hello and welcome to belmont in thirty news and discussion show about belmont i'm franklin tucker the editor of belmont tony and news and events website covering belmont and my co host is emory moni the current chair of the capital budget committee and a former selectman how you know and i'm good you're nice to be here too before we invite our guests on to the show let's talk a little bit about the first part of the town annual meeting held last week which we saw a very heated comments in our say moderator mike whitmer actually have to raise his wife's a couple of times because of during the debate on solar power so tell me what do you think about the first week in town meeting but also that that incident which we saw as you i was surprised that solar power as a topic became so heated not to be silly but yeah particularly since it was a non binding resolution just looking for a sense in the community i guess it became very divisive in the community having talked to some people on the advisory board and whatnot so i was surprised and i hope people have a little cooling off period before the reconsideration june you know what happened of course is that  e proponents of the solar power amendment basically were asking the town meeting to support legislation that was that doesn't exist exists so it's a little hard for us to support something that we can't see that's right you think that  think you need the information in front of you they don't want to just give a blanket you know approval not knowing without approval is going to go so i think they were wholly appropriate in saying bring us back some wording or or we'll talk about this during the when the sure it is a small tax on the real estate bill of each homeowner supplemented by moneys filing money when you buy or sell a home in the court and so that we receive belmont receives about a million dollars a year give or take to spend on community preservation items and those items can be something for open space or recreation for historic preservation or to promote preserve  create affordable housing so this year we had a number of applications we approve six and at town meeting i was surprised once again at the controversy that seemed to go around the electrical upgrades request and where was that u pgrades where were those upgrades for the what we know is the veterans housing and yes it was a big sum of money it was about five hundred twenty two thousand dollars and that was part of an ongoing project to upgrade the electrical service  those one hundred units and so this is the third year that we have allocated money to that and we decided we'd vies them it would be great to just finish this project so give us the whole project and will fund it all at once and get it done because it's a big safety issue for the people living in those units and you think that the reason why it passed overwhelmingly even though there was some controversy about giving money again to belmont housing authority because they haven't even started any of the upgrades  until they've done yeah they did the first year's work and they're starting the money that we gave them last year and i think the big controversy was more around the idea that it's a state funded entity and yet we aren't getting state funds actually to do these kinds of upgrades yet the housing is overseen by a board of belmont residence by belmont employees and it's belmont people who live there and i we felt very strongly that we have a moral obligation to give them a safe place to live and i think that's what really brought the matter home and that was safety absolutely yeah absolutely well there are there's other news that happened this week and there are two updates on two historic  project done and it's going to be apparently it's going to be done by august first the recreation department says that it will be able to get part time or a very limited membership for this year but looks like we will have some swimming moratorium well as you know the construction of homes that feel oversized in many neighborhoods and belmont has been accelerating over the past few years a number of neighborhoods are seeing houses th very much larger than the neighbors and especially your neighborhood to especially our neighborhood and where is your neighborhood of people that are are not aware it's the neighborhood just basically north of the grocery playground it's founded by school greenhouses were blown away by the hurricane of thirty eight started to construct this about of the lots and most of them are around seventy two hundred square feet so they're not huge lots and the houses were built during the  garrison and regular colonials very modest homes that many people have over the last i would say in the last twenty or so years as as the cycle original neighborhood through many people have expanded on those homes  conforming there are lots of things about homes but in these in these in this neighborhood the homes are less than ten feet from the side line and the current current zoning law says that your house has to be ten feet from the  sideline well these are non conforming and so if you wanted to build an addition over a garage that is only eight feet from your neighbor's property you've got to get a special permit and then you have to build a home that's in basic conformance with the rest of the neighborhood that's the way the by law reads however if you want to tear the house down you can build it then to be conforming the sky's the limit on how high pretty pretty much the sky seems like the limit so the limit is much higher on the  it's thirty nine feet to the peak of the roof which is extraordinarily high that's that's almost double the height of some new homes in that area is that it's a good story higher than most of the most of the homes in the two story homes in the area are under thirty feet there maybe twenty eight feet high something like that so this is a good full story hire even though it's a two story home with an occupied attic the newer homes have higher ceilings and they've got a substantial attic space and also we're talking it was that they were happening in such rapid succession last year that it seemed obvious that these changes were occurring without any control really over it i mean it was the marketplace was ruling  and and there didn't seem to be any way of slowing down the zoning regulations clearly weren't worth protecting those of us who live in the neighborhood from having our neighborhood transformed you know before  and so i got together with a few neighbors including peggy and we decided that we needed to start a conversation about this we really just needed to talk about this in a meaningful way and to have that go through the planning board process change and we haven't been opposed to change that been a lot of changes that have come to the neighborhood i was street for example has so many families now with young children compared to the time when we first moved in people who have purchased the homes have learned that to knock down is less expensive than to renovate so we've seen a lot of tear downs and i neighborhoods and as steve said the replacement homes have not any kind of harmony with the neighborhood at all and i think we have felt that our neighborhood is if there is an entry level neighborhood in belmont that this is an entry level neighborhood and we just have not been happy with the changes and i had made a number of calls to the town as some of these homes especially the one on my street side road was being  and we came together as a very very small group and but we know that there was an audience out there and i think across town as well who are concerned whether they live in the neighborhood or not and anybody in the audience who isn't familiar with the neighborhood i just encourage and steve would do the same to you know to come by if you want to drive by bats road stop your car and get out of the car and just take a exactly and it happens to be in between two ranchers who are actually a ranch and sort of a modified cape which which makes it even worse but just behind it is it is a two story expansion of a single story  that didn't go up anywhere near as high and that is even door to buy this house and i think i think you know it was recognized pretty quickly by the real stir realtors in the developers that the house was too big and they had to lower the price on it and it took a long time for it to clear the market so and i do think that there are lessons being learned in the relevant community about what size is is as marketable in a way and and and what the impact is on the neighbors and and so that's that's that's part of the conversation here is sort of the the evolution of you know attitudes about what can you build and what's too big and what's offensive to neighbors and others and and so that's the dialogue we're trying to get started here it isn't that we're against development and we're you know we recognize the people have rights  and what your goal is both for the moratorium and then when it's over sure this is actually the idea for this came out of the earlier work that was done in town by residents of the g r district  and the process that they followed was to petition for a moratorium and to then work with the planning board on developing rules for the entire district and that seemed like the only model that we were going to be able to use in terms of getting this done not because the planning board isn't interested in this but the planning board needs a mandate from the people of the town in order to act they can't just and they recognize that it doesn't work if you just proactively get out there with you know something that's coming from a planning board or an alderman in newton for example or something else where it's not about the people asking for change it's about some impetus for change coming from outside and i think that's that's a perfectly respectable way of doing it is to having have the people involved in and requesting the change because otherwise these kinds of changes have not been successful in other towns around so that we're a little unique in this way it's also a one yea belmont is a comp ok to town in terms of home sizes and to get us a moratorium in place to come up with a simple measure because we we aren't in a position to design and redesign the whole zoning by law to get a simple measure in place to just get the foot in the door of this thing  we need to pick a smaller neighborhood the intention here certainly on our part will be working with the planning board of the next year but i think also the sympathy in the planning board is with trying to rationalize that this is citizens for responsible designing we want to see a responsible rationalization of belmont's zoning laws there and consistency across the board are zoning districts don't necessarily reflect the type of homes that are in each of those areas or the and that's in place to encourage slope roofs but it means that it with a big enough footprint on the house you could go up to forty four forty five feet on the height which is really now double street and what a lot of houses in belmont are it's extremely large  house hard to visualize but it's a very big home and you'd have to have eleven or twelve foot ceilings on all three floors in order to do that that's a way to think about it but it's not necessary to have it be that high and still get high ceilings and so i started drawing up models of how big the house could be but also surveying the town talking to realtors going to the houses in our neighborhood that have been reconstructed and getting a sense of how big is is too big and it's that this is very subjective and you know number but but thirty two seemed about right it's about four and a half four feet five feet higher than a lot of the homes and they would but it's not egregiously higher and it's certainly less than what we've seen so we're feeling like this playing devil's advocate here town meeting voted two thirty eight to twenty four in favor of this thirty two foot limit so i would argue that you know this is a democracy and the people of belmont have spoken that the market may be offering something that many people in town are ready for but to your point the market as also recognizing its mistakes in building oversized homes by the fact that some of it has stayed on the market for a long time and i've had that kind of comment  and the market is also saying give us rules give us concrete rules don't don't let let's not make it a matter of special permit when we can't tell how big or small the house has to be so the developer is basi guideline and we can live with that we can work with that but we need to know what the rules are going to be and i don't think it's going to discourage construction in this town in the least this is a hot market i would add to i think in the conversation that has begun and in the planning that's going to take place over the next year that we need to have developers real estate agents and town wide residents part of that conversation that's going to be extremely important in order for this moratorium and then the planning that's going to take place to be successful right now we're looking for examples of what communities are all in or around us have done well so he has a very interesting tree replacement ordinance when the trees that are just two doors down from me come down if this were in wellesley there are substantial trees and the developer owner of the house would would be putting money into it basically a tree bank that could be used by the town to replace that significant bird habitat and visual scape somewhere else in town which is an interesting concept to bring to the depths of a lot of dimensions to this that i think are attractive to people  do you think in the end if working with the planning board that you will be able to develop something that will apply to the other single residence districts or even the general residence districts start handing on the particular house i think so i think that the proposal that be put forth before the next town meeting will be one that if it doesn't cover all of the town at least it will least provide the mechanism for for applying it you know  a very diverse community you know it's not good enough to say that it needs to conform with the neighborhood because you've got to define what that means and what we may end up with is a lot of zoning overlay districts in town it may take us a couple years comprehensive zoning yeah revisions or different structures scratch i mean i think the last time that any significant revisions were done in the zoning bylaws code was in the mid one nine hundred eighty s and so a lot has dimension to all of yes and i'm excited i'm very very excited to just have this conversation be can do you think you know you're talking about your neighborhood and how you came together as a group is a possible where it will depend on individual neighborhoods to decide on their own whether they want a regulation or if they don't i don't know i think i think that this year what we are going to be doing next is reaching out to people in the other neighborhoods who got up at town meeting and said what about our so many signatures for your suggestions that if we asked for the for the citizens petition and you know i think there's an appetite out the a far a lock across town in the planning board already has had a discussion at their meeting following town meeting you know if if there isn't somebody in the neighborhood for example are a number of people in the neighborhood who are concerned about something that's going on does that mean that we don't pay attention so you know the already talking about what's what's to come and how many neighborhoods will be involved in that as you say the zoning probably zoning overlays that that we would have to because of the character of the town and because because of the interest in having specific requirements laid out it will take some very artful work i think because once one simple principle won't you know work for all neighborhoods but i think we can get there i mean this is looking at is actually you know it's almost like in the past was something that you know a committee would make and now it's a citizens petition you know and how do we how do we work in this in this direction i know that there's been you said this is the most revolutionary i mean is this something that you could almost you know my you know export to other communities saying this is the belmont way of doing it you know i'm not i'm interested in our of the planning people in their city of summerville is going through a massive overhaul of their system is it is a sin for the same reason or they just being proactive they're being proactive but it is for the same reason i mean it was because of  you very much for being here this is very enlightening and i hope people realize that as steve said this is something that's going to be transformative for belmont for twenty thirty forty years so let me thank you very much for taking that and being citizen