 So it is 735 p.m. It is Tuesday, October 18th, 2022. Good evening, my name is Christian Klein and I am the chair of the Arlington Zoning Board of Appeals. I'm calling this meeting of the Board of the Order and I ask all attendees who are not recognized to speak to please mute their connection until such time as they're recognized by the chair. I would like to confirm that all members and anticipated officials are present. So members of the Zoning Board of Appeals, unfortunately, Mr. DuPont is unable to join us this evening as he is under the weather. But Patrick Hanlon, Patrick is here. Dandy Riccadelli. Here. See you. Venkat Holley. Hi, here. Good to see you and Elaine Hoffman. Here. Good to see you as well. On behalf of the town, Rick Dallarelli, our board administrator. Good evening, Mr. Chairman. Good evening. Assisting him, Vincent Lee. Here. Good to have you. We're also joined this evening by town council, Doug Heim. Here. Thank you, Mr. Schoen. Good evening. And also Kelly Lainema, who's the assistant director of planning and community development. Here and also here is Marisa Lafty, a planner from Department of Planning and Community Development. Good to have you both. And then appearing on behalf of the applicant, we have Paul Feldman from Davis, Malmö, and Augustine. Yeah, I'm here. I'm here. And then from the Missouri companies, we have Matthew Majuri, Jacqueline Majuri, and Paul Majuri. Good evening. Here. Thank you. Good evening. So this open meeting of the Arlington Zoning Board of Appeals is being conducted remotely, consistent with an act relative to extending certain state of emergency accommodations signed into law on July 16th, 2022. This act includes an extension until March 31st, 2023 of the remote meeting provisions of Governor Baker's March 12th, 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 forum of the public body physically present at a meeting location, so long as they provide adequate alternative access to remote meetings. 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 Arlington Zoning Board of Appeals has convened a video conference via the Zoom application with online and telephone access as listed on the agenda posted to the town's website identifying how the public may join. This meeting is being recorded and it will be broadcast by ACMI. Please be aware that 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 that you broadcast may be captured by the recording. We ask you to please maintain decorum 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. The public is encouraged to follow along using the posted agenda. As chair, I reserve the right to take items out of order in the interest of promoting an orderly meeting. As the board will be taking up new business at this, excuse me, as the board will be taking up new business at this meeting. As chair, I make the following land acknowledgement. Whereas the zoning board of appeals for the town of Arlington, Massachusetts discusses and arbitrates the use of land in Arlington, formerly known as monotony and Algonquin word, meaning swift waters. The board hereby acknowledges that the town of Arlington is located on the ancestral lands of the Massachusetts tribe, the tribe of indigenous peoples from whom the colony, province and commonwealth have taken their names. We pay our respects to the ancestral bloodline of the Massachusetts tribe and their descendants who still inhabit historic Massachusetts territories today. To start the meeting, the board would like to acknowledge the resignation of one of its members. Kevin Mills served this board for very many years with integrity, with humility and with humor. He has served us through the previous 240B hearings and his presence and experience will be missed. He has retired and has moved out of town. We thank him for his service to the town and to this board. So thank you, Kevin. We will miss having you with us on this journey here. Thank you, Kevin, for sure. Absolutely. The administrative items on tonight's agenda will be addressed after the discussion of the comprehensive permit application because I'm certain that every single person on this call is here for that instead. With that, going back to the agenda, I will move forward to item number four, which is stuck at number 3719 1025 Massachusetts Avenue. We are now turning to the comprehensive permit hearing for the residences at Millbrook to be located at 1021 through 1025 Massachusetts Avenue. This evening, the board is opening a new comprehensive permit hearing. The proposed project, The Residences at Millbrook, is a redevelopment of an existing site in the neighborhood office, that's the B1 zoning district. The submitted documents are available from the board's website or as an attachment to the posted agenda. We open this evening with an introduction to the comprehensive permit procedure. The applicants will then be invited to introduce themselves and their team, and there will be a brief presentation of the proposed project made by the applicant. The board will then present questions to the applicant before we open the hearing to public comment and questions. Mr. Chairman, point of order. Yes, please. Hi, Paul Feldman for the applicant. With Mr. Mills as the recognition and Mr. Dupont's inability to be here tonight. Yeah. There are currently five members of the board that are sitting. That is correct. I'm not sure if, I don't know if Arlington has the rule where if you miss a meeting, you could watch the meeting or watch the tape and then be eligible to vote. We have adopted the mullin rule, yes. Okay, so you have the mullin rule. Yes. And there's going to be five members voting currently theoretically right now as of tonight. The five members that are sitting will be those members unless Mr. Dupont makes himself eligible. Absolutely. All right, thank you. You're very welcome. So just to give an introduction to the comprehensive permit law because this is a little bit different than the normal business that the zoning board of appeals deals with. So the comprehensive permit law also known as 40B was established by the state in 1969 to allow developers devoting a certain percentage of the units in a development to being affordable the developer could receive an expedited review whereby the zoning board of appeals would hear the application and be authorized to grant waivers from any local statute which it finds can be granted without negatively impacting the health safety and welfare of the local residents. The applicant cannot request waivers from state laws and regulations which remain in full effect. Those include the wetlands act, title five, the state building code and similar state regulations. Once a comprehensive permit is filed the board has 30 days to open a public hearing. The town has seven days to notify department boards and commissions the receipt of the application and request comment. Once the hearing begins the board has 180 days to hear the case and close the public hearing unless the parties mutually agree to extend. Once the hearing begins the board has 15 days to notify the applicant if it will be declaring safe harbor under any of the provisions of the state law. Should the board make such a declaration the applicant has 15 days to file an appeal. After the public hearing is closed the board has 40 days to render a decision unless the parties again mutually agree to extend. When a board is preparing a decision it has three options. It may approve the project as submitted. It may approve the project with conditions or it may deny the project. Any decision by the board may be appealed within 20 days of the issuance of the decision unless the town can demonstrate it's meeting its obligations in providing affordable housing and appeal by the applicant is filed with the housing appeals committee by design a developer friendly platform. So if the town does not meet any of the safe harbor provisions if the decision of the board is appealed by the applicant it goes to the housing appeals committee. A butter appeals are heard at either superior court or land court. A town demonstrates it's meeting its affordable housing obligations by demonstrating compliance with one of the safe harbor provisions under the enabling state regulations. If the town cannot substantiate compliance using current figures asserting it does so only leads to increased legal costs by the town. And so of the different options one is the housing unit minimum which would be whether the town has greater than 10% of the housing units on the listed excuse me that the town has greater than 10% of its housing units listed on the subsidized housing index maintained by the state. The second would be the general land area minimum where it's having greater than one and a half percent of the available land area dedicated units on the subsidized housing index maintained by the state. And I would note that the formula for calculating the general land area minimum has been revised by the state within the past couple of years. There's also a total land area. So if the town has more than 0.3% of all land area in residential, commercial and industrial areas dedicated to units on the subsidized housing index maintained by the state. For the housing production plan if the town has met or exceeded 0.5% of the town's affordable housing production goal for that calendar year is established by the town. Whether there's recent progress towards the housing unit minimum having created subsidized housing units equal to at least 2% of the municipality's total number of housing units within the past year. Review of large projects, the number of units in the proposed project exceeds 2% of all the housing units in the municipality or related applications that prior applications for construction on the same land were received within the previous 12 months. The applicant needs to demonstrate that it meets the statutory requirements for its submittal to be considered for a comprehensive permit. The applicant must be a government agency, a nonprofit entity or a limited dividend organization. They must demonstrate that they have site control. They must have a project eligibility letter from a subsidizing agency like Max Housing. They must submit preliminary plans for review by the board. Final plans are not required until after the issuance of a comprehensive permit. Final plans are submitted or subject to review by the town for compliance with the decision and by inspectional services for compliance with the state building code. The applicant must submit existing condition plans and maps. They must submit a tabulation of buildings on the site and they must submit a list of requested waivers. The board cannot consider any impacts of a 40B project, excuse me. The board cannot consider any impacts a 40B project would have on the schools as families are protected class under the Fair Housing Act. The board is able to request funds from the applicant to allow the board to properly and thoroughly review the application and to supporting materials by hiring consulting engineers with expertise in areas like traffic, stormwater, utilities, urban design, architecture and other similar disciplines. The board can engage a transcription service to create a written record of the hearings. Under certain circumstances, the board can retain a financial consultant to review the project for a form of. Negotiations and work sessions may occur between the applicant and their consultants and the town and its consultants. However, no decisions can be made at any of those sessions. The board is limited to conditions which would be applied to similar proposed developments pursued through regular zoning. The board cannot consider, the board cannot reduce the number of overall units unless it can demonstrate that the necessity to protect health, safety and welfare of the residents. And the board cannot increase the percentage of affordable units or the affordability of the units. Only the subsidizing agency has the power to do so. I would ask our town council to climb if there's any other aspects of the comprehensive permit law or local concerns you would like to mention at this time. No, Mr. Chairman, that was very thorough and well stated. I suppose the only other thing that I would maybe add is that the 40B process is by its nature somewhat iterative. It's not abnormal for an applicant to submit initial proposal for there to be feedback and information that's received from town officials, the zoning board of appeals itself, from the public and there to be modifications to that. A dialogue or conversation is normal. And I also just wanna emphasize that something that you said which is very important in many of these contexts which is that this comprehensive permit does address all town bylaws and zoning bylaws but does not address permitting under the Wetlands Protection Act which remains governed by the Town's Conservation Commission. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Thank you, Attorney Hyde. At this point, I would like to introduce attorney Paul Feldman from Davis-Malmond, Augustine to introduce the project team and to make a presentation to the board into the town explaining the proposed project. Mr. Feldman. Good evening, Paul Feldman with Davis-Malmond, Augustine. I represent the applicant. The presentation is going to be presented by Matthew Maggiore who is a manager of the applicant and a president of Maggiore Construction Corporation. And I'm gonna turn it over to him right away so that we don't waste any time. Thank you. Chairperson Klein, is there a ability to share screen? Mr. Valarale, can you assist with that? You're good to go, Mr. Maggiore. Mr. Chairman. Hanlon. Just as, excuse me, as it has often happened when we have these hearings that in order to understand them, you have to understand the presentation and I just like to request that after the hearing today that Mr. Maggiore submits the slides that he's probably about to show us so that we have them in the record and a permanent record of the mothers and by watching the hearing on ACMI. Thank you, Ms. Hanna. Is that okay with you, Mr. Maggiore? Absolutely. Perfect, thank you. Jackie, could you, I'm having trouble doing a screen share for some reason. I tested this earlier. Do you mind pulling up the PowerPoint? Sure. Can I just get the ability to share the screen as well? I apologize. I don't know. Jackie, just give me a second. Sure. Sorry for the delay. No, no. Okay, Jackie, good to go. Okay, let me just get to where. Okay, Matt, you can just let me know. Sure. I want to go ahead. So a good evening, folks. Again, for the record, my name is Matthew Maggiore, 13 Wheeling Avenue, Wolverine, Massachusetts. Here with me this evening is my father and founder and CEO of our company, Paul Maggiore. Jacqueline Maggiore, who is our director of marketing in real estate. And again, Paul Feldman, who's suffering from a bit of an illness this evening. And we're going to save Paul's voice and I'll be the voice this evening and Paul can chime in to answer any pertinent questions that may come up. We want to thank the zoning board of appeals in the town of Arlington for affording us to the opportunity for a meeting dedicated to the permitting of this project. We're excited to be here this evening and thank you for getting this first one scheduled for us and we look forward to future meetings. The applicant for this project is 1025 Mass Ave LLC. It's a limited dividend company. The members of the LLC are affiliated with our parent company, the Maggiore companies, which is a 45 year old company founded by Paul. We're in the real estate development and construction and property management business. We've been in the same location in Woober, Massachusetts for the last 45 years, the same address and we enjoy a great relationship in the real estate community, the real estate brokerage community, architects, engineers, everyone who knows the Maggiore's knows that we build quality projects and we are people of character. We can go to the next slide. We've assembled a phenomenal team from the permitting of this project and ultimately the design and construction and delivery of the first class project. The architect for this project is going to be Harrison Mulhern Architects. The owner of that company is Chris Mulhern. You'll get to know him later on in our presentation and future meetings. Again, Attorney Paul Feldman of Davis Farm of the Augustine. Paul has been working with the Maggiore's for over 25 years. Paul is an expert in real estate law and has permitted several successful 40B and affordable apartment and condo projects throughout the Commonwealth. We have a relationship with Dave Alt who's the Senior Vice President of Cambridge Savings Bank who's provided a letter for us as a member of the Federal Home Loan Bank of Boston and we intend to engage Cambridge Savings Bank for the construction financing for this project. Patriot engineering is owned by Mike Novak. Mike's our civil engineer. He's been helping us with everything on the civil end of the project. Rich Kirby from LEC is our environmental and wetlands consultant. Rich enjoys a very fine relationship with the Arlington Conservation Commission and he's a welcome member of our team. Sean Kelly of Vanossin Associates prepared our traffic impact statement and I'm sure you'll be meeting him later on in the process. Kyle Zick of KZLA, Landscape Architecture. Kyle's been instrumental in helping us design the mitigation that we're proposing in the riverfront area of our property. Finally, Compass Real Estate, Albert Lynch who introduced us to the sellers of the properties at 1021 and 1025 Mass Ave and we intend to engage for the marketing of the project once it hopefully comes to fruition. Next slide. We've attached or we enclosed a copy of the project eligibility letter that we received from Mass Housing on August 19th. They should be online and in our submission that we provided to the town. Further copies of this are necessary. We'll obviously include that in the slides that we turn in after this meeting. Where's Virginia? Yeah, they put it in the eighth of one. Oh. What's up? Can everyone hear me? Yes. Okay, sorry, I thought someone had a question. Just to give you a little flavor of some of our signature projects. Next slide. This is a project in Wakefield called Wakefield Station. It's a 60-unit condominium project and 10,000 feet of retail space on the first floor and we're gonna be using a lot of design cues from this project to apply to the Arlington project. Trying to basically, we have a five-story building that we're trying to make look like a four-story building for massing purposes. As you can see in this picture, the fifth floor is set back from the plane of the fourth floor to give it the look and feel and massing of a smaller building. Next slide. This is a project we recently completed in Reading. This was a 40-hour project permitted with the town of Reading. It's a 31-unit apartment building with 3,000 feet of retail. This was a project that was eight years in the permit process in the city of Somerville. It's a combination of a new VFW post and a 29-unit condominium facility with underground parking. Fred and David Square. This is a recently completed condominium facility that we constructed for an outside client. This is also a 32-unit condominium project in Watertown on North Deep Street. You folks might know this project because it's kind of on the outskirts of Arlington, right basically in Wuburn, Wuburn Arlington line. This is a project at Shannon Farm, the old Shannon Farm. It's a 112-unit townhouse condominium project with Clubhouse. Jumping quickly to the description of the project, we have the properties at 1021 and 1025-27 Massachusetts Avenue under contract to purchase pending the approval of our proposal to the ZDA and highlighting yellow of the two parcels. Next slide. Here's a couple of views from Google Earth of the property looking east from down Mass Ave and looking west. This is the existing conditions plan that shows the two existing structures and the existing topography and wooded area behind the property. We are, there's approximately .43 acres of this project in the riverfront area and we'll be getting to discussions on our proposal to mitigate and implement a new planting program and a private garden slash park space for the residents of this proposed development. Next slide. Yeah, Matt, before you jump off that slide, I think we should create some a little better orientation for the board. Mass Avenue is running along the bottom of this particular existing conditions plan. You'll notice a dashed line which is set back 200 feet from the brook. That is the boundary of the riverfront between 100 feet from the riverfront and 200 feet from the river. But we talked about that as the outer riverfront boundary. So you'll see that the property that's going to be disturbed is within the 100 to 200 foot setback. The other thing you should note is that the riverfront area is the only wetland resource that impacts this property. There are no other wetland resources that are located on this property or by this development. Finally, if you have familiarity with reading topo lines, topographic lines, you'll notice how on the back of the property the top of the topographic lines are rather close to one another. That indicates a steep change in topography. And this site does dip down considerably from Mass Avenue relatively flat as you go by the existing buildings in the existing disturbed area. And then as you get to the back of the lot, it does drop down. The last thing to just note is that separating the brook from the property is a parking lot that is unrelated to the property. It is owned by an adjacent condominium and used by that condominium. Just wanted to point out some of those existing features before we got off the slide. Thank you, Paul. Next slide. So this is the proposed site plan. And again, similar to the last slide, Massachusetts Avenue is on the bottom of this plan highlighted in yellow is the proposed structure that will house the 50 units and into a parking area. And at the rear, at the rear in blue is our proposed roof water infiltration system. And you can see the pathways and the planting around that area that would become the park, private park slash garden space for the residents of the project. And that would be within the area that we're intending to improve and mitigate in the riverfront. So one thing to highlight before we get off of this plan, Matt. The building is going to be located almost entirely on area that's already been disturbed either by the existing structures or by driveways or by parking. There is a couple of thousand square feet of area that's previously not been disturbed. That will be within the footprint of the building. So you see the dashed line on the back corner of the building where we again point out the 200 foot riverfront area. Within that area, already a good portion of that area has already been disturbed with asphalt pavement and the like. You can see it outlined with the squiggly lines but there is some new disturbance there. The other thing that is hard to appreciate from this particular depiction is that the blue subsurface drainage system from when the project is developed will be part of the redesigned urban garden that has been planned for the entire back portion of the property. That structure is subsurface. You're not gonna see that and it's going to be developed above with, as Matt will get to an appropriate program. Thanks for that. So tying in, this would be a little more developed detailed landscaping plan. As Paul mentioned, the area over the infiltration system would be a grassed meadow type of area. As you can see, there's walking paths. There'll be seating back there. There'll be naturally occurring things like logs that were left for establishment or maintenance of that area as well as a robust planting plan with native trees, shrubs, bushes and very robust and beautiful area that we intend to also irrigate to be able to maintain for the association. And we'll be getting into obviously those details more thoroughly in future meetings when Kyle is here with us to present. Next slide. This is basically cut and paste from our application to mass housing. Just gives you some of the data or some of the pertinent information on the project is a total of 50 condominium units, 37 market rate units and 13 affordable units at 80% area median income. The gross floor area is 97,110 square feet. We have a height of 60 feet in five stories. One of those stories is set back from the plane of the first through the fourth floor again to create the feel and the massing of the forestry building for the purposes of trying to be in keeping with the area and other buildings on Mass App. We have 50 indoor parking spaces proposed with a one to one ratio on parking. And next slide, Jeff. Next slide. Of the 50 units, we have five, three bedroom units, 35, two bedroom units and 10, one bedroom units. And I didn't misspeak. It's actually 53 indoor parking spaces. We did some reconfiguration and we're able to get 53 parking spaces indoors. In the basement of this project, we have 49 bicycle storage units and within the first floor garage, 26 hanging bicycle racks and an exterior bicycle rack. The basement also will have 53 storage units. So it will be a storage unit for each unit owner as well as common area storage. We're proposing a 1700 foot retail space, the right front corner of the property with a beautiful plaza area. Hopefully be able to get some sort of use that will complement the area and complement the building via the coffee shop or perhaps a bike shop or something that would be appropriate for this use. Could be potentially a restaurant might be a little small for that but we're not really that out. And many of these within the project will include the fitness center, management office. We would intend to have a person on site doing maintenance and cleaning, not all the time but probably three to four days per week, two elevators accessing all floors including the basement and the second floor, common area courtyard, green space which will have some private decks as well as some common gathering space with the grills and seating for the residents of the project. And again, the mitigation in the rear would create a private resident garden amenity space for the residents. Next slide. Paul, shall we review each of these waivers individually? No, I don't think we have to but let me just generally describe them because there looks to be a lot more here than there really is. There are the first group of waivers are requested from the zoning bylaw. The most important of which is in this particular zoning district, multifamily use is not an allowed use or especially permitted use we're in the B1 zone. So we need a waiver from the use limitations to allow for multifamily use. That's the most important waiver request. Some of the other waiver requests from zoning that I want to draw your attention to in particular is the height limitation. It's three stories or 35 feet under zoning and the request is my stories or 61 feet and eight inches. Correspondingly, the full area ratio in this district is 0.75. We're looking for 2.0. Some of these parameters all work together because multifamily is not an allowed use. You have these other dimensional limitations which are more in line with the types of uses that are typically allowed under zoning. So when you move to a multifamily project you're moving to dimensional requirements that are more typical of a multifamily project and that's so those are those waiver requests. And then finally, the parking is proposed to be one parking space per unit. There's a tiered ratio in multifamily developments that would result in a slightly greater ratio than one per unit. That's in general the zoning. The town has a bicycle parking design guidelines and typically hanging bicycle racks would not be counted looking for a waiver from that limitation. We have the correct amount of bicycle storage in combination between actual accessible bike storage the way the guidelines want us to have but to get the numbers up so that they comply with the total number of available bikes racks. We have 26 hanging racks that are designed into the project. The reference to the tree protection and preservation by law, you'll see the applicant is seeking a waiver or payment to a tree fund as we get into it at later meetings. What this project proposes is to take an area of trees that are invasive Norway maples and actually start from the beginning and rebuild a native design, urban design that can actually serve as a model for how to rehabilitate areas in an urban setting so that they're providing the right habitat and the right type of vegetation for years to come. The wetlands protection request is simply that under the local wetlands bylaw we're seeking our permit through this comprehensive permit as town council mentioned we are going to need a order of conditions under the state wetlands protection act we will independently go to the conservation commission for the state wetlands protection act order of conditions but the local bylaw wetlands protection order of conditions we're requesting from the ZBA. Same thing with the stormwater management permit that we need locally should be issued through this process. One of the buildings 1021 mass 270 was listed on the historic structures inventory we're simply it's not in a historic district or anything like that it's a building identified on the inventory and we're looking for either a waiver of the demolition delay or a finding through this process that the particular building's demolition will not be detrimental to historical or architectural heritage of the town which is what would be the finding usually made by the historical commission but we take care of it here in this process. There's a minor waiver request with outdoor lighting later on in this process you'll see we have some exterior up lighting that's designed in the roof and some of the second floor a courtyard area that is we think appropriate for this particular project but there's an up lighting prohibition and the outdoor lighting regulations that we're requesting a waiver of. I think that basically highlights on that. Great, thank you so much. This is a rendering of the front of the building along Mass Ave. We'll be getting into the architectural aspects this project in more detail in future meetings but we're proposing again a five-story building with a setback fifth floor the towers on either end of the building are and down the sides and on the first floor are intended to be a gray brick. We have a combination of cementius and aluminum composite metal panels on the front projections of the building. We would be proposing a black painted vinyl casement window for the project and we're all about higher end finishes that give the richness that this project in this location deserve and we're excited about explaining this further in the process. Next slide. Now this is a view of the interior courtyard. So the building is somewhat of a U shape and this interior courtyard again would service some private deck space for some of the residents on that first floor living as well as common outdoor space for grilling and gathering and entertaining. These are the front and rear elevations of the project. There's a bit of a detail here that's probably difficult to see but again available online and in the package that we'll provide to the town after this meeting. Next slide. This would be the right and left elevation same thing difficult to see but we can now they'll be available online and in the package. Here's the basement in the ground floor plan. Again, the basement depicts the utility areas, electric room, excuse me on elevator machine room, water service room, bike storage and general storage units for the residents and for common area. The ground floor plan shows the 53 parking spaces retail space at the front right corner, attendant gym behind it, on the office and package storage, stairwell, elevators and trash room. And this is a garage at grade. So you're coming in off of Mass Ave at grade and entering this facility at grade. Next slide. And this is the second and third floor plan on the second floor depicts an overhead view of the common garden space as well as a common corridors to access that space. Third floor. And here's the fourth and fifth floor plan. You can see the fifth floor set back significantly from the fourth floor. Again, going back to my comment about massing and trying to get the look and feel of a four-story building while still be able to get the density that we need to be able to make this project possible. And that's the end of the slideshow. We can open it up to questions. We can turn it back to Christian. And again, we thank everybody for taking the time to be with us this evening and for giving us the opportunity to be here to present the thank you. Thank you very much for that presentation. Are there questions from the board in regards to the presentation? As we proceed through the hearings, the board will have more information from the consultants and the applicants and they'll be able to opportunity for more detailed discussion. At this time, I'm asking questions to be limited to the information presented this evening. So are there specific questions from the board? Mr. Hanlon. Sorry to unmute. I guess this question is for Mr. Feldman. Ravers have been requested for the stormwater management bylaw and from the local wetlands protection bylaw in favor of the state permits that deal with both of those things. And my question is whether in either of those cases, there are specific provisions of the local bylaws that are problematic to you that we could if we wanted to be followed the minimum waiver possible focus on just that or whether this is really a matter of trying to just get the local bylaw out of the picture so that you deal only with the state. Thank you for the question, Mr. Hanlon. And it's an important one to clarify. With regard to the stormwater, the stormwater system has been designed in compliance with the local requirements of your stormwater management plan. What we are asking a waiver for and it's not really a waiver, I didn't exactly know where to put it but I wanted to be more inclusive and at the risk of being over inclusive, I put it on the waiver list. The waiver request is that we need not obtain the stormwater management permit that either has to be issued by the engineering department or the engineering department's designate. The permit should be issued through this comprehensive permit process but our design as I understand it from our civil engineer conforms to the requirements of the stormwater management design guidelines in Arlington. So we're not looking for a waiver, a design waiver. With regard to the Wetlands Protection Act it's a very similar situation. We believe that we have designed a project that would entitle us to meet the performance standards under your local bylaw for work within the outer 100 foot riverfront area. There is some new disturbance that as I said is being presented. It's not substantial but there is an excessive, I'm not gonna say excessive, a very large mitigation program that is being proposed to address that. The board should know that the applicant did appear before the Arlington Conservation Commission. Several times in a pre-filing working session they were public meetings of the Arlington Conservation Commission to present this project in a less detailed way but focusing on the jurisdiction of the Conservation Commission to get some feedback. The Conservation Commission wasn't in a position to make any decisions. We didn't have a particular application in front of the Conservation Commission but it is the process and habit of the Conservation Commission to engage in working sessions with applicants if they're willing to do so, if the applicants willing to do so and we very much were. So we got a lot of feedback from those working sessions. The feedback we took from those working sessions is in the proposed design that you're looking at but this proposed design has not been reviewed by the Conservation Commission. I'm sure as part of this process you'll get input and feedback from the Conservation Commission but it's for this board to determine whether we meet the local wetland performance standards for an order of conditions. We believe we meet the local performance standards and we know you'll collaborate with your colleagues at the Conservation Commission. We're hoping that we heard the Conservation Commission's feedback correctly but we're not prejudging and we didn't ask the Conservation Commission to prejudge our proposal because they didn't see, they haven't seen the details of it and this is the first presentation of it. So again, we're not looking for a particular waiver of a particular performance standard as because we think we meet the performance standards to be entitled to an order of conditions. We are looking for the issuance of that order of conditions from the Zoning Board of Appeals through the Comprehensive Permit as the law provides. I will just reserve for one thing and I gotta confirm this with Rich Kirby. It's not on our legal list now but I will for the next meeting that we had some discussion and I wanna make sure that what we call the newly disturbed area, there is no limitation on the newly disturbed area under the performance standards but perhaps there's a waiver to be articulated on that. It hasn't been yet because I don't think we technically need it but I'll take another look at that. Thank you, Mr. Handler. Thank you, Mr. Feldman. Is this question maybe for Mr. Majori? You've got approximately with 97,000 gross floor area and I wonder if you have any estimate for if you were just looking at the conditions floor area as you would have to for those state building permit for the energy part of it. It would presumably be less than that. Do you have any idea what the condition to have floor area would be? The square footage of the condition floor area? Yes. I mean, this is a long-term process and so I don't wanna really put you in a position of calculating on the spot but if you could provide that information, that would be great. Sure. I will, just give me a minute to get to that and I will chime back in a moment. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, that's all I have. Thank you, Mr. Handler. Are there other members of the board with questions? Sure. Yeah, I just had a couple of questions. For the, I know we'll have a chance to ask more questions and get an intro from the design team later in this process but for the ground level parking that you mentioned, is the intent for that to be enclosed or have open sides? It's a fully enclosed garage space that would be climate controlled. So no open louvers on the side. There will be louvers for carbon monoxide exhaust evacuation but it's a fully climate controlled garage and to go back to the previous question, the gross floor area conditioned of the first floor is 25,020 square feet. Great, I just have one more question. So the rear yard which you guys showed a landscape plan for up against Millbrook, is that just accessed by building residents or is that publicly accessed area? That would be a private space only because of the liability that the condo association would be faced with. We were designated as private resident only access. Okay, thank you very much. Thank you. Anything else from the board? None. I would just say for members of the board and for members of the public as well, the drawings that you saw as a part of the application, there is a full-size drawing set available for public review. There is one set at the planning department and there's one set at the inspectional services. So if looking at it on your screen or printing it out yourself is not working for you inspectional services and the planning department can help you view a larger-sized set of drawings for those documents. So tonight's hearing will shortly be open for public comment, but before we do, I want to review some ground rules for effective and clear conduct of tonight's business. So public questions and comments will only be taken as they relate to the matter at hand and should be directed to the board for the purpose of informing our decision. Due to previously demonstrated interest in this project and to provide for an orderly flow to the meeting, the chair strongly encourages individual public speakers to limit their comments and to use their time to provide comment related solely to the topics discussed at this hearing. It would be particularly helpful to hear what aspects to the project should be the focus of specific review and discussion at later hearings. Please note, there will be multiple hearings scheduled for this project and each hearing will have an opportunity for public comment. The chair also encourages the public to provide written comments to be reviewed by the board and included in the record. And those that have been received up to this point were available on the agenda for tonight's meeting. The chair asks, the chair will first ask members of the public who have previously identified themselves by logging in through Zoom who wish to speak to digitally raise their hand using the raise hand button on the participants tab in the Zoom application. You'll be called upon by the chair. You may unmute yourself and you'll be asked to give your name and address to the record and you'll be given up to five minutes for your questions and comments. All questions are to be addressed through the chair. Please remember to speak clearly, concisely and in a way that helps generate an accurate record of the meeting. Those calling in by phone, please dial star nine to indicate you would like to speak. When called upon, you may unmute your line. Please identify yourself by name and address for the record. You'll be given up to five minutes for your questions and comments. All questions, again, are to be addressed through the chair. Please remember to speak clearly, concisely and in a way that helps generate accurate minutes. Once all public questions and comments have been addressed or we have, it is now 8.30, so we have reached the hour of 9.30. The public comment period for this evening's hearing will be closed. As noted previously, there are multiple hearings scheduled for this project and each hearing will have an opportunity for public comment. The board, the applicant and staff will do our best to show documents being discussed. If you'd like a specific document to be displayed during your comments, please ask us to do so and we will do our best to accommodate your request. So with that, I will formally open tonight's meeting for public comment. I'm just gonna quickly put down the name in the order I have them. Okay, the first name I see is Barbara Thornton. Thornton, if you can go ahead and unmute yourself, name and address. Barbara Thornton, 223 Park Ave, Arlington. First of all, I understand I'm addressing Mr. Klein. Mr. Klein, please convey my absolute delight that this team of developers has decided to bring this project to Arlington. Speaking as somebody who is at some point in my life, I'm going to be in the market for downsizing and wanting to stay in Arlington. I'm looking at this hard. I'm ready to pick my corner or space. But I do wanna suggest a couple of things that I think would make it, and I don't wanna be too much the future owner, but that is how I'm looking at it. I am delighted that you are having permanently affordable home ownership opportunities for people in Arlington that are more affordable than are in now. When I moved to Arlington, there was a real mix of incomes in town. And I really love to be in a project in the town that reclaimed that opportunity. Second, I want to encourage you to use all that open space that you have to take a look at Doug Tawame, if you haven't yet, and his idea of a homegrown national park. It would be nice to have a little homegrown national park right there on Mass Ave. And it looks like you can make a contribution to that with the open space and the way you're thinking about using it. I am a little concerned about the waiver on the uplighting. If, yeah, I would appreciate the board looking more at the open space, but I would also appreciate the board looking more critically at why they need uplighting. I would like to maintain a dark skies policy in Arlington wherever possible. Thank you. Thank you, Ms. Burton. Next on our list is David Pretzer. Hello, I'm David Pretzer at 44 Grove Street in Arlington. Thank you, Mr. Klein and the ZBA for having me. I just wanted to say that I think this is a very strong proposal. I think this is the sort of location we want to encourage additional housing being built. It's right on Mass Ave with very good access to public transit in terms of the 77 bus. It's also has easy access to the Minuteman Bikeway. I think to address the housing crisis in this region, we need to encourage additional housing and additional affordable housing to be built. And in terms of climate change and our contributions environmentally, building this housing in areas that present alternatives to private cars for the residents to get around is very valuable. And so I think this is very valuable. I mean, I personally, I live on Grove Street, which is basically the same block as this proposal. And this is exactly the sort of thing I think should be going up in my neighborhood. I think it's a great spot for additional housing and we definitely need both market rate and affordable housing. And in terms of what the board should be paying attention to, I do want to point out that Mill Brook, which runs very near this property does flood when we have severe rain events. And so I think it's very important to ensure that this property is making all necessary, taking all necessary steps to address stormwater runoff and flooding concerns and so on. Because I think it is in an area that floods and obviously making sure that it's not gonna have any negative impact on neighbors in that respect is very important. Yeah, I guess the other point I wanted to make is that one thing, and this should suggest needing more housing in general, one thing Arlington really lacks is housing that is accessible to people who use wheelchairs. And as people age, the ability to get to their apartment without needing to navigate stairs is very valuable. So I think this could be also a strong addition to the garlings and stock of accessible housing and housing that could be used by people with mobility limitations. So I encourage the board to help work with the developer to make this development possible. Thank you. Thank you. Next on our list is Steve Moore. Yes, thank you, Mr. Chair. Steve Moore, Beatmont Street and a member of the Arlington Tree Committee. I do wanna applaud the efforts of the developer here in providing a thorough plan and the addition of affordability and affordable units in town is always a plus. Certainly this project would contribute to dealing with that issue that we have in town which is not enough housing referred to by the previous two speakers. And I'd also want to bring up the fact that Arlington is facing a lot of significant issues of many different sorts that we're trying to handle. One of the ones that the Tree Committee has been working very hard on is maintenance and growth of the Arlington Tree canopy which is under right now severe strain and decline. We're trying to stabilize that and increase it. And at one point during the presentation I heard something the effect of the only, I may have misheard it, I'm not sure that I heard it right, but that the only resource effective with this project would be the Millbrook area and I would be wanna point out that there's a significant amount of trees on this property currently in the back section. It is a town resource, it's on private land of course but it is a town resource within the town boundaries. The rather forested area in back which is quite thick and hidden serves as a significant water mitigation area right now and probably helps during the Millbrook flooding referred to by the previous speaker. And I understand that a lot of that area is going to be retained as forest or replanted as forest, but right now it's quite thick natural grown forest that's serving the purpose. And there are some very significant trees that this project is going to take four foot wide, what looks to be 70, 80 foot tall trees in some cases and that will be a loss to the resources of the town. And I'm not sure, the only reason I bring this up now is because the waivers were mentioned and one of the waivers is from the tree reservation bylaw which I don't understand why this commercial project along with any other projects in town should get such a waiver. The reason the waivers in place is to try and retain trees so they don't get taken for projects like this. So I don't really support a waiver of that particular provision in town and don't quite understand why it's requested. I know there'll be more opportunity to comment later. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Thank you, Mr. Moore. Next on our list is Mrs. Warden. Yeah, Mr. Chairman, John Warden here. Mrs. Warden and I are doing this together. Unfortunately, we can't seem to make our pictures seen but can you hear me, by the way? We can, yes, sir. Good, all right. Please proceed. And I wanna say we both have raised hands. I would like to speak first briefly and then Mrs. Warden would like to speak. If that's permissible. Certainly. Okay, thank you. Well, let me begin. John Warden, Jason Street, tell me you remember precinct eight and long time resident of the town. I was asked by someone recently, what's a Friendly 40B? And thought about that and well, Friendly 40B is like a friendly mosquito bite. Or a friendly wasp sting or maybe a friendly snake bite. In other words, friendly like that who needs enemies. This project is outsized just from the number of waivers. It's a huge, looks like it takes up two thirds of the lot area. It's totally inappropriate for this site. It's totally, I mean, just from the number of waivers. This, the town's elected representatives of the people have decided what kind of zoning they want in this area. And the developer says, what do I care about what the people decide? I wanna make my money here. I'm gonna put this building where I want it. I'm gonna ask for seven different waivers of your laws because I need to fill my pockets. And I think that's totally inappropriate. All the town gets out of it. We're already in such a dense town is a few affordable apartments, affordable for people who have six figure incomes. So I would like to, I really want to say that I looking at this project, that the whole thing, the whole monstrous building, the cut down of the forest, the interruption of the natural flows of water and stuff and just a huge bulk and the ugliness of the building. This is a project to which you should just say no. And I thank you, Mr. Chairman. Thank you, Mr. Warden. Mrs. Warden. Oh, I did. Oh, I just wanted to add one thing. I hope the members of the commission of the board will read the dot long and detailed document that Mrs. Warden has previously submitted, which is not attached to the agenda for some reason, but it's a thorough analysis of the whole project. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you very much, Christian. This is Patricia Warden. It's important to know that our nation would not have to face the danger of this 40D project if town officials had not chosen to approve it with all its dishonesty and secrecy. Did the select board really think that a historic house, many trees and sustainability efforts should be destroyed to be replaced by a roof and inefficient apartment building with 33 barely affordable units and zero, zero units, which are affordable to very low income families, those most in danger of homelessness and for which Arlington has the greatest need. Our historic houses are now targets for developers since they are often on somewhat larger lots. Indeed, Arlington's first 40D project involved destruction of two civil war era historic houses. Arlington should not support for the loss of its remaining historic homes. Arlington is already the 12 most dense municipalities in Massachusetts. Of Arlington's 20,461 housing units, 61% are already in most of family or two family buildings. We have for many decades ensured against homelessness and war against it. We are close to, I may even exceed the 1.5% land area affordability safe harbor statutory requirement. If Arlington officials choose to do the work to properly and accurately classify non-residential structures as being in conservancy, institutional districts and not in residential districts. Following with a list of interactions in this particular project protocol. First, it breaches our violations of the Commonwealth's smart growth principles. Secondly, confusing and uncorrected statements by mass housing early on that the size of the site is 22.98 acres, whereas in fact it is one acre. Denial third, denial by the advocates that the site contains a house designed as a landmark building. Fourth, staff and secrecy, absence of transparency and public information about the project. Fifth, absence of solicitation of comments from the local community. Six, lack of information provided to local boards other than the conservation commission and the redevelopment board. No acquaintances of mine serving on other town boards were even made aware of the project. Seven, disregard for Arlington's efforts for sustainable development. Eight, disregard for Arlington's bio to prevent possible fuel accommodation in your construction. And nine, possible conflicts of interest. Thank you very much, Mr. Klein. Thank you, Mrs. Warden. Our list is Don Seltzer. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Don Seltzer, Irving Street. I just have a few questions for the applicant and I assume they'll be answered at a future hearing, not tonight. The height of this building is going to be a major point of concern in its impact on its neighbors. There are more than 50 families that live on the Northwest side of this project who would be adversely affected. The applicant has provided an illustration showing the building in the context of other buildings along Mass Ave. Could they provide a similar view along Brattle Street, taking into account the topography and could they also provide a shadow study showing the impact on its abutters? Second, I noticed that the applicants are not requesting waiver for usable open space requirements. Could they provide some detail in what they are claiming for usable open space with the specific square footage? And third, sort of following on from what Mr. Moore raised a little earlier, could they explain why paying into the tree fund is going to jeopardize the profitability of a $30 million project? I'd like to, you know, we see this a lot in 40Bs or other projects where the developer says, well, if we do this, it won't be affordable. I think some financial data and justification for that should accompany this claim for our waiver. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Soutzer. Next on our list is Carl Wagner. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Can you hear me okay and see me? Absolutely, sir. Great, thank you very much. I wanted to say that 40B for anybody who is new to it, and I'm sort of new as a lot of us are, is a process where projects are basically thrust upon communities like Arlington. And a lot of our local rules, as you mentioned, sir, in your introduction, get passed over. We lose local control. The goal of a 40B is nominally to make some affordable housing. 25% of the unit or 13 individual apartments are gonna be quotes affordable. But in actual fact, in oftentimes, and perhaps in this project, the cost of living in those 13 units is very similar to the older apartments in town. It depends on the number of people in them, of course. The 75% of the other units that will be built at the highest rate possible. And in almost all instances, projects like this increase the average cost of living in our town. So they answer a supply question, but they don't answer our affordability housing crisis, which is the only one Arlington has. I'd like to say that there is a future perhaps where Arlington town authorities could look at properly classifying how our residential spaces are existing, and that we could meet the 1.5% safe harbor. As you and Mr. Chairman noted earlier, that safe harbor exists. So 40B projects are a problem that we lose control and we might not have to have this one and others if we properly look at the safe harbor. The second thing I wanted to say is that since we have to take a 40B project currently, I don't think waivers, unless they are very small waivers, should be on the books really for this board to be giving. Particularly waivers that make it unfair for other developers or other people in the community, such as saying that you wouldn't have to go to the board that properly looks at historical things or environmental concerns. You wouldn't have to go through the normal process. Seems particularly unfair when a project is being thrust on our shoulders like this. And of course Arlington is facing, as we all should be aware, a large deficit, a structural deficit of up to $5 million, I believe, very soon after the ARPA funds expire. And Arlington should not be letting this developer in a 40B project or any developer get waivers to not pay us for the loss or the fees that would normally be incurred. And finally, specifically in the area of trees, there are dozens of trees here that are gonna be taken away. Arlington has just started a project to try and look at reducing hot spots and heat islands. This is not currently one, but it could become one if trees are taken away. And we've all been hearing about climate stress and climate resiliency needs and global warming. If we lose the 80 to 100 trees that are here currently or whatever number they are, which is in the tens of trees, we're going the wrong direction. And we should certainly not be rewarding any developer or this one by taking away the tens of thousands of dollars that removing those trees, because we don't want them to do it, would cost them. So I ask you to seriously consider if we should or should not allow unfair removal of fees that go against the grain of our town and what we do still have a little control over. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Wagner. Excuse me, next on my list is Winnell Evans. Thank you very much, Winnell Evans Orchard Place. Thank you to the developer and your representatives for your presentation. I agree with a lot of what people have previously said. As a neighbor though, I have some fairly specific concerns. As others have pointed out, this is a whopper of a building, especially on a street where nothing is above two and a half stories. So my concerns are about how this will kind of integrate into the neighborhood. And I have three specific areas. The first is the one that Ms. Thornton mentioned, which is the requested waiver from the dark sky from the uplighting regulations. I'm guessing that the people who live in this building would also like not to have uplighting. There is so much evidence about how this affects the natural world, birds, animals. It's really the more we learn about it, the more damaging that we learn that it is. So that is one concern going forward. The other is that if you look at this street, I believe there is exactly one street tree, which is struggling on the entire block. And everybody who lives around this building, you know, there is subsidized apartments across the street. There is lower cost old apartment buildings, a two family rental on the other side. This is not one of the ritzier areas of Arlington. And I think it would be a really, really, a really nice gesture and benefit to this block to think about doing something in front of the building rather than putting all of the park area within and behind the building for the exclusive use of the residents. So that would be something I would really appreciate being taken into consideration. And the final thing is, it's my understanding that there will not be a 24-7 on-site manager. And I'm wondering how the building will handle the inevitable overnight guests. There is no overnight street parking in Arlington allowed. So they will not be able to park on Mass Ave. There is a very conveniently located private way, however, which does allow overnight street parking, but only for the residents of that street and their guests. So I am wondering how this will be handled. I'm assuming that people who live in this building will find out pretty quickly about the perk of the private way and will be abusing that. So those are the things that are top of my list right now and thank you very much. Thank you, Ms. Evans. Thank you. So on my list, I had Joanne Preston on the list, but she has taken her name down. Did you want to take a comment? Yes, I do. Ms. Preston. Paul Wagner mentioned it. Oh, sorry. Just a name and address of the record. Oh, sorry. Joanne Preston, 42, Mr. Clay drive. And I had a question. There it is. May I ask a question of the developer? Through me, absolutely. Okay. Does he know if the Massachusetts Municipal Vulnerability Preparedness Program? Mass Municipal Vulnerability. Vulnerability. Arlington just got a grant from these people. It's MVP is the initial. If you'd like, I'll just continue. Please do. Okay. It's an initiative to identify and reduce what are known as extreme heat islands. Extreme heat islands are places in towns and cities, which have a much higher temperature than the surrounding area. They are most related to large buildings and the absence of mature trees. The developer has proposed cutting down the mature Norway maples. And I just wanted to add that the invasiveness is only that they drop their seeds all year than other trees. The state does not recommend cutting them down only that not more of them be planted. But anyway, the developer has that is developing vegetation for the years to come. I think that they should be in touch with this organization, which is strongly supporting maintaining mature trees so that we won't be creating yet another extreme heat island in Arlington. Thank you. Thank you, Ms. Breslin. Are there additional members of the public who wish to address the board this evening? I'm just gonna quickly look through all the pictures, see if anyone is waving frantically. I do not see anyone waving. I do not see any other hands raised. Does Thornton appear to be asking to be recognized for a second time? Barbara Thornton, 223 Park Ave. Yes, apparently there are people in the waiting room that can't get in that want to speak that have been listening. Oh, goodness. Thank you for bringing that to my attention. So for those of you who are just in the waiting room, I apologize that we didn't get you in quicker. We are in the public participation section. So if you would like to address the board, you can use the raise hand feature in the participants tab or if you're calling it by phone, you can dial star nine. And we will put you on the speaker's list and we have the public comment period is still open. So with that, Anson Stewart. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Anson Stewart. Your name and address of the record, yeah. Molton Road, Tolton Road, Arlington. I was listening in on the phone but wanted to join via Zoom so that my comments would not be strangely disembodied. I appreciate it. Thank you. Thanks Ms. Thornton for lagging the waiting room issue. In general, I'm excited to see the development of this project. I think it's great to have more housing in Arlington and especially housing in a transit accessible and bike accessible location. I did have some questions about the parking waivers. So I understand it as of last town meeting the requirement for parking is only one space per unit in multifamily zones. So I just wasn't sure if the applicants are would need to request a waiver if they're getting the multifamily use or if they would even consider lower parking to reduce the space dedicated to storing cars and maybe have a little bit more retail footprint or other uses that would be kind of neighborhood amenities. I'm sure I'll have more questions as additional things come up but thanks for that. Thank you. And then also Grant Cook. Hi, Grant Cook, 16 Walliston Ave in the Heights. Yeah, I think for what I've seen in this presentation this seems like a good project. I think we talk about local control in this town but look what we've done with local control. I think four or 5% of our property is dedicated to multifamily with everything requiring special permits. I mean, this is a, we need more housing. Arlington is focused on being a residential community. We don't have space like Med for other towns dedicated to industry or rail yards or things. So our density, anybody who's driven around these other towns, residentially they are more dense than at least the area that I live in the Heights but we'll get to affordable. I sort of cringe listening to people laugh at apartments available for a quarter of a million dollars which is unheard of at Price Point Arlington. My house probably, the house next to me sold for probably six times that amount recently. I'm sure there are speakers on this very call whose houses in itself were eight, nine, 10 times that amount. A quarter of a million dollar condo is get somebody into Arlington. And I'm actually gonna let somebody else speak right here which is the words of Kim Janie who was former mayor of Boston who talked about the value of ownership. She said, I don't think it's enough just look at the supply of affordable housing which says to live in this house you must remain poor. And she's asking of her words, what I'm asking is the thing about the economic pathways out of poverty. I'm asking us to think about how we address inequities or crazy legislation that we're discriminatory in nature. Most of us are willing to acknowledge this but what are we going to do to repair the harm? 13 units, I think it actually doubles the number of affordable ownership opportunities we have. That itself is a stark reminder of how little we've done in this area and I hope I'm glad to see us allowing a bit more if this project goes forward. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Cook. Next is Sanjay Newton. Good evening, Sanjay Newton 32 Ottawa Road. I too am pleased to see this project coming to town. And I'm hopeful to watch this process move forward. I'm particularly, I'm happy to see it along Mass Ave in our major transit corridor near the bike path. And I'm looking forward to watching the rest of this process play out and having some more housing here in Arlington. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Newton. Next on the list is James Fleming. Yep, can you hear me? I can. And that's like my camera isn't working so I will unfortunately be a disembodied voice. My comment was... Sorry, name and address of the record. Oh, sorry, yeah, sorry. James Fleming, 58 Oxford Street. My comment was I was wondering if the applicant would consider putting the building a little bit closer to the street. As it is, it's from having lived on apartment buildings on Mass Ave, open space in the front of an apartment building is basically wasted space. It's never used for anything. It's not comfortable to use open space on a major road. And having the building be closer to the street, I think would look better in the context of the rest of Brattle Square where you have commercial buildings right on the street, makes the street a little more continuous. And then you can save space in the back and have that either be fewer trees being cut down or you can have it be more green space for whatever might have been more useful. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Fleming. Quick check, there is no one in the waiting room. There is no one who has their hands up. So last call for public comment this evening. Checking the pictures. Don't see anyone else wishing to speak. But with that, the public comment period for this hearing, tonight's hearing is now closed. Thank you to all of you who have contributed this evening. As everyone sees, there is a wide variety of opinions and concerns that we have in this community in regards to this proposed development. And I really appreciate everyone from all perspectives for coming forward and speaking to the board tonight. So now there's a couple of sort of business and record keeping items we need to take care of in regards to this project. And a couple of votes that the board will need to take in regards to the application. So the first, as we have stated before, so the, once the hearing has been opened, the period for review by the board is 180 days. So 180 days from today would be, is in, which is the date. What we're gonna do is April 16th, 2023. So I'm gonna make a motion for the board. I will be looking for a second from the board and then we'll take a roll call vote. So I moved that having received the assent of the, so I would just like to confirm with the applicant that today is the first day of the hearing. Is there any objection to that? No. No. Perfect, thank you. So I moved having received assent from the applicant, the ZBA affirms that the 180 day hearing period for the purposes of 760 CMR 5605 sub three shall be deemed to have commenced on October 18th, 2022. May I have a second? Second. Thank you, Mr. Hanlon. So vote of the board, Mr. Hanlon. Aye. Mr. Riccardelli. Aye. Ms. Hoffman. Aye. Was that an aye? Ms. Hoffman, sorry. Yes, it was a aye. You know, the show is muted, but you're coming across as muted. I don't know why. Mr. Holley and the chair votes aye. That is passed. It moves to the second of these votes. So I would move that the zoning board of appeal receive all documents, correspondence and comments received as a part of the initial application, including the reformatted table of waivers. So this is entering the application formally into the record. Second. Thank you, Mr. Hanlon. The vote of the board, Mr. Hanlon. Aye. Mr. Riccardelli. Aye. Ms. Hoffman. Aye. Can you hear me? I can now. Okay, fantastic. Mr. Holley. Aye. Wonderful. And the chair votes aye. The next vote to the applicant has met with the select board and the conservation commission and possibly other boards in town. So we would like to incorporate those minutes into the formal record for this hearing. So it would move that the ZBA incorporate all minutes from meetings of various town boards and commissions conducted with representatives of the applicant up to the time of the application. And the second. Thank you, Mr. Hanlon. Mr. Chairman, I have a question about this. Yes, sir. Assuming that this, that this motion is approved, what will that mean as a practical matter? Well, are those, particularly the recordings and the various things that are referred to be physically put into the record in our proceedings? How will people know that it's there and be able to access it? Thank you. So, Mr. Hanlon. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I think the most appropriate way to incorporate the substance of those meetings are any A presentations that were made an open meeting. So for example, for the select board and the project eligibility to my recollection, the Montegy Orris made a presentation that would be incorporated into the record and can be found. That's already been submitted to select board. So it's usually put on your sort of list of documents and made available on your website, if you'd like. Secondly, any meeting minutes would be the primary, would be the primary reflection to the extent that there are recordings still available. Typically in Arlington recordings are kept for a certain period of time, but you could create links, for example, to an ACMI broadcast of a select board meeting which are kept for a long, long time and then also the minutes. So practically speaking, you're talking about any presentations, exhibits, documents that were used in those meetings, which all have to be preserved anyway, meeting minutes, and to the extent that they exist, you can include a meeting recordings. And we can have a transcript of the meetings the board would like. Thank you. Mr. Chairman. Mr. Hanlon. Can I ask you one other question, Mr. Heim? Supposing that there are recordings of relevant proceedings now will approval of this and putting them in the record in our case result in a stop order so that there's no future distraction? Mr. Chairman. Please, Mr. Hanlon. Wouldn't consider it a stop order as much as a request from the zoning board of appeals to preserve those records to the extent that they haven't already been deleted. As folks may know, Zoom recordings quickly eat up a lot of space for longer meetings. If they're still around, I think it would be considered a request from the zoning board to preserve those so that we can make them a publicly available but also be available to the zoning board for the review and use in the record to the extent that they have relevant information. Thank you. Mr. Chairman, one last thing. It may be helpful if, again, assuming that this motion passes, it may be helpful if the applicant would assist us by telling us which meetings we should be looking at because they know better than we do where they've appeared in under what circumstances. Yeah, I just... Mr. Chairman, if I may, I just want to point out and remind the board of a comment of town council. The pre-application informational meetings that the applicant went through with the town was designed to help the applicant with the application that it has pulled together and presented to this board and the particular project that it has presented to this board. I would not want there to be any confusion that materials presented previously, to the extent they are different than the materials that have been presented to this board. The only thing the applicant is interested in is the application it has made to this board. Now, the project hasn't changed dramatically. I'm not trying to say that you're looking at something different than what was presented to the selectmen or to the concom. You're not, but I'm concerned that we really need to keep the record as clear as we can. The application and project that we are looking to obtain a comprehensive approval for is the one that we submitted to this board as it may be amended and revised through the proceedings with this board. With that clarification, if the board wants to see previous schematic designs which may not be as developed as much as the ones that you guys have gotten, that's for the board to decide its usefulness. I mean, I don't matter, but you're adding a lot to the record that may not be relevant. That's all I wanted to point out. No, I appreciate that. Basically what the board is looking for is that records of this project as has been previously discussed with other boards and entities, committees in town, we would like that to remain with the record because that is relevant to some of the discussions that you've been having specifically with concom and the concerns that they have expressed to you. Those kinds of things are important for us as we review the documents to understand, the perspective of concom. And obviously with the select board in regards to their response to the initial request for comments on project eligibility. So we just want to make sure that those records are maintained and that's the reason for us having this vote tonight to incorporate the minutes from those sessions as a part of our record. I will point out to the board if you're not aware of it, is that the board of selectmen did submit a comprehensive letter to mass housing in response to a request by mass housing to comment. That is in our record right now. It is? It is, yes. Okay, so you have that board of selectmen letter. You see, I guess the other concern that I have is that again, I haven't gone through all the minutes they say what they say, whether or not we agree or disagree with how a meeting may have been recorded. I don't want that to be a source of confusion but because I really think that we should use this process and these proceedings to vet all of the issues even if we have to go over turf that we previously went over with other boards. It's this proceeding that should be as comprehensive as the board wants it to be and we really shouldn't rely on what happened previously but again, I just point that out and we'll comply with how the board wants to proceed. Thank you. So the motion before the board is to incorporate all minutes for meetings of various town boards and commissions conducted with representatives of the applicant up through the time of the application and that was made by the chair and seconded by Mr. Hanlon. So vote of the board, Mr. Hanlon. Mr. Rikadelli. Hi. Ms. Hoffman. Hi. Mr. Holley. Hi. And the chair votes aye. Moving to the next vote. So as a part of the review process, the board will be engaging consulting engineers and other consultants to assist with the review of the application, specifically in areas where the town does not have the expertise on staff. And so what the ZVA will be asking for is an initial sum of $10,000 from the applicant to retain the peer review consultants. And we're specifically considering the areas of civil engineering and site design, the building design and urban context, environmental impact and the traffic and transportation impacts. And so we would be looking to request the initial sum of money into authorized town council and the planning department to retain the peer review consultants on behalf of the board. So the motion would be, I move the ZVA requests the applicant to transfer an initial amount of $10,000 to the designated town account to retain peer review consultants in the areas of civil engineering, site design, building design, urban context, environmental impacts and traffic and transportation impacts. Said funds will also be used for the transcription of all hearings in relation to this application. Further, the town council and the department of planning and community development staff be authorized to retain appropriate peer review consultants for such purposes and communicate needs for additional funds for the retention of such consultants consistent with chapter 44, section 53G. The board reserves the right to request additional funds in the future to review these and other possible topics which might require analysis by an outside expert. Can I have a second on that? Second. Any questions from the board? Now proceed to a vote. Mr. Hanlon. Hi. Mr. Riccadelli. Hi. Ms. Hoffman. Hi. Mr. Holley. Hi. Chair votes aye. That brings us to... So part of the application as we had stated at the beginning, there's a lot of different pieces to the application and we just wanna make sure that we have everything that we are supposed to have under state statute. So what we've done in the past is the board has requested that the town council's office perform a completeness review on the application and provide just a basic report to the board in regards to that effect. So I would move that the ZVA requests town council to perform a completeness review of the application and provide a report back to the board and applicant within 30 days of this evening's hearing. Second. Thank you, Mr. Hanlon. Any questions from the board? Seeing none, vote of the board, Mr. Hanlon. Hi. Mr. Riccadelli. Hi. Ms. Hoffman. Hi. Mr. Holley. Hi. The chair votes aye. The next question is often the board. So some members of the board have had an opportunity to walk the site when mass housing was available. I think it would be valuable for the board to have an opportunity to see the site and to walk it with the applicant just so we fully understand what it is that the applicant is intending to do. So if the applicant would be amenable to that, we would just ask that you provide us with possible dates for an onsite meeting to review the conditions. Absolutely. Perfect. So I will just make a motion to that effect. So I moved to the board request the applicant to propose possible dates and times for an onsite meeting to review site conditions with the board, the applicant and the respective consultants. Second. Hanlon. Any questions from the board? I have a question. Yes, Mr. Hoffman. Would that meeting be subject to the other rules such as like the Mullen rule in terms of attendance of the board? So it would be more like a working session. It wouldn't be a formal hearing session. It would still be a public meeting because it would involve a quorum of the board. And so as such, the date of the meeting would have to be publicly advertised. It would have to be open. But as such, it would not fall under the meeting requirements in terms of attendance. Okay. Thank you. Would you be looking for particular consultants on our end to join the site visitor? Are you talking about the consultants that the town will be engaging? It might be a good opportunity for the two to meet. At this point, the board is just in the beginning process of hiring consultants. So we would wanna make sure that our consultants see the site and we're assuming that your consultants are very familiar with it anyways. So it would most likely just be our consultants unless there's a specific request otherwise. No, that's fine. So then a vote of the board to request the onsite meeting. Mr. Hanlon. Hi. Dr. Cadelli. Ms. Hoffman. Hi. Mr. Holley. Hi. Chair votes aye. That motion is passed. So the next one is sort of a big one. So the board needs to consider whether to assert safe harbor in regards to this project as we had discussed at the start, there are various state harbor provisions under state law which if the town qualifies, essentially what it does is it allows the board's, it removes the option for the board's decision to be reviewed by the attorney. Any appeal by the applicant would go straight to the courts. If the town does not meet any of the safe harbor provisions then any decision that the board renders can be appealed to the housing appeals committee. And as we said before the housing appeals committee is specifically designed to basically streamline development of these types of projects. And so typically town appeals against towns are not viewed favorably from the town's perspective. And so whether the board can assert that it meets any of the safe harbor provisions is a very important consideration in the review of these projects. The documentation that the board has, so we have requested updated information from the Department of Planning Community Development in regards to these various options. The specific one that is most critical is the general land area minimum. So this is one that the board had asserted that it met back in 2016 in regards to the Mugar development. The board had asserted it. It was the applicant had appealed it and it going to the courts. It stayed in the courts for a very long time. The town did not prevail. And as a sort of coming immediately on the heels of that decision the state issued revised guidelines as to how one is to calculate the guaranteed land area minimum. And so the board can, going into that calculation includes all the land area that is dedicated to projects that have affordable housing as a part of them as long as they have been approved to proceed. And so 1165 R Massachusetts Avenue which is a 40 B project that was approved last year that is under construction that now counts in the town's calculation but the development at Thorndyke Place does not count because it is still tied up in the courts. And so I had asked the Department of Planning and Community Development to go back and take a look at where the town stands now relative to that calculation. And they issued at my request a memorandum that is included on the agenda for tonight's meeting and to sort of get to the bottom line the current estimated plan for 2022 is 1.44 percent. So it is still shy of 1.5 percent. The reason we say it's an estimated number is that some of the housing that would be included in this calculation very specifically deals with residents who have sort of sensitive conditions and the location of their housing is not public and therefore getting a very accurate reading of this number is difficult in some areas. So what we have is we have the most accurate record that we are able to acquire essentially without petitioning the state for issuance of additional information. I would ask Attorney Hyman if that's a correct way of sort of stating that. Thank you Mr. Chairman. If I may I'll answer that question just go into one or two more details if the chair will. So that's correct. The primary area of knowledge that sort of gets a little bit fuzzy sometimes is group homes. The last time we asserted safe harbor status under the general land area minimum we ended up actually having to sue the state to get access to those records because DHCB themselves does not have access to those records for the purposes of their subsidized housing inventory. In short we had to end up filing suit against DMH and other entities that feel it's their duty to keep that information as confidential as possible. Reasons that a lot of folks can understand in terms of the types of folks who might be vulnerable in our living room's housing in that housing. And as part of our application for the assertion of the 1.5% we filed certain documents in here. I also just want to note that the litigation of this particular issue went on for about three years. We assumed the most aggressive posture that the town could take. Many members of the board are familiar with special counsel John Whitton who was hired specifically to litigate that issue and did an excellent job alongside Adam Korowski who's no longer employed by the town, our GIS coordinator. There are many aspects of the DHC's decision that I vehemently disagree with. One of the things that happened in that particular matter was what I believe was an ex post facto application of those revised Glam guidelines that you mentioned. In other words, Glam guidelines were revised in part in response to Arlington's assertion of its 1.5%. The point that I'm trying to make for the board is we threw the kitchen sink in support of the assertion of our 1.5% in the last 40 B of controversy and the HAC still found against us including in some ways that we're very difficult to accept but nonetheless remain the state of the law. So for example, in Arlington, private ways were considered developable land by the HAC that is not going to change. This is a legislative problem and a political problem. It is not something that the ZVA or the town's legal department or the planning department can change because we don't think it's right. It's something that the arbiter of this decision has decided in terms of how they're going to interpret the regulations. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Thank you, Mr. Heim. Given opportunity also to tell you, I'm the Assistant Director of Planning for New Development I don't know if you have any further comments on the Glam calculation. Sure, I think just the one thing to add in listening to your description is just to clarify that while we do not know the location of the land area of group homes right now in this calculation, we use the calculation that was accepted by the HAC in the 2019 decision. So we didn't assume zero, we just assumed that it remained the same. Great, thank you. Mr. Chairman. Mr. Hanlon. If I may, I've got a question that I'd like you to ask for Mr. Heim. One of the reasons apparently, as I understand what Mr. Heim just told us, the regulations that were adopted near the end of that proceeding and that were applied sort of retroactively, possibly in order to deny us the ability to successfully claim the 1.5%. Those regulations now have been on the books for several years. It isn't expo's facto anymore. And so if I understand Mr. Heim correctly, what he's saying is that the current regulations that determine what we can do and how we can do it in making that calculation are regulations that have been adopted in light of our previous position and which we're relied on by HAC in denying our previous position and that whatever question there may be about the legitimacy of that then, there'd be no question about they're applying those same regulations now. Mr. Chair, if I may, that is correct and well stated with exception of one clarification. And that's probably due to miss something that I haven't spoke about. They're not regulations, they're guidelines on how to interpret the same regulations. So the regulations have been on the books for quite some time. The guidelines in terms of how to interpret those regulations and I don't wanna be flippant. Excuse me for perhaps being a little bit sore about the outcome of some previous litigation, but there are a number of issues that were somewhat ambiguous and that we felt were rightly interpreted by Arlington. Those guidelines in terms of how to interpret the regulations we felt were applied retroactively, but that is not the case anymore. There's guidelines in terms of how to interpret regulations have been on the books now for several years. Thank you. Thank you, John. So just to go down through the list of the different minima. So the first is the housing unit minimum, which would be the town having greater than 10% of housing units listed on the subsidized housing index. The town is definitely below that number right now. Aspen's line of motion has to know that presented off the top of her head. Yes, right now the town is at 6.54%. Thank you for that. The second criteria would be the general land area minimum, having greater than 1.5% of available land area dedicated to units on the subsidized housing index. Our best calculation is that we are at 1.44%. The total land area having greater than 3%, sorry, 0.3% of all land area and residential, commercial and industrial areas dedicated to units on the subsidized housing index. I don't think we have calculated that precisely, but at the prior hearing it was determined that we were nowhere near that number. The housing production plan, having met or exceeded 0.5% of the affordable housing production goal within the calendar year would grant us a one-year moratorium and exceeding 1% would give us a two-year moratorium. The town was granted a one-year moratorium last August after the approval of the project for 1165 RMASF that one-year moratorium has expired as of August. Recent progress towards housing unit minimum, having created subsidized housing units equal to at least 2% of the municipality's total number of housing units within the last year. The town has not done so. Review of large projects, the number of units in the proposed project exceeds 2% of all housing units in the municipality. It does not, that number is somewhere over 400. And this is obviously well short of that number. And related applications, prior applications for construction on the same land within the previous 12 months. That would be specifically if there were applications for special permits or variances. And it's intentionally to prevent somebody seeking a variance on a property and then immediately turning around and requesting a 40B. And that has not happened. These sites have not been subject to any action before there's any Board of Appeals or the Redevelopment Board in recent memory. So with that in mind, I feel very confident that the town does not meet any of the statutory minima, which would allow the town to assert safe harbor in regards to a 40B application at this time. The Board does have 15 days to make this decision. This is not a decision that we need to make this evening. But if I don't know if there would be any change in any of the information the Board would have within the next 14 days. The Board does have a meeting next week. If members of the Board would be more comfortable postponing a vote on this question until that time. Otherwise, I think it's appropriate for the Board to go ahead and vote at this time based on the decision that it has. But it's on the, excuse me, on the information that it has. So I will move that upon review of the subsidized housing inventory related town records and the Department of Planning and Community Development member random regarding the status of the general land area minimum. The Board confirms that the Board will not assert safe harbor protection under 760 CMR 5603. Second. Mr. Hanlon, are there any questions from the Board in regards to this vote and the implications of the vote being none? Let's do a roll call vote of the Board. Mr. Hanlon. Aye. Mr. Riccadelli. Aye. Ms. Hoffman. Aye. Mr. Holley. Aye. And the Chair votes aye. I'm going to bring us to the final vote we need to take this evening, which would be to continue this hearing. We had a coordination meeting with the applicant at the beginning of the month, sort of setting out a schedule for this hearing and for some of the subsequent hearings, the hiring of consultants and such. So just to confirm with the applicant that the date we agreed to continue to was going to be Tuesday, November 22nd. Is that the date that you all have in your records as well? It is. Perfect. So with that, I would move that tonight's hearing be continued until Tuesday, November 22nd, 2022 at 7.30 p.m. Second. I take the chair, Lin. Mr. Chair, if I may. Mr. Elvin. Before we conclude, in order to keep the process productive and moving and efficient, maybe it makes some sense to talk about trying to focus the attention of the subject matter for November 22nd so that we can get lined up any peer review that you would like on the subject matter and by then have to try to get all of the peer reviews in simultaneously. We're not gonna, most likely not gonna cover all the subjects in the same evening, but at least we could start addressing some of them. And, you know, again, I leave it up to the board. We don't particularly care what order, but the one that may make sense to proceed on because it's relatively compact and manageable to be able to be done between now October 18th and November 22nd would be traffic, where we present on November 22nd the traffic assessment impact report that's part of our application by Vanessa Associates that prepared it. If you could identify and bring a line of wine, your review consultant in the next few days, it's not an overwhelming traffic study that I think will be challenging for review consultant to be able to review and provide a comment back, hopefully even a couple of a few days before November 22nd, so we have an opportunity to see the review comments so we can even be prepared to address them substantively if we can on the 22nd. And if you don't wanna do traffic, we could pick another subject. I'm not trying to suggest how you guys do this. I'm just trying to keep us moving efficiently so that we're just not here on the 22nd saying, well, we don't have any of our peer reviews. Let's continue it another month because it is important to the applicant that not only do we get through this process within six months, but hopefully well before six months. It's a very expensive process under our contracts. We have permitting deadlines and we really don't wanna find ourselves needing to extend the process after 180 days. We'd really like to try to accomplish it and complete it and get a yay or nay well before 180 days. Absolutely. No, and I think your recommendation to do traffic first is a good one because as you say, it is a relatively straightforward question and is one that's fairly easy to get into quickly. At the town, we are working with the Department of Planning and Community Development and the town council's office to bring peer review consultants online so we'll have them available as soon as we can. And I think we can just discuss, we should hold another sort of planning session just to sort of work through the rest of the schedule at some point probably in about two weeks, if that makes sense to you. Yeah, that would be fine. Again, identifying your other review consultants and getting them online so that we can get regular feedback. It may very well be that at a subsequent meeting, we could tackle two subject matters. We don't have a separate meeting for each subject matter. I'm just thinking that to be able to get review consultants on board, have them have an opportunity to review the project, provide comments so that we can respond subsequently to do that for too many subjects the first time. We're just not gonna accomplish anything. Absolutely. Mr. Chairman, Mr. Hanlon. I'd like to, one of the things we'll do whether we do traffic or anything else on that first meeting is begin to plot out what subjects will be coming up in future meetings. And I just wanted to note that while this relates to our peer review consultants, it also relates to other boards and commissions in the town who have been given notice on this and who will soon I hope be providing us with their perspective as to what they think the issues are and the way in which they would formulate their approach to them. Those are all things that we will need to take account in planning out what the schedule is and what the order of the meetings are. Also, we've gotten the number of comments tonight as to issues from the residents and as to issues that we should be focusing on. And I would encourage people who have thoughts about that who may not have told us what their thoughts are already to do it because once we figure out sort of where we think the issues are and we begin working through them, there's a certain degree of learning that we do and which ultimately results in some degree of improvising, but the major issues need to get sort of understood fairly early if we're going to proceed in an efficient way. And so those things are out as well as the attitudes or the advice that we receive from peer review consultants. Thank you, General. The motion that, is there any further discussion in regards to this application this evening? Mr. Chairman, just one more comment. When we have the opportunity to address some of the comments we heard tonight, we heard some very good feedback and we'd like to, you know, community outreach and hearing what the public has to say is important to projects like this and we appreciate and value that feedback and we'd like to respond individually if we can to a degree and maybe that can happen during that next meeting also. Absolutely. Yeah, to follow up, Matt, with what you just said, some of the, I'm in a complete agreement, it may make sense to some of the specific comments. You know, there was some comments regarding, for example, up lighting that would be appropriate when we're discussing the design of the building and we'll address those comments of uplining in that context so we could do it independently. We're gonna get new public comments at every hearing. So we'll make sure we cover them all and then we'll leave it up to the chair to tell us, do you want us to respond, you know, in the moment or do you wanna defer a response until we're at the subject matter of the comment? Yeah. With that, then I will take a vote of the board to continue the comprehensive permit hearing for the residences at Bellwork until Tuesday, November 22nd, 2022 at 7.30 p.m. Mr. Hanlon. Hi. Durkin Valley. Hi. Ms. Hoffman. Hi. Mr. Holly. The chair votes aye. We are continued on the comprehensive permit hearing which so we thank the applicants for all their participation this evening. Look forward to seeing you back before us next month and for the rest of the board, I'm sorry I have to keep you for some other business. Thank you so much for your time this evening to everybody. We appreciate it very much. Mr. Chairman, one quick question. Paul Maggiore, where do we deliver the check? That will... Your house, sir. Yeah, we just need to make sure the account is set up before you send it over. Okay, you'll let us know. We will absolutely will, yes. Thank you, County, for your time. All of you appreciate it. You're very welcome. Have a great evening. Thank you. Bye-bye. So I will return back to our agenda and go back to the administrative items. So that would be the next item on our agenda would be a vote on the approval of a written decision. This is for 7072 Oxford Street. This was written by Mr. Hanlon, a distributed reviewed by the board and a final version was issued earlier today. Are there any questions in regards to the written decision for 7072 Oxford Street? Seeing none, may I have a motion to approve? So moved. Thank you, Mr. Hanlon. And may I have a second? I can. Thank you, Mr. Rikadelli. So vote of the members who were voting on the initial would be Venkat Holley. Aye. Mr. Hanlon? Aye. Rikadelli? Aye. And the chair votes aye. Mr. DuPont being absent tonight. So that written decision is approved. And that can be turned to the applicant. And then the last piece of business for this evening is discussion of hybrid meeting discussion points. So at next week's meeting, the hybrid meeting review committee is coming to speak with us in regards to how the board might proceed with hybrid meetings going forward. And as a part of that, they issued a document, which I believe I shared with everyone, which had a few discussion points that they had wanted us to have before the meeting just so that we didn't meet with them sort of flat footed on this question. And so I will go ahead and share this screen. And so this is the decision points they had asked us to address. So I wonder if we should delegate sufficiently trained person or other meeting member staff person to manage the remote communications. Ideally that would be the board assistant once that position is filled. But in the meantime, I would ask Mr. Valerelli or Mr. Lee if either of them would feel comfortable serving in that role. We can handle that, Mr. Chairman. What's that? We can handle that, how to be fine. Excellent. The second is what happens in the case of a technical failure? So if in the middle of the meeting, the meeting suddenly gets cut off, what is sort of the default position? So the things that they sort of recommend, one would be that the board just adjourns that if the meeting dies, the meeting is adjourned and we pick up at a future date. Another would be to pause to allow travel time for people to go to Town Hall to continue the meeting. So that might be a pause of like half an hour to allow people to gather up their things and come over to Town Hall and get settled. Or continuing with the meeting, assuming that there's enough people available in person to continue with the meeting. And so I'm sort of curious what people think about these different options for how one would proceed. My sense is that the pausing is not as helpful because especially if we lose the connection because it's a storm, we're not gonna ask everyone to pack into their cars and drive into the storm to come to Town Hall to try to continue the meeting. The adjournment would be a possibility. I think continuing is, my only concern about continuing is do we still have a quorum to vote? Because a lot of the things we need to vote on we need to have a vote of four or five members. So if we have four members present locally and one participating remotely, if they lose the connection, now the applicant have to have all four votes. And that sort of changes the calculus for the applicant, which isn't necessarily a nice thing to do two thirds of the way through the hearing. So my sense would be that we would either either pause for, say 15 minutes to see if the connection comes back after which we would automatically adjourn or if we would just adjourn at that time and then pick up later. Yes, Lear. I have a question. Adjourning to a predetermined time seems to me to have a lot of advantages to it as long as we're in a situation where we're not on the verge of allowing time mandatory time limits expire. Obviously we have to think through what the implications of this all are as far as notice and the public meeting was concerned. But clearly if we would know we're going into any meeting whether or not we're facing a difficulty or at least we should know that with a 40B obviously this kind of thing can come up more than it does normally, but there's always is the possibility where you have to act more quickly. Continuing, so you would want to take into consideration that difference. The applicant may be willing to waive in order to avoid having to continue and to have that effect. It would be interesting to think through how it is that that waiver could be effectuated so that we could, I mean, we could record it the next time but the applicant would have to be in a position where he could actually do the waiver. It seems to me that while pausing doesn't work at all the continuing with the meeting has the danger of sort of distorting a meeting that's already underway and it may be a useful thing to do and it may be the only thing that you can do but especially since it could be to adverse to the interests of the applicant it may very well be that if we had a procedure that allowed the applicant to consent to waiving a deadline and that that could be made effective in Mr. Hymes point of view that we could sort of do an adjournment to a pretty determined date and time with the applicant at some relevant point having either consented to that or saying, well, if we don't consent then you can go with four or however that concerns out to be. This doesn't need to get, I think completely decided tonight but it's a more complicated thing than just picking in the alternative because as the question suggests in the bottom part of the paragraph the right answer may depend upon what kind of case you have and what the particular circumstances are. Thank you Mr. Hanlon. Are there thoughts on this topic? Mr. Sherry. Mr. Frigadelli. I agree with what you both have brought up but I think adjourning if we had to pick one of these options in a more black and white sense I would say adjourning makes the most sense if we could figure out how we would schedule that predetermined time especially with this continuing option thinking about a situation where we may have a number of members of the board in person that we could continue to meeting but the public would not have access to the hearings because the digital piece is gone. I don't think that that would be a very inclusive way to kind of run the board so. Thank you, very good point. Mr. Chair. Yes, please. Yeah, I also agree. I think I'm in line with everyone except my one thing with adjourning is and I think you mentioned this it seems like it would be appropriate in terms of a technical failure to do a very brief pause before determining to adjourn. So I don't know what other committees are doing. You know, just five, 10 minutes whatever we deem appropriate so that if it turns out to be a very short term failure we haven't created more complication than necessary. That's a very good point. Yeah, because sometimes these interruptions seem to be pretty brief. Okay, the next one they asked us to consider how do you recognize members of public who would like to speak? Boy, it's been so long since we've met in person I'm trying to remember what we did. I think we had people raise hands and then we sort of called on them and they may have, I think we just had them sort of stand up in place. I don't think we had them come to a microphone. We did in the end, we were starting to get online. And so when we're doing things with ACMI in their lion's room, I'm trying to remember if we actually had a public mic set up for that purpose or if they just sort of spoke loudly from where they were. Chairman? Yes. It was a little bit of both sometimes when we had larger hearings and a big crowd, people did come up to a microphone, especially if the proceedings were being taped. We're not taped, that's not what you do anymore, but video. But there also were sort of less formal ones that were people just kind of stood up. I mean, we were probably less formal than we should and we would like to be right now to do that. But one of the disadvantages of that procedure when we did it was it was, I never really went back and listened to the audio tape that we made of those things, but it must have been totally unintelligent because nobody was anywhere near a microphone. People were muttering as they leaned over full-sized drawings and so forth. So going back to that is not really, it's not really an option. We have to, basically we have to deal with the fact that even if Zoom doesn't, isn't doing this somehow TV is doing it, where all of this is being videoed and it all has to everybody who speaks is gonna have to speak in relationship to a microphone and a camera so that the video can record it. That definitely makes sense. Other thoughts on that? Yeah, I think we had, trying to remember if I watched and did those. Those are very few hearings we had before between when we started with ACMI and we went online. But I think it was an issue going back and trying to understand those recordings. And certainly when we were just recording things with a pocket recorder on top of the desk, it was very hard sometimes to hear people who are not very far away. Mr. Chairman. Mr. Moore. Yeah, could I make a comment relative to your discussion? I think so. The reason being that the tree committee is one of the committees which has agreed to be on the pilot for the hybrid approach. And the pilot, we just have been talking about this recently. So I know what the town, a little bit about what the town's been doing. They set up one room to start testing this process at the town hall annex. And they also have the TV that sits in the lion's committee room. And the equipment they're installing does the hybrid work and also has cameras that follow the sound and things like that. So it goes and focuses on the people who are talking. It's going to be probably pretty user friendly, pretty quickly to support what you're trying to do. So you just might want to keep that in mind. That's all. Thank you for that. The next was what's the expectation for committee members to require a quorum to be attending in person. If you do require a quorum of members in person, do you have rules around how many in person meetings? So this really sort of gets at how often people have to be in person, how comfortable people are being in person and how we work that. Certainly, going back to the earlier question about what do we do if there's a technical failure? I think we would, if the plan was that we would just continue on, then this would be a much more important question. Certainly the sense I was getting from the board was that we would want to have an adjournment possibly after a pause to see if we could get to reestablish things. And then if we did adjourn, it would probably be helpful to have a quorum present who could vote, there would be three people so that they could formally vote to continue the hearing. And then as far as whether we would have, how do people think, do we need to have a policy? Would we want to have a policy about how often people have to appear in person? I don't want to force anyone to have to appear in person if they're uncomfortable doing so. Thank you. Mr. Hanlon. I could say that I probably will be less comfortable than most of you in doing that. I sort of, I mean, I've kind of a negative reaction to the idea of having a minimum number of people present in person. Sometimes I would just assume not have a hybrid meeting at all, actually. And that would vary, but as soon as you begin doing that, your essential meeting turns out to be your in-person meeting and everybody else is out on the wings. And there's a certain kind of a distance that I think is not entirely productive of a useful discussion. So I guess my sense is that I would be very, not suspicious, I would be hard-pressed to agree with the notion that we ought to have any particular number of people who are in present in person. Thank you. I mean, this is all comes from being a septicinarian and the risks of being in person, particularly if there's going to be a lot of people in a crowded room are more important to me than they might be to some others. I believe, Mr. Bagnale, you are on the committee, is that correct? That is correct. Can I just comment that the question of four kind of assumes that as of, I think it is March, the executive order allowing for remote participation expires and committee members would be required to be in person again. And Attorney Hyme may be able to offer more insight into that, but our assumption is that the hybrid for committee members might have a clock on it. The legislature might fix that. Mr. Hyme? Yeah, unfortunately, the legislature has, Mr. Bagnale probably knows well, and actually Mr. Chair knows well as well. The legislature tends to move at the legislature's own pace. So every time we think that the order is about to expire at the, not necessarily at the 11th hour, but they oftentimes cut it pretty close. So unfortunately, one of the things it will have to do is do some contingency planning. There is, to my understanding, some state legislation pending to make some of these options permanent, but I'm not sure the status of those as of this week. Thank you, Mr. Hyme. I think I may have cut off one of our board members on this. Oh yeah, I was just going to weigh in that I'm actually in sort of a similar, despite not being a sub-diginarian, I'm in a sort of similar position to Mr. Hanlon that I would prefer, at least in the short term, to not be compelled to show up in person on a certain interval. And then obviously that could be, would be re-evaluated in March. I understand. Number five, Zoom-specific decision points. Do we need webinar function? So we typically do not use the webinar function in Zoom. I was a little nervous tonight because it, you know, anybody could have unmuted themselves at any point, but everyone was really very civil in terms of keeping themselves muted. So I don't think webinar is a function that the board specifically needs. We typically do not enable chat. We had a bad experience with chat on the NewGuard development and decided to not turn it back on. I did have a conversation with Jennifer Seuss about this that some boards like chat because it's sort of a way for people to put questions in, which I think is, it sort of depends on how you run the chat. If the chat is just directing questions to somebody who's monitoring the chat on behalf of the board, I think that that becomes a good way to deal with that. If it's just sort of an open forum for people to comment back and forth, then that becomes less helpful very quickly. Do we use the waiting room feature? We do. So we would have to, so maybe the given tonight's meeting, maybe the chime announce feature would not be a bad thing to use just sort of provide an additional queue that there's somebody in the waiting room that we may wanna let in. Do we record the meeting for the purpose of creating minutes? We do so, but also ECMIA is doing it. Will attendees be muted upon entry? That's probably not a bad idea. I can't recall what our current setting is on that question. And that's what they wanted us to discuss. I'd ask Mr. Bagnell, is there any other topics we should consider before we speak with you guys next week? No, I think that's good. And that's covering it. And it's just things to think about. And the rules don't have to be the same for each meeting, right? I think one of our thoughts was this might be, these might be laid out with the agenda that you published in advance of the meeting so that people going into any given meeting know what the rules of the road are. Great, well, that concludes that. So I'll go ahead and stop the share. So that is the end of the business we have before, excuse me, before us tonight. Anything else for the board? We are meeting next week. Rick, I can't remember. Do we have one or two things on for next week? I know we have a continuance. Mr. Chairman, we have a continuance and two other hearings minor in nature, I think projections and to minimum yards and a usable space deficiency. That's all we have. Oh, perfect. Great. Some administrative items approval of meeting minutes from the last time we had that we did not get to tonight. Yeah. And then for tonight's meeting, I think now that we have some approval for funds, I think we can reach back out to Acorn about getting us a full transcript of the meeting as opposed to. She will. For normal meetings. That's correct, Mr. Chairman. She will have a copy of the of the hearing tonight by tomorrow morning. Wonderful. Yep. Anything further for the board? Mr. Chairman. Mr. Hanlon. Just in light of having another of the usable open space, things would in the opinion that we approved tonight, we made it clear that it's the question of whether or not there's the significant extension of nonconforming use is in the first instance, a decision that needs to be made by ISD. And if the building inspector is willing to do that, at this point, having been clear about that, it would be better, I think, in terms of procedure to have an explicit decision on the part of the building inspector, rather than just assuming implicitly, it wouldn't be before us unless there had been a decision of that kind. So it would be nice, at least, if the record would show what the decision of the building inspector was on that point. Mr. Chairman, can I help you with that answer? Absolutely. Great question, Mr. Hanlon. So this particular case is a case that actually does have open space, but not enough, qualifies for a certain amount of GFA of the existing structure, but it does not qualify for the addition that they want to put on. So unlike other cases that we've heard that did not have any open space to begin with to cover what they had, this, in fact, does have open space to cover X amount of GFA, but not enough. So the commissioner has determined that in that case, the board will hear it. If it goes back to what we were used to, that there was no open space at all, we will address that and revisit that, and that may not come before the board again. That's still pending. This case will be heard before the board, according to the building commissioner and myself's meeting. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Unless there's anything further. Oh, I had a quick schedule and question actually. Yes, please. This is just with regards to the site visit. Yeah. If we're trying to wait until we have the other sort of expert consultants on board, is it realistic that that meeting or that visit would occur prior to the next 4DV hearing or do you think that it would probably be after? And you're not sure is an okay answer too. Yeah, I'm very hopeful that it would occur before then. Okay. Certainly the intention in having the hearing on November 22nd was to provide enough what the applicant would really like and make sense is for there to be enough time for the board to hire somebody, have them do a first round of review on what the application is, give it back to the applicant so the applicant can arrive at the meeting on the 22nd sort of prepared to address those questions. So our hope is that we would have somebody on board, certainly within the next two weeks. And then we could have, and it would be great for them really at the start to get a view of the site and to have a sense as to what they're really looking at. So fingers crossed it's within the next two, three weeks. Okay, great, thank you. Absolutely. Mr. Chairman, could I ask a question? Mr. Moore. In terms of that site visit, is this for board members only are other people well like myself allowed to join you or not? And I understand either way would make sense. Yeah, so technically because we would have a quorum of the board present, it is a public meeting. And as such, it is open to the public. There was a, there were a couple of meetings that were held. So we had one meeting where the somebody, somehow something got messed up and the applicant didn't show up. But we did have a site meeting with the applicant and mass housing and members of the board were invited to visit the site. This is probably three months ago now. And so we just, it was announced on the town website that this meeting was happening and the meeting happened. So it's, it is a public meeting, people can attend but the board is not going to do a big announcement a big splash announcement that this is happening but it will be noticed officially as any other meeting would be noticed. Okay, thank you. Absolutely. So with that, I would like to thank you all for your participation in tonight's meeting of the Arlington Zoning Board of Appeals. I appreciate everyone's patience throughout the meeting, especially would like to thank Rick Valerelli, Vincent Lee, Kelly Lynema, Russell Lau, Doug Heim and everyone else at the town for all their assistance in preparing for and hosting this online meeting in this first hearing in regards to this new 40B application. Please note that the purpose of the board's reporting the meeting is to ensure the creation of an accurate record of the proceedings. It is our understanding that reporting 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. I moved. Thank you, Mr. Hanlon. Do I have a second? Second. Thank you, Mr. Holly. Vote of the board to adjourn, Mr. Hanlon. Aye. Rick Adele. Aye. Toppen. Aye. Mr. Holly. Aye. Chair votes aye. The board is adjourned. Thank you all very much. Thank you, guys. Nice job. Thank you. Good night, everybody. Thank you. Thank you, everyone. Thank you, folks.