good evening i'm liz allison chair of the planning board and i'd like to call the paper boy twenty third two thousand and sixteen meeting of the planning board to order as is our custom let me begin by introducing the others around the table  the continued public hearing for twenty three poplar street jeff if you can for we do not need to having read the notice at the previous meeting we need not read the of the land we ask the question how will this look around the a bladder directly behind twenty three poplar and then there were a number of confirmed it was singles underneath and they were lead to corners and so forth all of which is noted in here and be happy to answer any questions you might have about the landscape plan or the sight line plan but but i think you've got everything i can have you had an opportunity to review the plan have you any comments on it i have and and i went over jeffery and i think it looks completely satisfactory is there anyone else who has comments i'll just comment that i thought that the site i'm trying was really helpful to put it all together and so thank you for that i know there's a little bit of extra effort but it i think it gives us a lot of comfort about scale  covered with snow which made them slightly more difficult to get more exact and i think that that's fine i think we were we were able to get the most of them were kind of clear there's a few pushes that  the who purportedly the prior owner said that the condition of the shingles was relatively good they just didn't want to put the labor in so we're hoping that we are able to recover some of the older the older sis faces of the house shingles it would actually be more cost effective to clap or need into the corner boards are you going to do that all i want to do is make sure that like i said we're not going to start sliding back of the house before you pull off the front of nothing just about right because you  make a decision whether you're going to be it will be better single the idea is to make it consistent all around ok so my only comment would be i want to make a condition in there that if you're going to be doing you know we've to a lap to corners on the front we're going to continue it around the entire yes or if you're going to clap or bafflement i just want to make it conditional that you're going to be running your six five five four right on the corners but that's all that's all i know and we're on the same pitch ok ok i just just going to make that comment that's all i need for me personally if you can just redo the front and make them with that would be great whatever you do don't put wood in the front carry  all right great in that this whole thing works for me i believe there are no other comments jeffrey i believe you have that this permit is granted based on the plans that were submitted with this application and that any large print would have the addition needs to be further reviewed by the board number two would be no modifications existing single family home it does not allow the home to be converted to two drawing units the fourth is seven as built plan shall be submitted to the office of community development prior to the issuance of a certificate  occupancy five is that a final landscape plan shall be submitted for review and approval by the planning board prior to planting in the us once a certificate of occupancy and then the sixth which is specific to this property that if the applicant so six would be that if the applicant discovers shooter cedar shingles under the existing vinyl siding when it is remo yesterday before the town meeting barbara and i were invited to this meeting and  i think had a very useful discussion in terms of the town presenting having a single viewpoint and a unified approach to moving forward with the c move the veriest to to attempt to move the various transactions along and i would expect the selectmen have scheduled a meeting for march fourteenth we have a meeting at much on march fifteenth and i think we we would expect to see significant progress at that time we do want you i don't i'm not sure how much more we can add but  will as i say we will we will schedule this for the fifteenth it is conceivable that we will hold a joint meeting with the board of selectmen on the floor we have not discussed that with the board as yet but that would certainly be a possibility any comments questions i'm reading the whole thing yes she did warn me first i went to massachusetts massachusetts general laws chapter forty a section five the belmont planning board will hold a public hearing on tuesday feb twenty third tw four definitions and abbreviations amend the definition for grade section one point five point four non conforming single into family residential structures restrict non conforming protections and section four point two point two linear requirements for residential districts require front setbacks to align with adjacent homes reduce allowed building heights and limit the location of outdoor mechanical slash fuel storage  amendments are proposed in order to address a citizens petition zoning moratorium that limits the height of constructed reconstructed or modified single family dwellings within a portion of the single residence c zoning districts these amendments will require greater public process for the construction of large additions and the replacement of existing structures they're intended to promote development of single family homes that are compatible with the surrounding built environment the complete text of the proposed owning amendments is available for review at the office of community development and the town clerk's office and on the planning boards website web page anyone wishing to be heard on this issue should appear at the time and place a designated  so my understanding jeffrey and please correct me if this is if i have amended anything we need to do a couple of things with first of all the language is due to the board of selectmen is due in order to get on the warran escrow yes so we after tonight we have one more meeting so that we if at all possible need to leave tonight with something if not absolutely final text we'd better have very very well defined questions that need to be asked because we have at the next meeting we will need this language before we move it forward the  this was being circulated we had a number of i believe largely technical corrections from george how town council we are also had a number for and then finally this evening we jeffrey has a draft of the presentation that we would give to a town meeting and we need to take we need to walk through that presentation and give jeffrey guidance on what needs to be changed prior to town meeting if anything of course it may have so my suggestion would be if  if we start with the issues raised by the building department which have just been distributed by jeffrey and again jeffrey could if that is meant to be any time such equipment is installed in a house regardless of whether or not any work is contemplated for that house or such as the general residence district where i was a little just i was somewhat i did not realize that we were considering regulating a few e c installation or that we would treat it differently as from the general residence structure but it's certainly an issue so i don't think that they should be subject to this just by a lot of this just took a great period where it has to be in the no setback so far of the side yard can't be in the front yard but in the event that someone has an existing home when they are putting in central air conditioning in they have to have a condenser and the fish should be subject to the same standard that we're asking for in in the new bylaw so that's my take on it because i think if you're if you're at if you're putting a brand new condenser brand new air conditioning system in regardless of whether your new construction or whether you're doing an addition or i think that we're approaching this because a lot of people have durbin throughout the town and ha seen mainly new construction go up that has these condensers in the front yards and it's an attractive people don't like it that being said i think people are always buying homes i think they're always making improvements and i think and agree with the so let's bill it's to come to be clear what's being proposed is if you are doing work such that you have to own a building permit even if you're not subject i'm i'm i'm just trying to clarify if you have to feel a pull a building permit even if it is for a small enough project that it would not trigger the special permit process to talk with your colleagues and learn how many building permits that include in a c v or are issued in the year think that every person that gets built is going to have a section for that but exceptional like right now i take it back i think even when you do it in addition you have to say are you going to be where i was going with this was how many answer either way but at least with through the special permit process we're seeing a set of plans that somebody has invested some money into or only know where their condensers are going and if we can condition approval on where those placements are if this applies across s r c we have a bigger potential enforcement problem i mean we're right we've talked about that application subject to section sixty four which is the which was drafted as a general rather dense performance standards but there are many of them are broad enough that could also apply to an addition or a new home in the s r c districts and would you like to provide us with an example yes so somebody coming in understanding that for any particular application as we look at the architecture the technology etc it could be above or below but this is when we when i i believe this was added when we went to the two town meeting to ask them to allow us to put allow a developer to some divide a lot of less than ten thousand square feet and put up two smiles single families and the question arose what's a small single family and so one of our slides in that presentation was twenty two hundred twenty six hundred that's the range we're looking for i am i'm not certain how we can give guidance in this area any does anyone have any thoughts owning i completely agree with what joe is saying and it would be nervous about attempting to put another standard on top of what already works pretty well twenty five percent coverage and  understanding with the front set back with parliament is that when you take the average of the budding properties thats it that's what the step back yes the way it is has been drafted was any comments or questions on the changes we received from town  council or people would like since they were somewhat technical in nature if you want to in light of the discussion we just can't look at them again and then as quickly as possible look at the palace side language and get any army as well as if you voluntarily demolish the entire structure build a bigger home that also without arms aren't in the review going into germany show before with like if you looked at some of the photos that i saw that showed the a body the abutting houses you could tell how they kind of like looked all the same and then with the new house went up how they kind of look whether the set  would suggest one is that it's very technical right now and so illustrations always help in these points the other is that it's awfully dense for example this slide i think you could actually break it up into two slides i've done a career doing presentations and simple is best on these things you can voice over but but what happens is it when there's a lot of information people get lost in the density of it and they're paying attention to sorting that out and then i'm going to be listening to joe giving the presentation so it's just that's my first take on it on the slide that shows that the two heights the existing condition the after i think it would be useful to add another slide showing that the impact of this is not that significant in terms of the what you can build in a in a home we did that with our presentation and showed that lowering the height you know down to a more reasonable level doesn't necessarily have it isn't detrimental necessary sara lee to having nine foot ceilings and to having a relatively large floor area it just takes a lot of the bulk out of the picture so that would be a nice one to have in addition so so that it showing people what the effect would be not just as an outline but in terms of the functionality of the house i think that would be a nice thing and i think i have one more tha i think it would be also finally very useful to point out that in fact in most of the homes in the s r c if you're going to build any substantial addition you're going to be bumping against some kind of non conformity in an extension of that non conformity and under current rule you would end up having to go for a special permit anyway so this doesn't necessarily add to the burden for most people who would be for example trying to put a single storey addition on their non conforming garage which is what happens a lot so most in my neighborhood most of the people who have done additions to their homes have had to end up going with a special permit because none of the homes are conforming and if they want to keep it consistent with the sight lines of the house right now then they're extending you know what it used to be an eight foot setback now with a new ten foot setback if you raise something over that eight foot portion you're going to have to get a special permit anyway so so the point being that this does not necessarily increase the burden to people who are trying to do just everyday additions they would have to be there anyway under the current process you look puzzled right but this is coming out from a statistical standpoint and i'm in the audience wondering about the addition that i'm contemplating tomorrow and i'm afraid you're telling me that i'm going to have to do something that i would've had to do anyway this is  work it's creating exactly so the question is what's the impact on the ordinary homeowner who just wants to go over their garage i mean we clearly aren't trying to penalize them for wanting to improve their property we just want to keep the size down so that's not though i agree with steve i think it's a really important point to me you know we're definitely allowing for some latitude here you know i think we're now just having a limit so i think forget about your twenty five percent like coverage for a second yeah ok if you've got a house states two thousand square feet total square footage you're allowed six hundred square feet i don't understand that but you're allowed need to build  house up to thirty feet yes that means i can't do the second story that means i have to go more than thirty percent you know i i'm not sure that i understand you because i'm a developer myself and i know  my point is of no but that means if i go up to thirty feet that means i'm going to build a tool to store a house yes correct that is going to be more than the other percent you allowed me to go up thirty feet you will not allow then we will work out exactly what it's going to look like you go through a site plan review well make sure it's not detrimental to the neighborhood and you'll be able to get your thirty four feet to the ridge thirty feet to the midpoint in the work i think you'll be a really believe you'd be ok it's just that if you want to build a second story on the entire house and that's greater than the thirty percent you have to come here it's last you don't have to just stay with and make restriction ok the whole point is that once you start putting in addition on as large as you're talking about you're gonna have to come before the boy i am for her site plan review that's all it i think it gives you a great amount of freedom to put in addition i really do the whole point is i think if you're in a if you're in a if you've got a house that is two thousand square feet that you're talking about more than likely the houses around you are pretty much the same size so what we're trying to do is we're like bedroom ten by ten anymore they will not a little bit bigger thank you i would agree with you i would agree with you would and we're not telling you can't do it we're just saying that it's going to get a little bit harder to do it this time because you're going to have to come before we just want to make sure that what you building is state law this is massachusetts state law yeah and it is to prevent an absolute once a once the discussion begins to prevent an absolute gold rush you might say of people trying to get in under the wire but in any case it is state law went to denver ties it is binding yeah i know you don't have control of that but i think the even if i add thirty percent today as existing i don't think it's going to make any difference because the house is too smallest eight hundred square feet that's the entire living area therefore if i want to make sense of a house i have to demolish  and build a brand new in there and i'm not sure the twenty five paid of course a good amount for it and i wanted to either move into it or sell it in the future so as thirty percent would be nothing really to thirty percent of eight hundred square feet or he would be two hundred forty three feet yeah right therefore adding that to it to make a house a thousand square feet is really  single family thousand square feet is not much therefore if i add to it i would be losing money on if i sell instead of making money and therefore what i i propose a four bedroom house and there are of course we have lowered the ridge and there we will go for before the special permit of course we have to go that definitely with it we are going to make one of the bedrooms to make it an office instead of making  bedroom and we're reducing two bathrooms eliminating two of the bathrooms and sort of making it for example four bathrooms four and a half making it two and a half and one half bathroom in the basement we will present i don't know how difficult it would be to have that accepted in the special permit i also expected a grace period when this is announced maybe i'm naive in terms of the law and regulations that  since town meeting pastors the planning board our planning board has basically had the charge of rewriting the s r c by law and it's been going on since since a town meeting actually passed a moratorium last june ok so it's been an ongoing process there's been some public hearings it's been some forums you know i feel for what you're saying but i can assure you that what we're what we're proposing here i think that you know i think that you'll find as we're not trying to deter people from developing real estate in the town what we're trying to do is we're trying to make sure that what gets developed again enhanced is neighborhoods and isn't out of proportion with the neighborhood and you just heard earlier tonight where the twenty five percent block and we're just it's going to stay the same so i think that overall i think that the guys that the people that have come before us for in the g r zone for instance they have come up with better plans and they came in with so i think that what you'll find is a board that's want to work with you and i think you'll be happy with the result in the end i think your neighbors will be a lot happier yeah i like that up my neighbors are really happy with my plants quinoa and happy that you have spoken to that know already that's ok as long as you're positive it's all right and again we will move forward if you have comments on just to repeat if you have comments and anything that the town council any perhaps you could just briefly summarize describe your plan for moving forward and i think you is so what i did was i took a first attempt to kind of put together a charter basically this is what we intend to is basically look at the issues that were discussed in our last meeting and some of the conversations have taken place before you can recall that the zoning board of appeals was the one that kind of moved it over to the planning board to consider whether or not this is something that we would want to take up and we've discussed that this might be a summer project that we wanted to take on also considerations about whether or not this might be a way to engage interested residents and folks that were interested in the deliberations of the planning board and try to capture that in this document and we want to discuss how we can be helpful to the planning board by basically identifying you know what's happened with other communities what they have done what were the issues that contribute to their considerations of how to respond to the air b n b get a sense of the size of the issue is so small issue or is this something that's going to be only versioning in impacting the quality of life in belmont and then of course with anything that we consider in terms of changes or potential zoning implications one of the enforcement issues not just for building inspectors but you know if it also has  might wish to join such a committee and you give some thought to the mix of skill with hallock availability that you want on the committee or in the working group all right all right which is update on what formally known as the uplands development but as you will  and and me as we all understand this is a very large if this is a two hundred ninety eight unit forty b development that is being built try to pull together just an overview of where things stand and where they are going it's a the two hundred ninety eight units will be divided into five buildings the first of the five buildings with seventy who will be available for occupancy and the current plan on august first and they'll phase them in with the final building fifty units coming in on being ready for occupancy and in february twenty seventh the they have not as yet established the final rental rates for the market units that have the stablished a range of one hundred fifty to one hundred in eighty five dollars for the perhaps the other notable fact with respect to the affordable housing component you have before you the distribution the number of available units by size  it is perhaps worth noting that this will be the first already be affordable housing unit that development that o'neill has never done  and the applications for it the first round of applications for the first building came in yesterday so they will be beginning the screening process with the obviously this will have a minute this is a major development this will have a major impact on the schools and i am not certain there is a lot for the planning board to do on this lease up the buildings to give the school district some information about how many children how many children are going to be living in the units and what their needs will be that's that's also true for the affordable housing the group that is overseeing the affordable housing lottery that clearly this will have an impact and the more they can help the schools the sooner the better it will be if that were represented if the group would pending that meeting were represented here those who finally make who win the lottery and make it through the process there will be a considerable need for english worry i'll instruction and that will be a change of wind which is traditionally had to do less of that than some of the other elementary schools so any so at this point i think my thought is to try to talk to the school to the central administration at the schools and be helpful if possible in setting up a good flow of information i do not see what else we can do as a planning board philadelphia who will be overseeing it with the excess and who will after the affordable housing lottery is completed be reviewing those applications as well you get a sense that they're amenable to move from their school system  doing that projection so that would provide so the answer is i don't know what that number is but we have the ratios we kept them updated so we could certainly have that they don't need me to thank you  and the other and then send it to the superintendent with a note saying have a good day we have where we will need to define a neighborhood since we will be since our meeting on the second will begin with a discussion of the neighborhood con concept a look at the assessors map which they assure me they will have digitized by that time my suggestion would be that we postpone the definition of neighborhoods both till we have that discussion and until everyone has an opportunity except for joe who keeps all these things in his head and therefore just have to go and walk around the neighborhood but it's very helpful as we define these things i think to have a good sense of what it actually looks like because of the graffiti of belmont so my hope would be that everyone could do that by the second and then we will keep corporator the definition of neighborhood into our gener represent a group of about one hundred more than one hundred citizens here in belmont mostly neighbors and a butters of of the plymouth church at five is it five twenty eight or five eighty two eighty two and so run kramer's here with me he is also working with the citizens group and i wanted to come here because you know we have a very strong group of people that are very interested in how this case proceeds and i'm here tonight because we feel that there has been an opportunity to now look at the plans and details of the submission by horizon and the church and we feel there are a number of points that need to be addressed and in some cases rebutted and the main thing that we are here about and i think many of you understand why i'm here is because i've asked the board to reopen the hearing because of what has been proven to be a lack of notification to him majority of the direct about hers and i would like to say that i have gone and personally spoken with each of these other about hers and we are one of those that did not receive notice and so we were not at that hearing we were not note we were not notified about the hearing we didn't know about it first time we saw it was on the television so we have gone in spoken to our fellow about hers and they have all agreed to make avatar affidavits legal affidavits to the effect that they will swear under pains and penalties of perjury that they did not receive these notices and that they all have very germane comments and rebuttals to the information that was presented at the at the january fifth meeting so i have asked i started the process i think as any citizen would i came to the city hall town hall and i spoke with mr wheeler and i asked about the notification process and i was given the information about that and then after that i got a list of the mailing lists and various things and started looking and realizing there were some inconsistency as with the notification and information that was in the notices so it was not surprising to me that something had occurred that kept us from being notified and so we've i'm sorry may i just finish and that we were you know and then i had a meeting with mr mr mr kale because i felt it was an important enough issue and i want to get his take on it and i met with him and in each case i was told that that sufficient notice was given and so i hadn't spoken to my fellow butters at the time so i said let me go and talk to them first so i did go in and talk to them all and i did get this information and i was told that when a majority of the above hers is haven't received notification then it would does call into question the effectiveness of the notification process in this case so we filed a individual complaint because i wanted to make it clear that we have sufficient we have not had sufficient time to comment and secondly we had to apply and we did pay for a set of plans and a set of you know information so that we could review this highly technical and very invasive you know kind of proposal that is coming from the church item that we have scheduled for discussion this evening correct and i hear you were certainly happy to have listened to your perspective on this but we cannot hold a discussion of it this evening and it is not clear and jeffrey i'm certainly happy to work with geoffrey we go there has been some consultation with town council but whether we can return to this topic at all is at this moment most unclear to me what is clear is we can't return to it this evening and it was never my intention to return to it or to bring up any east topics at all the only point i thank you for your comments i think that this has gone over the line with discussion and i really need to cut it off now then my last job i should my last question is when will i hear from the town must now move on thank you discuss a discussion of the concept of neighborhood what we do what you assess yours do and so on and the second will be a course that we kc a look at single residence see there are depending on we will take a look at the we will do the neighborhood geffen mission for the cases coming before us that is what i have jeffrey additional yes the design guidelines yes yes an excellent point thank you jeffrey yes that is that this will be the fourth major item that we take up you may remember two weeks ago we looked at some process guidelines for going forward and there was some discussion of architectural guidelines my hope would be that on the second we finalize the the process guidelines which we've talked about a couple times and i think with the replacement of the infelicitous phrase fast track with something more descriptive i think we are i hope we i think we are pretty much ready to go with the process guidelines jeffrey has done a first cut at architectural guidelines and just that's clearly a larger project a much having one and therefore we are to at least if we don't get started on it we'll never make any progress so we'll have first look at that on the second with the idea that we're moving forward with the with the goal of on the second being able to a approved the process changes and be able to give jeffrey enough guidance that on our meeting at the fifteen we be able to put together an agenda we might move forward on and you know a cap about process who else needs to be brought to you know do we want to consult with the architectural community  you know to what extent do we want to look at other communities and so on it's a very large topic it's in a very important topic and we we have promised time it's part of delivering on the promise to town meeting that we would come back to them with more in the way of specific zoning as opposed to the planning board will look at it and make judgments so that's the that's on our plates for the second and that will be the last look at the single resident see before it goes to the warren and it will be the first leg a look at the architectural standards which will carry forward to the fourth jeffrey that was an excellent reminder have you anything else in your bag of ideas but you're right and with that we moved two minutes which having been previously circulated do i either have