Streamlining the rezoning process and calling on Mayor to provide necessary resources for outreach to residents.

Dear neighbors,

This week in a live address to the city, I called for a shared path forward on the ongoing project to update Medford’s zoning ordinance. I also shared extensive context on my values as a City Councilor, the history of the process up to this point, and what I’ve learned from some mistakes I have made during this process and how I plan to address them. I really encourage you to watch the full address here or read the full remarks below.

The proposed path forward for zoning would streamline the rezoning process into two groups of proposals so residents can clearly understand what is being considered by the City Council, Community Development Board, and planning team, and request that the Mayor appropriate the necessary funding and resources for even more robust public outreach and engagement.

First, the City would prioritize completing the proposed commercial framework with the remaining proposed districts for Medford Square, West Medford Square, the ‘Other Corridors’, and Tufts Institutional Zoning this year.

Second, the City would extend the process for reviewing the proposed residential districts, ADUs, and updates to the off-street parking requirements through Spring 2026. I called on the Community Development Board to continue its deliberation on a new set of recommendations regarding the residential districts in August and hold public hearings on their updated recommendations and any off-street parking proposals in September, October, and November 2025 before sending any final recommendations to the Council. 

After the CD Board conducts its process on the residential framework, I proposed that the Council adopt a schedule for additional public hearings in January and February before scheduling any final votes no earlier than March 2026, and to allow for additional time through May 2026 if it is requested by the Community Development Board.

Finally, and most importantly, I called on the Mayor to allocate the necessary resources from our city’s reserve funds to conduct even more robust public outreach and engagement over the next year. Specifically, I called on the Mayor to place an appropriation paper before the Council by September that provides $150,000 in total funds to extend the contract with our zoning consultants through December 2026 and provide $50,000 to pay for more communications and informational materials to residents that provide more details about the zoning proposals and share how residents can make their voices heard to the Council and Community Development Board throughout the process.

I will place this process on the Council’s August 5th Regular Meeting agenda as a resolution.

After more than five years of work, we are in the hardest phase of this project, and we must secure the progress we all know Medford needs by seeing this work through to completion.

Thank you for reading this far, and please watch or read my full remarks to learn more about my views of this important project.

Sincerely yours,

Zac Bears
President
Medford City Council

Dear neighbors, I’m speaking to you today to talk about a Shared Path Forward for the ongoing project to update Medford’s zoning ordinance.

From my first day as a candidate to this moment tonight as your City Council President, my firmly held belief in democracy has been the foundation of my service to this community. That belief is grounded in some fundamental principles:

First, that the representatives we elect should be transparent and have follow-through: that they say what they’ll do and then do what they said they’d do — that they are truthful about their values and positions and work hard to implement them and deliver results for residents. I believe that is what I have brought to this chamber at every meeting and what has been behind every decision I’ve made and every vote I’ve taken. 

Second, it is the essential duty of our elected leaders to grapple with complicated truths — to hold contrasting values and policies and opinions in balance and make the best decisions possible for all of us and for our city’s future. On many nights here in this room, nights both inspiring and difficult, we have done that together. When we serve in these offices, we sign up for the responsibility of making hard choices for the good of our shared community and our shared future. 

Third, we must recognize and respect that each of us is imperfect and each of us makes mistakes – and that leaders and communities can only make progress when they are transparent about their mistakes and learn from them.

That’s why, tonight, I’m calling for a shared path forward on our rezoning effort that continues the updates to our commercial squares and corridors zoning districts while calling for an extended and even more robust public engagement process for the proposed residential districts and citywide off-street parking requirements. I am also calling on the City Administration to provide more resources for outreach to the community so that we can create a better opportunity to engage with residents, respond to good faith concerns and questions, and make it easier for more residents to understand and participate in this necessary process. 

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As we approach Medford’s 400th anniversary in 2030, I often find myself asking what Medford we want to build for future residents to celebrate on our 500th anniversary – while also preserving what has brought us to this point and acknowledging the history that has not been celebrated enough going back centuries before Medford’s founding. 

Our community is at an inflection point. We are finally doing the long overdue work of implementing our first ever Comprehensive Plan for growth and development and addressing the decades of underfunding and revenue shortfalls that have left our city infrastructure and services in bad shape. We are facing a housing crisis where kids who grew up here can’t afford to stay, and working class people who want to move here don’t have many options. 

I believe in a future of Medford that says YES to addressing the housing affordability and cost of living crisis. A Medford that says YES to smart and significant new development that invites more vibrancy, walkability, new businesses, more open space, new places to gather, and stronger community ties. A Medford that says YES we can welcome more neighbors to live here alongside us, and fight for environmental justice and open spaces, and support our businesses, and make our streets safer, and better fund our public schools and city services.

The rezoning process to implement our city’s plans is one of the key tools to build the better future we want for our city. I am so glad to see all of the engagement from residents over the past 5 years to shape the city’s planning documents and this rezoning process. I think the work product of the City Council and our Planning Department, in partnership with Innes Associates, is strong, aligned with the Comprehensive Plan that we crafted as a community, and sets the foundation for Medford to move in the right direction. 

In all of my discussions with and communications to residents, I have been clear that one of my top priorities is to transform our Zoning Ordinance to help build more housing, create more vibrant commercial squares, and focus on mixed-use development that activates corridors of our city with so much potential that have been ignored for too long.

The Mayor and previous City Councils have endorsed and signed off on this very same vision and plan. Our current zoning is a flawed patchwork and, while we may disagree on some specifics, we know that it needs to be changed. Study after study and plan after plan has said this for decades, but the city has not acted until now because doing something is far more challenging than saying something.

This City Council has worked hard to make our city’s vision and plans a reality over the past several years, starting with requests for funding for zoning updates before I was on the Council; to the initiation of our first phase of this project from 2020 to 2022 by recodifying our zoning ordinance; to the planning processes between 2020 and 2024 to create the Comprehensive Plan, Climate Plan, and Housing Plan that incorporated input from thousands of residents and hundreds of public engagement events and approaches; to the past 18 months that the Council and Planning Department have been working with Innes Associates to create zoning proposals that concretely implement our city’s plans. 

After more than 5 years, we are in the hardest phase of this project, and we must secure the progress we all know Medford needs by seeing this work through to completion.

Since January 2024, the Council, Community Development Board, and city staff have worked with the resources made available to us by the Mayor, and we have consistently and persistently advocated to the Mayor to engage more deeply in the process, provide more resources, and work to ensure that accurate information reaches as many residents as possible to get them involved in this rezoning project. 

Tonight, I am calling for action in the loudest and most public way that I can.

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Over the past few weeks, I’ve been disappointed – disappointed that so many residents feel that we haven’t done enough to engage them in the process; disappointed that we’ve allowed an information vacuum that has led to the spread of misinformation and mistrust in this effort; disappointed that we haven’t received enough resources to try to make this complicated information more accessible; and more than anything, disappointed that good people coming to the table in good faith who support change overall feel alienated by the citywide conversation and process.

Each of us deserves better. Medford’s future demands better. 

As I said earlier, the job of elected leaders is to grapple with complicated truths and to deliver results that balance the many goals and needs of our community and our residents. 

And, yes, a citywide rezoning effort contains many complicated truths. 

It is true that we need to build more housing AND that we won’t solve the housing crisis through new zoning and new private housing alone. 

It is true that we need more market rate housing to push down the pressure of limited supply that is skyrocketing rents and home prices AND it is true that we need to ensure that developers provide significant community benefits to improve our streets, sewers and city services AND that we ask the state for more local powers to protect residents from displacement. 

It is true that we need to better protect our open spaces and trees AND still allow new projects to be built.

It is true that our city’s history has been built by vibrant, racially diverse communities AND that part of our history includes exclusionary housing and zoning laws and other policies that cemented racial and class divisions in and between our neighborhoods.

It is true that we must make an even greater effort to preserve our history and historic buildings AND that we must not completely defer to the decisions of the past in ways that prevent progress, change, and growth.

It is true that we must make Medford more walkable, bikeable, and accessible to our elders and people with disabilities AND that we must encourage development and policies that make public transportation a more realistic choice for residents AND that we must do that in a way that reflects the reality that cars are going to continue to be the main way most people travel. 

It is true that we are just one city in a region facing a housing and transportation crisis that we can’t solve alone AND that we can advance policies that make us a regional leader and a model that other communities can follow to join us and solve these bigger problems together.

The zoning proposals advanced over the last 18 months are an honest, detailed, and bold effort to balance all of those complicated truths I just stated and many others that have been discussed extensively in the hundreds of public meetings the city has held and thousands of public comments residents have shared.

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Finally, I want to return to the principle that we can only accomplish big things when our leaders are transparent about their mistakes and learn from them. 

It was a mistake that I did not speak up earlier and more loudly to get the Mayor to commit more funding and resources to this project. 

I should not have accepted that an 18 month contract was the best we could get nor that we should try to keep our promises to the voters and accomplish this project in that timeframe. 

I regret that I did not share more publicly the efforts we have implemented to extend this process to hear from more residents.

I wish that I had lifted up the work of my colleagues who have done so much to try to improve the communications effort for this project with the limited resources available by asking for more time, more resources, and more funding sooner.

That’s why tonight, I am outlining this Shared Path Forward so we can accomplish what we set out to do more than five years ago – to adopt a zoning ordinance that we believe will build the future of our city that we want the residents to celebrate on Medford’s 500th anniversary. 

The process must be streamlined so residents can clearly understand what is being considered.

First, I call on my fellow Councilors, Community Development Board, and our planning team to prioritize completing the proposed commercial framework and focus our work on the remaining proposed districts for Medford Square, West Medford Square, the ‘Other Corridors’, and Tufts Institutional Zoning this year.

Second, I call on my fellow Councilors, the Community Development Board, and the planning team to extend the process for reviewing the proposed residential districts, ADUs, and updates to the off-street parking requirements through Spring 2026. 

I ask the Community Development Board to continue its process to deliberate on a new set of recommendations regarding the residential districts in August and hold public hearings on their updated recommendations as well as any off-street parking proposals in September, October, and November before sending any final recommendations to the Council. 

In advance of the Council’s receipt of the CDB’s recommendations, I propose that the Council adopt a schedule for additional public hearings in January and February before scheduling any final votes no earlier than March 2026, and to allow for additional time through May 2026 if it is requested by the Community Development Board.

Third, and most importantly, I call on the Mayor to allocate the necessary resources from our city’s reserve funds to provide the Council, CDB, planning team, and city staff with the support needed to conduct even more robust public outreach over the next year.

Specifically, I call on the Mayor to place an appropriation paper before the Council by September that: 

1. Provides at least $150,000 in total funds (including any funds currently appropriated in FY26 budget) to extend our contract with the Innes Associates team through December 2026, and 
2. Provides an additional $50,000 in funds to pay for communications to residents that are reviewed and approved by the consensus of all of the branches of the city leading the project (Mayor’s Office, City Council, and Planning Department) that help inform residents about the proposals and what opportunities they will have to make their voices heard and share their comments with the Community Development Board and the City Council.

I will formalize this proposal in a resolution to be placed on the Council’s August 5th Regular Meeting agenda.

I want to end my remarks tonight with my thanks to the Medford community for their passion for our beloved city. I am heartened and inspired by the vast majority of our community that considers these solutions to Medford’s big challenges with diligence, intelligence, and grace. 

We make much more progress when we listen to each other thoughtfully, clearly state our values and goals, and work collaboratively to accomplish great things together. 

At the end of this process, we will not all agree on the outcome. The final Zoning Ordinance will be the product of a continued great debate, of clashing opinions, of complicated truths, and of balance and compromise. 

I am humbled to place my trust in the democratic process so many have fought to establish for us and that we must fight to safeguard for future generations. I have great hope for Medford’s future, and I remain deeply honored by the trust you have placed in me to help lead our community. 

Thank you.