one minute the meeting of the Somerville Planning Board for April 9th 2025 will please come to order adequate notice of this meeting as required by the Open Public Meeting Act has been provided a copy of the notice specifying the date time and location was one published to the Courier News two posted on the bulletin
board outside of Burough Hall three posted to the municipal website and four given to the clerk administrator this meeting is a judicial proceeding any questions or comments must be limited to the issues that board may legally consider in reaching a decision and the decorum appropriate to a judicial
hearing must be maintained at all times roll call andrea Dair here chris Addex here art Aens is excused larry Cleveland here jason Kraca here john Manilio is also excused barry Van Horn here mayor Gallagher here council member Vroom here
chairperson Warner here please stand for the pledge i aliance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for it stands one indivisibley and justice for all
i need a motion for approval for minutes from regular session so moved second andrea Dair yes chris Addex yes larry Cleveland yes jason Kraka yes mayor Gallagher yes council member Verum yes chairperson Warner yes
uh can we do both resolutions at the same time or do we have to I think we should separate yeah okay sorry I answered my question as I answered it um motion to approve resolution for Ronaldo Partners LLC 44 44 Katherine
Street second motion brian Brian I believe so yes andrea Dair yes chris Addex yes larry Cleveland yes jason Kraka yes barry Van Horn I'm ineligible oh my bad mayor Gallagher yes council member Vroom yes chairperson
Warner yes and then a motion for resolution for the Foundry Urban Renewal LLC so moved second andrea Dair yes chris Addex yes larry Cleveland no jason Krosca yes barry Van Horn yes mayor Gallagher yes
council member Vroom yes chairperson Warner yes um I'm gonna turn it over to our board attorney Cara can you just turn your mic on okay can everybody hear me now yes okay great um we have a hearing this evening
in connection with uh Avalon Somerville Station Urban Renewal LLC there has been some dialogue and documentation submitted in connection with the uh issue of EV parking stations and there have been some dialogue of uh potential
uh litigation as a result of a decision that could uh be made by this board um at the conclusion of a hearing so I would like to go into executive session under subsection seven of the open public meetings act uh to discuss uh the that potential and the comments that were made prior to the continuation of
the application if I may Michael Bau here on behalf of Avalon um we object to uh you going into executive session we'd like any any debate about this application done in
the public forum uh with that said thank you and certainly we will return and have any of that debate i would just like to advise them on what has been stated and uh the issues that have happened up until this point and then we'll return to continue the hearing our objections on the record thank you
motion to go in yep so that we would be going as I indicated under subsection 7 in connection with that issue um we will of course be returning uh to the public there will be no formal action taken during executive session uh and all uh deliberations and action will be taken
when we return to the deis so moved second andrea Dair yes chris Addex yes larry Cleveland yes jason Krosca yes barry Van Horn yes mayor Gallagher yes council member Vroom yes chairperson Warner yes as a reminder the
cameras and audio recording is still live out here so I just want everybody to keep that in mind while you're out here you are being recorded and streaming live on television or YouTube if everybody can turn off their mics before going in please thank you
all right i need a motion to go back into public so moved second andrea Dar yes chris Addex yes larry Cleveland yes jason Kraca yes barry Van Horn yes mayor Gallagher yes council member Vroom yes chairperson Warner yes
okay thank you everybody your microwave your mic sorry there we go there you go uh thank you everybody again just for the record um there was no decision-making there was no discussion there was no deliberation there was no discussion of this matter with the exception of uh the legal
issues that we just discussed and we are ready to continue all right so up next hearing for Avalon Somerville Station Urban Renewal good evening um Michael Bruno again Gerardano Howard Ceil here on behalf of Avalon Bay Communities this
is a continuation of the preliminary and final site plan application uh that was commenced before you in February 2025 um the the application was carried to this date uh there were a number of conditions and professional review
letters uh that were given at the last uh meeting uh the plans have since been revised to address all of the items that we heard uh and the conditions and so we believe the updated plans which were submitted on March 21st 2025 are now
compliant with all the requests of of your professional team um one of the most significant issues that we've been working on uh is is related to the safety of the EV charging uh we heard um
we heard your concerns about the safety um and tonight we're here to talk about the revised plans and what we've done to try to address those concerns we have additional experts with us this evening uh that are experts in fire fire safety
uh they will present detailed testimony one of their reports was uh delivered to you as as part of the record we'll introduce that shortly well we've listened carefully to your your concerns and we've addressed your feedback uh and at the same time we're
complying with New Jersey law which has mandated the EV charging in this building uh we're going to walk through the plans in detail uh incorporate uh and tell you what we've done to incorporate your concerns
um we respect the heightened concerns that you've had uh and we're committed avalon is committed to addressing them head on uh that said the concerns while valid that you raise them uh stand in direct tension with the mandated
obligations of this board and the law of this state um as you know and as I pointed out in my memo that was delivered on Monday Monday there's a legal mandate for this board to follow state law and require uh
the EV charging stations as part of this development it's not discretionary it's an absolute mandatory obligation we don't like it you don't like it but we're obligated to do it uh in accordance with the law the other thing we want to really stress
tonight is what the real risks are or the lack thereof uh our re our revised plans keep EV charging stations within the garage as mandated because moving them outside isn't feasible there's just no available land on or adjacent to the site it's also not permitted under the
zoning or state rules and crucially it doesn't enhance safety evs will still park in the garage regardless and the data is crystal clear that the charging act itself is not the dangerous item um
it's also not dangerous to have EV cars i mean they they the likelihood of a fire from an EV is many many multiples less than a gas vehicle we recognize and we appreciate that those fires that do occur can be
problematic they get very hot and they're hard to put out but that doesn't change the law in the in the in the remote likelihood that this may occur at this property um as noted the fires stem from batteries and not the active charging and only in rare cases are they
tied to outdated equipment or misuse not cutting edge design like we have here you're going to hear from our architect as to what the changes are to the plan as well as our EV engineer and fire protection specialist who who will detail how the revised plans with a
multiplehour rating and advanced mitigation virtually eliminates any risk from charging even with the remote chance of a fire our design now ensures that there will no be will be no catastrophic result um
as the as the slab as it is is is is is designed to mitigate any any damage from a fire uh the revised plans now align with New Jersey law exceed safety standards and while we expect respect
your input uh we're stuck with a law that requires us to put these charging stations in so with that said we we do have one witness this evening uh Carl Panky who has another meeting he is our traffic engineer we presented him directly at the last meeting you had the
opportunity to to examine him we did bring him back just in case you have some more traffic related questions and he's here so if we could put him first for questions he's begged me to let him get out of here for another meeting and we want to accommodate him so any
questions for Carl Panky no any questions from the public might have for him that we don't any I'll open it to the public for questions quickly just for traffic okay hearing none okay carl
good luck at the next one our next what I want to do next is I want I want to put our architect on and go over uh the changes to the plans that we made to the building in direct response to the comments that we heard and the concerns that you've raised uh
once we have the plans introduced and and described uh we'll then introduce um Robert Solomon and Evan LCroy they were with SLS they're are nationally recognized fire safety engineers and fire protection experts and they're
going to talk a little bit about the law that requires us to design this in a certain manner and the and the uh mitigation that exceeds the current law in an effort to try to address the concerns that we heard at this last meeting and that we've seen from your
fire official so if I could Arthur Michaels our engineer you've previously been sworn and qualified yes I have okay great um the board's satisfied with with the with the last
qualification correct yes that's fine yeah we're gonna we're going to mark those as we as we enter into them okay so why don't we why don't we mark these up front so we we can have a smooth narrative here all right what are
we looking at and let's mark them as you describe them uh the first one I'm going to mark is the uh garage level plan it's G2 in the uh set that was subitted on March
21st 25 and it's 813 and then the second one is the updated rendering okay so there those are the two exhibits you'll be referring to this evening yeah I have others but u hopefully uh this
will tell the story so we we heard um the comments and the concerns of the board at the last meeting loud and clear and you spoke with your client the applicant yep and what did they direct you to do and what were you able to accomplish in response to those concerns
they uh they uh uh retained a fire consultant for us uh we had consultations with them we reviewed the design uh and and then we were um we were directed to upgrade the design uh
to uh to completely uh minimize the hazard to much as is absolutely possible okay so can you go through the changes that you've come up with sure um first uh on the garage level plan uh
we've we've located the EV uh well before we even located the EV stations the garage as it was originally presented uh met the requirements of an enclosed parking garage per the building code uh so we went back reanalyzed the
garage increased the size of the openings and now this this garage is fully compliant with the requirements of an open parking structure or open parking garage per the international building code uh so it it it increased
the ventilation area to the garage and natural ventilation uh dramatically and and how does that uh help address some of the comments that we've heard what's the what's the benefit certainly it would it would um have heat be able to disperse it would have smoke be able to
disperse uh you wouldn't have a an enclosed garage if there was a lot of smoke it would build up here you're allowing it to vent out naturally with with uh convection uh more freely um we further located all the EV parking spots
we've located them right next to the large openings uh we've also spread them out around the garage uh and you'll notice that we've we've um we've broken them up so that there' be two spaces uh that are a foot apart so we've separated
them a little further and then put a a non-EV space in between them there by by spreading the EV spaces around we maximize the ones along the back what's the benefit of spreading them as you as you go through that that that you they're not right next to each other and
it when you minimize the risk of uh the fire jumping from from EV vehicle to EV vehicle okay okay uh we also you'll notice how we positioned them here uh we tried to position them under the courtyards you know so to the extent
that possible and still getting uh the the um the number of spaces around uh we've we've located the EB spaces so they're below the courtyards not below the residential buildings above or and then the couple of spots where they are
located below the residential buildings above the residential buildings above are set back to some degree you know so they're not right on that phase um the next thing that we did is that we um located fire stand pipes that would
be within 50 ft uh of the vehicles you'll notice um these gray shaded uh areas that I have is the 50 foot radius from the originating point of the stand pipe we put the stand pipe on the
opposite side of the drive aisle so if a fireman had to go and connect up to the fire stand pipe it wasn't right next to the vehicle uh then I showed the 50- foot radius going around that it covers the uh the EV vehicles and then space
them uh space them all around uh uh then the third thing that we did is that we've located um uh places to store the EV blankets the blankets for the vehicles uh we vol which was another
request which was another request uh by the you know by the town at one point but also by our fire consultants uh and we've located four of those um one of them is by the back exit door over here
on the right side uh another one is by by this maintenance door by a back exit over here on the uh left side we have one uh in the front that's close to the uh vehicles in the corner here
that's close to the lobby entrance and so on uh and then we got another one uh that's right adjacent to the rideway as you're coming in um furthermore um with uh conversations with the fire
department uh we've have um two doors to the garage uh overhead doors that are operated by sirens you know so that those would automatically open you know uh if they had to go and get in uh and they are also interconnected with the
fire alarm so that in uh that was a request at our meeting uh that if there was a fire alarm or the sprinklers went off that the overhead garage doors immediately went open and there would be uh um easy access or easy for people to
go and get out of the garage okay uh any other changes to the plan that you made uh in response to the comments that we've received from the board professionals or the board yeah yeah there's a number we we've we've uh
located on the plans the generator uh we located the screening on the generator and the courtyard in the back the larger courtyard i show a 10-ft screen a 9 foot high screen wall wrapping around it um if you want I could pull up those plans
but but no you can do there um the fire department had also requested roof access uh and I believe on their uh their latest letter they acknowledge that we provided that uh and it's it's actually shown on the rendering uh in
the upper right hand corner over the lobby there's one on that side uh one on the other we made it look like a dormer uh so it integrated with the design of the building okay um and then um we memorialized all the things that we
talked about uh last time with some uh uh 8 foot6 bases to get access to the mechanical rooms and so on uh and then the final thing is the fire department wanted to the two courtyards up on the second floor uh they wanted to have access from the inside of the building
uh and we are agreeable to do that we're going to there's there's a on each side there's a onebedroom unit that I can tighten up a little and I can make a carter that's uh that's an emergency access there for for access back to those other than that which you're agreeable to doing on behalf of the
applicant we've addressed all of the other design comments that to my knowledge we have okay thank you anything else you want to offer no I think that that's that's it any questions i have a couple of questions yeah
um the one of the reports we have here talks about different types of uh mitigating circumstances are there going to be additional stand pipes or additional water pipes which report are you referring to there's a report here
that says classification of modern vehicles that was a that was a exhibit to your fire officials letter of Friday April 4th so this was sent to our fire official last week and then what I the
first thing I note is that it starts on page 33 with one incident number three but where's incident number two where's incident number we we didn't send that that's that that was that was prepared by your fire marshal not by us but we will we will be addressing the
additional mitigation uh with our next witness as far as the stand pipes there are numerous other stand point pipes that are required by code there are ones at the stairways there access points extra ones we're doing all those plus all these ones in gray are extra ones
that we're providing for the EV all these are not envisioned anywhere in the code they're all that's all um over and above the code that we're doing as mitigation to uh uh to uh to make it a
safer building and make it a uh uh uh a better position for the fire department when they have to be in there and I think our experts are going to speak about that a little bit more thank you let's let's have a follow-up question because uh obviously you've designed this now and you've got a lot
of experience in denying multi designing multif family with parking yes with EV charging how do you how do you uh consider this plan in terms of the upgrades and the mitigation that you've provided compared to other plans that have been lawfully adopted we've never
come close to this level of mitigation this this one is um by far way over and above just the the level of the sprinkler systems that we're putting in um the fact that we changed it to the open parking the open parking garage and
in fact even that um I exceed the requirements of openness you know we're uh you know I didn't cut it to the last percent or whatever we're we're uh you know uh in the length of openings I think I'm 8% over what the requirement
was you or or it's it's required 40 40% is open we're at 48% open you know as an example um you you know the the blankets uh you know the alarm system those are things that we don't don't normally do
uh and and quite frankly the three-hour fire rating and you're going to hear about that more uh we went through the fire test that our consultant did and we and we uh they had a lot of consultation with our structural engineers uh to make
sure that you know in the event that there was an incident you know that the building uh can sustain and and after this uh um I challenged them pretty hard every time we had meetings as well because I knew it was coming my way too
yes another question what towns were What town did you build a building with EVs in the parking deck this situation I've I've done them in I've done them in Bloomfield i've done them in Jersey um Union City i've done them in um uh
Livingston um Jersey City we've done a number of ones in Jersey City the last four years what yes the last four years yes every every project we have to do it now you know it's it's uh you know you know in the in the last you know two and a
half three years you know we're being forced we're being required to put them in all buildings are are those res are those residential buildings that you're referencing yes they're all residential buildings and they all have the residences above the parking parking
garage and some of them don't have the three-hour ratings that we have here all right is it fair to fair to say that Avalon asked you to really dig in and find mitigation that you could add over and above what the code requires very clearly
they're not shy right just a clarification question if I could you said three-hour rating what does that apply to just so I understand i apologize if I missed it three-hour rating yeah so so the building the way this building is designed the parking garage is designed to what they call
construction class 1A there's construction class scale from one to five with A and B in them all 1a is the highest rated construction class with the most resist the highest rated fire rate ratings in it this garage is 1A so
when 1A you know the that podium slab that's picking up loads has to resist three threehour fire rating you know under certain test criteria and the fire consultants can speak to you a little bit more about that probably as well as
the other structural elements beings and columns and so on do you know what temperature that's at uh I would defer it to the experts okay so one more question just as um a clarification point i think maybe the experts on that will have better answers
um with the three-hour rating if there's no concern with the structural of it what was the reasoning that we wanted to move them underneath the empty areas if there was no concern about the structure and the residential above it because I was told
to be um over and above and go crazy and make it as safe as possible perceived at every level you know and so my perception was that uh if if someone had the a concern to it you'd be certainly less of concern about um something
happened over a courtyard versus someone's apartment so it was it was an opportunity was here that was unique to this building that there was a a fairly good percentage of them that could be under a courtyard so I I took it on my own to locate them at that spot i I
don't think the board should take uh the mitigation that's been added as a concern that we had that we had an unsafe building building at the code it is in direct response to the concern that you have founded or unfounded we
respect what you what you said and we took it seriously and did everything that we could think of with the consultants that are experts in this field to try to address the concerns that you raised even though we don't believe they're warranted we believe that the likelihood of a fire from a
charger is virtually unexistent right if if a charger's built to code we believe that and you'll hear from the experts not from me the lawyer but we believe that we virtually decrease the chance of fire happening from the charger next to
zero fires can happen in the EV vehicles themselves the batteries get damaged there's some malfunctions but it's very remote compared to what gasoline cars go on fire the statistics that we found is
there have been approximately 400 incidents in the last 15 years there's nearly 40 million EVs on the road and only 15% of those were related to charging at the time and most the vast
majority of those if not all of those were as a result of antiquated equipment people doctoring up the charger using extension cords overcharging none of the protections that we have we couldn't find any case
where a charger is built to code that caused the fire so we understand the concern it's a grave concern because these fires are hot and they're hard to get out and they're dangerous but they're very remote and we built in redundancy and we built in protections
in the god forbid scenario where one does happen that it won't cause a catastrophic event for the building or cause injury or loss of life we're going to talk about your EV firefighters and your your um your firefighters and
proper training we're going to get that to that in the end what we're going to offer but we're rec we recognize the concern and we're going to hit it head on and try to address it the best we can and then some that so I I just want to be clear these are not because we're worried about a fire these are because
you guys are worried and we have to satisfy you one um sorry one one more question just for clarification on a different um item in there it said that the parking deck is going to be license plate reader that's how you guys are
going to do the gates and everything is it going to be open to everybody in the entire development of Avalon or just people who live within that building fair question i think yeah what was testified to was the residents of this building alone this building only i think you know that that's what I
remember hearing last time i think uh it's just been confirmed okay thank you any other questions of the architect we also updated the site plan uh Marioelli's the civil engineer he's here
if you have any questions i think it's rather straightforward the site plan changes we we got the letter from CHA um we addressed all the comments we got the revised letter today and there's a couple small technical comments he has in there we're happy to address those
also i don't think they rise to the level of a a continuing presentation because I think we've satisfied that but he's here if if you have any questions with respect to the changes that we made and again they were submitted back in uh March uh as a part of the amended
submission trying to address all of the conditions so we can hopefully get a preliminary final so just for the record then you're saying anything in his NCHA's report you're willing to comply any of those that's correct that's correct you want me to leave the exhibits up anyone else for now you can
leave them yes so next up I want to I want to uh call up our consultants um Robert Solomon and Evan Lacroy who were with SLS Social Tech
nationally recognized fire prevention uh engineering firm i'm going to have both of them sworn and we'll through the testimony and the presentation i do believe Sure can you turn your mic on for us
Cara sorry Cara are you you are you going to read those or you want us to verbally yeah I think does everybody have a copy of their CVs in front of them okay it looks like they're all getting them u why don't you go through qualifications they have these and if they have any questions they can go from there okay uh
gentlemen could you introduce yourself individually and and your credentials and your fire protection and life safety expertise sure uh Evan McCroy fire protection engineer with SOS Consulting
red is on okay um uh seven years of experience been have my master's degree in fire protection engineering from Wester Poly Technic Institute uh I've been a professional engineer uh licensed in several states for the last uh three
and a half years um part of NFPA uh SFP and ICC building plans examiner for um additional certifications robert Solomon i'm chief development officer and a principal fire protection engineer at SLS um I'm a licensed fire
protection engineer have been so since 1985 uh my background is bachelor of science degree in fire protection engineering from University of Maryland uh spent time working for the military in a civilian capacity spent 34 years working at the National Fire Protection
Association which is kind of the the center of a lot of these code provisions we'll be discussing this evening and since 2020 I have been uh with SLS consulting um some other activities I teach an undergraduate program at WPI
uh on fire protection engineering topics i a member of the UL fire council and a member of an NFPA committee after having managed them for many years i'm now a member of of one of them so that's a little bit about about my background robert or Evan could you could you
describe your company and what your company does and where you do it sure so SLS consulting is now part of a international consulting firm called SOAT uh headquarters for SOAT is in France but uh we were acquired by them
in 2023 so our uh our work is actually international was uh international to some extent even before that acquisition so our role is to work with everybody we work with developers we work with architects we work with other engineers
we work with code officials and we provide a variety of services everything from developing code narratives for a project um what codes apply what provisions are unique to that so that's a main uh function of what we do we also
conduct due diligence studies for maybe building owners that are concerned about the uh efficiency and adequacy of their fire protection systems or maybe a property's for sale and the potential owner wants to know is this thing up to code and if it's not what what are the
expenditures uh that are going to be involved there another thing that we uh also do we also do what's called thirdparty plan review where we might be retained by a jurisdiction to supplement their own resources to do building plan
review for building code and fire code related issues um one of the ones that a number of us are working on uh for the past three years it's actually the Tesla Gigafactory in Austin Texas where we do the third party plan review for that facility where the cyber truck is
manufactured so those are I think those are the main things that we uh we get involved in we do some litigation work as a result of fire losses um or buildings that maybe uh were were inadequately protected um and a new
owner bought it without a due diligence study so we'll also work on items like that as well any questions of these experts i have a couple um and please excuse the questions this is really just due to my complete lack of knowledge about what it is that you're doing um so
the we'd be looking to qualify them as what would be the they're fire protection engineers and life safety experts okay is that a state-by-state license is that an international license is that a Just explain that to me a
little bit yeah the licensing uh provisions like uh Evan said he's a professional engineer i'm a licensed professional engineer so it is state by state um for fire protection engineers that is the exact same test my license happens to be in California um but the
same test that's given there is given in New Jersey or Massachusetts or Texas if that helps okay no it definitely does um so the testimony is that the you're not licensed neither of you are licensed in New Jersey but the test that you would pass for qualifications in the states you are licensed is to the best of your
knowledge the same as what would be here yes do you have knowledge of the um international obviously fire code New Jersey building fire codes to the extent that there's anything specific to the state yeah yes the uh New Jersey codes
are referred to as the uniform construction codes the UCCC uh the current edition is based on the 2021 edition of the international building code the IBC is the model document that a lot of states will kind of start with and then they can modify or amend that
um we see fewer and fewer state amendments over the years but the the the New Jersey code is based on that 2021 edition yes okay and then you said that you've given testimony um in litigation presumably before other boards as well the litigation experience
I have is in depositions as a result of fire losses or uh copyright issues things like that and any board testimony i I do not know and then have you given
uh testimony or opin as to this specific issue uh with regard to uh questions and concerns of EV vehicles in parking decks such as the one that's designed for the application um I' I've given that in
terms of what we what we do as part of our um involvement on new building projects we develop a code narrative and the code narrative will address things like EV charging if it's if there's going to be a public garage or private garage whatever the case might be so to
that extent um those tend to get covered in those code narratives that our company develops okay thank you i I have one question have you done any investigative work on EV fires i have not personally no all right i I have a handful of
questions I'm I'm going to ask uh these gentlemen before we get into the exact changes and and uh rules that apply to this particular project just to set a foundation as to what we what you really have to examine in order to come up with
the opinion you're you're going to be asked to make regarding the safety of this building so exactly what laws and building codes govern the installation of and operation of EV charging stations and parking garages in New Jersey and how do they ensure safety
i'll start with that so as I mentioned the uh New Jersey Uniform Construction Code the UCCC is kind of the umbrella document for design of new buildings it regulates uh specific requirements based upon the use the occupancy and it gets
into things like building construction type so we'll start with that we heard from Arthur um that this is a type 1A building type 1A is fire resistive construction there is no construction category that's higher than that that's the same construction category that I
would find up in Newark in a building that's 40 stories in height so type 1A is the is a very conservative construction type so that's one piece that the code addresses to help protect the building the occupants and to some
extent the first responders and then we layer in other systems and features we have building fire alarm systems for example we have automatic sprinkler systems for example uh those are two very common systems that go into just about any building these days regardless
of its use or its function or its size so we have systems like that and then we also have other systems that the code uh the New Jersey code regulates and one of those uh supplemental codes that's a mandatory reference is the national
electrical code which is NFPA70 again New Jersey has I think a slightly different designation for it under the UCCC banner but the National Electrical Code regulates everything electrical that's in this room we're in right now this microphone even though it's low
voltage the lighting the projection equipment so the NEC is the governing document when it comes to many of these other mitigation features with regard to EVs there's an entire section in the National Electrical Code that addresses
EV charging stations specifically and it takes everything from where that charging station is receiving its power from the utility then the components of the charging station including the connectors the wiring everything that
goes from that charging station into the vehicle what supplements that then is the other part of this kind of uh protection ecosystem from organizations like Underwriters Laboratories ul is going to be plastered all over every
piece of equipment that's associated with the charging station ul has an entire ecosystem dedicated just to that so one of the things that we rely on in these codes and standards is the ability for an independent group like UL to
evaluate the reliability the safety issues the redundancies the hardness of the systems if you will to make sure that they're going to perform as intended so it's all of these things the building construction the active fire
protection systems the electrical system and then the charging station and then the third party independent review of that equipment to make sure it's safe that's kind of how we wrap all of that up when it comes specifically to EV
charging could you describe um if the charging stations themselves create additional hazards with respect to causing fires in ED vehicles and what what really causes
the fire and describe a little bit why these fires are so concerning yeah I'll I'll I'll start with that also i'm going to turn some of that over to Evan um let him talk a little bit so uh the the issue we heard earlier right the EV charging station itself is a very
safe piece of equipment right it's like uh it's like the the television in our house right it's a piece of electrical equipment um and it's evaluated like I said by UL ul is gonna is going to be the governing body to oversee that
equipment to make sure that we're not producing or manufacturing junk or installing junk charging stations in these buildings so so that that that particular uh that's the main aspect I think associated with that
um so the hazard goes back to what we heard earlier right it's the battery in the EV the battery in the EV is the thing that uh that first responders are going to be concerned with whether it's out on a highway in an accident or if it's in a residential one or two family
dwelling garage or if it's in a public parking structure so the EV battery has been the hazard that's been identified as a potential problem for more than 15 years now as the car manufacturers get smarter right those technologies are
improving how do we how do we come up with better battery chemistries that might be a bit safer that maybe won't burn at the same rate so the that you know the the hazard is really in the battery itself and you know the the the car manufacturers have that
responsibility but then groups like UL make sure that that charging equipment is compatible regardless of what battery technology goes into the EV so those are the those are kind of two of the um two of the main pieces there that I'd wanna I'd want to highlight and Evan some more
to add to that yeah just to add to that a little bit as as Robert was talking about the National Electric Code too and it its requirements there's additional requirements that relate to overcurren protection methods and remote disconnecting methods where um you know your your your wires and your cables and
your rating for for this equipment is required to be 125% of the the current that's going through it for that overcurren protection same with um having those remote disconnects and automatic disconnects uh in the event where the the charging station is going to sense
an issue with the with the battery or some sort of fault in the battery system as well thank you so New Jerseyy's at the forefront of electric vehicles almost obviously California is the leader uh and there's
many many significant uh installations in San Francisco itself and I understand that they are one of the leading jurisdictions in our country as to safety are you familiar with California's San Francisco in particular's requirements for EV
charging and EV parking in residential multif family homes yeah so San Francisco has a uh fire code ordinance where it basically requires where there's new EV vehicle charging installation um the spring it's required
to be sprinklered and that sprinkler design density which is going to be how much water is going to be you know emitted outside of your sprinkler heads your sprinkler piping etc um is required to be what's called extra hazard group two um that's your highest level of hazard that you can get for some sort of
uh sprinkler protection you start with light hazard you go to ordinary hazard there's group one and group two there's extra hazard one then there's extra hazard group two and that's a design density of uh 0.4 gallons per minute per per square foot um and that's required
to be done over a 2500 square foot design area um it's the most water that you could put on on a hazard as possible so San Francisco is actually um one of the only jurisdictions that has
designated a specific design density as it relates to EV charging stations this is above and beyond even what the international building code NFPA 13 which is your standard for installation of sprinkler systems nfba 88A which is
your parking structures this is above and beyond even what um those codes require this is a special local ordinance from from the jurisdiction and we're going to get into um what mitigation we've taken but can
you summarize have we have we met the San Francisco standards yep where we are going to be meeting the uh San Francisco standards in terms of sprinkler design density and uh and also additionally I know we were talking about the stand pipes that we're adding in the garage
stand pipe systems are required in your interior exit stairs only um we are providing them within 50 ft of every uh EV parking space uh that's a lot of additional hose connections to aid in firefighter operations to assist in
being able to throw even more water on the fire in the event of of a fire okay let's get into this project that you helped design a lot of the mitigation um so you were retained by Avalon and what did they ask you to look at and help
assist them with yeah so uh we were retained by Avalon to sort of uh really sort of understand the New Jersey building codes and what's required by the state for for parking garages specifically you know anything
related to EV charging stations um and to sort of understand the concerns from from the planning board and and to determine uh what in our professional opinion mitigation strategies above and beyond code that we can make make based on our research of um EV vehicle fires
case studies etc uh to to create uh a building that's going to you know preserve life safety and aid in fire fire department access in event of a fire as well and you're aware there's there's 31 uh charging stations that's required and
mandated by state law can you describe where they're located and why you think they're in the appropriate location in the building sure so they're located along the exterior wall perimeter um near these uh near the code required
openings for the open parking garage um and this is going to be in an optimal optimal spot because it's going to allow for the heat to uh emit out into and vent into the atmosphere um as opposed to you know hitting the concrete slab
above and affecting fire department operations in the in the garage in and of itself so where where they're located along the uh exterior wall is is something that's definitely optimal for in the event of a fire those
vehicles what about the spacing of the of the uh EV charging did you have any recommendations as to how to further mitigate the possibility of fire jumping from one vehicle to another what what did you recommend there yeah so we we definitely took a
look at where we could uh you know and they talked about enlarging the parking spaces right as we're trying to limit the amount of uh the the chances of a fire jumping from from vehicle to vehicle um in addition to that I mean with the sprinkler system that we have
in general sprinkler systems have great success in limiting u specifically even vehicle fires to just the vehicle fire as opposed to letting it jump from um adjacent vehicle adjacent vehicle um also they're they're out of the way of the means of egress from this parking
garage u so in the event of of a fire occupants that are in the parking garage can can egress safely without um going past an EV charging station or EV parking spot which was which was critical and something that we looked at when we're talking about the life safety of the occupants uh where where there
could be a fire event one one of the concerns we've heard u is how difficult it is to get these fires out are very hot how hot do they get compared to gas combustion fires and if they're difficult to get out what purpose does
the extra water or other mitigation uh what is the purpose of that in terms of trying to control the fire sure so talking just the comparison between the EV fires and a typical internal combustion engine uh vehicle with the
results that we had we had issued a report where we kind of analyzed a lot of what uh the fire protection research institute had or foundation had put together in terms of comparing uh the heat release rates of a vehicle fire the heat release rate being the uh total
energy produced from from a fire uh the results are pretty comparable between EVs and internal combustion engines evs peak slightly higher um they are longer in duration uh whereas your internal combustion engine vehicle uh tends to
lose lose that heat release rate and energy a lot sooner um so these fires are pretty comparable in peak heat release rate um but they do uh they do have a longer duration in terms of the amount of energy that it produces and uh
all the research that we have done in terms of extinguishing these fires um it could take somewhere between 60 and 50 minutes or six and 50 minutes to completely extinguish the fire obviously um there's considerations after the effect of of reignition where these fires have to be monitored for a certain
amount of time afterwards because there is a a risk of reignition for these for these vehicle fires um but there was uh one of the studies that we had looked at the difference in the amount of water to put out to completely suppress these
fires is is a difference between uh a greater magnitude from your gas vehic vehicle fire to to an EV vehicle fire you need a lot more water to to put these out so when we're looking at increasing the sprinkler system to a design density that can throw more water
on the fire when we're looking at adding additional stand pipe connections for your your fire department to hook up to to provide more water for that fire those are sort of uh a lot of the important things that we looked at in these proposed mitigation strategies
and so you you touched on as we talk about these mitigation strategies you touched on the standpipe hose connections in the garage what what what provisions did we make to accommodate that additional standpipe location yeah so one of the things that would showing
up here in the gray area is the the NFPA standard for stamp pipe systems basically says I have to uh have a standpipe connection from the connection point 100 foot length of hose and then I kind of get a credit for another 30 foot
um of nozzle distance through right 130T what the revision here is showing is that there will be a stamp pipe hose connection that's the 2 and 12 inch outlet uh that you might see in the stairwell of of any building um you will have one of those connections within 50
ft of the charging station itself the charging station not because we're concerned about the the a fire in the charging station right but the charging station is where the vehicle is going to be so that's a good demarcation point so that is uh probably you're getting twice
as many hose connections at least uh in this garage area than you normally might expect for us non fire experts what what's a stand pipe uh think I always describe the standpipe system as I'm going to take the hydrants out on the
street and I'm going to turn them like this right so it it it's a it's a dedicated uh fire line to supply the connection the connections come off that main line they are two and a half inch connections standard connections for any
uh any fire department in the US so what that does is the stamp pipe system basically brings the water supply closer to where the fire might be versus having to drag in 100 200 feet of of hose from the fire apparatus to where the fire
source might be you you got you mentioned that the three-hour fire resistance rating u how did you confirm that this will perform with at least a threehour resistance yeah so one of the things
that we did is that we looked at um those heat release rates that we we saw from the various testing that was out there for EV vehicles um we took the peak heat release rate that was observed from an EV vehicle um and were able to
use a fire modeling software uh to basically model a simulated fire to a uh we have a 12 inch thick concrete slab above um what we did is we looked at the most at risk
area which uh in our opinion was where the the height from floor to slab was the lowest um we simulated a vehicle fire below that slab an EV vehicle fire an EV vehicle fire below that slab um
using the heat release rate data that we had uh received from the testing um we determined a centerline plume temperature uh which that is just some uh fire dynamics calculation to basically determine we have this heat release data that doesn't necessarily
correlate directly to a temperature there's a fire dynamics component to it to to figure out what the maximum temperature would be exposed onto that concrete slab from that elevation distance uh that was determined to be uh
4,000 in the 4600 uh degrees Fahrenheit range so we took that 46 degree 4600 degree Fahrenheit exposed to our concrete slab above and what we did is we followed the time temperature curve from the heat release rate data that we
had received from the um from the studies from the EV fire um and basically determined how much concrete depth would fail at that time temperature curve at that uh 4600 degrees F um and we were able to
determine that there we would have concrete failure concrete spalling for 1.55 inches of that 12 inch slab um how we determined that was we looked at the internal temperatures of when
concrete fails so our our failure failure thresholds um was 350 degrees Celsius for concrete and then the rebar was at 400 degrees um at any point if our concrete slab hit that it was considered a failure that's
where we got the one and a half inches approximately even those um failure thresholds were were conservative uh concrete spalls usually around 500 degrees Celsius our our failure criteria was at 350 degrees Celsius rebar fails at at around 500
degrees Celsius as well and our failure threshold was 400 degrees C um so we evaluated the fire resistance of the 12-in concrete slab simulating an EV fire beneath it uh to determine if if we
would have adequate fire resistance that 10 and a half inch that is remaining um is is still well above and beyond the three hours that's required um the International Building Code has uh
calculated fire resistance for concrete um usually you can achieve three hours of fire resistance from about seven inches of of concrete so we're we're well above and beyond that from a fire resistance rating standpoint now you're
talking about 12 inches of concrete is that code or is that better than code from a fire resistance rating requirement that would be better than code a lot of times we see those podium slabs are increased due to structural concerns for what it's supporting above
um When we had discussions with the structural engineer of record when we discussed this amount of concrete that was failing uh to determine if there'd be any sort of structural concerns above and uh it it was deemed that it was there was no structural concerns at that
at that depth of failure so in your in your professional opinion the design of that slab would be safe in the unlikely event of an EV fire yeah and also I want to add with the uh the fire model that we simulated does
not consider a sprinkler controlled fire at all either that is just a fire that is going to be that is going to be allowed to be run rampid without any intervention at all of a sprinkler system or fire department operations at all because that's what the testing um so worst case scenario absolute worst
case scenario okay um other mitigation measures that that have been implemented that I'd like you to try to explain those for the board you know the overcurren protection measures measures are they required and provided for the EV chargers yeah yes so the uh the
electrical code in New Jersey again based on the national electrical code um there's an entire article in there article 625 that addresses all of the EV charging infrastructure um that kind of gets broken down to kind of commercial public garages versus what
I might put in my garage at my house as the case might be so the NEC then requires um that overcurren protection ground fault protection and one of the main things it does is it requires compliance with this array of UL product
standards so it it's it's those combinations of the code mandating compliance with certain UL test protocols and then that's what we're looking for again we we you know we apply that UL model to pretty much everything we apply it to that exit sign
we apply it to the sprinklers the fire alarm system components it's kind of there's a performance requirement and then groups like UL independently evaluate that to make sure the product or the products meet that performance requirement so that's all baked into
that that part of the EV infrastructure and the EV chargers themselves how how do you confirm that they're all designed and spec speced out to the most recent UL standards how how is that done to
make sure they're not they're properly certified yeah so what what typically is done right on a a project like this and most you probably already have heard this before right you have the architect kind of sitting on top of the the project management and then the architect will hire specialty consultants right they'll hire
electrical engineers structural engineers mechanical engineers so we anticipate then the electrical engineer of of that team they will put in the specification what those performance requirements are compliance with NFPA70
article 625 uh and then maybe compliance with the UL 2202 standard things like that so so that that's basically how we put all that package together that's how we ensure that the contractors are going to know what to do and that at some
point this ultimately will go before your building department and fire department as part of the plan review process and they have a the huge task of checking all those things right making sure we do have compliance with the UCCC
or the applicable reference documents or standards so uh that that that's part of that's part of the safety infrastructure that we rely on in the report that you submitted and we submitted to the board um uh to support
your testimony this evening you talked about the importance of UL 2022 and UL2594 certifications for EV chargers how does this project incorporate that and what what's the importance of that
yeah yeah it does it does i be repeating myself a little bit but those those are the those are the UL product standards that the US relies on for safe charging systems right that covers everything as I mentioned it covers everything from
where the power is derived from the utility into that charging station all the battery management components all the fault monitoring components that go into that charging station the wiring methods that are utilized and then the
connection between the charging station and the vehicle itself right that that's all covered under that umbrella um those are the probably two main UL documents that uh uh that you that everybody relies on there are believe there's an
infographic I can leave with you all from UL um that does a much better job of showing you all those pieces uh and there's a number of other UL product standards that also go into that mix so that's really what uh that's really what we're doing right we again we rely on uh
documents like that and evaluations like that to make sure we're getting uh a robust charging system and a safe charging system in your report you cite the Fire Protection Research Foundation what is that what is that
foundation yeah the Fire Protection Research Foundation FPRF it's the research arm of NFPA um until recently it was a a separate entity um kind of under the umbrella of NFPA but it kind of operated a little bit independently
um but what they do is they are always trying to look ahead at the emerging challenges so uh FPRF was established in about 1982 uh and they started to look at things like challenges in warehouse fires for example um over the years
they've looked at everything from kind of reliability of building fire alarm systems sprinkler systems they've been addressing a number of uh electrical infrastructure issues like uh like EVs and and fire department response they
have been looking at uh parking garage fires in Earnest now for about four or five years uh they have two reports specific to parking garages and a third uh studies underway right now so what what FPRF does uh with these reports
they uh they put a scope of the project together they put that out for bids to a contractor somebody that's really specialized in that subject area um and then they they have them kind of go off and sometimes the report just might be a literature survey or it might be
developing a roadmap for needed fire testing or evaluation of products or systems or whatever the case might be so again they're typically involved with built environment issues they've also done a number of studies on uh PPE for firefighters and things like that but
their main topic or main goal really is to look at emerging issues or challenges that we're currently faced with right how do we kind of come up with better ideas or better protection methods and those recommendations and those reports
then get put in front of the NFPA technical committees nfpa has uh 280 technical committees that develop about 310 different codes and standards so FPRF then uh use uh is is used by those
committees to inform them of here's a gap here's an issue you know do do the report give us enough information to revise something or many studies right more studies needed right that that's answer you don't necessarily want to see
but the parking garage issue uh really kind of got everyone's attention probably in 2014 or 2015 was you know we don't see many parking garage fires but we did see some globally where we had catastrophic losses right and the issue
really kind of came down to not if it's an ICE vehicle or an EV the issue came down to we kind of have requirements based upon when I was younger right the cars had a bunch of metal in them right they didn't have uh fiberglass and plastic bumpers or the amount of uh
synthetics that now go on the interior of the cars right so our vehicle fires are different now and the the first kind of kickoff of that research foundation report uh phase one was really to look more broadly at should these standards
in the building codes and the standard that Evan referenced that FFP 888A should that have some enhanced requirements in it because the nature of vehicles the makeup of the components and materials is so much different so
that's that that's what FPRF does and then that's a little bit specifically about what's going on with the three phases are looking at right now for parking garages and so how did how did you take that foundation's best practices for emergency response to make
your recommendations for this project how do you apply those recommendations here um I'll take a a start at that Evan um it it really looks at the FPRF report looked looked globally at fire events in
parking garages right it wasn't limited to the US right us cases are in there but it kind of looked globally right um these garage fires again they're not unique to the US i don't think there's any fire that's unique to the US other countries uh have them so what what's
different what's out there and then what are we seeing in other countries what are we seeing in this country what are the trends that are out there and then what are the places that potential improvements or more full-scale fire testing or potential changes to codes
and standards might be in order um so that that's that that that's kind of how I would u uh start with that part you want to add on to that yeah I think one of the things we looked at for for phase one specifically which was the first um the first time the Fire Protection
Research Foundation looked into this thing they they definitely sort of evaluated that the largest risk in terms of parking garage fires um really had to do with uh enclosed parking garages that were unsprinkled and had poor
ventilation um Art spoke earlier about how we've now taken this parking garage we've upgraded to an open parking garage per code um if you're an enclosed parking garage per code you need to have a certain amount of mechanical ventilation and in the United States are required to be sprinklers but you know
looking at the global aspect of parking garage fires um an enclosed parking garage that was unsinkered was really where a lot of the risk was at um for parking garages there there are even um most recent code change in in the
international building code um there's now requirements to sprinkler an open parking garage there are several states in the country now where you can build an open parking garage and you're not even required to put sprinklers in them and you are code compliant regardless of if you know not even discussing the EV
charging uh component of it at all so one of the code changes that sort of came out of this um this research was the international building code and NFPA saying "Hey we should look at even open parking garages and and providing sprinkler systems in in those uh in
those conditions as well." You know as we've seen um like Robert said car fires develop and change over the years they're much hotter now due to due to all the plastics it's no different than uh apartment fires you see now different upholsteries you know we're getting much
more synthetic now um and that is having an effect on the the temperature and the heat of these fires and how and it's affecting how the fire departments can can respond to them um phase two kind of
uh really took it a step further and kind of outlined and evaluated the effectiveness of sprinkler systems in parking garages and in their ability to control vehicle fires to just one vehicle and really um took a look at case studies where there were uh fire
events in parking garages that were sprinklered and how it was contained to one vehicle and it didn't spread to another vehicle and that the phase two really showed that the sprinkler system had great success in in controlling the fire to one vehicle and not not seeing it spread
you also site is it the Simons or Seaman's or Simon's white paper seams seams seams white paper uh that was issued on fire safety and parking garages with ED support uh what is that
what did that paper show and what were those recommendations and how did you incorporate those recommendations into this program yeah so they they're leader in EV charging infrastructure um one of the main uh findings from that was really incorporating was the importance
of the automatic shut offs and overcurren protection that would minimize the likelihood of any sort of charging incident um I think it really kind of hones in on how you know we really need to look at these charging stations and evaluate them and and make sure we're complying with all the
applicable UL standards and codes that are in place now um and it's really kind of showing that if you're a top-end code compliant charging system that has all of these measures in there that you're going to be effective in minimizing the likelihood of a of a fire due to a
charging incident okay and you we talked about sprinklers just a little bit more on the sprinklers uh are these upgraded sprinklers are these accordance with code they are they more upgraded than the code requires how how do we address the the concern you
heard from the client that they want to make sure they have every feature available to address these these fires sure so whenever the um codes started to change right these are the current additions now that have a mandatory sprinkler requirement regardless of the
garage is open or not um the sprinkler design criteria uses this concept of a density right how many gallons per minute per square foot of floor area am I going to put water on so the the current provision in the newer codes
right um is.20 gallons per minute per square foot um and that is indicative of what the standard calls an ordinary hazard type of uh of design right that's that's typical maybe for maybe a factory with
light manufacturing or places like that the room we're in now this would be what's called a light hazard design right it has the the least amount of water but it's based upon the fuel load that we that we we have in here so looking around there were a couple of
resources that our report makes reference to one of those was an NFPA standard dealing with energy storage systems right which is a whole other thing that your board might be dealing with if you're not already uh but uh energy storage systems that that
standard um addresses large capacity battery energy storage systems and some of their recommendations and some of their research on those size battery systems kind of came around this 0.40 gallon per minute per square foot
density so so we make reference to that again in context right nf A55 is not for EV charging but it gives us a perspective maybe of where uh a density has been kind of established for battery energy storage systems and then when we
look more broadly we go to the west coast like we heard about San Francisco did do an ordinance a supplement to their fire code and they settled on the 040 density if I look in the current edition of the uh of the UCCC in New
Jersey I believe the density the minimum that's required in the state code is a 0.15 density right so this is this is beyond anything that's required in the state it's beyond anything that's required in most states um and I believe
there's even parts of California that would require that san Francisco California allows individual jurisdictions to do modifications to the state code they typically have to be more than uh right there they're usually they usually can't go backwards they have to go forward so there's a case
where San Francisco exercised its ability to amend the state code and come up with that that higher density the 040 so we have a couple of places where this is starting to emerge right now um and you know time will tell if more
individual jurisdictions or more states or even if the national codes and standards uh kind of adopt that down the road but here um here you're you're you know you're getting you're getting a sprinkler system that is the the it's at
the top of the heap pretty much so So you've mentioned San Francisco any other jurisdictions that you reviewed that have updated code requirements that you took and you took the best out of and applied it to this project yeah I I
think I think u a couple things come to mind i think we mentioned in our report we mentioned Miami date county um our our firm does a fair amount of work down there and they haven't codified anything yet but you know wanting to work with the local jurisdiction you know they had
some concerns so typically on our projects down there and they're similar to what we see except sometimes they are they're 40story buildings with uh with parking garages underneath um we're working on one actually that has a car elevator that brings your car up to your
condo on your level so that's a slightly different challenge but you know Miami Dade had you know very uh kind of forward-looking department they said like a little bit concerned about this you know what are some things we we can do here so uh we have looked at you know kind of increasing the sprinkler density
for what they have they've expressed some interest in uh the fire blanket concept um they asked about you know could the EV charging stations when possible can they be located closer to the main entrance to make access to the
garage by firefighters a little bit easier so you know we we're open to discussing those things and having dialogue sometimes we can do one of those or maybe two of those and other cases it's not practical but you know they are they're like just like here
they have people asking the right questions what you know what what do we really need to do to to make sure we're providing as safe a structure as we can once we bring the EVs in and the charging stations into the into the garage thank you uh we we talked about a
lot of different things and a lot of different mitigation can we why don't we just try to identify them one by one what what are the code requirements that we have in this building and what additional measures such as the fire blankets uh are being provided over and
above what the code would require based on all of the all of the reports that you've cited this evening and all the best recommendations and best practices sure so starting with the sprinkler system um designing the sprinkler system
to that extra hazard group two design density um would be above and beyond the code required ordinary hazard uh design density um additional standpipe hose connections um provided throughout the garage would
be above and beyond code um having the overcurren and remote shut offs are required by code but we are providing those um the EV fire blankets are sort of just an enhanced technology
component that's coming along to assist in in fire department um operations in attacking the fire uh and then what else the open parking garage being above you know the 40% of
the perimeter and 20% of the wall area albeit you know slightly but still above above would be considered above and beyond code um still open parking garage yeah yeah i was going to say this lab you talked about also yeah yeah yeah and I was going to say the other one right
that we heard earlier right is is that the um uh the optimal locations right keep them on an exterior wall um right that's one of the things that's not a code requirement and then place as many as possible underneath this kind of uh this area outside the footprint of the
building above right so those are some things that are not required those are that's another example of another enhancement that's been uh that's been made here by by the project team uh did you have a chance to review the burrow's fire official letter of April
4th yes okay um he cited a number of publications in that report do you have a chance to review those quickly or yeah I took a look at them yes okay do do any
of those uh make the re recommendation that uh chargers either are dangerous or cause fires or uh EV parking should be prohibited within residential parking garages i did see anything of that right yeah I
think it depends on which one we're looking at some some anecdotally make reference to um trying to make an association between the Charger and the EV fire um but you know those what what what that doesn't do it it's mostly
anecdotal and it gives a percentage I think somewhere but we we have no context we don't know is that a charger in somebody's garage in their private home um in other words the data nationally that's available doesn't tell
us that these chargers are indiscriminately catching on fire or causing fires in garages so I think it the he had some of his documents I think have anecdotal references like that but nothing that I could point to to say that's a credible source or that's it's
a piece of you know just somebody's opinion maybe so Some of those articles did make recommendations for mitigation uh did we incorporate most of those recommendations if not all the recommendations and a couple of the articles that that recommended things oh
yeah yeah i think you know they they they all I think they all and I think regardless of what literature you look at if it's the FPRF reports or other independent studies or scientific papers that have been put out they talk about um robustness of the building
construction they talk about enhancements to the automatic sprinkler system they talk about enhancements to fire suppression operations which could include the addition of additional standpipe outlets or hose connections uh
on the areas of the garage where the um where the um uh EV charging is going to take place or for that matter where the EV vehicles are going to be parked regardless of I'm charging or not so those are pretty standard recommendations I think along the way um
they make reference to the requirements to have properly designed electrical systems and charging system components which take us back to our kind of UL NEC infrastructure to make sure that those
things are designed safely and installed safely and then maintained safely for the life of the building i think those are the main the research that I was able to do it it appears that most of the significant fires were done outside of this country were had outside of this
country you think that's because maybe the the code compliance and inspection requirements are not as robust as they are in America it it's it it's hard to say until you you know see whatever if a full investigation was done you know what what were the circumstances i think one
of those one of the uh garage fires that's uh referenced as part of this dialogue broadly um not just concerning EVs but garages in general um the initial uh initial accusation was it was caused
by an EV it was it wasn't it was caused by an ICE vehicle traditional combustion engine so you know it's it's really hard to say if their codes are lacking um again they have different code requirements they
have different building construction requirements um they have different firefighting uh guidelines in Europe versus what we see in the US so you know it it's hard to make an apples to apples comparison there are you aware of any
major catastro catastrophic fires in parking garages residential parking garages in this country uh uh catastrophic no if we had parking garage fires yes um and you know the
literature is pretty much gonna show that most of those if not all of them were kind of centered on internal combustion engine type fires so because you know we we you know we just have more of those we have more experience with them and there's just a lot more of them out there right now so but uh no
I'm not not aware of any if you could for us could you just summarize uh the key findings and conclusions in your report regarding the safety of these installations these EV charging installations in this building
yeah so I think uh Robert talked a lot about the electrical infrastructure that's that's going to be required and provided for these charging stations um taking a look at the structure component and the thermal analysis that we were
able to do on the on the podium slab um we were able to to determine that even after a uh a fire event involving an EV vehicle um evaluating the fire resistance rating and
structural integrity of the slab above would be would be maintained um increasing the the sprinkler design density um would assist in in limiting the the risk of a fire
spreading right the sprinkler control um aspect to that will help limit limit fire beyond just an initial vehicle um stand pipe connections and EV blankets to help assist fire department
operations for for fighting a fire so those are sort of the the key findings do you have an opinion i mean we talked about the building how about the safety of firefighters that would in the unlikely event there is a fire here um and an ED fired uh how about how
about the safety of those firefighters are they in grave danger fighting these types of fires compared to other fires uh I'll start with that one um general answer is no um firefighting by its nature is a dangerous profession right
um uh you know they they don't go into a room like this to save people right they go into a room like this when it's just it's on fire and all of our systems all our safety systems have failed us right so it's an inherently dangerous job whether they are uh at a EV fire in a
parking garage they're in a residential apartment fire they're fighting a fire in a vehicle out on the interstate right it's inherently dangerous wherever so organizations like NFPA like International Association of
Firefighters International Association of Fire Chiefs um and more most recently the UL uh Fire Safety Research Institute UL FSRI everybody's been providing tools training uh guidelines for how to
address any type of hazard right are fire departments and I'll refer to right they're not they're not necessarily fire departments anymore they're all hazard departments right we call the fire department for every potential single thing that's going to go south right when it comes to the building or
whatever the case might be so the the national standards organizations like NFPA the related firefighter uh organizations like IAFCF and I think you know again most recently ULFSRI
they have come up with you know the way we fight fires now is different uh than we did 10 years ago or 20 years ago i didn't mention I was a volunteer firefighter for beginning uh from actually from time I was 15 until I was 22 that's how I kind of got interested
in this business and the stuff that was done then you would be hauled off somewhere right now and put in a put in jail or whatever uh so it's an inherently dangerous profession but all of these resources are always put out
there to make it as safe as possible for firefighters right so the first responders are a are a key component and you know the location of the standpipe hose outlets the supplemental ones that are there uh that helps you know these fires require full structural PPE um and
and again I think we have requirements now or recommendations that firefighters use full PPE now when they're on the interstate battling a car fire right which PP yeah yeah personal protection equipment sorry um so right there's a whole
structural firefighting ensemble um and and that's kind of the that's the goal that the fire department uh wants to meet right for all of their all of their members and all of the folks who are going to be you know going into these environments so um you know I can you
know we we've we've had we've lost firefighters in warehouse fires we've lost firefighters in one and two family dwellings so it's inherently dangerous regardless of where the fire is right doesn't have to be in a parking garage with an EV uh on fire right it's just
it's just a dangerous job in total but there is training available absolutely yeah there's training uh available from uh NFPA's got a host of uh Sounds like I still work there but uh uh FPA's got a host of free training resources uh
dealing with EVs um US Fire Administration has a host of resources i think most of it is I think all of it actually is still free dealing with EV fires and then ULFSRI they've uh put together a tremendous um set of kind of
ondemand webinars if you will or self-paced programs to learn about the hazards of EV firefighting techniques and things like that and and when when the when the vehicle goes in the garage when it goes in a building you know the the firefighters are dealing with a
structural fire right there's always a source of fuel you know it might be a internal combustion engine vehicle it might be an EV um if I'm up in an apartment fire right it's going to be the furnishings and contents so these
fires are treated like a structural fire and then this the the requirements around that say what is the hazard that I'm going into so the fire department wants would want to adjust a pre-plan right they probably should already have it for uh responding to EVs fires that
might occur out in the street or on the interstate so the fire departments always have to be adaptable to whatever the new thing is that's coming along they might not like it but you know we all rely on them to to kind of help us kind of navigate negotiate this along
the way so those organizations all have you know uh really good training resources some of those uh resources can be done in person um and things like that so you know training training training is absolutely crucial for for
every first responder and I've spoken with our client uh obviously they're a part of this community and they would be willing to donate a $10,000 contribution to your fire department for in-person training that you could bring in to alleviate concerns of are you properly
trained to combat with the very unlikely event that there'd be a fire in a garage such as this so that that offer is stipulated um so I just in summary I mean it was a lot of great testimony i appreciate it
u as as professional engineers specializing in fire safety do you have any concerns that this building and EV charging at this building causes any unacceptable risks in in in this community or to the folks that will live
here in this building i do not no no I I would have none you have you have all these enhancements um and these enhancements tend to be in lock step with something we really haven't talked about that um the
national standard that committee is actually vetting proposed changes that are going to go towards this that you know what they're proposed right now it's you know in terms of the sprinkler requirements they're proposing less than
what you're being offered here what this project's going to incorporate so um you know this is a very safe design it's a very effective design it's a very thoughtful design because it didn't just consider one element right and that
that's what you have to do in fire protection engineering it's not one thing that we rely on to make everyone at everything safe it's it's all those things working together and you know fortunately in this country um we're
pretty successful with that regardless if it's you know an apartment building a high-rise office building a high-rise hotel whatever the case might be so uh you're being provided a very safe structure here that completes our
direct happy to answer any questions the board may have yeah forgive me if you uh asked already but uh you mentioned is it a wet or a dry sprinkler system it would be a dry pipe sprinkler system since the garage is unheated is that uh
supplemented by a fire pump or would you require action by the fire department to get water into the system yeah yeah it it it's going to be both actually so right every sprinkler system I'll do the second part first every sprinkler system has to have a fire department connection right for the fire department to
supplement uh the piping network the quantity of water that this sprinkler system is going to have to discharge is going to be north of a,000 gallons per minute um and that's assuming that I open the number of sprinklers in this
you heard this 2500 square foot design area that's the that's the kind of the area that we expect the maximum amount of sprinklers to ever operate that never happens you know but you never want to say never so but with that that density
right it's about a thousand gallons per minute um I I don't I don't know i haven't studied the Somerville water supply uh yet but uh unless you have a phenomenal water supply you know that that you're probably going to be requiring a fire pump and then you always have to have the the fire
department connection i I have a a couple of questions uh one is um the gray areas on the the map now those are for now but the state law says you have to build for the future where are you going to put more gray spots so
that you can maintain separate parking spaces that that let's address that because uh I think what you're referring to is the make ready yes right so these are all of the spaces all right why don't you describe on So we we you know um what
we're indicating as EV is the full requirement the now and the make ready so this is the the full package that's required um by the state law okay i didn't know that thank you um so state law would require that we build all 31
as make ready within the first with with upon the opening onethird of those would have to be activated i think that in two years the second third and then in after four years you activate the balance of that avalon is agreeable to activating
them in that manner and not all at once okay and um second question I had was uh in the burrow the burrow officials fire report that he put in item number six says EV
fires emit a mix of highly flammable toxic gases including hydrogen fluoride hydrogen chloride and hydrogen cyanide which is extremely hazardous to the uh to first responders nearby residents and
the general public these toxic should not be combined or restricted by structures but allowed to dissipate in an open space even though the parking level is going to have open windows in open areas to get
outside is this safe for car to be burning and the gas is hitting the ceiling and then going up into apartment 2 A 2 B 3 C and their ventilation yeah so that so this this concrete slab we've
talked about that's a continuous slab so you know there No I meant for it to pour out to the sides and then up the building that's what I'm just wondering is there some sort of mitigation for that because those kind of chemicals sounds
like they might be dangerous are our fire our firefighters have the masks to filter out that kind of stuff or are they just Oh yeah yeah yeah yeah so again you know if you look at you look at structural firefighting protocols right um I I don't know that there's a
circumstance with a structural fire that first responders are not in full uh PPE like the personal protective gear including the self-contained breathing apparatus and all the equipment um this volume you know we'd have to go look at
the but the volume is so large without doing any calculations right there's so much volume for that to dissipate right it's not like we're going to be in an enclosed one or two family uh dwelling garage right we we have we have plenty
of space for this stuff to vent for the stuff to dissipate and for it to become diluted if we have a fire in the garage I presume that the building fire alarm system is going to require an evacuation of those occupants uh to the outside anyhow so you know if we if we have a
fire um however unlikely so Thank you thank you i have a couple quick ones for you um so ju just I know I mean you guys are obviously very knowledgeable on the codes i appreciate that that was great
um the the information you were getting to do your in-house studies um the temperatures that um I believe you had said weren't very different from a combustion where did you what were those numbers you know
because you said it was like 4,700 degrees for um the EV for the lithium battery what what is the gas combustion what's the ice vehicle burn rate yeah so we derived that temperature
from the heat release rate that was provided and there was a study that we we had cited in our report it's called I was trying to find it in the report yeah so it's uh if you look at the
graph on page 15 um we cite the differences in heat release rate between EVs plug-in hybrids and uh ICE vehicles and it's cited there it's a it's a study
by four authors there and it's a it's a heavily cited that's always one of the first comparison studies of heat release rate between EVs um and ICE vehicles from 2012 uh so you'll notice that we took EV number
three which peaked at about 9,000 kilowatts as our heat release rate and then the following calculation method on the on the following page is sort of how we derive the um center line plume temperature when was that one from i'm
sorry i don't have that full thing i have seven pages in front of me so must be missing some of it so this is a this is the full presentation that we we forwarded to the board so we probably should mark this into evidence it's not the summary one that was
submitted back in March yes dated ap dated April 4th 2025 is what we're citing yes april 4th 2025 just for the record that and the um transcriber that's entitled Avalon Somerville Station Phase 2 EV parking protection and hazard mitigation report
dated April 4 2025 prepared by SLS Consulting and it consists of 54 pages i think we're up to A15 a134 15 correct so and and can you just um when when was
that study 2012 that was the 2012 and is that the same one that had the six to 50 minutes to put out an EV that was from I believe that was the research institute i have to double check that one
um because again I'm just looking at you know all the um the UL listings and the different NFPAs and everything and the the versions that were you know appco you know let's look at the NFPA 13 um that's the 2022 version and it doesn't
even address EVs so while we're going well and above it in this design it doesn't even take into account EVs in parking decks or anything like that so I'm just you know I want to look forward and make sure we're looking at things that are applicable to the EVs
not just the code that's you know five years old that doesn't even address the EVs which I understand that's the code and which what we're looking at i'm just trying to figure out where these you know this six to 50 minutes to put out an EV average time is coming from and
those temperatures that you know the the fire marshals report had it at like 1,500 to 5,000 degrees seems like a pretty big difference to me so I just kind of want to see where these the differences are coming from yep we have
it cited in our in our larger report um it's got the graph comparison of the heat release rates it's just understanding the difference between the heat release rate graphs and then that's how we derive the maximum temperatures using we have a formula here that we use
it may have just I think the question is that the fire official believes that combustible fires are run about 1500 degrees and EV fires can run up to 5,000 degrees that that's the that's the
statement by the fire official i don't believe he's here this evening is he he is now so we we won't have an opportunity to ask him about where he got that information but that's the question I think he's raising how do you reconcile that statement versus what
your study shows yeah so so I I think there's there's there's two two distinctions right there's temperature and then there's concept of heat release rate so the temperature of the EV remember this is the vehicle right this isn't the charging station this is the vehicle um
those are going to burn at a hotter temperature the heat release rate is the amount of energy that that's going to be um that it's released over a period of time right i mean um so the heat release
rates for an ICE vehicle and an EV are similar however because of the nature of the characteristics of the battery chemistry in the EV it is going to burn hotter um the there there's a great uh little YouTube video that ULFSRI has kind of
looking at temperature and heat release rate and it's a two-minute thing um but the the scenario is the engineer takes just a simple candle and they light the candle and then they're able to kind of show with some measurement equipment the
temperature of the candle and then what the little minuscule heat release rate is and then what he does he takes three candles right they're all identical and he lights all three puts them together and the three candles still burn at the same temperature but because I've got three burning there there's a higher
heat release rate because I've kind of tripled the fuel package that's kind of what that's kind of what we see here and then as Evan said we use that heat release rate to uh to do a a calculation on what the expected temperature is so um if I do that for an ice vehicle I
might come up with 1500 degrees or 2,000 degrees um as a maximum temperature we did that analysis for the um uh for the EV based upon its known characteristics and again that's a that's a pretty
standard uh heat release rate uh graph again as Evan said it's been referenced forever ul's been trying to replicate that see if there's anything radically different and so far there isn't and then we look at from that calculation that's where we're getting the 4600
degree temperature so we're we're we and that that that's what our analysis is based on that's the temperature that's hitting that 12-in concrete slab and then we show what the potential damage is and then if we're still uh confident that we're going to maintain the
three-hour rating and the answer is yes one one just clarification on this for my there's a lot of information um so at that 4600 degrees at you know three three and a half foot height where the fire is at the 12T height of the where
the deck is above it we're saying it's not going to hit that and again my quick calculation 650 degrees up there that will start degragating the concrete so so the the measurement of the So we have
our fire location which we set to be a height that would be similar to like a standard sedan window height right and what we're looking at is that elevation difference between you know your car elevation and the slab above this
difference here the temperature hitting the concrete slab that's the 46 4600 hitting the concrete slab the point at which the concrete fails when we're talking about the the degradation of the concrete that's the
concrete slabs internal temperature so that internal temperature is you know ambient or whatever when it's when it's sitting where it is and it's when we are exposing that slab at that 4600 degrees Fahrenheit for a certain amount of time it's going to heat up that slab when the
internal temperature of the slab hit our our failure criteria we considered it a failure and a loss and that's where that uh degragation came from thank you and and remember to the other thing we mentioned it I think once or
twice um that calculation is there's zero intervention right there's no sprinkler system operating there's no manual fire suppression that the vehicle is just burning um without any anything else going on and you use the lowest section of the
parking Yeah yeah lowest ceiling so it I understand your question i mean it is it is hard to understand how 4500 degrees is not a lot worse than 1500 degrees so how how
do you in in in non-professional words how do you uh describe in science and engineering uh how that isn't a significant difference when you say there's similar burns so yeah so there there's and this is
this this confuses the heck out of my students when we talk about fire dynamics as well we're all getting Yeah yeah so uh so yeah so you don't don't feel bad at all so you you've got heat release rate right so the the heat release is based upon um the energy that
is in the fuel package right if we look at the you know if we look at the um fuel package for the you know for the EV right we can you know That's what those graphs show right that that that's what is potentially there um the rate at
which the energy is released can have an impact on the temperature right there's not a direct one to one correlation but it it can have it can have an impact so if I'm looking at something that's 2,000 degrees versus 4,600 degrees yeah definitely that that's a difference but
if we went back and looked at well what what impact is a 2,000 degree temperature impinging on that concrete slab half you know we might find that the concrete slab at the that one inch mark or 1.55 inch mark it goes from
ambient temperature to maybe maybe 200 degrees Fahrenheit right and what it is it it's you know the concrete is a is a it's an absorber it's a it's a mass absorber of the heat right it can help the heat dissipate um it can go internally uh up through the slab it can
go laterally uh along the slab so there's a lot you know 12 inches of concrete is a lot as Evan said we typically can get a threehour fire resistance rating with only seven inches so now I've got five more inches i've got more places for that heat to uh kind
of flow if you will uh you know using uh you know using conduction to get to other parts of the slab so that but that you know that's that's why we use this worst case analysis so That's all I have
there will be a test i had one question um you were referenced in the FP RF uh study that you have referenced um was there any other recommendations after that from NFPA basically saying that there were still some significant studies that
needed to be done on the sprinkler systems to ensure uh more safe practices when it comes from vehicle to vehicle or were they pretty confident with those results yeah so so I think two things so there there there's a phase phase three of that report that's now I think just
getting started i think it started in December of last year and that is to spec specifically look at the sprinkler provisions um you know some of the some of the these sprinkler densities that have been thrown around out there have been you know 0.2
um you know which is what the first change was and then people said you know do we need more than that um there's been some interesting push back from the NFPA sprinkler committee about you know that even seems too severe you know what you know we're requiring sprinklers now
in every one of these garages um the US hasn't necessarily had a a fire issue with parking garages i don't see that changing but again it's trying to kind of look out if we do get you know uh
most vehicles you know end up being the EVs by 2030 or 2035 depending on what what target right um that you know that that that will be a different uh fire load in the garage and then what what's appropriate in other words you know some
people might say NFP is already behind the curve on this so the national standards are behind the curve but now that you know states like California and I think New Jersey Massachusetts X number have to be EVs that fuel load's going to change it is changing so what
what what is reasonable for the national standards to have um one of those um provisions that are uh being contemplated right now by the NFPA committee that deals with the parking garages um they're looking at uh
nominal discharge sprinkler densities of.3 gallons per minute per square foot that won't be finalized for probably another 18 months or so but there's a there's a there's a proposed change that's been put forward my experience
has been when the committee puts something out like this as kind of the first draft or the first concept that's probably going to stick right so uh you know they're they're kind of recommending three we're doing point four so that that FPRF report
phase three is hopefully going to give us more answers like we're going to find out you know the point two really that we have now it's fine um or it does need to be.3 or it needs to be point4 or what did I say Brian the worst recommendation
report is in a study we need more study right but I I you know th this has been intentional at each each step right broadly garage fires um current protection measures nationally
internationally and then this focus back to the design and performance of the automatic sprinkler systems that that's what phase three is So just I guess so after an hour and a half two two hours of testimony trying to kind of cull this
down so So if I'm correct me if if I'm not culling it correctly um so your testimony is that it's not so much the battery charging nationally that's the issue um if there is an issue the the issue is
really the cars themselves whether they're damaged whether they're um it's it's a function of the EVs and not really a function of the charging and that the um the uh elements that you've incorporated into this not only address
the EV charging but they also address the potential for I'll call it an EV failure a fire that is that a good summation yeah overall summation yeah yeah when when you when you have the right charging infrastructure and you have an
EV right we're going to have exceptions right if I have an EV that was in an accident and the battery was damaged or somebody intentionally damages the battery right that that that's kind of the the jumping off point when we might
expect an EV vehicle fire right the these things just don't happen right there's a fault somewhere um in the battery and that fault is usually the result of physical damage or you know you probably hear the stories after flooding in Florida and from the
hurricanes right if those batteries get uh inundated especially with salt water that can that can degrade the battery and then cause internal short circuits and things like that so at that point you know the the EV charging station h has no has no part of that right it the
default is going to be in the battery itself thank you um Mr bruno I multiple times I heard you say that um these are required by the state of New Jersey can you just clarify for the record are you saying that they
are required in parking decks or garages in general uh they are required for projects of a certain size this one qualifies for it correct and they are
required to be part of the project here the project includes the garage perfectly permissible there's no other place to put the required spaces so yes they would be required in the garage in this instance so just to further that
you say there's no other possible place to put these i notice the architectural rendering um it seems like the spaces are concentrated where there's no residential units above it i believe that's a courtyard right there
what is is there any reason why that can't be great at grade parking get rid of the courtyard area to completely move the parking spaces outside of the structure and eliminate all of this is there any
reason that cannot be done yeah I don't I don't think there's room for it we we looked at those alternatives i mean we we heard your comments from the last meeting can you move them off site can you move them on the street can you is there another location on site and we've explored all those in detail and you
can't a the law doesn't permit you under its current uh narrative to move them off site they have to be part of this project and there's certainly no room on the on the street we heard a lot of residents complain about street parking the last meeting we can't eat up 31
spaces nor is it practical or does it make sense to have parking far away from the building who have cars the reality is and mayor you hit on this even if we get rid of the chargers you're not going to outlaw EV parking in garages anywhere
in your municipality it would be contrary to law and it would be discriminatory against this one project because you haven't outlawed them in any other garage ev cars are still going to come in here that's where the risk is albeit very small it's not the chargers
themselves you're hearing when properly designed and and properly certified the risk is next to nothing so we're stuck with a mandated law you're stuck with a mandated law uh you've all taken an oath to uphold the
law i understand you can have opinions as to certain things but you don't have discretion in this instance the law tells you what you need to do if there was an alternative we could explore that but there's not we did explore so what we did instead is we've got one of the
most robust designs you'll see i think you've heard other jurisdictions in the country that have similar concerns that have raised their standards we meet those and exceed those so you've accomplished the goal of getting the best design that engineering can can
take can do and and that's what we presented before you this evening thank you just a quick question um the data cited in the thermal studies uh is over a decade old um do we find an issue or see
any issues with that uh with the new advances in because we talked I mean to your point before you talked about contents in rooms how everything's synthetic everything's changed you know a room 50 years ago there's a great video we talked about YouTube there's a great video online that shows uh a room
with 1950s furniture versus a room with today's furniture the room with 50s furniture after 30 minutes hasn't fully caught on fire whereas the room with more contemporary furniture went up in less than three minutes so with 12y old data 13-year-old data at this point do
we see any gaps is there any uh mention of gaps in the uh in the report you that you talked about from the research foundation with new EVs and their battery capacities and capabilities
no I I' I've not seen any for the good or bad a lot of the provisions in fire protection right we we kind of establish a baseline measurement right and then then we kind of go from there um I I don't I've seen nothing in literature
from uh from the manufacturers themselves or from groups like the Nitsa National Highway Transportation um agency that says these vehicles are marketkedly different now right these vehicles already had uh lithium-ion
batteries in them you know 12 years ago it's essentially the same battery chemistry now they have essentially they already when they because they're so new they already had synthetic materials in them so there's nothing marketkedly different between what our literature
says in 2012 versus what we're seeing some uh you know maybe 15 or 14 years later i there's nothing that would uh concern me with that anybody else chair I have one question um one of the things that I had read
with regard to the chargers um was that in situations where chargers are causing the fires one of the reasons could be overcharging and I think there's some some sort of automatic shut off since this is going to be charging for residences i presume somebody will come
in they'll park overnight go inside and and that's a possibility that automatic shut off does that cover that type of situation or is that a separate type of mechanism yeah that that that that's all part of the um the UL 2022 provisions
the electrical code article 625 provisions that that that's all built into the automatic shut offs okay um battery management things like that yes so that so basically it eradicates the possibility of an overcharging it it it
makes it nearly zero right there's nothing right we have no guarantees anywhere in the codes but yes I wish we did but since you're a lawyer I had to be careful so thank you i appreciate that anything else from the board
for these experts did you have any other testimony no not unless you have questions i'd like to uh we we did receive uh I do want we should open that's why I want to know if he had more first and then if you have don't I'm going to open it up to the public okay i'm I'm going to
provide a closing argument but um we did receive the the updated fire officials letters on Friday which caused us to do a lot of work over the weekend and submit to you a legal memorandum as to what we believe the law requires and
what the facts and reports that are available uh demonstrate in terms of safety of charging EV charging as well as EV vehicles themselves so I submitted that u on Monday i'd like to mark that
into evidence u I guess we're up to a 16 it's a legal memorandum from my office that we prepared uh in in response to the fire officials letter of April 4th where he concludes and
uh and disturbingly uh recommends that this board not approve the application uh he's not here to cross-examine as to how he finds that conclusion how he's authorized or or qualified to make that
conclusion uh so we we accept it for what it is and we've tried to address it in the legal memorandum and that's why that was submitted i'm going to open it up to the public for any questions hearing none will close public go ahead
thank you that's a beautiful building it really is it's a beautiful building and we want to see it built we do obviously as you said Mr bruno this is all new to everybody all of this stuff going
on um my job the board's job as you know is primary job mayor's primary job is safety and security of our citizens that's it everything else to me is secondary that's the primary role of of my job and that's what I think this
board looks at um we have to ensure that the residents when this is built when this is built uh are safe and secure and that should there be an issue our first
responders are safe and secure as well as they can be because they are volunteers all of them i got one sitting next to me i've actually got two sitting next to me yeah so um you know I think the state has
created a scenario of unintended consequences i think we can all agree on that um and I think unfortunately we are faced first uh with those unintended consequences um I think your testimony was extremely
comprehensive extremely from from both of you and and and from Mr bruno um it's just such a new and emerging issue that I think you've grappled with it and this board grapples with it
because you say the laws may be um the the laws say one thing we have to corroborate that those laws do say that um what I would suggest to the board is that um for that corroboration we
actually bring in a professional uh a fire protection professional like that to to corroborate or add additional testimony um to what has been provided today um again I think your testimony was extremely comprehensive um but I my
sense of reading the tea leaves is that the board would like that additional corroboration um I also believe that we um we have to have time to respond I didn't even say respond to review Mr
bruno's letter very comprehensive again um very very long and thorough um and I think we have to have the ability to go through uh that as well uh to ensure that uh everything that you have in there uh is correct and that we
understand exactly what your position is in that um so I you know my my suggestion is that we we hold off on bringing this to a formal uh vote and that we allow time
to bring in that professional uh could be at the next meeting um and then allow this board that opportunity to corroborate the information that was presented here tonight um and uh and also to uh to corroborate and thoroughly
vet the information that uh that Mr bruno provided to the board so um I don't know how anybody else feels about that but I think that's uh a fair uh direction mr chairman we can we may we take a short recess so I can speak with
my client would you like to myself so I I didn't have a chance to conclude our presentation and mayor I appreciate what you're saying but we we've been here uh we presented the testimony the
law is straightforward it's not complicated the concern you have I understand it but it's not founded in any any fact or reports um you've heard compelling testimony from the architect and the
Uh the evidence is undeniable uh I understand you have good good intent but it's not supported by facts law or even your own fire officials guidance his guidance suggests exactly what we're doing and we're doing
it uh we think it's time to close the matter and uh act on this application uh the data is crystal clear ev fires are rare um EV Fire Safe a a
global uh publication tallies just 393 incidents in 13 years across 33 million EVs and only 15% were tied to charging none from code compliant chargers like ours gasoline vehicles 60 times more
likely to ignite uh and cause 345 deaths a year there's been no reported deaths from EV fires in garages you're seven more time seven times more likely to drown in your bathtub at your house and die from a DV
fire the the chargers do not cause the fires it's the batteries and only when they're damaged or malfunctioned the architect's design that the standards of this building the highest three-hour rating which is tougher than
New Jersey's two two-hour standard the NFPA 13 sprinklers and advanced ventilation erases even the faintest risk of a fire or death or a collapse of the building the Burough fire officials
worries about enclosed spaces that's been fully addressed the building's now opened he cites references like NFPA and FSRI but they don't advise against EV charging in garages they recommend mitigation sprinklers ventilation
training we've provided all of that and then more the project delivers enhanced sprinkler density state-of-the-art off gas detection and threehour fire rating and sets a new safety benchmark in New Jersey
new Jersey firefighters can be trained we've offered to contribute $10,000 to bring in-house training to your fire department reinforces Avalon's commitment to address your concerns there's no available land
around the building to put these parking spaces outside the law does not presently permit you to relocate them off site the law mandates you to act on this and follow the requirements to have EV
chargers in this building you don't have discretion you can have concern but we've addressed those concerns the choice is really yours you can you can cling to a baseless fear or you can approve a project that
has been designed to the highest standards and the state-of-the-art and and and moves forward the initiatives of the state to provide for renewable and and energy efficient vehicles we would really ask you to
approve this application this evening we are open to certain conditions in case the law changes and we're happy to discuss those with you but we don't believe that delaying this this hearing for another expert to come in to say the
same thing that we're saying there's only so much data on this and the data is pretty clear uh insurance companies they've established that this is a rare occurrence much less than than gasoline fires and so our client's not agreeable
to extending this we are agreeable to talking about reasonable conditions uh in the event the law does change which we don't anticipate in any way this is this is where the world is heading and it's not going to go backwards green energy is a very
important thing in this in this world they're not going to go backwards on this and you have to charge these things think about how many cars 30 the latest study I saw is there's nearly 70 million EV cars in existence right now and on the roads throughout the world think
about the hours that they charge every single day and then the number of fires that are reported 500 fires in the last 15 years it's not a common occurrence and to the extent in the very remote chance that you would have a fire here
that's not caused by the chargers and we have mitigation in place to prevent loss of life injury and catastrophic results to the building i'm urging you to approve this application as you're required under your oath that
you took to uphold the law and approve this this evening we are open to conditions and we're happy to discuss those now in further detail i've shared some thoughts with your solicitor as to what we would be agreeable to doing and we hope you would consider having that
dialogue with us so what I'm hearing is you don't want the burrow to bring in a professional to corroborate your professional's testimony mayor you you you could have done that earlier we brought one at great cost to us and um our client's not
agreeable extending this thing further i just wanted that on the record that's that's fine like us tonight is it is it 120 days or is it 90 days cara can you turn on your microphone please damn it
saying it all again i heard do you want to take a recess I do but my client doesn't so um if we we were understanding you're out of time if you have more time then we're not going to force a vote but we would like
to talk about the conditions that we've worked hard in addition to all of the changes and mitigation in response to your concern we did not take your your concerns lightly we very serious about designing the best building engineering can design and we have some conditions
that I'd like to read into the record that hopefully you will consider um one one of the things we heard is you think this is an emerging issue we think it is but it's going in our direction not in the direction of getting rid of these things because the evidence is
that they're safe and if they're properly designed and coded there's no risk from the charging and you're not going to get rid of EV cars so the first condition we would agree to is that if the site plan receives preliminary final approval then the applicant will
construct required make ready EV charging stations in accordance with applicable law if however prior to 120 days of the applicant's estimated issuance of the first temporary or permanent CFO for the building the
currently existing charging station law is modified and the EV charging stations are no longer required for the project or if the bureau can secure a written waiver or approval from the state exempting the project from the EV charging requirements then the applicant
agrees that the EV charging stations that are make ready will not be activated so if you can get an approval from the state contrary to the law as it exists now or the law should change because you're right these are really hazardous issues then we would not
activate these these charging stations we cannot get a CO unless we install them in accordance with current laws so we we are our hands are handcuffed we have to do this the second condition would be to meet an earlier concern that we heard and objectives is if in the
event uh the above uh occurs prior to the deadline and charging stations are no longer required for the project and there's a requirement to install EV charging stations at a legally permissible off-site alternative location then you can select the
off-site alternative location in such event the applicant will contribute $150,00 000 to the burrow for the installation of any required EV charging stations and we will not be responsible for any installation for the offsite EV charging stations again we'll have Can
you repeat that one again so if if if the law changes and we've installed the EV bank ready stations but we don't we don't have to activate them we will not activate them and if you have another site where you'd like to put them we'll contribute
$150,000 which we estimate would be a little bit of what these cost to install so you can install them anywhere in town that you'd like to install if if in in the absence of the law changing however if there were uh an
agreement by the state to allow for a um an aggregated off-site location not just for this but for a number of other um potential projects um would that still apply yes i'm talking to Mr brown yeah I
think as as as long as we don't have to uh activate ours to get a CO then the answer is yes and and would you be amendable to uh instead of putting a dollar figure in there say subject to amount to be determined negotiated well
we have to have some cap i mean you can't come back and say five million i mean so what we what we did is we calculated these are these are $4,700 each it's less than 15 and we upped it to $150,000 contribution for those
so based on 31 that's that's what we did 31* 7400 was 140ome,000 we rounded it to 150 that works for me yes my client uh Ron Liddell would like to be sworn and make a statement mr
testimony you're about to give this for is the truth the whole truth and nothing but the truth i do my name is Ronald Liddell LL senior vice president Avalon Bay Communities Inc i've been with Avalon Bay for 22 and a half years and lead executive involved in running the
New Jersey operation for Avalon Bay i just want to go back to something you said when you asked the question of witnesses which I thought was actually the most statement that was made i think they did a great job i think your statement summarized it when you tried to say "Have I cold it correctly?" I'm not sure the word cold was way I would
use it but the way you used it was in fact was effective your comment was it seems like the real issue is the EVs the electric vehicles not the charging stations that's 100% correct and Mr van Horn you said the same thing in a different way both of you are 100% correct we agree with all of what you
said but as Mr bruno and my witnesses described even if we did no charge extensions which we're fine to do but the law doesn't require us to do it every issue that we just discussed right now two and a half hours would still remain in effect every single one the
the lack of fires in our view and maybe you're concerned we certainly acknowledge would still be in effect no matter what whether it's a set county courthouse or parking garage there Jack Mars parking garage or any other parking garage in Somerset without the state of New Electric vehicles will park in those
garages and if there is a fire in every other garage except mine that I want to do here there'll be more exposure to the first responders there why because they don't have all that we're doing here that's the story that is the truth these conditions came up from a combination of and I'm just going to invoke a name
Ralph Sucker Mike Bruno and myself over the last 48 hours although I wasn't here at the first meeting I apologize for missing it it seemed to me as reported back to me there was an interest in the town of Somerville Burrow Somerville excuse me to potentially have as you just indicated mayor an aggregate location for EV charging stations i'm
not running Somerville if all of you think it's appropriate to do that we want to support you to do that we're going to pay and contribute with regard to do that if we can get there if the state will allow us to do that with your assistance and we'll work together with your solicitor or anyone else who want us to work together to change it we'll
do that too and we'll cover the cost with regard to that we actually think it's about 4,200 because I added the power to it so you're probably getting a few more big dollars with regard to that having said all that and very very respectfully to wait till the next plane board meeting which may be in two weeks
or a month I have no idea what your agenda is by the way I don't have to be on the next meeting i really don't want to do the pretty picture and I thank you for your compliment there that we have up there we've already spent over a million dollars on this project why do we spend so much so early because we
like Somerville we like being here we've been very successful here we have 100% with a minor sign I believe conforming application we have an RDA done we have our pilot done this is we're building about 100 less units than we're allowed to build i'm not sure you even do that
we can actually build more than 100 more units than we're even asking for we didn't seek that we designed a project we think fits appropriately conformance with your redevelopment plan which acts as zoning in the way it works in New Jersey and we're eager very eager to get
started we can get this project started this calendar year it will employ 175 plus people on a regular basis close to 70 billion will be spent by us on this project think about the permit fees that sales taxes generated
the income tax has generated the shot in the arm for not only Somerville but for this county for the state of New Jersey and I want to start that this calendar year if I get delayed with all due respect I don't know that I can make it i ultimately think you're going to make the right decision and approve this
application for all the reasons that Mr bruno and our witnesses described tonight but a further delay again respectfully that I think will add nothing to it i'm upset that your fire chief is not here i'm upset I never met him that he wrote that you should deny this application respectfully but any
without any basis fire official not the chief sorry fire official i wish he was here to have that conversation but he chose not to that is your expert he wrote a report I don't think at any basis on it and I don't know what maybe had make it tonight i don't want to assume
anything but I asked for him to be here because I wanted to ask him the questions why he concluded it so here's where we're at i'm respectfully making a request i'd like you to vote today i'd like you to accept these conditions and Cara gave shows have a copy i have an
extra copy good i She could read them and do whatever she wants with regard to it someone has to of course make a motion and second it but I don't think waiting and I don't I don't know your schedule two weeks or four weeks or beyond is change anything we tried these conditions because all of you said there
was another option the state law doesn't allow it today but if you can get it changed we're behind you we'll support you we want to get this done but you may not think a month is a big deal it is i can't believe I'm back here again some of you were around when we got our first
approval i made a bet with Ralph Zooker that I lost ralph said to me "We're going to get approved in one meeting and I said "No we're not." Doesn't happen anywhere it happened in Somerville i read the articles about Somerville the way you've structured the town with regard to development and I'll give you
credit because you deserve it works well don't do that i'm sorry i I'll negotiate a salary next time but you know you are and take this as a compliment a developer friendly town you understand what your residents want what they need
from both a residential and commercial perspective we love being a part of that we want to our opportunity with regard to that i'm here to answer any other questions you have and I'll stop right now but if you're acceptable I offered these conditions the $10,000 is offered too and I don't know what other
conditions may have occurred carol if we get that far can read them to all of you but I'd like you to vote tonight i'd like you to vote in favor of this application subse can you can you repeat the conditions well Mr if Mr bruno can repeat the conditions again and let's
let's listen very carefully because and I if you don't mind my interrupting because I don't you know listen ultimately it is of course your decision the only thing I'll say is the conditions are going to be the conditions as worded and we all know how important it is to craft conditions in
such a manner where they are withstanding longevity and represent what both parties understand um since this is so important you know we need to make sure that they're correct um and I don't like doing things at the
last minute i'll work and again do whatever you want to do um the only other option that I will throw out there is typically we do preliminary and final separately i know that they are asking for preliminary and final tonight at least according to the conditions as
they're drafted um the only other suggestion if the board is so inclined to go that route could be to put on the record the conditions in theory as we're outlining them for
preliminary take the two weeks to craft specifics and incorporate them into a final again I think we're all trying to work together here and throw everything on the table that's possible so just another thought but go ahead with your condition yeah and and just so you're
aware one of the board uh has taken the position that we don't give preliminary and final it's not a reaction to to your um to your conditions it's just the the policy of the board we have other applications have requested both
preliminary and final at the same time and we have denied that so I I think a little flexibility on at least in terms of when you read this again for the board to evaluate um doing the preliminary and then the final at the next meeting mayor I will say uh and not
to be argumentative on that point then don't we did we we did understand that the reason you did that is because there's often times many conditions that are unsatisfied you want to see them we took the opportunity between the last meeting and this meeting uh to submit
fully revised plans to address each and every condition that was raised there's a couple technical conditions that your engineers raised we've stipulated tonight that we'll comply with those so we would respectfully ask for preliminary and final i get you your
policy and you're going to do what you want to do and preliminary is better than nothing sorry Ron fine but uh that that that that's why we submitted everything we we really worked hard to get that whole package into you
and but for the fire officials urging of Friday I wouldn't have had to send the legal memorandum that ruined my weekend and caused me to have to submit that because it was totally out of character with what I've seen in my 35 years of
practice the urging of a denial of a of a of an application that's fully conforming and mandated by state law and not having the opportunity to cross him so we did that out of legal necessity not because we're looking to challenge anybody we've been in this town a long
time we respect everything you guys do just we're doing our jobs too so that was the reason that was sent it wasn't sent out of any other any other reason so let me let me read the conditions one more time and I and I think I gave you a written verbatim copy of these so I'll
do my best to read i'll let you know if you're get it correct number one if the site plan application receives preliminary and final approval put the bracket around final then the applicant shall construct the required make ready EV charging stations in accordance with
applicable law however if prior to 120 days of the applicant's estimated issuance of either the first temporary or permanent CBO for the building the currently existing EV charging station law is modified and EV charging stations
are no longer required for the project or if the Burough of Somerville secures a written waiver or approval exempting this project from EV charging station requirements then the applicant agrees that the EV charging stations will not be
activated so we're going to build them but not activate them if the law changes or you get a waiver two and the law would be changed to not require them not allow them to be specifically allow them to be located offsite correct that's
number two that's what that Okay so that's number one number two says if A or B of the above that's either they they're no longer required or you get the waiver prior to the deadline which is the 120 days before
the CO is issued and we need time to activate these that's why we have a deadline there and and we're a couple years off from being at that CO point anyway um if the charging stations are no longer required for the project and
there's a requirement to install EV charging stations as a legally permissible off-site alternative location then the Burrow of Somerville shall select such off-site alternative location in such event the applicant will contribute $150,000 to the Burough
of Somerville for the installation of the required EV charging stations but the applicant shall not be responsible for any installation work related to the EV charging stations further the applicant in such case agrees not to activate the EV
charging stations located at the project if neither one or two occurs then the applicant agrees to comply with the EV charging station law as applicable in terms of bringing them on making them active versus ready so
law requires requires the 31 spaces it requires a third be brought on every two years so we would comply with that we wouldn't make them all upfront ready in case something happens after year two you're referring to the phasing with allow the phasing we'll comply with the
phasing so those are the conditions um and I think I shared pretty much the exact wording with with car so that's so number two is if charging stations are no longer required so the current law
changes but the current law is amended to require stations offsite then we can work together to select a site option two would not apply i'm trying to think of how to say
this option two isn't that the applicant and the burrow will work together to find another off-site location that would work that's only if it's not required on-site but it is required off-site then we'll find an
offsite location and you guys can find it yeah we're not involved with that you decide where it is we're not like I said I don't run summer but all of you do tell us where you want it we'll write a check i understand that so um
do you want to and again just in the interest of everybody working together here um do we want to do a straw poll as to who feels that they want to hire an expert my my here's here's where I'm at because I think the applicant is saying at this
point let's go um I think there's been a lot of testimony over the last two meetings um I think the testimony that was provided tonight was extremely comprehensive i've said that before
um I think the clarification that the issue is really the vehicle and it's not the charging where I think we were kind of locked on the charging initially um has been has been
clarified um one of the um one of the uh contentions I had after the last meeting uh was you know it it from a from a develop a statewide development perspective it makes so much more sense
what we're doing here what the state's doing here is bringing gas stations to every vehicle for lack of a better term and it makes no sense so you know I I left last meeting and and I drove around town a little bit and I said you know doesn't it make more sense to have a
a located area where folks from different developments can come charge their vehicles and it's centrally located there's one power source coming in it's not going into multiple because PS can't you know they're having trouble
you know fixing phone fixing uh power lines as it is um or even getting enough juice um so so the idea of creating a centralized location to me is very appealing i like the idea of going after the state to get
them to understand a better idea colin and I have done that for 20 years and and we've had a lot of success at it and I see the potential for success in this as well because I think it's it's smart planning
it's doing this on an individualized ad hoc basis every time somebody comes in um it's it's not the right way to plan and and this body plans for the future so let's let's
do that and let's try to plan for the future and let this one let's let's start with this one um we've identified a couple of potential locations already they're willing to help fund that centralized location it doesn't
have to be all at once but it can be you know over time it can be a slow buildout and as each developer comes in they then have the ability to kick in and provide for their requirement um it also allows people
to participate in our downtown um charge your vehicle and go have dinner that's that's great planning it's smart planning um is it the most
ideal probably not but I think given all of the testimony that we've heard um I'm I'm leaning towards uh accepting the conditions and uh and and then going to work and trying to find a uh uh a
location that satisfies not just this demand but our future demands because they're coming they're coming so anybody anybody else on the board yeah oh go ahead Larry you go ah thank you
um yeah I mean I I understand the mayor's point um and everything you guys have said and and obviously I do have significant concerns everybody does with you know it's new um personally I you know I I would like to hear another
testimony we got this Monday i'm missing some of those pages it appears um your testimony was great it was very thorough assuming that that is all 100% correct and those statistics and everything else then then and you're correct that you
know there's really no significant concern because that is not what I've heard over you know the last multiple years of everything I've heard about EVs um if we're not going to get another testimony to come in and you know
collaborate it deny whatever then we have to take you at that word um I just really hope at that point that you guys are 100% correct and there is no leeway I'm reading a research foundation thing here that talks about fires with EVs in
garages that melted the sprinkler heads above it um so hearing that there's no concern at all from anybody it it makes me nervous i wish there was another testimony um but I do understand that you guys are experts and thank you
for the testimony you guys gave larry you have something yes um well I agree exactly what Jason was saying is that you guys did very well in explaining it but we're just taking it just by your say so just because you said so just because he said so oh how
about give us two weeks to get somebody to come out and and give us an opinion that we can look at it and go from there two or three weeks is not going to kill you is it so is that a question well it was more
of a rhetorical question he he answered the question by shaking his head no it's not going to kill you two or three weeks for us to get to the next meeting so we can an expert that's on that that's independent because we have the opinion of our fire official who works for us
who we trust him he's one of our guys so for us to just flat out go against him without having additional information maybe not may not be the way to go in my opinion i would rather have additional
testimony and if it all backs up exactly what you guys said then okay and it's going to be safe and nobody's gonna get hurt go ahead what the testimony was they didn't say it's going to be safe and no one's going to get hurt that's not what their testimony was and let me just add a little further your fire chief's report
which I think was completely please correct that it's the fire official your fire what's his first nope nope your fire official who's not here who I respectfully think none of what he should have submitted so he can be part of the record he has to be available for
cross-examination he's not here i'm not even going down that road let's forget that but if you take what he said is true his issue is about electric vehicles not about charging stations everything about this topic is charging stations as I said earlier as these two
said earlier even if we got rid of every charging station electric vehicles are going to be in this garage and already in all your garages in Somerville that's not going to change what is another witness going to add to that electric vehicles are still coming in unless you're banning electric vehicles in
Somerville which you're not the fear you've described that both of you described is related to electric vehicles that's it i was always told or heard that the mo the
riskiest part of the EVs is when they're charging this is what I heard a couple there's no there's no evidence of that so but this is what we want to get you had a You asked the question earlier where's page 33 that was your own fire chief in fact the one video he attached
was in Madrid if you looked at it i did i we we didn't get this until today so didn't I can't speak to that that's well your letter came out on on the the 7th so but I'm reasoning is this is all rushed unnecessarily rushed well I
disagree with that for the record and it's your fire chief who took so long we met with the fire chief look around more than 10 days ago okay fire official more than 10 days ago he gave you a video I know you haven't seen it of a garage fire a car fire in a
garage underground in Madrid nothing about charging didn't talk about sprinklers and it was in Spanish by the way which is kind of interesting because I didn't really understand it i did a little research on it my point is everything he submitted had nothing to do with this testimony and everything
that's being discussed tonight on this side of the DAS is about electric vehicles not about charging stations what is four weeks going to add to that it's not about the charging station this is a leap of faith for us to just trust
what you guys said as verbatim i hear what you're saying but two weeks is not going to kill you i'd like this draw to be done and then I'll make a decision i I would I would note that your fire official doesn't site any sources the
sources that he cites are contrary to his conclusion they they recommend mitigation so if if he had cited some sources we could we could address those i mean all of the sources we found the insurance companies the risk of the fire
resulting from the chargers less than 5% and that's old chargers people using extension cords the the code related the codec certified chargers are virtually no impact right so it's it's
Mr liddell is right it's it's the EVs that you're worried about and those are very rare but when they do happen they're hot and you heard the testimony that they do happen this building will not collapse so there's really nothing more
uh anybody can add uh there's no there's no reports out there you you know in the world today you could you could investigate this very quickly oh certainly and uh find out every reported case because I did it every reported case in in in this country and
throughout the world the insurance companies reports on how often this happens and if they're increasing premiums and so forth because of the risk the risk is negligible and when it does happen it's because of a collision environmental factors just
like a hurricane or salt water or storm or malfunctioning batteries which are is kind of an older risk you know the Volt that we heard we all heard about those recalls the newer batteries are are improved and much less likely to have
defects but again it's not the charger it's the battery that creates the issue the thermal runaway in the battery not the charger itself okay Cara where do we stand as of right now
um okay well let's take the I want to say the easy part but um as far as timing statutory timing um we have until May 13th 120 days to act we have a meeting April 23rd our next meeting is not till April
14th which is the day after what did I say april yeah you said April may 14th um we can decide to hire an expert if that is what the board board's preference is um
if the applicant would like us to make a vote tonight and deny that um despite the fact that we do have time and despite the fact that there was a very short period of time for the board to look at this and have that
opportunity then that's certainly in their ability to make that ask and have the board do that and the board will vote how the board votes um but on its own from a statutory
perspective the board is not under any time restriction to vote tonight so our two options are at this point one we vote to have an expert brought in the other one is or not you know someone
makes a motion to Yeah yes but the motion would go forth with and the other motion could be with the conditions approval with those conditions that are set forth as of right now
yes and the only thing that I would suggest is that the general conditions if that's the way it's going to go be as placed on the record with specific if we need to tweak
something here like preliminary and final yeah so for instance like one of the things that I I would like to say is that the intention of these conditions is to be compliant with the state EV requirements not to circumvent to comply we're look we're just leaving some flexibility in the event that something
does change um there's also a number of other conditions in here that I would have to put on the record if we do that um but that's the only reason that I say that just so we have that ability to make these conditions which are part and parcel of the reasons why the board
would be okay with voting tonight be as correct as possible mr chairman there there is a important member of the public the original master redeveloper of the site would like to say something to the board
about this application yeah you can explain yeah I don't think you were the first time right no he's not he's not an expert he's just a representative this is Ken Gold thanks for representative of Somerset Development sometimes expert yeah but not in this capacity this evening ken
you swear the testimony you're about to give us the truth the whole truth nothing but the truth i do uh my name is Ken Gold uh senior vice president of acquisition development at Somerset Development um you all have known me for a very long time um Ralph Zucker is the
principal and owner of Somerset Development um he is unfortunately not available available to be here tonight um he's in Israel with his family for the Passover holiday uh and he had prepared this statement uh and he'd like me to read it so Ken this this is your
comments with regard to the application the only reason I'm asking is company yeah let's couch it though because typically we don't allow someone to just submit something so you're going to have to be prepared to answer any questions that the board may have with regard to this happy to do so okay thank you
okay uh honorable mayor mayors of the Somerville uh planning board uh I sit here before you tonight uh as an applicant but not as a stranger uh we've known each other uh my company inspired by Somerset Development and the people
of Somerville since 2008 we first responded to an RFP put out by you and New Jersey Transit in an effort to revive the then 20-year-old plan to redevelop the train station parking lot the green seam in the entire landfill area to bring it to life that was 1988
that you guys first start started trying to redevelop it this site since that time we've worked together long hard sometimes difficult and many times rewarding years we've worked together with integrity with purpose and
with resolve we've overcome many many obstacles along the way the plan that we jointly developed and the beautiful Somerville Station project that was a worldclass transit oriented development is a result of our combined efforts
along with Avalon Bay and PY Homes we've created incredible community here one that we can be proud of and we all sacrificed we all gave in we all compromised but we worked together i remember when the 2006
extension uh route 206 extension was deemed an absolute necessity and how much we labored and yes how much we contributed financially to make that happen and it's built today i was in the meeting with Colin when when that deal was was finally agreed to it was one of
the highlights of my career personally we stand here before you tonight as an applicant but again not as a stranger as partners as developers who hopefully have earned your and deserve your trust and we deserve the benefit of the
bargain that we struck many years ago inspired by Somerset Development Avalon Bay and PY Homes have all kept their end of the bargain we have done what we said we were going to do and as a matter of fact the very room we are sitting in now was contributed to the people of Somerville as a result of our
collective efforts so we stand here before I stand here before you tonight again as an applicant but not as a stranger we deserve to be heard we understand there are concerns nobody wants to endanger anybody not even developers however we
live in a world full of dangers every time you turn on your stove to cook a pot of soup there's danger every time you cross the street there's danger every time you step off a curb there's danger every time you board a plane or you go to a doctor there's danger but we
don't shut those things down we don't outlaw airplanes we don't outlaw cooking we don't outlaw driving and we haven't outlawed electric vehicles would the world be a safer place if we did absolutely nothing but sit in our chairs and not move at all
maybe maybe not but then you would not have places like Somerville Station the place that we built together i remember how hard we worked to on the bike path to pro to provide connectivity along the Green Seam Trail
biking is dangerous people die in biking accidents all the time but we don't outlaw biking we say wear a helmet observe the rules and go about your life we're asking you tonight I am asking you
tonight to keep your end of the bargain we've worked together you've pushed us and your concerns have been addressed and the Avalon Bay plans submitted here tonight are the cutting edge safety and EV charging station in a garage anywhere we've also offered compromises
that if these are not required by law if the law changes or we can put them somewhere else in the burrow and we would be acceptable to the state we've agreed to that you've what you've heard tonight we've said we'll we'll work with you to to put them off site you've done your job you've made it
much safer now we ask you to do your duty and approve this application this is what we bargain for this was our deal this these are the amount of units we are allowed to get under the redevelopment agreement and we're asking you to do what we did we kept our word
we kept our commitment please do the same i trust you'll do the right thing thanks very much ken Gold thank you thank you i was told there would be questions i
don't know no anybody have any questions okay yeah I think we have to at this point so we're going to have to poll straw poll for preliminary with conditions yep yep preliminary voting for preliminary
tonight with those conditions as part of the approval those conditions will be finalized and fine-tuned for final site approval at the next meeting and I have a number of other
conditions that I can put on the record well let's this is just a straw poll right now to see if this is the direction they're going to go in so this is not getting an expert yeah why don't we do a straw poll for that this is this is taking a
vote it's just a straw poll to to first to say preliminary approval tonight with the conditions outlined by Mr bruno and then ultimately she just said we should do the for do we need the expert or not you
don't need the expert all right good we'll do so if we agree to figure out a one to the other right that's why I want to find out if we want
to get Okay we will start with who is in well it makes a difference you said it makes a difference and it does i like this project i just think that we can do it the right way the implication that we're going to do but to make it seem Larry
Larry we're just going to do the straw poll vote okay how many would like to have wait and bring in an expert testimony okay next poll how many are willing to vote for preliminary approval tonight with conditions which will be
fine-tuned and clarified for final site plan approval at the next meeting can you go over the conditions please i will try all right um let's keep the conditions that Mike put on the record
separate right now we understand that those are the general conditions they will be Make sure she gets the language you have I have No no she has she has i'm just saying like Yeah I I have it but I just want to make
sure we look at every word properly like we do with the other conditions because typically I would just throw them on the record so everyone understands and then we fine tune it after the fact um compliance with the commentary in and
requirements of CHA's reports all of our standard conditions the applicant returns to the board for final site plan approval subject to the finalization of the conditions placed on the record tonight by applicants council
um all right here's where we're going to get crazy for the last one um now if these conditions were already satisfied by the amended plan let me know so I'll put it on the record and we can say that they were satisfied um lighting in the rear on the
road to be gated for transit only put up plans against the railroad and allow for burrow letting in the rear lighting on the roadway in the rear is that ringing a bell somewhere we're on the back of the building yeah
by the tracks by the tracks right okay um the plans reflect currently 304 street trees it should reflect 204 uh the plans amended as per that's what we talked about already uh
compliance with the redevelopment plan and agreement um relief to be granted from the loading requirements of the redevelopment plan if and as necessary as noted in number seven of the CHA report uh applicant will add an on-site
common area generator at the back of the and come back at final with details the applicant to [Music] work I have the applicant to work now this may have been changed by virtue of
everything we've talked about applicant to work with the burrow to discuss operational and actual actual use of on street parking and adjust as necessary a transition plan that's that's That's a condition because we've agreed when we transition the roads to the burrow we'll
work with you yes by the way all of these have either been satisfied which we believe or will be satisfied you've agreed to satisfy nothing's objectionable i think we did satisfy but to the extent one fell through the cracks okay your engineer found any we're agreeable okay
um the applicant shall increase the tree size of the 13 street trees to 2 and a half to three inch caliber trees and work towards the 3-in size matching what is on Roberson Street mechanicals shall be screened from
view uh project will be gold lead certified energy store compliant the pursuant to the engineer's letter two spaces near the wall will be reduced to 8 and 12 by 18 that's item 6E of your
letter does that sound right uh compliance obviously with all additional um proposals incorporated in the amended site plan was provided $10,000 contribution that was in the
conditions i think that's all I had otherwise and obviously the relief that was granted with regard to the uh the signage as well the two signs as opposed to the one Okay I'm going to put a motion forth for approval did I miss anything anybody
i think all the conditions that you raised and and we we and the engineers conditions we believe we've satisfied to the extent we haven't yeah we will satisfy okay okay the motion is put forth for approval with said conditions
i'll second this is and let me clarify this is preliminary uh site plan approval and the variance deviations exceptions that are noted from the redevelopment yes i'll second Lisa
andrea Dair yes chris Addex yes larry Cleveland abstain jason Kra yes barry Van Horn yes mayor Gallagher yes council member Vroom no chairperson Warner yes thank you members of Summerville
Planning Board appreciate it very much thank you for investing in Somerville we do i just have one question item I'm going to take when is the next meeting so 23rd april 23rd april 23rd april 23rd correct yeah yeah don't go running out yet guys
not done yet yeah let's do You know what two minutes well two minute recess rubble yeah I got ahead remember the mics are still on and the recording is still going i'll turn the mics off first
folks we still have a meeting going on so if you could uh exit quietly well we did have the opportunity we did open it up to the public oh no no it is it is right now okay yeah uh well I know that's the problem i
mean we did open it up to the public and that's why Mike can you come here for a second carrie your mic's still on oh yeah sorry just in the in the interest of fairness for these two residents we're going to
um I know we voted and and uh we're just going to reopen the public portion it's a little out of order but we do want to give you the opportunity to be able to have the applicant hear what it is that that your concerns are um so if you could all we need is you to state your
name and give your address please all right my name is Michael Mupo i'm the uh owner of 91 Robersonson Street in uh Somerville and our issue is about parking i mean there's a crisis parking
crisis in this particular area at any given time there's probably 40 cars that are parked illegally because there's not enough space now if we're going to add additional units to this area and an additional construction site I'd like to
see the plan of how we're going to handle all these other problems with associated with parking especially on this particular street are we going to now eliminate 20 parking spots across the front that were already 40 shy we're already 40 parking spots shy so if you
were to properly plan this project we would never have had a an additional well all these projects would never have all these houses without this additional parking if you're telling me that 170 units are going to fill up 170 parking
spots and that's it I find it very hard to believe i think that everybody understands this is not downtown Manhattan people People in New Jersey have cars every everybody has a car and there's multiple cars for these these
apartments i'm assuming they're more there's one twobedroom apartments maybe three-bedroom apartments i don't know but there's going to be more than one car associated with each one now the w now the woman told me "Well we have 60% more capacity in another particular parking deck down the road." Well we
still have 40 cars that are that are parked incorrectly here now so we have to come up with a plan i don't care what the plan is whether it's open up let us let us park in in their parking lot if they have 60% capacity extra or assign
parking you know they have to you have to control this parking dilemma this is a this is catastrophe every weekend there's people parking sideways there people parking on the side streets there's people parking on close to the curb close to the fire hydrants and
there's people getting tickets for this we need to we need to do something to correct this i mean I could I could develop a plan myself and easily solve part of the problem but it's there's just too many units for too for too little too little parking we we and
thank you for your comments are you okay with me taking this absolutely so so your comments don't go unnoticed um we've had a number of uh people at our council meetings this is a planning board meeting but we've had a number of folks uh from this area um from this
neighborhood on at our council meetings with the very same issue and and the challenge right now is that the burrow does not own these roads they will we will at some point this is something that uh Mr vroom and I have dealt with
at the council table and what we've said is when the burrow does take control of the roads at a point yet to be determined the the roads will be dedicated back to the burrow the burrow will then take control of the roads and the burrow will implement a parking plan
uh it will most likely include permit parking uh but at this point we don't control so we don't exercise authority over the roads we cannot enforce parking in this complex not until we own the roads um I can't tell you when that's
going to happen but I can tell you we're getting closer to it at this point um once we do we will implement a a parking management plan and and at this point that's the best I can do having said that what I can say is talk to your
homeowner are you part of the homeowners association sure sure talk to the homeowners association see they're the ones who sent me here today well see see if they can't implement uh with the with the uh property owner a a parking management permit structure at least
until the burrow takes control that may be your best alternative but until the burrow takes control there's nothing we can do about it we don't we do not enforce these roads it's private property right now no I understand the idea of private
property so what do we have to do to get it committed to to uh Somerville and it before this happens so we can start to get this thing settled it's a good it's a good fair question and it's nothing that you can do um this actually takes a
very large step to to having that happen the bureau did not want to take the roads until the construction is complete because we want to ensure that when the roads are turned over that they're in good shape we don't want to take roads that are damaged by construction vehicles um that that immediately need
repair so when we take control of the roads the the owner will ensure that the roads are in good shape for the bureau to take control this approval or at least preliminary approval tonight uh gives a very large step to that happening
um it's a discussion we know is on the table that we have to have with the developer uh who is the property owner right now i don't I can't give you a timeline right now it's But isn't the developer who is developing the property responsible for the road so if the road
is not in great shape they have to in order you you hold all the permitting and all that stuff so you could control whether they fix whatever they break along the way i mean I I've seen it happen many times they the developer builds the roads they they they put in
temporary roads they put in the final road when the whole thing's done and they get the CO they you hold the CO if they don't give you the CO the road's not done then you can't they can't start their their jobs well and these are conversations we have had with your neighbors as well um and and we've had
the same conversation and said you know maybe the homeowners association should implement a a parking permit structure right now but what's the what's the the teeth behind that structure so right now it's private property you can tow you can All
right i'll bring it back to the society but I there's a problem here because what you're allowing happen now is the burrow is not allowing anything to happen it's you're allowing this construction private property to allow eliminate a bunch more prop a bunch more parking this is private property i can't
I can't tell people what to do on their own property that's their property all right it's private property right now when it turns over to the burrow yeah and this board at this self unfortunately we have no purview of any of that so you know really there's not much there's no options for us with you
um but to the mayor's point it is private property so even the uh burough council itself doesn't have the purview over those roads unfortunately yeah all right well it's that's too bad that um you know I've I'm involved with
with you know several other towns and you know they wouldn't let this happened to their to their uh to their homeowners and it's devaluing the properties especially if you're now have you have a property that's going to be under construction for two years with with 20 less pro less
parking spots and construction going on there should be a plan on how people manage that part of it so they should they should have some you know calling off of areas so that they don't interrupt the commerce of the of the town that's already in
operation right so I don't see that happening here but hopefully it will happen maybe you know maybe we can work out a deal with these people to use some of their parking because they have such an excess here thank you thank you thank you for coming
and thank you for staying okay um moving along on the agenda uh yes I'm sorry closing public yes sorry thank you i am all right so unless there's no objections I have no comments and I I
think we can move all pending business items to just next meeting and I put a motion to adjurnn second i I I I I I any opposed oh all opposed
nope i think we're good no we just did I good we're done