Roy Avellaneda, the former city councillor who wrote Chelsea’s linkage fee law, is asking the City Council to vote down the city manager’s request to spend the first $570,712 the fee has brought in. In an open letter posted to Facebook on Monday night, he said the order does not say who would get the money, how much each would get, or what it would pay for.
“The City Council is effectively being asked to approve the expenditure of more than half a million dollars without knowing who will receive the money, how much each recipient will receive, or how the proposed expenditures will advance the objectives of the ordinance,” Avellaneda wrote.
What the council is being asked to do
The money is the first payment under the fee, from the development at 295 Eastern Avenue. City Manager Fidel Maltez wants to use it to keep social service programs going after their federal American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) money runs out on December 31. The order, ID 26F56, would let him spend “up to $570,712” on “eligible social services and programs currently funded through” ARPA. It does not name any program or agency.
At its October 19 meeting, the council sent the order to a conference committee of the full council instead of voting on it. Councillor Todd Taylor said it needed “more detail and structure” and asked whether the fund would become “the slush fund for nonprofits.” Vice President Norieliz DeJesus, whose name was on the order, recused herself because her employer could be one of the agencies that receives money. No date has been set for the conference meeting. It is not on the conference agendas for October 26 or October 27.
Avellaneda’s argument
Avellaneda wrote that he is not against the social service groups that might get the money. “The question before the Council is not whether Chelsea’s social service organizations deserve financial support. Many unquestionably do,” he wrote. His objection, he said, is to “the complete lack of transparency, public participation, and accountability” in the request.
He said that before the ordinance, money from big developments was “largely negotiated between developers and the City Manager, often outside public view,” with no set formula and little role for the council. The linkage fee was meant to change that. He pointed to a line in the ordinance’s findings: “The City Council as Chelsea’s Duly Elected Legislative body is responsible in both identifying the impacts and determining the appropriate mitigation.”
He listed five questions he said the order leaves open: who gets the money, how much each recipient gets, what services it pays for, how the spending relates to the effects of the 295 Eastern Avenue project, and why programs now paid for with ARPA should come before other eligible uses. “Linkage fees should not automatically become a replacement funding source for expiring federal grants without a transparent evaluation of community needs and competing eligible uses,” he wrote.
What he wants instead
Avellaneda asked the council to:
- vote against the $570,712 order as it is written;
- create a council subcommittee to review linkage fee spending;
- publicly announce that the money is available;
- set up an application process with deadlines and published criteria, modeled on how the city hands out Community Preservation Act money; and
- require every proposed grant to name the recipient, the amount, the use and the expected benefit before the council votes.
He signed the letter “Former Chelsea City Councilor, Author of Chelsea’s Linkage Fees for Development Ordinance.”
What the law says
The fee rests on a home rule law the Legislature passed at Chelsea’s request, Chapter 232 of the Acts of 2022, signed October 4, 2022. It says money in the Community Impact Linkage Fee Fund may be spent “upon recommendation from the city manager and a majority vote of the city council” and only for five kinds of things: affordable housing; “the support of social services within the city”; workforce development, job creation and education; youth recreation; and public space, traffic and capital projects that are in the city’s five-year capital plan. Social services are on the list, and Avellaneda’s letter says so. His argument is about how much detail the council should demand before it votes, not whether the request is allowed.
Avellaneda said he filed the ordinance in 2022, and after he left the council, then-Council President Leo Robinson filed it again for him. The copy Avellaneda posted with his letter is dated February 27, 2023, and is signed by Robinson. It charges commercial and industrial projects over 25,000 square feet $12.50 a square foot above that size, and residential and mixed-use projects over 25,000 square feet with 24 or more units $10 a square foot above that size. Half is due when the building permit is issued and half at the certificate of occupancy.
What happens next
The order goes back to the full council for a vote after the conference committee meets. At the October 19 meeting, Council President Roberto Jimenez-Rivera said the public cannot speak at a conference committee, but residents can speak during public comment at any regular council meeting before the vote. Our October 19 story has the council’s first discussion of the request.