 ACMI productions are only made possible with your support. Visit patreon.com slash ACMI to learn how you can help. It is 7 34 p.m. It is March 26, 2024. Good evening. My name is Christian Klein. I'm the chair of Darrington's Zoning Board of Appeals. I'm calling this meeting of the board to order. First, I'd like to confirm all members and anticipated officials are present. Members of the Zoning Board of Appeals, Roger Dupont. Here. Patrick Hanlon. Here. Venkat Holley. Here. Dan Riccadelli. Here. Elaine Hoffman. Here. Adam LeBlanc. Here. Welcome to all. On behalf of the town, we have Colleen Ralston, our zoning assistant. Here. Great to have you with us. So this open meeting of the Orange and Zoning Board of Appeals is being conducted remotely. Consistent with enacting appropriations for the fiscal year 2023 to provide supplementing certain existing appropriations and for certain other activities and projects signed into law on March 29, 2023. This act includes an extension until March 31, 2025. The remote meeting provisions of Governor Baker's March 12, 2020 executive order suspending certain provisions of the open meeting law, which suspended the requirement to hold all meetings in a publicly accessible physical location. Public bodies may continue holding meetings remotely without a quorum of the public body physically present at a meeting location so long as they provide adequate alternative access to public meetings. That I will do have someone in the waiting room, so I'll admit them and then go. The public bodies may meet remotely so long as reasonable public access is afforded so the public can follow along with the deliberations of the meeting. An opportunity for public participation will be provided during the public comment period during each public hearing. For this meeting, the Orange and Zoning Board of Appeals has convened a video conference via the Zoom application with online. Being the Orange and Zoning Board of Appeals convened video conference with the Zoom application online telephone access is listed in the agenda posted down to the website identifying how the public may join. This meeting is being recorded and will be broadcast by ACMI. Please be aware attendees are participating by a variety of means. Some attendees are participating by video conference. Others are participating by computer audio or by telephone. Accordingly, please be aware that other folks may be able to see you, your screen name or another identifier. Please take care to not share personal information. Anything you broadcast may be captured by the recording. We ask you to please maintain to quorum during the meeting, including displaying an appropriate background. All supporting materials that have been provided members of this body are available on the town's website unless otherwise noted. Public is encouraged to follow along using the posted agenda as chair or reserve the right to take items out of order and the interest is promoting an orderly meeting. So this evening we have no hearings, but we do have a series of administrative items that we're going to go to. So moving on to our administrative items, these items relate to the operation of the board and as such will generally be conducted without input from the general public. The board will not take up any new business on prior hearings, nor will there be the introduction of any new information on matters previously brought before the board unless specifically noted. So item two on our agenda is the approval of the meeting minutes from January 23rd, 2024. These meetings were put together by Colleen Ralston submitted to the board for a review. And has everybody had an opportunity to review the minutes and submit anything they had wanted to add? Mr. Chair? Yes. I just had one quick thing that I sent to Colleen just before the meeting. Okay. There was one typo on Mr. Minow's last name in the attendance section of the 312 minutes. So what's the addition of that change? May I have a motion to approve the minutes from our January 23rd, 2024 meeting? Mr. Chairman, so moved. Thank you, Mr. Hanlon. Second. Thank you, Mr. DuPont. There's a roll call vote of the members of the board who are present at the January 23rd hearing. Roger DuPont? Aye. Patrick Hallen? Aye. Thank you, Holly? Aye. Alain Hoffman? Aye. Adam LeBlanc? Aye. And the chair votes aye. Those minutes are approved. That brings us to item three on our agenda, which is the approval of the meeting minutes from February 13th, 2024. Again, these are minutes that were prepared by Colleen Ralston submitted to the board for review. Are there any additional comments on the minutes from February 13th? Seeing none, I will accept a motion to approve the minutes from February 13th, 2024. So moved. Second. Thank you, Mr. DuPont. The vote of the board on the February 13th minutes. Mr. DuPont? Aye. Mr. Hanlon? Aye. Mr. Hallen? Aye. Mr. Riccadelli? Aye. Is Hoffman? Aye. Mr. LeBlanc? Aye. Chair votes aye. Those are approved. That brings us to item four on our agenda, which is the approval of the meeting minutes from February 27th, 2024. Again, the minutes prepared by Colleen Ralston submitted to the board for comment. Are there any additional comments on the minutes from February 27th, 2024? Seeing none, the chair will accept a motion to approve the minutes from the February 27th, 2024 meeting. So moved. I second. Sorry. Thank you, Mr. Hanlon. Thank you, Mr. DuPont. So, vote of the board on the February 27th minutes. Mr. DuPont? Aye. Mr. Hanlon? Aye. Thank you, Holly? Aye. Daniel Riccadelli? Aye. Elaine Hoffman? Aye. Adam LeBlanc? Aye. And the chair votes aye. Those are approved. That brings us to item five on our agenda, which is the approval of the meeting minutes from our March 12, 2024 meeting. So, again, these were added at the beginning of this week, prepared by Colleen Ralston, submitted to the board for comment. Are there any additional comments in regards to the minutes from March 12? Seeing none, the chair will accept a motion to approve the minutes from our March 12, 2024 meeting. So moved. Second. Thank you, Mr. Hanlon. Thank you, Mr. DuPont. So roll call vote of the board. Mr. DuPont? Aye. Mr. Hanlon? Aye. Mr. Holly? Aye. Mr. Riccadelli? Aye. Ms. Hoffman? Aye. Mr. LeBlanc? Aye. And the chair votes aye. So those minutes are approved. That brings us to item number six on our agenda, which is just a placeholder. So the board holds its election for chair and vice chair in the month of April. And so I am anticipating holding that at our April 30th meeting of the board. So if there are people who are interested in taking on a leadership role on the board, please let me know. Always happy to share the responsibility to give someone else an opportunity to step up. I've served in this position for four years. It has been a fun position, but I am more than willing to train someone else to take it on if they would like to do so. So if you're interested, please let me know. And then that was item six. And then item seven is review of zoning bylaw changes being considered by the ARB. Excuse me. So at its March 18th meeting, the redevelopment board voted their recommendations for 10 zoning articles that are going to be before town meeting. Several of them were brought forward by our board, and those are recommended for adoption. But I want to take a few minutes to go through the articles and see if the board wanted to discuss anything that will be coming up zoning wise. So the first one, this could be article 25, which is building definition. So this is the one that has to do with the definition of attached building and detached building. And the fact that the bylaws as they are today have a gap between the two. So the recommendation is to change the definition of attached building to a building having one or more walls or roofs in common with another building or buildings or otherwise connected by a roof to another building or buildings. And then detached is a building that does not meet the definition of attached. So basically will be nice and clean. So they recommend favorable action on a vote five to zero. So that will be for the town meeting. Article 26 is an administrative clarification. This is just, there's this, we had asked them, this came out of the question about whether the six foot, the six foot setback applied to accessory dwelling units. It didn't seem like it should, but it wasn't listed as an exception. And so what the ARB is going to do is there's a note on the table for residential uses where it lists the exceptions under like section five, four, two, B. And then this will add section five, nine, two, B, one, E to that list of exceptions as well. So it will just clarify that the exception that's listed in the accessory dwelling unit is an exception to the table. So that's just a clarification. They recommend favorable action on that as well. Article 27 is another correction that we had requested. This is in the accessory dwelling unit section 592B1. It has five bullet points and we had asked them to get rid of the bullets and put something in that we can actually reference. So they are going to now lower case letter them. So the one we always referenced will now be 592B1E. So that's what we have. So they have recommended favorable action on that as well. And they're taking, at the same time, they're also recommending, also in the accessory dwelling units, there is a paragraph that was essentially put there for when it was being phased in. And so it gives the effective date and when it comes into effect. So they're recommending striking that paragraph because it's no longer relevant. So that is Article 27. Article 28 was recommended. We had asked the question about the Inland Water District and the wetland section that are in the zoning bylaw. Turns out that the one of them we're required to have, so that one is staying, but the conservation commission also wanted to get rid of the inland wetland overlay district. And so the recommendation is to strike that entire section from the bylaws. That is going to be going forward. So then the first of the ones we haven't thought about is Article 29, a reduced height buffer. So this is Section 5319. It's where there's two different districts that are coming together. There's sort of a buffer district between the two for building heights so that there's not as big a height difference between a residential and non-residential use. And there's a couple of different recommendations, but essentially they are looking to change the distance that it would extend into the adjacent parcel. So currently, it depends on the direction now, but right now, if it's between northwest and northeast, the lower height shall apply within 200 feet. They're recommending reducing that to 100 feet. On the southern side, they're reducing it from 100 to 50. And east and west, they're reducing it from 150 to 75 feet. So essentially just reducing the amount of space on the affected property that's going to be affected by the reduced buffer, reduced height buffer. And that's something that they are recommending favorable action on. Then the next one, Article 30, shaded parking lots. So this is the first of the 10 registered voter articles. So this, it really won't affect us because it only applies to parking lots that are 25 spaces or more, which pretty much by definition has to go before the ARB. But they are voted for favorable action, but it was a 3-2 vote. So I'm a little curious to see how they present this at town meetings. Sort of what their stance is going to be on that one. Next one, Article 32 on traffic visibility. This is to amend the section about views across corners and how far back you have to set something from a corner and how low it has to be in order to view across it. That received a vote of no action on a 3-2 vote so that the actual language will not be in the article unless somebody brings it up specifically at town meetings. So their recommendation is not to change what's there existing. Yes. I just wanted to mention that this was, the action that they eventually took was at the, was at the, consistent with the request of the building inspector. Ah, okay. The, who was concerned that things that are low to start with may not be so low eventually, and it's, once you, once you have reached the barrier that's there now, it's, it would be hard to keep, to keep control of it afterwards. No, absolutely. I was also concerned that the, the proposed language had an exception for fencing that was, quote, transparent enough and was really not sure how that was ever going to get defined or enforced. I'm glad it's not coming forward. Article 33 is rear yard setbacks and business districts. What this appears to be doing is right now, the way the bylaws written, if you have a building that is three stories or lower, there's a 20-foot setback in the business district. If it is four or more stories, the setback is 30 feet. And what the, what the change would be is if you had a building that was four or five stories, the setback for the first three floors would be at 20 feet. And then the, for the fourth and fifth floor, the setback would then be 30 feet. So it effectively, rather than having the entire building have to push back, it's just pushing back the upper floors. So the lower floor can still be closer to the rear lotline as it is today, but the upper floors would be pushed farther back from the rear lotline. And they're recommending favorable action on that. So Mr. Chair, can I just ask a question? Yeah. So that's just the rear yard setback. That's just the rear yard setback. And it's just for in the business districts. Thank you. Yep. And then Article 34 on residential uses. This is the one that would basically do three family everywhere in town. And they recommended no action, a vote of five to zero. The applicants requested that they do so, so that they have more of an opportunity to to get some more public support behind it before coming before town meeting. So that will not be coming before the town meeting unless somebody changes something. What was the substance of that, Mr. Chairman? So what they were recommending was in the R0, R1, and R2 districts that in the use table, the single family detached dwellings, two family dwellings, duplex dwellings, and three family dwellings would be allowed everywhere. So it's not just limited to single family in the R0 and R1 and two family in the R2. And I missed one. Here it is. Article 31. I knew I missed one. This is one that actually came up as an amendment before town meeting last time, which is to add 5-7 Winter Street to the MBTA neighborhood district. So this is a parcel that is immediately adjacent to the parcels that were included in the MBTA communities. The landowner had tried to get it in by an amendment last fall when this came before town meeting. It was voted down. They're trying again. So that's Article 31. And so it's a favorable action on a 4-1 vote. So here's where that's going to go. And those are the 10 articles. Are there any other questions on any of those articles? I just had one that came to mind. Yeah. For Article 29, do you think that's sort of in response to the new MBTA zoning and file laws? It might be. It's in Section 5319. Question. Pat, if I recall right, the MBTA C zoning has its own set of setback requirements that are different than these. That's kind of what I remember also. And I'm not quite sure how this, I mean, I guess it sometimes applies. I'm not quite sure where this comes from. It's not a citizen proposed article. It's an ARB proposed article. And I think that the one from the next one, or not the next one, there's the one that Andy Greenspun did was something that came up during the discussion of MBTA. So I'm not sure where that came up. But it could because in the overlay district, you do have potential for four or five-story buildings by right. So this would change the buffer for those and facilitate construction where there's an adjacency. But I didn't remember this being one of the ones that advocates of the MBTA of the overlay had in mind. The overlay is in a different section of the bylaw. It's not under 5319. This isn't limited by any means to the overlay, but it might be presented by the overlay. There were sometimes the overlay will authorize buildings as high as four or five and there's a boundary that will happen. I haven't looked to see whether or not there's a separate buffer requirement when you do that, but this wasn't specifically aimed at it. Right. But I think it would, unless there's a specific, specifically a different set of setbacks for the MBTA-C, this would still apply to MBTA-C. Anywhere where there's a boundary where you have two different height limitations on each side. This is specific for land that abuts an R0, R1, R2, or open space. I wonder, I don't know if Adam, you're kind of getting the same question, but I'm just trying to figure out what the the genesis of that is, like what the benefit would be to have a setback of high like that, unless it's, you know, access to white was the concern. It seems like kind of a funny, seems like kind of a funny rule. Yeah. So it's, you know, excuse me, it's the, yeah, the setback from onto the business, like this was a business property. It would be the setback on the business property from the residential lot. So yeah, so I think I'm not sure why the distance is so much deeper on to the north than it, or is it saying that if the land and R2, so if the residential is to the north and this would apply. Yeah. Unfortunately, I wasn't present at the 18th, the meeting on the 18th, because I would have liked to have heard a little bit more about some of these. So you already have the distinction between the directions was in the existing bylaw, right? Correct. So whatever the rationale is, that was already there. Yep. All they're doing is they're basically dividing the required distance in half for all the setbacks. And they're changing the definition slightly for how it applies. For northwest and northeast, it goes from 200 to 50. So from 200 to 100. Well, I'm sorry. Well, I'm reading here is the proposal and that wasn't necessarily where they came out. Yeah. Okay. And then easterly between northeast and southeast or westerly between northwest and southwest, it would be go from 150 to 75. And then southerly between southeast and southwest, it would be go from 100 to 50 feet. Okay. So in their hearings, they increased the originally the proposal from the ARB was to cut them much more than they eventually did. They moved in the direction of not making as big a change. Okay. Any other questions on those? Right. So that was the last item on our agenda tonight. All right. Next meeting is scheduled for March 20, no, today is March 26. So the next after this is April 9th. And we do have I think one new and two continuances on the ninth. And then we do have a few items on the agenda for the 30th. And the meeting on the 30th was originally scheduled for the 23rd and we opted to move it to the 30th because of the holiday on the 23rd. So our next meeting is on the ninth. Is there any other business before the board? Colleen? Yeah. Currently we have four new items for April 30. Oh, okay. And then Colleen, did we ever figure out what was going on with Peabody Street or Peabody Road? I have not had any application from them. So I'm not sure what they think they're doing on the ninth. Okay. I'll reach out to the conservation commission and get the contact information for them and try to figure out what's going on. All right. Well, unless there's anything else, I will include the meeting. I'd like to thank you all for your participation. It's a nice meeting of the Arlington Zoning Board of Appeals. I appreciate everyone's patience throughout the meeting. I'd like to thank Colleen Ralston and Mike Champa for their assistance in preparing for and hosting this online meeting. Please note the purpose of the board's recording the meeting is to ensure the creation of an accurate record of its proceedings. It is our understanding that recording made by ACMI will be available on demand at acmi.tv within the coming days. If anyone has comments or recommendations, please send them via email to zbaatown.arlington.ma.us That email address is also listed on the Zoning Board of Appeals website. And to conclude tonight's meeting, I would ask for a motion to adjourn. So moved, Mr. Chairman. Second. The vote of the board to adjourn, Mr. Dupont. Aye. Mr. Hanlon. Aye. Mr. Holly. Aye. Mr. Rickidelli. Aye. Ms. Hoffman. Aye. Mr. LeBlanc. Aye. And the chair votes aye. The board is adjourned. Thank you all very much for coming in tonight. ACMI productions are only made possible with your support. 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