a packed agenda this evening the first part of the agenda will be the public discussion of the general residence zoning bylaw amendment that was put in place in tw fourteen then we will have a continued hearing of application for an addition greater than thirty percent for thirty three saint following that there will be a production presentation of the housing production plan from the housing trust which i know we all look forward to and they've been working on very hard there will discuss some potential cases and projects and that should be a meeting thank you all for wheeler and our staff players spencer go over and they have put together a very interesting presentation this evening on the general residence by law how we got to where we are and what's happened in the last couple years in terms of this which brings us to the public hearings jeffrey you want to go forward with the present case yes i will so this begins twenty board's formal kickoff process there's lots of chairs up front if people want to come up front don't be a shy you won't get called out but this begins tonight so just to be clear is exactly how i actually had had several phone calls with various time meeting members on this issue we're only talking about the general residence district the single residency district screen is obviously the area in gold of the general residence the map on the tripod right here it's the same color it's the gold only is what is being discussed that is the area that allows one into family homes no other area in town flowers want to do family homes the bylaw as we've said was adopted in twenty fourteen and the reason why it's being discussed  because i was afraid that was going to be issues that the map was going to be blocking the screen but they needed it there for cable t that's right don't worry about it i just leave it on the ground and if it comes up we can always bring it back out if people have questions and i think we should point out one of the things that that the map points of actually is that you'll see that the general residence district is not a so as i said the bylaws adopted in twenty fourteen and he has an expiration sunset clause for this june it will disappear unless the planning board in town meeting does something about it either there are three options some and so those are the three different options the purpose of the bylaw at the time in still is is to really make sure that what is built is compatible with the surrounding that of the vironment and it's those different aspects of the project are reviewed and looked at in terms of compatibility with the surrounding built environment at the time i don't know those of you that i mean members it's actually quite complex package of zoning amendments there are six amendments from the twenty fourteen in twenty sixteen an additional moment was also added which allowed for two family for  two singles to be built in place of the two family provided that they were certain not size another dimension regulations meant but the sixes and the twenty fourteen are as follows there were some definitions and abbreviations adopted for single family in two families there was the nonperforming section of the single into family was significantly altered from what he had been previously schedule on the copies of the actual wording of the bylaws are also in the back of anybody's interested we're going to i'm only going to highlight four of them since those are the ones that are really the important ones  lot self i have to give credit to spencer dover for putting the presentation together that he had the idea of putting pictures on the left hand side of what was it just happening prior to twenty fourteen and what was happening what has been happening since twenty fourteen so there's supposed to be sort of a so that you can see a difference as as we're going through each different slide can move this over just a tiny bit we're losing just  free twenty fourteen there were several exceptions allowed for a lot of construction to occur without having any public input and that was really what people really most screamed about to provide input and the playing board has me the planning board was a designated a special permit granting authority the thinking behind does any of the planning board has a special permit granting authority is that traditionally planning boards have more of a design background so what appeals have more of a legal background and if one is concerned about the way something looks you're really going to want to go with a board that has sort of the design experience versus the legal experience so that's a comment on this when when this came up those of you who are in town at this time remember the issues with the make mention ization of certain parts of the g r especially in the waverly square area the very of place buildings that were built and there was at that time there was no control of that effectively and things were built that neighbors were were complaining about that were out of character with their neighborhood that's what led to the citizens petition in the first place in twenty thirteen which put a moratorium in place on that and then we went through a year long process with public with public meetings in the plains lord and we discussed all the issues that come up with the g r zoning regulations that were put in place in twenty fourteen so we want to be clear about this that this is that the only regulations that were put in place for the g and fourteen were as a result of an extensive public participation process in our reflective what we of what we believe that the humidity was responding to at that time so what begins to happen here is that you see that the planning board is is putting more control on development indies areas in terms of the buildings that are being built the height the mass of the buildings in their relationship to the neighborhoods that they're in as we go further along and you'll see the pictures you'll see the differences in the presuming less regulated environment and the subsequent after the zoning is put in place the environment and going through the planning board as the special permit granting authority on this well it we now section that really tells you what's allowed and what's not allowed in the district previously in two thousand and fourteen two families and single family homes were allowed by right post twenty fourteen  single families required designed site plan review again the public what the board heard in the town meeting adopted was that the public wanted an opportunity to comment on what was being built and to families required a special permit which obviously square feet however what was done was said that the five thousand square feet applies to a single family home and the seven thousand square feet applies to it to feel me so this in combination with  the use regulations put in incentive to construct small single family homes in the jungle residence zoning district it was heard loud and clear that housing options in town are opposed to a special permit which can be denied and that they reduce the lot size requirement it was a clear message to anybody who was thinking of building that single family homes is really what the board in what the town meeting prefer see the time the other big thing that occurred was that the front back is now we quired to be what the average is up to to a budding propert so in essence you maintain the street edge you don't end up with a house that said back twenty feet when the street may have been built at a ten foot from setback so it forces everything to be in line at the same street  section sixty is really where all again as i mentioned previously was the design standards are this section did not previously exist and so the question really became well that's all well and good that you want to require a special permit or you want to zines a point of view but what are you going to base it on placement all of these different aspects and they're going to be looking at in deciding in evaluating an application so these two split chosen specifically because they actually are of the same development the topic is what was allowed by right prior to twenty fourteen and the bottom the top one here is on waverly that you see red across from the barber shop and right we'll work to see kitty corner the second one is as you go you go round the corner and you go on white street that's the last one that was built there so you can see the difference in the two of them the first one is very i think as jeffrey point out is very garage it's over scale and it's very garage like  in terms of the garages that the predominant feature what are the the features on the second one that make a difference chip well so the features in the second one specifically were called  architectural plans or specifically from the embodying neighborhood you have a front porch a farmer's porch some people like to call it the house and almost looks like a single family home looks like it may have been a determination which you think is better but the one the one below with the ultimate goal is approved by the planning board so in preparation for the g or amendments there are really four aspects to what we're going to be doing for tonight as i mentioned we have the public input we want to hear from the public we have received several e mails and letters and we encourage addition we encourage people to send e mails with the thoughts are what they like to see done differently but they don't want to see if they like it the way it is we have we got one e mail with one just said leave it alone it works great we're also going to talk real briefly about we've been reviewing these special permit cases themselves and looking at the different aspects of the cases in itself without any deeper detail about that the general sense district with respect to the special permit case analysis as you can see there's a lot we're looking at in terms of the whole special permit in the process we're looking at the  is how long is this taking and then looking at why is it taking why did certain cases take as long as they did and looking at with this special permit have required a special permit anyway that application would have been stuck with then the special permit process anyway and then we're also looking at spatial distribution to make sure that there aren't certain areas that are being maybe one might think they're being approved there were seven additions in again looking at how long is it take and what size are they why did certain things take longer to get through the process and others then those of eleven new so as i said please if you haven't had time to talk to me please e mail us or if you get a moment think about something you know spencer i'm we will make sure spencer has started you know putting putting they've really taken the process apart so we can begin to see what is actually happened what's worked what hasn't worked what things we need to tweak i think the first step in evaluating this is determining what we have did this is one of the most exciting me that that that you could ever hear so you've come to the right we thank you a couple of ground rules when we begin so what we're going to do in a moment is we're going to open up open this up and we're going to be quiet we're going to listen to you when you come forward to the microphone a couple ground please every time you come forward introduce yourself your name where you live in the town so we have that because we are transcribing the comments so we want to make sure that we attribute them to the right person we are discussing tonight the zoning by law we are not really litigating any particular cases so we would ask you if you have an issue with dormers let's say or size and mass talk about that in general terms but praise no specific cases in terms of that now with that i would ask anybody that has comments to come forward to the microphone the microphone introduce yourself and you have the microphone is is so that the people in t v land can't hear you  it doesn't broadcast so speak up introduce yourself and please provide us with your comments we want to hear what you have to say thank you issues that they sought to address i as a town meeting member i voted for them i do think that there's a little bit of tweaking that could be done to make things a little more equitable and fair for people doing some minor exterior changes for example the case of third floor decks i think as it stands there seems to be a real inequity between cases that go before the zoning board of appeals where they regularly get approved and before the planning board where they regularly get rejected or suggested to be withdrawn in particular my suggestion of what i think might allow people to make some nice use of their space without negatively impacting the people around them is if in the case of non conforming structures  people be allowed to have an expansion that includes a deck if it is not an expansion of the footprint of the house whereas now if there's any expansion of the structure you know anyway it's not allowed whereas if it were allowed in the case of a deck you wouldn't necessarily be expanding the footprint at all so that to me seems like a reasonable tweak if there is concern that remains about the scope or massing of the structure when there's a railing added over existing structure i think that the two and a half story by law provides a really nice model for types of expansions which are allowed by right if they meet certain requirements for example not more than sixty percent of the square footage of  the existing area below something like that i think would be a pretty reasonable compromise where people could have a little bit of access to outdoors without having an out of scale over a large third floor deck thanks thank you for your comments the very thoughtful believe i'm twenty six vincent ave and also the town meeting member precinct five the way i read this and i also agree i think the intent is excellent we do want to have beautiful buildings buildings that actually fit our neighborhood but the way i understand this point i'm being non conforming pretty much every of my neighbor is known corn non conforming as well because i'm several other people about this about there's this misnomer that if your house bore it burns down that you're not allowed to rebuild it you have to go through this process and that's just not correct state law chapter state law allows you to rebuild your house exactly what you had before so that should not be an issue then i will have to say that i support it and that just one more concerned that if you don't mind as as you know we had this along to family built out on down to ave i'm about her parent and i was watching that the owner of the house that was built right next to the ex sensually school yard was allowed to knock the wall that was a public land and actually i suspect it was built together with the school at the time because it was continuous wall that was actually making a border between their yard and the school yard  that's wall was gone as the new with new construction and the only fence that it's not right now existing is essentially the owner's fence school does not even have its own fence or so its own wall and as i'm looking at this now i mean it's finished a year ago i just cannot understand and i'm very concerned that that was even happening plus new driveway was a lot right at the zone with the school drop of face and one of the main busy is own right in front of the school and i'm wondering if there's something that we could be looking at and not have that happen ever again i think that case yeah that's actually me and there i'm in the butler neighborhood too and if my house burned down to be the same thing as us i think my lot forty eight hundred fifty five hundred i believe i think i was in and out on the process one that was going through the i left the board and i came back on the board i believe the driveway and such and there was issues about the fence and i think there was an agreement on the fence and there was agreement on the driveway and that was part of the public process and i think that anything that we address in experience with clients that have had frustrations similar to what tara described and so i want to reiterate some of her points i think actually were very consistently in line with what i wanted to express tonight one of them is the one one of the points is that i feel like the going from one extreme if you're an existing on conforming law and you can build anything as it used to be pretty twenty fourteen to go to the other extreme of if you have any sort of existing nonconformity that you have to go through this process i think it might have gone a little bit too far in that maybe if there is something somewhere in the middle so i know she had suggested perhaps if you're building above the existing footprint i would also suggest perhaps something like a town meeting we approved more recently for the s or c district where if you're increasing by more than thirty percent then you come to planning board so maybe something like that would allow people to do a smaller scale rear addition if their front corner setback is nonconforming like so many of them are that the process would be easier if it were something of a smaller scale to not have to go through that entire process so that's one comment that i would like to offer and then the second one is also regarding third floor decks i think that for a lot of people if you have two family and you're living on the second and third floor unit and you have a living space that room space on that third floor you feel like you're very far from the ground and from simply a safety eeg rest perspective peace of mind but also i think from functionality and quality of life to have access where a lot of these lots are small and you don't have a lot of outdoor space on the ground level especially if you're on an upper level you know you maybe don't have as much access to it i think that there's a lot that can be gained from those types of spaces and so in some circumstances absolutely they may not be appropriate but i think that there are circumstances where they can significantly improve the quality of life for the people and perhaps not be detrimental to the neighborhood if it's on the backside if it's in a context where other neighbors have it and so i would like to suggest that perhaps that could be something that could be considered a little bit more lenient with a little bit more lenient see going forward so there's a i think the two main points that i wanted to make but thank you guys very much i hate the work that they've been doing that you've been doing for this  from the two family phenomena to smaller single family type structures with a three hundred thousand dollar high school coming down the pipe and dollar bills going up across town i'd love to see some information and somehow connect the dots in our community between you know build out on two families for a single family quality of life you know how much how close all these other things come together it sounds like that's being taken into consideration here and certainly by the pictures alone it's so pleasing to see the changes that were made just in that one development down by the old church that is sadly  gone so anything that can be done to try and i know it's a balance in our community i know it's very difficult to be affordable i suspect with a ten thousand dollar cap on our tax bills from the fed side you know we'll see some downward pressure eventually but we also have to live with these things two generations my house is eight hundred fifty six and you know it's not built on a square cubits off center a little bit which is super nice  d i just want to thank you for considering that you know families are great love them important part of our community but let's try to be careful about how much we squeeze them into spaces that generations have small a family because we have a lot of young couples without able to afford big single families so if you give some consideration to those young young couples that maybe had kind of an exception for the t family option for lots under seven thousand square foot that's a good consideration thank you please does anybody else have a more comm steve time chick i live in forty seven hamilton road town meeting member precinct one i supported the original amendments and according to my neighbors those i've spoken to the effects have been positive and i want to commend the planning board for their diligence in improving the plans for these new houses i think they're compatible with the neighborhood and living across from two  i just had a question so there's two kinds of burdens involved with this change one is the actual constraint of what you're allowed to do or the change of what you're allowed to do different people have tried to address this sort of make this i was talking about if we did this it would be a slightly less burdensome to the people but there's the other part is the actual process i just was wondering is there any way that you measure all the burden some of us of going through this process how much it costs a person that it didn't before again i say this in the framework of i support this you're not asking this is too burdensome and stop it i just i'm wondering if we can make it any more efficient thank you actually w answer that a bit here which is that one of the things that you saw when we were going through the data analytics when we were talking about the different kinds of projects that were coming to us but for special p daunting they were dormers they were on things they were decks that was new construction we were beginning to look at the time on the throughput process on that and as we've done as we're beginning to do the cases in that we're beginning to look for and find what the stumbling walks in the process are sometimes they have been us sometimes they've been in the preparation of the materials that then presented to us and there's an in process there is also been on the part of the planning board and we're seeing this a little bit in the s r one the s r c two is there's a learning curve and what we hope to do by going through the information and  individual cases both case by case and as an aggregate to see what we can do to speed up that process because in some cases we think that process i do personally has taken longer than it should have taken and one of the reasons for that is that maybe some of the smaller things will decide that there's a different process for those than for the the larger ones and maybe in and there's also something that we haven't talked about this but we have generally tried to move the projects through the special permit process to be able to be responsive to the developers and the home motors and sometimes a yes has taken a longer time on that process one of the things that was going through on this and hopefully we might have some solutions by the time we go to meeting in the regulations is to speed that process up to make it a more efficient process so thank you for that question i think it helps the support of intent to make the process as as least onerous as possible so yes and we try to make it as transparent process as possible to are there additional comments please please come up don't be shy montenegro from sixty whole street and i wanted to comment on dormers i think that the rules right now are very generous when the property has appropriate setbacks here one ensure that everything goes to the planning board very arbitrary and i think it'd be nice if there was some guidance in there for example you know i'm not trying to retrieve the decatur case but when i brought mine here i proposed a plan at the same volume i could write it was basically told to go away and i got the same size  mensions i'm sorry i was able to to to get a permit with the special permit that i think is less attractive for the neighborhood but previous planning board did not seem interested and i think it would be helpful if the rules had some guidance on that such as being able to get dormers that you at the same dimensions you we're we're we're cognizant of that and i remember your case and we will consider that as we go through the tara on our forty seven piece in road and town meeting member precinct six and i already spoke once so i keep it really short but something that miss miller said made me think of one other thing and also i assure you would not plan our plan o comments here but what she said about the quality of life issue for people living in to thank you now says on the second and third floor i definitely think is important i live in a two family house on  second and third floor and i think that in single family houses it's allowed by right to have a porch or a jack on the second floor and in a single family house usually the first in the second floor would be your main levels of living and in a two family house you you know there's people who have second and third floors as their main level of living and being able to have a little bit of access to outdoors on the levels of living i think is an important quality of life issue and an equity issue and a lot of the comments that i've heard people say in support of all the things that this amendment has addressed are directed towards new construction of things that have been torn down and built up in a much larger context and not so much about people in their existing homes that they've lived in for a long time making modest changes so that i think is also something to consider is just an equity issue between the people who live in one family in two family houses thank you very much have we have we exhausted being non conforming and needing to go to special permitting for you know any sort of additions and which makes sense doesn't actually make it more expensive for person to go through as opposed to somebody who's on conforming and is that something that may be in and that improve your house in addition to what the basic zoning is and you go through the special permit process that's that's a benefit to you to go through the special permit process to increase the size of your improvement your house what you want to do and it's and it does have a cost but it's a benefit to you in that in that you can potentially get something approved which is more than enough then is allowed but the underlying so but that that thank you but do you have any specific creation terms of how higher costs would be for somebody who is nonconforming going or which essentially means that you know and thing that i would like to do to our can speak to this time or anybody who's been in the process what cost the money is when you have to make revisions to your plans so now it's ridiculous to do plans any right you have to do plans anyway but then if you bring a plate of plans to the planning board that need to be revised or or or just need to be rising that there's architects cost there's costs associated with revising those plans and then you also get into the legs which also could add a cost significant especially depending right depending on how many times have to come back to the board you know if it gets a project it's delayed you know we would say though that it's not that in our experience if if a project is well presented and thought through and we have a couple examples of relatively small things on raleigh road and we had something that was don t want to for anybody who is going through the process those were very well prepared plans and the process was pretty expeditious with those and some of those are online and other ones we have we have anybody can see those and when you go through that process and talk to jeffrey about that he will give you guidelines on th if there are no other comments thank you oh please please come for consider zoning in more housing for those with disabilities special needs handicapped if you want already and i'm not assuming anything but i've been talking this over with some my wife and friends and i thought it would be ok this might be the proper form to bring this up maybe not but i tell you ten minutes early ok so here's the housing production plan will encompass this but we're going to as a matter of fact we had one or two cases that have come to us that are apropos of that in a slightly different way that came to us in terms of age proofing their houses to age in place which are similar kind of accommodations and i believe reynolds road and lewis road were are there any more comments on the general residence zoning if you have any now's the time if not thank you very much for coming and we will move ahead to the housing production plant i wan who are you here for the housing production plan yes actually it's it's just that you're here and i don't know if you will be speaking about this but we would like to hear in terms of the  proposals that are coming to the senate in the house and the reaction from the governor's plan for rezoning encourage when if you could give us insight on that as part of the housing production plan that would be very helpful and it would save you having having to come back to us at a different time ok i'm sorry i got i got this confused my father was so excited about the general's residence zoning that i lost my place on the agenda so let's let's back up for a second i know we have the architect here that district when we met last time we had left on this left that you've been to us a couple times we had plans we made suggestions on the plans there were subsequent discussions between you and jeffrey in regard to the development steve why don't you tell us where we were last time you jeffrey if you want to sort of introduce you to the changes that have been made and then we can meeting we particularly were listening to others concerns and being sensitive to the problems of height of the structure and as we can see the applicant has addressed a number of those concerns another second floor to a single story ranch it's a very common kind of expansion and belmont the complication is that it's a relatively large house on a small lot with multiple existing nonconformity the lot is it's not it in terms of size there are a couple of set back issues and the third problem was that it's on an unusual piece of land that has a good chunk of the basement exposed externally which it which arguably is a is a floor unto itself so we've been working with the applicant i know the applicants frustrated how long this process has taken but they've brought  complicated project and there are a number of issues to work through the first issue was that it's on an unconsolidated pair of lots in other words it's on two pieces of property and the applicant in response to our request has gone to the assess s are our larger problem there were terms of size everything else was the overheads overall height and mass of the structure was quite a bit more than the neighborhood and particularly quite a bit higher and more bulky then the immediate a boater's along changed the roof to a hip roof which cut out that big massive roof that was going to be seen before and at this point it's down to a point where it's actually much less of bulk than it  to us with this is why projects take a long time is that it takes a while to work with the applique and we our job in part is to help the applicant come to some sort of resolution with compliance with all the zoning laws and also  with concerns expressed by neighbors we're trying to find a balance here for people not not to discourage them from building but to help them build something that they want there was also concern about a desk second story deck that was going to be built that the end this was this is what with was originally proposed we have a slide of the result in the end we have something that's a lot less bulky it's an attractive looking house in its way and it looks very actually very similar to to a potential initially for and accessory apartment going on in the basement the applicant has agreed to change the fourth full bathroom into a half bath in a laundry facility  they've also converting the exterior door to a bulkhead and we'll see what's going on there the concern in addition to trying to deal with existing nonconformity is we did not want to add yet another and  basically reduce the the appearance of the house of the structure from the back so that it won't seem as massive and has also agreed to do plantings along the wall too to also shield that that massive well summarized in all the activities that happened up to this point my job as you know is to provide options to my client and to you and then hopefully come to an understanding and i hope we're at that stage forty five it hasn't been calculated yet but just we did whatever it was on your wish list so probably you would like to advise me on that how to proceed on that i to otherwise everything else we tried to comply with all the different requests up to this point there was also a door that we had on the side of the of the so called back which was and you don't see it on this plan and you see the evil line is just stuck to the windows so second thought is a very high fence law is just about a foot too so i see a minimum that we can provide for the house that's height and so on i mean compared to the previous submittal it's about two and a half lower than compared to the very first submittal much much lower so it has been a continuous low a you know the structure ok wife and i were one of the main critics if you will of the original design and i think we both feel that this is a very nice structure and i agree with the comment that it does feel like a road house so i think the changes were successful so thank you oh excellent thank you for the comment have absolutely nothing to do with this house i just have a question for the architect in revising how much square footage what was initially planned and what did you end up with it's  the building we lowered the building but we didn't lose any of the usability so basically the applicant is getting the square footage they're getting the doubling the size of the home they want to but it now we hope will fit much more attractively on the site  i do have a couple of comments we can we are winning those after we can say that after that would be a good idea thank you yeah we're waiting for please if you have comments please come forward and introduce yourself  laundries one in the basement level and one on the second floor and i was curious about th and you're in the basement and you do balk laundry end up in the basement because you have big machines and you do just small washing up stairs in the bedroom area with where the laundry machines are so it matter of convenience like you have it after you dated outstanding your kitchen and you have another one in your basement just a practical functionality for what it's worth i have that in my house mostly because as asking for a landscape plan is twofold so that the board can evaluate it and so that the town inspector can review it in the future when it's done we call it a landscape plan but the plan also includes a plant list which includes the species common name but time to call name height or  ending on what and i think that there is still some substantial amount of work that needs to be done in order to have a planting plan that the board can evaluate and that the town can review once it's completed seen at least five iterations of the plans in various forms and formats and and and and and sections and so one of the conditions is that we really do need now to have a complete set of plans all in one place  with all the windows on the schedule with all of the plants listed i mean we need a complete set of things because this just pile as you can see it's hard to manage this so that would be one condition is that we get a complete set of plans far end the edge of the carport yeah but on the elevation drawing they appear to be right at the house so you need to just get some can see you there i think you meant in that landscape plan to have the steps to be right close to the house yes yes you could you could work on that that would be nice just to correct that little ok consistency but will be will be having a grading plan because that's next important tack right  had shutters and those have come off and now you have the finials on top and the window sizes have migrated over time and i just have some questions about what you're doing with the windows because there are a lot of different types going on so if you if you'll all bear with me just a second because we're not going to go through redesigning it i just want to make sure that you and the owner or i just want to make sure that you are consistent in what you're doing ok max play or if you think i have something to to questions for you and then i can and then you can explain i think i understand why on the front of the house you have the windows up stairs as double hong and you have the windows downstairs as smaller casement windows it's a little backwards from a traditional colonial traditional colonial course has larger windows on the bottom floor and the second floor has smaller windows if i think it's you know it's coming out it's an attractive look i do notice that you've made all of the double hung windows  the back there we go on the on the left side as we're just going to go around the house i noticed that there are two double hung windows one of them is the same as the ones on the front but then the one next to it seems to be a smaller window in fact it listed as a smaller window and did you mean those to be the same  the window on the left side is a bedroom and oh no no no it's two windows in the still windows right there this left one versus the right one on they should be the same yeah yeah just different you know they know  have the same windows on the top floor to do around the front which is which is good i mean that goes right all is all around the ones on the bottom i don't understand why those would be particularly there was intended to be smaller well would try to stick as close as possible to the same size so i just you know the more types of windows you have the more expensive they are and so that was it's a cost consideration too i was thinking about and then just lastly in this is that i promise you this is my last point on the on the back thing with the bed the direct to the bathroom on the first floor yes and so you're just going with casements all around because you've got to do that for those two correct visually from outside it's not going to make no noise you're absolutely right there are there there   one thing if you'd like to go to the elevation where the deck is the side elevation yes i had a late comment from mr bala that he wants to have two windows that instead of one the applicant provide a detailed landscape plan to be reviewed by community development complete with a plant list which species and sizes caliper and that the applicant provide a complete set of plans final for the final set of plans consolidating always information are there any others and one more i would suggest is that with respect to the will help you on that you need to get the i'm sorry introduce yourself and can i just what what you just want to point out that there are copies of that power point presentation at the rear there are a few copies of the house and production point reader if people want the actual draft but it's very long that's why there's only a few copies of it is online has been posted online for a very long time so people can also get there there is also copies of some additional  delighted to have this chance to present the house and production plan to the planning board we have worked on it for more than two years there was a previous effort that we scrapped and started all over again and through that period we had an extensive public process and immense amount of data gathering and a lot of discussion and we think we have a really solid plan for housing future  so before we begin the presentation i just i just want to say i was like i am now the playing good representative to the housing trust and i had been before and it it's this is been a long process this is been a longer process t wo years to bring this forward and to get the iterations on it and i have to say that it's about time that we take this issue seriously and that we address it there are lots of issues in town there are economic development issues there are issues in terms of schools there are issues in terms of capital campaigns the housing issue is an important issue both for belmont and for the commonwealth and it's not something that we can wait until we see what the oil does to what we can wait until we see what happens in cushing square it's something that we need to address it we need to begin to think about  housing in belmont in the future so i applaud you for coming up with this we will probably change it because we're big because we're the planning board and we've got our fingers in everything and we change everything but in terms of the direction that you're going thank you arwa you make in your presentations thank you for your encouraging words the housing play and intersects all of those other issues that you mentioned and there's a lot to talk  about a lot to think about i'm really happy to see some property owners here because they're in play as far as what can happen and we're hoping that this will all move forward so we can bring what is a housing production plan this is a term of art something defined by the commonwealth of massachusetts under the state statutes it's a proactive strategy for planning and developing housing that means community needs and also meets that well known ten percent target for each community to have enough affordable housing its share of affordable housing p p s as they are known are required to contain an assessment of housing needs goals to assist with meeting the needs and strategies toward achieving the goals so what's in our h p p reasonably many pages of it there's regional context lots of very juicy statistical information mapping data basic census information and a lot of input from  thorough and public process through it or of community workshops there's a number of questions that we considered somebody mentioned before considering housing for people with disabilities that's certainly been part of this process housing for seniors who want downsize housing for new for families who want to somehow find their way into belmont to our wonderful schools housing for families in town already who are having trouble staying here because of the costs all of those kinds of things housing for people who work in belmont like home health aides and people who work in local shops and some town employees who can't afford to live  so why should we work together on that has a production plan and go through a process of approving it because it helps us know how to move forward as a  town and as it turns out it puts us in line for a new state money this is a very recent development the governor announced his housing choice initiative and there are handouts available in the bac will at least check that box off and then the other ones are actually doable so you know we have the chance to get this chance at getting some of the state money one of the things that's suggested is and acting by the commonwealth as an acting housing friendly zoning changes i'm sure we will talk to you about what those might be and you undoubtedly have ideas about them and by moving ahead on this we can contribute to our own economic growth and to that of the state so just a last thought for me how does the h p p get approved it goes through the planning board will work together i hope to get a mutually agreeable document that you will say yes to and then it goes to the board of selectmen and then to the department of housing and community development where we can get an approved plan and then we need to make some progress on that plan to get a certificate of compliance and that gives us a safe harbor from wanted for to be developments we've been there before we don't want to be there housing protection plan is to be a master of our own destiny not only do we need to grow our economy and contribute to the state's economic growth and we need to be a more diverse community and have a better quality or good quality of life but we also need  compliance as to saying with chapter forty b and i want to note that belmont has made tremendous progress so if you look at the slide you can see that we now have only three hundred thirty seven more units to our more homes i hate saying the word units more feeling the impact of the state's housing shortage jeff or do you mind going to the next one sorry so we know that housing costs here in belmont are very high and across massachusetts are incredibly high back in one nine hundred eighty we had housing prices that were on par with the rest of the country that is no longer the case we now have some of the highest home prices and rents in the country and we have allowed less new housing construction than almost any point since the  fifty s so we had a real slowdown that has impacted our housing prices and it's caused real housing shortage in the state so that's the next slide so what is happening as a result this housing shortage is impacting people impacting our economy as we hear today include boston as one of the locations that's in consideration think about how many homes we need right now we have a housing shortage that is about seventeen thousand homes short of what we need every year just to sustain our current job base so we actually want to grow our economy we really have to make some changes and we have to allow for increased development so you can see by looking here what's happening people are making choices to not stay in massachusetts because of our how high housing costs when you compare it with other innovation economies and others a lot of ways that you can look at massachusetts but obviously a very strong innovation economy you can see that for every ten people that go to portland oregon we're only bringing three back same with denver seattle atlanta dallas story after story and you can see on the chart the number of housing the homes that are being developed and where boston the greater boston region fall so this is really putting us at a disadvantage to sustain our economy but to grow our economy and you can see that it's our high housing costs are already impacting our current population this is often surprising to people to know how much people are struggling here in belmont but we see that almost a third of homeowners are considered cost burden and forty four percent of renters are considered cost for it and so this means that people are paying more than a third of their income towards housing and the lower the income that people are obviously that puts them at greater risk of housing instability so any car repair illness hospital bill can really impact the housing stability of people who are paying a who are considered cost burden in their housing and this is a representation of just how many people in belmont are currently eligible for affordable housing so almost a quarter of our population is below are at or below eighty percent of the area median income at the same time we have about six point seven percent of our homes that are affordable and know that the real belmont in the bradford are not fully occupied yet so we really don't have that many homes online yet so we have a lot of people who are really struggling to afford our high housing costs so who's impacted we have everybody is impacted but in particular we found in our needs analysis that seniors in particular are impacted any p c estimates that the metropolitan area planning council that we will have sixteen hundred additional senior households here by two thousand and thirty so we need to make sure that people have housing options helping them stay in their homes when they want to stay in their homes having other options for when they want to move out and there's also a big challenge for families childcare costs we know are very high while massachusetts has some of the highest housing costs in the nation we also have some of the highest childcare costs and so this makes it very hard for people to afford housing here as well so our plan looks at water opportunities we have a wonderful community we have beautiful open space a lot of times it feels built out but there's also opportunity and so what we did is we looked at where where can we ensure  that we can produce more homes but also preserve our open space so we focus on redeveloping blighted industrial or underutilized sites maximizing transit oriented development there's a lot of potential between waverly square belmont center along the true palo leveraging public land development revitalizing and preserving our existing community housing we have a wonderful housing authority it's also not very accessible the homes that are there what can we do to make sure that we have the most amount of homes that are in good quality are accessible so there's of opportunities there it's really improve our public housing stock and conduct education and outreach we want to involve the community in this work it's important that we all think about what our vision is for belmont we know that we need to grow we know it's the right thing to do we know it's good for our economy we know it's a requirement here in the state and so we need to involve the public in this process and one of the things that we're proposing in the plan is to do an exercise with the planning board a place making exercise where we take a place like waverly square we don't think about what is there now we don't think about just developing one particular site we think about what could this be what would we like to see what kind of open space what kind of access to  rail what kind of vibrancy do we want to see there and then back out from there and start to you know put in the zoning in the tools in place that would create a more vibrant area so we hope that the planning board will consider working with us on that because we think it's a great opportunity to involve the current property owners current residents and really help us meet our our housing needs and once the next slide so next steps we are looking forward to working with you and to seeing what ideas you have we do hope that you will come back quickly it's been very long process as you noted and we would really like to move forward it's just very important that we get ahead of this right now is a really interesting time in the commonwealth there's a very strong acknowledgement by our policymakers at all levels that we need more housing and there's a lot of tools that are opening up and we want to be able to take advantage of those tools tools that help with infrastructure tools that help with you know w have building high school for communities that are housing choice communities there's a little bit more that the state is offering to help with new school building so we should just make sure that we are accessing all of the great opportunities that are really opening up right now and that together we will see this process through bring it to the board of selectmen and put them on a path where we are preserving open spaces we're building homes in the right locations were improving our quality of life and we are really growing our economy and so for the questions you can go to judy my watertown lexington and concord i believe has one and there are over ten percent now there's a lot of our neighboring communities that have done housing production plans so we would be the first we would not be the first we would be i would say we would be and i know it's it's quite a morpheus that the governor has proposed a relatively sweeping zoning change that has all of these elements in it what's happening in the legislature  is too soon to tell for sure is that is the is the short answer for you as you may recall we in the senate last year or last session passed a very ambitious package that i would characterize as being having a lot of ideas in it but not necessarily ideas that were fully baked and it went over to the house and house did not take it up this year i think the advocates recognize it would be great to see if we could get the house to move first because the senate a sort of stuck its neck out and said we want to try to do something strong on this and you know it is a difficult issue because often housing production conflicts with with other community priorities like size of l we just been working on so i have understand in the governor's move to come out with a proposal makes it more probable i understand the house is likely to come out with some kind of plan it will see what it looks like i think it will be more circumscribed than what the senator had last year and we'll see where it goes but that's about as much as i feel that i know at this stage to expect we'll see and i remember last year when you came to us you didn't expect that that the senate would pass anything and they did yeah which was an interesting surprise do you have a sense that this being an election year that anything will will go through well there's two sides to that i mean on the get done so that's and that's in favor of something getting done but it all it also means that we probably don't want to things that are terribly controversial so i might my expectation is you will see a plan but it will be somewhat scaled back from what we tried last year do you have a sense i know that there was some discussion that the forty be aspect of it might be attenuated or drop do you have any sense of that meaning that the there was some discussion that forty b would be brought into play and perhaps that we might dial back on forty years somewhat in return for creating some new mechanisms that in the sense of community strongly it's so i'm not clear that that is on the table ok i  have to guess that if if we see air towards a less controversial thing then you can do something more like what the governor has proposed which is incentives if you do well then you have certain rewards it may not be what i would call the stronger medicine of actually mandating density ok thank you for what it's worth as soon as i soon as this starts to dial in in a clearer way and i have a sense that there are proposals that are actually crystallizing and have some motion and  i will be writing about that talking about that in coming to you and this and the town meeting and the community more broadly to get specific feedback on what's coming forward thank you thank you appreciate it let me open it up to is still good and we had a housing production plan it went nowhere i think that several times it has come forth in the town and there really has been little action on it so i am hoping that and i say listen to senator brownsburg or we all know that legislation takes time and i hope that the planning board won't wait to see what the legislature is doing before the planning board acts on this housing plan so that we can move it through the town it can always be amended it can always be added to subtracted from so i see no reason particularly for necessarily waiting for other groups to do something before we act it really is a concern in the town it's not right that we don't have a better economic diversity and it's not right that we don't have better racial diversity so the planning board really and man precinct four live on elm avenue in belmont so there's developers that might be interested in being able to build here for specific communities because they're philanthropist spite what i'm wondering is could we go back in some cases through the planning board because we've now increased lot size necessities and and how far a house has to be back but in the event that that a property can be built they can match the existing house outlines in distance from the sidewalk in the back can there be some flexibility so that we can increase the kinds of people that we can bring into our environment here not sure what question your question is that we keep that we change every year the difficulty in building houses just like knox was over here and they've been they've had five meetings and and that's a different kind of house but what i'm talking about is ken ken property built in belmont that that might agree with some of the the older non conforming lots that's what i'm asking leave the changes that were made which is what we spoke to g r we're  know so i think that g r package that we discussed actually does do that for example the front setback is what is the average of the embodying properties so now you don't have to be twenty feet back and more they reduced the lot size to five thousand square feet the average lots of generating district is fifty six hundred so they've actually come below i'm sorry i didn't realize that yeah so bank there is there are those examples of what the board what the town has already done to address th can be looked at that will make a difference in terms of develop ability of certain lots of things but we're not at that point with what we're dressing with the g r is a very different type of thing and i know there a number of proposals in terms of density and things we've done some of those things in terms of overlays and all that but we need to think more about those things are there any other comments from the audience please i'm julie perkins on pinehurst road and i wanted to say that the league of women voters the bama league of women voters is very much behind this we've supported town planning and housing affordable housing for many many years based on studies from way back and we've been following the housing trust over these past few years many years and have noted that hearings that they had to develop the plan and the statistical use that it's gone into the plan and we're very pleased to see it before the planning board tonight it's been a long awaited process gloria my name is gloria leipzig a member of the belmont housing trust and one of the suggestions that was made at the end of the presentation was to develop a place making to a place making exercise with the planning board in the housing truss on waverly square i'd like to make another suggestion which is to once again try and have the planning wherein the housing trust meet to discuss a revision of the inclusionary zoning bylaw that last revision was done in two thousand and thirteen and one of the changes that was affordable housing for mixed use development is twelve and a half percent we have an example going forward with the bradford that illingworth required to produce ten percent affordable housing raising that requirement back up to twelve and a half percent or even fifteen percent or we or reviewing other again nearby towns and cities and towns that have inclusionary zoning bylaws to put belmont back in a comparable position i think our inclusionary zoning bylaws right now is at the very lower end of the scale and as we look to try and figure out a way to build more affordable housing if we have developers who are interested in developing in belmont revising our inclusion zoning by law to increase the horrible requirement might be one way thank you phil dylan precinct four i've gone to a lot of these meetings over the years and the people have great intentions but in the last five years i don't think ten units have been built the you know for of affordable housing the only units that are coming online are from large apartment buildings where ten percent or twelve percent of the units that's the only affordable housing that's coming on in the belmont we have a problem we don't have a lot of land it isn't like other cities and towns where there's an industrial base that's closing down and converting it to housing if you go down arsenal street in watertown there's a lot of that we don't have that opportunity here and online but the opportunity the planning board has is to change owning my daughter used to live in hilla states it's a six story apartment building you know everything in life is a tradeoff if you want more housing affordable housing we need more density and we don't have any more land in belmont so we need to go up and i think there are a few places in belmont maybe along the railroad tracks where you could have some six story developments and two or three projects coming online like that would bring belmont up to the ten percent plain simple done no more and judy similar i'm a member of the housing trust as well i've actually been on the housing trust for just over a year and i i joined it because i wanted to be a part of the housing production plan because to me the housing production plan two to adopt it puts belmont a little bit in the driver's seat in terms of development we do an outline we kind of figure out and talk on the think about what we're what we want to do rather than reacting to developers coming in we can be proactive about what we want and have an overall plan and some overall guidelines that one have us to move forward and set of continually reacting to somebody else's project coming in we can have a little bit much more proactive plan for belmont thanks camino goldenberg member of the league and a strong supporter of affordable housing but i also want to speak from the standpoint of a senior citizen we bought our house in nineteen fifty six in the wind book area for twenty thousand dollars which were for us was a stretch then i've been staying in that house ever since  getting to the point where i need to downsize and looking looked around are there any condos in belmont hardly any and where what are the choices so another reason to support the plan for this population as well was low income families  tommy olson ten bay state road i serve on the housing trust i'm very happy that we were able to present this plan i also served on the housing authority along with my colleague and man and we're very pleased to see i'm glad you raised it and that this plan does give a lot of credence to the need particularly by twenty thirty where we're going to need an at as and can tell you at the housing authority we have people who really need housing and we just don't have it so we're very pleased to have done that as a matter of fact i talked to a musician today because with the concert that i do i get to speak musicians often don't make enough money to meet they fall within our guidelines you know like i was talking to this one person was thirty thousand dollars a year and so those are the kinds of people that we were as a lot as well as the handicapped and developmentally delayed we need to be looking at them as we also have issues with the with the existing stock of public housing in elderly housing that needs to be addressed and i know that that's part of that's one of the four or five things of going forward that gloria in particular and involve the with community involvement to see what would work there we've also housing a for the housing trust and also applied for c p a funds for a set aside to use towards  variety of predevelopment activities and we are hopeful that a town meeting in may that those funds will be approved and we'll be able to access them in the future the one concern that i have with people that are coming about they want to come to belmont to develop is they say this is the hardest town to do anything in because they have to keep going back and forth to the planning board and what was brought up here is if we had the parameters that were outlined in advance on a housing production plan on what they could do specifically how they could build the height and i know that we partially have that but when i look at the knock street and how you have the gardening and how that has to get laid out in the number of plants and what the kinds of plants are that if we could make things simpler we do need to build in belmont i remember well brownsburg or ten years ago saying we have to increase density in and this gentleman back here who says that there's just no place to do it there is but we have people that are afraid of belmont and i mean we've had empty electric building for a decade now that sits next to us and nothing's happened to it but but there's a there's a low hanging fruit but they're afraid to come here because we they say that this town is very difficult to get things built and so if we could have a manual that you on this is there anybody on the board who would i mean the liaison soil will do if nobody else does anybody want to work with the housing trust on this i guess it's me i guess it's all right you've got me for for better or worse ok thank you very much for an interesting presentation so we will we will as the audience clears in a moment we'll move on to the rest of army if people could if people could go out the back door  you got an exciting meeting now we lose it my particular break we'll take we'll take a two minute break until her body is out and we get it and we get back for like two weeks and it's just i have my tea i have my decaf team i had the cafferty what does that oh wait for him to come back yes we understand housing trust is gone and we've gone through that part where on the we were going to look at updates of potential cases plenty but projects and committee reports jeffrey can we have will be the first of a case for you is a waiver from the sign regulations and order to install a perpendicular sign which for this is a dome on books ok so  perpendicular if you will and because of the change of the sign by law they now can seek a waiver to install that as opposed to prior prior times it was a special permit much more involved longer are contemplating going the same haven't you i mean the waiver was put in there specifically to address this kind of thing where you know it's just it's an additional sign it's you know how does it fit into context if the r s on ongoing we have a liaison project for the housing production planned at this point we're going to be working with them on that in terms  terms of the committee report thank you in terms of other projects we are we're going to form with the approval of the of the board i would like to form itself pleasant street where believe square zoning and study committee to look at the existing zoning that's in place and potential zoning changes unpleasant street here i guess that's the best way to say it and we have looked at south pleasant street a number of times there have been a number of studies that have been done in that here there has looked at a number of of those and she and i have talked and so i'd like to form a committee now with there and this stuff cindy to begin to take a look at the existing zoning that's in place especially in the sliver of so pleasant street i mean of where really square that comes in and south pleasant street to begin to look at the zoning that's in place to look to look at the zoning studies that have been done and to respond to potential redevelopment of that area so i'd like to appoint them for that committee and they would move forward in terms of that their meetings would be public meeting which would be announced even when they're talking amongst themselves  to posting notice within forty eight hours of an agenda keep minutes so forth and so on so just to be clear that this is a public meeting you know that the guard is there when you hold it i on our list here is the high school building project update as you know the high school building project is moving forward i believe that they have three alternatives at this point they will need to move down to one alternative  us where they are at that point and what they will need from us it will be a relatively brief informational says session we will we will get information from them in terms of because we will do we'll be doing this i planned review for the high school we can't do anything until they sort of decide what they want to do with that i've suggested to them that before they have their formal presentation to us that they present to us it will be available online but they present us with the site planned in the plans for the high school and that we meet in a working group sometime probably if we can do an eight o'clock in the morning meeting to do that and just talk about that get through arming questions we'll meet with them they will make their full presentation and then we will respond to them and hopefully we can move the process forward because my understanding is that this is going to move pretty quickly in terms of what they have to respond to from the commonwealth so we want to make sure that we're a path forward with a nod and not getting in the way of the project and the third issue is the adult use marijuana this is kind of up in the air at this point because  regardless of what the selectmen do on the twenty second that they're meeting to reconsider whether they have a vote on that or not and i don't know what the outcome of that will be we have to be prepared for what's going to happen in terms of the zoning regulations on this the commonwealth will not give us anything probably any regulations until march in some way final and the final regulations until march at some point and everything now is a very i mean it's up in the air it isn't certain they've proposed a number of different things which doesn't help us in terms of regulating it in terms of the zoning issues there is so we have to get guidance from them in terms of if they want to try to put something together before april first which it has to be together before april first because somebody could apply for a permit to open a dispensary in june or july is that the first of july one but they could apply for an april first and if we don't have anything in hand that is and i don't think that is good for the town the the other thing that we could potentially do is we could the town could ask for a six month deferral on this to get the regulations in place if that's the case then we need the selectmen to move forward on from them i've spoken with one member of the board and we haven't spoken with the rest so we don't know what they're going to do with that so we need to work that out and we need to move forward on that so that's for the adult well what those selectman would do if they approve that would be to put that on the ballot for the town to play able to opt out if if they wanted to it's unfortunate because twenty two because in the public hearing that would occur prior table focused which means that the public notice gets and it gets published in the local paper prior to that as well so the effective date of that mor now i'll be at the meeting on the twenty second and i'll try to get the temperature on that point we need some guidance from them right mike sir as you noted in your packets there were some articles in the boston globe do i hear a movement to a motion all right thank you very much