Hello everyone, welcome to Options with Doug, streaming live daily on Bookmap Discord and the Bookmap YouTube channel at 1.30pm Eastern Time. Before I start, I need to go through the Disclosures. General Disclosure. All Bookmap, Limited Materials, Information, and Presentations are for educational purposes only and should not be considered specific investment advice nor recommendations. Risk Disclosure. Trading futures, equities, and options involve substantial risk of loss and is not suitable for all investors. Past performance is not necessarily indicative of future results. As a reminder, the focus of my presentation and the focus of the options-doug chat channel in Discord is options, order flow, the impact of options markets on stocks and futures, and the influence of market maker hedging flow on price action. I have a two-step process for trading, and the first is planning, and I use positional analysis, and I look at how traders and market makers are positioned in the options market, and how those positions change from day to day to develop a thesis regarding the expected trading range and volatility for the day, as well as a directional bias. And the second step of my process is execution, and I look at real-time order flow in Bookmap and real-time market maker hedging flow in SpotGammaHero to confirm my thesis and for setups, for entries and exits. And good morning, Rob, and thanks for your confirmation of the audio and video. Okay, and this second step in the process has become increasingly important today, given all of the focus and the trading and the zero DDE options. The levels are not shifting that much, and it's hard to develop a longer-term thesis, so it's a key to watch the order flow and market maker hedging flow during the day for setups. And on-topic questions and comments are welcome, and please, please, please note this. On-topic, and I covered the topics before, options, order flow, the impact of options markets on stocks and futures, and the influence of market maker hedging flow on price action. And this applies 24 hours a day, not only during my presentation, but all the time. So please respect this, and let's move on. So again, on-topic questions and comments are very welcome. I'm looking for your interaction, your questions. Okay, let's get started. And today I want to cover, talk about news briefly, events for the day. We'll go through our positional analysis, and then we'll talk about some setups. So first of all, news, there was some economic data that came out this morning. A couple of PMI numbers, one at 9.45, the other at 10 a.m. Eastern time, and both were less, a little bit lower than forecast, and both less than 50. So that still indicates the economy, at least according to these numbers, is still in contraction. And then Tesla is also having investor day today. I believe that starts sometime this afternoon, maybe soon. And then finally, I have not had much time to look at it, but Spot Gamma introduced a new interface today, and it looks great. This is a new interface for Hero and Equity Hub, combined into one screen. And they put in a huge effort to get this out on March 1st, and it looks great. Kudos to Spot Gamma for getting this done, and again it looks great. Okay, and then JEC says the Tesla investor day starts at 4 p.m. Eastern time. So after the close, the investor day starts. And just a reminder, the employment report that normally comes out on the first Friday of the month is delayed this week for some reason, I guess maybe because of the short month of February. Anyway, it's not going to be this Friday, it's going to be next Friday, March 10th, is the employment report. All right, let's take a look at charts. And let's start with the S&P 500. And this is book map. And before I dig into this chart, let's take a look at longer time frame charts. And we'll just look at SPX. And this is a 20-day one-hour chart. And this is showing, again, this is just SPX, price, and Spot Gamma levels. And these levels are provided to Spot Gamma subscribers. This is Thinkorswim, and they provide a script every day with the updated levels. There is some manual work involved in pasting in the new script, but it just takes a minute or two. And so this is showing the range that, with the key takeaway that I see here, the ranges that SPX is trading in is shifting down. So this is the range from starting, let's see that is, this is starting around the middle of February, February 14th or so. And then the range has been shifting down. And now SPX is trading in the 3950 to 4000 range. And again, this is SPX. And this is also showing the key levels on the charts. And here is the put wall. And I'll talk more about what these levels are. These are the key levels. Put wall. And then here, 4000, that is the key gamma strike or the absolute gamma strike. And that 3995 is the volatility trigger. And then way up here at 4200, that's the call wall. And that has been up at 4200 for quite a while. And also the 4000 level has been the key gamma strike for quite a while. And again, note the range for today and actually the last few days, starting at the end of last week, has been the 3950 to 4000 level. And the question is, will this level hold, will 3950 hold and price move higher or will it continue down to the next range 3900 to 3950? All right, so that is a little bit longer time frame. And now let's take a look at another thinkorswim chart. And this is just for today. And again, I'm just showing this simple chart to get started showing just price and levels. And there's a question in YouTube, what time period is the SPX chart? So the one that we just looked at was a 20 day one hour chart. And now this is a one day one minute chart. And again, showing the levels that are in play for today and the price action really kind of centered just between 3950 and this support level at 3957. This level was noted as support in the Spot Gamma AM Founders Note. Okay, so that's today in another tight trading range today. Another range day. And the idea is to establish highs and lows and then fade the highs, fade the lows. Okay, so that's the playing field, the levels in play. Again, the 3950 level here, the 3950 support level which was in play early this morning and then the 3950 and the 3949 combo level also in play. All right, now let's go to book map. So this is the S&P 500 and I'm showing, I have two columns of levels here. And the first, these are Spot Gamma Cloud Notes. These are provided to Spot Gamma subscribers just like the Think or Swim chart note, Think Script except these are updated automatically and I don't have to do anything. Right now, Spot Gamma is using a seven point difference between ES and SPX and that difference I calculated in JEC posted this as well is I calculated this morning at four and a half points. So I'm showing in my cloud notes here the levels that I have adjusted at four and a half points. So that is that 3957 level that was in play at the open and then here's my 3950 level, again the SPX 3950 although Spot Gamma is showing that level there and they're just, you know, it's easier for me to calculate the exact difference.  So a lot of levels in play and spy SPX and ES levels are all in play today so it takes a little bit of work to get these on the charts the correct levels and I calculate the spy ES ratio every couple of days and that changes from day to day just a little bit and then also the difference between ES and SPX and then on my spy charts I calculate the SPX spy ratio as well. So those are the levels in play today and you can see this is a trading range today and the plays have been to fade the highs and fade the lows. And we'll see that hero, that spot gamma hero is the hedging impact of real-time options did provide some good signals for both long and short as well as confirmation and order flow. So you can often see for example here this move down all the pink dots and then the shift to what I'm talking about is this this first big drop down notice all the pink dots those are market sell orders and then aggressive buyers start to come in as price hits that SPX 3950 and ES 3950 level notice the shift to the green dots and the move higher and then the shift to pink dots shift to green dots and now it's somewhat mixed here. Alright so that's ES and P500 and the levels that are in play and let's talk about shifts and levels. So first of all the SPX and spy volatility trigger both dropped SPX from 4000 yesterday to 3995 today so a minor shift down and then spy volatility trigger dropped from 400 yesterday to 396 today and the volatility trigger is spot gamma's proprietary gamma flip level and what that means is that market makers position on the gamma curve is negative below that level that means in that negative gamma environment market traders are long puts market makers are short puts and they have to sell futures to hedge their delta exposure as price drops and they can buy back their short futures as price increases so they are trading in the direction of price in a negative gamma environment and that tends to increase volatility and above the volatility trigger market makers position is positive gamma and in that case they're trading against price and that tends to subdue volatility in a positive gamma environment and right now all of the indices are definitely in a negative gamma environment. Okay so that is the volatility trigger so the QQQ volatility trigger dropped from 296 to 293 and then the zero gamma level dropped across the board SPX, SPY, NDX and QQQ and then finally this is kind of an odd one the SPY call wall dropped from 420 yesterday to 399 today so that is kind of odd to see one of these primary gamma strikes like the call wall at an uneven number not an even number, 399 okay so that's the shifts in levels now let's take a look at the gamma charts and see where these levels come from so these are the absolute gamma levels this is the zero line above this line that is positive gamma or call gamma shown by the black bars and below the line that is negative gamma or put gamma shown by the teal bars so this is SPX and this is the 4000 level that's the key gamma strike that is the very obvious is the largest strike on the board and it certainly should remain that way this is the March 17th the quarterly expiration so that is the key gamma strike the absolute gamma strike the strike with the largest total absolute gamma and then the put wall is down at 3900 and for SPX the call wall remains at 4200 so that's SPX really the notable thing here is the put gamma below the 4000 level that's SPX let's take a look at SPI I'm going to zoom in on this just a bit actually let's include that 420 level so this is the 400 key gamma strike or absolute gamma strike there's the put wall at 390 the put wall is the strike with the largest net negative gamma and that can be expected to act as support and then there's the 399 call wall that's the strike with the largest net positive gamma and that can be expected to act as resistance so the thing to note here similar to SPX is the predominance of put gamma below the 400 level and while we're on this page let's take a look at a couple of other things these are the combo levels these levels combine SPX and SPI gamma into one level and then that's converted to an equivalent SPX number so I want to point out a couple of levels here this is the that's that 3957 combo strike which was noted as support in the AM founders note and then there's that 3949 combo strike and again remember these are combo levels so that's the 3949 combo level and that's shown right here on this pop up that 3949 level that's a combo 3 meaning 3 the range of significance of gamma is 1 to 5 1 being the highest 5 being the lowest so medium significance there for that gamma level but anyway this is where that comes from and then finally let's scroll down toward the bottom here and we'll look at the open interest in volume adjustments and I focused on this the last few days this is SPX put data actually let me do this let's zoom in just a little bit on this so what this is showing is volume with the black bars versus open interest change shown in the teal bars and what this is showing us is the large amount of volume traded versus the change in open interest which is very small compared to the volume so this indicates that the bulk of the volume yesterday in puts was first of all at these levels here from 3950 up to 4000 concentrated around 3970, 75, and 80 and then also the volume was much much greater than the open interest so traders were trading primarily zero DTE options yesterday and not really taking much of a position in longer term options and that's reflected in the lack of change in levels for the most part this week okay that is the S&P 500, those are the levels so this explains again where those levels on my charts come from let's take a look at the NASDAQ now and for the NASDAQ we just look at QQQ NDX is not significant, the options market and NDX is just not significant so we just focus on QQQ for the NASDAQ and this is showing for QQQ the key gamma strike at 290 and then the put wall is also at that level and that is pretty obvious the strike with the largest net negative gamma and then the call wall is up at 310 here the strike with the largest net positive gamma and the thing to note here is really the dominance of put gamma below the 300 level alright let's take a look at data and as usual I'm going to focus on gamma notional this is market makers position on the gamma curve alright there's a question Luciano I will get to your question in just a moment when we get back to book map so let me finish up with my positional analysis here and then we'll go through some setups and we'll look at book map so this is the market makers position on the gamma curve for SPX in the left column SPI in the middle column and QQQ on the right column and first of all notice that all these numbers are negative so again that means that market makers position on the gamma curve is negative and it is pretty significantly negative especially for SPI so this means that traders are long puts and we just saw that in the gamma level charts traders are long puts market makers are short puts and so that's a positive delta position and they will have to sell futures to hedge their delta exposure as price decreases and that tends to again increase volatility in a negative gamma environment and the changes in this gamma notional from yesterday was mixed the changes were mixed SPX yesterday was minus 502 and today it's minus 463 so a little bit less negative for SPX and SPI on the other hand became more negative minus 2035 yesterday to minus 2126 today and then QQQ became slightly less negative minus 698 yesterday to minus 689 today so minor shifts in these gamma levels but all still significantly negative all right let's take a look now at VANA charts which illustrate this point graphically so this is VANA charts the VANA model for SPX what this is showing is market makers delta notional or delta exposure on the vertical axis and the strike price on the horizontal axis and this is showing that as market makers as price decreases market makers delta notional increases and they have to sell futures to hedge their delta exposure and this green curve is showing the current expiration and that's showing excuse me that is showing how market makers delta notional changes as implied volatility changes and that's the VANA effect the change in delta with a change in implied volatility and the black line is showing how market makers delta notional changes as time passes and that's the charm effect the change in delta as time passes so that is SPX here's SPI and those the steeper curve that corresponds with the gamma notional being quite a bit larger more negative for SPI than SPX and then there's QQQ so again all firmly in the negative gamma environment for all indices alright let's take a look at the last thing that I look at in my positional analysis this is the current key gamma strike compared with the previous key gamma strike for all the stocks in my watch list and notice I have trimmed down this watch list and these are just the stocks that I trade and watch on a regular basis and these are large cap tech stocks the indices QQQ and SPI and then the VIX and notice so in this right column I'm showing the previous key gamma strike that is from yesterday and then the current key gamma strike for today is shown in this D column and notice there's no change here so that is my that's what I do in my preparation and planning again and then based on this there was not a lot to go to go you know not a lot of guidance in this but my my thesis was neutral to bearish and that was really based on the levels the volatility trigger and zero gamma levels shifting lower and the SPI call wall shifting lower as well as that concentration of put gamma and the build of put gamma below the 4,000 level for SPI and the 400 level for SPI and also we saw in this long-term chart let's go back and take a look at that that the SPI slowly shifting lower the levels that are in play are shifting lower okay so that's the planning and preparation and again I pointed out in my introduction the importance especially because of all the trading and zero DTE options is to watch order flow and hedging flow during the day so let's go to first of all again the S&P 500 futures and let's take a look at at hero so this is one part of my execution process and then we'll go take a look at the S&P 500 this is the combined signal for SPX and SPI they used to call this ES and now they're just calling it the SPX plus SPI and that is the combined calls and puts for SPX and SPI and this is what I've been looking at for the S&P 500 whether I'm trading futures or SPI shares or SPX options this is what I look at this combined signal and this is showing that there were some good divergent setups actually in the morning just right at the open a confirmation long and I'm just looking for price to to follow options trades which is often the case and then confirm that with order flow and I showed that a few minutes ago how the order flow shifts from bearish on the way down to bullish on the way up so here's the shift in hero down there's the shift in price and this was a good divergent setup probably the first really good clean good clean setup here notice how hero starts to rise and then price follows a few minutes later so that is around 10-15 let's go take a look at that and book map and we'll take a look at SPI and ES so let's go back to ES now and let me get to your question now can I Luciano the question in YouTube can I elaborate on the background heat map orders and let me it may be easier to see in stock and I'll just let me tighten this up a little bit brighten up the heat map so what this is showing is the history of history of passive orders resting orders limit orders in the heat map so this information in the current order book is showing the limit orders the passive orders and the order book traders waiting to get filled at certain levels and then as those levels as time passes that information is shown in the heat map so this is showing a history of where the liquidity was in the order book okay so that is the S&P 500 and then we're looking at this reversal at at around 1015 and that is that they that's at the SPX I'm sorry ES 3950 level zoom in just a little bit more so again we saw the divergence in hero and now let's let's focus on some things in book map here and we talked about the clearly bearish order flow all the pink dots market sell orders all the way down to the 3950 level and this is pretty typical at certain levels these large iceberg orders come in that's shown by the blue there and that's showing 20 20 105 contracts and 13 separate executions and those are iceberg orders those are orders that large traders use to hide their size and then as price gets going again remember traders are taking positive positive delta options positions the shift to green dots there's a retest of somewhere between the ES 3950 and the SPX 3950 level and then price moves higher as the aggressive buyers come in and that's also fueled by stop orders and that's shown by this rising yellow line by stop orders and you can also see that with the on-chart indicator 650 by stop orders 358 so the stop order shifts from sell stops to buy stops and the price targets here were that these two gamma levels and price went straight through the this 3957 level and then chopped around the SPI 396 volatility trigger before dropping lower so the good bullish setup you know similar setups up and down and that was preceded again by hero by options trades positive delta options trades then these buy buy iceberg orders and then driven higher by aggressive buyers and buy stop orders alright that's the S&P 500 again multiple up and down setups today confirmed by confirmed by hero and by order flow alright let's take a look at SPI and we'll see similar setups sometimes I think the order flow in ES the futures is a little bit easier to read and spy and on this chart I have the same cloud notes these are my cloud notes and I'm noting the SPI levels you know that is 396 and then also I have added in the key SPX levels there's the 3950 level and then there's that 3957 level that was in play just at the open so really kind of a sloppy day not really uh... uh... uh... sorry not really holding to these levels exactly uh... but close enough alright let's take a look at some stocks now and let's take a I want to take a look at um... Nvidia first and then we'll go through uh... stocks the other stocks starting with Apple and I thought this was um... you know maybe the the clearest setup let's go take a look at Nvidia Hero for Nvidia and this was uh... you know definite confirmation of price action with options trades let's zoom in a little bit and somewhat of divergence here in the morning Hero definitely makes a lower high and then price price follows let's go take a look at book map and then I want to point out one other thing so there's a question about the heat map it's a little bit more clear uh... in stocks and the heat map showing again the history of liquidity resting orders limit orders and it's certainly more clear with stocks and that's what the heat map is showing so here's the I'm going to zoom in on this the setup in the morning Nvidia makes a series of lower highs notice the sell sweeps down there just below the 230 level and then the break below that level uh... you know if you didn't get one of these highs then the break below that level would have been a good entry to and the price target final price target down in this 225 liquidity so that was the that was the setup let's go back to go back to hero now and let me just check something I might have missed in video when I was adding my levels to the charts let me go back to book map yeah I just I changed the levels of my spreadsheet but I did not uh... just did not refresh the level so this is what I was thinking that this was the 230 put wall key gamma strike and the break was below that level and let's take a look let's go back to go back to hero now one thing I wanted to point out was this this note here I'm not sure about this time noting the Nvidia put wall was breached at 4 or 6 a.m and I thought that I thought it was talking about the the put wall breach after the open let's go check that let's go back to book map alright so maybe that first note was there right there at 4 or 6 a.m but this is the significant move alright so that's Nvidia now let's go take a look at some other stocks let's go to apple let's go take a look at hero put these back and what I saw was this confirmation slight divergence confirmation long around 11 1115 and that's right here and the reversal higher at the 145 50 liquidity target would have been the 147 hedge wall liquidity at that level and just like many other stocks apple's been trading in a tight range now alright so JC and YouTube ask hi Doug do you trade stocks trade stocks or SPX and hello JC I trade both so in SPX I primarily trade a little bit longer term options I don't day trade SPX I trade defined risk SPX like butterflies and no I don't focus on one sector I showed the stocks in my watch list and that is so JC asked do I focus only on one sector and I guess the stocks in my watch list are all tech stocks so I guess you could say that I do focus on on technology stocks but these are also the biggest stocks in the Nasdaq and S&P 500 they're extremely liquid and have options markets that are deep and wide and he says JC says it seems they are buying calls now and in one instrument alright so anyway that's apple let's go on to AMD and here I saw this divergent short this was pretty clear and in video we'll we'll get back to Nvidia and see what they're doing now so this is the divergent short that I saw in AMD hero dropping price responds a few minutes later let's go take a look at book map and there's that divergent short at the AD key gamma strike shown right here in the liquidity at that level and pretty good range for AMD today a couple of points alright let's move on take a look at Google alright so let's go take a look at hero now for Google and what I was looking at is this divergent long hero rising price follows around 1030 let's go take a look at hero or book map and there's that long first long 1030 reversal at the 90 call wall key gamma strike level and notice these levels can get a little bit mixed up for stocks especially it's kind of unusual for the P500 the call wall for example to be below the key gamma strike I don't know if I've ever seen that for spy before but anyway here's the reversal higher first time just after 10 the second time after 11 alright the next is meta let's go take a look at hero and confirmation long and short although it was a little bit a little bit iffy first thing in the morning with hero being flat and then responds actually after prices moving higher so not the best signal there in meta alright let's go back actually let's look at Microsoft first and it looks like Microsoft is trading up and down under range just like the SP500 and hero showing confirmation long and short let's go take a look at book map and it looks like the shorts were definitely the way to go here and the primary target is down below this 245 level with all the liquidity and that's the key delta strike let's go back and take a look at at hero so this is I marked in my notes confirmation short that's what I was looking at these right here and notice this notional value this number over on the right is pretty small but it is negative so on that traders are taking negative delta positions in Microsoft today alright back to Nvidia and let's see what traders are doing now so there's a comment that traders are buying calls now let's see if that's the case and I so the orange line shows calls separate from puts which is the blue line and this call line is pretty flat and I'm not putting much much emphasis on that I see the blue line so this is showing this blue line following shows that traders are buying puts in Nvidia and notice also this notional value minus 15 versus minus 100 for puts so puts you can just see from the line that put buyers are clearly driving Nvidia price and the number is substantially larger or more negative than the call sellers but overall both contributing to the to the drop in Nvidia and here this looks like this might be setting up this divergence might be setting up a short Nvidia let's go back and take a look at book map so Nvidia definitely trading in a range notice the concentration of volume in this 227 to 228 level you can just see by all the price action there the order flow as well as the price action volume profile let's take a look at QQQ what I had in my notes was a divergence long at around 1115 and that's a reversal looks like traders are stepping in front of this 290 put wall key gamma strike level so it did act as as support earlier this morning look at hero so it looks like there were a couple of long setups here and these are the kind of things that I'm looking for these divergences so hero rising and then price responding sometime later at key levels so couple of divergence long setups but a pretty choppy session and then overall price action somewhat bearish which pretty much lines up with my thesis for the day neutral to bearish and then let's take a look at Tesla and as usual there's a very strong correlation between hedging flow and price action and heroes providing signals both up and down confirmation long and short let's just see if breaking outputs and calls gives us any clarity and yeah it does somewhat it looks like primarily puts driving so in the morning traders were buying puts that's a clear pretty clear divergence signal there and then as price drop down to around this 200 key gamma strike traders stop buying puts and that and that flow of options puts has leveled off at the 200 key gamma strike and let's go take a look at book map here's Tesla sharp drop great great setup as traders were buying puts first thing in the morning tool try again down to the 200 key gamma strike looking at this level right here and then the liquidity down below at 199 and Tesla is a pretty volatile stock high beta and it's not necessarily going to respect levels quite as closely as the indices alright so there's Tesla short setup and then potential longs as well but the best setup was in the morning if you were fast following puts and then the clear target at the 200 key gamma strike and that the bonus down to 199 okay so Joe E says hi Doug can you compare the options flow from spot gamma and tradytix and sorry I'm not familiar with tradytix I don't know anything about it I use spot gamma and it provides everything that I need I think it's a great service and speaking of spot gamma let's just take a quick glance at the new interface and I have two screens up here the same dashboard so this is showing again they've combined equity hub and hero into one page here so I'm showing down below here this is my watch list and what used to be equity hub and now it's all on this one screen and let's go to well we can take a look at Tesla here it's on Tesla let's leave it so this is showing the composite view chart showing that puts dominate below this 220 strike and that is also the call wall we can see here that's the call wall and that's also the pivot level between the red put domination and the green call domination above and then the other key levels are showing on that chart and the lighter colors indicates a moderate position size let's take a look at the put and call impact chart and I think it's great to be able to see all of this on one screen and I have not had they just introduced this this morning so I have not had much time to play with this but I think this is great this is something that I had to ask for this the ability to zoom in on this showing the gamma levels orange is showing call gamma above and put gamma below and spot gamma makes a different assumption for single stocks than they do for indices so here for stocks like Tesla spot gamma is assuming that traders are long calls and or long puts and market makers are short calls and or short puts so this would all be all be negative gamma calls and puts but this is showing the gamma levels zoom back out zoom in just a little bit more showing the key gamma levels with these long vertical bars the change in gamma shown by these curves orange is calls blue is puts this is a live chart showing price action again around that 200 key gamma strike after the quick drop in the morning and this these bars on the left here are showing the gamma levels and notice the concentration of call and put gamma at the 200 level and this is a skew chart this is showing implied volatility for puts below this delta 50 line and calls above this delta 50 line so not much demand for calls here at least shown on this this chart and then finally we can look at the 5 day history so this is actually going back to 215 so it's actually showing longer than 5 days here and that's great showing this history you can see that the the key gamma strike for just for example has remained at 200 since the middle of February okay so that's all I have for today let's wrap it up just wanted to go over this interface I'm going to spend more time with this over the next few days and I'll be able to show more so this is really the first time I'm seeing this but it looks like it's a great enhancement so again kudos to spot gamma I want to thank everybody for watching today and thanks for your question to comments and I will see you tomorrow thanks again bye


I'm Jennifer Raid. I'm the director of planning and community development for the town of Arlington. Welcome to everybody for being here tonight. I'm still not loud enough. That sounds a lot better. You're right. Let me start again. Welcome. Thank you for coming here tonight. I'm Jennifer Raid. I'm the director of planning and community development for the town of Arlington. Really appreciate you all coming out this evening. I also wanna say recognize my staff, Ted Fields, and Laura Wiener, and Joey Gleshko, and anybody else? No. And so the Arlington Redevelopment Board is also here. Maybe you could stand. If you wanna introduce yourselves, just your names. Sure. Andrew Bonnell, chair of the Redevelopment Board. To the law. It might be him. And then members from, oh, and, from the Redevelopment Board. Hello. Sorry. Andy West. And the Master Plan Implementation Committee. I know some of you are here. If you're here, if you could stand up and say your names. One name. Probably the last one. No, chair. Four more. All right. Great. Thank you. So this is, as you can see, a forum that is co-hosted by these three groups. And tonight the mission is to talk about the Zoning War in Articles six through 10. And all of you have already read my PowerPoint. I know that. So, so bear with me. I am going to, this is a little bit of an educational informational forum. And it's also an opportunity for you to ask us questions. My staff are here to answer a number of technical questions that you might have. I'm going to walk through everything. As you can see, here's the agenda for the evening, which included the welcome and the introductions. We've covered that. The overview of planning and the planning process in Arlington, we're gonna talk about that just so that if you're not familiar with what we're doing here in the planning office or the redevelopment board or anybody else who touches the planning land in Arlington, I'm gonna tell you just a little bit about that, just a wee bit. And then also just tell you about sort of the origin of why we're here tonight. Well, why we're here to talk about the Zoning War in Articles tonight. So, and then I'm going to review the Zoning War in Articles just six through 10. And there will be time for Q and A. Everybody on that same page? Anybody think they're not in the right room? No. All right, so here's a very simplified version of zoning for Arlington. The zoning bylaw is a very long document. I'm digesting it for you in a very simplistic way, but in a way that I hope is easy to understand, which is the purpose. What is the purpose of zoning? Why are we talking about zoning in Arlington? There's a lot of zoning that you're going to hear about, particularly at town meeting when it starts. We realize that that's not just the zoning war in Articles that are being heard tonight. So it's important for you to understand what is zoning and why are we talking about it. Some of you might think, oh, I understand it, I don't need this, so that's fine. But I know not everybody's on the same page and it's helpful to get everybody on the same ground. So the purpose of the zoning bylaw in Arlington is quite lengthy and has some very clear purpose. The first thing that I'd say is the most important thing in the zoning bylaw in Arlington is about health and safety. The importance of health and safety is the underpinning of most zoning bylaws across the country.  Appropriate review and quality standards are also a major part of our zoning bylaw. How we review the projects that go in and what standards we use to measure them up that says this is the right thing for Arlington. So those three items that you can see on the top are the most important things. The other important elements of the purpose of the zoning for Arlington are the items listed below. They include economic development, housing, having access to services and amenities and also the importance of quality of life, which I think we all can relate to. So the background of planning in Arlington is much like the background of planning in any municipality in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. It's governed by Chapter 40A, which is the State Zoning Enabling Act. Not gonna talk a great deal about 40A, but I just want you to know that there is a State Zoning Enabling Act. Then Arlington has its own zoning bylaw, its own zoning map. We also have an extensive table of uses, table of dimensional and density regulations. We have a whole set of conditions about parking and how you can load and unload vehicles. We also have other requirements in the town that many of you might be familiar with, including historical properties and historic districts. And then there's other separate local bylaws, including things that address important wetlands or conservation issues that we care a lot about. And those can be special local bylaws that are also applied during the planning process and signage you can see here. So the Arlington Redevelopment Board is a five member board. There are four members right now currently. We're missing one member because we do not have a gubernatorial appointee at the moment, but the four members that are here are appointed by the selectman. The other one is a gubernatorial appointee, Designee, and they have three separate authorities. The first one is as a redevelopment agency, hence the Redevelopment Board. So as a redevelopment agency, there are pretty extensive functions and powers, but they mostly operate as a planning board. A typical planning board has the purview of reviewing local special permits, zoning that's coming before the board, projects, project review, environmental design review, and other items, and then a board of survey. So they have three very important functions for the town. We are the staff to the Arlington Redevelopment Board, the Department of Planning and Community Development. So just to make that clear, we're also a 13 member agency department. Not sure how many people realize the number of staff you probably often see four of us a lot, maybe five, but we actually have 13 members. It includes members who do housing rehabilitation activities, people who monitor buildings on behalf of the redevelopment authority, the conservation administrator, and the other planners that you've seen here tonight. And we also are assisting multiple town committees. And we have the authority to function in the way that we are tonight, which is to help to adopt zoning amendments. And through that, there are multiple mass general laws that govern how you can adopt zoning amendments that are included up here on the screen and in the handout. The way that we do that is you, first you have to initiate an amendment, and actually a lot of different entities can initiate a zoning amendment. You obviously know about two of them because you know about the Arlington Redevelopment Board and then there are 10 registered voters who also initiated a number of zoning amendments, but others can also choose to initiate zoning amendments under the state laws that are listed above. That includes regional planning agencies, that's Metropolitan Area Planning Council. It could also be a property owner who happens to be affected by a potential zoning change or an outcome of zoning and the zoning board of appeals and the selectmen. So there are others that can initiate these things. Once it's initiated, then it goes through a process of being heard, and that's the posting of the warrant, the provision of notice, notification to people to participate and understand more about it, the holding of the public hearing, in the case of the ARB, the public hearing that we held was on March 21st, and then the affirmative vote potentially by town meeting. In the case of this town meeting, because you need two thirds, so that number is 168 voters would have to say yes to the zoning warrant articles, any of them in order for something to pass. And then the next step is, of course, it going to the attorney general for review so that it may be approved by them and included therefore in the zoning bylaw. So before I, I'm gonna pause for a second to see if anybody has a question about what is zoning, the background of planning in Arlington, my department, the redevelopment board, or any of the other things, the aforementioned items. If not, then I'm gonna move on to the zoning warrant articles because that's why we're here, right? So the zoning warrant articles six through 10, they include the things that are listed on the screen. Basically, there are four items. I realize that there's a lot of pages for only four items, but it's really, we are really only doing four things. We are proposing to make revisions to the zoning bylaws table of uses. We are also proposing to make revision to the table of dimensional and density regulations, the definitions section, and off-street parking for both residential and commercial districts. So why are we doing this? We are hoping to make these regulatory changes to address the Arlington master plan strategic goals and recommendations. How many of you have read or looked at or seen the Arlington master plan? A lot of you, not all of you. Do we have any other, do we have copies still? We have a lot of copies. We're gonna bring them here. So you have a copy if you didn't raise your hand. If you want one, if you like reading it online, that's totally cool. But this is what the Arlington master plan looks like. My understanding is that 75% of town meeting voted affirmatively to adopt the Arlington master plan last town meeting. And so as a result of that, we have been trying to work towards advancing a number of recommendations in that plan. So that includes the first thing that's on the screen, which is unlocking the development potential of business-owned land, providing opportunities to meet, play and grow in Arlington, making sound, fiscal planning and also realistic choices, enhancing flexibility in the business districts to promote development of higher value mixed use properties and promoting vibrant attractive commercial centers and control the size and the scope of development in existing residential neighborhoods.  They don't say, well, what exactly does that mean? How are you going to unlock the potential of the district? How are you going to protect and control the scale of development? That's the next step in the implementation process. So the master plan does not say specific things about the zoning warrant articles that I'm about to tell you about. So the origin of those changes there before comes from a number of different things. The first and foremost item is the experience working with the zoning bylaw. And so another question for you. Who here has had any experience working with the zoning bylaw, just if you had to do work on your house or? So some of you, some of you. So we at the staff, the redevelopment board, the number of the members of the master plan implementation committee have all had a lot of experience working with the zoning bylaw. And we've also talked with people who've had a lot of experience working with that zoning bylaw. So that's, I would say, the first and foremost underpinning of the origin of these changes. And then it's followed by a number of planning processes. Some of you may recall, and this predates the master plan, there were a number of studies conducted by Larry Koff and associates that relate to economic development and the importance of commercial revitalization for the town of Arlington. And they were successive studies about that. So I've just put the collective one on the screen here and in the handout, which is the vision and master plan for commercial revitalization, which was completed in 2010. So that was number one. Number two is sort of, there's four items that all kind of go together because they're all collectively part of the master plan but they were individual processes through the master plan. So the first being the visual preference survey. There was a visual preference survey conducted as part of a number of engaging sessions when the master plan was being put together. And at one of those sessions, a poll was conducted where people could see a photograph on a screen and say, a question was posed like, do you believe that such a property is the appropriate scale of development in a particular district? So that, for example, and people could vote using probably keypad polling with yes or no or I'm not sure, I'm not sure what you used at the time. Was it keypads? Maybe, hands, hand raising, keypads? It was keypads. Okay, usually it's keypads. So you voted on those things. And so it was a poll to determine how people felt about different scales of development. And overarchingly I would say that people supported greater density in commercial districts and they also felt strongly about protections in neighborhoods. So the visual preference survey is an important item that's part of the origin of these changes. Also community feedback throughout the master plan process. And again, I mentioned there were a number of different activities that were conducted over a two year period with the master plan. Lot of feedback on these were only focused on two items tonight, which is the things that are related to items, articles six through 10. So that community feedback was important as well. There was also a zoning audit that was conducted through the master plan, which was very helpful. And of course the recommendations. And then more recently a residential parking analysis. So the master plan, which is now being brought in by Laura, is a document that has a lot of recommendations meant to be implemented over a long term period. This is 15 to 20 years that we're talking about. So we're not doing everything all at once. We're doing the things that we can do. And we're doing them, I think, very efficiently in the past really only the last six months that things have really gotten kicked off and started. And that began with the establishment of a master plan implementation committee, which is a 10 member committee appointed by the board of select men. You saw three or four of the members, I believe one walked in this evening. And so far these are just, this is a sampling of some of the things that the master plan has helped to move forward. The adoption of a complete streets policy just the other evening, commercial district design standards, implementation of the CPA funding process, work that's been started on a housing production plan, implementing Arlington Center parking management study and helping to amend the zoning bylaw. The amendments to the zoning bylaw that are talked about in the master plan are very extensive. We as a group collectively over the months that this process has been going on have chosen to focus on the five ones that you'll now hear about. So article six, article six deals with mixed use. Most of you know that mixed use, the mixing of uses is an important vital component of the commercial corridors along Massachusetts Avenue and Broadway in Arlington. And we want to make sure that it continues to be a vibrant place where we can see greater development and we can also continue to add new uses and also think about things that could happen in terms of multifamily housing and mixing uses that are currently not allowed or are difficult to mix in the commercial business districts throughout town. So that is the main component of article six. And article six would go through a special permit process. This is not by right. This would have any development, new development would have review by the Arlington Redevelopment Board through our environmental design review. So it would not be an automatic that something would change or that something would look different or that something would grow to a height that we do not want. So that process would still remain. So that's a little bit about article six. There are two new uses that are proposed. I realize that again, all of these zoning articles have extensive pages of things but the article six includes the addition of two new uses. We have artistic and creative uses added as well as artisanal fabrication and which includes software studios, application developers, collaborative office research space, basically spaces that we know is current for the century that we're in and current to the economy that we're in and we want to encourage those types of uses. We want people to come to Arlington to be able to have those kinds of businesses and to be able to use their space in a way that creates that kind of vibrancy and dynamic. And we want them to also frequent other businesses, frankly, when they come into our commercial areas. So those are main components of article six. Article seven is a bit of a companion but is a separate article about parking. Based upon the parking analysis that we conducted using Metropolitan Area Planning Council, we determined that we could potentially reduce parking in the commercial district. So amending the off-street parking and loading regulations to establish lower parking ratios that would actually reflect the parking need and demand along those corridors. Again, Mass Ave as well as Broadway and in industrial areas and multifamily districts. And that would mean that we're offering that as an option. So if a developer said we would like to provide alternatives to parking, we don't want to go to that ratio. We say, well, you can try transportation demand management or other options that again, in this, what in today's world, more people are looking for other modes of transportation. And so if you do that, then you can potentially get a reduction in the parking requirement. So that's the incentives to have fewer cars on the road, which I think we would all welcome here in Arlington. So now on to the residential zoning requirements. We have article eight and we have a diagram. So the diagram is simply showing you and hopefully it's easy to read. I know it's in black and white, but hopefully it's easy to see what's being proposed here. There are two facets to this particular article. So again, amending definitions. There are five or sorry, three, five, six, I can count. Six amendments proposed. Basements, sellers, story, half story and attic. That's five. We have to make these amendments for one reason, which is to align with the state building code. That's the piece in the top, which says to seven foot three inches to seven feet. That aligns with the state building code. The other amendment, which addresses the basement and sellers is the idea here is to lower the seller, I'm sorry, a basement seller, less than four feet six inches above grade, technically leads to two and a half stories being built above that basement seller. And it's not considered a full story under our bylaw. So if we make that change, this proposed amendment, then technically only one and a half stories could be built above that basement or seller if it's considered a story. And in this proposal, we are saying that the basement with these changes would technically be considered a story. So this is again, to get at some of the concerns that we've heard and be as responsive as we can by also being, but also being reasonable about it, responsive to some of the concerns about neighborhood growth and development. So the house on the left is the house that's built under current zoning and the house on the right is the proposed, under the proposed article eight. I'm gonna hold the questions till the end, please. So article nine, article nine is amending the table of density and dimensional regulations to encourage responsible new development in residential zones, which would reduce the maximum size of new homes and existing homes with large additions by approximately five to 17% and increasing the open space requirements. And that's a range. It's not necessarily going to be five up to 17%, that's if you have a two family. So you, I'm giving you the whole range of possibilities. And if you go through, again, all these pages of the table, you'll see that change happen depending upon which type of home you're proposing to make an addition to or to build. So again, the house on the left is the house that's built under the current zoning and the house on the right is the house that would be built under the proposed zoning. And for this one, we've got attics that are considered half stories if they are less than half the area under the roof, I'm sorry, wrong one, open space requirement. Currently is measured in relation to the gross floor area. And that means that right now what's required is 30% open space. We're proposing that it goes to 35% open space. You can see the required usable open space change, which then could potentially have an impact on the required overall floor-to-area ratio. Does anybody know what a floor-to-area ratio is? Seriously, yes. Would you like to answer? Over the lots of eyes, right. So that's the difference between the two, the division of the two, and that produces the FAR. And so many of us who have seen what's been happening in Arlington observe that the FAR is changing, and particularly in some districts. So this gets at potentially a slight reduction in that FAR, that coverage. Next one, article 10. Amending the off-street parking and loading regulations to require maximum, rather than the minimum, slope of 15% to maintain safe egress. And so for this one, this is changing basically the grade of a driveway. And when you change the grade of the driveway by what's shown here, what's happening is people are going to have to potentially move the house back on the lot. The setback would change, and there's a required front yard setback right now on any lot. It would move back, we estimate by about five feet to the sidewalk, I'm sorry, the house to the sidewalk changes by about five feet. And then again, thereby potentially reducing the overall floor-to-area ratio, or the amount that is occupied, the density of that lot. So you can see the change. The one on the left is the one under current zoning, and the one on the right is the proposed zoning. Limiting the driveway grades. And part of this is also in response to the, again, another condition in Arlington, which is the slope of some of the new driveways being built in certain parts of town, where you see the two garage doors and the very steep driveway. So this slide is now showing you basically the collective impact of articles eight through 10. Showing you what everything would look like if put all together could potentially address some of the concerns that have been raised about protecting our neighborhoods in Arlington and protecting the character and the scale of growth. So again, merged all together for you, for your viewing pleasure. And with a view of something, a conditions that could include a house with a dormer, a house with what may look like three stories, but may look like four stories to somebody else. And what also looks like a garage under the home. And again, everything altogether, reducing the overall percentage by about 6% of the total home being built on a lot. So I believe that covers all of the zoning warrant articles. So quick review, first two zoning warrant articles. Article six is about mixed use. Article seven is about parking reductions in relation to parking demand and need. And article eight looks at the basement, the seller, and the story and the attic issue. Article nine is talking about dimensional and density regulations related to the size and scale. And then lastly, we talked about the driveways and the grade. To have the overall impact of potentially reducing the scale of new homes. So now, questions. And I'm actually gonna ask my staff to come up here. Because they're gonna help with some questions. So yes, I know you had your hand up first for a while. I'm sorry, I don't know your name. I don't. You presented that in the context of new construction. How does that affect renovations to existing houses? Particularly with impact to the elevation change for the basement. How does article eight affect existing homes building additions, is that fair to say? Especially the change in the basement. Who wants to take that? If for additions and changes built after, let's say article eight passes, they're built afterwards, then the provisions of article eight would apply to those additions or changes. So does that mean? Actually, and Chris, we have two other answers. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. We are going to answer questions. Yes. I'm just trying to take the long hand. So we have plans to finish our existing basement. So if I have an existing basement, and I'm going to finish the existing basement, how does this impact that? So your basement is not finished right now. It would, if article eight passes, then the amount that your basement sticks up out of the ground would be reduced from four and a half feet to three and a half feet. Without looking at the specifics of what you want to do, it's very hard to say exactly how the article would affect you. So despite the fact that you're presenting this in a company's view, it's not that it's view, construction, like a new house gets renovations and that's what you're standing for. Yeah, let me try to straighten one thing out though. Finishing or not finishing your basement doesn't affect anything. This is simply a dimensional requirement. So if that basement existed right now and it's four feet, six inches, as an average around, then it's actually going to affect going up. It's not going to affect what you do with that basement. You can do whatever you want with that basement. It's just whether it's considered a story if you decided then to go up. If you were to add on to the top of your house, that's what it would come into effect. What if I put an addition out the back? Then these rules would come into play depending on how you would go into the ground, how much would come out of the ground and the overall height of your building. But your existing basement already exists. Your house is in place. Finishing it won't make a difference. It's if you want to build on top of the house, the overall height of the house is what we're concerned with here and what this affects. So there was actually, you had your hand up at one point. Should we do a hand up? I'd like to continue this conversation. I have a question. Sorry, okay. There are a lot of hands, so how many hands are up? Okay, I'm going to go right here, Steve. There is, I actually have two questions. I actually have two questions. One, regarding the definitions. I know you mentioned the change from 73 to seven feet and the attic was meant to apply with state building codes.  So I just out of curiosity looked to see what the state's definition of a basement is. Now they measured a little differently. So where we use the average grade to the ceiling of the basement, they use grade to the finished floor above the ceiling of the basement. But they use a measurement, they're cut off as six feet, which would be, I guess, about five if you went from, you know, ceiling to floor of, or yeah, from the ceiling to the finished grade. So one question is, you know, I can understand why you changed one, you were altering one definition to comply with state law, but on the other hand, changing another definition so that it moves farther away. My second question is from what I understand, house that was made non-compliant by, say, the passage of Article 8, a homeowner could still potentially do renovations if they were to file a special permit, is that correct? So we're not the zoning enforcement officer. We don't enforce the zoning. So if you're asking questions about zoning enforcement, okay, well, we're not zoning enforcement officers. The answer, so excuse me, one second. So I'm Rick Valarelli, one of the building inspectors, probably one of the most popular questions we get asked is to do some additional space in the attic. So I'm gonna go back to the first question. So the first thing we ask when a person comes into the building department, a lot of requests for attic renovations in two family houses, for example. What's the exposure of your basement in relationship to the underside of the floor joys to the finished grade below? If he's got an exposure greater than four feet, six inches, and more than half of the perimeter of that house, that basement is already a story. He needs to go to the zoning board of appeals for a special permit because he's already maxed out, he's got nowhere to go, he needs special permission. It's a permit that we cannot give by right. Does that answer your question? So the proposed change drops that from four foot six to three foot six. It's an individual case, it all depends on your property. And Steve, I think we did some elevations. We are property. Yes, I guess I'm just above, I'm safe by about an inch or two. Right, so let me just elaborate just for once. So if it's close, we ask for more documentation from a survey or an engineer, anything that will help us determine whether that basement is or is not a story. So the proposal here is to drop that from four foot six to three foot six. So may I finish my second question? So regarding special permits, from what I had spoken with the folks in the building department, and from what I understand there were 25 knockdowns in Arlington last year, and about 117 residential additions. So for, now I also looked at the number of dockets that the zoning board of appeals has heard. And according to their agendas for 2015 at least, they had, they heard a total of 17 different cases. So what I'm, one of my, just one thing I'm curious about is if there are a number of houses made non-compliant and the owners have to seek out special permits, how will this affect the workload of the ZBA? Well, it's gonna increase it tremendously. Okay, thank you. Okay, yeah. Thank you. Appreciate that. Okay, John, I'm gonna actually get the other mic. Thank you. Okay, you're welcome. I'm gonna go over here. John has a question. Thank you. It's not actually a question. It's a clarification or something that, well it is kind of a question. And the question is, why don't you propose a further amendment to your article eight that says, to simply says this basement, new basement requirement, which is for new buildings an excellent idea, will not apply to buildings built before January 1st, 2016, 2016. That solves the problem this gentleman was worried about. And in our little zoning group, and we put forth the other articles that I guess you're not gonna talk about tonight, the real reforms of the zoning problem. We talked about this extensively and there's a lot of hills in Arlington and there's a lot of folks who have, not these monstrosities, 92% FARs, but nice little houses, they're on a hill and they've got a basement exposure that is more than three, six. And maybe it's five feet on one side and six inches on the other, but it averages out. So they really should be exempt. It's not, I don't think you should change the rules for them in midstream and make them go and get a very insurmountable permit or something. Now, and so I would encourage you to do that. Okay. We appreciate the input. I also, I have some questions about, I know your favorite thing, mixed use. I have three questions about it actually. One, now, Ms. Rait was not here, but Ms. Weiner was, three, four years ago, you brought forward a mixed use proposal and is exposed in town meeting as a Trojan horse to bring in a lot of residential development. Is this materially different because I cannot find in it any requirement that any particular part of these new buildings would be devoted to commercial uses? The amendment as written does not require a percentage that has to be retail or commercial. And the reason for that was in discussions that we had with other communities, we, everyone encouraged us to keep it as flexible as possible. However, since it is a special permit use, the ARB would have some discretion over that and would be able to decide if it was appropriate for the location. So it could be one little shop and 98% apartments if they thought it was appropriate. I think in listening to the board's deliberation of this article, they have every intent to make sure that they're in any mixed use project that comes before them for a special permit that they would have a sizable and robust commercial element and not just a token commercial element. But it doesn't say that in the law. Right. We know what you say these guys think, what's the next lot gonna think when these people are gone? That I cannot answer. And that's why we have a government of laws, not of men. Now, there are a lot of vacant storefronts in Arlington. You must know that as the economic development coordinator, particularly around the center. Have you any studies, any indication that building these new buildings with a lot of flats on top of the shops is there gonna be demand for all these new shops? The experience from other communities is that mixed use development helps create demand for commercial uses that are part of the mixed use developments.  All right, third question. Suppose some developer who wants to do one of these things, and by the way, I think 60 feet is too high for East Arlington. The capital height is about what it should be. But does one of these things somewhere and there's a row of single story 1920 shops like there is up to the center and he buys these and knocks them down. What happens to the little people who are in there running a business and three years later, they say, well, you can come back and we'll rent you a smaller space for twice as much money. How's that gonna work for those folks who are already giving us service and goods and so on in Arlington? It's very speculative. Yeah, that's very speculative. That's very hard to. So actually, let me go to the back, I'm sorry. I know there's a lot of questions, so I'm gonna make my way back here. Hi, I was just wondering if we could go back to the finishing of basement and or existing attic space with Article 8. So I think we're in a similar situation where we have a home that was built in 1930 on a hill. Our basement's a walkout. We have a walkup attic that we had plans on renovating and we wanna really understand how this will impact the ability to do that. Either one of you wanna take the question. So your question was how will Article 8 impact your ability to, your basement is currently not finished or it's not a walkout basement? It's a walkout basement that's unfinished and a walkup attic that is unfinished that we plan to finish both. Depending on your plans for finishing it, Article 8 would lower in terms of the attic. It would declare any space that seven feet or above is habitable in line with the state building code. And it would also, if it sounds like you're not planning to increase the amount of your buildings. It's all within the current structure of the building. So then it probably would not impact the basement very much, your basement plans. Excuse us. Rick. Would you like to take this? Again. And the attic also. Setting enforcement. Hi, I'm sorry, go ahead. No, I just wanted to make sure that it also didn't impact the ability to finish the attic as well. It should not in your case. Okay. So I encourage everybody that's thinking, I encourage everybody that's thinking of doing a project to come down and see us. See Mike and I. There are a lot of different things that come into play. It's a little bit difficult to understand. I get phone calls every day, dozens of them. And I ask the people to come in. It's to your benefit to come down and see us so we can look at it. Every case is different. The rules apply, but every case is different. But it sounds to me like you'd be okay. Thank you. Okay, so we have a lot of questions about individual conditions. Do a lot more of you have similar questions? If you do, I think the advice of Rick of going to talk directly with them about your particular situation would be helpful. For the forum tonight, I want to answer questions specifically if you have other questions about the amendments. So where did my other mic go? Oh, sorry. Maybe we can line up if you have questions. Because otherwise I'm randomly giving the mics out. I'm sorry. I think if you could line up, that would help me. Right here. Line here. So you have a question. Yes. I have a question about existing homes being knocked down and new homes coming up. How is this all, is it going to affect it tremendously on the size of these new homes? And all about how is it going to affect it? That's what I want to know. So if these older homes are getting knocked down and new ones are getting put up. Right. So the overall impact was a reduction by 6% of the total of what you would see in terms of the home, like the new home. How would it address knock downs in the same particular manner? I don't know if you want to add more. In the lots. In terms of new construction, if articles. Two families, particularly two families. Well for single and two families, if articles eight through 10 pass, then all three of their provisions would apply to new construction. So you'll generally have the total size of those buildings reduced, depending on circumstances by an amount between six and 12. But we're not changing the frontage, is that correct? Sorry? The frontage is the not changing. It's still 60 feet. So just the area of what you can build in that. Correct. Right, we've got a line forming. I know there's hands up, but it would be helpful if you lined up because there's a lot of questions, it seems. Thank you. First, I guess on article eight, question on this figure. How did you calculate that figure of 5,520 square feet for the gross floor area? The designers, they plotted out on the diagram a house of the maximum size house that could be built under current and under article eight zoning provisions and they calculated the square footage from those dimensions. It appears that they're calculating a full story on the third floor. 40 by 46 is 1,840 square feet. If you multiply that by three, you get 5,520, but if our bylaw limits the third floor to a half story, then you can't build a house. They're also considering half of the basement as gross floor area in that calculation. And the figure on under existing zoning? Under both? Yes. Why half the area of the basement? Because they were assuming that the other half is used for a garage base. We're getting back to the questions and people have been asking about the modifications to an existing home.  Wouldn't you require a variance? I think that's a question for the building inspector. So pre-existing non-conforming under section nine of the zoning bylaw is the answer. Okay. I really think you need to put the grandfathering and has been suggested. Moving on to mixed use. Okay. Am I correct in understanding that there is no minimum lot size for a mixed use development? It depends on the district that's being proposed, but I don't believe there is. So if I say one could find a lot in a B1 district that was 3,000 square feet, I could decide to go in and I think I'd like to put an auto body shop on the first floor with an apartment on top. And I could do that, sell the condo on top and have my auto body shop on the first floor. Is that right? If the ARB grants you a special permit to do that. Whereas right now, because the B1 district is primarily made up of one and two family homes and the types of businesses that have occupied them, that would be my only option. And I guess that's the other question. There is no, the way that mixed use is defined, there is no limitation on which uses are mixed. So if I wanted to have a commercial parking garage on the first floor, that could be one of my uses. And I could have any other use on top of that in qualified or the mixed use dimensional requirements if the ARB granted the special permit. Yeah. Because that's a use. I mean, mixed use is any two uses, is that right? Even if the underlying use is not permitted in the district as an individual use, is that correct? No, I'm not, no, but I'm just giving examples. Right, I'm just giving examples of what I think are problems with the way this is written right now. Because what it allows is by putting these uses under the rubric of mixed use, you can now put uses in that currently aren't allowed in a particular zoning district. That's why the redevelopment board strongly feels that they need to adjudicate the mixed use process through special permits. But can the redevelopment board turn down a special permit application just because they don't like the use? I don't think so. The other question is, is a real oddity in the way the dimensional requirements are listed in the proposed bylaw change in that smaller lots allow more dense development. That's backwards from the way the zoning bylaw currently works. So if I have a lot that is, say, 22,000 square feet, do I have to, can I say I want to comply with the denser requirements, or do I have to comply with the less dense requirements? Currently, as proposed in article six, in most business districts, lots over 20,000 square feet keep their current dimensional requirements for mixed use. Lots smaller than 20,000 square feet have higher FAR provisions allowed. So can I subdivide my lot and say, half my building's in one lot and half is in the other lot, and therefore I want the higher FAR requirements? That's speculative. Okay, well I'll let others continue. Thank you. I was wondering how this affects the back of a house because I noticed in part of it, you have to have a lot of land in the back to build something. So in my case, I have a driveway way in the back, but I wanted to move it toward my house and build a garage next to the house. Now, the height of the garage wouldn't be higher than my house, so that would be okay, right? I mean, height-wise, it's all right. But I was gonna make the rest of the yard bigger with the former thing. Is that acceptable? Again, individual cases need to go to the building inspector, but what Article 9 would do is increase the amount of usable open space required to 35% of the lot area instead of 30%. So basically, I'm just shifting where my yard is so it probably would be all right. And the other question I have, which isn't addressed anywhere, is when builders build on a street that has every single solitary house the same type of wall because that's the flavor of the neighborhood, that's how it is, and a builder comes in and builds this pretty wall that doesn't even go with the neighborhood. Is there anything that can be done about that? Nothing's ever addressed about that. I would think builders should have to look around and say, oh, everyone here has a nice brick wall as revolutionary times or whatever, but we're building a square wall with little sparkles in it. I just don't understand how that can be allowed. Okay, and these zoning amendments don't address design issues that would be separately dealt with during the permitting and review process. So what, oh, thank you. If it's passed. But isn't that the one we don't wanna pass? Okay, thanks. Okay. Okay, well, next question. I'm also in a neighborhood with a lot of sloping lots and I'm curious in terms of Article 8, do you have any sense what proportion of the town is affected by this, like how many existing buildings might be covered? Don't start talking yet. The town, obviously Allington Heights would have more of a fact, but they are scattered. Mike and I were talking not so much possibly in East Allington, but once again, every case is different. You really need to call us and come down and see us. No, I understand that and I'm not doing anything to my house, but I'm just thinking for neighbors of mine that may be thinking of doing something. You know, if this is gonna affect, say, 25% of the structures in town, that's a really big deal as opposed to maybe affecting 2%. And it would just be helpful to me if I had some sense of coverage. Yeah, I'm sorry if we don't have that information. But if I could go back to the person that wanted to rebuild the garage, I just wanted to tell you that's an accessory structure. So you would mention going up to the same height as your house. So an accessory structure is maxed out at 20 feet. If it's detached, it's one thing, or if it's attached, it's a different story. Come and see us with the plans. Come and see us with the plans. I'm sorry, I thought you meant detached. Next question. Hi, I was wondering a little bit about the keypad surveys. Oh, the surveys. I was wondering if you could elaborate a little bit more on that. If you could go back to the elevations that were just up there. Which one in particular? The ones that were just up there, the elevations from basement to the peak. Yep, yep, right there. This one. Yeah, this one, yeah. So you're saying we're talking about two feet over 35 feet or so. So to the untrained eye, these two structures are gonna look identical. And from what I understand, the interest is to reduce the size of the structure. So I was wondering a little bit about what the surveys, the keypad surveys that you were talking about, what kind of images were being shown. Because, and the only reason why I'm asking this is because I've heard the term ugly houses thrown around a lot. So I'm wondering if the design of the houses is an issue here, more so than the size, because I mean, I'm not gonna notice the difference in these two structures.  Because I understand the preservation issue here. You know what I mean? Do you wanna talk about the images used in the master plan? They're actually, in the master plan, you can see toward the back the visual preference survey it's called that will show that the different images that were used. Were the images, were they of noticeably larger structures? In different styles. Yeah. Because these aren't noticeably. Right, no, that's true. You know what I'm asking? This one by itself does not make a huge difference. The ones that make a huge, a bigger difference are nine and 10.  I can see those online. Yeah, put this one in the back if you, take one with you when you go. I'll have a kid get it up for me because I wouldn't know how to do it. You know what I mean? On the computer. Oh no, it's not on the computer, it's right. Oh, it's, okay, all right, thank you. I brought in 10 of them. You can look at the visual preference survey information in the appendices, and it shows how people voted at the time, et cetera, and the images used. I guess I don't necessarily have a question, I actually have three quick comments and kind of following up on something this gentleman was saying earlier. I guess I was kind of surprised that we're not talking about all these zoning articles on the warrant. There are a lot of things that are going to be potentially impacting us tonight. I'm a newly elected town representative, I'm trying to figure all this out, and I would have really appreciated having that dialogue and discussion to understand not just these specific articles, but all the articles on the warrant. Second topic was, there was a discussion in particular with article eight that is a reasonable approach, and I guess I've lived in Arlington in two different houses, and not one of them has ever been on a 6,000 square foot lot in a flat lot, and I guess reasonable varies depending upon where you're at. If I was in East Arlington, maybe that's reasonable. In Morningside or the Heights, maybe it's not. I guess I would expect the articles to represent what's reasonable for each of the different areas of Arlington. Okay. And I guess the third point is, again, I was newly elected, I knocked on hundreds of doors, talked to a lot of people, and this was a big concern to the majority of the people I talked to, and the one thing they were concerned about was the new construction. They weren't concerned about reasonable additions to existing houses, and when I look at these articles, potentially in addition to the other articles that are on the warrant, I see how that could really limit anybody for making any changes to their house, and I'm not sure that's really what the people are concerned about when they're actually looking at significant changes compared to minor changes. They're looking at the significant changes, new construction on small lots, not minor additions or reasonable additions that are currently being done to existing houses. So I guess those are my comments, not necessarily questions, but thank you. Yes, thank you for those comments. Hi, I'm Jonathan Nyberg. Just want to say quickly two things. One, just want to again say appreciate all the work you guys have done because it's a lot of work, a lot of collecting data, et cetera, and I think all of us, no matter what your thoughts are, want it better and more wonderful Arlington, so thank you. And the other thing I just wanted to say because I think it goes unsaid when we talk about special permit, variants, et cetera, the average person doesn't realize it's going to cost them thousands of dollars. You have to hire an attorney because it's hard to differentiate all this stuff and it adds thousands and thousands of dollars and many times, months and months and months to a process. So I just wanted to say that just for reality check. Okay, thank you. Good evening. First, I just want to say thank you to Mr. Warden about some possibility of a grandfathering for existing owners of properties as of a certain date of this year. Okay. As a contractor, I deal with a lot of questions with potential clients so forth and so on. Those questions also are answered by the building department to try to simplify a lot of the questions that a lot of folks have right now, individual cases. My basement is this. My lot size is that. Under this change, if someone wants to do a second level addition. Now just, they've got a ranch or a small cape. Doing a traditional second floor addition. If their basement is considered a story. So now our basement is one story. Our first floor is a second story. The half story, you can't do a second level addition. Correct? Under this proposed article. That's correct. That is what I'm trying to get out in the open. That everybody is asking and getting around this question without overburdening the building department in the resources with numerous phone calls, meetings, slowing down the permit operations. It has some serious ramifications to the values of the property in this town. You will diminish values. You will basically handcuff families that are moving into this town. You can tell by the schools, the enrollment. Everything about this article needs scrutiny. And if you're trying to do some type of surgery, you don't go at it with a butter knife. You do it with a scalpel. If you want to stop a lot of the changes that you're not happy about, deal with it from a starting point, a specific date, not retro. I appreciate your time. Thank you. Thank you. Okay. So follow up question from earlier, I guess. What happens next? You're getting feedback. And then. Next step is town meeting. Right, so how do I find out what changes you made or haven't made? There's no changes that are being made between now and town meeting. We're not planning to make any amendments between now and town meeting unless the board wishes to do so and I can't speak exactly for the board if the board would like to speak to this. They can do that. But and. Right, so I mean you're getting a lot of feedback and if you're not going to actually address it before the meeting, then you're kind of ignoring the feedback and. So we're not, the board does not wish to talk about that right now. So I don't have an answer to that question. I'm sorry. Okay, so then. If they didn't make changes, we would definitely send it out via the town meeting. Okay, so then what is my next opportunity to follow up with what's happening? Is it an open vote? Is that and like, how does that work? You said two thirds of 160 odd people had to get together and vote, right? And how do I know what's going on there? So the recommended votes of the Arlington Redevelopment Board will go before town meeting and those we are going over right now what those recommended votes are. At that meeting, people can make amendments. They can, and vote their conscience either way, but it's members of town meeting that have that right. So are you a member of the committee? No, I'm not. Okay. So I can't make an amendment. But I also hear that you guys could on recommend your current articles. So what we have before, what is currently going out to town meeting members of the recommended vote of the Redevelopment Board, which are as presented, this is an informational forum. It's not a public hearing or one that's a vote is expected out. One that a vote is expected afterwards. This isn't a public hearing as that happened back on March 21st. Please, yes. And so the town meeting members who are here, please, if you're not a town meeting member, voice your concerns or your input to them, please. And it would be an amendment during town meeting. Exactly, a substitute motion. Town meeting starts April 25th. Okay, yes. In my neighborhood, I live in East Arlington, the issue of these new houses coming in that don't always fit in the neighborhood is an issue. It's not always about size necessarily. And the changes I'm seeing here all seem to be about size. And in some ways, maybe they're major, but in some ways, they seem pretty small. So I'm just curious to know what kinds of things do other communities do about this issue? Because I know it's not just an issue in Arlington. Other communities, for example, Lexington just passed a number of residential zoning amendments to their zoning bylaw. They actually put restrictions on floor area ratios or residential homes and variable setback requirements and a number of other measures. Other communities do different restrictions on lot coverage. The amount of, what a, the amount of land. Can you just restate that in sort of more lay terms because I'm not familiar with all of that. Sure, in Lexington, they, in certain circumstances, in residential districts, they governed how much the total square footage of a house could be in relation to the lot size. And it's a different process and we don't have design guidelines for every house. We have the historic commissions and the historic district commission has some say over the design, but it would be pretty unwieldy for every house to go through a design board. Well, I... I think a lot of towns are struggling with this, but there isn't that much you can do. I will say this, having gone to many of the master plan workshops and not just participated, but listening to people, when people were excited and positive, they were thinking about the uses that would be possible. You know, the main boulevard with the shops and all the great stuff that could be there. When people were fearful and negative, it was about the way that things would look. So I realize this is getting away from these articles. I would like to learn more about how we could, without being unduly burdensome, address some of those issues in the town. Yes, I would like to reassure any residents here who have this basement problem that I intend to at town meeting make an amendment, make an amendment if it's acceptable to the moderator, to grandfather, these basement provisions of article eight. I think that residents who have bought a house in a given area need protection from the trauma of turdons. They also need protection of the understanding that they had when they bought the house of any additions or renovations that the law allowed them to do when they bought their house. So I really think article eight basement dimensional changes have to be grandfathered. Thank you. Okay, sounds like a motion. All right, are there other questions? Yes, okay. Get this to work. Articles eight, nine, and 10 seem all sort of poking at various ways of reducing the floor area ratio. But don't actually just reduce the floor area ratio. Why do we choose to do it this way, with respect to percentage of the open space, which has to be at least 25 feet in every dimension, which gets us into a lot of complicated places with weird shaped lots and all kinds of things like that. Why not just regulate floor area ratio? You could do that, the decision was made to go about it in the ways in which you see on the screen. So, can you tell me why? Can I tell you why? Would anybody like to explain that origin? Yes. We looked at floor area ratios and it was very difficult to pick the right one for a whole zone because the lot sizes are different and the heights are so different than the East Arlington and we looked at lots of different things and we didn't feel like we could find the right number that wasn't gonna allow in some neighborhoods the houses to grow a lot bigger than they are now and in other places control it more. It was just, we looked at what the existing floor area ratios were by neighborhood and they were so different throughout the town, it didn't, we just couldn't come to a place where we could figure out what the right number was. Hmm, interesting. Okay, thank you. So, if I understand these articles correctly, it seems like the fundamental thing that I'm hearing about the teardowns of single families and putting up two families is not being addressed. Am I understanding that correctly? Is there anything that's happening that's going to reduce the number of teardowns and replacing them with larger two families? Not in these particular articles, no. On your lot, that's just, if you're in a two-family zone, everyone has the right to have two units. Okay, so a related question is, I understand that if you have a historic home, but you are not in a historic district, then there is no protection. It can be torn down and replaced with a two-family. Is that an accurate understanding? I guess that depends on the definition of historic. If it's recognized as historic, no, you have to go through the historic. A one-year delay. If I have a historic home in a two-family zoned area, but I'm not in a historic district, I could delay it for a year, and then it gets taken out. Right, depending upon if it's on the, there is a local historic property registry, right? Okay, so there's that. And then there's, of course, other designations of what is historic. You have to be on that list in order to trigger the demolition delay by-law that John was just mentioning, and that lasts a year. Yeah, a year, so what? Well, the master plan does talk about recommendations around demolition delay, and also about appropriate inventory of historic resources. So these recommendations, the zoning warrant articles, are not getting at every issue that we've raised tonight. We are getting at some of the issues. That's why I was trying to explain earlier, we may have gotten away from it a bit, that this is one part of implementing the plan. There's a lot of new ideas and momentum, frankly, in this room. I know that there's also challenging feelings as well about the things that we're talking about, but there's still time, and there's other things to do in the future. So we're open to those things. Hi, I wanted to thank the member who spoke up earlier for her comments and her coming forward and telling us what she will be voting on, or recommending. I wanted to say that I'm on the second floor of a two family, and my husband and I have been working over the last seven months on an attic renovation. Article eight and nine will jeopardize that. We've invested countless hours and thousands of dollars already. Well, if you have a building permit, I don't think you have to worry. We don't yet. We're just about to submit for that. We've finished the plans recently. So I just wanted to say that you have to consider these people. Thank you. I was waiting to all the other questions. I did have a question about article seven. I guess if you could just summarize, there's a lot of parking issues in town, but I can't really figure out what this one's about, and I want to know what the intent was and what you would like to see. Okay, so article seven to start off with only pertains to the commercial zones. It does not pertain to the residential zones. It gives the board, the redevelopment board, some flexibility to reduce parking requirements. Substantially, if the builder or the owner can prove to the ARB that they have sufficient parking and that they will be providing incentives for residents or users of the building for the tenants or owners to use transit, to use bikes and or walk or in other ways, maybe they'll have zip cars there so that everybody doesn't have to have their own car or maybe two cars. So it's a hand in hand thing that you would provide incentives for people not to need a car and you would have, you can prove that you have enough parking, you could reduce the parking requirement. So but then what would happen to the parking space? And is it that you can build more? You can build more on the lot. Oh, okay. So it's like increasing the size of the commercial lot, but that's right because not the size of the commercial lot but the building on the lot because one of the things that came out of the master plan was that people felt like we had more room to increase the density in the commercial corridors and that would help build the vitality of the commercial districts. So that was the intent. That was the intent. Yeah, thanks. I'd just like to make an informational statement perhaps to some of the people who are new to the town. You can ask anybody to speak at town meeting if you're a resident of the town, if you have questions about anything. And also if you need to know your town meeting members, I say this in trepidation, but you can call the town clerk's office and ask for an email copy of your town meeting members. And this is Janice Weber who works in the clerk's office and is a town meeting member. I'd like you to elaborate on the incentives that are provided to own fewer cars and how you actually intend to implement that. So some of the suggested, it's called transportation demand management and it would include having bike parking, not just a bike rack, but maybe covered parking if you're in an office that you might provide a shower to encourage people to ride their bikes. You might provide T passes to your employees or to your residents. You might have spaces for a zip car. You might have a car pool, reserved parking to encourage people to share rides rather than everybody bringing their own cars. Those are a couple of them. So this is specifically for commercial and industrial. And multifamily. Oh, and multifamily. And multifamily on Mass Ave and Broadway in commercial districts, yeah. Okay. Thank you. Not in the neighborhoods at all. Okay, thank you. I had a little follow up question about the basement redefinition, sorry. And I have no personal stake in this, but when you redefine some people's basements are gonna turn into their first story of their house, if you had to make a ballpark guess, are most people's basements turning into the first story of their house or like about how many are we talking about? I mean, any ballpark? No, you don't know. Okay. If you wanna think about percentages, think about this. If you wanna think about your server being up, right? So you're email working. 99% uptime sounds great, right? 365 days a year. 99% uptime means three and a half days of downtime. Okay. Arlington Heights, it's gonna be a pretty big percentage. It's gonna be, or it's gonna be a measurable percentage, which means it'll be a good number of houses. I have a follow, okay, now here we go. Yeah, follow for the woman who was, the second floor of a two family is considering finishing off the third floor. Now, I have a couple of questions. Article eight, that has nothing to do with the size of the lot, right? That's just the house by itself. So a lot of people have bought the second floor of a two family with the option, with the assumption that they could finish off the third floor. Is that gonna negate that? I mean, how does that impact the ability to finish a third floor of a two family? The circumstance of the house and the basement. I would say most two families in Arlington are the exact same footprint. They're the same layout, they're very similar. How is it gonna affect that? It will prevent you from finishing the attic space to make a half story. It'll just slightly lower the threshold for what a half story is, from seven feet, three inches to seven feet. Yeah, I'm asking about the attic, yeah. So it would not affect the ability to finish off the top floor. In most cases, I would say no. Okay. Again, it's a case by case basis. You should really ask the inspirational services department for an exact determination on a particular case. Okay, thank you. Any other questions? Any other comments? If not, can I say goodnight to everybody? And thank you all for coming out tonight. It was very helpful for us to hear your thoughts and opinions and your questions.


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