 Good evening and welcome everyone to the March 13th 2023 meeting of the town of Arlington redevelopment board I'd like to call this meeting to order My name is Rachel Zembery. I'm the chair of the board And I'd love for the other members of the board to please introduce themselves starting with Steve. Uh, Steve revelach. Good evening Eugene Benson. Good evening. Can I allow and we have Kelly linema joining us by this evening as well Who is the assistant director of the Department of Planning and Community? so just a quick note that we are being recorded by ACMI and Without further ado, let's jump right into our agenda this evening, which is the discussion The continuation, excuse me of the public hearings for the 2023 annual town meeting more in articles There are three articles this evening, which we will be reviewing and hearing hearing a presentation from the individuals who created these proposed zoning amendments we will ask each individual when they are called to come up and present The text will first start with asking Kelly to provide some background from the memo that was provided and included in the materials this evening By the Department of Planning and Community Development Then we'll give each individual an opportunity to present the proposed amendment We'll take any questions from the board and then we will take any questions from the members of the public who are joining us this evening Just as a reminder, we will not be discussing and voting on this article this evening that will Be on the 27th of March We will deliberate and vote on the 27th and we will at that time Identify whether the development board will vote to recommend action or no action to town meeting All right, so without further ado Let's move right into the discussion around article 32 the zoning by-law amendment related to building affordable housing Anywhere, so I'd like to invite Thomas Perkins to please join us Thank you so much and First I'd love to see if Kelly has anything that she would like to Highlight for the board from the memo that was prepared. Sure. Thank you, Rachel Kelly line of most assistant director of Department of Planning and Community Development I think just a few things I'd like to note about this proposal The first is that the idea of encouraging and promoting affordable housing throughout the town is Broadly encouraged by a number of town planning documents from the master plan through the housing production plan Both the 2016 housing production plan and the more recent update in 2022 The fair housing action plan and then also the recently completed affordable housing action plan of the affordable housing trust However in those planning documents Not including the master plan what is recommended is an affordable housing overlay and I think that the level of complication and I Recognize that mr. Perkins did an enormous amount of work in preparing this because sifting through the by-law is very challenging Especially when you're looking at things like parking in open space and all of that And then looking at the separate section on affordable housing I would say that the level of complication of doing that Really highlights why an affordable housing overlay is the key recommendation. I Also note that this is a high priority for for my department in Studying an affordable housing overlay. And so we definitely want to do that. It may take a certain amount of Like consultant expertise definitely doing a certain amount of community outreach and engagement to Affordable housing developers the broader community to really try to understand some of the technical details and where the most appropriate location Or if it or the affordable housing overlay if it should be more like Cambridge's overlay, which is Throughout the entire municipality. So I would say overall the The spirit of the amendment is is laudable We noted that there's probably a bit of work that still needs to be done Before this would be in a form that could be submitted to town meeting With that I'd love to turn it over to to you for a presentation or anything that you'd like to say related to the article that you proposed So, I mean if there's if you would just like us to jump right in That I haven't heard back from town council yet I emailed in ten days ago asking For what kind of shape it is and I haven't heard back I also recently noticed what I was looking at tonight that one of the revisions. I thought I'd done is it present? I thought I'd shifted some things in certain zones to be Some of the setbacks to be five plus height divided by three rather than ten plus height divided by six in order to better support One-story structures with that is done. There's an issue of primary buildings But I thought I'd done that but I couldn't find it anywhere in the document Functionally, I I'm sorry before you jumping I neglected to ask if you wouldn't mind please Introducing yourself by first last name and address just for the record Thomas Perkins 21 Cliffs Street. Thank you so much. Please go ahead. Hey, I'd say The proposal I have isn't much different certainly isn't much different from how is it overlay because The only district I really didn't cover in my revisions was industry at all Because I mean it doesn't make any sense to have anything in the open space district and planned unit development and The other one I forget are basically already housing specialty districts with their own housing specialty rules, so It's pretty much does cover just about every place Thank you so much and like Kelly I just want to say that I appreciate the amount of work that went into your preparation of the proposal So thank you So what I'd like to do is turn it over to members of the board for any questions that you might have Or comments I'm gonna stay Kind of general for now to see what the rest of the board members say and I like to circle back maybe in some of the details But I too We've done a lot of work here and I think we are out. We are in a line with wanting to do more affordable housing I'm just a little confused here what you have here Did you what when you were doing this did you talk to any Realtors of developers or anything That would like Encourage people to do more of this and see how this Would be a way of encouraging do more No, I don't know any developers To really get the finer details Okay, fair enough, uh, I'm just Trying to think of if I was a developer Okay, um, having as a right to do a fully affordable housing What difference that Advantage I get from not doing 40 b which is I believe 20 percent, right? affordable housing and I would get the same rights as this right here What's the difference at a higher level? I'm not trying to get all the little minutiae here, okay? and How do you see that? my understanding the basic thing about 40 b is that It can be turned down and then there's an appeals process You appeal to the state and maybe the state will grant your appeal Maybe it won't and that creates quite a bit of uncertainty and bureaucratic uncertainty, especially the further It goes out and at a cost of five or ten percent to the estimated cost of a project I mean if you have to wait a year before you get a final conclusion then That's a year of not building or developing or getting revenue on a property So mostly it's just meant to make the process faster and Easier to get done Okay with that said With 40 b it's not a fully affordable housing so what I'm just gonna stay with the private Developers for now. Okay. They need a certain amount of market rate units to support the affordable units if we go to a purely not profit and they do all That's that they're getting funding from the state or elsewhere What's that? I think the difference what you're saying is the speed or the or The reliability of having not to go through a year delay And for that you you you're willing to do 80 percent more affordable housing So what would justify them to? Make less profit or no profit because If it took so many units to equal affordable units And you're saying it's 100 percent affordable Then what's their incentive to do that? besides just getting more speed and Having a reassurance that it's going to go through I believe most 40 b projects go through They may be delayed because some of the towns might fight it because they're they're Disturbing the zoning some of the zoning criterias But that's a character stick thing there and I'm not sure How this is going to encourage more I want more. I'm just trying to figure out how we can Crap this is a way where we can't encourage more I don't know for certain Honestly, I think my proposal is probably a bit more aimed at making it easier for the Non-profits to just easily build developments rather than about private developers because at least back when I was with several years ago when I was Crunching numbers and looking at various specific locations I estimated that there were a few properties that you might be able to pull this off and It is really pretty close to break even honestly. I'm not sure Unless we raise the numbers they can be sold at That it's possible for a private developer to really make a good profit these days, but you know, I'm just trying to Make incremental improvements to the system where I can and I know it's not perfect, but something's better than nothing I'm also concerned that Many of the some of the 40 b developments like the one proposed near brattle square To me it seems more like essentially giving a large cash giveaway to the developer because Allowing the higher density I mean higher density property is more valuable because it can hold more so it seems like you're essentially giving away A million dollars to a developer to get them to build When it would be better to just directly build a fully affordable housing without using the private developer by Building something close to cost via nonprofits I I'll stop it there because I think we could debate this For a long time. I just was trying to get understanding What you were trying to do with this article and where you're aiming it for so you're more or less aiming this for non-profit Developers to give them a Understanding of not having to be threatened by a long development process Or so yes, I mean it's possible private developers will be able to make use of it But it's it's hard to get clear crunchable numbers on the top. I can I can do when I tried Crunching the numbers 10 or so years ago. It was possible to Would have been possible to make a private development But the profit margins were pretty tight And I'm not and I don't think it would be possible to do that these days given the price increases since then Unless we raised the margins But if we raise But if we raised the price the units that could be sold at that it would It wouldn't be fully affordable units or that we'd have to change it to say 100 percent of AMI instead of 70 percent Remembering the terms right And I think it would be politically harder to get that passed in some ways Even though it would serve to expand the housing stock and would still represent housing that was more affordable than available in the past I'm sure thinking For now, okay Gene thank you, and thank you for Filing this as I think everyone on this board would say We are in favor of figuring out how to get more affordable housing in town I have sorry I have a number of questions First one is this as as you probably know The town is putting together a proposal Just started on this to go to town meeting in the fall To meet what's called the MBTA communities requirements Which requires that the town have zoning that allows multifamily Housing as of right in parts of the town In addition, we've been told that the affordable housing trust fund Is looking at putting in some sort of affordable housing overlay. I have no idea what it may be For fall town meeting also So my initial question is Why should we go ahead with this now? Rather than wait For fall town meeting To see what MBTA communities is going to look like And what the affordable housing trust fund Overlay is going to look like because it sort of seems to me that depending on what MBTA communities does what town meeting does it may be the best place To put affordable housing in town. So i'm Struggling with why we should Do this now Rather than wait till the fall and i'm just wondering Why you think we should do this now Instead of waiting for the fall when those other things go into place And they may all in my opinion mesh a lot better Honestly that's probably better you mostly Back when I filed this I hadn't even heard about those things being in process And once I found out I mean I'd already done most of the work and i'm just trying to finish my part of the process You have my proposal in and then It can either it can be used as a seed and merged with others Or whatever. Yeah, my preference at this point. I'll hear what other people have to say Would be To have you work with the affordable housing trust fund on what they're Proposing to put in and take the knowledge that you gained In putting this together To that process So um, that's the first thing and it sounds almost like that makes sense second is Explain why the business district is a good place for affordable housing We have a very small commercial base in town um It it adds taxes to the town It gives places for people to walk to work To shop to restaurants Things like that Explain why we should take away the business district, which is only a small percentage of the entire town's land And make it available For affordable housing Where most of the land in the town is not so in business I'm just trying to get affordable housing affordable housing shortage has been around for a long time. I'm just trying to make it As available as possible should should we care that we would lose business Properties that they might get converted I mean, obviously, I mean I can understand being concerned, but if it's If it's a choice between not having the housing for people and businesses Could we do both by doing this without doing just the business districts? Which are mostly just right along massive Right along Broadway with a couple other little pieces. So basically Most of the town Is zoned residential So couldn't we accomplish the same thing and save the business districts? I don't know. I mean that that requires projecting to the future about where developers will build another practical note is that The business districts due to where it's Located tends to have better support for density in a way because it's right along all transit routes And of course that I'm envisioning many of these developments would have few people with cars And if you don't have a car for instance getting groceries is difficult But it's a lot easier to get groceries if you're really near the supermarket Like I agree like right off massive right off Broadway. That was one of my other Concerns I'll ask you about that next you mentioned in one of your comments That you expected most people wouldn't have cars Um, and that may well be the case. I'm not sure Why would we make available for affordable housing? The parts of town that are nowhere near Shopping nowhere near transit there are parts of town like that where people have to get in their car and drive To shop You know to go to mess have To get to transit you may have heard the term 15-minute city or 15-minute neighborhood the theory being that you could be within a 15-minute walk of shops and You know recreation things like that if we were to think of That concept for affordable housing we would say There are lots of places in town where that would work But there are also lots of places in town Where that wouldn't work when I used to represent people In public housing and in affordable housing decades ago One of the things we were always looking at when they were proposing to cite affordable housing is that it's near things like schools shops public transit So people could get to school get to doctor get to work So I'm wondering why you've made it the entire town when there are clearly parts of the town where that's not doable Mostly it's that way just to be generic and I assume that the developers would find it appropriately So if they're building a spot that's far from most of those things Then they make sure they have enough parking because the people who are going to go there are going to The only people who would choose to live there are going to be people who have cars You know that there's such a wait list for affordable housing that people Will apply to get into affordable housing Whether they have a car or not one of the important things zoning does is say We need to plan and make Some decisions about where things go So things work well and poorly you even mentioned that in here in a couple places like we don't want people living right next to a factory Things like that. It's the same thing about where in my opinion We put in affordable housing and you're saying Let's rely on the developer to do the right thing No, I'm not saying let's rely on the developer to do the right thing Let's assume that the market will at least to an extent factor in How convenient the property is into a price That will affect the kind of people Who apply for it and at a more basic level my stance is that There's a growth. It's a gross failure that there is enough affordable housing. There's a question of fact Affordable housing could have been trivially done 10 or 20 years ago for the entire town It could still be done trivially if there was the political will for it The affordable housing is basically a political problem that exists because people Regardless of what they say do not in fact want affordable housing in their neighborhood from afar So the without having your zoning The housing corporation of Arlington, which is the local nonprofit That builds affordable housing finished two fairly large nice projects Downing square park and and they're now proceeding on one on sunny side and they're doing 40 beasts But they're ones that the town's going to approve So they don't need to go through All of those processes So this doesn't prevent That sort of thing From going on at the moment. I wonder what your Explanation is to why we need to do more if they've been pretty successful up to this point Well, is there still a shortage of affordable housing in Arlington? That's the reason well Yes, I mean there's a shortage of affordable housing that needs to be addressed, but Can can you explain? For the district lot regulations minimum lot size front yard side yard How you came up with all of these numbers and how you know that that will Incentivize bringing in affordable housing developers. Well, I don't know exactly roughly how I came up with that if I'm looking at the Existing structure limits and in some if there was some room We can have a bit, you know, maybe it's a 15 lower to 10 that seems feasible in the area Basically just that going through the tables and looking up whatever there already is Okay, um, I mean I have a lot of detailed questions I won't ask through a lot of places where We need to add some definitions We need to add some more pieces for this to make any sense If it goes through All together, but I won't get into that until we decide What we're going to do about it because I'd be here a lot longer questions I could add it to them Or if that's allowed, I don't know with the process. Well, we'll see what we want to do Steve go ahead First I want to You know commend you for the amount of work that you put into this To take the bylaw like ours apart and you've done a pretty thorough job at going through it You know that that takes a lot of effort. I want to acknowledge that Based on a lot of the comments in your draft. I think you're thinking about the right things in terms of Making the process predictable in terms of making it by right and trying to avoid some of the Restricted dimensional regulations that give it away Um as a background a couple of things that You know, you should sort of realize about the history of our bylaw so me Early 70s around 1971 We you know established a 20,000 square foot minimum lot size to build an apartment building apartment building being It was three units three or more dwellings at the time now it would be considered four Two years later in 1973 we Established a two-year moratorium on apartment construction And you know then redid the bylaw in 1975 that one of the bigger effects of that was removing A significant portion of the business districts, which was primarily where apartments were allowed so While I I understand there's a you know Taking starting with what's there is a very natural way to you know for take a first step and proceed But there's still a good portion of our bylaw that is largely oriented You know or does does not readily permit multifamily housing in general And and that is you know, like one of the one of the obstacles to to get around um I do agree with staff that I think an overlay district would be simpler than Rewriting the base zoning And just you know in terms of other overlay districts that I've seen you could you could simply say You know in the affordable housing overlay district You know far is limited at two for the Four developments in the r0 r1 in our two district and does not apply otherwise Lot area per dwelling unit does not apply And it's it's a lot easier to you know, you could do it a lot more concisely You know, I when when Cambridge passed theirs it was over two years and One of if I'm remembering correctly on the order of tens of public meetings Not that a city, you know, one person would be expected to do that, but it does take You know, it does take a lot of Work to get to work to get all the details worked out um But for I don't really have any questions and I've had the advantage of setting tom one round of written feedback um And and I you know, I I saw that you I noted that you took a few suggestions and I I do appreciate that um, I think this is something that You know as a board, I think believe who want to do this. I believe there's a lot of support for it in the town um, but I I think there's You know, given what we have coming up in the fall and You know, just the need to get people on board with it um, I really hope you Would consider participating with the folks who are working on the affordable housing overlay because I think you'd have a lot to offer Great. Thank you, Steve. Um, and and I'll just add as as well. I don't have any questions per se, but I just want to add a comment that I I agree that um, I I think that You brought up a lot of really great points and in the questions that you still have for That were footnotes. I think that um, heli pulled out in the in the memo There there are a lot of great questions that in order for this to be something that would go to town meaning still need to be addressed and um, I I agree with Steve that by Looking at morphing this into an overlay district so that it is more concise and easily digestible by The people that it's intended to to serve And to to use it would would certainly be my preference and um, I I would hope that You would look for opportunities to to be involved as as the town and some of the Um, the study groups and um, commissions that are currently standing start working towards that for for the fall is is my personal Any other questions for I have a comment on that part of the reason for Not doing it as an overlay district is that it makes it easier to Find tune a lot of the details based on districts Uh, like the height requirements, uh, I made sure the height requirements so that In any particular district, uh It would only go up The maximum height would only go up by five feet and half a story And it was easier to tweak those numbers if it's done in a district by district basis Now you could just have an overlay district and say It's always whatever the standard is for that district plus five feet, but personally, I think it's Actually clearer to just have them in the table Because the fact of the matter is the only people who are actually reading the zoning code Are uh, town governance developers I mean, I recognize an overlay district a concise form does have make it easier to understand for The town meeting members voting on it, but I think functionally you could pretty easily Make a concise form that explains it to the town meeting members Well, still having the spelled out form in the zoning code And that they're functionally pretty identical, right? I mean, I think fundamentally the other thing that I have a concern about is that this Only speaks to fully affordable developments when I think if we looked at an overlay district, we'd look at opportunities for increased Percentage as opposed to to fully but that's again my my particular point of view Um, and I think at this point what I'd like to do is see if there are any other questions from the board We'll obviously come back again and see if there are any after public comments And then I'd like to open it up to public comments and then we can have you know another discussion We won't have our full discussion this evening We'll save that for the for the 20th, but any other questions. Yes The The basic process with the developer going in front of the redevelopment board there seems like No reason for that as I saw it because all the redevelopment board is saying whether it meets the requirements for affordability So I'm not really understanding the need As you see it for the developer to even go In front of the redevelopment board Honestly, I didn't really want that part. I was including it It's fundamentally similar to the Cambridge process actually if I understood if I read the Cambridge process, right the uh Meeting with their I forget which board it is in Cambridge It's strictly advisory and all the developer has to do is show up listen to the meeting and that's Either there's two or three meetings, but they just show up and they can ignore all the advice and they still satisfy the requirements Uh, honestly, it's just meant to be a place to allow public feedback on the project so that the town and various butters can say something personally, I would rather Not have it entirely because I think like the Cambridge case Having a purely optional rule or having a rule that says You have to do this, but you don't have to actually listen to any of the advice is pointless But apparently Cambridge decided to have what anyways and then the public would come and say something and then we can't do anything So it seems like Something wrong with that in my opinion on the utility capacity piece Those are things beyond the control the redevelopment board. That's the department of public works And the maps and things like that So the the board could not see to the creation and maintenance of those things because they're beyond our purview They're not they're not something that we can do that would have to be directed To the department of of public works rather than us. I'm pretty sure I put in some notes about that About whether well, this is one of my overall problems. There's so even if I agreed with this There are so many things in here that need to be fixed We I can't see taking it to town meeting with so many Problems this even says on one place It calls us a planning board It says the city staff or a town from those little things To really big picture things. I don't see how we could take it Um, I totally agree with gene was saying there, okay, but I'm going to ask you When you come back It seems like you want to come back and push this forward that You have to Answer my original question better And make me comfortable with it, okay By Inacting this zoning What does it do to encourage more affordable housing? Okay I think you're saying streamlining it Or making it more I've got the word you said sir. I'm I'm sorry about that But On your other thing it sort of contradicts it too So, you know It's come back with Like a maybe one or two centers by doing this This is what I'm trying to do And if I get that I can get behind other things And then we can talk about some of the changes the gene has and all that stuff that I totally agree with But right now I don't even understand What you're trying to do here Are you you're trying to increase? For housing, but how are you doing that? Well, the short answer would be for example, there was a property When I was looking at properties Where basically there was a good house with a pretty decent backyard near the 78th bus line, I think and Based on the price I calculated it this was 10 or so years ago It could be chopped up into eight single room occupancy building single room occupancy rooms with about that would Well, it would have a sale price equivalent to about a hundred thousand and then about four additional Three bedroom two or three bedroom units would be built in the cluster in the backyard Basically, it's designed the purpose is to let things like that be built So you're trying to increase density? Yes, it's basically to say it Yes, but I don't know it's pretty clear I guess it wasn't No That's basically what it's doing. Yes, and I would wish you Would get some more current numbers I don't think saying 10 years ago. I did a study like this I realized it but you're asking a lot here And I think you really need to talk to realtors and other developers and see what they see Talk to the housing trust and see How they go about finding their property? What are their tendencies? I mean if you were saying you're gearing this toward a non-profit fine Can you talk to a non-profit and say hey? What are some of your hurdles you have in town that's preventing you from Developing here then I then I would I would say okay, you have a point But you're just saying I haven't talked to anybody because I don't know anybody doesn't satisfy me right now And also Yes, and then the other thing is I don't want to use facts that 10 years old. It's just not going to make sense I'm sorry about that, sir I mean honestly the fact is I'm ultimately doing this just because I think the town needs affordable housing. I was trying to do something but Ultimately, I applaud you for that my family is well off and none of this actually matters for me. So it's basically purely out of Trying to get something done on an issue which again has languished for a long time And in point of fact like I say it could be trivially fixed if there was political will for it So it's really a political problem. And I'm actually bad at solving political problems. I'm just Trying to write better regulations I think at this point what I'd like to do is open hearing up for public comment So at this point anyone who would like to provide the board with any feedback on this article Please raise your hand. I'll call on you. You'll have up to three minutes to address the board Anyone And I'll remind anyone who speaks to please introduce yourself with your first last name and address Thank you, madam chair crystal ready 56 Adam street, you know, I appreciate the proponent bringing this forward And the work he's put into it. Um, and I appreciate the board's comment. I don't have a whole comments I don't have a whole lot of lot to add. Um, you know, the top level comment is clearly this is not ready for prime time Um, I was initially confused about just who whose article this was because the language of the proposed vote or possible By-law changes was written by the staff as opposed to the proponent Um, and the proponent himself if you look read all the footnotes had a whole bunch of questions about how things should be done So it's just really not ready to go before town meeting and I can't see it becoming ready in what six weeks before town meeting starts Um, you know, there are a few particular things I had problems with Um, one was the reduction of affordability requirements of our town by-law And the possibility of these affordable units not even counting on the state inventory of affordable units I find, you know, both of those unacceptable. I also find the reduction in the open space requirements for by-law unacceptable Um, you know, I think it's a great idea to have compensation for a butters Um, but I think that's problematic and I don't know how you would work that Um, and I'm I'm a little bit perplexed about the language of the article itself talks about Doing this by-right But the process that's described to me doesn't sound like by-right If it's coming to an advertised public hearing before the redevelopment board And I thought I read in the in the language of the vote that you might actually be able to vote up and down on it That sure doesn't sound like a by-right development to me Um, and in my, you know final comment was exactly the same as mr. Laus's We have a state law called 40 b. Why in the world would a developer Go this route that's proponents, you know proposing rather than a 40 b development if they want to get around the zoning restrictions Um, and I think as the board's noted, this is a significant change And these types of changes take a long time and they take a lot of public input And frankly, I think they should be coming from the board or for other town bodies that that specialize in this kind of thing Um, and so as as admiral as the intention might be, you know, this article really isn't it and it's really not ready for this town meeting Thanks. Thank you Any other members of the public, uh wish to make comment on this article? Okay, uh, so at this point, I'll turn it over for Any other questions or comments from the board? We'll start with steve No, I I understand the motivation. Um, Cambridge when they adopted their Affordable housing overlay, um, it was envisioned as something that were As accommodating projects that would be done primarily with, um, subsidies by nonprofit developers And they wanted to provide an alternative path permitting path Rather than 40 v You know the first year that bylaw or that ordinance sorry, Cambridge is a city So it's an ordinance the first year the ordinance was in effect They put something like 350 dwellings in the pipeline. So I mean it At least it seems to have been effective though I I I understand I have a vague understanding that there have been some hiccups that need to be straightened out like You know any other comprehensive piece of legislation? Um, yeah, that's it Gene um So, you know, you'll get to come back in two weeks when we Take a vote So I would just ask if you would consider Whether this is the course you'd pursue or the better course would be to Meet up with the affordable housing trust fund and and try to work with them so that there's a Package that goes to town meeting in the fall Um I would echo what gene say That's all Also Say that I I have similar thoughts to gene. I would I would really encourage you to think about Whether the the best course of action is to continue down this path or to Seek engagement with some of the the groups who are working on the proposal for the district for the fall And I will say that if they come here in the fall and they haven't done any public process We'll be asking them about that too Great any questions Okay, great. Thank you so much. I really appreciate it. Thank you. Thank you All right. Um, so at this point I'd like to move to uh, the discussion around article the proposed article 29 zoning by-law amendments For downtown business parking minimums, and I'd like to invite james plumbing to join us here at the front Welcome back james How do I know if it's working? It's you're good. We have a thumbs up from our Technical expert in the back here and before you start I'm actually going to ask kelly to see if she has any I was going to thank that guy. Oh, okay. You can thank him So what uh kelly short, um, so just two things to note on this The first is that this only affects the b5 district and the b5 district is basically a little bow Bowtie shaped district that's right in arlington center um About 26 parcels. So what this really would do is um, it'd have a very limited scope um, and and also note That I think as mr. Fleming is shared with the board before is that this really only affects Commercial properties. So if somebody was doing a mixed use development, it would not adjust The parking requirements for the residential component of the development. It only affects the commercial portion of the development um, the second thing to note is that We believe in having talked with our economic development coordinator. There's a business friendly aspect to this so because We have seen in this past year proposals that have come before the board for a change of use um Not in the b5 actually but in other districts and the change of use is the only thing The the required the need to require parking is the only thing that Makes the applicant have to come before the board So if you have a property for example, that is there's a tenant who's seeking to open a restaurant in an existing building They're not doing any construction But they're just seeking to do a change of use And if they don't have parking and they they obviously don't have the ability to create parking because they're leasing a space They still have to come before the board to request that parking waiver So if something like that happened in the b5 district under this amendment um That would basically circumvent that and make it a little bit easier for restaurants or or other property or other uses that require greater parking requirements to um Open up without having to pay that additional fee and the the two months it takes to legally advertise the hearing and then Turn around the decision And then I think finally it is um We noted that this is consistent with the master plan the arlington heights neighborhood action plan Which actually doesn't apply in this case. Um, but consistent with some of the recommendations and then the sustainable transportation plan So james, I'll turn it over to you if you could introduce yourself first last name and address and then anything you'd like to Know for the board. I'm not sure if you wanted to take us through your PowerPoint Okay, great james plumbing 58 oxford street Okay, and if I could ask that you just project a little bit for the folks here To get up and over the hvc system Thank you Well, unfortunately that that's just for our our groups from acmi for those of us in the room We'll just need to project a little bit. Thank you Um, so, uh, this is just an overview for anyone who doesn't know what the parking movement is It's basically you have a business. There's some requirement that you provide parking and it depends on the business Sometimes it's based on the floor area. Sometimes it's based on the number of seats in like a restaurant, for example In this case, the example that I'm going to reference the rest of this Thank you Is uh, is uh, the general retail, which is you need a parking space for 300 square feet Of floor space for the business. So hold on to that number in your mind for a minute Next piece. Thank you This proposal would remove that parking requirement for businesses in the b5, which is I like what I consider the downtown And it would apply in cases where a business changes over and you would have a greater parking requirement Or you have a redevelopment of some sort that involves a commercial use And in that case the applicant will either be able to claim a nearby public parking lot Which in this case would be the Russell common lot or they would be able to work directly with staff to Come up with the details of a tbm plan and there would be no need to go through this board for the review Um, so why this matters to me is that, um The parking space is also about 300 square feet of space So back to the 300 square feet of the floor area for one parking space So this is one of the example blocks. I think this one actually is technically b3. So you just imagine um so One parking space for 300 square feet of fun stuff means that half of your space is parking next please so I look at that is if this had to comply with the parking lot that would be a lot of stuff to lose And that doesn't seem like a good outcome for the town Or for people who want to do fun stuff in town um It's also unnecessary because as you can see here a lot of the businesses in downtown don't have their own dedicated parking And in general we all just tend to use the common parking lot Um, and that isn't really a problem for a couple reasons Next please The first is that we have, um, the circle dots of the bus stops So we have means of getting there without a car And the other is the Minuteman bike path so people can bike to where they get or you can bike up and down mass out So not having everyone arrive in the car means that you already have Infrastructure in place for reducing demand for car parking Next please The second is that we have paid on-street parking which is shown in orange here And we have a number of paid parking lots which are shown in red um, which The paid parking lowers demand for parking because people don't like to pay for parking So it encourages you to get in and get out so that someone else can take your place That's also good for business because more turnover means more different customers for businesses and just parking sitting there for eight hours Because it doesn't necessarily mean you're contributing eight hours worth of your time to patronizing businesses Maybe someone would Next please Um, this is just visual of what the b5 is. It's just that couple blocks in downtown center Next please In terms of details So the first detail is that we already have a section 619 d which says that Applicants can come to the board and get the parking lot as a substitution for their parking If they're close enough to the space in this case a thousand feet And so this this article would make that provision just by right for the five uses So if someone opens a new business right next to the parking lot, then they just get to plan this by right If you have something that isn't within a thousand feet Then the the other option is that they have to do what's currently under I don't have the section here It's the tdm section. Basically if you have you have to do three of one of the following three of the following things And then you that counts as your mechanism for reducing parking demand This is also something that they come before the board As is today and this would also become a by right process with this article um The the last question is why can the businesses that we have today exist without requiring parking And the answer is that the bylaw has both of those mechanisms in place that we just saw to allow applicants to Open so that we don't use our commercial space Without having to have them actually create the parking So both of those mechanisms are by special permit today And those are plans reviewed by the ARB and then subsequently by town staff next piece And the change in this proposal is really to just make them by right and with administrative staff review Which is what has happened for I think the majority of tdm plans that have come before this board With I think the exception of one in the industrial district Um, Steve, I think actually you you picked on the showers. Yes, I did So it seems that there's there's precedent for there's precedent for the tdm plan details Mostly going to the staff just please provide one and then you can get your um your waiver And so this just makes that happen naturally Um in summary, uh under this proposal B5 businesses Uh, they have to do the same things as they would do under special permit today It's just that uh now they get to Under review account staff the difference is that the process is a little bit faster I think it's about two months for a um a special permit from the advertising and then the The hearing with the board and then coming back for the decision and This matters to me again because we need businesses to open in Arlington and The easier it is for them to open the more likely it is that we're going to get things to be That's all I have. Thank you for listening Well James you're doing really well now, uh, I remember the first time we came here Oh, well, I was nervous and we we are now and uh, this looks really good um, I'm supportive of this and I'm going to do what a gene comment And just want to change a couple of words On your proposal there. Sure. Africans can show Availability of nearby parking and provide a plan to reduce. I don't think we either do either claim It just just sure. It's just there. I mean down to do that Is is that language? I don't have the motion in front of me. Is that actually in the main motion? I know it's in your proposal. Oh god. Yeah. Yeah, okay. Yeah, I'm trying to enhance your proposal better Yeah, it's good. You're gonna this is going to be the sell you're going to show sure The the main motion text is basically It's basically me copying and pasting 6190 and the plan just in one in one place Yeah, I'm fine with that and I'm supportive of reducing parking For business. I think uh, thank you. You hit a good spot here Okay, thank you kid gene So I I was reminded when you Complimented steve on the one in the industrial district. Was that a compliment hours? You should take it as a compliment that that we also ended up requiring changes to the parking there, too um So it's not clear to me that we don't serve any purpose whatsoever Take the restaurant. We approved a couple months ago the fat greek where Among the other things that we did which wouldn't have happened if there was just administrative approval We got them to change the direction that the exhaust went so it wouldn't point at residences and So they put some filtration on it We had them do something other than what they were going to do with the garbage was just put it out on the sidewalk With everyone else's garbage and the light above the entrance So I think there's a trade-off to be had here between Coming to this board so we can do things like that And not coming to this board to save a couple months time And we asked this of james a couple of years ago on another one of his articles And that is can you give us any examples of a business that hasn't come here simply because This current situation is in place I think that's a question. Is that a question? Yeah for james. Okay. Oh, I of course. I don't know right, right And The other thing is I think public process and public openness Is very important in what we do and what the town does And when an applicant Has to submit a transportation demand management plan to the arb It's a public document Everyone sees it if they want to see what the arb is up to it's in the it's in the agenda They can come to our meeting they can comment on it if it's an administrative approval And it simply goes to the staff and i'm not saying they wouldn't do a good job But there's no public process. It then becomes a black box And i'm really really hesitant to do anything that reduces public transparency That's right uh, steve Thank you for bringing this forward mr. Fleming. I I think it's a reasonable For given the limited nature of it that it only applies to the b5 district. There is a There are several large parking lots in the vicinity and um I do Yeah, I think I might take the side of the town economic development coordinator and see this is more of a business friendly Measure, so I'm supportive of this Thank you, steve. Um, I just have two comments and again, we won't get into Discussion or debate here. Jean I hear what you're saying there My question is whether or not we should rely on parking To bring people here if there are more things we we want to see that's something I I think we should talk about um in the in the future. I think as a proposal Um This seems Reasonable to to me. I think again if we get into wordsmithing the way that it's particularly Written here one of the things that I think might be helpful rather than to repeat what's in I think it's actually 6.1 point 10 D Okay. Yeah. Yeah, which is fine But I might actually prefer to reference as required in 6.1 point 10 d As opposed to restate. What's in that? Um, so I I I'd ask you to take a look at that Before coming back on the on the 20th. Sure one of the reasons I hadn't is that I think it's either that section or The tdm one that explicitly references to be reviewed to be reviewed by a special permit granting authority And in this case it goes by right and so Like I could try and do the insertion and that was why I was thinking originally But I think it made more sense to sort of short circuit that and just reference the language Maybe there's a different way. I'll take another look at that again, too I'm just trying to look for one of the things that we try and do when you look at you like, right exactly the duplicate of language Sticking point Okay, great. I think overall I'm Okay, great any other um questions or comments for um for james before we open it up for public comment All right, is there anyone who wishes to um make any comments related to this proposal? Please Thank you, madam chair again chris lewity of 56 adam street. My take on this article is that it's completely unnecessary Um, I think it's notable that neither the proponent nor the staff could identify one example where this has caused a problem You know in the bylaw as it currently exists Um, I think bylaw changes should be made to to address real problems not hypothetical ones And I also think it's notable that I don't see anyone here from the business community asking for this change As has been noted the ARB can already allow Um, you know the use of the public parking spaces within a thousand feet Uh of any of these um properties or businesses to qualify for the off-street parking requirement Or off-site or on-site parking requirement Um, and it's also you should also note that the entirety of this b5 district falls within that thousand square feet so, um The whole business about transportation demand management plans utterly irrelevant the tdm I mean the the existing parking lots in the center is all you need to grant You know the exception to the on-site parking requirement. Um, I would also agree with mr Um Benson that if you're going to allow an exception to bylaw, that's a policy decision And it's one that your board should be making it should not be made by staff And and my final point is that when these changes change in use occur in districts like this They almost always come before the board anyway Um, it's very rare that They don't come before the board And if they do come if they don't come before the board it's like a situation like with the Donut don't don't a diner place where there's no change in use and there's no change in the requirements But when you actually change the use And if there's any construction you change the use the bylaw says it has to come before the board anyway for a special permit If it would have required a special permit, you know as a as new construction so As they say in time meeting this is a solution in search of a problem, and I hope you won't support it Thank you. Thank you Any other comments related to this article? All right Seeing none, I will turn it back over to the board for any final questions for mr. Fleming starting with steve Nothing further gene nothing All right, cool. Thank you very much really appreciate it. Yep, and uh We'll get you started for the next one to the next one. All right. Um, so before we Move to that one that is article 30 um Also inserted by the request of james Fleming and 10 registered voters for a zoning bylaw amendment related to one and two family usable open space I will first turn it over to kelly for any comments from the department of planning and community development Sure. Thank you very much. Um To note in this um as we described in the memo this affects the r0 r1 and r2 properties Which are low density zoning districts? Um, basically in the zoning bylaw right now There exist a number of ways that open space is created and some of them are duplicative And some of them sort of they don't build on each other, but they're just sort of more extreme than the other So, you know, we have Front yard setbacks side yard rear yard setbacks maximum lot coverage landscaped open space and usable open space um, we did a we did a scan of a budding Zone zoning by zoning ordinances and bylaws of a budding communities And realize that out of out of our budding communities a number of them don't even require open space They rely on the setbacks As um, sort of that provision of open space is based on the setbacks um in arlington the Definition of open space Requires that for something to be considered usable. It has to be at least 25 feet by 25 feet So what that does and because that provision in the zoning bylaw was basically applied retroactively to a lot of existing properties Um, we have it creates a lot of non conformities Because there are a lot of properties where the the usable open space is either is neither flat enough nor Um, nor does it have the the 25 by 25 foot square in the backyard In order for a property to meet that requirement um I think as the board has discussed at other meetings where we've discussed open space The landscaped open space and usable open space is also tied to gross floor area Which is very unusual in comparison to other Other zoning zoning from other communities Because what this does is every time you add a square foot of residential floor area You also have to add a square foot or you have to add A proportion of that as usable or landscaped open space and that's you cannot necessarily create more land kind of property um, and so What the zoning bylaw? What our master plan? Seeks to do or what the master plan has prescribed is that Whenever zoning amendments are or whenever the zoning is amended you should not create more non conformities Um, and then in wherever possible we should seek to simplify the zoning bylaw for usability um, and overall I think This the applicant or the petitioner has explored a number of opportunities Really looking at reducing some of the redundancy and how open space is created. And so this is um I think he has a presentation that sort of describes the process that he followed in order to get to that Very much uh, james. I will turn it over to you All right james flowing 58 oxford street again Um, perfect. Thank you. Um before I said the presentation I will note this sounds like I am getting rid of backyards. That is not what this is intended to be so Keep that in your mind as we go through this because it's not intuitive um, so usable open space is a It's a continuous amount of space that each building has to have minimum 25 by 25 The important point is this does not mean green nor pervious It can be a swimming pool and it can be a bocce court like my neighbor did a couple years ago He has no backyard of a green space, but it's still usable open space um The stated purpose in the bylaw is that it's for enjoyment by the residents Um, so as an example you can see there's a 30 by 30 square foot of usable open space in red there So that's more than 25 on the side that counts But the orange space next to it does not count because it's got 20 feet on one side instead of the minimum 25 Next please So this proposal is to remove this requirement of for one and two family homes So you don't prevent them from creating it if they want it, but you also don't require them to have it Next please Um Kelly already mentioned this. Um, most of the towns don't have this concept at all of a minimum dimension Square in the backyard. Um medford has something that's similar. It's not exactly the same It's 15 feet with an additional 10 foot setback. So it's it's kind of close But theirs does not there's does not apply to one or two family uses It only applies to three family enough and so this proposal would sort of make us like medford in that respect The other thing is that this won't really have an effect everywhere In particular if you are a conforming single family home You already have a 25 foot setback and a 60 foot minimum lot width So you by definition have a 20 by 60 square of usable open space Minus your driveway. So their front yard will always be that space So the real the real place where this Comes into play is in the two family neighborhoods and older one families where you were built too close to the street to be 25 feet And in this case, your usable open space would only be in the backyard as is shown here with the minimum of with a 20 foot front yard setback Perfect So the reason the reason this matters to me is that um, this makes it uh, hard to adapt old buildings So the main issue is that the requirement gets bigger as you increase the amount of living space But your lot size is fixed. So if you run up against that limit, then you're kind of out of luck So as an example and I will acknowledge these are all contrived examples to illustrate a point There are thousands of plots. I didn't go searching for one and the records are limited anyways So this is an example of a house that is sort of just barely under the limit They need a 810 square feet of usable open space Or so they have 810, but they need 795. So they're kind of like just under that limit And in the next few slides, we'll see why that's a problem for them Next piece So as an example, suppose you don't have a back porch and you want to add one So this is a relatively small porch five feet. Um, you can't add it because it makes your backyard space non-usable So that takes you from Conforming to not conforming which under no circumstances can you do you do you have to get a variance I doubt you're going to get a variance in this case because it's probably a flat backyard So even though this is a small scale addition, it can't be done because you can't create non-conformities Um, the next one is suppose they don't have um a full Half story on top when they want to add some square feet in the attic Again, you're right under the limit. So if you add that living space Your requirement for usable open space goes up But again, you cannot create additional open space because your lot size is fixed So again, relatively small scale addition, but you're going from Uh, 795 requirement to 840. You only have a 10. It's creating a non-conformity. It wouldn't be allowed Um, one thing that I noticed this is sort of unfair if you were homeless already non-conforming So there's a section in the bylaw um In the non-conforming section, which is basically if you are non-conforming you can Make dormer additions and within the boundary of the property by right And the usable open space dimension doesn't come into play, but In that case, this house is actually bigger than the one before by about one foot So it's slightly over the limit of being non-conforming So this house could do a full set of dormers without any review at all But our previous example couldn't add even a small donor So that strikes me as very very unfair now granted. I know I'm picking examples This is meant to illustrate the point that if you happen to find yourself in that situation of being up against the limit You can't do something that you might see your neighbors doing and they might be able to do it Next please And it's particularly unfair because knowing this in advance requires you to have done basically a survey of property Which you don't own so you can't do it Um, or you would have to measure all of these things yourself and no one's going to do that And you'd have to do that before you buy the house so I think that that just seems very unfair to me And I think it's unfair because this requirement shouldn't prevent you from making small scale additions to your house We already have a provision in the bylaw for large additions. I think it's 750 square feet or so so big changes are reviewed and based on the zba cases that I've seen The neighbors seem to care about the size of the addition relative to the house So in that sense that seems a reasonable thing to do But if it's an incremental addition that runs up against this limit It doesn't it seems sort of arbitrary Next please so The obvious question is why did I choose to remove it instead of just making it a little easier? So I looked at a couple options for modification on producing the percentage which is set at 30 percent or changing the minimum dimension to 20 feet Or to base it on a fixed thing like the lot area or some combination of the above No matter which way I tried doing things I would there was no search There was no situation in which I wouldn't create the possibility of some other problem happening an example here is reducing the A lot the requirement from 30 percent to 25 percent The simplest example is that the porch takes the requirement to zero or takes the the use open space to zero percent So I would have in this case. This is a case. I would really want to see allowed reducing the percentage is just not going to work I didn't include all the Possibilities because that would make the slide deck very long. There is a memo attached if you care to see more Um I went tried to go through a process to see if there was an alternative that didn't create nonconformities or try accomplished what I wanted And there wasn't one so here we are um And this is where my opinion comes in is that usable is subjective I think a driveway is very usable if you have a basketball hoop and you want to shoot hoops That is extremely usable space The other thing is that this space the usable open space definition doesn't mean green It doesn't have any provision for that. So my neighbor's by my neighbor's pocci court counts He's very happy with it And if you're buying a house, you don't have to buy it if you don't like the yard You just wait for the next one And if you're doing something like adding a porch and you're removing your backyard space You've already decided that that's better for your needs. So You should be allowed to make that trade off And then lastly Kelly already mentioned it. So I won't believe it at the point other dimensional controls lot covered I think is the most uh the most uh Relevant one. Um, this is an example of a house from a zba hearing That was at the limit of usable open space or just over the limit of usable open space And also over just over the lock coverage requirement. So this is sort of a visual example of A house that is limited by a lot coverage and not and not by the or and by the usable open space Um, and based on the setbacks, you will always have some sort of yard space It's just a question of You know, do you have a square in the backyard as the as your mechanism to do it? next um In summary, we've approved the requirement Um, I think this is fine because we have a town next door to us that doesn't require this for one and two family homes And they haven't imploded Um, and that it had this requirement can limit adapting both homes in some respect Sorry, sorry that was long. Thank you. Thank you very much. I appreciate it and question for you Did you I believe you had the opportunity to review this with the cba? I wanted to see if they Um, provided any feedback for you. They did. Um Do you want my interpretation of it or do they have legal meeting minutes? I think If you could I mean, we'll we'll review those but if you would be reminded to summarize that would be helpful sure, so um So Inspectional services made a change in the fall of last year where if you are making an addition Within the confines of the existing footprint and you're on conforming. It's by right So that was that's the majority of the cases So this they thought this will apply to a very small number of cases where you happened to Be either have usable open space or you're trying to make an addition like just outside your footprint anyways Which they don't tend to see a lot of anyways, so they think it's Not going to really affect things one way or the other Okay, great. Thank you Uh, we'll start with steve actually on this one. Okay. Uh, thank you again for bringing this. Um It's sort of funny. There's Our, yeah, our open space requirements are kind of are a little interesting Um, essentially it's the reciprocal of far but with a couple of things taken out of the numerator And you know it does overlap with You know the front yard setback, um you that's a perfectly You know it's it happens to align with it, which Also kind of I've always wondered about but never don't know exactly how that 25 foot number was chosen In fact, I've read pretty much all of the zba and it's from You know the year prior to the bylaw rewrite in the 70s And one of the things I was kind of curious about is well, where did this concept come from? Um, I don't recall finding much helpful, but Um, neither here nor there The one of the interesting things about it is it does sort of create three categories of properties where There are ones with no usable open space at all and the bylaw just doesn't you know Regulations just don't apply to them because you go from zero percent to zero percent and it's no change in the degree of nonconformity um, you have Conforming lots where you know the front yard Setback in our in You know the single family districts more or less guarantees guarantees that you're going to get it um and then you have ones like the examples that you showed where it's conforming but just barely and You know the difference between A house a a property that's conforming and able to make an addition and not able to make an addition And one that's nonconforming and can make an addition Can be very slight and it's not intuitive at all I've kind of wondered Periodically like how could we make this better? um And you know you raise a point of well pretty much everything you try to do You run into creating other problems and that's sort of the same thing. I came came to um Overall, I think this is I do agree that our definition of open space is is somewhat dated in terms of what it's trying to achieve um, I would like to see us have something In terms of you know that stress things like you know that you know, maybe align more with community values in terms of Pervious surface or pollinators or actual green space um, but I don't um You know that's You know this can be done one step at a time. So I'm supportive of this Great. Thank you. Steve gene. Yes. Thank you for bringing this forward. You make a compelling case My one question is This would also apply to brand new construction And does it does it make sense? to apply it to brand new construction since all of your examples are Things that are not You know that don't seem to work With existing houses, but if somebody's going to build a new house um Why not have them use put in the usable open space and just Limit this to existing Just complexity just why why have a different requirement supply actually one notice that the The definition of usable open space is currently different for new construction houses. It's 20 by 20 It's 20 by 20, which which like like I see that and that's just another reason that I hate this requirement And it needs to go it's it's it shouldn't be different for the different houses Whether or not it's new construction or not. So in this case in this respect that'll just go from the definition That was my one question I remember this coming up several years back Uh Yes, we did uh, we started the zoning reconfication. You're on that gene only the end of it okay, um And we this one of this 25 by 25 and 20 by 20 came up is what it's it's conflicting And we tabled it at that time And said that we'll get back to it and we're going to develop a um Housing guideline because we talked to them all the things about curb cuts and Front yard set backs and off the fin. We actually never got back to it So, um, I'm glad you're bringing this stuff back up again. Uh, we did we have talked about this uh in our Retreats about, uh, what we're trying to address in the future and so forth and this is one of those Uh, you are right. Glad you're bringing this stuff back up. Uh, I'm just wondering This is one small change Uh, should we look at this as a whole? And, um Because I I'm not saying I disagree guys. I totally disagree. I totally agree of you but at one time we looked at the whole of design guidelines for Uh, single and duplexes like that We never actually went back to it, but I was wanting something that we maybe Get a group on that and we look at some of these things as a whole Because there's all there's all sorts of things that, uh Setbacks and odds, you know, right now we're doing incremental stuff like does the porch counters, uh Uh Building footprint or is it closed? There's all these things that've been sort of festering that's that, uh We should all address all at once So we have a I don't know the whole thing. That's the only thing I'm sort of bringing up right now I'm not saying I don't support this If the rest of the board wants to go ahead and move this along I'm not going to stop it But I just want to say should we look at this as a whole? And make uh make some time in isn't it? I'm not sure we can do it this This fall, but I think we should put it on agenda Um, I think the fact you're saying that this is a very minor occurrence That it's not holding much back or doing much of anything Sort of clarifying a lot of things But for instance, I bet it incorporates is enough bigger picture for this one So let's say Thank you. Um, I have a question. I I think that I'm certainly I appreciate what you have to say about the more holistic view specifically to what is in front of us. Um, I'm certainly supportive of Reducing something that I think is unnecessary and Um overly restrictive when there are other areas of the code which achieve The aim in a much clearer and Well-defined way my question is whether you contemplated The single family detached falling to family duplex, etc Um usable open space requirements in the business districts and removing that there as well because it seemed as That those would be in the same Situation as those in the in the residential districts So just curious as to whether or not that's something you contemplated. I had thought about it. Um I left it out purely because it would make the Main motion extremely long Um, and also that I doubt that someone would voluntarily build in you To find a home in business district when they could build something that's mixed use So it seemed like it seemed a possible but very unlikely case that would happen I completely understand that I think um, it could it could be done right my my preference from Moving it forward would be to fix it to do it everywhere If we're going to fix it and again, I I need to look at the way And I apologize that I I didn't do this ahead of time the way that the um, that the article was originally Written I think it does constrain it to the art districts. It doesn't Does it it's I thought it said to see if the town will amend the zoning by a lot of completely remove the open space requirement For one and two family uses it doesn't say where the districts are right So that says one and two families Yeah, so that's that's where I'm You'd rather see it done for this this use in all possible districts personally again myself and again we can um See if if others um, I agree with that, but that's that's where I'm Sure, I'm I'm coming from I I agree with it, but I'd I'd rather fix it We're gonna fix it. I'd rather fix it everywhere all at once Got it Any other yeah, they'll just say I mean that makes perfect sense to me too But yeah, there are one and two families in other one of the art districts As well as to be districts. So this has to be taken beyond the r One and r2 do you mean four three four five six seven there could be one and two families In all of those and of course what we're leaving out then is all the three families In the two right two is which we can't do because It's limited In the way that it's written to one and two right and unfortunately in the b districts It does include three families. So but would we be able to separate that out? I don't read any and one of the one of the reasons I left out everything above two families because you were you were taking on something for Open space for I think it was just the details the districts But you were also taking on the immediate communities legislation and so and so so It feels like Whatever I do here is either going to be interfering or changed by what you're planning on doing in Eight months. So I said we'll leave it up for now Whatever you you'll figure something out later on for the other cases and this will just take care of the minor residential ones right, so I think Completely hear what you're saying. So one of the questions that I think as a board we should discuss Is you know, I think this is a good idea Do we think that we should Fix a portion of it now or if The article was originally proposed in such a way that constrains it beyond what we think Needs to be done to rectify it across All of the different districts. Um, if we should Make that recommendation and push that to the fall Again, you can you know, sure continue forward if you would prefer. Um, but I think that that's something that I'd love for us to discuss Any other questions for For james or comments jean I don't know what to do with this. I'm in favor of this article in general And I like what you had to say about You know, let's think about the one and twos that are in the other districts I just don't know and you're right. It doesn't have to be grass It doesn't have to be bushes. It doesn't have to be trees But i'm guessing a lot of it is probably oh, yeah grass bushes and trees And i'm just wondering You know What we're losing As a community By doing this and I don't know the answer. I'm just wondering It's a good question. Um, just to My two cents on that is that a 20 foot by 60 foot area is no less usable In my mind, it's that, you know, just throwing an arbitrary number out there. It hasn't you know, then a 25 by 25 The alternative is what's 25 by 25 625 is just to change it. So you have to have a 625 In whatever configuration it is So that would be the alternative to what james is suggesting, but at that point That includes the little side strips that are the Uh, regular setback open space and at that point it's even more duplicative. Yeah, we talked about it before And you know, we start saying, okay, you gotta fight You gotta fight the strip on the whole hundred foot and then you turn the corner Now you got a little things I'm just saying, you know, I got my fear is not there are a few homeowners I feel for them who might not be able to put on a porch or in addition But what are we as a whole community Losing in terms of green space and trees. Well, how many of those come up on zoning? I think that's the question is too. Sorry. Is are we losing anything at the rear side? In front setbacks are still in place and I don't know that we are and I think that's what james has demonstrated for his examples Is that we're not losing there are so many other restrictions in place Well, we're losing if we're losing some open space in every one of these examples In spite of the setbacks and a lot minimum lot Yeah, if we're not losing any open space, he wouldn't need to do this. So we're losing some open space Well, I don't I don't think that's true. We're losing the requirement to create more open space by By adding to by adding gross floor area to a home Even if it's not out, yes, right, right Sorry, maybe just one one thing that Just to note here is there's a lot of things in the zoning by-law that make it hard to estimate actual build out Um, and when you have things that rely on a calculus of an unknown future condition um, and what I mean by that is right now A calculate in order to estimate build out or in order to estimate You know, what is the overall number of x What's the overall number of open space that we have in the community? We cannot calculate that because it's based on gfa It's a percentage that's based on gfa And we run into this situation in the business districts as well because we have a situation where your setback is your H divided by your whatever and then your l plus, you know, and and so when you're trying to understand or create projections For what the overall community is and or could be That would be an argument for for simplifying it in a sense because this sort of changes so that it's purely based on Dimensional numerical requirements that are established based on the overall parcel size Yeah, this is just the tip of the ice Any other questions or comments for james before you open it up Remember we talked about the stuff like Sorry camera weeks. Sorry on this thing. We are back back in the day. No, I'm glad you brought it back up Yeah Great And the thing was a okay This time I'll open it up for public comment anyone who wishes to To speak Please introduce yourself if you wouldn't mind by first last name and address and you'll have up to three minutes Should I sit here? I'm susan stamps town meeting member 39 grafting street and a member of the tree committee um We have a new environmental planner david morgan who has a vision for the town Um as a place that will sustain not only its residents Not only it's it's people of different um social classes and income groups, but also the wildlife the the plants the insects and All the pollinators and all the life that sustains us here in the community and one of the things that he's been talking about publicly is the need to intentionally create green space and wildlife corridors and um I think I'm very impressed with james's work. Um I think that um, I agree with ken that Uh, I think the town might be better served to do this kind of planning As a holistic plan and not piecemeal um I don't know what the unintended effects would be of eliminating open space if you've got Places that do not have much in the way of setbacks. You are going to if you also Lose the green space the open space requirement. You will lose Overall open space I don't pretend to be a zoning expert. So I barely understand it But it seems to me that when you are in a dense community only to become way denser The last thing we should be talking about without understanding without having a whole Whole of town plan is removing open space. So those are my comments. Great. Thank you very much. Okay. Thank you Anyone else wishing to make any comments, please Thank you. Madam chair again, chris already 56 Adams Street I opposed this article for several reasons. First, it said it's inconsistent with the master plan Let's look at what the master plan says about residential districts Standards that affect intensity of use such as maximum floor area ratio Lot coverage maximum percent setbacks open space ratios, etc Seem reasonable inconsistent with prevailing development patterns in the neighborhoods So the master plan does not see any need to change this What the opponent is doing is cherry picking particular parameters in this case The usable open space requirement to achieve a particular end He talks about medford. He talks about lexington, but he doesn't tell you that A significant portion of lexington has a larger lot size requirement for single family dwellings Lexington limits the size of homes Medford also limits how big an accessory structure like a garage can be in the backyard. Arlington doesn't do that And what medford also does is limits the amount of parking. They have a maximum parking amount Arlington doesn't do that if you approve this proposed change that is this right now Anyone can put as much parking on their lot as they want There's no limit on how if you want to you know completely pave over your backyard Because that's what the usable open space prevents People seem really confused about what usable open spaces and thinks you you have to build a swimming pool or a tennis court Or something like that or think you can't put native plantings and that's ridiculous What usable open spaces is limits what you can do with that space It says you can't put a building there. You can't put a driveway there and you can't put parking there You remove this requirement. You can put any of those things there and that's not acceptable and so You know you need to I think you need to look at in that perspective and you need to look at his figures again Proponents figures because the buildings and things he's showing are not to scale at all. They're very misleading I'm sympathetic to the issue of creating non conformities But the place that the bylaw should be changed if that's a problem is in the section of non conformities It shouldn't be throwing out completely the usable open space requirements and it sounds like the zba in conjunction with the Building inspector are going in that direction, but that's really where the change should be if indeed it is a problem It shouldn't be just to get rid of the usable open space requirements in you know in As an isolated change You know as others have said you you need to consider these things and it's in their totality And that's why the master plan talks about this whole set of different requirements that affect the intensity of development, so I hope you Will not approve this as it is right now Certainly there are more modern ways of looking at open space like permeable surfaces and impermeable surfaces And things like that that the town should consider But simply you know doing a wide-scale Removal of the current requirements is not appropriate at this time. Thank you. Thank you Anyone else? So at this point we will Move back to questions from the board or any further comments starting with steve nothing further jean nothing further And kin i'm good Great You have any questions for us. Yes, actually, um, uh, can you ask a question about the number of cases this might? Applying right yes One thing that I had thought of after you mentioned that so when so we we we went through A similar process where we have that actually that image in the thing is actually our house Where we are just over the limit. So we are just a little bit nonconforming. So we were allowed to drummer by right um What we learned in that process is that When because of this requirement you have to show up to the inspector's office with a permit So you find that after you go to them and you don't have your um Your Not permit survey After you file with them after a month they tell you you need your survey Then you have to get on the inspector the survey or schedule and they have to do that You have to wait for the results So that cost us about six months of delay and getting started So there there is like a cost to the the person who's on the on the receiving end of this And the other thing is if you are If the survey results come back and say you are conforming and you become not conforming They tell you right then and there the need of variance If you have if you're working with an architect, they will tell you You're not going to get that variance because they know how variances work. So I think If if this were to happen the zba would not have seen those cases because the person would not have been foolish enough to waste their time and come I don't know if that made any sense. No it does Yeah, so I think one thing we might The reason I don't have examples of this happening is because I think The way the system is set up may be so that you don't actually get those reported results So just a thought Thank you. Nothing else for me Okay, so I I think Definitely supportive. I would just like to see this It's going to be a very long main motion So we can um, I can work with that I think look at how that might cool Great. Thank you. Any other questions? Comments? Great. Thank you so much. Really appreciate it All right, so at this time we will close the public hearings for 2023 annual town spring annual town meeting and again to note that on March 20th is when um, the redevelopment board will meet again to discuss the Articles that were presented 27. Yeah 27 27 27. Thank you very much for correcting me. I appreciate that Thank you Correct the 27th to To review to discuss and vote on each one of the articles that was presented this evening and last monday night and If you have any questions between now and then please reach out to the board All right, so with that we will um close agenda item number one and move to agenda item number two, which is open forum So anyone here with us this evening would like to speak? We'll ask you to raise your hand Oh, please And again, uh first last name and address Thank you. Susan stamps, um grafting street on the tree committee. Um just to follow up on what I said before Our new environmental planner david morgan Said has said he's been around town talking to different groups and he's talked about um, how he wants To have an ecological infrastructure. He called an ecological framework. He says two are planning so that All the zoning decisions we make And any other park decisions any other decisions we make regarding The natural environment and the built environment is all Takes into consideration the ecology of the town and what kind of ecology we want in the town so um a town that's resilient sustainable healthy um and So I think it's a great approach and that's what I was talking about before when I Objected to just this piecemeal zoning and I also wanted to add that we have A great planning department who are actual professionals who know how to Put the pieces together and maybe make them all work certainly better than I could And I would like to see us take advantage of their expertise in More of a whole of town approach to our zoning That is all. Thank you. Thank you very much Any other comments this evening All right with that we will close open forum and uh move to agenda item number three, which is new business And I will ask kelly if you have anything Uh, just to note that on the 27th, um Tom council will be providing us either with a memo or he will be here to discuss the amendments or sorry to discuss the warrant articles Regarding the transfer of ARB properties to the town Um, so this is something That was placed on the warrant by the town manager. I don't have very much more information about it That's why I've asked town council to either come before the board or to provide a memo Because the board is being asked to weigh in on not actually take a vote, but just to It's a little unclear There's not going to be an actual vote. We don't have anything in a legal Notice or anything like that regarding taking a vote on the warrant articles But I believe that they are looking for something from the ARB regarding whether they are favorable or not on This motion that will go before the select board Okay, thank you for the update Asked a question on that please Uh, this is just for the maintenance and care of it or the whole thing Because it was I thought it was always and we always agreed that we were going to maintain control over who goes there and and whatever for the betterment of the town And that was given to us as the responsibility part of planning all along and I think that's just not right to be asked Not asked To just give it up My understanding My conversation the last conversation I had with the town manager was exactly what you just identified that it was Moving the responsibility for maintenance and operations of these properties, but not for the review of leases Etc Use in the use correct But that apparently is not what is in the proposal. So that's what we'll have Doug Hine Join us to discuss Because I'm going to object to that Yeah, well, we'll have a discussion on the 27th. But yes, that is not reflective of the last conversation that was So I just found out about this a couple of days ago and I looked at the warrant and it was very surprised To see it there and I mentioned to Rachel was before This meeting again, so I would like it to be on the agenda so that we can take a vote We may not want to take a vote But I don't think it would be nice to at least have it on the agenda so we can take a vote and request that There be either written or in-person Presentation To us Discussing and explaining That's my I have one other new business. I just want to say something about this one. Nope. So last week I Didn't participate in the discussion On the warrant daughter go on door to gate here That Kristen Anderson forward Because I wasn't sure what the ethical problems or not what and I spoke to the attorney of the day in the state ethics commission and I Will file Form some number something With the town manager as the appointing person that basically says Kristen and I are on this group together, but I can still exercise my independent judgment So I will do that so I can do that and I'd like unless people object I'd like to talk to Kristen miss anderson about the article because I would have said a lot of things About the article last week I have no objection to that. I think that again, we have encouraged Any applicant for any article to come in to the board for discussion and we have often identified an individual from the board to Provide feedback between Um between meetings, so I have no Concern with um you reaching out with additional feedback on behalf of yourself not on behalf of the board I think that that is absolutely reasonable any Objections no other thoughts. No no objections. Great. Thank you for your following up. I'm closing that loop gene. I appreciate that Kelly do you have any other new business? Just that we had our first the first visioning session for mbta communities on thursday of last week and we had more than 130 people in the zoom space and we had 230 people registered so We'll be following up with all everyone who registered via town notice A lot of other ways that we're reaching out to people were issuing a survey starting tomorrow And the survey is really just kind of a companion survey to everything that was discussed at this visioning session So anyone who wasn't able to attend can still submit their Their ideas and what they would like to see We're also going to be releasing a visioning kit Or it's basically like a meeting in the box. So anybody who wants to hold a separate meeting That's kind of very similar to what we did but in the comfort of their own home or with friends and neighbors They can also do that that way so But overall we're really excited about the turnout and the attention that was paid to this And the number of people who took time out of their thursday night to join a meeting Thank you And then we have another meeting this wednesday Yes Yes, so on wednesday of this week at seven o'clock in town hall is the Third public meeting regarding the mass avan appleton intersection That is the intersection where charlie proctor a bicyclist was killed several years ago The town had made Temporary safety improvements and then at the same time started a process to create more permanent long-term improvements So we are up to The point where we're ready to go to 100 design But we wanted to have this final meeting with the community because there are a few other options that we just want to hear from people about So we're in parallel with this. We're doing outreach to all of the businesses in that stretch Which I believe is within between herbert and quinn road It's kind of a distance on either side of that massive avalanche intersection So we're talking to all of those businesses. We've been sending direct postcards to a butters And people within a proximity of that But I just want to make sure that people are aware that this public meeting is happening And after this we're applying for mass works funding for construction So that would be like an application for probably five to seven million dollars of funding Thank you. Yeah Any other new business steve? Well, I was going to say just as a follow-up As someone who's personally been left hooked in that intersection I am really happy to see the The safety improvements moving forward Great. Thank you Any other new business kin? No gene Steve yep, all right We'll close agenda item number three and see if there is a motion to adjourn So motion second. We'll take a vote starting with steve. Yes gene. Yes kin. Yes, I mean yes as well We're adjourned. Thank you everyone