 Good evening and welcome to the Town of Arlington Redevelopment Board meeting on December 18th, 2023. I'd like to call this meeting to order. My name is Rachel Zenberry. I am the chair of the Redevelopment Board. And if the other members could please introduce themselves. Steve Rapalak. Eugene Benson. Anna Corman-Houston. Can allow. And we also have with us tonight Claire Ricker, the director of the Department of Planning and Community Development. And Claire, would you like to introduce your new colleague who was joining us this evening? I would love to introduce my new colleague. So the new assistant director for planning and community development, Sarah Suarez, is joining us this evening. This is her first redevelopment board meeting. And we are thrilled to have her. Well, welcome. We are very, very much looking forward to working with you. Congratulations. Great. So let's go ahead and move into our first agenda item this evening. We have a packed agenda and we will move through it as quickly as we can. So the first agenda item is the review of the meeting minutes from December 4th, 2023. I will first ask if there are any revisions or corrections from any member of the board starting with Ken. No, I have none. Sheena. No. Gene. I have none. And Steve. Madam Chair. I do not have any changes either. Is there a motion to approve the meeting minutes as submitted? So motioned. Second. Great. Thanks. We'll take a roll call vote starting with Steve. Yes. Gene. Yes. Sheena. Yes. Ken. Yes. And I am a yes as well. Those meeting minutes have been approved. Moving on, we will move to the conservation commission proposed warrant article. And I will turn it over to Claire for an introduction. Thank you very much. So these are two proposed warrant articles that have been vetted by the conservation commission to be progressed by DPCD and potentially the ARB warrant articles for zoning. One is related to the inland wetland district overlay. And the other is a proposal for rezoning open space, which I think is an item the board was interested in looking at anyway. So I'd like to introduce David Morgan, who is our environmental planner and conservation agent. And he will walk us through the proposed warrant articles. Fantastic. Thank you. And thank you, David. Steve, if I could ask you to please relocate that microphone. If you and Jean wouldn't mind sharing, that would be fantastic. David, do you have any other guests that have joined you this evening? Chuck Turoni, vice chair of the conservation commission. Great. Thank you. Great. And we'd love it if you could take us through the two articles. We can maybe start with the first and have discussion unless you'd like to do both of them and then have a discussion afterwards. Do the first one. Perfect. That sounds great. First, yeah. So the inland wetland district has come up in recent redevelopment projects as sort of a question. Sure. Yes. And I do apologize for anyone who is speaking this evening. The HVAC is a bit loud, so you do need to project over it a bit. We don't have microphones currently in the room that are projecting this evening. Thank you. So the inland wetland district has come up as a bit of a question mark recently in redevelopment projects. The district is on the books as what I understand as a pre-wetlands protection act way of achieving the same goals through zoning. And since then, of course, we've had almost 50 plus years of the conservation commission and State Wetlands Protection Act on the books, our local vial, of course. It's been around many decades and very robust document. The concern with the inland wetland district is that it's principally outmoded. The fact is conservation commission supersedes pretty much all fronts. And so we've gone and checked with the zoning board of appeals to see if it would be effective for them to continue having zoning oversight of the wetlands district. Their feeling is that it's duplicative. We don't really need to have the inland wetland district on the books. And more to the point, it's erroneous, let's say. The data that are suggested that the town holds in the wetland district language is not actually represented in the zoning maps that we provide to the public, for example. There's a lack of communication about what the definition of the district is in the first place that, you know, we're at present and we's unable to communicate what this really means to the public. That's, of course, a pretty easy thing to fix. We can just update maps and so forth. But I think our time would be better spent with the expertise of the commission being the go-to for all inland wetland concerns. And, of course, we have a robust permitting process established in town. The expertise of the commission is held in very high regard. We have a very well-educated, very informed, very responsible commission. And Conspectional Services, EBA, and I agree from where I sit in planning that we're all on the same page. We would like to just take it off the books. I don't think it makes sense to have, in the zoning any longer, we gain no additional benefit from the zoning enforcement. We already have mechanisms for that via concom. Hello. I'm Chuck Taroni. I'm the vice-chair of the Arlington Conservation Commission. And only to say that the Conservation Commission voted at its last meeting on December 7 to support this unanimous. I have to agree with everything David said about the zoning district and I've worked in two other communities, but they also abolished the zoning district and left it up to the Conservation Commission. And so the Conservation Commission is very well capable of managing the Wetlands Protection Act and the town Wetlands Protection Dialogue under regulations. So it's just supported by the commission. Fantastic. Seems pretty straightforward. I'll see if any of the members of the board have any questions on this first of two proposed warrant articles. Starting with Ken. I'm just very supportive of what you guys said. I think it's time to shift over. I do have one ten-general question to this, okay? And it has nothing to do with what you're speaking right now. Is it loosely related? Yes. Okay. There's a, I think it's called a no-name stream or river that runs through Arlington. Yes. No name broke. No name broke, okay? I'm not sure. Is it ever wet? Or is it? Maybe today. Maybe today, okay. How's the commission addressing that? Because I know a few years back someone did an addition and it had to be taken down because it was within the setbacks of the broke. And it wasn't clearly identified. I mean, I believe the owner did everything right. And they just somehow stood through the cracks. I just want to say can we do something about that so it doesn't happen in the future because it was a real shame. Yes. So I don't know what year that happened, but we have been working on our maps throughout the town, our GIS system. And when you go to the wetlands GIS maps in the town of Arlington, it casts a jurisdictional marker around all the properties that the conservation commission has to review. And this has helped not only homeowners and residents of Arlington, but the building department also has increased their calls to the conservation commission to allow us to get a first look at some of these projects prior to them being built. We've made some steps. I'm not sure when this happened, but that is very unfortunate. I would say I'm an old timer here. So maybe you might know too. I don't. It was probably eight, maybe nine years ago. It was a pretty big, I feel real bad, but homeowner. Yeah, I'll have to look into that. I don't. It doesn't ring a bell. It's the no-name brook that they're back out right there. They did a family room addition. I just want to make sure that there's somehow clear enough information that this doesn't happen again. That's all I'm saying. Absolutely, yes. It's mapped currently and we're doing a study of it with CPA dollars to see how we can enhance that. Okay, and there's a certain, a short list where they go through saying, hey, you have to follow within these criteria. Here's here, there's certain things you have to sort of follow. And these are people you've got to contact to make sure you're within, you know, there's a little small checklist is all I'm asking. Yeah, I think there's definitely a checklist and certainly is reviewed. As these places become known, it becomes more obvious to the building department, to all the departments to understand that, you know, they remember stories like you just told us. And so no-name brook would probably be looked at a lot more and remembered by not only all the neighbors, but the first stop is the building department. Everyone in town realized it's for many years that they need a building department permit to do any kind of work. The same is not true with conservation permits. So that surprise is built in. And so we have to intercept that prior to what happened here, which was a foundation, a permitting process, a review. I mean, there was a lot of time spent there that the conservation commission wasn't aware of its projects. And not fortunately, probably wouldn't have been allowed if it was, you know, asked to be removed. So it's good to check all the boxes prior to, you know, for the town and for all the committees, you know, the same home or just to make sure that they're heading in the right direction. Thank you. Great. Shayna. I think this is likely a great path to be going down. It does seem to make a lot of sense to me. Are there areas that the removal of the district would leave unprotected or less protected that ConCon does not have in its purview, but the district does? So the answer to that has to be yes and no. And I'm not trying to do a delicate dance here. But you are. But the fact of how it's defined currently is kind of no man's land. And if strictly interpreted, there may be places where this applies, but ConCon doesn't have jurisdiction. But it doesn't have a formal definition that works. And so I think any tweak that we would make to it in order to correct it, like if we were going to go that route instead, we would wind up aligning it with the ConCon's jurisdiction. And it's similar to the flood plain. Those are overlapping entirely. Thank you. Great clarification. Thank you for the question. Gene. Yeah, I have two or three questions. One was related to Shayna's question about whether there's not a perfect overlap between the two. So the current inland wetland district is for a horizontal distance of 200 feet from the centerline of any perennial river, brook, or stream. So I'm just wondering what the conservation commission jurisdiction is. Is it 200 feet or is it less? For a stream, it would be, so perennial stream, it would be 200 feet from that. So it's the same. And for intermittent stream, it would be 100 feet from that. So this doesn't have intermittent streams in there? Well, it sounds like in that situation, the worst case scenario would be 200 feet. So if you had an inland wetland district on a intermittent stream, you're casting 100 more feet than you need to. Maybe this is... You know, this is just perennial. It doesn't deal with intermittent streams at all. So my second question is, in the past few years, has there anything that hasn't gotten to the conservation commission, but the building inspector's gotten something and said, oh, wetland district, therefore I can't do something, and sends it to the conservation commission? Because this sort of overlaps a lot with your jurisdiction, I agree. But I just wonder if there are times where, because the building inspector implements this, but he doesn't implement your regulations, if this is sometimes an entree into wetland regulations. I think that would be a great conversation started with David and the building inspector. So David, you may know of a few. Did that happen? No, I don't. I'm not aware of any circumstances where the building inspector caught in the wetland district. Yeah, I'd be interested in having a conversation with head of inspectional services to make sure that's the case, because I just think this is a really good idea, but I just want to make sure that we're not losing something important in the process. We need to say that conversation should have a politics or perception that there may be, you know, no-name brook ends at some point. What is the next three houses, and maybe David and the building commissioner wants to talk about those, just to make sure that they're not in the conservation jurisdiction that all starts with communication. Yeah, so my other question is, in addition to the Inland Wetland District overlay in the zoning bylaw, we also have a floodplain district overlay. How come you're not coming to us, asking us to get rid of that, too? The floodplain overlay district is required by law in order to participate in the national flood insurance program and so on. So there are many eligibility requirements that necessity in the floodplain district I very likely will be coming back to you in the future to change the language of the floodplain district because FEMA told us back in June or July of this year that they were going to update their flood maps and with that process, when they finally get back around to individual municipality conversations, they suggest tweaks to the zoning language of the floodplain district so that's on the horizon. Okay, thanks. That's all my question. Great, thank you, Gene. Steve. Just as a little bit of history, Arlington re-hotted zoning bylaw in 2017 and 2018 and one of the points of discussions was how to handle these two overlay districts and the overlap with the conservation commission. The conservation commission's jurisdiction and what we tried to do at the time was to sort of separate wetland stuff from used stuff so that what was in the zoning bylaw dealt with land uses and everything else went to the conservation commission's jurisdiction. Re-reading this section there's not necessarily a whole lot of substance in terms of land use. So I agree that the conservation commission is you guys are a very much a bright dedicated people who know what you're doing and you're completely capable of handling this stuff. So I'm generally supportive of removing it. Great, thank you, Steve. And I am supportive as well. I did make the note to follow up with Mike Champa and the NISD question that Jean asked regarding whether there are any cases that the building department would have caught because of the overlay rather than the other vehicles that you've already provided to them when they know to call concom for a review just to make sure that we can all effectively answer that question when it comes in front of town meeting. Great. Any other questions before I ask them about the second proposed article? Great, let's move on to the second article. Right. So there are a total of 68 districts, sorry, not districts, parcels in Arlington where we've identified open spaces the principal use, yet they are zoned many different they're in different districts. They can be residential or most development, I mean it doesn't matter all across the board but the thing that unites them of course is that they are open space parcels. So these range from the cemeteries for example to parks and playgrounds recreation properties, conservation properties et cetera and following the open space plan and the public land management plan that identified the owners and managers of all of these parcels we would like to shift the zoning to reflect the use and we'll have a later conversation about who owns and who manages which pieces. This is sort of the first step in that direction and as you will all be familiar this designation comes with pretty happy use restrictions so the way that I've gone about identifying these parcels is first to look at our open space and recreation plan inventory compare that with the existing zoning map and find the discrepancies and then anything else that fits the definition of open space in this open space district section of the bylaw specifically saying that structures are ancillary to the principal use which is open space I've added a few in that meet those criteria and have been identified by others as open space parcels so I think that's really long and short of I think cleaning up the zoning in this regard in the town to know what it has to be able to do the count effectively each time we need to account for all of our open space to better as I said earlier assign responsibilities in light of open space zoning will improve efficiencies in terms of management and use and so forth and put together a list of the properties in question there are 15 that are loosely themed around reclamation those are mostly zoned R1 and R2 we also have 18 that are used for conservation purposes R1 multi-use plan unit development or R0 currently broke out a separate segment of cultural and historic uses these are ones with historical significance of course or they might actually be there's one odd one in this category that's the little park right next to the high school where I forget the name of the condos that are right next to the high school there but they put this in as open space in a constructed weapon back there and that is a cultural use in my designation there are four properties that are privately held those are mostly affiliated with the Bedford Boat Club or the Winchester and Belmont Common Clubs there's also one conservation restriction owned by the Wharton family these are all zoned R0 R1 for those properties totaling eight parcels the recreation park and rec committee has supported voted support this rezoning likewise for conservation and open space committee all in support of this the cemetery commission has questions what it really means and how they'd like to proceed so I would recommend further engagement with them if you all decide to take this up but I think I'll stop there and see if there are any questions just great thank you my first question is do you have a map currently of this and is that something that maybe we could follow up with the board okay great and my second question is is there a map that overlays the current open space plan to see I'm assuming some of these are included in the open space plan and some of them are not those are the two questions that I have I'll go to Ken two quick questions I also agree this is so far except for your five districts I have issues with only one of the districts and that is the private one right now the voting club the yacht club already a country club and all that stuff there is if they ever close or if they ever decide to change it would come open space it would be zoned as open space so nothing can happen to it besides what's there that is a shame I really think golf clubs are the worst land use anything and everything that goes through the day waste of money waste of land everything okay so and I would hate to turn that back to open space you know we have we have a beautiful water edge we could that could always be developed for other people I would definitely not leave it as R0 R1 where you put mansions up there I would definitely like to see if we can change that to a higher R value so there are a few more people that can live there and share if these things ever change so that's the only thing I would take out of that say let's look at this some more and see if we can do something in that four properties or nine parcels whatever saying that's let's use that open space I guess you could call it open space it's not really an open space but it is because it's not shared by everybody it's private open space so you know and I would like to make it such that where it could become public or be more for the town where it could be more housing there you know and it could be a full range not just rich mansions there where it's like 5 or 6 from the plot there along there because it's R0 and R1 if you increase it to R6 or something like that then you have a density there where you can increase and make it so that everybody can live there or at least an opportunity for people to live there I'll believe it at that and then does this include the open space that we have right now we have is it in Belmont we have this we lease this land from great metals we can't zone but that's open space do we count that as part of ours or theirs or is it nothing I'm not sure what Lexington does and whether they're double counting but we do count it as so we do count that as open space for us so we own it but do we count that as open space for I've never seen it in any thing saying we have limited open space I think it's in the open space plan that we reviewed close to recently we had a little bit of a discussion that's the only reason I remember that one I mean it's a great place to bike yes and walk I'm not doing it yet that's all I had okay, thank you Ken Sheena I think Ken makes an important distinction between the public and the private open space I would worry about the burden on individual property owners I think there is a lot of value in clarifying the parcels clarifying the zoning of the parcels but I agree that leaving out privately held parcels might have value for slightly different reasons than candidates Gene so right now when I find it our definition of open space district includes parcels under the jurisdiction of a number of things doesn't mention private owners right so if we would do this we would also need to change the definition of open space district to include private ownership but it also says structures where present are clearly accessory to the principal open space and recreation function of the properties and I think there are a number of properties here where the primary use is not the open space but the primary use is the house such as Jason Russell house where the primary use is the house it's not the land in front of it the Medford boat club where it's mostly building and places for the boat and not very much open space I say that's the opposite of what is currently in the definition I think a few months ago at one of the meetings I said gee I wonder why the cemeteries are zoned residential and I don't know if that was one of the impetuses for this but when I got this I did some research about that and what I found not for Arlington but in general that most cemetery areas ended up being zoned residential areas were growing and they were like where are we going to put things they decided we don't want the cemeteries in industrial areas we don't want the cemeteries in commercial areas so they tended to zone them to be in residential areas so then I looked at what is the current zoning of cemeteries and I obviously couldn't look everywhere but I just looked for some general information and in many places they're still zoned residential in some places where they're not zoned residential they're zoned specifically for cemetery with a definition of what cemetery is that includes burials and prematoria and things like that that we have in our definition and I found very few that are actually zoned as open space so I think that the Cemetery Commission has some questions I think it may be worth considering speaking with them and maybe looking at setting up a separate district called Cemetery for them and creating a definition of what a cemetery district would be so I think we should think about that the private properties I guess I have a couple things with the private property owners we can certainly ask to rezone someone's property without their permission but we should certainly ask them what they think about this and whether they'd be interested in going ahead or not and sort of building on what Ken and Shayna said the problem legally with zoning somebody's property is open space is then you've taken away all the economic value that they have for the property and it amounts to a taking and they could theoretically sue the town for taking the town even to rezone or the town would have to pay for the economic value of the property that they've lost so I have a little concern about the constitutional problem potential problem let's say rezoning private property for open space for those reasons and also I know at least one it says has a conservation restriction but those can be lifted so they're not forever so it's not as if there's a conservation restriction that's a reason to make them open space perhaps but it also would allow them at some point to say we'd like to make an economic use of the property if you don't let us do that look at all these wonderful US Supreme Court cases that say we can sue and get money so I have some concern about the private properties both because the boat club doesn't really meet the definition of open space I couldn't find where that conservation restriction I think the information said it was on Brantwood Road because I lived nearby and I couldn't get somewhere but I didn't know where it was and I couldn't find it I looked at the assessors database couldn't find it there either I don't know where it is it would be sort of spot zoning that little place spot zoning is not necessarily illegal but it does raise that concern also about in a residential neighborhood just spot zoning a little place so I like the idea of the recreation places in general I like the idea of the current conservation places in general but I think I would want to look at each one individually and see if they make sense historic cultural you know what some this is the other thing I looked up but what some communities have done for those things is rather than zone them as open space they zone them as public administrative space or governmental space or something like that so they're not specifically seen as open space which is more open spaces with not much on them but something that you know like which might be appropriate from Monument Park Jason Russell House I might want to take a look if that's a better designation for some of them than open space so maybe we need a cemetery zone for the cemeteries probably that would make sense at this point we might need some sort of public realm zone for the historic cultural ones that are public not sure what to do with the private ones but it would be worth having some conversation I think with them about that and then maybe the others would fit into an open space zone but I'd want to look at everyone each one of them and see that's where I am on that now I wanted to let you know that most conservation restrictions we try to there's a tax benefit so it might line up a little bit better in open space then we first look at it but I did like the other points you made when I was unaware of the Medford Bow Club it's mostly structure so that's interesting and golf might not be fighting the other side but the golf areas don't they just sell off some part of their land you know what I think was interesting I asked somebody so what part of the I don't belong to the Winchester Paltry Club by the way but I did ask somebody sort of what parts in Arlington is this correct they said it's the parking lot so if it's the parking lot if that's correct does it make sense to have the parking lot be zoned up and spit several holes in the parking lot so we need to think about whether you know it makes sense to zone the parking lot as open space maybe there are a few holes let's get the map which is something we've requested so I think we're headed in a really good direction with this but I think we need to look at the things I talked about great I want to go back to your first point just before you enter can I just remind everybody to please project for everybody who has joined us this evening so thank you the definition that you mentioned at the absent where it says jurisdiction of park and rec or concom it's not factual conservation commissions jurisdiction extends into myriad private properties we're talking about ownership and management we're not jurisdiction and so I think we want to clarify that in the definition I was also anticipating this question about the cemeteries in that space of the definition to say maybe it's also of the cemetery commission but I hear your points about cemeteries that history is very interesting and obviously we need to chime in there it doesn't say that every property in the jurisdiction of the conservation commission is open space what it says is the reverse which is some open space is in the jurisdiction of the conservation commission I mean it's a little vague but that's I think the better way to read it great thank you Gene, Steve thank you so I'll start by agreeing with Mr. Benson regarding the way we have the definition of open space district in our bylaw you know where structures are clearly an accessory and I agree with him that a lot of the historic properties like the Jason Russell house the structure is the main feature of the parcel I was wondering in the I did look at the map linked in your memo and are there cases where the proposed district is not the proposed district boundaries are not coincident with parcel boundaries shouldn't be I drew that from parcel data okay there I went back and forth one of the features of our current map is that the district boundaries lie are basically defined in terms of parcel boundaries so you have a parcel that's in one district and there were some that there were a number of them where what I saw on the the RTIS map didn't line up with for example behind the high school it looked like the playing field was sort of designated as an open space district but that's only part of the parcel the same thing with the multi-use district you know around Arlington 360 and I guess it's a senior living center lower on the hill I mean that's one thing about our bylaw that I like but it's you know it's not a it's not a deal breaker to me but going back to schools have you had any conversations with the school department with either the school department or the school committee about this great question I have not since the park and rec folks tend to manage those spaces anyway I went directly to them and again this is coming out of public management plan and trying to align those uses with the ownership of the man said parcel so I did not go to school this but I mentioned that the consideration or the concern I had in mind was periodically a few years ago we had a big demographic shift in east Arlington a bunch of older families moved out younger families moved in and these school districts needed to add I think six classrooms to one school to another but if you you know so having the playground the outdoor area is not zoned as open space gives the school district more flexibility where in order to deal with that sort of thing so I would like to bend away in specifically on that I just interrupt the hearty schools a really good example of that where they figured the area they moved things around so yeah so regarding the plan development district I personally for speaking for myself I would not want to do anything with that while Thorn Dyke Place is still in the process of going through permitting and until I know there is an agreement to be reached regarding the disposition of the non-developed portion until that settles I am kind of leery on making any changes to that district and I think that's all and finally I also had the same concern as Mr. Benson where if rezoning private land would basically be considered a taking and where the owner would be entitled to a conversation from us so just one more thing to thank you I just have one thing to add and then I'll come back to you Gene so once Gene provides his comment I can kind of recap and then we'll see if there's any other conversation but I just wanted for the board us to be thoughtful of this in reviewing this as well and that we are currently undoing some zoning that was whatever is currently on the parcel becomes the zone you know that's what happened in the 70s and we are actively undoing that work right now so that's one of the reasons why I asked for the overlay of the open space plan with these spaces because I think if the town has planned for better and higher uses of these places some of which are not currently zoned as open space that makes to me perfect sense to move those into this plan but for those that happen to be open space and but perhaps have not been contemplated as planned open space used within the town I would ask more questions about the why now and should that be part of the plan not to say that those couldn't potentially be added in the future just like we look at what the appropriate size and scale of zones are not regularly but not infrequently within the town as well so that's the only thing I wanted to mention to the board given again the work that we're currently engaged with the one thing I forgot to mention is I wonder if you've talked to the assessor's office about whether this rezoning would change any of the assessments on any of the land that's not currently owned by the town you know for example I don't know have any idea how we tax the part of Winchester Country Club that's in Erlington but and I don't know the answer that's why I'm interested in the assessor if that part were rezoned to open space would the tax assessment go down would we lose tax revenue from doing that same thing I don't think we're going to the Medford Boat Club with this but for all of the things that are not government or private non-profit but things that are taxed what's the taxing application great question sorry I forgot that no I had that one written down and I forgot to ask it as well so thank you for bringing that up for both of us can I just interject please it's kind of anecdotal but it's funny we've talked about Medford Boat Club numerous times in this conversation the piece of it that is actually proposed and in the map here is that section of the dam that is just east of the actual Boat Club and so that essentially does function as open space it's built but it is it's that nice mural of the fish and so forth on the ground it's a place that people go for scenic vistas you know it's not like you're actually getting in a boat right there I've talked in there many times does it include the parking lot that's just outside of it? no it's just that paved area parking lot to the start of the actual dam there's sort of that open space I can't describe it in other terms I know exactly what you're talking about any other comments from the board? great so at this time we will open up for public comment noting that we are this is not a hearing we are just taking any comments that may impact our discussion and feedback to the representatives who are here this evening so any members of the public wishing to speak on either of these two proposed foreign articles please I'm sorry if I could ask you to please come anybody who does speak this evening please come and sit at this table here speak into the microphone and please introduce yourself by first and last name and you will have up to three minutes to address the board Hi my name is Barry Jaspin I live on Campbell Road regarding the Inland Wetland District you described how I think you said that it was kind of vague, made contradictory in places it would be useful when you were discussing like in what way would removing that enlarge or reduce or change in some way the total protection of wetlands relative to what the concom has and you said sort of yes and no it would be some because like it's vague so it would be really useful to say maybe take the zoning district the most expansive interpretation of what the zoning district could be and then say okay if we take it away and concom ends up with what it already has here are the things that would change the protections for wetlands that would give a really clear view that list would be big it would be small it would be whatever it is and then we could evaluate it whereas I have no idea based on what you said great thank you very much anyone else was you to speak Grant Cook 16 Walliston and I'll go I think it's something you already brought up in this topic about rezoning open spaces we read in the paper a week from now that the Winchester Country Club was disposing of its land to move to another peat die course to be built up in Carlisle 40 acres fell into the town's lab to say that it would only be a for new Sherwood forest I think would be foolhardy, almost as foolhardy as an attorney to the mansion so I I would say no that would be a probably even more dramatic than the Sims discussion over 40 acres coming in I agree it should be perhaps housing parks commercial we talked about commercial meeting space here in town so and I think you look at the debate on the Cape over Twinbrook golf courses do go away and he locked this in as open space in the town's mind rolling it back to allow some housing or anything else I think would be a decision we've come to regret I think let's I would say let's save that property for the big discussion that we'll have if it ever comes free which it probably won't but we should plan for the future so thanks thank you any other comments okay this time we'll close public comment on this agenda item so just to discuss with the board one of the or I guess they should ask you the question is your request that the board take on either or both of these articles or is your request for support everybody comes in with a different request so just looking to see what your request is here okay thank you for clarifying that so I would like to turn it back to the board it sounds like there was significant support with one significant question for the for the inland wetland district for the open space it sounds like there are quite a lot of questions and unknowns and potential potential mapping map review that would need to occur so I'm interested in hearing the board's feelings on taking on either or both of these articles and I'll start with Ken would this be for the spring or for the fall there's no fall just spring this year I'm not sure we have time to do that and which one number two open space I don't think we have time this year to do either one if we're going to take on this and not take on commercial the business districts and the heights and stuff that we have also had promised people they would look at right away saying it's too busy we don't have enough time to do that and then we take on this it's not a good thing I just would set priorities and if you want us to take it on the spring I don't think we have the bandwidth to do that I would say if you could do it we would support you but otherwise it would have to wait till either fall or next year alright thank you so my perspective is that I think that we should take on the inland wetland district I think that this is well baked there's one clarification I think the open space still needs a lot of work and I think we would need to discuss whether or not to Kim's point we think there is the time to review that it could be a mapping exercise and a simple descoping of what is currently included in this article but I think we would need to discuss that further I'm in agreement with the chair Jean I agree I think we can take on inland wetland you know I've watched this conservation permission for many years and I've watched them adopt better and better regulations and I think they are excellent at protecting the wetland resources in town and they've been that way for many many years I am interested to see whether there are some areas that don't quite overlap and whether those even matter or they're just a function of this really old zoning bylaw not doing it right but I think we can get that and I think we can go ahead with that I think it seems like the appropriate thing to do and a way to get rid of another creaky out of date mismatch between various parts of the regulatory places in the town on the open space piece I don't think we're going to be ready to go I think there were too many questions that were asked that needed to get answered and too many sort of decisions trees to go down to doing all of these things I think it's a worthwhile project to pursue and maybe we can designate somebody from the board to work with David and the conservation commission and the open space commission on putting together something that would come to us 11 months from now let's say we would be able to roll into it at that point and maybe there will be something separate for cemeteries or not something separate for some of the public spaces questions about the assessments and things like that so I don't think it's ready to go I think we can make it ready to go but it needs some time great Steve I also concur with the chair the removal of the inland wetland district is a relatively straightforward change that's worth doing you're going to make me say that five times until I'm meeting too right I guess I know what I'm presenting and I agree that I think the the goals of looking at revisiting the way some of our parcels are zoned it's worth while but it's there's a lot to figure out in order to get that done do you have any other thoughts questions for us now that we've provided that feedback I think these are great points and thoughtful about it and get some pointers about how to move forward since part of the meeting we'll go back to the drawing board with question number two I'm always happy to answer any questions or be in contact with the first issue I appreciate all the work that has gone into both of these I think they're really worthwhile for us to continue pushing forward thank you very much really appreciate it alright that closes agenda item number two just get back to my agenda and we'll get that right on time our next agenda item is zoning board of appeals proposed warrant articles I believe we have Christian Klein the chair of the zoning board of appeals here with us this evening thank you so much Christian for joining us and we have not one not two not three but six six proposed warrant articles all very worthwhile for discussion in terms of you know I understand to be sections of the zoning bylaw which are particularly meaningful and to the ZBA and it looks like as well from the conservation commission with related to things that you run into regularly in your practice so Christian if you wanted to take it away would you like to review them as a group or would you like to go one by one and entertain questions let's do that I think that would probably be best great perfect thank you thank you again for having me I'm Christian Klein the chair of the zoning board of appeals and we deal with sections of the code that the ARB often doesn't see on a regular basis in their hearings and so there's a couple things that we've identified throughout the past year or two that have caused us some questions have caused us to go to council to try to get some clarification on and so there are things that we wanted to bring to your attention for possible inclusion as Warren articles going forward so the first one has to do with the question of attached and detached buildings so the town in the bylaws we have a separate definition for attached and detached and attached buildings that are attached share a common wall and buildings that are detached have no physical connection but there are other forms of physical connection that are not walls that cause two structures to be neither attached nor detached and this has come up once and there was another case that was possibly coming forward but in the end they didn't file and so it had initially come up in the question of accessory dwelling units because it it has a question of if a dwelling unit isn't attached to the main building then it is approved as a part of the main building accessory dwelling unit and it's within a certain distance of the lot line then it requires approval by the ZBA and so there was a situation where there were two buildings they were very close to each other but there was a slight separation and the question was you know is it attached is it detached how close do they have to be to be separated and in the end we sort of had to we found that they were supposed to be just not attached and because the particular part that they were looking at to attach and it wasn't attached we could move forward but there are situations in the parking bylaws it says attached or detached garage so if you have a garage that's separated from the house by a breezeway it is neither attached nor detached so there are situations like that so either we need to clarify one definition or the other so that it covers everything or we just need to think about how we want to handle those kinds of situations so that it's clear and the other part to that is section 533 on the spacing of residential and other buildings on one lot it references the distance between a permitted main building to be used as a dwelling and a permanent non-residential building which also sort of gets into this question of accessory dwelling units is are we supposed to be considering that how do we look at those in relation to 533 excuse me 533 so that was the first one is really the sort of question to attach versus detached in the whole one between okay great thank you I will start with Steve on all of these TBA articles so yeah I was trying to visualize the gap in the picture I came up with was just sort of a walkway or a ramp from one to the other I do agree that if we're going to define detached it should be exactly the opposite of attached and my personal thought would be to redefine detached so that it was the negation of attached just to make it very clear and simple but if you think that would be a suitable if that would address the issues that the TBA has run into I think it could we'd also taken a look through where in the bylaws we use the word attached and where we use the word detached we used detached a lot more than we do attached so we use so there's a lot of places where there's exemption there's certain street exemptions in 542 where we certain sections of town are excluded from certain parts of the residential restrictions and their references attached accessory buildings or attached dwellings attached dwellings also their accessory dwelling units references attached dwellings and then locations of parking spaces talks about attached and detached garages and then under detached we talk about there's a lot that talks about detached dwellings the residential design table the residential district tables are all written in terms of detached so it occurs there a great amount garages again the flood plain district talks about detached dwellings parking spaces talks about detached garages and affordable housing requirements talk about detached dwellings so I don't know if that feeds into which definition makes more sense but that's sort of how those words are used anything else Steve nothing else okay Gene I'm trying to consider the examples you talked about are they mostly where there's like a car port and sort of an enclosed or not enclosed walkway so once we've had sort of like an elevated deck that would connect an accessory a proposed accessory dwelling unit from a main building and the deck makes it attached so the deck it maintains it is detached the proponent strongly wanted it to be considered attached because it didn't be the definition for detached but we're like well it doesn't be the definition for attached anyway either so you sort of then you're in that in that gray zone in the end we did decide that it was just not attached because attached was the primary word in that section and tell me say again how it comes up in the situation of accessory dwelling units so under accessory dwelling units if an accessory dwelling unit is attached to the primary residence then it is either approved or not approved as a part of the structure if it is detached from if it's not attached and it's in a separate accessory building as long as it conforms to the setback requirements then it would go through the normal process but if it's within this if it's within six feet of a lot line then it's required to go before zoning but if it's attached within six feet it wouldn't but then what's the level of attachment that is required to move it from one category to the other is there a simple fix or is it more these are factors to consider in determining whether something is attached or detached I think it could be I think there's two ways of looking at it one way is there are currently there are sort of these it sort of falls into three buckets at the moment the other or sort of neither and I think that we could clarify in one of the definitions just add a line that if it is if we were to say with attached if it's a structure that does not contain a wall in common shall be detached or shall be considered detached just so that we put into one category or the other I think that would be a simple way to do it and then the definition for detached stands on its own as well okay thanks that's it so you mentioned you mentioned carports as a situation I also am trying to grapple with what the solution is what the desired solution is and I'm sort of wondering where you've been coming down on things that are essentially not a party wall so luckily we have not had the semi-attached garage come up but that was when we were sort of brainstorming what the issues possibly could be it's you sort of have the traditional house where you have a house and a garage and they build a breezeway in between that's open that is detached it's not detached because of the roof piece connecting it but it's not attached because it doesn't share a wall and then for there if you strictly read the zoning by-law that it can't be used for parking so so can can you contemplate is there a scenario that you can contemplate where something truly truly does not have a party wall but kind of looks like it should fit the attached scenario I mean I think sort of in that scenario we would not speak as EVA but I think looking at a typical New England style house where it's the house and the breezeway and the garage I think most people would consider that as being attached even though it's not enclosed in between but I think we just need to decide how we you know as a town how we want to handle that the situation should be so it might be more than one common wall there might be some other an aesthetic an aesthetic from the street for example it appears to be one structure we need something that we can defend is really what we need if I can pick up on that I think the answer is not one or the other I think the answer is what's the better outcome and then how do we write the definition for the better outcome if it's detached garage with a carport is it better that that garage be considered attached to the building in terms of how we do our business in town or not so before I think we decide which way to write this we need to hear from the ZBA what's the better option what's the better outcome but which is the better outcome with the ADUs which is the better outcome and then that would help us decide how to write this so a list of the potential scenarios and better outcome okay I think Jean hit it right on the head it's the outcome of what we want to do then we would write the regulations to that but you are correct it's basically three attached not attached and something in between all we want to do is clarify that thing in between and that's all we have to do and what we want to do is clarify that based on what outcome we want I mean I remember this being a project we looked at at sunny sunny side sunny drive where there we're going to put these big mansions there and there's one heated corridor that connected this other garage the Skyway and it was all one big happy building and we said no okay and I don't think we want to get that way so that's how we decide you know it's that breezeway that connects the building okay is it just a deck and a roof and we're also enclosed or we go one more step to say it's conditioned right but let's not decide all those new beginnings until we figure out what's the outcome we want do we want to increase the sort of density at the edge because there's a loophole they can go for or not so can you come back to us and say hey our recommendation is this because it does this and I think we're all on board for that at least I am so I think in order to submit the warrant article that language we can continue to work and wordsmith I think the warrant article could be written in such a way that we can speak to the clarification without actually providing the warrant article would others agree to that see if the town will amend the zoning bylaw of the town of Arlington for the purpose of clarifying the definition of attached detached and addressing cases that meet neither of the above yeah something like that yeah I just wanted to talk through timing for that as well okay so it sounds like the board is supportive of this clarification and we'll get back to you with some additional information on that the second one is section 5.3.10 which allows using the average setback along a street as a front yard setback but it only applies to vacant property and so the question is should where we don't have a lot of vacant property we do have situations where we have a street where the setback for the street is not what the actual setback says in the zoning bylaw but is sort of set by the houses that are there currently should there if the property is vacant then somebody is allowed to take that position if the property is not vacant then they're required to adhere to the full setback the way it's written and the question is just the clarification is that really what we're intending to do in that situation or is it better to maintain the street edge as it stands currently so if somebody's house is a little bit farther back and they want to do a small addition on the front of their house that would bring them to that average setback is that allowable yes please go ahead Ken have you talked to Mike Champa about this I have not I believe their interpretation is not quite exactly this I don't want to put words in his mouth but I think that's nothing to do with vacant or non-vacant I think it has to do with if someone wants to encroach upon the setback and the average of the setback on that street is less than they can meet that average I think that's what they've been allowing and I believe that that is likely the case but that's not what the bylaw says I realize that but we should make that clear so that it's either we enforce it what the bylaw says or change the bylaw to follow what they enforce I'm just seeing this and seeing what they've been doing all along is different so if you just talk to them about that and see how we should proceed what they recommend what's your interpretation on redevelopment of the parcels that are currently not vacant so if you were to if there was an existing building on the property and the property was being demolished and the property being wholly redeveloped then a very good question because at the time the building is demolished the property is now vacant so I guess I would say if you are fully demolishing and rebuilding then you would because you're required to adhere to all the requirements of the zoning bylaw then you would be able to take advantage of that provision and build up to that line however if you were maintaining two walls of your property in order to claim that it is not a new development then that puts you into you are only able to take advantage of certain others aspects specifically for the sections of bylaw that deal with non-conformity that would allow you to do essentially the same thing it seems to that seems to honestly be not that useful in my opinion um um yep I would second can talk to my chapter see what's being done now Gene there are quite a few sections of the bylaw I find very mysterious and this is one of them I'll quote you on that Gene and you know as I think you're pointing out it doesn't make any sense that if somebody is building a house on a vacant lot they get to use a different setback than somebody who already has a house on the lot and wants to do something with it that seems crazy I would basically this is another one what do we want the outcome to be right exactly but I guess my personal feeling of this has always been that this didn't make any sense at all and I would just X out 5.3 .10 all together because if town meeting and its wisdom had established a certain setback why are we then letting people sort of change the setbacks based upon what people did before there was zoning or when it was changed so we can do anything we want in terms of thinking about what do we want to present at town meeting I'd say one thing to think about is does this even make any sense at all to try to figure out which is the better way to do it should we allow it one way or the other or should we just get rid of this I don't know the answer but I'm just putting it out there is another way to think about it great question Steve this is one of the sections where the bylaw is not quite internally consistent with itself where 5.3.10 says sure if a portion of the street is nonconformity sure you could build up the nonconformity we have another section of the bylaw that says it is in the tent of this bylaw that nonconformities were applicable or were practical should not continue in perpetuity so you've got one side that says yeah let's continue it and one side that says it doesn't of course because of the nonconformity there are more lots yeah and I do agree that it does sort of create two different scenarios depending on whether a parcel is conforming or nonconforming I sort of question whether someone with dental in an entire building assuming a bill of a lot just to take advantage of the provision rather than try to remodel and reuse this is another section of our bylaw that I think may help encourage demolition rather than reuse I it does seem wrong to it does seem awkward I'll say awkward you know to impose to have one set of standards for you know where a full demolition is taking place and another set of standards where a full demolition is not taking place and to be sort of to compound compound things there are lots of unbuildable lots in Arlington by today's standards where you know you couldn't take advantage of you couldn't use this provision even if you wanted to so I think do you agree with Jean we should just take it out after checking with my champions that he uses it for that would be important for us to keep it in I mean part of me thinks that let's check with inspectional services and you know perhaps consider clarifying their interpretation similar to what we did with large editions just so that there's not a question mark it's clear you know otherwise I you know I don't I'm not without expressing an opinion on which side or the one way or the other I think it would be more logical to apply one set of standards regarding whether it was a full or a partial redevelopment and how often is this used that's the other question to ask Mike not yeah if it doesn't happen very often it's another reason to get rid of it are we how do we feel or how do folks feel about about the front yard setbacks as opposed to the written front yard setbacks as opposed to the front yard setbacks that you see visually you know are we going to start seeing the houses infill that is set much further back is that going to have is the aesthetic going to be changing and how do we feel about that by not having this provision by not having this proposal great question and that might be where again Mike Champa you're indicating that your understanding is that might be how they're currently applying this to existing non-performing sites that they can use that rule or something along those lines I just I don't know the whole thing so I can't speak clearly I just know it's fuzzy right now and I totally agree we should get rid of it and have one set of rules but you know you are 100% correct we do run into the fact that we do follow the rules of well here's the setback you have to follow it and that ruins an urban edge on the infill and that doesn't make sense and that's why we have these exceptions so but we should see what applies what doesn't apply right now it seems to be in two different spots right now and you pick out a good one but there's another one that you haven't mentioned yet and I think that's what Mike follows I'm happy to sit down with them and figure that out alright sounds like that's the path forward there alright number three I think you've already talked about a bit this evening so sections five seven and five eight which is the flood plain district and the inland wetland district are both parts of the zoning bylaw but seem much better covered by the conservation commission yes we will be supporting removal of the in the wetland district with the flood plain district that we were told is required by law by FEMA by FEMA so number four we had section five nine two which is the accessory dwelling unit section it gets to a certain point and then it switches from letters and numbers to bullets and it's just it's just awkward to cite things so we have citations like section five nine two B1 bullet five subsection three which is just you have to now count the bullets and make sure you're getting to the right one so if we could exchange the bullets for some other unique identifier that would be great we all in agreement we'd love to clean that one up and hopefully get that one on a consent agenda okay great how come you didn't pick out all the others that have bullets this is the one that jean if there's anything you'd like to add to this no no no okay there are lots of bullets so six ten six one ten and six one eleven I think they need a task force at this point there are these are the sections on residential parking that has been added on to and amended and added on to and amended and in the end they're sort of convoluted and difficult to follow and hard to interpret in places I don't think it's an easy fix I think it would take some sitting down and really thinking through exactly what we want as a town so it may not be something for this year but it's certainly something that I think we should start though we should start looking forward because there is just a lot there's a lot to it we need to start thinking exactly what we want to do Steve so as having served on the ZDA I can verify that there have been at least a couple of dockets where the meaning of those sections was not clear at all and even less clear was how to apply them to a given parcel it's there is a little bit of circular wording and I think in terms of just residential parking in general I think having something that's clear and readily understandable would be a big improvement I also think it's worth possibly revisiting residential parking some aspects of residential parking regulations in general but I agree that it is a rewrite I think is warranted but it will take effort and it sounds like once again involving Mike Champa and Isding and how they're currently it's worse than that as Steve can attest while we were doing reconification this is one of those sections where we're just like we just have to do it now but we have to come back to it so this might be a 2025 but we'll spend some time I think we'll have the transportation planner as part of the group that works on this Gina any thoughts on this one just that there are such strong feelings about parking generally in town I wouldn't want to see cleanup without a comprehensive look at parking policy can you have any thoughts no I wholeheartedly agree that we look at the task force level just because the size of the parking spaces the dry lanes parking in front of or behind the building yes compact spaces electric charging state everything that has to be sort of grouped and look at one comprehensive thing that's going to take a while to redo I think what we have is something that's based in the 70s with big big cars and so we need to do that the last one I had is in regards to the location of accessory dwelling units in accessory buildings so the way that the bylaw was written 592 in the accessory dwelling unit that is within six feet of the side and rear lot line could be approved by essentially a section that's six determination by the zoning board of appeals but accessory buildings cannot be built six feet of the property line and so we had sort of considered a couple different options and what we feel was most likely what was intended was that new accessory dwelling units could be constructed closer than six feet to the lot line so long as they had approval and that was to be considered an exception from the standard setback that's in the dimensions table doesn't list section 592 as containing an exception it doesn't mention that to c-section 542b for exceptions and it may just be as simple if the interpretation is that accessory dwelling units can be constructed to NOVO within six feet of the property line that the note that's on the table just indicates that c-section 542b and 592b for exceptions but if the interpretation was that accessory dwelling units were not to be constructed newly within six feet of the property line we need that to be clarified great, Steve so I have a vague recollection that the special permit within six feet was to accommodate the conversion of an existing garage to an accessory dwelling unit now garages although there are setbacks in 542 there are a separate set of garage setbacks in 542b7 outside of the main dimensional tables and I I'm wondering was sort of wondering if it would be appropriate to cite that or perhaps and this would be messy to move the sort of garage setbacks which vary on the type of construction into the main dimensional tables I think that the garage exceptions the garage exceptions for new garages I think are fine as they are the real question comes in is the interpretation that this section in 592 on accessory dwelling units is it intended only to apply to cases where there is an existing garage that is being converted or is it more general that you can build an accessory structure that is an accessory dwelling unit as an exception to the normal six foot setback that is required under the table thank you how have you been interpreting so we had we had our first real case where this came up recently and it was it was on Dorothy Road and it was a property that was owned by HCA and they were looking to build an accessory dwelling unit in the rear yard and we had gone back and forth we had docked to council and the interpretation that the board took was that you could construct a new accessory dwelling unit within six feet that was aligned as long as you met the requirements for determination that it was not more detrimental that's exactly the way I interpret this too so my suggestion may not be a good one so my suggestion is leave this you have the right to do rules and regulations put something in the ZBA rules and regulations that basically says what you just said this is how this is interpreted and that's all that needs to happen Shayna that approach makes sense to me Ken I don't know I think a little differently I think the intent of the ADUs was in this case it was for an existing it doesn't say that I realized that change or something along that but I think it was the intent to convert an existing structure to allow it to be built closer if it's new it has to follow the regulations there's no exception for that I think that was the intent because the first time I went around that was what it was the second time it came back it was changed because that was a point that brought up we changed that so that it would say for existing structures to be able to convert it, not new structures but that was my regulation at that time working with Barbara at that time so can I add on to that because I actually found the fact sheet that Barbara created when we were presenting this article at the time meeting and it talks about ADUs in garage in garages and the fact that they're the most complicated because you need to have water and solar and gas, electric et cetera but they're specific to article 43 adds an extra requirement for a garage or carriage house meaning these existing conversions close to the lot line if a garage is within six feet of the lot line it is no longer eligible for an as of right ADU approval the homeowner who wishes to proceed must present their case to the zoning board of appeals CVA provides a public discretionary approval process which all the neighbors are notified and have the ability to object so it is not in this and again just because this was the fact sheet does mean that this is what was approved or made into the final language but that was my recollection as well was that that specific provision was for how it's written right here again what is it that we would like to see in practice becomes a question but my recollection is similar to Kim's well this to throw to make it more complicated if a person wanted to build a new garage type 3 construction concrete up against the lot line they build the garage and leave it there for a little while now when they want to turn it into an ADU that would be it's a roundabout path but I could connect the dots and knowing that the dots could be connected like that I sort of agree with Mr. Vence in the sense of just don't make it crazy and it sounds like it sounds like from the Dorothy Roman it's a better outcome and just to sort of put it in the rules and regulations so it's clear that that's how it's interpreted but again I would just check with my champ on making it as it's same interpretation I would just say my only concern with just having that interpretation in the rules and regulations is that people aren't going to look there for interpretations they're just going to be looking to the Sonny Bravo well you can train them or we could as the supplies to new as well as existing structures we could put that sentence in there or if we just refer to this section as an exception to the table then that would work as well Ken what are your thoughts on that? I can go either way I think it's going back to the original what's the outcome we want and then whatever we modify is what's that and we're here to streamline the stuff that you have less confusion and so forth so what do we want? and if we don't want ADUs built so close to the property line then get rid of it if you want to leave it with some hardship cases because there's already an existing building there then we'll keep it in and but I think the question isn't removing this it's retaining the right for existing structures to come in front of the ZBA and adding potentially adding again based on the interpretation new structures being constructed to also fall under this yeah I would add it to there in the zoning bylaws as opposed to the rules and recs yes not the rules and recs so what's the answer to this question they come before you and they say we're building a garage up to the lot line with an ADU on top so they're building it all at one time what's the answer? so if there if a portion of the accessory structure contains an accessory dwelling unit within six feet then the board has to make a determination if it doesn't include an accessory dwelling unit and it's a garage then it falls under the garage rule so if it's an accessory dwelling unit an accessory structure and it's neither a garage nor a dwelling unit then you're not allowed to build it so it's a little haul of mirrors hmm it could be a storage shed it could be a storage shed as long as it's under 70 square feet we should fix this I'm not sure I'll point out okay so I think this falls into the same section as or the same as 5.3 .10 in that we would need to it sounds like work together with the ZVA after again talking about Jampa a little further and work through the final language but perhaps the Warren article could identify to clarify the intent and then the language can be worked on up until the hearing I think we have two or three Christian needs to talk to Mike when this came up a couple years ago I volunteered to be the ARB person to sit on on that and craft the chains I'd be happy to do that then if that would work with you but I built a nominee G with my Christian so let's just clarify which we'll be moving forward with so we identified the the attached building and detached building and again this is making sure that we're aligned on these being ARB articles that we're putting forth in collaboration with the ZVA so the first was attached building and detached building the second was changing the bullets to letters changing the average setback along the street related to vacant land the exception related to vacant property we've already talked about the inland wetland and flood plain district so that we will not for this particular item move forward but we're moving forward separately concom let's see we indicated that we would defer to 2025 section 6.1.10a and 6.1.11a and we will move forward the last item with regard to the clarification regarding ADUs and accessory buildings within 6 feet of the within the 6th setback in alignment okay great any members of the public who have any comments they would like to make on any of the zoning bylaw articles put forth by the ZVA okay we'll close public comments on that one and we'll thank you very much Christian thank you so much appreciate the time really appreciate it Christian thank you for bringing all of these forward and you know where to find I will find them fantastic okay so that closes agenda item number three and we'll now move to agenda item number four which is a proposed parking lot plan from Green Street Arlington is a representative who would like to come forward thank you very much so if you can introduce yourself for the record and then share your thoughts on the proposed plan that you'd like to discuss this evening thank you very much my name is Susan Stamps and I'm sorry I'm just going to remind you one more time if you wouldn't mind projecting as much as you can for the folks that are behind as well thank you thank you my name is Susan Stamps I am with the group Green Street Arlington and also a member of the tree committee and a town meeting member 39 Grafton Street and with me is Allen Jones Allen Jones, appreciate 14 member Green Street Arlington great thank you so we did up on the screen is the proposal the background of the proposal this was one of the part of our six point plan that we presented at the time that we were discussing MBTA communities zoning and we agreed with the planning department that this was a change that needed to be made to the underlying zoning so that's why we're back here now with this proposal and hoping that the ARB will support it and help us write it because it's pretty detailed idea is to require shading in parking lots and this is something that I think was not thought about when the parking lot regulations in the zoning by-law were written because I don't think the writers were particularly concerned about the heat island effect of the pavement absorbing the sun and making everything around it hot and in fact making the whole town hotter than it needs to be but now with climate change and everything and the weather getting hotter and hotter every year we just had the last two or couple of years the hottest ones on the planet we need to be Greenspeeds Arlington hopes to help the town adopt initiatives which can hurry up and help protect the town from and also in other effects of climate change such as storm water mitigation just happened today we had these really really heavy rains that we didn't use to have these rains and now they're fairly common and so the storm water and heat are the main reasons why we are proposing that we put in new rules for our parking lots requiring trees to be planted in the parking lots and also both for shade and storm water mitigation and we've been asked about solar panels can those be used for shade and the answer is yes that's fine with us as long as there are trees around the perimeter so that there would be some trees but there are two things that trees do well trees do a lot of things they clean the air they respirate oxygen and moisture and certainly they absorb carbon so those are very important climate change jobs that they do but also their roots of course absorb storm water so that's also really important the only things that they also do that is shared with solar panels as they create shade so that would have to be a call really by the planning department whether you want to give up all the benefits of trees for solar panels if it seems like we really need to be doing a lot more with solar panels to help get off of fossil fuels so that's kind of the question that's up in the air but we have presented a a two pager which summarizes a proposed bylaw change that is based on tells you what the elements are based on one that we found in Greenberg, New York which is a smaller place than Arlington but they and it actually hasn't been adopted in Greenberg but that was for unrelated reasons but they still are following it we've looked around the state and there are a few municipalities around the state that require trees in parking lots say every 12 spaces or 10 spaces but they're not really focused on shade they could be ornamental trees I'm not exactly sure why they're they're required in the parking lots for example West Springfield requires trees in parking lots but we have found other places around the country a few other places that talk about trees in parking lot in terms of percentage of shade that they provide and that's what we think is that's the important approach and so we're suggesting 50% shade cover within 15 years of planting so what we've found around the country is LA actually has a 50% tree canopy in 10 years 50% shade of tree canopy in 10 years in their parking lots also Sacramento has a similar ordinance which after 15 years 50% canopy coverage in their parking lots we also found one other place and I'm sure there are places we missed it's not that common yet though and so once again Arlington can be an environmental leader and that's what we're looking for and we in South Elgin, Illinois and they have a population of about half of hours with considerably more land but they theirs is 40% tree canopy coverage in 10 years and we would like to see this applied to any parking lot Gene Benson and David Morgan were both very kind to go over our proposal and there were questions about well what's the minimum size parking lot would it apply a couple of these places exclude single family and two family homes one place, I think it's Sacramento says it applies to any place that has a parking lot you don't have a parking lot when you have a two family home or even a three family home probably those would be details to be worked out when we were doing our research and trying to figure out where in the zoning pile this would fit we actually found it it's in 6.1 .11 F2 bullet 1 or bullet 2 subsection bullet 1 it says we already do this in an industrial zone with pervious pavement as an alternative it says 50% shading so one simplistic way of looking at it is just make applicability broader than just that one condition the specification there may not be enough detail it's just like one sentence that says that at least there is precedent in the zoning bylaw to do this great all right should I turn it over to the board now unless you have anything else? yes please Steve why don't you pick us up on your thoughts on this one yeah so one and this is primarily for the board one of the allowed uses one of the uses regulated by our zoning bylaw is a ground mounted solar photovoltaic so a ground mounted solar photovoltaic installation it's also a defined term but we only allow this in the industrial districts and as part of considering this maybe we want to broaden the set of districts where that use is allowed in terms of how large of a parking lot I mean one precedent is the places where we do our zoning bylaw does apply a greater degree of regulations to a parking lot it starts at six phases so there's basically one set of rules for five and fewer and one set at six or more there's precedent there this can be revisited I guess I was wondering I have two basic questions so the first is why 50% and number two just hypothetically say as a board member I'm given a planting plan how do I evaluate whether or not that meets 50% and that question was inspired by the sample drawing but if you could you wouldn't mind answering so why 50% and then given this plan how do I derive those numbers so I think that I would be very happy if we would require 100% coverage it just seems like that would be maybe there wouldn't really be room for many cars in the parking lot and then you're questioning why you've been doing the parking lot so we just followed the example of these other places that have these requirements in place which appear to be working yeah I think as Susan said 50% just seems to be the common language around the country and it's what's in our bylaw in particular and to be honest this discussion all started in relation to the MBTA communities how many new parking lots are going to be built in our own kind of well if we start making larger buildings within the overlay districts that's probably where they're going to be new parking so whatever the size or distinction is to define it what it makes sure it applies to new model family denser housing in the MBTA districts or anywhere else in town but I think that's where we're going to see so given a planting plan what's the process walk me through the steps to determine if I got a planting plan like this without the numbers how would I determine how would I come up with the numbers I think it's going to be an inexact science and what we've found is that certain trees with a different density have a different score it's 100% or 80% or 75% and then you draw something like that and it moves and there's buildings casting shadows and there's what season you're talking about so it's not going to be exact and I think what you end up doing is taking a certain density of specific species of trees which typically have a branching radius and have a typical density but it's not going to be an exact science I think that's where the tree warden and the planting ward comes in okay it doesn't seem to be addressed in too much detail in the regulations we looked at so I think we'd have to make some assumptions and do our best with certain species and a certain distance apart will provide that shading without being too specific about it the Greenberg New York bylaw ordinance has a tree list apparently it's not in the documents I haven't actually seen but apparently a tree list created approved by the tree warden or someone in the planning department who's responsible for trees the guy I talked to there was in the planning department he's the assistant director he's also a certified arborist they have a list of native species and what their expected canopy coverage canopy would be at 15 years or whatever the requirement was there and we have precedent in town now of having to provide a tree plan by developers for approval by the tree warden to show what trees are on a property and what they want to take out what they're going to leave how they're going to protect them and all these other things and the tree warden is very used to working with so it's the same concept in building a parking lot is that you're you're showing what trees you're adding versus what trees you're taking out but it's something that nothing further madam chair thank you jean thanks for bringing this forward some of the questions I'm going to ask are the same questions I asked when we talked so one of the statements let me call this up on my screen here one of the statements is that this applies to a reconstructed parking lot I'm not sure what makes a parking lot reconstructed what does that mean? that's a good question I had a little conversation with black champ about that again it's a fuzzy line basically you bring in heavy equipment you peel off a parking lot and you repave so we might want to think about top sealing isn't a reconstruction but ripping it down with stones and paving that would have to be a neat thing yeah I think we would need to figure out how to say that we talked to the tree warden and gotten his input on this yes he is actually quite enthusiastic we just had a great committee meeting last week of course we just had a big failure at cop 28 and every little bit is going to help and I think this is every little bit one of the things that I mentioned to Susan when she and I spoke was the possibility that these are contaminated grounds the parking lot surface is the cap on the contamination so I think we would especially want to have something in here that says if that's the case obviously they can't plant trees there they'd have to use canopies to meet the requirement or get some sort of waiver if there's not adequate sun but the same problem with planting trees around the perimeter is they may not be able to do it they're going into contaminated soil or the trees may be shading in 15 years or whatever the solar panels so I think we would have to think through what are going to be the exception I think that's a problem that's already sort of been solved for other excavations whether it's a street lamp or a perimeter tree or whatever it would be we would have to figure out what to do about this because there are cloning places where you can't plant trees because of the underground contamination especially if there's activity in use of it no no no not if there's an activity in use limitation there you clearly could not do it we issued a special permit to a project a year or two ago that had six spaces behind the building we wouldn't have been able to have six spaces if this were there I don't know how many spaces we would have had but we would have probably lost at least two out of the six spaces to do that I just say that because there aren't many big parking lots in Arlington and in many cases people try to shoehorn spaces in to get the required minimum number of spaces even after we give them some relief from the number of spaces so it would be helpful to get an idea of how many fewer parking spaces when you do this like what's the ratio of tree area to parking spaces so that we have some idea about how this would work I think that would be really helpful on this it talks about if since you spoke to Mr. Champa about this if somebody digs up their parking lot and puts a new pavement does he have to give them a building permit or occupancy permit or any sort of permit for one of the parking cases that I referred to when speaking with Mr. Klein earlier was basically rebuilding a parking lot and that did require a building permit it does I just wondered and this is something to talk to Mike about too because this in some places says building permits will not be applications will not be processed until these things happen and in another place it says they can't issue a final certificate of occupancy or completion until some of these things happen well if this is in the zoning bylaw then we don't need some of that but I question whether otherwise this is the right language and I know a couple years ago we had the AG's office throw out one of our bylaws zoning bylaws when it said you can't issue a building permit until this happens and the AG's office said that's not the way it works I think we need to have a conversation with Mike Champa to understand if this is consistent with what his responsibilities are because he's got the responsibilities to implement the zoning bylaw but he also has the responsibilities to implement the building code and I'm not clear like when there's tension between the two how those work that was put into the it was a reference to the town bylaws I still think I would want to be comfortable that Mike thinks that he would not have any problem if this is the wording the same thing with storm water when you're talking about storm water you're just talking about the fact that the areas with the trees will have rain going in them you're talking about any other storm water management other than that you've seen are these wonderful the municipalities taking the opportunity to create rain gardens so you have these think of a parking lot and you think about a lane that has trees you've got a bunch of parking spaces and then you have a the word is escaping me but a lane of concrete where the trees are and then parking spaces on the other side and then a median type so that would be planted with trees and in amongst the trees would be grasses and other kinds of rain gardens so you wouldn't have just big squares for the trees it would be a whole engineering for storm water management and probably around the periphery too and possibly including sloping the pavement sufficiently that the water would go into grates on the sides of the curbs where the trees are so that the water can be channeled into the roots the town now has a storm water management plan where development has to comply with so part of the successful implementation has to do with irrigating with storm water management so I would want to make sure that Mike thinks he can do this, that it makes sense in terms of his responsibilities I would be interested in some idea about how many fewer parking spaces we would have as a result of this to see if it's even doable with some of the small lots which may lead us to a minimum size before this goes into effect I think we would need some exemptions for contaminated properties where you can't go into the ground because you'd be violating the state law for exemptions on that and same for the shading of the trees and something if you can't put solar because it's a shady area something like that but I think if we can resolve all of those it probably makes sense at least to me at this point Shada? I think the goal is very valuable. I think there are a few implementation questions I have about for example location of trees and the ability to get trees to a healthy mature size you know, is there room for a root ball of a healthy mature tree and the median of a parking lot without losing so many parking spaces that it becomes financially infeasible is there let's see and the same is there room for a healthy root ball near a building the goal here is of course get the shade but get healthy trees right? and I think it's exactly the right goal to get as many trees as possible but trees that are going to survive you know, West Springfield a little bit and those one tree per 12 spaces don't survive past about three or four years can I just respond to that so they're developing all kinds of ways to plant urban trees now that aims their roots downward way below the parking lot and then they can spread out to avoid those problems I'd be very interested in seeing more about that I think that's part of what they're doing in Lexington Center they've done with the solar with the solar some concerns about financial feasibility and I think I think there was an article in the Globe today that that flagged some issues with implementing solar in Massachusetts right now I do think having the opportunity to go either solar or trees are a mix thereof is a good option but again financial feasibility is something that I'd like to see some more information about I think June covered a lot of my questions apart from size and location of trees that could achieve the canopy without undue burden on the parking lot thank you I'm concerned that this is an excellent proposal for a town that is not Arlington specifically because of the size of our parking lots I'm very concerned I don't know that we've ever reviewed while I've been on the board reviewed a parking lot that is large enough to have a median within it we typically review parking lots between four and seven spaces and it is a fight to get those spots in and of itself and I think that as a board we take great pains to ensure that there are significant shade trees love to be able to do more with education from the tree warden working with Green Streets Arlington to make sure that we are ensuring that the applicants include the best species for the buffer areas where we typically have them plant trees but I think that requiring a significant a significant discontinuity to these already small parking areas becomes an added burden to the developers for quite frankly what would be a very modest gain so I think that rather than adding a section to the bylaw what I'd love to do is to work together so that when we do in the rare occasion and hopefully we will have some larger projects come in front of us where we do have some of those larger lots come in front of us I have found that the developers have been very willing to work with us on planting plans and on configurations of parking lots within reason and we can push them pretty far and when we have some of these parking lots developed if we have some of these solutions at the ready I think it would be an excellent opportunity for us to consult and make sure that we have the appropriate that we work together with them for the appropriate solution I'm not sure that bringing to town meeting a warrant article and updating our bylaws for something that I think would have a very limited application and quite frankly might be a challenge for some of the again very modest developments that we do see I think it would be a challenge and I'm concerned a bit too again because of the fact that we have these small lots they're asked to do a lot so in a lot of cases they are where the refuse trucks also come through which have a much higher clearance obviously than passenger cars they might be for loading for space they might be with the moving vans are required to come for some of our mixed juice properties and the last thing I want to do is to require these beautiful shade trees and then I know what happens on my street when those trucks come through and they not exactly so I I'm supportive of the intent and I'd love to find a way to work together so that when we have an opportunity for a larger lot like you've started to depict we're able to make the appropriate requirements but personally I'm not sure that there's a need given that our typical parking less houses in the zoning bylaw please let me let's have and then we can take any questions I'm 100% agree with you Rachel I think we all agree with the increase tree canopy we do want that I think the way about going about it by putting a requirement on parking lots is not the way to go it puts too much of a burden on projects that we have in Arlington I'm not saying it may not work elsewhere but in Arlington we just don't have that kind of space and by doing this it's gonna hinder any more projects that would happen in businesses and everything else you're not clear is this all parking so if there was parking that's underneath the building does that count as the parking lot too so it's parking an open parking that happens so rare in what we do right now especially the way in the numbers you show it the one we had six spaces they went down to five or four that was built on blasted ledge there was no way they could put a tree there it's right in the edge of Mass Ave where you come in from Lexington on the right hand side by the pizzeria place that's not even the one I was thinking of but that's another good example that's what I thought I'm not sure what you were thinking about probably the next juice property I just don't think this is very appropriate for what you're trying to achieve it's a commendable goal I've talked to you before in the past about this, about tree canopies and a better way about getting better tree canopies is working with the town and investing that part in streets where there are plenty empty streets where we could put more trees on the streets where there's parking right now I highly encourage that to happen and then you put storm the catch some of the storm water runs back in when you do irrigation to trees on projects it's against leads leads don't want you to irrigate your landscape so you can't have one or the other really gold or whatever and then you've taken away some of their credits by irrigating vegetation they just want natural trees that can survive on their own no irrigation well by irrigating we mean having grapes so the storm waters is channeled over to the trees that's not involving any pumps then that's something that has to be more clear written and another thing you have to look at those kind of details when you talk about they're doing trees that want to grow down further how they do that is by integrating air so they put these PVC tubes along the sides of the tree balls and introduce air down lower so the tree roots can grab air and grow lower because that's how the trees get their roots up here from above and if it's all concrete paved and everything else they have no way of getting air that's how you sort of strangle the tree a little bit so talk about that we get a little more detail if you want to get into that type of thing but right now I just don't see this being very appropriate I want to say I like this but I just can't see this being appropriate for parking lots for new projects they just put too much of a burden on projects and we don't have those spaces for what's happening that's all I have a slightly different take on it I think you Alan might have mentioned this there is a requirement in the zoning bylaw parking areas providing more than 25 spaces shall include landscaped areas in at least 8% of the total paid portion of the parking area and then it goes in from there I think we could build into this some of the requirement for trees provided that it's that again that we're not talking about contaminated land where they would be piercing into the barrier I don't think it's going to happen very often because there aren't going to be very many places where there are parking lots of more than 25 spaces coming up but I think if we get to that number we can just take this and just add a couple of things about trees Jean that's specifically in the industrial no it's my understanding I don't think so but we have to look at that I don't think so no this is this is different this is in the general parking requirements so I would suggest we take a look at this and see if it's somewhere we can add a trees requirement in the parking lot or in the project because I believe what you're quoting is in the project it says it has to be in the parking lot yes parking areas providing more than 25 spaces shall include landscaped areas in at least 8% of the total paid portion of the parking area minimum required landscape setbacks and buffers at the perimeter of the parking area shall not be counted to the landscaping requirement individual strips of landscaping shall be at least 4 feet wide which I think is large enough for trees so this says trees on landscaping no I'm suggesting we can add a trees requirement to it my question is is that necessary 6.1.11d6 I think it's necessary because it will give us a hook into it because right now somebody can say no this is the minimum I'm not going to put trees in it and we don't give them a special I would say that the developers have been very accommodating the landscaping plan is the first thing they're looking at a bunch on it's true that it is so my question is is this a solution in search of a problem well I mean every single time we've asked for a tree or a bush or anything like that I've never heard someone say no because it's an inexpensive solution that creates good wealth right I just don't want to put regulations in such a way where it seems ominous so when someone has to come here and do this project wow look at these pages of stuff that we have to follow and what if I mess something up I'm going to have to go back again it's just I think one of our goals that we're trying to do with the recondication and everything else is just trying to make things simpler to make it easier I do I mean I agree that tree cannabis is important but not in this case with this parking lot that's the only thing I'm saying as part of the regulation yes I would support elsewhere and all the things that's not what I'm trying to say here I'm just saying if the parking lot is too much of a poison pill for a developer we'll agree to disagree we always do no there is you know I take the points that you and Mr. Law had made and I do agree that public space is you know as a municipality that's what we have the most control over yes I do want to wrap up our discussion pretty soon quick point one I guess I'm anticipating that the MBTA communities are really just because we're going to get larger structures with bigger parking lots more than we have in the past two people love green parking lot when you pull into a parking lot you look for a tree to park under but the third thing you mentioned half an hour ago that you may be pulling apart 611 because it's a mess and I'm wondering if this could just be integrated into into that rather than try to patch it into something that's already a mess so maybe that would be an approach to take I think that's fair and if I can just add that yes it's true these places we're looking at around the country have lots of big parking lots and lots of space for big parking lots but we do have some places in Arlington that people chronically complain about because they're so hot that they make walkie-mass ad really unbearable in the summertime and those areas for example are across the street from the high school at West where those two bags are it's just it feels like miles of black pavement there I think though that that's for Kim's comment we need to work on municipal street trees yes we're going to have to agree to disagree on that one well the thing about heat islands is that they heat the air I understand but we need to move on from that though before we close is there anyone else from the public who would like to speak on this particular article okay so I think just to wrap this up it sounds like there is not again I don't I want to put Matt to the board that Kim and I don't support this article in its current form it sounds like there is some support from the redevelopment board for a stripped down version of this obviously if this is an article that you would like to move forward it wouldn't come under from the redevelopment board but if it is something that you would like to move forward with would be happy to meet with you again if you do decide to move forward with it and if you decide not to move forward with it for 2024 to a meeting and I think you made a point about perhaps incorporating some of the elements of this as we start looking at residential that was specific to residential parking but if it is larger in terms of parking in general that might be an excellent vehicle for moving some of these concepts forward as well so should we be in touch with the planning director about maybe next steps I think that we had identified that the transportation would be probably the person from the department who would be leading involved in that effort moving forward or however it is set up exactly so I think that would probably be the appropriate person to follow we appreciate your time thank you so much that closes agenda item number four and we'll now move to agenda item number five permanent projects and I will turn this over to Claire Ricker great thank you so the board asked that I take a look at the staff take a look at two specific permanent projects at 882 Mass Ave and 455 Mass Ave and interestingly kind of right at the same time that the board made this request 882 Mass Ave was seeking its occupancy permit and so I was able to speak frequently last week with the developer of the project about deviations from permanent plans and so what you have what you see on the screen right now is ultimately what was permitted by the ARB and then what I have also is a picture that was taken of the project this evening I think some of the things that immediately stick out to me are the white accents included in the original design as well as the vent penetrations on the Mass Ave side and I think there was a question about the articulation and whether or not the articulation had been done to the plan meaning where this building sort of comes out towards Mass Ave and purchasing from Mass Ave it's possible that that was not designed and built deep enough I think in my conversations with the developer this week there was an agreement that whatever mitigation this board decides is necessary will be fulfilled by the developer as part of the awarding of the occupancy permit which was done Friday at 3pm the architect for the project was invited to this meeting tonight and I don't believe is here and so that is I believe something that I certainly will follow up with the developer tomorrow about that but this is an opportunity for the board to sort of weigh in at least on this project and any outstanding issues or other mitigation items you may want to consider having bring up to the developer in the future we will start with Ken I think they are covered everything that I had concerns about I think if we go ahead and all the PVC white trim should be painted to match what they presented to us around the windows to match some of the dark areas around some of the blue areas you should just blend back in and then they have these little ticks on the front there I'm not sure exactly what that is the vent penetrations and then all the dryer vents and kitchen exhaust vents should be painted out to match where it's penetrating it's a simple paint job and unfortunately it's going to have to be done in the spring because it's too cold to paint they can paint it but it just won't stay and so it's something we don't have to hold over their head until it's spring we do have some I want to say do they have any any tenets for the two as far as I know part of the concern over the occupancy permit was the expectation that tenets would be moving in this weekend I did have a conversation with Mike Champa earlier today and he said it was still possible to pull the occupancy permit if that is what the board desires they have business tenants moving in no no I think that was your question no business tenants moving in as far as I know I just wanted to say that they have to come back to us about signage and any canopies or anything to have I want to stress very very important to them that the trust has been eroded so if we can just say it's important that they get that and paint off the other stuff we should be compliant as far as I'm concerned thank you I'm very disappointed in the way that this was executed the color scheme was not what was approved I'm certainly not going to to Kent's point ask them to go back and rework the entire color scheme of the building however the white accents are absolutely atrocious and I have no idea why or when those were introduced I kept waiting for them to be painted and they never did get there so I agree I'd like to see a rendering showing exactly how they will be painted and which colors they will be matching because again to Kent's point around trust and taste I would like to see what they are going to do before we agree that that is what we will again because it differs so substantially from what was approved we need to see the plan for what they are going to do and I'd say we need to see that by our next meeting understood January 8th I also want to see all of those vents removed none of those were approved and not just painted removed they need to be interior that is going to disrupt their tenants but that is not this board's problem that should have been included within their initial building permit package my understanding is that those were not shown on the plans that the building inspector approved either they are they are an absolute I swear we would never have approved those as they are on the corner and the Mass Ave facade and I don't see if those return up besides you or not but if they are those need to be removed there as well Jada are you aware Claire is it a certificate of occupancy or is it a TCO I think it's the certificate of occupancy I don't think it's a TCO it's a full CO but it's a special permit we still have jurisdiction over the project for perpetuity it does make it more challenging but right again we have the opportunity to pull the special permit at any point for non compliance so one thing that I agree with all those things that the color of the building was not what we approved and I don't know if there's anything that can be done with that at this point I think it's worth thinking about I'm also concerned about the affordable units can you talk about the status of that Claire so the lottery for the affordable units was run erroneously initially and had to be rerun and not only that what they discovered was that the location of the affordable units that were identified as affordable were stacked on one side and were less than 700 square feet is the minimum size allowable by EOHLC we were we my understanding was granted a waiver for unit size and location but the lottery was rerun appropriately I can certainly give you an update on that but this is my understanding at this time okay so I looked at the plans and I didn't see anything and maybe I missed them that talked about the size of the units are there 700 square foot units or are they all smaller I think there are larger units in the building so our first special condition is that the affordable units shall be equitably disperse throughout the building comparable to marker at units in terms of location quality character size, number of rooms, number of bedrooms so even if they get a waiver from the state that's not a waiver from us and they can't do what you just said they seem to be doing so I think that's another issue to bring up to them and the same with where they are in the building in comparable size so we need to have some conversation in my opinion with them about that too and the same thing about making sure they meet the minimum square foot size so I think those are important also and it says that the affordable units had to be approved by the department of planning and community development so if they haven't been approved by the department we should still say no no matter what waiver they got from EOHLC and let's have a discussion with them about how they're going to meet the requirements at least that's my opinion about that so that's what I would add to what has been said so far that's a fair comment Steve? nothing further can I add one more thing? yes of course can we ask them to come in to our next meeting I don't want to seem like we're coming down on you it's not your fault we could reopen the special permit and I would like for them to come in yes have them explain what happened listen to what they have to say and then we can explain to them our questions for you absolutely I understand nothing to do with you I want to make the perfect view Claire so if that's is that okay Claire? Rachel? that's a question I'd like to pose to the board so I would like to request that they come in front of us with a plan with rendering again for how they will comply with the items we just identified I'm also taking a look at the color of the storefront framing for the storefront windows which is not correct either we had approved a dark bronze and they have a looks like a chrome an anodized aluminum storefront system and entry package and I'm not excited about the anodized aluminum storefront system in that particular color field there so again I agree I think that we'd like to see a mitigation plan we could decide as the board tonight to reopen to vote to reopen the special permit and leave it open until we are satisfied that this is complete or we could hold on reopening it if we are satisfied with what they come in front of us with on the 8th we can put some time time requirements for the execution of those items and if they are not that we could reopen the special permit at that time but I wanted to discuss the whether or not the board wanted to recommend reopening the special permit and I'll start with Eugene to decide heavily I don't know the answer Claire do you have any opinion on whether we should reopen the special permit or not do I have any opinion you've been talking to them we haven't that is an interesting question I would like to give them the opportunity to respond I think that Rachel's suggestion that they come in on the 8th with an appropriate rendering of the plan as well as some sort of explanation related to the distribution of the affordable units is good I think at this point what they have committed to is at least in writing is whatever mitigation this board thinks is appropriate they will agree to perform and I think where we are right now we haven't offered them what we haven't told them yet what it is exactly that we're looking for but I think having them come in on the 8th we are up to and including reopening the special permit is something under consideration and the certificate of occupancy will be withheld for a moment it's already been issued again it can be pulled for non-compliance in the future so the longer they let this go the more challenging this will be for them so what I would like to request and in good faith they have come back quickly to say we will comply but I think again they owe it to this town to come to the next meeting with the renderings and a schedule and a commitment for meeting all of these items that we just identified and committing in writing to addressing these items which deviated from what was approved Steve just a question for Ms. Ricker earlier you said that the owners had residential tenants moving in this weekend that's correct that's my understanding Gene I don't know when their commercial tenant was moving in but I understand they had a commercial tenant do you know I have heard they do have a commercial tenant but I do not know the timeline for them moving in and opening that business I've heard it to Jim that's what I heard too not the lucky one not the lucky community or not the lucky restaurant okay so you have the list to send to them we will address that and expect them back at the January 8th and if I may offer one more thing Mike Champa and I had a long discussion about this board and the special permit conditions of this board being included on their checklist of approvals prior to issuing an occupancy permit and we have been added to that I know we have been talking a lot about how we're going to keep promises and things like that so this is a start at least we will have an opportunity to inspect the building and inspect the facade prior to issuance of the permit in the future it might be worth as well as a future item for us to build into whether it's our rules and regulations or something else what are the consequences for not complying with the special permit because obviously there are fines and other items that the building department can levy for non-compliance with certain non-conformance issues that they have but I don't know that we have those levers and that might be worth discussing with town council and inspectional services again since this is not the first time this is the most recent the most egregious recently but it's something that I think we should given that that will now be a checklist item we should understand and be able to communicate clearly to the folks who come in front of us for a special permit exactly why they need to comply with the conditions and the particular elevations and again I think making sure that they know that at any time when things do change we can always review they can come in front of this board to discuss why and review and seek approval proactively and that is certainly preferred to this particular situation that we all find ourselves in absolutely okay great so that concludes agenda item number five we will now move excuse me was that you also wanted to speak about 455-457 so the board asked for an update on 455-457 massive as it appeared potentially maybe construction had stopped or it is underway they are out there working through the winter as they can but they're still moving forward with the project it is you know moving through the system and moving along I guess according to schedule thank you for the update any questions for Claire around 455-457 Mass Ave thank you so much for the update alright the next item is agenda number six which is Fox Library 157 Mass Ave a housing feasibility study which is very exciting which I would love to turn it over to you to discuss so in our spare time this summer when we weren't working on MBTA communities my staff and I wrote a grant for both we received a community planning grant in the amount of about $77,000 $77,000 and some change as well as direct local technical assistance award from MAPC to complete a housing feasibility study above a future Fox Library and this is something that is that Boston is starting to look at and some other communities are starting to look at how to for lack of a lot of vacant public property that we could potentially use to build affordable housing and build housing you know what could we do on properties that we own so Anna Litten approached me about the idea of what if we put housing above a future rebuilt Fox Library and I thought it sounded really interesting so we wrote this feasibility grant we were awarded MAPC we'll be doing the work and what they'll be looking at is the possibility of developing pro forma trying to take a look at disposition what would disposition of air rights what was the structure of that could look like how many units, how tall what's the neighborhood impact to the potential for parking underneath just basically any question that may be outstanding related to this project and we don't know honestly if it's feasible or not or if it's something that the town could take on there are certainly lots of ways that this could be achieved but I think what we're looking for is a path forward that works in Arlington that works in the system that we have so some really good news and I think a pretty interesting project that we'll be taking on in the next few months great, so, Ken any questions on that I looked at that a while back and you can probably fit in many units up there with no parking and you can do it modally and you can sit anywhere from 12 to 16 units on top of the existing library and you're doing the same thing what you're doing what they're doing over at Papageo Unicycle is poking a couple of big columns through and that's it and it leaves the library somewhat intact that is pure just the air rights and they can send that up as an RFP and sell the air rights that could be a possibility I'm not saying that the only way to go but I just remember looking at that a long time ago before I put on this hat I don't look at that anymore thank you, Ken Shayna you might consider talking with Joe Backer at Boston Mayor's Office of Housing he has been staffing their housing over library applications and would I'm sure be happy to discuss they just awarded their last-end library site just I think last week so I think they have been finding it hugely expensive but the sites that they've been putting out for RFP are very challenging sites so for what it's for yeah this is terrific I'm really glad you got the grant and are looking into this so congratulations is the Fox Library building itself going to be rebuilt too so this could be part of a whole package it's my understanding that the library building will be demolished and rebuilt rebuilt so this would allow for some more opportunities that's great for the housing itself what are you thinking like a percent affordable if it can't work financially is affordable will we do market rate what's your thought about that so I think the feasibility study will point us in the right direction what I would like to see is enough units above the library that we could do deeply affordable 30% AMI 50% AMI those type of units I think the parking requirements would be less and I think that ultimately you would need quite a bit of subsidy in there we would have to I'm not sure the schedule would work projects like that are funded going into the rounds with EOHLC the subsidy rounds so it may be a project that is market with our inclusionary zoning that's what I was wondering absolutely applicable this is great looking forward to see how this flows out thank you Gene I attended the affordable housing trust boards meeting last week and we actually got into a very deep in the weeds discussion about this I'm glad to see that we were able to get a TA grant because of the things I learned in the meeting in terms of what needs to be ironed out but in terms of air rights and number of developers how the asset classes are negotiated in terms of funding I'm glad we have some funding to make this an exciting project great thank you Steve congratulations thank you alright anything else on item six alright is there anyone who would like to speak at open forum in our audience tonight alright we will close open forum and move to number eight new business Claire anything on your list for new business no new business at this time Ken we introduce Sarah go ahead Ken see this project here across the street part of the approval process was there was supposed to be a tree here there was a tree there it died and they cut it and they threw it away so part of the promise keeping is they need to install the tree there yes it was a real small tree it was maybe a one inch caliber tree I don't know spring is coming spring is coming plant the tree can I ask you to put a bigger tree there sure if you go back to the original approval plans for this there was one decorative tree ornamental tree right at that corner bear question absolutely I'm happy to follow one tree at a time I just saw this and I'm going to go great question Ken alright anyone else new business alright is there a motion to adjourn so motion I'll second that we'll take a roll call vote starting with Steve yes Jean yes Shayna yes Ken yes MES as well we are adjourned thank you everyone thank you have a happy new year