Medford Mayor At Odds With City Council Over Recent Zoning Vote

Some councilors have responded after the mayor said she expressed her intentions to veto the recent action taken by the group.

By Benjamin Pierce, Patch Staff

Sep 25, 2026 3:24 PM EDT | Updated Sep 25, 2026 3:35 PM EDT

The mayor argued that the vote was reconsidered at an inappropriate time. (Dakota Antelman/Patch)

MEDFORD, MA — Mayor Breanna Lungo-Koehn announced she will veto a zoning amendment approved by the City Council following a late-night revote that changed how purpose-built student housing can be developed in a portion of the Hillside neighborhood.

The amendment allows purpose-built student housing to be built by right in the BA-3 portion of the new Boston Avenue Neighborhood Corridor District rather than requiring a special permit from the Community Development Board. The area affected by the change includes the Whole Foods parcel along Auburn Street and 200 Boston Ave. down toward North Street, according to the mayor's office. The change does not alter the permitted height or size of potential developments in the district.

The decision came during the Council's Sept. 15 meeting following months of work on the larger Boston Avenue rezoning package. The proposal establishes three new subdistricts along Boston Avenue with varying levels of residential, commercial, and mixed-use development. BA-3 allows the largest-scale development of the three subdistricts, with buildings up to five stories by right and seven stories with incentives.

Councilor Matt Leming initially proposed changing purpose-built student housing in BA-3 from requiring a special permit to being allowed by right during the Sept. 15 meeting. Councilors Zac Bears, Leming and Emily Lazzaro supported the amendment while Councilors Anna Callahan, Liz Mullane, George Scarpelli and Justin Tseng opposed it, causing the amendment to fail by a 4-3 margin.

Scarpelli argued during the meeting that requiring a special permit provided another layer of protection for residents, while Lazzaro supported the by-right proposal and pointed to the restrictions already included in the city's definition of purpose-built student housing.

The Council subsequently voted unanimously to refer the question of whether student housing should be allowed by right for further discussion as part of a future zoning cleanup process. The Council then voted 7-0 to approve the Boston Avenue zoning with the special permit requirement still in place.

Later in the meeting, however, Tseng moved to reconsider the Boston Avenue zoning. The motion to reconsider passed 6-1, reopening the matter before Tseng moved to make the same by-right change proposed by Leming earlier in the night. Tseng changed his vote, joining Bears, Leming and Lazzaro in supporting the amendment and allowing it to pass 4-3.

Lungo-Koehn said the second vote occurred approximately four hours into the meeting and after 11 p.m., when city zoning staff and neighbors who had participated earlier in the meeting had left. The mayor said only a handful of people remained, including a developer interested in building in the affected area.

"This revote took place four hours into the meeting after zoning staff and neighbors left with virtually no one from the public in attendance other than an affected developer," Lungo-Koehn said in a statement. "If the council wanted to take a matter back up, they should have done so when all interested parties were in attendance and not just the developer."

A representative of City Lights Development, which represents the ownership of 222 Boston Ave., participated in public comment earlier in the meeting and discussed portions of the proposed student housing regulations. The mayor argued that changing the zoning after most members of the public had left undermined the public process surrounding the proposal.

"This undermines how the process should take place, prior public comment from neighbors and the work that is being done by the Community Development Board, our staff and consultants to thoughtfully implement community-driven zoning changes," Lungo-Koehn said. "A change to by right needs to be more thoughtfully discussed under the shine of community involvement. It is for these reasons that I am vetoing the amendment."

Tseng told Patch he was torn during the original vote because he believes residents should have a say in development but reconsidered after determining that other regulations surrounding purpose-built student housing provided sufficient protections. He said removing the special permit requirement does not change the height or size allowed for a potential building or other requirements governing the use.

Any proposed purpose-built student housing development would also still undergo site plan review before the Community Development Board, which can review the design, layout, and neighborhood impacts of a proposed development and impose applicable conditions.

"After further consideration, I believed that the necessary guardrails on this potential use were in place, and that an extra special permit process would create delay and uncertainty that can stop housing from getting built at all," Tseng told Patch.

Tseng also rejected any suggestion that a developer influenced his decision. He told Patch no developer spoke with him about changing his vote and said Lungo-Koehn did not contact him to ask why he reconsidered his position.

"Following Council rules, I moved to reconsider my vote at the earliest opportunity in the meeting," Tseng told Patch. "All parties had their voices heard, and both votes occurred after all public input had been made."

The purpose-built student housing regulations were developed as part of a larger zoning process that began earlier this year and included multiple City Council and Community Development Board meetings and public information sessions. Leming said during the Sept. 15 meeting that the current Boston Avenue proposal had gone through 12 public meetings over approximately six months beginning in April, in addition to other work by city officials, staff and consultants.

Under the regulations approved by the Council, purpose-built student housing must include at least 150 beds with no more than two beds per bedroom, while at least 80 percent of residents must be students. Management must document resident categories at the beginning of each semester and provide that information to the city upon request. The regulations create a separate form of housing largely geared toward students rather than conventional multifamily apartments.

Leming told Patch that he proposed allowing the use by right because the Council and Community Development Board had already spent significant time developing those regulations and he did not believe an additional special permit process was necessary.

"It already goes to the CDB for site plan review, and I didn't see the reason for arbitrarily refusing something be built there if it followed the zoning that we so carefully wrote," Leming told Patch.

The Boston Avenue zoning is part of a larger rezoning effort that has previously created disagreements between the mayor and Council. Leming criticized Lungo-Koehn's handling of that process and characterized the latest veto announcement as another political disagreement between the two branches of city government.

Leming called Lungo-Koehn's actions a "political jab" more so than a move that is actually about what is being legislated.

Both Leming and Tseng also disputed the scope of Lungo-Koehn's announced veto. The mayor's announcement said she would veto the amendment making student housing by right, while the two councilors told Patch they believe the mayor does not have authority to make a line-item veto of that provision and would instead have to veto the Boston Avenue zoning ordinance as a whole.

"The Mayor does not have the authority to make a line-item veto, and I don't support her veto of this entire ordinance and the months of work put into this by so many residents because of one change she does not agree with," Tseng told Patch.

Leming similarly said that he believes the action could jeopardize the broader Boston Avenue rezoning package and potentially eliminate other protections and development standards included in the ordinance.

"If the Mayor's concern is protecting neighbors, her veto does the opposite," Leming told Patch. "It throws out the protections that residents fought for, all to block one procedural change for one potential use in one subdistrict."

The mayor's office said the City Council can override her veto with five votes. The next City Council meeting is scheduled for Tuesday, Sept. 29, at 7 p.m.