 Okay, it is 731. So I'll go ahead and call this meeting of the Erlington zoning board of appeals to order My name is Christian Klein and I'm the chair of this board. I'd like to confirm that all members And persons anticipated on the agenda are present and can hear me So members when I call your name, if you could please respond in the affirmative Roger Dupont Here Patrick Hanlon here Kevin Mills. Yeah, Aaron Ford Yeah, Stephen Revillac present unable to hear you and Sean O'Rourke is unable to join us this evening Staff when I call your name if you could please respond in the affirmative Rick Valerelli here and Kelly line Emma here perfect Like to just off the bat mention this meeting is being recorded and We have representation here from ACMI as well So good evening this open meeting of the Arlington zoning board of appeals is being conducted remotely consistent with Governor Baker's Executive Order of March 12th 2020 The order suspends a 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 Public bodies may meet remotely so long as reasonable public access is afforded so that the public can follow along with the Deliberations of the meeting an opportunity for public participation will be provided during the public hearings listed on the posted agenda For this meeting the Arlington zoning board of appeals is convening a video conference via the zoom app With telephone access is posted on the town's website identifying how the public may join this meeting is being recorded Some attendees are participating by video conference other participants are participating by phone Other people may only be listening and those persons are not required to identify themselves Accordingly, please be aware that other folks may be able to see you and Take care not to screen share your computer anything you broadcast may be captured by the recording We ask that you 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 So the first thing I'm going to do is actually take things out of order, so I'm going to jump down to the hearings section so Docket number three five nine four eighty six River Street was a special permit request for signage This has been now referred to the Arlington redevelopment board for consideration of the request for the sign permit The procedure for the issuance of sign permits was amended by at the 2019 annual town meeting So all sign permits are now under the purview of the ARB. So this is a change from prior practice and so That is now going to be heard by the ARB they'll be scheduled for the future The next item was item number six docket three six three six two fifty two Gray Street was a variance request This request was withdrawn by the applicant on Friday October 23rd 2020 The owner intends to revise the project to comply with the requirements of the zoning bylaw so At this time both hearings are being withdrawn. So if there's anyone on The meeting who had specific interest in either 86 River Street or 252 Gray Street, there will be no further action on those two items tonight So just wanted to get that out of the way first So we'll go back now to item number two Is the approval of the meeting minutes from October 13th? So those meeting minutes were made available to the board Excuse me by mr. Valarelli And I believe there's a couple people who had questions and comments going back are there questions and comments from the board at this time in relation to the minutes mr. Revillac Yes, mr. Chair in on the second page under the heading docket number three five one five Item number four the third sentence What's in the draft minutes reads mr. Klein asked Ms. Kiefer the attorney for the petitioner for an additional 40 days for peer review Is that right? Was it I remember us staying the hearing 40 days, but was that the reason so it's 42 it was it's actually 42 Okay, so it's 42 days and that is now consistent with her letter confirming the intention was that because the The applicant was essentially Doing major rent major innovations to the proposed plan. They were going to be taking three weeks in order to review Excuse me to redo their documentation and then we were providing additional time for the consultants our consultants to review the same application and so that the intent the intent was that we would come back on November 24th and so 42 days being the time difference between the date of that hearing and the and November 24th. So that's the so it was both to provide the applicant time to prepare their documentation and to provide time for the for our reviewers beta group to have time to review the application as well Okay, and I guess the the the bottom line there is is do we is Does the word need to be changed or is what's there? Okay? I mean 40 should probably be changed to 42 the 40 should be changed to 42 and I would just Add to add to that line Language that it was in the interest of both parties Rick is that division? I Already have it Steve if you can follow up with an email be good But I think I have it I'm gonna change it to party to and we're gonna say that the change was in the interest of both parties There are other questions on the minutes Seeing none. Can I have a motion? I moved at the meetings be approved as corrected Thank you. We have a second. Thank you. Mr. Mills Just by voice vote all those in favor, please say aye. Hi all those opposed As have it Thank you all that moves us to item number three approval of decisions from the October 13th 2020 hearing So the remaining Motion excuse me the remaining decision was for 150 summer Street Again, Patrick Hanlon did an excellent job preparing That decision for all of us and he provided us earlier today a final copy that included comments that came from everyone Are there any further questions or comments on that decision? Seeing none, can I have a motion please? German I move that the Appeal of the decision of the building inspector in 150 summer Street Decision that is for us tonight be approved Thank you. Have a second Second. Thank you. Mr. DuPont. Um, I should probably take a roll vote on this one. So Mr. Hanlon. Yes Mr. Revillac, yes, mr. Mills. Yes, mr. Ford Yes, and Mr. DuPont Chair votes aye as well That is all set great. Thank you both So that brings us to item number four, which is a presentation on the residential design guidelines Pat Hanlon if you could introduce us for us Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I've had the privilege for This last period of time This is actually one of the few good things that has happened in 2020 To participate as our representative on the design review working group this group as everybody on the Commission knows Has been chaired by Kelly line Emma who has done a superb job of moving things along And soon Kelly I will I'm sure introduce to you Emily Ennis from Harrowman and If he's on the line Philip who has done who has done an enormous amount of the work on this and has Equated himself admirably So I won't go into that or even into the substance what I do want to tell you is that This working group deserves I think a lot of credit I haven't had a chance to look at the participants yet, but I do notice Is is on the line who has been one of the members of the Working group but all of this has been probably one of the most Constructive and Working groups that I've that I've been on it It's not that everybody agrees on everything because that isn't the case But between Kelly's leadership Harrowman's sensitivity to the concerns of everyone and willingness to work to find a Position that not only accommodates what everybody thinks but also builds to make it more effective than it was before It's all turned us into a Remarkably constructive process and I think everybody who has participated in it with my exception Except me deserves a lot of credit With that I'd like to turn it over to Kelly and let her do the real introduction of the subject matter That's before us tonight Thank you so much Pat And just to just to mention the members of that working group are Pat Hanlon Elaine Hodges, Winnell Evans and Forsythe and Wendy Richter along with Mike Champa Jennifer Rait and Erin Zirco and again, we really had some excellent excellent That has been done for and with us by Harrowman led by Emily Ennis and with exceptional work from Philip who so thank you Thank you very much Emily if you want to pull up the presentation go ahead. I'm not really gonna speak to it That's what Emily's here to do tonight, but I did just want to mention. I know I was here I think three short weeks ago the purpose of that Presentation a few weeks ago was that I could give you a brief update on the project and Describe the existing conditions and the work that we had done to date at that time I mentioned that Emily and Philip would be back To provide sort of a deeper in depth In-depth dive into the actual substance of the report and the guidelines Just as a background again this this project commenced as part of the residential study group in the department of planning and community Development's report on demolition and replacement homes and this was a the development of residential design guidelines was one of the key recommendations of that report So in 2019 we received funding for the project We issued an RFP selected Harrowman and began the project and we've spent pretty much all of this year working on the project COVID notwithstanding So Just as a reminder of the project goals, which I didn't did introduce a few weeks ago we're looking to create residential design guidelines for Single family and two family projects in our zero our one and our two zoning districts And the goal of these the goal of the guidelines is essentially to provide balance so we're trying to balance the individual rights and needs of property owners with the desires of the broader community and The neighbors in those the neighbors in neighborhoods where new construction is occurring We want to be sympathetic to the market needs of anyone who is taking on new construction or a large addition to their home, but we also want to be sensitive to Just the general expectations for how new construction should look and not so much how it should look But how it should fit within a surrounding context and then the final part of this project that I believe Emily We'll talk to a bit tonight is thinking about the approval process. So how can we ensure that these guidelines are Carried forward and used as part of an existing review process We don't want to create an additional burden on any staff or review board But we do want to make sure that the work that's been done here is something that is considered by the community and brought into Bear when reviews are being done So I believe with that Oh, and again, here we are. So we're in the final comment period We did have comments from the working group Here I'm gonna turn those around quickly and what you have as part of the novice agenda package was an updated Draft of the residential design guidelines. So you're seeing something that's received the comments of the working group receive the comments of the planning department and We are seeking your input on them. So if you have particular concerns, we'd like to Invite you to share those with us. You can email me. I'll put my email address right in my In my name tag here on zoom But please do share those with us we're looking for feedback by the end of the first week of November So that is actually the end of next week What we'll be doing after that is turning around those final comments as well as comments from the ARB Bringing them back to a public meeting in December the first week of December and then closing out the project by the end of the year So with that So thank you Emily go ahead Thank you. First of all, I want to say it has been a deep pleasure working with the town of Arlington on this project this year The working group has been incredible just to echo some of the comments from that Pat made earlier and also Kelly has been a delight to work with so really appreciate the opportunity to present to all of you tonight We're looking forward to any comments that you have this evening and Also to any comments that you have by the end of next week. So my name is Emily Ennis. I'm the director of planning for Harrowman I'm joined by my colleague Philip who who has Definitely done the lion's share of the work on this and should receive the lion's share of the credit So I'm going to give you a quick overview and I'm going to turn it over to Philip to go into a little bit more detail Kelly also already mentioned some of the goals of the process But just to reiterate as we went forward with this the development of these design guidelines We really wanted to think about who was going to be using them and how they were going to be using them so this idea first of all that for homeowners who maybe they're only going to do some sort of Edition or construction or maybe even build a new house probably once or twice in their lives Many of them may not have an architectural background or a design background So first off, how can we create something that is useful to the person who's going to do this once and Talk to them about design concepts in a residential environment in a way that's understandable and Easily used we talked about the idea of a pattern book or You know so that people could point at something and say this is what I'm trying to do But it was also important to communicate with builders architects professionals who are working in Arlington on a regular basis and Saying these are the types of things that the community is looking for when you're thinking about doing residential work We did have the opportunity to talk to some builders who work in Arlington Frequently and get their feedback on the process and on the content As we were trying to work our way through how this would be put together. That was incredibly helpful We also recognize that there are people who may work in Arlington Just once or twice and are less familiar with the community than those builders are and then finally we wanted something that could Work for yourselves the ZBA as you are looking at special permits For residential use because they don't quite meet what they need to meet and also for town staff So whether it's the planning department or the building department some way of being able to say This isn't working quite right and how can so this document has a multitude of purposes and is aimed at these different users So in thinking about when these users would Actually look to the document for some sort of guideline or support We started with your original your current zoning process An application or approval process and Philip made this extremely handy flow chart For us and we're looking at Inserting this into two places in the process. So I'll jump to the right side The first is with you with yourselves in as An adjudicatory board in terms of a public hearing on some sort of special permit This would act as a guideline to you and to the staff in reviewing residential applications to see are they meeting the values of the community But not everybody who is building or And adding to or renovating a house is going to be coming to you So there's an earlier stage when they come to the building department for a permit a building permit and That's a point at which the guidelines can be handed to them and say you're thinking about doing this here they are. So that's on the left hand side, which is really the beginning of the process. We've also talked about how do you get people before they even start the process and that's one of the recommendations in the plan now is because sometimes by the time they come in for a building permit. It may be a little bit too late. They may already have been talking to the contractor or talking to the architect about what they want done. Certain designs decisions are set. These are guidelines. They are not required. It's very difficult to require Design guidelines for residential properties without changing the zoning and that was a big part of this discussion is that we were not touching the zoning. This would be supplemental to that. And so we've talked about ideas. Philip came up with one of a zoning clinic where people could have a workshop about how to do residential construction. We talked about putting it on the website in the same pages where people would be going for more information. We talked about distributing it to realtors in the area who could then give it to people who are buying. So I think there's a certain level of education that needs to happen. Before they get to the stage of the building permit. Now having said that I'm going to turn it over to Philip to talk us through the organization of the design guidelines and the things that you should look for as you're reading through this document. So Philip turning it over to you and just let me know when to turn the page. All right. Thanks, Emily. So I won't be going into detail of kind of every single principle and recommendation, but instead I'll just go over the structure and Highlight a few of the pages to show how it's kind of organized. So we really wanted to make this as easy to use as possible. So the way we decided to organize the design guidelines is that there are three primary sections. The first section is a streetscape design. So kind of how's the building Kind of relate to all the other buildings on the street. Then there's the building design itself. So the massing of the building and how to kind of Form it in a way that makes sense for its context and then building elements. So all the architectural details. That add texture and make a kind of empty box feel more like something that fits to Arlington With Finn nested under each of these three sections are the kind of key design principles that kind of labeled in a kind of scientific sounding way, but they're not actually that scary. And then under each design principles, there's a series of encourage and discourage recommendations. So we wanted to create a really simple framework that was like, Hey, these are things that you should really consider. And then here are things to try to avoid to meet the kind of design principle. Next slide. So this is just kind of going over the different principles and the different sections. I won't read through each one of these. But one kind of important concept I'll talk about later is that a lot of our work really depends on understanding Arlington neighborhood. So We kind of created a way to start understanding and differentiate the neighborhoods by creating these things called neighborhood block categories. So They range from kind of the family center core, but then there's also areas that have a lot of Small lots and how do we kind of treat small lots versus larger lots differently when thinking about Design and then these other ones are also about how the building really interacts with the street, whether it's kind of The how parking and other elements. Next slide. So then these are the two other sections building design and then Building elements. So Under building design again around the massing. How can we keep kind of a rhythm of these Buildings and kind of spacing between buildings and also have a discussion about styles. One really important concept we want to emphasize was that There's no kind of preference for traditional architecture over contemporary architecture. There's always a way and to make sure a new house. Can really fit into its context, but not necessarily have to be kind of stylistically all the same and then building elements really support that in terms of, you know, you have maybe a more contemporary house. How do you make sure the windows the sizing and portions of windows makes sense in its context. Next slide. So these were those neighborhood block categories I alluded to. So I'll just quickly go over the ones that we've kind of distilled. So the first one is a two family Town core. So trying to really identify what Elements really make up the two family areas like East Arlington and also along Massav. So then we have the single family small lot. So there are a lot of areas in Arlington, such as in Arlington Heights that there are a lot of smaller capes and bungalows in a concern that kind of emerged through this process was how do we Encourage designs to kind of fit the neighborhood and don't kind of overpower everything, but allow people to kind of develop To the kind of zoning envelope and kind of what they're entitled and allowed to do. Next slide. And then these two categories kind of fit our kind of between our one and our zero zoning districts. And it's just a single family medium lots and then single family large lots. Next slide. So this is just a kind of breakdown of how it looks in the residential design guidelines design principles up ahead. Sometimes there's a page heading heading kind of Talking about what is the page about. So in this case, it's about the front yard areas, then there's an annotated diagram. Then there are definitions. So one thing that we really wanted to emphasize was that not a lot of people coming into reading this Document might know all the kind of architectural terms. So we wanted to be sure that definitions were really clear and there's also a glossary in the back as well as a lot of references and resources to help People design their houses. Then we have the recommendation structure, which is encouraged. So here's a bunch of Principle of recommendations that we want to encourage and then here's some things that we want to avoid under this current and then sometimes get a certain block category will have separate recommendations given kind of unique Context of what that is. And then we also wanted to complement kind of the Annotated diagram with actual images so people could understand it from kind of two different levels. Next slide. So this is a kind of zoom in on the content of one of these pages. So this is from the streetscape design. This is about the garages front facing garages. So as you can see on the left there's the kind of diagram and then they're the two images. So the idea is how do we make sure that front facing garages don't kind of overtake the entire house. Next slide. And then this is some of the language that accompanies those images. So under encourage we have kind of minimize presence and then a bunch of kind of details about strategies to think about how you can minimize that presence. Potential kind of front facade elements like bay windows and porches that would kind of extend beyond or kind of draw the eyes away from the garage itself and also thinking about smaller park under garages and kind of just smaller garages in general and then under discourage. We have kind of avoiding prominent garage doors that are kind of right in the in your face and then also trying to avoid wider garage doors and thinking of how can we break those garage doors apart. Next slide. So then in the next section. This is just a sample from that is under building design guidelines. This one is really talking about how can we ensure that houses really fit in their context and in this case it's about the spacing so each street kind of has a rhythm to it. And oftentimes when the rhythm is broken it can often cause the new house to look kind of out of place. So here we discuss strategies to make sure that the new house does fit in its context. It's not necessarily saying that you know this house has to be the exact same width of the houses next to it. But just strategies to make sure it looks kind of appropriate within a range. Next slide. So these are some of the sample texts of that section. So under encourage we have entrance elements using half stories kind of closer such as dormers instead of adding full stories and also human scale details. So how can we detail the lines or the kind of first floor public basin projection so like porches to create a better connection to the street and then again under discourage I wonder if that's avoiding kind of these things that would make the building spacing that would disrupt the rhythm. Next slide. And then this is a sample from the building elements. So for this one there isn't necessarily a diagram or illustration but instead just a series of images to show some better examples and then examples to kind of avoid. Next slide. So again here are definitions of different elements just to create that vocabulary and then strategies to encourage to make sure that the building elements in this case entrance elements fit the house and then things to avoid to avoid making the house stand out or look overly plain. And that was the overview of the design guidelines and of course you have the document hopefully in front of you but and yeah I definitely look forward we look forward to hearing your comments and thoughts and kind of incorporating them. And I'll just add that it's critically important to us to Philip mentioned a couple of times to ensure that people using this had both the visual vocabulary and the verbal vocabulary to be able to talk their way through the potential changes. So with that as Kelly mentioned we're looking for comments from you all and then coming back to the public in early December and wrapping it up by the end of the year so with that I'll stop sharing my screen now and we look forward to your questions. Thank you very much. I greatly appreciate that. So so if you could elaborate a little bit on sort of what the what the ZBA's role will be it sounds like essentially mostly will not be something that that we deal with directly but I just sort of wanted to sort of get your sense of that a little greater. Yes, I agree and Kelly feel free to jump in if you like I think the vast majority of people doing residential construction, whether it's new or rehab or additions are not coming in front of the ZBA. So you're likely to see it only if they're in front of you for some sort of special permit or variants because they're not meeting the underlying zoning again we're not changing the zoning so I don't think you'll see it that often. But I would be interested to know if there have been times within the last few years, if you have seen people come in, or something like this might have been useful. You don't have to answer that tonight. Useful to know. I can tally the one. I was wondering, is there a section on dormers. Yes. Well in terms of something that frequently become comes before this board, the addition of dormers on a two and a half story home is, it's probably one of the more common common things we see. Well it's interesting that you should mention that because dormers are in there and one of the things that we did with the working group early on was say, what is it that is most commonly of concern to people in Arlington what are the elements of construction dormers was one of them. Philip focus a lot today on garages because that is another either garages or parking in the front yard setback were two key pieces. And then the final one, and again we spent a lot of time on it but just the massing of new buildings or new additions in relationship to the existing context. So, and that's one of the reasons we spent a lot of time evaluating what the neighborhoods in Arlington were, and what their physical characteristics were so when you delve into the document. There's this this opening piece that's the design guidelines, but if you go deeper in we put the information people might want to see most often at the top. But if you delve deeper in you'll see a full analysis of the neighborhoods and their characteristics for those who want to know a little bit more about why we're making the suggestions we're making Kelly. Yeah, I just wanted to also add I mean I think everyone understands that zoning is an expression of the dimensional requirements and so these guidelines are companion piece of sorts that are an expression of what the community is aspiring for when they think about zoning requirements obviously people can do what they want so long as it complies with the ZBL. And this provides a little bit more of a nuanced understanding of what exactly the intent of or what the interpreted intent of the ZBL might be. So do you and Kelly do you anticipate that this is something that would be included in serve in the review memo that we often get from from planning community development, or was this something that you would imagine we would get some from the from inspectional services, or how do you think it would come to us. So, I anticipate that I would be using this in the memos there's that criterion for where we're talking about the surrounding character that's always kind of a squishy squishy element to criterion to interpret when I'm looking at when I'm looking at dockets and so this might be something both for me to apply the residential design guidelines to and for you to consider as you're adjudicating on any special perimeter variance request. comment, please writer. So, first of all I want to compliment the authors because I think it looks pretty intuitive. When you look to go through I think it's set up in a way that's pretty user friendly. And I think that that's really important. I do know in one of the pages you showed you said for a stop and ZBA, and then you referenced variants specifically. I didn't know if you wanted to put special permit specifically. And the reason I say that is because I remember in particular, where, you know, we would have these. Either be tear downs or they would be really large expansions. And I know sometimes the argument in favor of these greatly expanded buildings is that well if you had a lot, you'd be able to build to that as a right. So, you know, I do remember in Christian probably remembers this to where we would drive around before the meetings and we take not necessarily pictures though we look at the properties started look at the joint properties. Excuse me look at the assessor's maps and try to get a sense of what their lot sizes were with the square footage was and all of that good stuff. Only to get to the meeting and have somebody say where you had, you know, a row of maybe 15 square hundred square foot tapes on a street, but you'd already had one building that had gone up and gone to 3500 square feet. And the argument was, well, it is consistent with the neighborhood because the guy two doors down, you know, or two streets over built it so I kind of see it more in the context of what you were just saying Kelly with respect to that squishy idea of the character of the district. Because the variance part of it is probably not as much informed by these things, except for I was just looking up the language and it says it may be granted without substantial detriment to the public good. I think for me would be the tie in or looking at these types of guidelines. And so they seem more from my perspective to express the idea behind a special permit, as opposed to their stuff that they couldn't inform the decision about. But it does sort of make me wonder, you know, how we get to say to people well, you know, we've looked at the guidelines and we think, in terms of your special permit that you should pay more attention to, you know, where you put your walkway or the driveway or the garage. And I think it could be really helpful in those circumstances. That's an excellent point. And we'll check with Kelly and just make sure that we've got the wording of whether it's the variance of the special permit correct on those pages. But I think that's a really helpful point. Thank you. Mr. Hanlon. Just to add a little bit to that the squishy provision in the special permit is 3.3.3 F which says the requested use will not impair the integrity or character of the district who are joining districts nor be detrimental to the health or welfare. And that's usually where we put in the fit with the neighborhood. But I think that our docket is dominated by special permits we get on average we must get at least two or three of those for every variance we get. And those are the areas where we have the most discretion. Certainly, one of the reasons we get a lot of special permits has to do with the existence of so many non conforming uses because while the zoning ordinance expresses the aspirations of the community at any one time. Over time it is by it sort of aggregates them over the last 50 years or so. And so there are lots of places where it just isn't very consistent and where things that were acceptable in one era are not acceptable in another. And I think that it's true that anybody that wherever you're in a situation where somebody doesn't whether neighborhoods neighbors who don't like it will immediately turn to the development to the guidelines we're talking about to fashion articles about why it is it doesn't fit within the neighborhood. And it will become the language. And I assume that it's intended to become the language in which these kinds of controversies which are usually the biggest controversies and special permits will be forced out so I'm imagining that we'll be seeing a discussion about these things and, you know, several of them at every time. So they'll have a big impact on structuring the way in which we think of this. And because it's a little different from the way in which I mean as Roger points out, it sort of tends to put the scale more on on a conservative In other words, you know, it's, it is a little silly to say well there's one more house in the neighborhood that's like this, but there are lots of streets in Arlington where the new construction numbers the old construction and if there's anything that's out of place it's the houses that were built 60 years ago. And how you deal with that if you're using the design guidelines is going to tend to be on the more conservative side, which we just have to recognize that it may be the case. So I would think that we need to accept that these are going to be structuring our decisions and I'm certain that people who appear before us will be doing the same thing so we have to be thinking about it from that point of view. That's a good question if I, if I could and I could ask, and do I understand correctly that these are not requirements, they're just guidelines. So I'm fairly new to the board and and understanding some of these processes. So can you help me, or could you maybe describe the process and and describe the point that would require a builder to maybe have to change a design that they bring is it. The flow chart that you have I've been kind of looking at to try to understand it. And is it the inspectional services that would catch it and say no you need to, you know, comply or is it the good neighbor agreement where the neighbors are coming back and saying, Oh, you've got a gigantic grudge. I mean we talked about this in a lot around my home. And so is there maybe could you describe how this gets corrected. How we correct the bad bad players. Kelly shall I take a first step and then you can come in. Okay, so you're exactly right in that it would be at the inspectional services so what we've been talking about right now is that there's a application you have to fill out to get a building permit. And the idea would be that this document either a link if it's online or the physical document, preferably a link to save some paper would be provided at the time of the building department application for the building department. The problem, as I mentioned earlier is that sometimes when you apply for the building permit with inspectional services you already know what you're going to do. And so that's where community education comes in in advance I think this will probably be harder the first year or so that these are being used. I think Patrick has an excellent point that the more they're used the more people will be aware of them. And that type of information is going to spread. And if I were a builder coming in front or a developer coming in front of a town board, and I knew that there was a document that had commonly accepted guidelines and that I'd be pretty anxious to at in that document before I appeared in front of the boards. But it is not a required document I think it makes the process easier for anything that's not just simply an as of right and in some cases it makes it easier for an as of right as well. But it's not required because it's not part of the zoning. Kelly anything that you'd want to add to that. I mean, ultimately, particularly for as of right, I mean, these these are advisory so if someone does not agree with them, they can continue to do what they want. So long as it complies with the zoning. So the same point about special permits I mean we can use them. We can we can use the terms and the defined language in order to describe, perhaps some inconsistencies of a of an application with the community preferences. So you can use that language to deliberate or discuss them, but the guidelines are still guidelines. So they're, they're sort of a helpful tool for aesthetics. They're helpful for sharing a language and vocabulary, but as long as something complies with the zoning. It's, it's not a requirement. Okay, Kevin Mills here. First off, I'd like to commend everybody. I think you've done a fabulous job and met your goals. I think the major thing now is going to be community outreach and community education. Repeated publication and the advocate from time to time, maybe once a month, drop something in there, obviously contacting the local contractors that do most of the work. But you know, you really have to get in front of people before they get to special services, because if they walk into special services, they've already got blueprints. So it's almost too late at that point. But again, I think you've done an excellent job. It stuff looks great. Thank you. Thank you. And I will just add, Emily and Phillip had this fantastic idea for doing perhaps even an annual primer on zoning and how it works and this could be something that is a companion piece to that. I think a lot of people don't necessarily understand zoning or the zone that their home is in or how zoning affects their neighborhood. And so I think having a having a regular reminder and it could be done in partnership with ISD. Some sort of meeting or event or or education around this and zoning would I think be helpful as an outreach and education tool. I'm curious, how many communities have adopted residential design guidelines? Is this something that you're seeing in more communities? I'm sort of curious. So, not many. In fact, it's one of the things that really attracted us to this project was, I've worked on a number of guidelines for village districts down in Connecticut for downtown and Massachusetts, but until this cross my desk hadn't really seen anything that was specifically for residential. And frankly, it was it was a challenge. And so, you know, when we saw that we said, Well, now this this could be a really interesting project. How do you think about residential design guidelines when you're thinking about how people deal with their homes. I think one of the things that the advisory committee brought up several times that or the working group that I really appreciated was this idea of how do you keep the interventions cost effective. So because when people are especially when people are renovating their homes, they're making a choice to stay in their communities, but they need more space or they need a different type of space. And so how do we keep this is this is from the point of the working group how do we keep people within the Arlington community and not make it cost prohibitive such that they decide to move out or that they're living in accommodations that really aren't working for them. And so some of the strategies in there, instead of having a bright white garage door painted the color that works with the rest of your house and you're automatically going to decrease how present it is. Things like making sure you're going to do a dormer, but making sure that it is in proportion to the roof and the rest of the house doesn't necessarily cost that much extra but it's just adding something that, frankly, not only adds to the visual quality of the community but also adds to the value of the house so they're doing themselves a favor by having a house but they don't necessarily most home owners don't necessarily know to ask for these things. So, so as I said it was a real challenge to think our way through how you would do residential design guidelines and there may be other communities that do them specifically but I have not seen them. I don't know if Watertown has a set of residential design guidelines but that's the only community I'm aware of. I think you may be right on Watertown that that rings the bell I know they have other design guidelines and the residential may be included in that. They've run into the dormer guidelines in Cambridge but that's the only other one I see. Yeah. Chairman. Yes, Mr. Hanlon. I think it would be interesting. We look at this going through and a lot of thought has been given I think to figuring out how they ought to work in practice. And a lot of that is going to depend upon the decisions of lots of people some of them be us and many more of them will be builders and homeowners and so on. I think it would be really helpful if some thought could be given to how one might formulate, going back and looking after four or five years to see how they've actually worked, have, have they worked have they changed if they change practices at all if they have as it been all the East Arlington homeowners building dormers or is that affecting the new construction as well and just to evaluate whether or not this initiative which is very imaginative and innovative is hitting the mark or whether some changes would be made in order to make it more effective for sometimes it may be getting the mark with altogether too great a force and maybe we should be stepping back a little bit but you know all too often we adopt innovative programs and then they just sort of sit there like mines in the water for a long long time. It would be nice to know that we were going to go back to this and have an idea of how we would go back to this to assess how well they've worked. Christian, I have a sort of a follow up and it's probably reiterating some of what's been said already I think Kevin referred to this but as I'm listening to people. Because of the fact that if you're doing sort of as a right building, you can walk in and you can do what you want and, you know, you know, inspectional services can say have you thought about, you know, maybe not painting or they don't deal with the color of paint I guess. But the other part of it is it strikes me that if a lot of people for instance want to put additions on their home, that you know they're probably contemplating using an architect. And so I think that one of the things and maybe this is what's already been stated, but one of the things is to try to educate the people in town to say, you know, if I have a project in mind, I should at least refer the architect that I'm going to be using to take these guidelines so that they'll sort of get a sense as to what it is that is going to be acceptable, because I do know in the past when we've had special permits and we've had these discussions about massing and all of that. That you know we've been trying to be a little gingerly in the way we've done that. But, you know, we tried to push back and say well you know they're just not enough windows on the side of the house it just looks like a huge rampart. So, I guess all I'm saying is that there would hopefully be a way of making this known to the residents, so that they would know, once they're contemplating this and they're going to talk to an architect to say, you know, did you know that Arlington has this set of guidelines and I think it would aid us in getting whatever our project is through. That's a very good point and it might be helpful on the, I know certainly as an architect one of the first things you do when you're looking in the new town is you look for the zoning bylaw. So it might be very helpful to have a link to the residential design guidelines right with the zoning bylaws to help foster that. Other questions comments. So we may have. We do have other members of the of the committee. Excuse me the working group on this I don't know if any of them have any other questions or things they would like to bring forth. We have we know Evans has put up her hand. Oh wonderful if you could enable. I don't think I can. I'm not a pro co host. I think I can just invite her to speak. I think I'm unmuted. Can you hear me. Yeah. Terrific. Thank you. Thank you. Absolutely. I just want to add my praise and they already know this but to Philip and Emily who have not only done a fabulous job but I've also just been a 100% pleasure to work with. I think there are a couple of the points that that were brought up in no particular order. I think Kevin's idea about outreach is critical to the success of these guidelines. And in addition to contacting architects we might think about contacting builders developers. You know, a relatively compact group who do the kind of a very large share of the development in Arlington and some of them serve as designers slash builders. I think obviously there should be links to this on not only the ZBA page but the inspectional services page. Anywhere on the website we can get it. And in fact maybe there's even a banner on the homepage of the website. Once these design guidelines are ready to post so that anybody who goes to to the website is immediately going to get notification that this has happened. One of the problems we have in town is is the lack of a single centralized trusted source of news the advocate I think is a little bit of a, you know it's kind of limping along but I don't, I don't know what their subscription is like so we're we're always at a bit of a loss when we try to advertise something very very widely. But we might think about the billboard in front of town hall other you know more traditional outlets as well as the town's Facebook and Twitter accounts anything to get the word out it's just so important that people know about this. And very very briefly Aaron you you raised the question of how does this interact with the good neighbor agreement I was a member of the residential study group that drafted that agreement. The good neighbor agreement applies only to the process of construction with requirements for notification and certain behaviors by the builder during the process but it doesn't really have anything to do with the outcome of the project itself. Those are my comments, thank you. Thank you so much. And as well. Good evening. Hello. Hi everybody. Thank you so much to all of you for listening to this really wonderful presentation and thank you to Emily and Philip for your work on the project of course. I have thanked you previously already but thank you again and thanks to Kelly for your work and leadership on this as well, and to the working group who really led the way and got us to where we are tonight. I think a lot of the points that are raised to me communicate that we need to figure out the right outreach strategy, and maybe we can kind of have a debrief on what the best approach might be. I would also I would point out that ACMI is actually a great resource for us. We may not always have the best print resources per se or like sort of a central website but I do think we could try to work with ACMI on some communications. I do think that part of the intention of this project was to reach property owners, primarily. You know, it starts, it's meant to start early it's not meant it's meant to be a guide later, but it's really meant to get at people early to inform them about better design or design that we would want to encourage. So that's kind of the target, the primary target audience it's meant to be a helpful tool though to staff and all the other groups that we've talked about, as we're actually evaluating things sort of creating some benchmarks. I do think that that first part is really important and maybe trying to figure out the best strategy to reach people, which I think we've heard a lot of ideas but I'd want to think about that a little bit more carefully. And then definitely getting back to the builders and we had some good conversations with a group of builders and contractors in the community already. But I do think that there's sort of other levels and dimensions to that like the design build firms, the many architects in town probably the attorneys. And then the real estate community just sort of more broadly so I think there's probably many ways that we can get this information out. So like updating website and pages and all that stuff all that would be naturally once we conclude the project more formally will issue a town notice that would be posted on that main page on the sort of banner. And then there will be other ways that we promote it and publicize it but I, but I don't know how many people really read that I, I like to think a lot of people do, but I'm certain that there's many other ways that we can get the information out. If you have additional ideas about this I would appreciate it and of course anybody who ends up watching this can get in touch with our department to give us any feedback. But it's been a pleasure working on this with you I know it's been an important issue for a long time and we've had a lot of feedback, and I'm glad that we've been able to respond to a number of things that we've heard along the way. So, thank you. And just to reiterate, as well thank you to to the working group to the department and everyone for putting this together I know it's been a, been a couple of years worth of work and it's a wonderful product that we have here to work with I really look forward to to seeing how this works within the community and working within this framework I think it's going to be very, very helpful all around. Are there any further questions or comments from the board or anyone else who is in attendance. I don't think we have any members of the public at this point so I think we're just down to us. Seeing none. I don't believe you need any action from us, particularly as a board or do you are you looking for any kind of. I don't think we need any sort of comprehensive comprehensive action from you as a board, however, if any of you do have comments as your review if you are reviewing the document, reviewing the draft in the next week. Please provide your feedback to me. We will be incorporating that feedback as we move forward toward finalization of the document. Likewise, as Jenny mentioned if you do have ideas for how we can share this. I know of particular architects or other other stakeholders who we can reach out to to make sure that we're doing this education portion. That's going to be so critical to the success of these guidelines going forward please share your ideas with me. And, and this is something that will also be discussing at our next working group meeting which is, I think, November 13, Friday the 13th. So, yeah, please do share your feedback. Thank you so much for your questions tonight this has been a really helpful conversation, and we look forward to hearing more from you. Great. Mr chair would it be appropriate to move receipt. Certainly. So I will make a motion to move receipt of the draft set of residential design guidelines. Mr. DuPont. All those in favor say aye. Aye. Opposed. None unanimous. Thank you. Well thank you all so much for that. So moving on. We are now at the conclusion of our meeting. 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 wish to thank work Valerelli and instantly for their assistance and playing this meeting together. I also like to thank those members of the department planning and community development for their work and assisting us with this evening. Please also note the purpose of the recording is of this meeting is to ensure the creation of accurate meeting minutes. If persons would like to access the recording make sure you make a request for we approve the minutes of the meeting. The recording may be deleted in compliance with the records retention schedule, however, I believe this will be available through ACMI. If anyone has any comments or recommendations, please send them via email to zba at town.arlington.ma.us. The email address is also listed on the zoning Board of Appeals website. To conclude tonight's meeting, I ask Mr. Hanlon for a motion to adjourn. It was great with great pleasure and move that the meeting of the board be adjourned. I have a second. Second. Mr. Mills, all those in favor say aye. Aye. All those opposed. Wonderful. We are adjourned. Thank you also very much. Good night everyone. Good night. Stay healthy guys. Thank you.