good evening this is charles clarke i'm chair of the playing board welcome to the tuesday may fifteenth twenty eighteen meeting of the playing board and before i begin let me introduce you to the other members of the pla planner jeffrey willers at the far the table so i call the meeting to order we have several things on the agenda for this evening we have a public hearing on seven cherry street which is to put an additional single family house in the general residence zone a discussion of the belmont high school building project updates on cases plain board projects and committee reports we will specifically make mention of the marijuana bylaws that will be discussed and we will be put together over the summer and into the fall we'll review a few minutes and that's it for this evening so mr pinkerton would you like to call the public hearing for seven cherry you shoot for a special permit under section one point five point four the zoning bylaws to alter the non conforming structure we're set back sixteen feet allowed fourteen point two existing and proposed in order to construct a two storey addition it's not able to be here this evening but we are the residence at seven cherry street and we have lived there since two thousand and two  the house is on a existing odd shaped lot which cherry street is a dead end street off of waverly and beach street actually defines the back yard limit on the back side of the lot which is essentially i think where the non conforming setback is however our house is sited on seven cherry street our garage is technically at five cherry street it is on up its own parcel but is too small to build on and we have a two car driveway asphalt driveway between the existing house and the garage the dentist's office is on waverly adjacent to the there corner is immediately on the sidewalk on on this side i think i actually came by and spoke with you a couple years ago to talk about where our neighbor to the left has a two family and their porches similarly set back from the sidewalk so this edition is proposed as a two story family room with a powder room and relocating the side entrance which we have creating a mud room essentially and then just capitalizing on the second floor it's a proposed third bedroom for that and it really is just capitalizing on the footprint of the first floor addition the intent is to create this family room with a toilet room that is on all one floor potentially for us to remain there certainly for an elderly parent to be able  to make use of the family room essentially as a temporary bedroom if necessary is the mud room with the closet and the powder room would all be accessible on that first floor and really that was the driving consideration to trying to to create kind of a one story living space floor is slightly smaller it's basically fifteen by twenty four foot print it we've stepped back wall in the manner in which we have to maintain the window from the kitchen and a view out towards kind of the back yard the existing house the existing footprint is about seven hundred twenty square feet  the total first floor living area i guess is about one thousand and forty one just to be clear of the the non conforming setback is actually on the opposite corner of the here steve is pointing at the tree here yes that's right step back and the area that's going to be developed is this portion here that's right this portion here that's right so it's if it does not increase  it doesn't fall into the sets that you know that it does not but it doesn't mean it doesn't make worse to feel anything about the existing house in terms of that rear yard or side  you're at seven six the garage is already in there but the garage is an exception so the eleven point six feet setback in the front proposed is is ok because the next door neighbor before we go into the numbers here i just have a technical question for jeffrey we have two separate tarak tax parcels here do we have an issue with that in considering is going to be similar to other especially in terms of coverage sure so it's currently approximately four hundred fifteen square feet smaller than the average single family home in the neighborhood the average single family home has  ven hundred seventy five square feet the proposed addition would bring it to about one hundred and seven hundred square feet larger than the average single home which would make it eight hundred and ninety two square feet which is still significantly smaller than the average home over all in the neighborhood because we have a number two family that's correct in even a few three families of the neighborhood and the average for the neighborhood as a whole is twenty three hundred seventy eight square feet with regards to f a r it's currently zero point two four and the single family has averages point three one in the neighborhood averages point four for the increase would bring it to point three three which is still in line with single  not because you're goes around the other side in that same manner vane maybe it has to i don't know or maybe a triangle or something i don't know if we could we could have certainly have you know the yes so it was intended to because one of the images that i really liked was some of like old obviously it's not a farmhouse but the notion of these houses that get added on to over time and you have like a collection of little volumes and to treat that powder room and the entry as it's own little volume as opposed to just a it's such a i think a wonderful way of breaking down the overall mass but also to articulate sort of the various pieces of yeah you know i never i mean i've probably walked by that thing by your frontage on beach street thousand yeah and i didn't realize that that was your house until i went and i went down cherry street and i stopped in my car and i looked up and i said oh that peach street over there you go all the way through and realize that yeah but that's interesting cindy you have come just some questions clarification s and she ate for there's a it's marked a closet on the top without a second bedroom on it on the second floor there or is of just a giant closet well if you real estate person you would call it a bedroom it's one of those and we it is actually a walk in closet ok currently it has two doors in in it your bathroom and your two bedrooms back there so now that's closed off you know right would maintain it so you come up the steps closed off now or there is a door here ok i didn't know if that  was trying to figure out if they were going like this and just curious what was actually here and then that door remains there as well ok the nice thing about this from a inhabitants point of view as a project is that essentially we're doing nothing to the inside of the existing and the whole thing is going to be able to take place and then they can iterate through breakthroughs so we paid little attention to the existing ok yeah i was just curious what was what was happening in my last set of questions are on sheets a thirteen and fourteen i was just curious the windows the proposal windows are not in alignment with the rest of the house and i'm just curious of that was chosen that way or  you mentioned earlier that you're kind of wanted to have that farmhouse appeal where each edition looks like its own sort i was curious if that was the intent there or if that's just yes actually ok we will basically taking out asphalt yet since the addition is being put on to where currently it's driveway there's we're just expanding  approve is consistent with certainly what your incentive so you know why spencer do i give you back like an updated or corrected clarified set of documents that all in favor i do i hear a motion to prove the special permit for seven sherry street subject to the conditions as discussed some to hear second second all in favor involved in that at this point because it is here do we want to talk about that and yeah we certainly have you know big report about this but the traffic and what it is for the future of the three forty three in yellow that is the existing parking if you take the east part of the school where we park for a town meeting there's a little spot behind the school and that area right around the field house  the needs for staff and visitors currently is sixty two in the second column there so that leaves another hundred eighty one available for students and then if you three gets us to the four forty seven number for total site parking so the the the number number carried forward from the building committee has been that for thirty number which is roughly that total civic parking number so if we look at future needs last column we have the current staff and visitors of one sixty two and then we have staff and visitor needs of an additional eighty six and that adding the one hundred one gets us to four thirty and those i believe the eighty six is seventh and eighth grade plus additional growth projections so that one eighty one number i think that's a number to to talk to the building committee bit about and get some clarity clarity about how much of that is is needed and in reviewing the the documents that were sent out i couldn't get a real sense of kind of how much parking was in each location in the site plan and i think that could help us come to a number if four thirty five makes sense or we think it could be reduced significantly or where it might be reduced but that's that's what i could glean from the documents in terms of existing and propose d needs in availability so the so the in my interpretation this correctly and they're projecting a need for let's let's run the four hundred thirty parking spaces on for thirty actually turns out to be the the requirement what they need now right for civic activities for us so that of the three forty three is the school activities the forty three by state it's there's three forty three on the main campus with one sixty two of that for staff and visitor needs and then they have that remaining one eighty one for students and that based on the documentation that's that's pretty full so the so the new parking on site is going to be four thirty and then they're going to be able to pick up when they have events and things you can pick up a few things on th with some interesting numbers other other as we consider other potential parking options as concord avenue from the mobil station to underwood has almost one hundred and one hundred eighty nine spaces and then underwood street itself has space for forty spaces but that but that's that's in there so i guess the question is the question becomes for us and this is the amount of parking that they need onsite right and we can we can do that he thinks that with the hindsight and how that works in terms of the layout of the roads the layout of what the latest information about the skating rink is correct one hundred eighty s parking spaces but it's not going to be behind the mobil station it's going to be in the ring road it's across the street from it's going to be right there it's from a one story building basically know and that's a that's a big number and in and just talk about the building committee itself they are going through a process and i think there's a meeting tomorrow and there is a meeting tomorrow about the traffic and one of the issues is how much parking should go into the high school site for many reasons because of the congestion and that's right people on side roads such as golden and you know other places like that that's what that's their issue and why they want to reduce it  so there is a real pressure to reduce the overall by increasing the ability to walk and bike to the to the school but also to try to maybe even make students pay for parking which they don't do right now which a lot of communities do and that will bring down the number of parking spaces that you need you know but there's also that issue where people are saying look if we need civic parking when town meeting happens right it's going to be at a site where you know we need at parking obviously these people are going to come to the place to park and then they're going to leave and so you know the number part of bases clearly has an impact on you know the traffic coming in and out of the school does their sense of what's what the exact starting time but really i mean morning feeds into blocking traffic coming here for this meeting every day every time there's always room you know the issue with with traffic on these things is you have to plan for your maximum capacity right on this so let's say the projections of the fourth thirty on that site and they've what they've doubled the size of the building right they've doubled the size it was like four hundred fifty thousand square feet or so and so all that affects  not only the layout of the configuration of the building on the site but also it also affects the traffic within the site and that some of that is within our purview on that  and so how do you do that in a way that's encouraging the modalities that we want and not having a negative impact once it spills out both within the site and they have to be said red those are the and yeah i mean they moving on that i mean if you if you go into this this document here and you go to  this page here feedback evaluation so they looked at a lot of the recommendations from the tac and went through and either agreed or disagreed and put some comments on each of those pages  what i did i went through all of those iterations and then these lists of twenty or so questions or comments at the bottom are the kind of outstanding issues and clarifications that that i have that i think can help drive how much parking we have on the site and i think i'll just run through some of the larger ones where will the buses park at the new high school i didn't see that on the site plan and i mean obviously now they just kind back up between the baseball field and head injury and the end of the parking lot there and they're out of the way but i'm just curious how that will play out here of that all over here are one of the plants they have them up and running sort of diagonally  and that's really helpful yeah you gain some or reduce the number of parking spots you need  parking configuration the number of spaces but you're also beginning to ask questions about the figuration of the buildings could you sort of how does that come up in this concern i think the configuration of the building is  stems here and how because if you look at this this drop off you know they have to come in at a proposed golden street entrance and then sneak back in and around and i wan a little more information on our buses making that trip and that question kind of dovetails into if you look through some of these drive as they tend to so you know they're pretty wide lanes so you have some ability to play the play with road real estate there and p t a buses are coming down here too and they're dropping off  and then further further afield is how how or what are the bus routes and how are they accessing the high school do we need drop off locations on the north and south side of con could we have the route answer so that they're all dropping off with buses facing west so that you're only creating one drop off point and it's on the north side of concord so you're not worrying about kids crossing con road after getting dropped off in mass from the bus and if you're only creating one one space there or one drop off location kind of like you have up it up at wellington  could you possibly do that and then lose this area and then that gives you maybe the ability to pull the building this way and give you a little more space back here you know i'm just don't idea that here  put a simpler drop off point here so they're not entering the campus completely i know i didn't do a detailed review of the traffic analysis but i know there was talk of bringing bringing some of the traffic into campus to pull it off of concord road and off of traffic so to essentially pull some of that traffic off the main road and reduce gridlock on concord avenue but i wanted to kind of have that conversation on monday night with the selectmen and the school committee in the planning board in tac all and the building committee obviously  to gauge everyone's where everyone's coming from on that and how and whether that might be a viable option because if that you know if drop off can be on the peripheral of the campus build the this is good i mean i think it i think i got some interesting points here so these will be raised in the discussion but we have to be what by the end of june we have to have some sort of an agreement to get our minds around what key decision points or and and and understand what the impacts of those are and i mean obviously it's parking but i think we're all have struggling with the idea of having all of this parking you know to what lane thoroughfare that involves children crossing the street right i mean if this is just got to be a better way of doing and if if if if there are ways to reduce the parking per se on site right and then that then the configuration of the building on the site can change exactly when and when it has an impact on safety and traffic flow and everything else so it's a big difference so there's a parking on underwood and you can see it's it's quite light so you know i just think if there's a way we can take advantage of that seems to have conquered really at least parking why the rank gets bigger and then do you move does feel somewhere outside i mean it's not in needs to be looked dad holistically not as two separate have always thinking back to what happened to the library over this exact same issue right yes and can i add some of the comments i one of the comments you made that i thought was really important is  daf you know it's extremely dangerous what people been doing it for decades you know we we get through our morning commute from the water with a fit there's just a lot lot of language with out statistics or things to support it it's just it's obviously a professional opinion but it actually works quite well so i had a question about that and i would like to i think sandy you've hit the real crux of the issue which is have a separate drop off from the parking because what doesn't work in the current plan is that they do the same thing in the same place so you have cars going your different direction all over the site and what i love about how it works now and i'm not saying it shouldn't change to work better is that you have drop off in your parking and they're completely separate and in the morning when you drive now i had two kids who went through the high school and you drop them off well i've dropped left on the head injury right for actually not because of that's because she goes straight into the bicycle complex now as it's designed but you'll still have a lot more traffic coming from and from that way and h just still struggling with what the entry for the junior and i mean that that's a tough one the fact that they've got it located you know at the center of the site essentially and getting through there is a bigger problem in a way i mean that and i see no issue at all with the doing the drop off for the high school in concord to do that should work for the juniors as well but yeah that was my should be able to go in the same door and then figure out what i even like the idea of separate doors just you know just a separate entrance for the younger kids but i think a drop off point can be shared to be sure where they stand and not only because this whole traffic and parking your show has become a large large larger and bigger discussion and i think people are actually dissipated i think so i don't know what's going to i don't know what they're going to have a force in june fifth  project what are we as a board meeting to provide to the building committee is that just a clarification and letter of our expectation based on reviewed and signed off on this i think that's what they need right for the state of brain granted you haven't done the formal review and approval which might bring up some other issues but water to kind of lay out these were the issues that will be addressed in november december i don't think they want that only because it really raises question marks around those issues i think they're looking example one of things that i know will be a big concern if it actually happens is spencer pointed out that the way to get to the loading dock is you can't you don't turn into lowing dark you know you actually back down the street so there's going to be the beeping right there's going to be the beeping of the truck as it backs up even though i know that the neighbors are not going to tolerate that that happens a i'm trying to think what we have what we get here i even think vans have the backup beeping noise you know although it's not just it's not just relegated to the box trucks or eighteen wheelers from or even any commercial vehicles that are going to be accessing that are going to fact have a better truck route i don't think it worked as well for passenger cars but you would come in this way drive forward and back that's a long that drop off point in the front and access or push it out on to under would you gain a plaza there and then you can bring the building up a little bit closer that you have more room in the back for kind of your your back delivery sticking points as we know it always becomes an issue like oh you know it becomes an issue so i don't know at this point it's very much sort of like here's the way the park is going to be here to where the building is going to lay and like that's i think i think we will be helping seed i think it will be helping them sandy my hope is that this that's what the putting together of concerns and stuff yeah i'm hoping that that continues to expand including you know the twenty questions you just raise should be added to that list and not just be handed over to them at some point in time and saying with them these are issues that we got yeah leading the lighting of the fields and the transfer my location in a generator location and we should send we should send stuff not seen on this is i mean you're very aware that the community pat is coming and the bridges the tunnel is going to happen i mean that needs to be addressed in this too he has his business frankly because he was recycling or coins the good stuff and if you ever needed a spare window you had it well and many did say that he did you know he did a lot of that kind of stuff clean outs and so forth and so  yeah that's great we were actually talking this morning about that at the park and there were some of us who were saying we should get played with pete on the park so it dogs don't run outside chasing squirrels but i don't know if we could get funds for that in a case jeff or you want to talk to us above what's going to so we're we're proceeding with the marijuana but first thing i was out sick for a number of days last week but i did put together this real quickly and month off steve doesn't want to take the but you'll see there's a lot of excess because i don't know what those dates are going to be i don't know a lot of times on that unlike the annual town meeting which the warrant is really opposed to be for very specific very special issues but you'll see here if you just look at the bottom going up that you know by the beginning of october if they go based on these dates were derived based on the new town meeting calendar up through the warrant being circulated as you can see i haven't filled been able to fill in a thing else but but that also means that so basically what it means is that during that june i'm expecting that i'm hoping that the june nineteenth and july tenth meetings will be discussing dr i'm sorry so tuesday july seventeenth in the ten will be by law where you put in july seventeenth after july tenth because you have a meeting so so the question then with the hope then that the bylaws will be in a position that you can take the month of august off and then you would pick back up september well here again september the first meaning september is the day after labor day so the question becomes does the board want to meet in september fourth the day after labor day or do they want to week meet the following week on the eleventh or they wan meet thursday the sixth september sixth i guess depends when you want to have a public hearing on this because i would think that maybe we want to meet as a board before that the  election we'll have to well we'll have open public hearings the public meeting but we'll have to have the public hearings as well as we go through and we probably have the figures once the everything i think we'll probably just have the retail go through i think that will probably go through and then the issues besides ironically it's yes it's going to be a yes vote yes yes it has yes because if know but i don't want it to get too mixed up right now because they are they're really about the operations so that's a different right you know how they separate ours except for ours and there are some operational issues that can we can embed in the