life care barbara fiasco joe de stefano and the town senior planner jeffrey wheeler we have a full agenda this evening and in the interests of moving us through it efficiently what i'd like to do is to begin with them to move to item three i'm sorry i want to begin with i don't three which i their second second are those in favor right we now will move along the item for review modifications to previously granted special permit clearly is more than twenty feet of clay so water doesn't even go down and to at all be gated to raise the building and so that we fill with crushed on and find at least a layoff crushed on where we can drain the water pump it and so on when the building is a construction for this season we asked that we raise the building by nine inches allow  guess i would just like to say and little alluded to this that we appreciate you coming to the board at this time and just making sure that there isn't it doesn't raise any issue we very much appreciate that and i don't have any issue with the proposed change all right and once jeremy asked you to read the notice of public hearing notice here by given that the belmont planning board will hold a public hearing on thursday december selectmen to consider the application of brian and laura caputo for three special permits under section one point five point four of the zoning bylaw to alter a non conforming structure non conforming lot size inside setbacks in order to construct a second story on top of the existing home greater than thirty percent of the existing gross floor area and seventy five all over road in a single residency zoning district thank you barbara then the order we will follow is i will ask the and again step to the mike introduce yourself each and every time  getting german members of the board my name is keith miller from miller design and i'm here representing my clients laura and brian computer currently a fifty all over hoping to soon move to seventy five all over they are going to step up and say if you words about themselves and their family and their aspirations for the home and then i will give you a brief overview of the project and in conjunction with the design guidelines that you guys have already written up and we can discuss it from there  computer so we currently live in fifty oliver road we moved in almost fourteen years ago now and just sort of stumbled into belmont without knowing much about it and then fell in love and told everyone basically that we would never move and less we could get one of the houses across the street because part of what we've always loved about fifty caliber road is that you can see in between the houses to the pond and i sit every morning and have my coffee and look at the water  we love our current house but our children are growing up and we can currently have three bedrooms but right now they're in bunk beds and they're told kids and one of these days they're going to outgrow that we have been watching the pond houses they tend to turn over every forty years or so because once somebody gets one of those houses they never leave  and so we have been watching them all a couple of them have been flipped have gone to develop developers we saw this one as our opportunity in that it is the smallest of all of them and we've figured it would give us a chance to be on the across the street we've been hoping to do that for the past fourteen years i think this house is the previous owners lived there forty or forty plus years we'd love to be able to do the same thing in that forty years they did very very little to the house so it is in pretty desperate need of renovation and so we're excited to be able to do that and be able to do it in a way that  again my name is keith miller from our design and i'm going to give you a brief overview of what we've proposing to do with the home first take a moment thanks jet thank you thank geoffrey for eyes tireless work and the help in facilitating this meeting today in our presentation to you so it's wonder say  iterations of the house to try to come up with a design that fit within the footprint of the existing home and met the guidelines that are set forth by the planning board and what i did is they did a brief breakdown of each of the elements of the guidelines i'll go through them one by one so the first element of course is style and they've obviously designed a center as colonial home this is very similar to many many of the homes in the neighborhood including the seventy eight all over which is just across the street it's almost the exact same idea there's a there's a picture of seventy eight all over i believe in the additional information packet that was provided to you the next item is mass and building height we added a modest expansion of the second floor of about seven hundred  with so bottom left hand corner is seventy eight all over which as a the center is colonial with a room over the garage space up there it's generally going to use for storage it has pulled down access not a stair up we're not expanding the footprint all as i said where maintaining a height of six feet below the current established the height maximum for the ri belmont we're reducing we've reduced the mass over the garage portion of the house the total livable area is about twenty two hundred square feet in our proposal we've also put together bar graph showing the livable areas of the houses upon side of all of our road and it's also important to note that from a lot perspective their lot is actually in appearance fifteen hundred square feet larger than it is because of the d c are setbacks that are required around the  water the next item there is a roofs in dormers the attic level as i said is mostly unusable space only about fifty square feet of it is is a seven foot three or higher which is the building code requirement for clearances there are no dormers in the attic level was just consistent with the other homes in the neighborhood that are colonials there is a dormer over the in the bedroom however the height of the roof over the garage is reduced the scale over the garage is reduced further we created a dormer and we have interior eaves for the master bedroom over the garage again to bring that that roof down over at the side of the house we incorporated wide eaves and aphasia to create a well defined for us lines with classical returns and raking crowns at the corners we have a classical eight inch gentle breeze across the front and reusing fifty year old shingles on the front porches and decks the existing house has no foundation wall showing on the front  facade it's actually the clapboards meet the ground centrally at the house we've we're adding a tenant scoreboard to delineate that we are on break line the house also currently still front setback is right on the setback line so we're unable to add any kind of covering  porch we are however adding a low profile and tablature with fluted pile asters at the front door in the rear deck construction will be composite decking with mahogany railings and we're also going to be cladding the structure of that deck with trim to match the house the next item on the list of guidelines is windows currently in the front of the house there are no visible basement windows because of the  grating that windows that we're adding on the part of the house are eight over eight windows in proportion with the size and scale of the house we place them evenly and they are balanced across the facade the trim around the windows we have five over four trim with six inch wide cas ings with crown molding cap stool and apron additional architectural details the next item on the guidelines where using ten inch rake boards that extend six inch six inches past the face of the gables fourteen inch soffit overhangs eight inch face of boards with eight inch freeze and eight inch corner boards exterior finishes were proposing to use hardie plank on that on the house given its proximity of the water and the other great benefits that hardie plank has in terms of care and maintenance for a landscaping are right now the  it you can notice the landscaping between the adjacent properties is either really really tall shrubs or trees some of them are located on i'm on my client's property and some of them are located on the adjoining properties our intent is that all to remain not change at all in addition to that there's the site itself both in the front and the back is heavily planted with large and small plants and our intention for the plans is to either maintain those or if they're damaged during construction to replace them with the most readily available local equivalent both in size and type outlines them their dreams the home and other areas in the neighborhood that are very similar to what they're asking to do so without i i have to ask you for your discussion and deliberation house so we're going to do next is there anyone large road directly across the street from the property that's being discussed here tonight i would than that address for about ten years and i also enjoy enjoying a good cup of coffee and looking at the pond in the morning and looking across the street  this is the first time i've seen any any documents any drawings any renderings of the proposed alterations to the structure i'm concerned about the height of the garage and basically i'm going to be losing some visual there the pond i'm in discussions quickly it sounded like you were trying to maintain the existing rejoinder the garage the drawings to the so the in the discussion the architect put forth  he was describing the ridgeline of the garage being maintained but that rendering seemed to see it go up quite a bit probably about four or five feet which would then obstruct some of my view of the pond so i have concern from ascetics as well as sort of a resale value as well so i think i just want to voice my concern here and if i could look further at some of the drawings and some of the dimensioning of roofline and massing of the addition above the who it was my intention to imply that we're keeping the roof of the garage we're keeping a lower roof line in the roof the majority of the house over the garage area but we it is a new roof thank you is there anyone else wh yes my name is nelson gore i live in the house next door it's eighty one oliver road and actually a recent addition to belmont i've been told about the project and i'm i'm not that familiar with it but i'm i wanted to voice some concerns that i have which i don't know if they're actually addressable by this committee but i'm retired and a whole lot this is going to be a major renovation and i'm my fear is that it's going to be pretty disruptive for me as i'm home a fair amount during the day i mean if i was working i was off to work at seven in the morning and back at five or six i don't think that would be a problem it was up a moment ago because this is don't see the controlling factor in this the controlling factor is not total living area it we can do because we have only information on cold living area we don't have information on roads floor area of other homes in the neighborhood  this isn't a problem peculiar to this application but it is an issue that we're going to have to try to address as we move forward on single residence hearings i think all of us agree that  controlling at the growth floor level area has much to be said for it but nevertheless it limits the comparisons we can make me and i think  i would also just again just as a patchwork point mentioned that the that the design guidelines are designed guidelines for the general residence area we have not yet tried to put together general guideline design guidelines for single residency i'm sure you understand that you know that we just haven't heard enough cases so that it's premature to be doing design guidelines and with that i have a couple comments but somewhat limited would it would be best to hear from others first thank you in terms of my trying to organize my thinking you know i'm sensitive to the request by the outcome to look at that but there you have that you have to do setbacks which work and i guess i appreciate their interest in maintaining the footprint there which was s i'm finding it i guess i was picking up on a couple of those things too in terms of difference and sizes and i noticed too in the in the in the applicants  table when you're talking about the increase in size that part of those are completed on the fourth for us and the difference between we we've been looking at things in terms of total living area say i think if you somewhere there you  foreseeable fifty percent plus fifty percent so it's even more ok that that was not explicit on this and it wasn't explicit in the darkness so we've got a fifty percent increase in the know i guess in some ways this is a very interesting case and not we have had a lot of neighborhood situations  where not all the others other houses are are already been expanded and this is sort of the opposite situation and i think it's creates interesting like an interesting dynamic right that we need to  the upward increase of nine conformities in terms of side setbacks and you know obviously the tension there is that there are a lot of homeowners who want to build up of the existing condition  which is something that you know sometimes can cause some problems so i mean that's you know sort of deep keeping wise that's where i am of wrestling with the issues i mean i don't think we're there yet but i certainly appreciate the architect's attempts to follow all of the design guidelines from the g r district and certainly you know in some ways that allows us to focus on these gatekeeping issues i think we're not distracted by the other more minor issues but the inmates are interested in other people's reactions to this size issue i think that's something else that we need to think about but i certainly don't have haven't made a decision in my own mind but it's interesting hearing from from view so my comments when you're here it's ok so we're in deep we're into spending keeping the structure for the first floor where bennett were doing some interior renovations we're keeping the main staircase for the first floor keeping the first floor the walls most of the walls around the house except for on the garage side the garage piece is being ripped down rebuilt but the rest of the house is remaining except for the roof so that's our intention for that component the project and in response to th question about livable area i know the liveable area the house would include the basement which this house has in the grocery it does not include me the seller i just i'm trying to remember if that's the case offhand because it's the we don't know is no way that i just looking at the house right now there's already an existing second floor it's not right is not but there is an existing second floor ready and we're not we're not increasing the l area by more than fifty percent because we're not we have the first floor and then we have already an existing second floor and we're increasing that by about seven hundred fifty square feet so i know that and of that you know portions over the garage and portions over the main house but there are two bedrooms out the attic space which we could by raising the second floor ceilings you know we'd only be at thirty eight percent increase in size did you excuse me did you the deck in the increase is well you know ok are hearing what the neighbors are saying i think the garage maybe you could tweak that a little bit i don't know what the cables doing over there fighting with like the main entryway with that little gable of the garage where you have that window of the garage door i don't know what that's doing there but i think that you could lower that part of the house to maybe satisfy some of the neighbors in the in the neighborhood and maybe give them back some of your views but my biggest thing is that i don't know what you're gaining from i don't know how you're leaving the i don't know how you can accomplish leaving that front wall in place given the amount of windows you're going to put in there and actually looks like your front door is moving to the center yes so when you get through pulling all that out and cutting all that up i don't know i don't really don't know what you saw fortunes the walls will definitely be modified and maybe it is the entire for a while yes i have a funny feeling because you're going to have you probably have to buy for construction there and you're probably going to be pulling back to buy six so i'm trying to think of you know to hit your codes so i'm trying to think of how you doing that  so i guess my question to be it's it almost looks like a complete demolition to me unless you're leaving the first floor deck in place and you know knocked out all the walls and just start out from that back and move on so i'm just trying to understand if that's the case if you are you must say that you're building a brand new house which means that that point you can actually he set back to maybe bring the house in on the sides of the whole bit again just this is just thoughts going through my head if i go to the back of the house from front to understand how you did it what you did in the back because you've got mold units in the back of the house we've got single units in the front of the house on the side of the house everywhere else but the back of the house and i understand the need for the views but you can put two windows side by side and get the same if not better views rather than having a moment middle and kind of like having a house that looks one way in the back and another way in the front because in my mind on the pond you've got two fronts you've got the front and all of the rows of front so i'm trying to understand that along with the deck that i'm sure you want to have your coffee on which is kind of out of balance and those windows don't even belong in a colonial and i know you're trying to make a colonial some trying to like understand how the whole synergy of this house comes together in a cohesive way that would actually compliment the neighborhood and maybe make some of the neighbors happy in terms of how they retain value in their homes the overall size of the house at twenty two hundred square feet i don't feel it's over power and over and over powering the house in my opinion that's just me for twenty two hundred square feet i think you know it's not it's not three thousand but i think that you have some that i'd love to work around the statics views sideline setbacks i just think you have a bunch of stuff that needs to get to eat that's my so in response to your come about the back of house i don't i don't think the back of house is going to really impact the apron because nobody in the neighborhood can see the back of the house in my opinion i think that you've got i think that the hill is just the apartments are on the other side of the pond my right they're not there in the distance so i can say that they are in the distance there are two trees oh sorry i'm larkham and the applicant here so the hill states is quite far so we can actually see see any of the details of the hill state buildings and there are two trees in between the pond and our house i would also say it's very typical and we actually have an overhead we have an aerial view of the neighborhood and i think one of the things you'll see is that the houses tend of a very traditional front and in the back tends to to maximize the view so if you look down the row of houses what we're proposing is quite consistent with the four or five houses island extra sewing what's been built there in the last ten years and having seen them actually i mean can we pull up next to four or five of the neighbors renovation the house to our right is is more typical so i just i thought this visual would help put in context for the discussion really for me with the neighborhood i know someone who built a house down the street in recent years later so i kind of know what and exactly what i'm looking at i just thought for the the best the group so anyway those are my points so i would just like to see the house be a little more cohesive than what it is and i understand your point that it's not the front of the house being on the pond but i think you'd agree that good architecture is in the front the back the room the sides everywhere that's a good architectural job to me it's not like oh i believe the front of we moved to colonial in the front we might do contemporary in the back for me i don't think that's going to get well in any architecture there's a lot of forces that enable the design and one of the forces that we have to contend with as as doing it development here in belmont is the is that the planning board guidelines so my clients can do whatever they want to which you know six months ago they could work a month what it was they could of we could have a modern house there and not but that's when i when i hear they are but it's one of the things that we have to take in consideration when we design a home so in order to accomplish that what i try to do is meet my clients goals of the house that they want to from the back but their views of the lake and the size of the windows that styles of windows which is consistent with the houses if you look at the picture next to it very consistent with them and also accommodate the planning boards guidelines for a colonial more stand look which isn't keeping with the rest of the neighborhood  residence area and the correction will be and we have mr pinkerton here who can probably give us the exact date single residence been under some kind nonconformance the the second area where again we appreciate the well first of all i might say we appreciate what you make will turn out to be the youth a little later this evening we will move on to a discussion of where we are with respect to the various conditions pertaining to the cushion village development we just played a large development and simply in terms of number of to be consistent here cases we hear the other point i would make is we again we spent a lot of time on waverley terrace where the neighbors were adamant and the planning board with absolutely clear that we don't take any one street and we don't treat that as the neighborhood so the comparisons of is this large is this small when it comes to issues of size and ma have to reflect the planning board to find a neighborhood that's what we said to waverly paris and i prefer to see you and why we should say something different now and just remind everybody of the reason we disruption to the neighborhood if it's if it's large enough to do much and most in most of the time aesthetically doesn't add a lot so i think we'd really want to understand that so i think those are my comments and yet let me just no no foundation whatsoever on the back you can see that the foundation is about half exposed with a date with a dig out for the door so there is a walkout door but it's dug out with steps you can see where that  elevation line cuts through to the deck the main the main floor deck is probably about four or five feet off the ground it's it's barely half the height of that that basement door it's a cellar it's not a basement because it's it's well below grade on average the second floor balcony second floor small deck there's actually one of those just like that two doors down to the left you can see it in the other picture jeff you want to pull it back there's also another one two doors down to the right they are in the neighborhood they have been they have been done you asked about the overall height from the front and the back the guidelines  the guidelines suggested thirty four ridge height thirty average height this is the main part of the house is six feet lower than both of those numbers on both the  above average grades so from the back it would probably be a few feet higher than that but we're still even from the back even from the ground there even with the ground falling off you're still well below all the new all the new imposed white lines which are much lower than the big ones that used to generate those those mega houses so this is a very short how short two story house because of the lack of exposed foundation on the front again from the back is really designed to maximize the view of the pond it is fairly consistent we can consider you know the style of the of the windows potentially makes them some changes there if you're not comfortable with us not doing six over six on the on the back as well but we did want as much unobstructed view as possible  oh yeah so yes so so for the first floor we keep all the we keep foundation as is the basement stays intact we intend to keep the first floor floor we intend to keep the first floor stairs and most of the exterior walls we're maintaining the first floor height so the ceiling framing will likely stay as well there's no changes to that so it's not a complete demolition  back to the other to the other overview picture and you can see exactly your concern that the house to the left of ours has a full basement floor two full floors and a full high third floor that could be livable  so i understand the concern exactly our basement is not fully exposed it's half and we're not doing anything any dormer going or use of the of the third floor so it'll be much shorter and much less visually dominant than the than what thank you sure and i wish i understood that the question is that simple and the size of the proposed second floor directly across the street the white house this house this neighbor's house is sort of catty corner so i think he's mostly looking to the side of the house i'm not sure if he can see the pond over the house or if it's just to the side as we're not extending the side intensity at all we're just going up i think the overall change in height of the side i'm not sure that i'm not sure not the number it's probably six feet eight feet  it's again we've we've stepped outside have it down so that it's as unobtrusive as possible but we need to maintain space up there to actually put a usable room in the dormer is merely there to make room for a windows that there is light on both ends of the room but it's again it's much shorter than than most of what exists in the neighborhood and shouldn't shouldn't it shouldn't change the view too much in terms  of value i think the house as it currently stands is a is a bit of a tractor on the neighborhood and i'm hoping that putting a nicely designed high and finishes house on the street will actually help all property values keith miller for more design just in terms of the height of the addition over the garage if you look at lou there was an earlier side of seventy eight oliver which shows a room over the garage and it has a full height wall with two windows you know our intention and i know that  of the fact that we have a gable on the end of that gable dormer in our intention was to be able to put a window bring the height of the roof down as much as possible so that we have as little impact as possible on that side of the house which is why it's lower than the rest of the house mine then we would appoint working and i don't hear any in the same way that i don't hear any sentiment or haven't for rejecting this out of hand i hear useful with the notion we can work on the issues of no gotta work the issues of non conformity need to take a look at the size issue look at the issue with respect to the neighbors the applicant and the applicants architect and mr wheeler schedule and what are we what would we be looking at in terms of when could we get a working group together is this something that we could return to the point is that we live if you're going to be on vacation in spain for the next three weeks this would be a good time to share that again my name is keith miller from overdesign we're back confer with my clients and just a couple things we we are anxious to meet with the group as quickly as possible to confer with them on on elements of the home that we can modify obviously a list from the from the board of the specific items will help us to make the changes necessary they also call my client also just like to state we were we were at the planning board meeting when this when the new guidelines were put into place for the thirty percent increase in oversight from the board sorry town meeting and you know aren't standing at the time was there was talk about houses that were being two or four times as large as they were being built and that the the idea of bringing this before the planning board was to prevent those type of things from happening we all know which houses we're talking about in the neighborhood if they show big slides of them this house is none of those houses this house is a modest addition it has a colonial look from the front it has windows on the back to joe de stefano doesn't  like the garage or well below on the garage the maximum limit we are over the side setback lines but we can't help on the houses built on the foundations were put into place and every delay you know we've already been back a month on this project because of previous meetings that have been delayed and it cost no money is not your concern but he's already isn't who live in belmont and they really really work hard with jeffrey and with myself to come up with a plan that met the guidelines that we had available to us to may not be going as sea guidelines available but that doesn't help us we have the guidelines to work with that we met what we saw in those guidelines and we really were hoping for a vote today from the planning board because my clients have horror and they own two houses and every time we stop they have to give up something they want to do inside this house they have a fixed budget they had a contractor they don't anymore is that because windows closer have to find another one or find a new window without one and we understand that you know this but i think the boards as said are now are not what was really the intention that happened at a town meeting or that was voted on that were nitpicking over a window millions and additions that are eight people low the ridge line is allowed by zoning and then i'm also getting questions from the board about floor air ratio which under the zoning guidelines is not applicable to this project is nothing in zoning guidelines that talks about floor or ratio it says and a in  guidelines for belmont under that category so and then we talk we're talking about livable area but yet the guidelines to be here are for gross area and i know use the unishe and he said that there's an issue with that i understand that but you know every time we get these delays i know it's a work in process and on the border as my clients are very frustrated with the decision as it stands right now so i hope you consider that understand a fifty percent addition to total living area a large addition in terms of density and size it's a reasonably good sized edition i'm not suggesting we understand this is not a four thousand square foot house but there are some issues here pretty and we're getting we're not suggesting that you correct the existing nine conformity we're saying and this is a very we'll find a lot of planning board design don't increase the articulated your client's frustrations very well and one has hired a lawyer to get somebody to do that for you so you're doing double duty and we appreciate that did you reach a decision about whether we can continue and so on are due they're doing on the fifth which is saturday which will roll over to i assume three month the following monday so at the meeting on the twentieth we'll have a much more definitive review but what i thought might be helpful this evening is for us to do it to do two things one is to get geoffrey to give a brief report on the meeting of the principals which took place which he attended and the second day is because the list of conditions is really long and there are many of them what i thought might be helpful this evening is to put them into some kind of perspective and so if we can move to the next slide jeffrey if we look and simply at the conditions that need to be met prior to in order to get the demo and demolition in foundation permits and begin the site which is the first phase of this project the list is long and when we look at the one chart that jeffrey put together it looks fairly formidable but i think it's useful for us to put it in to break it down a little bit more because of those nine conditions they really fall into two categories there are  conditions that are required not just of cushing village but of everyone who builds in belmont and then there are because most of the  toll brothers is going to be using the same general contractor that starr was going to use and indeed we've got had gotten very far down the line so it's important to remember that most of these most of what's required had already been submitted by the xan on behalf of chris starr now they're undergoing review by toll is that correct jeffrey and so that but it is not there is some substantial likelihood and this is a prediction this is not a fact that i'm announcing the toll will look at these conditions and they're very until paul has finished its review and said no gave it to a c year ago it was and we said it was fine then it's still fine i also just want to remind everyone that since we've now moved into the construction phase in force this doesn't mean that we shouldn't keep a close eye on what's going on but the planning board is not the enforcement that is the responsibility of community what you see there the the submissions the higher the case that will have would have to be done regardless of the project and those that are specific to cushing village and jeffrey correct me i believe that all of the conditions specific to cushing milledge that there have been submissions is that correct yes and just since decorum standard for example which this board voted on  initially just to remind you of what we're talking about these are things we've already looked at we've approved in unless there is some reason they're told feels they need to be changed which i would find surprising because they are really very standard  where we stand with respect to the general foundation permits commencement of work conditions and jeffrey could we ask you to come back to the table now and report on the last item under concern question village specific the see continued geoffrey get these so as i said what i understood the that the board was interested in looking at was all the other districts it may be that the tools that the planning board has won in conjunction with the districts week we would be able to work with won't get us there but that is what we are trying to accomplish this is not a unification project or a redesign project this is basically a commercial stimulus project ok and so with that  three and not much else the odds that anything we do would have a lot of commercial vigor and that yeah would outweigh the impact they are very much imbedded in residential neighborhoods write into the not now and maybe never category i agree with that i think actually that you see probably if we focus on the larger commercial areas and i guess i'm thinking in particular about you know at least we really square area that we will see probably spillover i mean i think that there will just be  really successful businesses that draw and people from watertown in arlington and cambridge so i think that tree are seeing some of the larger areas and i guess i particularly think about  waverly square given that it's been on the radar screen for a while and they're you know we've talked about public transportation issues around it that it feels like this is probably the  two seem the areas where you could get significant development or at least a change in the kinds of businesses you have there that might have some impact on the town the variety of services and so on did have quite an effort to look at the south pleasant street corridor and we had decided at that time that that was there was enough in that that we were going to do we're really square at the same time but we're thinking about that and we went along the road in that and we actually had some meetings and i remember we had some business owners who came and we began to talk about to begin to talk about vulcan massive amounts of pleasant street different kind of uses and and things and then frankly all the energy got caught up in cushing square cushing square and it made sense to have to focus on the crushing square issue because that seemed to be the development that was going to happen but if you take and they had the land and they assemble the site but if you look at waverly square and selflessness street in conjunction if you look at the transportation issues there you look at the roads and things if you think about one node of development cushing square that's transportation oriented that was one of the big  waverly square is even more so because it has the train as the end of the line here and there are developments there there are issues in terms of the size and the issues in terms of parking and waverly square itself pleasant are the same thing but but they fall into one another and i think that's the place where we should focus and i have for probably likely yes for five years ninety and second i think unless we find that there is someone who is coming out comes out of the woodwork and is interested in some could be the file and the next step would be as we discussed the last time an idea was consensus on this that we would hold a public discussion in january and you'll see the floor you have that it really lends itself to a good to a public discussion that's a genuine public discussion not the exchange of not discussion amongst the board and the presentation of said pieces by members of the  to property and business owners but also that we should make it clear that the general public is invited as well we're going to be a public meeting so i know about it but yet actually don't want to say it's true they're the only people who are going to  yes and we should and so see if there is someone from the floor of selecting who wants to come and sit in i have included a draft of an invitation to my close to the property and business particularly easy to get people to come to a meeting in january but the more people there the better that was one of the strengths of the single rest and see discussion and the general restaurants discussion that we held timely meetings and people came  people from particular sony districts are we going to have discrete zoning districts that property owners and business owners will be invited from and i mean my thought is  it or not but the public hearing that was held to the senior center was televised and it was very lively and that's worth looking at because where we are talking about those kind of issues and you can see the response both from the public and from some of the property i like to think of all of our meetings as very lightweight but i agree that we absolutely want the much media there that was a particularly try to choose a week where we didn't have a planning board meeting and there's fewer other meetings going on so that as many people can come as possible all right if the art gallery is already booked for the discussion of what we might want to accomplish through amendments to the signage bylaws we identified we looked at several of the comparable communities to get ideas and identified ties capping the maximum amount of area that can be taken up the second issue is standing signs so that signs on posts and right now there's a differential between  before the commercial space of cushing village becomes available and as we look to potential other developments in places like waverly and south present we also identif by looking simply at it for i think comparable communities by allies that all of those communities have much more stringent byelaws directed to what  a sign is nonconforming the sort of nonconformance provision including most of the town say that any if there's a change in the use of premises premises if the business goes out of business that this i needs to be existing non conforming signs and whether they can be maintained if they need to be altered in any way then you know what happens we then i think pretty lenient in terms of existing non conforming signs just continuing to exist a lot of other towns are much more stringent and basically are essentially have bylaws that will gradually phase out the ability to simply maintain a non conforming can't be right now this currently allowed under our by a lot where that's not in a lot of other places which was a little surprising and that's something we definitely want to take a look at audible signs is something that some other town by what signage in town either does that well or doesn't do that well and that will that is definitely that's why it's an issue to consider as opposed to suggesting outlawing it because it is it is could be a balance in or do you say you know if it's x you know certain signs are right you know and one of the things we were also thinking about i'll just throw that out there is you know is the new marijuana situation right i mean do we want like the neon partly flashing in the window somewhere in common i mean something to think about and get ahead of and you know we really need to be thinking  yass wellesley has a very extensive special permit ing process for at every time i'm not sure that that's a direction that this planning board is ready to go in  is that there are definitely byelaws out there that require maintenance and that the sign be maintained in good repair or they could be removed they can be ordered removed and we don't have died in that supply is something that we're going to look into then we should anticipate a public hearing on this in january well well i would suggest the hearings would be in february but there certainly would be a public conversation in january non conforming with respect to the single residency in terms of reviewing you know how many bylaws it was in coming up with and now analyzing how it would be different communities did it i thought that was a very helpful in terms of of the you know walking around town hello this is so and so this is so and so to sit down and give him a list of comparable communities and tell him to get signed by laws and to look at them and find out these are the issues and what is what is each town doing and how they dealing with these and then also the question was raised also that car race around the issue of how successful each community has has been i think i think part of what will be helpful in that is reaching out to the building inspectors the communities in asking having direct conversations with how do you deal with this issue what's going on here how are you making this work the other piece there he's right yes so i had a fantastic conversation with plan this afternoon signage is actually issue that's been on his plate for a very long time and the first thing out of his mouth was that this is an unforeseeable then because part of the problem is that signs just appear they don't follow the permit in process and they just appear so there's a lot of going around and saying oh by the way you need a building permit for this so that gets very frustrating but he has given me a whole list of of issues and stuff to consider to add to the mix a lot of it is overlap from what's already been discussed but it's a lot more insight to that as you're not changing the shape the size the frame whatever if you're just changing the inside that therefore your brand grandfathered in and just change it change it around well and as barbara pointed out what we've discovered is  several other communities are much more restrictive with respect to that i'm going to have a conversation with town council to make sure that it's soon very very soon i'm trying to figure out a five to four commit minus or george hall but anyway about exactly how far can we push this point that that would be helpful and i think as we move forward the other thing will do before we take everything any into account we want to discuss the lessons learned how to write warrant articles from last week what do we mean this falls into my category and we tried very hard not to make the same mistakes  yes but definitely the liaison to show up but certainly there any other member of the board because well that presentation will be posted on line the following day and it's also the be televised so that also this to be part of that and i just bring that chart i just bring me the second item to your attention it's a public records law has drastically will be drastic sorry it was drastically changed in becomes effective july sorry january one and this is just a one time meeting for committee members and board members to come in here what changes have been done and so  report and he says he mentioned the belmont can choose to put together some kind of guidance as to how to approach this issue and the plenty board can take a look at it belmont didn't necessarily seem like the r the board was it the subcommittee or or a working group planning board or yeah i guess that's what that would be the intent because well you know the working group did its thing but i think that what i was looking at was whether or not you know there would be an opportunity for us to make a determination as a planning board whether or not we want to take this issue forward so that was my thinking but the question in terms of minutes is is that what he said