Medford Mayor Breanna Lungo-Koehn announced on Sept. 23 that she vetoed an amendment to the Medford Zoning Ordinance that passed 4–3 on a revote during a City Council meeting on Sept. 15. The amendment would allow student housing to be constructed by right — as opposed to requiring a special permit — in a portion of the Hillside neighborhood near Whole Foods Market.
This announcement prompted City Councilor Matt Leming to write a letter to the editor for the local publication Gotta Know Medford, in which he alleged an ongoing pattern of mayoral disruption of zoning efforts.
“This move from the mayor bugged me enough to write about it directly because it’s not really about the zoning. It’s a political jab,” he wrote.
Lungo-Koehn explained in an interview with the Daily that her issue was not with the substance of the amendment but rather the circumstances under which the vote took place.
Her press release noted that the amendment was rejected 4–3 earlier in the meeting, and was only passed after a motion to reconsider was made around 11 p.m. by City Councilor Justin Tseng, who switched his vote to pass the amendment 4–3. A veto can be overturned by a supermajority vote of five or more.
“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,” the press release reads.
The developer mentioned is John Walsh, who owns 200 Boston Ave., among other properties that could be affected by the amendment. Lungo-Koehn cited resident anger that Walsh was in the audience and talking to council members between the vote and the revote.
“If Matt moved for the revote, then did he and Justin talk in between votes? It just seems really fishy to me,” she said. “The fact that the developer is there — it screams collusion. I’m not saying it was. It’s just really not a good look for them.”
Leming addressed the mayor’s comments in an interview with the Daily.
“The mayor is trying to insinuate that [Tseng] was pressured by a developer, and there’s just zero evidence of that,” he said.
“I voted to make purpose-built student housing by right instead of by special permit because it was only applicable to a very small area of land, and [the] City Council and the Community Development Board had talked about the definition and requirements for purpose-built student housing very extensively,” Leming added.
Leming added that he believes the mayor has historically used the city’s press release system to push her own agenda, a practice he disagrees with.
Lungo-Koehn, however, responded that she issues press releases when necessary.
“Once in a great while, on something like what happened on the 15th, the only way to get through to [the City Council], to say this is unacceptable, is to put it in writing and push it out to the community.”
She said the situation “crossed a line,” and she felt residents who left the meeting after the first vote did not get their fair say.
Some other Medford officials shared Lungo-Koehn’s frustration with the amendment’s passage. Doug Carr, chair of the Community Development Board, wrote a letter to City Council President Zac Bears expressing the CDB’s disappointment with the amendment.
“The Council significantly changed what we agreed to at the joint meeting between the City Council and Community Development Board on June 24, which was not in the spirit of our informal agreement reached at the beginning of the year. We would like to work with the Council to change and improve the process going forward.”
Carr explained in the letter that they reached consensus on all major aspects of the Boston Avenue zoning on June 24, and the council informally agreed “that the only changes going forward would be administrative in nature and not significant.”
Leming’s disagreements with the mayor extend beyond the amendment, though. He also claimed that the mayor had used a “misinformation-laden robocall” in July 2025 to spread false information about past zoning initiatives.
“It was a tactic to dominate the election narratives in a very negative way around zoning,” he claimed.
Steve Smirti, director of communications for Medford, addressed Leming’s letter in an email to the Daily.
“As for the robo calls, we sent messages to each neighborhood and outlined what the proposed zoning changes would be. We only presented the facts of the proposals (height changes/ADU requirements) as well as the meeting information for the June 18, 2025 CD Board meeting,” he wrote. “The Mayor said that Matt must be upset as he didn’t want the residents to be informed about the process.”
