These are just some of the municipal meetings and civic events for the coming week. More are on the City of Somerville website.
Student restraint and discipline
School Committee, 7 to 9:30 p.m. Monday. Policies around physical restraint and discipline, including timeouts and seclusion, are presented for a first reading, and there’s an update on the process of getting state funding for a school to be built on Winter Hill. At City Hall, 93 Highland Ave., Central Hill. Televised and watchable online and by Zoom videoconferencing.
Expanding Target at Twin City
Zoning Board of Appeals, 6 p.m. Wednesday. Executives at Target come with plans for the store at 180 Somerville Ave., Ward 2, sharing details of a proposed expansion into an adjacent vacant commercial space. Minor site and façade improvements will be made. Watchable by Zoom videoconferencing.
Apartments and Dunkin’ hours
Planning Board, 6 p.m. Thursday. Stuff is continued from a meeting Aug. 20, including proposed 24-hour operation at the Dunkin’ Donuts at 222 Broadway, Winter Hill, a major thoroughfare fronting on a largely residential area across from Foss Park. The store closes at 8 nightly. The request comes from a new owner who is looking forward to adding a Jimmy John’s sandwich operation within the same building. It is only one of several city businesses asking recently to stay open longer – but this one is resisted by neighbors who complained at a Wednesday community meeting of rats, noise, light and feeling unsafe because “it is a place where people hang out and gather” that, when open 24 hours, will be “a magnet for people coming home from clubs and entertainment venues late at night … the place is going to be dead from 8 to 1. There won’t be a single person in there, and then it’s going to be packed with drunken young men.” (There were also commenters who felt the expanded hours and service would be a welcome amenity.)
Also continuing: A four-story, 29-unit apartment building proposed for 32-40 White St. at the White Street Place cul-de-sac, across from a shopping center now known as The Mix Porter Square. The apartments would replace two homes and the long-closed Fleming Printing. A four-story laboratory office building (with a fifth floor of mechanicals) was proposed for this site in 2022, but the developer withdrew when a Planning Board memo in 2023 limited its available square footage. In the new plan, among a mix of studio, one- and two-bedroom homes are five that are deeded as affordable. There will be 29 long-term bicycle parking spaces and four short-term, but no car parking is included – and because they will be within a quarter-mile of a T station, residents can’t apply for on-street parking passes.
More issues that are back: A 19-story lab building at 120 Middlesex Ave., Assembly Square; and 6 Wheatland St., also near Foss Park but in the Ten Hills neighborhood, where more than a year ago a landowner said they wanted to build five units of housing by tearing down the current two-unit structure on land behind a convenience store and the Dumpling Garden restaurant.
Watchable by Zoom videoconferencing.
Funding for more Bluebikes
City Council Finance Committee, 6 p.m. Thursday. This committee run by city councilor Ben Wheeler considers more than a dozen grants and other payments, with the biggest being for the Bluebikes rental system – new e-bikes, docking stations and replacement batteries included. Sewer separation and police funds are on the agenda too. Watchable by Zoom videoconferencing.
Assembly, East Somerville taxes
Land Use Committee, 6:30 p.m. Thursday. This committee run by city councilor Ben Ewen-Campen looks at urban center housing tax increment financing for Assembly Square and East Somerville, and at a change in laws to better accommodate homeless shelters. Watchable by Zoom videoconferencing.
