The week ahead: Southside neighborhood meeting and other construction discussions

Update (Sept. 29): This article has been updated to reflect that the October Disability Services Commission meeting was rescheduled to Oct. 17.

City Council won’t be meeting on Monday this week. Instead, during that time slot, Ward 8 and Ward 9 Councilors Cathyann Harris and Robert G. Logan are running a neighborhood meeting for residents of the south side to discuss traffic safety improvements on Lowell Street.

At the meeting, City Engineer Robert Winn and Traffic Engineer Michael Garvin are scheduled to present information about traffic mitigation measures proposed at the Sept. 18 Traffic Commission meeting.

According to Harris, the two councilors have been working for the past six years on putting together a plan to improve the safety of Lowell Street — which the city has identified as a site of recurring accidents and near-misses. Now that the city has studied traffic patterns and potential solutions, they want to give residents a chance to weigh in before making changes to the street.

“Despite some past measures, consistent speeding continues to affect our quality of life and safety in Wards 8 and 9. That is why this meeting is so important,” wrote Harris in an email to the Waltham Times. “The proposed measures will be permanent changes to Lowell Street to slow down speed and make it safer for everyone.” 

The meeting is scheduled for 6:30 p.m. Monday in the auditorium of the Waltham Community and Cultural Center at 510 Moody St.

Zoning Board of Appeals

The ZBA is a five-person board charged with reviewing new and existing buildings that may violate the city’s zoning code. 

The board has the power to grant project-specific variances to the code, overrule judgements made by the building inspector and grant specific types of special permits.

This week, the board will be revisiting a case it has been deliberating since early June about a group of multifamily houses in Waltham rented out by a company that runs a roommate-matching service. 

The building inspector sent cease-and-desist notices to the properties maintaining they are being operated as lodging houses by Waltham’s definitions, which is disallowed at the sites of some of the houses and is subject to additional regulation at others. The company argues that since it is renting its apartments to groups of roommates who live together as a unit, the lodging house definition shouldn’t apply. 

Some renters and housing advocates in the city have argued that classifying these properties as lodging houses could endanger the legal rights of renting with roommates in Waltham. Because of those potential implications, as well as nuisance reports at some of the properties, this case has attracted a lot of attention from Waltham residents. 

The case was scheduled to come in front of the board earlier this month on Sept. 9, but both parties agreed to delay the hearing. At the case’s June hearing, Schwartz’s solicitor raised an objection to City Solicitor Katherine Laughman both representing the building inspector and responding to legal clarification questions from the ZBA. After some back-and-forth in letters, the attorneys agreed to provide separate answers to the board’s questions. The ZBA delayed this hearing to give Schwartz’s team time to receive the questions and submit their responses.

This isn’t the only case on the ZBA’s agenda: it will also be revisiting a large residential housing development application through Massachusetts General Law Chapter 40B at 455 Totten Pond Road, which has been in front of the board since March. 

Additionally, it will be hearing a case about a single-story addition to a private home that will encroach into the house’s setback, and revisiting two past cases to correct clerk’s errors.

The board will hold its meeting at the Clark Government Center on Tuesday at 7 p.m.

Conservation Commission 

The Conservation Commission is a volunteer board charged with overseeing environmental planning in Waltham. The commission reviews certain types of construction on or around wetlands to ensure it complies with the Wetlands Protection Act and the Department of Environmental Protection stormwater standards.

This week, among other business, the commission will be hearing an application by the Chapel Hill–Chauncy Hall private school to repave an access driveway at 417 Lexington St.

It will be holding a meeting over Zoom at 7 p.m. Thursday. A link for the meeting will be provided on the Commission’s page on the city website at least 48 hours in advance.

Disability Services Commission

The Disability Services Commission is a seven-person board that works to make Waltham more accessible for residents with disabilities. They advocate and distribute funds for projects in areas including physical accessibility improvements to public buildings, improving available signage and interpretation services, removing snow and installing curb cuts to make it easier to navigate Waltham streets.

The commission meeting was originally scheduled to be held over Zoom at 8:30 a.m. Friday, but DSC Chairperson Mark Johnson notified the Waltham Times that the meeting has been rescheduled, and will instead be held on Oct. 17.