 Thank you all. Welcome to the Town of Arlington Redevelopment Board on September 11th, 2023. Before we begin, I'd like to see, like us to please take a moment of silence to remember the tragedy on September 11th in 2001 and those that we may have, that we all lost. Thank you. Doing my best with the tools that we have. So with that in mind, if there are any empty seats, if you could please move forward, I really appreciate it. I am speaking into the mic and I am doing my best. We are hampered by the equipment that we have here and I just requested if you could move forward, there are empty seats in the front. Thank you. The original request was for a moment of silence, please. Okay. So welcome to the September 11th, 2023, meeting of the Town of Arlington Redevelopment Board. My name is Rachel Zenberry. I am the chair of the board. I'd like the other members of the board, if they could, to please introduce themselves, starting at the end here. Steve Revolac. Eugene Benson. Ken Lau. Thank you and we also have Claire Ricker, the director of the Department of Planning and Community Development joining us this evening. We will move right ahead into our first agenda item this evening, which is the review of meeting minutes from the meeting on August 28th, 2023. Pull those up and I will run through the board members to see if there are any additions or corrections, starting with Steve. Nothing, no changes, Madam Chair. Jean. No changes. Ken. No changes. And I don't have any changes either. Is there a motion to approve the meeting minutes from August 28th, 2023? So motioned. I'll second. I'll take a roll call vote, starting with Steve. Yes. Jean. Yes. Ken. Yes. And I may yes as well. The meeting minutes have been approved. We'll now move to agenda item number two, which is the public hearing of docket number 3766 for 315 Broadway. And there is a request here for the continuance of the hearing to September 18th, 2023. I'll turn it over to Claire for any comments. Thank you. This is a request by Ty Moon for signage over their new location at 315 Broadway. They have requested that that hearing be moved to next Monday, the 18th. Great, thank you, Claire. We'll take any comment from the redevelopment board, starting with Steve. Nothing, Madam Chair. Jean. No comment. Ken. No comment. Is there a motion to approve the request for continuance for docket number 3766 to September 18th, 2023? So motioned. Is there a second? Second. We'll take a roll call vote, starting with Steve. Yes. Jean. Yes. Ken. Yes. And I may yes as well. Docket number 3766 for 315 Broadway has been continued to September 18th, 2023. All right. We will now move to agenda item number three, which is to open the public hearing for the Warren articles for fall 2023 special town meeting. So allow me to run through the redevelopment board public hearing procedures. I know that many of you are joining us for the first time. This is the first of three nights of hearings for a total of 10 Warren articles that will be in front of the redevelopment board. Consistent with the past, the ARB will be hearing from the public wishing to speak on any of these articles as they're scheduled. We have one scheduled for this evening. The board will pose any questions to the applicants or in this case, the working group who is joining us this evening. We will hear public comment, but we will reserve deliberation and voting on recommended action on each article until the last night of hearings, which is on October 2nd. So the public, the subject matter for the hearing this evening is as posted on the agenda. We will not take comment on articles that are not posted on this evening's agenda. So on this evening's agenda, it is the subject of the MBTA community's housing article. Anyone wishing to address the ARB tonight on the subject matter of that agenda item, you'll signify your desire to speak by signing up to speak on the sign-in sheets that are located in the vestibule where you came in. If you did not have an opportunity to sign up, I ask that you do so, please, before I open this evening for public comment. After I recognize any speaker who has signed up to speak, you need to please preface your comments by giving your first and last name and your Arlington Street address. I'll remind you of this when we open public comment. Anyone addressing the board will have up to two minutes for their remarks. We're trying to get through as many speakers as we possibly can this evening. We may not get to every speaker this evening. If you are signed up to speak and we are not able to get to you this evening, please feel free to submit any written comments that you might have directly to the redevelopment board. All comments are being reviewed and I appreciate everything that we've received to date. Anything received before 3 p.m. tonight has been, or today has been added to the agenda under the tab of correspondence. One item that I'd like to remind everyone of is that a public hearing, you may not applaud or otherwise express approval or disapproval of any statements made or any action that takes place at the hearing. Please also refrain from interrupting other speakers and make sure to conduct yourself in a civil and courteous manner to all of the speakers this evening. If an individual reportedly repeatedly fails to adhere to this requirement, they will be asked to remove themselves from this public hearing. All speakers should address your questions through myself as the chair. Speakers should not attempt to engage in a debate with the redevelopment board or the working group members or any of the other hearing participants. What we will do is catalog questions that are posed to the board and we will address those at the appropriate time that may be at the end of the public hearing or if we determine that a clarification is required, we will call on the appropriate person to provide a clarification during the public hearing. All right, so with the procedures underway, I just want to run through a quick time agenda here. So the working group will provide a 20 minute presentation to the redevelopment board. We will then move to a board discussion where any questions that the board might have for the working group can be posed and we can identify any clarifications necessary. We will then move to an hour and a half of open forum closing at 10 p.m. We'll then reconvene for a board discussion before moving on to our final agenda item. With that, I would like to turn the meeting over to Claire Ricker and the working group. All right, excellent, thank you and thank you all for coming tonight. My name is Claire Ricker. I'm the director of planning and community development for the town of Arlington. I am also the secretary ex officio of the Arlington Redevelopment Board or the ARB. Tonight, Sanjay Newton, chair of the MBTA communities working group and I are presenting two alternatives to the board for an MBTA community zone that is compliant with the state's guidelines. I'd like to thank the ARB for their support and guidance over the past 10 months while the working group has developed two alternatives for consideration and discussion in preparation for a vote of town meeting on a war and article to establish an MBTA community zone. Since the board voted to create this working group on November 7th, 2022, the group has engaged in a tremendous amount of community outreach and iterative mapping that have brought you these two alternatives. Thank you to the members of the working group for your hard work and dedication. I am truly inspired by your commitment to this process. Thanks also to the staff of DPCD and the town who've all pitched in to make our public meetings and outreach so successful. I cannot thank them enough. Now, since different people have joined this process at different times, including those who may be hearing about this for the first time tonight, I'd like to give a short refresher on the MBTA community's law. Next slide. 177 communities in Massachusetts are subject to the new MBTA community's legislation or Mass General Law Chapter 40A, Section 3. And the state has categorized them as you see here. Arlington, there, is considered an adjacent community, meaning that we do not have rail transit within our town limits, but we are adjacent to communities that do have such access. Next slide. All 177 MBTA communities must provide at least one zoning district where multifamily housing, which is three or more dwelling units, are allowed by right. Housing is permitted with at least 15 dwelling units per gross acre. The housing cannot be age restricted and it must be suitable for families with children. Next slide. Just a note on capacity and capacity calculation. The capacity calculation is a variable used by the state to determine if a zone is of reasonable size. It is not a calculation of how many units will be constructed. And as you can see on the slide, there are assumptions that go into this model that do not reflect market reality or challenges on the ground. It is unreasonable to think that every unit of housing to be built under this zone would be 1,000 square feet or minus parking or even get built at all. And that is why the measure of capacity is a variable and not a constant, and nor should it be treated as a constant. However, no matter what the capacity number is calculated, it will not include whatever housing is there already. It is a measurement as if all housing that already existed under the zone were no longer there. Next slide. The working group has... This is a slide that shows what housing types are generally considered multifamily housing. And we can see here the three family that we're all relatively familiar with, as well as some other multifamily development styles that maybe we're not quite as familiar with and the related gross density of those housing styles. Next slide. This slide shows several developments in town and their respective densities, including 438 Mass Ave, which is 134 units at 49 units per dwelling acre. Next slide. So, how does this relate directly to Arlington? Next slide. Most of Arlington's zoning today was drawn in 1975 and it reflects the use and massing of whatever the use and massing was there in 1975, which is 50 years ago now. Today, you cannot build a three family or more in Arlington without a special permit. Multifamily housing is located in pockets around town and mostly exists where multifamily existed 50 years ago. Next slide. So, how does the MBTA community's law affect the town? To begin with, we have to determine what reasonable size means, which is a minimum of 32 acres where three family plus housing is allowed to be built without a special permit with a minimum capacity of 2046 units. Remember, MBTA communities is not a housing production plan, it is a housing potential plan. Next slide. And the benefits to the town are huge and especially the benefits to the town itself and my department. To remain eligible for mass works and other grant funding, including grants that DPCD and other town departments regularly apply for often successfully that will allow us to continue our work on behalf of the community. Next slide. Now I'm going to turn it over to Sanjay to talk about the principles of the working group that kept in mind while developing these alternate scenarios. Thank you, Claire. As Claire said, the ARB voted in November, 2022 to establish a working group to determine the location of Arlington's MBTA community zoning district using community outreach, stakeholder engagement and iterative mapping. The department held a first community meeting in November of last year and solicited interest in the working group. Since last January, the working group has met regularly to strategize outreach to community members and develop Arlington's MBTA communities district iteratively and in response to public comments collected via survey, stakeholder meetings at community-wide public meetings which are listed on this slide. Next slide, please. Hearing from and speaking to the community requires multiple forms of engagement because different community members can be found in different places and prefer to engage in different ways. The working group has taken this knowledge seriously and was fortunate to partner with Theresa Marzilli, the town's community outreach and engagement coordinator who helped the working group craft and execute additional outreach opportunities, some of which are listed on this slide. Next slide, please. The working group has also analyzed a number of existing town planning documents. The establishment of new housing districts and development of new housing is supported in several of Arlington planning's documents including the master plan, the fair housing plan, the net zero action plan, the community equity audit, the housing production plan. Our outreach and our analysis has led us to the following guiding principles. Encourage more housing in a variety of sizes and price points. Encourage housing located near public transit. Encourage housing to provide a customer base in support of local businesses. Encourage multifamily housing spread across Arlington and ensure compliance with the MBTA communities act. Next slide. We have limited time tonight so I'm not gonna cover everything on the following slides. They'll be posted on the town website tomorrow and the working group's report is already available there. There's much more detail about all of these principles and as well as the entire proposal in that report which I would encourage you to read. Or encouraging more housing at a variety of price points benefits many members of our community from seniors looking to downsize municipal workers who would like to live in the community they serve and people who need accessibility features. We'll get to the proposed map in a bit but I want to note that there are approximately 2,100 homes which exists today in the zone we're proposing. If we zone that area for the bare minimum it would result in no new housing. Next slide please. Encouraging housing located near public transit. The principle was supported in our community survey and by the town's net zero action plan and the connect Arlington sustainable transportation plan allowing more housing near transit and adjacent to mixed use areas is an important part of meeting our climate goals. Next slide please. Similarly, when we encourage housing near our businesses we create the potential for commercial vitality. Our consultant Dutille gave us a very rough guideline. It generally takes one household to support 30 square feet of retail space in town. Next slide please. Encouraging multifamily housing spread across Arlington. The working group has received suggestions to locate the map in almost every neighborhood of town. The working group also heard from both community members and the school department that it was important not to encluster a district in the catchment area for a one or a small number of elementary schools. Next slide please. Ensuring compliance with the MBTA communities act. Claire gave a taste of the complex guidelines governing creation of a compliant zoning district. The working group has worked in partnership with the professional staff in the department of planning and community development and with our consultant Dutille. DPCD has submitted the proposed map and zoning language to the executive office of housing and livable communities for pre-adoption review. And we expect to have results of that review before town meeting discusses the proposal. As I said earlier, this is just a taste. If you'd like to know more, there is much more detail in the working group report which is available right now on the town webpage. And with that, I'll hand it back over to Claire to walk us through the proposal itself. Oh, I forgot one slide here. The guidelines from, there was one late breaking news which this was us as well. The guidelines from the executive office of housing and livable communities were revised by the state on October 17th of this year. So less than a month ago. There were some limited options available to us to require ground floor commercial. The working group believed that the new provisions did not offer an improvement over our current strategies which will go over in a minute of incentivizing ground floor commercial and placing the district outside of the areas currently zoned for commercial use. We'll talk more about that in a little bit. Great, thank you. And now we move on to the proposal. We have developed one MBTA communities overlay zone consisting of three sub districts as described on this slide. Each sub district, excuse me, has dimensional requirements specific to each sub district including setback and height. The incentive programs for each of these are also different to better reflect the design differences of each area. For example, in the neighborhood sub district the overall height is shorter and the side setbacks are larger. Next slide. The working group contemplated height and setback very thoughtfully and discussed these over several meetings and decided that in order to support the desire for older residents to age in place, four stories requiring an elevator would lead to development that is accessible and appropriate for seniors and others. Next slide. The working group is also recommending a parking maximum of one space per unit rather than a parking minimum and that recommendation is supported by published town plans. We are waiting to hear back from the state as to whether implementation of a parking maximum is allowable in the district as the town currently does not apply parking maximums in any other zone and I should have an answer on that shortly. Next slide. Bonuses. The working group is proposing a series of development bonuses and an attempt to incentivize the type of development supported by our public outreach but that could not otherwise be achieved by right within the framework of the law including bonuses for mixed use development, provision of affordable housing above our current inclusionary zoning and provision of open space as part of a project. The bonuses are available only in the Mass Ave and Broadway zones and are not applicable to the neighborhood multi-family zone which has a height cap at four stories. Next slide. To that end, the working group is recommending a two floor bonus on Mass Ave and a single floor bonus on Broadway for development of non-residential square footage on the first floor. In addition to the two bonus floors property owners would be allowed to bring the first four floors of the building frontage to the front lot line. The affordable unit incentive was developed by the affordable housing professionals on the working group to promote development of affordable units above our current inclusionary zoning requirements and you can see how the bonus would work in the scenario here where a developer may decide to apply the bonus to build both more regular units while also providing more affordable units. Next. In order to support the provision of additional environmental assets for a project the working group recommends a bonus of one floor for project that is certifiably gold or equaling 100 points under the US Green Building Council's Sites Program. These assets could include privately provided public open space, provision of green infrastructure elements, enhanced stormwater management and other resiliency measures. Next slide. This is alternative one. You can see the zone along Massachusetts Avenue and Broadway all the way from East Arlington and into the Heights. We have achieved five contiguous acres as required by the state and we have dispersed the zone amongst several neighborhoods in Arlington rather than concentrating in one area. Next slide. This is a close up of East Arlington. In East Arlington you can see that the working group avoided parcels zoned commercial or industrial and prioritized zoning over parcels already zoned residential with height concentrated on Mass Ave. It's a little shorter on Broadway and then even shorter still in the neighborhood multifamily districts. Next slide. Alternative one. This is the Arlington Center Arlington Heights District which extends to the Lexington line. This is one of the alternatives and our two alternatives which would include more neighborhood multifamily along Paul Revere Road to the line. On the south side of Massachusetts Avenue. Next please. Alternative one. Here are our model outputs. So as modeled we would have roughly 109 acres. The target for compliance is 32. We have modeled roughly 7,200 units with our target for compliance at 2,000 with a model gross district density of 67 units per acre with a target for compliance of 15. There already exists 2,100 units in this area. Alternative two. Alternative two shifts the neighborhood multifamily formerly along Paul Revere Road to the south of Mass Ave to the Lexington line north of Mass Ave as there were some questions at least among the working group remaining about dispersal of neighborhood multifamily along Mass Ave. As you can see, we call out where we have placed those additional or not that additional excuse me where we have shifted the area of neighborhood multifamily to the north along Grove Street and Forest Street. And even closer you can see a zoomed in drying that shows even I think more granularly what this shifting this area to the north of Mass Ave would look like. Next please. All right, in alternative two scenario, it's almost the same as alternative one. We are modeling 115 acres for about 7,400 units and then 65 dwelling units per acre as modeled. So in this summary of the proposed alternatives and a question to the board tonight, both of these alternatives meet our targets for compliant. Both of these are currently being evaluated by the state for pre-adoption compliance and both of these would result, we think the working group and DPCD in compliant district. Thank you very much. Sanjay and I will answer any questions the board may have and with that I turn it back over to the chair for consideration and discussion. Great, thank you so much. First of all, I want to commend the working group and the entire staff of the department of planning and community development for their comprehensive process, including a wide and diverse array of public engagement which has heavily informed many of these recommendations. I want to mention that the design process for any type of initiative, including planning exercises is not always linear and it requires that participants broadly imagine possibilities and potential before narrowing their focus and possible outcomes as informed by stakeholder engagement. Again, the public engagement that we've had as well as the work that we've done with all of the departments in town, evaluating the relative merits of these design iterations and testing against existing constraints. It requires that all of us involved be comfortable with imagining what before evaluating how and it can be messy and for some people that process is unfamiliar and uncomfortable. I appreciate the many members of our community who have answered surveys, attended workshops, provided written feedback and attended open office hours to share their perspectives, to learn about how and why our town has taken so much time and thought into crafting a proposal that is right for Arlington and not just checked a box by delivering the bare minimum. As part of the working groups approach, I appreciate that they took advantage of being able to distribute the subject area across the three major business areas of town along our primary transportation corridors, including East Arlington, Arlington Center and Arlington Heights and all of our elementary school communities while maintaining the required contiguous acreage, which was the challenge I know. While the final recommendations and details are still to be reviewed and refined by the redevelopment board and through public comment, as a whole they are a net positive for Arlington homeowners, renters and are widely supported sustainability goals and objectives as a town. Arlington is not a town that accepts the bare minimum or aspires to the lowest common denominator. We are a progressive town that leads the region when it comes to adopting policies that are rooted in equity and social, economic and environmental justice. So thank you so much for all of your hard work. So with that, I would like to open, again, I really want everybody to try and refrain from applause. Thank you. I wanted to open this up to comments and questions to the working group from the redevelopment board members. I have a couple that I thought I'd start out with and then we'd love to give time to each one of the redevelopment board members before we open this up for public comment. The first question I have is around parking. And I think Claire that you started to mention this that with the parking maximums as opposed to minimums, is this what we are asking the state for some guidance on as to whether or not this is more restrictive than the base code? That is correct. Okay. I think that in the way that this is written to, there seems to be a bit of a conflict between section C1 and C4 in the parking where it talks about being able to wave the parking down to zero. But then under number four, it talks about the section in the existing zoning bylaw that allows us to provide fewer parking spaces. So that may just need to be eliminated potentially. Okay. Thank you. The next question I had was around the recommendation for the mixed use business percentage. Just wanting to understand a little bit more about the 60% that is required. I know that we have looked to maximize that wherever possible in many of our mixed use development. So just looking for a little more context on that particular recommendation. Thank you. Go ahead. Yeah. So the 60% specifically came out of conversation with the consultant, Utile. Matthew is here. He could probably offer some additional context for that as well. But the thinking, as you said, is maximize as much of the ground floor space for commercial as possible. That's why 60% of the ground floor, you still have to have room for lobbies, for elevators, for back of house, for a mail room, a loading dock, these sorts of things. And from Utile, Matthew may have more to add to that if you wanted to ask him as well. Matthew, if you have any additional context that might be helpful. I think Sanjay got it correct. You need leftover space to make the residential units above functional, lobbies, mail rooms, utilities. There's also a requirement for a certain minimum amount of frontage that be occupied and that's to maximize the benefit of that commercial space providing some sort of vibrancy and activity on the street. Great, thank you very much for the clarification. Another question I have is around the affordable housing provisions. As part of our clarification with the state, have we also posed the question as to whether the requirements around listing on the subsidized housing inventory and rounding up for any percentage are more restrictive than our current code? So because the affordable housing percentage is a bonus and it's not included in the base zoning, we will not be evaluated based on buildability or feasibility that would be up to the developer to decide for themselves. Thank you, let's see. Question I have around combining lots. So did the working group contemplate at all situations where someone might seek to develop one parcel that's in an overlay district and one parcel that is not in the overlay district? Thank you for your question. I believe we did have a discussion about a parcel that could be in the Mass Ave Broadway district with a parcel behind that may be in the neighborhood multifamily district, but I do not believe we had a discussion or contemplated one parcel in the overlay, one parcel out of the overlay. I will get you an answer to that question. Great, thank you. Question for you about dimensional controls. There were a couple of sections that were removed and I was hoping we could talk a little bit both as a board as well as from the working group and understand the reasoning behind the elimination of some of these including traffic, visibility, the upper story building step backs, which we're taking up as a separate warrant article, the height buffer area, which is also being taken up as a separate warrant article and the elimination of corner lots and through lots as part of the items in relative to EDR that were struck as part of this zoning recommendation. She's asking the list, this list. Yeah, this is the list. Okay, I'm sorry, I don't have that list. Get it right here. Okay, great. At section C, under procedures and regulations. Right. Just the various dimensions and the rules that we decided would not be heard. Yes, it looks like Steve can answer this question. I can start with two of them. Thank you. Regarding traffic visibility around corners. So this is a provision that applies to residential lots and given that we were trying to incentivize ground floor commercial and mixed use and for a mixed use building, it's nice to have it come out to the street. Now in an ordinary B district, you wouldn't that the traffic visibility rule does not apply. So we were trying to basically mirror that. As far as the upper story step backs, the reason for putting them on after the fourth floor was to keep the four stories allowed by right and then the step back would take effect afterwards. Great. Thank you. I definitely would like to talk about the map in general. I know that at one point the board, at the board we had a discussion around eliminating all of the parcels that touch Mass Ave in East Arlington, East of Orvis for a future re-zoning of that area. Business district much in the way that we have walked off the section around Arlington Heights for a Springtown meeting re-zoning effort around the Heights. So curious about the inclusion, the continued inclusion of that area along with the elimination of the neighborhood parcels behind that area. And Steve or Ken? Steve. So regarding the removal of the neighborhood parcels, from the, with respect to the, I don't remember if it was the July 25th map, based on the public comment and subsequent board discussion we felt that the map had become too heavy in East Arlington and lighter in the Heights. So we basically the, to sort of even it back out again, we'd removed neighborhood district parcels and sort of relocated them to the Heights. Now with regard to the excluding business parcels, that was something we discussed as a working group and came to the conclusion that the working group believed that it would be better left to the redevelopment board. Great, so that's definitely a topic that I think we'll want to put on our discussion following public comment today, great. So it wasn't, it was an intentional omission. Okay, great, for this discussion, great. So we'll earmark that for further discussion. I think that I'd also like to earmark for discussion after public comment, the decision around including a four story maximum instead of a three story maximum in the neighborhood, in the neighborhood districts. You mean three rather than four? The proposal has four. I'd like to discuss whether it should be three or four. And one item that I think we need to discuss whether or not it needs to be added to the warrant article language is around the solar bylaw section, which is limited to projects requiring EDR and because this requires site plan review, we may need to update that and decide whether that is just for the Mass Ave and Broadway locations or also the neighborhood sub-district as well. Those were the main items I have other than sites. Let me get into sites for a second here. I'd love for us to put on our discussion whether or not sites is the preferred rating system, whether we should identify a specific rating system and whether certifiable rather than actually certified is the right threshold for a bonus of a full story. I think that I'm sure the working group has had plenty of discussions around this and I'd love to get into that a little bit more but knowing what we see when we see lead checklists that are certifiable and the relative care and sometimes not that developers take in design professionals and filling those out and how truly achievable those would be if they were asked to be put into action. I think we need to think long and hard about whether or not that is the right bonus or rather if requiring actual certification is something that we might want to push for. So that's something that I'd love to, earmark for further discussion. And that is most of my list. I'd love to turn it over to Jean for any items that you might have as well. Thank you, thank you and Rachel and I spoke about the list and put it together. So I just have a couple other questions. If you can go back on your slide to alternative one model outputs. On this slide, can you explain how the minimum open space percentages were derived? Yeah, I think Matthew from UTL is probably the best to explain. Yeah, so just to clarify, the open space is, as I understand it, not part of the formal written zoning, but it is put into the model as a substitute for the space that would be carved out by the required setbacks. The state model, which is really just a kind of numbers model, does not handle setbacks very well. And so for the multifamily district, the majority of those parcels are around 5,000 square feet. When you subtract the required setbacks, you end up with something that's about 40% of the lot. In the larger lots along Broadway and Mass Ave, you get about up to 60%. So if I understand that correctly, as the lot gets larger, let's say somebody has a 10,000 square foot lot, the minimum open space percentage would go down significantly. Correct. And to be clear, the open space that is input into the model does not necessarily mean landscaped area. It simply means area on the lot on which the building is not. So it could be all paved. It could include, for the purposes of modeling, it could include the parking, it can include the setbacks, it can include landscaped area. Okay, thank you. I think one of the things that I will want to discuss afterward is the elimination of the landscaped open space in this proposal because as you've explained, this percentage doesn't give us any green space necessarily. I want to go back to the question that Rachel asked about affordable housing. As the proposal is written right now, without the bonus, it says any affordable housing requirements must be eligible for inclusion in the subsidized housing inventory. It doesn't mention the bonus. So I guess my question is, since we don't have that requirement in the underlying zone, what's the purpose of including it here and how can we include it here because it appears to be more restrictive? Or did you intend it just to be for the bonus amount? So the intention is for the 15% inclusionary zoning that's included in here to match the existing inclusionary zoning bylaw that we have everywhere else. If you're pointing out there may be a drafting error, we should go back and double check and we can double check that. But the intent of the working group certainly was that the base inclusionary zoning here matches the base inclusionary zoning for the rest of our multiple family housing today. That would be much better than what's written here. Sure, we can double check on that. The same thing with the fraction because under the base zoning, your number goes up when it's at least 50%. In this, any fraction requires it to be rounded up and that's not simply for that. So it sounds like it. If there was a drafting error, we should double check and make sure. But the intention again was to match exactly. All right, and the third, and this is for the bonus. If we're limited to 10%, if the state doesn't give us a 15%, under the guidance, we have to be at 80% of AMI, but we in the base zoning are at 70%. So this paragraph, I think, is gonna need a complete rewrite to meet your intention, which I'm happy to do, by the way. I'm trying, thank you. I'll save the rest for when we have a discussion after the public input. Thank you. Thank you, Jean. Steve, any comments, questions? No, Madam Chair. Thank you, Ken. No, I'll save my comments for discussions at the end here. I think you guys picked all the topics already. Okay, great. Thank you very much. So with that, I will ask Claire Sanjay, any other clarifications based on the initial questions that we've posed that you would like to make before I open public comment? No, I don't think so. I think, yeah. I just wanted to give an opportunity. Okay, great, thank you. Again, I really appreciate all of the work that's gone into this. We will jump into public comment a little bit early, which is fantastic, because I have a lot of names on this list, and I would like to get to as many as possible. Let's see, I think we're going, sorry, Steve. One comment to sort of clarify regarding open space. Please. One of the discoveries that we sort of made partway through this process was, our intention was to have sort of a, more of a schematic-based set of dimensional regulations that didn't overlap. So height and setbacks and parking, essentially. Now, we discovered that the model, although the model knows about parcel sizes, it does not know about parcel dimensions. So without providing any sort of hints as to what the open space requirement would be, it assumed 20%. And the model is fairly, the basic calculation it does is to take a parcel size, back out space for, back out a percentage of open space, and back out some area for parking. And because the 20% assumption is calibrated to a much larger area, what we ended up, it ended up with a big overestimate of capacity, like essentially with a, with five stories or with four stories on a 5,000 square foot lot, the model would say, yeah, that's a 16 blocks, and that's not at all what we had envisioned. Correct, right. This is where Matthew and his colleagues sort of did the calibration of the parcel size to get a more accurate capacity estimate. Great, thank you for that clarification. It's very helpful. Okay, at this time, I think we're gonna shuffle around a little bit, Claire and Sanjay, you're good? Okay, Jennifer, I can ask you to spin that microphone around a little bit. I think, well, unless we want people to sit in this, we could have them sit in that seat, that's fine. Let's do that. That way I think they can be seen by the, by the camera a little bit better too. Great. So I, at this point, what I would like to do is open this hearing up for public comment. As I mentioned, I will be taking the names that have, for those of you that have signed up to speak. What I will request is that when I call your name, if you could please come to the seat that is right here in front of the speaker to address the board, I will remind you that I will, we will not take, we will not answer questions as they are posed. I will be keeping a list of all of the questions so that I can understand themes. We will answer at the end so that we can get through as many people as possible. If there are clarifications that we feel are warranted, we will stop and make those clarifications at that time. I can do that. That's a good suggestion. Thank you. So I will remind everyone that you, when you're called, please when you get to the microphone, introduce yourself with your first, last name and address. I will have a timer. You will have up to two minutes to address the board. So our first speaker this evening will be Jay Fitz Maurice. And on deck, we have Linda Atlas. Hello, Jean Fitz Maurice, 231 Mass Ave, East Arlington. I'm talking about the low income housing tax credit affordability program, which is one affordability program, the federal tax credit. I have firsthand knowledge because my sister is in one of these apartments, not in Arlington, but in Greater Boston. One thing you should know is that the rent is actually quite high. So for a one bedroom, it's going to be about $1,300 a month. So it's below market, but it's not that affordable actually. It's not a 30% income thing. And the other thing is that it increases based on a formula based on the increase of the AMI average median, area median income of the Greater Boston area. So for example, last year from 2022 to 2023, it increased 5.8%. So my sister's rent went up 5.8%. And it's a formula. It's not like a private landlord where they know you're a good tenant. They know you pay your rent. They know you have good, you know, keep the place clean and they might give you a break. It goes up based on the second thing. So for example, a $1,400 one bedroom apartment would have increased this year to $1,485 a month, $85 a month for a total of $1,020 a year. The other thing is that the, these buildings, they have market rate and they have these 60%. 60% of AMI of a one bedroom is $62,340. So that's going to be the maximum income for a one bedroom that you can qualify for. So as you can see, there's a big donut hole. The people under 62 qualify for the affordable $1,400 a month. People over 110 can do the market rate of $3,000 to $4,500. Thank you so much. We're in time. Thank you so much. Appreciate it. Okay. So our next speaker will be Linda Atlas. And on deck we have, and I'm going to apologize in advance for any mispronunciation this evening. Ligia Grigoris. Hi. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. My bad. My bad. Thank you very much. I will just pass on the message that Jennifer so kindly shared that for anyone who would prefer to speak from your seat, who has any challenges with coming up here, or I assume for anyone in the balcony is while we do have a cordless mic, please just raise your hand and we will make sure that that gets its way to you. Thank you. Please. Hi. Thank you for the time and thank you to the working group because I know they worked hard and they put in a lot of hours. I wanted to start with a question to those who are here. Who here lives in a household with no car? We have one. There you go. You win by the lottery ticket. Okay. Please, we're saying from applause we need to keep this moving. My point is Sanjay on your slide that you listed three reasons to have the density that we have which included for seniors, young families, and for accessibility for people. Those are the exact same three groups of people that really need a car, okay? The seniors can't get to the doctor's appointments. People have trouble walking out to the car if they have heart-long issues, things like that where we're being too faced when we say come on in, but you have to be healthy. I think, and even young people, who of us haven't taken a kid with a busted lip to the emergency room? Well, you can't call an Uber and with this plan you can't call your neighbor either because they're not going to have a car if there's no parking spaces. So that's one thing. The second thing is that I'd like to say just do the math. It's true, you just mentioned we're not looking to throw everything in and maybe we don't know what's going to happen, but I only know what's in my neighborhood. I'm a third generation East Arlingtonian and I can tell you with just two owners that own the land on either end of the Bates Tough Street Mass Hab Broadway Carter, if you do the math, even on my five by a hundred square foot lot, I can do 40 feet across, 60 feet down. I can put 10 because I can put a basement apartment with the, so essentially I'll have five stories. I can put 10 dwelling units that are more than a thousand square feet on that one little lot. If you take the two ends of Bates Road and Broadway and do the math, because one of them is currently a parking lot, you can do 156 dwelling units. Take away the 22 that are currently living there and you have 134. Just that one street is 7.6% of what we are required to do by town. Thank you very much. Oh, I'm sorry, that was me. I'm sorry. Okay, thank you very much. Thank you. Okay, no applause. Thank you. We are going to close public comment. If we have this, if this continues, we will close public comment if this continues. Thank you. The next person on deck is Eugenia Grigoris. I think it's Ligia. You just called me up a minute ago. Did you sign up twice? No. My sister has a last name, Grigoris as well. Ligia and Eugenia? Well, that's who I was just saying was next. No, you just said Eugenia, but that's okay. My sister's also here. She'll be another time. Thank you. No, she is next, but you are one after each other. I see, okay. Well, thank you. My name is Ligia Grigoris and I live at 370 Park Avenue, Arlington. I thank you for the opportunity to speak in front of my fellow citizens here in Arlington. I am a lifelong Arlington citizen and I'm very disturbed at this whole process. And primarily because we have a pretty full audience, not as many as I'd hoped, but everyone I have spoken to in person knows nothing about this whole process. So number one, that's one of my problems with the whole thing. And primarily I'll make it short and sweet. Once again, why did you decide unlike every other town in this area to over comply? An excessive number of units. Excuse me. The woman in the white pants, if that happens again, you can excuse yourself in the meeting. Thank you. We already have diverse housing options, including one, two and three family dwellings already in East Arlington and throughout the town. And I don't see how the very high end, which is what we'll come about from this, high end apartments at $1 million or more units can help benefit anyone but developers. It will not have any benefit and most likely harm Arlingtonians due to very many factors, transportation, schools, other. And pretty much what we're going to end up in Arlington as I see it is pretty much demolishing and rebuilding which is an inequitable, elitist and unjust and less affluent homeowners living in contiguous areas will be eventually selling their homes to developers. No one else will buy them because they're going to be overshadowed by a monolith. And I just feel that if we talk about being more diverse from a social perspective, people of color will unlikely have the funds to afford this new market rate housing. Thank you. Thank you. The next speaker will be Eugenia Grigoris and on deck we will have Alex Bagnall. So Eugenia Grigoris, 11 Bates Road. I wanted to say that I too am really disturbed by this. Most of the people that I speak to have never even heard of the plan. 100% compliance is what the state is asking. And I believe that's what the group was mandated to do because everybody else is mandated to do that in the state as well I believe. And I don't think compliance is a dirty word. So I'm not sure where exactly the working group got some mandate for this extravagant plan of 7,000 plus units because it seems to me that that's not what the state is asking us. And I really think we need to comply with what the state is asking us. And otherwise I would say that it seems to me that this is a really good project if you're a developer who wants to in the long term transform Arlington into something that we've probably never seen before and will be unrecognizable to us. And I think that's a really sad thing because ultimately we were talking about people and renters and homeowners and citizens and taxpayers who don't even know about this. So I'm really quite concerned about where you get the mandate for this massive and frankly, ideological pet project. Thank you. Thank you. The next speaker will be Alex Bagnall. On deck we have Colin Bonnell. Hello, Alex Bagnall, Wyman Street. You have heard and will hear a lot of perspectives from current Arlington residents this evening. And I'd like to bring in a quote from a former Arlington resident who has gone on to be a sociology professor at Princeton is the principal investigator of the eviction lab, the author of Evicted, Poverty and Profit for the American City. This quote is from his new book, Poverty by America. How can we at last end our embrace of segregation? The most important thing we can do is to replace exclusionary zoning policies with inclusionary ordinances, tearing down our walls and using the rubble to build bridges. There are two parts to this. The first is to get rid of all the devious legal minutia we've developed to keep low income families out of high opportunity communities. Rules that make it illegal to build multifamily apartment complexes or smaller, more affordable homes. We cannot in good faith claim that our communities are anti-racist or anti-poverty if they continue to uphold exclusionary zoning. Our polite or quieter means of promoting segregation. That is, of course, Matthew Desmond. End of quote. Housing is not a zero sum game. We need to move beyond the scarcity mindset that tells us that if someone else gets a bigger slice of pie, our piece of the pie will be smaller. We can make a bigger pie. Providing for the needs of our families does not mean denying those possibilities to others. I hope you will support the recommendations of the working group to allow for meaningful change. And thank you for your work. Thank you. The next speaker will be Colin Bunnell. Thank you. The next speaker will be Colin Bunnell. On deck we have Nicole Gustas. Thank you. My name is Colin Bunnell. I live at 153 Medford Street. I'm speaking to urge the ARB to support the working group's proposal. This region is in a housing affordability crisis caused by decades of restrictive zoning practices in local communities, including Arlington, which have caused housing construction to lag far, far behind demand. The entire world is confronting the crisis of human created climate change caused by the car culture created by near universal single family suburban housing. More housing and denser housing addresses both of these and this proposal is a great step in that direction. Denser housing supports commercial development, helps foster walking communities and is essential in reducing carbon emissions. More housing begins to address the radical imbalance that currently exists between housing supply and demand. Declaring not in our backyard and punting the problem to other communities to solve is irresponsible and selfish and unworthy of a progressive community like ours. I urge support for this plan. Thank you. Thank you. Our next speaker will be Nicole Gustas and we will follow that with Mike Rainey. Hi, my name is Nicole Gustas. I live at 89 Marathon Street and I was really hoping that we would zone for more. Lexington is zoning for much more than the threshold. I was hoping that we would do the same. But I hear that there are a lot of people in this room who want to do the bare minimum. This is a compromise. Well, it's mostly a compromise because you're getting a lot closer to what you want than I am getting to what I want, but it is a compromise. I don't know if other people have read the plan. This is a 50 year plan. Most of us are going to be dead before this gets even halfway into what is planned. So this is not going to happen tomorrow. It's not going to happen next year. We're going to be deep in the ground. And people have asked where the mandate comes from. They listed it off. Our master plan, our fair housing plan, our net zero access plan, our community equity audit, our housing production plan, our sustainable transit plan. I mean, you guys were putting together a jigsaw puzzle based on eight million plans. That was just what I managed to write down. If we're going to put the brakes on housing cost inflation, which is horrible in Arlington, we need more housing units. We have the capacity because in 1970, we had over 7,000 more people than we have now. So we have the infrastructure. We know that building more housing works to moderate housing costs because two places have done it. Auckland, New Zealand dropped rental prices by 22% to 35% over not having built. And they had Wellington, New Zealand as a comparison, so which did not allow building. So it had a significant impact on housing prices. Minneapolis not just dropped housing prices, they also dropped inflation in half. It works and at those meetings, people were protesting using the same arguments that are being used now, but we have two examples to have how it works and it can work in Arlington. Thank you very much. Thank you. The next speaker will be Mike Rainey and I have Nilly Perlmutter on deck. Hi, my name is Mike Rainey. I also live at 89 Marathon Street. I keep hearing this narrative that developers are coming in to obliterate Arlington and rebuild it overnight. And that's just not the case. This plan isn't a steep climb up a vertical wall. It's a ramp that we need to get on now in order to not fall farther and farther behind. It's been explained over and over again by the working group that bare minimum compliance results in no net gain of units. So minimum compliance is falling farther and farther behind because the problem gets worse and worse every year. We need to get on this ramp now so that we don't fall farther and farther behind. If we wait another year, then the ramp will either need to be steeper or longer to get to the same place. Thank you very much. Thank you. The next speaker will be Nilly Perlmutter and we have Tamora Yontar on deck. Thank you and thank you to all of you for your work. My name is Nilly Perlmutter. I live at 79 Harlow Street, which is one of the blocks that is impacted by this plan. I'm here speaking on behalf of Mothers Out Front Arlington. We have drafted this statement in support of the MBTA working group plan. Massachusetts is experiencing a housing affordability crisis and a climate crisis. For these reasons, Mothers Out Front Arlington supports changes in zoning bylaws that allow greater density in housing near public transit. Mothers Out Front is supportive of the passage of a meaningful MBTA Communities Act that encourages the development of more multi-family housing and a greater diversity of home types in Arlington. A revised zoning bylaw to allow for more multi-family housing will reduce pressure to build single family homes on undeveloped land elsewhere in Massachusetts. This safeguards undisturbed ecosystems and provides real alternatives to automotive commutes in the region, reducing both congestion and fossil fuel emissions. In addition, passing this bylaw will allow Arlington to participate in the Massachusetts pilot for communities to build fossil free homes, thus ensuring that new construction in Arlington supports our net zero climate goals. Mothers Out Front Arlington respects the public engagement activities that inform the working group MBTA Communities Act proposal. We appreciate that the working group is working with the town to identify opportunities for developer incentives to encourage open spaces, public open spaces, mitigate heat islands and increase the tree canopy. Similarly, the town's commitment to maintaining current and incentivizing higher zoning requirements for affordable housing is also important to our group. For these reasons, Mothers Out Front Arlington strongly urges the Arlington Redevelopment Board to accept the MBTA Communities Act plan as proposed by the working group. Thank you. The next speaker will be Timor Yontar and we have Laurel Kane on deck. Good evening, Timor. Thank you. Kai Yontar, prec. 7, 58 Bates Road. Thanks to the working group for their hard work. I support an increase to housing in Arlington. I do have concerns with their specific proposals because of the impact they would have on our schools. The working group's own FAQ states that the Arlington School Department recommended, quote, spreading the MBTA Communities District over a wide area of the town. And from the map, it seems clear that the district is highly concentrated along two narrow corridors, Mass Ave and Broadway. And I worry that if the desired growth happens, it will disproportionately impact and lead to overcrowding at a few elementary schools, particularly Thompson, the largest and most crowded of all of our elementary schools in East Arlington. Through the chair, I would ask the ARB, whether the APS superintendent has reviewed and expressed no concerns with the proposal. As I mentioned, we'll take questions at the end, but yes. That's my question for the end. Thank you. Yes, we will take that at the end. And thank you. Thank you. Our next speaker will be Laurel Cain and we have Alan Tosti on deck. Good evening. My name is Laurel Cain. I live at 79 Westmoreland Ave. And without taking a position for or against the proposal, I would just like to say that I'm curious why or if a more stepped approach was considered by the working group, where it would be development in stages. So there could be feedback mechanisms built in to learn about the impacts and outcomes as it goes along over X period of time. And I don't know what that time horizon would be, but that in any sort of big development effort, there's often unintended consequences. It may not achieve the objectives that the working group is seeking and it has that been considered. Secondly, I would like to ask that there be greater consideration to a stronger environmental component, especially given the town's climate action plan or fast approaching 2050. And I know there's incentives built in, but why are there not mandates for say passive housing or fully electrified buildings, which these things are coming. The state has to do this stuff faster than we realize and it seems like an opportunity to take greater strides in that direction. Thank you. Thank you. And I have noted the questions. My name's Al Tosti. I'm sorry, but I haven't started your time yet. Before Alan Tosti begins, Josephine Bebiars is on deck. Thank you. My name is Al Tosti. I live at One Water Real Place up in the Heights. My primary focus now is on town meeting. I think I'm the second longest serving member of town meeting. And if you put before town meeting, this only this proposal with the proviso that if you don't pass it, then the state is gonna come in and do a lot of bad things to the town. Town meeting, you're not giving town meeting a choice. You're giving town meeting a proposal with a gun to their head. I urge you to allow for a couple of alternatives to come before town meeting. Obviously, there is a large number of people who would prefer meeting the minimum, 2046, 2050, whatever, as well as the plan put forth by the other group. Now you could always say, well, somebody could put an amendment. This is, or put an alternative warrant article. This is a very complex thing. It'd be very hard for a town meeting member to go up here and try to modify this so it reaches a minimum. So I urge the redevelopment board to respect the town meeting decision-making process to give them real alternatives and not just one proposal with a state gun to our head. Thank you very much. Thank you. The next speaker will be Josephine Garbrias and the speaker on deck will be Joanne Conance. Thank you. My name is Josephine Babiars. I'm on 59 Edge Hill Road, a town meeting precinct 15 member. I just like to talk a little bit about the affordability aspects and its impact throughout. I understand and support that we need more housing and I understand and support that this is not, ground and stone is gonna happen tomorrow or the next day. There's some serious issues about feasibility. When we're looking at affordability, we have to understand not only the opportunities for folks in the town, but also the impact on the town. Cambridge has an extraordinary record with affordability, but most of their developers will not go over 13%. You have very large property management companies that refusing to do that without subsidies. And the thing that makes Cambridge so different that also makes Somerville and Lexington so different, but I'll speak directly to Cambridge is that they have extraordinary commercial and industrial property. The real estate portion, the real estate taxes in Cambridge account for more than 65% of the entire revenue here in Arlington. So they can go ahead and buy down all of the affordable housing. Their residential rate is $5 per thousand. And if you live there for a year, you have a $37,000 tax credit on your property. If you are in Lexington, you've got everything up on Hartwell Avenue, all of that, you've got tons of stuff over in Somerville. When we are looking at affordable housing here and understanding that that's gonna be rental property, the property value is gonna be calculated by something called the 48D, which will reduce the amount of property taxes owed. So you have that, you have extra people coming in. Now just to point out, our taxes on our house are $10,800. According to the state, that's a real, that's a property tax. According to the state of 2021, the per student cost is $17,900. Thank you. The next speaker will be Joanne Cullinans. And we have Rebecca Peterson on deck. Thank you. Hi, thank you for allowing me to speak today. My name is Joanne Cullinan. I live at 69 Newland Road. I've lived in Arlington for 20 years and grew up in Boston. I just wanna say, I wanna reiterate what a previous speaker said that I think very few people in town know about the plan, whether that be the MBTA overlay, what the requirement is, what these maps look like. I think very few people are aware based on just my interactions with people and the response I get when I mention the plan. I think that I received two postcards in the mail just last week which mentioned this meeting and that was last week and mentioned the meeting would be today. It didn't list the time and other specifics, but I think thousands of people would like to be here and don't know about this, frankly. And they had either no time or the opportunity to be here today. I'd like to say I have concerns about the plan and the size of the plan and the fact that it's overly compliant. I have concerns about the environmental destruction it would bring to Arlington. I think we'll lose trees and green space around buildings which I think most of us treasure and believe is a good thing. I think the zero setbacks as a bonus that we give for a small increase in so-called affordable units are unacceptable for Arlington because they'll create these concrete canyons and that are not pedestrian friendly and frankly not very walkable at all in terms of if you want people to walk to stores and businesses. I have concerns about the fiscal dysfunction that this could exacerbate. As the previous speaker mentioned that I think the imbalance between real estate, the tax base, the amount we take in will not cover the increased burden on services. Tax rates will go up and that leads to my last concern that I think it will exacerbate gentrification because I think most of the new units will be at the highest end of what you see in Arlington right now and I think tax rates will go up on homeowners who then maybe are forced out who have the older housing stock. Thank you. The next speaker will be Rebecca Peterson followed by Matthew Owen. Rebecca Peterson, Florence Ave. Despite hours spent on this proposal, it's a loser. It will allow many projects like the massive buildings next to and across from the high school, buildings that are scorned and despised for their ugliness, their lack of green space and their size totally out of scale with our downtown corridor. Future setbacks should be as large as possible for shade trees and let's stop the build all the way to the sidewalk nonsense. We've heard about the working groups outreach but for changes of this magnitude 1,000 survey responses is not representative of 46,000 people. Deceptive questions were phrased to hide the true scale of the density. Most people would say yes to should density be near businesses in public transit but accurate questions would have asked should the town allow for the state mandated 2046 units or should the town allow three, four or five times that number. People didn't realize what they were supporting because there was no context yet survey results have been paraded as proof of support. The working group appears to operate within an echo chamber since most members are pro density design build and construction professionals. Where are those who care about the schools, the traffic, the parking, the air quality tree canopy, fire response times, other quality of life concerns. Zero studies assess the impact to residents and town services nor are any planned. Abutting homes will be in permanent shade due to new building heights. Concerns about the plans size and scale have been brushed off in the race to meet an unrelated and totally artificial deadline entry into the state fossil fuel band pilot program. If half or more of the 2046 state required units of children will add enough kids to fill another high school with schools at or over capacity and no land to build on where will they go to school? This proposal is off the rails in every way to dense too high too much. When you consider that 176 other towns will be adding housing at the same time. There is no need for this massive over compliance. I urge you to approve what the state requires and nothing more. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you, the next speaker will be Matthew Owen followed by Beth Milovchak. I am working on it. Nobody said that I'll end it if this continues. Thank you, please. Matthew Owen 164 Forest Street and I'd like to start off just by giving a lot of thanks to the members of the working group and town employees who spent so much time putting together this thoughtful plan. I am in full support of the plan as it's currently proposed by the working group and I would encourage the ARB to pass this plan along to town meeting. I'd like to comment specifically on two aspects that were sort of broached earlier. One is the height in the neighborhood districts and I would agree with the working group that four-story rather than three-story is preferable for the sub-district for one the reason they state, which is that the requirement for elevators would increase the likelihood of getting accessible units in the district and the other being that I think that it would make it much more likely that developments would meet the minimum size needed to come under our inclusionary zoning bylaw and create below market rate units. At three-stories with small lots, I'm not convinced that that would be possible. The other thing I want to bring up is the parking minimum issue and I would strongly urge you to maintain the zero parking minimum looking at national trends, especially in urban areas that there's a growing realization that parking minimums cause harmful effects and limit opportunities and as I think everyone would agree that space in Arlington is incredibly precious and taking it up to put in unnecessary parking spaces would be a shame, so thank you very much. Thank you. Our next speaker will be Beth Milafchuk, followed by Carol. Thank you, please. Hi, Beth Milafchuk, 20 Russell Street and I'm a town meeting member. I'd like to fully support the remarks of Rebecca Peterson. I thought they were fabulous. Too dense, too high, too much and too little attention to the fact that we're in a climate breakdown and we're a battle road scenic byways community. I think that we are, what's at risk? What's at risk is Arlington will be a little more than a speed bump on the way to Concord and Lexington in 2025 if we don't preserve the historic streetscape and the historic buildings that we have. Previous redevelopment committees have allowed the removal of historic buildings which is why people go to Concord and Lexington and don't stop here. I think the climate breakdown component, what's happening is so serious and I understand the many variables that are put on the working group to how you can do what can be considered. You can't do this, you can't do that, you can't require this or that. I think three stories is enough in the neighborhoods. Arlington Town Hall asked people to get solar panels. Will Town Hall be compensated homes whose solar panels are blocked by four-story buildings or even six-story buildings if they go really further into the neighborhoods? That's gotta be a consideration. I don't have anything else to say except that I appreciate Ms. Zembury's concerns about sites versus lead. I'll be looking into that. Certifiable is certainly not as good as certified and I think the plan is deeply flawed. I'm a town meeting member. I'll be voting against this over-compliance because I don't like the gun to the head of town meeting. We are a deliberative body. We should have a choice. Thank you. Thank you. I am gonna state one more time if the applause continues, this will be our last speaker. Carol Bard. And on deck we have Julie Avats. Hi, I'm Carol Band. I'm a town meeting member in Precinct 8. I live on Bartlett Avenue and I wanted to just concur with what Mr. Tosti said and I think that town meeting does deserve more choices than just this big plan and the town of Arlington is owed that as well. Also, I love density. I think density is great but I think it should be kept to the public transportation corridors of Mass Ave and Broadway and stay out of the neighborhoods unless you wanna just let all the people in the neighborhoods vote on that, the proposal. Thank you. The next speaker is Juliet Avats and we have James Moore following. I'll just, while we have the next speaker coming up, let you know that I am taking notes on every point, for and against and these will be reviewed. So please, please know that. Please go ahead. My request is very simple or my question. I would like to know if you have or are planning to conduct an impact study. I'm hearing a lot of conjecture about what will happen with this plan. I would like to have a little bit more information about how this is going to affect our community in terms of density, the commercial aspect, our environment, et cetera, et cetera. There's so many schools, so many implications and I feel as if we need to have an outsider instead of guessing what's gonna be happening. Thank you. Thank you. The next speaker will be James Moore followed by Steve Macauca. Good evening, James Moore, 69 Columbia Road. Thank you for all your work. I wanted to just expound on Julia Davos's question and my question has to do with the impact of services in the city or in the town of Arlington, police, fire, DPW. We have trouble with our roads right now. They're in pretty bad shape. I get the need for more housing. Don't disagree with that. I do concern myself with the impact and how that's gonna be managed. I heard a mention of it's not happening overnight, but we don't know how long is the plan and that's on the website. I'll find it, but that was my question. I'd like to see more of the impact to services financially and otherwise. Thank you. Thank you. The next speaker will be Roy Goldstein. Hi, Steve Macauca, 17 Russell Street. Also chair of the Marlington Historic District Commissions. First of all, I want to acknowledge the hard work that the working group has put in in this entire effort. They're trying to balance a lot of different things. I think that's led to a little bit of a rush in the process and I'm here to speak about making sure we avoid unintended consequences. I've tried to inject into the process consideration about historic and cultural resources in town and I note that the working group has avoided in historic districts, the local historic districts, which I applaud them for and thank them for that. I've tried to make the point in the past that there are other individual properties, national registered districts, other significant historical and cultural resources in town they think need to just be thought about affirmatively and mindfully in terms of putting this proposal together. I know no one has to do anything but I don't think we want to create incentives for someone to impact an important resource. Thank you. Thank you. And we're happy to work with the committee to do that. I just had not had the opportunity. Thank you. So we have Roy Goldstein up next followed by Carolyn White. Roy Goldstein, 91 Westminster Avenue. I agree with so much of what's been said today as far as the impacts go and I do also agree with wanting to go closer to the compliance as opposed to above. My wife is a teacher at Pierce, has been for 20 years. I've lived here for 30 and I know of all the discrepancies in our schools. I hear it every day and I really feel the impact on our school system is going to be significant. And we seem to always be playing catch up with what the needs are in the schools and other things in our town services, et cetera. And I don't think that I think that we should get our school systems in place that includes salary for the teachers. There's a lot of teachers that are underpaid where we're certainly again understaffed and having a hard time getting teachers and I think that it's just gonna throw a lot of things out of balance. I also am very concerned about the environmental impacts. Much of the quarter that we speak of that is gonna be developed is part of the drainage system where a lot of the water ends up from the hills on either side of Mass Ave and Broadway after all it is a river valley and the more we pave the less drainage that we allow and it's certainly gonna have a big impact. Thank you. The next speaker will be Carol White, excuse me, Caroline White followed by Adam Lane. Thank you. Hi, I'm Caroline White and I live on 276 Massachusetts Avenue. I grew up in Arlington, then proceeded to live in Cambridge and Somerville and worked in Boston and Cambridge. I commuted by subway and bicycle. I am one of those people in that donut who makes between 62 and less than 100,000 and I expect that to be the case till I retire. And so when I look at this proposal, I'm very concerned. I live in a 670 foot rental apartment, 276 is the large orange brick building that's at the corner of across from Bates and Mass Ave. I enjoy living in a building with 75 units. We have section eight, we have low income, we have single parents with kids in their 20s living with them, we have single parents and double parents with one child in the house. We have one unit and two unit buildings. There are seven stairs to enter because the building did not need to meet ADA requirements. I like the idea of additional housing and additional units that include buildings that are four and even five stories on the same side of Mass Ave, which I'm on, which is the south side because the shade goes towards Mass Ave and not the houses. Most of the sun in our building is southwest on the back side. What bothers me most about the proposal is all of the incentives and none of the mandates. There's no mandates for accessibility. There's no mandates for 15%. There's no mandates for climate change mitigation. Thank you, the next speaker will be Adam Lane followed by Jennifer Seuss. Thank you, Madam Chair. Adam Lane, 77 Grafton Street, the coolest street in Ellington. I would commend everyone present for their passion, regardless of where they are on this issue. We are all here because we love Ellington. It is a wonderful community. We are all lucky to live here. We have been given this by the people who were here before us and it is our responsibility to see that we pass on to future Ellingtonians, a town that is just as good. And I think change can be scary for some people, but towns change and a citizen of monotomy would not recognize West Cambridge, would not recognize the Ellington of today. We are going to change and whoever was here earlier and who said we'll all be gone in 50 years, they're right. I mean, this is for the next Ellington, the future Ellingtonians. And I would like to say, Madam Chair, that capacity is not destiny. We are giving the ARB, I believe, the flexibility to make wise choices about growth if the area has more capacity, gives us more options. I would hope that this version of the ARB and future versions would manage growth sensibly and not create ridiculous constructions that offend the eye and contribute to an unlivable Ellington. I would just like to say that I am reminded of the passions that surrounded the Mass Ave redo project 10 years ago when Carmageddon was predicted and people got so upset that they left town when things did not go their way. And what has happened, everyone? Mass Ave has been redesigned and it's lovely and it's fine and the town works and the traffic that was predicted did not materialize. So let us all take the temperature down a little, let us listen to each other, and I believe we should move forward with this plan as currently conceived, thank you. Thank you. The next speaker will be Jennifer Seuss, followed by Austin Brown. Thank you, Jennifer Seuss, 45 Teal Street. I want to echo what the previous speaker said. We are all people of goodwill who care passionately about Ellington. And we are, I think we have different opinions, which is fine, but I just want to bring us back to the big picture. 50 years ago, Ellington, along with many other suburban communities, shut down monthly family housing production. We are where we are today with the housing affordability crisis because of what happened back then. This is going to be a long process. We are not going to solve the problem overnight, but we do need to begin to make meaningful, small, incremental changes like what is in the Working Group's plan to address the problems so that we don't have an even worsening problem 50 years from now. I also want to remind you, so the state did not ask us to do the bare minimum. They proposed something that they thought could pass, not because they thought it was a terrible idea for any town to step up and do a little bit more. They just proposed what they thought could pass. The bare minimum proposal, as given the constraints, all the constraints in place, wouldn't produce much housing, wouldn't do what we want to do, what the state wants us to do, which is to address the housing affordability crisis. So I urge, I know the Working Group has worked very hard. I know that there were two members of the Working Group that were there from the ERB and two who sort of haven't been in all those discussions, but I know paying close attention. And I just encourage you just keep that big picture in mind as you make your decision. Thank you. Thank you. The next speaker will be Austin Brown, followed by Nora Mann. All right, hello everybody. My name is Austin Brown and I live at 10 Belknap Street. I'm very concerned about this plan because of what's happened on my street. I think that this is really gonna be a feeding frenzy for developers. The financial incentives right now are such that buildings do go up really, really quick. If you just spike around East Arlington, you can see that basically on every single block, I would think at least one new building has been built. And usually just looking at Zillow, it seems like these sell for over a million dollars a unit. So maybe if we approve a whole bunch more, I would bet that the price is, well okay, not gonna get into that, but it's hard to predict the future. But anyways, there's been a lot of development lately. So moving on to what's happened on my street, and you guys are familiar with this actually, we've had two four unit townhomes built within the past maybe two or three years. One of those four unit townhomes is at half capacity right now because the front of it is being held up by two by fours. And the other is at zero percent capacity, it's unoccupied because the builders got about two thirds done with it. And then it was realized by, I don't know who, that it was built nowhere even close to compliance, not only with the zoning bylaws, but with the building code itself. And that's a legitimate safety danger. So right now that building has a tarp on top of it, which is slowly shredding, and it's like distributing tarp shreds around the whole neighborhood. I'm watching that building sort of like slowly rot away. So anyways, I'm really concerned that if we give all these incentives to developers, this is what's going to happen all around Arlington and probably all around Massachusetts. So I think that if we want to allow something like this, that's so aggressive, we really need a much larger building department to oversee these large development projects. Anyways, okay, I think it's worth just putting the brakes on this plan a little bit. There's no reason why we can't approve more housing in the future. I don't think there's any reason why we need to turbo rush to get this all approved now. And I'm really worried that if we do approve it, then the result is just going to be a feeding frenzy leading to shoddy construction. Thank you. Again, all of these are being, all of these comments are being recorded. Thank you. Our next speaker is Nora Mann, followed by Steven Weill. My name is Nora Mann. I live on Walliston Avenue in Precinct 20 and I am a town meeting member from Precinct 20. I am grateful for the work of the working group, the ARB, and for all of the folks here who have, and otherwise who have expressed their opinions. I'm speaking in support of the working group proposal. I would echo what Jennifer Seuss and others have said to the effect that if we are to continue to live our values of equity and inclusion, we have to tear down the remnants, the segregation and exclusion. We need to utilize a broad range of solutions in many ways in which communities can grow in positive and constructive and inclusive manner. I have two things to add. One is that we might consider this opportunity to address more specifically requirements that would be focused on mitigating environmental impacts. And I would echo what Mr. Tosti said that we consider the political realities of getting this passed at town meeting. I am a town meeting member. I will support this, but I know my fellow town meeting members and they are going to want to hear some options. And so to the extent that we can, if the redevelopment board reports this out in a positive way, I would strongly suggest that we figure out how to get it passed considering the realities of our really strong and community focused town meeting. Thank you very much. Thank you. Our next speaker will be Stephen Will and we have Miles Rush on deck. Thank you. Hi, first I want to thank everybody who's been involved in this process because it's absolutely massive. But that doesn't mean that I agree with it. I am a 46 year resident of Arlington. I live in an historic home. So I was very glad to hear that someone from the Historic Commission was here this evening to talk. My concern also echoes Austin's concerns earlier that if we give the ability of developers to just buy up properties that go up for sale, of which one of them will probably go up for sale and block away from me on Bailey Road. I'm at number 35. Someone that person is gonna be more concerned about profit than they are about anything else. Arlington has a rich historic culture to it. My house is an example of that. I have made many improvements, many changes to a home that was built before the Revolutionary War. And every time that happens, I have someone monitoring the work that we do on our property. And I have to present plans to the Historic Board before I can do any work. That is not gonna happen with the development that's gonna happen here. Whether it's five years or 50 years, right now it's not included. There's nothing in this proposal that speaks to the idea of historical representation for the town of Arlington. And I'm really concerned. I see the houses that go up by developers. One went up four years ago diagonally behind us. It's an atrocity. All they care about is square footage and getting people in there. Those properties have sold for over a million dollars apiece. So that's my comment. So I hope that you can, my suggestion actually is that you get the Historical Commission involved very deeply in this process so that someone other than you can represent the historical value of this town. Thank you. The next speaker will be Miles Rush followed by Grant Cook. Yeah, so my name is Miles Rush. I live at 255 Massachusetts Avenue. Thank you so much for giving me the chance to speak today. I just wanted to say that I think a lot of people in the area have certainly felt the disastrous effects of so many decades of restrictive zoning and it's certainly overdue for a change. In addition to the wonderful presentation by the working group, I took the time to read through the full proposal and I found it to be quite thoughtful and respectful of the current neighborhoods. I also did want to echo something that one of the previous speakers said and commend the use of modern parking reform in the plan which is showing some promising results in areas where that's being implemented now. And I would just like to end by saying that the reason why the working group did all that outreach work is because a lot of the community members that plans like this are designed to benefit quite frankly don't always make it to these meetings in this process and please don't forget about them while you're considering the plan. Thank you so much. Thank you. The next speaker will be Grant Cook followed by Peter Fiori. Hello Grant Cook, 16 Wollstone Ave, precinct 16. I'm here hoping you'll support the plan produced by the working group because we have more than the burden of the state's requirements upon us. We have the burden of correcting a misstep made 50 years ago, a temporary measure nurtured into the status quo that made apartments so very difficult to create. We aren't the only community that did this and the actions amplified the problem. I think it's clear the outcome of this was exclusionary. I've heard the term socially elitist to describe this current push. People in one to $1.5 million homes complaining about million dollar homes. But the initial banning of them and the guise of a moratorium didn't spring from some exuberance to strike a blow for the common man and no amount of time to rehabilitate the original intent or the long-term avoidance of breaking from the path we took. If we had let multifamily housing grow along a natural path we'd probably have this zone in existence today. I think creating an appreciable amount of new housing is the spirit of the law. It surely is the express goal of our governor or legislature. They don't speak of this as a problem where a few tweaks or half measures are enough. Do nothing was the response to this law from some many months back. Take the financial head, call it something anodyne like opting out. That became a non-starter with the words of our attorney general. Now we're at a place where you're being asked to do little, to work, to do nothing more than the absolute minimum. You're asked to delay for some never attainable level of analysis as though we can put a number on how much exclusion is enough, how many children we can wall off. While at the same moment ignoring the facts right in front of us of housing scarcity, of housing costs and the burden on so many of our peers, we are asked to defer to future boards to act further ignoring the many years we have chosen to do nothing. You're asked to accept these goals as virtuous and wise and I say they are neither. They should be seen as the ghost of the 70s and I hope a spirit the town has or will soon exercise in favor of the town described in decades even further back where Arlington would describe as a globe growing and welcoming community. Thank you. Thank you. The next speaker will be Peter Fiori followed by Helen Jiu. Peter Fiori 58 Mott Street, town meeting member precinct two. My concern with this plan is the potential volume of debris sent into the waste spring. 2,000 units of housing could be demolished over the next 50 years. On my street, Mott Street, nine two-family homes have been demolished and replaced by duplex condominiums over the past 10 years. Not once did I ever see anything salvaged or recycled from any of the demolitions. Everything gets knocked to the ground by a backhoe and then it gets scooped up and put in these debris hollers, comb angled and hauled away. I went to the state website to try to find out what happens at debris and I understand that construction waste is supposed to be separated out and not end up in landfills. So the state website sent me to a recycling website where they recommend people dealing with construction demolition waste go for answers and this is recycling works of Massachusetts and probably members of the redevelopment board who by the way I should have thanked you for the opportunity to speak first thing, so thank you. It says demolition involves tearing down a structure, putting its contents in dumpsters and hauling it away. When taken to a C and D processing facility, some of these materials can be sorted and recovered for recycling but it's unlikely that anything will be reusable. What I'd like to even begin to support this over-compliance would be a guarantee that these developers would have to dismantle and deconstruct all these buildings brick by brick and board by board so that the material is recycled and I've run out of time, so thank you. Thank you. We have Helen Zhu next and Paul Selker on deck. Okay, we'll move right to Paul Selker. Hi there, Paul Selker, 24 Central Street. Thank you very much, Madam Chair and thank you to the working group. I'm in full support of this plan and to me, supply and demand requires in order for costs to go down, new units must be created. We have a housing crisis and we just simply can't imagine that there's a way to bring costs down without adding new houses. I believe that gradual upzoning and I do believe this plan represents that is a win-win-win. I think it makes the town more financially sustainable because it will send more revenue per square mile into the town's coffers for to choose a number, $600,000 units on one property sends more tax revenue to the town than one $1.5 million house and if the town is on a large lot, if sorry, if the large house, the expensive one is on a single, a large lot as many single family homes are that $1.5 million house actually costs the town more to maintain. So if you want fewer tax hikes, if you want more money for infrastructure like roads, I think you should support this plan. I also think honestly it's an exciting opportunity for property owners to add units to their own properties and increase their own wealth. I think for what it's worth, I share the concern that developers will profit from this plan and in developers incentives are not always perfect. I think it's a challenge and there are not easy answers. I would love to see the board look at best practices for inducing owners to retain ownership and benefit from the options afforded them by this plan but perfect cannot be the enemy of the good. I think this plan is good and I think we should get it done. Thank you very much. Thank you. The next speaker will be Mark Kepline followed by Adam Oster. Hi, thank you. Mark Kepline, precinct 911 Palmer Street which is the block between Broadway and Mass Ave. Couple of statements that struck me was like one is like oh lofty high buildings will make those sidewalks more attractive to walk on but I think we all know that people given the choice between walking on Mass Ave or the bike path surrounded by trees choose the bike path and so even higher buildings won't make Mass Ave or Broadway any more attractive. So I'll be voting against any plan that is above the minimum. I don't know if any of you have followed the money to see what's behind this plan to increase the population of Eastern Massachusetts but there are some nonprofits. About half of the working group belong to one of them that are in favor of higher density and higher population and there's a statewide one which is coordinating with the other 174 communities to push this plan through. So the goal is to increase the population and that's to preserve a congressional house seats in Massachusetts. They'll be voting Democratic and in the 2030 and 2040 census and redistricting Massachusetts will lose seats unless we can keep up with the population growth of red states. Their success from good policies and low taxes make them attractive places to look and live. So that's the whole incentive behind this program but I value quality of living in Arlington. If I wanted density I would have moved to Boston or Cambridge or Somerville and I'm sure some of you also view support this. Thank you. The next speaker will be Adam Oster followed by Marina Papova. Thank you Madam Chair. Adam Oster and I live at 112 Park Avenue. Change is hard especially when it's next door or nearby but it's been 10 years since this board recommended a town meeting that we adopt a master plan that does exactly this. The idea was that along the corridors we would build housing. The housing would engender a lot of interesting walk through shops. The rest of the town the residential neighborhoods would be left intact and there'd be some pressure taken off of them for tear downs and housing and things like that. And this was the product of an extensive public process and I think it was, it strikes the right balance. So when I hear people using as their frame of reference the minimum requirements of state law and the regulations under the MBTA law to me, look, nobody likes to be told what to do. Even if it's something they've already decided to do maybe especially if it's something that they've already decided to do but we need to do this. And we need to do it both to satisfy the law but also to satisfy ourselves. And I hope the board, I expect the board will find some way to say to people who use density which would be kind of nice to have in these areas and even urban streetscape as if they were swear words. I hope you'll find some way to diplomatically say yes, that's exactly the point. Thank you. Thank you. The next speaker will be Marina Papova followed by Judith Garber. Hello, my name is Marina Papova. I live at 255 Ridge Street. And first of all, I want to say that we already all know that Arlington is as dense that we actually don't even need any MBTA law because we already comply with that. So I don't understand why you even call this proposal an MBTA compliance proposal. It really should be just called the very drastic increase in the housing density. That's what this proposal really is. So to all of those who are trying to shame those who don't like this proposal into being like anti-diversity and affordability and inclusion and so forth. I mean, have you actually read this proposal? This is not affordable whatsoever. There's nothing about the affordability in this proposal any more than what it is already is, right? So this proposal for those who are saying that the density is good for the climate change. I mean, I also don't understand that we are going to eliminate as many trees as the developers can. And if you're seeing that, oh, they are not gonna do that. I mean, think about that. On the Cutter Hill Road, they are blasting freaking rock formations to build new houses. You think they're going to stop cutting some trees? Give me a break. So the next one, it's not just the trees that are going to eliminate. Everybody here driving cars, be realistic. People who will buy those luxury homes that actually will be not affordable, they will bring their cars. There's gonna increase the traffic. There's gonna increase the CO2 emissions. Here's your impact on the client change, right? So, and saying that this is all the community wants. Again, I want to repeat, the community input was minimal. That survey that we had, that Southern people replied to, that's less than 1% of the population of Arlington. As many others say, many people have no idea this is going on. To make it truly democratic, fair and transparent, let people of the whole Arlington, all residents vote on this. And then you will see how many people for this proposal and how many on hold. Thank you, your time. Thank you. Thank you. The next speaker. We have been good for a while. The next time I hear applause like that, that will be the end of public comment. Judith Garber is next. Rachel Curtis is on deck. Hi, Judith Garber. I live on 130 Mass Ave in East Arlington. I live in a multifamily house and I would not be able to live in Arlington if I did not live in a multifamily house. And among many of my friends that live in Arlington, it is the same case. They definitely could not live here if there were not multifamily houses for them to live in. So I'm in support of this plan, just to put it simply. I have a couple of clarifications or questions about the reduced neighborhood district on Mass Ave in East Arlington that was mentioned. I understand that's for balance, but I think it would be better to keep the larger neighborhood district there because not only do the 77 bus, but you have the quick walk to Ale Wife, which is super convenient and it'd be nicer to have more people be able to live there and to be able to walk to the red line. In terms of the three versus four stories in the neighborhood district, I think you should just consider the impact on the accessibility since the fourth story is like the cutoff for when you would need to make it accessible. So if we're looking for that, we should consider that. And then about the affordable percentage of units, I wasn't sure if all the units are at 80% AMI or if some are lower. And I was wondering whether the group considered to have incentives also for lower AMI level, not just more affordable units. I also had a question from a friend about what is the ARB commercial zoning study area and the heights and when will town meeting know what it is? Thank you. Thank you. Your questions have been noted. The next speaker is Rachel Curtis. Hi, my name is Rachel Curtis and I live at Nine Trowbridge Street and I appreciate the opportunity to speak tonight. I wanna raise several concerns I have about the plan. The first one is to say that I'm very supportive of increasing the units of affordable housing in Arlington, but I'm much less enthusiastic about what appears to be a six to one ratio of what seems likely to be million dollar condos to affordable units. It's not clear to me how this approach is gonna support young middle income individuals and families finding reasonable priced housing in Arlington. My second concern is about this argument that the plan will encourage people to use public transportation and own fewer cars. I think that's much more likely in a truly high density environment like the one being developed right by L. Wife and Cambridge. Based on the overnight parking pilot underway, I anticipate that elimination of the overnight on-street parking ban will be the town's response to the lack of parking provided by developers. This means that the side streets and orange zones off of Mass Ave and Broadway will be filled with frequent, not just the cars of the people who work at businesses on those streets and the customers who frequent those businesses, which is a current situation, but also new residents who have no off-street parking options. Currently we have cars parked on both sides of our street all day making it hard to drive down the street in a car, much less an emergency vehicle. This will get much worse. I believe that developers need to share a greater share of the burden on parking demands. The fact that Arlington is both hurrying this process to meet the deadline of the fossil fuel ban pilot program and submitting a plan to you that vastly over complies with the state requirement for Arlington should concern us all. Any decision to go far beyond the state's mandate should become accompanied by a more rigorous inquiry and deliberate process. Thank you. The next speaker will be Daniel Skarnakia followed by Andrew Greensplod. Thank you, Madam Chair, and thank you to the board and for the opportunity to speak. I want to speak in support of this proposal. I think it's great and if town meeting needs alternatives, I would urge you to go further. That's because greater density has about a quarter of the emissions of lower density housing and if we're here concerned about climate, which many of the comments I've heard are, then I think we need to be focused on solutions like that. The other reason I think we should embrace this is because while I've heard a lot of concerns about the schools and also climate and traffic, consider what happens over the long term if you don't do build new housing. When you are in compliance with the bare minimum, you don't add housing. Younger folks, like myself, are not gonna be able to afford to stay. We're gonna have to move further out. It means we're probably gonna have to buy second cars to commute to our jobs, which is expensive and unfortunate. We are also going to gray, the community will gray as a result because we're gonna be moving further out. Sure, over the short term, your housing values will increase, but over the long term, as your community grays and your tax-based shrinks, those schools are also going to become less filled with children, and they're gonna start falling apart because there's no one here to pay the taxes you need to support them. So I would urge you to think about the benefits of increased density. It's gonna mean that younger folks can stay, can pay taxes, can patronize the businesses here. It means that your kids and your grandkids can stay here and buy in and be here over the longer term instead of having to move away and having the community dwindle and unfortunately become perhaps a shell of its former self because it is currently a great place to live. Thank you. Thank you. We have Andrew Greenspan next, followed by Aaron Holman. Andrew Greenspan, 89 Palmer Street. Thank you, Madam Chair. I'm in full support of the plan as currently proposed and wish the plan was even bolder. I have two friends near and dear to my heart. One is a social worker. One is a teacher. They have a toddler who is one of the Arlingtonians who will hopefully be here in 50 or 70 years if they can find a unit to live in. This family does not live in or own a single family home which is what most of Arlington is owned for. They don't live in a duplex which is the next largest zone in Arlington. They live in a two bedroom unit in one of the few multi-family apartments that do exist in town. One on Mass Ave, walkable to the 77 bus and two commercial centers. They love Arlington and would love to stay here and are hoping to be able to buy a property here but there's not enough regional housing stock including in Arlington especially smaller units that would exist in more multi-family zones and be cheaper than most tomes in the single and duplex zones at current. So they continue their search. It would sadden me greatly if they couldn't stay in this community. This proposal begins a process that will help folks like them. It won't be tomorrow, but it's a start. They didn't know about this proposal either until I told them about it in the past few weeks and when they read it, they said it makes complete sense that we need this more multi-family housing so people like them can also live here. We have many community members who live in this community who live in multi-family housing ranging from triple-deckers to four-story and even eight-story buildings on Mass Ave that existed before the 1970s exclusionary zoning. We walk by all those buildings every day, we see them. There are community members in there who have every right to be here and contribute to the community as anyone who lives in a single family house and I would love if more people such as them could live here to make Arlington more diverse. As I said, I support the current proposal from my understanding compared to every zoning amendment in recent history. In Arlington, this has been one of the longest, most transparent and most outreach to community members that has happened to construct a zoning proposal. It's been over eight months with multiple drafts posted every week on the town website. I know this doesn't mean everyone knows about it. Some are hearing about it for the first time but it means a large sample of residents have given perspectives to inform this proposal. Even now I run into people who haven't heard of it and when I explain it, a lot of them broadly state their support and I know a lot of people here or around are just hearing about the proposal and they have many questions and concerns and I hope the ARB working group and fellow residents can help answer over the next few weeks leading up to town meeting. Thank you. Thank you. The next speaker will be Aram Holman followed by S. Nicholas Cricchettos. Aram Holman, 12 Whittemore Street town meeting member precinct six. Thank you for listening to my comments. I'd like to explain why the working group decided on a rezoning that created three and a half times the housing capacity that the state required. That requires stating the guidelines that really applied to the working group, not the ones they told you. They are these three. One, build housing that is expensive as possible. Two, provide a politically necessary facade of affordability. Three, do not touch the R1 district. These all require explanation. The reason to build housing that's expensive as possible is that Arlington is competing with other towns for high income individuals who will pay with considerably less complaint the rapidly rising taxes that apply to Arlington housing. That's what we need to do to attract them. As a corollary that will drive out lower income individuals. Per the above, Arlington also prides itself on being progressive, diverse, and liberal. A token degree of affordability is necessary to preserve Arlington's desired self-image. Third, don't touch the R1 district. The R1 district is not to be touched because the R1 district is wealthier and more politically powerful. Hence, the decision to rezone only what are the densest portions of town which are less affluent and less politically powerful. The working group discussed at its meetings the fact that by upzoning denser areas the net increase in capacity would be considerably less and could even be negative. Despite that, they continued to decide to do that. The results of this rezoning will be perverse, the opposite of what is intended. It will be high-end, high-cost housing, uniformity instead of diversity, and green instead of green space. Thank you. 2046 can be reversed, can be increased. 7300 cannot. Thank you. The next speaker will be S. Nicholas Cricketos, followed by Michelle Rapp on deck. Good evening, Madam Chair. Good evening, committee members. Nicholas Cricketos, 80 Orvis Road, Arlington, Massachusetts. A very proud Arlingtonian and an alumni of the Arlington Public School System. I am deeply concerned with the proposed plan that you've presented, but I'm more concerned with the communication that went out. I have not received any of those communications. And in fact, some of the letters that possibly came to my home were torn open without any piece of mail inside. I have reported that. But I did receive that one card flyer about a week ago. Your plan, I believe, you know, I understand we need to have equity and I certainly understand we need to meet the obligations of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. However, I believe we've gone beyond what's allowed and gone a little further than what is expected of us. I understand that that is very important, but to compare ourselves to other towns with different tax brackets like Lexington, where they have different types of tax for industrial and for residential, Arlington may float that on the backs of its current taxpayers in the highly densely residential system we have. Additionally, I'm concerned about the services the town of Arlington offers, because as of now there are troubles keeping up with our school systems. There are troubles with our DPW, allowing them to actually do their jobs effectively. So my concerns with expanded outreach of these programs is just very concerning to me. And finally, as a comparison, the property across from Arlington High School that was recently redesigned. I just noticed I hear a lot of people talking about concrete and asphalt and high story buildings. There is no green space to speak of, except two little boxes with a couple hydrangeas in front that really no curb appeal is added, but more concerning the lack of green space. So I highly urge, I'm not in favor of this plan and I highly urge all of you to go back to the drawing table and work hard and I appreciate the work that you do, but I apologize, I can't support this. Thank you. The next speaker will be Michelle Rapp, followed by Larry Shotnik. Okay, we'll move right to Larry Shotnik, followed by Kristin Anderson. John C. Larry Shotnik. So let's go right to Kristin Anderson. Thank you, Kristin Anderson, 12 up on Road West. I'm a town meeting member and I run a business in the industrial zone in the Heights. I have attended every MBTA community's working group meeting since May and I can attest that the planning department, the town's consultant, UTIL and the MBTA community's working group have expended a significant effort in creating the new MBTA community's housing plan for the town. Thank you to everyone who has worked so hard on it. Arlington needs zoning for new housing. The current iteration of the MBTA community's housing plan achieves that and there are many good ideas in the new housing plan that are worth supporting. However, this has been a planning effort without input from Arlington's director of economic development as that position has remained unfilled throughout the MBTA community's planning process. The director of economic development is a crucial seat at Town Hall, especially at a time when changes are being proposed that will affect the future of our town. The MBTA community's housing plan district alternatives before us now require two key improvements. One, protection for all of the town's businesses and allowance for future commercial growth. Arlington needs commercial space for services that are important to our residents, including medical services, child daycare, grocery stores, law offices, museums, beauty salons, art studios, ambulances, pharmacists, bakeries, florists, gyms, optometrists, cafes, theaters, funeral homes, dentists, appliance repair, and the list goes on. Businesses provide local jobs and make Arlington a town worth living in. Local businesses make our neighborhoods more walkable and reduce reliance on cars. So I ask that all existing businesses be protected in this plan. Please remove from the new MBTA community's housing districts all parcels where Arlington's businesses exist. This is important not only for our existing businesses, but also for Arlington's future commercial growth. Thank you. Thank you. The next speaker will be John Warden. Would you like a handheld mic? Thank you. Thank you. Thank you, Madam Chairman. Well, this plan has so many problems that I couldn't possibly address even a significant percentage of them in two minutes. I think that the irony of calling the MBTA community is that the MBTA service has been cut to an all-time low. And for example, most people now can't even get to A.L. White Station, yet we're being punished for having that here. The plan is going to be implemented. If approved, which I hope it won't be, and implemented, which I hope it won't be, would basically destroy the town of Arlington as we know it. And there is, the environment, people talk about sustainability and the environment, climate change, you build new buildings, they're gonna tear down old buildings, throw out all that stuff, which is the carbon waste, but they're gonna build new things, heat islands, no open space. How about requiring all the new buildings to be not heat by fossil fuels? That would be something good for the environment. How about requiring maybe a little bit of green space so that the little oxygen can be produced? And there's so many things you could do that never apparently occurred. But so I've been writing the public transportation for almost 60 years, and it's never been this bad. And I've been living here, I'm a town meeting member for 53 years, and this is, these articles from the town meeting, they will be the worst thing that I have encountered during my tenure there. Thank you. So I urge you to please. Your time is up, thank you. Project this plan. Thank you. The next speaker will be Karen and Matthews, followed by Daniel Fulop. Good evening, Karen and Matthews, I'm a 13 Highland Ave. And that's, I live in the neighborhood zone, the four-story zone, and in a two-family home. And I've read the full proposal. I've attended the July 25th hearing, and I'm in support of this proposal. I'm encouraged and in fact inspired by the thoughtfulness and the eloquence of others in support of this proposal. I can't match their eloquence, but I'd like my comments in support of it to be a matter for the record. And I'd like to note that the hecklers in the audience, that the hecklers in the audience that voices in favor of this proposal match, it seems to me match or exceed the voices with concerns tonight, but they're not applauding every time someone in favor of this proposal speaks their mind. I ask that the ARB and viewers not let this room mislead you to believe that the majority of Arlington residents, Arlington voters, are represented in this room. For many families likely to support this plan coming to a three-hour Monday night meeting is a hardship or a non-starter. I look around this room and I do not see the many, many faces my fellow volunteers and I deliver groceries to for Arlington eats. This room is not representative of all of Arlington. No one has put more thought into this than the committee. No one talking about this with our friends has consulted more stakeholders than the committee. Heard more diverse voices in our community, including our fellow citizens who cannot show up to town meetings like this. This has been a remarkably inclusive process. With respect to town meeting, I'd like these maps to include the entire bounds of the town to represent an accurate visual proportion of the proposed changes. This is an incremental change and this is much smaller than the original proposal. It is a compromise. Perhaps as the gentleman earlier implied, the alternative the town meeting could see would show it on our one zoning for multifamily would look like. I encourage the working group or the ARB to note the most misleading and alarmist statements shared tonight and to supply all town meeting members with a plain spoken Q and A that addresses such misunderstandings raised tonight in an other public fora for the red herrings that they are. Thank you and thank you for all your hard work. Thank you. The next speaker will be Daniel Follop followed by Gordon Jamison. I don't see Daniel Follop so we'll move to Gordon Jamison. Followed by Matthew Weir-Garry, Waigiri. Thank you. My name is Gordon Jamison. I live on 163 Sitchwit Street. I'm a town meeting member from Precinct 12 and I am currently also the chair of the Board of Assessors. I want to thanks to all for their hard work and for people who have come out to this forum. I attended a July session and I have to admit I heard very similar comments on both sides of the issue. I've read the whole proposal and I think it's an excellent final product that is a compromise position as the previous speaker noted. And it does reflect as Mr. Oster noted, the smart growth respective in our master plan that I voted for on town meeting about 10 or 12 years ago. Still I'm looking forward to learning more but a couple of comments in my question. The first blush I like option one in the heights and I want to remind the Board that four stories gets you an elevator. Setbacks. Last meeting, last discussion about 10 feet versus 15. We were told 15 was required for street trees but not by the tree morden personally by word of mouth but you adopted 15 for street trees. What does that actually mean functionally in the business district such as those buildings by Arlington High School that no one likes. Business district has a zero setback but the building's not at the curb so I'm confused what 15 feet means. Is it 15 from the curb that 15 feet equals 15 feet? If it's from the sidewalk I measured mine from the back that's about another six feet. So if it's from the sidewalk 15 feet actually equals over 20 feet setback. But we only need 15 for the tree so I would suggest that the 10 foot that was originally recommended by the study board might be something to reconsider and I look forward to hearing that answer to that question and I look forward to passing this a town meeting. Thank you very much. Thank you. The next speaker will be Matthew Weigang followed by Bo Radokio. Matthew Weigang, 276 Massachusetts F. Walk down any street and you'll find endless rows of homes each with a family that likely raised kids. Children don't say that way for long and there haven't been commensurate homes made for these children for when they become adults. When economic supply and demand curves intersect it sets up price for a good. The decision by Arlington residents to raise families without a commensurate expansion in the supply of housing that will be demanded by the adult children of these families establishes a price of housing to be exorbitantly high. For many goods consumers can simply elect not to purchase something expensive but for housing the adult children of these families have no choice except to pay for whatever price the supply and demand curves intersect at. This cost can be pervasive in destroying a person's ability to live out a reasonable life. I arrived in 2015 working for Armstrong Ambulance up on Mystic Street as an EMT for 13, 20 an hour. I was performing a critical service for the town's welfare and safety and my rent for a mediocre single bedroom apartment basement apartment in East Arlington was $1,300. Do the math on that and you'll see that even when I was working over 40 hours a week more than half of my take home pay was going to some of the most modest single person housing I could find. It is unconscionable for this situation to have been allowed to develop in this town. I lost all social mobility because it took all of the time and money that I had just to buy the next week of my life. My entire contribution to society has been utterly curtailed from what it could have been because of housing costs. Go as big as you can with as much new construction as you can get people to build. Thank you. The next speaker will be Bo Radocchio and this will be our last speaker this evening. I was very clear at the beginning that the end of public comment was 10 p.m. And I asked, this is not a discussion. I was very clear at the beginning. You may leave the room. You may leave if you cannot be civil. Please. Please. Bob, Bob Radocchio. Thank you. Not Bo. That's my nickname, but anyhow. Thank you. I've lived in town for 83 years and I've been trying to explain to my neighbors and friends I see at Dunkin Donuts and about town, they ask me what do I know about it because I'm a town meeting member, they think I know everything, but anyhow, I tried to explain it. I said, but I'm really not sure. I need to read the details more and I've attempted to do that but I find it very confusing and complex. I'm not sure what I'm reading because it will be contradicted someplace else in the drafts and correspondence and everything else. So I'm trying to get it done. I'm honestly trying to figure out what it is we're trying to accomplish here without all of the peripheral stuff. And I find it's probably, it'd be easier for me to read War and Peace and understand what it's about than it is to go through this. And that's my difficulty with it and I'm trying to explain it to my friends. But my question is, what is the default or the backup plan if town meetings should reject this? Thank you. Thank you very much. I appreciate all of the speakers this evening. This will end tonight's public comment and we will move back to discussion from the redevelopment board. Thank you. That's enough. Anyone who was not able, as I mentioned at the beginning of the meeting. Order. Thank you. Order. Order. We will be moving on. As I mentioned at the beginning of the meeting, the public comment ended at 10 p.m. We are now moving back to the discussion of the redevelopment board. We are going to pause the meeting while we ask a police officer to come to help us remove some of these folks from the room who are causing a disturbance. Thank you. You can take your seats. We will be reopening the meeting. Thank you. So at this time, I'd like to turn the meeting over to the members of the redevelopment board for continued comments and discussion. What I would like to get to are the items that we would like to discuss further, whether it's this evening or perhaps which requires some further information ahead of our deliberation on October 2nd. So, Ken, I'll start with you for your initial thoughts. And then once I've heard from all three of the other board members, I'll run through the list that I'm keeping of topics that we will need to discuss further this evening and on the second. What I heard today, a lot of thoughtful comments, heartfelt comments from everybody. Excuse me, we're in the midst of a meeting. Thank you. We had a lot of comments today that people feel very passionate about. And I'd like to say that we will try to address as much as we can. It's kind of unfair for us to be able to answer every single question today. A lot of the questions were similar and you did a great job of typing them down. And we invite anybody else that wants to submit any more questions via email to us. And I would suggest that we get a matrix of all the questions and maybe we can respond some answers back to it. So that people feel like the questions they had were addressed. Were heard and addressed, yes. So we'll put them in some sort of matrix because a lot of questions are repetitive. So we'll just put, we'll group them into this was about schools, this one was about green space. We'll group them up and then we'll put our response to some of those questions on the other side as a response. And then we can make that public to everybody and we may have that at the next meeting. But I don't think I can go about addressing some of the questions that are answered today. There are some good questions and I would like to see if we can address those properly. That'd be my suggestion. Great, thank you Ken. Jean? I also appreciate all of the comments that were made and all of the many, many emails and letters that we received. I've read everyone that came in until five o'clock this afternoon. And if you weren't able to speak today or you have more to say, please, please send emails to the redevelopment board because I read all of them and think about all of them. I mean, I agree with Ken that there were a lot of comments that come into a few categories, which I think we can respond to. I would characterize some of them as, gee, I wish we could do more on climate. I wish we could do more on green buildings and I do too. We're somewhat constrained by the state law in what we're allowed to do in our zoning here, but also the town passed the stretch code at town meeting. So all of the buildings that are gonna get built in town are gonna be built to very, very high environmental and climate standards. And I think that's a good thing that everybody needs to know. There were also some questions about affordable housing. And for those I'd say our current bylaw requires one affordable unit at 60% of AMI, which is pretty low for each six units that are built in a project and what the committee, the working group has proposed is higher amounts if people wanna build extra floors onto their buildings. Now, the town is gonna have to convince the state that it's economically feasible for us to do this because the state limit is only 10% affordable where we've been more than 10% for a long time. But we are going to do that and I do have a hope that there'll be more affordable units coming through as a result of this. I mean, I have to appreciate everything that the working group did. I think stretching the districts along Mass Ave and Broadway gives us something that's really environmentally friendly, walkable, what are often called 15 minute neighborhoods where within 15 minutes you can walk to stores, you can walk to buses, you might have to wait 15 minutes for the bus, but you can walk to buses. And I appreciate that they did that and I think that's in keeping with the spirit of many of the plans of the town and in keeping with the spirit of trying to make the town as environmentally sustainable as possible. And we're gonna have a discussion about what we would like to change and refine in the working group proposal. So if you stick around, you'll hear that too. So thanks again, everyone. Steve. Sure, one question I remember hearing a lot was, well, what if town meeting doesn't pass this? So the reason why we're on the schedule we're on is because back in 2020, we town meeting adopted some legislation or a warrant article that authorized the filing of the whole rule petition so that we could basically ban fossil fuel hookups in new installations. Now the legislature didn't, 10 cities and towns passed similar things and the state basically came up with a pilot program rather than granting each one, each town what they had filed for a home rule. They just said, okay, we're gonna take 10 communities and go with it. But there are strings attached to that. So in order to be one of those 10 communities, you have to qualify. Qualifying means having 10% of our housing on the subsidized housing inventory, which we're not even close, or adopting a multifamily district of reasonable sizes and compliance with section 3A. Now at one point, we as a working group discussed, well, do we think we can do a good enough job and get something passed or get something adopted in time? And we decided that since town meeting had sort of basically taken us down this path, we had a responsibility to town meeting to bring something forward in time to qualify for the deadline. Now I understand if, from my personal perspective, town meeting is the one who brought us into this program, town meeting should be the one to take us out. If town meeting feels that this is not ready, then it is a fairly simple amendment to just move no action or to vote it down. We are not required to do it until the end of 2024. So if town meeting really wants more time, there is another year to work on this. Thank you, Steve. Jean? I just want to say a couple of other things. I know some people have said this is going to be transformative for the town. I want to point out that the current working group proposal affects 109.1 acres of the town. The town is 3,517.5 acres. That's about 0.3% of the town is going to be affected by this. So it's not like this is a big transformation of much of the town. It's a transformation of a long message of massive and Broadway and just off massive and Broadway. And what the board had asked the working group to do and they did is not put any commercial, any commercially zoned parcels in this because we felt like we needed to preserve the commercially zoned parcels. In addition, what they've proposed is that even in these residential districts, people can build mixed use buildings with commercial or offices on the ground floor. So not only are we protecting all of the areas that are currently zoned commercial or industrial, we are also incentivizing to hopefully get more modern commercial and office spaces built on those thoroughfares. So I just did want to mention those two other things. Great, thank you, Jean. So let me run through the list that I have been keeping of items that I believe need to be discussed by the board. Some of these may need more research and discussion beyond this evening. Obviously we have until October 2nd. I will mention that there will be more information too for those who could not join us this evening. Claire, correct me if I'm wrong at town day as well. That's correct. We'll have a booth at town day. Sorry, excuse me. Yes, DPCD and MBTA communities will be have a booth and Q and A available all day at town day. That's great. And that is before the redevelopment boards, deliberation and voting and enacting any additional changes that need to occur on this proposal on October 2nd. So still more time for, plenty of time for public input. So the list that I currently have and let's make sure that I do have everything is to evaluate the site's reading standard and whether certifiable or certified is what we feel is appropriate for a bonus. We need to further discuss parking and whether the inclusion of a parking maximum rather than our existing parking minimums is a new standard that we would like to introduce in this overlay district. We need to look at affordable housing, specifically the subsidized housing inventory requirements as well as the rounding up of any percentage versus what is currently in our requirements as well as the recommended percentage increases for the two bonus floors to 22.5% and 25%. We need to ensure that there is language in this plan regarding the combination of lots so that we can preemptively address situations where one parcel is in the overlay district and one which is not. We need to review the site plan review requirements. There may be information that is currently missing around the number of representatives needed to vote in favor to approve, whether it's a simple majority or like sections of EDR, it would require four votes. I'm assuming that there is probably also an establishment of rules and regulations regarding the site plan review process that we should decide whether or not to include reference to within this foreign article. I would like us to go through the list of dimensional controls that were identified for elimination. There were some that Jean and I had questions on having not been part of the discussion. You know, they may all wind up being fine, but we just need to discuss them further. Believe that we do not currently have a definition of multifamily housing in our zoning by-law. It's currently defined in mass general law, but not the Arlington zoning by-law. And that, again, since so much of this is in reference to, and we do reference in the foreign article, multifamily housing, we'll need to add that to the definition section. On the map, I would like us to discuss whether or not we exclude the parcels east of Orvis in East Arlington for a business district rezoning much in the way that we have eliminated those parcels in Arlington Heights on Mass Ave, which will be addressed in the spring for the Arlington Heights business district review. Our original intent was to begin with Arlington Heights and then address East Arlington soon thereafter. This would ensure that we are not zoning those parcels in East Arlington this year with the overlay district for multifamily, for MBTA communities, and then again, in another year or two. We should discuss the neighborhood sub districts and whether a four-story or three-story max is what the board would recommend. We heard that several times this evening as well. And we need to ensure that the solar by-law section, which is required under EDR, is referenced within this overlay district to ensure that it applies to the buildings in the overlay and also whether or not that applies just to Mass Ave and Broadway or also to the neighborhood sub districts. Can I add one more thing? Please. Also the setback that happens if the property's at a corner lot, how's that setback turn to corner? We had talked about that our last meeting about this and we're gonna look into that study. Okay. I don't believe the working group talked about that, but that's something that we should talk about and say how's that gonna work on a corner lot. Okay. Jean, did you have any additional items that I may have missed? Okay. Please. Okay, Steve. Oh, sorry, Jean, if you could just speak into the microphone. There are some working things we can discuss. Okay. Steve. I'll bring it up on Mr. Benson's behalf, the parking minimum. So one of, okay, yeah. So our sort of rationale for zero was as we have heard applicants come before is no one is going to build housing and the applicant's going to try to, we'll have some parking. They need this in order to get funding, but the working group's mindset was not to overrequire, basically. If we are starting with parking, I'll respond. Sorry, I just have one more item to put into the list. I would want to ensure that we review the map to ensure, I know that we have excluded historic districts, but in terms of historic properties, my understanding was it was the intent to exclude properties that are currently on the list of historic properties in the town of Arlington. And if any of those have been included, I would want to discuss whether the board feels that those should be excluded from the final map as well. And existing churches. And whether or not churches as well. And we need to choose between alternative, one alternative, two more. Thank you. Okay. So let's start with parking. And again, we are getting close on time this evening. I think again, a lot of this will come through in deliberation, but there are, what I'd like to get to this evening is if there is, if there's any information that we are going to request of either the working group, the Department of Planning and Community Development, et cetera, that we identify that this evening so we are fully prepared for the deliberation on October 2nd. Steve. So offhand, I will put out three things, three pieces of information that I think would be useful. Okay. So one, the change in capacity if the East, if parcels in East Arlington, East of Orvis Road are removed. Number two is the change in capacity if the neighborhood multi-family district maximum height is reduced from four to three. And item three is the change in capacity if the minimum parking requirement is one space per dwelling unit versus not none. Capturing all of those. So the, what would be the change in capacity if the parcels East of Orvis are removed? And in order to do that, that's the parcels East of Orvis on Mass Ave, we would need to add back in to continue to make that a continuous, a contiguous land area. We would need to add back in the neighborhood sub districts behind those parcels in order for that to remain contiguous. So we would need to make sure that that was added back in, right? So it's a plus and a minus in that. Okay. The capacity for minimal parking, if the minimal parking unit is one space per unit, and then the last one, Steve, there were three. That was three. And along with parking, the, I mean, there's just the more general policy of, you know, if will we allow reductions sort of as a bonus with TDM as we do now. Right. The other one that you would mention was the change in capacity if we move to three stories instead of four in the neighborhood sub districts. Any other, in order to have these discussions, any other information that we would need from either the consultant or the Department of Planning and Community Development? He's gonna get that together for us for the next meeting. Okay, great. Did you have any other items? No, I think that would do it if we get, yeah. Okay. Until we find as more. Any other comments or discussion this evening on any of these items that we've run through on this list or on this warrant article in general? Starting with Steve. Nothing else for this evening other than to say it's been an iterative process and we will continue through the iterations. Great, thank you. Jean. There are some wording concerns that I have. They're not substantive. There are wording concerns that I can share later. That would be great. And I would say for any members of the Redevelopment Board, if you do have at its major or minor to the language of the main motion, if you could send those to Claire and myself and we will make sure that those are fully tracked so that we have a clean copy or a copy, excuse me, a copy with the proposed changes that we can review together when we do meet again on October 2nd. Yeah, if you just get us those list of questions that came out today and future questions, I would like to propose a meeting with the working group, at least give our pass at it and then whatever pass we wanna do as the board to. Yes, I'm happy to send this directly to the working group. Thank you. Yes. I will also ask Claire if you have any final thoughts or questions for the board in terms of feedback that would be helpful at this juncture or anything else that you need from us at this time. I think not at this time. I am looking forward to receiving the solicit questions from the board. I did take notes here, notes on the community input as well and we will try to coordinate the matrix as Ken suggested and work on that red line document as well. Thank you. Great, thank you so much. So thank you to everyone who has joined us this evening. At this time, I would like to see if there is a motion from the board to continue the public hearing for fall 2023 special town meeting to the evening of September 18th. So motion. We can if there's, that's what I had just asked, Gene. So if there are items that you would like to discuss further at this time, that's if I was unclear, that's what I was just asking. So all the lists were gonna be. We would say for deliberation on the second. Again, unless there's something that you would like to discuss in greater detail. I think that if we have deliberation on the second, we're not gonna be on time to discuss them. We have so many things to discuss. We have so many things to discuss. I think we have to find another date between now and the second to discuss them. So this is what I, I don't know that we have another date between now and October 2nd. What we can do is let us see where we get with the, with the, with being able to address the items that the questions that came through this evening. Again, Gene, if there are some items that you feel are gonna, will need some substantial discussion that you would like to start this evening. We can certainly, we can certainly do that. But I think it, it sounds like we need some of this information, as Steve just mentioned in terms of the additional capacity calculations for some of these discussions as well. I mean, there are some, there are some things where we need those calculations. Yes. But some of them we don't. Sites is one example where we don't. We can make a decision about parking and that will drive either needing the calculation for parking or not. We can make the decision about 304 story on the neighborhood zone and that will drive the need for a calculation or not. We can make the decision about what to do about mass avis to orvis and expanding the side streets. And that will either drive the need for that information or not. It's all needed, but it all depends upon what we decide to do. So again, typically we would save that for the deliberation. I'm happy to discuss the three items that require the calculation so that to your point, we decide whether or not we actually need those or not. So let's prioritize those gene tonight and we'll see how far apart we are on that. And if it looks like we will need those in order to make a decision, we'll table it. Otherwise let's, let's just see where we are with those three items. So we have meetings to 18th, 25th and second, right? No, we have meetings the 18th and the second. None the 25th? No. And would that having to be in the 25th for that being time or no? It's a holiday. I am looking to see, I believe that that's a holiday. That is Yom Kippur. Oh, sorry. It's okay, that's why we stayed away from that date. Can we read something all the time that week? We'll need to look at it. At schedules. The other thing that we will need to do as well as we are going to need to add in a meeting between October 2nd and the start of town meeting where we can review and approve the Redevelopment Board report to town meeting. So Claire, we are going to need to look for a meeting date preferably, I believe October 9th is a holiday, most likely on October 10th. Okay. I'm traveling the rest of that week. Okay. And I think Jean, No, that's the week. Sorry, that's the week that Jean is traveling. I'm traveling the rest of that week. I'm traveling the rest of October. But I can do it on the 10th. Okay. What is some of the stuff that Jean wanted to talk about? I would like to have some numbers. Like zero parking or one parking. I like to see what those numbers come out to as far as density and so forth like that. Okay. And same, the same way with three floors versus four floors. I want to see what those numbers come up to because we're so, so we cut back a lot and we're so balanced right now that an arbitrary change of going from four stories to three stories could be a major, it could change the whole map. That's why I want to see, how's that affected before I talk about that? Because then you don't have the, it could be a consequence that by changing it, you don't understand what was the cause of it. So I would like to wait on that, if that's okay with you, Jean. Well, let's wait on all of them. I'm just trying to have the information in front of me. Can you, I'm sorry. I'd say we can wait on all of them and maybe have a seven or eight hour meeting on October 2nd. Well, let's, we'll review the agenda accordingly for that evening and then ask for that information ahead of time. Okay. So with that being said, is there a motion to continue the public hearing for the redevelopment board board articles for fall 2023 special town meeting to September 18th? So motion. Second. We'll take a vote starting with Steve. Yes. Jean. Yes. Ken. Yes. And I may yes as well. This is continued to September 18th. We do not have new business on the agenda this evening other than to, like I mentioned, set a date for a short meeting where we would review and approve the Arlington Redevelopment Board report to town meeting. So would October 10th work clear for you and the department, would that give you enough time? We'd need to post that by that Friday. So we would meet on the second. We'd need to post the draft of the report on the sixth in order for us to meet on the 10th. Okay. We should be able to do that. To do that. Okay. Go ahead. So it would be the fifth. I think so. Right. So it would be the fifth? Yep. I know that's a fast turnaround. Perhaps we could tentatively look at that and then next week we'll finalize that date. That sounds good. Okay. So if you could talk about that and we'll put that on the agenda to discuss next week. Great. Steve, is that data possibility for you? Are you used to the fifth? The 10th of October. I will make it work. Okay. I'm fine. Okay. So we will review that. On September 18th. Okay. With that being said, is there a motion to adjourn? So motion. There's a second. Second. We'll take a vote starting with Steve. Yes. Jean. Yes. Ken. Yes. And I'm a yes as well. Thank you very much. This meeting is adjourned.