planning board and i'd like to call the march fifteenth two thousand and sixteen meeting of the planning board to order as is our custom i'll begin by introducing my colleagues carl h we have we received a update from the smith legacy partners which i will read and then provide to jeffrey for posting on as to who who will be involved in the development and a specific time frame for proceeding with construction we would welcome the opportunity to meet with the planning board assuming that the board of selectmen are willing to extend the existing beyond the current expiration of march twenty seventh my my plan is as follows if it works in terms of people's schedules  presentation on the twenty second of march will be a major presentation on cushing village and obviously we are at that point only five days away from a truly hard deadline the extension of the  option to purchase the town parking lot to move things forward in whatever direction things are moving forward at that point as quickly as possible i would like to call a current meeting of the planning board for the twenty second to be held in this room it's a choose day so that we all hear the same  briefing and can then consider how to move forward based on what we learned that that evening i would say that  even in the in even the best of all worlds  this will be this would be this meeting could be an important milestone but is far from the beginning of the end so that we will clearly again if if things move forward we will clearly be asked to modify the permit since the permit is now full of dates that have not been m and this will be i think in in doing so it will be very important to think about what are the town's vital as they as they teach in foreign policy courses what are the vital interests what are the important interests what are the modest interests and so on so that we can if we are going to move forward so we move forward with in the most expeditious fashion all right moving on to the next item of our next  extensions of non performing structures if the extension exceeds certain thresholds this is arguably inconsistent with general law chapter forty a section six however these types of provisions are increasingly common and i think this is quite d e in fact it is it to be surprised if it attracted a challenge i'm sure the age of prove it otherwise i think it's reasonably clear free of legal defects consistent with the board's policy goals as you described them to me  last sentence last week building department staff was reviewing some building permits relative to these amendments as you recall because these amendments have been published in the newspaper they are therefore in effect so the building official was reviewing an application relative to the bylaws and it appeared to him that there is no provision for flat roofed structures under the prior by law there was no cap in the  just had to a midpoint so the ridge would obviously fluctuate based on the pitch of the roof so there was no cap of the building but we had a fairly long conversation about this and the building harm came down on the fact that the cap therefore then based on the definition of height would be the measurement for a flat roofed structure so in this case at thirty four feet the midpoint as the board has indicated would be thirty feet so i added to the sentence because i assumed the board would rather the height be kept at thirty feet for a flat with structure as opposed to thirty four feet because thirty four feet if you think about it's going to be more bold because it's no pitch right so i added that last sentence this is a new thing that just came up and just based on our conversations the board has had so forth i believe morning my interpretation was correct that and we can we can do and we can do a comparison as to what those were i have a sneaky suspicion they're going to be less than thirty yet there are three big examples currently there's one up on clover road  three stories are really allowed so you have half the story so you you have what i could see and you haven't seen it really happening in these contemporary homes which are most of the time only two where because of the slope of the hill that there is a high living dining area that would be different from the you do you wouldn't just have a  uniform flat roof the whole hallway across so i think i but i think we need to cap it at some number i think i have a little trouble with this definition of a flat roof i think we need to we need to  give it in anything less than or i don't know if there's some way of distinguishing from a gabled roof  nobody build said imperceptibly flat roof because you want to drain so right but nobody built a flat repeater that's why i had the qualifier because i don't want to say well this isn't a flat roof because it has you know right that i'm going to the thirty feet in this situation also does eight foot nine foot ceilings and then you'll have a third floor after floor and use the rest as a deck i understand so you're going to totally from what i know a house like that no no no   smaller block so you're right in the sense of the true story is going to be a lot less than that if they wanted to have story i also mean theoretically as is written we could have a big thirty foot i just would i just for me the way that i do things i would be more comfortable having i would love to just to review a couple things just to make sure that statically could i believe it is like you know signing on the twenty yes but they keep fluctuating that warrant on the twenty but they keep fluctuating the week before the the beatings week before so so yes i think that the radically going out of question is that you've already said to me on the twenty second maybe meet at six thirty i just need to be comfortable with it it's like the number to me is that pulled out of the sky it seems to like match the mid point of of what was on it and i just don't want to be point random numbers i know i mean i just i need to be comfortable with back on the other thing is eighteen thousand and fourteen thousand square feet kind of i looked at that property years ago before and broke down that's a nice piece of text and that probably because that was under thirty sec so that actually the height will be more towards thirty six and thirty because i feel that's why i think i have some discomfort this is been a long process of drafting and i have some discomfort with making a change as somewhat at the very end of the process making a change but if people feel that this is likely the thirty will not publish what we want to accomplish and we can gather at six forty five and you can get this done so we gather what would it work to strike and what erin's the definition of flat rock in the main yes well i was i was going to suggest is this one of those we know it when we see it and so if we just struck the parent the parent that i go and if we run into a situation where we feel like there's some better definition than just saying flat roof i think everybody knows what we mean that was the only thing that's been at it since mr pinkerton since you've been working for us could i ask you to come to the microphone and share any views you have on this state pinkerton tommy member precinct seven  one question here is that how is our flat roofs dealt with under current zoning law as i understood it would in fact you end up with a thirty six foot limit on a complicates it i get it i do understand and i'm sure joe was concerned about wondering what that looks like here as well so i think think we're on the right track here and the question i wanted to call was to people this would require changing the date from april seventh is if whether we might want to  meeting from seven to eight thirty and from seven to seven thirty we would have an educational session for newly elected time with us i have talked with eric smith who's chair of the z b a and the notion would be that this would not be long this this would be really have three pieces one would be either i were giving an account of what the planning board does to help newly elected town meeting members who are looking at the zoning bylaws for the first time to just have some guidance when we go into town i  have talked with eric enthusiastic about doing it and wanted to hear people start since the election is on the field and it's difficult to know who to invite to a newly elected planning newly elected town meeting member before the fifth we would have to move out the day if we were going to do that so it's an idea for consideration of i can only speak from having served in different communities different capacities and t and we obviously wouldn't be teaching the zoning in a brisk twenty minutes but at least it would be possible to do the main concepts and put a copy of the bylaws the newly elected town meeting members  hands all right then i will work with geoffrey we will try to find a date and the basis of the basic four hour format would be seven to seven thirty for newly elected time meeting members seven thirty to eight thirty for a discussion of the single and in terms  dates we will we need to work around school vacation and we need to work around the war in committee briefings so my suggestion would be that jeffrey and i will do that tomorrow and get dates out to you all right moving along to item for discussion architectural design guidelines were the general residence district  which jeffrey has distributed and the way i'd like to structure the discussion is to do two things first to just simply walk through it and get people thoughts and then second and secondly consider how we want to organize to get public input on these but maybe maybe i could we could just  start with the general thing parts on the design guidelines beginning with one style about the design guidelines and what the structure should look like  i would just note that for oh how far back quite a few years maybe thirty or forty years there has been an alternative view that when you do an addition on a historic structure it should say edition it should look different and and there are cities and towns some close by where that's been the preferred mode  we have a very fine house on our street that has a very contemporary edition and it doesn't spoil my walk down the street so i think we might run into some some resistance to that in individual cases overall we're trying to preserve the character of the neighborhood and that was part of the drive for the g r districts you know zoning law was all the change that we put forward so as it was a voice to that i agree with you carla mean there's got to be some kind of a way to kind of be prepared to address some of those conservative but generally speaking the flavor in the field was to kind of have it look like the character of that neighborhood keeping in mind that these guidelines are only for the general have any concerns about style i mean i hear what karl saying about old structures but i think graffy makes a good point that you know somebody buying into a neighborhood  buying into a neighborhood and would probably prefer to see as a general matter in addition that's consistent with that house as it looked when they moved next door you know that details like they want the roof to be a little bit different but overall they haven't done two editions it just we've made i was looked like it was done to different like maybe the house was built in eight hundred fifty five but this that's the sentence for structures more than seventy five years old every reasonable effort should be made to preserve the distinguishing original qualities of the building and there were some buildings built seventy five years ago that happen no distinguishing them original features that was during world war two people built with what they could get their hands on if they built it all and i have  i take your point rafi about you want to preserve the care but there are definitely some houses built in one thousand nine hundred forty two that you would really not want to preserve that are if you can find bad really bad architecture in any period and the fact that it's all doesn't make it good it just makes it  i would just replace distinguishing with attractive original i mean that's a yes a difficult call the term basis for the structure is more than seventy five years old you w and if somebody comes in and says well it's not possible for me to do it and then we'll have to say ok we said if it was possible we're any historical historic material again there are some historic materials that are very worth preserving and you know again we're after the invention of plastic there is some hope historically curios that a really it would be good if you took out the vinyl even if it's two pints original vinyl from one hundred thirty five maybe we again it's just a question what is stucco stucco in the early twentieth century was often a solution to shingled and collaborative structures to it was sold as maintenance free just like aluminum was know well it strikes me that to some extent the two sentences are a little redundant i mean if every reasonable effort shall be made to preserve distinguishing original qualities of the building do you really need even the second sentence massing and building structure so if you had two family is that forty forty or fifty two ok so the way it's worded is the this is the range that we presented to town meeting last spring when we were asking too for a change that would allow us to put two smaller single families a lot that was under me in thousand feet and the question arose as actually joe had anticipated what what do you mean by smaller and so this was shown to town meeting and i think you're right it worked yeah  the left in the third paragraph is there a copy of the logical conflict between the first and second sentences the second one says it should be no taller than the tallest and no shorter than the shortest but then it says it should be the average  but it doesn't say the average it says an average i think we need to either need to save the average but the second sentence sounds like you could exceed the average if it was as tall as the tallest building on the street we're saying it read would now read the new building should be similar in height to other buildings on the street and we could  ok should it be taller than the tallest building or shorter than the shortest so that we've got hard we can't go higher you can't go lower than what some reading there and you have some flex in between i'm comfortable with trying to find a reference point by looking at the to the way it stated here and that may not sound or you know as a definition but i mean i like the where it's going because you're using that as a way to kind of drive what the cap with the neighborhood is you're getting some some play towards you know driving the outlook in a direction where you're not going to outdo the tallest house but you know building you know a little you know going for the low yeah you're not going when we finish the whole document i think we need to go through it and look at whether we really mean should or withering in shall from and i don't think that we need to do that ex that's really what i find a more general question that may have may or may not answer the start of question i think can we do we really want to limit the dormers only above stairways on the third level i mean that's it and i don't i felt a little bit more comfortable with that limitation on the third level than let's say but if you were if i didn't there are lots of houses in somebody else has run a shed dormer for example to within nine inches of the exterior walls that kind of thing and i don't know how we have to deal with that but that's part of the reason why i was asking about style because if you sort of try to write people in the style say you know gable you're going to prevent that long shot or to acquire that if you broke it up it might be hard to to to legislate though i mean think about the hamilton road where we took the dormers off a third floor there just because of you know the neighborhood and the size of the buildings and massing and all that it might be too hard to becomes like some of the stuff that's in here but what we don't want to do is in my memory we don't want to stop creativity right so we want to encourage creativity so if if these guidelines so precise that it stops people from being creative to get some really boring houses so i think it's a good thing good general we want to do a simulated divide of a window that isn't in the glass and we would rather see that applied rather than having the glass but that's not to say that if someone doesn't want you millions or they're divided let's all together and they just want to do you know one like cuts i'm not opposed to that i'm really not i just want whatever is done to be tasteful and thoughtful and consistent you know in in the architecture that's all when we when the current gen resident selling sun sets in that for that where we need to go back to town meeting and replace some of these very broad areas of discretion with something that is somewhat more rule based without destroying create cavities so there there's no binding constraint on these on the other hand if we don't start none of them or we have to take it to town meeting it doesn't work well  is like a but this is some really good stuff here that i agree with like for instance it says railings and backs and jeffrey points are pressure treated wood may be used only on the structural members i'm totally in maintenance problem it's easier to make the capital investment for for for a park but it's very hard to work with it's for hire so i'm going to go back and push around dorm just couldn't help but think of that a little road which i think was just before my time and all that was up for discussion a couple of times but this group best other projects were being presented so i didn't have an again we may want to work the reason that the jeffrey wants to keep a dorm or if i mean clause in here is if you were to go back and review all the tapes of the board reviewing projects and look at what time was spent on what feature it is really clear that the board has concerns about dormers if you just if you get a frame by frame analysis that would be true and therefore we sh are lots of houses neighborhood to that have what karl was describing which is the three dormers you know over the second floor windows then we should have less of an issue with it than in a different neighborhood my big thing is i don't want to confuse someone coming in here because you can see the need for or you can see them be with new construction although we eliminated them on him milton road because we tried to make the hoses look small and then we had people come before us with existing homes ok and this guy by the way i assume is meant food and he might be exactly so and we saw someone put these monster owners on like that's not going to work but we allowed someone else to do it because they needed the don't want to get a stairway and which is a modest dorm or just to get a stairway and so all i'm saying is that i don't want to i don't want to encourage or discourage them and i'm trying to i understand that you want to make a point but what it's really going to come down to is that cycling review we need to look at so i'm just trying to leave all our send a person down a certain path i mean honestly when they want to see jeffrey as they did on a previous case it was like there's no way that singles ever becoming to you know that we have to jeffrey as a point guy this isn't as i mean they shouldn't they should as i understand that you are really representing the views of the board and giving them advice to be efficient about getting their plans to us and through us but i don't think in the past  everyone's always listened right that's and so the question is are there more is there a little bit more we can another tool he gave to jeffrey that isn't gonna overly constrain people's creativity but that he can kind of point to to say that's not going to fly look i don't know i mean maybe it's just maybe you know the risk and of inefficiency has to fall on you know is borne by the people with deaf ears and they're going to end up paying for more rounds of architectural plans and we could use art and turn money to hire a visual arts student who will make a short movie called why it took more than one night well let's just move along let's go easy let's leave your manners for the time being and see if on really means and decking which is you know again raises the issue of how detailed one wishes to be it and then we can take windows architectural details and arc together think under de i feel like the first sentence cut it conflicts with the last sentence we said true divided lights or simulated but the first sentence says simulated or preferred i don't agree that simulated applied right applied actually is the word you want to use applied is there applied on each side of the of the glass so we prefer those over the ones that are alike in the center of the glass so honestly if you talk about simulated divide of light that's what that means because it is applied but what you do is you can still get them just on one side run you can get them on one what does it so so what's done is people put them in between the two pieces of the last thermopane the grids put in the middle of them and it's one grid this in the middle and it works for both sides which you're seeing it used less and less most people don't like it the way damage to that was you got you got the look of a like car and you didn't have to it wasn't so hard to clean the going to mean  detail i do think the first sentence sets an impossible standard that you can't tell where the addition starts if you have a ston foundation you're not going to you're not going to put a stone foundation under your addition and that's a dead giveaway what about if we did something like you know reasonable effort well i think the first half of the sentence following where he says that should be carried through to the edition but i think that standard then just where it starts cannot be differentiated is too h and where it is where it says please no yeah i mean we don't require shutters on all there's nothing here they require shutters on all windows and where this please note is makes it look like that softens could be different or the corner board to be different in which we experience what would we say to someone who comes in and says on my street half the houses do not have corner boards or even one house on my street doesn't have corner roads and i'd like not to do it recommended and we move on to exterior finish together it's almost as solid vinyl shingle made to look like a old wood shake that has the grooves in it i couldn't even believe it was vinyl when i grabbed it i was like you kidding me it's like discerning homeowners they're in there anyone that they are looking at these alternative siding options that are made out of like solid p c s it's amazing the subtext and i was so maybe final in certain contexts or something there needs to be i think a little maybe a caveat or something with respect i know because clearly if someone came in with what they'll call a traditional vinyl siding architectural while products which are going to say them are rather than say that ok why don't we just put it not recommended and that way there it's it's not saying that we can't use it for but it's not recommended in if you can talk us into it might know i know i i'm hoping somebody does some because you know when you drive down a street and you turn the corner and then the whole fans lights up  category i mean i think it's important we mean when we have a policy on it but this is not really an archangel issue right this is a density issue that we'll look at in great case and then i think it's a sense of ma i think that the the trade description would be instead of minimum trunk size you'd say a three and a half to four inch caliber just want to get away with some of those examples specially when they're in very visible and you know parts of town that's just what attracts low quality like you really i mean honestly even a low quality wooden fence is horrible to look at it just whatever the language is probably needs to be listed as preferred and creating so that we could do so then we can push people on you know what the way we push them on details related to you know window or species that you have consistently recommended respect to screening of mechanical equipment i think we could talk about suggested but i wouldn't want to i wouldn't want to limit if somebody actually goes out and gets a good landscape architect and goes beyond what we have here right now it doesn't have to be at all i just didn't know that was something that the board wanted to deal with or not well maybe joe and i could talk about that afterwards and just come up with a list of three or four of each type and reputable nursery right and so i wouldn't want to i would want to overly restrict people if they have a favorite kind of shrub and it's not on our list  you have but if you don't deal with that then what are we just play devil's advocate here and i put my french why locks around my my ac units then you can see it it's not screen and let me close right this is i mean i think it's very useful one has to work through one of these documents to get this started and i think this is very useful it will be interesting to see what the town's appetite for more detailed architectural guidance is and again we'll look for a time that we can schedule a public discussion on this not at this point a formal discussion and a question t we think that is a recipe for never getting through this  has been involved in this process of architectural standards for many many years and what she emphasized to me when i was talking to her about the fact that we're going through this is that  addition to educating the building trades and the architectural community you also have to educate the inspectors because what happens in the real world is that people will run a design through you and get it approved and then a change order happens and suddenly we're not dealing with the same building that if that doesn't get translated into the enforcement end of things in the inspection process and there's some discernment that has to be made in that process because somebody may not be able to get  material that they promised you and they want to do a substitute or something like that what are the provisions for following these rules through so it's just important to consider that  moving right along item five discussion on defining neighborhoods we have had to postpone because auburn who has a day job in cambridge in cambridge city government sometimes has evening meetings so we will reschedule that moving along to update sanford item six updates on potential cases planning for projects and committee reports jeffrey do you have anything for us on  you're in the applications so those will be cases that will have to be scheduled but and before we move to committee reports  committee at the high school building committee meet with that we meet with them to discuss how our usual review process will be how they would like to see how the committee would like to see the usual review process modified the point being that they do not get to final plans into a very this is a very big project final plans are prepared and we're pretty far down the road and fo wellington school they used a process i think carl you were chair at the time where they started to come and talk to the planning board as things were being developed they would like to repeat that and they'd like to come and talk with us in general about how this is going to how they'd like to see it through and they do not feel you need to recuse yourself from this discussion  at the church we have just received from geoffrey this will be quick opinion from town council on whether the notification process was appropriate everyone should read it so that we can discuss it next time the wind committee has asked us to appear to discuss   sometime before that thinking through how we will meet since since a quorum of the board are former members of the ward committee we need to think about how this kind of zoning where the economic impact is hard to quantify is best presented to the warren committee since we can fairly well anticipate questions we need to work on the answers and i think that jeffrey or anyone else have anything