 I'm Sanjay Newton. Hi, folks. We're going to get started now. Lots of time to hear from all of you. Good evening, folks. I'm Sanjay Newton. I'm the chair of the MBTA Communities Working Group. I'm very pleased to have so many of you here tonight. Thank you, thank you, for taking the time to come out tonight to hear from us. And we're looking forward to hearing also from you. At the other podium over there is Claire Ricker, the director of planning and community development. And I'm going to hand it over to her now. Thank you, Sanjay. Thank you, everyone, for coming out tonight. And on behalf of the MBTA Communities Working Group, I am Claire Ricker. I am the director of planning and community development. Can you all hear me? Really? I can hear myself just fine. How about that? Is that better? All right. I'm Claire Ricker, the director of planning and community development. And I want to welcome you all to our fourth community meeting that we have held for this important project. If folks could raise their hand if they are from the Heights or West Arlington. All right, all right. How about folks could raise their hand if they're from, say, Arlington Center, Jason Heights? Excellent. And then how many folks are here from East Arlington? This does not surprise me. Excellent. Thank you so much for coming. That's great. It should not come as a surprise to anyone that Eastern Massachusetts is in a housing availability and affordability crisis that's been coming to a boil for at least the last four decades. And 50 years ago, the state produced, on average, 30,000 new units of housing a year. And housing costs were about the same as the national average. But over the past two decades, the state has produced barely half that number, while the population has increased as the fortunes of Boston have boomed. Last year, the state did even worse. New housing permits in the Boston region fell by more than 60% in April from a year early or year over year. So why does 3A matter? The hard reality is that we cannot make any sustained progress to help close the racial wealth gap, provide a healthy start for young children, better schools, more economic opportunities for those who have been marginalized, and strengthen communities threatened by climate change. We can't make progress on any of these issues, unless and until we start providing housing that is plentiful, available, and affordable, because no child's future should be determined by their zip code. The town of Arlington is compelled by the state to respond to this urgent crisis via the MBTA community's law. Tonight is officially a meeting of the MBTA community's working group, an exceptionally committed group of volunteers who have been working extraordinarily hard on this project almost every Tuesday night throughout the spring and the summer. They have taken on the task of envisioning Arlington over the next 50 years. Who works here? Who goes to school here? Who lives here? And where will they live? And so I'd like to take this opportunity to introduce the members of the working group, Sanjay Newton, the chair, Rebecca Gruber, Laura Wiener, Shana Corman Houston, Meta Admont, Vincent Bowden, Steve Revolac, representative from the Arlington Redevelopment Board, Kin Lau, representative from the Arlington Redevelopment Board, and Theresa Marzilli, our community outreach specialist who has been just super solid on this entire project. It has just provided endless help and support as we've moved through the process. The staff who's made this meeting possible this evening, Marisa Lau, Talia Fox, David Morgan, John Alessi, Mary Mazinski, and Jennifer Joslyn Simotowski. Thank you all. So where are we in this process? The timeline to adoption of our MBTA community zone. In August, we will send the draft zoning package to the state MBTA community section for pre-adoption review. This will allow the state to comment on our zoning and point out any flaws or hurdles that may lead to non-certification of the zoning prior to it going to town meeting. It's pretty great that we can get this sort of pre-adoption review from the state that lets us know if we're on the right path. In September, the ARB will hold public hearings on the proposed MBTA community zoning and other zoning amendments that will be on the warrant for the special town meeting to be scheduled. In October and September, we will be drafting the fossil fuel pilot bylaw. In October, at a date to be determined, special town meeting with the MBTA communities on the warrant for zoning adoption, again, as well as several other warrant articles proposed by the ARB. In November, we will send the pre-reviewed and adopted zoning to the state MBTA community section for compliance. The pre-reviewed zoning should move through any post-adoption review quickly. The Attorney General's Office will also need to review the zoning, but we have received assurances that should we receive this pre-review before adoption, we would move through compliance certification rather quickly. The Attorney General's Office will also need to review. So February by February is the deadline to participate in our fossil fuel pilot. Thank you, I'm gonna hand it off to Sanjay again. Thanks for coming. Thank you, Claire. Now that we know the overall plan, let's talk about tonight's plan. We can go to the next slide there. In a moment, Matthew, our consultant from UTIL is gonna remind us about some of the requirements and technical details of the MBTA Communities Act or Section 3A. Steve Revillac and Theresa Marzelli are gonna talk about the ways we've heard from the community and some of what we've heard. And then Director Ricker will come back to introduce this proposed zoning districts. At that point, we'll take a very short break just for a couple minutes to allow people to put their names into the box if you'd like to do a question or comment. And that's the part I'm excited to get to hearing from all of you. So the next slide, please. This process with Section 3A gives us a chance to make progress on a number of goals that are laid out in recent plans from the town of Arlington. In particular, the participation in the fossil fuel demonstration pilot, as Claire mentioned, better access to work, other destinations by using public transit. I don't need to read this whole slide to you. We have an opportunity to move the ball forward on lots of things that we care about as a town and doing MBTA Communities Act is a great way to do it. The working group has received a small amount of correspondence in our, while we've existed, which suggests that we should not comply with the law. Our new governor has made it clear that implementing this law is important to the future of the Commonwealth. And a new Attorney General has also made it clear that she will take action against communities who don't comply. So I hope we can agree to keep tonight's conversation focused on how best to allow multi-family housing in Arlington. I'm excited, as I said, I'm very excited to hear from all of you. This process gives us an opportunity to express Arlington's values through zoning. This work is essential to our climate goals, our transportation goals, our economic development goals, and our goals for Arlington to be a diverse and inclusive community. We, the MBTA Communities Working Group, look forward to your questions and suggestions this evening as we talk about the proposal that the working group has put together. And with that, I'll turn it over to Matthew, from UTEL. We'll walk us through some of the details of Section 3A. Next slide, please. So thank you, Sanjay. My name is Matthew Lutel, a principal at UTEL. We were hired through a grant that was given up by the Mass Housing Partnership. And our role has been to help the working group and the planning department craft a zoning district that complies with 3A. So we've been the ones who have been taking the suggestions of the working group, testing them out on a map and seeing if they comply and I'm trying to understand what the capacity is. We are, in Arlington, what's called an adjacent community. You don't have a train station per se, and so that creates different sort of obligations for the town. Next slide. Many of you have been following this, and many of you are probably familiar with some of the mechanics of this law, but I will provide a little bit of a refresher here. So the law requires that you have at least one district of a reasonable size. The state defines that as 50 acres or one and a half percent of your land area, whichever is less. In this case, it's the one and a half percent. That's how we get to a district minimum size of 32 acres. The district has to have multifamily housing permitted as of right, and multifamily means anything with three units or more. There are no age restrictions allowed. You can't restrict it to seniors. The housing should be suitable for families with children. And in that district, you need to achieve at least a area-wide density of 15 dwelling units per acre. In Arlington, there's a sort of a second requirement, which is the state determines what the minimum number of units that need to be hypothetically achieved through the new zoning. And it's either 15 dwelling units per acre times your acreage, or it's 10% of the existing units in the town, whichever is greater. And so in your case, 10% of Arlington's units gives us about a little over 2,000 units. And you are permitted to have your district be in different sub-districts or different chunks. And there are two conditions to that. At least one of your districts needs to be at least 50% of the overall acreage and unit capacity. And no sub-district can be less than five acres. And this is to ensure, the state wants to ensure that there's at least one district that is a legitimate sort of sizable, workable, multifamily allowing district. Next slide, please. Okay, there's a few restrictions that are important to understand. Commercial uses are allowed, but they may not be required. For instance, there may not be a commercial use on the ground floor requirement in this district. The zoning needs to be set up in a way that a developer can, as of right, put multifamily housing. It doesn't mean that other uses can't be allowed in that district. You can allow other types of uses. It can be a mixed-use district, but so long as a developer is able to put a multifamily development as of right, that will comply. The development must be truly as of right and not in need of a special permit. Site plan review of projects is permitted within reasons so long as it doesn't become a sort of means of obstructing what would otherwise be an as of right project. So the town is entitled to review for things like vehicular access, architectural design, screening of adjacent properties, things like that, things that can be resolved through a special permit process, but they're not meant to obstruct the permittability of the project. And as I mentioned before, the district can be split into sub-districts, but you need at least one piece. That's 50% of the overall, and again, none smaller than five acres. Next slide, please. So what is the model? The model is a kind of mathematical model that the state has given us. It's the kind of the calculator, if you will, that determines what the capacity of your district is in terms of density and number of units. Basically, you plug in the variables, number of stories, setbacks, parking minimums, open space, dwelling units per acre, minimum lot size. There's a whole bunch of variables that you can put in. And the model references geographical information systems, and it basically computes a likely density for that district. The model is not perfect. It is not a perfect predictor of even theoretical density, but it's pretty close for the most part, and in any case, it doesn't really matter because it's that mathematical model that we use is what's needed to comply with the law. So the inputs that we put into that model and we submit to the state, those inputs need to be reflected in your final written zoning. So for instance, if you say four stories allowed here, that needs to match what goes into the model. Next slide. Okay, so there are a few background stuff we wanna talk about. Arlington is now what we call an adjacent community. You do not have a train station per se, but you are next to communities that do. This has made your district requirements and your capacity requirements a little bit lower, and it's given you some flexibility about where you locate your district. Again, the capacity is 10% of your total existing housing units. So that comes out to about 2050. And capacity, it's very important to understand what capacity is. Capacity is theoretical. So it's not what units are there plus other units. It is how many units would the zoning allow you if all the parcels in your district were to be vacant all of a sudden? So imagine tornado comes, there's an enormous flood. All the parcels are vacant. What is the total capacity that the zoning will allow you to rebuild? And this is very important to understand because the capacity counts that we're talking about are not a plan to build more housing. They're only what zoning would allow. And the presumption is that most existing development would stay in place, but there would nevertheless be opportunities on vacant parcels or if someone decided to redevelop. But it's a very important distinction. And then what we call the reasonable size criteria. Again, 50 acres is where the state starts. But in our case, it's 1% or 1.5% of your total land area is the assigned amount. So that's 32 acres. And this is a scaled map. You'll see obviously the town of Arlington on the right and you'll see two red boxes in the left. 32 acres is the smaller of those two red boxes. Typically, using that minimum size creates a district that would have to be very, very dense in order to meet the requirements. Very difficult to locate. So when you choose, as Arlington has, to use a larger district instead, it takes pressure off the density. So there's some municipalities that are spreading their multifamily district everywhere, but might be limiting it to triple-deckers, for instance. Others are doing it in corridors at a different kind of density. But the size of the district is one of those variables that, again, is under discussion and needs to be complied. So far, the mapping that we have right now is extremely compliant. Next slide. And it's important to think about the various densities that can occur. Claire will speak more about the particulars of the district that's being proposed, but I will say that it contains parcels of many different sizes that would support different kinds of densities. So everything from triple-deckers to fourplexes to multiplexes to what we call courtyard buildings. And these are a good example of the kinds of densities, what those numbers represent for each of those. So a triple-decker can be anywhere from 11 to 30 units an acre based on the size of the building and the parcel. Fourplex is very similar. Multiplex buildings, five to 16, could be anywhere from 10 to 50. Courtyard buildings, again, could be anywhere from six to 25. It's a function of how big the lot is, how much area might be reserved for parking, how much open space there is. The next slide shows some, probably some examples that you may be more familiar with. The recently constructed Downing Square. Comes out to about the overall development, which is on three parcels. Comes out to about 45 units an acre. 438 Mass Ave, which is a fairly large project, 134 units. That's almost 50 units per acre. And then you have some sort of outliers like 389 Mass Ave, which is an older apartment building. And I think has a very high density, 117 units per acre. But I think that's because there's very little other land on that site. I believe they may not even have off-street parking. So, an otherwise modest project, 29 units traditional can actually have a much higher density than one might think, just based on how much land it sits on. So my point is that there's a lot of densities, their impact, their visual impact, how they sit in the land can vary quite a bit and so can the density. Next slide. So, a few examples of what neighborhood density looks like. Arlington Heights, what we've done is taken a drawn a circle around a certain areas in the town to see what the average residential density is. So Arlington Heights, about 10 dwelling units an acre. Arlington Center, about 11 and a half. And Capitol Square, a little bit more dense, approaching something more like 15, which is sort of the target area that 3A wants us to get to. But these are useful for reference, again, to understand what these numbers might mean. Next slide. Oh, and again, I already showed you a slide, but I wanna make mention that some of the larger, existing, full multi-family projects, developments that are along Mass Ave, are in the range of sort of 50 to 100. Depending again on how big their parcel is, how tall they are, how much parking they have, that sort of thing. Next slide. So in terms of the location, one of the great things that Arlington has is in many communities where there is a train station, either a communal rail or a subway, those communities have to put a certain percentage of their district within proximity to those stations. Arlington has, as an adjacent community, can put the district wherever it chooses. And you'll see quite sensibly, I think, that it's evolved to include the corridors of Mass Ave and Broadway, where a lot of the existing bus transit stops are located. So in the sort of spirit of transit-oriented development, that is where it's going. And finally, incentives. Let's go to the next slide. I think 3A is, it's not just a good idea, it's the law, as they say, but it comes with certain advantages. I think that have been spoken to already. There's all kinds of state funding programs for which you will remain eligible. The state was sort of hanging these out as possible things that they might do to a community that chose not to comply. And then I think the big one is, and explains the accelerated timeframe of this, is to maintain sort of eligibility for the Mass Fossil Fuel Free Demonstration Program. And one of the prerequisites for that, again, is achieving an approved 3A sub-district. So these are actually tangible benefits that come in addition to the inherent benefits of maybe creating a more inclusive multifamily zoning. Next slide. And then finally, the law is really based on obligation. It's based a little bit in anti-discrimination law and federal fair housing. I won't go into all the details here, but the power to create your zoning districts is actually granted to Arlington from the state. And that's why the state can require certain zoning changes of municipalities. That's the real reason to comply. And it seems as time goes on that this law will have some real teeth. And so it's a very important obligation for the town to come to a reasonable district for 3A compliance. Next slide. Okay. I will hand it to you. Yeah, we'll turn it over. We'll turn it over now to Teresa Marzelli. And yeah. Hi, everyone. My name is Teresa. I am the Community Outreach and Engagement Coordinator. I sit in the Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Division with Jill Harvey. I've been assisting the department with this MBTA communities project, particularly around engagement. Next slide, please. So as Claire mentioned, this is our fourth community meeting. We had our initial one on November 17th. That was really just to introduce the community to the legislation and what it would mean for Arlington. We had our second on March 9th where we did a community visioning session to get a clear sense of what goals and values the community held. Our third one was on June 8th when we asked the public to help us think about the size and scale of multifamily housing and obviously we're here today to talk about the current proposal. Along with that, we've had multiple surveys that has had a lot of engagement from the community. We had visioning kits and meeting in a box. So multiple ways for the community to engage. So really beyond the surveys and the community meetings, we've tried to be out talking to people about what MBTA communities is, what does it mean for Arlington, and particularly what do people want it to mean for Arlington. This spring and summer, we've done pop-ups at the Farmers Market, at the Council on Aging. We've been at Arlington Eats. We've been at Townsend sponsored events. We've been at the libraries where we've been holding office hours. We set up a table with a guest book so that folks could interact. We've had key conversations with key stakeholders and we'll continue to do that throughout the process. And then, future engagement activities and we're going to continue the rest of the summer into the fall. Try to engage with the whole community with the hope that this plan will be representative of the multitude of voices and perspectives that make up Arlington. So as you can see, I won't list all of them, but we'll continue to do some of what we've been doing Farmers Market, so it will be at the library. You can find us at Arlington Eats. We'll be out on the street. We have plans to go to the Rez concert series. We'll continue to work closely with our partners at the Housing Corporation of Arlington who have done some really incredible work with the folks in their community, running community meetings, inviting more folks into the process. And yeah, we'll be a few other things and there's probably more that we'll get added to this list that isn't there now. So for me and I think for a lot of the folks that have been involved in engagement, kind of the most significant part of the effort has been engaging with folks who have housing at the front of their mind. So whether that's a resident over 60 concerned about their ability to age in place in Arlington, a mom who's seeking consistency for her family, service providers who work every day with people trying to find housing, young professional who may have grown up in Arlington but can't afford to live here, folks that currently live in multi-family housing and really want that opportunity for others, teachers who'd like to live in the town that they work in, government workers who would like the same, high schoolers, community organizers. There's been multiple conversations that we've had and that we'll continue to have. We've heard from the community about their concerns and we thank everybody for offering their perspectives on how to make sure that we maintain sustainability and wild spaces, what the state of the MBTA is. That's been one of my favorite conversations. What school capacity looks like and sharing that the community feels whole and inclusive and represented and how to create more vibrant commercial spaces. So I just want to thank all of you for being here tonight, for engaging in the process. I invite you to continue to engage. I want to thank the working group for their incredible work to catalog all of these ideas. As you could see on the previous slides, we've received thousands of responses and have had multiple, multiple conversations. So just bringing all those ideas together and making sure that it's included and represented in the zoning scenario and the proposal that we put forward. So yeah, thank you for giving me the opportunity to work with you to make this come to life. And I'm Steve Brickalek. We'll talk about our June 8th forum. Thanks. Good evening, I'm Steve Brickalek. I'm going to talk about some of the recent engagement activities. Two of them specifically were the, being the public forum we had on June 8th and also the survey that followed it. So, ah, good. So we, our last public forum was on June 8th and it was held just up the block in the community center. And our goal was to, you know, kind of check in with people and show what we had done so far. But also to, you know, get residents sitting around tables, looking at naps and having conversations with one another. We were also looking for some feedback on a couple of particular questions. One of them being the size and scale of what kinds of multifamily building would be appropriate and where, you know, where they ought to go. The other question was dealt with how the MBTA community's zoning should relate to our existing business districts. And so responses. The event was well attended. There were over 120 people who came. We went into an overflow room and even I think filled up the overflow room. So it was great to have everyone turn out. We heard support for expanding the district. A number of quite a few people commented that what we showed that night felt a little too concentrated and, you know, should be given a little more breathing room. There was support for having a variety of housing types, sizes and price points. And we recently published a report. There's a link there. Oh, okay. Well, yeah, there's a link there where you can download it. But basically it's got pictures of the maps and all of the comments received and all of the facilitator comments. So we're trying to, you know, one of the things that we've been trying to do is keep public feedback kind of very much in the center of this conversation so that, you know, residents can hear what, you know, other residents are saying. So although the attendance at the forum was something we were quite happy with, not everyone, you know, we realize that not everyone can come out on a weekday night and spend a couple of hours. So we created an online feedback forum which is a, which was very similar to the material that we presented that evening. But just to give people an opportunity to chime in after the fact, you know, and work this into their schedule. So we had the survey open from June 12th or to July 17th, about a month. 213 people responded providing us with 550 comments or so. You know, sentiments that were expressed continued support for multifamily housing along corridors. A fairly significant amount of support for multifamily that was six units or larger. So this is where a building of this size triggers affordability requirements. So, you know, a fairly amount of people seeing this as a possibility to get additional affordable housing in Arlington. And finally, support for transit oriented development. Now we didn't, now not everyone agreed on everything. And, you know, we're still having a conversation here. So one of the areas that there was, you know, significant differences of opinion was on the second question, the relationship to commercial districts. And, you know, there's essentially, you know, there is support for kind of the current proposal of puts it around the business districts, but not in them. Some folks are really happy with that. Some folks would like exactly the opposite. They'd like the stuff in the business districts and not in the neighborhoods. So this is a topic I think we're gonna have a robust conversation about in the coming months. Next slide, please. All right, so some of there are key takeaways from, you know, from these recent engagements and just to recap, size and scale, you know, building along corridors like Mass Ave and Broadway. Six or more units and larger apartment buildings in order to create affordable housing and having taller buildings on the corridors that kind of step down into the neighborhood. So it's, you know, there's a flow to it. So regarding relationship to commercial, there was support for adding housing near commercial centers so that, you know, people could act, people could walk to amenities, restaurants, et cetera. And these businesses would have, you know, would have people to patronize them. There was support for mixed use. Mixed use generally referring to having, you know, commercial on the ground floor or two and then apartments above that. This was both for people express support for this in the context of brand new construction and also in the context of taking and existing, say one story commercial building and putting a couple of floors of housing on top of it. And again, not a clear consensus on the subject of in the commercial districts versus the neighborhoods surrounding the commercial districts. So I am, that is my update on engagement. So I am going to pass this off to Claire. Thank you. Okay, great. So here we are with the latest iteration of our MBTA community zoning map. And I believe we are on map number eight at this point. This has been a very interesting experience doing this sort of work in a public way. It's obviously very transparent on the very authentic process we have put most, you know, no, not most all iterative work that we have done, including updated maps, including maps with very slight updates on the website. But using the input we have received from the community, we started the work of mapping the goals and the priorities that we've heard the most, as Steve pointed out. So what we have here for our MBTA communities district are two sub districts, the Mass Ave and Broadway corridor sub district in blue, the neighborhood multi-family sub district in orange. The work in group is proposing four stories by right across both sub districts. What do we mean by by right? We've defined it a couple of times tonight, but I'm going to do it again. A zoning code or a zoning item, such as MBTA community zoning is considered by right if the approvals process is streamlined. Streamlined does not mean eliminated. The approvals process is still in place. There is still administrative review of projects that are proposed in this zone. By right means that projects that comply with the zoning standards receive their approval without a discretionary review process. By right means you cannot say no to the use or require the use or allow the use solely by special permit. The use is allowed by right, so housing will be allowed by right. You also cannot say no to the scale established in the zoning. The more clear our zoning code is, the more predictable our development outcomes will be. So four stories by right is what we're looking at across both of these sub districts. Now, there is the possibility to build two additional stories on Mass Ave and on Broadway under certain conditions for a total of six stories and the possibility to build one additional story on Broadway under certain conditions. And again, these details are being worked out as part of this conversation. Those conditions are if the developer builds two floors of commercial space starting on the street level, they will receive a bonus of two additional floors for a maximum six story height. If the developer builds affordable housing as defined at our zoning bylaw in excess of our inclusionary zoning, which is 15%, they may receive a bonus of one additional floor. So some of the priorities that we have heard. So as we're incorporating our priorities into this map to support transit oriented development, what we heard, locate the zone along major bus routes, there is a desire for improved transit service and as well as a car free experience. We focus the zone along the more transit rich areas of Arlington, especially East Arlington, which as folks remember initially when the guidance for MBTA communities came out was really the focus subject of where this zoning would go. So we focus the zone along the more transit rich areas of Arlington, especially in East Arlington where there is access to the red line subway. And we hope that additional development along these corridors will lead to improved transit service on the bus lines as well to support more car free living. We stayed out of commercial areas. We stayed out of industrial areas. We stayed out of historic districts. The community asked us to retain and support commercial uses. So we've excluded those properties from the zone and we are even increasing the capacity for more commercial square footage with our commercial space bonus. This plan will increase the overall amount of taxable commercial space in Arlington. This also promotes the idea of a 15 minute town where most amenities and services are located within a 15 minute walk of someone's home. On June 8th we heard, what about Broadway? We had a lot of conversations about whether or not to include Broadway as part of a corridor plan and ultimately decided on June 8th as a result of the public meeting and as a result of the comments that we received there. Yes, we should include Broadway in the plan and so we drew a zone over Broadway. We heard, don't put all the housing and again we're talking about housing capacity in the same neighborhood. So we didn't. We looked at East Arlington, we looked at Arlington Center and we looked at the heights as well as places that we could up zone and potentially have more robust residential development along the commercial corridors in Ireland. In Arlington, provide a commercial bonus. Done. We did that. Provide an affordability bonus. Done. The town will need to request that the state allows us to use our current inclusionary zoning definitions in percentage of 15%. The state is entertaining these requests so long as an economic feasibility study is included that shows increased affordability will not hinder overall housing development. And again, while the details have not been finalized, the working group is leaning towards a one story bonus for affordability in excess of 15%. The last thing we heard or at least the last thing I'll talk about tonight is to concentrate the height on Mass Ave and Broadway on the corridors and feather or taper the height into the neighborhoods. So what we have proposed tonight is four to six stories on the corridors, tapering down to two and a half stories in the middle of the side streets. And now I believe Sanjay is going to talk about our frequently asked questions. Sorry everyone not Sanjay, it's me. I'm Rebecca. I was a bit surprised so I'm just kidding. And in just a minute, you all are going to get to ask lots of your own questions, but we have received some very common questions and we thought we could just preempt by giving you a few responses. So one of the common questions we've received is can our existing sewer system handle more residents? Yes. And also to keep in mind that any population growth due to this new housing development will be gradual over years and potentially decades. Can our schools handle more students? Again the answer is yes. The school department has, we've consulted with them and they have proposed that the school enrollment is starting to peak through the elementary school system and that in the next few years we'll see a decline in this elementary school system and there will be capacity for more students. In addition, the school department gave us guidance that we spread out our district to allow them to have more flexibility in adjusting elementary school boundaries. What about traffic and parking? Well, as has been talked about frequently tonight, the location of the districts is intended to encourage development near transit and along existing or near commercial corridors with the intent of reducing reliance on cars and making cycling and walking more convenient with 15 minute neighborhood ideas. And also the working group has talked about a limitation of parking to one space per maximum per dwelling unit. Next slide please. Oops, what happened to this? Not the right slide. Thank you. What percent of new housing will be affordable? I'm just gonna briefly reiterate what Claire just said. Our current zoning requires 15% and we will be asking the state to allow us to have these new districts follow that same inclusionary zone rate and the same AMI rate that we have. We've also incentivized a higher percentage of affordable dwellings. What about trees, private green space and open space? The working group is absolutely supportive of all of that. And we are working with the Department of Planning and Community Development to figure out how we can have bonuses, incentives and in general encourage the prioritization by developers for public open spaces, ways to mitigate heat islands and increasing our tree canopy. Next slide. Anyone? One more. One more. Please support businesses and an increased commercial tax base. Again, we've talked about this. Our proposed plan maintains all current commercial and industrial zoning. It leaves additional room around existing commercial districts to allow for future expansion. We have voted a height bonus in the Mass Ave and Broadway multifamily districts for the inclusion of ground floor commercial. And we believe that greater density near our town business districts will be a boon to existing businesses and service providers and will hopefully create opportunities for new ones. And then the last question I'm going to try to give an answer to tonight is what does capacity mean? So capacity is a calculation that some of you have seen. It's done using a state's compliance model. It is not a calculation of how much housing would actually be built. It is simply potential. It's a theoretical maximum. The actual number of new units built by any property owner would be affected by any practical limitations associated with the design of the housing, the livability of that housing, and the marketability of that housing. All these questions and more are on a FAQ sheet that I think most of you picked out when you walked in, written in much nicer texts than my very summary bullet points. And we also encourage as we're about to do questions. Sanjay. Thank you, Rebecca, and thank you to all of our presenters this evening. Thank you all to listening and taking in all this information. I know it's a lot of information to take in. So if you wish to provide questions or comments, we're gonna move on to that part of the evening now. If you wish to do that, please make sure you've filled out one of the slips that hopefully you got on the way in. If you didn't, you can visit the table either in the side hall or in the back. And we'll now take a three-minute break so that anybody that hasn't gotten their name into the box can go do that. And if anybody needs to stretch their legs, they can do that. So we'll reconvene here in three minutes, okay? Thank you very much, everybody. So a lot of, pardon me. I'm mentally, I'm mentally. We used all town notices and county websites. Okay, folks, we'll get going, we'll get going again in a minute here. So if you could find your seats again. Folks, we're gonna get going in just one more minute here. So if you could find your seats. All right, folks, let's get on to the main event here. If we could get our panelists back up to the front, as soon as we have our panelists back, we're gonna get started. Okay, folks, if you're holding one of our panelists' tossage, if you could wrap up your conversation and let them come back to the front. And if you could bring me the box of slips and if we could advance the slide one more, I'll walk us through how we're gonna do this. Right there would be great. Okay, folks, so we're gonna do questions and comments from all of you. We're really looking forward to hearing from everybody. So just some notes about the process here. Please come forward to the microphone when your name is called. And I will call both the person who we're gonna speak now and I will give a preview of who is going to be next. We have all of your names here in the box here and I'm just gonna continue to pull names at random, okay? That way we don't have to pick what order to go in. Please ask your questions to me and I will figure out who to direct them to on the panel here. I believe everybody, no, we have not. David Morgan is the only person I believe who has not already introduced themselves tonight. David, can you remind us of your title? I am the town environmental planner. Thank you, I didn't want to say wrong, thank you. So in order to hear from as many people as possible, we have chosen two minutes for people to share their comment or ask their question and get an answer. We will, every 10 speakers or so, because of that time limit, if we've gotten some question that didn't get fully answered or something like that, I'll ask the panelists to see if there's some detail that needs to be filled in or some context that we missed because of the format. We will, we're just not gonna have a chance to entertain second chances to speak and please state your name and your address before you speak. So without further ado, I will tell us the first person and then, I did say two minutes, did I not? Two minutes, okay, great. I went on, what's the name? We're gonna put the map up in just a second here. Okay, so the first name we have is Frances Tilney. And then after Frances, we will go to Rebecca Peterson. So Rebecca, you're on deck for afterwards. You can go, sorry, you can use the yellow one over there. So it's coming out now. Okay, Frances Tilney, 81 Marathon Street. My question is the most obvious one. The outside consultant mentioned the formula. What happens if you plug this map into the formula? What number do you come up with? I'm a numbers guy. I wanna know the numbers. Matthew, yeah. Does this, it works, it's live. Yep, so the total acreage of the blue and the orange combined is 176 acres. And the total number of units is between 12,000 and 15,000. And I say it's about that amount because we're working with the state right now on this some issues with the model and the parameters that have been set. It's usually a good predictor. So that compares with 2,000s required and you're doing 12 to 15,000. Seems to kind of overkill. Let's keep things civilized here. And if I could ask Steven, perhaps, player might wish to say something about that. I can say something, sure. There's, when our current zoning was adopted in 1975 and at that point in the process, the then director of planning and community development, he did two studies. One was to like a capacity calculation. Arlington had about 54,000 people at the time and the zoning that we had pre-1975. You know, they estimated, well, you'll get to about 75,000 people. For under the new zoning, which is what we have today, the estimate was for about 62,000, which is an increase of about 15%. So in the last 50, 48 years, we haven't had a 50, we have not had a 15% increase. So what we're talking about is a theoretical maximum. It's equivalent to saying that there are 8,000 single family homes in the school in the town so there could be 40,000 kids in the school district. It's mathematically possible, but in reality, not practical. So that's Rebecca. And while Rebecca is coming up, I'll pull the next name. Lee Grigoris will be after Rebecca. Rebecca Peterson, 31, Florence Sout. So I had the same question as the first gentleman and since that's been answered, I just have a couple of comments. I think that, I don't suggest that we don't comply with the law, but I think over-complying, like was mentioned at a previous meeting, is vastly different than complying with the law. The negatives of over-complying are numerous, not limited to more traffic, higher school enrollment, excessively tall buildings that create permanent shade, unattractive new builds with zero setbacks, loss of open space, loss of green space. I'm concerned about our small businesses. I shop in town frequently and I feel like these changes will really dramatically affect the look and the feel of the town. I don't think they'll make Arlington a more pleasant place to live. I don't think they'll make it more affordable. And I think that it, unfortunately it seems like the working group is pursuing other goals, which are using this law to implement massive increase in density, rather than complying with the law. And these are the biggest zoning changes since I think someone said the 70s, maybe the 60s. And so I think they should really be approached with caution and in the most minimally disruptive way to our community and our quality of life. Thank you. Thank you. The next person is... Let's hold the applause first. Lee Gregoras and I'll hold the next name. Yeah. Oh. You wrote your question on the back. Great, absolutely. That's fine. And the next person after that will be Elizabeth Carr-Jones. Hi. Number one, I've been in Arlington residence. Could you remind me? Hello? Yes, okay. And remind us of your name and address, please. Okay, my name is Lee Gregoras and I'm also speaking for my sister who is a resident of Bates Road, 11 Bates Road. I also owned that property before she did. And one of my question, however, besides being very concerned that our property will be eventually taken away from us, which has been my home for 50 years at Bates Road, I also propose upscaling the projects, which is what they are called, I don't know what the actual name, we've always called them the projects, off-Broadway with higher density multi-family units that are landscaped to enhance the lives of residents there. I'm wondering if this area has ever been adequately considered for reuse and actually rebuilding and making into a more viable place for people to live there. They've always had no landscaping. There's a lot of space there and I think that more people in a well-planned, well-designed building could be there. To me, this makes sense, that would bring more housing, better living for those residents. You were wondering that that had been considered. Claire, do you have any thoughts or maybe you might have follow-up, I don't know. Can you guys hear me? Hello? I don't have any particular thoughts on that property, that property is owned by the housing authority. It is a singular property and it is large enough to be considered on its own. If the housing authority did have plans to build denser, bigger, differently, they have tools already in their toolbox that they can use to develop that project to be more dense. I think the issue with that area in particular doesn't have much to do with zoning. I think honestly what it has to do with is funding for affordable housing and our housing authorities and understand that should we not adopt MBTA communities, funding for our housing authorities has already been cut. It's been cut in Schelmsford and a few other communities and it will be cut in Arlington as well. Thank you. The next is Elizabeth Carr-Jones and then the next name I have after Elizabeth is Matthew Olin. I'm Elizabeth Carr-Jones. I live at 1 Lehigh Street on the co-chair of the Arlington Open Space Committee and a Precinct 4 team town meeting member. Tonight I'm speaking on behalf of Green Streets Arlington, a group advocating for tree canopies, healthy streetscapes and open space to be part of this plan. I could talk about all of the things that we've included in our zoning and in our planning documents. But I think tonight what I really need to say is that what's been put up here as a plan is very justifiable until you realize that what it means is so much density. I sort of feel like what could be salvageable about this is the areas and the planning thought that went into it, but that the density is just too high. The setbacks are too small. The amount of floors allowed in neighborhoods is too many. So what I'd like to see is that the good thought that's gone into this and all the hours that these good people have put in not be wasted by not making it really work for Arlington. So I guess that's it. Thanks. Thanks. Any guys, let's please keep it simple, thank you. Matthew Owen is next. Oh, I forgot my name. Hi, I'm Matthew Owen, 164 Forest Street. So I had a question and there was comments about sort of an economic feasibility study in terms of application of inclusionary zoning bylaw and whether it would be feasible for us to require 15% affordability. And so I sort of had questions around that. Is that something, a decision one that would be made on the level of the town or could it be sort of based on, since we have different districts with different requirements, could those be considered individually and just sort of what work has gone into or like what do we think now, how the state would react to the sort of what is currently allowed under this map or like maybe a slightly modified map, clear, right? That's great, thank you for your question. MBTA communities requires inclusionary zoning of 10%, which was clearly less than what Arlington is requiring in our zoning. MBTA communities at the state level, their section is willing to entertain or willing to consider town, cities and towns requests to apply their own pre-approved inclusionary zoning bylaws to MBTA communities. What we need to provide as a town is an economic feasibility study, that's my job, I will hire someone to do that, to prove that projects that have a 15% affordability requirement in Arlington are feasible. Projects that have a 15% affordability requirement in Arlington are feasible. We have permitted several. We have permitted 40 Bs which have a requirement of 25% affordable. Clearly, that level of affordability is working in Arlington. What the state wants us to do is prove it through an economic feasibility analysis. Okay, thank you. And yeah, just as sort of a general comment, I one want to thank the working group for all of the arduous work they have done. And just like to say I am supportive of sort of the current sketched out, I think the scales on mass average consistent with multi-family we've had there for in some cases a hundred years. And the neighborhood scales, I think definitely fit in with- Well, we're past, okay, past time. Thank you. Thank you. Sorry, I couldn't quite see the talk there. Joe Babiarz is next. And after Joe, we will have Arthur Crocox. Thank you, Joe Babiarz, 59 Edge Hill Road, towning meeting member precinct 15. So what happens if none of this gets built? This is all theoretical. I do support going to what the law requires, not what is over. That my constituents are concerned about not having any land, that kind of thing. But in my part time, I do work with contractors. Because you have the stretch coat, because you have a number of requirements for zoning and all the rest that's coming down, the estimates are this is increasing 33% of the costs currently around. I believe that having just be done our own home. So what happens if we comply with the law? Not over comply, but we end up not having people do this kind of affordability. Boston has tried to attract developers by going into office buildings, saying convert them into apartments and we'll give you a 29 year tax abatement. What's gonna happen if nothing really comes of this? Claire, is that something you could talk about? Or I don't know if Matthew or Claire. Claire. Sure, I'm happy to answer that question. What if nothing comes of it? I think that is, it's a valid question. We don't know if a single unit is going to be built. Should we pass this? None of the cities and towns that are doing this work know that a single unit is going to be built. We don't know if we are a more attractive market than Belmont. We don't know if we're a more attractive market than Newton. We simply do not know. And so what we have tried to do is to write zoning and put in incentives that will encourage development. That will encourage at least some development initially on the corridors especially so that we can increase number one, the number of housing units that we have in town. And number two, our subsidized housing inventory. We continue to be subject to 40 B projects which are large, which we don't have a lot of control over. I mean, this is really an opportunity for large projects to come through and be reviewed, be administratively reviewed, be commented on and then be built in a way that is contextual to Arlington. Now, you're right. We don't know if a single unit could get built. And we do not know right now, I think, if the stretch code or other policies we have in place which means they are applicable to anything that gets built at MDTA communities are going to stifle development. I've heard it both ways. I've heard that it adds additional costs that makes development hard. I've heard that it adds minimal cost that isn't as much of a concern. Again, I think this is just, we have to operate here, thinking about what the capacity is and what we ultimately want to see built. Let's decide what it is we want to see and then work backward from there. And then there's all sorts of things we could do to incentivize those sorts of projects, in addition to some of these incentives that we've talked about tonight. We could revisit the zoning in two years and say, hey, nothing's getting built. Is there something to look at? Should we go back and reopen these incentives to see if that may help spur some of this development? Thank you, Claire. Arthur Crokosh is next, and after that we'll have David Ossofsky. Hi there. My comment is that I support the density of this plan because I value anything. Sorry, name and address, please. Of course. Arthur Crokosh, 45, Cameron Wall Street, precinct for town meeting member. And I'm commenting that I support the density of this plan because I value inclusivity, sustainability and prudence. By inclusivity, I mean that having more developments that are possible with six or more units means more opportunities for the developers to provide us with the inclusive zoning, that is, the units that are required for six units or more. I believe that we cannot get enough affordable housing without having private developers taking advantage of this zoning by-law and there's practically zero opportunities for them to do this today. In terms of sustainability, numerous studies show that resource use and far too many other indicators of sustainability are strongly correlated with density. More density means more sustainability. There is a limit. That limit is far above six stories. And prudence, this proposal, the density of this plan, will increase the tax base in such a way that is supported by the town facilities. For all these reasons, I support the density of this plan. Thank you. Thank you. Yes, let's not keep, no matter what, let's keep the applause and the jeers either way. David Ossofsky is next and after that I have Julie Brazil. And if you could share your name and address when you get there. I'm David Ossofsky. I live in One Water Mill Place in Arlington Heights. I didn't know about that we were that we were increasing the density beyond what was required. It concerns me a little bit, but that's just an aside just from my head in that discussion. But what I'm wondering is, so I was kind of thinking of my condo as a possible fallback if I ran out of retirement money and I'm a little bit concerned that the value of my condo will decrease with the addition of a lot more similar kind of housing. And so I'm wondering if that is, if I'm not looking at this the right way or if there's anything in the plan that is being considered that might help remedy that. Matthew, is that something you've been? Yeah, there hasn't been a financial impact analysis associated with this. You know, it can go many ways. More development means more value all around sometimes, right? Density brings certain benefits and amenities that make certain parts of Arlington more desirable. It would be impossible though to answer your question with any certainty without doing a real study. Is there any thought about doing such a study? So the question is, as a condo owner, will your condo lose value, should the building be up zoned? No, should, would my condo lose value just because there's a lot more multi-family housing stuff to compete against it? I mean, I cannot give you a definitive answer. Certainly, if I could predict the housing market, I may not be working here any longer, but I think that it's an interesting question. And I think in terms of a condo, does more condos make the condos that are there less attractive, less valuable? I don't know. I think that, obviously, clearly when we put in brand new buildings, they do look different, better, whatever as compared to buildings that are already there. However, I think that what a zone like this would do is incentivize condo associations, other property owners to upgrade their own properties and keep them in very, very good condition. What we have is, what we have to compare them to are the new buildings. We're past time here. Sorry, I really don't know. I can't actually see the point. I apologize for that, guys. Thank you, David. Julie Brazil is next, and then I will pull the next name. After that, I have Mary Ellen Marino. Go ahead. I'm Julie Brazil. I'm a town meeting member from Precinct 12. I live at 56 Coolidge Road. So I like the idea of the bonuses for extra commercial space and extra affordable housing. I'm not particularly concerned by the sticker shock of the upper limit on that capacity, but could you talk about how you got there? Because that 12,000 is a lot bigger than 2,000. What are we getting for that? Is it, are we going for the affordable housing? Because that's what I would hope for if you could dig into that a little in the iterations. Yeah, I can begin that answer and Claire can follow up if necessary. I think it was a natural evolution that there was sort of broad consensus that people wanted the district to be spread equally throughout the corridor. And so the goal went from how do we comply to how do we actually make a district that actually makes sense? 32 acres is very small. It would be a kind of very awkward gerrymandered kind of district. And then there raises the question of who gets that district, right? Who's in it, who's out of it? And so the proposal you see is far in excess of what compliance requires, but I think it's because it's based on a growing consensus about creating district that really makes sense in terms of occupying the corridor. Thank you very much. Thank you. Next we had Mary Ellen Ernau, and after that, Neil Burnham. Mary Ellen Ernau, 22 Addison. Sorry, I mispronounced it, I'm sorry. That's okay. 22 Addison Street. I'm the co-chair of the Arlington Tree Committee, Tom Meany member precinct eight. I'm also part of Green Streets Arlington. It's a group advocating for tree canopies, healthy streetscapes and open space to be part of this MBTA community's district zoning plans. Currently I think there's some important gaps to the plan regarding Green Streets open space and tree canopy. First, I think we need to follow the tree warden of our town's guidance, which says 15 feet is a minimum setback to put a medium or large shade tree. Then I think I was encouraged to hear that the redevelopment board is thinking about perhaps expanding some of our current zoning. There is some current zoning that's ripe to expand to apply to residential, multi-use and planned unit districts. The site development standards, which were added at tau meeting 2020, that say plant a street tree every 25 feet for business and industrial if we expand that. Yet when there's not room for a street tree due to two skinny tree strips or overhead wires, the law already provides for the provision to plant a shade tree within the setback. But yet if the setback is too small, they won't be able to fit a tree of any relative size to help with shade and climate resilience. Another current zoning to modify more widely is the screening and space buffer requirement. That's in zoning section 5.3.7. That requires a screen of plantings to be maintained between properties. So I think getting the setback right first is really important. And I guess I asked the question as why haven't we seen some iterations of a setback that's wider in the main corridors? Thanks so much. Thank you. We're out of time. We may come back to that in a little bit. Neil Burnham, I believe was next. And then after that, I have Andrew Fisher. Hi, everybody. My name is Neil Burnham. I'm at 16-1 in Terrace. So I'm in the Brown District. And I have two questions. Has the working group considered, as part of this plan, the consistency of style in the development? Are we gonna have one developer creating something that's all bricks, someone else creating something that's all marble? Is there gonna be any kind of zoning consideration that would lend to a harmonious tone of Arlington in the future? So that's question number one. Question number two is, I am... Why don't we answer that one first? Okay, go ahead. Does that sound good? Claire, do you want to? So everything we have in place now will apply. Can't hear you there. Can you hear me? Is this better? All right. All of these projects will be subject to the Residential Design Guidelines that were published in 2020. These projects will also be subject to site plan review by the Redevelopment Board in their role as the Planning Board. So there will be an opportunity to comment on architectural style, scale, those sorts of things. Again, what we can't prohibit is the use. We can't say housing can only be done by special permit. And again, what we need to do in our zoning is make it clear what can be built in terms of height, bulk, massing, those sorts of things in terms of style that will still go in front of the Redevelopment Board for evaluation and some comment, some opportunity for the public to comment on the proposed project. Thank you. And then I'll be quick, because I'm running out of time. If you have a low house, one story side, and someone next to you can go up to four stories in the multi-family sub-district, they can do this by rights, as I understand this. Does that owner have any recourse to resist what's gonna happen to them? But we're out of time, so we may come back to that also in a couple minutes, if you'll excuse me. We're past time actually, so we're gonna move on to the next person who is Andrew Fisher. Andrew Fisher, and then we will go to Carl Wayne here. Hi, Andrew Fisher, 25 on Bar Road. We talked about closing the wealth gap, and the only way to close the wealth gap that I know of is home ownership. So I would strongly support a two-story bonus for owner-occupied buildings with 15% affordable. And I would acquiesce to the state's mandate of 2046. But that's it. You can have your plan as it is, and when we reach 2046, just say that's it. Thank you. Folks, I'm asking you, Daniel, please press your frame from the, or onto Carl Wagner, and then after that, we'll go to Phil Goff. Thank you. Just before I start, it might be better for future speakers if you could turn off these fans since it's not hot in here. It's hard even in the first row to hear. I'm Carl Wagner. I live on Edge Hill Road. I'm a precinct 15 town meeting member. I thank the members of the volunteer committee and the members of town officials who are working on this. We pretty much know, because Attorney General said, we have to comply, that we have to do this. So if we have to do this, the best way to do it for the town would be to comply with the rules 100% to make the 2046 unit density overlays. We can always in the future make further overlays, but it's very difficult to go back once we've made overlays. I wanna make a comment that yesterday at the redevelopment board, members of the working group presented probably a slightly different map, but it provided for 20,804 units. And that's crazy because Arlington together right now only has 20,000 units. And the odd thing was that at the ARB, there was no talk about the fact this was 10 times compliance. It seems ridiculous to me, living in Arlington a long time, that we should inconvenience at the least the people that live in those orange and blue districts by A, not telling them about this meeting tonight. This is only the second in-person meeting, not flaring them like the Arlington Good Neighbor Agreement says for a butters and people affected by major changes that developers do. And most of all, it bothers me that there are such a small amount of people surveyed, 213, it bothers me that there might be 150 or 200 people here for a change that will affect possibly 3,000 units and overall the 20,000 units of our town. I would ask that the working group and the town officials go to the purpose of the law. The MBTA community's density overlay is to put density where it's least likely to cause problems by alewife, by transit hubs that are not bus stops, but are subways or railway stations. You see that there are no density overlays right by alewife, it's ridiculous. Thank you. Thank you. So we'll do Phil Goff, please stop folks, please stop. We'll go to Phil Goff and then we'll take a round of filling in some of the blanks that we had earlier. Thank you, Phil Goff, 94 Drafton Street, town meeting member precinct seven. And my house, I think it maybe is right on the edge of the 350 mark depending on if it's the centerline or the broadway or the edge of the broadway or whatever. But I think whether my house is within that orange zone or outside of the orange zone, clearly this will have some impact potentially on me and my neighbors. But four story buildings, they don't scare me. Like obviously I think some people here are a little scared of them. I don't mind some additional density. I recognize that a lot of the two family houses say on my street and many others in East Arlington and throughout town, even with the change in zoning with the additional density, most of those two family houses, they're not going anywhere for the most part. I mean, I'd like to think that with this change zoning, two family houses when some of them maybe are kind of falling apart. Maybe there is a consolidation of some properties. I'd much rather see four story apartment building on some of the parcels in East Arlington and elsewhere where more recently, redevelopment has meant just McMansions. Two family McMansions, there's a big one on Winter Street. There's one on Marathon and Waldo Street. If we had zoning like this, those sites should have been four units of housing, five, maybe six units of housing, but instead you get a two family McMansion. So I think that's one of the benefits here. I think that the working group has done a good job and I generally support the strategies here. I do agree to some degree with the previous speaker, it would be nice to see some of that density, some of the four story density closer to El White Station. I know there's flood zone issues that I think that could be perhaps overcome in design with good architecture, but I'd like to see perhaps some of that reconsidered, but I'm happy to see four story buildings, five and six story on Mass App and Broadway and let's move forward with this, thank you. Yeah, we're, oh yes, we're gonna return to any questions that we didn't get answers to. Claire, did you wanna address from earlier? Sure, so the question was what happens if someone's neighbor sells their house and someone builds a four story building on it and the house next door is a single floor house? What happens when that person sells their house? What happens when that person sells their house? It's an opportunity for more people to buy homes in Arlington and to participate in Arlington. I mean, we go from having one house with a wonderful family in it and maybe they've lived their lives in Arlington and maybe the older folks wanna stay in Arlington and the way that they can do it is to redevelop their property. This is just an opportunity really for property owners ultimately when they choose to vacate their property to exact not just the value of what they have but the value of the potential capacity that has been zoned over their home. And really what it results in is more housing, more people, more opportunity really in Arlington. Was there another question that we didn't get to earlier? I don't think so, okay. The next person I have is Shelly Dean and after Shelly we'll have Annie with her. My name is Shelly Dean. I live at Seven Cleveland Street and I'm actually in East Arlington in one of the orange sections. I wanna talk and also say that I'm very supportive of this plan. I feel I'm not scared about height. I'm not scared about depth. Sorry, I'm sorry about that. What I was going to say or what I had said is that I'm not scared about height. I don't think four stories is crazy. Most of the buildings in my neighborhood are three-story buildings so four stories isn't outrageous to me. And I'm really very pleased to see the sustainability that will come with density. I think that's really important for our town and I think it's really important for our future. I guess the question that I have is really a question which is there are a number of properties that are excluded either because they're in commercial districts or because they're part of the Arlington Heights study. And I just like a little clarification about why those properties are excluded and what their zoning currently will allow. I would hope that they would allow density as well. Yes, Steve, maybe you could answer some of that and then we'll go to Claire. Yes, I'll start with the Arlington Heights business district first. So the Arlington Heights business district is currently sort of a patchwork quilt of small districts that are sewn together from parcel to parcel the regulations change because the districts change. So earlier in the year the redevelopment board started working on a plan to basically redo the zoning based on some planning that had happened earlier. And Steve, you're gonna have to go quick. Okay, so basically there are plans to redo the business districts in Arlington to give them a little more density and then eventually to look at the other business districts. Thanks, Steve. Annie LeCourt and then Phelan. Annie LeCourt, 48 Chatham Street, town meeting member from Precinct 13. So I got a couple of really quick hits here. This zone as represented on this current map is 176 acres. What percentage of the land area of Arlington is that approximately? Okay, can you do mental math? I can tell you in a second, I got some math to do then. Okay, I'll check up the second question while you guys are coming up with that. So if I understand correctly, the state will only allow us, if they don't agree to our 15%, they'll only allow us 10% inside of the MBTA community's district, but that doesn't affect our infusionary zoning in the rest of the town, correct? Correct. Okay, so it's only within that 176 acres, which is what percentage of the town? It's about five or 6%. So it's five or 6% of the town where our infusionary zoning would change. And if I understand the map correctly, we are abutting some of the commercial and industrial districts, but we're not intruding on any of them and we are not giving up any current public open space. Correct. Great, thank you very much. So in my last 43 seconds, I'm gonna say that I'm fully in support of this plan. We have a climate crisis and a housing crisis and more density in Arlington is part of the solution to both. If we don't build here, then there will be more open space filled with housing further to the west of us, the south of us, the north of us. And all of that will be inconvenient to public transportation and will require personal vehicles for people to get to their jobs, et cetera, et cetera. And we have an affordability crisis and the housing here is where people need the housing. It's near to the jobs that they already have and it's in a community with good schools, so on and so forth. It's very important that we do this and most important is that we not do the minimum but that we do what's right. We're timed. Okay, Sandra. Yep, Michelle Phalen is next and then Jennifer Seuss. Hi everybody, my name is Michelle Phalen. I live in District 4 and I'm a town meeting member. First I wanna thank everybody for all the amazing work you've done. I've been following the iteration of the plans over time and it's really herculean tasks so thank you so much for all the dedication and all the hard work. I just wanna comment that the version of the plan just before this one had a two-tier idea. The blue would have been five-story and the orange would have been three-story and that kind of gave me a little bit of relief thinking that if you approach East Arlington from Route 16, seeing three-story buildings on either side of the road would feel kind of comfortable. However, when you switch to making those orange structures four-stories and then say, guess what? You get an extra two-stories if you comply with these certain requirements you talked about during the conversation. Now you're talking about driving down Mass Ave, in East Arlington, heading toward the center on both sides of the street a potential and I realize it's not all filled in of six stories on both sides of the street. All I could think of is central square. What I wanna ask the committee to think about is setbacks and how important setbacks are. 10 feet is not very far. 10 feet might be a combination of these two tables together. To have a building, a six-story building that close to the perimeter of Mass Ave I think is gonna feel very tight. And I, somebody mentioned tree canopies earlier which I think is another very important factor. If you've got a 10-foot setback you really can't have increased your tree canopy. So I'm just asking the committee to think carefully about urbanization which is good, density which is good but also green and open relief, air relief if that makes sense. Thank you. Thank you. We'll go next to Jennifer Seuss, then Bill Fuchs. Hi, Jennifer Seuss, Tami number 45 Teal Street. I am very excited about this proposal. I see this proposal as re-legalizing the type of modest housing choices that we used to build in Arlington. If you think of the kinds of buildings that will now be allowed, they are very much like the buildings that are already part of the fabric of our community. But that in 1975, we made it illegal to build in Arlington. So I am really excited about this. I am not scared about the capacity. If you remember at town meeting for those who were there when we had the debate about accessory dwelling units there's a lot of worry that we'd see thousands of accessory dwelling units popping up. And I think we've had four or five permitted. So capacity is not quite, I've heard four, but capacity is not quite the same thing as what will be built and what will be built immediately, right? So this is a very conservative, modest proposal that will increase housing very slowly over time in the places that they need to be. I have one quick question. I love the reduction setback. One of my big bugaboos is the very large setbacks that are required to don't fit in Arlington. But I'm wondering if you add ground for commercial, if you consider reducing that setback. Because right now when we have ground for commercial we don't have a huge setback. So that you can walk by, you can look in the windows and you can see different things. And I'm curious if that was maybe being considered or I'd like to advocate for it. Sure, that one's easy. Actually, yes, we had talked a lot about a setback required for a residential only building on Massive and Broadway. But that a zero setback would be required for street level commercial. Excellent, thank you. Bill Fuchs is next. And then I'm gonna see if this person knows it's them. I just have a first name with Gina but it does say Bates Road. Does somebody, okay, they know who they are. Okay, great, we'll see you then next. Hi, I'm Bill Fuchs on 7 Cleveland Street. So I'm right in the neighborhood multi-family sub-district. Can I get the mic down? Yeah, that sounds better. Couple of things, Bill Fuchs 7 Cleveland Street right in the multi-family district. I would actually support the expansion of this into commercial districts with the requirement that the ground floor commercial be preserved. I think that, I'm curious about why the West End at Mass Ave, the, what's labeled as the RBR owned and high tree zoning study area, hasn't been included in one of these districts. Should we get an answer? Should we get an answer to that question? Either Steve or Claire, do you wanna answer that? Do you wanna answer that? You take it. Sure, I'm happy to answer that question. We were asked by the redevelopment board in one of our working sessions to please exclude the study area that they would like to take a look at. It will be a warrant, it will be on the warrant warrant article for the Fall Town meeting to establish a singular business zone across Arlington Heights, which was a recommendation of the Arlington Heights Neighborhood Action Plan that was done a few years ago. Thank you. I think that this is a great program. I think that it's gonna have little or no impact public open space and we'll really have limited functional impact on private property, open space. I'm excited that this proposal so strongly supports the goals described in existing town plans, including diversity, affordable housing and supporting local businesses. I think that this is the right size plan for the town. Thank you, Bill. And then Gina. And then after that, well, actually I realized we had one other question that we didn't, I think, answer, which we'll come back to. Hi, I'm Gina Grigoris. I'm at 11 Bates Road. My sister has already spoken. First of all, I wanna say I do support the complying with the law, of course. We have to do that, that's fine. But I do think that this is really overkill. When I look at this map, a lot of orange, especially on my street, it seems to me, and I'd like to answer to this, is the ultimate goal to take a street like Bates Road, which is made of single-family housing, is the ultimate goal than to rid the town of single-family housing, or at least in East Arlington. My second question is, is what is... Should we get an answer to this? No, let me, let me say my second question. And the second question is how, what is the town doing to protect homeowners and taxpayers from predatory and aggressive developers? Because this does seem to be like a real good program for them, but not necessarily for the rest of us. So, folks, let's hold the applause, please. I really would appreciate if you did not applaud. Steve, could you answer the first question? So, no, this is not a plan to rid the town of single-family homes. So, this will likely be implemented as an overlay district, so a person who wants to develop a property can choose to use these set of regulations or the existing one-family regulations. Ultimately, if a person wants to build a single-family home, yes, that will be an allowed use in this district. The second question. Sure, so the second question is, what is the town doing to protect homeowners and taxpayers from predatory developers? Is that the question? Yep. What I can say is that we go through several levels of project review with ample opportunity for the public to comment. Developers come in front of the ARB, oftentimes for three to four meetings for small projects. By a small project, I mean maybe one floor, commercial, eight units above, something like that, oftentimes leads to several meetings with several opportunities for public comment. I think that there is nothing that gets built in Arlington by right or not. That doesn't have an opportunity for the public to weigh in and for our butters to be notified. Now, there is, oh, okay. We're a bit past time here. If you could, let's return. I think we had a question earlier from Mary Ellen about that we didn't return to about setback, doesn't it? Do you, David? I can answer, yeah. So a number of map iterations ago, we ran a model with 20-foot setbacks. So we're probably talking map five at this point. And that was discussed by the working group. The model numbers came out pretty similar to what we're looking at, but there were some differences. Matthew can probably speak to those figures better than I can. But ultimately, the working group decided on the 10-foot setbacks in order to encourage commercial development and for the fact that in the neighborhood districts, when you take the average of existing setbacks, it comes out closer to 10 than it does to 20. So it was more to keep in the form of the neighborhoods that that decision was made to recommend a 10-foot setback. So I hope that is clarifying, I can elaborate if not. Thanks, I have Austin Brown next, and then I'll find another name. After Austin Brown, Gene F is what I have. Austin, you can put him over there, name and address please. Gene F, do you know who you are? Okay, great. All right, hello, my name is Austin Brown and I live at 10 Belknap Street. I'd like to tell you all a little bit about the development that's going on at Belknap Street. So I believe that Massachusetts as a whole has a problem with shoddy buildings and no accountability because when people buy a house these days, a lot of people do it with waived inspections. So there's no accountability for the builders. Anyways, so let me tell you what's happened on Belknap Street. So sorry, let me catch my breath, big crowd. All right, we had two four-unit townhouses put in, so a total of eight units. So on the first unit, they built it, the people moved in, sold it for about a million bucks a unit. After a year or two, they found out that the builders had put out bump-outs with no foundation underneath. They just like had put cement blocks on and then built up two and a half stories. So obviously that structure was not safe. Currently that's half unoccupied. The same builders put in another structure across the street, which was again two four-unit town or just a four-unit structure. That, they had to go up in front of the Arlington Redevelopment Board because it turns out it violated the whole bunch of the zoning laws and the building code as well. Anyways, both these structures were not caught at all in the building process. So as far as I'm concerned, even with the existing zoning laws, there's not enough oversight. So you're proposing a whole bunch of new development. I'm really not comfortable with this unless you propose a huge amount of increase in the oversight that has to be placed on new developers. As somebody said before, these new developers are extremely predatory. They'll do anything to maximize profits, obviously. So anyways, I think if you're proposing something like this, you really need to have a lot more oversight against predatory developers. Thank you. Gene F, please. Gene F. And then after that, we'll go to Winnell Evans. Hi, I'm Gene. I live on 230, oh, hi, I'm Gene. I live at 230 Mass Ave in East Arlington. And as an engineer, I don't agree with one of the big assumptions that you made, which is that you put the corridor along East Arlington because you have access to the red line. Well, as a commuter on the 77 bus, the 77 bus is extremely unreliable. Sometimes people hitch a ride on the 350 bus that goes to the, goes to Air Wife. Instead of the 77, a lot of people get off at Porter. Even though this is supposed to be every 12 minutes, it is not. In fact, one person I talked to this week said they had waited 40 minutes and then they called an Uber and it cost them over $50. And what we need to realize is that there's the better bus project the MBTA is doing, which is going to change the service of the 350 bus. The 350 bus is no longer gonna go from Burlington all the way to Air Wife going through East Arlington, through Mass Ave. It's gonna go to Arlington Center and then to Davis. But what I think, which I'm still working with Sean Garberley, you know, I've been in contact with him with the Better Bus Project, is that the Turkey Hill bus is not gonna go down Pleasant Road to Air Wife. It's gonna go through, it's gonna be the substitute. But the Turkey Hill bus right now, the 67, has much less service than the 350 bus. So I don't believe commuters are going to have that option of getting on the 350 bus to get access to the red line. And right now it's so poor, I mean, I personally am affected. It's not reliable. When there's green line, there's all these problems with the MBTA right now. When there's a green line. If you could wrap up the, what? If you could wrap up, you could. Okay, shut up. So what I'm saying is the MBTA bus is poor. And I believe that by concentrating it onto the Mass Ave, the assumption is wrong. And I'm trying to work with Sean Garberley. I'm trying to get it, the 350 bus, access to the. Thank you, thank you. I did have another question about LITC. Is the affordable housing, we've hit our amount of time folks. Let's, we might be able to answer after. The next name I have is Winnell Evans. And then after that I have Chris Helleter. And I wasn't sure, Chris, did you want us to bring a microphone to you? Or did you want to come up to the front? It was unclear from the. Chris, are you? Chris Helleter, H-E-L-E-T-E-R. Okay, I guess we'll, we'll pass on that one. No, it's not push through ready. It's not push through ready. Yeah, okay. I'll pull another one while Winnell's talking, sorry. Thank you. Winnell Evans, 20 orchard place. I'm a town meeting member with precinct 14. My thanks to the working group. I've attended many meetings and I know the hours and the effort and the thought that has gone into this. And I'm very grateful for their work. However, I have a slightly contrarian view about this. I think this is likely to happen quite a bit faster than people are saying. I don't think we're looking at a 50 year gradual, slow time span. I think that the financial incentives for current owners and for developers are so attractive that we are likely to see an explosion in development. I am frequently driving through Alston and Brighton and Watertown and the transformation that has happened in these areas over the past five years is staggering. And they are five and six story buildings with no setbacks on main streets. We are talking about transforming Arlington into a city. And if we do that, then I think we've gotta let the wonderful Jim Feeney and our select board go and think about hiring a mayor because we're not gonna be a town anymore. And my question is, I'm very curious about the capacity modeling that our wonderful consultant, Utile, has been doing. And I would like to request that the sheets that they have produced and the data inputs that they have used be made available to the public either on the MBTA website or some other place on the town website so that residents have access to this. Thank you all very much. Thank you. The next I have Mark Rosenthal. And then after that we'll go to J.P. Lewicki. And if Chris Helleter, if you are still here you can wave a hand and we'll figure it out. Mark Rosenthal, 62 Walnut Street and town meeting member from Precinct 14. The Utile representative, I'm sorry, I forget your name told us that this plan provides for 12,000 to 15,000 units as compared to the 2046 units required by the state. Now I would like to request and I wanna make this clear, I'm not looking for somebody to make a guess and redirect the question to a question I'm not asking. I would like to request, I don't know if I have the right to do this but I would like to request that Utile do a study and tell us what the projected number of additional residents in town would be for the 12,000 to 15,000 plan that we're seeing now. Ideally also for the over 20,000 plan that I just learned about tonight. And if I don't have the right to do that I would like to request to the working group that presumably they have the right to do that that they request this, I'll tell Utile to do this study, do a study to project not only how many additional residents but how many additional students what the additional load is going to be on our schools not just for this year or next year but year by year at least over the next two decades so that we know what we're committing to. And that's pretty much it. So thank you very much. We're out of time, we'll maybe circle back to see if we have any answers to that question later. Next I had J.P. Lewicki and after that is Carol Bohn. Hi, J.P. Lewicki, 104 Bay State Road. I also want to thank the working group for all the hard work they've done. There's been a lot of really thoughtful decisions that went into it. I've all the time seen what they've put out and agreed that it's kind of very important to do that. Given the question that's been raised about kind of why are we doing all of this extra capacity. If we don't actually, so it's kind of, if we look at what will happen, if we don't add those potentially 10,000 housing units here, those instead, instead of being on existing developed sites in a walkable community where people won't have to take cars, can use public transit, 10,000 housing units elsewhere, that's potentially 10 or 20,000 acres of land. People have two or three cars for household, driving 30 or 40 miles for a commute. In terms of what it means for our community, it means your children kind of worrying are they actually going to be able to afford to live where I live now? If I want to move to a smaller place, will there be a variety of housing types for that? And it also just means we're not really going to be stepping up to actually take an effective role in addressing climate problems. So again, thanks to the working group. I really appreciate everything you've done. Thank you. I have Carol Band next, and then Stephen Malune. Hi, Carol Band. I'm a town meeting member from Precinct Day. I live on Bartlett Avenue, which is in the orange section. I think what people are concerned about, and I know I am, is that we're worried that we're going to get a town that's stuffed with the development that's next to Stop and Shop. That's the poster child of bad development. And how are we going to protect that? What sort of, there was no review for that building, which is pretty ugly. And I don't know that there's going to be oversight enough to protect future development. Also, the one... Did you want an answer to that question? Yeah, but can I ask my other question also? The maximum of one parking space per unit is admirable, I think, and we do want to become less dependent on automobiles, but we don't have a public transportation system that promotes that, or that is workable. And so people are going to drive and they're going to park on the streets, and the character of the town is going to change. So you can, yeah, answer my first question, I'd be great. Sure. So the question was the building next to Stop and Shop, is that 882 massive? Right. So that was a building that was put through several public meetings, public hearing in front of the ARB, that went at least one night or more. Honestly, to be fair, you would have had to be looking for it to know that there were public meetings related to it, but they were held. In terms of what we can do about that sort of development, preventing, promoting whatever it is, however you feel about that building, I would encourage folks to keep an eye on the ARB agenda, the plans, the specs, the renderings are all up there available for anyone's perusal. So we have Stephen Maloon, and then on to Marion King after that. Oh, I don't see Stephen. Stephen Maloon, Marion King, I don't see Stephen Maloon, so maybe Marion King. We, Stephen and I, well, we put in questions. Name and address. Stephen Maloon, 7 Webster Street, Allington. Pardon? Stephen Maloon, 7 Webster Street, Allington. We are not in agreement with this proposal. We don't think it should be beyond what the state requires for a lot of reasons have been expressed tonight. But most importantly, what bothers us is that we do not feel this is communicated effectively to all of the residents of Allington, nor was the survey solicited to all of the residents of Allington to get feedback so that this committee who's done a lot of hard work, and I do appreciate that, could weigh in. Small group of people, small group of people surveyed. This is not representative of this community at all. And that is a great disappointment. I know you've done a lot of hard work, but in this regard, you have not sought input from the majority even of the residents in Allington. I've lived in this, my family has been in this community since 75. People on my street are two and three generations. None of them are here tonight probably because they don't know about it. So I would say you need to get this information out. You need to survey the whole town with an objective survey, not a slanted survey that gives all the information and lets the residents give you their feedback. Thank you very much for your time. Thank you, we have Marion King next. And I will note it is nine o'clock. We are here to hear from you and so we will keep going for anybody who wishes to stay. Marion King, and then, oh, I think we already heard from Gina earlier. So I'll pull another one while Marion's talking. Marion King, I'm a town meeting precinct one and 122 Decatur Street. I'm also a past tenant leader at Anonymous Manor Tenants, which was a family public housing in Arlington. I do wanna comment also on the bus service on Broadway. For people who do need bus service, that bus route does not run into Arlington on Sundays. So that's very problematic for low income and other persons who need to use public transit. Many of our bus routes do not run regularly at times when residents need them, as was already spoken about regarding even the 77. And it is getting more difficult to get to the red line. We don't have good service to the green line. While we are required to provide more housing, which I agree with, there seems to be no requirement for the MBTA to provide greater service to us, to enable us to have less individual household usage of vehicles. There also does not seem to be written into the zoning requirements. A requirement for electric vehicle charging and other solar requirements for environmental preservation. Ms. King, we've hit the, you've hit your time. I know two minutes goes by so fast, doesn't it? So I have a slip here that just has Susan on it. And so if you are the person who wrote just Susan, perhaps you could put your full name on a slip and put it in here. Jordan Weinstein is next. Thank you. Excuse me, Jordan Weinstein, Lennon Road, Precinct 21 town meeting member. I have a couple of questions to begin with for the panel. If you were to take this map and limit all of the orange zones to three stories and basically make that one change, can you give me a rough baseball figure of what the total capacity would be? Matthew, is that something you know off the top of your head? I'm gonna guess and qualify that my answer is really just a guess, but we can go back and check. I think it reduces the total capacity by 3,000 maybe? 3,000, yeah. Okay, and if you were to add to that and reduce, limit the blue zones to only four stories without any ability to build it higher with these bonuses, would that be about the same number, do you think? It would not change the modeled capacity. So for the purposes of the model, we assume four stories, the bonus is extra. Okay, with the amount of time I have left then, I think that that's a great plan. I think this is dramatic overreach. I know that there's been a lot of resistance in this town, in town meeting, rejecting, ARB rezoning warrant articles that would have increased density, and I see this as kind of pent up eagerness on the part of the working group. And frankly, I don't see anybody on the working group that has any sense of moderation and is even considering this kind of lower density. Instead, we're jumping from 10,000 capacity to 15,000. Now we're up to 15,000. I think it's a mistake, 3,000 fine. But I don't think that there's much support for this kind of overreach, an overcapacity in town meeting. And frankly, I would vote against this as it is. And I would also lobby and campaign against it. We're out of time, Mr. President. James, no thank you, folks. James Fleming is next. And then after that, we will have Tofer Hyam. Is that better? Awesome, James Fleming, 15 Nohr Road Street. Right after it. I had James Fleming, 15 Nohr Road Street. I had a question about the assumptions used in the speculation for some of the districts. It seems very implausal that you could fit 10,000 units in that orange strip. Are you making an assumption about the size of the unit in that maximum number? Yeah, the model assumes that units are 1,000 square feet. 1,000 square feet? Yeah. Okay, thank you. And then the other question that I had was why, you've picked 350 feet as you're off of Mass Ave for the orange, that's arbitrary. You can go higher or lower. Was there a reason you picked the 350 in particular? Was there a particular feedback that you had that said, you know, this seems like the right sort of ballpark even if it's not the exact right number? There was a lot of feedback to extend the district back into the neighborhoods. And so you're right, it's a question of how deep. And so we tried to set it, you know, let's go back a full block, but sometimes the blocks are really, really long and sometimes really shallow. You said let's just come up with a consistent sort of target about 350 feet, which is a reasonable distance from the transit district and see if we can apply it more or less in a way that's sort of rational and equitable. But you're correct in that it could be 200, it could be, but we wanted to try something that was at least consistent. Okay, thank you. I'd like to say that I like parts of this. We are in the orange district. We don't plan to leave Burlington anytime soon, but if we ever did have to leave, our house would be worth a whole lot more because now you can build more units on it. That's great. I don't understand why everyone is inclamoring to be part of this district. Thank you. Thank you. So Topher Hyam and then, oh, I haven't pulled another one. After Topher will be Colin Mincham. Okay, thank you. Topher Hyam, 82 Richfield Road, increasing 15 town meeting member. I had two questions. One is on the five foot side setbacks. Has anyone talked to the fire department about that? Because I know that that's, there are parts of the zoning code where it goes into materials and what you have to do if you have, say, a garage that's not close to the line. The five foot setback is absolutely achievable within the fire code. Okay, thank you. And the details of how the building is constructed and materials, but it's quite common. Okay. The other question I had is, would you submit this entire plan to the state or would you submit a subset of it that would meet the state's requirements? I see Claire is ready to. Sure, where we are right now is, this is the plan that we intend to forward to the state. We are having this discussion tonight, which we will talk about in the working group in our next meeting and see what we come up with as a result of the comments at this meeting. So, again, it's on the table, but I think that it's a discussion in the working group we'll have to have. All right, thank you. Thank you. It was Colin Mincham. Ah, great. And after that we'll have William Bowman. Hello, I'm Colin Mincham, 22 Bailey Road. I applaud all the work that you folks have done and what you pulled together today, I have a couple of concerns and issues. Number one, I found out about this whole process by a neighbor providing me with a flyer to then find my whole block is an orange zone. So, a good job has not been done in getting it out there by all means necessary. And I would argue that everybody in this inner zone should have been flyered in advance to enable us to know to come. That's number one. Number two, to have suddenly have to ask the question, what is the acreage and how many units are actually in this plan? I think is incorrect. It should have been on the website and up in front and center of all information because in some ways that's what some people are going to be voting based on. Other people have got different reasons. So, I think there needs to be an improved communication to enable people to make decisions. The last question I had is a repeater, something a gentleman asked earlier. I'm in a zone whether or not I move out is part of it, but if next door gets bought and I'm not a tall house and somebody puts in plans for the four storeys next door, I haven't heard an answer to the question, what the course do I have? It was answered, but that actually didn't answer the question. So, as a homeowner, if somebody buys the property next door, what course do I have to object and to mitigate the diminution of the quality of my space? Claire, do you have a? I am not an attorney. So, I can't answer the question about litigation. I imagine if you'd like to litigate, you could certainly go right ahead. If someone built a four story house next to your house, you have the opportunity to come to a public meeting and express your dismay, anger, whatever to comment on the design of the building, to comment on the open space of the building, the parking of the building, any of those things. However, we cannot say no housing and we cannot say that someone can't do anything that is allowed in the zoning. So, you would certainly have recourse to protest, but in terms of recourse to stop a development, I imagine would have to litigate. Claire, okay. So, we've passed our time. That's not enough. Thank you. That's not enough. William Bowman, and then after that, Alex Bagnell. Hi, my name's William Bowman. I live at 12 Highland Avenue. Couple questions. I share the same concern about capacity and it seems like we may be biting off a little more than we can chew to rush this for planning for potentially 50 years from now. So, I guess my question would be, can we cut that in half and maybe plan for 25 years? And I like the last gentleman's point about reducing the number from four floors to three floors would only lose 3,000 units, which would bring us to still three times what the law's mandating right now. But I think the main goal is if we cut back the number in capacity and units, we might be able to grow in a more healthy way when considering the infrastructure and housing codes, because I think in Highland Avenue, that's like a big cut through between Mass Ave and Route 2. And Wildwood is a very small road that would have a hard time facilitating for stories. And while I've lived there for the last 20 years, there's been many accidents where cars end up in front porches and houses and stop signs aren't maintained. So I guess we need to grow. I think you guys are doing a great job. It's not an easy task. And I thank you for letting us talk. But the real question is, can we bite off a little less, maybe cut capacity in half and grow over time in a little more healthy way? Great, thank you. Alice Bagnell is next. And then Wendy Rickner. Should I answer this? Oh, sorry. Yeah, I'm happy to answer that. Like I said, and I think that it's been made clear in the presentation tonight, this is a working group that is very open to public comment and very responsive to public comment. This is a public meeting. They will take in all the comments that are made tonight and go back and take a look at the deliverables and see how we can best express public comment in the map again. Thank you. Sure. Sorry. Alice Bagnell and then Wendy Rickner. Hello, Alice Bagnell, Wyman Street, safely on the edge of the Orange District. And I believe only not a budding of Blue District because it is a commercially zoned property. I would say, I think if we wanna be considered a welcoming town, we actually have to be welcoming to new people. Now, while walking here, I would note that I passed a number of six and eight story buildings along the way and that when walking the dog, we pass a lot of six and eight story buildings primarily built before the 75 zoning rewrite. So I don't wonder if you could talk about not necessarily the difference between our existing zoning and what you're proposing, but what the built environment already contains and that we as town residents apparently all feel passionately about and what the delta is potentially between that and this, noting that some of those buildings on Mass Ave, I think, couldn't even be built under this zoning. Thank you. Steve or Matthew, yeah. Well, I think you're absolutely right. A number of the buildings on Mass Ave, apartment buildings could not be built under this zoning and could not be built under our existing zoning. This change will get us back to some of the things that we used to allow but have made illegal to build a new since 1975. Wendy Richter is next and then I have Emily Snyder. I have Wendy Richter, 12th round of place, town meeting member through Sink 17th. I, one thing I noted on this plan was that the biggest blue area runs along Millbrook and I just, that's a concern because that's a flood plain and we had input about that, taking that into consideration when the zones were laid out. The other thought that I had, I agree with a lot of things that I've discussed tonight but one concern I have is the width of Mass Ave changes from East Arlington into the Heights and I feel like the height of the buildings are basically the same all along the corridor and I just would like to see that taken to account when you look at the height. I think six stories is too high when you look at the two buildings that are crossing each other near Stop and Shop, I think those are four stories and I'm not sure what they are now. Put another two stories on those and Canyon, it's a Canyon. The other thought I had was that if you are going to have incentives for setbacks with adding stories, might you have that area somehow incentivize larger parcels because one of the problems that we have is we have such small existing parcels that to incentivize any kind of setbacks, there just isn't space to set things back and offer more green space even within the lot so that was another thought I had. Thank you. Thank you. We have Emily Snyder and then after that, Chuck Connie. My name is Emily Snyder, 10 Milton Street and I'm also in one of the orange areas. I just have a quick question. Can you enlighten us a bit about how some of our contiguous towns are handling this issue? Matthew, you might be able to tell us about how other towns are. I don't know in detail how your contiguous towns are handling but we are doing the same consulting work for Winthrop, Lincoln, Newton. They are, there's some very common themes, one of which is everyone wants to preserve their commercial districts and so they are working this new work because the new district cannot require commercial, many towns and municipalities are trying to sort of work around that. I've also seen districts sort of evolve in each municipality from something that was minimally compliant to something that made more sense from a sort of planning standpoint. But obviously different densities in different places. Do they have a similar process to what we've had? Yes, and they have more time because theirs isn't due until next year but there's this pressing fossil fuel piece here which is hastening the decision-making process. Okay, thank you. Thank you, we have Chuck Connie and then after Chuck will be Liz Riesberg. Hi, Chuck Carney to Kimball Road, precinct 11 town meeting member. But my question has to do with affordable housing. The state allows you to have 10% of the map be affordable housing. Beyond that you have to justify and so the working group voted to go at a 15% which matches the current inclusionary zone but the state allows you to go to 20% as part of the revised DHCD guidelines. So has the working group thought about being more aggressive on affordable housing and going to 20%? Claire? Sure, I'm happy to answer that. And these are still discussions that we're having about affordability and affordability requirement. I think that generally, and certainly correct me if I'm wrong, working group, we are all interested in a bonus for anybody who is going to go above and beyond the 15%. What we can't necessarily do I think is petition the state to say we wanna do more affordable housing than we require in other parts of the town in the NBTA community zone by right. That would be non-compliant because it would be putting. So the town guidelines says we can go to 20% without any bonuses. I mean, the state guideline. That's correct, but our town guideline right now is 15. To the town, right, so but does this working group have the ability to make it 20? I mean, it's a lot of changes that you're making. The working group has the ability right now to make anything over what we currently have a bonus. So yes, they could potentially go to 20 but right now what we have in town that's applicable across the entire town is 15. Okay, so just so I understand, forget about bonuses. Is part of this plan, if there were no bonuses we couldn't go to 20%. Go ahead, Steve. So the idea is that we can't require something of the NBTA communities district that's greater than what we would require for normal development. So because the rule is 15% everywhere else, we need to keep it 15%. Okay, thank you. Thank you. We have next Liz Riesberg. Who was sitting here and I don't see her anymore. Liz, if you're still here, wave your hand and then I have Andrew Greenspawn next and then I'll pull another name. Allison Briggs after that. Allison. Andy Greenspawn, 89 Palmer Street, town meeting member precinct five. I'm very enthusiastic about this proposal. I'm right adjacent to this district though I wouldn't mind personally being in it at all. I live in East Arlington for walkability and access to public transit where a lot of this district is proposed along Mass Ave as well. My wife can't drive and takes the bus to and from work many times a week and I drive as little as possible because of my location. A lot of my friends in Arlington and surrounding areas have one car for two or three people or zero cars if they live in an area with public transit. We need more housing for people like that. I think that's what this is designed to do. Many folks my age, I don't know if I'm the youngest person here, one of the younger people, can afford to buy housing in Arlington let alone barely rent here. We need missing middle housing, not McMansions which is what happens when a single family house runs out of its life and somebody eventually moves away a house in 50 or 70 years. If it's single family's owned, it's gonna be a McMansion that happens in my neighborhood in Newton. They're all $3 million houses. We need missing middle which is triple-decker, six flexes, four or even six stories that are a variety of prices for seniors who want to downsize. Single people, people starting families, et cetera. So my question because there are a lot of people concerned about where they live and what this means for their property specifically is a question to you all is if you own a property and you are in this overlay and it is passed, does that require anything of you or change how your property exists? Does it compel you to do anything? Claire or Matthew or? The answer's no. Okay, so that, does this affect existing owners in condo associations where somehow they could be compelled to sell their property? No. Okay, thank you. That's all I have. I support this. Thank you all. Okay, next we have Allison Griggs and then after that Gina Rodriguez. Just in case people have left, if I call your name, if you could just wave so that I know whether I need to pull in, oh Gina, okay great. Hello, my name's Allison Griggs. I live at 126 Mass Ave. I am in a blue section. I am here to support this proposal. I get really frustrated when I find out from contrarians that this is happening. So I will say like the only thing is just getting the word out there but beyond that, I think this is an incredible job and very thoughtful. I don't know what people are scared about because like the person before me, I live in high-density. I live in Arlington. I work in Arlington. I manage a small business. My money is made here. My money is spent here. I hope to raise kids here. I can get to the bus. I ride my bike to work. I can get to the train. This is the dream. I live the dream life. I wouldn't be able to be here without having this type of housing. I wouldn't be able to live here continually without this type of housing. I don't know what people are scared of because I'm the type of person that benefits from this. So I would hope that everyone can see me and see that I'm a contributing member of the society that we live in and that this is literally a dream life for me. It may not be for you but you don't have to live that type of life. This isn't forcing anything upon anybody aside from making it possible to expand over the long term. So I'm happy to have one-on-one discussions with my neighbors about this and I'm so happy that everyone's here to voice concerns and have those types of things. I believe these fine people up here took all of the aspects and all of the voices into this proposal and thinking about that for the future. So that's all I really want to say. My only question is I know that there was a lot of climate concerns and sustainability and I support all the people talking about put setbacks and things like that. I was wondering if one of you could succinctly talk about how climate for this proposal actually is because that wasn't super tangible to me. We're out of time so we'll maybe circle back to that in a little bit. Gina Rodriguez and then Aram Kalman. Gina Rodriguez, 6th Daniel Street. I think that anything that we can do to help with the environmental crisis that we are living in and that many of us won't get to the consequences, I think it's worth it. With that said, I think that a lot of things could actually be taken into consideration. For example, charging stations for electric cars and also more reliability on public transportation. Because if we're gonna bring all these people close to public transportation but then we're not gonna be able to service them, it's just gonna be difficult. I live in the Heights and I really don't understand what the re-owning study means and people have asked about it but it's not really clear to me. I know that most of it is already commercial but what doesn't mean to a two-family house? Sure, so really quickly, this is the ARB has a suite of about 10 articles or so that they're gonna bring forward on the Warren article along with MBTA communities that are related to the business. One of the things they would like to do is consolidate the many different business zones in Arlington Heights under one Arlington Heights business district zone. I think that B one through five is represented on the short stretch of Mass Ave. And so as a way to consolidate the zoning and make it fair and consistent across all businesses in the area, they are looking to implement the Arlington Heights business zone which will eliminate B one through five in the area. It's a recommendation that came out of the Arlington Heights Neighborhood Action Plan and it'll go forward as a potential article, the same as MBTA communities in the fall. And where can I find information about it? Sure, that's a great question. There is some information available on the website. There's the Arlington Heights Neighborhood Action Plan is on the website and then we have minutes left over from ARB meetings late last fall where we discussed this. It will come up again in ARB hearings related to town meeting this fall. Thank you. So we have Aram Holman and then Susan Stamps. Aram Holman, 12 Puttamore Street, town meeting member precinct six. Couple of comments here. First, criticism. I don't think the working group has been doing a very good job. Unfortunately, it's not your fault because you've been asked to do something impossible and you have been asked to do something which is not really in Arlington's best interest. You have been asked by this foretold by the state law to create capacity. Arlington doesn't need capacity. It needs housing. You're asking about the future. We need housing now. We don't need just housing. We need affordable housing and the law which you're working under severely limits that. We need preservation of business. This law does not deal with that. So in a way, you're not doing a very good job because of the constraints under which you're operating. I do have some things that I would like. First, as other people have pointed out, this is an experiment. Let's keep it to 2046 units, which is what's required. Nothing more than that. You can always expand at a later point. Another thing. I think other people have proposed and you have not really responded to proposals by other people, but you've basically just got this one plan and that's it. We would like the software and the data so that other people can try it. I think some of us can do a better job or since we're paying for it, we certainly ought to be allowed to try to do a better job. I think we ought to stop calling it the MBTA law because since we're an adjacent community, this really has nothing to do with the MBTA. I think you exempted, you chose to put all this in the most dense part of town despite the fact that in your own discussion, some of which I attended, you said, hey, doing it in dense parts of town, you don't get much of a gain. Mr. Holman, you've hit your time limit. Okay, thank you. Thank you. Next we have Susan Stamps and then Nicole Gustas. Nicole. Okay, great. Thank you. My name is Susan Stamps. I'm a town leading member of Precinct Three and I'm on the tree committee and the gas leaks task force. We applaud the work of the planning department and the working group to come up with a plan. However, and we think they've done great work, there's a big huge gap in the plan, which is that, yes, it's environmentally friendly because it's dense and that by definition is environmentally friendly, it's energy efficient and we're not cutting down trees in the suburbs. But the problem is that it is not allowing big enough setbacks on the street so that the residents are new neighbors in this dense housing will have the same leafy streetscape as we do. The opportunity to go down the street, read their neighbors, pause on a 15 foot setback or have a chat and enjoy being in Arlington and also take refuge from the effects of climate change, which as we all know, I think after the hottest July in recorded history we're in now. I'm a member of a new group called Green Streets Arlington, greenstreetsarlington.org. We are advocating for climate friendly environmental green space, open space, trees to be worked into the plan. We have had many conversations with the environmental planning department and the working group and we really appreciate they're being receptive to talking with us. But we are asking for not a 10 foot setback, not a zero foot setback, but a 15 foot setback in all of the residential parcels to make room for planting trees. The UTL consultant the other day told, the working group 10 feet is not enough to plant a tree. There are many times when on the tree strip or the sidewalk near the building, you can't plant a tree because there are wires. The stands here? Yeah, okay. So thank you very much. I am Arlington Green Streets Arlington.org. Thank you. Nicole Gustas is next and then afterwards Ann Laurier. Hi, I'm Nicole Gustas. I live on 89 Marathon Street, which is right under one of those orange blots. And I wanted to say I moved to Arlington because Arlington doesn't do the bare minimum. I looked at a lot of different places to move and the thing about Arlington, and you can look back to the Revolutionary War, Arlington has never done the bare minimum. And I am really excited to see a plan that is bold and goes beyond the bare minimum in order to get more housing and more effective use of land into the area. I am in one of those orange zones. Honestly, most of the houses are really three stories because people are living on the top floor. So going to four stories, that's not a huge change. I got a flyer that implied that this was going to be something like what happened in the West End, where my family was booted out because the entire neighborhood was leveled. And I think there are a few people here who might be old enough to remember when that happened in the late 50s and early 60s. I'm really glad I came to this meeting because I was shocked to find out that's not at all what we're talking about. All we're talking about is rezoning to allow building of larger buildings and affordable housing. This just seems like a no-brainer to me. And it would bring a lot of potential. I'm really excited about it and I wanna congratulate you guys on a bold plan. Thank you. Ann LaRoyer, next. And then we have David Maltzarn. David, I don't, okay, I'll have another name afterward in case David isn't here. Go ahead, Ann. Hi, Ann LaRoyer. I live in Pierce Street in the Heights. I'm a town meeting member from Precinct 17 and I'm also a member of the Open Space Committee. And I also wanna thank the committee and the planning department for, I know, a lot of work and a lot of challenges to try to come up with a plan in a very short time. I also wanna support the Green Streets efforts and the Open Space Committee is working on also trying to advocate for much more front setbacks, especially so that trees can be put into the front. Fronts of some of these buildings, especially in the neighborhood areas. So I just wanna reinforce that goal of trying to get more open space, more public open space. My main question is about the Heights again. I know several people have raised it and Claire, you've answered some of the questions, but, and I know that there's been some work in the past that's been done about this, but I guess I don't understand how the new zoning and the Heights is gonna mesh with the zoning regulations that are being proposed through here. If both of these proposals are gonna be put into a fall town meeting, how are they gonna be synchronized? Steve. Yeah, so the changes to the Arlington Heights Business District will not be coming up this fall. That will be in the spring. Well, I was told it was gonna be in the fall, but. Oh, okay. Well, I stand corrected. Claire, did you wanna add? Sure. I don't necessarily think that these two, these two zones are in competition or somehow are counter to each other. I think one of the things the ARB, one of the reasons they are interested in this reservation of the commercially zone property and what they wanna do in the Heights is, I think more mixed use. And I think combining these business uses in the Heights under one, B District that allows mixed use will give the board some more flexibility and certainly will give components of projects in the area a lot more clarity on the expectations for business uses, business development and things like that. Okay, or time. Yeah, but I still don't quite understand how these two are gonna be presented at the same time. I'll find, I'll go to your public meetings. Thank you. We had David Maltz on next, but I wasn't sure that, okay. Mark Kapline. And after Mark Kapline, we have Charlie Blandy. Is Charlie still here? Yep. All right, thank you. Mark Kapline, precinct nine. I live at 11 Palmer Street. I have for almost 35 years now. Got a couple of, well, the first suggestion is you outreach to the social clubs because most of the outreach has been to sort of progressive enclaves and not so much the social clubs. So my district is almost, is overwhelmingly renters. And I've been living in East Arlington for a long time. And again, that's primarily a renting area has been traditionally. And so we see that this plan is kind of a rich man, poor man plan. It puts the burden of this additional development on traditionally lower income areas of Arlington. And this amplifies the spread between the wealthy, the haves and the half knots in town. Even here we can see between Bartlett Avenue and Lake's and Spypon, none of the higher density is included in those areas. That's where the money is. And again, they're protected from higher density, higher stress, loss of green space. And I'll also, another observation I had is apparently you don't consider the bike path to be a transportation corridor because you've gone above and beyond the MBTA minimum. And yet there's very little adjacency to the bike path only the Spypon conducts. So you might consider the bike path being a transportation option and not just a recreational facility. And the other bike path that's along Route 16, again, none of that is included nor is the proposed bike path along the mystic. So have you done any median income comparisons of the project areas or the zoning areas versus not and seeing how you're amplifying the difference? All right, thank you. We're out of time, but I think you have a short answer for that. The shorter answer to that is no, we have not evaluated this district in terms of the underlying income levels. So we have Charlie Blandy and then after that Carl Wagner. Oh, that's not very polite to put your name in twice. After it will be, go ahead Charlie and then after that will be Len Carter. Thanks, this is Charlie Blandy. I live at 58 Lombard Terrace and I'm a town meeting member in precinct six and I want to thank the working group and the consultant and the town staff for all of the work that they've done on this. It's really, it's very impressive. I wanted to address one of the concerns that I think that stops a lot of people which is does new market rate housing actually address the affordability crisis? And the answer to that is resounding yes and that comes from work that's been done in the housing scholarship for the last 20 years, but there's an especially growing consensus of housing scholarship over the last seven or eight years. And so I urge people to if they haven't already look for a paper that's from the Furman Center at New York University and it's called Supply Skepticism and it addresses a lot of the arguments about whether affordability is improved by new market rate housing or whether it doesn't. And in fact, this was a result of a state mandate and it's a regional mandate. We're going with 170 other communities that also have to create transit oriented development. And even sometimes the close in effect of new market rate housing can alleviate rent increases. There was a researcher in San Francisco who looked at new housing that was developed on the site of old fires and found that there was a 2% decrease in rents within a 100 meter radius. And so they're filtering, even if you build new market rate housing and even if it's expensive, people filter into that and they leave behind housing behind them. That becomes then naturally affordable. So anyway, I probably have time, but thanks for your work. Well done. Thank you. Len Cardin and then Gordon Jameson. Thanks, Len Cardin, 65 Tanager Street. Thank you all for staying so late and hearing all of us in our thoughts. I'm very supportive of more housing in Arlington. I think we need to do it on Mass Ave and Broadway and I'm a little bit disappointed about all the exclusions that you have there, but given my limited time, I wanna focus on the neighborhood multi-family sub-district because I think we need to ask what we're trying to do there and why. If we had a blank slate or even partially open canvas, it completely makes sense to build larger multi-family housing in the proposed zone, but we don't. We were talking about the built environment. The built environment is a 100-year-old, two and a half-story buildings, most multi-family two units. What we're doing is we're incentivizing those to be torn down and replaced with four-story, three or four-unit luxury condos because that's what's gonna happen, but it's gonna happen sporadically. It's gonna be one building here, one building there, very slowly over the years, and so what we'll have is we'll have a street like Surrey or Higgins or Laurel, particularly those streets that run parallel to Mass Ave that you've put completely in this zone. They're all solely single-family, two and a half-story buildings, multi-family buildings right now, two-family buildings. Suddenly, one of those will turn over, someone will pass away, the building hasn't been maintained. It'll be torn down and a four-story building will go up there, but I'd like to see some drawings of what that will look like so people in town can see that. I really think we're overreaching here. We don't need to do that. Those aren't gonna be affordable units. There aren't gonna be six-unit buildings. Most of those lots, if you look at those lots, they're 6,000 square feet, maybe 8,000 square feet. Nobody's gonna build six units there with an affordable unit added. They're all gonna be luxury condos, so I would really ask that we take another look at that district, make it smaller, consider the three-story limit. Newton's doing sticking with two-and-a-half stories. Lexington did three stories. Let's do the same. Thank you. We're gonna go to Gordon Jamison and then Gary Goldsmith. Gary, are you? Oh, yeah, sorry. Thank you. Gordon Jamison, 163 situate, town meeting member, precinct 12, and also currently the chair of the Board of Assessors. I'm speaking in my resident precinct 12 capacity. Very quickly, I wanted to go through a few things. Yes, we need more MBTA service. The 79 needs to be restored and the 80. We give them $3.3 million a year and they keep taking stuff away from us. For those who are not familiar, the business zoning setback throughout town is zero, like in the center. Inspectional services has had a change of leadership so that concern that was raised earlier hopefully has gone away. Town meeting has passed several higher density proposals over the last several years, including mixed use zoning in the business districts. And my rhetorical question, if we only do the minimum, where do you do it? Good, I have my minute that I hope to have left. So I agree that we need transit-based smart growth. We used to talk about that in town meeting when I first joined. Smart growth along our business corridors. Now, what people don't really understand is what people can build now. So if I'm correct, along Mass Ave and parts of Broadway, the existing zoning allows four to six stories, yes or no, in general? In parts, depending on district, they can go up to five. Okay. Thank you. And then, so I think it would be helpful to come up with a map that showed the heights along there so one could understand the corridors. And then to the consultant, the capacity of the existing housing in the acreage, what is that, and what is the capacity with our existing zoning in the acreage? I don't know, we haven't done that calculation. Have it for town meeting, please. Thank you. We're going to Gary Goldsmith next, and then Kathleen Malune. Kathleen, are you still here? I don't see, so I'll pull another name while Gary's going. So hello, Gary Goldsmith, 91 Beverly Road, town meeting member of Precinct 11. There are many things that have changed in town since I moved here in 1985 and raised my family. I never expected when I moved here to be able to get beer with dinner downtown. But the town is still green, and if anything, greener, and it's a wonderful place to live. In the 38 years that I've lived here, many things have changed. And what we are doing is planning for a town what this town will look like 38 years from now. So today's 10-year-old will be 48 years old, and what will their town be like? And we are making decisions for what that town is going to be like at that time, and it's not just a question of housing. But I applaud the approach to long-term thinking as opposed to short-term thinking, which often has led to problems in a variety of things. A couple of things that I would say, one is that I appreciate the work that this committee has done. It's this project is sort of like an elephant. It depends on how you handle it, what it looks like. So you are sort of elephant handlers here. I would say that a couple of things quickly. The challenges of creating setbacks are significant. Someone said, oh, this table is like six feet. This table is eight feet. The setback of 10 feet is slightly longer than this table, maybe two feet longer than that. I think that Green Streets Arlington has approached this from the standpoint of producing more trees in Arlington. One point that has not been made is that, although we're figuring on, there's some high number of houses, but that's assuming that the houses are 1,000 square feet. That means that they are all either studios or probably not one of the edge apartments. These might be starter houses for other people. Thank you. Thank you. Oh, I have next, Elizabeth Pyle. And then after that, Beth Miloftrick. Hello, my name is Elizabeth Pyle. I'm a town meeting member from precinct eight. I would like to request that the commission put forward alternative maps showing different levels of density. It was said tonight that this particular map would call for an additional 12 to 15,000 units. I think that you should also put out a map at the 2,046 units, and then maps in the middle, 6,000, 10,000. But because of the considerable disagreement in the room about the level of density that is required, necessary or advisable here, I believe that you owe it to your constituents here in town and the residents here in town to put forward multiple alternative maps that clearly show the number of units that you're talking about. That's my first concern. My second concern is that if this map is showing 15,000 additional units, you only have 20,000 units in town right now. That's a 75% increase in the number of dwelling units in town. What does a 75% increase look like in terms of the town's ability to provide services? Have you talked to the Capital Planning Committee? Have you addressed this with the demographer of the school department? The answer, though, that was on your website that says that there's been a decrease in elementary school enrollment, doesn't cut it in terms of what is likely to occur here with influx of people of different ages coming in with new housing being developed. So the new high school is sized for 1,700 students. A 75% increase in town, if that translates, that's an additional 1,250 students. All right, thank you. So these impacts need to be addressed before you make this level of change. Thank you. Yep, Beth Milofchuk and then Kristen Anderson. Beth Milofchuk, 20 Russell Street, town meeting member precinct nine. I think the plans presented are predicated on a functioning public transportation system, which we know we don't have. Or it hasn't been presented in an adequate way to me to see that this is about affordability or school teachers being able to buy million dollar condos. I will not be able to vote for this plan. I will be unlikely to vote for anything beyond just a straightforward compliance to see how that gets applied. And I think that every single project the town takes on should be looked at through a lens of climate breakdown. Wearing climate breakdown, we have the hottest summer in a year that's going to be the coolest year for the next four years. We're facing the loss of the Gulf Stream by 2025. So please go back to the drawing board. Please listen to the remarks tonight from Liz Pyle, from Elizabeth Card Jones, from Susan Stamps. We need 15 foot setbacks. We need shade trees so people can walk to the store. And the retired folks and the elderly going to appointments are not gonna ride their bicycle. Thank you very much. Thank you. We have Kristen Anderson next and then Charles Foskett. Is Charles here? Oh, he is there. Okay, yep, thank you. Kristen Anderson, I live at 12 upland road west and I'm a town meeting member. And I wanna thank especially Uteel for the good work that they've done and also the working group and the planning department as well as the ARB. I run a business in the Heights and the plan that we see before us now includes protection for all businesses in the commercial zones, both industrial and business. Local businesses provide services, products and jobs to the community which makes Arlington a better place to live and I am extremely in favor of a plan that protects our businesses. So thank you for that. The other thing that I wanted to say is that I think that we really do need to have 15 or 20 foot setbacks for trees. In addition to being a town meeting member, I am a co-founder of Save the El Wife Brook and two of the things that we are interested in are water quality of the El Wife Brook but we're also interested in, I'm also interested in other water bodies including Mystic Lake and the Mill Brook, Spy Pond, Hills Pond and if we have trees that will help to drink up some of this storm water, it'll take rain water and keep it from turning into a pollutant. Additionally, I'm very concerned about flooding and I think that if we have more trees and room for green storm water infrastructure that it will help reduce flooding and so thank you very much. I hope that you'll take those things into consideration and again, thank you for protecting our businesses. Thank you. We have Charles Foskett and then Carol Kowalski. Thank you, Charlie Foskett, precinct 10 and member of the finance committee and thank you to the working group for the tremendous effort that you've put in to get us where we are today. However, I'm concerned about where we are today. I think this capacity issue is a very serious one and I can't imagine that you would bring this before town meeting without a detailed financial analysis of what the cost that a taxpayer is. The school committee has asked for another seven to eight million dollars in the next couple of years which is coming as part of an override request in the fall and that's roughly at the same time contemporary with the town meeting that this subject will come up at. This is, in my view, this is a plan that the capacity cannot be afforded by the taxpayers in Arlington and I think that right now we're in a situation where we have mostly residential citizens paying 93% of the taxes and if we increase the density by another 10%, 20%, 30%, whatever the number is, we need to know what it costs. So I would ask that you're not bringing this before town meeting without a detailed financial analysis. Thank you. Thank you. We have Carol Kowalski next and then after that Stephen Wilde. Carol Kowalski, 182 Situate Street. I wanna thank the working group for all your hard work. I wanna thank Matille and I wanna thank the board. I heard Mr. Revillac say that it's either in the commercial districts or in residential and I want you to open your minds please to the possibility that there are and have been for a long time. I had the privilege of working for the town as planning director for several years and we looked at a lot of these sites that were crying out to be redeveloped and they're of substantial size and they're outside of the core of the commercial districts. 28 Mass Ave should really be considered for inclusion, for example. These are sites that for years, 30 years I've been thinking and I'm not the only one who's been thinking that could be a beautiful gateway to our town. There are lots of properties in Arlington in these proposed districts that might be in a flood zone but they're not no-build areas and there are ways to do it. That could be a fantastic site. 28 Mass Ave, also 30 Mystic Street. 30 Mystic Street is a massive parking lot and a 50-year-old office building and it's recessed down so it's sighted in a way where I wanna keep going because I, so please take a look at that. That's, it's crying out, it's perfectly smart growth. Also, the Greater Boston Motorsports Block stand across the street from it, stand in front of Jimmy's, look at it and say, oh my gosh, it almost looks like an apartment building and say to yourself, why isn't that included? What are we, we do not have a split tax rate. And I don't think, two other quick things, I don't think we're sure we should maybe look at what it would cost but these properties will pay taxes and new multi-family development is more valued and gives us more revenue than depreciated 50-year-old commercial buildings that we struggle to tenant right now. I don't think, I know we don't, I work as a professional planner, we don't have a commercial development market. So the Greater Boston Motorsports, 37 Broadway, Friday, 2 p.m., anyone who wants to meet with me, I'll help you walk those sites and I'm also walking the districts and I recommend that you do the same thing. Thank you so much. You're the time, thank you. We have Stephen Weil and then Joe Zeph. Joe Zeph, Stephen Weil. Okay, I have Ratnakar Vallani. Vallanki, yep, great. Hi, Ratnakar Vallanki, 21 Adams Street. I'm in one of those orange areas and I welcome this plan and I thank all the working group members who have put in their effort and volunteered for this. Now, a few things, right? I know a lot of speakers before me have said that higher density is not good, but I just would like to reiterate that higher density saves much more green space than it saves, than it uses, sorry. Higher density is also more financially sustainable and in addition to that, right, in addition to the sustainability argument, I would like to also extend and say that this is also one step, one good step, forward towards protecting an owner's right to decide how best to use that property. Not my words, these are the words just as John Paul Stevens, Supreme Court, and it continues the opinion saying which we've forgotten, this right we've forgotten. This is enshrined in English common law which we've forgotten since the 1926 ruling of the court. Now, coming to another topic which is what I originally wanted to make. Now, the Section 3A guidelines that were outlined by the Attorney General of the Commonwealth also say that the multi-family zoning district should be in areas that are safe, accessible, and convenient access to transit stations for pedestrians and bicyclists, right, keywords for pedestrians and bicyclists. Now, we know that in the proposed Mass Ave and Broadway corridor, we know that there's no bike lane on Broadway and the bike lane is pretty much non-existent on Mass Ave, right, I would like to request the working group members to consider having separated or protected bike lanes on both Broadway and Mass Ave because not just because clearly Section 3A guidelines require that because one could say that we'll be in breach of that without safe access, but more importantly, it's probably the, yeah, thank you. Thank you, we're out of time. Matthew, I think you had something from earlier that you wanted to circle back to. Yeah, a clarification. It was suggested that the number of units that the modelist is estimating, 12, 15,000, is in addition to existing units, that is not the case. That number is as if all of those parcels, all those blue and orange areas were completely vacant and people were building as of right. So I just want to get that clarification out there. Thank you. Next I have Juliette Furman and then after that, Brian McBride. Juliette Furman, right, Brian, you're up then. And after Brian, we'll have Steve Macalco. Hi, good evening. This is Gordon Macalco. Yeah, I'm Brian McBride, I live at 36 Eastern Avenue. I'm a member of the Conservation Commission and a member of the Open Space Committee. Tonight I'm speaking as a member of Green Streets Arlington. So my job, I know everyone's tired. My job is to try to convince you all that we shouldn't submit this plan with 10 feet of setback. I think that's a terrific mistake. And the reason of that is setback is very important for your experience of the streetscape. When we look at the table model plus two feet, I guess here, that's not enough of a setback to really have a green space. It's not enough for the tree warden to plant a tree that's sustainable. So consider that when you've got a higher temperature in 25 years, when we've got five or six-story buildings along Mass Ave, when we've got people using the subway, or sorry, the bus and waiting for the bus on the street, we're trying to drive engagement with community members to knit the community together, right? The setback, although it seems like a trivial kind of architectural number, is really important for how we envision our future community. It's the trade, when we look at increased density, but we try to build in a pleasant living and walking environment and something that's in sync with our habitat. So I really encourage the committee not to submit a plan with 10-foot setback. Please look at 15 or 20 per the tree warden, and let's make this a win-win. We need the housing, we need the green streets. Thank you very much. Thank you. I have Steve McAlcay, and then I think we have a clarification for a circle back and something. Good evening, Steve McAlcay, 17 Russell Street. I am a member of the Historical Cultural Resources Working Group, working on implementing the town master plan. Also chair of the Arlington Historic District Commission. With my Historic District Commission just a couple of comments. One was mentioned that the current plan avoids Historic Districts. I mentioned to Claire earlier, and I just want to reiterate to the full committee that it's still, the map is drawn up now, still covers half of one of our Historic Districts. So I hope that gets resolved. But that brings up another point. I've looked at other communities, Brookline, it's which other places, Belmont, all of them have had representatives of cultural and historical resources as part of the committee thinking more broadly about meeting housing goals, but doing that in a way that's compatible with all the other community objectives. And I just encourage Working Group to be, to do more outreach to other folks to learn about those things. Because I feel that there hasn't been a lot of outreach here. I commend all the work that the Working Group has done, but I think they are working in a very compressed time environment. And that leads to my first question. I understand we're doing that because of the need to meet the gas ban. I understand there's only 10 communities in Massachusetts that will be able to be involved with that. If Arlington does not, as I understand it, the next towns that would be included in that group would be Somerville and Boston. Is that correct? They are on the list, yes. Oh, sorry? They're on the list, they're on the waiting list. So if Arlington does not do it this November and does not participate in the first phase of that ban, Somerville will make it the opportunity to be part of that group. They may. It's contingent on the state's decisions, but they are in line, so they can't comply. So just from an environmental perspective, if you want the biggest bang for the buck. Six more seconds. Biggest bang for the buck. I don't know why that short-term thing is driving our effort to do something that's really, really complicated in a short period of time. Mr. McCauske, you're actually passed by now 20 seconds. Sorry. One last question. Can you put all these Q&A up on an FAQ for people to get, is everyone's leaving tonight? The whole thing is recorded. David, your time is over. I think, David, you also had some other things from earlier that you wanted to, something you wanted to clarify. I do. We've had a lot of conversations about environmental concerns tonight, and just quickly show our hands how many people know who Bill McKibbin is. How many people know who Bill McKibbin is? Majority of the room, Bill McKibbin, world-renowned environmental activist. He is from Lexington. You may not know that piece, and he wrote a piece in the New Yorker of all places when MBTA communities passed in Lexington celebrating their accomplishment and chiming in, not just on the environmental front, but from the equity perspective, that this is a very valuable thing to do that addresses the climate crisis, and does so in a just way. So I have to say I support Bill's decision to do that and his position in that way. I want to say that there are things that we need to look to beyond zoning to really realize the things that we're discussing tonight. So we can get to those in a subsequent conversation, but I think the more meaningful piece for tonight is that MBTA communities is a zoning by-law. We can work on other kinds of compliance with promoting public transit, et cetera, in other venues. There are other ways to meet those goals, and I think you will find that the town is very receptive to accomplishing those goals. There are some things within the zoning code that we may also change in order for them to apply to MBTA communities, and one of those things is the site development standards mentioned earlier broadening that to not just apply to the districts where they currently apply, but to have public shade trees required in your development, redevelopment, large additions, et cetera, you get a public shade tree in addition to the context that I just described. So there are ways within and without zoning that we can accomplish a number of these things, and I really welcome the conversation about this because it engenders further conversation about how we get to those goals. So just a clarification that there are some things that we can apply within zoning that have bearing on much that we've discussed and others that we want to pursue, perhaps as soon as springtown meeting, and we're open to having those conversations. Thank you. Chris Loretty is next, and then I'll pull another name with Chris. Narissa Smoger. Thank you, Chris Loretty, 56 Adams Street, town meeting member precinct seven. I think the map should have names instead of numbers, and I would call this one the shit on East Arlington map. As someone who lives in that area, you really are concentrating particularly on Broadway, and I find it astounding that people are claiming that this isn't keeping with the neighborhood. The south side of Broadway is predominantly two family homes of two and a half stories, and you're gonna be building or allowing a by-right six-story, 60-foot building five feet from my property line, and I'm supposed to think that's fitting for the neighborhood? Well, I'm sorry, I don't. I appreciate the efforts of the committee, but I think you kind of missed the boat on the location of these zones. What I was hearing in the previous public meetings is people wanted to spread it out, put it near Alewife. You haven't even covered most of the bus routes. Why are you concentrating only on Broadway and Massachusetts Avenue? It's kind of clear to me that the committee was more interested in listening to themselves than in listening to the public, and so a couple of requests I'd like to make is I think it's gonna be necessary to do a substitute motion at town meeting. I'd like to know, either from the committee or staff, what support you will give people in making the substitute motion to ensure compliance with the MBTA Communities Act? Will you allow the use of UTL? Will you allow the use of the model? Will you encourage DHCD to pass judgment on any substitute motion so that town meeting will know the alternative is an acceptable plan? And finally, I think the whole idea that this is gonna create affordable housing is just delusional. I don't need academic studies. All I need to do is walk down the street into my neighborhood and see what happens when two family houses, typically owned or occupied with one unit rented out, are sold to developers and then sold as condos for a million dollars. Thank you. Thank you. We have Narissa Smoger, and then after that, Dorothy Gosling. Dorothy, are you? Okay, you're gonna, Narissa and then you. Yeah, I just wanted to make sure. Go ahead, sorry. Hi everyone, it's okay. It's my first meeting. Thank you to the committee. I really appreciate the work that's gone into this clearly. I'm new to Arlington. I'm on 30 Temple Street. I have some concerns about this plan as is. While I admire the spirit of the plan, I feel like there are some aspirational aspects without the safeguards to ensure smart implementation of the plan. For example, we want, I bite to work today and then I took the train and the bus home. It took me over two hours to get home. I don't see that changing when we have more people that need to be relying on this type of transportation. What can we do to make this experience better for more people? I think the way that this plan is outlined is as others have said, it's a big bang all at once potentially, even though we don't expect that, it could be. And I feel like we're giving a lot away for free in a way. Again, what can we as a community gain from this, aside from the diversity of people in more affordable housing or housing that's available? What other programs can we tap into and kind of use this as leverage potentially? I also want to urge the committee to think about who's most harmed. I think we thought a lot about who can benefit most from this, but who is most harmed with this implementation? And one group of folks that come to mind are town employees and people that we want to actually be able to afford to live in the town that they work in. For example, our school teachers who will have a ton of burden put on them by the more children that they'll have to be teaching when we have more folks joining our lovely town. So I'm not sure if the committee's considered how we might think about our town employees, school teachers and that sort of, that group of people who would be critical to the backbone of a healthy community and what we might do to support them a little bit more. Thank you. Thank you. We have Dorothy Gosling next and then Elaine Crowder. Elaine, oh yeah, I said Elaine. Dorothy Gosling, Sixth Wyman Terrace. Who is most harmed and what is the worst that can happen? I moved here from Seattle, Capitol Hill. They changed the district zoning 10 years ago and all of the things that they're talking about with developers, I saw it happen in my neighborhood that is no longer a neighborhood. The developers, I'm concerned we're giving the developers a carte blanche. I think the committee's done a great job but I also think the input has been very, very helpful. We, my neighborhood ended up with all different size buildings and I just wanna say, let's open our minds, what are other options? There's an article in the New York Times a month ago in Vienna how large units are people love living there and they stay there forever. They do little apartments that are group places with small living spaces. Maybe that works for elderly people. The boomers are eventually gonna be giving up their large houses. People with young kids are gonna be moving in. I've got two grandkids in my two family. So let's really think about, open our minds and not just do what we've always done and double down on multifamily housing that we've already got on the east side. Great, we have Elaine Crowder next and then after that, Linda Hansen. Linda's still here, let me help you. Elaine Crowder, precinct 19 to Glenbrook Lane. We've heard about the difficulty of public transportation that people are experiencing in Arlington and about difficulties in particular, getting to L-Wife. We've also heard concerns about the treeless canyons that might result down Mass Ave and about the heat islands that might result without the ability to host street trees. I'm from Arizona, I know what 110 and 115 degree pavement feels like when it slaps you in the face when there's no tree or shade. It seems that the idea of spreading a bit beyond the current map, it seems I've heard that the bike path corridor has not been considered for part of this, is that correct? Claire, do you wanna talk about what things have been considered? Not intentionally, I think that when we were, or when the working group, and again, I don't wanna speak too much for the working group, but the bike path was not intentionally removed. I believe that what we were doing was focusing again on the transportation corridors where the transit is, but point is well taken that the bike path is a form of transit. And the bike path is not only a form of transit, but it goes to L-Wife. Correct. Which is, I believe the bike path is also owned by MBTA, is that correct? Which means that it is directly within the purview of an MBTA plan, I would think. So it seems like a good solution to begin to think in terms of spreading it a little bit away from a six-story mass app corridor and reducing a bit. Thank you, you're a time. Thank you. We have Linda Hansen and then Amy Goldstein. Amy. Hi, good evening, Linda Hansen, 11 Webster Street, Precinct 9, Orange Zone. I wanna start by thanking the committee for the work done to date and the work that you still have in front of you and the staff as well who've worked really hard on this. I wanna start off by saying that I see the MBTA communities as an opportunity to increase the amount and types of housing we have in Arlington. I think that's a good thing. And I also just hope that we can use this opportunity to increase the kind and amount of affordable housing in any way we can. That's actually, I'm very interested in that. I have a clarifying question though, maybe for Claire. There are two, there's blue and orange zones. Can you just re-clarify the heights that you have proposed in this plan? There was like a six, four, three on a slide. You mentioned something about stepping down, something about two and a half. If you could just quickly reiterate that, I'd appreciate it. Sure, I'm happy to do that. So essentially what we're looking at is the Mass Ave and Broadway Corridor Sub-District, which are properties with frontage on Mass Ave and Broadway. By right, allowable would be four stories with plus two stories for ground floor commercial plus one story for affordable housing above and beyond our inclusionary zoning. So the maximum height on Mass Ave would go to six stories, maximum height on Broadway, five stories. In the neighborhood multifamily district, properties within 350 feet of Mass Ave and Broadway, we figured that was roughly three parcels, four stories by right, with a 10 foot front setback, 10 on the sides, 20 in the rear. We have not yet contemplated bonuses for a neighborhood multifamily district. So to be clear, in the orange zones, three parcels back, four stories by right. That's correct. Without any additional bonus opportunities. That's correct. And did you consider, I'm curious to why you... Miss Anton, I know. Two, okay. I know, two minutes is hard. Okay, I'll email it. Thank you. Great. Next, it was Amy Goldstein. Okay. Then I have Julia Mayrak. Hi, Julia Mayrak, 438 Mass Ave, property owner, business owner in town. Thank you for all the work you've done. Great ideas. My only suggestion or request is that you do not exclude all the commercial and all the industrial. By doing that, you have excluded the largest parcels in town. If you wanna get the density out of the neighborhoods, then allow some building on the larger parcels in town. These are the parcels that are most attractive to a developer. A developer's not gonna come in and buy three single family homes and build six, it's not gonna happen. But if you have a nice big piece of land that's in a smart growth area that's on Mass Ave or on Broadway that's next to grocery stores that next to the school that fits all your smart growth criteria, that's desirable to a developer. It'll be profitable, it'll be something that could actually get built. I fear that if you leave all the commercial and the industrial zones out and leave all the large parcels out, that you may hit the letter of the law, but you won't actually get what you want, which is some serious development. And so I would just encourage you to include some larger parcels of land. Thank you. Thank you. Next I have John Warden. Mr. Warden. Oh, would you like us? Thank you. Have you heard all right? Yeah, John Warden, tell me you remember Precinct 8 Jason Street. I'd like to mention a couple of statistics. One, Arlington is the 12th densest community in the state. I just mentioned in the state. We have already done our share to house people. And the other 11 communities that are more dense than us of all cities at Brookline all have substantial industrial, commercial, retail, whatever businesses that pay taxes that don't use services. We don't. We have 5% in that in those categories. That means all the burden of taxes falls upon the residents and the homeowners. The statistics show that each new resident on average brings in half as much in new taxes as they do require for services. So we're digging a hole and we're gonna dig it deeper. I call upon the, and the third thing I'd like to say, the statute itself, read the statute, section 3A, chapter 40, 48. It talks about the half mile zone around near a transit, adjacent to a transit station. Doesn't say anything about all these other zones spread throughout the town. That is the creation of the bureaucrats in Boston who I think must be obviously deeply in bed with developers. I call upon the committee, the working group, to craft a plan that follows the minimum possible compliance with the law, the law, and let's struggle it. The laws, one thing, the regulations, which could be tipped in court, is another. Mr. Warden, you've reached your two minutes. Let me, please just wrap up. I call upon the committee to craft something that's- Mr. Warden, I'm sure you appreciate the difficultness of the job that I'm doing right now. And we've hit, you've hit your two minutes. Two minutes is a lot of love. I understand. Two minutes is a tough time. Two minutes is not enough time. I've waited for two hours to speak here. I understand. And I think you should protect the residents, the homeowners of our area. We're on to Paul Bradford, please. It's the most important thing you should do. We're on to Paul Bradford next. Paul Bradford, no. We are very close to the end here. I appreciate everybody's patience. Oh, Carol, we already did Carol Kowalski. Oh, you must have put two in. Yeah, Doug Greenfield. Amy Slutsky. And the winner of the prize here is Alan Jones. So Alan can talk until town meeting starts. Thank you to all of you. I actually watched the video of the last meeting you had and I thought, I'm so proud to live in this gorgeous, fantastic town that is progressive, thinking about sustainability, people, equity and all of those important things. And I also am really thinking, oh, Amy Slutsky, I am town meeting member precinct 17. And I live at one Mortimer Place, the 130 unit building overlooking the Schwann Mill complex right on the bike trail. So I appreciate that a lot. So my main point, I'm really sorry because I so appreciate the work that you guys have done really, truly. With that said, I would love it if you, number one, reopen the survey because I'm someone who just woke up to the importance of this issue really late as you can see, really late. I think that would be a fantastic thing to do. And number two, I think it would be really great to put a copy of one of the maps in a gigantic banner across Mass AF. I'm a member of Arlington Chapter Mothers Outfront and we are all about the climate breakdown and trying to do what we can. And number one, I love the reminder of a 15 foot setback. Every time I walk by that horrendous building, I don't know when it lives here, there. Right next to stop and shop, I thought, what were they thinking? This is so not Arlington. Trees, yes, and protected roofs for solar panels. I don't know if we're gonna have windmills in Arlington, but at least we can do solar panels. What else did I want to say? We've hit, you've hit your two minutes. Perfect, thank you. All right, Alan Jones. And that is our last slip. Alan Jones, one Lehigh Street, and I know I'm gonna request that the board consider a number of things, which I know we probably can't require, but maybe can be incentivized. First is setbacks on the front that are larger than the 15 feet I know you're gonna land on. 20, 25 feet, so big enough for a real shade tree. I would mention that if you look at the butt-oddly buildings next to the high school, if you push them back 25 feet, put a couple of big sugar maples in front of them, they'd look a whole lot better. We wouldn't have to stare at them all the time. Easements for public access to those 15-foot front setbacks in the form of tiny parks, maybe a bench or two, a trash can, maybe a little table, a big shade tree as a refuge for hot pedestrians and cyclists. Planning and maintenance of landscaping with native trees, shrubs, and other perennials, particularly if they're in one of the wildlife and pollinator corridors that we're planning. Green parking lots with at least 50% shade tree canopy or a photovoltaic over the top and permeable pavement, reducing the size of open parking lots using structured or underground parking inside the building footprint incentives for that, and in large projects, significantly more green space than necessary. All of these things are about more natural green space, managing stormwater, reducing heat islands. The possibly most important is to make sure we're not building second-class buildings so that our new neighbors don't have to live on hot, treeless, second-class streets. It's a matter of equity, thank you. Thank you. Thank you so much to everybody for your patience this evening. It's been wonderful to hear from so many different people. Thank you to all of our panelists, to all of the staff who have made this possible. Thank you to the working group members who have been working very, very, very hard. I've been proud to be the chair of this. Thank you. Not a little bit of applause, but... So for folks who are watching the livestream at home or are watching the recording later, if you want to send, share your feedback or your questions with the committee, MBTA communities at, oh, and I always forget, is it town.arlington.ma.us? Did I get that right? Yes, okay. You can send your feedback to there, and we will get that to the committee. Thank you again for a very late evening and we appreciate your time. Thank you.