 The call to order the Monday, May 16th, 2016, and the Ireland Community Development Board recorded by ACMI. First in our agenda this evening is Certificate of Completion for the Bright View Assisted Living Project, and Joshua Davis is here to make that request. Good evening. This relates to a special permit that you all issued in 2012 for the assisted living facility at the old Sims Hospital site. And my client neglected to ask for a certificate of completion at the same time that they got the final certificate of occupancy. This is sort of a, as some of you may recall, this is a parallel process because of the land disposition agreement and the urban renewal, the fact that it was an urban renewal project. So the certificate is simply indicating that the improvements have been constructed. It's not saying that everything else under the land disposition agreement. But a lot of the requirements have been fulfilled. Those are mostly ongoing. So the request tonight is to ask the board to have the chairman sign it, notarize it, so that we can record it and satisfy Bright View's lender that everything is OK. I think that answered your question. I think it was just for the board. Wait, so that's done? Well, I believe we're a chat to make sure that. Did you do a drive-by? I had a reception. Did you do a drive-by? About a year ago. Well, I will just say that I did speak to both in special services and the ten engineers' office, and both of them said that there were no outstanding issues related to the project. Excellent. Yeah, we closed down the input plan quite a while ago. I had nothing better to do, so I drafted a motion if you want it. We're at it. Without Bruce here, we need some of the details. Let me just read it first, and then I'll make sure I agree. Yep, OK. I move that we vote to approve and issue a certificate of completion under the land disposition agreement dated as of August 25, 2004, between the board and Sims Redevelopment Associates LLC as amended to write you, Arlington LLC, as owner of the assisted living land described in the agreement, in the form submitted and to authorize the chair to execute a knowledge before a notary and deliver the certificate on behalf of the board. And actually, I would say the land disposition agreement dated as of August 25, 2004, as amended between. Oh, I'm sorry. There it is. Never mind. Second? Motion. All in favor? All right, all right. Thank you very much. Thank you, Josh. Enjoy town meeting. Those of you who are not. I'll give you a call in a couple of days. Yeah, I'll let you know as soon as I get back. All right, great. Thank you very much. You're welcome. Moving on, recap of town meeting and next steps. Jenny. So I thought we could spend a little bit of time just sort of reviewing everything that happened at town meeting with the zoning warrant articles the last time you met. You had a brief discussion or celebration of articles six and seven. And so after that point in time was then all of the residential zoning warrant articles. So I wanted to just give you some air time to talk about that and if you wanted to. And also then talk about what are the next steps for moving forward, which include responding to the article 11 motion. And along those lines, what I wanted to share with you is beginning work with Adam Chatelain, the town manager, to devise what will be sort of a recodification committee that would be in relation to the master plan implementation committee and then also a subcommittee that would be looking at residential issues. That's the sort of beginning thinking. Further fleshed out once we get to the master plan implementation committee meeting on May 26. That's kind of just the timeline of things, but we're still working out details and understanding a little bit more about what that article 11 motion says, making sure we're responsive to it, and also making sure that we're responsive to the recommendations that were in the master plan, which included a zoning audit and some very clear steps that we need to take in terms of sort of looking at the zoning, cleaning it up, and then also addressing if we can some policy issues to align the master plan with the zoning with the master plan. So I wanted to just put this on the agenda so you had time to talk about it before the master plan implementation committee meeting. Yeah, so I think it was, I certainly felt that it was a lot of confusion and that type of thing. And I think part of it was a little bit of, well, two-fold. Number one is, is I think we were nibbling at the edges a little bit on what it was that we were trying to do and trying to explain it for one reason rather than the other type of thing. And I think then we need to be kind of transparent about, and I think we always were. We always said that the gradation of the driveway would push back in that type of thing. But I think we kind of got to lay it all out a little bit. If that's the approach we want to take, then we need to lay it out a little more clearly. But the other part that I guess I kind of am curious about is what folks in our position kind of old land use type zoning and that type of thing. How other communities similar in nature to Arlington have gone about this kind of process and how, whether they've done it in a piecemeal fashion or whether they just kind of tried to rip off the Band-Aid with some rather large recodification. So I guess at this point, I don't have enough knowledge of it to understand which way other communities have gone, what the pros and cons are of that type of thing. I think what we're trying to do was make some changes that could help move us along. But part of me thinks maybe we're better off just kind of looking at it holistically and trying to figure out everything that we may want to do and how we may want to do it. And I guess I'm just not into reinventing the wheel. There's got to be other communities that have been in kind of a position with 40-year-old zoning, 40-plus-year zoning that when they did bring it up, maybe it's form-based, maybe it's something else, some other ideas. And then finally, just kind of doing that soon so that we can kind of get in front of it if we do want to do it for next year. Sadly, it's just not as much time as you think in that whole time. Anyway, so those are my thoughts after that whole time. I can wait to respond if you all want to continue or respond to it. Yeah, no, I mean. So just one little tip it is, we did allocate $50,000 in community development block grant funds towards recodification of our master planning. So we will have that to work with. Because that was always part of the problem is we didn't have those funds. How many funds? So that'll be active July 1st. And so the beginning of the process, and Laura, you can fill in the blanks if you want to see anything, but the beginning of the process is kind of scoping it out. What exactly do we want to do? What's feasible? What can some of our staff be able to possibly work on or advance versus what do we need a consultant to help us with? Which I think we definitely will need a consultant to help us with this if we go down the path of wanting to recodify completely. And then part of that is also kind of having a conversation about what are our goals. And I don't know that we've actually had that conversation. Maybe you had that conversation during the master planning process to an extent, but I think now it's time to revisit that conversation and understand what we must do and then versus the things we might have to live with. Which is somewhat contingent upon funding, somewhat is contingent upon the timeline, and possibly other factors as well. Because I think a big part of confusion and the fact zoning is hard and everything else is the way it's currently set up, right? Like I said, we're kind of nipping at the edges here and no one understands if we change this, then this has to happen. Well, what does this actually mean? I live on a hill. But there isn't this kind of, it's all, to me, it would almost be easier to explain a recodification completely, you know, completely because you don't end up with this Swiss cheese that we have over here. You know, of this parcel is this, this parcel is that. Yeah, the master plan when RKG was doing the zoning audit, my understanding is based upon the conclusion of the audit was to, you know, the town had a couple of choices. One is to completely recodify, address the numerous districts that were in place and clean it up because there's a lot of language that's either outdated or does not align with, you know, sort of current best practices or, you know, do bits and pieces sort of along the way, which many communities do that because it takes, it's quite a process to recodify. But there are communities who if they have the foresight and the will, you know, organize a group of people like a larger committee of people, which includes, you know, cross-section of staff, various different boards and committees that deal with land use and zoning and policy issues and, you know, may include other, you know, residents or business leaders, et cetera, depending upon what your, again, what the goals are of that process. And, you know, you can get at it in the big way, cleaning everything up, get at it in little pieces and then maybe you can also get to the policy issues. And that means taking the visions and the goals and the strategies that are enumerated in the master plan and saying, well, how do we need to re-zoning in order to achieve these goals? Because a lot of them actually do require, you know, zoning initiatives in order to advance them. So right now the zoning doesn't match the master plan in a lot of ways. And I think that that's, you know, taken out in various strategies. Yeah, I remember as we were passing the master plan a year ago or talking about it, you know, one of the big things was to do that kind of, okay, if we went that direction here or the changes that it would make, but we didn't have the money to do that. So, you know, I'm wondering with this CDBG, how far it does against, do you remember that as well? Or yeah. Yeah, it may not get us all the way through. Right, I'm sure it wouldn't, but it'd be nice to understand where it would start and how far it gets us. Because I think that's actually, once again, I think that's more easily explainable than kind of, you know, they're picking the opposite. I think that comes back to kind of what are the goals of the project? You know, what do we ultimately want to achieve at the end? And then what can, what's the scope of work to achieve that goal? And then once we get the scope, we can figure out what the, what we think are some of the cost estimates to move forward. And then obviously go up to our, have an RFP to bring somebody on. The other kind of cost factor would be community engagement, which I think is, to me, the most illuminating part of town meeting is the need for a lot more community engagement and across the town. And that we want to be very deliberate about how we do that. And we want to be, we need to be engaging very broadly because it's both an educational process as well as, you know, a process to tell people, you know, the way that we do the zoning and the way that the process works in town. So I think that that's, and we want their input, you know, there's a piece, the master plan is completed, yes, but that doesn't mean that we never ask for it, but it can on what we want, you know, what is the vision of the town, and what do we want, how do we want to see things moving forward? So I think that's part of that process as well as engaging people in that vision to get to some other endpoint. I think one of the toughest parts with that community engagement is sort of two of the toughest parts. One is we see the same folks a lot, which is great. I mean, they're very active and everything else, but to get that next level is something else. Now, we've got enough press that maybe it does bring, but the other part of zoning too is you get a very individualistic view of it, right? How is this going to affect me and my property? Which is totally understandable, but, you know, the civic engagement we're looking for is maybe a little bit broader. And I think that's where I think it is a challenge to try to figure out how you navigate that. I think it's gonna be really difficult if we're gonna go and do a holistic zoning change and do it within a year. And with the funds we have set aside, I see it as sort of three parts right now, how could be relevant, but the first part is like you said, understanding what the mission is and what we're trying to do. And then establishing how we go up through that. I mean, with who, with the outreach, community, everybody, business, the business people, the contrary, everybody. And then third thing is just drafting it so everybody understands it. And putting it in such a way where it's, I just can't see that happening that soon. Yeah, it's pronounced. And so we have to ask ourselves a question is do we say that we're gonna do a big approach and then we should let everybody know that with this big approach. It's gonna be more than a year. Or are we gonna say no, we're gonna keep to our word saying we're gonna look at this over the next year and bring something up for the next town meeting. And that's something that I think we have sort of decided right now. Or at least think about it. Well, I think it is a couple of things. And I can talk about this with the master plan implementation committee next week on that committee as well. But given the conversations that we had, given the turnover in town, given the turnover in town, this might be a good time to start to take a look at the master plan and begin that first review of where we are. Even though it was only approved a year ago, it really started, and I don't remember how long it started, Laura. Is it five, two and a half years? Before, yeah. Between the first, the World Cafe. Yeah, I remember that. To adoption, it's two and a half years. And so now it's three and a half years. So it's probably time to start this summer at looking at what we want to accomplish there and work with them to maybe hold a forum or to one specifically geared towards zoning to find out what direction we should head in and how we should have held a forum. Who would be, I'm not following. We start a public forum. With just 10 meetings. Something like the World Cafe. Something open to the general populace of the town to get ideas and start to head into this process. And we can put the option that there's a holistic review in doing an entire reconification. Maybe what's necessary, we can look at some other better crafted piecemeal changes. But I think that's where we probably should start. With a review. And policy changes, are you saying? I'm saying those are the options. Figuring out how we approach this so that we're doing it. And I don't know what the answer is. I don't know either, but we'll get there. Is the master plan implementation committee taking a look at what other communities have done in order to bring specifically, I guess zoning as much as anything else into the 21st century? Like what, you know? And it just, I can't look at this. And it just, it's not intuitive. It's not easy. It's not, you know, it gets crushed under its own weight. And maybe that's the way it needs to be, but. You don't have to need to have that many districts. Yeah, and I think for me, I think simplification in order to make sure that we understand the goals. But I think the goals were actually fairly well set up in the master plan itself. But what can be done from a simplification perspective, both from a, you know, a synthesis, you were talking about kind of going through and making sure it all gels, right? And I think that is part of the problem. And then to say, okay, and then here are the things that we're trying to accomplish with respect to maybe sizing with respect to a bunch of other things. How are communities addressing from a best practice perspective? You know, I think part of that was missing from the conversation. And, you know, and because it was missing, it led to, you know, what seemed like very technical changes that would have big impacts that no one really understood. So anyway, so. I think one of the takeaways I had from this past year is that there's certain things that there's a lot of general agreement about. It was kind of remarkably easy to change the mixed use and the parking. I think everybody would agree that there's too many zoning districts. Those won't be hard. Right. I don't know. I kind of disagree a little bit, okay? Because someone's gonna have property and those scattered all of those districts there and they're gonna want to realize how's this gonna affect my value? You know, this is my biggest purchase all my life savings or this thing here. And all of a sudden it changes zoning or under the guise of simplifying zoning. All of a sudden they perceive that they're losing value. That's a bad thing. But that's gonna happen no matter what. Maybe the game value. Well, that's true. The game value. But that's gonna be quite a bit of a big up there. Oh, I agree, but that's why you need to have, like as your backup, what other communities have done. Like, why is this the way to go? You know what I mean? Like, I agree with you completely. And people will be affected. But that's why it's even more, and I think we saw that with this, even in this year when we did it, right? I mean, that's what everyone said. But we couldn't really explain it well enough to say, yes, but here's why, you know, from a community as a whole, this is the right thing to do. You know, yes, people will be affected. We'll try to mitigate some of those effects either with timing or something like that. But I agree with you, but I don't think we can avoid that fact. But I think that's why we need to kind of get our ducks in a row, is because people will be affected. And so if we don't have a good explanation of why and how, and you know, these communities did it and here is the result, you know, then I think we're just gonna end up with what we had this year, which was a lot of confusion. So the point of this conversation was just to let, you have some of your time to kind of reflect on what occurred at town meeting and, you know, the next steps moving forward. And also just to kind of get your feedback for things that we can bring to, back to the master plan implementation committee. I think we put the card before the horse in the right. The way I'm hearing, I mean, you're talking about recodification, out-of-pacation, which is the master plan is articulated, things that are great about this community, things that need to be fixed, things that need to be reinforced. And they went about it, our master plan went about it by talking about neighborhoods, didn't it? It said there was a this area, there was a civic area, there was a central development area, which is also called no brook sometimes. There was other things that we wanna keep the same way they are, but it proved them. So there were goals set out by the master plan. The recodification is a tool, a potential way, to deal with those. And I completely agree with Mike's comments that you need, we need to know how that's being done in other communities. So maybe there shouldn't be a recodification. Should there be and how should it be done? But then we superimpose from out of left field one of the issues which has to do with nationalization and a bit of tiptoeing to my mind around that issue. If it's a good idea and it's part of the master plan, then own it and then say how are you going to do that? Maybe it is through recodification. Instead, we immediately got into the weeds on how you could kind of tweak zoning in order to make it kind of work to make houses small. But then we found out, well, that's too much of a broad brush approach. That's not really gonna work, so we kind of learned something, but I think we were ahead of ourselves. Obviously we learned that. So I think there are two things that are going on. What is the bigger picture of the method that we go about the zoning change? Is it, how has it done in other communities? Is it a good thing to do it that way? Do other communities do it on a piecemeal basis? Have very strong goals that are articulated? And then the second one is, okay, now we've got a kind of a way to do it. Here's an issue that apparently is very important to the master plan, which is mansionization. Let's attack it in that context. So I think we had double whammy against us because we went into detail without a clear goal being articulated. And I think that was the difference of the mixed use. I think you're absolutely right. This time on mixed use, we had our ducks lined up really well on why this was important. Right out of the master plan. Right out of the master plan, and also here's what it is. Yes, then we got into some specifics, but people, they were concerned about the specifics, but when you put them in the context of what it was we were trying to do and what the why you provided for greater height, but you had step backs and everything. Like once you could put it in the context of policy, here's what we mixed use, the goal was to develop our commercial. To improve, to make it more productive, bring people into the community, all the things that were part of them, clearly articulated. Whereas when we tried to attack mansionization, even that, didn't want to use the word. So we didn't really have a clear goal, because I think I found out that in some cases we want to let houses maybe get bigger, some houses we don't. I'm not sure now, so we kind of learned. So we have to get that goal very clear, but if, and I'm hearing two things again. Recodification is a saying where our tools aren't right for a number of things that we want to do, and we ought to articulate all those things. Sizing of dimensions, dehumanization is only one of those things. Right, definitely. Yeah, that was only, that was not everything. That is one piece, one subset of many other things. So, and just since I have a list in front of me that Laura put together, I'll read it. So the kinds of things that were talked about were reduce the number of uses that require a special permit, consolidate and refine the business zoning districts, create commercial and industrial design guidelines and incorporate them into the zoning bylaw, amend the zoning bylaw to provide redevelopment incentives in all or selected portions of the business districts, et cetera. So I mean, there's a lot of other things that are talked about in the master plan that relate to the zoning bylaw that again relate back to the master plan goals and strategies. And yes, other communities when they adopt the master plan the next step is them looking at the, what are the policies that need to change or the regulatory process? That's a typical next step in a process. And sometimes you could go about that by completely revamping the zoning bylaw or creating lots of overlay districts or patching up one piece at a time. I mean, it very much depends upon the community and the process involved in adopting zoning, which of course varies depending upon the type of community of your charter. In this community with town meeting, we have a very special, we have a unique process and it requires a lot more education. It requires a lot more outreach and buy-in and that's a little bit different, I would say, than some other places, but not incredibly so. But you still need to have that process, but the timeline is longer so we need to make it very intentional and we want people to understand what's happening to your point, the how and the why. Yep. So, and the impact and having an understanding of, why are we doing this? Are there other communities that have done something similar? What were the outcomes, et cetera? So all of that stuff would be part of that scope that I was talking about of what exactly are we doing here? What are the goals of this process? Do we want to get at addressing many of these issues? Some of these issues, sort of just cleaning it up, having the zoning bylaw makes sense and making sure that it's clearly communicated to the people who need to use it the most, which is a combination of our customers, the developers, development community, the building inspection office, the planning department, the residents, everybody. We all need to understand what it means and if we can't read it or there's contradictions in it, then we, I think that that's a clear indicator that, and that's pointed out frankly in the zoning audit and that's something we should probably address. Then everything else is kind of part two, which is do we want to get to policy issues? Do we want to get to some of the other bigger goals that we're probably very passionate about other than commercial districts and things of that nature? There are a lot of things, in other words, like Milbrook, for example, you mentioned that. So one is just the system kind of thing. This is the tool, making it work better for you for the whole approval system. For all the users, yeah. And the other is a series of goals that would be brought to bear. So I think we sort through those in a bigger picture way. Right, back to Andrew's point, I think, which is the timeline for, I can actually, you noted this, which is the timeline is very tight. And the reality is, this is my understanding, I wasn't here, but you adopted the master plan and then it took a while to appoint the master plan implementation committee. There was a gap of time, and you had probably roughly, I would guess six months, maybe less, to develop those zoning recommendations. Or even less. Maybe less, right, four months because you took a warrant, it was January, like October, January, like two months. So we don't want to start this in September or October, for that matter, we want to start soon. Although I will say, from my perspective, I'm more interested in how we want to tackle it than the timing of it. I mean, if what we were talking about was something a little bit grander, if you will, and we need money and we need time and that. I think all of that is actually fairly easily explained if you have exactly what it is that the project is, right? And I don't think, so I think that's the big question for us sooner rather than later, is how much are we gonna tackle in what order, so. And so that's the idea of the master plan implementation committee meeting on May 26th is to get at this issue and to also understand how we need to be responsive to the article 11 resolution. Central school. So I realized after putting this on here, the RFP is still open. So the bids are due actually on Monday, May 23rd. So I don't actually have much of an update. We had a walk through last two weeks ago now and actually made that and have had a number of people and organizations who are interested including town departments. So there's, it's still in process. So nothing is definitive at this point in time. But what I wanted to ask is if any one of you would want to participate in the review of the proposals because I had not asked that previously once we receive them to evaluate the proposals against the criteria and make a decision for help with the decision. Any volunteers? Yeah. I don't think I know enough about the central school. I mean, how do you know if this was your agenda? I did it last time so I can kind of look into it. I just was sensitive to your time. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Well, if you wanna, if you need help, I would help you out. I don't know enough about it, I'll do it. You're on the feasibility committee for the senior center. Okay. So it would make sense for you to continue but if you can't be there, maybe an alternate. I can help. Okay, perfect. I just don't know enough about that. And I can help you to have to speak. Okay, yeah. Or if anybody else I'm thinking could help as well. Yeah, me and you. Having the experience of. I'll be sure. Okay. I'll do it. Okay, thank you. Okay. Meeting minutes from the point. Yeah. I didn't have an issue with the zip. I can, I don't know the motion. Yeah, I was looking at it. I would like the motion to approve by do both at the same time. Well, I think Andy wasn't at the first one and I wasn't at the second. So we probably should separate the two of them. Yeah, okay. All right. Motion to approve the list. April 25th, 2016. I'll second that. Fall in favor. Aye. I guess that's the one I abstained. Yeah, yeah. I abstained from that one. I approve the meeting minutes from May 2nd, 2016. I get, you know, there's a red word. Second. All in favor. Aye. And I'm abstaining from that one. Okay. Anything else we have not discussed? When's next meeting? June 6th, June 6th. Yes, June 6th. Two weeks, though. You're granted a break. That's right. Memorial meeting. Okay. Do we have anything on the docket for June 6th? We do. Yes. We will have a special permit hearing for the, I'm always forgetting them. It's learned to grow, but they're called the spring board schools. Yes. And there may be another one as well. And the housing production plan. And the housing production plan. So that actually could be a very important answer to the question that was, was consultants were coming. And the plan needs to be adopted by the sport, as well as the Board of Select. And you'd expect that, right? Up to you. Okay. If you're comfortable. Yes, but it doesn't have to be. Do we get a preview of that then? Yes, yes. Yeah, just this week and then it'll be final Monday night, final issue. The committee, the advisory committee is going to review it next Monday and make changes. And then sort of give one more revision. It's long. It's very long. But you know, you can focus on what interests you most, but you know, you can focus more on the strategies, the goals and strategies. The pictures. Yes. We like pictures. I'll move to adjourn and reconvene. Well, are we reconvening? Or am I the only one reconvening? And thank you. Yeah, so I don't think we're going to reconvene. I think we're only going to adjourn. So I make a, I move to adjourn. Second. All in favor. All right. Thank you.