There's an extensive scientific literature describing the positive impact of dietary plant compounds on overall health and longevity. However, it's only now becoming clear that the consumption of diets rich in plant foods can influence neuro-inflammation, brain inflammation, leading to the expression of cytoprotective, cell-protective, and restorative proteins. Just over the last decade, remarkable progress has been made to realize that oxidative stress and chronic low-grade inflammation are major risk factors underlying brain aging, so no wonder antioxidant and anti-inflammatory foods may help. The brain is especially vulnerable to free radical-attack oxidative stress due to its high fat content and its cauldron of high metabolic activity. You don't want your brains to go rancid, so you'd think one of the major fat-soluble dietary antioxidants like beta-carotene would step in. But the major crotinoid concentrated in the brain is actually lutein.  For example, if you look at the oldest old, like in the Georgia Centenarian study, recognizing that oxidation is involved in age-related cognitive decline, they figured dietary antioxidants may play a role in its prevention or delay, so they looked at eight different ones, vitamin A, vitamin E, on down the list. And only lutein was significantly related to better cognition. Now in this study, they looked at brain tissue on autopsy. By then it's a little too late. So how could you study the effects of diet on the brain while you're still alive? I mean, if only there was a way we could physically look into the living brain with our own two eyes. There is, with our own two eyes, the retina. The back of our eyeball is actually an extension of our central nervous system and out-pouching of the brain during development. And right in the middle, there's a spot. This is what the doctor sees when they look into your eye with that bright light. That spot, called the macula, is our HD camera, where you get the highest resolution vision, and it's packed with lutein. And indeed, levels in the retina correspond to levels in the rest of your brain.  So now we can finally do studies on live people to see if diet can affect lutein levels in the eyes, which reflects lutein levels in the brain, and see if that correlates with improvements in cognitive function. And indeed, significant correlations exist between the amount of macular pigment, these plant pigments like lutein in your eye, and cognitive test scores. You can demonstrate this on functional MRI scans, suggesting lutein and a related plant pigment called zeaxanthin promote cognitive functioning in old age by enhancing neural efficiency. The efficiency by which our nerves communicate. Like check out this cool study on white matter integrity, using something called the diffusion tensor imaging, which provides unique insights into brain network connectivity, allowing you to follow the nerve tracks throughout the brain. And researchers were able to show enhanced circuit integrity based on how much lutein and zeaxanthin they could see in people's eyes. Further evidence of a meaningful relationship between diet and integrity of our brains, particularly in regions vulnerable to age-related decline. So do Alzheimer's patients have less of this macular pigment? Significantly less lutein in their eyes, significantly less lutein in their blood, and a higher occurrence of macular degeneration where this pigment layer gets destroyed. The thickness of this plant pigment layer in your eyes can be measured and may be a potential marker for the beginnings of Alzheimer's. Let's not wait that long though. We know macular pigment densities related to cognitive function in older people. What about during middle age? One apparent consequence of aging appears to be the loss of some aspects of cognitive control, which starts out early, in mid-adulthood, but not in everybody, suggesting maybe something like diet could be driving some of the differences. Here's a measure of cognitive control, showing younger, on average, do better than older adults. But older adults who have high macular pigment, lots of lutein in the back of their eyes, do significantly better. These results suggest that the protective role of crudenoids like lutein within the brain may be evident during early and middle-adulted decades prior to the onset of more apparent cognitive decline later in life. You can take 20-year-olds and show superior auditory function in those with more macular pigment in their eyes. Look, the auditory system, our hearing, like the rest of our central nervous system, is ultimately constructed and maintained by diet and is therefore not surprisingly sensitive to dietary intake throughout life, all the way back to childhood. Higher macular pigment is associated with higher academic achievement among schoolchildren. You can look into a kid's eyes and get some sense of how well they may do in subjects like math and writing. This finding is important because macular lutein is modifiable and can be manipulated by dietary intake. OK, OK, so where is lutein found? The avocado and egg industries like to boast about how much of these macular pigments they have in their products, but the real superstars are dark green, leafy vegetables. A half a cup of kale has 50 times more than an egg, a spinach salad, or a 50-egg omelet. And the earlier, the better. Pregnant and breastfeeding women should definitely be checking off my daily dozen green servings, but it's also apparently never too late. While some age-related cognitive decline is to be expected, these effects may be less pronounced among those eating more green and leafy. But you don't know for sure until you put it to the test, which we'll explore next.


In this video, we'll build intuition for how we calculate areas enclosed by polar curves. The idea is very similar to what we use to interpret an integral of a function over an interval as the area under the curve in that interval. Recall that we used Riemann's sums to approximate the area under that curve. We'll use a similar idea, this time with areas of sectors of circles. Let's remind ourselves of how we calculated areas of sectors of circles in geometry. So here we have a circle. We know its area is pi R squared. And the entire angle measure is 360 degrees, or as we know it, 2 pi. Well, suppose we look at just a portion of this circle, a portion whose angle measure is theta. We know then that the area of that sector, just this piece, the area of this sector, must be a portion or a fraction of the area of the entire circle. Since the angle measure is theta, we know that the fraction of the entire circle that this sector represents is theta over the 2 pi, which is the entire angle measure. Therefore, the area of this sector is theta over 2 pi times pi R squared. So the area of this sector is therefore theta over 2 times R squared. Now, if we're looking at a polar curve, let's say it's shaped this way, just as we did before with areas under curves in the development of the integral, suppose we take this section of the polar curve and divide it up into little mini sectors of circles. And just as we did with Riemann sums to approximate the area under a curve, we'll find the area of each of these sectors and add them up. So let's consider the i-th sector. We'll call this the i-th sector. And we're going to define these sectors with a theta of size delta theta. So I've got a number of sectors, each of whose angles are delta theta. And as we said in the previous screen, we can find the area of each of these sectors by taking that theta, in our case delta theta, over 2 times the radius associated with that sector squared. This is the area of the i-th sector. Well, once we find the areas of each of these sectors and I add them up, I should get some sort of approximation for the area of the whole polar curve. So the idea is I'm adding all of these up. And then in order to get a better and better approximation, I'm really looking at what this area is approaching as delta theta gets smaller and smaller, which means I'm really looking at smaller and smaller segments in order to better approximate the area in this polar curve. So ultimately, I'm interested in letting delta theta approach 0. And I'm adding up the areas of each of these sectors, which we now know as an integral. We're evaluating it from our initial theta to the theta of interest. So theta 1, we'll call it to theta 2. 1 half r squared d theta. So this is the area of a polar curve r of theta between theta 1 and theta 2.


What I'm going to talk about is a small Dutch population, where everything is small in volume to per definition, called Oldenzaal and its development over time. Yes. So Oldenzaal is located on the eastern border of the Netherlands, almost in Germany. We are right here at the moment. Well, Oldenzaal was founded somewhere in the seventh or eighth century. We don't know the exact date of the foundation of this medieval town. We do know that the oldest dates of the burials that we have are from the starting of the seventh century. So what you see here is a map of Oldenzaal in the 16th century. You see in the middle a small church, and around this church there has always been a cemetery. And at this cemetery, not only people from the town of Oldenzaal were buried, but also people from the region around it. So the population that is buried there really is a regional population. So not just people from the city context, from an urban context, but also people from a rural context, which is both interesting and makes it even more complex. And at this cemetery, excavations took place until 2013. Not all the cemetery was excavated, but just parts of it, depending on what was going to be disturbed for all kinds of reconstruction plans. And as you can see, DNA samples were collected in the field already out of forensic conditions to avoid problems with contamination, which is, of course, a big issue with ancient DNA. So we planned on beforehand that we were going to do an extensive population analysis, which is quite interesting and has many benefits, because you can prepare, basically, yourself for what's going to come, so take specific precautions. And so the population research that we were going to do on these skeletons was basically a commercial project. So you can see that almost 3,000 skeletons were excavated, and 37% of them could be sampled in the field for DNA and isotopes by collecting teeth. So not everybody had teeth anymore, either due to disturbing activities in the cemetery, or people were simply old. They didn't have any teeth anymore. And from these almost 3,000 skeletons, we had to select 200. So we had a budget for 200, that's it. And within the budget, we defined several themes that we wanted to address, which is your basic demography. So by looking at sex and age distribution, we wanted to look at diet and health by means of carbon and nitrogen, isotopes, stature, and pathology, and migration and mobility also by addressing strontium and oxygen, isotopes, and DNA. And we wanted to view these themes from a diachronic perspective. So we know that this cemetery has been used from around 7th century until 1830. So we have over 1,000 years of burials. So you can really track this population over time and see what's happening. I'm a DNA specialist, so I did the DNA analysis. He's at Codecorp from the Free University of Amsterdam. Did the isotope analysis. And Ravel Panhuis, who is not in this session because he's overlapping, but he's around. So if you want to ask him, find him. He did the physical anthropology and paleo pathology. So this was really an integrated project from the beginning. Of course, spatial and temporal distribution are quite important in a project like this. What you see, the big blank gap in the middle is the church itself. And in gray, you see all the grays that were excavated. I think it's quite clear that especially in the south and the west, they are predominantly from the outer side of the cemetery. So typically the less favorite, the cheaper places. And that means that you already have a very strong selection of the population that you're going to analyze. You have a specific layer of the population, in this case predominantly the more lower layers of populations with the outer edges of the cemetery and, of course, the northern side. And to do this diapronic perspective, you need good dating. So we were looking specifically in areas with deep stratigraphy. So we could do Harris matrices because you can't see 14 dates every skeleton simply too costly. So you need to make sure that you get them from areas where you have different layers above each other and just assume that that represents a long period of time. So here you see the regions A to D, where we got our 200 skeletons from. If we zoom in on that, you can see that in the northern area, we mostly had people from the medieval period, so up to 1,500. And in the southern locations, more people from the post-medieval period. And the reason that we chose this division for the population is both practical because this enables also to compare it with other Dutch populations. It doesn't mean that this is the best division that you can make. But this is what we started with. And depending on your research question, of course, you can divide your population to different time periods. But for now, we chose this one. But still, we had 30 individuals that could not be dated, unfortunately. So quickly, for the data analysis for DNA, what do we do to answer our questions? For the autosomal DNA, we looked at the level of genetic variation. So how much variation do we have in this population? If you have a very low variation, it's an indication of a very close population. So like what we call inbreeding, so not much new DNA from outside getting into this population. And to see if we have population continuity or not, you want to compare the type of genetic variation between the different periods. Are they similar or not? And for the y-chromosomal and mitochondrial haplogroups, we now have a really cool, new way of modeling that and actually really look at population continuity. Because if you model for population continuity, you need to take mutation rate into consideration. You need to take population growth into consideration. Effective population size, which is the part of the population that actually does produce the next generation. And for the autosomal DNA, we do not have that kind of sophisticated models available yet. Unfortunately, but we do have that for the y-chromosomal and mitochondrial DNA. And for diet analysis, Lisette kind of made a reference database for the local population based on local zoo archaeological remains. And for migration, she refers to something that is not quite amazing. In my point of view, it's like a map with local bio-available strontium ratios for the Netherlands. And of course, if you want to know whether someone is local or not, you need to know what kind of strontium ratios are available in different regions in the world. And we don't have that for many regions yet. So having this really is a luxury. And for the oxygen ratio, she looked at the ISOIS database and modern available data. But because we had such a big population, we could also apply the statistical approach. So based on what is the average signal of our population and where do our outliers go? So for the results, basic demography, we saw that sex was equally divided over time, both in adults and non-adults, because in this case, we could also sex older children, which was quite new and interesting. We didn't see any changes over time. We didn't see any differences in the different areas of the cemeteries. It was quite a stable picture. We did see, however, that the age at death for the adults was relatively low compared to reference populations in both the Netherlands and elsewhere in Europe. We didn't see any significant changes over time. So this age at death stayed stable over time. What we did see, however, was a serious underrepresentation of non-adults and a rather unusual distribution of the age classes within the non-adults. So what you see here is adults versus non-adults in the medieval population and the post-medieval population. Over here, the medieval population, we have a bit over 30% children, which is on the low side but could be acceptable, could be really representative for what was going on. Then the post-medieval population, we have only 10% non-adults. And that's really not what you expect. Usually it's between 30% and 50%. So that either means that due to tephanomic processes, for example, children were less well-preserved and we simply didn't see them anymore. They were not there anymore. It could also mean that they were predominantly buried in a location that we simply didn't hit with the excavation. So that could also point to specific use of the spatial area of the cemetery and burial traditions. If you look at the age distribution within these non-adults in yellow, the medieval population in green, the post-medieval population, you see that the youngest age group, 0 to 5 years, is relatively underrepresented. Usually that is the largest age class. And so even there is something strange is going on. If we don't have a clear explanation for that at the moment, hopefully later we can answer this question. Concerning health, the stature of the population of the females and males was quite average concerning reference populations. We saw relatively low prevalence of cariose, but relatively high prevalence of fractures, peripheral and vertebral osteoarthritis, periodostitis and osteomalacy. We didn't find any clear evidence of tuberculosis, syphilis and leprosy, which is, I think, remarkable on such a large population. In terms of diachronic perspective, we saw the decrease of regular and seasonal enamel hypoplasia, but an increase of dental carias and antemortem tooth loss. So that might point to a change in diet over time. When we compare the sexes, we see that males have more fractures and more chronic sinusitis than females. It might point to a bit harsher conditions, working more limb conditions for males compared to females. When we look at the diet, I'm not going to go into this plot. I don't have time for that. But we see that the diet is predominantly based on C3 plants and animal proteins. The component of fish was remarkably low. It was nearly absent. Still, if we compare the sexes, we see that the men had a little bit more fish in their diet than the females in the medieval population, otherwise didn't see any changes over time. And we did see a relatively high nitrogen value in the northern zone, which is not related to the carbon. And in this case, that might indicate to higher prevalence of disease and or lack of food and or water. For migration, we saw that at least 15% of the analyzed individuals could be seen as non-local because their strontium-oxygen ratios were outside of the regional bandwidth. But the majority of the known locals had ratios that were still compatible with other regions within the Netherlands. Nevertheless, we do see evidence for some individuals, most probably originating from the UK, Germany, and Eastern Europe. Now, when we look at the genetic parts, we see a very stable picture of genetic variety over time. The population does not get more variety over time. It's quite stable. But overall, it's a relatively high level of variety with 81%. And that means that it's a quite open population. So they're combined with the isotope results. It points more towards a high level of mobility, so regional mobility as opposed to long-distance migration. And when we compare the different periods, we see that based on the autosomal DNA, there is no significant differences. So again, a very stable picture. But when we do the population modeling for the Y-chromosomal hypergroups, it's the same. We cannot reject population continuity. But we might be able to reject population continuity for the mitochondrial DNA. It's a very subtle signal. And it's not backed up with the isotope results. We don't see any difference between the males and females. So we need to dive into what could be the cause of that. In conclusion, what we basically see is a population consisting of laborers, people that worked on their relatively harsh conditions, had to work hard. More regional mobility than long-distance migration. But overall, a very stable population. Nothing much spectacular seems to be happening here. The temporal difference that we do pick up point more to changes in lifestyle and life conditions than really changes in the population itself. We also picked up some very subtle spatial differences, which point to differences in socioeconomic position. And I guess, in the end, this picture more or less fits with the fact that we have our skeletons from the outer edges of the cemetery. And I guess this is a nice basis, like a first glimpse into what happens in a regular Dutch town. But the point is that we hardly have any reference data. So how spectacularly boring or exciting this is, I don't know yet. So we need to do way more, of course. I'd love to get more skeletons, because 200 seem like a lot. We're talking about a regional population and over 1,000 years of burial. So in the end, it's not that much, really. And of course, we have a very strict selection of the population. We're addressing only one part of the population. And I'd love to get more dates. So we get more skeletons for the diagronic perspective and also narrow down these time frames to pick up more subtle details. Compare with other regions within the Netherlands and Europe. And also move on to paleoepidemiology, pathogen analysis, selection. Well, I'd like to thank a lot of people for contributing to this project. And that's what I'm going to leave it at.


It is 734 p.m. on Tuesday, December 20th, 2022. Good evening. My name is Christian Klein and I am the chair of the Arlington Zoning Board of Appeals and I'm calling this meeting of the board to order. I can confirm that all members and anticipated officials are present. See Roger is here. Patrick Hanlon. Yeah. Venkat Holly. Venkat you're on here. Thank you. Daniel Riccadelli here. And our associate member Elaine Hoffman will not be with us tonight. On behalf of the town, Rick Valerelli, our board's administrator. Good evening, Mr. Chairman. Good evening, Rick. And assisting us is Vincent Lee from ISD. Here. Good to have you with us. Thank you. Appearing. So there's no one here appearing on behalf of 39 Woodside Lane. We will be voting. They have requested that they be allowed to withdraw their application because it's taking more effort to redesign around the easement that was found on the property. So we'll be only holding a vote to accept that request withdraw. But appearing on behalf of 201 Old Spring Street. Steve Linz. Yes, hello. Hello, I'm sure I did not pronounce that correctly. Apologize for that. It's okay. Oh, okay. No one in the waiting room. This open meeting of the Arlington Zoning Board of Appeals is being conducted remotely consistent with an act relative to extending certain state of emergency accommodations signed into law on July 16th, 2022. This act includes an extension until March 31st, 2023 of the remote meeting provision of Governor Baker's March 12, 2020 executive order suspending certain provisions of the open meeting law, which suspended the requirement to hold all meetings in a publicly accessible physical location. Public bodies may continue holding meetings remotely without a form of the public body physically present at a meeting location so long as they provide adequate alternative access to remote meetings. Public bodies may meet remotely so long as reasonable public access is afforded so the public can follow along with the deliberations of the meeting. An opportunity for public participation will be provided during the public comment period during each public hearing. For this meeting, the Arlington Zoning Board of Appeals has convened a video conference via the Zoom application with online and telephone access as listed on the agenda posted to the town's website, identifying how the public may join. This meeting is being recorded and it will be broadcast by ACMI. Please be aware that attendees are participating by a variety of means. Some attendees are participating by video conference. Others are participating by computer audio or by telephone. Accordingly, please be aware that other folks may be able to see you, your screen name or another identifier. Please take care to not share personal information. Anything that you broadcast may be captured by the recording. We ask that you please maintain decorum during the meeting including displaying an appropriate background. All supporting materials that have been provided members of this body are available on the town's website unless otherwise noted. The public is encouraged to follow along using the posted agenda. And as chair, I reserve the right to take items out of order in the interest of promoting and orderly meetings. As the board will be taking up new business at this meeting, as chair, I make the following land acknowledgment. Whereas the Zoning Board of Appeals for the town of Arlington, Massachusetts discusses and arbitrates the use of land in Arlington, formerly known as monotomy, in Algonquin word meetings with waters, the board hereby acknowledges that the town of Arlington is located on the ancestral lands of the Massachusetts tribe, the tribe of indigenous peoples from whom the colony, province and commonwealth have taken their names. We pay our respects to the ancestral bloodline of the Massachusetts tribe and their descendants who still inhabit historic Massachusetts territories today. Okay, so I am going to go ahead and pass on the administrative items for now. We'll come back to those so we can go straight to the public hearings. Turning to public hearings, here are some ground rules for effective and clear conduct of tonight's business. After I announce each agenda item, I will ask the applicants to introduce themselves for themselves and make their presentation to the board. I will then request that the members of the board ask what questions they have on their proposal. And after the board's questions have been answered, I will open the meeting for public comment. At the conclusion of public comment, the board will deliberate and vote on the matter. So the first item then would be docket number 371539. I will go ahead and share the letter from the, Mary-Wynn Stanley O'Connor as the applicant's lawyer. And on behalf of the petitioner and the above reference matter, she requests an application for special permit will be withdrawn without prejudice. So as I briefly stated before, this was an application that was filed with the board several months ago. The board held one or two hearings on it and then continued and then it was discovered that there was an undisclosed easement on the property. And we continued again and then the applicant had come to me last week saying that they were still working on the revisions and asked about a further continuance. And I had recommended to them that they instead asked to withdraw and then without prejudice and then reapply. And what that will do is it will give them as much time as they need to get their drawings prepared relative to working around the easement, but it also makes sure that the application gets readvertized so that the public will be up to speed with when this comes back before the board. And the neighbors will be better informed when this comes forth. So with that, are there any questions from the board? Pat, you are, yes, Pat. The record in this case includes a fair amount of commentary from neighbors and others. And some of that will maybe moot, given whatever the new proposal is from the applicant. But other parts won't. And rather than inconveniencing the applicant, I wonder if it's possible for us to deem that the filings that they've already made would continue to be part of the record in the event that there is a new application that is filed dealing with this. Because otherwise, I'm afraid that everybody is going to have to go through the trouble of resubmitting all the stuff that they've already submitted. I guess when I think about it, it may be that we can handle this when the cases filed again, assuming that it is. But in either way, I'd like to find a way of avoiding putting the neighbors to the additional trouble of refiling what they've already filed. Okay. Anything else from the board? Seeing none. Then I would move to approve the request to withdraw from 39 Woodside Lane without prejudice, and note that the record to date will be re-entered into the record should the applicant reapply. Second. Thank you, Mr. Hanlon. Any questions from the board? We'll take it to roll call vote. Mr. Dupont? Aye. Mr. Hanlon? Aye. Mr. Hawley? Aye. Mr. Riccadelli? Aye. And the chair votes aye. So the motion to approve the withdrawal of 39 Woodside Lane is approved. So that brings us to item six on our agenda docket number 3727201 Old Spring Road or Old Spring Street. Our applicants are here, so I ask them to introduce themselves and tell us what they would like to do. Okay. Sounds good. Nice to meet all of you. We are the Listener family. My name is Stian, and thanks to me is my wife Natalie. We've been in Arlington for 10 years, and we've been at 201 Spring Street for almost seven years now. We really enjoy living here. This is a great house and a great neighborhood. We have two children, five years and nine years old, so the close proximity to Bracket School is a big bonus for us. Another thing that's been a little bit painful is the kitchen. So we have been wanting to remodel our kitchen for pretty much the entire time that we've lived in the house, but there's no optimal way to really improve anything with existing floor plan. So that's when we engaged Pegasus, designed to build to help us, and the solution turns out it is to extend backwards and sacrifice some of the area that's currently occupied by a deck for the extension. The project also includes rebuilding this deck because it is very old and falling apart, so it needs to be repaired and rebuilt. So unfortunately, the house sits at an angle relative to the left property line with the Emerson's, which then naturally limits what we're able to do. And that brings us to this point to see what is possible, and I guess, did I cover everything Natalie? Yeah, I think so. Is there someone here from Pegasus tonight or no? Yes, I'm here, Jenna. Jenna, do you want me to bring up the plans if you'd like to just walk us through them? Sure, no problem. So we're proposing a six-foot addition off the back of the left side of the house there. So it expands basically in line with the current corner there, which brings us more non-conforming. So right now they're non-conforming at the 7.5 feet, and at that angle then brings us closer at 6.5 feet. So that's the drawing you see there. And then the only modifications that we've done to the footprint of the deck are moving the location of the stairs, and we've discussed that we are flexible with how that corner is utilized. So right now, if you can see closest to the property line there, the stairs are basically like inset within the deck, and they're a little awkward for them to get in and out of their yard there, so essentially making that usable deck now and moving the stairs toward the middle of the deck and sticking out a little bit. So that footprint basically expands their kitchen there, and within their kitchen right now there's a powder room, and they have very limited storage. So this is sort of the solution that we came up with. Yep, so that's the footprint. You can see there the stairs at that left corner there of the deck that I mentioned, and then their current kitchen, which is sort of tucked by the chimney there and the basement stairs. So it makes it pretty tight for two people to be working. And then there's a powder room also there. So those are the existing elevations there. So the deck footprint doesn't change except for where the stair locations are. And the grade is a little bit tricky, I guess I'd say. So the grade is they have a garage under their front of their house, and then the grade comes up towards the back of the house there. Okay. And then so this is our proposed footprint. So we've expanded the powder room to incorporate their laundry, and then given a little mudroom space for coats and book bags and all that necessary items. And then made a more comfortable kitchen layout for them. So that's the six foot addition at the rear and a little under 21 feet of the way. And those are just a few pictures of inside there of the kitchen. I don't know where we have that. We have that twice. We don't have that. I definitely have the exterior elevation. Let me try a different file here. Let me try. I think I have to open a new one. That's the existing. That was the proposed. Yeah, there we go. So a little crooked there. There we go. Yeah, so it's a single story addition. So the siding on the house is a little unique. Most of the house is brick from, you know, when the house was originally built. And then the previous owner built a dormer on the back of the house, as you can see there, which is siding. I believe is it wood? Clatboards. Yep. And it's painted. And so that's what we're proposing to do as the finish of our addition on the first floor there. So basically those two portions will match. And then just sort of a low pitched shed roof there. And then again, you could see the deck, which is in the same footprint as it is now. Great. Well, thank you very much for for walking us through the project. So this part, so this is an interesting part of of the zoning bylaw and the state zoning law. So as the applicant had mentioned, this is the current setback on the side yard here is 7.5 feet, where in Earlington the required minimum is 10 feet. So this property is an existing non-conforming house with regards to the side yard setback. And what the applicant is requesting, by extending the rear wall of the house out six feet, they are decreasing that amount. So instead of being 7.5 feet off the property line at 6.5 feet off the property line. If the house was conforming on this side and they had requested to extend into the setback, then that would be a variance because they are creating a new non-conforming condition. However, in this case, they do have an existing non-conformity that they are intensifying. So they are making it more non-conforming, but it is already non-conforming. And this is in state law, this is taken up in chapter 40 a section six. And the state law and the towns by law allow you to increase the intensification of an existing non-conformity. But the board has to find that that intensification is not detrimental to the neighborhood. And then and the board typically does that by applying the standards for a special permit to evaluate whether that condition is met. So at the time that this was filed, it was filed as a variance. But a request for a special permit is less stringent than an application for a variance. And the board in the past has allowed a special permit to be approved under a variance application because the standard is lower. So that just brings everyone up to speed on what this is. So essentially what this now because it's an existing non-conformity, this becomes a section six determination of whether or not the requested intensification of the non-conformity is more detrimental than the existing condition. So are there questions for the applicant from the board? Mr. Chairman. Mr. Hanlon. It may be that that this is more appropriately directed to Mr. Valerelli. But I'm wondering whether the instructional services has made a determination whether this is an extensive and intensification of an existing non-conformity or whether it's a new non-conformity or potentially whether it's de minimis and so not really an extension of the existing non-conformity. Generally we followed the lead of ISD on this and the record does not indicate what ISD's views are. That's a good question Mr. Hanlon. So ISD SART is a variance because the deck being open has a whole different set of rules but Chairman Klein did a great job of turning that into an extension of a non-conformity. So unfortunately it's a little ambiguous and therefore we leave it to the board to make a determination. Can I have a word here? Because I live on the house on the left. Yeah, we will absolutely get to you sir. I need to do questions from the board first. At this point I was just trying to get clear as to what the procedural basis of all of this is. We're not really dealing with the merits of what it is or isn't there. I guess the other question I have Mr. Chairman is whether there is any information and this may be something that when we get to public housing Mr. Emerson would like to comment on whether there's any information that if we treated this as a special permit application and whether there's any information that is missing from the document that we have before us that we would need to know to decide whether or not whether or not to be that we can make a Section 6 finding and issue a special permit here. Thank you Mr. Hanlon. Are there any further questions from the board at this time? Seeing none I will go ahead and open the meeting for public comment. So public questions and comments are taken as they relate to the matter at hand and should be directed to the board for the purpose of informing our decision. Members of the public are granted time to ask questions and make comments. The chair asks those wishing to address the board a second time during any particular hearing to please be patient and allow those wishing to speak for a first time to go ahead of them. Members of the public who wish to speak should digitally raise their hand using the button on the participant tab in the Zoom application. Those calling in by phone please dial star 9 to indicate you would like to speak. You'll be called upon by the meeting host and asked to give your name and address and be given time for your questions and comments. All questions are to be addressed through the chair. Please remember to speak clearly. Once all public questions and comments have been addressed the public comment period will be closed. The board and staff will do our best to show documents as requested. So with that I will call on Dave Emerson and if you could just give your name and address for the record sir. David Emerson 205 Spring Street. Thank you. If you could put the survey picture back up that has probably the okay. So I mean I have no problem with the kitchen part. The problem that rises is the deck. As you can see it goes out. It's not six and a half feet at the end of the deck. It's more like three and a half feet. So I'd either like a bump out of a bump in of 18 inches or something to maybe make it or maybe it's six and a half feet for the last 10 feet of the deck because it is very close at that at the tip of the of the new deck to the property line because of the way that the lot is configured. Mr. Hallerly how close is the deck supposed to come to a property line? Well in this case Mr. Chairman it's a pre-existing condition so as it was built it could be rebuilt on the same footprint. Okay. Mr. Chairman. Mr. Hanlon. If it were not a pre-existing condition what would the rule be? Our call is half the is it half the distance to the property line? It would be 10 feet from the side yard setback Mr. Chairman. So it could theoretically go to the property line? No no it would be 10 feet side yard setback to the deck.  So Mr. Chairman I I'm being a little dense and can't follow this. I know that the deck is supposed to not be more than 10 feet from the from the face of the building in which it wouldn't be here and it sort of is obliquely impinging on that side yard. The protected property line is 10 feet period and the question I have is that we the deck normally can a decks frequently can and do project into protected side yards and my question is if you could explain a little more about what the what limitation there is on that if there is any limitation. So I was going to go ahead and bring up the code on that for five three nine five three seven. So unenclosed steps decks and the like which do not project more than 10 feet in the front yard or more than five feet in the side yard beyond the line of the foundation wall may extend beyond the minimum yard regulations other provided for the district and enclosed decks which do not project more than 10 feet in the rear yard so in this if it was to be if there was no deck now and they were constructing the deck it could extend or actually no it's entirely within the rear yard it's not in the side yard is in the rear yard so therefore not project one 10 feet into the required rear yard not closer to the lot line than half the size of the required yard okay okay so Mr. Chairman that would be five feet correct not closer to the lot line than half the size of the yard yes I believe that is correct so if this were just have an issue it would be a little bit too close yes but as Mr. Valarelli notes this deck is this deck is a pre-existing it is an existing condition Mr. Chairman just to I don't want to conceal where I'm coming from here I this is one of those things where obviously everybody has got legitimate interests at play and I'm trying to think about the way in which these things could be reconciled you know if we just left it as things are we have to make a finding that the extension of the kitchen not be more nonconform would not be more intrusive to the neighborhood than the existing condition Mr. Emerson's argument is it would be more intrusive not because the kitchen particularly but because he has a concern about the continuation of the existing situation with the deck we're not obligated it's a discretionary thing for us as to what to deal with as far as the kitchen is concerned it's not impossible that reasonable people could get together and say you know as a way of dealing with this we might want to make some adjustments on the deck in order to make clear the way for what's done with the condition it's all a thing that reasonable people could discuss and could think about and ultimately the discussion the the issue for us is a question of discretion so presumably I would be very interested in what the applicant and Mr. Emerson and potentially others might might come up with but it's it's a it's a situation where there's not a huge amount I mean we're talking about feet here and it's not like there's a huge amount that's at stake in in any direction but it would be nice to be able to have this done in a way that that nobody has to walk away from the loser and that's just as a loser and I'm just kind of looking at it from that point of view and trying to explore the possibilities of coming to a win-win situation for everyone thank you Mr. Hanlon Mr. Emerson did you have any further comments no I just that that point there the end of that deck is probably three and a half feet something like that because there's flowers on both sides and what might what I was hoping is that maybe we could get it to like what it is from where the addition the six foot addition is at six and a half feet and either take it out at an angle or bump it in a foot or two and I mean it's there's nothing at that end there's no stairs the stairs are in the middle of the deck yeah okay it's just a little it's a little close there that's all all right well thank you thank you very much are there other members of public who wish to address this hearing let's see any going once going twice mr. Moore yes mr chairman sorry for the delay just building on what mr. Hanlon had to say i think more i have to ask i'm sorry yeah Steve Moore Piedmont street i apologize thank you um uh based on what mr. Hanlon had to say as a disinterested party a suggested compromise might be to just make sure the corner of that deck does not exceed the current non-conformity of the house which is it's seven and a half feet i'm not sure what it says um and and and like mr. Emerson was suggesting you know bump the deck back that would be a compromise here because this is going to extend the non-conformity of the uh the house um and yes it's grandfathered in but i think a compromise with the neighbor would be just to take that corner back to uh the original non-conformity thank you mr. thank you mr. Moore are there other members of the public who wish to address once going twice with that then i'll go ahead and close the public comment period for this hearing so the go back and uh share the site plan again so again the the question before the board so it's a house with an existing seven and a half foot side yard setback um which is non-conforming and the request is to decrease that from seven and a half feet to six and a half feet by way of creating a uh essentially six by 21 foot addition on the rear of the house um that takes up an area of the deck which the the applicant is uh stated is a deck that's in a state of disrepair and a need of some serious some serious work as a part of this process and they are also intending to relocate the stairs um from the corner to being more central on this on the backside of the deck and then in addition we do have testimony from the abiding neighbor who has concerns about the existing uh location corner of the deck whereas now on that corner drops down to grade i believe the intent would it would be to build it up at the height of the regular deck so it would um this area here would stop being steps and would be a part of the deck and very close to the property line um so i would like to give the the applicant an opportunity to um address that concern for the neighbor um and as mr handlin suggested if there might be a way that we could um pull this corner back from the property line um as a part of the reconstruction of the deck okay is it okay if we jump in absolutely please go on so yeah i i completely hear what uh what mr m merson is saying and we we have discussed it and it's uh for us the important part here is to get you know a better kitchen the deck is what it is and what it was when we moved in uh we we wanted to to try to preserve the area of the deck because it's it's nice to have the deck there but that corner there at the moment is just stairs as you can see and it's just kind of a difficult to walk around there and uh uh the the idea to move the stairs to the middle of the deck seemed like a good idea from the the way pegasus had designed this now what happens to that corner whether it goes in at an angle or some other creative solution you know we're we're totally for that flexible we don't want this to be any inconvenience for anyone that you know even for ourselves to walk around the house it's uh you know it's it's it's good to have some space there so i don't know if if jenna if you have any uh good comments you know that if we're going in this situation and we'd like to hear from you as well but you know we we are flexible we don't want to uh make any problems for anybody so um i think that's all we we have to say at this point mr chairman mr handlin before just to give jenna something to work with one of the ways that we can address this is by uh including a condition saying that the reconstructed deck would be no closer to the property line than five feet and that gives flexibility to do that in whatever way that makes the most sense and i wonder if if we did that whether that would be uh whether the output would be we'd find that except for me so that i think that's a that's a good suggestion um i did want to just bring this uh slide up again um because it shows the location of the entrance into the mud room and i just wanted to make sure that we were um you know that whatever we did we were make you know maintaining um access to the mud room yeah i think that um if i could sorry jump in jenna from pegasus um yeah so i think it might feel a little bit better like you know we're discussing is maybe step it in and and i think that's uh approximately two feet there um between the the corner and the door so if you know there was a compromise in the middle where you know we put the deck edge in that two feet to to give a little bit more space um i'm thinking just looking out your back door and and as the neighbor that sort of a straight line would probably look a little bit better than a funky angle and potentially more usable as the deck um and i think yeah maybe it's a gives us a little bit of creativity you know a little flexibility with it if um you know there was something that said we would keep the um um you know the seven and a half feet um as we mentioned that it is currently like the house is currently i feel like that's a a pretty good compromise okay so that would mean keeping the deck within i mean essentially no closer than seven and a half feet to the property line is that with the objective yes i think that that um so that basically brings it into where the um um existing corner of the house was um dimension wise right which i don't think you know ruins the intent of the deck or the use of the deck as long as the homeowners are on board with that mr chairman it seems to me that there's no that there's no particular interest in in controlling how the applicant brings that about and if if just meeting that performance standard basically we'll do the trick uh then we may want to consider having a condition to that effect uh if the board is interested in approving the application well approving i mean obviously we have an issue that we started off with it isn't really the application but i'm guessing that nobody on the part of the applicant would be uh concerned if we uh constitute this application as an effect an application for a special permit i would not have a problem because i don't see any information that a special permit application would provide to us that the variance application has not provided this is the bylaw let's go back up to you okay so the board um and so just to make sure that the board is comfortable with um with this approach i'm recommending that we consider that this is a property with a pre-existing nonconformity and the request is to intensify that existing nonconformity by reducing the setback from the side yard from 7.5 feet to 6.5 feet um and um in order to review that at the the stat the statutory requirement at the state level is that we are allowed to make that determination provided that it does is not more detrimental not excuse me not substantially more detrimental um to the neighborhood than the condition as it is today so i think what we have discussed with the applicant the applicant has agreed to do would be sort of a combination of two things one would be to extend the the house out six feet to come one foot closer to the side yard um while at the same time um adjusting the deck so that the deck um is no closer to the side yard uh set side yard line than five feet which is the amount that the bylaw allows by right um under section five three nine and so in order to to review this typically the board would review the special permit requirements um and which in this which are here now on the screen e through g um so the used a the use requested is listed as a special permit use in the use regulations for the applicable district or so designated elsewhere in the bylaw so um the use requested it's on our it's a single family residence in the single family residence district so it is actually allowed by right um as the use uh the requested use is essential or desirable to public convenience and welfare um so having a house that meets the needs of the family um is desirable for public convenience and welfare uh requested use will not create undue traffic congestion or unduly impair pedestrian safety there's no change to number of people living in the residence the number of cars at the site or any others so that is not an issue uh d the requested use will not overload any public water drainage or sewer system or any other municipal systems to such an extent the requested use or any developed use in the immediate area or in any other area of town will be unduly to eject the hazards um believe in that case that would be true they're not changing the substantially anything in regards to any of those um the town does have a bylaw that would require if the addition is over 350 square feet um if you're adding more than 350 square feet of impervious area um but at 6 by 21 um it's is not of that size I don't think my math skills are working tonight um and so that would not come into new effect uh e uh any special regulations for the use as may be provided as bylaw are fulfilled the only special regulation here is that 539 d that allows a deck to extend into the side yard setback nope but no closer than five feet um to the lot line uh f the requested use will not impair the integrity or character of the district or joining districts nor be detrimental to the health or welfare um so this is always sort of the big one um but in this case the proposed addition is within the care within keeping within the character of the house it's within the scale of houses in the neighborhood um it is mostly hidden from the street um and as the as the next door neighbor has indicated you know it is immediately adjacent to his property he does not have any particular concerns about uh the encroachment by the kitchen um but is more concerned about the reconstruction of the deck and that is something that the applicant has agreed they're willing to address and then she uh requested use will not by its addition to a neighborhood cause any excess of the use that could be detrimental to the characters that neighborhood um and no the this is not something that falls under that category so with those can you know with uh after reviewing those uh it's up to members of the board to decide whether or not they feel that it is appropriate and that this uh proposed addition would not be substantially more detrimental to the neighborhood than the current condition mr hamlin so i mean ultimately all of this comes back to the question about whether the proposal was more detrimental to the neighborhood than the current situation and it seems to me that the place where uh the applicant has left it creates a situation where that is clearly uh the case and uh with the appropriate condition i would be uh very much in in support of allowing the applicant to go forward on this thank you mr hamlin mr chairman mr blunt so um even though i think it's fairly obvious that the approach that's being suggested to look at this under 48 section 6 is beneficial um for the applicant i think we should on the record at least ask them if they're uh okay with us approaching this um from that perspective rather than from the variance which is the way that this was originally introduced so i just want them to have the opportunity to say yes we we're okay with you looking at it as has been described sure um so just briefly uh for that for the applicant so this is originally advertised as a variance application and a variance has four criteria that needs to be met they are set by state law and they're quite stringent um and the first and so it would be a very different approach to how we would go about determining compliance with the law um however what the board is considering is approaching this as simply an extension of existing nonconformity which just requires a simple vote of the board that it is not substantially more detrimental i don't know if you received a copy from the planning department of their memoranda they had reviewed the criteria for variance um and provided guidance to the board that they were concerned that the property didn't need the requirements for variance but the board is i believe that the board is comfortable proceeding with this as a as a determination of not substantially greater nonconformity so as mr dupont that i just want i just want to make sure i explain that to you properly and make sure that you're comfortable with us proceeding with this approach so um we aren't all that familiar with all these rules and regulations and uh i don't know if gen i as our representative do are you able to give a an answer to this and on our behalf or or is this really up to us to say yes or no um i think we are on truthfully not um 100 on i guess what um the impact would be of you know making the decision in one you know application versus the other like are they i guess what at the end of the day is there's something that's you know going to to hurt the project you know if we don't do it within a year do we have to reapply like are there certain things that you know make it difficult for us um chairman mr handlin you know i i've reached the age where i don't need to be diplomatic anymore uh but if you read the planning department's memorandum if we stick with treating this as a variance we will deny it and it looks to me as if if it's a requirement if it's a special permit we will probably not deny it and that's the difference so special permit sounds good mr chair yes please i think i think but just to clarify for the applicant and the architect the the compliance path doesn't change the way that you would build the the project i mean you'd be able to build this the same way either through a variance or through the special permit so it's just the way we're getting there the outcome wouldn't change well the outcome would change because as mr handlin said we may not approve it the other way but it wouldn't change the way you had to build the project or the conditions around it i'm just trying to remember if there's where it says in here that recording so yeah so especially the if the special permit will lapse within three years so you have three years to exercise the approval from the board in either case okay to it the the thing that gets the thing built is what we want so give it simple all right um so that with that are there any further questions from the board okay so should the board vote to approve we have three standard conditions that would be applied to the decision which i will go ahead and reach into the record the first is that the plans and specifications approved by the board for the special permit shall be the final plans and specifications submitted to the building inspector of the town of arlington in connection with this application for zoning relief there shall be no deviation during construction from approved plans and specifications without the express written approval of the arlington zoning board of appeals number two the building inspector is here by notified he's to monitor the site and should proceed with appropriate enforcement procedures at any time he deemed the violation is present the building inspector shall proceed under section 3.1 of the zoning bylaw and under the provisions of chapter 40 section 21 d of the massachusetts general laws and institute complaints if necessary the building inspector may also approve an institute appropriate criminal action also in accordance with section 3.1 and standard number three is that the board shall maintain continuing jurisdiction with respect to the special permit grant and then additionally as proposed by mr handlin um make sure i have this correct that the reconstructed deck is not to be located closer to the side property line than five feet is that correct mr handlin yes that's correct are there any additional conditions which members of the board would want to propose being none any further questions for the board no no with that then i would ask at the board for a motion mr chairman mr handlin i move that the application be most i know that the uh the uh board make the required section six uh finding and approve a special permit subject to the conditions that the chairman has just read into the second mr handlin thank you mr dupont so the motion before the board would be to approve section six finding and special permit for 201 cold spring the street or road street street thank you with the four conditions being the three standard and the fourth by mr handlin are there any questions from the board on what the board is voting on seeing none i will then ask for a roll call vote of the board mr dupont hi mr handlin hi mr holly hi thank you mr rickard ellie hi and the chair votes i thus so the board has approved the motion for section six finding and special permit for 201 old spring street with the four conditions as stated thank you very much so um if you get in contact with mr valarelli um later this week then he can guide you through the rest of the process essentially the board will draft up a formal decision that the board will vote on um at its earliest meeting and then um from there there's a 20 day appeal period where um uh butters and interested parties can appeal the decision and then beyond that you are free and clear thank you very welcome so with that i'm going to go back up our agenda back to number two which is the approval of the written decision for 160 wallaston avenue so this is um hearing of ours from december december sixth december sixth december sixth um and uh we had a decision uh crafted by mr handlin and submitted to the board for questions and comments are there any further questions and comments on the written decision seeing none may i have a motion to approve the written decision for 160 wallaston avenue mr chairman mr handlin so moved in the second second thank you mr dupont all those in favor of the approval mr dupont hi mr handlin hi mr holly hi mr rickadelli hi the chair votes i that decision is approved next item is number three uh members vote approval of written decision for 320 cupelton street this was also heard on december sixth uh written decision prepared by mr handlin and distributed for questions and comments are there any further questions or comments from the board in regards to this decision seeing none may i have a motion mr chairman thank you mr handlin yes um i move that the approval of the decision that the decision be approved thank you second thank you mr dupont we'll call the board mr dupont hi mr handlin hi mr holly hi mr rickadelli hi and the chair votes i that written decision is approved um then that means that item four on our agenda which was moved forward from last night uh which is the approval of the minutes from the december sixth meeting those were prepared by mr valarelli and mr lee and distributed the board for questions and comments uh we had final version come out this morning are there any additional questions or comments in regards to those minutes seeing none may i have a motion to approve the minutes from december sixth mr handlin so moved second and dupont thank you vote of the board mr dupont hi mr handlin hi mr rickadelli hi mr holly hi and the chair votes that that the minutes is approved so then the next thing i have is just to share our upcoming schedule um so we tomorrow morning at 11 a.m there's the the walkthrough at 1021 1025 1027 mass av i think we're meeting going to be meeting in front of 1025 mass av and it's just an opportunity to see the site um both of our representatives from both of our peer review consultants will be at that meeting so we'll be able to meet them um and the applicant will be there as well i did speak with the applicant briefly today um went over the votes that we took last night they're all set with everything so um and the department of planning and community development was nice enough to update the website for this project already so all of the meeting dates and hearing dates are now available on the web on the website for people to see so that is our upcoming are there any questions about our upcoming schedule no fantastic mr mr chairman i i would like to point out that we're meeting on st valentine's day so i hope that we have particularly amicable cases on that day well it depends particularly on whether or not anything scheduled for that date we might be able to get it off as it's a if there's if there is no uh no business for that evening absence makes the heart move under right well with that i would like to thank you all for your participation in tonight's meeting of the arlington zoning board of appeals i appreciate everyone's patience throughout the meeting i especially would like to thank rick valarelli vincent lee and marissa lau for their assistance in preparing for and hosting this online meeting please note the purpose of the board's reporting the meeting is to ensure the creation of an accurate record of its proceedings and it's our understanding the record made by acmi will be available on demand at acmi dot tv within the coming days if anyone has comments or recommendations please send them via email to zba at town dot arlington dot ma dot us that email address is also listed on the zoning board of appeals website and to conclude tonight's meeting i would ask for a motion to adjourn mr chairman mr moore yes before you do that i just could i make one comment please sure uh i just want to advise mr holly that uh he's only allowed to vote once no matter how many of the parties are at his end thank you mr chairman thank you mr moore all right so motion motion to adjourn uh by mr handlin and seconded i believe by mr dupont yes okay roll call vote of the board mr dupont hi mr handlin hi mr holly hi mr rickardelli and the chair votes aye the board is adjourned thank you all so very much happy holidays happy holidays tomorrow otherwise okay guys have a great night thank you everyone bye bye thank you bye