It is 732 p.m., we got nobody else in the waiting room. So I will, today is September 14th, 2021 at 732 p.m. Good evening, my name is Christian Klein, I'm the Chair of the Arlington Zoning Board of Appeals. I'm calling this meeting of the Board to order. I'd like to confirm all members and anticipated officials who are present from the Zoning Board of Appeals, Roger Dupont. Here. Patrick Hanlon. Here. Kevin Mills. Here. And Sean O'Rourke. Here. Glad to have you all. Unfortunately, our two associate members are unable to join us this evening. On behalf of the town, Rick Valarelli. Good evening, Mr. Chairman. Good evening, Vincent Lee. Here. Good to have you. And I believe Kelly Linema is gonna join us later on, but she is hosting a housing forum for the Department of Planning and Community Development at the moment. And then just confirming, people are here for our three cases this evening for 2020 A Lafayette Street, is it Jason Santana? Or is there somebody else who's appearing? I am James Risling, we'll be presenting. Good evening. Appearing for 53 Marathon Street, Bob and Nessie. Yes, I am here. Good to see you. And appearing for 14 Nicott Street, Sean Hayes. Hi, good evening, Sean Hayes is here. Good evening. All right, we are all here. Check the waiting room. Okay, this open meeting of the Arlington Zoning Board of Appeals is being conducted remotely consistent with an act extending certain COVID-19 measures adopted during the state of emergency, signed into law on June 16th, 2021. This act includes an extension until April 1st, 2022 of the remote meeting provisions of Governor Baker's March 12th, 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. Further, all members of public bodies are allowed to continue to participate remotely. Public bodies may continue to 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 app 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. Other participants 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 you broadcast may be captured by the recording. We ask you to 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 that are out of order in the interest of promoting an orderly meeting. So where we are introducing new cases this evening the town encourages us to have a land acknowledgement. So whereas the Zoning Board of Appeals discusses and arbitrates the use of land in Arlington formally known as monotomy and Algonquin word meaning swift waters. The board hereby acknowledges that the town of Arlington is located on the ancestral lands of the Massachusetts tribe with 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. Check the waiting room and we will move to the first item on our agenda this evening which is the approval of minutes from June 1st. So we're submitted last week by Mr. Valorelli. Hopefully everyone has had an opportunity to review those. I know I had sent in some comments. Are there any further comments or questions in regards to the June 1st minutes? Seeing none, may I have a motion to approve? Mr. Hanlon, may I have a second? Second. Thank you, Mr. Mills. Voted the board, Mr. Prudhipont. Aye. Thank you, Mr. Hanlon. Aye. Mr. Mills. Aye. Mr. O'Rourke. Aye. And the chair votes aye. Those minutes are approved. That brings us to the next item on our agenda which is the approval of the minutes from our June 10th hearing. Similar to the previous, those are submitted to the board by Mr. Valorelli. Hopefully everyone has had an opportunity to review those and submit any comments or corrections they have. Are there any further questions or comments on those minutes from June 10th? Seeing none, may I have a motion to approve? The moved. Thank you, Mr. Hanlon. May I have a second? Second. Thank you, Mr. Dupont. Voted the board, Roger Dupont. Aye. Patrick Hanlon. Aye. Kevin Mills. Aye. Chantler O'Rourke. Aye. And the chair votes aye. Those are approved. Thank you all. Brings us to the next item on our agenda which is the vote to approve the meeting minutes from our June 29th meeting. Again, those were distributed by Mr. Valorelli to the board last week. I hope everyone has had an opportunity to submit any questions or comments they have had on those, Mr. Valorelli. Are there any further questions or comments on the minutes from June 29th? Seeing none, may I have a motion to approve? So moved. Thank you, Mr. Hanlon. May I have a second? Second. Thank you, Mr. Mills. Vote of the board, Mr. Dupont. Aye. Mr. Hanlon. Aye. Mr. Mills. Aye. Chantler O'Rourke. Aye. And the chair votes aye. Those minutes are approved. Great, thank you all for those. That brings us to the next item on our agenda. So we're now turning to public hearings on tonight's agenda. Here's some ground rules for effective and clear conduct of tonight's business. After I announce each agenda item, I will ask the applicant to introduce themselves and make their presentation to the board. I'll then request that members of the board ask whatever questions they have on the proposal. And after the board's questions have been answered, I will open the meeting for public comment. So with that, I move to item number five on our agenda this evening, which is docket number 3661, 2020A Lafayette Street. And James Riesling, if you would like to go ahead. Nope, you're still muted though. There you go. Thank you. Thank you, good evening. Sorry about that. I have access to screen share. Yes, sir. You're welcome, James. Okay, thank you. Thank you, Mr. Rowling. Let's see what I got here. Right. So 2020A Lafayette is I guess what one would call a, well, again, my name is James Riesling, LR Designs, Cambridge, Massachusetts. 2020A Lafayette, I guess one would call a stacked ranch.  It has on the left-hand side a two, two and a half story home. And then on the right-hand side, a one story bungalow with a recent addition. This is looking at number 28, which is on the right-hand side. And as we move down, this is another view of 28. I'm just giving some context of the neighborhood. I think the street is rather interesting. There's quite a different variety of architectural expressions up and down this portion of Lafayette and kind of very some different passing. So this is number 16, number 14, number 16 is adjacent to the left. Another view of that home, a little more context. And then, oops, sorry, this is going fast. This is looking across the street at the two and a half story homes going up towards Mass Ave. And then, sorry about that, then going back down Lafayette towards Boulevard Road. And then this is a view of Boulevard Road. And you can see 2020A sort of peeking out on the back there between the two two and a half story houses. And then another shot of the end of Lafayette going towards Boulevard, which you see some of the context, even a triple decor is thrown in here, a couple of one story bungalows, like I said, and then primarily two and a half story houses. So that was to give us some context. What we are proposing is a large addition to the rear of the house and subdividing the house vertically into two townhouses. These are the existing elevations of the house, of the sort of stacked ranch. It's a very simple, very taught exterior with somewhat of a colonial expression. House was built in circa 1962. And then what we're proposing is a house that's divided down the center to sort of townhouse arrangements, including some development in the basement or cellar, the second floor and then a half story above. And the side view, you can see the outline of the existing house, which we're keeping. And the front and sides of this house are in the setbacks. And so our addition is concentrated on the rear and the top of the house. This clear story that looks over the ridge is approximately just a little under three feet above the ridge, the existing ridge, which is actually a fairly modest ridge for the existing house. And then at the highest point, we're about seven feet above the ridge. The front elevation would retain the sort of taught colonial box with a covering at the entrance, some new windows, new roofing. And then this is that monitor or clear story I was talking about that looks over the ridge. And then the shed roof that rises above it. In section, this is where we're at. Again, the main body of the house is here. And then our addition comes up the back here. If I go back to the zoning, I can show some of the. So as I mentioned, the front of the house is in the setback and as well as the sides. And so that's what drove our decision to leave the sort of work with the existing massing, but the existing house being so low, we thought that in this case, it was an opportunity to maybe go up above it with a more modern expression. And given some of the architecture that's been experimented within the neighborhood, we thought that this was maybe a unique situation in which we could do the two and a half story height, but then a more of a modern expression that will sort of be in harmony with some of the neighbors at least. And then still maintain a nod to the historic context. I think I'd like to leave it at that. I think more information comes out when people ask questions than I can think of. Thank you. If I could have you just leave this up, that'd be great. So I had a couple of questions. The first is in the basement level, are there any egress windows? Yes, they are. They're on the side here. On each side is the egress window. And then so an area way with stairs to the rear yard. Okay. Do those impact into the driveways at all? No, the driveways are approximately the same. Well, the driveway cuts will be the same. The driveway on the left is already two tandem spaces and the driveway on the right is one which will become two tandem spaces. But they're short of these area ways at the rear of the house. And both of those curb cuts are existing? Yes. Okay. Yep. This is our graphic laid over the existing survey. And then from the front elevation to the home to the right of you, to the, that home is a single story and the home to the left is two and a half. You know the height of the building of the two and a half story to the left? I think it's a, well, I don't know. I don't have it exact, but you know, counting siding and getting to the ridge is approximately 30 to 33 feet to the ridge. Okay. And the overall height of yours, I believe you said it was 33 and a half. Is that correct? Mine. Well, not mine, but it is 33 and a half. Yes. Okay. Those are the questions I had. Other questions from the board. Mr. Chairman. Mr. Hanlon. The photograph show a tree. Fairly large tree immediately in front of the house. If I'm not mistaken. Yes. Yep. And is that going to remain there? Or is that going to be removed? I think what we're proposing it is possible. It could, it could remain. And do you have a, do you have any other. Let me explore that in a second. Mr. Hanlon. The photograph show a tree. Fairly large tree immediately in front of the house. If I'm not mistaken. Yes. I'm not going to explore that in the second bit in the back. It's hard. It's hard to tell you have a large.  And the question I have is. What sort of. Whether you have any substantial significant trees that are located in your backyard. So what's going to happen to them? I believe the back is fairly. Bare and I, I apologize. I didn't include a photo. Let me see if the cover. I. I'm just pulling up a satellite view real quick because I recall the back is being quite, quite there, but there are trees on the property line that we would not be touching. There are. There is a large mass of trees. I don't know if they are. I don't know if they are. I'm 23, 25. Boulevard and this house, but. They are. I believe on the property line. So those, I don't see any reason to touch those. So I, I will say that I went by the property to see this afternoon, just to take a look at them. And what I recall from looking. Around it is consistent with what you just laid out. So I'll just say that we have a couple of. Places on the property. So. So. Civil cultural situation was here. Oh, great. Thank you. Any other questions from the board? Mr. Mills. Yes, Mr. Chair. The half story. Is that been reviewed with the building department. And it's within specification. Mr. say that this is just the beginning for this applicant and any applicant who comes before you. There are an additional 23 checkpoints, if you will, that the inspectional services looks at before we even get into the building code stuff. So the half story is clearly part of it as far as the dimensional and density section of the zoning bylaw. Then we will automatically, because of the size of the proposed, get into all of the town laws, such as construction control agreements, the treat bylaw, stormwater mitigation, again, 23 in number checkpoints before we even get into building code issues. The only thing that we have no control over is the size of the addition. All of the other regulations we have. Thank you. Mr. Chairman. Mr. Hanlon. I wonder, should I infer from that that we haven't really, that we don't know for sure yet whether it meets the half story or we frequently either have conditions or have to make judgments as to whether or not something does or doesn't comply with the zoning ordinance when we are making special permit decisions. And so I'm not sure that we can just say, well, never mind that we'll all be taken care of at the building permit stage. I'd like to have some assurance and we'll see this in another case more than this one, I think, that we're okay on the half story. Mr. Chairman, I can answer that if you like or not. I guess, please. Okay. So when I first look at a set of plans, I look at all of the things that are suspect and three things came to mind with this. So I did some quick calculations. One was lot coverage. It barely made it, but it was less than 35%. The other one that kind of read flagged this deal was the availability of usable open space. So based on what they're proposing, they needed 1400 change. My calculations on trapezoidal area was 1651. So that was okay. The added calculations seem to be okay at this point. They may or may not need to be reduced, but Mr. Hanlon made a very good point. That was one of the three that was suspect to me when I first looked at this. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Thank you. And I believe that was, there was the memorandum that came out from the Department of Planning and Community Development had a question about confirming the half story. I believe there was a little bit of confusion about exactly how we are measuring it, where the town's practice is that it's based on the floor area, the floor below. I did add since that memo a story diagram that shows the outline of the floor below. And then the second floor area being 1470 gross square feet. And then the addition with the shed roof on it is at 660 square feet. The rest of it is cathedral attic or balconies below the lower roof. Any further questions or comments from the board? Seeing none. I'll now open the meeting for public comment. Public questions and comments will be taken as they relate to the matter of hand. It should be directed to the board for the purpose of informing our decision. Members of the public will be granted time to ask questions and make comments. Chair asks those wishing to address the board a second time during any particular hearing. Please be patient. Allow those wishing to speak for the first time to go ahead. 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 nine to indicate you would like to speak. You'll be called upon by the meeting host and you'll be asked to give your name and address and you'll 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 for the time allocated by the chairs, ended the public comment period will be closed. Board and staff will do our best to show documents being discussed. So with that, the first person wishing to speak is Steven Moore. Yes, thank you, Mr. Chair. Steve Moore, Piedmont Street. My first question is simple that I was having a little difficulty interpreting some of the plans. The existing structure called a stacked ranch. Does that mean it's a two family, first one apartment, second floor, second apartment? That's correct. All right. Next question. That means that this is actually a total gut of the existing structure and a addition which deals with the what's left over after the gutting. Is that correct? That's right. Okay. So it's not it's a lot more than an addition. It really is a total following out of the existing structure. Okay. And I believe that the question was asked about the access to the basement. And that's good. I am a member of the tree committee and I have a I want to make one point about trees. Mr. Hanlon, thank you very much for your questions about the trees. I appreciate that. And clearly Mr. Valerelli said the tree bylaw will be will be part of the approval process. It looks to me from the satellite photograph that standard trees and back is fairly large as was stated by the applicant. Those are in the setbacks of the back. They will be protected trees.  I'm just saying that for the information for the applicant's information that a tree plan will have to be approved by the tree warden for the taking of the trees or or not taking of the trees. Just what the plan is for the trees on the property. So thank you, Mr. Chairman. Very welcome. Are there any further questions from the public? I have a question. I can't seem to raise my hand. Mr. Williams, please. My name is Ryan Williams. I reside next door to this property at 28 Lafayette Street. My question, I have two questions that are related to each other. One is does the Zoning Commission deal with fencing? We do not. Mr. Valerelli, can you address that? I can. What are your concerns? There are fence regulations in place that they are in the zoning bylaw. They're not the easiest thing to understand, but if you have a specific concern, I can answer that question for you. I guess, well, I guess the the big one is that if you look at the diagram that Mr. Risling has on the screen on the right next to the green, they have the wood fence. It is actually on the right side of the property line that has been noted and it that matches up with what's out on the ground. And I guess I just wonder, is that something that that the zoning board deals with and the adjacent trees that affect that? We've already had a tree fall down from this property. So a very large tree fall down from this property. So and that affected the fence. And I just wonder who who deals with that? Okay, so it is a building to pop an issue. But again, a fence that's six feet in height fall less does not require a building permit. And it could be placed right on the property line. The only exception to that is the first five feet of the fence from the property line. Again, I'm talking the front of the property cannot be more than 30 inches high. So if the applicant or anybody else for that matter in town wishes to install a fence to separate the side yards from the neighbor, they can do so up to six feet in height all the way down to the backyard where the property ends with the exception that the first five feet cannot be any higher than 30 inches. And that's for safety purposes. If a child was riding a bike and so on and so forth, backing out of the driveway. And to address your question about the trees, if I could actually ask of Mr. Moore again, when the tree committee or the tree warden is doing the pre-construction survey, did they look at the health of the tree? Do you know? Hold on just a moment, sir. Please. Sorry to catch you off guard. Well, the reason I'm off guard is I was trying to look at the materials for the next. You're questioning what about health of the tree? So as a part of the enforcement of the tree bylaw, I believe the town, the tree warden does a survey of the trees on the property. Do they do any evaluation? Does he do any evaluation of the health of the trees, you know? Yes, he does. He notes the species, he notes the height and most importantly the location because of the way the bylaw is constructed with the setbacks. But yes, he does those. He doesn't have an opinion. He just, he's more interested in the tree plan. It's going to be done particularly with the setbacks because that's the structures of the bylaw. But yes, he works with the applicants to talk about what their plans are and sometimes makes recommendations on the best way forward. Okay, thank you. I appreciate that. Certainly. Mr. Williams, anything further? I guess one last thing, if you don't mind, is removal of those trees, Mr. Moore, something that has to go through the town of Arlington? Mr. Moore, can you address that? Mr. Chairman, the trees that are in the setbacks, I can't remember if it's 10 feet on the back and the sides, but it's, I think, 20 feet in the front. I don't, off the front of my head, I'm not sure the number of feet in the setbacks, but if the trees are in that setback and there is either a substantial addition being made, which is the case in this case, or there's a demolition, then the applicant has to come up with a tree plan, which is what's going to happen in the existing trees if they're planning to take, and this is on the entire piece of property. And if their tree is planning to be taken within the setbacks, then there is a fee that gets charged, depending on the size of the tree, where the applicant has to make a significant contribution to the town trees please fund. I believe it's $375 an inch diameter breast height of a tree that's taken. Clearly, the bylaw's hope is to maintain the tree and tree canopy in town. And so, the tree warden spends a great deal of time working with the applicants to preserve what can be preserved and still able to build the buildings and additions that they want and require. Does that answer your question? I was kind of long-winded. So, Mr. Moore, Mr. Rupp-Williams? Yes, it does. Thank you. Thank you. And thank you, Mr. Moore. Are there any further questions? Any further questions from the public? Do not see anyone waving or anyone with their hand up? So, the public comment period for this hearing will be closed. The board would now discuss their findings and the potential decisions. And any vote taken at this hearing would be preliminary until the written decision is approved by the board at a subsequent meeting. And all votes will be conducted by a roll call vote. Mr. Chairman? Hanlon? It may be that I've just missed my chance to do this, but I wanted to wait until the public comment period was over to raise it. So, I went to the site today and I am thinking that number 28 is the house with the more or less modern addition that is to the right. I wonder if Mr. Williams or the applicant could confirm that? That's correct. So, with cell phones you can do this. Take a picture there. And along the fence, which is now partly broken, actually not partly broken. The fence just has a gap in it. I don't really see any trees at all and don't remember having seen any trees along that fence when I visited the site. And I'm wondering if I missed something. Are there any trees along that border? This is the border. There are, if you look at that tree, there is a that tree right there. That's a significant remnant, I think it's a Norway maple, more or less a garbage tree that has allowed itself to grow there. And then to the left is the one I'm a little bit more concerned about. That's the larger tree above it. That is the one at the back of the property line, probably easily a 65 foot tree. Silver maple, grows fast, falls quick. But that is on, is that on this property? I'm looking at what I think is the tree you're talking about and it's behind a fence that's immediately behind the house. Is that tree, I think that Mr. Risling identified that tree as being on the other side of the fence. Are there any substantial trees on that are on this property? I don't know if that one is. It may not be. I don't venture on to their property. Okay. Just trying to figure out, obviously, I guess the other question I have is, in terms of your concern with the fence, obviously, something happened to have broken it and I'm assuming that there'll be a new fence there. But I wondered if is your concern that there may be other trees falling or is there a different, an additional concern with respect to the fencing? Mr. Williams, I guess this is for you. They were separate issues. I think the fence is a concern because I basically maintain it because no one else maintains it and it just falls down in the wind. That's just an annoyance. And the tree, this Norway maple tree that you see that leans over the mint greenhouse in the back, it's just not a very, I don't know. It doesn't seem very safe to me. I mean, the tree grows at like a 30 degree angle to the ground and I don't want to belabor the point. In the foreground next to the house is a large, I believe it's called a sumac. Sumac, yes. I think we recognize that Mr. Williams, you know, has invested a lot of energy and design and material in his yard and his house. And I think my clients would be willing to work with him with regards to the fence because, you know, the fence isn't really attractive to anyone. So I think they would definitely come to some agreement pretty quickly. The base of that tree does appear to be in the rear yard of 2325 Boulevard Road. Mr. Chairman, that was what I had for Mr. Williams. I wondered if I could just prevail upon the body. I'm a little bit unclear as to what, I'm a little bit unclear as to what in the playing department's memorandum is the issue that's at the stake here. We don't have drawings in that memorandum. And so it's hard to follow exactly what it is that the playing department is raising as a question on how the second, the half story is done. And I wonder if one of you who are more knowledgeable than I am could explain what it is that is being raised and why it does not appear to be a concern that we need to address. So this comes down to the definition of half story in the zoning bylaw. The zoning bylaw is very clear that, you know, in the third level of a home, not more than 50% of the floor area can have a distance from the underside of the roof structure to the finished floor, greater than seven feet. And that the roof above that needs to be sloped at a minimum pitch of two to 12. What the zoning bylaw is less clear about is what exactly it is being referenced against. And the the planning department had read it as saying that 50% of the roof at the third floor level that 50% of the area under that roof cannot exceed seven feet in height. Whereas the opinion of the zoning enforcement officer and the building department is that it is actually 50% of the area of the floor immediately below, which is the criteria that the applicant has included in their application. And so the confusion is a difference in opinion of how this is enforced, but it is up to the zoning enforcement officer to set that policy. And this has been the longstanding policy of the zoning enforcement officer that the half story is in relation to the area of the floor immediately below. Mr. Vellerally, is that correct? That is well said, Mr. Chairman. If there's any ambiguity in the definitions, and there is in the definition of half story and the older bylaw or the newer bylaw, and it is up to the chief zoning enforcement official and building commissioner, if you will, the time to make the call. Thank you. The other two recommendations from the planning department, one was an updated elevation or rendering to better convey the massing of the structure, which if depending on how we vote this evening, that's something we could request. And then the last is that the board requests a tree plan approved by the tree warden prior to allowing work to commence on the property. And as Mr. Vellerally had noted, that will happen as the as the permit moves forward. Mr. Mills? Yes, it's standard operating procedure for the tree warden to visit the site and sign off on everything. I believe that the three recommendations from the planning department will be addressed. Any further questions or comments on this application? So if the board has three typical conditions that we include with every decision, go ahead and read those now. Number one is the final plans and specifications approved by the board for the 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 root plans and specifications without the express written approval of the zoning board of appeals. Number two is the building inspector is hereby notified that he has to monitor the site and should proceed with appropriate enforcement procedures at any time it determines that violations are present and the inspector of building shall proceed under section 3.1 of the zoning bylaw under the provisions of chapter 40 section 21d and institute non-criminal complaints. If necessary the inspector of buildings may also approve an institute appropriate criminal action also in accordance with section 3.1 and number three is the board shall maintain continuing jurisdiction with respect to this special permit grant. Are there any other conditions or concerns from the board? Mr. Chairman? I sort of I understand the difficulties of restating things that are already in the bylaw and already in what the standard operating procedure of the ISD is but I seem to recall that under several that in previous cases when Mr. Moore has has come and at this point his attendance at our meetings compares favorably with practically anybody else except of course the chair. I think that we have done in the past and I guess I would feel comfortable including the condition just as a kind of a reminder in part of the checklist even though I'm confident that Mr. Valerelli and ISD generally would do this anyway. Conceivably we could simply say the ZBA notes that a tree plan approved by the tree warden prior to allowing work will be required prior to allowing work to commence on the property if the board thinks that that's preferable in order to maintain comedy with ISD but in any event I would like to see that that condition included in the conditions that that we have just to to continue our previous practice and just to call out the issue and make it clear to everyone that that that this board is seriously interested in the enforcement of that provision. So the ZBA notes that a tree plan approved by the tree warden will be required prior to prior to allowing work to commence on the property. Yeah I'm just editing the language from the staff. Mr. Chairman. Mr. Moore. Yeah I know public comment period is closed can I say one thing it's your your call. As as the member of the tree committee you may. Thank you. Mr. Hanlon thank you I appreciate those comments. I think the word you might want to use is prior to demolition. There's been a problem with building permits being issued after the demolition has already taken trees out so I think you might want to say prior to demolition. Thank you. I'm not sure there actually is technically a demolition here so I mean this is going to be a gut renovation but I don't think that the word demolition is to describe exactly what's supposed to happen. Is there a better word to catch the your concern? You wouldn't be required prior to demolition or allowing work to commence on the property. That works. That works for me Mr. Chairman. Thank you. Okay so to read that back so that would read the ZDA notes that a tree plan approved by the tree warden will be required prior to demolition or allowing work to commence on the property. Does that work for you Mr. Hanlon? Yes it does. Perfect. Are there any further proposed conditions for the board? Seeing none do we have a motion? Mr. Chairman. I move that the board approve the application subject to the three standard conditions that the chair read earlier plus the additional condition that has been edited into the record relating to the tree plan. Thank you Mr. Hanlon. Do I have a second? Second. Thank you Mr. Mills. Vote of the board Mr. Dupont? Aye. Mr. Hanlon? Aye. Mr. Mills? Aye. Mr. O'Rourke? Aye. And the chair votes aye. This is approved with the four conditions as stated. Well thank you very much. Thank you everyone have a good evening. Thank you. And if you could go ahead and stop sharing before logging out. Okay. Perfect. Thank you. So going back to our agenda the next item is item number six which is docket 3663 53 Marathon Street. The applicant is represented by Mr. Robert Ennessy. Yes I am here. Are we ready? We are ready to go. I'm accompanied by Mr. Paul Grillo. He's the architect and Albert Azatants. Albert is the principal with respect to the ownership of the property. Just a correction at the outset I agree with planning. There was no need for a large addition advertisement with respect to the property. This is a teardown. The lot basically has a two family on it as we sit here now. That two family was constructed in 1915. It's not on the significant list. I did check that out carefully. We propose to take the building down and by the way the building currently the existing building is non-conforming. As planning is indicated it's not conforming certainly with respect to the front yard. What I did and I hope you got my memo that I sent to the board where I went through each of the dimensional requirements contained in the zoning bylaw to show that the building that we were proposing to put up would in fact comply with all of the dimensional requirements of the zoning bylaw. Paul Grillo will show you if you allow us to screen share Mr. Klein will show you once I finish my opening statement we'll show you the plans we're proposing. Paul could you conjure up the site plan for us at this point? Can you give him permission to do so? When we get the site plan up on the screen we're going to be able to show what we are proposing on the site. You doing okay with that Paul? Yeah I think there we go. All right there we go. All right so right now it's a corner lot and we basically have one side on Walder Road and one side on Marathon Street. The existing driveway is on Walder Road as you look at the site plan we are proposing to take down that driveway on Walder Road and construct a new driveway. We are also proposing to construct a driveway off of Marathon Street. So the relief that we need is a relief for two driveways and that's a special permit request under the zoning bylaw. Now with respect to the neighborhood if you took a look at the plan the memo that was sent to you by the zoning board I don't know whether you conjure that up Chris Klein the memo from the planning board kind of shows the neighborhood on Marathon Street and Walder Road and if you if you had a chance to look at that you would see that the houses on Marathon Street and even on Walder Road are all pretty similar. Now I agree with planning that none in the neighborhood have two driveways but I think the advantage of what we are proposing is that we are going to have one driveway on one street on Walder Road and another driveway on Marathon Street on a different road. So we are going to have the driveway separated with respect to different streets. I think that addresses the concern in the planning department memo where the planning department talked about the fact that we want to be sure there are no safety issues whether pedestrian or traffic. I'm going to suggest to you that Marathon Street is not going to look any different with respect to this driveway for this property that we're proposing to construct than it does now because if you look at the property directly next door on Marathon Street you'll see that that has very similar parking with respect to that property and even the other properties. Again if you looked at the the planning department Google image that shows the other properties on Marathon Street very similar to what we are proposing. Essentially the proposal is akin to having two separate units although it's one two family that it's two separate units because each of the units are going to have access to their own unit. As planning indicated indicated in their memo the the front portion of the building will be the entranceway to the building and Paul could get into with you as concerning the plans with respect to what will be done on the sides of the building. There will be safety with respect to a separation of the driveways from any access to the building itself. I don't believe that's going to be an issue. All in all we are going to be improving the site. We're going to be improving the site because we're not going to have any non-conformities on the site and I know the planning indicated that there was no present numbers with respect to open space, landscape, or usable and quite frankly I don't know what they were but I can tell you now that what we are proposing is going to fully comply with the zoning bylaw and the other point that I wish to make here is that we are talking about a lot that has 6,988 square feet almost 7,000 square feet so it's a pretty good size lot. Paul why don't you jump in with respect to the plans themselves even though our position is that we need to have our plans approved by the building department that is the department that's going to determine whether in fact we comply with zoning and again I think that format will follow what I have indicated in my statement of facts in the memo I've submitted to the zoning board. Can you jump in at this point Paul? Sure and I can give just a little bit more maybe context on the neighborhood if that's okay. Just this is the corner lot that's in question it's a it's a two and a half story structure two family unit over unit with a large hip roof and the proposed structure is also two and a half stories again this is non-conforming it's a very large corner lot almost 7,000 square feet for this neighborhood that's a large lot we see a lot of them under 6,000 square feet regarding the driveways though I think there is more precedence on marathon if we just come up the straight here there are a number of newer townhomes that have multiple driveways on them and similar to what we're doing on the corner of marathon and Broadway there it's a much smaller lot but there are two entrances to this structure one off of marathon one off of Broadway so there definitely is precedence in the neighborhood we're taking a structure that was built in 1915 that just really isn't you know it's in very poor condition and you know we often are looking at to rehab these structures but this in this case it really wasn't feasible so we're really bringing you know introducing a structure to the to the neighborhood that's going to be you know you know in keeping with kind of the development of the area and some of the the neighboring newer structures and additions that have been occurring compared to this old this older 1915 structure and there are still some of those in the neighborhood but but it's adapting quite a bit I can go back to the plans real quick so what we've done is we have this unit over unit building there today the parking for the for the building is in the back corner here I don't know if you can see my mouse on there but this is the corner where the parking is today and it's a unit over unit and the structure that we're proposing put in is going to be of a townhouse style where the two units are separated by a demising wall we have the large lot we can accommodate very nice open spaces and and separate them so that they there's more privacy many of these homes there's one open space in the rear for both homeowners to to share we actually have enough property there that we can provide nice living outdoor space in addition by by separating the driveways and orienting one unit more toward marathon and one toward Waldo you know the the owners propose some some rather extensive landscaping for the corner lot to to you know kind of buffer the the privacy from the lawn but also to to just make a nice attractive corner lot condition the elevation that would face marathon would actually have a bit of a a little more classic colonial feel to it while we we with a few probably contemporary little detailing or articulation in the end and then the the entrance along marathon street you know we're looking at board and bat and styles with with clobbered siding and entries because of the way the site does taper back we've accommodated one of the parking spots in the garage so that would actually be in the building so one parking spot is actually in an enclosed garage while the other would be outdoor surface parking some renderings of the structure as proposed today it is two and a half stories it would be under 35 feet completely conforming structure we have calculated the half story is under 50 percent of the the floor below at seven feet and that's really truly the the the overall layout and design intent for the structure thank you thank you Paul the essentially that would be the presentation again the only relief I'm sorry the only relief we were really requesting is with respect to the two driveways we're not seeking relief for a large addition thank you a couple of quick questions are there any trees that are impacted by the construction of the driveway on marathon street or actually no trees on the property at all so the plan doesn't show the adjacent property on marathon but they have a driveway that's approximately 20 feet wide currently um do you know how far away from that driveway the driveway on your property would be is that this driveway here yeah um that's a good question um I look I believe that one looks very close relatively close to the property line so we would be relatively close maybe I don't know that might be about two feet if it's on the property line it's hard to tell exactly but we're relatively close to the property line as well um and your your sketch drive makes it look like there's a curb that wraps the property but neither of these streets have established curves except in certain locations um and so it's where one driveway ends is sometimes a little bit difficult to discern so I'm just like I think that the driveway is a good distance back from the intersection which is helpful but I don't see it as interfering with visibility at the corner I was a little concerned about the the overall length of driveway that would be created along that side so I think it would be helpful if there was a way to sort of delineate the the separation between the two driveways which would also help to protect the the fence that would otherwise be bisecting a much wider curb cut okay and then on Walda street um you would be infilling uh obviously the drive the existing driveway and continuing the um you would just be removing so the existing sidewalk okay yeah would essentially remain then you'd be removing the asphalt down to the street and and restoring the grass verge on the edge of the street correct um we would be restoring this to the open space use and our new curb would be you know probably in this this vicinity would it impact that street tree um that's a good that is a good question um I don't know if I I'm just going to um looks like this is the existing tree right here so it looks like we are just inside of it for the survey oh I see okay so it looks like we are just inside of it so that tree could be preserved it appears so yeah okay we will have to reserve preserve that tree absolutely Paul yeah are there are there questions or comments from the board Mr Chairman Mr Hanlon um is there any in the um driveway the proposed driveway towards Marathon Street um I'm as I recall there's language in the zoning by-law relating to vegetative buffers and I'm wondering what is proposed for that area between the between the uh uh driveway and the uh in the property line it looks it looks as if there's none so yeah currently it's probably a more of a lawn buffer is what we're carrying today um I do not know the ownership of that fence I believe it's the neighbors or um a proposed if there's a proposed fence for this property um but that is right now really be kind of a turf buffer at a minimum um I don't believe we have it doesn't appear we've had plantings proposed for that edge specifically the thank you the reference from Mr Hanlon is to uh six dot one dot ten dot a in the zoning by-law which includes it's the um the last line in the first paragraph is side yards used for parking she'll have a vegetated buffer when a budding a lot used for residential purposes to minimize visual impacts um Mr Vellarelli is there a particular standard that the the zoning enforcement official has adopted or what that vegetated buffer would be sorry I was on mute I believe it's uh laid out in the town laws not the zoning by-laws I have to look into that but yes there are specifications um with respect to the buffers okay and uh Mr Vellarelli the driveway can be I believe as narrow as seven foot six per by-law is that correct it could be uh that that's the minimum width that's allowed on the side yard um the preferable width is eight and a half um which is still doable here and that would allow for a buffer as well okay I believe that this plan shows it's just slightly over 12 feet so there should be plenty of room from the building to the property line that is correct okay Chairman Mr Chairman yes please yes hi I just had a couple of questions about the uh both the driveways so the way that it is depicted I wanted to know if there was a plan for cars to be able to park behind the cars that are shown on the plans so with those parking spaces because I was looking at that same section that you were just referring to Mr Chairman as far as being able to park in a driveway um you can park in the in the minimum front yard setback and I was just wondering what the what the intent was on the part of the applicant with regard to parking would they think of those as two parking spaces per unit no we can we consider one parking space per unit which is which is the requirement that has to be beyond the setback so that's what we're designating as each of those parking spots to meet the requirement of the town we are over 20 feet back from the property line itself and and similar you know probably a similar slightly greater distance from the sidewalk itself which is more than ample for a second vehicle to be in there and not be in the driveway right most cars are around 16 to 18 feet long and then I just had a comment about the choice of any sort of buffer materials I'm particularly sensitive these days to driving down streets and having sort of overgrown buffers where you're coming up and you can't really see the driveway and then all of a sudden somebody backs out and I've noticed that in particular where people are using large grasses which seem to really sort of grow you know very vigorously and so I would just suggest that you know whatever you can do to preserve the site line as you're coming up on marathon approaching the Waldo street that you want to make sure that people coming up aren't having their view of the driveway completely blocked by some sort of growth so just a thought okay mr chairman to handlin just wanted to just point out that that's not only just a good idea but one of the factors that we're going to have to consider in deciding whether to grant this is whether or not the new curb cut and basically the design of the driveways is going to is going to adversely affect safety of pedestrians or another traffic and so if if the buffer is done in such a way as you need to have some the buffer that the zoning law by law requires and if it's done in a certain way it may adversely affect safety so you you have to sort of design with both considerations in mind absolutely any questions from the board at this time I will now open the meeting for public comment as stated before the public questions the comments were 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 public 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 now star nine to indicate to you would like to speak you'll be called upon by the chair you'll be asked to give your name and address and you'll be given time for your questions and comments so at this time mr more yes thank you mr chairman I just very quickly the landscaping presentation is very helpful I appreciate the applicant going to the extent of doing that early rather than later so we can see what's going on with the existing trees the existing plantings and what's what's proposed for the future so thank you very much for that I it makes my sort of job quite a bit easy and one comment further about the tree the street tree which is a protected tree um I just want to give the applicant a heads up that they're going to have to be critical root zone protection measures put in place for that tree it's quite close to the current driveway and my guess is with all the construction and construction materials and equipment around you have to protect the critical zone and the tree warden will be able to advise you on on methods for that thank you mr Jim very welcome next on the list is mr um mr brownstein hi yes my name is michael brownstein I live at 62 marathon street and I have two questions please and that this is a chair down I'm just wondering whether there will be any excavation in the basement area um mr gorilla yeah the you can actually see here there um there will be a basement of on the new structure and it and it does not align with the existing one perfectly you can you can almost kind of see we have the outline of the existing building today within our footprint um there will be some additional excavation and the reason the second question related to this in in east orlington there are some reports of rats around and I was just wondering if there was excavation what are the road and control measures that might be in place um that's okay mr gorilla if you can address that if not I would ask mr valorelli what the requirements are yeah I right now I can I can say that they would certain be you know the contractor and the client would be required to follow certainly the any state or local requirements at a minimum um and if there are any issues I'm sure they'd be um any known issues in this area I'm sure they can um address those with the building department perhaps um I don't I don't know any road and mitigation plans that are you know as the architect I don't know the exact application of any road or requirements of road and mitigation so I can't really comment on that myself mr. Valorelli do you have any I can't mr chairman so the demolition sign off package is quite extensive it contains all the new laws that were put into play in the latest um town meetings that is a border held sign off which not only includes the best disappointment but uh rodent control measures uh and not to switch gears but the buffer uh section of the bylaw you're referring to is 8.07 addresses driveway slope and it addresses side yard parking buffers so yes to rodent control it's part of the demolition sign off sheet and um it's governed by the border health but nevertheless it has to be addressed prior to the demolition of the structure is is there any specificity you can give to what those measures are I think we can get that offline but um come down the building pop and I can step you through it great thank you anything further mr. Brasky no thank you thank you very much um miss Vanderberg are you able to see me and hear me I can can you can you see me as well or did you just like half of you see I can't see your face but I can you're there I can see the back of your hand now better hi my name's now I just hear now all I see is the oh sorry you're in two windows take apart now I see you fully yes please okay hi I'm Dr. Laura Vanderberg I live at 20 Waldo Road with my husband Dr. Andrew Fioridlis and we have a few questions we were hoping that um one the proposed square footage could be um described in comparison to the current square footage we see the overlay but we're wondering what the percentage of increase is and um then two we'd like to ensure that the tree that is in that um dead strip as they call it is retained we've lost many trees in this neighborhood that are in the dead strip for a variety of reasons and it's difficult to to keep green out front also we do have concerns about the visibility and the increase of a driveway so that intersection with Waldo and Marathon is um relatively challenging from a neighborhood perspective it's a cut street cut through street from um Marathon is a cut through street from Mass Ave to Broadway and there have been multiple accidents that I myself have witnessed at that intersection so as as you know that street um across Marathon there is a house on that street that also has a green buffer around the edge and that particular lot overgrows quickly to address the concerns of the board um it reduces visibility and there have been accidents on that corner so I do have concerns about adding a driveway on a cut through street um when visibility could be reduced um with a corner landscaping application so those would be the three right now um so I will just quickly note that the sorry I have somebody in the waiting room um just note that the the proposal to demolish the existing home and build a new home can be done by right without action of the board um but I would ask um Mr. Guerrero if he can note the size of the prior building and the size of the new building I'm actually at the look at the existing when I get in I don't remember um I don't have the existing square footage in front of me um I think it's the next page yeah um let's see two seven nine eight here okay um and we are so with the basements and the half story would be 6807 of total okay of total living area gross square footage so actually that table shows existing and proposed correct yeah um we don't have we didn't um extensively as built the existing structure because it was coming down yeah so that's more than 100 increase is that right correct uh 2798 correct I don't I don't believe there's any living area noted I don't know if I don't know if that's the gross square footage of the existing structure that may be the living area so that would not include the basement likely of that building today where our number would include the basement um so if we were to have at the basement of the existing structure that would be a higher number um similar with the attic that one actually does not have a habitable attic um where our structure would and those are those are two areas that are inflating the number extensively okay thank you and then um the tree in the strip is as Mr. Moore noted um as in Mr. Hanlon the that street tree is a protected tree under the town bylaws and cannot be removed um without action from the tree committee uh the tree committee has been very very reluctant to do that with any street tees to my knowledge um Mr. Moore I don't know if you would like to comment further on that uh yes thank you Mr. Chairman yes you're you're correct uh removal street trees is is one of the things we are watching very carefully uh and and folks are increasingly following the various rules related to that there's a number of mesh state laws related to the street tree protection so yes it's a it's an important issue and the applicant is going to treat it that way and yes yes Mr. Chairman I I have to again applaud the applicant for having thought through the landscaping so early in the process and speaking of landscaping if I could ask Mr. Grell if you could put the landscaping plan back up um you see this is that existing tree so the proposed planting in the yard um are the heights of any of the proposed plantings of an elevation that would cause a reduction in the visibility that's a good question these are these are smaller ornamental trees um uh you know if I don't know my plants as well um I wasn't prepared for that um that that are are kind of dotted around the perimeter here they've been pulled in from the corner as you can tell here we didn't want to we didn't we were all we were trying to keep back from the corner um to keep lines of sight across the intersection there um this you know this is uh this is a proposed plan um you know is that something we can certainly take into consideration um with the client and see if there's you know and address the questions that have come up today um we want we do want to buffer you know these are um you know there's outdoor living areas around the property we want to allow the the homeowners to really be able to use the the larger property that they have and use their open space so um but we just we want to give them a little privacy corner lots tend to not have as much privacy so that's why we're thinking about how is this is um landscaped you know pretty early to to make you maintain that through the project thank you um Dr. Vandenberg did you have any other for the questions thank you for asking um I just if if you are serious about the um visibility in the landscaping I would recommend you spend like maybe 25 minutes at that intersection because it'll yeah during rush hour it will really inform your understanding of how quickly cars go down and um the level of uncertainty about where they are to stop uh I think it could really help your plans for the landscaping thank you thank you thank you mr. Moore did you have further questions or comments yes mr. chairman one last point thank you more since we are reducing excuse me increasing the footprint of the home uh the homes on the property and reducing um the the open space some although it is rather uh complete landscape I would suggest for the second driveway that permeable pavement get used to allow uh water inflow to the the land below since we as I said are are uh increasing the footprint of the house and decreasing the open space thank you mr. thank you mr. chairman mr mills um if I remember correctly isn't marathon street a one-way and there is a stop sign at this corner approaching that uh new driveway so you'd be coming down the driveway be on your right in the stop sign would be at the corner of the house no stop sign it's only on Waldo road there's a stop sign if you're driving on Waldo road if you're coming down marathon there's no stop sign okay all right is there a stop sign you want to put one in we would appreciate it there's one on this corner currently this is the property there's one on the Waldo side Waldo's road but it is and it appears from the stop line on the street that there's a there's one in both directions correct okay that does look like whoever did the replace the main in the street did not restripe um you know I I was talked I think I was speaking to somebody to engineering getting curb cut information and there may be road improvements planned for the street um in the very near future I'm not sure what those include thank you mr. more thank you mr. mills uh are there any other members of the public who wish to speak to this matter being none I will go ahead and close public comment on this item so the board needs to reach a decision in regards to the question of allowing a second driveway um we're the house can be built can be demolished and built by right so we're our decision is really limited to that aspect of the decision um I did want to quickly um so the in the zoning bylaw in that same section I quoted earlier uh six one ten a um notes that not more than one driveway shall be permitted unless there's a finding by the special permit granting authority for the development that a second driveway or a driveway that makes more than one intersection of the street may be added in a manner that avoids an undue concentration of population allows adequate provision of transportation and conserves the value of land and buildings in the vicinity and in no case be a second driveway uh violate any other dimensional or density regulation for the district in which it is located mr chairman mr. handlin it's it just to have start talking about this subject the I think that the in this particular case the uh I'm trying to find the right the right part of section a here uh here let me cut okay there it is in the second um but it seems to me that we're we're in a situation where where the safety issues we've talked about and I think that it would be useful to have conditions making clear the need to adjust the uh plantings in such a way and to choose species and and locations and the design of the plantings in such a way as to uh to the satisfaction of ISD avoid any any pedestrian uh any any pedestrian uh or or driving safety issues beyond that I don't think that that in a two uh a a basically a two a duplex that continues to be a two-family structure you're going to have a undesirable concentration of population and under the circumstances particularly as mr and s he points out where you're really putting one you're not putting two driveways next to each other you're putting them on up on at at right angles so to speak on two different streets uh that it's unlikely to be here uh it's it's unlikely to do anything that would undermine the value of houses in the neighborhood so it seems to me that that uh the requirements of paragraph a are met now in addition we also we also have to consider the standard by standard special exception circumstances but these are the these are the spec special regulations due to that and this seems to be a relatively uh a relatively clear case with respect to them thank you mr hamlin are there further comments or questions from the board mr chairman can you bond yeah so um i was sort of just picking up on what mr hamlin said but i was also thinking back to earlier in our meeting when mr valarelli commented that if people want to put fences between two properties and run them out to the street the first five feet has to be 30 inches or lower and and i think that that's sort of the idea that i had in mind when i was thinking of if you're going to have a vegetated buffer i don't know if the section that mr valarelli quoted 8.07 i think that's in the general bylaws um i don't know if that specifically states how high uh plantings may be but i would suggest that something along those lines be incorporated into the decision making for what a buffer would look like uh between the two properties on the marathon driveway if it's approved i can answer that mr chairman if you like please so there's two sections at a great point mr dupe on i think what we're talking about now is not only the side yard more importantly section 5.3.12 traffic visibility which clearly addresses for every good reason that one could imagine the safety of conna lots especially so it's it's i won't bore you with the details but it's clearly spelled out there nothing can be high 30 inches and there's a formula to figure out what your safe area is and what your area of concern is not only that but i believe there's a diagram that spells that out as well anyway that's part of plan review that would that would never get missed thank you i was considering um should the board wish to approve this there would be what conditions would be appropriate um there would be the three standard that we had enumerated for the prior hearing which i'll wait reading at the moment um i was a little concerned about the the lack of a curb in this area um in particularly the sort of defining the end the edges of the driveway um and so i would like to propose a condition that the applicant is to provide a two-foot radius cornerstone at both sides of each driveway and basically you know not that the the applicant is required to actually install a um you know a complete curve around the street but just that the ends of the driveway are clearly delineated so that it doesn't slowly sort of migrate sideways um and then a second was per prior comments the zba notes that the applicant is to provide a vegetated buffer between the proposed side yard driveway and the adjacent property um and then third would be the zba notes that the applicant is to preserve visibility across the corner and keeping with the requirements of the zoning bylaw and then as we had with the prior um similar to what we had on the prior case the zba notes that the existing street tree um now written this down yet this thing tree is a protected tree under the town by under the town bylaws okay uh mr chairman mr more uh one thing the street tree is protected not under the town bylaw in particular in this case it's the massachusetts chapter 89 regulation i believe and i'm not you'll have to check that at the top of my head i don't want to claim the wrong regulation but i believe it is the massachusetts so it's under massachusetts law not under town i believe so yes okay so that would be the zba notes that the existing street tree is a protected tree under massachusetts law are there any further comments questions or recommendations from the board seeing and hearing none do we have a proposed motion mr chairman mr hanlon i'm excuse me i move that the application be approved uh that and that in that connection the board finds specifically that the special general conditions of special permits have been met substantially for the reasons stated in the department the planning department memorandum and that the individual requirements uh of 6.1.10 a have often have have also been met and i would just add that to include the seven conditions yes of course sorry about a second second thank you is that mr mills okay uh vote of the board mr dupont hi mr hanlon hi mr mills hi your work the chair votes hi uh so the application for second driveway 53 marathon street is approved as amended um and in keeping with the special conditions of section 110 a mr chairman hanlon i just wanted to say that i would like to echo uh mr moore's uh compliment that that the landscaping has been thought through has had an early stage in the process um and i just hope that anybody who stays up late watching old zba uh old zba meetings notices this and and takes heart in the future i think that's a great practice uh to do in mix our job easier it makes mr moore's job uh easier and i think it makes everything go faster and better for the applicant thank you it's very well taken thank you all back to our very much very welcome thank you all this brings us up to item number seven on our agenda this evening which is docket number three six six four uh which is 14 nycod street um shon haze is here on behalf of the applicant hi good evening shon haze is here good evening good evening thank you for your time this evening um by way of introductions my name is shon haze i'm a lifelong resident of arlington mass i'm a 1996 graduate of arlington high school i've owned 14 nycod street since 2009 i currently currently reside there with my wife and my two boys uh 10 and almost 13 my 10-year-old goes to down school down the street and my almost 13-year-old is that oddison we are currently turning our cape into a two and a half story structure obviously it's a growing family we need two growing boys we need the room to now fit them what we are applying for and i'm sorry they don't have a cool presentation on the screen like the last two but i believe that um the landry construction has sent over a packet to the board but what we are applying for is we're applying for a permit to put on a farmer's porch and the main reason for um our application is you know twofold we're looking to bring some curb appeal to the property but more importantly we're looking for a structure and a place for my wife and i to sort of sit on the porch and watch our two young boys play in our front yard and on our street nycod street which is a quiet street and our boys love to play basketball and football on the street so that's really the main reason for our application um happy to answer any questions i know franando from valandry construction is also on the call who is the the technical expertise but happy to answer any questions that i can and appreciate your time thank you very much i will go ahead and share this thank you very much for that you're very welcome so this is the outline of the existing home um it's additional work that is not under our jurisdiction which is um this addition piece back here and what is um up for you this evening is this front porch here so these are the proposed elevations are there questions and comments from the board but i do not see any the will quickly refer to the memorandum from the department of planning and community development and they had just noted that while the proposed porch sees the maximum square footage allowed by right the overall proposal is not substantially more detrimental to the neighborhood and is in fact a common feature in the surrounding neighborhood although none of the homes in the immediate area have the a porch that's fanciful with uh the department planning community development maintains the proposal is consistent with designing by law with that unless there's anything further from the board mr chairman melt i would just like to say it looks aesthetically pleasing i think it'll be a benefit to the neighborhood thank you i will now open the meeting for public comment public questions and comments are taking this they relate to the matter at hand it should be directed to the board for the purposes of informing our decisions members of 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 nine to indicate who would like to speak you'll be called upon by the meeting post and ask to give your name and address and given time for your questions and comments mr more uh yes thank you mr chairman i would strongly echo mr mills's comments i think this is an excellent addition but my question um and i'm probably not asking this correctly is i'm wondering if uh mr haze or the volandry folks utilize the building style guidelines i don't even know if i'm naming them correctly that has been referenced in zba meetings previously not recently but uh perhaps a number of months ago these new style guidelines i believe that the residential design guideline thank you yes sir that's i'm wondering if those were utilized here hey amy yes please hi this is fernando owner of valendi contract and yes they have been mr chairman mr more i want to applaud valendry contracting for that because clearly the outcome here is uh is excellent thank you sir i appreciate it thank you mr more um thank you uh mr mrs jones thank you mr chairman we live at seven across the street from the hazes they've been great neighbors we have no objections thank you anything else it would definitely add curb appeal to the neighborhood mr carrier do you want to speak as well i'm sharing are you asking me i'm sir yes you had your hand up so i just wasn't sure oh i that was my accident i'm sorry no that's okay i'm trying to stay on the deck here because the kids are acting up inside the house here so okay sorry about that that's another use of an uncovered porch you're not live at the subject property are you no i'm not i'll take my hand down hey are there any questions or comments from the public being done i'll go ahead and close public comment period for this hearing any discussion from the board we have our standard three conditions which have been read into the record earlier this evening um i don't think there's a need for any additional conditions from my perspective does anybody else wish to add anything else seeing none may i have a motion mr chairman i i move that the uh application be approved subject to the standard conditions that were previously read into the record thank you handling i have a second on that second thank you mr mills vote of the board mr dupont hi your handling pat uh i mr mills hi mr or work right chair votes i uh so for the application for 14 9th street is approved uh with the standard three conditions thank you boy thank you very much thank you very much congratulations good luck thank you thank you appreciate it very welcome have a good night night thank you and i will just quickly wanted to bring up our upcoming calendar second day so this evening was the september 14th hearing so the next scheduled hearing or the next scheduled date we have is tuesday september 28th which is the submission of the revised draft decision for thornback place so i just remind members of the board that if you have um you know based on the the current draft decision on thornback place which obviously is older but if you have recommendations based on uh that decision or any other recommendations in regards to what should be included in that draft decision if you can please submit that to uh to paul haverty um as soon as you're able uh then the next meeting of the board will be tuesday october fifth at 6 30 p.m uh just the continuation of thornback place where we'd be focusing on that draft decision um because currently friday october 8th is the close the public hearing period for thornback place um let's put that in uh i had asked earlier in the week about the the next hearing which is set for tuesday october 12th uh we have five hearings on the docket for that evening i'd asked if uh we would like to start earlier um rather than our normal 7 30 if we wanted to start at 6 30 for that one um i had uh one member had asked if we could keep it at 7 30 and if had others at say it would be fine to move it to 6 30 um is there any particular sense of the board as to which they would prefer mr chairman if i'm the if i'm the one that is being read as opposed to it uh i'm i'm perfectly amenable to whatever is most convenient for the board okay the 6 30 work for everyone else okay he nods and thumbs up yeah um mr valarelli are we okay with starting at 6 30 or has this already been advertised as 7 30 no uh mr chairman we're okay we have plenty of time okay and i apologize for so many quite honestly i i only have a certain number of days to get these things heard once the application is 100 complete so my hands were tied so i had to load us up that's all right so well we will start at 6 30 p.m then on the 12th very good make that easier and then two weeks thereafter october 26th uh 7 30 we have two hearings on the calendar for that so that said um if on tuesday october 5th we close the hearing on thurndike place we'll then start the 40 day clock for deliberating and issuing a decision so we need to uh be cognizant of that because that will unfortunately need to overlap uh with the hearings in october so we may end up meeting um sort of once you know one week we would meet to discuss the regular hearings that are on this but then in that intervening week in the week after we may need to um meet to discuss that decision so just to keep that on everyone's radar but that's obviously contingent on um what happens on october 5th and whether we're still in open session or whether we're we're closing the public hearing so mr chairman yes please the the 40 days will expire somewhere around november 14th is that i'm just doing the rough arithmetic but that's when we unless there's a further extension that's when we have to come up with the final decision that sounds right that's a sunday so presumably we won't do it that day um okay yeah so we could i think it would behoove us at the at the time that we are ready to close the public hearing that we discuss with the applicant what would be um an acceptable date for delivering that decision i will point out mr chairman that november 11th is armistice day very true are there any quick questions about our upcoming schedule seeing none mr chairman yes please i would like to compliment mr hamlin on his uh his understanding of history everyone calls it vet for you there i just remember lots of 11s okay well 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 especially wish to thank mr valarelli and mr lee and miss linema for all their assistance and 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 the proceedings and it's our understanding the recording made by acmi will be available on demand at acmi.tv within the coming days if anyone has comments or recommendations please dba at town.arlington.ma.us then i would look for a motion to adjourn so moved second mr melz go to the board mr duplatt hi mr hamlin hi melz hi for work i only share both i we are adjourned thank you all very much for all your assistance and attention to patience and everything else yeah good night everyone good night everyone thank you guys bye


Greetings fellow learners, before we begin our titular tale of transfer learning, I have a thought-provoking question for you. What activity or skill was easy for you to pick up, but not necessarily for anyone else? For me, I would say it was teaching, and I attribute a lot of this to the public speaking I had been doing since I was growing up. By the time I was in 10th grade, I was speaking in front of thousands of people hosting events when I was in school studying in India, and eventually I started hosting other events which you can still find on my channel till this day. So public speaking is definitely a transferable skill I used for teaching on YouTube, and so teaching came a little bit quick to me. But please comment down below what your superpower skill is, and I would love to know you better. Now this video is going to be divided into three passes where we start with an overview of transfer learning, followed by some detailed example on how we would exactly solve a transfer learning problem, and then we're going to code the same thing out in the past three of the explanation. So stay tuned, we're going to learn a lot. This is a neural network, so let's say that we want to train this network to take in a given question and produce an answer. To do so, we construct a data set of about one million questions along with their answers. Now during the training phase of the network, we will pass question-answer pairs to the model, the model updates its parameters, and we repeat this process until the model eventually learns to answer questions. Now during the inference phase, the model can take an unseen question, and then it can produce an answer. So this is great. Now let's say that we want to perform another related task, where we translate a given English sentence to a French sentence. So to do so, we will construct a data set of, let's say again, one million English sentences with their French translations. We start with an untrained network, and during the training phase of the network, we pass English French pairs to the model, and update the model parameters. Now during the inference phase, the model can take an unseen English sentence, and then produce a French translation. This is great again. But now one major pain point here is that building data sets of this one million size can be very difficult. And if we wanted to now solve the problem of, say, translating English to Spanish, this can be difficult because we would need to collect one million examples again from scratch. Now transfer learning helps mitigate this problem. So let's say that we want to build an English-Spanish translator. We can first train the model on one problem, like English to French, and then we can fine-tune this model on the problem we want to solve, which is English to Spanish. And this way, knowledge can be transferred using a model trained on one problem as a starting point. And hence, we don't need as much English to Spanish data for the model to actually learn. Quiz time! Have you been paying attention? Let's quiz you to find out. What is the benefit of transfer learning? A. It reduces the need for computational resources. B. It overcomes data limitations. C. It enhances model interpretability. Or D. None of the above. Please comment your answer down below and let's have a discussion. If you think I deserved and you love learning, please do consider hitting that like button because it will help me a lot. That's going to do it for pass one and quiz time for now, but keep paying attention because I will be back to quiz you. Let's illustrate transfer learning by teaching a model to perform an NLP task, which is question answering. In the simplest form of question answering, the network is given a context and a question. And the output answer can be extracted from the context. So the output is essentially just going to be two numbers. The first number is going to be the index of the start position and the second number is going to be the index of the end position. For this type of network, we will use BERT with transfer learning. For details on the architecture of BERT, you can check out this video. And for now, just know that BERT is a stack of the encoder part of the transformer neural network. And it is trained in two phases. We have a pre-training phase and a fine tuning phase. So let's talk about each of these. So during the pre-training phase, we will take a dumb network and we'll train it on two problems, mass language modeling and next sentence prediction. So in mass language modeling, the model will take in a masked input and determine what those masks are. In next sentence prediction, the model will take in two sentences and determine whether the second sentence logically follows the first. And once it is trained on these two problems, the BERT model is said to be pre-trained. Now you as a user don't usually need to pre-train a model yourself and these models can be downloaded online and then fine-tuned for your use case. During the fine tuning phase, we will take this pre-train network and train it further on question answering. So the dataset would have a question plus context. We can catenase these together. This stream of text is then broken down into individual units called a token. We then pass these tokens into BERT and in code, we're going to use a version of BERT called distil BERT that converts each token into a 768 dimensional embedding. When I say embedding, they are basically vectors that is a set of 768 numbers that represent the meaning of a word. Now each of these 384 tokens are then mapped into a two-dimensional vector. Now the first number will determine the probability that this token is the start token of the answer and the second number determines the probability that this token is the end token of the answer. So they are numbers between 0 and 1. And we have 384 of these two-dimensional vectors. We can then take the maximum values across these columns to get the start position and end position.  Overall, the big picture here is BERT requires substantially less question-answer data than if we had trained a model from scratch. Quiz time! It's that time of video again. Have you been paying attention? Let's quiz you to find out. Which of the following architectures can make use of transfer learning? A. BERT B. GPT C. Feed Forward Neural Networks Or D. All of the above. Comment your answer down below and let's have a discussion. That's going to do it for quiz time for now, but keep paying attention because I will be back to quiz you. In this past, we are going to fine-tune BERT on the question-answering data set. In this notebook, we describe a few processes. The first is loading of the training data. Then we're going to have to pre-process that training data so that it can be fed to a model. Then loading and training of the model itself. And then some post-processing to be able to interpret the results from the model. And then performance evaluation. So let's go through each, starting with just loading the data set. In this case, we're going to use squad version 1, which means that the answers will always be present within the context that is provided so as to simplify the process. We're going to use distilled BERT. And the batch size is 16, which means that we can pass 16 examples to the network all in parallel, and we can get 16 results in parallel. This data set has 87,000 training examples and 10,000 test examples. And so this shows that we only need so many examples to actually fine-tune our model instead of the millions that we would potentially need if training from scratch. And here is a record of how exactly that training data looks. The important part is the context, the question, and then the answer, where the answer is, we can see that the text that the answer corresponds to. And this text is directly present within the context itself. So they consider to be unscriptural doctrines that is present right over here. And then it's starting position is also given over here, which is the position of they in this case. Step one of loading the data set is complete. Now we want to go to step two of actually pre-processing the training data. So first thing we want to do is concatenate the question and the context. And then we will break that text down into individual tokens via an auto tokenizer. So you could see that here, this is the question, this is the context. We have broken it down into individual tokens. And then we have padded it using a padding token. This is required because we want some fixed size inputs, mathematical inputs, to be passed into the model at a given time. And then we also want to fetch the start position. This will indicate the index of the start of the answer and then the index of the end of the answer because it's already present in the context. So for example, 33 to 39 for this fifth example right over here, which is the same one right over here. It just basically says that I think a golden statue of the Virgin Mary answers this question and this golden, I think this is the 33rd token, whereas this is the 39th token. So how do we go from this to creating this tokenized version plus padding, plus getting the start and end positions right over here of the answer? Well, we have a function that does all of that right over here, which is going to be called prepare training features. So we were able to load the data set and we are now able to pre process our input data and our output data. Now we need to load and fine tune our model. And this here is the architecture. So what happens here is we now have the input tokens, which were the 384 tokens. Each of those tokens is going to be mapped to a 768 dimensional embedding vector. Position embedding allows the tokens to encode positional information because their position matters. LayerNorm is going to help stabilize training. Dropout is going to act as a regularizer to prevent or mitigate overfitting. Then we have the transformer and this consists of six encoder transform blocks because this is BERT. And with the encoder transformer, it's going to perform a series of attention operations in order to better encapsulate the meaning of every single token. And that's why the output of every single token is going to be 768 dimensions, better encapsulating meaning. If you want to get an idea of exactly how every single component works, I highly recommend you take a look at the transformers from scratch playlist. Now we are going to have 384 tokens and each of those is going to be mapped to a two dimensional output, which indicates the probability of start index and the probability that this token is the end index. So that's the model that we're dealing with. And we can actually start the training process fairly easily. So we have loaded the data set. We have pre-processed the data. We now have trained the model. And now let's actually look at post-processing and prediction of the model itself. So this code over here is going to take a batch of examples and generate some predictions. Now this is going to be a list of 384 tokens, which indicates the probabilities of each being the start index and another 384 token list of it being the end index. You can see, and it also has a batch size because we're passing 16 examples at a time. But we really only need the position, like the true position for every single column. We can actually just take like the maximum value over here. So that means that, for example, this is going to be a list of 16 examples in the batch. So for the first example, token 46 is the start and then it ends at token 47. That's the answer. Then the second example, the answer starts at token 57 and ends at token 58. For the third example, the answer starts at token 78 and ends at token 81 and so on. And so now that we've done the load data set, the pre-processing, the model training, the post-processing, we can now do some hardy evaluation because we had our evaluation set of about 10,000 examples and we could see how much there was an exact match to the actual answers generated by the model and the answers that are actually true. And we can also generate some other evaluation metrics. And once done, you can push your fine-tuned model to Hugging Face Hub. Squeeze time. All right, this is going to be a fun one. What is the primary advantage of using Distill BERT over BERT? A, Distill BERT is larger and more powerful. B, Distill BERT provides better interpretability. C, Distill BERT is faster and has a smaller memory footprint. Or D, Distill BERT has a higher capacity for model complexity. Comment your answer down below and let's have a discussion. And if you think I do deserve it, please do consider giving this video a like because it'll help me out a lot. Now it's going to do for quiz time and pass three of the explanation of the video. But before we go, let's generate a summary. Transfer learning involves pre-training a model on a general task. Then further fine-tuning the model on a specific task. This way we don't need as much task specific data. Now BERT uses transfer learning by pre-training on mass language modeling that is given a mass input, determine the masks. And next sentence prediction that is given two sentences, determine if the second sentence logically follows the first. And we can use less data to fine-tune on other NLP tasks like question answering. And that's all we have for today. The links to the code and all other resources will be provided in the description down below. So do check it out. If you want to know more about how BERT works, I highly suggest you check out this video right over here. And you can watch the rest of the NLP playlist as well. Thank you all so much for watching. If you do think I deserve it, please do give this video a like. Thank you and I will see you in the next one. Bye-bye.