Franco’s Hair Studio

This is in fact new and not related to the AHO amendments.

I am the author of this petition and this is my solo endeavor. I'm on the board of The Cambridge Residence Alliance and Green Cambridge. I'm a co-founder and the treasurer of Upgrade Cambridge. I'm also a member of The Port Organizing Group. I have a technical degree from MIT which lends itself to understanding and making zoning amendments, however it is not civil engineering or urban planning based. I've been involved in Cambridge politics since 2018. I've seen a few zoning petitions go by and have used what I learned from them when crafting this one. I've met with city staff from the CDC about previous zoning proposals, and briefly with the Cambridge Director of Zoning & Development about my current proposal.

It’s in the same category. They had a much more ambitious proposal a year or two ago that didn’t pass. My goal is to try and break the ice jam with something modest

I updated the summary on my website to make it much clearer that every change is in fact less restrictive.

https://franklin.cx/petition/

Here's the actual text from their email notice.

>Say NO to the Franklin Up-Zoning Petition - not on the merits but because we need the City to do a real City Plan with specific streets re.zoning, housing, green spaces, and other factors. Option: instead convene a 12 person committee: 3 members each from the Planning Board, the BZA, the Cambridge Historical Commission, and our Neighborhood Group leaders to work together to create a City Plan on behalf of City Council and CDD

It's self contradictory. Pretty clear that they'll never support any housing of any kind

This is incorrect. See my response. https://www.reddit.com/r/CambridgeMA/comments/11w1swa/comment/jcze9wc/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x&context=3

Edit: I actually earned a badge of honor by having the CCC send out a notice saying to not support my petition

I am the author of this petition. I think you have misinterpreted it as you said you may have.

>It seems to mandate a lot of open space on lots. The 10-15 foot front yard would basically outlaw 3-deckers built close to the street like these

That distance is from the street line. It's mostly occupied by sidewalks. The table of allowed dimensions had equations for determining setbacks, but then there were footnotes that set a hard minimums. I removed the equations and moved the hard minimums to the table.

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>Is the minimum side yard on each side of the building? Even 7.5-feet on each side of the building would mean leaving 15-feet between buildings which is probably around a good bit more space than exists between 3-deckers in Cambridge

Each side, for a total of 15 feet between buildings. It seems like a lot, but it really isn't, especially once you start to consider things like safety, emergency egress, fire fighting. Either way, it's less restrictive than the current zoning. It's also the sideyard set back that the AHO uses. Additionally, depending on the zone, there are existing provisions in the zoning text that allow buildings to share what would otherwise be exterior walls if they have no windows. Zoning is complicated.

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>The minimum lot width is either 50 or 65 feet. That seems quite a bit wider than most lots with 3-deckers on them. Looking at the lots on Fayette St, they're around 40-45 feet wide. So I'd have to buy multiple lots in order to hit the minimum lot width of 50 or 65 feet

It's plenty of space for a double wide triple-decker like the one in which I live

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>Do driveways count as side-yards?

Yes

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>There's a 30% minimum private open space to lot area ratio in the petition. Do driveways count as open space? Is that 30% per unit or 30% total? Do shared yards count as "private open space" or does it have to be deeded to a unit? Do the front steps count as open space?

30% is a decrease in many residential zones. I didn't increase open space requirements in any zone. Shared yards do count. I believe front steps also count, but don't quote me on that.

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>Again, maybe I'm misinterpreting this, but it looks like a petition to severely restrict building compared to what already exists.

This is factually incorrect

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>Back when the petitioner was running for city council, they proposed eliminating minimum lot sizes so I'm a bit surprised that they're keeping minimum lot sizes in this petition

I did propose that, with a number of other things. There are unfortunate legal reasons why the lot area per dueling unit has to stay at or above 1200sqft. If you take a look at my reasonings PDF, you can see the full explanation. I was able to mostly get around that problem by adding a footnote that nearly sets it to zero for residential buildings.

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>At the time, they said they were "generally not" in support of the 100% Affordable Housing Overlay.

This is unfortunately true. I had misguided reasons for speaking against it, but I changed my mind in or just after December of 2020, then publicly spoke in support when it was reintroduced. It helped that the city made the main change that I wanted to see that was causing me to reserve support, which was increasing the minimum open space in residential neighborhoods to 30%.

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>They also seemed skeptical that Cambridge should be building more housing.

This is factually incorrect

Zoning is very very complicated. I tried to simply it, but the more I read the more I saw why I couldn't. You make one change here, and it cascades into a bunch of other changes. Before you know it, you've made an even bigger mess than what was already there.

Here's my website. It contains the summary, a FAQ, and links to PDFs of the full petition text and my reasonings behind each amendment.

https://franklin.cx/petition/

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Edit: I actually earned a badge of honor by having the CCC send out a notice saying to not support my petition

Yeah, you're definitely missing something. I'm the petitioner and author. I need to reread your comment and will address each point

It got close though. A lot of property owners took off the top floors of their buildings mid 20th century to save on taxes

There was a citizens petition filed in Jan or Feb that basically did that, the Doug Brown petition. It changed the table of uses to allow multi-families everywhere without changing the table of dimensional standards. He tried to submit it without signatures, so it failed by default.

Thanks!

Maybe this will push them to do it sooner

Giving up the right of way by treating a two way stop as a four-way stop can be confusing to other drivers and it’s not recommended. One of the best things you can do as a driver is be predictable.

Marc McGovern also said they’re working on something. There’s also a citizens petition on the agenda for Monday’s council meeting. It’s agenda item APP-2. I wrote in support of it, but I don’t think it’s going to pass because it’s written in a legally confusing way.

The USPS doesn’t have as much competition as you think. Other shippers don’t really send letters, and some types of letters are legally required to go though the post

Yeah! They posted here with pics

They did find that dog though, the one lost in Kendal.

It’s certainly not the suburbs

The city council has the power to change this. Email them at council@cambridgema.gov

Maybe recladding?

Too bad it’s not with prejudice

Correct

Look at the meter. The number is always going up until it overflows back to zero. The owner company reads once a month and subtracts last months number from the current one. If you live in a multi-unit building, throw your main breaker and look for the meter that’s no longer moving or counting up

You’re in the clear. You comment and post a lot here, so clearly not an interloper.