 It is 7 o'clock and we will call this a November 2 meeting of the Count of Arlington Redevelopment Board meeting to order. Good evening. This meeting of the Arlington Redevelopment Board is being conducted remotely consistent with Governor Baker's executive order of March 12, 2020, due to the current state of emergency and the Commonwealth due to the outbreak of the COVID-19 virus. In order to mitigate the transmission of the COVID-19 virus, we have been advised and directed by the Commonwealth to suspend public gatherings and, as such, the governor's order suspends the requirement of the open meeting law to have all meetings in a publicly accessible physical location. Further, all members of public bodies are allowed and encouraged to participate remotely. Before I go any further, if anyone is not muted, if you could please mute yourself, there's a bit of background noise. Thank you. For this meeting, the Arlington Redevelopment Board is convening via Zoom as posted on the town's website identifying how the public may join. Please note that this meeting is being recorded and that some attendees are participating via video conference. Accordingly, please be aware that other people may be able to see you and take care not to screen share your computer. Anything that you broadcast may be captured by the recording. So before we start, we will take a roll call to identify attendance at this meeting. First, we'll start with the members of the Redevelopment Board, Ken Lau. Present. David Watson. Present. Eugene Benson. Present. Katie Levine Einstein. Present. And I, Rachel Zimbari, the chair, am present. And I believe we have two staff members from the Department of Planning joining us this evening, Jenny Rait. Present. And Erin Zwerko. Present. Do we have any other planning board members joining us this evening? Okay, great. Thank you. So before we get to the first item on our agenda, I wanted to turn it over to Jenny who can speak to the other agenda item that we were potentially going to hear this evening as well. Rachel, you just need to, you know, open the hearing and then I'll gladly, I'm going to share on the screen the letter from the applicant. Sure. So we'll open tonight's hearing, the open public hearing. Before we move to docket number 2717, we will talk about the other continued hearing which I believe was docket 2717 for 23 Broadway which was a continued public hearing. Yep, this is as amended docket 2905 and the applicant has requested if the hearing can be continued to November 16th. This of course is the first day of a special town meeting, but I believe that we could meet before that potentially, alternatively, the next available time would be December 7th. So I leave that to the board to decide what date they would, they wish to continue this hearing. So I'll run through a quick roll call to see if there are any preferences starting with Ken. I would probably be okay to move them to December. December. Gene? That would be my preference although I live with their date but for me December would be better. Okay, yeah we do have a busy night on the 16th. David? Yeah, I concur December would be better. And Katie? December sounds good to me. Okay. Great. So, Ginny, can you give me that date one more time? That's December 2nd? December 7th, 7th. And if you can continue the hearing, have a motion to continue the hearing. We'll take a motion. Yep, no problem. Thank you. Thank you, Ginny. No motion. Great. So that's it. There's a motion to continue the public hearing to December 7th. Do I hear a second? Thank you. We'll take a roll call vote. Ken? Yes. David? Yes. Gene? Yes. Katie? Yes. And I am a yes as well. So docket 2717 will be continued to December 7th. So moving on to our next item, which is to reopen the continued public hearing for docket number 36331500 Mass Ave. And I believe we have attorney Nessie and Monty French here, but first I will turn it over to Ginny Rait to see if there are any notes from the Department of Planning. No, I actually, I don't have any further notes for this evening other than what I've provided in my memo, which was an update, simply outlining the, the items that the Board had requested and their response to a couple of those items that had been requested, which I'm sure they will discuss further with you this evening. I believe Monty and Bob and Nessie are both present and perhaps I think there's one other person from the applicant team, Emily. So I will turn it over to them. Thank you. Great. Thank you, Ginny. Bob, I'll turn it over to you to introduce yourself and the team. All right, Bob and Nessie here, and I do represent the petitioner and a company. I am accompanied by Monty French, the architect, Emily Driscoll, the designer and Darren D'Anucci, one of the owners. You may recall from the last meeting that we went through our presentation and the Board members of the Board had various suggestions they wanted us to address. We have done that, I believe, and with two matters that I will leave to the end for a discussion. However, the items that were presented to us related to access to usable open space, double hung windows on the side and rear elevations to be consistent with elevations and rendering, restructure the first floor as offices, consider solar panel and roof deck, improve side and rear elevations, fencing around the retaining wall and slope, use permeable pavers. In the TDM plan, we were asked to provide, and I think we suggested one or more of these items ourselves, a shower, a charger, one space per unit with respect to the tenant parking. And we had already indicated that we were going to be providing covered bicycle parking in storage and bicycle parking sharing on site. Now, those items related to the parking requirement, as you can see from the plans that we discussed last time, we have five parking spaces and we need six. So we're asking for a 25% reduction with respect to parking. And we have suggested to the members of the Board, and I'm suggesting now that the items that we're proposing should be considered by the Board with respect to our suggestions to the Board as to considerations they should get into with regard to whether we are in fact offering concessions, I'll put it in the context of concessions to the Board with respect to the Transportation Management Plan. So that's the reason why we're offering those items to the Board. And again, I think that was consistent with what we had discussed last time. There were two items that we basically were not able to comply with. And I'll just point those out to you now. They were the solar panel and roof deck. The solar panel basically we have a problem with because there is a 10 foot setback requirement, I'm told, with respect to code in that any equipment on the roof would have to be set back 10 feet from the equipment as contained on the roof. According to Darren Danushi, one of the owners, who is a solar panel installer, if you had to comply with that, given the area that you have on the roof, you would not have an awful lot of room to do effective solar panels. So I'd be requesting that that item not be an item that may be mandated that we need to comply with as far as the suggestions of the Board last time were. With respect to the situation on the roof with regard to the roof deck, I mentioned in an email to Jenny that one of the reasons we did not want or the reason we did not want to do the roof deck was that in constructing the stairway to the roof deck, we would be taking away square feet from apartments. Well, I may be wrong on that. I'm not a contractor. I'm not an architect. And I may be wrong on that. It's possible that you could construct the roof deck and not take away from the square feet with respect to the apartments because of the stairway. However, there's a more important consideration for the client with respect to that issue. And that consideration is that the client is really at the outer limits of its budget in terms of what is what is proposing as far as the site is concerned. And the cost to install the roof deck according to, again, my discussions with my client, Mr. Danucci, would put them in a position where the cost factor would be something that they would have difficulty complying with. Of course, they could comply with that. Okay, there's no question about that. But there would be a problem economically in terms of all the numbers. They've been working on this project for more than a year. COVID hasn't helped, of course, okay? The wall in the back of the property hasn't helped either. So I'd be asking that both with regard to the solar panels and the roof deck that the board consider not mandating that we have to comply with those two issues. Having said all of that, I think I'd like Monte to talk about the items that he has addressed as far as the plans are concerned. Monte, could you jump in, please? Thank you, Bob. Actually, I'm going to have Emily Driscoll in our office go ahead and go through this. Oh, all right. Emily's fine. Can you hear me? Yes, we can. Okay, perfect. Emily Driscoll from Monte French Design Studio. As Bob mentioned, we came out of the last meeting with a number of comments that we tried to take into account. And we tried to be as responsive to these comments as possible in our updated package. So I will run you through the changes that we've made basically based on these comments. So if we start on the ground floor here as shown on the screen, we have taken away that ground floor unit and made it office space. We have the store front in the front. And then we also have the restroom with the corridor connecting both of the spaces. And this allows the option of having two separate tenants or one tenant that could rent both the spaces out with the connection in the middle. And we also have the shower in the restroom, as Bob mentioned, as part of the TDM plan. The mechanical trash room and bike room have remained the same with the access from the rear of the building. If you move to the exterior of the building, we have now shown the walkway from the front street to that usable area in the rear. And as part of our package, we have included an enlarged plan so that you can see more clearly the breakdown of the 8% grade area. We made sure that 75% of our usable open space was within that 8% grade. And we have added the landscape wall to make sure that this meets the code and also just it's visually appealing. So we've included rendering of this rear area as well just so that you can get a better idea of the feel of the space and that it's actually, it is a nice area back there for residents to use. We have also on the exterior of the building, if you go down to the elevation, we have noted that the side and the rear of the building will now have the double hung windows to match the style that were on the front facade. And we've also added the vertical paneling to mirror the style and to break up the facades as well. And we've also added the fences to the plan so you can see along the retaining wall, there's no fences. So you can see the electric charging station in the parking lot. And you can see we've added some lighting and there's the fencing as well for that rear area. And we've also on the roof plan, you'll see we included the roof hatch for roof access, which will give you a better idea of one of the comments from last meeting. In the parking lot, we've also shown two drains that will be factored into the design, which of course will need to be discussed further with Civil and Town Engineer, but we've included them in our, as well. And we've also included that each parking lot will have, will be numbered and each unit will have one parking space per residential unit. And I think that is pretty much all of the changes that we had discussed from the last meeting unless Bob, you have anything else? Well, we do show the signage on the facade of the building, Emily, as well. And that was one of the items that the board had asked us to address at the last meeting also. Now, I think you've covered the items that we were asked to cover. And I think I'd like to ask the members of the board if they have any comments or questions for us at this point. Thank you very much. I appreciate it. And again, as always, thank you for the very thorough drawings and for taking us through each one of the questions that we had posed previously point by point. It was very helpful. We'll start with Ken. Well, thank you very much for adding all the trim work around the windows around the side and the back. I think the building looks much more nicer now. The scale breaks down a lot better. And I'm not sure, but I think I was the one that brought up the possibility of roof decks and solar panels up there. I'm okay with that. I just want you guys to take a look at it. It wasn't a requirement or anything like that. So I'm not as pushing for that as much as, you know, if you guys could take a look at it as a possibility. And I'm glad you guys did. So I'm pretty much fine with the building way it is and the way it's situated. The only thing that if you could have added was just the caliber of the trees. I think that was one of the issues we talked about, that we're being planted along the perimeter. But that's, you know, that's not a deal-breaking for me here right now. I think if you guys, you know, worked that out with the planning department, I'd be fine. I always support this project. It looks nice. I'm glad you guys pushed the building forward. I like the architecture and what you got there looks good. So I'm very supportive of this project. Great. Thank you, Ken. Next up, we will have Gene. Thank you. Excuse me. I agree with Ken. I actually think I was the one who asked to use, take a look at the solar panels. But also if I was, it wasn't a request to do. It was just take a look at the feasibility and whether it was something to be added. It wasn't a requirement. So I'm glad you took a look. I have, I have a few questions. First on the permeable pavers on the permeable driveway, which I think is a great idea. I'm glad you're including it. What I've learned over time is in many instances, the permeable surfaces require some sort of maintenance so they don't fill up with grit and no longer act permeable. I'm wondering if you've taken a look at that and whether these surfaces will need some sort of ongoing maintenance. Monte, can you address that? Yes, this is Monte French. We have experienced things like that. I think you'll notice that we did incorporate a trend strain and a catch basin in the project that helps the drainage. You know permeable surfaces are always susceptible to what you mentioned and there will need to be some sort of maintenance. Yeah, thank you. That's what I thought. I just wanted to confirm. I'm thinking we might want to put a condition that would require you to provide the staff with the maintenance plan. So at least you would know what it is and we would know what it is. I have a question about the gross floor area of the building. I wonder if whoever's controlling this can turn to that page on the latest submission so we can see it. It's the same submission. It was about two or three pages earlier. It's page eight out of the 24 pages with the latest submission PDF. Yes, that's it. Thanks. I think it's the next page. Yes, that's it. Thank you. Okay. I added up each one of the spaces, the square footage of the spaces that was shown in the floor plan of the first floor and I came up with 1,528.8 feet as compared to 1,327.8. I wonder, Monty, if you are able to either describe now how you got to 1,327.8 or if you would add up each one of the areas, if you could show that on the screen, I'd appreciate it. The floor plan of the first floor. Yes, again, this is Monty French. I'm going to ask Emily if she could help step in here. She was very intimately involved in putting this together. Okay. Emily would be great too. I didn't know which one of you to ask so that's great. Let's head up on the screen so that I can show you what I added up. Let me just say, so it would be the two offices, the stairs, the corridor, the restroom, the mechanical, the trash room, and the bike room. I added all of the, and plus I wasn't sure what this little doorway was next to the shower but I decided it was probably about 3.5 square feet. I added all of those up and I got to 1,528.8 square feet. So I wonder if one of you would check me on that or tell me how you ended up with 1327.8 square feet. While you're doing the math, I'll go on to a couple of other items and then come back to that. I can actually answer that right now. Great. So the number that we got to is because in the bylaw, the language of gross floor area, the mechanical space does not need to count towards that and the bike room is the accessory parking which is also excluded. Can you show me where that is because the general rule is the gross floor area is the entire from wall to wall. Okay. I can pull up the section. Okay. That would be great. Thank you. Meanwhile, yeah, I also appreciate your showing all of the 11 trees and again, this isn't a request but just something for you to consider. The building has the planting strip between the sidewalk and the street in front of it. It would be nice if the owner would consult with the tree warden about maybe planting one or two trees in that planting strip in addition to the 11 trees you're showing going on to the property. I don't intend to make it a requirement but I think it would be nice if the owner would commit to doing that. What type of trees would you be talking about, Jean? Whatever street trees the tree warden might recommend. I think that the tree warden has a list of what are considered acceptable street trees. I mean, I'm not going to suggest it a requirement. I just think it would be a nice and appropriate thing for the owner to do after the building is constructed. I think it will help with that block and will soften the look a little bit in a nice way. I think there are at least 15 types of trees that perhaps could be discussed with the tree warden that would fit the requirements of what he's looking for in terms of size of trees, caliper, and the like. But yeah, we can certainly consider that, yes. Yeah, it's not part of the tree plan because the tree plan is clearly just replacing the larger trees that were taken down and you show that which is great. I'm saying in addition to that consider one or two street trees and I'm sure the tree warden would have a lot of good suggestions. All right, so the only thing I have and we can come back to me if Emily hasn't gotten that yet. I'm looking for the reference that allows them to exclude the mechanical room in the bike room from gross floor area. So we can come back to me on that. Sounds good. We'll return back to that question. David. Well, thanks very much for being responsive to our requests from last time. It's appreciated. I have a couple of thoughts. One, with respect to the transportation demand management plan, I think you have done more than enough. I would suggest though that one of your five points, number three, that you'll provide bicycle sharing on site should probably be removed from the TDM plan because you have no control over whether the town cites a bike sharing station there. That's fine. We can do that. I do like the look of the open space from the rendering and the walkway to access it. One thought I had though, since it is stepped to get up the walkway, have you given any thought to how the open space would be maintained if it's necessary to get equipment up there? Montaigne? This is Montefrench. That is something that we'll need to consider. I have a similar situation in my house where you have to take a lawnmower up the stairs. It is a small patch of grass that will have to be maintained and if they have to bring a mower up there, they will have to just bring a mower up there. I'm considering whether we should make it a condition of the permit that provisions for maintaining the open space should be required just to make sure that that happens. I think the open space is now a significant part of this project. I think we'd like it to be maintained in a nice and usable fashion indefinitely. I don't know that I have any other comments. As I said, you've been responsive to our previous round of comments. I do think it would have been nice to include the roof deck, but I'm not going to insist that that be made a condition. I agree with Jean. It would be nice if the Honor would commit to at least consulting with the Tree Warden regarding street trees. Certainly do that. I guess the only other question I had, and this also relates to trees, is are we now definitively settled that the Tree Warden is satisfied with the Tree Plan subsequent to the removal of more trees than was originally agreed upon? Yes, we are. We actually have a letter, and I believe Jenny might have it as well, from the Tree Warden, which basically states, after further review of 1500 mass, said three additional trees have been removed at the back lot line growing in the setback. A total of 11 trees must be planted on site according to the 2019 version of the Tree Bylaw. These trees must be native, 25 caliber planting, and must reach a minimum height of 50 feet. We intend to comply in all respects with that directive of the Tree Warden. Okay. I hadn't seen that letter, but if that's what the Tree Warden is requiring, then I'll be satisfied with that. I don't think we really have a jurisdiction to do more than that. That's all I have. Great. Thank you, David. We'll go now to Katie before returning back to Gene's question. So thank you for being responsive to all the board members' concerns and for this really detailed presentation. I think the other board members raised the issues. I would have, I just wanted to second, as Gene and David mentioned, if you can make it work, Street Tree would be really great in that area. I think a big contribution. But other than that, I think it looks great. Thank you, Katie. So Emily, I'm not sure if you've had a chance to see if you could pull up the section relative to the question that Gene had posed earlier? Yes. It's section 5.3.22 gross floor area. Rachel, can I also make a comment later? Sure. I'll just give Gene a opportunity to review and move on. Thank you, Ken. I guess I would say the mechanicals are not a basement area in this building. They're the first floor, so they don't apply. It's number 4. If you look, there's another section that's not just basement. Okay. You are correct. Thank you for pointing that out. Okay. That's good. Thank you. Thank you, Gene. Ken? Oh, I'm sorry. No, no, that's fine. I'm satisfied with that. Thank you very much, Emily. I will. Thank you. I will just, I just want to add on to what David said, that yeah, I don't think we can require more trees, but we just might want to have a special condition on the permit that says that the applicant will meet the requirements of the tree protection and preservation by-law as set forth by the tree warden, just so that's included in the special permit that we issue. So I just wanted to sort of follow up on that good point that I think David made. Yes, I agree. I have that written down to list as a special condition. Thank you, Gene. Ken? I agree with those, with Gene and David about the trees, but I kind of disagree with David amongst putting a special condition in for open space and putting a clause in it and maintaining it or whatever. That is something that's kind of unique. I mean, you either have open space or you don't have open space for the permit. And if they're to take the space away or don't have it anymore, then the building is not compliant. I don't think we need to put in a special condition. I think I'm just nervous that we keep on putting all these special conditions on all these projects. It's going to be kind of undalting for people to get projects or if you have all these conditions. I just don't think that one is necessary. And that's my feeling, okay, Dave? I know what you're trying to do and I'm not trying to, I don't know, that's something I just want to talk about. That's all. I'm happy to talk about it. I just want to make sure that I was clear in what I was asking for. I'm not concerned about them doing away with the open space. I was concerned about it being properly maintained like from a lawn mowing and weeding kind of perspective because it's difficult to get equipment up there. Yeah, I think that's just something that I really don't think we have to tell them that if they don't cut their grass every week or every two weeks, they lose their special permit. I just don't see that as being a good requirement to add on there as a condition. I mean, they're going to want to maintain the place looking nice. It's a brand new building. Why would they let the grass go long? Or why would they let, I don't know, I just see that as an extra condition there that's not really going to, that's going to hurt other things in the long run. Yeah, I hear what you're saying. That's all I want to talk about. That's all. Nothing, you know, saying it's going to. Yeah, I'll just add, I'll just add to that. I think that the enforceability of that, you know, we don't really get into the maintenance of a lot of the other items. So I would tend to agree with, with Ken in this, in this particular case. Gene? Yeah, I agree with Ken too. I mean, we're not going to start putting in special conditions that each open space gets maintained. Yeah, you know, it's not like, yeah, I won't say more. I agree with Ken also. Okay. We'll come back to the special conditions. Obviously, when we, when we get to any motion to vote for this, but are there any other specific questions for the applicant before we turn this over for public comment? Okay, seeing none, we will open this up for public comment. Any member of the public wishing to speak, I would ask that you please use the raise hand function, which is under the participant section in the bottom of your screen and zoom, or use star six to unmute yourself if you're joining us by phone. Any member of the public wishing to speak will please identify yourself via first and last name and address, and you will have three minutes to speak on this particular topic. So the first member of the public that will call in this evening will be Don Seltzer. Thank you, Madam Chair. Don Seltzer Irving Street. I'd like to begin by complimenting the applicants team for their response to the issues that have been raised in prior hearings. A particular example is they're providing adequate usable open space that is consistent with both the letter and spirit of the bylaw rather than trying to dodge around the requirement. However, I have to disagree with what has been said about the total floor area this evening. The applicant has miscalculated by using interior room areas rather than as specified in the bylaws from calculating from the exterior faces of the exterior walls. The actual floor area ratio, if correctly calculated, is above the maximum allowed 0.75. I realize there's some disagreement on the bylaw as to whether the applicant can qualify for a bonus exemption. But if he wants it, he has to first submit an accurate accounting, ask for a specific exemption of the floor area ratio, and specify the basis for that relief. The question is to whether the sport can legally grant relief in this case may ultimately end up in Landcourt like the hotel Lexington has. This is another example of trying to squeeze the building that is simply too large into a small 7200 square foot lot. The parking lot can't hold the required number of cars, and it isn't even realistic for the requested reduced parking. And what happened to the snow removal plan? What alternative is there to simply plowing it all out onto Mass Ave? If the applicant simply wanted to build an apartment building, the bylaw would limit him to just two units on this particular lot. By invoking the mixed-use rules is allowed to build three, which is probably a reasonable limit on what can fit there. A four-unit apartment building on 7200 square feet in a B1 is neither legal nor is it reasonable. I was gratified last week when a board member reminded his colleagues of a commitment that was made last year. The board had promised that no major zoning changes would be sought without a broad, robust community involvement, and that he was going to stand by that commitment. Four years ago, the then chair of this board stood before town meeting and made an unequivocal pledge that no use that was not already allowed in a district would be allowed under mixed use. He further gave his word that future boards would honor that pledge. The time is now for the board to honor that pledge. Thank you. Thank you. The next speaker will be Steve Revelak. Hello, Steve Revelak. I live at 111 Sunnyside Avenue. I just wanted to make a brief comment. Since the first hearing, I see that the site has been reconfigured fairly substantially. So rather than having a driveway looping around the back and cars parked along the perimeter of that, we now have a parking lot and an area, a small, you know, we have a backyard. I think that's a much nicer use of the space. And, you know, I just want to commend everyone involved for that change. It's a good improvement. Thank you. Thank you. Are there any other members of the public wishing to speak on this item? Seeing none, we will close the public hearing for this agenda item. Are there any other questions or discussion from the board before we look towards making a motion with special conditions for this particular item number? Okay. I did have one other thought. Since we're limiting each unit to only one parking space, but there are still five parking spaces, what's the plan for dealing with the fifth parking space? What's it used for? I think the idea is that this space would be for commercial space or overflow for the residential? Overflow as in like a guest or something like that? Correct. I think the original discussion was that we would have the spaces numbered so that they were dedicated in a numbered way towards each unit, and then there could be a guest space. And to the point that was raised in the public comment about snow removal, have you given more thought to how that would be accomplished? I don't recall whether we got to a conclusion on that previously. Yeah. I mean, snow removal is going to be something that has to be looked at, but typically in a lot like this, we look to do contractor removal. So if they have a substantial amount of snow, they'll have to have a loader that comes in and removes it and takes it off site, things like that. That's pretty typical. It's similar to trash. You have private removal a couple of times a week to manage it. That's what I was expecting. Thank you. Thank you, David. Any other questions or comments for the applicant? Okay. That being said, if we could look towards creating a motion to approve with any particular special conditions, the one that I heard was Jean, as you stated, complying with all requirements for tree planting with the tree warden as stated in the tree protection plan? Well, requirements of tree protection and preservation by law and as required by the tree warden in the tree planting plan. Okay. That is the only special condition. We had struck the maintenance items that were originally part of discussion. And the other item we had said we were not going to make a special condition with regard to this sidewalk trees, but rather just a request to the applicant for continuing that discussion. So any other special conditions? I believe that that would be the one. I'm sorry, Jean. Well, they're not special conditions, but I think we should, in the special permit, make two specific findings. One relates to the fact that we are adjusting required front yard setback from what it would be to 2.5 feet as allowed by 5.3.16 to account for specific conditions unique to the proposal. So I think that should be mentioned in the permit. And the other one that I think should be mentioned is that pursuant to 6.1.5, we're reducing from 6 to 5 the required number of parking spaces. So those are not special permits, but I do think we should acknowledge that as allowed by the bylaws, we've made those two adjustments. Juan, I think don't we typically reference the TDM plans in the special conditions? Well, I think we would probably do that as part of the 6.1.5 requirement. Right. Yes. Right. And David, I did note that you had requested that the third item, the bicycle sharing be removed from the TDM plan. Yeah, I just don't think that makes any sense. Agreed. Okay. Do we have a motion to approve the approve this submittal as excuse me, docket number 3633 as discussed with the special conditions and the references to the adjustments as stated by Jean? Jenny, do you need any us to run through any of those again for you or do you have all of those written down one minute? I was typing actually. So no, I don't think so. The only one I added is actually that typically we put in there about the final transportation demand management plan is reviewed and approved by the department. Yes. So I actually put that in there. I was going to also say that we talked about snow removal a bit, but it's actually one of our general conditions that every applicant must be compliant. Anybody who's granted a permit must be compliant with the town's bylaws with regard to snow removal. Same thing for trash removal as well. I don't think there was anything else to add though. I've got everything else. Thank you. Okay. So I saw move based upon Rachel's request. Thank you. Thank you, Ken. Let's take a roll call to vote. Ken? Yes. David? Yes. Jean? Yes. Katie? Yes. And I am a yes as well. Congratulations. Thank you very much. Yes. Thank you. Thank you. All right. So that closes docket 3633. And our next agenda item is to review the draft report to town meeting. And I will turn this over to Jenny. And I'll also thank Jenny and Erin for working on this so quickly given that we just wrapped everything up mid week last week. Yes. Thank you to Erin for recording the deliberations on the votes and working together to pull this all together. So I have a document open that includes Jean's edits. He was the only board member who provided something directly to me. So I thought it would just be easiest if we reviewed the document with the track changes, which I think overall are pretty minor. I'll just go through page by page for your review. Hopefully can you see this? Okay. Yes. Okay. So we've got some minor typographical issues. Same there. An addition here with regard to the reasoning behind what the town by-law states as the requirement, I believe. Jenny, can you back up to article 16? Yeah. Actually, I'm happy to like keep running through or if you want to just talk about the discussion and the vote, that might be better too. And then we can come back whatever you'd like. Rachel? Yeah. Why don't we run through them one by one and see if there are any specific changes one by one. So let's start with article 16. David, you had... So I thought it might be more clear because the proposal had introduced this yard space term that in the second sentence it might be clearer to read the petitioner also proposed referring to usable open space and landscaped open space as primary and secondary yard space. Any other questions or suggestions for article 16? Moving on to the next article, article 17. We have the two changes suggested by Jean. Are there any other items that the members of the board would wish to suggest for this article? I'm just making this consistent. Sorry. Okay. So seeing none, we will move to the next article, article 18. Any comments or revisions to the text for this article? Okay. Move on to the next article. Article 19. I think Jean had one small wording change here. Rachel, I had one. Yes, Kim. I couldn't find it. Maybe I just didn't read it close enough. Jean made a very important point on this petition during our discussion saying that it was brought up that we didn't give this a fair enough trial or explanation and reach out to all the town members. And Jean brought up this great comment. I'm not sure it's here or not, but we can't equate an article that's submitted from one person and 10 members as equal to the same article that we submit because they don't have the same ability to have these town forms and meetings and stuff like that. So I don't want it. I just want to make sure that it's emphasized, that even though this is a petition from one member and 10 other voters, I don't want to make that saying that that is the reason why we're not supporting this because of the fact that it didn't have enough outreach. It will never have enough outreach if it came from a petitioner and I don't want to exclude petitioners from making suggestions because they don't have the same outreach we have and I don't want to make that as a requirement. I don't think it says that in here, so I don't think. I know. That's what I said. But you brought that up and I thought that was really important to bring up that we talked about that. Did I misinterpret you, Jean? I don't remember, but I'm not sure what you would add to this or take away from it because it doesn't. I think it's silent on that issue. Yeah, it doesn't say that and I don't think we said we weren't bringing it forward because the petitioner didn't do enough outreach. We're just pointing out that if we put in an article next year, we could do more outreach, but that's not why we didn't bring this one forward. Okay, it just seems like when you make this, you know, add these hurdles to it and it'll make it such that people want to do do their own partitions, they can't do it because they don't have the same outreach as, let's say, something's backed by the town. But I think that's not the reason we didn't bring it forward though. I don't want to be construed that way. Yes, I agree with Jean. Ken, are you maybe referring to something I was talking about with respect to the commitment we had made to a public process? That was part of it, yes. But that was our commitment. It was not the people who brought this petition up. They didn't have the ability to do that. Well, right, but we still have the choice of whether to endorse what they proposed or not. And I totally agree with you, and I didn't endorse this, but I just don't want it to be construed that if you want to make a change, you have to make this public outreach. And I don't want to set this feeling to other people that it can't do it because they're not going to get by the board because they didn't have the public outreach. I hear what you're saying, Ken. I don't think that at least the way that I read anything that's in the commentary here. No, it doesn't say anything. But it had to at the last meeting. I just want to somehow bring it up saying, although I don't know how to say it best, I'll leave it to Jean and David to think about what might best be put in there. But you know what I'm trying to, you don't feel I'm getting from this thing here that just because there wasn't enough, I'll reach by this petitioner, we're not doing, we're not supporting it because of that. I don't think any of us said that at the last meeting. I think any of that discussion was really about one of the, that came up, I believe, in the discussion about the zoning change. So that Article 18, yeah, that came up, I think, Ken, with regard to Article 18, not the ADU article. No, I'm talking about, I'm not talking about the ADU. I'm talking about the single family. That we're in the single family. We are. Well, no, I was just moving up because that's what I thought Ken was talking about. We were actually on ADUs. But the one that you're talking about, Ken, says this, which talks about outreach. And then, of course, the vote seems to suggest that additional study would be needed. So I don't know if that's the lines of what the discussion was about, or what you believe it was about. And there's a reference to a couple of paragraphs up at the end. It says, however, the ARB recognizes that there has been no broad research relative to the, and no public engagement regarding this article. But you can't do that if it's not an ARB sponsored article. I don't know. Maybe I'm making a big deal of nothing here. I'm just, when I read it, that's how I, that's how it sort of came out to me, like. But again, I think that was part of the discussion for, by the board was that something of this scope and impact, no matter who would bring this forward, would require that level of review and understanding by the public and investment in understanding the broad impact. So. I understand that part. Right. Richard, that's not what I'm saying. I'm just saying that it may bring up to a thought that if anybody want to bring anything up, it had to be brought up by the board. That's all. And I think that's, I guess we'll put it out. Is anyone else on the board reading it in the way that Ken is and feel that we need to make any changes here? I'm personally not, but I also don't want to discount what Ken is saying, Jean. I mean, I see what Ken says, especially in the, in the area that's highlighted. At least for me, I can't speak for the other board members who said, don't bring it forward. I didn't vote not to bring it forward because it didn't have public engagement because I thought they could have the public engagement at town meeting and, and in the run up to town meeting, I just thought it needed some substantive changes. So I don't know if there's a way to get at what Ken is saying, which is, you know, you know, after those, after that sentence that's highlighted saying something like, however, you know, there were other reasons why a majority of the board thought it should not go to town meeting, something like just that one additional sentence. Ken, would that do what you need? Yeah, I think so. Well, something like that is, I just want to read it. It just struck me funny. That's all. I mean, it doesn't, I don't, I didn't read it that way, but I'm sort of feeling if Ken read it that way, maybe some other people are, and maybe we could just put in one other sentence. Or maybe we could just, maybe we could alter the sentence to read, however, in addition to other concerns about, or other concerns about the proposal, the ARB recognizes that there has been, so that we can see that it's not the sole concern that the ARB had about the proposal. That would work for me. I hope you're okay with that, Rachel. Okay. Thank you, Ken. Sorry, I didn't mean to be such a pain. I was in a quick add-on, because now I've been staring at that sentence too long as well. I guess I would feel more comfortable saying rather than that there's been no broad research to say something more along the lines of these kinds of zoning changes have been so recent, because there have been people researching, like we know what they've done so far. So it's not a question that people haven't been studying it. It's more that these are, it's a really recent policy area. It's all happened in the last year, year and a half. So that's all. So what do you want to on it, Katie? So how don't we say we're limited? Rather than claiming that there's been, so there's this line that it says there has been no broad research relative to the impact of similar rezoning. There has actually been research on it. People have been studying it closely. It's just that the zoning changes have been so recent that we don't really know what the long-term impacts are, that we can't say what's the impact 10 years down the road. So perhaps we say that there has been limited impact, or there have been limited impact studies relative to relative studies, relative to the impact of similar rezonings. How about their limited data? There's not a clear understanding of the long-term impacts due to the recent nature of similar policy and zoning changes in the United States. All right. Now you're going to have to go back. Sorry. I was piecing all those things together. Sorry. The air be recognized that there has been or that there is no clear understanding of the long-term impacts of similar rezonings. Can we just say impacts? Because everyone is so recent, it's more than just long-term. I mean, when I asked that question, the answer we got was, well, they're so recent, we really don't know what the impacts are. Yeah, that's fine. We'll get rid of long-term. Understanding of the impact of similar rezonings. Due to the recent, yeah. So then just, yeah. And then just get rid of the word long-term up there. Should say, do the recent nature of similar zoning changes in other states. Well, I think our discussion was not even other states, even here. No, no. It's elsewhere where it was done. Okay. I think we were talking about like evidence from Minneapolis and Oregon. And essentially what we know so far, it hasn't led to rampant redevelopment, but we obviously can't know how it would affect things five years from now. Sorry. I'm conflating the ADU article. Explain me. I'm the one that brought it all up. Sorry. But now this sentence is amazing. We really have it done. Perfect. Is this good? Now? Yes. I'm happy. Okay. Okay. Now we'll move back to the ADU. And are you satisfied with the vote then? Because if you reference above the limited engagement, are you feeling the need to say something about engagement in all of the articles or was that just specific to this? I believe it was specific to this one. Okay. Yes. In our discussion. Thank you. Okay. So now we're back to ADUs. And Gene had a minor wording change here. Were there any other? So I agree with all of the reasoning that's laid out here, but I think I also did bring up again the public engagement issue in this discussion, since this was related to an article that had been brought up last year. So I don't know if we want to, again, reference the need for public engagement. I mean, that it sounds like that did not, that point was not central to all of the members decisions, or maybe any of the members decision, but it was a point that I had brought up. Perhaps we, the sentence that Jenny has highlighted here, the, and discussed presenting an article at a future town meeting, following a public engagement process, because again, if we were to submit an article, there would be a public engagement process. So would that satisfy you? Okay. That would be good. You want to edit this or now? Yes. So it would be, oh, I lost it. It was the one that you had highlighted previous. It's the same sentence. The majority is, yes. So presenting an article at a future town meeting, following a public, following a public review process. Public engagement? Engagement process, yes. Could you just say following public review? Simple. Okay. That's fine. Perfect. Just technically here. Thank you. Anything else for article 19? Okay. Article 20. It's capital square. I didn't see that. Sorry. And then I've added the maps from, which were previously submitted. Those were the only changes. Okay. Anything else on article 20? And finally, we have article 21. Any comments or changes for this article? I just suggested adding the adjective town-owned before the word parcel to make that clear in the text. Yeah, that's a good edit. Any other feedback before we take a motion to approve the report to town meeting as amended? All right. Do we hear a motion? No motion. Second? Second. All right. We'll take a roll call vote. Ken? Yes. David? Yes. Jean? Yes. Katie? Yes. And I am yes as well. All right. That closes that agenda item. The report to town meeting is approved as amended. The next item on our agenda is the review and approval of meeting minutes. We'll start with the meeting minutes from August 17th, 2020. I'll run through a roll call to see if anyone has any changes. Ken? None. David? I thought I did, but now I can't find it. Okay. We'll come back to you in case you find it. Jean? I did have some. Give me a second to scroll to the right place on my document. Okay. I'll go to Katie while you're looking. Thank you. I can't find it. None. Okay. This is also predates Katie's. Oh, you're right. I'm sorry. Oh, sorry. You'll have to, yeah, you'll have to. Okay. Yes. Thank you. And I had two, but I'll go back. David, have you found what you were looking for? Not yet. Jean? Yes. One second. On the first page of the meeting minutes of August 17th, we're about halfway down the paragraph says a chair introduced a fourth agenda item. The word at the end should be approved, not approved. Do you see that? Oh, sorry. Yeah. That's one. On the next page, the first full paragraph, that's the paragraph. Ms. Wynne Stanley O'Connell said there will be 11 contracting parking spaces off site for this purpose. I think I have one more. Let me see. The next page, the paragraph that starts down south to 104 Irving Street. Let me see where it is. After the word lot on the second line, it needs to be the word as. So it should say lot as it exceeds. And that's all I had. So I had two small items. One is on page two paragraph. It's the sixth sentence from the sixth line from the bottom where you talk about site. Hours have been spent with the developer to tweak the site plans. It should be SITE. I'll be working teams. And then page six. Yep. That's a good thing. Page six in the middle paragraph there where it talks about Myrack will own the 40B. Sorry. My cursor went crazy. Which one? I'm sorry. It's in the middle paragraph where it talks about the, let's see. It's just at the bottom of that screen. There's an extra, the sentence doesn't really make any sense. So it, yeah, it's Mary, when Stanley O'Connor said that she represents the Myrack project and Myrack will own the, eventually the 40B. So it's right at the top, right underneath the ruler. That sentence. Oh, okay. I assume it just will, eventually will own the, will own, will own. I don't know. It doesn't really make any sense. Maybe eventually goes between will and own. Right. The 40B. Okay. Eventually. We'll eventually own. Yeah. And then just get rid of the extra, the eventually. Yeah. All right. Yeah. Okay. That's all I had. I found what I, I found what I was looking for. It's on page two in the paragraph that starts Mr. Watson asked. So let's see. Down in the middle of that paragraph, it said Mr. Watson said that the safety issues at the Appleton intersection is about bicycle and pedestrian traffic. I think that should be that the safety issue, issues at the Appleton intersection are primarily about bicyclists and pedestrian safety. Anything else, David? No, that was it. Okay. Any other comments? Do we hear a motion to approve the August 17th, 2020 meeting minutes as amended? September 14th. Oh, August 17th. August 17th. Sorry. What did I say? I meant August 17th. Okay. Sorry. Does anyone, do we hear a motion to approve as amended? Second. Second. Okay. We'll take a roll call. Votes. Ken. Yes. Sorry. I forgot. That's okay. David. Yes. Gene. Yes. And I'm a yes and Katie. Abstain. Thank you. Those are approved as amended. The next item are the meeting minutes from September 14th, 2020. I had one thing. Okay. At the bottom of page two, it says Mr. Watson said that if it is possible to add an affordable unit that would solve the parking issue, et cetera. I'm pretty sure Gene said that, not me. That's correct. David, they confuse us all the time. It must be the glasses. Is this sentence though, is that attributed to you? David, just checking. No, that was me too. Although I, I, I agreed with that. And I think I said something similar to that. So it could go either way. But this was all me talking because you know what I mean? They were talking. Yeah, I'm thinking that these two belong to you because of the continuity. And the next one, right? I'm okay with that. Did you have any other changes, David? No. Gene? No. Ken? No. Katie? No. I had no other changes either. Do we hear a motion to approve the September 14th, 2020 meeting minutes as amended? So a motion. Second. Second. Run through roll call vote. Ken? Yes. David? Yes. Gene? Yes. Katie? Yes. And I am a yes as well. So the meeting minutes from September 14th, 2020 are approved as amended, right? That closes item number three in our agenda. And we will now move to opening open forum. So any member of the public wishing to speak at open forum, you will be afforded three minutes to do so. If you do wish to speak, please use the raise hand function in the, which you can find in the participant section of zoom at the bottom of your screen or press star six to unmute yourself if you are joining us by phone. Please remember that as I call on you to state your first and last name and your address for the record. So the first speaker will be Barbara Thornton. Thank you. My name is Barbara Thornton. My address is 223 Park Avenue in Arlington. And I am commenting with some process suggestions. And because I haven't timed this, this, what I'm about to say, I'm going to promise you that I'm going to follow up with it in writing. First of all, I want to talk about these process suggestions are in regard to what I will now consider the dress rehearsal for the major zoning articles that are going to come up in the next town meeting. And from my perspective, the dress rehearsal, as they say in the theater, needs some notes for the, for all of us on how to proceed to make this go more smoothly. I think good governance is like a, like an orchestra. And there are lots of players and we all have different roles and we need to understand that sometimes we have multiple roles and how we can best get all our jobs done for the sake of the citizens and our own people in the community and our own selves. So there, there, there are four points that I want to make the four headings are technical issues, organizational issues, political issues and personal issues. And to go very quickly on the technical issues, I think that the board, if they are interested in, for example, you will see the ADU issue again. So let's just use the ADU issue as an example. If you are really interested in the ADU and you don't want to repeat for the third time, not being aware of, of what was coming up until the last minute and then deciding to make or not make changes that would confuse things, I suggest that you, you look maybe 10 weeks out before the hearing is going to happen. And you make sure that you have internally reconciled whatever that issue, whatever that proposal is from a petitioner with the zoning that exists. So that you all are technically clear on the balance between the zoning and the, and what the petitioner wants to do. Second, jumping ahead some over some points is the organizational issue. I think that the, that the questions need to come up early what, what you're concerned about the technical issues that you've decided don't reconcile well with existing zoning. Let the petitioner know in advance. And by advance, I mean several weeks in advance. Let them know what kind of additional questions you might have. The third is political. You had a long talk this evening about the political issues. Actually, I am an elected official and actually using ADUs as an example. I did meet with, with not only my precinct, the citizens within my precinct, but others as well to talk about the, the ADUs. So it was out there, it was out there, as you know, in Facebook and Arlington list. So this does happen. So be clear to us as I'm sorry, you're a time if you just want to cover. I know you said you had four points if you just want to get to the last one real quickly. And the last one is the personal issues. You have to know the difference between your role as an ARB member and what you feel personally you, you might want to see in it or not see in any, any zoning article that comes up. Thank you very much. Thank you. The next speaker tonight will be Steve Revillac. Thank you, Madam Chair. Steve Revillac, 111 Sunnyside Avenue. I'd like to offer some constructive criticism on the board's hearing process. And I'm trying to be, trying to be constructive and hoping to make it better. I'm wondering, let me back up this year, I understand that town meeting and everything happened on a very compressed schedule more so than usual, but the phenomenon of being short on time to prepare and go through zoning changes is something that has happened in the past. I'm wondering if the board would consider in the future perhaps adopting something like the select board's policy for conducting warrant article hearings. So I'll use the, the Tree Protection By-law as an example. This was proposed by the Tree Committee. Members of the Tree Committee drafted the first May motion and presented it to the select board. The select board, the first night, tore to pieces. They found there were a number of things that they had a lot of concerns about and they told the petitioner, you know, would you like to try again next year or should we continue your hearing and you can try to address the comments that we've made tonight. The petitioner elected to continue and two weeks later she was back and had, you know, pretty much gotten everything the board was interested in seeing. They made a few more changes and then recommended favorable action. So I'm, you know, as someone who tends to write warrant articles broadly and would really like to collaborate with the board on ideas to solve some of the land use challenges we'd have, I would, I would be thrilled to have a little more opportunity for back and forth. I don't want to simply throw something over the wall and, you know, give you an upper down on it. I'd actually like to collaborate. Thank you. Thank you. And the next speaker will be Jennifer Seuss. Hi, thank you. Jennifer Seuss 45 Teal Street. I just want to give you my experience with public participation on the school board. When I joined the school board over six years ago, there was a lot of resistance to the idea of public engagement. The administration felt that when they had public engagement, the only people who showed up were people who complained or deeply distrustful of the administration and they just didn't see it as worth their time. And I pushed really hard for increased public engagement. I also did my own, which really made a lot of people very angry in the administration, although they benefited from it ultimately when people praised them for it. So the idea is when by doing sort of this, what I pushed for them, I think we got, is that when you have a bunch of people in the room talking to each other, people no longer think, oh, everybody thinks like I do. And if the administration is ignoring me, it's because there's something corrupt about them or they're not thinking properly or something like that, right? So if you get a bunch of people in the room talking to each other, people realize the diversity of use that exists. They hear from their fellow citizens. And there's just sort of a bigger understanding of how complex the issue is that in fact, they are one voice among many. They also feel heard. And that's really important. So even the crankiest person who was really upset about what the school department was doing was not quite as upset at the end of a very long public process because they felt that they've been heard, they've been listened to, and that if it didn't go their way, they understood because there's a variety of voices in the room. So I really encourage you to do, I know that you have kind of do some public outreach, but I encourage you especially to do public outreach before any particular articles are put forth. So it's not just about explaining a particular article, but about soliciting community ideas, thoughts, comments. And I think you'll find that you have a lot of people who are opposed to any changes, but also a lot of people in the community who are in favor and who have good ideas. And I think it will be ultimately, it will help people sort of be comfortable with the change. You'll also give them some time to sort of digest these issues. So just that was my experience. It's a long process, it takes a lot of time, but it saves time in the end. So by doing all that work upfront, you don't get a bunch of really off people who are really suspicious of you, who are trying to really undermine the process because they feel that they've been heard. Thanks. Thank you very much. Are there any other members of the public wishing to speak this evening? Okay. Seeing none, we will close public the open forum for this evening. And just to thank the three speakers this evening who all spoke about public engagement and opportunities for collaboration. I know that this board has our goal setting meeting coming up in a few weeks. And I hope that that is something that we will speak much more about. So thank you for your feedback this evening. It was very much appreciated. That brings us to the end of our meeting. Do we have a motion to adjourn? So moved. Second. Second. Take a roll call for close the meeting. Kim Lau? Yes. David? Yes. Jean? Yes. Katie? Yes. And I am a yes as well. Thank you everyone for attending this evening. Thank you. Thank you. Good night. Good night.