 Good evening everyone and welcome to the February 28th meeting of the Arlington Redevelopment Board. This open meeting of the Redevelopment Board is being conducted remotely consistent with Governor Baker's executive order of March 12, 2020 due to the current state of emergency in the Commonwealth due to the outbreak of the COVID-19 virus. For this meeting, the ARB is convening via Zoom as posted on the town's website identifying how the public may join. Please note that this meeting is being recorded and that some attendees are participating via video conference. Accordingly, please be aware that other people may be able to see you and take care not to screen share your computer. Anything that you broadcast may be captured by the recording. So at this time, I'll go ahead and take a roll call to confirm that all of the members of the board are present and can hear me starting with Kim Lau. Present. Dean Benson. Present. Melissa Titacolas. Present. Steve Revolac. Good evening, Madam Chair. And I am Rachel Zinbury. We also have two members of the Department of Planning and Community Development with us, Jennifer Rae. Present. And Kelly Lanema. Present. That was. So with that, we will move right into our first. Agenda item, which is an overview of the. Current. Development guidelines for the MBTA communities and I will turn it over to Jenny and Kelly. Thank you, Rachel. And thank you to the board for giving us this time on the agenda tonight to talk about MBTA communities. Kelly is actually going to make the presentation, but I just wanted to give a quick introduction to it. And I just wanted to make sure that we, we had started talking about this almost immediately when we learned about it last year and. You know, thought that we would have sort of an urgent need for compliance because we didn't understand. When the economic development bond bill was first passed, we didn't actually understand when things would need to be compliant and what things meant. All that we knew was that state law. And that the new zoning act was changed. And that there would be a requirement for an MBTA community to become compliant at some point in time. So we had proposed a warrant article. And then of course the board. Pretty quickly after that. Decided to, you know, it was already filed at that point, but it was voted no action on because we moved it to be voted no action on. And nothing further occurred. So we had a chance to discuss that. And then, I think the course of the last year, the department of housing and community development at the state level has been working on development of draft guidelines. And having a number of sessions with communities. Making presentations. Kind of cross the state at this point. Trying to educate people about the guidelines to both the Massachusetts municipal association. And then, you know, you know, you know, you know, there's been various sort of statewide organizations are trying to best understand what exactly the guidelines mean and what it means to potentially have to comply. So what that means is we're doing the same thing. We're sharing the draft guidelines. And we just want to have a conversation with the board about it. We have given a little bit of thought to it based upon what we understand the guidelines to mean, but I think it's important to have a conversation with the board. I think it's important to have a conversation forthcoming. And of course, because they're guidelines. In a draft format. Awaiting public comment to be received by March 31st. And then with the expectation that they'll be finalized in summer. A lot could change. So. Let's not completely hang our hat on everything discussed tonight, but more make this a conversation to talk about. What could we do in relationship to MBTA communities, but I think it's important to have a conversation with the board. Because there is likely the possibility that we will need to comply with something. In order to apply for really important grant funds from the state. That relate to our public infrastructure. And that's actually a very broad statement about infrastructure, but we have a particular project in mind. So it is important. It will become important to Arlington, but it is not. It will be important to have a conversation with the board. And I think that we understand at this point in time. And start the discussion. And as Kelly will share in the presentation. We would intend to come back to the board once we have a lot more information. So. With that, I will hand it over to Kelly who is started to, hopefully you can see her screen and. Then we'll come back for, or Kelly, you can choose if you want us to pause in the middle. For questions. No words. It would help if I was unmuted. Yeah. I think maybe we can get through this and then we can have a discussion. If that's fine with everyone here. Is everyone seeing the main screen here and VTA communities. Okay. So thank you, Jenny. As Jenny mentioned, the purpose of this presentation is really to provide you with an overview of the legislation. And then talk about DHCD draft guidelines and those are two separate things right now. And then we're going to talk about, you know, some of the things that we want to talk about. We also wanted to invite you to submit comments to DHCD. That deadline is rapidly approaching at March 31. I wanted to explain a bit of the timeline. So what's happening next, both at a state level and then the timeline for compliance. And share some initial outlines of consideration for districts or districts. So again, what I have here in the presentation is just talking about the timeline for compliance. Sharing the draft guidelines with you. I'm having a discussion around that talking about the timeline and then some possible ideas for compliance. In the legislation in order to be eligible for certain kinds of funding, MBTA communities legislation states that we have to have at least one zoning district of reasonable size in which multi family housing is permitted as of late. This is in, as Jenny mentioned, in the last slide. I'm going to talk about that. I'm going to talk about that in a little bit more detail. Chapter 48 codified in section 30 and sorry, section three a as part of the multifamily zoning requirement. One district of reasonable size multifamily from housing permitted as of right. No age restriction. So it has to be suitable for families with children. It can't be limited to seniors only. And in that district, you have to have a minimum gross density of 15 units per acre. And that district can't be more than half a mile away from a home. So that's the only way to do that. So I'm going to talk about the guidelines in the MBTA communities legislation. But this is as it's applicable to Arlington. So this specific language. In the legislation provides a broad framework, but it doesn't have the kind of detail to direct implementation. So DHCD drafted. Draft guidelines and has shared those in December of this year. Of last year. Sorry. So I'm going to talk about that. So I'm going to talk about how we can interpret the legislation in this way. So DHCD is interpreting. That reasonable size of being at least 50 acres in total. So that can be over one district or several districts, but in total they have to, they have to encompass at least 50 acres. They define multifamily housing as a building with three or more residential dwelling units. And again, that's, that's a bright. And that's also an important part of the planning and transformation of the development process. No age restrictions or bedroom limits. You can't limit it to one bedroom only. It has to be suitable for families. And then because Arlington is categorized as a rapid transit community because of her proximity to L Y station. we have 25% of our total housing units. We have to have the capacity for 25% of our total housing units in that district or in those districts. So because of our total numbers, that means we have to have the capacity for 5,115 units. What's important to note about this is by capacity, they don't mean in addition to, it's basically as if you had a Tabula Rossa, if you had like no development at all on a site, what would you have the capacity to develop there as a right? So we may have in certain districts, we may have the capacity for 4,000 units, but we haven't met that 5,115 unit capacity. And then the guidelines are a little bit more flexible than the legislation might make them sound. At least half of the land area within the district is within half a mile of the station. So the district can extend beyond that half mile radius, but at least half of it has to be within that half mile radius. By complying with the legislation, we remain eligible for funding from MassWorks Infrastructure Program from the Housing Choice Initiative and for some communities from the local capital projects fund, although Arlington does not qualify for this latter funding source. So how could we use the funding? We, as Jenny mentioned, part of the reason why we wanted to talk about this tonight is because we are currently in the process of applying for MassWorks funding. MassWorks funding provides funding for designing construction, for funding for public infrastructure like roads, utilities, bike lanes, pedestrian facilities and improvements to public properties. I'll get into that in a little bit on the next slide. We are not currently a housing choice community. We have not qualified for that, but there is a potential for us to maybe become a housing choice community in the next year or two. If you are a housing choice community, you become qualified for, you become eligible for community capital grants funding. It also was an excellent source of funding for certain kinds of planning, like funding for a master plan or updating a master plan funding for studying zoning amendments or other sorts of studies related to economic development or zoning, what have you. And again, that local capital projects fund are eligible for. In the past five years, we have not pursued MassWorks funding. And as I mentioned, we're not a housing choice community. So we have not pursued or been awarded funding. But as Jenny mentioned, we are applying for MassWorks funding, particularly for the MassAv and Appleton project. This is a very large funding source. MassWorks in 2021, they're awards average $1.1 million per community or per project that received funding. So this is a very large source of funding. Housing choice initiative grants are definitely smaller. They have about a $5 million pool of funding and we may become eligible for that in the next one to two years, but we are not currently eligible. Now, looking ahead into the future, we may start to see the state funnel more funding through these programs tied to incentive based standards. So the state may try to incentivize communities to become compliant with MBT communities legislation in order to receive this funding. So I think compliance is something that is important to consider and it's important, part of the reason why we're here tonight is to really talk about how we can maintain our compliance. The draft guidelines DHCD approach the guidelines using two factors. So it's that reasonable size that they determined to be 50 acres and it's also that capacity level. So based on your level of transit service with the expectations that communities have access to subway service should be able to provide greater capacity for housing than those with bus service or commuter rail service. Arlington, does Arlington comply now with the guidelines? The short answer is no. We do not in our zoning, we don't limit. We don't limit our zoning based on age or size of units, number of bedrooms, size of bedrooms, et cetera. But what we also do not do is we don't allow for multifamily zoning, we don't allow for multifamily development by right. Even in our three zoning districts, you are required to get a special permit in order to develop a three family unit. So basically you cannot develop multifamily housing by right, which is part of one of the key requirements of the MBTA community legislation. We also don't have a district of 50 acres that's within a half mile of MBTA station that provides that 15 residential units per acre with the capacity that meets the current draft guidelines standards. So again, at that capacity of 5,150 units we don't have that right now. The timeline for compliance. In order to comply with the guidelines, we don't have to have zoning right now. We have to be moving toward it. So by May 2 of this year, we need to hold a briefing with the select board and submit information regarding current compliance back to DHCD. Then we need to start working on a plan. That plan actually will likely depend on what the final guidance from DHCD is. So DHCD has issued their draft guidance right now. They're receiving comments until March 31 of this year of 2022. They will turn around and issue the final updated guidance later this summer. And then we will have until March 31 of 2023 to submit an action plan to DHCD. And this should describe how we intend to come into compliance to the state for approval. And then by December 31 of 2023, any action plan that we've developed must be adopted. So this would be adopted by town meeting. As far as next steps, as I mentioned, that deadline of March 31 for comments on the draft guidelines, we would really appreciate it if you are going to submit comments. You can submit them here through mass.gov slash M-D-T-A communities. We'd appreciate it if you copied staff on this. It is going to be helpful to us as we will be helping to guide that planning process and determining what the zoning will be. It'll be helpful to know what your feedback is on the draft guidelines right now. This would help us definitely shape based on community feedback and board feedback. Also consider attending the select board meeting. We're looking to schedule that meeting, that briefing meeting with the select board in March. We don't have a date yet but we will let you know when that happens. So consider attending that just to hear their questions and comments. And then once the DHCD final guidelines are issued, we will return to you with an update and a discussion proposed schedule for how we would like to move forward. And this will likely happen by the end of the summer or early fall of this year. So with the draft guidelines in mind, we did want to provide the board with a sense of the types of districts, size, location, et cetera, that could be considered for future compliance. I do want to caveat all of this with the idea that these are not plans. These are just initial sketches on maps just so you can get a sense for like, what does 50 acres even look like in Arlington? What is an overall size of a district? What kind of areas could we be considering for this? We have not done planning around this. We've just done some studies to kind of get a sense for what do these guidelines even mean? Some of the ideas for compliance with the draft guidelines, the first would be the first category of ideas would be to just reduce the development that's subject to a special permit. So are there areas in town where we could allow for three or more residential units by right instead of requiring that they go through a special permit process? Could those locations be either along or immediately behind Mass Ave? If you look back to some of our old zoning maps, Mass Ave was sort of a business corridor that extended about 150 feet on either side of the street centerline. And so maybe thinking about some of that corridor idea may be helpful in thinking about where we could allow for a little bit more density. Could we consider a little bit more multifamily housing by right in our seven zoning districts or perhaps in some of our business districts, maybe in the B1, B2 or B4, so long as they provide for mixed use development? The other category that we could pursue is thinking about increasing the dwelling unit flexibility. So we could create a very large 40-hour district maybe 150 to 300 acres. This is a recommendation of the net zero action plan. It's also a recommendation in the draft housing plan. And this would be something that a lot of other communities are starting to think about in considering the DHCD guidelines as considering a 40-hour district. We could also consider permitting to accessory dwelling units in single-family zones and that would get us to a three-family, essentially getting us to three dwelling units per lot by right. So looking at the maps, we looked at three different areas. I think when everybody thinks about MBTA communities within Arlington, they immediately think Alewife because we are a mass transit community and our location is tied to that subway station in Alewife. But we have spoken with DHCD and they have let us know that we could also consider Arlington Heights around the bus depot as a potential location for that half mile radius. And then while Arlington Center does not technically qualify, we did consider this as a third area in order to increase the overall district size and sort of as an alternative for thinking about unit density because we do need to have the reach those capacity numbers. So we located the center of that radius, that third radius in Arlington Center at the intersection of where the Route 80 and Route 77 bus lines converge. So again, as I mentioned, these are totally for discussion. These are for illustrative purposes. One option would be considering locating the district completely in East Arlington. If we wanted to think about a district sort of around the Alewife station but then extending up into Capitol Square, what you see here is approximately 65 to 70 acres. More than half of it is within a half mile radius of Alewife. So it would meet that compliance of the reasonable size requirement. But the one thing to consider is that it would have to also have that capacity for 5,115 units. Another option would be to completely locate that district within Arlington Heights. What you see here is approximately 50 to 55 acres. Almost all of this is within a half mile of the bus depot. But again, as I mentioned, we have to think about those two requirements from DHCD. So we also wanted to present two starting points for thinking about what would a larger district look like if we wanted to spread that capacity over a larger acreage. And so another option would be to think about having more than one district, having three districts, thinking about using each of our business districts as sort of center points for thinking about how we could meet those capacity and density requirements. These districts kind of roughly outlined here are about 140 to 145 acres, and we have one located in each business district. Each of them is within a half mile radius of that transit. And then one final option would be to consider and actually not one final option, there are actually multiple options. These are just some initial stabs that drawings on a map. I think there are a lot of ways you could interpret this but we could consider looking at just an overall corridor overlay. So setting a distance from the Mass Ave centerline, thinking about what you see here in this initial, like this is the Mass Ave centerline here. And if you go one tenth of a mile out or you go one 20 or two tenths of a mile out, you could think about having two different sub districts. So you could think about this like outer district here as having a slightly lower density that still complies with that 15 dwelling units per acre or maybe even a little bit less, maybe that's three family by right. And then within the corridor right along Mass Ave and within a one tenth of a mile back from Mass Ave, thinking about having a little bit of higher capacity for units. So as the DHCD guidelines say, you can have sub districts where you have a lower density and then a higher density within those areas. If something like this were considered, a total district size could be anywhere between 200 and 450 acres. So if you start thinking about dispersing 5,100, a dwelling unit capacity of 5,115 units over that, you start getting to about 15 to 26 dwelling units per acre. So that does get a little bit closer to the minimum, the minimum density required by the guidelines, but it still is in compliance. So again, in closing, I think, as Jenny mentioned, she and I have both been sitting in in a lot of sessions where people have been talking about these guidelines. We've been listening to what other communities have had to say about them. We definitely would invite your questions and comments here and also would love to talk with you more about submitting feedback to DHCD in advance of that March 31 deadline. So thank you very much. Thank you, Kelly and Jenny, both. I really appreciate you breaking down where we are and some of the initial thoughts for compliance. I know that this has been, that there's been a lot of information coming out that you've all had to synthesize. So I really appreciate the work that's done into this. I'll now open it up to you members of the board for any questions or comments and I'll start with you, Ken. Well, thank you. Thank Jennifer and Kelly for this representation. That was pretty good. I wouldn't mind taking a closer look at that and opposed to maybe we can set up a couple of forums, maybe with the affected neighbors in those certain areas as one group of meetings and then maybe realtors and brokers and contractors as another forum and see what their feedback is and then having that in mind, let's take a look at it and see all the different views that have this, this is a pretty major change. I think it's pretty much follows the master plan actually and it kind of resorts back to what some of the old zoning was before we got, before this newer version of zoning came in and de-densified some of this public area here. I mean, along a massive corridor there. So it's encouraging and it might also help us out of this housing shortage that we might be experiencing right now, I think that's a good thing. So I think I just need more time to look at it. I can't really, I think what you have is really good and I just need to look at more of the details and think about that a little more. That's my initial reactions. Great, thank you, Ken. And I should ask Kelly and Jenny, I know that I don't believe that we were able to post this presentation with the agenda today, but is that something that you can send out or post to the ARB site following me? Yeah, we will post it to this meeting agenda and just give a follow-up email to the board to make sure that it's posted when it is. Great, thanks. I think to Ken's point about just wanting a little bit more time to sit with it and understand the recommendations that would be fantastic. Jean, I'll go to you next for any questions or comments. Yeah, thanks. Yeah, I'll start by echoing what Ken said. Thank you for the presentation or sort of walking us through what various options might be worth considering in going forward. And I agree that having some sort of public process before we choose which option or which combination of options is I think an really important step. Couple other thoughts and then I wanna say something fairly destabilizing for the conversation but my couple other thoughts first are the legislation. All right, so I've read the legislation in the guidelines a few times but I can't say thank goodness that I committed it to memory because that would be a little crazy so I may get a few things wrong. But I believe that while it prohibits special permits it does allow for site plan review. And I think that if we go ahead I think we should have a serious discussion about whether we wanna have site plan review as part of this and if so how that's going to work, who's gonna do it, et cetera. So I think that's an important piece to add. And I think one of the reasons that's important is if we do something like this I think we have to think about green space, open space, climate, things like that. And I think site plan review gives us an opportunity to figure out how to make that part of the project because I mean, this isn't gonna happen once as Kelly said, these are all built up areas it's just going to give people who own the property there the opportunity potentially to do something with the property that they can't do now. I would be a little concerned about the size of structures we would allow on MassEd because as we had discussed many times on this board MassEd is where we should have taller buildings more density. And I think for me at least then I'm gonna open to other discussion about this I think three or four unit buildings are not what we're looking for on MassEd. If we were to do this and at least in some places allow more than four unit buildings as of right we're gonna have to revise the inclusionary zoning by law which now kicks in only if there's a special permit required. What else did I wanna say about that? Oh, I've read the guidance a number of times trying to figure out if the bus depot in the heights would qualify as a station and I know it's sort of vague I'd say it doesn't but if DHCT says it does they wrote the guidance so I think we'd have to live with that but I don't think the bus station as the bus depot as it currently operates meets the current guidance definition of a bus station. So now when I have one question before I get to my destabilizing or semi destabilizing comment. I hope you had already gotten there, but okay. No, no, we haven't gotten there yet. We're two. No, no, no. It's I'm just, you know, what's that call where you set something up so people can- You've really built it up, Gene. In the conversation, okay. So what would it take for us to become a housing choice community that we're not now? What would we have to do to be able to get into that other bucket? Can you discuss that now or do you wanna come back to us? Kelly or Jenny? Yeah, I was gonna say, Kelly why don't you talk about how we've computed it right now, where we stand and what we would need to do differently. So the housing choice community that you have to have both a certain amount of housing production within a certain time period. And then if you don't have the upper threshold of production then you also need to meet a certain number of criteria. A lot of that is what you allow in your legislation or in your regulations. So in Arlington, we haven't met that because the lowest threshold for production is 300 units within a five-year period. So we are with the approval of 1165-hour massive and with the Downing Square Broadway initiative and with a couple of other sort of like smaller projects we're getting close to that 300 number. We could pretend if a couple of other projects so we don't know for sure but if there were to be two or three other projects in the next two years we could most likely meet that 300 number. So I didn't wanna say we could not become a housing choice community because the possibility is out there. We also have met a number of the criteria including with the passage of the ADU-Baila I town meeting last year. We're getting pretty close to the threshold number criteria that would have to be met in order to get that lower number. One of the other criteria that could be met is allowing multifamily by right in one zoning district. So if we were to pass MBTA communities like some zoning that is compliant with MBTA communities we would then that would almost be a two-fer, right? We would have, we would meet that requirement for housing choice and then we would also be compliant with the MBTA community legislation. So I think we're looking closely at what other things could be required. I think a parking reduction is another one of those. I don't wanna assume that's going to pass town meeting but if it were to pass town meeting that would that just a little bit closer toward meeting those requirements. So that's why I said it's potentially out there in the next two years but we have not met that yet. Okay, thanks. That's really helpful. The other point I wanted to make before I said the other thing I was gonna say is you talked about allowing two ADUs but one of the proposals that we're going to consider next month would be to allow two family homes as of right in the single family districts. Well, if that were to happen they could under the ADU by law have ADUs as of right. So if we did that would we be effectively creating this MBTA district or getting pretty close to it? We have to do a little bit more interrogation. I don't know that we would meet that 15 dwelling unit gross density under a district but we have to look. I think, well, my sort of off the top of my head not very good at math is that a three unit building 15 units per acre is about 8,000 odd square feet lots. At least in the R1 district the minimum lot size is 6,000 square feet. So theoretically it would work in the R1 district R2 district that's 9,000 square feet. So if there's a two family with two ADUs that would also meet the requirements. So I think it's, I'm not positive but I hadn't thought of it until you put the one slide in. So I think it's worth taking a look at an hour knowing that when we consider the warrant article which I think is up on March 7th, I think. So here's my semi destabilizing comment. Look, I think the legislation is really important and there are a lot of communities including Arlington that need to provide for the possibility of more multi-family housing near MBTA stations. But I think the guidance is pretty terrible and I think it goes far beyond what the legislation contemplated in a lot of ways. And I think DHCD is hanging everything on that one little phrase in the legislation that says something like it can determine if the requirements are being met. But I'm not clear that it gives DHCD the right to do something like say, MBTA communities with a station, 20, they have to add potentially enough zoning so that be a 25% increase in housing. And if I think about it, it even seems a little backwards to me in that the places that should have the higher percentage are the places that have managed to keep out more housing than Arlington's managed to keep out. Those I think are the places that should really have the higher percentages or the higher total requirements. And I can think of a lot of more suburban places that have tea service and whether it's rail or bus, where they're really a lot behind us, we can do more, but they should be doing more than we're doing. And this is backwards as I see it. So what I'm really hoping is that the town, and I don't know if the town would be willing to do this, I would like the town to submit comments that say, we think the legislation's important, it's needed, the town's committing to do more, but this is really bad times. And here's what's wrong with it and make some suggestions for how it should be changed. So I'll write something, I haven't written anything yet, but I think there's a lot that can and needs to be written about it. I won't get into all the legalisms that I've thought of, I'll state those for my letter, but that's it. Great, thanks, Jean. So that's specifically around the calculation for capacity. Well, it's partially the calculation for capacity, partially whether they even have the authority to determine that at all. So do they have the authority to determine it? Do they have the authority to tell us that we can go outside the half mile radius? If they have the authority to do the calculation, is this calculation at all reasonable? And then there are a few other things that I don't have on the top of my head that I think are really problematic about it. Great, did you want Jenny or Kelly to weigh in or just wanted to share that and then play on submitting some additional? Well, I think maybe if you have full-filed up, Congress has you with Jenny and Kelly offline because I guess they have a different point of view. I might have a different point of view about it and they've been known in the past to convince me that I'm in error. So that could happen later. Okay, so we'll leave that comment for now. I appreciate, Jean, you giving so much thought to this and sharing your initial thoughts here. So Melissa, I'll go to you next for any questions or comments you might have. Well done, Kelly. I thought that was an excellent presentation in terms of making it concise and relatable for everyone. I think in terms of, from my experience, in my perspective, the MassWorks grants can't be lost in terms of how they're using it, whether it's a carrot or stick. In the communities I've worked for, they've averaged actually closer to the $3 million range. I mean, that's obviously a smaller selection, but it can be significant. So it is something to really kind of consider as you kind of look towards compliance going forward. I was surprised though, I didn't realize that we haven't really received anything in the last five years. So I mean, I think it does take the coordinated department effort, DPW, planning as well to kind of think those things through. And I haven't looked, I mean, I've looked, I've sat on some of these, I guess seminars, webinars on the topic. One thing I don't know if we mentioned really was also that I think mixed use would be considered as part of this, it's not strictly housing alone. So as the public's kind of digesting this in general to keep that peace in mind. And then, I hear what you're saying, Jean, in terms of the communities, I've worked for too, as you kind of go further out, there is more, the structure of the transit is different, but in terms of looking at the existing connections anyways and bus routes and getting us kind of flowing in that direction so that the development, I mean, in my mind's eye, I see this much more as a transit-oriented development effort. It is housing, but it's also kind of with the proper balance of potential mixed use and the expansion of the zone as kind of one of the ideas that Kelly presented, it has a way to kind of blend both, address the housing as well as space for business commerce too that can be a good blend. I mean, I think also my two cents is there it's, they are looking for comments. So Jean, I mean, articulating those and be interested to see what that looks like on paper. As you kind of bulleted out, because my sense is that they are really looking for feedback. They really do want that and I'm, you know, so I'm hesitant to be like, okay, we have to do it just by what they've said today. So, I mean, because I understand it's very iterative at this point. So, but well done. Thank you so much for kind of giving us kind of the current update. Great, thank you, Melissa. Steve, any thoughts you want to share? Oh, you're on mute, Steve. Hopefully now it's better. Oh, excellent. So first, I think this could be, I'm really excited about this as an opportunity. I agree with Melissa that, you know, this does seem to be getting more at transit oriented development. And I think that's, you know, honestly, if you compare that to what we did in the 20th century where the general idea was to build things spaced far apart and then have to drive every place and build lots of roads and interstates, et cetera. And now all we have, you know, some decades later is wicked bad traffic and a lot of greenhouse gas emissions due to passenger vehicles. So to me, the idea of transit oriented development is just thrilling. Now, I think a lot of it will depend on, you know, where we draw this on the map. But a couple of things that I'd sort of like to hope we could keep in our minds as we do this is to the extent that the district is in East Arlington, an area that's subject to future sea level rise and flooding, that we could incorporate some flood resilience measures into that part of the district, even if they're just, you know, sort of preliminary to what say the Zoning By-law Working Group has been discussing. You know, just even a requirement to provide free board, you know, some distance above the base flood elevation and making sure that height wasn't, you know, an obstacle to doing that would be, you know, I think a good start. I would hope that we could also allow some housing, some level of housing by right at a scale that would trigger our inclusionary zoning. So, six plus units, or if we change the inclusionary threshold to something else, but, you know, allow that by right, probably with Site Plan Review. You know, as I agree, there are a lot of other components, sustainability and otherwise, that, you know, there's advantage to discussing it in a public forum. I also, knowing that the bikeway is also a transit resource, you know, thinking of, you know, perhaps thinking of doing a little bit of build up around or making part of the district, sort of follow the bikeway in places. And finally, I am intrigued about the idea of Arlington Center. It's not one, it's not an area that would have occurred to me, but, you know, maybe considering, you know, I think one thing to consider would be bus ridership and areas that are commonly used that have high ridership now might be, you know, good candidates. But again, I do see this as an opportunity, I realize it's just draft guidance, but hopefully we'll get some clarity future, clarity in the future. And I sent my comments in early, but I will send a copy of those to staff. So you have an idea of what I said. That's all for me. Thank you. Great. Thank you, Steve. Are there any other comments for Jenny and Kelly before I open it up to, for public comments? I already see we have one hand raised. James. Yeah, just one other thing. And Steve reminded me when he said Arlington Center, one of the things that we just started talking about that was in the housing production plan is what to do with the Russell Common parking lot. And thinking about that as an area that would be part of this, I think would be a very good idea. Thank you, Gene. I agree as well. You know, okay, great. Anyone else before Steve? This is a very far out question, but I'm going to ask it anyway. Any chance of getting the red line extension back? Jenny, don't let you feel that one. I actually get asked this question quite frequently. So it is not an unusual question. Could we get it back? I mean, I think the focus is on the green line extension going to Mystic Valley Parkway right now. If we can get that to come back, that's what we are still committed to trying to do and working with other communities to make that happen if it could. There is actually an opening for the potential for an environmental impact review. And so we are looking at that. Bringing back, extending the red line, as you know, would be giving up, potentially giving up or significantly modifying what we have as an amazing resource in the Minuteman Bikeway. And I think that that would be that would be a whole different conversation. And one that I am not certain that we are in a position to entertain at this time, but is certainly maybe something to talk about in the next master planning process. Okay. There are definitely people who ask that question frequently. I don't think it's out of the question, but we would need significant investment to make something like that happen. And the focus has been on the green line extension for that reason. Steve, get on your time machine and go back to 1970. Also might require some money to do that, but anyway. All right. So with that, I will go ahead and open this up to the public for any questions you might have for Jenny and Kelly. I'll just note that you should, if you are interested in either speaking about this or asking any questions, please use the raise hand function at the bottom of your screen. When I call on you, please make sure to introduce yourself with your first last name and address, and you will have up to three minutes for your comments. And I will start with Don Seltzer. Thank you, Madam Chair. Don Seltzer, Irving Street. I just want to point out that what the legislatures passed last year was fairly simple. They said they wanted 15 housing units per acre located within half a mile walking distance of the transit station. In fact, you'll find numerous places within the guidelines that were issued that emphasize that any such district has to be easily accessible to pedestrians to the transit station. I've provided the board with some detailed calculations. I've done a great deal of analysis of our existing district that's within half a mile of our life station. And in fact, we check off a number of the boxes of the requirements. It's actually around 17 housing units per acre. And within half a mile, and it's occupies 62 acres of developable land. And the other thing that should be pointed out is that even the State Department of Housing and Community Development has far exceeded what the state legislatures have passed by adding this additional requirement which really overrides everything else saying that we have to provide a district in which multifamily housing is available by right that would accommodate as much as 5,115 housing units which is many times higher density than the 15 per acre that the state legislature wanted. I'll just stop there, except I provided a lot of data to the board. I'd be happy to answer any questions that you might have at this time. And try to provide you additional detailed data if you have any questions on that. Thank you very much. The next speaker we all have this evening is Elizabeth Dre. No questions from anybody? Nope, thank you. Elizabeth Dre. Oh, wait, I don't know why my video is not working. I'm sorry, a few clarifying questions. Sure, I'm sorry, Elizabeth, would you just mind also identifying your street address or your street? Yes, Elizabeth Dre, Jason Street. Thank you. Thank you to clarifying questions because this is relatively new to me. Did I understand that the 50 acres could be cumulative over different locations in town? Okay, Kelly's nodding, perfect. Yes, I'll just, Kelly's nodding yes for people who can't see her on the screen. Go ahead, Elizabeth, sorry. I lost my second question. That's it, thank you very much. Okay, thank you. The next person will be Kristen Anderson. Kristen Anderson, 12 up on Road West. I am not really prepared to speak, but I just wanted to say that I was at an MWRA meeting on the 17th of February. And I heard that the MWRA's sewer system through the alewife currently cannot handle capacity for the area during major storm events. And I just want to read what Don Walker, he's a longtime consultant for MWRA said at this meeting so that you can all consider this. And I would hope that when you provide DHCD some feedback that you will mention that MWRA has some work to do in the alewife area. This is very important. So let me read this. The MWRA system is limited by downstream capacity under very large storm events. The capacity of the alewife Brook pump station, which is downstream of MWR-003, that's one of the CSOs, one of the combined sewer overflows in the alewife, which by the way discharged 20 million gallons of sewage water in 2021. The capacity of the alewife Brook pump station, which is downstream of MWR-003 is reaching capacity. It's a very large facility, has 90 million gallon per day capacity. That then discharges into sewers that are conveying flow further downstream and going to the Chelsea Creek Headworks, that then reaches capacity. And there are events when the capacity of our Deer Island treatment plant, 1.3 billion gallons per day is reached. So there are limits to what the MWRA can push through the system. And that's the end of the quote. Basically what Mr. Walker was stating is that the MWRA sewer system through the alewife is not capable of handling the area's current needs during some rainstorms. Climate change is going to greatly exacerbate this problem. So the sewers, the combined sewers and the municipalities on the other side of the alewife Brook from Arlington really need to separate their stormwater from their sanitary sewers. And if they do this, then there will be more capacity at the Deer Island water treatment facility. Thank you, Kristen. I appreciate it. I see that Gene has his hand up. I assume it's to respond or to further discuss on this topic. Was that my three minutes? That was your three minutes. So thank you very much. I appreciate it. I think it's very important. And I'm not saying this because I want to stop development in the area. I'm saying this because I want those sewers to be separated and I want the pollution to stop. Thank you. Yes, we definitely understand that. And I appreciate the passion which you bring to this. So Gene, I'll kick it over to you. Yeah, I was also at that meeting that Kristen was at. And I think she correctly quoted the person to talking about the limits of the MWA capacity. I'd like to just add like a gloss on that though. One is, I don't think that what will end up getting proposed by this should have any significant impact on that because we're not talking about a green field that's all of a sudden gonna have a lot of housing on it. So this is gonna, whatever we do is gonna be a very slow increase in the number of units. But what I think we should think about two things. One is most of the lack of capacity going into the L-Wife pump station is all the excess stormwater that gets into the sanitary sewer system from not combined systems, but from separate systems like Arlington, Belmont, Lexington, places like that. And I know Arlington has some plans and is putting some of those plans in place and has done some work already to try to reduce that excess flow into the sanitary sewer system. One of the things I think we might wanna think about doing and this will take a lot of thought whether it makes sense. So this excess flow is sometimes called INI for inflow and infiltration. Some communities require that new developments remove like twice as much INI as would get added to the system or that currently exists. So I think if there is gonna be any large additional development in town, not an individual place here or there, it might be worth having a conversation with DPW about what they're doing and whether it makes sense for them to ramp up some of these requirements or whether we need to add them to site plan review. Great, thank you, Jean. And I'll pass it over to Steve who I know has been speaking with a few town officials about this topic as well. Yes, I was sending, exchanging email with Mike Rademacher, our director of Public Works, asking precisely some of these questions about sewer capacity and that sort of thing. One of the things Mr. Rademacher pointed out is that back in the 70s, Arlington's population peaked at 53, 54,000 and at a time when low flow appliances, toilets, et cetera, were not really commonly in use. So even just based on the capacity that we had back in the 1970s, there's actually a fair bit of headroom in our system. That doesn't speak to what's downstream necessarily, but what our system can accommodate. He also said that one of the biggest challenges is I&I and we do have a program to regularly do sewer, do line replacement. And it's just trying to basically prevent water pipes from leaking and prevent water from getting into the sanitary sewers. But it is something that they consciously work on. And we do work every year. And just to close, I would like to express some, I know the Yale Wifebrook CSO issue is something Ms. Anderson has been pursuing with a lot of energy lately and I just wanted to express some appreciation to that. They really should finish separating. I think my personal opinion is that Cambridge and Somerville should finish separating their systems. Thank you. Thank you, Steve. Are there any other members of the public who have any questions on the MBTA community's presentation and if not, I will go ahead and close public comments on this agenda item. All right. And I'll turn it back over to any final questions or thoughts from the board. I know that Jenny and Kelly have both expressed that they'd love to see any comments in writing that we can then pass on to the DHCD. All right. So seeing none, we'll go ahead and close this agenda item. And again, thank you so much to Kelly and Jenny for the presentation and for leading our discussion this evening. So the next item on our agenda is an update from the Envision Arlington Standing Committee and the Open Space Committee. And I believe that we will start with Jenny, do we have everyone here? Which one would you like us to start with? Everybody's here and there are three of them are all on screen now. So maybe start with Alex and then Jeff did and then Wendy can talk about Open Space. Fabulous. Alex, would you like to go ahead and introduce yourself and give our update here for Envision Arlington? Sure, thank you. So Alex Bagnell, Wyman Street. And I'm gonna go over a few things and then I think Jaget has a variety of other things. So let's see, over the past two years on Envision, let's see, and I'm keeping some of this to kind of a housing focus. I helped organize with Karen Kelleher and Educational Forum where several mission-driven affordable housing developers came and we organized a Zoom so that they talked about how they develop projects where their challenges lie and touched a bit on what we as a town might do to be more attractive to them. I'm working on developing a future Educational Forum where I think actually I'll do something with Steve to continue to demystify zoning for a more general audience. Envision also helped organize the last town-wide candidate night and organized and ran the town meeting member candidate night in 2020 and plan to do the same this year. With Len and Greg Christiana, we've developed a kind of a nascent civic engagement group that could be handy kind of as it develops for a variety of outreach purposes. And then I have one kind of long-term suggestion or idea to throw out so Envision was originally developed as Vision 2020, right? Which is a long-looking plan for Arlington and wondering if that is something that might interest people in us doing that again with perhaps a very long-term focus, I don't know, 2050 to align with some goals for net zero that might try and tie together and seek community involvement, tying housing, transportation, environmental goals, education and diversity among other things into something that we could then develop more actionable plans on. And finally, if there's anything the board would like us to be pursuing, we're all ears. That's great, thanks so much, Alex. I'll actually turn it over to Jagged for any updates you might have and then take some questions from the board before we move to the open space committee if that works for you, Alex. Thumbs up, all right. Great. Thank you so much. Jagged, if you could introduce yourself and provide any updates you might have, we thank both you and Alex for coming this evening. That's my pleasure. Jagged Thalia, Winter Street. I joined Envision Arlington in June of last year as the ARB's nominee and it's been a real pleasure to serve on the standing committee with Alex, Scott, Greg and all of the other standing committee members and desk group chairs. Certainly it's been a very educational experience so far and to see the variety of topics that Envision Arlington has been involved in so far. So just to add to the updates that Alex provided, I mean, I'll go through a few topics essentially on the various task groups that are within Envision Arlington. I believe almost all of the existing task group chairs have been reappointed. So notably Rebecca Gruber as the task group chair for diversity, Gordon Jamison and David Garbarino for fiscal resources task group. Brucey Morton and Tom Ebrecht for sustainable Arlington. Michael Brownstein for education task group and several others. The community engagement group is the newest task group as Alex mentioned and the idea is to really foster inclusive forms of civic engagement and to somehow amplify our outreach and connect Arlingtonians from as many diverse demographics and viewpoints as we can manage. And I think the measures of that activity would be potential improvements in participation in town elections, for example, or surveys or civic events such as the candidates night which Alex referred to and which we will co-sponsor with the League of Arlington voters in Arlington this year. So those would be some measures for how well we're doing on community engagement. One of the groups that I've been trying to at least follow and attend most of the meetings for has been the diversity task group and it's been really impressive the collection and variety of topics that Rebecca Gruber has put on the agenda and really raised awareness about it's a very active and passionate group of people, though informal as it may be and I think there may be some topics especially coming out of that task group that I can discuss further within Standing Committee. Some of the topics that I encountered were the diversity in the Arlington Public Schools and Superintendent Homan, Ms. Thomas and our spearheading certainly diversity topics related to the police force and within portable housing as well. Until recently I was the newest member of the Standing Committee but recently Carolyn Murray was appointed to the open seat nominated by the town manager so I believe we now have a complement of Standing Committee members. One of the main tasks for the Envision Arlington Standing Committee is the town survey. The 2022 survey is close to finalization and additional communication will be posted very soon. The 2021 survey report has been delayed due to primarily due to the pandemic and I believe it's in final review currently with that which will be available soon as well. In addition, so upcoming there's the candidate night for the townwide offices and that will be held on March 23 the signs for that will be posted outside down hall in March and maybe the posting should also appear in the town calendar very soon. There's also and I guess the other upcoming event I'd like to highlight is this idea of a Broadway design contest which Envision Arlington will also co-sponsor and we'll hear a little bit more about that. So those were generally my notes and I think you offer any other details or perspectives. Great. Thank you so much. I really appreciate hearing about everything that the different task groups are working on and I will run through the board for any questions or comments. I believe that Alex posed a question about whether taking on a long range you know new vision towards 2050 or some other longer range planning is something that we would find helpful from Envision Arlington so that might be a great topic to weigh in on as well. So I'll start with Ken for any questions or comments. Thank you Rachel. Excuse me. Alex and Jagger, thank you for helping us out here in this committee here. One of the things I did not hear anything about and as one of you guys talk about this is the growth of this town in growth of I'm not talking about business there's plenty of people advocating for housing as should be but how do we grow that? Are we reaching out for that? Is this going to be slowly becoming a bedroom community? Is that where we're heading? Is that where we want to do? Or do we want to have a downtown center? Or do we want to have little nodes where we can have little centers like where you can do your go out and have a group of restaurants and have streets where there's activity in vendors that you can walk down the street or is it going to be all these quiet communities with hedges and manicured lawns and everything those are some of the things I want to talk about and see what other groups are interested in and what they want to do and I think you guys have a good spearhead about what the town what the rest of our neighbors want in this town have there been some talk about that in your committee? No we have not spent a lot of time on economic development I would say that would be a really interesting topic for kind of the long range planning about long group discussions about what do we want the town to look like in 30 years and how we might get there I think that's great that's something that would interest me a great deal and help us too as we do our stuff and get more people involved in their input to this town instead of just a few people who are very loud and want to control the town the way they want it that's what I'm trying to get at excuse me sorry about that thank you I might just offer one perspective there was a discussion in the context of the town survey and associated topics and themes and about the three commercial districts that we have and how we might further raise awareness and also participation of the community and supporting those districts what might the districts do to make themselves more appealing but I think you know that's it's a much bigger discussion than much beyond the scope I think of English knowledge but certainly the CEG I think might be a good vehicle to partner with and we might sponsor the community outreach with a certain targeted set of questions to bring back data which might help inform policy so certainly that might be a good partnership with ARP and Visionology great thank you Jenny I think if I'm not mistaken as well just to back on and also to address Kim's comment if I'm not mistaken I think that ATED the tourism and economic development committee is being kind of re-tooled right now and that there will be a seat for either a member of the ARB or a designee of the ARB on that board which Kim to your point I know will address is my understanding correct on that that is exactly right the newer composition and charge for the Arlington tourism and economic development committee is just that it's meant to be a little more comprehensive a little more inclusive also bringing in some of the pandemic sort of recovery task force work that we've been doing and trying to kind of merge efforts into something a little bit greater we have just as a point of reference in the past we've talked about a business task group because that was something at one point that the Envision Arlington previously had been considering but what we're talking about in terms of like a future long-range plan or just in general long-range planning this board is going to be talking about updating the master plan and I would anticipate that we would look out you know another 20 years from now to some bigger you know far reaching goals and it would incorporate some of the you know certainly a lot of the planning work that we've been doing and build off of that but I think it would be an opportunity to really find a better way to engage Envision Arlington in that future planning effort I know a lot of effort had been done to create the master plan advisory committee back in 2012 and 2013 including some of the people here who probably participated or were formally a part of that committee and so we have time to kind of imagine that and think about what that might look like and it's something that I'm hoping we can start talking about actually in the next fiscal year so it's good to hear that Envision Arlington is for at least you're talking about that and there would be some opportunities to align great thank you Jenny so Alex it looks like there will be plenty of opportunity for some cross-pollination and engagement as we undertake the next master plan and I think Envision Arlington is the perfect group to really take an active role in that as well. Excellent I will add I did run this by our co-chairs before just trotting it out there. Oh great and they are supportive fabulous thank you I'll go to Jean next three questions or comments yeah thanks for Alex and Jagged for coming and discussing this so when I moved to town like 31 and a half years ago the town was in the process of doing the initial Vision 2020 and it took a lot of time they had you know excellent consultant facilitator come in and spend a lot of time to make it work and I ended up on the standing committee for many years and chairing the environment task group for many years also and so I think it's a really important place for a lot of people who live in Arlington to get connected to the types of things that are happening in Arlington and to sort of move some of those things along I agree with Jenny there should be some way to blend what Jenny had talked about a new master plan with what Envision Arlington is thinking about what occurred to me when Alex and Jenny and Jagged were discussing it would be interesting and I guess I should say you know planning 30 years in the future is like a crystal ball that's pretty cloudy so we make some good guesses but who knows what it's really going to be but to me it would always be interesting to take a look at like what do we think the entire metropolitan area would look like in 30 or 40 years whatever the time frame is and with that as the big frame what's Arlington's role in the metropolitan area because I think that's changed over the decade and there's some opportunities for us to think about what that could be in the future so I'd just like to put that out as another piece worth thinking about as you go through this and the other and I don't know Envision Arlington has done this but I think I think there's a lot of task groups should there be different task groups you know are there missing task groups that might be helpful to have so those are my thoughts about this thank you Jean I think your comment about placing Arlington the context of the metropolitan area is a really interesting one I don't have any questions at this point great thanks Melissa Steve I'd like to start with my own little Envision Arlington anecdote well this starts back in the days when it was still called Vision 2020 because 2020 was still a few years off but like I can remember my first spring in town getting a survey in the mail and at the time I think the quest we were starting to get to the point of needing to do a budget override and there were a bunch of questions about you know how should municipal funding be prioritized and I was just blown away by the fact that the town sent me this survey asking about how to set priorities it really the group is I think a unique and important resource I do very much like the idea of sort of I guess you can call it getting back to its roots and Vision Arlington was formed in like 1992 to have a forward looking view that went out to 2020 so 2022 to 2050 is kind of the same horizon it's going to be a very important three decades for us not for us as a town and us as a as a metropolitan region but I think that's an excellent idea to consider thank you great thank you Steve and with that I'll thank you Alex and for being with us this evening and move on to Wendy who is here representing the open space committee so Wendy welcome and thank you so much for joining us this evening you could just introduce yourself and maybe give us an update on what you've all been working on at the open space committee okay well thank you for this opportunity to talk to the ARB I've been the liaison for the ARB with the open space committee since I joined the open space committee which I think was about five years ago and I've been involved since the master plan started back in 2012 so in the open space right now where I just want to say it's a volunteer group that right now has 11 members and there's a liaison with all the different departments that are related to open space like public works recreation and the planning department and the committee is tasked with preparing and monitoring a seven year open space and recreation plan and we are now in the process of updating that plan with CPA funded consulting firm Horsley Whitten group and the process has included a number of public outreach opportunities a survey and a couple of virtual forums due to the pandemic we haven't done anything in person as nobody has for the last two years so we're in the process update of updating the plan and I pulled out the goals for the open space and recreation plan that was we're basically working with the same goals that we've reorganized them into a different order because things have changed over the last seven years and I'm just going to read those to you and you should familiarize yourself when the new plan comes out there's going to be a lot in there and I have a couple of quotes I want to read they're sort of hot off the presses they may be reworded between now and when it actually is published but I thought it was relevant so the goals are addressed climate change, sustainability and environmental justice two is increased public awareness access and stewardship of natural open spaces and recreational spaces three coordinate and strengthen local and regional planning and management of open spaces that I see as part of the ARB being part of the process that the open space plan is talking about four is preserve, maintain and enhance existing open spaces including parks, recreation spaces and historic sites and then five is acquire valuable undeveloped lands to ensure their protection and I think that was sort of more focused on the MUGAR property but because there's very little land to be acquired although Elizabeth Island is an example of something that in the last few years was acquired through CPA funding I believe and Arlington Land Trust so there are projects that we've taken on since the last open space plan and we track a lot of projects that have been going on throughout the town I know recently there was the Wellington Park was one of the projects that was through the Mr. River Watershed Association and that was funded I think through state funding having to do with mitigation to sorry it's going to ring in the background here for resilience and looking towards impacts of climate change on the town another project we did was we created a set of walking maps to encourage people to get out and explore their neighborhoods in the town as a whole letting people know where the existing open spaces are a lot of little parks that people are unaware of and that was something that when we did town people took the maps and hopefully we got more people out seeing what we do have in terms of open space I wanted to read from the plan that's under currently a draft in draft form this is under the analysis of needs around infill development we have limited undeveloped land and infill development and redevelopment are the primary ways Arlington meets growing demands for more affordable housing and economic development even with this pressure the town must balance development with natural resource protection needs resilience goals and quality of life in Arlington and I think that is looking at balancing development with natural resources and making Arlington or maintaining Arlington as a livable community and some of the examples are walking and biking connections between development projects and nearby conservation areas recreation facilities and public spaces natural based solutions to manage stormwater that also contributes to landscaping in the town and we have done that the towns had a number of rain gardens and the retention areas that are for storm runoff that are natural based where they are planted I know there have been a couple of pilots for that and meaningful public spaces with the development that have benches tables and other seeding landscaping and shade trees so that would be things to be considering as new development is proposed then looking ahead the town should review recent infill and development projects and measure the natural resource benefits achieved to their design a review might identify gaps or missed opportunities to add amenities and I think an example of one of the amenities that came to my mind was when the Brigham apartments were built there is a natural retention area that's sort of next to a park on the edge of the high school so although it's on private land it's something that is it enhances the development in a way that people you know passing through and also just in terms of water retention it's a retaining area but I think the idea to review some of the projects that have come through and see whether things have worked and what hasn't worked and have that feedback towards new projects that come up for higher density may not be able to accommodate open public space on site the town might want to consider other ways to cement it for residents around town and it could prioritize investments in walking and biking connections or similar to the tree by law explore options for requiring payments be made into a recreation or open space fund that the town could invest in existing public spaces near the project site because I think one of the things as we look into our you know the next seven years of the open space plan is as the town becomes denser with new development is sort of balancing how do we balance that with either increased open space which is you know it's really hard to increase when there isn't the space there but to at least have it in mind when development is proposed how close is it to open space I think especially projects that you know when there's no yard area and if they're family projects how close are they to a place that families can get out and use a public space and one of the things that is mentioned in the open space plan is the idea that how important the natural features are to development that if we and I think that the balancing of development with open space resources is really critical to the livability of being in Arlington I mean we're not a city our open spaces are a lot of them are really small but very if they're in a neighborhood they are very used very heavily by people in neighborhood especially if they don't have a yard and in addition to that there's the whole adapting and mitigating impacts of climate change which is a huge factor going forward that I think we're all aware of one of the terms that is new to me is the idea of environmental justice and that that's a part of the as development occurs that what open space we have is available to all members of the community and we talk about people as they age people who have mobility issues and was the third one for just economic that there tends to be less tree cover in the areas that are considered what is the term it's not just environmental justice but it's the areas that are lower income I guess you would say areas Jenny what's the term for the areas in town that are we're wanting to make it equitable for people to access the public spaces so concern for how close people are and to encourage in development encourage access to those public spaces so I guess I wanted to end with spoke about environmental justice I know there's one other thing I wanted to say that one aspect of open space is not just the natural spaces but it's also the hardscape in town looking at mass av as a space that is used by everyone and I think the little parklets that came up during the pandemic were an example of how a hardscape actually does become usable and thinking about mass av in an urban planning kind of way this may be getting a little outside of the open space committees actually what they're tasked to do but I feel that it's kind of the interface between the ARB and open space to consider how the spaces are being used and to think about it in an urban planning urban design way so that I would encourage the ARB to think along the signs and you probably already do and I feel like I would like to be more aware of what you all are doing and I tend to attend the zoning pieces when you're talking about zoning but a lot of other stuff goes by without that I'm not aware of that you work on and then I just wanted to finish is Arlington increases in density the open space committee will continue to preserve and enhance existing open spaces both owned by the town and privately held the committee is also committed to maintaining the green character of the town by promoting the balance of development pressures with open space needs for the residents of the town so thanks thank you so much Wendy it's wonderful hearing about all of the different things that you're working on I appreciate all the time that you and others take on the open space committee and I think the point that you need at the end regarding hardscape and and parklets and some of the things that become part of open space that we don't traditionally think of in that in that realm is is really important and you certainly over the past two years has have seen how important that's become to residents in the town through parklets as you mentioned in other items so it's a great reminder for us and so I will again run run through our board and see what questions or comments you might have for Wendy starting with I have none right now thank you great thank you can thank you Wendy and Wendy and I kept on planning to talk and never got around to do it and I think it was mostly my fault so I apologize for that Wendy yeah thanks for the presentation a few thoughts one is on environmental justice which was one of my professions for a number of years I'm on the board of an environmental justice organization now in Chelsea I think a couple of things is that the state has a EJ where if you go down to Arlington you can look and it's done on the census block level and much to my surprise there are quite a few census blocks in Arlington that are designated as environmental justice and I think but you'll look at the map and see if I'm wrong I think they're not for income I think they're for minority status but so you might want to take a look at the map which you can easily find online if you can two things that I think might be interesting to line up with those EJ neighborhoods and the open space plan is tree cover and heat island because one of the things that's often found nationally is that EJ communities tend to have much worse heat island effect so tree cover so I think it's worth taking a look at is does that line up or not line up in Arlington and in addition to access to parks which I think is a very important piece the other thing is what do the parks provide and do they provide what people in those neighborhoods need and I haven't sort of thought through Arlington and see whether there's a good correlation between the populations and what the parks really provide how well they're maintained things like that the other piece I'll just mention so I was on a Zoom lecture about a few weeks ago from a professor at the University of Virginia and he introduced a concept I had never heard of before and I have to read it so I remember it called biophilic cities which I thought was really fascinating and I think part of what I at some point I think our board should talk about as a board is whether we want to and should start incorporating some of those standards I guess what we think about especially if we're doing another master planning process and it seems to me it would be interesting for the open space committee to also take a look at that and see if there are things that might be too late for this open space plan I understand but might be helpful to incorporate into the open space plan because I found it very mind boggling and very compelling way to think about cities and what they can do for environment in a lot of different ways but thank you very much Wendy appreciate your being here and working on the open space plan can I just respond that we do have an environmental justice map in the open space I just forgot how it was determined yeah great thank you Wendy we'll go next to Melissa for any questions or comments you might have or Wendy no exact questions but thank you Wendy for your work I think just along lines of what Jean was saying the connection between the cities and nature that biophilic kind of city kind of attitude I think brings so much value and quality of life to any place I think I was just visiting Watertown and their design guidelines and access to the open spaces that they do have was pretty impressive and I mean I know these are kind of pieces that come in different forms but we're all working towards that to some degree so I appreciate your work and I just want to thank you for that at this point thank you Melissa Steve thank you like Ms. Zembury I also appreciated the comments about hardscape two places that I really enjoy hanging out are like Broadway Plaza and the Plaza in Davis Square and it's kind of for the same reason they're places where you can sit, relax, hang out and people watch they're just spaces that make me feel good so I'm glad to see those getting some attention one city that I've really been admiring lately has been Paris where they are starting to take areas that were basically a maze of roads on the Arc de Triomphe for example and then just starting to well maybe that can become sort of an urban forest and some of the renderings for this they look great I'd hope that we would not compartmentalize like this piece is open space and this is a business district but I'd hope that we could intentionally blur some of the lines because it is nice when there is greenery around thank you thank you Steve any other comments for Wendy all right well thank you so much Wendy I really appreciate it and we do look forward to finding opportunities to work together with you and the rest of the open space committee when we have developments that we're reviewing and finding that intersectionality between the work that you're doing and the space that you're doing out there. Just a general quick question to be so thank you so much I would just like to say when the plan is out there is a section that really does that part that I was reading from that addresses development and that I hope you are able to take a look at that that sounds great Jenny I believe that been providing some updates on the open space recreation plan. I think I've given maybe two or three updates in the past, particularly when we were doing the work over the summer. And I mentioned that it will come to the board for your review and approval, just like the last open space recreation plan did. And the board ends up writing a letter just supporting it. It's not actually a requirement for you to adopt the plan or anything like that, but it is something that the board has done in the past. So we're planning to do that again. David Morgan on my team is the person who's the project manager and I'm expecting that relatively soon there will be another forum and the draft will be forthcoming and it will probably hit this board sometime in April for review and before it's actually finalized. That was my understanding. The last time we spoke with the consultant, who's some Horsley Whitten group about the timeline. The open space committee, of course, has been having more regular meetings and discussions about it. And so they might have some more recent content that I haven't seen in a more full draft form. But as soon as I have something that is ready for the board's review, I'll provide that to you. But my expectation is it will not be until April. Great. Thank you, Jennifer. Appreciate it. Welcome. All right. Thank you so much, Wendy. So that concludes item number two, committee updates. And we'll now move to agenda item number three, which are two sets of meeting minutes. And we'll start with the meeting minutes from January 24th, 2022. And I know, Jean, you have already sent a few comments through. I incorporated feedback, sorry, Rachel, from Steve and Jean. And I think in these draft changes, some of it is very small. So if you want me to, I can review line by line, or I'll just kind of roll through and you can, why don't you roll through and I'll see at this time as we're rolling through. If anyone else has any, any comments, I'll start with Ken. No, I have no comments. Okay. Melissa, no comments. Okay. So we'll just scroll through their comments. I didn't have anything on this set of meeting notes, other than what I saw Jean already sent through. To bring these two things together. That was a long evening, apparently. It was a very long evening. No, nine pages. I'll be done shortly, I'm sure. No worries. There you go. Okay, great. Thanks so much. So is there, first of all, any other comments? Nope. Is there a motion to approve the January 24, 22 meeting minutes as amended? For a second? Second. We'll take a roll call vote starting with Ken. Yes. Jean. Yes. Melissa. Yes. Steve. Yes. And yes as well. The meeting minutes for January 24th have been approved. We'll now move to the meeting minutes from February 7th. And I had two items here. Actually, Jenny, if you could go back up to the top, this actually says January 7th at the top. That should be February 7th. And then my other comment was on the last page. And it was, where it says, Mr. Benson approved the 1322. I believe it should be moved to approve. And that's all that I had. So I'll go through and see if anyone has any other comments. Jean, it looks like you sent yours through for this one as well. Okay, Steve. Steve. Nothing further. Okay. Ken. Good. Melissa. Good. All right. Is there a motion to approve the February 7th, 2022 meeting minutes as amended? Yes. As amended. I motion for that. Thanks. All right. We'll take a vote. Ken. Yes. Jean. Yes. Melissa. Yes. Steve. Yes. And I'm being asked as well. So the February 7th, 22 meeting minutes have been approved as amended. That closes agenda item number three. And we'll now move to agenda item number four. Open forum. So at this time, any member of the public who's joined us this evening who wishes to speak with the board, please use the raise hand function at the bottom of your screen. Give a minute if anyone wishes to speak this evening. James Swemming. I'll just remind everyone, please introduce yourself by first, last name and address and you'll have up to three minutes. Go ahead, James. James Mowing, 58 Oxford Street. I had a question. This is, I know it's not the hearing for one of my articles, but I got a legal notice in the mail about the business districts being expanded, which I was surprised by because we're not one of the butters to any of the properties being rezoned. It came from the, I guess it's from Rachel from you, or you're signing at the bottom. So I was just wondering why, why would I have received this letter if we're not in the butter and we're one of the owners of the properties? Jenny. Yeah, I would have to check back at my office to figure out why you were on that list. I don't know, Kelly. Can you add anything to that one? I'm sorry, I'm losing my voice. We did send, we did send that notice to all the butters and then I believe we also sent it to, we sent it to some of the neighboring communities as per law and then send it also to the petitioner. Oh, okay. So you received it because you were the petitioner. It's just your own confirmation that in addition. Ah, okay. Yeah, it's a requirement that we send out that legal notice in addition to the legal notices that you send out. So it's basically just a dual confirmation. Okay. So, so like my immediate neighbors may not have gotten one if we're not close to. No, no, you should have just received it as the petitioner. Okay, because I was about to change the motion to just because I was like, wait a second, I don't know who's being okay. That makes sense. Thank you. Great. Thanks for any confusion that we might have caused. I think we just wanted you to make sure you had a copy. Yep, that's good. Thank you. All right. Thank you, James. Anyone else wishing to speak this evening? All right. So with that, we'll close open forum and I will see if there is a motion to adjourn. Rachel, I'm sorry. Just real quick. I can't make a motion to adjourn, but I would love to. But no, it's that on I'm if it's okay on Monday night, which is the first hearing evening, I'm going to put on the agenda. Rachel and I talked about this. The meetings in April, we're just going to talk about those and we're going to also talk about sort of the move to meeting back in person and what that will look like and when to anticipate that. But we'll put that on the agenda formally so we can talk about it on Monday night. Great. Thanks. And then Jenny, just to confirm while we're just talking schedule, I believe that we had scheduled all of our meetings through April. So I'm assuming that we could also then talk about future meetings. Schedule in general will be on Monday night. Exactly. Okay, super. Fantastic. Any other comments before I take a motion to adjourn? All right. Is there a motion? Motion to adjourn. I can't. Great. We'll take a roll call vote starting with Kim. Yes. Jean. Yes. Melissa. Yes. Steve. Yes. I am a yes as well. We are adjourned. Thank you everyone for joining us this evening and we'll see you next week for our first hearing. Have a good night. Bye-bye. Bye.