 All right. So I'd like to call the February 6, 2023 meeting of the Town of Royal Antiquity and Redevelopment Board to order. Introduction of the board members. I'm Rachel Zendery, chair of the board, Steve Revlak with us. Good evening Madam Chair. Jean Benson. How many are? Pleasure. We should have Claire Ricker joining us later this evening. So with that, we'll go ahead and kick off with our first agenda item, which is the schedule, outreach, and engagement for 2023 Town Meeting, the 2023 Town Meeting Zoning Amendments. I'll hand it over to Kelly. So we had originally anticipated that there would be 12 amendments from the ARB, which were voted on at last at the last hearing, and then we also received another four citizen petitions. On Friday, it was requested of us by the Town Manager and Town Council that all zoning amendments be postponed until fall for a special Town Meeting. And so those amendments would be the idea that was that they would prefer that all zoning be heard in the fall so that special, so that in no town meeting this spring could be reserved for financial administrative work. Their request was that only, that the board only advanced to town meeting any amendments that could be reviewed as part of a consent agenda, that the board would feel confident could be approved as part of the consent agenda. My understanding of just the amendments that the board approved at the last meeting is that that pretty much leaves us with only the, with the Section 3.1 Building Enforcement Amendment. I apologize that we didn't know about this sooner. It would have maybe changed the way that we worked on some of these amendments, but this has been the request. And what this would require is a vote by the board at the next hearing to move those amendments to a special town meeting in the fall. In the meantime, we can, if the board is amenable to that, we can work and collaborate on an outreach and engagement schedule from here going through the fall, specifically focused around economic development, the Arlington Heights Business District, and then MBTA communities as both Steve and Ken are both on the MBTA community's working group, so those things would be aligned. And the message then would be that the board is moving forward on specific amendments to address economic development in the business districts, trying to encourage redevelopment that preserves as much ground for commercial as possible, while also promoting mixed use, and then a separate amendment for MBTA communities. But that's the request from Town Council and the Town Manager's Office at this point, and I'm happy to answer any questions. Let's start with Ken. This may be from Town Manager, not Town Council. I can't see any Town Councils that have been... Yeah, it was primarily from the Town Manager. I don't see a problem with this. I think it gives us a little more time. I'm okay with that. Gene, any thoughts? Does that apply to the resident submitting to the Arlington Heights? Right, so because any hearings, we need to submit the legal ad for any hearings by this Friday. So what I need to do after tonight's discussion, because I have already tentatively scheduled those hearings with the residents, based on the board's discussion tonight, I would reach out to the petitioners tomorrow and alert them that, you know, this is their recommendation. If it is their own prerogative that they want to really push through, however, our recommendation would be to also have them... It's sort of like akin to what was done in 2020, which is that, you know, we would work with them to try to advance them in the fall instead of pushing them through this spring. If they're really adamant on doing it, you know, it's their own prerogative, they're able to do that, and we would have to schedule the hearings, but that would be our recommendation. Now, two of the four resident ones, I think, really fit into the development, it's never too doubtful. Right. But we'd rather take this one to the fire. So I have reached out to Tom Perkins, because I know there is another citizen group that's working on an affordable housing overlay, and I have asked him if he is collaborating with that group, because I know they're interested, they're actually working with Goulson and Storrs and going to do some outreach and do a lot of work to create that, and their intent was to bring that to a special time meeting in the fall. So, you know, my recommendation to him would be to continue to work with them, or to try to work with them unless he really was insistent on doing his own amendment. And then, you know, I'd be talking to Mr. Fleming about the downtown business parking minimums and seeing if he would be interested in advancing the usable open space article as well. So, just what I had heard from the town manager was that he really wanted anything that would have substantive discussion to be moved to the fall. And I don't see any of those as, the only one I could imagine would, that would possibly be on a consent agenda would be the Anderson article. If it were, if the town, if ARB voted action. Yeah, yeah. She submitted a proposal to allow animal daycares as a use in the industrial business. That's one of the, the industrial pieces was one of the its goals for this. Yeah. For the spray to look at in the fall. So that's something that we could certainly let her know. And invite her to be a part of that discussion as we prepare for the fall. Okay. I, you know, I, I'm amenable to the town manager's request. I was just curious about if the manager express or, you know, maybe expressions as to why, or the thought process behind moving things around like this. Was it just to break up the meetings or? There are two parts to it. I think one is that there was a feeling that last year the articles were sort of wide ranging and not organized around a particular. Theme or that that weren't like. Yeah, I think it's sort of the, it's sort of the inverse of like this year, what we were trying to do was really focus on the business districts. And I think there's a desire to have that be a very specific message to town meeting that that's very understandable. And it's like, here's what we are explicitly trying to do. I don't think that the manager understood that that's really that we were trying to put that message forward. I think even so, there's just a desire to keep town meeting a little bit shorter this spring and then focus exclusively on zoning in the fall. There are some benefits to perhaps doing that. And I know this has been something that the board has discussed. I think it was in 2019 was the idea of starting to focus on zoning amendments in the fall so that, you know, town meeting members, there's a third of town meeting members that are either reelected or new to town meeting member, being a town meeting member and they're elected in April. So be able to have a little bit more time to do some outreach, talk about zoning, get them familiar with amendments before they're actually doing a vote. That's a potential benefit. But otherwise, I think it was really about just having a cohesive message and really organizing the amendments around a theme or two. So what it would be in the fall would be business and economic development, housing regarding MBTA communities, and then corrections to the industrial districts. Yeah, there's, I believe in my time on town meeting last year was I think the longest we ran. And for a while there was some concern about whether we would have to add nights in order to finish on time. And I mean, even for that reason, ensuring that the, you know, the fiscal business gets done at a time like that, right? That alone, I think, makes a lot of sense. Yeah. Is it fair to say that time management will not be the time management sometime? Yes. Yes. So I just have two thoughts that I wanted to share. The first one is probably is, or one is Todd. Yes. Because I think that it's not very clear. In some way, I think that we were very deliberate about focusing on the business districts and the industrial districts this year, or excuse me, for spring town meeting so that there was not confusion around what is applicable to business districts versus what is applicable to residential districts, which sometimes confuses the town meeting members who don't work rezoning every day of the week. Zoning is complex, and it's hard for people to deal with it regularly to understand what the implications are. Given that, though, I also feel like one of the things that's really important, too, especially the items in the list that we're looking at here that are items H through P, the business and the early to high business district items are, that we really need to be able to prepare visuals to accompany this so that people can understand that only what this is, but more importantly, what it does not need for the scale of buildings, for the looking feel of the communities, and I think that that is something that we need to make sure that the Department of Planning and Community Development has the bandwidth to be able to work with us to prepare, and moving into fall town meeting gives us more time to prepare those documents so that people who don't work with zoning every day have the ability to really visualize what these words mean, to me that would be a benefit. So, again, I'll speak out of the size of my mouth, but I like the fact that we were, that we were isolating business in the fall, residential in the, excuse me, business was very residential in the fall, but at the same time, I think if this allows us more time to create the documentation and engagement that we need so that the town meeting members more fully understand what it is this means that could be a benefit as well. Do you know when the fall town meeting would be? So, I spent like the last hour putting together a potential schedule for an engagement and I can talk you through. Perfect. I think what it would mean is that we kind of have to work backward because MBTA communities is going to kind of require, if we want to participate in the fossil fuel band pilot program, that application has to be into the state by November 10. And so, we do not have to have it passed, but I think it would be beneficial to have MBTA communities be probably one of the first things on the agenda, in which case I would think that a special town meeting would probably start, I think the 16th is Indigenous People's Day. So, it would probably maybe start on Wednesday the 18th or the 23rd. That would give town meeting time to, I don't know if it would take a whole night, it's hard to tell until we get through this town meeting to see what the body composition is and what it's like to be back in person again and how long it takes to get through specific articles. But this is my guess. With that in mind, now I know a special town meeting we don't have the same kind of requirements for getting the report to town meeting, like it doesn't have to be that many weeks in advance, like it does typically for annual town meeting. So, I was looking at schedules from previous years, I think in 2019 we had, no, 2018 there was a special town meeting in February and then another one in December, both from marijuana uses. And those, the report was issued just a week or so in advance of town meeting. So, it was a little bit more compressed timeline, in which case the hearings would probably fall, you know, in September through the beginning of town, so then the report, the hearings in the report, I would say maybe like a week or two before town meeting would begin. So, then we've got to have, you know, legal ads two weeks in advance and what I was thinking is like in this phase, this early phase here before town meeting, I've kind of blocked out town meeting because if we are doing outreach and engagement town meeting members aren't going to be paying attention during town meeting. So, I think what we could do is kind of issue a press release about like ARB advancing articles about business and economic development at special town meeting in the fall. Here's times when you can meet with us, you know, like really be very clear right now in the spring about like, here's what's going to be coming in the fall. You can meet with us at these times, here's what we're going to be doing when. Possibly having a joint ARB and select board meeting, I know we've talked about whether those are beneficial or not, but I think at some point in this process we may want to meet with the select board and say, here's what we're advancing and why. And then possibly having some sort of, we could begin to draft some options. So, I think in the memo that we prepared for you back in December we had kind of talked through some of the pros and cons and whether certain amendments should be proposed for town meeting. I think we could start to, we could start to pick into those and start to say, well, here are the things that we want to hear from people on for each of these amendments. So, like, we want to know is it about, like, is it about step backs in the narrow streets or on the main streets or, you know, like, just kind of, like, figure out, like, what are the things that we actually need public comment on. And do, like, a community workshop or an open house to kind of talk about these things and start talking about, like, we, at one of our department had meetings, we could share with department heads and kind of talk about this, too, because I think both understanding, you know, from the town assessor, from the treasurer, from the clerk and DPW, like, here's the things, like, let us, we need you engaged on issues around MBTA communities and around business and economic development. So kind of giving them a heads up, because I think people will ask us, you know, what's, what's the financial implication of these various zoning amendments? Or what does this mean for infrastructure? And we kind of need to know that. During town meeting, I think we could take some time to, because if we're not talking about zoning amendments, it does give staff some time to really start to dig into these graphics, start to dig into, like, refining the options, creating educational materials so that we can go back out to the community. But this would kind of be a downtime for staff to work on these things. And then coming back to the community here, and then town meeting prep really begins in, like, August through October. So hearings, we're proposing would be in September, right? Yes. This would not be in August. Okay. Yeah. That would also allow us to have our fifth board member. That would be the other advantage is that we would have that board member identified. Hopefully. It's happy you didn't get Steve. Well, that was the gubernatorial. Yes. Situation. It was worth it? It was definitely worth it. Thank you. Yeah. Can I just take a quick question of this? That's not quite this. Yeah. You, Charles, are going to help us with the graphics? Yes. Okay. So we have... For MBTA communities. No, okay. It's limited scope. Yeah. So I'm concerned that we... I know you guys do a great job. But... It's not... You're not going to offend me. Don't worry. I don't think we have any... any horses in a barn to help us with the graphics. Because we're going to fall short. Like every... You know, and I've done this when the complication happens. We just fell short of all the graphics. It's great. Now that we have a little more time, do we have funding so we can hire someone to help us with the graphics? Because I think the graphics is the key so that everybody can understand what we're trying to do. And it's not just a diagram showing setbacks and lines and whatever. I think we have to go a little stuff further and maybe show a little vignettes of sketches of the road where I say this is the kind of feeling we're trying to achieve. This is a business trip where... how you see it walking, how you see it driving, how you see it in little clusters where it's a center, where we have a center piece of town or this may be just a side road, but this business is just different. Just different feelings. And you need someone to do a rendering of that, I think. And I'd say the other thing really is to help people understand how slowly this change actually does occur. Yes. And that because the opportunities there does not mean that every land odor along the corridor is going to, you know, next week put forth a development scheme in order to fully build out to the maximum to the maximum more footage that's allowed on their property. So I think being able to use historical data to be able to identify, again, how quickly or not things actually do change over time is something that might be helpful for people to visualize as well. If just going off that, one of the the first of the two ADU proposals. So I think this would have been 2019-ish. One of the concerns expressed during town meeting was that there would be, you know, we've got seven or eight thousand single family homes and we're going to have seven or eight thousand ADUs in no time. And in the two years since our ADU article has passed, we've had four constructed. So it's eight, four? Yep. Two via special permit and two as a break. Oh. Well, not constructed yet. Okay, business. Two. There's two that have been approved, but haven't yet started construction and then two that. Okay. Yeah. All right. So I was right. I asked before. Yeah. And I was told two. Yes. Yeah. And I was like, wow, doubles? Yeah. Can we put this? Oh. Come on, Jean. Go ahead. I'm listening. Can you give us a little financial assistance in getting some of this rendering? Because otherwise we're stuck dead in the water again. Like, so if you can help us out in the in the coffers, I'm happy to talk with Claire about that. Okay. Oh, I'm telling you right here. Okay. Jean, hold on. It doesn't matter. I mean, I think this is fine. It's a little disappointing. Yeah. Because there are some things I hope would have been nice to have done sooner. To have it in place. To have it in place. To have it in place. The other thing I just received is that there's going to be a real welcome shopping full town meeting. Because not only are we going to have all of these things, but it's going to be a real welcome shopping full town meeting. Because not only are we going to have all of these things, but the affordable housing and trust fund group which for affordable housing overlay on top of that, that's just going to be a lot of zoning amendments that could generate a lot of content. I think clarity of message is going to be extremely important. And it is going to be extremely important and it it's I think there may be, I don't know, I think my other concern is just having even more citizen petitions because I just want to make sure that we're very clear about what is being advanced and why and that these are priorities for the court. That was actually another question comment somewhere between that. So if you want to regularly tell me citizen petition on these 10 signatures, I believe for special talent. So will these people who got it with 10 need to like come back, or will they be able to sign in with their 10 signatures? We should know so we can tell. That's a great question. Yeah, there's a few things that I'm following up with town council on and it's like it particularly because I know in 2020 there was a there were different exceptions because of the state of emergency and COVID and because a lot of those citizen petitions were moved from spring time meeting to fall. But just want to make sure that we're clear about if we tell a petitioner that we'll get there, you know, they'll be able to do their hearing in the fall, then I want to make sure that we're able to do that without them having to go and gather a bunch of signatures or the ARB necessarily advancing something that it may you may or may not want to stop. I mean, if that's the case, if they have their 10, whether it looks like we were asking to postpone it till fall, keep everything together and do that, we can say, okay, if you need 100, you can't get 100 rules. They are because of what though in submitting that in. What happens if we disagree? Right, that's my own right. We haven't seen these. We don't disagree. Well, I mean, let's take building one housing area. Yeah, I know. Let's take even the industrial district animal care use. We were scared about whether that was a good idea and decided we wanted to take a bigger, holistic look at what needed to change. Yeah, you're correct. So, you know, so would we allow just one piece and go forward? I'm not sure. You're going. I'm sorry. I don't know. I mean, the, I would expect that citizen petitioners that will be, you know, that question will, I think that question will come up quickly. Yes. No, I, that's where like, following up with them, tomorrow I need to talk to town council before I, you know, I need to make sure we're clear about what they can do and what they can't. Because this also affects your meetings in March. The only one that go up there is just P, P, right? Yeah. Yeah. That's the only one that's just don't really easy. Yeah, that one. One would think except the person who's, the person who submitted it is still in town meeting. And last town meeting, we just needed two people to move it off and consent to them. So that might be a good question for Greg, whether or not he's changing the way that they are looking for people to move things off the consent agenda. Because you're right. I wanted to come in to record six extra videos when everything got moved off the consent agenda. And then there was some people who forgot to move them off the consent agenda. Right. Really? It was me? Oh, I changed my mind. I remember. That's much better in person. I tell you. But, okay. But I do see that one being a no-brainer. I don't know why it wouldn't be. But I think we should try it. I mean, the law is the law, right? I mean, Attorney General, so you can't do that. We have a letter from the Attorney General on that one. So that seems like it. And our original, yeah, you know, non-support of that. And my recommendation on that would be to have that. So on March 6, we have a continued hearing for 99 Mass Ave. I would recommend that that be the hearing date for that amendment as well. The other thing I was thinking of, so the early 10, what's it called, the Newcastle Star, it's no longer a newspaper. It's some weird thing that's not a newspaper anymore. And the real newspaper at the time was Arlington. So I'm just wondering if there's a way that we can put the ads in Arlington rather than that African Newcastle Star in the state. So the Massachusetts Municipal Association is advocating with the state legislature to change the requirements for legal notices. Because beyond Arlington, there are many communities that their only option for advertising is the Boston Globe, which means that they have to pay tens of thousands of dollars for these kind of things. And so, you know, at this point, we're still required to follow state legislation. And so until that changes, we're really stuck with the print copy. I thought you were saying this paper of general circulation is a sort of print? I believe it's print. Yeah, I'll double check on that. But the accepted paper right now is that one. It's always looking, I think, of maybe having a conversation with the town council about what really is to use paper in these things. It's a market basket advertisement. So I just want to go back to what could be on the consent agenda, because I know that in many other towns, far more of the zoning articles wind up living on the consent agenda and being approved. And I'm looking at these specific industrial articles that we decided to advance this year are in many ways clarifications. So the industrial district development standards really have to do with the stormwater requirements, which I cannot imagine that any one-to-town meeting has the background to debate. And that is really coming from a recommendation from the conservation committee. I just want to throw out there that I think that one could be potentially on the consent agenda. And I also think that the solar bylaw in these industrial districts also could be on the consent agenda. The ARB jurisdiction is really bringing consistency, and you could make a case, again, if you follow the way that many other towns look at their zoning articles and the consent agenda, that that could potentially belong on the consent agenda as well. So I want to open that for discussion. Feel that we have, we could more robustly use the consent agenda for some of these other requirements. I mean I agree on the solar bylaw in industrial districts, because all this basically stands as, you know, now that we've got aging approvals for the solar bylaw, this just conforms the word in the industrial district bylaw tonight. So I think that's a good point to consent agenda. I'm not sure about the development standards because what I heard last time was that the conservation commission was thinking of coming up with a design of square income. And I don't think that's the way to do it. So we need ourselves to have that discussion about it, and there may not be even an agreement on the redevelopment for the year. Couldn't we do that during the hearing though? And by the time of recommendation, if they assumed the recommendations made, that it would then go to the consent agenda. Because again, I just, it becomes a technical review, and I think that very few town members have the background to be able to play in on that type of a technical recommendation. And I would hope that they would take the recommendation of the expertise of the town employees and the experts who are on some of the various commissions. But that's what the consent agenda is for, right, is to take the expertise of the people that we have hired to provide that expertise within the town. If the board is unable to come to an agreement on it, you could vote no action, and then it goes on the consent agenda that way. So that does, yeah. If we could clear some of those out of the way, that would be helpful. So AP, AP and CNP? APC and P. Yes. I'm wondering whether C will really get consent agenda. It's okay. But the whole point is to go forward just with things that we want to stay on. Yeah, but if they take it off, they don't need to go off that. They don't take it the whole scent. Or they didn't know they take one at a time. At a time. Yeah, okay, so it's all, yes, it's not all, it's just, it is. You can try. I think it's coming off. What do you think? I would say AB and P, and I don't think that C is going to remain on it. I don't even know if the town moderator would put that on the consent agenda. I think if we can clear AB and P, then that to me is a win. Yeah, yeah. Okay. Can you send around, because I looked on on the town website yesterday. I didn't see any of them. Are they not posted yet? Yeah. So can you send them? I was, yeah. Both the ones putting the A for the Bs. Yes, I will then. Great. Any other questions? We have to officially vote at this vote about this vote, excuse me, vote on this. At our next meeting. I believe we need to have, we didn't have a vote on the agenda for tonight's meeting. Right, so it hasn't been posted, right. Yeah, I need to post. So that would be on the February 27 meeting that there would be a vote to move all amendments except for A, B, and P to special town meeting in the fall. Is there any concern about that? Well in alignment. Okay. All right. And in that, please. Can I just say, getting back to A, at some point soon, I think we're going to have a vote from that other conversation, David Morgan, you know, whoever is the person who's been thinking this through. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. That's great. Yeah, I can connect you. No, that's the part of the agenda. Great. Any other discussion on agenda item number one, which is schedule and outreach. And I think we can probably dive more deeply into the schedule that Kelly revised and put together for us at our next meeting after we officially vote to move these to special town meeting in the fall. That looks good. I agree. I just, this is in an hour. So there could be some specifics there. My only concern would be moving. I would want the hearings, I think, to start in September. I think if they start in August, yeah, that becomes a bit of a challenge. But yeah, I agree. Well, the big problem is going to be so many coming up. Right. Plus any hearings. Plus at least it sounds like two. September is going to be back to school. Yeah, and it will be good to have all five members of the board. I will just say that I travel quite a lot in September and October. So I will do my best to try it. Okay. So let's move on from agenda item number one to agenda item number two, which is the Department of Planning and Community Development Administrative Approval Overview of Recent Decisions that went through administrative review and approval. Sure. So at the prior hearing, I know there was a request to have a discussion about administrative review. I went through the last from 2020 to 2022, just went through the various decisions and took a look at what had been the number of applications, how many had administrative review as a recommendation, and just following up just to check and see what the status of those things are. So in 2020, there were 11 applications to the ARB. Four of them in the decisions had administrative review. So two of them were for, you know, in a decision, we sometimes have a number of items that are for administrative review. Two of them had transportation demand management plans. For example, I think 450, no, 882 to 892 mess out had a requirement to submit a transportation demand management plan. And I'll get into TDMs in just a second. The other common item is signage and then affordable housing. So anything that requires monitoring or a lottery that also gets recommended to be subject to administrative review. In 2021, there were another 11 applications for them with administrative review, same kind of items with the addition of bike parking, like working with town staff to determine if a potential bike parking location. I know that was for Dell's lemonade, which wasn't actually feasible on the site, but there were other outdoor amenities that were put out there. Oh, there is. That's right. Yeah. And then in this, in last year, there were 13 applications and then nine of them had items for administrative review. Three of them were transportation demand management plans. Three of them were providing details or working with staff on bicycle parking. And then four of them were regarding signage. I will say the, and then also with affordable housing. So there's certain things that do have a lifetime, like anything with affordable housing, it should be subject to staff review just because the affordable housing and the lottery and working with an agent to determine the lottery and get that out, that doesn't happen until the building is almost completed with construction and almost ready for occupancy. So for example, 882 to 892 mess out, that decision was made in 2020. The lottery will probably happen in March or April of this year. So it's definitely a long lead time before that kind of thing. You wouldn't want to hold a decision for administrator. You wouldn't want to hold a decision until that was ready to go. So it's similar with transportation demand management. So I know like even with 455 to 457 mass out 882 to 892 mass out, sometimes elements of that transportation demand management plan are really dependent on the tenants, the commercial tenants, because the, what the ARB has typically decided in those decisions is that they've decided where the bike parking is going to be, they've provided a reduction on vehicle parking, but the one or two outstanding elements on a transportation demand management plan are usually regarding providing benefits for the commercial tenants, like doing benefit and that requires some kind of survey of the owners or the staff. And sometimes those occupants have not yet been determined. So, you know, the again, 882 mess out, they're just signing a lease now with it with an occupant for that ground floor commercial space. And so holding the decision until that tenant is secured, it tenants kind of come and go and it really depends on the build out of the space. So that's something that potentially I think would continue to be appropriate for staff review, if it's not explicitly determined at the time of the hearing. I think we do recommend that applicants come to the hearing with an idea of what their transportation demand management plan would be. We're also looking to Portland, Oregon and San Francisco to try to see what other kind of innovative measures our city's doing with regard to transportation management plans, because our list is, I think it's a solid list, but it's also a little bit difficult for some of the types of development that we see in town. So just want to come up with some other ideas that we can provide to applicants when they're coming to us. Signage 2, I think there's some things where, again, the tenants haven't been determined, so we're waiting to see what those tenants are before we can review the signage. When a development does have a new occupant or a new tenant, we really try to encourage them to propose signage that's within section, the requirements of section 6.2, because it's just an additional burden for new businesses to get started. The reason for the requirements in section 6.2 is because it does create signage that is not overly large or doesn't have too many lights, that it does comport with other signage in town. So I think, and then separately, you know, like with Tate, they came back to staff asking, just we reviewed the vinyl signage that was proposed for the entry doors just to make sure that it was within the six foot maximum area that was allowed for vinyl signage on front door. So that's like the kind of administrative review that we typically do on following up on that sort of thing. The one particular, I know the one development in question at the last hearing was regarding 1500 Mass Ave. And in that case, the applicant came back, and this is before I was in this position, so I wasn't really involved in it, but it looks like the applicant came back and requested a reorientation of the parking. And in doing so, that changed the parking spaces from four full-size parking spaces in one compact to five compact spaces, but it did provide more bicycle parking and it provided more access around the edge of the building. That kind of thing, that may be something that the board really doesn't want done administratively. And that's, I think, what I want to hear from you tonight is, you know, those kind of fuzzy areas. I know we really try to work with applicants on to make sure that if they're proposing something that is like pushing the boundaries a little bit, we try to work with them to bring it back in. I think an example of that is what happened with the Arlington Animal Clinic. There were problems there were supply chain issues on some of the awnings, and so we had worked with the applicant extensively to really find a solution that was in line with what had been approved by the ARB, because what they had come back with and saying that what was in stock was drastically different than what the ARB had approved. So that's something where we worked back and forth. I guess this is, you know, this is kind of like an outstanding example. I wasn't able to find anything that was like, that was consistently like out of scope or, you know, I think the other example, just thinking about like 34 Dudley Street, you had provided a sketch for what the elevation should look like. And so when the applicant and attorney Nessie came back to me with the revisions, I checked it against the sketch and it looked in a match, so I proved that administratively. So I guess what I wanted to hear from the board tonight is like what kind of reporting back or what kind of, like how do you want to know about how administrative review items are handled? This is something that you like, you want included on an agenda, if there is an item that has been administratively approved so that you can know about it. I raised this, like background why I raised it. Yeah. I didn't know that Mr. Seltzer was going to raise 1500 message. Okay. And but he did send me some things after. I raised it because someone in town had emailed me to say that they had seen the building at the corner massive and we had said, you know, that side and that was not acceptable and they could do, I think we gave another choice and said needs administrative review. So somebody said to me, did that administrative review ever happen and what is the side and supposed to look like? And I had no idea. And that sort of was like a light bulb to me that there's been no feedback loop at all. And that's why I said, I wanted to have a discussion about the feedback loop. So I think there are two parts. I think to the extent that we as a board can give more definition to what the administrator review should look like, I think that's always better. Second is, I think that we should be told we did administrator review on excess mass staff and it's finished and here's what they're doing. So I do think it would be appropriate, at least for me, to know that that's going on. So even if it takes a year, you know, that that or you could say, you know, they did the TDM and the only piece that's left is, you know, what the commercial tenants going to do and the TDM will be updated. So I think it would be helpful for us to know that because I think it will tell us, too, are we giving the right number of administrative reviews, the right information to the staff about what they want, things like that. Jean, just can I ask a question? Are you thinking on a monthly basis that would be sufficient? On a monthly or whenever they do an administrator review, they just come back next time and say, oh, we did the administrator review on, you know, so if nothing's happened for three months, they don't come back for three months. But whenever there's an administrative review completed, they come to us and say, here's what it is and here's what we did. I think that really closes the loop that we need to have closed. On 1500 Mass Ave, we did not authorize administrative review. I read the decision. We didn't authorize administrative review for that. And I said in my email to Claire, I was interested in understanding what the authority was to make those changes. And I don't think anybody has the authority to allow five compact spaces under the rules and no regular sized spaces if I read the bylaw correctly. So I don't know what to do with that one because it's an outlier. But if we knew that administrative review had happened, we might have been able to say, wait a second, you know, what was this about? We didn't authorize administrative review for that particular thing on those particular issues. So I think getting feedback even, you know, or coming to us and say you didn't do administrative give, but this has come up with you now, you know. Yeah, I think in that case, and I'm not trying to like justify anything, but I do think in that case, like the first thing under our general conditions is that any substantive differences or any changes need to come back to the board. And so that would be like my recommendation going forward, if somebody came to us and said, oh, we need to change parking to this degree, then it would have to come back to the board to reopen the hearing. That didn't happen. And I guess, you know, according to Mrs. Seltzer, who sent me a bunch of stuff, there was also some other differences, but I won't get into those. Yeah, so I mean, that's why I raised it and what he sort of sent to me afterward just raised that other issue about areas where we have not delegated administrative review. So that's where I was on that. I kind of interpret this a little differently. I think prior to Rachel, we used to do a lot more amid a sort of follow-up to not review or decision, but just follow-up. And you mentioned that, I think you guys have been doing a great job on that because you can't follow the thread of the thing all the way through. You just give a direction and say, okay, we gave the intent we want just to head toward and they can come back to submit a design or a revision based on what we noted and we leave it up for them to follow through with our decisions. And I think that's been happening well. I don't know, seven years, eight years. I've been on this committee. We've done that and I thought that whenever we left stuff up for administrative review or follow-up to not review again, then the follow-up has been good. I am never objected to anything to say, but we didn't mean this. How did this get through here? What you're saying is totally different from what I'm saying. We never approved this and they built it. That's not administrative review to me. No, no, I'm saying two things. One thing is, I'm not disagreeing with you that the staff has generally done a really nice job with administrative review. What I'm saying is there needs to be a feedback loop so we understand. We asked them to do administrative review of deciding on a building and three months later they said, we did it and here's what's and here's what the end result of that was. So just that it closes the loop and on this one, yes, we didn't authorize administrative review. So it's maybe it may be that's a bad example because I don't think we ever said we don't like this material in this building here. Once you guys work it out and administratively decide upon it. We sort of did that. Did we do that? Typically, we tell them like, oh, we should look at Ethis or we should look at Well, right, you look at X, Y and Z. Yes, and precedence. Yes, and then they follow through on it so there's no, you figure it out. No, right. And if they can't figure it out or something that they don't want to do, they come back to us, I agree with it, they should come back to us. But in general, I don't think that, yeah. Maybe I'm big misunderstood. I'm not asking for the applicant to come back. I'm just asking for the staff to come back and say which I agree with. I think it would be great, you know, to close the loop and say this. Yeah, like today I approved a bracket sign for 37 Broadway. So they'll take down that. There you go. But now we know. Yeah. And we don't have to discuss it. No, but what about the right update? But what you bring up is concerning to me. Where? This one. The wall is different from the chair that we approved. Is that true? I don't know. Is it true? I don't know. I don't think so. So that 455 to 457 Mass Avenue to 14 Medford, that development there, that kind of brings up a different situation where the board approved something and then has to go to the historical commission. And so that's potentially a slightly different discussion about like what happens if the historical commission requires something that's different what the board did. But I think what has happened with that building is that there was board and baton on the ground floor of one facade. And that's remaining, but they're not introducing it elsewhere because the board had said in the decision that nor board and baton. Yeah. I mean, one thing I, you know, to that particular case where there is a subsequent review by a different body after we've granted a permit, I would really prefer not to put the applicant in a review loop. I don't think that does anyone in these services. I agree with you. But if the historical commission said, oh, no, you need to go back to board and baton, I wouldn't want that person to be in the loop. We want to know. We want to know and we might want to say we want to say we need to have a discussion with the historical commission. Yeah, that's a historical commission discussion. I mean, we different boards have different jurisdictions and, you know, in that, in that case, I think I would be inclined to defer to historical or at least know that we need to understand where we may have a difference of opinion so that we could have a discussion perhaps outside of that particular hearing. Absolutely. So that we can be better aligned going forward so that we're not giving them mixed messages. Rowing in the same direction is good. Right. You're right. That feedback loop will help us know where we need to then find and create alignment ahead of time. But the burden is not on the applicant. Correct. Okay. I'm just don't want to burn. No, it's the burden is not in the it's about us understanding how we can better be in alignment in the future by hearing what occurs once it leaves this space but before it's fully constructed. I mean, I do drive around afterwards and look at projects that we've approved in the past and see if, you know, what we accurate on some of our decisions where we work, how are the materials lasting? Is it being used? You know, I'll give you one example that I strongly against and I almost didn't approve it, which is that daycare center on Broadway because I felt strongly there was not enough room for drop off the kids drop off and it would create a cluster of traffic congestion there and drop off and pick up. And I was wrong. I omitted. I drive by there all the time and they manage well and what they have allocated was adequate. So I mean, I do follow. That's great. You know, I mean, you know, so the other thing that I think I'd like to think about is is there are times when we ask the staff to do administrative review just because the applicants haven't submitted things that they really should have submitted along with the application like the lead checklist, the lead checklist, TDM. And I think part of it is the staff. And I think you do this a lot saying you need to do this. But then when they come without it, I think there's some point where we should say you have to come back with it. You were given the opportunity and you didn't do it. I will say so as part of this side project where I'm updating the whole application, that's where it's going to be much more clear. I mean, I think right now the checklist is part of the application doesn't include a lead checklist. It doesn't include anything about it, transportation, demand management plan, the table of dimensional requirements, doesn't include anything about bicycle parking. So those kind of things are hopefully in the next few weeks going to be updated in the application, which will hopefully clarify as well. Like you have to submit all of these things and it makes it much easier for us to check things out. Even how they figured out the dimensional things and how they figured out the gross floor area. None of that's there. And it's hard and they don't always get it right and they're not always consistent. We're removing the requirement for a model, right? And putting a sketch up. Okay, good. We're just updating that. Can you show the draft? I will do that. Yeah, that was my intent. I think, ideally, if I can get that to you for the hearing on the 27th, just so you can take a look. And I definitely invite any comments on that because, you know, you go through each of these. Some of you have been on this board longer than I've been with the town. So, yeah, just to understand that. Great. Anything else on administrative approval? So, are we going to create this feedback loop? So whenever there's administrative approval, it will just be on the next agenda that has happened. That would be great. Great. Okay. Sounds great. Great. Thank you. We don't have to vote on that, do we? Next is Business Districts Lot Size and FAR. Kelly, I'll turn it back over to you. So this was just following up on a question that came up at a previous hearing, which is the question was really regarding mixed use and whether there's in the table of dimensional uses, it says mixed use and then there's the greater than 20,000 square feet and there was some vagary about whether that was regarding the lot size or the gross floor area of a proposal. I provided that memo as part of the agenda, just clarifying historically, it had always been connected to lot size. Even before mixed use, there were I think in the B5 district, there's something about commercial development and it's really any other building and it's in the prior iteration of the zoning by-law, it was attached to the square footage. I think there are certain clarifications that could be made to the zoning by-law to make sure that the language is consistent and it's very clear that it's regarding the parcel size and not the proposal or the gross floor area of a proposal, but I think it was pretty clear in prior versions of the zoning by-law that it's related to the parcel size. Yeah, I thought that was great research. Thank you because I was the one who raised it and I was going to suggest that we go to a special town meeting in the fall with some clarifications to make it clear to anybody who looks at that exactly what it is and then the one thing which you highlighted which I had seen, you know, that those get fixed and we go to town meeting with. That is something that I'm checking with council to see if it's something that even has to go to town meeting. It may be something that could be approved or there are certain things that we can amend administratively without having to go to town meeting in the attorney general and all that. So clarifying that and I'll report back to let you know if we're able to make that change. Right, yeah that was very helpful. And by the way I looked back as far as I could look and you might have more history than me to try to find out whether the step backs were related to the lot line or to the building wall and I came up with there was nothing that indicated one way or the other. You can look at bylaws from some other towns that are also silent but you can also see bylaws from other cities and towns that are pretty specific as to whether it's the building line or the lot line and ours seems to have been silent forever. So we're still going to agree to disagree on this one? Well we're going to amend it. We're going to amend it in the fall. Yes. To which? To what you folks want. Thank you. And I'll vote against it. Move forward. Or I won't say. At least it'll be consistent. Yes at least it will be in the bylaw and anybody can read it and understand it. And with regard to the like the mixed use I also did a little bit of research on this and found the hearing draft where the language was introduced as you know with change tracking. The I do remember there being a lot going on at that when the recodification was being passed so yeah it's worth tightening. It's worth clarifying. I will also add that I did some research into lot sizes for the B3 and B5 and particularly in the B5 I think there's one. There's actually not many parcels that are larger than 20,000 square feet so it may be worth as a point of clarification in a future bylaw amendment just to eliminate that. Well I'm sorry. It just adds maybe potentially unnecessary complexity to the zoning. I was thinking of B5 in the 40 and 80,000 and there's one greater than 80,000 but nothing between 40 and 80. Right. It's helpful to have that requirement. Just kidding. Anything else under the lot size and FAR? Great. Thanks for all that research. All right we'll move on to the next agenda item which is reviewing the meeting minutes and we'll start with November right? No time right? That we've we'll start with November 7th and I know that there were several revisions submitted prior to this meeting so are there any questions on the revisions? I know that Kelly sent these out earlier. Sure. Are there any additional revisions for the November 7th meeting minutes starting with Ken? No. Gene? No just a quick thank you for Kelly to sending them all out so we didn't have to wonder whether they're on the website so thank you so much. Steve, anything additional? What's good? Okay. Is there a motion to approve the November 7th 2022 meeting minutes as amended? So moved. Second. Great. We'll take a vote starting with Steve? Yes. Gene? Yes. Ken? Yes. And yes as well. Those are approved. Next we'll go to November 21st 2022 and again these were submitted or excuse me revisions were already submitted. Ken, did you have anything additional? No but it's the next one. Okay. Gene? No. Steve? Nothing here. All right. Is there a motion to approve the November 22nd 2022 meeting minutes as amended? So moved. Second. Second. All right. Starting we'll take a vote starting with Steve? Yes. Gene? Yes. Ken? Yes. And yes as well. Those meeting minutes are approved. Next up is December 5th 2022. Several corrections were already submitted. Ken, do you have anything additional? Yes. On page 25, 24, 25. What? We're here. I don't know where that is. Oh is that on the entire? Does it say welder rights? Yes. Can you scroll up to see what you mean if I drive? Drive please. I don't know what welder heights is. Oh that's on the 19th. Okay. That's the next one. I'm on the wrong one? Yeah. We'll get to that and then in the next. We're on the fifth right now. Oh okay. Sorry. Yeah that's okay. I have no. Okay. Gene any additional? None. Steve? Nothing here. All right. Is there a vote to approve the December 5th 2022 meeting minutes as amended? So moved. Second. Second. We'll take a vote starting with Steve? Yes. Gene? Yes. Ken? Yes. And yes as well. Those have been approved. We'll now go to the December 19th 2022 meeting minutes and back to you Ken. Yes on that second to last page, welder? Yeah I don't know what that means here. I'm going to guess okay. I think it was ballard. Ballard lights or something like that yes because they had wall lights on building. And the next later in that actually it's I think on the next page it talks about change the wall packs to ballards. Yeah first bullet point. Yes okay so ballards from welder amended. Yep. Okay great. Anything else Gene? None. Steve? Nothing. I don't have anything else. Is there a motion to approve the December 19th 2022 meeting minutes as amended? So moved. Second. Second. We'll take a vote starting with Steve? Yes. Gene? Yes. Ken? Yes. And yes as well. Those meeting minutes have been approved. We'll go to our next agenda item which is open forum seeing nobody here with us this evening unless you have something you would like to say. Okay. You're okay. Fantastic. We will close agenda item number five open forum and then we'll move to new business. Kelly did you have anything for new business? Just to report that we had our first meeting of the BTA community's working group. We did submit our action plan in time and we'll probably be meeting again in about two weeks so I'm working on scheduling that meeting so we can do a visioning session and really get running. Very exciting. Very good meeting. Oh thanks. Steve you work in that meeting as well? Yes. Great. Fantastic. Thank you for representing the board in the meeting and for pulling all of that together Kelly. Well that was a lot of work Kelly thank you. No you guys are great. It's a very good group and I'll be excited too. I'm really looking forward to working with them. If I can add I think we have we have pretty diverse representation on that group. We have some people who are working in affordable housing. We have a number of architects yeah architects and planners and then people who do a lot of work with you know reaching out to the community so I think it's and it's a lot of people who don't serve on other boards and commissions so it's really nice to get to see some new faces get some new voices and um also maybe uh like a more diverse age range than we normally see on other committees too so it's it's it's an exciting group to be a part of. Fantastic. I'm on the old side June. Can you send us the plan that you submitted to the state? Yes I will. Yep. Thanks. Great. You said there's four of us that can't meet or is it three? Well it's so a quorum there are eight resident members that includes you and I. I'm assuming that a quorum would be four so um no more than so if it's you know like a subgroup meeting I believe it would have to be three or fewer. Okay I kind of look confused on that one there. I had a conversation with Claire some weeks ago about how often there would be report backs to us about what was happening and what the committee was working on and I suggested whenever there were key decisions that are going to be made so I think it'd be helpful to think about you know doing report backs to this larger board on a pretty regular basis so we're not blindsided by what's going on. I will say I think um by the meeting on February 27 we may have an idea of when another outreach event or community meeting will be happening so we'll be able to and we'll have had their second meeting of the working group at that point so we'll be able to provide another upgrade an upgrade sorry update at that point. Great. Excellent. Can I add one more? Yes um just following what June said I thought if we're a little slow on some of these meetings maybe we can put back in on agenda uh all the other board members all all the boards we sit on just report back just uh update of what you know. Sure more. I can report back on the CPA what we're doing there. That'd be great. And whatever else all the boards are. Sure. That sounds good. All the other board committees I'm on haven't met in months so. Then that's another thing that's good or bad I don't know. I don't know. Mine was just banded so. Okay. If I can add one other thing um when we did the solo bylaw we decided to take out what was going to go into the um into the um application and put it in the rules and regs instead. Yes we have to update the rules and regs. Yeah so we have to do the hearing and that yeah and that the information obviously is should go in the application too but I can't think of any other updates to the rules and regs but we should think of the range. I don't think so I'm gonna look back because I think there was one historically that Jenny had mentioned and I just want to I think it may have been about um waiting fees. Oh we didn't we didn't do that I thought we could. No I don't think we've amended anything I know there was a question about like establishing a rule about requirements for waiting fees or under what conditions we would do that um so I need to go back and figure out what that is before I can present anything official. Um two other quick updates so on the on the meeting on the 27th um right now 190 to 200 mass app is scheduled to come back so long as they provide us with revised materials in time um and then I think we can talk more about like a schedule for we'll put in the vote for special time being in the fall and then we can talk a little bit more about like a more specific schedule for for communicating with the public and other boards and committees um so just that for that meeting and then I'll also be able to share with you um I'm just thinking about like the hearings in advance of town meetings so if possible because 99 mass app is on the 6th and those other items should be pretty brief I think we can look at reducing some of the meetings the other meetings that are planned for March um and yeah I would love to um I love you all but you know we don't need to meet every week no it's okay um so then thinking about like just trying to get all of those other discussions in on the 6th um and then keeping maybe one other meeting in March but at this point I don't have we don't have any other applicants um going forward great um and then finally just a heads up that on March 1 um Talia Fox who's our sustainability manager is working with the Clean Energy Future Committee on a bylaw amendment for adopting the stretch the specialized stretch energy code um there's going to be a public meeting um on March 1 in the evening we're presenting details about the stretch energy code and what it means and what they put you know it's a lot of a lot of it's like a listening session or Q&A we're trying to reach out to town meeting members to educate them we're having a separate developer builder meeting um in February so we can talk to the community the development community about the specialized stretch energy code and both explain that and the stretch energy code we're just kind of our baseline because we are a stretch energy code community um but by the first we'll have a little bit more of an understanding and perspective of what that means for the building like people who work in building and development and then we'll be able to bring that back to the community but if you are interested in attending or is interested in the stretch the specialized stretch energy code or the stretch energy code uh such building code like energy building all of those things um that's going to be talked about on March 1 and my name for that yeah I'd like to go sure one other question because I think it's been about a year since they were last in front of us is the at what house still in limbo with the historic commission or has that development delay officially started and are we at a year do you know so I think there is a conflict between um the historical commission's understanding and interpretation of of demolition delay and the state law so okay first state law you have 60 days to uh the historical commission has 60 days to schedule a hearing yep um if that hearing has not been scheduled then the typical demolition delay process begins yes and at the end of that the owner may demolish the building right whether or not the commission so this is basically to avoid a situation where you would have a taking or regulatory taking because the body refuses to meet to discuss something so um my understanding is that per state law if they have filed for demolition then I believe as of last summer they had may have been eligible for to demolish the property so I'm going to follow up with um since you bring it up I'll follow up with inspector champa okay and see what the status of that is great the hundred percent correct the hundred percent correct yeah the two years ago yeah I have for them to do something with that property that'd be nice bring them back in bring them back in yeah it's still under special permit okay the hotel's gone right uh the last I had heard on the hotel was that um they were having difficulty finding somebody who wanted to purchase a hotel given the market um the special permit lapses after three years i think it's three yep and so we're getting close to that thank you for the update on both you know we we never had a chance to have a discussion with a lot select board about that but the way they went about determining what to do with that piece of town property was not necessarily ideal in my view let's put it that way so I think the purchase do am I right the purchase has not gone through officially do you know Callan I have no idea because if if it's going to revert to the select board to decide what to do about it you'd be nice if we could have some input into that decision okay anything else in your new business I have one item please so over the last couple of months one of the groups I've been working with is um the or one of the things I've been involved with is the town's equity audit um so I've been one of the sort of steering or steering or advisory committee members um I had a we were given a presentation on the findings about two weeks ago and uh they're actually I guess get the select board is getting a presentation tonight it's on their agenda the the reports which I hadn't seen until this weekend are I know this but the purpose the purpose of the exercise was to assess a quality of like access and opportunity in three different areas so there was um civic engagement uh town employment and housing so of the 10 findings two of them related to relate to housing I'll just summarize them I'm not going to do the whole thing justice but the general gist is that you know one of them is that Arlington is a racially segregated community both within itself and with respect to the region as a as a whole and this has a couple of different reasons going back to like our use of restrictive covenants the history of FHA financing rules and also you know our our map to to some extent the other finding was um renters feeling a general lack of support in terms of you know having advocacy having someone to do uh inform them of the rights that sort of thing the couple of the sort of like the short summary of the recommendations in these areas were to establish and hire a housing specialist or housing liaison position to develop a community fund for rental assistance and rental and rental housing improvement programs and also to um some address some of our more restrictive zoning districts thank you for the update mm-hmm anything else on your new business all right uh with that I will see if there's a motion to adjourn so motion second take a vote starting with Steve yes jean yes yes yes as well thank you so much thank you