 I'd like to reopen the public hearings for the 2020 special town meeting. Good evening. This open meeting of the Arlington Redevelopment Board is being conducted remotely consistent with Governor Baker's executive order of March 12, 2020 due to the current state of emergency and the Commonwealth due to the outbreak of the COVID-19 virus. In order to mitigate the transmission of the COVID-19 virus, we have been advised and directed by the Commonwealth to suspend public gatherings and, as such, the governor's order suspends the requirement of the open meeting law to have all meetings in a publicly accessible physical location. Further, all members of public bodies are allowed and encouraged to participate remotely. For this meeting, the Arlington Redevelopment Board is convening via Zoom conference as posted on the town's website identifying how the public may join. Please note that this meeting is being recorded and that some attendees are participating via video conference. Accordingly, please be aware that other people may be able to see you and take care not to screen share your computer. Anything that you broadcast may be captured by the recording. I'm going to run through our and confirm that all members of the Redevelopment Board are here and then I will run through some requirements for the public hearing for anyone who wishes to speak tonight. So to run through the list of the Arlington Redevelopment Board members, if you could please identify present when I call your name. Kin Lau. Here. David Watson. Present. Eugene Benson. Present. Katie Levine Einstein. Present. And Rachel Zenberry. I am present. And the staff members from the Department of Planning. Jenny Rait. Present. And Erin's work out. Present. Great. Thank you. So tonight is the third night of the hearings for the 2020, the public hearings for the 2020 special town meeting articles. The first two were on Monday, the 26th and last Thursday evening for a total of six warrant articles consistent with the past Arlington Redevelopment Board meetings. We will be hearing from the applicants and the public wishing to speak on each of these articles as scheduled. The board will pose any questions to the applicants after the applicants present their article, but we will reserve discussion and voting on each article until after they are all completed, which will happen after we close the public hearing this evening. Any person wishing to speak at the zoning warrant article public hearings will be given an opportunity to do so in accordance with the following procedures. The subject matter will be the hearings that are posted on the agenda. So tonight that is article 21. Persons wishing to address the Arlington Redevelopment Board on the subject matter of the agenda item shall signify their desire to speak by raising their hand when the chair announces consideration of such item. To raise your hand in zoom on your computer, go to the participants section on the bottom of your screen and select raise hand or on your phone press star six to unmute yourself. After being recognized to speak by the chair, such persons will preface their comments by giving their first and last name and their street address. People addressing the board on the subject matter of the agenda item shall limit their remarks to three minutes and may be allowed to speak more than once at the discretion of the chair. The board may receive any oral or written evidence, but such evidence is restricted to the subject matter of the agenda item. Immaterial or unduly repetitious evidence may be excluded. Those persons present at the public hearing are requested not to applaud or otherwise express approval or disapproval of any statements made or action taken at such hearing. Hearing participants shall refrain from interrupting other speakers and conduct themselves in a civil and courteous manner. Speakers should address questions through the chair. Speakers shall not attempt to engage in debate or dialogue with the Arlington Redevelopment Board members or other hearing participants. Questions may or may not be answered during the public hearing. And with that, we will move to our agenda item for this evening, which is Article 21, Zoning Map Amendment to Rezone Town Property. This is to see if the town will vote to rezone a parcel of land belonging to the town of Arlington with the access from Grove Street and being identified by Map 54, Block 3, Lot 2.B from R1 to I in terms of the zone or to take any action related thereto. So with that, I will hand it over to Jennifer Raitt from the Department of Planning to give us some background before we turn it over to the applicants. Thank you, Rachel. It's Jennifer Raitt. I'm the Director of Planning and Community Development. I'll be brief as the petitioner has a presentation to make to the board. In brief, this article is meant to rezone this one lot of town-owned land that is currently zoned R1, which is the residential district for single-family homes, to industrial, which is the abutting land use. And you can see that on the map here that all of the purple is zoned industrial, which includes the DPW complex, the current complex. The majority of those parcels are already occupied by DPW properties, but there is a proposed expansion of the salt shed and they'll describe what that will look like and what that means onto the abutting parcel that happens to be zoned for R1, which would need to be rezoned to industrial in order for that use to be accommodated. There's already an existing curb cut and it is currently used as a driveway already, but it does need to be rezoned again for this particular use as it is restricted. The project need is somewhat imminent and of course the petitioner will describe what that process means and what they're seeking and the timeline that they're looking to achieve in order to develop the property for the new DPW facilities. In part, this will last the construction period would last for a couple of years. And as you can see, the estimated timeline for completion is 2023 based upon my memo and information that I've received from the petitioner and they will be providing that information again in their presentation so that we can learn a little bit more about their timeline and the needs related to this particular parcel. So with that, I'm going to ask Mike Rademacher to provide a further introduction of this article as well as an introduction to the architect who will be making further, provide further information to the board and the public. Thank you. Great. Thank you, Jenny. Mike, would you like to begin your presentation? Sure. Thank you. I'm Mike Rademacher, the director of Public Works. Tonight I have with me Jeff Alberti and David Steves, both from Weston and Samson. Jennifer, Jenny did a very good job kind of teeing this up for them with some background on the project, but David is, I mean, sorry, Jeff is going to, has a presentation he'd like to make to further describe the reason for the request. Thank you. I was wondering, would it be acceptable for me to share my screen so I can control the presentation or would you prefer that I just work through your end? Jenny, I'll leave that up to you. I'm not sure how you have this presentation. I think it would be easier if you just tell me when to advance. Okay. Please. All right, sure. So if you advance to the next slide, so this presentation is to provide an overall summary of the project, which includes the request to rezone a parcel land that was mentioned earlier belonging to the town of Arlington to accommodate what we're referring to as municipal facility, which includes the DPWR renovations. And the site is located at 51 Grove Street as mentioned. And the reason we refer to it as a municipal facility is because the facility does include public works, but also has some support functions internally for the Inspectional Services Department, Facilities Department and IT department. The project includes the renovation of four existing buildings. Those are shown to the left on the photograph on the rendering on the bottom, as well as a new facility shown on the right, which is the new operations building. The project also includes a salt storage structure, which is in the back right behind the new facility, as well as a fueling facility and a municipal parking area to the right. If you move to the next slide, this is just an overall view of your zoning map and just outlining the proposed development area that shows the zoning districts I being in purple and the R1 in the beige color. And moving to the next slide, this is just a zoom in of the site. You can see the two lots. Now I'll just refer to Ms. Lott 2A, which is the industrial and purple, and Lott 2B, which is the R1 as mentioned earlier. To the next slide, just rotate the site a little bit to give you an overall view. This shows the two parcels combined at 5.95 acres and approximately 4.42 is in the I district and 1.5 in the R1 district, showing the current use of the sites between DPW as well as part of it is a existing practice field area that's shown to the left. Moving to the next slide, so when we began this process, we started by really focusing on the original development area, and that's shown in yellow. And that original development area was being programmed to support DPW and ISD. So as you move to the next slide, this shows you the next three slides, and you can go through them slowly as we go here, but they show you the options that were developed early on to provide space for DPW and ISD. So that was option one. The next one is option two. So you can see we're primarily staying in the developable area. And as you move to the next one, you have option three. So what we determined is with the current program needs and with the parking needs, we're able to fit DPW and ISD. As you move to the next slide, you can see that the town head, through the development of the high school project, the town head requested that the facilities and IT departments be relocated from the high school to the DPW site. And this required approximately 11,000 square feet of building space to accommodate that, as well as an additional 30 parking spaces to accommodate the staffing for IT facilities and associated visitors. So we evaluated that yellow shaded area, the 4.4 acre parcel to determine if we could further expand it. And I think from showing you those options, there really wasn't much left, much room left. So we determined it was not suitable to just build within that developed area. And we began the process of looking at that adjacent parcel, the existing practice field area. And working closely with the high school design team at the time, we made a joint decision to provide a central parking area on that former practice field area. And that would also provide a third access point to the school for any future needs, and really more for emergency needs at this point. The field area was important to note was historically used for industrial purposes for a large storage tank, and I'll show you a photograph of that in a moment. And it does have historic contamination and essentially is covered by Massachusetts Department of Environmental Protection engineered in contact barrier. Sliding over to the next slide, this provides an overview. You can see the large red outlined area to the right is the high school and to the left is the DPW facility, the smaller enclosed red area. And you can see the area in yellow that represents the portion of the practice field that is proposed to be converted to parking on the high school project. As you move to the next slide, you can see a concept plan showing the high school and that proposed redevelopment area outlined in yellow for the high school parking. And then you can see the other area that we've identified to be proposed to be developed for the municipal facility. And as you go to the next slide, you'll see the concept overlaying on that as well. And you can see that it primarily includes a parking area, but it does have a portion of the salt storage structure in the fueling facility that falls within that parcel. And I'll show you a more detailed plan in a moment. As you move to the next slide, I just wanted to outline what we have for these, what we're referred to as direct contact or engineered barriers. So there are three barrier types. They include the paved direct contact barrier, a field direct contact barrier, and an engineered barrier. And as you look at these, what you'll see is that the entire R1 area has historic contamination based on its former industrial use. And it is covered with a complete mass DEP barrier. If you move to the next slide, this shows on the plan below shows you in these red circles, this represents what I refer to as the MGP gas holder locations. MGP stands for manufactured gas plant. So this is where the manufactured gas was stored. And you can see in that photograph, that historic photograph, the large tank that was historically located on that site indicating its past industrial use. And that's also apparent from the fact that there's associated contamination with that. Moving on to the next slide, this shows you the proposed plan development. And we've identified the new and renovated structures in beige. And you can see the gray area represents the paved areas. This shows you the overlaying zoning districts with I on the right being in purple and R1. And this is overlaying over the proposed development. So as you can see, a majority of the structures, both the main new structure as well as the existing structures to be renovated are on the I parcel. And you can see just to the bottom of the bottom right of that R1 symbol, you can see the salt storage structure, which has a portion of the structure extending onto that parcel and the fueling facilities directly above that. And then the remainder of the site is being proposed with the paved area for parking. As you move to this next one, this is what we're proposing is to change this so that is a consistent I district for the two parcels combined. I think just as a quick side note, what you find through the development of this compared to what exists now is that a majority of the operations will now be enclosed and under cover versus what you have now, which is a lot of equipment and materials outdoors, which essentially will be an overall improvement for the operations and for this site. As you move to the final slide, this is just a wrap up in summary. What the town is requesting is that lot 54, 3, 2B be changed from the zoning district R1 to I. And that requested changes consistent with the historic use of this parcel for industrial purposes. As evident by that gas tank photograph I showed you earlier how it's been historically used along with the historic contamination and the bar, the engineered barriers that exist on that site. And because of that historic contamination in those barriers, the site cannot be used for residential use. As I mentioned, the decision was made with the high school project team to convert that field into a parking area for a central parking area for both facilities with a third access point provided. And this will provide the town with a consistent zoning district for the town yard municipal facility, allowing them to meet the project goals and apply appropriate and consistent zoning criteria for the development of this site. And more importantly, this zoning change will support the development of a new municipal facility which houses operations which are used to support the essential services that they provide to the town on a daily basis. Thank you for running that presentation very smoothly for me. I appreciate your help. And that is it for my presentation. Great. Thank you. Mike, did you have anything else to add before we turn it over to questions from the board? Excuse me, nothing really. That says it all. As far as timing goes, we are looking to begin construction in the spring, in the upcoming spring. And it looks to be currently a two-phase project, which would take about two years. Great. Thank you for the additional information. And thank you for the very thorough presentation as well. I appreciate it. We'll start off with Ken. Sorry, it took me a while to get unmoved. Yeah, it was a very good presentation. And I'm generally supportive of this. I just have one question. That used to be a practice field which was mainly grass, right? Correct. And you're going to cover that field. How are you guys going to handle the runoff, rainwater? There will be a stormwater system design that will capture the runoff and hold it in a tank and to allow it to release slowly to mimic how it acts today as a grass field. All right. So that would be some sort of holding tanks on the park structure, right? Or underneath, but it won't be located. Well, is there some sort of separation between that and a contaminated soil so that you're not pushing the stuff elsewhere? Correct. Right. So the way the field is now it has an engineered barrier to prevent stormwater from migrating through it and to propagate the contamination any further. And what we'll be doing is collecting the rainwater through catch basins into a very secure tank that would not allow it to also would not allow it to permeate into the soil or be held in this tank and discharged slowly to existing drainage in the area. Okay. Are you guys planning to plant any trees at the perimeter? Jeff can speak to it, but I believe a landscape plan is still under development. Yes, it is still under development, but we are looking to improve some of the screening on the perimeter subject to provisions of meeting the DEP requirements for the barriers. So this is some restrictions that we will have to follow. And so we're in the process of working through that. So you might put them in some sort of plantar maybe, right? So the roots just will get into the into your barrier you're putting in. Correct. Okay. I have no further questions, Rachel. I'm generally supportive of this. Great. Thank you, Ken. Gene. Thank you. And thank you for the very thorough presentation. Are you going to have to go before the conservation commission for any of this? Yes, we've actually filed with the conservation commission. We met with them informally and then submitted a notice of intent. Okay. Thank you. I don't have any other questions. It seems to make sense to me. Great. Thank you, Gene. David? Well, I'm excited to see this project going forward at the DPW yard. It's long overdue. Did you guys perform a parking utilization study of both the existing and proposed parking and how closely matched is the capacity you're building to what you actually expect to see? We have we spent quite a bit of time understanding the parking needs for the operations and for potential public visitors to the site. And we feel that we've adequately covered that. One of the important things to notice that you can see that there are several buildings on here, but most large portion of these buildings are just used to house actual storage of vehicles and equipment indoors. So we have done that parking utilization for the intended use and have that covered based on a plan that we've developed to date. Was there any investigation of using some kind of a parking structure instead of surface parking? We actually did early in the process when we developed alternatives. We did look to see if we could go with a parking structure and determine that when it was very cost prohibitive, we had issues with the contamination and what would be required for our foundations associated that, but more importantly was the access required to get up on that structure was prohibitive from a space utilization need on the site. So the major factors against a parking structure were engineering related rather than cost. Yes, it was primarily operationally related. Okay. All right. Well, I don't love seeing green space paved over, but I don't see that we necessarily have an alternative here. And I am concerned that you guys do improve the screening around the perimeter of the abutting properties. And it does sound like you're doing the best you can with the wastewater, the runoff. So I really don't have any other questions. Great. Thank you, David. Katie. Thanks for the informative presentation to my colleagues for their questions. I have no further questions. Thank you, Katie. Any further questions from the board before we open this up for public comment? Seeing none. We will open this up to any questions from or comments from the public. As a reminder, each person wishing to speak will have three minutes. I will ask that you share your first and last name and address before you begin speaking. And if you'd like to speak, please use the raise hand function in the participant section in the bottom of your Zoom screen. So I'll take the speakers in the order in which they have identified a request to speak. The first will be John Warden. Yes. We can hear you and see you. All right. That's good because I'm having to listen on another computer in order to get to sound. So it's a little confusing. I've got a couple of John Warden Jason Street. I have a couple of questions. Last year, the public works of an article was turned down by town meeting to seize a little historical house where they could periphery their property to use for, I don't know, some purpose. Have they given up on that idea? Yes. Not included in this parcel, right? Is it appropriate for me to speak? Please go ahead. Yes, you can answer the questions. Yes. No, that parcel is not part of this project or this request. And the other part of my question is, have you given up on the idea of taking that historic house? Yes. The original intent for taking that property was to provide an efficient driveway through the site to the high school. What we've done is design a parking lot and a driveway that can provide on occasion access to the high school. But it was designed such that in the future, we could potentially consider alternatives. But as of right now, we have no intention of taking that property. Thank you. Next question, why don't you use impermeable paving where the grass is now? One of the issues with that field is that we have contamination under it. So even though it's grass now, there is a barrier underneath which prevents rainwater from actually getting deep into the soil. It's basically like a plastic sheet, or lack of a better term, that directs the water into a drainage system before it can get into the soil. So putting in the permeable pavement, we would still have to collect it right underneath it and dispose of it or direct it elsewhere. And that would be a very costly way to do the same thing we're doing with the catch basins and the substorage. You claim that you need 30 parking places. There's no other place on the site. I mean, I really feel badly about taking a field away from the children. The high school is already losing its front yard for this enormous building. You want to take away this little practice area for the children, which seems for parking, which just seems like the wrong kind of choice in this day and age. Yeah, I can sympathize with that, Mr. Orden. And we did give a lot of consideration to parking options and locations. Having employee parking within the facility does not allow for a secure facility to allow private cars to go within the facility, nor do we have the room to do so. This is going to be parking for four different town functions, public works, information technologies, the facilities department, and inspection services. So it would be hard to disperse that parking throughout the site. But understanding your concern about the playing fields, I believe the high school's plan expands the current fields they have now. They have a baseball and a softball field. And my understanding is those current fields will be enlarged so that they can both house. One could have soccer as well. And I believe the other one can have lacrosse and or another soccer field. So the fields are being enlarged and being made more useful than they are today. So we're hoping that it will recoup the loss of this practice field. But they're also removing the basketball court, which is widely used by not only high school, but a lot of people in the community. Mr. Orden, we're at time. And if you have any other questions related to the specific zoning change, I know that there was some back and forth. So I certainly allow you another question if you have another question. All right. That's that's that's all the questions I have. Thank you. Thank you for the clarifications. So the next speaker this evening will be Carl Wagner. Thank you, Madam Chair. Can you hear me okay? Thank you. 30 Edge Hill Road is my address. I wanted to actually ask a procedural question. I hope you'll humor me with the answer. I noticed there are 50 participants total on this call. And I think a lot of people are here because they have concern over some of the zoning changes. Question 1819 and the renaming of open space. Could you please tell for people, including me who are not clear on whether the public will be allowed to give any more public comments tonight? What your plan is? Thank you very much. Sure. The the public comment tonight is for is for the the current article article 21. We had public comment that was open for those two articles on Monday evening. And I'm certainly happy to take any any questions or or comments tonight on article 21. So you will not be allowing the public to ask you questions about the items they did not know about before? Again, any any questions we right now are for article 21. We can still take comments for the for the other articles. I'll open it up for any final public questions or comments after we finish article 21. Thank you very much. And could you please state how late people can submit written comments for the hearings? Let's see. Well, we will be discussing and voting on the items. Jenny, in terms of items going into public record, how late can you accept those and still have those be public published as part of this? This is this is a public hearing. So as long as the public hearing is open and if it's continued, then it would be continued to the next possible evening. But at the moment, this is the last public hearing evening. So why don't we see how far along we get with the board, but comments are still allowed and are welcomed in terms of either verbal or written or by phone. I had somebody call me on the phone. So I hope that helps. I realize there are a number of people here who probably are not looking to speak on this particular article, but we should wrap this up before moving to the other ones. Exactly. Thank you, Jenny. Did you have any other comments on article 21? Mr. Wagner? No, thank you. That was it. Thank you. Thank you. Are there any other members of the public that would wish to speak on article 21? Okay, seeing none, I will turn it back to the board to see if there are any final questions or comments on article 21. Okay. Seeing none, we will open back up or continue public comment for any of the six articles that we have heard over the past three evenings. And again, if you would please use the raise hand function in through the participant section in the bottom of the Zoom screen. I would ask that you please, in addition to stating your name and address, if you have anything that you would wish to contribute, that you also identify the specific article member. Jenny, I'm not sure if we could pull up the summary of the articles. That would probably be helpful for people as well. I was about to do that actually. The document that's been posted is the one that has all the articles and then the proposed motions. Is that what you're talking about? Please, yes. Great. So I will open that up for any members of the public. Okay. So the first person I have on my list here is Rebecca Peterson. Hello. I'm not sure if you can hear me. Yes, we can hear you and see you. Okay. Thank you. So I don't know if I have Rebecca Peterson, Florence Ave, 31 Florence Ave. I am speaking regarding article 16. I believe 17 is the one. 16 is open space. I think 17 is ADUs and or single family zoning. I'm not sure if I have all the article numbers correct. Oh, yes. Thank you so much. So essentially, I'm speaking about 16, 17, 18 and 19, I believe. I sent an email. I didn't know about these meetings and I do get town notifications, but I missed it somehow. I sent an email to the members of the redevelopment board tonight, but it was quite late. It was just before the meeting. So I'm just, if it's okay with you, I'll just read my email because that encapsulates my comments. Absolutely. Okay. Great. So I have lived in Arlington with my husband and my kids for 20 years. We love the people. We love the schools. We love our neighborhood. We love the proximity to Cambridge and Boston. However, being close to something we enjoy on an occasional basis does not mean we wish to live in those other communities. The proposal to radically reduce open space, allow unlimited ADUs and eliminate single family housing will destroy the character of Arlington. Town meeting rejected this last year ADUs. Why would you want to allow something that so many residents do not want? Please stop trying to shove increased density down everyone's throat. If I wanted to live in Cambridge or Boston or Somerville, I would have moved there to begin with and not here. I love my yard. I love the huge trees. I love the parks in Arlington. These articles will do nothing to bring more affordable housing, just adding more housing doesn't make it affordable. Our schools are already bursting at the seams. I have two APS students. The estimate of one new student for every condos, which I saw in one of these articles or maybe supporting documentation, is laughable. Until the town charges businesses a higher property tax rate than homeowners, the entire cost of this increased burden on the town schools will be borne by the homeowners. Neighborhoods of single family homes exist at all socioeconomic levels and have long been desired by people of all races. Please stop lecturing us about how racist it is to want to live in a neighborhood. I keep seeing documentation about if you want to live in a single family neighborhood, it's racist. We want to live in a neighborhood with a certain type of house or certain characteristics or a certain level of density most important to us. That's why we moved here. I just say enough is enough. These proposals are too much and too soon. They should not become law in Arlington. Thank you. Thank you. The next speaker this evening will be Maxwell Palmer. Hi, I'm Maxwell Palmer. I'm at one Rowan Oak Road. I want to speak very briefly in support of the articles on ADUs and single family zoning. We desperately need more housing in Arlington and both of these articles will make substantial headway to addressing those problems. While there's been a lot of discussion about affordability and I fully support much more affordable housing in Arlington, we also need more market rate housing. Many studies have shown that allowing more multi-family housing reduces the price of the new housing that's built. The new condos will be less expensive than building new houses. And while that's not going to address the affordability problem, at the lowest end, it will address the need for more housing and by increasing supply will reduce housing prices as well. So I strongly support both of these new articles. Thank you. Thank you. The next speaker this evening will be Carl Wagner. Thank you. Carl Wagner of 30 Edge Hill Road, Arlington. I just wanted to very briefly touch on something Mr. Palmer said as it was entirely false. When you add new residential housing in any town that is in a democracy, the people who end up paying more are the people who move into those units, the people who rent those units, and the people who pay property tax in the town already because they always are going to have an increased burden due to more residential development. And for the last two years in Arlington, Mr. Palmer should be aware that every unit created costs more than the unit it replaced. And it makes sense. Developers are only going to build market rate housing when they have an incentive or profit to do it. But tonight I wanted to specifically turn to the board and ask you to reject article 16 and 18 and 19 on procedural and process grounds, if not democratic grounds. First of all, open space being devalued to primary and secondary space is just silly. The towns around us, the communities around us don't do that. It makes no sense. It can only be explained as the proponent mentioned in that it's going to be part of future proposals they give us for devaluing our open space. But on 18 and 19, this is the critical and very large negative change that Arlington faces. And how many people know about this? How many town meeting members even know about this? How many of you on the ARB knew about this until the citizen proposals were brought to you? It would be wrong for such a poorly understood set of very dangerous density initiatives to go before you get approval, go before 300 or whatever they are, people in the town meeting who are trying desperately to understand it, when in fact 43,000 people are affected, when in fact low and middle income seniors, people of color, people on fixed incomes will be affected, displacement, major changes to the town in addition to making us more urban and making more units. So I ask you, do not support article 18 because there's just not enough public awareness at any level. And I ask you, do not support article 19, Ms. Rait particularly should know this because if the planning department can be prevailed upon by the democratic people of Arlington to not support it, it is illegal because it was asked just last year of the town meeting. So please do not support the article 19 because it's not right and it's coming too soon. It's much more dangerous than the one rejected just a year ago and allow for much more public awareness input and surveying of what the public wants to do before you support anything like article 18. Thank you. Thank you. The next speaker this evening will be Marina Popova. Hi everyone. My name is Marina Popova. I live in Arlington at 255 Ridge Street and I guess I also want to comment on the article 16, 18 and 19 and I totally agree with what Rebecca and Carl Wagner said before. I do not agree with what the other participant sorry I lost the name was saying but the main question that I hope that the board before they vote will actually ask themselves is who do you represent? Do you represent the actual residents of Arlington or do you represent a very few rich people who actually will profit from this new development? You have to understand that there is no actual benefit for people who live in Arlington who are the residents now who pay a lot of taxes, a lot of property taxes to support and develop our beloved city. There is no benefit to those who actually live in the Arlington. The only people who actually will benefit from those articles are those again who will do the new development and who will profit from that. So when you vote for those articles please ask yourself who you are really supporting. Are you supporting the people of Arlington? Are you supporting those who are very rich already and will become much, much more rich from these articles if they are approved? All right, that's all that I wanted to say. Thank you. Thank you. And I'll just also state for the record for clarification that the petitioners, the only article, there seems to be some confusion, the only article that was actually put forward by the Arlington Redevelopment Board is Article 20. We are hearing all of the articles, the six articles, the other five being presented by petitioners from the town. So just for clarification on the articles themselves. The next speaker tonight will be Don Seltzer. Thank you. Don Seltzer Irving Street on Article 18. The number one reason that has been given for eliminating single-family housing zoning is to correct a racist legacy. I don't doubt those books and academic papers that claim the intention of single-family zoning was to exclude people of color in many cities across America. But was it true of Arlington? I'm not an academic, I'm an engineer, and I like to use data that is specific to the problem at hand. Fortunately, we do have some good data. I looked at what people were building in Arlington before we had zoning restrictions when they were free to build whatever they wanted. Prior to Arlington's first zoning map behind me in 1924, people wanted single family homes and that was what was built. 20% of our housing stock today comes from these free zoning houses. Many remain single-family homes. The others have been converted into multi-family either condos, two-family or three-family. Think of some of the fine, large Victorians found all over town. I also found an early zoning map thanks to Richard Duffy. When zoning was first introduced, roughly half the town was zoned for single residents and half was zoned for general residents. The single-family districts seemed to have been placed where many homes had already been built. The general residents districts were placed in neighborhoods where lots were waiting for new development. In other words, our earliest zoning actually encouraged multi-family housing development. But here's another interesting thing. People kept building single-family homes anyway because that's what they wanted. Take Webb Cowett Road as an example. Many of the homes on the street were built in the 1920s when it was zoned for general residents. Yet people chose to build single-family houses there anyway. Racist zoning had nothing to do with it. Today the market demands are different. So on what Cowett Road and elsewhere as these original homes come on the market, they are snapped up by developers, torn down and redeveloped as condo duplexes, each unit selling for nearly one million dollars. Let us dispense with this notion that Arlington zoning was intended to be racist. In our period of greatest growth, we permitted very, very small lot sizes and encouraged multi-family development. We did the right thing. For a racist attempt, look first at the builders who put into pluripal deed restrictions. Look at the bankers who refused loans and look at the brokers and realtors who steered away people color. That's where the racism occurred. Thank you. Thank you. The next speaker will be Elisa McDowell. Elisa, are you still there to speak? Okay. We can come back to Elisa. We'll keep your, I'll keep you in the queue and if you have any difficulties coming off with please let us know. The next person, I don't have a name. It's a phone number ending in 428. Hi, good evening. This is Elizabeth Stray. I'm a town meeting member in 328. Thank you for your time. I am alarmed. Sorry, could you update your address for the record, please? I'm on Jason's sheet. Thank you. So I'm calling to ask you to vote against articles 18 and 19. I am alarmed that these are coming in front of us on November 16th without any kind of community outreach. From what I remember, last time the accessory dwelling units was proposed that that was withdrawn pending need for future settings and outreach and I don't believe that that has happened and the zoning changes being proposed in article 18 are huge for the town and I don't believe enough people have had the opportunity to learn about these proposals and voice their concerns. So I ask you to vote these down and give the public an opportunity to give their input. Thank you very much. Thank you. Let's see. I'll go back to Elisa McDowell. Oh, thank you. I figured it out. Great. Thank you. Yeah, this is George McDowell. I'm here with Elisa. We live at 90 Valentine Road and I'll just read my little prepared statement regarding article 18. Does anybody in this meeting disagree with my contention that 99% of the Arlington towns people have no idea that you are now considering the most impactful changes in the history of this town? Does anybody disagree with that? I ask that regardless of your position on the article, you table the debate, do not proceed until this has been put to a town referendum or at the very least made known to the town at large. This is not representation. This is a betrayal of the people of Arlington and I ask that you stop now. That's all I have to say. Thank you. Thank you. The next speaker this evening will be Stacey Slate. Hello. My name is Johannes Epka. I live on Teal Street in Arlington. I am speaking in favor of increased density, especially the ADU article as well as the single family housing article. I'm glad that previous speakers brought up the issue of race and how that interacts with zoning in cities and a lot of speakers have raised the intent of the zoning as an issue to look at. I think that the function of the zoning is more important to consider. These types of zoning restrictions have been used since the red lining and exclusionary zoning have been outlawed or racially explicit exclusionary zoning have been outlawed and the function of these restrictions has been to keep people out of a town. We use phrases like character of a town and things like that that we like the people here and that the people here don't want that. The function of that is to restrict other people from coming to these communities. I like Arlington. I like the community here. I love being a member of it, but I would love to see more diversity and more houses means more people can move here. We talk about this benefiting only the developers. That's not true. It also benefits people that can't afford to live here or can't find a place because the market is so constricted. Adding ADUs and increased density would allow for different people to move to Arlington. I think we have to open our arms to that possibility or else we are stuck where we are and I am opposed to that. Thank you. Thank you. The next speaker will be Stacy Slate. Sorry, was that just too loud here? We will go to Mark Rosenthal. Can you hear me? Yes, thank you. Good. Yes. I am Mark Rosenthal. I live on Walnut Street, number 62 in Arlington. I have two comments I want to make. Number one is I am here to speak out against the proposed articles 18 and 19. I am not going to go into too much detail. I think other people have explained the downsides of those pretty effectively. But I do want to relate a couple of personal experiences with regard to what actually the, you know, with regard to what's being described as Arlington racist zoning. Because it's not zoning, it's not redlining. As far as redlining, I grew up in a redline neighborhood in Philadelphia. It was 99% Jewish because the people who built the neighborhood and made lots of money off it, basically, it was treated as a poor neighborhood and it was effectively a redline neighborhood. More importantly, I personally, when I first moved to Arlington, when I first moved to the Boston area was in the 70s and realtors for better or worse have a bad habit of shooting their mouths off when they should keep their mouths shut. And so, as one realtor was driving me and a friend around Arlington to show us some apartments, she turned to me and commented, you know, you're lucky you're looking now. Five years ago, they wouldn't have let you in because you're Jewish. About 10 years later, I had another experience where I was looking to rent a place. And I was remembering that years before there had been an issue where towns were not allowing, had put some restrictions on how many unrelated people could live in a house, basically to get rid of students. And cohabitation was not approved of them. And so I asked the realtor a question. Is the landlord going to have a problem with the fact that my girlfriend and I aren't married? And the realtor turned to us and without even blushing said, oh no, the landlord will just be happy you're white. The racism that exists in Arlington exists as a result of racist realtors and racist landlords. It has nothing whatsoever to do with zoning. Thank you very much. Thank you. The next speaker will be John Warden. Can you hear me now? Yes, we can hear you. Oh good. All right. Thank you. I just want to say we're getting an echo from our other machine because I can't hear you on my machine, but I can hear it on the other one. The echo is gone. We're good now. Thank you. All right. But you can hear me. Yes. Yes. Oh good. All right. Thank you. All right. I just, I just want to say two things. One, Arlington used to be a town where, where, where people who didn't have a lot of money could come and buy a single family house at a reasonable price. Those days seem to have gone away because the prices are no longer reasonable. If there is a reasonably priced house around, the realtors immediately call up their, their favorite developer and say, here's one you can get for cheap and the developer rushes in, makes an offer. The realtor says to the sellers, you'll never get a better offer. Grab it now. The two weeks later, the bulldozer has arrived and, and that affordable house has gone and it's replaced by some million dollar or a million plus dollar house that's spoken of. So that, that, that attraction to Arlington, we don't have any more and you're not going to get it by squeezing a lot more houses in unless you squeeze in so many and it makes a town so undesirable that people move out. Poor people who can't afford the tax, maybe go to Wilbur and say, or Bill Ricca, people who have fat salaries, may go to some other more Tony suburb like Datum, for example. And, and, and people who want to stick it out, we're going to be stuck. But, so, but I think the main point of these articles is, and I'll talk about 18 to 19. As some speakers have, have, have mentioned before, these are fundamental changes. These are perhaps the biggest changes to zoning that ever happened in Arlington for 96 years since we first adopted zoning. There should, they should not come, they should not come before the town meeting. In this pandemic town meeting, we don't even know how that's going to work. Nobody knows about this stuff. The notice, the particular notice of zoning map changes, which you claim doesn't need to be made because of, I know, some specious argument. You change R, R1 and R0 into R2, and it's not a map change. I don't know if that isn't a map change. I don't know what is, but, but the main thing is, if you, if you're in love with these articles, which I hope you're not, but if you are, put them off until we can have a real town meeting. We can have real hearings. We can have real information going out to all the owners of these, these properties and all the people of Arlington. So we, so we can have a consensus about what's needed. Not, not, not just what a few fanatics and a lot of developers would like to see to trash our town. Thank you. Thank you. The next speaker will be Winnell Evans. Winnell Evans. Thank you. Winnell Evans, Orchard Place. I live in an 850 square foot house in an R2 zone. Two houses from me that abruptly jumps to an R6 zone. I'm surrounded by a classic Arlington potpourri of zoning districts. Fairly, fairly dense, love my neighborhood, love my neighbors. I moved here about 20 years ago. I always tell people I grabbed the bottom rung of the ladder before it was yanked forever out of reach. I have great empathy for people who want to move here and cannot. But by simply allowing more houses to be built, we will not be doing anything to help those people. The research into density is changing dramatically. It's not unlike, you know, people used to not really know what smoking did to you, but the research changed. And we came to realize how dangerous it was. The research on density is changing. And what the most current research shows is that increased density, unless it specifically requires affordable housing, does nothing to make more affordable housing. The idea that by allowing more market rate units, there will be a trickle down effect is not true. What it actually does is raise is, I'm sorry, lower prices at the very top tiers of housing, because that's what is provided. It does nothing to help people in lower or middle income groups, which unfortunately to this day also happens to mainly include Black and other minority residents. So to Mr. Palmer and to the gentleman who spoke with the name Stacey Slate, simply by allowing density, we are not doing anything to make our town more diverse. If anything, we will only be making it more homogeneous. The average price of new homes now is pushing $1 million. There are very, very few Black minority and lower income people who will ever be able to afford those kinds of prices. So it's a false logic to believe that increasing supply is going to somehow or another bring more diverse people into town. I would also like to agree with the other speakers who have said it is really a travesty to bring this before town meeting this year. This has not been publicized. So far we've had approximately 40 people per Zoom call on this. There are 40,000 people living in Arlington. Unless this is much, much more well publicized, which there's not time to do, so that there can be public discussion about this, it is really a travesty to bring it before special town meeting where floor debate will be weird, truncated and extremely limited. So I hope that the board will vote not to advance this to special town meeting. Thank you. Thank you. The next speaker will be Nora Mann. Thank you. So I have lived in Arlington for almost 30 years, and I spent about 10 or 12 of them as a member of the redevelopment board. And I have observed this process with interest. It has, I think that the discussion has been fascinating and the way it has been moderated has really been incredibly helpful in terms of allowing us to really understand the variety of opinions. I am here to say that I support this and I look forward to an affirmative vote by the board so that we can have a discussion at the town meeting. I think we don't have the option of staying still here in Arlington. If we do nothing, we continue the trends of losing generational and economic diversity. We have a housing diversity, a housing affordability crisis that is in the whole metropolitan area. And we can't just say that other communities are going to do it for us. I think that this is not a question of solving the affordability issue using this particular strategy. It's about starting to move toward a more diverse and accessible housing stock. And I look forward to an affirmative vote of the redevelopment board. I would ask for that vote and I look forward to continuing discussion at town meeting. Thank you very much. I'm sorry, could I just ask you to restate your address from the record? We didn't catch it for the notes. Oh, I'm sorry. I'm at 45 Walliston Avenue. Thank you so much. You're welcome. Thank you. Okay, the next speaker this evening will be Grant Cook. Hi, can you hear me? Yes, I can. Thank you. That was Grant Cook. I am at 16 Walliston Avenue. And one of the wisest things I heard in the discussions and the housing form we had in the summer is that this town needs both. We're going to have market rate housing and we're going to have affordable housing. You can't have one without the other. My fear is that to talk about all affordable, which sounds nice, is a poison pill because we're not going to raise our own property taxes to build all affordable. It just becomes another impediment. But this question has been on the table for years. ADUs were talked about last year and I remember they were pushed off with talk. We need more time. We need some few more months just to work the issue. Here it is again and we're hearing the same thing. What happened? What happened with the time you had? We heard talk about I'm not aware of the issue. If you weren't aware of these issues for the past months, they've been sitting, this town meeting itself was delayed a few months from the normal activities in the spring. If you weren't aware of this issue for the past year, where have you been? How do we know that you'll dive into it in the next few months if more time is given? I elected 12 members of my precinct to town meeting. I trust them. I know a lot of them. They're good people. They sit among 252 that I also know many of them. I want to hear what they have to say about this. I want to hear the debate. I want to hear the opponents stand up and talk about everything in Arlington with housing. It's just peachy and the people in Matapan and Worcester and Brockton, they don't need to come here. I want to hear those words. If town meeting, if the people I trust get up there and say the town isn't ready for this and they vote, then that's the way the legislature works. So I say bring this forward. Let's have this debate, not hide from another year. So thank you. Thank you. The next speaker will be Joanne Preston. Can you hear me? Yes, we can. Thank you. Good. Thank you. I hardly know where to begin. Maybe I'll start with all this wonderful diversity. Your name and address for the record. Sorry, Joanne Preston. I live in Mystic Lake Drive, which is in the Webcow neighborhood. We have, as I said before, seven teardowns of beautiful houses, single family houses of various architectural styles. And they've all been replaced with cookie cutter, townhouse, duplex houses that look all like. So I don't see where all this diversity is coming from. Secondly, what has been put out there, I guess, on the internet is that houses cost less to build. There's, which one speaker said, therefore, they will sell for less money. That's absolutely not true. That's the wrong way of thinking about economics. Houses will sell what the market will bear. They will get as much money as they can for them. Thirdly, I'd like to talk a little bit about the issue of racism. I thought there was very good data shown that Arlington did not have racist zoning. And I think that's important to keep in mind. What we might have last year if it hadn't been defeated is the changes in zoning came in along Mass Ave, Summer Street Broadway, with a lot of very modest apartment buildings, which has a lot of diversity in it. So basically, these people would be zoned out in exchange for luxury condo and apartment buildings. Fourth leaf, I have a minute. I want to also talk about the issue of racism because not all blacks are desperately poor. We have a turnover of about a thousand units a year rental and for sale. Even so, over the years, we've had no appreciable increase in black people moving to Arlington. That leads us to think of the possibility there are reasons that people don't want to move to Arlington, black people. And if you listen to the town forums, there was a discussion by a number of respondents who were blacks saying they thought that there were problems in the school system with race, and that they felt that the real estate industry discriminated against selling or renting to black people. Thank you. I'm finished. Thank you. I made it. The next person to speak will be Steve Rebelak. Sorry, I was just having a moment of difficulty getting my fingers on the right keys. No problem. So my name is Steve Rebelak and I live at 111 Sunnyside Avenue. 111 Sunnyside Avenue, which is to say it is a market rate duplex that was built by a developer in, I think, 1947. Part of a development that contained 42 duplexes, 84 units, all told. Basically, identical floor plan, just get a bunch of land, put down a road, put down some utilities, and build a bunch of them. Which is to say that I would have a house because someone back in the 1940s was willing to let it happen. And through having that, I and I think six or seven other homeowners before me have had this address as a place to live. So I just hope that, you know, one of, I would just like to point out that folks who are living here now, odds are that you're benefiting from a place that was built by a developer, benefiting from those who allowed the development to take place. And I would like to think that we could be, that we would be willing to pay that forward. That's all I have. And yeah, that's all I have. And I do support the support 18 and 19. Thank you. Thank you. I see we have a speaker who wishes to speak again. Do we have any other new speakers before I jump to speakers who are speaking for a second time? Okay. I'll go to Judith Garber. Hi, can you hear me? Yes. I would like to say this is my first meeting on the, to listen to the planning board. I found this very interesting. And I would love to hear more discussion about this happened at the town meeting. Thank you. Thank you. Okay. The next we will have Marina Papuolova. Yeah, sorry. So again, I'm at 255 Registrate in Arlington. I just wanted to kind of reply to some of their speakers that we had before. First of all, I'm kind of very offended that, you know, those, those people who think that I'm arrested because I am against the article 18, 19 and 16. I have to give you an example, you know, if I wanted to buy, for example, an apartment in New York City and that apartment would cost $5 million and I wouldn't be able to afford it. Would I have to then sue or maybe, you know, accuse the owners of that building, you know, that they were racist towards me because potentially my, you know, origin is from Russia or from somewhere else, right? No, that's not the case. You know, anybody can apply and try to buy the property that opens up and is available. There's no racism here in the actual, you know, ability or, you know, the desire to buy something. Nobody prevents anyone, black people based on their race, based on their religion, based on any other, you know, gender or whatever other, you know, features. Nobody is prevented from trying to buy an apartment or a house or whatever they like. But that's the whole point. You are trying to buy something that you actually personally like, right? I mean, if I like something, but I cannot afford it and I'm not going to buy it. If I see something that I really like, I'm going to buy it. So that's one point that I want you to make. Another one again is when you are always saying that a few people were saying that they want to increase the diversity and the affordability. Why are you saying this? You know that the houses that will be built on top of their, those that are teared down, you know that those houses will cost much more than the previous house would have been, right? It's not going to be any more affordable than, you know, any house that was before. It actually will be much more expensive. So I want us to kind of start really thinking about that and understand that saying that we want to, you know, improve their affordability, it's actually a lie. It's not the affordability that what we are improving. Then another person said that we're all benefited from the developer's building something for us before. Again, believe that, believe us that it's not that we benefited from that. They benefited from taking a lot of money from us when we were paying for that house at the price that they asked us, right? I mean, so again, the benefit, of course, was mutual because we wanted to get the house, we bought it, but the actual, you know, profit was made by, you know, developer because they've got much more profit based than what they spent on building those houses. So that's all that I wanted to add. Thank you. Thank you. The next speaker will be to phone number ending in 428. Hi, this is a look this day. Can I remember Jason Street? Yeah, I just also wanted to respond to a few things. I take issue with the gentleman who says that we weren't paying attention since March. We really don't have any business to be paying attention now and asking for more time. I mean, we are in the middle of a pandemic, and that gentleman has no idea what each of us are facing. And so that's really the issue. We are in a pandemic, and there is no need to push this through to a virtual town meeting that has never happened before. There's no idea what kind of debate we'll be able to have during that meeting. There's no reason we can't wait a couple more months until our next scheduled town meeting in 2021. There's no reason to push this through. And I would also like to figure back on what Joanne Preston said. If families of color wanted to move here and can afford it, then they would. But Arvington has a reputation among people of color, but it is not a welcoming place. If you go back to the community conversation that was held about housing, no one seems to remember the comment made by one of the listeners saying that they knew a family of color who could afford a home in Arlington, but was not looking to move into Arlington because Arlington is not a welcoming place. If you look at our schools, if you look at what's going on in our police department, there is a lot to be done in Arlington beyond housing to make people want to move here and stay here and raise a family here. So there is just no need to get this done now. I ask you to wait. Thank you. The next speaker will be Michael Basham. Hi there. My name is Michael Basham. I live at 73 Randolph Street. Just very quickly, I want to say that I support Article 18 and 19 because I believe there is a housing crisis in the Boston area and the only way we can fix it is by increasing supply. I know that Arlington alone cannot fix this issue, but we need to be a good influence on other communities and do our part to ameliorate it. I would also just like to add as a relative new comment to Arlington that I've really enjoyed my time here, but I do want the time to change. And I think by increasing supply and allowing more people to move here, I think we can go in a better direction. Thank you. Thank you. Are there any other members of the public who wish to speak in open forum? Seeing none, we will now close the public, the open forum for the six warrant articles, which we have heard over the last three nights. And we will move to the individual discussion by the board of the six articles. And the portion of the meeting where we will also vote on whether to take action or no action on each of the articles. Let's see. So Jenny or Erin, Jenny, I'm not sure if you're going to switch to Erin. I was going to switch to Erin. I was going to ask Erin to pull up the document and go from there. Great. Just bear with me. Jenny, the word document, correct? Yeah, it would be great to see the list of the articles themselves. There we go. Perfect, thank you. You're welcome. So if we could go to the list, perfect. So I'd like to suggest to the board that we run through these in order. Starting with article 16, we'll take discussion and then vote on them at the conclusion of the discussion of each one of the articles. Unless there are any objections, any comments on that procedurally? Great. Well, let's start with article 16. And I will first open it up for David. Just reiterating my previous thoughts on this. As it's currently worded, I'm not supportive of this article. I think the intention was to draw a distinction between public and private open space. And I do think there is confusion in the public in that context. But I don't think that the proposed language really solves that problem. And perhaps introduces other issues, particularly where the open space terminology is widely used as a term of art in many other communities. And we would be using significantly different terminology here. I also have the concern about whether any changes made in section two would be able to be appropriately changed in the rest of the bylaw within the scope of this warrant article. But my primary issue here is the wording as it's proposed. If we want to try to tinker with the wording and we're confident that and as well as go through and make any other needed changes to the other sections of the bylaw to comport with the change definitions and we're confident that that would be within scope, I'd be okay going through that exercise. But as it stands, I would not vote in favor of this. David, go next to Ken. I too concur with David. As written, I don't support this at all. I think this the intent was good, but changing just the word open space is too confusing. And it's something that's been, everybody understands from town to town. And it goes throughout all the zoning. So I would like to propose that we table this and maybe approach this maybe next year for this one here such that we go through the whole zoning and fed it out maybe with it with not changing the words, but maybe adding a description that better describes it. So it's less confusing. That'd be my opinion on this on this article 16. Thank you, Ken. Go next to Jean. Thank you. I think that the intention of the people who presented this was not to somehow undermine the open space requirements in town in any way, but simply to make a distinction between what's thought of as open space like parks and things like that and open space that's on somebody's property. I think unfortunately, the wording that they use yard space secondary primary is not the wording we would want to use. And we had this discussion when this first came up. I think if we would not change the term open space to yard space, but just instead term it private open space. So there'd be private open space, private open space landscape and private open space usable. We would accomplish what the people who presented the article intended to accomplish. And then I have to thank the staff for going through the bylaws and attempting to find every instance in which the term open space is used. And they would have to do that again. And on my idea change it to private open space one or the other. So I guess we could make that change, get rid of what I think is the unfortunate wording that was chosen, understand what I think was the good intention of the people who put this in, change the wording to private open space as I suggested. And I think it should be very non-controversial to present it. And then it's really do we present it? Do we give a report recommending it to town meeting? Or do we give a report of no action because we don't want to change the wording? I'd be more inclined to try to accomplish what I think was a good intention of the people who put it in, but not use that wording. Thank you, Jean. Katie. David, I'll come back to you after we have Katie's thoughts. I was going to say I'm happy to let David go first if he has something that quickly follows on what Jean said. So I don't want to interrupt the slide. Thank you, Katie. David. Yeah, I did just want to follow up on what Jean was saying about just about using the term private open space and then replacing the instances throughout the zoning bylaw of open space with private open space. But I think the issue with that is we need to go through with a finer tooth comb because there are also references to what we are talking about as public open space in the bylaw, I believe. I love very few. But we would have to get that right. Yes. No matter how many there are. So it's not quite as simple as just a search and replace. It's a good point. Thank you, David. Katie. So I just want to say I completely agree with my fellow board members. I think the intention of this article was really good. I don't think there's any of these sort of insidious darker aims about undermining our town's open space or green space or anything else that's been implied. But I also agree that given that open space is used by the surrounding communities, it's a clear, easy to understand piece of language. I don't think that this particular change is the right one. So I would support I think as the other board members said tabling this so we can get the wording right. But the intention of it, I think, is something good and something we should keep thinking about. Great. Thank you. And I agree as well. So do we hear a specific motion on on this particular article then? Would someone like to make a motion of no action article 16 as presented? Second. Second. Okay. I'll take a roll call vote for the motion for no action. Starting with Ken. Hi. David. Yes. Jean. Yes. Katie. Yes. And I am also a yes. Okay. So that closes article 16. And we will now move to article 17, which is the Zoning By-law Amendment, Notice of Demolition, Open Foundation, Excavation, New Construction, or Large Editions with the reference to the so-called Good Neighbor Act in the town by-laws. And we will start with Jean on this one. You know, as we, as I mentioned the last time, I think there's nothing wrong with adding the sentence. I think it's completely unnecessary because there are other places in the by-laws that require this and same thing with Title 6, Article 7. We heard what some of what the people who submitted the article said and what some other people said, that there seemed to be some problems with the implementation of Title 6, Article 7. And I really took a close look like that. And I really think the fix is not adding the sentence, but having the same people who submitted this taking a look and making some changes to Title 6, Article 7. And I'd be happy to discuss with them what they have in mind to take to town meeting next year. So I'm not opposed to this. I just think it's unnecessary. And I think the fix is some tweaks to Title 6, Article 7. Thank you. Go next to David. Well, I have a question for Jean. I thought when we first looked at this, you had expressed some possible concern with whether the proposed language might somehow have unintended consequences and perhaps broaden the application of Title 6, Article 7 beyond what is stated in that article. And I've been looking at it from that perspective. And I'm not sure because I think the language of this section, 3.1 Section B, does not exactly track the language around permits in Title 6, Article 7. So it's not simply a reiteration. And I'm struggling with the possibility that this might provide a hook to apply Title 6, Article 7 in situations where it might not actually be applicable otherwise today. But that being said, I also do not feel that this is necessary. And that if there is a problem with the application and enforcement of Title 6, Article 7, that that is where the proponent's attention should be rather than putting cross reference in here. If I can just respond to David. I think one of the problems with the wording here is that no permit says no permit shall be issued until the applicant's in compliance. But in the cases where the applicant has not given prior notice, and that's the requirement, the applicant can't go on a time machine and go back in time to give that prior notice. So it's technically not really great wording because of that problem with when things have to happen under Title 6, Article 7. That's why I really think the fix is some wording changes to Title 6, Article 7. And this might create a little mischief. Yeah. I mean, I'm also thinking it says until the building inspector finds. So does that mean that the building inspector can't just simply issue a permit but has to make a finding of compliance separate from issuing a permit? I'm a little confused by this. And I think it opens up the, it does not clarify the process. I think it might bring additional confusion. Kim? I concur with my other board members. I think this adds one more layer of something that's not necessarily needs to be required. I think it's covered in other areas. And this is just piling on more regulations, making it more difficult for someone who wants to do something. And that's, I think that could be construed as a consequence of this. And we're trying to make things simpler, more friendlier for people who want to do an addition or do something. And we're just adding one more regulation on top of it. I think we can clarify it in, like Jean said, in the Good Neighbor Act and leave it at that and not have another regulation on top of that one. So I'm not supportive of this at all. Thank you. Katie? I agree with my fellow board members. And I think Kim stated this perfectly. We don't need to add in more regulations where it's not necessary to do so. Thank you. I actually agree, Jean. I think that there, if there is a problem with enforcement that changing it, your suggestion of working with the petitioner to identify the places in the town bylaws where that needs to be clarified or strengthened is probably the right way to go as opposed to trying to insert it into the zoning bylaws instead with questionable wording. Can I just give one little example? I looked at this, I forgot and it came back. Title VI, Article VII requires a notice plus a lot of materials to the surrounding property owners. But it only requires one thing to go to the building inspector from the developer. So there's really a mismatch in Title VI, Article VII between what the building inspector gets and what's required of the developer, at least as how I read it. And that was just one thing that occurred to me the first time I read through it. And I think there are two or three other things that can be strengthened that shouldn't be a problem. Great. Any other comments or discussion on this article before we look for a motion? Seeing none, do we have a motion or action or no action on this article? Motion of no action on Article VII has written. Thank you. Was there a second? All second. Thank you. I'll run through the roll call for a vote starting with Kin. Yes. David? Yes. Keen? Yes. Katie? Yes. And I am also a yes. So Article XVII, we will recommend no action. Moving to the next article, which is Article XVIII, the Zoning By-law Amendment, Improving Residential Inclusiveness, Sustainability, and Affordability by Ending Single-Family Zoning. And this time we will start with David. Well, let me start by saying that I think that the issues that this article attempts to get at underlying single-family zoning are important issues and ones that we should spend time understanding and trying to correct. That being said, I am not supportive of moving forward with this article at this time. The reason for that goes back to a town meeting in 2019. And the confusion surrounding the zoning proposals at that time, despite a significant effort by the board and the planning department to do public outreach on those proposals. And following that, the board committed to a public engagement process and to engaging with the select board on a larger discussion of our housing issues and affordability issues. And that process is still ongoing. And as Rachel noted before, we, the ARB, have not put forward any proposed substantive changes in the zoning aside from the the parking-related one that we'll get to in a bit, pending the outcome of that public process. And I am not comfortable moving forward with this, which would be in many ways a much more significant change in zoning than anything we even proposed last year without both completing the process that we have been engaged in and for a proposal of this magnitude doing very significant public outreach and education prior to bringing it to town meeting. So that's where I stand on this at this point. Thank you, David. We'll go next to Ken. Well, I think this article I will differ from my other board member, David. I am supportive of this for the following reasons. I think this brings up good issues to talk about. And I think it's a very broad issue that's larger than just us five. And I'd be very interested to see what town meeting members have to say about this. And it's not us to decide is this going to happen or not. I think we should give the opportunity for town meeting members to actually weigh in and see what their thoughts are on this. And so I was on the fence, but after hearing all the comments so far, I think it's worth bringing it out there so that this issue can be brought up more and discussed in a larger form. And that's what I'm voting for this. Thank you, Ken. I'll move next to Gene. Thank you. So I'm a little torn about this for some reasons that David had mentioned. We on the redevelopment board had decided after town meeting last year that we would want to have a very robust public process about housing in the town and what could happen. And the pandemic, among other reasons, didn't allow us to do that. And we hadn't intended to bring something to town meeting until maybe next year or the year after at the earliest to give enough time for that to all happen. On the other hand, this is not our article. This article was put in by one person and 10 registered voters. And so I'd look at it a little bit of a different way and a little bit more the way Ken is looking at it, which is, is it our job to say, no, we don't want town meeting to have a chance to discuss it because we weren't ready to present a housing proposal to town meeting? Or do we say, let's hear what town meeting has to say about this? So let me say what I've been thinking about that. You know, a number of people tonight and the other night said, well, a lot of people in town don't know about this. But I sort of feel a lot of people in town will know about this if it goes to town meeting. And we got a wide variety of opinions from the people who spoke both days. So I think we have a flavor to what people are thinking on both sides. There was some discussion about don't bring it to town meeting next month because, you know, it's going to be some sort of zoom or different sort of town meeting and not sort of the standard town meeting. I think the conversations tonight and the other nights are examples that this process that we're using also works really well. People are able to say what they want to say and be heard and have some no different in a lot of ways than the standard town meeting before the pandemic. So I'm really not concerned that we're putting some sort of unusual burden on town meeting members if they have to discuss this at town meeting next month. Now let me get to the substance of this. I'm not sure about the substance, but there are three things that I would want to change in this for me to support it. Let me say what they are. Number one, oh, let me say something else first. A lot of things were said over the course of a couple nights about, you know, developers are tearing down older homes, single family homes and R2 districts, and then they're building duplexes in the R2 districts that sell for more money than the single family homes. In this case, though, we're talking about the R0 and the R1 districts and at least during my walks during the pandemic and before, what I've seen in at least my neighborhood and some other neighborhoods is that the developers, maybe they're the same ones or not, are buying single family homes in these areas. They're tearing them down and they're building newer, larger single family homes to the maximum size that they're allowed to fit on the lot under zoning. So this is a recent one, a few blocks where I live where they bought a house for about $800,000 and I was shocked to walk by sometime after that and they see the house completely torn down and now there's a much bigger house on it. But like the way it looks particularly, that I think just sold for about $2.5 million. So by doing nothing, we are not stopping that sort of thing from happening. What I think would be interesting is if this did go into effect, each one of those builders would then decide, am I going to build that one family house that I could have built anyway on the property or am I going to build a two family dwelling or a duplex on the property instead and obviously they'll do whatever they think can get the best return in their investment. And I think one of the proponents mentioned this, if they end up building a duplex, each side will probably cost less than if they had built one big single family home. We're not building affordable housing that's not going to be affordable housing, no affordable housing without deep subsidies gets built in Arlington now because of the cost of land, cost of construction, etc. So this article is not going to stop the transformation of the R0, the R1 or the multi-family zones from the market forces that are taking place. That said, if we were to do this, if we were to send it to town meeting, I would like to send it to town meeting with free amendments to it. Number one, and I need the help especially from the two architects on the board to think about this. Number one, I would like to be a requirement that either the two family or the duplex have the appearance of a single family home. And I think we can talk a little bit about some language that might help make that happen because one of the complaints we heard had to do with the appearance of the neighborhood. Second had to do with density, but under this proposal, those duplexes of two family homes will be no larger than what they're allowed to build for a single family home. So it's the look, single family home work. Second, what I don't want to see if this happens is something with like four bay car garages. And you know, the garages stuck right out sort of as far as they can toward the sidewalk, sort of snout houses so that when you walk down the sidewalk, you're not greeted by the house, you're greeted by the garage. So that's unfortunately starting to happen already in town. I think partially an unintended consequence of make it more difficult for people to put garages under houses. So I think we're going to have to think about how to craft something so that what the house doesn't present to the street is a large bay of garages. Now I know that's intended for the residential design guidelines, but those are only guidelines. I think these should be required if developers are going to do this. Third thing. Thank you. And by the way, I see you. I'll let Gene finish all three and then come back to you. I have thoughts. Thank you. Third thing. So this gives developers in the R0 and R1 zones a choice. Are they going to tear down what they would have torn down anyhow and build a big single family home or are they going to build a duplex or two family? They're going to build a duplex or two family if they have a greater return in their investment. Now back when I was in law school, many, many, many decades ago, one of the things my property professor mentioned, which I still remember, is when you change zoning or when you do some other things in a community, what you effectively often do is raise the value of some property and lower the value of some other property. So by doing this, we theoretically raise the possibility developers can get a larger return on investment if they determine that the market can, they can sell a duplex or two family home. The question is, how can the town capture back part of that increase in wealth? How can we share that? And to me, the way to share it is to amend article 8, section 8.2, I think is the one on affordable housing so that if a developer chooses to build a two unit where they could build a one in the R0 and R1, it is their choice, they have to pay a fee to the affordable housing trust fund. I'm not sure how much the fee should be, and I think we would have to do a little quick economics with the staff on that, but the fee should probably be based on the assessed value or the selling value and two or 3% of that because then if the developer chooses to build a two unit building, the town shares some of that and it goes toward affordable housing in town. So I would support this going to town meeting so that the town meeting can have a real discussion about this with those three amendments. Thank you, Jean. I'll go to the Canada response specifically to the points that Jean just brought up before going to Katie. Jean, some of the things you asked for is somewhat subjective and I'm not sure how we can craft regulations for that, but how I read this article and I thought my understanding was that it doesn't change any of the setback requirements for a single family. It would have to meet all the requirements for a single family and that goes with driveways, it goes with shadow studies, it goes with front yard side yard setbacks, it goes with trees, everything. So I think that sort of answers some of the questions you had there. What you bring up about a fee for this is intriguing and I think I would support that too. I think having a nominal fee of maybe four or five percent for this and for this fund to go into a housing fund, not to the general tax fund. It has to go to a housing fund which then could develop more affordable housing because the only way you get affordable housing is by government, taxes, but no one's going to build it because you say you want it. So by funding that, I think that's a great idea. It's a win-win, I mean you can't do it in such a way where it doesn't make sense anymore, but it's a good encouragement and I think it's, I would support what you just said there. Well, thank you and I'd be willing if you were willing to give me a couple of days to try to draft something to try to scope out what the appearance of a single family home might look like in regulations or in the bylaws. Sure, I'd be willing to help you out with that if you need. Terrific. So let's go next to Katie and then we'll, then I had some thoughts and we'll circle back around to that discussion. So thank you, yeah to the board members, these are all really great comments and I really like Jean's idea of a fee in part because as Ken raised, we're not going to get affordable housing through zoning. That's just the reality of land cost, construction costs, everything else in a town like Arlington. We need deep subsidies from federal state government to get that done given how cash strapped our local governments are right now and so I think the idea of a fee for this kind of development is really appealing and I'd also be interested to see some of the language you guys come up with around sort of what the appearance of these two family homes might look like. But I want to speak more generally about sort of both process and the substance of this article and so process wise, I can think of nothing more democratic than bringing this before town meeting rather than having this discussed just by the five of us and by the 40 to 50 people who came to these rooms. We elected a legislative body in this town that represents our interests and I would love to hear what they have to say about this article. I strongly reject the idea that a Zoom town meeting will be incapable of having these discussions. We've had them effectively here in this room and I've actually done analyses. One of the things that I've been working on with some of my colleagues at Boston University is actually empirically with data looking at what the dynamics of these Zoom hearings are like and how different they are from planning and zoning board meetings before the Zoom era and it turns out they're remarkably similar. The same people are showing up demographically. We sort of rigorously look at this and the demographic disparities which is maybe a little depressing when we think about representational inequality. They're quite similar and their support or opposition to housing is also quite similar and so something is lost in Zoom certainly. I'd love to see everyone's faces and be in the same room but I think we can have high quality discussions about housing and I would love to see our elected representatives have those discussions. So none of the substance instead of why I support this article. I think tonight a lot of the conversation and in the previous night a lot of the conversation I feel a little frustrated by the total denial of problems that are facing middle income home buyers who seek market rate housing in Arlington. This is a really big problem. We absolutely have a shortage of affordable housing and I support sort of any kind of federal or state subsidies to address this issue but we also have a real shortage of market rate housing and we have both data to back this up and there were a lot of anecdotes from folks and stories and narratives that I think are really important. I actually found myself this past spring in the unfortunate position of being in the Arlington housing market to find housing for my parents to be close by and it is terrible and I want that to really come across. We heard from a few more recent home buyers in Arlington. I looked at single family homes where one literally had dead mice all over the basement floor and it sold for between 900,000 and a million dollars. So the single family market was brutal and where how this relates to condos after losing out on multiple single family housing beds my parents decided oh can you check out this condo for us that's close by to you. The condo as condos are was about $200,000 cheaper than surrounding single family homes. It was comfortable for my parents and they were able to get into the Arlington housing market because there was a two-family home with a condominium that was nearby and so this turns out this is not just like an anecdote about my own family. This turns out to be a broader pattern. The planning board actually provided really helpful data that's publicly posted on the ARB page that shows that yes these new condos being built are more expensive than the old houses that were there but that's not an apples to apples comparison. The right comparison is to new single family homes and those new duplex condominiums are about 200 to $300,000 cheaper than the new single family homes depending upon the year that we cut the data. So yes those new duplexes are not going to make Arlington housing cheap but they absolutely will help to stem the tide of rapidly increasing housing prices in this community and so for that reason I really sort of support this article and its intention. I support what Gene has said about how we can potentially modify it to make it more palatable to town meeting but most importantly from a process perspective I would like to see town meeting discuss this because I think that would to me again my view is just of one person as the commenters who came here tonight those are 50 people let's hear from the representative body of the town of Arlington. Thank you Katie. So I'll just add that I really appreciate all of the people that have joined our meeting in the public comment period on both sides of this issue and also those who who really expressed an interest in or recognized that they had a lot more to to learn before they identified where they fell on on this issue too and I think my biggest concern I think that I fall more in line with with David's thought about the importance of really looking to a robust public process that allows the town meeting members to understand what their constituents and the people who live in this town truly truly think about this and to educate them on on what this would mean to to them as the residents of the town so one of the things because of how quickly the special town meeting is is coming upon us we don't have the robust series of precinct meetings and and other opportunities for town meeting members to be able to interact with with the residents of the town prior to this special town meeting where I think that engaging in a discussion about this particular article would be really important before they are able to effectively represent the the the members of their community and I I appreciate the the three points that that Jean brought up I think it becomes very difficult to legislate or create specific guidelines around appearance where we don't do that anywhere else in our zoning bylaws although I share the exact same concerns that that you do Jean about about appearance and about the way that some of these duplexes and truly family homes would change the complexion of many of these neighborhoods where historic homes and and other properties currently currently are and and I and I also really appreciate the the thought that you had about the the the percentage fee towards the affordable housing trust fund I think it's a really really interesting and provocative idea and I think that there are many others that could be attached to this should we put this out to a wider study group or again a more robust public process prior to the discussion at town meetings so that it so that there's a background that allows a much more informed and robust discussion so those are my thoughts and where I'm currently leaning on this Rachel can I just make a comment about the timing for substantive substantial changes like they're being discussed we just received notice when reports to tell meeting and motions are due so they're due on November 5th and your next meeting is on November 2nd when the intention was to vote on a report to tell meeting so should those sorts of changes that are being discussed by the ARB members the desire to be included we would need to have that wrapped up on November 2nd right yeah it's a it's a tough time period it is a very tight timeline but I just I just for reality sake I wanted to mention the schedule that we are working under to be prepared for town meeting thank you thank you sorry to interrupt no no it's a really important point you brought up thank you uh David I see you have your hand up to speak a couple of thoughts um I I also uh like the concept of um of establishing a municipal affordable housing trust and having developers pay into that in in this situation but that's exactly the larger discussion that needs to happen if you look at how this has been done in the few places that have done it so far Seattle for instance there was a very lengthy public process and a lot of compromise to put a a system in place including payments by developers that was acceptable before moving forward with this you know I think if we were to make substantial changes to this then where we're effectively making it the board's article and and that I think goes back to my original point of whether or not we should be keeping faith with the commitment to public process that we made last year on on the zoning issues so I I don't as as much as I want to dig into this and I also want to say I I don't think it's undemocratic for us to to make a decision one way or the other on this because uh that's that's our job we we are we are constituted to be the gatekeepers on zoning issues and um you know if you could make the same argument on basically any citizen driven proposal that comes before us that it should be discussed by town meeting uh and uh I I don't know that that's that's a compelling enough reason yes I think that would I think it would be a very good discussion but I'm not sure how we can move this forward now to have this that discussion without effectively saying we endorsed this despite not having had uh not having it grow out of the public process that we initiated in yeah I I appreciate uh David all of the things you said just a couple sort of thoughts in response I mean we had not put in an article like this before and probably would not have done it at the end of the process anyhow so um I think putting putting this forward to town meeting and I think we could indicate this in the report to town meeting is something that we didn't initiate um but if they were to pass it here's the language that we think would be appropriate with the additions I suggested and and say you know have added town meeting um what do you think um you know if you know and and I think you're right about um we are tasked to be gatekeepers and and um and an example the previous two articles where we said no I think we did the appropriate gatekeeping function but I think this is a little different because this is a really huge policy issue it's you know and on that maybe our best gatekeeper function is to frame it better and then send it to town meeting for a robust discussion so how do we frame it other than saying uh we recommend approval uh you know as as written with our changes for for instance Dave I think if we were to do what Gene says we would have to put in a supplementary uh warrant article that modifies this one is that correct Gene no we would just we would just modify this one and what we're going was not was this one with the modified as modified but our recommendation would have to be uh to approve it as modified right we would recommend to approve it to modify and I think well we might want to check and then say you know and and um something about for you know town meeting discussion or something well you're right David I mean we do have to recommend you know either no action or approval and it could be approval with the modifications we've suggested yeah and what if the component wants to do something else it doesn't want our modifications and they have to put in a substitute motion at town meeting so they would have to do the substitute motion okay and they would have to do that by next Wednesday and if we voted no action they could do a substitute motion that looks exactly like this and I guess I would rather have something go to town meeting with the amended version rather than their version but Gene wouldn't you want time to really craft that amended version I mean I think that the the the three items that you brought up especially the first two that's a significant amount of work I think in order to get to something that would would be meaningful enough that would change this to address the the points that that you made and to to be quite honest again to Katie's point I'm not concerned about this being over a Zoom meeting I completely agree that I think that the ability to have public discourse over a Zoom meeting I I don't doubt that and we've seen it in action I I think that we're rushing because of how quickly you know the the the open period for submission of the articles the hearings and then moving into the actual town meeting a week and a half from now we we just don't have the time to to make those changes and then to get them to the town meeting members in time for them to prepare to be able to have a substantive conversation about this on the floor where if we recommended no action and then worked towards towards towards moving this conversation forward when it comes forward again you're able to do so with you know meaningful visuals with you know having having really looked at the different ways that this affects the different the different use groups and have the discussion about aesthetics and then all of the other potential thoughts that might that might come up it's it's it seems pretty pretty loose right now to have that substantive discussion please say one more thing Rachel please jean didn't this article come out of a working group I don't think so this wasn't brought up in that housing group that Ben and Ben host time to time we have to ask Steve Brevilac who's here because Ben's not who's presented on the article not an official study group of the of the town no it's not but but I'm just saying that it wasn't just 10 people just saying let's do this I thought it I thought it was developed from that citizen group am I wrong can we ask mr. revelac this hello mr. lousy revelac 111 sunny side avenue could you repeat the question please this warrant article 18 ending of single family zoning um was this brought through discussions with this housing group that you guys belong to and and and discussed amongst you guys and developed over time or was it something that just came up with you and Ben it was um you know it was something that came up between mr. Rudick myself and a couple of people from our group there were not uh formal discussions um you know or some or the process you would typically see in say a town sponsored working group you know you can I would assume that you know this being a resident sponsored petition uh probably has probably evolved like you know most residents sponsored petitions that um you know have to change to amend the zoning bylaw which is to say a group of people seasonage to you that they need to address and uh they put forth an idea to address it thank you for the clarification David I'm I'm feeling a little bit of deja vu um with the discussion of making substantial changes to this citizen proposed article because that's what we did last year and uh it unfortunately ended up adding to the confusion despite our best efforts and we we did a lot of community meetings where we actually along with the planning department met with citizens and town meeting members it wasn't just putting it out there and town meeting members discussing it with their constituents there was a substantial effort by us to explain what we were doing and build support for it and I'm you know we're not talking about as substantial a shift from the originally proposed article here but I'm feeling a little bit like that um and I think if I I think if our options are you know approve it as proposed approve it as amended or no action if we say no action uh if um that does not that does not prevent a substitute motion from being uh broad I think that would allow the discussion to happen anyway and if the important thing is for the discussion to happen but we don't feel like we can endorse it um at at this point I think that's okay jean yeah I guess I just feel like these are not sort of major substantive changes the way we did last year with the article just requiring some aesthetic values and the and the payment to the affordable housing trust fund is not I think at all at the same level as what we did last time I mean look to be fair I would fault no action if we were not to amend it I think it needs those amendments yeah and and I'm I'm I'm not yeah I I'm certainly not comfortable moving forward knowing that we could potentially be affecting property values and again we've we've really not um nobody's done the work of of uh bringing this more widely to the to the town itself it there there hasn't been that process ahead of town meeting jean so if we vote no action then no um by law like this can go to town meeting for the next two years unless we approve it so I think maybe if we would have vote no action we might want to sort of ask the housing implementation plan committee to take this on as a project so that maybe they could make recommendations along with the other things they're going to be doing over the next year on this so that maybe a year from now we'll decide this isn't viable or a year from now there's something like this that it makes sense to bring the town here and I think you had a clarification to make yeah I was just gonna state exactly what jean stated the redevelopment the redevelopment board um could uh recommend action and express interest to refer this to either an existing committee such as the zoning by law working group or the housing plan implementation committee combination of the both or you know a new committee that could be developed um so so that's certainly an option in front of you you know in addition to the recommendations that were stated um earlier this evening well can I say something more Rachel please hearing all hearing all this thing that I think I'd be willing to vote for no action and move it forward to a new study group that's focused solely on this issue here because I think it's it's it's broader than just housing and I like to keep it that way and just have a have a new group and then do some public outreach and so forth and do what Dave said let's let's get it out there and maybe bring it back in the spring so I have a question for you if it's wider than housing how would you define I think we need to define what the group what the study group would look like how would you define it no I see jean has a hand up to I'm not sure that's something I will leave it up to me we can discuss that and see how that how people think about that I just think it just should be not just just someone who's interested in housing I think it I think we have to get a real maybe a realtor involved we have to maybe get a developer involved and you know maybe get a lawyer involved so so we you know and get a consensus of a broader issue that's you know but this zoning issue affects that broader and I think we just we just have a wider group discuss that I just suggest that we if we vote no action we ask the planning department to either give it to one of the two groups if the groups if they think one of the groups is appropriate to take it on or to create a third committee for the purpose of looking at this I don't want to sort of dictate which one planning does maybe they think the zoning bylaw committee has the time and can bring in some other people or form a subcommittee to take it on so I like your idea kin but I ask basically Jenny and her staff to figure out what that group looks like that's going to do this I'm okay with that David so could we could we recommend to town meeting that they um direct the planning department to uh to refer this article to uh an appropriate committee for study for uh for potential future action or something to that effect Dave I thought we can do that I think we can do that yeah so we don't have to we just we just do it without sending it to town meeting you mean right I think we stay no action and say we you know we have requested the planning department to you know either give it to one of its existing committees or create a new committee for the purpose of you know exploring this and coming up with a recommendation I'm okay with that I'm just I'm just thinking back that I believe some of the other committees uh have arisen specifically at the direction of town meeting right fine but I think and they could choose to do that anyhow but I think we could at least get it going and if they didn't do it it would be in you know in motion already I agree with Jean okay yeah I um just clarify what I understand um the sort of the motions that would be uh options for the ARB so uh you could um the ARB could vote to recommend action and express interest in that recommendation that town meeting refer the article to either an existing group or a new group um the ARB could conversely recommend no action um and then a town meeting member would need to file a substitute motion for a town meeting to discuss which would require a vote of town meeting and then through that discussion request um the article to be referred to study um which which I think is um the process that has happened in the past for example the residential study group so in order for us to request um or recommend the planning department to identify the appropriate committee we need to actually recommend action with that request as opposed to um a request to take a vote on the particular item Jean I don't think so I think we have to take a vote of either you know recommending something to town meeting or recommending no action it sounds like where we're maybe coalescing although we haven't heard from Katie yet is to recommend no action and to ask the planning department to have one of its existing committees or a new committee take this on as a project then it goes to town meeting with a recommendation of no action and if a substitute motion is put in by somebody then we can ask town meeting to also require a committee to look at it understood Katie any thoughts sorry to be a minute can I think on balance I probably still favor bringing it forward I understand the logic behind bringing it to a committee and having them look at it more um I've served on some of those you know on a committee that did something like that around adu and I think that process can be helpful but I I still I think I my personal preference I completely hear the rest of the board is saying would be to bring it before town meeting but I also understand the the logic behind having a committee look at this too great um let's see so is there any other discussion before we look to make a motion for us to to vote on anyone else like to share any thoughts okay so I'll propose a motion and see if we have a someone who would like to take it up and second it if not please suggest a substitute motion do we hear a motion to recommend no action on article 18 with a request for the planning department to identify the appropriate uh committee either existing or uh new force study I would move that second that I hear gene with a second from David and we'll take a roll call vote kin yes David yes Dean yes Katie sorry guys no Katie's now and Rachel yes so uh we will recommend uh on article 18 no action with a request for the planning department to identify the appropriate committee either existing or new force study thank you everyone it was a great discussion our next article excuse me I have to get my agenda back up is article 19 uh the zoning bylaw amendment for 80s and we will start with um Katie this time everyone gets excited um so um I think the challenge with this article has been obviously that we did this at the previous town meeting um and it came very close to passing um but did that because the two-thirds super majority and so I think some of the comments around this um centered around whether we should be bringing it up again um with all that said I I liked the article that we did at spring town meeting and um I very much like this one and I actually I think I prefer this one um for having ADUs be vibrate I think it is um really important in some ways as much as possible to remove impediments to this I think it's a great way of bringing in more diverse housing stock I think it's a great way um to potentially provide income opportunities for people who are struggling to stay in the town so um yes I support this article for many of the similar reasons that I supported um the uh the single family zoning article I think it increases housing supply in a community that needs it um I also opposed sort of some of the pushes um to add affordability requirements again I strongly support building more affordable housing in Arlington I don't think um pushing the zoning in that matter would be the most effective way to do it thank you I'll go next to Ken um I only have one request to change to this and um everything Kathleen said I agree with I don't need change I want to include is this would apply to only existing structures they cannot build an addition or new structure to accommodate this um uh accessory dwelling unit um I really appreciate the fact that you know taking away all the impediments and everything else but if we approve it as is I believe that you're up zoning everything right up across the board and because you're allowing additions and you're allowing new construction for this new footprint that is you know I'm not talking about new construction inside but uh if the if the footprint or the or a creation of new space uh is caused by this then it doesn't happen but if it if it can happen within that envelope I'm all for this and I think this is a great thing so I would like to move forward with just that one change thank you Ken uh um next we'll go to David Ken I'm confused because does the proposed article limit the adu to the existing building envelope it does not it says that you can do an addition unless I'm wrong I'll be the first one saying wrong but I thought there's no limits you can you can build the garage and put an adu above it new or if you want to put an addition behind your building you can do that uh so how so how does adding a requirement of existing structures help here because it's all because it's what's inside it's existing already you're not so you so let's say you had a single family house and you all sudden want to add the adu so you go ahead and add a big addition to this house now you now it's a two-family house okay so you're you are so you okay I wasn't clear you're you're proposing a limitation here correct okay because we did have we we did have that same limitation in in last year's proposal correct but there was a there was a bunch more other limitations which I agree Kathleen that it's too much I think this the only one I think is the most critical one that's what I'm trying to say if I'm not saying it clear enough I I think we'd have to think a little bit about where to insert that but I I understand what you're saying so I I have some substantive concerns but I also have more or less the same process concern um that that I brought up with respect to the last article um although I think that in some respects at least the adu article is is is is a little bit more constrained although it would apply to more districts but my my substantive concern is I I really I support the idea of adu's I think we should approve them in some form um I was very supportive of of the article that we put together last year which I thought while it did have some procedural hoops to jump through I thought it was a measured approach to it to to see what happens my concern is that if we open the door pretty widely to adu's um and um it uh doesn't um end up being working in a way that's positive for the town or in all of of the districts that it applies to um shutting that door is much more difficult than progressively opening the door wider um as uh as you see um how it's working it's easier to loosen restrictions than to reimpose tighter restrictions so um you know I think um putting uh adding in a limitation on existing structures um uh does help I think uh so that I hadn't considered just adding that uh so I have to give it a little bit of thought while we're talking uh to see if I I could support that but um I would I would rather I would rather take a more measured approach to this and perhaps what you're suggesting is measured enough but uh I I need a a little time to think about that while while we're discussing it okay uh jean um so let me start by saying I'm also a big supporter of adu's I I do think they should be as of right as this would have and not require a special permit um I'm not as afraid as David is about sort of how wide we open the door because it's not completely widely open however procedurally I I've read this really carefully I think this is fatally flawed and needs a significant significant rewrite and I'll explain why in a second and I would want to see some substantive things added and I don't think we can do that between now and Monday I actually wrote this out for myself so I didn't forget but let me tell you um um I think the way it's written um ends up creating some inconsistencies with the current bylaw as well as ambiguities for example has written it's ambiguous as to whether two family also applies to duplex because duplex is defined separately than two family in the bylaws and this would not include duplex which sort of makes no sense but it's a little ambiguous that way and whether two family and duplex dwellings can have only one adu between them or one adu per unit or even more there's absolutely no limitation on any of that and at one point it defines adu's as being on the same premises as the principal dwelling but then it limits adu's to those in dwellings which would exclude accessory structures like on a garage so on the one hand it says on the premises but then later on it says in a principle in the dwelling so it's ambiguous and hard to figure out there um and the table makes no distinction between whether it's in one or the other and and so it potentially allows different rules for whether it's in a dwelling or not in a dwelling it's also unclear if they're allowed in one or two unit and duplex units in the business districts because this only changes it for the residential districts and so to me how could you just do it in residential districts when there are one and two family and duplexes in the business districts so it leaves all that makes them very unclear um I checked there are 115 uses of the word accessory in the zoning bible and I think not all but some of those provisions would apply to this perhaps unintentionally to adu's and we can't quite figure all that out between now and monday for example some of the requirements in 5.3.13 appear that they would apply to adu's at least in some circumstances but nobody's really thought that through so procedurally it's a mess at the moment and as one of the gatekeepers I don't think we can send it forward with all those ambiguities and inconsistencies as far as the substantive issues a few of the things that we did last time I think need to be in adu's again unless something else has changed in the world one is no short-term rentals which isn't in here at all um second is the owner needs to live on the property and in you know either the principal or the accessory dwelling in addition if you notice it's defined as four or more rooms and even when the component was in last time to discuss this she said oh didn't need to be four rooms it could be fewer rooms and sometimes duplexes are still our studios so I just think that this I love the idea I love where Barbara Thornton was going on this um I just think it needs too much work and I can't possibly vote for it the way it is for those reasons thank you jean um I actually agree with every single one of your comments I had a very similar list written down to I am absolutely in support of of adu's and I I do like the fact that this particular article is as of right I agree with you that limiting it to the the our districts when there are single families in the in the b districts you know ideally you wouldn't have that limitation if you are making it as of right for any single family I also have questions given that the there was no limitation about the owner occupancy I think that that needs to to be in there for for one of the units also clarification about the the principal structure and the fact that it allows for the adu to be up to 50 of the structure you know what would then not make it a a two family so I think that there needs to be some some additional thought given given there but I'm supportive of the concept and the positive changes that were made here but I agree I think that there are some substantive changes that would need to be made to this in order to for me to support putting it forward David I'm sorry David that is that's fine good David so it sounds like what we're getting at is an article that looks a lot like the one that was proposed last year but by right instead of by special permit last year we only did one family so this is one two duplex last year well right terms didn't allow any expansion there are lots of differences but I think in terms of the of the of a lot of the conditions or limitations we're talking about it's sounding a lot like the like you're right it's not it's not exactly the same but a lot of a lot of the points that you and Rachel um brought up are things that were in last year's proposal so I was gonna say the same thing David um but would with the rest of the board be of okay with us submitting uh approving this uh with the conditions that it was exactly like what we submitted last year with exception that is as of right and then if we need to loosen up some of the strings we can do some do so later on if we feel it's too restrictive but we can at least last year we agreed upon all the conditions except for we were relaxing the special permit condition would would the board be okay to accept that as a motion to move forward I obviously um was already supportive the most important thing to me is the as of right I think that's a really helpful contribution so I would very much support this um and I think a lot of the concerns that Jean raised and it sounds like the careful discussion you guys had last year that makes a lot of sense to me Erin I'll just ask procedurally um I know that there are limitations to within the scope of this article in terms of the way that it's presented we we still need to the changes we need that we make need to still um keep it within scope of this particular article before it becomes a substitute um article um so if you could help us put some boundaries on on that there that would be helpful so you're right though the way the article is written it it definitely hams you in um I think if the best place to add some of those conditions that that the ARB members are expressing that came from last year's bylaw would be to handle it in um this new e paragraph where you it it already starts to discuss some conditions of where or what how it could be allowed you could certainly add items here um that that might be acceptable but the way that the article is written um definitely hams you guys in I I guess what I was saying is that I think if you wanted to add stuff this section is going to be your best bet David my I I think it could be done my my concern with trying to do that is we would essentially be making this our own article um and again based on what what we said last year about the process we're going to go through uh is that the right way to approach this now gee yeah I I agree with David and I sort of feel like we could do a little better than we did last year and I would want to be able to go through what we did last year and sort of have a discussion about picking and choosing what made sense and what we might want to modify so I don't think it's a simple process is just courting everything over except the special permit requirement for example hours only apply to single family homes this specifically said in the warrant article single and two family homes so we would still have to deal with what that meant and is it you know one adu or is it one for each unit so there are still some complications that I don't think we can work out between now and Monday and I think this is something where we should be ready with the adu article to take something to tell meeting next year it's not as complicated as the single family's owning piece we're just talking six months delay for that for this one any other questions or or responses to Jean's timeline I think that makes it personally I think Jean that that makes a certain amount of of sense um you know seeing these two here are knowing that from the comments of the board there are there are elements of of both which which are desirable that crafting the right taking you know taking the small amount of time that it would take to craft um the right article that's still more time than we have between now and and the the fifth is is something that we might want to take a look at um so do we is this a case where we we just want to keep this uh in house at the board rather than refer it to a committee or that we can have that discussion with Jenny you know at one of our next meetings about how to make it work we get out as far as well in December good point Rachel yeah so would we just would we just vote no action with no other recommendation tonight yep yes but I I I think that adding it you know making the commitment to add it to our goal setting meeting to um to to bring it forth at the next town meeting would be or at least to add it to our goal setting meeting discussion to you know to to talk about crafting what we would need to do to go about crafting an article for the next town meeting sounds seems to be something where um we might have some support here if we if we don't move it forward or or at least a commitment to bring a revised article into the public process prior to next town meeting right and we can talk through that process at our goal setting meeting okay um do we have a motion um sounds like there might be a motion for for no action on this particular article do we have uh support for anyone uh who would like to make that motion so moved well David I'll do David for the motion do we have a second gene the second and we'll take a roll call vote uh ken no David yes gene yes katie no and I'm a yes so I believe we need a simple majority erin correct me if I'm wrong so we will move forward uh with a no action vote on this article and um we will add it to our goal setting meeting gene I would just like to say to the people who sort of like to I really wanted to bring this forward I did I did I just think it's too flawed I just think there are too many things that need to be fixed and I don't think we could and I couldn't in good conscience bring it forward in the with all the procedural and ambiguities and inconsistency at this point great thank you gene okay um the next article on our um agenda is article 20 so that's the zoning by law amendment with parking reductions in the b3 and b5 district and I think jenny highlighted here that there were a couple of modifications that came forth erin is that correct right um but I think the top paragraph is based on is the staff's effort based on the conversation when this was uh heard in the public hearing and I believe the bottom paragraph is from Eugene um yeah yeah I I just rewrote it a little bit so it's easier to parse and read and to for a little more clarity I didn't change the substance of what the staff had done it it lines up a little more with how the rest of the bylaws read great so let's start with uh kin for this article if I know issues with this article I'm supportive of it uh do you have any preference in the in the wording with uh jeans I read it uh and as far as I can yeah I can't yeah I don't I don't see it being just it was word changes I don't think the meeting has changed at all like gene said so I'm okay with that great thank you so I'm supportive of as written where's modified thank you David uh so I'm sorry which does jeans modify the staff's suggested paragraph yes the bottom paragraph gene correct me if I'm wrong you you saw the staff's modification and then rewrote it based on that correct so the staff one is the one with sort of the orange highlights okay the paragraph below that as I said let me rewrite that a little bit so the bottom paragraph there the one that says when the applicable is the one that I wrote okay um no I I think I'm okay with that yeah I didn't have any other comments uh to the original language and uh I and I'm okay with uh gene suggested revision okay Katie I'm fine with it great has am I perfect and um I agree with the way that that is that section is we rewritten as well okay um so given that do we have um anyone who is willing to bring forth a motion to recommend action on this article some motion Katie and a second second okay we'll take a roll call vote Ken yes David yes Dean yes Katie yes and I am a yes as well so article 20 we'll move forward we'll be recommended um as amended as amended thank you okay uh and now we are to article 21 so this is a zoning map amendment to rezone town property uh we'll start with uh gene I'm I'm fine with it as it is no comments I would I'm in favor okay David uh same here I'm okay with it as written okay uh Katie I'm in favor of it is kin yes I'm in favor of it as am I so uh do we hear a motion to uh recommend um see recommend uh with action we recommend for action the zoning map amendments and article 21 so motion do I have a second we'll take a roll call vote kin yes David yes Dean yes Katie yes and I am a yes as well so that recommended action okay so that takes us through all of our articles any other comments from the board great job chair thank you thanks Erin did you have anything else um I think procedurally we will have a report to review on uh the second on Monday after the continued hearings that we have on our agenda yeah so as the staff has done in the past we'll put together a report that includes uh commentary the the things that I heard and wrote down tonight based on the board board's discussion um and then the recommendation um and the motion if if that is to be included um so uh we'll have that with the packet for November 2nd um and uh if if the board's so inclined once you have a chance to review it um prior to the meeting and then in the open session um you can vote to have us submit it on your behalf great thank you and thank you Erin to you and Jenny and the rest of the staff for all of the work in a very short amount of time that you put forward in preparing all of this information and that you're still going to be putting forward to preparing all of this it's much appreciated thank you great all right um so with that we will adjourn the um the public hearing for the uh zoning warrant articles for the 2020 special town meeting um do I hear a motion to adjourn so I'm motioned second second okay we'll take a roll call vote kin yes david yes beam yes katie yes I am a yes as well thank you all and I will see you on Monday night thank you thank you