These are just some of the municipal meetings and civic events for the coming week; as of press time, five City Council subcommittees were scheduled to meet in the coming week and other committee meetings were scheduled as well – but only one had posted an agenda. More meetings are on the City of Somerville website.
The Winter Hill Community Innovation School in Somerville was closed this month for safety concerns. (Photo: Marc Levy)
Revisiting Medford Street plans
16-20 Medford St. Neighborhood Meeting No. 4, 6 p.m. Wednesday. Somerville Living LLC and DiBiase Homes host their fourth community meeting on a proposed mixed-use residential and commercial project at 16-20 Medford St. Located on the current site of Cubby Oil Co. and Somerville Gas and Service, the four-story development received site plan approval in August, but the applicant submitted a major plan revision in January requiring Planning Board review and another neighborhood meeting. In the updated plan, the developer proposes to increase the total unit count to 51 from 41, change the units to rentals from condos, remove the subsurface garage and reduce parking spaces 12 from 43. Representatives from the design team will be available to answer questions from the public. Watchable by Zoom videoconferencing.
Maintaining school buildings
School Building Facilities and Maintenance Special Committee, 6:30 p.m. Wednesday. This committee run by councilor Beatriz Gomez Mouakad meets for the first time since the Winter Hill Community Innovation School was closed this month due to falling concrete inside a stairwell. Councilors will discuss the building’s failures, a plan for assessing the causes of those failures and how to reopen the school safely as soon as possible. The city’s director of infrastructure and asset management and the commissioner of public works will answer questions about whether new staff positions will need to be created for the planning, design and construction process and how that process will be overseen and evaluated. In addition, councilors would like the school department and city staff to develop emergency plans for relocating students of “at-risk” schools including “but not limited to” the Winter Hill school and Benjamin G. Brown School. Beyond the “at-risk” schools, councilors call for the development of a five-year assessment plan for all school buildings. Watchable by videoconferencing.
