By Dolores Sauca Lorusso

The Hull Redevelopment Authority plans to delay its third set of public meetings from late April until the end of May so the HRA can “refine the plan” while incorporating the public feedback and financials, said Chair Bartley Kelly.

Kelly said the extra time will be for “slowing it down…so we can make something that works.

“We are moving forward based on the comments from the last week at the public meetings,” Kelly said. “Consultants are consolidating all that information and we will continue to work toward that going forward…Then we will reconvene; hopefully at that point we have the financials. [We] want to help everyone understand how it works, what works, what doesn’t work, what can be paid for, what can’t be paid for, and how we move forward on this.”

Some attendees questioned how the HRA was gathering more input if it did not plan to hold the April meetings.

“We didn’t want to go back to another meeting without having more information,” Kelly said. “We are taking the comments from the first two sets of public gatherings and we are going to incorporate those into the plans. Then bring back the financial information we’ve got and more graphics to meetings in late May. If we have to have meetings after that, we will… If we had another meeting in April, we would be spinning our wheels because we won’t have new information to add.”

Susan Vermilya, a founder of Save Our Space, a group that is seeking to put the HRA’s plans on hold, asked about the changes that would be made for the next sessions.

“We are still working through that,” Kelly responded. “We are not ready to answer those questions yet, but we are taking the information we have and trying to make refinements.”

HRA members continued to address questions from the public that have been posted online, including a request for the authority to show the state Department of Conservation and Recreation’s master plan at one of the meetings.

“We don’t present the DCR master plan; it is available through the town website,” Kelly said. “If you look at them together, the HRA and DCR master plan work well together. They don’t cross over on each other’s land. They would fit nicely together.”

Director of Community Development and Planning Chris DiIorio confirmed “the Unified Work Plan puts it [HRA and DCR master plan] all together, and that is one of the plans referred to in the Urban Renewal Plan.”

Kelly said the HRA would work to post “graphics that show the change to the roadway plan, because it does significantly widen that bayside parcel that will be public open space.”

A “concerned citizen” posed a question about the beach being referred to as open space, and whether “the people that purchase the condos will think that is a private beach…you may want to rethink taking the beach parcel out of the draft as open space.”

“The open space part of this project is going to be worked out as we move forward,” Kelly said. “When this is developed, the open space parcels will end up back in the hands of the redevelopment authority, so we can guarantee it can be maintained and supported. It [open space] would not go with any development.”

The HRA has not yet set the dates for the May meetings, but pledged to promote them to the public.

“There have been a number of requests that have been thrown around to use the electronic signs to notify the community when there is going to be a large-scale meeting,” HRA member Dennis Zaia, said.  Kelly said he spoke to the police chief and will get a notice up on the sign as soon as they have new dates for the meetings. He also added if there is time, they may be able to get a message in the next light bill mailing.

At the last board meeting, Zaia also several new business discussion items, including addressing the management of the public bus system; economic feasibility of a summer shuttle bus to connect to the Cohasset and Nantasket Junction train parking lots, as well as the Pemberton ferry; illustrating what it would look like if a developer were to max out the property compared to how the Urban Renewal plan is currently envisioned; utilizing the hotels’ occupancy excise taxes to collect data on the current hotels’ performance; beginning a formal dialogue with the Trustees of Reservations at World’s End, and initiating a conversation with the select board about converting the current town hall into affordable housing.

Zaia said he wanted to “enter into the conversation, and for the record, these ideas to hopefully get people to start realizing we may need to start opening our eyes a little wider.”

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