All right. Welcome everyone to the March 29th meeting of the Arlington Redevelopment Board. This open meeting of the Redevelopment Board is being conducted remotely consistent with Governor Baker's executive order of March 12, 2020, due to the state of emergency in the Commonwealth, due to the outbreak of the COVID-19 virus. In order to mitigate the transmission of the COVID-19 virus, we have been advised and directed by the Commonwealth to suspend public gatherings, and as such, the governor's order suspends the requirement of the opening of public meetings in the publicly accessible physical location. Further, all members of public bodies are allowed and encouraged to participate remotely. For this meeting, the Redevelopment Board is convening via Zoom as posted on the town's website identifying how the public may join. Please note that this meeting is being recorded and that some attendees are participating via video conference accordingly. Please be aware that other people may be able to see you and take care not to screen share your computer. Anything that you broadcast may be captured by the recording. I will now take a roll call to confirm that all members of the Redevelopment Board are present and can hear me starting with Kim Lau, President, David Watson, President, Jean Benson, President, and Melissa Tintacalus. All right, I will ask her to recognize herself when she arrives, and I am Rachel Zenberry, Chair of the Redevelopment Board. We also have three staff present, I believe, or maybe it's just the two of us right now, but there will be a third joining. Great, Jenny and Erin, would you introduce yourselves please? I'm Jenny Raid, I'm the Director of Planning and Community Development. And I'm Erin Zwerko, Assistant Director of Planning and Community Development, and Kelly Linema is with us. Hello, Kelly Linema, Senior Planner of Department of Planning and Community Development. Great, thank you so much. So with that, we will move to the first item of our agenda and we will now reopen the continued public hearing for the Warren Articles related to the Zoning Bylaws for Spring Town Meeting. This is the third of four nights of hearings as published in the schedule on Nova's agenda for a total of 22 Warren Articles. Consistent with the past, the Redevelopment Board will be hearing from the article applicants and public wishing to speak on each of these articles as scheduled. Applicants will have three minutes to address the board. The board will then pose any questions to the applicants, followed by a period for open public comment. Note that the board will reserve final discussion and voting on each article until the very last night of hearings on April 5th. So before we begin, let me run through the procedures for any person who wishes to speak at tonight's public hearing. So the scope of the public hearing is the subject matter as posted in the agenda. Any person wishing to address the Redevelopment Board on the subject matter of the agenda item shall signify their desire to speak by raising their hand when the chair announces consideration of each item. To raise your hand and zoom on your computer, go to the participant section and select raise hand or on your phone press star six to unmute yourself. After being recognized to speak by the chair, each person will preface their comments by giving their first and last name and their street address, and I will remind you at the end of the discussion before each public comment period. Each person addressing the board on the subject matter of the agenda item shall limit their remarks to three minutes. If time allows, you will maybe allow to speak more than once at the discretion from the chair if you have a new and different point to make or question to ask on the topic. The board may receive any oral or written evidence that such evidence was restricted to the subject matter of the agenda item. In material or unduly repetitious evidence may be excluded. Everyone present at the public hearing is requested not to applaud or otherwise express approval or disapproval of any statements made or action taken at each hearing. Hearing participants shall refrain from interrupting other speakers and conduct themselves in a civil and courteous manner. Speakers should address any questions through the chair. Speakers shall not attempt to engage in debate or dialogue with the redevelopment board, other hearing participants, or the public at large. Questions may or may not be answered during this public hearing. And with that, it looks like Melissa has joined us. Welcome, Melissa. And we will move to the first item on our agenda this evening, which is Article 47, a Zoning By-law Amendment Establishing Requirements for Off-Street Handicap Packard Parking. And this is inserted by the select board by the request of the Disability Commission. So do we have a representative from either the disability or the select board? Yes. Very. Thank you very much. So if you would like to introduce yourself and please speak, you will have three minutes to address the board. Thank you. Okay. My name is Darcy Devney, Thorndyke Street, Arlington. I am the chair of the Arlington Commission on Disabilities. I did send some stuff in advance, but just in case everybody attending this hasn't been able to read some of it, I'm just going to say why are we doing this war and article in the first place is because in 2016, the Zoning By-law 6.1.5 was changed to allow the ARB to permit reductions of up to 75% in the required number of off-street parking spaces for developments in certain districts. And then in 2019, we added R7. And then just a few months ago, we said it could go down to zero in the B3 and B5 districts. So legally, the ARB cannot waive compliance with ADA accessibility requirements because the ADA is a federal civil rights legislation. Inadvertently, however, these 6.1.5 waivers do reduce the required number of off-street HP spaces because the ADA and the MAB regulations base the minimum number of required off-street HP spaces on the total number of parking spaces. So I think you have the printout from the ARB that has the little blue symbol and has what they are normally for ADA and MAB. Yep, got one, thank you. And sorry, I just lost my screen. How did that happen? Here we go. Okay. So in essence, the rationale for allowing these reductions in the parking minimums as they currently exist in the bylaws is that a TDM, a Transportation Demand Management Plan, will be implemented. But if you look at those TDM methods that are available, sorry, it's clear that many of them are burdensome or they're impossible for many people with disabilities to take advantage of. It's not that people with disabilities don't ride bicycles, but for example, bicycle racks just aren't much use for wheelchair users. So when we looked at this, we tried to come up with a way to sort of fix this and the easiest, simplest thing to do that we probably should have had done at the time that this was coming before town meeting is fixing it by saying, okay, since it's normally this many spaces, why don't we do the HP spaces as if there hadn't been a parking reduction at all. So I sent you a chart of what that would look like. Can you pop that up please? With some examples. It's a chart that has a yellow bar on the right hand side. Yep, that one. Okay. And you can see we tried to do a couple of examples just to show you the kinds of things that are happening with it. Now you can see that really it's not a huge loss in HP spaces. It's just that given the number of HP spaces you're going to have, it's a big percentage of them. So it's just that it inadvertently, effectively overrides the ADA and then maybe standards because when you change the all the total of regular parking spaces, you change the number of HP spaces just by default. So we're trying to correct that with the suggested amendment D. And I think if you have any questions, it's pretty straightforward, I believe, but there are probably questions. So thanks. Thank you. I appreciate it. We will now run through the board members to see what questions you have for the about this proposed Warren article. And we'll start with Jean. Thank you. And thank you for presenting this article. I have a couple of questions. One is one of the things that the ARB can do is to say that no parking spaces are required. And we would do that when there is no existing parking. And it did come up in one instance in the past year or two, in which case we said, gee, we need something that gives us the ability to go to zero for a business that wanted to move in to a location that had no parking spaces and they couldn't create any parking spaces. So what you're doing, I think, makes sense, but it doesn't work when it goes from some number to zero because there's no way to put the handicapped parking space if there's no parking available. So do you have any suggestions how we might deal with that? Okay. Do I go ahead? Please, please, if you could answer the question. Thank you. Okay. So if there are, if there's any parking at all, right, at least one of them must be accessible. Although Valley only parking does not trigger an ADA violation, it's an unfriendly policy. I think we just, we went through this at another meeting like a couple of months ago to try to describe Valley coverage just isn't good enough. It doesn't provide permanent, reliable 24-7 coverage. And further, as we've noted, Valley parking cannot safely handle specially modified vehicles depending on what kind of disability you have. So the answer is if it's, if there's even one parking space, it should be an accessible space. If there's no parking at all, then I would think that we would handle that the way we've handled on-street parking in Arlington where we take a look, we take requests, we go out and look at the space and see what's nearby and how likely it is that that business or resident will attract that kind of thing. Like in the ADA, medical buildings, for example, have a much higher percentage of handicap spaces because it's considered that you would probably need more of them. So you really, if it's zero, it's zero and we're kind of stuck with that. That's not something you can do very much about. So when I talked to the town council, he said that there might be a way to just put something in there that says if you have reduced it to zero, you've reduced it to zero. And then we would just handle the commission on disabilities would handle the sort of on-street parking space that we would need to add quite probably at that point, but that would be an on-street public space. So that would be a little different and it wouldn't go through the ARB. So I mean, that makes sense to me. So I'm wondering if you would accept, if we would do this, just a friendly amendment to this to indicate that if the required number of parking spaces is zero, then there wouldn't be any HP parking spaces. Yes, because that, as you point out, that makes sense. Right. We would handle it, but we would handle it separately. Okay. Yeah, that makes sense to me too. The other question I had was there have been sometimes when we've reduced the number of spaces because it's an existing building that just needs a special permit for something new and the existing number of spaces is quite a bit smaller, quite a bit fewer than there were before. So I think in any event, the ones I'm thinking of that end up being one HP space, but if there were one, if there were an event where there would otherwise required to be more, should there be more even if there were never that many spaces to trigger more than one space? Sadly, when I look at the stats for this kind of thing, yeah. It's true that people always associate the ADA and mobility and HP spaces with wheelchair only, and that's not actually the biggest percentage of people with disabilities, but there's all sorts of reasons why you might need an HP parking space, fatigue if you're going through chemotherapy. Some of the people with autism can't really do a group sort of carpool, so they need to be taken singly in a vehicle, that kind of thing. So yeah, I would add in the graying of America, not that being old means that you're disabled, but there is some correlation, and we've got to, Massachusetts has a silver tsunami coming, so I have a feeling it's just going to get more, we need to be more inclusive, we really do. Yes, I think I'm at the leading edge of that silver tsunami. Yes, I know about that. Okay, I think, yeah, I think I'll just stop there for the moment. Thank you so much. Okay. Thank you, Jean, and thank you for the clarification, Darcy. Ken, any questions? Yeah, hi Darcy. Follow up on a line with Jean was following up on where there is existing, non-conforming parking spaces in a lot there, and so you're saying we should make one of those existing ones hand-capped accessible? Yes. And by doing that, by the ADA, if you have one hand-capped space, that would have to be a van hand-capped parking space because that's what the law says. The big difference there is the access aisle, and you'd have to do that anyway, so you wouldn't be taking any more space than you would take for a regular one. The only time it would come into, the only time it would be different for a van is, for things that have height, height requirements, there is a height requirement for a van space that's different from a non-van space, but other than that you're going to need the access aisle anyway, so it's, I think it's eight feet plus five feet for an access aisle. I believe it is eight foot for the parking space, eight foot for the access space adjacent to it, and for a van height, it's eight foot four inches clear. Okay, if you can pop up the, the... I don't want to get into too much details, I want to stay on this, so it's higher level here, but let's say there is no room to get the van height in the existing non-conforming space. I mean, can we word in such a way where it has a little more slack into it? I truly feel that, yeah, we do need hand-capped accessible spaces, but in certain areas if you don't, if you can't have it, you can't have it, and I don't want to be so blunt with this, with this amendment where it precludes anybody from doing anything because they don't have the space. That's the only thing I'm a little worried about, and I just want to, if we can, like Jean said, be wordless a little friendlier where it gives some exceptions. I'm not saying, you know, it's a broad exception, but I'd say if there's no height, you just say, you know, it's parking below, but there's no way you're going to get 8 foot 4, 8 foot 5 clear. It is what it is. So we'll get the exception that the van park space would be required. You following me there, or am I not being clear enough? No, I am following you, and you are right, it's the 8 feet wide, I always forget that one. In that case, honestly, what I would say is that the developer needs to ask the MAAB, the Massachusetts Architectural Access Board, for a waiver, which is, which is a thing that happens anyway. Do you know what I mean? There's already a process, a procedure set up for that, but when you do that, part of what the developer owner has to talk about is why exactly is it impossible or too much of a burden to put in that space? But yes, it recognizes that there are unique spaces, but I would think, yeah, if they went through, they do a waiver process, and then you request and you go through a hearing and you put, it's a lot like an A or B thing, actually, in that you ask and you talk about the unique properties of that particular site, and that is normally why someone asks for- So would you be amenable to add some sort of verbiage into this, saying that when it can't be done, that a waiver process would have to start with the Handicamp Commission or something like that, so that at least, at least so makes it clear for someone who's trying to do a right thing, how to go about doing it? I would be perfectly happy to say yes, to word it however the town council thinks or you think it should be worded, to say that they would have to apply for a waiver from the Massachusetts Architectural Access Board. I wouldn't actually like them to apply directly to us because that's not something we can grant, it has to be through- Yes, I understand that. Okay, so however that wording should go then. I'm not the greatest of wording, I think maybe Jean or might be a better person for wording. I think we can do that, both of those, the zero one and unless they get a waiver from the MAAB. Okay. And then my last question is, I know this parking reduction is not new to many towns similar to ours, are any of the towns adopted this added on in how successful or unsuccessful it has been? I think that Arlington's planning and development talked about it in their comments on this article and there have only been two but honestly I would like us to, I would like us to be a role model for this because it is an issue that comes up, we belong to something called, I go to the meetings of the CODA which is the Commission on Disabilities Alliance which is Local Commission of Disabilities, Commission on Disabilities Chairs and this is one of the issues that keeps coming up so I think it hasn't gotten, it hasn't bubbled to the level of trying to get a state law passed but it is something where towns, where parking is, you know, a difficult process and these reductions are getting, are getting permitted more and more that we should start doing it and I'm hoping that that I will, you know, share this with my colleagues and they will probably start the same sort of thing in their town if they're having these kind of issues. Rachel, I'm also my questions, thank you. Thanks again, did you want either Erin or Jenny to comment based on what was in the memo? I know the question was about some of the research that they have completed about what, what they're finding in other towns, are you? Sure, yeah, that'd be nice. So yes, thank you, Rachel. Erin, do you want to speak to the memo? Do you want me to bring it up? No, I don't think you need to bring it up. So in support of the memo that we put together, I looked at the comparable communities that are often referred to by the town manager. So that includes quite a number of our neighboring communities, communities in Metro West and just on the North Shore. And in those zoning bylaws and zoning ordinances, I did find an example in Cambridge and in Needham where reductions are allowed through a special permit, which is very similar to how it works in Arlington. But there is a clarification that the reduction is not applicable to the required number of HP parking spaces that are otherwise required by the MAAB regulations. So those were the two examples that I found. There might be others, but to control the amount of research that I was doing, I used the examples that are often cited in town documents. Okay, thank you, Erin. Can anything else? No, that's a good one. Great, thank you so much. David Watson. So thank you very much for bringing this up. I think it is very necessary for us to pay more attention to this when we're looking at parking reductions. I did have a little bit of follow-up to the previous comments and maybe one or two additional questions. The first was with respect to the amendment that Gene Benson brought up where the number of required spaces is zero. I think when we draft new language for that exception, that would be very clear that that number is zero after any permitted reductions, not that it's zero to begin with. Because that would have almost no effect potentially if we word it that way. Okay. With respect to the MAAB waiver process, it seems to me that for us to ensure that we are looking out for the right number of spaces in a project, that if any waiver is going to be requested, it must be sought and received prior to us being able to permit a project or else make it conditional on the receipt of such a waiver. And I don't know whether there's anything further that needs to be said in the draft proposal or if that's just a process issue for the ARB and the Planning Department to deal with. I was thinking about that actually and I would suggest that it doesn't belong in the zoning bylaw because that's how we handle other similar boards or commissions. We don't talk really about process in the bylaw anymore, but I would say that maybe in our rules and regulations when we talk about EDR, we probably would amend that to talk about procedurely when you're dealing with other approvals in relationship to your permit and the process that you would go through to get those other approvals. That would be my suggestion. For example, we deal with the historical commission quite often. We frequently say it's conditioned upon getting the approval or certificate, depending upon which it is, from that commission as part of a specific condition in the special permit. So I would suggest we handle it in a similar way. That makes sense to me. So I had a couple of thoughts on maybe edge cases where I'm not quite sure what should happen. So in a situation where we've got an existing building with X number of parking spaces that comes back before the ARB for a new special permit or a permit modification, and what happens if they have no accessible spaces but their existing spaces are fully utilized by existing residents? And if we were then to require them to turn one of those into an accessible space, then wouldn't that end up displacing parking of one of the existing residents? And that seems like a problematic case to me. Another one, which is a little bit similar, is if you've got a building that itself is not ADA accessible and isn't required to be, and it's resident only parking, and there are no disabled residents, then you may end up with requiring a parking space that can't be used by guests, it can't be used by residents, and it's just taking up space, and it's just paved space, and that doesn't seem like an optimal outcome either. So I wanted to see if the proponent had any thoughts on those cases. David, would you like to respond to that? Dorothy? Yes, that is a very good question. We did think about this kind of thing. There's two things I would say, and one of them is when you are redeveloping a building, you don't say, okay, well, it doesn't have to come up to current electrical standards, because it does. So part of me wants to say it's part of being a modern building, that you have to do your best. Now I understand that your best can't always be, that is why they have the variances, can't always be that, but that it strikes me as sort of, it's discounting why we do it, really, because the idea is to make it accessible to as many people as possible, and as we discussed, when you say a building isn't accessible, people with disabilities, it's such a wide range and such a why it may or may not be accessible in one way or another, that there are plenty of people who can use an HP placard that can walk upstairs, for example, and the reverse, there are plenty of people who have to have an HP placard and can't do any stairs at all, not even a little step. So I would think, if nothing else, if visitors get to use spaces, are we saying that people with certain kinds of disabilities can't have access to the visitor spaces, can't visit their friends? That seems a little, do you know what I mean?  And as I said in my notes, it can take a very long time with the MAAB and the ADA, because it's a very adversarial process, so there can be a lot of foot dragging. Well, I completely understand. I think the reality is that we deal with a lot of small projects that have very few parking spaces to begin with, either retro fits or new construction, or projects that have extremely constrained space for parking. It's often not as easy as just saying, you must include a handicap space, because it can be, as Ken was saying, just not physically possible in the given conditions. And I think aspirationally, I completely agree with you. We always want to try to address this and address it upfront, rather than make it something that people have to request. But just given the reality of many of the projects we deal with, I feel like somehow there needs to be the ability for the ARB to exercise discretion to some extent. You do have a specific question, or did you just want to put that point out there? Well, I think the problem is right now, this eliminates the ARB's discretion, and no matter what the size of the project is, or what the space constraints are, and I don't see how that's going to be workable in 100% of the projects that come before us. So that's my point. Okay. Thank you, David. Ken. To follow up a little bit on what Dave was saying, I totally agree with him. Maybe we can leave it a little loose, like I said before, where let's say there's five assigned spaces. This is an example of five assigned spaces for apartment buildings, and right now there is no requirement for it. There's no one living there that's handicapped, who has a placard that says they need handicapped space, but we have one that doesn't need for one. Once one is seen that gets required, then that space would go to the handicapped placard user, but when it's not used, then we're not building a simple space just to build a space. So it might work better within that, and maybe that's a discretion for us to say. If a handicapped space is needed, then this is the space for it, and it has all the requirements to meet that handicapped space, where they access the heights and so forth, but when there's not one required, then that would just be assigned to one of the apartment buildings until one is deemed needed, and then that would revert that way, or something along those lines. Could that simply be worded in such a way, David, or I'm not sure what's the wording? Well, I think it's maybe easier to do that in a rental situation, but if you're in a condo situation, and the spaces are deeded, it's not so easy to suddenly tell a resident that the new handicapped resident has to have your space and you have to move your car over to this other space that they can't use. I'm not sure how that would work. But then you're forcing someone to build a designated handicapped space that may never be used. Yeah, I understand that that was one of my concerns, but maybe, and in some cases, within very constrained space, that's going to be a big deal to build a parking space that may never be used. But maybe we, I mean, it sounds like in many cases where it is possible that they do have to do that. I think what my concern is in those cases around the edges where you're dealing with a very small number of spaces or very constrained space and it just really isn't possible. How do we maintain the discretion to allow that to happen? Or can we? So, David, you're looking for a carve out for existing spaces for existing properties with constrained sites so that the proponent does not need to go to the MAAB, which is a very long process. And there is a process established, but it's, again, for a small small property, it can be a challenging process to go through. So you're looking for an opportunity within this by law change for the redevelopment board to exercise discretion specifically for constrained sites with existing parking, correct? Especially where that parking is fully utilized by current residents. Because then you'd be displacing a resident from their parking space in order to create a handicap space. So I think that that point is noted. I'd like to get to Melissa and her comments and then perhaps we take public comment and then Darcy, if it's okay with you, what I'd like to do is then circle back at the end with the request that Gene had made as well as David's request and just talk about what might be feasible and what you might be willing to take a look at between now and when the final piece goes through, if that works for you. Sure. Okay, super. Thank you. Melissa, any comments or questions? Yeah, I guess this might be for Jenny or Erin. In terms of parking, my experience has been looking at parking supply and management of the whole and trying not to make kind of small ad hoc tweaks, whether it's on street or off. And I'm wondering, given the, I guess on street analysis that was done before the parking meters went in, was there any analysis done to the off street and consideration, not just to handicap but to the parking kind of as it relates to both the demand? I can just speak to the accessible parking actually that was conducted by the Disability Commission and I want to say that was three years ago, maybe four now Darcy. I believe it was 2016. It was the same town meeting where the reductions were done. So with that one, what ended up happening was the installation of additional accessible parking spaces throughout mostly Mass Ave and maybe other places in town. I'm trying to remember, but it came out of a study and it led to a warrant article being developed. And then I believe it led to the installation of additional spaces. Is that an accurate sort of replay of it? Yes. Okay. So that was the study that we conducted. We have done other demand analyses, but more in concentrated areas along Mass Ave corridor, Broadway, but not all over town necessarily, but more in relationship to business districts. So we have looked at that. I think at this point, I don't have any further questions. I'm just kind of absorbing everything at this point. So thanks. Great. Thank you, Melissa. Before I open it up for public comments, are there any other questions from the board for either Darcy or Jenny or Erin? Yeah, because I can't. Gene has his hand up. Yeah. Gene. Thank you. Yeah, David and Ken got me thinking about this. And I think actually the scenario David and Ken mentioned, I don't think would end up being a problem because for X number of spaces, I've forgotten certainly Darcy knows the numbers just going to be one each space. So once the lot is big enough to require more than that, there's probably going to be enough spaces to put one in. I'm more thinking about the situation where let's say there's a very small building that's all residential. And let's say there are five units and each unit is assigned a space. So there's no necessarily a designation of which one is the handicapped space because each unit is assigned a space. Is that a problem, Darcy? Rachel, did you want me to talk about it now or at the end of public comment? Why don't you go ahead and answer Gene's question now? And then Gene, after Darcy answers, let's table this and let's take public comments and then we'll circle back around. Thank you. Perfect. Okay. And what you started by saying is true that basically if there's, it's one through 14, one through 15 spaces in a lot, one of them must be accessible. So if there's one space, it has to be accessible. If there's 15, one of them has to be accessible. And you were correct that anything over that is kind of more what we're talking about. But I didn't kind of understand the second part of that. The second part is let's say there's a small building with let's say four residential units and each and usually it would be entitled, I'm making this up, I'm not sure. Let's say it would be required to have six spaces, but there's no place to fit in six spaces. So the solution is four spaces, one space assigned to each residential unit. So in the scenario, it would otherwise require one of the four spaces to be handing out accessible, but there's only one space and it's specifically designated for each unit. So I'm just wondering how you would handle that situation. That is a good question. And I think I have to go back to the, we have someone actually on the Disability Commission at the moment who had a very long struggle to get her condo association to put in a space for her. And she shouldn't have had to do that because that means that she could only look at ones that already had spaces or she could look forward to a long argument about it. And either way, again, you're kind of putting the onus on her to make them be modern enough to be not automatically disqualifying people with HP placards from being in their building. Well, except she would be entitled, in the scenario I posited, she or he would be entitled to one space. Yes, but I think what Kim was talking about is that one space has to be bigger than most spaces. So in fact, you would sometimes be taking sort of a space and a half away. And I can see a landlord just digging in their heels on that. That's what worries me. Okay. Thanks. I got to think about it some more. Okay. Jean, just to just to follow up on that, please, Rachel, we just had, we had a project recently. Do you need to move to public comment? Sorry, Rachel. If you could just make it brief, let's let's wrap this up. I mean, we did see a project really recently, 400 mass abs that had a very small number of spaces all fully utilized and in very constrained space where they can't possibly put a handicap space without displacing a current parking space. So we've seen that already. And then in a deeded parking space situation with like one deeded space per unit, the only way to ensure compliance I think would be to make all of the spaces compliant. So I think this one, again, I'd like to take public comment and then if we could circle back so that we could discuss a little further and make any recommendations that we might have to Darcy about any modifications we would like her to consider prior to next Monday. So with that, I will now open this up for public comment. Any member of the public wishing to speak in reference to article 47. If you could please use the raise hand function in the participant section of Zoom, I will call on you in the order that the hands are raised. Please remember to state your first and last name and address for the record. And we will start with James Fleming. Awesome. Am I audible? You are. Thank you. Thank you. Cool. Cool. James Fleming 58 Oxford Street. I'm torn on this article because the ideal world is that there is no need to ensure that there's a number of handicapped spaces because the entire built environment is handicap accessible. Unfortunately, that isn't the world we live in. So I'm in favor of this because as much as parking you know is me personally, I think that there is a reasonable measure to say if we are going to start reducing spaces and still have a built environment that isn't fully accessible, that you have a separate set of conditions that say this is how many handicapped spaces are accessible in town because the ADA minimums are set at a national level and are pretty low bar, as I understand it, for a number of accessible spaces. Thank you. Thank you, James. The next speaker will be Dawn Seltzer. Thank you, Madam Chair. Dawn Seltzer Irving Street. I think I might have a solution to the question that was raised by several board members about deeded or assigned spots in a small lot. The simple answer is paint. Just redraw the lines as the tendency changes. And I don't think in most deeded situations they specify geographically where the deeded space is. So you could always just repaint the slot numbers to accommodate whoever is living in the building at that time. Maybe it's simplistic, but I think it will probably handle some of those problems that you raised. Thank you. Thank you. The next speaker will be Carl Febner. Hi, can you hear me okay? Yes. I'm Carl Wagner, 30 Edge Hill Road in Arlington. Arlington residents for responsible redevelopment sent out a comment on this to people in Arlington because I think it's important to understand that our zoning by law specifies a minimum number of off-street spaces that are required for new developments in our business districts. And federal and state ADA requirements are regulating also how those spaces should be accessible to holders of these HP placards. But then five years ago, we and I think I in town meeting gave the ARB wide latitude to reduce the parking requirements to up to 75% reductions. The frustrating thing here is we did not expect this to happen. There was an unintended consequence. And I hope the ARB and also the planning department realized that what the Council on Disabilities, the Commission on Disabilities is doing here is helping to correct a mistake that was an unintended consequence. I think if you don't see that the town is asking the town to fix something and you don't work with them to make this happen, it's frustrating to town meeting members who did not intend this. And we would have to seriously look at removing this 75% reduction for parking spaces that was given to the ARB in its entirety. Thank you very much. Thank you. And I'll just remind everyone that's what we're working on right now is finding a way that we can come to a way to move this forward with understanding what these edge conditions, what happens to the parking in these edge conditions. Any other speakers wishing to speak on this topic? Seeing none, I will close public comments. And let's see. So to recap, I think that the two items that have been brought up, Jean, you brought up the first one which was if the amendment is required as zero, then there would be no required on-site handicapped parking, again, and this is due to the site conditions. And I think what we need to get to is whether there is a proposal or perhaps, Jean, if this is something that you would want to work together with Darcy on before the next or David before the next meeting on Monday the 5th to look at language to address some of these existing condition challenges that we've been speaking to, or if you have any specific language recommendations that you would like to propose this evening that Darcy and the commission consider. And I'll see David or Jean if you have an opinion. I'd be happy to work with the Disability Commission, but I think Jean should also be involved since he, I think we each have one particular concern that we were focused on. Darcy, I'd be happy to do that too. Darcy, does that sound amenable to you? Oh, sure. Okay. Great. Ken or Melissa, are there any other questions or comments that you have before we close this item and move on to the next foreign article? I just one more quick thing with respect to Mr. Seltzer. My condo building does have geographically designated parking spaces, so we can't easily reassign them. Thanks. And I think Darcy did speak to the burden that that does place on those looking for first spaces for potential living situations as well. Great. Darcy, did you have any other questions for the board before we move on to the next? I don't think so. Somebody will contact me. Is that how it works? Okay. Great. So with that, we will close Article 47 and move to Article 48, which is a Zoning by Law Amendment regarding ADA and MAAB Standards in Administration and Enforcement. This is also inserted by the Select Board at the request of the Disability Commission. Darcy, will you be speaking to this one as well? Again, just for anybody who hasn't read some of the stuff in advance, this is a warrant article that we came up with, not like the other one. It's not that we've known about this problem for a while. In essence, in the last year, we just talked to the building inspector the other day and he agrees. Development is really busy in Arlington right now and we're missing things. We're not catching things in time. And the Commission on Disability is really trying to get that earlier in the process so that it's better for everyone, so that things that we could see wouldn't work, don't have to go through a long process and then come back. And then I just want to make sure that ADA and MAAB are getting thought of earlier in the process. Because as I said, if you wait until the end or near the end, then you go through a whole if it's the ADA, you wait until the building opens and then someone sues and then that drags on. And that's not, we don't want to be confrontational about it and it's not fair to the person with disabilities to make them, again, to have them the burden of making things accessible. So I'd just like it to get in earlier and I talked to Town Council about this and we went through a couple of different scenarios and decided that, again, the simplest thing is to just say it's got to be in here. You have to think about it. I imagine one of the things we could do is what you ended up doing with the Lexington Hotel where it ends up as a sentence in the MOU, in the Memorandum of Understanding that says that they will comply with all of the all of the regulations that need to be complied with. So we're hoping that that would be acceptable to the ARB. We're not asking you to be the enforcers. That's not the point at all. But we would like more attention paid to it in an earlier state where it's more possible to, you know, do the thing that you do in the EDR and negotiate back and forth and say, can you try it this way and so forth. So that's pretty straightforward. Great. Thank you very much. I will now turn it over to the board for questions and this time we'll start with Ken. I have no questions. I'm generally supportive of this right now. I think it's not changing any of the rules. We want the rules followed and I think we can definitely do that. Thank you, Ken. Gene, any questions? Yeah, I agree with Ken. It seems pretty straightforward. I thought it was something that the building inspector was doing either with issuing the building permits or the occupancy permits. So I think it's fine to have it here also. David, any questions? No, I don't have any objection. Melissa, any questions? Melissa, she may be on mute. So I'll go ahead and identify too. Again, I have no issues with the intent of this. I think that my only request would be to see if we could specifically refer to the state building code and accessibility standards rather than specifically call out the individual sections of the building code. And the reason being so is that I'd like to be consistent in the fact that we don't call out all of the other subsections of the building code. I think just in terms of writing zoning bylaws and policy, having, you know, we went through the recodification process to remove a lot of these specific sections that would need to be updated when the model building code is updated or changed. So if you would be amenable to state building, you know, looking at a language that was less specific to the individual code sections, I think that would be in line with what we had previously looked to achieve in the recodification process. But I certainly have no objection to intent. Any other questions? I did. Is everyone else? Okay. Two things. One is I did want to say that yes, the building inspector is responsible for doing this 521 CMR, which means Commonwealth of Massachusetts regulations. Yeah, you guys all know that. He is responsible for doing that particular evaluation. But at that point, it's much later in the game. And it seems to me that we would get farther if we were doing it earlier, if we were brought into these conversations earlier. Because as I've pointed out, you know, you don't know what you don't know. So it's very hard for people to understand exactly how the ADA could affect people, various parts of it. And it's very hard to make. The ADA is minimums. It's really your legal minimums. It's the least you should do. So sometimes there's a way of doing an even better, more inclusive, you know, not just for people with disabilities, but I don't know, parents with strollers. So I'd like to have that in there. But I also I'm afraid, Rachel, I didn't quite understand. Do you mean I'm looking at the wording of D here? And are you saying that where applicable accessibility standards set forward in is not how you want to word it? I think if we want to specifically highlight accessibility standards, standards, it would be and where applicable, accessible accessibility standards, period, because the Mass Architectural Access Board is governing 521 CMR, which is already covered under the state building code. So again, I think what I'd like to do is, you know, again, we don't then separately call out life safety or elevator code. I mean, there's so many different things that you could add in here. And so rather than and and and again, I have no issue with specifically highlighting accessibility standards. But I think I would end this there rather than calling out the specific code sections, which are already included under the wording of state, state building code. Let me think about that. Absolutely. Absolutely. Is now public comment time? Is that what happens? Yeah, unless anyone has any other questions. Okay, so at this point, we will open up for public comment. Please use the raise hand function. I'll remind everyone you have, you will have three minutes. When I call on you, please state your first, last name and address for the record. And we will start with Christian Klein. Thank you, Madam Chair. Christian Klein, 54 Newport Street, speaking as a resident. Just a couple brief points. I do like the proposed revision to removing the specific lines about the specific standards that are to be followed. The Americans with Disabilities Act as a federal statute is typically not enforceable at the local level, but it's a civil action as opposed to regulatory action. And I think it's confusing to have it here be something where it is being, excuse me, required at a local level, especially where it does sometimes conflict with, with, with not say the regulation. And I also just wanted to say that something like this might be better served in title six of our regular bylaws as opposed to being a part of the zoning bylaws that section title six is specifically about building regulations within the, within the town. So thank you. Thank you. The next speaker will be Don Seltzer. Thank you again. Don Seltzer, Irving Street. I speak in support of this article, but I do not think that it goes far enough. It should really be part of the environmental design review process. And I hope that maybe at a future town meeting, this board will consider adding this as a 13th standard to the dozen that the board currently considers for every special permit. Thank you. Thank you. There are any other members of the public wishing to speak regarding this warrant article? Great. Seeing none, we will move on from public comments. Sorry, let me get my agenda back up. Great. So any other board members wishing to, to speak, have any questions for, for Darcy or any thoughts on the proposed change to the, to the wording that I suggested? No. Gene, I'm fine to the change in the wording suggests that I don't think it changes what the outcome is going to be. It certainly isn't meant to change the intent. So Darcy, is that something that you would be willing to consider? Well, I think I understand the point about the taking out the ADA. I would tend to put in the MAAB only because the MAB regulations are more extensive and have slightly higher standards in many ways than the ADA does, and they are state laws. So I would like to, I'm okay with taking out the ADA, but I think I think I would say accessibility standards, including the Massachusetts Architectural Access Board. Without, without referencing, I mean the whole CMR and all that kind of thing, just that it is, it is the board that you would, for example, ask for variance. Great. Well, let's, let me take another look at that then again between now and, and Monday as well. And I'll certainly reach out to you with, with any questions, but I appreciate you taking a look at the, at the proposed adjustments to the language. Okay. Thank you very much. I appreciate you bringing both of these foreign articles to our attention. Thank you for, for hearing this. This is great. Thank you. I appreciate it. Thank you. All right. With that, we will move on from article 48 to article 46, which is a zoning bylaw amendment regarding a tear down moratorium. And this was inserted at the request of Lynette Culverhouse. Is Lynette Culverhouse with us this evening? Yes, I am. Fantastic. So if you would like to present this, this zoning warrant article, you will have three minutes. If I could just ask you to please introduce yourself by first, last name and address. Yes. My name is Lynette Culverhouse. I live on Draper Avenue. I'm a town meeting member in precinct 11. And I am introducing this two year moratorium on tear downs in order to invite the town to take the time to actually address the issues around tear downs related to affordable housing, the environmental impact of tear downs, and the fact that we're tearing down trees. This moratorium applies to small houses and capes based on the research done by the geographic information survey system that applies to 871 houses in Arlington. Okay. Next. Next. Next. Can you move on? Next. Okay. Here's an example of a, no, one before. More. This. Where did I go up too far? The White House. I think you went too far. There you go. This one? Yes. This is an example of a cape. I hope I get another minute for this. This is an example of a cape in my neighborhood, a beautifully well-capped, well-maintained cape that was sold for 600,000 and was replaced by, the next slide, this that sold for 1,425,000, no longer a relatively affordable home. Next slide. This is the houses in a year's period that were sold and torn down and rebuilt. The blue is the selling price of the original house and the green is the price of the building that replaced it. As you can see in almost every case, the cost of the house more than doubled. Next. There's the main statistics here I want to focus on is the fact that house prices increased by 129% since the year 2000, whereas wages have only increased by between three and 4.3%. Next. And research shows very clearly that the environmental impact of a tear down is far more severe than renovation and reuse. Next. So why are we tearing down good houses? Next. This is motivated by money and profit. Profit for the developer, increased tax revenue for the town and larger commissions for real estate agents. Next one. I think that this is a moral dilemma when money is what's driving our decisions that affect the well-being of people and our planet. In Arlington we have two crises, the demand action. We are in a climate crisis and we have a net zero plan, so we need to start walking the talk. And we have inadequate affordable housing to meet the growing need. Next. So in conclusion, I want to say that that capes and our older homes represent an era of architectural history that we are destroying. And as an original citizen of England and seeing how people from other countries love to come to Europe and look at the old buildings, we have a short history. And I think that we need to preserve the architectural history that we have so that future generations will be able to have a sense of the value of that. And of course, the inevitable outcome of the climate crisis demands that we take bold action and change the way that we are living now. And I think that it just can't wait. Thank you very much for your presentation. I will now turn it over to members of the board to ask any questions. We'll start with Jean. Thank you and thank you, Lynette, for presenting the article and for your discussion of it. I'm wondering if you've read staff's memo about your article and if so, if you'd like to respond to it. No, I haven't. I didn't receive it. I was in the agenda for tonight's meeting. No, I didn't. That's probably a good idea if you read it after it before you come back next time. What do we do about an existing homeowner who wants to demolish part of his or her or their house and to build on their house? So let's say their family is expanding and rather than sell and move, they'd like to do something with their existing house. This seems to say that they couldn't do it for the two years during the moratorium. Was that your intention? No, that was not my intention. And I would expect that during the two year moratorium, the town would actually address that issue. So we would have to amend your language because the language doesn't give the town the ability to give some leeway to current homeowners who might want to do exactly what I said. So would you be okay with that sort of amendment to the proposal? I would be okay on to working on that. Yes. I realized that that was a piece that was missing and needed to be addressed. Similarly, you have a situation where a home is damaged, flood, fire, something like that. And at that point, it makes more sense to take it down and build a new one rather than try to build up what was damaged in some way. Again, this would not allow that to happen. And theoretically, you would have homes that were damaged that couldn't be built up for a couple of years. Are you willing to modify this for that too? Yes. If it was damaged beyond repair, but I am very concerned with the environmental impact of tear downs. And if it is at all possible to repair a home, that would be preferable. It's somewhat, I mean, they're always possible to repair, but you have to look at the costs of repairing as compared to the cost of starting from scratch. So for many people, when some circumstances, it would make more sense and maybe the only way they could afford to do it is to start from scratch rather than deal with a significantly damaged structure. So where are you on that part of it? Well, I think that there needs to be a fair amount of education on the environmental cost also, that it needs to not be always centered on financial costs, but we need to start as residents, as a town, as a country, as a world. We have to start addressing the environmental cost. So if your house, God forbid, were to burn down or be severely damaged in some way, and it would cost a million dollars to rebuild it with the sticks that are remaining, or $800,000 to take it down to the foundation and rebuild it, which would you choose? No, I already said that if it was destroyed beyond repair, then... No, no, it's not destroyed beyond repair. It would just cost more money to repair than to start anew. Which would you choose? I think that's a very hard question to answer, because how do you evaluate the extent of the damage?  I'm just concerned, Lynette, that we are tying the hands of homeowners in this sort of situation, which I think is very unfair to families under those circumstances.  Yeah, no, I agree with you, and that is... I have thought about that, and I agree that it's not adequately addressed as is. So let's say there's somebody in one of these houses that you're proposing the moratorium on, and they could sell the house for, I don't know, $600,000, let's pause it, if the moratorium's in place. But if there were no moratorium in place, a developer would pay them $800,000, let's say, for the house. So how do you feel about the homeowner not being able to take advantage of that $200,000 for those couple of years because of the moratorium? Well, I would need to know whether that's an actual fact that there would be that much difference. Yes, there often is. I think that, I mean, part of what needs to be done is the education around this and a focus on the value of our older buildings. I'm just wondering if, because I have a lot of sympathy to where you're trying to get to with this, but I'm concerned about the moratorium part because of the consequences I mentioned and because of consequences that are probably unintended that I haven't thought of. I'm just wondering whether it would make more sense to just have the part of your article that's the study and the report back. So we have two more years where clearly some houses would get torn down during those two years, but it might be a fairer result than having a two-year moratorium at the end of the two years. In either event, we'd have the study and report. I wonder what your feeling would be on that way to go. I'd be open to discussing that. Okay, I would too, but let's see what my colleagues on that ARB have to say. Okay, thank you. Great. Thank you, Jean. David. Thank you, Rachel, and thank you, Lynette, for bringing this to us. So I agree with all of the issues that you identify in your purpose section. Those are all things that we all need to be very concerned with. However, I also agree with Jean's concerns, and I also would urge you to focus on the study aspect of this. I would actually go further with respect to the concern that Jean identified, because I think that the moratorium really seriously impacts the financial interests of homeowners in Arlington beyond whether they might be able to rebuild after damage or build an addition. I think during this two-year period, it would significantly impact their ability to monetize the investment in their house if they were to choose to try to sell it. That seems to some extent unfair to the homeowners and perhaps an illegal burdening of their property rights. I think if we focused on the study part of this to know exactly what we're talking about, because honestly, it's not even 100% clear from the language of your proposed amendment, which properties in Arlington would be impacted by this, because it isn't clearly limited to say single families throughout the language of the proposal. And the department did an analysis based on some assumptions that even with those assumptions, which were pretty conservative, it would impact a lot of homes all over town. And if your intention was that it would cover even more homes than what the department assumed in their analysis, it's potentially affecting thousands of homeowners in Arlington and their very real financial interests over the next two years. So for that reason, I would urge you to focus on the study aspects. And I'll pass it along to my colleagues. Thank you, David. Melissa. Hi. Thank you, Lynette, for presenting this.  There are these larger forces. I guess, you know, with the time that you would propose this two-year moratorium, what would you hope would be the outcome after those two years? I would hope that we would have a set of standards for maintaining, for focusing on renovation and reuse rather than tear down, the preservation of mature trees. And I would, I definitely want to address the homeowner aspect. What I was primarily focused on when I was thinking about this article was the sale of small homes to developers in the total tear down in order to make a huge profit. And just so saddened to see so many beautiful little homes getting sold, getting torn down. And then maybe to Jenny or Erin, in terms of looking at the housing production plan out there in the world, have you seen incentives for preserving smaller existing homes? I mean, other than setting up residential guidelines on, you know, kind of square footage, are there things out there that we could look at as more like carrots versus sticks? But not, I'll talk to that Rachel, please. Not specifically for this type of the model that you might be suggesting. I mean, other than a first time home buyer program or down payment assistance or something along those lines, which we do participate in a regional program related to that. So it's not a lot of money, but it could be an area where we focus greater attention, perhaps. Beyond that, I wouldn't say that it's about preservation of the structure. It's more about home, home, first time home buyers. There have been examples in the past of the housing corporation of Arlington, engaging in basically acquisition of two family structures for preservation and then renting them out. They're not currently doing a program like that, but it, you know, with the right scale and sort of bundling of many, many properties, it can be possible. But on a case by case, you know, sort of individual property preservation, it doesn't, I wouldn't say that that would be something the town would necessarily pursue just in and of itself without perhaps the other incentives that I was talking about, like first time home buyer assistance or down payment assistance. And that can be something that look, that is looked at in greater detail through the housing production plan process, which was I think what you were originally talking about. Yeah. And then just if you could update me on, remind me the number of single family homes in Arlington and then average tear down annually. Erin or Kelly, if you want to chime in on our easy or not, sometimes I can, I can chime in. This is Kelly Landemann, Senior Planner. When we study this as part of the 2019 report on demolitions and replacement homes, we were looking at an average of about 27 homes a year that were torn down. But that was, that was combining. So two family homes on it is two, two, we're looking at 27 units being torn down a year and replaced and those were pretty much across. I believe I'm trying to remember roughly how many, you asked how many single family homes or how many homes. Yeah, because I've got like this one was addressing the single family home. Yeah. So we have 8,001 single family homes in town per a recent full on assessors data. Okay. And can I just answer that? I think that it averages out to about 20 single family homes a year. Okay. Okay. They also did provide a map, which would outline the number of potential properties that would be impacted by the spy law. I just need to grab that and I'll pull it up. Melissa, did you have any other questions while Jenny's pulling up the map? No, none at this time. Thanks. Okay, great. So Ken, while Jenny's pulling up the map, do you have any questions for the the one article petitioner? No, I think I generally very much agree with Gene and David in what they said earlier. I think this does put an undue burden on existing homeowners. And I'm not sure the more terms the way to go about the jest capturing the character of existing homes and even keeping trees. I think we should address those head on instead of just having a moratorium and having all the existing homeowners pay for this wait and see study. I think we should do it right now and not put a moratorium on it. Thank you, Ken. Erin, is there anything, plus you, is there anything that you would like to say about the map that you have up on the screen now? Kelly, do you want to speak to the map? Sure. This is just based on assumptions, based on the petitioner's proposed amendment. So again, I'm not 100 percent. She said I believe like 800 something homes. Okay, when we looked at the assumptions that we wrote about in the memo, it came out to actually, I think about almost 2,800. So this map shows the location of those 2,800 the parcels on which the 2,800 single family homes sit. And we've also identified homes that are already under some sort of historic preservation or the local inventory of historic and architecturally and culturally significant properties with the exception of the recent 2018 edition, which is not yet in our terms. Thank you so much, Kelly. Are there any other questions for Lynette from any of the board members before I open this up for public comment? You'll have to speak up because I can't see you all on my screen. Uh, no, nothing for me. Okay, great. Thank you. So with that, we will open this article up for public comments. Please use the raise hand function in the participant section if you would like to speak. I'll remind you each speaker will have up to three minutes. Please identify yourself by your first last name and street address. We will start with Patricia Warden. All right, actually, my I'm muted. You are. We can hear you. Okay. For some reason, when Patricia is kind enough to tackle the computer to get me on these lists and stuff, it comes up as PB war. But that's actually John Warden Jason Street. Thank you. In 2016, the group of citizens presented some articles to reform zoning bylaw. And one of the part of the goal of these was to address the teardown issue by the teardown mansionization issue, which this coverhouse very aptly described, um, is, um, what was what was the target of one of the things not not to prevent it, but least to make it a public process that would require a hearing before the zoning board so the public would have a right to say something and maybe persuade a board to to say, no, you kind of do that. Um, the the only result, unfortunately, the unholy alliance of brokers and and developers and put out a really packet of lies and and no help from the planning board. The planning department, uh, the we were unable to muster sufficient votes to get these amendments approved. But the one thing that did come out of it was that a residential study group was established to tackle this this very issue. What what could be done about, um, teardowns and mansionization and committee was appointed and they had meetings and but they never they never really got to that issue because when they had the termarity to oppose the, uh, the one of the many ADU articles that you've been trying to ram through, uh, they were summarily dismissed and dissolved and ghosted and then dismissed. So that study that should have started five years ago is now, uh, is now again before you. And what you're saying is, well, let's not do anything firm. Let's study it some more, but we've had time. We've lost five years when there should have been studies and nothing has happened and the teardowns go on a pace. And you know, there are a lot of, as pointed out by the map there, there are a lot of homes that are already under some level of protection. Of course those in the historic district, um, those don't get torn down and and a lot of people, uh, it's a very small percentage of all the houses in town, but people move into these districts because they have some assurance that their neighborhood is not going to be messed up the way so many other neighborhoods are messed up. So and if their house has damage or something, it gets fixed. Uh, and the other houses are on the inventory list, but unhappily what happens is the developers buy them anyway, they have them on the, put them on the shelf, and the year runs out, and it's only a year in Arlington, uh, they, uh, the bulldozer comes in. So time if you could wrap up, please. Well, I just, I just want to say I hope we will support the moratorium. I think yeah, yeah, there may be some inconveniences for some people. We're talking about demolition, not, not fires and so on. And I think to say let's study first and do something later. We tried that, it didn't work. So let's do something affirmative and to meet all those worthy goals in this covered house, uh, so aptly described earlier. Thank you. Thank you. The next speaker will be Patty Muldoon. Thank you. Um, great appreciation to Patty Muldoon, Smith Street. Thank you. Um, great appreciation for bringing this article forward. I'm one of those homeowners that could be affected. I live in a cape and my whole neighborhood is changing because I don't live in a historic district. Uh, two houses down from me, a beautiful house was torn down with two giant spruce trees with owl in it that lived there. Now there's almost no ground left. It's just a giant mansion under development. And that's everywhere I turn in my neighborhood. So I'm one of those people that you want to have pity on and say, well, the homeowner could lose money. Well, if I sold, maybe I wouldn't make as much money. Um, but why, why should I reap the rewards that someone else is harmed by by these incredible housing prices that we see around us? Um, I think it is doing great harm to the town of Arlington. And I want to urge this board to please work with Miss Culverhouse to put in some amendments that would make it a little more acceptable, a little more functional, targeting single family homes, targeting, you know, if you've had a flutter fire, you know, those kinds of issues are completely valid and would make this a more useful article. But I'm studying longer when so much change is happening to our town. I feel like I'm, we're turning into our expensive neighborhood, neighboring towns rather than Arlington. And I, I've been here over 30 years. I love this town. What's happening to us right now is horrendous. And I can speak as a former member of the tree committee. I can speak as a conservationist. I can speak on multiple levels, but I speak to you as a homeowner asking you to please work together to make this a viable, active article that town meeting can really work with because studying it while the houses are being torn around us all the time. We don't have time to study, but a moratorium makes the greatest sense. Give us some breathing space. It's not like, you know, homeowners that want to sell won't make money. You're out of time. Thank you. Thanks very much. The next speaker will be Ellen Cohen. Hi, I'm Ellen Cohen. I live at 48 Park Street in East Arlington. I'm also speaking as a, as a homeowner. My house is an 1854 Cape that is not historic, but it is a wonderful home that was originally one of the farm workers homes. I, I actually am speaking from feeling extremely harassed by builders that builders seem to have a lot of control in this town. I am constantly being offered outrageous cash prices for my home. I have no interest in selling. I have to, you know, speak and advocate for myself at these times. At one point I was afraid something would happen to my home that it would be destroyed and I would have to sell. I shouldn't have to feel like I can't rebuy my own home. I could not afford to put up the same kind of home as my neighbors. I'm, I'm surrounded by a million dollar homes. There's fewer and fewer of the smaller single families on my street. I've had seniors around me in tears because they had such pressure to sell and they did not end up putting the houses on the market that they just sold to a single builder who offered them a price they couldn't refuse. I am in, I appreciate this effort to have a moratorium. I think the town needs to look at what we're doing. I am actually enjoying the diversity in my, on my street that there's low income. There's very wealthy people on my street. It's very interesting but I can see that it's not going to stay this way and the few houses that are remaining are, you know, like myself being pressured to sell. So I, I at this point think that there's no, no more time to study. There's time for you know a really firm action that makes the town think about what we're doing here. Thank you. Thank you and I apologize. When you begin speaking, I don't know that we received your address if you wouldn't know. I did. I said 48 Park Street. Thank you so much. I appreciate it. Yeah. The next speaker will be Carl Wagner. Thank you, Madam Chair. My name is Carl Wagner, 30 Edge Hill in Arlington. Can you hear me okay? Yes. Great. Thank you. Just to speak to some of the board's comments, the purpose of this laudable suggestion by Ms Culverhouse, I think is not to inconvenience homeowners. In fact, it's to allow generations of homeowners to be able to continue to afford Arlington to stay in Arlington and to be able to move to Arlington. And as we've seen over the last 12 months, we're increasingly talking about trying to appeal to diverse people. I don't mean appeal because we're a nice town, but appeal because we're affordable and they can move in. The people who would be temporarily disabled would be developers who buy properties and then flip them. And in the last couple of years, you can look at the research in Arlington, the average purchase price that the developers are paying is $600 and $650,000 for little capes like the house I bought to the loud meeting, moving to Arlington. And they are then turning them around for more than double that price, about $1.5 million. This destroys our natural affordability. As some of you won't believe, and I didn't believe till I looked at it, Arlington is the cheapest town of all the towns around us that touch us that are contiguous except for Medford, cheapest to rent in and cheapest to purchase in. And this means that people can move into older apartments and rent for a lower cost than around us and still get good services like schools. But it also means that people can hope to buy that house that you saw Ms Culverhouse described because they have just set of money to make their mortgage like I did when my wife and I moved into East Arlington. But actually, as Ms Culverhouse pointed out to you, that house is gone. And these houses are disappearing, our natural affordability is disappearing. June 23rd, 2020, our town manager said that housing is one of the biggest sources of inequality and racist problem in our town. Well, at that time, I disagreed with what he said because I thought he was talking about zoning and he was saying, oh, if we get rid of zoning, I thought we would somehow make ourselves more anti-racist. What Ms Culverhouse is actually doing is trying to give you an inclusive, helpful, anti-racist zoning law. And I encourage you, since this comes before you in your town offices and town boards over and over again, to realize the taxpayers are asking you to work with Ms Culverhouse or a similar proposal to make sure that these small houses are still here as the owners move on and leave them instead of the owners sell them to a developer who destroys them very much. Thank you. The next speaker will be Don Seltzer. Thank you, Don Seltzer Irving Street. I just wish to clear up some numbers that have been given tonight. It has been reported to the board that there are 2,799 smaller homes built before 1950 that could be affected by the smaller target. That is not correct. It is based upon some very broad assumptions and it overstates the number by more than a factor of three. The actual inventory is about 871 homes. About 10 of those are two-family. I'd be very happy to explain in detail if the board is interested. Otherwise, I thank you for your time. Thank you. The next speaker will be Colleen Cunningham or Stewart. Hi, it's actually Stewart Morrison again. We're on Kensington Park. I just wanted to say or speak out in favor of Mrs. Colburn House's proposal here. The goal is very clear. I think everyone understands that the point is to limit tear downs that are performed by developers. Unfortunately, Mr. Benson took the opportunity to ask a bunch of questions about possible but real corner cases, rare events. He used that as a way to smear and obfuscate the actual purpose of this warrant, which is actually pretty frustrating because if the proposal for ADUs had been nitpicked this much by the board, it wouldn't have gone anywhere. But unfortunately, the board didn't nitpick that particular issue. So why are we nitpicking this one here? Clearly, there's a lot of public support for some sort of moratorium on tear downs. Therefore, what I'd like to do is challenge the board to actually work with Ms. Colburn House here exactly as you did with Barbara Thornton and craft a fix the language that's in here so that it actually is something that addresses the points raised by Mr. Benson. Honestly, I think Mr. Benson is smart enough to do that because some of the issues he raised are easy enough to take care of by just putting a time limit on the amount of time you have to own your house before you can make some of the changes involved. Regarding corner cases like, well, if you buy it and then two months later burns down, what do you do? Those sorts of things can be easily thought of and taken care of by smart people. So I urge you to work with Ms. Colburn House here. This moratorium has a lot of public support. It makes a lot of sense. And rather than obfuscating, I think it's time for the board to actually do something proactive to help move this into the town meeting. Thank you. Thank you. The next speaker will be Steve Revolac. Good evening, Madam Chair. Steve Revolac, 111 Sunnyside Avenue. First, a technical comment. If the board does decide to move forward with us, I would encourage you to tighten up the language so that two people can measure it and not have one get 800 and one get 2000 and some. But at a previous warrant article hearing, a member of the public talked about living in their grandfather's two-family home. And the grandfather bought this for $40,000 back in 1978, which would be roughly $168,000 in today's dollars. So it's currently worth a million dollars. And so the value increased by a factor of six. And this is a used home in Arlington. Now, the Planning Department's memo for this article talks about their efforts to identify properties that might be subject to the moratorium. And they calculated an average value of $721,000 per home. And you got to realize that these are the smaller, low-end of our single-family housing stock that were built before 1950. Again, used homes, but they're still nearly three-quarters of a million dollars. Now, I understand that new homes are expensive, particularly if you've just had to, say, pay a construction crew several months to build it. But my point is that Arlington's used houses are really pretty expensive, too. And they account for roughly 90% of the property sold during a given year here. So used houses are where our market is. Once upon a time, you could buy a one or two-family home for not a lot of money here. I honestly think those days are behind us. And they probably will not be returning any time soon. I mean, it'd be nice to buy a home for $300,000 or $400,000. But when the land itself is four or five, it's just not going to happen. This is a function of regional pressures, jobs, a lot of demand, and years of basically not building nearly enough housing as we've needed. So I think that Arlington and communities around us are going to have to make a choice over the next couple of years. I mean, we can keep the housing that we built 75 years ago and accept the fact that it's likely to continue to get more and more expensive. Or we can start allowing smaller, denser housing that requires less land per dwelling unit. So I mean, I know teardowns have a bad rap, but I have to be honest, the only issue I have with them is that the new homes are single family instead of four plexes or six plexes. In most of the town, you can only build a single family home and that's what we get. Thank you, Madam Chair. Thank you. The next speaker will be Matthew Owen. Hi, I'm Matthew Owen. I'm at 164 Forest Street. And I had at least, yeah, I'd like to thank the members of the public who were very clear in that their opposition or that their support of this particular measure was because they're opposed to tearing down old, beautiful houses because I think that is a very honest account of where this is coming from. Very much sort of an aesthetic sense. Whereas the arguments about affordability are ones that I don't think are particularly, particularly realistic. So I bought my house here seven months ago. And it doesn't quite qualify for this moratorium since it was built in 1952, I believe, but is one of these smaller homes. And I can tell you, it was not affordable. I feel very privileged to have been able to buy in this town. I was nearly priced out of it. And as Steve Revlak just said, things are not going backwards unless we can come up with a much larger supply of houses, or at least homes on the smaller end of things. And the zoning, current zoning bylaws don't allow that. I think if you are serious about affordability and environmental things, then you should really consider changing the zoning bylaws so that tear downs can be replaced by duplexes or triplexes or larger. Thank you very much. Thank you. The next speaker will be Karen Samuelson. Actually, it's my husband, Gary. Hi, my name is Gary Holly. I reside at 18 Tower Road in Arlington. And I'm speaking as both a homeowner and the father of a child who attended the local public school. And I want to speak to that aspect of this, because what I see happening is Arlington becoming segregated neighborhoods based on economic factors. And if the neighborhoods are segregated, the schools are segregated. And one of the things I loved about the public school here in Arlington that my son attended was the diversity of all kinds of diversity in that school. And I see that disappearing as more and more houses get torn down in this neighborhood replaced by 1.5 million mansions, in my opinion. And the diversity on an economic basis is just disappearing. And I fear that that has a trickle down effect on the schools and the community that is very difficult to assess, which is why I think a moratorium and a study on all of that is perfectly appropriate. Thank you very much. Thank you. Are there any other members of the public who wish to speak on this topic? Okay, seeing none. Could I add to that? You'd like to have, yep, you may have three minutes to speak as well if you'd like to introduce yourself in your address. This is Karen Samuelson at 18 Tower Road as well. Just on so many levels of this, and it sounds like there's several issues. I totally support the moratorium. I think that in our particular neighborhood, there's been a huge push to just tear down the single families and put up McMansions on postcard lawns that I actually think look aesthetically horrible and takes away from the green environment and trees and all that. And then of course, the affordability factor that people have been talking about. And a gentleman mentioned that, I think Matthew, his property was not very affordable, even though it was a small single family, but imagine if they had built a McMansion there, then it would have been completely unable to figure out how to buy it. So I guess I'm saying I really strongly support this. It's been an issue that's been bothering me for years and I wish I had become more active sooner because I really feel like it's literally changed the landscape of Arlington physically, aesthetically, and in terms of the people economically, in terms of the people who can even imagine coming here to look for a home. So that's it. Thank you very much for listening. Thank you. Any other members of the public wishing to speak? Okay. Seeing none, we will close public comment on Article 46 and I will look back to the board to see if there are any additional questions for Ms. Culverhouse. David. I just wanted to ask maybe Jenny, has Town Council taken a look at this and done any analysis of the legal implications of the moratorium? Rachel. Please, Jenny. So we evaluate all of the zoning by-laws with Town Council. My department does. So that's already been evaluated and the suggestions that we made in the correspondence that we provided to the board outline our concerns and how we might address some of the issues and in terms of sort of an interim, the sort of interim period that is being discussed that would happen during the moratorium and I think that the board has now weighed in on some potential ways to address what would happen in the interim that we did not have when we were first evaluating what was being proposed. But yes, we review everything with Town Council. Any other questions? Rachel. May I? Thank you. It's not a question so much, but I just want to point out that in the actual wording of the article itself where it says, older affordable homes, houses showing houses built before 1950 with a footprint of less than a thousand square feet. If we think of, and I think most people do, the footprint is sort of the outline of the foundation and you're talking about houses that are two stories high with maybe dormers, you're talking about houses that are more than two thousand square feet in size that would fall within the moratorium, which I think is not the intention of Ms. Culverhouse, but the problem is it's in the Warren article itself, which sort of defines how far you can go with with changes to the wording of the bylaw that she wants to make. So I think the problem is some of those houses are not older, they're older if they're before 1950, but they might have been renovated, small and they're not all small and they're not all affordable. So I think it's really very, very over-inclusive and while I said at the beginning I'm really sympathetic to some of what Ms. Culverhouse is interested in doing, I just think that this moratorium is much too broad for where the town should be going and I hope to be able to have us work with Ms. Culverhouse and see if we can either find something much more narrowly tailored that would work or end up with something where we come back in two years with something that's been studied and hopefully it's something that people can agree on as a way to do something about what a lot of people have identified as a problem. Thank you, Jean. I'll just add as well that I think part of the challenge here too is looking at this just from the standpoint of the age and size without taking into effect things such as maintenance over time and the quality of the original building construction as necessary factors when you look at whether or not a building can be rehabilitated or should be torn down as a factor and I think the broadness that Jean was referring to is certainly a concern that I have as well. Any other, Ken or Melissa, any other questions or feedback from Ms. Culverhouse? My own suggestion is maybe we can work with this a little bit and have less stick and more carrot with this and maybe put incentives in here where if they do tear that if they do tear down they have to replace it with something like Steve said maybe a duplex or a three or four family so that it's actually truly addressing the affordable housing by saying there's more of it so there's simply more affordable. I mean instead of just saying let's stop it, let's take action on it and say here's a carrot here, here's what you can do if you want to go around this moratorium. Little things like that that might shift our opinion a little bit right now. Ken, I think with that it would certainly, I mean you certainly saw the map in terms of all of the different zoning districts that this covers. I think that would be something that would need to come out from part of the study though. Wouldn't you agree that? Yes, I would agree. Great. So I believe that there are certainly members of the board who would be willing to work with you if you were interested in reaching out in terms of looking how to recraft this to really focus on the study and the report. Gene and David would you agree with that assessment? Does that sum up your comments as well? Is he nodding of head? Yes, although I'm not sure how much time I have since I committed to do one. That's true. So see if somebody else can or maybe the staff, I hate to put the staff at it because I know they're super busy also, but I am at the moment too. Great. So this would have to be done before next week right? You have to be done before next week. We are reviewing and going to be taking a vote on each one of the Warren articles on Monday evening next week. Right. At Thursday specifically. Right. So I'm open to talking with people about how do we craft it. There are people who are willing to do that. So I'd certainly be happy to speak with you if you were interested in reaching out. And we can certainly at least start from there and see how we can recraft this again to focus more on the study and the report and looking at some of the impacts I think that have been mentioned both tonight as well as in the impact study that was created and presented by the Department of Planning. Great. Okay. Thank you very much. I appreciate it. Thank you. All right. We will now move on to Article 49. Zoning bylaw amendment relative to side yard sky exposure planes. And this was inserted at the request of Ted Fields. So is Ted Fields available this evening? Pet, I see you. I think you're on mute. Thank you, Madam Chair. Ted Fields, 268 Renfrew Street. And I submitted a slideshow for your review. What's in your agenda? If I could put that on the screen. Yes. Thank you. I'll go through this quickly in my three minutes and then answer questions. Thank you. Large homes built on lots meant for smaller homes often produce oversized impacts on neighbors, as we've heard from previous testimony tonight. These impacts are magnified in older neighborhoods with smaller homes, particularly in postwar subdivisions with single story capes and ranches. Next slide, please. Large new homes can substantially reduce neighbors access to sunlight. Open space and views disrupt the established neighborhoods and tend to be more expensive than the homes they replace. And obviously these impacts worry residents who have been complaining about these impacts for a number of years now. As previously mentioned, the master plan adopted in 2016 addresses the tear down rebuild phenomenon on page 53. And it recommends consideration of stricter dimensional controls such as setback controls or this case, side yard setbacks as well as design guidelines and neighborhood conservation districts on page 177 to confront these impacts. As this graph shows, the living area for homes built recently in the past 10 years has been growing steadily. And modern homes built in the last 10 years are much larger than homes built in previous decades in terms of living area as tracked by the assessors. And next slide. These impacts are most often felt on side yards, which tend to be much smaller than front and rear yards in Arlington, especially in the R1 and the R2 zoning districts. So article 49 proposes to moderate the impacts of large new homes on lots in the R0, R1, and R2 districts by sky exposure planes in the side yard setbacks. Sky planes are angles that start at a lot line and extend inward toward the center of the property and upward at defined intervals. Buildings and structural, most structural components may not extend beyond or above sky exposure planes. By way of example, one-to-one side yard sky plane rises up one foot for every one foot of inward horizontal distance from the side lot lines it goes. And practically sky exposure planes focus building height toward the center of the lot away from neighboring properties. Next slide, please. You can see that in this illustration, figure one, the blue arrows are the sky exposure planes. And in this example, which is not drawn to scale, part of this building would be beyond the sky exposure planes. On the lower left-hand side, you can see the run and the rise that defines the sky exposure plane. Next slide, please. At time, if you could wrap up and I'm sure this is a very technical proposal, I'm sure we'll have lots of questions for you there. I'm sure you will too. Next slide, please. Just some quick facts. Yes, thank you. Additions to homes are exempt from side yard exposure planes in article 49, as are minor roof overhangs, gable roof ends, small dormers, and most flushed mountain solar energy systems. Sky exposure planes are also a more precise way of controlling building mass. And it allows builders and architects flexibility in controlling building mass and corralling it towards the center of the lot. It provides much more flexibility to developers and builders of new homes than cruder measures like expanded side yard setbacks. And finally, article 49 was not drafted to punish builders of large new homes or the people who live in them. What it does is it protects older dwellings from oversized impacts from larger new abutters, I should say. It allows construction of larger home in response to current market conditions with a bit of new controls. And it finally permits homeowners to make repairs and build additions on their homes without dealing with sky plane regulations. Thank you. Thank you very much. All right. So I will open it up to the board for any questions and I'll start with Ken. Hey, Ted. Hey, how are you? Good. Thanks for bringing this in. I was one quick question for you. If we return back to that section of the building with the side yard sky exposure plane there. Yep. The one after this one. Sure. Okay. All right. So are you saying that that dash line is the setback, right? Or with this override the setback. So on the lower floor you can build all the way up till you touch the side yard setback. No, it doesn't override the side yard setback. It just governs how much building height can extend up to the side yard setback. Okay. Well, the way it's written is not that clear. I think we should add something if that's something that's there.  Well, in the actual motion itself, there's two illustrations. There's a flat illustration and then there's a one for a non flat lot. Yeah, because most of, I mean, let's say that's a most but say a lot of Allington is on hills, very hilly. Correct. I excluded that from the presentation in the interest of brevity, but yes. So if one side is much higher on that and you take an average of it, that means hills, properties on hills have an advantage of getting higher and it would still block the neighbor because it's just because it's on a hill. Right. This is not, I don't pretend this is a perfect motion. It's a start. I think it's important to start and to address the issue and then refine it later on. But that is non level lots do present different challenges than level lots. Did you get a chance to read what the planning department wrote? Yes, I did. Yeah. And what are your thoughts about their recommendation of following design guidelines? I think this supports all of the main design principles in the design guidelines, especially B1 through B3 and C1, especially in C1 with respect to large dormers and whatnot in new housing. I would love to incorporate the skyplane concept into the guidelines to some degree, but I think it's more important to incorporate them directly into the zoning bylaw itself as well because as we know, the residential guidelines are just that. They're guidelines. They don't have the force of the zoning bylaw behind them. Okay. And then if it's a non retellini or lot and it's kind of like pie shaped or some weird shape, does that then do you do an average of the property line to where the building is or is a change as the building meets the property line? So let's say the property line flares out. Mm-hmm. That means your building get higher as it goes back or if it's more of an inward. I'm just trying to think of all the different examples that I'm looking at here that I can't seem to get an answer for. It really depends. That's a hypothetical situation that's hard to answer because it really depends on the unusual geometry to give you an exact answer. Well, let's say you're in a cul-de-sac and all the lots of pie shaped. Yeah. All right. So the front of it, the lot lines are much closer to the building, but as you get back to the rear yard, it flares backwards. So that means your house can continue to go up and up again or where do you take that skyline exposure plane from? It extends along the whole plane of the side yard setback. So in the case you're providing of a pie shaped lot, again, fundamentally, these focus the tallest parts of the building in the center of the lot. So you will have in the case of a pie shaped lot, you can have taller parts of the building mass up to the maximum height allowed in the zone in question towards the center and the rear of the lot and less in the front of the lot given a triangular pie shaped lot because the side yard setback lines are relatively closer together, together given the geometry. Again, in that case, it won't be perfectly triangular because you have minimal frontage requirements that govern the lot, assuming it's conforming well. All right. I'm going to leave my questions here for now and see what we all the board members say. Okay. Thank you, Ken. Melissa, any questions or comments? Hi, Ted. Good. Thanks for bringing this to us. I think it's a creative way to kind of address some of the kind of massing issues and mansionization that people have been concerned about. I think I am actually not familiar with the skyline plane as much. You said in Cambridge and in Natick. Those are local examples. It's more widely used in the Midwest, mid-Atlantic states and out west. Okay. So do you happen to have maybe any images of how that translates? I mean, I can see the obviously the diagram, but do you have them in like a form that like a house that took place maybe in Natick or Cambridge under this? I can find some examples for you. I can send them through the planning department to the board. I think that would be interesting for me to see just how it manifests under this type of zoning. I think the design guidelines don't have the teeth that are that is needed. And that's what you do need to kind of control the massing on a bigger redeveloped project. Curious about like balconies. I don't know if that was mentioned in one of the exemptions or can it be outdoor kind of space on a building like that? Balconies bear with me. Let me review. There's a number of exemptions. Gable ends. Balconies right now are not exempted, but that I'm not adverse to modifying that reasonably. Again, these are more for single and two-family homes. So the relative incidence of balconies is less than in multifamily properties. Right, right. I think I've just recently seen some just kind of pop out to outdoor space and I don't know if the railing or something like that would then, you know, be limited under something like this. So that would be my request to see something that's built under this. And so that would be helpful. Thanks. All right. Thank you, Melissa. I'll go to David next. Up, David. I think you're on mute. Sorry about that. So this is a really interesting proposal. It's much more technical than most of the proposals that come before us and I wish we had more time to dig into it and understand what the potential impacts are. But one thing I would be interested in is kind of the flip side of what Melissa asked for, which is as many examples as you could provide of things that were built in Arlington that could not be built if this were in effect and how those planes would look in those cases. That would help me understand sort of what the impact would be because obviously you wouldn't be proposing this if we didn't already have a problem. You were trying to solve. Correct. I did provide the first part of your request in terms of buildings that are problematic with the materials I sent to the planning department earlier, but I can do some estimates on what they would look like with the side yard setback. Again, in the photographs that I show. Yeah. I understand the basic diagrams in the proposal, but I'm having a little trouble visualizing what it actually means for the examples. Right. I can give you, I might have to work in hypotheticals because I can't really access people's private property and measure out sure things, but I can give you a diagram that I think would meet your needs. Okay. And if the what we're trying to get at here is is reducing the massing of the homes. I mean our existing dimensional requirements are at least an attempt to place limitations on how large a home can be. Is there, is there, do you think that it's not possible for us to modify the existing dimensional requirements in order to reduce the massing rather than introducing what is a fairly complex new analysis into the process? It is possible, but I'm going to actually answer your question with an observation in that the existing residential zoning standards, especially for dimensional controls were largely written in 1975 when the housing market was very different. When a lot of new homes that were being built were the one and a half story smaller homes, the two-story smaller homes that didn't impact their neighbors to the degree that new homes built today under today's housing market, which is very different, are impacting their neighbors. So, yes, you can revise side yard setbacks, especially frontage requirements, even maximum building heights. I would argue that is a cruder and less precise way of combating the problem. As I see it, and I have direct experience, the 1600 square foot home next to me was torn down and replaced with a 5600 square foot home. And the builders were great to work with. I love my new neighbors there. I don't have anything against them, but the zoning controls in place allowed them to build that type of home right next to mine. And I don't mind it as much as my younger son does who looks out on a blank final wall every day when he gets up. So I think that builders will build to what they're allowed to build under zoning. And we have a 45-year-old zoning bylaw with 45-year-old or 50-year-old dimensional controls. And I think they need to be adjusted to react to the modern housing market in Arlington, which is for given land costs is to maximize the size of the home that can be built within setbacks and other controls. I think if we're going to modernize our zoning, we should use modern tools like a sky plane so that we really focus on allowing people to build to the 35-foot height limit, but build it in the center of the lot, not at the edges of the lot, which in many cases they're doing to maximize footprint. I think that's more of a practical and an elegant solution than forcing very wide sideyards on 6,000 square-foot lots and really limiting the builders to what they can build for the modern housing market. But it certainly is an option to adopt a simpler but less precise series of controls, you know, wider sideyard setbacks. Now, I do get in general what you're trying to do here, and I think it's an interesting approach that certainly is a more modern approach. I don't I can't say that I have a major fundamental objection to it. I just want to make sure that I fully understand all the implications of adding this new analysis to our dimensional requirements, and I'm going to spend some more time over the next week looking at the materials you've submitted, but to the extent you can provide us with even more information to understand what this would actually mean with respect to what can and can't be built in our only 10 would be helpful. I'll do my best. Thank you. Thank you, David, and thank you, Ted. Gene. Thank you. Yeah, Ted, I had some of the same requests that Melissa and David had. I'm not really familiar with sideyard sky exposure planes, so this is my exposure to them. So to the extent that you can provide some of the things that Melissa and David talked about that would be helpful. So you mentioned a couple times that that what this is trying to get at is the impact of the new houses on their neighbors, adjacent lots. And can you talk a little bit about what those impacts are that this would be addressing? The one you mentioned, the two you've mentioned is they're a lot taller than the house next door, and your son looks out on a blank final wall. So I wonder if there are other problems that this would address other than the height differential and what you look at next door. Well, I think it's, you know, in the big one, the big impact is the height differential and the massing of larger new homes really up against the side yard setbacks which causes the relative height impacts. Those are the major impacts, but there's also affiliated impacts with access to sunlight, air, whatnot. At least from what I've observed, having lived for nine years next door to a 1600 square foot house, that was about two stories versus, as I said, a 5600 square foot house which is two and a half stories. Our circulation from wind is much different and in my opinion, less beneficial to us than it used to be. Again, that's just my personal observation, but it's a perception that's real. And, you know, we see less, we have, it's detracted a bit from our enjoyment, if you will, of the backyard vista of our neighborhood. Previously, we could look out from both sides and have an uninterrupted view of backyards, which added to our enjoyment a lot. That is disrupted by the example I mentioned next door of a large modern new house on a 6000 square foot lot. So, again, those are tertiary to the main impact of the height differential and the shadows and restriction of sunlight and whatnot caused by that, but they are, they do affect us to some extent. Thanks, that's helpful. A little tangent here, have you ever heard of the doctrine of ancient lights? I have not. It was a doctrine in England before the Industrial Revolution that said you basically couldn't build a structure that blocked the light on an adjoining structure, and eventually the courts in England and all the courts in the United States as a common law doctrine basically repealed it because you couldn't have modern development if structures could never block the light on an adjoining structure. So, what's been happening in the 21st century is not re-looking at that doctrine but saying, you know, there are some places that we should re-look at it, like, you know, should we not allow a new structure to block a solar panel on an existing structure, things like that, but yours is clearly a couple steps beyond that because if I understand it right and tell me if I'm wrong, it's partially aesthetics for you. Yes, it's partially that and partially, you know, airflow, sunlight, shadows. For me, it's all of those wrapped into one. It's the total experience. So, if the houses on both sides are already that big, let's say... Only one is. Pardon me. Only one on my side is that. No, no, no. But let's say it's in a neighborhood where the abutting houses already two and a half stories high and I'm guessing you wouldn't have the same objection to the middle lot being the same height as those other houses. Speaking hypothetically, I'd have to look at the situation and experience that I can. Yeah, because I'm thinking we might need an exception here when either the houses, the abutting houses are, you know, a height that wouldn't be allowed under your skyplane or as Kim pointed out where the topography is such so that the house on one side is actually sitting higher than the house on the other side so you could actually build up. So I'm thinking we would, you know, aside from the balconies that Melissa mentioned, we might need to do something to take into account the neighboring houses and the topography. I will note that besides the exemptions I did mention, all the standard exemptions in section five, three of the zoning bylaw are also exempt from skype chimneys and things like that. Yeah, I assume I assume that. Yeah, you added the roof mounted solar is something I noticed which made sense. So I'm thinking we may need to think about carving out some exceptions for the situations that I just mentioned. Although I would, just to play devil's advocate, I might say that it would benefit everybody if you had three, you know, in a three example, three property example, if everybody was two and a half stories, if all of their heights were focused in the center of a lot rather than on the sides, they would all benefit from more airflow sunlight, less shadows, etc. Yeah, absolutely. You know, that's probably correct, but yours would not let them get up to two and a half stories potentially. And that's sort of one of my problems. You don't want the giant next door, but you would be okay with the dwarf next door. And I don't think that's the right solution either. I think we have to figure out what to do with that. Well, and remember, this only applies to new constructs. Yeah, I understand. Do you have any idea if we put this into place, and I know it's only new construction, how many existing houses in town would become become non conforming and that they wouldn't meet these skyplane requirements? Well, because it's new construction, it would really depend on the plans that come before. No, no, I understand that. But you know, if we change zoning in any way, things that are conforming become non conforming. So I understand this would, you know, not deal with things that were already built. But I'm just wondering how many homes that are currently conforming might become non conforming as a result. I have to talk with the planning department. I don't have access to the town GIS to figure that out. Yeah, it would be interesting to know because that could have a real implication down the road that would need to be considered. The other thing I wonder is if you've spoken with inspectional services about how easy or difficult it would be for them to actually implement this. I have spoken in the past, I've spoken with Commissioner Byrne. And he acknowledged that right now they work with average grades. And he recommended that we key the calculation of the side yards to the average grade calculation that's currently used. We do realize that there'll be slightly higher costs for developers in getting a more complete survey of existing grades and actual, you know, to calculate the average heights. But beyond that, it's a mathematical calculation. You know, what's the average grades are known? Do you anticipate it would be something that whomever was building the new house would do and not inspectional services? Correct. That would be my recommendation on how to implement these and administer them. You know what the inspectional services thinks of that? When I talked to Commissioner Byrne about two and a half years ago, he didn't think that would be a problem. Now, I don't know what he thinks now. I haven't talked to him since then. Okay, those are my questions for the moment. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you, Jean. Any other questions for Ted Fields before we open this up for public comment? Ken? Yeah, Ted, under your exceptions, okay, when you say minor roof overhangs, I think it'd be better if you just clarified saying roof overhangs, not to exceed two feet or something like that. In a similar fashion, how they did it in the design guidelines. And then same thing with small dormers. Let's not say small dormers. Say, dormers that are one third of the roof or something, similar way how they did it in the design guidelines. Well, I actually do spell that out more in the actual motion. Oh, you do? Yes. For example, roof overhangs or eaves that extend horizontally no more than two feet. Excuse me. It's section F that dormers that extend no more than five feet horizontally and five feet vertically. Okay. Sorry about that. I must have missed over that. It's a technical piece of motion. Any other questions, Ken? No. Great. Thanks. All right. So at this point, we will open article 49 up for public comment. Any member of the public wishing to speak, please use the raise hand function. I will call on you in the order that the hands were raised. Please state your first last name and address and you will be given up to three minutes to speak. The first speaker will be Carl Wagner. Thank you, Madam Chair. Carl Wagner, 30 Edge Hill Road. Can you hear me okay? Yes, I can. Thank you. I think that Arlington has been already noted to be one of the towns that are adopting solar panels and other sustainable energy forms among the highest in Massachusetts and we're actually, in that regard, Massachusetts is leading the nation in many ways. Likewise, many other cities throughout the country and many other towns and cities in Massachusetts, I believe, already have protections for things like solar panels and other forms of alternative energy and this is a really nice way to arrive at most of what those other towns protections would do, but those are limited to those towns and just being solar protections. These go further and as a long time member of sustainable Arlington, which deals not just with things like energy, but also with ways that we can have a lower impact on the planet and a sustainable community. I would say that Mr. Field's comments about children looking through the windows or being able to sit in a backyard or being able to grow plants and flowers and vegetables, these are not just oh la la kind of issues. These are important issues for our time where we're dealing with a planet that is heating up and where we have many neighbors who already have installed expensive panels that they would be very unhappy if they found out they were going to be shaded as well as if they found out that a huge place was going up and going back to the earlier article on a moratorium for teardowns, we learned that between 800 or 3000 small houses are at risk of being torn down. Multiply that by two to three times for the number of properties that would be affected by huge mansions going up that would do just these things, ruin their solar panels, ruin the quality of life outdoors, and the ability to plant. So I hope you'll work with Mr. Field to make something that does go into place this town meeting. Thank you. Thank you. The next speaker will be Winnell Evans. Thank you. Winnell Evans, Orchard Place. I would like to speak in support of this article. I think it's a very elegant way to address a number of issues and it particularly prods developers to think more creatively about massing both in terms of designing the structure itself and in placing it on the site. Right now, the average size of a new home built in Arlington is almost 1000 square feet greater than the average size of new home construction in the United States. I want to suggest that, you know, we're kind of getting into an area with really large houses beyond what could be considered necessary to to raise a family. So I think that keeping these new houses in better scale with their neighbors is going to be positive for neighbors and for neighborhoods. And I also just want to say very briefly, I noticed in the planning department's memo about this article that the it states that the residential study group did not support it. I was a member of the group and I actually did support it at that time. It was one of the very few occasions when the residential study group did not reach consensus on an issue. So I just wanted to get that into the record. But but overall, I think that this is a terrific approach with precedent. And I hope that the board will work to to make this happen. Thank you. Thank you. The next speaker will be Steve Revilec. Hello, Madam Chair. Steve Revilec, 111 Sundayside Avenue. I submitted written comments on this article and listening to the discussion, I realized that there was one piece I admitted. So there is a section in our zoning bylaw. It is 542B2. That's 542B2, which contains some exemptions of side yard setback requirements for particular streets. And I just asked that the board in Mr. Fields consider whether sky plane exposure should be added to the exemptions in this section. Thank you. Thank you. I'll ask Ted Fields, is that something that you have had a chance to take a look at? Are you familiar with that section? Is that something that? I'm not terribly familiar. I've seen it before in passing, but I'm not terribly familiar with it, but I'm happy to take a look and then take that under advisement. Great. Thank you. Are there any other questions for Ted from the board members on this article? David, she said no. Jean, okay. Great. So it sounds like there were a few requests about some clarifications about not overriding the side yard setbacks. Mr. Revilec had a good question about the exemptions in 5.42B2. And there was a request to look at exception neighboring houses due to topography. And I believe that the last item was a request for imagery to see how this manifests itself in Cambridge or Needham and to potentially diagram over some of the property images that you had provided as reference for what the impact, even a rough impact analysis might look like. Does that all seem? Well, again, I think let's see what we can address and what we can't. And I think the ones that were specific to the technical details, if you're able to provide those, those would be obviously the most important to focus on. Rachel, let me just interject. In addition to the topography, it's just the idea that if the houses, if the abutting side yard houses are already two and a half stories high, I would not want the sky plane to limit the house in the middle to be smaller than it was. So I think, you know, it might be the smaller or the, I'm not sure what the right wording is, either what you get from the side yard sky plane exposure or the abutting home, something like that, the height. So I'd like Ted to look at that too. Yeah, I've noted that. I'll take a look. Okay. Great. Thank you very much. Thank you. All right. So we will now move on to Article 44, which is zoning bylaw amendment related to parking minimums inserted by the request of James Fleming. James, are you with us? I see you right there. I am. So you'll have three minutes to present this one article to the board. All right. Awesome. Thank you. Rachel, can you go to the next side? No, Rachel, sorry. Jenny, thank you. James Fleming. Okay, great. Yeah, I'm just going to ask you to introduce yourself. Yep. James Fleming, 58 Oxford Street. Thank you. This picture was taken a few weeks ago when the sign for the Heights Pub went up over the old five and dime to great praise from local residents. Locals also remember how long it took to get approval and that it might not have happened at all. What was the problem? The store was built around 1970 before the current zoning bylaw and importantly, before minimum off street parking requirements. When five and time closed and the pub wanted to open, the pub was on the hook for adding parking to comply with the bylaw. Look at the building. Where would you add parking? There's no room at the back and no one would spend money demolishing part of the business to add parking. The requirement just makes it hard to start a business so the storefront stays empty for longer. Next, please. Luckily, the ZBA was able to make it work so the pub is going in and article 20 passed in November, which allowed removing parking requirements in core business areas by special permit. Great problem solved, right? Well, not really because the same problem can happen elsewhere. Next, please. In Arlington Heights. Next. Near the high school. Next. In East Arlington. Next. And dozens of other small storefronts and offices around town. Next. This article would extend article 20 to all the other business districts if the gross floor area of the business is under 6500 square feet. Why 6500? It's a small ish number that includes most pedestrian storefronts and offices around town. Next. This proposal would not change anything about other districts on street or accessible parking. Next. I basically took the text of article 20 and I rearranged to support a list of situations that it applies in. You can see here that number one is just a rewritten version of article 20 and number two is my addition. Next. The goals of the proposal are to one, make it easier to comply with parking requirements. Obviously, this is why we're talking about this. But also number two, which is to preserve the value of existing buildings. The next few slides I'll talk about there for a second. Next, please. So here's an example from the zoning by law, which describes the amount of parking a business must provide. I realized that the square footage number here is actually incorrect. The town corrected it. I think it's about 250 square feet. Regardless, in some cases a business has to provide parking nearly equal to the square foot of actual business they have. Next. To show the effect that this has, here's a comparison of two stores in town. On top is Walgreens in East Darlington and below is Regina's Middle High School. According to town records, Regina's is worth a million dollars and Walgreens four times that. Sounds great. The problem is that Walgreens has a really big lot, but Regina's has a small lot. Walgreens pays four X the tax revenue, but uses 18 times the land. Think about that. Regina's built 100 years ago provides more than four times the tax revenue for the land that it uses. It's a financial powerhouse, but you couldn't build it today because of parking minimums. Based on its value, we should want more places like Regina's in town. Next. In summary, this article would let special permit authorities remove parking requirements in all business districts if creating new parking is impractical or unnecessary, depending on zoning and floor area like talked about previously. You should support this because the requirements make it hard to reuse some buildings and because businesses which actually meet the requirements are less valuable than they could be. Thank you. Thank you. I will now open this up to the board for comment. Gene. Thank you. Can you put on the screen the actual proposed motion? Thank you. Is it one of these? You had it up a moment ago. It was in one of the slides. Oh, in the slide. Okay. Thank you. It's in a couple places, but there we go. There you go. So May exercises capability is not sort of legal language for bylaws, James. I don't know if you ran this by town council, but you could say may implement this if, but I would prefer to not cross out in B3 and B5, but insert the other end if you don't mind. I could email you afterward with a proposed way. That sounds fine. Those in a slightly different way that I think might be better. Sure. Yeah. I ran this by the planning department, but I didn't end up running the final motion by town council. As long as the substance is the same, I'm the wording. Yeah. Let me just sort of run an alternative by you and also run by the planning department also is a slightly different way to word it.  So we had the benefit of that conversation at one of our meetings some time ago. So at the time I didn't know about this 6,500 square foot piece. And you did mention that it's most of business properties in town. Do you know which ones are not would not be subject to it? I don't have a I'm based on what the town had provided. I'm sure my list is now incomplete in one of the one of the supporting documents. There was a table of properties which were listed by gross floor area, which I realize is not perfect because there are some of those properties are subdivided into different businesses. Right. They're sorted by building area and square footage. So if you were to go down down the list to where you see 6,500, you could see some of the ones that are over that limit. And I'm not married to that particular number. It was just a number that seemed to pull in most pedestrian storefronts in town. Yeah, I just I'd like to hear my other colleagues on the board say about what I'm going to say, which is it seems like a fine number to me. But let's say that there are a couple storefronts at that size or you know, two thirds of the size and they don't have any parking. And then some business comes in and wants to knock them on the wall. And all of a sudden you have, you know, 12,000 square foot restaurant or whatever, you know, group or whatever, and there's no parking available for it. So I'm just wondering. That's a good point. I'll just hear what the other members of the board say. I'm just wondering if we should be okay with the 6,500 and say the chance that something else will happen is very remote or should we try to deal with that? That's it. That's a really good point. Thank you, Gene. Next I'll go to David. Thank you, Rachel. And hello again, James. Hello. So other than the the 6,500 number that's in there now, what has anything else changed? What's changed from what you talked to us about when you appeared before us? Sure. So the original proposal was to completely eliminate parking minimums altogether. And it was made extremely clear that that was not going to fly in a single session of time meeting or even make it by the ARB. So I scaled it back to what you see before you. Okay. I appreciate that. And I think this is pretty well tailored and is in line with the incremental relaxation of parking requirements that we've been engaged in for a few years. So I appreciate that. I share Gene's concern about the 6,500 square feet because it just seems a little bit arbitrary. And I'm not sure I understand all of the potential implications of that. And as Gene pointed out, one situation that this could cause a problem. So I'd encourage you to think about that a little bit and maybe work with us to come up with a way of being more flexible in the event of an unanticipated situation. Yeah, absolutely. Thank you, David. And I'll just ask before I move to Kenan and Melissa whether, you know, I agree that it does seem like an arbitrary number. Given that it is like the, we put no restriction on the size when it came to the B3 or B5 district, I would ask the question to the other board members, is there any, should we put a square footage requirement in for the other districts at all given that this is one of many different relief options, but it is not the default relief option that is given to us to potentially exercise. So I'll throw that out there. I'd maybe throw it back to James to answer that question of why he thought there should be a limitation. Sir, James? Sure. So the only reason really to have a limitation on square foot was incrementalism, doing it as small a scope as possible. If you think it'd be better to not have that number and just make it say any, you can do this in any business district regardless of Florida. I'm totally on board with that. Can we ask the staff if they think the 6,500 would end up being a problem, you know, in terms of businesses and buildings in town? Jenny? Honestly, I would have to study that a little bit more carefully. I had not thought of it and how it might apply to development and also looking more carefully at that supporting document that was provided to see how that might impact, you know, just sort of more broadly. So I would need to look at it a little bit more carefully. Gene? Thank you. Thank you. Ken, I'll go to you next. Well, I would agree with you, Rachel. I would push to not having a square foot steer altogether.  It just won't, the market won't allow that and, you know, and there won't be enough parking and it won't happen. I think, you know, it's going to be mostly around 8,000 to 10,000 at most, but I think eliminating is the way to go. I think if you haven't changed anything from what we talked about before, I'm perfectly fine with everything you have right now besides that, you know, eliminating the square footage all together. Right. Thank you, Ken. Melissa, questions or comments? I think in generally speaking, I'm leaning towards, you know, no minimum on the square footage. In my experience, you know, those businesses that are coming in understand the context, the financing on certain businesses also kind of look to the surrounding areas on what's allowed, what's not in terms of, you know, new tenants in this space and why it may or may not be viable. And so I think if I'm understanding it, removing the square footage offers the most flexibility for being able to use this, correct? And so that's kind of how I would lean towards that, especially, you know, if we can look to, you know, I think existing on-street infrastructure for parking and things like that. So that's why I am right now. Great. Thank you, Melissa. Any other questions or comments on the board before I open this up for public comment? David. Well, I just with respect to Gene's thoughts on rewriting this a little bit, if we keep some language in there that this is discretionary, not required, then just eliminating the 6,500 square