The Fall River Redevelopment Authority convened on Tuesday, December 14, 2021. The meeting began with the approval of the open session minutes from November 15, 2021, and the December 2021 warrant and financial report, both passed by unanimous votes. The board then entered executive session to address executive session minutes and real estate contract negotiation items. Upon returning to open session, two significant contract amendments were approved: one authorized a $5,000 annual salary increase and a one-year contract extension for Executive Director Sarah Page, and the other approved a second amendment to the purchase and sale agreement with Liberty Utilities, extending deadlines for building decisions until the end of February and for Liberty to record the AUL and finish remediation until the end of August. Both contract amendments passed unanimously.
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all right i'd like to call to order uh the meeting of the fall river redevelopment authority today tuesday december 14th the open law of the open meeting law statement pursuing 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 recordings or transmissions are
0:30being made whether perceived or unperceived by those present and are deemed acknowledged and permissible this time i'd like to take a roll call for attendance starting
0:49joe marshall here and keane here thank you and also participating tonight is sarah page our executive director john coughlin council and ken feidel are our administrative service consultant the first item on the agenda is the approval of the open session meet minutes from last month november 15 2021.
1:14is there a motion to accept those minutes discuss them i move we approve the minutes okay second second second by anne uh all in favor eye anyone opposed okay so move next item is the warrant and financial report you have that in the package is there any any discussion or additional information needed i want to note that since the one that was sent out in the um with the whole packet i had paid for a 50
2:01christmas tree for us to decorate in the lobby and um paula decided to add that so that's the change there that's it yeah okay okay any other discussion on the warrant a motion to approve the warrant for december 2021 second second by john harrison all in favor aye aye anyone opposed okay uh at this time um well i'd like to take the uh the meeting the agenda out of order we'll take number seven
2:42on the agenda currently the executive session i make a finding that an open session under executive session would have a detrimental effect on the negotiating position of the public body we need to make a roll call to get into executive session to approve the executive session minutes and to address the below noted real estate contract negotiation items on the agenda and we will return
3:12back to open session after we're done an executive session that being said let's take a roll call uh votes done with uh the vote is to go into executive session johnny erickson john medeiros yes yes yes yes okay so we shall go into executive session so we're good we're back we voted to come back into open session two votes we'd like to take based on discussions the first vote is to authorize
3:46myself to execute an amendment to the contract between the redevelopment authority and the executive director sarah page based on her review at this point can i give the details sure okay and the details being uh we're increasing sarah's salary by five thousand dollars a year and uh extending our contract one additional year so she's already completed one year she's got three more years under contract and
4:22uh john will you execute the the the amendment to that yeah so i brought one with me perfect okay if you take a vote to authorize that she had to sign and we could sign that okay then i'll entertain a vote uh to to do that is there a motion to execute the amendment to the contract between the rda and sarah i mostly meant proceed with the amendment to sarah's
4:49contract okay is there a second to that okay all in favor aye all right anyone opposed okay thank you the second vote or the next vote would be to authorize myself to execute a second amendment to the purchase and sale agreement between the fall river redevelopment authority and liberty utilities is there a vote for that is there a question for that
5:30okay is there a second for that that's august uh yeah so it gives us until the end of february regarding the decision for the buildings and it gives liberty until the end of august to record the aol and finish remediation by second i think we first thank you okay second favorite anyone opposed okay thank you uh next item on the agenda is the city pier six hundred divulges okay can i i get a
6:01i have to go to a city council meeting at six for two tips and i'm first on the agenda um do you want to quickly two minutes go over the national park service stuff are you okay with that no what is that on the agenda yes it is where is it the historic district oh yeah it's number five yeah you want to go to that right away or do you want
6:22to take care of that you want to you can take care of your life so i just got about five minutes here no no no you can go okay is there anything you want to say about it no so what you have is essentially just a draft scope of work i take no pride of authorship it's just a draft but i think we've captured a lot of things that would be necessary to
6:40incorporate into the development of a district the benefit of that district will be as we talked about before by extending the district down to you know saint and church thereabouts whatever the board defines as the boundary it would then allow the buildings within the district to become eligible for federal and state had to start tax credits which would facilitate and help with the capital stack in terms of the
7:07development of these properties for market rate market rate use so without that it becomes a little bit more challenging because those federal historic tax credits you know by right it represents 20 of eligible costs on the federal side and 10 to 15 on the state side so if you have an 8 million dollar project um you know 20 percent could be 1.6 million and another you know million and a half you know 800 000 from the
7:35state giving you 2.4 to offset your cost right so this is the first step in doing that i think we have some buildings along the way that help us we've got the kennedy pockets on the historic register saint and church is on the historic register st mary's cathedral is on the historic register so you're talking about the federal register correct so the fed once you get on the federal you all you also become
8:00on the state too right so they work hand in glove with one another so you'd be you'd be accomplishing both at once so like i said we you know i know that we want to put this out to bid sometime early next year this is the scope and i think you know like i said if there's any other things you need and there are any other questions you know just we can discuss
8:19thank you okay thank you thank you guys thank you and if i don't see you happy holidays merry christmas and i'll see you tomorrow okay thanks guys uh as i said uh number four city pier 600 uh duval street sarah you want to talk to us about the construction and other updates sure so uh the remediation uh the removal of the soil along duval street is uh far along they've consolidated
8:54consolidated it in the circle that's going to be in the cul-de-sac driveway and they have some more to consolidate in a berm that was planned and um they have uh beta has worked on an amendment to um the um the epa documents because he found that there was a need for more geotextile fabric than had been put down and joe mclaughlin from data has been carefully out there watching everything so that
9:35there won't be questions we've been asking kim teasa to approve it so there's a little concern that we had to keep going she knows that she has looked at the amendment but she hasn't actually approved it yet and she's retiring at the end of december and so mary lou was going to call her and say you know we really need you to i really want her to be the one who
10:07approves it not wait until january for some new staff person so that's um is the possibility there to get that yeah okay we really think that she likes to think the other day they sounded like they were pretty confident that she was it's just a matter of doing it though yeah that's right and so they're being i think extra careful to make sure that they have photographs of everything that they can prove that
10:36it was all done by the original plan and you know everything that we found hadn't been done is all being corrected properly so so i think that's all um working out going well it just was a bit of extra work that we weren't quite expecting and um they have just about finished the whole perimeter sidewalks they had left a couple of um sections not done because they had underground trenching and things that you know
11:14conduit they need to go in they've been putting a lot of conduit for the electrical transformer and the electric line along the street and today i saw that they'd poured concrete covering that and so they're really moving ahead they expect the railings to be all up by christmas which looks viable all the posts are up all the way around and now they need to put the um the top the cables in and
11:51uh still on the northern pier they still need to put the top piece on the railing so but they're just working through it and if they don't have all of the cabling in before christmas they're they're planning to come back and make sure that's done over the few weeks after that so um so i did want to say that you know we still are waiting for components of the lights to come in
12:23the curbing to come in they expect to get that in january february so they'll be all they'll have it so they're all set to put it in in the spring that was you know the supply chain issues that affected us and john and john coughlin and i had a call with nick corvello at beta and just talked about the timing was there a need for us to send any kind of letter that john might
12:58develop and we agreed that um that they're really moving forward and we didn't need john to write a letter but what we agreed on was that there will be a summary memo from nick at beta telling the board and all of us what is left to be done in the spring what that plan looks like so we'll kind of end the year you know we expect it to more or less be shut down although
13:26they'll go out and do what they can during the winter and if we have a mild winter that would be great um but we'll kind of have a memo to bring you in january that says here's what's left here's the plan and um you know i we're very happy that the weather is really good right now and they're tearing forward they just have lots of people out there right now
13:56if you guys have seen it but once they get the horizontal cables in they're taking down the temporary right railings and it looks very nice you can appreciate how cool or really it is it is really cool really those posts look really good yeah all right well that uh anything else to add no uh no not on that uh on the pier uh no we need though the vote was already
14:28yeah done with my report okay any any questions no okay um i'll entertain a vote to authorize me to execute a second amendment to the purchase and sale agreement between the fall river redevelopment authority and liberty utilities next one no good stuff oh i see it i'm very excited right yes yes i'm still asking for the vote to authorize the chair we have that a contract with beta in the amount of 55 000 to
15:03develop the chapter 9 license application i move with that we approve the it's 5 000 more right correct five thousand extra yeah than we thought then we thought yeah right and will we approve the five second uh is there a second to that second second all in favor aye anyone opposed pretty good uh next bank street armor so the mayor came to my office again yesterday i think it was yesterday and said
15:39where are we with brian tebow the potential purchaser and i told him that john and i were waiting for his attorney to send the land disposition agreement back that had been promised uh he was in touch with us right before thanksgiving so the mayor said all right i'm calling him right now so he in my office called him and brian told him how sick he had been and um that you know it just really held
16:07him up and that um they would get a they would get us the document by friday which i told john and john said that he would um contact the lawyer and see what the lawyer had to say about that so the mayor had a good conversation with him but brian brought up all the concerns he's been bringing up that we hoped he would talk with ken about regarding you know taxes and how those
16:39will be handled and he he just has a lot of questions and we thought that he had kind of a road map to get those answered and i think he's still struggling to figure it out did you have a chance to contact yeah so i sent you a copy i know you saw it i sent you a copy of the email i said to his lawyer last night oh great um saying that we anticipated getting it
17:07back on friday is friday coming yes but i did not get a response right i do remember that it's a vague memory i recall talking to you it seems like friday seems to be the checkpoint but nothing happens right so i mean at this point there's a there's a draft land disposition agreement that they have and until he's ready to engage and buy it there's really not much we can do
17:35we don't have a backup buyer we don't even own the property right the city owns it so you know if he wants to buy it he has to engage and if he doesn't then we're not going to take ownership because we're not we're not taking it from the city unless we can turn around and resell it well is it is it appropriate to put a uh a date where we need to get this done
17:57we could but you'd have to say in that they you know if you don't get back to us by this date we're not selling to you i guess if you want to do that okay if you came back two weeks later and said i want to buy it i'm not sure when to say no no no that's right but i'm not prepared to pick a date today i just want to whether or not that's appropriate well
18:14what i had done before thanksgiving was write him and say why don't we have a phone meeting between your attorney and ours and you know um you and me and our attorneys and get together and talk through the issues and he didn't really respond to that he then really got his attorney to contact us and maybe we should again say we understand you're struggling with this you know why
18:45don't we get on the phone and talk it through but we already know the issues that he has concerns with we think we're not sure oh that's my point i've heard a few but i'm not sure i've never seen a draft back with revision so and some of the issues frankly have nothing to do with redevelopment i mean how the land's going to be taxed and pilot agreements that's all with the city that right so
19:07i think ken would have to be on that correct yeah because we're not the only not the taxing authority we're not the ones who determine that stuff and he's also talking about you know is he going to create a non-profit and um that all plays into it too i think he has a lot of decisions well that has nothing to do with that we're just the celebrities right that's all
19:27well a lot of this a lot of it has nothing to do with us it's just holding him up from getting back to us and until he resolves those things he's not ready to sign an agreement so we're trying to figure out how to help him resolve those things well you know maybe we should have a discussion with the mayor and see how how he feels about the delays and
19:52whether or not he wants to put a date on it i mean if he's that serious about oh let's give it more time fine but i mean you put a date on it if he agrees i don't see a problem with us agreeing no and then or maybe we try one more time to schedule a call yes could be somebody from the mayor's office could be somebody from ken's office can we i
20:10think we should because there are issues beyond us as the seller right there are special permits there's parking there's tax issues there there are things that have nothing to do with us yeah i think we should move toward that because our uh the the projects that we have now and going forward uh the ones that you know that nothing's happening we should just get rid of those and start moving forward i mean you can't
20:37take on three more and still be juggling seven so and i'd like to come to a conclusion on this uh again with the direction of the mayor uh you know how you know how entrenched is he in having this done at the beginning it was you know it was very exciting but nothing's been happening and again we're just facilitating this right now we don't own the property i think that's a good idea i will
21:07propose to him a meeting with um his attorney ours the mayor's office can be it could be a zoom call like you're gonna have it was so convenient see we can't answer for the uh the administration or the city about tax tax and that may be a question we can't answer that question right of that meeting i should tell him is to get a list of the concerns that need to be resolved
21:38we want to help him yeah he's got to tell us what he means okay good great next community you want to sit on that great okay so um well it was interesting we had the meeting um we did a walk and walked of pleasant street uh with our consultants and um bill kenny and caitlin from the city planning department and um francis goys from mass housing joined us and she
22:28walked some with us and then we went and had lunch and paula provided us a great lunch from new boston bakery and uh we had a really good conversation and francis explained mass housing's interest in making sure that housing was a piece of our planning because we have tended to really focus on commercial and she made sure that we knew that getting housing in there which we're certainly envisioning on the upper
23:03floors of the commercial buildings on pleasant street and housing is certainly a piece of it and so that was a good discussion and then several days later she wrote us to say that she's leaving mass housing and so we felt like we finally met her in person so we have she has someone taken over temporarily from her and mike dion and i are setting up a call with him we've thrown out some dates and so
23:35hopefully we'll connect with him next week and but it was a it was a good um it was a good day and their product that um we're getting out of it is that instead of photographing each building we went down streets and we're creating they're using a program that's kind of like google maps street view and they're creating um a really more interactive document that you know online that can be used over
24:12time can be shown to people and so it's a really interesting process and product that we're getting out of that and now we're focusing on putting our committee together and plan to have a meeting with community members in january do you want to say anything about it joan it was great that we were there it was good um the consultants were on the table certainly brought their expertise into it
24:47i think it facilitated some really good discussion around the issues for the neighborhood and gave them some ideas to think about in a pine on as they stopped working on the proposal good um so let's see then next is collaboration on projects in the tdi district and south main street and i'll just give you um oh yeah first we want to i'll give you an update in a minute but
25:27i guess first we want to deal with the historic district consultant you want to do that before the tdi um i outlined the projects under this do you want me to go into those no no no we can go out of order sure now go ahead with the historical consultant so basically we have a scope of work that we sent out to you and we i think that
25:57it looks good and we can turn it into an rfq that would go out in january and if you um have any thoughts on it um that would be helpful but otherwise um you know i think that a scope of work is just a vote to go forward okay then we you know why don't why don't i entertain a vote to approve the scope of work for the historic district consultant you
26:30have an rfq even though if you've had one developed already no but it will be i'll take the um scope of work and use a standard rfq that we've used before and work with john on it and work with ken and we'll get that developed well again i'll entertain a vote to approve the scope of work for the historic district consultant have an rfq developed to be uh given out in january of 2020.
26:59is there a i move we proceed with the uh consultant historic district consultant okay that's uh the second second one of those um yeah so the rapid recovery plan has really it's a it's a big document very helpful lots of detail lots of examples from other communities um about how the 12 priority projects and goals that we've identified have been implemented in other communities and you know if you
27:43want some wonderful reading over the holidays we can get you copies of it it's big but it was really really helpful and it has just a list of the 12 really delineated with what are immediate goals midterm goals long term and so we've had some really good conversations with the mayor about it and bill kinney and mike dion and i have been really working through what um what goals the city already kind of envisions
28:17implementing for example mike was already working on a facade improvement program he was already working on the idea of a a lease subsidy program so that we could attract companies to come to storefronts in south main street and pay part of their year's rent their full year's rent he's still looking at that as a real way to attract more businesses so we are being offered help with fundraising at least
28:56we've had a call and we have a team identifying um funding sources that we might go to to carry out some of these goals and so we went to the mayor to ask him of the 12 do you agree with us that these are the two we should really focus our fundraising on one being having a vacancy tracking tool that's already somewhat developed and needs to be further developed and a plan for recruiting companies to come
29:34to south main street so that would dovetail really well with the assault improvement program with the lease subsidy program that mike is talking about and the mayor said absolutely that's a super high priority for me and then we also talked about this whole issue of district management which was another um real priority identified that we have viva fall river doing a lot of marketing
30:03of the district but there's still a need to really think about how to engage companies in making decisions to work as a group to take on different issues make sure that the maintenance and the um beautification of downtown is happening in ways that they would like to see so i think we have agreement that we want to create an association of businesses and i worked to help a group in springfield of um in
30:41the italian section of springfield create that kind of business association and there's been concern that if you go to a business improvement district where companies and you know small shops and property owners have to really commit a percentage um a lot of them are designed by state law so that a percentage of your property value is then taxed by the bid to to generate money for this kind of
31:15district management and that's not advisable when you have a district that is so struggling as it is and so the idea of getting businesses engaged in a way where they have a boat at the table and are really thinking about how to improve their district but just doing it with a nominal nominal contribution is what we're pursuing the group that i worked with came up with 25 dollars of business and you know it was
31:46incredibly token but for some businesses that that was actually what they really could contribute and um and it really made a huge difference and so the mayor said oh this is so daunting and it is daunting but you know you work at it over time so the thinking is that we have a consultant being paid for by mass development part of the tdi project to come and really work with our partnership on the concept of district
32:20management how has this worked other places model bylaws probably a variety of tools and so we'll be working with her but at the same time we're thinking about raising the money potentially using arpa money to hire a district manager so as we talked about that the idea of that person being an employee of the redevelopment authority came up because it would be better not to have it be a city position and
32:54the rda is a logical potential place to put this position i think i would hope that they not be in our office in city hall be at war in any office in city hall it would be great if they could be in a storefront or you know have a space somewhere right downtown so that they're not seen as a city employee but really as an employee of the association
33:23so we have a lot of work to do um we want to throw this idea around with a consultant but i wanted to just let you know that that that's some of the thinking that's going on right now that's great and the other thing i wanted to report is um there's been a lot of frustration that outdoor dining didn't get off the ground the way people hoped for example tj wants i mean ta's restaurant wants to
33:54um really had a plan for uh you know their um their outdoor dining on in some some parking spaces and um harry's wants it and a few others really thought that it was moving forward and so there's a need to put together a whole kind of program uh probably another ordinance just really clarify how do you apply what are the guidelines how do you work with the building department so
34:29civic moxie has been hired and there was funding available and bill kinney has really had the city sign the contract and they there was 35 000 available for them to develop a program and then some of that funding is available to get the concrete and some of the furniture that's needed to actually implement it and so we moved really quickly on that once everyone said you know we have to get this figured out
35:02and um civic moxie developed the um fall river arts and culture plan recently and people really liked working with them and they developed the outdoor dining guide for the state and so it has examples from all different communities around the state so they can really hit the ground running on this because they know the city and they know the issues so i'm just very excited that so many of
35:31those pieces are coming together and we seem to really have a lot of consensus about what the what the goals are and how to move this forward so i guess the last thing to say about that is that we started needing to plan a gathering of property owners and businesses and i'll be talking with ken about it we met at the chamber the other day and we're thinking february 4th or so
36:03where the tdi partnership will invite a lot of the businesses that have been involved we're going to ask ken to invite property owners and he and i have been talking about this and i think that you know we want the mayor to be there probably invite city councilors and really have a conversation about how all these pieces could work to really get the district um more activated okay so so that's um
36:38that's the downtown district downtown district and the next is all the last 79.79 yes update on that at all i mean yeah there's just a really brief update uh bill kinney ken and i met the other day because mass d.o.t came back to us and said do you want us to provide a consultant to work with you on the issue that we've been raising over and over about how once there are developable
37:11parcels how are people getting in and out of them where are the curb cuts and it's hard to know where curb cuts should go before we're further along and yet you don't want to get far along and then have a problem with where how are people getting in and out so we all agreed we should ask for a consultant and bill sent in that request right but that consultant would currently work at nasdot well i
37:39think massdot is hiring a consultant whoever the consultant is should be aware of what the project is oh yeah that's what i'm saying yeah i'm i'm assuming it's someone mass d.o.t has been working with and they will help um probably go back and forth with between the sqt folks and us about where are we going to put these entrances and exits anything else no anything from any of the other members
38:25thank you thank you for coming