As Mayor Carlo DeMaria prepares for his midterm address in late February, there are some things that he wants to prioritize.
One major area he wants to focus on is the Malden River.
Already popular as a walkway and bikeway along the River, DeMaria said he would like to concentrate on getting the canoe launch near Mellon Bank and also investigating a clean up of the River with the Army Corps of Engineers.
“That will be a top priority in the next two years,” he said. “That’s an area with a lot of potential. Can you imagine being able to swim there again?”
A huge initiative going forward, he said, is to revamp Everett’s zoning ordinances – which he said are antiquated.
One such problem, he said, is that people often want to convert two-family homes to three-families. To do so, they must provide more parking, and in order to do that, they’re paving over their backyards and side yards.
That government requirement, he said, is robbing Everett of green space.
“That’s antiquated and old,” he said. “People don’t want to see cars anymore. I’d rather see trees and grass, not cars parked in a backyard. That’s what we have to get back to…We’re having people hot top their backyard to create parking spots and we’re losing greenery. We’ve gone backward on that and we need to go forward.”
That effort will probably accompany a greater effort to pull up impermeable surfaces all over the City to accommodate the federal Environmental Protection Agency’s Stormwater Permit, which is believed to finally be coming down soon.