this test kind of walk through these four points what just sort of a little bit of why i whine about what a housing production plan is what it can do for the town what it's done in other communities and why the town's been working on one  why the town might want to top this type of plan what strategies and goals can be used to achieve your housing goals so i'm going to review a little bit more about the entire plan that we want to know the answer to that question of the next steps in the plan process we are we do have a draft of a housing production plan that you'll learn a little bit more about that a little bit later so the idea that housing that action plan is basically an under massachusetts general live chapter for you be it's a plan that can help you to achieve your local affordable housing goals and as part of that process there's a process to look at a comprehensive housing needs and demand analysis so basically assessing who in the community has a housing need maybe their cost for it and maybe they're a little bit higher income and then what are the other types of needs people just filling these people who are older people and what is the demand so you have a current development constraints to create to know about the housing needs and the projected demand but what about the constraints to doing to valid in the community how can we work to address the overcome them what ones can you work on where is the political will and then i looking at goals clear goals and strategies that are relevant and appropriate for the community so that's essentially what's one of the components of the actual house and production it is intended to be a five year plan that's be it would allow the town to andy protected against potential cumbrians of her projects time so that's the fifty one units is about certifying your house and production plant if you have one but it's not necessary in terms of doing your housing plan it's just that's what that means when you see that in the text here the idea really is to create a strategy that's appropriate for the town to achieve housing goals so and along those lines it's about looking at  of course also auckland's you the opportunity if you're below ten percent of the subsidies housing inventory and talk about that and second it'll allow you a little more control over competence of current projects because the plan will allow you to have sort of a guideline in terms of what it takes and you know you're looking for it gives puts you in a better position in talking with developers about the types of housing developments you're looking for and then lastly it does create an ability there is an incentive for discretionary funds from the state that process is to have either zoning for multifamily housing housing production and other things that are related to communities incentivizing housing unfortunately that was not received so just again that's one type of program there are many other discretionary programs that trigger interest in multifamily housing it is feasible we've we've been talking about this  see that is have been talking about this with the community for the last couple of years and have definitely found particularly in the last i would say six months some very feasible goals and strategies and working with  is feasible to achieve that goal it's not out there completely and also it's still enough work that you've already done some really great work which mustn't talk about the last housing production and you have on the bus was adopted in two thousand a lot of the goals in that were actually achieved so you've shown that you can create a planned new trans atlantic ocean so this is the same kind of idea again and then of course there are opportunities for some development which is not necessarily when we say development it sounds like everything's new but there can be no existing units or existing conversions of underutilized properties and other things so we've identified some of those things now for temporary time to promote mixed income in mixed  development and again as i mentioned there is a draft of the housing production and much of the work is and so just to kind of been talking a lot about formal housing not not necessarily knowing your familiarity with that affordable housing s one part of it the other part of it is that it's deed restricted so there are restrictions on property when somebody buys or leases the unit that says this is only this is affordable under these terms so that's the good deed writer and  and the other part of it is that it has to be affirmatively and fair market so there has to be a process to make sure that people know that the housing is available and accessible to people who are in multiple to then go through the process of qualifying for the  so this is sort of the three part test to getting what is affordable housing under this construct under forty me now and then the other partner actually that's mentioned as about you cannot earn more than you should not be earning more than thirty earning paying more than thirty percent of your gross household income towards housing costs otherwise that in concert she was called it a burden fifty percent is actually considered a severe cost for so the state by forty be less knapton sixty this in the past but for those not familiar it's a developer comes in with a comprehensive current proposal and it allows for a developer to create a project that main cleared up to twenty to twenty five percent of the units designated as affordable housing under the definition that i just went through if you create a rental housing development and all of those units within that development even the ones that are not technically affordable count on your inventory if it's home locally so jeffrey i believe is one of your staff people who provides those updates for new units to process so you can see in the chart on the right path and belmont highlighted in blue is the number of units that are on the inventory is as low lower than other communities in the surrounding area and about six hundred thirty five units short of that ten percent but again making progress this feasible and half a gap could be closed almost in three years depending upon the process that you decide to go through to make that happen and so on that inventory that i mentioned these are the kinds of units that are listed on the  you have a lot of local public housing with your public housing authority no one housing authority two hundred fifty four of those units count on your inventory so that sat in her the tutti housing that's affordable to most and extremely low income households then you have a number of group homes the beds are what count and not the home itself as one unit but the number bedrooms there are seventy two units that are currently listed that is a number that fluctuates depending upon the department of developmental services and department of mental health placement of such individuals and then you have a number of private housing units that have been listed most of those are through local initiatives that have been prompted by on housing trast or other so a little bit about housing needs the population grew from two thousand and twenty ten we do a lot of this work based on census numbers the american community survey estimates yes and some of our own projections as well as the local data so that's how a lot of these forests are gathered so you understand a little bit more about that so it according to the twenty ten census and two thousand census you girl by two point two percent in that time about five hundred thirty five people on any p c makes projections on household and population forecasting for the entire region actually as part of our transportation planning authority with the state and our projections projections suggest that you could grow to between fourteen hundred twenty four hundred people which would then be the equivalent to eight hundred fifty for two for twelve hundred ish households by twenty thirty so you get a long period of time here but and also a range of an increase depending on the t that you promote looking at back projection and a lot of the potential inventory that you have now and that's in the pipeline may not actually meet the needs of the accounting individuals living or even the existing residents in belmont sixty four percent of the units across the town are were built before nine hundred thirty nine is a little bit of a diverse hous though predominantly eighty three percent homes are single family and again changing tastes and also high costs could be the equivalent to a different type of housing demand introject or e than what people might be looking for in the future those sales or units that are for sale are affordable to people who are lower incomes so therefore it is making it more difficult for people who are kind of just getting into the market were lower means less mea so and you also have a little vacancy rate one of the lowest in the a month surrounding communities in addition to the sales prices the rents are also very high so it's not just a barrier to entry in this and the forced sale or ownership units but also in the rental market additionally you have a number of unsubsidized units a units that are not restricted in any way that are currently being occupied by people of higher incomes cell and this is just showing you what would really affordable somebody who's turning thirty percent of the aim high as well as fifty and eighty different levels compared to what the median gross rentals are just sixteen hundred dollars so for example somebody who's earning eighty percent of the area median income something affordable at household would be about fifteen hundred dollars per month but the median rent is higher than that so additionally there are a number of households about twenty percent across the town who are earning less than forty thousand dollars that would be a qualifier technically interviewed for income eligible households and also households who are experiencing poverty five point four percent of those  people in belmont are experiencing poverty the other component is about the cost burden that i mentioned previously said three thousand households are current cost burden that means they're paying more than thirty percent of their gross household income on housing and then fourteen hundred are actually paying more than half of their income for housing that's fifty percent more than the first lower income owners and renters are also likely to be cost burdened and that's that you know comparatively rental renters are sixty seven percent more likely versus eleven point three percent in the ownership market and i think this is the last slide that needs residents and this is the ladies there are actually a number and business district there are not any residential use is technically allowed and of course probably the top one that i should have said first is you are you are very dense as a community there is little and develop all other kinds of activities that the town has been involved in that qualify as being successful or working successfully towards the creation of formal housing included opt in the community preservation act which has a set aside for community housing also having first time home buyer program  and in ministering home local home program funds which can create affordable housing so in fact as i mentioned we had a meeting to talk about some goals and strategies for the town can use to  goal being to increase the supply of affordable housing the most important of those strategies is to preserve affordable and suspects housing as i mentioned there are a number of units that technically be affordable that are currently occupied by people higher income subsidized housing is as important preserving the existing affordable housing inventory is also important you have found an inventory to protect so it's important to continue to do that and as i mentioned there you're keeping up with them and then of course ensuring the priority populations have access to opportunities creating intentionally housing underutilized property setting out a target we talked about what state the sets as a target they use setting a target for any production by year and by method and identifying sites where you want to really encourage clarity development and maybe a process that gets you into pretty hot and continuing to educate  accommodate a range of housing choices so some of the things that we talked about you identified as only just one support production goals and strategies adopting potentially other overly zoning districts like i mentioned the forty hour you did  for the other development amending and with that their side of forty s would be available to mitigate school potential school costs or other impacts amending inclusionary zoning again the piece about underutilize cap capacity to achieve those goals that means anything from providing your continuing to provide the resources that you are providing as i mentioned and coordinating coordination among the various groups that are looking at  google providing appropriate staffing levels and of course working to affirmatively further their housing goals and then bill the goal for us about continuing to leverage additional state regional or local resources to ensure you keep up with your house and goals so it's one mechanism is to get access to the discretionary funds i mentioned you've partnered with a number of different agencies that habitat as well as  west other developers say you can continue to do that through those collaboration supporting the belmont housing trust and securing additional funds so that's the suite of goals and strategies basically that the next steps in the process that we've outlined include refining what's the draft housing reduction plan we have a draft we need to work on refining it to make sure it's ready because that step after that is for you to review and then adopt the housing production me to some extent following up on barbara's question there were a number of natural points in the presentation that i would really like the opportunity you follow up in writing so as to submit the would be that any discussions of this really can't proceed if we're going to do reality we need to be taking place in the context of what's happening  well and let the impact on the community will be the ability to absorb additional i mean i think that you know that that's the eight hundred pound gorilla sitting out there and i think pat's to be kind of  how do we bring it all into the fold and how do we afford the of the school system the police the fire and then everything else that goes along with it in that everybody looked around the room in that nobody has an answer and it would it's going to take a lot more than the thought and the you know briefly we kind of went around the board table with the various items to see if anybody had any any issues or any any problem with any of the proposed changes and at the end of that in the conversation we had a couple of things that we suggested we would sit with the developer to talk about in a working session one of them was an elevation that had some kind of some bad window layout that minor it was a couple of windows we asked the add on on the border road side of the ammonia building which they were they were happy to do the other issue although they made a very very hard drive to get these grills through the building on the first and second floor was primarily not to put it through the third floor but to go through the roof and then to put it around the first and second the carl and i were where we're f with them that you know this this was something that was put forth early in the process that they would be put through the roof and we held them to that and they understand that at least carl and i were very firm there and i would imagine we'll have the support of the board on that as well but they left the meeting knowing that that's what that's what we were going to insist on so i don't know with that summary carl if you want to add anything to that  that the developers asked if they needed to be here tonight because we had already discussed everything we suggested them if they get up to them if they want to be here or not they weren't sure if they were going to be able to we would it was a conflict more scheduling than anything but they may they may come in you know on my intent was to finalize any remaining questions with the board and and hopefully bring it to completion tonight to that to the developer can move on in that board can move on to other matters knowing that the developer is going to have to come back to us you know at least one if not multiple times for other approvals that they're going to need to quit the conditions of the special permit we touch the outsides of all the buildings and that you're going to be using it not just for the outside the for the roofing materials and and everything else so we we know we're going to be a force again and we're going to give the community an opportunity to ask questions when they come up with which concerns about you know the process and in some of these particular changes and i had asked to be more specific i think i think that was the of the attempt in the letter was to be more specific with some of the than perhaps at a point that we can we can vote on this round of suggestions and changes and  square footage that that shouldn't be allowed because the question permit was pretty specific to the to the area of the of the building and it just my own interpretation was that they you know the they added the tower space that is not habitable space does have square footage you know that's obviously part of it expanded the couple of the roof common rooms they have made a mistake on the on the whiz low building on the original drawings and didn't include the proper height of the elevator machine room that would serve the elevator so they had to put that up three feet but other than those things according to the developer script footage was added based on the new window layout of the roof line and without getting out of scale and measuring every every inch of the building i think that i think we as a board have to rely on the developer at an architect you know be true to that but having said that i also told them and are working session that we would add a have yet to any vote that we took today suggesting that if anything was was not discussed was not approved specifically not presented specifically that we reserve the right to bring that up at any time and you know in point out that it is something that was discussed and that we would intentionally you know have to vote on that specific thing alone and they understood that they were comfortable that i don't know from missing anything else but to support have any any questions civically about any of the any of the issues anything that we talked about the working session and you might want to know more about it or any of the other proposed changes and seem to be any more questions  you know i'm i'm happy to listen again to the neighborhood group without with some cavity as one rehashing the same issues again i don't think it's productive talking about future issues that are going to be coming before us and to be productive now i'm of the buildings were not simply a flat box looking shed shed like construction and what i think what we see now is we see flat boxy looking buildings which we are very concerned about and also we believe that as a result of the of the envelope of the buildings moving out through where originally was the detailing and then the windows were were were were built back even if it was only a matter of inches when you take the the entire value of that there was increase that is a considerable increase in volume in terms of the amount of additional square footage of the buildings to the detriment of the appearance of the buildings and so that's that's one concern as far as and it's not just an aesthetic consideration it's it's also a matter of whether and in you alluded to it about three minutes ago cyrus that you were going to trust the developer in this regard and i'm not sure does affect the aesthetics the other thing that we're concerned about and that we are wondering about is is who is what are your what's your determination what was it these at these meetings with regard to materials and what we see in the in the renderings is a cheapening of the materials that i'm going to stop it on because that's not for us right now that's down the road when they come before us ok thank you and then we also appreciated the decision which you have and it was about adding a couple of windows to one elevation which i knew i summarized already and the other one was to tell them that they couldn't put the vents to the side of the building those are the two issues that we were meeting on that's all that we discussed other than  was a series of invest in meetings is in isn't what happened this board suggested that carl and i would sit discuss those two issues that it would be it would be much more productive to do that without a roomful of people you know everybody having just different positions and we got i think in and by the way no decision has been made this was karl and i meeting on behalf of the board we made the decision for the board we firmly suggested what they needed to go along with it they were going to going to have a positive vote on the other changes but that said that's what went on at that meeting i have to rely on the architect i think this board has to because of the drawings that we have in front of they maintained on a number of occasions that no volume was added to the to the inside of the building and they maintain that the face of that building is what it was before when they eliminated the parrot in the parrot it is the extended proof that that creates basically for lack of better word a railing system that if you were standing on the roof the parroted would come up a height blocking you wouldn't be down of at the roof level they tried to do that in the last iteration where they put up railings and you could see the railings you could see the roof line and it was not very pretty but the neighborhood didn't like it or didn't like it we pushed back they came back with what is in front of us today which is very similar to the original slope prove we told them you have to go back to the slope that was insisted on earlier because of of what it does to look at the building from the street it softens it it lowers the look they did that then as i said the only volume that appears to be added to me winslow the little the little elevator roof that had to go three foot higher to allow for the beam that has to be good to carry the elevator misstate a mystic prince part that he acknowledged in him you know felt bad about it i mean it is what it is it would have been on the original drawings wi have had an issue with it so on the other buildings and i believe that's it i mean the other thing is that the community light was the movement of the of the entrance to the center of unity like that in your paperwork t the aesthetics of the windows you know to me you know speak for myself to me it's that it's a detail of the windows that they're looking to to finalize you know i know you maintain that it cheapens the look and it may be a  less expensive method of construction you know that i think that's a printer potations more than anything and you know understand your concerns i think the board talked about them we had that he would like the volume to be bigger to make the cost easy to absorb that that's not the issue with that and that's not the purview of this board with the financial his financial situations have to do with us it has to do with the deals he's made with the town for the project to go forward before that there will be construction draw these do not constitute construction drawings he added in terms of analyzing the square footage and the body i'm of the buildings  will work with the architect to verify that they are still within the original dimensions we have set there this is not the place to do fine measuring because these drawings are not detailed enough to do that agreed to design modifications to cat to cushing village subject to the following conditions one the approval is based upon incorporates the revised plans as identified specifically  this approval i further proof that this approval be limited only to those divine design not patients listed above and reviewed by the planning board any modifications that were not presented to the board are not part of this approval additional lot of occasions will need to be reviewed at a subsequent planning board meeting further move that no further modifications be made with the approval of the board or a determination running by the building inspector that the modification is so minor that the approval of the board is not required and further removed in all conditions associated with the july twenty seven twenty thirteen decision as may be modified by this approval are still applicable and enforceable kind of look at it i guess it's really the first time in public that we've that we've seen it i wouldn't call it a bit as complete a presentation as the board would probably want to this point however it's a good start and i think it's going to it's go comes we expect to to do the same thing for all of the initiatives that we take up as a board i'd want to think that this is a kind of a favorite of the board right by any means but it's it's you know it's it's it's nice to see  increased their property value it would cause them to feel claustrophobic had a negative visual impact on the neighborhood on a could have possible safety injuring its it is and they felt it should be regulated as any force in order to protect their rights the town down once every buyer has correctly examines walls from the definition of structure and therefore does not require zoning board approval for retaining the homeowners  since possibly a decrease in property value retaining walls i had there been concern here that retaining walls are exempt from the definition of structure and do not require seventy four  a building permit massachusetts state code says you wouldn't need a building or rent and bal want is actually requiring a building permit plus you must have a plan stamped by a professional engineer if the wall is ten feet in height or need on has setback requirements five foot seven requirements if the wall is more than one hundred square feet and footprint more than eight feet right hand side this is the main retaining wall that's less than six feet tall a summary of issues to consider as we move forward on some of these are really some of the main questions that i think we have to answer boards starting to give us some guidance as to how we can structure the deal by rise on the things that we tall because of the way that it's looks i mean clearly i don't know this is i mean this is the issue not only with new development but also with existing developments in in terms of this is basically by taking the wall away from a structure you're not including it improving the site which a couple of things and here i am thinking not just of this but the other if you will citizens initiatives that we've already seen if you're going to make manage because we do want to have a single process  these things through or not so one is it would be good to know right now we have to get a building you do have to get a building permit and a stamp and engineer stamp feet since i it would be good to know how many of these have been issued in say the past five or six years so i think second and again this is for this issue and other issues  it's great to see examples of people towns that have done this we do after quite a lengthy discussions with the selectmen the financial task force and so i have a list of comparable communities it would be the it would be good to see what the banks you know you want to look at it both ways want to see who's doing it and what that looks like but it's also good to have some sense of the accounts that for other purposes we decided are comparable what  hands and how it actually playing out and do we want to do do we want to be more focused or do we want to have more of a structure out front for you know what the guidelines are that i think that it's important for early work in  working group and eventually we bring it to a point where we discuss it at a public hearing and in that that input we may go back again and be defiant again and ultimately will come up with something that will vote on to bring to the town meeting and hopefully get you know people which is one of the reasons why we said to the to the man to people you know go back and get some support so that is the more of a groundswell so that we can you know get something pushed through and i think that's you know that will help here as well for those numbers reported somebody close but that probably will be sometime in february oh maybe the beginning of march but that is a very short time frame to i think it's a short time for insisting to put some stuff together sure type of avenue or we do it just to either a special permit or more definitive way of building the walls of the height restrictions which every avenue we go to once we decide that i think the drafting of it is pretty yeah this is the only reason it's here is his really for us to talk about the scale of scheduling when we're going to be able to get it to town meeting and that's kind of why we were looking at the schedule yet we're not far enough we have to make that decision as a as a board and i hope to make it better probably another meeting every hole hopefully in the in the morning sometime between six to twenty eight so that we can kind of have our our marching orders amongst us and know what we're going to take are what we're not i think there are some some items that we can tweak now that aren't going to take a lot and i think you know if we if we decide to take this one up i think we can get it done it's just a matter of degree of agreement we all will be over be involved to some degree