 of Monday, March 30, 2015, the Arlington Redevelopment Board. First on our agenda this evening is considering the adoption of the Open Space Plan update from the Open Space Plan Committee. We have Ann LaRoyer here. And if you could take a seat up here and tell us a little bit about the plan and what you're asking us to consider. Well, many of you have probably been to this before. It's kind of a ritual thing that comes up. It used to be every five years. Now it's every seven years. So this plan is covering a period from 2015 to 2022. And it is basically an update of the 2007 plan, which then was for five years, seven to 12. And then it was again an extension from the state. It's the state division of conservation services in the ELEDA that actually approves these plans because they're part of the state regulation. So but we want both letters of support, which we have to put into the plan eventually, once those are received from various different committees. And then later, I'm actually going to the Board of Slugmen tonight. So I will have to leave about a quarter of a week to get down there in time to talk to them about this as well. But so one thing we're asking is for eventually to have the letter of support that will be incorporated into the plan. And that's been the case for past years as well. And so the Board of Slugmen, the Concom, Parking Art, and NPAC, and APC will get letters from them. So the plan, as I said, it's updating the plan that was done in 2007 and extended to 2014. And so a lot of it is updated. But obviously, there's a lot that's happened in town since 2007. And Chapter 2, if you had a chance to look at it, is list-lobbling accomplishments. Not all, I shouldn't say all, because it's too much to itemize every single item. But many of the accomplishments, especially related to some of the key properties in town and key things as far as invasives and water bodies and just natural resource protection in general. So that's one important chapter. Chapters 3 and 4 are more or less documentation of the town as it is, the soils and environmental conditions and things like that. So a lot of those were updated, population data, of course. But a lot of that hasn't changed drastically. And then Chapter 5 highlights the major properties around both open space natural areas as well as recreation areas. It's technically called the open space and recreation plan. So it definitely incorporates both types of spaces and facilities. So there, we have a lot of maps. And Adam Korowski was fantastic working with us to develop some of these new maps. And both town-wide maps, as well as the site maps that are there in Chapter 5 for each of the different properties. And then 6, 7, and 8 chapters, those chapters kind of talk about needs in the town. And of course, we relied a lot on the master plan to get information that had been compiled for that purpose. And we tried to integrate information, have everything be complementary at least, supplemented to each other. So there's information there that having to do with needs for special populations and so forth. And then Chapter 9, which I guess he just was circling, that's the actual plan part. That's like the implementation part of the master plan, which itemizes specific. Actions, most of which are more or less ongoing. There's not really, there are only time limits to most of these activities, because they're having to do with collaboration among different town departments and maintenance of properties and parks and sports fields and all that stuff. I mean, those just have to keep going on. But there are some more specific goals. And objectives there are, these are certainly is one of the key ones under the first goal was acquisition and protection of land. So that shows up there. Most of the others have to do with maintenance and protection of natural resources, water bodies. Breaks out different types of lands and waters. Then there's protection on coordination within the town and within the region, like MWRA and NISTAC River Watershed and so forth. All the various town properties that we have, but overlap with Lexington, we were talking about before. There's always more that can be done to improve communications both within the town and within the region to plan for our needs and our concerns about how these different resources are being used and taken care of and outside impacts climate. There's, we added a new goal this year, having to do with sort of sustainability and climate change and to just, and again, working with some of the language that was in the master plan to kind of highlight that as a factor in how we plan for and maintain these properties for the future. I know those are some of the highlights, I guess, but I'm happy to try to answer questions. I have a couple of questions. And I guess the first question, what you're asking or to do is write a letter of support in regard to the open space plan or is it an endorsement or a technically, I guess there's two different things, actually. One is we do need a letter that would, and you can find the, get the letter from the last year's plan just to look and see what the language was, I guess. Something, you know, it's pretty generic. It's not that detailed or anything. But then I think the other factor is that because of what's happening with MuGar, there's, when the ARB, as the pointing agency, adopts the open space plan, it also becomes town policy. The Open Space Committee adopted the plan last week at our meeting on Thursday, just technically to make it official. The Board of Select then, again, they don't have an official role in adopting or endorsing or whatever the proper language would be. It's the state that has to approve the plan. But again, by whatever actions you take and the Board of Select would take, as well as the Open Space Committee, it becomes part of town policy. So if we were to endorse the plan or support the plan, and I want to put this into the context of the hypothetical and not single out any particular parcel in town, but just hypothetically dream up an open space parcel that might be on the market, would the redevelopment board, I mean, in saying that open space, preserving open space is a priority, is it a priority that eliminates all other possibilities for the land? No, necessarily, no, I don't think so. I mean, one of the changes that we made was having to acknowledge and looking at lands that have specific conservation and recreation value that may be next to other already protected lands or there's, except for the obvious, anything that's left in town that's not ever been developed is so small. A Milbro corridor is certainly an area, but it's highly developed. It doesn't mean that it's just open space, but that whatever open space and natural resource concerns, there might be opportunities that there would be that those would be seriously taken into account. I don't think it's not meant to be exclusive at all. It's just to try to raise the awareness of the need for open space in a small town like ours and by recognizing that there's very, very little that's available even to worry about. But to take advantage of where little parcels or things that might come up that might be able to be added on to something adjacent would really enhance use of it and protection. But just to play a little bit of devil's advocate here in the event that the decision on land use were to come before this board. And the view of the board members was that this particular hypothetical parcel might be better suited to some form of development, perhaps what we would hope would be a sensitive development to be other important objectives that we're ever looking at. We're not precluded from saying, OK, well, in this particular instance, this parcel makes more sense to add on to another parcel that's being developed in some form or another. Yeah, I don't think it's meant to be exclusive in any way. Or it's not. I mean, it's just like the open with a master plan. It's a blueprint, policy, vision of just trying to acknowledge what we have and protect what we have, maintain what we have, but look for opportunities that might be appropriate. But you're right. Sometimes an area, even along, obviously along Melbroke, there's areas that are kind of natural right now. But some of them might be better to be built up as part of a development that goes along to Broke, but it's, I don't know. I mean, anything that's zoned open space, obviously, is protected. All these other kind of little small open parcels that exist. I mean, there's no mandate here that says, if it's not developed, it can never be developed. That's not the idea at all. No, I don't think, I'm not sure that it's going to come up recently anyway. I don't know. I mean, the only other, the major site that was protected that's not going to be developed is Elizabeth Island. But that's a special case also. Sims, obviously, there was a lot of development there. But we were also able to carve out some very nice open space. So that's the kind of probably a balancing compromise and kind of common sense opportunity to take advantage of things that make some, that's to the benefit of the town. OK, great. Thanks. Mike. Yeah, so as a planning board, I think we will be asked to adopt it not only right the matter of support. Right, OK. I just have some more process-type questions than anything else. Obviously, I mean, it's a great document. A lot of work, everything else. What was your process in drafting it and approving it and that type of thing? Did you have a public comment? Like, what happened with that piece of it? Well, it is an update of the previous ban, like I said. The committee is made up of representatives from the parkinrack.com, cemetery commission, DPW, other groups in town. And because the master plan was happening at the same time I mean, I happen to be at the master plan advisory committee, that was very handy. And so we kind of adopted that whole public process as part of our own to kind of integrate the two processes together. The other new bit of information that we were able to get was the 2020 Vision 2020 Survey in 2014 had a specific section about open space that we worked closer with them to develop questions that we thought would help us in this plan both to look at need. There was a question about what kinds of resources do the town have enough of or not enough of? And that's in the appendix, the results of that survey. Yeah, I saw that. And you probably saw it before too last spring when it came out. So that was another source. And then because the master plan was happening and there were all the public meetings associated with that, we didn't have our own set of separate meetings. But we had a series of meetings within the open space and for resources, part of the master plan that I was involved in and others were as well. So we, again, kind of piggybacked the committee. Right, so this dovetails in with what you've done with that. So we felt it was really important that the two plans match or complement each other and address the same kinds of issues. So. OK. And then on process two, I guess the one thing, if I were to look at it, that I think, and I heard what you said and I agree with it, is I guess I'm just surprised on the implementation plan that's there's not much distinction between short-term, mid-term, and long-term on almost everything. There's just only a few things. And I guess, given resources and that type of thing, I guess I'm a little bit surprised by that, that maybe we didn't take a little harder look at some of the things. Are we really going to get to that in 15 and 16, given everything else that we're working on? Yeah, no, I think that's fair. We talked about that ourselves and saying that, wow, this is really kind of rigged. I mean, it's like all of these things we want to try to do. But how do we break them into manageable chunks that can be accomplished within a timeframe? And a lot of it's hard to do that. I mean, one of the things that we've started now that this is going to be almost over, we're already starting to talk about projects that the committee will start to actually work on now that start going through this list and trying to accomplish some of these things. And one of them is about the inventory. And that overlaps with the master plan as well. And I guess the water bodies, people that are involved with the water bodies, also are doing an inventory of that. So that's something that should be very short term. Another thing that we want to do is to take the maps and the descriptions, a lot of what's in Chapter 5, and get those up onto the website in a way that people can access them, like with their smartphones or download the maps or access. Rather than, I mean, we will put the whole thing up as a PDF file that people can look at. But that's a little daunting. So we want to try to break up the information. To make it more accessible to people. So that's another, could be a short term goal, that's probably under the, I think it's number four, having to do a publication, things like that. Yeah, I mean, I guess that's, if I had only, if I had one constructive criticism, I think it would be that. Because things like implements owning and other bylaws to ensure that Prollington residential areas, commercial centers, and infrastructure are developed in harmony with future natural resource needs. You know, I can understand the implements is the tough ones there for kind of a short term. I mean, if you're on town meeting, anything at all with 15 is gone. 16 is going to be gone. Our community to decide these things. Exactly. We'd like to end on lots of other. Exactly. Or other friends groups that are very helpful with doing some things about maintenance and so forth. But dealing with invasives, I mean, that's forever. Yeah, it's ongoing. And certainly the things that say support and encourage, I definitely understand. It's more the actual action items implement or something like that. I kind of wish we had. We need to revisit that. Well, I think we're probably a little bit late on this one. Well, we can still do minor editing. And if there are specific ones that you are wondering about, we can edit them. We've got that list of things that you have. And I've been continuing to proofread this. And I keep finding little problems. And there's some formatting problems that you may have noticed. Also, those will be taken care of. That has to do with the file format. Those will be fixed, certainly, before it's circulated any more widely. Right. Yeah, I was really distressed when I saw all these missing letters and strange things. Yeah, it looked like they did. Yeah, it almost looked like it. It's because it's a low-res PDF file. Is that what it is? So I just didn't pick it up. And I guess when they compressed it, somehow it dropped out. Well, I was looking at the Word document as well, and they were all in there. So I think it's just a matter of making sure. Yeah, I just have to work with BHB that's doing some of the logistics for us. They'll have to fix that. But if you have any of the specific elements here, the action plan there, when you think the language isn't quite right, we're happy to change it. Yeah, I think the only one I'd have is the implement zoning and other bylaws. 5-8-4, 5-8-1, 8-1-31. Look, I'll just bring it up. There are a few I might try to remove the X on a short term. But if you say support or encourage, maybe encourage zoning and other bylaws to ensure that, to me, that's a little bit more in the wheelhouse of what? I mean, we could even add into that box in collaboration or something or whatever. Well, no, you can't be armed in the DPW. Oh, yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Actually, I like that. That makes more sense to me. In collaboration or in concert with the master plan. Exactly, in concert with them. I actually like that a lot. I mean, there are probably quite a few things that we could add that. Yeah, but I. Clarification, because that really reinforces that it's part of a major town-wide effort. I think that's right. But as I look through the different things, the ones that, once again, as a town-wide member that I like, it's like, well, wait a second, that's what we do. So I think on that one, I'm OK if we make that change, I think. Right. No, I can see that we don't do the implementations. But that's the responsible part. I mean, that's why so many of these things are just sort of ongoing, because there's other groups that have to do with all these things. Yeah. I guess that's what I had. Any? If you've got the mill broke. Oh, yeah, lots of stuff about the mill broke. Yeah, that's great. I mean, that's very a typical kind of park. It's not really a park, or at least people can't really imagine it as such, because it's broken into tiny little pieces where it picks up and then it becomes completely unrecognizable, happens to run through a residential neighborhood, then it picks up again and it get little pieces of itself. The idea that you could continue to look for ways to enhance that, either. Well, and again, the master plan was very strong about looking at that as a way to think about next use development in the future and so forth. And I think, again, it goes all in concert together to try to take advantage of the open space resources, the open areas, the waterways that are there, as well as the opportunities for building on what development is there, improving the quality of the activities that are happening there. I mean, you mentioned the mill broke study area, which we define the ARB, Rotador, at least indicated yet, which helped indicate that the zone should be looked at as one big thing. And it speaks to your point of, you might develop very strongly larger sites within the millbrook district or millbrook area. And then in exchange for other areas becoming more green. So if you look at it holistically, it's not like you have to have one size fits all solutions for that whole area. No, I mean, the town owns, I think it's about a third of the areas of budding, like around the reservoir and some of the playing field. Yes, heard. Of course, in high school, it's under water. It's channelized. It's hollow, the cemetery. I mean, so those places are not going to be developed per se, but there's plenty of other places in between that can be re-developed to make the links much stronger and to accentuate what's there. And I mean, I think in the long term, if we can somehow recognize, and I think this helps recognize the importance of that millbrook zone to the town that each time a development is made, we can weigh in those concerns. Exactly, yeah. It might be just a very small gesture to it in some cases. Yeah, but I mean, at Brigham, they did a nice job to build the park and the kind of a wetland that they developed, which was town on pocket and so forth. Yeah, stuff, yeah. Is there, I don't have the map with me. I just have this blow-up that's in this section. All of the little pieces that we own as a town are on there, right? Yes, there is. It's hard to see it on the map. You don't see it on the system. Well, that's the beginning of chapter 5, I believe. I don't have it with me. But I think it's on there. I think I've seen it before. I like that one at Brattle, at the corner of Brattle and Dudley. There's lots of tiny little places. Yeah, it's on page 69. You see that? Does that have every single? minutia? Well, I don't know that it has all of the concom little tiny custom areas that are out of the place. It doesn't have a little Brattle one there, for instance. I don't think that's across the street. Dudley corner of Dudley and Brattle. I believe that's a corner. Seven is Wolland and Park. That's Wolland. That's Gwerb Street. Right, yeah, these are more of the middle ones. Yeah, these are the ones that we highlighted the numbered places. There are a few little small ones, but as you know. Yeah, there's lots of town on this town. If you go along Dudley and you go up to Brattle and you take a left, is it Brattle? It's not Grove, it's Brattle. There's a site there that's along the brook. It's got parking. Yes, but I believe that's owned by one of those apartment buildings. It's not Townland, no, that's not Townland. Because that's a good one to keep an eye on, because it really feels like it enhances that. Right, that's exactly. And it connects down to Wolland to Grove. I mean, it connects, it's pretty much open all the way from Brattle to Grove Street. That was one of the places that we highlighted in that report from 2010. That that's one of the few relatively long stretches that still looks kind of natural. I mean, it's abutted by houses on one side and parking lots. And there's a little bridge over it. I think that was the Renaissance. Was it the Renaissance? The Rembrandt. Rembrandt. Right, kind of. That put over. But the far side, the north side, is back up to Dudley Street. And it's quite steep at sections of it. So it's really not accessible on that side. But on the mass outside of the brook, it's relatively flat. But it is, my understanding is that the land is owned by those. Oh, OK. So I'm mistaken on that. I thought it might be. I was wishful thinking there. Yeah, no, I was wishful thinking there. I mean, they might, you know, if there was, you know, we got to the point where we really wanted to try to install a pedestrian pathway or something through there, maybe to get an easement from those owners or something that would make it. Or just a preservation, because the view from that bridge going that way, going that direction is so enhanced by having that as open space, even if you don't have it accessible. Anyway, that's a detail. Yeah, but I mean, except for maybe the people that live in those buildings, most people don't know about that. It doesn't seem very open to me. From the Wellington Parkside, you can walk a little bit. You can't get out of the way through it, yeah. Yes, I mean, it's private property, and I'm supposed to walk out of the way through it. I have walked out of the way through it. But it's not, I mean, yeah. But again, if it were to become a part of a project, that would become part of a section of the linear park, what's called linear park, a walkway that even if it wasn't a lot of work done on it, but it was made public, with an easement of some kind, then it would be great. What are the kinds of new things that come into it? You mentioned some when you reviewed chapter 9, but what are the new aspects of the open space report? Like, Mill got a little bit more. I know that, because I was interested in that personally. Right, because we did a lot of work a few years ago. Well, Elizabeth Island, that came up over this past seven years on Sims, working on getting the CR on that, and getting the parks and the woods protected there. There's a little site over by Spipon that's, did that get in, or is it already in there? The public space that we own, just short of the stone bridge as you go through this. On Pond Lane. Yeah, absolutely. I think that was already in that, yeah. That's, I believe part of that's under the park and rec. Okay. No, there haven't, I mean, except for those, there haven't been any new, I mean, the break-ups in a way is a new thing because certainly the area was enhanced because of the development that happened there, and because of your work to make the developer, do something that would enhance that area. There was a little bit of work done around Old Schwann Mill, actually, when they built that new bridge over Mill Lane. And there was a little bit of landscaping that was done. I mean, most of that was already there, but it's been improved. I improved the mansion and the volunteers at the Old Schwann Mill are involved in helping with the work on that landscape. Was there any change in the Mugar coverage in the report? Because it's always been, or at least the last two times we've approved it, it's been in there. Oh yeah, it's always been in there as a goal. I mean, since, you know, 60 years ago. Did you amend that in any way, or is that just the way it was? It's been updated a little bit, but it's maybe strengthened a little bit to, you know, there's a new threat. But, you know, 2000, 2001, Town Meeting voted to 2010, I guess they are being voted to adopt the old open space plan, which had been just an oversight, I guess, and not having adopted it previously. To, again, be sure that it was adopted by the planning board as town policy, I mean, the overall plan, which included statements about protecting it, the new Garland. There was an opportunity there, but again, it's not prescriptive, it's just saying. Right, of course, yeah, it's just saying that this is, you know, floodplain and land that needs to be at least looked at in terms of the environmental impacts that development could have on it. As it borders on public land, on Arlington land. Right. On Daikon. The impact on the neighborhood and the other open space that's already there. Great. No, I don't have any other questions that aren't covered. Thank you. I think all my questions have been covered. So it's very thorough, very comprehensive. I especially appreciate the pieces on the reservoir of McClone Park and Mount Kilmawin. That must be your neighborhood. That is my neighborhood. That's great. They still learn a little bit more about our island. Yeah, well, that's part of our goal with this and now with, you know, the new technology to try to get it broken up into little manageable pieces of information that people can download. So we hope to work with Adam and I guess Joan Roman or whoever, you know, if we need to work with the town website too. So you can, you know, walk around and say, oh, you know, what is this place anyway? Trying to work on signage and I mean, that's something that's again, kind of long-term. Yeah, yeah. DPW to try to just help people find their way around. I really like the idea of turning Mount Kilmawin to a Vista Park. That'd be very nice stuff to have to walk to. No, but thank you for coming today and presenting. Oh, you're very welcome. Thank you. Appreciate it. Follow up with one letter or other about what you need to do. Thanks very much. Great, thank you for our action on this one. Do we need to move something? We should if we want to. I'll offer a motion. I move that we approve the adoption and support of the open space plan for 2015-2022 has revised by the open space committee on March 27th, 2015 and subject to making the corrections as noted therein. Oh, you can correct that. If I've got it wrong. If you want to do what Ann's asking you to do, you ought to consider rewording the motion so that the board adopts the open space plan. It does say adopt and support. But this, I may have misheard you, but I think you said endorses the adoption. Oh, let me rephrase. Please correct me if I'm misidentifying the plan, but the motion would be to move that the ARB adopt and support the open space plan for 2015-2022 as revised by the open space committee on March 27th, 2015 and subject to making the corrections as noted therein. And I think the only thing I might add is, Ann, just that the chairman can sign a letter of support. Authorize the sign a letter of support. Yes. Please tack that onto my motion. Sure. I think you know this, but it's open space and recreation plan is the formal name. And I second that. All in favor. Aye. Great, now I can look under the select one and tell them that you've adopted. You've adopted. Four-zero. Exactly. You know this. Very important document for this town. Well, it's, yeah, I mean, I think it is and maybe a very important step. Bruce, what was the verb you used for the open space committee's action on March 27th, 2015? Has revised. Has revised. And just so you know, there'll be further revisions of minor edits and things like that. Those, I just wanted to get a couple of those in there that you would be aware of, but like I said, I'm continuing to proofread it, you know. So it'll be cleaned up and we'll make the change about the one factor about the master plan and the zoning. So there'll be a few other things like that, but nothing really majorly substantive. Okay, that's all I have to say. Thank you. Thank you. Moving on to minutes from last week's. I had no comments. I thought they were excellent. It's a first. I'm good with them. Likewise. Likewise. I'll move to approve the minutes of March 23rd. I'll second. All in favor. Aye. Great. Easy. Good. I'll get anything else? I think that's on the agenda unless anyone has any other business. I'll move to adjourn. Second. All in favor. Aye. Aye. Thank you. Good, thank you. Thank you.