 As town moderator of the town of Arlington, I call to order the opening night of Arlington's 2023 October special town meeting, and I sincerely hope that this town meeting finishes in October. As I announced previously through the TMM email list, Article 12, the MBTA community's overlay district with the meeting's permission is expected to be taken up no sooner than next Monday, October 23rd. The intention is to give everyone time to prepare for that article and the multiple amendments that are incoming. If you're a town meeting member, you should have received a message from me sent through the town clerk's office by email about registering in advance to speak or ask questions about Article 12. This is optional, it's not required. Just to be clear, I will be managing two speaker queues during debate on that one article. A live speaker queue, like we've used before, and a queue for requests made in advance. I will recognize speakers from both queues in order to ensure that a diversity of viewpoints and questions are presented to the meeting. I will not be publishing a specific algorithm on how the determination of the multiple speaker queues will be managed, so please don't ask. Before we begin, I want to take a moment, a more serious moment to recognize the active war zones in Europe and the Middle East that are at a scale the world hasn't seen for decades. Let's observe now a moment of silence for the victims of these wars and all who are affected. As we reflect on world events, let's remember the importance of what we do here in this chamber. Yes, we deliberate appropriations and bylaw amendments and resolutions, but there's more that we do here. We are living and breathing, we are a living and breathing institution of deliberative democracy for the town of Arlington. Institutions like this one allow members of our communities to resolve their differences on important issues that affect the town peacefully and thoughtfully. And that is a tremendous responsibility and privilege that we all share. As we take up the meeting's business, let us take that responsibility with the seriousness and thoughtfulness that it deserves. There will be times for lighthearted moments, but let us never lose sight of the importance of what we do here together. I'll now ask the Madam Clerk if there is anyone to swear in for tonight. Let us now bring up a vote to consent to the satellite room. This is the same language that we used in the Spring annual town meeting since that was the first time we were doing something a little different. This is the same as we did in Spring. So actually could we switch over to the vote language so we know, so everyone knows what's being voted on. Okay, so I will read it since the text is a little small. That duly elected representative town meeting members of the town of Arlington hereby consent and agree to conduct this meeting and address all articles on the warrant by in-person participation utilizing the town hall auditorium and a satellite room in the town hall complex via live audio and video. So let's actually, before we take the vote, let's take a test vote first to work out any kinks that we might have in the voting. There's always like one or two handsets that have an issue so we can switch over to the test vote first and then we'll take the vote on consenting to the use of the satellite room. Okay, we're bringing that up, the test vote up right now. Okay, vote yes if you want to finish by Halloween. Yeah, press one for yes. Voting is now open. The green light indicates that voting is open. Vote one for yes on your handset, two for no, three to abstain. Okay, so let's get our test votes in. This is important to make sure that your handset is actually working for voting. Let's see, voting is now closed. Let's bring up the votes. And the motion carries 173 in the affirmative so we have to finish by Halloween now. That's something else and we're not going there. This is how democracy should be done. Yeah, let's, thank you, can we bring up the votes so everyone can confirm that their vote was registered? Okay, so if you see a discrepancy between what you thought you clicked on your handset and what you're seeing on the screen, please, you can bring your handset over to the folks over at the side table. If you're in the satellite room, you can shout out over the microphone and we can send someone up to check that out. Also, a note to the folks in the satellite room, I was informed earlier tonight that you can expect a delay of maybe a couple of seconds between when you press a button on the handset and when it actually reports on the digital text display that your vote is registered because there's an extra relay that those votes have to go through to get to the main hall. And so the folks in the main hall usually will not see a delay like that but the folks in the satellite room might. So if you see that, that's probably what's happening. So please be patient with that. Okay, we're done. Okay, let's now bring up the, so now we're back to the vote to consent to the satellite room. This is just asking the meeting's permission. It's not, I don't believe that it's legally required or technically required. It's just to make sure that everyone's comfortable with this. So, okay, so yeah, we're handling a technical issue with a handset that looks like, so let's get those resolved. And then after that we'll return to the vote to consent to the satellite room. And I'll read the text again if we're not able to switch over. And the vote is that we'll be taking up in a moment that duly elected representative town meeting members of the town of Arlington, hereby consent and agree to conduct this meeting and address all articles on the warrant by in-person participation utilizing the town hall auditorium and a satellite room in the town hall complex via live audio and video. And so after we're done handling some technical issues with the handsets, we'll move on to voting on that consent statement. Yeah, I mean, that's a good point. We could just take that by, are we ready to go? Do we have other issues there, or can we, we're good? Okay, let's just switch over. I want to take a vote on that. So voting is not yet open, you have to wait for the green light. Okay, green light is on, voting is open. If you consent to the use of the satellite room, which is up in the second floor, town hall annex, vote one for yes, vote two for no if you are not comfortable with authorizing the use of that room or three to abstain. Okay, just voting will be open for just a few more seconds. Okay, voting is closed. Let's bring up the vote, 184 in the affirmative, two in the negative, three abstentions, and so the meeting overall consents. Okay, we'll run through these votes. Okay, we're on the last screen. Okay, so we're done with the electronic votes. Let's now rise for the performance of the Star-Spangled Banner by Mr. Helmut. Great, thank you, Mr. Helmut. I now recognize the Chair of the Select Board who is coming down from the piano. Got to do everything around here. Thank you, Mr. Moderator. It is requested, Eric Helmut, Chair of the Select Board, is requested that members of the Select Board and elected officials of the town, town manager, department heads of the town and staff, superintendent of schools and staff, committees, commissions and boards of the town, minimum regional vocational technical school district committee and superintendent, members of the general court representing Arlington, members of the Arlington Retirement Board, employees and volunteers supporting electronic voting and also any consultants who have been retained to work for the town relative to articles to be acted on by this meeting and representatives of this news media be permitted to sit within the town meeting enclosure. Okay, we have a second. All those in favor? All those opposed? It is unanimous. Constables return. Clerk, do you have reason to believe that this meeting was appropriately called by the Select Board and that the Constable made a return of service on the warrant in accordance with the laws? Mr. Helmut. It is moved that if all the business of the meeting is set forth in the warrant for the annual town meeting is not disposed of at this session, when the meeting adjourns, it adjourns to Thursday, October 19th, 2023 at 8 p.m. We have a second. All those in favor? All those opposed? It carries. Coming back Thursday. I now call for announcements and resolutions. Seeing none. Article 1 is now before us. We'll receive the reports of the committees. Do we have any reports that are ready to be received? Ms. Deschler? Hey, Faith. Christine Deschler, Chair of the Allington Finance Committee. I move that the report of the Allington Finance Committee and the supplemental report of the Allington Finance Committee be received. Okay, we have a second. All those in favor of receiving the report of the Finance Committee and the supplemental report of the Finance Committee, the one pager that was in the back, say yes. All those opposed? It is unanimous. Mr. Revillac. Good evening, Mr. Moderator. Steve Revillac, member of the Allington Redevelopment Board. On behalf of the Board, I respectfully submit that the report of the Redevelopment Board and its supplement be received. We have a second. All those in favor? All those opposed? It is unanimous. Mr. Helmuth. Thank you, Mr. Moderator. Eric Helmuth, Chair of the Select Board. I remove that the report of the Select Board be received. We have a second. All those in favor of receiving the report of the Select Board, say yes. All those opposed? It is unanimous. Ms. Deschler. Christine Deschler, Chair of the Allington Finance Committee. Mr. Moderator, I move that the recommended votes contained in the respective reports of the Finance Committee, the Select Board, the Redevelopment Board, be before the meeting without further motion. We have a second. All those in favor of receiving the recommended votes contained in these reports or any other supplemental reports that the meeting receives in the future implicitly, say yes. All those opposed? It is unanimous. Thank you. Ms. Deschler. I move that Article 1 be laid upon the table. Okay, we have a second to lay Article 1 upon the table so we can come back for further reports or supplemental reports in the future if needed. All those, and we have a second. So all those in favor of laying Article 1 upon the table say yes. All those opposed? It is unanimous. Article 1 is laid upon the table. That brings us to Article 2. Thank you, Mr. Moderator. Again, Christine Deschler, Chair of the Allington Finance Committee. Since our original Finance Committee report was issued, it has come to the attention of the Finance Committee that due to the language of the override ballot, the appropriation being sought in Article 2 cannot be achieved through funding through the override. Specifically, the ballot as written is not effective until FY25 and Article 2 sought funding for this, additional funding for the schools for FY24. Accordingly, the Finance Committee voted to recommend a no-action vote on Article 2. I would like to defer to the Town Manager as to any more, as to questions regarding any more details about the override ballot and perhaps the Chair of the Select Board would like to make a few comments. But, Mr. Moderator, as this is a no-action vote, it is obviously up to you to determine whether you'll entertain for the discussion on this article. Great. Thank you, Ms. Deschler. So, just give me a second here. So, the supplemental report from the Finance Committee which just came out tonight, moments before the meeting has a recommended vote, an updated recommended vote of no-action to be taken onto the article. That would typically mean that we have, there's no scope for debate. I think under the extraordinary circumstances, I think I'm open to the meeting being informed about how we got here, since this is kind of exceptional. Mr. Helmut, did you want to explain to the meeting? Thank you, Mr. Moderator. Eric Helmut, Chair of the Select Board. The following remarks were authorized by my colleague in the Select Board to represent them this evening. Earlier this month, a typographical error was discovered on the ballot language for question one on November 7th that's prepared under the direction of the previous town manager and voted by the Select Board. Specifically, instead of specifying July 1st, 2023, to identify the fiscal year in which the override would take effect, it said 2024. As a result, the tax increase, if approved by voters on November 7th, will take effect next July and on August tax bills and not in February and spring of next year as originally planned. It also means that the town will ask voters for $7 million less through FY26 than originally planned. When the error was discovered, the Board had two options to change the language and delay the election or proceed with the current language. After consulting with the town manager and his finance team, it became clear that we could proceed as is and still meet all the Select Board commitments to taxpayers for this override. Maintaining services through FY26, making specific new investments and not asking for another override before fiscal year 27 because we will still have a balanced budget through fiscal year 26. Now, this course of action was made possible by two things. First, some very recent positive though very likely one time financial developments that the town manager will shortly detail and it was also made possible because of the town's conservative budgeting practices that are designed to withstand unexpected events. Although it is clear that the town very much needs the override funds starting in FY25, I am pleased to report on the behalf of the Select Board that we are very comfortable with this course of action that is good news for taxpayer wallets but remains a responsible financial approach that protects the town's ability to continue providing outstanding town and school services to our residents into the future. I enforce an additional remarks I'll turn to with the moderator's permission to the town manager. Mr. Feeney, do you have more to add about? Again, let's keep this to the, since there's no scope for debate under a recommended vote of no action that we have in front of us, just keep the remarks limited please to how we got here to this extraordinary circumstance. Thank you, Mr. Moderator. Jim Feeney, town manager. Good evening, town meeting. So as the Select Board chair referenced working with the finance team we were able to update our financial plan based on the most recent information available and we determined that we would in fact be in a position to meet the stated commitments for fiscal years 24 through 26 within the confines of an override that did not take effect until next year. At this time of year, as many of you know, important figures come into focus for municipal finance. This includes our assessor's office honing in on our new growth, which exceeded our estimate. We also learn about school enrollment, which is still growing, but to a lesser extent than was conservatively and prudently forecasted. And we also have our free cash certified by the Department of Revenue. The town's free cash position was particularly strong. Of course, we had a milder winter than normal, but we also benefited from other favorable, perhaps temporary economic circumstances outside of our control. Namely, ever increasing interest rates yielded significant returns on our sizable interest bearing accounts. In the tight labor market resulted in delays filling many open positions, which ultimately results in a salary surplus. So given the circumstances, we were able to balance the long range plan through fiscal year 26. And of course, should the ballot question pass on November 7th. And of course, this would also defer consideration of a school department budget adjustment originally contemplated by article two until the spring town meeting, when again, we'll be further along in the fiscal year. Thank you. All right, thank you. So we have several speakers in the queue, but there is no scope for debate. It would be an appropriate time. I don't want to encourage it, but it would be an appropriate time for points of order under the circumstances. But I'm not opening the speaker queue given that the main motion as it stands right now is no action. So there's nothing to debate, but if there's any confusion that might be clarified by a point of order, I would be willing to entertain that for a limited period of time. Mr. Jamison, do you have a point of order? How we get what? In queue. Ah, yes, I can do that. So when we do open the speaker queue for an article that has a recommended vote of something, I will try to remember to notify the folks managing the speaker queue on the side, or the displays to switch over to the speaker queue ahead of the introduction of the article so the folks can see when it opens so they can see if they've gotten into that initial tranche of requests on the queue. We won't be going back to it constantly because there might be other things that we want to display, like the text of vote language for instance. But initially I think because there's a confusion about when the queue opens and whether you've got in or not, we'll try to remember to have that up and displayed on the main display before we introduce the article. And then once we go into a presentation, we can switch over to like the slide deck, okay? Mr. Jameson? I believe the button, can someone confirm on the side? The button, oh, that's different from last time. Okay, yeah, one to get on the queue, two to get off, is that correct? Yeah, look, can we do a trial run of that just to verify so there's no confusion? So can we clear the queue now and show it and so we can actually have like cold hard evidence of how this works? Can we switch over to the speaker queue on the main display? And now we're scrolled off the bottom, so. Okay, all right, so can we clear the queue and can I ask that folks refrain from hitting the buttons on their handsets? Point of order? Point of order, yeah. Mr. Moderator, Carl Wagner, Precinct 15. I believe other buttons also add people. I pressed nine, the old button and it worked fine, I believe, can you confirm that I'm on the queue? My understanding last time was that pretty much any button would have gotten you onto or off of the queue, but is that what you're seeing now? I think I saw my name and I pressed nine only, so in case people want to do that, I think it works. Okay, so this'll take a lot of self-control. Everyone please don't push buttons on your handset right now so we can get through this quickly. Joe, can you reset the queue and the speaker queue and show it, and then I'll ask folks in the front row and the auditorium only to try hitting various different buttons and to verify what gets you onto or off of the queue. Does it appear to be the case that hitting any buttons toggles you onto or off of the queue? That is correct, okay. That is empirically what we believe to be going on. Arguably still better than just people raising hands, but we have a point of order. If you hit one and you see your name on the queue, my understanding is that at least in the main hall, we're in here that it's within probably a second or so that it should appear. Like there's a very small delay for it to get processed through the system, so I wouldn't hit it like within a second because you might have, yes, if you hit it an even number of times after the queue has been opened, you will be off the queue. You'll see, thank you, Mr. Slickman, you will see the confirmation on your screen whether the request has been processed. Just like with voting, okay, so there might be multiple seconds of lag, so wait for what, look for that little digital text display on the handset, like look for the confirmation that it's received your click. It'll say on the text display, I don't have a handset, but it'll say added to queue or removed from queue, so await the confirmation text on the handset. And hopefully in the future, we have a better system for doing this, but this is what we're using for the time being. Okay, with that cleared up, I believe we still have article two before us. Yeah, Mr. Kepline, you have a point of order? Can you go to the microphone so everyone can hear you? Mark Kepline, precinct nine. Mr. Moderator, we have an important vote coming up next month on the tax override, and so far I've not seen. Well, he hasn't finished his sentence. Not seen specific information for voters to decide upon on this issue, important issue, and this article two would be an opportunity to do some fact-finding for the voters. Well, let's bring up the article text for article two, at least with the schools, which is being said to be the primary driver of the override. And so if you bring up the text, to see if the town will vote to appropriate or transfer a sum of $400,000 from the tax levy for the fiscal year 2024, Arlington Public Schools operating budget, and so on and so on. But my understanding based on the explanations by Ms. Deschler, Mr. Helmet and Mr. Feeney is that there's nothing to do under this article because of the year. Okay. If the year were 2025, then it would be a different situation. Where did the 400,000 come from? There's nothing, yeah. All right. Well, the voters would appreciate more information from everyone. Yeah, great, thank you. Okay, so we have a recommended vote from the Finance Committee from the Supplemental Report of No Action on Article Two. We'll take that by voice vote since there's nothing to do under this article. All those in favor of no action say yes. Yes. All those opposed say no. It is unanimous. We will do nothing. That takes us to Article Three. Let's see, is Director Ricker here to introduce us? Thank you, Mr. Moderator. My name is Claire Ricker. I am your Director of Planning and Community Development for the town of Arlington. Of Arlington's 2,558 acres of zoned parcels, only 3.7% are within the business districts. This 3.7% of zoned land, when combined with the zone. I'm sorry to interrupt. I've paused your speaking time. Can we bring up the speaker queue and open it so everyone can see? I'm so sorry for the interruption. That's okay. This 3.7% of zone. I'm sorry, is the speaker queue open? It's open now, okay. And did you want your slides, Ms. Irving? Sure, we could put up the slides for Article Two. Thank you, sorry about that. I'm sorry, Article Three, thank you. We're gonna skip ahead. In late 2022, the Arlington Redevelopment Board discussed a number of amendments to encourage commercial development and attract new commercial uses to the business districts, B1 through B5, while supporting additional town goals for sustainability, urban design, and overall site standards. One method for doing this is to thoughtfully evaluate dimensional requirements and controls in the zoning bylaw to effectively support development opportunities, efficiently use limited land resources, and increase the diversity of business types in town. Warrant Articles 5 through 9 and 11 seek to encourage redevelopment in the business districts to meet Arlington's economic development and sustainability goals. And now on behalf of the Department of Planning and Community Development, I'd like to introduce Redevelopment Board and Town Meeting Member Steve Revillac to present on Zoning Warrant Articles 5 through 9 and 11 pertaining to business districts, Article 10 pertaining to expansion of the town's street policy. Article Three, what you see right now, is administrative correction to the zoning bylaw. Thank you, Steve. Mr. Revillac, do you have more to present? Okay, well, you have five minutes to do it. Okay, thank you, Mr. Moderator. Steve Revillac, Member of the Arlington Redevelopment Board. So Article Three proposes an administrative correction only to correct a reference in the zoning bylaws to a re-lettered subsection of Section 813. Section 813 was amended at the 2022 town meeting. This amendment provides clarity to the zoning bylaw and does not alter its substance. The ARB voted four to zero at their October 2nd meeting to recommend favorable action on Article Three. Thank you. Thank you. Okay, seeing no one in the speaker queue, we can go, and there are no amendments. Let's go straight to a vote on Article Three. And so while we're bringing that up, before we open up the voting, I'll just summarize. This is Article Three, vote yes to make an administrative corrections to update references in the zoning bylaws, Section 5.9.2, that were previously amended by town meeting in spring of 2021. If you're in favor of those changes, you'd vote yes. If you're opposed, vote two. And this is, yes, thank you, this is a majority vote. Point of order, Mr. Wagner. Excuse me, Mr. Monterey, Carl Wagner, Precinct 15, is abstained no longer an option? Three? Oh, you can still press three. You did not mention that. Okay, sorry, you can press three or do nothing to abstain. It counts the same. Voting is closed. 190, 70 affirmative, one in the negative. Passes. That brings us to Article Four. We can go straight to Mr. Revolak unless Director Ricker has anything to introduce. Thank you, Mr. Moderator, Steve Revolak, member of the Arlington Redevelopment Board. So the Redevelopment Board voted four to zero at their October 2nd meeting to recommend no action be taken on Article Four. Thank you. Thank you. We have a recommended vote of no action. Of course, means that there's nothing to debate. There's no scope for debate and there's been no substitute motions offered in advance. So we can go straight to voting. So let's open up voting on Article Four, which has a recommended vote of no action and that's all there really is to say about it. Did we, I heard some murmurings. Was there a point of order or were we good? Okay. Ms. Crowder. That is not in the scope of no action. The finding that led to the recommended vote of no action. I think we just had to take our own interpretation of that at this point. So voting is that we have 12 seconds. We can hold voting open a little bit longer since we had interrupted voting. This is a vote of no action, vote one for yes, for no action, vote two for no, which still does nothing or you can abstain with three. Okay. So let's close voting now and the motion carries. So 188 in the affirmative, three in the negative. We will take no action. That brings us to Article Five. Mr. Revolak, are you presenting on this? Thank you, Mr. Moderator. Steve Revolak, member of the Arlington Redevelopment Board. I'd like to request that the submitted slides related to Article Five be shared at this time. Okay, and actually while we're waiting for that, can we, did we already reset the speaker queue or can we show and reset the speaker queue so everyone can see whether they're getting on? Okay, speaker queue is now open. Okay, so thank you. I will be taking you through warrant Article Five. It is a proposed zoning bylaw amendment related to open space in the business districts. But first I'd like to start with some context. Next slide, please. Let's switch over to the slides. Ah, yes. So with the exception of Article 10, Articles Five to 11 are being proposed as a package to enhance Arlington's business districts. These were inspired by the 2022 town meeting changes to the floor area ratio to encourage the redevelopment of underutilized properties in the business districts. So currently Arlington's business districts make up a small percentage of all zone parcels in town. So last fall, the Redevelopment Board identified a number of business zoning requirements that inhibit the ability to redevelop properties in the business districts to the heights previously approved by town meeting. At that time, the Redevelopment Board began working on a series of proposed amendments that would address the challenges to creating more needed and desired quality commercial business space in the few areas of town that are zoned for business development. Next slide, please. So what you're looking at is a map showing the business and industrial districts. The sort of purple, magenta-ish areas are the business districts. This is the only areas of, these are the only areas affected by these articles. Next slide. So open space is a defined term in Arlington's zoning bylaw and it refers to a private yard or outdoor space. Currently, it can be located on a roof or a balcony no more than 10 feet above the lowest floor used for residential purposes. And the requirements are based on a percentage of the gross floor area, which is basically the square footage of the interior of the building. So open space does not mean public space or green space or pervious space. It only means that it's open. It is a defined term in our bylaw. Next slide. Okay, so article five proposes three main changes. Changing the calculation of open space from being tied to the residential gross floor area to being based on a percentage of a lot area. Number two is increasing the amount of landscaped open space required while eliminating the requirement for usable open space in the business districts. And finally, allowing open space on balconies and roofs, but at any level, not limited to 10%. And again, these changes would only apply to properties in the business districts. Next slide. That's it right there. So to address the first change, open space is currently tied to residential gross floor area as opposed to parcel size, which means that the area of each property that's dedicated to open space increases with the size of the building. For example, if you consider a mixed use building with two stories, the second story of residential creates an open space requirement. Now consider adding a third floor. This doubles the amount of residential space and it doubles the open space requirement. The footprint of the building has to become smaller. So tying the open space to gross floor area tends to limit the footprint of mixed use buildings and the amount of ground floor space available for commercial use. So these limits also restrict building height beyond the limits set forth in the zoning bylaw and the ability to develop upper story residential. They typically exceed the rear and side yard setback requirements in most business districts. Next slide please. So by increasing the required percentage of landscaped open space and eliminating the requirement for usable open space in the business districts, this amendment would align with the strategic goals of the town of Arlington. Currently, our open space requirements do not reflect the environment and climate priorities of the town as a definition of open space limits where and how its benefits can be achieved. Next slide please. So currently, balconies and rooftops can only count as open space if they are located not more than 10 feet above the level of the lowest story used for housing. The incorporation of landscaping on balconies and rooftops is an important strategy for the town to embrace allowing for climate positive impacts while maximizing our ability to create tax revenue generating commercial space. It's important to note that on private property neither usable open space nor landscaped open space are required to be accessible to the public. They are intended for the occupants and users of the building. Thus adding landscaped open space where it would be most impactful to the building occupants and users is a positive outcome of this amendment. Next slide. So this article, article five simplifies and improves usability of the zoning by-law by tying open space calculations in the business districts to parcel size rather than building size. And although it eliminates the category of usable open space from the dimensional requirements it increases the requirements for landscaped open space within the town's limited number of business districts. The ARV voted four to zero at their October 2nd meeting to recommend favorable action on article five. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Repelach. I now want to invite Mr. Weinstein up to introduce his amendment. Can we bring up Mr. Weinstein's amendment please on the display? Hi, thank you. Jordan Weinstein precinct 21. This is an amendment to article five, which just to set the stage, I really like what article five is doing to a great extent. I think that it's fantastic that they've changed the calculation for how open space in the business district will be computed rather than on floor space to tie it to parcel size. And that from the very beginning is going to increase the footprint of any building. If it's tied to parcel size and you want to diminish open space and have a bigger usable space for commercial property this is great, this is great. But there's a fatal flaw in this. If you could go to the second slide and I'll show you what my amendment fixes. This is how open space is defined in our bylaws for any parcel. The difference is right now, if with passage of five you will get a larger footprint, be allowed to build a larger footprint on business parcels. If you go to the next slide. This takes it a step further though. It inserts these two sentences that basically say these definitions apply except in the business district. So it's removing all the definitions for open space on any property in the business district which is already getting a bonus of more footprint on the parcel because the definition of how you calculate open space will change. So I'm saying this is double dipping. And what we should do is vote in favor of my amendment which would take out these phrases, these two phrases that would simply restore the definition of open space for business. Albeit with the enhancement that it's already going to be provided for by a change in how it's calculated. So I would say I'm, if you can go to the last slide or the next slide and the next one. Yeah. Basically the amendment would eliminate the recommendation that the open space definitions be taken out, leave the existing definitions unchanged and require that landscaped and usable open space be at ground level or as Steve said, slightly above in buildings in the residential, I mean in business districts. So please vote in favor of this amendment to article five and then yes on five. Thank you, Mr. Weinstein. And just to make sure we're all on the same page about what we're discussing, can we bring up the, let's see, the article within the annotated warrant? And that way we can see those because I know that was kind of hard to read. Some of that text was really small. So this is a little bit bigger. I thank you. So we have the vote language here that we have up on the display. And so if we scroll down slowly, you'll see the underlying section that was highlighted in Mr. Weinstein's presentation, the accept in the business districts where open space so on and so forth, and then the other section. So these definitions in section two of the zoning bylaw, according to Mr. Weinstein's amendment would be left intact. But the other changes in the zoning bylaw proposed by the main motion, the recommended vote from the ARB would be retained with Mr. Weinstein's amendment. So with that, let's go to the speaker queue. Let's take Mr. Owen from the balcony. So I want to speak in favor of this article. This is actually an article that I, at least in part, suggested to the ARB and the ARB meeting last year. Not aware that this was sort of already in the pipeline to be worked on originally for Springtown meeting. And the reason I recommended it was just attending various ARB meetings and seeing dockets with this mixed use redevelopment. It became very clear that the bylaw as written was more or less unworkable for doing the type of mixed use development that I think the ARB mixed use bylaw should want to allow. And that's essentially because as you explained there, when you have this open space scaling of the size, you very rapidly sort of lose building space and thus lose commercial space versus what previously exists on the lot. And you don't actually get a lot of additional residential space sort of in exchange to that. So I'm very much in favor of keeping us went to Marshall as we can, but also adding much needed housing to our business districts. I don't understand all of the portions of Mr. Weinstein's amendment. I do know it sort of seeks to require that the 15% landscape open space be completely at ground level or only 10 feet above. I think that may not be necessary. And the reason for that is that the lots that are generally being redeveloped for the mixed use can be on the sort of larger business spots. And the pre-existing conditions on those lots is more or less 0% of open space. It is a commercial building with parking and a dumpster, and that's pretty much it. So I could see if there was sort of a larger pre-existing open space, a desire to sort of add to routine sort of ground for open space. But I think allowing it on our floors really allows us to sort of get the redevelopment and get some green space sort of present in the business districts without having to sort of cannibalize business space or parking or anything. So I encourage a positive one on this. Thank you. Thank you. And one thing I forgot to do, Mr. Weinstein, I can invite actually Ms. Malopchak, and I hazard a guess that you'll be supportive of Mr. Weinstein's amendment. That will not affect your order of speaking. I now recognize you to speak and can, you can come on your way up. And I forgot to ask Mr. Weinstein to move his amendment. Ms. Malopchak, she can just move it when she gets up to the microphone and save us a little bit of time. Thank you. Apologies for doing that out of order. You can just make a motion to move Mr. Weinstein's amendment to the main motion. Motion to move. Main motion. Okay, we have a second. Okay, so it is so moving. Thank you. You can go ahead with your remarks. All right, just slightly mystifying. I'm all for green space on the ground. And I'd rather like the green space at the Brigham's residential building on the bike trail than I believe was formerly a commercial space. So I'm gonna be very brief and say please support Jordan Weinstein's nuanced amendment that allows the reconfiguration but preserves the protections for green space which we all benefit from. And an example of that that I just thought of is that Brigham's building on the bike trail where you can see the nice trees and grass. And it is one of the developments that actually does embrace the bike trail which I'd like to see more of and you'll find out in the standards document from 2015 which I'll be talking about in a later point. But so thank you very much. Please vote for Jordan Weinstein's amendment and then for that article. Thank you. Thank you Ms. Belofchak and apologies to Mr. Weinstein for not introducing that earlier. We'll take Ms. Pretzer from the satellite room. Hi, I'm David Pretzer, pre-617. I rise in favor of this article. Our business districts are currently often have, they're small parcels, they often have little or no open space to begin with. And the current requirement makes it a real barrier in terms of creating taller buildings where one story buildings currently are. I think mixed use buildings that have residential and commercial are great use for our business districts. And the current open space amendment gets in the way of this and I think the Airbnb's recommendation is a great way of both recognizing the value of open space but also allowing taller buildings to be permitted in a way they aren't today so that we can avoid unnecessary barriers to housing creation. So I also would encourage voting against the Weinstein amendment given the limited amount of space in many of our business district parcels rooftop spaces may be the best place for rooftop gardens. Are there green rooftop spaces? Maybe the best way to get open space while allowing new buildings that could bring, create housing and bring value to the community. I don't think it makes sense to say rooftop gardens are allowed but only in certain cases based on the height of residential. I think we should allow rooftop gardens in general. And so therefore I say vote against the Weinstein amendment and vote for the main motion. Thank you. Thank you. Let's take Mr. Jalkett next. Daniel Jalkett, precinct six. I am a little confused about what the implications of the Weinstein amendment would be. So I want to ask some questions in particular. I know the sort of fear was raised that I think I understood the fear being raised earlier that open space that currently exists might be lost that ground level open space might be lost. And I'm not sure if that's true. I kind of like the idea. I mean, I actually totally like the idea that existing lots with no ground level open space shouldn't have to create new ground level open space to participate in this. But just as a question, Mr. Moderator whoever you think might answer it best would the provisions that are being added that were requested to be removed by Mr. Weinstein would those allow current properties with ground level open space to rebuild without that ground level open space? So I believe the meeting has Mr. Weinstein's opinion on that from his presentation. I'll like to ask either member the redevelopment board or the planning department for their opinion on that. Eugene Benson, precinct 10 and Arlington redevelopment board. This article does not reduce the required amount of open space. All this article does is allow the open space to be on a roof above the first floor or on balconies. Some of you may have seen these amazing photos of buildings in Europe where there are hanging gardens on the front. This would give building owners the opportunity to do that. These are under our bylaws open space that are for the use and benefit of the occupants of the building and this gives us more opportunity for that. And as you know, green roofs are one way. Mr. moderator, I feel this is not completely answering. It's just going off course from my question. This is Mr. Jalkett's time, so. Sorry, what's so just to say, it sounds like what you're saying to me right now and supposed to clarifying whether or not ground level open space would be allowed to be replaced with higher level open space. It sounds like you're trying to reassure people that higher level open space is good and that's a separate debate from what I'm asking. What I'm just asking is will this change if the amendment is not accepted? Would it allow, for example, an existing lot with a good amount of open space on the ground floor to rebuild, eliminate that open space? I'm just, I'm not even saying whether it's good or bad, I just want to know because I don't understand it from what's been presented. It would allow them to move some of that open space to balconies and rooftops, green open space to balconies and rooftops. Yes, indeed, it would do that. There does, however, need to be some open space on the ground level in general. So suffice to say that the standard applied to an existing property that's redeveloping would be the same as for a new property that was being developed. Yes, that's correct. Thank you. Yeah, let's say Mr. Newton next. Sanjay Newton, precinct 10. I had a question today under our existing bylaw before we make any changes or think about making any changes tonight. Can green or open space be provided on a roof? Under current rules? Under current. Okay, do you have someone from the redevelopment board, Mr. Benson? Yes, Eugene Benson, precinct 10 and redevelopment board. Yes, it can and in a new development they could move that open space to the roof if it's on the first level. On the first level. On the first level. So essentially what you're saying can happen today is a green roof can be provided but can it only be provided on the first floor? So in a mixed use building they can build commercial on the first floor and then they would have to use their roof space to build open space. Well they could do commercial on the first floor, residential on the second. But they would have to take away space from their residential to provide that roof based open space today. It depends on which level they're putting it. But today their only option is to put it on the first level. Above residential. So their second story, yes, could be full. And then the third story would have to be much smaller. Correct. So essentially if we pass Mr. Weinstein's amendment that's less housing in our mixed use buildings. It could be, yes. Thank you. I would urge you to vote against the Weinstein amendment and support the overall article. Thank you. Thank you. Let's take Mr. Grinucci next. For a second I thought that was gonna descend into who's on first bid. Carmine Grinucci, precinct 21. I move to terminate debate and all matters before it. Okay we have a motion to terminate debate and we have a second. So let's try this by voice vote. All those in favor of terminating debate on all matters under article five say yes. Yes. All those opposed. I don't think it carries. Okay we have two, three, four standing, five standing. So let's take electronic vote on termination of debate. And can we do that without losing the speaker queue? Is that correct? Okay we're waiting for the green light. Okay voting is open for termination of debate. Vote one to terminate debate, two to continue debate, and three to abstain. And this is a two-thirds vote. I'll take a picture of the speaker queue in case anything catastrophic happens. Okay voting is closed and the motion passes. This is calculated as two-thirds correct? Yes. Okay debate is terminated. So we will now go to a vote on Mr. Weinstein's amendment. The point of order. Dr. Yontar, well there's one article under consideration the main motion is a two-thirds vote. The amendments to main motions are always majority vote. Yep okay so debate is terminated. Let's go to a vote now on Mr. Weinstein's amendment. And before we open voting on that, just to as a reminder, Mr. Weinstein's amendment would strike the changes from the main motion from the ARB so that in section two of the zoning bylaw no longer changes the definitions of open space. Okay so let's bring up a vote on the Weinstein amendment. Okay so if you're voting is now open, if you're in favor of the Weinstein amendment to strike the changes to the open space definitions in section two of the zoning bylaw, you can press one for yes to accept that change to drop those changes and definitions of open space. If you want to retain the ARB's recommended vote, which includes changes to the open space definitions in section two of the zoning bylaw, then you would vote two for no to reject the amendment to the main motion. We're just voting on the amendment to the main motion. Okay voting is now closed. This is a majority vote and it fails. So the vote of 58 in the affirmative, 156 in the negative. So the main motion is unchanged. It remains the recommended vote from the ARB. Point of order. We haven't been doing that every time. We can scroll through. Yeah we could do that here. Yeah I guess usually I would do it on the final vote, but we can do that here. Since we haven't taken many of the electronic votes yet tonight. Okay that's all the screens, all precincts. And now I'll just remind everyone what we're voting on here. We're now voting on the main motion, which was the recommended vote from the redevelopment board, which has not been amended. And this vote, so you would vote yes. Once we open voting in a moment, you would vote yes. If you wish to accept the ARB's recommended vote to make these, I'll go through the, can we bring up the, just to recap from the switchover to the annotated warrant maybe if you can bear with me and scroll through as I outline these four changes. I won't be able to read it in its entirety, but you'll be able to see on the screen. There's four sections of changes here. First is to amend the definitions of open space in section two of the zoning bylaw. The second change is to remove section 5.3.21 item D, which begins quote, for mixed uses quote. Three, add section 5.3.22 item C for an exception for business districts, mind on the display. And then the fourth set of changes is to change the open space requirements in the table. Let's say in the table in section 5.5.2 item A entitled be district open space and lot coverage by increasing some but not all of the landscaped open space requirements from 10% to 15 in some of the cases that you'll have to look at the table for. Can we scroll down to the table and dropping the usable open space requirements that previously cited section 5.3.21 in that, I believe it's the third column. So there used to be reference or currently in the zoning bylaw and it would have cited section 5.3.21 that's being stricken by the main motion. You can see all the several but not all of the 10% requirements have been bumped up to 15. So if you're in favor of all of those changes collectively, you'd vote one for yes. If you're opposed to those changes and you want to keep the zoning bylaw intact that'd be two. Mr. Weinstein? Oh, let's hold off on, yeah. Point of order. Is this the majority vote or two thirds? Oh, I'm sorry, I should have stated that. This is a two thirds vote. Thanks for asking. Yes, this is a two thirds vote. I'll try to remember to state that next time. Okay, so open voting. Okay, so vote one for yes to accept all of the changes in the ARB's recommended vote to amend the zoning bylaw. Vote two, if you don't want those changes and you want to keep the zoning bylaw intact and vote three, if you wish to abstain. And again, this is a two thirds vote. Okay, voting is now closed and the motion carries 167 in the affirmative, 53 in the negative, that is two thirds vote and I so declare it. And that brings us to article six. So Mr. Revlak, you want to lead us off with a presentation? Okay, can we open the speaker queue for article six? Let's clear that first. Thank you. And speaker queue is open. The point of order, yes. Okay. You can ask. I will do my best to do so. Okay. And now that speaker queue has been open for a moment we can switch over to the presentation and give Mr. Revlak his time. Thank you. Okay, thank you. Mr. Moderator, Steve Revlak, member of the redevelopment board. I see that the slides are being shared. So thank you for that. So I will be taking you through warrant article six. This is a proposed zoning bylaw amendment related to rear yard setbacks in the business districts. Next slide please. So article six proposes a simplification to the rear yard setback requirements in business districts. So this is one of a set of articles intended to encourage the redevelopment of underutilized properties in the business districts and create more needed and desired commercial space in the furiors of town zone for business development. So currently, rear yard setback requirements are formulaic based on the length and height of the building. Some of the formulas in our bylaw and you can see them here are things like 10 plus L over 10 where L is the length of the building or H plus L over six where H and L are the length and height. So these formulas make it difficult to gauge build out potential of parcels because you don't know what kind of building you can build until you know what the setback requirements are but you don't know what the setback requirements are until you know what kind of a building you're thinking about building. So there is a catch 22 inherent in these setback formulas and we'd like to make the bylaw simpler and more straightforward to reason about. So the changes proposed under article six would establish a fixed set of rear yard setbacks in the business districts based on the height of the building and the surrounding context. So these rear yard setbacks proposed under article six are zero feet when the building abuts an alley or right of way at least 10 feet wide. 10 feet in the rear yard setback when the rear yard abuts a non-residential district. 20 feet when three stories or less abuts a residential district and 30 feet when four stories or more abuts a residential district. The height varies with essentially what is behind the parcel. Next slide please. So staff in the department of planning and community development did a survey of rear yard setback requirements in some of our neighboring communities like Burlington, Lexington, Medford, Somerville and Watertown and these communities typically require between 10 and 30 foot rear yard setbacks in their business districts. None use formulaic requirements as Arlington does. Next slide. To summarize, this amendment will simplify rear yard setback requirements in the business districts making them easier to calculate and more context specific to the adjacent neighbors. The ARB voted four to zero at their October 2nd meeting to recommend favorable action on article six. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Revlak. We have a couple of amendments that have been submitted. We'll start with mixed pretzer from the satellite room. Thank you, Mr. Moderator. David Pretzer, pre-617. I introduced an amendment. I want to start by thanking the ARB for this proposal. I think overall this is a great idea. The current requirements are definitely confusing and this really helps. I would modify the ARB's recommendation slightly by making this setback not dependent building height so that buildings that are adjacent to residential would require a 20 foot setback regardless of height and no building would require a 30 foot setback. Many of our B district parcels are small and looking at examples of them, it seemed to me that 30 feet would unnecessarily discourage four or five storey mixed use buildings. When Tom meeting voted to allow these buildings, I think we want them to actually happen in practice and I don't want unnecessary barriers to having mixed use buildings to produce housing and support our businesses. And there are some parcels in Arlington that are only 60 feet deep. So if you have a 30 foot rear setback on a 60 foot parcel, then half of your parcel is in the setback and then just that rear setback and then that sort of, it seems like it's likely to get mostly used for service parking and it feels like we're prioritizing parking over housing at that point. I think a 20 foot setback is sufficient am I making the setback more consistent is avoids discouraging four and five storey buildings. So if you're in favor of four and five storey mixed use buildings, I encourage you to vote for my amendment. And regardless, I think we should vote for the main motion. Thank you. Yeah, and can we, I moved to amend the main motion via my amendment. Okay. And we have a second of that motion and it is now pending before us. Thank you. Let us now take Mr. Loretty, you have an amendment to introduce. If you could bring that up on the display. Thank you, Mr. Loretty. Chris Loretty, precinct seven. I moved the amendment that was distributed to you, both electronically and in hard copy on the rear table, which would slightly modify the situation where there was a zero yard rear yard setback to remove lots with the rear of which about a right of way of 10 feet or less. Could I have a second please? And Mr. Loretty, could I have the presentation that I prepared please? Yes, we bring up the presentation. In case anyone missed it, we had a motion to put this amendment before us and we had a second so it is now pending as well. Yeah. Thank you, Mr. Loretty. This is the wrong slide deck. Article six. While he's doing that, I noticed noted with some amusement at the warrant article hearing for this article that the speaker before me on a separate article had accused the redevelopment board of trying to turn Arlington into Somerville. Well, you should know in this case. On the previous article? In this case, the bylaw amendment before you by the redevelopment board come straight from Somerville. It is their zoning bylaw for rear yard setbacks. But having said that, I think it's fine with this minor exception. Hold on, we're still, we have the wrong presentation here. Looking for presentation from Mr. Loretty. This is the amendment. There should be a slide deck as well. Oh, I saw a slide deck that said Loretty article seven. Maybe it's mislabeled. It should be six, but I thought I saw Loretty amendment seven maybe, which does not exist. Oh, it's P seven. I'm sorry. Not article seven, my mistake. Yeah, the presentation, yeah, that's it. Thank you. Sorry for the confusion. Go ahead. Next slide, please. The reason I'm putting this forward is we have a railroad right-of-way in Arlington called the Minuteman Bikeway. And the way the ARB's article is written, I could foresee developers coming forward and saying, well, this bikeway for the bike path is really a right-of-way. I deserve a zero rear yard setback. I don't think that's appropriate. And what this map is showing in the colored parcels that are pink and reddish are business-owned parcels that are about the bike path. So what this, what my amendment would do is require for those parcels that it not be a zero foot setback. Instead, next slide, please. These parcels would have a 10-foot setback because they would be abutting a non-residential zoning district. In this case, the open space district. And as I said, in this case, the developer of the property could not claim that they are abutting, well, they could claim they're abutting a right-of-way. It wouldn't have any effect because we've taken out that zero foot setback for rights-of-way. So that's one objective of this amendment. The other occurs, next slide, please, is more typically, or it's actually not very typical in Arlington, but the other time you can have a rear yard abutting a right-of-way is when you have a street. That's a right-of-way, both in front of your lot and behind your lot. They're really pretty rare. That's already taken care of in the zoning by-law. That's referred to as a through-lot. And Section 5.3.8 of the zoning by-law deals with that. What it says is when you have a through-lot, you've got two front yards, and therefore you have to meet the same front yard setbacks for each of those streets frontages. Now, as a practical matter, that doesn't have a whole lot of effect, too, if you're concerned about mixed use because the front yard setback for mixed use is zero. So it's still gonna be zero whether you pass this amendment or not for mixed use, but for other uses in the business district that have more than a zero foot setback, such as apartment buildings, townhouses, then the regular front yard setback for those types of developments would apply. So I view this as a rather modest proposal, primarily to protect the bike path and also to avoid a potential conflict in the zoning by-law where you do have a street-wide right-of-way behind the property, which is already covered, and then this new different set of regulations that the Revelopment Board is proposing for certain types of uses in that case. So I ask you to support this article and I ask you to not support the other amendment because I think Somerville and in general did a really good job with this particular regulation. Thank you. Great, thank you, Mr. Loretty. So I just wanna call everyone's attention. I'm looking at the annotated warrant and let's say this is for Article 6. If you look at the vote language, that table isn't as clear and it might not be correct. I'm comparing that just visually now. I did not catch this earlier. I apologize with the Redevelopment Board's report. Let's see, yeah. So you'll see here, for instance, that right rear yard in feet column. It looks like there's a strikeout across 20 feet with a tick and an asterisk. And do you happen to have the presentation computer? Can you bring up the Redevelopment Board report because it's more clear there and I think correct? Is that, yeah, so this is page, it's 14 according to the PDF. It's page 11 printed on the page or you could click it from the table of contents. So I wanna make sure everyone has the right vote language. I have it, yep, thanks. Right, and so you can see here, this I believe is the Redevelopment Board's intention since it's in their report. You'll see that there are strikeouts in that right column under rear yard with an underline for the asterisk. The asterisk is new. That's being added by this main motion, the recommended vote. And then also those asterisks correspond to the asterisks down below where all those footnotes are being added which correspond to all those asterisks in the right column of the table. Hopefully that's clear now. And that's not how it's visually displayed in the annotated warrants. So please consult, and I just caught that now. I apologize. Please refer to the Redevelopment Board's report for the canonical changes here under this article. So those footnotes are all new. They're all labeled with asterisks and they're cited now for several but not all of the items in that right column for rear yard. Okay. Okay, so let's now go to the speaker queue. Ms. Kepka. Hello, Asha Kepka, precinct one. I actually oppose this article. I have a personal story. You know, setbacks are used in today's urban planning to provide more space and adequate light and air. In dense urban communities, they are necessary for greenery and open space to thrive when used correctly. They can add value to buildings. They can be used as asterisks, green space, flex space, as we saw during the pandemic. Most importantly, the setbacks are very important for in case of emergency. They promote fire safety by spacing buildings and they're protruding parts away from each other and allow passage of firefighting apparatus between buildings. A few years ago, I actually experienced a fire. I was not home and a visitor to a building next to me threw a cigarette on the mulch within two minutes. My whole backyard was gone. Luckily, somebody passing by saw the fire called the fire department, but within just a few minutes, my fence was gone, my yard was gone, my furniture was gone. And if it wasn't for my patio, which served as a setback, my house would have been gone. I do think the setbacks are here for reason and you know, it's not healthy, it's not safe to put too many buildings, whether residential or business, so close together. Just because in case there's emergency, we need to be able to rescue people, rescue property. So I do urge everybody to vote against changing the setbacks, thank you. Thank you. Mr. Loretty, I believe we did move your motion. Did we not? Great, thank you. We'll take Mr. Kepline next. Thank you, Mr. Moderator, Mark Kepline, precinct nine. My fire safety is very important to me also and rare access can be a matter of life and death. Every time there's a fire in Dorchester, triple-decker, quite often you see neighboring buildings also involved. Somebody smokes on the back porch or has an illegal barbecue there. It's a disaster which affects the neighborhood with many people displaced from their homes. Another problem I have with the article is the first part about a real right-of-way or alleyway. These are rare in our current business districts and they're important for placing dumpsters. And if the right-of-way is only 10 feet and garbage trucks are eight feet wide along with fire trucks, there really isn't room for a four-foot-deep small dumpster and that more spaces are required back there, including also for say delivery drivers to park temporarily or even business owners or merchants working at a store. So I think that zero setback is inadequate in that case. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Kepline. We're now at 9.30. This debate might go on for a little bit so why don't we take a 10-minute break starting now. I'll set the timer and we'll come back in 10 minutes and resume article six. Thank you. Please be prompt. Okay, apologies for the delay. During the break I was informed that we ran out of copies of the Redevelopment Board report and given the display or formatting issues of the vote language and the annotated warrant, we just sent someone to print additional copies to ensure that everyone has a paper copy in hand which was the intention of the guidelines to make sure everyone has an opportunity to see the vote language in advance or at least have paper copies at the meeting so that everyone knows what they're voting on. So we will get those copies to you as quickly as we can and apologies for running out of those copies. So we'll now go back to the speaker queue. Do we still have the same speaker queue? Okay, great. Was this reset during the, it was not reset, okay. Okay, so let's now take Mr. Weinstein. We're back on article six. Thank you, Mr. Moderator. Jordan Weinstein, precinct 21. I have risen to speak in favor of Chris Loretty's amendment to article six. I think that he points out something that probably was overlooked by unintentionally by the redevelopment board and that they probably would want it inserted in there anyway. And in particular, unless this language is amended as Chris points out, and it's a very simple amendment by simply taking away the half the line of the asterisk that says zero feet when abutting an alley and scratching out or rear right of way of at least 10 feet of width, that's to avoid any developer from taking advantage of this loophole and building right on the Minuteman bikeway, seeing that and defining that as a right of way, which it may legally. So that's the main reason why I support this amendment. It's the Loretty amendment, the first one. And yeah, really, I would not want to dumpster right up against my house or to see my backyard burn or my house burn for a lack of the backyard. And also got to give those delivery trucks more room these days, which we have more of them. So I support the amendment, the Loretty amendment, article six, and I oppose the Zabit Pretzer amendment. Thank you. Thank you. And just for the clarification that the first amendment that was moved was the Pretzer amendment and the second amendment moved was the Loretty amendment. And next in the speaker queue, well, we heard from Mr. Jalkett, let's just skip forward now to Mr. Prokosh. Mr. Prokosh. Arthur Prokosh, precinct four. So first, I have a question for the Arlington Redevelopment Board, if that's in order. I am curious, per the main motion here, would setbacks necessarily be smaller? Someone from the Redevelopment Board, Mr. Revillac? Not necessarily. So we'll give a formula, their formula is, I'll give you a formula answer. So one of the formulas is H plus L over six, okay, height. So picture of building 60 feet wide, right? So that's H is 60. Now picture, or actually L is 60, L is 60. So, but let's make sure, let's have it be 60 feet tall too. All right, so 60 by 60. So H and L is 120, 120 divided by six is 20 feet, which is, that is not necessarily smaller than what we're proposing here. If the building were only 30 feet tall, then the bylaw would require a smaller setback than what this article would propose. And approximately how many stories might a 30 or 60 foot be? So 30 feet would be a very tight three stories. Three stories is usually a little above 60 feet is more like a five story building. Okay, thank you. Thank you. All right, and I have a couple other just questions because there've been a lot of hypothesizing. I wanna make sure we're talking about fact. So I'm curious, perhaps the planning department could speak to this, if there's a difference between fire standards for the type of new construction that would be possible with this amendment, or excuse me, with this main motion for multi-floor mixed use development versus, for example, all wood construction from three dockers. Mr. Champa, are you able to answer that question? How you doing, Mike Champa, Director of Inspectional Services. Can you just repeat the question so I make sure I have it right? So yeah, I was just, in general terms, I was wondering if you could characterize the differences in fire safety or fire standards for new construction of a multi-floor mixed use building versus an existing wood three-decker. Yeah, so all of these buildings would be required to be sprinkled and have fire along. And there may be additional fire ratings added to the exterior walls. And to the earlier point of fires and spreading of fires, there's additional fire protections that are required based on proximity of buildings to other buildings. So it's all covered in the building code. Thank you. You're welcome. All right. And so I have a final question, which is as to the gap between the edge of the paved bike path and the legal edge of the MBTA right of way. I'm curious what the range of that is. Is that many feet? Is that a couple of feet? Is that zero feet? Do we have any sense of that in general terms? Anyone from the redevelopment board or the planning department or inspectional services? Not inspectional services, but yep. Ms. Ricker. Thank you. Thank you for your question. I am not an expert on the width of the right of way of, you know, for the, for the bike way. I was just naming title for it. Oh, I apologize. My name is Claire Ricker. I am your director of planning and community development for the town of Arlington. Like I said, I'm not an expert on the amount of right of way, but I do know that there is extensive amount of right of way on either side of the paved area of the bike path, you know, off the top of my head. I think, you know, most rail right of way is, you know, no less than say 40 feet. So there could be as much as 10 foot already existing on either a distance from the paved section of the bike path. Thank you. So I just want to close here by mentioning that I support businesses. I especially support those businesses that serve cyclists and walkers. For example, like the bike stop in Arlington, which faces immediately up to the edge of the bike path, as I understand it. And there are other examples of buildings fronting the bike path that I think work very well in Lexington and, yes, in Somerville. And so for, for these reasons, I suggest I urge you to vote no on the Loretty amendment, yes on the Pretzer amendment and yes on the main motion. Thank you. All right, thank you. Let's take Mr. Hamlin next. Pass. Pass. Mr. Schlickman, just a reminder, everyone being like or unlike Somerville is not in the warrant article text. Paul Schlickman, prec nine solidly in Arlington. All of a sudden I'm a little confused because I'd like to sort of ask for an expert from say the redevelopment board to answer a couple of questions here. So what would be the legal definition of an alley as applied under this bylaw? Does anyone from the redevelopment board have an answer to Mr. Schlickman's question? Mr. Revolac? I'm not gonna recite the definition, but I can tell you where to find it. So it is not a defined term in our rezoning bylaw in which case the definition, our rezoning bylaw takes the meaning of, I think it's Marion Webster's Unabridged Dictionary. Mention this in chapter two. So whatever they say is an alley is an alley. That's interesting. This is in section two definitions of the zoning bylaw words not defined in either place. You'll have the meaning given in the most recent edition of Webster's Unabridged Dictionary. I've been in town meetings since like 1993. And you learn something new every meeting. I don't know. What is a weird right of way? How is that defined? How would I know what I see that as a right of way that would be applied here? Mr. Revolac, unless someone has a copy of Webster's Unabridged Dictionary? The, do I need to define right of way? For the purposes of interpreting what we have before us. Okay, so a right of way is generally an area where the public can pass. Typically it's a street and sidewalks. So if you have a, if your parcel abuts, like say a street and then an alley, the alley is considered a right of way. But what is the rear? So the rear comes from the definition of a rear lot line and basically the primary one. Actually, this is a good question. So the rear yards, I can say that the rear yards, they are both required to have the same setback on the front and the rear because they're both considered front yards. It's five, three, eight B or something. I think for the purposes of interpreting which is the front, it would be the bigger street. So for the purposes of this bylaw, Mr. Loretty is raising an interesting point of the bikeway, which we could say is a right of way because people do have the right to pass on it. But we could say that it is zoned for transit and it is rail bank property. So a railroad is a right of way, but maybe not. I don't know, I don't know the definition. So I'm wondering if the criticism of abutting the right of way onto the Minuteman bikeway, there's a smile over there. It looks like somebody's got an answer. So I saw a hand in the, Mr. Ruderman, did you have an answer to this question? Okay. I was going to say. Mr. Revlak and then Mr. Ruderman. I learned something in this case. So the definition of a front lot line is the property line dividing a lot from a street right of way. For the purposes of this definition, neither the Minuteman bikeway nor any railroad right of way shall be deemed a street right of way. Oh, so this does not apply to the Minuteman bikeway. Excellent, because hypothetically, at some point it would be a lovely thing to see some construction equipment cranes, things digging a little cut and cover building a rail line in there. And I want to make sure, no, this is within scope because the question is, if at some point somebody came along and wanted to build a subway on the Minuteman right of way, would there be room to do it given the definitions under this bylaw? That I think is a legitimate question. And if we're planning for the future, one of the future things we have is a rail bank bike path where there are existing plans to build a subway. And if that at some point should happen, I don't want to encroach upon things that would be important for the construction. So I'm sort of trying to figure out whether this applies. And it sounds like the Minuteman bikeway is not a right of way under the law. So thus, Mr. Loretty's amendment is moot when applied to the bikeway. So that answers my question. That gets me where I want to be. Thank you very much. Mr. Loretty, I will invite you very briefly to, if you, since there were a variety of opinions. Just to clarify definitions. My slides are still available. I have these definitions on them, and I'd like to refer to them just for a second. If I could, it's after the extra section where it says zoning bylaw definitions. And I think a key point that Mr. Schlickman missed is that exclusion of the Minuteman bikeway only applies to a front lot line, yet the bylaw revision that ARB is talking about is the rear lot line. And I did not copy the definition of the rear lot line, but it does not say anything about excluding the Minuteman bikeway. So I agree. If we were talking about a front lot line, then Mr. Schlickman would be correct, but we're not. The bylaw change that the ARB is putting forth specifically relates to rear lot lines. Okay, thank you. Thank you. So there are a variety of opinions for interpretations of definitions. Let's take, I think we heard from Mr. Owen earlier. Let's take Mr. Moore next. Let's take Mr. Greenspawn. Greenspawn, Precinct Five. Can I ask, I'm sorry, this is very confusing, I think for a lot of people. Can I ask the ARB to respond to what Mr. Lorette said, because I don't understand the definitions anymore. Yes. So does a member of the ARB wish to respond to the definitions we just discussed? And it might be useful for the meeting to clarify the things between the front lines versus the rear lines. Sure. So Claire Ricker, director of planning and community development. The definition of the front lot line is as Mr. Revillac pointed out, not applicable to the Minuteman bikeway. The rear lot line is defined. I'm just taking a look here to see. Lot line rear, any lot line which is parallel to or within 45 degrees of being parallel to a front lot line, except for a lot line itself that is a front lot line. Another perhaps useful definition here would be right of way itself, which is the line determining the public limiter ownership on a street or highway. So by those definitions in your interpretation, the Minuteman does not count as a rear right of way. Okay, I get the affirmative. I have a couple other quick questions. In terms of the setbacks for different stories, it says 20 feet for three or fewer stories and then 30 feet for four or more stories when a budding residential. So is my interpretation of this amendment correct that if someone wanted to build a three story building near a residential, there would be a 20 foot setback. But if they wanted to build a four story building, every story would have to be 30 feet setback. Can someone from the redevelopment board, Mr. Revlock answer that? Yes, that interpretation is correct. I hate to complicate things more because there was some discussion about, dare I say, summer built zoning bylaws. And I don't know if the way this was, I don't, can I ask the motivation for how these setbacks were determined? If anyone in the air be able to answer. Can someone from the redevelopment board explain how you arrived at these setbacks? So back in December of 2022, planning department staff did a survey of setback requirements in business districts in some of our neighboring communities and provided a set of options. This, what you're seeing in this made motion happens to be one of those options. And the board felt this was appropriate because it was both easy to understand and contextually sensitive to the height of the building and what is surrounding or behind it. Okay, thank you. So I do think it would be hard for any building to go above four stories in this situation because of the reasons mentioned in, prisoners, sorry. The amendment to switch this from 30 to 20 because you're not gonna get a 40 story, a four story building, if you only have 60 feet across and you have 30 foot rear setback and need a front setback. I did look into our neighbor's zoning bylaws and for them it's, for the first three stories it's 20 foot setback when abutting a residential and any story above is 30 foot setback which makes sense to me for shadows and various things for a budding residential. I unfortunately did not have time to propose any amendments here that would be to that effect. So I'm giving that as information for the town meeting. Other than that I would say I would still support the amendment to switch from 30 feet to 20 foot setbacks because I think as is this would make, given the parcel sizes in town making any four story buildings in any of these districts basically impossible because I think it actually would make rear setbacks even larger than the current weird formula. So I support that amendment. I am against the Loretty amendment though I'm not sure it has legal standing given these definitions and I support broadly the existing article as proposed. Great, thank you. Let's take Mr. Jamison next. Thank you, Mr. moderator Gordon Jamison, Precinct 12, I move the article and all matters before us, thank you. We have a motion to terminate debate under all matters under article six. We have a second, let's try this by voice vote. All those in favor of terminated debate on article six and all matters before it say yes. Yes. All those opposed? No. The yeses have it, debate is terminated. So we're taking up the amendments in the order that we moved them so we'll be taking up the Pretzer amendment first. So can we bring up the PDF for the article six Pretzer amendment? On the display? Thank you. And so you see all these lines with the, that begin with an asterisk. All of these lines were, are proposed in the ARB recommended vote in the main motion to add all these asterisk lines and the Pretzer amendment is making these changes to this whole section that's being introduced by the ARB's recommended vote. And so the Pretzer amendment will strike from the third asterisk line for three or fewer stories and it strikes the fourth asterisk line in its entirety. And so let's now go to a vote on the Pretzer amendment. So if you are in favor of those changes that we just showed on the screen of removing the, the voting is now open, removing the restriction of four, three or fewer stories and removing that, that fourth bullet point or asterisk about 30 feet for four more stories. If you're in favor of striking those pieces of text from the recommended vote of the ARB, you would vote yes. If you want to leave the recommended vote as is, not amended by those changes, then you'd vote two for no or you can vote three to abstain and stay out of it. And this is a majority vote on whether to apply the Pretzer amendment to the main motion. Okay, voting is now closed and the motion fails. 84 in the affirmative, 123 in the negative. The main motion remains unamended. It's not, it's not particularly close. So I'm not going to scroll through the screens. Let's now show the PDF for the Loretty amendment under article six. And rather than repeating all those asterisk lines which I asked Mr. Loretty to not put in there because it would put the amendments in conflict, we have just the one asterisk line of zero feet when abutting an alley and Mr. Loretty's amendment would strike the remaining text, which reads or rear right of way of at least 10 feet of width. So it removed that second clause starting with the or but then would otherwise leave the main motion unchanged except for this one, the striking of that clause. So if you were in favor of striking that clause from that asterisk line from the main motion from the ARB, then you'd vote yes to strike it, vote two to leave the main motion unamended, not changed. And three to abstain. So let's now open voting on the Loretty amendment under article six. If you're in favor of that change to the main motion to remove that clause, vote one for yes. If you wanna leave the main motion, the recommended vote of the ARB unchanged, you could press two for no, or you could press three to abstain, two to abstain. One for yes to take the change, two to remain unchanged and three to abstain, sorry. Okay, voting is now closed. Again, this is a majority vote and it fails. It's very close so we can scroll through the screen for the 101 in the affirmative, 105 in the negative. Again, it's always a majority vote to make an amendment to a main motion and so we'll scroll through the screens. It's very close, we're almost there. And that is all precincts. So now we'll move on to the main motion which is the recommended vote of the ARB and it has remained unamended, I'm sorry. And yes, thank you. It is a two-thirds vote on the main motion. And so before we open voting, let me just summarize as best I can that we're now voting on the main motion under article six. This is the recommended vote of the ARB vote. You will, once voting opens, you can press one to vote yes to accept the ARB's recommended vote to amend section 5.5.2 of the zoning bylaw. The section titled dimensional and density requirements replacing several of the entries in the rightmost column of the table, the right column under minimum requirement, rear yard with an asterisk in several of the entries that refers to several criteria that we saw of those asterisk or bulleted lines with newly proposed footnotes. So if you're in favor of all of those changes from the recommended vote of the ARB, you'd vote one for yes, two for no to leave the zoning bylaw unchanged and three to abstain. Okay, voting is open and this is a two-thirds vote. Okay, voting is now closed and the motion carries 173 in the affirmative, 37 in the negative and we will now move on to article seven. Article six is disposed of. Okay, so Mr. Revlak, are you introducing article seven? Okay. Oh, and before he comes up, let's open the speaker, let's show and open the speaker queue, switch over to that. Could we clear this out? Okay, speaker queue is reset and open. Mr. Revlak, and then just, like maybe no one has anything to comment on this. Okay, so let's switch over to Mr. Revlak's presentation and you have the floor. Thank you, Mr. Moderator, Steve Revlak, member of the Arlington Redevelopment Board. I'd like to request a submitted slides for article seven, be shared at this time. There we go. All right, thank you. So I will be taking you through warrant article seven. This is a proposed zoning by law amendment related to step backs in the business districts. This is one of a set of articles that's intended to encourage the redevelopment of underutilized properties in the business districts and create more needed and desired commercial space. Next slide please. So I'll start with some background. What is a step back? So a step back is when the upper stories of a building come in a few feet away from the street. From the perspective of someone standing in the front of the building, the step back uses, kind of uses the lower stories to conceal the upper ones. It makes the building seem less big. It also creates a built-in requirement for some variation in the facade. Next slide please. So Arlington currently has an upper story step back requirement, starting at the fourth story. The building has to step back seven and a half feet on each side of the building with street frontage. So on Arlington's business parcels, roughly 44% of them are on corner lots with street frontage on two sides and sometimes three. Combining that, the multiple street frontages with the fact that a lot of these parcels in the business district are small, the requirement to have a step back on multiple sides is it can make it challenging to develop upper story residential space. So article seven proposes to change the step back requirement so that it only applies on the primary facade. The primary facade will be along the side-facing mass-average Broadway unless there was a compelling reason to choose otherwise. Article seven also clarifies that the step back is to be measured from the property aligned. Next slide please. Now staff in the Department of Planning and Community Development surveyed business district step back requirements in other communities and most don't have them. Of the communities that do require step backs, it's generally for step backs well above the fourth story, 65 feet is one measure which is about a six-story building. Next, nope, this is the last slide. So this amendment addresses a challenge in redeveloping the upper stories of mixed-use buildings, particularly on smaller corner lots. The ARB voted three to one at their October 2nd meeting to recommend favorable action on article seven. So the board member who voted no was in favor of the amendment but preferred the step back requirements start at the fifth floor rather than remaining at the fourth. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Revlach. Let's switch over to the speaker queue. Mr. Wagner, you're up. Thank you, Mr. Moderator, Carl Wagner, Precinct 15. The previous speaker, the proponent, said it well that the step back is there to make the building less massive to those that have to look on it or pass by it. And they also affect solar access and they affect solar access not just on the primary or the front side but to the butters on the backs and the sides. And Arlington has done nothing yet to protect houses but particularly solar panels. And we really should. What this would do is it would say only the front side would keep any kind of that setback and we really shouldn't be going that direction. I also want to point out that this article, like articles five through 11, never had anybody from the public to be able to go to a public meeting since last town meeting. This was first presented when it was presented to the ARB on the 18th of September, a rainy day, only in person. So a butters and people that could be affected by this change never had the chance to have a public meeting to hear the questions of others or to ask their own. They never had a chance to write in to the town. In every instance in my life in this town when changes to zoning happen, including all the other articles four through 11 or five through 11 effectively, the public has had meetings much like in this room and people have said, hey wait, adjust this because it affects all these things. We are 190 or maybe we're 211 people at the moment who are voting on changes that will affect massive buildings and most importantly the butters and the people around them. I think this deserves to have like the other articles through 11 public input. So I would ask you to vote no on this. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Wagner. Let's, we can show the speaker queue. Let's go ahead to Mr. Aram. We haven't heard from him tonight yet. Aram Holman, precinct six. I urge you to vote against this. As this has been described, this step back will only apply to the principal facade. Generally tall buildings present their nicest facade to the main street. In general, the facades present on other sides of the building are less attractive, sometimes considerably less attractive. What you're really doing is sending a message to most of the butters, people who are not on the main streets but on side streets, the people who will be facing taller buildings than they've experienced before. You're unimportant. You don't count. It's not necessary for you to be relieved of any of the appearance of massiveness that this will cause. This nice facade with some limitations will be seen only from these front sides, only from the passersby. I think that does a disservice to the many people who are going to be near these buildings. This building will not be invisible to them, but these people will be rendered less visible to the rest of the town. I urge you to vote against this. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Holman. And I apologize for misspeaking your name when I recognized you. Let's take Mr. Benson next. Eugene Benson, precinct 10, just a couple of quick points. We are still more restrictive with step backs than most communities in our area. And I think that's an important point to make. We are competing with other communities in our area for commercial buildings. And we need to be competitive on things like step backs. Secondly, right now, and another reason why the redevelopment board has put this forward, is it's unclear whether the step back is on the first floor, the fourth floor, as long as it adds up to the fourth floor. So this clarifies that it's from the property line, and it can be on any number of floors as long as it makes it back to the fourth floor. Further, it's for street corners. It doesn't affect people behind because the step backs even currently only apply on street frontage. So I would urge you to vote in favor of this motion article. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Benson. Let's skip ahead to Ms. Elliott, who I don't believe we've heard from tonight. Pets, okay. Mr. Moore. Thank you, Mr. Moderator. Christopher Moore, precinct 14, motion to terminate debate. We have a motion to terminate debate. Do we have a second? Yep, we have a second. So all those in favor of terminating debate on article seven, say yes. Yes. All those opposed? No. I declare that it is a two-thirds vote, and debate is terminated. So before we bring up voting on the main motion, there's no amendments here. So we'll go straight to the main motion. Let me just summarize before we open voting. First of all, this is a two-thirds vote, and if you can vote yes to accept the redevelopment board's recommended vote to make changes in these three sections. Can we bring up the recommended vote language? All right, so there's three sections that are being amended here by the main motion. Number one, update the definition of building step back in section two of the zoning bylaw to replace the text all building elevations with the entire principal facade of a building and dropping the exclusion of alleys. The second section of change is multiple edits to section 5.3.17 titled upper story building step backs, including a new paragraph, which is one sentence about measurement of an upper story step back. And the third section of changes is removing section 5.3.21 item C, which is about upper story setbacks, which results in re-lettering of these subsequent items in that section. So it's those three sections that are being amended in the zoning bylaw by this recommended vote, which is the main motion before us. So let's now open voting on the main motion of article seven. Voting is now open. This is a two thirds vote. And so if you're in favor of those three sections of changes that I just ran through, you can vote one for yes, two for no, to keep the zoning bylaw intact and three to abstain. Mr. Jamison, do you have a point of order? This is the title is wrong. Zoning bylaw amendments step back requirements in business districts. Yes. So let's hold off on the voting closing. Let's leave the voting for now. The title of the slide should read, zoning bylaw amendment, step back requirements in business districts. Thank you, Mr. Jamison. That might be the name of a different article. That was the previous, yeah. So can we clear that out? Is that possible? And have the correct language up there? And once again, the correct language, the title of this article is, zoning bylaw amendment, step back requirements in business districts. Mr. Gilbert, do you have the text that you need for that? Does anyone have a good playlist? Yeah, can we run the vote? So we were talking about step backs. There we go. Okay, voting is now open for article seven, zoning bylaw amendments, step back requirements in business districts. Vote one for yes, to make those changes in those three sections of the zoning bylaw that I ran through earlier. Vote two, to leave the zoning bylaw intact. And three, to abstain. Voting is now closed. This is a two-thirds vote and it is affirmative. 140 in the affirmative, 60 in the negative. It is a two-thirds vote. Okay, so moving on to article eight. Mr. Revlach, do you wanna leave this off for the presentation? And before he comes up, or before he gets started, can we clear and open the speaker queue so everyone can see if they're getting in? Okay, speaker queue's open. Mr. Revlach, you have the floor. And now that we've confirmed it's open, can we bring up Mr. Revlach's slides for article eight? Thank you. All right, thank you, Mr. Moderator. Steve Revlach, member of the Arlington Redevelopment Board. So I'll be taking you through warrant article eight, which is a proposed zoning bylaw amendment related to height and story minimums in the business districts. Article eight is one of a set of articles intended to encourage the redevelopment of underutilized properties in the business districts and to create more needed and desired commercial space in the few areas of town zone for business development. Next slide. So article eight's goal is to encourage traditional mixed-use development in the business districts with uses like retail or restaurants on the ground floor and office or residential space above. It's also a way to encourage more efficient use of the limited land resources in Arlington's business districts. Now to that end, article eight proposes a height minimum of two stories in 26 feet unless there are site-specific circumstances that would make a second story infeasible. For example, the board would be unlikely to require a second story on a new gasoline service station. Article eight would not require the owners of one-story commercial properties to add a second story. The requirement would only apply to new development. So this amendment tries to encourage higher value mixed-use development in the business districts by requiring a minimum of two stories unless there are site-specific conditions that would make a second story infeasible. The ARB voted four to zero at their October 2nd meeting to recommend favorable action on article eight. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Revola. Let's switch over to the speaker queue. Let's take Ms. Farrell who we have not heard from yet. Pass. Who else have we not heard from tonight? Ms. Mozina from the Satellite Room. Angel Mozina, please say 15. I do agree with this article. I think it is prudent for us to make use of existing land and existing structures and maximize the usage and ability to build on residential if that's what we need to. I am in full support of this article. Thank you. Thank you. Let's take Mr. Tosti next. We haven't heard from you tonight. Al Tosti, please say 17. Move the question. It's not what I had in mind, but we have a second to terminate debate. So we'll do this by voice vote. All those in favor of terminating debate on article eight, say yes. Yes. All those opposed? No. That is not a two-thirds vote. So we have at least half a person standing. One, two, three. Okay. All right. All right. I shouldn't have opened my mouth. Let's go to an electronic vote on terminating debate, and we can do that while retaining the speaker queue. Voting is now open. If you wish to terminate debate on article eight, you feel like you heard everything you need to hear. Vote one for yes. If you want to hear more and continue debate, press two or three to abstain. Voting is closed. And debate is terminated. It is a two-thirds vote, 141 in the affirmative, 58 in the negative. So let's now go to a... Well, before we open voting on the main motion, let me just summarize what we're voting on here. This is a two-thirds vote for the main motion. Vote yes to accept the... If you wish to accept the ARB's recommended vote to add section 5.5.2 items C. Actually, can we bring up the vote language, please? Thank you. You might need to scroll through because there's a lot in here. So we're adding section 5.5.2 items C to the zoning bylaw, which would be a new section titled minimum height and story requirements for the business districts, which specifies a minimum of two stories and 26 feet in height in business districts. These minima do not apply to single-family residential buildings, and the ARB reserves the right to waive or modify the height requirement if it's infeasible for the property or the project. Okay, so that's what we're voting on for the main motion of Article 8. So let's now open up voting, and we'll all make sure we have the right text, zoning bylaw, amendment height and story, minimums in business districts. I'd also accept minima as the plural. Voting is now open. This is the main motion under Article 8. Okay, voting's now closed, and the motion carries 185 in the affirmative, 23 in the negative. It is a two-thirds vote. That takes us to Article 9. Mr. Revlak, do you want to lead us off? And can we reset and open the speaker queue and show that on the display? Okay, speaker queue is now open. Mr. Revlak, you have the floor. Do we have a presentation slide deck to show? Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Moderator. Steve Revlak, member of the Arlington Redevelopment Board. So I will be taking you through warrant Article 9. This is a proposed zoning bylaw amendment related to corner lot requirements. So Article 9 is one of the set of articles intended to encourage the redevelopment of underutilized properties in the business districts and to create more needed and desired commercial space in the furiors of town that are zoned for business development. It also seeks to clarify how the Arlington Redevelopment Board has been interpreting this aspect of the zoning bylaw. Next slide, please. So under Arlington's bylaws, corner lots have multiple front yards. There's a front yard on each side of the property that abuts the street. Now, according to Section 538 of our zoning bylaw, these, the depths of these front yards, quote unquote, shall be the same as the required front yard depths for the adjoining lots. So in other words, on a corner lot, the front yard setbacks are determined by what's on the adjacent parcels. Now, in the vast majority of cases, a corner lot will be in the same district as the parcels that abut it, and Section 538 produces a reasonably nice result. You get an even front setback as you go around the corner. Now, where this becomes a challenge is in the cases where the corner lot is in a different zoning district than the abutting properties. Specifically, when the corner lot is in a business district and the abutting parcels are residential. Next slide, please. So a commercial or mixed use building in a business district is generally allowed to have a zero foot front yard setback, but residential parcels usually have setbacks of 20 or 25 feet. So applying residential setbacks on corner lots in business districts will, tends to reduce the footprint of the building and the amount of commercial space available. So Article 9 would amend the zoning bylaw so that when a corner lot is in a business district, the business district setbacks apply. So there is a section of the bylaw, it's Section 5, 316 that allows the ARB to adjust setback requirements during environmental design review. And Article 9 is largely a codification of how the board has been applying the bylaw in this regard. The board hopes this leads to more clarity and more predictability in the permitting process. So in summary, this amendment adjusts the setback requirements for corner lots in the business districts so that the setback requirements are based on the business district rather than the abutting parcels which may be in a different district. The ARB voted for zero at their October 2nd meeting to recommend favorable action on Article 9. Thank you. Great, thank you, Mr. Revolac. And turning to the speaker queue, let's take Mr. Miller. Is there Mr. Miller? Do you wish to address the meeting? Oh, do you have a microphone upstairs? Is there a microphone coming down? Okay, in the meantime, let's say, Mr. Warden? Oh, he's right here, okay. Yep, Mr. Miller, yep. And then we'll take Mr. Warden. No worries. Mr. Miller, I appreciate you loving. This is just, I don't have an opinion, I just wanted clarification. So looking at that slide that we previously saw, there was a setback that was different on the corner versus the adjoining, even though they were in the district, business district. So could that slide be brought up and clarified again, please? If we bring up the slide, and Mr. Revolac, do you wanna explain that? I just wanted clarification, thank you. So yes, in this diagram, we see a corner lot which is intended to represent a parcel in the business districts. And abutting it on either side are our district properties. So the dashed red line on the B district parcel, the blue one, is intended to represent the setback in that particular business district. Now the dashed lines in the yellow parcels are intended to represent the setbacks in the residential districts. And what this slide is trying to convey is that if you were to apply the residential setbacks to the business district parcel, you would basically lose a lot of buildable area. Whereas if the B district setbacks were applied to the B district parcel, you'd have a larger, developable area and would be able to, it would allow you to get more commercial space on the parcel, thank you. Just to further clarify, so typically you're not gonna have a single corner that is in the business district. Speaking of the microphone, please, sorry, yeah. So typically you would not have a property on a corner that's in the business and there's residential on both sides of it. Is that true? Oh, I'm just trying to clarify. Steve Revalac, Arlington Redevelopment Board. There are cases like that. We had one recently a few months ago. It's also reasonably common to have one of the two parcels be a residential district. So if you think of like Mass Ave as a commercial court or the next parcel in on a side street is residential. So then that would mean that if it was horizontal and this was Mass Ave going horizontal then there would be two blues. There would be two blues. Yep, that's all I wanted. Okay, thank you. Thank you. You might say B district parcel qualifies as a corner case. Mr. Warden, you're next. Some mics here? Yeah. The other one. Okay. Thank you. John Warden precinct eight. I have a problem with this in so far as the a multiple story building and we've just voted to have make one story buildings. Well, you can't have one story building anymore. You have to have a two story building and one story building at the sidewalk level and a residential zone just behind it. Well, that's not too bad. I think that's a good point. I think that's a good point. I think that's a good point. You have four boxes on the floor.再見 Oh, I don't think you have anyone just behind it. Maybe isn't anyone just behind it, though. That's not too bad. You start putting multiple stories there and then then you're really pushing the height shadow and all those unfortunate results upon the people whose houses are down the street. If it's a one story, yeah, it's okay to have that wave the side setback requirement. But if it's a multiple story, I think this setback requirement should apply only to the first floor and the other floors should be setback a bit. Thank you. Mr. Warden, let's take Mr. Klein next, and I will assume that Mr. Warden was not making a motion to refer, so we'll take Mr. Klein. Thank you, Mr. Moderator. Christian Klein, precinct 10. I just had a quick question. The language that's being added, it says, court of law shall have minimum street yards with depth for its front and side yard, as required by the front and side yard requirements. The side yard has not been mentioned in this discussion, so I wanted to ask how that applies. Mr. Revolak, can you repeat that language, Mr. Klein? Sure. So the language that's being added that's underlined, it says, except in the business district, so court of law shall have the minimum street yards with depth for its front and side yard, as required by the front and side yard setback requirements as applicable. Can we bring up the amendment text up here? The by-law amendment, the main motion, thank you. That is a little extraneous, because the side, the court of law does have a side yard, which is of the two front yards, you get to pick one of the opposite sides as a rear, one as a side, but in this case the side would be the side yard of the business district. Okay, so effectively to what we're saying is that the side yard, which would have applied anyways, is still applying. Yes. Okay, thank you. All right, thank you. Let's take Mr. Gast from the satellite room. I move the matter and all matters before, I move the article and all matters before us. Okay. We have a motion to terminate debate on article nine, do we have a second? Point of order. Point of order, Mr. Loretty? Mr. Loretty, for everyone else said that he believes that Mr. Klein raised a scope question. That's right. Thank you, Mr. Loretty. Crystal Loretty, precinct seven. If you look at the language in the warrant, it does not speak about side yards at all. It talks about minimum street yards, and street yards are not side yards, so I don't see how the ARB can be putting forward a warrant article to amend or add to a definition with language that regards side yards. Okay. Okay. Can we bring up the warrant? Actually, it's at the top of the, it should be at the top of the page, right? The warrant article text all the way to the top. Yeah. So warrant article text to see if the town will vote to amend section 5.3.8, corner lots and through lots to amend the requirement for corner lots in all business districts which requires the minimum street yard to be equal to the required front yard depth or take any action related there, too. Some from the ARB wish to make a comment about this question of scope. And to be clear, this, so if I understand you, Mr. Loretty, you're not just saying that there was, you weren't calling scope on what Mr. Klein was saying, you're saying that he raised an issue that you're, you're questioning whether the main motion remains within the scope of the article text. Correct. Okay. Mr. Benson? Yes, Eugene Benson, redevelopment board. I would say it is, it is within the scope because if you look at what it says, depth for its front and side yard as required by the front and side yard setback requirements in the other district because buildings on Mass Ev may have front or side yards depending upon which way they face and therefore it makes a difference what goes on down the street and how that applies. So this minimum street yard has to be both front yard depth if it's a side yard but also front yard depth if it's a front of the building. So for buildings on Mass Ev and a side street but most of it is facing the side street so the side street is a front yard then that applies. So if this, therefore I think it is within scope. Okay. It is. Mr. Cunningham, do you have any legal opinion you wanted to share? Thank you, Mr. Moderator. Michael Cunningham, Acting Town Council in just reviewing the particular provision of the zoning bylaws that the Warren article seeks to amend. It does mention street yards in 5.3.8 so to the extent that there's a scope issue which the moderator will determine it does appear that that notice was provided to the body. Thank you. So based on the feedback from Mr. Reddy, Mr. Benson and Mr. Cunningham it is my determination that the main motion, the recommended vote from the ARB is within scope and we will proceed with that. Thank you. Let's see. Did we, I think we were just about to take Mr. Gast, is that right? From the satellite room? Oh, he terminated debate. And all right, so let's rewind here. So, but we did not yet vote on terminating debate, correct? So all those in favor of terminating debate on all matters under Article 9 say yes. All those opposed to terminating debate say no. That is a two-thirds vote and debate is terminated. So let us now move to a vote on the main motion and before we bring, before we open voting let me just run through what we're voting on. This is a two-thirds vote and you can vote yes if you wish to accept the, let's switch over to the, to the vote language. Thank you. A vote yes if you wish to accept the ARB's recommended vote to add text to item A of Section 5.3.8 of the Zoning By-Law which is the section titled Corner Lots and Through Lots specifically adding the text that you can see here on the display except in the business districts at Corner Lots you'll have the minimum street yards with depth for its front and side yard as required by the front yard and side yard setback requirements as applicable for the district in which it is located. That is the entirety of the main motion. So let's now open voting on Article 9, Main Motion, Corner Lot Requirements. So if you wish to accept those changes to the Zoning By-Law Section 5.3.8, vote one for yes, two for no if you want to keep the Zoning By-Law intact and three to abstain. Okay, voting is closed and it passes. 150 in the affirmative, 49 in the negative. Wow, that's, is that really close? No, it's not really close. So we will now go to Article 10. Mr. Revlach, Mr. Slickman, we have a second to a point of order. That's not a, that's not a thing. Mr. Moderator, point of order. We, Paul Slickman, Precinct 9, we have only five articles plus Article 12 before us. I would wonder if the moderator or anyone else who could advance this question determine whether or not it makes sense for us to come in on Thursday for five articles seeing as we have defined Monday night as the Article 12 night. That is a, I think, a fair point. Let's see, so just looking at what we have ahead of us, we still have 10 and 11 before Article 12. I do have one amendment in review for Article 11, so there's some business to do there. The, let's see, and looking ahead to the other articles if we were to hypothetically, just kind of thinking out loud here in front of 300 people. If we were to convene on Thursday to skip past through a series of procedures to skip past Article 12 this Thursday to go ahead to Articles 13 through 15. I don't believe Article 15 is necessarily finalized from the Finance Committee report. Let's see, 13, I believe, is no action currently with no substitutes. 14, yeah, so, yes, point of order, yeah, yeah, I can repeat the question. The question is, is it possible or likely that if we skip Thursday and just convene next Monday might that result in town meeting running into Halloween, basically the end of the month? It's a, right, I mean it's all up to you how long we're going to debate. I don't make motions to terminate debate. I don't vote on terminating debate. I just recognize speakers from cues. In my professional opinion, I'd say that's unlikely. Mr. Jamison, do you have anything to add? Since we're having this open conversation about scheduling. Thank you, Mr. Moderator. Gordon Jamison, Precinct Child. I would suggest we do Article 10 and come back on Monday. I agree with that. What? What was that? Okay, so I think we're going to stick with the original plan. If we have to skip around to skip over, and again, it's also up to all of you to vote, like we take these procedural motions to lay articles on the table, remove them from the table. You vote on that and decide that, but assuming that the meeting was amenable to skipping Article 12, which was the intention on Thursday if we got that far and we likely will if we meet Thursday. There's other business that we can do Thursday. And wouldn't it be nice if we got all the other business or as much as if we could get done Thursday and then come back Monday. And then we could finish on a high note, right? Where Article 12, it'll be a lot of passionate debate and we'll resolve it and everyone walk out arm in arm and it'll be great. Mr. Rubilak, are you doing anything Thursday? I'm all yours, Mr. Moderator. Steve Rubilak, Precinct 1, I have a point of order. One of the articles, I don't recall the number of it specifically, but the fossil fuel article, I believe has Article 12 as a prerequisite. And I would question whether it would be wise to take that up before taking, what happens during Article 12 will have a dramatic effect on what we do with the article that requires Article 12. Thank you. Mr. Helmuth, did you want to add anything or Mr. Cunningham? Not yet recognized. We still have two minutes, come on. We could have gotten through like two articles in all this time, right? Do you have anything, too? Mr. Cunningham? Thank you, Mr. Moderator. Michael Cunningham, Acting Town Council. I think Mr. Rubilak's point is somewhat valid. I think that Article 14, the MBTA communities requires the fossil fuel program, we're required as a community to do one of three things, one of which would be MBTA communities. The other two options, set forth the statute, are not currently options for the town of Arlington. So that's why the point is appropriate to make. Okay, thank you. So the plan will be, and we already had the motion by Mr. Helmuth at the beginning of the meeting, that if we don't finish the business tonight of the meeting, which we did not, that we will adjourn until Thursday, October 19th at 8 p.m., we're going to stick with that plan. It may be a short evening if we run out of other business to do aside from Article 12, which will still contain, will plan to leave for Monday with the meeting's permission. And so that's what we'll do. So you might get an early night on Thursday, but we'll try to get as much business as we can get done in the meantime. So I would now entertain a motion to adjourn. Oh, first of all, before I accept that, turn in your handsets. And do we have any notices of reconsideration for any of the articles that we voted tonight? Speak now or forever hold your peace. Seeing none. Any motions to adjourn? Is that a motion to adjourn? I heard a motion to adjourn. Do we have a second? Motion to adjourn. Okay, we are adjourned until Thursday, October 19th at 8 p.m. I'll see you then.