let me briefly go through the agenda for this evening for those of you that are here and for folks at home we will i gather marine street is not going to be a public hearing this evening had they continued th continued yes we had a request for that so we had a continued public hearing for thirty three that will be continued we also have two new public hearings one will be for ninety seven slade street which is the addition of a dormer for a two family in the general residence district the second one will be for twenty two they can road which is proposed new single family house in the s r c district we will move from that to a discussion of the housing production plan that's been worked on by the housing trust and we will discuss that then we do preparation for town meeting will do updates and then we will repeat minutes before we begin the we will continue the public hearing for thirty moraine street but before we begin that i have a comment to make on the public hearings for applicants that come before us the procedure is when you are looking for a permit a special permit that you go through community development and we have two players that work with you in terms of that they are very cognizant of the rules and regulations for the zoning they are also very cognizant of the that what the board would like to see in terms of applications we have two applications this evening and we've had them before in which the applicants did not respond or make any changes in their applications for the special permit in response to what community development specifically jeffrey and spencer had to say  this makes things a little bit more difficult and it tends to make the public hearing in the approval process longer i urge anybody either here at home that is coming for a special permit before the planning board to listen carefully to what jeffrey and spencer and community development have to say about your proposals it will make life easier they have been said jeffrey now we just make we just continue the public hearing for thirty days to make a motion to do so to able to i make a motion that we continue the public hearing for thirty murray in st until what's the date they're coming back to they would like to come back up people twenty fourth it will twenty eighteen at seven pm in the board of selectmen meeting room at town hall auditorium four forty five concord avenue to consider the application of judith petrie for a special permit under section one point five point four of the zoning bylaws to alter it non conforming structure building height stories two and a half allowed three existing three and a half proposed in order to construct a dormer on top of her home at seventy ninety seven slade street  we have a microphone is the applicant's architect am my name is niles e m m with north river builders and judy is our client i'm sorry could you repeat your name and he you with again short excuse me my name is nile z m and i'm with north river builders and we're the builder involved in this project and i'm speaking on judy's behalf are you the architect as well designer before you begin this you realise that in the in the end some of the plant information some of it's in correct although we are although this property is in a general residen district for two families the minimum lot size is seven thousand square feet five thousand square feet and the minimum frontage is seventy feet not fifty feet  out we did we did go into the building department and discuss with them we brought them the plans and we went through several revolutions and when you looked at the zoning as well what we did was we took their advice and they  there is a note that says for two families it's different this is a two family property correct correct yeah i'm sorry i interrupted you please no no that's ok so one of the things that i wanted to point out that we tried to minimize the impact of this dormer is that we kept we took great pains to keep the ri line exactly where it is and we sacrificed a little extra headroom but in that proposed warmer but we are not making the building any higher than it building and then the other thing i wanted to mention is that there's a large portion of that dormer area that is actually storage and one of the important reasons behind  needing that is that the basement this very old house it's got a rubble stone foundation and the basement is constantly wet judy has antiques that she likes to store and she can't store them out on her property right now she has to pay for storage elsewhere and in one of the think she'd like to do is get them in a climate controlled area and that is why you know we're hoping to keep that dormer that the length that it is  the the reason that you're here for a special permit is not as it refers to in the letter the mudroom petition the reason that you're here for a special permit is because in the general residence  zone if you have a two family house you have a you have to have a seven thousand square foot lot you have a six thousand square foot lot so you don't conform in terms of that you have to have seventy feet of frontage across the front you don't have that so you don't conform in terms of that you also have because and i know it's an issue that we will talk about this this evening and try to work this out we we understand that it's considered by the town as a three story building now and it will be three and a half if the dormer as proposed goes through that's an additional nonconformity one of the things that the planning board has an issue with is increasing nonconformity s and that's a nonconformity we will try to work something out and we typically do but but these are issues that are coming up in terms of this and you should be aware of this we've thought about this community development has a lot about this and i know they made some suggestions you'll hear from the board this evening you'll hear suggestions in terms of how we can get to something that may be able to help you with your issues so we're trying to work with you on this but you should be aware of what the issues are you should also be aware it's in your package of don't talk about it there are a number of very large shed dormers in the neighborhood those were and we have pictures of them which show that those were put in place before the current zoning regulations are in place and they would probably not have been allowed to that extent before that and that's that's one of the the reasons why the zoning was change so you're in a special permit process because of that so what the special permit process does is not the not the right to make changes but it brings you into a public process in which the impact on on your neighbors and other people in your residential district is discussed and we see what kind of an impact it has if it has a deleterious impact if it has a minor impact but also if it conforms to zoning and we will see what we can work out in terms of that i'll turn to spencer now who will give us you had some basic numerical data on the neighborhood and you should also provide us because the the builder didn't provide this and we haven't seen this per se the the number of stories   feet is that sounds about right actually though there's something that i wanted to make sure was clear on the plans if there is an existing bedroom on that in that space and so the neighborhood and you can see that it is primarily a two family neighborhood with a few single and three family homes scattered throughout this next slide shows the the lot sizes throughout the neighborhood the average lot size for the neighborhood is a little over fifty five hundred square feet the lot size the the applicant's property is a little over six thousand square feet so it is about five hundred square feet larger than the average with regards to the existing the total livable area the t l a of the existing structure is two thousand nine hundred seventy nine square feet and the average for the neighborhood is two thousand six hundred fifty five so the welling as it exists is  about three hundred square feet larger than the average for the neighborhood and in the proposed c l a is thirty six hundred square feet or a little bit over thirty six hundred square feet which is just shy of a thousand square feet larger than the average two family home in the neighborhood and then we have the existing f a r for the applicants property the existing f a r s point five which is pretty much on target with a neighborhood which is point four nine but then when you look at just two families the two family averages is point five as well and then the proposed f a r is point six which is higher than both the they will have ridge of point four nine and the two family averages of point five exists at five bedrooms and the average for the neighborhood is also five bedrooms existing story is we have to go on assessors data which the assessor they base the stories on what they see when they're out in the field and their definition of a story differs from the zoning bylaws definition of the story the average story for the neighborhood based on the assessors data is two point one there's no way to confirm  we don't have the data but my expectation is that due to the topography of the neighborhood that they there are other properties on the neighborhood that would be considered three stories based on the zoning by law and quite possibly some that would be considered three and a half stories based on  is owning is two and a half so those stories are assessors determination or zoning those stories in the neighborhood analysis that we have is the assessor's data on the map that you see here which unfortunately i not clear on the screen for mapping purposes for both the applicants property and the neighborhood i just used assessors data but the data that you see on the right hand side the numbers themselves for the proposal that is based on the zoning clients check list included the assessors data for the applicants property for mapping just so you can see how it would fit and realize that most of the surrounding properties are also considered to be two stories they most likely are for  purposes or higher than two stories only assesses for those stories that are above ground and in this case the basement is why we consider it a basement and therefore a story the assessor does not consider that a story you know it's not livable space they're not looking at is the bull's base cracked from from our point of view it's the stories that are considered to be above ground by that definition yeah existing structure is already quite large compared to the neighborhood in the average two family in belmont as a whole is actually twenty six hundred seven square feet so it's over three hundred square feet larger than the average two family and belmont  the proposed addition is increasing a structure that's already larger than the average with regards to if they are it's on as exist as on target with the neighborhood but the increase in t l a second and then i'll turn this over to cindy who will walk us through this just look at lot in a building on this an f a r of two you would have two floors on ok so it's a measure of density or area ratio to area ok it's a fraction where you have the square footage of the house the livable square footage divided by the square footage of the lot well let me just walk through i mean i just had some questions on this and this if we take a look at the proposed calm on the right just walk down we have a lot here that's the front edge of the required is in correct on this which needs to be fixed this is for a single family part of this and not for two families so it should be a seven thousand square foot lot it should be seventy feet of frontage so in any case there is there's question marks here that i have just going through this and this is just this is just a checklist kind of stuff we're going to talk about other things but just as just as this is just in terms of completion for example we have the set backs which are required twenty feet existing is fourteen eight the proposed is thirty three point seven are you moving the front of the building back no the dormer is that that's the dormer with  going we'll get back to you if it's hard to read i won't do this but but they're inconsistent season the zoning checklist that need to be fixed ok ok and they need to be congrui with the correct part of the zoning by law and what your actual well you doing so this is incomplete at this point and it's also it's it's incorrect community development we'll talk to you about this and to make sure that it is only checklist is compliant with exactly what you're doing ok and so in any case i'll turn this over to and i'd like you just kind of walk us through the the plans a little bit more detail and as we're doing that i understand you've had some back and forth with spencer and jeffery on this project and i would just like to kind of hear some about that discussion because as chuck alluded to earlier there was a much change in your plans i understand from that discussion i kind of want to get a better sense of what that discussion entailed and what some of the ideas other ideas that were application were both going to come up because you have to i'm sorry you have to introduce yourself these are nihilists from north river builders chris skiles from north river builders chris had  numerous discussions with spencer so i thought it would be good for us to but i may be able to answer some other design questions through what was the proposal we see today was that the original proposal has it been modified based on discussions with the planning planners the town or  kind of what were some of the feedback you received and how was the plan modified to adjust regarding i think as far as you have to reintroduce is you have to reintroduce yourself each time you speak  kyle's north river builders ok and some of the feedback that we got from spencer was perhaps reducing the the size of the storage area in the dormer and that was  as niall had mentioned earlier we were reluctant to do that because the overall length of the of the dormer does fall within the requirements and the situation with the basement was your problem in the basement  judy's collection of antiques a big part of the reason for wanting the store was to have a place that she could store those a climate controlled area in terms of the story count and spencer jeffrey if you can help me out on this i didn't see a calculation kind of typical per month parameter calculation that's used to determine the story is that  other things to note is that the zoning by law defines what a half story is but it sets a maximum it's a cap if you go over that cap then your a story so anything between my two fifty say i'm just using as an example is considered a dormer after fifty be considered a story so even if there may not be really necessarily truly ha space it could still be considered a house story so in some respects this is already a half story and they're just expand further expanding that have story within the limits of a half story they're not going there are three stories but the question is already i would suggest that there are three and a half stories because of the pitch of the roof and the fact that there is an existing room up there already that is usable there using it non compliant as correct yes most definitely that's the complication is expanding in nonconformity it's well it's an additional non conforming that is on the table as well one thing i wanted to mention was that  about a foot foundation showing in that because the street is so steep on the other side on the driveways side it's four or five feet and that's why we're getting that that i sent into three stories now we looked at we looked at the idea about putting a retaining wall next to the driveway and filling that up with dirt to hide that exposure but that just didn't seem to make sense it was a lot of money for for just to satisfy a rule that i mean it's it's up for interpretation but it didn't seem like the way to go would look absolutely ridiculous with a tall wall right next to the driveway and then four feet of you know raised bed basically right next to the house so we thought about it you're trying to satisfy this requirement and we couldn't come up with something that wouldn't look  weird i think i think cindy if i have this right so basically the proposal that you have after going through community development is the same proposal you walked in the door with no we made some initial changes just speaking to the building department just in terms of what minor changes of the floor area things that we were clear on we've reduced the size of the dormer slightly to be in compliance with again that was there was a directive from the building officials they they said you know this storm is too big based on the square of the linear foot of the ridge and so we reduced it at that point to to meet what we thought were the only requirements for that dormer i understand what you're explaining now but  this is a tough one because because it does expand nonconformity by significant amount and i understand and appreciate the need for storage upstairs it would be it's unfortunate because it's six increasing the size of the  r and ford for not a whole lot of storage frankly i mean that that stored from doesn't seem very large going down but it does substantially increase the size of the expansion the nonconformity which is the tough that's the nut to crack here i mean i think i would be looking at eliminating that storage area or are trying to figure out a way to i don't know it's just i mean this this this storage area under the under the the peak is only what is it five feet long it's really long and narrow it's really mostly a i do understand as a matter of fact or her basement did flood again recently she has a sump system but they don't always work great if power goes out or whatever and and thankfully she didn't have anything in that basement because buildings out of two story buildings essentially which is what's going on here and it's hard for us to as sympathetic as we are it's hard for us to to go against you know something that town meeting was pretty clear about  so i might hope would be that you could work to reduce the size a bit i think we could see you've got air conditioning units you've got  right and that was a challenge to to get you know we had to put some extra framing in there to get that dormer roof to keep it below the existing ridge line which i had hoped you know what i was hoping with that is that we would anticipate something that might be an issue we're talking about some some height issues with this house and rather than bring a dormer that's that's two feet higher than the existing bridge we would just anticipate what you would tell us and i'd start with with that low  dormer i mean i i would agree with the previous comments i actually thought on the elevation the dormer might not look so massive if it was brought over and aligned with the and one of the things i wanted to make sure that you all understood was that the existing bump out just on the right of the building in the front because of the height of the street the topography of the street you really are not going to see much of that dormer that we're proposing because that pitch of that roof that's a gable end that ties right into the main roof yeah right there that locks much of the much of the dormer and that's why we thought it would have nearly the impact that it might look in this rendering because you'll never get this perspective in the neighborhood it's just over eight years you still see it i mean i live nearby i walk down the street a couple times i looked at there are a lot of dormers in the neighborhood and some are better than others and i just felt like this is so long that if you could step back just do something to articulate it so it's not just this big huge block wing on to what there was saying i was curious as to whether or not you couldn't i could see them lining the windows up and i'm curious as to why use casement windows when the whole house is double hong but just by by by creating a visual difference up there you're calling attention to this the space up there and i thought maybe there might be ways i think of what they are alluding to ways of you know kind of bringing a little bit more into conformity with the rest of the structure so it seems like an organic part of it rather than just something plopped on to the side which which frankly that's what you see all around the neighborhood and i'm afraid that even even in those you've talked it nicely behind the front ga what you're trying to do and i think you appreciate the issues that we have in terms of non conformity with the zoning code in terms of i think at this point what we should what you should do is go back to community development talk to spencer listen to what spencer has to say and see if you can make some sort of a reduction on this and that's our suggestion  so so that's sort of my general comment but before i make my final one is there anybody in the audience who would like to speak in regard to this or any public comments please come to the microphone introduce yourself and tell us what your comments are such but this is something that i would see from my kitchen window as i look backwards and as someone who's sympathetic towards and having heard many many other people within multifamily zone condos where you talk as if family has two stories but really without being able to expand into the attic you know many condo owners only have one i think the idea especially in this neighborhood where everything my lot her lot many many other lots as as i think there was a comment earlier all have exposed basements i just don't understand you know sort of it devalues our home simply because of that we live on a hill and multifamily on a flat spot you know even just two blocks down on each street and some of the other more flatter parts of town between us and waverly they get to build a dormer and even go above the existing peak there's one that's a couple blocks away where they actually built a higher peak and so this is staying below the peak so i appreciate that they had that in mind i don't it would not change my visual my view of the sunset so i just generally am sympathetic and i think there is a bigger conversation around allowing for you know changing the three story to story type of idea but i think which again i also support a change obviously but as far as this goes  like the neighborhood is such that everything is nonconforming like here that seventy foot rule which i'm just learning about for frontage you know i can't think of any lot that has seventy foot frontage in this neighborhood so i just don't know  understand i'm very sympathetic to you i live in the general residence district i have a two family and a residence district it's non conforming non conforming non conforming i understand what the issues are one of the things you  should be aware of though is that some of the shed dormers that you see that are going above the peaks in places that's why the zoning was changed in twenty four the one i am the one i think you know i believe was built within the last two years yes would you please come to the the microphone introduce yourself and petrie at ninety five ninety seven slate there and although we have tried really hard we thought to stay within the rules i find it difficult at this point to having homes that have been like mine situated on the lot for one hundred years and now have it not large enough it's not the i came to this area for specific regions because i have a need to be in this area that carrier in particular and it's been very difficult i just did one on a personal note let you know that the the size so that i have storage on that on that i have a door marked on the second floor unit there is only there are only two closets there's one in a bedroom well both bedrooms they one is going to be an office my office but the one in the office won't even hold and hanger so that's where my problem and additional four of them with space comes from there's just aren't any closets and well whatever happens thanks for having us and i am trying to we're please please come introduce thank you i'm cheryl walker i work in the capacity of interior designer and assistant to judy and just for my own  clarity if i'm understanding this issue of the f e a r properly i'm thinking of it in terms of lego stacking there's a certain number so please correct me if i'm wrong because i think in pictures what i'm understanding is that there's a certain amount of square footage or cubic footage or whatever that can go into the property itself and that this dormer is exceeding that number doesn't matter whether they are how long they are or i know that there's a height restriction but in other words there's a certain amount of square footage that can go into that in moving forward  working with spencer it's going to be crucial that we understand that come capacity plane he will explain that in detail ok because that's something that was not made clear to us when we met with him  my understanding and again it was through our builder that the board want to changes and spencer suggestion cutting down on the storage which was kind of vague and we didn't really understand the whole concept of where you people you know where this is all coming from i do understand that premise better at this time the the the the the striking nonconformity is the stories i'm sorry the what is the is the stories the number of stories this you basically the way we look at it now is the three story building we allow two and a half so it's non conforming as this  may well end up being a full three which is or three in the hof it actually which which which is which just increases the nonconformity substantially i suggest i mean there are details about if they are and all that i mean what that basically is an index that's telling you it's going to be big for the neighborhood ok but don't focus on that my suggestion is that you go meet with spencer listen to what he has to say listen to what geoffrey has to say and see if you can work out something some way that might work in terms of this we don't want to let you not do something we're trying to figure out a way within the constraints of the zoning system and the special permit process allows us flexibility in terms of the i just am not as proposed we have no flexibility on that it doesn't work and it needs you need to rethink that and you need to work with community development on that and you need to listen to them on that well we did try to listen to that i don't i want that to be clear we're not trying to just slip something on you know by the board it was not very clear presented to us on what these calculations represented and i think that we have a clearer understanding of that at this time ok so i think you and we'll certainly take into recommendation anything that any kind of options or suggestions that would be made that's you know we want to get the project done  years i mean so are all the other houses ok and some are bigger than others where do you make that reminder for you do you make that decision based solely on the numbers one moment sorry so the grandfathering comes about because the number of stories you went is that when you came into place it said to want to have stories is what's allowed in your structure was three stories nobody came and you tear it down and start over you were grandfathered at that point the additional piece that takes into account the grandfathering is that you're able to apply for a special permit if you were a conforming structure you would have to apply for a variance and that conversation would not be the conversation you're having today it would be a very very different conversation so the grandfathering that's already taken into account because you're able to apply for the special with what we are seeing we are seeing over development we are seeing development that does not fit into the neighborhoods that we have grown to love and cherish and we have done in tired of it and we wanted to stop and as a result of that conversation by law was changed such that now this project does require a special permit prior well no not this case because it's three stories but if you were a conforming structure you would not have had to apply for a special permit but because of your lot size you now have to acquire or apply for a special permit and so tame by law was drafted in order to specifically look at mass in sizing of structures both editions and buildings f a r is a way of looking at in thinking about math it's not  design about math if you have a one for an f a r that means your building is equal in square footage the size of a lot if you have a point five you're building is half the size of your lot in terms of square footage so that helps that's just a way for the board to help figure out whether or not where does this fit in scale within massing scale with what's going on in the neighborhood it's just a tool one of many as you see in this whole packet that they used to think about how to help in craft these these different various projects think i don't really mean to cut you off but i think we're straying from the main point here we have issues about going forward in terms of this we're really not going to argue the architecture or any of those things that this point i think you need to at this point move on talk with community development and see what you can realistically do ok you have a comment please introduce please introduce yourself david petry just a quick comment to follow up on something now sort of a while ago in terms of the basement it seems like that's the have a huge impact the exposed foundation and in addition to looking at the house from the front if you look out of left to right of course the left side has a foot or something but that wouldn't be an issue and it's slopes down to four feet or something that is an issue there's also the case on the right hand side as you go up the driveway it also slopes up to it so it's like four or six inches or something along those lines socially just the right front corner of the house we have this exposed foundation that's you will if you were to go up or at at the storm or to make that i have story so that's my comment ok thank you i should just in response to that the one of the i mean we are not you know we're not saying no no no the with the special permit process does is enables us to have a discussion about this and to see what the impact on the neighborhood is and in terms of zoning and all that and see if we can figure out a way to do something that we can grant a special permit for so we're trying to do that we're not saying close this off go home we're saying talk to us about this ok are there any other comments from the public in terms of this please please please come forward reintroduce yourself  please i travis frank ever wrote i actually i think you had or you wanted to say you are served also suggesting where the current conversation is and i think we did the history but i would i'm sorry for it it's a little bit of a segue but if you could just say where it's going to be great you know so it's a new nation to by law was changed in twenty fifteen at the time the by law was adopted with a sunset provision that said that has to do with new single and two families it doesn't have to do with this at all it's not your main to our discussion correct ok so the you would see huge dormers going above the ridge line you'd see very large things that were out of place in the neighborhood the change in the zoning was in response to that so one of the things though that happened was that for things that are non conforming i mean there are many that are most of the properties are non conforming but if you want to do something in a non conforming property you can come for a special permit before the planning board variances in some cases special permits in this case so what what the applicant is getting here is not a no they're getting a hearing in the public and we're listening and we're responding to what you proposed and weird we're saying we will work with you and see if we can get something that's acceptable so that being said if there are no other comments from the public i'm going to suggest that you set a meeting up with spencer or jeffrey to begin to talk about the items that we discussed today come back to them with some sort of a proposal after that discussion spencer will guide you in terms of that talk to them about that and then when it looks like from their point of view that there is a proposal that we could find a way to work with then we could come back and have another public hearing about ok so that's the process so that being said i move that we continue the public hearing and ok so i make a motion that we continue the public hearing nice of insulates street until april twenty fourth to hear second second on favor thank you very much meat so that's the board and the staff so we move now to the public hearing to open the public hearing for twenty two bacon street which of which is a proposed single family home in  single residence c district mr pinkerton would you read the public notice notices here by given that the belmont planning board will hold a public hearing on thursday april fifth two thousand and eighteen at seven o'clock in the auditorium next to the board of selectmen is reading room town hall forty five concord i have to consider the application of one one for a special permit under section one point five point four the zoning bylaws to alter it non conforming structure lot size nine thousand square feet allowed eight thousand and five four hundred fifty two feet existing and proposed in order to construct a new single family home existing home will be demolished at twenty two bacon road located in a single residence see zoning district  before you begin before you begin the presentation a make a comment here i made this at the beginning of the meeting and it bears repeating again  the application process for a special permit the applicant comes to the community development office with a proposal and the community development team works with them to craft a proposal that is within the within the general guidelines and within the parameters that the board is generally favorable to in terms of a special permit process i have where you met twice with the applicant and then offered a third meeting and how they haven't decided to move forward without the meeting and so the applicant met a couple times with community development the response was that community developments response was that this is going to be a very large project and will have difficulty in the special permit process  the applicant will quote here is the applicant's decision to move forward with the tax application despite staff recommendations that the size of the proposed house be reduced before going before the board so i just put that is as a precursor to the discussion that's coming at this point and i will turn the turn over to the applicant or their architect to make a presentation thank  you good evening i am diane miller from miller design and architect of record and i'm here today with quantum on before i begin my presentation i know he has several neighbors that are here to speak on his behalf and normally that would happen afterwards but one of his neighbors and actually it's the media better behind the property has to leave at eight thirty and so i was wondering if he never mind he can wait ok so so we are seeking a special permit in relief in order to rebuild an existing single family home on a non conforming lot so you have the images up there currently of the existing structure the one family would like to  rebuild for three major reasons the first is that his family has lived in this house for almost a decade they've been there since two thousand and nine when they bought the house they were a family of three they are now a family of six they have two children and two elderly parents that are living with them  the current ranch house has three bedrooms and the proposed colonial home would have four bedrooms and it would also increase from two bathrooms to three and this would allow both of their children to have their own bedrooms and it would also provide for in a ground level living space for their elderly parents so that would be a little bit more accessible for them the second reason is that the current home has a long history of ra problems that have rendered the seller space to be completely unusable i have included documentation regarding the raid on in the submittal that you have in front of you this is a particular hardship because when they purchased the home they had intended to use the finished cellar space as part of their living space and then they discovered the raid on issue they installed a mitigation system this was again back in two thousand and nine and while the system has helped bring the rate on levels down they are still dangerously high well above what the e p a and the surgeon general recommended so they are in this sort of zone according to the e p a that is that is not safe and so therefore the living space that they have in the cellar is not usable they intend with the new addition with the new construction rather to continue to mitigate however it is very unlikely that they would be able to use that basement space even going forward because this is been an ongoing struggle that they have yet to be able to get under control and i think that that is actually a very significant factor in the usability of their property the third reason that they would like to rebuild is that the existing home has some major physical failures and limitations and just to quickly go through some of those with you when it rains the rain water penetrates the walls on the south facing side and so they get water stains on the interior walls of all of those rooms they have problems with mold because of that as well there is a lack of insulation there are recurring issues with plumbing and sewage backups existing home is nonconforming relative to both the front yard setback on bacon and also the rear yard setback and what we are proposing with the new structure would correct those nonconformity so the new structure we're proposing would be completely conforming in terms of all the setbacks and  coverage etc so that would be an improvement on what they have currently and then lastly the current home does not have a garage and in order to add a garage to the existing structure the only place that it would fit on this i currently would be on the east side which would involve removing a beautiful street tree with the new proposed design we are proposing a garage on the west side so that they would be able to keep that tree so despite all of these challenges with the current homes current home the ones are very happy in the neighborhood they have a great relationship with their neighbors and this is evidenced by the fact that i have a petition here that is signed by thirty five of their neighbors so this is essentially everyone i believe within the defined petition spencer is bringing that up the petition has the first page is a map with green dots showing all of the homes that have signed the petition in support of the project there are also i believe quite a few neighbors that are here tonight that have graciously offered to come and speak on their behalf which i think is just further testament to the fact that they're a well liked part of this neighborhood and that the neighbors have looked at this project and really do feel like it's something that they're comfortable with and they're embracing so that they do want to improve the property they want to make it a more beautiful home they want to add to the overall quality of the neighborhood for me personally i am in addition to being the architect i'm a belmont resident i'm a town meeting member from precinct eight so as a town meeting member i understand that the planning board has been charged with maintaining the character and of the month neighborhoods and ensuring the any development is appropriate  size and character i also know that much of the history on this particular part of the zoning guidelines sort of originated in this neighborhood and so that's something that we have tried to be really sensitive toward  we did it meet twice with spencer and with jeffrey and have changed the design based on their feedback on both of those meetings some of the changes that they requested that we implemented and i'll just kind of run through a list for you if that's all right  we removed five basement windows we reduced the family room window from three to two we eliminated we initially had a large cathedral ceiling with a sundial window eliminated that we reduced the dining room and master bedroom windows on the front facade from three down to two as well we've reduced the garage and family room mass which you see on the left side there by three feet in the back we reduce the dining room and the kitchen and the master bedroom mass by one foot in wit we reduce the overall square footage by one hundred square feet we converted from a gable roof to a hip roof and eliminated the front cross cable we added some high lester's and peppermints that we had initially had shown just on the primary frontage on bacon road and then we added them also on audrey an r v for side again per their recommendations to these were the comments that they had given us that we incorporated the issue of the third meeting and the concerns that they still have are certainly as you had mentioned regarding size spencer had recommended was that we eliminate the family room above the garage and our response to that was that that's a space that's again coming back to the fact that the basements really not usable space that family becomes really critical in so far as the way that their families are going to use the house and having a place base for their children and so even though that was something that spencer felt like you guys would want to see as we've removed we really wanted to just first have a conversation with you and present what we have and our reasons for that and also the fact that we have that neighborhood support so a getting back to the neighborhood for a minute a close look at the neighborhood fabric revealed that it is indeed an eclectic neighborhood it has a diversity of housing including many branches and colonial and a couple of victorians and some modern homes as well there are quite a few homes in the neighborhood that are significantly larger than what we are proposing and that is deliberate we did not want to be too big so we are trying to kind of keep the size down while meeting the needs for their family of six so while the designated neighborhood for the analysis that spencer put together is almost entirely north of our project i also wanted to know that directly south of this project on the map is  a neighborhood that has almost exclusively two family homes and those are generally much larger in size and so even though they're not included in the analysis they are very much a part of where when you consider the neighborhood and where they're walking with their children to the park or to school or whatever these are also homes that they're walking by that are again on the larger side of things so i brought a massing model to share with you guys in an attempt to sort of help to illustrate what the property would look like it's a small house it's a small it's a small house if it's in the palm of my hand so hopefully this is a helpful in terms of just kind of getting a sense of that massing and  a few points that i wanted to make in terms of the property of the house itself the height of this house is that twenty seven feet and that's to the midpoint and that is three feet less then the requirement of thirty feet in order to keep that height down there were a couple of things that we did one is that we kept the elevation of the home relative to the average grade deliberately so that we would minimize the amount of exposed foundation while we also did end up going with the hip roof which was one of the suggestions that spencer and jeffrey made that i think really made a big difference in terms of a reduced usable space in the attic but it really did make a difference in terms of the look and feel and massing of it and i think the model really probably conveys that more than anything else that with a hip roof it kind of hunkers down a little bit lower and it is a hip roof with no dormers so there is no third floor no attic space really at all in that project no usable space in the  attic and i think that's also relevant because i think within the neighborhood or within the pictures that you have in your packet there are several other homes that have a significant third floor presence with dormers and that's something that we have already sort of conceded so the last comment that i wanted to make about the structure itself is that we do incorporate an attached garage with a finished space above it and this is the controversial family family room that spencer had sort of questioned and this is a feature that is actually pretty common within the neighborhood i think within the packet of photographs that i included there are fourteen other homes in just that immediate neighborhood that have a garage with living space above and some are more massive lee portrayed than others one of the things that we have tried to do with this particular on with having the living space above the garage is to sort of again lower the feel of that what we did is we sunk the garage by a couple of feet and then we put the living space is actually six feet lower than the rest of the second floor space so that just sort of reduces the overall massing and the other thing that that accomplishes is that it's sort of a voids that large expanse of blank wall that you'll often see when you have a garage and then you'll have a lot of link space before you get to the windows above and by kind bringing everything down low and keeping it you know tight to the top of the garage ceiling you don't have that same amount of exposed wall that you will often see so as i mentioned earlier the project has received tremendous wrist support from the neighborhood we understand that a major motivator in this review process is to respond to the neighbors concerns and the desires of the community and to build thoughtfully in appropriately and we think that this is an example of a project that is in fact embraced by the neighbors and supported by them and we hope they will agree that the proposed design is in harmony with the neighborhood for nat killer and is actually more modest then several it's it is larger then the current home and it is larger than some in the neighborhood but it is also more modest than some so it's somewhere already in the middle of that spectrum and i just want to reiterate that the proposed design is a conforming structure it is in keeping with the intent of town meeting and the planning board special permit criteria and it is not substantially detrimental to the neighborhood in fact we believe that the proposed home represents a significant improvement to the property and to the neighborhood as a whole thank you for your time and your consideration and i think we have a couple of neighbors that someone would like to speak with let's thank you for your presentation but let's sort of get back to basics here let's take a look you've given us a good description of why you built the building that you're posing to build let's i mean you know you know what this is all getting too complex for me let's  with your plan and your landscaping and then let's walk around that and let's take a look at the elevations of the building so let's do that in a sequence kind of let's take a look at the site as it is let's take a look at this as you're proposing to put the fruit and the landscaping on it and then let's take a look at the elevations the building and then we can take a look on the inside i'm more concerned about the outside than i am on the inside should walk us through because you had a very nice presentation but we didn't get to really see the building in its site sure if you can easily so that would be may be helpful not only for us but for the people at home as well ok fantastic so when so you're looking on the screen at the landscape plan and before we even get to the landscape plan maybe we'll start with the survey which you guys have in your  packet thank you so you have the surveyor packet i don't know if you have a slide for the survey ok so that can be very hard to see on camera but for you guys with the in front of you the reason i want to start the surveys that that does show the footprint  existing home and so you can see where the existing home is the black line on your plan i think it's not in color on there but the black line in your plan is the existing and the red line is the footprint of what's new and so that's where you can see that the existing home is nonconforming in terms of the front setback and then it also has a rear component that non conforming in terms of the rear setback and it's sort of because of the way that it is oriented repair a lot of bacon and the proposed is now being oriented parallel to the rear property line and audrey road so it's not lined up with the street it's right it's lined up with audrey instead of lined up with all the other houses on bacon are lined up with the street but this one and so it makes it such that this is a conforming structure so then moving to the landscape plan we did work pretty closely with spencer and his expertise on this in terms of the plantings that we're proposing here is a gardener and they would like to have some gardens like vegetable and and  perennial guardians in addition to the plants that are shown here but basically what we're doing the landscape plan is you have a couple of existing street trees that you see on there and then they are planning to fence in the backyard which actually it is fenced in currently so they would  maintain a fenced in backyard with like a three foot high white vinyl fence similar to what they have now we propose a foundation plantings along both audrey and bacon and then we propose some screening along both the rear property line and the side property line do you want me to go through with the specific plants are ok all right so that's that's the gist of it is the foundation planting in the screening along the two sides and then  the street treats if we have additional questions we'll ask you i just want to get a sense of what you're going to build up a shark so and actually to that in that regard one of the things that i did not talk about in my presentation but that is in the packet is a list of sort of materials which when we get to the elevations we can certainly go through that as well and in terms of legal look at the front elevation oh ok the walk around was this bacon street elevation that we're seeing yes on the top is the bacon street elevation and on the bottom is the elevation that would be opposite our dri let me just pull up my drawings here so they can see what we're doing here ok so i do have some notes on the right hand side of the drawing that are describing all of the material choices that we're making and really what they're trying to do is that the house i mean let's be honest the house as it is right now is i need of a little bit of t l c and so what he would like to do really is to include some more quality building materials so that it you know looks looks a lot more attractive so we're looking at things such as hardy siding harvey windows that are double hung incorporating some nice pediment that you see there on the elevation above the windows a front porch with a pile asters and a decorative rail above all the one thing that we had kind of kicked around i think with spencer as well and we were really indifferent towards what we would you know be willing to defer to whatever if you guys feel strongly one way or the other is with that front porch if you would like to see a gable roof on that instead of the flat roof with the railing we could go either way with that so that's a possibility but we also have on the corners we have the pile asters that you see on there build thirty three hundred ninety four square foot correct ok that will want to get those ok thank you spencer now we'll we'll go through the presentation in terms of the metrics for the neighborhood just the first light here is shows the existing in proposed use twenty two bacon road is on the corner there were outlined in sort of a future color as you can see the neighborhood is almost entirely single family homes with one two family home and here you see the existing in those lot size for the neighborhood the average lot size for the neighborhood is a little over seventy three hundred square feet and the lot size for twenty two bacon road is about eleven hundred square feet larger at eight thousand four hundred square feet the existing t l a as you mentioned is just slightly below twelve hundred square feet which makes it one of the smallest houses in the neighborhood if not the smallest house in the neighborhood as it exists today the average is why it's about to disappear  the the average square foot for the neighborhood is just over one thousand eight hundred square feet so it's seven to eight hundred square feet smaller than the average for the neighborhood t proposed t l a is just shy of thirty four hundred square feet which makes it significantly larger than the average for the neighborhood the existing f a r is point one four that's because you have a small house on a relatively large lot for the neighborhood the average neighborhood f a r is point two seven so it's significantly smaller  the existing number of bedrooms the document that was provided to the board actually contained a data entry air and it shows on the averages are they the right hand column there that is too but it is exact actually three bedrooms that are existing and they're proposing four bedrooms the average bedroom for the neighborhood is three point four again proposed is four bedrooms so that in the average is three point four which means you know there's almost as many three bedrooms as there are four bedrooms in the  the average for the neighborhood is one point seven and they are proposing two point five where is this fall in terms of that is going to sure it will just be comparatively speaking both on an absolute in a proportional basis one of the smaller buildings it's one of the smaller  now will it be medium sized will it be on the larger end as proposed so it's currently with regards to the total level area of the seventh smallest house in the neighborhood but as proposed it would be the sixth largest house in the neighborhood and it is an increase in t l a of one hundred eighty six percent and again it's going up from eleven hundred eighty eight square feet to thirty three hundred ninety four square feet it would be seventy five percent larger than the average for the neighborhood with regards to f a r is the lowest if they are the neighborhood at one point four but then it would be increased to the fourth highest f a or the neighborhood at point for sure thank you spencer  up if we have comments from the audience before the playing board weighs in on this do we have members of the audience who would like to speak in support or opposition to the proposed development please go to the microphone introduce yourself and comments i my name's to the rooms i live in one of six dalton road one of the one of the other small homes in the neighborhood we walk past the south all the time it's really in bad shape it doesn't look so good and we're very we're looking forward to this and think it's a great idea we hope this will pass thank you is there anybody else you'd like to speak please introduce yourself michael kluger i live at nine audrey right next door so my house will be facing the back side of this house i'm one hundred percent for this i think it's going to be a great addition to the neighborhood you take the house that we have it was built in two thousand and sixteen you know it's five bedrooms and  you know it's only enhancing the neighborhood increasing the tax base so so i hope we go forward with it thank you anybody else who like to  that house thank you thank you anybody else would anybody else like people mentioned that we always walk around the corner the house is nearly new some great and i think you guys mention when things you know i always feel weird this house i so i live at one thirty nine dalton road which is just around the corner and i took the liberty of expanding the neighborhood little bit just to see how this house would fit in with the larger neighborhood that  it's in and it's in a defined a neighborhood for this purpose but i wanted to see how it compares to the houses that you gave us pictures of and the first thing i noticed is that you have a frontage on bacon that's about sixty nine feet which is pretty wide and i started looking at the presidents of the houses from the street and the average of all the houses that you showed us was about fifty feet wide so you've got a house that's now going to be almost twenty feet wider then most of the houses in the neighborhood and that's that's that's a function of the lot let me back up and say this house the existing house clearly needs to be taken down and rebuilt i applaud you for doing this there's there's no fault with  that you have a large lot relatively speaking mine is only sixty eight hundred i envy you your eighty four hundred feet you're going to fill that lot up with a lot of building your f a r is very high and in fact in expanding the neighborhood out all the way to washington street grove street and school street and looking at that larger picture you're still going to be in the top ten of the f a r s in the neighborhood including a lot of the new houses that were in fact the problem that precipitated the zoning amendments that were passed a couple years ago so i appreciate all the work of that you've done to try to make it smaller and you've done some very nice things there's no question about that you're really working in the spirit of it but the house is really still very large you're essentially trying to put a two family house into squeeze it into a one family lot single family home a lot and i understand that i applaud the fact that you are caring for your elderly parents that's all very good but this house is really big compared to everything else in the larger neighborhood the hip roof was a nice touch there are only a few hip roofs in the neighborhood most of them are gable and as you've seen but that's fine it helps reduce the bulk the difficulty though again is that it's very big and it's going to be very massive and i don't know that people appreciate that that that's what it's going to when you've got a house that's going to be half again as large as across the front as any other house in the neighborhood i mean the larger neighborhood it's going to look like a big house that's just the way it is the height will be thirty two feet tall  we're not concerned about the midpoint per se for this purpose because we're looking at building mass the heights going to be thirty two feet the that will be among the top ten tall buildings in the neighborhood as well the average height of two story buildings in the neighborhood is only twenty eight feet to the ridge so this is already going to be four feet bigger than the average i can see potentially one way of lowering the height b instead of having nine foot ceilings going to eight foot ceilings which is what most of the homes i mean most of the homes in the neighborhood have that would give you get you down to thirty feet which would be consistent with your next door neighbor with a new house there and it would be a lot less imposing to the single story houses that line the street for the most part and bacon no i understand those are subject to change but  it wouldn't be such a shocking change so there's a possible suggestion there  i'm a little concerned about the alignment with the street mix minds on that there are a couple houses in the neighborhood i know the neighborhood very well there are two other houses that are cocked on the lot and they're cornered corner corner houses are always tough this is a tough in a sense this is a very tough footprint because you've got one one side is seventy feet i believe in the other corner is fifty three and so you've already got an angular lot and squaring it up a lot really to the street i'm just having wrestling with that because the house next to it is also cocked to the street but in a slightly less prominent way and i wonder if there isn't a way that you could go ahead and line the thing up with bacon and still accomplish what you want playing around with the design a little bit i mean i did a couple of card cutouts on the design just to see if what would happen i think you might have to lose the front entryway but otherwise end it but that front entryway is actually not very typical in the neighborhood anyway so that's a possible way of straightening out the the footprint i'd like to think you'd see if you could experiment with out a little bit to get it lined up on on bacon street i think that would be a lot more  compatible with that neighborhood along the street it wouldn't stick out so much that's those are my comments i think  think i think steve covered most of what i was interested in i would like to receive the model because i think the drawings definitely the first thing you see is the roof and  it feels quite high and pitches the newer homes this one this one looks a lot like the few newer homes that came in and this is what's a little bit nervous making about it because they are quite different go ahead the i mean i guess i just wanted to see it up close to see if how the roof fell because from a distance it seemed lower but it still feels tough the rear the rear yard neighbors here and is supportive of it but i that is a it's a very wide house and i respond to that diane miller miller designed the back and this is actually  something that we discussed with spencer and i think jeffrey was there for that meeting as well but part of the reason that the back is a straight plane is that the intention is at some point in the future that they may very well need to have a  handicap ramp so the idea is that they would be able to go pull into the garage come out the garage door in the back and you can actually see there's a dash line drawn on there so we needed to keep it sort of flat so that they could then if they need to put a ramp on the back so that they could get a wheelchair in and out for the mother in law for for for neighbors to go ahead i also had one of their just follow up question in terms of the roof pitch so are you what is the pitch that you're suggesting it's interesting seven to twelve is very compatible with what's in the ok so i don't have any issues with that ok i would almost be if it were lower i'd be fine with a gable just because the rest of the neighborhood has gable roofs but this is find it helps reduce that sense of mass for those of you who are here from the neighborhood if you want to do a comparison this this footprint here is going to be bigger than the two family house at eighty eight dalton road so when you walk by dalton road the corner of and bacon and you look at the two family that's back from the road you're going to see this is going to be quite a bit longer than that so it's an interesting kind of way of comparison comparing you know what is this going to look like on the lot i think actually me and most of the houses around and that's that's one of the things that's concerning me about it again i admire what you've done and i like the design and i see what you're up to i'm just trying to represent the interests of the hundreds of people who signed petitions saying we don't want houses like this anymore and passed a meeting of law town meeting saying we don't want houses this big anymore so ok sorry and i think steve's and on the mezzanine scale issues i just had a question on the the with of the driveway how is it the garage is what twenty twenty two feet in the driveway  driveway wide enough that they could squeeze two cars in next to each other the just just to be clear for the board because the way that it's been couched it's the this is the controversial piece is the family room the family room came up as a very easy way to reduce the size without having to significantly we design it wasn't necessarily that wasn't the controversial piece just to be clear i didn't want it to the board to be left to think that if they just simply chop that off that was going to solve the problem it does reduce the size but it doesn't i'm not sure if it problem that's your decision to decide there's a sitting room on the first floor and there's a very large study on the second floor that could easily be used for multiple purposes and just not  one thing i think at this point i think you've heard the concerns of the board i think would be useful you know you want to be involved with this this even if that if that's appropriate sure  yeah yeah i think i think they'd be appropriate to get in touch with geoffrey after this here their input here steve's input on this and respond to that and  when do you think we could get them back jeffery the twenty fourth or you want to do it twenty fourth where we're going to run into town meeting stuff no no we get time do you think you could do revisions by the twenty fourth ok ok so we'll move it to the twenty fourth you get in touch get the revisions work with spencer and the other comments from the board at this point if not then i'll make a motion that we continue the public hearing until our media april twenty fourth at which time you come back with a revision we have been reviewing the housing trust has proposed a housing production plan for belmont we have made some suggestions in terms of that the housing trust has come back with some revisions on that judy and gloria do you want to come forward and talk to us of the revisions to that you made in terms of the i'm sorry i'm sorry this is like a radio show changes that you've made and then we'll bring it back to the board ok i'm judy finds one of the co chairs of the housing trust where i live the other co chair of the housing trust and we belmont can meet the housing needs of many people in town and produce additional affordable housing consistent with the nature of our community and consistent with the economic future of the region  we made in response to comments that came to us from the planning board we made a handful of changes to focus the plan in the direction that you are suggesting i think that we tried to incorporate the suggestions of the planning board in the goals and strategy sections to focus in on close to focus on close in opportunities and we reduce the number of strategies from seven to five which we believe strengthen the list in reorder the strategies in light of planning board comments need i think you probably know from reading materials we said that in just the last few months there how are two new finding at opportunities that the state housing providing different resources to the town including technical assistance even staffing support for the planners and so on to move us forward and you know months not been able to get very many grants in this area so it would be a really great thing if we could get the plan approved by you and then the board of selectmen submit it to the department of housing and community development and then apply for these grants right away and we are where we are we're excited to be moving forward now open this up for for comments from the board planning board representative to the community preservation committee i had the opportunity to work with laurie on the mountain and to see that featured in this plan i think is important we've had some conversations that are c p c meetings on how we can better utilize some of that money to address the affordable housing issue in town so that in transitory and development thayer and i are working on we're really square and you know with the commuter rails up there in the end of the seventy three bus i was looking at those who types of opportunities and i'm glad to see them in here  i really appreciate how you sort of re did the plan because i think it's much clearer your goals are much clear i think you did an excellent job thank  you so i gave it another another read i had time to really go through it i think it's like i did before i still think it's a great plan it was a nice tone i especially like the fact that you identified young families as a as a class that needs assistance with with housing it's easy to say seniors and and those with handicaps need need housing opportunities it's it's refreshing to see that you know belmont's embracing families i had a couple you know i think the household table table five was really striking where we see that in belmont we've got we've  twelve percent increase in households with individuals eighteen or younger compared to just less than a two percent increase over middlesex county as a whole and a decrease in the state and then we're you know at the same time belmont we're seeing a reduction in households with individuals sixty five and over by almost three percent while that group is going up by fifteen percent in middlesex county it's really up but the discrepancy between the belmont and middlesex numbers there is pretty dramatic and i think it sort of proves some of the perceptions that a lot of us of how about what's going on in town over the last ten years i actually have one question for you is how how is it th sorry i don't remember just what we can certainly look at that i know that came up i think that was one of our questions metro west clabber development helped us put through the demographic piece and i know that that was a question that came up and  i'm sorry i don't have that answer but i can certainly get that for you there was there was a response to that and i can't remember what that might be there might be a correction that you make before i will check projections and all that sometimes when they do those things that mixes things up i've always find that confusing they don't always measure yeah they don't always make it always better just use one like we at work use clarity so we do that all the way so we're options for seniors i did have a question about so these these cost burden seniors if they were to move out of there like a lot of them are in ownership homes if they were to move out they're going to have a while many of them will receive a sudden wind and is that going to what is that amount of asset going to disqualify them to live and now it doesn't it does not count as income and so they would be eligible for community affordable housing if their incomes are appropriate and that it income calculation counts earnings and retirement income it isn't like a medicaid calculation and like a of that i think you're feeling the board is before we go on jeffrey do we take a vote to accept let me just make a few comments on this and having been peripherally involved in this for what since two thousand and twelve i think i was the liaison from the housing to the housing trust from the playing board for like three years or or so and forward which i know is not easy and i appreciate your efforts to everybody on the housing trust thank you very much recommended sorry as approved by that belmont housing trust provides marched twenty eighteen and with minor modifications has suggested by the boy different things for town meeting i just want to reemphasize everybody at home and people in the audience here and to other members of the playing board that we have a couple of issues that are coming up for town meeting the most important is the is a sunset clause on the section of the general residence zoning that has only to do with the special for new single and two family  projects developments in the general residence district is a sunset provision on that we are seeking to make that permanent this does not do anything in terms of the  mentionable regulations this is what this provides the special permit process is a public forum for the citizens of belmont to speak out in regard to proposed developments in their new single into family developments in the general residence district and it's important that that we put this in permanent form the other  regulation the the other amendment the bylaws that we want to do for the general residence is simply to move some of the smaller dormers from a special permit process with a planning board to a special permit process with the zoning board of appeals those are the two big zoning ones the other issue that we have is that we're presenting a moratorium on adult use  to begin talking about one of the first one that's on the screen in the first one that is in the packet is a plain board report this is your recommendation to town meeting about how to about how you recommend how meeting should behave and how how they should act in terms of voting on the various amendments before them it also gives little background as to what the purpose of those amendments is for that has to be done tonight however this document it has to go out to the be available to the town clerk for inclusion in the town meaning members packets  for monday so we can get this done tonight that would be great the other two documents one is the powerpoint presentation which we can go over if you want to tonight you have a hand copy of that as well we do have a little time on that and the second in the third piece sorry is handouts whether or not there is anything that you as a board want to provide is a handout either additional to the planning report in the town meeting packet or at the night of meeting is there something that you want to provide what spencer did is there are copies come up during the during town meeting but it may be too much information it may be too confusing to to put in a town meeting package or hand out at town meeting because there's not really much context necessarily with it and most of this information could be covered within a powerpoint presentation as well for example you know the photographic survey that is one part there so but actually  evening i've read through these two but one question this is packaged as two amendments are we going to ask michael  i think we might try to think of a better way to say the intent of this amendment is to take away the small stuff the intent yeah just take that holds and and there in no no let me point push back a little bit because i think one of the very are the the selling points on this is that when the complaint has been that we're spending our time neck so those are those are my comments on the site for i don't i don't know about hitting this will back it out to the time you members ahead of time in a way even if it were put up on the web site i agree with you that it might be that is all of the zoning regulations and everything all the details of all of those things are all important but they're not really what that's about what that's about is the oversight in the special permit process of which you look at granting a special permit within the within the confines of the zoning tables and the dimensions and all that but this is the interpretive part where the playing board looks at what's proposed in terms of the community and the neighborhood that's the important part about that this is the public process about that and what we don't want to do is we don't want to get into a discussion of why is the front you know the front step back you know five feet or why isn't five feet why is it ten feet why is the frontage seventy feet is opposed to fifty feet that's not what this is about for the first one so i think we need to be clear about that i think we need we need to know what's behind things but i don't think we need to go into the back of a cases you talk about what we did i think we need to talk about  what we've done is we've produced development we haven't stopped development in the residence district at all we've produced new buildings in their single and two family buildings that are in the spirit of the general residence during changes and work in terms of the neighborhood and we can show a number of examples of wharton of projects that have come through the process and i think that we have not only produced properties that new buildings which is the first part that are in harmony with that but also improve the sites that  ron improve the neighborhoods that they were in and had a positive impact on the value of those neighborhoods and on the tax base i think those are positive things that this part of the general residence which is sunsetting needs to be extended because it's done that it's had a very positive effect and i believe we're seeing now in the real estate development community they understand that they seem to be happy with what they're able to develop in the general residence district and when we take a look at at the projects that have been built in comparison to what was should have was just one question would it help the board to have sort of a cheat sheet or a fact sheet the day of town meeting and if so do either of these documents effectively provide you with that order should they be at i think this is very interesting but it's way too much information i just can't imagine though that we need to know we don't need to for that sure sure it is we would have been derelict to hand out to the public or including the packet i think about a quarter of this information would be helpful like to see how many cases you know how many properties  so we don't need to reiterate it in this memo ok what we want the information that we present in our presentation we want it to be so for the sunset it's only the special permit for new construction so that's what we want to talk about and i'll talk to to mike to make sure that we won't have a discussion of i mean he's pretty good but very well make sure we the numbers now i can actually insert the numbers as opposed to calling them being c as well as that last sentence and paragraph of  else i don't need to push this but this has to be done tonight ok i will make sure that you all get a final copy of this as well and then we'll might because i think it is it is the witching hour we do have to come to terms with the powerpoint presentation and with respect to whether or not you want to do some sort of handout or have some sort of cheat sheet for yourself between four would it be helpful for a couple you to work on one issue and a couple you'd work on another issue how do you want to go about making sure that on the able to twenty fourth meeting you have a power point presentation that you're ready to go with the town meeting ok and deal with respect to the cheat sheet or handout or whatever however you however that ends up getting crafted  ok so so but typically what happens is the new member the new town meeting member is asked to read the article a town meeting but in this case because there's no new town many members  it's really up to the board who will present each article you can either have it one be the same person or you can have to be two different people somebody could read the article and then someone can do the presentation or you could have that person be the same person and cannot read the article the article can only be read by a town meeting member that doesn't mean he can't do the presentation if he if he gets if he so chooses or or gets asked to but it would be the four so anyway i don't have an ego in terms of this if if if you guys want me to do the main article which is the sunset want to be happy to do that if you want to do that you want me to do it you don't  in what was a really sight sorry i keep thinking it's waverley because it parallels waverley let me just ask you because we're preparing for a town meeting just forty nine have to come to us because i don't know if i want to do for  and we spoke last nothing new or next meeting is next wednesday jeffrey do you have anything else to do other issues to briefly talk about one is you are scheduled to have your first to so do you want to move it to the next week so that would be may eighth is that work for a body that is there are there any that town meeting will go into a second week of yeah there's always concern that it may go into a second week for little they'll be a special town meeting it sounds like to talk about going down the marijuana there to the opt no first session but it looks like it's going to be wednesday may second april thirtieth right well that before all three yes but the issue always becomes we have to be prepared for every thirty at it because if you're called you can say i'm sorry w i mean special the second that the tension discussed that's why the question about a third night becomes very valid i mean the thing to do is would you rather would you do it would you like to do it on no talk about it there's no talk about a fourth night website what's always it's always listed because they don't they want to make sure people are of there's no conflict  done with which you're done with what you've put forward however the wednesday before town meeting is the final date with which amendments two amendments can be submitted by town meeting members so what will happen is you will have a public meeting scheduled for april for monday night and wednesday at six thirty to take up to take up any amendments that that we want to talk about quickly is we tried something different tonight with you all we provided a staff report that was very much appreciated i think that's the question is a letter on the front of the part of that came about is because as has been said many times tonight listen to what the staff has to say we did not want you all to think that spence and i are just sitting you know playing candy crush on our cell phone and doing nothing else that we really are trying to might not also mean that we really are trying to bring make sure the cases that come forward to you not just are complete applications but they are really do have legs to stand on you know ultimately we don't decide you all decide so ultimately it's your decision but the same token if we know a case is going to be you go down in flames we don't want those cases we  try really hard to to to to make that known to the applicants and so that's where the notion of this sort of staff cover letter or report or whatever you want to call it i think we try to also couch it we try not to editorialize we tried to make sure that you understood these were the issues we saw and this is been the response at least from the applicants so we should continue with what i'm hearing ok very s i have one small comment i guess the march twentieth planning or four hundred fifteen marketing plan for the affordable housing units i would dad it says mr pinkerton met with gloria and i would add as joe pinkerton reported that he met with gloria judy and it's sort of sounds like they were