11.14.2023 Redevelopment Authority

y good great okay welcome to the uh Tuesday November 14th meeting of the Development Authority this meeting is open to the public to attend person and at the above reference date which I just mentioned uh recording of the Open Session can be viewed at Fall River government television ww.

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us first one to the open meeting lot any person may make an audio video recording of this public or transmit the meeting to any medium attendees are therefore advised that such recording transmission are being made whether perceived or unperceived by those present that are deemed acknowledged and permissible Joan Ericson Ron R here Joan madas here uh also participating Sarah paage our

executive director John cman councel K fola administrative services consultant and Karen Martin our project coordinator uh first thing on the item on the agenda here is um the irop session minutes from uh October 25th um which are attached anybody have any questions on them I think you were all present good on that uh just need a roll call to approve John Erikson yes motion to approve the minutes of last month

meetings uh second second John yes which is a total of 96,9 2663 any questions on any of those dispersements anybody's part JIS yes I see a signature on there motion approve the warrant for November 2023 second second John eron yes R gonz yes Ron Ren yes M yes um I should mention an Kean could not uh be present tonight um next item is City Pier um Karen's going to give a a dock

update so the docks uh Coastal was back out there today to complete the punch list um the only thing that was going to be outstanding at the end of the day was going to be the lock set the final we has a lock on it right now but it's not the final one that we can program to you know open at Sunrise and close at sunset he's hoping to get that in um I he

talked to bill the engineer and they got an verbal approval so he's looking into getting it he's hoping maybe next week to have that the only other thing that um he uh he called me this afternoon he's like I'm gonna start this out by saying don't panic I'm like okay and um so I guess the guys put the pile caps on but they're black and I said well we want white

and he said you sure you want white I said I am absolutely certain we want white we've gone back and forth 10 times we want white so he's got to reorder those and get the white ones in so the black ones are there um I don't know if he's going to take them off today or wait till he's put um when the white ones come in so um the engineer was

going to try to get over there tomorrow to make sure everything else is okay I have to be out there tomorrow anyway so I'm going to double check but the pile caps that are not are on are not the final pile caps so just so you know I didn't know when did those go out I didn't notice um they today oh today he was he wasn't there and didn't

know yeah so yeah la had come in yeah so are those locks that go from Sunset I mean sunrise to sunset are they programmable every they change thems or they you have to go change them so there's a software that comes with them that will have that we have to program whether um I can just put it to like day to follow daylight savings time I'm not sure sure of the actual programming

intricacies and then it's going to have the key override too and the harbor mass will have a key to that and everything I'm just thinking if somebody goes to Cove and they stay a little too late and they try to go back to the boat and they're supposed to then have to call the Harbor Master and feel like a jerk hopefully not make a habit of it um and um and so the cameras are all installed

too they working um I still have I'm not connected to them yet and um we need uh Scott's going to come by the office and get me connected with all of that and I have the Harbor Master is back I spoke to him he's probably going to swing by tomorrow and take a look at the dogs he's taken some look at them but he is going to be going out on vacation from

November 16th to um just into the new year like SE uh January 2nd he'll be back so uh he but he's all on board he thinks they looked good from what he's seen and he um I told him I'd probably bring him over to look at the spare parts and everything so we knew where they were so he um he was was excited about everything so hopefully once um we get the white pilot

caps on in the lock we will be done and we'll have him closed up he'll pull up the gang way um for um Coastal Marine will pull up the gang way and close it all off for the um for the winter nice so and the um steuart Dean um so passivation work was completed on November 2nd the pier the railings um all along the pier have now been passivated and they look really nice

they look really good and um his bill was part of the warrant and he'll be paid in full and we'll be done with that also so good uh Cort Council Sarah great um I'm just gonna pass these out to you we uh the SE Council proposal went in and I'm just giving you a little map that we made for the proposal that kind of shows exactly it I think this helps and so we applied for

um a plan for this peninsula which we ended up calling Northfield um spit no we ended up calling it Northfield point right I didn't make up the spit name I got somebody else gave me that well but that we don't think that the Northfield spit was ever really a um a formal name and I don't even know that Northfield wasn't just something an engineer came up with like we just came

up with this to have something to call it um so the proposal uh says that we would be designing moing fields for the um Cove area actually this plan is a little cut off uh it has and has if it's printed right uh Cove Mings on the left side of City Pier to the South and then we would point and then we would be designing a moing field for the um boat ramp area up near and

so uh we ended up working with the engineer that I told you about which was enormously helpful and we asked ultimately for 396,000 which was a lot more than I think we were talking about at our last meeting but when the engineers really looked at what it would take to plan all of this out they came up with a detailed budget and it made sense and then I asked you to approve matching funds but the seport

council allows you to apply funds that you spent on your project previously that exceeded their commitment and your previous match and so we had put hundreds of thousands of dollars into this out of um Redevelopment Authority money so I asked them to consider $80,000 of funds that we've committed over the last two years um as our match so we didn't actually have to commit more match money

okay what was the requested amount of the grant again uh 396 okay um maintenance updates at City Pier Karen is going to talk to that yes so the um irrigation system was all blown out and shut down um Friday November 10th I am meeting the water department tomorrow morning to have the meter pulled for the winter shut down and uh the landscape is going to probably be all cut back and everything likely next week

he feels um and then that should pretty much wrap up all the um cozy and up for the winter on CD pier and then we come springtime we'll play the weather and see how it goes and let's hope we won't have to plow much Sarah how long will we know before that Grant's accepted or not oh um is it like a long time or is it just no we should

know the the uh meeting where they make a decision is in December last year it was around December 14th or something so docs the mayor and I went up to I think it was Salem or somewhere so uh we'll probably go to the meeting give a presentation and if you've been asked to come and give a Pres presentation you're you could be pretty sure that it's being approved and we had our delegation write

a letter of support and we also got a letter of support from uh groundworks South Coast with youth and they had really expressed interest in having their youth help clear this land because it's got invasive species and that's something that they've been doing at cook Pond and they have funds to work in Fall River so um so we put them in as some students would um participate with the engineer learned about getting rid

of invasive species the engineer thought it was a wonderful idea and it's certainly something the seaport Council likes to see that you're kind of involving students in things so um so their director uh wrote a nice letter of support and uh we hope that they'll be collaborators thank you excuse me next uh on our agenda is the so we have been doing lots of Outreach with uh Emily inis and Karen

has gone out and done tabling at numerous locations to try to get input from residents in the Flint and people who spend time there we did hire Elena pavid um who had worked in the mayor's office for um quite a while and has really done a lot of public relations in the city so she is pushing um through Facebook the uh flyer we H the U survey which has a QR code

and people have been responding so we've gotten 2 responses so far and people are really liking the QR code and um we're going to have a meeting this Thursday at catel apartments which is the senior apartments right on Pleasant Street and we're serving pizza and snacks and we're giving out um the uh gift certificates giving people gift certificates uh and pulling a drawing for people who responded to the survey

and people who came to the event so um we're hopeful that that will go really well the mayor's speaking representative Schmid is sending uh his um staff person um representative Viola is sending her staff person um we're still waiting to hear from uh Senator rodri's office and um we did invite representative syvia to and we have um other people coming to respond to questions and concerns that

the residents have they're very concerned about illegal activity and some key uh bus shelters and so we have Captain ferado coming to talk about um what the police are doing about some of the um safety issues in the Flint and we have Paul furland coming to report on the two million doll Grant the city just got to work on Stafford Square because Stafford Square floods and that's been

an issue and um people have continually raised that concern so it's really exciting that he has the grant he needs to plan that whole project so he's going to report on that Mike Dion's going to report on the um uh whole facade program he's doing that's improving the buildings along um uh Gilbert's Jewelers and along White RADS and a few other places so that was one of the things the

residents um wanted to see changed so that's good and then Aaron Tetro is going to come and talk about some buildings that he's redeveloping on Pleasant Street so what we wanted to do was make sure that people heard some positive movement on Pleasant Street we know they're going to complain about the building that is still um fenced and scary next to White Rose and um we know the city's working

hard to try to deal with that building um so we wanted to be sure that we brought a lot of good news and we'll be asking for input and we'll have boards and so after the presentations we'll present some of what we learned in the surveys and after people speak and present what's happening then they'll be able to go up to boards and put poits and say you know what what more they

they want to give as input what dat is that uh this coming Tuesday Thursday Thursday 16th sorry me days Thursday 5:30 Thursday 5:30 yeah it would be great if you came Joan was um Joan and Lewis have both been on the phone on some of the meetings so uh a lot of what I just described was encouraged onon Post-its and all that that went pretty well yeah so I think that's that report and

then the uh Sarah the amendment to the Waterfront her so we learned yesterday that that was approved by the office of Housing and livable communities and so we've all worked hard on that for a number of months and we're thrilled that the amendment got approved and Ken and I are going to meet with John to talk about steps that we would need to take to really look at uh acquiring one of the properties that

was identified as a potential acquisition but that was good news Okay um uh the property of1 Commerce Drive there's uh nothing new to report on that um anybody have any questions on any of those things no no I just the that's the gas company site or is that the gas station we're talking about it's the one um on a corner okay on the corner of turn the amendment covers both the

amendment covers both of them but there um okay so so we're good I guess um the chair makes it fining an open session uh would have a detrimental effect in negotiating and litigating position of the public body the purpose of the executive session is to approve the executive session minutes from August 23rd 2023 and discuss strategy with respect to contract negotiations for the Route 79 to all Street c or master

plan um I'm going to take a roll call are we not returning we're motion to go into executive session and we would not be returning second second John Erikson yes Lis kzo yes Ron Ron yes madas yes thanks everybody cor set thanks Al thank you