[Music] [Music] the meeting is
open and it's going to be an unusual meeting because it's the first meeting I think at least the first in many years where the entire agenda is for the planning board and whatever public decides to attend to learn about and think about some issues that are before
us so this is a discussion meeting and we'll try to make the discussion orderly um but make it informative for everybody who takes part in it which will be good because there's a lot of new housing things there are a lot of things that are in front of us so we'll begin as we
usually begin with public comment is there any member of the public who would like to comment or explain himself no okay the minutes Paul Madam chair I recommend approval of the minutes of February 11 2025 and Fe February 25th 2025 as
corrected second all in favor I I good minutes thank you very much now planning board discussion we're going to begin with um a actually a sad letter um Paul the letter is from you would you like me to read it or do you want to read
it I don't have to read it oh but you'd be you're welcome to read it if you'd like I think that we should read it you've served on this board for a long time um we're all going to miss you I'm very sorry that you are doing this and I would like to read it into the record you addressed your letter to Mr Palmer
and it's a letter of resignation and you are saying to him please refer to your letter dated February 19th 2025 advising that my term on the planning board ends this year I have served on the board for more than 10 years and have enjoyed the working with
the dedicated staff of the planning department and the planning board members during that time how however it's time to provide the opportunity of others in the community to consider the opportunity to serve in Falmouth I will be pleased to continue my responsibilities as Clerk of the
planning board until the end of my term therefore I will not request nomination papers for re-election this will allow sufficient time for others to obtain the necessary signatures to be qualified and we are hoping that very qualified people hear this and learn of it um
unfortunately the Enterprise which listed vacancies on the select board and other places in town did not list our vacancies correctly and we are hoping that people with a genuine interest in with the work of the planning board um and with uh experience to back up their
interest apply and get elected to replace you it'll be hard to replace you your background as an engineer has been useful to the board and to the town thank you Paul thank you very here but we won't after elections you won't hear so this is our time to clap
we this is when we get to do it B the whole audience appla they actually should we standing on yeah okay next on our agenda too no at a at a in the future yeah
perhaps but not this year so next the planning board's appointe to the short-term rental committee um the makeup of the short-term rental uh committee which is formed by the select board will be appointed by the select board leaves a spot for a planning board
member um all those who are interested in filling that slot please raise your hand I would like to nominate Charlotte to continue her excellent work yeah so that we don't have a gap from our input it look like she nominated herself
well she raised all volunte step forward this is official and we can vote that we are yes nominating her then oh thank you okay I'll second that nomination all in favor hi hi hi thank you very much I'm I'm glad to do this I don't know why
I've taken up such an interest in it but I have so I'll be glad to do that next uh what we're going to do is go through the the longest thing on our agenda we have some things here that are going to take a lot of time and a few things that won't so for people who might actually
be listening um on our agenda we have a series of things dealing with housing here in town so this is our time to learn about all that the state has been doing the state apparently is moving in the direction of usurping uh local autonomy as far as land use is concerned
they've taken up uh quite a strong hand in in zoning they uh we had an Adu law many places didn't they extended the law which we didn't object to but we see oh this is a change the state is now entering the zoning Arena and now they
have uh with the governor's task force and with some other things that they're doing they're really fully in it I don't fully understand them I've read them several times they haven't really sunk in this is our time to question them and pull our information
on them and see what our feeling is about each one so let's begin probably with the the longest one which is unlocking the housing production commissions building for tomorrow report these aren't things that already happened these are things that could
happen um Jad did you prepare screens for us to see or how it's going to be challenging for you to see them up on the screen but I'm happy to do so I have um a flash drive so I can I can load it up there but what I do want to bring
your attention to in your packet is this document here the summar the summary of the report so the report itself is over 150 something pages right um so Melinda has put together um a summary for you um
and you know based on what I'm reading you know you might want to start on page two of six um because those are some of the land use and Zoning um suggestions we we'll call them um from that
report so for example the first one is eliminating parking minimums as you know um across the state uh there are several um communities who have who have done that who have eliminated um completely
their parking minimums I think there are other communities who are you know sort of hesitant to do that simply because it's a it can be a scary thought uh but the intent would be to essentially allow developers to not dictate but suggest to
the regulatory boards this is our proposal this is what we think we need for parking so that we're not creating oceans of parking uh that sometimes are used and sometimes are not um so again it's a fairly um aggressive approach by
eliminating them all together I would suggest that if you want to take a look at the parking which is part of what we're going to be doing in the future is perhaps reducing rather than eliminating um but other items on this I don't want to be talking the whole uh evening but
some of the things that you may want to pay attention to were ex uh expanding multi family housing options that's a big push uh by the state as you know and then this whole minimum lot size uh reform U component so essentially eliminating minimum lot sizes
altoe um so again just some items that I think you might want to focus on for tonight I think we should take them one at a time um and it would be good actually not to skip over uh the state's um goal absolutely and the the context and framing of this because the state
has a plan that they haven't put into action to put some resources into this so potentially municipalities will have uh a structure at the state to fall back on and it doesn't look like a very strong structure to me but at least it's something so let's look at that
first question who actually prepared the report it doesn't indicate who wrote it was it a consultant in the state or right so it's a it's a conglomeration of a lot of folks um it's called the unlocking housing production uh commission so Governor Healey
established the commiss Mission it was um staffed by I think a dozen or so folks the state level yes and it's been around for a while the date I read the date on the original report it's like it's almost a year old isn't it or last summer any uh I think that's perhaps
when they when they started the commission but they just released the report they just released the report okay a couple of weeks I think yeah so it's fairly new hot off the presses if you will so the state action but I think it you know the state is a big place this is not the
legislator's action this is the governor's task force so this is way at the beginning of legislation correct right so none of it actually has happened it just that it might happen so people uh not just us but other boards
in town and people in town might want to know uh what they're thinking of teeing up and what they may want to lobby for and they may want to oppose yeah so and it's also to gauge interest from towns that maybe they might like to participate
and then they look for feedback and they did the same thing with the budget and also the uh what was the other initiative there for um all right I micone are you thinking the but it's just up for discussion like
the um what was the other one with the uh seasonal yes the seasonal I recommend ation since Doug's the only one here why don't we ask him to join and sit at our table and then he can talk and not have to go to the microphone because it's really important to follow our procedure
and this way that works out he's an honorary member of the plan former honor foror welcome now now we're following the rules yeah back yes then we won't get upset when you
talk CU we're supposed to stop you sorry okay we're all going to talk when we're recognized by the chair what I looked at is going through this whole thing if it's adopted the towns and the state both but the towns which is where
it hits Us in particular and not just the planning office will have to be looking to put on additional Personnel so that's a financial implication for the town too well I think we have to adopt it too don't we I mean they make it available to us but we have to decide
if it works for us and then we recommend at the town meeting like we did with the accessory apartment you know the uh we used to have a special permit for the uh second but we brought it to town meeting and we said yes we'll adopt that yeah
this was not this was just a component that I was picking up that would be something that the town would require if we adopted it that's an assumption though yeah right now we don't know what whether we're going to have options or not we we really don't know what final this true is going to be we don't know
if it's going to happen if you see stuff in it that you like you might send a letter and say you know we're on board we support this maybe you tell your local legislators to to vote for it if at least talk to our reps pardon me at least talk to our reps talk yeah if if
you all come to consensus that it's something you like and you send it on send feedback to your state representatives that let's vote for this or if you think it's intrusive and it's out of line send them that I'm looking at this as something we can cherry-pick from you know you know we we should just
go through it say you know this this looks good maybe we should explore this some more you know put a check mark next to it and and I think we should approach it that way well that's probably what each of us did in preparation for tonight we should let we should let the audience at home know what's on the
that's what we're about to do so this begins with a context and framing I think I'll just read um the headlines of what the state says it's going to do at a state what the what the governor's task force recommends the state do at a state level if they really want to
unlock housing production and increase the amount of housing in Massachusetts then the state thinks they ought to take immediate steps to support modular housing year because now we build houses one by one you don't necessarily have to
there are many Technologies for doing modular houses they're saying the state should support that there should be a state sales tax credit to provide uh for credit for construction materials purchased for the development of new multifam housing projects or substantial
redevelopments this should be state funded infrastructure to explore and expand existing funding mechanisms because one of the real barriers to actually doing any kind of building is the money and so they would say they would come up with a state funded
infrastructure and also Workforce Development initiatives aimed mostly at the construction trades so that we would have more people working in that industry and be able to do the building that they foresee happening if localities go ahead and do any of the
things that they're going to try to encourage people to do and we don't know whether there's going to be uh uh a mandate that localities do this or they're going to be cherry picking as we go along so let's go through these they begin with land use and zoning and then
they go on to regulations codes and permiting and finally Statewide planning and local coordination so the ones that would really fall to this board most immediately as Jed said is land use and Zoning so let's first talk about
eliminate parking minimums this says the state should eliminate parking minimums first of all let's have an example of a parking minimum that would be like how many do you need in order to have a building at the plaza right so for example when you are
considering retail establishments I believe it's one space per 200 square ft of leasable floor area so for a big box door you wind end up with needing how many parking spaces depends on the size of the store of the of the box but 2,000 ft 10 spaces a good amount the easy way
to look at it from that perspective and we have found the parking requirements to be really inflexible MH that's one of the reasons why we fought to get them in Mr Cod we wanted flexibility in the business Zone to be able to reduce the parking so that we
don't have so much empty asphalt and can do more building and I assume that that's aimed at this so if you think about The Big Empty asphalt fields that we have here in Falmouth Walmart all across there felet Plaza all across there there are
others where are the others oh I know when you're coming down Palmer AV and you come to the liquor store the um the gas station and they've simply paved a huge amount I just Madam chairman I want to point out in reading this it's not
only for the commercial It also says that allow off street parking for all housing so that means when we're looking at somebody putting in a a four-bedroom house on a 3,000 sqt lot that now is
going to be buildable if we allow the thing that they won't even have to have parking that they allow them park in the street that is what this is saying I just want to point that Nuance out in case that's what caught my attention Okay let's take it Case by case I am we're talking parking right now we are
but there are two cases here one is the parking minimums that create big asphalt fields and the other is keeping the cars off the street okay what what does the board think of that well reaction keeping the cars off the street I mean we have the fire
requirements that you have to have uh at least 18 ft uh wide to clear and I know in the summertime when we have uh people renting houses uh and you got eight eight Vehicles here they're parking in the street so you literally have maybe 10 to 12 ft to pass through uh you know
with no sidewalks and and vegetation on either side so uh that to me is is a major concern and that's one of the things I suggested about the uh shortterm rentals is that parking has to be on the property because of that situation that occurs right I I agree
with Bob yeah wholehearted so it will be in some places but not others we have places that have wide streets that we could have parking on both sides and still or you allow front yard parking my neighborhood in hatchville everybody has a little slot in front my
driveway is in front of my house Oh you mean like the curved ones yeah yeah yeah woodo too it's everywhere what about if I could also there's uh one thing to consider is that eliminating or reducing the parking
requirements helps you when uh people want to redevelop these buildings on Main Street second floors that Jim has mentioned in the past that there's a lot of space that could come into play you know if it was easier for them to redevelop it that's right if they didn't
have to provide parking for the apartments that might do it yeah but one thing that we have done too is look at shared parking and so that could be part of that instead of that's part of the equation with eliminating
minimum parking if you can share parking and that seems to have worked out where we've allowed that now I know with paying Palace it's shared but now that is being redeveloped over there and the sharing was only for
a certain number of years so perhaps the sharing needs to go on Jim well one way to look at it is I think if you read it that they're going to eliminate minimums
but when we do our site plan review we could say it doesn't fit it doesn't have to fit a formula for the minimum parking we can just say it doesn't fit so they might be allowing us to make that decision based on our
judgment on the site and the use and just eliminate the the minimum that's just a a rule that doesn't mean anything you know Case by case Okay so that that means we could we could evaluate it as long as we would still have the authority to say no it doesn't fit mhm
and then then we could say well you want to have four more apartments up there it works we need those places yes go ahead and do it but I I think to take away our ability to say it doesn't fit is a very dangerous thing to do because uh you
know one they can't make a judgment from Boston to see what how we live we we're the ones here in our streets and so it might be a good thing if you look at from that perspective that they're actually giving us the freedom to make the decision by not having an absolute minimum and just say Yes it
fits or no it doesn't and that we probably need some determination on that if that's what this law is saying that'd be a positive way of looking at this law well and that is very very positive John this is eliminate parking minimums for housing
only I don't think this means for a shopping center or something else this is this is for housing well but but John If you eliminate the parking minimums for commercial places you're freeing up more land for housing I'm not saying we shouldn't do that I'm just saying I
think that this says right here summary for unlocking housing production not Walmart production or Kmart or some other company this is this is a residential program oh I don't read that into it does anyone else see it that way
I do about housing above the mixed use yeah Mr Cod right again mix use is housing yeah probably would I think this is housing yeah chair yes one other way of looking at it is we now have no off street
parking we could allow on street parking but limited to maybe one side of the road or something like that which would ease us up quite a bit depends on many streets you can't park on the sidewalk right well let me answer you a question you're saying you know we should wait we
could do this ourselves we don't need the state to pass any kind of legislation for us to be able to do to eliminate parking minimums we put them in we can take them out isn't that true correct in fact your
parking bylaw is currently on the master list of bylaws that we are seeking to um amend in the future because of the rigidity that's um built into the parking bylaw that you don't really have the flexibility to make a case by case
of assessment it's just you're doing this this is what it says you're stuck with it but if we're doing it Case by case uh how open are we to appeals and you know lawsuits and things like that where someone doesn't like the decision so you know that's that's something you
have to consider consider strategies like parking demand management come into play when you start talking about reducing your parking minimums because you have other sources of ways for people to get around for
example if you have a fixed rout transit system then you don't necessarily need as many cars but it really needs to be a robust system so that people can use it and get to where they need to be um but items like uber andyt and you know all
sorts of other ride sharing programs exist all over the place so it's entirely possible for folks to if they work locally to be able to not have a vehicle um but again it doesn't work in
every situation yeah but but it could offer some the flexibility yes to help create housing an example is the the gentleman that's going to put the apartments um at Duncan a Duncan y I was
going to say Duncan Donuts but Duncan what if he didn't have any parking available to him in a parking lot we couldn't allow that to park on sandwich Road yeah but there this I think the state is
saying try to figure out a way to have flexibility for different situations they're not trying to take any Authority away they're trying to give us an opportunity to think about being more flexible that's that's how I read it yeah well how many of you are interested
in in moving this up and we had it on our our sort of long list of things that we wanted to work on without having put any kind of timeline around it so it sort of just floats without any end in sight is there enough interest in this
as a good way to improve the situation here in town around housing to move up and give ourselves greater flexibility on parking why why don't we go through I think we got to get to the third bullet point first before we talk about doing the first because that could have a serious impact Oh you mean let's go
through these and then we can I agree you agree to number three then we come back to number one we got a bigger definition okay good process let's look now at 40a reforms steps to take which in turn would require aligning local zoning with Master
planning implementing administrative review for certain byright plan review projects so fewer applicants would have to come to us they' be going to the planning department record appeals strengthening the appeals process and de incentivizing baseless appeals reforming
48 I'm not sure what all this means do you want to walk us through that well I think the um the appeal component I think speaks for itself but um the idea would be to allow housing to be built and not have all of the appeals that
sort of I don't want to use this phrase but get in the way of housing production right um because certain appeals are legitimate but there's also some appeals that are not um but you touched upon the administrative review of certain site plan reviews projects so a good example
of that is our plan currently for adus if if a homeowner is doing a simple Adu let's not require them to come to the planning board we can handle that with the Building Commissioner um and so it makes that that process a lot faster and and cheaper quite frankly as long as the
planning department is following the guidelines that we would be judging it on exactly exactly well in that case the planning department probably would report at each meeting the things that they have approved and the nature of them right
right and then the last item is is you know aligning your zoning with your master planning work and you know obviously here it's a little uh different than other communities in the Commonwealth because you've got a local comprehensive plan that has to be that has to align with the cap commission's Regional policy plan so it's a little
bit more complicated but the idea is simple is that your zoning is complimentary to what your vision looks like for the next you know 10 to 15 15 years so I think the recodification process that we're going through now is
actually part of that correct it is so this is sort of an ongoing project it's not a One-Shot deal or something that you would just uh decide to implement we're doing this on a continuing basis I can't right now think of a place
where our zoning rules are in conflict with our long-term plan well I think we will get to that later in the agenda when you look at the multif family housing chart that I put together or the table um I think there
could be some opportunity to potentially change your zoning or at least consider changing your zoning to allow more two family or um lower density developments in other areas in town but again I say potentially and could it's definitely a
conversation but that's the idea that the state is looking to encourage community to not just have single family zoning to allow a variety of um different residential uses in all neighborhoods well in the totality of
this they actually oppose single family zoning right throughout the whole thing obviously the Cape is you know unique because of water quality concerns so balancing that is important yeah I'm curious what what is
meant by scale up bonus payments I think you might be on the 40R 40R that's what we're talking about here no no no we're way up at the top we get there yet we're 48 Oh I thought you had moved down already no okay
slowly but I think we're going to move on now to expanding multif family housing option and the first bullet here the state should allow two family homes on all residential lots and four family homes on all residential lots where
there's an existing water and sewage infrastructure so if you're on a street that has both water and sewage which is an increasing number of homes in Falmouth then you could have four family homes mam chair just a a quick uh
picture just because it comes to mind is something I was involved in Kendall Lane lots are 4,000 ft they're single family homes just it's on the sewer and it has C water they're saying they can all be four family homes where would they put
them I'm just saying that's I just want to put that in perspective that's when you you want to see a practical application of what I wanted you can visualize what that street looks like and how dense it is it works but it's packed in tight they're just saying they
could be twos threes or fours because it's on the sewer two if they're not on the sewer and fours if they are is the way I read this recommendation Stones holy even to on a 4,000 ft lot like there are some
four or 5,000 foot lot in East F it' be too dense well it's not saying lot size I mean Jim's Jim's using a radical example because that's a 40b development it says on all resal all residential lots
actually I I I I'm not John I just put a house under agreement it's only a 2,000 ft lot and it's and it's in on the sewer and on the water in marav wow four units well it's one unit now but that's what this this is saying so
it's 40b we have many many older Lots before zoning that were built on very very small Lots uh maravista and fites in particular but could you fit four
units it would be tall it would depend on the pocket yeah 35 ft it won't be required yeah and and lot coverage yeah and lot coverage those other criteria I mean I I can
see uh two family homes on uh acre lots or two acre lots I I think uh that would be fine um and I've mentioned it before about expanding the uh accessory apartment bylaw to allow someone a greater percentage either 100 even up to
100% for another structure on on property you know let start with 50 and the reason we didn't do 50 was people didn't want duplexes and uh so I mean if you have an acre lot you know you could have two full-size houses on that lot and uh plenty of room for boing and uh
and all that so uh but I wouldn't want to see uh what you don't want to see is big box for uh apartment units that are uh three stories tall and and that type of thing in smaller neighborhoods and
this is happening in Cambridge now where you have a lot of single residence homes uh that are big old houses and they're saying that they can put up uh four to six stories on that on that same lot and and we also it comes down to uh the Cape
is different uh we make money off the character of our town uh and so that's a very fine line that you you have to walk when uh you're dealing with with the cape and if we turn this I've been in hyas a lot lately and it grosses me out
every time I drive through hyenas to see what's happened there and uh yet their housing problem hasn't been solved in fact uh 40b has been in existence for 54 56 years and out of that only about 11
or 12 towns have actually met the 10% over 54 years MH uh so I want to see more done with property that is in existence whether it's Town owned uh buildings that we no longer use whether it's a business that's gone out uh I think what they've
done with the uh nursing home on Main Street that that's the type of stuff I would like to see more of and allowing people to do more with the land that they already have as opposed to uh just going into the uh woods and uh uh tea
ticket clearing out put in 900 units of housing on on a piece of land uh that's that's not what I want to I want to see better better use of the land we have that's already been built on and Disturbed when I was going through this
I wrote a great big no on it because it begins with the state should they make no provision in these two recommendations yeah about two and four family homes and multif family zoning districts for local decisionmaking
they're saying the state should and I really hope that doesn't happen that we wouldn't lose control of the character of our town because this this the thing that makes a neighborhood look good is homogeneity if you think of
European Villages the reason they're so charming and people will buy uh airplane tickets to go and experience the charm is because those buildings are homogeneous they're built of the same materials at about the same time and they have been elaborately protected for centuries to continue to look like that
the thing that makes the neighbor neighborhoods here in Falmouth worth visiting the ones that are worth visiting and they aren't all worth visiting is the ones where they are all more or less go together there's a homogeneity of the appearance to it there's respect for natural materials
there's respect for the scale there's respect for the amount of land around each there's a look to each of the villages The Villages aren't all the same and it's maintaining that localized character that really protects our our
town and these two options that they're saying absolutely you'd lose the local option there there's no room here for municipalities to decide our character is important to us we'll make the local decisions so I just write like this big
black line right through that state should that's like a real danger thing to me they forgot to put one word out for that after that state should recommend that would change it that would change it it wouldn't make me like the recommendations any better no it
wouldn't but it's not the state should no it's the state should recommend yeah cuz now I I lived in Cambridge for quite a while I like Cambridge and and to picture on this I lived on Harvard Street and to to picture that street now with with some six-story things and
mostly two and a half story thing it's going to look terrible and I agree with you about hyenas yeah they ruined that town yeah mhm yeah mhm I certainly agree and I appreciate appreciate your comments about just sticking these things in the middle of neighborhoods because that wouldn't make sense all of
a sudden you know four unit skyscraper but what about if there was some sort of an overlay District in an area in like maybe in the Mr Cod area or downtown just just a thought maybe there's a couple of I think that's what
we have that Mr Cod is that oh I don't know do we have the four units uh oh you already in there well you can go up to 20 20 units per AC it's not limited well it's limited to 20 right but it's not like in the other parts of Mr Cod
between Staples and CVS you have single family homes there maybe could convert maybe some of those are in areas that you might consider it I don't know I'm just saying right right but that is covered by Mr Cod that whole Davis Straits right but does it give you that
four unit yeah yeah oh okay so you could do that already yeah under the rules that we have now with that with that zoning District a developer who wants to take one of those I like that side of the street that you're talking about wants to take one of those single family homes that are now being used mostly I think as
professional offices this one restaurant but mostly professional offices to take that piece of land which goes back quite a ways they could probably fit 20 units on that piece of land but they'd have to come here to do that they wouldn't be able to do it by right right I was thinking more in terms of some of the
last couple remaining single family homes that if they're on a lot and they don't want to redevelop into 20 units but just take their building and modify it into four that's already there too right okay they can do it they're on a sewer they're
Madam chair yeah Mr Cut Is by right yeah but you have to come here with the site plan review just site plan review but it is by right right it's by right that they can do something that we approve aesthetically they can't necessarily put out anything they want
but amount of units is by right is what I'm talking about it is so if they could make it look the way we want it to look they could still put in the 20 units that's right it's a negotiation John so the these are all talking points but to me one of the important things
here is it says on the sewer so this is not in West fouth North fouth East fouth this is on in our town it's on the sewer and that's what they're saying on the SE and we've had many discussions where we said why shouldn't we allow duplexes
somewhere it says duplexes I can't just say oh for plexes this is duplexes this is housing if we don't create the housing the people can afford to live in why do you think everybody goes to aanas they have the the density the other towns don't want the
density a lot of hyenas has sewer so that's why it's starting to look the way it looks people are moving there but we have and remember the report that 50% of the people that work on this this island don't live here anymore we're trying to solve the this is we're this is for
discussion but I can't I don't think we can just say we love our town it's got to stay the way it is guys guess what we've got a four-story apartment building on Main Street who voted for it anybody nobody if we don't do it it's
going to get done without our vote if we don't do something it's going to happen anyway you cannot control everything but what what we what we can do is plan for the future I think that's what they're asking us to take a look at all of this and discuss it which we're doing but it
can't I don't think it's just all be written off as no I don't want the state telling us what to do so I actually agree with you that a limitation and the state has in a way
imposed is our sewage capacity we're filled out as far as our capacity for the not filled up forever not forever but and we're planning for the future and the state is going to have to come in and allow things that they don't
currently allow well we're doing stuff now because a court case said we have to do it that's what I'm trying to say if we don't plan for it it's going to be forced on us John I'm not arguing with you I'm saying if what we're saying is we've got to push back on the state
saying well if you want us to do that which we're not opposed to then this has to happen on the state Lev and I agree and the other thing we do have is a soul Source aquifer that we have to protect I I I don't disagree with any of that I know
you don't but again this this starts with a preface is on the sewer and we already have you know you can take four borders into your house what's between four borders and and a four family establishment at a place where we want
it to be where it looks good and it where people don't all have to have a vehicle but gradually there are going to be sewers in many places in town in fact right now in an area of town um uh is already sewered and it's right around the corner from where I live in North
Falmouth the um New Silver Beach area is sewered you know are you saying we could put for plexes up there I'm saying it's a consideration yeah I'm saying we need to start thinking about it we we can't just be Dr No
anymore we we really that's just my opinion one opinion person but okay but my guess is no one on the board disagrees with that two opinions to yourself joh that no keep one to myself I think there's another consideration here getting ready for
this tonight I went um and Jen and I were talking about it this morning I went through um the housing production plans of all the towns on the cape down through uh Yarmouth and and Dennis to see you know who's where what are what are they doing about this where where do
we stand with the other cap towns we're the only one at 10% and our 10% is a little wobbly but we're there but the others Yarmouth is the next closest but the others they're at five and 6% and many of them their housing production
plans aren't even up to date they say oh you know we're updating but they're not doing it we are we are so far on the upper Cape we are the ones way out in front on housing production we are making a greater effort and we have have
more on the ground and more to show for it than any other town on the cape isn't that true it is it is and I think it's a dangerous place to be because you pointed out hyenas and how it looks actually that village within barnable
they're the ones who are way out there on providing the most affordable housing I'm assuming those things are more affordable they may not be but they are way out there I don't think we want to be the capital of affordable housing on Cape Cod I don't
think that's where we want to position our town we don't want to be behind anybody I think we should be proud of what we've done but I think we should be careful we need to protect the town for one thing we're supposed to one of the things the state says the planning
boards are supposed to be doing is protecting property values think of that I just got a question going back to the sewage so this multif family housing option is based on sewage infrastructure where are we at right now about 10% of
the Town that's sewed and what are we expecting what's the future of that over the next 20 years of we're I think less than 10% and we're hoping to be around 23 or 24% by when uh decade 20 years 20
years okay really all right that's pretty good okay had the chance in 1947 to have the whole town Su turned it down yeah the hold down then wouldn't be the whole town now John so as you know um on
the cape C commission I get to see the other towns plans and we've been we've been reviewing them as they come in and um so far every community that has come
in front of the board says they need number one to protect the character of their Community that's first on the agenda and then housing goes like and housing goes just like
that every one of them so far that's the region we're within we need to protect character of our our community and our aquifers and our Wetlands here over and over and over
again so it's not not unique for us to have this kind of a of a sense for our community I'm just suggesting that if we don't do it the way we'd like to see it done that's good for our community
someone else is going to do it for us anyway and we won't have a vote on it and and I'll just give you an example I I went to uh my insurance company yesterday and uh the young lady that was helping me with u with uh my
insurance she said to me that uh she bought a house in 2021 she she and her husband in SEO Shores for like $350,000 and it's a little bit too small for them but she says thank goodness we
bought the house when we did because we would never be able to live here if we hadn't right and she's just I want to say just a clerk but she's not an owner she's she's working the the the clients as they come in the door we need these kind of people we we can't we need I
shouldn't say these kind of people we need workers not everyone is making $100,000 not everyone is retiring here not everyone has sold a house in New York or or Maine or wherever and moving here with a lot of money in your pocket and
paying cash for a house we we just have that's that's what this is all about in my opinion this is to create a housing scenario that's good for everyone benefits everyone so that's my thought number two
okay okay I have a question about that thought what would that be then maybe duplexes everywhere again let's not use the word everywhere not everywhere in everybody I think that's wrong to talk like that this is saying on the sewer so we we've
talked about um John it's not saying on the sewer it's saying four families on the sewer two families not on the sewer that's what it says that's duplexes have we not discussed duplexes before have we not said many times we should have duplexes in in certain areas
and Zoning that's that's what we do we're planning and what's the difference between a duplex and a two family well it's just semantics okay semantics yeah I mean I read this as saying the
sewer is is for four but that they're saying two families everywhere that's what I'm asking that's what I thought I read right two families everywhere not even on the shore yes yeah that's what this says okay to me the greatest ways to buildable land is really in the 1
acre zoning yeah um the place where I grew up in Lexington was developed North Lexington was developed in the 1930s when uh the street car line was coming out from the city and suddenly all of these you know Irish Americans and other bad people were turning up in these
Yankee towns and the towns were not liking it one little bit so they stuck us sort of out at the fringes of their town and put us on quarter acre lots so on an acre lot you get four houses and you're in a neighborhood that's filled with kids and a lot of the
the houses decided I think I'll buy the lot next door so people manage to get themselves bigger Lots over time the quarter acre lot looks pretty big to a kit you know you can get lost in that quarter acre your mother's not sure where you are and we have one acre lots
all over town oh yeah and your thought about putting some another now we can put adus thanks to the state we can put an ad anywhere by right and it can be what now 900 ft yeah yeah so we already have two houses on a 1 acre lot that's a
Halfacre lot that's doubling the housing in town and that's existing zoning yeah well that's what I keep getting at is utilizing what we already have and enhancing it uh the town I grew up in was is a square mile 25,000 people bunch
of big old victorians and American for squares some were built as uh two family homes others were single family that were converted my uh I did two of them for my brother um so that that's what I'm seeing even if you had uh one
structure on a one acre posle and you converted that into two families either by allowing it to expand or just cutting having one floor and uh a second apartment above the other but uh and with two separate addresses you know
different numbers but allowing something like that to happen where you can't unless it's 40% and with a lot of big houses I I use uh uh the house I'm living in now is an example 40% doesn't work to divide the
house up that way just doesn't work it wouldn't make sense uh but to divide it uh in half make uh two stories you know it's two two-story house have it a second floor apartment and a first floor apartment works perfect because that's what my brother's house was and that's
what we did you know front hall closed off the first floor up to the second floor a piece of cake um and or being allowed to build a bigger Adu you know not everybody can fit in 900 square fet
you know especially if we want young families you know allow a 1200q foot Adu on a on an acre pel you that that that's what I'm saying is we need to expand on that how fast do we need to create all these more options when we know we
already have options on the books that are not being used yeah I Jim I I think we should pay attention to this but actually we've been appr proven 80us at a pretty fast rate I think the last meeting we did six of them yeah yeah I
think we should see what the next year does and absorb the bylaw change that they've already sent to us and and and see how it what the impact of is because we're not even sure yet they're coming at us at a pretty fast rate MH but I don't think we're up to 100 yet the last
report we had was 55 and we added six but that was they were coming through you get yeah you get approximately for a month uh some months are more than others uh but they're we have a lot of people kicking the tires yeah coming in asking questions Etc it's help it's
helped a lot of people I mean it's a really oh yeah I think it's a good idea but we should absorb it I mean yeah well you know if we kind of have Canadian Lumber maybe we won't be building much at all well not this week but maybe next week
yeah we have plenty of our own trees okay let's Mo let's move on I just didn't like that state should part minimum lot size reform well we were just talking about minimum and once again this begins with the state should eliminate minimum residential lot sizes
Statewide except in environmentally sensitive areas and on excluded lands which in the in the longer version It's conservation land uh uh water protection land there's a lot of excluded lands what what do you think of that or allow
residential lot merges split Lots use of substandard lots by right for the purpose of creating multif family housing see again I I see two sides to that because I I I look at uh what is um
creating this uh this influx of of money that and how it's affected the town I just had this conversation with Bob Hamill today uh about how money is is really affecting the housing market here and you you kind
of need to discourage people from tearing down a house and going setback to setback uh right now it's what 25 10 10 and 10 uh so if somebody wasn't allowed to do that if we increase the setbacks for for something like that uh
there's got to be some way of limiting and I think they've done it in Provincetown where there's a certain percentage that you can expand by so we need to do that because what's happening is someone's buying uh a house uh say for I'll use mine my little one-bedroom
Cottage in hatchville somebody buys that for $500,000 on a uh tears it down they have made that price of that lot $500,000 for everybody else in the neighborhood so it's uh artificially inflating the value of the land when
when that happens and I I really would like to see some way of discouraging that type and granted there are a lot of old houses I'm working in a house now that really should be torn down I mean it's sitting on Locust posts uh it's that old but um you know so there's
there's a way I could see someone tearing it down and building up the same footprint I mean that's that's okay but to take something and uh build it out to every setback which is what they've done on Long Island I a friend who's a an architect from Long Island and he said the first question is what are the
setbacks okay build me the house to go to those setbacks and so it's it's inflating the value of property so that people people can't afford to live here because of that um I mean there's got to
be some way um what would it be increasing setbacks limiting uh how much you can add to to a uh the footprint of a house uh limiting how much if it's a tree lot how much
vegetation uh you can uh you can clear uh you know uh just some restrictions on the size of the the unit that goes into that property didn't Martha's vineard try to do that in order to limit
mcmansions yeah and that's remember how that turned out I don't know I mean that that's what I see happening is the the mansion ization of of this town and and that's what's making it so unaffordable you can go into any little neighborhood and we we went down to the
uh tax assessor uh this year when we got our tax bill saying how come our taxes went up so much well somebody tore a house down built a$2 million house so all your property values went up and other places don't do that you know but in fouth it seems if uh property value
goes up in on one lot it gets rippled out to everybody else I mean that was the explanation com but I think John was waiting John so um uh in our build in our building code and Doug you might be able to help me because I
didn't do any remodeling but isn't there a a portion of the code that says if you want to remodel a house you can only do a certain percentage per year of the value offorming structure on a non-conforming on a non-conforming structure that
law you it's the assessed value you can only do 50% of the assessed value per year on a non-conforming what's non-conforming for an too small lot uh you know something that doesn't fit zoning it doesn't match but the house is already there but but it's still a
non-conforming the structure many every structure in fites is non-conforming because it's acre zoning on a 4,000 foot lot so I mean that's what non-conforming is the lot's too small that makes it instead of just going get a building permit you got go to the zba have a neighborhood hearing everyone gets to
talk about that so it's nonconforming what the new lot size would be in that area because it went one acre zoning is that what just saying well I think family Heights believe it or not is one acre zoning so you're pre-existing non-conform pre-existing noncon for me it comes into play more in the coastal
zone and in the coastal zone say I've got a house uh that needs a new roof Windows siding and then you know Mechanicals and so forth so years past I used to say let's do the roof first close out the permit then we'll change the windows close out the permit now the
price of the value of the house is increasing so I'm getting ahead of the game when it's time to replace the HVAC now my house value is up by the roof the windows the siding now I work on the inside so that's how we used to do it
now you have to take all those expenses over accumulative over three years and if you go 50% if you go over 50% of the assessed value of the structure you have to bring the whole thing up to code including hurricane tie downs uplift everything so
I think what I'm trying the point I'm trying to make here is maybe that type of a bylaw that we already have is making people that buy these homes tear them down because they're spending a lot of money anyway piece by piece maybe in
their mind it's easier just to tear it down and build what we really want oh yeah yeah because you can build what it really want yeah yeah maybe that's why we're seeing so tear Downs because do we really want to encourage that that's just what we were just saying we don't want but well no no I think people are tearing them down because of the of our
via that that stretches out how much you can it's true and they want it now they don't want to wait three years they don't want to play around I would want it now I mean I I built I built a house on Mon out road I see two two tear downs and rebuilds right on Bridge Street
right right no the problem that I see is that tearing down a house and then building something much larger I mean uh go along Green Pond I mean you wouldn't believe the size of the houses on Green Pond oh I would uh and those were all little capes what what I'm trying to say
is maybe if they didn't have to do a peace meal they could remodel the whole house right without without any uh yeah uh penalty they would do that instead of tear it down and build a bigger house yeah possibly I don't know but possibly but more likely they're going to go
bigger because they've gone through the expense of tearing it down they're going to Max it up yeah if they don't if they can remodel it as much as they want at one time instead of doing it over a 2 or three year period they may just keep the house and update it yeah instead of tear
it down and build a bigger house just just a thought I don't know I don't have that much experience at it changing those rules though really wouldn't add more housing no well it's it's trying to keep the inflation of the prop the the lot
itself and that that's that's what I see is when you buy a piece of property for a certain amount of money and then tear something down so it's an empty lot at that point uh you're you're paying that much for the lot and uh that's just how
I'm seeing it uh and it's it's an inflationary uh thing that's happening with with is that how the assessor sees it I don't know I don't know if I could before we get off the minimum size I my understanding or what I kind of thought
this meant was we have a lot of 2 acre zoning are they asking us to consider one acre zoning and if we did that if we put that out there how many people that have a house that don't really need two acres but they ended up on two acres
might subdivide and sell and then there's another house there just a thought I don't know if that's something we want probably have to send that one to the voters because it's really a a h huge change right but that's what I'm that's what first came to mind when I
saw that you know consider changing your minimum lot sizes I have a question I think it'd be a really tough sell at town meeting yeah would maybe but Doug you grew up here why did two acre zoning come into being instead of just all one acre
because it was the idea of we want luxury living we want nice Big Lots and we want it to be a real fine you know really nice place and you know we've encouraged that we've encouraged people to have you know great homesteads that are on two acres with big houses and you
know there wasn't anything underlying I I wasn't here for it to to say I don't know why it was done but that's what I understand it's it's what we've created my memory says that in the 80s there was so much uh new development happening the
buzzword was always we're gonna overrun the school system that was every planning board we're going to have the school system's going to drown we're not going to be able to afford it our taxes are going to go up and up and up
so if you go we went we went from like at at M Vista what 7500 or some of them are 5,000 yeah to 10,000 to 15 to 20 to 40 it it was a progression it's only
them with the schools the amount of children in the school system right into the 9s there we're going to and all of a sudden mashby built a high school have the student went to mashby yeah and now we don't have an overrun school system anymore and we have bigger
lots for those of you remember when we did uh it was Cypress Street and they were we were talking about uh improving some of the drainage and whatnot one side of the street the houses are the lots are
4,000 four 5,000 square foot Lots they're real small the other side of the street wasn't developed was all in one family it's now acre zoning it's the strangest and when you look at the any maps of marav Vista you see this big green square on on a on the GPS and all
these little Lots all around it but that's that's what zoning did they were building out marav Vista the Lots in marav Vista the original subdivision I think they were down to a th000 square foot Lots the 1948 plan came out the little teeny Lots I mean when you go look at the planner record you need a
magnifying glass to look at your lot they put those little tiny Hodson houses on them that's was that was what getting built and that's the way fouth Heights and marav Vista was built I think in the teens and in the 20s and 30s yeah they were thinking campsites almost you know
that' be like new Silver Beach yeah well that's and then I think they were afraid I I remember the housing build in the 70s it was I remember going around seeing new houses roaring great Harbors everything was just exploding mhm but it was uh we had some very small Lots in
the beginning here in this town yeah SEO Shores is like that too yeah they're big compared to the maravista Lots well at some point like in the 90s water quality became important yes so
it's a trans it's a it just goes It goes it changes as it go along that's why we here trying to plan for the future right well they're all unintended consequences well but we have a lot of experience now too so true we went from being shacky to being fancy
yeah and now we're too fancy and we're thinking about going back a little bit now we're mcmansion now we want to go back to yeah tents yeah well we haven't established that that's what we want to do we're just discussing it right there's the Stan Pat group too 4000
4,000 square foot 40R reforms the state should amend tell us about 40R what what is 40R so you're familiar with 40R because your mrod district is essentially a 40-yard District um it's uh the missing pieces are the state
oversight the state regulations and then the state bonus payments or the monetary funding that you get by establishing the district it's essentially creating multif family housing in eligible locations or high quality locations around Transit stations around bus bus
stops in your downtowns and 4r requires a Transit component doesn't it it doesn't require it it has it as one of the components that is most valuable but you can still do a 40R District in a downtown that doesn't have Transit it's
not as um appealing uh certainly but you can do it um folks have done 40 yard districts near highways so there's access options yeah but the the basic premises it's to allow multif family housing um by choosing where it goes
rather than um being told by 40b so 40b is the reactive 40R is the proactive what does this mean scale affordability requirements to density um I think the idea is to create
more affordable um units when you allow higher densities so the more housing options you've got in there and you allow higher densities increase the amount of uh affordability so it's um very similar to 40b it requires
25% U of your affordable units so I think the intent is to hey look if you've decided that this is where you want to be and you're allowing a certain density then you need to up the amount of affordable unit requ would that come into play on
the local initiative um projects also uh how do you mean well there they the local initiative projects which is what we're sort of getting now that we're at our 10% yep they have to do the 25% right correct
right yes and the town is sort of encouraging them to go higher on that yes with what look mixed there are some developments that are um uh very enthused by that uh and
there's some developers it's a challenge for nonprofits it's a little bit easier we'll call it in air quotes um for profit developers um it's a different story so we're we are constantly negotiating with developers to create
more affordable within those uh applications so it's a mixed bag of success yeah is there any limit on where those lips can go no no so again it's a it's an applicant
who would in normal circumstances um file a comprehensive permit a 40b application with the zoning board of appeals the lip process is essentially just um allowing the select board if they choose that or if they determine that it's a consistent with you know our
local needs to essentially endorse the project before it gets to the to the zba so there's a conversation about um the components the density the affordable units the amenities that they're providing so that when they get to the zba they've already gone through sort of
that preliminary discussion phase and we're getting more than what they would normally be required to provide but again that's not always the case so it sometimes is a challenge to get through that process do they have to also specify which um which local zoning
rules they need waivers from yes yes so it's the same rules for 40b so think of it yes is exactly the same as 40b think of it as a a friendly 40b you've heard that term um that's the process that's the lip process so that it's a it's a uh
friendly discussion about you give we give Etc and so that you know both parties sort of win at the end um where a traditional 40b there doesn't have to be that friendliness you know component it can just be an applicant apply born
right now is working on the 4dr I think they're somewhere Midway in their design phase if I remember reading correctly and I personally would love to have more information as a board because it is a very local 40R it's just in the doing
stage so that we can be schooled more on this the reason Bourne has it is because of course they're the Terminus of Transportation right um and there's been a lot of pro and con and from what I read recently I think
they have a variety of housing within them this including I I hate to be quoted on this but I probably will be and and I'm probably speaking erroneously I think they are doing something like 40% affordability MH oh
it is right then I I don't no I wouldn't be surprised it's a much larger I'm just saying it sounds good I I don't know that it's true liar liar I'm serious I'm just nodding because I'm like yeah 40% sounds good but I would love to have more information on what's being done there
for the planning because this is something we could start looking at as a town you've got so your Mr conon district is your 40R District so you have options to if you really wanted to you could um bring that back to town
meeting and say you want to do a higher percentage of affordable units as a requirement it's certainly a conversation that you could have um you could also increase the density um you know you've got the ability to talk about that and if you want to make
changes you've got the ability to do that it looks like increasing the density would be more likely way to go because that's proved to be more of a barrier for the ones that we've heard about trying to do Mr Cod that the density just isn't great enough for what uh they think they uh deserve for profit
and doesn't 40R get some State funding too it does so I thought and we are you could say we are a Terminus because everybody goes through us pretty pretty much to go to the vineyard yeah so when you when you establish the district you get an
incentive payment and then I believe every time you've got an applicant the number of units that you provide I believe there's also bonus payments on top of that that the that the community receives from the state that's what I was reading here and then if you fail to perform you have to repay all of that
correct yep so it seems to me like this would be a really good thing for us to pursue get additional housing in i i the we a Terminus no that's part of what this whole thing is so that you
can get more density and I don't know I'm learning well we were working on the Mr C we looked at the 40R and part of the concern was that uh what the state says they're going to do with the payment to the town and what they do might be a
little bit different that I don't recall John sounds about right either non-p payment or slow payment or it was quite a bit of discussion about that mhm but I I want to mention the town of
barnable uh they um the commission and the town of barnable voted to have uh 250 Apartments built in their industrial park and uh that was uh I think a year a year and a half ago and uh 220 of them
are are occupied and now right next to it they uh the commission just voted 300 more Apartments it's an out of state uh developer but the town of barn wants 10% affordable at the 80% and 2% at I think
it was 60 or 65% that's that's their preor pre-work plus it's on the sewer and all that why does they want more um to be they're very much they call they Workforce housing people they want people living there working in
their Community yeah not just the affordable units but the market rate units too so they're saying they're probably thinking that just the sheer volume is going to make the affordability and and the the building that already built is beautiful I mean they have you know playgrounds and etc
etc it's very attractive it's brand new but it's very attractive I think our Tech Park is way underutilized yeah so but again they're on the sewer doesn't allow housing yeah I know so just to just to give some information what's going on in other community yeah
in other places you know the ones that uh the land that interests me in Born is the federal government or whoever controls it allowing um housing up on uh otus that would be ideal right well they're doing a new master
plan right now to devest themselves of some more land so could be coming how can they be sure that the the good part about noce aside from all the airplane uh Fuel and so forth is at least it prevented a lot a lot of sewage
going into the aquifer but now if it's going to be for housing is it going to be at the periphery of Otis or where will they put it they're just starting to really think about it so it they're looking for public comment and yeah there Council that's just starting to
really start to think about it all they're thinking about putting a composting facility out there they're targeting 7 Acres and it's not exactly determined where but uh there's a lot of uses that they're open to out there and housing there's some discussion of whether it should be for more military
uh housing and then perhaps another section should be for civilian housing so they're just starting to talk about it but they're very open to suggestions you say they who are they who is military commanders General Fox was just mentioning uh at the last uh meeting of
the um Community civilian Advisory Group they had a presentation uh week before last about uh Carrie parcel talking about the composting and then uh the generals also mentioning that reminding everyone that the uh the master plan for
the base is just getting started so if people have you know ideas and want to talk about it you know Now's the Time because there's a real opportunity for there to be a lot of uh affordable and Workforce housing right there there could be definitely yeah oh you're
talking about you're talking about a partnership too with uh with the federal government and uh and I think we need to look at more Partnerships I I look at the institutes down here uh who have uh properties and uh expanses of land I I I
go back to the MBL property uh off of uh oyster Pon Road all these little tiny Cottages that aren't lived in year round and those could be redeveloped with a partnership with the town or an affordable housing entity uh and just
not tell the Institute you need to do this land they're actually already considering that yeah yeah and I that's something I keep bringing up and uh it's we've got to look at more Partnerships you just can't uh put it all on a
developer either and that's why you know we need to incentivize developers whether uh it's uh through land grants or financial assistance tax incentives things like that so well if we go out to Otis we have to be extremely careful um
about what might be disposed of there because all you have to do is remember the cleanup still ongoing in some areas and Falmouth was one of the towns that put pressure on the government or we wouldn't be as far ahead as we are right
now in the cleanup of the spills out there i' I've heard innumerable stories about how they'd get an extra shipment of fuel and what would they do oh you can't return it to the government yeah dump it the testing that they used to do dump it yeah friend buz used to talk
about that they pull up in front of a tank a pit open up the tank and absolutely get it ripped yeah but so whatever goes in up there is going to have to be contained so that nothing is disposed of that will wipe out our water supply
right that's the top of the lens shall we move on yeah oh we've got one more section under land use and Zoning in this things that the uh the task force came up with and again it begins with the state should um but we
could um and we can object to it if we want to and now we're out from under 40b at least for a little bit uh streamline the appeals process require applicants to post a mandatory Bond um increased frequency of housing stock counts and
updates that's sort of an efficiency thing I think that our um housing coordinator really keeps up with that very well but here's one that's really worth talking about remove subsidy requirements now you can't get on the
Shi and count to the 10% unless you have a subsidy and the subsidies are very limited so this really is a big barrier to building up your 10% uh what do we think of that yeah if it would help us well
I I always thought it was a little odd that uh rentals count towards our affordability and when when they're really not affordable right so uh I think anything to my my complaint remember we tried to
uh eliminate 40b they there was a ballot question they wanted to eliminate and I was never in favor of eliminating it I wanted to uh tweak it a bit and one of the biggest uh complaints we have down here is when we have a 40b development we don't have any say in how it looks
and how the size and things like that uh you know whether they comply to every regulation and all that I think we should have a little bit more latitude and 40b should allow us a little more latitude uh and given that we're a vacation uh Resort as well so uh those
are the types of things I would like to to see happen with 40b any other General comment on 40b or the Shi I I do agree with Bob that we need to have a little bit more say instead of having it stuffed down our throats I'll never forget that guy coming when we
said yeah we'd like to see a little bit no we're not going to do that everything that was his answer to everything and he was just really nasty about it and uh I I I think uh you know these the people coming from out of town and they don't care what what happens here and uh I I
take great offense to that because you know how the town looks and feels uh there's an atmosphere to it it all equates to quality of life and you know if you just build baby build till this becomes so crowded and
so unpleasant and polluted and everything else you know then you destroy the reason for being here but we we do have Safe Harbor now from 40b so we can dictate now how it'll be done and where it'll be done but we still got to make 80 units a year right
now and maybe next year 80 81 or 82 I like what the uh the CPC is allowed to do now by uh funding uh uh other affordable housing entities to buy existing houses houses and and Rehab them and and turn them over I think we
need to do a lot more of that um I mean I've joked about my organization uh calling ourselves rehabitat uh when it gets to the point where we can't uh land to build on that's affordable for us to be able to build on and uh and again
it's utilizing what's already here I just want to see more of it and uh and I I think that it just it's a bunch of smaller steps you need to do everything you just can't pick one package say this is what we're going to do to solve it you need to have multi housing districts
you need to allow more density on one acre lot you need to uh have affordable housing entities be allowed to buy existing property and you need tax incentives for doing these things um so to me it's a multi-pronged approach and
I think we need to be open to it I I have a question uh because we had we saw some major changes regarding housing from the state mandated down a few years ago about uh tell meaning votes and percentages and two-thirds vote what if
they the state just decides to take take the word should and say shall and all this thing that's when that's when you have one little word change yeah that's when you have a mutiny yeah well they a lot of they jammed a lot of stuff on us the last time it was a mandate from the
state of of how we vote uh for housing issues that no more uh two-thirds voted on toown meeting for zoning changes no if it's housing it's 50/50 that was a sh true actually every community in Massachusetts has us now
yeah right but just not just us that's one little word change yeah mhm yeah yeah but it's one little word change that takes a lot of politicians to do it all of them have to go home yeah so would they dare well we're watching uh when people
dare what they can actually do but I can't see the current legislature in Massachusetts making that little one word change on some of these things yeah I think it's alarming that they would uh actually send something out saying the state should yeah and make it a state
thing that would happen rather than a local thing but the useful useful thing I think for our board to do is to look through those land use things that are in that document and see which ones we actually like and could move forward on
no matter what the state does those might be things that we we would want to do and I won't ask that now but I think that we ought to take a look down through the list everything under land use and Zoning we've just gone through and see which ones do you think you could get behind to try and move that
along now we don't we don't have to wait for some other entity we haven't lost our uh local autonomy yet can I ask a question what does it mean to streamline the appeals process to shorten it I think it make it more understandable and
shorten it yeah make it more efficient um our understanding is that some appeals can take a very long time and as you know when a community is under its temp % the appeal goes to the housing appeals
committee generally speaking they side with the developer because the point of 40b is to create affordable housing and so you know when there's an appeal there's generally sighting on the side of the person who's proposing the affordable housing um but once you're
past your 10% it's a different story so yeah I mean we've heard stories of appeals taking forever I mean the appeal with uh Liberty green seem seem to take quite a bit quite a bit of time um and as you know it doesn't have to be
a direct of butter it can be anyone so so get Elon on it right away so are they suggesting that towns should voluntary streamline I mean is it up to us or is that a state mandated it would be a state it would be a state thing because
that's state law okay thank you okay those those are the ones that really apply to us if you look uh further in that same document they're really things that go to conservation they go to the Wastewater they're not things that are going to come to us so let I'd rather that we spend our time
tonight that clock hasn't been changed I didn't I was wondering if anyone would notice yes only a half hour in yeah um for those who it's actually keeping accurate time I'd like to get through the rest of the housing things at least and the next one up is seasonal housing
requirements and there are pieces in this and I think this is actually a law all what's that now seasonal communities yes yeah so it was passed um as part of the affordable homes act it was um language
that was inserted into that very long uh document and essentially the seasonal Community handout in your packet hopefully everybody got that it describes what a seasonal Community is um as you can imagine it's it's a community that you know sees its
population employment Etc um change in the in the uh due to the seasons uh one of the things that uh is important to point out with seasonal communities is that a certain um number of communities
automatically made uh or were considered designated as seasonal communities fouth was not one of those was we didn't make the 35% yeah we did not make it as a automatic designation so the town would have to apply for that um it seems a bit
still unclear exactly how that process will work and what sort of incentives um are included um in being designated but the reason we bring It Forward uh tonight is because one of the requirements if you are to designate
yourself as a seasonal Community is to um create a zoning ordinance or a zoning bylaw that would permit the use of tiny homes so tiny homes are considered um structures detach structures that are 400 ft or less um
and so the real question here is you know is that something that the board would be um open to uh the whole idea of tiny homes um as you already know you've got your accessory dwelling unit uh bylaw which would allow up to 900 ft it
doesn't it doesn't say that you have to develop a 900t accessory dwelling unit but this would be another um Avenue to create smaller homes and in fact the next agenda item talks a little bit about that as well the getting back to
creating smaller structures and to Bob's point the larger you build the more you have to sell it for the smaller you have obviously the more affordable it creates so I had a question what uh tiny homes if you don't change the lot size what's
good to have a 400t house on a 40,000 ft lot right that's what I I was going to talk about I mean what tiny homes doesn't mean anything unless you first change the Lots SI no you create uh little uh communities with the tiny homes with 1,000 foot Lots out of 400
squ foot house or something like that well what whatever it's uh a cluster you say okay it's a cluster development like a little cluster where the units are only 400 square ft because you can build a right now if you want to build a 400t house you're allowed to build it oh yeah you can I think the idea with these is
if I could is uh what I've seen actually there was some people that were trying to build them in fouth and they thought they were going to get legislation changed but it didn't work out yeah but their mobile they're on Wheels yeah and they Park them on a lot that's already there yeah and they were trying to sneak them in here and there but they're a
little bigger than to be registered registered Vehicles if you do it that way it's it's a registered vehicle that's what this says it is movable it's trailer so that's just one way it could be done you could do a village you could do or you can say you know sneak them in
if you got a two acre lot and you don't mind having it on there and you maybe if as long as it can't be visible from the street or something I don't know do they tie those tiny homes into the existing septic how does that work yeah they would likely do that um and again you
know considering separate tank the was comp it it could be a number of different things okay um especially considering where you are right right there's certain areas in town obviously that are more sensitive than others right um but you know the tiny home
conversation is um a little challenging considering where we're at with the future of the sewer and septic situation and is it similar with the Adu that you have to subtract a bedroom from the existing home if you're going to put a tiny home it well itot size yeah it
wouldn't necessarily the reason that comes into play is because that language is is written into your accessory dwelling unit by law okay um and so that requirement is only in the Adu uh by law itself and I will you know right say
that part of the um uh changes that we made to the uh Adu bylaw was LE well part of the changes I should say one of the things we left in was the requirement to keep the number of bedrooms depending on where you're located Coastal pwn overlay and Water
Resource Protection District it'll be interesting to see whether or not the Attorney General agrees with um with that language we just recently received an extension so we're not quite sure the reason for that but we have not been approved on that zoning bylaw Amendment as of yet so it will be interesting to
see whether or not environmental factors are allowed to regulate the number of bedrooms that you can have uh when you're talking about an Adu because don't forget adus are now a protected use just like solar and child care
you're not supposed to regulate them through a special permit you're really they're Allowed by right and the state has made that abundantly clear that they are not to be regulated essentially other than the size and the parking so thank you it's an interesting conversation yeah and where do tiny
homes separate from mobile homes my question Trax right difference because the size of the structure could be comparable and when you look at it trailer pox are the most efficient form housing that you could possibly have and
yet not all towns is owned for it I know sandwich has one uh and uh of course Wham has them mashby has one mashby yeah so uh you know we we've just never had that uh as part of our any bylaw or
zoning code that we've had in town we have a trailer park pretty close well it's on at the intersection of John Parker and Thomas Landers it's a trailer park really right John po Sunset something or other I've forgotten what his name is
Turner go down Thomas Landers going toward sandwich road on the right just about where John Parker comes in it's a campground it's a campground it's not that's not permanent house it's a trailer park but not a permanent it's not a permanent trailer park no people
come and go right yeah that it's a campg ground just like sipa wh it um yeah but um so yeah I I think you we talk about Workforce housing if we were talking about uh putting housing on the base I would
think that would be ideal uh for out out on the bases you have uh trailer parks out there that uh work force housing uh I always looked at the uh the sandwich road gate as a as a good location from that because you could have uh transportation starting up there
bringing people down uh into town and I always get on uh whenever we talk about affordable housing always bring up transportation we really need to work on Transportation on the cape uh people just don't have an efficient way of really getting around uh in order to to
live someplace and not need a vehicle I mean I grew up in a town where we had public transportation and you didn't need to drive everywhere so that's something that we we really need to bring into the mix I did ask Tom caher came to our select board meeting a few months ago and I did
ask him to if he's you know take into consideration that we have a lot of affordable housing on uh gford street now and now we have the YMCA coming there's other housing right up the road so we really are at the point where we need a a service going down uh sandwich
Road Brick hilm and gford yeah and he said he would take it into consideration so good maybe maybe we need to follow up with that and ask you know send another letter we were talking about that when we were looking at this locating the senior center up there that if the Senior Center went up there they would
have uh run buses up there mhm so yeah it takes a certain amount of mass for them to want to do anything with I I would hate to see a trailer park come to be our answer to affordable housing I I
maybe this is just a a Prejudice of mine it feels like it but it's a strong one yeah I mean it all depends on how how they done I mean there there were trailer pox and then there are trailer pox I think the principle is is what you're getting at it's it's smaller structures
come uh you know place close together in a in a sort of Village environment and and it can be 55 plus it can be a mix of age allowances but the general principle is that it's owned by one entity and those folks who are essentially renters
they buy the structure but they don't have land ownership I they're tremendously common all through the Midwest in the west yeah lots and lots of trailer parks and for the most part there used to be big ranches and Farms yeah and then the farmers discovered you know I can buy a bunch of these 10 can
houses cover my land with it and make a pile of money and they don't maintain them and they're just big outdoor slums and it it you can look at it and say wow I mean that's I wouldn't want to have to be there it's just too easy for it to
deteriorate it's hard to go backwards in terms in ter terms of size right so we're getting used to things that are larger right our structures are larger and now you're you're sort of you know not forcing but cre you know in your own mind you know if we're going to go from
the present close to 7 billion human beings to somewhere around 11 or 12 billion human beings things are going to get smaller we're not all going to have eight rooms to Rattle around in so you just know that's coming anyhow but that doesn't mean you have to you have to abandon the idea that you should have a
quality of life within those smaller spaces it really doesn't and it doesn't mean that you should enable the lowering of a quality of life even though it's less space I just and I know you're laughing at me and I know exactly why no I I think it would depend on it's like
uh any other developer that builds something they're responsible for maintaining it and how it looks and and all that I would see the same thing as a trail of Park and again I'm not talking about haven't one on Main Street or uh I'm I'm
looking at it that's something uh so you think it's something that should be hidden if it's hidden it's okay well yeah I've been told that if it's in hatchville it's hidden so uh why not you know I think if you've got something you want to hide you ought to think about fixing somebody can have fun with
this yeah that's what I was told by a zba member was it maybe two weeks ago I went in and I talked with Jed about tiny houses because on my cell phone I kept getting these ads coming through Amazon sells a tiny house that the picture
looks pretty attractive Del about $20,000 now the quality of it or the insulating capacity of it I have no clue but I also think about the 400 square ft is too small really remember the people
who came in here with the adus I think we had three of them with that particular Builder MH and they looked really good and these people wanted to continue working with people who were doing adus here so what I had approached
Jed on is that the town has because of tax payment default I think taken Lots I do not know how many or what size or anything like this if the town had several Lots on the sewer Town
water you could do a little Community like this right on that lot but it might be plunk right in the middle of some pretty big houses I have no idea where these Lots might be whether they exist or not but this would be a thing that could be done I think
well you look at the old pump station up there that that's a beautiful building that could be made into a bunch of units there and you could have some tiny houses you really could couldn't you Bob you're absolutely right yeah with that yeah J how close are we to it's not in the sewer it's right next to our our
water I don't know but I'd be concerned tiny house become drers well that's yeah Kim and I are looking into that into the seasonal Community designation yeah but somebody must have to see that we're not eligible we're not automatically within the seasonal housing yeah the cape cut
commission not recently issued or I'm forgetting if it was the k cut commission or the state issued a press release indicating certain communities made it um in fact I think we heard it at the one Cape Summit that we were at um but fouth was not part of that and
then there was debate on like well how do we apply to get in and you know they just weren't answers yet because the affordable homes Act is brand new why would we want to get in right what are what are the incentives right what could be some
drawbacks well if you're in tiny homes are a requirement right it's not an optional it's a requirement right the rest of the stuff that's in it appears to be optional and it doesn't appear to come with any money so I'm wondering what what would be our incentive to
apply yeah and and there's a little bit of confusion on tiny homes because as as of right now if you wanted to build a 400t home you could do that it's just people aren't choosing to do that is is one incent where you have two lots and one that was not buildable but with this
this uh seasonal uh incentive um community that now becomes buildable right so yeah there's there that that's that's an incentive there right they provide for that in itty bitty pieces of land that are kind of scraps yeah now you can put tiny houses on it yeah yes
but you would have to have it's almost like transfer development right you would have to have five other lots that you're merging with it to get that unless they're going to change the zoning and say no more 1 acre zoning it's going to be 10,000 square fet or 5,000 square fet tiny Lots to me doesn't mean anything unless you're changing the
zoning too that I don't see what difference does it make I suspect with you know sort of makes sense in my mind anyway that you know if you're designated as a seasonal Community you're saying in the summer months let's say we're just we're we have so many people coming in here and so the state
says well all right if you've got all these people coming in you need to house them so that means we're going to give you every available option so that you can create a bunch of housing so that when people come in they've got a place to live Su are work 4,000 right so I
think that's the general principle but more to come because this is all brand new but it's not going to happen to us cuz we would have to apply so it would take an affirmative action here before we would have to really delve into it all right who who applies for
that well it would be would it be the select board we've been looking at it we just discussed it at our last meeting and our question was what's the catch you know what's it make uh staff have to do I noticed that there was a couple of items that had reporting requirements
and so okay we didn't make any action on it we just kind of thought about it and talked about it the first pass and we asked staff to look into more you know what are we on the hook for if we go for
it well when you want to really know what's your incentive to do it at all not just what are we trapped into well I think the incentive is kind of not in our face tonight but it's you know how many people are living in unsafe conditions like I just just Envision
there's probably a lot of young people living 6 8 10 to a house I don't know for a fact of this but I imagine that there this must be happening because it's so hard to afford to live here yeah I I some of our families have been living in people's basements that's what
I'm saying yeah so that's unsafe you're safer in a trailer yeah than you are in a basement with no egress if there's a fire and you're potentially sleeping next to a oil burner that might not be evented to the outside and you know so
that's the urgency is just but we don't see it we don't it's not in our face oh and some are living in their cars too we read about this all the time hey I camped out over Sumas between winter and summer rentals when I first came
here yeah we've talked about this before FAS is a very unusual situation where we have the science community in Woods Hole and never we talk about affordable housing the students and researchers come in and say they need housing well some of these institutions who you for
example have land they have housing uh housing was approved by this board in the upper campus so maybe there should be an encouragement also in this case to reach out to a public private partnership with some of scientific institutions that might alleviate some
of those things which benefits their students and researchers as well well public private partnership means that the town would be appropriating money for this purpose either from Community preservation act money if they could do that or just adding it to the
budget that housing is so important we're now going to underwrite some of it in Partnerships do you remember the proposal I think it was Mr glo's proposal for um housing up by the depot and it was similar to the housing that actually got built across foro
channel in Boston where the um apartments are very very tiny and I don't remember the square footage but they were so tiny they were doing Lofts to get in extra beds kind of thing really very little ones but they had um in addition on the ground floor and not
only on the ground floor they had um public meeting spaces so everybody in the building plus their guests could now come down here and be in a lounge or any amenity you wanted to have um would be there but the actual Living Spaces are very tiny so you can fit in a lot of
them that actually was do you remember the proposal I the edic is still working on that they're trying to renegotiate their lease with uh Mass Department of Transportation to allow for that because right now what they have for lease only allows them to run the bus station I
believe so they're trying to change the language in that to get permission to do that housing the immedia to butter really didn't want it to happen there's a few of Butters that don't and you know there is a lot of traffic on that road so they might have a a legit complaint but yeah but ideal
for housing yeah yeah and would be tiny but it's all sort of in one building okay there was something that got mentioned and I forgot what I was going to say about it but uh I think uh Jed mentioned 55 and up housing and I don't
know how that is legal in this state because to me that's discrimination it's age discrimination and yet we're allowing whole developments to be just 55 and and above I don't think any Housing Development should discriminate by age because you could stop
discriminated by anything and uh you look at uh the Dome there yep there's four units of Workforce housing but there's all those other units that are restricted to 55 yeah 55 yeah up so I I don't see how that's fair I mean I couldn't advertise for a roommate and
say I want somebody 55 and above for a roommate uh that's discrimination so I I don't know true I don't know how the state gets away with that that I believe that 55 component there only is regards to Title
5 told my wife because it reduces from 110 gallons per bedroom because you have older people and I think they they they make it less so it allows you to get more bedrooms in but that's where that comes from it's a Title 5 play they still had to have commercial property to
to to build it it's not a zoning it's a Title 5 issue yeah okay I did the math on that yeah yeah yeah I don't know how that's so so they need to change it to be bad I had suggested do you want to make your suggestion I'd love to P
has some considering that it's not 7:15 it's 8:15 and we've got at least half of this agenda to go at this point if not more and as far as I understand we have nothing for the agenda for our next meeting on the 25th of March is that still correct J we have things that
carried forward to the 25th we did I think so just give me a minute and I I will double check yes there's nothing on our agenda oh uh shall we adjourn for tonight and continue with this agenda going forward since we have a lot of
people here interested in it second I I it's a big enough issue too yes yeah I know I want to spend the time yeah I I I I'm all in favor of that okay so all in favor I guess right well it's made in second we're going to have
to take a vote any further discussion all in favor all [Music] right e e e e e
e e e e e e e e e e
e e e e