 Good evening, everyone. 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 in the Commonwealth, due to the outbreak of the COVID-19 virus. In order to mitigate the transmission of the COVID-19 virus, we've 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, as posted on the town's website, identifying how the public may join. Please note that the meeting is being recorded and that some attendees are participating by videoconference. Accordingly, please be aware that other people may be able to see you and take care and not to screen share your computer. Anything that you broadcast may be captured by the recording. So I will take a quick roll call of all of the members of the board. Ken Lau. Yes, I'm here. David Watson. Present. Eugene Benson. Present. Katie Levine Einstein. Here. And Rachel Zembery, the chair. I am here as well. I'll also run through the staff members from the Department of Planning who are joining us. We have Jenny Rait. Here. And Erin's board co. Here. Do we have any other members from the planning board who are with us tonight? Nobody else from the department. Great. So the subject of tonight's meeting is to open the warrant article public hearings for the 2020 Special Town Meeting. Tonight is the first of three nights of hearings. The second will be on Monday, the 26th, the third on Wednesday, the 28th, for a total of six warrant articles. Consistent with past hearings, the Arlington Redevelopment Board will be hearing from the applicants and the public wishing to speak on each of these articles as scheduled. The board will pose only questions tonight to the applicants, but will reserve discussion and voting on each of the articles until the last night of the hearings, which is on Wednesday, the 28th. So I just want to run through a few items for any person wishing to speak at these open public hearings. 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 of the hearings is posted in the agenda, which you see on the screen. People 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 at the bottom of your screen and select Raise Hand. Or on your phone, press Jar 6 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. Any person 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. Persons present at the public hearing are requested not to applaud or otherwise express approval or disapproval of any statements made or actions 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 tonight. All right, with those procedural items out of the way, we will begin with the first article on our agenda, Article 20, which is a zoning bylaw amendment with parking reductions in the B3 and B5 districts. And I will turn this over to Jenny Wright, who is going to speak on behalf of the planning department. Thank you, Rachel. I'm Jennifer Wright. I'm the director of planning and community development for the town. And this is a warrant article that was actually had a hearing. Our one and only hearing on March 2 included this particular item, as well as others. But we did have a pretty back and forth discussion about it. I did, however, update the memo that was provided back in March to provide a little additional information. So I'll explain this article. The article emerged as a result of a case, a docket that was under review by the Redevelopment Board, for a restaurant to go into a former store that was located in Arlington Heights on Massachusetts Avenue. The issue was that there is no parking tied to that building whatsoever, and that the applicant at the time was unable to find a way to create parking or utilize any other existing parking in the immediate neighborhood in order to fulfill the parking requirement. However, the board was placed in a position where we were unable to set the number lower than what we are allowed to reduce parking from based upon what's allowed in the zoning bylaw. And it put us in a position of having to refer the matter, make the decision for the Environmental Design Review special permit, but defer the matter of parking to the Zoning Board of Appeals as in the form of a variance, which was eventually granted to this particular petitioner. But flagged and long after the time that we had our hearings. But I think in general, this flagged for the board and the Department of Planning and Community Development, the matter of when you're talking about new use changes or any other development in particular, having to comply with our parking regulations and requirements in these particular districts is very challenging. And then on top of it, the burden of meeting what is required for a variance through the Zoning Board of Appeals is next to impossible. Incredibly challenging to just create new parking in places where the parcels are very small and very, it would be very challenging to accommodate a variety of uses on that site. And further would run counter to a lot of the town's economic development goals. So, I think the challenge here is, do we want to accommodate our lots with new parking as opposed to other uses? Because when we do that, when we try to set the requirements for everything, we run into the problem of recognizing that to provide for all of the parking ends up saturating most of the small, developable lots along Massachusetts Avenue, which is primarily where we're talking about B3 and B5. Further, I think we're trying to encourage vehicle reduction, use reduction, and it fits the long-term goals of the town to consider how to address this matter. Second matter is that we already encourage transportation demand management plans as part of most of the EDR special permit reviews. And I think that this can neatly fit into what we already have as a process and a structure for how to consider alternatives to vehicle usage. And of course, ultimately reduce vehicle miles travel, which is part of the town's overall net zero plan goals, actually. And then the last item is that it's consistent with our master plan in multiple ways. But the primary way is back to the one that I said in the beginning. It fulfills the town's economic development goals in order to better accommodate new businesses coming in and providing it in a manner that allows them to do so without waiting months for variants to be filed and adopted in past by multiple boards. So with that, what I'm showing on the screen is a map of Arlington Center and also a smaller map of Arlington Heights. I'm glad for the board's use, I can bring up the text of the orange article or anything else that would be helpful for the dialogue as we move forward. Thank you. Thank you, Jenny. As we already had a hearing on this item, I will move through the roll call for the board before turning it over to the public for any questions or comments. So if there are any new comments that we didn't address previously, I'll start with Katie, since you are joining us. We're not at that first hearing. And I can't say that I watched what happened at the first hearing, so I apologize if any of this is repetition. I just wanna say I strongly support this. It seems like we need to, particularly in this moment, but also consistent with our master plan be doing a lot to make it easier for businesses to open and do things to streamline our zoning to make this possible. So it seems well thought out, carefully considered no doubt in part because my board members, I'm sure, asked amazing questions back in March and had a great discussion over this, so. Thank you. Jean. I agree with Jenny's very nice and comprehensive discussion of this and with what Katie had to say. And as Jenny mentioned, the board considered this some time ago and thought it was appropriate and even necessary for the reasons that Jenny stated. I'll just add that many of the current businesses do not have parking. And so when a storefront becomes vacant, you don't want it to remain vacant simply because there's no parking available for a new business to go in. So this is one of the many ways to help remedy vacancies in the commercial property. So I think this is necessary and appropriate. Thanks. Thank you, Jean. David? I also agree with the reasoning laid out by Jenny and with my colleagues' comments. The three business areas currently work pretty well with the amount of parking that's available and by removing or reducing the burden of finding parking as businesses turn over. I think it'll contribute to improving the vibrancy and the occupancy rates of the commercial properties. So I remain in favor of this. Thank you. And Ken? I have no questions. I echo my fellow board members' support of this. And thank Jenny for her complete explanation of what's going on here. So I'm all set. Great, thank you all. So with that, we will turn, we will open this to four public comments. As a reminder, please use the raised hand function at the bottom of your screen and I'll remind you to please state your name and address for the record. And then you will have three minutes for any of your comments. First person to speak is Chris Loretty. Thank you, Madam Chair. Chris Loretty, 56 Adams Street. First, I wanna preface my comments by saying I don't actually see any proposed vote here. So I'm not exactly sure what I'm commenting on because all we have is a general warrant article with no specific language for zoning bylaw changes. But I would say, I think the staff from planning that you received is misleading because in situations that were described, the bylaw does not require new onsite parking. The way parking has traditionally been handled in these districts is that even though there is no parking right now for the existing use, if that use changes, then it has been considered a preexisting non-conforming use. And as long as the new use does not require more parking, then there has been no need for additional parking and no need for on-street parking, I mean, off-street parking to be created. So first, I wanna get that out of the way. Also, I think the example in the memory received is misleading because it talks about a change of use and the need to create all this new parking off-site. But as I said, what's only needed is any incremental parking requirements. And in fact, the bylaw already provides quite a bit of flexibility for meeting those requirements. I think it's notable that at most you came up with maybe three or four variances over a 50-year period in three different business districts. That tells me that we're doing pretty well as is. And particularly in the past when the flexibility mechanisms were much more limited. So frankly, I'm not sure I really see the need for this. Also, I don't know why it's limited to just the B3 and B5 zoning districts. And a lot of the other business zoning districts, I would say there's probably a greater problem with parking than in the places like the center where you have public parking lots. Also, I think you need to consider that in these districts, you're also allowing residential uses. So what this bylaw change would allow is somebody to come in and put a big apartment building in and say, oh, sorry, we can't have any parking. We want you to allow a residential development with zero parking. And I don't think that's appropriate. And I don't think it's appropriate because you also have to consider the other existing businesses and their need for on-street parking. If these developments are not providing off-street parking either on their site or elsewhere, then they're competing with other businesses. And I don't think it's fair to the existing businesses to give that competition. With respect to that development in Arlington Heights, they did not need a variance. They didn't need the variance because they found alternative parking that could be shared. It's time if you could wrap up, please. So all I want to say is I think this really needs more study. I would ask you to put it off until you look at the problem in greater context, bring more of the businesses in to get their perspective because they're gonna be the ones who are hurt by those. Thank you. Thank you. The next speaker from the public is Darcy Devney. Am I muted now? You're all set. Great, thank you. What I wanted to talk about, I had two comments first, which was cars don't melt away just because you hope that they do. It's environmentally sure it would be great and all those other reasons would be great, but just wishing or forcing doesn't really work. And we can see that already because what Dan Dunn said is in select minutes that the most he ever hears about is parking. That is the most contentious issue. And I'm not even gonna talk about snow, but the overnight parking requests currently go to the select board. So how are you going to make sure that this bylaw doesn't result in people asking for overnight parking waivers and those being granted because you've got the parking going through sort of two different official answers. The big thing I wanted to talk about is I am a member of the Arlington Disability Commission. And in effect, the current bylaw already changes the ratio of HP, handicapped placard parking spaces to non-HP spaces and not in a good way. And this was something that we had mentioned when this bylaw was changed in the first place, that it was gonna be a problem and now it definitely has been a problem. And it's a problem in other towns. I work with the Commission of Disabilities Alliance people and we just discussed it at our last meeting because a lot of towns are doing this and there's no real transportation demand management system that can work this out. So really what happens is, you know, a housing development that has 102 bedroom units would ordinarily have to have 150 spaces. Therefore the MAB would require that five of those spaces be HP. Under the way we're doing it already in Arlington, they'd only have to have 38 spaces in which case they only have two HP spaces. So that's not, we're not clear what would be the best option. You know, the Disability Commission was considering doing a separate warrant article for this because it's unclear exactly how we're going to work it, but it worries me that we're just pushing through these bylaws without thinking about the fact that they kind of get around the Massachusetts Architectural Access Board and the ADA regulations because they go straight by a ratio. And once you've reduced the amount of parking, whole parking spaces, since it's done as a ratio, you have automatically reduced the number of HP spaces. Given the silver tsunami in Massachusetts and especially in Arlington, we are going to need more HP spaces, not less. So I am truly concerned that this bylaw again, ignores it and in fact makes the problem that we're already having with the reduced it by 75% to... I'm sorry, we're at a time if you could wrap up, please. That's it. Thank you very much, I appreciate it. Thanks. If any other members of the public wishing to speak, seeing none, I will turn it back to the board to see if there are any additional questions or comments before we move on to the next article. If I have one. Please. I mean, just to make sure that people are clear what the proposal is, and Jenny just put it up on the screen, I guess some people hadn't scrolled down far enough is we do have the proposed change to the bylaw and it is only for businesses, it's not for residential. So I don't know if that completely eliminates some of the problems that were mentioned, but it's not an intention to do residential and it's not something that would reduce the amount of parking that's currently being used, but just recognize the limitations that exist. That's just what I wanted to say. Thank you, Jean. I'll also add that it is one, it is added as an option, not as one of the potential options that the board may consider in addition to the other requirements already included within section 6.1.5. Any other items from the board before we move to article 16? Seeing none, we will move to the next item on our agenda, which is article 16, Zoning Bylaw Amendments and the definition related to open space. This article is to see if the town will vote to amend the Zoning Bylaw by renaming the terms open space, open space usable and open space landscaped in section two definitions or take any action related there too. So before we, Jenny, Rape will be speaking a bit on this, but before we do, so I wanted to make sure that the petitioner, Steve Revlak, is with us this evening. Hello, Madam Chair, I am here. Wonderful, thank you. So Jenny, I'll turn it over to you before we turn it over to Steve. I'll just say a few brief things. The first one is that, and these are also in my memo to the board and what's been posted in the Novus agenda, but just briefly, it's the, I think the intention and we'll hear more about it is to neutralize some of the terms around open space and that the word yard, which is a word that actually the board has been using pretty consistently in the four and a half years I've been working with the town. We often refer to it as a yard in the back of a building and that it's specifying sort of the way the land is actually being used on the lot. So it's consistent with this board, but it's also consistent with some of the zoning board of appeals cases as well. It is the scope is limited to definitions, but we observed in our review that it might be relevant to make some other amendments on the bylaw that might however be out of scope. The last item is that the master plan talks about promoting ways to make the zoning bylaw just simply more usable and understandable, especially when it comes to terminology and what different definitions mean. We worked very hard actually on definitions during the recodification process to sort of tease out what is actually the definition of the board versus how you actually calculate things and measurements, et cetera, the dimensional requirements. This would kind of create even further teasing out and definition of the concept of open space, which of course is more than a concept, but the way that we look at it and talk about it, I think this is meant to introduce the term that is frankly often used by boards in their decision making. So that covers the highlights of the memo that I provided to the board. Thank you. Thank you, Jenny. I will turn it over to Steve Revillac. Thank you, Madam Chair. This is Steve Revillac and I live at 111 Sunnyside Avenue and I'm the petitioner for Article 16. So Article 16 proposes to change the terms open space, open space usable and open space landscape. It does not propose to change the definitions and neither does it propose to change any of the associated regulations. So we're just renaming defined terms in the bylaw itself. I had two motivations for bringing this article forward. One was that our bylaw uses the words open space in two different contexts and in each of those contexts, they have a different meaning and I'll talk more about that in a moment. And secondly is just because frankly, I've gone to enough hearings and seen enough people misunderstand the definitions that it makes me think that when people say open space, they're not necessarily speaking in a way that's consistent with what the text of the definitions are. So with respect to the way that we use open space, those words in the bylaw, we have an open space district which is under the jurisdictions of the Park and Recreation Commission, the Conservation Commission. It's under the jurisdiction of a public body and its principle uses open space and recreation and any structures in the open space district are clearly accessory to that. For all practical, to a large extent, it's what you would call green space. Now the open space that is used in the second way we use open space is as a dimensional and density regulation. Now we have three definitions in this context. One is open space, one is open space usable and one is open space landscape. The latter two have specific quantitative requirements associated with them and the definition of open space just sort of sets a framing for the other two. So the way we define open space is a yard including sidewalks, swimming pools, terraced areas, decks, patios, play courts and playground facilities, not devoted to streets, driveways, off street parking or loading spaces or other paved areas. So the fact that the definition for open space begins by calling it a yard is what led me to think that yard space would be a more appropriate term and possibly better understood. Now with respect to the difference between landscaped and usable open space, in general, usable open space, its primary characteristic is a set of requirements. So it needs to have a certain minimal horizontal dimension, 25 feet or 20 feet for recently constructed residential houses that provide surface parking. But there's a minimum parking requirement. A minimum size requirement, a minimum dimensional requirement and open space landscaped is for the most part, the areas of the yard that are left. Now, since open space usable is generally the biggest portion of the yard, I had suggested calling it open space primary or just primary open space. And for landscaped, that tends to be the smaller area. It has a smaller dimensional requirement as a percentage of gross floor area. So I had suggested calling that secondary. I am completely open to better ideas for the terms, but I just wanted to bring this forward as a way to, I think try to clear up some of the language and hopefully to improve usability. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Revlak. I will open discussion now through roll call for the members of the board, starting with Katie. So I think this is great. I think moving us in a direction, as the memo from the planning department indicated, moving us in a direction where the terminology we use is more comprehensible to the general public. I think it's great as a step forward to making zoning and land use more inclusive to a wider audience. And so obviously we need to be really careful with the language we use to make sure that we're being precise in the concepts we're defining. But this seems to me like a modest administrative change that would help support the goal of making the zoning bylaws more accessible. Thank you. Jean. Thank you. And thank you, Steve, for putting this forward and for your explanation. And it's certainly understandable and in reading your explanation, if I understood it right, one of your motivations for this change is to distinguish these sorts of open space from the open space zone itself, which is parks and recreational areas and things like that. That said, I have a few concerns about the terminology you're proposing and I'd like to suggest an alternative to you. I have some concerns about primary and secondary because they tend to be seen not simply as what's larger and what's smaller. Sometimes what's more or what's less important. And sometimes landscape open space may actually be a larger part of a parcel than usable open space. So I'm somewhat concerned about that terminology. I'm also somewhat concerned about using yard space as the term because as you can see from the usable open space definition, it now allows it to include an open area accessible and used by occupants located on a roof or I think somewhere else it might say about any or something like that. So it creates this inconsistency with yard space that includes a roof. What I would suggest instead of these for your consideration of consideration of my colleagues based upon what I understand Steve's concern about differentiating this from open space zoning is to not call them open space yard space but to call it private open space, a private landscaped open space and private usable open space so that we wouldn't get rid of the open space but we would define it as what it really is private as opposed to public. So that's one way I would like Steve and my colleagues to consider redoing this a little bit. The other part, and I think Jenny mentioned this and I'm not sure what the answer to this is the warrant article itself just talks about amending the definition, not amending but renaming but we would then have to go through and I took a quick run and I ran out of time to number it but there are probably 40, 50, 60 places not in section two where we would have to rename the open space to whatever it's become and I'm not clear whether we can do that under the bylaw that just renamed section two or not we may wanna ask town council about that piece of it but if and if we can't do it that I think we would need to think about doing this the next time when the warrant article gives us the ability to not only rename the definitions but also in the other sections if we can do it, I'm fine with it but not with Steve's terminology but with the terminology I suggested for the reasons I suggested. That's it. Thank you, Jean. Jenny, did you want to address Jean's question or we'll follow up with town council? Oh, I would wanna follow up with town council. It's a good question. It's a question that I embedded in my memo but we'll follow up with him about it. Great, thank you. Ken? No, I concur with Jean in what he said. As a principal I was just clarifying the name I think that's a great idea, Steve but I think what Jean said is correct and that's all the comment I have. Thank you, Ken. David? He installed my comment. If I understand correctly what Steve is driving at here and I understand his concern because I've observed it as well he really is trying to make a distinction between public and private open space and the language that's been suggested I don't think really gets at that and I personally find it potentially confusing in a different way from the language that we have today. So I'm not in favor of moving forward with the proposed language but if we wanted to examine the public-private distinction more explicitly I would be in favor of that. I similarly have a question about whether we can actually accomplish the change within scope of this warrant article and then the only other thing I wanted to say is these terms landscaped open space and usable open space are terms of art and widely used in zoning in many, many communities and I think we want to be very careful about changing them because we certainly don't want to cause confusion among people who may be working across multiple communities and they come across Arlington and we don't have anything called open space anymore in the way that they're used to seeing it in the zoning bylaws. So I think we should be cautious about changing these terms but I do think it would be helpful to distinguish between public and private. Thanks. Thank you. Steve, I see that you have your hand up. I'll see if you would like to respond to any of those comments before we open this up for public comment. Yes, I would. I would like to respond to Mr. Benson's comment. I think that private open space, private open space landscaped and private open space usable would be, I think it's a great suggestion. If I'm not mistaken, Cambridge uses the term private open space in their zoning laws and several of the board members have noted, and I didn't in my opening remarks but one of the distinctions between the two ways we use open spaces, the district is really public property for public use and the dimensional open space is private property for private use. So I think private is a great way to frame it. Thank you, Steve. Any other comments from the board before we open this up for public comment? Jean. I'll try not to steal David's ideas anymore. There, thank you very much. Okay, with that, we will open this up for public comment. Please, as a reminder, use the raised hand function in Zoom. I will take the comments in the order in which they are seen. Please remember to state your name and your address and you'll be limited to three minutes. The first is John Warden. Well, can you hear me now? Yes, we can. Okay, thank you. I was a little challenged by this technology. I'm so glad when we get to real meetings with real people in a real room. John Warden, 27 Jason Street. It seems to me that this proposal, they remind me the ramifications that it might have throughout the various parts of the bylaw is a solution in search of a problem. The open space is something I think everybody can understand. So we can understand we have enough of it in Arlington. And open space in a park is open space in a park. We know that. Open space in my backyard. So I don't see any point in complicating things and bringing in a new definition that has been pointed out as used anyplace else. Let's stick with what we have. If it ain't broke, don't fix it. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Warden. The next speaker from the public will be Patricia Warden. Thank you, Madam Chairman. Can you hear me? Yes, we can. Thank you. Yes, Patricia Warden, 27 Jason Street. I just want to say that this could almost be an attempt to distract and confuse from the existing very clear description of open space as we understand it today. And could be provide an article in which like last year, Mr. Ravellar had an article in which he didn't even vote for his own article in the end. And he tried to have a lot of other unrelated matters that were very important onto his article. I think this article could be damaging and confusing for John Leasing and others and could certainly be damaging for a very precious open space. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Warden. The next speaker will be Carl Wagner. Hi, thank you. Can you hear me? Yes, we can. Thank you. My name is Carl Wagner, 30 Edge Hill Road, Arlington. I think it's, thank you, Madam Chair. I think it's important that just like changes to the by-law were made in the past to make them nominally clearer and better understood, changes like this should also meet that goal. I am pleased that the state appointed member of this commission, of this board, Mr. Watson pointed that out. I wish the rest of you who are town manager appointed would realize that this is an obfuscation. My understanding of open space private is that it is trees and grass and things that keep buildings small, not because buildings need to grow larger as I suspect Mr. Ravellar's goal is, but in fact, because they are things that keep people happy on those properties. They keep the town the way it is in a good sense. They keep coronavirus at bay, for example, by giving people a place to go. If you call spaces primary and secondary instead of open space usable and open space landscaped, you are simply paving the way, as Mr. Ravellar actually points out if everyone wants to take a look at it in this document, he points out that in the long term, I quote, in the long term, I hope that we can revisit the way our zoning law regulates yards. But for the moment, my goal is to have new terms with that better fit the text of the definitions while leaving the definitions as they currently are. So folks, there are gonna be several more days of hearings. This article looks neutral, but in fact, its goal is to downgrade and devalue open space, green trees, green grass, the space that parking gives to cars, the fact that buildings don't have to be jammed against each other. And I really think we have to be concerned that there are articles coming from Mr. Ravellar and others that want density and urbanization that could be very, very dangerous. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Wagner. The next speaker will be Don Seltzer. Thank you. The next speaker will be Don Seltzer. Thank you, Madam Chair. Don Seltzer, Irving Street. Several members of the board have really covered most of what I was going to say. So I'll just be brief and get to the end of my comments. Do we really want to burden town meeting with such an article at this time? Consider how it would play out. The petitioner will present his lengthy argument. There'll be two or three town meeting members who will then speak in opposition. And then there'll probably be a few supporters of this article who will speak next and finally there will be a vote. All of this is easily going to burn up 20, maybe 30 minutes of meeting time. Is it really fair to town meeting to burden them with what is really a semantic quibble during such a trying times? Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Seltzer. The next speaker will be Chris Loretty. Thank you, Madam Chair. Chris Loretty, 56 Adams Street. I agree with the previous speakers. I really don't see that this is necessary. And I think the changes Mr. Ravellar proposed actually add to confusion. One, indeed his definition of yard space is just wrong. I have a sard yard on my house. It's entirely a driveway, but it doesn't meet his definition of yard space. I find that very confusing. I also think that the terms landscaped and usable are far more descriptive than primary and secondary. And as Mr. Benson pointed out, my dictionary defines secondary as less than fan. Now that may well reflect Mr. Ravellar's opinion, but I don't think that should be codified in the zoning bylaw. And I really don't think the board should make that change. I would simply want to correct some statements that have been made about whether these changes are even possible under the wording of the warrant article itself. And the person you need to consult with on that is not town council. It's the decision of the town moderator, Mr. Leone. And he's the person you need to speak to about whether all these other changes that Mr. Benson identified can actually even be made. I suggest there's really no need for this. And I'm really disappointed that the board did not put forward as far more important changes. Now we're articles 44 to 47 in the original warrant for the spring town meeting. But I would ask you to just vote this down. And if you really do feel you have to go ahead with it to adopt Mr. Benson's recommendations. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Loretty. The next speaker will be Steve Moore. Yeah, Steve Moore, 64 Piedmont Street. I just have a small related question in meeting the various language for yard space, secondary, primary, et cetera. I see that sidewalks is included in the general definition of yard space. And the distinction, my question is around the distinction of sidewalks. Does that include public sidewalks? That's a question. And because I see that not devoted to streets, driveways, off street parking, public sidewalks would be probably in the not devoted section. And I'm wondering about sidewalks being included generally because that ends up being a lot of square footage that's part of public property. So maybe it's just my lack of understanding which is probably it. Thanks. Thank you very much. Can someone answer my question? We're working on that. Yes, I'm gonna throw that. Jenny, did you want to offer any technical clarification? Well, just the first thing I want to point out is the definitions themselves are not being changed on the screen, which hopefully you're seeing. What would be struck out and what would be added is this is the strikeout and this is the addition. Otherwise, the definitions don't, there's not a rewriting of this. This is already in the zoning bylaw. In other words, just to be clear about that. This is everything in a lot though, in a lot, in a private property owned lot that we're talking about. So I don't know if that clarifies where the things are, but if there's anything on that lot, which could be any of the things that are covered here, the trees, the walkways, all of that driveways, that's all on the private property lot. Okay, I believe I understand. So what threw me was the term streets and you're saying that would be a private street on a private lot, not a public way or something like that, which is why I was questioning about the sidewalks. So thank you, that answers my question. Looks like Ken is raising his hand though. Yeah, thank you, Jenny. Ken? Yeah, Steve, I believe that public sidewalks do not count in that calculation. It's the only spaces that count is within the property line. So if there is a private street that doesn't count here, it has to be within your property line for this. That's my belief on this. I stand corrected if someone found it's different, but that's how I've done it in the past. Use an area of calculations. And I believe Steve was not trying to change any meaning of what these were. So that's how I believe it is. Okay, Steve? Thank you. That's just my edification then. Thank you very much. Sure. Thank you. Let's see, Steve Revlak. No, I just wanted to offer a clarification. Yes, as Ms. Rait stated, the only changes to the definitions are the strikeouts and the additions in red. Everything else in a normal font is part of the existing by-law. It's what we have today. And I am not proposing that that be changed. Thank you, Mr. Revlak. Do we have any other questions or comments? Seeing none, I will turn this back over to the board to see if there are any additional questions or comments before we move on to the next article. Okay, seeing none, we will move on to the next agenda item, which is Article 17, zoning by-law amendment, notice of demolition, open foundation excavation, new construction or large additions. This is to see if the town will vote to amend the zoning by-law in section 3.1.b by appending to the end of this section, the sentence, no such permit shall be issued until the building inspector finds that the applicant is in compliance with the applicable provisions of the Title VI, Article VII of the town by-laws or take any action related thereto. So this petitioner is Michael Ruderman, who appears to be with us this evening. So I will turn this over to Jenny Rait first before we then allow Michael Ruderman the opportunity to present this article. Great, he's here too, correct? Okay, great, I just don't see him on my screen yet. Sorry. So this is, I think this is a very, this is something that relates back to the construction control sort of agreement, the good neighbor agreement, as we call it in friendly terms, that was actually put into the town by-law. It was a series of amendments to the town by-law that then turned into what is now known as this good neighbor agreement. And this basically is the sort of companion to that by putting a statement in the zoning by-law that makes it clear that those provisions must be adhered to. And I think it's a wise addition. It's not typical that we've tried to take out some administrative sort of steps and actions that need to be taken from the zoning by-law when we recodified it in particular. But I think that this one is good because it clarifies the action that relates back to the town by-law for the building inspector to take in order to execute this agreement. So I think it's, I think it is a wise amendment to the zoning by-law in relationship to these notices. Thank you. Thank you, Jenny. With that, we will turn it over to Michael Ruderman. Thank you, Madam Chair. Michael Ruderman of Nine Alton Street. Ladies and gentlemen of the board, I commend your staff support on the memo that they prepared for you, which was made available with the online agenda. I couldn't have said it better myself. The summary of what this article tries to do. And I'm sure you've all read it. For the benefit of the other folks who are attending this meeting, I'll summarize it very briefly. At the 2017 town meeting, a committee called the Residential Study Group offered an amendment to the zoning by-law which would alleviate or address many concerns, the most common and frequent concerns that people had raised about the pace and scale of new development immediately in their own neighborhoods. And these complaints generally centered around finding out a little bit in advance, what was going to happen? What the hours of construction would be? What the scope and the scale of the project was going to be? It was all about notice and giving notice and hence the name, the good neighbor agreement was appended to it as an expression that this was an amendment to the by-law which would place an affirmative responsibility on people seeking to construct projects of a certain scale and size. A responsibility just let the neighborhood know what's going on so that they can understand the scope and scale of the project if there are going to be any impacts on egress and ingress, hours of operations. They'll know who to contact because the neighbor, good neighbor agreement also makes sure that there's a responsible party to receive these requests for information. This was reported out by the Residential Study Group in 2017 overwhelmingly adopted by town meeting. A few years later, we are at the point where it is found to have been not thoroughly acknowledged and put into practice. And one way that I thought we could do this was to condition building permits on filing just enough information that the good neighbor agreement had been complied with. So it ties together the town by-law and the zoning by-law at this point and lets everyone know that this is a requirement and we'd like you to file some information that says so, that says you have complied with this. And I thought this was a way to bring these two parts of the zoning by-law and the town by-laws together at this point. And I'll pause there for any questions. Thank you very much for that explanation. I appreciate it. We'll move first to Ken. Sorry about that. I couldn't get myself unmuted. No problem. Mike, is this basically a regulation just for the building department such that they can't issue a building permit until the good neighbor's policy is put in place? I mean, essentially, I'm just trying to understand. Is that what this is? That's what this is and that's what the memo to the board was right on point in highlighting. It folds the good neighbor agreement into all the other things which someone already has to do to be issued a building permit. As town meeting voted it into existence and made it a requirement, this now puts the issuance of the building permit on top of fulfillment of that good neighbor agreement. The good neighbor agreement has penalties in it. And I'm seeking to find out if those penalties have ever actually been threatened or levied, but this would be one way to ensure that people are aware of it and that it is complied with. Okay. I really have no objections to this right now. It's just another clarification of the good neighbor act. And I think this is fine. I supported the good neighbor act before and I think this is an extension of that. Thank you, Kim. Katie. I agree. This seems like a really reasonable extension of the good neighbor agreement and ensures that it actually operates as town meeting wanted it to. Thank you. David. I'm not sure that this is strictly necessary. In fact, I'm pretty sure it isn't because in title six, article seven, subsection D it already requires compliance with all of the article seven requirements prior to the issuance of a permit. So that said, I think this is simply a cross-reference to that requirement. It doesn't add anything new as far as I see and I don't particularly have any objection to it. I just don't feel that it's strictly necessary. Thank you, David. Gene. Well, I could say that David stole my idea to get back to him earlier because I came to the same conclusion. D of article seven says prior to the issuance of a demolition or a building permit or commencing, et cetera, et cetera, the person must comply with all the requirements and it goes on to say violators of the bylaw be subject to a fine of $200 per day upon notification of the building inspector. So I guess one way to look at sort of adding it here is then you then had belt and suspenders but I'm usually not a fan of belt and suspenders because if it ever gets sometime in the future it would be like, how come they put it in the zoning bylaw? It is already in article seven, what the requirements were. So I'm just wondering, Michael Ruderman, do you have any instances you can point to in which article seven has not been complied with and the building inspector nonetheless issued a demolition or a building permit or something like that. So there's a necessity to have both a belt and suspenders approach to this. Thank you, Gene. It's a good point. I am working up my list of properties where we weren't able to find, according to the recollections of the persons in the neighborhood, nearby to some of these qualifying projects that the good neighbor agreement was put into force. It'll expand upon a study, I believe that was done by the planning department in the spring of 2019 and I'll have the exact figures at town meeting. Off the top of my head, I believe that in the spring of 2019, there was a survey done and a certain number of projects were identified as being of the scale and scope that would trigger the good neighbor agreement. The survey of the neighbors in the close proximity to those projects found that 39% of those neighbors had received the notices that the good neighbor agreement required. 39% hadn't. The rest couldn't remember. So at least starting from that point, there is improvements to be made, shall we say, in making the community aware that the good neighbor agreement exists and that it does need to be complied with. I don't look good in belt and suspenders either, but I think this is a brief enough reference to bring the town bylaw and the zoning bylaw together as one more reminder that, yes, the good neighbor agreement does exist and the town through town meeting vote expects that it will be acknowledged. So article seven, the good neighbor part, if I can read this directly, was adopted by town meeting on May 1st, 2019, which means it would have probably gone into effect around July of last year. So I'm really interested in not old history because that predates the town meeting vote last year, but between, let's say, approximately July, I'm not sure exactly when the attorney general would have approved it, but let's say July 2019 and now, if there's really evidence for the belt and suspenders piece. So that's one thing I'm curious about because if it hasn't been a problem, I don't see the need to add it. There's one other little thing that bothers me about the word that you put in here, and I'm not sure what to do with it. I'm not sure if it's only me or a real problem, but it says no permit shall be issued until the building inspector finds that the applicant's in compliance with the applicable provisions, but some of those requires prior notice so the applicant can technically never be in compliance with the applicable provisions if they've done some of the things without giving prior notice. One of the nice things about what's in article seven is it doesn't have that potential wording defect that's in your article. So I have some concerns about the wording defect. I have some concerns about whether we really need a belt and suspenders thing since this thing has been in effect for approximately a year. So I'm not sure this is a good idea to do this time maybe with slightly different wording in the article, a year or two down the road, if it turns out that there are problems from sometime in 2019 to a year or two, I'd be more inclined to think this is a good idea. That's where I am at the moment. If you can provide the staff, Michael, with some examples of non-compliance between July 2019 and now, I think that would be really helpful to make your case. I will, and it's a good point. I appreciate your help in shaping the presentation for town meeting both before spring of 2019 and up to the present. I'll be happy to work on that and bring illustrative examples when I speak to it in front of the town meeting. Thank you so much. Thank you, Jean. Oh, if I may correct one thing, Madam Chair, I'm not sure if someone said that the good neighbor agreement was put into effect in 2019, it has been in effect since 2017. So we do have a relatively good time span here to look for examples of how it's been working in the field. Great, thank you for that clarification. And thank you for consideration. Any other questions or comments from the board before we turn this over to public comment? Being none, I will ask that anyone wishing to comment on this article, please use the raise hand function. As a reminder, please state your name and address for the record and you will have three minutes for each comment. The first person to speak will be Steve Moore. Yes, Steve Moore, 64 Piedmont Street, thanks. My issue to do, I am a supporter of belt and suspenders in this particular case because the good neighbor agreement has been enforced, as mentioned earlier. However, as we've discovered with bylaws and changes to bylaws like this, the process of contractors and developers adopting them, first being aware of them and then adopting them into their common practice takes some time. It doesn't always go particularly smoothly. And one of the issues here to do with the belt and suspenders is tree removal. Since tree removal is part of site preparation for an awful lot of development work, but it's done often before they break ground to put foundations in the ground, et cetera. One of the issues that often runs afoul of the good neighbor agreement is trees coming down before the neighbor and neighborhood are particularly well informed. I'm a member of the tree committee and we've run into this situation, not commonly, but it does occur. And in this case, belt and suspenders would remind again, developers and contractors that they need to comply with the good neighbor agreement aspects to do with trees and other things prior to them doing certain activities of site prep, which don't necessarily involve complete construction beginning commencement. So in this case, I think it reinforces that. And the good neighbor agreement goes an awful long way to providing communication between neighbors and the developers about what's going on. And I think an awful lot of bad blood and angst comes from lack of that communication. So anything to strengthen that and adding suspenders to the belt or vice versa, I think is a good thing. Thank you. Thank you very much. The next person to speak will be Peter Fiori. Can you hear me okay? Yes. Okay, so I actually hadn't intended to comment on anything. I just saw Mr. Rudin's article being presented and because the house across the street has been demolished and rebuilt and the whole foundation done over, I just was curious to see what he was doing. So I actually have one of those good neighbor agreements and this is it right here. So I can give you a little bit of how it's worked for me. It had the contractor's name. When I realized I didn't get a site plan like I was supposed to, I asked him to send me one. He didn't send it to me. So I contacted inspection and service. I'm sorry, I don't mean to interrupt. Could you just state your name and address? Oh, I'm sorry. I'm sorry. Peter Fiori, 58 Mod Street. Thank you. So the house across the street to 59 has been rebuilt. I received a good neighbor agreement. It had no site plan. I contacted the contractor. It had his name and phone number. He said he'd send it. He didn't. So I contacted and got the information from inspectional services. I had an issue with the work hours. I contacted the owner. He was not helpful. So I had to contact inspectional services. The great thing about this document is it's an easy reference for a neighbor that wants to see that the contractors, the developer follow the bylaws. It's very handy for somebody that doesn't know what they are to just use as a reference list. And when they contact inspectional services to get it enforced, they know what they're talking about. I was in town meeting for 25 or so years. I've been on various committees. So I kind of knew it anyway. But if you're somebody in town that, for whom zoning is a foreign language or doesn't understand it, it's really helpful. So I actually support what Mr. Ruderman's saying. And I think this is good. And I guess, yeah, that's pretty much it. Thanks. Thank you very much. The next speaker will be Don Seltzer. Thank you, Madam Chair. Don Seltzer, Irving Street. I just thought I would clarify some of the dates regarding the good neighbor agreement. It was passed in the spring of 2017 going into effect in the fall of 2017. A little after a year after it had been enacted, the residential study group conducted its survey. I think it was sent out very early in 2019. And as it was, I think it was mentioned, it went out to around 1200 households, I believe. And it had a pretty low response rate, about only 14% of the people bothered to respond to it. And overall, I think out of the 1280 households, 40 or so recalled getting their good neighbor agreements. There's more in that if you want to bring up the report itself, which was given to the select board in the spring of 2019. Thank you. Thank you. The next speaker will be Chris Loretty. Thank you, Madam Chair, Chris Loretty, 56 Adams Street. I'd like just to address a couple of comments of the board and hopefully allay some fears about this particular article. First, with respect to holding up the building permits by putting this in the zoning bylaw, in fact, the tax that's already in the town bylaw does exactly that, because what it says is prior to the issuance of the demolition or building permit or commencing an open foundation excavation or protected tree removal, the applicant shall demonstrate the satisfaction of the inspector of buildings, blah, blah, blah, that the notice has been made. So this does not add any new requirements in that respect. And if that provision of the town bylaw is being complied with, then it's not an issue with the zoning bylaw either. But one of the benefits of putting this into the zoning bylaw, I don't think has been mentioned. And that is that the zoning bylaw empowers people to make a request to the building inspector for enforcement. This is in section 3.1.2. And that says any person may file a written request to the building inspector for enforcement of this bylaw. So by putting this provision in the zoning bylaw, it gives people, particularly the neighbors, the ability to request the building inspector to enforce the bylaw, and he has to respond within 14 days. So essentially all it does is strengthen the requirements that are already there, but it does not impose any new requirements. Thank you. Thank you very much. Do we have any other members of the public who wish to offer comment? Okay, seeing none, I'll just add to just to echo what Steve Moore mentioned with regard to tree removal and site prep. I think for those reasons, I too would be in favor of adding this particular amendment to the zoning bylaws again, just to continue to strengthen the relationship between the Good Neighbor Act as it's currently written and the zoning bylaws. Does any other member of the board have any additional comment or questions for the petitioner? Yeah, Rachel. Yes, Ken. I was gonna just let it go, but just when Steve mentioned earlier about notifying neighbors about cutting down trees and so forth like that, I believe a homeowner can cut down trees within their property as long as they're not doing a new construction. Only time they meet certain requirements is if trees were in the setbacks, then they have to get a special approval for that. Prior to cutting the trees down. So I just wanna separate and have an understanding that we're not limiting them, people from not able to cut down trees within their own property. It's only if they redeveloping the property and then if the trees falls in the setback of the new development. I think that's an important clarification. Thank you very much. That's all. Thank you. Any other questions, comments or clarifications from the board? Okay. That concludes the articles that we will be reviewing this evening. Rachel. Jenny, did you have? Yes. Just Steve Moore raised his hand again. I don't know if it was. I'm sorry, I didn't even see that. Thank you. That's okay. Steve. Yes, go ahead. Thank you. I wanted to just respond to the comment just made. You're absolutely right about the setback issue. The setback issue is where the tree bylaw comes into effect. However, neighbors respond quite strongly to any large trees being taken, particularly large trees being taken down on property. And you're right, the homeowner and landowner is within their rights to do that. However, the good neighbor policy again goes an awful long way to allaying the fears or at least educating the butters about what is within the rights of developer to do and what is not. And that's again, any communications like this helps which is why I was supportive of the whole belt suspenders idea. But your point is quite well taken about the setback. That's all. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Moore. Let's see, we have one more comment from Chris Loretty. Thank you, Madam Chair. If I could just add one thing related to the first article, I think that came up on the reduction of the parking in the B3 and B5 zoning district. Let's see, I think we are, yes, please go ahead. Okay, just briefly, now that I've seen the text that would actually be in the bylaw change, I would suggest that if you're gonna go forward with something like this, a couple of changes. I think you're gonna run into apartment operators who claim that they're running a business. And rather than saying when a business in the B3 or B5 district, I would perhaps say a business use defined in the bylaw. And I also think you need to make this determination of having no ability to create parking at the sole discretion of the redevelopment board or the zoning board of appeals as applicable. As it is right now, I'm afraid you're gonna get into situations where proponents coming before you are gonna make one claim and you're gonna be making, or potentially making another claim. And I suggest that you craft the language in such a way that it's up to the board's discretion entirely and doesn't give the proponents a way of challenging you. I think this is what I wanna say. Anyway, I'll leave it at that. Thank you. Thank you. Okay, seeing no further hands raised, I'll close public comment. Jenny, did you have any final items before we take a motion to continue the open public hearing to the next meeting date? No, but just to say, just to the public comment is technically still open. So if people wanna submit anything in writing to me or any other materials, because the hearing is covering multiple evenings, we can continue to accept any additional feedback from the public. All of the documents are posted on the redevelopment board's page at this point in time, including the agenda and the materials for Monday night. We'll be posting the agenda and materials, I think, for next Wednesday night tomorrow. So I know there's a lot of material to review in a short time, but appreciate your efforts in doing so. And of course, during this particular time. And I'm glad to answer any additional questions should they arise. Thank you. Thank you, Jenny. Okay. So do I hear a, I'd like to hear a motion from the board to continue this open public hearing to the next scheduled date of October 26th, 2020. So moved. Second. Thank you. We'll take a roll call for a vote. Ken. Yes. David. Yes. Dean. Sorry, I forgot to unmute. Yes. Thank you. And Katie. Yes. And I am a yes as well. Thank you very much.