Board of Aldermen — 3/21/17 Page 16
President McCarthy
There are a number of things in the ordinance that are simply technical corrections where the old ordinance
made reference to state rules that no longer exist and laws may have been changed. Primarily the wording in
this cleans that up.
Alderman Dowd
Also, Attorney Westgate represents several developers. They worked on compromising languages to get this
as clean as possible so it’s a win-win on the city and the developers. They can live with the ordinance as it is
before us this evening. | think working togheter with corporation counsel, they have come up with wording that
we should support.
Alderman Siegel
| do have respect for Attorney Westgate, having used himself. | am well aware of his capabilities. | do also
support the idea of limiting some density in neighborhoods. Now my concern is the definition that corporate
counsel gave us was notification via the planning board process. However, if somebody buys a piece of
property, the first thing they are going to do is they buy it with an assumption of what is possible, develop some
planning, some financing. They do something well before they get to the point where they are ready to have a
notice before the planning board. Again that represents a significant financial commitment. Is there some kind
of delay that we could put into this to allow for some sort of grandfathering in fairness or am | overthinking this?
Part of me also wants to understand if Alderman Deane has some valid objections, through you, Mr. President,
| would love to hear Alderman Deane’s objections if he would be willing to share them with us. I’m curious.
Alderman Deane
| look at legislation to be filed to address what we might see as issues, but the whole process of what went on,
and this is aimed directly at 122 Manchester Street, was just wrong. It was wrong. I’m sure down the road
we’re going to hear about it.
Alderman Schoneman
| was unable to attend some of the meetings where these things were discussed. | appreciate the insights that
folks are sharing tonight. | received a call from a constituent who had some concerns about this in an earlier
version and now believes their needs are addressed by it. Nevertheless, | share Alderman Deane’s deep
concern for this type of thing. We're going to talk about process a lot tonight. | think we need to be very, very
careful and not draft legislation that targets a particular activity or place. Whenever you do it is going to
perhaps interrupt someone’s development. | think occurrences is a little different than a specific driver, a
particular project that was a particular driver. So although | know there was work on this and can live with it
and | would prefer to give it my support on that basis, | feel | can’t base on the process. Thank you.
President McCarthy
Again, | want to point out that this legislation was not applied and does not apply to the development at 122
Manchester Street.
Alderman Lopez
The initial legislation was proposed months ago. There was no quick pass going on. There was some
concerns raised and that was one of the first things we discussed at committee. Is anybody in process right
now who is going to be held up by this. My interest was protecting the residential neighborhoods and keeping
the character of them, but also encouraging density in areas where density is a good thing. The process did
serve us. There must have been at least 8 editions that were proposed, if not more. It was a very much a
back and forth process, which can be confusing, but that was mostly because it was an open dialogue where
