 All right, call to order the Monday, January 9th, 2017 meeting of the Ireland's Injury Development Board. Happy New Year. We are being recorded by ACMI this evening. We initially had a longer agenda, however, that has changed due to procedural reasons public hearing first up on tonight's agenda will not be held. It's been postponed to February 6th, so everything has moved up accordingly, beginning with 2017 annual town meeting warrant articles update. We're missing Jenny Rait tonight, so long as she's here, her place to go through that discussion. Okay. There's, I think we're planning to have a fuller discussion about this at the next meeting. This is sort of just to let people know what we're planning to do. So there were some articles that we discussed at the last meeting that were all tweaks of last year's mixed use and parking. Well, new things that we passed last year that we have found this year needed a little bit of adjustment. One had to do with allowing a little bit more density in the mixed use on the commercial quarters. Another one that we did not talk about last time was we had a definition of artisanal fabrication and our new economic development quarter coordinator, Alison Carter, the definition said no more than 5,000 square feet and she did a little research and discovered that breweries are by definition larger than that. That would not, we would not be able to bring in a brewery with that limitation and also even commercial kitchens or that was small for commercial kitchens. So we are proposing removing the square foot maximum entirely but anything that comes in requires a special permit. So we're not just allowing it completely by right. And then the other things that are being contemplated are coming through the residential study group, the main one that, the only one that's only related has to do with driveway slope. Okay. There are some other projects potentially being pushed forth by that group but they have grown and will likely become venerable by-law changes so we'll be going to the purview of the board of selection. That being said, the main proponent of the driveway by-laws is here with us tonight, Elizabeth Pyle, come forward. Even though I've introduced you, tell us who you are and run us through. I think you have some of the materials that went through the residential study group. I have some materials. Good evening. My name is Elizabeth Pyle. Hi. Hi. Some of you I know before but some I think you're in the face. I live in Arlington. I'm on the residential study group. I'm also a member of town meeting. I'm a lawyer, a wetlands zoning land use lawyer. Before I lived in Arlington, I was on the Somerville Conservation Commission where I was the chair for 10 years. I'm happy to be involved with the residential study group. I came to town meeting last year and I did assist with some of the citizen warrant articles and jumped in that way, but I'm happy to be part of the study group and take the experience from last year and move it forward. Last year, if you remember, there was a proposal to limit driveway slope to 15%. I think there were two problems with that warrant article last year. One was that there wasn't enough research behind where the 15% came from and the second was that it focused on just a straight out limit of slope at 15% and didn't distinguish between up slope and down slope. Where Arlington is hilly, a lot of people were concerned that if there was any kind of regulation of a slope up, meaning from the street up to the house, that that would have a lot of unintended consequences for properties in the heights. This year, our residential study group has been talking about limiting driveway slope, but only the down slope as measured from the house down to the property in a garage under situation. There's two reasons to do that. The first reason is a public safety reason because when a car is backing up out of the driveway, it's rear windshield is pointed at the sky and they can't see pedestrians or children walking by on the street. That's the main public safety issue. Another public safety issue, though, is that driveways that are too steep like that are too difficult for cars to get out of in the icy winter so people are not parking in the garage and backing up out of the icy driveway. They're parking on the sidewalk apron. And then pedestrians that are walking by can't get through because the car is blocking the sidewalk and they have to go out into the street and walk into the street in the snow. So that's another reason. I did some research from surrounding communities and also on guidelines for what an appropriate driveway slope should be. And certainly the consensus is that you don't want a driveway at any more than a 15% slope. And I have a handout for you. Do you have this? I did add something new to it. I found an additional town, which is Belmont, that limits it. And I also included what the Arlington Town Engineer said as well. So I kind of included it over what you have above, but it's basically the same information. So if you look, these are towns that in many instances responded to an inquiry that Laura put out about do you regulate driveway slope? And then I also found some that didn't respond like Belmont. And then we have these guidelines. The town engineering department said 5% to 15% would be appropriate. The Massachusetts Department of Transportation basic driveway dimension guidelines at the bottom of the table says the maximum grade for residential driveways should be 10% to 15%. The National Highway Institute says even less, 6% to 8%. Town engineering, 5% to 15%. And then if you've read this memo, I won't repeat it, but safe, efficient driveway design says that it's important to limit driveway slope. The maximum practical change in grade is about 12%. Above that, many vehicles will scrape out, but it's also safer to use a smaller grade rather than a bigger grade. Neighborhood street design guidelines from 2003 says that driveway grades exceeding 15% should be avoided. So I think that there's consensus in the literature from an engineering and public safety perspective that you want to cap out at 15%. We'd be happy on the residential study group and our discussion so far to limit that to only a downward slope. But then I think the question that we're kind of wrestling with is 15% enough. I mean, Lexington goes to 12%, other communities go to 10%. Do you want to have the least safe driveway slope grade? I'm glad that there'd be some limit at 15. We might want to consider going even beyond that for a safety reason. The second reason to regulate driveway slope is that it has an effect on discouraging the garage under design. And the garage under design, particularly with a two-family house, is problematic because it eliminates the front yard. So instead of having a front yard and a traditional streetscape, you have a pit in front of the house. Some of these pits are so steep they have to have fences up on the sides. People don't fall in the driveway. It looks like a loading dock. The front yard is not usable for children to play. It's not any kind of usable space at all. It's just like a pit or a loading dock. And that's something that many people in town here I think are interested in limiting. As an additional point on that, and Laura, this is new. When I was looking at Belmont today, I saw that they both limit driveway slope and have some really excellent suggestions for regulating the garage under design. So I have a section of the Belmont zoning code here for your information. And I'm going to bring this up at the residential study group when we meet next. I've already emailed Jenny about it. On the second page, this is the first page here, it's just like the general information page. But if you look, I've highlighted parts on the second page, and they for at B on the bottom residential, for all residential driveways, first they have a thing about parking in the front yard. That's one of the things we're considering if you allow a space to be in the front yard, but in the driveway, not in the yard, but allowing a space in the driveway to be a space for the house. But then if you look at B2 in general residence districts, the filing provision shall apply to attached garages, including those constructed below the ground floor and driveways and parking spaces that are created within a required front yard. And then if you look on the third page, this is really where the need of it is, they allow a attached garage for a single bay, a single car garage opening with certain restrictions on paving the maximum with not to exceed 12 feet, the slope no greater than 15% drainage, effective use of plantings, grading and location are employed to minimize visual impact. So these are all really good suggestions for a single family house. But then the B discusses two family houses and parking spaces for two car garage openings for larger below the ground floor shall not be permitted except by special permit. And that would really go a long way towards solving the problem. And the criteria for the special permit, I think are something that we could really use here in Arlington, one, feasible alternatives for providing necessary parking do not exist. Two, there's effective use of plantings, grading and location are employed to minimize visual impacts of the paved front yard and or garage, which is something that we're struggling with here. Three, and this is very important, the garage does not create the appearance of an additional story, which would then give an overall appearance of the structure exceeding the two and a half story limitation. And that is something that people really feel when you have the double garage in front of the house, the house has the impression of having an additional story because you have all this carved out space underneath. So I thought that was important. The slope is no greater than 15. The paved area is only as wide as the garage and tapers were possible. Six, we probably have to be modified toward Arlington because it talks about a separation between the driveways and we only allow one driveway as of right. Seven is on site drainage. So this is something that I'm going to bring up to the residential study group, but I wanted to just give you some information about it tonight. I just found it today. But that would be a way of maybe regulating garage unders and driveway slope altogether if we had kind of a similar bylaw. And there does seem to be some consensus that regulation of driveway slope is a good idea. We've been struggling with how to deal with the garage under aspect because as you know from your information here, if you make the driveway slope 10%, then you're going to have a very large front yard setback and that might be undesirable because the house is too far back from the road. So this might be a way, if you can have both of these provisions together, limiting the slope and putting some special permit requirement on a two-family garage under, that might go a way toward solving the problem. So happy to discuss anything else with you about this. We're still thinking of only one curb cut as of right, maybe possibly having tandem parking permitted. So if you have to have two spaces for a single-family house right now, the developer puts in a two-car garage at the front of the house. But if you allow them to just have one driveway space and one garage space in front of it, that might help solve some of the visual impacts that people in the communities are experiencing. Do you have any questions about anything that I've said so far? Yeah, I want to point out, sorry, there are some graphics in here that also show you how adjusting the slope of the driveway will impact the size of the house. It's buildable on a lot and you can see they're, in each one, the house really does change. If you push the house back on the lot, the house gets a little smaller, too. Right. Yeah. Right. No, I just wanted to point that out. Yeah. Yeah. Thank you for doing the Belmont research. How do Belmont, I should know this, but I don't spend a lot of time in Belmont. How do there lots compare to Harlins and Los Salles? I don't know. I tend to think they're bigger. I tend to think that they're bigger also. Yeah. So they can do some of these other things to reduce that. And I also wonder whether they have the same issue we have in town of these two, side by side, two families, which is one of the problems we see. I mean, that's the majority of what we see. This is the discussion that's going back to last year. This would discourage that, though. Right. Right. I just wonder whether Belmont is dealing with the same. I know Belmont. Yeah. I don't know if you do. Belmont has the larger, wealthier area, but then they also have a more middle-class area with a ton of two families. And there you see those two families stacked on small lots with some of the double garage. Right. They just have an ideal. Or a garage on the side yard in the back, because they're usually one on top of another. Right. I don't know if they have the same prevalence of tear-downs to create the side-by-side with the double garage. They probably wouldn't, because if this by-law is on the books, that just discourages that design, because then I think a developer likes to know in advance what you can do by right rather than by a special permit. And so they would just design the house without the garage under and have the garage flat. I'm curious to see what their development looks like, if you bring that one to me. Laura, can you reach out to Belmont Planning Department and ask them about this issue? The lot sizes? Is that the... The lot sizes, but also whether they're seeing the building of these side-by-side condos that kind of necessitate this driveway to begin with, with the underneath space to the driveway. I mean, I'd like to know what has the actual effect of this very specific by-law to be in. I mean, has it acted as more or less a complete bar to this kind of configuration, or has it functioned in a way that has allowed some of these to be built when they were able to meet the criteria? Yeah. Well, I recently did... I was at a meeting where the Belmont Planning Department was talking about some of their zoning changes. And I think they made a lot of changes to their zoning to make it more restrictive and have a review process for almost everything that gets built. This is from 2005, so it has been there a while. This has been... Oh, really? Yeah. Is this from 2005? Yeah, it says... I can find out. Yeah, so there might be... There should be some history on how this has worked in practice. Yeah. I'd like to see that just out here. So to see how it compares to... Yeah. Well, that's an idea. It's very easy to find the one sizes. And have you seen how Winchester in the summer built? Two of these issues? Two of these issues. I know not everybody responded to them. Right. Not everybody responded. And I found that Cambridge, which I think is similar in lot size and density, more dense than Arlington, has a driveway slope not to exceed 7.5 percent. Although curiously, that's not in their zoning bylaw. It's in their curb cut regulations. So I don't know what the reason for that is, but the limit is there. Summerville does not have anything. Winchester does not have anything. Winchester has such big lots. Yeah, I don't see the same kind of issue. I can't find anything in Summerville, but I know they're in the process of totally redoing their ordinance right now. I don't know if that's something that they're looking at, but there's nothing currently on the books. Okay. All right. Yeah. Thank you. Sure. We're scheduled to talk about this more next week. Great. No, it already in two weeks. Right. In two weeks. There's some more questions, and I actually have something else that I wanted to ask about, too. Okay. I just wanted to come back to the percentage because it did, when I read this, struck me that 15 percent was very much at the upper end. Yeah. And most of the communities were significantly below 15 percent. So, keep thinking about that in concert with what the percentage would mean with respect to the setback. Right. I'd like to see the reasoning behind whatever recommendation the residential study group comes up with. Do you think that it should be like 12 percent or 15 percent? Well, I'm not going to express a preference, but if the recommendation is yes, we should go with 15 percent, which seems by consensus to be the maximum for safety. I'd like to understand why we're going to the maximum rather than something less as most of these communities seem to have done. Yeah. I can just tell you that the residential study group has so many diverse interests. It's hard to get everybody on the same page about everything because obviously this limits the size of the development, and there are a lot of developers with interests. I mean, my preference would be to go to 10 percent, but I don't know if there's going to be support for that. I'm hoping that there is, but we'll have to see how that goes. I can tell you a little bit of history with this discussion last year before town meeting. I know you're a town meeting member, but you weren't at some of these hearings. The issue is that lot sizes in Arlington vary so widely, and some are much smaller than others. As you decrease the percentage of slope there, so if you go from 15 to 10, then you're significantly shrinking the amount of house that can be built on any given lot or the amount that can be added on. And perhaps what we look into in adding is that there's some sort of tradeoff for height or width, but we haven't gotten that depth deeply. Yeah, one comment. This is sort of getting almost to the point where it was a lot better, but last year it was too encompassing. And this is sort of getting that way a little bit more. I think my recommendation is to decouple certain things. I would just say for safety factors only, period, driveways cannot be any more than let's agree upon a number. I do believe that 50% is pretty steep without a blend on the top and bottom for the cars that make that transition, they bottom out. But that would just be a separate thing. And that stands alone for all new construction. And then you start talking about tandem parking, two curb cuts, parking in the back. Let's put that as a separate thing, because otherwise if you start combining everything into it again, it's going to get to where everybody's going to have a little tug-of-way if everybody has a different interest. And I don't think we're going to start talking about that just yet. That's not what's been discussed in the residential study group. I think Linda is just here to update us today on what's happened there and to kind of gauge the interest of the board on going forward. And one of the things is because this was acted upon unfavorably last year, it can't go forward unless you guys recommend it in your final report to the planning board. That's under 40A section five, so we would need your approval if we're going to talk about a 15% slope because it was defeated last year. That's the rule. So I had another question. It's not about driveway slope, but this is since we're here and talking about warrant articles. Can I pause for a second? Did you have a question? Yes, I did. Always just name an address, please. This is not a public hearing, but I'm still going to require it. Well, it is a public hearing. Steve Robilac, 111 Sunnyside Avenue. The research that you've been going through has been pretty interesting. I just had a question. Were there patterns between cities that allowed off-street parking versus those that did not? I didn't look at off-street versus on-street parking because I was focused about the safety issue and just what pitch was safe for pedestrians to walk by. I was thinking like in Summerville because they allow off-street parking the simplest way to solve a driveway slope problem is not to build a driveway. So I was wondering how much that might have played into the... Unfortunately, I don't see us getting rid of parking requirements. What should I like to? I'd like to... I would like to second what Ken said about decoupling. I think that's a really important thing. It's a safety issue. I tend toward 10% or 12%. And let's put that aside just as Ken said. Okay, now what are we talking about? Are we talking about how people park on their lots? Whether they have below-grade garages or not. I think that now you're talking about regulating house size, a lot usage that kind of stuff. It's very different from a safety issue. I think it would be useful to have a couple different prototypes in your little armory of exhibits. I'm familiar with the heights because I live in that area. The heights has houses with a 20-foot front yard and a driveway on the side that leads to a garage or not. East Arlington has many two-family houses or other houses that have 20-foot driveways in some cases, I think. I'm not sure. And that's another prototype. I know there are six million different versions outlying different varieties, but there are three or four typical ways people actually houses park. I think it would be good to have a little diagram of each one. Or a picture. And then we have some kind of reference when we're all talking about what about this and what about that. There are quite a few houses that have the little slow driveways like the picture, so that should be one of your prototypes. And then we can kind of make an evaluation of how serious that particular condition is that we're trying to remedy somehow versus maybe other things that are as important like parking on the front yard, as an example. Those are the evaluations I'd like to be able to make somehow rather than trying to again kind of pigeonhole it into a regulation about slopes that somehow affects the design of the house or the size of the house. That's not going to work again, I don't think. Okay. Good. Thank you. Okay. I have another question, though, about Warren Articles. As long as I'm up here, it's not about driveway slope, but since I'm here, just take a moment, I'd like to ask you about it. Last year, there was a suggestion to modify the large additions in residential districts by tweaking that to include not just special permits for large additions and alterations over 750 square feet, or that increase the square footage by more than 50% of the original building size. There was that provision in the zoning by large additions in residential districts to make it apply to reconstruction and replacement. But it also did a lot of other things, too. It would have applied to putting a second story on a ranch and it would have sunlight and shade impacts, and I think it tried to do too much, that citizen article. And my question for you, and I have, if this is the language of large additions in residential districts, with just a suggested replacement of adding reconstruction or replacement. So it would require a special permit for teardown evils. So I'm going to show you just one simple change in the language. And because the other measure was defeated last year, something like this couldn't go forward unless it was in the final recommendation of the ARB. And I didn't know how you all felt about this kind of thing, and I talked to Jenny about it, and she said, well, in order for something like this to be considered, you would have to be receptive to it as the planning agency. And I am here just to gauge your interest about whether you would be receptive to this kind of change. And if you say to me, yes, this is something we'd be interested in looking at, then I can go back to the residential study committee and say we could consider making this kind of recommendation if you would put it in your final report. It's just so within the scope of what was defeated last year. And my own experience is I think the one last year tried to do too much. This is an issue of parity, because right now if you are putting on an alteration or in addition to your house, and it's above a certain size threshold, there's a review process, you need to get a special permit. The neighborhood is notified, there's opportunity for comment. But if somebody is going to tear down the house and rebuild it, even if the larger structure meets the same size thresholds, they can just do it as of right without a special permit. And I didn't know how you felt about that. So I'm not comfortable having a discussion on this without it going through the residential study group. Right, I would want to do that. So until we have that conversation there, I think it's premature to bring it here. Okay. So let's talk about it at that meeting next week. I didn't want to bring it there if you guys said it's a lost cause here. Let's see what that board says about it before they come up. Okay. Somebody says before it comes up here. All right. Board committee approved. Okay. But we'll discuss everything. Okay. Good. All right. I figured as long as I was here, I would ask. Thanks very much for your time. All right. Thank you. Laura, is there anything else that we can expect to come up? Have you heard from the citizens groups? Oh, no. We haven't. Have you? No. No. Oh, there's the, well, the good neighbor construction agreement might have some aspects. Yeah. We've actually talked about that. It's not zoning. That's not going to come under zoning. That's going, that was what I referenced at the beginning of this question. I think that's going to end up with the select men and possibly the, The whole thing. Board of Health. Okay. Everybody but us. Even though it's one of our subcommittees. Right. Deciding on it. So what it is, is essentially a construction agreement to be filed by the homeowner or the contractor who's developing some property. And it ties in some of the bylaws to hold the person actually doing the construction a little bit more accountable than things that have been done. And it's actually in response to the one article that was filed at fall town meeting, which was filed in response to the Irving street issue from last year. And what this does is it tries to accomplish a more fair and equitable dialogue between homeowners and neighbors so that the construction process is a little bit more well managed. People know what to expect and the people actually doing the work have some accountability. So it also directs people should hopefully direct people to the appropriate town authority enforcement agency. Maybe. So. Has there been any discussion of making any needed minor technical corrections in the zoning bylaw in spring town meeting versus waiting for the zoning recodification process to to get through that? Well, I don't know if you'd call the changes to the mixed use that we're talking about technical changes. Other than that, nothing has come to us through us. With the ceiling height being changed from seven foot? No. No, no, no. I'm thinking more things like the mismatch in like the parking reduction section between the title and. Oh, the R7. Yes. We are looking at doing that also. It was sort of inadvertently left out one of the zoning districts for, yeah. So that I'm talking about more like just an error rather than an actual change. In the section that allowed reduction in the parking, we had all the multifamily districts named except for R7. We kind of, we looked at it and it says multifamily housing in the top and we've been interpreting that to include all multifamily zones. But we are thinking about that as a technical correction. I forgot to mention that earlier. All right. Anything else? No. All right. Great. Sure. Good. Thanks very much. Thanks a lot. Thank you. All right. We are moving on to agenda item three, ACA, MOU, next steps. I think they're working on at least Jenny and Mike aren't here to tell us about that. What we've been asked to do is draft a support letter for my signature. Handed this evening to the cultural facilities fund grant committee in support of the ACA's application. So what we have to do is vote on that tonight to authorize for staff to finish that up and be assigned later in the week to go in. Samers, take a quick look at it. We can hear any changes. I had a question. The second paragraph saying that the board will provide any necessary support to ensure that the transition and tenure are successful. What exactly are we committing to? Laura? That's a good question. I think Jenny has, from the very start, worked with them very closely to help them to meet their goals. And I think that's all that we're committing to. I mean, we will have a lease with them and they will have to meet the requirements within the lease. And I'm sure the lease will look a lot like all the other leases at the Central School. I think that, are you on that committee at all? Or is it just my care? Just my care. Okay. So I think that they've already agreed to a rent because of the RFP, through the RFP, their proposal was for, and I don't know what the number is. But so that's not up for grabs at all. Yeah, I think. Is it important enough to have a word there, advisory support? Or is it, I think it's not? Yeah. I mean, I'll make you feel uncomfortable. I don't. I don't think so. Yes. I don't think that we're committing very much. No. You're supporting to ensure that the transition and da, da, da, da, da, it's not, you know. We're not saying we're going to raise money for that. Yeah, yeah. I mean, that's not. No, we're not tying ourselves to anything, but it's kind of fitting. I'm fine with it. Yeah. It's a support letter for a grant. Yeah. Do we need to vote on it? So we do need to vote on it. Yeah. I've moved to, do I need to authorize you to, do we need to authorize you to sign? You need to authorize me to sign. I moved to authorize the chairman of the ARB to sign this letter to the grant committee members of the cultural facilities grant committee in support of the Orange and Center of the Arts. Okay. I'll second. All in favor. Aye. Aye. Great. Combine the signs. Tomorrow? No. There's been a new one. We signed tonight. We did. The next item on the agenda, we are also going to move out two weeks. To go over with Jenny, the properties update that we wanted to have a discussion about for some time, but she's really in the best position to walk us through that. Okay. So next up is, there's an email included in our packets by a member of the town, only a neighbor of the Downing Square development who was unhappy with our decision and some of the, she was unhappy with our decision and she wanted us to reconsider our vote. As chair, having provided over three public hearings regarding this matter, I'm not inclined to reopen that hearing and to reconsider our decision. They also ask for a time extension to file appeal. We are not able to do that either procedurally or under the statute. So I can't allow that to them. But I did want to at least acknowledge that this had come in and stayed our position. I'm happy to discuss it with the rest of the members of the board. The resident was invited to the meeting tonight. Jenny has had conversations with her, but I don't think they've run any further than that. I think our process was fair and open. We allowed for public discussion, comment, on several separate occasions. There was a dialogue between the board and the proponent and residents who wanted to come. As I said, it was over three separate hearings. I'm comfortable with the decision that we made and I'll leave it at that. So is there anything we have to do here? No. No. No. Okay. All right. And we do not have minutes for December 19th. Amy was sick last week. I did not finish on that. I apologize and congratulate everybody for the brief meeting this evening. That's okay. Anybody has any questions? I didn't want to cancel it outright with such short notice, but sometimes that's the way things go. Motion to adjourn. Second. All in favor? Aye. Aye.