good evening this is charles clarke on the chair the planning board i welcome you to the planning board meeting of tuesday february sixth two thousand and eighteen we have an interesting agenda  this evening we have a couple we have three public hearings that are coming up on properties in addition we have three planning board discussions of zoning amendments  retail marijuana the housing production plant we will also be discussing the site and design plan review pullin ery of that for the high school and then we'll do some neighborhood determinations and that should be it for this evening as always i'd like to introduce the members of the planning board on my far right is that static call hegel and vice chair steve pinkerton order the first up is a public meeting on your public hearing on thirty two to thirty four upline road i move that we open the public hearing to have a second second non conforming structure in order to enlarge a second story deck deck already exists at thirty two thirty four upland road in a general residence owning district ok you have to come forward and deck roof was expanded to cover the first floor deck in order to prevent from running in the future as it already happened in the past additionally expanding the second floor deck next door houses there are budding houses have similar decks to that which was constructed expanded second floor deck for why did additional accessible outdoor space for the second floor unit of true story that blends well with the neighborhood and all the structures surrounding the hide of the roof is about one f lower than the original roof in order for it to cover the entire deck and the lattice will be installed at the base of the deck in order to prevent wildlife from o us what is the reason that you're here before us that at this point if you say that you have built the deck that conforming and everything why do you need us what are you coming to the playing for the town of belmont did not give me a complete approval after it was bill because they said that i had to fall to whatever was back you know th building the old structure so the old structure was about five feet shorter you know with so you built in the illegal improvements but we didn't realize that was illegal improvement because at that time when we will build a i don't know i don't want to point fingers or anything for the inspector came and they look you look and we actually you know showed  that your building came down and then july twenty fifth two thousand your your porch came down yes ok and you had a full deck on the first floor and you had a partial deck on the second floor correct it was just partial deck on the second floor excuse me and you applied to the town to rebuild the existing debt correct and you were given express permits on that on july twenty ninth two thousand and fourteen and  butter on august eleventh two thousand and fourteen came forward and pointed out to the town at that time that you were extending your deck beyond what you were given the expressed permit for your issue to stop order in regards to that and you were told by the town and community development and glen clancy you were told that you were not in conformity and they inspected the property in two thousand and fifteen and they found that you had completed the improvement with with out further communication with the town the photograph showed that you were in violation of what you were approved for so and this is been going on for three years i understand they've told you that you over improve this and you haven't done anything in regard in regard to that the town has gone to the clerk magistrate and one of the reasons i think you're here now is that they told you that they would prefer you to move forward with this rather than finding you to have this legalized in my summarising this correctly yes you know in other words you did you over improved what you were allowed to improve and for the last three years there's been a process of the town reaching forward to you trying to correct this and you haven't correct this now at this time you're coming before us to ask us to legalize it is that correct yes i am asking you to understand the circumstances i think we understand what the circumstance and i think the town was clear with you about what you could build and what you couldn't build now you're asking us to to consider legalizing this ok i think i understand what your argument also i would like you to keep in mind that the drawings were originally presented of what we will building the inspector in that i also believe that you were notified on september fifteenth two thousand and fourteen that under the zoning regulations for this is the g r geoffrey under the zoning regulations at that time for  r zone for the deck to be improved in the way that you did that you needed a special permit income before the planning board so you were notified on that the temper fifteenth twenty fourteen today is february sixth twenty eighteen yes it's over three and a half years ok we will yeah ok well it's ok do you notice you were notified it's over three years attempt fifteen twenty fourteen ok ok i was notified and you don't come forward to the planning board as i said i'm new to it i never done any of that in the past well my question is if they notified you that you should come to the planning board to get approval for that and they told you by telephone that you should do that why do you care so also in person and also ok why didn't you come forward to us to do over the last several defeat was why when i submit the drawings and inspect the came and saw that location he still gave me a permit and i started building and i feel that all the way to the end and as you said that of barter made inquiries at the very end after we were done with it and that only the inspector started looking into it and when i explained to him you know what or why i just told you about the dura building if it's fortunately built structure so the bottom line is that seventeen thousand dollars just to build that that way and also at some point when there was miscommunication became between the contractor and that set inspector my contractor just so at this point it's an illegal improvement and you're in violation of the zoning law and you're because you didn't go through the special permit granting authority for the for that additional part of the deck which would be through the planning board is that correct you're asking us to legalize rectally all i want you to understand that everything that was done by that legitimate licensed contractor who would not risk his licen because of that illegal activities that you have described but the bottom line is that you have a poor church you have a section of that poor church yet that is not in conformity yes and it's not to give you want today and you're coming to us and asking us yes to i'm asking you to legalize yeah yeah ok because they respect the actually told us this is how it is he can and he saw the footprints and deciding he knew what it was people nobody know about us have to notify him he was very knowledgeable inspector ok that's that's fine can we oh we're open to a public hearing now are there any neighbors that wish to comment on this neighbors or a butter's who wish to comment on this am generally ok with what has been built it is more only as kevin was saying it five feet from the second floor i leave that up to you guys  only thing i would like to see is the the lattice work on the bottom as kevin said to be finished and finish the top with the roof comes in i look right out at it what's the condition of that now i haul so the gutters haven't been completed well that's not part of the just not part of the that's not part of this ok i hear you could you'd like to see it done rather than not i just like to see it finished it doesn't need to in my opinion like i said i'm this is jeffrey you might correct that the improvement itself is within what we would generally approve for if we had gone through the special permit process that time would with the second floor have been generally what we would accept yeah i mean it's of this so the picture on the screen just to make this clear the check is asking me initially stopped here so you had like an l if you will like this and what has happened is it has been extended this peace is what's been extended and that need right do i have some comment on the point steve i know you took a look at this a bit how does this fall within the other decks and the neighborhood is it is it extraordinarily large for the area is it within the boundaries how would it fit you know it's very consistent with the others there for mediately abutting if you look at the six properties they range  r apartments in the back of the house the rear decks and porches the largest one is actually next door to the to the left it's about four hundred fifty square feet there's a big you have a comment on that no i guess i just asked jeffrey and in that the board's history here in belmont have we ever asked a property owner to remove improvements yes yes that has happened in just one with the range of you know but it does it does appear to be consistent with yes it's consistent in terms of size and use with what we see in the neighborhood car my general thoughts on this are that it is in a it is it is i guess bad form is the way you see it but let's just say it's not the right way to do things when you're issued a stop order no matter what the confusion is to go seek to remedy with community development and i know that that they spoke with you they came forward they gave you a way to resolve this and it's been over three years so it's been there has been over three years that this is gone forward it would have been much better to come forward to the planing board at that time we could have resolved this  what's so what's the penalty then that you have in this the penalty is to you in that you've had an incomplete deck for overthe three years so it hasn't been complete on the top you haven't put you haven't completed that so there's probably some deterioration in terms of it because of that because i'm not asking a question i'm not asking a question so there probably hasn't been  is probably been some deterioration because of that there's also your neighbor who spoke up and said the deck is generally fine to him but it has has to look up for over three years on an incomplete jack you know construction project basically although a very small one and there's no let us work in place on that so those are things that i think that have been detrimental both to your property into the other property and frankly to the town in terms of our time and in terms of the process and i don't want to see an example like this again in terms of things what saves you in generally on this is that what was built is generally what we would see in conformity with the deck in the g r all you had to do is come to the planning board special get a special permit and three is of would have gone away ok that being said i'm in favor of legalizing this and i think it's time to  if nobody else wants to you need to speak before we close the public hearing come forward and introduce yourself or forty one drew road you know i think i can i'm ok with it you know it is you know one thing i would ask is that we put a time constraint on finishing it yet because as you said it's been three years been looking up my back window for three years i'd just don't want to be number three or eight or whatever we can put a special condition on that deck on thirty two thirty four upline road subject to the the deck being completed in terms of the roofing and the flashing and let us the latest work do  a motion a timely fashion in a timely fashion i would say within three months whether ok thank you the thank you so did you just make a motion steve did you complete the motion or complete the mission to complete the deck on a five to thirty four by subject to completion by  before us for a three year project that could have been taken care of expeditiously thank you the next public hearing is for fifty three raleigh road which is a two story addition in the general residence just refused to take it in would you read the notice notices here by given that the belmont planning board will hold a public hearing to alter a non conforming structure plot size five thousand square feet allowed four thousand nine hundred eleven square feet existing and proposed in order to construct a two story addition at the side of the house at fifty three raleigh town our neighborhood fantastic and really you know we've got two or three other kids just honors from their neighborhood so it's just it's a place that i want to be i want to be a long term that's what got us started thinking about our house we're definitely one of the smaller in the snow and it's one of the things that we want to try to address and you know at the same time we address that you know we've got three pretty small bedrooms upstairs to have a closet that would allow us to have the kids in their own room instead of us using the closet right now you know basic you know our first thought was right well at least you know expanded that deck area so we don't we don't getting closer and you know i guess my understanding just you know the reason that we're here is that our lot is four thousand nine hundred eleven square feet not five thousand but there's nothing that we're proposing that doesn't meet the current zoning bylaws right so so if we were a five foot lot we wouldn't be here right so so but we want to make you know one of the reasons i went to the trouble of hiring david and getting a really good architect is we want to do it right you know this is a place i want to live for a long time i want to look good in the neighborhood you know it's stucco there's a lot there's a lot of you know details that i want someone special to do as an engineer professional engineer i understand when i need help right i need professional help in a lot of ways psychiatry not withstanding but but you know david someone who's the only you know did it so it was it was built very much like a house you're trying to flip not necessarily like a house that makes a whole lot of sense to live in right so like the entrance on the back of the driveway will turn into a bathroom so we could have you know for about their well you know said he live in no so so the bathroom into a sort of a very logical entrance because you know we pull our car into the driveway and that's where you'd want to i want to enter but right now we have to go back to our front door and enter right into our living room and you know when you have six inches of snow on the ground that means you know chaos so you know our ability to sort of create a mud room there move our kitchen down a little bit and basically move the dining room into where the porch area is is a really natural extension of what we're doing you know and we you know we're able to create a couple of nice features to with because you know we are obviously close to our next door neighbors it's you know a lot of small lots so you know we're putting the windows up high so they're not looking at us we're not looking at them does right now when we stare across you know we're sort of looking at each other so it allows us to create something that's a little more private which is nice you know it just it just allows us to have a kitchen and you know we still were able to keep the small powder room but we've got a mud room we can we can take the kids out we've got a dining room that i think is functional and we always want an island in the kitchen a place where you can eat i these are sort of basic basic human wants in terms of the house and you know we'd love to have an office you know a place for the kids can do homework and where we can you know we can retreat to when needed so we tried to you know we kept pretty pretty closely to the footprint you know we are moving out in the back a little bit but again all well within the zoning restrictions we're not anywhere near the setbacks you know even the even the overall requirement of law coverage or of less than the overall law coverage so you know it feels very in character with the neighborhood and we were careful about that you know we walked around with david we looked at other houses and you know that we want to make sure it made sense so you know i feel i feel like it's a it's a good ad for a house we're not changing the number of bedrooms it's not you know turning  what i'll say i don't i don't have strong strong opinions on the landscaping like if you told me well you need a five foot box with here i would say i'll put a five foot box with there you kind of let me know but we're just trying to have some screening like a lot a lot of the landscaping in front is existing stuff but you know we like to lance even that's one thing when when our house got flipped it was by his landscaper so he spent a lot of time with us so we're going to keep that that front piece and then just making sure we put appropriate landscaping along the side  you know i think that's something you know in the in the full disclosure i had some of our landscape architects and b h p just helped me put something together so i didn't look completely down and we've put this together but if you put it there are specific you know things that you think we need to we're going to take a look at the metrics in a second this on this i believe so you're basically your total living here and now is fourteen hundred twenty four feet and so you basically that has proposed or all within the requirements of the zoning i'll just take two seconds and just and just talk about some of the metrics which is how your property fits within the neighborhood oh yeah yeah yeah yeah so you can take a look at it out you know i'm going to feel like i get yeah so basically you have a forty nine hundred twelve square foot lot now the total living area which is the metric that we use for a bigger house in terms of the neighborhood and the neighborhood include some two families and things which we've defined is the area around you your watch size is under the five thousand and they are a little bit think that in the lots are a little bit bigger the total living area is a little bit smaller than what you propose but more than what you have it's seven hundred twenty two square feet the f a are for the single families which is the florida area rachel like how big it sits on your lot you're a little bit less than that and you fall within the bedrooms and the story so you sort of your rate within the neighborhood overall and for the one families which includes some older ones you're pretty close  so i guess it so that sort of where you are in terms of that in the board will consider that i think we need to open it up for any any members of the public would like to address this if you come forward just introduce yourself give us your name in your address and whatever comments you have i'm jeanne jeanne divine fifty two raleigh road neighbor across the street i look at their house every day they look at my their house is beautiful now  they're one of the only ones that have not filled in their porch all the other ones in the neighborhood have done but we love having them in the neighborhood and what they're planning looks to be an elegant solution for keeping them there so i wholeheartedly endorse what they're doing i think it they're an anchor in the neighborhood in fact they're i've been there longer but they are the people in the neighborhood together around their children and what's happening so i think it's good that they're sta one thing is that the h p ac units are not going to be within code there they can't be in the side set back and the where where you've placed them right next to the areaway there that's in the side set back so we've got to get you to move them around to the back probably below the kitchen windows or do something clever with the steps but they had can't go on the sidewalk up there it would be great if you had enough room there'd be a perfect place and you string them well but what's playing in neighbor beef would be fine but there is a standard that h b ac equipment not be visible and i'm concerned that your h v ac is under that thirty six in charge you might need to go to forty eight inch boxwood in order to screen since i just had a quick question on the design experience where's the access routes from the basement where the ball is the site the side stairwell if you look at it it's actually easiest to see probably in the landscape plan we close the public hearing for fifty three raleigh road doing your second second on favor do i hear a motion with the conditions that we just will read the notice notice here by giving that the belmont planning board will hold a public hearing on tuesday feb sixth twenty eighteen at seven pm in the board of selectmen meeting room town hall four hundred five concord avenue to consider the application of belmont books chris evans i had and kathleen crowley honors for a waiver from the signed by law under section five point two point two of the zoning bylaw to install a projecting sign at seventy nine minor street located in a local business one zooming for zoning district to the public hearing is open with the applicant come forward introduce yourself and explain to us why you're here like christie is a one of the owners of bum up books businesses are opening up next to us we have one of the issues we run into constantly is there's a ton of people driving through belmont every day and yet we still get people saying oh i didn't know there was a bookstore in b t we have great signage in front of our store and i think in general center works well for businesses but it's a high traffic street and people driving through and even people walking through can't see what's there and so they you know if they're facing our store great they see our nice big sign with the bear and the books on it when not if they're driving or they're bicycling or walking up from the train station they see nothing we're hoping to do is get a sign out as you can see it's kind of a classic look same thing you would find in pretty much any nice new england town it's not huge it's think it's two point five by three point five feet it would be  fairly high up on the building has to be over the awnings because there's on ngs on on all the shops there and just it's just something to come out a little bit from the building to let people on either end of the street know there's a bookstore there and we're hoping that you know it kind of fits the character of the town and won't be seen as too much of an intrusion on sight lines and whatnot do you have an awning on the store now  that whatever's in the permit it would be that would be the actual materials ok is there let me open this to the public is there anybody from the public that would like to comment on this i don't see too many people in the audience  but this wasn't one of the issues that was addressed with respect to the issues that were done at that time so this is not omitted it's not considered it wasn't considered and the last under the last review of ri law so you're allowed so you're allowed in this case they already have the signs at the from the building there right here here about those right or you can do the one blade sign but to do both of them you either require either apply for a special permit or now that you've instituted this waiver process you apply for a waiver in order to allow for both the wall sign and the blade sign long as they signs are an important part of creating a downtown feel and especially where you've got a whole new building a complex down there like some people probably don't know to walk you know i don't have heart of i don't know if you're interested i have a couple photos taken from the street showing you what the what the difficulty is sure sure please come for pretty far down the street there yeah you know it's at the other end i don't know that you'd be able to pick out a no but i had my point was that any of the stores really other thing you really i mean if you're driving along you really would not be able to pick most him out if you're paying attention to where you're going they really point is that it's a busy street and the last thing we want is people kind of looking around like this for the for the bookstore or or any other store really remind me jeffrey in terms of the square footage on the side if you do a blade side in the flat side is there square footage that you have to be then we were we went through this process for two and a half months it's confusing even to us sometimes it very detail i n we only a few weeks ago were with friends driving past and the bookstore came up because we had been to meghan marshall's reading and had shopped it the christmas and these people who are readers they didn't know the bookstore was there yet i'm all in favor of doing whatever we have to do by approval or waiver to to make thank you folks for more visits so basically in librar speak you're asking us to put binder in place right there you have a comment on this i was curious about why it was placed there and i look at sort of the architectural elements that the landlord will not let us drill into ok so that that's one of the main reasons the other is our choice was i would put it on this in or the near and we felt it would be actually more visible more useful at that end on the end know what i would argue is more oriented towards the car that you know i mean i understand it now yeah we don't really have to drill into that architectural feature but that's my if we didn't have cars in mind when we placed that there was purely teeth architectural restrictions in the landlord instructions i think i would be happy to put it lower if we can but but there are too many other things in the ways and favor of doing what we can to encourage the commercial districts in town are my only concern and i'll raise this issue and the board and but address this and maybe we do this on a case by case kind of basis is that will we see additional applications to us for science like this and what will what will be the result of that  your street now i know this is tempered by the square footage of the sides so you can only go in a certain size and that all of these will have to come to us either for a waiver a special permit they'll have to come through us by process that's the only issue i raise an does the board with the board like to address this or do you think we deal with this on a case by case basis i have a i like the s come into town because that is north europe you have a nice white background and these really colorful signs and that's one of the first things i noticed foodies on the other hand have to read sign on a written wall which is i mean that's a completely different kind of concern so i i don't find this hard to see i'm not texting while i'm driving i'm looking around and things but but but i understand i understand the issue here i i shared shocks kind of so it makes me nervous that if you're going to one like this i'm certain the dealers is going to want something because they're a smaller forefront and there are others down the road that have you know similar kinds of issues it's a legitimate question i totally understand it's not it's not anti social concern that i have to bring to this i think if you know for us one of the things that you know aside from the driving issue and i prefer people not people looking they're driving but as i said if you there's been so much construction on this in the street that a lot of people just gotten used to their not being anything there and i think one of the concerns we've all this your store owners have had is what can we do to put to let people know we're open for business on this end of leonard street that will happen over time i'm sure but we thought that you know sort of a classic looking plate sign like this would be a good thing for people who are not familiar with a town to say oh there's something interesting down there but i think the alternative to not a sign is a high is if you're seeing there those awnings block your line of sight exactly was that a normal plate sign level you wouldn't see it from that and right you know it's true i mean i see that you know one question about the sign itself i read that it was it was the heavy foam i didn't hear of unless i misread it that's all i saw was that it was a foam and i'm innocent rather big sign in a sense and would make quite a easy target for the north and if we do get applications for plates signs across the building are they all going to be up at that high second story level and is that what ultimately we're trying to do with way for all the store fronts on that building to the ones that would come through after this this right that the landlord make provision to you know for all three of they be done in a coordinated fashion and that we do seek i think as common is dead on almost a pretty high how high is that that's on the second that's like sixteen seventeen feet i would i mean that looks like an owning for lawyers office and yet there's i mean obviously you said books and again i love the sign so the trick is just trying to make it work for those the placement and i know you say make sense to me have it i'm not sure whether we will be able to place it somewhere better anything that will bring it lower is going to be on one of those architectural  pillars there's no place where it is right now is that wall that was built inside the building and there's a metal plate inside for the sign the landlord has no trouble there's drilling holes in there he does have trouble with us drilling on that column there which her or a bracket amount that brackets the columns or something that's in the land i think the landlord this is going to help keep businesses in business and it's been the landlords buildings that would be the reasonable assumption in my getting the sense of the board tell me if i'm wrong about this that we generally in favor of but we'd like to see it come down so maybe what we'd like to do is continue the public hearing have you go speak with your landlord see if you can make some adjustments in the i don't this will come back and talk to us and we can also at the same time consider for ourselves the implications of allowing this along the path so we can talk about that so jeffrey when can  so i was going to make a motion that we continue the public hearing on till what's the date jeffery to from now march since march six us with renderings that reflect what we've talked about in this do i hear a second on this second on this ok so we've continued you for a month so try to project from what you've come grab a couple of chairs and come forward here we'll give you microphone and you can talk to us about this thank you you guys are the hardest working people  ahead thank you for you those that don't know me my name is bill vall i chaired a high school belmont high school building committee as who co chairs with me and we thought it would be a good time to introduce you to the project and talk about maybe the process for the short term which is what we're focused on right now the project is in feasibility and moving into schematic design to a point this year where we are going to work out a project partner and they're happy they're providing funding for the design and construction of this project we have agreement with them for funding of eligible cost to killer percentage that we're working out so we've already submitted our first package to the m s p called the design program which established basically the parameters of the project as well as the study solutions that we wanted to look at if you recall through reading or hearing about us there are three design configurations that we're looking  for the classrooms the classes that's the current one through twelve and eight through twelve in a seven through twelve and super dead of failing in the school committee of doing a lot of talking about that so i will go into it in addition then the building committee look  at design solutions of the riding of those that would suffice for those three configurations i will tell you that if you didn't hear about it big news was that january twenty third the school committee voted to select the configuration of a lot of deliberation public meetings that that's going to be a seven through twelve facility and then the building committee chose a design option that is essentially a minor renovation and a major addition to the site and and that is this diagram i would see two point four numbers really don't mean anything other than we thought it is a structure on the screen and so this is what we are going to be focusing on now from now until we finish our schematic design we are currently in the last few weeks of the next phase of feasibility called preferred schematic design and and that is where we're teasing out this solution with a little more detail we're compiling all the documents that the s b a requires and we're submitting that for their internal review and eventually their board approval which is in april but we the parameters are separate all the costs are drilled down and known logistics on site are are all set schedule is is the find and essentially we come to a project funding agreement they say that's it changes after that something they will not want to hear about so we have a little bit of a challenge on our hands we clearly are not in design development or construction documents but we really need to have that level of discussion with a lot of stakeholders including you folks and so in our discussions more recently we said let's let's talk about what that means and how we might go through a process so that it's both beneficial to you and to the the project on the belmont and then with a positive outcome we will be in design for most of next year with permuting probably towards the end of the year or early two thousand and twenty shovels ideally in the ground two thousand and twenty so you know it would come back to you for another whole year lot of things can happen in a year yes indeed i might still be here i don't know if you'll see well we don't know what the boy the boy changes yeah well so what pat and i would like to do is just talk and start all over again and i know that would happen and exaggerating but that's what our hope would be to come up with a solution that might work it's a little bit unusual and ask it is a big project for belmont so we wouldn't have certified drawings he wouldn't have complete this or that but what we would propose just jump right to it and we could talk about some details is that maybe on your april seventeenth meeting we would schedule a time we come back with design to well a big national firm with over two thousand people have one hundred fifty people in boston so they have the horse power to get this job done they are also doing a lot through virtual design so they have been modeling so if that beneficial they would also have some virtual modeling that they could present as well so that would be really the april meeting and the idea would be that we'd like this solicit from you comments things that we need to go back and work on things that  you feel are important for this project and stage and then we come back in a couple of months in june maybe june fifth jeffery or somewhere close to that would site plans of materials building floor plan sections rooftop equipment laid out and properly shown amassing models again physical virtual elevations material selections exterior renderings systems interfacing with buildings you know that sort of level of detail and and have a we have about a month after that to really try to wrap in any of your subset of comments that we're doing get him into the pricing get him into our documentation that goes into the state so well let me just walk back for two seconds just  for my simple mind so we can clarify the yes which is you're in basic the beginning of schematic design you've done stuff but from you have a one way to go for the commonwealth in terms of that so this tonight is the introduction to the project the beginning of the process with the planning board member we we spoke the other day about you providing us some time between now and the next meeting that that we have some materials of th planning to work in the in the early morning session or you know an on schedule one that we can go forward and begin to get our teeth in the project before your presentation on the twelfth and we would do that so these were thinking about a week or so or maybe two if you tell us ahead of time where we assemble this information and get it into your ear by that and i've already asked ed who's dealt with a lot of projects like this to take the lead for the planning board on this ed will help us along and we'll shepherdess through interest of this so then on the twelfth you'll make your presentation will be as much up to speed as the playing board can be up to speed on faster on these kind of projects so we can give you some initial feedback at that time and then as we go through the process we get to april in june you'll come back to us and you'll have more specific things you can get our commentary and we can go back and forth on this and now you're it'll so we'll be able to get as much as we can from what you give us so that when you go into the schematic design which you need to freeze things at that point right pretty much  site plan in design review so as you give us this will do as much as we can to get you our reaction and intice a patient that by the time next june comes and you have the formal proposal right you'll have your formal proposal that hopefully we will of the able to work together to answer answer the questions that will come up from the from the planning boards point of view on site plan design review so we're not starting at the beginning so hopefully that's what the beginning of this processes ok does that make sense it does look you know a couple things we we also talked about is the building will be four stories sixty foot sixty feet right and and then equipment on top probably pushed back from the edge still screen and so forth but it's a it's a divergence from what's there today as far as the height and it's also would be a challenge what we're hoping to be able to use this time at all three hundred hours and with parking process parking we didn't obviously stover but we did have an agreement about parking because parking for this i forget what that figure was that it was well over a thousand there for president in teachers with with the current park income but we're bringing seventh and eighth grade they don't drive thankfully but the teachers and that's supposed to not supposed to right but the but the teachers and staff too so we have to bring the that in there visitor allowance for that group and an increase of about five or ten for the high school growth so you know in total there's about eighty five more so if you add that we're somewhere  footage of the building is increasing by almost two hundred thousand square her actual current square footage is to fifty seven and we're going to four fifty so it's a substantial change the reason we're going up trying to preserve fields that's that's just that's just that's not just the goal has been to better distribute parking on the site than it is today for the fields going from you know harris field all the way to a softball field all the way east to the other side so so that it's mostly distributed along the back and coming across harris field and then also the parking that's adjacent to to the ice rink is now part of the county because it's going to be somewhat closer to the school and it will go to the campus it's on the campus or not at all on campus what a great opportunity also be shared for pool for the library for harris field football then so so better distributing parking for not only the high school but for all uses is something we're looking at and so in terms of the construction i remember when we spoke earlier you got to maintain the major gym gymnasium building for in the pool and the so so we could have been to ram a forever forever forever it only seems like that right you know the interesting thing with even though we're so again those overflow events happen infrequently and we don't really hear a big pushback on that so we're a status quo kind of don't bring like that said hundreds more parking spots to the site is a big push of we've had a lot of community outreach and there's a big push to reduce the number of parking incentives to bring bicycles and pedestrians more in the forefront of the transportation needs we're going to put the mo a tunnel and that in the projects not to channing so that is a different group that's working on that but we have embraced the concept and sure that when it does i say when it does happen in the future i'm not sure if it's this decade or whatever  wanted it to be part of our project the challenges the duration of permit ing and everything and just of it i mean the whole time we're funding is out there you know so but it's a great opportunity there's been a lot of traffic discussions that we've had so thus far and  explored to see how that can be accelerated that's being done by another group of people  morning meeting to look at the preliminary drawings that bill and patrick going to give us before the presentation so we can take a look at those and then we have the presentation will see the presentation but we will have already reviewed that material and so that we'll be able to respond to you having thought about that and talked about that and if we have time if we have a liaison we might even which is that you're right we may even engage in a dialogue you know sure that we're that you would know to notice at a regular hearing this we understand this isn't a formal the hearing but we would like to notice everybody both of the times that we come that's so that they will all be it won't be a it will be a public meeting may not a hearing correct i understand that distinction between yes but but we would like to do that we also will do it from all and in terms of you know the the things that if any of you have children in the schools you're bombarded with our stuff every day probably and and ellen christmas very good getting notices out for these things for us and we will continue to do that we've had an awful lot of public meetings we've had a very good attendance and we do have somebody who lives in the neighborhood who's religious about letting people in the neighborhood know what's going on and we discussed the site but it's just important that the people that are going to be directly affected be present and and hear what you all are saying will be able here early on and you can tell your wife the concerns are yes be because that it's better to know them before hand ups as you go through the process rather than us having a public hearing and we have the site plan in place and the sudden there are issues that come up so whatever issues that there are in this you're absolutely right we need to hear them and we need to figure out a way to address them so full disclosure if you haven't heard yet traffic is a big issue right now oh yes oh yes i  belmont i think that if we didn't have this school project traffic would still be a big issue right think it's probably what we have our next our next opportunity to discuss this in a larger format is with tact this week on thursday and will continue that discussion again in march because the real discussion that we had over one hundred people come to our presentation on traffic and clearly it's sprawled well beyond concord half of it is going up to all the other schools so the town has reengaged their traffic consultant to be part of that because our we can only go so far right and so i just have a collaborative effort and you have all the issue of the kids at lunchtime going to mama goose and coming back yeah yeah you should do it over that takes orders yeah that's over trucks so all seriously we we recognize that the very beginning and i don't know how that gets worked out but we are still we have added an entrance and exit on both ends of the site which is different than the way the campus works here with us throughout and where those actually terminate on the campus is still being worked out traffic is always an issue when it becomes an issue for these these kind of projects and meticul so these are the representatives of the of the housing trust you presented us the housing production plan i think our last meeting you had a very late presentation last night with the board of sled what right chance to take a look at the housing production plan and we enjoyed your and appreciated your presentation the last time i asked the members of the board to take a look at the housing production plan and have some comments i think that this one of those voices that doesn't carry their so you know i am very optimistic that's something i could see being done in a reasonable time frame  d you know i'd be interested in seeing if development in mclean has potential although i know it's dependent on the landowner so it's you never know what the interest is going to do you have any reactions to the housing production plan my initial question was for to be the housing production creation of the plan helps pretty much a difficult goal to achieve on the other hand who would have thought that we would have added three hundred sixty units or the three hundred fifteen units in the last you know five years  last two years when you include through oil belmont and the bradford units and i think those that happened and i think that there are potentially other sites in time mike i understand what you were saying there about the belmont center sites but i think there are other the carmel we've seen that the baker and ministration we've seen the general outlines of that it still has to work its way through the legislature there was some talk at some point that the forty b component might not be part of that but i think it will remain that it says it seems in any case though one of the things that's clear that's going forward on this is that communities will be if you make a movement towards increasing your housing production and fifty one units is a difficult number to achieve in douma we've got to unique events of forty b and project that steak and you know nine years to get into place and to produce that those a unique events and we probably won't see those again for a while but in any case though if there is a movement forward on that that begins to open up things from the commonwealth right in terms of the monies that will come from the commonwealth that they will incentivize towns to do that  because there are some opportunities it seems like it would help that you all agree with that absolutely were the plan because i mean it really feels like low hanging fruit compared with for example trying to increase density in the neighborhoods which is probably not going to be affordable  i mean there's you know we we've done our best to keep the you know to to make it able to to build smaller houses in these areas and in fact constrain people to building smaller units that are arguably going to be more affordable but that's there's only so much you can squeeze out of that little bit so that's that's all keeping families with children out of belmont which is a lot of what i've seen and in other towns it's trying to trying to evade that sort of thing and to sort of minimally satisfy the requirements of the state to get the ten percent i was wondering and it may have been in the i may have missed it as in my reading but have it has there been any thought at all of trying to buy down existing units for you know put to purchase restrictions and come restrictions on existing it's maybe in some of the units on the hill estates might five for well we have actually we're requesting three hundred fifty thousand dollars the c p a funds this year that will go to town meeting in may and that is a potentially some use that we could put to those  production plan i know it's been a lot of work this has been for five years in process in terms of this so congratulations on getting a draft and coming forward presenting it to us and presenting to the board of selectmen as well my general comments on on the on the house production plan is i think in in terms of emphasis i think the achievement of the fifty one units which is which is half a point you know in terms of that given the the built environment in  belmont and the lack of develop a full land in the short term at least is a difficult goal to achieve on an annual basis i think it's i think it's an aspirational goal and i encourage that and i think i think that we should aim for that and i think by putting a housing production plan in place and aiming for that it begins to open up money and it begins to open up opportunities and even if you don't hit the fifty one you don't hit the safe harbor i think that would be hard to do in the short term but it begins to open things up so i think in some ways that needs to be in the documents self there's some way to talk about that now in terms of specific things what you basically do i mean there's all of the socio economics and all of that the the layout of the town is kind of interesting in a way in that you have very dense development i mean it's generally dense unless you go up on the hill the venner even in sort of single residence areas they're relatively small lots compared with other towns you go to the g r district the way really square and as you go up to the g r they're very densely developed it's like it's like a west roxbury with that kind of thing it's more comparable to street car as suburbs kind of thing you have single families you have a lot of to my neighborhood in ways we square you have threes a long beach street and all those a densely developed areas one of the reasons that the g r zoning in the s r c zoning citizen initiatives came in place is because there was a perception that those areas were being over developed very large houses were being to not more people i mean the household size was the same  but very large things and so there so there's sort of a divide so what you need to keep in mind is there's sort of a development weariness in those areas of town there's also in those areas of town they don't count as affordable housing i don't believe but there are a number of non profits that have housing i don't know if they count or not do they come out of those that are ten percent it's it's within that if you can't if you go to i live on the corner of white and beach street just about there are one two three of those development within a five minute walk of me in either area and they're actually fine there's no problems that they're absolutely fine but there is a sense that those areas are over developed in terms of that where will we square for example in some of the g r s have borne the weight of some development more than other areas and part of that is because they're the more affordable ten parts of town and you can do things on that so that's something to think about in terms of general sort of zoning things that will be affected by this you should be aware that the playing board had a meeting not the playing so yeah yeah it's something like that whatever it is to me so we are beginning the planning board is beginning to look at what's more germane is well both are jermain both up south pleasant street and waverly square and in waverly square that the concept will be to make it a real square a village and where at the very beginning kinds of things and then other uses of pleasant street and when we get into the process more we will invite the housing trust to participate with us in that and as pertains to that just talk about the way we square per se sherman gardens there which the cindy had talked about and i've talked about this before there's a obsolescent both in terms of how they're laid out and in terms of dealing with the helping an elderly population two floors without without elevators i think that is one of the prim and i and the planning board will work with you on that to figure out how to redevelop that in a more substantial way where there's more density and more height there and to put more units in that place that work better that's just to pull in every kind of concept but i think something can be done in that and i know that  at some point in time you'll be able to get some money for a plan or a housing plan to be able to look we would we would recognise that that would be a place to look and in conjunction with the planning board that would be a useful exercise in terms of that so i think as steve has point i think things like that are low lying fruit the other potential development sites are potential development sites and i don't think you can say any more than that many of them are caught up in the capital needs of the town which will involve the moving of the police station all those other kinds of things so some of those monies are allocated but you never know what's going to happen in those things and you need to identify them whether you know there are you know a nine out of ten on a realistic scale or one out of ten i think it's useful too but then of  there will also be opportunities in terms of profits in town in terms of churches i mean or other kinds of things and i mean i think you've identified at least one i think there are other potentials in terms of those and there are a number of development tools that can be used to put those in place so i would say some wording in terms of this some realistic kind of goals but if you don't plan if you don't try to move ahead if you don't try to organize and get these things done they won't get done so as i've said before it's time to lift up our heads and look to see what we need to do is to sort of get people thinking and of your way and not putting down what we think are all of the alternatives but to kind of get people to think about other way you can talk about instances i would say try to be exhaustive no no i would say that those are live easter us used to talk about myths as things to think about so i would use these as things to think about these would be in the wheel house of what might be potential things but certainly not exclusive and certainly not that something is going to happen in terms of them so i mean i would i would for frankly if i were you on my side i would have a list of ten or twenty what we've suggested is simply moving the neighborhood over one street so that's what we're looking at obviously this stuff here on brighton street commercial is all commercial so that actually all comes out so that's the proper thing that's the neighborhood that we're looking at for that property and you know the neighborhood pretty well it looks pretty consistent with what's yeah what's there it's it's mostly to family he's the property owners looking develop to develop the property are i understand these are for the for the people in the audience here or people at home when we talk about when we define the neighborhoods here what we're basically saying is this is the these are the houses this is the area that we're going to use to compare the size of the proposed project with things that are actually existing at this time which gives us a framework to say does it fit in terms of size in the neighborhood is a little bit big or is a little bit small so this begins and this gives us a framework to begin to talk about things and so we saw this in the in the public hearing that came forward on raleigh where we saw what was proposed and then we talked about how that was in terms of the neighborhood so that's what we're doing in terms of  block between introversion and there wouldn't be much different more of the same yeah the mix of the family if anything i think of that block is a little bit more you know i think it's more single family in the family if you look at the edge here on underwood right yeah yeah you can sort of see just the shape of the housing really picking up a lot more food single family when you bring it right there particularly  you know there is no really other side to the you know the neighborhood and you know we have the other two properties around the road and this is basically what was for those two properties as well so this is what we're sort of thinking is make sense for this property it probably makes it probably makes sense and spencer is breaking them down between single doubles anyway yeah which makes it a lot easier thank you promote you which is a good metric on that and august i mean march thirty first which means they can start issuing licenses and able first so if we have no regulations in place basically means they can go in any commercial district in town so that's why you have the commercial map that's pretty packet that's right on the screen the selectmen have indicated at the moment that they don't want to entertain a moratorium there's still some question about whether or not there's even a vote of t well let me just preface this by saying and we talked about this that for you know roughly comparable type products like alcohol the placement of alcohol establishment is not within the purview of the zoning it's the granting of them they can be the commercial district and the granting of them is by the board of selectmen who would determine where it is going to go when there's some state regulations which are the the distances from schools and all that but within that perimeters it's up to them and they apparently would like us and it looks like other towns are doing the same thing that that plane boards are doing some regulation in terms of placement on these so it's fall on to us kind of by default in terms of that it's very difficult as jeffrey had talked about to to get a handle on this without really very much for the ca one mission people understand the moment and this began because the regulations have been issued here is that if we say no to any one of those four uses that that actually has to go to not only does it go to town meeting but it has to go to a vote of the town to opt out of that specific use so you don't want to do it when we're talking about if you don't want testing just say it just doesn't work testing doesn't work at all  and you say no one table uses that that would have to to go even though you may be saying yes to retail and the other ones but because you're saying no to one of the four principal uses has to go to a vote of the town you know where i'm not clear do you know of the four principal uses since we're going to have one license which would not have that then you say one license you mean one license for retail sales you're not suggesting one of those for now  there will be mean licenses for every retail sale so that one license to do anything for those in minimum one to do any of those four right that's right my understanding is the moment but again we don't have the regulations so clearly so is there any reason we wouldn't do it the way that we did it before or for the medical marijuana medical center medical marijuana it's a great question medical marijuana it was determ certain distance from a place where children congregate so ours now takes that extra step and says ok yes these districts but then we also say it has to it can't be more than three it can't be closer than three hundred feet to any place with children where the loading dock is you know so those two areas are really the two areas that medical is allowed no you're right you we could simply just mimic what was done for medical and do that for all of these different these four types of  i mean that certainly that's true make a certain amount of sense for through the uses but not for retail sales in l b one and it should be next store them to the craft beer store and it should be out in front and if they are where the police can see what's going on young and well again there's a lot to be said that  of that if you will as well is the fact that there are tax taxes that significant tax incentives to town actually can reap from this precisely so with retail sales you don't want to hide it and make it a shady at the moment that's a question before the board is you know you see what the zoning districts are spread out i mean one of things of that stuff about this town is that there's only districts are literally on top of the residential or converse or the residential literally on top of commercial cannabis control commission with which they created it was they were very expansive in their shots around this check talked about yoga studio as you know even bars that you could sit and smoke without you know mystery smoking publicly or at your home or consuming whatever but ever since the federal government trying came in and sort of overturned obama's ruling about not  prosecuting states for the legalization of marijuana that they've been there's been a lot of pushback on the commission just sort of honing back in you not get you know beyond ourselves at the moment but sort of get it stop wished and then let's give then we can figure out maybe they're on whether or not to expand it so just in terms of the for use three of the four are basically industrial type uses industrial but you know you put those and then so the question becomes essentially you want to put the retail use in a retail zone that's the question and and my thought on that is i don't have a dog in this fight one way or the other but i think if it's if it were allowed to use i think the best thing is sunshine i think if if you're going to vote to have it in your town you should have a great have here and do it quick and wait until we and not spend enormous amount of time or just get a framework to the put that on that and wait until we hear from the commonwealth and then we're either going to have a month to put something in but see i think i can you can do the public hearing after the close of the war morant but yes that's why i'm saying it needs to be done well in advance because you don't want you also don't want this there's going to be not there's going to be enough warning around march thirty first you don't want to do more because of that you're right you know and i suspect that what the commonwealth will too the reasonable man would suggest if you don't get your regulations in place until the middle of march you know we're going to let people go forward on the first of april i mean that i mean the country argument to that is that the cautious argument was which arlington i believe in a couple of other towns have done is they've done the six month moratorium we haven't it doesn't seem like belmont wants to do that as far as we can tell what we did the year we did the year we could extend it for six months yes we  say but we've been told that the minimum is one right but that doesn't mean you have to work so we could have ten applicants and we'd have to deal with i mean you know you could say ten yes to all ten i'm just i don't believe you have to we have put together something we actually do you actually have a public airing on this issue on february fifteenth which you'll notice the public airing of says in your packet it was done with a lot of assumptions made but but those can also  and you know it's this is just about the generals and district for those who are watching this is not about zingers and see certainly not about anything up on bell until the way that this amendment preparation has taken place so far is that it's actually there for tools that we've been using to come up with of the proposal several we discussed already we've gathered public input working conditions and he's conducted a photographic survey you know the performed after in the existing conditions about what exists exists today within the general residence districts  so there are eight questions we need every answer if not tonight sooner the better and these are them these are they these are them and we will do the presentation go through all of them right before a special permit is required does the planning board want to review small projects that make existing large homes larger is a maximum square footage cap needed to avoid large  properties from becoming larger via the buy rights square footage threshold cannot release valve be used to prevent small projects from getting caught up in the special permit process should single family properties into family properties be regulated separately will incorporate a language from the g r design guidelines into the by law curry eight clarity for residents and developers and then finally can then g r be used to increase housing density gets to as you can seek it's a lot of different questions you know decks account for twenty nine percent of cases that you've reviewed you know do you really want to be reviewing  single family into family homes you know we're assuming those who you want to review those but you know we need to get just one week priority and then the on average two families you know the average preferred is with forty three and it's for feed in for a single family is twenty two hundred square feet again those again speaks to the issue do you know is that are those properties you want to be reviewing or not we're presuming they are when we spoke to the public you can see the next slide is that these were issues that were raised now we only had twelve people so far provide input either at the public hearing or in emails we are always open to getting additional information but you can see that  feet when you break that down with to the specific general residence district the average south is twenty four fifty and then when you further break it down so that the average house general general house when you break it down to a single family versus two family you can see that the single family seven hundred in change and the two families twenty six hundred and change the average structure really bridge every structure correct what about so sorry let me go back so now that you know these are sort of the averages here and at what point do you want to start looking at reviewing application if you answered that you want to get rid of small projects now you have to establish when do you what size project you want to look at when when does that kick in similar to singers and see if you chose thirty when you so now you have again existing conditions is there's four hundred and four hundred fifty two families that are below twenty four and it's right for the there where you can see the numbers this gets the question of established playing a cap so if you say that a property can be increased by thirty percent is there a point at which point yet no thirty percent doesn't mean any more because we have already gone way too beyond that and what number that is in this case what it's showing is that there are forty fifty below twenty four and square feet and then there are  six hundred eighty eight that are above twenty six hundred square feet so this also talks to about if you instill if you adopt a cap what potential that means for special permit applications coming before that but square footage cops were illegal in most cities and so well we haven't fully so this is why we have these questions we have to figure out where the board wants to go with certain things we have not engage the town council yet in any of this but we didn't want to until we figure out what the answers are all these questions were there the question i have is not only that but we have a question is do you want to treat single family homes different than two families and i'm not sure you can do that either but again didn't want to engage town council until we heard some had some more direction from you in terms of what we you all want to see in doing that so this is  how many conforming there are with respect to single into family and so that was sort of the existing conditions analysis and establish as i said thresholds and all kinds of those questions are pending and how you go with those then we get to as i said the photographic survey so these pictures represent those projects that w withdrawn after the twenty fourteen amendments much had to do with the scale in size of the addition or the fact that it didn't fit in to the neighborhood in terms of style and architectural details then represents these are three projects that actually represent what has but what was approved by the board after twenty fourteen the top right in the big picture to family the bottom right is a component of the property on the right  church was taken down it became three lots and then it was so we've already this is just a recap of what the questions are in defining how you answer them depends on how the bottom was for  so what we're proposing is basically mimicking the structure of the single residency district which would get rid of small projects for the planning board to review and either make them by right depending on how big they are or require them to go before the zoning board of appeals additionally this also brings up the issue of the cap in whether or not if your property is already big to begin with and you're adding hundred square feet to it so you making it you know you're making this sore even more so or so to speak is that something you want to review or not currently this thing or since he doesn't have that sort of cap me well let me make a comment this week on this which is forget the cap these are all these are all very good questions that we need to think about yes one of the things in terms of we we want to make sure that it gets passed by down b and the points that it appears that the town is in agreement on and the neighbors are in agreement on that we maintain those and that we make relatively we need to talk all this but the changes that we make are relatively small changes to move stuff off our plate and into different places where you know it becomes complex just i know we need to discuss this but what i'm saying is we need to be we need to be careful that we're not uploading it too much understood understood ok understood but so what i'm always because that's what i've heard and so what i'm always thinking about is how to implement that yes i understand sometimes the inputs to the simplest statements of the most complicated to absolutely and so that's why we need to work this out in the right figure out how to  exactly and that's why i said it mimics the structure of the singers in c because the that meaning in in the town certainly bought into that structure and the and the single residence see learn from the i'm only saying that you need to be careful i appreciate that we don't go in the weeds in changes right we can certainly talk about all this will make progress but when we make the with the own thing when we input and that's what we do that we establish a thirty percent threshold and we put a cap of twenty four hundred square feet for a single family and twenty six hundred for two family again these are all things that need to be discussed and looked at further and spencer has done some analysis and shows why the thirty percent works and what's been approved or not approved in the past then we recognize that if you did indeed put a cap of say twenty four  upon a single family home do you really want to be looking at a month if they add a mud room to their property right so there becomes a release valve that we've suggested of being one hundred fifty square and again spencer picked up three project that you've actually looked act in approved and it shows you what the percent you know what the size of the addition was and what the chain the percent increase was  heres what happened spencer did some analysis of what happens if you apply different things in terms of the square footage before and afterwards and this is just additional mimicking the single as in see because this is if six different zoning in twenty fourteen it can it was six different zoning amendments and it worked we're at the moment only talking about is to the non conforming section we just went through and design guidelines and one of the things we heard a lot about is trying to get better direction to developers and applicants so what the design guidelines do are is try to incorporate to the extent possible those guidelines that the so i guess i find it hard to know without know whether there's got to be a relationship to the  interesting but i the one piece of information i'm missing is what size line or they are and what else is going around right now and what program i mean that's the other thing is that it was user to some extent relative to immediate neighborhood and so it's difficult to quantify some of the stuff in that way there we do have a kind of at the ancillary document that has as we need to have this kind of consistency yeah yes a successful meeting of are very much in favor of what his past and what is in the law so if you're on one hand shifting it to a different format is a good thing but embellishing it in the process gets a little scary to me in terms of trying to that should be the magic number so to speak so that's why the icons up i said but that doesn't mean that you know that can be something it's used this in your dialectical plus and you know and and the thing is what we will do we will end up having the core of what we had before we'll refine it a bit him we will allocate certain tasks to the planning board and certain other there ok and we just move something i think that's the way to go on this and all these things that we're talking about we need to address we need to be knowledgeable and we need to go through we need to put these out to the public and let's see what they say in terms of them and all of this will always work that you have done spencer this prepares for town meeting in the public process the more we know is better the more question is better  though party for that i think that's very and so we're beginning to in spite of the fact that we're all falling asleep we're beginning we're asking the question so why do you continue sorry you know that's a great no no no the only thing i would say about the guidelines w when this was initially dotted by and twenty fourteen there was some concern that there wasn't any real direct there wasn't any real direction in the standards in that there was a commitment to the to the main you need to go forward with it it just means that's why we're having this conversation because i don't want to drop the ball on something you know i don't want to get to town meeting and someone said well you said you all we're going to be back here we doing this issue and you had the conversation no no i mean in in terms of  the guidelines i think i think they're useful i have i think one of i mean it's how far do you go one of them and how do you interpret them and i think that's become one of the issues that one of the things that slow down the board f i mean i don't think i mean there are times when you know you don't like the way the windows look kind of like ok you can make it on that but you don't want to spend that hour now right and you don't want to spend you know if you don't like the way the want them to consider things in a certain way that that then has to be in the zoning law there's only board can't operate on a third of those guidelines are designed guidelines and aspirations if we if we're that what we just looked at said the the h b a c planning should be thirty six inches instead of saying shall be taller than the shelf fully screen whole because that change that is this is the language from this is the language from we're thirty six inches is number four that's a language the current you've adopted currently as a guide now what i've heard is we're going to look at just the changes for the back to the non conforming section not the guidelines