going to be a public hearing on zoning amendments for the signed by law and that will be our first order of business will then with the historic district commission proposed article on demolition to begin with item one and ask  public hearing on thursday feb sixteenth twenty seventeen at seven pm in the board of selectmen meaning room town hall four fifty five concord avenue to consider amending two section of the belmont zoning byelaw section one point four the definition for center for temporary sign and section five point two signs and amendments to section five point two include making minor edits eliminating the requirement of posting a deposit for a temporary sign regulating noncommercial signs making the regulations for standing signs the same in all commercial districts limiting the amount of window covered by permanent and temporary signs and establishing criteria for when an existing sign has to comply with the current signed by law new provisions to be added include listing the types of signs that are prohibited limiting the size of signs and awnings and marquees limiting the size location and duration of sandwich boards and requiring signs to be maintained these amendments are proposed in order to improve throughout town and to advance the purposes of the sign by law and zoning by law as a whole these amendments will place greater limits on signage and fill loopholes that currently exist within the signed by law the complete text of the proposed so any amendments is available for review at the office of community development and the town clerk's office and on the planning boards web page anyone wishing to be heard on this issue should appear at the time and place designated  questions so we can we are they do board members who are part of the working group we also had tremendous a sense assistance from spencer and jeffrey spencer put together the presentation that you see here tonight in health care be running the slide show will go through an overview and our thought was to give a fairly top level review of the presentation of the proposed changes knowing that everyone has a copy of the current draft of the amendments we are happy to strip dagon and any questions as as people see fit so to give a little bit of a background as to why we took this project on we this issue initially came up as we were thinking about the improvements that have happened in town to date and thinking about trying to be forward looking you know as belmont center a significant number of improvements of i'm a development center we have new businesses moving in and we've spent a lot of time focused on cushing village which will have commercial properties associated with it the true color road corridor has been and significantly improved and we've had conversations talking about our additional commercial districts they really square and the pleasant three just tricks we thought that this was the right time to kind of get a little bit ahead of the game and look at our sign bylaws  particularly with respect to those town centers we focused on window signs which is something that a number of people have brought to our attention as a little a little cluttered physically as compared to some of our neighbors and also standing signs and sandwich board signs that would happen in the pedestrian environment that we're hoping to achieve and in a number of those  in we also identified a significant loophole in our bylaws in that we have a number of businesses in town that are using awnings as a signage and we have currently no regulation of that signage whatsoever town by law in the context of the first amendment which laid out some pretty clear guidance that we that signed by law is can't be included content based restrictions so we took a close look at our noncommercial signed by laws in upgraded those to ensure that we wouldn't be subject to any sort of a challenge on first amendment grounds so  those are the areas that we took on so let's start a little bit withstanding signs we made a decision that the same bylaws provided for different sized signs in in terms of windows times and mentioned that there were some concerns about a letter in our window space we've addressed that in two ways one really appears here and that is limiting the total amount of windows signage that can cover the window of the total window area of the business including within that calculation both permanent and temporary which did not exist before generally some with some very restrictive dialogue provisions and there were we didn't identify any other town that had distinguished or sort of created a violet cover both both of which are in use so we thought carefully about each of those and try to develop some some language that looked at the business frontage as a whole and giving a business the opportunity to either have a wall sign or to use an awning or a marquee as essentially the underlying canvas if you will for for their sign but to ensure that we wouldn't end up in a place where there was a lot of visual clutter allowing businesses to have both the wall sign and signage logo and lettering both on the slo business in the commercial district and create creating a size limitation and also requiring that those sandwich boards be taken in at night and some other provisions i'm directing where they can be placed to ensure that you know businesses can look inviting and highlight a sale all were a special that they're having without impeding the flow of ministry in traffic in our prohibitions spencer asked the government and we asked him for a flashing sign because that is one of the types of signs we would like to prohibit in the community and spencer came with his animation thank you for the prohibitions provision really walks through a list of prohibitions that are very standard in a lot of our neighboring comparable communities and flashing sign use of colored lights to shine on signs and some other things that we think are really not controversial are included in the prohibitions sound good another one for  provision which essentially says that if that the sign a non conforming sign can't be altered and it is really in any way any to be maintained as it is and any attempt to change its color or change its size or change the name of the business is not allowed and it would require instead a new conforming sign it's place least a more robust provision on noncommercial signs to make it very clear that noncommercial signs are allowed in all design districts and they're subject to a list of conditions that are consistent with commercial sign from requirements that are out there so it's very clear that as a town we are treating noncommercial and commercial signs equally ok i actually have a question which is and i've noticed this emerging in the last couple of weeks or so there's a there's a recently renovated the two weeks ago two weeks ago we may have just got under the us yes he may have just got under you know because i would hope that that would not be the kind of sign that we would want under these new standards bright colors and i want to know if they slipped under i think if they've done it three weeks ago that's a long time i'm not too sure so we had asked spencer to do some drawings rather than running around town trying to figure out really what would be what would be conforming in terms of the size of a logo and and lettering he said yeah and he has spencer to look at the demolition delayed reflect on how it's worked for us over the past three and a half years and the results of the historic  survey and i put forward a few things to tweak the bar law and so we have been back and forth and it's been very much an iterative discussion and it's been good way to do this all so differently have shared you know share discussion so this is you know really the best that really this is really is the results of our our collaborative work place now it will sunset you know in the spring this year so we need to do something or we lose the bar key we've kept a few key pieces the appeal process remains we have kept a sunset provision but we've asked to increase it a little bit so instead of three years it's now five years and we have a better handle know the list and so forth we have a very you know some tweaks to the definition of demolition and that's based on research that we've done with other laws that have worked in other  communities there are two changes that sort of remove what i would call the holes one is that you know has some language about what happens if you apply for a demolition permit and you go through the process with the historic district commission but you don't take the building down and that's what that speaks to you can i can answer more questions about that if you have it  and then the other loophole is a provision about non transfer ability and what that means is that if a owner applies for a demolition permit and he wants to sell the process property within that delayed period that the process is not transferable to the new owner so the new owner would have to start the process over change is that we're asking to make consistent the delayed period so rather than have two different delay periods spacetime use it's a consistent twelve month delay for and that is by and large the fencer might want to speak to this little bit but it it's meant to clarify a little bit more we looked at a lot of other towns and how they handled this question arlington for example all gets very very specific about percentages and you know some towns look at car overall cost of construction  what's visible from the street and we just we batted that around as an option but opted not to get that specific  and so this is just meant to clarify a little bit more what demolition means i think that's hopefully that what their structure i mean well that and wants to keep the barn but not the is is that and other structure if they take it down and just you know put a roof a solid roof on the barn that's probably that wing down a substantial portion of other have to excess or rebuilding so on the list one is the lord a lord and burn clean house and the other is a barn and so sometimes the distinction between building and structure is done based on ability and so those are not habitable structures but there is so there are not habitable buildings but you know i think that's the removal of a coupal is just the removal of peace and wouldn't wouldn't meet that list really the two primary places that that would relate are the  and rebuild and do what they want to do even though it's not in my mind a real demolition because you know the whole house yes to me it would be i think out of bounds to have historical over what someone's really interpretation like what is demolition so if someone want to knock down you know for instance of let's say the base of the house was seventeen and they say ok well we want to knock down you know that's itself and we want to take down the i you say no they leave just a front for side which is yeah which does happen sometimes yeah well it's a good question i just what i want to be keep i want to be i want i think it should be really clear about what we're trying to wh you're trying to do you haven't what's being presented to the folks because as you know the last time this demolition the way it was presented in the list was put up a lot of people wanted to opt off that list yes so and for the reasons that they did not want to have their property controlled yes and we that is that and i would agree that it is not the intent of this by law for the historic districts this is not a historic district proposal  and we're not proposing architectural review so in this bylaw there is no role for the historic district commission in approving what happens and that's appropriate i think it's a and his there will be more everything from the war and there will be more public process around this so that the final version will undoubtedly reflect some judgment as to what has pass indeed yeah none of us want know right yeah great yeah yeah i totally expect that great  page o really matter by the time you've hired your architect and decide what you're going to militants on six months have got to have gone by anyhow and that's how people got comfortable with the delay on  this was this was the instance that came up when twenty one twenty two and part of it but came up on that but actually from the point of view of somebody who went through the process ok you just take the bill you take the building and then you sell the property once building is down you know i don't think it a larger benefit to the community right you spend and that's i don't think you want to argue that there's no cost briles not trying and i would agree with that yeah i agree with that that you know it's all about you know we have a select group that is a very small percentage of structures in belmont and that's that have that have been determined historically went through this process which one twenty two by the time they got to the six month thing they couldn't do anything and the developer didn't give on that and so it happened and if they're in the argument is if there was maybe some additional time some sort of a compromise could have been worked out check that that was a developed first deal ok the house was vacant most of the people that own the homes on this list of giving  cans it's a different feel it's a much different it's apples and oranges actually though if anybody does that anybody who owns one of these houses and is in it is going to be if the house is go demolished it probably not the moshing it for themselves is probably a developer who wants to acquire it and demolish it is that the case you don't know you know and you don't know chuck it's people that might be living in a house and say you know i see all these nice new homes people saying i don't want to really live in a fourteen hundred square foot house with no closet space and so we have all these we have all these people and as r c for example coming before i think the next in large homes so people there are bigger plots of there are a few that still have all forms on file but the forms were adequate enough car we talked of i think you weren't here last meeting when we talked a little bit about the survey had two properties that went through the demolition delayed process one was the cider mill site up on prospects greet the owner came and with  substantial documentation and we got raised and we waived and we waived the delay period the second one was one twenty two waverly which presumably you're all familiar with we met several times but were on successful  influencing that project the third was a beautiful shingle but you know victorian up on clark street inventory forms seventy of those were redos properties that had been on the demolition to one list but for which we felt there was inadequate  documentation or in there were a lot of questions that came up during the public comment period about whether or not those properties were still you know had enough integrity so we went back and really looked at those and in fact did take some properties off the demolition was delayed list after lisa finished all of her inventory forms she looked at a total of about six hundred fifty to six haven't made an interim decision in the historic district commission that we would only propose properties for the demolition delayed list that we had adequate inventory documentation for to be able to assess truly assess their significance so that's where this all comes from so the list includes i think mark you know what the number is exactly i'm sorry i didn't i didn't bring that gas sort of representative of those there are several there are couple more going on raymond houses and down one so we put the best one on the list there are there's the whole snake hill road development interesting lane our consultants sort of said that she thinks that whole area is eligible for listing on the national register we talked about it in the historic district commission and decided to take the bet the most important house out of that group and that was karl cook's house so that was a decision we made and then there are some other houses well i think there's earl  that are in our sort of medium to medium high category of significance but didn't make them into a list because that was the area that the mid century was an area that we wanted to make sure that we covered because it was missing from the last century both we feel that we've got the three most significant or three or four most significant examples in da mind one of which is very  significant that is that hopefully we'll have the whole spreadsheet available chuck had mentioned that he thought that you know that that it might be of use to the planning board you know to have the sort of very good question i know that the last time around we did have we had a couple of public meetings as i recall there was  jeffrey had worked worked on a appeal process for the last time around so they'll be a whole post if it passes that town meeting will be a whole post town meeting process for all the owners on the list to alert them to the something to vote on at your next meeting and then and jeffrey would like to would like we were going to have to buy a review committee would like to move it as quick as possible to buy a review after city should draw their process first ok that's fine because that's fine i totally i think that if then with your sort of if you feel that we can advance this so that we all get you know something that we can you can respond to attenuate demolition i think the big thing we need to look at is that demolition definition and see if we can think this is a very you know i think it's really looking out for the community i think you've done a very good thing for the community great i don't want you to misunderstand me all i want to do is just take a look talked about yes that's all ok great i think you did a great job write i am certainly everyone's had chance to look at  and therefore they didn't much care so those are the only two municipalities where no institutions are subject to love whole zoning just like end i think that as just as general background we will be distributing the ninety nine days for both organizations and so we will clearly see that listed are not listed as an asset would you make that meeting just for those two applications or would you be adding more criteria to the meeting other cases those large cases  where with the keen sense of the operational geoffrey his put the definition of neighborhoods first define neighborhoods that had somewhere between sixty and ninety five properties including this one is significantly smaller and i have concerns about that because we consistently said we're not looking at the it's not the house on one side or the other place not granted right and so this is about half the size of neighborhoods that we can pick lee worked with and i think and since there's park right there that's just what is right we have it right so you know and then there's certainly crosstrees of the t i think you've got more than enough for us and to be very frank with you jason road is very much part of that whole neighborhood are there more so than it would be like even not the chatting or isn't part of that  right and so we move along to six be pushing village and jeffrey do you want to start and i may be able to add one or two things so some demolition as as legally require the original comment period ended on the fourteenth of february relatively easy day to remember the neighborhood association asked for and received  twenty day extension for the coming period what that means in effect is that toll is scheduled to finish the above ground  monday or tuesday of next week barring some unforeseen weather and some of the things will start there within be a standstill in order to accommodate the extension given to the neighborhood association of the comment period and then assuming there are no major issues phrase demolition of the underground structures will be  think i mean i think it is important that when people say to us you know they start they stop what is going on here the answer is if there is going north there was a request from the neighborhood association it was honored but that that the answer is not nothing is wrong there is nothing wrong with the developer there is nothing wrong with the contractor this was the request of the neighborhood association and that is the reason that this is going on and i understand they are still hopeful of an april groundbreaking and there will be an update on cushing village i'm sure and i would hope i'm not certain how many gave comments on