 All right everyone, welcome to the January 25th meeting of the Arlington Redevelopment Board. This open meeting of the Arlington Redevelopment Board is being conducted remotely consistent with Governor Baker's executive order of March 12, 2020 due to the current state of emergency in the Commonwealth due to the outbreak of the COVID-19 virus. In order to mitigate the transmission of the COVID-19 virus, we have been advised and directed by the Commonwealth to suspend public gatherings and, as such, the Governor's order suspends the requirements of the open meeting law to have all meetings in a publicly accessible physical location. Further, all members of the public bodies are allowed and encouraged to participate remotely. For this meeting, the Redevelopment Board is convening via Zoom as posted on the town's website identifying how the public may join in. Please note that this meeting is being recorded and that some attendees are participating via video conference. Accordingly, please be aware that other people may be able to see you and take care not to screen share your computer. Anything that you broadcast may be captured by the recording. So I will now confirm that all members are present and can hear me through a roll call. Ken Lau. Here. David Watson. Here. Eugene Benson. Here. Katie Levine Einstein. Here. Katie Levine Einstein. Here. And Rachel Zimbary. I am here as well. And from the Department of Planning and Community Development, we have Jennifer Rietz. Here. And Erin's work co. Here. Do we have anyone else joining us from the Department of Planning tonight? No, we do not. Great. Well, with that. Sorry. Actually, I take that back. I just noticed that Ken Pruitt, our energy manager, is also joining this evening. He also helps with the Clean Energy Future Committee and many of those committee members are also here. Well, welcome. We're glad he's joining us this evening. Great. With that, we will start, we will open the first agenda item on our agenda this evening, which is the Arlington Redevelopment Board draft amended rules and regulations. So Jenny, I'll turn it over to you. I believe that these are just the changes that we discussed two meetings ago, but I wanted to see if there was anything else that you wanted to share regarding the final draft of the rules and regulations. I didn't have anything new to share, Rachel, or board members. I haven't received any other comments, but the one that we received from Mr. Lorette, which was posted to the agenda and had been shared previously at a prior meeting as well. So tonight, if there are any other amendments, we can, of course, incorporate them or take further public comment as needed. Thank you. Thank you, Jenny. So I will just run through a roll call of the board to see if there are any new discussion items before turning this open for public comment, starting with Ken. Oh, you're on you, Ken. I am none. Great. Thank you, David. I have no further comments. Thank you, Jane. Yeah, I have no comments. I just want to confirm that the only changes are a little 10. Is that correct? Correct. OK, thank you. I have no comments. I think it's what we discussed last time. Correct. And just to clarify for everyone who is joining us, Jenny has the the only changes that are being proposed are currently what is up on the screen, which is relative to the timing for the posting of materials for the open meetings. Katie, any items before we open this up for public comment? I have no questions or comments. Great. Thank you. And I do not either. So with that, let me just pull up my participants list. I will open this up for public comments. Anyone wishing to speak on this matter, please use the raise hand function in the participant section of Zoom. And I will call on calling people as they in the order of the that the raise the hands are raised. Note that you will have three minutes to make any comments. We'll ask that you identify yourselves by your first and last name and your address. So give this a minute. And the first person we have is Chris Loretty. Thank you, Madam Chair, Chris Loretty, Adam Street. And thank you for having my previous comments posted. I assume from what I hear in discussion so far this evening that there's been no initiative to place in the rules a prohibition on ex parte communications of board members with those who come before them. And I think it's important that you include that in the rules as Attorney Nessie, who often appears before Tom Boards has indicated that's really an ethical issue that's very fraught and board members should not be meeting with people who have business before them or seeking permits outside of the public meeting. That's sort of like if you're going through a divorce proceeding and you're soon to be ex spouses meeting with the judge privately without you being there. That's wrong. It shouldn't happen. And I believe that should be in your rules because I understand that has occurred on a number of occasions recently. And I really hope that you can change the rules to do that. The other suggestion I would make or observation I would make is the board's been very lax about requiring models in there for submissions for EDR review. And I think you should change that to be the default unless the board grants an exception. And I would also add in general, I'm wondering, you know, how interest of the board really isn't doing EDR because it doesn't seem that the EDR reports to me seem very superficial and perfunctory and the sort of limitations on the time people speak and the way you're running the meetings. It looks more like you're just trying to get through with things as quickly as possible. You know, doing environmental design review special permits is a privilege granted to you by town meeting. And I've heard some town meeting members suggest that maybe that should be taken away and all the special permits should be granted by the zoning board of appeals. If you're really not interested in doing EDR and doing it thoroughly, I hope you'll be clear about that because I'm sure there are people who would be more than happy to put forward a warrant article to change it so that only the ZBA grants the special permits in town. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Loretty. Just to respond to two items. There already is a section, I believe it's in section 16, Jenny correct me if I'm wrong, that that is that addresses the the the legal meetings that the board has in place. And there have been no instances of meetings that have not conformed with this. So I take exception to that statement. And I also personally do not feel that models are necessary or should be required for the majority of what we see before us. But I believe that up to other members of the board to see if they would like to address that when we have further discussion. Are there any other members of the public who wish to speak? Rachel, can I speak up? I also take exception to Chris's remarks about meeting prior to any of these discussions. All meetings with plaintiffs are done in the open and they have come out from the public meeting saying we can further help them with our views but not prior to any meetings. And it's only subjected to what we are suggesting. But the final outcome is a public meeting with a public discussion. There is no approval. There's no none of this. So we're just trying to provide extra help to get a better project. And I'm kind of I kind of feel like the extra work we do, we get punished for. And I don't think that's right. Maybe if they want to come join us for these meetings, they're more than welcome to because there's nothing to hide. We're just trying to further discuss. How to make projects better. And I think every example that we've done, we made the project better. So I don't know what else to say. I see that Mr. Loretty has his hand up again. Are there any other members of the public wishing to speak? Mr. Loretty, do you have a different topic that you would like to speak on? I'm not interested in having a back and forth on any of those two topics. Madam Chair, I would just like to clarify. I'm not talking about the board meeting as a whole with participants outside of a public meeting. I'm talking about individuals, one or more individuals, meeting with applicants outside of a public meeting. And to Mr. Lowell's point, I don't know that any time that members of your board have have met outside of the public meeting, they've been advertised and that the public even been offered an opportunity to participate. But I would just refer you to the letter that Mr. Nessie himself wrote to the Board of Selection in the context, in this case of the ZBA and the inappropriateness of people having ex parte communications with boards. It wasn't specific. His comments were not specific to the ZBA. And I've sent you references to opinions by public officials completely outside of Arlington on that topic. And it's best practice not for board members, for board members not to be meeting with applicants for special permits outside of public meetings. And I appreciate that you can improve the projects that should be done as part of the public meeting process, public hearing process. Thank you. Thank you. Any meetings that occur have are recapped at any public meeting. So they are actually part of the public meeting process. Thank you. Colleen Cunningham. Sorry, I guess. Stewart Boris and 73 Kensington Park. You know, we're very new at this, so we're just learning. But I think Chris has a point here this all he's asking. He's not accusing the board of, you know, malfeasance. All he's asking is that the business about, you know, prohibiting external meetings that are not in front of the public be written into the documents you've got here, the rules and regs. That's all he's asking. And it sounds very reasonable to me regarding reporting on those meetings at the meeting itself. That's that's not the same as having the meeting in front of, you know, members of the public who can ask questions at the same time. So I just want to point out that it sounds very reasonable to me. And it's just something you would write into the into the by into the rules and regulations here. Thank you. Thank you for your feedback. The next speaker will be Don Seltzer. Thank you, Madam Chair. Don Seltzer Irving Street. I have to ask the board if they have considered the impact of these proposed rule changes on public participation. This schedule requires that materials for a typical meeting be submitted by Monday the week before. Yet the public doesn't even get to see these until Thursday evening. Some members of the public, myself included, like to use a few visuals to aid the remarks, perhaps a chart, a marked up plot plan or just some photographs. Before COVID and Zoom meetings, I could walk into the town hall annex just before the meeting. I could hand Aaron a thumb drive with some visuals that I wanted to use. Now, this new schedule unreasonably requires that I submit them by the Friday morning before. It's very difficult to meet that demand when the agenda and the meeting materials have only been released on Thursday evening. I cannot see any good reason why a member of the public should not be allowed to submit visuals up until, let's say, noon of the day of the meeting. This is not an unreasonable burden upon staff. All they have to do is put the file on the host computer for the meeting. I also noticed that the town calendar lists that the Energy Futures Committee is holding a joint meeting with the Redevelopment Board this evening. This is a surprise because it's not listed on the agenda and there are no meeting materials posted. I suppose that under the board rules, they will be denied any visuals if any representatives wish to speak tonight. Thank you. Thank you. Any other members wishing to make comments this evening? Great. Any other comments from the board before we move to a motion to approve the changes as submitted? Do I hear a motion? Jean has his hand up, Rachel. He's just waving. Yeah, I'm sorry, I didn't use that. Jean, go ahead, please. Yeah, I'd like to respond to a few of the things that were said. One one has to do with the ex parte communications. Ex parte communications are improper communications. There's no indication that these are improper communications. When the board has a meeting with a project proponent at a public meeting and has questions and concerns, we have sometimes said, why don't you meet with one of the board members or communicate with one of the board members separately and get and then come back at the next meeting? So nothing that is done in that communication meets the definition of an ex parte communication because it's not done improperly. It's not done without the board's consent. And it's not done outside the venue of the party because the party to a special EDR permit is the applicant. So from sort of a legal point of view, there's nothing wrong and it helps move the process along. Second, I take a lot of exception to the statement that we don't take our EDR review requirements seriously. Anybody who's watched these board meetings over the last few years sees how seriously we take them, how we question the applicants about many of the criteria and how they have to come back to the board more than one time to meet those criteria. I agree with Rachel on the models. You know, we've left it to the staff to determine on an individual basis whether a model is required and that seems to have worked well on onto the timing piece. I wish we had more time, you know, because we don't get that much time before we see things anyhow. But we are dealing with schedules that are very compressed for a lot of reasons. I think everybody is trying to do the best that they can. What, you know, I guess the only thing I would say is that if there's a reason why the visuals couldn't be delivered by, you know, 12 p.m. at least 48 hours prior, I'd like the staff to take that into consideration about perhaps being able to accept them later if there's a reason. But other than that, I think the rest of this, the changes are consistent with how the process has worked for a while. And that's why I think the board up to this point, at least, has felt comfortable with it. Thank you, Jane. Anyone else with comments before we move for a motion to approve? OK, do we have a motion to approve the. amended. The amended board rules and regulations as submitted with this agenda. So motioned. Through a second. Second. Take a roll call vote. Can I have a little discussion now that we have a motion in a second? Please, Jane. I like something at the end of the sentence that starts with if visual circumstances, visual information at the very end that says after the section 20, the comma and say, unless there are extenuating circumstances or unless the staff determines there are extenuating circumstances. So I have a question about that, Jean. So if it sounds like the major concern that Mr. Seltzer expressed was if the materials aren't available till Thursday and visual materials based on that have to be in by the next day, isn't the extenuating circumstance always going to be there's not in the room to create materials? No, that's not an extenuating circumstance would be something like there was a storm and someone could go out to the site or, you know, there was a brownout or the internet went out or something along those lines, something beyond the timing would be the extenuating circumstance. Jean, I'll just ask that. Sorry, go ahead, David. No, you go ahead, Rachel. Just going to say that I would think that any type of extenuating circumstance, such as what you just suggested, would apply to any anything here. I don't know that we necessarily need to explicitly call that out in in this particular document. I think that the staff and has always been very understanding of of trying to be accommodating to timing. And, you know, again, what what you just suggested is what would constitute an extenuating circumstance really could could be applied to any of this any of this timing. I'll just say I think we've recognized with the changes that that the the previous process was not working particularly well and that there continue to be challenges with both us and the public having enough time to review things. So I think it's clear since we're making these changes to try to improve things that we will keep an eye on how the process works and, if necessary, tweak it again to continue improving. Any other comments from Katie or Ken on Jean's proposed amendment? I would leave it as my opinion is I will leave it as is and Jean's comments are correct. I think that that would be granted anyway. So if it was a brown out or, I don't know, something happened, snowstorm or something like that, we say, yes, sure. You know, we're we would be lenient enough to say, yes, we will take it in on Monday, on Monday morning or something like that. I don't see Jennifer saying, no, it wasn't here. I'm not going to do it. We have not done that in the past. I think we've been very accommodating. I guess, you know, I'm sorry, Ken. Didn't mean to cut you off. So I mean, the other way to look at it is whatever visuals would be presented could be incorporated into the written comments. So, you know, we would still get them as part of the written comments. So if somebody I'm speaking against my emotions. So if somebody couldn't meet the deadline by noon the next day, they could certainly include that in the written comments and we would get them all the day of anyhow. So it would be just as effective. So the reaching, you know, so, you know, I if nobody else is going to support me, I'd still support the overall intention, which I think is fine. Thank you, Katie, did you have any comments on this discussion? No, I share. I think your perspective, Rachel and Ken's that it's fine as this. Great. So, Jean, would you like to withdraw that suggestion or? Yes, I will. I will withdraw it since there doesn't seem to be any support for it. Yes. Great. Thank you. Any other comment commentary or discussion before we move to a vote on the motion that has been made and seconded? OK, seeing none, we will take a roll call vote starting with Ken. Yes, David. Yes, Jean. Yes, Katie. Yes. And I am yes as well. The new amended rules and regulations are adopted as submitted. OK, that closes our first agenda item and we will now open our second agenda item, which is the Zoning By-law Amendments to be submitted by the Redevelopment Board for twenty twenty one annual town meeting. And I will turn this over to Jenny to start the discussion. Thank you, Rachel. And I'm going to see if Aaron can jump in here to. Are you there? Yeah, you are. This is Aaron's memo to me, actually, so I am going to just give a quick overview that to explain that Aaron and I, you know, following the last meeting where we had talked about the different types of amendments I provided a memo. We heard a little bit more about some of the proposed amendments from petitioners potentially. Aaron and I then started the drafting process and spoke with Doug Heim, who reviewed this document with us last week. And I think probably the best thing to do is for Aaron to walk through the document and it primarily reflects what you had previously looked at, except for one of the items, which is the MBTA communities item, which, of course, we can spend some time talking about as well. But if it's OK with you, Rachel, I'd like to let Aaron walk us through the document and Aaron, I'll scroll for you. Sure. Can we do this one at a time? So each article, we can discuss each one. However, you want to do it. Just Aaron, just tell me where you want want me to move. And Rachel, if it's OK, I'm going to have it. Yeah, I think that sounds great. I could go one at a time and we'll just see I'll take any questions from the board as we migrate through them. Great. So the first item here is from the 2020 annual town meeting that was deferred. It extends a reference to a two-year period to a three-year period, which is consistent with Chapter 40A. This states this consistency requirement dates back to a permit extension act from the Great Recession when special permits were allowed to the exploration of special permits was extended from two years to three years. Any questions from the board? OK, let's move on to the next one. Thank you. So the second item is also a carryover from the 2020 annual town meeting. It defines apartment conversion, which is a use listed on our table of uses, but does not have a definition. Any questions from the board? All right, moving on. So the third item is also a carryover from the annual town meeting of 2020. This defines how landscaped and usable open space or landscaped in open space and usable open space is calculated to relative to the gross floor area. There was a reference that seems to might have been it was in a definition, I believe, pre-recodification. So this just brings this back up to the forefront so that it's clear how usable and landscaped open space is defined, calculated. Any questions from the board? OK, but just just to be clear, it doesn't change the calculation. It just makes it clear again how it's calculated. There are no changes to the calculations or the percentages that are shown in the tables or in the text. Great. Thank you, Erin. So the fourth item is again, a carryover from the 2020 annual town meeting. This just makes it abundantly clear that any use in any of the tables of uses that doesn't have a Y or an SP, meaning a special permit, is a prohibited use. Any questions from the board? OK. The fifth item is a carryover from the 2020 annual town meeting. This carries over the legend that you see before the table of uses for residential districts and the table of uses for business districts. It carries it over to the other districts, which includes the open space district, the MUD, the PUD, the industrial and the transportation district. Any questions from the board? OK. The sixth item is partially a carryover from the annual town meeting of last year and then partially new. Numbers one, two, and three are carryovers from last year. Apparently, the numbering did not work properly. So the first item, the third item and the fourth item are carryovers. The second item, which reads removing gendered terms in subparagraph A of section 323, rules and regulations, and subparagraph B of section 627, non-conforming signs, is a new item. And it removes references to chairman and replaces it with chair. And there's references to he and it replaces it with a non-gendered term. I will note that you probably you probably recall that there was a reference to the state regulations for medical marijuana that was listed in this version of this article for the 2020 annual town meeting. That is incorporated into the next item down. Any questions from the board? Jean. Yes, there's one other administrative amendment. I sent an email to Jenny about this, so she knows about it. I suggest be added a correction. The current section three point three point four eight says dimensional standards more restrictive than those set forth in section seven of this bylaw. The reference should be to section five rather than section seven. So I think that was just sort of some sort of typo was carried over incorrectly from the previous zoning bylaw before the recodification. So I think that should be added as another administrative correction. I'll say it again, three point three point four eight. The reference should be section five rather than section seven. Should be. Yes, that's it. OK. Thank you, Jean. Any other comments? Any objections to Jean's eagle eyed correction or addition? OK, moving on. So the next item that is highlighted on the screen is new this year. The state has promulgated regulations for delivery options for marijuana retailers. So this amendment would create a new use category, which is marijuana delivery only retailers, which is essentially like a third party delivery. However, this type of use can establish a space, a warehouse space as required by the state regulations to store products that they purchase from other establishments and then deliver those products to customers who place an order online or over the phone, but not in person. These establishments are not open to the public. And then the second part of this amendment is to make other amendments for consistency, including such as that reference to the correct medical marijuana regulations that the state recently repro that word is difficult for me, that they recodified the regulations for medical marijuana uses. Any questions from the board? Yeah, I do. So are we adding a zoning district or this is added on to the existing zoning district? This would not add any new zoning districts. The marijuana delivery only retailers would follow the same allowances for for the zoning districts as product manufacturers. So that is primarily in the B3, B5 and industrial districts, if I remember correctly. OK, so it's not narrowing it down or making it bigger is just what it was before. That's correct. And allowing this new type of use. OK. And you had a comment. Yeah, I have a couple of questions. So the next or last line, use regulations for MU, MU means what? It's the mixed use district. The MU district, the only instance of it is at Arlington 360 and the associated assisted living facility at that property. OK, and why do we need to make a change to the open space districts for us? There is no change to the open space district. As I had mentioned to Ken, this use would be allowed in the industrial district and the MU, PUD, industrial transportation, open space districts are all on the same table. OK, so it's just changing the table that has them on. It's at and only specifically in the industrial district. OK, one of those other districts are under consideration. Great, thank you. Yep. Any other questions for Aaron? OK, moving on. So the next item related to the industrial uses. So this is the warrant article for the project that the Zoning By-law Working Group undertook over the past year or so. This is the warrant article proposed to include those amendments. That the board has seen previously our consultants from RKG and Harriman were at the December 21st meeting. Any questions? OK, moving on. So the next item is a re-adoption of the zoning map. The zoning map was last adopted officially in, I believe, the 90s. So this amendment would enable the town would enable town meeting to re-adopt the official zoning map. Of course, there have been changes to the zoning map since it was officially adopted, but it's good practice to re-adopt the official zoning map, which is what this this article would do. Any questions from the board? Jean. We I think last town meeting we did recommend. I think town meeting adopted a change to a parcel next to the DPWR. So this is this would be both to amend and re-adopt or I mean is re-adopt accurate when we're making a change in the map. So there's no change proposed with this article. It re-adopts the official zoning map that would incorporate all the changes since the last time the town adopted an official zoning map. OK, so it includes all the changes. OK. Yep. But there is no specific zoning change proposed this year. OK. So I'm sorry, Rachel. No, please go ahead. So I'm going to hold on the next item because I think that will garner a lot of interest and just quickly mention the last two items. Mr. Loretty has requested that his citizen petition from last annual town meeting be resubmitted. So that's this one. The definition of excuse. And then the last item here is the recommended suggested article for Mr. Maitanen proposal related to energy efficient homes and foundations on conforming laws. So that suggested text was provided, Mr. Maitanen, and I believe the ARB had not made a decision in January 4th, whether they would submit this or encourage Mr. Maitanen to submit it. So that's what this article is. Great. Thank you, Erin. Are there any questions? I know that can you had some questions when this came in front of us previously? With regards to the last item for energy efficient homes on conforming lots. I think I'm after meeting with them and going over all the issues that Erin coordinated. I think we're all set. I'm all set. David Jean, did you have any questions on this item? No, I'm fine with it. Okay. I'm also okay with it. Okay, Katie? Yeah, it looks great. Okay. And I was in support of it when we did it previously. So I don't have any other questions. So should we go back to the one that we skipped over? Yep. So this, and I'll ask Jenny to, I'll introduce and I'll ask Jenny to provide additional detail. The economic development bill that was recently signed into law by the governor included a requirement for communities that are known as MBTA communities of which Arlington is one to ensure and to continue eligibility for certain grant programs chief among them, the MassWorks program. MBTA communities must provide for a zoning district of reasonable size with a minimum gross density of 15 units per acre to allow multi-family housing as of right. So our, what Jenny and I have discussed is the text that you see on the screen and then specifically the half-mile buffer from Alewife station, which is the second requirement is that that district needs to be within a half mile of a transit location. And there's a list of them, but Alewife is the one that impacts Arlington which Jenny and I are recommending that the districts that allow multi-family housing as of right to be in compliance with this requirement is the B2A and the B4 district. I will also note that the other districts that fall within that half-mile radius are the PUD district, the R2 district and I believe the B1 district. So I'll ask Jenny to see if she has anything to add but the question is in front of the board which district should we be including in this article? Do you guys have a map? Oh, do you want me to, I just want to add a little bit, Ken, if you don't mind. Sure, please. I just wanted to add, first of all, thank you Erin. That was an excellent overview of each one of the amendments and for pausing on this one I also appreciate that because I'm sure there will be a lot of questions. The one thing I want to just note is we have to adopt a district that's of a reasonable size and so that was one of the other things of note here is that B2A, there's basically two parcels that fit within this half-mile radius around Alewife. There's about two parcels in East Arlington that relate to B2A. Of course, it would apply to the entire B2A district. It's important to understand that. It's not just those two parcels. And then the B4 I think is, we figured out it's five lots but they're contiguous as one big block and that's the B4. We're suggesting that both of them because that determines a reasonable size but it could also be one or the other because collectively that does end up becoming a reasonably sized district but is it a reasonable size in relationship to the transit amenity? That's an important issue for the board to address in this particular amendment. The other thing is Erin and I had done some work sort of playing out the 15 units per acre with these parcels and also believe that based upon this this would be our recommendation. As Erin noted, the other options are the PUD which is essentially limited to the parcel that is owned by the MuGar family where there is currently a 40B proposal under review as many people know and the other district and that zoning district, I believe there's one other district of that type PUD or is that? That's the only. That is the only parcel of land in Arlington that is owned PUD is that parcel of land, okay? So then the other option was the R2 and I think that would open this up to all of the R2 district throughout the entire community which is again, we're trying to balance the need to meet the requirement in the best location potentially and to also think about have some thoughtfulness about how it applies across the town. So that was some of the background in forming this conversation. The last thing I just wanna add is why do we need to do this now? It becomes an effect 90 days after the bill was signed. So technically that's a couple of months from now, two and a half maybe roughly. And there will be, as Erin noted, there will be regulations promulgated by the MBTA and DHCD and others that won't change the requirement to actually adopt this and for us to be able to access MassWorks funds. So then just to let you know, we are planning to apply for a MassWorks grant for a traffic and transportation related improvements in the area of MassAven Appleton which is a known intersection that's in need of a number of traffic and safety improvements. So that is the impetus for wanting to move this forward at this time. And that grant period is basically in the summer. So the timing of town meeting and the timing of this conversation is that's kind of the order of events at this point in time. So I'm glad to answer any other questions but I think I'll leave it there for now. So Ken. Is the LWF is the only hub that's eligible or can we do a bus station hub? We don't, what we have are bus stops and they're not, it's not the type of station that we believe they are talking about that meets the requirements. So you might be thinking of the bus way in Arlington Heights for example but that is essentially a layover. It's not a transit hub. So LWF certainly does meet the requirements however. No, I do, I just, I'm feeling like right now I'll ask the rest of the board too but I feel like we're a, not given very much time to study implications of this. You know, it's something we haven't been talking about for quite at all. And I think I like to spend a little more time talking about it and studying it and seeing actually on a zoning map. Me too, me too, we would as well. So I mean, the goal here is if we could file the warrant article we will have it as the sort of the placeholder. And of course we would be doing a lot more work and research and preparation in order to move this forward. But we do, I think it moves the town to file something in the warrant so that we can at least move forward with us. Ken, did you have anything else before I move to Jean? No, that's good enough. And I might come back in but I think that's good enough. Yes. Jean? Yeah, I thank you. I appreciate, you know, sort of the need to get something done on this and move it along. And we have to start here because this is where we are right now. I have some questions and a number of concerns about it. I'll start with one concern that I had shared with Jenny and Rachel by email. Right now under our current zoning bylaw the inclusionary zoning requirement for adding affordable units for six or more unit project project only kicks in when there's a special permit required. If we do this and allow multifamily housing to be permitted as of right and don't amend our bylaw to require inclusionary zoning outside the special permit context I'm afraid that some projects can get built that are six or more units and won't have any affordable housing. So if we're gonna do this and I had some other concerns about this let me just say if we're gonna do this I think there needs to be something that's referenced in this language that adjusts the affordable housing section so that we can make the requirement, the inclusionary zoning requirement there outside special permit. So that's the first concern I have. Second is, and this I think is sort of a policy issue our definition in the bylaw of multifamily dwelling is four or more dwelling units you know, four unit building, five, six, whatever. The definition in the state law which is the one we're trying to implement is three or more. So we could meet this requirement not by allowing multifamily housing as our bylaw defines it but by allowing triple decker's basically three family dwellings. The advantage of that is we don't have to be concerned about the special permit and the inclusionary zoning because there's no inclusionary zoning required when it's three family rather than larger. That's one piece. So I think that's something for the board to discuss whether we wanna open this up to our definition of multifamily which is four or more or the state one which is the requirement we have to meet at a minimum which is three units. Second is, and this is another thing I think the requirement is just to authorize this within the half mile of L life. I don't think the requirement is to extend it throughout the entire town. And if the rationale for doing this was to make it within walking distance of in our case, the L-Y-T stop it doesn't meet the rationale by extending it throughout the entire town. And my concern is that I don't think that requiring a special permit has been a barrier for people in building multifamily housing in town or mixed use which is what most of them turn out to be in town. On the other hand, the advantage of special permits for us and I credit the architects on the board the current and the former ones is that the projects end up being much better projects because of the special permit process than they were when they were first provided to us. So when we make this change if we spread it out through the entire town we theoretically at least lose some level of control that I think has resulted in better projects for the town. The last thing is, and I don't know whether this is a good or bad idea but I just mentioned it as a possibility and that's just put an overlay district within a half mile of the L-Y-T stop in which three family homes are allowed as of right because three family would meet the requirement. And we might want to exclude a few of the parcels I have them happen in front of me I honestly don't know exactly where the half mile is from L-Y but it looks to me like most of it other than the pud and we might as well put the pud in if it's an overlay district most of the rest of it are our two family districts so it's not a big leap to do an overlay district for that. So I'm not sure whether that's a good idea or not I just put that out as worthy of discussion as well as do we want this proposal for the B2A and B4 to be throughout the town or only within a half mile of L-Y and do we want it our definition in the bylaw which is four or more units or the definition in the state law which is just three units. Rachel. Yes, Jen. Can I please respond, please? So I think first thing is probably an Erin are you still there? Sorry. Yes, I'm just on mute. Oh, sorry. I had my screen small. So I lost you. So I think Erin and I went through quite a lot of brainwracking around how we meet this and it is not as simple as just allowing three families and Erin can we talk about how we came to this and it has to be that the minimum density is still 15 units per acre. So we wanna do, do you mind talking about that? If not, I'm gonna pause for a second and then just while you're looking that up we would have to amend other sections of the bylaw as well. It's just that from a timing perspective it didn't get posted with this document. We would definitely have to amend probably the definitions actually 3.4 for EDR as well as 8.2 for affordable housing because of the phrasing in 3.4 and 8.2. I think we would have to make it clear in 3.4 for example that it wouldn't apply. So that would be a use that would not apply in your list of uses. And then in 8.2 you would have to provide a subsection that makes it clear that we would want that to apply which I believe can be the case that you can allow affordable housing at any development. So Jean and I did have course condense about this matter and having worked on this particular topic in many communities throughout Metro Boston it is an allowable requirement that we could say we want to include affordability and we want our section 8.2 to be relevant. In terms of this, Erin, do you feel ready? I can't, if I switch my screen I have to go back to the bill language and I can read it verbatim would that be easier? No, I mean it's a simple explanation is the fact that three families require a minimum lot area per unit of 2,500 square feet in all of the B districts and therefore but then also a minimum lot area of 5,000 square feet. So if you divide an acre by 2,500 square feet it does seem like the use that allowing three families would be eligible. However, when you consider the fact that there's a minimum lot area in addition to that and for a three family if you need to 2,500 square feet per lot or excuse me per unit you actually need 7,500 square feet as a minimum lot area. So when you'd calculate the math out it doesn't actually meet that minimum gross density of 15 units per acre. And that was actually, so there was like the ore also you could also allow the two, three families on one lot which we also do not allow something like that. Right, so the ore statement is at least two buildings with two units in each building but our zoning prohibits more than one principle structure on the lot. And a two family dwelling unit is one principle building even though there's two units. Correct. Two dwelling units. So Jean, I don't, I very much appreciate your measured approach towards this. We did talk about that initially and worked our way back to this in terms of the applicability throughout that particular district that is something for the board to discuss. I will just again emphasize the point that it does need to be a district of reasonable size. So that's just something to think about. Can I just ask a question related to what you just said which I really appreciate because obviously you guys have, you too have done a lot of work on this and thinking it through. If we did an overlay district, we could encapsulate all of the things that you mentioned. I forgot that one. I'm not saying pro arcana of the overlay district. I'm just putting it out as one possibility which is if we did the half mile overlay district we could do all of the things you mentioned so that it would meet the requirements because that's what you do with our overlay district basically. My short answer to that is I think the intention is to amend the underlying zoning and that's still an optional way of achieving this goal. It's not, it doesn't say anything about it being prohibited in any manner. So it is a possibility. And again, and another one that Aaron and I also talked about. And by the way, we haven't spent nearly as much time as we would have liked to talking about this. It's really, it's very new and we're trying to figure it out. We've spoken with colleagues at the state to learn more as well as many other planning colleagues working throughout the Commonwealth trying to figure out what to do and particularly those communities that have a town meeting where there's the importance of trying to get this done in a relatively short period of time. And so this is our best proposal at this moment in time. But I think, Jean, you make a very good point about the overlay concept. Jean, did you have any other questions or comments before I see if David or Katie? Can I make one quick comment or do you want me to come back after you? No, no, go ahead, Ken. So you're just saying we need to put this some sort of zoning bylaw amendment in for the time being right now where we've studied this and understand the ramifications of this because I see what Jean's trying to do and it makes a lot of sense. But also I want to take a look at it from a point of view of a developer or a homeowner and say, well, what we're doing here, we encourage what we're trying to get here is more housing. And I just want to understand that whatever regulation you put in here is not going to hamstring it. And that's where I'm not getting it right now. I just don't feel comfortable right now on all these changes because they're happening too quick and I don't understand how that affects the bottom line. That's all I want to say. So is your question, and I don't want to lead you in any particular area, is there a way to write this broadly enough so that there is the time to study it leading up to filing the main motion? Do you have an ask or a? Yeah, sort of. I mean, I just wondering if we maybe can have a couple of small meetings on this and talk about it with maybe a couple of realtors, a couple of contractors or whoever to get their side input as well as us. And I think you guys done a great job of trying to understand this thing, but just get up a broader picture of this whole thing then see how it works and see what we're doing. Because otherwise I don't see what the round, we're rushing it too quick, we're going to drop something. Move over to David. So a couple of things. First, I think the real issue at this moment is that if we don't put an article on the warrant for annual town meeting, then we won't be able to consider making any changes at annual town meeting, which would then potentially prohibit us from applying for mass works grants until such time as we make a change in the future to comply with the new 48 provisions. So in order to at least preserve the possibility that we can continue to apply for mass works grants, we need to put something on the warrant and the warrant closes in a few days. So we don't really, unfortunately, with the timing of this, we don't have time to study it. So, but with respect to Kin's point, can we file something that maybe doesn't reference the specifics of the B2A and the B4 to give us some time to think about exactly what we might want to do? I realize you guys have gamed this out and think that's the best option, but we're just seeing it now. And I agree with Kin, I'd like to see it on the map and understand the implications. And I also was going to bring up the idea of an overlay district as a possibility to more tightly tailor this to the half mile distance for male wife. So I do think that, yes, even though I'm usually the first to, I don't wanna put anything on the warrant when we don't have a clear understanding of the exact changes. I think in this case, there's urgency to preserve even the possibility of the town continuing to apply for mass works grants in the near future, which is important. It doesn't mean we may still decide upon further examination over the next couple of months to not move forward with any changes for this town meeting if we don't agree on it or don't like the direction it's in, but then we would be making a deliberate choice to forego being able to apply for those grants until we get this sorted out. So I think we should put something on the warrant, although if we can make this even a little bit broader so that we can really have the full discussion before we set me the exact changes, I would support that. I did have one question, which is, is there a reason that we wouldn't want to or be able to include the Mugar property? Is your question just the PUD to just apply this to the PUD, David? Why wouldn't we include that? That kind of seems like a gimme because it's right next to L-Wife. Your Honor, Jenny? Well, so let me, there's a lot to reply to. First thing is, yes, right now, this is a place told or warrant article, the deadline is Friday. It feels hurried to me too. I wish I had more time to vet this out a little bit more. I also wish I had prepared like three of these. So you weren't just looking at this one. And so there is no reason to leave anything out right now. It all is potentially on the table, including the various ideas that have been shared. So I'm just thinking this through and out loud a bit. And Erin, you can be like, please jump in at any time. But we could prepare different warrant articles that gets at this in the different ways in which some of you have suggested now, as well as include other districts. There's no reason to leave something in or out. We were a little bit wary of R2 intentionally so. However, that could also be included in this. I think to not say the district in the warrant article would be a bit of a mistake. Although it could be districts that are within half mile of the ALYFT station, that might be the other way to phrase it. If that would be, I think we would then be, we would then be of course listing the districts and that includes R2. But that could be another way of perhaps just noting it in the warrant and holding the place. And then if this overlay district idea is of particular interest, that would be a different article, I believe. I don't think we could like lump that into this one necessarily, but Aaron, what I'm just curious what you think about that. It feels like a different one altogether. Like it would be a whole separate section in and of itself. Yeah, I agree to allow the creation of an overlay district would be a separate article. But similar to our other overlay districts that are in the zoning bylaw. They have their own constitution essentially. Right. But to make this article more broad-based, I would agree with Jenny's suggestion to strike those specific references to B2A and B4 and leave it up to districts that are within a half mile of ALYFT and you could include a clause in there too, but not including R2 or to include R2 depending on the vote of the board. I think we're getting toward what might be a broad enough wording of the article, which I think, as other people have pointed out, is where we need to be at this point because there are a lot of things we're not sure about yet. So I think if after the word children, it said something like in the districts within a half mile of the ALYFT, MBTA station, whatever it's called, that might do it and then say something like and make related changes to 3.34 and 8.2 or whatever those exact references are. So you don't lose the need to do that. But I do think that if we, I'm just thinking that with this wording, it may also allow us to do an overlay district and you won't need to do a second, need to do a second large article for that. Well, what if we just had the or take any action related there to catch all, like we do in some of the other ones? Well, we definitely need to do that. But I think we just might wanna call out the EDR and the affordable housing. But yeah, we may be able not to do might be worth having a quick conversation with town council about whether this would allow us the flexibility to make those sort of decisions. I'm just gonna like type, but please be aware of the fact that further editing is necessary. And I'm aware of that. So it's like section two, section five, section, section 3.4, section 8.2. And then what about if we added an overlay district? I was just trying to do my quick, not well, but that's in five, right? That would be okay for five. But establishment of districts is in four. So I think you've covered it. Just put, oh, in four. You mean, oh yeah. I think it would need to be added to section four. You're right. And five probably too. Yeah, so we've got all the sections. Except for six and seven. It feels kind of like we should just include them. In that case, would or take any action related there to just cover it if we're basically naming all of the sections? It doesn't hurt to have them here. I mean, I can just put the overall section number is probably just as well at this point and we can go further. Do we think section six though? I am somewhat serious about that. Did we identify that as being an issue or was it only section five? We haven't yet, but the overlay districts are a reference in section six, I believe. So we would need to include that. Aren't they? Or am I wrong? If I might, Rachel, the overlay districts are in section five. They're five, seven and five, eight. Section six includes off-street parking, which unless you want to make this a big article, we could tackle that section. And it also includes signs. My opinion is that it may not be needed. But yeah. I just thought that the overlay district, the open space sign district, that's what it is. But you know, the overlay district could say that whatever the underlying parking and sign requirements are applied. So you don't need to change six for that. Yeah. I would put parking in there. I would put parking in there. Because we're talking about the whole process of putting within half mile of L-Wave. And then, I mean, I would, you know, talk about not having any parking in some years to allow to get to the 15 units or something or other. I don't know. I'm just thinking out the top of my head right now. I don't know. That's going to make a lot of people under section seven is four. Yeah, if there was ever a situation where we'd want to look at significantly reducing parking requirements, it would be in this situation. Yeah, I would agree that I think at this point, since you're talking more comprehensively and particularly for an overlay district, which usually has some, you know, very specific confines to it. And again, its own sort of charter and constitution. And particularly if that comes up as we begin real conversations about this, I think not, I think keeping it in makes sense. So this is, at the moment, well, if this is okay, this captures, I think the majority of for now, of course, the main things that we want to make sure to include in the warrant article. And again, it is meant to, because this is the time to do it, we will of course have more conversations. They will include maps and further analysis lists. Jenny, just a quick typo on the last line, it's L-Y if you don't need to work the letter T because you're put M-E-T-I-M. Yeah, thank you. Yeah, there might be further editing of this one. Please note, because I need to note the section titles as we do in the other proposed amendments. I'd also just add that I think to me, this looks good with the understanding that the board would like to be able to explore an overlay district. So if town council believes that we need a second warrant article to be able to do that, and then we couldn't hear that, I think we'd want to see that second article also filed. Yeah, no, I think the way that Jean has phrased that and how it might fit in here, I think probably is, I don't see any issue with that. I don't think it needs to be worded any differently. Great, so I do want to make sure, Katie, that if you had any specific comments that I know we haven't fully gone around the horn yet. So did you have anything specific that you wanted to add? No, I think everyone else really covered most, but I wanted to say, I think the one point I just really want to underscore, which it sounds like multiple board members have taken up is just to make sure that as we iterate over this and as our town thinks about how to do this properly, that we make sure that we make it easy to build housing, which is the aim of the state law. And so making sure that we maintain the spirit as we go forward. But I'm really excited about the other conversations about thinking about not providing parking, for example, not having the parking minimum supply here to the same way. I think there's a lot of really exciting things we could do with this. So anyway, that's all. Great, thank you, Katie. And I appreciate, Jenny and Erin, your willingness to think about how we can structure the way that this is written so that we can have a good discussion leading up to it, because I do think that that intersect, being able to apply for the MassWorks Funds, we've heard from many, many people in the public that that intersection at Appleton and MassAd is very, very important to address. And so having the ability to apply for the MassWorks Funds by addressing this, I think is very important to the town. So thank you for working with us tonight for this. Before we open this entire section up to public comments, I wanted to see Jenny and Erin, if there are any other comments related to what you've presented that you wanted to mention this evening, or if any of the board members had any comments before we open this up for broader public comment. Rachel, what about Chris's request? We didn't talk about that at all. I think we're just moving that forward. As we mentioned, he had filed that previously with the number of signatures that were required and requested that it be deferred until a future town meeting. So I don't think that we need to necessarily discuss support or lack of support for that or any comments, but we could, and I believe Chris is on the... Yeah, Rachel, this is verbatim what was filed and that's what we promised we would do if a petitioner asked us to. We also asked all of the petitioners, so it wasn't selected. It was anybody who had not asked us to resubmit for the special town meeting in November. And Mr. Loretty was the only individual who stepped forward and requested that we resubmit it. And we said we would resubmit it as is. So we'll have much further conversation about it as we begin a public hearing process or at any other time that the board desires prior to that, of course. Where you have the personnel should be... Yes, thank you. 3.3.4 point A. Okay, and what is... I was just looking up the name of that, sorry. It's the EDR. But the overall... Oh, it's just technically... Special permit conditions. Special permit conditions, okay. And it should be... We want it to be section five, not section seven. That is a special section five, yeah, right. Well, I think the way that you've worded the rest of this is that you're correcting the thing that's wrong. So the thing that's wrong is section seven. Okay, that's correct. Sorry, okay. 3.3, we're good, okay. I don't have anything else. Two articles down, industrial uses. Industrialism is... Oh, yes, thank you. I knew there was another one. There's a U before the D. Oh, yeah, in industrial, got it. It was the U was... I think there was also a typo and missile reddies unless you caught that already. I caught that, it was definition. Yeah, well, we'll do another final scan before we move this forward. Any other questions for Jenny and Erin before we open this up for public comment? Oh. Okay, great. So we will now open this agenda item up for public comments. Any of the members of the public wishing to speak, please use the raise hand function in Zoom. I'll ask that you please identify yourself by your first and last name and address and you'll be allotted three minutes of speaking time. So the first person is Colleen Cunningham. Yeah, hi, once again. It's Stuart Borson, 73th in Kensington Park. Actually raised our hand long ago to point out that typo and the spelling of industrial, but thank you for catching it. But I might as well just take a second to comment on the MBTA area thing. Actually, I liked what Jenny and Erin had done by saying that, you know, really build in the B2A and the B4 areas. They had a lot of sense. And I'm a little disappointed that all of a sudden that went away and the board is looking at building in larger areas. And the reason is this, there's a master plan that was created for Arlington that in fact, I think you guys participated in. And it's a good document and it lays on a lot of very smart, you know, development pathways for Arlington to pursue. And one of them is the master plan is very clear that mass amp development should be encouraged and the Mass App corridor, you know, stands some improvement. And by putting larger buildings on Mass App down there by ALY near the Cambridge border for housing and replacing some of the crappy buildings that are there now, you'd be fulfilling that particular part of the master plan. Whereas just allowing developers to build wherever the heck they want in the R2 area, that's, you know, that's sort of an abrogation of what's called out the master plan. So my request to the board is consider the master plan when making the decision about where to, you know, how to do whatever overlay district that you want to do. Thank you. Thank you. The next speaker. Right, so can I just respond to that quickly? I wanna make it clear that we want to look at the best way for the town to comply with the changes to 40A in order to continue to qualify for Mass Works grants. And if you are listening to our discussion, we are very concerned about how to best constrain those changes. So I don't, I disagree with the characterization that we're talking about just opening up R2 to any development that people want because that's not at all what we're discussing here. Thank you, David. The next speaker will be Don Seltzer. Thank you, Madam Chair. Don Seltzer, Irving Street. I appreciate what a difficulty it is for the planning department and the board to deal with this state mandate regarding the MBTA districts. It's not an easy problem to solve. For the public who don't have a zoning map in front of them, I just wanna help visualize where these B2A districts are. We're talking about all the large pharmacy parcels in town starting with an East Arlington, the CVS and Minotomy Grill. That's one of them. The Walgreens Plaza, East of Arlington Center, the Walgreens and Trader Joe's up in the Heights and the Stop and Shop parcel for good measure. And we wanna consider seriously whether we wanna make multifamily housing by right to replace these businesses, what it would mean to the quality of life in town. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Seltzer. The next speaker will be Steve Revillac. Thank you, Madam Chair. Steve Revillac, 111 Sunnyside Avenue. I'm speaking as someone who is a member of the Zoning Board of Appeals, but I'm not speaking for the Zoning Board of Appeals. My comments are specifically regarding to the MBTA article for compliance with changes to 48. I like the discussion of having an overlay district that would apply within one half of a mile of L-Life-T station. I think that fits the state changes goal of having transit-oriented development. I personally love triple-deckers and would not object to seeing more of them in that area. And I mean, from a massing perspective, a triple-decker is not a whole lot different than some of the two family homes that are there. Now, in writing that article, I'd suggest that one, it would be worth looking at section 8.2, which is the non-conforming uses section of our zoning bylaw. The lot sizes within a half mile of L-Life tend to be rather small and not conforming to what's currently, necessarily conforming to what's currently in our bylaw for minimum, not lot size, and not even necessarily conforming to the vested rights provision in 40A, which is 5,000 square feet and 50-foot of frontage. So one thing you may need to consider is how to possibly facilitate reconstruction on lots where it would be difficult to do so under the current bylaw via non-conformity. That is all, thank you. Thank you, Mr. Revillac. The next speaker will be, just says Posse on the screen. Hi, Posse Miattenen, 23 Sheridan Park, a member of the Clean Energy Future Committee. On behalf of the committee, wanted to thank for the support for the committee's bylaw proposal. And this will help Arlington meet its energy efficiency goals and thank you again, just wanted to say thank you for this support. Thank you. Do we have any other members of the public wishing to speak? Seeing none, we will close public comment. I'll open it up again to the board for any further comments or discussion on any of these articles before we move to submit the warrant articles as amended for the meeting discussion this evening. Jean. Just a quick response to what Mr. Revillac said about all of the very small locks. It's another advantage of using an overlay district but it just also shows the challenge that we have in front of us in crafting the, you know, what the overlay district would be to take into account some of the things that Mr. Revillac mentioned about the small locks. Good point, thank you. I thank you for all of the points that were brought up in the public comment period. They're all very much appreciated. And just to note that we would be covered under this article to address the issue that was raised if we choose to or think we need to. Just I want to flag one thing though at the moment, this last article does not, this was the one that was to be discussed if it's filed by the board or otherwise. And so just whenever you get to that, we just need that clarification. Sure, why don't we address that now? Jenny, do you need us to vote individually on these warrant articles or as a slate as long as we answer all of these lingering questions? Yeah, just a slate is fine to say, and as amended because it's now a little bit changed from what was previously shown. Great, so why don't we go ahead and tackle that question as to whether or not we would like to see this last warrant article filed on behalf of the board or by the petitioner. Any thoughts to start us off in that discussion? Can we ask the petitioner which he would prefer? We can do that. Why don't we have Posse, you could unmute. Yes, that's high. Yes, we would prefer if ARB would file. I would support that then. Any other members wish to discuss their support or preference otherwise for adding this as a Arlington Redevelopment Board sponsored article? I would support it too. David? I'm supportive. Katie? Yep, I'm supportive. And I'm supportive as well. So I think we can go ahead and make that change to note that that is inserted at the request of the Redevelopment Board. Thank you, Posse. Thank you very much, thank you. So any other discussion before we move to support the filing of the warrant articles as amended by the discussion this evening? All right, do we hear a motion? So moved. Second. Second. Any discussion? All right, seeing none, we will take a roll call vote. Ken? Yes. David? Yes. Dean? Yes. Katie? Yes. And I am yes as well. Thank you, Jenny and Erin for all of the work that you put in, especially the last minute maneuvering with the recent 48 change. All right, so that closes the second agenda item this evening. And the next agenda item is a, and look at this, we are right on time. Can you remember the last time this happened? Fantastic. Nice job everyone. The next item is a proposed citizen petition zoning warrant article. And I believe James Fleming is here to discuss a proposed article that he's interested in having some feedback on. James, I will let's see if you could keep your remarks to three to five minutes. That would be fantastic. And then we'll open a discussion. Sure. I have two slides. Is that, am I able to share? Jenny, do you? I don't normally, but if it's okay with you, I can do that. So I'd actually prefer if we, if you could talk to the items, we typically require that those slides are submitted ahead of time. Yeah, sure. Absolutely. Great, thanks. And if you wanted to submit them, we can certainly put them in his record in the future. Sure, sounds good. So the proposed article is to allow the, to see if the tunnel vote to reduce or remove parking requirements, or sorry, not parking requirements, minimum parking requirements in some or all zoning districts or any action there to insert all the catchalls. The goal would be to improve the experience for our business owners by reducing or removing the need for parking variances, especially for small blocks or pedestrian oriented businesses, storefronts that have been here for, well, this is a predate zoning. Having parking policies that don't penalize uses that are less parking dependent than others. So different uses will have different parking requirements even within a given category. Another goal is to reduce rent in new construction by not requiring that any builder builds anything more than what they perceive they actually need. And then the final one is to remove a barrier to creating pedestrian oriented places in Arlington. As to why I am talking about this is that the table of minimums in the bylaw that's there, it's hard to define good minimums because there are only so you can't create categories of use for every possible conceivable business or every conceivable residential use because there's so many different nuances even within a given type of restaurant. You could have two restaurants and depending on their business model, one may require a lot more parking than another one. And unless you're willing to write an enormous table in the bylaw to cover all of those cases and make sure that it's fair, it just becomes a practical impossibility to do so. The other thing is that if you have a minimum in the zoning bylaw, it doesn't adapt well or automatically to changes in society. So if transit improves, like Uber didn't exist when the bylaw was written and that certainly helps transit somewhat or increases in cycling or changes in society to work from home more often which is with the exception of now, obviously. It also makes it hard to build pedestrian oriented corridors like we have currently because a lot of them were created before the existence of parking minimums and with high lock coverages it would be impossible to do something like that today. And then on the cost side, parking is expensive to build on the order of $5,000 for a service space, $25,000 to $30,000 for a space if you add parking structure over or underground. The other thing is that there was an MAPC study and studies around the country that showed that the more parking that a given business provides the more it actually gets used. So by having a minimum that requires parking you're actually creating the market for parking increasing demand for vehicles traffic. And then the final reason is that parking isn't really a good use of land that's not as taxable as the structure. So if you have more lock coverage you get more taxable dollars for the town. That's all. Great, thank you. So could you let me know, are you looking just for feedback on that initial proposal from the board? If you could kind of just let us know what you're hoping to gain, that would be great. Sure, well the original plan, this guy idea was to just completely delete table six, section 614. And after getting feedback from the town my realization that's probably not going to happen. It's going to get too many people fighting it from too many different angles. And I'm perfectly happy with shrinking the scope and going with something that everyone can at least agree on. The one that stuck out to me was the exception that was crafted for the most recent town meeting that allowed parking reductions to almost zero and B3, B5. That's really, really good. It just doesn't make sense if you can't add parking to a lot to refire it. And what I noticed is, and I went through entirely of them all, it took a while. There's a lot of lots that are similar to B3, B5, I think Blue Roof and Barbecue, Regina's Gifts. Any number of the small businesses along Broadway or along other parts of Mass Ave, they don't get the benefit of that exception. And it doesn't seem fair for one. And the other thing is that because you have minimums in these other districts, it doesn't allow for the creation of new pedestrian oriented traffic or business areas, which is something that, based on feedback from residents in the town, it seems like people in the town actually want. So in some sense, this is getting in the way of what residents actually care about. And then on the residential side, it's that the most recent example was the Mooger property where the developer has submitted multiple memos that say that they don't think they'll actually need the parking that the town bylaws requiring. And I know that there's a process that they can go through to reduce it. It just seems like it shouldn't have to happen at all. It should just be automatic that if they don't need it, then they should just not have to provide it. Because if they can't sell a unit because they don't have enough parking, that's their problem. They won't be able to sell it for the price they want. And they also have the banks looking over their shoulder. If they put too little parking in, they aren't gonna get financing. So our, I'll just, sorry, ask the more specific question. Are you, sorry, go ahead, Jenny. Oh, I just wanted to say, so Rachel, Mr. Fleming approached me by email because as part of the warrant article filing process, most petitioners reach out to Doug and myself if it's a zoning warrant article. And Mr. Fleming had done just that. We had an exchange. He also reached out to other members of other people in the department as well as other departments, I think as well and other committees. He's done a lot and asked if it would be okay to just simply talk with the board to get a sense of their, the spirit of what he is proposing and get some, you know, just very preliminary input was my sense at all. It wasn't anything more than that. I think, and I just want to say, I just want to appreciate his interest in having the conversation with the board in advance of deciding to file. We have, we will be hearing a lot of other types of zoning warrant articles when they, if and when they are actually filed this Friday and, you know, it is nice to be able to at least have a very preliminary conversation about it, which is what I believe Mr. Fleming is trying to do but may also benefit from any of your opinions about this particular topic and to give him a little bit of guidance as he finalizes the article that he would like to submit. That was my understanding. Is that correct, James? Yeah, more or less. Looking, looking, looking especially for reasons to not do it any, at least any reason at all that there might be a problem because I don't know everything. I don't do this full-time thing. And also knowing what is likely to pass town meeting because I'd rather make a small amount of progress than have nothing happened at all. Great, that's, I appreciate it. And thank you for, thank you for giving the background in terms of what you've looked at the breadth and how you've expanded and narrowed your focus as you've gone through that exploration. That's very helpful as well. So we'll run through and see, I'll just do a roll call and we'll see what kind of feedback and questions that the board has for you. So we'll start with Ken. Well, James, I find this very interesting. I think I'm tentatively very supportive of it. I just want to make sure it's all clear as far as what you're trying to do. You're just reducing or eliminating parking requirements but not increasing anything else. So let's say someone, a developer has a burden of parking, open space, the building, setbacks and all that stuff there. Not changing any of those others, but just the parking. That's right. And that would give the opportunity to encourage more development in limited spaces we have or we can have more green space, more open space or more public spaces and it would allow us and it would let the market decide what's required to parking and not parking, for parking, not no parking at all. Am I? Yep. Basically let them do whatever the heck they want with it. If they decide building shell is the best use, then they can do that. If they decide that green space is the best use, then they can do that and just leave it up to them and then whatever other constraints the town by law applies. Well, it would depend on the market, not the developer. I mean, the developer will always go to what they want. Oh yeah. Absolutely. They'll have an idea of how much they need to spend to build parking and then if that's amount is somewhat lower than what the town would otherwise have required, then they've got some land back that they can do whatever they please with. I'm generally a supporter of it. I'm just not sure the elimination of all that just seems very aggressive, okay? And I have no problem with saying that. I'm just saying we should talk about it and maybe we can come up with a more equitable number that would work. And I believe the numbers you have stated earlier as far as, I think you said like 8,000 for surface parking, 25 for structure parking and I believe it's 50 for underground parking is the cost of parking. And I think some of the numbers you've said and you've done some proper research on this and I think I'm appreciative. I'll let the rest of my board members see what their thoughts are, but I'm generally supportive. We don't have anything in front of us to look at and comment on, but we're going, I'm okay with. Great, thank you Ken. Jean? Thank you. Mr. Fleming and I had a really nice phone conversation the other day about what he was thinking. And I'll just say some of the things that I told him is that I liked his idea of extending what we did for a couple of the business districts to the rest of the business districts. I thought that was, unless sort of people disabuse me of that notion, it seemed like a good idea to me to do that. I had a problem going to zero parking minimums for lots of reasons that I had mentioned to him. We at the board a couple of years ago had put in a proposal to reduce some of the parking minimums and I would still be supportive of that if that's where he ends up on the other pieces of it. So that's just a really short version of our about half hour conversation. Great, thank you, Jean. David? So I also had some email correspondence with Mr. Fleming prior to this. And I definitely want to continue looking at this I think that the board has been supportive about reducing parking requirements in the past, both in terms of the bylaw change that we made a couple of years ago that Jean mentioned as well as on specific projects where we're generally pretty flexible about grant either granting requested parking reductions or in some cases proposing that the developer do a parking when we think that it's a good candidate for that when they haven't already proposed it. So I definitely applaud Mr. Fleming for being bold with his initial idea. You know, I think we didn't get a lot of pushback from town meeting on the relatively modest reduction that we made a couple of years ago, but I think that in that case, our original thought had been a larger reduction. And if I may be mistaken, maybe Jean remembers, but I think we actually settled on a smaller reduction than we had originally contemplated upon further reflection. So there was, in that case, there was definitely an appetite at town meeting to agree with a modest reduction in the parking requirements. I can't say now a few years later that I have a good sense of what town meeting would do with a really bold proposal. One thing, while a couple of things, Mr. Fleming mentioned that the town transportation planner had given him some data on car ownership. And I'll just read what he sent to me, which is car ownership in Arlington has held steady at just under 1.5 vehicles per household from 1990 to 2015. And as of 2015, there were about 2,000 car free households, 7,901 car households, 7,402 car households and 1,303 plus car households. So what struck this is over 50% of households in town have one car or less. So that surprised me. I didn't think we were at that point yet. So I think it is timely to consider whether we should be doing something with the minimums. But the other thing that I suggested looking into, which isn't part of Mr. Fleming's proposal at present, but that I wanted to talk to the board about is whether we might want to think about flipping things around and going to parking maximums instead of parking minimum. So not removing the barrier that is created by parking minimums, but also not in an entire list of the market, how much parking to build so that we don't get more parking than we think might be appropriate. And I wanted to get the board's perspective on that idea as well. Thank you, David. I'm gonna hold that for just one second while we see if Katie has any comments to add and then we'll come back to the question of parking minimums versus parking maximums. This is the same. I really like this proposal and I really like David's idea of parking maximums. I think that's an exciting direction to go. I don't know if it's for this proposal or sort of a separate conversation for the board, but I think it would be particularly given sort of just general data that we know about parking nationally, the data that we have here for Arlington. And just in general, I think in the last few years, a big change in the conversations around the politics of parking. I just pulled up some data right now that sort of gives, I'm happy to send it to you, James, if you don't already have it. Basically crowdsourced data looking at what kinds of places across the country have gotten rid of their parking minimums. And this is not something that's confined to big cities or places. I mean, it's like, it's happening in so many different kinds of communities, including many communities that we might've thought of as being traditionally car dependent. Like I think this is increasingly possible and something that's become just sort of more widely accepted in a wide variety of places. So I think there is, again, no one knows for sure sort of how this will be received, but I think it's worth carefully planning and really thinking about how to use the incredible data that we have about eliminating parking minimums and potentially moving to something like a parking maximum to really show that this is something that is mainstream increasingly in a lot of places, including communities that are a lot like Arlington. So thank you. Thank you for sharing your perspective, Katie. Moving right into that topic then, Gina or Ken, did you have any thoughts on parking maximums? James, actually, what are you- Sorry, I just wanted to say, so I actually have seen the same, I think Katie, the same map that you're talking about for its communities all over the country that have done it. And I've talked to some planning professors around the country and seen what they've got. The reason I didn't include it in this proposal is that I think trying to educate town meeting members, not just on what parking minimum reduction does, but also what the heck a parking maximum is, I think that's probably too much to swallow in a single session of town meeting. Not that it's a bad idea, just I didn't, I figured it would already be an uphill battle as it was to try and reduce minimums, leaving maximums aside. But that being said, please do talk about it. Gina or Ken, did you have any thoughts to add on that topic? Yeah, a couple of things. Yeah, I mean, I think parking maximums are the new sort of cutting edge way to deal with parking. I think it's worth discussion. I don't think it's something we wanna file a large article on this time. I agree with James. It takes, I think, some more looking into and some more sort of public outreach and education. And maybe it's a year from now if we do it at all. You know, I just say a couple of concerns that I have is whether when the pandemic ends, the T's gonna restore all of the bus service it's cut from Arlington or not. And to me, that's one of the key telling points on whether it makes sense to move in that direction or not. You know, I've been disappointed that they made these cuts and we'll see if they restore service or not. The second, and this is just sort of anecdotal but I think it's worth thinking about a couple of years ago I had a conversation with someone who lived in the Vox on two apartment complex on room two. And I was asking her, you know, how she liked it, et cetera, et cetera. And she said, well, it's expensive but I like it. The only problem is there's nowhere for my visitors to park and there's nowhere for anybody, you know who wants to come and stay overnight to be able to park. Well, they can go park an alewife and pay a few bucks but it reminded me when my parents were alive and used to come and visit and stay at my house and they needed a place to park their car. And I'm one of those one car households so we had a second space where they could park their car but I think those are the types of things that we would need to have to sort of think through and how they would work in the pros and cons. So I think it's worth discussion and seeing if we're going there but I don't think we're ready to propose it for this town meeting. Okay, any thoughts? Yeah, I agree totally with Jean. David's idea of maximums is a great idea. I think we just have to take it incrementally like James says and I don't think it should be tied in with this proposal. I think we can develop that way. Let's see how things go but I think doing incremental steps is the way to go. I don't want this maximum to hinder what James is trying to do here by reducing some parking. I think that's a good first step just like how we had compromises for our initial reduction in parking. It was much broader, David's correct. It was much, much broader and we said let's be a little more conservative and get this by and it went by but now it's the next step and I think this is good. Great, Jenny, I saw you. I just wanted to make sure it was very clear that James is filing a would file a warrant article not the board and the board may not agree or may not feel strongly about this being the right timing but I just want to make that point very clear. He can file a warrant article by Friday and I think he just wants to get a sense of what is possible and some of the concerns that are being raised but I just want to make sure that's clear and also just to the people who are listening right now the intention is not for the board to file something. Thank you for the clarification, Jenny. Yeah, I would just echo what my fellow board members have mentioned. To me an achievable when would be extending what we started with the B3 and B5 districts at this past town meeting that definitely seems achievable given the way that it was received and the spirit of what it is you're trying to do and again, whether you decide to look at this as an incremental piece that builds upon continued education and the steps that we move or whether you look to propose something that's more provocative and perhaps has a greater educational burden is ultimately up to you but it definitely seemed from the reception that we received at town meeting with the most recent change in the B3 and B5 to allow another, again, it was not, we made it very clear that it was not something that was going to zero wasn't as of right. It was a lever that the special permit granting authority could choose to implement when the conditions were appropriate. And I think that that really went a long way to helping people support that measure. So I just wanted to pass that piece of information on too. Any other items? And I'm happy to open this up to public comment if you're interested, sorry, on, David, I'll come right back to you too. James, if you're interested in receiving comment back from the public, I'm happy to open it up as well. Great, David? So I think I would say we've clearly seen that town meeting has been comfortable with incremental changing of the parking requirements. And I guess for James, the question is, you know, really, do you want to propose something big with more of an intention of really sparking a discussion at town meeting, or do you want to propose something that's more carefully tailored that you think might actually pass without much pushback? And that's really what you need to decide. I'll take a comment from Jean, and then I think we're gonna move to public comment to keep the meeting moving. Jean? The corresponding comment I'd make to what David just said is, does James want to present something that we the board would probably recommend to town meeting? Or does he want to present something that we the board would determine is, you know, a parking lot too far and recommend no action? Actually, that's a great question because I didn't realize that you could submit something and then have the board sponsor it until I saw Posse's article go right now. So is that that's a thing that can happen? Well, what usually happens is for the citizen articles, they all come to the board and we will either recommend basically to the town meeting if they adopted, we might make some minor changes in the wording, or we could recommend to town meeting no action, which means we don't agree with this. So I'm doing it. So I'm saying, you know, part of your calculation is not only what David had to say, was would you prefer your article when it comes to us be something that we would support to town meeting or not? Gotcha. So if it was something that the board voted a positive action on, would it then be inserted at the request of redevelopment board? Or is it now? But I think to your question, you know, we have had, so there is the article from Posse today, which came through actually a, Kenny was a committee or commission. Clean Energy Future Committee. So Posse is a member of that. And we've had a number of conversations with their committee members about zoning changes that they're proposing as part of the net zero action plan. And this particular one had been advanced as being the first one is feeling that this should be discussed. And so we started those discussions with Posse, who happened to be the presenter on behalf of the Clean Energy Future Committee. So most things that end up, if the board chooses to move forward with them and inserts them into the warrant on their own, are coming through a committee process. It's not typically- Gotcha. Okay. And it's tied to some sort of planning process, ideally, because we are charged with implementing our master plan and any other plans that the board is potentially working on. Okay, that makes complete sense. Okay, cool. Sounds good. Great. So James, I think I'm gonna open this up for public comment. So I will ask that anyone wishing to speak. And I see a couple of people with their hands up already. Please use the raise hand function. And you will please, if you could please introduce yourself by first and last name and address. You'll be allotted three minutes to speak. The first speaker is, I believe it's Stuart Borson, who's under the name of Colleen Cunningham on my screen. Hi, thank you again. That's Stuart Borson, Kensington Park. We think this is a fantastic idea. We love the idea. I know that reducing parking requirements is something that's in all of the urbanist sort of publications nowadays, and it's great. So I just wanna say as a member of public that we really like this and we suggest that you run with it. Probably can't go to zero immediately, but at least run with the again, trying to require a few less parking. Regarding Mr. Fleming, it sounds like he may not already know this, but he should make friends with the folks running and walking in Arlington, an advocacy group for pedestrians. In Arlington run by somebody named Rachel Stark. So Mr. Fleming, I urge you to Google that particular group and make friends with them. Item number two, a little less probably, I wanna say in a friendly way, I know this meeting is supposed to end at nine 10 and you've saved the ADU discussion to the very end, which really isn't gonna give it the appropriate amount of time it deserves. And I would respectfully suggest that that get tabled for another meeting rather than disallow people from having their time to speak. Thank you. Mr. Bronson, I don't wanna get that wrong. I'm sorry if I did. Stewart submitted an email to me in relationship to, it was from Colleen actually submitted an email, providing comments about the ADU article. And I did post it as part of this agenda item. However, there's nothing, there was never a discussion about ADUs for this particular agenda item, Stewart and Colleen. It isn't being taken up as part of this meeting. I'm sorry if that may have been misunderstood in our earlier communication. Okay, you know, that's great. Thank you very much. Yes, Colleen wrote the letter. Yes. But we operate as a team at one computer, obviously. Thank you very much. We understand. Thank you. Thank you, Jenny, for that clarification. Let's see, the next speaker will be Steve Rebelak. Hello, Madam Chair. Steve Rebelak, 111 Sunnyside Avenue. I'd like to just offer one historical, you know, reference and one specific ask for Mr. Flunning, if you know, he would consider it. When our zoning laws were rewritten in the 1970s, there was a lot of, you know, concern at the time about limiting, you know, the potential for population growth in the town. And you can really see this on the map in the sense that where an area was two family homes, it got turned into a two family district. If there was a small apartment, it got turned into a low density apartment district. Big apartments became large apartment districts. And, you know, I think the intent was to just kind of hold the built environment to where it was at the time. I mean, and this worked. The, you know, the population stopped increasing and even went down. So I would submit to you that if one can use zoning to limit population, one could also limit zoning to limit the amount of parking and therefore the amount of traffic. Having gone to enough permitting hearings, you know, everybody talks about traffic. Nobody likes traffic. Everyone would like less traffic. And I think a way to have one, I think that reducing the number of cars could be an effective way to reduce traffic. So, you know, I'm a big fan of Mr. Watson's idea of parking maximums. Now, as far as a specific thing that I hope Mr. Fleming would consider addressing is the parking requirement inequities in apartment buildings. So whereas my two bedroom, half duplex is required to have one parking space. A two bedroom apartment is required to have one and a half. So again, there's a historical reason for this, which is, you know, at the time that regulation was put into place, there was a conscious effort to discourage higher density and less extensive forms of housing. And I'd like to see us even that playing field. But I think it's a great idea. Yeah, thank you. Thank you, Mr. Avilak. Barbara Thornton is our next speaker. Hi, thank you very much. I want to build on- I'm sorry, Barbara, could you just say your name? Oh, I'm sorry. Barbara Thornton, 223 Park Ave. Arlington. Thank you. Thank you. I want to build on David Watson's comment, which I thought was very good. Whether James Fleming decides to put together a big and wild and provocative proposal or whether he decides to look for something more conservative or small or limited that will be most likely to pass, I hope he does it because this is the conversation it's like feeling an elephant, this transportation and parking issue in Arlington and we need the discussion. And this is a great vehicle to encourage the discussion. And I look forward to having an opportunity to see it on the town meeting floor. Thank you. Great, thank you very much. James, any final thoughts before we close this discussion item? I don't think so. This has been really helpful. So my assumption is that I just file it from here and then at some point we have a public hearing if everything clears through the town offices. Correct. You'll hear from Jenny and Erin. I don't know, Jenny, if you want to speak to the process. Yeah, so you need to file your warrant article. By Friday, that's the deadline. Usually the warrant is put together over the course of the following week and then issued. We'll have a copy of it probably at some point next week and we'll begin our legal notice which will include all of the warrant articles that we know are zoning warrant articles which have to have a public hearing. And we figure out the timing of that. Erin and I have looked at some of the options for those dates and we'll let the petitioners know which night they'll fall on. So you'll be given time to know when you would be, when you will have the public hearing. The public hearing usually just happens at one evening and then the board waits until the end of all of the public hearings before they make any recommended, if they have their deliberation and their recommended votes. So you could attend more than one night of public hearings if you so desire, but usually you're just expected to attend on the night of your public hearing. Sounds good. And then when I submit the warrant article, do I also have to file a proposed motion in the changes to the bylaw, et cetera? Ideally, yes. You would need to be as specific as possible if you can, but otherwise you would need to, by the time you come to the public hearing that would have to be, we would have to know what you were actually filing so that we can both be responsive to what you're filing and prepare the board accordingly and also provide the public with ample time to understand what you're looking to amend in the zoning bylaw. If I could interject, you don't have to have that when you file the warrant article. Not for Friday. Not for Friday. Not for Friday. And you could actually try to talk to Jenny and Erin afterward and say, this is what I'm thinking of doing. Help me figure out what I need to change in the zoning bylaw and make it happen. Yes. And James has already done that. He started with that. So we did start from that point. And that's actually when I recommended that he might come and talk with the board. So I'm happy to follow up with you and Erin as well. I'm sure time permitting between now and Friday and then certainly after if you have any questions. Yeah, this all sounds fantastic. Have you followed, have you made yourself aware of all the other requirements for what you need to do to file a warrant article? Cause I'd hate you to get tripped up by administrative requirements like having. And like having pages of signatures. Exactly. I know that the whole process for handing it in is different because COVID and so I'll have to, I'll reach out to the town offices and say, you know, when can I drop them off and all that kind of stuff. But unless it's something I really, really missed then I think I'm mostly all set. And now it's just deciding what I actually want to file. Great. Well, good luck to you. And thank you so much for reaching out. I think this was a great discussion and I really appreciate you bringing the topic in front of us. Yeah, it's great to get professionals in on this. Great. Thank you so much. Thank you. All right. So that closes item, agenda item three and we'll move to agenda item number four which is a review of the meeting minutes from October 5th, 2020. So I will go through roll call to see if there are any changes or amendments to what was submitted starting with Ken. I just have one comment on page one, the last paragraph Mr. Lau asked if there were exit. I asked if the sales floor exit was handicapped accessible, that's it. Great, thank you Ken. David. I don't think I had any comments. Great, thank you. Jean. I do have some comments and maybe David will tell me I'm wrong but I think they attributed some statements to me that were statements of David. So on page one, the next less paragraph that starts with Mr. Watson asked to have a detailed design of the indoor bicycle parking. I don't think I asked any of the rest of those. So I'm guessing that whole paragraph is Mr. Watson because I don't think it was me but I don't know what David thinks about that. I actually don't remember. Yeah, I don't remember answering those questions. I don't remember specifically asking them but I don't discount the possibility that I did ask those other questions. We could either do the terrible thing and turn them all into the passive voice so nobody knows who asked. Yeah, that's probably the, why don't we just do that? So. You could say there were questions asked about and then put all those in, right? Then on, had the same problem on page three where it says Mr. Benson asked about public participation. I don't remember the first one. I don't remember asking about the public participation. Were the concern about those without internet access? Somebody else did that. However, I did talk about the design guidelines and the rest of that paragraph. So. Which one was that? I'm sorry, which paragraph was it? The one that says Mr. Benson asked about public participation, it's the third page. Oh, I'm sorry. Okay. I didn't ask that question and I didn't say a concern about those without internet access. So I don't know who made those statements. The rest of the statements attributed to me and that paragraph are correctly attributed to me. Those sound like the questions I might have asked, but again, I don't typically recall. I think they were yours. I think we have been confused once again. Just those two or this one is these two. Just those two, the rest for mine. Anything else, Jean? No, that was it. Great, Katie, did you have any changes? No, nothing for me. Great, and I didn't have anything either. All right, do we have a motion to approve the meeting minutes from October 5th, 2020 as amended? So motion. Second. Any discussion? Great, we'll take a roll call vote. Ken? Yes. David? Yes. Jean? Yes. Katie? Yes. And I am a yes as well. So those are approved and that closes agenda item four and we now move to our last item, which is open forum. Yes, please, Jean. What about the town meeting process draft? I'm sorry, I don't see that on my agenda. Let me reopen it. It's part, it's within the zoning by law amendment piece. There's an attachment that's town meeting process draft. Will we not go to discuss that? Maybe we weren't going to discuss it. I apologize. Let me go back. I just put it on the screen. I did post it when we were talking about the zoning amendments. This is basically just, we took the process that we discussed and Erin pulled together this table, which outlines the dates, the process and describes what the actions are. We had some internal staff discussion about turning this into like an infographic or sort of maybe easier to digest version of this but didn't have a chance to pull that together by tonight. So Erin, is there anything else to this document you wanna share? Not specifically, but the goal with this document would be to circulate it directly to citizen petitioners. James asked basically this question in the last or two agenda items ago, but also post this prominently on the ARB's page or in other locations, just so that there's clear action items for both, well, just so that everyone understands what the ARB is doing at each step, what the petitioner might need to be doing. Primarily it would be a citizen petitioner because the ARB knows what it's doing. And then for the general public or town meeting members that may want to observe the process just so that all of that was sort of in one spot. And I know some of the dates in here are still kind of to be determined as we understand the total slate of zoning articles that would be before you in the next couple of months. But I kind of wanted to break it down based on some of the comments that the ARB has received over the last couple of months about the process and try and make it a little bit clearer. So while this is wordy maybe I could pare it down in some location. The graphic that we're thinking about is basically just the timeline that simplifies this message at a glance. So someone could look at a single page and be like, oh, this is where we are on the timeline. And these are the steps that we've already taken and these are the steps that still need to be taken. Can I just say, I think it's really nice. I'd like how I'm not sure if an infographic will be better or needed, maybe it will. But I think this is good, very good, excellent far beyond what sort of we've had before. And I think it gives a lot of good information like still remain a little concerned that we get time crunched at the end. And but you left some wiggle room there. But yeah, I think it's, yeah, I liked it. I'll just say that I think it's phenomenal too. I think not only for the public but for new board members as well, who may not have gone through this process yet. I think also that per some of the discussions we have with the BARB relating to this as well, you can imagine that even leading up to the time when you know that the period of submitting warrant articles will open, you could even a month out from that identify. This is when you would start to have the discussions like James was having with us tonight if you are soliciting board feedback. So I think it's a wonderful piece that can be modified as necessary based on when town meeting or special time meetings occur. If I could just add, if there's one suggestion that I would make it would be something, the before the warrant closes, where there's a process where people can go to staff and come to the board to get some board input. So if you would add anything but it's too late for this year. So I didn't think of it, but for later years just starting off with the sort of when the warrant is open or before the warrant is open. But I think it's really good. David? I also really like it. And I think the text is great and really helpful and really helps set expectations both for us as board members as well as the public. I think having a graphic alongside it might be helpful but I wouldn't lose the written version. And similar to what Jean just said I was actually thinking that for future town meetings maybe the first item on the list would actually basically be any time after the previous town meeting is the time to start the discussion instead of trying to constrain it even to a month or two months or whatever. I don't know what the rest of you think about that but I would prefer to get those discussions started as early as possible. And I'm finding it helpful now that we're being a little bit more organized about encouraging them. Jenny? Yeah, well this section right here it sort of hints at the idea that it would be please discuss this with us your article but also to learn more about the process but I think that we could either now add a row before this that talks about speaks to the things that you're mentioning now and just sort of in generic terms but I think we probably need a bigger conversation about it at another meeting and we can kind of draft I have some ideas about it right now but I prefer to write it out and then share it and we can talk about it because I think it should also be like and tied to the master plan a committee may be involved like I think we need to plant those points in this process and make that much more intentional would be my preference. So if it's okay Aaron and I could work on just a sort of precursor to this for now just sort of like a pre-warrant or before the warrant closes or we could just post this for now and move forward whatever is your desire but I definitely agree we need something that's like before the before. I would say post this now because the warrant is about to close but also come back sometime soon with what the pre-warrant closed one would look like. But I also wanted to just remind you there was interest in the zoning bylaw working group at being involved in the preliminary process. So while you're thinking about how to frame that. Yeah when I said committee I was thinking of them really but yes, yeah so we'll work on something I think we'll probably just post it now as is if the board is all okay with it and we'll also work on that timeline which was a companion to this not a substitute and I think we'll come back at another time to talk about that the process that happens before so I do think that's where we should spend continue to spend time talking about that and sort of the steps that need to be taken and I completely agree that it is immediately after the last town meeting it always starts. However much we may not want it to it should start at that time I agree. And did you have any thoughts you wanted to share? Nope, Katie. Great, what sounds like we should go ahead and post this and look forward to adding additional pre-steps at a future date. Great, is there anything else I missed before we go to open meeting? I apologize, I remember reading it and thinking how wonderful it was and I completely lost in the agenda so thank you for bringing that up. Yes, thank you, Gene. Rachel can I add one thing for maybe next meeting's agenda? I was hoping that we get a quick overview of past projects that we have approved, let's say the last year or so or two and just a quick little thing, is it being built? Is it not being built? Just so we have a sort of a quick snapshot of the history of what we've been doing. I took a drive around town and I was looking at some of the projects that we've approved and looked at, some of the projects we've looked at and it's gone nowhere like the dog, the animal hospital. Is that stopped? The daycare center that we approved, is that stopped? The addition to the daycare center to the side, is that going on? I just wanna see what's happening and is it because of the pandemic or is it not because or what's happening? I just wanted you to get an understanding of that more. It doesn't happen right away. I know you're really busy and everything else, Jenny and I don't wanna add more work that you need. No, it's actually, I think it's pretty straightforward to do actually and I could probably give the update anytime but I probably wanna do a little due diligence with Erin on the ones that have not proceeded just yet. I do believe some of it is due to the pandemic that there are some other issues with other projects that have received a special permit and have other steps in the process. It's often not the end of their process anyway. It's a step in their process but I'd be glad to provide that at a future meeting. I'm not sure it would be the very next meeting. It might be the meeting on the 25th though, which is the second one. So if that's okay, I think that gives us time to kind of put things together a little bit. But yeah, I think that would be very interesting for the board and other people to understand what happens. It might affect the way we look at things, so I just like to have that in hand. Okay. Great. Thanks, Ken. Any other items before we move to public comments? Great, all right. So we will open our open forum. And so any member of the public who wishes to speak, please use the raise hand function in the participant menu. I will call on you in the order that the hands are raised. You will be given three minutes to speak and I ask that you identify yourself by your first and last name and your address. I'll give it another 30 seconds. I don't see anyone this evening. So seeing no hands raised, I will close open forum. And before we close this meeting, I believe Katie that this is your last meeting with us. So I just wanna thank you so much for everything that you contributed during your time on the board. It's been such a pleasure working together with you. I really appreciated your perspective and thank you so much for volunteering your time on behalf of the town. Thanks to all of my board members. I'm sorry, I've never gotten to meet you in person. And I'm sorry that my time with you all was so short. I really appreciate you all and the service that you do. And I look forward to seeing you hopefully at a meeting at some point in the future, just around town. So be well, everyone. And we can't even take you out for a drink even now. Very sad. Thank you, lady. And please come back with housing policy information at the appropriate times. Absolutely. I look forward to being an attendee at meetings and wish I were in a life position to attend more regularly as this commitment requires. So thank you all. Great. So with that, we'll take a motion to adjourn. So motioned. Second. Second. I'll take a roll call. Ken. Yes. David. Yes. Ian. Yes. Katie. Yes. Let me guess as well. Thank you all. Have a great evening. Thank you, everybody. Thank you, Katie.