 Good evening, ladies and gentlemen. Welcome to the Board of Selectments meeting tonight, August 12th. The purpose of this meeting is a public meeting for us to discuss and receive comments on the application for a comprehensive permit site approval letter from Mass Housing by NBM Realty LLC, also referred to as Arlington Land Realty. So the purpose of this meeting tonight of the Board of Selectment is for us to have the opportunity to ask questions and receive comments so that we can vote on Monday evening, August 17th, the Board of Selectments next meeting, to vote on a letter making comments to Mass Housing related to this matter. Up front, beside me we have the, my name is Kevin Greeley, Chairman of the Board of Selectment. Next to me I have Diane Mahan who is the Vice Chairman of the Board of Selectment, Mr. Stephen Byrne, Mr. Dan Dunn, Mr. Joe Curo. I'm going to ask Arlington Land Realty to introduce themselves in a moment. To my left we have our Deputy Town Manager, Adam Chapter Lane has 102 fever and is just sick that he can't be here with us this evening. But so we have our Deputy Town Manager, Andrew Flanagan. Next to Andrew we have our special municipal council, Mr. John Whitten. Next to John we have our town council, who is, what's your name again, young minister? He's a Yankees fan, Doug Hine, but we still love him, he's a hell of a council. Next we have our Director of Planning and Development, Carol Kowalski. And then next to Carol we also have Corey Beckwith who is a conservation administrator. So the way the meeting is going to run is first we have asked Arlington Land Realty if they would please to make a presentation to us. That will be followed by questions, comments from each of the members of the Board of Selectment. And then the Board of Selectment of course would like to hear your comments. And when we get to that part we're going to ask each person to limit themselves to two minutes. Look around the room, you see how many people are here and we're sure many of them would like to be heard on this matter. This was not necessary for them to come here and do this with us this evening, so we appreciate that. But friends, this is a Board of Selectment meeting, we listen to one another. So we don't really want booing, clapping or any of that, we will all listen to anybody who speaks and ask you please to keep decorum throughout this meeting. So with that said, let me now turn it over to Arlington Land Realty. Thank you all for visiting us and thank you all for coming here this evening. It's a warm evening and it's great that you've come out. My name is Gwen Noyes, I'm a partner of Oak Tree Development and we're working as you know with the MuGar family on this project that we're here to talk about tonight. With me this evening is Bob Angler from SEB and my partner Arthur Clipfell from Oak Tree. And Mark Bodry who is with Meridian Engineering and Chrissa Gibson who is also from Oak Tree. So if it's okay, I'll just stand right here as we... Yes, okay, and Bob is going to start off. Thank you. My name is Bob Angler. And this is a repeat to some of you who are at the site walk with mass housing, but I think it bears repeating what we're actually, from our point of view, going through at this point in time. The first step was our site approval application and made a mass housing. Mass housing is the quasi-public entity that reviews these things. It's kind of the gatekeeper for this process. But they're taking a very broad brush look at the site, at our design, at our numbers to see whether it's within the market of feasibility, whether the costs and the revenues are okay. More or less whether the design is acceptable to them and whether the development team has the capacity to do this kind of development. So they're looking at very general things. As they said at that meeting, or that site walk, the very specific things that mostly you're concerned about, traffic, hydrology, how the site works, et cetera, is appropriately dealt with if we get a site approval letter at the local level, at the zoning board, when consultants and peer review consultants can be hired and can interchange with art experts, and that can go on for several months. So that's when a lot of this information will be forthcoming. We don't have those answers at that stage because we're at the first stage, which is if we don't get a site letter, we don't have a project. So one step at a time, we recognize that what we've turned in is preliminary. We recognize we can't answer all questions and concerns that are here. We hope to do that if we get to the next level and really have more information to share at that point in time. So we are here for a third time of talking to you, the neighbors or town officials or the selectmen. We don't want to go back through the whole thing. We're going to do a refresher with a PowerPoint presentation so we have a baseline of what people are looking at. And then we hope after a brief presentation to answer questions or at least listen to them at this point. So I'll turn that over to Gwen and we'll start the actual development discussion itself. Thank you. As Bob said, this is a repeat for a number of you. I'm just curious how many of you were at the May 21st meeting at the Hardy School? A lot of you. So you're just going to have to bear with seeing much of the same material. And as he also said, in the time between now and that time, we have not been delving into the considerations that we know we will be because it isn't yet time. This would be the preparation for the ZBA and the Conservation Commission meetings are when we would be doing that. We have, however, brought on board our new civil engineer. Some of you saw Dave Albrecht from Borrego Solar. He's unable to continue because it's not the kind of firm that has the sort of expertise that Meridian and Mark bring. So I'm going to, I don't know how to advance the slides. So this is going to be a shorter version of what many of you have already seen. First, this is an existing conditions slide that Mark is going to go back to. But I just wanted to show you that the shaded area is what is above the FEMA line, which everybody is concerned about. It is so-called buildable. It's above the FEMA, the state, the regulated FEMA line. This is the site plan you've seen before and the couple of things that are relevant here that the wetlands that has been delineated is here. And the plan that we're showing is bringing about 10 acres of land into conservation use as well as providing connectivity. This is where the little bridge goes over Route 2 and this would be a path that goes out to the bicycle path, the Minutemen Bikeway. And so this is generally what we're talking about proposing to the town. These are townhouses and this would be a four-story building above parking. One of the things that has been talked about is how much parking we would need and that's something we can have some discussion with the ZBA. Right now the parking takes up quite a lot of paved area outside but most of it is under the buildings. I'll show you that in a second. But the pavement area obviously is not as permeable as we would like and if we can reduce the amount of parking that's required, that would be advisable. The townhouses are- I'll show you those in just a second, but there are two townhouses per building as shown there. This is to show a section through the property to just get the scale. This is existing homes. This would be the proposed townhouses. This is the buffer between the new townhouses and the existing building and that's the scale of it. And of course the open land continues over and off the drawing over to Route 2. This is just showing the preliminary design idea for townhouses. They would be appropriate for families. This shows how the parking would be underneath the building, the majority of the parking, which is of course a key attraction for one of the major demographics that we would see to be living in the building. Older people for whom shoveling snow is not what they're interested in doing and so it makes it very convenient for them. This is a vision that I think is- it's a picture I took of the wetlands that are just across Route 2. I think being able to walk around the wetlands that has been open to view and can be a good home for wildlife, it would be something, an asset that would make it genuinely accessible for the people in the neighborhood and the whole town. With that, I'm going to turn the mic over to Mark and he's going to talk about how this could be achieved, maybe. Thanks, Gwen. As Gwen mentioned, my name is Mark Baudry. I'm a professional engineer with Marooning Associates here in Massachusetts. We have offices in Beverly and Westboro, Massachusetts. I happen to be in the Westboro office. Meridian's been doing this kind of work for over 25 years at this point and we are happy to be involved in this project now. We actually just recently got on board so we have not done any extensive studies at this time. So what we're going to do is- what I'd like to do is just kind of speak to go over quickly some of the existing site conditions and talk a little bit about the engineering process, you know, kind of moving forward. So I'm sure everybody here is familiar with the property that is this shaped piece of property right here with Dorothy being up at this location, little John, and Birch over in this area. So the property has its 17.7 acres total area with- this is Route 2 along the, you know, the southern and southwestern side of the site with the Vox apartments across the street in this area right here. The- out of the- clearly this site has some constraints on it that we're all familiar with that include wetlands as shown right here. We see some bordering vegetated wetlands here. There are some wetlands down in this side and a little bit along this edge right here and some over in the corner here on the- on the state property. Associated with those wetlands are 100 foot buffer zones around the- around the wetland areas that bring these wetland areas into the jurisdiction of the Conservation Commission as well as the Zoning Board. So at the appropriate time this project will, you know, if approved by the Zoning Board would go before the Conservation Commission for review as well. And another constraint on this site is the 100 year FEMA floodplain. Now the FEMA study from 2010 had established an elevation of 7.6 on this property in the area. So what we did was mapped out that red line right there as you can see in that location, this location over in this area over on this edge over here. That red line on that graphic represents the 100 year floodplain elevation of 7.6. So what we then did was shade the area above the 100 year floodplain on the site as that area right there in some other smaller isolated areas. Out of the 17.7 acres of total property area, the area above the 100 year floodplain is- is 6 acres roughly. And if you recall the- the site development slide, but a driveway comes in off of Little John, another driveway comes in at this location with the townhomes along Dorothy and the- the other buildings in this area right here. So the buildings, you know, pavement, et cetera, are located substantially within that gray shaded area. Now as part of the various state regulations and whatnot that affect this project, one is having to deal with what's called bordering land subject to flooding, which is basically all the land area that's below the 100 year floodplain line. So what the state regulations require as well as local bylaws is that the- any filling of that wetland area be compensated for at every incremental elevation with at least a volume equal to that which is filled. So any floodplain volume that is- is displaced or filled has to be replaced. Something in excess actually of the- of the amount that is- that is actually filled. The- another thing that is- another significant regulation here that applies is the DEPs, the state stormwater management regulations. Those come into play because of the project is going to be subject to conservation review. Now there are 10 standards in the stormwater regulations that have to be met and kind of boiling those down in a nutshell is you have to manage peak flow rates on the property so that when you develop the project site you cannot exceed flow rates that come- are coming off the property under existing conditions. So you basically have to mitigate your runoff from the project to existing levels. Another issue that has to be dealt with under the regulations is water quality so that, you know, we all know that stormwater can have some nasty stuff in it at times and that's pretty well documented. And so the state requires that the stormwater runoff actually be treated before it's discharged. So that is an important element of the stormwater regulations as well. And the- the final thing would be that you have to mimic existing conditions from a recharge standpoint. So a site that's recharging stormwater, you know, under natural conditions has to also recharge stormwater under proposed conditions. So you- you- those three key elements are coming into play and will be the subject of very close design and a lot of, you know, scrutiny from an engineering standpoint as this project moves forward. We- and then again the compensatory storage, you know, floodplain requirements as well will be obviously looked at very closely also. What we anticipate with this process is that although under Chapter 40B the comprehensive permit requirements really only requires preliminary plans but in this case where there are not only these constraints but, you know, conservation reviews that are pending and whatnot what we typically do is bring the design to a higher level than just preliminary design to be able to demonstrate to the municipalities and whatnot and that we are meeting the requirements of the regulations to ensure that a project is being proposed that addresses the concerns of the- of the community, frankly. And I don't think anybody here wants to, you know, have a project that's going to have, you know, any environmental impact. So that will certainly be a- a mission of ours is to design a project that complies with the- with the state regulations. And- yeah, and thank you Gwen. And actually, you know, if possible we'd like to improve existing conditions. As I'm sure a lot of people are aware there's a lot of fill material in the site right now that's not the best quality fill. I think there's going to- there's a lot of invasive species on the sites right now. There's a lot of things that can be done from a site standpoint to improve the site conditions maybe from an environmental standpoint ideally and provide better access for the neighborhood to the footbridge over to the T station and whatnot. So that's it. I guess I'd like to make one more little wrap up statement and that is that after all this is about housing we understand that hydrology is an incredibly important piece of what we're looking at but housing is what we're here to make these improvements that Mark has been talking about. And one- one aspect of this that- that people may not appreciate is that when you build housing that has 25% of it earmarked to be affordable 100% of whatever is built goes toward the count for Arlington's affordable requirement. As you I'm sure know 10% of the housing stock in Arlington is the goal and right now there's a deficit of 4.4% something like that. So there's 5.6 is here and there's another chunk of housing that's needed. So maybe some of you are aware that at one point part of the site was being- was being considered for housing some years ago if the state had provided some funding for the town to do so there would have been housing there today but that- that source of funding didn't come through and so this is another- another alternative. I think that's all we need- we have to say right now. Thank you very much. Thank you very much. I'm going to turn it over to individual members of the Board of Selectmen for their questions and comments and I'm going to start with Mr. Dan Dunn. Thank you for the presentation. I took my jacket off and that is not a sign of disrespect. It's just a sign that it's middle of August. I'm definitely very concerned about the wetlands and so those- some of those comments are very well taken but I think most of my questions are about the wetlands. I've gotten a lot of feedback that they're about- and I know myself about some of the history of flooding in that neighborhood both in the neighborhood and downstream and I'm curious how much are you aware of the scope and frequency of the flooding that happens in the neighborhood? I can say I've taken a bunch of pictures after major storms. Which years? Oh, I can't tell you, I can't remember. It was a couple of years ago I came out after- after a major flooding in the area and I watched the basements being pumped out into the street and so that's- that is some experience. Yeah, we're certainly aware of the flooding concerns. Saw the Facebook page in the various pictures on that site. The- I don't think anybody's denying that there's a floodplain issue here and that needs to be carefully looked at and designed to ensure that the project is not going to you know, compound that problem. Yeah, okay, I appreciate that. I'm also concerned that there isn't enough appreciation of the long history and not just the adjacent spaces but also downstream in the sunny side neighborhood and all along the Alewife Brook. And, you know, going out for a couple of storms are pictures from Facebook. This has been flooding for a lot longer than that and it's been wetlands for a lot longer than any of us have been here and I- and I'm definitely concerned that that isn't reflected anywhere in the proposal that you've made and I think that that's something that bears a lot further inspection. You mentioned the paving and the amount of paving that's there. Paving as you mentioned and as we all know is impervious and creates a lot more flooding in particular during peak events. What do you plan on- what- what's- how do you plan on managing that? There's several techniques. The- basically to meet peak flow management, you know, you were looking for at onsite detention and those onsite stormwater management areas would be separate from the- from the compensatory flood storage areas so we're not double dipping with those things. So the- you know, there are underground, you know, storage techniques that can be done. There are some, you know, some- some low impact development techniques that can be- can be implemented into the- into the design such as fire retention basins, tree filters, you know, things like that. We're going to be looking at the- a various array of- of tools to make sure we're meeting the regulations. Are any of those indicated on the plans we've gotten so far? I think there was- we did not prepare the- the site plan, but I believe that there were some things shown on the original site plan and some of those tech- some of those ideas. I read it pretty close and I- definitely some of the notation is opaque to me but I wasn't able to understand any of it. I wasn't able to see to that. I believe that there was some pervious payment area shown. Yeah. Which is certainly something that could be- could be done here. I believe that was a- in a per- pervious payment area. I believe there was one over here from- and there was a- a- a basin shown in the middle of that roundabout area. They- these, you know, there's some tree box filter ideas shown. But these are not cast in stone certainly at this point. They're preliminary ideas and just kind of representing kind of a pallet of what could be done. Thank you. Do you- do your understanding would we- would this project have drainage into adjacent street drainage systems? Currently the site drains towards- substantially towards our route two. There are three culverts that I've seen on existing conditions plans. One of the culverts, the previous engineer, was not able to find down in this area. There's a couple- that's an 18, I recall. I think there's two 24-inch culverts. They do- one is quite flat that I could see from the existing conditions plan, but they do tend to drain to the south side of route two. So we would anticipate that the- that the site is going to drain down to, you know, to the conservation area, this- this- this open space area and find its way towards route two like it does now. Now, something that's important to point out is that these culverts are not in great condition under route two. They- they could use some cleaning. From what I understand, one of them at this location is- I've heard anywhere from a half to two-thirds of its diameter is full of sediment. Could certainly, you know, get some, you know, work- work with the town to, you know, work with the state to get some of that stuff cleaned out, which is certainly going to help the situation out here. Existing conditions as well as proposed. So do you propose that it's going to drain away from route two or towards Arlington or both? We're anticipating that it's going to drain towards route two, not towards the neighborhood. Thank you. You're welcome. So one of the things that you've- that I think I've heard a couple different times is that the plans that we've been presented aren't complete enough for us to evaluate whether or not they're going to be able to manage the flooding. In fact, we- and our- our expert told us that they don't think that you- that it is- it can be done. And so we've got a consultant report that says that it can't, and we've got- and we don't have anything from your group that would explain to us how we can trust that the flooding is going to be managed. Can you help us explain how we would react to that? Like, I mean, how are we- how do you expect- how can we make a smart recommendation about this without sufficient information? Excuse me. That's a dilemma that comes up all the time. The way 40B is structured, it's not only a dilemma for you to comment when you don't have enough information, but sometimes even the peer review consultants in front of the ZBA are asking for more information, even though it's only preliminarily submitted. We're going to- we can't answer that for you tonight, so you can raise those questions. We intend to and endeavor to answer them in front of the zoning board to the satisfaction of either the zoning board or and or state DEP so that we can receive a permit if we can't, we don't have a project. So the burden is on us to get that done. We just aren't doing it right today, but it will be done- there's probably a 90-day period, 60 to 90 days, if we get a site letter, when all this testing can be done and research can be done. When we get to the zoning board and you hire- or the zoning board hires consultants, this will be vetted very carefully, and that's when it'll happen. So I appreciate that you're in a dilemma now, but you can raise the information. We just can't answer it right now. All right. So when you don't have insufficient information, you work with what you've got, and so I'm going to work with the presentation- with the proposal that you gave to us and some of the presentation you gave tonight. A lot of the proposal talks about a single wetland, but I also heard tonight a discussion of multiple wetlands, and the previous site study said that there's multiple wetlands. Is there controversy about how many wetlands there are? I think some of the confusion- we're not the wetland consultant, just so you know, but some of the confusion might be that there are bordering vegetated wetlands as well as isolated wetlands on the property. So the isolated wetlands would come into play under local bylaws where the bordering vegetated wetlands did actually have to border on something, you know, like a- some kind of water body, a drainage channel, or something like that, versus an isolated pocket. Those BVWs, as they're called, are subject to review under the State Wetlands Protection Act. So there might be a little confusion when you're talking about bordering versus isolated. I don't think I'm the one confused in this case. I'm reading- this one's me reading the application. Okay. It's definitely- it does not consistently refer to multiple wetlands, and it specifically talks about a single, which I found concerning. Are you aware that this FEMA map, the one that you were showing up earlier that has the floodplain, that actually appears to be on the 1982 FEMA floodplain, not the 2010? Please. Well, I've got a copy in my bag actually of the latest FEMA mapping, and you know, it shows the- there's a datum difference here. When you do the correction on the datum, you arrive at the 7.6 elevation, and I think the previous engineer went into detail on that at the informational meeting back in May. So I guess when you- when you read the FEMA map the way- I read the FEMA map, most of the buildings that are proposed are in the 100-year floodplain. I think some of the confusion there is because when the FEMA mapping was done, they specify an elevation, but they don't- they don't have detail on the ground topo like had been done in this project site. So when you take that elevation and apply that elevation to the topography on the site, you arrive at the line that we have in that graphic, as opposed to a generalized area that might have been based on USGS topo or something like that to determine the extent of that floodplain. So you're saying- So you're saying that the proposal that you've got in yours, in the proposal that we read that you believe is on the 2010 map? Correct. Okay. And is it correct that one of the waivers you're seeking is of the Arlington wetlands by-law? Is that correct? Including the compensatory storage requirements? Answer that. They- as you have heard- Can you stand up? Yeah. I think if you point them out- Okay. Yeah, that'll do better for you. Okay. The- I apologize. I'm going to repeat the question. My question was, is it correct that you are seeking a waiver of the Arlington wetlands by-law, in particular the parts about compensatory storage? As you know, Mark Bodry is new to the civil engineering assignment that we're providing. David Albrecht, who was with Borrego Solar and had worked on this property for a long- many years, informed us that the design criteria that he was working with was that it would adhere to the Arlington two-for-one, but he felt like it- because the state requirement is one-for-one, that he would check off the waiver request so that there would be some room for error, should there be any, it would give him some flexibility. But he says that as the plans are drawn, it does adhere to Arlington's two-for-one requirement. I guess what I'm hoping then is that the next sentence is so that we're not going to apply for a waiver to that. We haven't- this is something that we see that this is a process of working with the town and the design and so on and so forth. We're nowhere near complete with how that all sorts out. It's our intention to work very closely with Arlington's request for two-for-one, but I don't want to promise that. Thank you. So the line of questions that I've given here is something that- there's some vague claims in the proposal that it's going to- that this building can make the situation at this wetlands or in this property and specific the wetlands better. But there's no technical, scientific, or engineering work that backs up that claim. In fact, the supporting documents are inconsistent in terms of the number of wetlands that are being described, and I find that I am utterly unconvinced that the map of the FEMA line is correct at this point. In that, furthermore, believing that you're going to make the site better and simultaneously saying, I don't want to follow the Arlington Wetlands bylaws is absolutely inconsistent. Is there- I guess that's- if you have any thoughts as to why we would entertain or why we would be interested in supporting a waiver like that in such an absence of new and interesting and productive information, I'm interested. Let me try and answer that. The waiver request at the site approval process with NASA- the waiver request at site approval is very general based on very general preliminary plans. You have to do it because it's a requirement. Do you not held to that? You're asking a question that we can answer when we file with a zoning board if we get that far, and after the detailed engineering is done and we see that we can live with two for one or we can't, or it's one and a half for one or whatever. At that point when we file, we're going to know what we can live with. So we can't answer that we need a waiver or we don't need a waiver because we don't have enough information ourselves to be able to answer that question. But most developers protect themselves by saying, well, we better put that in. We don't know that until we actually get in front of the zoning board. But you're also protecting yourself on one hand, but on the other hand you're saying don't worry, it can be better when we're done with it. Here's what we're saying. Our intent is to make it better and if we can't make it better and we don't follow the state regulations, we don't have a project and we can be denied. That's our burden. So we've got to be able, you know, forget the fact that we're saying it'll be better. We have to demonstrate it as you've indicated and that's our burden to do that. Thank you very much. Thank you, Mr. Greeley. Thank you. Sorry. You can applaud for us. That's right, no. But our special counsel has asked to make a comment at this point, so I'm going to allow that and then we'll go to the next selectman. John Whitman. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, members of the board. I just want to comment on Mr. Engler's earlier comment and his later comment, which is, these are preliminary plans and the board will get the detail that you seek at the ZBA level. Mr. Engler knows better than anybody that once the project eligibility letter is issued by Mass Housing, which is why we're here tonight, then the burden is going to be on the town of Arlington to demonstrate why this project doesn't fit within the town and that is a very difficult burden. The town could be protected in many ways, including the 1.5% calculation, but it is disingenuous and totally unacceptable for an applicant to come here with preliminary plans that are as gross a preliminary set of plans as I've ever seen and say, don't worry, we'll deal with the details at the board of appeals level because at that level, the burden has shifted to the town of Arlington. The burden right now is on the applicant to convince the board of selectmen why they should support this project to Mass Housing. And based on the presentation that we've seen tonight and the answers to the prior question or questions, it's impossible to discern any depth of this project and it's not acceptable for an applicant to tell the board of selectmen, don't worry the details will be worked out with the board of appeals. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. All right, I'm going to allow it each time I come up here, but otherwise, no. All right, Mr. Joe Currow, next on the board of selectmen. Thank you, Mr. Chair. No pun intended. I think the council is saying that the application doesn't hold water. Is that allowed, Mr. Chairman? Thank you. Thank you. But I'm not going to talk about water primarily. I think that my colleague, Mr. Dunn, asked a lot of questions along those lines. I want to say that in my time on the board, there's probably, and probably on all of our times on the board, there's probably nothing that's occupied our time and energy as much as issues of traffic and parking. And there's perhaps no neighborhood that we've heard from and tried to work with more than the neighborhood directly abutting the proposed development. Now, the development is billed as a transit-oriented development. I get that it's close to ill-life station, but that really only serves a portion of your likely residence. I don't know if the applicants have read Arlington's master plan. We had in there some documentation of the numbers of Arlington residents who work in communities that are not readily accessible from your site by the MBTA, and there are a lot. I count myself among those. Many who work out of 128, for example. Also, the master plan documents that only 16.7% of our residents currently use public transportation to get to work. The issue was more, but at this point in time, it is not. So I'm guessing that the applicants recognize this because the application includes 304 parking spots. That's 304 more autos going through that really problematic neighborhood, you know, traffic-challenged neighborhood. Without major changes to your plan, it seems to me that most of your residents are going to drive, and the impact is going to be felt on Dorothy Road and the surrounding neighborhood. And this is in your plan, despite previous assurances by you guys on previous proposals that there would be no access to this neighborhood. Previous projects were given special permit approval, contingent upon no access to this neighborhood, but now we're forced to consider a project that would run those 304 vehicles through this neighborhood, a neighborhood which I might note is abutted by a heavily used playing field and a school and used, has a lot of children in the area. So, Ms. Noyce, during your presentation, you talked about the number of parking spots, and you said that you hoped that if and when you get to the ZBA, that you'll be able to push for fewer parking spots. And I want to just challenge the developers that if you really are intent on going forward with this proposal, that you really put your money where your mouth is on making it a transit-oriented development and really force the issue and propose a drastic reduction of the number of parking spots for the proposal. This would be actually consistent with our master plan principle of looking at reduced parking ratios. We haven't adopted those yet, but I would encourage you to do this. The metropolitan area planning, this would do a couple of things. First of all, it would relieve traffic pressure in the neighborhoods. It would remove some of the impervious surfaces that are certainly going to contribute to the wetlands issues within the neighborhood. And also it takes cost out, and one of your stated goals is affordability of this project. And according to data I was able to find from the Metropolitan Area Planning Council, surface spaces run something like $1,500 to $2,000 to build. Underground spots can be something like $20,000 to build. If we do the math on the number of parking spots that are proposed for this site, it starts to quickly add up. And so I just wonder if you would comment on this issue, and if you truly are looking to reduce the number of parking spots that you're aiming for, I wonder if you could give us an idea of the scale of reduction that you're looking for. Mr. Chairman, I've already been criticized for promising things, or the team has been promising things, and Mr. Whitton has pointed that out. So I'm not going to say don't worry. I'm going to say worry. We've got to get to that. We've got to get to anything. We're going to look seriously at transit-oriented developments and what the parking requirements are. We're at 1.25 taking out the townhouses, which have two spaces per townhouse, which is fine. In my experience, having done many of these, that's a pretty low ratio for even transit-oriented. So we're going to take a look and see what's across the street and what's working. In past 10 years, the parking ratios have come way down in all of these multifamily developments. So it used to be 1.89 with a standard Avalon Bay kind of thing, come down to 1.7, 1.6, 1.5, 1.4, 1.3, we're at 1.25. We'll see, but it won't be massive. I can't say that. Gwen might say that. We need to talk about it. It's really an issue of research, so I'm not going to put anything out there that we can't live with. So we'll deal with it when we get to the zoning board. Okay, so it sounds like we stand now at 3.04. Yeah, exactly. Thank you. You know, our master plan also specifically calls out the MuGar property as a priority for presentation. And Tau meeting has endorsed this concept at least three different occasions, as has the state. And the town has exhibited a willingness to talk, and there have been many overtures to discuss the potential acquisition of the property. Most recent that I'm aware of was last year, and in fact, I know that five years ago, there was a written agreement that was ready for signature and it was walked away from. I'm just curious. I mean, our town now has new tools like the Community Preservation Act. We have partners who can help us in this process. Arlington Land Trust has a lot of experience in this and has helped us in other areas. I mean, why would you not consider another round of discussions rather than bringing forward such a controversial proposal that clearly does not have the support of the community? I don't know what those discussions would entail. I can't speak for the MuGars. I wasn't on the team then, and they didn't come to the table with you. So that's a different issue. As for the master plan, I've read the master plan. I don't see anything specific in it about how to develop more affordable housing and where it's going, like a plan production plan would do. If that's a plan that has specificities, where are you going to do it? That's a plan that has to be respected, but your master plan talks about open space, but I didn't see anything that really said here's where we're doing our affordable housing in significant numbers to get above 5.6%. So I don't doubt that you will tout what you've done, and I've seen what you've done. We've run the lottery for the affordable units in Brigham Square and some of your other developments. We know that. If those were 25% affordable, you might be over the 10% by now, but they weren't. So that's water over the dam. The issue is going forward. How do we get more affordable housing? And if there's more discussion about how to make this site work that's still financially feasible, I'll be right in the middle of that. I don't know what the numbers look like in terms of what you might propose, but we're not closed off by any discussion by any means. Thank you. Lastly, to the issue of affordability, I did want to just note that when I looked through the comparables that are included in the application, most of the units in this development, I mean, I'd be hard-pressed to get a studio where I'd pay for my mortgage and taxes on a two-bedroom single-family home, but that's neither here nor there. And as far as the 10% threshold, I appreciate the presentation that this would count towards our 10%. But I want to just emphasize that the reason we're concerned about making that 10% threshold, one reason that we're concerned about that is to prevent just the scenario that we're facing right now. So I'll just wrap up by saying that, you know, the Board of Selection is a policy board, and I for one, and I think my colleagues, but they'll speak for themselves, take very seriously the positions of town meeting and the policy statements that have been taken. And this town meeting has voted three times now a principle that supports the conservation of this land and I have to say that on balance, given some of the vagueness of the application before us, the inability to give us more specifics and the policy precedents that have already been set in the town that I'm not feeling good about the proposal as it stands before us. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Mr. Chairman, may I make one more response to that? Sorry? Could I make one more response to the comments? This will be very unpopular, but that's okay. The master plan and the demographics for Arlington's housing need is only one piece of the 40B equation of affordability, which most towns ignore, and that is the regional need for housing in the Boston metropolitan area is huge. All the articles in the paper for the last several years have talked about that. Every town has a responsibility for the last 44 years since this bill was passed, not just to deal with their own population, but to deal with the regional need so whether you have people that are going to work here there in Arlington, that's one piece of information. What about the people who would like to be in Arlington? They can't be in here on the affordable side. So we're dealing with a regional issue, not just a local issue, and I want to make that clear that that's part of what the affordability requirements are under the statute. Thank you. Thank you. I'm going to call on Carol Kowalski, our director of planning and development, and who headed up our master plan project. Carol. Thank you, Mr. Greeley. I think it's important to mention that the town of Arlington has a housing plan, and the master plan recommends updating that to create a plan production plan, which we have undertaken. The redevelopment board composed a committee this week who will advise on that, and Department of Housing and Community Development has given a grant to the town to help us accomplish that. In addition, I think it's important to mention that Arlington embraces density, which is something that Mr. Engler endorses in order to welcome more people to Arlington. We've always been a dense community, and we have even recently welcomed additional people by building the former Sims Hospital site, which has affordable housing in it, and that's a multifamily development, as you all know. And the Brighams as well, the ALTA, Brighams, that's a multifamily, that's a very new development. So I think Arlington has done a very good job of welcoming new people into Arlington, creating affordable opportunities very recently at a higher density than a lot of municipalities would allow. Thank you. Next, Mr. Steven Byrne from the Board of Selecting. Thank you, Mr. Greeley, and I'll realize that I did not get the applause that you get every time you come up here. Julie noted. Thank you. So realized after coming a bit late in the speaker's lineup, a few of my questions have already been asked and answered, but this is obviously an emotionally charged issue, but what's really important to me now that we are at this juncture is that the current neighborhood surrounding this land is protected, and you don't simply take advantage of a very old law that allows developers to disrupt progressive communities like Arlington that have worked very hard to ensure an ample amount of affordable housing is available to our residents. By the way, I grew up in this neighborhood as well, so I'm pretty familiar with it. And when I wake up and I think most Arlington residents wake up and they think about the MuGar site, that's exactly what they think of. How vital it is to the well-being of those who live around it. And now I may be wrong, but I think your very bare application clearly denotes that when you think of this site, you simply think of what you see in the profit and that doesn't sit well with me. Quite frankly, I'm shocked that the process has even got to this point. I mean, this plan lacks so many details, we can barely begin to have an adult conversation regarding this proposal. Never mind a detailed response. For example, in the project's capital budget, there's over $2 million dedicated to unusual site conditions slash other site work, but there's really no other details on what that means. I believe that's over half the site work cost. Can you please go into details on that? Not at this time. No. That seems to be a very common theme that I'm really getting tired of hearing. And going on, I was reading an article the other day in the Cambridge Day where Ms. Noyes stated that this project will not hurt but improve the hydrology of the area. But what we keep hearing tonight is that absolutely no studies have been done. So how can you stand by a statement like that? The piece that is being referred to there is... I can go back to the... If you can see right here, this narrowing of the higher pieces of land causes the surface water that comes down from the rest of the town to collect in this area. And we walked out there, when we did the site visit, we walked to this portion of the land and could see that, indeed, this is almost like a pool area. The surface water pools, and these are the houses that have a particularly difficult time with the flooding. And the plans, the conceptual plans that we've worked on to date have specifically been addressing how to allow the flow of water from here to continue its natural path out this direction and relieve the ponding. I've been there when there was... a lot of canoe in the water that was gathered there and had no way of escaping. So that's the major piece of how we believe it's possible to improve the hydrology of the property. Thank you very much, and I do, again, appreciate saying that the plan to date, so we don't even know if that will be the plan that we can rely on moving forward. So I also understand that this is a 17-acre lot, and I believe that by right under our current zoning, you can build three, two-family homes on the property, and yet you are proposing to build upwards of 70 times... 70 times the present by right allowed use. And throughout your application, you failed to present relevant data, yet you continue to claim that there will be no adverse impact on the neighborhood and that just simply doesn't add up. Now, I realize that you're not lawfully required to provide detailed plans at this stage, and I'm sure you're not looking forward to continuing discussions like these, but I really hope that we can take a step back where you can have time to create a worthwhile and up-to-date plan that we can objectively consider prior to having more discussions like this, because I think it's really important that, as we try to formulate a response to your application, that we know what's going to be there, and that's simply not there right now, and as you can see, it's very frustrating for all of us, and, you know, thank you for your time, and I hope you can address these concerns moving forward. Thank you. Thank you. Next up, the Vice Chairman, Diane Mahan. Thank you, Mr. Greeley. I purposely asked to go last because I kind of feel like I get to ask all the questions first and I wanted to make sure my colleagues had the opportunity. Thank you for being here tonight. I understand this is the third time you've been before us. Also on a site visit, which I accompanied the proponents from Oak Trian to sort of piggyback on my colleague, Mr. Dunn's question. I'm just wondering if I can get another crack at asking you to commit to not asking for a waiver of the Wetlands Protection Act, and the reason I do that is that waiver, I believe would prevent our Conservation Commission, the ability to take into account evidence of flooding of existing residences and necessary remediation needed to mitigate. And I'm not just talking about the residents that are in your development in the 100-year floodplain, as well as some of the residents down on Sunnyside Lafayette, Boulevard that are also in the 100-year floodplain, but I'm talking about the outlying residences that, again, and I would ask you, perhaps if your engineer or someone could speak to this, I see you've taken into account the 100-year floodplain scenario, but have you taken into account, and if you have, if you could share that with us in terms of the data, the non-100-year flooding events that typically flood our streets, as well as up to the 500-year flooding events? The requirements of the regulations that you do not make existing conditions worse with the proposed development and what we've said several times tonight is that the goal would be to ideally make existing conditions even better. But from a standpoint of the storm water, I mentioned earlier the DEP storm water regulations, you're required to look at the two-year, the 10-year, and the 100-year storms. So the two-year is certainly a more frequent storm than the 100-year storm. We need to address the storm water runoff requirements for those three design storms. But from the bordering land subject to flooding thing that I mentioned earlier, that's under the Wetlands Protection Act regulations. That addresses the 100-year storm. But what the state requires you to do is to, and I'm sure the local bylaw does also, is to compensate for any filled flood storage at a incremental level. So you can't do all your filling at the upper levels of the storm. You have to do it at each level of the storm as you're going up. So that way you're inherently addressing the smaller storms as well as the larger storms. Right. But my question would be, again, one of the things that concerns just about everybody in the storm, if not everybody, is by going the 40B route, you're really circumventing a lot of the local bylaws, including Arlington's Wetlands Protection Act in Arlington. We know best basically what's going out here. Everybody knows by going 40B you get a real lax interpretation from the state. So I just like, if I can get a yes or no, since everybody seems to be so civic minded and I know Ms. Noyes sometimes feel bad doing this, but you know you do cite your community activities and your mission with the Cambridge Quaker Friends and I think you had the Earth Care Witness Committee. It just seems to me it would comport in terms of all those adages that you put out there, what I'm really looking for is that you will not seek a waiver to the Arlington Wetlands Protection Act. I think I should say first off the bat that we must be gluttonous for punishment because we keep coming back to try to share what we're about here. The effort to date has been to address the two for one. We will continue to do that. We may find ways of shrinking the footprint or whatever. That's our goal to go for the two for one regulation that the town has. Will you commit to that? To the Arlington Wetlands Protection Act? I think you've heard several times. This meeting this evening is one that we volunteered to come to knowing that the process that we're embarking on, the next benchmark is the ZBA hearing and the Conservation Commission hearing for which we have brought in Meridian, Mark Bodry, who will be heading a team that is going to be doing the detailed hydrology studies and reserving all kinds of things that are going to be providing us with the detailed information that everybody would like, including us. We were asked, we were invited to come tonight to repeat basically what we gave in our earlier presentation. We had no promises that we had detailed information to provide, but we're here as I say, gluttonous for punishment to provide what we can say and I can say we will do everything we can to adhere to the two for one, but until I have a specific project in front of us and you, I won't be able to give you, maybe we'll do 2.1 for one, I don't know. We're probably going to go back and forth. It's really just a yes or no, and I'm just hearing a big loud no, which is really unsettling to me. Also, I've gone through the 196-page document submittal. I know tonight it was stated FEMA floodplain elevation of 7.6, but in the 196-page submission to the board, it was stated at 7.81, which we also had various consultants look at themselves. And for me, just being a novice in terms of, I'm not an expert on flood elevation impacts, mitigation per storm event, per 100, per 500, I'm just going to say myself personally as a member of the board of selectmen, I took an awful lot of time going through that 196-page submission as well as speaking to other people. And it's been very frustrated to me. I do appreciate that you are here tonight, but it's been extremely frustrating to me that doing all that due diligence, then asking questions and being told, well, we made these representations, but it's really not in there. We're going to get it there later. It's hard for me, especially when we went on the site visit with the gentleman from Mass Housing, there were representations made there concerning the site, the vegetation, as well as a berm that was going to be put in, as well as a promise to restore a culvert. So I'm wondering if you could speak to any one of those when we went on the site visitation with, I'm going to blank on the gentleman's name. Greg starts with a W. Watson, thank you very much. You did speak about removing vegetation. My question would be what studies have you done because my novice expertise would sell you? That's an oxymoron there. My experience has been when you remove vegetation, you're taking up a lot of the sponge and according to some of the studies I've seen currently up to 20% of the excess flooding that occurs in the site by removing that, that would be impacted by at least 20% and just exacerbate the conditions on that. So if you could speak to that as well as the berm that you cited on the site visit. And I only ask because this was represented to the gentleman from Mass Housing, to which you are seeking a project eligibility letter and these were the representations made there. Regarding the invasives, we have the rich Kirby who was out there with us, the naturalist was saying that the extent to which the site is completely overgrown with brambles and poison ivy and so on. He said this would be an impossibility to remove all of it. What he was suggesting is that part of our proposal to the town would be that there would be an ongoing program over a period of years whereby first there would be paths that would go through the brambles that would get people to where there could be a good destination. And then over a period of time, the invasives that are in the immediate area would be beaten back, cut back and minimized. But as has been pointed out, the site has been worked over and dumped on and abused by construction from Route 2 and so on, that there's quite a lot of remediation that is needed to get to the get-go. I guess my point would be that the vegetation that is in the plan that's before me, which is evolving as we speak, invasive vegetation removal would increase the flooding by 20%. I understand you're saying you're going to commit to a number of years. Would you commit to as many as 10 to 12, which is what DCR has done in other projects when they've removed Japanese knotweed? They said the minimum for that is 10 to 12 years. I think this is one of the areas that we've, in our internal conversations, talked about having a partnership with the town and generating 10-point sum acres that would be deeded in some fashion, which we can't describe because we haven't had that conversation with the town. But some way of preserving that land for public use and public improvement would be, the plan would include what could be done on a year-to-year basis and what sort of partnership with the town could be crafted. I guess if I had my druthers where this is a for-profit project, I would not want to commit any Ellington funds to that. I would look to the developer. Another question I had, and I'm all for affordable housing. I spent some of my childhood years and I didn't realize I thought it was the projects. It's monotony manner. I understand your mission and your goal for affordable housing. I'm wondering if you will commit those affordable housing units to perpetuity, or are you going to skirt under the 40B law and just do 20 years? We don't skirt under that kind of thing. When you do a 40B or any other affordable housing, it is a permanent commitment to the state and goes into the deeds and is recorded in court, you know, and all kinds of things. So there's no way of taking that back. And that's not the deal. So I guess I must be misinformed. I thought under 40B the affordable units after 20 years no longer have to, that it's not in perpetuity. So I guess I'll leave that for others. Maybe I'm misinformed on that. I'll try to wrap it up. I think everybody knows where I'm going on this. This is not a project that I even wanted to see everybody out here on a hot summer night in the middle of vacation. I'm sure a lot of you have had to work around that. I can just have your indulgence. It's been represented that Route 2, I've heard back and forth. I'm hoping to get at least one question actually answered definitively here tonight. I've heard at the Hardy School as well as the sidewalk visit, two different versions of whether you are or are not seeking access from Route 2. Could you definitively answer that? Meaning Route 2 access off the off-ramp to the MuGar Oak Tree site? This is a matter that has been discussed and if you want to, we have a graphic here that shows how that could be a possibility. We decided that to link providing an off-ramp from Route 2 to the application that we've submitted would be complexifying what is already a complex project more than need be. However, that said, should this project get the approval from the state and should the community, the town of Arlington, desire to have an improved ramp from Route 2, it is possible that access to the property and from the property could go directly to that ramp. We've got as far as speaking with people in the Massachusetts transportation department and they believe that this has some beneficial aspects to it for everybody, for the traffic along Route 2 and for managing traffic to and from the property. So that is a distinct possibility should we get to that point and should the town decide they'd like to pursue that. And I also raise that because we're afforded the opportunity for some of our state legislators here. I'll just say the meeting that was held over in Cambridge when it was presented the grade angle off of the off-ramp proposed into the Mugar site according to mass DOT standards was the highest dangerous angle elevation considering rate of speed and how you would be entering there. But I'll leave that to state officials and others. I was hearing that you weren't pursuing that but it sounds like you are. Lastly, a lot of residents outside of the 100-year floodplain who also experienced this I said Vioxx at a previous meeting when Voxx was being designed especially on Lake Street we had several including one very large sinkhole. Can you speak to the construction phase portion of this vis-a-vis the pile borings the construction vehicle management your stockpile management plan as well as any mitigation to outward residences that are affected by any of the construction in terms of foundation or other house structure damages. And then I'll make that my last question I probably have 10 more. I'll try that simply by saying construction management and controlling of dust and at the zoning board level in terms of a management plan to be reviewed that's way ahead of where we are right now we have a lot of things to solve as you're seeing so we'll solve those first and we'll get to that at a later date. I'm going to stop there because I think this is sort of an exercise of what we've all been experiencing with this proposal. I definitely do appreciate you know third time out but it's very frustrating to ask questions and be told over and over again this too will come, this too will come but there have been statements made that you know the flooding will be better you know if not the same better I think everybody knows where I stand for the past 20 plus years Allington has consistently since 1990 and their open space plan most recently in their master plan cited along with the Army Corps of Engineers as well as DCR Army Corps of Engineers have put this in their highest priority top two or three. DCR has put it in their top one or two for an area of wetlands that should be restored and the very least for flooded storage as well as I don't think you've adequately addressed your plan to send all the flooding to Route 2 which consistently Route 2 and Route 16 already are flooded during spring and fall events and shut down for I don't know how many rush hours per day per season and I really think it's irresponsible for you to say whatever we can say on the flooding where it's going to go we're going to send it all out to Route 2 which is going to impact not only Allington Belmont Cambridge residents but anybody who's coming down Route 2 to go to L-Wife so I stand firmly opposed to this project I failed to mention Diane as our liaison in terms of this particular project from the Board of Selectmen and I'm not smart enough to better the questions that have been asked by my colleagues so there's many of you and I also would like to speak tonight and luckily this Board of Selectmen is never alone when we're dealing with issues like this we have an excellent senator and two representatives that stand side by side with us and help us on projects like this so at this point I'd like to call on Senator Ken Donnelly and I guess I'm also calling on our two excellent reps Sean Garberley and Dave Rogers thank you Mr. Chairman thank you Mr. Chairman the delegation is asking to speak for the delegation and I want to say right up front that we stand united in support of the Board of Selectmen and stand united in opposing this proposal what we have done over the last several months is we have met several times with the DCR commissioner to let the DCR commissioner and remind them of their commitment that this was a critical piece of property for the whole wetland area we've met with the department of the DOT Department of Transportation and mentioned the traffic problem both of route 2 and that whole H.D. area and both urged them and asked them if there was any intention for a proposal for a curb cut or any other proposal to go from route 2 to the DOT property we would be notified immediately and to this point when we met with the DOT in District 4 there was no proposal and they had not said that they would so I was surprised at some of the comments that were made here earlier on that also to let you know we met with mass housing several times and actually we facilitated a meeting with the town with both DCR and mass housing to let mass housing know we adamantly oppose this proposal in this very environmentally sensitive area now to say some of the reasons why both I know representative Rogers represents precincts 2, 4, 10, 12 and 14 representative Garbley has the rest of Arlington which includes I think is very important that some of the areas that affect not only this proposal is other areas of Arlington and let me just give it a little bit of an example when we had the so called flood where some pictures were taken both myself representative Garbley and Dave's predecessor representative Brownsburg who represented that area was standing in the pouring rain where L. Wife Brook meets the Mystic River and by the way that's where I grew up I grew up down there as a kid played in those areas played in Thorndike field and I remember Route 2 by the way before it was Route 2 it was a nice white picket fence so we'll talk about that in a minute but as we were standing there the water from the Mystic River was going up the L. Wife Brook not the opposite way so I'm not a hydrologist and I don't understand a lot of the stuff but I do know what I see as both myself representative Brownsburg and representative Garbley saw water going back up into this area and I also know that as a long time ago playing literally baseball in the Thorndike field actually had baseball fields in it that when the flooding came those fields flooded that way and towards my friends' homes that were on Mary Street it did not go towards Route 2 now that was probably 55 years ago but I don't know that was before Route 2 but when we did see this water and I want to let the developers know this why when Winchester wanted to do flood mitigation this delegation sent the letter not only this delegation but the delegation from Medford and Somerville sent the letter to Winchester asking to stop the flood mitigation in Winchester because what was happening to our Sunnyside area and our whole East Arlington area that got impacted by water coming from upstream we also filed legislation to put a fourth pump in Amelia Earhart to make sure the water gets out into the ocean where it belongs instead of coming back into our neighborhoods so this area and that's why we called Mass Housing to say not only does it impact the residents around the MUGA it impacts all of East Arlington all of Arlington Cambridge, Belmont and the whole surrounding area so we will continue to oppose this proposal we stand in support this delegation stands in support of affordable housing and when someone preaches to me who grew up in Arlington about housing we are one of the most dense communities in the state and 95% of it is residential no other community that I represent or any of my 39 other colleagues in the senate can say as much very few can say that as dense and 95% of it is residential for the Boston area so I don't need to be preached upon about more housing we support affordable housing we look forward to working with Oak Tree the Board of Selectment and anyone else to make sure that we work on affordable housing but not in this completely sensitive area thank you so friends now I have we have 10 organizations that have asked to speak before us this evening and all of you who are out there as well who would like to speak so I'd like to give you two reminders please two minutes per person whether you're representing an organization or your own heart and mind and body when you get up here and speak we have two microphones here one on the right what I'm going to do is time and at two minutes I'm going to tap this twice and I'm going to ask you to please bring it to a conclusion don't make me raise my voice so the first organization that has asked to speak and what I'm going to do is ask this first organization to come over here to this microphone which would be the Mystic River Watershed Association while over here awaits the League of Women Voters speaker the Mystic River Watershed League of Women Voters thank you Mr. Chairman my name is E.K. Colisey serves as the executive director of the Mystic River Watershed Association for the past 15 years the association has been deeply involved in an evaluation of water quality in the 76 square mile watershed and I'd like to read two paragraphs in the letter which we'll submit into the record of the Watershed for Alewife Brook which is an impaired tributary of the Mystic River Alewife Brook drains approximately 4500 highly urbanized areas made of 47% in pervious cover the Brook recently received a grade of D from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency for its chronically poor water quality despite these many challenges Myra and its partners remain committed to improving the quality of the landscape and its surrounding flood plains wetlands and uplands this 17.7 acre property plays a very important role in Arlington and in the greater Mystic River Watershed by providing flood storage in the naturally pervious land in wetlands within its boundaries but also these lands filter pollutants and recharge groundwater these functions are particularly important in this very vulnerable low-lying section of East Arlington which already experiences flooding during storms the proposed development unfortunately will replace 3.7 acres of this previously pervious land mainly forested to impervious buildings and pavement additional vegetated areas would be cleared and graded the proposed change in land cover will significantly diminish the ability of this land to store slow filter and infiltrate rain water and flood water we stand in opposition to the proposal as it's been prepared Thank you sir So next from the League of Women Voters while sustainable Arlington comes up to this mic please League of Women Voters Thank you Good evening to the Board of Selectment and all of you people from Oak Tree My name is Elizabeth Thompson I have been a resident of Arlington since 1975 and first for 15 years in precinct 2 and living across the street from spy pond not on it but looking at it and walking kids to Hardy School so I'm quite familiar with the area and I now live in precinct 15 up in the hills where all of the drainage water that you folks down on the lowlands get come from and that is actually part of what I noticed when the A.L. Wife Brook was planned the A.L. Wife station was planned in the 1970s I actually had been in Arlington long enough to volunteer to serve on the League of Women Voters committee to review the environmental impact statement so my memory goes back perhaps a little bit longer maybe than some of the selectmen in terms of what eventually went into that and the things that we had to look at to do with drainage and flooding concerns what would happen when the station was built what kind of a footprint with a 2000 car garage put on top of all these wetlands all of which were properties that belonged Arlington, Belmont and Cambridge that were all part of a greater area called the Great Swamp back in a map in 1866 and all of that water eventually ended up trying to go into Cambridge on our side but was blocked by hills and so that was one of the things that stuck in my mind we wrote part of the citizens comments that went to the great volumes and when you read these things it's weight lifting I recommend it for your ongoing health the EIS that's the Environmental Impact Statement was made available to the town for review in Robbins Library and also the Board of Selectmen and the Planning Office thank you pardon that's the end of it okay all right well think about this the mastodon who lost his tooth in spy pond is still looking for it he lost it when the glaciers were receiving they left us the landscape that drains continually downward towards the ocean it's never changed and we can't engineer it and we can't get global warming to disappear and it's going to give us more rain to deal with happy swimming everybody and well then over here we're going to have waiting the friends of spy pond park okay that better all right so I am Chair of Sustainable Arlington and I don't know who's talked about climate change tonight but obviously that's a real issue here what we're expecting is more intense rain we already have more intense rain we will have more flooding we have sea level rise and actually if you're interested you can find maps that will show you what it will do to Arlington so I'm also Chair of the trustees of the spy pond condo association and I wanted to tell you a little bit about flooding sure and so when the FEMA map was changed in 2009 our insurance company planned to increase our premium from $10,000 a year to $54,000 a year that's five times as much so we spent $11,000 for a survey of the property to prove that only one of the buildings was in the flood plain obviously with climate change it's going to get worse we have more flooding in this area more rain and so I think that for especially the people who don't have a whole lot of money who would be in this project whether or not they'll be able to afford flood insurance if it's even available at that point is a good question is it fair to put them in a property where they could be flooded and ruined I don't think so that's probably it she was under 10 so we have over here the friends of spy pond park while over here please the Arlington land trust friends of spy pond park oh that was her oh who did I say Arlington land trust is next then Arlington's open space committee Annie past two she looks surprised I was given this list I don't know any I'm Anna Royer the chair of the open space committee and we just completed our fifth I believe open space plan which from the very beginning since the 1990s when the open space plans which are a state mandated document which have to be approved by the state the new protection of the new garland has always been a top priority in terms of trying to acquire or protect it through conservation restrictions or any plan so I just want to be sure that's part of the record that people are reminded that it's over 20 years now that this organization has been working to try to protect the property for the town many people have been working on it much longer than that so I think we're all in pretty much agreement that this is an area that should be protected for natural resource protection and potentially environmental education which is another use that would be very valuable there thank you so next I have the Arlington soccer club and after that over here we're going to have the East Arlington livable streets next soccer club for us sir good evening thank you chairman and thank you everybody for listening thank you for Oak Tree's presentation my name is Henry brush and I'm the president of the Arlington soccer club the Arlington soccer club is a non-profit organization here in town we have approximately 1900 players that participate in our league and they range in age from 5 to 18 years old we also have approximately 300 coaches that participate in our volunteer organization they're all Arlington citizens mostly parents of the children we are one of the largest youth soccer organizations in the state there's been a lot of discussion tonight about the impact to the immediate neighbors of the Arlington proposed development those are certainly valid concerns but I would also like to give another perspective that shows how this impacts actually the entire town so field space is a significant challenge for the ASC and all youth sports organizations in Arlington fortunately we have very large participation in sports both youth and adult and Wednesday nights during our spring season this past season which is the night that I coach and I practice at Dorn Dyke and it's a typical night on those fields we had 19 teams and 200 players practicing on Dorn Dyke field and also Magnolia as well and on a typical weekend we have about 20 games there we have similar crowding in other fields that we have in town and if we were to lose that time on Dorn Dyke and Magnolia through increased flooding you can see that would be a significant impact on our youth soccer program we have no place to move those players and this would be obviously a big impact and actually I share the senator's experience one of my elegant duties as a board members I get to check the fields and I can share with you that Dorn Dyke still does flood and it's one of my sort of negative barometers so if I go down to Dorn Dyke at 6am and it's dry I pretty much know the rest of the town is probably good so I just wanted to voice that concern and thank you all for listening so East Arlington liveable streets going once going twice gone East Arlington Good Neighbor Committee George Thank you very much Mr. Chairman I'll be very brief I just want to make it very clear that we from the East Arlington Good Neighbor Committee we're the group that has put the boots on the streets to organize the neighborhoods and the people who reside in the vicinity of the project proposed development we're totally opposed to this development and the proposal has been submitted at this point in time and we're against any incarnation in the future you can tweak it all you want but we will fight this plan door by door street by street until the plan is completely defeated and the property is left in better condition frankly than it will be when it is developed thank you very much George just spoke for the Good Neighbor Committee George just spoke he has a minute left he has a minute left I'll see you have a minute Elsie Fiori Elsie Fiori 58 Mart Street of those four houses you see up on the left I'm right in that area and this they're pretending not to come down behind our houses however they're going to use Little John Street as a way into the project and that's going to affect all of us down in that area because the streets are one way so that not only means they're going to use the streets they're going to have to change those streets for being two way to help the people who live there and then we're going to have a merry time with traffic I had if I just could take an extra minute please get my glasses on somebody spoke earlier about this place being called The Great Swamp and lo and behold I have a book called The Great Swamp that a friend of mine who's now under 90's down in Cambridge wrote many years ago and I just looked and found that I was quoted in it and it says and it kind of says nice things about me so I'm going to let you know what it said in Arlington Elsie Fiori feels now this is 2000 and I think 2000 or something like that Elsie Fiori feels she's succeeded in winning support for her neighbors and other residents in her efforts to protect the Mugar land on route two from development her charm and her persistence over 40 years and the use of legal measures have been useful as a matter of fact I brought a suit against one of the Mugar projects a few years ago myself because all of these people didn't come to meetings in those days it was just me so anyway so I said I have had a vision of the Mugar site since I moved to Arlington many years ago as a matter of fact 65 years ago I'm actually very old while waiting and hoping for my vision to be realized I've watched what was once farmland turned first into a rather barren place and then gradually through the years turned into a parcel of open land fringed by trees and other greenery the land has acted as a sponge to absorb water from the 100 year flood plane and the greenery has created birds and small animals and a pleasant gateway to Arlington on route two and we also have a deer that visits us it is charming yeah right okay alright could I just say why we didn't get it before two lines unfortunately at this time when the Mugar site was being proposed years ago the town of Arlington had just purchased this hospital on Hospital Hill and had little cash to acquire more open space in East Arlington and in turn the town's land trust was devoting its limited monies to prevent encroachments by pond therefore the Mugar site continues to be in danger of development still we've all learned never to underestimate our powers of persuasion so let's keep on opposing the development of the Mugar site I don't like messing with Elsie I can tell you only one I let go over time you'll notice that so now friends what we'd like is to invite any of the rest of you who are here thank you so much for coming out showing this kind of interest and concern for our town and what I'm going to ask is if you're interested in speaking that you come and line up behind either one of these two mics okay now and let me remind you please two minutes same thing I'm going to give you this double tap when it's two minutes are up and I ask you please to bring it to a conclusion finish your sentence and I ask you please to keep in mind what we're doing the Board of Selected Men have to put together comments related to this project by Monday evening so to whatever degree you can help us with what your recommendations should be about comments that we might make about what a spectacular group these four individuals are and are well capable and certainly have formed a lot of comments already but so please keep that in mind two minutes each person and we will start right there thank you very much my name is John Yerowich 47-year resident of Allington 39 is a homeowner 33 at the corner of Martin Little John Street have seen little change over there other than good stuff that's going to be built right down the street just because the state waives a 40B trump card over the town we don't want that what's going to happen is they're going to go in there with their chainsaws and bulldozers mow everything down and come in with 304 parking spaces which in case you don't know what that means you can't see it on that drive by the Allington of the East Allington Walgreens and it's at least four times the size of that parking lot picture that in there the turtles, the birds, the deer, the fox the turtles, the snakes, the skunks, the possums they're going to have to get their own affordable housing winters mowed down think of that nobody mentioned the critters already now right on consider the three and a half hours twice a day we get traffic jams on Lake Street you get some 911 call medical, fire or police that have to get from one side to the other on Lake Street which is a drag strip that's not going to happen I don't want to be looking for any last gas we're there waiting for the ambulance because we've got 300 more cars coming off of Little John Street which is a dinky little roadway that feeder, Birch Street I mean it's just 300 more cars it's illegal to be in the neighborhood there aren't 20 cars that go down there all day long they're going to put 300 my bottom line here is in this room they said no we don't want it I don't know when the message is lost to you we don't want it that's um thanks, thank you in the neighborhood I couldn't agree more about the traffic I think something to consider is all the additional accidents that will happen out on Lake Street because there'll be so many more people trying to turn left to get to Route 2 and any access from Route 2 is only going to lead to cut through in our neighborhood and more accidents in our neighborhood access from Route 2 unless that's the only access is the problem however I'm here to talk about flooding first of all the best conservation vision is no development that's everything that you've said is so disingenuous because we can if we had public access we could get rid of invasives we could get rid of the fill that's there we could unclog the drain under Route 2 but the other thing to remember is there's no change in the water and it rains into Ale Wife Brook when it rains Ale Wife Brook level rises there is no elevation change for stormwater anywhere that's why we have so much flooding because the groundwater comes up there's no elevation change between Ale Wife Brook and all the storm sewers everything backs up you can put compensatory storage in but you know I'm an engineer too the integrity does not stay so it's going to end up being part of the problem rather than part of the solution however the biggest thing is with Garlington's conservation commission bylaw is using up to date rainfall levels when you're calculating the 100 year flood the 10 year flood the 2 year flood Massachusetts regulations are so out of date this is a huge problem they are relying on data from the 50's and 60's on what 100 year flood rainfall is I have lived through in less than 20 years 3 of those 100 year floods they are not that data is so out of date and how anybody can live with themselves and say that they're going to make things better using that old, old data that is completely irrelevant we know with climate change we know we got a lot of problems you've got to use up to date real data and that is what the conservation commission's bylaw demands and you are just going to skirt around that by trying to use the state rules it's unconscious it's criminal Steve Revlock 111 sunny side avenue I think I've been completely upstaged on the topic of flooding so I'm going to ask a few questions about affordable housing instead so earlier in the presentation I believe okay well okay well I was in the questions I would have asked if I could have gotten an answer would be the number of affordable units available, the percent AMI that these units were targeting and the AMI value that was being used so in short I just was really looking for a sense of yes affordable housing but how affordable and who are we really trying to help out with it or who is intended to be helped out but I will leave it at that thank you I believe we're talking 25% affordable not 20 I think we're talking about 80% of medium we're probably setting the rents at 70% so there's a window and that's the AMI value of the utility the lottery process as you probably know covers more than just the town but they get priority if they prove that the need is there and then there's a balance of the state as handicapped accessibility there's all those kinds of things going to it 80% AMI you said? yes okay thank you town meeting member precinct 18 and most of you probably know of my activities the past 15 years are either reformed or repealed just a couple of points you've talked enough about the wetlands I live up in the heights I am not affected but I am very concerned for my friends down in East Arlington that I know will be affected a couple of things that came up that I just want to bring to your attention they intimate that we had 40 years to get our 10% there's no way in God's green earth that we will ever reach 10% the last time I looked I have to build something in the order of 8 to 12,000 homes but it keeps eroding and I can explain that at another time intimated that we haven't done well at our 5.6% wherever we're at now the number changes there's only 35 other towns possibly 38 that have done better than us in that regard so we have worked on affordable housing and we were doing things long before 40B that created affordable housing we have more public housing units created by the town of Arlington than any other city or town except our major cities we're number 11 out of 351 cities and towns that have provided public housing and that's there forever okay the other issue is can we make 10% I seriously doubt it not without making this look like New York City so there's gotta be a balance here someplace we've done a lot of work to create affordable housing if we could get half the things we've done here in Arlington and acted through our state legislature perpetuity of the developed units inclusionary zoning that says every major development has components these are the things that would make 40B truly produce affordable housing not line the pockets of developers I'm embarrassed to see them here to tell you the truth thank you it's a little narrow opening that you say it doesn't flow but that's where it goes I've lived here for 20 years and that's good I've seen some pretty heavy rains I can see the entrance to Thorndike field from my house and I've watched it turn from pavement to a pond I've watched ducks swimming in the neighbor's yard I can look out my front window and see Thorndike field and watched kayakers paddling across it did I mention it's a field and to my right is the Mugau land precious soggy functioning land trees and vegetation acting as a natural sponge a giant bowl that holds all that rainwater just below and at the surface and it's all good because I knew when I bought that house from the in-laws who have lived here for 40 years that is a flood plain water in the basement is a fact it's okay to some pumps I have them everything three feet above ground level done finished basement for my teenagers it's not gonna happen I get it of course six years ago the flood plain maps changed because of all the nearby development cost me an extra $800 every year that's just doubled I'm sure it's gonna double again it just boggles my mind that it can be legally build and pave over that working land the neighborhood community has to be considered just because you can doesn't mean you should and you want to build in the name of housing what about our housing the houses that are already there my horse hair plaster walls will not withstand the pounding of the pilings it's morally and environmentally irresponsible to build and pave on this land it doesn't make sense doesn't make sense it makes dollars it must be a huge payoff for the new god family if they're willing to give millions of dollars to the developers to build it some real green developers for sure the town might make some money but residential revenues have additional municipal costs associated with it it's the current residents of this town it's all of us who won't benefit from the increased flooding the traffic and the safety concerns we're the little guy that's going to have to really pay the price and the funniest part of this whole development is that they are promoting it as a land conservation the definition of conservation is preservation protection or restoration of the natural environment natural ecosystems vegetation and wildlife fortunately I don't have time to sing paid paradise put up a parking lot you're welcome I hope you hear our voices clearly and I thank you for all your support I live off of spypond parkway Miss Noyes and colleagues do you live in the E.T. Starlington area who are you asking Miss Noyes and her colleagues do you live in the Starlington area no I've been in this area for 12 years relative newcomer I walk to L.Y. almost every day for the past 12 years and I cannot tell you how much this area has changed between traffic people are really pissed off like streets so they're zooming right through our streets I'm afraid to let my kids walk across the street or on the road or to play anywhere I'm a commercial banker by trade I believe in balance of making profits and balancing with community needs but you know let's calculate profits per unit 15 16 million roughly versus the community needs I mean how do we balance that the safety of people the environmental concerns again it's good to make money everybody is entitled to that but when we see all these things happening in our community it's not about affordable housing 25 percent 100 percent of those units affordable housing that area can't sustain a single new house period so I don't even know you know shame on us in Massachusetts for allowing a good law intentionally and we need to do something about reforming it to be abused that way as it's a slide right around way of making money money making has to be ethical and balanced with environmental and community needs thank you I'm definitely against it thank you Hukumbwa Sauti representing the East Arlington Good Neighbor Committee and all our relations any major construction development that affects not only the human community in fundamental ways but also the natural environment and ecosystem has to be considered fully from information shared openly and in a timely manner for all the stakeholders aside from the developers to observe and give full feedback on it had come to our attention at a recent community meeting that the developers had expressed that their development reports made available to the community were not completely up to date or a full expression of the scope of the development this clearly does not show egalitarian relationships in good faith with the community or adequate professional levels I and others feel that this incomplete communication severely hampers the ability of the community and other stakeholders to make decisions to be aware of harmful environmental outcomes fully assess community traffic patterns in public safety or consider the ultimate impacts to present or new residents and to local and regional flora fauna and natural ecosystems on the international stage free informed and prior consent is something advocated and fought hard for with respect to how corporations relate to local residents and indigenous peoples the importance of full and open communication with the impacted populations and communities is no less grave and important in this local setting the incomplete and unfinished reports that have been disseminated up to this point severely put this kind of necessary ethical consent in serious jeopardy thank you my name is Ted Paluso I've lived here maybe six years I guess yeah I was going to ask a simple question which was tell me the number one reason why you're bringing something special to this town versus the negative sides and then the fellow over there mentioned the word critters and it suddenly occurred to me are there critters living in there I mean I know there are homeless people living in there but from what I understand they were supposed to get rid of them some place along the line even though it wasn't developed but let's think about what happens besides the water so you take a big piece of that and you say I'm going to make this into a livable area where did the critters go and you know what scares me I've seen some of the critters around Arlington recently and you know where they're going to go they're going to go into the neighborhoods and I would love to see these folks do a little survey to find out how many rats are living in that swamp when they're going to take away their habitat if a vinegar I live in that neighborhood and I wanted to paint a little bit of the picture of the traffic in the neighborhood based on the data that was shared with us at the main meeting where we were sure that because there's only an expected one third of people that will be commuting by cars there's only 80 cars going through the neighborhood during rush hour trying to get on Lake Street at a clip of one car per minute now if you picture the streets in that neighborhood they're small like many streets in Arlington there is a car parked on the right a car parked on the left enough space for one car to go down the middle now if people are going down to Thorndag field while people are trying to get out of the development at one car per minute that's going to create a traffic hazard if the traffic is backed up as it already is in the morning to get out on Lake Street both going towards Mass Ave on Margaret Street and going towards Route 2 on Little John that traffic jam you know they'll be sitting on those streets for a long time creating safety hazards so John already alluded to if there's a 911 call and vehicles have to get through they'll be sitting in traffic they won't be able to get through we have mothers walking there are strollers on the street because the sidewalks are too small where are they going to walk the children are riding on the street because the sidewalks are small trying to get to the bike path it's going to create a big safety hazard and the neighborhood is just too small there's no traffic and we've been assured it's only one third and I don't believe those numbers quite frankly Hello my name is Neil Saunders I've lived in the neighborhood for 16 years I didn't prepare a speech but I'm just going to say what I think and I think Oak Tree is here to just kind of quiet everyone down their goal is to make as much money as they can as fast as they can with as little resistance and whether they find some laws they've learned us that's what they're going to do there's a development right now in Belmont off of Acorn Park I'm sure many of you are aware of it I feel bad because I didn't stand with those people when they were demonstrating and now they tore down all the trees the roads along Lake Street are all torn up and this is what they're proposing for our side too they really haven't talked about our quality of life the flooded basements the more traffic the crowded schools their goal is to make as much money as they can I've seen when it rains the water shooting out of the storm drains like a fountain in the middle of the street I haven't heard much in terms of studies that they've done they show great pictures I'm sure they have their financials all in line of how much they can make but they haven't really done any of these in-depth studies that I keep talking about I think what their goal is try and find as many loopholes as they can and get this pushed in as fast as they can but I'm glad that the rest of our neighbors have shown up they're showing support and I think I hope that has weight with the town committee members too thank you Thank you Mr. Chairman, Chris Loretty, Adam Street I'd like to address Mr. Kuro's comments and offer a different perspective on them I'm not at all convinced that this town has made the preservation of the Mugar site a priority you know in our society money talks and as far as I know this town has never been willing to spend a dime to preserve that site at this year's town meeting despite the representations of the community preservation act committee that if that act was passed funds from it could be used for preserving Mugar town meeting voted against spending any money from any of the CPA funds on the acquisition of this site and indeed that that position was favored by people like Ms. Rowe in an underactive hypocrisy who was one of the main CPA supporters and your board your board went along with that I'm calling on you to call a special town meeting to reverse that vote to show that this town is willing to spend money to preserve that site I think if you don't do that and if you take the position that you're going to deny every permit for any type of development on that site you're taking a position that is both irresponsible and untenable as your friend and my favorite town meeting member likes to say that's an invitation to litigation I would also like you to consider what might happen if a 40B development doesn't go in here you know this site is not like an HCA development where they need a lot of zoning relief that site by my calculation can support 600,000 square feet of development what this developer is proposing is less than half of that sure there are wetlands issues that need to be dealt with but I think you need to think very carefully about what the alternatives might be because I think you could very well end up with a different development that doesn't give you the social benefits and I'd like to just list a few demands that I would like you to make that would be interesting first thank you my name is Aaron Holman 12 Whittemore Street I have some recommendations I have some comments and I have some questions which since I can't ask the proponents I will ask the board of select to follow up on some of the recommendations the difference the only difference between right and Florida Swampland is that this is in Massachusetts and it has no alligators other than that they're the same I wouldn't develop on Florida Swampland I respectfully suggest to Mr. Mugar though I believe he was not here that he either take a conservation easement or donate the land and put an end to these repeated attempts to try to develop it a couple of other recommendations for our state representatives and senators who were here I appreciate their being here one thing I'll request that they try to do if it all politically feasible is to amend section 40B so that 40B no longer trumps local conservation bylaws and that would give us some of the important protections that we should have by law instead of having to beg the developers when it's not in their interest I'd like to ask the Board of Selectmen if they would proactively down zone some sections of Arlington there is no need anymore for an R5, R6 or R7 district and these are the things that developers blackmail Arlington into doing 40B on they use these I can build these big projects let's do it now before it becomes a taking that's something that the Board of Selectmen and town meeting can do these things are all doable couple of comments I would I have dealt with thank you thank you and John Worden Jason Street lived in the town for quite a little while I'd like to go over a little bit of history about this tract back in the 60's there was a billboard this before the forest was there there was a billboard there that said future sight of star market and one night we were driving home from a party or something in Boston and the sign was burning well that was the end of the star market I guess somewhat later in the town meeting of 1970 the first one I was in and I think very few Mrs. Fiore may remember this the Mugar family brought in well they didn't bring it in they got the planning board to bring in planned unit development and Mr. Stephen Mugar who made a fortune in the star market and later selling it stood on the floor of this hall speaking at town meeting and urged the town meeting to vote for this PUD which was going to be the greatest thing since sliced bread and a bunch of us opposed it we lost the PUD zoning was put in 1970 45 years have elapsed and they haven't done a thing with it so my question if I were allowed to ask a question Mr. Chairman would be why don't the Mugars want to develop it under the PUD zoning which they asked this town to enact for their benefit thank you Mr. Warden is also a town meeting member so I just wanted to get up here because Mr. Engler I'm not sure if he's aware that there are many town meeting members in this room I don't know maybe like 30 how many town meeting members and a lot left and I want to say that I also thought Mr. Engler's comment was completely wrong town meeting voted for the CPA and the reason I personally voted for the CPA is for open space and I saw some of the slides during the presentations of affordable housing units in other towns and I thought that's the kind of thing I'd like to see in Arlington a beautiful Victorian with affordable housing units in it and that is what we intend to do so we're not just going to ignore affordable housing we just don't want a monstrosity and as somebody who has to commute daily to Route 2 it's a mess I hope you guys can all get in your cars and drive both ways at 7 to 8.30 9 o'clock and you can see there's no way you can sustain something so again CPA town meeting members that's what we intend to do in Arlington and overwhelmingly people also voted for it so I think you need to take that into consideration master plan, CPA town meeting members thank you my name is Laura Knottman I'm a resident in the Heights so I'm not directly impacted and I'm an architect and I fully understand what the challenges are of the process of proposing a project like this and that there are costs and time involved in preparing materials for presentation and I came tonight with an open mind to the previous presentations so I really wanted to see what you had to present in terms of solutions to the very well known and well described challenges with the site in terms of wetlands and traffic and I believe there are potentially designed solutions to some of these issues though I'm much more skeptical after having heard everyone's comments but my real concern is when I listen to you describing the process and that the point we're at right now which is asking for the mass housing site approval and that only requires preliminary design but you describe that the charge that they have is to help determine the economic feasibility of a project and looking at the site and the distance you've been able to come in terms of your analysis I don't think there's any way that you can do an assessment of the feasibility of this project because there are so many unknowns yes perhaps you're carrying a contingency for site work that you don't know about because you haven't fully evaluated the site but I really question whether this is feasible to develop economically and I think the Mugars have rights as property owners and I don't see developers as inherently evil there's some great projects that have happened even here in Arlington but I really feel like if you want to go before mass housing and say this is a feasible project you're going to need to do more than the minimum required in terms of analysis and really do your homework to present that and I don't think the town should accept the proposal without more work having been shown thank you hi thank you, thank you everybody for being here in the middle of a hot summer night my name is Allison Link and I think I might be the first Belmont resident to speak tonight and I and many others were very actively involved with trying to preserve the Belmont uplands for over a decade including state representatives and people who were doing it totally volunteering and town meeting members fundraising phonathons everything as you know sadly we lost that fight it's kind of ironic because walking here with one of my colleagues who was involved with that fight our first I think Silver Maple now turning orange on our way walking here so very poignant but I have to say I did also go to the meeting at the Hardy School back in May and it is just so inspiring to see how everybody is pulling together to try to save this very crucial space it has so many parallels to the Belmont uplands in terms of its crucial flood absorption concerns about traffic I actually grew up in the house that I now live in in Belmont which is right on the other side of Little Pond from Route 2 and I can tell you all the little critters that were in the Silver Maple Forest they're over in the Mugar land now and where are they going to go when that's taken and just the schools traffic it's just it's really a crime I think what's happening with Forty B and I just want to mention that Mr. Engler was present at many ZBA meetings that I was also present at and speaking on behalf of the developer of the uplands and preserving Forty B and we know how that ended up so please stay strong Dianne Dupont town meeting member precinct 13, precinct 13 is on a hill in Arlington and you would not think that if you're on a hill that you would experience flooding however once the house next to me was torn down and then a house with a larger footprint was put there as well as a larger parking pad and removal of trees I now flood the builder had no responsibility towards me because I now flood and have to deal with the water so now I had to spend lots of money to mitigate that problem so are you going to have lots of contingency money so for the next 50 years there will be a lot of people who have flooding issues because of the development you are willing to compensate them for lost work time lost property damage decreased value of their homes compared to what other homes in Arlington are increasing by the percentage because it would be on a relative basis and on a relative basis East Arlington because they're flooding then I think the builders and the developers need to be responsible for that for let's say 50 to 100 years and are you willing to be able to do that and I don't think that most developers consider the impact of what removing a tree does that there's a lot of water absorption in there and a lot of cooling impact and I unfortunately didn't see the board meeting so I didn't see the beginning of it so you may have covered it that every tree and every shrub that's removed here is the impact to it thank you I want to thank the Board of Selectment for holding this hearing and keeping this room open for all these comments I'm Glenn Koenig I'm a former town meeting member I've lived in Arlington for 40 years I'm the person who made the video that you can see on YouTube I flushed through the water to get those images when Brian sent me a photograph from 1953 showing the swamp I realized I was only three years old then and I'm 65 now almost and that was a long time ago and all this time many many proposals have come up and I was on town meeting for years to try to build something on this land and as you can see nothing's been built yet so I kind of have to ask the proponents what part of no don't you understand many years ago President of the United States was quoted which you're probably all familiar saying Mr. Gorbachev tear down this wall so I'm asking oops I went to the wrong direction Mr. Mugar let go of this land Winnell Evans Arlington play orchard place I want to urge everybody here to read an interesting application that has already been filed by Oak tree it's really interesting and very informative they have indeed already filed for an exemption from the flood storage requirements I did read their original early proposal before the May meeting in which they said that quote unquote ground water is not in our purview I lived in that neighborhood for about 10 years I went through several hundred year storms I also saw manhole cover two feet above street level where it was being pushed by the water going through the storm system and I think that to say that there's a difference between ground water and storm water at a certain point is as many people have said tonight disingenuous they are one in the same at a certain point I also noticed when I read through the housing application that oak tree is filed for 28 waivers from various requirements including a waiver from our existing wetland regulations and the one that really stuck with me it's kind of small but it really really ticked me off they are looking for 25 percent reductions of various filing legal and building fees which they are asking for on behalf of building 25 percent affordable units in this this is on behalf of a for profit project for one of the wealthiest men in Massachusetts okay I want to request from the selectman and any other board that may be involved in this that they do not get a dime off of any of the fees I realize this is a small part of it and it's a drop in the bucket with the money that we're talking about but that is really offensive and I'll all the speakers and I think you all should give yourself a nice round of applause for being here on such a warm summer's evening coming up last step long process we're with you all the way very proud of Arlington let me see do any of my colleagues wish to make a no I'm getting no no no yes no I'm getting a yes Diane Mahon I just want to take advantage of the opportunities two points two questions to Oak Tree to MuGar through Oak Tree first it was cited about transit oriented project only one third will have cars that's approximately 80 cars one per minute I would question why you're building a 300 car parking garage underneath for 80 cars the second I would put to you is when we went on the site visit Ms. Noyes pointed out the what was termed the tent city with a alleged criminal activity incited that this project would get rid of that and remediate it I would say to the MuGar through Oak Tree that is your property you should be responsible you haven't done anything down there yet I wish you would I want to thank you all for coming out I really appreciate it I thought I was being overly sensitive by Mr. Angler's remarks regarding Arlington and affordable housing so I kind of put that aside I just want to state for the record that this Board of Select Men has invested 5.75 million dollars of community block grant development funds that we oversee and town meeting approves that's 29% of the total funds that we get from CDBG we're part of the suburban home consortium which has invested 6.4 million in home funds for affordable housing in Arlington the housing core association which the town works with and with town support the HCA now owns 90 units plus 67 new units projected in the next four years our master plan has received a grant from the Department of Housing to assist us with our housing production plan which we hope to implement it was cited about the Community Preservation Act which may assist not only with MUGAR but also with affordable housing since we've hired our director of housing in the planning department we went from 892 units on our subsidized inventory housing list to 1,121 we've adopted inclusionary zoning which has given us additional units and we also have some very unique to Arlington the homeless prevention fund with 100% private donations from town residents to date since I think approximately 2014 donations have totaled $597,000 that's all town money from you residents so I certainly think this Board of Select when this town of Arlington and the citizens of Arlington certainly have stated their strong support for affordable housing thank you good night Arlington God bless and Belmont good night everybody thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you