 James Slamming, Precinct 3, Article Proponent. Let's start with a question. What is a parking minimum? It's the minimum amount of parking you have to have if you want to have a building in Arlington. You can build more if you want, but you can't build less. There are minimums for almost every kind of building in town. For example, this is a single-family home. Single-family homes are required to build at least one parking space. This home looks like it has two, so they're okay. Two is greater than one. However, they couldn't tear the driveway up and not have a parking space, because zero is less than one. This is a section of the zoning by-law, which dictates the minimum parking requirements for residential uses. As we just saw, single families are required to build one space per unit, as are two and three families. However, apartments are required to provide a different number of spaces per number of bedrooms, usually greater than one parking space per unit. This is data from the American Community Survey, which is conducted by the Census, and which helps local officials, community leaders, and businesses understand the changes taking place in their communities. This chart shows the number of cars per renting household in Arlington as of 2020. For the purposes of this presentation, note that four in five households had one or fewer cars, and one in five had no car at all. This proposal would change the parking minimum for apartments such that apartments are required to only build one space per unit. This brings them in line with other types of housing in town. Note that an individual apartment can still have two spaces, even if an average of one space per unit is built, and that public housing for the elderly is not affected by these changes. We have evidence that builders are willing to provide one or fewer spaces per unit. A proposed development in East Arlington in 2021 had about one half space per unit, and the development currently being built kitty corner to the high school originally proposed one space per unit. This is the reason that I'm so interested in this. Unneeded parking wastes land that could be put to better use. By way of example, this is an apartment building at the end of Oxford Street just before Broadway. According to town property records, it has about 10,000 square feet of apartments and about 4,300 square feet of parking. The building is valued at $1.3 million and the parking lot at $6,800. The parking space is 40% of the living space, but is valued at less than 1% as much. Think about that. Living space is worth 80 times as much as parking, so it also pays 80 times the tax revenue. From a money perspective, parking is almost like empty land. By requiring more parking than needed, instead of allowing it to be used for something else like another apartment, the town is leaving tax revenue on the table. Unneeded parking also costs residents money. Depending on conditions, a single space can cost between $5,000 and $12,000 in the Boston area and a whole lot more if basement parking is required. If an owner wants one space per unit, but is forced to build more, the rents must be higher to cover the cost. Someone has to pay for it. You might ask about guest parking. The town allows 14 nights of on-street overnight parking for guests in front of the host's apartment, which strikes a balance between flexibility for residents and enforcing the overnight parking ban. What about handicap parking? These are two excerpts from the Massachusetts Architectural Access Board regulations, which governs handicap parking. In Massachusetts, if you move into an apartment building and you need an accessible parking space, the building owner must provide one for you. If they do not have enough because they only built the minimum, they must find a way to provide you with one. In short, if you need an accessible space, you're going to get one. In summary, minimum parking requirements for apartments would be reduced so that only one space per unit would be required. You should support this because the majority of renters don't need more than one parking space, and excess parking deprives the town of tax revenue. Thank you.