 The public sidewalk. Correct. At the, at the entrance drives. We have some flow on that slope. Yes. That would flow across the entrance drive, not onto the sidewalk. I believe we're. I think that's page 14 Jenny. I can't see it on those drawings. How. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. What's your. Go, go down. Go down a little bit more, Jenny. If you don't mind. See what a curb cuts are. Your, your, your catch basins is much further in on the. On the site. So there'll be some water that would drain across the public sidewalk. On both your driveway entrances. Yeah, I believe we have a catch basin. There is a catch basin. I guess it would be. Just outside what I'd call the sidewalk area. It would be in the public right of way. There's a side. There's a catch basin right there. That's the public catch basin. Yes, that's correct. Yes. I'm not talking about that. Your water from your parking lot is draining across the sidewalk. I guess it is a possible to flip to the grading and drainage plan. The C 401 plan. Well, I don't want to get too caught up in this one thing. Okay. I just wanted to bring that up and make sure you, when you talk to the town engineer. That you guys, he's comfortable with what you guys are doing there, because I don't believe you can drop. You can drain across. The drain off your property onto the sidewalk. Yeah, essentially like, like Tom was saying at that driveway, if there's a catch basin out in the right of way, and there's a very small amount from that ridge line. That is draining over that sidewalk. It's basically what, what exists today. And we're just kind of maintaining that similar condition. If you get this approval, I'll be fine with that. Okay. Great. And I think in that location, we could look at doing some small trench drain there. I don't know. What would be involved, but it's very difficult to regrade that area, but we could explore that. I think putting a trench rain there and then diverting that little water onto your, your garden there with a. You know, into some sort of a drywall over there. That would be fine to catch. And then, you know, that'd be enough of an attempt to. You know, mitigate the water crossing the sidewalk. But to go back to the earlier. Earlier comment. You know, let's, let's see what, let's see what my other board members feel about. The feel of how this bank sort of sits. Like, you know, more of a suburban bank, not really. In the town center type deal, you know, I just, I just don't see it that way right now. Sure. We'll certainly address that. And that's all head for now. Great. Move to Jean next. Thank you. I'll come back to King's comment there a couple of minutes. First, I wanted to sort of acknowledge that you did make some changes that we had requested when that is good. One of the questions I have relates now to, you've removed a few of the parking spaces, which is good. One of the issues that we had previously was that because of the way the parking lot was configured. We had an opportunity to look at the parking lot. In fact, I just wanted to make sure that we had the appropriate meeting the 15 foot buffer. To the residential properties and back. And I couldn't determine. From the plans. And I don't know if Jenn, you're Eren, whether you had an opportunity. To look at this or not. Whether they now meet the requirement for the 15. for the 15 foot buffering back? I think we met it before. I believe there's an exception allowed if you have fencing and screening in there, which there is exist today, both fence landscape screening as well as retaining walls in the rear, which I believe allows for a reduction in that buffer to half. So I think we may have complied even before removing it, but we in looking at what parking spaces to remove, we took that into consideration in specifically targeting these three spaces, which are probably the closest to our rarer butters. So we chose those two, be the ones to be removed. So the rules say that a solid wall or solid wooden fence, five to six feet high and high complimented by suitable plantings may be substituted for one half the required width of the buffer strip but still requires the setback. So I don't know if Jenny or Erin had a chance to look at that and see if this meets that provision or not. Erin, one time. Yep, so it does that the requirement is 15 feet and with the allowance to have it, it would be seven and a half feet. There is 10 feet between the property line and the parking lot or at least this dry vial. Sorry, I'm moving my mouse on my screen, like you guys can see it, I'm not the Zoom host, but where Jenny's mouse is. Additionally, the actual parking spaces are further away and by removing those parking spaces that were you're looking at the plan and the top left hand side, which were the ones that were infringing on this, the buffer requirement. So I couldn't tell with whether they do make the requirement to have a solid wall or a solid wooden fence, five to six feet in height. I couldn't tell whether this meets the requirement or not. Does anybody know? Perhaps Tom or Randy can explain how tall that retaining wall is. Yeah, there's at the rear of the site, if we go to the grading plan, you could see, but there's two retaining walls out there at least that are approximately four feet in height each, kind of terraced with existing trees and shrubs. And then on the top of the highest retaining wall up at the rarer butters elevation, there is a six foot fence that I believe has some type of screening and shrubbery as well. Okay, thank you. Our butter in the rear could be as high as 15 to 20 feet above us. Okay, okay, thanks. Second point, we had asked you to take a look at the potential of putting a solar array on the roof and the information that we received was that you were going to explain to us tonight why you were not going to do it. As part of our effort and lead effort, we decided not to incorporate solar into the project. We made some progress and effort on some other sustainable items and are focused on those. That didn't quite tell me why you're not doing solar. Citizens chose not to use it here and to explore some other green energy related items potentially as part of the lead effort. Okay, on the lead part, I noticed that you added some extra points but the minimum that you're aiming at won't even get you to certification. And it sort of seems to me a bank building, a brand new building should be certified or even better than certified. And I think if we end up approving this unless you can explain why not, I would suggest to my colleagues that we require that this be certified or better. So you have some requirement to get up to at least what is it, 40 points. So if you wanna speak against that, this would be an opportunity to do so. Yeah, we've went back and looked at it and right now we're at around, went from about 19, I think to 30 definite points that we can get. So where we are in the project is the core shell component of it is very far along as is the site. So we're very comfortable that we can support those 30. There's probably another 10 to 20 out there that potentially we could qualify for as we move forward through the process and coordinate the final tenant fit up design with citizens into this kind of base site plan. So some of them we just can't fully commit to at the moment because the entire inside of the building is not fully developed yet. So, but we think 40 potentially may be achievable. Okay, so let me get to Mr. Lau's point about how the building looks. So at the last meeting, the members of the redevelopment board were very focused on that the building was oriented not toward Massachusetts Avenue. And we had some concerns about how it looked, but after the meeting was over and I was thinking about it, I had pretty similar thoughts to the thoughts that Mr. Lau had and that this looked like something you'd see you know, in a suburban mall or you know, on a suburban highway and not in a town like Arlington. So I have some of those concerns too. I'm not sure quite what to do about them. You know, I wanted to have some conversation with my colleagues at some point about why are we allowing single story buildings on Massachusetts Avenue anymore? That's not, I think, what the vision for the town is for how the town should be developing and what the look can be in the business districts. On the other hand, you know, it is a single family, a single story building that's being demolished. So it's not like you're making it worse in that regard. So I had some of the same thoughts that Mr. Lau did about the design, but I'm also interested to hear with my colleagues on the board side because I certainly think you've improved it quite a bit from the previous time we took a look at it. That's what I've got for now, Rachel. Thanks, Jean. I'll actually jump in, David. If you don't mind quickly, just while we're on the topic of aesthetics and the context of the street and hopefully give you a little bit more feedback at least from my perspective that's specific. So Jenny, if you could go to the elevation that's facing Mass Ave rather than the parking lot elevation. I think to me, you know, I do appreciate that first of all, you've made this building accessible where it's not current currently. I do appreciate that and the work that you've done on the site. And I also appreciate the fact that we're now entering off of Massachusetts Avenue. I also like the fact that there is now a change in elevation as you move across the building. So there's a definite, you know, there's a change in topography to the building itself as you look at the facade. I think the challenge here is that the flat ethos that we're looking at is certainly part of it. So the stucco and then the, it looks like you have, you know, a little bit of articulation in the stucco in that, in that left bay. I would certainly prefer to see clapboard, you know, replacing a brick building that is much more in the character of the business district of Arlington Heights and what we see along the Mass Ave business quarters in Arlington. So I think if you were to take a look at the materiality of the building itself, in terms of looking at elements of brick, stone, and clapboard, you certainly would go a lot further towards contextually bringing this into the rest of the business district than what we have shown currently. And I would say that at a minimum, I would look at that for the Mass Ave facade as well as the secondary facade facing the parking lot. I think the tertiary facades, you know, we certainly could look at a different building material, but at a minimum, I would take a look at the Mass Ave and parking lot facing facades. But I'll turn it over to David for any other comments. I'm in agreement with my colleagues. I don't have any additional comments to make on the aesthetics. I do very much appreciate that you have reoriented the entrance and that you've been responsive to our previous comments, but it still doesn't really feel like it fits into the existing Arlington Heights business district and it's walkable pedestrian friendly nature. Beyond that, I will echo Mr. Benson's comments that I'm disappointed that you haven't gone further with the lead checklist. And I think given that the town is very strongly moving to solarize its own buildings and that we have a very strong cultural sustainability here in Arlington that I think citizens would be a better neighbor to us if they were more on board with a highly sustainable new building. The only other question I had, I did see in the floor plan where the indoor bike parking is intended to go and I wasn't 100% clear how that would be accessed. It appears someone would wheel a bike through the front door and through the lobby and then into the rear hallway, is that correct? That is correct. Okay. It seems like there's more than enough room back there to properly site a bike rack that could potentially hold two bikes, which would be good. And I think I'm okay with that as long as it's compliant with the town's bike parking guidelines in its actual implementation. Great, thank you, David. And it was like, do you not believe that you were on the board when this was first before us? Correct me if I'm mistaken. You're right. So I probably don't get a chance to vote on this and let me turn the screen on, but. We'll, I'll respect the move past. No, I know I want to keep things clear and moving forward but I do have a couple of questions, Rachel, just in terms of this project, just to get up to speed, I'm assuming the drive-through is that grandfathered under the current zoning? Are you allowed to do a drive-through? Yes, we have a, I believe it's a 1978 special permit under which this building was built, which allows for a drive-through and it's operated as a bank since then with the drive-through. And the special permit, is it has to be renewed every year or how does that special permit work? I believe that special permit is still in existence. In existence, yep. Okay, yeah, I mean, I think, you know, in terms of access from the front, I do worry that just, you know, the pocket park in the back is going to get lost and underutilized. And so I'm not gonna chime in on much more, but I think, you know, thinking about how we look at the big picture on this will be important going forward. Great, thank you so much, Melissa. Any other questions for the applicant or before I open this up for public comments? Okay, so I'm just gonna make sure I can see Ken. All right, seeing none, I will open this up for public comment. Before I do, I will just note for the record that we do need to begin Agenda Item Number Three, which is the public, the zoning warrant article public hearings. So I will be cutting off any public comments if it's not complete already by 6.55 so that we have a chance to review and deliberate on the next steps for this particular article. So that being said, I will invite any member of the public wishing to speak on this topic to please use the raise hands function in Zoom. Please note that you will have three minutes to speak. Please state your name and address, both your first and last name, as well as your address for the record. And we will open public comment with Colleen Cunningham. Hi, this is Stuart Borson. Colleen is my wife and we're sharing this computer. And 73 Kensington Park is the address. Thank you. So I just wanted to say thank you to Mr. Lau and Mr. Benson for raising the issues that they get. I completely agree with Kim Lau's assessment of this building, it really looks like it's a suburban building and it doesn't belong in an urban neighborhood. Arlington is not in Manhattan, but it's still particularly in the Heights, it's urban enough that it's walkable. So I would urge the architects to look in whatever plan both you're pulling these plans from and look in the chapter labeled urban plans, please, instead of suburban plans, that would help a lot. So that's the big picture comment. And then the small picture, the small detail which is sort of a nitpick, but I think it's important and applies exactly what the problem is here is that if you look at your site plan, the incoming driveway where cars come in from the street, it's oriented at a diagonal to the sidewalk which does nothing more than encourage drivers to gun their engines and go shooting into the parking lot to the endangerment of people that are walking on the sidewalk there. And I would strongly recommend that you do some traffic calming or at least think about traffic calming is being a part of your design and making that, you know, assume you keep a driveway and don't go to an urban design that you at least have a perpendicular driveway to discourage drivers from just gunning the engine and running over people on the sidewalk. Thank you. And I do wanna acknowledge by the way that we did watch this presentation last time and I wanna acknowledge that yes, you moved the entrance around and that's a step in the right direction but there's still some ways to go here before this is a building that belongs in the heights in a walkable sort of quasi-urban area. Thank you. Thank you. Are there any other members of the public who wish to make comments on this particular article? Okay, seeing no handphrase, I will close public comment and I will open it back up to the members of the board for any additional questions or discussion on this docket number. Ken? Yeah, I agree with you, Rachel. I think changing sound and materials to something that's a little more contextual is it would be a good start. It would be a recommendation from us. I like the fact that you moved the door over and you started to break up the massing by changing the ethos pattern on that far left corner as you face mass have, but I think you gotta do a little bit more. I'm not sure your canopy that's right there maybe you can extend that over more. What still looks like the side of a building to me is the two windows with the awnings above it. Those two things there just don't seem right right now. I don't know what the other board members think, but to me that looks like the side of a building. You gotta get it looking more like a front and the doors are a good start. I even like the railing you got up top there or so it looks like a Juliet almost up top, but those two windows doesn't look like a front. You either put them closer together so they look bigger or making bigger. I don't know or can it be across or something? I'm just saying just make this look more like a front and a little more contextual to what's there. Thank you Ken. David, Jean, Melissa, any additional comments? I think I'll just sort of add a little bit more about the LEED certification and the solar, the towns. Energy Future Committing just completed its net zero plan for the town. And I think this building doesn't get there. And unless the applicant can come back with some much better reasons on why they can't do certification, LEED, maybe even silver or better plus why they won't put solar on the roof. I'm inclined not to support this at the moment but they'll have another opportunity to make their case. Jean, I just want to address that really, really briefly. I have to say that I think where they are in the development, I certainly do understand not necessarily wanting to put a stake in the ground in terms of where they are from the potential exact number of HVAC points, which is where a lot of the movement towards the higher level of certification that you're looking could come in. However, I do believe that it is possible to estimate that based on the existing building systems if you have an engineer already in place. So I think coming back with a better estimate of what you believe you can move into that column in terms of both without specifically specifying your materials and your final design of your HVAC system being able to come back with a better estimate would go a long way. Thank you for the addition, Rachel. I appreciate it. Please, go ahead, Tom. Yes, just two points I'd like to make one on lead. In the narrative that we added and provided, you'll see we explained the ones that were very confident that we're qualifying for and have no issue with those. We also did lay out the categories that we think potentially that we could comply with and we explained briefly what those were and potentially how many points each one of those could be. So that is contained in the narrative and there are in excess of 20 potential points in there that we could achieve and that is in the narrative. Right, understood. And I kind of think that that would demonstrate that it's definitely achievable that we could get north of 40 points and be in that certified category. Thank you, that certainly is your narrative. And again, what I had mentioned before, the fact that you have done the work to identify what could be achievable certainly satisfies me. Jean, if there's something more specific that you're looking for, I think I'd wanna make sure that that is articulated because again, I feel comfortable with where they are in terms of having documented what they've committed to and what is still in play. Yeah, I mean, I agree completely and maybe I wasn't clear. I think if I were to vote for this, it would be a requirement that whatever they built be at least lead certified. It's not better. You're not, are you specifically asking for them to go through the certification process? No, just have the point. It is certifiable. Certifiable, thank you. Thank you for the clarification. Yeah. David, any final questions from Melissa before we... So I think now that we have a proposed floor plan and we can see how the windows relate to the interior of the building, those two small windows in the center of the facade are looking into what are labeled as small meeting rooms. And it seems like maybe there's an opportunity to open that section of the facade up a little bit more so that it looks more like the storefronts on the other buildings along that block. Great. I may want more general comment in terms of the basis of the design when we started was the buildings directly adjacent to us on Mass Ave to the left. We use that as kind of a design basis in terms of some of the materials, textures to be used on the facade of this building to make it fit with the two buildings that are directly adjacent to this, to the left. So I think in that context, this building is similar in fits and picks up and plays on some of the elements and the stucco and the canopies that are used on Mass Ave today in those two adjacent buildings. So I'll specifically respond to that. I think one of the two that you referred to is certainly not a building that you should be referencing at all with regard to the appropriate design for Arlington Heights. And the other one, although it does have stucco also has a significant amount of brick in the design of the facade and a significant amount of storefront system in that as well. Kim? Tom, a suggestion that I might have is when you show the elevations of a building in the next door around, could you use short elevations of the adjacent buildings? So we see scale of a portion of what you're proposing and what's there. It might be easier for us to understand what you're trying to do. Cause right now we're just looking at your building and sort of each one has their own memory of what that what that area is. But if you actually have an elevation along Mass Ave it may help us look between the two. Yeah, we're kind of in a transitional area where we sit or where the building sits today in that to the left is retail strip center, flat roof, storefronts on the street, two buildings that way directly across the street. We have more of a New England architectural facility in the assisted living facility. And then as you head in the other direction on Mass Ave we've got a fairly decent screen both grade and some trees and stuff before we get to I believe it's a two family home that sits similar to this property in that it's two or three feet above the sidewalk. They have a stone wall right at back of sidewalk there and that house sits up in that location. Great, thank you. I'm going to need to bring the discussion to a close so that we can move into our next agenda item. So let's see, it looks like we I think we can agree that there is some work to be done on the facade. So I'll turn to my fellow board members here in terms of looking to continue the hearing to come back with a facade that more appropriately sits into the context of the neighborhood. Let's see, Ken, the other comment I have from you here which is two other ones. One is to look at the coloring of the EPDM which is a minor item and then the drainage up off the site to look at incorporating a trench drain at the property line and is there anything else that I missed from Gene, David or Ken that you would want me to ask them to look into before they return to us? Oh, great, so. If I may, I just have one question. Architecturally and we've played obviously with different elements and designs on this building between the last meeting and this one. So if there was anything specific that the board sees that would work, I heard potentially floor to ceiling glass in the two meeting rooms to mirror what we use to the left of the front door and potentially changing some of the EFIS to clapboard. Is that correct in terms of the type of design direction that we should go in? I guess I'm looking for some guidance on. Absolutely, let me summarize that for you. So I'd ask you to look at instead of the stucco to look at more of the materials that you see in the adjacent business center so that could be clapboard, it could be brick, it could be stone. Those are the materials we'd like you to look at instead of the stucco. And for the two windows, the two individual punched openings we'd like for you to look at either combining those through perhaps recessing the facade in the windows into a single bay with an awning over top of those as a single element or perhaps look at a storefront glazing and again, it does not have to be Florida ceiling but it should potentially look like storefront glazing. Basically we're looking for that to read as a bay either through an awning that connects that entire section together or through the use of storefront glazing. Okay, and awning was acceptable on those windows? Yes, per what Kin had suggested and I agree if you tie it together with a single awning as opposed to individual awnings over the punched windows I believe that that would again carry more of the Main Street character that we're looking for. Does that help to clarify? Yes, thank you. You're welcome, let's see. So we would need to, Jenny look to a meeting date to continue this hearing. Yeah, I think it would have to be April 8th. Again, we've now crowded up the 29th which is your next meeting and April 5th I think also has a hearing. Yeah, plus other hearings. So for you April 8th at 7 p.m. which is a Thursday. Well, it'll probably be more like after the other continued hearing. So not at 7 p.m., sorry. Meeting start time, sorry. Tom, would you? Oh, I'm sorry that was directed at me. I'm sorry, yes. Yes, that's good, that's fine. Okay, great. And we'll resubmit obviously prior to then the appropriate date with the architectural materials. Great, we'll be in touch with you, Tom. Thank you. Great, thank you. Do I hear a motion to continue the hearing to April 8th? So motioned. A second? Second. Great, I'll take a roll call vote. Ken? Yes. David? Yes. Jean? Yes. And I am a yes as well. Thank you very much. So let's see, we're getting up on seven o'clock. Jenny, am I, let's see I'm just looking at my agenda here. Is it possible to move 23 Maple Street after agenda items three before agenda item four? If possible, I would prefer to take five to get this one finalized if it's possible, given the timeline. And I also have neighbors who are here right now present. So let's take five minutes. We will, we will stop at seven o'clock five so that we can start the zoning more article public hearings as close to the start time that was published as possible. Do you have anything? So we'll move into agenda item number two, which is 23 Maple Street, the memorandum of understanding. Jenny, do you want to say a few words on this? Just to note that we, instead of our typical rental agreement, we've chosen to do an MOU, it's really among various town departments and the Airbnb. And it essentially allows a number of individuals to be able to work in the building from departments that will be displaced during the renovation of the DPW campus buildings. And it will also allow us to set the hours of when they're going to work there and also have clarity on where they're going to be parking and makes it clear how we want them to conduct business in the building while they're there at the facility. So I've also talked with the neighbors about this who provided some feedback with regard to this agreement and the terms. And I think that the primary issue that we will need to follow up on separately that really does not belong in the MOU is with regard to just in general parking that occurs on Maple Street as a result of various town business, not really just 23 Maple Street, but all different kinds of town business, whether it's employees or visitors who are interested in conducting business who are essentially parking all over Maple and probably Academy Street as well. But on Maple Street, there's not very adequate signage. And I think addressing that issue and then also making it clear that we don't want cars idling on Maple Street is something that I will follow up on separately, which does not belong in the MOU. So that's all that I wanted to say about it. And what I need is really just authorization for Rachel to be able to execute this so that we can move forward because we need to move them from their current facility by April 1st. Great, thank you, Jenny. So I will run through the list of board members to see if there are any concerns with the MOU starting with Ken. Just a quick question, Jenny. How much renovation or if any will be done for this to the building? We have to do some ADA updates to the first floor so that the rear entrance is a little bit more accessible. We have to change the back door. We have to install some updated lighting. We are going to be replacing some windows as well. And then there's a lot of just internal updates and cleaning up after a long time tenant has left. But all of that is being worked with facilities, through facilities. So at this point, these are all factors that are incorporated into a maintenance budget that we maintain for this property. Okay, so it's coming from a maintenance budget. Yes. And facilities is handling the actual repair or modifications. Yes, either. We almost always do things internally or when needed, sub it out. And it's all the contracts are maintained by the facilities department. Okay, we have no other questions. Thank you. Great, thank you Ken, Jean. Yes, thanks. Yeah, I think, I mean, I think it's fine with one question I have on page two, number D. You know, you're back one page, you've gone too far, page two, number D. I was looking at- I mean, that's sorry. There you go. Okay, there we go. That's it, that's it. I was looking at the town bylaws today on idling restrictions and I couldn't find any in the town bylaws. Yeah, there aren't any. Yeah, so I was thinking that this should be applicable, noise ordinance and idling restrictions contained in the town of Arlington bylaws and in the state of Massachusetts laws and regulations cause the state of mass laws and regulations contain both noise and Commonwealth of Massachusetts idling restrictions. So that, now I think you just need to say Commonwealth of Massachusetts laws and regulations. And that would do it. Great, thank you, Jean. Thank you. David? I don't have any comments. I believe this is responsive to the concerns the neighbors have previously expressed but I'm sure if they have additional concerns they will tell us. Great, thank you, Melissa. No further questions, Rachel. Great, thank you, Melissa. Jenny, did you mention that we have a few neighbors here who wish to speak? They do, we have Schell. I don't know if he wants to speak. He's not off on camera right now, but he is present. Why don't I do this? If we have any neighbors present who wish to speak regarding the MOU I would ask that you please use the raise hand function now. If not, we will move to a vote to authorize execution. Great, I do not see any hands raised. So we will close public comments. And I will ask the board if there is anyone who would like to make a motion to execute the 23 Maple Street memorandum of understanding. So moved. Is there a second? Second. Great, I'll take a roll call vote. Ken? Yes. David? Yes. Jean? Yes. Yes. And I am yes as well. Thank you, Jenny. So that will close agenda item number two and we will now move into agenda item number three, which is to open the continued public hearings for the warrant articles related to the zoning bylaws for spring town meeting. So we are holding our second of four nights of hearings as published in the schedule on Novus agenda for a total of 22 warrant articles. Consistent with the past, the ARB will be hearing from the article applicants and public wishing to speak on each of these articles as scheduled. Applicants will have three minutes to address the board. The board will then pose any questions to the applicants followed by a period for open public comment. Note that the board will reserve final discussion and voting on each article until the last night of the hearings which is on April 5th. So before we begin, let me run through the procedures for any person who wishes to speak at the public hearings. So the scope of this public hearing is as posted on the agenda. Any person wishing to address the ARB on the subject matter of the agenda item shall signify their desire to speak by raising their hand when the chair announces consideration of each item. To raise your hand and zoom on your computer, go to the participants button and suggest raise hand or on your phone, press star six to unmute yourself. After being recognized to speak by the chair, such persons will preface their comments by first giving their first and last name in their street address. Each person addressing the board on the subject matter of the agenda item shall limit their remarks to three minutes. If time allows, you may be allowed to speak more than once at the discretion of the chair. If you have a new and different point to make or a question to ask on the topic. The board may receive any oral or written evidence, but such evidence is restricted to the subject matter on the agenda item. Immaterial or unduly repetitious evidence may be excluded. People presenting at the public hearing are requested not to applaud or otherwise express approval or disapproval of any statements made or action taken at the hearing. Hearing participants shall refrain from interrupting other speakers and conduct themselves in a civil and courteous manner. During your public comments, we ask that you conduct yourself with a civil and courteous manner and ask constructive questions or comments. Speakers should address questions through the chair. Speakers should not attempt to engage in debate or dialogue with the ARB members or other hearing participants. Questions may or may not be answered during the public hearing. All right, so before we begin with the first petition of the evening, I'd just like to put into context and highlight a few items that were included in the excellent memo that was prepared by the Department of Planning and Community Development. If you note 17 of the 22 articles that are coming in front of the redevelopment board over our four nights of hearings are related to housing. And in December, during the board's 2021 goal setting, which actually is referenced in the meeting minutes that were also part of this agenda this evening, we committed to creating a public process following the spring's town meeting for discussing and recommending action related to the need for housing diversity. This specifically includes the creation of affordable housing within Arlington together with the intent to update the 2016 housing production plan. Many of the one articles proposals tonight have similar intent, although very significantly in their approach and deserve the opportunity to be reviewed, evaluated and vetted as part of a holistic approach to housing production in Arlington, together with a discussion of density in our town during the planned housing production public process, which will again begin following town meeting. So before we begin, just any other questions or comments from board members on the general topics we're gonna be hearing this evening, okay? Seeing none, we will move to our first article, which is article 45, which is a zoning by law amendment to increase the percentage of affordable housing units. Do we have a speaker for one of the proponents who is prepared to speak this evening? It's like Laura Kiesel. Yep, fantastic. Thank you so much. If you could please introduce yourself and state your address and then please go ahead. Sure, my name is Laura Kiesel. I live at 260 Massachusetts Avenue. So I actually live in Capitol Square Apartments. This is a piece that, this warrant article I co-sponsored with two other renters, Judith Garber and Johnson Balmatsu. I, we're all three of us are renters and I am an affordable housing tenant at the Housing Corporation of Arlington as well as for the past year and a half, I'm a Section 8 voucher holder through the Arlington Housing Authority. So just to clarify what this warrant seeks to do, we are looking to increase the amount of affordable housing and private developments from its current rate of 15% or one out of six units to one out of four units or a quarter. Originally the warrant was authored to suggest a range between a quarter or one out of four or one out of three or a third. But we've settled on a quarter for now because we feel like that is more feasible for passage. So one reason why we wanted to raise the rate is because we are way behind on our affordable housing goals and our need to create more affordable housing in town is very high. Increasing the percentage of affordable housing required in the zoning bylaw is one of the recommendations in Arlington's housing production plan actually. So we're looking to realize that. Next slide please. So again, we chose 25% because we figured that it was more feasible for passage, but we still think that even though it would fall short of the coverage we actually need for affordable housing, I still think it would make us a leader in inclusionary zoning in the Boston Metro area. And just to say what our original motivation and inspiration was Fenway Community Development Corporation along with many other housing activists across the river in Boston who have formed the coalition for a truly affordable Boston. They are pushing back over there for a third or 33% affordable housing and we stand in solidarity with them. And we wanted to work on something similar here in Arlington and do our part. So next slide. All right, I just want to let you know you have just about a minute left. I actually have a reasonable accommodation to speak a little longer. Okay, short, Jenny, sorry. I was told I had five minutes and I asked for reasonable accommodation to be able to speak a couple of minutes longer if I needed to. That's fine, I'm sorry, that wasn't passed on to me. Favorite question, a little more time. It's okay, thank you. Thank you. So right now the state mandate is that all municipalities should reach 10% of its affordable housing. 10% of its stock should be affordable housing. Right now we're at 5.7% to put that into perspective and in the past almost 20 years we have only increased or subsidized housing regulatory by 0.1%. And we're behind almost all of our municipal neighbors including Belmont, Cambridge, Medford, Somerville and Lexington. Next slide. I'm not going to dwell too much on this but this is from the National Low Income Housing Coalition and I actually had a representative from their speak on a housing panel I had the week before last and she spoke about what you would need to make as an hourly wage to be able to afford at fair market rate, a two bedroom apartment in the Boston, Cambridge, Quincy area that is almost $45 an hour. Next slide. And so we have, even though we have over 1,100 deed restricted affordable housing units there are over 5,000 potentially eligible households. The AHA wait list is over 700 people long and the vast majority of those make under 40,000 a year. So next slide. So I want to just pause at this one to talk a little bit about why I think Arlington in particular really should be tasked with raising its affordability earmarks that a lot of people unless you live in affordable housing and if you've had to deal with it don't understand Arlington's area median income is much higher than many others in the Boston metro area. As you can see here, we're $113,000. There was another source that said 109,000 but either way you can see we're much higher than many other of the municipalities including Boston proper. And in addition to making us more exclusionary for other people to move in here our area median income is factored into the formula for fair market rate across the river. So our high median income also makes it too expensive for other people and section eight voucher holders in other of our neighboring communities as well. I wanted to mention, I don't know can you go to the next slide please? So this has become a paramount issue because of COVID-19. People are losing jobs by the hundreds of thousands and this is a disproportionate impact on people of color people with disabilities and low income people. I want to underscore that the area median income in the Boston metro area for African-American households is $45,000. The area median income for Latinx household in the Boston metro area is $42,000. The area median income for a white households is $85,000. So effectively if Arlington wants to walk the talk on racial equity, we need to have more affordable housing because the market rate becomes a proxy for discrimination because it is inaccessible to many black and brown people as well as voucher holders who are disproportionately black and brown people, people with disabilities and single women and or elderly folks. Can you go to the next slide please? Thank you. And I also want to say it's worth noting that the median wealth, the area median wealth for African-American households in the Boston metro area is $8 whereas the area median wealth for white households is a quarter of a million dollars, $248,000. So again, if we increase our affordable housing stock that is one way that we become more accessible to people. This is just a chart showing some of the more units we can create if we increase to 25%. So there would be a 27% increase in affordable housing units. Next slide please. So I also want to pause here for a minute because I think this is really important. And I also want to address some of the comments that were made by the redevelopment board at the last meeting that I attended. I know that when you have the biggest argument I often hear for why we should not create more affordable housing is the economics just don't work. And what's upsetting about that is if there is any truth to it, I do think that is overstated because from what I've seen in places like Cambridge when they increased to 20% it didn't hinder development at all. But even if there is any truth in that I know that it's because the economics is based on a devaluation of the people who affordable housing serves. Again low income people, but also the black and brown people the people with disabilities and the single women and the elderly folks that disproportionately need it. So this has always been a chicken or egg thing with economics. Economics are a reflection of our evolving values. And if our values evolve to prioritize the people who need affordable housing the market shifts to reflect our values. To that end, there have been just in the past few months some pretty heartening changes to the low income housing tax program on the federal and state level. In December, they changed the floor rate and divorced it from the 4% to increase the value. I know that a state bill had doubled the value I think from 20 to 40 million to fund the state low income housing program and also the state passed a bill to create more climate resilient affordable housing. And of course the minimum was a quarter of the housing in those new developments had to be affordable at 60% AMI or less. And that's particularly important for people with disabilities who are more vulnerable to climate change and new developments we rely more on new developments to house ourselves. So next slide. So Laura, I know we're way past the time if you could just please try and wrap up in these next two slides. Thank you so much. Yeah. So creating more affordable housing helps moderate income renters too. So again, when we talk about the economics the National Low Income Housing Coalition representative who was on a couple of weeks ago discussed this what a lot of people don't understand about the economics is when there's a lack of affordable housing low income people or lower income people have two options. They're either forced into congregate settings. So they're in homeless shelters or they're on the streets or they're in institutional settings like nursing homes in which case their mortality rates were much higher due to COVID or they're forced onto the private market where they're competing with middle income renters. That makes the rents rise for everyone because you have low income people competing with middle income people and both then have greater rental burdens. And studies show that with a lack of rent control or regulations on rents creating subsidized housing has over doubled the impact of market rate units in reducing displacement as compared I mean affordable housing has over doubled the rate of stabilization of rental prices then compared to market rate development. I also wanna take a few seconds to talk about who lives in affordable housing and this is addressing the remarks to the board last week. When there was another bill warrant on the table they talked about workforce housing versus affordable housing. And I have to say as someone who lives in affordable housing I was really distressed by the comments of the board because as it was worded it implied that the two were somehow mutually exclusive. Affordable housing people many of us who live in affordable housing do work. My next door neighbor is a healthcare worker. We've got daycare workers. We have mental healthcare workers. We have landscapers. We have painters in our building. And those who don't work usually don't work due to disability or age. And when we make comments like that it seems to betray a misunderstanding about who lives in and needs affordable housing which is concerning because you all get to vote on our own housing stability. So I would implore the board to really get to understand who actually lives in and needs affordable housing because we do work and those of us who don't are just as deserving of housing as those who don't. So next slide. So I just want to finish by saying we have gotten a lot of endorsements by housing activists, racial equity groups and disability justice groups. This is just a finite this is just a small sampling city life, Beter Abana, which was on the human rights commission's own housing justice series the Boston tenants coalition the disability policy consortium the Boston center for independent living Mystic Valley NAACP just signed up Mass Adapt just signed up and Arlington helps mutual aid just signed up as well as our town's own diversity task force group. Thank you. So I appreciate the comments. We'll now turn this over to the members of the board to see if there are any questions on either the presentation we just received or on the memo that was prepared by the department of planning and community development. We'll start with Jean. Thank you. And hello Laura, it's very nice to see you again. And it was a very nice and compelling presentation. And if I felt like this would have a great increase in the amount of affordable housing that got built in Arlington, I would absolutely refavor it. I don't know if you had a chance to look at the memo that was submitted by the department of planning and community development. Did you have a chance to read it? Okay. So I think I'll make a couple of points about this. One is this is only in the margins of the past few years we've had very few developments that have been large enough to even have any inclusionary zoning kick in. Most of them have been fewer than six units and one of the reasons or a couple of reasons have to do with current zoning in Arlington, we tend to have fairly small lots and fairly significant requirements. That's why a couple of years ago the Arlington Redevelopment Board proposed not this but something a little bit like it that would have given bonuses where people would build more than the 15% of affordable units and in exchange, they would get the ability to put another story on the building, some other sorts of things so that there would be some incentives, some economic incentives for them to build larger buildings that would allow them to build affordable units plus more affordable units. If I remember from a couple of years ago, it was clear that that was not going anywhere at town meetings. So we made the commitment after that that we would engage in a public process to both hear what the community had to say and to figure out how to go about increasing the amount of affordable housing that comes in through the inclusionary zoning bylaw. Well, that was pretty much put on hold due to the pandemic, but I think we were all hoping that that will kick off again fairly soon and that we would have had a proposal to go to town meeting maybe through the revised housing production plan or separately from the housing production plan. So that's sort of one thing. The second is my understanding is that, for example, Somerville, which has a slightly higher than we do percentage, but isn't it 25% went through a long process with research and a report to determine how to implement their inclusionary zoning numbers in a way that would not actually dampen down the amount of affordable housing that got built as a result. Because the fear as you articulated, which is that what we've got in Arlington is a lot of small developers who are building small projects and if they see that the economics don't work, they're simply not gonna build the project. So I knew about the change in the low income housing tax credit. So I asked some people in the know, how does that work? And would this really flip the script on this? And their explanation to me is it probably wouldn't make any difference to the type of housing that got built in Arlington so far for a few reasons. One, the transaction costs on making those work are so great that the six, 10, 12 unit buildings still wouldn't get built. It wouldn't make any difference in that. And secondly, they felt that the economics probably wouldn't be there to allow more affordable units unless we did something else with density bonuses or something like that. So I would really love to do this, but I fear it is more likely to decrease the number of affordable units that get built rather than increase the number of affordable units that get built. And I have two suggestions and I hope you would be willing to work with me or members of the board if they're interested about this. One is to instead of this put something in that would say that there's a report and study that's done and we go to town meeting a year from now with a proposal that's based on how do we get more affordable units built in town, both what needs to be done with zoning and what needs to be done with the percentages to increase it. I think that's the ideal way to do it or else we're dealing with a lot of very serious unknowns that could end up reducing the amount of affordable housing. If you don't wanna do that, I would hope we could sit down and figure out something where this is combined with some increase, what's known as density bonuses, which are really, if you do the reading, the only way to get more affordable housing through inclusionary zoning. So my real preference is to go with what the board wanted to do, get the public process done this year, get the report done and be ready to go to town meeting next year with something or maybe we can agree that that would be the warrant article for this year to guarantee that's done between this year and next year. I have been a proponent of affordable housing for large parts of my professional career, represented a lot of people in affordable housing, a lot of people in low income developments. I'm working with a group in a major Latino community in the state now trying to create a land trust to create more affordable housing. So there are a lot of things to do and I think this needs to happen, but we need to do some groundwork first. Thank you, Jean. David, any questions or comments? I'd just like to say I am entirely in agreement that we have a housing affordability problem in Arlington and that we urgently need more affordable housing here. That said, I completely agree with Jean's comments and concerns. I think as proposed, there's a significant risk that this change would not only reduce the amount of affordable housing built in Arlington, but would reduce the amount of housing built in Arlington period, which I think would not be a desirable outcome from anyone's perspective if you're interested in building affordable housing. So I would urge the proponents to think about the suggestions that Jean had for a couple of different ways to move forward and get to a point, a place where we can feel confident that we're actually going to generate more affordable housing in Arlington with the changes that we make. And beyond that, I'm interested in hearing what my colleagues have to say and as well as members of the public. Thank you. Thank you, David. Kim? Yeah, I expect all what Jean and David says that I think without some sort of incentive this won't go may probably slow if not stop housing production in Arlington. Answer to one of your earlier questions are, Cambridge does have inclusionary housing, but they offer a density bonus in return for that. So I think we have to somehow walk sort of a fine line here and figure out what is that fair trade-off. And it'd be something we tried working on the year before like Jean said, and was not very accessible and we want to encourage more input for people like you to see what we can do about what we have to do to make this more equitable. You know, it has to be the developer, this is on the private side now, has to feel like he can make some money to do this, otherwise he's not going to do it. So we have to walk that line. So, and then to answer an earlier question you had before about a statement that I made last week, I think that was taken out of the context a little bit. It was stated that the only housing that should be built in Arlington was affordable. And I said, I disagreed with that, not because I don't support affordable housing, I do. But I'm saying this all the type of housing that we also cannot say can't be built in Arlington. That's all I said, that's all I meant. And if I said something that- Well, to clarify the workforce housing, a lot of the positions you mentioned are actually compensated here in Arlington at rates that are affordable. So I looked at the 2018 salary compensation for Arlington public school teachers and almost more than a hundred of them are making under the 70% area median income for what qualifies as affordable housing. So I feel like when we use these terms and they are put in ways that sound mutually exclusive, it does reinforce a stigma over who lives here. And I can speak from personal experience that makes it a more unwelcoming and sometimes hostile place to live here. I think there's a lot of misunderstanding about what people are compensated and how affordable housing isn't even that affordable. Like $70,000 a year. Yes, I realized that. And maybe that's not the word I should have used. That's what I'm saying. I did not mean that stigma you're talking about. I just maybe I used the wrong word there, but I'm just saying that affordable housing is not the only housing you should be building Arlington. That's all I meant. And that was, that's it. And I'll leave it at that. Well, I just want to offer that over 80, I just want to finish because I wasn't allowed the five minutes I was told. I just want to say 84. Laura, Laura, you were given 12 minutes. Okay. No, I'm just saying before I even started speaking, you kept telling me. Could I please ask the rest of the board members to finish their comments and you will absolutely be given. Okay. I just wanted to clarify a point he made while he made it. Laura, that's fine. Soon as all of the board members have had a chance to address, I always ask the proponents if they have anything else I'd like to say before we open it up to the public. Thank you very much. Melissa. Thank you. I mean, I appreciate, you know, the presentation and I guess going back to the staff memo on the housing production plan, maybe Jenny or Erin, could you tell me when that would be completed the update to it? Sure. We just signed a contract with the consultant to start the plan update and we're waiting on the schedule to proceed and actually we'll hopefully be able to bring that to the board one of the next meetings so that you have a sense of the timeline and the general public does as well. But we had put that out a while ago and are now ready to do the update. So the update, but generally like a 12 months or less or 18 months? I mean, it depends on when we start but ideally it will be wrapped up in a timely way towards the end of the year where we will be talking about strategies in the fall that had been the plan. Yeah, so that we can then gear up towards a spring town meeting. Yeah, I mean, I think from my perspective that's important for us because it gives us more of a comprehensive approach to affordable housing and I think it gives us an opportunity to look and analyze the various strategies that would be possible, including increasing the percentage here, which I think has some value but I think we need to kind of revisit some of our areas that might have more bang for our buck, accessory dwelling units, going into those smaller niche spaces as well. I think figuring out how to do this with a plan versus kind of ad hoc is important to how I would think about approaching this. Thank you, Melissa. Laura, did you have any questions for the board members on the recommendations that were provided or the comments that were made? No, I just wanted to make a clarifying point that I don't think anyone's saying to only make affordable housing but when over 82% of the housing that gets built here is market rate and we're talking about making a very conservative increase, very conservative next to the need that exists when there are people dying by the thousands in our state and being made homeless by the tens of thousands, I don't think that that's a balance between market rate and affordable. So that's all I wanted to say. Thank you, Laura. Any other questions from the board for the proponent of the warrant article before we open this up for public comment? At this time, we will open up for public comment if everyone can please again, remember the items that I spoke about earlier in terms of the procedure for addressing the subject matter. Please note that when I call on you, you will have three minutes, up to three minutes to address the board. Please also remember to address yourself by first, last name and address. So the first speaker will be, I believe it's Patricia Warden. It's P-B-W-O-R. Thank you, Madam Chair. Can you hear me? I can, thank you. Okay, Patricia Warden, Jason Street. I think this article is very commendable and necessary. I disagree with it in that I think that the percentage should be 100%. All that we need in this town, according to the master plan, is affordable housing and senior housing. And this planning board and redevelopment board has succeeded in enabling because of the lot sizes and whatnot in the current zoning and the way they oversee the affordable housing and inclusionary zoning. They have enabled a lot of gaming of our system, which has reduced the number of affordable units that we are getting even from inclusionary zoning. We need affordable housing, a great deal. And we only have to look at something like 483 summer street to see how this planning department and redevelopment board is allowing the gaming of the system. What we need is for the planning department to do some work in finding out before the best before purchases are made of large apartment buildings at way above assessed values. They should be finding out about those and referring and giving help to the affordable housing advocates like the housing authority, the housing corporation of Arrington. So they can maybe move in and purchase them and renovate them for affordable units before developers get them. In addition to that, this should be reducing the number of affordable homes that are being demolished all over town to enrich developers who are well connected and realtors. Thank you very much. Thank you. The next speaker will be Rebecca Gruber. Thank you. Rebecca Gruber, Pleasant Street. I am speaking tonight on behalf of Envision Arlington's Diversity Task Group, has one of DTG's co-chairs. To voice DTG's support for this article, on March 8th, DTG voted unanimously to endorse this warrant and we urge the redevelopment board to do the same. As a matter of social justice and equity, DTG believes of his paramount that we prioritize housing for those who need it most. Even before COVID-19, the Boston metro area has suffered from enormous racial disparities when it comes to employment, income, wealth and housing. Rates of homelessness and housing insecurity have increased dramatically in our metro area in recent years. And now the pandemic has greatly exacerbated these existing inequities. Low income people, black and brown people, people with disabilities, the elderly, have faced increased risks of infection, unemployment, homelessness and death due to COVID. We are in an unprecedented economic recession that is disproportionately impacting those of the lowest income distribution in ways that no other prior recession has. Without meaningful affordable housing, market rate housing is set at prices that are exclusionary to most black and brown people, as well as those populations more likely to live on fixed incomes or rely on housing vouchers, such as people with disabilities. In the absence of rental price regulations, increasing the availability of affordable housing stock is one significant way to ensure greater economic and racial diversity in Arlington. This warrant article represents only a modest step in the right direction, but it is nonetheless a step. I speak on behalf of the Diversity Task Group to urge the Redevelopment Board to support this important initiative. Thank you. Thank you. The next speaker will be Aaron Farah. Hi, my name is Aaron Farah. I live on Benjamin Road in Arlington and I'm a homeowner here. I wanted to speak in support of the warrant. I have to say we're living in a time of incredible wealth disparities. The gap between the haves and the have nots is incredible. I mean, it's been incredible in this area for some time and it's just growing. And I was really kind of discouraged listening to some of the responses to the warrant because I heard a lot of concern about the developers which was veiled as they're not gonna wanna build here because they won't make as much money. Real estate developers are not suffering. People of low income are, black and brown people are, the disabled are. Real estate developers are not suffering here. And we thought that maybe they'll go build somewhere else. I mean, Laura spoke to Fenway, the Fenway area. If anyone's been over to the Fenway area who is doing this at 33%, the Fenway area is booming. And it's a different area than we are. And I'm sure they have different zoning laws. But the pandering and the concern that I hear for the developer over the people, the elderly, the disabled, the black and brown neighbors is discouraging. And I would urge people to take a step back on that and think about where their values lie and different ways to attract people to the area without making it so that we need to give the developers something in order for them to give us more housing and to be a little more creative than that. And a 25% as this warrant seems pretty fair. And like something that we could do in this area to attract a more diverse crowd to this area, which is really badly needed. What's not badly needed is more, frankly, epoxy, fancy apartments and condos in this area. Thank you. Thank you. The next speaker, oh, I see somebody waving her hand. Let's see, I'm going to take this next speaker and then if you're not able to use the raise hand feature, I will call on you next, okay? No, not next after, thank you. Okay, thank you. Sarah Moraz, I'm so sorry, Nick Stein. Hey, can you hear me? I can, thank you. Great, so I'm Nick Stein. I live at 28 Clark Street here in Arlington. So a lot of the people before me have kind of made similar points, but basically I just want to ask, who deserves to have a house? It's something absolutely necessary for basic survival and who doesn't? Many seem to believe that the determining factor should be whether the person works and to what extent they work, but nobody works harder than those who are closest to being evicted due to rising housing costs. So when this argument is being made, what is really being said? Some labor is being presented as more valuable than other labor and therefore those who perform the less valuable labor as a consequence of markets deserve to be without a home. Some of the most essential services that everyone was praising as heroes at the start of this pandemic are performed by people living on the edge of making ends meet, sometimes working two or three jobs just to pay the bills. We must look at this issue from how we can protect the interests of those vulnerable people. These kinds of policy changes can positively or negatively impact our community. This is more important than the profit interest of developers who will have zero trouble finding tenants or buyers and will not cease to build in one of the most hottest housing markets in the country. The difference is stark. They will not go homeless as a consequence whereas ordinary people will, regardless of any reforms that we do here. Raising the percentage of affordable housing required in private construction is the bare minimum. You're already working within the system that is already failing these people. And to make basic improvements in the lives of these essential workers that we claimed just a year ago, never mind all the people who can't work. I mean, it's just, it doesn't make sense. Every person deserves quality housing as a basic human right. And we must make this a reality in Arlington. This initiative is such a compromise already with what must be done to have an ethical society. That's all I'm gonna say. Thank you. Rachel, may I respond because I think we keep hearing similar comments on this. And I think our concern is not with how much profit the developers are making. Our concern is with how do we get projects built period? Because somebody has to pay to get them built. And with our existing inclusionary zoning bylaw which requires 15% of affordable units for projects that are six or more units. Very few projects have been built that have triggered even that very low 15% threshold. So those projects even now are not getting built. And if the percentage had been higher, those projects would not have been built at a faster rate and are likely that we would have gotten fewer projects. So the struggle that we all have is how do we get people to invest in building projects that include more affordable housing? And it's not that we don't want to do that. We want to figure out how to do that. And our concern is that based on how it's been done in other communities that it could, it generally requires an approach that is targeted very specifically to the market conditions and the zoning and the size of the lots and other factors in each community. And that's what we think needs to happen to actually generate more affordable units in Arlington. Thank you, David. So Susan, I'm going to come back to you where you were in the order when I saw you raising your hand, if that's okay. Great, thank you. So the next person will be Sarah Moraz. Good evening, everybody. My name is Sarah Moraz. I live at 66 Chandler Street in East Arlington. David, I hear what you are saying. In my opinion, that does not make this warrant article mutually exclusive. There may be a lot of other things. I know there are a lot of things that Arlington has to do in order to attract more dense housing, larger units. But that does not mean that this warrant article shouldn't move forward now. I believe that our situation is desperate. I myself moved here 24 years ago as a renter, as a single mother, I could barely afford the rent. In those 24 years, rents have tripled. Income, I had a middle management position at a nonprofit, I wasn't a low level wage worker. The salary for that kind of position has barely doubled while rents in East Arlington in my neighborhood have more than tripled. There are almost no elderly left here. Forget about people of color, there are no single parents and there are very few elderly neighbors that I have anymore. Everyone else is reaching retirement like I am and is cashing out and leaving. And that is just a disgrace. I can't even begin to tell you how upset I am about it. And I know I'm not alone. And I think this needs to move forward. And if there are other issues that need to move forward, I think this is not enough, but it's a start, like density, like changing zoning laws, then by all means go at it. But to say hold up, we need to do a study and maybe in 18 months we'll have a comprehensive plan. That to me is code for kicking the can down the road and we don't have the time to wait on that. The last plan was only in 2016 and it's already failed to meet the goal by almost half. Thank you. Thank you. Jean, I see that you were interested in addressing that comment. I was gonna say similar to what David said. I think we understand the need. We have the same goals you are. The question is how do you get there? I did a little research on this in the only town that I could find and maybe somebody can correct me on this. That's at 25% is Dover. And with Dover at 25%, zero, zero inclusionary units have been built. So the fear, and this is a really, really genuine fear, is by raising it from 15 to 25 without adding anything else, you're gonna reduce the likelihood that you're gonna get affordable units built in town until we do the other pieces. That's why I'm really hesitant to go ahead. Perhaps we should stop heading out of fear. I'm really hesitant to go ahead and do this. Please let Jean finish. I'm really hesitant to go ahead and do this because our goals are the same. I would just wanna make sure we go forward and succeed and not take a step backwards. Thank you, Dean. The next speaker will be Wynell Evans. Hi, Wynell Evans. There we go. Thank you. Wynell Evans, orchard place. Thank you to everybody who has spoken. I want to very respectfully disagree with the memo from the planning department and the opinion that says that we must build more market rate housing. I think a lot of the market rate development that is going on in town is a very large part of the problem. We just, we cannot sustain the kind of prices that market rate development is driving. And I wanna give you one quick example. There's a developer who does a lot of work in town. He actually builds some of the nicer looking houses. He just finished a very, very large house on Ridge Street. And in another zoning related meeting that I was in with him, he said that he was able to sell this house for $1.7 million. And he presented this, he said, quote unquote, this is a great benefit for the neighborhood. And I'd like to argue that it's exactly the opposite of a great benefit for the neighborhood. This kind of development drives the surrounding land prices. It says to a developer, this area can sustain these kinds of prices. And once this starts to happen, there's a wedge into a neighborhood. And the next thing you know, the smaller attainable houses are disappearing, very large, very expensive houses are coming in. This affects people, as Susan Maraz was saying, elderly people move, their property, as the land value goes up, property taxes go up. People who are retired or living on a lower or a fixed income can't keep up with it. They are going to leave town. Somebody who's trying to buy into town who doesn't have the down payment for a $1.7 million house is gonna be shut out. And the people who can afford the mortgage for that $1.7 million house and maybe one or two kids are not gonna be phased if their property taxes go up by $1 or $2,000 a year. It's just, it's not gonna register with them. And this affects tenants as well because these increases in property taxes, eventually a landlord, no matter how well-meaning they are or how much they care about their renters, eventually they are going to have to pass that along. So I think to say that we need to just build lots and lots of housing. And magically it will somehow lead to affordable housing, I think is part of the thinking that's got us where we are today. We are well on the way to being a very expensive bedroom community. The mixed use projects that we see happening, not only are they not supplying affordable units, but they are eating up our commercial districts, which we desperately need for a variety of reasons. And inclusionary zoning, as we've all stated, it's just, it's just not working because the developers know how to build so that they do not trigger inclusionary zoning. So we need some really, really creative thinking about this, I do not have any genius solutions. I support the intent of this article because I agree that we're really in bad shape. And every time another $1.2, $1.7 million house goes up, we dig ourselves a little bit deeper into the hole. Thank you. Thank you. I just wanted to let, I think that's Esther Kingston-Man. I see you and I will put you on the speaker's list. So I do see you. Thank you. Let's see, the next speaker will be Don Seltzer. Thank you, Madam Chair. Don Seltzer, Irving Street. Before I begin, I'd like to call the chair's attention to the fact that ACMI is not here in recording this hearing. I asked the chair's permission to have my record button enabled so that I might make a record of this. Jenny, I'll throw that over to you. I don't. The meeting is being recorded by me and then it's provided to ACMI tonight. Thank you, Jenny. I still ask for permission to record this. Could you enable my record button? The meeting is being recorded by the town. If you're not going to enable it, I will record. I would like to notify the chair that I am recording this by other means. Yeah, I did allow you to record actually. So I don't know if you didn't receive it. Thanks a lot, Jenny. I appreciate it. I just want to say quickly that I support this article. I also want to observe that our mixed-use by-law gives very good density bonuses and it hasn't been very productive in producing affordable housing because a lot of the projects that come before this board are for either four or five apartments, thereby not triggering the inclusionary by-law. And perhaps this article should be further amended to kick in earlier at let's say four units. So there's at least one affordable unit in every mixed-use project that comes before this board. Thank you. Thank you. The next speaker will be Stephanie Edinger de Cuba. Hi, thank you so much for allowing me the time. I'm Stephanie Edinger de Cuba. I live at 144 Wright Street. I'm also a single parent and professionally, I'm a pediatric public health researcher focused on the child and family health and economic wellbeing impacts of public policy, including specifically affordable homes. So just starting on a personal note, I moved here more than a decade ago because it was a community I could afford. Certainly stretching my finances to the very brink at that time, but still I could do it. But if I were having to make that move today, there's no way I could afford to move here. I'd have to move much further away. And so I hear the concerns that the board members are raising and I do hear that you are interested in increasing affordable housing. But I think another way to think about this issue is that this is a first step and not a last step. And so some of the other things about density and other issues could also be amended going forward. So it may not need just to hold back entirely. So now speaking more professionally, I'm in favor of this article because as many have noted, there's an immense need for affordable homes here in Arlington. But another really important aspect is that there's a real health promoting potential of more affordable homes here in Arlington. And as others have noted, COVID-19 has made that need even more urgent. Amending our inclusionary zoning rate is just one of the many ways we can support the health of families and other community residents. And I know there are redevelopment board, not the health department, and I'm sure you all know, housing is really integrally related to health. And in particular, it's related to child health. To build resiliency early in life, children need stable affordable homes to prevent problems and to heal from mental and physical challenges. And yet too many children, including here in our own town, children encounter barriers that prevent them from growing strong and achieving their optimal physical, emotional and mental health. Unstable housing, whose definition actually includes housing costs that are out of reach, can be one of the greatest barriers to good health. And children who experience housing instability for longer periods of time are more likely to experience mental and physical health challenges as an actual developmental delays. And pre-pandemic, one in five children had a diagnosable mental health condition. We've all heard the news reports about the twin spikes of people struggling to pay their rent and poor mental health for both adults and children during the pandemic. And again, that's here in our town too, as the schools struggle to manage the wave of mental health needs. Concerns about being able to pay the rent certainly only exacerbate those mental health challenges for the children and their families. And just on the cost side, my team and I estimated that unstable housing will cost the US 111 billion dollars over the next 10 years, related to worse mental and physical health for adults and children and impacts on children's brain development. And those costs come from unstable house adults who have higher rates of hospitalizations, ambulatory visits, dental procedures, mental health care and medication needs. And similarly, children who are unstable house have more hospitalizations, ambulatory visits, dental procedures, medications and need more special education services. So while Arlington, I'm wrapping up right now, while Arlington obviously won't bear the full cost of all those challenges, I do want to note that a portion of that cost is most certainly borne by the town with the greater need for health, mental health and educational services from throughout the age span of children here in town. So thank you very much for the time. I appreciate being able to speak. Thank you. The next speaker will be Kelda Fontenot. Hi, Kelda Fontenot, Allen Street. I'm actually a candidate for the Arlington Housing Authority Board. And I just wanted to speak to support this warrant by Laura. Nothing is perfect. You're never gonna get the perfect warrant. You're never gonna hit it out of the park with affordable housing in one fell swoop. And I think I hear a lot of fear from people that this is not gonna solve the whole problem. I think it's unreasonable to think that anything will. I agree with everybody else that there are gonna be multiple steps in multiple places that need to be taken. But I think this is a great first step. I think we need to have these conversations and look at who is living in affordable housing, who is being taken advantage of by practices because we don't have enough affordable housing and families and individuals don't have access to enough vouchers and other programs. So there are a lot of congregate settings that aren't shelters like rooming houses that are illegal in Arlington that exist right now where I've met people who live there. There are a lot of working class people in them and you'd never know it because they're not gonna tell you. There are illegal rentals going on in basements and addicts. These people are here. The social impact is here right now. You just don't recognize it because when people are living in illegal dwellings they feel hesitant to come out and tell you that there's a problem. So this is going to keep showing up. I think it's strange to think that it won't in our schools, in our neighborhoods by way of crime. Hopeless people are frequently taken advantage of and take advantage of others. And we need to make a step in the right direction. I think that Laura's warrant is that step. And I hope that people will get over the fear and support this. Thank you for letting me speak. Thank you. The next speaker will be Zavid Pretzer. Hi, I'm Zavid Pretzer at 44 Grove Street in Arlington. I just wanna say I definitely support the concept of this article. I think we need to be realistic about the barriers that currently exist to building these sorts of buildings in Arlington and a lot of Arlington. We've said that it should be easier to build a million dollar single family home than a building that has affordable units. And so I think we do need to consider things like density bonuses, not out of some sort of concern for developers, but because if we allow people to build more units, that's also building more affordable units and would make this more effective to addressing our housing needs. So I think we should consider density bonuses or other ways of reducing barriers to building buildings that would trigger this inclusionary zoning and make that more attractive because I think we really need to have more of them get built. Thank you. Thank you. The next speaker will be Lynette Culverhouse. Hi, thank you. My name's Lynette Culverhouse and I live on Draper Avenue. I'm a town meeting member or precinct 11 and I wanna urge the board to support this article and thank the proponents for introducing it. We are at this moment in time because we have failed to act on increasing our quota of affordable housing in Arlington for way too long. And I'm hearing a lot of fear reactions from the board and I think that in life, if we don't step out into the unknown and risk some failure, we're not gonna get anywhere. And if we keep on doing the same old, same old, we're not gonna improve things. There are too many people that are living on minimum wage and there is nothing shameful about living on minimum wage. They're doing worthy work on our front lines serving us every day and they cannot afford to live in Arlington and that is a disgrace. I bought my house in 1984 and I retired from teaching two and a half years ago. And if I were a teacher today trying to live in Arlington, it would be impossible. There is no way I would be able to live in Arlington. And it doesn't need to be this way. We need to take some action and this is a good first step. We need to take a whole lot more actions and I think moving in the direction of an overlay and attracting nonprofit developers to develop in Arlington would be a really great initiative for this board to move forward with. We are too beholden to the for-profit developers and there are nonprofit developers out there that want to build affordable housing. If we're committed to affordable housing, then we need to take every step that we can and this is a really good first step. Thank you. Thank you. The next speaker will be John Sanbonmatsu. Thank you and thanks for taking our comments. So I've lived in, I'm sorry, my name is John Sanbonmatsu. Yes, sorry, I'm at 100 Barnum Street. I've lived here in Arlington for about 10 years and that time my rent has gone up about 100% that's doubled. I can, I'm barely hanging on in this community and I'm a private, I'm a tenure professor at a private university. So that kind of is symptomatic of a housing crisis for people. I want to second everything that people have said. I'm a co-sponsor of this Warn initiative. I hear the concerns of Gene and David and others Lynn, I'm sorry, Ken, but I want to second what Lynette just said which is that we have to take a step. I don't, I cannot believe the board wants to spend a year studying this problem. Where has the board been for the last 10 years? As we pointed out in our rationale for this warrant, Arlington has only increased its housing inventory of subsidized housing inventory. I mean, by 0.1% between 2008, sorry, 2000 and 2018. A few years ago, I founded an organization here called Tenants for Liveable Arlington. And we met in the basement of Robin's library. And we heard from people from different parts of town, people who were on the verge of homelessness, families who are gonna have to move out of Arlington within weeks and we're facing homelessness. During one of our meetings, we had a librarian come down stairs from upstairs in Robbins to join us to say that, she couldn't afford to live in Arlington and had had to move out. Just one a second, what people have said about the luxury development in this town, it just is worsening the situation. I know that this warrant article will not solve the problem. It's to go from 15% to 25% and then with some of the issues of incentives that the board members have raised, clearly this is if anything may be symbolic, but it's an important symbolic element. And it's a citizen initiative and I would like the board to support it. All housing, to echo someone else on this call, all housing should be affordable here. It should be affordable particularly for working class people, from lower income backgrounds, people of color who have already been essentially given the heave-hole by this town's discriminatory housing policies. And if this board is serious about affordable housing then it will treat it as a crisis and consider this its top priority rather than something to, as someone said, kick down the road. So I urge you to pass this, it's only a first step, but it's an important one. Thank you. Thank you. The next speaker will be Steve Revillac. Hello, Madam Chair. Good evening. This is Steve Revillac of 111 Sundeaside Avenue. First, I'm really heartened to see the number of people here voicing their support for affordable housing. Housing costs over the Metro Boston have become very expensive, especially over the last five years and it is a very real issue. So I just wanna point out that Arlington Zoning Bylaws, which were written in the mid-70s, they were basically written to stop people from building apartments like they did throughout here, throughout the 1950s and 60s. And as several of the board members have indicated, this is one of the reasons why we've gotten so few affordable units through inclusionary zoning. We've had our inclusionary zoning bylaws on the books for approximately 20 years. And in 14 of those years, there were no projects that triggered them. It's sort of sad to say this, but if the board were to pass this or recommend this in town meeting where to pass it, it's likely we could have time to do a study and revise before another project came along. But I would like to note that, in discouraging apartments, what we also did back in the 70s was put a lot of preference on single and two family homes. The vast majority of land in town is zoned that way and they cost what they cost, even used ones. You can spend $700,000, $900,000 on a used home. And that happens because somebody's willing to pay the check and someone's willing to cash it. If folks would just start selling houses for $300,000, we'd have this affordability problem licked, but we don't or they don't. So I think I'm glad we're having this conversation. There's the way forward probably isn't clear yet, but it is a conversation I think that we do need to have. Thank you. Thank you. The next speaker will be Susan. Thank you for your patience. Oh, you're on mute. I'm sorry, we can't hear you. I was waiting for you to unmute me. Sorry. My name is Susan Mortimer. Thank you. I'm at 271 Mass Avenue and I'm here to support the warrant to increase the percentage of affordable housing. And I want to say I'm a very, very proud working class person and I'm missing all the working class people that are needing to leave Arlington because they can no longer afford to be here. And I think class is a big issue in Arlington and I think it's something that needs to be spoken about. There are different values for different classes and I'm very proud to be a direct spoken working class person. I entered the workforce 50 years ago. I'm 68 years old right now and I'm still working full time because I cannot afford to retire. And interestingly, I work at the Registry of Deeds in Cambridge and I am a certificate writer. So I see the housing costs in Arlington every day at work and I see what the history of those houses were and what they're being sold for and I see the development as well. So I want to be the first here to say and mention very politely the G word. I want to mention gentrification and there would be no push for more affordable housing in Arlington, if not for gentrification. So I think we need more affordable housing and not all affordable housing organizations do a very good job and that's another issue to talk about at another time. But I see this board embracing gentrification and acting as if affordable housing is some kind of charity that they might be willing to do. People spoke about working on affordable housing boards before and we know the reputation that some of the organizations can have where tenants are a commodity and that's the truth. I want to say more is that people are being displaced and simultaneously denigrated here as in the choice of some of the terms that were used in the last meeting as if the people who cannot pay market rents they have some kind of deficiency and nothing can be further from the truth. Someone spoke about essential workers but there's always been people who can work and do work people who are unable to work people who cannot find work in this economy people who are ill or disabled who have children or who are one person one person is supporting the household. I did mention that I've worked for 50 years and in that time my rents have increased 10 fold but my wages have not. And I would really like to see the ARB begin to acknowledge the gentrification word and the effect that it's having on the inability of people to pay rent or housing costs here. And I find it offensive that there's a need to incentivize wealthy developers to build and not a similar concern for people who are working class or ill or can't work. People should be able to stay in their communities. And so I just want to reiterate and say I'd like the board to support to bite the bullet and support this warrant in increase of affordable housing. Pardon me? I said you're a little bit beyond time right now but thank you. Okay, I just want to, I'd love to see a demonstration of a commitment to diversity, a real and substantive one here in Earrington. Thank you very much. Thank you. The next speaker will be Guillermo Hamlin. Thank you so much. My name is Guillermo Hamlin. I'm a Precinct 14 town meeting member and aside, I'm also a candidate for assessor. But- Guillermo, could you please also state your address for the record? Well, certainly. I live on 1228 Mass Avenue. Thank you. And I am here in support of this affordability via inclusionary zoning. I'm going to keep this as short as I possibly can. I appreciate the work that this board has done. I appreciated that which was mentioned by David, Eugene, Ken, as well as everyone here. However, I believe that windfall profit is going to fall over regardless. So I don't think that unless we want to particularly upset real estate interests that it would be a net gain to proceed and to allow us to go to town meeting. If only for the discernment of our fellow town meeting member colleagues to then proceed with what they believe is accordingly, I have these worries still persist. I imagine that the board can present again at town meeting and allow town meeting members to make their ultimate deliberation. I'm supportive because whether it's nonprofit or for-profit developers, windfall profit will follow. The only thing that will happen is that if they were to go ahead and proceed, they can go ahead and meet the terms and conditions as we've effectuated. If they are concerned about not meeting it, we could also offer density bonuses. I'm initiated a petition for studying an affordable housing overlay in order to do just that, to see what it is we can do to encourage developers to build higher denser for the purposes of meeting these goals. In short, I please ask the board to support these measures. Because I believe that affordability is too crucial to let unregulated. And I believe that again, at the third time, the only thing that will happen is that windfall profits will continue. The only difference is that there will be slightly more housing to more people that would be otherwise unable to afford so. Thank you. Thank you. The next speaker will be Judith Garber. Hi, I'm Judith Garber. I'm on 130 Mass Ave. Can you all hear me? We can. Thank you. I'm also a co-sponsor of this warrant article. So I obviously am in support of it. I also appreciate the words from the board and their concerns that it will dampen development. I just wanna say I like density. I'm a fan of density and I'm open to more density. And I'm interested in what some of the other warrant articles coming up tonight and that are on the board are gonna be. But I do think without a balance of affordable housing as well as market rate housing, more building in itself is just gonna make rents go up. And that is very concerning for me and for other people who have spoken as well. I also agree with what Don Seltzer said. I think having an amendment to have this kick in earlier at four units would be a great idea. And the only reason we didn't propose that was because we weren't sure what percentage we were going to put in front of you at the board. I also think a density bonus. I'm not opposed to that idea either, but I think we should get this passed now or put in front of town meeting now. And if what you fear happens, then we amend it. Then we put in a density bonus or then we see what else could happen because we had the housing production plan in 2016. And in that, the board recommended increasing the inclusionary zoning percentage. So I think this goes along with what the board has said that they want to do. And that was four years ago or five years ago. So we're just getting started with that now. I think we kind of need to move faster and we take bold moves because there has not been enough affordable housing. So thank you very much. Thank you. The next speaker will be Kristen Martin. Hi, thank you. My name is Kristen Martin and I live on 4th Fairmont Street. Welcome to my childhood bedroom. I've never left. I can't, I can't afford to. I grew up in Arlington, class of 03. I'm a graphic designer, social media manager. I work full time and I still can't afford to live here. And I know usually it's like, well, then move. I can't, I have health issues. I'm legally disabled. All of my doctors are located in Arlington and it's taken me years to cultivate proper doctors. And I need to live near family in case anything happens to me and everyone lives here. Stating that the house that I grew up in is now, it's a two family and my grandparents live upstairs. They own it. It's worth over a million dollars and they bought it in 1978 for $40,000. I did a quick Google check while we were talking. So just knowing that they bought it for $40,000 is just crazy to me. The houses on my street are going for over a million dollars and all the developer is gonna do is bulldoze it, build another two family and then charge over half a million dollars for each, which I've seen up and down the street. I'd be homeless if I didn't get to live at home. I'm very fortunate that I have family that will let me stay and that allows me to work and that allows me to have insurance that pays for all my health issues. There's no difference between me and someone I see under the bridge on my commute to work. And I've always had partners that have said, why do you give them money? You need it, you live at home. And I'm like, they have it way worse. I'll be okay. A group of my friends moved out of state because they couldn't afford to live here and they went to Virginia and they all rented a giant house that was super affordable for them. And I couldn't go because I need the insurance here. I need an infusions every eight weeks. And then people will still want to build here in terms of the developers. We have great access to Boston. We have the tea and we have a diverse neighborhood and these restaurants that didn't exist growing up here. It was incredibly boring growing up here. And we need to understand that the reason we have these things is because of the diversity that we now have. So that is speaking to culture, affordable housing and everything that we need. I shouldn't be 36 and still living at home. We need affordable housing. Thank you. Thank you. The next speaker will be Anna Henkin. Hi, thank you, Anna Henkin, 11 Marion Road. I also want to speak in support of this article and I want to expand on the Winnell's comments because increasing rents and increasing just market rate housing is not just gonna get you a bedroom town. It's going to result in the town dying because that's what happened to my hometown. I'm from a similarly previously wealthy and populated suburb north of Chicago. And growing up, it was a diverse town with a lot of different incomes and it had a lot of lively shops and young families. And as the town government started reducing affordable housing and allowing developers to just build market rate deluxe luxury condos, the rents went up everywhere in town, including up the stores in all of the housing. It pushed a lot of people out of town. None of the people who got old could retire and move to a condo nearby where they used to live. No new families could move in all of the shops downtown closed. They are all boarded up now. My town is a ghost town and it is on the commuter line to Chicago. There's tons of land there and no one lives there. And that's gonna happen to Arlington if you don't put in more affordable housing. The developers don't typically live in Arlington. They don't spend money at local shops. They don't pay local wages. They're paying people from out of town to build something here. And then they go back to wherever they live and they put the money from their development in their bank account. People who live in affordable housing, especially when they're not over rent burdened because the AMI is so high, spend their money here. They pay wages in town by spending money at local places where they live. The velocity of their dollar, the impact of their income is miles more than a developer brings into town. And I've listened to a couple of older meetings that you guys have had and I hear the board bring up the same excuses why no affordable housing warrant article can really ever pass. And it said that there's no solutions to problems you don't want to solve. It feels like no bill will ever be perfect enough to be worth starting. And taking a first step is necessary. You've got to start with something and then you can build from it. This article is needed. We need to make progress on all fronts. This is important. Thank you. Thank you. The next speaker will be Kevin Heaton. Hi, my name is Kevin Heaton. I also live in Capital Square Apartments. I'm at 252 Mass Ave and I just wanted to support the warrants. I mean, we definitely need more affordable housing and 25% is really not that much. And you look at how much some of the other towns have like Cambridge and Lexington. So I don't think it's asking too much. And I think we owe it to low income neighbors that want to live here and keep living here. Thanks. Thank you. The next speaker will be Esther Kingston Mann. Jenny, are you, there we go. Can you hear me? Now we can. Thank you. So my name is Esther Kingston Mann and I live in the Heights on Peter Tufts Road. When these housing, I want to speak in a more personal way, although I've been really happy that some other people are doing that too. When these debates began to heat up, it made me recall a time many years ago when I was myself homeless. I was a grad student at Johns Hopkins University. I was the first in my family to go to college. And when I came to Hopkins, although I looked everywhere I could think of, there were no apartments that I could afford. And my family could not afford to help me. Rents everywhere were too high. Eventually I found a low rent rooming house where the doors were all rickety and there were no locks. There were just hooks on the door that were always being rattling or being rattled by someone or another. It was terrifying to live there. But I had no other place to go. I was also ashamed to tell anyone because I had never imagined myself being in this kind of situation. When I found out that Arlington was behind most of our neighbors in reaching the state affordability mandate, I was shocked and disappointed. If there were more affordable housing here, there would be more housing for lower income people. And it would help not only for there to be more housing, but it will help me maybe a bit to forget my own experience because it's still with me. So I speak in support of Laura's morning. Thank you. Thank you. The next speaker will be Eric. Thank you. I appreciate the time and the people here who support this warrant. I appreciate the board listening. I live at 285 Mass Ave. I support the proposed warrant article. I was trying to assemble some bullets, so this may be going to be disorganized, but from an environmental perspective, I'm a tech worker. My commute is within the same apartment. I get to walk from room to room. I remember commuting with a car. It was environmentally bad. If everyone did that, it would be really bad. The longer we commute, the worse it is. And it was a risk to me. It's kind of dangerous to drive here in Massachusetts. It was also expensive to maintain a car. And I had the privilege of having an income that helped me support the risk of owning the car and driving it and the expense to maintain it. I also am privileged enough to choose living places that aren't affected by the externalized cost of the environmental issues created by lots of people commuting longer distances. The people who are at the heart of this warrant article teach at our schools, they work at our restaurants, they do the essential in-person services, and they deserve a shorter commute. We deserve the privileged people on this call and everyone deserves lower environmental impact. The people who are most affected by it tend to be the folks who don't have as much of a luxury to choose where they live, and they deserve it in a way that I don't. And that can't be done with market rate development. You can't cut the commute time for essential in-person service workers by pushing them farther and farther out with market rate development in the suburbs, which we're not Boston, we're the suburbs, we're pushing people farther out. It's also a vicious circle. Within the time period that I've lived here, like five years, I guess, I saw the luxury condos come up near Capital Square, which could only be afforded by people with an income that's high enough to pay for it. That in turn raises the AMI for this area, which then raises the cost of affordable housing. So the folks living in affordable housing got to see neighbors move in that in turn raised the cost of living in Arlington at affordable housing rates. So it's like a vicious circle and it's kind of perverse. The more market rate development unchecked creates this vicious circle and ARB has an opportunity to combat that. Finally, in the literature, there is a main study which says that incurred in inclusionary zoning discourages development. However, if you look beyond the National Association of Home Builders and their literature and other folks who have a bias, a really good bias because they make more money, there are actually a lot more studies afterwards that are more comprehensive that refute that inclusionary zoning discourages development. One that compares- Are you trying to, could you please look up? Yeah, thanks. Thank you. So the literature is actually in favor of this warrant and I urged the board to support this warrant and I asked you, I turn this on you. What is the percentage of inclusionary zoning that you would like? I know you're saying that you wanna move this on but Cambridge is doing 20% and that didn't discourage development there. I don't think this requires a lot of thought and I think we need to stop development like the luxury condos with their perverse vicious circle right next to affordable housing. I think you can do it and I appreciate you doing it. I support this warrant. Thank you. The next speaker will be Lynette Martin. Good evening. Can you hear me okay? I'm using my kid's new headphone. Yes, we can. My name is Lynette Martin. I live at Eustis Street in Arlington. I wanna go back to something that Mr. Benson referred to a couple of times. He mentioned a community that did this and hasn't built any affordable housing since they passed this measure. I believe that community was Dover and I just wanna point out that Dover is not Arlington. Arlington is a hot market, it's very desirable. We need to pressure the market to change. We have the leverage. I've actually taught classes and negotiations before and I see the leverage and the power that we have. Why we are relinquishing that leverage, that power I don't understand. If enough communities stood strong and... I'm so sorry that your video and sound is frozen. Jenny, maybe we can come back to this. Yeah, I can't unfreeze her. I understand that. Okay, so I just want, I'll come back if her video comes back. So the next speaker will be Grant Cook. Hi, hello, am I coming through? You are. Great. I really support getting more affordable use in town. Could you please introduce yourself to respond to your I live on Grant Cook. I live on Walliston Ave in the Heights. I support getting more affordable units into town. We're at 5%, 5.7. When our neighbors of the East and West have done this, we can't, it's kind of pathetic. But I also think we need to be honest about this goal. We already are an expensive bedroom community. Many of us, I know my do and I know many of us on this call sleep in very expensive bedrooms tonight. We just had the benefit of getting a house here instead of having to build a new one. And I know personally, I don't have a deed restriction on my house saying it'll be affordable when my wife and I passed it on. We make it hard in this town to build affordable units. We make it hard to build any units that would increase our housing diversity. There's almost nowhere to build them with our heavily weighted focus on single family zoning and the expensive land it sits on. We make it hard to build congregate housing where we do allow it. I don't think I remember a single development in this town where there wasn't a cacophony of voices saying it was ugly, it would cause traffic, would increase our property taxes, would blow open the school population and so on. I agree, we don't need to help the developers, but we do need to recognize their motivations. A speaker here spoke about non-profit development. Even not for profit doesn't mean no profit. Projects have to be justified somehow. And I wanna squeeze as much out of developers as we can. The people with the capital right up to the moment before they decide to walk away. That's negotiation. It's knowing when they're about to walk. And I don't wanna push them past that point. And in that vein, if somebody has something we want, you do some trading. You give them something they value and that's been talked about here. An extra floor, reduce the setback, we subsidize it. If you want me and other voters to support this, I support the goal, come back with a subsidy. I would fund it through my property taxes, put an override up to make this work, a debt exclusion for capital, I would gladly vote for it. Otherwise, I think we'll vote for this in TM, we'll feel good. And then when the numbers don't budge in three to five years, we'll come back and go, hey, why didn't that work? And the only change really will be that our bedrooms will become more expensive. So thank you. Thank you. I believe that our previous speaker who dropped off is back. If you wanted to unmute yourself and finish your comments. Hi, sorry, my computer died without warning, I apologize. No problem. I think I was talking about power and leverage and I was saying that we need to pressure the market to change and I believe we do have the leverage. If enough communities stood strong and said enough, then the economies would shift. Arlington is positioned to be a leader in this area. Mr. Watson expressed his fear that no building would be enabled if this weren't passed. And I know the stats. Arlington is one of the densest communities in the area. If we need to stop building other housing and stand firm on only building affordable housing, then so be it. People that can afford to come here can find someone else to live, somewhere else to live in the interim. But there are people now that are homeless and we need to stand firm and make sure that we are building housing so people can get here. The bill from town meeting two years ago failed because it had no teeth. It was all voluntary incentives. Our community time and time again has spoken. We want to make space for affordable housing. We want to place the needs of our most at-risk residents over that of developers. Just listening to the commentary tonight, waiting another two years or even one year to do more studies while people are dying and homeless dying, literally dying because of COVID and everything. So many friends I know who live in public housing or shelters or catching COVID. Black and brown people are dying at higher rates. And it's a disservice and harms community trust and helps no one to not listen to what the community is asking for. Communities need to take a stand. This is what BIPOC people, disabled people, working class activists are asking for and Arlington has an opportunity to be an upstander in this area, setting an example for communities around us. So we have an opportunity to impact real change for people. I would urge this board to consider supporting the article. I liked what Judith said about, amending things later, adding amendments if we need to, but we need to take a step and show the community that we're listening and take some stance towards this. We've been in a deadlock situation for years now. Everybody wants to change zoning, which there will be room for that, but we can't change zoning until we know how much we're going to dedicate to affordable housing and to the people that really need it. Otherwise we keep just weakening our stance. If we pass this warrant, developers will come. Thank you very much. Thank you. So I have three more speakers with their hands up and then I'm going to close comment on this article so that we can move on to, we have speakers waiting for our upcoming articles. We also have an open forum at the end of this meeting where we would certainly welcome any additional conversation. So the next speaker will be Brad Adams. Hey, you able to hear me? Yes, thank you. Wonderful, thank you so much. This is Brad Adams. I'm on Mott Street here in Arlington. So I'm in support of the article raised tonight. I wanted to bring some other news that might be added to the conversation. Today, the poor people's campaign in Massachusetts delivered 14 priorities, legislative priorities to the state house. One of those being guaranteed quality housing for all. So this article seemed like a chance to get ahead of an issue that we seem to already agree is an emergency, the health emergency as well here in the state. And also to get ahead of something that's coming more into the spotlight and we'll get more attention as time goes on. I lived here in Arlington for a while now, big fan of this town. One of the reasons is the outcome here tonight, like this is extremely healthy quality of a town to see this kind of community engagement speaking. I work in information technology. I allegedly have pretty good level of financial stability. But I know my time here is limited in Arlington. I know there's no future for me or my family in Arlington because of these housing costs in the market. I know I'm only a few bad months away from losing everything I've built. And I know I'm an entire lifetime away from being able to move around this housing market without care or concern for homelessness. So I think around the room here, I'm talking to a lot of people in similar situations or with family in these situations. I think a lot of us are like-minded in that, but maybe I'm wrong, maybe I'm in the wrong room. Either way, thank you for your time though. Thank you. The next speaker will be Mark Rosenthal. Can you hear me now? Yes, I can, thank you. Mark Rosenthal won't let speak. Before I make my comments, there's something I need to ask very quickly, which is I lost connectivity a little while ago and dialed in on the phone and couldn't figure out how to raise my hand. How do you raise your hand if you're on your telephone in case I lose connectivity now? The way to unmute yourself when you come back is you pressed pound six. No, no, my question is not how to unmute yourself. My question is how do you raise your hand? I don't believe that you can, if you're just connected via your phone, but if you unmute yourself while you're still in your public speaking time, I'd be happy to entertain your comments. Okay, so that's star six. I'm sorry? Did you say that's star six? It's either star six or pound six. Jenny, do you? Yes, star six. Star six, yes. Okay. Okay, so the first thing that I wanna mention, I support this one article, but I worry that it will have the same problem that the existing inclusionary zoning has, which is something Don Seltzer referenced before, the fact that the trigger is at five units, basically the developers are out of their way to see to it that they build one unit below whatever the trigger is, so it has no effect on them. So I would really like to see this, or an article increase the percentage of affordable units required, but see to it that the trigger is lowered to a point where the developers will actually have to comply with it rather than work around it. So that's item number one. Item number two is that about two years ago, I ran for town meeting and got particularly interested in these kinds of issues and started visiting planning departments in all of our surrounding towns. And when I sat down with the town planner of Winchester, he told me, oh, well, no, you don't have to necessarily go with all these local developers who just wanna build to make megabucks. There are developers in the area who build 100% affordable units and know how to do it, know all the forms that need to be filed with the government. And they make a respectable profit, they just don't make an obscene profit. And I find it very disappointing that somebody in town, government in Winchester, that I was hearing that from somebody in town, government in Winchester and not from our own Arlington government, members of the Arlington town government. So that's pretty much all I had to say. Thank you. Thank you. The next speaker will be Patrick Hanlon. I'm Patrick Hanlon. I live on Park Street and I'm a town meeting member from precinct five. It seems to me that almost everyone agrees with the underlying idea that we ought to be encouraging more affordable housing through all kinds of means, one of which is inclusionary zoning. Inclusionary zoning up to now has not been highly successful in forgetting very many units. But that's not nearly as much because the percentage is wrong, but that the number that the percentage is being applied to is very low. This is only a part of the affordable housing picture. Certainly all affordable housing done by nonprofits, including HCA, which does a tremendous job here is one aspect of the puzzle. But here we're talking about market rate housing that has a substantial affordable complement. And in order to get that to happen, what is going on is that the market rate housing is subsidizing the affordable housing. And whether or not the affordable housing is built depends upon the economics of the overall project. And those economics are often different in different kinds of projects. In neighboring communities like Somerville, when they fiddled with and developed a thoughtful and somewhat complex inclusionary zoning set of percentages, they also did a great deal of study in order to figure out just where the market would be in order to try to get the subsidy, the affordable housing percentage to encourage housing rather than disparaging. The memo that you have before you from the Department of Planning seems to me to have it exactly right. This is not something where good wishes that we're wishing can make it so. 25% would be better than 15% and 30% better than 25% and so far on an item. What you have to do is understand where the sweet spot is in the market. We have an existing process that is designed to do that kind of an analysis. I think it should do that kind of analysis and we should take this up when we actually know what we're talking about. But at this time, we're in danger of making wishful thinking substitute for public policy analysis. And I think that it would be a big change. Thank you. So with that, we will turn it back to the board for any final questions or comments. Obviously, we will keep our discussion until the fourth night of the meeting when we will also vote on this particular article. But if there are any additional comments before we move on to article 41, I'll certainly take those at this time. Jean, David, Melissa, and I apologize. I can't see you all on my screen right now. Ken, I don't see any. Okay. Thank you all very much for everyone who provided comments during this article. Definitely appreciate all of the engagement here and you were all well heard. So thank you. We will now move to article 41. Which is a zoning bylaw amendment for the definition of foundation as inserted by the request of Patricia Warden. So Ken, sorry. I'm sorry. Did you, are we gonna break before or after this? Let's take this one and then we'll take a five minute break. I know we've all been sitting in our seats for three hours now. So you don't mind, I'd like to do this one and then we'll take a break unless the board has. Thank you. Okay, fine. That's fine. Thank you. Great. So Patricia Warden, are you here to be able to speak to this article? Yes, thank you. Fantastic. So you will have three minutes to present the article. Patricia Warden, Jason's to you. First of all, you need to know that I'm here tonight presenting article 41, the definition of foundation only because of a broken promise made by the former chair of the redevelopment board. One broken promise among several. Mr. Bernal asked the special term meeting of winter 2019 not to consider and approve this article at that time because he would deal with it later at the redevelopment board. However, he never did. The fact that most other communities do not define foundation does not mean that we do not need one. A similar argument was used years ago to delay us when I and others were trying to get the town to adopt an inclusionary housing bylaw. Opposing town officials said that few other towns had that bylaw. So why should we? After all, we have a housing authority. And so they managed to delay us long enough that for example, the MIRAC legacy project was built without a single affordable unit. Probably those communities that do not in a foundation definition have inspection or services who are able to notice and question an illegally expanding foundation when a large addition is being considered. That foundation expansion has been happening a lot in Arlington bringing huge profits for developer owned houses and their realtors and the loss of small affordable homes for those who cannot outbuild developers. The definition in the planning director's memo discussion is not the proposed vote that I sent to her. That final version for the 2021 annual town meeting is in the memo I sent to her and is at the end of her memo almost as a footnote. That definition was drafted with the advice of the chair of the zoning board of appeals Mr. Christian Klein who is an architect and preferred more detail. The planning director's memo is irrelevant. Let me just say that if you refuse to define foundation then you should at least eliminate, just get rid of. The exception allowed in the entire first bullet point in large addition section 1518B, parentheses six of the Arlington zoning bio which references foundations. In that way at least the zoning board of appeal may be able to review and save some of our affordable houses. At this time, the planning director and the redevelopment board have managed to delay the presumably loss of many affordable homes by delaying this definition and essentially since 2016 for five years since the establishment of the residential study group town meeting, that was town meeting group to address these problems in affordability. Ms. Warden, you're not going to do the right thing. Thank you. The planning department simply ghosted that committee last year so that they have not done any of the other reforms to help affordability and are risking dreadful displacement and homelessness. Thank you. Thank you. All right. Let's see, I'll turn it over to the board members for any questions to Patricia Warden or any questions to Erin or Jenny from the Department of Planning on their commentary. And we will start with Ken. I have no questions. Thank you. We'll move on to David. Mrs. Warden referenced Christian Klein from the ZBA having participated in drafting this and I would like to hear from him if he is on this call, what he thinks about this proposal. So David, what I will ask, I do see Christian Klein listed on the call. If Christian, if you could raise your hand, we would like to hear from you during the public comment period. Anything else, David? No. Jean, you're on mute. Thank you. And thank you Mrs. Warden for presenting this. My question is mostly about some of the things that you're excluding from the foundation. And I'm wondering why in our neighborhood, there were porches that have since been enclosed and are now integral parts of the home and sit on a foundation of masonry or concrete or other material. But I'm sort of, let me ask that first. So why wouldn't that sort of porch be included in the building foundation? If you would like to respond to that, if you could do so for Jean's question, that would be appreciated. Yeah, yeah, I think so. Do you have something to say, John? No, well, I... We can hear you. Yep, you're on mute. I can't hear me. Okay, thank you. Obviously, if the foundation is an integral part of the whole building, then that may be considered but that would be very much something that the zoning board of appeals would be able to determine. And I think that we have... That's what they're there for. And I think the purpose of this article would be so that the zoning board of appeals would be able to hear to hear about the proposal, since the bachelors will have been able to get a notice about it. Thank you. So one story attached private garages are considered part of the building foundation. If it's a single-story building, but not if it's a two-story building, why did you make that distinction? Probably by the foundations. A single story, a single story garage attached, possibly just a funnest lab. I think that is something again that the zoning board should be able to easily determine and should be given the opportunity. But these wouldn't go to the ZBA just by defining building foundation. It would still go through the regular building process and not everything would get to the zoning board of appeals. That's just a quibble. Well, it's not a quibble. My concern is that you're adding a definition here that seems in some places not to make any sense by making a distinction between enclosed porches and not enclosed porches, between garages that are attached to a single family, a single-story dwelling, but not if it's attached to a two-story building. As for the distinctions, I need to understand why these distinctions are rational. Excuse me, Jean. The distinction is that one has a foundation that is part of the house and the other does not. That's not what this says. You're defining a foundation to not include things that are part of the house that may have a foundation. You do not exclude anything that is legitimately on the house foundation. Okay. Well, I think you answered my question. Thank you. Thank you, Jean. Melissa, do you have any questions? No, not at this time. Great. Thank you. So with that, we will open this up for public comment. Any member of the public wishing to speak, please use the raise hand function. We will, I will call on you in the order that the hands have been raised and you will have up to three minutes to speak. Please identify yourselves by your first, last name and address and the first speaker will be Christian Klein. Thank you, Madam Chair. Christian Klein, 54 Newport Street, speaking as a resident of the town of Arlington. I had originally brought up concerns in regards to the writing of this to the proponent principally in the sort of the middle of the second line where it talks about materials that would be involved in the construction of a foundation. I had felt that it was restricting foundation to specific materials, which I thought was not keeping the intent of her article. In regards to the necessity of a definition for foundation, I do think it's important to differentiate between the foundation wall of a house and the foundation wall of a porch that sits entirely in front of the house because what we do see sometimes in town is that a porch is sort of an open airy structure, but then on reconstruction, often the porch is removed, a new footing is poured and it becomes an integral part of the house and there in the house steps forward. And I think that that's just, that is something that the town needs to consider whether that's something we want to allow by right. And that's the reason that I think this is something important for the board to consider. Thank you. Thank you. The next speaker will be Colleen Cunningham. Hi, actually, Stuart Morrison. Stuart. That's okay, Kensington Park. We're here to speak in favor and recommend this particular proposal, this particular warrant article. Certainly the spirit of the article is such that the goal is to prevent developers from say building a 20 foot wooden porch around somebody's house waiting a year and then extending the house. So using sort of ancillary structures around the house as a way to enlarge the house. As you've heard earlier this evening, there's a tremendous amount of concern in town about the fact that we have lots of laws that are just being subverted by developers to build larger and larger buildings, which does not promote affordability by any means. So what this is trying to do in my understanding is trying to close a loophole that allows developers to find a way to weasel a much larger structure onto an existing site. Now regarding Mrs. Warden's wording, I'm not a lawyer, but I would suggest that, we all understand what the goal of this article is and it might be, I might even, if Mrs. Warden is interested, I would suggest that the board itself has helped other people write warrant articles, including Barbara Thornton and this would be a place where the board could lend some expertise if that was something that she would like to have. Given that you've so graciously worked with other members of the public to refine their warrant articles. Thank you very much. Thank you, story. And yes, that if there any warrant article petitioner, if there is a request made to the board to review language and ask for feedback, you're more than happy to do so for any person. So I believe I see John Warden, you raising your hand, I do see you and you will, I will call on you after the next speaker that I have ready to speak. So the next speaker on my list here is Chris Loretty. Thank you, Madam Chair. Chris Loretty, 56 items, can you hear me? Okay. I can, yes, thank you. Okay, thank you. Yes, Madam Chair, I'd like to address one of the questions Mr. Benson raised and I think it was just about the need for this type of article. I really think the board needs to address this issue of just what is the foundation footprint for defining a large addition. And I'd like to explain how you can currently game the system. Currently, you can build a rear deck on your house that extends half of the required rear yard depth. So typically that's a 20-foot depth. If you wanna violate the zoning bylaw by building a deck that goes 10 feet into that, you're absolutely allowed to do that by building an open deck. Then what happens is the way the bylaw is currently being interpreted, you can build two stories on top of that and the building inspector will say, oh, that's within the existing foundation. When that foundation simply consists of some tube footings that were put in to build the deck. And I think that's the sort of thing that needs to be addressed in the bylaw so that we don't have these expanding foundations continually outside of the original footprint of the house that further encroach on the setbacks required by the bylaw. And so I'm not sure that the language proposed is necessarily the best language or the right language, but I clearly see this as a problem. I was going to give you a poster child for this, for a development that's occurring right now on Palmer Street, but unfortunately the public records I request I made has not yet been fulfilled. But it clearly shows this happening that sometime in the 1990s, after the rear porch had already been enclosed to create a larger house, the deck was put on and now the deck becomes into that, that deck was built into the required rear yard setback and now that's becoming the new rear wall of the house. I don't think that type of thing should be allowed, certainly not without a special permit or without a variance. Thank you. Thank you very much. John Warden, there you go. You're off mute. Am I unmuted now? I can hear you. Good. Yeah, John Warden, Jason Street. You wanna just wanna give the board a little history on this thing. Back in the 70s, I don't remember which year it was, we had a slight one named Bob Walls. And I don't know if any of you remember Bob, he's long gone now, but the person next to him built a huge house size addition to his house. And he thought that was not right, that there should be some regulation of that. And that was the genesis of the large expansion by law that was put into the books and is still standing. Basically, the word's a little bit rearranged, but it's basically the same one that we passed way back in 1970, whatever. An exception was put in because the custom at that time was that after the war, a lot of little one, one-and-a-half story houses were built in various parts of town. Some of them were still there. And when the family, when they had two, three kids and they need a little more room, they would literally raise the roof. They would stick in a second story between the first story and the roof. Maybe they'd even save that same roof and the houses were constructed in a way to support that second story. And so that was made an exception to the large addition by law because it was strictly a new story on top of the original story. And that's the way it was intended and that's the way it should work. But as has been pointed out, it has been hopelessly gained by developers with, I'm sorry to say, the approval of the inspection services where, and you've heard a couple of examples already tonight, where the spirit and purpose of that exception to the by law is being grossly violated. So as Mrs. Worden said, if you don't want to support this foundation definition, then you should, maybe you could use the same article. Delete that exception altogether. When we tried to do that in 16, a lot of people complained about it. And that was perhaps one of the reasons why the article to reform the large addition by law failed. But obviously it's being violated and it should be this or some other mode should be adopted to fix that because the large additions are without, there is a process that wouldn't end your ability to do to raise the roof. It just meant you had to go to the zoning board and you had to meet the criteria of respect for your neighbors and so on, which the special permit process sets forth. And that's just being a good neighbor and that's something we should favor and enforce in Island. Thank you. Thank you. Are there any other speakers on this topic? I don't see any further. When I had her hand up, she's also still unmuted, but she's- I pass, thank you, though. Oh, okay. Thank you. Thank you, Jenny. Thank you, Manel. Okay, so at this point, we will end public comment on article 41. I will ask the board members if there are any additional questions. David. So I appreciate Mr. Loretty's comments and Mr. Warden's comments. And I think I understand what this article is trying to get at, which is this idea of essentially using ancillary structures to bootstrap a larger foundation size when a renovation is done. And I understand the concern about doing that. And it seems like something that we should think about and address in some way if it is, in fact, happening. But I don't think this article does that, at least not in a clear way. And unless we can working with the proponent come up with a way of addressing the problem within the scope of this warrant article, I don't think we can fix the problem within this warrant article. David, do you have any specific suggestions? I hesitate, I think the terminology in the current article is imprecise and I'm not sure sitting here what I think the precise language should be. So I hesitate to suggest anything on the fly. But I would be interested in exploring this more with Mrs. Warden if she is amenable to that. Mrs. Warden, would you be open to exploring that language with David Watson? Oh, yes, I would be delighted. Great. Any other comments from board members? Okay, seeing one or seeing none, excuse me, we will, I'll ask the other board members if there are any concerns with taking a five-minute break since we've all now been sitting for over three hours and then we will come back and discuss articles 38, 43 and 42. Can we have a 10-minute break? Is there, if there's any way we could keep it to five minutes, I'm just mindful of there are people here who have been waiting quite a long time to speak. If you need 10, we can do that, but if we can keep it to five, I'd prefer that. Okay, try. Thank you. Thank you also at 9.23, we will, 9.24 rather, we will kick back off. As soon as I have confirmation that each one of the board members has returned, we will move to article 38. So, David, I see you, Jean, I see Ken. I am back too, Rachel. Great, thank you, Jean, I appreciate it. I think we're just waiting for Melissa to rejoin us. Melissa, are you there? Melissa, are you back? Sorry, I can't see, I'll have to have a verbal. She's not there, so I think she'll rejoin us hopefully. I see it's just, her video is off. Okay, well, let's go ahead and get started. So, the next warrant article that we will discuss is article 38, which is a zoning law, zoning by law amendment related to energy efficient homes on non-conforming lots. And Erin, I, Erin or Jenny, which one of you will be speaking to this one? Erin. Okay, good question. Is this the, is this what you want on the screen? Right, and actually we were going to defer to Posse Miettenen, the representative from the Clean Energy Future Committee. That's great. So you'll have three minutes. Okay, thank you. Good evening, Madam Chair and members of the ARB. Can you guys hear me okay? Yes, we can, thank you. If you could just identify yourself for the record, that would be fantastic, thank you. Yes, so I'm Posse Miettenen, 23 Sharkin Park, and I'm representing the Arlington Clean Energy Future Committee in support of the article 38 that is being presented to the town meeting by ARB. And the town of Arlington established the Clean Energy Future Committee because the town has set a goal of reaching net zero emissions in 30 years by 2050. The Clean Energy Future Committee in February a month that this past month passed the Arlington 2050 net zero action plan. And I have a copy here and anybody can actually get that from the town website. In one of the key sections of the plan, NZB3, the plan calls for the town to make changes to zoning or other bylaws that hinder their renovation or construction on net zero energy capable buildings. And that is the reason article 38 is being presented here today. Within 30 years, 70% of Arlington buildings will be over a hundred years of age and many buildings will undergo, sorry, undergo significant renovations or rebuilding in the next 30 years. And we wanna make sure that they will have the highest level of efficiency possible. Currently, any homeowner in Arlington can build a new home on their lot, whether it's a conforming or non-conforming lot. But we have this dynamic word in about 30% of the lots. You have to build a new home on top of an existing foundation and you're not allowed to replace the existing foundation with a high efficiency insulated foundation that are required for most efficient homes. So we have this dynamic that effectively the current bylaw doesn't allow the most efficient homes to be built on 30% of the Arlington lots. So the proposed bylaw would change this by allowing installation new foundations on those 30% of lots, as long as the owner agrees to make the home at least 20% more energy efficient than the energy code. So that's the significant ask for allowing this amendment. The proposal does not change any or it doesn't allow any additional buildings to be built. This only affects the lots where there's an existing principal building and simply allows new foundations for homes that are already allowed to be built. It encourages homes to become net zero capable homes that will have zero energy bills and therefore will improve housing affordability in Arlington. The article 38 will help Arlington meet this energy efficiency goals by removing a key barrier to building the highest efficiency homes or allowing the building of the highest efficiency homes on these 30% of the lots. And the Clean Energy Future Committee, thanks again, the board for its support in meeting the town's energy efficiency goals. Thank you. Thank you so much, Pathy. So I'll now open it up to the board for any questions for either Pasi or for Erin or Jenny regarding their memo. So we'll start with Kim. One quick question. What is the benchmark? You said that it meets the 20% better than the benchmark. Yes. Is the benchmark the energy code or the stretch code or the new code coming up? Yeah, excellent question. It is the current code and then in effect. So today it's the stretch code if the energy code gets tighter in the future, then it'll still be 20% tighter than that code. Okay. So it's 20% greater than the existing energy code. Correct. Using the HR score, yes. Yeah, fine. I have no further question. Great. Thanks for the clarification, Kim. The next, how about Jean next? Yeah, we heard the presentation from Pasi a while ago and it was very compelling. I don't have any additional questions or comments. Great. Thank you. The next we'll go to David. We did have a very thorough presentation on this and I'm supportive of it. I did just want to ask Pasi, if he had any thoughts on the potential interplay of this proposal with Mrs. Warden's proposal defining building foundation as I continue to think about that one. Yes. So good question. Since the building foundation definition itself does not impact the energy efficiency of the buildings, the clean energy future committee wouldn't have a position on that particular, but because it would be impacting the size of buildings, not the energy efficiency of buildings. Okay. Any other questions, David? No, thank you. Okay, thank you. Melissa. No, not at this time, but thank you. Great, thank you. So at this time, we will open this up for public questions or comments. You will have up to three minutes. Please remember to identify yourself by your first class name and address. We will start with Patricia Warden. Thank you, Madam Chair. Patricia Warden, Jason Street. Yes, I very much support energy efficiency in all forms. However, I do not think that there should be a special award as an incentive to allow building on non-conforming lots. I think all developers should be required to address energy affordability and there should not be a special award for those who choose to build on non-conforming lots. Thank you. Thank you. The next speaker will be Joanne Preston. Thank you. Joanne Preston, Mystical Lake Drive, town meeting member precinct nine. I'm also on the board of the Arlington Housing Authority and I just found out today I live on one of these non-conforming lots. I do not support this article. I don't think it's in the public good in terms of energy slowing down climate change. And I say that because I look through the research and I found that teardowns, which I guess this is based on and building energy efficient construction house does not reduce, does not lead to energy efficiency. And I'll just, I only have three minutes. So I'll just read some quotes from the studies. For instance, a new home is constructed and features high performance insulation, increased energy efficiency and improved indoor air quality. But the carpet emitted by the construction of the house itself will still be too high. The study found replacing an older, less efficient home with a new high performance home will take an average of 80 years to offset the ecological impact of the new construction. We do not have 80 years to combat climate change. Another quote, when comparing buildings of equal function building reuse, which is putting in new windows, insulation and so on offers environmental savings over a demolition and new construction. So I think this, oh, and the other part that is missing is once you tear down a building that each building has, according to one study, 50 tons of landfill. And other studies show that the landfill in the United States has 25 to 40% of it is materials from tearing down buildings. So I am totally unconvinced by the scientific evidence that I've been able to find. And I would like to ask that the redevelopment board look at these studies that compare tear downs with this energy-efficient construction because I think that I am at least not convinced that the reason for this should be for slowing down climate change. The scientific evidence doesn't show this for me. When you take into consideration what a tear down will admit in terms of carbon, landfill and so on and constructing a new house also has problems in terms of what's submitted into the air and what's put into the ground. And I think 80 years is too long to wait. Some studies say it's even over a hundred years. So thank you. I hope you will consider this scientific evidence. Thank you. And I certainly appreciate that. I would be happy to defer to Posse. I'll just state that in my experience there certainly is a lot of variation that needs to be taken into account when it comes to the reusability of properties and the ability to rehab an existing property to make it energy-efficient especially to the level that this proposal would allow the homeowner to achieve. Let's next go to Chris Loretty. Thank you, Madam Chair. Chris Loretty, 56 Adams Street. My main comment on this article is that it's really not ready for prime time. And I say that for a couple of reasons. One, this article is really dealing with non-conforming one and two family homes. And the proper sector of the zoning by-law to be amended is section eight and in particular, 8.1.3 because that's where you deal with non-conforming structures and in particular in that case, one and two family homes. So I think one, you're putting this into the wrong section of the zoning by-law. But on substantive issues, I'm a bit concerned about some of the greenwashing that's going on. And I appreciate Ken Laos' comments about the change in the building code in the energy efficiency requirements because it appears to me that the benefits and the incentives in this are largely gonna go away and this is gonna just be used for any type of new home. And if you read the language, it does not, the 20% increased efficiency does not change as the state building code becomes stricter and requires more energy efficiency. It's the lesser of 44 or the current code. The current code 55, 20% of that is 44, but if that 55 goes down, that 44 doesn't change. So then this becomes just a means of getting around the limitation on building on undersized lots. I think some of the background information in the memo is also incorrect. You cannot tear down a house to the foundation right now and rebuild on it. Once you tear down the house to the foundation on an non-conforming lot, you no longer have a buildable lot and that's the whole reason for this article. I think that's an issue that needs to be dealt with more generally in town, but I don't think this article is the right way to go about doing it. So I think, for that reason, I would defer this. And I think also there's sort of an irrational fear among the opponents of going before the ZBA. There's a number of ZBA members on this call. I wanna assure the proponents and other people on the call that these are very nice people. And I don't always agree with them, but you don't have to fear going before the ZBA for a special permit. So I think at this point, if you are going to move ahead and allow this type of construction in completely movable and tear down on a non-conforming lot, I would suggest that it should be done subject to a special permit before the ZBA, you know, until such time that this has been further considered. And if it is gonna be considered because of the changes in the building code in the increased energy efficiency, it ought to apply more generally and not just for people who wanna do zero energy houses. So I'll leave it at that. Thank you. Thank you. The next speaker will be Sanjay Newton. Thank you, Madam Chair. This is Sanjay Newton, 32 Ottawa Road. I just wanted to say that I think this article is really well thought out and no nonsense. And I hope that the board will put it through. This is the right kind of step to be taking for energy efficiency in town. Certainly not the only one, but this is a good one that the ARB can make a positive contribution with. Thank you. Thank you. The next speaker will be James Fleming. Sorry, I don't have my video. Can you hear me? Yes, we can. Thank you. Awesome. I wanted to ask the proponent why the... If you could just... Oh, sorry. Yes, of course, of course. James Fleming, 58 Oxford Street. The question for the proponent was why that there was a minimum lot size of 5,000 square feet as a precursor to this condition applying. Where I live in East Arlington, you'd be very hard pressed to find any lots that meet that condition. Almost all of them are under 5,000 square feet just by dint of being older. I wonder why you couldn't just take that out entirely because it just means that you wouldn't get energy efficient development in East Arlington. Thank you. Thank you, James. Posse, would you like to address that specific question? Yeah, that is a good question. And what it was attempting to do is that currently bylaw differentiates between buildings that are greater than, I'm sorry, the lots that are greater than 5,000 square feet or less than 5,000 square feet. It was simply trying to synchronize the sizing so it would be consistent. We currently have 2,800 lots in town that are 5,000 square feet that are actually exempt and they're allowed to be built. And so simply it was trying to standardize the language considering the 5,000 versus less than 5,000 versus greater than 5,000, but you would still be allowed under this bylaw to replace the foundation of that building and expand it up to 750 square feet, which the current bylaw allows you to do except that you couldn't replace the foundation. So I don't know if that answers the question, but you would still be allowed to replace the foundation under this bylaw. Okay, one thing that I was thinking about when you originally had talked about it as a foundation replacement, my thought was that foundation replacement is really expensive and the cost of doing it would forever offset the gains you get from energy efficiency in terms of how much you'd save every month in utility costs or what have you versus the cost of replacing a foundation, which is on the order of $100,000. But is this specific to replacement foundations or would it also apply to say if you did a layer of installation on the inside of your foundation walls? May I answer that? Absolutely, please, yes. Yes, so this does not require that the foundation be replaced, it simply allows it to be replaced. So if you were to wish to leave yours intact, this has no impact on that. Okay, thank you, that's all. Thank you. The next speaker will be, I'm assuming it's Stewart. Hi, Stewart, yes. Yep. Yes, thank you. Stewart Borson, Kensington Park. So I just wanted to say a couple of things. First, a number of people have already mentioned this, but I'll reiterate the point, a building that already exists is probably the greenest that you can actually have. And what this looks like it's trying to do is provide incentive for developers to tear down buildings and then build them based on, somebody mentioned the word greenwashing here. I won't use that word in this particular instance, although it's what it looks like. Some sort of greenwashing, energy efficient principles as a way to build larger structures. So it's pretty obvious that this is something that's really being done to facilitate developers that want to build McMansions. It's easily gained and it's a way developers can, find a way to build McMansions on smaller lots. Okay, but that's my first point. The second point is more general. Passe owns a company that's actually proposing to do this work. So he has a commercial interest in promoting this particular law, but he's hiding behind the clean energy committee. And I would just propose, I would like to respectfully submit to the board that when people bring warrant articles like this before the board, they should have a courtesy to disclose their commercial interests. There are a lot of people on this call right now who came to see other zoning laws and aren't aware of what the background of this is. So there's a commercial interest happening here and it really should be disclosed and not hidden. Thank you very much. Thank you. I'll just state that Passe has done quite a lot of work for the town with regard to looking at opportunities for Arlington to promote energy efficiency across many different areas of the town. And I'll just leave it at that. May I actually address that? Well, you can certainly. I was also going to ask you to address the embodied energy question, which has come up a couple of times as well. Sure. So I address both. First of all, I have no commercial interest in this whatsoever. My company does analytics of utility meter data and is not involved in construction in any way. I have no involvement in any sort of a commercial activity involving the buildings or new construction in Arlington or elsewhere. But the second point about the embodied apologies, embodied energy is that with most of the analysis, if you look at the embodied energy of a net zero energy building or a, let's call it a plus 40 building, the paybacks can be well under 10 years in those cases. So it really depends on where or what you're comparing it to. Also in Massachusetts, for example, building waste or buildings that are components that are removed have to be recycled by rules. So for example, concrete gets regrounded and gets used as a fill for a road. So the embodied energy question is a bit more complicated than considerably shorter time paybacks than that were described earlier. Thank you, Kasi. I see two more hands raised. I will go to Judith Garber who has not had an opportunity to speak yet. Hello, I'm just asking for a clarification on this because I'm not familiar with this warrant article just yet and first hearing about it a few days ago. So can someone build a house on a non-conforming lot currently and they just cannot make it energy efficient or are we not allowed to build on non-conforming lot? And this would make it so that you can build as long as it is energy efficient. That's just my question. Thank you. Kasi, I'll turn it over to you again. Yes. So the current rules on non-conforming lot are such that, apologies, losing my voice here, are such that if you leave 50% of the volume of the existing building up, which has been interpreted by the building department as leaving two walls up, you can build a new house. And that's why you see a lot of new construction which is actually considered a renovation because they leave the existing walls up. So that's why what I'm saying is that effectively you can build a brand new home on top of an existing and non-conforming lot foundation. And it looks and feels like a new home. The distinction is that they left two walls up to retain 50% of the building volume. Thank you. Thank you. The next speaker will be Chris Loretty. Thank you, Madam Chair. I would just like to add to that last comment that indeed you can build that way and you could make that house just as energy efficient as a new home and you can insulate that foundation on the inside and get basically the same energy efficiency as if you put a new foundation in. But the question I wanted to raise though is I don't understand there's this whole amendment to the section on the minimum lot width which is not the same as the frontage. And I'm wondering just why that is I understand the proponent may not have a commercial interest but I thought the very first time this was discussed he did have a personal interest and that his lot was not of sufficient frontage and probably not sufficient lot width. And I'm wondering if that's what explains that lot width issue there. And so anyway, that's my question. Just why usually when we talk about a non-conforming lot it's the lot size and the frontage yet you're also amending a requirement related to lot width. Thank you. Passey, would you like to address the question about why the amendment to lot width is included? I'm actually not familiar with that. Only the frontage question was in there to my knowledge. So if there's something about width I'm not familiar with it. Which says 5.4, 0.2, 0.4 front yard minimum lot width and that's different from the requirement. Okay, I don't have the language in front of me right now. I believe that was only referring to frontage, not width. Yeah, those are two different things. Absolutely. And Madam Chair, I guess one other correction. I think there's a misinterpretation of this 5,000 square foot minimum lot size. And that only applies to lots that have never been built on before. I think that's something you wanna check with town council on that comes out of state law and there seemed to be some confusion about that in the memo too to the board. Anyway, I don't think it's critical necessarily for this but thank you. Thank you. So Passey, if you could double check the question on width versus frontage. Yes, I certainly will do that. Let me get back to you on that. My knowledge there's nothing there about width. So that's an error if that's the case. It's about frontage. Great, thank you so much. Are there any other members of the public wishing to ask questions or comments? Okay. Seeing none, I will ask members of the board if there are any additional questions, Jean. Jean, you're on mute. Thank you. Passey had a couple of questions. A couple of people made comments that by time this to an existing standard that's expected to get more energy efficient in the future we're not taking that future into account. I guess my question is that correct? And if that is correct, would you suggest an amendment to the language that would take that into account? Yeah, that is a good question. And the way it was intended and it was discussed originally was that there's some point at which the state building code becomes sufficiently tight. So for example, if the state building code requires net zero energy buildings, then requiring further 20% or further reduction from there was not going to be helpful. So it was sufficient. The state code would be sufficient was the idea. I have no objection to making continuing into the future. It was just trying to figure out at what point do those two things converge? So the language about the lesser of the two would not be a limitation on what the requirements are in the future? That is correct. So if for example, the state required a her score of 20, then obviously these under this bylaw the non-conforming lots today would have to meet that her score of 20 also. So it would get tighter with the state code as it goes below 40, 40, 400. So I think if the board ends up voting in favor of this, we might wanna add that explanation to our report. I guess my other question related to that it based on I think a couple of people at least the implication of what they were saying which is not the way I understand it. So I'd like to know. I don't see this as an incentive for somebody to basically tear down a house and build a new house on a foundation. I see it as you're gonna tear down the house and build a new house. You might as well make the foundation as efficient as you want to. So my question is, does this add any incentive for somebody to do a demolition that they would otherwise not do? No, it does not. And we don't anticipate any new construction. No one builds a new house because they can build a new foundation. They build a house because they needed for some other reason. So my anticipation is that this would not increase new construction in Arlington. Okay, yeah, I think it's helpful to understand that distinction. And by the way, I agree with you. I was also gonna say that in Massachusetts, construction waste, when you tear down a house, cannot be landfill. It cannot be incinerated. It has to be recycled than it is. So we're not, some other places where the dynamics are different from that. Indeed. Thank you. Yeah, well, I'm on mute talking. Are there any other questions for Posse from the board? Great. Thank you, Posse. Thank you, on behalf of the committee. All right, let's see. We will now move on to article 43, which is a zoning by law amendment article to propose the adoption of accessory dwelling units or ADUs. And I will see if Barbara Thornton is with us. Yes, I am. Fantastic, thank you, Barbara. So you will have three minutes if you could to walk us through your proposal. Yes, thank you. I'm happy to be here tonight in support of what I believe to be the best housing article in the state that actually encourages development of these new housing opportunities. As many of you know, the article has been incubating for a very long time. We came close to getting it in 2019. We missed it by, we had a majority vote in town meeting, but missed it the two thirds majority by nine votes. This article that we have today is clearer for the building inspector, better for affordable housing, better for Arlington neighborhoods and better for those homeowners who want to add an ADU to their property. I'm pleased to introduce Phil Tedesco to you to walk through the details. Phil is a fellow Arlington resident, real estate lawyer who is helping with this article as a volunteer on a pro bono basis. Oh, well, you can see three examples of the ADU on the screen, of different ADUs on the screen in front of you. Thank you. Phil? Thanks, Barbara. If you can go to the next slide to start, accessory dwelling units are small independent living spaces. So think like an extra bedroom with a kitchen, bathroom and separate entrance that like this slide shows can be within an existing house by finishing or converting space in an expansion to an existing house or in an accessory building. If you go to the next slide, we've tried to be really thoughtful with the parameters for this proposal. And there were a few we think worth highlighting. First, the ADUs under this proposal would be subject to all the same dimensional requirements that apply to any other home improvement project, in addition of course, to building code and fire safety requirements. Also ADUs are accessory as the name suggests and ADU can't be bigger than half the size of the primary dwelling or in any case, 900 square feet and it can't be turned into a condo and sold separately. ADUs are gonna be created by homeowners, not developers in our proposal. You can't get a building permit for the ADU unless the homeowner certifies that they are their family member will live on the property when the ADU is completed. And as we mentioned before, the ADU can't be turned into a separate condo and sold separately. ADUs can't be used for short-term rentals so no Airbnb's and nothing here will change Arlington's Bandit overnight on-street parking. As one last point, I think it's important to keep in mind. We expect only a modest number of ADUs to be created each year. Other Boston area towns that allow ADUs generally see around two to five a year, which makes sense considering the upfront cost and work involved like any other big home improvement project. So if you go to the next slide, I'll turn it back to Barbara to describe some of the benefits of the proposal. Thank you. We believe the ADU article will not only add more lower cost housing to Arlington, it will serve the 34% of Arlingtonians who now live alone. For example, the regional average is only 25%. It will also give homeowners in Arlington a direct role in providing more affordable housing. It will enable seniors to age in place instead of going to a nursing home. It will allow our kids who grow up here to live in Arlington as young adults. It will bring back and reinforce the concept of extended families living in proximity in a way that we have not seen in America since World War II. Barbara, I just wanna let you know you're at time. So if you could work to wrap up, that would be great. Thank you. Thank you. In 1970, there were 54,000 people living in Arlington. In 2000, there are 44,000 people living in Arlington. We hope that ADUs can help fill those empty spaces in the houses that we have with people who need spaces to live. Thank you. Thank you. All right, I will turn it over to members of the board to ask questions of either Barbara or Phillip or the planning board or the planning department representatives regarding their memo. And we will start with David. All right, so this is one of the articles where the proponent has previously talked with the board to get some feedback. And so I was looking at my notes from those discussions and I guess one thing is I still have a certain level of discomfort that it's possible to build an ADU by right that is larger than a large addition that would require approval from the ZBA. So I wanted to ask about that. Sure, so we've tried to be really clear on that because it's absolutely not the intent. The intent is really to be subject to all the same rules. So we did specifically reference in, if you scroll down a little after the purpose in the requirements section, which I, in number one, I believe the fourth bullet there, sorry, it starts off in accessory dwelling unit may be located. So it's in the requirements section. And I believe, yeah, there it is there that accessory dwelling units, that's it there. Provided if it's going to be an expansion, the expansion has to comply with the requirements of the bylaw and we specifically referenced section 542B6 in order to be clear, absolutely clear that if you did trigger, if you added more than 750 square feet of gross point area, you would need a special permit from the ZBA. I think that makes sense, but it's still a little unclear to me because you have to read that after you read the bullet point, the first bullet point in that section. Yeah, I mean, I would just say, I mean, the way I think about it is that you're permitted by right to add the bedroom to your house. So, but if you want to add that bedroom in connection with a project that triggers section 542B6, you need a special permit. And so the use here would be permitted by right, but of course it's subject to existing rule. So, for example, you also couldn't build it in a way that would, that was less than 750 square feet, but for example, was gonna encroach into the setback just because that's just not allowed anyway. I still feel like it could be clear in that first bullet point. So that you're not, because someone sees that and then they have to keep reading to see that, well, there's actually a limitation on that. So I don't know if you wanna reference the section in this bullet point as well, but think about that a little bit. Absolutely, and as I say, I think there's no, that's absolutely our intent. So we'll definitely take a look back and aim to make that more clear. And let's see, we also talked a little bit about the third bullet point there about no more than one accessory dwelling unit is allowed per principal dwelling unit. And how that would interact in a two or three family building, for instance, or sorry, a two family or a duplex as opposed to a single family. Would you like them to speak to that and what the intent is, David? Yeah, thank you. I'll take a crack at starting. There's a, we are allowing it an ADU for one side of each of a duplex housing. So they could put, say they have a basement that would facilitate that. They could put it, the person on the left could add an ADU, the person on the right could add an ADU, but they have to comply with the building codes in order to do that. This is not something that anybody can just do because they want to. Phil, do you want to add to that? Sure, but I think a big, there's a, we're trying to make sure if one person in a two family, first of all, this would have to be ones that are owned in condominium form, just by the nature of the other requirements or by the non-profit, not affordable housing developer. So if one of the unit owners wanted to build an ADU, we're concerned that we don't want to create a situation where the owners basically preclude each other from doing it. The other one unit owner has to quote unquote get the ADU, even though it's highly unprobable, the other one would ever either be able to under zoning or in practice ever do it. I mean, if we just think that at most, we're thinking half a dozen are gonna be built a year. It just seems highly unlikely that two would be built on the same lot. But in order to allow those condo owners to not to just basically be like, well, in order to do this, I have to quote unquote get the ADU from my neighbor. We think that's first of all, just to avoid that sort of dynamic. The other issue is that if zoning would allow it, these are gonna have to be no more than half the size of the primary dwelling. We really are talking about very small units that would probably have like a single resident. So the effect on density is always limited by the principle dwelling it's attached to. So if someone's an in-law or a child returning from college, is able to have an independent space that can be accommodated within the zoning rules, we didn't see why that would just off the bat preclude the development. And I mean, given the size of the lots in Arlington that most two families and duplexes are built on, it seems like there would be very few, if any, lots in Arlington that would allow someone to build ADUs outside of the existing building on Valope without violating other zoning, other dimensional requirements. I absolutely agree. And that's why I just view it as not a big concern because I believe that the existing limitations of zoning will not, will be a substantial limitation on the effectiveness of this. Yeah. Any other questions, David? I did, it's something I am okay with, but I did think it would be helpful for them to just discuss in the hearing the parking provision where no additional off-street parking would be required and thinking around that. We think parking is a problem in Arlington. We do not want anybody to think that the addition of an ADU is going to increase the on-street parking or we don't want, we are not requiring anybody to build a parking on their space. If they wanna create an ADU, they have to find appropriate space on their property in order to build parking if they want an extra lot. We think there is a growing number of people who would be very happy to live in an ADU and use public transit or walk. Yeah, and there is that. I think there is some data, I believe it's from the AARP suggesting less than one parking space is needed even per ADU. So again, it's the homeowner's problem, but we wouldn't require more land to be paved over for a car that may not be needed or in a lot that could already accommodate the parking nets that's needed by the lot. The last thing I wanted to mention is there's been some concern raised with public comments we've received about the potential for people using ADUs for Airbnb. So I wanted to ask you to talk about the provision dealing with that and I think you just passed it, Jenny. Yeah, thank you. So there is a town bylaw already that prohibits the use of ADUs for Airbnb use for short-term rentals. So I probably broader than just Airbnb. And so we want it to be really clear that this is intended to be subject to that. And so we've included it here. As I say, I don't think it's necessary, but we've done it to be really clear on that point. All right, thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Go to Ken next for any questions. Ken, you're on mute. Sorry about that. No, I have no questions. I think this is a good one and we're good to go. Great, thank you. Jean. Yes, thank you. I read this in a very detailed manner and I think it's very well written and very well thought out. So thank you for presenting it to us in this fashion. I do have a few questions. One is when the ADU warned article was at town meeting a couple of years ago, Mr. Byrne was, I'm not sure what the right phrase is, let's just say he had some concerns about it. I wonder if you'd spoken with him this time and if so, can you fill us in about what he thought about this? Yeah, I'll start out with that because I think that Mike Byrne and the role he plays is absolutely central to the success and the safety of the ADUs that would be created in Arlington. So it was really important to us that we talked to him early and we talked to him often and we have. And he has, I think he is nervous a little bit that there's going to be a swamp. He's going to be swamped with these. And our findings are that in Newton, which is one of the most, so far most successful communities in the state, they develop about, they bring online about maximum 10 ADUs a year. Arlington is half the size of Newton. Nevertheless, I would be very happy if we got 10 ADUs a year. But we've worked carefully with Mike and in one of his concerns was, well, I'll let Phil address the concern that about how to use conversions of garages and what we did to try and make him feel more comfortable with this because of that. Can I just clarify for members of the public who may be listening in that they're referring to the head of inspectional services? That's right. Thank you. Yeah, so what we've met with him a few times. So the, from his perspective, the conversion of an accessory building to an ADU is the most challenging from a code and fire safety perspective. There are, this is allowed in three of our surrounding communities, Cambridge, Somerville and Lexington do allow ADUs in accessory structures, but that is the most challenging. And so what we've done is just delay that you wouldn't be able to do one in the accessory structure for six months. That was to give the town an opportunity and the inspectional services department to learn how ADUs work, what the code issues are, et cetera, with easier cases before having a more challenging one to deal with. Can I, did he express any other concerns? I think in general from a building, with his building inspector had on, I think he was, he felt like he could enforce this, that the concerns he raised were that in many cases because of code requirements, it's going to be impractical or more expensive than people anticipate off the bat. It's not as easy as just, I don't know, putting in a carpet and a door or something like that, to make it actually comply with the building and fire code as a dwelling unit will require more work. And he was concerned about the volume that would come. And that is really, I know he's reached out to the finance committee to, with kind of a heads up that this may be a, he may be asking for more budget and staffing to the extent that's an issue. And we've also, Which would be, you know, which would be part of kind of the overall portfolio of what they're dealing with. And I understand that their office is busy generally. Yeah. We've also talked to him about this potential onslaught of people, how he can screen them because there's 19,000 properties, for example, in Arlington dwelling units, and there's probably 19,000 different ways of evaluating them with the building code. So he knows that he's going to have to go in individually to anybody who wants an ADU. And we're thinking about how informally we can create kind of a screen for him, a pre-application, some information sheets because people to do this are going to have to go to an architect or a licensed building contractor in order to get information to assess the costs and whether it's possible before they go to the building inspector for evaluation. So with the six months, he was he happy with the six months delay for the accessory buildings? I think on that point, he didn't have a specific timeframe on them. And so we felt we wanted to be responsive to his concern that it was a more challenging situation to provide the six months. He didn't ask for it. We just sensed that this would give him more comfort. Okay. Yeah, that's all very helpful. A couple other questions. In addition to David's asking about some of the comments we got, we've gotten a couple of other comments that said by doing this, we're really turning single family residential districts into two family residential districts. What would be your response to that? Phil? Sure. So there's a couple of really core differences between what you could do, for example, where I live in East Arlington, which is two family by right and what we see happening and what is possible here. So the first is that what often happens, you cannot tear down. A developer would not be in a position to tear down a single family house and put in a quote unquote, two family with the ADU and then sell them off as condos. That would be a common occurrence in a two family by right district. Here that can't happen for two reasons. One, the homeowner has to certify that they're gonna live on the property when it's completed either in one of the two units. And the other is you can't sell them separately because the ADU is accessory. The ADU also can only be half the size of the primary dwelling. So it's really subordinate to it in that sense as well. And doesn't require any extra parking spaces? It doesn't require any extra parking space. And just in general, the type, this is a different type of housing that we're thinking about. And so the market is gonna be just different for it than the market for a two family or the market for condos. The other comments we've gotten is like, this isn't good for the environment because people will pave over green space and they'll sort of tear down trees and things like that in order to do this. How would you respond? So we're subject to all the same rules that already apply in the zoning code. So we're not loosening any of those rules. So if you want to do an expansion for a bedroom or a home office or something like that, these are all subject to all the same rules. So we're not making anything incrementally worse for from a green perspective. I mean, the one thing about not in crying up, including the parking is from our perspective, not needlessly paving over, paving over things. Can I just add to that? One of the things that I learned in talking with the Newton building inspector was that by far the majority of the uses of an ADU were within the existing building envelope. It was not an expansion of the building envelope and it largely took place with people deciding that they, maybe kids had grown or that they could convert the part of the space for a mother-in-law without, and just adding it's essentially just adding a kitchen to additional space. I noticed that I liked that you, if it's owned by a nonprofit, I've forgotten the exact wording, that it would have to be an affordable unit. Can you explain your thinking about why it otherwise would not need to meet the sort of detailed definition of affordable? Well, it has to be affordable as defined in the bylaw. I don't, I just want to make sure I'm responsive to the question, were you asking? So I understand if it's going to be owned by a nonprofit where somebody, the owner's not living there, they would have to be affordable units. But if the owner's living in one of the two units, the unit doesn't have to meet the definition of affordable, I wonder about your thinking about that. Can we do that? Yeah, so there's two kind of thoughts really, well, three points I would make, I guess. One is that, affordable is defined with reference to area median income, and there's a, so in many cases, you may build the ADU for a family member, and then you would not be allowed to have them live in it, both because they might not meet the income threshold, even if they did, you would have to rent the unit, pursuant to a lottery system and have affirmative fair marketing, et cetera. So that's the first. The second is, I think it would be a real, just in general, a kind of poison pill for an ADU bylaw, because for that reason, and the reason that you're gonna expend something like $100,000, never be able to, it could make it infeasible if you were doing it in order to earn rental, you wouldn't necessarily be able to get it back, and a homeowner who's gonna be building this is going to be just really, really deterred if you think about it by the compliance requirements, just fear of compliance and just not being able to, with the administrative burden that is associated with a unit being affordable. And the third point I would make on it is that keep in mind, these are by definition smaller apartments, which are going to be much less expensive than single family homes, which is the primary place where they'll be added. So in that sense, they'll be much less expensive if not, quote unquote, affordable as defined in the bylaw. Can I add to that? These are, having an ADU is like having somebody, like having a roommate, it's a very personal experience. So the most of the ADUs are going to be family members or friends or adult children coming back are the major purpose, but this particular article or this particular piece of this article was added at the request of people who develop and are concerned about increasing the amount of affordable housing in Arlington. We kept this, that it has to be the homeowner, it can't be an outside developer, has to be the homeowner that does this with this one exception, and that is to encourage the opportunity for ADUs to be developed for nonprofit purposes if the owner is a nonprofit entity. Great, that's all very helpful. Thank you for taking the time to walk me through that, I appreciate it. Thank you, Jean. Melissa, any questions for the article proponents? Yeah, I was curious in terms of the cost, if when you guys were doing your analysis, if you got some estimates on kind of the internal addition and then kind of the garage in terms of just kind of estimates for what it would cost, so homeowner or nonprofit. I, again, I'm going back to my conversation. There are lots of reports. Amy Dain is somebody who's done a couple of reports on this in the state, and we've looked at those, but she doesn't deal with, and when we talked to her, didn't deal with the actual costs. The best information that I had is still anecdotal, and that was from the building inspector in Newton, and we've been under the assumption that you should assume it's gonna be $100,000, but he said it could be substantially less. It could be if you're renovating a space that's already there in order to meet code compliance, it could be as little as five or 10,000, but it really depends upon the building and the code, and you have to get the license inspector in there to look at it. Okay, and then with regards to, I guess, the building inspector, were they concerned about the added staff and demands on time? Is that some of the concern with what was coming forward? Would they anticipate coming forward with an ADU kind of change? I think the building inspector saw himself, and I'm just guessing here, I think he saw himself as the front line and the only contact point for everybody that may wanna develop an ADU, and he had no idea how many people might wanna do that. So I think after talking with him and sharing more information with him, I think he feels better about what it would take, but it's a complicated process. And as he said, I had to wrap my head around it, and he did. And lastly, I guess this is to the Jenny and Steph in terms of how this compares to the other one, based on the memo, I guess I feel like staff was more aligned with this, and then at the beginning though, kind of in amalgamating all of these warrant articles was advising kind of to take it slow. So I'm trying to understand and tease out this one in particular. If you could give me any insight on your thinking, Jenny or Erin. I'll just briefly say, I mean, this is different than what we were talking about in 2019 from the board. Pretty substantially different. So I wouldn't even really dare to compare the two at this point in time. And then in terms of how this relates to everything else, I wasn't necessarily including this in that grouping of all of the different articles with the exception that of course, you know, would have to be taken under consideration as you're evaluating everything in general. So that was more the commentary about looking at things holistically and trying to understand what they all might mean together. Not simply in this out specifically, but in the articles. Yeah, that makes sense. And then I'm just curious if the proponents had recently heard of like the kind of, some of the new zoning that's going on. And I mean, it's a different geographic area, but in Los Angeles, they have some kind of over the counter designs for ADUs. Have you looked at that and, you know, how does that reconcile with someone, what you're proposing? American Planning Association, and I believe the AIA and the American, excuse me, the W-A-R-P are all very excited about the possibility for ADUs being one of the solutions, not solutions, but one of the aids to helping with the housing crisis. And I've got a file folder full of plans of ADUs and I'm waiting until we get this passed and then I'm sitting down with the building inspector and saying, you know, here's some things that you can give available. You can pass out to people who are interested because there's a lot out there. Right, I think in terms of facilitating the process, if there were certain designs internally or garage based or something like that, that could be approved in that way, it could facilitate. Some of that and maybe remove some of the, you know, kind of onus that he might feel, I don't know. Yeah, we will be setting, we will be. I mean, I hope that there will be a sort of industry, right? I mean, there will be architects who and contractors who are familiar with ADUs who, you know, and who can, you know, both propose things that work and also in the course of doing that, help the town, you know, learn about ADUs. It's going to be the kind of thing which, you know, are slowly but surely becoming more common in Massachusetts. And, you know, I would expect that, you know, for those, you know, people who would work in this area more, you know, more as a primary part of their business to, you know, to come into the space and that would be great for everyone because it will make the process cheaper, easier and better. Mm-hmm. Yeah, no, in terms of kind of intergenerational living and, you know, even, you know, smart growth in terms of infill, where there's existing infrastructure, you know, those things are, you know, why a lot of people gravitate to ADUs and including myself. So thank you for putting this forward and the work you've done on it. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. I'm actually going to hold any of my questions until after we've given the public a chance to comment. I see quite a few people with their hands raised. So I do want to make sure that we get to that before it gets too much later. So I will now open this up for public comment. Anyone who wishes to speak, please use the raise hand function. As a reminder, you will have up to three minutes to speak and please identify yourself by your first, last name and street address. We'll start with Patrick Hanlon. And my name is Patrick Hanlon. I'm at 20 Park Street and I'm a town meeting member increasing five. And I had just a couple of points to make. First, I think it is a value to point out just the amazing amount of work that's gone into the proposal that's before you tonight. Not only with staff, but with Ms. Thornton who's been working on this hard for the last several years. And Phil has and his firm have done a fabulous job in trying to address the technical problems and make this as tight as legislation can be. Secondly, I wanted to point out that this isn't a new idea. ADUs have been around for a long time. In an earlier life, I served on the Fairfax County Virginia Planning Commission and we adopted an ADU ordinance in 1986. And the problem in Fairfax County after that has largely been a problem not of undermining the zoning ordinance or creating difficulties with neighbors but just getting enough information in people's hands to use it. I think that it would be a shame if we only got three or four or five new affordable accessory dwelling units a year that in order to make a more of a contribution to affordable housing, we ought to be able to do more than that. And part of the reason and part of the way in which that can be done is to have the town do what Fairfax County does and that's provide active assistance in referring people to plans and information that is necessary to enable them to use it. And finally, I just wanted to tell you a personal story that illustrates what ADUs can do. My brother lives in Los Angeles. He has an ADU on his property. A number of years ago, my mother had a stroke while she was visiting and when push came to shove, she and my father moved into the ADU where they lived until she died several years later. And after that, another couple moved in, a brother and sister who are now beginning to get up in years themselves. They're absolutely super in everything they do. When my brother comes to visit me, they're the ones who watch the dogs. They're constantly improving the property and they're very artistic. So there's a lot of pretty interesting art everywhere and the income that my brother gets who's retired and old like me is what's helping to keep him and able to live in and to continue to make this homeless property. It's a win-win-win situation for everyone and it illustrates the possibilities that are there if we are able to exploit this legal mechanism to the extent possible. You all know that in the recent economic development bill, the state legislature really put its weight behind the idea of accessory dwelling units and invited us to and other communities to explore this. And I'm very happy to see that we're going to be doing this at the very next town meeting. Thank you. The next speaker will be Sanjay Newton. Hello, Sanjay Newton, 32 Ottawa Road. I'm also a precinct 10 town meeting member. I wanted to first just quickly address one of the comments that Mr. Watson had made and because I had a similar confusion about the 900 versus the 750 when I was first looking at this. And I think the distinction is the 900 is about the maximum size of the ADU and the 750 is about the maximum size of any sort of addition. And it's possible to build 900 square feet of ADU but only add 600 square feet of house. And so that distinction took me a little while to get my head around. But anyway, just to sort of step back from all the technical details, I also wanted to share a bit of a personal story about how ADU was important to my own family. When my grandparents got married and began their family there was no money for them to buy a home. So my grandfather and his parents split their single family house into what we would now call a main unit and ADU. And that allowed both parts of the family to take care of each other over the years. My childcare when kids were young and care of elder relatives as they got old. If they had not been able to split their house the lack of privacy would have made that untenable. My grandmother would have gone insane. Luckily it was impossible in that time and place for them to do that. And my mother still recounts fond childhood memories of going next door, so to speak, to visit her grandparents. She also talks about helping to care for them as their health declined. That support next door, again next door so to speak allowed them to live in their house until their deaths. And so that kind of multi-generational support first for young family and then later for aging parents would not have been possible without an ADU. And so I really hope that both the redevelopment board now and town meeting will go forward with this. Thank you. Thank you. The next speaker will be Rebecca Peterson. Good evening. Can you hear me? Okay. I can, yes. Okay, all right, great. So I just wanted to- Could you please just introduce- Oh yeah, sorry. I just need an address. Thank you. Sorry about that. Rebecca Peterson, 31 Florence Ave. I sent an email that's attached to the materials for tonight. And I just wanted to summarize a couple of points that I made. I feel like there's already a process in place if someone wanted to build an ADU onto their house. And my concern is that there is a constant push in Arlington for more density. And I really feel like this nonstop push for more density, more building is tiresome. We need to protect what little open space that we have. And this includes yards, non-conforming lots, unusable land, everything. I think everyone has probably noticed that with the AHS rebuild, we've lost almost the entire front green and one athletic field. And I think that front green was one of the biggest open spaces in town, aside from a couple of parks. I'm not hearing a lot about enforcement on these. And I don't, I hear a lot of hope that these are gonna help and it's gonna be wonderful. And I think everyone's thinking that grandma is gonna live in the spare room. And in practicality, I'm not sure that's really what's gonna happen. Arlington's a desirable place to live. And my concern is that there's no enforcement against the short-term rentals. And there's not a lot of like, I guess, there's one guy who's supposed to inspect and be on top of all of this. And I also have not heard or seen any data on the effects on school enrollment, the loss of green space and parking issues. So that summarizes my email that I sent earlier tonight. And I thank you for your time. Thank you. The next speaker will be Don Seltzer. Thank you, Don Seltzer Irving Street. You will hear a lot tonight about what is in this proposal. I would like to talk about what is not. I've read through all the documentation and there's one word that is conspicuous by its absence, neighbors. There is a passing reference to impact on the neighborhood but that is never explored and simply ignored. I'll give one example, parking. The petitioner does not want to require an off-street space. No space, no car, no problem. Except that Orlington has 23 miles of private ways where many residents live. If you don't provide a parking space off the street, you'll simply have an extra car parked out on the street. As a long-time resident of a narrow private way, I can tell you that it causes problems. Our street does not get fully plowed in winter and it can be difficult to get out of the driveway with cars parked across the way. The other word that is missing is enforcement. Inspectional services simply does not have the staff nor the tools to enforce this article as it is written. On the last go-around, the head of Inspectional Services in a candid moment admitted that his department could not and frankly would not enforce it. It will fall upon neighbors to complain about egregious violations. They can only do that if there is a published list of permitted ADUs. Remember the A, Air, B and B short-term registry that town meeting passed? It is not published. How many owners have actually registered so far? Just two in the whole town. Where in this article is there anything about the method of enforcement and of penalties? At a minimum, there must be some mention of a certificate of occupancy and how it can be revoked. And one final comment. This is being promoted as a means for seniors to age in place at a multi-generational living, all fine things. That's going to end up being just a minor sideshow. It really isn't about seniors at all. As it is written, it is aimed at hiring people with big houses and longer investment horizons and the financial resources to turn this into a profitable extra income stream. We're not talking about affordable units. We're talking about market rate units. This article needs to restore the protections that were part of the 2019 version. It has to show some respect for the neighbors. Thank you. Thank you. We've actually had two comments in a row now that had specific questions around enforcement. So Barbara and Phillip, I'd like to see if you could give us a brief, any brief thoughts you might have on enforcement. Because of, I'm sorry, Barbara, you should go ahead. No, go ahead. I was going to say, for this reason, we were very careful and conscientious in reaching out to Mike Byrne and making sure that he was comfortable that this was something that his office would be able to handle from a technical perspective. And as I say, did delay the enforcement of, or the permission for accessory dwellings for six months to permit additional time for learning. I guess like any other kind of enforcement, I'm not totally sure how to respond. You need to comply with zoning if someone were to rogue add to their house without a building permit. They would be subject to all the same rules if you were doing it for an ADU or doing it to add a bedroom. If someone were in force, running an Airbnb out of their property and you saw that, you could obviously call them and that would be, they would be cited for that violation. I'm just not sure beyond that, it's subject to any enforcement like any other kind of zoning and code compliance. Just building on that, the same thing is true. Dawn mentioned the private ways and we looked into that because we really want to protect neighborhoods from an onslaught of parking problems. And private ways are a bit of a loophole, people can park there, but as soon as somebody calls the police, they get ticketed. So I would assume that Dawn on your private way, you will be vigilant about enforcing the illegal parking that goes on there. That is correct about the police. Mr. Seltzer, they responded to your questions, this isn't a back and forth. Okay, I thought the barber was directly addressing just that. Just mentioning your name. Thank you. The next speaker will be Alex Bagnell. Thank you, Alex Bagnell, Wyman Street. I'm strongly in favor of this article as a way to add gentle density to our single and two family zones which claim 80% of the land in town. And it also gives Arlington homeowners more freedom and flexibility to modify their property to meet their needs, be they familial or financial. As average household sizes has shrunk over the past several decades, it only makes sense to make more efficient of a finite resource or land. Sometimes ADUs are called grainy flats and some have observed that ADUs are pretty much allowed under current zoning except for the ability to have an oven. Now I am in favor of letting more people bake, especially grandparents. Now look, we all clearly like living in Arlington and I think we should think long and hard about using that privilege as residents to deny others something that we value so highly. Housing is not a zero sum game and I think we should be looking for ways to share our good fortune, not hoard it. Thank you. Thank you. We all appreciate the levity at this point of the meeting. The next speaker will be Patricia Warden. Actually it's John. Oh, thank you. We don't know how to register both of us, but we'll work. That's fine, that's fine. Aged in the job. Whoever would like to speak, please do. All right, John Warden still on Jason Street. Well, the proposal that was put on the screen during Mrs. Thornton's presentation was, and I could see three quarters of it. I hadn't seen that before. So apparently it has improved somewhat over what was originally put forth. I would like to say that there's some of the safeguards that were in, even in the previous one in 19, which was defeated, need to be put into this. For example, the structure, which is going to accommodate the ADU should have been in existence prior to, say January 1, 2021. Otherwise developers are gonna come around, share it on a house, build a two-family, say, oh, this part's an ADU. I see that's not, I'm sure, the intention to buy law. There's got to be nailed down. The issue about hocking, okay, you say you're not gonna require any, but there has to be specific provision that if the tenant has a motor vehicle, provision must be made for it to be parked off street. And the third point I should like to make, which I think is very important, unless the unit is being rented to a family member, someone related by blood or marriage to the owner who has to live there, it should be rented at an affordable rent. And to say that if you rent something in an affordable rent, which in our bylaws defined as 60% of AMI, there's no requirement. Nobody's saying there's a requirement to go through a lottery or a public process or anything. You rent it, somebody comes along that meets the eligibility requirements, that's their rent. And everybody's saying, this is gonna create affordable housing. All right, if it's gonna create affordable housing, let's make darn sure that it does by putting it as one of the provisions of the bylaw. Unless it's being rented to your grandmother or your child or your grandchild or whoever, well, that's someone related by blood or marriage. Otherwise, it should be an affordable thing. Otherwise, it's just cash cow for the people who have more space than they currently need. Thank you. Thank you. The next speaker will be Zavid Pretzer. Hello, I'm Zavid Pretzer at 44 Grove Street in Arlington. And I just wanted to speak in favor of this. I think this is a great opportunity to allow homeowners the opportunity to create units that will necessarily be smaller and less expensive. I think subsidized affordable housing is important. And I think we've got opportunities to support that as well this year in town meeting. But I don't think subsidized affordable housing is enough. This allows homeowners to create smaller, cheaper units without the regulatory burden of formally making it affordable housing with some support family members. And it provides an alternative to what we're currently seeing today where today in a single family zoning, you can make your house larger. You can make it more expensive. You can cut down trees and nothing prevents you from doing that. And I'd rather give homeowners the option to instead of just making their house larger and more expensive, provide a housing opportunity for people with that need a smaller, less expensive unit. And I think I'm definitely concerned about things like trees and supporting public transit. But I think if those are concerns, we need to address them directly, not by restricting the ability to make smaller units for our relatives and friends or others who need that place to live. Thank you. Thank you. And Pam Hallett, I do see you waving your hand. I apologize, you were not on my screen previously. So I will call on you as soon as I get through the next couple of people on my list, if that's okay. Thank you. Absolutely. So the next speaker will be Stuart Cunningham. Hi, Stuart Morrison, Kensington Park. Just want to make two points that speak against this particular Lawrence article. First of all, a number of people have observed that the fear here is that these apartments will be turned into student rentals or Airbnb's or what have you and will lead to parking problems. And we've been assured that no, we're gonna have granny live in the apartment. Well, where's the enforcement? The fact is the enforcement issue has been raised a couple of times, but I haven't heard a real strong answer to it. And the town itself does not have a good track record when it comes to enforcing sort of covenants having to do with zoning. And the Atwood House, which is that dilapidated building right next to the CVS is example number one of the sort of enforcement you can expect from this article. I saw there's an affidavit in there for that you're gonna rent the apartment to a family member and that's wonderful, but you can sign an affidavit and then six months later, granny is no longer with us and then you rent it to some student. What prevents that from happening? There's no mechanism for enforcement. And Barbara Thornton says that, well, it's up to the neighbors to call the police or to call the inspectors. It's not up to the neighbors to have to enforce stuff like this. That's a major reason not to do it in the first place because why should we be placed in the position of enforcing other people? No, I'll take my time then you can respond, thank you. The second thing is an even bigger issue here which is that as soon as you build a structure or apartment onto a house, that house immediately becomes much more expensive and it becomes then something that like John Warden said is a cash cow for the people that own it. And then when they turn around and sell the house to somebody else, that house is now instead of being a million dollar cake, it's a 1.5 million dollar cake. And so this does nothing to solve the affordable housing issue in Arlington. What's gonna happen instead is that the apartments will be without, for example, John Warden's suggestion that these be affordable units, the units will be rented at market rate and then when the house itself is sold, the house will sell for much more than it would have had were originally one family house. So market economics often works perversely and this is a case where nice intentions to create affordable housing will bite you because what will happen is it will just remove affordable houses from the marketplace. Thank you. Thank you. The next speaker will be Chris Loretty. Thank you, Madam Chair, Chris Loretty, 56 Adams Street. As some of the other previous speakers have said, I think some of the language needs to be tightened up in this article and I'm particularly concerned about ADUs and accessory structures. As it exists right now in town, you can build a garage right up to the property line and I think there will be a lot of conversion of these garages into accessory dwelling units. You can make them two stories high, two stories or two stories high, 20 feet tall. I would suggest people take a look at the auto repair garage at 86th River Street. That is two stories, 20 feet high built right at the property line. It's about five feet away from a two family house and I don't think that's very friendly at all. I would strongly recommend, could somebody mute their phone please? I would strongly recommend that if you are going to allow these things and accessory structures, and I suggest you probably shouldn't, then those structures should comply with the setback requirements of a principal structure, not the zero setbacks or the reduced setbacks in the bylaw for accessory structures because they're simply too close to the property line of neighboring homes. The other thing that other towns have are provisions for regulating exterior firescapes which will be needed for primary or secondary means of egress. So you're not sticking those on the fronts of houses to meet the egress requirements. For parking, I would suggest that there would be a requirement that if the tenants have a car, you must provide on-site parking. Otherwise it becomes a problem for the neighbors and for the towns. There's several things in the language of the amendment that I find frankly confusing. It's still not clear to me as an owner of a two-family house whether I can have two accessory dwelling units or one. There was a comment made that it would have to be condo-ized. I don't see that in the language of the bylaw. It's also unclear to me how this applies in business districts. Can the accessory dwelling unit only be on a one or two-family house or a duplex or can it be on any structure in a business district? In that case, isn't it really just a mixed use and shouldn't it go to the mixed use permitting process? And finally, I would say that this reference or this new section 8.1.3 is entirely superfluous. If the idea is that these things are going to have to comply with all the other requirements of the zoning bylaw anyway, then that section is completely unnecessary and should be removed. So I would leave it at that as I said, don't have too much problem with these if they're in the principal structure and all the other zoning requirements apply. But I think it's a very different situation when you start allowing them in accessory structures, particularly all the existing garages that we have in town. And in East Arlington, you might have an accessory garage right next to another garage, literally three feet apart. And I don't think it's appropriate for those to be converted to dwelling units that close together and potentially 20 feet tall. Thank you. Thank you. The next speaker will be Jennifer Seuss. Hi, thank you. Jennifer Seuss, 45 Teal Street. So just a couple of things, I'm really excited about this. I think it's a great way to add natural affordability across town to add supply. We will not set solve the housing affordability crisis without supply additions. I urge you to reject any of the poison pills that have been suggested tonight or at other times to make sure that we keep this as by right, something that's simple, easy to understand. I wanna address the cash cow issue. I own a two family house in East Arlington. And when I look at my retirement planning things, it's very important that I will have this income source I don't think that's a bad thing. I think that that's a fine thing for other people to have. What we have in Arlington right now is seniors who cannot afford to stay in their house. And if this will allow people to stay in their house, I think that's a great thing. Characterizing as a cash cow just feels sort of mean spirited to me, frankly, because I think this is a way that can really help people. The third point I wanna make though is I have had tons and tons of conversations with people about housing in my select burden, both people who are on the town meeting but also other people in town. And there tends to be a lot of anxiety around housing, which I think will come as no surprise to anybody. But what I hear around town is widespread support for accessory dwelling units. I hear people say to me, I am really worried about X, but yeah, accessory dwelling units, that makes a lot of sense to me. So I would strongly suggest that when we go to town meeting, you will find a lot of support for this proposal. And so I'm really excited to hear it. Thank you. Thank you. The next speaker will be Joanne Preston. Thank you. Joanne Preston, Mystic Lake Drive. I have tons of things to say, but I'm gonna limit it to four. They've been, I have a slightly different thing to say about each of them that have been said before. What is this myth of we're going to have this intergenerational family unit with everybody happily living together? Well, first of all, on adult children, for you who have young children, I will tell you once your children get into the 20s, they don't wanna live with their parents. And you could talk to my 22-year-old about it. I think that's not a statistically valid statement. The second one is that Granny is going to live with you. I have a PhD in social gerontology. All of the data show that increasingly able-bodied seniors wanna live with other seniors in senior residents. Those that aren't so able-bodied and need help. Yes, in the 1950s, mom was home to take care of them. Women are now in the labor force. The house they live in is often, children are in school and sports is empty. If people need a lot of assistance, they live in assisted living. Two, on the street, oh, I just wanna say about AARP. I know Barbara has quoted them that accessory dwelling units are wonderful for seniors. They're not a research institute. They're basically an insurance company with a lobbying arm and a monthly magazine. So I would not rely on what they have to say. Secondly, on the street parking, it's been argued that people will take our robust public transportation system. They have not been reading the papers. We just lost the 79 bus. The 77 bus is much more limited. And I think as much as we want people to walk, I think that's just a myth, that people are gonna have cars, they have them on our street. Some developers did not really put in enough parking. They park on the street all the time. Neighbors don't like to call the police regularly every night and give them a ticket. And when they get tickets, they say, well, this is just part of having to live here. And also once people park on the street during the day, our roads in this neighborhood are quite narrow. And often people have to back down the entire street to allow the other car to go by. Three, affordability. These will be market rate units. That's not the kind of affordability that the people who testified earlier really think we should have in Arlington. You're at time if you could please wrap up. Enforcement, having some conversations with Inspectoral Services does not ensure that there's going to be real enforcement. For instance, last year, many ARBs were advertised in Arlington and only two people registered. One of them I believe was Jennifer Seuss. So that's it, thank you. Thank you. Next, we have Pam Hallett. Hi, I have several things to say. First of all, I wholeheartedly support this bylaw warrant. It's in many ways will produce certainly affordable housing. Most of our, as you know, we build a lot of affordable housing. We rehab a lot of affordable housing and it's very expensive and there is significant time lag in finding the money to be able to build even one unit. Typically range from $300 to $500,000 to create. I'm looking at the possibility of perhaps producing five at least a year in our current building. So there'll be no acquisition costs. If I'm hearing it's gonna cost us $100,000 to do a unit, to me that's a drop in the bucket. It could be done by any one of our very skilled contractors that we use all the time who are very familiar with inspectional services. I don't think you really have to worry too much about inspectional services being overwhelmed. They are very busy, but they also make the most money of any department in town because of the huge permit fees that are charged and collected every day because of so much building going on in the town. So if they need to go ahead and hire additional inspectors, I'm not sure that would be a much of a problem for that particular department. They have to get approval, but they'd have the cash. I also know that it's not gonna be one person that inspects these. They electrical inspector, a heating inspector, foundation inspector, a roofing inspector, they all do their numbers of inspectors over at that building department. And so not like poor Mike Byrne is gonna be walking out to look at each one of these ADUs. I mean, let's be honest. And on the parking issue, we ran into the same issue for our 20 Westminster building. Oh, you have to have parking. That's nine units. Oh my God, they're gonna be parking all over the street. Well, we have nine units, no parking, and we have no issues. People do not have cars. They were more than happy to move in. It's fairly convenient. It's not right on Massive Ave. So it's another block, block and a half to get to a bus, but they easily do it. We've had no issues with the parking or the neighbors regarding parking. And in terms of the garages, certainly these units are going to require a certificate of occupancy. And the fire safety issue, clearly that is a major issue for anyone in the right mind to build a unit with fire safety issues intact. It's just not gonna happen, nor is the building department going to allow it. Those are all very scare tactics, which is sort of silly, actually, to be bringing it. You're a time, if you could wrap up, please. That's fine. I just wanna say one more thing, is AARP is a significant organization supporting the rights of senior citizens across the country, and they do a lot more than simply put out magazines. They are a powerful force in case you didn't notice what impact they had on the past elections. But thank you. That's all I had to say. Pam, and I'm sorry, I'm glad to remind you at the beginning, would you please just state your name and address for the record? Sure, I'm Pam Hallett. I'm on Park Ave right now, and I'm Executive Director of the Housing Corporation of Arlington. Thank you. Our last speaker will be Steve Ravillac. Hello, Madam Chair. Steve Ravillac, 111 Sunnyside Avenue. I like this proposal and I support it a lot. Earlier tonight, we heard a number of people talk about the challenges of the cost of housing in Arlington. And I think that one part of dealing with that is finding ways to provide new housing at price points that are lower than what currently exists. Putting in an ADU for $100,000, $100,000 is far cheaper than a house or a condo. In fact, just the typical lot that a single or two family home sits on is worth about $450,000, building not included. Landed Arlington for single and two family homes, depending on the size, is between two and $4 million an acre. And whatever we can do to better manage that scarce resource, I think is worth doing. Finally, regarding the formal affordability of accessory dwelling units. And I mean, having to go through and file the deed restriction and develop the affirmative fair market, housing affirmative fair housing marketing plan. Yes, that's it. It's getting late. With respect to like individual homeowners, I think that the number of homeowners who would want to do this for an ADU would probably be about the same as the number of two family homeowners who voluntarily go through the process and put their rental unit under that. And through you, Madam Chair, I'm wondering if staff can say how often two family homeowners do that. Thank you, Madam. Thank you. Jenny or Erin, if you could respond specifically to the question. How often two family homeowners do, I'm sorry. So how often do the owners of two family homes get a deed restriction and a fair housing marketing plan and go through all the formalities of making their rental unit officially affordable? Basically it's only the housing corporation of Arlington in the town of Arlington that has any deed restricted units that are two families. That was actually the beginning of the housing corporation's whole entire program was the two family preservation program. There aren't any others. Thank you, Jenny. All right, with that we will close public comment for article 43 and move on to any final questions from the board that have not already been addressed for this article, okay. Thank you, Barbara and Phillip. And we will now move on to our last article for this evening, which is article 42, Zoning By-law Amendment on affordable housing on privately owned parcels of non-conforming size. This one is also put forward by Barbara Thornton. So Barbara, I'll turn it back to you for three minutes to introduce the article. I propose Barbara Thornton, 223 Park Ave, Town Meeting Member Precinct 16. Thank you. I proposed article 42 as a way to enhance opportunities for providing more affordable housing in Arlington. However, I think the article can be much improved. I request the indulgence of the board to allow me to return next year with a much better article. I'd like to note that I'm not going to take any more time on this. I hope you instead turn your thoughts to the support of Accessory Dwelling Units article, which is the right housing related to zoning for the town today. Thank you. Great. Thank you, Barbara. As Barbara has with, I assume Barbara, just to clarify, will you be withdrawing the article? Yes, Madam Chair, I will. Okay. However, the process is to do that. Yes. Great. Jenny. Free to go. Thank you for the evening. Jenny, you look like you had something to add. I was just going to note that basically the board would, similar to the MBTA communities one, we can withdraw it at this time because it's already in the warrant, but we will, when it's time to deliberate and vote likely, vote no action so that it doesn't basically become, because you don't intend to move it forward with it. Right. Thank you. Great. Thank you. Possibly in our discussion of that in the report indicate that it is essentially at the request of the proponents so that there's no confusion at town meeting about what we were doing. Exactly. Yeah. We would capture that. Great. Are there any questions for the board about Barbara's intended request to have us vote no action on this article? Rachel, yeah, I do. If we vote no action on this one here, Barbara would not be able to bring this back up the following year. I'll bring it back new. So she could, if we allowed her to do it. Oh, good. Okay. Sorry. Thank you. Fantastic. I will, again, I would prefer that any public, I will open this up for public comments. It is a public hearing specific to Barbara's, with the request that you respond specifically if you have any comment related to Barbara's decision to defer this to a future year. So if anyone has any comment, please raise your hand. Okay. Seeing none. We are at the end of our zoning warrant article public hearing for today. I would like to see if we could have a motion from the board to continue this open public hearing to the next scheduled date, which is, bear with me for one second, which is Monday, March 29th. So moved. Second. All right. I'll take a roll call vote. Ken. Yes. David. Yes. Jean. Yes. Melissa. Yes. And I am yes as well. Thank you everyone who has participated in the forum this evening. And for all of the petitioners who presented their warrant articles. Now move into agenda item number four, warrant article review. And Jenny, you had a suggestion for us for how we could respond to this. Yes. So we have material on two of these articles because they're in part being worked on by staff, the real estate transfer fee, as well as the stormwater management. We do not have information about article 22 despite a request for the information. What I would suggest is that if board members would like to send information to me for comments that I can then compile and put into a letter or memo to then provide to the Slack board, I think that that would be the most efficient way to do this based upon the time. And by time I mean that our comments would be due to the board by their next meeting, which is in between this meeting and our next meeting. So there isn't a lot of time for us to deliberate on this or talk about it. So I'm open to other suggestions about this, but that would be my recommendation. So Jenny to clarify the comments are due to the board by the 22nd. Yes, which is really by Thursday. Great. So it looks like we have a couple of comments. I'll start with Jean. What, when would you need our comments to you, Jenny? Well, not later than Wednesday. And what do you do if you get different comments from different, like I have a couple of minor things on the stormwater management one. I have some suggestions on the real estate transfer fees and a question about article 22. So I can get those to you by Wednesday, but I don't know how you end up putting them in a letter without vetting them by the rest of the board. Yeah, there may not be a lot of time to have a memo prepared and vetted by the time that I need to submit it. So, and also some of the comments that you have could likely be resolved internally and don't need to go to the board. The select board is just looking for any feedback the board would have about these particular items. They don't necessarily need, you know, editing and things of that nature. I think they'd just be looking for, you know, sort of what are the, what's the feeling of the board? It wasn't meant to be much more than that. Was my understanding. And Rachel, you can clarify if you need to because you participated in that discussion. Right, and I would say, Jean, that, you know, per your question, if you're concerned that there may be slightly different takes that we each have, I don't think that's a, you know, negative thing for Jenny to say, the board had these comments. They don't have to, you know, all be, I don't believe in exact alignment. It's not like we're going to be voting yay or nay on these articles. It's just to provide, this is the feedback, a summary of the feedback that the board had. I mean, I think that's fine. I just wanted to make sure or clear what that was going to be. Great, David, you had a question as well. I do, but just to follow up on that point, I think if we were to submit a dueling comments, that would actually by itself serve a valuable purpose in pointing out to the select board that perhaps they need to take a closer look at whatever that provision is. The question I had is, I realized that you did not get materials related to article 22 from the proponent, but I was hoping to get some information from staff about the implications, the practical implications of doing what they're proposing. But it doesn't sound like we're really going to have time to get that. No, but I mean, that could be your question that you ask of the select board that they evaluate those impacts. Okay. Or ask those questions of the petitioner. All right, well, I'll do some thinking and send you whatever I come up with. Kim, did you have any questions? No, we really only have two to respond to. The other one, I really, I don't know. Yep, Melissa, any other questions? Okay, great. So we will, Jenny, we'll all make sure to send any questions that we do have to you by end of day Wednesday. Yes, thank you. Great. And if anybody would like to communicate before then, if you have questions, more specific things, we would be more than happy to talk with you myself. Erin, I'm sure Emily Sullivan can make herself available as well, who had a hand in writing the bylaw amendment for stormwater. Great, thank you. So I'd like to quickly just review the meeting minutes. Hopefully we can move through these very quickly. We'll start with the meeting minutes from December 9th, 2020. And I'll just run through the list to see if anyone has any additions or corrections starting with Jean. No additions or corrections. Great, David. No, nothing for me. Kim? I'm good. And Melissa, you were not a member of the board yet. So do we have a motion to approve the December 9th, 2020 meeting minutes as submitted? So motion. Second. I'll take a roll call vote. Kim? Yes. David? Yes. Dean? Yes. And I'm a yes as well. We'll now move to the December 21st, 2020 meeting minutes. Any additions or corrections starting with Jean? Oh, none. David? Nothing. Kim? I'm good. And Melissa, you were not a member of the board yet and I don't have any as well. So do we have a motion to approve the December 21st, 2020 meeting minutes as submitted? So moved. Second. I'll take a roll call vote. Kim? Yes. David? Yes. Dean? Yes. And I am a yes as well. That closes agenda item number five. So we'll now open agenda item number six, which is a public open forum. So any member of the public wishing to address the board, please use the raise hand function in the participants section. You'll have three minutes to speak. Please address, please identify yourself by first, last name and address. I don't see, let me just run through my screens to see if anyone's waving at me. I don't see anyone with a raised hand. So we will close the open forum. Are there any other items before we close the meeting for this evening? Erin? Yeah, thanks, Rachel. I wanted to let the members of the ARV know that I will be leaving employment with the town of Arlington. I've accepted a position in Yarmouth, Maine as the director of planning and development in that community. So I will be with the town through April 9th, at which point my husband and I will be relocating to Maine. And I just, I wanted to thank the board members for the almost three years that I've worked with a group of you and others that are newer. It's been a real pleasure. And I am looking forward to assisting you all through the end of the zoning hearings that you have through April 5th. So it's with mixed emotions that I'm sharing this, but we're looking forward to this new adventure for my husband and I. So thank you so much. Congratulations. Congratulations, Erin. Thank you. Congratulations and sorry you're going. Yeah, I'm sorry you're going too. I agree. Congratulations. It's been such a pleasure working with you. It's, yeah. Thank you so much for the town and we'll really miss you. Thank you. Thank you, Rachel. You know it's even older there than here. Yeah, I'm aware. I got my coat. But yes, it will be a change and a great adventure. I'm looking forward to it. Great. Well, thank you for sharing that with us this evening. Anything else before we close for this evening? Quick question. Jenny said she needed comments on the Select Board articles by Wednesday. Does she mean tomorrow or this Wednesday? End of day, Wednesday. This Wednesday in two days. Yes, two days, not tomorrow. Not quite. It's Tuesday, so. Yes, it's still Monday. Yes, it is still Monday. Yes, almost tomorrow. Just barely. You're right. All right, speaking of, do we have a motion to adjourn for this evening? So motion. And a second. Second. All right, any comments? All right, we'll take a roll call vote. Ken. Yes. David. Yes. Ken. Jean. Oh, yes, sorry. Melissa. Yes. And I'm a yes as well. Thank you everybody for sticking with us through this long meeting and we will see you again in two weeks. Good night, everyone. Good night. Thank you. Good night.