welcome and good evening all to the uh planning board's public forum on MBTA communities um at this time I would like to call the meeting to order and begin by introducing the planning board members and the staff this evening great uh first if you'd like to go ahead
and introduce yourself cheryl Tagayas secretary Magiel member Sean Fehee member Jim Davis member and Meredith Hall serving as chair um with us we have our staff members Cheyenne Cheyenne
assistant director and Julia Julia Perfect great thank you and to lead the presentation this evening um many of you have been following the presentations um but we have with us um Matthew if you'd like to introduce yourself from UTIL sure i'm I'm Matthew Lutella principal
UTIL um I uh am joined virtually by uh associate principal Zoe Mueller who's been helping with this project and really running it she has COVID so she's going to stay in the background but she'll be there if we need her
um uh we've been helping uh the town with the 3A compliance scenarios since I believe 2023 we helped with the the first scenario that went to town meeting in 23 um and we were re-engaged last year to come up with alternative
scenarios uh moving forward that we'll go through tonight would you like me to start and yes and I just want to say these are not final scenarios so I don't want anyone panicking if you see something that you're concerned about that you want to comment on these this is sort of a point
in time where the planning board is um with our different um planning initiatives um just even since our subsequent meeting there were some things that were being tweaked um we're pretty far along in the process so these are really more minor things that we're
we're looking at right now but um as you'll see it's a complicated process with the model and when one change is made it affects a whole different district so um there's certain things that we we will need to be in compliance so um just so you know every this is not
the final final but we wanted to come to you to get public input as soon as as we felt like we had something ready to move forward so just to make that clear so yes Matthew go ahead thank you um next slide please
um so some of you may have been involved in this process some uh maybe new i think this is a good juncture to um do a quick review of the requirements of the law and where we stand in terms of timeline um an introduction to some of
the subdists that we're considering um some of them are carryovers from before some of them are new um and then the planning board has asked us to look at three um three scenarios so the first is the one that uh went to town meeting um
uh in 23 the rapid transit community plan um the planning board has asked us to look at two what we call hypothetical alternative plans that meet uh different requirements um one is the hypothetical adjacent community plan and the other is we call the statute plan and I will
explain what those are uh the majority of our time has been spent on the first one but again the planning board wanted us to explore these other potential pathways uh next slide please okay so I will um as best I can I
will go through uh the sort of the requirements of the law and the um and and the background um the MBTA communities section 3A law uh requires towns and municipalities with access to
public transit to create a multif family uh zoning district um there are three basic requirements um a minimum gross density of 15 units of uh per acre um that a certain number of those units be located within a half
a mile of a commuter rail station or a subway station or a ferry terminal um and then uh this last piece is uh we call flexible that um these units cannot be restricted to um the elderly or certain certain you know individual
populations that they need to be um uh suitable for families um the the statute itself uh asks for a district of a reasonable size the regulations that are attached
to that um end up defining that um and so for the various different kinds of communities uh that are that are categorized here rapid transit commuter rail adjacent um those requirements are different uh Milton has been classified
by the state as a rapid transit community because of the proximity of the the red line um and that results in a sort of minimum multi-unit capacity as a percentage of the hazard units we call it 25%
um and then associated with that is a certain minimum land area that's required for this district um and for Milton that's 50 acres so we will talk a little bit more in detail about that but you can see from the map um the various different kinds of communities that um
are being asked to meet this requirement um again summer rapid transit around Boston and then you get into adjacent and um commuter rail communities next slide um so uh as you many of you know
the the law was challenged um it went to the Supreme Court uh the Supreme Court upheld the statute um there were um but the guidelines themselves the regulations as we call them were u put
into a little bit of a limbo um there was an emergency order that um sort of held them held them to but they were sort of finalized and ratified and approved final regulations approved um just recently on April 14th um uh one
thing that came of this was that uh there is essentially a new deadline for compliance um because of all the legal activity it's moved it up um to July uh so July is is the July 14th is
the deadline for um for the town to apply uh uh district compliant application uh next slide so uh the the attorney general has
um uh issued a warning and some of these are in the in the law itself that um if towns do not comply that um civil action civil enforcement action is is possible um and then as well as potential loss of funds from a certain list of programs
that include housing choice local capital project fund mass works um things of that nature and then there's another sort of long list of discretionary grant programs that might also be impacted next
slide um this is a a map that shows uh the various states of compliance for all the MBTA communities uh uh in the Commonwealth um some have already submitted compliant zoning districts some are in compliance
because they're in the process and they've registered uh their intent to do so uh but there are as of right now um four non-compliant communities that include Milton but also Middleton Marshfield and
Halifax next slide okay i will try my best to summarize some of the requirements to uh maybe demystify some of the the rule set um the um the law requires communities with rail access or adjacent to rail
access uh to have at least one one multif family zoning district um multif family means either three units or uh two units in two buildings um and it another key part of
this is that it's it's required to be as of right in other words um the allowance can't be subject to a special permit um you can require site plan review but um there needs to be a sort of definitive as of right entitlement um to that
zoning uh that zoning's allowances um there are a few uh sort of important requirements which is um you are not allowed to um require ground floor commercial um and no restrictions on age
number number or size of bedrooms or the number of occupants and uh the intention there in the text that's on the lower left is to um again not use other kinds of restrictions to to be an impediment to the the enabling of multif family
housing uh next slide um important definitions um I mentioned the first one uh multif family housing it's one building with three units or two buildings on the same lot uh each
with with two units um and then gross density is a very important concept um it's basically units per acre and the baseline for most communities for all communities is 15 units per acre um but it includes um everything within the
district including uh public rights of way recreational space civic space it's not that all that area can be developed but in terms of how that gross density is measured it's sort of the it's the entire package um it does exclude
wetlands and non-developable sort of flood plane areas but for the most part uh that is how they define sort of gross density u next slide um there was an amendment to the
regulations um uh sort of halfway through um this process uh which did allow a certain amount of your district to contain what's called mandatory mixed use in other words that would be a
district where you could require uh ground flooror uses to be commercial or retail or or restaurant things of that nature um there was a limit to it how it could be deployed it it it can't be um more than 25% of your minimum capacity
in other words there's a limited amount to which you can use that to reach your unit capacity um and the second important thing is that those units uh and those districts can't contribute to your acreage requirement or your overall
density calculations so they're just contributing to the sort of the unit count piece next slide please um a few more rules so um 50 acres is the sort of minimum size of the
district um it can be split into multiple separate subdists um so long as each of those separate chunks are a minimum of five acres um the other rule is that um at least one of the districts needs to be
big enough to represent 50% of all the other you know of the entire district itself so you need one big piece um and then you need um then the rest can be sort of spread around um the other condition is that um half of the of your
area and the and the capacity needs to be within a half a mile of transit stations um in Milton um the formulas that the state has put forth uh require quite specifically a
minimum of 2,461 units um of zoned multif family capacity um and an average of at least 50 50 units per acre um and again 50% of that has to be within a half mile of transit
station um very very important to understand that that capacity uh in terms of the unit count is a theoretical amount it is not an obligation to develop that housing it is not an
obligation to displace any existing uses um it is um simply a kind of mathematical model of what was what would be possible given the the parameters of the zoning if all of those parcels were vacant and everyone would
build as of right um so again not a prediction of what will happen but it is a a theoretical sort of uh numerical target next slide please think we're missing SL maybe if you go
back you go back one more okay never mind i'll I'll I'll keep going if you go to the next slide oh um so uh Milton's transit station area here is represented in in two
shades uh you see the orange area uh are those those parts of the town that are within a half a mile of the the red line extension and then the darker sort of um purpley color is areas that are within a
half a mile of the commuter rail station and um this second adjacent scenarios community um that we were asked to to look into reacts primarily to the commuter rail station adjacencies the
the the major um 25% or rapid transit community scenario uh is responding primarily to that um that Matipan trolley uh area that's depicted in mostly sort of
orange uh next slide please so this is a sort of quick summary of some of the requirements that apply to each of these um scenarios um as I mentioned uh the state has designated Milton as a rapid transit community that comes with obligations
listed here in that left column 15 units an acre 25% uh designated housing stock 2460 units um 50% within that um Manipan
trolley station area um and then again 50% um is your sort of minimum sort of major zone and then 50 acres the uh adjacent community scenario which is a a different standard uh which applies to
communities that um do not have rapid transit and do not have a commuter rail station but are adjacent to a community with a commuter rail station uh the requirements are different it's still 15 units an acre of
density uh but the housing stock number in other words the minimum number of units is much less it's at 10% so this is based on how the state has sort of categorized the various sort of uh responsibilities of different kinds of communities based on their proximity to
public transportation so that number is 985 um uh 50% of it um uh and by the way in an adjacent community there is no obligation to be within a half a mile of the stations that geographic requirement
does not apply uh but you still need at least one acre that's 50% of the the total uh size of the district um and you still need 50 acres um this third scenario um was something that was asked
of us um a little while ago uh we call it the hypothe hypothetical statute plan so the the law consists of the statute which is the literal wording of the law um that wording refers to regulations
which is which is where all the detailed guidance comes from we were asked to prepare a scenario that disregarded the regulations and looked just specifically at the letter of the law which is um fairly brief um I will talk about it in
more detail but um as far as we can tell um all it's telling us to do is to achieve 15 units of an acre um and to have 100% of our land within the station area there are no um sort of express um
capacity requirements the size of the district is categorized as reasonable there isn't some specificity there so um we've done what we can to interpret it and we can share those sort of results with you okay um next
slide okay this is the slide I thought was missing but it's not um so how do we determine these capacities you're going to see a lot of numbers um associated with these scenarios the state has supplied a fairly complex um Excel
workbook model um in which you put all the various parameters of your zoning so setbacks parking requirements the number of floors you might allow floor area ratio um minimum lot size there's a whole
bunch of parameters that can restrict and shape development in a certain way the this mathematical model takes all the existing uh has the data of all the existing parcels in terms of their sizes and it u it
computes essentially an estimate of how much error you have to develop once you put in all those rules right um and it tallies those up and it gives you a computation of how many units there are and by extension how many units per acre
you are so these this is the sort of the model if I refer to the model um it's a very intense um multi-page spreadsheet that um that helps us to to comply that the the model itself is the um mechanism
to for the for the state to ascertain compliance so the the Excel workbook is it's locked we can't change the parameters it's a kind of uh ironclad computer of sorts um again those estimates are not a prediction of
development um they're really just a kind of theoretical or hypothetical uh tally of what is might generally be possible under under certain kinds of zoning uh next slide please um it's important to talk about
the schedule um we are right now at that orange dot that says 417 public forum um as Meredith mentioned you can see we've been meeting with the planning board with some frequency um with the hope of iterating more and
more kinds of refinements and options and testing things you'll see this is a very multivariable kind of problem uh but the planning board has asked us to turn over every stone and um this was an important moment in time that required I
think a sort of a pause and official uh sort of gathering of people and getting public input um because the clock is ticking um the the final application to the state is due on July 14th there is I
believe a u a town meeting planned for June 16th uh at which this vote will take place and in order for that to happen we back up to May 16th um in terms of a date for delivering uh producing and delivering the final
warrant um so um there's a sort of parallel thing that's happening here you'll see the the the state offers a a a pre um they offer a review uh of compliance
for compliance before um a a response is submitted to them um thatund 90day state time frame is sort of um begun a little bit um we understand that they might be willing to
work with us to um review something on a shorter time frame um I believe they began to review um the last submission i'm not sure they ever issued a final compliance on it but um they're starting from a place of familiarity and we've
been in communication with them as well about some of the decisions that we're making uh next slide please okay I'd like to first go over um all of the subd districts that we're using in
these various scenarios um particularly the rapid transit and adjacent community scenarios um you'll see um uh they're all colorcoded in various ways those of
you who are um familiar with the 2023 uh plan will notice that there have been some sort of new districts added to the south on Rolph A um as well as the paper mill site on Truman Parkway over to the
west there the bulk of the the sort of middle of the district along Elliot Street and around Matipan Station those are largely still there um and then you'll notice in East Milton
that um uh we are still retaining uh Granite Avenue North i'll let Cheyenne plug in here is that you or me no I think it's you is there a power cord knock on that door the IT guys can
probably help you come out of the closet i probably do there's a power there they unplug it again great there we go thank you sure thank you i just ran out of batteries
so this is an overview of the various districts we will get into them in in more detail and how they're deployed in sort of different scenarios uh next slide please um I'll walk through sort of each one
we've we've prepared a kind of a a more u aerial view detail to show you um a little bit more detail so you can really see what these districts are um these are the Milton Station districts which
consist of Milton Station West it wraps around like this something we call Milton Station Bridge and then Milton Station East um on this side um this is fully in the transit area and is the one
area where we are proposing to exercise that mandatory mixeduse uh uh aspect that I discussed um there is a desire I think to retain some of the the retail character of this neighborhood and um
this seemed like a good fit um next slide this is the Matipan station area um there's an existing uh multif family here as well um and some additional smaller lots have been added um this is
an area in which uh I believe we're proposing 5,000 minimum square foot parcels um with one unit for the first 5,000 and then one square,000 square feet for the additional it was a balanced way to navigate sort of
connecting a much larger multif family parcel with some of these smaller parcels next slide um adjacent to that is the Blue Hills Parkway corridor um this is a district where we're proposing a 6,000
square foot minimum parcel size um and you'll see when we get to the dimensional tables that um a lot of the dimensional parameters for this district resemble um uh some of the the parameters that we're proposing for Elliot Street as well uh next
slide um and then this is the Elliot Street corridor which um you will see is actually broken into tiers based on uh the various lot sizes um but it is fully in the transit station it provides the
sort of bulk of the compliance for the the the access and proximity to transit um it also provides that remember we have to have at least one district that is um at least 50% of the overall area this
plays an important role in that and it also helps to um connect um uh some of the Milton station areas to Madapan and Blue Hills Parkway as well um you'll notice that it's it's sort of cut off
right here where we get to Milton Station but it's also excludes the the historic district that you see outlined in blue here as well uh but generally it's organized along Elliot Street um with more or less uh sort of a thousand
thousand foot sort of catchment um from the various um trolley stations uh next slide um Granite Avenue North uh is probably the most remote of these
parcels you're probably all familiar with it um it's where you um go under 93 towards Dorchester um uh those of you who may be familiar with earlier schemes may remember that uh this parcel Granite Avenue South which
is uh belongs to the the DOT was also part of the scenario that has been eliminated from these scenarios uh for a couple of reasons uh one is its eligibility uh for putting in our plan was the fact
that it had been mentioned in your housing production plan that production plan has has expired um in addition Mass DOT has indicated that they do not have any plans to um sell that parcel or
convert it to residential use um previously uh Granite Avenue North and South were considered a quote unquote contiguous district uh because uh HLC allowed us to interpret it that way
because you know there's really no other way to connect in conversations with HLC they've indicated that they would allow a district less than five acres in this condition here because really there was no practical way for it to abut or connect to any other
parcel so we are including it there um a little bit with an asterisk but based on um a relatively production productive conversation with HLC uh next slide please uh the paper mill site is a new site
that has been added um it's a site on which uh there's a current overlay I believe a brownfield overlay that already allows for 90 units um it's a challenging site obviously there's
difficult access to it um and uh developers have not yet figured out a way to do it uh economically um this is also another site where um HLC is allowing us to or at least entertaining
the idea of a parcel that is less than 5 acres and again for the same reasons because it can't be sort of reasonably considered contiguous with anything else it's separated by uh a DCR property by the MBTA right ofway it's a kind of
unique condition and uh they've indicated a willingness to consider that as a standalone district uh next slide please um and then we have two parcels
or or sort of small districts on Randolph A 7-eleven Randolph A is is uh a site on which I believe there are already plans to develop uh I think it's in the neighborhood of 90 units um
uh there was a 40B process that I think has been uh sort of concluded and I believe that they have their they're entitled now um so the logic was to sort of use that pre-existing entitlement to overlay it seemed like a natural to
overlay uh a multif family district and then um on the other side of the street if you go to the next slide there are um uh four parcels on the other side of A as well um and I believe one of them already has a a 40B
proposal in the works um three of these parcels are under common ownership believe they're separated by a public right of way um and this district um is um is compliant in terms of its
accessibility and its and its size um it abuts I should say um a lot of town-owned uh land in the back uh next slide please
so I will talk through the how these various districts uh were combined to form um a uh a a compliant zoning version or let's call it a draft of of one scenario that would
meet the MBTA rapid transit community uh requirements again these are the targets that we're trying to hit um in terms of the metrics um if you go to the next slide
um uh a little highlight of again I touched upon a few of these things but a little highlight of um some of the the ways in which this particular proposal is different from the 2023 warrant article as I mentioned um Granite Avenue
South has been removed uh uh East Milton Square has been removed as well um there have been some sort of boundary changes around the Matipan station um
there was a little bit of a swap between uh Milton station east and west that was a sort of a subtle refinement um but the the physical sort of boundary of the Elliot Street corridor remains mostly in
place uh next slide please um this was the uh townwide map that was proposed in 2023 um you can see there's that sort of core area of East Milton um I'm sorry of of Elliot Street
um and Matipan and then the sort of the East Milton districts here as well granite Avenue North south and uh East Milton Square uh the next slide shows um the current proposal um
it retains by and large this sort of central piece that uh we had in the last time but again as I mentioned has added um a couple of new parcels um the paper mill 3A district site here on Truman
Parkway um those two areas along uh on Randolph A um and then as you can see Granite Avenue North is still here but obviously a big reduction in terms of uh the the presence of 3A in East Milton
based on the removal of those other sites so in general the districts have um maintained a strong presence along the LA Street corridor but the the center of gravity has moved a little bit west and a little bit
south uh next slide please um these are the districts that um uh play a role in the um proximity to the red line so we're calling them the sort of the red line corridor districts um
the red line runs along this edge of town the northern edge of town um these are the areas that meet that that requirement for being within a half a mile of the the stations um there's something I just want to point out if
you notice that Milton station west and east have a kind of hatch on them um that's signifying that um we are proposing that those uh conform to the the mandatory mixed use so those are districts in which uh multif family
housing would be allowed on upper floors but uh there would be a requirement that the ground floor uh be reserved for um non-residential uses uh next slide
okay this is the sort of the compliance table and some of you may have um seen us developing this before but it's really a summary of the all the districts on the left and I believe we have more
districts than any other 3A community I've worked on that's that's for sure uh in fact you've broken the computer model we've had to like use several different models at once that's right um uh the uh it's broken into the what
we call the key model inputs so you enter the various zoning constraints uh that may or may not be applicable to that district uh so in some cases it's a it's a maximum units per acre uh for
some it's it's a floor area ratio that's a kind of measure of the density of built area um there is a uh maximum unit per lot uh which is different from units per acre
there is a minimum lot size in other words the the minimum size that u a parcel would be eligible for this um we have maximum parking spaces per unit uh maximum building height um and then a
minimum amount of open space and so we've used most of these uh parameters in most of the districts but some of them um don't apply for various different reasons what you're seeing on the right hand side are the kind of
outputs so um the model gives us a kind of estimate of the total number of units in each each district it calculates the acreage the total acreage of that district and then there's something called the density denominator so that
is the acreage once you have subtracted undevelopable land meaning wetlands flood planes things like like that and that's the number you use to get your density so when there are wetlands around um you get a little bit of a
density bonus if you will um uh that results in what's called the model density um and then um all of these numbers feed into the the basic sort of compliance metrics so
we have in this particular scenario uh out of a required 246 2461 units we're we're reaching one unit above that um in terms of the the model density uh we're required to get
to 15 and and this particular scenario is at 15.71 um I want to point out another thing which is that um these areas in in pink are districts that are new since
the 2023 warrant um and then um wherever there's this other tone it's yellow on my screen but it looks a little greenish up here um that indicates where um some of those parameters have been changed or refined since the last
version um I want to point out um a few things here uh namely that um uh there's been a lot of attention to really refining the Elliot Street into a number of different uh tiers so um
there's a 6,000 square foot minimum tier right that allows three units and has a maximum F of five there's a 10,000 foot tier that gets you to four units but your F is now lowered and the logic sort of continues um
uh the other uh I think um and again those are those are really refinements over the last um scenario that that we've looked at why don't I go to the next slide
which shows where we were um in in 2023 um the there was slightly more units there were slightly lower density um we had fewer units in the Elliot Street corridor um you'll notice that
Granite Avenue South which was producing a lot of units has been removed um as well as East Milton Square so close to um 950 950 or so units have been removed
removed from East Milton generally um uh and then as I mentioned before um we've added to to sort of replace those um some of the parameters for Elliot Street have been sort of tweaked a
little bit um and we've added those those three or four other extra districts as a way to sort of make that up um why don't I keep going because we have two other scenarios we need to get through and then we can cycle back i'm sure there's some questions and this is
a little bit of a summary of um some of those changes from the 2023 again uh sort of reducing 930 units in East Milton um and then um adding more units to both Elliot Street and Blue Hills U
Parkway corridors uh next slide please okay so this is this is the adjacent community plan this is a plan that uh again hypothetical because the state has not designated Milton as an
adjacent community but if it were to to designate Milton that way um the density requirements are the same the the minimum acreage is the same the real difference is that um there isn't a
station proximity requirement and um the number of units is much lower at 985 if you go to the next slide um so the rapid transit community um this is one pathway and if you go to
the next slide uh it's a kind of a flowchart that uh explains some of the logic right um if you're not near rapid transit station um do you have your own commuter rail
station no and we end up down here if we sort of follow this logic in the in the regulations uh we end up here as an adjacent community with the associated numbers that we've discussed um next slide
please uh so to get to those lower numbers um we did several things we removed the Milton station districts uh we removed Granite Avenue South we
removed uh East Milton Square um and if you go to the next slide uh we also put the Elliot Street corridor on a on a diet if you will so um all these black parcels are ones that
have been removed for this scenario um and the the Elliot Street corridor has been reduced to essentially just those parcels that abut Elliot Street um but that gives us um the the right amount of
contiguity it connects us um to the Blue Hills Parkway and Manipan Station districts uh next slide um so these are where the the numbers um leave us we're getting to exactly 15
units an acre uh we're getting just slightly above 16 units above the sort of minimum compliance target um we have I believe come closer to some of the more original parameters in the Elliot
Street corridor for instance a limit of three units per lot um in each one of those um and some adjustments as well um uh to Randolph A uh oh we've also included Randolph A and the Paper Mill
site as well in this in this scenario as a way to balance things out okay the statute plan uh as I mentioned the the law consists of the statute which is the tight legal
language that then refers you to the regulations uh the planning board wanted to know if we just listened to the language of the statute and disregarded the regulations what would a district look
like and what would the capacity be um the statute gives us a little bit of guidance but not a ton uh we know that we need a district that allows multif family housing we know that we need a minimum gross density of 15 units per
acre um and that the district be located not more than a half a mile from a commuter rail station a subway station ferry terminal or bus station um so there's a little bit of interpretation that's required um uh
particularly what reasonable size means um so we did our best to sort of break this down and see see what that would look like you go to the next slide um so you'll see in this chart that it
doesn't tell us how many units we need doesn't give us any targets in terms of that um the language implies that the entire district needs to be within a half a mile of the the station area um and
there doesn't seem to be any requirements about contiguity um next slide please so these are all the areas that are within a half a mile of a commuter
rail station um there's the Blue Hill A there are these sort of slivers around the Fairmont and then a little tiny chunk down by Reedville um the um the total of these areas um if
you just added them up what you're seeing here in purple is about 74 acres um total um the actual amount of developable land that is just privately owned parcels um is really about half of
that at about 37 and a half acres um the majority of these uh sites are single family there are some two families um and then there's a few um other what we call other residential condos or or or multif
family uh next slide please um so if we look at these areas in more detail this is Blue Hills Fairmont and Reedville we've rotated them a little bit just so you don't get disoriented included a north arrow here
um again we don't know what reasonable means in terms of the size but um we thought it was reasonable to at least try to develop a district that felt coherent um made sense and didn't have
certain fragments that may or may not partially be in the city of Boston and not have access um and so if you go to the next slide uh we sort of settled on a slightly cleaner version of of what that
half mile radius looks like you'll see in each of these drawings that the radius goes like that in general we've included any parcel that kind of touches that um and what we come out with if we
simply um uh if we tally all of these areas um and divide by 15 units of an acre that's inclusive of roadways and other things so this is gross density um the
the numbers that we get to are around 780 units and um based on the the differences of these sites obviously one is more actually uh adjacent to shopping
and transit the others really are sort of orphaned by um geographical conditions and um rivers and things like that um we made some adjustments to what we thought might be you know uh the best
case scenario in terms of density putting a little bit more density in Blue Hill A a little bit less in Fairmont and Reedville but uh a collection of densities and sizes that got us to an average that was just
slightly above 15 units an acre now uh one other thing to understand about the statute plan is that when you're using the regulations the the previous tables the numbers that the model puts
out are only instances where the zoning has allowed multif family housing to be possible in other words it will exclude parcels that are too small to meet the requirements and count only parcels where that multif family you know three
units or more has been achieved without the regulations we don't really have those kinds of uh restrictions and so in this case um this is just 15 units 15.02 units per acre
across whether or not a tiny parcel could only get to one unit or four or whatever it was we counted all of the units that that were possible in that district and again this requires some interpretation
i'm sure there's probably several other kinds of legal ways of breaking this down but we've did our best to sort of understand what what that might look like generally um next slide may be ready for Q&A
great thank you very much um so any questions from the board before and we will open it up um to for folks to uh speak any questions at this time i'm good okay great all right so
um just pull this up see here sure so um at this time we will transition into the Q&A portion of the forum uh to keep things moving each speaker um we will allow three minutes um Julia will
be managing uh the timer in the room um raising her hand at this sec at the two and a half minute mark to indicate your time is almost up and again at the three minutes to indicate your time has ended for those who are joining us on Zoom
Cheyenne will raise the virtual hand at those same times to signal you um we did have two people who asked to speak a little bit longer one had a presentation so he is now going to come um to our meeting on the 24th to allow for more time for that um presentation but there
was one other person who asked if he runs over a minute and I had given him permission before we had set this so um with that um if you want to um do you have the list of the names or is that out
would you mind grabbing those and then we can just read off so we can keep everybody in order there is a signin sheet that's So if you didn't get a chance to sign in please feel free to add your name
so we can follow that great they use that as a signedin sheet rather than a speaker sheet oh I'm sorry a speaker sheet yes well you're going to have 80 speakers all right oh everybody signed it was a Okay i think you're going to have to ask you
know what then we'll ask for hands raised as people like to speak i think that's fair thank you yeah and you can move to the front when before you are ready to to speak but um Yes would you like just a quick question sure could you explain rapid transit
versus what's the process what are our odds of being sir can you come to the mic so so folks that aren't here can hear you thank you that's Jefferson 103 and could you explain a little bit
about the rapid transit Jason what happens there are they going to decide that for us are we going to excluded right if you could just Are people able to hear the question was the microphone
close enough yeah just he's asking Okay go ahead if you want to just repeat it the difference between the rapid transit the adjacent and the the hypothetical statute um what's the process for us being designated that and you know what you you give three scenarios what what's the likelihood of
each one happening so that's a great question and just miss that procedurally exactly thank you very much for for very very clear and concise description right so the regula the final regulations just came out since our last meeting so we I haven't really
we haven't really been able to discuss it but we have um they've maintained um Milton as classified is a rapid transit community um we have been in talk talk talks with HLC um as a significant number of the residents feel that we do
not have a um we don't have a subway in Milton we have a we are in a within a half mile of a commuter rail station so we have been um sort of advocating for the town on behalf um the other big issue which makes um the challenge and
and why we've been advocating to be in a different classification is that only half of the land area along the trolley station if you were going to consider that a trolley is on the Boston side which as you know we cannot zone Boston's exempt so we only have half the
land area but we're being asked to do the full 25% um and there's um just a recognition that um and even some the you know we've heard of the speaker of the house saying this week Milton doesn't have a train we have we have a
little crazy trolley so it's it's um it's it's a stretch to to call it um a subway and the towns that have a commuter station commuter line have a 10% requirement um and they have a significant greater capacity than what
we have so we do feel that there's a basis for for challenging this we're hoping to work still with HLC and we want to be compliant by July so that's our goal so you have to get them to decide before July so it's yes we're trying to work with HLC to to to iron
that out and um and to have a fair um anyical statute or or no is that that's that's sort of a basis for what the laws just recognizing what is the law and what is the difference between what the regulations are and there's question are
the regulations actually expanding upon what the statute actually says so okay is there any likelihood we might fall into that category or I I I or we don't know yet we don't know yeah but okay thank you thank you good question but yeah we Yeah
thank you yeah good evening everyone erin Bradley 28 Lincoln Street town meeting member precinct and I just want to say one thing before you start i'm just going to remind everybody because I can tell select board member select board member yes i and everyone in the community here
that this is a very you know people feel very strongly and very emotional about this on both sides as you know with the referendum so I'm just going to ask that all comments are respectful absolutely and the tone is respectful by everyone who speaks on either side of of this
issue so of course and that's what we should have at every meeting i hope we can thank you i just wanted to So Aaron Bradley 28 Lincoln Street uh town meeting member present for select board member i have a couple questions um one I heard you say that we are negotiating with HLC i'd like to know who's
negotiating with HLC at this I didn't we're we're in talks with HLC who so we have had our department staff um has reached out we so that one meeting that that they had like a month ago or like six weeks ago or is there more talks that are
happening there was talk um at that time of a follow-up meeting okay but there hasn't but there has we don't have a follow you would know if there's a follow that's what I was that's why I was like not at this we don't have we have not had we don't have a date for that okay and so the regulations that just came out that again says that we're
rapid transit um I think I heard you say that we are trying to change that and so I I wonder who's trying to change that because the only person or the only body that can do that is the select board correct so I'm curious as to why that's
being said here change us from rapid transit i think my understanding um in speaking with the town administrator is that the select board was waiting for the final regulations and no one knew what that was what the decision was going to be absolutely so um so my final question is and I'm sure you read this
in the paper today is um I have a big concern about how much money we've lost because we have not signed a piece of paper Madam Chair and so I I have concern on both this board and on the select board we've now lost over $1 million we're at like
1.17 of grant funding that we've lost because we wouldn't sign a piece of paper and so I'd like to know why this board why we should why that's okay you know we're looking at a $9.5 million override i have been advocating non-stop to be compliant with the law which right
now would only require us to sign a piece of paper so I guess I I personally would like to know why the the planning board feels that we don't have to do that and we don't have to follow that law well I don't want to speak I can't speak for the rest of the planning board we haven't had a chance to discuss the final regulations coming out no no no
this is before the final regs so I will say that the planning board has been advocating to do the best thing for the entire town and that is why we have not jumped into um the 19 the 2023 plan and we've been waiting to to work with the
state on what we think would be a fair treatment of of the town and who's working with the state again i mean you said staff but they haven't met recently and there hasn't been any discussion and the final ress are out so I I guess what I'm wondering is we are
not in compliance because we won't sign a piece of paper we are now sitting here and thank you to UTL for all the work that they've done it's been fabulous um we're now sitting here and we're looking at multiple different scenarios two of which do not fall in compliance i think we're at the threeminut point that's
sorry I'll stop um but but I'm just going to let me wrap this up so we are not in compments we welcome any written comments from community who's not here tonight also to speak i wanted to absolutely absolutely but we're not in compliance and so I guess my question to you and to all the members here why would it be that we're even looking at
something that's not within what the final regulations say so that's that's my piece and well the question was that the regulations weren't finalized they weren't properly promulgated as you know and now they are but that was just and we have not it was just last week I know it was last week so we this has been a
moving target um regulations have been changing they were guidelines now they're regulations so it's it's been a moving target i'll just say that okay but now that they've been are you going to comply with it i we need to discuss it as a board amazing thank you i I appreciate that and I look forward to
hearing more about it great thank you yes welcome good evening steer 49 Meadow Road great thank you first I'm a little confused on the format is supposed to be questions and answers of the guest speaker or is this supposed to be
questions and answer of the planning board and policy statements and endorsements to the planning board yeah this is really qu we want questions about the plans you know for people to be able to ask that if there's a question um that you can't answer we
will do our best to fill in but okay um my question for the guest speaker um in your introductory comments you referred to the m two matipan trolley line as an extension of the red line i'm
wondering if you're familiar with the fact that the MBTA board of directors in 1968 in their fourth annual report to the governor the legislature and the public specifically abandoned the extension of
the red line from Ashmore to Matapan i'm not aware of that i use the term not in a technical sense but it's just how I think of it is an extension of the red line that's different than well that's actually a term of art in terms of subways okay
um and actually two actual extensions of the red line that the MBTA constructed was the extension from JFK Mass to Brainree and the extension from Harvard to Airwife so the MBTA board of
directors specifically rejected and abandoned extension of the subway system from Ashmont to Matapan in 1968 um I'd also like to mention to the speaker that the Boston Globe on Sunday
February 11th 2024 published a column in which it said the trolley is not the subway and everyone knows that Milton should have received a different designation
and on April 11th Speaker of the House Mariano says Milton has a legitimate complaint over the MBTA housing board he said "If I felt that if I was the judge and I'm not all this all Milton has is this crazy little trolley car they don't
have a train they don't have a bus station." So I said "If I look at it they don't have enough to really be a full-fledged MBA MBTA community." Um so I would I would request that UTIL and the planning board uh comply with
the law which is the statute plan that's being considered by the planning board thank you that's a great time can I just Yeah through you i I would like to um clarify that UTIL is a consultant
working on our behalf we're not asking them to interpret the law uh or to provide legal guidance we're asking them best ways to zone uh by with the Thank you uh my name is Tom Callahan 16
Oro Street 4 um thank you for your for this forum and thank you for your work on this uh to date and and thank you to UTIL for for their work as well um I have a quick comment and then a question
that probably is for both the board and UTIL um not probably a surprise to those of you who know me um I am in support of uh putting before a 25% compliant plan in
in in front of town meeting i think um the state has spoken several times as most recently in Monday um they have made that very very clear that we are uh we were we continue to be we will always
be a rapid transit community um we some of us professionally have lots of connections to HLC um I see no interest in bending the rules for one
town with seven miles from the regional economic hub of downtown Boston so that's my opinion um the question I have is more a procedural one around town meeting you've presented three plans two non-compliant one
compliant here today um what is the plan for town meeting is plan for you to recommend one plan all three plans to go before town meeting and let town meeting decide obviously it's ultimately a town meeting decision at this point um and I
guess that's a question for the board and it's a question to you Teal in your experience in advising other towns what has what have other towns done in terms of that um have towns actually put before a non-compliant plan um in front
of town meeting um as the only option or as one of multiple options i can speak quickly to to what we've done in other communities um we've never worked with a community that's submitted a non-compliant plan um there is
generally in almost all the communities that we've worked in the final submission the final plan is one plan it's yes or no the um proposed amendments have to be controlled in a way so that they don't compromise its
compliance um Lincoln was a special case where they were out of the gate very early and so they had a a town meeting before the final town meeting to decide which of three schemes that they would proceed
with all compliant all compliant and then and then there was a fourth one that was added as a kind of an amended amended option but that that takes a lot more time and the board okay you know what that
time's up but I would be happy to I spoke for a lot less than three minutes was that We're just Julia's keeping we're just trying to get I'm just I know I'm just keeping the track i didn't know the answers were part of the three minute yeah that's all that we I'll say
we have not discussed it as a board because the regulations just came out so we have not had a chance to talk but consult so yes go speak for a minute that's to Mr
kelly um yeah at this point it's it's not possible for us to determine as a board whether we would submit to town to town meeting one plan two plans or three plans for approval you know our responsibility is to explore all of the
options and hopefully come to it it would be better if we could come to town meeting with one plan that would probably be best we're not sure if we can do that um I do want to address uh because I want to address rapid transit for a moment if I
could because the speakers that have come to the table so far have referenced rapid transit which leads us to the 25% um zoning requirement when the state sued Milton Milton responded to
defend itself within Milton's defense was an argument that Milton was not a rapid transit community the SJC ruling never answered never answered that argument
they left it alone so what they did say to Milton is if Milton wanted to adjudicate the 25% the rapid transit classification Milton has the opportunity to do so so
that opportunity remains for Milton to adjudicate whether or not we are a rapid transit community because that is up in the air and Milton has the opportunity to adjudicate that if it wants we have a responsibility as
a planning board to explore all options so it's for that reason that we're not focused only on the 25% we would be irresponsible as a board to ignore the fact that that's not been adjudicated uh and ignore the other alternatives
which are the three that we have currently presented tonight uh through UTL and I hope that makes sense not only for the audience here tonight but for everybody in the community until that is going to be definitively decided is
if Milton either decides to accept that yes okay we'll accept that we're a rapid transit community or no we don't accept that we're a rapid transit community and we want that adjudicated and we are going to go back through the courts to adjudicate that until that happens one
or the other um we would be mistaken as a board to ignore the other alternatives meredith can I make a comment come to the mic please can I just make a a comment though finishes please
well that's new information i don't think anything's new there that's that's all that's all public i think what you're what I'm hearing and correct me if I'm wrong is uh doubling down on the legal strategy to sue the state that's not my decision that's not I I am not saying that we are it's not
it that's not a decision that this board makes but the town has the opportunity to adjudicate if we have an opportunity to adjudicate lots of things but we don't take advantage of that and you seem to be endorsing a legal I'm not endorsing anything i'm providing
information that hopefully brings some clarity for everybody that's here okay so can I just um add to a little bit more context the Milton did not submit an action plan uh by the deadline of
February 13th or 14th I think so currently we are deemed uh out of compliance and ineligible for uh quite a number of grant programs i think there was some reference to that by Miss Bradley earlier and there continue to be
um new ones that were ineligible for ones as recently as a week ago that we just found out about and we will if we do not submit zoning that is compliant with our with the regulations um by July
13th or 14th um we will remain um out of compliance and we will u continue to be ineligible for grant programs but we could also be uh subject to uh enforcement action by the attorney general like we were um a year ago so
those are uh that's the context of which we talk about whether there's legal action there are consequences um to this decision um and we have talked as a board about having a zoning that is compliant and that um if for some reason
uh another path were were found um how might that look uh I think um it's important for the community to understand what these could look like uh what we are though realistically and the way the state views us realistically and
what we are um what the sacrifices that we're asking uh residents to make in terms of being out of compliance and and Cheryl if I could and the schedule that is in the packet walks us right to that deadline of July right so
it it is it is it is our intention to use the time that we have u to up until that period of time in July Our goal is to be compliant if we can yes um sorry you were next and then
and we have see people on Zoom probably john Driscoll 718 Randolph B sir could you put up the access road please [Music] you might uh Cheyenne you might go to the aerial view
of earlier in the slideshow it's the 2025 yeah map so all right you don't have my house in that thank you but I do live in that area i live on Randolph F and this is a big snowball
it's coming my way i'm not you know these people all want this and that's not too good to one neighborhood all right they're adding 37 units to a neighbor a project that already had 90 and it's a very dangerous site that
entering out and go out and the access road i fought to get the light for that 40B so that's coming back behind me i invested a lot of money to get that light and now it's going to come out good for the town but I'm going to tell everybody here when you get a foot of
snow you're going to end up with 15 to 16 in on those sidewalks the town does nothing for that neighborhood absolutely nothing for that neighborhood so all these people you're going to put in that neighborhood they're all saying they're going to get the bus where are they going to stand there's nowhere to stand
the town does nothing for that street so I live on that street when you get 12 inches of snow there's at least 15 to 16 inches on the sidewalk so everybody better start thinking about who's going to maintain that stuff for all these people you want to move in because the
town does nothing thank you thank you okay i think who was next yep you can come up and then Hi good evening everybody i'm Doug Hine i'm at 453 Elliott right in the middle
of the Elliott Street corridor um I just got a couple questions for you guys um so Tom had mentioned that you you you don't know exactly how many plans you're going to submit to town meeting i get that like what's the metric of how you're going to decide how many plans to
submit a slightly different question i'm just trying to think what are you guys weighing in terms of how are you going to make the decision because and I guess this is another question you have to have a decision made by is it May for the June town meeting because that's
only a month so that's kind of my question is what's the metric that you guys is it feedback from the public is it is it town council weighing in what what what is it it's the select board's decision over I think really what what ultimately will get submitted um in discussions um obviously we haven't had
a chance to talk the regulations just came out um but there will be a conversation with the select board and it will be the select board will make that decision okay and comm feedback from the community obviously is very important so okay so you guys are going to come up with the plans make your recommendation and then it's the select
board's call we'll have multiple scenar whether or not to submit an article okay i think something definitely will be submitted i but I thought the planning board had to submit the article well we will we come up with the articles and we will we will have something to submit
based on the decision of the direction okay select board so you guys are going to submit and I'm and I'm not putting words in your mouth i'm sorry if I sound like a like I'm trying to do that so one of the metrics will be the feedback from the select board i'm just trying to figure out like how
We have not had a chance to discuss so I we can't do it tonight we're this isn't the the opportunity but we will be discussing it as the board what we would like to put forth to the select board and we'll have to consult with town council as well okay so let me ask you a slightly different what are the uncertainties what what do you have to
resolve in your mind before you're able to make a firm decision what plan or plans to recommend to town meeting what are the unknowns from that to be to be honest with you sir it would really be good to hear some feedback on what's up
here on the screen we have you Teal here thank you i mean if if there are residents here that see their neighborhoods up there or on the edge of a neighborhood and they have some questions you know we're here tonight to hear feedback on on a on the in this public forum on the presentation we can
we can sit here and go back and forth with every single person in the room tonight on the type of questions you're asking we don't have an answer for it but Matthew you don't know he's committed so many hours and so many days for a long period of time we'd like to utilize his expertise to really ask questions about what we presented by 3
minutes running so make my my opinions real quick number one I'm in the middle of Elllet Street i think the whole thing sucks but I'm committed to like having a compliant plan because I don't want to lose more money if you guys want to challenge it in court fantastic better yet get somebody to change the law that
would be a great way or get better yet get someone to clarify what the law is that's what the legislature should do i'd love to see that happen i don't think it's going to happen i'd love to see that happen in terms of the three plans that we have uh you know the only one that I could support would be the 25% plan because it is compliant if you
want to then go ahead and challenge the designation of the rapid transit I'm all for it um you know the the adjacent plan and then the madeup plan i don't even know where that came from so I I don't I don't agree with those so that's my feedback thank you for your time i and I really do appreciate your your work i I do thank you when you say the whole
thing sucks do you mean the plan no no is it the 25% mandate from the state or is it the work we've done or what what sucks i think the MBTA communities act is terrible i think it was passed at the very end of a co short session nobody read it and nobody knew what it was and
they said "Okay you figure it out." And then these regulations came out but this is what regulations do they they fill in the gaps they are they do have the force of law and and nobody voted on those it wasn't like the product of like hearings in the public that the legislature
weighed in on it was just kind of done by people that were unelected so that's what I think sucks i agree thank you so anyway thanks guys okay so all right we want to give opportunity for everyone to speak so sorry yeah the neighbors and
then Yeah hi I'm Lisa Leo 26 Wildcart Road i'm right next to Brush okay i'm Lisa Leo i live at 26 Walcott Road i'm next to Brush Hill in the corner of Walcott in Brush Hill and I'm
just getting involved in this process because it seems like through the past year or so it has impacted me so now I just realized that um um a my whole
corner of these of of my neighborhood is all 10 acres of it approximately is being added and I'm not really sure when it was added but when you look at it's all like these quirky little side roads
private roads meandering roads um horseshoe roads that connect to old homes and of course there's also Big Blue and I know there's several properties on Big Blue but I would like to know like what when was it added why
was it added um because and and is there a possibility that that could be excluded at some at some point due to the fact that it's just a very weird like they're they're little old homes
with We should put the plan up side roads matthew can we put this Can we put the Yeah can we Sorry can we put the slide up so we can speak directly to it yeah let's go back also the other question is Excuse me the other question is the hypothetical statute
um prop pro proposal seems uh there's a lot of legal questions around it which why would that be something that would be um viable when there's when you said there's so many questions
around it when the other plan seem the prior two plans or one plan seems pretty concrete that there aren't like a lot of legal questions around can I answer that question can I answer that Matthew if you don't mind the the the the questions
that Matthew referred to are the questions in terms of the calculations of of the compliance model allows for the calculations in the other districts much more um easily it it functions that
way but the one thing that's definitive is that these areas are a half mile from commuter rail stations that's that is as the crow flies Well they're all they're all as the crow flies but but um you know that is that is they're not like I
understand i understand uh but they are definitively with within a half mile so why are we examining why are we looking at it because we know it is within a half mile of a commuter station but but if we could look at your particular area
Reedville right which is station which is what's up so you see Brush Hill Road here at the bottom right hand corner and you can see what you had recommended which was to remove those two parcels um that are
circled right but it doesn't mean that we're going to support this plan because I know where you live and it's it's it's special it's it's all and this is the challenge that we're having with our 25% plan is it's
everyone's special i mean all Exactly we all feel that way and I understand that these you know all it makes it difficult and we're trying to put multif family housing where multifamily it's characteristic of the neighborhood so right and are those units what is the height rate range of those are they
three high we haven't even gotten that far yet that's something in the future that one will be fighting the the phrased um the phrase if you if you don't mind me u just bringing some clarity to it to say that it's added i I think a more appropriate um expression
would be that it's under consideration u because that's truly all it is it's under consideration we everything is under consideration where you know obviously you move from one you said earlier um uh you know it may not have
been it may not have had too much of your attention because it wasn't in your neighborhood you know when it was on granite a you might not have been paying too much attention to we had our fights over there understood so so as as we've explored alternatives um you know I I
think the best way to look at it is that they are under consideration um but to say we we've had our we've had a little breathing room but we we just had a 40B project just a block from me so you know we're not saying nothing we want nothing
there we're not like We have Curry College behind us and they're wonderful neighbors and we've worked with them so it when Yes of course when it gets added to your and you have to face it yeah i mean I'm not going to be talking about Granite A because I don't live in that we all know that that's right right the
way it works i understand so can I add something um just quickly again for others who might um to understand um the the law or the statute versus the regulations um the regulations um provide opportunities for towns to
tailor zoning uh specific to their communities whereas the law just says 15 units an acre half a mile from the station that's it and you can see the kind of problem that that when you take that strict couple of parameters and you that's all you have whereas the regulations give us a lot more
opportunity to tailor it and that's why when Matthew said there's more districts in that rapid transit plan than any others because we've taken advantage of that opportunity to fine-tune it and to tailor it to what's on the ground what's there so where there's already larger
multif family buildings that's where we're addressing a little bit more density and we're doing lower density where we have already existing lower density in our single and two family along the Elliot Street and Blue Hill Parkway corridors and but the the law itself doesn't provide that those are in
the guidelines so I think the guidelines provide opportunities for us to uh craft something and and the I hope that people looked at how that was done in the rapid transit because that is the only one that's compliant with what we know in
the regulations uh and what HLC's current position is um and this is something that has not been broached with HLC at all and um and and I find it um a really
um not the not the best way to to proceed for for the reasons that you can't tailor it you can't consider um some of these other conditions it's just not part of what's what's in the statute understood well thank you thank you very much appreciate it yes okay we had a
couple We had Pete Jackson and Oh sorry and then Rob you had your hand up pete good evening uh Peter Jackson 14 Capen Street before my time starts can I just ask a question about something that was part of the plan but not presented
and that's the three tiers there's I didn't see a plan that showed what these tiers are or a description of what created tier one tier two tier three in Elliot Street can you explain that a little bit yeah cheyenne can you
go to the the table you don't have a map that shows where they are no because the tiers are based on the lot size so it's not a geographical You're talking about the
Elliot Street corridor tiers okay so a tier is strictly based on how big the lot is yep so tier one is any parcel that's between 6,000 and 10,000 square ft tier 2 is between 10
and 15 and then uh tier three is above 15 can I just um mention that we had those tiers um in the 2023 and what varied in there was the F so that there was a lesser F the larger the lot size
that's why it was sub made into tiers and open space requirements with there still is but the same 40 oh you yeah yeah same 40% in the LA street quarter okay you can start my time um I am in favor of presenting a 25%
compliant plan I was a strong supporter of the original plan um but I'm a gasast at what I see here tonight just I think it's Um uh I think what it's doing it's an unfair concentration of all of the
required units on Elliot Street um it's not even within the quarter mile it's in with in a th00and ft so you've crammed it all into a very narrow quarter which is going to create a very high density
conceivably a high density neighborhood in one part of town um the uh statute or HLC is allowing us to put 50% within the
trial and 50% without it and I think as a matter um I uh at the first time around I advocated for a larger square foot lot
size um I really and 6,000 square foot lot size are um suitable for uh three units of housing and three off- streetet parking spaces and including a 40% open
space that just isn't Milton character it doesn't leave any outside space for kids to play or to have a a patio or anything else it just crams it in too strongly
um the last time around when it went to the to vote the precinct two were very who live on the Elliot Street corridor who live on the Elliott Street corridor because the plan was very carefully crafted not to not overburden and we're
as a neighborhood we're strong as a general rule um but the plan was carefully crafted this putting all the units along Elliot Street I just do not think you're going to get the neighborhood to support
it responsible approach um to any kind of equity in the distribution of units um and just the last thing everybody knows Elliot as it is and to take this number
of units and add them to the neighborhood would require a major reconstruction of Elliot Street including land takings um so it just isn't to put uh that high a concentration um along the Elliot Street
corridor thank you thank you okay first of all thank thank you uh Util and thank you the planning board i think this is a very complicated matter um I have probably detailed question
um specifically the paper mill site um Rob sorry can you just put your address um specifically the paper mill site i'm curious about the paper mill site specifically and there's parking spaces per unit listed on all these on all
these pieces a paper mill site is that even is that is that even a a developable site you one would have to make a deal with the uh MBTA there is a underpass right
now it's sized and would need to be widened and um there is I think a designated area where vehicles are intended when they have to Yeah it's a very difficult site and you
you know all of it would need to be coordinated with the MBTA but one of the reasons why we put so many units there is to try to make it economically feasible to develop it yeah understood this you've identified an important detail
which is that we [Music] um we're not showing um any kind of maximum or on this site the intention was because it seemed like there was a
desire it's a brownfield site maybe a desire to actually develop it in a way that cleans it up um it's going to require some flexib with one space per unit it still works
if we wanted to say one space per unit minimum that it'll still in theory produce the same number of units but um that is intention of providing some flexibility for development thank you and my my second question is just
regarding mixed use and so there's it looks like there's two zones on here that are mixed use and maybe the planning board could within the East Milton Overlay district and so I'm just curious is there any of that work in the East Milton Overlay
district why wasn't that considered in in the overall comm in this that's just I don't know if someone could answer that that is Well I'll answer that um basically we are we are
ready to come to town meeting with uh an overlay zoning for East Milton Square it has um some really um great features to it preservation of historic structures um a height limit um etc so
the number of units that we Milton would be at such a capacity that that people would not take they would not use the overlay zoning it wouldn't fit into this into it would have been and the density would it would be too low for this plan it would have
been too would have to the there would have to be a tremendous number of units i just can I add to that we um have a maximum number that of the units that can be in a mandatory mixed use we've utilized those in Milton Village
and so we wouldn't be able to make it mandatory mixed use in East Milton Square and we didn't want to lose business use on the ground floor so if you put this in East Milton Square and you can't have it mandatory mixed use you could shift from business to fully
multif family with the loss of business opportunity and we felt as if that that was um a significant loss so with these mixed potential so with these mixed uh phones mixed mixed use is that that's at
the maximum right now that's my understanding is we those were at the maximum yeah you're limited to 25% okay i'm just it's close it's close and Meredith may I just um I just want to give a little bit of information to Pete Jackson who spoke
um on the changes on the Elliot Street corridor in those tiers while the minimum lot size was lowered from 7500 to 6,000 the open space requirement was kept at 40% and the F
was that would be allowed to be built in terms of the building is also smaller so it's scaled down and in these it's not in this presentation but in prior presentations util has showed us that what can fit what's in the uh the size of a unit
is what the compliance model uses is a th00and square feet per unit and so this would be three 1,000 square foot units max that would fit within that f um still controlling the size of the building still allowing for the open
space even So it's allowing it on a on a smaller lot and the way that that what that happens with that um our density has increased because we have more lots that are you know can be
applied to the district and less that are ineligible um but it's not changing the boundary of the district whatsoever point it out it's a little bit in the weeds but I think we have two people heading yeah sorry yeah Anthony oh sorry and
Brian 1061 Barell Road long time listener first time caller actually second time I guess caller um but I just want to first say like thank you to UTIL for coming here and thanks for setting up this forum i think it's um a great opportunity for us
to have to invest hours in watching all the planning board meetings to get to this level of understanding and you've all compressed it into making it nice and easy to understand for for all of us folks so thank you and Zoe I hope you're feeling better as well i've watched her on Zoom many times um I have a couple pieces of feedback
specifically on the plans for UTIL and then um and then I want to talk about the Reedville station area which is obviously very close to home for me um the dot parcel on on granite a um the slide showed that it was excluded
because the state uh hasn't expressed any intent to dispose of that um so I don't think they should be excluded and we're also we're talking about zoning here right we're not talking about getting plans approved for developments we're talking about zoning
zoning should be able to apply to any parcel within the town of Milton regardless of who owns it it's up to them whether they decide to dispose of it and use it and so I think we should take advantage of that that should go back into the plan I think would help our numbers and I think it's a great
great spot um the second is that um we talk about this as a theoretical target right you know this unit target doesn't mean these things will get developed i think people have used that phrasing to try and make the residents feel better about this um and I don't
think it's appropriate because um once it's zoned it opens the door for a developer uh zoned by right is a very specific type of zoning that really opens the door wide for a developer and takes away due process from permitting and other things and so we need to be
very careful about trying to use that opinion to minimize that uh once a a large structure goes up in a neighborhood the next neighbor sells the next neighbor sells and it becomes a domino effect and it changes the entire neighborhood so let's be clear about that language and what the implications
of this is going to be for the town um the other piece is that um on the statute p plan specifically um I think we really need to I I think it's a good idea right i think the way the statute's written it's very vague that's the
state's problem they didn't do a great job clarifying what it meant we should use that and we should go back to them with something that complies with the law as it was written and that is one district of reasonable size with 15
units per acre as a minimum that's just a minimum um uh within a half mile of transit we could do that with just the Madapan station area alone we don't need to spread that across and so Util made the recommendation to include all areas
within a half mile of human station i don't think it's necessary i think we could do that all with the mataban there's no unit target specified at the statute and we could go back to EOHL HLC and say what do you think does this meet the requirement of the statute of the law and if they don't think so then a
court can decide that and then we can get more clarification and I think that's a uh a good opportunity for us to go further and lastly and I'm going to speak about the rebell area um I think all the other areas or some of the other areas use satellite views of the map i think you should do a satellite view and
I'm going to provide some comments and some more research that I've done next week in the planning board meeting if anybody wants to join there um with some additional satellite view you'll see that area is completely cut off um using with with natural land features and the Pontuk River Valley um riverbed the Fowl
Meadow basically continues and separates it from the Reedville Station area and um and uh if you've been down there if you walk the area you can see that it's um uh it's a very different and it's not accessible to transit um and thank you
so much thank you i appreciate it we just have others that and then we'll have to people a couple of points that were brought up that I'd like to respond to yeah um the in reverse um that the question of as of right will it happen
as of you're you're you're correct as of right is a has a very important meaning that's an it's a kind of entitlement but site plan review is still required and um site plan review is can be pretty thorough and it gives the town control
over you know how does the parking work are you putting in a curb cut um there's there's often design review associated with it so I didn't want everyone to get the impression that you could just go build whatever you want to the rules that there are layers of review and and
impact analysis um and then with respect to the the the DOT site um the regs prohibit us from including publicly owned land period unless there is some
specific plan that they will be used for residential purposes later so if a municipality already had a piece of land and let's say they had already issued out an RFP to developers with a clear intent of developing it they might be able to count it towards their
requirement but in this case um because it's owned by DOT they've pretty you know they put it in writing that they really have no imminent plans of disposing of it um and you know it's not even in the housing production plan now because that's been expired so it's just
the regs that don't allow us to use it great thank you okay Brian and then we'll we'll get to everybody don't forget we have people on Zoom and we will i know uh Brian McGuire 94 Grafton A welcome just a couple questions on
infrastructure i mean are there going to be we're taking single family houses replacing them with multi-unit buildings are there considerations for um like water and sewer like did we know do we have capacity it's going to be another 2500
people living in this area have there been cost projections on that does anyone know not on our end i I I can speak to this i can't speak to the the utility capacity in Milton it's not my area but I can
speak to how the state views this issue which is that um and this goes back to site plan review that um the state is is the law and the regs are not concerned about whether um some of this development whether there are
utilities for this development there may in fact not be in which case site plan review can stop a project right if there just aren't sufficient utilities or if there isn't space for um septic systems or you know whatever it is there are
other layers of regulation that might prevent a too large development from happening but in terms of purely from the state's perspective about compliance they're they they're not concerned about it yeah developers don't
have to be at the cost infrastructure correct no they do they do water that's true yes we had clarification in 2023 from the DPW director that that is a separate layer of review as uh Matthew
said u but the DPW director was clear that um you know permit could be denied if there wasn't adequate infrastructure and the the developer could have an opportunity to improve the infrastructure u but it would be at their cost their cost their cost okay yeah but the biggest question was what
happens if there are lots of developments it could have the capacity for one or two um developments but there might not be cap capacity at the third and fourth development so then that would probably fall on the town no
there's still no requirement for the town um to have to improve the infrastructure so you could deny it is what you're saying like the third if the third one comes up you you would deny that that's what we've been up to that's the understanding i think that's a long
shot that was not my understanding the town is not required to improve the infrastructure related to this zoning and and a developer is not entitled to have the town provide the infrastructure for a development that they propose and
it that's not something unique to this zoning or to or to any of these properties that's standard procedure um so the other thing I I wanted to make sure just I'll add to this because there's some question about what as of right also means it still means that
other regulatory bodies have their approval processes so the if there's wetlands the conservation commission if it's a historic building the historical commission and it still goes to the fire department to the police department to the DPW all for review the building
department eventually u and so all of those layers of approval still uh exists unlike some other methods of approvals like the chapter 40B for example um this is is purely uh this piece of the zoning but if it you can't
put on like architectural changes to them or say like you don't like the design of something right we have guidelines we we have guidelines design guidelines and those are could would be reviewed during the site plan approval process well and as
of right now um as you know because you're in warrant committee the um our site plan um review process that we worked so hard on uh was sent back to the planning board was not passed at the
last town meeting okay and so currently our site plan approval process is fairly weak we're hoping at the next town meeting town meeting members will approve it shout out to town meeting members please do your homework and um
don't send it back again um but in case it's not guaranteed at this moment in time because this moment in time our site plan approval process is fairly weak okay gotcha and all right sorry yeah one more yeah one more question and
then we just have so many people because there's 2500 people they only they I think they only have to do one spot parking spot per unit and that's an extra 1,200 cars on the average they figure 1.5 in Massachusetts per unit
there's an extra 1,200 cars where are they going to go and is there plans in the town to have additional pocket probably enough but the the zoning um has a requirement to park the needs of
the project within the project site it can't rely on public land for its parking um and as you probably know Milton um has separate regulations that prohibit overnight parking except with special permit um process and that would
still be in for in place as well so that is a policy question that the town will have to review to get an overnight parking um pass in the town is not a high hurdle to clear um so that has been
my live in town yeah so my fear is that the overnight parking permit um is going to be given out quite liberally so my concern is there will be more um parking on streets which would then clog up the
streets for emergency access vehicles thank you another reason why this is a tough law for Yeah thank you thank you all right Kathleen and then Yeah all right we had a few other Yeah
sorry yeah Kathleen O'Donnell um precinct 7 town meeting member and I just had a quick question on you because I wasn't trying to understand the impact of not having a housing production plan is it just the one thing that that the
DPW the state DTW yard is the impacted by that failure yes um and do we know what's happening with our housing production plan our staff is in the process of looking into a consultant who would update that i mean as a person that sits on the
board of appeals I have one and there's been a lot of growth in the town i think people don't realize how many units have been created or have been approved so we will be in the process of updating that i think just the gap between Tim leaving and Cheyenne coming so I think that's
appointed by the select board so I looked at I went on the housing production um committee and I think they're supposed to report to the select board I think quarterly it was stated in their charge and I went on to go find
their minutes to their meetings and I haven't been able to find it and many of the people still listed on the committee um you know in their capacity as a select board member are no longer on the select board member oh that committee was disbanded though after the housing
production plan 5 years ago so that plan was adopted by the planning board and the select board um so it I think it's something that um Cheyenne actually what we let speak to that do you know the status
of recently expired we have been in talks with usually I can repeat that as Cheyenne say Cheyenne says that the it has recently expired and so Cheyenne come over and speak to Mike
just so the the folks Yeah I can hear you um so our housing production plan recently expired we've been in touch with consultants such as MAPC currently they don't have capacity so we're looking into other consultants um we did see a former contract that
they did with I think the town of Everett so we are looking into expenses consultants and getting that in the works so that's where we're at on that great thank you thank you as I said I was just wondering whether that was the only interface between the housing production plan and the stone yeah it
the the the the regs or the at least the policy is that you know uh publicly owned land is excluded unless and then there's a kind of a list of things and one of those things in
that list is is it part of your housing production plan and so um you know I don't know if it ever really met the test whether just because it was mentioned in the plan right but um I think there's been some clarity and We we had conversations with HLC and they
were like "Well it's it's barely mentioned in the plan it's already expired and you're going to want to get some clarity from DOT about their intentions." And I Thank you very much appreciate it that's great carrie you were Did you still want to speak you had
your hand up earlier thank you Madam Chair welcome sorry carrie White uh shift now do you want to tilt that you tilt it this way i'm height challenged even sitting thank you no problem chivalry is not first of all
thank you for the presentation that was very helpful i had one specific question it is not in my neighborhood as you all know the paper mill site i think I'm semifamiliar with it and I there were a couple questions already so if it's too redundant Madam Chair um please tell me
but I was a little bit curious about it is is that um adjacent to where the super fun site is where the the river comes through is that TS area sorry I believe so okay yes I believe it's it's it's in it or close enough to
it that it's eligible for the overlay there's a there's a Yeah there's a brownfield overlay site it's a brown Okay when you said Brifield I tend to assume that's what you meant but I wasn't entirely certain it would be great to see that developed and cleaned up i think so too yes and the the state
has already been given a very large amount of money uh from the federal government over the past five plus years uh to clean that up and that would be quite a useful thing to be able to develop thank you sorry I didn't mean to that's great good good question yeah
thank you um yes with the in the yellow sweater well sorry I didn't recognize you from the background without glasses on thank you very much u my name is Matthew Walco precinct one 76 Hudson Street my
questions are for the consultant on this um 2025 rapid transit community plan table i think it would be useful for those who are not as familiar with the process for you to put in footnotes the
actual acreage of the Milton Station East and Milton Station West um down at the bottom we'll have to change the font a little bit on the top get more room um also I see that you've highlighted the
changes in uh unit capacity from the prior plan that was approved by town meeting and then rejected at at the referendum uh I think it would be helpful uh so folks didn't have to flip back and forth to put in parentheses in
the unit capacity uh column the change whether positive or negative from the prior plan um there were some comments earlier that this plan increases the number of on unit
capacity on the Elliot Street um and some folks would want to be able to know what that is more easily than having to go back and forth also I see that two of the districts are less than five acres and I know you've mentioned that there
have been productive um discussions regarding that um I don't see a textual basis in the final regulations to um get credit for something less than five acres and so uh my question to you not to answer it
tonight is if the state rejects those two districts because they're less than five acres uh who ends up losing when it comes back uh where do you stick the rest of those units um I do think that for this particular plan um if you look
at the uh the third option where you've detailed how there's actually development acorage within a half mile of the uh Fairmont Station if you extended that district
um further north along the Truman Parkway which is a divided four-lane highway uh you could get it so that it's directly across the street from the paper mill site and then you could use
the paper mill site acreage add it to a Truman Parkway acreage and have one district that's much bigger and then you could drop the numbers on Elliot Street and perhaps keep them as they were which
would get more support uh for those who favor the larger plan and provide some um backup in case the state screws us again and says these less than five acreage
um uh districts don't count so I think it would be useful to a planning board for you to model that and see what could be done um and how many units could be basically um jammed onto Truman Parkway that would
obviously upset some folks as uh some folks were upset with uh uh the Randolph A new district surprised by that but um it seems like it's a zero- sum game here i am very uh much against the
25% as a a legal requirement but I can see that some people do favor that and I do think that um planning board should have a couple more options to consider from its consultants thank you so much that's great appreciate that yeah thank
you for your comments yes i if you'd like to come yeah and and for folks who would like to speak if you want to move to the front because we'll um or just make sure I see you because we want to move to the people on Zoom so
good evening uh Richard Shay uh first I'd like to thank you people for the time you give in that route and giving that kind of time per week it's beyond the call of duty thank you so I thank you for your time and I
hope the people will keep this group together because you're working together on this and get new people in here it's going to be starting from scratch no but I I wasn't going to speak but I will say
this i believe um Mrs the guys you mentioned that the town does not help these contractors in their construction or anything like that just a few minutes ago i thought you mentioned that am I correct what I said was the town's not
required to improve its infrastructure for a project so if a project um needed additional water capacity sewer capacity storm water capacity the town is not under no obligation to provide it i see
okay that doesn't mean that they shouldn't that has nothing to do with that just has nothing to do with should it's just there's no obligation well I would recommend uh that the planning board it might be years from now i don't know but uh pay
attention to what is done to the help these contractors with the town i know people want to push this through push this through but mention on televised uh programs that you're looking out for
the neighborhood for the abutters just mention that i know some of you can't see these projects from your house but I can and I think you should notify the people just that you are paying attention to the abutas
uh too late for me but that you you are paying attention to them and I think they'd appreciate that most of the gentlemen up here tonight and ladies uh have mentioned that in a roundabout way uh so just kind of mention that and pay
attention to what the town does to for these contractors it's amazing i was blown away because it's my tax dollars thank you thanks for your time and thanks for your effort that you make it's
appreciated thank you you want to Good evening my name is Joan Ball 172 Granite A and I'm a town meeting member for precinct 7 and um I also didn't
intend to speak tonight but I as I'm listening I I thank you all for all your hard work i've watched a lot of the meetings um you guys really went into a lot of detail my question though is there's lots of building going on around
town on around town right um how is do we are we able to have take credit for any of that within this program this yes we absolutely are yes so yes the 40B
projects th those are um we've looked at those and um some of the other development we we really have tried to put zone where multif family um building commercial development has already happened so we'll get credit for some of
the building that's Yes okay exactly that that's something that I didn't realize and I think that's important okay we will yeah we can't get credit for all of them because it has to be a 5 acre minimum so the 40B on Randolph a
7-Eleven Randalf a we're getting credit for but the 40B across the street at 728 Randolph A um that's only on a 1acre site or the Brush Hill Road 40B is only a oneacre site amore Road is only a
oneacre site so we're not getting credit house yeah so um I'm glad you brought it up because we do have about 789 units coming in the pipeline um that have been built um and will be built and
that includes um 36 units at Winter Valley the 72 beds at the Memory Care so there's all different types of um units coming online in the next few years and um a lot of them we're not taking advantage maggie I
think this that 700 is um I'm not sure that those are all new units i think that's the number on the SHI which is the subsidized housing inventory and some of those exist um so I don't think that's the the accurate number for new new units coming online some of them are
already been built yes yes but to Maggie's point there's a ton of stuff coming down the pipeline that we that we're not that we can't take advantage of everywhere I go there's build it and that's why how much more can we really absorb um so I definitely support
I don't support the 25% plan because I don't think we can absorb it here in this town right now um but I thank you for all your hard work thank you for speaking yeah good okay welcome good evening um Chair Hall members of
the board thank you uh my name is Kevin Chrysom Jr i'm a town meeting member from Preason 7 i reside at 62 uh Courtland Circle i wear many hats in town but tonight I speak to you as a resident of Courtland Circle uh I had no intention of speaking here tonight first I want to thank you Teal and members of
the board for putting this forum together but after the previous comment that was made about keeping uh the Granite A South plan in a plan I feel as though on behalf of my Courtland Circle Thistle Aav Riverside A Whitman Road and Granite A neighbors that I must speak
out and say to continue to stay the course and ever again keep Granite AB South and any plan going forward one of the words that is thrown around town quite a bit and was not heard um tonight at most was the word of traffic and as
many people know Granite A one of the most weekday highly congested and at times dangerous roadways corton Circle abuts that as does Thistle Aav so I'd like for you to expound tonight on some of the neighborhood impact in input that you heard from my neighbors the Granite
A neighbors and of East Milton as a whole on why you took Granite a South out of the plan and again traffic is a huge impact and I encourage anybody who hasn't had the pleasure of living on Granada abudding it or driving it every day to see the impacts of traffic and
for the addition of 500 units adding on the neighborhood already would have been a disaster for my neighborhood and it was mentioned about other precincts tonight that voted in favor of the MBTA communities act i would remind the folks at home and to the audience here that priest and 7 voted 84% against the 25%
plan very much in part due to the fact of the granite a south self plan so on behalf of my neighbors of court and circle this granite a and the other streets that yes do exist but don't get a lot of fanfare we do exist and we say no to the granite a south south plan so again I would ask you just to expound on
the neighborhood input and more on why you kept Grand A South out thank you very much great thank you yeah it was it was very clear to us following the referendum that um having East Milton Square Granad North and Granada South
was was going to have a huge impact the number of units um particularly granite a south um I I thought at one point you know it would have been nice to consider doing something there but at a much much smaller scale um than what was proposed and the impact of the combination of all
three would have would have really added a lot of um additional traffic that we all know East Milton Square is burdened by all the construction the new developments that are coming down the pike because not only as a planning board do we look at
what is actually currently built but we we forecast what is coming and the development that we see coming so we do know that those impacts um Granad North they have a different access path so it would not have been access off of
Granada so that was really important and we felt like that's why we kept that in there but we did um we found when we did the plan that we could look at alternative sites um and because it is a traffic is an issue um it's issue everywhere in Milton so everyone's
impacted now but um particularly in your neighborhood we're very sensitive that you can't get out of your street so on a good day on a good day yeah good thank you i thank the board for the leadership thank you yeah thank you okay yes couple more and then we'll go to our
Zoom speakers so I wasn't going to speak you yeah and I'm basically traffic my name is Jane Driscoll i'm at 399 Reed Still Road i work with you guys on a Zoom about the Yeah can you push the Yeah a little funeral home the funeral home that's
about the funeral home sorry sorry i just heard about this from my sister-in-law that Randolph AB was added because I've been keeping track of it but it hasn't been in my neighborhood right and um I actually walked that way the other day so I I know two of the projects have already been labeled for numbers but how do you you just let them
know they can build more is that what happens like it's supposed to be 92 across the street at 7-Eleven Randolph AB right but now they can build more is that what happens more units um like how do you get the zoning capacity you mean the zoning capacity
that's there we went slightly higher than what is there because we get we get credit for those likely they will never be built because the project is already under construction but we will get credit it will pull us a little bit more with our density numbers that we're
trying to make i wasn't sure how that works i know that you've been in the works 92 and 27 the developer is not going to come back at me i don't Well the only concern about that Meredith I've just recently learned that the developer does own um single family houses on Randall Fav so if we increase
the um allowed units on that site granted they may not add them to the the foundation that has already been built of the 92 units but perhaps they could take advantage of the single family houses on Randolph Sav that would be
outside of those the lot it's not in the district it wouldn't be the district just the district yeah so that's the only thing I would be concerned about yeah it's not in the district so and they would have to go through an approval process it's not as if they could just start adding additional units
to it right so that approval process would include the conservation commission that property was pretty tightly built already within the regulations for the wetlands so I'm not sure that that there's um a lot of room for them to do it and it's really uh as
Meredith said uh taking advantage of something that's already in the pipeline and getting credit for it because if we didn't do that then we'd be looking at zoning other places and we'd be adding to the total number overall in the town okay and I know right beside the one
across the street 728 there's the farm the old horse farm which I guess is going to be for sale which I don't know how big that is how many more the question is really traffic too because I live on sale road but it's kind of like a triangle and then there's in the middle is Pleasant Street and Pleasant
Street has just gotten I don't know why the neighbors aren't complaining all the time today I saw East Bridgewater ambulance going down Pleasant Street coming from the highway to get to Boston they weren't going to Milton Hospital wow so the traffic there is just unbelievable and there's children
passing and the reason there's no snow plowing is because it's a state road milton police they're there but they're not there very long very often and the state police are not on that street very often unless they're going to an accident street right so they need I mean when the state mandates us they're
going to put more police on that very very busy road i think it's one of the busiest ones in town and again I live on Reeddale i have to sit to get out of my drive driveway too just to get on Reeddale Road i know so um traffic and it's a safety issue for people and then
if you're going to add two and three more two three more hundred people in cars and things it's just it's an accident waiting to happen thank you very much yeah you come up and I think after this speaker
um how many are on Zoom cheyenne with their hands raised just one just one okay okay all right so we'll have the next two speakers and we'll go to Zoom so that's great oh cool great
can I again sure thank you y do you need one yeah this is Tom Dy Adam Street Milton uh I have a handout because what I have uh to uh say couldn't be said in three
uh three minutes so I hope uh you all take a look at that at some point um just a little bit about me i lived in Milton uh for 40 years and uh long time ago I was the uh managing editor of
Harvard Law School's uh journal on legislation where we looked at statutes and regulations as they are crafted and as they relate to each other also clerk for Steven Brier who recently retired from the uh US Supreme Court uh also litigated the GE case against the
attorney general where the attorney general tried to add to the public records law regulation a regulation that was inconsistent with the statute and defeated that uh and they therefore had to address that um what I had to say though very briefly is the statute's
wording governs over the regulations wording if there's any difference between the statutes wording and the regulations wording the statute wording governs to apply the regs the words the regulations the uh words in the
regulation must comply with the statute's words and so it it sort of rhymes right to uh to apply the regs must comply with that governing statute now uh the regs here have a definition
or the final rags have a definition of a subway station matipan highspeed rail line that's not what the statute says the statute says subway station and that means subway station it's that simple and um there are many many however um
regulation provisions that are that do comply with the statute and they're very helpful though it's been stated that the the the station plan is incomplete the station plan is meant to be a beginning because you start with the station and
then you look at the regulations and I won't go through it any further than that because at the time you can read through but that's the basic point um and that regulation as it relates to the subway station is um is in con is is in
conflict with the very simple words that are used okay lastly here it was mentioned during the presentation that the statute does not give you uh give anyone reasonable size i'm quoting what was said yes it
does here's the wording of the 3A statute that the EOHLC must follow quote "For the purposes of this section se this section this section 3A a district of reasonable size shall meaning must one have a minimum gross density of 15
units per acre subject to a couple of wetlands and and sewage limitations uh and be located not more than 0.5 miles from a commuter rail station subway station ferry terminal or bus station if applicable." Okay well as to applicable
Milton has no subway stations within a half mile of its borders and as you can see from those words rapid transit is not mentioned there by the way the very same day that they enacted this statute the legislature enacted a different statute having to do with voting that uses the word rapid transit they know
how to make a difference you know you can look that up so what I'm saying is that the rapid transit is not authorized in section 3A by its terms nor is it applicable you know to the statute but Milton does have developable land
located within not more than 0.5 miles from a commuter rail stations that statute wording quote is applicable close quote and uh therefore Milton really does because of that uh have commuter rail proximity and meets that
requirement it does apply and Milton must comply with it and develop such a zoning ordinance that's that's just that's my view and that's how I read the statute um I'll sort of I'll I'll stop there uh but it's also therefore very
appropriate and possible that Milton can do more than that it can comply with the 10% um goal of the uh select board by both defining and and and building a
plan for a commuter rail stationbased uh district one district of reasonable size which by the way is a very helpful regulation as it relates to uh the commuter rail in that regard with if you have a 100 acres or more 100 acres or
less than the location of the actual units as as planned they can be anywhere and consequently the this that's the zero in their um table so consequently
uh that plan could both embrace the commuter rail adjacency but also be able to uh be more spread out in terms of its uh application so I'll I'll stop there that's great Tom thank you so much i'm
sorry i wish we had more time and no just we have two speakers left and then we want to move to Zoom thank you very much that's great hi good evening my name is Mark Kristo i live at 17 Waldo Road it's been a
pleasure to be up here speaking with you all for the last two and a half years about this matter um a couple uh I just want to hit on administrative based concerns if I can as a revolver around HLC who I really feel should and is on the hot in the in the hot seat and then
also designbased zoning uh concerns that I might pose to you Mr latell if I have done there's great legitimacy in crafting that solid 10% zoning plan just a few short months ago we did learn from the SGC that they determined that all
municipalities must abide by the law and that the AG has the ability to enforce compliance additionally it was ruled that the regulations are ineffective because they weren't properly promulgated and the guidelines that dictate both classification and zoning requirements requisite for compliance
are part of those regs now as Mr fehe had mentioned uh he talked about and I'm I'm just prefacing this sorry the dubious rapid trans mclassification of the trolley was outside of the scope of that court case as Mr fehee had mentioned this matter remains unressed
and Milton alone has legitimate reason to challenge the class classification so I would really ask both this board and the select board has Milton filed for declaratory judgment with respect to the classification argument to the court hlc
and I strongly believe the administrative agency further failed to recognize the trolley with its limited carrying capacity and no ability to transport passengers downtown is operationally inferior to rapid transit rapid transit provides generous carrying
capacity over long distances without interruption directly to the downtown urban core for all passengers the trolley is distinctly dissimilar when HLC rebranded that top tier classification a rapid transit in early
2022 just weeks before the draft guideline deadline for communities to give feedback they failed to recognize two things that the trolley is dimminionative by nature but also that Ashmont Station is the rapid transit terminus and the trolley is just feeding
into it that it's fair in my opinion to call out HLC for these additional failures because it has significant consequence for this community the irony as well too that HLC after that draft guideline review liberally
reduced zone unit requirements for 90 communities of the 177 that's more than 50% and of the 90 communities 48 had reductions in zone unit capacity of 50% and greater that's tremendous resolution of our dubious classification whether by
arbitration or litigation needs to be resolved before we comply you can never put a cart before the horse so I think our focus needs to be there and I think that a successful reclassification will yield both physical and financial benefit physical obviously because when
we work through all these programs that you have up here it is difficult to strike balance between granite a Elliot Street etc but there's financial benefit as well especially at a time when our schools are financially burdened the
$2.1 million MBTA service search charge that Milton has assessed would be one benefit because we've been tasked with having an unfair rapid transit label um for these for for this period and that savings would be you passed on year to year and we would then also be able with
the compliance to your 10% plan resume the state funding so that we can at least keep up with our expenses and get the funding from the state that we're entitled to thank you so much i guess I won't get to the F questions that I have for Mr latell can you That's fine can
you send I'm so sorry because we are running but I know thank you if you send us your question we can come to the next meeting and come to the next meeting on the 24th on that yeah on the 24th what I don't like with the LHC court if I can just take it back to to Pete Jackson's
is that you increased uh sorry you increased the number of units in the neighborhood and you also decrease the starting uh the uh you decreased uh sorry you decreased the square footage of the lot size so the two of them together I think is a bit problematic
and I'd like to see degradations that are not so widespread say 5,000 between the categories thank you thank you thank you very much great all right we'll go to our speaker on Zoom that's great thank you and the last one
okay matt Morong 136 Elliot Street um I'll start out by saying thank you to UTIL thank you to the planning board for um for your hard work um in getting us to this point um and I'm glad that we have this opportunity to get together tonight um I also think this is a highly consequential time of course um to
gather and assess what the board has done and plans to do um especially in light of the final regulations that came out on Monday um I'll throw in a little bit about myself um you know going back to the beginning of my career I interned for a Pritskar prize-winning architect um at the start of my career 2530 years
ago um went on to the University of Pennsylvania received um a degree in architecture also um took course work in planning while I was there and in the past 20 years or so I've worked in the transit industry um designing as an architect uh stations for the MBTA
Wamada the MTA um it goes on and on the Edmonton Alberta transit station uh transit system um I know what I'm talking about and the uh Matapan trolley is rapid transit um now that I I I I know this question has been asked but I think that the the board has a
responsibility to level with us as citizens um now that these regulations have been issued by EOHLC um will the board continue to promote plans that don't correspond to them um given the million dollars that we've lost so far um what is the plan to move forward and is there a plan to handle
consequences um including the possibility of another lawsuit from the state um or possibly the appointment of a special master to create his own plan for us when we lose control um second there are rumblings about a grand bargain with the OLC um or other
legislative maneuvers to come to some kind of compromise um to relieve us of our responsibilities under the MBTA Communities Act or to repeal the act altogether uh it's worth noting that there this has already been attempted and failed um I'm sure that opponents of the law will attempt this again and that
is their right um but that said I believe that the sensible thing to do is to pass a plan that meets the requirements um of this entire statute as intended including the regulations until our obligation officially changes we should comply with the law as it stands and we can revisit this in the future um if and when changes are made
third um regarding the approaches that deny that we have a subway um the basis of their existence um we we we need to talk about the the wording of the law um and it's not just a subway it's subway stations um and by that logic um you know we don't have subway stations but neither does Maldin um neither does
Medford neither does Newton neither does Rivier neither does Brookline all of these communities have rapid transit stations that exist above ground um were they all intended to be exempted from this law I think is a fundamental question that you have to ask yourself um was it only intended for Cambridge
Somerville Chelsea and Rivier uh does Milton have it right and by extension have all these communities made a big mistake i think the answer is no yes um while these comments address specific concerns I don't want to lose sight of the big picture that shapes all of my comments um at the end of the day this is about increasing access to housing
it's about fairness it's about Milton's role in our regional economy um it's about beginning to untether our zoning from its segregationist and racist history while fair housing laws ensure that explicit racism religious discrimination and discrimination by family makeup um among other things are
no longer allowed by law it used to be uh economic discrimination remains perfectly legal and through my years of discussion um with this community I've found that um it's actually preferred among some of my town's people um that we keep it that way so I'd look like to
push back against this and as a town uh do our part to barriers to home ownership that have been in place throughout our three thank you very much thank you very much sorry okay do we still have the one person on
Zoom still okay invite them to speak five minutes and four and a half minutes one of them asked to speak for longer and I told that was one of the people who I said could speak longer so you got a lot of time right i think
I actually But you got up twice right let's We're going to wrap this up didn't get up twice this okay no I didn't get a lot of time okay yeah he did not okay ask yourself okay let's on to function properly
be careful okay let's go thank you Tom okay we have one last person okay can invite Aida in hello yes we can hear you hello can you hear me okay thank you ada Rose Marin 32
Coline Road um precinct two town meeting member thank you for having this session tonight i really appreciate this opportunity and to hear um the latest plans and and directly from you Teal uh
about this um I just um uh agree with my neighbor Mr jackson um in concerns about um overburdening the Elliot Street corridor with this plan and I'm wondering whether you have considered
other sites that could share some of the burden um and in particular I'm wondering about whether there could be some type of hybrid plan put together um between the rapid transit areas that
you've designated for one of the other plans along with the um the um um areas that are designated in the current um 25% plan um to reduce some of
the burden on the Elliot Carter do you want to try to bet uh the short answer is yes there's always another option um we've I don't know we're on option Z I think right now um so yeah I
think there's definitely a way to look at that um you know there were some other districts that we removed they weren't working very well um over the last two months with guidance from the planning board we've been looking at you know ever more new new districts um
including you know for instance the paper mill site um I don't know if if we have an obvious candidate for like a brand new district feel like we've looked at those pretty carefully but there are ways to redistribute the density between the districts that we
have i I will add just just a g because a lot of people have been talking about the LA corridor and that the fact that some of the numbers have gone up since the 2023 plan i will add that it is the least the three tiers are the least dense
districts in all of the districts that we're considering so they're they're e they're below the 15 units an acre they're in the range of 11 or 10 um and it's not completely inconsistent with you know some of the density that's
already there so I just need needed to mention that okay all right well thank you i I appreciate that and and just one last comment is um when you're talking about the trolley the Matipan trolley um that
that trolley is the reason that many of us moved to this neighborhood and I I have to take offense at you're referring to it as a crazy trolley um it's a beloved trolley from many of us in our neighborhood and I think it it's u
deserves the respect that um it has for us in the neighborhood thank you well that was that was quoted by Ron Mariano just to clarify I don't know who Ron Mariano is is the
top house Democrat in the state speaker i I think the point though that it should be well taken that there's um a lot of folks who have disparaged the trolley and I've heard from other people who live in the neighborhood just as
Miss Rosemary does that they specifically picked that part of Milton because of the trolley and in fact this planning board several years ago when the MBTA was talking about doing something else with the trolley the planning board in Milton the select board in Milton all supported uh
reinvestment and further investment in the trolley because we saw it as an asset to the town and I personally still view it as an asset to the town of Milton and would like for us to continue to advocate for its investment in it so that it works better than it does today
yeah i don't think anybody has said it's not an asset um I've questioned is it a $2 million a year asset that's what we pay every year to MBTA um I love the trolley i grew up taking the trolley my kids take the trolley i think it's a
100% asset i just don't think it's worth $2 million a year and I don't think it's um reasonable to expect us to uh zone for 2461 units um my question though is um and I
don't know how to say this without causing a little controversy but do you think the Elliot Street neighborhood and precinct one and two supported the plan originally because it wasn't in their
neighborhood and now that it is in their neighborhood they're pushing back and that's problematic for us because now we're even more confused so from a planning perspective
um this is a a transit oriented development which is supposed to be around um transit and amenities and the Elliot Street corridor has that and then at town meeting all the I don't know all
but a good portion of town meeting members from precinct one and two voted for it and then during the referendum a lot of the residents in those neighborhoods voted for it so it is causing some confusion now especially for me because now we are looking at
other neighborhoods that are outside good planning areas you know uh we're looking at neighbor neighborhoods that provide um uh ecological benefit you know I'm on the climate action committee our
greenhouse gases are increased so it's just it's problematic i don't know i I I can't speak for people who voted one way or another or support one way or another but I think what I heard tonight is people are concerned about the increased density in the LA street quarter over
what was there in the 2023 plan and you know part of um why some people support compliance has to do with u the fact of grant money and the financial position the town is in in spending money to on
legal fees and on lost grants i I think some people feel as if we we should be um compliant so that we aren't spending and losing money um I think what you've said though is trying to is it's very close to pitting neighborhood against
neighborhood and I am really concerned about pitting neighborhood against neighborhood i think the board has worked to be sensitive to all the neighborhoods it's why we've I've advocated for months and months and months to come out and and have a public forum because we've been looking at
adding some density to Elliot Street Quarter since last summer and I said "We need to get out to the public and let them know about this we've been looking at alternative districts since last summer and we still have this is the first we've come out to the public to show that and we have now a month left
we should have had a forum like this months ago like I suggested and we can do what we can in the next month to address the comments that we've we've heard but we've put ourselves in this position ourselves and my other question is um the status
of pursuing an unfunded mandate determination so that has we haven't talked about that um you know middle burrow um they filed for for to the court for a determination and then
that's when the um HLC came and negotiated with them so I think one of the things we should be doing as a town is um seeking that determination because
we're in a $10 million situation u and we're looking at a $10 million override i think it would be negligent if we did not pursue that so I'm really advocating for us to do that all right i think this is a good point i think we everyone I
just am so grateful for everyone who has come and has spoken um this evening and shared your your thoughts with us and we'll take this all back and um and be able to discuss at our meeting on the 24th but most importantly I just want to thank Matthew and thank you for all the
good work that you've done so thank you all good evening this is nice do we have to adjourn do we a motion to adjourn i'll make a motion to adjurnn all in favor sorry second all in favor i great