all right ladies and gentlemen i would like my name is liz allison i'm chair of the planning board i'd like to call the december third meeting of the planning board to order begin as usual by introducing my colleagues fiasco and our staff person jeffrey wheeler the now we have a relatively full agenda this evening i'm going to begin by taking two items which are five minutes or less simply to take them off the agenda and then we will move into the applicant's request to modify the conditions of a one year extension of the special permit previously granted to the for the construction of a christian village we will then move ahead to discussion of one twenty two waverly street twenty six twenty eight dante avenue we did hold the as all of as as we all know since we were there we held the public discussion of single residencies sone just before thanksgiving we received many useful suggestions we are working with the citizens group to the belmont citizens for responsible sounding to take those into account as we modify the what we will be bringing to town meeting we have not prepared a redraft as yet so we will not we want to prepare present the ideas and the redraft at the same time we'll be doing that on december fifteenth secondly and this is an internal item that we because we we are a planning board in addition to being a special permit granting group beginning in the new year i i would like to see to schedule and these are things that we can schedule because they and their are we we choose the issue use at each meeting to take up one of the larger planning issues or the issues that we promised time meeting we would take a look at like just have a discussion of what those issues should be on the fifteenth but just to and i'll be looking for  suggestions but i wanted to throw out a few suggestions just to give some sense and this is think of this is a one person brainstorming session which is not the ideal size for a brainstorming session but just to as a planning board we may wish to invite the developer in to talk with us about what is happening and how it is going and how if at all his plans for the  development are change the fact that it's it happened it's now not making the headlines it's a little bit like you know ukraine hasn't been solved it's just not making the headlines anymore so that would be one of the  issues we should make a decision about the extent to which we want to take up the n p t issue an issue obviously that's something we do in court a nation with the board of selectmen because it's so important town wide we may want to agenda that at some point we have we we are both responding to and shaping real estate trends in vilma we may want to bring have a joint meeting with the assessors at which we discuss that so we get some perspective on it  have a comprehensive plan which was written some time ago now i think carl you're probably the only person here who was on the board when it was put together i'm not suggesting that we take a new comprehensive plan but there are some sections that we might want to take up so that under the big topics with respect to going back and taking a look of the work that we've done we probably want to step back and look at all our decisions in the general residence district to date and to see where are we going we said we would come back to town meeting and try to propose more a little bit less rule of you know more rule of law less rule board and in order to do that we need to start going back and looking at what we in some inductive way looking at what we decided we we've we've always put conditions on you know at at a minimum we've said plans is built we've got to see plans is built not just plan to submit it since we've done that maybe we should go back and review that with in conjunction obviously with community development the concept of neighborhood has done has been a part of our deliberations in all these cases we probably want to go back and look at how that has worked and bring some perspective to it and obviously we will need to keep moving ahead with single residency so those are you know i'm not looking for any discussion on that this evening but just when we meet on the fifteenth i'd like to have a discussion about what are the broader issues that we should try to agenda so that they actually happen and how as we reflect on what we've done in the single in the general residence district what should we be taking a look at and anything else that is consistent with our charter an it right and with that so that that concludes the discussion of the items five and six on our agenda  i am pretty much guessing that update on potential cases and committee reports will be very short review and approval of minutes i have asked jeffrey if at our next meeting we can have as you know we're somewhat behind in the minutes i've asked if we can believe we can have the meeting the minutes for tonight the seven the seventy for the last three meetings and we'll go through those approved those post those and then start working our way through the all right and with that we are ready to move back to the item two on the agenda the applicant request to modify the condition of the one year extension of the special permit i'm going to ask the issues in the applicant and i believe mr starr mr donahue have you brought a contractor with you this evening i will because we understand that the question of the timing and reality of this project is important having i think it would be useful to hear from the guy who's actually going to move the machines on to the site stick speak from the microphone introduce yourself even if at this point you feel you know law and production anyone here you do for the audience at home yes of course my name's chris starr md developer of cushing village i wanted to first start out by saying by apologizing for having to come back and to ask you for yet another request  you know we're deeply sorry about having to do this there were some basically the simple fact is that there were some lender requirements that we needed to address that went on to unaddressed in our last last planning board hearing so unfortunately where before you today but we're hoping to get through those together i can't begin to tell you how much each of these delays really impacts me i mean i have seen the frustration of people and pushing squarer and and i've seen their the residents and business owners and coaching square and i certainly up with eyes with that with what they're going through right now and i share that and i share that frustration so we're really committed to making a change  cushing square and getting christian village done while i'm apologetic about our requests which i am there are some benefits that are going to be offered up in this request that i think that will will help reassure the town that we will be completing the project so mark will go into that in more detail and finally i want to i want you to know that you know myself and my family are committed to to meeting every milestone that we promised you committed to closing on the eighteenth as we describe and were deeply committed to developing and completing the project so you know we have the money committed to go forward and we have the plans ready to go and we we to work with you to get beyond this and i'm finally want to thank you so much for all of your hard work over the years and your understanding your your patience and ites i'm sure  won't go unrewarded because i know this has been a long road for everybody so thank you for that madam chair members of the board mark donahue in behalf of the applicant let me first echo chris's comments as far as apologies when i left here on nov seventeenth after uni and your unanimous vote i thought we were all set as far as zoning was concerned  i was wrong we didn't do a good enough job in closing the loop in communication with all of our lenders and i certainly have some responsibility for that and i apologize therefore for taking more your valuable time before you deal with  s unfortunately that is where we are we have some realities we have dealing with the major lender of wells fargo and they have certain requirements to make sure that on day one when they invest to begin fifteen million of a sixty three million dollars total investment that they can make sure that the special permit can be effectuated because the only way to get the fifty million back is to finish the project so you have a the modification before you that that we took the liberty of preparing to try to address that that has been reviewed by the lenders so we at least know this time that we won't have any second questions about further edits about what it does basically is it asked for three different types of modifications to your unanimous approval of november seventeenth first it adds a force majeure provision that provides that the milestones that are set forth within the permit will be extended in the event of ordinary or extraordinary circumstances the important thing is those circumstances as the language is drafted have to be on the beyond the reasonable control the developer it doesn't give the developer a second bite if he fails to prepare if he doesn't do enough planning if he's trying to get better pricing or anything like that it deals with extraordinary circumstances such as whether it has read the recitation in there unusual highly unusual events that we don't think would happen and frankly we think it simply articulate or expresses what would be the practice that we came to you and told you what you already knew of extraordinary circumstances we have a logical discussion about that in any event the second change but that is within there is what i refer to as the lender saving provision as i said the lenders are going to be fully committed by an investment in north of fifteen million dollars on day one they need the special permit to survive in order to go forward so what the lender saving provision provide is that in the event they inform you that they have exercised the myriad of rights they have against the developer due to the developers failure to perform under their agreements with them in these milestones are embedded in that obviously then that that that time the milestones no longer the deadlines for the milestones no longer apply that does not suggest that the permit falls into a black hole just the opposite what it suggests is that simply that the requirement that the lenders in some fashion have to make substantial use of the permit within the twelve month period that's afforded by your by your per your decision still applies and these actions either constitute substantial use the not so they have to do that but it does give them some leeway from those front and requirements so they can still get those done that doesn't leave it in a black hole because what you've basically traded since the overall goal at that time for the community is assumably to have the development done you trade a local developer for the second or third largest bank in the country and therefore economic ability is going to be a question the project is going to have to get finished so that they can get their fifth of whatever money they already get invested into it at that time that's not to suggest in any fashion but the developer is walking away from those milestones as chris said the milestone still work as you'll hear from mr pepper goddess of the work as far as his schedule with more than enough room to spare so those commitments that we made on nov seventeenth from our side not continue the simply give the lenders yet another way to make sure they can protect themselves and the third rate modification is essentially to move the closing date which is a milestone that is not subject to any of the other provisions to buy one week we have frankly lost time as we went through this loop of trying to close the communication with the lenders trying to convince them that the decision was fine and we did lose some time as far as scheduling is concerned is my understanding that if we're able to inform the two lenders tomorrow morning that you have approved this modification that people are talking about closing on the tenth or eleventh that the reality is a closing of this nature takes more than a couple of hours it's not quite the same as well as a host refinances documents they have to be assembled they come from a number of different locations because all the lenders are not in boston there are third party documents such as the documents with the town of belmont that have to be put in escrow under specific escrow provisions those documents with the tenants and the like and so we're asking for the additional time so that if it happens the following week as far as closing which in in our parlance means everything done and actually recorded the registry of deeds we have a little bit of leeway as far as that's concerned well we certainly hope we don't need it or not i'm planning to have it no one's talking about needing it but at least they have some breathing room gives everybody some some ability to do that and so with that it may be helpful for the board to hear what would happen if we're able to proceed based upon as tony papadopoulos is the president i believe or construction the general contractor selected for the site and so what i'd like with your permission manage share is they have him describe that from the day he's informed that the property is closed in the finance is closed what happens next is some sort of sequence you can kind of see what the future holds i think that would be helpful for all con intent is to actually depending on what what transpires tonight is to start making the site safe beginning next week even prior to closing i've had discussions obviously with with with chris and his group with the lenders and we feel very confident that this closing is going to happen you know even the eleventh or shortly thereafter so we're right now of god more than fifty percent of the project under sub contract you are due in a short term assuming the closing happened on the eighteenth we would be beginning to mobilize equipment within the next few days  thereafter the first like you said we'll have the site safe and then we could start seeing heavy equipment mobilize on site and demolition would start within two weeks i would start taking on the buildings and  as we're going to start our excavations so that is all been scheduled we've had countless meetings with our subcontractors as well as the town departments and everyone's very aware of what our process is going to be categories one just being the changes necessary to reflect that this is yet again another amendment revision one is the change the closing date that mark just mentioned and then the really the two most substantive ones are the force majeure provisions and the provision that exempts the lender the lenders from milestones b c d and e is there a way that here as to that last one i guess i would just point out that when we discussed the the framework that was going to be proposed to the board in november originally what we suggested was an extension condition dani closing date and a six month extension we didn't actually ask for or have a lot of discussion about this these b c d any provisions i think because the lenders wanted to go to a year instead of six months the developer added these other in milestones to try to assure the board that the bellaver was committed to meeting those deadlines and that isn't changing that these would continue to apply to the developer i think that the only real change here is that the lenders really want the benefit of that one year in the event that there's a default i would point out just from the structure of this financing that we're talking about a very low probability event that they have the prospect that that lenders would be exercising the remedies before a foundation is even poured would probably require some economic catastrophe i think at this point so it's it's insurance that the  it's not really something more likely to have to contend with the force majeure language i just want to clarify that the amendment as approved by the board in november would have required the board if one of these deadlines was missed to have a hearing to then notify the building inspectorate of its belief that the permit had lapsed i think what this does is it does build in a little bit of flexibility if there are events beyond the beyond the developer's control that give the board a basis for saying no even though that deadline was missed we think there was good cause for that and that and and we are not going to make a lapse determination so i think these changes are  fairly consistent with the spirit of what we discussed in november and don't make any real dramatic practical impact on the project timeline and i'm happy to answer any questions  i'm wondering for the for the town members who are here if it would be helpful to take a specific example because that list of things that that list of possible delays we've all seen that happen on almost any project so what happens if bad weather delays a week what does that what does that do in this civic case well what it does in this first i'd just say that force majeure language is fairly typical of contractual force majeure language and it actually parallels what's in the land development agreement about what we have considered to be this context in the zoning context as i pointed out if there's a failure to meet a deadline the board would meet they would provide notice to the to the developer and also the another change to this notice to the lenders and as to whether the board should make a determination and notify the building inspector that the permit has lapsed if with with the force majeure language if the board board determines that the reason to for the missing of the deadline was because of one of these events beyond the control of the developer it would be appropriate for the board to say essentially no even though the deadline was missed it has not lapsed because two weeks needs to be added on to that period of time to reflect the delay caused by that event be on the developer's control the corner seat what what i'd like to say is you know my first reaction to the force majeure language you know to the conditions that suspend the time deadlines in this decision you know my first reaction was not favorable ok and and you know i think we're all frustrated to be here again tonight but then i i also think we have to look at this from a bigger picture and we have to say to ourselves ok what's best for belmont and what i tell you is as i read these changes and i reread these changes although they look extensive they are better for belmont and i'll tell you why none of these none of this proposed language f x the one year life of this extension not the force machine or not the default not the lender exercising remedies that one year time limit is still ticking but what it does do is if the developer misses one of the milestone conditions for the development to proceed boy we don't want the special permit to just terminate at that point we do want the lender to have the opportunity to come in secure the project take it over finish the construction your remedy proceed all of that is taking place under the umbrella law of that one year extension it's not going to extend the one year the only way that that one year gets extended if they come before you and request an extension and i think you know madame chair was pretty firm at the last hearing you know don't expect for the extensions from this for so i think it's we don't want to hold in the ground we don't want to have constructed foundation we do want this project to proceed and if for some reason this developer the applicant can't make it proceed it is good for belmont to have someone else step in and keep this project moving forward you know all within the time limit to the one year time limit of the extension so for this reason this language doesn't bother me and that's a look at the big picture i think it's better i think it's better  thank you does anyone have any questions from mr banks in that case as before we will not be going to the audience for comments but i would like to start with since on the board you were the one who does this in your recontracting he said actually i read contracts not necessarily special permits on a regular basis but i mean i certainly understand why the applicants here in needs this amendment to the special permits makes perfect sense from the lender's perspective i agree with sammy that i don't think that it's really impacting the timeline in any specific way it's not adversely affecting the residents of cushing square or of belmont as a whole and that the project is is going to proceed i mean i'm prepared to to vote to grant this amendment but but i would like to say that it's it has been difficult and frustrating because we are a public body that meets in a public forum and we have to have conversations in this way and you come to us right before you're about to blow a deadline because i understand you have a lot of people moving parts and not everyone's interests are aligned yet because you don't have all of your agreements in place but as i think lives suggested another factor in reaching out to the uplands developer i think it's going to be important and i'm going forward basis for us to have an ongoing dialogue and for you not to just come back to the planning board at the eleventh hour when you see something going off the rails or potentially going off the rails i think that we as a board and i think that community as a whole would like to be a prised of what's going on and if we're not seeing the appointments moving in a few days after the closing then you know i think that it's important for the community to know why and i know that early on we reached out  to a number of the businesses in cushing square and really trying to keep the lines of communication open and i think that that was well received and i think it's going to be very important for you want it going forward basis you know we're all going to be in this together i mean where the town is time signing the land development agreements and this is a partnership in a lot of ways going forward to develop this base and we i think need to make sure that the lines of communication are opening open so i can encourage the board says the board to figure out you know what works we all in our day jobs are engaged into a joint ventures and there are you know monthly conference calls to update everyone on or other forms of communication to keep  one apprised of what's going on so there aren't surprises and i think that the relationship going forward will be stronger if we can find a way to communicate in that way barbara have you have you any sense of the right frequent i think that's a very important idea do you have a sense of the what the appropriate frequency i don't i mean i don't know if and i'd like to hear from other members of the board whether it's you know you know once a month if we're meeting once a month i mean some of these some of these milestones are you know much closer together in time than that so that not really workable early on what what you laid out the earlier part of the planning board before we got into the topic for discussion this is something that we need to look back and review because we are going to have undoubtedly other projects like cushing village in the future and we need to be able to look at what worked what didn't and be able to incorporate that going forward big projects like this i don't know if it's a project managers role or a project management type of discussion or liaison from this board or through jeffrey but some frequency maybe monthly no less than quarterly perhaps they'll kind of get a sense and be able to communicate that to the community because there's a big project impacting a lot of people  and planning board i want to thank you as well we're focusing on the big picture propel mont thank you and we appreciate your counsel and mr hall as always we very much appreciate your counsel and clarification of the issues continue your conversations on the first floor all right we are now going to move to the public hearing on one twenty two waverly street  sit here through everything other members of the board as required repeal as they feel appropriate recuse themselves so we're going to have a just one moment while  ask if you could ask him to come in that would be excellent he noted that he was of water to one twenty two waverly he has asked that to recuse himself to avoid any appearance of a conflict of interest and of course the board as always wishes to err in the direction of a law we still wish to have a quorum of course in the direction of the making of having both the substance and the appearance clear discrepancy of one day in the initial advertisement of this it was really advertised meeting and exceeding the requirements but in light of that we are going to proceed follows we're going to formally open the hearing again and i will ask biography to read the notice notice of public hearing by the planning board on application for design and site plan review any special permit w design and flight plan review notices here by given that the belmont planning board will hold a public meeting on thursday december third two thousand and fifteen at seven pm in the board of selectmen meeting room for town hall work for fifty five concord avenue to consider the application of robert kalman for the following one designed by plan review for a single family drawing on lot b one and two a special permit with design and site plan review to subdivide the lot and to construct two single family dwellings on lot b two and b three respectively in order to construct three single family dwellings at one twenty two waverly street located in a general residence zoning district and if i may say very well we will turn then to a discussion amongst members of the board of the one of the elements that we had not previously discussed namely the landscaping plan  following that we'll turn to the applicant see if the applicant has anything in dish and he wants to present a we will then we can take my question is from the  board i will then go to members of the community in attendance who wish to speak to this issue and then it will come back to the board so very briefly the two revealed to this point  we have before us an application to could as as read to construct three homes one requiring be site plan review and two requiring side plan review and a special permit we had discussions of all three as well as the project as a whole before the board and a number of suggestions of were made to the developer arising out of th last meeting so we were and able to take them up at the meeting but could you take us through the list the jeffrey has read i believe all of the items that were mentioned are are now on those new set of plans except for the sliding door i think that's the only thing that's not there i don't think that is going to work but every other item that was mentioned including the the windows the little windows foundation windows and i think you mentioned house those are removed as well so we've addressed all of those concerns and made the changes thank you and i believe that me the the other that leaves moves us along to the next issue which is the landscaping plan and i believe joe and carl were going to look to two of you to begin with comments on  that the biggest thing that i noticed this is why is the street trees we have set a standard for development street twenty to twenty five feet apart and i think that this plan is short be three and a half to four certainly willing to work with the board on whatever they recommend for trees the landscape architect did speak prior to doing the plan with the tree warden tom walsh and had a conversation with tom and the tree lilac was one of the recommended trees from mr walsh and actually recommended to do a smaller version instead of a larger version of the street tree i'm willing to do whatever the board recommends that's what recommended to me from the architect from the tree  willing to do whatever the board would like did the tree warden give any reason for recommending a smaller tree the paschal reason is just the deterioration of the sidewalks that have been created throughout the town with the larger trees and all the larger maples are pushing up the the sidewalks in fact if we do not go with the sidewalks on the waverly terrace then in fact we could go with a larger tree where it wouldn't impact any sidewalk which certainly we could we could do and if the board needs additional trees in the front there would we want to do that that's not  actually move or scream that certainly if you'd like to write more more screening that's that's an easy fix to create that if you want to recommend any type  know i also want to note that there is a small fence in front of there as well it's really if you look there's a small fronts as far as a screen as well world of worlds i mean you've got some ashes that i see that you're going to be proposing and they're in the rear of the one you've got the two you've got a human being back there you've got another ash so i kind of like the staggering effect but if you could work with us to make them a little larger that would be great if you could do a three inch minimal rather than a two and a half inch because again the big homes the bank would like to of like them to like look like they belong have been there yeah so landscaping is going to be key so a larger plantings would be great what if we added another tree on the property i hate to put one on the corner there that's going to that'll impact that that corner corner view certainly but another one on waverly terrorists in between b want to be true that certainly is going to fit right there i don't see where another one's going to fit properly over the other side i don't mind putting them on the property someplace else i can see on the one on the side of the property we could squeeze one in on that side over there so it's not not the idea of not putting the trees in but i think we want to make them fit fit well as well know that's fine and those are going to switch to red maples  question is why would you why would you bring a great one but with the great hasn't been changed yet the grade is just spend just where the bond was taken out so that was just dug out all the concrete was out of there and where the house was just the foundation so the appearance of it is totally disarray right now you couldn't figure out what the grade is right there if you look at the back of the grade where the fence is about pearl street that is the actual grades which has never been touched and the grade next to next to the one that grade has not been touched that's that's actually the hay bales are sitting right there that that is the natural the natural gr so that those those two grades haven't been altered and as far as the height of the houses and all the some concern about that i think i think we've done a pretty good job as far as graduating the houses from left to right in a kind of a  pyramid style to go to blend then we do have some houses on you know on the maya but as on pearl street which do tower over my houses there they're probably forty feet and then the other one on waverly street waverly terrace has to be forty five feet so i think i don't think that the houses are aligned for the neighborhood the street does dip down going towards the west side of waverly terrace it does dip down a foot any did you wish to speak again would you like to speak to it and then we'll see if any questions from the board you just want to clarify on the elevations how how these are read i don't know if everybody understands orally how they are ok the board had asked me to go out and i hired a professional lance surveyor to survey a few of the houses and what he did was he took their ridges of their houses and the bridges of the houses that we're proposing and put in elevation and the elevation is from sea level that's actually the number it's one hundred twenty two feet hundred twenty nine feet above sea level so what he does is he sets out in the str sets a transit and shoots the ridge of the houses and gives you the actual ridge of those houses and i gave you a graph and showed you what they are now the actual neighborhood concern about the actual number that they see on the side of their house twenty two feet those and twenty twenty two twenty two and some change those numbers are from approximate grade the way that we do our ridge height is an actual from a a grade that we propose so on my plan i have an actual elevation that gives you a finite number the neighbors houses were not surveyed totally to give you an an average grade of allots an average rate would have to be provided by going from the rear of their lot the front of the lot in the size of the lots i wasn't asked to do that and the actual number of say twenty two feet is really not a relevant number that number could be twenty five feet it could be eight hundred feet it doesn't really matter i think what you're looking for is the actual ridge which is the top of the house and that's what you're trying to compare house to house to house and i've provided that discussion from residents which which i appreciate i x having looked at the volume of e mail traffic that cross jeffries desk i expect that there will be some discussion i would and we are eager to hear that i would offer one observation about the e mail traffic  that and much of the e mail that was provided was indeed very thoughtful and respectful of our planner and that's respectful correspondent is a very useful thing in civic dialogue with that is there anyone in the audience who would like to comment knows like many others i'm concerned about the height and mass of this new development on waverly terrace i'm chairman used stated on nov seventeenth at the morning meeting that you had driven by three eighteen trip hello rode a development that was recently approved by this planning board and found that the development more is much larger and more imposing in reality than it appeared in the submitted drawings you may recall that i was at that and spoke in opposition to the size and mass of that building it was precisely for this reason that i asked the board to request a visual representation of this new development within the context of a budding properties i was hoping this kind of visual would provide the board and the res a more accurate depiction of just how large they would appear when built however i find the additional drawings provided by the developers in response to this request do not provide the clear depiction i had hoped for for one thing being two dimensional they didn't give us the full sense of just how large these structures will be in relation to the neighboring houses in addition we  did question the drawings accuracy in terms of one the abutting property at nineteen waverly terrace is represented as being twenty two feet high it's  who who is the owner of the property has confirmed the measurement is in fact nineteen feet eight inches high similarly my home at thirty waverly terraces twenty feet eight inches in height not the twenty two feet reported on those drawings and leslie the drawing of the abutting house nineteen waverly terrace and lots b one and b two seem to indicate that all the houses at least on that flat map all the houses appear to be at the same grade level and we just look at the roof line my understanding is that the these proposed properties will actually set on higher grade thus requiring the retaining walls and the front foot we didn't feel we really got the picture we were hoping for there is a quote in our zoning by life if you don't mind photographs it sixty five point three photographs or other readily available data concerning the location and size of structures on lots adjacent to or visible from the lot under construction in order to provide a neighborhood context for the development under consideration and that really was what we will looking for for both new houses on waverly terrace the developers are applying almost the maximum watt coverage allowed according to section sixty a scale of building the building shall be cited in construction constructed in a manner that is consistent with the scale of other structures in the neighborhood through the use of appropriate massing we're not expecting nor are we asking for the same scale and mass as we've been fortunate enough to have in our media neighborhood but at a minimum or asking the planning board to reduce the mass in the height of these proposed new buildings i've sat in this room and i've heard you asked the question relative to other applicants you vast the planning board all of you have asked each other to consider the impact on this neighborhood if every one of the nine houses in our case applies for increases unlocked coverage and heights to the heights in these applications would those be approved by the prime and says quote the primary goal of the planning board is to protect and preserve the character and quality of life that defines belmont end of quote that's from the website we feel the size mass and height of these buildings will damage our immediate neighborhood and we ask you to preserve and protect the character of our immediate neighborhood and the quality of our lives thank you for this opportunity think  relation would it be accurate to assume that you will be speaking from the presentation that you provided us we also receive a real analysis of the data from the book and that was color coded one and of course in that case it was a very well it was a very thorough analysis and i got some credit for seeing the applicants name along to my mare and others charged with liking people who own committees where it's important to have strong clots unfortunately you have already been discovered get no credit for passing along your name but precede mr several without intro i should probably sit down now it is it won't get any better ok first of all i just have a couple of questions because as i looked at some of the the drawings i'm just not sure there's a couple things that are confusing if you could look at just the different elevation on be one and i've not done a thorough review of all of it and these just occurred to me  and quite possibly the developer can kind of clarify this right now it just helps me understand i found myself trying to look at some dimensions that were necessarily cited on the drawing that said this is all that shit is so i looked at the scale that said one quarter inch to one foot and that doesn't seem to work in a drawing because i was measuring the height of the even it came out six feet from the base to the eaves some wondering if maybe the scale is one hundred to one foot or something it just made it hard to understand some of the dimensions what i'm saying makes sense to any of you if you've looked at the drawings i'm looking at i'm look right now well all of them said one quarter inch to one foot but the one i was what looking at this is again maybe it's just a somebody drew the wrong line or i'm reading it wrong but on this story i see an average grade line down at the lower right corner that says the average grade is one  at another level it starts at will look to be the top of the foundation level  so i shouldn't be can i do understand that i'm just looking at what the what the drawing is telling me so if this is this is simply inaccurate in fact it's measured it's a height measured from the average grade i'm fine i'm just saying the drawing doesn't exactly say that to me so i just want to point that out make sure this is accurate of three zero one zero three elevation no i'm looking at the i'm looking at the it says t o f i'm assuming it's top of foundation it's one of the six elevation twenty three feet ten inch height is from the average grade of one o five correct ok and give you much more for me with the drawings than i am so i'm certainly want to go along with that ok i realize says as madam chair when you were talking about of e mail traffic that i certainly contributed to the e mail traffic that came out and so i did submit a fairly lengthy analysis and discussion of both the neighborhood definition that the board is using and some of the what i felt the disparities he feels that way for the terrorist versus the rest of the neighborhood versus the proposals i'd like to just read into the record a summary of that i clearly as i said before it's not the best way to present sort of analytical findings but that's why i submitted it all in writing to you and i post we've had a chance to look at it and will consider it at the same time there are people here at the hearing people who may be watching on t v who haven't heard from you so i feel i do need to speak to it so if you'll allow me  my major concern in submitting the analysis i did remains the scale of the proposed buildings in relation to the nine neighboring houses on waverly terrace to two thousand and fourteen fifteen amendments to the g r zoning bylaws were response to resident concerns about the demolition of existing houses in general residents district neighborhoods and the replacement with size housing that maximize building house and lot coverage reduced open space and generally damage the character of the neighborhoods the residents who voice were looking for changes to the zoning regulations that would place stricter limits on the scale of new construction i might add here is that i was i was among the verizon and sort of met with the planning board members when the when your original zoning was put together in amending the bylaws however the planning board elected not to set specific dimension of requirements to apply to all g r neighborhoods because it recognizes individual neighborhoods vary greatly in terms of housing scale and design the board instead of stablish guidelines to ensure that any new development would fit into the existing neighborhood thus preserving its character deliberations in this case the planning board has defined a neighborhood that is both very large and very varied and with respect to the mix of single into family houses unfortunately from my point of view developing metrics based on such an inclusive neighborhood definition masta substantial variations that exist across the individual streets in that neighborhood in this instance it becomes difficult to fill appreciate the disparity between the existing houses on waverly terrorists and those proposed for this development in the context of the larger neighborhood waverley terrorist becomes an outlier and as a result with that comparison we risk losing our own character the residents who expressed their concerns two years ago when i was among them and who provided the impetus for the new g r zoning were worried about the new houses being built in their immediate neighborhoods across the street next door the neighborhoods that they lived in saw and experienced every day that's our concern here where really terrorist represents the immediate neighborhood for the proposed developments or at least in the case of the two lots that are going to front waverly terrace that would be like the want to be to i urge the board to take a look at the scale of development within that context our neighborhood is comprised of nine cape style homes some with one storey additions are in close porches in the rear but all relatively small in scale the proposed buildings are significantly larger in height and or footprint and generally will dwarf the existing houses that are on the terrace in my written submission i provided the board with alternate sets of measurements to show just how much weight of the terrorist a different from the larger neighborhood that has been defined in b how much through houses on waverly terrace differ from the proposed development that's going to go onto it key findings and again i'm going to attempt to summarize here i welcome questions and i'll share with anyone who wants written copies of this in the audience but i'll try to summarize as best i can looking at the larger  terrorist in regards to the larger neighborhood definition that the board has used to do its comparison i looked at the average metrics just to try to summarize there are some ninety three properties within the neighborhood definition so in attempt to sort of summarize i developed average metrics for each of the streets or street segments that were in that neighborhood to see where waverly terrorist act up basically waverley terrorist ranks lowest among all of those segments within the neighborhood for total living area floor area ratio number of bedrooms and number of bedrooms per thousand feet in other words for all metrics other than lot size terraces the lowest if we look at the neighborhood also with respect to the mix of single into family housing in a couple of cases multiple family housing i wanted to look at that mix because you know one of the things that the zoning was looking to sort of incense is more single family housing development in my view because single family housing too and those tend to be smaller in scale and these more open the way the entire neighborhood that's being used by the board is about sixty five percent to family or multiple family housing thirty three percent single family housing waverly terrace is zero percent single for multiple family sing and one hundred percent single family in the comparison that you've run the proposed houses were i understand considered a good fit i used to do two measures that seem to me most close to scale to size of the house that you use their average total living area of the proposed houses is two thousand and three feet the average for the entire neighborhood was two thousand two hundred seventy three feet so clearly it fit it within that neighborhood the floor area ratio for the proposal was zero point four zero zero point four two for the entire neighborhood if the neighborhood had been analyzed only looking at single family houses which again is all waverly terraces the average total living area for the neighborhood then would decrease to fifteen hundred forty one feet the average florrie ratio would reach to zero point two eight feet where the terrorists is at fifteen zero seven and zero point two seven so clearly where the terrace is fairly in line with with single family houses in that larger neighborhood  i looked more closely yes as you know if you've opened it up i looked more closely you just said ok what if we use waverly terrace is a neighborhood how does it come out how does the metric work just for waverly terr i looked at it i looked at the nine existing properties and that in the three proposed properties first for the five metrics that you used in your comparison which would be a lot size lot size total living area flo ratio number of bedrooms number of residents who for one thousand feet i also looked at for additional metrics i was concerned that sometimes the metrics that were available most of those metrics were available as most people know on the assessors database those metrics are obviously getting you value house that's what the assessors are interested in doing i felt that there might be a some additional metrics that a closer to that deal more with building scale with mass other thing i did a little bit differently is that in the core tile analysis where you rank order all of the properties and determine which core telling which they will fall it's a very good analysis of sort of show where properties might fit within a neighborhood but especially in cases where the new properties are larger than the existing neighborhood and fact outside the range of the existing neighborhood i added i added color ratio analysis what i wanted to sort of show is that not only were they higher if they were higher than the existing neighborhood but by how much because i remember in early conversations i was so basically look you're not going to get capes people don't build capes anymore there's not a marketplace for capes but it still leaves open the question then of how big is the difference in terms of what they are the existing properties to the new properties for an example is sort of once one one thing the state that the f a are for the new properties constitute the highest co tallow waverly terrace it's another to say that the f a r s on average fifty one percent higher than the average for the existing properties gives you a sense of the degree of difference are you finished which is very summary summary of the numbers i came up with basically looking at your five metrics i found that the new buildings lie within the fourth quarter near or within the fourth quarter for all metrics it constitutes the fourth metric for for  florrie ratio with respect to a ratio analysis the only metric that the new properties are smaller than the existing was is with lot sizes on average is about fourteen percent lower than the average lot size on the terrace for all the other metrics to new development averages a higher with differentials ranging from a low of seventeen point four percent for a number of bedrooms to a high of fifty nearly fifty one percent as i said before florrie were even sharper differences occur when i look at the new metric the new  metrics in terms of a court trial analysis the proportion properties constitute the highest court tile for a lot coverage for height and mass and for footprint it's only slightly different in that they rank nine ten eleven  properties on the terrace finally the ratios predictably the ratios they are much higher the lot for looking at all of the lots he averaged average footprints twenty five percent higher the average like coverage percent is almost forty two percent higher it's thirty five percent higher for building height and nearly eighty percent higher for mass if i only look at the one in be two because i recognize it be three sets on waverley street but look at just b want to be to the differential is not so great  all the measures the corresponding measures would be actually twenty nine percent for footprint that's higher than the other one simply because the largest footprint is be be one as you as you've known if you've looked at the at the drawings it's forty five point seven percent for live coverage percent is twenty eight point two percent for height and about seventy six percent larger in terms of mass in some to me this demonstrates that these houses are quite large waverley terrace that not only if you go to the top of the list in terms of your core talent alice's their significant lea baker their waverly terrace if they're approved as proposed i believe they'll change the character of the neighborhood this supposed to actually this only is supposed to protect you i thank you for putting up with this long presentation i hope you look at what i've submitted considered very carefully on this is an important decision  my name's david chase i live at fourteen waverly terrace across the street from where these would happen i'm also a town meeting member precinct three i would very much like to see some attention paid to reducing the height of the first two buildings i think that's a reasonable thing to ask for i know that we're not building capes i know from living in a cape that indeed the ceilings are quite low and i would certainly expect even if you were to rebuild a cape with modern standards that the very same building would be three feet higher just from increased ceiling heights and increased size of structural members we've had to deal with oh these things are undersized we what we don't want to put a man up in your ceiling because he might come through it so they'll use bigger tempers now but i would say that would expect three feet not five and i think every foot counts and furthermore the slope of the street is such that if the lots were appropriately graded you might be able to gain a foot there you would still have grade to the sewer connection you would still have grade to the street itself so that your driveways would drain and i certainly agree with bob sorry his analysis i would specifically like some detail the tension to be paid to the height of the buildings and i know that that would require some detail the tension but i think that some some ground could be gained there or ground could be removed as the case may be thank you very much last two meetings and everything has been repeated tonight about the size of mass and every other issue but i cannot in good conscience sit here and listen to mr cusano say that the lock grade has not been changed anybody that is familiar with that property there are many pictures that the town has records of the neighbors i'm sure all have pictures and photographs of the existing house that was there before was demolished in the bar in that lot even though the real lot line as mr santa stated has not changed and the side lot line has not changed but the rest of the lot has been significantly lowered in grade by at least two feet and there is more than enough evidence to show that to this board if they want to look at anybody familiar with that as mr haglund looked at it today knows that that lot has been significantly changed in great if him to stand here and say that they haven't changed the rate is all right  regarding the anger in your voice regarding the great change ok so what what was done on the lot so far is when we start a lot we remove the house remove the stone and remove the loan so what you see there is approximately two feet of loam that has been removed from the lot it's been stored at another facility ok the gravel which is very good gravel when the foundations get  will be spread to the exact grades specified on my plan the other thing that i'd like to add one more thing for the board is i hear the sonorous with their  analysis of that situation i also want to bring back to the board that this is been a long going project and we originally were going with multi families we made the change and i had neighborhood meetings according to the regulations none of this has been said up until the night of a potential vote so i haven't had any impact input from any of these people what they said tonight to these houses that were drawn in these plants thank you they're you know i think comments jeffrey emotion  oh no no i want to move to a discussion amongst discussion question amongst the board and i have some comments but let me just start i see that as  information to consider but not something that sort of binding and doesn't create a set of rules and i don't think that any court tile analysis that we ever do regardless of the number of blocks or streets that we put in the neighborhood is ever going to create a formula and i hate to have us get tied up too much in that and i want to sort of put that out there in part because long term i think was you know we've been thinking about process changes and and i you know from the start i will push back a little bit on the quantitative analysis and said i don't think that that's really workable in all circumstances and so i don't think that it makes sense for us to get caught up too much in those numbers you know the cul de sac of waverly terrace is a very nice little neighborhood looks it's very pretty all the houses conform were we talking about a  lot in the middle of that cul de sac i think that i would have a different reaction to the to the plans that have been put before us but that cul de sac is cited around a number of larger houses and variation in those houses and i think that we as a planning board have to strike a balance between you know what the neighbors the new diesel butters on this circle would like and and the economic realities of capes not being marketable and the other larger houses that we're seeing and we really terrorists and i guess i i feel that the plans generally represent a reasonable compromise between the large multifamily originally you know being considered in concept and three single families where they're where there are there's more open space there's more green space it's not an easy decision and i really look forward to hearing from everybody else on the board but sense somebody had to go first and putting my comments out there what's striking about where really terrorists is i think it's it's very unusual and belmont in terms of have having the coherence of a whole set of capes that fill the streets and and i don't see short of building two more capes on the street i don't see a way of maintaining that sense of scale the scale is is going to change if we proceed with with this and i don't know that there's a way around that there was a big house on this lot it was it was the out wire when the capes were built and and it was not in there was not in condition to where we had to face the possibility of rehabbing that house and in an economical way so i think this is  a this is an example of how the individual property owner may do something that doesn't make the neighbors happy but i don't i don't see a way short of saying all the other houses have to be twenty two feet high or at least be one and b two have to be scaled down and then then we're basically asking the property owner to start over well i think i have less to say now because they think bob or encourage anyone there but i will i just want to point out that the original lanson house it was the house that was originally there was quite large actually larger than any of the three houses that are being proposed the developer to be built on this land so if you look at one twenty two waverly street which is the first us they're building that's much smaller and actually common complements the house that's right beside it so that house for me works if you come down the street and you look at lot to believe it is we've got a twenty five foot height there could have been maybe a foot or two lower maybe been but i think that the developer is well within the by a law in terms of like where he's going with it and then as you go down even further to be one which i think is the lowest house he's a twenty three feet and i guess i think that that's a nice compromise what i think is thrown everybody off is that the fact that all these houses have garages that are built into them into the structures and no one else really does i think mr mr sonner don't have a garage with there is paul you don't have a garage with yours that adds quite a bit of mass to a structure so the question becomes oh geez well you know it's actually nice to have the garage i think mark d'andrea has an issue with outdoor power equipment being stored on decks and porches and stuff like that and maybe with these garages we kind of like we possibly alleviate some of that from happening i think it's a tricky thing because i think quite frankly i think it's a good it's a great little neighborhood i think everyone has a really nice property there but unfortunately no one builds capes anymore and there are there are hard house to to market and there are simple house to built but so it's a a developer word simple to build but it's but it's it's not so attractive because it's hard to sell so i think given what could be there i eat to two family homes i think three single family homes are a pretty good alternative could they have been a tad smaller maybe they could have been but i think we've gone down the road quite a bit and as far as the matrix goes i i mean my own personal view of the matrix is i appreciate what you did bob but i guess i agree with with what barber saying and that matrix is wrong is a property or a project is in that matrix and it fits someplace that matrix there's going to be a hi is going to be allowed it's going to be some of the middle of that matrix so i think it's a tool i don't think it's the end all be oh yeah i think that's a good i think just this particular case has been a  good good learning curve for ford because i think that what was trying we're starting to see is that the matrix does give you a starting point but it's not the end all be all so i hear the neighbors concerns  offensive and not wishing to i'm broadly in agreement with what's been said so let me limit myself to things i can say that have not been said  one is that the point that was made on is the board bit correctly visualizing the height of this structure in relations to other cases we considered that something we asked jeffrey to do an analysis of and it is clearly the lowest of the case of the lowest of the homes that we've taken a look at and approved these the second is that and i i have i have listened to  single family homes on its lot slightly smaller than fifty thousand square feet one of the questions and came up at all of the meetings one of the questions that came up a town meeting was so what do you mean by smaller and the answer that we gave town meeting which we referred to when we were dealing with the thomas throughout the thomas three case was what do we mean by saying we want to include encourage smaller single family homes the answer we gave town meeting was twenty two hundred twenty six hundred two of these three houses are below that and ones at the lower end of that and finally just in general this is only with respect to the comments about the one there is indeed this distinction between site plan review and special permit and i think that's really important to keep in mind the one is only coming in for site plan if you so that some of the see the ability of the board even if it wanted to and as i say i agree with the comments that been made would be very different work on that house if you look at the the roof the roof lines there it's very very difficult half the house is not even being used because of the roof if there are no other questions or comments again i'd like to ask for a motion and i want a motion to i want to motion to close the public hearing move to close a public hearing on a applicant has indicated that he would be willing to accept landscaping as proposed by the board so that   jeffrey in your notes that we need to  if i can just speak to that specifically the reason i think why joe and i have worked so hard on the landscaping issues as projects have come to the board in my experience of living in belmont as a relative newcomer of thirty years it seems to me that the streets that are the most pleasant to be on and to walk on are the treat the streets where the street trees have been preserved and replaced and so what we're trying to do here is to say yeah these trees are going to look new when they go in but if they go in big enough in five years you'll feel like you're walking down a tree lined street even if you're not all that enthusiastic about the houses behind this free there and there are streets in belmont that had no attached garage as i live on one of  we had in the last five years we've had two gigantic remodeling jobs that both ended up with a double attached garage that's not my preference but i don't notice that because the trees are still in place and i think that's our hope is that is that we we have to strike a balance between the property owner's rights and what we like about the neighborhood and then try to improve what we can in the public portion of the neighborhood and and sometimes many of us will be disappointed on one side or the other so that the do we need a separate motion on the subdivision or will simply vault them together right now so i'll move to approve the special permit and you'll make them really attractive with large tree we have three more cases we have a hard stop it can simply because meetings that go too late into the night do not do two things and both of them are bad they encourage bad decision making and they discourage citizens from the candy meetings so what i'd like to do in terms of staging the remaining three topics rafi good to see you again is first of all to ask other than applicants do i care is there anyone here as a resident who wishes to speak to any of the cases that we have not heard yet and just really and in which case i'm breaking that which case would that be yet come to the microphone and tell us which case that would be hi i'm laura carlson i live on twenty upland road and there is now placation for sixteen upline road and i am asking in support of it first of all this is a third generation belmonte and and second of even if we can't go through the full application the full hearing if residents and neighbors made an effort to be here this evening we try we give them an opportunity to speak even if we're not going to take go through the pace as a whole so i was only asking other than up and grow do we have anyone here who wishes to speak on any of the applications who is not employed the applicant employed by the applicant or related to the applicant by blood or marriage do we have anyone else who wants to speak on any of these cases yet before us  following i am going to invite the applicants for up and rode to make a brief presentation i want to open the hearing on up and road invite you to make a presentation which i understand will be reasonably brief give the neighbors who are here an opportunity to comment on it and then continue the hearing in lest there are particular questions that people are very public hearing by the planning board on application for design and site plan review notices here by given that the belmont planning board will hold a public hearing on thursday december third two thousand and fifteen at seven pm in the board of selectmen screening room town hall four fifty five concord avenue to consider the application of justin kenyon for design and site plan review to construct a single family dwelling at twenty four opened road located in the general residence zoning district and you is yet oneself one thousand and seventy eight square foot and a proposed house is twenty three hundred seven square foot and as you can see in a neighborhood analysis we some met it which is larger than a single with the law zoning law which is comply with the size setback and we are set back and it is a improvement i believe it is implemented a neighbor about herds and also rear said park currently is a twelve foot tall point two feet it's not a classical tradition a window placement which is due to the fact that this is very sad energy sufficient energy efficient house which is i've done energy more lengths to make sure and we bought the house two years ago with the intention to raise our family in this house my wife is actually more we're both expecting in march and we really want to make th saar home to raise our family and to be dominant residents contributing to the neighborhood we like cyo mentioned we're really trying to build this house to be very energy efficient and try to come apply with a lot of the new energy modeling is that are becoming popular in the area we know that belmont is moving towards that in  many different ways and we want to be part of that movement so we really are looking forward to building this house and starting our life  a few hours before it came in here so i'm not very sure of it but i think my initial thing looking at the plans is that the construction it looks similar to a two family  you know the way it's constructed it looks like just from the north south elevation that's the way i look at it anyway it doesn't look like it's gushed much single family shave to it ok the existing height of twenty three feet point zero five feet on the existing house is that to the midpoint of the of the roof on the existing  house i know that these heights are made made points and different but just if you can clarify it as well is that is the existing on one of the specs it says existing heights of twenty three feet five i just want to know is that the top or is that to the made point of the existing house if you bit because there is only a few singlets on the street and it's mostly two families and if we have a chance to keep a few singles they are just to alter a little bit that it looks a little more like a few existing on having the family staying in there having the one family i mean we could have sold the land and had another whole two family in this whole debacle and i think we're pretty fortunate to be able to have a family stay there want to be there  being considerate of the neighbors in the neighborhoods and keeping some of the belmont history still there as well and they are very well intending in terms of being mindful of the neighbors and the setting of the street on twenty nine drew road in belmont were directly behind the property is a very small lot the current house is pretty far back i mean it's good news to hear that the whole thing is being moved forward it does when i look at the structure in the back it does look like it's pretty broad so we're surrounded by two families kitty corner to family side to side and we're a single family so my concern was is just going to totally block out and isolate kind of the single family there it looks like the ridge line the way it's designed is going to we'll get some sunlight through it if if the design it looks very flat and kind of bland from the back looking i don't know if anything can be done to improve the cosmetics of the back a little concerned about the construction because it's so close and such a small lot but secondly road has an incredibly high water table people are just flushing their water down to everyone else's basement i hope that the board as they consider these  things at least do consider the fact that wondering if any construction will in fact impact the water table and we've gone to great lengths to try to protect our house hopefully nothing will change other than that it's nice to meet you in tallahassee obviously in the same household behind we're very happy to have a single family in support of my one concern is we did see a lot of soil put onto the property and i'm just again very concerned about drainage because we're right behind so i don't know why all the soil was added in if that helps train age that's great but i just again supportive of having a single family i just don't want to be worried about having any water issues flooding my backyard we had our basement redone to make sure there's no water in and because it was the sledding street so all the water flows almost to continue case number fifteen fourteen the designs i plan review to construct a single family dwelling at twenty four upland road to seven pm on december fifteenth this is a continuation of our hearing on fifty two wide street at our last meeting we reviewed the plans there were a number of suggestions if you like to discuss the three items we put more detail to that entrance there is more molding there's a crown at the roof line the there were two or three steps before and what we did was we lowered the landing so there's a step up into the front door and into the door that's more consistent with the rest of the other door openings and we had a ten inch pile asters in just in general so look at the little jewel box type entrance and i think there was one of the comments that someone was interested in the other item was the garage doors so we did use you can see the bottom right here and we chose a door quite limited and we're certainly eager to reassure the community that that won't happen again  i don't think that the board should be in the business of it's hard enough to to to to look at a new landscape plan and and impose some perspectives on it but i don't think the board should be in the business of picking which trees stay which trees get cut down but my my review of this suggests that some of these trees are at the end of their life and some and a couple of them are are unattractive and and not in good health and i think we ought to go for the sake of the neighbors at the back so that these two garage double garages get screen i'd like to see it as a landscape plan submitted that is based on having a landscape contractor or a landscape architect of the trees and suggest which one should stay or should go and then fill in around the the neighbors so that you put in some three and a half to four and a half inch trees for the long haul so so we would we would ask for a revised landscape plan that would include marking which trees ought to be taken down and i think on this one we need we should really see a full and complete landscape plan before we vote especially i think my question is do you have any more guidance to provide as to what that special that landscape plan i think i think the goal is the goal is to screen the garage loose from the neighbors and provide some sense of separation and how that goal is reached i think requires  friends who who had a vestibule on the front of their house and you only have this much room to stand while you're knocking on the door and that's what i think of whenever i see it is that although i'm talking material or is there go details there were operating tonight without the benefit of either you know mike or joe who are no resident construction experts and there were some details that we required and one twenty two waverly that and a lot of it is proportional like the ten inch columns for that eight inch and there are some other things that jeffrey's list identified for me that we haven't talked about here tonight and and looking at the planets you know eight two zero one one other thing that stood out to me and this is probably the lawyer in me is that you know where we require identification of exact materials to be used right and there's language you know labels in here that say typical standard and we probably should do that here so a couple of the things and there may be more that stood out to me i don't have the detail white plans in front of me but from jeffrey's list you know we had casings around the windows at five and a quarter by four which is bigger than the case and that are around these windows so something that we should think about it's not clear to me whether the six over one windows they look like they're drawn in here but that's not stated in this in the speci this is eight inch p v c i think it's ten inch their way really so those are some of the design details that we often have required help with him to include that i think because of the larger design issues that we had been focusing on in past meetings we didn't focus on it with these drawings i mean that we should talk about a little bit more tonight and you're aware that the planning blurred the planning board has a number of comments it makes over and over and one of them is if you move from vinyl to wood there's a class by yours that likes  better than vinyl and you'll find that i think that's pretty much true of many of our design comments at the at the next and hopefully final hearing on this we will be looking at a fall landscape plan and i would i don't know how much of the proceeding probably you don't want to plan with two and a half caliber industries because then you hear the same comment over again so i really would urge you in the preparation of the landscape plan having invested several hours upscaling of the detailing is something we'd like to see and perhaps you could work with that and yes right we are continuing the hearing on twenty six twenty eight dante and you and perhaps first before jeffrey i ask you to review the concerns and questions from the previous meeting we need to deal with the safety issue that was raised by  gero who is director of operations and finance for the school department both of them expressed concern that there had been no prior discussion with them and concerned about the jim and we received these claims yesterday alternative driveways i suspect that no one from the school department has had a chance to look at them yet  but we certainly want i think we should certainly take them up first and make sure we understand them and how they respond to the school's concern but we will need to hear from school department but we've discus and now thank you cliff for over here for the applicants and actually one of the things you should have gotten is one of the applicants actually had a discussion with mr mcallister on this issue and i know that as he's handing them out basically the principal was mainly concerned that this driveway would be going into the drop off area well first the no parking no sir no stopping zone actually starts beyond our property beyond the telephone pole  there's a white line on the ground which is basically on the school side of that telephone pole not in front of the driveway the children are not dropped off in front of where this driveway would go they are dropped off around the corner so once that was brought to mr mcallister's attention he said he did not have any problem with the two cut driveway that's what he said to  the applicant ok so that's the first thing i just wanted to make sure that was brought up because i think when it was put to his attention he thought the drop off areas was in front of where the driveway was going so i'm hoping that alleviates a good bit of the concern it's a little like when we have a question about whether something meets the requirements of the fire department it's good to know that this probably will be a problem and that's what you're telling us now but in the same way we need to hear it from the fire department discussion and after you've talked to mr mcallister if that is agreed on then what also was done is based on having the driveway there we proposed doing plant things between the driveway and the fence along the side to give somewhat of a buffer between the two and then to the back side of the house  i mean i don't want to go into everything based on the the whole project we only have twenty minutes but i think i'd like to say that the applicants have done basically everything that the board asked them to do they did it all in good faith they put a lot of time and effort into doing this and the sickly saying fine we'll do it we want to get the project going and i just see that you know every time if there's always something coming up and being done it's disingenuous to the clients my clients that they have done this in good faith they have done everything you asked for in good faith i'm not sure if there's anything else you want to go over while we're here the best solution for this property i think is to have the two driveways it actually leads to less traffic coming out onto the road especially if you tried to have one driveway which is not in anybody's best interest you're going to have all cars backing out into that area just to get one car out it is a congested area this leads to only one car potentially need to come out at a time and i think that that's a bonus for this project i'll wait till you see if you have any other questions you want to respond to two points you made the the first is the is disingenuous it is of course true that as any of these projects move along people finally noticed that there is a project going on and raise objections in the board's aware of this we have no desire to stop all the trains from running on the other hand a safety concern raised week the board acted on this as soon as we were made aware of it and a safety concern raised by a principal  of a budding school is really in a different category than a neighbor who has noticed that the decking isn't quite what they'd like it to be so i do take some issue with disingenuous safety school safety is a different kind of issue then the sort of design issues that neighbors raise fairly late in the process assure you if we stop the process and restarted it every time twelve weeks into it someone else noticed that we were doing it we would permit very little and we don't do that but this is different  we understand that all of the people that the applicant needs to produce plants don't work full time for the applicant we get that but it is also true that these plans were developed delivered yesterday and think the the two driveways want to neither side is better for a couple different reasons one you're not having a sixteen foot wide driveway which each car's eight foot wide a sixteen foot wide driveway coming out across the sidewalk it's only one car wide and the other thing is by trying to make this a sixteen foot wide on one side you'll see on it the house is very has to come very close to the property line i think it's look three feet i'd rather have it more than three feet from the property line the disadvantage instead of having sixteen feet wide why how much of asphalt you have to two strips of asphalt that add up to so i i don't understand why if if eight feet isn't of in one location why why the driveways have expanded to nine and nine feet four inches well i think the driveways were left at at at the original concept at nine foot four because it's easier when you have one car coming in a door opening up to a side is easier if you have another car next to it because you each car is a let's say six feet wide so that means you have a foot on each side if you're talking about just putting an eight foot wide then you don't have that extra foot from the other space which is why generally a single space potentially is a little wider you understand what the concept i'm getting at so if you have one car in the left spot it has a foot of extra room on the right hand side and when you come in the right side you have that one foot on your left side plus the foot on the other side and makes it easier to open doors if you have if you have the nine foot space but that being said i mean if you are saying put it as an eight foot space i'm sure they would go for that so they could have the one point four feet of planting and the other thing about that site plan is you lose it's hard to read the dimensions well i'm not sure how many of this one that has the green shading in it is it is the most recent version that's a version that would show if we put the one foot one point four foot planting strip along that edge so that would narrow the spaces up to eight foot wide on that side and the other side that was something done in conjunction with jeff well if you have to drive if you have a dr who on each side why do you need to make the driveway nine feet for nine point four feet and then have a space because you have steps coming down i'm not sure what you mean by steps coming down those steps and if you're looking at the steps going to the side that's actually the existing house the proposed house has steps going to the rear of the property then guess i'd sooner read suggest a fence on each side of the driveways some kind of attractive fans and no landscaping instead of trying to put it sixteen inches ridiculous for the two feet tall you'll never really noticed me one when one section of sixteen foot asphalt to the side of one side of houses that's a lot of asphalt you know so if you if you could do that and as sort of how the drive where the driveway is going to the house with those two doors that i think are going to the basement there are cut out there were is the driveway i guess i'd like to just highlight that issue when we follow up with principal mcallister because we're going to now have the cars left backing out and a little bit out of the driveway just in terms of this ability if the cars pull into the lot right into the driveway that will happen in the house area once they hit in front of the house actually the driveway is coming slightly down so it's going down towards the road at that point marginally not a whole lot there rise and it does rise up a little bit and then it drops down as it goes into as it passes through the house door for the access out of that side i'm not sure that will work but that was just something i was just thinking about but that's also something that will be gone through you know for the stormwater and all through the if it's of any use i i have my own closet has a window in it in order to make the front facade symmetrical yet you hang a blind eye never open it and it's behind the shirts it's not a but and we do not have a problem putting a window in that area there's that there's a reference on l one to see l two and and i don't think we have bill i don't in the original submission i believe there was nell to sheet the only thing that was added heard that are there any are there any street trees around the houses on either side the problem i have with the cherry in the front is that it's never going to be very big and this is a big this is a big structure and one of the other problems is there is now grass strip in front of this house it is total pavement maybe you're going to but that's a good that's a good but that's a good  well maybe that's maybe that's all you can do if you don't have a new driver with you can't get the height i write in jeffrey you want to read the list again so that everyone here and then i'll ask for a motion incorporating those conditions  move to authorize special permits subject to the conditions that jeffrey has just read your conditions and the usual standard town conditions