On the message and order, referred on March 2, 2022 Docket #0314, for your approval for a short term extension of nine (9) of the fourteen (14) remaining urban renewal plans in Boston, the committee submitted a report recommending that the order ought to pass in a new draft. Councilor Baker moved for substitution. Motion prevailed.
Using planning and land use tools for public good and docket number 0314 Message in order for your approval in order for a short term extension of nine of the 14 remaining urban renewal plans in Boston. Thank you. The chair recognizes Councilor Baker, chair of the Committee on Planning, Transportation Development Council. Baker, you have the floor. Thank you, Mr. President. Thank you for allowing me to merge these these two docket numbers. The first 10192 was filed by Council BLOCK and co-sponsored by Council of Louisiana. It was to discuss land use tools for public good, basically urban renewal tools that we have that are available to us. And I believe Council will get up and speak about some of those. So we had two separate two separate panels. The first panel was from the EPA and they spoke on 0314, which was the extension for 14 urban renewal areas. And in so we were able to dig into a lot of content. We talked about elders quite a bit. Land disposition, land disposition agreements. We talked about land trusts and a whole lot of there was a whole lot of content content there. But what we came up with, with the 14 with the 14 urban renewal areas six years ago, we took a vote to extend it to this April. So basically, if we don't take a vote on this, all 14 of these go away. And within those districts, there's there's a number of tools that we use that help us in development and also protect the LDA, protect affordable housing. They protect open space, they protect a whole a whole wide range of different things. So what we come up with out of the 14, I believe we're going to take votes on on extending nine of them. And we're thinking about we're not going to we're not taking a vote on this today. We're looking to bring it to a vote next week. So councilors have a have a a week to talk about it, see what's within their districts. I know Councilor Warrell has some changes, so we want to give different people different times, but we're looking to extend nine of them. Ten of them extend extend ten of them because we added park plaza in the park plaza was on was on the list that we would sunset. But there are some major concerns around height issues and things like that around Park Plaza. So we will have the vote on that hopefully next week. And Council of Clarity came up with wanted to extend it two years and do a six month check in every two years. So what I think we're looking at doing and we're open to it is extended a year into a six month check in, which would be , I believe, in the end of September. So these will remain in committee and we will vote on them, will vote on 031 for next week. And with that, I'd like to turn it over to the to the to the lead sponsor of 019 to council. BLOCK Thank you. Thank you, counsel. Baker The chair recognizes counsel via counsel. Walk. You have the floor. Thank you so much, Mr. President. Thank you to Councilor Baker for running such a thorough hearing yesterday and to my co-sponsor, Councilor Louie Jan. We appreciate it. Everybody's indulgence letting us combine these two things, because in some ways they were kind of two sides of the same coin. On the one hand, we've got the long and difficult legacy in the city of urban renewal. As I mentioned there, I represent the West End, which is one of the many parts of the city that bore the brunt of that. And I think that the mayor's administration is laying out a path for us to really transform the city's relationship to planning into these tools and and looking at places where it's appropriate to sunset. At the same time, some of the stuff we were talking about yesterday was how do we think about like using some of these tools that we have for things like community land, trust, for things like building social housing on public land. And I think we had a really good second panel with some of the advocates in those spaces. Thinking about on the climate mitigation side, how do we assemble land parcels where we might need them to protect the fringes of the city? So I think it was a really productive conversation. And as councilor, as Councilor Baker said, I think, you know, the first part came out with some kind of good, good trajectories for the immediate decision at hand. But I'm very optimistic about the opportunity for the Council to be part of a real re-envisioning of how we use land use tools and public land for public good in the city. So thank you so much to everybody who came. Thank you, counsel. Would anyone else like to speak on this matter? Docket 019 will remain in committee. Docket 0314 will remain in committee motions. Order in resolutions. Mr. Clerk, please read Docket 04090409.