chapter forty a section five the belmont planning board will hold a public hearing on tuesday march twenty first twenty seventeen at seven pm in the board of selectmen meeting room four fifty five concord ave to consider amending the belmont zoning bylaws as follows create a new section nine point zero quote the marijuana establishment temporary moratorium and quote applying to all zoning districts that would provide a temporary period of prohibition to allow the town adequate time to consider whether to allow marijuana establishments and if so where and under what conditions the complete text of the proposed journey amendment is available for review at the office of community development in the town clerk's office anyone wishing to a happy to madam chair and thank you very much for having to this evening i'm going to answer your second question first that by asking for this moratorium we are in effect going along with what the state is requesting because the state already has realized that the way that the article that had passed was written as it was just was not enough time nor true definition of how a lot of this was going to be enacted so the state itself has already put off the final an act meant of the marijuana guidelines from january to june in order to give states more time to be able cities and towns more time to be able to decide what they're going to do with this by asking for the moratorium which simply following the lead of the state in order to take the time to do this is the right way so that's the first thing as far as a timetable goes what the town to belmont and you folks in particular need to understand is that if we do nothing this is going to happen anyway and if the state does nothing the way that the law that was passed was written there the question was is that any medical dispensing site automatically becomes a recreational site which of course is what they're hoping for is and you sort of get a freebie and are able to expand your business and it and we would be required to allow medical marijuana dispensaries in the town anyway because that's already was asked before the scheme so if you work it backwards it's to the town's benefit to do this early and often because it's going to happen to us anyway the second reason that we should be addressing this is that it was written in the question that the towns are allowed to add two percent to the sales tax of any sales of marijuana within the town confines it does not happen automatically the town has to vote to do it and so again if we do nothing we're losing potential two percent in the same way that you know there was a sales tax added locally for the food in town exact same type of set up for some reason they didn't make it automatic you have to do it yourselves so we'd be losing revenue on something that is going to happen anyway why in the world would we do that so that's the reasons that it's important to address it and it's the reasons to have enough time to do it properly and be able to get the guide from the state to see how they're going to set up the slice ensure the states are the ones that are ultimately going to be handing out the licenses that's what's a little different it's not like liquor where belmont decided we had x number of these licenses x number of these licenses and we'll sell them accordingly the state is going to decide what the licenses are and then we decide how many we want and where are we going to be putting it is the position of the board of health and obviously we've talked about this a little bit that the town of belmont voted almost sixty eight to thirty two on the positive side of this question so in our minds the town spoke fairly clearly that they want to legalize recreational marijuana so in our position it's not a matter of of what if we have it but how we have it and that's the approach that we're kind of taking our oversight is going to be somewhat limited and some of it is very strange for instance as you know marijuana is going to come in kind of two flavors is going to be the smokable type and the edible type the  brownies gummies lollipops we have no oversight over we're not allowed to inspect the for the production of the food which is a little strange but it's the way that the state has it set up so it's going to be more like us controlling tobacco that we're going to be monitoring the licenses the license the actual fees in the likes of be in all likelihood collected through us and it certainly if there are violations will be the first ones through the health director in our inspectors to go through there so that's how we kind of vision of belmont sort of running it from  there just one question about the timetable so does the state have firm date in mind as far as i know the latest state is june of two thousand and eighteen that's the cut off when it automatically goes to the medical dispensary is prior to that now now i do know that i believe framingham has already put in the moratorium we're not the first ones to be doing the moratorium i think framingham was the first just so you know so we're not we're not inventing the wheel here but we're really kind of going along with the most are going to good job that was we were well it you know though i will say just just for frame of reference that we brought this to the board of selectmen in order to alert them to the fact that we've got to be looking at us and i basically gave them the same thought that i just gave you folks and that's why i'm thrilled that you're addressing it because we really do need to hit the ground you know when the time comes and location obviously we'll leave it up  certainly you know and again when it comes time please avail yourself of the health department office as far as exactly what these places look like or what they do we do have information that it's going to an interesting thing you get a little variety of the sort of in many ways like  shops because i didn't know this but apparently you kind of go in and you can actually blend it like tobaccos and teas and things like that so but the point of the story is that you know as you get further into it you want to know what you're approving and we can give you a little more of an idea of exactly missing that's a good thing to check with george  so they are headed in yellow just to distinguish them from the rest of the track changes a number of them just address instances where we have the kind of li within the within a provision of the violence and even them with some i call ends and then and before the final in a list as we were editing things got added and moved around and sometimes we had commas sometimes we had some icons and sometimes the and wasn't actually before the last item in the list just by virtue of all of our changes  also wanted to spring people's attention to there were a couple of places where we used and or and slash or and i wasn't sure that that was really the clearest way to draft the buy a lot so i took a stab at making the choice and hopefully spencer and jeffrey took a look at them and agree with those changes and joe had circulated them to earlier in the week i think that the ending or come in on it in the awning section so under section four page six and you'll also see just as an aside some of the other yellow on these pages is that i wrote out inches and set of using the hotel mark just because we wrote out feed and be so under four a that valence section instead of the maximum letter and or symbol height should really be the maximum well sometimes it's a little unclear i think which is why we stick to did and slash fo he have any strong feelings one way or another they prefer i haven't and or it says whichever you have including the having both yes including having both thank you i think  fine i had either way i don't i mean it shouldn't and i don't think it affects really in that the fact of the byelaws at all it's just one of those construction issues you know we've we were either is fine just so except as may be provided in section five point two if thing we were at least i focused on when i heard that on shorter periods of time or question of longer than ninety days is on page five of the blue with i think it's that noncommercial signs are allowed to be for longer than ninety days and not was to speak to the issue of identify them ye we had i guess allowed for a special permit right for someone to come to the planning board for a special permit and town council recommended essentially that what we were providing for was not really a special permit because we hadn't laid out the guidelines that we would use to determine whether a special permit should issue so in place of that has sort of recapped arised i think  fully satisfy is our intention but in in the form of a way of her of the requirements of the by a law rather than a special permit which is to gives us a little bit more leeway and doesn't require us to walk through i think or set up a series of guidelines which would be very difficult if you have an awning that essentially stretches across the entire facade of a building and hangs over both doors and windows that the height limit for how for how tall the slope to go would be limited by the height of the window  and you're going at fifty percent of the maximum of the window or the door the window is set of eight years now you have a mother you have a daughter that's technically eleven in this fifty percent of the love there would be on this one here this is what that would be a potential waiver if there were concerns about how the how this provision applies an odd situation and that's why i mean i think as it reads now if there were if the awning work were going across the building and covering the window and the door for above the window and the door then as this reads i think whichever is smaller is what you have to keep to the right yes and so that's so it's clear and if somebody has got small windows i'd say they've got a colonial facade of business right so they have just like residential side windows as opposed to giant plate glass and that's potentially a problem for them and their cars and they'll come to us but otherwise it's probably you know the big plate glass windows are not going to be that different in height from a door height so in those circumstances it should be make a motion we recommend the proposed by law to tell meeting with the proviso of the changes that we have discussed and also my own personal words as you've done an excellent job and you worked very hard on this this is very tricky stuff thank you second  i have one last question it's addressed to you jeffrey you may well have answered this when i wasn't here last time but i remember we discussed the new building that was up at the corner of one of the renovated buildings on the corner i don't think we need to although i think that we either as a working group or maybe as a working meeting should do a run through of slides and make sure we have the slides that we want to have and it would be nice to have feedback from th and people might be willing to do it since they're shelling out any testing that has not having raised this issue prior previously jeffrey that is the best i can do on short notice good about having input from the group on the final presentation that we're going to put together that i think probably a higher priority for my respect him i mean right before the war everything doesn't it was not going to fire that much we're not going to be able t definition section people are view committee posed including a definition for demolish since we reference that in the by law itself so that will be added and another revision to the definitions the review section which is section so than that takes us to this fourth key issue which is section moving the exemptions from the definition of demolition to that section the fifth key issue today regarding these proposed this proposed language there are a few policy issues that came to light one being the definition of demolition which the h d c hasn't had a chance to review this so that they will be need to discuss how they want to move forward with that the second being exemptions recommended by the the committee go beyond the intent of the historic district commission so they want to review that and consider that language of what the h t c had in mind the third being the non transfer ability clause and lauren felt that after receiving feedback from the planning board and within each general bylaws section and then the final policy issue that lauren is actually looking for feedback from the planning board on is the issue of moving a building outside of belmont or movie get inside and whether that should be considered two different things if one is considered demolition and one is not and she would she's looking to for feedback from you on how they  yes well this is the first time i've seen the by large changes are you talking about the issue moving is that the specific issue well the census i mean if if the intent of the law is water to maintain historical significance structures within the town of belmont if they moved outside of belmont they're not in belmont anymore that would be my take on that so you know you so you move it to lexington harry you are so someplace else it's not in belmont anymore so belmont has lost obama has lost part of its history so i would i would say that the way we treat that i think is appropriate and reflective of that demolition and the whole thing that was demolished somehow we used it that's true that absolutely true and anybody who wants to go through the that was for each of these properties when it finds the characteristic it won't define a particular characteristic and it'll define the characteristics in some of what the house is or like it has a couple as it has this and all those i think the style of of of this and therefore it's less more specific players right and it is it is more it it can potentially one of the issues that we talked about is how much is enough and how much is too much but this sort of is going  other direction now because because we're compromised to come someplace in the middle which we thought was reasonable and lauren thought was reasonable  being i don't understand so i'll have to read this and i don't understand the intent what was the intent of spencer when they spoke about the intent was to is can do is as did they change that where we had a lot of time on earth on that but they all they did more they didn't want any of this contained within the definition so that is why they moved it to here to the review  confusion there can appropriateness that's taken care of but they're not a policy discussions was to be able to let the house live ok and so in that sense to be able to to say these do these houses the demolition delayed part is the last thing i shall not be applicable to because it seems to me if you you could change the roof and the siding and the character would be gone and  i think it would be better for people to have the freedom to take themselves off the list than to say you can change the siding you can change the route you can you can take your beautiful swan roof and turn it into have asphalt and you can put aluminum siding on your house that house is gone as a historic structure from in my experience directly with but better for them to just come in and say i'd like to have my house taken off the list sufficient definition my sense was from the meeting that we had clarified that and the last time we spoke with the board  sense was that the board was with us on that and it was reflective of issues that the board had brought up and it was responsive to those things and those were the issues that i heard from the board of from that point on in terms of committee to reconsider and it was actually put to a vote and they and the committee declined to put it on they felt like the the other members of the committee had gone to  town staff who feel like they're hard pressed to do the things they've already committed to do to take on of the responsibility of supervising the construction of this even if everybody had agreed with what was being proposed and they had not succeeded in connecting with the nearest to butters they had no no letters that had the had they they've been asked to provide letters of support especially from the people who look out there windows right at the at the park and and based on that it was a it was close to what it was like five to three or five to four against reconsideration they said we you can come again you have plenty of time this is not going to get done about does the board want to do that whole neighborhood analysis on that because it's going to be like an additional hundred square feet that may superficial reasonableness of the request but where would we draw the line if it went from a playroom to the room to adding a closet and a bathroom or it would you would be hard to draw the line and it the town meeting is expected to run for three nights but we will be in the first night