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
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.
