City Council in brief: After three years, residents see some progress on paving private ways

More than 72 private way residents will soon see progress on their requests to resurface their streets.

Between early 2023 and May of last year, residents of 12 private ways requested that the city repave their streets. The City Council has discussed some of these projects for years without a clear end date, but on Monday Assistant City Solicitor Michelle Learned visited the Public Works and Public Safety Committee to give a timeline for repaving six of them.

For these six requests, Learned said the city was able to verify that more than half of the neighbors on these streets agreed to the project, which is the first requirement for such a project to go forward. In total, these repaving requests will cost the city an estimated $637,170. 

The Law Department has already reviewed three of the projects – Buxton Lane, Mount Pleasant Street and Marion Street – and is ready to present them at next week’s City Council meeting. The Engineering Department is still reviewing the other three – Kenmore Road/Kenmore Terrace, Milner Street and Blossom Street.

Learned estimated the Law Department would be ready to present the latter three projects at the council’s Aug. 3 meeting and recommended that councilors vote on the repaving requests as a group at that meeting. 

Even with an August start date, Learned said the city would be able to pave some of the private ways without underground gas lines this construction season. Some of these proposals have recently hit delays, she explained, because the city learned that utility companies had planned maintenance on the roads. In cases where utility companies will be doing work on private ways in the near future, the repaving may have to wait until next spring after that work is complete.

Private ways are not owned by the city, and the city is not legally responsible for maintaining them. Still, because of the high cost of roadwork, if more than half of residents on a private way agree to redo their street, they can submit a request to the city. If accepted, the city will determine the cost of the street paving and pay two-thirds of that cost. The other third is divided between landowners on the private way according to how much their lots are on the street.

Additionally, the City Council:

• Applauded Sunday’s Pride Day celebrations. (Committee of the Whole)
• Got a first look at proposed plans for new Department of Public Works headquarters at the site of the former Fernald State School. (Committee of the Whole)
• Heard an update on the city’s potential purchase of a building at 600 Main St. Mayor Jeannette A. McCarthy said the Law Department was still negotiating with the building’s owner about details of the sale. (Committee of the Whole)
• Postponed discussions of a citywide bike-sharing program to next week’s committee meetings. (Committee of the Whole)
• Unanimously agreed to a request from McCarthy to buy two single-family houses to redevelop into affordable housing using previously approved Community Preservation Act funds. These houses, to be named Mac’s Place and Arrigo’s Place, will be targeted toward veterans. The full council will vote to ratify this decision next week. (Committee of the Whole, Licenses and Franchises)
• Heard a presentation from the first responders’ and veterans’ mental health organization 22Mohawks detailing its community mental health care and outreach programs. (Economic and Community Development.)
• Discussed a $125,000 funding request to pay for city utilities from the past fiscal year. Director of Building Maintenance Jon Millian said costs have surged, and water and electricity bills from the first eight months of the past fiscal year matched or exceeded the previous year’s budget. Councilor-at-Large Randall J. LeBlanc asked Millian to investigate whether the city’s utilities usage has gone up in the past year. (Finance)
• Preliminarily accepted donations to City Hall’s museum room: two Waltham High School reunion yearbooks from the class of 1940, centennial scholarship materials from the 1980s and photographs of Waltham landmarks. (Finance)
• Preliminarily accepted three emergency services grants McCarthy said the city had received in previous years: a $20,524.80 emergency medical dispatch and a 911 training grant of $123,557.52 for the Police Department, as well as $275,871 for 911 program support. (Finance)
• Agreed to grant Minwoo Park a license to operate an online fortune telling business out of his private home. Since Park plans to move the business into an office space at the end of the summer, the committee set the license to expire early and asked Park to reapply at the new office in September. (Licenses and Franchises)
• Agreed to renew two licenses for lodging houses at 107 Adams St. and 77 Prospect St. The committee also approved a short-term license for a lodging house at 94 Adams St. but asked the owner to reapply in the fall so councilors could inspect it. (Licenses and Franchises)
• Preliminarily approved outdoor dining licenses for Guanachapi’s Bar and Grill and Pho & Spice Waltham. (Licenses and Franchises)
• Passed a motion to send amendments to the city’s compensation ordinances raising pay for the human resources director and payroll supervisor and creating new assistant fire chief and senior park ranger positions to the Law Department for review. These were part of McCarthy’s budget proposal for the upcoming year. (Ordinance and Rules)
• Passed a motion to send an updated proposal to residentially rezone 495 Lincoln St., the current Pizzi Farm Market property, to the city solicitor for review. The owners agreed to limit housing on the lot to 13 units. (Ordinance and Rules) 
• Sent a proposal to expand the Riverfront Overlay District over 181-185 Felton St. to the Law Department for review. (Ordinance and Rules)
• Voted to send proposals to create three overlay districts around Route 128, designed to encourage mixed-use housing development from companies BXP Inc. and 1265 Main Street LLC, to the full council for final approval after receiving a positive judgement on them from the Board of Survey and Planning. It sent a request to expand one of the districts to include the lot at 1432 Main St., owned by Ferris Development Group LLC, to the Law Department for review. (Ordinance and Rules).