 Applying this meeting of the board to order. I'd like to confirm all members and anticipated officials are present. Members of the zoning board of appeals, Roger Dupont. Here. Good evening, Patrick Hanlon. Here. Good evening, Kevin Mills. Here. Good evening, Sean O'Rourke. Here. Good evening, Aaron Ford. Here. Good to see you. Thank you for being here. Steven Revillac. Good evening, Mr. Chair. Good to see you as well. I'm here on behalf of the town, Kelly Lenema, the assistant director of the Department of Planning and Community Development is helping us out this evening. Good to have you here. And we are joined this evening by town council, Doug Hine. Good to see you. Thank you for having me. You're welcome. And as we mentioned last time, so Paul Haverty, our normal consultant for 40B is unavailable this evening. And so I had asked Mr. Hine if he would sit in with us to help us as legal questions may arise as he is the counsel to the town and also therefore counsel to the zoning board of appeals. So this open meeting of the Arlington zoning board of appeals is being conducted remotely consistent with an act extending certain COVID-19 measures adopted during the state of emergency signed into law on June 16th, 2021. This act includes an extension until April 1st, 2022 of the remote meeting provisions of Governor Baker's March 12th, 2020 executive order suspending certain provisions of the open meeting law, which suspended the requirement to hold all meetings in a publicly accessible physical location for their all members of public bodies are allowed to continue to participate remotely. Public bodies may meet remotely so long as reasonable public access is afforded so the public can follow along with the deliberations of the meeting. For this meeting, the Arlington zoning board of appeals has convened a video webinar via the Zoom webinar application with online and telephone access as listed on the agenda posted to the town's website identifying how the public may join. This meeting is being recorded and is being broadcast by ACMI. All supporting materials that have been provided members of this body are available on the town's website unless otherwise noted and the public is encouraged to follow along using the posted agenda. So with all of that, there are no other administrative items on our agenda this evening, which brings us to agenda item number two, Thorndyke Place, the term to the comprehensive permit for Thorndyke Place. At its October 20th, 2021 public hearing, the board voted unanimously to close the public hearing for Thorndyke Place. This marked the end of the acceptance of testimony and new information in regards to the project. It also initiated a 40 day period for the board to consider and render a decision. On October 28th, 2021, the board initiated its deliberations. They were continued on November 3rd, 11th and 16th and we continue them again this evening. Tonight's discussions and deliberations are being held openly and publicly but the board is unable to accept comment from the applicant, the board's peer review consultants, the town or the public. For this reason, tonight's meeting is being conducted using the webinar platform, which allows the board to limit who may participate in the discussion. Now, on behalf of the board, I appreciate everyone's understanding. The board will resume its discussion using the draft decision available on tonight's agenda. It can be differentiated by the text in the footer noting in 11, 16, 21 revision date. And the board will briefly review the revisions proposed at the previous meeting then resume the discussion with the findings, discussing proposed provisions and a few proposed substitutions. And then at the end of tonight's meeting, the board may either vote on the final decision or vote to continue the meeting to continue its deliberations. Under state regulation, the board must issue a decision by November 30th or request an extension from the applicant to further continuous deliberations. Okay, so I will, as I've done in the past, well, Kelly, if you could give me a version to share my screen. Here you go. Perfect, thank you. So this is the draft that's been posted. It has some additional comments and notes I've been making on my own behalf during the day. So there will be things in here that are not in the other version, but we will be discussing them as we go through. So yesterday we had gone through and completed all of the conditions and the waivers. And I just wanted to briefly go back through to see if there are any questions on the conditions in related to comments that Mr. Hanlon brought forward in regards to the findings. There was one finding that sort of made a work that there was a question whether we should adopt an additional condition. And so I have penciled something in here, which we can come back to when we will view that portion of the findings. Otherwise, I believe at the beginning of the last meeting we had gone through and sort of cleared out everything. The only other question I had on the conditions and it's really just a Scribner kind of question is we do have voids in the numbering which we had left so that we could, our referencing to numbers continued throughout the review but now that we're done primarily with the conditions, does anyone object to taking out the numbers that we're not using and just re-sequencing the numbers? No, perfect. There's no objection. Oops, I don't know how. Mr. Chairman. Mr. Hanlon. Just at some point, I think not, clearly not tonight but once we do that, there may be cross-references that will be affected and that's a more extensive procedure to find those and to get them corrected. Okay. Yeah, I think the first number I believe is I-24. So it's really just the last portion. On that cross-referencing, it might be easiest to just do a control F which is a find and you can do a find I-40 before you delete them. So that might help. So it's a very good recommendation. Thank you. Conditions and then the waivers. And there was a question that had come up in regard to last time to the adjusting the hours and days of construction that we would need to include a waiver for that and so it was something we should look into but in reviewing it, it appears that we had already put that into the meeting prior. So that is a waiver 32. Which allows to change it as it's condition. Are there any questions then in relation to the conditions or the waivers? Being none, back to the top. We had last time looked at the procedural history and we had looked at the jurisdictional findings when we left off at the factual findings. I don't see, just to sorry to briefly just jump back to the jurisdictional findings. I don't know if 16A, we were looking for an infill date here for the DHCD subsidized housing inventory. So we have copies of the inventory from May and November of that year. But I don't have one any closer than May to the filing date of the application, which was August and so that's, so I think May 13 is probably the most appropriate date to apply there. And then to the factual findings, we looked at the first few and then we got to number 21 and Mr. Hanlon had put together a very nice substitute for 21, which really sort of laid out a formatting for how to address all the findings going forward. And so we adopted that and then what I had done was try to take all the findings and stick them into these categories. Some of them sort of fit more successfully than others. And as we go through, we'll also note that there was a large scale substitution for transportation and one that came out more recently both for stormwater and wetlands, but also for climate change, which I'm gonna propose that we call climate change and resiliency, just because I think it gives a little more sense as to what we're trying to accomplish with it. So this is essentially the text that Mr. Hanlon had provided and was provided as a part of the agenda last time. Actually, let me go ahead and make this bigger so we can actually read it. I was gonna propose under C that we did call climate change and resiliency. And in G, I wanted to change it slightly. So the town has a strong policy in favor of keeping the subject property or as much of it as possible as open space as well as ensuring that it's managed appropriately. So just changing the word into as. Any other questions on 21 or what we would like to do with 21? Seeing none. So that gets us into the first of these new topics, the need for affordable housing. And I believe that Mr. Revlak had provided text for this, is that correct? That is correct. And that was posted to the agenda last time. I don't know if you'd like to take us through this. Okay, so two of the, I'll skip over the first item 22. Items 23 and 24 were existing findings that I'd just taken perhaps, I think I reworded 22 a little bit and put them under the heading of affordable housing. As far as 22, 22, the main thrust is just kind of framing the current state of, or the number of affordable units and Arlington and framing it as an area of local concern. And just talking about some of the measures that the town has done like adopting a housing production plan having it approved by the state. And just a little bit of, just an outline of what we had in terms of affordable units and eligible households in 2016 when our current housing production plan was adopted. So I believe, yeah, I believe those are the three sections. Thank you. I had just, there were a couple of two quick typos I think we're missing just missing a verb and this one sentence just capitalizing to be in board 23 and then there was just a script note at the end here regards to I think where it was originally coming from. So these are the paragraphs in the findings in regards to affordability, the need for affordable housing. Are there any questions or are there any additional findings which we would like to include? Looks good. And Mr. Chair, didn't we go through this language last meeting? Don't recall how, where we exactly ended up last time. I know it was definitely submitted in time for last week but I don't know if we specifically went through it. I think we did, Mr. Chair and Mr. Hanlon probably remembers. We had, we, I think we went over this. We did a little bit of the wordsmithing on 22. Oh, okay. Mr. Chairman, I think that we got all the way to flooding in wetlands, although I think it's useful to see it all set out and to look at over the way we just did, but I think that flooding in wetlands is about where we are now. Okay. So flooding in wetlands, so I had gone through and the version that I had posted, I had taken all the paragraphs that I had found and tried to stick them under flooding in wetlands. The ones that seemed appropriate that I put under flooding in wetlands. And then I went back when Mr. Hanlon issued his version of flooding in wetlands, I went through and I basically went through this list here and sort of crossed off things I could find, specifically in his to make sure we weren't missing anything particular. So I will go back and cover those but essentially everything that we originally had, I had originally identified with the exception of 21 is in his. So I will go ahead, I will stop sharing on this one and switch to the other one. Stop the share on that one, pick up this one. So I was going through this today and so there are some additional comments on here from me. So Mr. Hanlon, I don't know if you want to present this or should I keep going? Well, let me just quickly say that there's something peculiar about the way in which spell check works that it didn't notice that flooding has a few O's in there. I thought that that was the Scandinavian version. Yeah, it'll be three O's. It did seem Danish or something like that, yeah. So believe me Hanlon, you had two versions of the first paragraph depending on whether or not the letters in reference had been included in the record. And so I did go back and confirm that yes, these letters are in the record. Okay. So the first letter was from actually Nova Armstrong Associates to the town council dated August 10th and then the second was dated August 15th from the conservation commission to the select board. Okay, that sounds fine to me. And this note here was just to check those citations to work it there. And so because A works, we can scrap B. Mr. Chairman. Yes, sir. That's, this is all fine with me. I'm just wondering and maybe Mr. Han can help explain to this, I think we say early on that the filing date for this was September 2016. And obviously there was things going on before that was officially filed. And what I'm wondering is whether these 2015 letters are actually properly in the record in this case or whether they're preliminary correspondence that might have related to the appeal for a finding letter from mass housing and that sort of thing. So I can actually address that slightly before you with Mr. Han. So we have received comment from Mr. Rarick on behalf of the Arlington Land Trust. We have received a letter back in March, I believe. And then the letter was reissued for later in the year. And I had asked him, and he specifically referenced these documents. And I had asked him for copies of those documents at that time. And so those were officially added to the record and you can find them on the ZBA website. Okay, that's all that's my concern. That's fine. Okay, perfect. Mr. Chair, do you want me to add anything or you're all set? If there's anything you think we need to add to that? How far back does the record go? So the original application I believe is from August of 2016. I believe that at different points in time you incorporated a variety of things including the mass housing project eligibility letter which is dated December of 2015. Some of the studies that were relied upon for various different purposes which stretch all the way back to 2014. But as long as they were incorporated into the application directly or later into the record by the ZBA, they're all a part of your record for consideration. Okay. So Mr. Chairman, I think maybe the helpful thing is I can at least indicate to people what in general I did and then maybe we can just go through and see how the wording works. And what I attempt to, what I actually did was copy out the existing draft that had to do with this general subject and looked further on at later provisions that seemed to me to also relate to this subject and then to try to get them all to come together in an orderly way. And so that more or less starts with introducing the general subject of flooding and the importance of that as a local concern. It turns to the final summation that we have from both the applicant and beta about the underlying circumstances on flooding that it was intended to and I think does summarize what occurred during the record after that period of time. At that point, and this goes in then in what my version would be number 19 to mention other aspects of wetlands and to turn to much of the regulatory structure that we talked about with the Conservation Commission. And I attempted to bring in the various aspects of the way in which the applicant addressed the concerns relating to the application and their compliance with the wetlands bylaw and regulations which brings us ultimately down to 24 and 25 which were conditions that were originally proposed much later on by the Conservation Commission but which related to the subject of how you deal with the remediation that is taking place in order to meet the wetlands bylaw. Originally, you may remember that those were at the beginning of something that we incorporated into conditions relating to a mitigation plan for plantings and so forth. And so those provisions are intended to provide the basis in the findings for what we did in the conditions. At that point, I turned to climate change and in contrast to the way in which I did it before where I went to directly to the net zero issue I spent more time on resilience and response and went back into the objections that were made by Samson and Weston and the concerns they had that notwithstanding that adopting the NOAA 14 plus may make this up to date it isn't up to the future and the future is fast approaching. And so I went through that correspondence which also led to a consideration of the way and the reasons for raising the building up and how that all came about. That ultimately goes through 32 and then in starting with 33 I outlined in slightly more detail than I had before but not a whole lot, the rationale for the condition that had to do with building electrification. I thought that, I mean, in light of all of the other things and just sort of part of what's going on in my mind in the other 40B, they originally proposed to do all electric and nobody said a word about it even though it's an important part of the town's policy no one said a word about it until much later when they decided that they preferred not to do that. And it seems to me that when people are voluntarily because we're not in a position until we have a home rule amendment and in a 40B not even then when they actually do align with town policy on this that we ought to call it out. And my objective here is to make sure that when other people read the sorts of things that we're thinking about they don't think that because we're silent we're passing over such an important movement that the town is engaged in. So that is the reason for squeezing that in there. Now, hopefully I have succeeded in not leaving anything out. I wasn't intending to leave anything out although there are some provisions that I boiled down a bit to avoid going into sometimes confusing detail when we didn't need to but we can get into that if there's anyone who has questions about the language that I tried to put together. Mostly it was a matter of weaving stuff together and making a quilt rather than starting with anything very fresh. Mr. Chairman. Mr. Dupont. Just a thought. Mr. Dupont, you're back on mute. Just paragraph 33 if you wouldn't mind going back to that. So I believe I understand what net zero policy refers to but I'm wondering if people reading this for the first time might find it helpful to have some reference to the control or the elimination of greenhouse gas emissions. So where it says the town adopted a net zero action plan maybe in parentheses, something just to reduce or eliminate greenhouse gas emissions just so people know what that actually refers to. And it may be somewhere else. I didn't go searching for it but I don't think it hurts to have it in there. So maybe to, okay, that I would include green, I would say I think that maybe greenhouse gas emissions would be more appropriate. It's only partly true that greenhouse gases are all a matter of carbon. They mostly are. Thank you. Mr. Chairman. Yes, sir. In that same section, the word onsite is that one word or two? On the last line of 33, eliminating onsite fuel. The word, and then that's Microsoft word thinks it's a word. You can hyphenate it. I've also found that's not, you know, a final aperture of good English. No, we can hyphenate it. Maybe any of you is fine. All right, so just to, so we had talked about 16. So this is your handle. So in through 17, it's more about Western and Samson. In 18, the last sentence was just changing that the board has also asked its peer consultant. I would just say the board asked its peer consultant to review the inclusions. And this is, that's a comment. It says, this section here summarizes that Don Hitchens memorandum that Mr. Hanlon had asked him to prepare. So in A, about the flooding currently, basically about localized flooding, which is the street flooding after rains. So I had just wanted to change. So it was, there is some question whether the municipal storm drain has adequate capacity. And that was, it was specifically raised by the applicant as to whether that was an issue. And so I wanted to put that in and so to add that, sort of change the sentence to, there was a question raised by the applicant as to whether the 12-inch municipal storm drain has adequate capacity. Is there any objection to that change? Mr. Chairman. Yes, sir. I don't object to it, but I would like to look and see what beta said to see whether or not that's something that was just raised by the applicant, which is kind of this implies or whether it, or whether beta specifically endorsed it. I don't remember. Okay. And Mr. Chair, I recall beta deferring that claim to the town engineer. Yeah, because I remember we had that's, I remember that the town did not necessarily take well to this suggestion or this implication. So I'm not, but I don't recall specifically what beta's response was. Mr. Chairman, I do have a recollection that they did not challenge it. And there was a separate issue relating to stormwater here. If you'll remember about whether or not they were combined sewer and stormwater that as apparently Cambridge has in summer ago, but we do not. And somebody had raised that. One of the public commenters had raised that, had been told that we did have those things and the town engineer intervened to say subsequently that we didn't. I don't recall the town engineer addressing this particular issue. I don't recall either one way or the other. I can look at the record. But then even the only point that I would like to make is if beta actually endorsed it and I'd like to say that and there's a good reason for it. And that is, is that if in fact this is true or even if it might be true, we've been living with the neighbors here for a pretty long time. And, you know, if there's a question of the capacity of the stormwater sewer and that that is causing the daily problem that has led to the frustration and agony that they've expressed over and over that everybody ought to be talking about that. Absolutely. So subsection B, it's about stream flooding which is related to flow from the Y-brook. And so the NAVD's 88 is included everywhere in the document but there were some numbers from Cambridge and I can't recall, Mr. Hanley, did you remove the references to the Cambridge Datum? I did, yes, I removed the specific references to the data and you'll see when we get to that paragraph though there's a reference to the Cambridge material supporting the conclusion that had already been made earlier. And it turns out that once you change the Cambridge data into the NAVD data, it turns out to be essentially the same point that the applicant was making without doing that. And so it was just, it was just duplicative and confusing because dealing with different measuring systems for height is even one set is a little bit confusing. Two sets at the same time is more than we need to inflict on the public. Okay, so we'll leave that then we don't need to say unless otherwise there is nothing else. NAVD has agreed to require the two to one compensatory storage by meeting this as just referred to as a more stringent standard. The proposed project will not contribute to increased flooding in C. Third essential source is groundwater flooding. And I just wanted to add or infiltration from water flowing underground just to add a little bit of explanation as to what we're talking about there. Otherwise all the rest of that seems fine. D is about flooding. And this was this question about data or additional precautions may need to be taken to protect the proposed project itself from groundwater flooding depending on the pattern of additional data. And so I have a proposed condition D32 to address that. E with stormwater management systems designed to meet or exceed mass stormwater standards. And then this brings in the NO 14 plus and then F again, this is the opportunity for the town to clear existing easement of vegetation and increase the capacity of municipal systems to minimize likely of local.