june twenty first twenty sixteen meeting of the planning board to order as is our custom i'll begin by reducing my colleagues we have chuck carl headland longest serving member of our board a full agenda tonight and some very important issues to move through so let me jump right into it the first item item and item on our agenda which is entitled the brief on town meeting as i suspect everyone who is here knows me being voted on two pieces two by laws that have that will be important for the planning board the first is the zoning amendments for single residence see which was a joint effort under into the boards hands and very concerned with using it in the best interests of the town what i thought we might do to begin with is because  i think it would work be worth our spending five or ten minutes just talking amongst ourselves as to what we think what we heard town meeting say in addition to the letter of the by  the chair is not the best position from which to listen you're too busy remembering your name and which committee your chair of we're not  so just to get things started here it here was my list of major takeaways and then after the board i'll i'll also ask if there are those in the audience who want to comment briefly on this  the first in this i think is the heart of it there are no mega mansions there was a clear mandate for control over the size and scale of development second low at the time that all the amendments came in my gratitude was less than palpable it did have the virtue of having numerous amendments did have the virtue of focusing a forcing a discussion on questioned in particular this is my number to take away the extent to which design and architecture should be part of our review again that with an amendment dealt only with that issue come meeting voted town meeting voted overwhelmingly yes it should be and mike my third big takeaway is that every zoning district is different we've heard from general residents districts we've heard from single resident see but you know town meeting i think the town meeting since was but that's that doesn't tell us anything about what should be happening in single residence be our single residence say that's and residents need to come forward and speak for themselves so those who are kind of what i thought i heard town meetings saying to us but let me stop now and see what else you know you were sitting there going  very very center of the of the home gross gross wary of the home then you're before this board for a special permit and just in walking around town even after town meeting what i heard my feeling is our zero support is really to not to stunt development it's to help development in to enhance neighborhoods through the set of tools the town meeting has given us so i don't want people to get the the wrong feeling that the wrong perception that oh boy i can't ever do anything in s r c zone again because that's simply not the case what is the case is that it's going to be just a little bit more of a process your neighbors are going to have a little bit more to say of of what things look like this board sort of the will have something to say about what things look like and ultimately what we're hoping for is a win win a win win for the developer for the neighborhood and ultimately the community so that's what what what i got out of that and i just want people to understand that i think is the whole intention of this new change in the by a large as far as i'm concerned you know how you're going else on the borders but i think that was the intent and i think that's what a town  that this is that like so many other things that it involves a balance of rights that if we live in a community we share some objectives and sometimes our objectives differ from each other but that in general we work our way towards a balance that recognizes the right of the individual as well as the goals of the community to try to address some concerns that they had and i thought that the process that we went through and the resulting output that was presented to town meeting was a reflection of a collaborative process that reflected where the mood of the community was interesting for me also too was the there was some discussion and requests to consider you know property rights residents rights and so to to balance that and find the middle ground the compromise if you will but to be a balance in our approach and be able to look at the rules that work you know promulgated well vetted by the planning board and also by the resident group that was advocating for us to consider putting together some new zone a guideline so i thought the process was what it was intended to be on the output was good and the proof will be as we go ahead and weigh in on cases and see is there anyone in the audience who'd like to comment briefly on this up by town meeting that has an impact on the role of the planning board was the issue of the interior cell and can us again my takeaway is was that in terms of our role it means that our role continues unchanged that if and as the applicants come forward we'll hear them under the design insight and review process but again right and again i think all of us are very great tommy i'd like to move on now to item three which is the implementation of the single resident all right the one of the good things about doing single resident see is that we previously where the general residence district and and i offer this in the spirit there a saying in publishing everybody is a better editor than they are a writer and so in that spirit i want to offer  one of the things i want to offer a framework and then get for critique and comment and i would truly offer this in the spirit of a set of astronomy not anything more so what did we learn from the general residence from the general residence district rezoning i think the first thing we learned was that we need to stop and be self conscious about the process that we're going to process and i am drawing the curtain of charity over this that we did not have as robust a process as we should have had and the theory that it is making making new mistakes is in evitable but making the same mistake is really unforgivably here is my list of what we can adapt pretty  much what we can take over from what we're already doing in the general i have to listen i have a list of things that we can probably take over from the way we've worked with the general residency applications and then i have a list of areas where this is different this district is different and therefore we're going to need to give this some thought all right  we have a we have a framework that has kind of five as i see it five pieces we have a process of defining a neighborhood again it could be defined but defining a neighborhood is a starting point we we have it took a while but we've gotten to what i think we could call the thirteen birch street model that is that we would clear to us what it is we want to see in an application and i think that that's pretty much what we want that may be what we want to see in an application from general resident see and fifth really i think one of the things that we learned  is that it's really important to have the courage of our convictions that up sometimes a plan will come in and again thirteen birch street first one was that would have been an example that sometimes a plan will come in and the building as conceived just doesn't fit within the spirit of the zoning bylaws and then we need to get to know quickly and sometimes you look at it and it's something that we can work with and then it's really important to try to decide which of which bucket it falls into as early as possible in the process not every application can be reshaped but a lot of them can and in trying to be clear about that so those are my takeaways here's some of the things that may be different and again  when we comped about the general residence district we talked about total living area when this is when we worked with the residents on the single resident see zoning we're working with a different concept the trigger is roads floor area not total living area and that reflects the fact that the residents had a concern with garages other structures are too easily then we need to get busy on collecting the data we would need to take that concept into account obviously we have a different set of hard rules they're  does that mean that when we look at whether this fits well with the neighborhood we need to collect data on the height of other structures the th is passed contains a phrase particular consideration of a body in properties where it was not a lot of discussion or definition of what that phrase should mean in  practice but that's probably something that we need to think about  there is a a question and i posed the question of with respect to design guidelines we pose we we we have to strew kinds of design guidelines that's a question i'm not sure what the answer is and to the extent one do we want to drive the real broad considerations up to the very front of the process  how do we encourage better how do we encourage better compliance throughout the process and i think i have some thoughts about that but those are kind of my these are some of the things i think we want to think about how much we'll obviously this process will evolve but where do we how much do we want to take over from the general residence district process and where is it really imperative that we start a and make some changes and additions because it's a different district it has there's only the bylaws are different and the character of the neighborhood is there so that's  rough a lot of good things to think about with the process for us in addition to reflecting on this after our meetings and conversations with my working group rethinking to doing that or summertime project or this is going to be just something that we want to come back to intermittently what i was hoping to do was kind of get people's thoughts this evening and then the framework that we've set is really important and so i'm reluctant to do it in a working group format i mean that may prove to be the only thing that's practical but is one of the things i have learned in the past months is if it's really important discuss it in the evening and discuss it at the expected time so what i'd like to do is to get people's thoughts and then next time i have something written we have something written for people to take a look at and start the process there understanding that we can't keep on the trains from running into the station so there's going to be we're going to have to do and plan at the same time think it's really important that you have highlighted you know particular consideration be giving be given to the abutting properties we really do need to start thinking about what that means you know and when we want but say data that's for the entire neighborhood versus data that's specific let's say to be a budding properties you know one situation that i could imagine being particularly important to think about maybe is height right compared to the abutting properties that is and i see that not because i think that you know we would impose any sort of a rule issue but i do think that it's that we now have a duty at least to consider those abutting properties and to have specific data probably about those in terms of the height and you know i think generally very often we're getting that we got that in the in the context of g r we very often see we have plans that show you know the height of the proposed structure next to the existing structures and i think that kind of probably something that we're going to want to ask for in s r c as is my sense and i think a we're just going to need to have some conversations particularly early on about how we think this phrase needs to be interpreted you know i don't think it's a doesn't create any presumptions but it clearly has to be given some weight and will need to just work through really what that means probably we have on the gross floor area point or free do we have is it is this data exist for us to collect easily is the way we have total living area or is that not necessarily  away and one of the reasons for raising it is we have some grant money left yes and it may be that one of the things we should decide as a board this is there are there are many talented undergraduates with it interest in design and architecture who have not yet found summer jobs maybe we want to say ok we're just going to create a database for the entire single residency district and that becomes somebody's summer project if the just just went on to teach somebody other than measure a single family discrete project for someone but it's a doable project i see this whole thing as a quite a challenge because you see the bunch of ranch houses and some we're going through an evolution of the tower people are taking these smaller houses in the making the module and that's why we went to town meeting because some of the houses were too big but what we have to be careful to do is to make sure that when someone does command wants to put a house i think it's going to be very challenging to say the least and i think that we have to we have to think evolutionary how like how these neighborhoods are going to evolve and i think that that's going to be the challenge and i think that the height restrictions are going to help us but i think that some of the data i mean you can't tie you can't tie someone to a whole wall every house in your neighborhood a sixteen hundred square feet so you can't be more than twenty six hundred square percent of our coverage would work but it would only be like a tool like a measuring tool like you can exceed that that's within the zoning and in fact you know we look at some of the lot sizes i think that you can use that thing i appreciate the confidence that of town meeting but i think we'll have to be very thoughtful in developing methods and guidelines that make it clear for homeowners and developers i mean the thing two things that i wrote are what barbara started off with from that was the height requirements in taking a look at some of the considerations of i mean this is going to be i was talking to some folks it's going to be a choreography that we're going to kind of get the fit and feel and get the temple right and i think that for me what that means is it's a look at the case that we had in s r c it was apparent that when some of the houses came in to the upper end of the quarter range that was hard to say that that those would be homes that would be acceptable as a legacy from the planning board or the residents would have issues with that i think that there's a balance to get in there in that second to the  quarter and i think that that's something that i'm keeping my eye on you know the considerations for a new families and homes in the new housing stock you know times are changing i get that but we're also responding to what residents wanted in terms i mean i think my my major observation is yes then we we will have to however move from general observations to dealing with cases with some some consistency and applying principles that doesn't mean it's and i get a call outcome a spec there has to be some consistency i now want to move ahead briefly to item and should it be necessary to continue any of them it will be very helpful to have a date to which to continue the our regular meeting dates in july the first and third of the month that would be the fifth and the nineteenth so my suggestion for july is that we meet on the fifth and the nineteenth right and with that we have needs for july i appreciate everyone's holding to them i think it's helpful for all if there's we can always meet on the first of the third because time meeting happens other thing happen but i think it's helpful for people if we here who has come to other than the applicant and representative of the applicant do i have anyone here who has come to speak to do i have anyone here who has come to speak to forty eight middle  the then prior to our last regular meeting submitted a set of revised plans but the revised plans were delivered i believe friday our hearing will be again as we generally do by asking the applicant if he or she wants to make a presentation and then present the revised quantitative analysis and then take questions from the board and then comments from those who attended this evening the result of the impact of those changes on the floor tile analysis and i think people remember from last time it was at the very top of homes in the area both in terms of two of the things we look at most frequently one is total living area and the other is floor area ratio and with these changes there has been some movement instead of being at the margin it's now piece it's not how sixty out of sixty five homes on both those measures so it's still in the fourth it's still in the top quark tile and would be one of the largest homes in the area and in the neighborhood as we've defined it and would have one of the highest floor area playfields with that i will with the owners architect all children are in jeffrey along with the the applicants and you know was a process of trying to to respond to some of the discussions from the initial hearing and we were grateful for that i mean a i think that they had made some pretty big strides towards reducing the size of the home and understanding some of the dynamics at play that little phrase that was used often in the conversation was the psychology of the room of the psychology of trying to respond to you know you are trying to build a home but you're also trying to be a good neighbor and respond to some of the concerns that were out there and i think that they drove the process in the right direction i still think that  you know as you said the court held out as does show that it is still in the larger side but i think that they've you know the twenty one percent reduction in the size of the home was a pretty sizable step in the right direction  we encourage them think hard about doing that actually make the front of the house small which they did so i think they've made some really good strides but it looks a little bit i mean  front i mean even if you remove the one to the right over the doorway which we discuss with them or actually did i wasn't there but for afternoon that was my sentiment if you remove that one i think it would be even liz one of the things we requested to take the to the there was a bank of two windows two sets of two windows and we asked them to go ahead and separated out and upon reviewing the the front elevation it appeared that the the bank of the five windows there across the front on the second floor gave it the appearance that it's a much larger house so in in working with jeffrey and the applicants it was best to kind of look at the design as submitted but for us to work with the the builders and the architect to look at if we can make that change that would be a change and maybe we could do here in the meeting tonight ok i definitely see some improvement over the last design i definitely agree and appreciate the elimination of the two story of open the improvements here a leave it at that for now i think that probably if we as a board get to that point there are some details you know this thing in the plans that we would go back through but i don't i have some comments and questions but let me hold them for a second and see if there is anyone who's in attendance here tonight that would like to comment yes you know you all know the drill by now come up to the microphone introduce yourselves and say your structure on a small lie with no regard for the impact on the neighborhood flip it and walk away and help us live with it if a special permit is granted do we have the right to appeal yes thank you and you can see by our petition and concerns we absolutely love our little old fashioned american neighborhood please don't let it cape and it is i think approximately thirteen hundred for the death it's living through what i want to know it's really along the lines of the first comment do i have the permission to build a house that size and i do believe that that it's going to set things off in a direction that as i and my husband have been living in the house we've been thinking of renovations and we would like to innovate and we have i have a seven year old son and we do need space for the keep we have a bedroom so we i have a galley kitchen so just sort of logic sticks of living in that house and we have been living with my family visiting from india a swell so we want to run over it but looking at that house that's not the house i want in that neighborhood that's not the house i want right next to mine it would affect our sense of privacy in the yard it would just affect the energy i feel like around the house what i have seen from a lot of the big houses and we have one on hardly swell hurley street if that people do not invest a lot in landscaping so the houses are they are there and they're sort of in your fear if there it's there it's a lack of privacy and it definitely affects the appeal of the street so those are things that i am taking into consideration that i think about renovation and i hope that those are things that people who come in and build take into consideration about especially really the the the needs of people who are living around them as a community i you know i am in touch with my neighbors i nor my neighbors but it's it's really hard when you don't talk to people and they are working on these projects in your backyard they're truly i think the distance from my house from my art which is twenty seven feet and and this house is probably twenty seven plus probably another five or seven feet so there's not that much distance from the fence to the building to the structure that stands now and you can imagine once it goes up on the side the sort of incursion be are going to feel so i hope that that would be taken into consideration there are ten steps between us i repeat a mere ten steps to cross the street from my house to that house this structure mass construction will take place on the front on the two sides and on the back this is too big of a mass for a non conforming lot we are concerned about the height but just as concerned for the large looming mass of this structure this structure will tower over every home that and not only abuts this property but of the entire neighborhood this structure is a monstrosity for the non conforming lot and the neighborhood we are against these revised plans thank you thank you and yes chief the last house thirty five thousand street i'm neither a contractor nor an architect but i wonder why you need a ten foot high attic technically nine foot ten inches but a ten foot high adding to the ri that ridge pole could be lowered a little i think without any impact area is used for storage mainly unless there's a plan down the road to add rooms up there but the height has a great impact on the neighborhood and all the neighbors are concerned about their height and the mass of the house thank you right i'm not in a bar but i just feel as the size of a house like this is just not going to be can you know not going to go in the neighborhood and you start a precedent doing one like and upon a said you if we we've said the homes are going to get bigger i think the that the spirit of these the zoning changes that the homes are going to get bigger many of the homes will be two stor homes that is that that is what will happen what we're in and what town meeting wanted us to wants us to do is control the pace at which this happens and this is going to be a very big structure if i have trouble saying compared to everything else around it pushes the boundaries as far as it can push the boundaries when i look when i look at the proposed basement plan that's a  so my first concern is it's way at the top in terms of size if this is an acceptable adjustment what would be an acceptable adjustment and what would the neighborhood look like the second is one of the things we've been really clear on is we don't one single family homes turning into two family homes if this is indeed here we have a proposed basement that may have a full bath it's hard to tell has something has a number of rooms and has a direct exit from the basement if that doesn't look like a space the could easily be made into an accessory apartment i me that i think it does that those are the things that has generally given us concerns when there's a separate entrance when there's a full bath and when there's a lot of space you may remember we took down one of the one of the general residence applications that we rejected simply it had too many exterior stairs it was clear we had four levels for apartments and  this is a question of how lengthy the for the front facade the length of the front facade you looting the garage everything that you're going to be looking at when i think it it really raises the question of if we said yes this what we we say no to against the residence a petition against it they were against any special remedy in process and so where to where do you find room to work with a person that has some desire to make an improvement  have thirty percent or twenty nine percent you know in addition of on a fourteen hundred square foot house maybe not you know i was just wrestling with that that for me was one of the harder issues to understand here where they made a big you know twenty percent twenty one percent plus reduction the size the house the existing bathroom that was in the basement was just that an existing bathroom that was in the basement so i didn't identify that as a changes the basement you so that stairs and then the stairs that you mentioned those are fire stairs there's are not regular stairs there's this is not what college can you comment actually are the c s so he can help you but what i want to those that you tell you is that there are fourteen houses on middle fall out the fourteen twelve houses are two story houses yes our house is the only one along with the other one that is only  story so i feel like we have a if anything then we're not in compliance not in the sink with the other houses so i feel the second floor should not be a problem and if we're putting a second floor and the first floor is fourteen hundred square f proposing or you're against the change of putting second floor and make them making the empty area on the second floor not utilizing it what's the purpose of putting the whole frame and going putting a second floor on the house that we cannot u about a better understanding of what's in that the existing finished basement had a kitchen dishwasher sink all that all of that being taken out and the now you may say all someone may have privacy that having a private apartment you can rent rooms in your building and nobody can do anything about it but i don't think that's the intent that's not true ok now you can see anyway that's not to go to that so that are some code issues there are some code issues here that have been handled as an improvement the steady is one of them and that has been a significant effort of not making that area in the basement as a second unit as i said the kitchen has been completely taken out so you just have a big room recreational then you have the foundation of the garage on the left and then you have a tele to your own and a storage room and another room so it's purely recreational you cannot use that as a second apartment now coming to the heights the the first floor height is about eight foot most of these new construction homes that you see they are nine foot nine and a half foot some are ten foot eight foot same as the second floor now if you look at the g for some of the other the second story homes they don't have that eve projection breaking the two floors so they create the illusion of a hired building secondly the main roof is protecting down you see the evil line is almost in line two in the windows and those windows are about eighty two inches from the floor then if you consider the structure and the digit beam and everything else there isn't much left as a space plus the triangular shape of the roof now looking graphically like this it gives the impression that it's a if you look at the left portion it's significantly lower than the right section and one portion of the house which is over the garage this is no room just the roof goes to have a better continuation of the roof lines so all of us have these frustrations when somebody puts a big house but let's be a little bit more objective about what we are seeing that some of the misconceptions could have been a bit exaggerated you may have some points in some of them but you have to evaluate everything now their discussion lines yes did did i hear correctly that that twelve of the fourteen houses on the middle crowded street or two story house assertion i did the research i print out all the properties from view towns website i had pictures of all the proper this ever brought it with me but i did my due diligence that is absolutely correct and you can verify on your vote although what i'm hearing is everyone is on a two floors and this is an actual floor because this is a ranch that's quite a two floor that they're putting together i mean that is exist right now so that's below that and i understand that that does look bigger than that on this piece of paper but i also look at prints every single day and although that's a large and what's in that neighborhood that's not of the largest a lot of people think it is it's less than thirty feet tall to its highest point so to me knowing what's on little cart road especially the one if you go down the car heading towards the school on the left that's a monster of a house that's pushing thirty six feet this is at least six feet lower than that house and doesn't have as much nearly as much mass or volume the other one car the street that was  perspective is that i mean i'm sure the guys are aware it's the houses on the market right now so these guys don't don't do this ok we we say you can't do it someone else is probably going to buy the house we're going to be back here again because someone's going to be an owner user there and use it the way it is which i highly doubt because of the price of the product price of the property there's got to be some type of redevelopment going on there as well as a lot of use of other houses that's what i was talking about earlier in the conversation there's going to be a lot of challenges coming forward i think you can get it to look smaller with more tweaking of this i think we can do that but i think that overall the height in the mass of the house it's it's not three thousand and something square feet it's less than twenty seven hundred that's a huge difference so you know i said a town meeting and expecting i mean i was one of the presenters there were people there there was a there was a pretty there was a probably isn't going away so i want to try to work with the board the advocate and you guys as closely as we can but there's going to be the reality is there's going to be some pepper changed to that house john i don't think anybody would take then one could certainly have a smile or two story house and in fact maybe one of the things that we ought to do is to go through and take a look at the size of the  a number of two story houses in the neighborhood i can take a look at how large they are and they have to be that would be a good cat to know i'd also be it into an accessory unit so that would just be a good a good point to get clear on the other i mean my other thought is if we're going to take that the a butter language seriously we probably need to take a closer look at this compared to a butters language again this is this is the it would be this is the point at which we have to start translating what was discussed the town meeting here is a good point we should look at the we should look at with the sizes are the houses on middle card because just to make it easy math wise ok if someone had a two thousand square foot house on a lot this size the way the by a large is currently written right now the new one we just did those folks can add six hundred square feet because two times three is six you've got a twenty six hundred square foot house that someone is doing by right with absolutely zero control over drop by the neighborhood as well as the board as well unity because they can do whatever they want on the edition so i'm just saying it's it's a very challenging thing we're talking about there are never going to i guess so i'm hearing what everybody's saying and i wonder if one of the issues that we're facing with this house in particular i mean i think that  lot lot of us are generally recognizing that probably doubling the size of this small branch houses in this area is going to happen when people put a second story on it seems like some of the perception of mass issues that we're facing here is that there's an attempt to work with a personal footprint of this house the existing house and the foundation right and that's kind of it really does come down almost to a design choice to stick with that footprint and then we end up with lots of rooms and lots of things going on in different walls and going out here and there which is giving a perception of the very large you precisely right  didn't start with that with that assumption or that or that foundation as a starting point then we may eliminate some of the concerns that have been race or be able to manage them better you're absolutely right so that's a that but talking about this one saying you you could you could you could jog it and you can make it less i'm just being theoretically speaking what barbara raises is a good point i mean they're building on top of that the fact that this is first case we have a number of other matters that we'd like to get to this evening  so yeah i believe the choices are weak and continue this to the fore with the understanding that we will take a look at the abiding houses marked here fully  as well as some of the design considerations are we can time as well as just have time to reflect on well how are we going to manage this process and single residency why would one would always hope to start with an easier place but it doesn't work out that way i would support continuing the hearing to give us the time to go walk the neighborhood i have driven it but i thought i feel like from hearing the issues i would like to walk the neighborhood and and look more carefully at the street before voting and especially since we're we have a meeting scheduled very very quickly and i don't think we'd suggest to the applicant that any further work be done between noting step by us except i think people jim sabbaths from precinct one i thought a bit it would be very helpful for people especially for the neighbors if they actually saw the plan on grade because they're looking at a foundation that goes all the way probably six or eight feet are a number of neighborhoods in belmont where houses are on small lots six thousand square feet two stories  but they have been softened by thirty or forty years of landscaping and i think that we can't offer thirty years of landscaping but we can put in more serious landscape requirement so that six or eight years from now that the impact of whatever it is is revised and constructed is softened excellent that if we lower the roof more and we lower the roof more than two feet as it's indicated we should show that just in the previous middle and we show the lo and secondly we tried to make that second floor look like like a door mat and introduce that eve line to it to break the building in order to minimize the  surely in effect and we have that roof also turning on the sides of the building again for the same reason to break to break the height of the building and this is in  can see the evil lines even at the gable end we have the gable end broken with a small the floor area ratio has moved from previously it was fifty first out of fifty seven now it's moved to forty six i and the total living area has moved from fifty out of fifty seven to forty eight sixty seven did see the meetings that we have had and this meeting also to be a problem solving meeting not necessarily a challenge to either one of us but i don't think and i hope that you know that we have done as much as we were suggested to  do and i want you to consider that i have been paying mortgages for thirty four hundred dollars a month since december and i want you to consider that i hope that we can get things done as suspects as possible thank you very much n echo some of the things that i said in the previous case and here i mean we did take a look at the roof line in trying to address some of the change that would break it up so that it would be  and again i think we made some progress but again it's some mistake choices that folks wouldn't understand it the way  not i definitely see some improvements in the in the mass and them perception and i guess just the once or design element that i would like to see some can further consideration given to in addition to the to the roofline i think it's those three windows on the first floor in the front really  this is also this is also a personal judgment i draw i go by my house on washington street that has a projected roof over the porch that starts at the second floor and comes all the way down to the bottom of the first floor and i have tried for twenty five years to like that design and i still it still looks odd to me and i feel the same way about this i feel like this would be a simpler and stronger design if that be shape was taken off and the and the siding was continuous all across with with regularized window pattern i that that is that that is that that is a design issue but i think it is a as a design issue that is atypical of of the town and i'm not a big fan of it i think it actually detract working group the owner of cooperate with them so i see france i can take it out in the open oh no time at all i thought that was suggested to us that we do it that way i don't like it myself i can make it one flat roof and i would be fine with me yeah i don't know how we got here mr magara because we talked we are basically ok with his help me because i think one of the things we want to try not to do in this is a lesson learned from general rest and see if we have real fundamental concerns about the affect the perception of mass i i get that i do i believe that i do but even so there are limits to what architecture does and so before we before we start getting into some architectural redesign like you know the this is a this is basically a smaller house are we comfortable with the mass volume length relationship to adjoining to adjacent homes i mean for me there neighborhoods where the houses are extremely small so any type of addition new construction the that they're going to end up in the higher or tile would just be just the way it is again i just i raise the issue because if we're going down a redesign road we certainly don't want to ask somebody to do redesign and then say oh but by the way we think the house is four hundred square feet to and how would people like to proceed is it best if we see those changes in two weeks rather than assuming that the what gets changed is what we were asking for i think as we get it we could go yeah i would think  we're continuing it i have to and we will not have any more in less the in less the roofline does not come out as people expect that we will not have additional architectural the landing it's i don't know what is dimension that with a three foot four and a half foot four foot something that's because that's where the set backs thoughts from the landing you don't count steps and try to keep it away from the tree which and to the rear you have a little part so i was trying to capture some housing stock with which to measure this by i mean we could you could go down storms and all we have an application what i'd like to suggest since i am mindful of the time is that with respect to the states  that we ask dave rogers our state rep to come to talk with us about it i would talk with the selectmen and see if they want to make it a joint meeting or at least hand here are the three provisions that  the bill as actually passed the first videos by right a community must allow at least some of his roughly ten thousand housing units it's nine six hundred but just for the week there must be a minimum we must allow by right five percent of the housing units to develop accessory apartments which can be up to nine hundred square feet that's a two bedroom apartment that that would have a substantial impact on the second and this is yes by right multifamily ho there again the specifics are lacking but we must specify a district will suggested the general residence district where multi family housing would be allowed by right and this cities it's the equivalent of having three family homes on twenty five hundred square foot lot throughout history no i don't i don't think that's the fire was reasonable and and there are a host of planning requirements which of plans all look which must be done by planners and we're certainly talking about quarter of a million by the time these plants are all done and finally it proposes to change the voting on zoning amendments so that they now require a simple majority not a two thirds majority there are many other provisions whether the house and senate whether joe has in the house whether it will get together whether there would be differences that would be ironed out that is open but this is this is just a major development and it is is self serving because i would hope that you would believe be able to do it on the nineteenth since i would not be president if that's all vote for myself i think you are joining me with the board of selectmen i think would would add to the gravity of concern that this body is set as feeling that this type of legislation would have a significant impact not just for the planning but also all of the quality of life in this community and the subsequent impact financially fiscally in terms of yeah so i remembered jeffrey saying some some time ago that we belmont have those people paying rents that meet the affordable housing criteria but because they're not set aside and designated belmont doesn't get any credit for all that right for having ten percent affordable housing put out with this will throw all that out because forty b is going to be thrown out with this so then th have one twenty two waverly i think when i see we have the we have a we have an application here and my suggestion would be that we we need to discuss a couple things to one yes from you need to recuse yourself from the presentation by four of the revised application but but we need but you don't need to recuse yourself from the sure me i'm not sure are we talking now about the general issues yes if we have a case like this that comes up what's majoring what's minor in terms of things which determines how we react and w decision not to add to the suspense but not to i rather we need george there are a number of issues in the specific case where we need george hall to weigh in it won't be and i'm not sure major or minor precisely gaffe she said but the question is it's clear that the responsibility for enforcement lies with the inspector a bill that is suited to taking on that responsibility the question that arises years that's the first twenty second twenty years this is if you have to do inspector of buildings should refer that to the relevant law and by the way we have only half of this the rest belongs to the zoning board and we probably need to at least understand how they have yes there is there there is a set of things that we care about a lot that's density which is called a living area that's made issues is a single family going to turn into a two family is it two family going in turn into a three family song that we might want and again we might this is something we need to think about and answer but not do we want to do it if a change involves one of those two areas do we want to say to the inspector buildings then you need to i wondered if i'm just kind of your instrument here you know certainly anything that impacts density i'd want to see come back to us you know i thought about just as liz was talking whether you know there been times when we had the added express conditions to the special permit at the end and if if there were a change to one of those is that when it should kick back to us but i think the problem with that is that sometimes our express conditions are just filling in holes in the plans that we see not necessarily you know where the tree counters too small or the columns are too small shutters we want to be wood and you know it seems like we would be treating changes differently depending on whether the outlook and had very thorough plans or not based on the conditions so i mean we could potentially come up with some process where we identified a stock set of conditions that applied whether or not the process you're going to have public hearings board's going to make all these things is going to be written finding all of that we've we've approved the whole thing if you don't do what you're supposed to do the building inspector should say they didn't do what they were supposed to do and bring it back that's what i think and that's and now if you think about the number of cases that are going to go through the special permit process we haven't had i mean there's been you know a number of how many are actually not going to do that ok and if it gets brought back to us they either get fixed or you know the process opens up again i don't think anybody's going to want the process to be opened up up again so there has to be an element of deterrence that honestly what i guess what i don't know is obviously one twenty two or at least come back before us in part because you know there were some neighbors who brought something to our attention but i don't know jeffrey is sort of whether there have been other instances where the building inspector has said oh yeah they decided to go with copper gutters think is a minor thing we could have a discussion on that's clear force but on these other things i don't know hard so i mean a lot of it sounds if we're heading in the direction we have to create a star a target areas to focus with the plans that we see that provide for certain habitable space have to be adhered to and otherwise you don't get the can agree but i don't think the my concern is not with those issues my concern is that between in the course of construction tub or the refrigerator or whatever you know that seems even though it's in the plan yeah i mean that's i think proof there is there is a level of intervention  unrealistic for a volunteer board and undesirable oh you mean the good ads no even with a swap the kitchen and the sink in the refrigerator to use your example for doesn't make any difference to any revitalize commercial districts well on the other he he he and if you having if you're going through a special permit process which is a very different kind of process and you know there are some minor things perhaps they can talk to the building commissioner but for other things that you sat through long public hearings and when you've gone through all the you know i density in mess you've gone through the site when you' gone from the look and the feel of the house you know those kind of things they have to be held at some point they have to be told at some point or why go into all that  way that they're like we could so that the building inspector doesn't have to sit through six hours of hearings you know revealing it on tape to to whether we could efficiently and effectively put together a more significant a more robust i guess set of conditions that we could pull in that become the checklist for the building inspector i don't know whether that's workable or not  way we said ted go ahead and do it this way which i think is consistent with the idea of having some clear guidelines yes but very far from every line every every that we have a record application to amend decisions and plans for lots of land located at and known as one twenty two waverly street belmont ma we have received a set of plans for these three lots we have the applicant here this evening so i can ask the applicant if he wishes to make a statement on sound representing  c i've heard some of the comments tonight i just want to be clear that the mass force structure of these buildings have not been altered and i think that's a very important thing that we try to would get to the square footage which has been brought up by a lot of the neighbors regarding these homes that created this start of this controversy is a false accusation square footage has not changed on these homes is the same footprint we're making a recommendation to add a half hour from to our finished basement which is on our plans which we did submit to the building department ever on our behalf didn't have a drawing on our original set of plans everything else that we would have done on this project has been approved by the planning board which we've had here two and we've done it in a extremely fast fashion project is almost complete now i'm asking the board to approve a half bathroom in a basement and i also heard in the prior meetings that a big concern about single families converting into two families we've created a half hour in a play for forty two inches by seven feet i'd like to stress to the board that in any neighborhood in the whole town any applicant go to the building department and apply to finish their basement they could do a full bathroom they could do a kitchen they could do a set of stairs to go outside they don't need this board's approved for that they just merely go to the building department and ask for an application or set of plans and they will get approved they will not get denied i'm only asking for actor not a wrought iron is available in all kinds of designs and grades and i think since we had previously seen elevations that showed the other design it's hard for me to to judge the quality of the wrought iron given that we approved the whole design of the house with granite i do what i chewed on  the process so i'm trying to understand why we aren't having a public hearing and why we were notified so that's really my first question that neighbors came to public hearings and heard whether we agreed with the decision you made or not there were lines from this through the town clerk and i thought they were legally binding i thought these are legal documents so my first question is why no public hearing on changes if you want to go through on your question well i'd like to know furthur fi could be there is there is no public hearing because we have not yet made it determination as to whether these are major changes or minor changes and therefore whether a public hearing is required ok so this is a discussion really what's happened now no decisions will be him and believe i said that earlier earlier that when chuck ra the the whole made the hopeful remark about being coming to a decision and then amended it to say we would on the road to a decision i believe i said that we were on the road but we were certainly not document that you filed for be one is very explicit it's not about where refrigerator goes or a stove but it says very clearly one then they have bathrooms in a master bedroom will be on the first floor a full back home on the second it doesn't have any mention of the bathroom in the star in question i have just to understand again for transparency in process for this under seven point three point six of the zoning i'm not sure how this qualifies for modification it says the applicant property on a building commission or plan board maybe titian to change it in the event of unforeseen site characteristics infrastructure or economic prep problems or unexpected circumstances this doesn't seem to fall under belmont's zoning bylaws which were adopted by town meeting it's not unforeseen and i don't understand and i know you'll explain it but i don't understand how this is a legal process it seems like this should go to the zoning board not the planning board you want to see first off they would never go to his own board at this point the permit granting authority is the plan board so any review or any one of the patients of decisions has to be made by the planning know i think it's sort of depends on how you define all those unforseen circumstances i'm sure the applicant probably could give you some unforseen circumstances if that's what the board so chooses so needs to hear and know those none of those  stephanie warner fourteen waverly terrace i'd like to argue that adding a bathroom is not a minor change it's not like swapping a sink or something like that and so i would argue that finishing space and concerned about putting maple trees in the street we've had many problems my neighbors have had to take out maples because of clogged sewer we've had to take out once because of asphalt so i would also require public here so just to be clear it's not only switch sinking kitman our public hearing there's a category in between which are significant a less invasive yes yes