 So I'd like to call the January 4th meeting of the Arlington Redevelopment Board to order. This open meeting of the Arlington Redevelopment Board is being conducted remotely consistent with Governor Baker's executive order of March 12, 2020, due to the current state of emergency and the Commonwealth through the outbreak of the COVID-19 virus. In order to mitigate the transmission of the COVID-19 virus, we have been advised and directed by the Commonwealth to suspend public gatherings and, as such, the governor's order suspends the requirement of the open meeting law to have all meetings in a publicly accessible physical location. Further, all members of public bodies are allowed and encouraged to participate remotely. For this meeting, the Redevelopment Board is convening via Zoom as posted on the town's website identifying how the public may join. Please note that this meeting is being recorded and that some of the attendees are participating by video conference. Accordingly, please be aware that other people may be able to see you and take care not to screen share your computer. Anything that you broadcast may be captured by the recording. So I will now take a roll call to confirm that all of the members of the board are present. Kim Lau. David Watson. Here. Eugene Benson. Present. Katie Levine Einstein. Here. And Rachel Zimbary. I am here as well. And the staff that we have with us tonight, we have Jenny Rait. Here. And Erin Swarco. Here. Great. And let's see, before we move to the first agenda item, I think Katie, you had something that you wanted to speak to the, to the board about. Yeah, I just wanted to let folks know that I unfortunately have to step down about two weeks after I was offered a position here on the Arlington Redevelopment Board. Dr. Ibrahim Kendi offered me a position as member of his leadership team at the center for anti-racist research at BU. I've tried to juggle those responsibilities for the last semester and with constrained pandemic childcare and two young kids at home. It just has not been doable to maintain all these different responsibilities with the late night commitment to the ARB. So I unfortunately will need to step down and I'm sorry to have to do so. And I wish that we had functional childcare. Sorry. Thank you, Katie. We've really, really enjoyed having you on the board and I echo your frustration with the childcare situation over the past several months. So we're sorry to see you go. And thank you. And I believe that you'll be with us through the end of January. Is that. Yes, that's right. I will be here to facilitate transition and help with the next few meetings. Great. Thank you, Katie. Great. So our first item on the agenda is the first of two continued public hearings, which is docket number three, six, four, zero, 86 River Street. Jenny, do you have anything that you would like to say before we ask the applicant to, to join us? I do not know. And I think the applicant is here. Correct. Yes. Yep. Yeah, okay. And the owner are available. Great. So could we please have the applicant unmute yourself and introduce yourself to the board. And then if you could give a brief presentation of the materials that you included in the materials that would be great. My name is Craig and Murphy, and I am representing smooth automotive automotive. And there are two signs to this project. The first one is a wall sign that will be mounted above the garage, the center garage area, the garage bay. And that is mostly a flat sign, except for the word smooth automotive would protrude off of the flat sign. The word smooth auto would be black during the day. And as the night comes on and the lights go on, smooth auto will appear white and be lit. The red letters will be lit whenever there's electricity on at night. So you'll see that the tire threads on this particular sign will be here graphics so they don't light up at all. The secondary sign on this. And by the way, everything is is metal and the anything that's lit is acrylic. So the light can go through it. The smooth auto. There's some words smooth automotive on the side of the building, which is the river street side, and that is brushed aluminum so would not be mirror. And those letters are, you know, 15 and a half inches by 15 feet. So it's actually very, very tasteful. We've done this a bunch of times and people seem to really like this. Any questions. Do you have any if you don't have any further items to present I can turn this over to the to the board for any questions. No, it's actually just those, those, those two. Thank you. Great. Thank you very much. Great. Thank you. Ken, the smooth automotive sign that's metal. That's you have illegal illustrated behind the tree right. Is that what is that what we're talking about. Yeah, there's a tree, there's a tree there I'm not too sure. 100% of that trees there but it's mostly like if somebody is coming up with a street to the other intersection to the main intersection and they were wondering if they arrived to be able to walk over there and see something that says hey, you've gone to the right place. And that's not lit. Not lit. So the only sign that's lit is above the garage doors. That's correct. And that's the side that faces the rotary. Is there a rotary there. Yeah, I think the rotary might be a little bit more down the street. Sorry. Oh, yeah. Yeah. The bigger street, not the residential side. Okay. No, I have no questions. Right. Thank you very much. Thank you, Ken. David. I don't know if it is the applicant or or Jen. Any question because it wasn't clear to me from the materials, but is where do we need to grant relief here. Is it both the size of the science and the number of the science. What are the issues. I'm going to let Aaron answer. She's unmuted now. So it is this property is actually in an R2 zoning district, which corresponds to a residential sign district in our current sign regulations. As such, for this business to install the signage that they've requested, they need relief from the number of signs, the size of the signs and the height of the signs. So those are the three items I will note. And I believe it's noted in the staff report that the signage proposed is consistent with the requirements for the main business district, which is is the business sign district and contains B3 before B5 and B2 a. Does that answer the question. I mean, I don't. Don't have any specific criticism of the signs as presented. I'm wondering though, whether the aluminum sign on the river street side. Needs needs to be as large as as it stands. But that's serving a dual purpose perhaps of identifying where the customer entrance is as well as just indicating to people on the on the parkway. That that is is where the business is before they can see the front sign. That's exactly right, David. Yeah. I'm not entirely certain how necessary. That sign is just for, for letting people know that business is there. I do appreciate that you need some signage to direct people were coming to the building. If you thought about using any smaller signage on that side that's more centered on the on the on the doorway for the for the customer entrance. I think we looked at that and I think the, at the time that seemed to be, you know, kind of just a great spot for it. I don't believe that tree exists. I know that tree does not exist. That was a drawing that was done by the architect at the time so that that tree does not exist. So we're just trying to keep it, you know, towards the right hand side of the building. Further down is residential on River Street. So, you know, I think it was the idea was that they keep it, you know, as far to the right of the, of the building as possible, but I don't think there'd be any objection to putting it over the door. They're just putting it to the right hand side of the building. Well, I was, I was thinking, possibly shrinking it and, and moving it over the door to indicate the entrance, but I, I share your concern that that, that side of the building is on a residential street. And, and your desire to keep the sign signage as far from. Your concern, even when there were, I know when they were building this building, you know, the previous building was hideous and really ugly. So I mean, I think the, you know, I think it was a lot of concern, even with the town of Arlington and of course, the new owner and the architect at the time to make something that was pleasing and I think combined I think this is basically what, what everyone, you know, sort of came up with at the time. I don't think, I don't think the size, you know, the building's a little bit set back but not too much on that side. I think if it was a little smaller, I don't think it's the end of the world, but it, you know, if it's not a big issue for you, you know, the size would be preferable. Well, let's, let's see what the rest of the board thinks and I'll think about it for a few minutes. Thanks, David. You know, thank you. Excuse me. I think in the circumstances that we have here. I think the signage is appropriate for the reasons that Aaron said. And that we do have the authority to grant this if this were in the business district, it wouldn't even be before us because it meets the sign size, location, etc. My, my only suggestion and this is only a suggestion not a requirement is similar with David said I actually think it would look better for the sign on the river street side to be centered over the doorway. I'm afraid if it's smaller and people are looking for it, they're going to be glancing more so I think the size is appropriate. But I think over the doorways just a better place to have it on the river street side. But other, other than that as a suggestion, I think this is an appropriate way to go. I mean, we'll actually take that under under advisement. I think that's probably a good idea. Thank you, Jean. Katie. I approve the sign as is no further questions. Thank you, Katie. Thank you, Katie. Any other questions from the board before I turn this over for public comments. One more question and maybe the folks on the board with more design experience have, have some thoughts on it, but from a deep. If you're expecting drivers to, to be seeing that sign and glancing at it, is it, is it perhaps safer for it to be on that edge of the building then. Then a little bit further off of the street that the cars are driving on. I don't know what's preferred for a sign in that position playing that role. I'll just give my first. Sorry, go ahead, Ken. Thank you, Rachel. I just, I think he your question, Dave, you came. I was, you're coming every other word for me. So I'll repeat, because I know he's been cutting in and out a little bit on his microphone what I've heard was, is it better, is it more visible to the people driving down the street for it to be in the center then justified right. And my, is that correct, David. Let's start. Sorry if I'm breaking up. No, it was actually the opposite. I was thinking visually, I think it makes it might look better in the center. But I'm wondering since people on the parkway are the ones who are going to be looking at it. It's actually safer to have it where it's where it's shown, because that requires them to glance less far away from their direction of travel. So again, I'll just give my perspective. I don't think it will matter one way or the other. I really think it's an aesthetic choice. I mean, we're not talking a huge distance in terms of moving it to whether it's centered or whether it's to the right. I personally prefer it. Justified to the to the right as opposed to center and I think that the scale is appropriate for the facade of the of the building and within the what would have been the business district codes but that's that's my personal aesthetic preference. I also agree with you, Rachel. I think having it right justified gives it a little more dynamic look to it. It just gives it a little more punch to it and the building itself, the plan renovations and finishes makes that whole year look a lot nicer than what it is right now. I don't know if you guys had a chance to look at it, but this is this is less. I don't want to say dumpy but it's, it's, it's a lot nicer now it's a little it's much more modern. It's, it fits in the neighborhood a lot better and I think the owners done a good job at that. If I could say something to that effect, if nobody's ever met the owner Frank you will find him an amazing, amazing gentleman and a good addition to Arlington. He really did care how this building works but I want to answer a question about the lettering choice and you're exactly right it is a little more dynamic on the right and if you're looking at it from the parkway I think this is more advantageous for the lettering to be more to the right now if you're coming up River Street, and you've got some buildings on the left to inside that are shielding this a little bit. Again, a little bit more on the right it might be seen first, typically speaking like if you're looking at the wall sign on the parkway side, you know your eyes are always looking to try to humanize always going to find the edges of something and they kind of to David's point maybe looking more to the center in fact oftentimes on a piece of paper it's not quite centered it's a little bit higher than center and slightly to the right is where I was looking there's a bunch of studies on this. So, in the end Rachel you're right if you're looking at it from the parkway this is better if you're looking you know it's really is more of aesthetic. I'm satisfied I withdraw my concerns so I'm okay with this. Great, thank you David. There any other questions before we open this up for public comment. Okay. So, any member of the public who wishes to speak on this docket number please use the raise hand function, which is in the participants section of zoom on the bottom right hand side. I will call on those people who have raised their hands to speak in the order in which they've raised their hands, please identify yourself by stating your first and last name and your address, and you will have three minutes for your comments. One second here. And the first person to speak will be Chris already. Thank you madam chair Chris already 56 Adam Street can you have me okay. I can thank you. First, I want to raise a basic objection to the draft of the special permit that's been provided to the board. What you've been provided is a special permit under environmental design review. You cannot grant a special permit under environmental design review for a prohibited use. It fails the basic proposition that the use is a special permit use in the zoning bylaw. And that's acknowledged in the draft that you have what you're granting potentially is a sign special permit under section 6.2.2 C and nothing else. And this distinction is very important. And I want to explain why to you. I believe the board is being used the automotive use in this location is a non conforming use as has been explained. The zoning board of board of appeals approval is required whenever a non conforming use or structure is changed, altered or extended. VBA approval is also required when a large addition as was made in this case occurs, yet that did not happen. And now the ARB is being asked to grant a special permit. Without those approvals of the ZBA. And I suggest to you that you're being asked to bless this development in order to make up for the failure of inspectional services to direct this project to the zoning board of appeals. And I believe that occurred because the attorney for the owner is an attorney who serves on the zoning board of appeals. And you should not be granting the special permit. You should be referring it back to the zoning board of appeals for the necessary relief for a non conforming use and a non conforming structure and a large addition that it has not yet received. Now, frankly, I don't expect you to do that. I do want to raise several other issues related to this application. First is nobody has said anything about the illegal signs currently on the property. There's a pedestal sign that needs to be removed. There are feather signs that need to be removed. You need to be sure those are removed before you do anything. And also, I don't believe this tacky internally lit sign facing Mystic Valley Parkway and the Mystic River appropriate at all. And you should be looking at the lowest level of business signs available as a measure, such as a B1 B2, such as signs allowed in the B1 B2 zoning district, not the higher districts that have been mentioned. And finally, you need to require that all fine illumination be turned off when the business closed so we don't have billboards in a residential district. Thank you. Thank you. Are there any other members of the public who wish to speak? Okay. Seeing none, we will close public comments. And there any other questions or comment from the board, or do we, is there anyone who would like to make a motion to approve the signs as submitted? I have a comment. Please. I agree with Mr. Loretty that we should have something in the sign permit approval that requires the lights to be turned off when the business is not operating. That certainly makes sense to me. So I would just suggest that as an addition. I guess the other thing that I will say relate to this is we are only approving the signs. And I think what our approval makes that clear. Great. Any other questions or comments? Okay, so do we hear a motion to approve the signs with the special condition that the hours of lit signage be constrained to business hours? Do I have a comment on that? So although I don't really find overall issue with that condition, I think, and certainly I wouldn't want to see this business having his sign open, you know, on to like midnight one o'clock, that would be wrong. But, you know, having it open, you know, and I don't know what his hours really are, but having to sign on eight o'clock or something of that nature. I don't see really any harm on that. That building is really set very far back off of the parkway. And I think, I think, you know, the sign does very little harm to really no harm to anybody if it was on to say eight o'clock, if that's when his closing hours are. If you don't know the closing hours, Jenny, would you be amenable to the stipulation being that the hours of the lighting of the sign be restricted as reviewed to work through that final hour that they're going to have to have the signage be on with the Department of Planning. Once we know their closing hour. I suppose, but I will also note that in the sign bylaw, it has very clear standards for sign illumination and hours of when signs can be illuminated. So I would just refer the board to the signed bylaw with regard to that and specifically it states no sign shall be illuminated between 12am and 6am except signs identifying emergency services, etc. And finally illuminated, there's you know additional information about different types of illuminated signage. If you wanted to amend that further beyond the 12 to 6am, which is what I think you're getting at. I am not familiar with other signs having that same requirement. And including the one across the street. And so I present that to you as a little bit of an equity issue for this business owner as to why you would be requiring that only for this business. And I would advise against that and it would advise you professionally that you should abide by what is in the zoning bylaw. Yeah, I mean I withdraw my suggestion I think that makes more sense also because the sign that's illuminated faces mystic now faces mystic now. So, yeah, I would withdraw that suggested. So if you don't mind, is it okay if I motion to approve without without any. Yes, go right ahead. So motion. Do we have a second. Thank you, Katie. I'll take a roll call vote. Kim. Yes, David. Yeah, Jean. Yes, Katie. Katie. Okay, thank you. And I am a guest as well. Thank you very much. Great. Thank you very much. Thank you. Have a great night. Happy New Year. Thank you. All right, so that closes docket three, six, four, zero. You will now open continued public hearing docket number three, six, three, eight, 400 to 402 Massachusetts Avenue and attorney in SE. Yes, I will turn it over to you. I did send a letter into the ARB. And I'm requesting a continuance of this matter until sometime in February. The reason for the continuance is that we are looking at another investment property that the school family owns. And we, again, still have a concern about the ability to rent an office unit, given the, what's happening with the pandemic and the like. So we're talking with one of the tenants at another of the Piscoto investment properties and office tenant, and we're trying to see if we can perhaps have that individual. In terms of moving to the 402 mass have having in mind that at the last hearing before the ARB, the consensus on the part of the ARB the members of the ARB was that they did not want to grant permission for a fourth residential unit. The downsides, by the way, to the situation with respect to just having the third unit is the third unit would be in the basement and the basement units residential units are pretty difficult to rent. So, if we could get that tenant at the other property to agree to move to the 402 mass have that I think would be a comfort level for my clients, who basically have to make a judgment as to whether they're going to spend money to rehab the 402 mass property. If they're going to do that, they need to know that they'll be able to have an occupant of that, that fourth unit, which would be a rent unit, and not a residential unit. So therefore, we're asking for a continuous of the matter, until sometime in February, which hopefully should give us an opportunity to try to make that happen. Thank you, Attorney Nancy. So, the two dates in February that we would be looking at. And Jenny, I will look to you for what is already on our agendas are February 1 or February 22. If I'm not mistaken. Yeah, those are the two options and at this moment I don't think we have anything scheduled yet. Although I anticipate that possibly on February 22. We will have a special permit hearing for the DPW. I don't think there's anything. I don't think there's anything else. Aaron. If, if I could, I would like the, the later date rather than the earlier date so I'd be asking for the February 22nd date if we could get that journey. Yes. Any questions from the board. Is there a motion to continue. All right, let me get the docket number is there a motion to continue docket number 3638 to February 22nd as requested. No motion. Second. All right. We'll take a roll call vote. Yes. David. Yes. Jean. Yes. Katie. Yes. And I am yes as well. Thank you. Thank you, Bob. And good luck to your client with all of the, the switching and and negotiations there. Thank you very much. Thank you. As before, happy new year. Happy new year to you too. Thank you. All right. Let's see. So the next item on our agenda was posted for 745. So Jenny, I think we probably will need to take a 15 minute break unless. Since this was posted for, for a later time, unless you see anything else that we could move ahead. I think you might have the people here who are at least had intended to speak. From what I can tell. And the board has all of the materials. So I think you would be my recommendation. Okay. If we have the, the speakers here, we will just keep moving forward. All right. So Jenny, I will turn it over to you and and Aaron. To introduce the potential zone zoning by law amendments for 2021 annual town meeting, which is our continued discussion from December 9th. Click is really hard sometimes. I'm muting that is. So I prepared a memo, which is very similar to the memo that I gave to the board last January. Where we had hopes and dreams for everything we were going to do in 2020. Many of those things continue to happen on a planning level, but had not necessarily advanced quite beyond that. So I think that's a good point. I think that's a good point. And then some of those items. Have continued in their planning stages into that are still continuing now. So we obviously the last time we talked about this, we, so I, in this memo, I basically gave you a review of all of our current planning work. Including the net zero action plan work. The work that we're doing on stormwater bylaws. And then I mentioned the industrial zoning work. Which culminated in design residential design guidelines. The Arlington Heights neighborhood action plan implementation committees work. Although that was probably the most. A sleep. Last year. The housing plan implementation committees work. And then I mentioned the industrial zoning work, of course. I think when we last spoke. We talked a little bit about that again. So I think we'll probably talk a little bit about that again. And then we have a number of things that are sort of carried over from our housing conversations. Which included. Revisiting those proposals at some later date. And so continuing those, that engagement effort and those discussions, which was everything from looking at. The housing, the housing, the housing, the housing, the housing and the housing. And then we have some other options in certain. Areas of Arlington and beyond. Those areas as well. Accessory dwelling units and other housing, potential housing ideas for addressing housing, availability and affordability. And then I noted in my memo that. There are a number of things that are basically zoning amendments that are administrative in nature. And then we have the zoning map. And then we have the zoning map. And then we have a spring 2020. And that we want to refile. And the last thing is the zoning map. We are recommending that we file a, an article to essentially adopt the zoning map. Because we would like to get into doing work on the zoning map at some later date. Potentially. And there have been discussions about that as well. And then we have the zoning map. And then we have the zoning map. And then we have the special town meeting. About the DPW parcel. I think it would be prudent. To direct our attention to adopting, formally adopting that zoning map. This also actually came up. When we were doing the zoning recodification process about the official zoning map. So I would like to cover that issue as well. And then lastly, I noted the marijuana study group. Which actually as of this date, I can't say. I can't say. That we need to file a warrant article in the time that we have, but I suppose we could file a place holder type of article. And then await the regulations. Or something along those lines. So I'm glad to answer any questions about my memo and. The planning work that we're doing and what's coming up, but I've also. I think made clear to the board what I recommend gets filed. For this spring town meeting. And then also what I recommend. I think is that we can, that we can, that we can, perhaps have an at a later date. So glad to take any field. Any questions from the board? Thank you, Rachel. Thank you. Actually, before I do that, I just want to see if Aaron wants to add anything to what I noted. I don't have anything to add right now. Okay. Thank you, Jenny. I'll go again through a roll call to see if there are any questions from the board. On this package. You muted yourself again, Ken. There you go. Am I good? No, you're good. Okay. It says removing zoning barriers to net zero. The mute went on again. I don't know how that's happening. Maybe your mouse is hovering over the mute button. How's that? You're back. Good. Sorry. What barriers are we referring to? Sure. So. One of those things that we're going to hear about tonight from a member of the clean energy future committee who has a proposal that he would like to explore with you. So maybe I'll, I'll put a pin in that one. But other things included the solar ready bylaw. Which right now we don't have anything in place around addressing the net zero action plan. So I'm just going to go back to that. Okay. There are, there have been discussions about. How we address electric vehicles. That I think is also worth discussing at some point. I have a lot of thoughts about that. Clean energy future committee through the net zero action plan has also expressed some ideas about that. And then other potential building regulations that might. Be in place. Be in place. And then other things that we're going to be talking about. And then also the lighting scenarios. So those are the kinds of things that I think are, it's not necessarily just limited to eliminating barriers, but it's also about incentivizing. More sustainable development. Okay. I was more Jenny. I was more for actually zoning. Barriers. Like, do we have zoning in place right now that is. Prohibiting. Energy efficient homes. That's, that's what I. I was wondering, is that true? And if it's true, let's address it, but I don't think we do. Do we. I think we may. In certain instances, I think that. If we are. Thinking ahead. There are some potential barriers to our dimensional and density regulations that. Make it very prohibitive to building the kind of development that we're talking about. We're talking about industrial zoning. We're talking about the costs behind some of that development. I think it makes sense. To be a little bit more accommodating. If that is our goal to have more sustainable development. And even in our discussion about industrial zoning. This came up. Where if we want to incentivize certain types of development in the industrial zones. One way to do that is to introduce. Possibilities around green building. And incentives around that. So maybe the word barrier is getting in the way a little bit. And also I don't want to. Steal too much air time from the individual who. Is going to actually talk about that in more detail. And can also describe. More technically what the barrier is to that particular type of development. All right, then I'll just hold my comments back to. When that individual comes up with. With what that says. I do have all of questions on what's there. Yep. I think you're referring to posse's presentation and we'll, we will skip to that shortly. Okay. Sorry. No, that's fine. I'm glad you asked. Anything else. No, I'll just wait. Okay. Great. Thank you. David. I don't have any questions regarding Jenny's memo. No. Great. Thank you. I think the memo is fine. I don't have any questions. Thank you. Katie. And I do not as well. I think it's very clear. So with that. Jenny, would you like to turn it over to. Posse now to. Speak to. The residential. Okay. I believe that he's a representative from the clean energy future committee. Correct. Yes. He's right there. Welcome. Can you guys hear me? Okay. We can. Thank you. All right. Madam chair. Thank you for having me. I have a presentation that I'll go through select slides on it tonight, but. Okay. We'll, we'll, we'll hopefully address your questions then as well. Thank you. Make sure that I got the timing here, right? So. Let's go to the next slide. So I'm a member of the clean energy future committee. And one of the policy goals or one of the goals of the committee is to look at any loss and regulations that might need to be addressed in terms of, in terms of the implementation of the plan. And with regard to green buildings. If I can go to the next slide. And we'll go through the slides fast. I'll try to get to the proposal. Slide quickly. So the items that I'm discussing here tonight have been discussed in the CFC meetings. They've been presented to the town manager. And the percentage of the. Finding department. Grateful for the, all the feedback that we received from the council. I'm going to emphasize this is enabling legislation. In terms of asking to remove a barrier. So if we can go to the next slide. The, the essence of what we're discussing today is that currently, if you're a residential homeowner, if you're an R zero or one or two lots. You can replace the building that is above the ground on every lot, whether it's a conforming or nonconforming lot. So on, on the difference though, there are a lot of those that are considered nonconforming or non exempt today. There are about 3000 of those lots in our LinkedIn out of the 11,000 residential lots that I'm speaking about. You're not allowed to have a new foundation on it. So you can put a new building on top of it, but you can replace the foundation. So it's a sort of a curious artifact of historical artifact. So, I don't know if that's a good idea. I don't know if that's a good idea. But what we're proposing. Is that if you're building a very energy efficient, very high efficiency building on. Then you would be allowed to replace the underground portion of it as well. So the proposed by law change here does not affect. What is above the ground because those are allowed by right. And what we're discussing is what's below the ground. So let's just restate the purpose. The current non non conforming lots are not subject to the same energy efficiency requirements as those that are conforming lots. If you're building a new house, because they are considered renovations rather than a new construction. So the new construction energy efficiency rules don't apply. And that creates a bifurcation where as buildings are replaced on conforming lots, they get increasingly energy efficient over time, but those on the non conforming lots. So what's below the ground portion is not subject to the same advancements in energy efficiency. So it's one of the emphasize that this would not the proposed change here would not change anything with regard to dimensional requirements or small lots. And would not result in any kind of division of new lots or additional and new buildings. It strictly applies to existing buildings on existing lots. I know the next slide. We can skip the slide before I take a time here. The, just to highlight it that. When we look at the building stock currently on the residential lots. Already 20% of the buildings are over 100 years of AIDS. 50% additional 50%. So total 70% of the buildings. Will be over 100 years of age over the next 30 years when, which is the goal for us to get to med zero energy. In town and which is a task of the community. So. We are looking at a potentially substantial renovation, building replacement cycle. And if we don't get to build the most efficient homes during that cycle, we'll be potentially missing out. For another 100 years or whatever the cycle is going to be for those building lives. So the question is, as the aging foundations are an issue, should we be building 100 plus year assets on foundations for already over 100 years of age and not efficient. So let's move on to the next one. And just highlight one quick thing here. The way the analogy that I use is the way we're constructing homes on nonconforming lots where we're leaving the insulation, I'm sorry, the basements in as they are. The analogy is that if you're wearing a very nice winter coat, and you can buy a brand new coat, but when you go outside, you're only allowed to wear shorts. We're leaving the below ground portion of the building as energy inefficient. So that's the kind of your question about what's the distinction here is that when we were talking about the buildings that are like passive house type buildings. Those buildings are those buildings are have an insulation values in the basement of our 30 to our 60, which you wouldn't be able to put in the interior of the building existing and because of water issues, you wouldn't many cases, you wouldn't be able to insulate them at all. Next slide please. That's great. It's one quick second here. Of course. Yes. Is that okay, Rachel? Yes, of course. This is the part that I was, let me make myself a little more clear what I was trying to get at. I believe the state law states that once you go beyond a certain amount, proportion of the building that you have, then the whole building has to meet the new code, just not the portion that you're doing. So if you're just redoing the whole house above the foundation, then the whole building structure itself would have to meet the state building code, the new state building code, not just the portion you're doing, the whole building. Is that not true? You don't have to actually touch the basement to improve the insulation of the basement if you do the whole, if you do the above the ground. I'm not talking about touching it, but there's certain requirements for a new house. That's what you're trying to say. When you design new houses, the energy codes that's part of the state law right now, that says you have to meet certain requirements, you know, R38 in the ceilings, R15 in the walls, whatever that energy code is. And then that includes the basement. The basement has to be insulated for a new building. But once you go rip the whole house off, then doesn't that, doesn't the state law state that, that the whole building has to meet the new code? Not just the, not just the portion that's new, the whole building. The, if you were to take the basement out, then it would be, but in the case of, if you're just doing the above the ground portion of the building. No, no, I'm talking about the whole building. The basement is part of the building. That's why I'm saying whole building. I'm not just saying above. All right. So there is, there is no explicit installation requirement in those cases in the basements. And a lot of the homes in Arlington are done that way. They, they built everything above the code. I mean, everything above the ground to code, but not, not the below. There's, there's no requirement to do that. And I understand your question, but I'm happy to take offline. If that were helpful to address that specifically. Yes. I think we would, I think I want to look in that a little bit more because right now. I don't want to introduce zoning laws that's already covered under the state building statute. Sure. Happy to address that separately. Okay. Good question. So if we can go to the next slide. And just to illustrate very quickly here. All the buildings, these are just basically the energy consumption index. They're been a hundred and 200. Compared to the 2006 baseline home energy consumption. What we're proposing to do is that. What we're proposing is that. Yeah. I think that's a good point. On the, on the nonconforming less, if you install a new foundation, a new building, you would be required to put a very high efficiency. Building structure on it. Let's let's move forward for the first sake of time here. Um, Yeah, just simply in terms of showing. There's an equity issue here that I want to also highlight. You know lots that are affected by this. If you're in other parts of Arlington, there are very few lots that are affected. But in certain neighborhoods, basically what it boils down to is in certain neighborhoods, you can build a very super efficient home in other neighborhoods. You're not, it makes it at least very difficult or you can use the basement space. So we can go to the next slide, skip that slide. Here's an illustration of how the building, where the zoning also impacts various different types of lots. So not only do we have the small lots, but they're here using 5,000 square feet as the threshold, which based on the 1975 bylaw, we are treating the 5,000 square foot lots, it's called in large blocks in this case. We have this dynamic down cul-de-sacs with very large lots, 8 to 15,000 square foot. We are prohibiting super energy efficient homes or irregularly shaped lots like the one on the bottom where you can see that if the triangle is pointing the wrong way, you have 19 feet of frontage for you on a 10,000 square foot lot, you can put a new foundation on that house. But the neighboring house is neighboring lots with smaller lots, you can. So we have these dynamics where the larger lots are treated inconsistently. Some of you can put a new foundation on them, some you don't, if you have another mention. And just a couple of highlights. There's some interesting consequences if we were to allow this. One obviously is that it addresses the part of underground, not above the ground, because those buildings can be built today as by right. And non-conforming lots, you just need to leave two walls up and you can build a new home there. But if we were to allow this it was actually potentially creates smaller homes because now a larger portion of the square footage is actually going to be underground. So this may actually address massing in a potentially substantial way on the smaller lots. There's an affordability benefit where we can actually create homes that not only use net zero energy or have zero energy bills, but they actually pay the owners. So they say generate 30% more in energy than that they consume. And those types of homes are then possible to have on super high efficiency or if you have a super high efficiency building, you can have those kinds of energy benefits. As a practical matter, we may be prohibiting those or again, making it particularly expensive to build those or we're essentially requiring that any expansion to these current buildings happens above the ground and not below the ground because we're not allowed to be rebuilding the basins. So, and I wanted to highlight one item at the bottom of the slide too, which is we have when you look at the embedded energy in the building materials or when you're replacing an existing building with a very, very high efficiency building, the carbon paybacks can be actually very short. So there are really substantial energy efficiency benefits and carbon benefits that we are potentially foregoing because we don't allow third of the houses in Ireland to potentially reach that level of efficiency. Go to the next slide. So it's simple as to do a comparison of what's being proposed. So using again on the non-conforming lot by law on the left-hand side and the proposed by law on the right-hand side. So it's new home construction allowed. Yes, on both current by-law and the other because right now the distinction is that currently listening to leave those two walls up it's you can build a new home there. Can you install a new foundation today? No. And we're proposing in the new by-law that yes, it would be allowed. And the current by-law allows you to expand the building by 750 square feet by right on the non-conforming lot. And we're saying that on the small lots there would be no change. So your ability to expand the house would be the same except that again a bigger portion of the house would not go underground than previously. Now on the larger lots there's a separate issue what we're proposing is that if you are at least 5,000 or 6,000, whatever the threshold would be appropriate square feet or meet this definition of a large lot then regardless of the frontage on the lot you would be allowed to build a very high efficiency home if you're disagree to do so. And we also have this other item where currently the fossil fuel by-law which is obviously not pending final approvals if that goes, if you're doing less than 75 square feet of the building adjusting or rebuilding the by-law does not apply. But the interesting scenario is if you replace the foundation of the building then the entire building becomes subject to the new fossil fuel by-law which has to overwhelming by the town meeting. And Dickens point which we'll follow up on specifically later, there's only a partial requirement to meet the state energy code if you leave the existing basement rather than replace it whereas on the current, on the new fossil we're saying that they will be subject of the energy code. And the second part to the energy code and Dickens question is that one of the features of the current energy massures of energy code is that it gets tighter every three years by-law and it's automatically implemented that way. But because the by-law does not, I'm sorry the current, if you leave the basement in there you that portion of the building won't be subject to that whereas if you replace the basement it would be subject to that. So this is why it would address this with the divergence between the energy efficiency of the building so conforming and not conforming lots. And the last point here is that the clean energy future communities, net zero energy plan based when we look at how are we gonna achieve the net zero carbon emissions by 2050 requires us to, sorry I'm losing my voice here requires us to take a look at these issues and make sure that we don't miss every single opportunity to either retrofit the building, do deep energy retrofits electrify the buildings or if appropriate then the building owner wants to do it allow them to install a very high efficiency building including a very high efficiency basement. So with that, I think that was the end of my slides. Great, thank you very much. I'm sure that there are additional questions from board members. Ken, since you had asked one previously do you have anything else that you'd like to follow up and ask any questions? Well, first I wanna start off by saying, thank you. This is a very nice proposal here and you did quite a bit of work and research on this and I am very interested in it. I just can't follow through all the stuff you got there right now and understand it all. Yes. So I think, getting a better understanding of it, I can give you much more support right now. I'm on the fence on it. I think Jenny, you want me to stop or? I was just waving to Rachel to get my turn. I thought you said hold on a minute. Okay. On my copy of the thing you said in there, I think there was one that was causing me a little confusion was would not change current building size or dimension rules for small lots, simply allows new foundations to be installed on homes that are already allowed to be built on top of existing foundations. So what we're saying is we're just putting a newer foundation into an existing foundation, where the existing foundation was. I don't see how that the foundation has anything to do with the energy. I mean, the foundation is structural. I mean, you're either gonna insulate the outside of the foundation or insulate the inside of the foundation and where you want some isolation between the first floor and the foundation, you're gonna do that anyways, because it's new above it. So I was a little concerned or confused what that's supposed to mean. It looks like his video might be frozen. So, Posse, I'm not sure if... Can you? There you go. Up. You know, you wanna say, Rachel. Rachel, we have, if I might, Ryan Katowski is also on, he's a member of the Clean Energy Future Committee as well, and in the event that that happens again, he may also wanna chime in. Yeah, can you guys hear me? Yes. So if either one of you wants to chime in and answer Kim's question, that would be great. Yeah, I'll jump in while Posse's having trouble. So happy new year and hello to everybody. I actually believe there was a slide in this presentation earlier. I had some information about that, that when you look at an efficient home, the foundation's actually a fairly large percentage of the remaining energy losses. I don't remember the exact figure, but it's fairly significant. Oh, yeah. No, I do realize the portion of being an energy loss, but the actual foundation is not what you're trying to create here. You're trying to create the insulation on the outside or the inside. So what difference does the foundation have? Anything to do with your insulation barriers? I don't know, Posse, if you have a question. Yes, can you hear me now, hopefully? So, Kim, do you have a question? The distinction here is that in these types of homes, the basement becomes conditioned living space. So the actual thermal barrier is the basement walls and the basement floor that's below the ground. Yes, so you would put a wall inside the basement. You would not tear the basement wall out. They put a new basement foundation. You wouldn't put a new foundation wall in. You would just put a wall on the inside, which is your thermal barrier, either 2x4 or 2x6 or rigid insulation, whatever you want to do on the inside, create your thermal barrier. Why do we have to tear down and replace with a new foundation? Excellent question. So there are a couple of things there. One is that the types of homes that we're talking about insulating here, like passive houses, they're looking at insulating wall values in the R30 to R60. So that's about a foot of insulation. So you wouldn't be putting that on the interior and on the floor off the existing basements. But also, if there's any water penetration into that area, you're potentially creating a significant mold hazard when you have that space there. So if you want to really build an efficient home, take care right on, but the proper drainage and everything else, you would do it the insulate from the outside and not on the inside of these walls. So that's what I'm gonna be careful about, because now you're saying, with this zoning allowance, you're making the foundation bigger because you're, see, with not conforming sites, you can rebuild on existing foundation because it's existing. So we're not making the foundation any bigger, right? What you're saying, we're gonna tear the foundation down and make it bigger so it's actual building is bigger. Is that what you're saying? That's the point I'm all confused about right now. Yeah, so it depends on how the insulation is done, but for example, if the existing wall is one foot, the existing foundation wall is one foot wide and the new super insulated wall is gonna be one and a half feet wide, that's going to be the below ground portion. So the interior of the building in that scenario would actually become smaller if you kept the existing footprint of the building. So you're correct. Why would you have to change the foundation? Like you just put the insulation on the inside and be done with it? Well, if you're adding six to 12 inches of insulation on the inside, you create potential mold and water hazards. Anytime you have a sump pump or moisture penetration in the basement, it becomes difficult to insulate. And the second thing is a lot of the homes in Arlington where some of the down half footings on the foundation or they're not structurally capable of being able to be insulated and turned into living space in the basement or that they can't support the heavier building. And I think Ryan may have had personal experience with this, who I see him nodding his head. So it's a very, very common sort of a structural deficiency in the buildings the way where they were built a long time ago. Okay, I just wanna make sure it's clear that then then the outside perimeter of the new building will not exceed the existing footing. Line of the thing. Yes, that's correct. So everything we built, so everything will be documented from the outside of the existing foundation then you work inwards to get your existing, and get your new foundation in with the new energy codes. Yes. And essentially what it means that you would have an exterior and the building and the energy code requires that there's a continuous insulated space. So there are no barrier breaks in the foundation insulation. And that's how you make these buildings super efficient because you can lose half of the building's energy through the basement if you don't insulate them. All right, then my last question. I'm sorry, Rich, I'm taking too much time here. Yep. You put in this onus on this absolute net zero building. How's that factor into affordability? I mean, I can see if you want to encourage more energy efficient homes, we allow certain things to encourage that, but to mandate it right off saying, all new homes are gonna be energy efficient, then you're limiting affordability and now you're driving the affordable housing out of Arlington. A very good question. So there are two things. One is that by law, we can only allow people to do certain things. And this is an allowing exemption. People could continue to still build on top of the existing foundation. We can't prohibit them from building on top of the existing foundation. But having said that, what's the distinction here is that the types of homes that we're looking at here, potentially, like I said, can be paying the owners or the excess generation from the solar panels on the super efficient homes actually creates net credits. So the affordability here comes through eliminating energy costs. So you can take $3,000 to $5,000 of energy costs and just eliminate them in these houses. And so there's a significant affordability benefit because the cost of actually doing these retrofit, these improvements isn't enormous. The materials costs aren't really significant. It's just they have to be done from the exterior. All right, I don't need to look a little more into this because I'm not sure, I totally agree with you that the net zero does not cost more. Well, it will certainly cost more in some materials, but the cost differentials aren't significant and the paybacks are pretty short. But I think for the sake of time, we would be thrilled to have these conversations separately and just discuss them in detail. I would love that, great. Thank you. David, did you have any questions? Sure. Thanks, this is a really interesting proposal. And as the owner of an almost 100 year old house with water infiltration in the basement, it's been a particularly interesting conversation. I do think Ken has raised some questions I hadn't thought about, which would be helpful to get some more information on. So I appreciate you following up on that. So if I understood correctly, you were saying that in the context of this proposal, if the homeowner was allowed to build a new foundation, it would be entirely within the existing footprint of the current foundation, is that correct? Well, there are a couple of things in there for the small lots that below, I mean, those that are under 5,000 square foot in this proposal, it would be within the foundation, existing foundation footprint, plus by current bylaw, you're allowed to expand it by up to 750 square feet. The total square footage of the building. So that would be basically asking for the same exact treatment as is currently allowed. And then before the lots that are over 5,000 square feet, for those we're asking for the same treatment as other 5,000 square foot lots in town where you're not restricted to the existing elements. And I would presume that in situ, well, first of all, I guess I won't presume, has this happened in Arlington where someone has built a high efficiency new structure on top of an old foundation? I'm not aware of any. We have surged for, people have built the current building code is pretty high efficiency on the above the ground portion of it. So we have a number of new homes that are quite efficient above the ground but they're on top of the existing foundations that are not efficient. So the answer is maybe you could treat all the new existing buildings that way, but no one has built, to our knowledge, no one has built a super efficiency home on top of an existing foundation in Arlington. Okay, and I would, I guess, it would make sense to me, not being a construction, I don't know, but it would make sense to me that in a situation where you wanted to put a higher efficiency home on an older foundation that there are techniques and mitigations that you can do as part of that new construction to account for the fact that you're building on an old foundation and without losing, without losing at least most of the benefits of the new construction. Indeed, and you're absolutely correct. And what tends to happen though in that case is that any expansion of the building that occurs above the ground so increases the mass of the buildings because the below the ground portion wouldn't be high efficiency space. Okay, and I guess it seems that it would, it seems that it would, is there anything that is preventing a homeowner from going to the ZBA right now and asking for a variance to build a completely new high efficiency home on a non-conforming site? Not to my knowledge, other than I know of cases where people have the approach to that concept when they've been told there will not be variances in this template. So I don't know if anyone has officially tested it or could be done, but I do not know specifically if this would be eligible for a variance. Okay, so essentially, I mean, what we're doing here is making under certain limited circumstances making it by right and instead of by permit that a homeowner would be able to do these things. All right, the distinction here is that within the existing, the same dimensional requirements and treatment as we treat the other 8,000 lots in Arlington. So either build within your existing footprint if you're not able to expand it because of dimensional requirements or if you're on larger lot, then treat it the same way as any other larger lot. Okay, I understand, that's helpful, thank you. Thank you, David. So I'll move to the other board members, just in the interest of time, I think that rather than dwelling on some of the dimensional questions that have been asked several times that perhaps we suggest that in the future that some diagrams really illustrating the footprint in terms of what's allowable versus what's existing, et cetera, be part of what's presented in the future, both for this board and for the public in terms of their greater understanding and the suggestion I could make. Okay, Jean, did you have any questions? You're on mute. Sorry, Jenny at one point wanted to say something, so I don't know if this would be an appropriate. I'm so sorry, Jenny. It's okay, I'm always glad to hear from board members. My question was kind of to Posse, but just in general, with the new potential that came from the conference committee with the climate bill and a net zero roadmap that the state is going to be adopting hopefully soon, signed into law. Well, do you think that with that it will include officially the net zero stretch code? And if so, do you think that this issue will be addressed through the net zero stretch code? I know this is all somewhat new and I'm sorry, please, if anybody has a question about anything I just said, I'm glad to answer, but I anticipate that it will be signed into law and then we will see a net zero stretch code forthcoming over the course of this year or next and that it will be under the department of utilities and there will be some changes in terms of reviews to net zero buildings, et cetera. I'm just curious if you think this is captured as part of that or if this would be something else? Yeah, that's a great question. So that would be really good news for the two thirds of the lots where they are considered, anytime you touch the foundation it would be considered a new construction. Since these buildings would be, so the new, to my knowledge that the new stretch, net zero energy plans and net zero energy code will apply to new construction. And since if the existing foundation is left intact and the two walls are left intact, then it's considered a renovation and the code would not apply to it. So that's my understanding at this moment it's so brand new that we're still waiting to see but that's my expectation that continues is that how it has been treated to date? So I don't currently not aware of any changes in that process. Okay, I guess we'll have to wait to see. Indeed. Thanks, Jean. Did you have any other questions? I don't have any questions. I guess I would just like to say that I do think that what's being proposed by the Queen Energy Future Committee will remove a barrier to people building the most energy efficient homes that they're able to. I know in my neighborhood, I can think of homes that were torn down and new homes built on the top of the exact same foundation. And if they had had the opportunity to replace the foundation with a new energy efficient foundation, we would all be ahead of the game and they would be ahead of the game. So, this makes perfect sense to me that this is something that Arlington would do when having this hard distinction between allowing two walls of a foundation to be removed but the other two have to stay in place. Just doesn't make any sense to me in the year 2021. That's it. Great. Thank you, Jean. Katie? As soon as I really appreciate an approach that thinks about reducing the barriers rather than layering on more barriers to building. I mean, I think one of the points that can raise that's really important is thinking about how a lot of energy efficiency requirements can actually make it more expensive to build and more difficult to build and have the perverse effective moving less housing in areas that are transit accessible, which help us reduce greenhouse gases via a different mechanism. And so I appreciate the attentiveness to that kind of issue in this proposal and really thinking carefully about how we can have more energy efficient homes without making onerous requirements that make it more expensive to build housing. Great. Thank you, everyone. And I would agree as well again, in addition to the, you know, given the discussion that we've had here and the questions from the board and what would occur, I'm assuming when this is circulated more broadly in addition to some of the diagrammatic pieces I'd certainly be interested in whether or not any analysis of what the demand or the potential demand would be for this type of barrier being lifted. I don't know if that's something that you've analyzed or if that's something that you have any projections on. Yeah, we'd be happy to share that in the future in terms of ranges on that. Great, thank you. Jenny or Aaron, did you have anything else related to this specific zoning item? I was just gonna say that I, so the reason we're having this discussion in case I didn't say this in the beginning is that the zoning warrant articles need to be filed by the end of January. So this board, you know, we will be filing some articles but we would like to get a sense of what you would like to file so that Aaron and I can spend some time preparing that. Ideally, we would actually come back to the meeting, your next meeting in January with some drafts of the warrant language that we would then file by that Friday. So one of the reasons we wanted to have Posse here and Ryan's here as well to discuss this is that it, you know, we would like to understand if the board would want to file this or how you might want to pursue or if you want to support it, how you would want to proceed. It is something that we have discussed at least David and Jean actually had participated in some conversations with members of the Clean Energy Future Committee to review some of the zoning and permitting changes that have been proposed and to be included in the net zero action plan, which of course is being finalized. So I do think that there's some nexus here and but I want to get a sense of that level of support because if you are going to ask us to work with Posse and others from the Clean Energy Future Committee to prepare some sort of warrant article, we need the time to do that. And that would be the same thing for any other part of the discussion around this agenda item. But I just want to make it clear to the board that that's one of the reasons for this conversation. So I just want to get a sense of where you're, where you would like to go from here and also to give that guidance to Posse and Ryan. Great, thank you, Jenny. I saw both Ken and Jean raised their hands. So I'll go to Jean first. Yeah, I'm speaking for myself. I think this is something where the board should put in a warrant article, Clean Energy Future Committee has done a lot of work on this. The town has a goal of zero carbon by 2050. The state has a goal by 2050. There are obviously a little bit kinks that some people mentioned tonight that can be worked out in coming up with what the actual wording would be of the final motion. But I think I would support our putting in a warrant article along the lines of what Posse has talked about. Thank you, Jean. Ken? I was going to ask, when is your next committee meeting? I would like to maybe meet with you guys and get a little more into this. I don't think I'm on board as far as as much as Jean is to support a board. For my personal opinion, a warrant article yet. I still need some answers. And I'm sure you might have it. I just want to get a little more clearer on this. So do you guys have a meeting coming up soon, which I can attend? It's a couple of weeks away. So I might actually suggest that we won't have a conversation before then. I'm going to talk to Jenny about that. I don't think I can meet with you guys. I'd be happy to organize a conversation and invite any board members to that discussion. I'll do this with Ken Pruitt, who is actually the person who coordinates the Clean Energy Future Committee. And I'll get back to you. But the committee actually meets the last Friday of every month, so it's too late at that point. OK. But yeah, if you can do that, then I can reconsider at our next meeting my support or not for this. Thank you, Ken. David? Oh, I think in concept, I'm supportive of doing something. Like Gene, I don't think it makes a whole lot of sense that if someone can otherwise build a high efficiency building that they can't build a high efficiency foundation to put it on, that just doesn't make a whole lot of sense in the 21st century. I think we would definitely want to be careful that there are sufficient guardrails incorporated into this proposal so that it just doesn't result in wholesale demolitions across Arlington as a result. But I think that the main guardrail is requiring the strict adherence to the efficiency standards. But as others have mentioned, that perhaps has an affordability impact. So I'm not really sure where the balance is. But I think I am generally supportive of something carefully crafted here. Thank you. Katie, did you have anything else you want to add? No, OK. And I'll just echo what Gene said. I'm generally supportive. As I understand it, it's really about the basement, the missing piece. If someone's going to demolish the build, they're already going to demolish it, right? They're just going to build on an existing basement. So I think if we can effectively illustrate the boundary in terms of the fact that this is not going beyond what is already permissible by code, it's just replacing it in kind with a super-insulated basement. To me, it provides one more incentive. Or again, it removes a barrier for somebody who would potentially be considering a super-insulated or passive home scenario. So I don't see any objections to moving that forward. Gene? I just want to add, while I'm always concerned about the affordability of housing in town, I just don't see this having a big impact on affordability. Because every house that I've seen get torn down and built on a new foundation, the price has gone up quite a bit for the new construction. So I don't see this adding a large factor of additional cost for this. And what we get in return is something much better. And as Posse pointed out, you end up with a house that's more affordable to run on a day-to-day basis. So the payback is financial is good. So I hear the concerns about affordability, but I don't think this shifts the balance on affordability, particularly one way or the other. And again, I think it would be interesting since you have studies on demand. To me, that would be interesting to take a look at as well. Indeed. And I guess I was just highlighted. I was referring to basically scenarios because there are no explicit studies on this. But we can certainly talk about the scenarios. All right. Anything else on this topic before we move to the next zoning item, which I think is the ADU? Are we authorizing the staff to go ahead and draft at least the warrant article for this? I think we are. I'd be in favor. I don't know if we. I know that Ken, you still had some concerns. I would like to wait till our next meeting to authorize that in two weeks. So I get a chance to meet with these guys. So we're actually not going to have a meeting in two weeks because of the holiday. Correct, Jenny? It's in three weeks. Yes, that's right. Or the article is due. So we either need to authorize them tonight or it won't be a part of this because there's, I think you have two or three days. Yes, it's still on Friday. They need to be filed by Friday of that week. I wouldn't go my, I would go my fellow board members if they want to authorize it. I won't stand in the way. I still would like to meet and go over some more details. But getting it, getting it started, I'm not going to be in the way of standing in the way of that. So Posse has already prepared with some input from the Clean Energy Future Committee to a certain extent, I would say at the last meeting, a warrant article. So I would suggest, and I believe that was actually at least in a bulleted format provided in the PowerPoint. So I would suggest that we just come back at the next meeting and we talk about that. And then we decide how to file that. That would be my best suggestion at this time, as well as have the interim follow up and report back at the next meeting. That makes sense to me. Any objections? I'm good. Great. Okay. So we'll take a public comment at the end of all of the zoning article discussions that we'll be having. So I think at this point, I want to thank Ryan and Posse for all of the information you've given us and for answering all of the questions that we had. I look forward to continuing the discussion at our next meeting. And Jenny, I believe that the next item is the ADU article. If I'm not mistaken, sorry, I'm just going to bring my agenda. You're correct. And Barbara Thornton is here because this is sort of a history behind it. And so I'm going to let Barbara talk about that and talk about where we're at right now. Great, thank you, Barbara. Great, thank you very much. I'm delighted to be here. And I'm going to build on Posse's very interesting presentation. And now that it's the beginning of the new year, we're also sort of at the beginning of a new century. And as he pointed out, Arlington is filled with housing that is well over 100 years old. And we are now really, although we're not talking about it explicitly, we're talking about what we want our buildings, our homes in Arlington to look like in the 21st century and beyond as we, what do they need? And he brought up the point of energy efficiency that's something that we're looking for. And I'd like to suggest to you that the question about accessory dwelling units is very much on the same wavelength. We are needing to think about how we will be living in these homes in the 21st century and beyond and what we need in the homes that we want to live in. And some of the things that I'd like you to think about are the tremendous fear of large numbers of people, I'm being one of them, a baby boomers, are facing the choice of living in an old age home or alone because there's not a sufficient type of, there's not a type of housing that allows me to age in place comfortably and safely. So that's one concern that the future of housing needs to take into consideration. Another is the preference shown in the pandemic that we've been experiencing for people to live in clusters larger than just their nuclear families. We have evolved housing in the last 150, 200 years which is very nuclear family oriented and that may very well not serve us well in the future. And last, I'd like you to keep in mind the figure that is now a couple of years old, that over 34% of the people in the Arlington community are people who live alone. These people are probably overpaying for the housing that they want and they are also probably taking off market housing that has two or more bedrooms in it that could be used for a larger group. So with that in mind, I wanna take you back to October 26th when I last came before you to talk about the accessory dwelling unit issues. And we ran into some, in the conversation we ran into some complexities and I'd like to move beyond that and we have been, and by we I mean people I talk to about accessory dwelling units which includes my neighbors and people around town and Zoom meetings, et cetera. Many of us have been talking about what we want in accessory dwelling units. I think there's a growing interest across the town in having accessory dwelling units. And I realized that there is a new proposal that's come up. I believe it was developed by the staff for accessory dwelling units. So you now have in front of you two different accessory dwelling unit proposals but my accessory dwelling unit proposal that I brought in October 26th effectively dies and will be like a Phoenix reborn on January 29th. And my intention when I hear back confirmation from Doug Hyme is to conduct signatures for the pretty much the same very simple two or three line proposal for an amendment to get us in. And then the complexity comes with working out the what you call the main motion of the details in it. And I along with a number of others have looked very closely at the main motion that was developed by the staff and looked at the main motion that we have. There's some, I think a clear kind of a punch list of issues for discussion that are maybe in the vicinity of 10 issues that after January 29th when I have the official warrant ready to go that we can sit down and start talking about a main motion that makes sense for my colleagues and the people that I've talked to as well as you all of the ARB board and the planning department staff. So I'd like you to agree to that proposal. Thank you, Barbara. I appreciate you coming to chat with us tonight and to talk through process as well. Jenny or Aaron, did you have anything to add or before we open it up to the board members? Aaron, Aaron to now or now? No, I didn't have anything else to add. Okay, the only thing I would say is just it would be helpful to get some, again, back to the similar to the last time, to get some guidance as to which direction the board would like to go in, that would be helpful both for the petitioner, Barbara and others who she's working with and people who she's been talking to about this as well as obviously the staff and some guidance from the board. What we prepared was based upon the direction from the board to take a look back at what was filed in 2019 and give it a bit of a refresh. And that's what we came back to the board with when we had the last discussion. It wasn't meant to confuse everybody. It was really in response to a request from this board but we need to know which direction to go in because that guides staff time and of course also would help to help the public conversation around the topic for a number of reasons. But I'm glad to answer any questions about what the staff prepared as well if there are still any lingering questions. Great, and I haven't brought up either of the documents. They're in the packet, but I'm glad to also bring up anything on the screen if you would like me to. I just need you to tell me what you would like to see. Great, thank you, Jenny. Jenny, would you like to start thoughts on the previous motion that had been prepared by Barbara versus what has recently been prepared by the staff? You're on mute. Jenny, you're on mute. Thank you. There you go. Sorry, I was a little surprised that this showed up in one of the previous board meeting packets because I hadn't remembered the board requesting it, but it was nice to see. I think what the staff prepared is very elegant, very simple, very well done, and I think did incorporate the discussion about what the board liked from Barbara's proposal with what we had done last time. I will just, and I think it makes sense for us to either put in an ADU warrant article or to look at the warrant article that Barbara's proposing to put in and decide that we could at least support that language and try to work out what the actual wording of the bylaw would be between the warrant article submission date and when we have to file a report. I will say that I think we as a board should reconsider most of the conditions that we had agreed to last time for accessory dwelling units. And I say this for a couple of reasons. One is I think that there seemed to be a lot of support last time for ADUs and maybe more this time. Second, it sort of occurred to me, I was talking to a cousin over the holiday weekend and I realized that she was the beneficiary of an accessory dwelling unit. And then I realized that when I was a kid until I was 13, I was also the beneficiary of an accessory dwelling unit in the building in which I live and there are many, many, many benefits to them. But the things that I think that we as a board should reconsider, and I'll do this very briefly, is one, should we allow accessory dwelling units to be constructed in new construction or only in existing construction? What we had said before was only buildings that were currently existing. But in rethinking, I'd say why? Maybe it makes as much sense to say, somebody wants to build a new house and have mom and dad live in the ADU. There's no reason why they shouldn't be able to do that rather than find an old house in town where they can add an ADU. So I'd like us to reconsider that. Also, I'm not sure about the need for two means of egress. Maybe one private entrance, but the other one can be through the principal dwelling. I think that while we had decided in the past not to expand the footprint of the existing building, I'm not sure that makes sense if the building could be expanded anyhow under dimension and open space and things like that. So I'd like us to reconsider that too. And I don't see why we wouldn't allow an accessory dwelling unit for each of the units in a two family or a duplex, assuming they would meet up all the dimensional and the other requirements we have in here. So I'd say what the staff put together is really an excellent melding of where we were last time with some of Barbara's ideas. But I think we should discuss whether we wanna move beyond that into something along the lines that I spoke about. That's it. Dean, do you have a preference in terms of whether that's something that you would prefer that the staff move forward with or that Barbara? I think that is really the direction I think that Jenny and Erin are looking for as well. Jenny, correct me if you're wrong. I mean, Barbara and I shared a little bit about a week or so before the meeting about what she might put in as a warrant article. And I think if the warrant article that she puts in is broad enough so we have the ability to make changes to decide on what we want, then I think that's okay. However, if the warrant article that Barbara puts in hems us in too much, which I think was the case last time, then I think we need our own warrant article so that we can do our own thing. Okay, thank you. David? To build on what Jean was saying, I would also like to avoid dueling warrant articles. And I do think there is a path to be found to move forward here. One thing that I would like to just put out there is in the past where we have significantly modified citizen proposals when crafting a main motion on a warrant article, we have at least generally done that only with the consent of the citizen who originated the article. So I would hate for us to get into a situation where we go ahead and have Barbara file her article and then ultimately we decide to do something that she doesn't fully agree with. So I think I'm hopeful we can avoid that situation because I am perfectly happy to talk through all of the conditions that we had placed in the original proposal. And discuss whether we think they are still necessary. But I wanna make sure that we're able to work on this in a fully collaborative fashion and not end up at an impasse. Do you have a specific question for Barbara within that in terms of anything that was included in the proposal that was prepared by? Yeah, well, I think I don't know where I land on these questions, but the questions that I have with Barbara's proposal versus the staff's proposal is allowing an addition outside the footpath that would be up to 50% of the floor area of the principal dwelling versus the staff proposal, which would allow only up to a third of the principal dwelling. So I think that's a good question. I think that would be up to a third of the principal dwelling to be an ADU. And I think, well my concern is whether allowing an addition of that size as part of this of this essentially creates a de facto two-family dwelling or three-family dwelling, if you've got a two-family to start out with. And as Gene mentioned, I think it was Gene where if you had a two-family where either could have an ADU, you could end up with a four-family dwelling where you had a two-family dwelling. And that would be by right under Barbara's proposal. And I'm feeling a little bit uncomfortable with not more control over those situations. So do you have a specific question for Barbara or about a willingness to discuss the parameters between an ADU and a two-family? Or how, David, do you want to move this forward with Barbara? Well, I'm just trying to avoid what is inevitably going to be the loud objections from people who are self-inclined to object that this just opens the door wide open to creating two families in R0 and R1 and multi-families in R2. And I think Barbara and we need to be prepared to respond to that in a way that is going to be acceptable to most people. Barbara, do you want to speak to that at all? There is a difference in the proposals right now with regard to allowable square footage and the distinction between where the boundaries are between a two-family house and an ADU, which are significantly more restrictive in what the staff had prepared as a result of the comments from the board versus what had originally been in your proposal. Do you feel like, given what you've seen, that's something that you would feel comfortable working towards? Or do you feel strongly about what was originally proposed? There are things. This is a work in progress. And as much as I would have loved to have had this sail forward with your approval law on October 26, I think that the time is just going to make it better. It's going to make it more foolproof. It's going to address some of these questions like, is this a sneaky way of creating two-family housing in a single-family district, which is not the intention of this at all? I want to, as I said, we actually put together a list of 11 bullet points of things. And David, in response to your question, I think there are actually, you raised two points. One is the allowing, in addition, outside of the basic unit, which is one, question, is that allowable and under what circumstances? And the other part of that is the ratio that any new building should be. Should it be 33% or 50%? And when you think of all of the housing types in Arlington and the goals that we want to establish here, there are a lot of gray areas and a lot of arbitrary areas. My goal is to develop ADU housing with you and with the staff in a way that makes sense for Arlington and makes sense for the people who are going to review this, the building commissioner and the fire safety inspector, and move us forward knowing that in years to come, we may say, oh, how did we miss that point? Let's find it. Let's fix it. But I think right now, addressing the issues, David, that you raised, both of those things are on my bullet list as two separate bullet points, I think. Anyway, the size dimension and the whether or not there should be something like an approval for a carriage house. And then we need to talk about, well, if we want to be clear about that, how do we do it? How do we write it? And this is something that I hope we can do in February together, if not before. And I'm sure that the other question Jean raised about whether this should be applicable to both new and existing structures is also on my list. Great. Thank you, Barbara. Thank you, David. Kim? I'm in agreement with David and Jean. I think we should write it. And I'm in agreement with Jean, said about new and old possibility of expanding if there's space to expand. I had a few others that I like to talk about with the rest of the one members. One was not defining is four or more rooms, but keeping it maybe to three or more rooms. I think that is important because I don't think you need four to make an accessory unit. And I also like to talk about what David brought up, about 33 and 50, or below 50. I think it's a fair compromise somewhere between the two. And I'm OK with that. And then what was this one other that I've forgotten now? What you're thinking, I'd suggest we don't even need to put in the number of rooms. We just need to agree on either square footage or percentage. That's OK, Jean. Yeah. Oh, the other thing is I definitely like the limits to the two families. Once you get to multifamily, you're just adding more units to a larger building. So it could be in a R6 zone or whatever, but it's only a two-family building. Those are things I want to talk about. But I think if we did it ourselves with Barbara, you'll come out so that we all agree upon something we've talked about it, as opposed to seeing it at the end and then having to decide when to wait the other and making changes at the last moment. I think I would like to work together on this and get it as best we can. That would be my suggestion. But I am all for this, OK? I'm not against it. Thanks, Ken. Katie? I think with fellow board members, I support this strongly. And I want to especially second what Jean said about really thinking more expansively about this and thinking about having this and things like new construction. I think it's a valuable direction to push this forward. And the other point I want to flag is that we have actually really good data on what goes on with ADUs and ADU ordinances from Greater Boston and a lot of other communities nationwide. And what we know from those communities, Ashley, is that when we put too many restrictions and so-called safeguards on ADUs, they just don't get built. And I assume our goal in spending years and trying to craft this ordinance is that someone might actually get to live in one of these ADUs in Arlington one of these days and that we might actually produce housing stock that serves the diverse needs of our community members. So I really want us to be careful while we craft this that we make sure that we actually make it financially feasible to build ADUs at a scale that is actually helpful to the community in Arlington. Because when I think of the bigger risk facing a proposal like this, it's not that we're going to see some sort of horrible degradation of the community. It's that we're actually just going to spend all this time working on legislation that accomplishes very little in the face of sort of a desperate need. I think Barbara laid this out really nicely about the many different types of constituencies that Gene added to nice personal examples and different constituencies that could really benefit from this kind of thing. Thank you, Katie. So I feel like I'm hearing two different things. Gene, what I heard from you was let's support Barbara in moving this. And again, please correct me if I'm wrong. Let's support Barbara in writing her article as long as she doesn't feel that where we're moving is a place where at the end of the day, she doesn't feel anymore that it's something that she can get behind, that we're not shaping it so much, that it's no longer her worn article or something that she can get behind. And from Ken, I'm hearing, let's have the board write the article together with Barbara. But it would be an article that's put forward by the board. So I just want to confirm that that's what I heard from Eugene, because I think Ken was very clear with what he did. Maybe we should do both for the moment, which is Barbara can put an award article on ADUs. And we can put one in and then work with Barbara on trying to reach a common understanding of what the main motion would be. And if we reach the understanding, then only one of the two needs to go forward. Last year, there were three articles in on getting rid of the housing requirement, the parking requirement, and part of the business zones. And we ended up doing one of them because the proponents, the other articles, were really happy with what we were proposing. So maybe the middle ground used to do them both. And then work with Barbara and try to come to an understanding on what it's actually going to look like. I'm not opposed to that either. So Barbara, I'll put this out to you in terms of, I feel really comfortable with where Aaron and the staff had moved the article in terms of taking a lot of the items that you had put forth from your most recent article and what had been proposed before. Although clearly from this discussion, there's even more to do from there that I think are more towards, again, where you had been previously, what do you prefer? What would you ideally like to see happen? And then we can talk through, are you, would you like to move this forward, or would you prefer this to be moved forward? It sounds like there's a lot of interest in the board in potentially moving this forward together with the staff. But again, I know how much work you've put into this as well, and I want to be respectful of that. I would like to move it forward. I would like there not to be a competition between my ADU and the ARB's ADU. At this point, I think we're very close. I think that there are things that were in the staff position, which is, as I understand, was based on what the world looked like in April of 2019, plus some perspectives that had been brought to the attention of the town. I think that we both sides, and I even hate to describe it that way, have something to offer here. And I'd like to be doing it around a table together. While I'm not thrilled about the town seeing that there are two separate ADU proposals, one under my name and one under the ARB's, I certainly don't mind there being one coming up to that we all agree on, coming to the town, ultimately, that is proposed by the ARB. I do not need to see my name on the article that wins. But nor do I want to step down at this point, just as you're not sure about what I might do, I'm not sure about what you might do. And January 29 is the deadline. So thank you, Barbara. I personally would prefer not to have two articles and to work together with Barbara to meld the two. Again, I think we keep moving closer and closer every time we have these conversations. And unearthing additional items for us to consider. So I think as long as the article is written to Barbara's point broadly enough so that we can work through the finer points, I would personally to support Barbara and all of the work that she's done to date and continue to work together with her. But I'd be interested in hearing David, if you had your hand raised as well. So I think the big improvement in the staff's proposal over last time is that it's by right. And I think, as I said before, I don't want dueling warrant articles. I'd prefer to work together and come up with one we can all get behind. The way I look at Barbara's proposal is it's opening the door very wide and creating more opportunities to possibly create ADUs. And the staff proposal has all of the requirements in it that we had originally put forth. And I think as I said, I'm happy to go through and reconsider whether we really think all of these requirements are necessary. But I feel like we can get to some place in the middle where we can get this out the door, see if it works. Because I think it's easy to tweak it to expand access. It's harder to open the doors wide and then try to close them a little bit later. And so I think we can probably push for, I mean, the staff proposal is already a step forward from what we had originally proposed. And I think we can probably move a bit further and come to a compromise. And just get started and see if somebody wants to build some of these. So David, again, so that we're clear because we need to give Jenny and Erin some specific direction here. Are you saying that you would prefer to work with Barbara to have her draft the motion and continue working together with her? Would you prefer to work together with the staff? I'm sorry if I'm not being clear. I think there's I understand. I think there should be a motion that we can all support. I don't care whose motion it is. Right. But I wanted to be one that gives us enough room to have this discussion and come up with a final main motion that we all agree with. Barbara, I see your hand up, yes. Yeah, you know, far be it from me to jump to the next proposal, which as I understand, it's going to be a discussion of the process for hearing new zoning. But I would suggest that you let me go ahead and file this before January 29th and that you're going to have it as soon as it's filed. You're going to have it on your desk. And from that moment that I've taken it to the clerk's office, I will say publicly, I will pledge to you that it is in my best interest to make it be something that you all, or at least the majority of you, will support so that this gets through. And if at the point that we want to change the name from me submitting it to the main motion being submitted by the ADU, I mean by the ARB, that would be fine with me too. But let's just get, let's not at the end of January have two competing motions. That just doesn't feel like a good way to start toward town meeting with this issue as far as I'm concerned. Jean? I'd just say it would be helpful if Barbara would share with Jenny the final language of what she thinks the large article would be that she's going to get the signatures on. And if Jenny thinks that that gives us what we need if the envelope is big enough so that we can do what we need to do, then we don't need to put in our own large article. Works for me. I'm supportive of that. Is there anyone who has any concerns? Jenny? I'm glad to work with Barbara on that with Erin as well. Yeah. Any concerns with moving forward as Jean proposed? Great. Thank you. All right. Thank you, Barbara. We look forward to working together with you. Great. Jenny, did you have any other zoning items for us to review before we open up for public comment? Just two things. One is for the next meeting, we'll have all the articles drafted for the administrative items, the zoning map. And the last item was the industrial zoning and where to go with that. Because we actually do have that drafted, but not the warrant article. So we're working backwards here. So I think I would like to be able to provide that to the board for the next meeting as well. But I want to get a sense of where everybody's at. I know there were some lingering questions. We actually have a follow-up meeting tomorrow morning with RKG and Harriman to discuss, to debrief, the conversation with the board and the public. And so I would like to kind of move that along, but want to get a sense of where the board is at with that. So thoughts? Ian? Yeah, I think we should be moving in the direction based upon the last discussion about the industrial zoning. I guess I sort of have the same feeling about where we just went with the ADUs, that the warrant article needs to be broad enough so that we can make some changes in the specifics if we feel that it's necessary. OK. Any other comments other than Jean's? I agree with Jean's comment. I'm OK with that. David, Katie? I agree. I agree. OK. Great. And was there anything else? Did I miss anything else, Erin, from, I mean, last go round? Other than citizen petitions that may return. Right. No, I don't think so. I thought your memo captured everything. But I don't think there was anything more specific that we needed to talk through with the board at this moment. OK. The solar ready one, we don't have a warrant article for that. We did talk about it. If that's something, again, similarly, if you want us to prepare a draft article on that, we would need to know if that's the direction you want us to head in, or if you want to wait for the Clean Energy Future Committee to come forward with something for a recommendation. Jean? Two things. Yeah, I thought the decision was somewhat to my dismay, but I agreed to wait for the Clean Energy Future Committee to put together a larger package. And I just wanted to, I know I'm a broken record on this. All those little corrections that we need to make. Yeah, that's what I meant by the administrative corrections. Yes. OK. OK. That's going to be. Yes, I just wanted to make sure. I remember the replay of the conversation about solar ready. So OK. So we're not we're not going to be working on that right now. And that's it. I agree with Jean. OK. Great. Thank you. Thank you, Jenny. All right. So I see a few hands raised. Are there any other comments from the board before we open the potential zoning by law amendments discussion up for public comment? OK. Seeing none, if you wish to speak on this topic, please use the raise hand function. I will call on members of the public as the hands are raised. Please note that you'll have three minutes and I'm going to ask you to identify yourself by first and last name and address before you begin speaking. So the first person on my list is John Warden. Mr. Warden. Is it am I open now? You are. Thank you. Thank you. Well, all right, I have a lot more than three minutes to address and and and there's been a lot of really a lot of bad stuff spread out tonight. I just say very, very briefly on the energy stuff. The board was sent a memo by my son, James, who has pointed out that he's in insulated basements from within with spray on stuff and houses, 200 years old in a house that's in a very large building that's 80, 60 years old. So this. So that's and the tearing down of a small affordable house to build a big energy efficient house foundation or no, that's just a really bad idea. And and and something you should look at if you're serious about this is not letting huge months, monstrous new houses put shadows on somebody else's solar panels. They have no protection against that at the present time. And of course, that the residential study committee that's group that was dissolved was that was there. That was their original charge. The mansionization tear down problem. And let me get to the ADUs. That's an even bigger disaster by right. To allow people to put in ADUs in any house by right, basically destroys a single family zone. And if you wanted to do away with single family zones that that person Rudnick had a proposal for that in a special meeting, I don't think they're going to go for that. Many people in Arlington, maybe most, their most largest investment they made is in their home, whether it's a single family or a two family. And to say that that zone that they invest in is not going to come with two family, two family zone. And the two family zones could be a four family zone and so on. I mean, that is absolutely not, not even getting a special permit. That's absolutely insane. And people are not going to go for that. And you can be assured that that will in gender a very large battle until meeting. Now, this will be the fifth time ADUs have been tried to foist designs. This is a worn out thing. It's not going to fly this time. It didn't fly the other four times. So why don't you just let it go? And if it must happen, the only housing that's supposed to be built in Arlington per the master plan is affordable housing and senior housing. Okay. If there's going to have an ADU, it should be rented at an affordable rent. That should be the one redeeming social factor in the whole thing. It must be affordable. Thank you. That's time. Thank you. The next speaker on our list is Don Seltzer. Thank you, Madam Chair. Don Seltzer, Irving Street. I actually wanted to comment on three of the earlier items but give it the limited time allowed. I'm just going to talk about the energy fish and home proposal. I'm generally in agreement with the idea of it. I have to disagree strongly with the basic premise that PASSI provided that you cannot build a new home and foundation on a non-conforming lot. It simply isn't true. I know of many examples. I can look out my bedroom window and see a house, a non-conforming lot where it was rebuilt recently with a new foundation. And there's another house, for instance, on Arnold Street that's nearing completion. And it's another small non-conforming lot and it has an entirely new foundation. So the reason for doing it that PASSI provided simply is not correct. I don't know where that idea came from, where it says in our zoning laws that you cannot do that. It's just not true. Thank you, Mr. Seltzer. The next speaker on our list is Chris Loretty. Thank you, Madam Chair. Chris Loretty, 56 Adams Street. I would echo what Mr. Seltzer just said. Here in East Arlington, we're seeing quite a few two families converted into condos. Virtually everyone I've seen has had the basement converted into living space. And when they do that, they insulate it and really bring it up to code. Now, whether it's as efficient as the proponents might like, I don't know, but it's certainly being insulated and it's certainly being converted to living space. Now, that living space does not count as gross floor area under Arlington's zoning bylaw. And that means that this has nothing to do with how much is built above ground. What will happen under this proposal is that the foundations will be expanded beyond what they currently are, because there's nothing to prohibit that as long as the setbacks are complied with. And it does nothing to prohibit the increased height of the building or massing on the third floor either. The only thing that the floor area relates to is the open space and the zoning board of appeals routinely allows these large additions because they claim there's no usable open space to begin with. So I think there needs to be further study of that. The other problem with this is the inspectional services doesn't properly enforce or interpret what the existing foundation is. And they're doing things like using decks as the outline of the deck and calling that part of the foundation. So if indeed the town could clean up its definition of what the foundation is, and if the proposal was really limited to the existing masonry foundation, I wouldn't really have a problem with this, but there are a lot of other issues that need to be studied and considered before this moves forward. The other thing I just want to ask Madam Chair is that a number of us had put forward zoning articles that were deferred. I have not seen any information or request from the board about our intentions for the next town meeting. And I'm wondering if that's going to be forthcoming. My understanding is they're out there. If we want them back in the warrant, we can have them. And I'd like to have at least one of mine reinserted. So I'd appreciate if you could speak on that topic and what the process will be for that. Thank you. Thank you. Jenny, I will turn it over to you to answer that question. Sure, yes, we were anticipating that Doug Heim, Town Council was going to send an email to all of the prior petitioners, which I'm guessing based upon your question hasn't occurred yet. So I will follow up with Doug accordingly to find out what's going on. And of course, if you know that you're interested in refiling anything or resubmitting something, you can feel free to reach out and let us know proactively. Also, you mentioned something about foundation. I believe that's one of the items on our list. Erin? It was a citizen petition from the 2020 annual town meeting from Mrs. Warden, I believe. OK, so I'll follow up with Doug to find out what about the status of his email correspondence. Thank you. Thank you, Chris, and thank you, Jenny. So the next speaker will be Winnell Evans. Thank you. Winnell Evans, orchard place. I want to speak to the ADU article. I am not categorically opposed to ADUs, and I see a lot of benefits from them for certain people. But with all respect to Barbara and the enormous amount of work that she has put into her version of an article, I think it's riddled with gaps. And so I would lean very strongly toward the version that the ARB has prepared. One thing that is missing from both versions, however, which was in the 2019 version that the ARB prepared, is any reference to length of tenancy. And I don't see how, without some kind of regulation of this, you can not just open the door to Airbnb's and other short term rentals, which I think that's a really unfair, inequitable situation to create in a neighborhood where people have bought homes with no expectation that they would be living next to short term rentals. And I think that there needs to be some protection for existing residents, whether they're homeowners or tenants, from this. And I feel that a lot of the policy that we discuss in Arlington, I'm getting a little bit off topic here, but bear with me just very briefly, I feel that a lot of the policy that we discuss in Arlington has to do with people who may be coming here in the future. And I understand that that is part of town planning. We have to prepare for the future. But so much of it seems to come at the expense of people who live here now. And I really urge you to rethink how an ADU, how allowing ADUs would affect existing residents. For instance, Mr. Benson's comment that perhaps every unit in a building could be allowed an ADU. Well, there are no provisions in these articles for additional parking. Where do all those people park? I just think there's a lot to think about here. And while I'm not saying, no, let's shoot this down altogether, let's think about not only the people who will be allowed to live in these ADUs, but their neighbors. Thank you very much. Thank you. The next speaker will be Barbara Thornton. I just wanted to jump in to say, I was hoping that there would be a discussion of item number three on the agenda tonight. But I noticed we jumped. Yes, Barbara. Sorry, we will. This is just public comment regarding agenda item number two. We will get to agenda item number three as soon as we're done with this public comment. OK. Thank you. Absolutely. The next speaker will be Steve Revillac. Hello, Madam Chair. Steve Revillac, 111 Sunnyside Avenue. I just wanted to say that I liked Posse's presentation a lot. If I am recalling my greenhouse gas survey of the town, about a little over 60% of our GHGs come from buildings and primarily residential buildings. So if those, with respect to getting to net zero and addressing greenhouse gas emissions, if our 100-year-old housing stock is not a liability already, it may very well reach that point in the future. So I think whatever we can do to encourage and allow more energy-efficient homes is something worth doing. To answer a question Mr. Lau raised rather directly, places where zoning would get in the way of making an energy-efficient home, my own personal experience, I need to replace, reside my house, deciding a shot. So I was looking at ways of adding insulation around the perimeter of the house, like a Larsen truss system or a remote wall. But that would involve going into a yard setback, which then it would require a variance. I don't think that I would make the cut for a variance, but I'm not leaning towards going through the headache of finding out. So something to think about in the future. Finally, regarding ADUs, I agree with Ms. Einstein in that the goal should be to actually have the units produced. And it is better to have a bylaw that allows ADUs to be created than one which merely exists on paper. Thank you. Thank you. The next speaker will be Colleen Cunningham. Hi, it's actually Stuart Morrison, her Colleen's husband, Kensington Park. Just a quick note on the ADU proposal. So Barbara here is talking to her book as an architect. The question I have is what she talks a lot about how wonderful it will be to have family members, children and parents live in these accessory dwellings. Everybody who's on this call knows that what will actually happen is that it'll turn a green light on for people to turn their garages into dwelling space for students, for tough students, for example. And so I'd like to call the bluff here and say, well, what protections would be put into place in order to prevent these units from becoming just free market rentals or B&Bs, as when Elle Evans pointed out, an excellent point. All of a sudden there will be B&Bs in everybody's garage. Are you willing to put a law into place that these units will only be rented to family members? And or would you be willing to put a law into place per John Warden's suggestion that actually there be rent camps placed on the units in order to ensure affordability? Because if these things aren't met, then the reality is that the accessory dwellings will just turn into essentially cash cows for people that have garages and turn them into dwelling units. And then once the garage has become dwelling units, then you have a problem with parking where people will start to ask for variances where, well, gee, we don't want to all park in the same driveway. So now everyone wants to park on the street and that will be something that the town will have to deal with. So I think that people may have strong point that there's a whole can of worms being opened up here and a lot of the real practical questions that will place themselves before the town need to be answered before anything, any proposal like this is approved. Thank you. Thank you. The next speaker will be Philip Tedesco. My name is Philip Tedesco, 74 Park Street, number two. I just wanted to speak in support of the ADU proposal. And I thought it was great that this one's coming forward to be as of right. And I agree with everyone who spoke in favor of taking a more critical look at the restrictions to ask whether these are really needed and whether the fears and safeguards that people are advocating are really things we need to be afraid of if we look around at places, not just around Massachusetts but around the country that have adopted ADUs, whether these towns and communities have been ruined or whether they've provided many opportunities for people to age in place and stay in their town, for graduates to return to town, for people starting out to move to town. When we first moved to Arlington about 10 years ago, we were able to find a small apartment for a couple that was moving to Australia for two years for work. And we were looking for a small apartment in town. An ADU would have been a great option for us with a small baby. And we've been able to now be here for 12 years. I think that in general, the fears are overstated and the goal should really be to look at the benefits that these will provide existing residents and their families over time. Thanks. Thank you. The next speaker will be Joanne Preston. Joanne, did you still have a comment? It looks like not. We can certainly do. There you are. I thought Jenny would unmute me. I didn't realize I was still muted. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you, Joanne Preston. 42 Mystic Lake Drive. I thank Mr. Cunningham for bringing up. What I'm going to introduce and that we have to be careful not to attach myths. To. And have them influence housing policy. I have a specialty in gerontology. Because we. We have to be careful. We have to be careful. We have to be careful. We have to be careful. It doesn't mean that the extended family is all together. In the modern family. And I think we've all experienced that. Especially with the entrance of women into professions. And other jobs. Is. In the morning. Everybody leaves. And they go to work. They go to school. Sometimes even the family dog goes to. The senior citizen alone. In fact, they've been studies that have shown. Whole suburban neighborhoods. Have an isolated seniors. In various houses. And no one else is there. Until seven o'clock. When everybody comes home. So. What senior citizens. Suffer from most is isolation. And so I think that. Assisted living senior residences. Have become so popular. I don't think we can assume. That. Seniors want to live. In the same house or right next door. To their. To the nuclear family. So. And I don't know. Barbara, this is a different topic, but I think it's important to look at this. And I think it's important to look at this. The extent. Of. People in Arlington live alone. Well, is that alone in family houses? Or is a, are they living in one bedroom apartments? I think if we're going to start talking about. This is a wonderful. Aging in place for seniors. I think it'd be important to actually look at the demography. And look at the studies about. How do we do this? We should be an option for maybe some, but I think the vast majority. Want to live with others. That have similar interests. That have similar experiences. And we can see that happening now. So I think that senior residents. Would be a very good housing policy for. Arlington. Arlington, but nobody else seems to be supporting them. Thank you. Thank you. Are there any other members who was just speak on this topic? Seeing none, we will close public comment. And I just want to thank everyone for all of the. Productive comments and topics that were suggested. This is the beginning of the zoning warrant article process. So thank you again for your feedback. So we will close agenda item number two. And move on to agenda item number three. Which is the ARB pre-hearing process. Recommendation. Which was drafted and submitted by. Barbara Thornton. So Jenny, is there anything that you had wanted to. Mention before we ask Barbara to, to speak a little bit about her process recommendation. I don't have anything to say about this. I think it's meant to be a conversation with Barbara about her suggested suggestion about the process. It would be about, you know, a future process. So whether or not the board is interested in this and wants to, you know, visit it again in the future is. Maybe something that we do. Tonight. Great. Thank you. I believe she's still. Still on. Hopefully to talk about this. Great. So Barbara, if you are still with us. There you are. If you wanted to take, maybe a minute or two and just top line. I know we've talked about this briefly before. But again, for those members of the public who have joined us and for a refresher for the board. If you could just give a brief overview on, on goals and process, and then we'll move into a discussion. Yes. I think that the. ARB. And the planning department staff has a huge portfolio of projects that they work with all the time. And I proposed this to, to slot into your calendar. Sort of like counting back or counting forward the time between your likely to receive or hear about for the first time. Articles proposed to deal with zoning related issues that come under your purview. And when the moment comes where you have to. Vote to support or not support that. And it was painful for, I think, all of us. At the October 26th time. To hear that it couldn't be approved because there were questions that hadn't been answered. And there wasn't enough time left to answer those questions. To make the adjustments in the ADU article. So I'm hoping that by slipping in some deadlines and calling them whatever you want to call them, but I've kind of outlined them in this article. You can have pause points where you just say, have we heard from everybody? Has everybody that has. Submitted an ARB article. Related article. Has the board reviewed everything? Does anybody have any questions? Then go back and say. Is there any technical support that this writer needs? Then go back, et cetera, throughout the, throughout the process. So you don't get it into this sort of traffic jam at the pre time, time meeting month. With questions. Great. Thank you, Barbara. I agree. I think that. The compressed schedule in the fall was a challenge. For a lot of people, and I appreciate you. Bringing this forth in terms of providing an opportunity for us to talk about what an ideal. Scenario would look like. So I'm going to open this up to members of the, the board for, for comment and discussion. And I'll, I'll run through. Our, our roll call here and then see if there's any further discussion as well. So we'll start with. Ken. No, I really don't have any. Issues with this. I think it just. States and more formal process. And it assigns times. Where the process happens. I'm not sure. Can all these times be met or heard of just because of. Of different things. Depending on, you know, we're a voluntary board that meets twice a month. And it doesn't like it is not as. It is harder to follow sometimes exactly all this way through. I don't mind. Is this a guideline? I think this is a good thing. But I think it's very hard to adhere to sometimes. Based on. What projects we have coming up to here. Or, you know, good example was this pandemic. You know, it really. Unfortunately. Compressed everything. This. This last time that we went around for hearings. So. Yeah, I don't, I don't mind this. I think it's a good format to use and adopt. But I'm not sure we can adhere to it all the time. Just based on what we do. Thanks Ken. Jean. I'd like to thank Barbara for putting this in. I also, and I think all of us were. Disappointed about how compressed the schedule was in the fall. And additionally, as I've expressed before, I think there have been some other times. Where there has not been enough time. Between when we finally got to look at the proposed changes. To the zoning bylaw. And when we had to take a vote. And there really wasn't enough time to do. Some iteration. So I'm not sure if this timing would all. Always work, but I think. What would be helpful for us in the future. And maybe we can pilot it this time. Is. Figure out when we're going to need to put in our report to town meeting. This year in the spring. And start working backwards. So that we know. When we want to have the hearings, when we want to see. Main motions. And maybe we'll ask people to present motions sooner. So I think. I just suggest that maybe that's the way we should pilot it this time. And then put some dates in and see if it's possible to. To meet those dates. Thank you. David. So. I'll also thank Barbara for. Putting something down on paper to. To. Go through with us. I think as most of you know, I have. Frequently. I'll find that we don't have enough time. Particularly on zoning proposals. To do the kind of process that I think we would all. Like to do. And. That would provide. Better opportunity for working with the proponents. Of. Warrant articles. For getting more public input. In an earlier stage in the process. And. Or. Crafting. Zoning proposals. That. We have more confidence. Meet the needs of the community. And. And have. Broad support in the community. And I would actually advocate for pushing this back even further. You know, and. Starting this process with. With our. Proponents. 12 months. Before. Before. A town meeting. Because for them. I mean, with possibly rare exceptions. Zoning articles are not emergencies. You know, we, we could afford to take more time. To get this done in a more orderly fashion. And I think achieve. Better results. So. I. I would. I don't. Completely agree or even understand all the pieces of. Barbra's proposal. But. But I think. The concept of. Putting in place. Really substantial timeline. For getting these done. Would be very beneficial to us. And to the project. Thank you, David. Katie. So I really appreciate a lot of. What Barbara pulled in here. And in particular, I really liked the idea of clarifying what in advance constitutes good community outreach. Because that seems like a big goal of the board. Something that's understandably incredibly important to our community. Something that is enshrined in state law. Right. Like this is something that. It's really critical for us to get right. And I think we'd get better zoning bylaws. And better public input on projects. If we had good community outreach. But I think the key is making sure we define what exactly. That looks like and what, what it means for something to be good. And because I think it can often be a moving target. And that people who are opposed to. Proposed changes in zoning will say perpetually. That we haven't sent something like that. Far enough in advance. We haven't informed people enough. And sometimes it's true. Right. Like sometimes that's a really valid critique. And I think as a board, we can insulate ourselves from some of that. And also just be better community members. If we really have a clear definition of what good community outreach looks like. And the second point I want to pick up on is this issue of. Sort of. How long. We should take to do some of these things and sort of what it means to delay policy change. Because delay privileges is status quo. And when we think about what a status quo looks like, it's not a neutral decision to delay policy change. It can have real consequences instead of moving solely on policies, even ones that are not super emergent. Can be deeply problematic and entrenched inequality. So I think just thinking carefully that we don't create two owners of bureaucratic processes. For this board to make policy change. I think it's also useful, but I overall, I really appreciate Barbara coming trust with some suggestions, given that I share her concerns that the fall was a frustrating process. I think we all felt that way. And probably a lot of it was pandemic driven, but it's useful to think about ways we can improve. Thank you, Katie. Yes, I agree. Actually with the jeans comments about. You know, trying to pilot this in the spring by really calendar, calendaring out backwards from our. From our report and identifying where some of these milestones might be, might be met and how those to, to Kin's point, the fact that we only meet twice a, twice a month. And have all of the other items on our agenda together with this and really understand how this practically would be implemented as well. I think it would be. It would be great to perhaps at our next meeting, which is when we will be reviewing. Several of the, several of the. Articles that will warn articles that will be. Submitted. I think it would potentially be a good time for us just to also look at the, the calendar with. This kind of a. With these types of headings. Calendar back out from where we know we need to, to get to. Any other thoughts on. This proposal. Yep. Rachel. I'm just to, just a couple of things. One is we, we all boards and commissions have to report to town meeting in a certain timeline. So we always do that. It's, it's pretty much the same. Every single year. Except of course in the special town meeting scenario that we had. In the fall. And frankly, another special town meetings where it is sometimes up until. The day before town meetings. Which we, we can also provide a verbal report to town meeting. There's, there are other, you know, we, we choose to prepare the written report. And publish it and all of that. We also send it with a select board reports and other things. Usually in the mail. Obviously things have been different. Because of the pandemic. But I will say that there's, there's typically this happens. The first thing that happens. In April is when we vote on the report to town meeting. So whenever that usually is, is when we sort of work from that date, roughly. Just to give everybody a sense of the timing, but it does sometimes. Necessitate depending upon where we're at with our hearings and the conversations and the deliberations. It sometimes necessitates an additional meeting. In April, but that's obviously a tricky month for a couple of reasons or a number of reasons. One is there's an election. Two, there's. You know, a holiday and usually a week off. That occurs that month. And then three, there's precinct meetings. So it's good for us to be prepared and ready to go. By that first Monday meeting in April. And usually we are, but some of the, so that, that's usually the date that the, that we're working backwards from and staff do this anyway, because as part of the, the required legal notification process, we work our way into a hearing schedule that works. That's also what happened with the fall town meeting. So I, I understand that it was. An agonizingly short timetable in the fall and with multiple back to back hearings and in many ways, but it was because of the date that the special town meeting was set. And we had to work with, within that, that framework and the public, the notification, the legal notification that is required under chapter 40. To let people know about, you know, town meeting zoning warrant article. Sorry. Zoning warrant articles and their hearings. So I mean, we were, we were, we're bound by that. Those rules. So, you know, looking at this, those would be just things to think about that. It's always going to be a tight timeline, but it's actually always going to be a tight timeline. So when we ask for more time, or anybody asks for more time, I think understanding what we want to do with that time is really critical. Because it does send a, a mixed message on the one hand. The board appears to want to advance zoning. And particularly zoning that is in, in support of, in the fall town meeting. So that's, that's, that's, that's, that's what we're going to be doing. So that's what we're going to be doing. And particularly zoning that is in, in support of the master plan, let's say, or any of our other plans. But hopefully primarily the master plan. But then on the other hand, after some process occurs, when we come to a point where we're in the middle of a town meeting process, that town meeting process generally looks the same every single time. And we're all constrained by the same timeline, but that's where we're going to be. So that's what we're going to be doing. And that's what we're going to be doing. And that's what we're going to be doing. And we're going to be doing some reviews and literature that needs to be reviewed and weighing and understanding the benefits of, of things, or the negatives and the positives, et cetera. These are all the same things every single year. So I guess from the staff perspective, we really need the board to really understand what it is. We need to know what you're looking for in the needing more time. So I don't know where, what to do with that information. But I think, and I'm just speaking from a staff perspective, but I think that because this is coming from somebody who has been a petitioner, there's clearly also a need to provide that feedback to other people as well, rather than three weeks prior or one week prior or the night of the hearing saying not enough time was given to the board to deliberate or to the public to deliberate when actually, when the time table is set up exactly the same time table every single time. So, so I guess I'm, I'm certainly in support of this, but I just want to throw to back to everybody here that the reality is the time table is always the same. We're constrained by the same issues every single time that we do these things. So let's just be clear about what we're looking for. When we want to get it done ID and in the ideal world, because there's always that perfect scenario, there's always that perfect reality of all of the things that we've just talked about. I talked about and others have mentioned. So I'm, I'm expressing support for this. I didn't have anything initially to say, but looking at it a little bit more carefully, I think those would be some things that just for the board to be aware of when we commit to a timetable. That means we're committing to whatever processes before us. And then we're going to be able to, we're going to be able to get the work done. We're going to be able to get the work done. We're going to be reviewing and digesting material and asking questions as, as often as we can. To get the work done. So Jenny, thanks for, for that clarification. If, if I may, I, I think. Between what you just laid out for us in terms of the, the regularized timeline that typically happens and what Barbara is suggesting here. I think that there's a lack of understanding from those who don't go through this every year as to what is about to happen. And to Barbara's point in terms of the way that she's laid this out, what stage I'm in at each, at each, at each step in the process and what the timeframe for that looks like. So again, I think looking at this year as. As an example, if there's a way for us to, to take what Barbara set out and then put that against the, the regularized process and, and really create almost a manual, if you will, for this is what you expect. This is what's going to happen. You know, we know that there are additional meetings that get added here and there based on the volume that we're dealing with every year. But to make it. More transparent. And, and easier to, to digest for, for those who are engaging at different, at different stages with different knowledge levels. Both from Barbara and from other people who have, have chimed in that's, that's what I seem to be hearing is the, is the need, not necessarily to follow the exact time that Barbara has laid out here. But I'm curious to see if others on the board have, have other thoughts on that, David. Oh, respond to some of the other comments that I've been thinking about. So I appreciate Katie's point that there's a cost to delaying policy decisions. And I'm not proposing that we take. An infinite amount of time or not necessarily long amount of time. To make change. But as, as Jenny said, the time, the timeline around town is, is the same every, every time. And having been on the board for a number of years now, I can say with a pretty high level of confidence that we're always working with about a 12 week timeframe with respect to, to town meeting. And when we are talking about, about zoning proposals, experience and that that is not enough. And part of it may be that this is the natural start of the, of the warrant season. So proponents are putting their articles together and saying, okay, this is the beginning, but for proponents to come to us with, with proposals now. And for us to decide, are we going to do something or that, or are they going to file a citizen article and then to work on getting the actual language together. For what the proposal really is and then doing public education about what the proposal is, get it garnering public input that may cause us to make changes to it and then go through the hearing process and then to get to the report that 12 weeks gets compressed really fast. And, and, you know, we've had multiple situations over the years where we have ended up making fairly significant changes to either ARB proposed or citizen proposed articles kind of the last minute right before, you know, during the hearing process. And, and that, that has not been an optimal process. And so I think we shouldn't, we shouldn't assume that we can, we've got 12 weeks now. So let's do the best we can and try to see if we can have kind of more orderly. I won't say orderly because it's always, there's always an order to it, but, but a more complete process within the same frame, we may need to next time around based on our experience. This time we may want to think about starting earlier, like a move it back a few weeks and see if that helps and maybe just incrementally try to find what is, what is the right time frame that lets us comfortably deal with these more complicated zoning issues in, in a better way. I just like to add on to what David said, I'm not quite sure what the right timeline is other than to agree with David and he's been on the board long and I have that there have been times when it's ended up getting so compressed at the end that I felt that another go at what the actual language of the main motion would have been would be much better. It sort of seems to me that we have some things that we should be doing. One is figuring out what's the best public policy for whatever either we are working on or the citizens propose warrant article is proposing. So that's one. The second is how to get good public input. But the third is how to craft the main motion because that often becomes part of the zoning bylaw so that, you know, it doesn't end up being ambiguous or hard to understand or contradictory along the way. And I think we are usually okay on sort of trying to figure out and figure out what we think is the best public policy for that particular issue. And we're usually okay on getting some amount of public input, but where I find that we could be better is the last piece. And we often, I felt I haven't had enough time to go through the actual wording of what the zoning bylaw change would be and feel comfortable with it before it got into the warrant article. So I'm looking for sort of, you know, the timeline that has all those pieces, but gives us more time on the last piece. What's the actual wording of the proposed amendments to the ZBI. And I know it's hard to fit in with all those other things. Rachel. Okay. So, Jean, I understand what you're saying. I think that. I know you were saying it's okay. Right. Rachel. I was sorry. I'm just apologize. An immuted type of way. Yeah. I read you. I did some lip reading. So what Jean, the thing is usually that language. Tweaking, if you will comes. When we're doing the actual hearings. When we're doing the meetings. Which are, you know, generally speaking, not always, but almost always late February and March. That's, that's basically the timeline of when that is happening. So unless you want to add more hearings. Or meetings in general to talk about. Those motions. I don't know when else. We would do it. And I'm, I'm, I'm actually, if it's okay, Aaron, if you have any thoughts about this, I think it's okay. I think it's okay. One thing that's laid out in, in Barbara's memo is this idea of a tech up technical pathway. It's in quotes. So I'm quoting. So if I think we can easily put together like a sort of the technical pathway with the timeline, we do that actually internally just for our own. Like. Get, you know, grasp of all of the things that we have to. Remember and do. But we can. We can do that. We can do that as part of the. The hearing process, but I think that we could do that, but I'm curious what you're. If you have any ideas about how to deal with that main motion, because usually we're crafting that language as part of the hearings. That's the time that that actually comes to be. Thanks, Jenny. I have one thought. That I think helps the timeline. I think it's really important when we have to submit a legal notice. And then when we have to prepare a porch town meeting, that's statute. So that's the requirements. But for example, you know, the annual town meeting warrant for 2021 opened on December 1st. I know we were still in special town meeting so that with a little bit of a headache with all of that, but I might suggest. The final date of the hearing. But we'll be back in a minute. And hopefully that will be the final date of the hearing. The meeting that the article opens. To get to this 12 weeks out from a hearing. And it's not exactly 12 weeks out, but it's, it gives it a little bit more time is to put a note out there to the community for people that are thinking about more in articles or thinking about zoning on their free time to, you know, at that time approach the staff. we furthered the conversation around the ABU article is that we have a couple of more meetings where the board can informally talk with petitioners about their thoughts and about their proposals in order to get to the point that statutory, and I can't change that timeline, have the item or the article at that point in a more prepared version for lack of a better word, but something that has already been thought about by the ARB and can move through the process a little bit more straightforward because the members have already had the chance to lay their eyes on an article. That doesn't necessarily help the things that are coming from the staff, but at least it starts the conversation with potential petitioners earlier in the process, particularly those petitioners that desire the feedback from the board. You know, other petitioners might just say, well, this is what I'm going to do, so I'm going to submit this, but at least things like Posse's proposal gets a little bit more time in front of you, and then you're not surprised going into a hearing on the first week of March being like, what's this? I have all these thoughts and all these questions and I want all this is this other information, so that was my thought in terms of being able to extend the timeline a little bit. That doesn't necessarily help or answer the question that Jenny posed to me, but it might be one way to think about how this event gets calendar going into town meeting. Thank you, Erin. That was very helpful, Jean. Something to think about is a lot of times we don't see what the actual, we see the large article, but we don't see what the actual proposed wording change to the zoning by-law is until sometime in March. And it just seems to me that one way to maybe give us more time and that piece of it is to try to get those sometime in February possible. So if it's the citizen learn articles, we can at least ask people if they could get us something. And if we put out like working backwards from when our report is in, is due in April, this working backwards and figure out is there sometime in February where we can at least request it from the citizen proponents if they're willing to give it to us. So we can see it ahead of time, but I think we should make it a commitment among ourselves that any articles that the board is going to be putting forward that we have at least draft wording for how to change the by-law in February. It was a lot of times we haven't gotten that until sometime in March. And I think that's one of the reasons why I felt the compression in the schedule. So if we can move those pieces to February this year, for example, I think that might help. Jenny always, we always ask petitioners to provide this to us. So it's, I think kind of building off of what Aaron said, maybe sort of announcing it as early as possible. Also, most times people communicate with town council, but don't always include me in the process, even though it actually says in the warrant article packet to talk with both of us. This is not a, it's not a big deal because it could be either way, but it does present a little bit of a problem. When I haven't been part of it, then we're receiving something usually the week after the warrant articles have been filed. And then we're sort of reacting and doing the things that we need to do to file a legal notice, making sure that we have all the right information. And then we're pursuing the information we need for the board. And that's the part that often takes us actually a lot of time, especially if it's not the, obviously not the articles that we're filing. But I think the, Aaron, your suggestion about trying to do this as early as possible once the warrant opens is probably, that would actually help a lot. And when we started to have this conversation in December, that was partially the intent, as well as to have the conversation about industrial zoning this time around. But I think we can try to figure out ways to queue that up earlier, of course, in the future when appropriate. But I guess my takeaway from this proposal is that perhaps if this is responsive, let me know. But I think picking up the main suggestion is sort of laying out the technical pathway for petitioners and sort of what that process looks like and when specific pieces of the proposal will be evaluated and discussed. I think we can easily slot that into the timeline that we always prepare. And then communicate that. Is that, Barbara, does that? I know that's not like everything in what you've put forth here for discussion, but that's my main takeaway. Yeah, Denny, I think you've really hit the nail on the head. I'm listening to this and I'm so grateful for this really excellent conversation among you all to think about how this can be improved. And I don't expect any time warp machines to come out of this, but I'm thinking of it from my perspective and if I had known 12 weeks ahead of time that I was supposed to write a main motion and what that main motion was supposed to look like and if there were some rules and if I knew that what they were, it would have been a very different experience because I didn't write the main motion for the bill that proceeded through or the article that proceeded through the football field town meeting. I don't, you know, so this was a surprise to me and focusing on the technical stage would really help the applicant or the petitioner speaking as one. Thank you. Great, thank you, Barbara. And thank you, Jenny and Erin. I agree, Jenny, with the next step of laying out the process for the technical pathway and then also in the future, per Erin's suggestion, as soon as the call goes out, making sure that people know that as early as possible, we'd love to hear what people are thinking about proposing, give them feedback so that the first time they're hearing feedback from the ARB, which again, we heard complaints about this year was at the hearing. So we wanna make sure that we're giving people potential feedback as early as possible. Anything else? Rachel? Sorry, I can't see everyone, but please go ahead. Yeah, I'm going off topic a little bit, but let's say we get a proposal from the public. How do we go about outreach to, the public on their zoning proposal? You know how we talked about, well, we used to have hearings or have different precincts. I don't know, maybe 10, 12 years ago, maybe Jennifer, we had different precinct meanings and everything else, and had outreach to the public about what these proposals mean. And I thought that was really nice, what we did there. And then each board member took on different precincts. We did that a while ago. And then, but that does stuff well for us that we wanna put up for zoning proposals. But if someone else came up with a proposal, how's that gonna form into that kind of public outreach? Because they can't do that. They don't have the resources that say we might have. I think it's something that we should talk about. Yep, and we've done that pretty much every year, except for last year. So it just last year was different. Spring town meeting was not really a full town meeting. And I think we've already beat up virtual town meeting enough. So I mean, I think in the special town meeting, so I think moving forward, there will be precinct meetings again. We can talk about how to approach that with petitioners. We also would be working with Envision Arlington on usually they have an all precinct meeting. And I have been talking with the co-chairs of Envision Arlington about a way to get a little more integrated into that process so that we can discuss zoning proposals in a more proactive way, which is what town meeting members you typically request anyway. But you're also referring to the neighborhood meetings that we typically do, which is usually there's four meetings, neighborhood being just quadrants of Arlington. It's not exactly neighborhoods. And then inviting precincts to those locations. That's what we've done for the prior three years up until last year. So we can certainly explore something like that again. And it doesn't matter if it's the air base proposals or a citizen petition. We've talked about both at those types of meetings and if the petitioners is present then they can also participate. But that feels like something that could be addressed though. I think, yeah. And also we also had meetings where it was just the department heads where we just had a before the pandemic and Zoom but we had this department head meetings where we met with them and had their input too. That was, I think that was very helpful. Yep, yeah. And depending upon the types of proposals that we're talking about, I always speak with my peer department heads about what's coming up at town meeting. We usually spend at least one or two department head meetings just talking about that. No, but we're at the board. Department heads coming to the board? That's what we did a while back. Yes, where we had a meeting at the school Yeah, that, okay, right. That was a slightly different kind of meeting. It wasn't just limited, it wasn't just talking, that was zoning recodification is what you're talking about. I know what you mean though. Yep. Well, anyway, I'm glad to integrate any of these ideas into future outreach and of course in discussion with petitioners when it's relevant. Okay, I'm just bringing it up from past experience. Yeah, those are good experiences to reference. I agree. I'm sorry, we didn't have that last year and we probably won't be the same, the spring town meeting but we'll see what happens in the fall. That's fine. Any other comments or questions before we close this and move into open forum, right? Well, thank you so much Barbara for putting this together and for spurring this discussion. I think it was very worthwhile. Great, all right. So with that, we will close agenda item number three and move into open forum. So any member of the public wishing to speak, please use the raise hand function. And as a reminder, you will have three minutes. I'm trying to open my participant button here. Give me one second. Here we go. So you'll have three minutes. Please remember to state your first and last name and your address for the record. So the first person will be Colleen Cunningham which I think is actually Stuart. I guess it's Stuart or some Kensington Park. I just wanted to say that this process document is excellent. I mean, having a clear and well-defined process by which things go through the board helps everybody because it means that petitioners know what to do and it also means that, you know, the reputation board is good because everyone knows what's going on. So one thing I wanted to suggest is that, you know, you have a set of time-based, the document seems to concentrate on setting enough time in order to have the relevant discussions. And that's a good thing. An equally important thing that would be good to actually write down in the document is, I think Barbara started it. She asked the question, what is the public input that you wanna take? And so really in the document, there ought to be, you know, on this date or 12 weeks before this milestone, you have to have public input and it's advertised in this following way. And, you know, it's left open for these many weeks and public input can be this, that and the other type and there will be this or that meeting. So actually whatever the process is, having it written down so it's clear and explicit would help a lot and it would help, you know, ensure trust in the public, public trust in what the board is doing. Thank you very much. Thank you, excellent suggestion. The next person to speak will be Don Seltzer. Thank you, Madam Chair. Don Seltzer Irving Street. While we're on the topic of process, I'd like to refer back to earlier this evening when there was extensive discussion of the process by which Barbara Thornton would work closely with members of the board and the planning department on crafting the details of the ADU article. I hope it wasn't meant to imply that this was some sort of exclusive access that other residents wouldn't be welcome to join in this discussion. And after all, there was a second citizen petition article on ADUs presented before the board this fall. So to clarify this working with the board and planning is that open to other members of the public? Yes, that's exactly what we were just talking about that we were going to encourage that by ensuring that, again, for Aaron's discussion that as of December 1st, when the warrant article opens in the future and obviously this year, we are encouraging people to bring their thoughts and suggestions to the board so that we can continue to work with them as they craft their articles. Sounds good, thank you. Thank you. The next speaker will be Patrick Hanlon. There you go. I'm sorry, it took a little while to unmute. My name is Patrick Hanlon on Park Street. I'd like to comment and endorse the initiative that Barbara has on changing and making the procedure work better towards getting the product at the end and in particular not having hiccups at the end where you discover that the problem may not be a policy problem. The problem that you have may be a technical problem of drafting, but the ordinance is, the bylaw is sufficiently complicated that those can't be resolved very quickly. And Gene, I think, has put his finger precisely on the difficulty that proponents of anything that goes beyond a certain level of complexity have in actually having a technical product that is a well-drafted statute by the time it gets to you. And there's not enough time to fix that because typically all of that emerges sort of late in the process. Arlington is a little different from most places because we have very vague in general warrant articles and in many towns, you pretty nearly have to have the main motion as the warrant article to begin with. We've, the advantage of that is we preserve flexibility until the end, but the disadvantage to that is that you don't actually nail things down until the very end when the clock is about to run out. On the select board side, this is where Doug Heim does a fabulous job of working on making things into motions and sometimes in actually negotiating with the applicants, with the petitioners who in order to make something that is, that works for them and is more satisfactory or more likely to be approved by the select board. There really isn't an equivalent way of getting technical help here even though the statutory background is actually much more complex than most of the bylaws that Doug has to deal with. Doug is not really as, he obviously knows a great deal about zoning but there's also a huge amount to know and Doug doesn't deal with that every single day. At some point along the line, some applicants or some petitioners, some proponents need help in just figuring out some basic things like there's a difference between duplexes and two family and those are not immediately apparent to the average person and you don't wanna find yourself at the end trying to deal with the problem of just getting it technically right at the point where you really are trying to deal with the policy and changes at the margins. So I'd encourage you to think a little bit more about how it is that individual petitioners on citizen articles could get benefit or could get the help from the town in crafting an appropriate article so that you at least don't have those problems unnecessarily not because you need to put them in the warrant article but because you need to have something specific to talk to early on. One way of doing this, our process, everybody always looks at a deadline and you figure, well, that's when you have to act. If you look as Aaron suggested at December 1st is the key day, that's the point where you need to begin thinking about it and fixing exactly what you want to do. It may very well be that a useful thing to do for this and on the other side as well is simply say sometime around Thanksgiving have an outreach to the public about the process and say, look, you can be entitled so you wanna file a zoning warrant article this is what you need to do and go through this. And so at the very least nobody is surprised long way down the line that they have to do a main motion. So I suggest at least give some consideration to the practical way of going beyond the statutorily required series of notices and make it easier for people to avoid tripping over their shoe springs when they should really be tripping over the policies that they're proposing if they are going to trip at all. Thank you. Any other members of the public wish to speak? Okay, seeing none, we will close open forum. Let's see, and that brings us to the close of our meeting. Any other items from the board before we take a motion to adjourn? Okay, seeing none, do we have a motion to adjourn? Motion to adjourn. Second. We'll take a roll call vote. Ken? Yes. David? Yes. Dean? Yes. Katie? Yes. I am yes as well. Thank you all. I think this is a really productive discussion tonight and really appreciate it. Have a good evening. Bye, thanks. Happy New Year. Happy New Year.