good evening i'm liz allison chair of the planning board and i'd like to call the september fifth meeting of the planning board to order as is our custom begin by introducing my colleagues carl head rather may notice that barbara fiasco is not here there is and you may be asking yourself i wonder if she ran away from home that is not the case she simply had was unable to get away from the office tonight so we will proceed with out her we will there's a number of agenda items that we would ordinarily take up at the first meeting of the new season that we will be taking up on the nineteenth when i expect we will have a full complement of members here right with that of the the main topic of the evening is for continued public jeffrey my question to you would be since i had we had i had pulled some material together for this evening how far is it appropriate for us to go in discussing it without the applicant present or should we simply powerpoint that had been prepared for this evening to all the board members and to the applicant as well i'd like to ask for a motion to continue the public hearing on seventy five leonard street and jeffrey before we take up the three forty four pleasant street my understanding is that we have a second continue public hearing that we will not be hearing this evening you know actually  the one seventy five brighton street has actually submitted i would quest to withdraw her application all right so then i believe we need a formal motion right i would add that that leaves us from what i had and to say hated would be a very full agenda so we now have two of our hearings which we will not be discussing this evening  as noted on the agenda we had the discussion of waverly square south press pleasant street the library had been to the nineteenth when as i said i appreciate we will have a full compliment of board members so we can move now directly to yes yes  leiter on the thirtieth yes recommending that the consideration for the library on that site be withdrawn and i just wanted to make sure and that the born had received that and were taking that under advisement the board indeed received it the withdrawn since it was never formally accepted by the board but in nevertheless the spirit is understood and that will be a topic of discussion on the and because there was a meeting on the thirty first and we had thought that it might be discussed and we wanted to make sure that we were coming forward with our recommendation and strong desire to have it be withdrawn from consideration and so would like to make sure that we are sharing that with the folks you know some of what we learned the meeting that you were good enough to come to on the twenty third the current library site is eighty six thousand square feet carwash is fifty five thousand square feet i just don't understand speaking for the trustees and how how it even works and should be even considered so it's  distraction honestly from a viable plan forward for the library and would prefer not to wait i appreciate that and certainly  alone having announced that we having an agenda that says we are going to have a full discussion on the nineteenth my suggestion would be that we would wait to we certainly can get two items through the update and i'm happy to have you read the letter then charge but again i think we should hold a discussion this is an important matter when we have a full board present now i agree and might my only concern was that in the meeting on the twenty third and that it was widely reported that it would be discussed tonight on the fair and it was reported i start in the newspapers now and i want to urge on it on the agenda so it is on the agenda however more extended discussion at the board's next meeting on september nineteenth was intended to convey that and i did write to the belmont citizen herald to let them know there would not be a vote or an extended discussion tonight and franco there is going to be no discussion tonight so in other words the item on the agenda is not going to be discussed as it was put on the agenda even though this is going to be wor certainly have some discussion tonight but i think it is an imp as i said a moment ago i think it's an important issue and i think we should have the full board oh i agree it's an important issue i think it is such an important issue that the hasty decision that you and rob be made to present the big concept the big idea at our meeting without any discussion or any research and put it front and put the playing words in print behind that was not flawed the well it is good to have a preview of what we'll be hearing from you again when we get to idaho you've certainly heard from the community in the library what you're going to hear i don't think any of that is a surprise and i think the fact that you're going forward in the face of this is what surprising i didn't think the planning board had any authority over the library clearly a library is has elected trustees it's their f responsibility to take care of the library it's not ours it's also not our place to propose things and push something forward without thinking about it and clearly it was not shot about this in terms of the board thought about between a select group of people not brought forward not planned adequately and it's not a big idea i am it's a big lie my and i also think as a result of this in the actions that you've taken you should resign as we are of the planning board and remove yourself from this process because i think you violated your responsibilities to the planning well that does make it a little bit harder to move along to item to be where you can stay or go it's up to you i plan to move on to i to be in and just for the record i'm very surprised that my one of my colleagues regardless of their opinion if they are in favor or in stark contrast to the idea that the group that plans and thinks and right although it is a little anti climactic and we will wait for barbara to be here on the nineteenth i did want to thank those of my colleagues for u working through the belmont day school which was a very difficult and hotly contested decision i think the board came you know i plod the way the board worked through it worked through many many comments and  because of that i thought it might be useful since it has been a while since we took up three forty four pleasant street what i've tried to do and do i have anyone here because of an interest in thirty four three forty four pleasant street other than the audience i mean other than the applicant all right since we do not have a projector let me just quickly run through what i've pulled together and how i have tried to keep up the issue so that we can move so that we can move forward and have such a clearly defined course  just to recap the project description it's on the side of the former gas station and the band stands roughly yes yes he was simply correcting the location of the property adjacent to the band's dense thank you thirty five approximately thirty five hundred square feet one story three recal spaces and twenty one parking spaces i turned to the applicant for any correction on that the issues and again what i'm trying to do is to tee up a list of issues so that we know where we are and i have separated the issues and again this is a consider this a draft from which we can work i've separated the issues into two categories the first those that i think application as presented is has sufficient parking it's my understanding that at our last meeting the application for assigning variance for a while there will be i would anticipate that in the conditions there will be a recap of the discussion on environmental issues raised primarily which rafi  together so that in the conditions will capture the q and a that went the took place at our previous meeting and it has it's been a little bit of time or were there any follow up with  community of rome with officer community development jeffrey and i believe that we had resolution on lighting the issues on my list of open issues and again both applicant and other board members should note if they a the we still needed a landscape review that was in part because the landscape review in the original submission was somewhat hard to read not because there was any dissatisfaction necessarily with the landscape issue to be certain that that it conforms we need to deal with the traffic issue which is obviously the major open issue i think here we need to provide a variance with respect to the  landscaping in the in the back of the site and then to really it's two issues that i would put under the legal heading one is that we need to word the  we need to word and approval carefully to make certain that there's e b a s still has is still able to fully exercise its powers we also and i say this not with in any spirit of criticism but because there is litigation pending litigation we probably want a mark helpful review of the wording of the application th we would otherwise and again there it's i say this in no spirit of criticism it's entirely appropriate for an applicant to seek legal remedy but we just need will therefore need to be more precise words miss than we would otherwise speak with question about the legal process you know we get through this meeting or the questions through jeffrey come up with some questions possibly that could be discussed with you know if the board decides to move forward with it would please see this for repeal use of so many square feet you know with so many parking spaces and does not include you know anything that in anything that needs to get a special permit would have to go through that process and this is very separate from that so it should be clearly stated in the decision how this report appeals should look at their process going forward what i was like ok write do you others have any additions to the list of open questions open issues or anything that is currently on the list of more or less resolve issues that you believe should move to the other side of the it that wasn't the that wasn't the intent to let me try restating it more clearly we want to be careful that we write a decision that the if that does not bind way in any way that is inappropriate well i don't think any of us have any intention except this private means someone might as a private citizen i don't think anyone has any intention of weighing in on the c b a decision we just want to make certain that their ability to go through their normal process isn't compromised by anything any set of conditions or any decision that we make  i would just state for the record that the zoning board of appeal if a special permit is needed for a use there is a whole public hearing a list of my criteria that have to be satisfied for the board to grant that particular use and we certainly would be compliant with whatever requirements are needed for a special permit thank you any other comments on these lists in terms of the traffic issue ye s i i would like to kind of address kind of what the planning boards criteria are in terms of traffic perf the the by law by  five point one that in effect deals with parking requirements and access to and in from the site and then under a special permit for u seven point four three of the bylaws criteria that they that they have to assess so when we're talking in terms of tracking traffic we presented a generalized traffic study on potential uses to show that under the various scenarios that it is our traffic engineers opinion that there will not be any negative impact  by this this development to the extent that the board seeks to condition its approval based upon traffic issues offsite i would like to kind of see what the board is thinking in that regard so that we don't get into issues that are the  i have not included a slide on how we might move forward on whether we're going to require landscaping at the perimeter rather than the preservation of the current fence largely because that's i believe was the preference of the neighbors and we can certainly discuss that in turn but i think these three are the largest so in terms of landscaping  the question is this suggestion for the evening that we confirmed that the plan was broadly acceptable and by that i really mean broadly that we see if anyone has a problem with a waiver of section five point three point three d of the district boundaries planting area i see the applicant has provided a large format plan  and a that there be a technical review to ensure compliance with the guidelines that we usually put forward with respect to size of tree and so on  o members of the board any thoughts on i'm under the landscape for this is come up before this the board has has asked that for individual homeowners that they specify trees that are three to three and a half inches but for commercial projects we have asked for four to four and a half and i think that they are planting beds are narrow enough that i am concerned about their survivability and i understand you're trying to weigh cars moving in an hour and it looks like you've tried to preserve a twenty foot wet between the parking spaces and and the driving area but i think that that comes at the sacrifice of the of the planting beds to to to really survive and so i i  don't know if it's really twenty feet is twenty feet is if his a standard size for a street and i wonder if you could consider  narrowing that down a by even even a couple of feet would make a difference in terms of the planting beds that are here yeah i think i think you go and point it to the audience because the has has the drawings as well so i believe what we what we have proposed right now is in this corner basically spoke with the neighbor hind to try to see in this plan you can see it better on the plot plan the landscape bed stretches out a little farther than back here and she has asked us to preserve as much of those trees as feasible back in that area which we've agreed to do so that basically if this area mostly landscape the way it is along this back area there is a fence that starts i believe around four feet at the front and then slowly goes up to between eight and ten feet the remainder of the property there that was also what was reference to be you know to maintained in front of that i believe this bed it's either five and a half or six feet i don't remember exactly what it is what we have in there is mostly these large jobber vides this is labeled on the plan as tio those are all eight to ten footers and what those do over time is basically grow into one big the only other trees here are these three which you've placed approximately whatever every maybe twenty five thirty five feet i wish there were twenty five that were going to be my next gesture and there i have a forty feet apart forty i think you will see in sort of urban settings of recommendation of twenty to twenty five feet so it would only be one more tree i got back i would have banned the tree and one more tree on the side so what he proposed here is to bring a half inch six foot high branching skyline and he local i've dealt with a lot of these with these honey locust trees and other projects and that they actually grow very well in very minimal areas i've actually grown these in side to over here yeah yeah that's definitely doable otherwise i think i think the the general site planned the moving the building out to the front instead of having the parking in front is a has that is an important recognition of of the street the waiver of five three three d i just don't actually not actually familiar with that but the bylaw it's addressed in second ballpoint on the landscaping lighter that back would you like to the planning board guidelines there is mention of a landscape buffer between district zones there's caution in the event that the board views its requirement for its guidelines as part of the bylaws are requirements so i was a little unclear so that's why that was included in there  it would be my interpretation of the by law itself it does not specifically require a b and b for a five i think it's a five foot planting bed or ten for planting be intent was to make certain that the residences were adequately buff there was in the earlier discussions of this  creating that would require taking down the fence and would also make it more difficult to move the parking to the back since that seemed to be the preference in terms of design so like shouldn't the decision about taking on the fence involve the about hers as well when it should be just sort of at the whim of the time well we weren't there wasn't a proposal to take down the focus so why would it require to take an offense to put it to have a landscape over a larger buffer i guess i'm confused by that i don't mean to be dense no i was not suggesting the larger buffer be to the ig at the expense of the fence ok out of the other moving the other way but adding a foot much buffer as possible landscaping wise between you know that the appropriate amount i know it's somewhat subjective by the for the board's interpretation the while but my preference would be for more rather than less landscaping between the parking your their requirements about taking down old trees that you have to keep the number of them or how does that work how can we how can that be required to the site plan approval gives the board discretion and landscape matters and so we have we have for example with this with staff have gone out and looked at specific trees on both residential and commercial properties ok and worked with the thank you it's also in the landlord's interest process where again the the concept would be that we provide any particular questions to jeffrey but that in the end we ask the z b a to review it and  asked george hall to review any decision both for to make certain it's consistent with the mandate and that is does not affect the ongoing litigation in any significant fashion does any comments on that are right traffic all right i want the traffic issue is obviously been the most of most concern and has certainly drawn from the most comments from those who've attended this meeting and so and see if first those on the board and then the applicant would be comfortable with it i want to direct everyone's attention cable be free and for those of you who have not memorized the table of contents every and there's if anyone we have extra copies of the three here if anyone wants a cut to follow along do we have anyone here from the traffic committee this evening ok  so check provided some comments on traffic and some questions on traffic and here is my question the table that you're looking  at there they're free you can hand them all out to everyone here there are sufficient copies i believe for everyone who's interested to have a copy a nd the question is if instead of focusing on traffic counts which we and instead focused on the topic of table three which is level of service and level of service is essentially the waiting time the is the answer to the question how long does it take you to get through the intersection and in particular focusing on the brighton street pleasant street intersection what you have in front of we also have in the report forecasts provided by the applicant which essentially assert that there will be no change in level of service at any of the  intersections there are some refinements there that we need to look at so my question is and at this point we do disagree with this is a disagreement with your interpretation of the town bylaws and would be something that we needed to work out is that we include as a condition of approval that from the time that the that a measurement in terms of only of level of service not the entire  study be taken that we either use these levels or we use the levels taken prior to construction in a new study and that for some reasonable period of time afterwards the level of service and by reasonable amount of time i mean something like six months to a year because over a longer period traffic is going to build up in belmont there are no obvious solutions to it and so conditioned time spent waiting at an intersection will increase independent of this development but the odds are if it is the case that this is the only development that takes place in that area over any six month to one year area time period could we simply make that a condition of approval and i should note that the current study we have says no matter what goes in there there isn't going to be a two teary ration in level of service at any of the intersections so i put this out only as an idea as to something that we might move forward on there are some refinements on this that we would need to get into there would need to be a technical review between the highway capacity manuals approach to calculating service levels and the syncro calculations which is a software firm that does this but has its own methodology and we need to understand it but would we want to think about that as an approach instead of counting cars on the grounds that what drives you really crazy is that you're sitting there and you're sitting there and you're sitting there it's not the traffic is flowing past a lot of traffic is flowing asked but that you just can't move if that is not a good idea i'm open to any other approach for dealing with this but that is my after doing some consultation with a number of people who are traffic engineers who teach this and so on that is one idea with the room and the remedy would be the that is a good question there could be a couple remedies one would be redesign of the traffic flow within the site a somewhat more imaginative remedy would be payment for the last time sitting at the intersection to be used to be unified the neighborhood right so you you should be designing the traffic flows of people who are sitting there right so they are not walking right in the street i don't know i don't know how you to make the turn off pleasant street as one way only and so that people who come of brighton street would have to turn or would have to fall into one of these parking spaces and go back out and i don't know enough about how to and i think i think that's a traffic engineers question but but there is there is certainly room to do more than an unrestricted in an outs and in both on both streets on the i'm  would make the situation worse and that the the because exit and entrance is on the property are not located on one street ones on pleasant ones on brighton so vehicles coming in off a pleasant street may not necessarily want to come back out on on pleasant street they may just want to come back and exit out onto brighton street so mostly because of the if you know you could get what we're talking about is what happens if you make it one way as one way through as joe already mentioned it would make the congestion worse a lot of that is because it becomes more circuitous to get on and off the site when people are forced to one direction or the other from a from a traffic capacity standpoint it actually makes sense to have two way to allow people to do the cars in the line of one another when you only have yeah i think i think that the other the other problematic point is people coming from from arlington and stopping to turn in here and backing up the one of the reasons one of the reasons that i arrived at a level of service requirement is that figuring out exactly what the best way to manage the traffic flow yes in terms of this hearing is going to be very hard requiring performance so that the applicant is very highly incented to deliver the performance that his engineer says he can approach is to allow unrestricted entrance and exits and if we have a problem we revise the movements it was the kind of thing he'll be before he'll ok i'll just use this mike so in the city massachusetts and it does vary if the level of service to graze to a level service after from he it's considered unacceptable and in this case where nor near that so and in that traffic say that we did and just as a sort of wanted to mentioned about cinco vs h c m so cinco does have the ability to do both the synchro methodology and an aide see a methodology was so the key point is to grade versus the baseline right so if in any situation with there is say eighty five seconds of delay already and it goes to eighty six th that's not an issue our synchro showed you can probably see in the memo one point two seconds worst case so that's pretty far off from the thirteen seconds you would need to degrade to lower service f and you can  can basically tell from more than seven hundred vehicles per hour weave in worst case for three and a half percent of that so such a small drop in the bucket of additional traffic which is why you don't see one second one and  e second increased delay just sort of from intuitive perspective i mean worst case will see you know a vehicle a minute during the busiest period of time both entering and leaving so you don't have a lot of queuing issues and as joe mentioned that protected left turn coming on to brighton you're right that there might be the occasional person not making that but people figure out pretty quickly they're going to have a lot of time to going after bright into the parking lot so we looked at this carefully as we know we've been at this for quite a while now on this project be reasonable from your point of view  three of us feel strongly that that's an interesting new you mark it's tied to the change in service related to the site yes and the proposed language that i would suggest the standard practice is easy i teach english manual on you if you calculate the number of trips and that's an estimation of the impact based on the chips from this book it's not really a standard practice to to go out software and they say well this is what the calculated estimated increase until is going to be due to this project and then obviously there's other developments and the general background growth which we we go to the m p o for the general background growth organization which has a large traffic model and they carefully look at every sort of micro region and to estimate the background growth in every region so we went to them and say what's your estimated growth in traffic i think you i mean the short of getting a like i limit myself thank you ok let me just see if there are comments and questions from the audience reintroducing yourself each time you step to the microphone this is a typical morning at the intersection  toward route two on brighton street is that is the worst offender so it's core my biggest concern about traffic and i you know i'll say there's two two questions i would have about the specific study one of them is the assumption that you know there is some huge number of passed by trips because that sort of what's considered standard practice a concern about that is that there really aren't like a lot of other particularly convenient you know locations of a potential up and down us which you know is one of the potential uses we're talking about here that are that are convenient to this area that are actually accessible to for example he spoke commuters if you think  my biggest concern is about the queuing that happens and when cars are trying to queue to left turn onto the side or off of the site into already congested traffic and i guess to some extent you could see cars turning left on the right street getting you know sort of stuck turning trying to turn right on to it it's it is a tricky intersect and i would i would suggest that it's not possible when you procedure section from the route to side to be able to tell priori what what is street and they're going to queue up to turn left and it's going to cost more back up some pleasant street cars that are giving out of the site to turn left back on right she tore the intersection or turn left as a street toward downtown could create additional exhaust emissions and congestion in the site so that's the nature of my concern i would agree that the number of cars we're talking about per hour is not necessarily huge fraction of the overall traffic in the area whatever we can do however as a town to mitigate traffic separately from this application would be great and if you have any ideas on that topic do feel free to bring them forward some ideas have been presented to the traffic advisory committee but i don't know what the status of that is i think it's a difficult problem as we all  this area coming down pleasant going and in a route from brighton a straight i don't see any real problem with that people will begin to figure it out i've got a concern that cars driving down pleasant street going south i guess coming off of route two or off them arlington trying to make this kind of a turn into the lot will have to be very it will negatively impact traffic going both unpleasant in both directions i understand you're saying let's try it out having both open that's entirely your decision i'm concerned i'm thinking about a safety issue o cars trying to turn into here coming in going in on pleasant street going this way going in that's not going to be a problem at all that concerns bay for safety reasons  we're busy tomorrow is crunch today it's the first day of school and then we're really going to be able to see it that's just a comment from a better thank  jam just to add on what joe said about the width of it in general intersections are the choke point not the roadways between intersections so once you get through the intersection there's a lot more capacity the manual says you have nine hundred vehicles proline theoretical that reduces quite a bit obviously once you put in driveways and other friction factors but nonetheless it's the intersection itself that's once you make it through the intersection as joe said it's going to be relatively easy to go around any vehicle going left at that sort of makes sense thank you yes a couple quick points i mean these concerns we addressed in the positioning of the building the existing site now as the gas station is has the curb but here also occur right here right off the intersection and then i'm right in st this carpet goes all the way to the intersection so as of right now  intersection has two entrances in probably within twenty feet of you know section so our goal was to basically address that concern and pull the driveways the farthest from the intersection that we possibly could and also maintain you know the buffer complian application  so the the suggestion would be that we allow it to move forward again that we allow it to move forward as currently propose d we either take these these measures of level of service again with the some technical questions result and the baseline and then nine months into it require a second study level of service is that where is that where we're level of service what the remedy would be a reconfiguration of the traffic flow a fine there needs to be some remedy built into from my clients standpoint a financial penalty would be preferable assuming it's reasonable and that he has an incentive to have his site as it's convenient for his customers and tenants that are going to be there so he has every incentive to make this work for has his client so  there needs to be some maybe we need to there needs to either be a penalty or there needs to be a requirement to cure confer amongst yourselves and you know again this is a little bit like some of the requirements we put on with respect to h b a c nice levels where we say this is the level and if it goes higher than that you don't pay a fine you've got to cure it and what the applicant then does is go back talk with his engineers look at the calculations look at the equipment he's fine and be very very confident that he can meet that standard and say we feel very confident and you know the analysis we've done my only concern is obviously you know we're investing millions of dollars here and have something completely uncertain not that some happens out of our control down the line and somehow the level of service changes for things outside of us or whatever reason it changes and no matter what we do you can change it back or something you know what i mean so open ended is obviously my biggest concern i mean there's nothing there we get we feel very confident and you know what we have here just want to go to the notion of building this all you know doing all this and then having something come up control unforseen or something that's obviously my concern having an open ended you know and my thought would be if it were a genuine uncontrollable situation such as they close a major intersection then you would come back to the board and ask for relief on the grounds that this is unforeseen and having nothing to do with your business  f that happens you know we have contractors who hit rock do that you know they entries we planned this we can't do it we need a waiver and yes that is a business risk repeat i think we want to try to move this along so and i i think i you know my suggestion would be that we try to stay with a level of service a reasonable period of time and ask you to go if you want to define some circumstances in which you'd be able to come back to the board you could certainly do that but that that would be the direction that we'd like to go and any disagreement know right just for five or any other conditions that look in the face you know at least i don't think so i mean again there's the technical making certain phrases i read the phrase  i see a phrase we're using soft which you've already but you've already explained we're using software and it produces a result slightly different than the highway capacity manual it's like oh it's different how different and tell me why but i would that's a technical wrinkle and i think one that we can resolve you know probably glenn is the best person to involve that but i think that's just a matter of  certain that before we sign on to this we understand the difference between what makes the synchro software calculation preferred so that we could give a credible account of it in a  that we are close the public hearing and we then asked jeffrey to draft a set of conditions working with glen and  george hall that we can review and the applicant can review and see if we're finished yes you come to the microphone absolutely as long as you come to the microphone thank you my name is and as i was listening i was interested in the idea that a person standing there to make a left hand turn and i single lane could have another car sweep around it to in order to you know continue down the road and not be deterred by the person that is a very dangerous thing considering the number of people who ride bicycles very dangerous and also dangerous a pedestrian so i hope that that is not thought of as a solution  we would hope to move so if we can move forward along these lines at the idea would be to have a set of conditions that you can share with the applicant and circulate to the board so that we can vote at the next meeting you know it's possible you do not even need to attend but you'd probably want all right with that man have a motion to  without some guidance from the zoning board of appeals and so on that that is just really hard to do i think we would certainly try to be to vote at the meeting on the nineteenth and for me personally just to be i know that i would take a little time what is in my primer on the traffic piece yes just to be up to speed on that but i mean i would be in favor of doing a strong man a few hundred do this even yet we could certainly if we have gone through the process with a georgia town council has looked at this and said it won't play a role in any litigation going forward what would be would we be prepared to vote in favor of this show straw poll ok and with that we'll have a motion to close the public hearing september nineteenth very right and with that i would like to move along to seventy five alarm or road so thank you for providing the materials it's generally the case that the board needs some time to review them and generally doesn't do that in the course of the meeting we're happy to have you through through this with us we are also we to have brought materials and we are happy to go through our materials with you and then we will see what the next step in the conversation  is so why don't we just take a minute and distribute all the materials and then i will come back to you to walk us through this and  now right yes hi we are the applicants for the seventy five lorna road renovation project there was a previous earring on july eighteenth where were they not have a quorum and if but a few questions were raised and would just love the opportunity to address some of those questions today wanted to spend one second in recapping the project that we are proposing in the candle garden neighborhood we've been living there for about almost twenty years we have a small house they we are very excited about renovating the renovation consist of a back addition of two stories and a side renovation of the existing side of the left to improve the entrance into the house which is currently a very narrow design that we have proposed is within the setback limits from the side the back to two and a half story calculation i whenever the challenge and the reason why we're here to ask for your special permit to continue on is that the frontage of our lot is sixty five feet instead of seventy five and therefore the mean the lot not conforming and because the addition is greater than thirty percent of the current leaving area again we're here to discuss with you what we can do about proceeding the there are two mistake questions so i believe were raised in the previous meeting that we wanted to have a chance to  you know propose to the board one was in relation to the say the style in the fed of the house so once more qualitative one more quantitative set of metrics one related to the quality of the addition i have look and feel we're really trying hard to stay within the the style of the neighborhood and though this pictures here are pretty horrible my skills here they do show that our house in the current design is  this kind of strange roof that comes for that is about you know a smaller size relative to the left and the right of the neighbors and the propose addition wishes she see here has essentially the same features then today you know with mine or as i said improvements to the access into the house from the front we believe this addition actually is pleasing and overall we're very committed in doing everything we can to maintain also the landscaping that is consistent with with the neighborhood so from it from a style perspective in a quality perspective being the addition in the back we don't believe the lot is pretty actually pretty long in that we don't believe is going to be intrusive or and pleasant for the neighbors around as a matter of fact all our neighbors were by now obviously pretty close friends hundred forty of them have signed its support letter for for this work now i know that it's qualitative but you know still a very large group of people who basically said you know you guys should move ahead however i do understand that there are some limitations that you guys need to judge on and that is related to the thirty percent calculation which caught us a bit by surprise because we didn't realize this was happening so we are in  kind of a funky situation right now being caught out of our house as we wait for the renovation but anyway the calculation here on page five we took the liberty to assess the analysis that was done and presented  at the previous year on july eighteenth so thank you for the data that would give us a chance to actually sift through it and the assess based on that calculation showed that the floor area ratio analyses was done utilizing the total living area data which of course is public available data and you know easy to access based on these analyses the home renovated with the new addition would end up in some of the metrics into the fourth quarter one hundred fourteen houses in the neighborhood however what we would like to submit for consideration to the board is a modified analysis that actually bases the floor area the gro five sorry the floor area ratio based on the gross floor area which is actually by the by law definition of how to do the calculation this is a harder the it a point to collect and we understand that it's not easily accessible in a database but being both of us a big geek so we actually did some work especially david in digging out some of this information in proposing an analysis that is included here eight and nine comparison therefore when you would see that overall the ranking would go from one hundred three to sixty five within the hundred fourteen houses assessed we do understand that this is a different metrics that we did we share the data you know we jeffrey possible to do so based on those in that analysis you know we feel like overall a house that is thirteen hundred square feet going to twenty in a hundred in a neighborhood where there are several homes that are actually more sizeable in staying within the the quarte the third quarter tile makes it a project that is acceptable but of course we're here also to to hear how you think about you know a different method that is as we  said what we used by just reading through maybe some doing a little bit of legwork in the neighborhood i would make maybe one last point there was also an assessment of the number of bedrooms our house currently three bedrooms by the way one normal size two pretty small propose addition would include a fourth bedroom in the second story and the previous board discussion is the there was a lot of debate about the number of bedrooms and the sky she was primarily on using the space in the cellar as a potential extra bedroom obviously belmont i town where you know it's for lots of people want to be here i know people do all kind of thinks it's a possibility that someone might decide to build a bedroom but we are you know we don't need extra bedrooms in the house we are making all this big investment so that we can stay the next twenty years so we don't believe that's the key you can the a seller as a bedroom however if the board chooses to put some i don't know what limitations could be on the deed or any other limitation we would be fine with that because we don't intend to use the space or sell the space as if it's bad but i don't know if it's possible to make those kind of maybe limitation it's more on the property overall so with that we obviously do greatly appreciate the consideration and we would love to be able to move on in one way or the other you know with with the project with feedback understand what is what could we do and your perspective on how to move forward thank you and we certainly we've had a number of applicants who bring their own power point and  this is certainly among the more impressive thank you for providing it just a couple finds before we begin them our general discussion the first is that what we have always said t applicants the question of how the applicant will use the space is not the focus of the board in reaching a decision how is this turnover and therefore we look at how that space might be used by the highest bidder for the house on the day it comes on to the market and in these plans when has a full bath in the basement one has direct exit from the basement without going through the rest of the house and the most likely successful bitter regardless of your plans will be someone who plans to use that that well that is actually already part since this is a single residence area that's already part of the requirements and is but again we have i think as a board we feel that what you can do is somewhat war important then what the if these are very hard to enforce so we need to so to speak engineer them into the architecture if this is supposed to be a single residen an easy thing to do so i had met several weeks ago with david and talked about this but didn't get any of the doubt until today so i do have received contain a write up on the methodology and i haven't even had a chance to look all right you know we we it took us a long time to do that analysis so we do understand how you know you obviously would need time to think through and rev the basement which is very critical to g f a calculation and then there for the farmer issue i am not certain that we should promise to have finished reviewing this by the nineteenth but we will certainly review both the methodology and the data maybe before we  might be useful to review the distributions that we've been looking at which i think everyone has a and just a little bit of the background which is what we could what we try to do consistently is to understand what town meeting wanted us to do when we translated the changes in the bylaws into the  into decisions in particular cases and jeffrey it's a pity we don't have a projector this evening because if we look there are indeed you have a copy of this  right there are indeed a number of houses in the neighborhood that measured by total living area are larger than the house being proposed here but there are clearly  if we were to if kendall green were to be a collection of houses whether we look at it by total living area or floor area ratio that gave created the density that this would create it would be a very different kind of neighborhood and i think that's our concern let me ask others for their comments and questions you know i mean i remember the applicants the first meet for the was one of the concerns that was raised by the folks in the s r c and so to be true to that concern that we created the new language was promulgated so we try to to to be responsive to the concerns that were raised th town meeting so i know that you know i was away as some others were during the month of august but i asked jeffrey even late today if there was any updates and i'm just at a disadvantage to make any from our july eighteenth meeting regrettably a lot of interesting information glass that i can't i can't say that i you know gone through it in any way that i can understand it completely in the sense that we need for this for the in diving into this very deeply i came to understand that the purpose of determining gross floor area especially as the the structural mass not anything else just structural mass so it's just how much building is there in the ratio should reflect the structural intensity given the size of the property that seems to be missed in the calculation that was done with with a total living area divided by the size i think that's very misleading metric i would i would be i think i would disagree that it is a misleading metric there are certainly other metrics that one can look at but in terms of gansa the number of people using the space amount of traffic and so on total living area far as we've defined it i think is a meaningful not it is not a magic bullet statistic but it is a meaningful statistic don't in that case i believe we need a motion i do not want we don't wind close the public hearing there is that right so in that case and i don't usual say so could i have a motion to continue this hearing to the third up is this the third of october work for you where the builder actually committed to start on june first believing that they had the permits we had to move out  roberts if the i'd like you can make one comment and then i'll take a motion to continue the hearing i would just like make a comment on behalf of myself as a member of town meeting and maybe to some part of the community i think you've got a family here who's been out of their house waiting for this work to get done you've got a letter signed by one hundred hundred fourteen i'm sorry hundred forty four of their neighbors saying that they don't have an issue with this  application what this family is proposing to do i think in the interest of that neighborhood and this family it would be the right and proper thing to do to try to move this along as quickly as possible so that these people can get back in their home thank roberts i think this every applicant who comes before the board makes a tradeoff if you if you come in with a home that's a fifty or sixty percent increase and and it is not solely numeric and i don't want to suggest that it is then you can leave the planning board in one night if you wish to more than double the size of your home there will be a longer conversation and i think that is that is inevitable given what the neighborhood would look like again and this is a special neighborhood because it's hard to make distinctions among homes in the neighborhood and this would push the density to a very high level in was right thank you with the notion that on october september nineteenth when we have a full complement of board members we will have a more extended discussion but i think the little bit of the elephant and the only comments i wish to make are ones that i've consistently made in the past and anytime that i've spoken out of town meeting or name the committee member and the committees that i've been a part of and i've had the benefit of being in some good committees and some com despite the issues have raised a lot of affectation that have then i think deleterious to the debate we're supposed to be able to think through and work through things and we do live in the community together i was a little bit taken aback by the finger pointing by the africa laden i'll call it attack and then you have every right to be thoughtful about what you want to say and how you say it but i would ask at home with their family sometimes watching these public meetings and i find that to be i do not call for and i may not agree with a lot of what people say but i refrain  from finger pointing in the attacking and i would ask you just consider that you don't have to honor my request but i would ask that certainly where it's supposed to be so called leaders in the community if we can have a discussion and heated discussion is more than welcome but the finger pointing in attacking me i think is not called for i've asked folks to stand down that's what i say and i who would hope at some point we could talk about the idea and i think it would be well to think carefully about how we can have the most constructive discussion on the nineteenth and i certainly will do that and i'm confident that rafi and carr will as well and whoever else is joining us i certainly hope that on the nineteenth that rather than then discuss  rather than have the focus be on the idea that you put forward on this that we talk seriously about how do we begin to look at planning  where rather than focusing on this particular project which we've missed because of this which has taken the air out of the discussion in terms of that especially when we know that there are there is at least one other project that's waiting in when mr de stefano will be coming out of the ground with the mixed use project sometime within the next year or so there's a shadow there are a couple of other things that are posed in the square we need to sort of go through some sort of the cleaning process my point is that if we had had a meeting at some point rather than simply have gone from the public sort of discussion thing to all the sudden something's done that we have to focus on to a more thoughtful reading and if this had come up if we had a sure read about this maybe we invite some planners or something if we had done this and this is the point that you had raised the idea that you have raised but the library could have been one of many discussions that come forward at that point i think that would have been much more appropriate and much more will look forward to the nineteenth to kind of the more and welcome all points of view and be able to get to a place where we can not only focus on what the needs of the town but be able to look each other in the eye and be able to say that we're neighbors the kind of the debate and the level of discourse right now is ben i tamed paris and i'm not winning i'm not that's not about you but just generally speaking since i do have the if i could if i could comment i think that the small group working group discussions have have gotten off the rails and that four point four four when i as a planning board member find out that two members of the planning board have raised an issue without raising it here first and i have no i have no opportunity to choose to go to that because we have not announced that i would like to see it get back to that anytime any two members of the planning board are meeting with anyone else that it be not that the full board be notified so that we are at least are not surprised when it when a major proposal comes out and people say what do you think about this mess i had no idea that it was coming i think there that is it that is certainly a process yes that we can take up but i really want to underscore the the  value of not personalizing the discussions anymore than has already taken place and i think we can decide whether it's useful to carefully review the history before at the next meeting or whether and to what extent our time would be better spent going back to where we started in january with a set of things residents wanted to see in the redevelopment and the the criteria that the board would use and i think since there is an item on the agenda we ought to at least has if there are people who have specific comments rather than then the idea itself are there th the i think it's i think i think we owe it to everybody who is here to ask if they have any observations or we're certainly happy to have the trustee speak and have brief comments i would observe that  the on the twenty third there were many of the points were made which i will briefly summarize if they are not summarized in the remarks by the trustees but let me folks are interested in the media and getting a lot are we really wanted to come here and the respect the process and share it with you all which is why we sent it out on the very end to make sure that we could give it to you for you to see first because that was our first to us our partners and thank you let me just respond to two points the the first is that of course we are going to look at the redevelopment of waverly square and south pleasant street planning boards have had done that many times without success the second is that the way i believe the correct way to look at this is if that area we will create benefits for the current property owners that was not true in cushing square for a variety of reasons but we clearly will and we are at going to at we are asking the same questions that boston asked that cambridge asked that every city asks which are should we try first of all should we try to understand what those benefits are and second should we try to capture some reasonable portion of them not so much that we have no development but some reasonable portion of them to use for a important civic need i think the answer to that is clearly yes whether it is the library or not and as a practical matter i think we all recognize that that is not in the cards  the idea of linkage and not simply saying go ahead do development but aren't you lucky to have been standing in the right place the right at the right time is not a concept that sophisticated cities and even less sophisticated town to use and we shouldn't do it in waverly square i want there's a number of other points that i think are best reserved to the nineteen i appreciate your coming this evening and again reviewing the position of the trustees and the concerns and i certainly would agree with you that the majority of comments at that meeting were ranged from the unfavorable to the hostile i do wish there had been more time for discussion but i don't whole i think that is an interesting and important question mr roberts raised it at the meeting on the twenty third that is a longer discussion then i think is appropriate for this evening but i am eager to join that  issue and i think the roles and responsibilities and when i look on the website for the roles and responsibilities of the planning board you can probably code it better than i but it protect and preserve the character of the town us and respond to her going to development so that is the case then with love to get your opinion on our proposal to rebuild the library on the existing site we will not serve our community in the location that of a carwash just won't work because the high school students walk across the street to get teaching and training on how to write their theses how to do this information literacy skills that are not taught in any of our schools today they are taught in our public library we are open for the most part seven days a week we are the only building in the town that serves the entire population from babies to shut ins and some place us so far from our user population out of the central central of haitian that renault would just be foolish and it would probably impact the number of people that we'd serve because the high school get i am on your second point the the merits of discussing there the specifics of the square footage given where we're going with this idea seems somewhat limited to the question of what i mean central again if one were looking to redistribute benefits if one were looking at where the english language learners are there are there is some argument there is a discussion to be had as to whether this would be redistributive and if so in a desirable way but again the merits of doing a deep dive on issues that are not likely to arise are somewhat limited the to have a brand flattery and we release where because it's not easy for them to get the library in its current location the redesign of waverly square the use of that lot or other available lofts and how we might want to do those are great questions real information and data behind this so for you to kind of throw out well what are the needs are english language learners maybe the library could serve them you're just kind of tossing that out there you don't have any data on that bridge is anybody as far as i know it's a great question ask but we should ask it an it in a deliberate way not just throw it out as a what about you know we're engaging in what about ism and i think that we have many great talented people working on committees across this town i think these are all directly to voters and i think that's the proper way to do that i think redesign of waverley square we can all get behind that but let's really do it in a inclusive way and that way when we get to the final architects drawing a picture of what it's supposed to be people say yeah that's that's a process that we were a part of the community engage in that these committees and gaijin that smart and that's you know really going to work this is kind of a plan that is now looking backward you know it's it started with a plan and now we're looking for just again i would go away look forward to a full and frank discussion on the nineteenth i just have a question with kathy yes and i'll take you at the last comment ok until the next meeting of course ok my name is lois and macintyre i am a town meeting member precinct eight and i'm actually not hear so much because i'm a town meeting member i was thinking this today about why i'm coming to these meetings i've been to as many of them as i've known about and i think it has to do with the fact that when i was a kid my mother worked at the local public library and i would leave school and walk to the local public library and that in my home my husband's and my search for a house one of the things that helped me fall in love with belmont was the fact that the high school and the middle school were both easily accessible to the library and so i developed a vision of my son growing up through the wind broken through the chattering through the high school and gradually also being somebody who would walk to the local library and so i think the reason why i come to these and why i have been encouraging everybody i know to come to these meetings is because the question about possibly moving the library really cuts to the heart of my falling in love with belmont and so i you know i feel very sad about the idea that the library could possibly move away from the center of town not just because it would affect me personally but because when i look at the map of the town of beaumont and i see how many houses are accessible to library currently versus how many would be if it moved about remarkable powers since andrew carnegie first created the american public library as we know it today it is an amazing institution and the belmont library has consistently that would mean for as long as i was on the warrant committee which is a really long time has consistently had the strongest circulation and usage statistics of any library in the middleman system the public library clearly has a very strong and passionate following as evidenced by the comments of the various meetings i did have one question is if i could ask you to make this the last i will make this look the only question that i'm asking i'm curious in all of the comments that you've received in email or in any other commentary fashion approximately what percentage have you received of people in favor of the idea i would say it was running  right and with that we have i believe there are no men to review the agenda for the next meeting will include among this we need to review our possible projects for a twenty seven twenty eight and to welcome our new member and a variety of other organizational activities which we did not take up this evening and so with that may i have a motion to a