we have a rich agenda this evening and i could begin with the first item of business which is the organization of the board we believe we need  to elect a chair and a vice chair for the coming year we will be doing some but not all of the committee of five minutes this evening and i expect to finish them up on the first of november so that's let's   well it would be weird to sit there and can graduate yourself but i am honored by your confidence and will certainly do my best with respect to the committee assignments  the carl is i believe already serving has already agreed to serve as a representative on the community preservation committee which given it appears to be all going to the construction of har the committee so perhaps at the next meeting up to this florida on the first of november you can give us a more detailed report on the projects that are moving forward and rocky if you are in client if you are willing to serve i'd like to ask you to continue on the capital budgeting committee yes it takes a while to get the hang of it greed the the in some sense i regard as our principal or visit i'm a business for the evening which is the consideration of the graphic design guidelines and the  for two reasons one is that it gives guidance to applicants and i believe saves everyone a great deal of time and the second is that it gives a degree of transparency to the planning board process so that the to the extent that people have questions about design it's there and everyone can read it and everyone can see this is a topic we've discussed before and i want to briefly recap the last meeting in june said because when we last discussed this as a board there was as is perfectly appropriate some difference of opinion among us as to whether the we should impose there should be design considerations and whether there should be design standards low at the time i would not have wished for it there was an amendment offered for that to the single residents see district and while that is not identical obviously to the  residence district there was an amendment offered that would have eliminated the bar at the fords the question was really posed to town meeting should the board have to use design considerations in reaching its decision and the good thing about having that amendment brought before the town meeting is that just i did i believe send around the transcript  the discussion begins on page fifty nine and concludes on page one hundred and fifty nine so i believe it is fair to say there was a full discussion of the matter and the the amendment would have required two thirds vote to pass it lost by a vote of eighty seven to one hundred fifty nine so i think we can safely say the  meeting has spoken on this matter and perhaps we should have a discussion about it it is my feeling that once town meeting has spoken on an issue regardless of our personal feelings of it we're not here to make the rules if we go along we're here to take guidance from town meeting and then translated as best we can in the specifics of each situation is that a comfortable position for everyone yes ye mentioned that i i personally believe that that was the time and was not particularly parsing that decision and there was a wide spectrum of opinion that design should be taken into account in what they do you think there is some reason to believe the town meeting would feel differently if the discussion had been about single residence be our general residence or any other i don't know was not the server to disc roughly a year ago since this draft was completed on october fourteenth style in general major in part and should be placed on maintaining an enhanced in the proportions  houses that defined this streetscape changes i have one question and as i rewrite it in the third paragraph the remove the remove or alteration of any historic material shall be avoided now i wasn't really sure what historic material meant and i can imagine particularly living in a home that had shingle siding with god knows how many layers of paint on it that if you take this literally my shingles with like all the chips the layers of chipped paint that gave it a three dimensional look suggests that i shouldn't remove those shingles and start over with new cedar shingles to paint so i wasn't resale in the first sentence you know preserve original qualities and architectural features so historic material just stood out to me as what does that mean really and does it add anything to the first sentence or do we intend it to add anything to the first sentence know i think that i don't know if it to barbara's point to the second part of what you were saying whether or not it adds to the first sentence and i would think that the first sentence speaks to what we were seeking i mean i was one of the original petitioners as as a resident and you know you want to preserve the architectural features in those kind of embellishments to your point it's not their character  necessarily historic to what liz was saying and i'm referring to the historic district commission and i don't think the second sentence really adds so i'd i wouldn't be i would never hard time with  any other under one style and other changes to i i would prefer and after original qualities because i think they're two different things and you section two i think when we look at this the last time we obviously and this is something that was proposed to town meeting when we asked for arthur is a shame to allow smaller division of a less than ten thousand square foot lot we just we defined an acceptable size for a single family dwelling for this is n did not come to we wrestled but not successfully with the size of the two family dwelling so the question is are we ready to i don't have a sense of it's based on i just sort of what you think would be a good in the it was a spy i think as we look back at the applications that we had accepted and the applications that had required a great deal of negotiation before they finally accepted that there was a request for guidance as to how big is too big and this this rather than the acceptable this is the preferred side i think the reason that we used the word acceptable was to suggest that it would be if it was something let's live here because realistically we're not talking about many things mali we're talking about people coming in with larger feels as if it was going to be a very long this part of the u s so we're thinking about a five thousand square foot lot if you go by the letter of the by a large it's thirty percent coverage which would give you fifteen hundred square feet if you multiply that by two you'd be a three thousand square feet so i think what we did is we realized that if you maxed out that watt ok at that thirty percent you ended up with a house that overpowered the lot and that's what people seem to be doing within the realm of the by a lot as it exists even currently so what we did this w took a look at some stuff that happened particularly on himmel to road and merrill avenue and they came forth with a couple of houses and we slimmed them down and they they finally said to us you know what is acceptable any way we would like you know twenty to twenty six hundred square feet for a single family on a rather smaller lot is pretty good because it gives you a good amount of open space you don't max out your footprint and that's we kind of ended up when you like get a little bit more rear yard maybe a little tweak more side yard a little bit more front yard family if you had a two family house that was going to go on a on a lot that was less than the seven thousand square feet that's required of the by a lot and then i think that you know you're coming before the sport again and it's a matter of like the thirty percent mark coverage again and if you do the math on that so i can i think that i personally think that we should almost take on a case by case basis for the two families so oh my goodness of them going to build a house not a lot they don't need a special permit for i have to go through all these things so it's better to be more explicit at the front line is if you're in a special purpose situation is what happened like good clarification and if we do a little bit of rearranging in that section that the wording as it is now goes back and forth between a single building and buildings and i think we ought to make  that and maybe you start the second paragraph since that's the one that tells you whether you're eligible to keep going or not right right so if you start off you say on what's on lots of less than fifty five thousand square feet of buildings child shall not be enlarged more than the size of the building that existed previously and put that as the first item and that's that's kind of the first you are familiar with  going to think it doesn't square feet of this body is going to be encouraging you to do this six to do the two lots of four thousand square feet which would then put you at this twenty two to twenty six hundred square feet so you're doing to pass since we've used total living area because that's the number that we have for all really fine licensed but i would like to come is absolutely me there may be a couple places that we have to kick it down the road and i would very much like to avoid doing it because i think just the last month or two couple months of hearings have made it clear that if we had these out there everyone would be better off very lucky in continually and i think i have a question about the acceptable any issues with the greed of the law i am concerned if i think of some of the properties that we have looked at that reducing the grade to the to the abutting sidewalk would be sick if they had said ok we're reducing it to the size of the sidewalk it would have turned it it would have looked very bizarre next to the existing corner if you would if we had said we prefer that we reduce it to the sidewalk or would have it would have been five or six feet lower than the abutting house and then you'd have a wall between that lock and the next lot i think when when we have gone ray changes i think and made the neighbors very unhappy and i that's what i think and that's why i think at just a general statement like this that we preferred that the grave be lowered to the sidewalk i think we can't possibly predict how that will play out based on what we've seen in the last few years but if it grew you know again i mean i understand your point but i don't want to get into a large discussion over it but  retain like because you're too high i have no problem leaving it out but i think that it's what i've really like to do is have this so it's something that i think that i feel i feel your point is valid i agree with you but it's something i think that this board maybe should look at and require that we should ask for a proposed w should include both wall height yes i mean really that's where it really points down to we need to see what the polls will hide from benchmarks benchmarks should probably be the way we do it as we get center of the street we use that as a benchmark because that's a high point you use the crest of the street and then find out what we want to do where we want top wall to be from that and then everything works from there i think that needs to be the first sentence where we say i mean very well that's what we're here and i think you maybe you're not getting at this to reduce the sense of mass and height the building itself is not going to be sensing anything right  where i think i think this is such an important little paragraph in this whole thing that i agree we think that we should spend some time on the not really i don't think it's something we can do tonight i think it's that should i mean i remember when i went to town meeting actually at language the talked about that great couldn't be altered by more than a foot in height because of the stuff some examples that happened  to cover the wall because your foundation is actually too far out of the ground so i think that we need to spend just a little bit of time and i think that what we're going to ask applicants to do in terms of like you know proposing wild heights i think is like it's new territory so i think we really need to be clear about it and i think i don't think we can do it like that that i think we really have to walk through a couple of scenarios  plan it could be a huge i think it would be a major step towards really a great solution towards like what buildings look like in terms of mass and how they match  and i think that what builders are going to find is that if they do this little exercise that we're going to we're going to ask them to do i think that we're going to take a lot of worry out of like there's a slope too high is that to car lots will be considered on a case by case basis right i think that think that's a good point case by case but the basis and i think that i think you know front door is not is you know obviously going to have a lot to do with like which benchmark we're using i think begin with a general disclaimer that says things are tense it or not this is a special permit process that means it's considered on a case by case basis you know i think they i think that most people are going to know that you know it's a special permit so obviously it's a case by case or are we saying that generally similar in height means thirty to sixty or sixty years thirty to seventy percent of what the surrounding the surrounding drawings i don't remember what we well well one way of thinking about it is that if you think of that we have very few vulnerabilities but there are and if you if you stand in front of a bungalow and say if this is the emphasis when we when we say things like this what with meaning is that the roofs and other features should be conformity with the neighborhood that's one of the big design principles that runs through all yes so i have some concerns with the last paragraph in the story you know you said during the third floor should be modest and proportional yes i agree since i have been the one at least in the narrow hamilton road context to say twenty six feet deep ok horsley speaking if you're going to if you can make some dormers in that roof ok you can then figure out that like you know you do the math and you say ok well if one of them is like you know four feet wide you know fortunately how many can you get into twenty six feet but having space in between a you can make can make sense of it because we are better than i thought i mean that's in harmony with but one of the you know the one of the questions that i've raised is that now it seems like dormers are now in pine where you're starting to see an increase in square square for a livable area because you're taking in a twenty four hundred square foot two family house twelve hundred square feet on each floor and ok so is thirty percent ok another three hundred sixty square feet is for eighty is a six hundred one doesn't necessarily mean you're going to get that raffy the dormers to me are a design element and they could they could actually function as living space as you say but when you get to the half storey calculation that's going to take care of itself anyway so i think it i think it but i think it works i don't think we discourage the use of dollars because in some instances  something like dormer should not increase the sense of mass and height of the house so they may be neutral or four dorm that increase the size of mass and height are discouraged if we want to try to address the situation that i don't know i mean i think  that's an interesting point i don't know if it adds anything to what we're seeing in the work but there was well that's i mean because i wanted to react to that because i want to get to a place where we can try to get to a place where we i think probably in the view this is just going to for your benefit if you're talking to somebody but i mean the door has a roof right and the first sentence of this section says you know the roof should reflect the roof styles located throughout the neighborhood you know and on the bedding properties i would think as we're considering whether a shed dormer appropriate or not i've seen examples geoffrey where people put you know you've got  another dormer on the left side of the house and somehow they put a shed on the left side and there's a there's a hip on the right side and it's like how did that happen how did someone get a shed on the left hip on the right side because it looks horrible so it's like i think that you know it's a case by case type of thing if someone is designing a new home and the front porches and guess where  if not i have a question about the get whether we should whether we need more to get language and the the concern the issue in particular is the i think very true one is just the sheer size of the guess that there are some people are adding a twelve by fifteen deck and you are basically adding a big outdoor room that has a lot of disruptive potential the other aspect which doesn't necessarily isn't necessarily in the it wouldn't have to work this way but if you look around the neighborhoods it does get particularly if it is copper to some extent turns out to be where people store things in between seasons there are too large to conveniently fit anywhere else so essentially it ends up being the open garage where all of this junk gets you know the armchair the can't quite decide what to do with but i think  need to some extent that's a function just of size that there is some size of jacket which you have made a major and highly disruptive addition to your house and do we want to say something about  limited to third floor decks not limited third floor jacks just because they're not counted in total living area but for half a year or so they are in the other half a year their storage opportunit from the side to the side right here you know and the other thing that happens to is that some of them are covered some of them are covered but but you see scenarios where people are proposing a six of the issues i mean we always talk about conformity but one of the issues that comes up is when you take a look at some of these particular neighborhoods i mean they're all over the place in terms of i mean there isn't you know there was a pattern in one nine hundred fifteen built but they've been changed by so much you're right i mean yeah i encourage people i mean you know quite frankly a patio is a great thing you know much much much less maintenance than any type of deck that you can get on any house i don't care what it's made out of a second or whatever ok they take the weather better they're in the ground it's just it's and it's a great space you know if you want that type of true recreational space to liz's point i mean that type of space does become a think thinking about checkpoint about the compelling reason language i don't and i think we should consider having because of the significant negative impacts on abetting properties and just say they're one is that the deck should meet the setback setback requirements of the greatest thing possible yes we agree i agree it is that is it to the greatest would probably be relatively flat across the back the older houses are right here for a good point if the if the drug should  you see many things so yes and so we can we move on to supp you mentioned at least ten inches should be the norm but i think that we could we could we could probably i think eight inches would be a minimum standard rather than ten i think ten in some cases could and b b i think is a very useful one you see some you see some people the other the hoses that they've rebuilt the front porches on they just have mention it in the pressure tree it would be me only be use for it on the structural members well that is kind of ambiguous too because what chuck was just talking about some of puts a six by six or eight by eight pressure treated come up we should i'm not opposed to them doing that but i would want that to be wrapped in like a sick world or even pine i thought they wanted to do that but i think a zombie that harbors really good looking for the flooring that i wouldn't want to discourage anybody from using because it's maintenance free and it's this come on when it's really it's it's solid p v c it it's nice it's nice stuff so i'm not going to discourage that i think the big thing that we want to discourage is the is the pressure treated materials for finished product they're not good for people anyway i mean you walk out and you carry a splinter from a pressure treated piece of decking you've got problems you don't get that splinter out  we even need the whole sentence stuff to do we need to say that when to even need to bring a simulated grid applied to violate windows i preferred it says it all it's going to happen by default and then historic so  very often said that we'd prefer would be shutters close to the synthetic area and we're happy to have them on the front and they need not be inside some isms as it clutters things to have  start with sixty sixty two channing around second or get and my understanding is that we were going to receive some curios when i did not in our friday packages listening to this so my suggestion would be let's just stick with the documents the applicant is here and let's ask if he has any quick statement that he wants to make and we're going to continue the hearing to the first of november to submitting when we clearly was not communicated to me so these were ready a long time ago the three changes are essentially number one moving the deck by moving it over s setback requirements ten feet versus the previous one seven feet number two was adding additional details to the elevation drawing which which indicates a material basically the ballast there is the railings that all the materials that are used to construct the deck are not indicated on the elevation drawing as was requested and number three photographs of the existing landscape because it was suggested that i show what the existing then skip looks like so recommendations for improvements of landscaping could be made so those are the three new additions you're seeing in front of you i also included an updated framing plan it's exactly the same thing you had before with the only difference being the deck being shifted over by a by a foot as to reflect the  t there was that the the timing on the distribution of new material was not communicated clearly but having the board calling out of library fifteen minutes while the board goes thanksgiving plan and i have no real issue with it i think your railing system works and maybe everyone could look at it in the next few days and give you a free any other comments that we saw that the next session know there are pretty bad resolution i think my photographs are much better they're much much more informative your photographs are fine but we were looking forward to the google earth shot of the they're not there not to i'm concerned that they are drawing that we received is is not accurate there is there there are no plants on the back of the have existing and the deck what essentially go to the edge of the existing paving so there isn't very little room to plant anything between you don't have enough o drawing there's not a planting bed big enough for plants to survive you mean the lure of your building the deck out almost to within inches yeah the paving and the only reason this paved parking lot works is because the house next door the entire back yard is paved so people can pull in here and turn around taking advantage of the other so we're looking we're looking at at two lots where three quarters of the two lots are asphalt and it's a it's a it's a challenge in terms of making it a little bit more hospitable  and and that problem is increased by the by the width of the deck you're you're you're basically filling up follow the space between the paving and the house the driver on your property of the with on your property of nine and a half nine point six feet when you subtract the planting bed there isn't enough room for around the deck to get to carl point there is a potential so you can say that that paved area needs to needs to be cut back in order to allow a planting bed of three to four feet you don't have to go think you might in three might look better because right now it doesn't look good i don't see one thousand feet here i think that's excessive what bothers me even about giving you twelve feet is the fact that you're going to have six feet of deck covered in six feet of deck open whereas right now you've got six feet you can have thirteen feet of deck open the way you're proposing it this is not this is not roofed this is not roofed on the second floor you do where i mean i think it would involve a little bit a little bit more detail i'm saying is i think the gentleman want to deck what i'm saying is the deck that he's proposing is probably too big for the house as well as the lot  the one that exists is probably too small so i think there's a there's a happy medium here someplace so i think what i think we could accomplish is we should give this gentleman a deck that is a little bit bigger think that the twelve by six would would probably be fine because it least that people would be covered and it would look right yeah so you know i think twelve by six would be great but to carl's point i think there's an opportunity here to  the parking is very ambiguous at best ok and as well as the landscape plan that is being proposed here so i think this is there's an opportunity here to clean this up and to make you happy and to make us happy  by going into some great detail on the landscape drawings as well as reducing the size of the deck that's that's my take on it so we reduced the way they said exactly the a nice large on western avenue we we would like we need to see a specific set of plans that you propose to put in here and that needs to be part of the  submittal you need to pick the plans and tell us what they're going to be and i think you can get someone at home depot to help you select plants and put them on this plan with their names and their size yes just being sympathetic to the time before that he's coming for the board and this additional expense is this the size that the board is comfortable with because you're right ultimately to get a building permit he's going to have to have a revised  in then is there any way that we can give more guidance on that landscaping more detail doesn't necessarily to your property from mahoney's you can pay a small fee they'll come out almost designed to give you a drawing of what you should do and i would be right for i for one would be happy seeing  very much for your patience and i thank you thank you repeating kind of same going out so anyhow so we the last application we send was to go that's three level points i took you know almost nine months to decide ok that's not not time actually today i it was the first time i saw you guys working like this so the time we submitted application was a year ago so there wasn't something like this in place well i was very confusing it was throughout the throughout  so we had a fifteen by six levels we said roof on the on top of the second level so we're requesting to rebuild this pretty old porch but increase the size to fifteen by twelve on the first floor and fifteen by eight on the second floor and our eggs next door neighbor actually had the story level porch and we talked about that ok yeah style and since we're not building a store level and the the new porch will be very similar in style and really can it make very subtle difference to the back of the yard which is only visible fun neighbors from both sides and they had no problem for us building a porch like that this this time being you know make some significant movement you made a joke on sense given that it's actually something we don't want to happen right i go for the previews i guess i mean i mean i'm concerned  and you can't make a decision bally's can help me just kind of trust me the fact that it's ignore and so we should have done this just somehow this particular piece got lost in this you know transferring of documents i've heard this you know there are three different and so over three times and it's costing applicants a lot of money so every time we do something it costs money and time so i want to have a specific answer from the board is fifteen by twelve with now so so one of the one of the issues we have is that we can narrow this deck a little bit but we have to we have to either be outside the window and the door or inside the window and the door ok yeah i mean for me as well the existing deck dimensions were called out so i thought oh yeah that they were called out in the in the dr you've been before us and i'd like to understand what your new plan is but i don't have the data in front of me to be able to make a learned or informed i mean so i just said i wouldn't have lied right so i could have lied right but i'm just saying the old with it's fifteen and we are not changing that at all so we're not changing that whets we only extend that by by by two times have the wise today's discussion would have been wasted right so if i come here then we we discussed this so i more efficiently because every time com is a waste of the boards the time if nothing gets moved no on right savings in using everyone's time efficiently you might want to just make yourself a check list run through it i think we've done this many times and check clicks has being updated all the time so so i think i am just  frank here i i want to have a definite to answer here if fifteen by twelve is something that would be acceptable by the board because i don't want to come here and then i have another topic that i can't you know the question is i'm looking at the think part of the issue is i'm looking at your numbers in your application and i'm looking at eight and i'm seeing that that existing roof is six feet should be that's right out so and then i look at your first floor deck so i think that what you're proposing is to double the depth of that roof that's that's true i look at that drawing it's not to scale this edition here is not another six take my notes i was not able to do that because dimensionally there was things that were missing so there were layer upon layer of some of the confusion so i share that with you barbara i would not be able to be able to make a cogent kind of decision a little we're logic to me i guess it's any comment on the landscape plan before before we leave the building plan i don't understand why the side elevation figure two on page eight why the dormer goes so close to there's almost no edge to the roof and and i think you see what we talked about about having huge dormers the fact that this dormant goes into the very edge by the rule that i think is unfortunate doesn't increase the size of the back porch but again so if i propose to rebuild that back but ways that increase the size at all just making the same size it doesn't have to to go through the special permitting the right that's what should be at that so that it's if there's some reason that you didn't that you would i'm not proposing any anything bigger than flower beds on the front elevation philosophy on landscaping is that it is a way to get in ever to believe imposes some costs on the neighborhood landscaping improves the neighborhood so it is one of the ways we hear you're asking for the size of the plant so i'm just curious at what level of the detail you want take a tape measure yeah if you if the tree is twelve inches from side to side well vinge tree  branches coming in so so it's just you the nitty gritty is that in the guideline you're going to put out for everybody it's it's it's a standard practice for all landscape architects and i know that you're not a landscape  not yeah you would have at least consulted briefly with someone who could help you with a landscape plan a landscape plan should show this thing and propose and size yeah but it's th size of the plant saucer change over time so by having exactly rasher meant like what was that point many instances almost all instances we have said what the minimum is and it could grow from there but you know where we particularly want screening on each back system a one foot tall plant isn't going to screen and large air gap that is common sense will grow something that will cover it well it isn't unfortunately there and so that's our job is to ensure that there is consistency across the stand the lines to specifically say there are six inches ok six interests ok yeah i think these are technical things can be easily address still coming next time i expect that fifteen by twelve will be yeah you guys just don't want to discuss about that then becomes the issue that will prevent this being approved the next time so so that has been a repeating theme which i've seen in my case and other people's case that's why you know it seems to drag along for a year i think that's unacceptable on my standpoint but yeah you saw the board trying to work very hard with someone who has a simpler and in some ways more difficult problem than yours and you saw the board trying to work with him and i'd like to see the same spirit of cooperation here our rights were not really respected the other gentlemen you know here there are plants in people's life we we feel that we were not respected in these areas so i just want to express those points to the boy and hopefully makes a good change sensory level that it's not possible here we wouldn't even propose this right so it was very very process throughout that can i lead us into the process we had no intention to violate anything if it's already a very clearly and so i'm glad to see the skyline is putting up now but i felt as unfair to impose this to us when we applied a year ago so these things came just recently how did i know the time i put in the