11.16.2022 Redevelopment Authority

hey I'd like to welcome everybody to the Wednesday November 16 2022 meeting of the Fall River Redevelopment Authority recording the Open Session can be viewed on Fall River government television www.frgtv.us I'd like to call to order a person went to the open meeting law in-person make an audio or video recording of this public meeting or may transmit the meeting through any medium

attendees are therefore advised that such recording of transmission are being made whether perceived or unperceived by those present and are deemed to acknowledged and permissible I'm going to start out with a roll call Johnny Erickson here post Gonzalez here and Keen here and Joe Marshall and Joe Medeiros are absent tonight also participating on Sarah page executive director.com

first on our agenda is approval the Open Open Session minutes from October 26 2022 I need a motion to approve those session meanings minutes foreign yes

uh next thing is the approval of the warrant

items on the warrant total 73 144.74 cents questions so I need a promotion to approve the payment of this warrant y so foreign

next item is City Pier 600 Wall Street uh updates are pretty much the security system removed the security system is going in they've ordered all the equipment and otherwise everything is really going well out there people are just walking and doing birds are not in your near as present staying clean which is really wonderful I was out there one morning pretty early on an older man came by with a pickup

one of the Pickup Sticks and he was picking up trash and he said oh I pick up trash All Along The Waterfront and I'll be here every couple of weeks and I'll everything up and he clearly does this in a number of places so that was the kind of thing I was hoping for was that the Walkers would help care of it and that sounds like that's the case Ken and I were out

there confirming the punch list for the concrete and they had all kinds of humorous about our lunch list of Great Lakes a few bucks to work out no more yeah yeah they're out there so yeah said to me they really like the benches and for us there would be more so it was that that option yeah yeah the opening went very well I want to thank everybody again it was it was very nice in your bless

the weather that day too yeah and I think Senator Norton was really you know particular paint place and that was nice you got a good press yeah yeah uh we do meet um I do need to vote uh to authorize me to execute the change order that you guys have uh nine it's for 276. extra grass on top of the uh the food truck area it's expenses hopefully grass yeah the grass is

growing much better it had been done with sand because that infected everyone agreed it really needed so we added that so I need emotions to execute this change authorized jump the chair down into the chairs

that exercise right for the changeover yes yes Sarah do you want to speak to the chapter 9 verses for the dogs so we've been making calls to Millie um and uh encouraging this to be approved and it is in process and we just need for it to get approved soon so that we can put our buyers and and it's working on it and we're just staying in close touch with them and

Laura our consultants and some more documents and so that should be coming soon and um the major issue is that the bids came in for the pile of installation and they came in we had projected that they come in around 197 000 we have an earmarked for 150 000 and they came in at 265 000. and the primary reason we believed is that green heart piles respect in their uh supposed to be the very best

kind of piling material comes from Guinea and they're in short supply and so this one so we got one bid and that was the surprise because many people had taken the plans many that come to the pre-bid meeting but we believe it was a problem with getting the pilots and so the one company that did called me today and said that there are some things in the specs that make the job more

expensive and that they would love to meet with us and talk about ways that they could cut it back and because some of our environmental approvals some of the agency approvals required a turbidity curtain we thought it would be seven thousand dollars and they came in at thirty six thousand and the reason is that the way it was specked it assumed you would move it 20 times for the 20

different piles and they had written a question um that was answered could they use one big perk but the way the answer to find it they felt it still wouldn't work for them and so they did it I assuming they had to move it 20 times and what they're trying they want us to think about is to have the turbidity curtain go from the little Jetty at the end of City Pier to The

Jetty that we own across the way and close off that whole Bay Area and so we're going to entertain that idea and they had some other ways they thought that they could make it less expensive so they'll listen to that so I've talked with many people about it and you know we could reject it and go back out to bid but we're recommending that we go ahead and accept a bit because

these piles are expensive they're the best to use um if we don't do it now then we're risking doing it in the spring you know we'd have to go back up to bed and um bill that beta said today that we we're assuming that the time of year restriction for the spotting of the fish is going to end the middle of May but he was saying that the Army Corps of Engineers could actually make it into

June and that would make our ability to use this money by the end of achievement really a couple of times and we could expect a different kind of here piling but um there are all kinds of issues with the others that we might expect and so it was real this so we would like to recommend that we go ahead and accept this and you said they were failed they're available this one company

he explained today that the reason they can get them is that they have ordered an enormous amount for a big project in Newport and um therefore they have kind of a the supplier was willing to extend this to the 20 that we needed and so because they have such a big order in already they were able to get these 20.

so you were talking about early earlier with with the turbidity curtain like doing in a different way we need to run that by anybody or I don't think so I think it just calls for a turbidity curtain so I think so long as this meets the criteria of intermitting the current we should be all set I'm sure they know that yeah the iron the irony of the whole thing is when we when we

originally did the City Pier and we were driving in I'm on the how many sheet piles were put in there nobody nobody required a turbidity correct so here we're putting in 20 pilots and now it's a requirement so I think it's whoever the whoever the analyst is for EPA at the time they made those determinations so I don't think this is a really a hot button issue um if this is a acceptable means of

installation of the turbidity current that I think will be okay yeah just it's one clarification and we had mentioned that we thought it was 7 500 dollars wasn't we it was in data stem it's their numbers these are not our numbers so because when the turbidity our current question came up that was the first question we asked and what's the cost of this because if we thought it was really

expensive we'd like to push back on it you know because we don't think it was actually necessary so then with the 265 with that savings be a credit after the fact oh no we would they're saying before we enter into a contract we could lower the number by 20 to 30 000 they think Closer Closer yeah yeah there's a 36 minus 20 16.

so so then I need an emotion so actually right the way that we suggested right doing that vote is a not to exceed the 265 assuming that it may come down okay so then so I I need a motion to authorize the vice chair to execute a contract with Reagan Marine slash Mas building a bridge not to exceed 265 409.

hey just one quick question all everything in their bits of paperwork and everything was good and all that so that's already been reviewed and such okay the vice chair to enter into the big not to extend 265 000 seconds Johnny Erickson yes let's save this uh Pleasant Street road map in Earl excuse me urban renewal plan well I thought I might have more news to report on this but we have uh both Emily

Innis and her group and um Monica Pacino from Mass our consult our program officer that has been working with us on our Hub Grant uh both of them are trying to talk with both Neva and um the Department of Housing and um I see if the regulations that were promulgated in January uh can be either um put off their implementation for urban renewal plans or there's the possibility that they could just

still use the methods that they used before they implemented these new regulations and so they've been doing work finding out how many other communities are affected by this and um trying to talk with state agencies saying lots of people are being affected by new regulations that really are difficult to apply to urban renewal plans so we're working on it we don't have a definitive answer um

downtown historic district expansion yeah we had our kickoff meeting with our new consultant who's on board and he's coming out December 5th through 7th to do an assessment of the area that we are designating he had a really good meeting with Ken and with um Jason who's the new chair of the Fall River historic condition and we talked about the size of the district and what you include and he

really had very good points about how he thought we were expanding it a little too much into areas that were hard to argue fit within the theme of the downtown and so um so at the end of that meeting we agreed that he would come for a few days and we probably set up some meetings with him and he mostly needs to look at the area and the buildings and take photographs

and then he'll write up his documentation that he has to send to the mass historic commission then they have six weeks to review it and after that we'll have a public meeting and so we are on a timeline he's worked out a very careful timeline and so um will probably have that public meeting in March or April do we need to go in front of the historic commission with any of his findings

well actually what's happening is Jason is the chair of the our historic commission he's uh reporting what uh he's learning in our meetings to the historic commission and will certainly be making that connection it's possible that some of them will meet with um anti-robling when he comes so we've got a really Clear Connection there so he'll be here for a few days the vice chair makes a finding that an

open session would have a detrimental effect on a negotiating position of the public body and allocating you need a roll call to enter into executive session to approve the executive session minutes from October 26th and to discuss strategy with respect to litigation in the Bristol County superior court docket number 2273 CVO 535 and with respect to potential litigation regarding the City Pier

project and for real estate transactions on the agenda on Innovation Way attorney Erickson yes and we won't be returning to uh and came yet thank you