We good? Hi. Good evening, everyone. Thank you for taking your time to be here today at City Hall and do the people's business. Welcome to the Committee of Public Works.
This is a public hearing today. We're going to listen to everyone who's here today. Today is Monday, 12/01/2025, and it's 05:33 o'clock PM. I wanna say welcome to my colleagues, councilman Miguel Sanchez, councilman Perez Finale, councilman, Justin Royals, councilwoman, and to the solicitor department, they better give you a name next time, And to Bob Assar. But special to the the people who comes in here and testify.
Can you call can you read item one, please? Sorry.
Patricia Mdeya M Vega and Christopher J. Armstrong of 70 Brightwood Avenue and Joanne S. Kashab I can't pronounce it. Thank you. Of 45 Audubon Avenue, Annabel e Surrow and Matthew r Rivers of 37 Audubon Avenue requesting to abandon Falmouth Street.
Sergeant. City sergeant, can you please bring me the list?
The first one? Thank you.
Okay. I will have, Bob Azar to talk about this item number one for now. Thank you. Welcome.
Good evening, Mr. Chair, members of the committee. I'm Robert Azar. I'm the Deputy Director of the Department of Planning and Development. All street abandonment requests get reviewed by the City Plan Commission.
This one, the abandonment of Falmouth Street came to the City Plan Commission a few months ago and the commission made certain findings that are outlined in a letter that was forwarded to you. This is a what we call a paper street. It's undeveloped. It shows up on the map. But on the ground, it's
paved. It's wooded. And it is not providing access to for the public to any property. It appears only to be useful to the property that it abuts. And, in these circumstances, our policies indicate that this would be a good candidate for abandonment.
These the street would be made private property. It would be subdivided and the land would be divided up among the abutting property owners. So, the City Plan Commission recommends that the council approve this petition subject to several conditions. One, that the abutters come to an agreement on a plan for abandonment and subdivision prior to appearing before the city council. And this has to be depicted on a survey.
Number two, the petitioner shall apply for an administrative subdivision to merge the abandoned street with their respective properties. Three, the abandonment shall only apply to the portion of the street within Providence. And obviously, since you don't have jurisdiction there, shall not apply to North Providence. There is a tiny corner of this street within this block that is is in the town of North Providence. And then, finally, that the petitioners shall grant any necessary easements for access to property, utility access, and maintenance.
Okay. Thank you very much. Now we have somebody from who representing this property.
My name is George Lough, and I'm here on behalf of the petitioners. We've put together some pictorial, identifications to that show the wooded nature, the substantially wooded nature of the of the property. There's a little bit that's asphalted here. So you can see that it's really not been in. We've been working with Bob Ezar of the city, and, you know, our, you know, our agreement our position is is exactly what he's saying.
The only practical use probably in this case would be the abandonment. The abutters all the abutters are in agreement, with this. And I you know, the next steps, I guess, would be ascribing a value to it and, you know, delineating, specifically where the elements would go to each of them. But they're essentially gonna be the parts next to the the property are gonna be long to the people who are right next to them. And there's already utilities in place on that property, so all of those utilities and all the access points for the utility would stay.
There's nothing that's there's no intent to create any hardscape or asphalting or anything like that. They want to leave it so that it's permeable for water.
Any questions from the colleagues?
Yes. So I mean that was one of the conditions that Mr. Aisa pointed out, which is making sure that the abarters are in agreement and you just asserted that they are.
In fact, I actually have a blow up copy of the actual petition. It actually has all the apartments.
they have no issues granting easement to the utility companies. Right? No. No. That's fair.
In fact, there's actively there's utilities on this strip right now, and everyone sort of knows where they are. And that's one of the reasons why they don't wanna do anything other than the vegetation that's on there so that the access can continue to be had, for lack of a better where you can see it's just mulch and softscape, I guess.
Well, thank you. I'm all set, Ms.
Altea, you have a that's your area. Right?
You said part of it is in in North Providence? What part? Auburn Street, Brightwood? Water Bond? Okay.
that would be closer to Annabelle would have that that section. Is that what you're saying? Okay. So these two are I'm sorry. So the John and Tyler are are gonna be splitting this area.
Okay. Okay. Thank you. That's all.
That's alright. Well said, Mr. Altier?
Okay. Any other questions from my colleagues? No? Thank you.
Thank you very much. We like to call Billy Coyle Coyle? Mister Billy.
Mr. Chairman, I'm here representing the tax assessor's office. We were asked to value this particular property at the original application. At that time, we received only the abandonment of the entire lot and we had requested additional information so that we could identify what percentage of the property was going to which a butter. And with the part of the property being owned by the town of East North Providence, we were concerned with how much square footage of the 10,000 square foot was actually in Providence so that we could identify the actual amount so we could give you a value at your committee meeting.
But so we haven't done any of that yet. But I noticed they do have a different plan, but I'm not sure if it truly identifies only the Providence land.
Okay. So come up again, please. Counselor. Talk to the microphone, please.
The survey document should just have the Providence square footage on there that the engineering company put together.
We just got that this evening. Yep.
Okay. Thank you very much. Thank you.
K. Item number two, petition from Dylan Connolly, s y, Connolly Law Associates, 123 Dyer Street, Suite 2 B, Providence, Rhode Island 02903 on behalf of one sixty one Ridge LLC requesting to abandon a portion of Steel Street southerly of Woodbine Street.
Sergeant, can you please bring me page number two? Thank you. Okay. We have Mr. Azar again.
