Good evening.

This is the housing and community development committee.

I am City Councillor at Large, Kristen Strozo.

Tonight is Tuesday, November 18th, 2025.

It is 632 p.m.

And we are in the subcommittee room broadcasting live in Somerville City Hall and also hybrid virtually.

Pursuant to chapter two of the Act of X of 2025, this meeting of the City Council Committee will be conducted via remote participation.

We will post an audio recording, audio video recording, transcript, or other comprehensive record of these proceedings as soon as possible after the meeting on the City of Somerville website and local cable access government channels.

Here.

Council Ewan Hampen.

Here.

Okay, we do have everyone here, so wonderful.

Thank you.

Our first agenda item is an approval of the committee minute minutes by the uh number two five one two two four.

And we please call my others call the role now.

Yep.

On item number 25 1224.

Um approval of this.

Okay.

Yes.

Uh Counselor Hart.

Yes.

Council and Swiss.

Yes.

Okay, that is all those in favor.

Uh thank you.

Okay, so the first item on our agenda order 240075 that the director of Office of Housing Stability appear before the Housing and Community Development Committee to discuss the current status of residents based and displacement and the number of households seeking rental assistance.

Uh typically over the years in HCD.

Come on in, where are you?

Okay, feel comfortable, Director.

Over the years in HCD, we've we've kept this as an ongoing agenda item.

This is a weekend every quarter or so check in and see what Office of Housing Stability is seeing and experiencing.

And what we should plan and fund for in the in the months and days to come.

So with that, I have uh blessing of having executive director of the Office of Housing Stability, Ellen Chapter.

Thank you very much to the chair for inviting me and to our new member of the council and to Ben Yuan Campin from afar.

Um I'm really glad to be able to come here before you today just to share a little bit about what we're seeing, some of which is good news.

Um the first thing, just in terms of volume to let you know the period that I looked at for this data for the most part was January 2025 to the end of September 2025.

And during that time, we had 637 unique Somerville households seeking assistance, sometimes households seek our assistance multiple times during the year, but those were unique households.

And about uh 49% were 312 of these households were at imminent risk of displacement.

And out of these, 118 had already received a notice to quit or court summons for eviction.

Um, about 41% of all our referrals recorded a monthly household income below 2,000, and within this, nearly one third recorded having no income whatsoever.

So that's kind of just a little look at the volume of the cases that are coming into our office, and then I'm going to talk to you a little bit about rental assistance and what we're seeing on the eviction front.

Um so first um for rental assistance, when push comes to shop through all this OHS assisted 102 unique families with obtaining rental assistance from federal, state, and um city resources.

This smaller amount, 42,674 was obtained through the state raft program.

And I will just note for those who may not remember that our rental assistance program here was really a more robust rental uh assistance program that was designed to kind of wrap around that state program and to fill in gaps and especially to be able to help with prospective rent if a person looked like in some reasonable period of time they would be increasing their income, or there'd be some other way for them to be sustainable.

So, all totaled our main rental assistance programs are administered by the community action agency of Somerville, CASS and the Somerville Homeless Coalition, and combined during this period um with both OHS cases and the other cases that they had more independently, 2,593,000 and 595 dollars, sorry, in the first nine months of 2025.

So this is obviously a fair amount of money and it is robust.

And one of the things that I'm sure we'll be talking about in the next year to come is what are the various ways that we can sustain um some of the funding for this program, even if not all.

And I will just say over the last few years, we have been tightening the restrictions a little bit as we looked at not having the same kind of guaranteed revenue sources from free cash and from ARPA and other sources that we had had previously.

So and then from there, just eviction data.

And I wanted to walk you through this because I'm really proud of this.

So first you can see we looked at the number overall of eviction cases.

This was to through the end of October, so a 10-month period instead of a nine-month period.

And there were 167 eviction cases filed.

And what I do want to say for those that aren't as familiar with the eviction process, A, it's always bad if a case gets filed because then you have a case in court.

B, there's now eviction record ceiling thanks to a long effort by housing advocates, so that in some cases we can get those evictions taken off.

But there are many more cases filed than actually result in eviction.

And I think that's an important thing to understand.

So the measure that we look at most frequently to really assess who is really getting evicted here as opposed to a case being filed.

And there were 42 executions filed during this time.

And an execution is the document that essentially tells the constable, the judge has given you the authority to move this person's right.

So it's the final stage of the eviction process.

And what I did here was to compare what our rate of executions to the rate of executions in neighboring cities and towns.

And I broke it down to look at it by poverty population, because obviously areas that have a more dense poverty are going to have a lot more eviction cases because about 85% of all cases are for non-payment of rent.

So with that, what I really am proud of is that as you can see, Somerville has a rate of 4.1 executions per 1,000 households in poverty.

Maldon is more than three times that amount.

Medford is 50 over 50% more than that.

We are significantly under Cambridge, not as big of a difference because they also have some pretty ample rental assistance and other anti-displacement measures.

And we are about one third of what the rate is in Waltham.

So from my perspective, this is evidence that the programs that we have and the investments that we make are working.

We would like to see that number be zero, but that's not ever going to happen for a lot of reasons.

So yeah, so that was a little bit to tell you about where we are with evictions.

And I know that Yasmin had shared that one of the things you were interested in too with what we know about the federal landscape, how that federal landscape is impacting things now.

And what I will say is the single thing that is most concrete that has just happened comes within the realm of what we call COC funding or continuum of care funding.

And this is primarily the funding that is directed towards things getting people off the streets and into housing.

So you may have heard all of you of the notion of housing first, right?

There's been for the last, oh God, 10, 15 years a big surge in a movement around housing first, saying that we first we focus on permanent housing, then we're in a better shape to get people into treatment, mental health services, whatever else they need to stabilize.

So HUD just issued its new NOFA.

I think it went out about two days, which is a request for funding for its the next annual allotment of its continuum of care funding.

And what has been made clear is only 30% of all funding can go towards permanent housing of any kind, including the kinds of Section 8 housing vouchers that we have been using that summer homelessness has been using to get people out of Davis Square and into housing.

And what is really scary about this, I did create this chart that I didn't create this, sorry, this came to me and I put it in this chart here to show if you look, we are in the what's called the balance of state, where it says Massachusetts balance of state COC, and the home the homeless coalition is the main convener for our area in that continuum of care.

But if you essentially look, the funding for current the PSH means permanent supportive housing and RRH means rapid rehousing.

So those are like for security deposits, first month's rent, all of that, and the actual vouchers that keep people housed that pay for their rent.

The amount that we will be able to use for that purpose is going to go down from 27 plus million to less than 10 million.

So cut by almost two-thirds.

And again, they're not cutting the funding, but they are redirecting and reorienting so that the funding can really only be used for supportive services, the other 70% supportive services, mental health treatment, substance abuse, et cetera.

They also made clear that none of it can be used for homelessness prevention at this time.

So the pot has really, really changed.

And I, you know, I would just say for if anybody does look at it, it's it's it's an incredibly ironic document because on the one hand, it sets these goals and the goals are to get people off the streets and to make sure that there's nobody living, but essentially it's focused on clearing encampments and forcibly putting people into treatment and then sort of putting them away in shelter somewhere where people won't see.

And that's my editorial comment on it.

But that's basically what it is saying will be funded and how they intend to pursue COC going forward.

So, you know, my guess is that this is gonna mean that there's some population of I know that it will mean there's some population in Somerville that have these Section 8 vouchers, and I think you know, we'll yet to be seen if there will be a lawsuit or any legal challenges or what will happen, or if they'll actually be yanking those subsidies away from people.

And then the question is what do we do?

What do we do as a city?

And again, you know, there's so many needs, um, and and only ultimately only so much revenue.

So having to figure out how, as a city we make priorities about how we spend our housing dollars, is really challenging.

So I think the only other thing that I will just add that isn't on this forum, because Emily, especially because this is your first meeting here, is we do have, and you may have heard of this, but a robust municipally municipally funded voucher program, and very proud to say we're the first of its kind in the country of the way who we are funding and how we are funded.

We're tied with the public schools, and for the most there's a big priority given to families with children in the public schools who are not eligible for federal housing due to immigration status.

So we have all there's 29 in the 30 families housed.

There's one person who we're trying to relocate, but again, this is going to be something we do have funding through FY27, but we are already contracting for money through then and are going to need to be thinking very creatively and very quickly about how to how to shore up those accounts because these are meant to be permanent vouchers.

There's no expectation that these households are going to be able to increase their income sufficient to pay market rents.

So that's been a really good program.

And I'll say one more thing since I said last, which some of you know, but we did have the first in its state pilot for something called the older adult bridge program.

And this is a program which we were funded uh through PAD Earmark through PAD Senator Jalen.

We're very grateful for at 100,000 last year in FY25.

And we did find out finally that the governor had released funds for FY27.

So the FY26, so there's now 220,000 for this year.

So we are going to be admitting new people into the program.

Um and this really is for seniors who fixed income over six-year-old or they are applying for public or subsidized housing, and they have a reasonable shot within a year, 18 months of getting into a unit that we will pay to keep them in their homes, collaborate around with council on aging and other resources to get them whatever kinds of other services they need, but then allow them to avoid homelessness and transition smoothly into that permanent affordable housing.

So we're really excited to be opening that up again because when you have a program but it's fully subscribed, it's great to talk about, but it doesn't help new people who are you know who are out there needing help.

So I'm available for any questions.

Um, but that's an update.

Thank you.

Uh a little bit of the floor up uh counselors.

Do you have any uh counselor Young Campbell?

Yeah, thank you, madam chair.

Um, and through you, thank you, Director Shachter.

Um, as always.

Um, I guess I have two questions.

Um we talk about these federal funding cuts.

Can you just help me?

The numbers that we're seeing on this memo, is this like this is done?

This money is not going to be there 100%.

We know that we're planning, or is this you know, I I work at Harvard, right?

Like we're you're constantly headlines that the funding is gone, and then maybe it's really can you just help me understand like where we are in the reality of we are going to have 10 million dollars less guaranteed next year.

I'm sorry, the room is muted.

Can you hear now, Councillor Ewan Campin?

Okay.

Oh, good.

So through the chair, uh, thanks for this question.

It's a good one.

Um, first I do want to point out that these numbers here, just so you can see them, it's actually a loss of almost 20 million, but it's for the entire balance of state COC.

So it's not just for Somerville, it's for the other cities and towns as well.

I don't know yet, but can certainly find that out exactly what the impact is in Somerville.

What did happen is that this NOFA for funding went out.

It's live and applications are due in January.

The only thing I can think of is if there's any legislative litigation strategy around defunding programs where people are already housed.

And I can't pretend to know if something like that would be successful, but I do think that HUD and President Trump and his administration have the legal authority to change the rules for funding for their NOPAs as part of their executive power.

So I don't know if there's a litigation strategy that somebody's gonna be able to think up.

But at this time, because it's not this is not dependent on a statute or a regulation or anything, it's just funding, and the funding is being targeted differently.

So I do think, you know, there's a lot of organizing around this by national organizations and others really trying to combat this.

There's a lot of fear that this is a lot of fear that this may be in part designed to make homeless encampment situations worse in large urban eastern and western cities.

Um I don't know if that's conspiratorial or not, but in any event, the nope is out.

The funding is changing unless there's some kind of litigation or other strategy to get HUD to turn around on it.

But it doesn't have to be like with regulations where you have a notice period and a comment period, and it's suggested this is out there.

Um I will just add one other thing besides this that I didn't say the first time this is important.

The other big place that we're seeing impact currently is from Section 8 funding changes.

So that for the last we met with with Somerville Housing Authority in um October for something called the resident advisory board process.

They had not given out a single section eight, what we call regular general section eights.

There's some like niche ones, like for veterans for some people in DCF custody, but for just regular section eights, which the vast majority of folks with with rent illicit with vouchers use.

Um, there had been none issued in the last six months, including turnover vouchers.

So as people were moving out, giving up their vouchers, they were not able to reissue them.

And they also are not, it do not believe they will be able to issue any in the next six months.

And part of what this impacts, it impacts obviously our ability to help people who are in need of Section 8 vouchers, but it also potentially um impacts on the revenue sources that are available for affordable housing developments.

So for example, you know, any many developments that have come in want to try to rely on project-based subsidies to, you know, be able to reach the most lowest income folks, and there really are no vouchers available anywhere.

Um letters went out to all the landlords asking them voluntarily to not not uh increase any rents.

To the best of my knowledge, nobody has been terminated because of funding shortfall yet.

Um that is not anticipated immediately, but just means it's shut down.

That's not an option or a resource available for folks going forward, which is a big, a big loss uh that I didn't mention.

And I one, yeah, one other thing I'm just gonna say orally, it's not on your paper here, is some of the really big dramatic cuts and things you may have heard about, like um they're they're talking about time limiting public housing.

So if someone goes into public housing, let's say they get their three years and then they have to leave because they're gonna be self-sufficient.

Um we did see there was a memo that was an informal memo, and we did see from that that it looked like these really big changes might be up to the discretion of the housing authorities.

We are really hoping that that is the case because you know, we we have faith in in our Somerville Housing Authority.

Um the director there is very uh very supportive with the advocacy community and very engaged that if it is voluntary, even if this happens, that it may not impact us.

That was the thing I was sort of the most worried about of all is what happens if they time limit public housing.

And the last thing I'll mention on this, um, then I know I went off track on your one question, but just filling you in on a few others, is that um, you know, there is a movement now which may say that they may still kick out mixed immigrant households from housing if any one member of the household doesn't have um of their green cards.

So that is still like a wait and see, and we're kind of on bated breath, waiting and seeing how that plays out, um, because that may be another situation where we're seeing people who've been housed for a long time uh successfully at risk.

But so far, that hasn't happened yet.

If there's just a lot of saying that it probably will.

So that's what I can tell you about the federal federal stuff.

Well, madam chair, through you, I mean, it's just sickening.

I mean, you there's obviously a talking point you hear a lot.

They're uh they're they're screwing over poor people to give tax cuts to the rich.

And that sounds sometimes like a uh a radical statement or something, but it's just like this is exactly what's happening, right?

We're looking at this document in front of us.

They're just cutting money from the poorest people in the community.

It's just completely um it's despicable.

Um, it's really horrifying to hear.

Um, I guess the only other thing that I'll just I wanted to, well, I think intergovernmental affairs is there.

Um our warming center is opening on December 8th, the overnight warming center, is that correct?

The chair, um uh gas and IGA for the record.

Uh, yes, that's correct.

Okay.

Well, I'm grateful that they have not been able to destroy that yet.

Um, and through you, madam chair.

Thank you, director.

Um, please obviously always let us know whatever we can do to help on the city council.

Thank you very much, Counselor.

And uh director, yeah.

I I have to say that when I read this paragraph, just this from the memo.

In addition, I'm just going to read it out loud because my archive.

Uh in addition, no general section eights are being issued by the Somerville Housing Authority, landlords have been asked not to raise rents.

There have been no terminations to due to funding cut.

Well, what are we going to do?

Um so as you're saying that it's going to be potentially at the behest of regional, like municipal housing authorities, whether or not they do that.

So, in terms of the time limit, the big changes to work requirements, time limits.

Um so far, it looks like it's going to be discretionary, but there has been no actual rule issued.

And so we don't really know this was from drafts that were released that we saw that it was hopefully going to be at the option of the housing authority.

So I am just hoping that that is the case.

I do know the one other thing I do know is I did, I believe it was 30 households.

I did ask at one point, Diane Cohen from the housing authority was close to that.

I might I'm estimating now the number of households that had mixed immigrant status that were sort of like the most likely to be at risk.

And that yeah, that number was around 30.

So and what we we did, yeah.

So that's still on hold, and obviously that is a big issue.

And if that happens, we will have to brainstorm as a community, what resources we have and how we want to prioritize funds and some of it may be up to ultimately the affordable housing trust fund to make some decisions about funding that they have at their disposal.

But again, we're looking to that fund for a lot of different purposes.

And I think you know that every single affordable housing development project right now needs so much more local match than they used to.

So even when we have, you know, what looks like a good amount of resources in the Affordable Housing Trust, but there are so many competing needs and will be including my probably rental assistance and MVP program and all these other things.

So um, but for now, I think you know it's critical that as there are populations really impacted that we look together and see if there's a way to help those community, you know, those families stay in the city.

Um but it yeah, each day is a new um a new thing to worry about.

Yeah.

And and with that, um, just to clarify, are these section 8 voucher holders already or are they no?

So there's no new voucher holders being issued, except like I said, a few of those specialized for veterans and DCF uh families.

So basically, right now, when somebody loses their voucher, either because they're terminated, which are very few, but some, or they move and they don't need it anymore, they buy a house or whatever happens, they're not reissuing those vouchers.

So not only aren't they issuing new vouchers, and just to be clear over the past you know, five years before this started.

So, you know, summer the housing authority was aggressively giving out vouchers.

So we had at our disposal.

Um, there were vouchers going to people in you know domestic violence shelters, there were vouchers going to people in hopeless shelters, there were vouchers for prevention available.

We have so many of our clients over the last five years through that resource, which is just gone.

Um so yeah, and and I I will say that you know, part of what happened is two is that as rents went up, what we call payment standards, right?

Which is the maximum that you're allowed to pay with the Section 8 voucher, we kept pushing those up and up because tenants couldn't find housing in Somerville.

So we really increased those payment standards to make our Section 8 vouchers more usable.

But that also made the program a lot more expensive.

And in the end, when this all you know came out, they were able to basically able to administer fewer vouchers than they had hoped or anticipated because of the increased increase in rent and uh payment standards.

So um, so that is also another reason why we're seeing this retrenchment is just because of the escalation of rents.

Yeah, I think that uh I think uh we have to get really creative and really go inward of our into insular and our four square miles and figure this out very hyperlocally.

And director, you you've been on the forefront of that.

The the policies and ideas you've put forward for years have always been just different and and like over under through to a roadblock that the state had or even federally.

So I I do believe in us and I believe in you, but I can't see us not being like it.

We have to be four square miles right now.

I can't figure out any other way that we're gonna get through this, and I'm this scares me, but we will figure this out, I guess.

I'm so scared.

I want to stop right now.

Councilor Hart.

Thank you.

Um, through you to Chapter.

Um, this just I won't repeat that.

This is really upsetting information, but um, could you help me understand in terms of not having your section eight going forward?

Like what percentage of our overall housing kind of support are we talking about?

Or so I think what I want to be clear is that this doesn't take money away from anything that is currently funded with Section 8 vouchers.

So there's many affordable housing developments that have project-based vouchers, many people that have mobile vouchers.

So I don't know how to answer, you know, maybe I could say that in many years in the past, like four years before six months ago or eight months ago, um, you know, maybe I would estimate that there were, you know, 50 to 100 vouchers being administered per year.

So it was very substantial for our client base and for who we see in the in the prevention world.

Now, some of those people had been on wait list for a long time, so it wasn't like they were all available to the 50 people that walked into my office, but um, but it was a big part of meeting the need.

I will say of all the section eights that Somerville Housing Authority does give out, only one third of those stay in the city.

Um, and that in part is because it is so difficult to find housing here.

So many are sort of forced out into other localities where rents are lower and there's some higher vacancy rates.

Um so it is substantial.

Um, but I will say that the you know the good news really is that there's been no terminations, and that ultimately is sort of the most you know, the most important thing is at least not taking away what people have been counting on for so long.

So thank you.

Yeah.

Um with that, uh if no other questions, happy to keep this in committee.

And thank you very much.

Thank you so much, Doctor.

And thank you for your time, Chairwoman, and very, very nice to see you in person.

Thank you, Counselor.

And thank you, Counselor.

You in camp, and I will see you tomorrow at the state now.

All right, well, with that, we're gonna keep this item in committee.

And our next agenda item.

Okay, is a resolution 25014 by Councillor Blockville and Klingon and Councillor Davis that the memorialization committee dedicate a memorial to Kenneth uh Lonergan.

Uh here to speak on this item is uh the IGA department, uh the mayor's office.

Welcome.

Thank you, madam chair.

Um introduce myself.

Um, so fortunately I don't have a significant update on this item.

Uh there's still some coordination that needs to happen with school committee members and with our memorialization committee.

I've reached out uh to the sponsor to get a bit more information about the request.

I haven't heard back yet, uh, but happy to follow up with the sponsor when we have any subsequent updates to provide.

Absolutely, thank you.

Yeah, I don't recall how this ended up in the HCD.

Um, but it was hoping that either there was uh win from the end of the year, and that's fine.

Um, so we can keep this in committee and thank you very much for checking in on it and hopefully we'll we'll get an update later, but until then, yeah, thank you very much.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Okay, but that will just keep it as one of committee.

Order number two four zero zero seven zero, that the director of parks and recreation discuss how inclusive playground accessibility is being considered.

The future playground plans and redesigned projects.

Um here to speak on this item one for which is uh director with happy for you to introduce yourself and yes, I I believe there is a freshment on this.

Good evening.

Hi, through the chair, uh welcome, Councilor Hart.

Um, my name is Luisa Olivera, and I'm not the director of parks and recreation, but I am the director of public space and urban forestry, and we are the ones who uh design and manage the construction of our parks as well as over 350 trees every year.

So I did send um some slides earlier today just to get a um so that we are all kind of on the same page.

Sometimes folks will say that our parks are not ADA, they're not in compliance with the American Disabilities Act, and that is not true, at least not for the last 15 years since I have worked here.

Um, and I know for a fact beyond that.

So the American with Disabilities Act was passed in 1990, updated in 2008, and it is a set of standards that rules that have to be followed.

Is it's a law for the physical layout of certain things.

And and I can we can talk about what the ADA touches in terms of uh public space, but it's a minimum, and I think everyone would agree that it is not um enough, but it is something that the federal government has determined we have to do in order for uh people to be able to move through public space.

I don't know who's controlling the slides, but yeah.

So the types of physical things that are touched by the ADA are ramps, uh walkways, the the width of walkways has to be a minimum of 36 inches.

There has to be a grade that is under 5%, unless it's a ramp, and then it requires a number, a number of other things.

There are requirements for stairs and handrails, all of this.

There are requirements for surfaces and playgrounds to that make playgrounds accessible.

So and that make them um easy for a wheelchair to go on.

In the case of playgrounds, there's port in place rubber, which you have seen in many of our playgrounds.

Some people love it, some people hate it, rubber tiles, which uh we don't use very often, but is that's also an ADA accessible uh surface and engineered wood fiber, which is looks like wood chips, but it's actually not wood, it's made out of a um an engineered fiber um or synthetic turf, which we don't use in our playgrounds.

But so there's a number of different things that are considered to be uh ADA compliant surfaces.

There is parking, to be honest, we don't really uh are not very involved in that because we don't usually have parking lots or garages adjacent or in our playgrounds, and then um facilities.

For example, if you have a bathroom, they have to be ADA, uh drinking fountains must comply with ADA and a number of other things that we do as well, making sure that handles are easy, easily lifted, things like this.

So I just bring this background to say that um I personally uh get very upset when people say our parks are not ADA because we go we are absolute sticklers about this landscape architects, the landscape architects that work for us are licensed and are held by their license to to make parks ADA.

We go out and check all of the grades with a smart level.

So um they are ADA.

I promise you the the parks that have been built at uh at least for the last 20 years are ADA.

Now, what happens is that sometimes they are uh fall out of compliance.

Uh, you may have a tree tree root that rips through a surface.

I mean, we see this all over the city.

So that it is another issue uh that has to do with maintaining them, and sometimes they're not easy fixes.

But um, I just you know, if there are any questions about the American disabilities laws as they pertain to parks, I would love to hear them.

Okay, great.

So now that we got out of that, got that out of the way, there are um the next slide, please.

There is somewhat recent, but not that recent um idea concept of inclusive play.

And inclusive play, um first it was accessible play.

Now the the word that's being used is inclusive play is much broader than that, right?

So if the ADA is a minimum, then what we're looking towards is trying to create things where everyone of all physical abilities is able to participate in play.

Um and we know that many disabilities are not physical.

They're there's a large range of them, but in terms of what we can design in a playground, we are trying to create things that all children can use.

Um and we have just recently um finished had a ribbon cutting.

Can I ask for that next slide, please?

Um, with our with our back one, please.

With our swings where, and this was an initiative by the Somerville Commission for Persons with Disabilities, and also funded by them, where we inventoried all of our swing, all of our parks, um, and went from having 23% that had an ADA swing to um 83% of them.

And we looked at each of them with a certain criteria where we were able to put a new swing, we put a new swing.

Um next slide, please.

We chose a swing that has all of the safety international and national meets all the safety requirements, has a hard yoke, but also an additional strap if a child doesn't have the muscle tone to hold themselves up, or is too small.

And we are working now to distribute those to folks that have that need.

We're happy to give them uh a strap.

So we'd love to hear from folks, and we're trying a number of different ways to get in touch with people who may have that need.

And then in addition to this, the inclusive swings project, we are in the process of designing Centerville's first inclusive playground.

And this playground is at the Kennedy Schoolyard.

Kennedy School Yard has a larger percentage of uh that's okay of children with disabilities.

And so we have been um the project manager is named John Brown and Kent.

He has been at every uh Kennedy school event for the last six months or so.

Um back to school night, the professional development days, harvest fair, drop off and pick up teacher surveys, community service.

He sent out a teacher survey, sent out a community survey.

And then we have a number of things that are virtual that are uh community meetings that are happening, two of them to really start to take all of those ideas and put a physical form to them.

And we invite everybody to please participate in them because like all of our schoolyards, when they're out of uh when there are school design session, they become a playground and a and a park for everyone.

So there will be a September 2nd uh community meeting.

We have made it virtual so that more people can participate, but we hope that everyone will come.

And we are working towards getting a set of construction documents to put the project out to bid in the winter so that we can begin construction on this in the summer of 2026.

Pardon me, Director.

I have a 10 V school student here, and I thought this is very exciting.

Yes, it is very I think I think it's really cool that he's watching it happen live.

And um I I don't know, it's just amazing.

So through the chair, he has probably engaged with John because John will go out for recess and talk to the kids about their playground.

So uh so yes, uh sorry to interrupt.

No problem.

I do want to mention that this project has not yet, uh we are still uh it's has not yet been funded.

So we are still looking for funding and it is in the capital improvement plan.

Uh, but I also understand that's in flux in a lot of different ways.

But um so the to the question of where are we going with inclusive play?

I think that we are constantly learning more about what can be done.

Um we it's sometimes difficult because some of our playgrounds are very small.

So it's hard to do some of the things that require more space.

For example, with um walkways, which all of them have to have.

If you visit some of our newer parks, they have kind of switchbacks because uh 5% slope means that it goes up one foot in 20 feet.

So it's quite long.

Um so we I uh have very confident that we do our absolute best on this front for sure.

Um and we would like to do better.

We would like to uh engage more with families that have children with disabilities and to understand more and to go above and beyond the ADA law.

And and on that, uh especially with the Kennedy School playground.

Um I know that there we have some students here that are very uh physical and and need to play, they need to play football, they need to play, they have to get that energy out.

And although there is it's a tight space.

Um how has there been conversations or considerations of expanding the space past the green, the grass closer to the sidewalk?

You know how it is, because I I hear that there's some rumblings.

I mean, this is third person, but possibly fourth, who knows?

Um, that some parents at Kenny School are concerned of uh will there be enough space for for everything within it.

So I'm just spitballing the question that are we really bound by the grass area, or can we push out the area a little further, closer to the sidewalks where there is a little more space for both the high energy games of a football or basketball, and then additionally making sure that it is absolute enough space because having sure that it's inclusive is a necessity and a bottom line.

Um, can we have all the things?

Through the chair.

We can't ever have all the things all the time.

Darn it.

Um, but we have been looking at expanding the playground, yes, and looking at different variations of um changing the parking parking configuration and removing some parking spaces.

And you can imagine that there are people who are not happy about that.

Uh Kennedy has the most parking of all of the schools, and there's a a lot of street parking.

So we are looking at different configurations, and those will be shown at the December 2nd meeting about if we did this, we could have this much more space.

If we did this, we could have this much more space, while also uh trying to be to listen to the teachers who, in my experience doing uh schoolyards in Somerville, this is the point where they um get very upset.

Um, but we you know there is a balance here between retaining parking and increasing the schoolyard.

Um is it so although with the the all the things is there a possibility of expanding the parameters of the schoolyard currently where it is to go on further ends with the grass?

Or is that is that a is that a a is that an intentional square footage where we must abide by that through the chair?

No, no, no, absolutely not.

We're trying to expand it and we may expand it beyond the grass, and we're trying to expand it beyond the grass to get the maximum that we can while um eliminating minimal parking.

So, yes, we we think it should be expanded.

That's it's the schoolyard, it's important.

Play is not only important for our present Kennedy uh schoolyard student, but for all children, that is their work.

Right.

Right, right.

And so we can kind of have a little bit of all of things.

Okay, we through the chair, we can have some of the things some of the time and all of the things some of the time, but we cannot make everyone happy.

That is again.

Yeah, all right.

Um but we try.

I think uh parks is one of the areas where we can make many people happy.

Thank you, Director.

Uh colleagues, do you have any uh comments, questions, thoughts on this?

Yeah, so uh through the chair, if you can please just let um any constituents know about the December 2nd meeting.

We would love to have as much participation as possible.

We've our outreach right now has focused most mostly on the school community because that is who the park serves.

But of course, we want also to hear from uh the neighborhood.

Um the Kennedy school parents have been incredibly supportive with CPA applications and other things.

So uh we're very excited about this project.

That's that's wonderful.

And I do want to give a wonderful compliment to the fact that yes, I was there at the um unveiling and swinging of the uh of the the Hoyt Sullivan playground, the new swing of the inclusive swings yesterday, yesterday, but yesterday and even all kind of worst again after a while.

Um, but recently this week it was cold and windy, and it was wonderful to see that see these models out.

So I do want to thank you for that for your work on that and the fact that they're out there.

I'm honestly disappointed that um, and this is not in any way's particular view, but with the sites of the new inclusive things, seeing how Trumpfield is a state owned property.

I've kind of bummed that they wouldn't like help us pay for that or pay for it through the chair Trump Field.

Oh, I'm sorry, Trump.

I'm sorry, I was thinking of FOSS.

You're right.

Uh I think you're right.

Through the chair.

I don't know if our boss has swings, but I know that they recently put new swings at the Dilboy property, the DCR Dilboy process, and they were the same model as this one.

So we were really happy to see that.

It's possible they've done that everywhere just to kind of get to safety standards.

That would be tremendous.

Yes, my apologies.

Your one syllable and yes, I I saw thoughts in my mind and saw Trum as the word.

So we'll have to we'll have to take a look.

It's possible they did that.

That that would be really exciting.

Um, so thank you very much for your work.

You're welcome.

And also uh, from what we hear all children like these swings.

So it's great.

Thank you.

Thank you very much.

Thank you.

Um close this and mark this more complete.

And our next agenda item, yes.

Oh, I'm sorry.

I'm sorry.

We have to pre-motion um order number two for one zero zero eight that the director of economic development discussed with this council ways to provide small businesses with financial and technical support when impacted by construction and other emergencies.

This was an order put forward by Councillor Canada Infeld.

And I think it is oh oh I'm pulling up our but we're still in the meeting, hopefully every thing's well.

All right, um share my happy Mercury and retrograde, everyone.

Um have a happy holiday story.

Have a happy Thanksgiving.

All right, hey, there we are.

Sorry, I don't want to put my email on public internet.

Oh yeah.

I was I was wondering if we might take up the two items since they're both related to small business together if if you're amenable to that.

I I hear you, but um I'd prefer not to because um because of the I I want to talk more about construction, nether emergencies.

Uh I think that that really needs to be said um on its own.

I hear you, but um yeah, let's if we can, I'd really like to focus on construction.

Okay, sorry.

Uh hi, Director.

Thank you for being here.

Um record uh Richard McCurry, Director of Economic Development.

I'll be joined momentarily by Dan Whitehead, our deputy director of economic development.

He is uh wrapping up with the East Centerville Main Street board meeting.

So heading down welcome.

Okay, thank you for being here.

Sure.

So it was a third presentation.

Correct Navan.

I I'm sorry, I just finished okay.

Oh no, thank you.

Um no, no uh no issues.

I was like, uh I I'm a paper gown.

Um sorry about that.

Yeah, no, and it's nothing just yeah, okay.

Well, welcome.

Glad to have you here.

Um so yes, I the I I could see where where the counselor was going with this.

Um because I I had more than a few conversations with small business owners.

Um when it comes to construction, when construction happens and in front of a um on the street or um down the street sometimes, or when street design is happening sometimes, and I've heard numerous times, definitely a pattern where businesses may or may not be informed with enough time.

The most the word one of the worst examples I've heard was in uh counselor and campens board it in the the strip of businesses um on um not school um well close actually school and summer street were that very um lot of construction was happening for months, and the businesses weren't sure when they could open or not because on Mondays is when they were drilling, and Tuesdays blah blah blah was happening, and it was very um the the customers were coming and going, the sidewalk was blocked, or or was no longer a sidewalk was gravel, and so it became inaccessible for anyone with uh with with ADA needs and that that was a part of the customer base with the hair salon, but then also this sound was so unavoidable that it it impacted the business.

And it was very um the customers were coming and going, the sidewalk was blocked, or or was no longer a sidewalk was gravel.

And so it became inaccessible for anyone with uh with with ADAs and that that was a part of the customer base with the hair salon, but then also this sound was so unavoidable that it impacted the business.

It was indisputable.

And and I heard from these residents, I'm sorry, these businesses that they they couldn't get ahead.

They could there they did not have there was no communication of plan.

And again, this is no slide, but just it was so hard for them to keep ahead of it.

It was it was such a tank to the those months that this was happening, and it felt very um just omnipresent for them.

Uh I see consortium and camping's hand up, and although I I want the director to present, I'm I'm happy to have uh you speak if you wish.

Oh, thank you, Madam Chair.

No, I'm happy to hear the presentation, and then I have a um uh even more specific ask.

Super.

Um so construction is can be very devastating uh for the small business.

I mean, you know, you're the director, you know this, but I I do hear about it enough to to know that we need to get a give a good plan, like discuss what we're doing with that as well.

So please, director, thank you and welcome.

Yes, the presentation I have is more on the technical assistance front.

So we can hold that for a moment.

On the construction side, typically economic development is not in the role of uh construction communication with with the community that that really falls to um the contractor, the um the engineering team with the city project, and uh we're talking about construction.

Um, or often what we find is there's there's a range of construction challenges, right?

So there are city projects where we're we have a project that's out there, and our contractors are the ones causing that disruption.

Um the engineering department is handling most of the communication with residents and businesses with all of that.

Um typically only comes to us in these moments where there's something that is there, they're it's getting to the point where it's it's a broader neighborhood issue.

That's when it usually lands with us.

Um then we have a lot of other construction that happens.

There's private construction that disrupts things.

We have this conversation in the data score neighborhood, and literally the next day after we were at the data square merchants of a bit merchant could not get in their door and searching high and low.

What the heck is happening?

Why can't they get to the door?

And it was the landlord had scheduled something and hadn't told the tenant that this utility work was going to be happening and preventing them from opening for the day.

So it isn't, it is definitely an issue.

Um it's an issue on city projects, it's an issue on ever source projects, it's an issue when it comes to private projects.

We know there's a there's a need to do better coordination, this especially when it comes to the city projects on the communication front.

Um, but because so much of that is really lives with the contractor, what they're showing up for that day, what they're showing up for that week, um, engineering really has been the center point for those communications.

So I do think we should probably schedule a second conversation where we're bringing engineering to this conversation as well, um, so they can really talk you through what they do because they do try and be as proactive as possible in getting out there and giving all the information that they can't again, they don't always have all the information from the contractor and the time that the city would like, or that the um the community would like as well.

So it's a challenge.

Um what we've discussed in the past as a part of it is that also you know, if we want more lead time on some of these things, we also have to structure that in our RFPs in a way that is showing that we want to we want to invest more dollars in having that clarity of the timeline ahead of the time.

Um sometimes they are going to be shifting things on a day, literally on a day-to-day hour by hour basis.

If it's gonna be raining, they're moving over there, they're gonna shift what they're doing.

Um, if they don't have the three days of clear forecast, they're gonna do something different for that week.

So because this is such live information, it's really comes down to the contractor being in a position to be able to share that in a way that we can communicate out to the constituent.

So it starts at the early stages of the RFP and our contractor selection of getting that contractor engagement that we're looking for.

So looking at current projects is a lot harder than looking at future projects.

Um again, I do think we should really bring engineering into a deeper conversation about what that could look like.

Um, and it is definitely something on their radar, on our radar.

We'd love to be able to work on, but it's it's hard to do in the moment with a an active contractor because we don't necessarily have the tools that we like available.

I think you and I do want to I'm just going to, I know you have a presentation plan, but and I do want to say that, yeah, I I know it's not like, oh, just here's a one to go fix it.

I know it is extremely complicated because right, our source and as their plan, and then there's the prior contractors that have their own separate plans and et cetera.

And then there's the city work.

I I get that.

Um, but I'm hoping that, yeah, in the new year that we can have a conversation, I think bringing engineering as well.

Because right, I I hear that I and I know that that construction work is irritating.

It's irritating um to residents, to business owners.

So I I know it's it's it is tough.

Um, but I I do know that um that there has to be some room for streamlining it.

And this is not this is not critique.

And I know, like you said, you're you have there are different departments, but maybe we can, and and that's it's helpful to clarify that it does be good with the RPs.

That's kind of exciting because maybe we could hide heighten the standards now without you know expecting more anything like that.

But um, but if we can figure out a way to do that so that we can get some esteem, some it raise the esteem of our small business community on it.

That's at least what I hear the most from it on.

But thank you for that.

Um on the technical assistance front, and I think this was where it maybe bleeds a little bit more into the second item.

I don't know if it's worth, I don't know how this works for C B.

Okay, well, yeah.

So did I'm trying to remember the second time.

So let's see, no, it's sorry, because yeah, we're not discussing the the second item yet.

So um this order um the fifth one.

So technical support would impacted in construction of the emergencies.

Um kind of wanted to focus on that.

Did you uh aside from what you said is the should I close this item and then move on to the next or Madam Chair, can I ask a construction question before we move on?

Oh, okay, yeah.

All right.

Um, yes, uh counselor, go ahead.

Thank you very much.

Um, through you, I have a very specific ask that the city absolutely can directly help with.

Um it's fortuitous that this is on tonight's agenda.

There's a stretch of businesses along Bow Street, um, where there's a there's a large utility work is happening right now.

Um this is like the block that has block cafe on it, but it also has uh bara, celeste, fuki, siam ginger.

And what makes them relevant here is that they have outdoor dining and they paid a permit for the full year to have outdoor dining, and this construction project has made that impossible for the rest of the year.

So as it's been communicated to me, and I I think staff may already know this.

Um they got less than half of the days for their outdoor dining.

And so they've made a direct request.

They originally made it to the city clerk and then were directed to the mayor's office directly to to get a half reimbursement for the year.

Um, you know, I don't know the law around this, but just from first principles like this, absolutely.

I I would I would be shocked and appalled if if the mayor can't do this.

Um, so I'm I just want to take this opportunity to just kind of on the record with a bunch of staff here to ask that that please happen.

Um, I think some of these businesses, you know, are it it's not abstract, right?

Like they're they had outdoor dining and it was taken away.

Um we all understand the importance of the work, but there's there's no way that these people should be made to pay for a full season of outdoor dining.

Um so I just wanted to make that ask tonight.

I don't know who's authorized to actually do it, but if that could be communicated to the mayor's office, I would greatly appreciate it.

Yeah, um chair, I can definitely we can definitely convey that message on.

It is not economic developments decision, it would be with the licensing.

Um it's with licensing and within the speed clerk's office.

I don't actually, and it might be with the mayor.

We did have this conversation out.

We did um a larger outdoor dining conversation with the community a few months uh a couple of years ago.

We are due to reset the outdoor dining fees in 2026.

We're gearing up to start that engagement um sometime early spring.

Um one of the things that we discussed actually when we did that reset was what do we do about construction?

And at the time where we had landed was if it is disruptive for if it's known early enough to say it's definitely going to be disrupted for that, you know, the majority of the season, we would not charge them the fee.

There is some like procedural thing that needs to be figured out around this reimbursement question, and at the least of the time uh two and a half years ago, we weren't we didn't have that mechanism available.

And at the least of the time uh two and a half years ago, we weren't we didn't have that mechanism available.

So I will reach out to um Michael Hoter, who staffs the licensing um side of the clerk's office and ask what what possibilities might exist um at this moment.

And it's definitely something we should be talking about more for the next year's round of you know what adjustments are we making to the fee structure.

Madam Chair, through you, thank you for that.

And just what's been communicated to me is that you Union Square Main Streets that they've already talked to licensing commission, city clerk's office.

They've been told directly like it is a decision of the mayor's office.

So, you know, with intergovernmental affairs here, I just wanted to kind of raise this uh on the record um and hope that this can get done soon.

So thank you.

Uh if I may on the same on the same street.

Absolutely.

Um, so we did receive an email from a business owner on Bow Street about just the disruption to short-term parking.

I know um Jesse Moose from the engineering department is engineering team is connecting with them.

Um, and we are trying to get that, we'll be getting that message out to back to the main streets and everyone else that they will show you the same information.

Um, there's been a lot of disruption to short-term parking over the last week.

It's a busy, busy, busy time, um, especially with that Thanksgiving orders um coming up for next next week.

Um, they are hoping that it will, they are expecting that the contractor will be pulling in some of their equipment so that the short-term parking is available for next week.

So I just want to share that as well.

Um, but again, there'll be more detailed information going to the business owners.

Counselor, anything further on that?

Okay.

Counselor Hart, how are you doing?

Okay.

All right, yeah.

Thank you.

All right.

Well, I'll I'll uh close this agenda item.

Uh, and then happy to discuss uh the next agenda item.

They last agenda item.

And I order 241488, the director of economic development appear before the council's committee and housing and community development to discuss the immediate plans and short-term response efforts to best support and sustain small businesses post-COVID.

So plans, plans, plans.

Um I wrote this, and I think my goal of this was oh my gosh, the ARPA funds are drying up.

What's the plan?

How now that uh things are on the complete other side of that?

How are we doing?

What are we looking like?

Um, what what stuff wouldn't what um how do we insulate our small business community and help them thrive on the other side of this?

Um so that's uh the presentation now will make a lot more a lot of sense to this item.

Um because it gets into our technical assistance work.

All right.

So we can go ahead to the next one, I think.

In general, sorry, 2024, 2020 to 25 was a very unique time.

Um, we had a huge peak in funding that cities were allowed to spend on direct business support in a way that we never were before, and we may never again.

Um so do you want to just sort of like put that in a frame of this was a really unique opportunity, and we left at it to be able to help um stabilize our businesses during COVID and help them with recovery.

Before 2020, cities, city governments were really only allowed to spend CDBG dollars and grants as direct to business supports.

I may direct her if we have an absolute new counselor.

Could you possibly ask explain those acronyms you got?

Yeah.

So community, so um first of all.

Yeah, so CDBG is the community development block grant.

It's a federal program coming out of HUD.

Um same programs that support affordable housing and work.

You could use federal dollars to invest directly in businesses, but the anti-aid amendment in Massachusetts means that you cannot spend municipal dollars directly to support the business.

That's a tricky layer to our economic development work that we're constantly trying to find the uh edges of.

Um during COVID, there was a little bit of a relaxation.

Um, understanding that this is a major like economic crisis, huge disruption to everything.

Um we allowcated as a city five million dollars that we spent on direct business support to stabilize our business community here.

We then also invested 2.3 million in ARPA funding to support businesses.

So all that ARCA money, that 2.3, that all went out the door in 2024.

So we see this, you know, 2020 and 2023, where you gave out little bits of money at a time, a lot of stability, money, a lot of money to support outdoor dining and the transition of our restaurant community out to the outside.

And then in 2024, we had this massive influx of cash going out to the businesses to one support folks for opening brand new businesses in this wild and crazy era.

We had 30 awards to um new businesses who are opening.

That was a rent rent support, had a lot of small businesses get started and to get get their sea legs.

And then we also spent 1.8 on business enrichment grants to 60 existing businesses.

That was in the form of technical supports and uh cash forquip.

Now we're back really to that normal, that old normal, right?

We're back to the normal place of we can only spend C DBG funding and grants.

If you go to the next, Dana will walk you through where we are in the new, what we've been doing with this this year.

So as Rachel mentioned earlier, uh welcome, counselor.

It's good to meet you.

My name is Dana Whiteside, I'm deputy director of economic development.

Good to meet you.

Congratulations on your new level.

Thank you.

Um happy to help explain as Rachel mentioned, amplifying the fact that with 2024 into 2025, we're in what we what I would call our new normal.

And one thing that I'll reference is number one, our use of the community of community development block rent uh to support businesses and to provide particularly the help of technical assistance, help with operational considerations, and also um focus on business retention, making sure the businesses have what they need to sort of stay in place.

And so the primary uh venues through which the C DBG block grant funds are through our main streets.

So we've got the East as a little main streets district as well as the Union Square Main Street district.

Those are the primary vehicles to which we do they are what I like to what I'd like to describe as the two particular forms through which those funds can be uh can be given on literally just coming from the East Lumberville Main Street sport meeting.

Um, just before this hence might be late, so my apologies for that.

Really useful opportunity to sort of talk through how resources can be can be utilized and how we can make sure that the staff of those particular districts have what they need to sort of give the businesses that kind of support.

So that is one of our uh one of the pieces of our new normal.

If you wouldn't mind going to the next slide, I'll describe the next component of.

In addition to uh providing those funding sources, given the fact that uh the ARP funding is gone.

One thing I will mention that we also is not articulate on this slide necessarily, we are thinking about what are some new sources.

Uh entities like mass development, entities like um metropolitan area planning council that look at ways to provide uh opportunities so that we're we're not only thinking about ARPA being done or CDB having being limited, but also where are some opportunities that long range getting.

In the midst of that, we're also doing a fair amount of uh what our practice really is in economic development is to meet our owners where they are and really focusing on what we like to call the principal touch and through um means of interaction and communication that uh make it easier for them to sort of peel back the layers of consideration of our own policies and practices and how best to access information.

So one um tool for that is our small business office hours.

They are weekly opportunities that are convened by us, hosted by us, which bring together development staff, but also more importantly uh licensing, engineering, ISD help, IST building, and other staff.

What we like to call ourselves in many ways is we are the conveners.

While we're not the regulators or the decision makers, we do have the good fortune of having really a fairly good rapport with our sister agencies and representatives from those departments to have these regular meetings where businesses can come and have their questions answered in a Philly in a non-pressurized format and really get access to the great help that's needed.

And it's really we found it to be incredibly successful.

The slides articulate some of the statistics, the um greater five attendees usually and the results again that opportunity to really have that personal touch and opportunity to have questions answers.

The next slide goes to another aspect of what we try to do as well, in addition to having those, I should say the small business open source are by assume virtual.

In the context of that, we also uh have utilized language services to for those folks who brought a first language.

The other part of meeting people where they are, meeting businesses where they are is through small business block blocking.

We do that in conjunction with earlier about construction and conservations like that.

Many times there are other departments that are doing work in the districts like our mobility departments on transportation issues.

So it's not uncommon for us to do block blocking in conjunction with our mobility department.

So if there's issues on parking, issues are on uh mobility projects, our small business team as well as the mobility team will go and meet those businesses and talk through the issues that they might have.

What we've found is that the rapport that our team is able to build with owners there has been incredibly impactful because it's good for providing answers to questions, providing access to resources and making sort of demystifying what it means to sort of be able to do business here.

And we found that that's incredibly incredibly useful.

It's not money, but it is access, it is information.

And I think the other thing that I would probably say is it's education, and many times it's that uh ability to provide people with the input and information that they need to make their business successful.

I think there's one more piece of information on the next slide that is probably going to yearly successfully republic to act team on this one.

Um we mentioned earlier about looking for human funding sources.

We were able to uh this year access through the Commonwealth's economic executive office of economic development, the urban agenda grant, which allows for municipality to partner and um utilize 100,000 dollars, which doesn't sound like a lot of money, but it was it was quite a bit, and as the statistics show here on the slide, we were able to have a really strong impact in using those dollars to um do two things and then I'll turn Dr.

Rachel provide education, provide information on some important certification, and also provide a uh a one particular constituency-based i.e.

uh home-based daycare, which is huge in this neighborhood.

Um making certain that those individuals and those that those forms of small business could could thrive and have really good opportunity.

Yeah, so the home-based child care was really the one of the focal groups that we were targeting with this program.

Um, that was we were able to do a small amount of stipends and the stipends we targeted to that that constituency.

Um we were our goal was to get uh as many as possible into these training opportunities.

There's already a group convenes through summer promise um to help them sort of learn about child latest information about you know teaching methodologies and what it's like to run a child care center and really help bolster their ability to do the job.

Um, our end of it is how can we support them in the business side of it?

So things like the certifications on um the the food safety was the main one, right?

So getting that food safety training out there.

We were able to offer food safety training actually not in English in this round.

We only offered food safety training in Spanish and Portuguese.

Um there definitely is an appetite out there for food safety training in English, not only for um these home-based providers, but also all of our cottage industry folks who are doing baked goods in their house and selling, um, as well as actually most of that.

You do need at least two people and staff at all um food service businesses to be food safety trained.

Um, so that way there's always somebody on site with that training.

So that's all the allergen training, right?

So that is a service that we definitely saw through this program could be bolstered to put on more programming around food safety training.

Um, but one of the things I think that's also really helpful here that for where we could go next um is to think about it as more training form.

Because that is something that will probably pass muster with anti-aid.

Um we can probably put on, you know, if we can thinking about funding for next year, be thinking about programs that are group-based and all businesses can apply and participate.

It's not the same as that direct aid.

That direct aid is really where we were limited in the 2020, the 2024 range.

Um, but now our future is probably more like this.

A tricky layer on this grant speaking.

A lot of what we the grants that have it had existed, again, they're pulling from our funding.

So we are seeing contracting in the small business sphere for for grants as well.

We are also seeing more of these grants shift to have a focal point of not the municipal government but nonprofits directly nonprofits being really where the the training is happening and who's putting on those programs.

So the urban agenda grant actually no longer exists it has been rechristened um community workforce something I think during the exact boarding um but also municipalities are no longer eligible it is under the new standard of it it is only going to uh nonprofits so like again we're working really closely with our main street partners we're working closely with the chamber making sure that as we find grants that are not applicable to us but maybe applicable to them that they're able to apply um and help remote for the community and I would say to Rachel's point one of the things that we have been that has made us as successful as we were during the the times with ARPA then COVID but also as part of our success now in the post-ARPA world is this real real focus on partnership being able to connect with main streets being able to connect with the chamber being able to connect with those nonprofits that do that service orientation I use the term convener earlier it really is a principle of ours that we really hold to because we become the trusted advisors if you will who can bring parties to the table and enable our work with our colleagues at the state to channel funds were appropriate to those partners and in many cases what we will likely will find in the next coming fiscal year or so is that we will be a cool co-sponsor or a co-applicant with those various nonprofits and that's a really good model to enable us in some ways um to get out of the business administer funds and more business of education people because I think with that education and spending time with folks we're it makes us out much more budget I think our impact as a team is multiply.

And I'd say one of the other ones just to highlight it since we're talking about the the home based childcare the summer promise team again they've already been doing a lot of convening with those particular businesses they received a grant from the jobenti trust to extend their work on that and continue doing a lot of that education and building and certification work with the specific targeted population.

Again childcare being foundational to all economic activity in our community everybody needs it before they can do the next thing so we're really trying to make sure that that is foundational to our support.

One final piece on the education I'll mention that is important with these really successful workshops that we held that we're in different languages etc they're also on video so we we have this is a long range thinking that as we do more business educational work on various topics bringing technical expertise having it in a digital library source so that a person can't make it we can point them to our websites etc to um anyone to have access for a long period of time.

And that video library is currently on YouTube on the city's YouTube channel so definitely something if you you all are have your own social media as well that you want to be able to show that to constituents that we're happy to pass that on.

Some of them were in person some Spanish some English but they all Portuguese too we had all those we could go to the next do you also want to focus on a couple of sort of latest and greatest efforts these are things that I've really been watching in the last month even three weeks.

We've got some light as well this idea has really blossomed out of a conversation with a couple of businesses in Data Square.

A couple of businesses in Data Square have really said hey we want to change the narrative if you Google Data Square today it is not the same as if you Googled Data Square 10 years ago and that is that there's a negative media circus that is you know we're we're in the middle of that vortex and we really want to shift that narrative and so we've been working very closely with the communications um team here at the city to develop a a broader what we can do as a citywide effort that can then amplify any messages that the Data Square folks are putting out East Somerville Union Square, Magoon, anybody will amplify it in this season.

And so what we've got is a campaign that we're launching called Be Loyal to Local This Winter, love your small businesses.

Again, this is building off of our loyal to local campaigns that we've run before we ran a big local campaign when the bridges were out in Wall Street Square.

We printed loyal to local bags in 2019 that we've been using at every civic day and other event for a while that's like can you tell us about some small businesses you love here we'll give you a loyal to local bag.

So this is a coordinated effort that the communications team is going to be leading on our social media channels in our print media in our um press releases and in the physical world so wraps on the um looking at the we're trying to figure out if we can pull off uh quickly enough on the um ads so we're trying to put out a really big series of messages all on all channels that says stay loyal to your local businesses throughout the winter season we are going beyond small business Saturday our goal is to start some of these messages going out for small business Saturday and extend it all the way through February.

So we're trying to put out a really big series of messages all on all channels that says stay loyal to your local businesses throughout the winter season.

We are going beyond small business Saturday.

Our goal is to start some of these messages going out for small business Saturday and extend it all the way through February.

Businesses hurt in January and February.

So our goal here is really to tell folks what can you be doing to support your local businesses throughout this season.

Um if you go to the next one, wanted to highlight a couple of important things.

First are these key dates.

So small business Saturday, Saturday after Thanksgiving coming up in just a couple weeks.

Um the Davis Square Merchants, we've been working with the Davisquare merchants for a year plus um on a monthly basis, and they have put together the Data Square Holiday date.

Um, so huge good.

They are self-organizing that effort.

Um they don't have a main streets, but they are pulling it all together.

Um, the merchants themselves without a staff of supporting them.

So that's gonna be on the sixth.

Um, so send folks out to David Square to shop.

Uh, I think some folks in Teal Square and our pond are also participant.

Okay, great.

Um Union Square Jingle is on the seventh.

So Union Square Main Street is organizing the Union Square Jingle shop, sip and niggle on the uh so again, head out state union on the seventh, and then eat out on East is an every Wednesday promotional uh activity that the East Center of Main Streets is really trying to coordinate.

Then your Wednesday out, go out to eat on each Broadway on Wednesday nights.

So we're gonna be highlighting those those key dates um throughout this next month as folks get up to it.

The other messages that we're gonna be putting out on social media and in these places are why should you shop local?

What does it matter?

It matters of time.

Um so we've got a lot of different messages that are on, you know, why are the different reasons that you should invest your dollars locally in your community?

That doesn't necessarily um get everybody to shop locally.

Some people are going to respond to that, some people are not.

So we also have um a few other things that we're gonna be targeting.

One is a ways to support your local businesses that don't cost a penny.

Um so things like um leading a five-star review, not leaving a one-star review.

Please tell complaint, complain quietly, like share successes loudly.

So we want to share, like, give those tips um to folks, you know, maybe you might want to change from your Bank of America bank to a local bank here in Somerville, even if you are moving from somewhere else.

Uh, all those kinds of messages are what we want to put out there.

The last thing that we're gonna be doing this is really going to be on social media is some questions that are going to encourage business discovery.

Again, we are limited by the anti-aid um in doing a business promotion of a specific business.

But we can highlight our districts, we can highlight a whole variety of things, and we can have some nice opening props.

Um, we had a uh super sharp communication student who was working with us all through the summer, uh, who put together a lot of really good social media content, and we're gonna be building off of that.

And one of the things that we do is a whole series of these question campaigns being like, Do you think you know the oldest business in Somerville?

Do you have like what's your favorite new client deal?

What's your favorite student deal?

Where do you get your hair cut?

Like getting people to help each other discover things.

Um, we have a specific at Summerville businesses Instagram um that is really this is the this is what that is for.

Um that has really been the shift that we made.

We did a as part of the ARPA programs for small businesses, we did a um professional campaign around shopping locally.

And that is going to we sort of like morphing that and using the same color themes, the same like content, um, but turning it using that really to uh reach an audience that wants to shop local and amplify our local businesses.

So that is what that we're gonna be using that for, and we are gonna also have that on the summer, you'll see it on the summer bowl uh citywide uh social media as well.

So because that's such a larger reach.

So this is gonna be a big coordinated effort for the next three months.

That's really exciting.

Okay, can I talk?

This is so exciting.

Okay, I uh thank you.

This is thank you.

And by the way, I totally see the emojis uh blue hard.

No, I I appreciate uh all the work you're doing, of course.

Um and and just a couple of thoughts.

Uh also I love the the loyal to local um would you consider?

I know that uh we have the Christmas tree lighting and we have the um minora lighting happening as well.

Would you consider um having uh presence or at least uh a flyer or something on the tables?

It's hard with the manure lighting because it's dark um and cold, always cold, but very important.

And although, you know, Hanukkah is not about gift giving, we're just kind of trying to have our children catch up to you know, Santa's big haul, but there is still purchasing for Hanukkah.

So just an idea for that wraparound especially and and with the Christmas um uh tree lining as well.

Just a thought.

I know, I know it's about it's about the the spirit of the season, of course, that's vital important, but also it's it's on our parents' minds, just a thought.

Um, if I can actually respond, yeah.

So there is one thing that we've been we're also working on that's more physical flyer that we will work well for that.

We're trying to put together a calendar.

Um we're still waiting, I say just November, December calendar, like December calendar, or if it's all three months.

But the idea is to have a flyer that's like a thing you could do every day to support your local businesses.

So that would be the perfect thing that we could bring.

That's awesome.

Yeah, and and just I know that I don't, I think we talked about this maybe uh a couple of years ago, or or someone said it or we said it or someone said some or the concept of the reward-based consumer driving activity of a punch card or an app or or something that purchased 10 items at a uh local business somewhere in Somerville and get, I don't know, something I'm very reward-based at times.

So I I could see that being useful.

Um, and then for the 10th purchase or whatever, they can get a tote bag or a little toy or I don't know, whatever.

We if I may, we are thinking about within this campaign.

So the first one is is the data score holiday, the data score holiday is going to be a raffle.

So it's you make a purchase um at one of the participating businesses, they'll give you a raffle ticket, and you'll be able to enter to run a prize of thing like gift cards and things from local businesses and data square.

So they are definitely on that track.

Um with the broader campaign, we're trying to figure out how we would structure an event so much as a social media base, but we are looking at um, we still figure out how to we haven't pulled off the venue yet.

But if if we can, uh if there's still space available, the community tabling events, tableing space at the art farm with the winter farmers market, we're gonna see if we can get a table for one Saturday sort of late in this campaign.

They aren't already taken, which is possible because we're so late at this.

Um to actually have a physical presence where we can have flyers and then also be like, hey, have you engaged with our campaign?

If you've done a couple things, snag a tote bag, snag a sticker.

We've got some cool stickers of different neighborhood names and business street names that people might be able to snag on that are linked to the campaign color theme.

Neat.

Um and the business, do you think of the oldest in summerville?

I don't know, but I know that Lindells has to be up there.

We have a shockingly large number of businesses that you probably would never interact with that are over 50 years on and funeral home, right?

Uh don't read stuff there.

I actually don't know that we know the oldest yet.

Totally not playing like stuff stump that I can development on.

We do have folks who are working on trying to figure this out.

One of the things that's been considered as a as a an offshoot of this and related to the oldest business in some rule is whether you know what we can't promote a business, what we might consider doing within without pretty any anti-aid rules or that sort of thing is thinking about honoring legacy businesses.

But in a way that's really community-based and community oriented.

So are we putting the other proposal that's something probably for a next year timeline of with how it you can be structured?

Is it a declaration of the city council of the mayor?

Is there a plaque?

Is there a this we're still putting that together?

Um, and then how are we tracking so that when someone goes from their five-year milestone to their 10-year milestone, it's like seamless.

Love that.

Love that.

That's great.

And I'd love to be, I'd love to find that in the city council too.

That's a great idea.

Um, this is really exciting.

I'm not sure.

So we do have a couple more slides too on one other thing that's not related to marketing.

If so, the last thing is again, this is sort of live and like really early stages.

But wanted to give you sort of a preview of what's coming.

Um, again, this is this is in our budget ball, so this is won't be new.

Um, but we are really at the place of starting.

So we are launching a really like a city process review for how small businesses engage with us.

And that's really around licensing and permitting and all the things that they need to be able to resist at the business and have their interactions with the city.

Um, and so we're starting on the internal front.

We definitely will be doing engagement with the people with all of you on the city council as well as with the business community in the course of the next year, but we're really at the very early stages of engaging with all the internal departments, internal departments who have say and sway over how a business operates.

And what we're looking for really are where does missing communication happen?

Is there a process change that would make that easier?

And is there an educational or informational moment that could be found to again have the business show up prepared, ready, and also make it easy for the department that's reviewing whatever the thing is to be able to give them a quick answer.

A lot of this is ultimately comes down to miscommunications, is usually what we find.

There's a miscommunication between the business owner and our contractor and the city.

Usually there are three, maybe four-party situations, and somebody missed somebody missed an email.

Um is typically how delay happens, and we're trying to find where those places are and figure out if there's anything that can be done, whether that is on the system side, a policy side, or simply a like personal touch side that would make it possible to reduce that.

But that's something we're really again like as of two weeks ago, um, have kicked off and are really starting to get into.

We're expecting this is an ongoing process that's we will probably never be done with making it better.

Um, but we want to really focus on this for the next year and getting our teams all aligned on this.

This is something you'll see in the economic development budget goals in the PPD budget goals, the licensing budget, the clerk's office.

There's a lot of alignment of departments who are trying to really look at how does that engagement look and are there things that could be fixed.

Um, I do want to highlight one that's been really impactful so far, and this is a collaboration that we are really not a part of, but we are we get to shout it from the rooftops for them.

Um, and that is that licensing city clerks and IST have made some important changes to the citizen surf process.

So if you looked at citizen serve a month ago, you would have seen like you would have to scroll by I don't know, a foot of text before you got to anything you could click on.

They have made that a lot cleaner, a lot simpler, a lot easier to follow.

Um, so that landing page for citizen serve is much better than it was a few weeks ago.

Really quiet change, really important change, right?

Another one is the license renewal process.

License renewals happen in November, December, because they go into effect for the calendar year.

The license renewal process this year has had a some seriously important improvements.

This is the first time you can do your license renewal and pay for it without a check and having to walk into city hall.

Um huge time savings for every business that encounters a license.

Um, the other thing is that you can do the application for the license alcohol license and the inspection for the alcohol license at the same time.

So you don't have to do those in sequential order.

Saves a ton of time.

So this has been a really big impactful change.

Um, there's a lot of folks who are involved in this major team effort, a license again, licensing uh city clerks, IST, but also IT, all of our systems folks who've been really working in the background, the treasury department who accept those checks.

Um, there's a ton of folks who've been involved in making that work again.

Really want to where we can highlight those moments through this process is like we are making incremental change, it is going to get a little easier.

Um, they've seen the especially the application happening all online for folks who don't have a lot of time, it's making a big difference.

Um, a lot of less, a lot of reduced missed paperwork uh in the process.

So that's ultimately our goal is find those places where the paper exchange isn't happening and make it a little bit smoother.

That's what we're left to that's our post-covid approach.

That is wonderful.

Uh colleagues, have any thoughts, comments, questions?

I have yes, um through you, Madam Chair.

Um super helpful and very informative.

Thank you.

And so much exciting stuff going on.

Um, I was wondering about the the data square holidays and if Teal Square, you know, was going to be involved.

So it's great to hear that there is some of that.

And um, prior to that, you had mentioned that the Union Square Main Streets and the East Humberville Main Streets were the way that the um D money was going out.

So in parts of the city like West Somerville where we don't have an organization like that, does that mean that they're not able to access those funds?

Or is that's a really good question.

The short answer is those districts do have access, it's more indirect of quite frankly our sour staff when they're doing block walking or staff when they're doing the office hours uh when they're doing responses to phone calls or emails and visits um in many ways our staff serve as the sort of conduit that a main street staff person would serve.

It's more indirect of quite frankly our so our staff when they're doing block walking our staff when they're doing that the office hours uh when they're doing responses to phone calls and emails and visits um in many ways our staff serve as the sort of conduit that a main street staff person would serve so um we we we don't want to have a situation where those districts that don't have a main street don't have access to tech technical assistance um would that we could have more main streets districts because we could just more directly distribute CDP money to those districts but our way of sort of working around that I hate to use the word working around is to enable staff to really spend more time and we are our you know up to the on that go to the go to many other districts that don't have the designation of the main streets and they give the same level of service now in all canor but the concentration of activity that happens in the main streets district is going to be very different than the conversation that happens in Magoo or Davis.

But as we provide with the data square team for example then this is not a main street there either but our staff really interacts with them fairly fairly regularly so we try to just make sure that we do regular interaction on the bottom staff we just really and also this is one of the things that we've been talking about the data square merchants who meeting and the data square merchants includes like PJ Ryan's Connors all of regular presence there.

I think they are open to the idea of collaboration with the TL Square businesses.

There's been a longstanding idea of developing some sort of organization of the business owners in Davis and deal there's a lot of things that the main streets organization can do that we we are not allowed to do um so things like you know some of the event organizing that happens some of these kinds of things they get to do more of the other thing that the main streets organization does is some of the supports that they're doing again are things that we aren't not allowed to do they can intervene when there's a landlord 10 dispute we can't um they can advocate for the business working directly with aware we can we can point them to legal legal clinics resources but we can't serve in that way mostly our main streets organizations are phenomenal at and generous with our services they generally will go beyond the scope of their area to support somebody that's struggling we went through this with a business on um beacon street um there's being supported with the in east summer mainstream to be able to connect them with resources much more quickly than we could because of the limitations that we are under so there is definitely a a sphere where I could see uh either an expansion of main streets organizations across the city and extensions of business improvement districts main streets um used a lot of their ARPA grants um to explore what would a business improvement district would look like for union square but also they wanted that to be a model for other districts that would consider being a business improvement district that might be a Davis that might be a work bottom that could be a bit of a variety of districts where assembly event where business improvement district may be a useful tool but again that idea of um having that like place based organizing uh is there the chamber is another resource the chamber has new leadership we're really excited to be partnering with their new leadership and they're getting um really in the groove of having some more technical assistance activities as well they did it um like ai for your business workshop recently that was open to non yeah cyber security they also as Richard's mentioning the chamber they also this past year in their taste of summerville included upwards of 50 new small businesses who have never participated before and so that opportunity to connect where there's not a main street to connect businesses with those other organizations that have that nonprofit status that could do more than we can do.

The other thing I'll mention too and in this business district thing it is a uh a goal of ours in the coming year to yes think about those districts that don't have a main street designation like the magoons like the teals like the you know to to not so much push a main street main streets district designation on them necessarily but to think more intentionally about how we internally interact with a Middle Square or with a I'm saying we've got just as a as an example so um much like we're thinking about the small business streamlining we're also thinking about business district not so much designation but acknowledging okay where are those areas where are those areas there areas where there isn't a concentration of nonprofit activity that's what small business that we can as a city team intentionally have those you know those those touch points and the organ self organization of data square over the last year or so has been really telling for us like what what they're looking for is a lot of information um and engagement and it's not typically it's not at contour where again we're the convener um and we're we always have a presence and there's some questions that they have that are in our wheelhouse but they often are looking for information around hey what's the police activity going on what is going on in terms of um a development activity in our neighborhood what's happening with the mobility project in the neighborhood and is there a space where we can convene it on a regular basis and have those conversations so again we're really thinking that through is a what could it look like could it look differently for there to be a more standing invited conversation for all businesses in different square it's going to take a that's a shift that's going to take a long time to shift um because we got a lot of a lot of folks involved and we

What is going on in terms of um development activity in our neighborhood?

What's happening with the mobility project in the neighborhood?

And is there a space where we can convene it on a regular basis and have those conversations?

So again, we're really thinking that through is a what could it look like?

Could it look differently for there to be a more standing invited conversation for all businesses in different square?

It's gonna take a that's a shift that's gonna take a long time to shift um because we gotta let a lot of folks involved, and we gotta get those businesses like organizing and coalescing around when do we do this meeting?

How do we have this meeting?

All those kinds of things.

So that's a growth area that we're hoping to do.

And we do think that also in terms of the construction, that might be a layer again that we might be able to improve on.

So thank you.

Uh Council and Captain, do you have any good?

Okay.

All right.

Uh this is exciting.

Um very much push the uh information out.

Do you know when you will have the calendar or uh everything finalized?

I will check communications.

Probably will I expect it'll probably be into next week.

And also we'll have some things that are ready for some of the side and some things that follow more in December.

We'll bring on a graphic designer um with using the material that that stuff might follow.

We might have a November December look and an updated look in January, um, just depending on how their timeline is and please.

I here in here, just even with uh City Hall.

I don't know.

I'm I'm I'm sure you know things here.

You know, it's if people in and out all the time, especially with the holidays coming up, that'll increase.

Um but it would be even great if if that say, for instance, the punch card idea or whatever, 10 visit 10 uh summerville businesses and yeah, maybe you do stop in city hall and pick up or whatever, you know, little summer role duck, whatever.

They don't really have a mascot in some um or whatever, but uh I I think in my opinion, IMO, I think going to 2026, we're gonna have to really just go totally full-on Summerville centric and pull in uh all of us big old four square mile hug and get really creative.

I think that I know you know our summerville, you know, we know our Summerville and our values of of really supporting each other.

We can really um stoke that plane in the years to come in 2026, and um we're just um unlocking our Solomonville residents to do so.

I I love the guidance on this, and I'm really looking forward to seeing where we go with there.

Um we can talk more about the updates uh at the in the beginning of the spring, but exciting to hear this, even if we go happy love day and and get all uh Valentine's Day heart-ish up in February.

I mean, I like the sky's the limit.

Let's just let's just entice everyone to shop summer dog.

And and so thank you.

So with that, happy to close this item.

We ran out of agenda items.

So um with that, uh I may, I'm allowed to move to adjourn, please.

So let's uh adjourn.

So we're we're completing this.

We're complete, correct?

Okay.

Counselor Hart.

Yes.

Council U and Hampton.

Yes.

Yes, right.

That is all in favor of the German.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Happy Thanksgiving, and uh safe fun holiday.

Yes, thank you.

Thank you.