2025 all rise and salute the flag please I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands one nation unto God indivisible with liberty and justice for all here here here here here good even Mr director good evening counselors Tom scari 281 Broadway chief of planning Community Development um for once I will be brief um I had sent to all of you the changes recommended at the last meeting all of them um followed basically Verbatim what was in the slides that I presented at our last meeting with a few additions and I'll just outline those additions briefly um on page 70 or 27 there was a reference to sell towers as a form of payment to help support uh affordability and as Council McKenna had brought up at that meeting that is um prohibited in the city nor is it's something we want to look to encourage in the future so I would like to in addition to the track changes version that I presented on page 27 just eliminate reference to cell towers um and then wanted to discuss two other items that were um mentioned at the last meeting one of them was a discussion of I guess raising the height limit to seven stories in Shirley Avenue and other neighborhoods that was really just um a discussion of an a precedent example in another Community I believe the community was Somerville it was really a broader point about creating a affordable housing overlay District where if you have a project that is 100% affordable you basically get additional density bonuses and things like that um and so I just removed reference to that seven story um example in Somerville because that was never the point the point was about creating overlays or it's a little bit easier administratively to uh approve affordability projects um but besides that it was basically what we discussed at the last meeting and I'll uh hold my comments and answer any questions you might have councilor Gino SAA thank you Mr President yeah Mr chairman Tom um thank you I'm one of the people that you spoke to today um what I would like to know is what we will be voting on tonight I want it in your words are we voting on this plan or are we voting to do what the vote would be to adopt the plan um at which point it would then go to the state for its approval so if the plan was adopted that would basically create Safe Harbor from any 40b development that comes in where a developer says well we want to circumvent or kind of leap over your local zoning ordinance because we have affordable housing within our project and you haven't met your 10% goal um that's the only thing that would be approved tonight so as mentioned before um the community preservation act that additional sech charge on property taxes that would not only take a vote of the council it would then take a referendum of residents in the city to approve it all the zoning changes would have to go in front of the planning board and the City Council in the future not anytime soon and that's not our intent so today would really just approve the use of this tool box and then as to how we use the tools and when we use them that would be ultimately at the discretion of uh the council in the future and each section would be taken up separately in the future right correct we we wouldn't take this all as one package I think they're all pretty complex issues maybe with the exception of zoning when we do want to take it on it might be good to take the whole package on but neighborhood by neighborhood um you know not holistically in one big vote that's it's too complicated clearly based off some of the discussions we've had thank you you're welcome councilor aeno thank you Mr chairman thank you Mr scosi I know you've come here several times and uh thank you for your patience um so as I just want to Echo what um councilor sya said uh this plan is to uh relieve the Spectre of these 40b developers and I know uh councelor Zam buo had said uh that the chances of that were unlikely and you kind of agreed with them uh but the chances are not zero so this plan gets voted in every section of this plan needs further discussion votes zoning subcommittee nothing that we do tonight puts this thing in in in action that's correct okay and one thing I I the parking lot the municipal parking lot on Central Avenue I know that was a suggestion as a good place for affordable housing I know in the Broadway master plan uh that plan identified that parking lot as integral to the parking along Broadway for the businesses so those two plans seem to kind of contradict each other um could you speak about that yeah so I think there's always competing interests in the work that we do and part of the effort of planning is not just to create the Visionary 10 20e plan but do the work in between balancing those various interest so I think if we were and that's a big if if we were to look at the Central Avenue lot as a Redevelopment opportunity for Housing Development we'd have to consider not just what's called out in the plan about senior housing um and or uh the Senior Center Parking rather and making sure we maintain that but also parking for the entire business Corridor so as it stands today that parking lot is severely underutilized um as an economic development opportunity for the businesses along Broadway if even as we continue in our Redevelopment efforts it continues to be that way maybe we can balance these competing interests and decide that it's worthwhile moving forward with Redevelopment that doesn't retain all of the parking maybe we decide we want all of it but I think ultimately that would be an RFP that would go in frontal a council where we could all talk about together how we want to balance those shared interests thank you very much I'm all set Mr chairman thank you councelor uh Council y m thank you Mr chairman uh Tom um what are the states affordability goals through R the states affordability goals are the same across board in any Community which is 10% of the housing stock being set aside is deed restricted affordable this may be a question you don't have an answer to but um how many units have been built in general in the past since your tenure in terms of affordable or or just across the board I don't want to flub on an answer in front of you all okay we can come back to that yeah um maybe you send me any followup email there uh how many units affordable have been built since your tenure built and occupied I I don't think any at this time we've had a few permitted but haven't been billt yet how many have been parented about 50 uh what how what's our progress to goal on the 10% there that you mentioned you say that again progress to goal um affordability we've got about 750 units that are needed to close the gap on affordability and and we have 50 in the permitting um so 700 how many sorry right 7 how many sorry 700 about 750 750 and 50 and so that puts us at what percentage we're at about 7% right now okay and do section8 or um housing go count towards those those units any Section 8 vouchers they travel with the person they don't uh stay with the property so they're not considered part of the 10% affordability if in order to qualify for that it needs to be deed restricted for a period of 30 years or more and how about rever housing or federal some of our federal housing stock the Rev Housing Authority properties comp uh comprise the majority of our of deed restri affordable housing stock does that and that's so that's those are all deed restricted 30 years in some cases in perpetuity so all of those um qualify as uh affordable under the state's guidelines for 7% great thank you thank you councelor councel novski thank you Mr chairman uh Tom thank you and I appreciate you adjusting what you did after we talked last week um but the way I look at this I know it was mentioned by councelor agenzio and councilor soya that um you know I'm not looking at this as a vote to do anything like you said I'm looking as a management plan that we're we agree to look at it and pick out things as people want to do things as we go along and now will all the zoning changes come have to come through us or all the votes come to us or any through zba they would all go in front of both the city council and the planning board uh with the exception of a few scattered non- zoning items so there's one that talks about utilizing tax title properties and developing those as affordable um we don't I guess the vote that would be needed there would be to declare them as Surplus at a later date but in terms of using that as a tool we we could start that one almost immediately I don't know if um the president can would answer this too but any of the vet vetan affordable housing units with V with v vouchers areth they considered part of the affordable housing package if if it's a voucher it travels with the person not the property there are cases though like R Housing Authority where you might have a deed restricted property that the tenant is also using a voucher to help further support the rents but um it you always have to think about the property itself not the person do you know of any of the um units at 123 shirely have in that affordable package I believe they are okay thank you Mr President do you have something no oh thank you Council McKenna Jan mck McKenna counselor uh W counselor um I just need a question um so you talked about Central Parking and may be down the line putting um affordable housing in there there are people that live there um there are streets two streets um very maybe two or three houses on each Street uh but those are people that live in that parking lot do you have any plans on what you would do for those people it's a good question so I you know I think the goal would be utilizing setbacks and design principles to to make sure that there are step downs from uh the abutters if that was something we would undertake um some of you may have seen we had actually an award-winning student presentation about a year and a half ago that looked at that site and considered the possibilities there um I think often when we think of Housing Development we always go right to that like five over two um large construction which can be kind of if if you're right next to a single family home can feel pretty um overpowering and I think in that development that student project we had they they were actually looking at Town Homes and three families and opportunities to kind of step down the closer you got to Residents that feel of the impact and then as you're further away and closer to the Broadway Corridor having sort of a a gradient in height as which is similar to I think a lot of the things counselor that you've done in the Shirley Avenue neighborhood I think that's the approach we'd take from a design standpoint so just one more question I've had some residents call me I mean they're very uh they're in fear of uh the city taking their houses by eminent domain can you say that that you're not the city is not going to do that we absolutely won't do that not even a consideration thank you thank you Mr Mayor thank you Mr chair um I just wanted to bring up a little bit of a story and uh I wanted to thank Tom for putting all this work together uh and make sure the the the zoning board understands and through your chair to the body um this process has been undergone for almost a year and a half now and it is just out of study much like the Broadway master plan a Broadway master plan had U there was some Greenery in the middle of Broadway right around rid and um Walgreens and then there was a lot of scuttlebutt online is a city going to build this massive housing at R Aid and and B and Walgreens um the city in in in since I've been born and since many of you have been alive has not built one single house uh at times developers do build on properties uh and Right Aid is owned by a private developer a private uh entity and so is uh Walgreens to the point where Right Aid uh was just came in front of us that they were going to be looking to sign another uh local pharmacy which is great it's great for the community uh these are just um Tom's an urban planner uh and he went to school for Urban Design and this is what they do they plan and implementation is a whole another thing um so he's just presenting to you what what is very much in my office from the amberino administration from the Kal Administration from the oral Administration from the Rizzo Administration all of these plans most I would say 95% of all of these plans that are sitting in binders in my back office still have dust on them and have yet to be opened or are barely have barely been touched um this is just about staying ahead to give a road map if there was a group like an hym that came came in and said hey we would be interested in doing this well he has a little bit of a menu of potential options you could have but you still have to go through all of these processes uh today just before this meeting we had 55 55 students from Harvard Y in this very chamber uh and they're going down Squire Road as a school project Harvard students uh going down our Squire Road Rivier the beautiful community of Rivier welcomed all of them and we greeted them to talk about what if they were to do a study what they would want to see in their pie and sky view of ska Road they're going to present this they're going to go through their professors each one of them is have different angles that they're interested in and they're going to present it to the city they may even present it to this very body and that may go on a pile of uh paper on the back of an office at some point in time we may Implement some of it but all of it and everything that Tom has uh talked to you about every single piece of it will have to continue to come back to this body and to be further adopted and I just hope that you understand the work that he's put into this this is not just a halfhazard here you go and by no means un and I say this unfortunately because I think that we'd be in a better place if the city did do a little bit more when it came to affordable housing the city isn't isn't really much of a good Builder we just don't build very well we build good schools and we build a few good municipal buildings and DPW facilities but we haven't really been much of a development company and I don't really want to be either so I just want to make sure you know that Tom has the best intentions and ultimately you'll have the full authority to make sure that any of these uh future intentions would go through you thank you thank you Mr Mayor um I'm not sure do I need per permission to speak from the chair as the chairman I don't think so but um a couple of things uh uh I don't have a a big problem with this first piece of this except that it opens the door for the second piece which I have a lot of problem with I think there's some major legal issues here um I'm not sure it's legal to uh uh well I don't want to get into the details but there there are many legal issues now I'm not a lawyer I probably played one for 25 years here on TV but I I do know zoning I do know uh quite a bit about what we can and can't do with an existing special perimeter and so forth and so on so there's some of those issues tied to this so I'm going to ask my colleagues that we hold both of these in committee until we get the answers I'm going to be looking for legal opinions I'm going to be looking for a financial opinions there uh some of the implications on what has happened here uh what what could happen here uh affects future financing now uh you know there's talk about suff Downs here I'm I'm not sure it really is part of this but whether it is or not that that proposes uh you know I was very against the high school going a Wonderland and I lost that battle but the bottom line is what we did was take the future revenues from suffk Downs to pay for this high school now if they're in Jeopardy in any way that's the high school in Jeopardy so there's there's a lot here and and I'm going to ask uh my colleagues on the committee to go with me to hold these both in committee until uh the next uh till we can get these uh couple of opinions and I'll I'll speak to them verbally uh before they before it goes to committee Mr chairman counc y yeah motion to report favorably so what do we vote on the motion okay so we're voting on the first housing production plan that's it right as amended yes BR shall the zoning subcommittee offer a favorable recommendation on the city of River's housing production plan as amended Council agenzio yes yes Council greo SAA yes yes councel hero yes yes Council noeli yes yes and chairman zambuto no no the housing production plan as amended has received a favorable recommendation for the full city council thank you next item is a request of the chief of planning and Community Development relative to the adoption of a Housing Development incentive Zone and proposed activities at Subic Downs the adoption of a Housing Development incentive Zone and proposed activities at Green Street Shirley Avenue and the authorization of Mayor Patrick MKE Jr to execute and Implement Housing Development tax exemption agreements for Housing Development incentive projects in each respective Zone Mr director good evening um once again I'm here to talk about a housing program but distinct from the housing production plan that we just spoke to um this is a tool called the hdp program the Housing Development incentive program that is a state tool that is looking to promote market rate housing in Gateway cities throughout the Commonwealth it's a tool only available to gate the 26 Gateway cities in the state and it's a two-prong solution the first is a local tax agreement otherwise known as a tax increment exemption which allows a um City to um exempt a portion of the taxes on the value created on a project um for 5 to 20 years from 10 to 100% of the value added on a project so to put it simply if you have a piece of land that's valued at $100 today and a developer builds it out now it's valued at $1,000 we can choose to exempt that n $900 for a period of time from uh five to 20 years 10 to 100% of that value so it's basically utilizing a local tax agreement as a way to incent more housing production um the second uh portion of this tool is a state tax credit which is capped at 2 and a. half million or 25% of the qualified project expenditures um on a Housing Development that is a state tax credit that they can only get if a local tax agreement is executed first um so the plans that you have in front of you there there're actually two H dip plans and they have very different and unique goals within them so the first is for the suffk Downs development recognizing that it is the singular most transformative project in the city's um past and future um from an economic development standpoint from a housing standpoint resiliency quality of life standpoint and of course as Council Zeno had mentioned the connections to um a lot of important Municipal needs in the long run this project helps to make all that happen 100% Union built includes tens of millions of dollars of on and offsite improvements hundreds of millions really um both on-site and offsite things like the haris street pedestrian connection things like Bell Circle brown circle all those offsite improvements are going to be um done as part of this project in addition to Beachmont square and everything else that's happening in that project um so this is a significant project uh that we would like to use this tool as a way to spark the development of that next phase of suff downs uh ptical and so that's one portion of our H dip plan that's one distinct H dip plan the second one is looking at Shirly Avenue and Green Street which are those two districts that were approved about a year ago to make us compliant with MBTA communities it was a 40R a smart growth District the idea being that we would use 40R as a tool to provide density bonus and and um other improvements to streamline affordable housing permitting in the city and as of today we haven't seen any utilization of either of those two districts because often they're working through the zba or through the city council special permit process to approve um projects where they don't have that same affordability requirement so with this plan we would like to use it as a tool to incent more affordable development and more use of that 40-hour smart growth plan um I would uh ask the chair if it would be appropriate considering you know of these two districts I think we can all agree the suffect Downs of it all is perhaps the most important of it and we have Tom O'Brien and Doug man here from hm that would be willing to speak about why this tool is important to them and their development and just give the council an update on where we stand so again I don't have a problem with that but I do have a problem with passing this because of the legal issues and and that are that are out there and I you can give me all the insurances you want they're not enough because I I frankly don't believe that you can open up a special permit to insert this now I you know again U when I'm shown that maybe I don't believe I will be uh but uh I I don't I certainly won't have a problem with hym giving a presentation um but I'm not sure how that affects this we already know that hym is and will be the probably the best development the city ever gets uh but uh bottom line is it doesn't eliminate my concerns at this point so so I have my intention is not not to approve this section tonight um and um for all the reasons I stated and and I think it would be irresponsible to pass this without getting the answers that we need but I I certainly am looking forward to a presentation from hm so the one thing I want any any counselors want to speak on this councel renel thank you Mr chairman Mr selski exactly what would we be voting voting on tonight authorizing the mayor to enter into negotiations thank you for the question that's what I was just about to say um so similar to the HPP where the plan was approved but then the nuts and bolts would come back to the council at a future date the same case here so this would approve us to be able to submit to the office of Housing and livable communities our H dip plan you know depending on how quickly the state operates could be 30 to 60 days where they then approve the plan and then they approve after hopefully you will the authorization to start negotiating tax agreements with um this is the only developer within any of our H dip districts that actually is looking to take advantage of this tool today um so if it was approved at the local level and then the state level we would then enter in NE to negotiations and we would bring back to um the city council a plan of exactly what we would be looking at and I would say as we're submitting the hdp plan I'd be happy to submit clarifying questions to hlc about the legality of approving uh an H dip deal after a special permit's already been issued I can tell you from precedent I'm not um an attorney either I sometimes play one on R TV as well but um I am my previous time in Fitchburg I had approved an hdp district and had several projects that had been approved by the planning board which is a special permit granting Authority and then at a later date came in front of the city council with um a tax deal and I think I think that's fairly common in terms of precedent for this tool because if you think about it the other way if a tax deal was approved before the plan was actually approved by uh a planning board or a city council you would wonder what exactly you're approving because you don't know the the general outline of what the development would look like they might bring with you a proposal for an 80 unit development but who knows if that would actually get approved so you really can only understand what the impacts would be and what the possibilities would be of that agreement if you know what's actually approved in the first place so we we would be establishing the district tonight correct thank you Council novski thank you Mr uh chairman um I think we ought to approve the district tonight you know and then come back later and talk about different locals that we want to attack our our approve later but I think establishing the district now would be a a major point and then come back later and uh and do the uh diff you know and work from there so unless anybody has anything to say I would like councelor uh Gino sa shut me off okay excuse me coun you said in case anybody has anything else to say I called on another counselor I I apologize if you think I cut you off I certainly didn't cut you off on purpose are you all said okay I just I just want to reiterate that question that was asked by um councelor agenzio we are only voting on nego so you can have a negotiation with the mayor's office hym can have a negotiation with the mayor's office in your yourself right this is what we're voting on that and to send the plan to the state for the state's approval at which point we could then start negotiating okay so if the state approves it now it's going to come back to us or is it a done deal after the state approves it oh it'll absolutely come back to us so that when the state approves it it then authorizes the mayor's office and my office to enter into discussions with um any developers that want to utilize this tool and of course right now hym so if the state approves it it comes back to us and say we um we have to vote on it again we can shoot it down at that point you couldn't okay thank you with all due respect to the to the director I want to put on the record here tonight that I do not want to vote as chairman of the zoning committee I I urge my colleagues not to vote uh in favor of this until we get the legal issues solved now it's easy to say the director did some stuff in fitzburg and and all the other good stuff and everybody has an opinion I want a legal opinion I want a fiscal opinion from our professionals and that's what I'm asking for here tonight I just want to go on the record that I think it's Reckless to pass this without knowing those issues Council s Gino well if we approve this tonight can't you get your legal opinion from the city solicitor and everything during the negotiation the bottom line is you're approving and endorsing something that may not be legal that's all I'm telling you I'm the chairman of this committee that's my opinion I'm only one person I'm it's only one man's opinion but it's a serious opinion and all my opinions in 25 years have been well reasoned and I I offer that out and uh the committee is is is uh at its Leisure to do what it wants however I caution that I believe it's a mistake uh I'm not always right but I I was I thought I was wrong once but I was mistaken uh so but uh I would ask that this stay in committee so I I'll ask for a roll call on that until we receive the Legal Financial opinions uh Etc two oh no no I'm okay yeah y yep now it's good it did it on its own I don't M Mr chairman as as I was talking before I said um the first part establishing the diff is not the part that you are talking about whether it's legal or not the part that you are talking about is whether or not we give it to someone that's already established a an approval and I don't see anything wrong with establishing the district the H dip District now and then later on we can talk about what's legal as far is who they're going to give it to and how they're going to give it so I would make a motion at this time that we approve the adoption of the H dip uh zone is that what is Zone The hdp Zone and for at least establish a zone is a big package and then and then later we can come back and talk about who we're going to give it to but at least we get the ball rolling with the state and to get things approved so I make that motion that we approve the H dip District so the council makes a substitute motion to my motion to send this to committee so the substitute motion goes first on Council noeli substitute motion to report out the Housing Development incentive Zone and proposed activities at suff Downs Housing Development incentive Zone and proposed activities at Green Street Shirley Avenue and the authorization of the mayor to execute and Implement Housing Development tax exemption agreements for Housing Development incentive projects in each respective Zone with a favorable recommendation to the full city council councel agenzio yes yes councel greo SAA yes yes councelor hero yes yes councel nelski yes yes and chairman zambuto no no the H dip zones and the authorization will be forwarded to the full city council with a favorable recommendation uh I'm going to allow a presentation of H H ym uh you've got you've got 20 minutes if you want it well I'll try hard not to use that but I I'll try and move through this as quickly as we can we're just waiting for this to get hooked up to the um to the screens here I think for one second while we're doing that just a um my name is Tom O'Brien um with the hym Investment Group um this is I don't know how many times we've appeared before this body but we really appreciate you folks making time um for us and then um uh what we're trying to do is hopefully give you a quick update on on sub it down and see if that lines up one minute did it disconnect down below here we go I think we're going to Connected here hey counselor spe for e Mr chairman I can just speak if you want um and then we can later send this presentation uh to everybody is that okay I can oh it will okay great go okay go right ahead Mr O'Brien that's okay and I'm we're happy to we can send this to everybody and people can can look at it so um I think our purpose tonight was to just kind of give everybody an update I I you know for a lot of us we spent so much time on this transaction um and there's a lot that we take for granted in terms of what we know and where we are but but I would um uh suggest that you folks have so much on your plate you have a lot going on you're very busy so we're very happy that to take this time to kind of give you an update on everything that we've been doing and all that's been happening so the first to just just to reminder we acquired the site in 2017 and so remember at that time uh the site was basically an abandoned horse racing track the horse racing only happened a few times a year and uh in the the portion of the track that that was in rever were the uh were the horse the old horse barns so those horse barns uh at that point in time uh were um you know important to the overall operation of the track but were not a key part of the overall valuation of the of the track uh and so at that time the the track paid approximately uh 3 $50,000 or so in uh taxes property taxes to the city of R um and uh and as we went through the whole process of of approving and and going through that uh that work uh it's important to point out that we've spent probably at this point close to uh $500 million of uh of uh of capital so far on the site to add value uh and to do the work necessary to advance the the the uh the development uh among those uh those pieces that we've uh built into uh certainly we built the um uh the project known as Amaya that actually is an additional $250 million so that that's not in the $500 million but all the other pieces around that the parks the roadways the uh the work to create the outdoor concert venue uh the work that we do to to build out all the infrastructure National Grid all those sorts of things that's caused an investment of about as I said about $500 million into the into the site uh and all of those things have brought a tremendous amount of uh uh activity into the site uh as we move forward we demolished all of the existing uh barns uh we built all those onsite roadways that you know well built uh Beachmont Plaza the open space that you can uh see there uh did all the infield work uh for the stage at suff Downs uh did the installation of the new wasburn Avenue uh climate barrier burn which is a a key part of uh protecting the entire site uh we did the winthrip Avenue Beach uh R Beach Parkway uh intersection uh did all those different pieces and then we've got another uh about 30 to $32 million of work that's going to happen this year of more infrastructure work as we as we go forward Amaya we're very proud of that uh we opened that in 2024 it's been very successful uh We've leased almost half of the 475 units at this point we're really pleased about how that's going so far but I think the key thing uh for folks to remember is Amaya is just one building so the premise of the entire site is that we would build a community and then we would build these buildings um in you know multiple points at a time and get to the point where we could have more people living there take this abandoned horse racing track and make it a place that's active so the the key next step for us is to get this next building underway uh the the work so far that we did for Amaya produced about 750,000 Union construction hours uh about 375 uh uh you know specific jobs uh working during construction at at Key moments uh during that period of time so about 375 people at Peak moments working on that project on on that site uh it's like a $250 million investment as I as I suggested before um this year that building just that building alone will pay almost $2 million of of property taxes um uh into the city coffers um here's what's next um we're working to get a hotel in the ground as well and so we have about 150 key nationally branded Hotel uh that's due to begin uh this year uh probably late summer early fall of this year September of 2025 um the um I'm sorry could could start in in uh July of 2 sorry Start in September 2025 and then in July our hope is to start picco which is the next 475 uh unit uh Residential Building uh on its way and then as I said earlier about $30 million of infrastructure that uh that we'll take on um if I could um a little bit more on the hotel the hotel is about 70,000 gross square feet 150 rooms as I said projected to have a rooftop bar which we're really excited about uh we're doing this in partnership with a group that is a established Hotel developer and owner and operator uh and very excited that that will start this year in 25 and deliver in the spring of 2027 just on the hotel in terms of tax revenue uh to give you a sense of that uh the combination of real property and personal property taxes the Massachusetts room occupancy tax the local room uh local option room occupancy tax that would come uh to the city meals tax uh meals tax you know specifically for rev the the total piece uh of taxes that would be paid by this hotel in general across you know all of those pieces including the park to the Commonwealth uh is just over a million5 and uh just under a million dollars of that comes to rever in terms of the room tax to rever the property tax uh and uh the meals tax Rie year um in general for for us for suff Downs for right now as I told you we started off paying less than $400,000 of taxes in 2017 uh as of right now uh as we get into 2025 before we begin Portico uh we paid over $10 million of of property taxes um so far which is uh which is great with Portico underway uh you know we we push those uh total amount of taxes uh in the hotel uh to close to about $4 million um per year which is uh great in addition to that remember that we also pay fees uh perating fees uh the uh water and sewer fees all those different pieces uh and so fees paid today we paid about $4 million of total fees to date uh and then an additional projected fees from Portico of almost another $4 million it's a big building so in total uh almost $8 million of of total fees to be paid uh to uh to the city all of these what they really mean I think this is the key number that we would have projected on these slides had they been up on the screen is the total real estate taxes have increased about 595 per so that's 595 per between fy7 and fy2 the one thing I would say is you know we did a calculation ourselves in the last couple of weeks to say if we build out this site in the next 10 to 15 years which we'd like to do um then um you know we we uh project that the taxes could increase to over $70 million per year which is a a big part toward uh making our contribution to the high school the the reason we're here today is the environment that we're in right now where interest rates hav gone up so quickly so uh precipitously that's really affected this next building and so what we need is some assistance the governor and lieutenant governor have helped us with some assistance to get that help get that building going in the uh the economic development bill and the the um housing Bond bill but we need this H dip to in order to make that piece go so we appreciate everybody's vote tonight giving us the chance to kind of go to the next step on that and then we'll come back before the city council with the mayor's okay uh be uh with the actual plan for how we uh could Implement an hdp program to get the Portico building underway I'm happy to answer any questions that people might have um for me any counselors no questions councelor renio thank you Mr chairman thank you uh Mr O'Brien and U in future construction you're still committed to 100% uh union labor we are I think that's very important to this that's I'm sorry I didn't mention that but yes absolutely I'm joined by members of The Building Trades here tonight um we are it's um uh the the the math on these projects is a challenge for us and so that's uh in large part why the AG dip is is needed for us to make the math work I just I I know it's it needs very little reminding for for you folks but the Amaya building that we just completed uh we believe is the only 100% Union built residential project uh in revier uh in fact just you can look at it the other side of the Blue Line tracks from our project is a a project that is not built you know with with Union Labor uh but we are commitment is to that um and our commitment is uh is strong on Portico to get this underway we want to do this in partnership with um with the Building Trades thank you very much thank you Mr chairman Mr chairman uh coun I have a m Tom thank you so much for joining us um so you you're going to go enter into these negotiations after the council meeting possibly with the mayor um can you just walk me through a little bit of what uh so 10 years ago you came before this Council and you negotiated about 10 years ago not quite 10 about half of us were here some of us Wen I know that the chairman was still here at the time um how many affordable units did uh we do uh for or or Workforce housing units did uh does the whole project have so at the time uh the city council and review so we actually came before this body in 2018 um after a a a well structured I think community process we had a uh we had a a group of people who met uh from the the city citizens and elected officials and a variety of different folks who met on a regular basis and after going through that planning process I think we came before final vote of the uh of the city council in the last quarter of 2018 if I if that sounds right Mr chairman um the um uh and at that time the city council uh elected to approve a plan that did not have affordable units um uh in it so that that's the the plan that's approved we're not asking to reopen that that plan um on the Boston side two-thirds of the site this is your question counselor two-thirds of the site is in Boston on the Boston side um the uh the then policy in Boston was that 133% of the units built in Boston would be affordable uh to people who are I believe 85% of the area meeting income um so that would be uh teachers firefighters you know um um you know folks like that who struggle to find housing that's affordable and then um we also pledged working with the then City councelor in Boston that um for additional amounts of public funds that we could raise on the Boston side that those could also go toward a contribution of a additional affordable housing Fund in in the community of East Boston thank you Tom I think that actually you answered all the questions I had with that response I appreciate that thanks in fact uh I think we insisted that would be no affordable at the time on the rever side uh that's correct and uh that's correct I would do that today yes so thank you yes any other councils have anything for Mr O'Brien okay that concludes the zoning uh subcommittee meeting for uh February 3rd thank you all