A proposed North Shore Road towing business has a month to get any potential issues cleared up and to meet with abutters before coming back to the city council's zoning subcommittee for a special permit hearing on Sept. 14.
The owners and attorney of 128 Towing and Recovery at 855 North Shore Road appeared before the subcommittee at its meeting last week for its special permit.
However, several city councillors said they had issues with 128 Towing continuing to operate at the North Shore Road location without the permit. There were also questions raised about the business and its impact on traffic and abutters from when the proposal first appeared before the council earlier this summer.
Attorney Niles Welch, representing the towing company, said he was recently retained by the owners and understood there were some issues with work being done at the site before a special permit was obtained from the city council.
“I would like to acknowledge, in speaking with my clients, that they did a lot of things backwards in applying for this permit and as any small business owner, as I can attest, this was not an intentional thing,” said Welch.
Welch said the owners, who are Revere residents, went forward with getting the business ready to operate before meeting with the ward councillor and applying for the special permit to operate.
“They only want to do the right thing, but now they are faced with the impossible situation that they are not licensed to operate a business, but they are semi-operating a business here in Revere,” said Welch. “We are here to acknowledge that is the case. In the past 48 hours, I have had some very productive conversations with members of the city, I’ve spoken with the ward councillor, I’ve had some very productive conversations with her in an effort to get in front and try to deal with some of the issues that were presented at the last city council meeting.”
Welch said the applicant was looking to table the subcommittee meeting in order to meet with abutters and residents and clear up any issues before the next zoning subcommittee meeting on Sept. 14.
However, several councillors, including Ward 5 Councillor Angela Guarino-Sawaya, said the issues went beyond needing to meet with neighbors.
Both Guarino-Sawaya and subcommittee Chair Marc Silvestri noted that the business has continued to operate without a special permit on North Shore Road after the owners were expressly told not to operate at the council meeting earlier this summer.
“We don’t want to impact the lives of anyone trying to start a small business here in Revere,” said Silvestri. “The last time they came before us, there were conditions and we spoke about not operating at this premises while they were in the process.”
However, Silvestri said he was driving by the property near the end of July and saw a flatbed truck on the site with its lights on and a driver inside.
Guarino-Sawaya said there have also been issues with neighbors seeing business being done on the site and trucks blocking traffic and the roadways.
“The neighbors behind them and across the street, they constantly call me, I guess they got into an altercation with a neighbor this past weekend because of the noise they heard,” she said.
Based on inconsistencies in the application and the resident complaints, Guarino-Sawaya said she could not allow the business in the neighborhood at this time.
“It is like he is lying right to my face, I don’t know if he is not doing it purposefully and it's just a miscommunication,” she said. “I have nothing against (the owner), I just can’t see this operation being approved with him doing everything wrong to begin with.”
Welch did raise the issue of a potential conflict of interest for Guarino-Sawaya, since two of her relatives work for a competing towing company in the city.
Guarino-Sawaya said she contacted the state ethics commission and that they advised her that she could be involved with the hearing process. She noted that her husband works part-time driving a rolloff truck for another company, and that her son works in sales for the company, but that neither of them are involved in towing, or that she would have any financial interest in the ruling.
Council President Anthony Zambuto and Councillor-at-Large Michelle Kelley both asked if there was a way the city and the business could find a compromise on the issue.
Silvestri tabled the special permit hearing until the Sept. 14 zoning subcommittee meeting to give the business and the attorney time to settle any outstanding issues. However, he said that the business cannot operate in any fashion on the property before that date.