Less parking, lower taxes: Council committee advances zoning proposal

The New Bedford City Council’s ordinance committee advanced a measure to reduce parking minimums for new development at their Monday night hearing, where 15 people showed up to voice their support for the proposal. 

Councilor Ryan Pereira, the committee’s chair, said he couldn’t remember the last time so many people turned out to speak on an ordinance like this. Other hearings on a slate of zoning ordinances over the past two years have drawn little public attention.

Residents of New Bedford and some surrounding towns said the city’s current zoning requires much more parking than people actually need. The laws drive up housing costs by discouraging new development and adding to the cost of construction, they said.

One argument in particular seemed to resonate the most with councilors.

“You’re gonna get way more tax revenue if you develop land, than let it just sit idly as parking spots that never get used,” said Elise Rapoza, a city resident and housing researcher. “That makes it so you can reduce the taxes on everyone else.”

The proposed ordinance is part of a series of zoning updates brought forward by Mayor Jon Mitchell as part of his administration’s housing plan. City planners have argued that the changes are needed to address the city’s massive housing shortage, which is driving up costs.

New apartment buildings would only have to provide one off-street parking space for every unit with fewer than three bedrooms, down from the two spaces currently needed. Many businesses would also have significant reductions based on factors like square footage or the number of different uses in the building.

Almost every member of the committee supported the proposal. They characterized it as an economic development measure, cutting “red tape” that prevents new construction. This will save residential taxpayers money, they said, by growing the tax base and generating more commercial tax revenue.

Councilor Ian Abreu said it would be “talking out of both sides of our mouth” to complain about high housing costs and property taxes, then oppose an ordinance like this one.

“This NIMBY attitude around here is frustrating,” he said. “Let’s start developing in the city of New Bedford.”

Ward 1 Councilor Leo Choquette was the main voice of dissent. He said he was concerned about residents of apartments and their visitors parking in surrounding single-family neighborhoods.

“I am not against economic development by any stretch,” he said. “If overflow parking is allowed to come into these areas and clog it up, now that changes the character of the neighborhood.”

Choquette tried unsuccessfully to amend the proposal, eliminating the changes to parking minimums for apartment buildings so that two parking spaces per unit would still be required.

Then, with the support of Ward 5 Councilor Joe Lopes, he put forward an amendment that would require 1.5 spaces per unit in apartment buildings. That measure failed 5-2, with every other councilor voting against it.

The committee referred the ordinance to the full City Council for approval.

YIMBY group pushes for change

Many of the speakers at Monday’s hearing identified themselves as members of South Coast Places for People, a group founded by Fairhaven resident Will Gardner. The group aims to create more “vibrant communities” by pushing to remove barriers to new development. It’s also behind a grassroots effort to improve safety on Route 6 after a deadly spate of crashes.

The group’s messaging echoes the YIMBY movement, short for “yes in my backyard” — a response to the NIMBY, or “not in my backyard” stance that residents often take when they oppose new development.

Some of the speakers who showed up with the group on Monday wore stickers that said “END PARKING MANDATES.”

New Bedford resident Ned Carson said councilors have characterized high housing costs and property taxes as crises, but their past actions haven’t matched their words.

“Maybe we’re treating taxes like a crisis by trying to cut a ream of copy paper from some budget in a department up here,” he said, gesturing to the hallways of City Hall, “at the same time that we’re choosing to not unleash development in the city.”

Allowing more development would put more properties on the tax roll and reduce the burden on individual taxpayers, Carson said. The “ugliest” and “dumbest” properties in the city are those that build large empty parking lots to comply with city minimums, he added.

“This is what happens when you let these outdated parking codes rule our city,” he said. “You get ugly parking no one uses, and us fighting over taxes every single year on cut night.”

Concerns about creating gridlock by reducing parking minimums are overblown, speakers said. They pointed out that most neighborhoods in the city with apartments were built before the minimums existed.

Shayne Trimbell, a member of the Planning Board since 2019, said he can’t remember a single case he has voted on that didn’t include a parking reduction. 

“The fact of our city is we just don’t have the space,” he said.

Gary Gagne, a New Bedford resident, said he has never seen a six-family building with 12 parking spots or a three-family with six parking spots. He said he owns 20 rental units in the city, with only two off-street spaces, and has never received a complaint about parking.

“What character are we talking about changing?” he said. “I’d love to have a driveway. That’s not the character of New Bedford — it never has been.”

Four of the 15 speakers identified themselves as developers or landlords and said their experiences show the city’s parking minimums are too high.

It hurts small developers in particular, they said. Audley Bodden, the developer of a proposed nine-unit, mixed-income property at 105 Ashley Boulevard, said he originally wanted to build 13 units on the site, but he only had space for 12 cars. The city’s zoning forced him to scale back his plans and go through the Planning Board for a parking reduction, he said.

David Silveira of the construction firm South Coast & Associates said that in his two decades as a builder, he has watched the city’s minimums “kill deals” and change plans in ways he sees as unreasonable.

“This is why we have a housing crisis — because we’re too afraid to develop, because of this anxiety that it’s gonna change the character of the neighborhood,” he said.

Councilors support reducing minimums

Choquette shared deep reservations about the way new apartments could impact single-family neighborhoods. But other councilors said the city had other ways to mitigate parking impacts, like introducing permit-only parking in impacted neighborhoods.

Concerns about neighborhood character are outweighed by the urgent need to rein in taxes and housing costs by allowing for more development, councilors said. 

“We do harp on the taxes and the economic development, and we do have to do something if anything was proven here tonight,” Councilor Shawn Oliver said.

Pereira, the committee chair, said the city needs to expand its commercial tax base in particular, which would shift the burden away from homeowners. In an interview after the meeting, he said Dartmouth has been able to keep property taxes lower because of all the revenue from many commercial properties in the town, like those along Route 6. 

The committee considered two other zoning proposals on Monday, both part of the mayor’s zoning rollout. 

One of them is a long-awaited set of rules for accessory dwelling units, also known as in-law apartments. They were legalized by-right statewide in 2024, but the city waited until the state set out specific regulations before introducing local rules. Procedural issues further delayed the proposal this year.

The local ADU ordinance would allow for new units of up to 900 square feet by-right, in accordance with the state law, and up to 1,200 square feet with a special permit. The city would also choose an option in the state law that allows municipalities to ban short-term rentals — such as Airbnbs — in these units.

Lopes said the short-term rental ban “has no teeth” because it would only be enforced with fines, but he said the city’s legal department has told him there’s not much more the city can do under the new state law.

Assistant Planning Director Anne Louro said that was unlikely to become a problem.

“With the cost of construction, if somebody’s building an ADU, they’re probably not building it for Airbnb,” she said.

City planners also presented an ordinance to set out guidelines for solar energy systems. Those projects already go through Planning Board approval and would still need to do so under the new ordinance. The plan presented to councilors would create formal guidelines limiting their size and placement.

The committee referred both of those ordinances to the full City Council for approval.

At its next meeting on Jan. 26, the committee is set to discuss other zoning proposals to allow new buildings on smaller lots and condo conversions in large single-family homes.

Email Grace Ferguson at gferguson@newbedfordlight.org

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