bylaws we will then have some neighborhood determinations an allocation of working group for a couple of properties then we'll do some business in terms of potential cases and then we will move the meeting let me though as i begin this evening let me go back to last thursday and talk a little bit about the mclean  discussion that we had at that point we had decided last thursday not to go forward to town meeting with the article that had been proposed b mclean there were several reasons for that one particular one was the amount of time we didn't think we would be able to get it in shape that would be able to go to the warren and  had come forward and talked about that between the the vision that mclean had proposed and discussions by the housing trust and other advocates for housing as as the neighbors in the woodland which would be the most impacted the there was also a lack of clarity in determination in terms of what the parking and what the traffic requirements and impact would be on that there was in addition there was a technical difficulty in the proposed amendments in  district three which was the continuing care proposed district the proponent basically proposed to do a replication of the woodlands projects which  are duplexes in try plex townhouse type projects long with a multi story building much less dense much different project than had been proposed it was agreed to in the memorandum of understanding for the town the way it was proposed was to make changes relatively small changes in a number of parts about the way the zoning was in place that would enable the developer to build the development that he had proposed he may well have done that in the fullness of time however the  amendments were entirely one sided in terms of maclean and the developer in that they did not reduce any development density or do anything to mitigate what would happen if the developer was not able to complete the project that he had proposed at that time all the benefits were flowing to mclean and none were flowing to the town except the long term benefits from additional taxes on the property are my opinion was and i think it was the members of the board as well is that even if we agreed with the development that was proposed there was no way to control it within the context of the zoning that was proposed in that sense i believe it was a bad deal for the town and i believe that we can do better in terms of that also in terms of district four which is the district that is related to the proposed r and d project the r and d project was proposed for approximately one hundred and fifty thousand square feet nearly twenty years ago at one point it was under agreement are just standing is that it hasn't been under greenman or has been marketed for at least the last four or five years and is not currently being marketed the the proposal that mclean had was not to restrict development in the area but basically to open it up to any and all institutional uses in parentheses anything that mclean would like to do that is relevant to the mission of mclean again it is hard to see what the benefit for the town would be although certainly we agree that mclean is a worthwhile institution and the proposed now residential school that they are planning for the site will be a valuable contribution to the commonwealth in general mclean had spoken in terms of a pilot payment in lieu of taxes on the parcel that never got any further than this say we would consider that mclean as we found out at this time is not paying any any taxes or any payments in lieu of taxes for either of those two parcels so we think that that like parcel three opens up all benefits to mclean but doesn't do very much for the town it needs to be worked out  long process and the results of that that mclean in the town went through approximately twenty years ago for the redevelopment of the site which had a number of benefits both to mclean in the town and we appreciate those however  the proposals that are made in terms of the zoning for mclean in my opinion and i believe in the opinion of the board require us to reopen the memory and to move on just standing  i hope at this point that we will be able to begin again to talk with mclean and to the residential developer about potential development at the site whether it's residential or it's a residential school for mclean we think those are worthwhile projects but i think as i've said before the devil is in the details and there are many details to be worked out and it did not seem that there was sufficient time to work those out my suggestion is that at this point that we have a discussion not only with maclean but also with the board of selectmen about perhaps establishing a task force and spending the appropriate amount of time to get this right as i've says said before i believe that mclean can do better than this and i believe that i don't want can do better than this just to clarify and i think we can move forward on this hopefully for a special town meeting in the fall and that we can get something done that we can be proud of that will serve the needs of the town as well as the hospital so that's my comment on that  zoning district spencer let's talk about the tour and just real quickly before we move forward with the continued just want to call to the boards attention the upcoming dates and deadlines there is a tentative date on the calendar just in case you need to continue the hearing again for tuesday march th the draft amendments have to be submitted by march th and the deadline to submit is marks twenty nine so let me ask the question at this point so if if if we decide to go forward with either of these two amendments at this point and we and we think we pretty much have them in a handle though there is language that has to be be changed can we close the public hearing at this point take a vote or what's the procedure in terms of that so it would know how substance of the changes are if it's you know come here come in there that's different than don't it's a disc much larger conversation you can close the public hearing before taking a vote on the amendments by closing the hearing you've essentially closed the public we have to go to draft out tomorrow so we have to get a draft to tomorrow so the so does closing so we can close the public hearing right that's fine yeah ok ok thank you yeah right ok that's fine always nice to have t is the northern section of town it's founded on the north by route two on the west by clifton st and on the south east by pleasant street staff has three broad questions that we want to pose to the board which will help us move forward finalizing the texan understanding how the board wants to move forward so before i move into the presentation i wanted to call your attention these three questions and then we can move forward the presentation to the st question is i wasn't sure i'm in the last meeting if it was determined that you wanted to do the g r model which is a special permit required by either the z b air the planning board or this s r c model which is either the product is by right or it's the special permit from the planning board if it crosses the thirty percent threshold steve you want to know from from the from the onset let me just be very clear that this is to be an extension of the work that we did on the s r c or see that that was the intention of the neighborhood that's been my interpretation of the best way to proceed on this so it is that's currently how it's drafted that's how it's been drafted so i appropriate number and then additionally to confirm whether or not you want to delete the seven hundred dollars square foot threshold from the text as well which currently has its drafted seven hundred dollars square foot directional it's taken out and the three thousand square foot threshold is what's being proposed and then the rd question is and we sort of touched on this is how to approach the regulating the height the increase in height as it's drafted currently any increase in height whether it's feet or stories would require a special permit from the planning being real ok ok think oh let's be clear about what height means we're not talking about high to the midpoint we're talking about the highest point of the building and i have some said i have some i have not thought about all of the implications of that but i think that that would at least cover the problem that came up with the garage and so we're talking about non conforming height is that correct spencer so that's that's my question is the way it's drafted in the current draft it would be any increase for that where the height is conforming or not though there's an alternative  correct that's it so then right so ok so any increase in height in a building whether you're talking thirty percent or anything else to this neighborhood and we're not trying to extend that elsewhere because if you just start getting into that then somebody who's doing a relatively modest single story to two story conversion which is you know almost necessarily is going to involve thirty percent increase in the size of the structure but may not it may be that somebody is just popping up one side of it i'm not sure that every time the high goes up that needs to be as long as it's within th but for this for this neighborhood yeah i think think it's a special circumstance i'm thinking about how this affects the innocent you know right and so what this what it currently as it's drafted would do is if you  have a ranch home on a flat piece of property that wanted to do a dormer out the back that would be that would require a special permit because it's an increase in higher number of stories because they've been going from one story to one and a half stories right and that's capture ok and if that's if that is the intent of the board then that's what this dies i think that i think given the given the topography there and the   in a case where it's a relatively benign think it's a put right there and it should be clear let's say this is now for future boards it's a quick look it's sort of does it do something bad or does it if he's just increasing it is not going to have an effect on you know the neighbors which is our intention to avoid that then it should be over easy and i'm thinking of an example that  will come up before us and the increase in height is actually the opposite of what the concern is it's into a hill yeah and so there's no a better there's no concern there and it's something to look at and it's because it's because it's an increase in the midpoint of the midpoint of the show way is a very different thing from the midpoint of a ranch and so i think we so did we absolutely not midpoint we want total height or height to the ridge exactly it and we do have and we did later on in the dimensional requirements we do for the entire s r b district we just carry that language completely over that that it's at the thirty four the it was interesting in a way to look at the the problem of the size of the increase i don't i don't think we were as interested in talking about the size  houses and i thought that was a very clever way of doing it but the three thousand the total square footage amount has crept back into the language so you didn't have that the last time around and we were so the previous  last week's hearing the president previous drafts had the thirty percent or seven hundred square feet exactly yeah and that's what we were and that's what you want ok i guess i misunderstood i thought it was the other way around well now the question is how and it's it's and it's an easier argument to make that the problem here is the size of the increase and we're trying to capture houses that are already large coming in at twenty nine percent and adding a one thousand square feet right right right if we that's a very different kind of concept than coming in and saying you can't build a house you be if you want to build something bigger than three thousand square feet you've got to come to blackboard for approval understood that's that's that's a that's a controversial approach but i think it's that the proportion of addition then we would revert back to that more than thirty percent or seven hundred square feet whichever is rights you could have a two thousand eight hundred dollars square foot house and want to add one small bite to it at two furnishing over the garage and also that also solves a problem over regulating exactly properties on larger laws that are larger hose right right because we're going to run into you know this will be  it's it's a much easier thing to explain and to justify and to show we can show the graphic of here's a large house and if you put you know twenty nine percent on it it's bigger than anything else in the neighborhood that's that's that should come to the to the planning jurisdictional question not an accidental question and so in this case we that's not where we're going with this so three hundred feet was just a carry over i don't know i mean you know let's go right in three hundred feet to seven hundred is a sensible number given it's a much bigger number to saw there were because otherwise if we're getting anything if we're getting three hundred dollars square foot additions no matter what that's that's not at all we have mined here  about whether or not there were two families in the district previously drafted it said single or two family structures and when i looked there is there happens to be there is twelve family and there's a condominium development and so what i did was just going on in the dimensional thing i don't have it up here in our thing i can pull it off just come from there for the audience sure if you want to look on the website show with a change on that really is just a matter of adding a b and c and changing the letters so that they make some sense but in the intensity though you have changed the building height yes yes and all you all are all these dimensional buys a house or has a house and pairs it down then they are covered in your b one section because there's a whole description about that but in terms of that the superiority of the outline in b to there is the only language says the building commissioner determines in such a proposed alteration or structural change to the existing non conforming structure once they tear it down there is no existing non conforming structure so the question is how do we kind of capture that for a tear down or is that and are we opening a different interpretation is what i know what you were trying to do by adding that word because of the whole thing that came up with the z b a but i i just i'm looking at the numbering the number one and two are equivalent and two is not subservient to one in my just reading it wrong but it these are all of the the they are there one after the other but they're not linked in sequential in that sense right so alternatively if you could leave everything in place and use the st paragraph instead having a number one next to it you could leave the st paragraph as a standalone and then put a one next to the building commissioner may issue a building permit under any other circumstances what you're saying rather than just beginning the opening to say yes take this i'm suggesting perhaps you want to consider taking the one and moving it down to one sentence that says the building commissioner and said so that mean it's very clear that it's either existing or it applies to a tear down to the prior structure i'm not a lawyer i don't know but it does that numbering doesn't make sense to me i see what you're saying that definition is basically in essence repeated or should be repeated in in paragraph two but it covers everything in the  yeah this is this is the only it and it's it's not at a substantive change from the s r c it's actually better language i mean it's a better structure it's something that the know that whole paragraph stays there by itself with no number right right then the number one comes under the building can the commissioner may issue a building permit under the energy of following circumstances well that the reconstructed extended altered or structurally changed covers everything ok what's the problem is that it's not repeated under number two here right and so what what i hear it being proposed is that we leave the blanket paragraph at the top is the superseding paired superseding paragraph and then under number one the building commissioner may issue a building permit under the following circumstances otherwise basically  if the building hears of the superseding paragraph to another one this is this is this is really kind of all over the place so number one of the building commissioner the building commissioner made it issue of a building permit on the following circumstances so the building commissioner may issue it otherwise basically if the building commission determines that the that this is the purpose well do we need to if now we that and then let's worry about the bill that we can we can work on the you know we do understand we hear your your concern so let's keep it the same well let's just do the substantive changes we're in agreement on those checks let's put those inform us on the proper way to do this so ok so so now backing up what we're really interested in is the height and number of stories to get the important stuff to the height would be the height in feet to the ridge or in the numbers or stories go be nice do surgery place when you're all done all this and spell out square feet ok i always make good but he do that for me after the the sense of begins either as a stand alone could be simplified by saying if the application itself then in parentheses or when or when combined with the gross floor area and i don't i don't think you get gain anything by saying stand alone or either as you just say if the application is not a standalone s with another if that talks about coming from the planning for and it's that there's some confusion about jurisdiction there which is the board of the board of appeals is in this case the playing right and you have to spell it run this is a draft we are there so the draft they can take a look you know what we get to them yeah yeah as long as we have a subset of stuff in here and yeah and i mean maybe i'll talk with them and we'll have the has to go to the county council for us here i mean we're actually forty four we have the great advantage of the experience of the as far as our see because ordinarily to make this kind of a change you know  think the important thing to understand that there is a point is that we have a consensus on what we want to do and how we want to do it and what the take your aspects that are now where and one last little bit if if if you want if we could we have too many ifs if and if parentheses two starts with a vodka so it says the building commissioner shall determine if the proposed period after be in the new sentence of the end it's as if either of these conditions are met yet the proposed alteration shows right exactly yeah so you do need to you need to set it up you need to it tonight worry about the word smithing as we move forward but they're just brought up in another interesting point so so now that you're completely confused we know what the substantive things are this this language  to move back up to what is now bullet number c i have story addition to the non conforming structure that will not increase the footprint of the existing structure that's got to come out so basically this is saying that if you want to build a dormer on the back of your your your ranch right or right on your cape even if you want to put a half story addition to the thing  of the height restriction it's the perception not only the perception but it's the actual height that if you have something further up the hill even if the actual height i think is under it when who wanted to you know add a half story to their existing you know cape right it's actually sort of the inverse of the universe of what was going on or right in this case that can be pretty detrimental if it's in the wrong and it doesn't mean they so now ok here i see so here it says and another for me welling may be reconstructed after voluntary demolition is the building is reconstructed as reconstructed will be located on the same footprint as the original non conforming structure will be no greater in volume or gross flurry area as the original i could have it on two floors and decide to built how  anybody yes yes yes yes yes we should repeat it exactly ok do do we have does anybody else have any changes all of these i think we've talked about i think it was when we start messing with the language adding things and taking out that w problem for us they've really have any comments on the remaining part that's red lined through here did we miss anything in a way that avoids strike in that in a way that avoids and just say to avoid you know  the planning board but you could combine right to carry it and make it just one big paragraph yeah right because it's cut the way it's set up this if if you comply here's what you can do but if you don't care what happens one or the other right conforming it is not itself is not conforming that does not rise to thirty percent then it goes to the they would be the board of appeals in this instance if you're in violation of current setbacks you've got to go to the c b s right this one says if it isn't then so so this is complete in itself and says these are the conditions under which you can you can get a permit by right if you can't meet these then it's going to have to go to the d b a the board of appeals in addition if the if the building commission determines the following things then it goes to the planning board right so that's where the distinction is as if that's what that's all about or yeah right there under the under number two so it's just the whole section one is actually the holdover from the original language of the right the amendment the this article before we amended it by eddings part right right ok and it's this that it's fine in itself except for the single into family dwelling part of it and then the neurology is off i mean it should be a b c not one  but otherwise that is in itself a complete whole i think we do have to have that  cover the definition of a non conforming building it's been a while since i went through this with geoffrey when we were in the detail of it of the filtering is what's going on in background right ok ok that's great so we are jeffrey hearing at this point for inclusionary zoning let's take a look at the text we have to write so the text will be different than the presentation to town meeting so we talked about like the graph and all that that will be in the presentation that project it's just for for sale projects as i recall you can't do this on a a for rent project if you have a for sale project the developer has the option and i think the language that we're putting in this is with sort of the guidance of the of the housing trust they can come to the planning board and they can basically make a payment of five percent of the the language that we're seeing here is a little bit different than that it doesn't spell out the it's a payment it doesn't spell out the percentages on it and they all have this provision that has to do with if the developer thinks they have the option to to buy out the buyout the project or the the affordable housing interest in the in the project and if they can say that it would be infeasible basically they're saying it wouldn't be feasible to develop the projects with with these in place now my question is i'm taking a look at these these are broader then ours because they don't specify for sale projects so we have to be careful about that  in my reading this correctly help rachel do you want to reveal for you what would you like to come up here and introduce yourself to turn on the microphone you can talk  i do think we're one of the few communities that has it only for homeownership but i would say if i can come in i found a very helpful report that was prepared on  metropolitan area planning council it's a recent report it was prepared specifically for act in bedford concord and lexington and there is a section that talks about calculating payment in lieu fees and although there are we've talked about this before there's no standard recommendation for how to do it but this report highlights that there are two general ways of approaching it one is an affordability gap which we see in arlington where it takes the market rate unit minus the affordable unit and you can multiply that by the number of units that would be built and then that would be given to the trust another way is by the production costs so that's based on the amount that would cost to construct an affordable unit and that can either be set by the town in consultation with developers or another way that communities do it is by using department of housing and community developments q a p they set limits what would be the cost of an affordable unit so in the current  they also look well under winchester actually adds and the value of the land whale and so whale and on page two at the bottom states that in order to include the value of the lands the financial contribution for each affordable unit shall include an amount equal to the current year's assessed value divided by the total total number of units multiplied by that's one of them are affordable units so i think something to keep in mind is a couple things one that we want this used in rare cases because we have all talked about there's just not a lot of opportunities for development and so the ideal is that it is built on to make the project infeasible so i think those are important provisions we want to put in there but it's also thinking about how those who are most often be used when a larger development it's going to be easier to do the affordable units on the smaller development is where it gets a little bit more challenging so i go back and forth on this because obviously the more money the better but in thinking about how much a market rate you know it goes for in belmont you know we're talking about last week could be a one million more than a one million a small development being built and the difference between a market rate and affordable could be eight hundred thousand dollars now in this case are we making infeasible for it to be onsite and to even do it a payment in lieu and so i wonder if we might want to this you know when i kind of think you know the more the more you go in the direction like this it's like a full employment it act for you know  with the fordable you know the land value and all that i think i think and i understand this and i think what what's also in here inherently because it doesn't separate this out is that they are also talking about more than just for sale units they talk about for rent units so it may be that there's a part  arlington where they want to build there but they don't particularly want to build affordable at eighty percent or whatever it is they want to do something that's maybe workforce you know type thing which is a different thing and that's for the benefit of the town but if they if they had you know some of the inclusionary zoning there it might make it a feasible project and so they'd have to determine that it's the best interest of the town  then they make a financial contribution now the problem with that is if you're doing a project like that it may be that the project is so tight that the financial contribution may be a relatively minor financial contribution and i certainly agree that i don't think i think we want to i don't think what we want to capture the runnel part in this because smaller things don't get affected so i don't think we want to capture that so i don't think we want to include that so i think we want to we want to stay with the for sale  so i think the question on the forced sale the way they did the percentages cleaner it's cleaner so it's a definition of is it the percentage and i think the issue that we were discussing in terms of this was is it five percent of the value of the of of the cell price of all the language in there that there's some language here that i mean that we put language in that i think we have something  on the recommendation of the housing trust in the planning board that we allow that to happen that isn't there yet yeah i think that's what the there's there's too much you are making you know going back to your conversation from afar you might be making a decision right now without being able to properly vet it so i do understand it's low no i think that i mean i'm thinking this in terms of going to to meeting because we want to get this passed and we want to get the changes passed so this is something we can do because if we do mclean we can capture that in the memorandum of understanding we can go to do something to freedom cost yeah we can do that from a custom basis and i don't think the other i think the other projects are going to be like i think what's going to happen on so pleasant street is going to be on a rental basis so that we can't be absolutely sure of that so having incentives i mean some jurisdictions reduce parking having their own kind that's it can be very complicated and this is the whole road question yeah i thought about that today actually when i was walking there that was a gas station that was a repair place and that would have fallen under that too and he was going to move gelato store to the st floor and he was going to but residential on top of it so i'm not too sure so should we keep the language the way it is on this let me just read the language on this the language that we have now is may they may appeal to the playing board to make a cash payment in lieu of such a cash payment shall be equal to five percent  i would change the language and say either show be equal to at least five percent because we don't want to h  in here may appeal so it doesn't mean we have to grant it right should we just merge  sections for six to nine units and ten or more units are we treating them the same no i think wishes and you should just merge them makes you think like what look for the what's the what has made you differently they were created because they are different  well it says five percent the right amount at him from the floor yeah yeah well those i'm on the other hand if we could get through would we turn it away depending i mean three doesn't do very your sort of such cash payment shall be no less than five percent yeah she'll be in no less than five percent in making the decision the plane which will suit the recommendations show concern yeah i mean if we do that she'll be no less than five percent of the value of the entire development yeah that's fine with me then shut the one i was mentioning just a nd ago so the c one section of the well the so it's what ten percent right so that's six the reason is sixty nine because if you do ten percent six is you know  is there's a there's a there's a there's an incentive that's building that's built the developers build in centive for themselves or slush fund as they develop these things then of course you hope when you go to the market that you could do much better than that and you do you know he did too much in this market yeah you know this is a surging market and anything that can be built around here probably will be built so what's the change the that we want to make on on this and so they want to yes ok for residential yeah ok development for rachel and i i hope this is going to be a pretty straightforward presentation for you in terms of things i think when you put it we talk about the graph of what the other towns have so you know for graft it's basically going to show that as opposed to going to be right there we're going to be with our her peers in terms of this and it's safe to say it's an improvement housing trust i believe that we have improved it and hopefully it will result in more affordable units in town as more did development takes place ok so we move on from that to neighborhood determination and working groups the st one is fifty the fifty two elma avenue so is this a working group thing or do we that there are a few architectural changes that are recommended that they are going to implement and does the size of the addition is in the ballpark of what the board has considered in the past so i think if they're if they don't they still need to do the working group based on their their reaction to mine yes that's right so is the architect somebody that we've worked with before no i you there they have another case that sort of in this same stage so you will we're fine ok we're fine in terms of that so we talk about potential cases projects which is heading towards needing the mcclane is on the horizon again as a made for tuesday tomorrow night but they just cancelled because they're not quite organized so it will be sometime in april i think i think it's particularly