had a scheduled travel and the second had a sudden death in the family so that the import of this for our agenda is that voting on a special permit requires a supermajority and since we do not have a supermajority this evening we will not be voting on any of the special permit items in a moment i will briefly step out of the room so that mr yako can deal with the first item we will have some discussion of general principles that we might apply  office of community development website was being updated last week to town by town and i had the belmont days call that the most recent submission of the landscape plan was not is an extra copy that you provided to me of the full scale landscape plan yes i was wondering since it is i think the most final plan that we have seen and it went through the working group  whether we should do what we've done in the past with some other applications and just make that available for people to look at in the library i can give it to you if we want to do that or i'm going to put it in the make it available for people at available the problem i think that you're speaking to barbara is that the obvious communication and closes a fork for more so that may not be the most convenient time for people to come look at the plan and in certainly the least the plan is difficult to read online washington street i'll second that all in favor i point out everyone will have a speaking part on every  connected all right we move along to see which is seventy five leonard street design insight plan review two wave parking requirements fifty four parking spaces for restaurant and if there is a note that this will be continued jeffrey yes they would like more time to put together various documentation in some doubt of that the border would be quested and so they actually seeking with  all right we move along to two d three forty four pleasant street design and site plan review retail building greater than twenty five hundred square feet local business district three a receive written material fairly late in the day of the hearing that what we try to do i think perhaps tonight we is that we could do two things one is we could ask you to walk us through the and a second i just want to note that we also have late some very recently received advice from town council which i think require some discussion with town council and and thirdly and i think this is only covered briefly in the you may be covering it in the application that we  yes good evening members of the board joseph known for the applicant in terms of the late submission i received thursday evening after hours a list of questions from the board we endeavored to provide the answers as best we could in short period of time given that it's the middle of summer and it required some consultation with various experts so we did get the answers to all of your questions i submitted to jeffrey a response to each of those questions i can walk you through  those responses i think for the most part the questions dealing with the storm water and the environmental are pretty straightforward as well as the concerns that may have were raised concerning some of the the traffic issues if you'd like to proceed and that fashion i'm more than happy to to kind of walk you through each other questions and the responses that we have just one point of clarification are you withdrawing the application for us national permit with respect to sign which well i'm a little unclear i've asked for some clarification with regard to the to the new signed by law the the plan that we submitted for the monument signed the sign itself is fifteen square feet the the pillars that hold the sign up take it outside of the the fifteen square feet the by law as i read it doesn't necessarily indicate whether or not the supporting structure is to be included in that square foot calculation and so we're looking for guidance from the board of the officer community development if we need to withdraw we will in resubmit but based upon my reading  clear the dimensions of the standing sign including the standards and the various are five by eight is that right that is correct so that i am looking to mr so and i didn't bring my copy of the signed by last night but the thing that stood out for me with respect to the size that you proposed is that its height exceeded the height that we i guess width of the pillars although it certainly speaks to the height right i mean it's actual overhang of the top of the sign is actually six inches so when you do the eight feet it accounts for a foot over support of the supporting elements or if i if i may throw my two cents into it i think if the board uses the calculation supporting structure in that the fifteen square foot calculation what the tunnel and up having will be essentially a sign with a structure that actually looks nice you know applicants will just try to utilize as much square footage as they can with all signage and i think this presents an attractive sign when you so i think the question you know that we have to consider is you know that's the picture that i put up at town meeting and so the question is do we have  i would offer two points the first instead i think the overall encamped was no luck no large commercial signs i think that was clearly what we asked town meeting to prove  in spirit the second is i have a great concern that if we were just say oh right if you supported elements do not count we will very quickly see because the this is a point in which the individual owner would like a really prominent sign that makes it really really easy to find his or her establishment want something more modest and if the suggestion is you can make the supporting elements is why does you'd like because that doesn't count we will very shortly see some signs that have very wide supporting building in the more of the things that we try to do consistently is a dress in g r in s r c bulk mass and height and you know that's what was going through her mind when i was trying to visualize the  placement of that sign which to me is a pretty noticeable structure and clearly the intent barbara as you were speaking was to not to have big bulky signs that to your point you know draw that kind of attention because you'd want the biggest side to draw the most attention so that for me i mean it is a little ambiguous and we need to think about what would be the the best way to proceed but i think you know the intent was a fifty square foot sign you know i think from my perspective having stood up at town meeting with the photograph that i did yes heat the first sign that we are out pushing the limits possibly too far so i would prefer to see a much smaller supporting structure that from belmont center driving towards that location will be a pretty prominent structure  that application for the special guest ms allison will there be other then the feedback that you've discussed tonight do you expect to get further feedback from your other colleagues so that we have you know direction going forward we will certainly take up the will take up the sign it's issue again ok to do this and our expectation would be that we will see one or two more signage issues come before us so that then we would try to take a look at some what is helpful could we ask you to take us through the rest of your answers part two of the questions that were raised on in the july twenty sixth memo of part two dealt with the environmental concerns  and a couple of the questions were directed at who remains responsible in the event that there's issues that may arise the prior only owner current issues in prior issues that it exists with the environmental remediation in the event that neighbors were concerns about any issues that may arise during the construction activities those concerns are reported to getit and the applicant the applicant to the extent that any of their construction activities may  cause new environmental issues to arise it's that applicants responsibility to deal with the the new environmental issues that arise during the construction process the  getty and its l s p kevin trainor are responsible for monitoring all the construction activities that are going on and have a duty to ensure that no additional problems are to arise as i was saying during the construction activities the l s p monitors what is going on so that if any issues arise the l s p dictates what  clued in that status reports in the potential vapor intrusion into the future building would be addressed by any regulatory requirements that are so regulatory  since i asked all the stormwater questions and the environmental questions knowing that the site where the tanks were located has been removed in this and remediated the slab where the existing building is still remains and nothing underneath the slab has been remediated and we won't know what's there until the structure comes down and they start to assess and test that soil my concern is that when you introduce an intermediary in another party because i trust the the applicant is responsible he's been through these types of things previously there's a reliance on him to be able to perform so that we can hold him responsible but when there's another party that's involved in or to do says another intermediary and there's a multiplies the chance that things can be missed or not follow through with and we wanted to be clear errol certainly i wanted to be clear on behalf of my colleagues what was the  resolving problems or identifying them and holding whatever party needs to be held responsible for responsible well that the the passes either through getty were through mr leo in the  business that has assets and in terms of someone who is going to be responsible for any potential problem i think the town is getting or has a good owner that would have the financial wherewithal responsibility if you know we take down the old building and something new is discovered you know that would be on us to administer that i think it's called is a certain playing you have to file for the addition and one thing we've talked with getty which is confusion makes things and organize and obviously you know we're going to take care of anything we have to we have to base in the law and with our agreement get it no understood i mean my point was clearly that there's going to be some there's the potential for some unknown is as we have disturbed that structures it comes down and then there will be a period of discovery in terms of whether or not there are contaminants that need to be addressed and whatever the appropriate remediation is certainly d e p t that's their job and as a responsible you know rebel or anything that we discovered is most likely just going to be a soil contaminates this point i'm pretty sure they have the ground water covered on the site even underneath the slab of the existing building so i would think that anything would the reason for my line of questioning was that ultimately the stormwater going through my documents and unfortunately it's just in the in the big book that you have and it's kind of hard to point out and i apologize in advance to the people watching at home it says that  it connects to the storm drain to the state to the town storm drain and my understanding was that the storm water system is not supposed to be connected to the top storm water system and i was just wondering given all the the existing site issues how could that so the the system now has its own infiltration field on the site so they say the water's captured into the catch basins moves around the site and to drain animals and then eventually goes an infiltration field it's basic with the water back into the ground on the site i believe the drain line that goes out to brighten the engineer but normally those are only overflow lines in the event you have this i think i think the new standards are hundred years storms with carry on site and beyond that would overflow into the city system but the way this is designed it wouldn't have contaminated water going into the storm system that's what the concern is that was my concern and i was just trying to understand because most of the designs that we see are the containment of the storm water system on the site so it does contain it on site and moves it throw the site into the infiltration field and it leaves just overflow in the that the turnarounds increased and given the turnarounds increase there is another more stringent step in mitigating stormwater when there are i think believe the threshold is when you increase a thousand turnarounds in a site like this so there's  implications in terms of what the storm water system would be so i was looking at one the existing site conditions number two it's tying into the public water system and thirdly knowing or anticipating that there could be a chance that you know it is a restaurant or a restaurant or duncan doris type of environment where there'd be a lot more traffic and a more stringent storm water system would need to be in place i said what assurances that you know and i'll ask jeffrey if we need  filtration system that's different that's more mature towards that volume of traffic you know understood so so knowing that storm water is concerned just in general and yes specifically on this project  before the i actually did their official filing i told them they needed to get what they need to meet with our attempts are review the whole storm water plan to make sure that indeed what was being proposed met the by law and  two the storm water engineer the contour of the law makes that much more reasonable and the other reason is that it's less intrusive into the to the mainline pleasant street clothes less of  but i couldn't make heads or tails out of because there were no keys there was nothing to kind of say that this is the range these are the i think they were like eighty pages and so i just want to say that these packets sometimes  is a loss and you have a lot of expertise that i won't put you on the spot thinking you have but you understand the point rafi is making it down the road something doesn't work well and we say we review documents carefully and someone says they have no labels they have no legends how could you possibly have reviewed them i'm not sure what our response would be other than that's a good question well i can assure you that you know because this is being monitored by the dea and geddy have to comply with their requirements and will not be allowed to allow things to go arise from an environmental standpoint in your inheriting a lot of this and we appreciate your trying to make improvements on the property this is not a city situation that you created that you're trying to remedy now so i totally understand that i also recognize that it was residents that identified the problems that initiated the remediation which was prior to your ownership so i want to be very clear this is not about you or your application but i just want to make sure that the residents who have inherited you know some of these problems are sure that we're trying to look at these things and be as much on top of what will be a new improvement without any environmental issues let me just pause for a moment and see if there are any residents present who want to comment on the storm water issues specifically ok and i guess i'll just in terms of the traffic there was discussion at the last hearing of the the use that was based upon the state facility can as compared to a gas station which was its last form or use and essentially what the the analysis reveals is that although there is a slight increase in the number of trips with either a family business you family restaurant use war with a two small retail uses or some other type of convenience store use the trips in and of themselves although there is a small increase do not have any adverse impact prior use you'd have five trips per hour the net increase under proposed use of a i'm li restaurant and two small retail uses is somewhere between thirteen and seventeen trips and so that number of increase trips compared to the auto repair use is less than one percent overall uses in the traffic study were were heavier or more intense such as a convenience store again under the analysis the overall impact on the roadway system there was no change of level of service and no additional significant delays at the the intersection the most significant delay was less than half a  second so from an overall traffic standpoint what is being proposed at this facility and please keep in mind that no specific uses yet determined we anticipate whatever the use going forward that there will be no detrimental impact on a roadway system or the abutting neighborhood and i would like just to  zoning board of appeals and the number of the impact of traffic and the number of parking spaces that that particular use it requires is analyze under the the special permit requirement there was a question dealing with parking and there was a suggestion that based upon the traffic report  that what was submitted in the traffic report as a potential use of a family restaurant to retail use is that the applicant would not satisfy that the parking requirements for parking a restaurant the number of parking spaces is determined by the number of seats when we went before the zoning board of appeals the number of seats that was proposed would was twenty one which would require ten or eleven parking spaces for retail space it's one parking space per every two hundred fifty square feet i'm sure you're aware that based upon the square footage requires seven spaces so under kind of a generic fifteen hundred square foot restaurant space with twenty one seats we are believe that we're well within the parking requirements that would be required for the proposed for the uses that were identified in the parking study so until of use is determined and we go before the board zoning board we don't know exactly what the parking requirements are i would say though there are twenty one property cleaned up and with a new building that is very attractive in a gateway to the town so in terms of the traffic there is not going to be any significant impact if there are specific questions we're happy to address them so what i might do now is pas is there any do we have any residence here who wanted to comment on traffic specifically right with the attractiveness of the potential development i do have some place gins for you and that's some issues i want to discuss with my associates but perhaps we could first hear from residents who want to speak to this issue and all of you know the drill come to the microphone and give your name people driving on brighton and on pleasant streets in ma what happens during the morning rush hour in particular is that we have a flow of traffic that comes off of park street and goes down the stella road and prospect road and those cars come onto pleasant street and i don't i don't my question well i didn't it didn't appear to me in your original who's in taishan at the other meeting that that traffic was included in your study originally and i don't know whether anything has been of follow up to obtain that kind of information because we do have a significant problem with cars coming down the hill and then going on to pleasant street and then down brighton street from about seven to nine thirty every morning so when you say that there's no real impact i'm not sure that you have included that driving those cars in your sell but if you can't offer something that would be good just a few of the applicant when the traffic analysis was performed the engineers did go out and counted the number of cars that utilize brighten the deep this pool area and they came up with traffic so it would take into account those vehicles that were coming off onto pleasant street thank you there was another comment i believe jeff so don't be too repetitive here first i would say it's hard for me to respond to just a verbal run through of data that was you know appeared today so yeah i would ask that i'd say give a chance to really read station maybe they should redo the tractor solely with usage in mind or just revise it i don't know if that's possible but i would suggest that's more appropriate and otherwise it's hard to respond to just you know a few words like secondly i just reread the same concerns my neighbor gave about the volume of traffic at the site it's it is sort of easy to say that on a percentage basis the amount of traffic additional why it is not significant the w be the level of congestion already present at the location i find it a little hard to believe that i think most people who live in the area would agree i would just like consider words very similar things thank you for anyone else who wants to comment on three ninety one pleasant street i live at the corner of pleasant and prospect street and i just want to confirm what is already been said about traffic patterns my husband walks to work every day fortunately he works in belmont he as he comes out of the house he marks the car visually in his head with the license plate and he gets to work before the car so that's all i want to say thank you  just want to thank you for that clarification auto repair it was five cars for a fast food or for a food service business it was fifteen so the it's three x the amount of traffic compared to an auto repair correct so i just wanted to be i mean i wanted to just simply just say but i understood that including comparison to the overall traffic of eight hundred vehicles n understood it but for that particular site there is that potential to have that level of activity where it's an op that has been historically an auto repair facility and so the the comings and goings from that side will increase well historically it was a gas station and until the environmental issues remain there's a gas station so the engineers feel confident that you know they used the last pr if no one else in the audience who wishes to speak this is a discussion amongst ourselves this is a i think this is a hard issue for us to get hold of there are some larger developments where what we say is we find these assumptions implausible please redo the traffic study but that is a major undertaking that's an expensive thing and we would have tried to think what a reasonable alternative that might be because i think i hear rafi's feel that the notion that one hand that there will there will not be a noticeable increase in traffic just compared to the current use just seems intuitively implausible and i understand that is not good enough so i'm looking for something between having a board that says doesn't feel right and do a traffic study because neither is a good do another traffic study neither is a good alternative  is that's been my struggle as well i think that traffic studies that we are presented with are sometimes proof very difficult to process and think through assumptions i mean there's and there's no doubt that this is a very congested mean one thing that i've wondered is whether and this is difficult because some of the congestion is kind of at the interface which is it is in what could be new intersections created as people are pulling in half which you know potentially implicates town traffic control but i mean one thing that i wondered was whether or as i think about the dunkin donuts under color road and granted it's a more narrow perking but it is a one way lot and is it a compromise is it a sufficient compromise position let's say if this were one way and you could pull in from the right coming from belmont center to go through but not have two way traffic you know that the applicant has that we wouldn't see people coming into town unpleasant street and back in front of the building that they more likely turn left on bright and then come in that's hard to make who are going that imagine like whether those are the assumptions or not if you manage the traffic such that people could only come in through a right turn off a pleasant and come back through in the ideal world from a traffic perspective and then only take a right on top right so we didn't have left turns jamming that intersection that strikes me as one and he's starting point you know we've talked recently about conditional traffic control uses another context one way is just to to take an incremental step forward some sort of throwing that out there is a potential way to manage the situation until we see how it is still traffic plays out there's not a lot of for us in the traffic studies that we see in a way where the areas already extremely congested it seems like even a ten percent increase that is that is a good idea and braises the question of can one get something less is there something between redoing the whole city traffic study and redoing a piece of the traffic study changing a couple key assumptions and it stimulates another possibility when people in style and we see th information what we do is to have performance requirements the a and c levels can't exceed a certain level and i do not know the answer to this and we have to find someone is it possible to impose some kind of performance levels part perhaps in conjunction with some limitations on where you can turn where you can how much so that there is some degree of protection that doesn't depend on our past on my going to the town clerk tomorrow and asking if i could have a listing of all town residents who include the word traffic in their occupation and see if anyone is prepared to lend a hand  i seem to feel inclined to support what you are suggesting barbara in terms of maybe one way i mean but i don't have i'm going back on the hunch is insufficient from here but i mean i just thinking that i'd like to think about when i think it makes sense to me it's resonating in terms of one way to mitigate the flow of traffic and lessening these turns across from pleasant street heading in the other know we're aware that understood i think we probably got about as far with this as we can go this evening we will need to continue it i think probably we occupy talk to the traffic in five three committee who may have dealt with this issue more frequently particularly on whether there is some traffic flow fix and whether there is  some performance criteria we could reasonably impose which which obviously if the usage turned out to be a low intensity usage wouldn't be an issue but would be if it turned out to be a high intensity usage and so we will study these materials will still look forward to seeing the traffic report we will clarify a few points with town council and with that i'd like to ask for a motion to continue to support him for this but to make a motion for three forty four pleasant street designs i plan review to be continued for september fifth two thousand and seventeen i will second that all in favor thank you the august fourteenth meeting if it is my understanding is a is a one issue of gend party again i look to others but i think the attempt to wind up the belmont a school is something that everyone on the planning board and anyone who has business before the planning board would agree is a noble effort right with this we move to i don't see both of which will need our special permits they will need to be continued but i'd like to spend a few minutes have a few minutes of general discussion before we take before we move to continue the all right then for a largely disinterested audience i will briefly summarize the last time we heard both cases we look because we all think the case is the issue with  was that the homes being composed were very large relative to other homes in the neighborhood it is clear this is an issue that tried to do and this is something for discussion as we move forward again what we what we try to do and all the songs we've tried to do is to move forward not a cookie cutter but a more systematic approach to considering them and what you have before you if i could ask you to look at the two frequency distribution for  brighton street and marmor is what i've done is take what you have here is two of the critical dimensions one is total living area it's not gross square feet which we prefer to have but don't and floor areally show on the grounds that those are two between those two pretty much get a sense of how this will impact density and size the thing is the when we get to the point of the applicants asking us for specific guidance on how much smaller the structure needs to be that these might be useful to look at and we we do if we want to have control on mass and density we really don't want to provide special permits for structures that  are at the upper tail and this is a clear way of looking at what's in the upper tail i'm also trying to put together in a list of more qualitative factors that you might look at and this is this is a draft list of the things that we should look at you know at least visually we should take a look at the gross square footage how big are the garage is how big are the buildings and so i just to get a sense of overall mass even though we won't be able to quantify it we should look at the structure in relationship to the str immediately around it again in terms of mass high production there are high restrictions but particular when we have a two story structure that's being bumped up more it's clear that where we have where we have an applicant where the frontage is not so we're looking at a place that's really close to the neighbors that means something to to look at very closely there may be others whether the proposed addition lends itself to at some point not with the current owner necessarily to two family occupancy which would be a substantial increase and others that we might talk about this evening but the thought would be that we start with some notion that you need to be maybe at the top of the third or tile or in any case before that before that curve really turns up and then adjust it based on some set of considerations which we could improve over time no i mean the this format with say potential call to adjustments as you've labeled them i think is a great kind of take a look at how we approach this i mean obviously you know concerns we've talked about the potential at some future date for it to turn into a two family obviously if it's the size is there and the height is there it lends itself to a greater potential although that the current applicant may or may not see that a future applicant may want to seize upon that opportunity given that the  basic elements are in place i would add many parking would be another one because one of the things that often comes out certainly in g r from for myself is that you know the structures get bigger but there's not enough space to accommodate the additional vehicles that oftentimes follows the the bigger structure i don't really have anything to live out the i think this is a great start in that captures a lot of the concerned he had other instances you know to be thinking about and it seems like oftentimes there's one of these factors that really stands out sometimes it's the lack of setback conformity you know when it's really close to the property line or who are their house their posed addition towers over you know much smaller houses on either side like that it does seem like one of these factors can really drive us to push to need to push back on the proposed plan so it's us to push back or if we could start by saying it it needs to be somewhere around the top of the third quadrant but these are the things that move it up or move it down and no group since i could imagine something that was at the top of the third quarter and but we looked in the base and there was at the basement level there was a full bath and a direct entry to the outside and the top floor it was fully plumbed and the there was a stairway and a deck and yeah yeah all right so then the power would be   where our mandate i think is to void the creep that we've talked about over time that we don't want the whole neighborhood to be trending in that direction ok all right then with street discussion for anyone present who did not receive a copy of the power flowing at the previous meeting i have some copies here  write perhaps i will just start with an update on what has happened since we last discussed this i would say  three things one we had a meeting as you see appropriate the selectmen expressed a desire to see this discussed with the library trustees i see we also have the chair of the library trustees here miscounting before they took it up in any fashion and the next meeting of the library trustees for the twenty fourth of august is that still correct we will be some of us as many of us as many some non member number of us will be attending the board of trustees meeting to discuss this in whatever form the trustees wish to discuss  second we've started the analytical work on understanding what this would mean to the town and thirdly we have received a number of comments from residents and i assume that you are largely here this evening to give us additional comments just to summarize what has come in so far i would put is the word the look at kelly attorney used to characterize their previous reactions to parking issues negative yes negative so but let me put them  the second can category would be substance concerns the third i would categorize and as this understanding and the fourth i would characterize as global reactions so let me give an example of what falls into each of these categories under the process category most of what we've seen has so that those would be in the process category on the substance category quite a number of people can walk to the library in its present location and pointed that out there were concerns raised whether high school children high school students or not children high school students would be able to do their schoolwork with convenient library and a variety of others we expect will see more in that category on what i would consider just  misinformed but for principal ones would be this is this state of discussion of this idea it is an idea it was put forward the planning board has not as a whole discussed yet so that there is some confusion as to whether this is a full blown proposal which it is not it is an idea purchase again that that was that was not part of it in large for many reasons but certainly one is that would destroy any of the there is concern that somehow the idea included changing or reducing the size of the library and again the conversation on all of the work that the limited amount of analytical work that has been done contemplated exactly the library that had already been designed or grange somewhat differently and  thirdly there was there was a suggestion that we already had a senior center very nearby and there wasn't a need to build a second senior center i think that is a confusion over what was proposed which was senior housing in conjunction with a library building not another senior center so that those are what seemed to some just some points of misunderstanding and then the final category that line i have labeled global was roughly this is a terrible idea and then followed a characterization of members of the camp of the planning board some of which could be broadcast on family television and some of which could not be broadcast on family pet location it is difficult to know how to go much i think i may have gotten want to try more calmly but i mean i think clearly i mean in terms of the misunderstanding piece and the global reaction to that you know i saw the most of that were directed towards me and i know that we shared some e mails together as a group so you know my anticipate that they'll be some questions tonight and i look forward to helping they answer them or hear what people's concerns are and so with that how many here tonight wish to add a comment and just what i thought is to night we would hear comments but we would know we would prefer to wait till the meeting with the library trustees before we deeply in day so to speak but we're happy to the extent that there are things we can quickly player we will how many do i have here who would like to comment frankly no you holding up your hand or just your camera thank you all right let me just start with this culhane and risk to pay yellow and ask them if they'd like to comment trustees so your i'll just comment that we were very concerned about the process or the lack of process so i think it's critical that we have a discussion on the twenty fourth we will make sure that we advertise that there's consideration if we need to move that date so that our library liaison from the site and so we will make sure that we get that confirmed as quickly as we can but it will be that week and i think the other thing that i would say is i think we have a labeling issue when when when you read this concept big idea  had a process water so i'm if it's if it's a concept that early stage i think that when you brainstorm and get ideas from people pros and cons of both what they're looking for and i think that's perhaps starting tonight with public input with morning following we should be encouraging anyone and all to reach out to the trustees to the media to the planning board to share their ideas and comments whatever they may be thank you mr pa so we heard this idea as well i think what i would say as a member of the board and also as member of that working group is that we we want to find a way to build a library perhaps where it is baby sis idea it's some idea but i think as a community we just need to gather  is mean to keep the project working group is trying to understand how we move forward as a community we're four major building projects one of which is the library all the which perhaps we can all afford and so but still committed to needing to do something with all four including the skating rink which is something separate so i hope to attend that meeting with fourth of the ongoing dialogue thank you all right let me start with that roll over the community development office as of yet in terms of getting some traffic calming measures on the side streets and i really at this point having a very hard time to understand how the traffic actually move around visually which is already so close and such an extremely vital area of it all hustle and bustle of dollars and all sorts of other things and another point that i wanted to make is that i love library i live there practically probably three to four times there every week i certainly can see why we as a community want to have a new better nicer her but i think it's at this point adequate and if we don't have enough money at this particular point of time i don't understand where is the rush that we need to resolve all of these capital big issues in the course of one year maybe we should concentrate on high school first and then go from there thank you thank you the traffic point is well taken second and larger point goes beyond the scope of this committee but we're happy to have had you make  olson tell me to remember precinct five i have a question what's the financing here privately owned it is that was the point of the presenters i saw privately out and said what is your understanding of this proposal as far as building a library are they suggesting that it would be privately owned and then least back to the town have they gone that far because i see it in the proposal yes the idea was to to look at a way that we would not have to take on the dead of building and write a library and subsequently that would also free up the ability to take a look at the police station moving ring so it was looking at trying to understand how we could free between twenty five forty million dollars of possible debt that was contemplated given that we have approximately two hundred sixty two million dollars of capital projects ahead of us and so the discussion was the idea was after the way we square form that we had in the discussion that we had in january and a subsequent capital planning group meeting that i am the liaison on the idea was what would the town consider renting back some space from a private developer if they wanted to you know consider you know thinking about a public private partnership and that's what it was would be or we'd be renting back from this developer that space the thirty nine thousand square feet that the library had contemplated that they were considering for a new structure  did the our numbers in terms of have you looked at any numbers in terms of what it would cost down to rent back space i mean has there been and is this just an idea it was an idea we have some rudimentary the gating questions or always this is not something that would be a burden on the town would have to be economically in the towns interest to contemplate this and knowing full well that  over the many years this has been debated well before i was a involved in the midst of a life as a volunteer and certainly has been up to bat a number of times during my term as town meeting member and finance committee member and now planning for that you know it was an idea that came to me and i said well why not it might not be well received or might be you know a number of hurdles to go through but let's contemplate whether or not this is something that we can stretch and think about doing at what point do you think you'll flesh out those numbers i mean is it is are you going i guess my question is do we take enough a number of comments and then just kill the idea before we look at the again so that two points one is that i just want to clarify depress developers did not approach however badly or well you may think of the idea if this is not a developer generated idea that's point number one and point number two is and this was only a number to get us started  that the the starting number was that the annual work that the cost to the town had to be twenty five percent or less of the cost of bonding the library for twenty years at five percent so there were there was some construct with sounds like within which you worked ok thank you moving across the back row hi my name is jessica bennett i'm in precinct one my concerns with the idea which i and i commend people for trying to come up with innovative ideas for how we can deal with what are substantial problems in town but my concerns are a philosophical nature i think in that i feel that we as a town have to take care of the resources that we provide for our residents and if we are going to outsource having a public library to a private developer and to be beholden to a private developer for a space to have our library rather than owning that ourselves i want to see evidence that that has worked in other towns and i want to see that of this idea i was really unsettled by the get by thinking of belmont as a town that doesn't value by having a library enough to keep it in the town's possession so that i just wanted to say that thanks and i would put that actually into a fifth category which is here and comfortable about public private partnerships providing some town services i'm not uncomfortable with public private partnerships per se and i think that they can be i think is we just have to be careful about how we approach them and if we're approaching them in a way that a developer with a profit motive has has the space where we're providing this service then we might be opening ourselves up to rather than having twenty five years of debt to build a building having escalating rents to pay which would negatively impact the town and would negatively impact the libraries budget and ability to provide the programming that we need it could also negatively impact other services in town if it's eating away at more and more of our operating budget rather than being a separate debt exclusion and that we know you know we have a mortgage we're going to pay it off in a certain period of time it's a matter of you know do we want to own this or do we want to rent it and i think  that many homeowners here in belmont know the value of owning the property and know the value of having a fixed payment that you can count on rather than having ballooning rental rent payments you know rent payments that are somewhat out of your control and i can't see belmont being in a good position to negotiate a reasonable lease payments for the next fifty years you know with a private developer and i think that we just want to be very careful about how how we approach public private partnerships and if we want to you know explore having the belmont savings bank or whatever reading room you know like i'm happy about that i'd be happy to have corporate names on the building if it helps us get it built but i want i want the town to think about how it a path impacts all of our budgets as well so thank you for clarifying that points and those are points that we would certainly be prepared to speak to in the next meeting all right moving along hi my name's mary lewis i'm also in precinct one and like jessica i appreciate trying to think about things creatively that said i'm a little confused about some of the things that you said citizens were confused about for instance when you mentioned that the belmont car wash would not be replaced on your power point it says incentivize owner to relocate belmont car wash and replace it with a privately built privately owned building etc etc second let me just finish my thought with jessica i'm also concerned about the lease idea we are at historically low interest rates at this moment it would be an insanity in my view not to purchase the property that we would be using for hopefully the next fifty or more years in this climate those interest rates are only going to go up in less we lock in something relatively soon which the library has thought about the library trustees have thought about and part of the reason that they are interested in moving along at a reasonable pace i also fall into the category of citizens who have both process and substance questions process even tonight's agenda did not have the word library on it so i raise that as a lack of transparency that i'm concerned about concerned that this is rolled out in the middle of the summer when people aren't paying attention i realize you have complex agendas but this is a concern to me and i also have substantive issues beyond the debt issue which i think i've already splaying that i think it makes more sense to own than to lease but also that children and i think there are children from channel and the high school use that library every single day not only in their free periods at the high school but after school those children who are not part of the afterschool programs and it's essential that that be a walkable space i can imagine a wonderful branch library at waverley if we could ever affor it cambridge has done something like this probably seen it on concord avenue near here on where there's an apartment complex it's a condo complex actually it's owned by harvard university and there is  small cambridge public library branch library in there so i think the kind of public partner a private partnership the air imagining for you know leasing back which is what cambridge does from harvard or from the condo association makes sen for a small branch library but perhaps less so for a main library finally have one more comment which is that we really should be trying to incentivize revenue generating in areas that  for revenue generating purposes such as waverly square we need smart businesses over there that can bring in more sales tax revenue business tax revenue maybe even hotel occupancy tax revenue and it makes more sense to put the library central to the town where it currently is where you can walk from almost all of the schools unfortunately not all but almost all of the schools can do your business in town and go to the library on the way home thank  you no i can just simply say that though once upon a time we did have to branch library as we had the ben branch library and the fire station that's now condominiums in waverly square used to have a branch there as well so  we used to have three now we have one and the concern always said ben that you know i want to see a library thrive in belmont i have four children have gone through the public school systems i still have my own library card the minuteman library card and value that central nervous system of the community in many respects but the challenge is how do we get this over the goal line we've tried it numerous times i want to be able to have some room that we can entertain an idea that may not be supported male timidly not be able to be successful but it's an idea that does warrant some kind of strategic thinking  in front of you yes yes we're kind of going to work our way across you are all very smart people you get the idea it was a good evening my name is david steeves or an increasing one i think the the main comment that i have is i really really can't comment on the substance of issues because i don't think any of us really do know what is planned so i don't i mean there's probably a ton of questions  really i don't think answers but i think that the main question on the questions that i have a really around the process that i mentioned earlier and i think the thing that i would prefer that i can i would like to speak i think for a number of people is that the library board of trustees and elected group in town should have control not final control because i think town meeting really has that but i would like to see the library trustees have  really the say in where we're going to head with our library and that's that's really a comment i'm not looking for for an answer but i think that that's something that would like to see that moving forward thank you thank you it seems to me like as presented that way it feels like this it's the the proposal like it would actually save a significant piece of that and it feels like if we're going to have those sorts of numbers do we have any any estimate of  i sort of you know i mean as a physicist physicist i would say this is ten percent of capital budget so the difference it would make to the practically should be ten percent overall maybe and probably less than that because he'd have to pay back and rent whatever you we've given there is an answer to that question but i also have here tonight right epstein of the warrant committee and  we would much prefer to have those numbers that the warrant before we put them out they have not yet but just as a discussion with the school department and school committee is on our list so is the discussion with the warr chair no taxpayer dollars no ton of money was spent the developers have not put a nickel one into this project we asked them if they would be interested in considering this as an idea as they caught template what they want to do with their sites there have been a form that we started in in january of this year to talk about the revitalization of some of our squares and waverly square south pleasant street was the topic and  to bring some context around this discussion and the idea for a way of least squares pleasant street car discussion our chair funded an architect to do some renderings just for us to conceptually see what it would look like we could talk a picture of this conversation if there were it would have probably been a lot more challenging and probably a lot more hard for people to kind of get their heads around it but you know i said it in  the meaning and think it was in july when we talked about this publicly that you know i thanked her for it but it was done by liz just to give us an idea of what these what it could look like and it was a building that smack presentations and i have never seen president a presentation goes works communicates infinitely better  an architectural firm that looked at google earth looked at the site and did some conceptual renderings of what it might look like given the current library plans and the that would go on the list of substantive questions to be explored thank you questions and i apologize if one of them is covered in the presentation or even get a chance to look at the whole thing we're going to see what percentage of it will be affordable senior and then we were discussing that it would be up to it like it was forty units in that structure ok thank you i was just curious about that back story of the comments that you received were any of them positive  you know they heard you know what have you gotten yourself into and you know they applauded you know by taking the stand but i've got like four or five of my classmates colleagues in town that have responded favorably septa noon unfortunately you'll see that there's only three members present this afternoon we found out that the fourth member present could not attend tonight and therefore then there were many issues as those who sat through had to be continued so in an effort to try to notify the public that if you're interested in this issue don't plan on attending i had to revise agenda posted in listed those items to be continued that agenda was posted probably about two three three o'clock this afternoon so it's public information so it was wide open for don't want tony whoever  else to see and that was done as an effort to notify the first time when the again it was a very well attended issue and i want to i was trying to curtail the number of people signing up to that one so i was an effort to reach out and put people on notice that the school the school graduates put in and but because of the only three members present it caused a ripple effect from the whole agenda and again to put people on notice the public on notice to show up because that issue you may be interested in is not going to be discussed i put it i hadn't noticed i had a revised agenda you'll see it's posted in brit big bold letters about three o'clock this afternoon trying to put people on notice i know there were several people coming from while and as we move on i do want to make it that i did promise miss culhane that i would try to wrap this around nine thirty so while we are happy to stay  perhaps you could hold your applause to the end that would be helpful joanne hard to me in three issues that concern me are transparency and process that's been said before but i  felt that i need to say that and the third one is use several years ago i was asked to judge a middle school science competition and i asked one of the and trends tell me how you got your information the internet etc etc i said did you go to the library know why i don't have a library card why i can't walk to it if we remove the library from the critical space where it is now close to the middle school close to the high school it will affect us i know that thank you lake town meeting member precinct faith i have more of a question and it has more to do with how the proposal even came about in the first place because as i understood that the library trustees had done study and you know there are all kinds of options on the table with regard to what to do with the library space and my question is do we as a town you feel like this is a good use of our time and energy to explore an option you know completely from scratch and could be you know that we are just amazingly open to any and all options and any and all ideas but it seems like you know a study has been conducted you know with many options on the table with many cars many obstacles but until we run those down what is the thinking behind exploring you know a whole new rabbit hole essentially to go down well i would i would take some issue with the characterization of rabbit hole and be a fun place to be  yeah it's an idea it's not a proposal it's this power point presentations and have the word proposed it's that's what it is i think that in many ways this is the if i could rewind it i mean i wish cathy was going to be president the major capital planning work group where i presented  the some of the key gate keepers in town and that's where i was the first place to kind of discuss it with the key stakeholders in the town of belmont that have a say and do influence decisions that get to be further vetted and the support that's needed and folks in bodies like the planning board and the town treasurer or other bodies they get involved to weigh in and make an informed decision knowing full well that this is a substantive decision is a strategic kind of a decision and we as a planning board did an exercise to kind of understand what can we do to  community centers it's one of the areas in town where it's the has the dense population it's over eleven thousand people per square mile there are more inhabitants in th precinct three in four than there are elsewhere in belmont it's the center that it's also languished for the streetscape hasn't changed in more than fifty years now property owners have done some wonderful things to bring businesses in there but this was an opportunity to take a look at as the perspective landowners there are cotton plating some changes in the properties that they hold and this gave us an opportunity to think i don't i don't like to use the word innovative only because it gets overused but this is a creative way it is and it's actually used in cities states universities throughout the united states frequently  and it needed for us to be a belmont centric idea and if it works for belmont that would be wonderful if it didn't work for belmont we move on to other strategic initiatives that we have in n initiatives the kind of challenge ourselves with the kind of understand not just the today's impact but how this will impact us fifteen twenty fifty years down the road i think you know and i guess i would just ask you to think about you know the fact that since subject matter experts you know spend a lot of time thinking about a concept that really you know requires some kind of specialist thinking you know that we do consider the fact that they have laid a lot of very well detailed thought out options on the table and to really run those down before exploring you know a whole other realm that you know involves a lot of permutations and combinations in especially as mentioned previously in an area that is designed for commercial use and to take advantage of that down and down you know and as you guys are doing in the trustees who are the experts so i just wanted to a little bit more maybe meat on the bone in the background the does the discussion about where really square in south pleasant street generally you know the planning board raised the idea i think you know in january or even before you came up last year that this is the area that is sort of least developed in town that we have really  succeeded in creating more vibrant community gathering places in belmont center and hopefully pushing square as well underway and so the the last frontier if you will and and we wanted to talk as a group about how do are there things that we could do to manage that right we are the body that charged with coming to town meeting with changes to things like zoning laws and bylaws that could encourage development and that's what really got the conversation going you know as we talk about the issue of transparency the planning board operates a public meeting roles right so we can only do so much in a public hearing setting to advance the ball and we very often break into working groups so this particular proposal was something that became a working group proposal that necessarily couldn't  involve the full board and i was one of the board members not above the working group first heard about the proposal in july with the rest of the public other than those that you know sort of reached out to in advance and that's really the way you know we need to work to comply with good public meeting was and to start conversations going so it's it is difficult to get things going his difficulty figure out how to come up with ideas that are sufficiently concrete that we can have conversations including the discussion about how to what is it that we need to bring to waverley square to anchor it as a community gathering space and we talked about that a little bit and i think we couldn't came up with a library library idea where you want to put words in your mouth but it is potentially that community anchor and i do hope that as we continue this conversation we don't lose sight of the fact that what really is the responsibility of the planning board is to figure out what we can do to help make that space more vibrant and i do hope we can have we continue to have conversations about ok if it maybe it isn't the library but maybe it is but you know what are some other options like help us think about what we can do to make waverly square something a place where the community wants to go and not just react to developers or and not just have underdeveloped space where we're not getting we're trying to add to that discussion and really try to get community feedback the things we have responsibility for which is to figure out if we can facilitate making that area a more and man precinct for just your point which i wasn't planning on talking about but stefano owns the property that's right there in waverly square and he had come up with the really interesting ideas that he was going to put into place which i think would increase the  he wanted a restaurant down at the train he wanted to have business on the first floor apartments on the second so i do think that there are things that your friend on the planning board actually had planned on the in jason property but that was the reason i came up here to talk i don't know how many of you go to the high school p t a meetings but a few years ago we have we had an override but we still don't have school monitors we have real big budget constraints at the belmont high school and  didn't we didn't have monitors anymore they tried to put the kids in the library but there were too many and there's a certain number of children that are allowed to be in a library once so they end up removing a bunch of books to create more space for the children and then that still wasn't nearly enough room with the line outside so they asked parents and families to buy benches so we bought several benches that the kids could sit in in the hallways and then they all started going to the library across the street this is a place where they go out to freeze because we don't have monitors at the school anymore and if you take it away you can put it another use there that just doesn't create the traffic that we've got right now i don't know how you figure that one out by town but there was a real reason that that library was working for our kids at the school there was a real reason that we bought sold many benches to put in the hallways of the school to store the kids and i know we're building a new high school and i i hope we are and we can increase capacity there but we're also going to probably putting in new students from the middle school so that we can have more students lifting up from the elementary school because we're overcrowded we're building modules there's a reason the libraries there and it's really worked for us and that would be a very practical thing that we get ruined if we put it waverly square thank you i would imagine a part of the many questions that we have on the list to work out but it would be something that residents would know about as it unfolds ok thank you and may i ask just in the interests of time if you could focus your remarks on points that have not been made before that would be helpful thinking out of the box the idea of having an apartment building essential the senior housing that's a fabulous idea it would go up three four stories probably i think that part of the revitalization potentially of the cush of the the area where really area is to provide an opportunity for the buildings to be built new buildings to be built that go up two or three stories all along to pelosi road in that area of waverly square we like we always talk about this idea of the small town well small towns been generating small amounts of rentals and if you allow for the building or consider the you know the rebuilding of some of those old buildings having three stories it's not harvard square and that will be a very very fascinating way to provide  businesses offices whatever it is in that area just more revitalization of the town am rachel heller i live on wait street i can see the car wash right from my house and i'm also a member of the housing trust and first i just want to start by saying thank you for coming up with an idea thank you for thinking about revitalization it's something that i really welcome i do trust the library trustees and forget the library but i think that you've started a process and this is important i think that we should be thinking beyond just this one piece of property but really looking at the whole square and you know it's a good idea of going up to apollo and kind of thinking about how we can use that there's a lot of needs that the town has there's also a lot of needs that people have and there's a lot of housing needs so we've just completed our housing production and it's a great community process many people came and talked about the kinds of housing that we need areas to develop this was definitely waverly square was one of the top places in terms of need there is a great need among seniors lots of families and so i do think this is an opportunity for doing about vibran make a mix of housing that could serve a lot of different types of people take advantage of the fact that it's at a commuter rail and a bus station really think about how to redevelop this area we should do some good place making practices really involve the community and saying what do we want this area to look like how do we make it vibrant what is it i know in january people said we want pubs great bring some pubs and restaurants must put some housing about it that would add by princie thing we need to look at what tools we have available so there are tools at the state level that we could be taking advantage of tools like forty are where we could be getting paid and some assistance in rezoning as well as building units solve out smart growth forty yes which reimburses communities if there are additional school costs related to the forty hour developments we have c p a and then misty is really interested in developing along transit and if and we have a huge need for housing in the state we have such a sure of housing particularly in this area and if we were willing to go state and say hey we do want to build something we'd like some help we'd like to use the n p t and it's right there i think there's a lot more opportunity that opens up so i'm really appreciative based started a process i hope that it will get bigger and we'll consider a little bit more of a place making exercise or it's not just limited to that one site we're thinking what do we want this war to look like for the future thank you thank  similar to the debt ceiling question but i would think less complicated what do you mean by a decision and why september that we have some sense of whether this can be real or not because the the library is it's planning to move ahead it is not helpful to yes hi my name is ryan a call i'm a resident and also a certified urban planner by profession so my i think my objection to this idea is really it comes from my experience as a resident and also my professional perspective i have wrote a really big letter for you guys great e mail you but many of the residents already talked about some of the concerns i think i have two more who catch are great one thing i think it's really about parking capacity i think one of the related talked about traffic but have you thought about parking because when i look at the renderings on the presentation there is no dedicated off street parking lot for the library or to senior housing miscarrying thank you very much we appreciate that and we have actually given some thought to the square and the empire with as a whole but this one topic seemed quite sufficient for this consideration to work on the process of work on the substance points i think we've made a start on the process is a part of the process point but to just follow on mr payloads remarks we have four critical capital projects and probably an operating override i support all of i would vote for all of them i believe all four are critically important but i do not believe that passing for capital prep for debt exclusions in an operating override is a slam dunk i think that will be very hard and i think that dealing with the many good issues that have been raised but a scenario in which we can take two or three of the capital projects because remember once if you were to open up belmont center in for redevelopment you would make a contribution and so on means that then we have one very big capital project to fund and that is easier than for own library is really important so is a police station so is d p w and certainly is the high school project we don't want to end up leaving anybody off the list