12.18.2024 Redevelopment Authority

okay welcome to the December 18th 2024 meeting of the Fall River Redevelopment Authority persu through 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 advise that such recording or transmission are being made whether perceived or unperceived by those present and are deemed acknowledged and

permissible first thing is roll call John Eren Ron R Joan madas and ke thank you also attending Sarah page executive director John Coughlin legal council Ken Fiola administrative consultant Karen Martin project manager first item is approval of our Open Session minutes from November 20th 24 uh if there aren't any comments on those I'll prove a entertain a motion to approve those minutes motion to approve

the warrant for 4,178 96 the just just a minute you want ahe jump back one motion approve Open Session meetings from November 20th 2024 see that means he was really listening to you yes yes madus yes and ke yes thank you I'm just excited it's been so low 4,000 you're so excited Ron you're up now uh I'll entertain a motion to approve the warrant for 40,000 17896 perfect approved the warrant for

December 2024 of 4,178 96 second second second John ER yes Lis conos yes Ron Rus yes Joan Medeiros yes and ke yes thank you um the fiscal year 2023 audit update from Karen yes so we have pretty much finalized the audits in final draft form and we've sent it to Joan for you to review yeah and then my list do you still want to have another meeting with

Jen or uh once I take a look at it all right let me know then she's going to be around so let me know and then um so then we should hopefully have um it ready for the January board meeting to um authorize the for the representation letter and finalize that on it and then on to 2024 do you find any uh issues no it was just a big question

about the lease and and um how we um were handling all that but that's all been resolved so there weren't really any major issues in that and a couple of things that were in the draft management letter we're already addressing with the uh we've been working on a financial policies and procedure manual so um hopefully that was their only request there was that and then um just a a more

detailed process for how to do adjusting journal entries and that's been put into the draft of the uh Financial policies and procedure manual so and I met with um our outside accountant today and she's looking over that manual too so we'll um be getting some input on that from her and I sent it to the auditor too for their initial look I think I sent a copy to you too

John so um so hopefully all that will be um addressed in those documents so that should be be it uh the uh dates for the meetings yes so everybody should have got an email from me with the um dates for 2025 I know Ann had an issue with the date in um May May um and then did anyone have any other issues with any of the other dates speak now not at this time not at

this time that's a great that's the best answer that's the best answer all right so then these are um these will all be confirmed and I'll send everyone um a meeting formal meeting invites in the mail on the next few days or so okay all right that's good all right next item is um Norton oh sorry uh Norton City Pier uh environmental close out Karen that's also I'm getting close to

being wrapped up Sarah just sent Joe back um the final comments right you're just waiting for the full document with appendices to come back right yeah and he sent me back he just sent me back the oh he just did okay well the other day I don't know that I have any corrections to this version okay but Joe and Mary Lou and I have gone back and forth because I wanted a lot more

clarification in certain places and Mary Lou agreed and so that's what's been holding it up is I want to make sure that 10 years from now if somebody tries to walk through that and understand where the contamination was where it got stored that it's really clear and he had to review I don't 20 years worth of documents and all those documents described the property in different ways and so we had to kind of clean

up how it got described so that you're clear there's the northern part of the property and then there's City here so it got it got complicated and that's what's been holding it up and John's going to look at it um to make sure that he doesn't see anything because once it's filed with d and EPA it becomes a document that's in perpetuity and we want to make sure that everything in it

is really accurate and can be be relied on okay cathodic protection all right so the cathartic protection is um actually progressing um as scheduled we had um an update meeting with um fo today and um the design has been pretty much done by the cathartic protection um consultant and Fa is now getting everything on drawings and into specifications and working on um pulling together budget

um it looks like we're going to need roughly 109 um cathodes to be installed out at the um Pier and it looks like it could come in within budget and one of the things that they um based on the um cathartic Engineers review that he thought would be um pretty beneficial for the exposed the areas of the sheet piling that will remain exposed um there there's this coating you can put on I think it's

called denzo and um that can also help stop the corrosion of the exposed um uh sheet piles so they're going to put together a they're talking to the um the product um manufacturers of that to get um specs and recommendations and pricing and they're going to give us um uh a budget for that too based on square footage that we'd have you could do the whole thing you could potentially do

just the seams and so many inches on either side of the seams um you know so depending on where the numbers fall we could see if we have you know what we have remaining in our budget potentially and maybe even shift some dollars within that Grant possibly also but um more to come on that we hope to have some more answers by um our next meeting in January uh they are also proceeding with

pulling together the concom per in and hope to get that on the agenda for the February meeting and um they're working on the notice to the Army Corps also so it looks like the projects on schedule will probably be bidding it have all the the the bid documents and everything done by May June and then bid right after that and then install based on um the bids is the coding black do you know

coding their I don't know he's going to I asked him to make sure that we got a copy of the specs my guess is probably on all those codings black or gray so it's probably one of those colors um anything new on Northfield Point um Northfield point right now um we're I'm trying to in the process of trying to schedule a meeting with Ken um Laura and Bill from beta to go over on

the permit process they've started working on the permitting um they're also in the midst of um uh further doing design based on um what we discussed at the last meeting the layout of that design they're hoping to have um some more to us in January we'll probably have a permitting meeting and another um a group meeting to review where they're at with those drawings and um they're

also talking to the um Engineers gei who are doing their revetment work it just seemed like the the budget numbers that they had originally proposed seemed a little on the low side for the amount of work that had to be done so they truth check and that with them so um they're kind of plugging along with that too but it does look like for funding we did find out that you know for Grant work to

actually do the work um The cport Economic Council Grant should be coming out at some point hopefully in early 2025 but it won't be awarded until June and I'm still waiting to hear back from coastal zone management about their Grant programs but it looks like we will likely know not even be able to get anything out to the street and bid till the summer so that may mean I don't know

if any construction will happen in 2025 but more likely 2026 so just as a kind of timeline based on and that assum as we get the grants so if we don't get the grants we'll plan B okay uh se you want to talk about Pleasant Street Flint herb yes so the urban renewal plan is moving along uh Emily has uh gone through and made some of the changes we need to make we

had talked at the last meeting about the fact that we're going to kind of remove projects that are really City projects and so she's been reworking things and um first she was responding to to all the questions and requests of the housing department and she'd waited to re to answer those until we knew what meepa um was going to require so she's been going through and reworking the

urban renewal plan and then it needs to go to tie and bond our engineering firm and they need to rerun analysis and work on a number of um aspects of it and I have a call into uh Mass housing because we still have money left in a grant that we were awarded but the money was supposed to be to implement projects to maybe hire a consultant to advise us on one of the

projects we have in our plan and instead we're asking them to let us just use that to pay tyin Bond more to do all the engineering analysis and writing that needs to be done to revise it to go to meepa but we're at least feeling like we've come up with strategies that will work and for example we had had in there the project of Stafford square and Engineers had run all the analysis that

meepa required so we're removing that and she's they're both going to be um showing a four story building on Pleasant Street just a an imagined four story on one of the lots that would be buildable and then they have to run all the numbers to show how much more energy will be used how much more pollution that that energy could generate and um how many more cars could go through the

neighborhood because of that building and so that's the next project and it's uh it's just so much analysis and um so that's kind of where we are with that she's sending a new revision I'm really happy that we'll have that to review in the next week or so and and uh what I want to suggest and request is that uh I think we need to uh probably pay um in Associates another

10,000 for all of this rewriting and additional work and so I would like to be able to um uh have an amendment we'd like to amend the cont to add that to her original um her original contract because her original contract did not presume having to totally redo the urban renewal plan has she requested this from us yeah she well she said that she thought that um uh that she would need more funds to

go through all these revisions but she's she's also open saying you know she knows that some of the work uh you know in her she said she would finish an urban renewal plan and the amount of work being required by meepa is um Way Beyond what her original contract was so did she send us request for 10,000 or just request more funds well she brought up at a meeting we had

recently with tyin bond that if she was going to do all of this revision her contract would probably need to uh be increased by 10,000 so today I asked her about it and she said that she felt that she was doing $10,000 more work and she sounded as though she would accept less than that because it's a gray area what you know what does her contract require and how much extra work

is this so would the like if we increase it amend it to increase up to 10,000 then is it just like a she'll just bill us for her time or yeah she always bills us for her time um but if you want to question it you know we have every right to do that so Sarah did the other Consultants fall under her contract like is that some of that time for tie and

Bond as well or is it just no it the tie tie and bond are saying that they need so what happened was when we found that we had to do much more for NEPA we had tie and bond con change their contract over to Mass housing so Mass housing where we have a grant to cover our urban renewal plan work um they contracted directly with tyin bond for this second piece of work that was

never foreseen in our in Emily's original contract so we don't have to pay their portion it's just her portion then under the T but as I was saying I need Mass housing to really confirm that because our previous program officer was adamant that they didn't want all their funds being sucked up by the NEPA work but I think the new person we're working with there understands what we're going

through and I don't really want to move if we were to have to pay tyan Bond ourselves we'd have to move it uh out of the contract they're working through Mass Housing and create a new contract and it took months to get the one created with Mass housing so I think that the only amount that we're going to have to pay is the 10,000 the whatever we decide we'd be willing to in increase

for Emily and it may be that we should wait for her to really give us an outlined proposal is this triggering anything from a procurement standpoint from a what standpoint U fitting because we had to initially put this out to bid right so these changes aren't going to affect be affected by any of the rules around that but have to look what was the original bid you remember 165 165 yes you can do 25%

increase on the 30b so as long as you stay under the 25 and the fact that tyin bond is no longer part of hours because Mass housing pays a lot of consultants for this kind of work directly and so they'll pay that and then this is far below a 10% so why don't you just have a submit a proposed change order take it up yeah exactly we need it documented yeah two things you mentioned that with

we're going to change like Stafford square and a couple other things couple little projects without without limit the meepa that we have to actually do by taking those out and then will that make a difference and also the price too and the other thing I I I always ask is she signed a contract to do this renewal plan she didn't know that was part of it she didn't know that meepa would um what

mea okay when she originally wrote the contract the regulations were different and that's hung us up in all kinds of ways the legislature created a new set of guidelines or they they had a bill that included environmental justice communities requiring far more analysis and that meant that our urban renewal plan had to go through a far more detailed stringent process and that was completely new and so

her um her contract did not foresee this level of NEPA review okay is there a part in the contract that says if there's more work she can charge more money is that part of the contract I think so okay um you know she could say well I've fulfilled my contract yeah I mean I think that she can say this is Way Beyond the work that I bid on and if you look at the contract

and you see what she said they would do this is not in there Meep wasn't a part of it no okay I seems reasonable I mean me was was always part of it but meepa was a very limited process and it became massively expanded well hopefully will limit on me if you take a few projects out of it maybe I'll limit it to some where it'll be more reasonable if you they out Stafford

square and you said two other projects well but the thing is by taking out Stafford Square um we're having to do different analysis but it is it is simplifying it but it's more work to take those things out and do some replacement and then there are lots of things that meepa is requiring and she's carefully writing it so that mea's not going to come back well the the goal is that mea can't then

come back to us and ask 20 more questions that we have to answer and you know I worked for a year trying to with all these other groups around the state trying to get this application of this level of review removed from urban renewal plans this is a problem across the state Brockton is having to pay something like 990,000 more for their whole urban renewal plan to address Nea

so we're not alone in this and and we're still working on trying to get the regulations changed because the change in regulations is hurting you know any Redevelopment Authority that wants to do an urban renewal plan red teeth gets longer well it seems reasonable to me that if she feels like she's go going above and beyond the scope that she just as John said she just give us change

orders as she goes and we can evaluate those andove question number whatever y so um do we need to um actually do a formal amendment in that case or yeah I would just have her submit a proposed change order and then you can vote on it the next okay that way you got something in front of okay good uh Sarah anything new to talk about on the the uh Deval Street

Corridor well the only report is that stantech is working to complete the master plan documents to submit to us and from what we can tell they've made lots of progress um and that in response to the letter that we sent to the governor governor and lieutenant governor uh with six 60 signatories we understand we be receiving a response soon soon did you say soon soon yes um is the is that meeting uh in

January the 7th or the 8th is that the last one yes that's the last meeting we think we're having with developers that are interested in commenting on our plan and considering if they might at some point want to you know talk seriously about being involved in okay um update on the North downtown area well I want to thank um a number of you for coming to that meeting that we

had a few weeks ago uh to talk about how to kind of take what we did as part of the transformative development initiative that we have been working on for about four years with mass development and um kind of taking that to a next step and so Johnny and Lewis came and Ken and John and Karen came and we had about 40 people there uh all really interested in this idea of focusing not

so much on the South Main Street but on this cluster of North Main Street including purchas Street um maybe Troy Street um and some blocks around there and the thinking is that um Viva Fall River has moved into a new location on Purchase Street it has a patio area with the vision that in the summer and the spring uh they'll have concerts and the restaurants in that area can and provide food and it can be

just a really vibrant area so a lot of the discussion the other night was about collaboration among the restaurants collaboration with businesses and trying to really have vibrant activity in that area and it may involve more lighting it may involve closing a street um so all of that is going to be uh carried forward through a number of meetings uh the new TDI fellow was introduced Nick schonberger I had

mentioned him at the last meeting and he's going to be with us for a year and he has a really great background he's very enthusiastic so he'll be working with us on this planning we're going to have our next meeting uh January 16th it will be at the creative class building and I think it's in the groundwork space and um the other piece of this is that we've kind of come to realizing

that there are lots of groups that really are excited about all these kind of social activities restaurant activities and that group will meet once a month and Ken has agreed to call some of the property owners together for a somewhat separate meeting to try to find out what their key priorities are that we can then work with them to strategize what might we want to try to do to address those priorities so this was

kind of how we were working before in our TDI partnership but I think this is a good strategy of kind of having two different tracks and um it should lead to a lot of exciting activity come spring but there's stuff Happening Now Viva Fall River is having all kinds of activities there's a trolley event on Sunday and you've probably gotten invitations so um so that's movement that seems really good for North

downtown Johnny and Lewis do you have any comments after having attended well there seemed to be a lot of energy there a lot of interest I've always since I first moved here I always thought that was kind of a restaurant uh you know Haven yeah with all the places you could go around walk around to you I thought it was good conversations after they after she spoke I thought it was pretty good everyone

stuck around and got a little groups and talked about ideas I thought that was good yeah what's the trolley Sunday receiv oh um there's uh you know there have been various activities related to this new trolley and so this idea is to have a Christmas carol group I think they're professional singers and they're going to go from stop to stop by trolley and so there's a whole schedule if you look

on Viva Fall Rivers uh website it tells you they're stopping at a church and various other places I'm going to go when they go to the Viva Fall River shop at 5:00 but I think it starts at 2 and it kind of goes different places and it's a fun idea Sam from the mayor's office is going to be on the trolley with them and each location where they stop is supposed to have activities for

kids and um you know when you stop at 5:00 at Viva Fall River uh chocol latte is going to have a um Coco station where you can get cocoa so or hot chocolate so um there are different things at all the different places sounds good um there's no other matters uh for the Open Session the chair makes a finding that an open session would have a detrimental effect the negotiating position of the public

body the purpose of the executive session is to approve the executive session minutes from November 20th 24 discuss strategy with respect to potential real estate transactions for properties located at assessor map 22 lot 9 on Deval street at the corner of Turner Street 45 Anan Street and 191 Commercial Drive property I'll entertain a motion to uh enter into executive session and we will not return to open session

we not return that no we not return motion to go into executive session and I will end the meeting for tonight second second John xen yes Wisconsin yes Ron R yes Joan madus yes an ke yes thank you happy holidays everyone