 Let's see. The open meeting is being conducted remotely, consistent with Governor Baker's executive order of March 12, 2020, due to the current state of emergency in the Commonwealth due to the outbreak of the COVID-19 virus. For this meeting, the ARB is convening via Zoom, as posted on the town's website, identifying how the public may join. Please note that these meetings are being recorded and that some attendees are participating via video conference. Accordingly, please be aware that other people may be able to see you and take care not to screen share your computer. Anything that you broadcast may be captured by the recording. So at this time, I'd like to confirm that all members of the redevelopment board are here and can hear me, starting with Ken Lau, President, Jane Benson, Melissa Sintakelis. Here, President. Steve Revlak. Good evening, Madam Chair. And I am Rachel Zember, Chair of the Board. We also have two members of the Department of Planning and Community Development with us this evening, Jennifer Rait. Present. And Kelly Linema. Present. Fantastic. So as we move to the first agenda item this evening, we will be opening the Warren article public hearings for the 2022 town meeting. There will be, for those of you who haven't joined us for these before, there will be four nights of hearings for a total of 18 articles this year. Consistent with past hearings, the ARB will be hearing from the applicants and the public wishing to speak on each of these articles as scheduled. The board will pose any questions to the applicants this evening, but will reserve discussion and voting on each article to recommend action or no action until after all hearings have been complete. This is expected on April 4th. The typical format for each article that will be hearing this evening will be to hear from the Department of Planning and Community Development regarding the memo that they prepared and any items that they wish to highlight from that memo, followed by up to a six-minute presentation by the petitioners of the particular Warren article. We'll then take questions from the board, followed by public comments. We'll then ask the petitioner to address any questions and take final comments from the board members. And we'll go through this for each of the separate zoning articles this evening. So before we get into the first article, Article 38, I do want to ensure that we speak about the rules for the Warren article public hearing. If you can bear with me for a minute. The scope of this public hearing is the subject matter of the hearings is posted on the agenda. Any person wishing to address the ARB on the subject matter of the agenda item shall identify that you wish to speak by raising your hand when the chair announces consideration of each item. To raise your hand and zoom on your computer, go to participants and select raise hand. On your phone, press star six to unmute yourself. After being recognized to speak by the chair, each person will preface your comments by giving your first and last name and street address. Anyone wishing to address the board on the subject matter of the agenda shall limit your remarks to three minutes. If time allows, you may be allowed to speak more than once at the discretion of the chair if and only if you have a new and different point to make or question to ask on the topic. And again, we'll review that to see how we're running for time this evening. The board may receive any oral or written evidence, but such evidence is restricted to the subject matter of each agenda item. Immaterial or unduly repetitious evidence may be excluded. Everyone present at the public hearing is 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 also conduct yourself in a civil and courteous manner with constructive questions or comments. Speaker should address questions through me, the chair. Speaker shall not attempt to engage in debate or dialogue with ARB members or other hearing participants. Questions may or may not be answered during the public hearing and will be addressed at the discretion of the chair. So at this time, we will go ahead and open the public hearings for 2022 town meeting. We will begin with article 38, which is a zoning bylaw amendment for two family construction allowed by right in the R0 and R1 residential zones. This was asserted by the request of annula court and 10 registered voters. So to begin, I'd like to turn it over to Jenny Raitt to see if there are any questions or excuse me, any comments related to the memo prepared by the Department of Planning and Community Development. Thank you, Rachel. I first of all, I'm Jenny Raitt. I'm the director of planning and community development. I'm joined by my colleague Kelly Linema, who is the assistant director. And the two of us are available to answer any questions that the board members might have about the memo that we provided, which outlines the consideration that the board might take for each one of the warrant articles that are being heard this evening. So I think I'll defer to the board to see if there are any questions or comments on the memo. But I did want to say a couple of things. The first thing is that this particular zoning bylaw amendment is subject to mass general law chapter 40a section five, such that this zoning bylaw may be enacted by a simple majority vote rather than the two-third super majority vote that applies to other zoning amendments. So I wanted to make sure that that was clear. And second, I actually wanted to invite Steve Revolac to make a couple of comments before we entertain the board's questions on the memo if there are any. So with that, I think I'll turn it over to Steve. Okay. Thank you, Madam Director. I just wanted to a few weeks ago, Ms. LaCorte appeared before the board to discuss her proposal with us. And during the during that discussion, one of one of my colleagues on the board said, this seems like a proposal we've had before. And, you know, I noted that I had filed a similar proposal or actually I'd worked with a work with a colleague of mine who filed a similar proposal, I think back in 2020. Now, although Ms. LaCorte is substantially similar, I just wanted to point out that this is her article. You know, she what she as far as I know in Ms. LaCorte, I encourage you to correct me if this is wrong. But this was, you know, you filed this on your own initiative, you got your own signatures. Mine is not one of them. And I will, you know, I look forward to hearing what you have to say. That is it. Thank you, Madam Director. Thank you, Steve. Jenny, any additional comments? No, that was all. I'll be happy to take any questions or comments from the board on the memo that the department prepared. Great. Thank you, Jenny. So I'll run through the board members to see if anyone has any specific questions for Jenny or Kelly, starting with Ken. None at this time. Thank you, Ken. Gene? Yeah, thank you for the very comprehensive discussion of this warrant article. I don't have any questions. I have a comment, but I'll wait until we hear the presentation by Ms. LaCorte or someone else who's filed the article. Great. Thank you, Gene. Melissa, any questions on the memo from the department? No questions. I'll listen to the presentation as well, but I do encourage everyone to read that memo if you haven't, if you're following Article 38. Thank you, Melissa. And Steve, any questions for the Department of the Memo? No questions, but just a comment. In the portion of the memo which reproduces the main motion, it looks like there was some strikeout text that didn't come through as strikeout, at least on my copy. It is correct in the... Or there's a difference between... I mean, there's strikeout text in the set of main motions that was distributed or published on February 17th that it looks like they might not... It's a Scribner's thing. It looks like it may not have come through in the memo. That's all. We will look into that further. Steve, thank you for flagging it. Great. Thank you. And before I turn this over to Annie LeCourt for a representation, I do want to remind the board members that if there are any questions which the petitioner doesn't have an answer for this evening, because we have several nights of hearings ahead of us, we can certainly ask Ms. LeCourt or any future petitioners to come back with us, to us with those answers before we deliberate and vote on April 4th. So I just wanted to make sure that I gave that reminder. And I believe Annie LeCourt is with us this evening. And Annie, if you wanted to go ahead, I think we have allotted about six minutes for the presentation. So take it away. So thank you very much for inviting me through this hearing tonight. I would like to mention that Laura Wiener who has worked on this article with me and been a great deal of help to me in understanding housing and zoning is also here. And so we're both here to answer questions or help field whatever is going on. So I'm proposing that we allow two families by right in all of the residential zoning districts in Arlington. A considerable portion of the land in Arlington is restricted to single family development. What I've been seeing happen is that in neighborhoods where multifamily dwellings or duplexes can't be built, that we are seeing very large buildings being built as single families. And my hope by proposing this would be that we see more units built, more modest units built, things that we might call the missing middle, although I recognize they will not be tiny given the other rules around zoning on lots. And that this provides some housing flexibility. And it also is an environmentally sustainable move because more housing built in Arlington near transit is housing built for people who are going to use their personal vehicles less, less burning of gas, less traveling in individual cars and that it increases housing choice both for the residents who already live here and for people who are trying to move into town. So it offers the opportunity for young families that may struggle to purchase the average single family home in Arlington now to have additional options in terms of condo availability. It diversifies our neighborhoods. It makes it possible for those of us who have lived here for a long time who might want a down size to consider the option of moving into a smaller unit in our same neighborhoods. And two families just to get back to the environmentally sustainable issue, two families are also more energy efficient generally than a single unit building. So that was what I was thinking when I decided to propose this article. If you want to go to the next slide, Kelly. So as I said, two family zoning is better for the environment. Smaller homes, insured structures have lower carbon footprint. More houses on a smaller piece of land mean that we are less strung out, less sprawl, so on and so forth. Arlington is a great community in part because it is so close to job centers and public transportation. So it's a good place to increase housing in terms of sustaining the environment. This is really an article that is about housing choice, flexibility in our zoning code, investment in this community, and expansion of who can live in this community. It is not necessarily an article about affordable housing with a capital A. I don't believe any of these units will be built at 80 or 60% of the area median income and qualify for any kind of subsidy, so on and so forth. But they will take some pressure off the market and they will offer many people who want to move here and many people are already living here some options. We can go to the next slide. So in what we're proposing, the building that would be built on a lot that might have two units in it will not be larger than the single family home allowed on that same lot. We're not changing any of the setbacks, we're not changing any of the height restrictions, we're not changing any of the required open space, so on and so forth. So we're expecting structures that meet all of our current zoning restrictions in single family neighborhoods just with two units in them instead of one. Nonconforming lot restrictions also remain the same. So for example, my house is on a nonconforming lot, which means that I can't expand the footprint of my house beyond what is here without a special permit. So they're all ready to families in the R0 and R1 districts. I added a lot of slides at the end of this particular presentation to show you some of those two families. We don't necessarily need to look at them tonight unless people ask, but I wanted the board to understand my thinking about that. A two family is sort of a standard unit of housing in Arlington. This isn't exotic for us or unusual or different. They're two families all over town. There are many two families within walking distance of my house, which is right across the street from Stratton School. I do think that any change is going to be gradual. I checked these statistics with Kelly last week and we have been averaging about 27 teardowns a year. That's 27 completely rebuilt homes. We have seen an increase this year, but last year we had almost no teardowns, so we think that's just an increase based on pent-up demand. But I suspect that most of those teardowns are actually within walking distance of my house. It seems like every other house is coming down and all of them are being built into very, very large single-family homes. I personally would love to see some of those single-family homes be two units and for us to have more families in a neighborhood that I love with more kids attending the school that my children attended. In conclusion, I think this is a simple change that could have a meaningful impact on housing availability in Arlington. I think it increases our housing choices and it encourages sustainable development, and I think it's a great investment in the future of our community to allow this kind of flexibility in our zoning code that will allow people to stay in Arlington through the full life cycle and also make it easier for folks who are not current residents to possibly get a foothold in our community and become contributing members to our community. And with that, I conclude. Great. Thank you very much, Annie. I appreciate the presentation. I will now turn it over to members of the board for any questions that you might have for Annie, and we'll start with Ken. Hi, Annie. I have one question right now is does this address parking or just remains the same as is? So it doesn't address parking in the sense of expanding the allowable space for parking on the particular lot. Most of the single-family homes that I'm seeing built that have this same footprint are being built with two-car garages and space for two cars to be parked in front of that. At least in my neighborhood, it's not unusual for a building that's built to the maximum allowable space on the lot to also have parking for four vehicles. So I just believe that it wouldn't be different for two-family structures since the structure is not going to take up a greater footprint on the lot. And the available space for parking in a garage would be similar. So you don't see this increasing traffic at all with more parking. It is what it is. All the setbacks requirements would still apply. Yes. All the regulations for as far as closeness to property lines, all that stuff would still apply. It just stays the same. Yes. I mean, there are single-family homes in my neighborhood where on any given day there are six cars parked in front of them. Yeah, I realize that. I just want to have this address. It doesn't. It assumes that whatever the restrictions on parking and available, ability to use the lot to create parking are the same for the two families as they would be for a single family. Thank you. That's all I have for now, Rachel. Great. Thank you, Ken. Gene, any questions for Annie? Yes. Thank you. Yeah. Thank you for the nice presentation. I guess the first question is one for either Annie or Jenny or Kelly. And that is the updated housing production plan recommends as a strategy exactly this allowing two-family homes in single-family zones. And I'm sort of wondering to Jenny, I guess, any thoughts about how that corresponds to this article and to Annie about, well, let's see, Jenny first. No problem. Yes. In the housing production plan that was adopted by the board, one of the strategies to address fair housing and access to housing and remove barriers to housing is the recommendation to allow two families in single-family zones and to consider that as being one strategy among many others to increase housing affordability and availability. That particular recommendation emerged from the Fair Housing Action Plan, which was completed last year, which looked at access to housing and barriers to affordable housing and fair housing in Arlington. And some of the barriers include barriers to home ownership as well as barriers to rental housing for specific races, classes, and various protected classes of people in Arlington. So this was one of those recommendations that came from the Fair Housing Action Plan and is now part of the housing production plan. And I just, for Annie, I wonder if you took that into consideration in this article? So actually, Gene, this is classical court behavior. When I decided that I was going to file this article, I sort of was like, oh, look, I've had this brilliant idea nobody else has had. And it turns out that's not true. So I didn't know it was in the housing production plan at the time that I proposed this. And I also didn't know that it had been proposed in the past. But I think I have benefited from the work that was done by folks on the housing production plan and by the previous proponents work in sort of formulating my thinking about this and also seriously from the time that Laura Wiener, who used to work on our planning department, spent with me, helping me kind of understand the technicalities. Thanks. So second question is, I'm, I guess, concerned that we'll end up with, in many cases, with two fairly large living units or housing units, let's say, on the space. And I'm thinking that what I would like to see for this warrant article, and I raised this, I should say, at the zoning bylaw working group meeting last week where it was pretty much favorably received, would be to limit the size of the units that would be created to 1,850 square feet of heated living space. And I came up with that number, because under state law, it's the maximum size for what's called a quote unquote starter home. And I think if what we're trying to do, and I agree with you, as an aside, you know, considering how much land prices are and how much construction costs are, these are not going to be affordable to low income people. But I think if we limited the size of the units consistent with the starter home requirements, then we would be depressing the price of the units somewhat, and then it would more likely fulfill one of the goals, which is to create more missing middle housing. So I wondered if you have or would give that some thought as a possibility. So I have a couple of questions about that. And I don't know if now is the time to ask questions of you, or I'm happy to try to answer them. That would be great. Yep. And if there are just for process wise too, if there are questions which Jean has that the two of you need to follow up on following this meeting, that is certainly something that we can do as well. And we have offered to any person coming in front of the board in the past to to basically have a board member work with them on any revisions that might be suggested that come out of today's meeting. Great. So the first question I have Jean is, are you talking about restricting the size of units in a two family to 1850 square feet in R1 and R0, or in all residential districts? No, in R1 and R0, because that's what your warrant article is about, and it couldn't be expanded to include any of the other districts. Right. But if you could restrict the size of multi-family units like this of two and three family units in the other districts, would you do it? Because it seems to me like it's going to have an inconsistent code. I'd have to think that through. I'm not sure. There's some, I can see your point. On the other hand, the point is when you're allowing something that's not currently allowed in a district, you might want to put restrictions on it that you wouldn't put elsewhere in the town. So I'm not sure. But this article is not about the rest of the districts. Right. So we don't have to worry about that. And then my other question is, if what we really want is to create more smaller units, then it would seem to me that the way to do that is to expand the number of units allowed. So that within the footprint that's allowable in our single-family districts, you could actually build more smaller units, rather than. And that's not what you proposed. It is not what I proposed. It's not what you proposed. And then it, you know, I've read every one of the comments that came in, and it was just exacerbate, I think, what a lot of people's concerns are as you as you, if you would allow more than two units in these buildings. So, yeah. So I, you know, I guess I'm sort of asking if you and the other people who, you know, had signed on to your warrant article would give consideration to this amendment for your warrant article. So I'm not, I'm not 100% certain what the process is here. Okay. So the way that I had imagined it was that I was going to propose this warrant article. I was going to propose a final vote and that you were going to decide whether or not you supported the article and you were going to, as a board, write the final vote. So it would seem to me that if the board decides that they want to restrict the size of these units and put it in the vote that they take, then that's what we'll get. If you're asking me whether or not I think it's a good idea, I don't. But, you know, I don't see it as a hostile move and I don't want to, so unless I'm wrong about, if select board that would be fine. Let me, yeah. Let me just clarify the process and what I'd like to do is to take all questions and comments such as genes that we have from the board members, listen to the public comments and then circle back and identify any comments like genes that are requesting you to consider any potential changes to the amendment as proposed to see if that's something that you'd be willing to entertain between now and when the board votes on April 4. So if that works, Gina, what I'd like to do is just table that question until we, until we're finished with public comments. That sounds like a good thing to do. Thanks so much. I'll stop at this point. It sounds like a very collaborative way to approach this, Rachel, and it's sort of what I was expecting. Okay, great. Thank you. Melissa, any, any questions for, for Annie on the proposed foreign article? Annie, thank you for your proposal. I guess I was just curious about any residential design guidelines if that had been given any consideration through your thinking and, and kind of the development of this proposal. Partly I asked because, you know, some of the comments that I've received and some that came in and writing have been really concerned about form sizing and mass as well. So I think I was curious on, you know, what your thinking is on that as a proponent. So my thinking had been to keep this as simple as possible. And I would assume that all standards that apply to single family homes being built in, you know, torn down and built on the same properties that we're discussing would apply to two families. So to the extent that the design guidelines are imposed on single family homes, they should be imposed on two family homes, duplexes, you know, whatever is, is being built by a developer. I've read the guidelines. I've walked around my neighborhood. I don't see any projects being built in my neighborhood that are applying the guidelines. I'm not sure what to do about that. Madam chair. Yes, I do see our building commissioner on here. And I was just wondering if he could speak to that. Just to help me understand what the control is on the size under this proposal. The control is for the size of the... Yeah, the massing and how he would see this playing out. Great. I'm happy to turn that over to Mike Champa, who is with us this evening. Thank you. Mike Champa, director of Inspectional Services. I'm sorry, Melissa. So you'd like to know how the sizing restriction would play out? Yeah. So I mean, I feel like a lot of the concern is either McMansion or now with regard to two family, it would just be, you know, kind of still maximizing the building envelope with two family on one site. I think that's generally what I've heard is a concern. And I'm just trying to understand from your perspective if that would continue or is just because that the proposal doesn't have those details. It's saying as is, is there anything else that we should know that could be exploited here that we're missing? I mean, I think that so R1 and R2 have the same lot sizes. So it, you know, you would just be, you know, they would be building the same size house, but you would be getting two units. I think the RO gets a little trickier if there's not a restriction because of the size of the lot. You know, they could build bigger homes. It could, you know, two large homes. But I'm not sure where the, I'm not sure where the happy medium is that it makes it a project that's worth doing for someone size-wise as well. Okay. Yeah. Thank you. Thank you, Mike. And thank you, Annie. Great. Thanks, Melissa. Any other questions or you're good at this time? I'm good at this time. Okay, great. Thank you. Steve, any questions for, for Annie? No, just actually sort of a follow up. I'd like to follow up briefly to something Mr. Benson mentioned. You know, we did discuss this article at the Zoning By-law Working Group and you know, the, you know, the practicality of imposing size limitations. Now, I did ask, pose a question to staff earlier today is in terms of how many starter homes were been built under 40R. And I understand the number is very small. So I think, you know, for us as a board, it would be, you know, possibly worth investigating that if, you know, we continue down that line of discussion. Thank you, Madam Chair. Great. Thank you, Steve. Annie, I just have one question for you before we open this up to public comment. My question is, you know, given the discussion that we've had both tonight and I'm sure we're about to have with the public and when this same topic has come before us, you know, one of the things that I see as potentially necessary is, you know, real education plan in terms of the way that this, should this go forward, that this be discussed with with town meeting members and precinct members ahead of town meetings so that they understand what this article both proposes and more importantly doesn't propose in terms of the way that things might change. Have you given any thought to what an education plan might look like, you know, knowing when town election is and, you know, new town meeting members and that window there? I just want to say that I think when there has been a strong education plan in place that has been helpful for town meeting members. So just wanted to see if that's something you have any thoughts on. I haven't thought about it very much yet. I'm sort of taking it one step at a time. If the show goes to this article, then that would be the next step, which is to come up with an education plan, particularly for town meeting members about what this proposes and what it doesn't propose. You know, we usually hold a series of precinct meetings before town meeting now and I would, you know, be sure that I and other proponents of the article, other supporters, showed up with those precinct meetings to answer questions. I suspect it would probably be a hoove me to produce some written material that could be used, you know, FAQ or whatever for that purpose. You know, I'm not, I'm not delightfully assuming that this is either going to pass the ARB or past town meeting. It felt to me like it was something we needed to discuss. Thank you. I appreciate you addressing that. All right. Any additional questions for Annie from the board members before I open this up for public comment? All right. So at this time, I'd like to open the public comment period for article 38. Any member of the public wishing to speak, please use the raise hand function at the bottom of the participants window. Please make sure to introduce yourself when you begin speaking by your first, last name and address and note that you are allotted up to three minutes for your comments. We will go ahead and take the speakers in the order in which hands are raised. Starting with Steve Moore. Yes. Thank you, Madam Chair. Steve Moore, Piedmont Street. This feels pretty much like it's a redox of what was pursued about two years ago in front of the company. And maybe it was three and failed pretty dramatically. And I believe in effect what it is. And I'm not sure how folks are addressing it, but this is doing away with R0 and R1 zoning. It's not just allowing two families on R1. It's doing away with R1 and in effect doing away with R0. That's, to my mind, what's being presented. Changes to the vision of Arlington as with all vision adjustments, I think needs to be done with a scalpel. And I believe this is an effect of hacksaw. This is a huge change. It's not small change. And as I said, when it came up two years ago, it failed as part of a package pretty dramatically. I think this would push a huge workload to the ZBA, which handles all special permits, because pretty much, I think many lots, maybe the majority of lots in Arlington for R0 and R1 are nonconforming. For many reasons, be them size, be them setbacks, be them, they've been grandfathered in as many two families have happened in R1 districts. And that means the ZBA has to prove all of that. And that's a pretty big workload on top of what already is a pretty big workload for them. I heard during the presentation a statement that it's unusual to see certain parking and such on a single park. That doesn't mean it's typical. I think there would be serious parking implications for two families, two family parking in single family areas. Not that it couldn't be dealt with, but there would be implications. I think with Arlington lots being as small as they are, the only way to go is up. And that is a pretty dramatic change for the visual character of town. And I don't know if it's a great way to go. But again, this is food for thought as much as anything else. So to finish, I basically don't support this. I think the way we need to go is to incentivize the building of two families. Not impose changes to zoning that would push two families. I think we need to incentivize builders to do it since they're going to make more money usually, but I believe with single families, though I'm clearly not an expert in this area. So I would just like to say I don't think the ARB should support this article as it's currently being streamed. Thank you, Madam Chair. Thank you. The next speaker this evening will be John G. from Boston. Thank you, Madam Chair. John Gersh, Kipling Road, Town Meeting Member for Precinct 18. I have four questions. I will state them and then take the answers while I listen. Number one, would these two units each then be entitled to build an accessory dwelling unit? In effect, total of four units on each lot. Number two, how would the existing residents of Arlington in these districts be notified so as not to be blindsided by this change? In other words, would they be treated as a butters with a butter, letters and such? Or is this going to continue to be R1 and they would not need to be notified if they were not paying attention to these hearings? Number three, I'd like to know if there's any evidence that these new units would be more affordable than the existing single family homes that they are replacing. If they would, yeah, if it makes any affordability sense to replace with condos. And number four, I would like to know, I heard I think Mr. Court say something about residents would not maybe have as many cars and I just would like to know if there's any evidence to support that idea. I will take my answer offline. Thank you. Great, thank you for those questions. I would like to ask Annie to respond to, I can actually respond to the first one, maybe Jenny to number two and then regarding affordability. Annie, I believe that you've already addressed that in your notes but if there's anything else you wanted to add. So the two units would in fact each be entitled to ADUs per what was approved last year in terms of the ADU. Jenny, would you like to speak to how existing residents would be notified? We're not changing the zoning of the existing in terms of what they're currently classified as so I don't know that existing, I don't know that notification would be required but Jenny, I'll turn that over to you. Okay Rachel, no notification would not be required. The only time notification occurs in single and two family zones is if there's a special permit hearing through the zoning board of appeals for a specific project and then also people are notified when there's a good neighbor agreement attached to a project and that's sort of a different scale of a butter notices but not that kind of notification that this individual is asking about at John. Great, thank you. And Annie is there anything else that you wanted to add regarding affordability? I know that that is I'm sure a question that will come up again so if there's anything else you wanted to add at this time I will hold further questions on that until the end but if there's anything else you wanted to add at this time I'll go ahead and give you a minute to do so. I hopefully won't need a minute Rachel there's a lot of hands up. I'm a big proponent of affordable housing but this is not an affordable housing article. This is really an article about allowing for more starter home missing middle. I mean I recognize a particularly in R0 if you took the average lot and you built to the max which is what people are doing when they're tearing down their houses you're going to end up with two very large units. But I would say that what's happening now is that houses are being built to the maximum size on the lot and we're just getting a very large unaffordable single family home. I was hoping that this might encourage more duplexes and two families to be built that would allow for just sort of one slightly lower step on the ladder for families to be able to afford to move into Arlington to just sort of keep the cycle going. So thank you Annie. Jean I see that you have your your hand up do you have something you'd like to add? Yeah to to John Gershwin's question and I'm sort of going to ask this to Jenny. So while this would I think not change the rules on ADUs one of the other rules I believe is that they still need to meet the setback and all of the other requirements. So if you're building these houses out to the size that you're allowed to have they're not going to be able to stick an ADU on it. I wonder if Jenny thinks I interpreted that correctly. I want to clarify that you can't build an ADU if it's new a new building? No no you can't build an ADU if doing so would go into the setbacks or exceed the FAR or reduce the number of open space available. That's correct and there's also limitations on the size of the accessory dwelling units that's codified in the bylaw. While there's no parking requirements for ADUs the parking requirements for single and two are one space per dwelling those are the only different that's sort of a differentiation there but otherwise no to answer your question. Yeah so I think that's the gloss I would add to the ADU thing that while it's going to be available if we assume that the builders are going to try to maximize the size of the place it's unlikely that somebody's going to come in later and be able to put an ADU on because they're going to violate the bulk of the open space requirements. Great thank you Gene. I'm actually going we have a lot of hands up so I'm going to move on to the next speaker so Jordan Weinstein. Yeah thank you very much for holding this meeting. Jordan Weinstein, Lennon Road in Arlington and I'm a town meeting member from Precinct 21. I am opposed to this yeah if it were a bylaw that actually created more affordable housing which in my mind is the only thing that would help drive down and take the pressure off the market in Arlington and also help diversify and allow people who can't afford the rising cost of real estate here to come into the into the region into our town I would support it but this does nothing to address that primary issue that we have with real estate here with housing. I don't agree with the logic that's being presented for even making this kind of a change better for the environment. I don't see how a two-family how doubling the occupancy on the same plot of land is going to take any pressure off the environment and you know I can come up with arguments for why it would add more pressure to the environment more use of the utilities probably automobile use and also I think that there's an assumption here that really needs to be examined the assumption that building more and making more housing available will help ease the pressure on the market. Let me give you a couple of examples of why this hasn't been the case as the theory maybe this works but Don Seltzer published a great blog on the ARFR website and he cited at least 10 examples I'll only give you a few of single family homes that were sold and then converted into condos each condo selling for much more than the the initial price of that single family home one of them is one from 9 to 11 Arnold Street a single family home sold for $600 was converted to two condos each of those condos sold for nearly $900,000. $21 to 23 Beacon Street $950 sale price of a single family home one of the condos sold for $980,000 the other for $990,000. We can go back and actually get and look at the actual data and not present theoreticals here there's plenty of data. To me it really is an act of would only enhance gentrification in Arlington and as far as choice it would not lower the pressure on the market it would only create more unaffordable housing and I think finally it's really a giveaway to real estate and developer interests who are interested more in profits than people or our community I think we ought to be focusing our attention on true affordable housing here in Arlington thank you thank you the next speaker this evening will be Carl Wagner thank you madam chair can you hear me okay I can thank you thank you I'm Carl Wagner I live at 30 Edge Hill Road in Arlington and I was born here moved away and then like a lot of newer people moved back and discovered how Arlington has this wonderful spot between the urban and the suburban it's neither of those but it contains all of those two plus it has extra features we have some of the most diverse housing in the area and we're also more affordable than all the towns and cities that surround us except for except for Medford the the proponent is is trying to add housing I think it's very important to note that the same article came to the town and came to this this ARB just a year or two ago and it as was said earlier it it was turned down because it didn't match the needs of what Arlington needs it doesn't help affordability it doesn't help our climate resiliency it gets rid of green spaces it doesn't help the housing stock diversity it goes on and on to the point where you realized like Mr. Weinstein just said what it does is it makes housing choice for people who don't live here yet and don't you as volunteers of this board and the people in the planning department and in our town official status don't those people have to work for the benefits and the needs of the people who live here already or to work for making it more affordable for the people who don't live here yet and this would make housing choice for higher income people at the higher price point it would probably do nothing at all for affordable even if if Mr. Benson's proposal came in but it will definitely eviscerate the middle income housing the middle stock of the housing and I ask you therefore to turn this down I further have a question I would like people to realize who are here tonight that that the proponents of the article a year or two ago as was mentioned are include one of the members of the ARB and I hope that that you'll recuse yourself since you already said two years ago that you want to be going for this very thing I think it's really immoral to have an ARB commissioner vote yes or no on something that he's already stated very recently he wants the same thing to happen thank you thank you I'll just state that there is absolutely no reason for any member of the ARB to recuse themselves during this no matter what they've been involved with regard to past past war on articles we haven't invited any member of the public in Arlington to work together with the ARB to to to help to solidify the war on articles as they're trying to put them together and we've had Annie come in front of the ARB earlier in this year many other proponents and that's again something that's open to any member of the public to work together for for the preparation of any one of these war on articles the next speaker this evening will be Winnell Evans thank you very much madam chairman Winnell Evans orchard place and town meeting member precinct 14 I very much appreciate the intent of this article to provide housing choice but I I agree with previous speakers that the choice that it would provide would be entirely for buyers who can afford million dollar plus homes and it would remove choice for everyone else by further incentivizing the demolition of our older and less expensive houses in 2020 this board voted no action on a similar article noting that there was not yet quote a clear understanding of the impact of similar rezonings due to the recent nature of similar longing changes in other states unquote this concern hasn't been addressed yet but really all we have to do is look at what happens here when single families are replaced with duplexes in every single case each new unit sells for several thousand more than the demolished single family and sometimes for close to twice its price now one justification for this article I've heard is that by providing more market rate housing we alleviate some of the competition for lower priced houses but 2021 data from the mls says that houses listing at one million and up average 12 days on the market and sold for well over their asking prices while those listing at 750 000 and lower sat for 26 days and sold for close to their listing prices in other words the competition is for the more expensive houses and this makes sense people who can afford those prices don't want fixer uppers they don't want to put sweat equity into a house they want new big and ready to move into and while those older homes that are targeted may be smaller and in need of work they still provide an opportunity for someone like myself this is how i moved here to get a foothold in our housing market their replacements remove choice while driving up home prices and land values which will lead to an eventual rise in property taxes this affects existing homeowners of more modest means and those on fixed incomes and also renters as their landlords pass along these costs all these people are being pushed out of town arlington is meeting the needs of higher income buyers it's middle and lower income buyers that are shut out this proposal while well intentioned would have the exact opposite effect of what it hopes to accomplish finally the arb also expressed concerns about quote a lack of public engagement unquote regarding the 2020 version of this article this likewise has not been addressed yet several months ago this board heard a proposal to rezone several areas along mass app the board was united and insistent that the proponent must contact every affected property owner and town council told the proponent that he must notify a butters to the affected areas will the proponents of article 38 likewise be required to provide notice to all property owners and the butters of r0 through one districts i believe that they should thank you so much for the opportunity to speak i appreciate it thank you the next speaker will be james plumbing sorry getting everything set up does that work now it does we can see you and hear you fantastic james plumbing 58 oxford street i like to speak in favor of this article most of the redevelopment that i see in town just you just build out to the max because there's a market for it people want it um and if you build out to the max you're gonna get whatever that is it doesn't matter how many units are in it as i see a couple advantages to do in multiple units if you have a two family instead of one family the tax base is larger and that new unit doesn't require any additional roads or water or sewer lines to support it and for schools like we can support the student population we have so really our tax rate and base everything that seems to cover that's not really an issue and then if you have more residents you can also support local businesses better of the three districts we have the heights is the one that struggles the most with vacancies it might help to have more residents nearby to support those businesses for affordability there's nothing that's going to happen to slow that the effect that our units can be less portable over time you wouldn't you would never say that beacon hill would be an affordable place for someone to live only the wealthy can live there our engine is becoming that and there's nothing you can just stop it unless you solve today's housing which is frankly it's very slow and it's expensive so that's why there isn't a lot of it the only upside to this is that it's good for the town because you have more taxes and it's good for some of the residents who can move in because you would now you have people who can afford a million dollar house instead of two million dollar houses so you whatever little economic diversity you have left at least you have that as opposed to nothing thank you thank you the next speaker this evening will be john warden my name is john i'm not john warden uh i thought you called john warden john warden yes john warden okay go ahead thank you can you hear me i can yep oh thank you all right john warden jason street i'm meeting member um i first i i i i oh yes um my wife patricia warden would also like to speak at some point we don't seem to be able to find a way to get both of us separately on your list so we're doing this as we had done at a previous meeting that's fine um john if you could have patricia speak right after you that would be great well i'm sure she's she probably would rather speak before me but but anyway my name's on the list thank you all right first on the materials that the the planning department made on your website there was a vast number of photographs of two family houses in single family zones a couple of which are neighbors of mine and they were all marked page after page of illegal houses and whoever put that together uh i i'm i'm appalled that they don't understand the difference between an illegality which is a structure that's built without a permit and and pre-existing non-conforming use uh which was built under a permit or before we had before we had zoning uh and uh that his grandfather in this was mentioned before and and i'm also i'm really mystified how the professional staff would surely understand the difference would let something go on the on the arb or the planning department website uh that contain that uh that confusing and and incorrect language so i i would ask that that sort of thing not happen in the future um just a couple points this is a terrible article uh it was rejected before it should be rejected again you know you already have uh the right to have a two-family house in a single-family zone it's but you call it an adu and you can have that adu expand beyond its 400 or 750 feet by getting a special permit so what you're asking for now is the ability to create four-family houses in the r1 and r0 districts uh and that's totally over the top the the master plan the master plan which has been adopted by the town meeting at the very extensive public participation over a long period of many months says there are two kinds of housing that we should have in eilinton and that would be affordable housing and senior housing now at the zoning bylaw working group of which i am a member i brought this i brought this point up and and nobody said anything about senior housing i guess they don't think that that they're not going to get old like i am i think you probably will maybe you won't be able to afford live in arlington anymore uh but affordable housing was scoffed at oh they you can't afford to build affordable housing well wait a minute we're talking about developer profits you can't afford to do it if you're going to if you're going to charge uh the kind of money that they're charging and getting for these houses so that that that that's that that's just a false error and if they can't if they can't follow the master plan then we shouldn't be doing it so i i i would urge you to uh to to reject this and and and that if it's bad enough what's happening to the small marginally affordable well built i just want to say well built how's built before the war before world war two or well thank you materials you're a time yep thank you thank you madam chairman thank you and what i'd like to um clarify uh the the document that john warden was referring to was prepared by the petitioner not by the department of planning and community development uh so patricia warden uh i will go ahead and um turn to you now if you could introduce yourself and i'll start your time thank you patricia warden precinct eight i have worked for 30 years on affordable housing article 38 is not about affordable housing it is about providing lucrative development opportunities for developers with its Orwellian language and proposed changes it feeds the appetite for profit developers to continue their documented tear downs of reasonably affordable homes and replacement with much more expensive units it entirely violates the master plan the article is extremely discriminatory and racist and should be rejected out of hand if we are to retain our cherished housing equity and diversity in arlington the article proponents are trying to make a profound and tragic policy decision for arlington which deserves publicity to all citizens and taxpayers uh it is essentially it eliminates much lower income people of all races from the arlington housing market there is nothing in this proposed bylaw for them nothing it also hurts the so-called missing middle buyer from arlington contrary to what the article 38 proponent claims our teachers service providers etc are priced out of units that this article will bring if you study the logistics of likely consequences in arlington you will find that um any affordability will be a thing of the past except what arlington housing authority can provide the new housing units will have prices for those earning more than 200 percent of very immediate income also proponents of article 38 claim that nothing can be done to present tear downs and replacements with extensive homes but those same proponents opposed development of a temporary moratorium on tear downs of capes and opposed every one of the many attempts by citizens at last year's time meeting to present tear downs and increase affordability of our housing if nothing can be done that's because they choose not to do anything some we suppose the parent department assured you the members of the redevelopment board that before any of the strategies of the housing plan were to be promoted and enacted with zoning changes it would first be vetted by appropriate town groups including the select board but that has not been done one thank you your time thank you thank you uh the next speaker this evening will be wendy rector hi um my name is wendy rector i live on bridal place in arlington um a lot of the points that i was going to bring up have been mentioned and i just want to highlight them um the um unintended consequences of this i could i think could be uh detrimental to the town in that um units that are affordable to the missing middle as they are now um may be lost with tear downs and we see this a lot in the two family zone where smaller uh even smaller two families are replaced with much larger two families so i feel very strongly that if the the intention the intention of this um warrant article which is to increase more uh housing units that are um not affordable in the technical term of affordable but are not um high-end housing that there needs to be incentivized some way smaller units and um i think that um tying uh development of two units on a single family lot to um uh adhere to the residential guidelines might be a way to incentivize those guidelines and give a developer something you know that is a an alternative to building a large house but i think that it needs it would need review and um one of the concerns that i have in this is if the one one family zone lots um have to conform with single family zoning um zoning is there more than one front door because i think that changes the nature of a neighborhood and i'm not saying that you can't have a two family because there are two families that are developed where you have a primary residence and a secondary residence and i see that as something would be more um fit in better in the single family neighborhoods but i think that it take it will take more um development of this uh proposal to um and it would probably involve more uh review and oversight um and i just think that there's a lot more that needs to go into it before it's ready ready um to be to be voted on thanks thank you uh the next speaker this evening will be elizabeth pile hello my name is elizabeth pile i live at 66 Gloucester street um a town meeting member from precinct eight i'm also a zoning and land use attorney and i've been practicing in those fields for more than 20 years and i was a member of arlington's residential zoning study group the rsg which for three years studied the issue of new construction in the residential districts and what the impacts of those new houses would be on the community and i can say that my single biggest takeaway from being on the residential study group was that homes that were single family but located in the two family districts were targets for tear down rebuilds and that these new homes that were built were bigger more expensive and built to the maximum envelope possible which were always very large houses and bigger than what was replaced and if this article were to come into effect this article 38 we could see the same kind of impacts throughout town and i oppose this article because the impact of it would be to put arlington more out of reach for people from diverse communities this would remove existing housing opportunities at the 600 to 700 thousand dollar range or the middle range and replace it with only luxury units and although the proponents of the article their intent is to make more housing choice the article would actually have the opposite effect and have less housing choice and one of the things that rsg we we always talked about was the potential for unintended consequences caused by major zoning changes and how important it was to fully vet changes with all stakeholders so unintended consequences that were negative to the community would not happen and i've heard many examples of these kind of unintended consequences come up tonight the impact on green space the impact on massing the potential for parking problems for having a to use on the lot that these these impacts have not been fully vetted such that this article is not ready to go forward at this time and arlington by removing single family zoning would be the first and only municipality in the state to take such a drastic action arlington should wait and see how these kind of impacts play out nationwide and in other communities to see if they actually work and have the impact that proponents say that they might have because many scholars think that they'll have the opposite impact less affordability less choice and a lot of unintended consequences so i would urge the board to reject the article to vote no action more study and public outreach is needed on these important issues um this article would lead to greater gentrification has not been fully vetted thank you your time thank you very much for for your time tonight thank you uh the next speaker this evening will be don selzer uh thank you madam chair don selzer Irving street i'm going to try to answer the question of how many just how many homes will be affected by this zoning change references have been made to the 2019 report on demolitions i remember when it was presented to the residential study group and they refused to endorse it it was based upon the mistaken notion that only those homes smaller than 1500 square feet and built before 1980 were candidates for tear downs it was a poor discriminator at the time and is even more outdated now in actuality any single family lot of 5000 square feet or more and worth 850k or less would become a target for tear down and conversion to a duplex condo for which each unit would sell for about a million or more in today's market nearly half of the single family homes in r0 r1 fall within these criteria what would this mean for a specific r1 neighborhood such as Stratton our most racially diverse school it is predominantly comprised of these types of homes affordable to the middle third of arlington households making between 100 and 200 000 dollars these are the kind of homes that are affordable for our first responders and for two teacher households as an example one such home 2200 square feet and built after 1980 sits only a block away from Stratton it sold just a year ago for 780 000 dollars if this warrant article were in effect it would likely have been bought up instead by a developer to tear down and replace with more expensive condos crowding up against its neighbors and the front yard dug up for a steep double driveway leading to garages under this board has been provided with the recent tear down and conversion history in the r2 districts in every instance a single family home was replaced with condos each costing more than the original home the net impact of this warrant article will be to remove choice for middle income families and instead provide more choice to households making 200 percent or more of AMI despite the intentions of its sponsors it will not create more affordable housing and it will further erode the economic and racial diversity of arlington thank you thank you the next speaker will be michelle hi um madam chair i'm just want to say i'm a new resident but i've been here for a few years and i heard annie talk about that i'm so sorry to interrupt you would you mind introducing yourself with your first last name and address i'm sorry michelle nathan i'm a robin hood road that's you know bordered mystic blades thank you so i heard the woman annie who proposed the article talk about in her neighborhood that she sees housing guidelines are not followed and i unfortunately have seen the same thing in arlington and i wonder since guidelines aren't followed and there'll be a lot of development how will guidelines be ensured um to be followed and also i don't understand why developers when they apply for permits don't put the true cost of construction so they pay less in permitting fees i don't know why that happens thank you thank you the next speaker this evening will be christin anderson thank you christin anderson 12 upland road west i am a precinct 13 town meeting member my concerns are of environmental health specifically regarding stormwater runoff stormwater is a waste product rainwater on the other hand is a resource when it is absorbed by trees and vegetation and when it is able to percolate back into the soil um and recharge groundwater so um with this in mind i have a couple questions how will this zoning change affect the amount of pervious surface that we have in arlington on a per lot basis so what i mean by that is let's say we've got a single family lot that that is redeveloped um turned into a two family with a couple of ad us what is the estimated loss of pervious surface and secondly how many trees will be cut down in each lot that is developed in the event um that this article passes thank you very much i'll i'll let you guys answer that uh thank you christin what i'd like to do is hold that question i'm not sure that the applicant can answer that today um but i will say that for the end and um ask ask this they respond may may i say something else about this then since there this is going to be the end of the discussion on it um this is a terrible this is a terribly important issue and we tend to overlook stormwater runoff unless development is happening in the flood plain which is really unfortunate and we have flooding problems in this town and we also have problems with uh hazardous contaminated water in our water bodies and so when we talk about how this warrant article is going to be good for the environment i really think that this needs to be addressed so um i'm i'm disappointed that no one has even considered this as of yet are you sure that the that the proponent has not thought of this i i do not know but i'm going to hold that question for the end when we circle back to the discussion so i i appreciate your concern thank you thank you um the next speaker will be uh ann alert hi i am ann alert i live on west minster avenue i'm a town meeting member in precinct 21 um and i respect um any schools with this warrant article um however i have a lot of concerns for the impact on the town a lot of people have already discussed my concerns so i want to just focus on the ones i think we might need a little more discussion on and and that's increased density is something i've heard a lot about from the town but the residents i know really are not in favor of increased density for a wide variety of reasons um and the other thing i think that hasn't really been discussed tonight is the impact on property taxes if density increases which i think it will over time because the property would be more valuable and developers will come in then this puts a lot of pressure on the schools and the infrastructure and we already have spent you know are spending 300 million dollars on rebuilding the high school we've had to in the last few years take over a school because the increased enrollment and what happens is like these big jumps when you um no longer can fit into the school buildings are really going to increase property taxes and this is maybe a little bit outside it but one thing i've noticed being a town meeting member is that that there really isn't a process for the town to figure out and communicate the the impact on our infrastructure for some of these warrant articles and i think it's huge i think this could make you know over time even the adu thing if that takes off and you know allowing two families by right can really increase the property taxes and make the town less affordable even for the people who already live here um the other thing i just want to remind people of is that anytime we have a zoning change that only requires 50% vote to implement it it still takes a two-thirds vote to reverse it so we need to be really careful about putting these things forth to town meeting. Thanks. Thank you. Thanks uh the next speaker this evening will be Rebecca Peterson. Hello um this is i'm Rebecca Peterson i live on Florence Ave um i i urge you to categorically reject the elimination of single family zoning in Arlington. I think Arlington appeals to buyers primarily because it has a suburban feel but with urban conveniences where we have good restaurants we're close to the T we're close to Boston but eliminating single family housing will destroy the very thing that drew most people here i think this proposal is patently unfair to people who saved to buy a house specifically in a single family neighborhood most people who bought in single family neighborhoods didn't do that by accident and so you know those of us who have done that have spent the subsequent years paying for our homes and improving them so i would respectfully ask you what about people who want to live in a single family neighborhood do we matter i wish we could stop demonizing single family homes is the only goal to stuff as many people as we possibly can inside the town borders many of us do not want to live somewhere as dense as Cambridge i don't you know i appreciate the townlike feel of Arlington with the yards and the trees in addition as other people have mentioned in eliminating single family housing does absolutely nothing for truly affordable housing but it is a dream on the other hand for the tear down crowd and the developers the constant push from the town for increased density is really tiresome people who live here if you if you look at the comments tonight it's overwhelmingly people do not want this we should be trying to protect what little green space we have and maintain our quality of life rather than encouraging people to build on every square inch possible so i really hope that you'll pay attention to the vast majority of residents here tonight who are speaking against this article thank you very much for your time thank you the next speaker this evening will be Matthew Owen hi i'm Matthew Owen um i'm at 164 Forest Street um and i'd like to speak in favor of this draft warrant article um i think one thing in this discussion tonight that sort of hasn't been foregrounded a lot um is there been these comparisons between you know how much um a single family home cost that was redeveloped into a duplex and what each of those units cost but i'd like to give some examples of what the cost differences are um in currently in the r1 district two examples so 37 rubly street which was a small single family home sold in 2019 for 680,000 and then um was torn down and a single family home was put up and sold the next year for 1.51 million um the seven Hancock Street which is in my neighborhood um sold in 2020 for 639k and then sold um just a few months ago for 1.5 million and i think you know if we don't enact an article like this this is pretty much the status quo we're going to get the um smaller homes that you know are sort of people are latching onto as like oh this you know allows our time to be affordable are just going to be redeveloped whether it's into a duplex or a large single family so i think really our choice is between do we want to be a town with a decreasing number of starter homes and an increasing number of multi-million dollar single families or do we want to be a town that has an increasing number of um starter home sized um family units um just one last thing i'd like to note um is just to point out that you know there's been talked that this is sort of like a radical push but i would like to note that um two families by right is legal in the entire state of california currently um so this is not you know an especially radical idea um at this point in time when we're we're dealing with a essentially nationwide housing crisis in our urban areas thank you thank you the next speaker will be uh eram homen hello can you hear me i can thank you uh madam chair would it be appropriate for me to ask a question of the arb at this point and if so would that take away from my three minutes it would be part of your three minutes yes okay then okay then i then i will wait on that my name my name is eram homen i live at 12 widamore street i am a candidate for town meeting for precinct six i am here to speak against this proposed article uh you've already heard a number of the reasons i will try to abbreviate what i have to say uh but it seems to me that be it smaller units or larger units whatever is being proposed for arlington whatever the rationales are it seems to me that the proposed zoning changes are intended more to enhance the profitability of the developers than any other goal that is the one thing which is consistent uh the arguments made in favor of this simply don't hold and i'm addressing the claims made in the march third memo from jenny reyton kelly linema and talia fox to the arb uh the claim that this will create more affordable housing basic linguistic thing more affordable than what just an anecdote a two family near me an existing shell was renovated it was a two family 800 k and 1.3 million for the two units that was an existing shell it was not even a tear down that would have cost even more mrs lecourt even admits that this is not an affordable housing measure by definition measures which increase the total possible supply of market rate i.e luxury housing in arlington make arlington even less affordable because it raises the price of housing and also because more importantly it increases the number of affordable housing units that we need under the supposedly affordable standards of 40 b and those are not affordable to get out from 40 b the claim that arlington can or should address the quote racist legacy and quote of past zoning is laudable and may even be possible but further raising the price of housing in arlington will simply make arlington's housing even less accessible to those of limited means regardless of their race or color in short i think one could at least argue that this proposed zoning change is another one of the racist policies encoded in zoning that it is supposedly intended to to remedy it seems like it's just one more the claim that this will improve environmental sustainability likewise does not hold yes newer construction will be more energy inefficient but that would be true of any housing built regardless of type so it is not an argument in favor of this article the argument very time thank you very much thank you the next speaker this evening will be judith garber hello can you all hear me we can thank you hi i'm judith garber i'm at massachusetts avenue i'm also tell me meant for precinct four i'm generally in favor of this article um as someone who lives in a multifamily unit i feel grateful that i get to live in arlington and i certainly wouldn't be able to afford a single family home here um and i think increasing our housing is not necessarily a bad thing i don't think we're as dense as we may think we are and i don't know where everyone lives in arlington but here in east arlington like it's not so bad it's really nice having a lot of neighbors it's it doesn't feel extremely closed it doesn't look extremely dense um obviously this is the kind of neighborhood i moved into um knowing what it was so i understand how everyone's feeling about it but i just wanted to put that that word in there and for some of my other um town being members who i've talked to about this and uh who couldn't make it this meeting but feel the same way um we're generally in favor of this although i i'm mostly very interested in hearing um the discussion at town meeting especially around you know there seems to be this question of is this going to increase tear downs or is it going to or tear downs destined to happen anyway and this will just make it able for more people to live in arlington which i am in favor of um i don't know if it'll increase tear down so i'm i would um ask if the proponent or the arb if they approve this to see if we can get some kind of information on that um and i also want to say you know i've seen some of the information about how many people used to live in arlington in the past couple decades and there used to be many more people here it's not like we're at our maximum capacity we used to have many more people living here and i think we can have more people living here again that's all thanks thank you uh the next speaker well i just have an email address so it's uh jawdbw hi i'm janice weaver precinct 21 i live in crescent hill avenue and i'm against this article and i'm the 17th person on the list to be against it there were three for it um they did do a knockdown on my street and the house itself is fine the driveways horrible and the walls do not match up with the rest of the neighborhood uh there are no restrictions on how things are built to keep in line with the um architecture of the neighborhood if you go up orient avenue the same thing happened when they built i think five or six duplex houses it looks like a parking lot because no one can park in their garages evidently because there are always two or three houses outside and i hate to see that happen in other areas of town i think um as the previous speakers have said you're trying to push out people who would like to have um single family homes and you make us feel as though there's something wrong with us i grew up in a two family home i enjoyed it i loved it but then i moved to a single family home with my parents and then i bought this house in arlington and a lot of my friends most of my friends have had to move out because of the prices and only taxes will be increased nothing will go down and you have to understand that when people say oh this will be better for the tax rate it will not be better and the school cost us more as other speakers have said and rebecca peterson was right on target nice to see someone who just moved in a few years ago to say she moved here for the very reason that a lot of us moved here that it's um suburban and not urban and the people that are moving in to try to make it urban should go back to the cities that were urban thank you very much thank you the next speaker this evening will be uh i mean cahill hello can you hear me yes we can hear you oh okay hi um yes i mean cahill dixon av there's just so much to say um and so many people have made good points of the 17 people that have spoken um i just have to approach this from an engineering perspective it's just irresponsible to human health to not look at our infrastructure with you cannot make this decision without assessing the condition of our below the surface pipes that keep us healthy this is our water mains this is our sewer mains we have the luxury of turning on the water and getting clean drinking water we have the luxury of flushing the toilet and bringing it away to get treated properly so from engineering we literally use the the zoning to decide how big to size a pipe and i understand that the justification there was a meeting last week was that okay population used to be 10 000 more the pipes are like 60 years old in the ground okay we have clay pipes we have gas mains being dug up these clay pipes are being broken we have to look at this it's like you just can't make this decision without it i have a list right here about 25 trouble spots that the sewer department checks these locations they're in residential areas teresa ridge um ridge tomahawk dodge forest these are the areas that we're talking about increasing the building and increasing the um the the cars driving on it i think it's very unrealistic to think that the traffic would not increase um and it's just i just can't overemphasize like i just have to really stress this out of the responsibility of being a civil engineer i'm like environment and the storm water i completely agree with that that but that's actually i i think the answer to that is that this is still contained within the building requirements that i i think i remember annie saying that um so i i i think we do overbuild because i see clean um water getting pumped out of people's basements you know out of some pumps and over these huge houses that have been built in the single family so i i just i hope and i really wish that we could do this in person um it's it just seems like this is way too big a decision for this town people that have invested so much money in in either their their their houses and maintaining their houses and being the community that it is but think be thankful that when we flush the toilet it goes away we don't have to think about it okay that's ever something everybody can relate to right and we want that for our our health okay we don't want backups into our houses thank you thank you uh the next speaker will be Colleen Cunningham all right actually it's her husband Stuart Stuart Morrison Kensington Park um first of all i thought i'll answer a question was raised a couple of speakers earlier regarding the higher population um Arlington did used to have a higher population it was largely you know large let's say Irish Catholic families that had five or six kids so what's happening now is that those large Irish families are gone and they've been replaced by yuppies like several of the people that have spoken up here and that leads to um you know the the problems that people are alluding to which is higher population density more people more services being required so on and so forth so we used to it is true we used to have more people but it was just simply large families so let me go to the main um point here which is a number of people raised these points already so i'll try to be brief um it's clear that although this idea was brought forth with some you know and he's trying to solve a problem here it hasn't been thought through and i think that many people have expressed the notion that there are a lot of unintended consequences to this um this this article so unanswered is the question of how we deal with the impact on taxes on the sewer system with the increased population and so on unanswered is the question of you know how this is going to change the character of the town um and that's a major issue because people love the town because of its character and if all of a sudden it changes from being what many people appreciate which is a suburb of single family houses to something that's a lot more like summer vill or parts of Cambridge that's going to cause a lot of anger and and and that's not a good thing that we want you know we don't want to do that in this in this town and i'm afraid that many people i pay attention to zoning issues my wife does most people don't and they're going to be broadsided by this so there needs to be on the subject of you know thinking this through and actually preparing for it one would need to actually alert the majority of Arlingtonians that this major change is coming their way and then the other unanswered question is really who benefits from this right i believe that the proposer thinks that you know society is a whole benefit but it's very clear that the real beneficiaries are going to be the real estate industry developers and you know the people that make money by doing construction here in Arlington and the question then is well why would we want to you know lend more throw more gasoline on the fire of you know developers who are enriching themselves in Arlington at the expense of the existing homeowners who like Arlington the way it is we don't like the tear downs unfortunately you know there are a lot of tear downs happening now being replaced with one families the ARB has not done a good job in stopping that what will happen under this piece of under this warrant is that the tear downs will just all of a sudden turn to making two families everywhere thank you you're a time thank you uh the next speaker will be Dolores mickey hello hi i'm Dolores mickey in precinct 16 and i really appreciate a lot of the comments that some of the um participants on the call have made and i agree with one of the previous um committee or community members that we should really be doing this in person so i just want that put out there um so i would just like to say that with greater density in our residential neighborhoods um we need to consider um what the increase in traffic would do to the roads um residential areas throughout the town already experience very unsafe levels of cut through traffic so um for instance our main roads mass have pleasant street medford street lake street summer street they already cannot handle the traffic we see so our lintonians see the result with this increasing amount of drivers speeding through our residential neighborhoods so um how will these roads be able to handle even more traffic from our denser neighborhoods if if these changes were to to occur the town is working hard to improve the workability i mean the walkability of our town and um you know it's a big consideration with all the school children that we have walking to and from school each day this zoning change threatens to undo all of that work um that we've been you know pretty committed to over the years and pushing this you know it would just it would increase the speeding issue that we have to through our neighborhoods so i think that needs to be considered as well um i think i'm not sure how it would impact like the um rodent issue but i do believe we have a pretty significant rodent issue in our linton too and i'm wondering if um if that would be impacted so thank you very much thank you uh the next speaker will be grant cook hi can you hear me i can thank you grant cook uh wallson ab i think i'm still in precinct 16 um so it's easy to confuse what is with what ought to be when when what is has worked out in your favor um somebody mentioned a scalpel versus blunt force and i i think zoning large swaths of our towns that only a single family home is allowed seem to be the ultimate in blunt force approach but we hear talk about expectations of our neighborhood and i live in a let's um it's led to some pretty nice neighborhoods i live in one but if you go back and ask why we did it that way i suspect some of the reasons would be pretty sensible and i sure some of them would be less savory in their virtue as somebody has said we don't have one housing problem we have many but they boil down to two areas scarcity and subsidy and we see scarcity now in prices on what should be starter homes well out of reach of middle income buyers we talk about luxury units even if you're home in our lintons of modest stock you have a luxury many only dream about the luxury of wealth and equity i would love to hear more talk of subsidy of the affordable units it's what we need to generate true affordability it's not going to occur naturally for those that believe it can where is it the land is too expensive and multifamily units must go through regulatory hurdles that we have put in place discouraging those developments but as much as we talk about affordable units of a virtual shield professing noble intent we hear very little doing about it it has been asked how do we create these big a affordable homes organically and it's usually met with silence from some of the same voices we hear here this proposal is one tool to address scarcity it's not a panacea it hopefully is one measure of many the proposal doesn't change the size of the home it adds people i have the good fortune to live across from our two districts so i have duplexes and apartments across the street those people contribute greatly to my neighborhood they're my friends they're my peers in my prior years i lived in a neighborhood in east arlington that had many single family homes mixed in and the neighborhood was very vibrant so commentary about negative impact of expectations of the neighborhood i'd like to see more specifics on that we surely don't discourage single family unit construction in our two districts and we have plenty of two families and our ones today that exist in prior to zoning i don't buy many of the data free allegations of infrastructure breakdown as was recently pointed out on the same discussion our largest sewage generator was the brigham factory which as we all know is gone our schools have capacity i watched the high school get built i know it can handle more students because we plan for that and some of this also betrays the commitment we talk about a lot with discussion of things like black lives matter but the signs we have in our front yard wealth seeks an outlet and our towns and many of our neighboring towns supportive scarcity exclusionary zoning drives the gentrification we criticize into other neighborhoods it drives it into rocksbury it drives it into southy it drives into east summerville but those places are far away we don't see them day to day living next to an our two district i've seen demolitions paul reveres had several four in close proximity were replaced with two families and some by single families all of them are more expensive i'm sorry you're you're at time okay thanks for your time thank you uh the next speaker will be barbara thorton thank you very much um there's a there's a lot to respond to here so i'm going to go through some points as barbara i'm sorry could you please just get your i'm sorry barbara thorton precinct 16 uh park a 223 park af thank you thank you um first of all this is becoming a town full of mac mansions and i keep hearing people complain about mac mansions and when we finally have a an opportunity like this warrant article that miss lecourt is proposing to slow down the mac mansions we seem to be opposed to it i moved to arlington because i i valued the economic diversity that was in this town and and it was in this town and it isn't anymore um i'm not asking for a great deal of economic diversity this isn't about affordable housing but it is about creating a diversity of housing styles and types for our different phases of life that would be that would be good for people it's not going to change developers coming in and tearing down and rebuilding housing but it will keep them from they have a choice they can build mac mansions or they can build something else this will give them something else to build and i'll bet you that given their choice they would just assume build a two family as one more mac mansion i want to go back to ilean cahill's comments about infrastructure and i think infrastructure is important to consider more than half of the of the homes in arlington i would guess are over 50 years old the infrastructure within those homes not the pipes because i trust our dpw you don't keep you don't keep good care of the pipes and upgrade but within the homes they're not being upgraded regularly which is why so many are subject to tear down once they're bought you can have a small home but it's going to be incredibly expensive to to renovate it to bring it up to standard and now some of the standards of these older homes are becoming seriously dangerous so we either need to figure out how to renovate these older homes or or provide new homes of the same size that are available to people in arlington that are safe and i and i hope that this the arb will consider doing that consider the importance of standing up to mac mansions providing a diversity of housing styles and providing for opportunities to renovate the infrastructure of the homes in arlington by allowing this process and lastly it won't happen overnight this is an incremental approach it's going to be out of the 19 000 homes in arlington i don't know how many it'll be a year but it's a very small percentage maybe 10 homes across the town a year that this happens to and i think that's something that we can find out about by the four town meeting and make some good guesses on it but i i very much been in support of this article thank you barbra uh the next speaker will be san j newton hi san j newton i'm a pre-sync pre-sync 10 town meeting member on otawa road and i will keep my comments short this evening i'll thank the board for spending so much time listening to so much comment this evening and i'll just say thank you to miss the court for bringing forward this article and express my support for it and i'll i'll leave it right there thank you thank you the next speaker will be susan stamps okay yeah here i am oh perfect timing i just got back home coming back from new york on the train um it's been a great discussion tonight thank you to the arb um i'm sorry would you please sorry would you please introduce yourself first last i'm so sorry yes i was okay thank you susan susan stamps i live in east arlington on grafting street um i'm also a member uh town meeting member and i am a member of the tree committee although i'm not speaking for the tree committee um i have a tremendous respect for annula court and um there people are desperate to try to figure out how to make more housing available i i completely agree with the um you know what what um what the push is i i really can't agree with a proposal though for all the reasons that has been stated tonight my particular i used to live in carlyle where they have two and four acres zoning because they're on wells and um their own septic and when in my time there they were cutting down huge acres of trees and putting in mac mansions and i i was on the housing authority at the time and i was pushing for them to in those mac mansions rather than making them single family homes to put two or four units in those buildings which they wouldn't do because of zoning but the reason there was not particularly to provide more housing at a reasonable cost because i didn't think it would but it was to prevent the degradation of the environment um unfortunately i um which which it would have done it would have been a good thing for the environment in carlyle i think it would would have i think i agree with the speakers tonight that it would have the opposite effect in arlington because right now so many of the single family homes have nice yards and big trees and and all kinds of greenery and um i think they're everybody understands that if a builder tears down a house and puts in a duplex versus a single family home they're going to make a lot more money and which that's they're entitled to do that and it's a noble profession but what what's going to happen is they're going to build out to the lot lines all the trees are going to come down the driveways are going to be bigger because they have uh two you know two houses to put in driveways for so as one of the speakers there's going to be more impervious services which is really the wrong way to go in this time of climate change taking out the trees is the wrong way to go and um there have to be some better solutions out there um i think we ought to be looking to cpa money to um effectuate more subsidized affordable housing and and think of some other creative ideas but i don't think this is the right one thank you thank you uh the next speaker will be uh identified as rs ipad thank you steven blagdon hutchinson road i sent uh the board a letter on this and won't repeat myself there have been many good comments against article 38 which i agree with this article won't reduce mac mansions it will increase tear downs and just as large or larger than mac mansions two families will be built i keep hearing a change is not a worry because it'll be incremental and take a long time this is like increasing the water temperature slowly on the frog so it doesn't realize it's being boiled listening to the presentation i was surprised and disappointed that this hasn't been thought through and the effects identified and considered it seems to have aspirational goals rather than realistic ones the adu by law ended single family zoning last year the town should see how that lower scale change works out and analyze the impacts before something like this which were turbocharged tear downs how can you get four units replacing a single family you build a duplex to the maximum structural limits with rough adu plumbing and electrical in the garages you get your completion approval now the builder converts the garages to adu's and doesn't have to replace the parking that has bad effects i've noticed in hour zero the tear down threshold looks to have reached about a million dollars i made some practical points in my letter a few of the written comments make a good point that this patrol the proposal is a betrayal of the implied compact with those who spent a lot of money to buy and live in a single family house article 38 would destroy our linkedin as we know it please say no thank you thank you the next speaker will be alex bagnell hello um alex bagnell wyman street uh zoning rules and land use policy are complex mechanisms with a lot of leaders in the end they are an expression of our community values with zip code playing an extremely large role in determining economic opportunities and household incomes we should be welcoming to more people in our high opportunity community not continuing to exclude exclusion by race and or class were key drivers in the creation of single family zoning we can and should do better this article isn't going to solve our housing problems and nothing is going to happen overnight but it's a meaningful step in the right direction and i am very much in favor of it thank you thank you and with that i believe we have heard from uh all of the speakers this evening who have their hands up uh to speak about article 38 yes jenny i didn't get a chance to speak uh i okay i'm sorry you didn't have your hand up so um could you please i you're more than welcome to to speak if you haven't had a chance this evening you could introduce yourself with your first last name and address that would be great hi thank you sorry it looked like i had a hand up on my side so that's okay please please go ahead yep uh terry kirkland brunswick road um so a few things that we listened to um you know for mr weinstein um mr wagner um miss evans we fully agree with all of your statements put forth i really wish we had more time to listen to mrs warden uh personally a lot of things she's saying about how people are taking small houses and building it up uh to these mac mansions why aren't we imposing more rules like that mrs warden's thoughts were very well thought out i wish she had more time to continue what she was saying uh because that's where it is she said no one was coming and speaking to these problems on you know taking a smaller home you know maybe 800 square feet or less and let's keeping it to those sizes and let's help people uh get those smaller homes that we're talking about um also to uh what miss kay hill said about infrastructure we learned about that firsthand um you know when the house came up next to us the uh the water line which was just the drain off water was not inspected properly by the town and what happened and a full crack happened and tons of water thousands and thousands of gallons of water went under our property that's a huge issue um when we're talking about all these houses coming down and what's going to happen to the grain space uh the cross the you know across the street we also had three houses go up and over those 40 50 trees that were there every single one was cut down every time i've seen a multifamily home that's maybe as they said tear down and built up any trees on that property are gone so the contractor can get the maximum space they don't care about the greenery i see a lot of two family houses that don't even have a yard uh in many homes i've walked around them and multiple ones that were two families and they made sure they condoized them and selling them again maximize the lot they had they had maybe a foot before their fence so those are just some of the things that you know we're very concerned of um you know coming we're in an r1 district right now i couldn't imagine in a ranch style home that we have a large frontage that you could put up a huge double decker i think that it would not even look well with our you know the rest of the house is around us um so we really hope that more people decide that this is not the way to go um this feels that it was just a prematurely put together where we're not talking about as other people have stated what's the parking going to happen what do our schools are going to look like you know we have put all this money into these schools but they're they're going to be maxed out if we take what is it the 79 percent that's our one or our zero we can make them into two families that's a lot more people that's a lot more trash has to be picked up so i think there's a lot of problems and this was this is just not a well thought out um or well prepared argument for us all to do and especially by zoom so this is something we really need the whole town to get into and everybody should have a notice to see only like 80 people on this meeting is is sad but thank you for your time and thanks for letting me speak thank you um and then the last speaker this evening will be gary goldsmith oh you're you're on mute if you could unmute yourself there we go gary goldsmith beverly road um quick uh two quick points or two quick questions one is it is disingenuous to think that there would be fewer cars i think we can assume that anybody who is purchasing a a house or a unit in arlington is going to have at least one car so my one question then is if we were to uh to enact this uh this article uh would we require two uh two parking spots i believe someone earlier said that uh the current requirement is one spot for each dwelling unit uh we would now have to require two parking spots um and how would aid use affect that the other question i have is that i think it's disingenuous to think that this would have any issue have any impact on reducing the mac mansionization of arlington houses i think it's pretty fair to assume that if a builder developer is building two units rather than one um they will try to maximize uh the the size and uh the of the units um which will maximize the price uh and one final comment and that is that there is a certain population looking for a house which is costing two or two point two million uh there is a much larger population looking for a house of one point one million even though that seems like a crazy number but that's that's what it is so this is likely to increase our population some of the estimates on growth are uh include single family houses being expanded but um it is a lot more likely to sell uh units at one point one million than two point two um those are my questions or comments thank you very much and i thank the board for considering this thank you all right so um at this point i will uh turn things back to the board and to uh annie will court the petitioner i'm just going to recap a couple of the topics um annie that that i heard some of which you may want to address this evening and some you may want to um think about and and come back at it at a future evening and and respond to or respond in writing if that's okay with you sure okay great so um i'm just going to run through a couple that that i highlighted and then asked any of the board members that there there are others um as well so um there was a question about um and maybe this is something that you and um jenny have discussed but how you are seeing the residential design guidelines potentially um playing into the requirements for um the two family dwelling units um that that would be proposed on um in the r1 and r0 um districts um the question about will this increase teardowns or simply be a reconfiguration of existing is a topic that people are looking to have addressed uh the question about traffic impact um and parking i believe that can also have some questions about your thoughts on on parking um and i believe that that also played into um some of the questions that um christin and others had about um infrastructure and um pervious um pervious potential increases in pervious surfaces um specifically related to stormwater runoff um there was a question about any potential projections on impact on property taxes um and then we go back to gene's question about any you know any of your thoughts potentially on limiting the size of the units in these particular r0 and r1 districts if they choose to to move to a two family construction so um i'm not sure if you're prepared or would like to answer any of those i'm i'm prepared to give some general answers now but i will that's fantastic learn those questions if someone can give them to me in writing into an faq going forward yes i can so we can certainly follow up with um with that list sure so let me um give you all an anecdote about the inspiration for this article so when i first moved into my house which for don selzer's sake you should know is directly across from uh strant school so it's right in the strant school neighborhood there was a row of eight or ten um ranch houses on the other side of the strant school playground on mont nav all of them six room houses some of them had sort of kicked out the back maybe added a little wing or a deck or whatever all of them on six thousand square foot lot every one of those houses when it has sold over the last 15 years or so has been torn down and rebuilt as a larger home the last one of those houses that was torn down and rebuilt as a larger home was built as to the maximum size of home that you could possibly put on that lot with the maximum driveway and a two car garage so that house has the exact impact that a two family allowed by this article on that same lot would have there are three or four of those single family ranch houses left as they sell they will all turn into exactly that house because that's what's being built in my neighborhood right now the largest single family possible so what we have is a five thousand square foot house with as much driveway as is allowable under our bylaw and a two car garage across the street from spratton school and a single family home worth two million dollars which could have been two very generous duplex units with no more effect on the environment or the lot with no more paving and no more structure than is already there so what i'm seeing in my neighborhood is that every tear down is is exactly this every time someone tears a house down it turns into this very large single family home and what i'm saying is those could have been two families now in terms of trees and permeability i don't think they're going to have a different effect if there's two families or there's one because the restrictions that we're placing on the building of the structure itself are the same same setbacks same height restriction same volume so we're not increasing the environmental impact it is true that there will be more people and more kids in the schools and there will be more you know presumably more water flowing through our sewers i've discussed this and several other people have discussed it with people in the town that tell manager mike ratamaker son and so forth they don't see a concern these are the people who are in charge of managing our water and sewer and they believe that our population is much lower than it was at its peak everybody is using more water conserving equipment in appliances so on and so forth and so our flow is not increasing even as our the number of housing units in town increase because the population is not matching what it used to be and we also have a very good very consistent anybody on time meeting that knows this consistent program of replacing our sewers and improving them so that we have less infiltration and inflow so the the folks who can affect it are aware of the infrastructure problems and they are working on them and they're working on them regardless of whether or not we increase the number of housing units in town so my general answer is I did think about this I thought about it a lot I spent the whole summer watching that house go up and thinking about it and all I'm saying is I'd like more neighbors and I would like not to see these small ranches get knocked down and turned into McMansions but I don't think there's any way for us to reasonably prevent someone from selling their house maximizing their investment in the property that is probably the sole asset that they have and selling it to whoever is the highest bidder which in many cases is a developer if it's not a developer and someone moves in and does not want to expand that house or does not want to build a two family that's great this bylaw does not require them to do so so I think we're talking about you know at at the most 10 20 you know tear downs like this happening in a year maybe less because on average we're only having 27 so it's not going to be this huge overnight change and in fact it may not happen at all because this doesn't require any particular developer or any particular homeowner to build a two family it just says you have the flexibility to do it if that's what the market demands that's what you want to build that's what you think is best for your own investment in your property were there other questions in the address in that no I think I think there were I think you got to most of them and again we can follow up with with a list I'll at this point what I'd like to do is run through my fellow board members and see following public comment if there are any other questions you would like to specifically ask any court to follow up on or address prior to when we deliberate on this on April 4 know that we are we're not going to have deliberation this evening this is just for any additional questions or guidance that you'd like to provide at this time so we'll start with Ken hi Annie thank you for that comment I do have one question that if you don't mind doing a little research on and getting back to us on and that one is where this has been enacted in other states or in other areas what has what has the outcome been or you know what what what have they found uh pluses or minuses you know uh you know I heard talk that all california has eliminated that I also heard rumors that um washington or or in the seattle area is also the same way uh there are other areas that have done this and what was the outcome and how long has it been it just to be another uh more information for us to talk about and be uh and so we're not making haste judgments here that's all had Richard great thank you Ken uh gene thanks just a couple quick things I really appreciated Annie's um response that uh she just gave I just want to I think add on to that a little bit because a lot of um people tonight said you know we have to do something about stopping these huge single family homes from getting built and the problem is that the state law does not allow us to impose any sort of limit on the size of a single family home that would get built that's pretty clear in the state zoning code however it only applies to single family homes so we could and this is why I raised it uh earlier we could impose size limits on the duplexes and the two families which would I think have the effect of at least having somewhat less expensive homes than they otherwise would have and somewhat smaller footprints than they otherwise would have so um yeah I don't have any particular questions I just wanted to you know pick you back on what Ms. LaCorte just said thank you thank you Gene um Melissa um Madam Chair we're only asking questions of the proponent at this point correct okay um or the department if you have any questions for Jenny or um Kelly okay thanks um maybe this is for the proponent just going forward I think to echo what Rachel you said at the beginning of the conversation to really consider how um outreach happens because you can probably tell from these conversations there's a lot of information and people pick up up from different areas so how can you better you know kind of communicate the essential pieces of it and get people familiar with it um and I think the other thing that I I guess I heard and even from my own you know kind of experience sharing this with other people um also being able to explain well enough for people the ADU and you know two family and how that kind of you know the differences and the benefits or you know comments of those are a couple of things I've heard from other people as well so thank you great thank you Melissa Steve thank you Madam Chair um I have one comment and that and two questions um one for the proponent and one for staff uh one is I I do want to uh express some gratitude for to Ms. LaCorte every it seems like every year we have discussions where people are concerned about housing affordability and you know the escalator that's been going up and up and up and up for the last 20 years um and somehow we never can seem to agree on what um you know what to do about this but it does take I think a lot of uh it takes a certain amount of courage to propose something like this because it's you know it's it's something different and it's going to be controversial having said that um two my two questions of one well the first is more of a suggestion I think for the proponent given I I think I fall into the same category as Mr. Lau where it would be interesting to have some data on where similar changes have been enacted I know that Washington State um you know allows multifamily by right in cities over a certain size California has been mentioned uh Minneapolis was I think the first large city in the United States to allow multifamily by right and that's been a few years ago so there may be you know there's probably a good chance that there is some data to go on now my question for staff is um have there been any ad use permitted yet you know since we passed the bylaw you know last time meeting no there have not been any ad use permitted there have been no applications for accessory dwelling units um and nothing permitted either thank you great thank you um okay so Annie I think I would just again as I mentioned earlier I'd echo um Melissa's question I think it'll be important to address um outreach outreach for sure yeah yeah um so you know I think there there are a couple of really good comments to to to take a look at here um we can certainly follow up with again the list of questions that we've provided with you and if they're um in taking a look at those if if there is some additional information you'd like to send to the board prior to the fourth we certainly would be more than happy to receive that um otherwise we will discuss at that time great thank you Rachel I just want to mention one other thing for um sure public consumption for the future my I'm not Mrs I'm Ms my husband's got a different last name and um I would appreciate the public taking note of that in future great thank you for the clarification you're welcome great all right thank you again for all the work you put in and for joining us this evening I appreciate it all right uh so with that we will now move to article 28 which is a zoning by law amendment for enhanced business districts and at this time I will turn it over to uh Jenny Rage uh to discuss the um memo that was provided by the Department of Planning and Community Development thank you Rachel I'm going to share my screen and give a quick presentation and then I'll turn it back to the board with any questions or comments great thank you okay can see that yes yes thank you all right so I'm going to talk about the zoning by law amendment that addresses enhanced business districts um I'm going to give this sort of overview and then I'll get into the details of the actual amendment so this is applicable to only properties that are within the business zoning districts can you hear me okay I can there's a little feedback I think that there might be one or two people with their microphones um unmuted if you unless you're Jenny if you could please mute your microphone that would be great I think I might have taken care of it okay um all right only properties within the business zoning districts proposals for new development or redevelopment of course those are things that come before this board um and uh this would not be applicable to any existing commercial spaces with frontage that already would exceed the dimensional requirements those would be exempt so we looked into this a little bit more broadly um Kelly did some research at uh as to other communities both in the intercore in metropolitan Boston and then also um other communities throughout the country and found that um it is what we're talking about doing is compliant with recommendations and standards that come from a group called the congress for new urbanism which is essentially they create standards and recommendations and designs um around smart growth um and so one of the things around smart growth is good design um and so that's one one of the places that we looked uh for some precedent uh we also noted that this bylaw amendment would expand upon the requirements that were described in the site standard section as adopted last year by this board um and town meeting um through the industrial zoning uses um those amendments specifically gave a sort of a suite of standards that would apply to any new development or reconstruction in those districts um so the proposed amendment is really aiming to encourage pedestrian activity and maintain a more active streetscape while also limiting the amount of ground floor spaces that are occupied by banks or offices or lobbies essentially non-active uses so the proposed amendment itself um is in uh development standards it applies to new construction additions over 50 of the existing footprint or debris development and it would be required to i'm going to actually scroll through um to provide a minimum transparency on the ground floor to make all facades visible to ensure that each ground floor uh storefront in a building has a clearly defined primary entrance um to ensure that any lobby entrances for upper story uses are optimally located and well defined um the primary building entry is connected by an accessible surface to the public right of way or the sidewalk lobbies are limited in both width and total area to preserve ultimate ultimately preserve uh floor space for other uses and as i noted existing commercial spaces with frontage that exceeds these requirements would be exempt and that's i'm actually going to pause there and see if the board has any questions that pretty much walk through the bylaw amendment great thank you gently you're welcome great uh so we'll start with kin any questions uh for jenny oh i'm generally supportive of this great thank you jean yes i'm generally supportive to have a number of questions um some of them are just wording changes i don't know if you want me to go through them now jenny or if you'd just like me to send you changes afterwards um i'll leave that up to rachel but i will note that it's probably obvious from hopefully the memo we did make some wording changes based upon feedback that came from the zoning bylaw working group and they are highlighted hopefully that was clear when it came through uh in the novice agenda but um are there other things beyond those edits okay so rachel what would you like to do sure jean i would say if it's um small adjustments that you could send us to jenny but if there's anything that's substantive that it would probably be helpful for the board to to to hear those changes yeah let me just mention the ones that i think are the most substantive great thank you under the standards um the second bullet which starts all facades visible from a public right of way the second sentence says no blank facades are permitted and is that no blank facades on any side of the building or only no blank facade that faces a public way it gets that face as a public way we need to okay so we need to modify that a little bit in the um in the next bullet talks about a primary entrance that faces the principal street so i'm thinking of a building that's on the corner and it has storefronts on two sides so there may be a principal street there may be two principal streets so i think we need to slightly change that so that um it's clear that if there are storefronts i'm thinking for example the building at the corner of um massive and lake street whether some businesses face lake some businesses face massive if we consider massive the principal street we have a problem with this piece um let me see if there's anything else that i think are oh so i'll say that the others are wording changes that i'll send you i don't think they're particularly problematic but the one that the zoning pilot working group mentioned is if you look at the purpose one of the purposes is to eliminate the amount of ground floor space occupied by banks offices lobbies non active well this does a good job i think with the lobbies but it doesn't i don't really see how this limits the amount of floor space occupied by banks and offices which is one of the observations made by another member of zoning by a low working group not me but i think there's a little bit of a mismatch so either take out some of those change the purpose a little bit or add something about banks and offices that's really helpful jean um i have one question rachel and then one suggestion i'll start with the suggestion actually um the last point that was made but i i i agree with that point actually and i don't think that this change is the the use per se but maybe it should just say non active uses you know and then that just covers it because it's not it's not banks or offices lobbies even i mean we we make the points about lobbies and the standards but i put that back to the board potentially if you're depending upon where this goes um that it could just state non active uses how would you i would review jenny i don't like the word bank and offices put in there jenny and lobby how would you define non active uses for purposes of i guess that's a good point um short of saying i think we use you know limited um well i need to think about it and i don't want to take the time here to do that let me let me think about that the question that i had though is um i think it's actually an important one that you raised about mass avon lake also um 117 broadway there are a number of cases actually where we've we've we've approved buildings on corner lots there's actually like we were yeah so i think how we deal with corner lots is a really good question i might just put that back to the board about how you want to deal with that probably deserves its own bullet point under the standards as a sort of standalone issue um so maybe you know again to think about a little bit more i think those are really good points yeah there are buildings throughout town i just used the one quarter of mass and lake as an example but you know park av and massive has that you know and you know if i thought some more i think of some others also yeah yeah multiple buildings that have been approved on corner lots so yeah so okay those those are my comments and jenny i'll send you the what i think are only minor wording changes and if they're not i apologize okay thank you gene thanks great thank you um okay so uh we can jenny did you want us to follow up on the question regarding the ground uh storefronts and the question about the principal street now or do you want us to follow up on that separately i think we could go through the rest of the board comments and then i'll follow up it's outstanding and figure out what to do and let the public i think there's only at the moment there's one hand raised just so okay great we'll circle back to that one um after public comment then so melissa any uh questions for uh jenny hi jenny um thanks for putting this together so just i'm curious on how it's only for the applied to new construction additions existing footprints so i guess where i'm coming from is when there's a change of use for example how is that handled it wouldn't apply unless they're doing something significant with reconstruction it would not apply and remind me what the significant threshold is i think it's 50 percent that's what it says okay and that and again sorry i feel like part of um what i'm thinking is that some of this is under new construction i understand that when there's a significant investment but when there's the smaller changes that you know we have talked about here i know you know one of the arbs on the bank uses that one concerns me and that's a change of view so this wouldn't apply could it apply or should it you know i guess throwing it back to the board should it be applicable in that sense could you i'm sorry could you repeat that one more time melissa well i guess i'm trying to figure out if it should include um when applicability for a change of use okay let's come back to that one um when we also talk about corner lots since that's a question for the board if that's okay with you that's fine okay uh steve any questions for jenny uh no there's one follow-up remark about um non-active uses um you know it it does feel you know it does it i would struggle with how to personally struggle with how to define that so i'm you know i i can sympathize there the only place i know of that has that i'm aware of that has something like this is uh cambridge essential square business district where they regulate banks and it's basically on a certain percentage no more than a certain percentage of a block face can be composed of banks or financial institutions uh at least that's if my memory serves me correctly i don't know if we wanted to you know consider possibly going down that route but it is you know it it it is it is it is one idea too we could consider great thank you steve um and jenny i'll just follow up i know that we're going to talk a little bit about non-active uses and lobbies um the term lobbies is a potentially a bit of a challenge when you think about hotel lobbies which can be active uses and um you know obviously is something that we recently permitted which i don't know if the right move is to uh minimize the size of those so when we get back to that that's just something that i'll throw in there as well any other questions um for for jenny um before we move to public comment all right uh so any member of the public wishing to speak on um on this warrant article please use the raise hand function at the bottom of your screen this is again article number 28 um i'll call on you in the order the hands are raised and we will start with steve more uh yes thank you more piedmont street um just one quick question um what is the intent and purpose of speaking to the entrance for the upper floors to be optimally located i don't understand that uh thank you for the question um why don't we go ahead and um answer that one i think that that is a is a good point of clarification other people may have questions about um jenny do you want to speak to that one i'm happy to but if you want to i'll be happy i'll let you speak to it and i'll add sure so um i think with with that particular citation um it's really um looking to identify for you know for example for a mixed use property where you have the residential entry and the lobby um as opposed to the um any entrances for for storefronts um you know ensuring that you are optimizing that location and um uh ensuring that the the storefronts have um are provided to the public in a way that is um highly visible and that the the lobbies are um are not uh kind of bifurcating the the different the different uh storefront uh sections in terms of the facade but jenny go ahead and um i'm sure you have additional color that you'd like to add there actually i i liked the way that you you faced all of that um you know i think that that's kind of the key we we don't want to see basically dead space on storefronts you know when we walk down mass have or broadway we want to have yeah we want to have something that makes us want to visit that store something that pulls us in if it's something that is just sort of you know blank space or just a window that sort of doesn't have any engagement anything you know product or anything that's sort of bringing luring you inside that's sort of the that's that inactive sort of use of the space and something that's sort of not well optimized which is i think the word that you used um so this is sort of aiming to and in a small way try to limit the amount of that kind of space in our storefronts the other thing is our storefronts are very small there's not there's not that much room you know when you if you walk down mass have you'll see the storefronts are not that wide there's not that much space to optimize so why would we not then want them to be fully optimized so this is basically trying to get at that of course in a larger scale redevelopment you'd want to you'd want to see even more of that and so some of the points that we've made about the mixed use developments that have been approved um the hotel i mean there's a lot of different examples where the board has tried their best through design um to encourage those you know that sort of activity and engagement at the street level but there's only so much that we can do so this this is an attempt to try to get at um more of that in the actual criteria and in the requirements i hope that helps to answer some of your question steve uh so uh madam chair i think then it does thank you both that that helps me out quite a bit i think um you might want to consider more words than just optimized because you don't know what is being optimized and i think what you're telling me here if i understand you correctly is you're optimizing the street busyness and presentation of the storefront as interesting and welcoming just i'm not saying use all those words but optimizing if you just say optimize you know what you're optimizing for and for a moment i thought perhaps you met uh folks with uh other abilities and things like that i was unclear so so thank you thank you madam chair great thank you very much um gene and can do you mind if i take james Fleming's comment um unless you have something specific to to that one gene you see you nodding your head did you want to go ahead then yeah i i think i just wanted to also say to steve we have had some buildings come before us in the past few years when the entire front was storefront but there were second and third um levels so they would sort of have to be on the side of the back for offices or for apartments so if we didn't so we have to allow for that because it both helps the streetscape and it allows the second and third floors to be accessed great thank you gene that's a that's a really good point kin did you have something else to add just something real quick uh the way we look at things is there's two programs one that supports uh the misuse above and then uh what's the program below and we're and then we want to put the primary uh program below which is activates the uh the street edge uh is the primary that's how i how i see these things and that's how we usually how i usually look at it we look at a project we want to keep that program on the first floor that activates the street life but engages the street edge uh the primary great thank you uh great thank you steve uh next we'll have james swimming is that working now it is yep fantastic james flowing 58 oxford street i have a question about active uses at the end of my street there's a floral shop called derby farms they close at 5 p.m they that doesn't seem like an active use and yet it's something that i can't imagine anyone here would say we don't want in our town and i can think of other stores like henry spare park bait and tackle shop in my neighborhood all these are their places that they don't draw street traffic and yet we like them they're useful we we we serve it we go to them for something that we need so my question is why why call out banks and offices specifically because the only thing i can see that this to jenny's comment about you want to make sure that the storefront has stuff in it if you're trying to control that sounds like trying to tell a business how to run their operation which feels like it's something that we definitely should not be doing so i guess why why the focus on banks and offices and other things that don't draw crowds and because you activate the streetscape because you could say and yet we still like those things great question thank you very much uh jenny did you want to specifically respond to that one just to say that i think a retail and a restaurant use both of those uses are completely different and draw you in and i'm much more engaging than an office or in this particular case what it says here a bank um a bank you know they draw you in in different ways perhaps and i think that they create a different type of use and it and a different environment on the street compared to when you're looking at a store and you've given the one example which has you know very decorative windows there's a lot of interest there's something that's drawing you in um that's that's a different i think that's a very different use category of a retail store whether they're selling something specifically in the storefront or not there's something that's more engaging same thing for restaurants you're seeing people usually in a window eating doing something that you know again would ideally bring you in to go to the restaurant this is trying to say let's let's make more space for that and less space on our streetscapes that is sort of limiting or creating sort of a sort of a wall between pedestrians and what's behind that wall whether it's intriguing or not is sort of this is not about you know you have to have product in the window that makes sense but it's just like the flower shop closes at 5 p.m so by any stretch of the imagination that is a dead space after 5 p.m same with the gift shop which closes at 6 p.m and bear park i think closes at 6 30 those are those are dead spaces in the in the evenings and some of them are on tv and open on sundays it doesn't seem quite frankly it doesn't seem fair just to say we're going to focus in these categories yeah when depending on the hours a business can be a dead space even though they are a different kind of use so james one of the one of the things that we look at when we are reviewing applications and looking at you know the businesses in this street in general are this this idea of different day parts so activation a different time of of the day so you could say the same thing about a restaurant which doesn't open until 5 p.m so i think that you know irrespective of the actual hours of business knowing that there is a significant portion of the day where there is an active activation whether it is from 8 until 5 or 5 until midnight you know the fact that there is a contribution through an active presence on the street is is what's important as opposed to the specific operating hours and banks don't do that under any operating hours they don't have employees that go in and out that go out for lunch in patronized local restaurants well that's that's the question that i think the board has been debating and will be part of the discussion going away i got my comment is basically i think you basically should just not do any of that just let the let them be let the restaurants thank you what they be and thank you okay um any any other uh any other questions or comments uh any other members of the public wishing to speak okay uh seeing none i will run through the um list of board members again um to see if there are any specific feedback any specific feedback for jenny regarding the idea of how to reference um active uses or corner lots um and we can certainly follow up following this meeting as well but i'll take any um comments that people would like to give at this time starting with kin yeah i would uh like to strike uh banks and offices and find some other verbiage uh to do that uh and as far as corner lots i think we have been addressing it you know generally sometimes selecting it selecting the primary street as that um gene brings up a good point where the the secondary street is pretty primary too and that's i think it's a one-off i think some of the ones we have a lot talked about there has been a primary and a secondary and we have um looked at it in that way so i'm not too not as concerned about that that's my sense with great thank you kin gene yeah i i'm not sure what to do about corner lots because i think ideally if the streets on both sides were you know fairly major then you would want the um standards to apply on both of those sides um on the other hand if you have a storefront occupying one of the streets that goes back to the end you're not necessarily going to have an entrance on the other side so i think we might have to add something in here that says you know when there are corner lots the board shall consider these standards in determining you know what's appropriate for each one of the public facing streets or something like that which i think is what kin was saying um that we would need to do something like that um but i think the part that i think we don't want to give up is there shouldn't be any blank facades on any of the public streets so we have to be careful i think about how we do that wording um so that's my thought about maybe the best way to handle corner lots but maybe other people have much better ideas than i do about that on the other question which was active uses um i don't know maybe rather than saying other non active uses you can flip it around to be that generates you know that generates activity or you know what i mean flip it so it's not uh non active uses but you flip it to a positive that's my only suggestion about that for me thank you jean melissa thank you i don't have any comments at this time great thank you steve oh sorry before well steve why don't you breath through and then i'll get back to kelly okay i was going to say uh i nothing i have nothing to add thank you okay kelly i was actually just going to say something uh of kin to the suggestion that uh what jean made which is to change the last clause in the purpose statement to instead of and limit the amount of ground force place occupied by non active uses to instead say to something more like encourage and to encourage the amount of active ground for uses and i think active ground for uses being more commonly defined as sort of more commercial activity um and and we can we can find actual definitions for that just to be a little bit more precise i think that's great i would definitely support that and i see a lot of heads nodding in the from new direction there all right um any additional comments on uh from the board on article 28 before we move to the next article okay get back to my agenda so we will now um move to article 29 which is the zoning by law amendment related to uh street trees and i will turn this over to uh jane all right i'm going to run through this one so article 29 is about street trees and the goal here is to just to protect and preserve trees um and to plant new ones ideally um it is to the whole by law amendment is describing the town's procedures and requirements for the preservation of trees this is particularly around public shade trees the araby has the ability to waive requirements um when necessary it applies only to trees located on uh private property the tree warden maintains the tree inventory and there's plantings of 200 to 300 200 to 300 new trees annually this is also following the requirements that we set forth in those sites uh standard section around the industrial uses that were adopted last year um public shade trees are part of uh they're part of laws that are governed by the commonwealth and so the definition is essentially picking up that same uh those same rules around what a public shade tree actually is the proposed amendment follows standards that are set forth in other communities as well so there's some precedent for it um and this is with regards to the tree placement the size the type and the maintenance um the purpose of this amendment is to uh is fivefold providing for adequate public shade tree coverage along Arlington's main corridors which this board has purview over um to implement carbon neutral policies of the town to address heat island effects emanating from the main corridors to enhance public health and walkability with proper shading and to create zoning uh specifically this definition around public shade trees for clarity so it is applicable in the business districts again around new construction or additions over 50 of the footprint or redevelopment anything that is subject to the review of the redevelopment board and the provision is to provide one public shade tree every 25 linear feet of lot frontage along the public right of way it would be administered under 3.4 and it would include the following standards planted within existing and proposed planting strips and in sidewalk tree wells on streets without planting strips trees would be selected from an approved tree list that would be set set forth by the tree committee and approved by the tree warden the tree warden is also just to be clear is an employee of the town working full time in the department of public works when planted trees must be a minimum height of 10 feet or two inches in caliper all new trees shall be maintained in with under certain standards I will read all of the standards and when there is not a suitable location within the right of way shade trees may be proposed in locations within the lot or in exceptional circumstances the board may allow the owner to make a financial contribution to the Arlington tree fund we also might be able to grant through the redevelopment boards review an increase in the spacing requirements between plantings when appropriate and then we further create a computation of how many trees need to be planted depending upon the total number and the total amount of feet available to you for that planting and I think I'm going to stop there and see if there are comments or questions great thank you Jenny I'll start with Ken no I have none this is good support this 100% great thank you Ken jean agree with Ken all right Melissa same Steve I've got two comments but I also support it 100% first in terms of the definition or the proposed change to the definition we use the text public right of way which I believe was actually my suggestion I noted I went back and looked at Massachusetts general law chapter 81 section one to see how the state defines public shade tree they use the phrase public way rather than public right right of way I mean to me the two terms are basically equivalent I don't know if there's value in taking in keeping the word making the wording identical but you know it's something we may want to consider and you know sorry to keep going back and forth on that one sentence um the other the other question or the other thing I wanted to mention was in section 634d it mentions American standards for nursery stock when we were working on the industrial district version of this one of the questions that came up was well if there is a standard and the something happens to the standard or standards organization then what you know what happens to the bylaw after that I the part from the industrial district that seems to match is 562d5 which actually just doesn't mention any particular you know nursery standard or something etc you know it may be worth just trying to take what we've done in the industrial district and you know just essentially mirror it you know mirror it for this section 63 but yeah I'm supportive of this great thank you Steve I appreciate those two suggestions and I am supportive as well um so any additional questions if not I will go ahead and open this up to public comment all right any member of the public wishing to comment on the proposal for article 29 please use the raise hand function at the bottom of your screen we'll start with Steve Moore oh yes thank you Madam Chair Steve Moore Pete Montstreet I I apologize I had not expected to speak so much tonight I'm sorry you're hearing so much from me but I've heard everything now um what um I uh I'm also a member of the tree committee um as Susan Stamps mentioned earlier and um I'm although I'm not speaking for the committee tonight because we've not really discussed this I want to uh agree with all the members of the board how wholeheartedly I approve of this I think this is an excellent move to have business owners and developers take some responsibility for increasing the tree canopy up till now the tree committee has been focusing very hard on public shade trees on tree strips and also with a couple of programs adopt the tree and the tree canopy program that when we're trying to encourage private owners to have more trees um but let me ask you a question on the first slide I believe there was a point about this applies to private trees is that what I saw is you quickly went through it and I don't quite admit I think maybe I missed saw it because it doesn't make sense to me um and uh the second question would be that any trees that get planted in other tree strip or on private property that is business owned um means to have a watering plan we have found on the tree committee this is a very big issue in that trees get planted all the time two inch caliper 10 foot tall trees is great they're they're a little pricier and they're absolutely worth the investment however if you don't water them they die and so many of the trees that we plant around town have this problem where they don't get adequate water the dpw and tree warden tries to keep after it with the new trees at the town plants with a pretty good degree of success but so often it's the maintenance that doesn't get followed up on programs like this so I'm glad to see the reference in the amendment or in the proposal of the article four of the maintenance standards because those are more almost more critical than the type and size of tree that you plant so anyway thank you madam chair for listening to my third rant tonight thank you thank you um Jenny I'll turn it over to you to address the question about private trees um and for the second item if we I actually agree with Steve's um concern about including a specific standard because standards do change we got into this with the building code and a couple of things um last year but perhaps if there is a way for us to work on something regarding a watering plan um and perhaps the town body that provides resources as opposed to a specific standard because that group would then provide them with a standard but if you could address the private trees question that would be great I think that was just confusing in my presentation because I went a little fast it was I think I was I was just referencing that we currently have you know article 16 which is the tree protection and preservation by law so I that was that which is about private tree on trees on private property so sorry that was a little fast in the beginning but I was not talking about this this is about public trees and in terms of watering actually I just briefly Kelly we looked into sort of more detailed language and we talked to the tree warden about this can you maybe expand on that a little bit yeah I think again I mean that was where the American standard for nursery stock standards came in because that's a standard currently used that the tree ward referred to and as well as the conservation commission um and that would include standards for watering so um that's that's that section 6.3.4d is meant to be sort of comprehensive about like how the tree is maintained um but if you know I guess it's a matter of whether the board would want to um I think maybe refer instead to standards um administered by the tree warden and then um and and include for maintenance and watering or something like that just be very specific about watering. Great thank you uh Jean I see you have your hand up on this particular topic and then we'll move to the next public comment. I think I think a better way maybe to do this is not to get rid of those standards but to say or other standards the redevelopment board may designate something like that um because as long as those standards are in place as Kelly said they have the things we want in them but if they're gone or we don't like them then we'll have the ability to designate something else so I'd like to say that or something else that we designate. Great thanks um the next speaker will be Don Seltzer. Thank you Madam Chair Don Seltzer Irving Street. I'd like to thank the planning department and the board for sponsoring this article. I think there's a unanimous agreement about with everyone here that it's a good thing. I'm just wondering about the wording under the standard section whether there needs to be some language more specific as who is responsible for these things particularly like all new trees shall be maintained. Perhaps that's adequate I'm just wondering if we should have it clear that it's the property owner that has to maintain it and I don't see anything here in terms of penalties if the property owner does not maintain the tree they're just my thoughts. Great thank you very much and I don't know that we necessarily we have a requirement here for the length of time that they need to be. Indeed I apologize there is a hurricane it sounds like outside my window so um uh we I think in general this would fall under um the requirements of of the environmental design review and uh that would cover penalties which you say that that's correct Jenny what do you think that there's something else that needs to be included. I was more I was thinking that we don't have like separate sections that right have penalties embedded in them you know like a penalty of the bylaw would be enforced by inspectional services right um so I'm not sure that we would add that specifically here the other point made um or the question I guess it was more of a suggestion about adding who maintained the trees I think we could talk about that a little bit or that could also be something that gets um stated in any as we do with any decision we are speaking directly to the the property owner usually when we write our decisions so that's how it gets that's how it happens but I suppose the language could be different here um as well so okay and three those points great thank you Jenny Ken I thought it states right here say all new trees shall be maintained in a co-initiated with the american standard for nursery stocks for a period no less than 36 months from the date of planting so the it's the owner that's who's doing this is responsible to trees for um for the next three years that's usually enough time for the tree date established and they usually uh american standards for nursery stocks usually is um the gator bags they put on the trees and uh they just have to maintain that being filled with water it's not a it's not a hard task it's just when the bags are not full you fill it and these have to do for the next three years um and then hopefully they can survive on their own or the town can pick up the maintenance of there you know great thank you Ken um and and Steve um if you have one one last point on on this I'll go ahead and take that and then we'll close public comment yes thank you madam chair uh three years the same standard that the county uses to water the trees the planted trees that is and um uh I one of the point that I forgot to make earlier was I think I heard Ms. Wright speak to that the business owners would have an option of contributing to the town tree fund that would be the trees please fund um I would suggest that that only be exercised at the approval of the board or the planning department because otherwise you're just encouraging basically a relatively easy way out and then no maintenance we want to encourage the owners to plant and maintain trees not just check off one more box on their redevelopment project so uh that that's thank you madam chair thank you and I believe that that control is in section 6.3.5 in what has been proposed so um that looks like that caveat is in there um so with that I will um uh we'll we'll move back to the board for any final questions um I'll just run through really quickly before we move on to the next article so uh any final questions jean ken no you are correct there's a huge thunderstorm outside there's I'm sorry you strong outside yeah there's a huge storm outside right now yeah yeah I just yeah it came up all of a sudden while I was speaking so it just startled me uh Melissa any any final question uh no thank you okay great Steve uh no additional questions all right thank you Jenny do you have what you need from from the board have everything I need thank you for the comments from the public and the board great thank you um and then we'll move on to our last article of this evening article 30 which is zoning bylaw amendment related to solar energy systems I will um hand it over to Jenny and then I believe that we have uh two speakers this evening who will be uh presenting this article so Jenny I am going to actually just say welcome to Talia Fox who is our sustainability manager she is actually going to make this presentation and then Shelly Dean I believe is still here she's a representative but she serves on the clean energy future committee it's not necessarily completely speaking on behalf of the committee but we'll speak to this article as well so the two of them are going to share the time I'm just going to let Talia take it away from here because of the time um and Kelly is advancing the slides so if people have questions uh you can refer um to Talia or Shelly great thank you welcome Talia thank you very much so good evening I am Talia Fox I am the new sustainability manager for the town and there is indeed a storm outside it is a pleasure to meet uh those of you I haven't met I'll be speaking briefly to article 30 um the purpose of the proposed amendment is to require installation of solar energy systems for buildings subject to environmental design review with some exceptions as well as introduced definitions related to solar energy systems so currently the town's zoning bylaw enables ground mounted solar systems by right only in the industrial district and this was approved by town meeting in 2010 among uh other criteria that enable us to be a green community and to be eligible for funding from the state's department of energy resources solar energy systems are not prohibited by our zoning bylaw and other districts they just require a building permit and in historic districts there are certain desired guidelines that apply some events of relevance are here on the right uh a zoning audit completed in 2015 as part of our master plan process as well as a subsequent update to that audit in 2017 as part of recodification noted that provisions related to solar energy systems were generally missing throughout the bylaw and in 2021 town meeting passed an amendment to the bylaw requiring new commercial and mixed used buildings in the industrial district to be solar ready I think it's worth noting that last year also Arlington's net zero action plan was completed and adopted by town meeting and that net zero action plan actually includes as a priority measure this amendment to adopt a solar requirement solar is a piece of our strategy to get to net zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050 and to achieve several of the goals stated in that plan effectively all rooftops in Arlington that have the capacity for and are suitable for solar will need a solar energy system and so thinking about the number of actual rooftops that are suitable to suited to solar that's about 75% of the total number of roofs or 9000 roofs Arlington is not alone in proposing this kind of solar requirement the cities of watertown and medford both have bylaws requiring solar energy systems for new large construction and several other communities listed here including summerville, Cambridge, Boston, Lexington and Wellesley have mechanisms that require consideration of solar from among a suite of green building requirements even if they don't outright or specifically require solar and the proposed amendment itself adds several definitions that you see here relating to solar energy systems to clarify terms that are used in the text of this amendment as well as terms that are already used in other sections of the zoning bylaw. A new section 6.4 would require solar energy systems on 50% of the roof area for building subject to environmental design review. The ARB could reduce this requirement where 50% of the roof area is not viable for solar where there is a parking structure a solar energy system would need to cover 90% of its top level and the amendment also specifies that the ARB can adopt rules and regulations to require specific additional information as part of the application. There are several exemptions noted in the amendment such as for circumstances where there's insufficient load capacity or a roof has too much shade as well as exceptions for facade alterations, temporary signage, outdoor uses, religious uses among other exemptions listed here, and ARB can reduce or waive requirements if an applicant proposes a suitable alternative to meet the goals of the section. And then last there are some provisions regarding emergency access and e-graphs and safety as well as exclusion of solar energy systems in determining the height and floor area of the building and with that I will conclude and I think should I hand it to Shelley or back over to I think I'll hand it to Shelley. Yep, that would be great. Thank you so much. I thank you very much. I'm Shelley Dean. I live at Seven Cleveland Street in East Arlington and have been an Arlington resident for almost 40 years. I'm I'm also here as a member of the Clean Energy Future Committee. Though I'm not speaking for the Clean Energy Future Committee, we didn't actually vote on this in our last meeting. So I just want to reiterate many of the things that Talia has already mentioned that you know this this proposed ordinance is very much very similar to the ordinances that were approved in both Watertown and in Medford in Watertown in 2018 and in Medford in 2019. But I've spoken to the Planning Director and Assistant Town Manager in Watertown, Steve Magoon who just raved about it and said you know it has in their instance it's produced solar on about 10 to 15 buildings. He didn't have the exact number when I spoke to him. They were thinking about expanding it that that any object that there had been nobody who had sought any exemptions on it even though there were exemptions allowed and that he felt like it was a very positive experience for the town. I spoke with somebody also in Medford in their Planning and Environment Department who also spoke positively about it. It's a newer ordinance for them and so they didn't have quite as many cases to speak to but in general had very many positive things and I just want to reiterate the fact that this is very much in keeping with not only the town's net zero action plan but the state's climate legislation which really commits the state to net zero by 2050 and it has interim goals for reduction in greenhouse gas emissions of at least 50% by 2030 and that the amendment is a very tangible way to work towards those goals. It you know it won't increase the amount of impervious surface we're really talking about putting solar on already impervious roofs and perhaps top levels of garages should they should they be constructed and I'm hoping that folks from ARB will vote positively for this. Great, thank you very much. I appreciate all the work that you and Talia have put into this and look forward to the discussion. So any questions from members of the board will start with Ken. Yes I'm generally supportive of this. I just have one comment I'd like to add to see if you guys are willing to make it. I'm not sure where to stick this but the location or placement of solar panels are prohibited when it precludes your adjacent neighbor from building their building to the full extent of what's allowed by zoning. Okay I know that's kind of wordy and everything else but I'm just worried that if someone sticks a solar panel adjacent to the right right to the next to the side yard and then also they say okay someone's going to build their building which is allowed by zoning but now it blocks just the solar panel they can fight back and say you're blocking my solar panels rays. I think that's unfair to the neighbors so I think if we add a note there saying that locations of these solar panels cannot preclude your neighbors from building out what's rightfully theirs or if they if they do do that there's no recourse saying that you have to you have to they can't do that you set the movie panel. Something along those lines I'm going to trust Gene to word much better than me he's much more of a better words than I am or if he may not agree with me I'm not sure that's all I had to say but I support this right away 100% thank you I think that's a good point that you just brought up Gene. I supported 100% too partially because I work with Shelley and Talia I'm putting it together I'm not sure what you're getting at Ken on that because even if the next door property maybe at some time could be built up higher there's no guarantee it ever would and if we put something in that said you know um if another building could go up higher you don't have to put in trailer we'd basically be cutting the legs out from under this currently under law somebody can build another building and block somebody else's solar panels nothing prevents it right now so I don't unless I'm missing something I don't really see where what you're asking for is necessary for this unless you want to make sure that people can't put solar on the roof if somebody can build a taller building next door. Uh do you want to take yourself off you Ken? That's what exactly I'm saying let's say I have a piece of property and my next door neighbor has a one-story garage and I guess I can throw one solar panel up along the side of my along the side of my building there and it'll prevent him from doing what's allowed by zoning and and have him build three or four stories which is allowed by zoning but now he comes back and says you're blocking my sunlight. It does it doesn't do that it doesn't do that the state zoning code gives us the option if we wanted to to put something in about not blocking someone else's solar but we have never put that into our zoning bylaw so therefore if I've put solar on my roof and somebody wants to come later on and build something taller there's nothing to prevent them from doing that. That's all I want to put them in that let's I just so there's no need to put it in here because that's the way it works right now. Well you're the lawyer I'm not going to argue with you about that Gene I just you see what I'm trying to get at okay I know but let's just tell you who's our like energy whatever this fancy title expert is about this. So the point that you raised Gene I think makes sense to me and that Arlington has not enacted anything in zoning to prevent folks from doing this already is that what I'm understanding you're you're saying I'm repeating that correctly yes so I think it I think it's worth asking the question if you're going to put that in here is that something you want to ask more broadly for for the zoning bylaw is that a fair response there? Well if we're gonna if we're gonna make this at the zoning bylaw I just want to make sure that we we're not being unfair and treating neighbors of taking unconsciously saying you're taking away their rights of building but they need to with they're allowed to build I'm not saying you know they can build more but it's it could be you know it could happen that way and has this been has this come up in a state or anywhere else where this became an issue and how they resolve it I'm not sure but I just see it as a consequence that could happen and if Gene you're right then you're right so I'll tell you this anecdote and I don't know if it's true everywhere but so there's this case in Wisconsin a number of years ago where somebody had solar at their house and their neighbor wanted to build a house next door that would have shaded it and and they basically sued and the court said basically that there used to be this common law doctrine called the doctrine of ancient lights which said you could never block a neighbor's lights but that was thrown out by the courts in like the 17 or 1800s because it would have completely prevented industrialization building stuff like that so there's no doctrine like that in massachusetts there's nothing other than something we would put in the bylaw that says you can't block a neighbor's solar panels if you wanted why I guess we could put something here that says you know nothing in this section shall prevent a butter from blocking this solar panel if that would make you happy we could put it in it would okay we want to make Ken happy so I guess we'll find a place if other people agree to put that just one sentence in why don't we why don't we move to melissa and steve and get their take on this as well and then we can circle back after public comments regarding any additional modification if that works gene did you have other did you have other items gene okay melissa I don't have a comment at this time I mean I think it makes sense if the wording helps to clarify and reinforce can you know and secure what ken's trying to get to I'm fine with that great thanks melissa Steve yeah I know there I do I understand where mr. law was coming from um and I do like that idea I think it's not only an issue or potentially not only an issue with buildings being redeveloped developed or redeveloped at different times but also shade you know honestly trees so um you know I wouldn't want a solar panel to prevent you know the planting of a public shade tree because the shade tree might grow up and might grow and eventually you know shade the solar panel so um yeah I think we're wording to be worked out but I think it's a good idea great thank you Steve yeah I mean I think I similarly went to the same places as ken trying to think about the fact that the town is going to require people to make these investments in solar panels and at the same time we're looking at things like far and you know changing people's ability to to build higher um and what impact does that have on the investment that people are making that we're going to be requiring that people make in solar on their roofs um I don't know the answer to that but it's where my head started to go as well so um Gene yeah I just think if you think of all of the buildings that we've issued special permits to in the past few years I can't think of one that ended up later on where the roof has gotten shaded from something else you know we're not generally talking about short buildings you're and you're absolutely right I think it's you know part of it may be just thinking about going back and looking at those those instances and where the application might be and you know again thinking about um where it isn't in terms of the the applications that that we've approved so far so again I think that's part of where I'm still trying to wrap my head around with this one and I think it's possible we'll put in a sentence that basically gets it gets it that great all right thank you I mean I just see a homeowner putting one solar panel on the edge of their roof and it's the rear setback and it's blocked and the sun's blocking their solar panel Gene you know I'm saying right I mean right but this is never going to be a homeowner this is just a commercial I see I see you point but but okay but I'll come back next year with the with a warranted article to deal with that with the homeowner one of the time thank you gene all right so with that I'd like to move to the public comment period um and Steve Moore you're up first yes once again um I think Mr. Law's comments are are very well taken I'm glad he's thinking ahead because this will happen there will be some time when someone else bills and shade someone's mandate and solar panel so I think it's smart to be thinking ahead particularly when we start changing all the the zoning to do with density along Mass Ave where the business districts intersect with the residential district and also I want to applaud Mr. Revlax speaking to the tree issue because that's that's why I raised my hand here uh Steve Moore Piedmont street member of the tree committee uh I um I want to be sure that the additional requirement of businesses and such to put solar panels on the roofs of businesses and homes or whatever we're talking about here does not require or force the cutting down of shade trees very large trees will shade solar panels clearly and small trees get planted will grow up to uh be a problem as Mr. Revlax points out um climate change and the issues related to that and energy net zero and trying to be energy neutral and all that stuff it's a complicated issue trees are beneficial to that solar panels are beneficial to that trees and solar panels don't get along very well so we have to make sure that trees aren't being taken to uh encourage solar panel development because you're creating a problem I take in the trees you don't want to create a problem by solving a problem so to speak so I think that sensitivity is important to to keep in mind here um I don't know if I'm suggesting words be added to this to this this change related to shade trees because I don't even know how that would be worded but I think you do want to consider not encouraging business owners to take down shade trees that are on their property of which there may be some I don't know thank you madam chair great thank you Steve and I'll just respond that um I believe that that's addressed in the way that this is written through the first um exemption where it talks about um exemptions for solar solar ready zones that are shaded and that would include shaded by being shaded by existing trees so I think that that is um definitely covered already in in this um in this section madam chair uh yes I know what you're I know what you're saying but I want to make sure it's a chicken and egg problem in terms of does the shade get taken before the application gets made for the trees solar panels I'm sorry um you see what I'm saying I I I do and again we'll we'll kind of debate this as a as a group um but I your point is well taken for sure thank you um let's see any other members of the public wishing to speak on this article okay uh so with that I will turn it back over to the board and I'll run through again to see if there are any additional um questions or or comments on article 30 starting with gene um no I I you know we'll end the sentence I think if other people want to do that and you know I I don't think there's any incentive built in this for somebody to take down the tree um in fact it's the opposite in any you know and that if if it's shaded they don't have to put on um the solar whatever they're putting up there you know the solar system solar energy system so there's no incentive for anybody to take down a tree here they're not required to or even incentivize to great thanks gene kin no I think with the change um I'm also with this I I trust gene and wordsmith and this correctly great thank you Steve ah yes um a note I had written to myself in section 641 um in the last sentence there should be a space between the words section 6.4 and the word of okay that's all I got great thank you Melissa no not this time okay so with that uh that takes us through the um warrant article public hearings that are on our agenda for this evening um so before we move to our next agenda item I need to see if there's a motion to continue the open public hearing um for the 2022 annual town meeting warrant articles to our next scheduled date which is uh March 14th I so move second take a roll call vote sorry Jenny did you have something I saw you just unmuted um I'll I'll come back at the when you're done okay great uh so we'll take a roll call vote starting with uh gene yes kin yes Melissa yes Steve yes and I am the yes as well and I'll go to Jenny before we move to agenda item number two this is quick and unfortunately Shelly dropped off but I was just going to thank Talia and Shelly um Gene and Kelly and also Coralie Cooper who's the chair of the clean energy future committee for all of their work pulling this together in a very short period of time a lot of meetings a lot of back and forth and research and it was very appreciated and helped us to have a good discussion tonight so thank you great yes I think we all echo our thanks and to the planning department and all of the staff for the very thorough memo that was created for all of the warrant articles this evening so thank you very much for that as well you're welcome please expect another one for next week so the marathon is on happy reading okay uh let's see so our next um our next agenda item agenda item number two is the draft meeting schedule from May through December um so I hope everyone had a chance to review this Jenny um if you wanted to maybe take us through um at least maybe through the the May um dates I think there's a April 7th kind of hiding in there that was um probably a holdover from a previous draft or something but um if there's anything you wanted to highlight and yeah I see that yeah yeah you don't go back to April after May 23rd no hopefully not on any calendar no um so okay well one thing we were going to say is that April 4th and April 7th with those meetings will be on zoom um and then we had talked about after well so town meeting it is not yet known if it will be in person or on or remote um so that is TBD and when I learn of what will be I will share that with the board um but the current schedule only went through April which town meeting starts on April 25th so there would be an expectation for the board members to be in attendance it's just that I don't know where that will be at this point in time um Rachel and I had talked about having resuming in-person redevelopment board meetings after a town meeting which may potentially be my guess still is May 23rd um not May 16th but it could be May 16th um that we would resume or in-person meetings if that's a town meeting night then that'll be a different um a different meeting um and so that uh the rest of the schedule basically just takes us through the end of the year and we would be meeting at 7 30 pm uh I think we agreed that that we wanted to keep that time but I'm also open to going back to I think it's now a couple of years ago that we were meeting at 7 pm when we were meeting in person there was a little bit of talk about that where if we came back to being in person maybe we would want to change the time but I've left it at 7 30 for now and I think that that was it was there anything else that we talked about Rachel um no I think that that was it the only other thing I'll just note is that at some point the um we had talked about the hybrid pilot program um which will take effect um in terms of um something that we'll need to fold into our our meetings that has yet to be finalized in terms of when that will start and process and where we will meet as well so that's something that I think more information will be forthcoming on right and this would basically be similar to what I think the select board is doing this evening which they started to do and maybe did maybe twice last summer where the board and staff were in the meeting room but other people could participate remotely via zoom or another platform and so yes we'll we'll investigate that when uh that option becomes available right yes yes great um so I think what I'll do is I'll I'll kind of move around the um call on the the board members for any thoughts on timing for meeting back in person again what we proposed May 23rd um but also on any of these dates that you know currently you have a conflict with so I'll start with Ken uh no I have no problems with the dates right now as is I would vote for a 730 start uh if it's still in person it makes it easier for me to get from work to there 7 o'clock pushing it very tight uh for me okay great and do you have any um thoughts on uh in person meeting starting at the end of May I think that's great okay I would like to have go back to in person I think we get a better review on the projects when we do that in in in person great thanks Ken Jean uh thanks um yeah I don't really have a preference between 7 and 730 start when do you think we might have more information about when we can run these as hybrid meetings so um from my work on that committee um I think that we're probably not going to be fully equipped to run these as hybrid meetings until um July uh there you know it could be sooner than that but part of it depends on the availability of technology right now that's being specified and priced and the meeting rooms still need to be identified so that's part of one of the goals I think of of taking the walk through the central or the community center formerly the central school is to understand what has already been built into that space that we might be able to take advantage of um you know that will all affect timing as well so it could be June it it could be July I think that's still um still currently up in the air and I think at one point some time ago Jenny said something like we might no longer have to meet into the little room in the town hall annex and could meet in a larger meeting room in the community center do you think that would be available as of May 23rd yeah I can I can start booking that room for us for all of these meetings basically if you want um maybe you know we're we're going to be there next Tuesday right um I believe so I think it's the is that the 50 yes yes so I think you know take take a look and um it's no problem to book that space and also that space so it's the main room that you you the old main room now can actually divide up into two separate rooms but I mean the volume of people that were in attendance at this meeting earlier this evening that would fit into the big the whole room uh easily so I mean I think that we could probably just book that room from this point forward yeah and it has a projector it has all the equipment in it yeah you know in some ways the little room was you know sort of nice and you know close but there were hardly any meetings when there weren't people stemming out in the hall right so you know even when we don't have 60 or 70 people coming if there was more than one permit on the agenda something like that you know the room couldn't accommodate so I think a larger would be better um as to the dates I'm pretty sure I'm not going to be around on June 6 but other than that I'm good for all the dates okay um what we'll do is we'll just collect dates that don't work and then once everyone has gone through we'll um we'll get some of the adjacent dates and see if we can't find um find a date around there so I'll start June 6 uh Melissa um in terms of dates so the July we're not having July meetings yeah I I cut out July oh that's fine was that I mean I'm just wondering because actually no I I really I I honestly you could take off August or July the board has not had a break in schedule for years now and I think we've had we've done quite a lot consistently for the past two years very challenging times and I think you deserve a little break so either it could be July or August I just did that for for you but you can choose or you can choose to meet but I think you might think about it okay um I just know I think August 15th I am I cannot do great thank you and um Melissa did you have a preference 7 30 start time oh yeah I prefer 7 30 but okay great uh Steve any dates that are a challenge for you thoughts on timing of return or start time uh so I don't believe any of the dates are challenging for me um I'm fine with a 7 30 start time uh it does help to have a little little slack to get away from work um and resuming in-person meetings after town meeting is fine with is fine with me I I do have one question since we typically meet on Monday nights and I am a town meeting member um I guess this might be a question for Jenny but in terms of time conflicts between ARB meetings and town meeting how has that typically been resolved in the past we in the past we've met it depends if we have hearings we will have some public hearings actually that we're going to have to figure out how to blend in the middle of actually our warrant article hearings so well there's going to be some carryover and we're going to need to meet before town meeting so what we've done is usually 7 to 745 um in the past and then you adjourn and town meeting starts at 8 I the question is going to be this issue of if it's in person or remote and you know if you we can't also the the potential for the in-person meeting is not necessarily in the town hall auditorium so I mean I think there's a lot of we'll have to kind of play this by year a little bit in terms of like if we have to meet before town meeting where is that going to be how are we going to do that so we might need to revisit um I I I guess just revisit it when it's time I don't have the answer right now but it was typically 7 to 745 before the meeting thank you all right um and then just for my schedule I am also not available on August 15th um so I think that's two of us for that date and then Jean isn't available on the 6th so I guess to that end um does it make more sense to meet in July and take August off in that in that case um and do does anyone have a concern with meeting in July and not August um and flipping those no from Ken no from Steve no from Melissa Jean are you good with meeting in July and taking August off I'm checking my calendar okay the main thing would just be that we wouldn't obviously meet the first and third Mondays because the first is a holiday there'll be the 11th and the 25th right um potentially yes I think I think I'm good in July does anyone um have a concern with the 11th and the 25th instead of the two August dates okay we will keep June 6th is that okay or do you want to move that um I would be fine moving that we'd have two in a row you can have a meeting without and we just leave it flexible for now to see what comes up then we decide we could do that and we could always move it there's I mean I would hate for hearing to start and for us only to have four people so um yeah we could we could do that so Jenny we would just need to know the meeting beforehand correct so that we could officially change the date yes okay all right so by May 23rd we'll make a call on June 6th okay um well I think that is it for the draft ARB schedule genie desk to vote I think we typically vote on that correct usually do we'll do it up so is there a motion to approve the um meeting schedule May through December 2022 as amended so motion back in thank you we'll take a roll call vote starting with Ken yes Dean yes Steve yes Melissa yes and I'm the s as well so that closes agenda item number two um the next item is open forum so if there are any um members of the public uh still live us this evening who wish to speak please use the raise hand function okay seeing them we will close open forum and uh any other items from the board before we adjourn all right is there a motion to adjourn so motion second second second great thank you uh uh take a roll Ken yes Dean yes Steve yes Melissa yes and I'm the s as well thank you everyone for sticking with us to this late night have a good evening bye guys thank you next Monday