the thursday october eleventh two thousand and eighteen meeting of the planning board i call the meeting to order first before we begin a thing what he introduced the members of the planning bo first we have basically two items on the agenda that this evening we'll be discussing it the adult marijuana use overlay district and follow that by the south pleasant street over lake district  so we'll begin with the adult use marijuana overlay district let me point out first some some history in terms of this the the the town  the town or didn't two thousand and six election favorably in terms of adult use marijuana there was an element brought to the town meeting in may in terms of adult use marijuana it was passed it restricted adult use marijuana to the single use as a retail store the planning board was was directed by the board of selectmen to prepare zoning so our charge is to prepare zoning that will regulate this use in town so the regulation is detailed  in terms of what places can be like and there's a lot of regulations that have to do with the commonwealth there are also regulations that will have to do with the town and there are regulations that will have to do with the board of health as well and a number of special permit processes will have to be gone through before it comes to the planning board and when a site comes to the planning board there will be an additional public hearing  special permit process so we have had i think it's something like seven or eight public meetings and a number of public hearings in regard to this  issue we have heard we've restricted the discussion on this to the actuals zoning overlay that's been proposed so any discussions of whether the you should be permitted in town or not were beyond the scope of our discussion when we left last time the concern was where the overlay districts were and we had proposed to overlay districts one alonso pleasantry and the other overlayed district in the loading dock area i should say in response to some comments that this hasn't been an open and transparent process that it has we've had seven or eight public meetings we listened extensively to people's opinions on this both in the meetings and in the writing no decisions have been made at this point and what you saw last time in our meeting was discussion the transparent discussion of what we thought was reasonable and what we thought was not reasonable one of the things i know can be slightly frustrating to some people is that we don't come to decisions immediately and we don't respond to the people that are in front of us and change our mind we think about things and this is part of the public process and this is the process that's done before you so there are no hidden deals or anything like that they have been some scatters about about the opinions that of the board and how some of the board members might be swayed by reasons other than have to do with the good of the town let me assure you that if you could please turn that off  let me assure you that the playing board is open and transparent and our interests are the interests of the town in general then not the interests of any special interest group or not so at the last meeting there is the issue raised about nullification which was basically those that are proposing that we limit the adult use marijuana district to one district in town which would be the south pleasant street i raise that issue of the reasons i didn't respond on at that point and fear had raised at a different point an interesting issue is that sufficient and steve had raised this point in we'll talk about that is that it's sufficient to to meet what we what we see is the state regulations so we asked george howell george hall the town council his opinion on this and it basically and i'll read part of it he said that the town me and act as zoning by laws that govern the time place and manner of marijuana establishment operations except that zoning ordinances or bylaws shall not operate to limit the number of marijuana establishment below belmont so our question was are we vulnerable if we only have one and he points out a potential point of confusion here is the phrase operates to highlight it above which operates to do so only operates to limit the number of establishment not districts establishment because of this new statute there is some uncertainty about how this will be determined he writes i view it as roughly analogous to the first amendment cases pertaining to adult entertainment businesses which towns may regulate but not prohibit belmont cannot make it effectively impossible to locate at least two marijuana establishment within its boundaries but where belmont has very limited land area zone for business and relatively low turnover among the businesses that are within those districts it does not mean that the playing board has to account for the difficulty a marijuana establishment may have in buying or leasing a site if you have a half dozen properties currently zoned for retail that are within a new overlay district for marijuana sales and none of those property owners is interested in selling releasing to a marijuana business i that's george hall and do not think that it makes the buy a lot of vulnerable to a successful challenge i think the courts will require marijuana establishment to compete in the same way that any other retail business would be required to complete  so what that basically says is if you have enough what seems to be sufficient area then it can be within one zone in district and not too i look six tenths of a mile there are over a dozen land parcels more like fifteen or sixteen land parcels and over twelve improvements along that portion there view ownership is fragmented although there are a couple of large property owners in that area so we heard the we heard the questions that people had and we thought constantly  my other question about the loading dock area was that it's a much smaller area and aside from the school issue my concern was that we may be an item and we didn't ask town calls on that that we may have been spot zoning there because it's a relatively small area and there was probably one establishment that would have more likely chance than another being entitle entitled by this so i was concerned about that so those are the issues so that sort of the legal stuff that we've gotten some of the issues that we've raised in terms of this we'll have a discussion in a minute but i want to turn to  and understood what he was saying i was not at that point entirely convinced that there was enough space for two enough room competitively for two businesses in that area i got a really terrific email gather google maps and looking at distances and and did you know i don't know about his methodology and i can i can't swear i haven't or fight it but the interesting conclusions were that basically most of the shops in  over fifty percent i think the shops in colorado are within a half mile of each other so we've got more than half a mile going on in in this one district and i guess shops tend to cluster and that's that's true when you think about it shops do tend to cluster even if it's not if it's not even if it's something as i knew it was marijuana still wanting to think about this though i said i started wondering well how competitive could a marijuana store be in that description just given given the product and the fact that there really isn't a lot of differentiation it's all pretty much the same product and i got to thinking what other businesses are like that and and what in the appearance on the streets kate that's something we've been concerned about is it's going to look like a dentist's office or something like that is not going to be much of a store front and i started thinking what what stores do we have like that in belmont and it dawned on me that we have banks banks have nothing but a sign and they've got no product in the front window and they're pretty anonymous and unattractive and we have five of them in a one eight mile strip of  and it's on both sides of the street but even so within you know a quarter of a mile linearly we have five of the exact same business they just got different logos and i got to thinking well wait a minute we've got almost two thirds of a mile over unpleasant street that should be enough room for two i don't know from a planning perspective if this is the best thing i think it would be nice to have more than one zone and i don't necessarily think that the i don't room on pleasant street and for now it seems to me what's restricted to that and move along and in five years we can revisit this issue if there's demand but that's perspective i think that the the loading dock area is fine and that this if if the loading dock property itself were to be were to become a retail marijuana shop the first thing they would have to do is board up all the windows it would you know it's not there with you know you're not allowed i took a moment to peruse the state regulations today and taliban wants regulations the board helps regulations and you know you're not allowed  to your the state regulations prevent any exterior views of product so you can't even get a glimpse at it is the dentist's office so i the notion of schoolchildren driving by with their parents and becoming intrigued and by marijuana to me is just i i agree with you that we are doing the bare minimum to use satisfied regulation and i think it's not good planning to limit it to one area i was very interested to find out what other towns were doing around us and many of them have twenty one year olds can buy marijuana i know saying work cambridge in belmont  let's leave it there what other communities do do but if we limit it to south pleasant street we can't do it is they require a buffer around each store so that's how they make sure that they don't and cluster or in places where you don't want because it's even in cambridge which has this liberal approach to it they want eighteen hundred feet between establishment and so i think if we're going to just pick one part of town south pleasant street which politically seems to be the way things are moving and i don't i still don't think it's good planning but it's seems to be the political thing to do that at least we're not prescriptive how they're located near each other and so you could you could potentially end up the next door to each other but we are allowing our two stores that people have voted to have them ten thinking car i'm in agreement this part of the exercise was to charge me additional tax and the revenue from that would go to drug education and counseling which i think would be far more effective at helping children  th with problems and prevention than trying to hide it because of this this product is out there they're going to have access to it and this is not going to change their access to things but i understand the feelings are high and i think it's too soon so let me just make a final comment on this before that will hold the the plaiting board on this used we've been accused the board is been accused of and i don't often say this of being tone deaf to the citizens and i think when i went back before we looked at we've had eight public meetings of one form or another where we've listened to people their points of view on this i think we've been open in trades areas and i think we've listened and we have a dot we have adapted to what we think is a reasonable solution on this it's certainly not perfect so so i'll defend the board in terms of that i think everybody has the best interest of the town at heart and i think we've listened intensely to what the town has to say that being said can i get just a straw vote because we're going to vote on the whole thing on this and we are this is a public hearing the public meeting but we're not going to accept any comments from the public at this point we're pretty much done with that for this ed so you vote for self pleasant street only  on both sides so we're going to move ahead with just the so pleasant street site now we're going to go with some details on this zoning so that part of it if you can for that part of it it's over three point three the next to last sentence first paragraph you for each used it to i'm sorry it should come up refer each used to section six it should come out t this sentence purpose ok so we're only doing the changed one the purpose of that sentence i marijuana district will be in location suitable for the if you want to do it like that this the adult the a u n mees will be in location suitable for adult use marijuana establishment facilities and to minimize that breaks up the sentence i don't think it changes the  yeah and that question on the first line of page four i think it's unusual to have a capital following a hyphen  and i looked yeah there was there something about it mints shall not be allowed i'm terrible i don't id has been checked so that could sort of say that unless you're doing it outside there has to be an indoor vestibule we should be more explicit about it probably maybe the applicant shall provide a secure vestibule area for the checking of  with adequate security measures to ensure th so just real quickly at my understanding of the but the board wanted list to for the map to reflect you'll see behind it and then the word to them to take out the car important and you know anybody that does anything there we're going to preserve that because that that provides access to the community and that will be part of the saving of you and the reason for this is to be to have a cl restricted housing i have i have a comment on this and it's sort of we've been thinking about this for at least i think it would make more sense to go to the fifty five you know rather than sixty two does anybody have a feeling i think that makes more sense it opens it up more or i would agree with that i've been hearing from people saying that you know we need housing in this town fifty five accomplishes a lot of the same goals get through that because i think where i think with thirty eight with a special permit i think maybe forty feet might work a little bit better it helps the retail in the first war  in terms of waste even though there's a distance between any improvement that we would put there and the neighborhood you have to realize we have we have an echo chamber there that goes across concern is if we go to forty feet and we allow that in some cases and also we may be able to do something with we do it to store building in place there and we may be able to do something if it's the same developer is going to keep that in place that might be an incentive that we could have to increase their putting of chemicals down that's often the most objectionable part yeah  clean surface on the top here and you have like i don't much rather have that two feet higher than than have thirty eight feet with a bunch of junk yeah so if it's two feet higher and yet i've seen it for one conceptual thing i have seen for something like that you have like a hip roof you know you have the mechanical in that so you have your full three stories and you have your mechanicals and of course all that goes through your design of settling anywhere review and all that goes to the public and we can see how they respond to that so i'd like to change that too and that is is it was there anything else that seems to make sense that as we need to be change i think i think those were sort of important important points and  safe looking for comments and yes please they just directed the housing development definition shall be owned in occupied or rented i think i would say how about let's just be redundant and say owned and occupied or rented and occupied ok this is designed as a review we have to go through that incidentally i don't know if you have a camera that that's putting on the screen but that's where everybody should be watching thank you that's where we're making the changes but nothing to see here know unfortunately i can't i don't have control over that or even  oh well we have got to the right so ok so in this now we're in the uses i thought it was i thought this it could really spell out exactly what does this use really mean so that's housing for households that sort of thing households who are sixty two years of age or older because households don't really have a single age i would say households including at least one member sixty two years of age retire for where we say like mentally and physically handicapped children are ok but children are not like i don't know how you can i don't know if we are legal to save especially for now down to fifty five people people are going to have to take develop and such to develop like there's some sort of retail convenience store but also recognizing that they don't need that that a full scale c s s there isn't necessary limiting to two thousand two percent of the total player of the development concerned that those uses make sure to make sure that they were not open to the public that only open to those that lived within the development so that's what this sort of tries to get out is to say that you can have th significant limited to the size i mean the other piece i was even thinking of is if if this is even something you want even have an ear if you could even just say two percent of the total film and or fifteen hundred square feet whichever is well you needed her dresser yeah you need maybe even a barber shop you need a little convenience store and a little gift shop so i mean seriously that's  twenty five hundred is a good size so not more than twenty five square feet so it should say that in such a van this may provide convenience retail and personal services personal services you know fine i mean it 's actually like if you look at the smaller storefronts or work public road and all of those ones there those are about a thousand square back that's a little bit under it and so these things would be grouped together so you would have the hair salon and the barber kind of together and the other thing in the store and you have in you have a small c store and convenience store which would be another seven or eight feet it wouldn't even be as a small and the about twenty five hundred square feet and that last make any sense out of yes i'm sorry i you know went because i was trying to understand how the retail involved you know i mean separate the skilled nursing care and i didn't  and she'll also include services the system really also needs may also include may also provide services including without limitation so i tried to since i saw my name there right to work on that section and i didn't totally get there but the and under building design detail providing high quality material so i think that's kind of wrong built with quality you have dealt with real with high quality material to grow it back up to scale know because i mean the character it may well be that something that works best over here would be different than what we have in other parts of town only to find the quality of  yeah but the important thing here is is that you're reducing the perception of vulcan mass from the residential neighborhood southeasterly of the overlook the district and i wasn't sure i looked at other design well let's come back to that so under external materials from the parents i had building shall be designed to avoid using reflective material such as porcelain enamel sheet metal and while material shall be more have the appearance of natural materials such as wo so you want to say see what's the phrase i'm looking to insert there it's a whole sentence kind of way at the and maybe at the end of that it says that this should have oh yes ok so this is this section here but one of instructors was that it was trying to get out what historic district commission had asked to be considered that some kind of bonus been given if you try to preserve that building and board discussed it and said they rather have a little flexibility so to open it more up to you know not just there for you are but one of the whatever else let's say he's if we can encourage him to me taint the historic structure then that will help us in terms of going for the the additional  o it's not it's it's not a t d r but it's kind of like one should read that section and read renovated structure shall maintain the unique architectural details that really maintain that there is some funny language that made it sound like anything that was renovated have to use remember architectural details but ever was going for and then when i looked up lesson street i thought so i mean that's the thing so whatever they do inside to different things and in that building that we're talking about you know that's the one that's demised enjoy all the automotive thing that actually would be a great and title blah blah blah why do we need any of that because what you're saying here below what i want to just the planning board may waive some or all the dimensional parking requirements of the section if the proposed project effectively retains the architectural integrity of and section four this is pretty consistent with cushing no i recognize this although this is not encroaching but that's what we ended up with designing and that's what i felt was really important to put this in the air and tell people to bedrooms have comments before the board as we go forward because we still have a little bit of time to go on this so i would ask people to bring microphone up to and come forward and introduce yourselves and tell us that the the issues or six g three one the height of structures and what this was just changed to forty feet but i thought we were saying it could go to forty as long as the mechanicals are in the building so where is the i might have missed it but i didn't see that hard about the comment section i'm going to say among comfortable with forty feet being allowed without the cavity at that it's as long as mechanicals are in the building and i wondered if it's actually thirty eight feet that six feet high right there so that's going to be up yeah we don't want anything to be more than forty feet high so let's just say it can be up to forty feet with the mechanicals included within  you know that does the alternative energy thing of which you don't need  going to be to the midpoint so we don't we're looking we don't want that we want that to the to the ridge to the ridge to the ridge the maximum height of the building right which is which is what we've talked in the other iterations of thirty eight feet to the ri force that's good that's going to force them is it doesn't force them it still can be a square building because it doesn't say it has to be so it doesn't there's no incentive to do a slow proof here so as you say to the ri that could be a flat building that's why the height five height definition is to the midpoint right to encourage people to slope ribs this does not encourage people to slow progress so if you want to say if you want to put a max on the height then you say the building height of thirty four feet that's allowed max forty to ri five apartment building ok so we get one hundred thousand square feet or so let's say the most so let's say the units are a little bit less you know that so we're going to get over a hundred years right when you get over one hundred years so maybe they'll have retail in the first four they probably won't it'll probably be so for them they don't need all that in the first floor so what's your sense for what kind of a roof will they want to put  buy that if if i were them i mean the wellington is within the noise by law and everybody's very happy about seven years something to build a case so that's what i'm trying to get out of trying to get the mic i'm trying to encourage can i ask if you were to stick to the l b one which i'm supporting the overlay and thank you on that that the two parts would be what's allowed with i'll be one maximum and however that's worded on height because we're supporting that with the caviar being or it could be up to this with two more feet but this is spelling it out if the if we make it forty two to to the highest point there are only gaining one two foot well can we just say that the maximum height all parts of the building i mean can think it was a very smart approach to use an existing l b one that's either a track record not try to create a new a new zone so i fully support that i also support the age fifty five that you have put in and with it was in the previous drafts the the only other thing i want to mention is under uses and i couldn't be at add storage units a storage facility and a small boutique hotel as allowable uses and personally i can speak from experience as we rent a storage unit in waltham there's no noise no smell little or no traffic and little or no trash i consider a storage unit facility to be a desirable neighbor in south pleasant and i realize i missed the public hearing where that might have been more timely but i just wanted to ask for some consideration if it can't be done now may be later and for a boutique hotel i think there's a need for it in belmont so thank you thank you in regard to those and of anybody else's any comments i think those are interesting ideas i think we're a little far along in the process to we address that a different point thank you for your comment and your support somebody else want to come forward and speak gloria i'm gloria leipzig i've been a member of the housing trust for many years and i am a commissioner at the helm of housing authority and live in precinct five i personally again i want to thank and bring about some thank you from five or six months ago when both the planning board and the board selectmen adopted housing production plant that i think is one of the most important statements that the putting forward in the in the town has made in many many years and i think it certainly showed that the town has committed to creating more affordable housing and i think we need to maximize the opportunities we have i believe this is one of those opportunities i'd like to i believe that the way the languages at the end of this bylaw speaks to the inclusionary zoning by law and i think there are some assumptions being made that i don't worry a little bit about that we're assuming that if it's more than forty units fifteen percent of those units will be affordable however if someone decides in there and i know that i heard the presentation about the assisted living and it was quite large and certainly would be above the forty but the retirement community could be at thirty nine and there would be a twelve percent i think that we need to if it's a overlay district i would hope that we could then just sort of over that overlay  the commitment to the higher standard of fifteen percent for each development to be affordable and i think then we would need to also hopefully in the future look at the inclusionary zoning bylaw in general for the entire community again i'm a little concerned just now hearing about this forty feet maximum i certainly when i saw the forty feet i'm assuming that's at least three three stories high but now if we're talking about imposing i don't know that there i defer to her about how much enclosed mechanicals how much space that takes how much square footage but i am a little of concern about how that would impact the size and scale of any of these potential new sites that's just a concern but i would ask you to think about your concern that there might be the projects might be too large or too soon i think it be too small if you're saying that you know you've got you know i don't know four to six feet in mechanicals enclosed mechanicals and that's the top point of the building you know so if it could be you know thirty four feet plus six feet of mechanicals you're at thirty work well ok and i know this is going to be you know every every project will come under your review but i'm just you just saying that this is one of my concerns that this is all of a sudden going to reduce the scale of these developments and if we don't hit forty is definitely going to reduce the scale of the of the of a number of affordable units so that's that's a big concern under the current bylaw also again if we hit that forty fifteen percent of the units in the fore in the assisted living or the retirement community would be affordable however what i would like to ask the planning board to consider and perhaps not in the bylaw but certainly when you are looking at all these individual basis that we would also i would ask that you look for a commitment from the developer of the provider that there is a plan to ensure that services in these communities are affordable especially the assisted living  otherwise usually when you look at assist i'm concerned that when people look at or consider affordability for these assisted living units we're going to look at the basic services that are provided when someone walks in the door however as people age in place more services are required and how and i think there needs to be some mechanism that the provider developer is taking into account ahead of time for how those additional services are to be affordable going forward i mean i think the last thing that we want to do is see that a senior is going to be forced out of their home at you know sort of the the last few years of their life there are several affordable assisted living communities in massachusetts and there are ways that this can work but i think all of us would like to see answers to that question from the developer as they pursue this development opportunity  so the other question i had was about the comment about retail within the these assisted living or retirement communities i would hope that that little bit or retail or any retail that there isn't some little kaviak that they'll put up a little grocery store in there or gift shop in all of a sudden we've got mixed use and we're down to ten percent so i hope that the bylaw would reflect that that we that the people other people talk about this include in terms of the overlay this is this is the end of our process and this is exactly what i said to judith which is that's an interesting concept and i don't know how much i disagree with that but this is very late in the process and we've had public hearings and that hasn't come up specifically in the public hearings so we haven't been able to weigh them so i don't think at this point we're going to include that here you can see all that we do it i would say that i think that the new you know in the house of trust anymore you're out of the housing trust and talk about that and you know make something decide how how you want to change that and apply that you know in a town wide kind of basis th specifically now and so that would apply to any of the overlays if you wanted to buy that any of the overlays and once that sort of would be in that kind of a mode that would apply i mean once that begins and that gets passed that would apply to any development that would be built while that's once that's approved that's the way to go  housing study committee and things like that and done my own work on affordable housing personally with my husband to help get the h p p happening and i'm just thrilled that we're finally making progress on this i went to a bunch of meetings at the very beginning of the south pleasant street i missed a lot along the way i don't understand the technical details as much about an overlay but i'm just really happy to see progress moving towards some kind of assisted living some kind of senior housing things that we desperately need in town just today i was at the farmer's market for four hours in the rain talking to people who showed up and one man said he'd really consider leaving selling us house and moving if there was a place for him to go and belmont something reasonable well built a lot of comments like that it happens all the time we keep losing a lot of our members in the league of women voters who can't find a place to move to when they want to give up their house  we just need more of this and i thank you for finally doing this i agree with you and thank you for your comments i should just say in terms of forward housing i mean you know mostly family neighborhood and i was talking with one of my neighbors the other day who's over sixty five and she shares an apartment with another woman i think she has a roommate there  is in a triple decker her limb lowered she believes is going to conduit so it's a three unit one there's no protection in terms of she's retired i think she's on a pretty fixed income and she said to me i'm very frank you everybody i appreciate it more in the forty feet there's a lot of ways to build it so that the mechanicals or the net without without going without you know no builder is going to reduce everything to thirty four just to support six feet yeah it's almost nine thirty right half way just barely over i think we should make further progress on this have to yes i know we have to go are you going who's going it is spencer we should because if it's more it's like it's barely walkable for this a little bit more you can you can walk there now you can you might get run over but you know when i read my bike i didn't ride the bike tonight i ride down on southwest street choices that are but you can't right that it's too dangerous you're on page nine first line of a small room all for delete the because you have parking in different places you know you're up to two blocks you're free to now you know he's still like a buck fifty yeah right i see one g there jeffrey yeah second mind the word long at the end of that first paragraph under eight i think it should be outside development project storefronts not just addressing just a singular store fro of middle here there's one thing i've been meaning to catch ok so the electronic copy here ok now we tell you about a on the next while he fixes that the next section here i thought i agree with i thought it was great that that we actually got the materials i thought i think was theirs comment that they should be individual boards i mean  lumped together like that but i think that's the first time for any development i remember in town that we've actually seen anything caught a mock up because what they've done before you they bring in the materials and i think the only time that something wasn't street hikari called would drop materials but it was i think my sense is that although i don't want to speak for them that i think the members of the community that were interested in that i think that helped them with that hel materials were called out on drawing their color dramatically and so there was no nothing to touch that i think that that would be a good thing to have things to touch in and to put them in a file box someplace because when they build it year later you know looking at a drawing and say oh yeah when they're going out say yeah it looks like that so we're not asking him to build a material board right in this case what we're asking for in this paragraph is asking for sample materials yet back right here it's  bookends for design and site plan review instead of true pay shall pay a review fee and an amount to be determined by the planning board to cover the reasonable costs cut of the planning board for the employment of independent consultants to assist in the review of the application so you're cutting determined to be needed of the planning board and the first ten words whatever it is so that it starts with the applicants and delete any after but in front of independent eliminate determined to be needed strike that and then put a period after application and delete for design and site plan review know it's the planning board will will decide if they're qualified that's what i think that's what determine me is right because they may have somebody that kind of come in and talk about and do the same thing at the  fourth line down cut on its approval so it says the planning board may have imposed such reasonable conditions as it shall deem appropriate and where and i'd say when instead of where and then and then turn an application into applications and then it should be no reasonable conditions would ensure that the proposed developments are just i don't know what that sentence means no reasonable conditions ok that's what that we would impose will ensure that the post to bill i don't know what that sentence means consistent with the standard no reasonable conditions will ensure that the proposed development is consistent with that so that means that even if you put million conditions on the project it's never going to be it's never going to fill the objectives of this section you want proposed developments yes for a proposed development one of the we shall just make it consistent shall instead of will sixty two in there yes i think i have to do so this is as you can see there's a lot of red here so this is all new stuff so just make a deed restrictions make it start with the destruction or with deed constriction i'm sorry and then i would put the whole of the including the age restrictions including age restrictions in parentheses you get caught up including where the restrictions com including age restrictions call show room with the last word in the case where you have to delete for purposes but since it's going to happen more than once i think you would say that we are several jubal residents are just see sed and there are no surviving building permits and a special permit and building special permits it's the special permits that are based on it's the building permits that are based on this was from the questions where projects where they are not allowed to convert rental apartments to condos i don't know if it's necessary or not i don't necessarily understand