12.13.2022 Redevelopment Authority

calling to order the Tuesday December 13th um read a Fall River Redevelopment Authority meeting effective 505.

pursuant to the open meeting law any person may 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 or transmission or or unperceived by those present and are deemed acknowledged and permissible I'd like to start by taking attendance via roll call John John Erickson President Joe Marshall here and Keane here

uh also participating in today's meeting is uh Sarah page our executive director uh John Coughlin our Council and Ken Fiola are administrative service consultant

um first item on the agenda approval of Open Session minutes from December 16th on November 16th and November 30th is there a a vote to approve those minutes or any discussion I moved we approved Joe okay is there a second to that second uh all in favor aye anyone opposed um next item is the approval of the warrant everyone I hope received one has reviewed it and if they have any

questions we can discuss them and if they have no questions I can entertain a vote to accept I move we approve the warrant all in favor aye aye aye anyone opposed um next item on the agenda is uh the recruitment for a new executive project assistant you wanna structure oh Rochelle has been here with us and wonderfully uh helpful and doing a great job and she's gotten an offer she can

refuse and I think you all have heard this and I just put it on there to say that tomorrow I'm gonna get it up on indeed last night I looked through some of the people who had applied before because when I hired Rochelle some people um kind of kept answering so uh there were some people I never interviewed who might be worth looking at and I'm going to redo the um

job announcement that you know I'll have a piece of paper announcement I'm going to send it to all of you the mayor's office and any of you if you know of people um that would you know be really really helpful and you'll see the salary that we had talked about before it was around the 40 000 range and um and yet we've we've been somewhat flexible if we had the perfect person so um

so that's kind of where that stands we want to find someone as quickly as possible in the meantime I'm calling uh Julie who took some minutes for us and worked as an attempt and she still works full-time but I imagine she might be willing to help out since she learned the roads here and that would be great and then I've talked with Carla our bookkeeper who could come a couple of

times a month to help with some of the bookkeeping tasks in person the way she did before but I am really hoping that I you know I'm going to seriously prioritize this and try to get someone as fast as possible and recognizing the middle of the holidays isn't always the best time to be looking thank you Rochelle Merry Christmas yes thanks yes all right thank you next item is our City Pier

600 Duval Street you want to give us an update yes if you don't mind so I have here the approval process for various kinds of events we had talked about getting a committee started in early uh 23 to start working on um policies and procedures about having events on the pier um the really great news about events is that um Ken and I were on a call with several people from Mass dep and Ken did an

excellent job of laying out what we want to do and the kind of events we want to have and just kind of instead of continuing with this assumption that we would have to go through a whole new chapter of 91 license process he said you know we want to have these and and he just kind of didn't get into whether we would have to apply the Assumption was we wouldn't have to apply

and they said yes you have old historic licenses and you know we'll look at this and see what kind of events you can have without another license so they gave you the reason why you can have events three much yeah good yeah well we haven't heard back from their research but do you want to talk about the one that you found so some of you may remember Joe probably remembers there was actually a steamship Cove

chapter 91 license for the City Pier and that license was approved by the approving entities at that time and AD license actually allowed the City Pier to be developed for hotel um Marina correct and office use and Commercial and Commercial correct so that license in and of itself was is a valid license when we were redoing when we were trying to look at the pier for Marina purposes

we were going to make an argument that said we didn't have to do another license because we already had one that was available through steamship Cove but at that time nobody wanted to press the envelope everybody said well it'll be clean if we just do another license as opposed to trying to fit a an old Marina use under that license so that's why we moved in that direction but I guess the point is if they're looking

for ways in which to accommodate different types of uses on the pier certainly that steamship Cove license which is the most recent license but for the new chapter 91 licenses that we've um secured that should give them the authority to do so so having that license is hopefully will prove to be beneficial to us right yeah because if we don't have to go through that bowl chapter 91 license process

that we've just gone through twice it would be just such a sign Time Saver consultant fee saver how long is that good for the steamship one seems like open instances I think there's a sunset provision on of 20 or 30 years yeah so yeah all right and um the 79 groundbreaking yeah um um so I scheduled jumped ahead from the committee um do we still agree we want to pull together

um do do we have a sense of what we want to do should I work with a couple of people on this process are you talking about the committee for the events I don't know that we actually need an official committee no but you can have a ad hoc committee maybe some people from the community and and a couple of board members for sure what kind of people from the community

would you think I might want like people who might have maybe Patrick people that Patrick because somebody who may want to use the pier for events so the Arts Community the yeah oh we can we can go over that but it's just I think the committee should be comprised of the city stakeholders yeah um what board members would like to be on it this time well since Jones not here maybe we should volunteer

she's already in the I know you want to oh great that's a good idea I'd say just one or two because you don't want it no no no more even one's fine because you'll be there yeah you'll be part of it yep okay I think it's enough yeah yeah and then and then uh you know go over especially with John on it uh go over uh some names from the community and like them good and

don't make it bigger than six or seven no definitely okay good uh is that that answers your question right okay on the committee yeah yeah so then Route 79 groundbreaking uh we saw the lieutenant governor today she's excited about coming back to the pier for the groundbreaking uh D.W white call this afternoon and they were asking for a key so they can bring the dirt that they're going to

shovel and we're asking about our tent and um so Rochelle talked with him and we'll get him a key and you know work with them on it but it was nice to see they were reaching out and good is that 12 21 yes yeah December 21st yes 9 30. yeah

um and everyone here is invited yeah who do you think for about 50. I'm inviting my board I'm fighting the boy yeah I'm just saying the weather will dictate that I think how many people come City councilors are going to fight

today the mayor and I drove up together and oh I jumped ahead to Facebook no that's okay though I think we can follow you go ahead and um so I'll show you the board that um David made up for us that we showed and um so here's the new dock system and there are 12 uh up at least up to 12 um Mooring spots for the for the audience yes oh see what that's about

yeah the seaport oh what it's going to do the seaport Economic Council helped to fund the whole remediation and development of City Pier uh into what it is today so we went back to them with an application to add a dock on the north side of the pier and our goal is to get that in um so that people can come in their boats over to the pier next summer and

we're just going to have it on the North side right now we just learned that the governor has chapter 91 license so now we are licensed to put docs all the way around and um one of the questions I was asked at the meeting today was I wrote in a proposal that we're using this kind of as a test on one side and he said what are you testing and so I

said that you know we want to see how well people navigate to it how well it works if they're a design designs that we may want to change in a next iteration and how much demand there is and uh so then the other piece is that this is an 80 foot gangway and the fact that it joins a land as opposed to joining the pier means that we can make it wheelchair accessible baby carriage accessible and

is a real advantage and then when we do peer you know when we do docs around other parts of the pier we're going to be having a much steeper pitch up to the pier and it may be much more difficult to make anything with you know ADA Compliant so here we won't have to go for an architectural access board variants we'll make it um 80-foot gangways are considered ADA Compliant even though the pitch is a

little more than a typical pitch Allowed by the Ada for other purposes um oh and then the piling so um we have a hundred and fifty thousand dollar State ear Mark to cover the pilings and we already put it out to bid and we are in the middle of uh signing a contract with Reagan Marine a very experienced company out of um Newport right and um they were the only one who did uh and it

came in uh relatively close to what we expected because they also came back to us and said there are things in the bid documents that make it more expensive we'd like to talk with you about making some revisions so our um a couple of our permitting agencies required us to have a turbidity curtain and originally can you explain what that is for me yeah do you want to explain it

yeah so it's a turbidity curtain is a curtain that's used during the construction of the driving of the piles so that as you're driving them down the as you're driving into the ground itself the you know what's resulting from the pile being driven in is now floating around in the water and everything else so this curtain contains whatever's coming up from driving the piles into the sediment from

being dispersed throughout the entire River it's just going to be contained within this area no it just resettles but it doesn't get washed out into the river right so there's a curtain that confines all that stuff from being washed out it's interesting so there are different ways you can do them and and Beta had expected that you would have the curtain on your barge and you would put the pile through it so it would

really have to be opened and moved Arrow 20 times for the 20 piles which they thought was doable but what they're now going to do that will save a lot of money and time is at the end of our little break water here it will go over to the close Breakwater and we have land over here that um oh yeah that has two points there's a point kind of over here

and one over here and if you do the curtain to this one you kind of really close this area in and there's a root there's room for the barge but you are really keeping all of this um material from floating very far thank you yeah so that just stays in walked away right now so yeah so this you know this is a significant Grant right so when you actually look at the amount of money

that is taken to to get this pier ready for public use and now transient dockage we're into it for probably close to 10 million dollars of which and I say this all the time that I think it should be reiterated that the city has never put in any of its own money into this project the majority of this money has been secured via grants whether it's through the various grants from the CPA Council a

mass development and mass works and then money is from the Redevelopment Authority itself so this is a very costly project primarily because it costs so much to remediate the pcbs that were there that nobody knew about but now we'll buy that and now we're into the own structure of this project and yeah I think the uh feedback has just been tremendous on the project itself people are actually

loving it and they're going to love it more in the summer and then the time to come so I think it's a highlight of the Waterfront well even even the state's approach we may contacted us about doing the groundbreaking for 79. yeah so they are aware yep yep no it's great now I got a question for the curtain right yeah when if we go to Dooley the other side of the pier can

we use that curtain because we have to purchase a new one because it's their curtains the cost is just installing yeah but we would probably use it from corner to corner over there right yeah yeah a lot of it's going to be based on a demand the good things were permitted to go the real cost of this project is not necessarily in a pilings it's actually in the dock yeah dogs are expensive you

know and I think we're going to take a look at bidding it out both for aluminum as well as wooden docks in the spring could probably get ready for the spring all right right yeah because we want to have the docks installed sure right and the docks don't have any time of year restrictions so once we go out to bid they've just got to manufacture construct a docks and then install them and that can be done

anytime do we know if we have to put a game yeah there's going to be a gate that's going to be here the Harvard Master was pretty adamant with us that you want to gate here and it will be a locking gate and I think we decided to have it on a timer so okay great yeah so if you're locked in you're probably going to have to call the Harbor Master to get to get access

and then we're also going to get some camera coverage of the uh the dock itself from the cameras that were placing up there now is that the only material wooden aluminum wooden fiberglass or typically they wouldn't that wouldn't uh or aluminum yeah and then they have floater floating mechanisms under the barrels or some other material that makes it float good now with that meeting you you're in

the mayor attended today right at that meeting did they give the approval yeah with you know every single one of us got up and gave a three-minute presentation so I had it timed it I did my little presentation and then they vote at the very end so that's kind of the you know if you're on the agenda you know nobody's going to um say oh I don't like this project

they all just get approved and I was surprised I was so careful in what I was going to say not to say this grant will I was gonna say you know if you approve you know with your support we'll do such and such and everybody else was saying this award will allow us to so um so what'd you say I uh I think I got rid of I was sitting there

scratching a few things out I I just said we are going to add docs okay with your support we're going to do that yeah all right thank you thanks for the updates sure uh the next item is the again Sarah the status of the chapter 91 in Army Corps of engineer um approval for the Ducks so that's part of that uh the lieutenant governor confirmed with uh the mayor that um the governor has signed the chapter

91 it had been sitting on his desk and we have been told that we're getting the Army Corps of Engineers permit this week so but so we've been working with um Congressman auction class's office I just read I just received a check uh a text saying that they're going to be checking again with them tomorrow because tomorrow is the day that they sort of indicated that they would give

us the letter so so we got a full claw press on getting that done good yeah because um if we don't get the Army Corps of Engineers okay this week then um the uh Reagan is not going to start putting the piles in until after the holidays and if it were to lag much more than that they said that uh they would um potentially not start in January because we're up against his January

14th time of year restriction they know it's going to take at least a week to drive the piles you could have blizzards and bad weather so we're really up against the gun and we're trying everything to get it approved so they can get out there and you've already mentioned anything to add on the plans for the installation pile installation no you just said it yeah I think so okay

and uh the approval of the beta contract Amendment for pile installation and construction-based services so I had a head number from uh Bill McGrath uh to put in the application to the seaport Council because I considered this matching funds we were basically able to say that we were providing a 32 match to the grant that we're getting because a lot of the engineering work and planning we've done

uh can't be covered by the grant because it happened prior to getting the grant so um so this um Ken and I are suggesting that we had take a vote uh that the amendment not exceed 19 580 because I got it kind of midday yesterday and we haven't hi we haven't had a chance to um really talk with Bill McGrath about the fact that we question whether there would be a need to have

um someone supervising the pile installation the entire time and you know we want to pick into that and see if he he could convince us that that's important you know there is the concern out there that there could be obstructions under the mud and they could go putting a pile in and if they're supposed to test to see if there's an obstruction but they could hit an obstruction and it could damage

the wood and so that's the kind of thing someone would be out there watching for but we're not sure that it makes sense to have someone out there in the cold watching the entire time so we want to to debate that with Bill and see if we can reduce this a bit so for the sake of time you'd like us to entertain yeah some hope to not exceed uh 19 000 which

is their proposal okay so uh Let Me Entertain that is there a uh a motion to approve of contract amendment to exceed 19 not to exceed nineteen thousand five eighty I move the incentives there's another immediately okay and is there a second to that yes all in favor is signified by saying aye no one's opposed um yeah we have some urban renewal plans going on so uh the Pleasant Street road

map right you want to address that yes so we have been working on this road map that's a revitalization plan that will that precedes the urban renewal plan pieces of it will go into the urban renewal plan and they're into really connected um Dan aguiar our new city engineer kind of came into this process after we had done a lot of meetings and a lot of thinking Caitlyn as our city planner was in the

beginning so we've had some City staff kind of coming and going so Ken and I had a meeting with Dan Mike Dion he and I to really talk about um here's where we are with the blueprint now are there things in this that you really don't think should be in here and there were some things so we all agreed we think should be removed and so I'm working with Emily on doing that um and

a major issue that has really hung up our process is that we had our Consultants had discussions with NEPA and NEPA started saying that um an enf um an environmental notification form would not be adequate that we would probably need to go much further into much more review um for the Flint neighborhood and we all started thinking that didn't make sense to us it kind of stopped us in our tracks because it had lots of

implications well it turns out Emily learned through a meeting with meepa and another client that NEPA had gotten the impression talking to some of our Consultants that we were not just doing a plan and um having other developers develop they got the sense we were doing what Quincy is doing in their urban renewal plan removing a significant number of buildings and as a Redevelopment Authority developing new buildings

themselves which is completely not what we're doing so when we learned that we decided we're just going to go to meba with the enf and there are some new Kinks to it where we do have to do some public engagement and high-end bonds will be doing a climate change analysis in relationship to it um but we're just going to make the assumption that we can go the simple route then if when we submit that they

say oh no you need to do more then we'll deal with that but we're now thinking that there was a real misunderstanding and that we should just back up and tear forward with the process is there a better understanding now yes yeah okay yeah so update on the plan and time frames have you covered that kind of we we now need to re-figure our time frames but our goal is to get this road map done

um and presented we're going to present some of the changes at the team meeting that we have with you and Joan and many of our Consultants um uh the first Wednesday of this of January and then we'll finish the road map and get that done and then we'll be able to move forward with the submission to meba and getting the urban renewal plan back on track and then report at the next meeting yeah

any questions another question uh projects downtown historic district expansions so Andy roughly our new consultant came uh December 5th through 7th and he walked um our whole Urban ring our whole historic district um and took pictures of every building and he did it with um Jason the um uh the chair of the city's historic commission and Jason's amazing he knows almost every building in its entire

history and that was really great for Andy and um so he may stay in touch with Jason if he has questions um then we met with Ken for a while after we walked on South Main Street and Andy was very impressed with how friendly people were he got started at 7 30 in the morning on North Main and he said he couldn't believe how many people just went up to him and said hello and

um made him feel really welcomed in the city and and they didn't know who he was right yeah they have no idea who he was good um and two pieces of good news are when I was writing you know revising our RFP and talking with Ben Haley of the historic commission he started saying that he thought City Hall and i-195 broke the district in such a way that we would have to have two downtown historic

districts and I pushed back on him and then um he Andy had a number of questions for him and he said that to Andy and Andy convinced him to some extent you know he felt that he was quite successful in convincing him that the historic nature of this building the fact that i-195 going through the city was actually a historic event of urban renewal and that there was you know a

lot of arguments to be made to see both parts of the district as one district and then Andy did a day of research while he was here and he found a document that had been developed by the mass historic commission that made that argument itself that it really should be one whole District so he was so excited that he found that documentary and he's now writing everything up he'll submitted to the historic commission and

then after they've reviewed it we'll be able to have public meetings and then get it on to the historic commission for their final approval and submission to the park service any questions yeah I got to meet him I don't know no I really I was really impressed with spent a lot of time in the library myself he knows a lot of stuff too he learned a lot about the city just like a fresh

course I was really impressed a nice guy to us thank you uh next item I'm going to ask that this will conclude our Open Session and as for both to go into executive session as me the chair make a makes a finding that an open session would have a detrimental effect on the litigating position of the public body and to do so executive session to approve the executive session minutes for November

16th and 30th and to discuss the strategy with respect to potential litigation regarding the city peer project is there a motion a newly move into executive session John is there a second and not to return and not to return until Open Session correct in natural correct second okay but Lewis uh we'll take a roll call as well yes Joe Marshall yes yes okay so we will now go into executive session never to return