charles clarke i'm chair of the belmont planning board welcome to the tuesday october second two thousand and eighteen meeting of the board i call the meeting to order this evening we have a number of things on our agenda we begin with a continued public hearing for a dorm or construction in the general residence district of forty five to forty seven chaining road we will follow that with a new public hearing for a blade sign at thirty five whether it's street in downtown belmont or the santon fear of bank following that we will continue our public hearings on two zooming amendments that will be coming before the november special town meeting the first is which i'm sure a number of people are here for which is section six south which is the adult use marijuana overlay district we will discuss that of we'll make our pullin airy determination on the draft that will be going for the warrant that will be subject to change and there will be additional planning board meetings and public hearings regarding that we will follow that up with section sixty which is the self pleasant street overlay zoning district that will be followed by a presentation from the bellman energy committee on the climate action plan road map for belmont which i hope doesn't get lost in the midst of all these things it's a critical important thing in climate change and we certainly have seen the effects of climate change in the system tubes of the weather in the last couple of years and immediately  then we'll follow up with some cases that we're talking about and projects and then there's some business work before i begin i would be remiss if i didn't introduce members of the playing board in the town planner and let me introduce tonight from my mike on my far left is pulling who is our new associate member and i believe this is your second time staying with us so they get better and better as it goes along you had that on my left is it is the last person there and it in there i'm on my conscience in terms of architecture and planning so thank you very much we'll continue the public hearing on forty five to forty seven sharing road which is a dorm construction keith did you want to bring the microphone up the story tell us what you did and we should say that this was a proposal of a dormer on a two family house we've had a number of the sky sions about also they welcome back jeffrey it is great to see you again i'm sure spencer is enjoying his i'm off we developed two options based on a lot of input from stephen karl in the last meeting regarding the size and shape of the dormer and its presence to the street we looked at varying depths back from the edge of the building we sell that two and a half feet back and we did two hype variables for you one is a foot higher than the other one the option b that allows us to incorporate a standard asphalt shingle roof to be more residential and feel good on the foot lower it has the membrane roof both options reduce the overall allowable and cross area by about thirty square feet from where it was at the previous presentation so would you like to show us on the screen for everybody that's here george and have copies of this what the changes look like probably the elevations are for fish and i would guess shore so jeffrey if you go to that's the roof planned so in the roof plan on the right you can see that the dormer and closest to the street steps back about two and a half feet and then jeffrey for the next one quite that one looking directly at it so we pulled it right so we pulled it back it's a smaller window a smaller wall and a more of the main roof profile which is what keeps you see all main roof now so and that's toward the corner closest to the intersection that we've talked about the when you get it once you then go through with the second interation and then you can show it right w model that we brought to you two weeks ago this storm or extends all the way out to the corner basically looking at it out that front section of the dormer just gets cut away step back the better and get smaller at the front of the house the window gets smaller and the presence on the street  reduced so the intention is in cutting that back because most of the we're going to see this is from walking by from the street right in the driveway here and that's that access and what that does is it breaks up the bulk a little bit there it breaks at the massing and it kind of gives goes to thirty four five but we're able to incorporate asphalt shingle roof so that is the only difference between the two that's because of age we go from two to twelve which doesn't mean asked doesn't meet the requirements for warranties and everything else to a three and twelve which does so it's one inch per foot of slope to get there so it's about twelve yeah right let me let me open this up to the board the question i'm always nervous  of the construction of it because the shingles ice and things pick up underneath there and in the windows too i'm wondering you know how important this is to go to the higher pitch and add another foot of height to the thing because remember you're right now your level with the surrounding homes and your you know your baseline is going to be up three feet from that most some of them are a little bit taller some of the ones that are put dormers on are but but you're right in general you are correct and especially the two about you know what it is in my mind the only reason we came with the asphalt shingle option one craig would prefer asphalt you know for the exactly the issues that you just mentioned about flat roofs just aren't as good generally don't last as long  not warranted for as long and they don't have a radio from from my standpoint it doesn't have as much of a residential feel when you start having a membrane really want things especially when it's something that's visible from the street so it's that the board weighing the foot of height versus the membrane roof and you know where willing to go in either direction but whatever the boards were comfortable with but that's the main difference you know most of you don't actually see the roof from the street and  i would just say i've walked around the neighborhood i've looked at the different shade dormers that do exist this is a personal opinion which is the only thing i can offer i'd look at it it really doesn't appreciably change the interior honestly really doesn't but if i look at it from the front not not this view but when you're driving down cross street looking at it that extra pitch looks far to me far more a static pleasing that that little bit of bitch versus the ones that i've seen that are essentially you know pretty much straight out right it's very boxy yes and you can't really get the sense that it still has that sloping roof feel that that would be my preference but again i just wanted to share my personal is that it and viewing it knowing that the impact on the interior in my living space there wouldn't be impacted hardly at all  though just to repeat so you're in favor of the of this with the the asphalt i am in favor and just because the membrane does present its own it could be fine right but the asphalt has a better know i'm not too worried about the construction for me it's mostly in a static and i mean i guess that's where that's where i'm off and i thought it was a good there do you have a preference for one with the other do you like the asphalt shingles i do i do like the shed because i think it is more fitting with the neighbor that being the case will let me open this up to the public before i close the public hearing if there are any comments on this oh please please come to the microphone and introduce him and briefing for the only thing i was going to say if you were going to try to push the flat roof is that i sell it on a real estate and problems we always find is that with a flat roofs you were time our climate change at the start of this meeting and with the snowfall and the height people don't remove this now when they wear down so fast that it's fast fall shingles considering the weather that we have is probably going to save him a lot of money are there any other other any other comments from the public before i close the public hearing seeing none jeffrey before we go ahead and vote i have to put  agreement that we're in favor of the of the proposal with the asphalt shingles on that though i would make i would ask somebody to make a motion zoning district if you like to introduce guess so the public hearing is open now would you like to introduce yourself and make a presentation and tell us what you're proposing so yes my name is richard williams i'm the contractor first entendre bank for the thirty five minute street location the reason we're asking for this this approval is because when you approach the bank the branch from channing street going northbound there's a curve right there so you really don't see the branch until you've passed it so we feel like there's a little bit of a hardship there because of that so the sign we're asking for a small blade sign is about three foot projects three foot missed two and a half foot tall the only illuminated portion of it would be the know it's an area that there's a there's nothing else that fast thing so they did it so go back one let me just kind of point there that's typical of the sign we're doing that's right down the street on the other side of the street so it's pretty much the same side of that and that one so you can see where you're coming up channing and you're taking making a right turn there after you make that second little crook in the road there so you really don't see it until you've gone past the branch so you've missed an opportunity you parker or do what you need to do to get into the branches protest pedestrian traffic it's hard for to see so it's really more way finding than it is anything else just to help the people  trying to find the branch to to locate it and you have you have pictures of the post side yes go you can you know there's a couple  if it's equal with you can see it's a good twelve to fifteen feet off the ground so it's right there in the gets right there on the corner at the same level as the sign on the top there  let me let me ask jeffrey in terms of our roads that are signed by law i know this the blade signs require a special permit which is why we're here is this in conformity with all the other aspects for another waiver i would like to see the board discuss what would we be would be satisfied if every other business or half of every other businesses in the center had blade signs would we still feel that it was an appropriate use it's a reasonable yes reasonable question i think our issue with the belmont sign was was the placement of it and that had to do with the landlord and not the book it was the landlord it placed quite high as i recall it was quite high and it was not within the sight line of your eye in the retail district but this is this is a very reasonable question ed do you have thoughts in terms of this would you like to see i mean we do this of course because of the special permit process and we do it signed by sign but is there a point at which you think that we should have more played signs or less struck me as as great when i saw it for the first time aires seventies eighties well you know it's a c s it's a c b s but but i'd like to end and i think the end this isn't really relevant to the santander application but down by the bookstore the whole facade is so flat you know there's nothing new here there's nothing to draw the eye there are too to let someone know what's there when you're from a distance that kind of remains a dead and of the make of main street so i have no i have no concerns with th addition to the sign there's this sort of phone in going up and now it starts to look a little clustered so that's just a comment that i've got as far as what the ultimate appearances going to be and the other is that when the owning is questioning seeing it but the so the real point i think carl's got a good point that we really ought to have a look at and have a conversation about how many of these things we want to see out there i mean i agree with that that they look  great in certain circumstances but the question is how many are we talking about and i mean there could be i can imagine there could be a limit to yeah exactly there is then and then we start looking like a you know or an eight hundred ninety s yeah you know streetscape which is i don't think that's where we 're going while the restraint on that is it's one by one true yeah the other thing is i think relevant here's connor i think one of the reasons that this aside from the fact that there's a blank wall there i think one of the reasons that the sign is where it is is that as your i comes up from there's a slight slope as your eye comes up it'll catch that if we put it in the middle of the building it's cluttered it's  i was writing it was pretty handy to have it there will really help how far up it is how far enough where you can get protection from the whether there's something wrong with the perspective here it's hard to tell but it's also because the oh the door goes in there i see  we go back please introduce yourself when he's long corning i am a resident on somerset street i'm also an employee of the bank ok and have been working hard to support the branch here in town to be successful in an ongoing basis it's just been challenging for them to direct customers to come in to the bank new employees to find the bank just people drive by and it's just been a bit of an inconvenience i think it would help to raised i think that's a reasonable issue i think if we think about that as as i said before though the the issue in terms of this is that at this point we're doing this one by one so if we begin to see a number of these come up i think that at that point we'll have to take a pause or have to decide if we have some general guidelines for how much or what we want to see the downtown look like in terms of those ok so is the board ready for me to close the public hearing and get to talk about this ok that being the case i make a motion that we close the public hearing to hear second thank you all in favor of the public hearing is closed what's the sense of the board on this would the board like is the board generally in favor of this particular application how many we're going to get to before we talk about it i'd would i would say we put this on our agenda for i have to tell me that makes sense yes i think so and we will have a discussion of that and we will also will ask the staff to to get us some photographs of other places that have laid time that will help us in terms of that through it in terms of this we have a full quorum of the we were going to talk about you know our process on this ok sure i thought so are we going to allow twenty five on the street or we're going to allow three more how are we going to make a decision about this so that we avoid the clutter and i don't not suggesting that we don't let any go in you know but i'm just wondering what are what i think it has to do with with with spacing you know should be a certain own sign you know i think that's the number of criteria that we should consider i mean i think tonight's not not going to be able to bang them all out tonight right but i think so my thought was that we talked it that we set aside the time touring the plate would write meeting after ten meeting and walk through those kind of things and have sort of general guidelines for not only what we want to see in terms of signs which is normal sunny file but also the placement have the visibility issue i would also say for the belmont bookstore we had a visibility issue there as well and that would be something i would like to see gravity that would be something that we would probably appreciate with the land board would help the tenant on our understanding so are we going to postpone the vote on this or we're going to approve it now let me ask the board with the board wanted to do you want to vote on this this evening there's no there's no necessity that we vote this evening or do we want to my next tuesday is actually the fourth tuesday i think that's fine i think the two is the fine with everybody that gives us some time and then we can i'm hearing what the board is is saying that we need to puts some thought in we'll see you on the twenty seventh thank you we're going to we're going to do some discussion of this with the board first we have a number of issues i think will we'll save our decisions until the end but we have to get something what's your sense jeffrey do you think it would be best to go ahead and hit here the public first or discuss what we have to make choices on first and well greatly influenced by the public has to say actually all for that matter but it's really in that case was the board feel we should open up for the public hearing or would you like to discuss a free i have i have some observations i been thinking about this a lot and kind of been getting a lot of input from a lot of different people with many different you know the time and i'm harking back also to the summer meeting that we had which was about twice as many people in the room as is here and there were people at that meeting with all points of view and out of that meeting we stumbled upon there came a pause and when i was posed that meeting with the simplest most straightforward things we could do to alleviate some of the concerns were raised at that meeting was to repeat the medical marijuana over the way and move forward with that one thing that we missed in that and which has led to a great deal of confusion and and and frankly this information there was a wonderful fake news story in the boston herald this morning that showed us the light in a glaring way the error of our ways is that we have put the overlay it we just follow the dimensions of the general business district at the high school and could very easily and much more sensibly just draw on the triangle  brighton and the railroad track and won't concrete section and let it go at that because that's the only portion of that area that has anything to do with being eligible for placement of a retail marijuana so if you look at the at the dimensions of this and the the buffer zone and everything else those would be the only stores that would be the facilities that would be eligible so that was a mistake on our part i think we should have drawn that more clearly and more refined of late and i think avoided a lot of confusion about that the planning board's proposing to zone the high school you know as a retail marijuana zone so that's one of the suggested that i'd like to make tonight is that we redraw that line and only have it cover that corner now the reason for keeping that corner is that it is one of only two business districts in town that don't abut residential areas and loud and clear from the summer meeting going back to that what i heard was where it's universally people were concerned about having a retail store next to their house that was that was it was loud and clear and that was one of the reasons we were saying oh well let's just go where the medical marijuana footprint was because it wasn't in residential areas so itself wasn't street no immediate about it's residential and that triangle no immediate there's a buffer zone of other stores and other zoning districts and in fact the city of cambridge is over that way so those two seemed reasonable and in my mind they still do because for those reasons i'm a little concerned about backing away from that because we by law have to allow reasonable opportunities for there to be a business located i'm concerned that we're going to get a lawsuit and i don't want to expose the town of belmont to a lawsuit saying that we've been unduly restrictive so that's what i'm walking into this meeting with the other thing that i think would help because that if we in our presentation town meeting make it very clear how limited access is going to be to these stores per the board of health rules the age restriction the states requirements of and what is it in the surrounding communities of one twenty one so we should we should we should also point out just in terms of jeffrey have you got about in terms of process is that you realize than anybody that wants to apply to to open one they just don't come to the planning board they have to be approved by the commonwealth so they have to go through that process which is an extensive process to go through the commonwealth they will have to apply for the host town agreement with the board of selectman they will then have to go through approvals from the board of the board of health before they finally playing board and the process in the planning board is a special permit process which would include all of the neighbors as well as any  town town residents who would like to speak either for or against that just like we're doing for public hearings this evening so it's an extensive it's a fairly long term process and it's an open process and it's  transparent process so that just prefacing and that doesn't matter where it goes if it goes on self pleasant street if it goes in the loading dock area if it's in cambridge it's in belmont it doesn't matter it's an extensive in terms of that so this is the special permit process this is the this is the process that they would have to go through that i'm talking about so there's the community outreach portion of  commission you can see the detail in terms of that you can see the board of health application how extensive that is what's the fourth one where do we find the planning board on this the plane what is after doing it it's not it's not done yet it's not yeah or so so the plane board is number four so by the time anything would come to the plane but it's gone through all this process of extensive public both on a state and a local basis and a transparent where would this be would this be so if we if we talked about that and let's just be clear about this so it would not be you know at the door of the of the new two hundred eighty million dollars high school not by any means  we should also bear in mind too that there will be the alexander avenue underpass so students will go from the high school and probably go raid in to the center to get pizza all those things that know the reality is that the deep that whole site right here this force in the general business district it's all deeply w e arts it's all publicly owned anyway and so it's not going to it's not to become available and why that was sort of in our draft we have a number of things to get through but i think at this point i think at this point let's open this up i know there are a lot of people here this evening who would like to talk to us about  had the last public hearing that clear about this people who would like to come up and talk i would ask you first of all to keep the two minute time limit so that everybody will be able to talk i would appreciate it that you do not read letters and things if you have something to say that has been submitted to the board you may summarize that please don't read anything in terms of that if you have issues or things to say above adult use marijuana in general in terms of either it's efficacy or it's not or if it should be in belmont it's not this is not the place we're talking about zoning at this point so we're talking about time matter in place so there's going to be adult use marijuana areas in belmont so the question is at this point where they're going to be that's what our discussion is this evening so if you have comments above you don't want is to see this in town the potential public health effects of that that's not your main to our discussion so that being the case i open up the public hearing by people come forward talk please introduce yourself and people please do not come back several times to talk let it everybody talk and if everybody has had their say and then there's additional time we'll invite you to come by for a second bite of the apple and we have a man precinct two i support the lowering dock as a location because of that tax revenue that could come in and we have i know that there's been concerns about traffic and parking but that's an area that has a lot of parking we're adjacent to cambridge this paper spy pond is there and and as far as sales go we know that sales are already happening in belmont and we know that they go on to the high school and we go this is a safe place with a two door entry with security i d's in cameras so i'm here to support the loading do three kids seven one thousand year old a thirteen year old and an eight year old they're all go through high school i am strongly in favor of the two locations that you've laid out here i think you've done excellent work on it you've taken a lot of things into consideration thank you for changing the map i think that was key i have nothing to add about the pleasant street zone now that you've said that you will take that out of there but i did have one question about the special permit process because explain to me how that will differ from the community host agreement process where someone will have to hold meetings with the community to be able to get the community post agreement to permit process is the zoning process so if you want to develop something a store in a particular location that falls to us for so many ok so they would be having t public meetings essentially one for if you're going to have it in town and then the second one for the place the place one for the license like a liquor license here at almost and then one for just it's a development project that has to be approved well thank you i just wanted to voice my support for those two sounds thank you i know there are other people who want to talk don't be shy my name is morgan noble i actually grew up in belmont graduated from belmont high i to fully support both zones for retail cannabis i have a five year old i'm hoping to see her go through go k through twelve here as well and so i just want to voice my my full support my name is michael carey belmont resident i'm also in favor of both both locations i don't know if there's one but i think the triangle the loading dock location is probably better it's to be the best source of tax revenue and i think you guys have been quite conservative about the twenty five year old limit and the you know the buffer zone and make sense to me so i'm and support thank again i want to commend you for the job that you've done and i fully support each location i thank you  number one i think it's very close to not only the high school but also to the wooden brook school and can you guarantee that people are not going to buy things there and then go out into the streets and sell to the children i mean i mean now that they can get it legally can people i mean you have the whole estates with many families there many other families around i mean i would be concerned for that in that location you know understand and then also it is very close to arch our church as well so we would be concerned about the possibility of people using it what's your church right and street on the other side of the tracks right next to saka there and we have in the past had issues with you know children young people getting in with you know beer and into our property and things like that so if people are now smoking marijuana and possibly getting onto our property that that could be a cause of vandalisms and we would be concerned about that as well so those are the issues that i would i would raise because obviously i would not be in support of using marijuana law i mean you can understand that but that's not the issue here but being that close to the not only to the church but also to to these residents and to these two schools i think are issues that really should attending and there have been a lot of people who have voiced concerns in the previous two planning meetings the answer was well there's other people who don't have concerns and we got to think of them too even though they weren't present and everything that has been sent in and brought up i feel has been completely shoved aside even though it has a semblance of we're all participating and it's taking into account the first planning meeting i was that there was an overwhelming response where people wanted it at least at five hundred feet as the state indicated and yet it's been changed to three hundred so three hundred five hundred five hundred is back to five hundred is lateral it was right anyway i do not feel like there's been a really fair hearing first by the town or the board of selectmen or by the planning board because as you explained there's going to be an extensive process first they have to apply for this license that license the a butter's will be notified it's got to go through all that but as you indicated we have to have at least two places to have a store why i don't know and we don't want a lawsuit so the a butter why not put to a pleasant street at either end if nobody has a problem with pleasant street we could piece everybody and put two in pleasant street nobody has any objections to pleasant street and yet there are so many objections to the loading dock and yet why is that not taken into account thank you if you want to respond to that it is being taken into account and there were so many objections to putting it in all of the other business areas we we the with the state has been very clear that we can zone this away we have to provide adequate areas for retail business areas in town by by far and away because because of the because of response in response to people just like you we've all been listening to this and hearing this and  response to people who said we don't want it in our neighborhood which came out light has come out loud and clear over time there have been many meetings and that's been one of the clearest messages i get in my e mails in the conversations of everything else we don't want to next door houses find places to put this used in belmont we're going to have it if we don't do anything it could be in any of the commercial districts so our task is to find what we believe the planning board believes after having heard from the residents in the town and with our planning staff what we believe are reasonable places to zone this into place the arguments against  many places and focusing it in one place smack of notification which is trying to legally zone away something that you don't like that's what steve's referring  to we thought about this and we're still listening to people we haven't made final decisions on this when we will have a draft of this that will be in the policeman or a warrant tomorrow i believe right we're going to submit this everybody all the time we're not having any side conversations on this we're listening to you and we will make understanding and hearing what people say we will make  then we might as well have it in the best like location possible i think the loading dock area is a good location because it's well lit and you know it's i druther have it kind of where all eyes are going to be open and our kids are going to school there and i mean everyone all eyes are going to be there i feel like pleasant streets a little bit far from every i mean i guess it could be good and i definitely wouldn't want it in belmont center because i just think it doesn't look nice for my town to be where i'm shopping and i'd rather it to be on brighton street and there's already a distillery other adult use activities going on there a liquor license and that's just wanted to say that i if since it's going to happen and i just don't necessarily want to you know i don't use marijuana i don't want my kids to use it but if it's going to happen is going to bring revenue to our town which it's going to happen a few meters down is cambridge so i might as well get the money for i mean we're building a school and we need the money so they might as well if we're going to do it might as well do it right so i think it's a great location thank you jessica gotcha precinct one i'm actually in a butter to the loading dock and i fully in support of that location i actually prefer to pleasant street because of the woman before me just said it has much more traffic area near the bike path people could actually come from out of town and purchase and give us more tax revenue instead of you know pleasant street which is a little bit out of the area i'm fine with pleasant street as a second choice th just not good we should know incidentally that the state allows you to push things the furthest the state allows you to push things away from schools and associated things is five think precinct seven and twenty five year resident of belmont and for all the reasons that people say the loading dock area i agree with that i think that's probably the best being on the cambridge child line and i also just want to point out that pleasant street actually isn't that far from the you jennifer thomas on precinct one i'm actually in opposition to having this retail establishment next to the high school and i recognize that there's a limited amount that you can do in a very small space and that you're bound by the laws that you've cited however i think that plays actually to my argument belmont is a very small place and if if that isn't a scary enough distance to harm children then that isn't a difficult enough to set distance to be an example of putting excessive harm on the people who want to try to buy marijuana and i think that all public policy has to weigh benefits and risks and it has to weigh benefits and harms and i i completely understand that you're sitting in a situation where you're going to have to split a baby and everybody's not going to be happy but i think given that we're talking about a set of families that have significant concerns about exposure of their children and a message that it's sending to them then it seems like we as public policy creators should make our decisions based on if we have a group of people that are potentially going to be harmed then we need to say who gets the greater harm and if you have a significant number of parents in the town who have concerns about their children and then you you can't make an argument that anyone's going to be really hurt or harmed by having to drive in  mile further to get their marijuana then it seems like it is important that you weigh that and the i guess what i'm saying is the harms aren't equal from my perspective and we i can't see  or harm that is coming to anyone to have to drive a little bit further unless someone has done legitimate studies about the actual amount of money that this is going to bring into our town i think that that is sort of a red herring if we don't know exactly how much money having a store in that specific spot is going to bring then as opposed to a spa a store on pleasant street then i think it again is important of our pub public policy the people making these decisions to w how your town feels about the exposure of harm to kids so that's i guess all i want to say i don't think harm is equal in this case and so i think we should do our best to cause the least amount of harm to our most vulnerable population i think if it is really going to be that close to us in cambridge then the odds are not really great that someone is going to walk across the cambridge line to buy in belmont if this is really just going to serve our belmont population then it probably makes just as much sense to have it there as it does at the  dock as opposed to being in a situation where it causes significant harm to our teenagers tell you from the last thing i tried to sell at this scale was cookie sheets for the boy scouts and so i can't claim to have an insight but if i were trying to sell pot or any other drug i would not stand out in front of the loading dock to do it and i think th drugs will be available or not and our job is to teach our children to choose well we are up against this limit we are required by meeting to establish two different locations and we can say oh one in the pleasant street on the other in the bottom street we can legally do that and meet our requirements if you have a common please come up to a microphone no no if you have a ok you reintroduce yourself jennifer thomas precinct when i'm just curious about given the small scale of the town how you can make the case that this is significantly different there they're not too far from equidistant in terms of being the two different points on pleasant educator former faculty member of the my high school i've taught every grade level from seventh graders through seniors in college the idea of putting this establishment at the loading dock lacks any common sense in my opinion for the benefit of our students  this community i can understand the legal components the aspects that you're considering but i think there's a sense of duty what's right what makes sense in commonsense for our students to put that in the loading dock that close to the high school for someone who's been  educator's entire professional career in my opinion is just a very bad decision thank you thank you you thank i don't get an implausible but my name is portia thompson i'm in precinct two i live on beatrice circle i also have the advantage of living on griswold street that was the first street that i lived on when i moved here which is on the cambridge side but  one of our favorite things to do with my children was to walk to the load was to walk to the white pantry and i had a baby here and a baby here and a baby on each arm and i loved it i loved having that community i know this man well he knows all my children i have six children now and i am so grateful for this community because of the safety my daughter likes to walk to high school i have a student two students at cherry and two students  this particular location at the loading dock is extremely concerning to me because i don't think i would longer feel safe for my daughter to walk to school knowing that after school what might you know who she might in interact with the leader of that congregation said of someone that's a little bit older that just wants to make a few extra bucks these there are real concerns in a real community we've got to burst out of the bubble and the the the you know i've driven on the pleasant street the south pleasantry many times i would never walk with my children on that street people go way too fast but there is parking there are people that live that  drive there there's a lot of places that you can eat and do many other things but it's not a place that you're just going to sit and hangout it's not a place i've seen mothers walk with their children in fact i saw a little kid walking there and i called her mom immediately and i know where your child is walking also in this community we have a walking establishment where we encourage our children and also have a set out where they walk to school i i think that is a wonderful thing we have the bike path that we're really trying to promote i understand and i know that you're in a tough spot like many have stated that you have to limit this and you have to find two locations but i fully fully think that in this parameter we can make south pleasant street work and we can make it work well and say we want to keep our children safe and we also want to appease the people that are in favor of having this you mentioned earlier steve in another planning board meeting you wanted to make a yes for someone that wanted their house changed you said i want to do a yes for you but this is how it's got to work and i think with all these people opposed and strong feelings and educators that in order to make this a yes for kids to feel safe for parents that pleasant street is a yes that many people if you ask here right now raise your hand if pleasant street in two locations would be a yes for you they would say yes that that would help us feel ok with a meeting the criteria with the criteria that you're up against that's all i have to say thank you you've already talked is there anybody else will let me get first timers first ok him ok we're going to go another fifteen minutes so please i'm gone kovacs from one thirty to school street and i have a genuine question to follow up on the discussion that we've had and the input that you've gotten  you said that you feel like you've got a direction from the town meeting to find two separate locations for marijuana retells elephants in belmont and indeed the town got a chance to vote last week and they voted by a large margin almost two to one in favor of restricting it to no more than two licenses that was the only option for restrictions that was on that ballot that town to choose from but so given that you need to find  space for two licenses two licensed retail establishments and given the size of the pleasant street commercial zone there where the like of that is probably what two thirds of a mile from one when the other with more than that ok so are there is there not sufficient space in that long commercial stretch for two separate retail establishments what what do you eat what does the board see as the as the problem with  ago when we dealt with medical marijuana i sent you guys or earlier yes i was reading my own words that i could i would remember them i ask that no comments be directed directly to the planning board if you're going to send an email these comments are public record and they have to come through the town to the playing board this ensures that they're available to the public so please do not email comments directly to the point  members thank you thank you for that clarification so four years ago i had never seen the the medical marijuana zoning map until the league of women voters tonight so i appreciate that this is been a much more open process you've had three public meeting there's obvious interests that turn out last week was higher than in our april election i think it's the plain words job i know there's a concern about getting this through town meeting i honestly think you guys do great work and that whatever you put on the table a town meeting  will get through my concern is that you need to listen to all the public and tell me that the planning board represents the public and i feel like you have heard lots and lots my name is don west london and i live at one thirty four clapham and just from a safety perspective and this i think is an uncomfortable reality but like the high school was already joked around as being called belmont ask if this location is considered the like you really look at the amount of kids who go that direction already to smoke and i think this really fits into the current news cycle of the safety of our daughters and our sons at parties parties are happening at the high school kids are drinking and drugs are happening with alcohol which is relaxing and so with pot right now there  man going for our supreme court for something that happened the age of high school fourteen year old girl and a fifteen year old boy same age as our high schoolers these are relax it's ok so i would appreciate that so if i understand your point that you think it is not a good location so having it near sends the message that relaxants taking drugs that make you  why it's ok we can have it near our kids in the safety of my daughter at a party knowing that we're saying is a community it's ok to have it and that distance from the high school and also the safety of the walking path along that part of the minuteman i already heights of the brushes feel like a little bit uncomfortable and knowing that there's going to be more pedestrian traffic with people that are in possession of marijuana because that's the path that they would take to purchase it makes me feel even more unsafe with my kids walking along that that path but for the safety of our children at the parties that they are attending please consider not putting it on  belmont public schools i walked about high school twice a day for four years right past what was then the right hand pantry which is now the loading dock area it is undeniable that almost every student who is coming from that area of town and walk into the now seven to twelve proposed high school will be walking past that location and i understand the limitations of the concerns that you have in terms of putting two different zoning areas i'm just urging you to take consideration of what is best for this town and not what is easiest to do because it's already zone for medical and my sense is that right now it's considered an easier location  but what i'm hearing from these residents and what i feel what i hear from the parents that i'm speaking to who aren't you know frankly comfortable coming out and speaking to you in public from the senior citizens who i know from living here my whole life they're frankly shocked that this is even a consideration because the belmont i grew up in did things that was in the best interest of the children in this does not feel like it's in their best interests i also have a very strong concern about its proximity to the bike path the ill wife and the proposed path to the walking path that will be going through the center i think having that access point to the marijuana and then people can be traversing along that is not a wise decision frankly our police are overburdened as it is at this point they will be unlikely to be able to be there in enforcing whether people are consuming marijuana on those pass or not i don't think it's a wise idea i urge you strongly to please consider or take some time to get other legal opinions on the two south pleasant really ations thank you thank you my name is jane johnson and i live at thirty six kenmore road we've been residents of belmont almost twenty years now i have a freshman in high school and i have a seventh grader and i just would say that i think that the loading dock location is ridiculous just very personal experience in two senses my husband and i have very close family member who was admitted to drug rehab and she always said as a mid twenty year old that marijuana was the gate way drug that led her to much harder things so i will say that and then i will say there's no reason why you cannot have two dispensary in one location next to the high school is a ridiculous a preposterous idea thank you very much be a double door entryway and there's cameras and if anything is going to make it safer it's going to be having somebody with an official capacity at the door preventing all of your children who don't know any better from trying to get in  i think i think that speaks to how much interest there is in this but not on the vote and i find that really interesting given that that's when you had more options to do something the two locations most people have already talked about that there's lots of legal reasons the medical marijuana wasn't this controversial and it seems like i was listening on my way in that you had already gone through all that that seems like that would be your easiest still can happen especially since financially it would make sense even if the store hasn't existed yet to open both the marijuana's at the high school you've said  that if we have a retail store in town a lot of people in this room probably don't know not only can high school students not buy it but twenty one year old twenty even be able to buy at it you have to be twenty five and belmont the best way to get marijuana less in our high school is to have more retail stores and belmont to get an adult audience to get rid of the black market and the black market is the one selling to the kids a high schooler will not look twenty five right now they probably buy alcohol with a fake id looking almost twenty one they're not going to look twenty five so being near the high school i just don't see that it's going to have the same issues there is alcohol there right now and nobody complained there's alcohol over town the alcohol stores have signage they say what they're selling everybody knows it a marijuana store has no signage not anything resembling what it's about i've been to three stores in three other states the safest feeling experience to me having never used marijuana before i still didn't want to went into the stores but was the environment where it's near town center where there's retail already where it's a comfortable environment and then you still have to deal with the id and going through double doors you can't see the product it's not like our alcohol stores but we have like we used to have three places in the center of town with alcohol and nobody complained about those thanks for fixing the map because that was the question that kept coming up over and over again to many of us want to make sure that i did remember to get anything else so the community path it's going to be in their self pleasant street too so that's not an argument why south pleasant street is going to be different as long as we get a good community path it will go through all parts of town  it's being told that you know the cameras and everything at the establishment where it's bought how how safe it is my concern is not what happens there you could have a united states marine corps there but what happens when people leave they've bought it i mean i grew up in the sixty's in the seventies i know a lot about marijuana and other drugs but the thing is what happens it may be safe for the moment there but all these people are talking about going down with the children down the passing going here there and everywhere what happens when a person buys it and leaves and it won't be everybody but the potential for a twenty five year i mean i grew up when i was fifteen sixteen i didn't buy the alcohol but i got someone that i knew that was old enough they got in gave it to me and i mean that's a concern no matter you know how safe it is at the location i think  geographic thing so my sense is steve my sense is is is is that you would you have to live in the area that zoned for the use and that would provide opportunity for establishment to open in belmont that will only be two so there's no geographic thing that says it has to be you know two different areas per se that's my understanding and i think jeffrey knows this better than me i think it has to be that you kind is only into such a corner that you wouldn't be able to step up and so that's my understanding i see the problem with pleasant street is that you grocery store with a large parking lot taking up a big chunk of space you've got a gas station on the corner we're talking about putting an assisted living facility they are further up on earlier on the street just sort of a budding that next you've got a car dealership you know pretty much beyond that i guess there's the flip properties in there  opportunity especially so you start restricting the distance you could get between two spaces which is where were some of the complication comes in terms of urban interpretation about whether or not there's enough room so i don't know the answer i mean i think we have i think if you look at the area from ten ten pleasant street with the assisted living is proposed and we'll talk about it we go jeffrey flip the the adult used oh i'm sorry yeah it's no good it goes all the way up so there's sort of like on the redevelopment area sort of that that we have things we're talking about that six point two five acres  my sense is that if you disagree when you go up there and all that were hidden ten acres so we're getting taken without counting shot and all that we are today hitting ten acres that ripe for redevelopment at this point in time so that just gives you a sense of the amount of space i'm just looking at the distance between the end of the space which is now a relatively small chalk talk about that the northernmost yes yes down i mean there are there are a couple of so in terms of like that's probably i don't know i mean that's a fair amount of you know that's that's probably eight to ten acres there it narrows towards the end there's less developed ability in terms of that trip to party and i'm  sure about that it's not sure there's enough linear space yeah i mean that that that becomes that becomes kind of an issue that you have to ship but how do we test that issue you know do we will talk to  who who does development things for development all the time what do you think it about whether it's large enough yeah that's for two or three after the same business and i'm sure it is yeah i'm sure it is and that it you know a lot of businesses cluster i mean like fast food restaurants gas gas stations you know that that said i'm not sure that it's a i think there's issues with the limited number of  owners and their and their likely i think it's by all reports those owners are are looking to do kind of wholesale redevelopment many of them are looking to do a wholesale redevelopment plans which probably wouldn't wouldn't be looking for small businesses as well as part of them that leaves that leaves then once you get past the subaru that leaves the gas station and three smaller building the restaurant the and the other there would be what do you think in terms i mean my why i felt keeping the loading dock area in the mix was appropriate is because i was looking at what cambridge is talking about the adjacent commercial strip and thought well what what difference does it make i mean that's it it's fifty feet or one hundred feet away and you know it's along the edge it's across the street and so to me when you know it just seems appropriate has cambridge designated that y know it's all in full stuff it's all small kinds of things and i would like to say i mean in terms of placement when we first started talking about it as a board flat  create dark back alleys i i was in town meeting when i introduced alcohol to the town which was in two thousand and one which was going to be the end of the feel as though we've list our we've listened to what we've heard and taken it out of the main commercial areas where we've heard it clearly people don't want that image of belmont and cushing square waverley square or the centers i'm i feel quite confident that we've found two locations that are different enough to too it's been a good home to a lot of uses that don't fit into neighborhoods see it that the the distillery that you got for the loading dock which was up which was i think the first store in belmont to sell hard liquor they got the first hard liquor license as an animal hospital is a dog eat at the very big doggie day care him across the street you've got a huge electrical substation in there you know it's i think it's going to proven track record as a place where things can pleasant street and we were challenge by prospective owner we would have to then make a decision i don't know that necessarily would incur a lawsuit know we could change at that point or we could go back to town meeting and say this is being challenge what do you want to do you know i've been using that i've been using i think we're all using that as a kind of shorthand the lawsuit part is t that's one spot versus you know two spots worse and one i actually presents itself closer it doesn't excite me very much and in some ways because it is at the margins and it is at a place where people aren't keeping an eye on things the threat here isn't the be in my mind and i've been listening to people this is that i started out thinking well let's just put it anywhere and i've come a long way from that position i'm concerned about hiding it or trying to stick it off to the side of it because i think that encourages one it's it's a it's a it's it's it makes it more attractive to kids i mean i was a teenager i have a teenage daughter just if it's on the margins then it's much more interesting than if it's on main street in a way and the threat here isn't that kids are going to be able to go in to buy it directly but the threat here is the secondary sale and i think the way to discourage the secondary's scale sale is to put some shine some light on it and that's why i feel like this is a pretty easy space to control in a way as opposed to along the neighborhood strip and on belmont street i mean any other locations that i can come up with in town so you see you talking about the loading i'm talking at the loading dock there feel like that's a place that can be pretty well controlled in terms of that i don't see it as being as vulnerable to secondary sale actually as south pleasant street which is a long strip and there's there's there's you know woods across the street and it's an easy place to so i don't know i mean we i guess my take would be that it's not the primary sale and and so but let's let's put the primary scale in the least think actually given the us i think excuse me i think actually in terms of the secondary sales i think the price of the legal marijuana is going to be much higher than the than the black kid that's go with you know it's it's all over and i mean it's it's it's it's true that the price is going to be relatively high for the stuff coming out of the stores and it may not be an attractive secondary market it's all the infrastructure you know and all the regulation and all that you know what's my thought we have to make a decision on this i think my sense is from hearing the discussion looks the board having heard other people i don't think we have a problem with so pleasant street how do we feel about the loading dock for that or against that now's the time to because we have to move on at this point we have to get something board members who are in favor of leaving on the loading docks i can't i can't decide to tell you the truth so recommendation to tommy right yeah but we don't need to do that now you don't have to do that if you continue the public hearing we will continue the public hearing people will be able to come and talk but this is this is our draft that's going forward at our next discussion so next week you know you're all invited to come so next week you need to have and i mean you have to look at all cycle meaning next up with next week where you would do this in probably finalized they're a all right so this is to be continued thank you very i think we've talked about this we talked about this on friday which was the meeting that we had on friday that was not broadcast and i think we're going to pull it up we're going to pull it up the boundary back to self pleasant street we're going to take it out of the part that goes  that if that was an issue before as i recall a restricted housing which was the deed restrictions in term which are which which was the sticking point very early and we should have that in there yes you have been restrictive in the whole thing and i mean i think the argument had been at that point well if it is in the can we feasible the want to get out of that and my answer to that conversation around the reduction actually being greater i mean i'm the distance from the business to the commuter rail being greater which you have here on the so the question becomes you know do you want to say half a mile or for the reduction half a mile for i'm fine with either one of the the one who's who's walking this is it i mean just seriously yeah yeah but then it becomes like it would then would have buildings that are too bad if if we do that because they're going to exceed the what's the live coverage there there isn't there isn't a risk you know wh is an economic use at this time and the development that they're proposing does not impinge on that it goes partially into the bus parking lot and the other one and that sort of been thrown about on the flood thing i don't think comes up that location for a retail you know you don't have to do either that or you probably wouldn't use it for the use that is there right but it would be for some sort of a retail use but then probably we don't need to give them a bonus to get t but we never spelled it out and we get something for inclusionary zoning and all that sort of what it talks about we can put language  buy incandescence you can special application you know you just it's just not something you can go to the store and pick up you know i think i think the one who doesn't have the one ton of yeah you know answers the question  to to comment that we did have the open we did have the meeting for the bradford we had the presentation by the developers of the bradford of the exterior of the building and almost all the planning board was there it was it was interesting in informative we're going to talk about this at a different point but they're i believe had a couple of comments on that will go into more detail afterwards but i want to hear a comment on that and move and we'll open up a full public hearing and discuss this before we approve them but at this point well two things we heard winds needs to be adjusted now and quite likes that color and even the architect doesn't like it it doesn't go with the brick at the bottom the architect had  and from a different company something in the math range of color we haven't seen it i sort of felt like everyone who was there grieved that that one building has a lot more big age generally another one so you know the mock up was done with you know white white from the store and i think may need to be more subtle in their choice of white on each building i think over all of the materials appear consistent with what was approved by the planning  amazed and they seem consistent i mean the one thing i don't know if we can affected it all but the but color of the door front  i think it's ok for the winslow but it was rendered sort of noncommittally in the renderings that were approved and i think it's just the aluminum color which i don't think actually goes very well with bage i would think they'd want to use something that goes a little better and the rest of cushioning square has dark window surrounds that almost made me wonder if those store fronts maybe not on the wind slope that the other two might not want the silver but the sort of from think that's a recommendation that would be we could make them because they seem to be open for some of the color issues that i don't know whether to believe it or not but i there was an e mail that went to the board that suggested they've already purchased all the store front and i don't know that it's true or not and i have not seen that you know ok i i we did discuss some of the construction details with  the architect and some of them were installed incorrectly like they had hard mortar where they should have had caulk and some of those details will be fixed in the final thing recommendation for the planning board and and i don't know if it needs to be codified or if it just needs to be in the memories of everyone which is should have gotten three windows were never mentioned and i think in the future windows need to be mentioned as part of the overall facade to sign there was a discussion of this and there was no interest in the windows on the part of the planning board and that's why the window for a stall without anything approved and i think that so i don't know where this goes in language to make sure i it's hard to believe that we didn't talk about windows in the in the several written i'm relieved that they would understand windows showed up on side because it could have been a lot worse on the other hand there was a lot of buzz about the six over six years being a little too fussy and i think we had a member of the board like those things at the time i think the i think this is a good point i mean you have to realize of course that this was really this was the major project that the planning board had done for twenty years or more and that we'll have another meeting we'll have a public one that we announced the week of the the neighbors and all interested parties can come on that let me move along to planning for projects do we have enough projects to have anything back to us so we kind of scheduling until he comes back or any other items i need to i want to go back to your comment i have it seems to me that they showed us a lot of material but they didn't give us three markups and to say that that is is is a markup it's i think is from i don't think we should i think we should say give us some markup for each of the three buildings we heard all the discussion about all color changes that you're going to do so what let's see the real let's see the final finishes they say if you go over if you go over these three things there are at least two three things on each of the three buildings that they said they were going to change and that means we can't sign off you know them you know but that's something they should do that for their own  quality product for this is in their best interest to do this and get it done that's also given given how slapdash it was putting it together i think they could use the practice actually yeah the pain will look like something i've done happy to let everybody do the presentations and as you know i think everybody should be involved so we'll do that things that is there anything else you're free yes it is there anything else anybody has in terms of things that being said i would entertain a motion