uh good evening everyone my name is Laura shiffrin and I will call the meeting to order of my last meeting the board of assessors oh I'm just gonna I just want look at the agenda I thought I cred it
out please forgive me everyone thank you I'm starting again evening everyone I'm Laura schiffen and I will call the meeting to order of the planning board for February 24th 2025 at 6:31
p.m. we do not have any members on uh virtual right now and would you all join me in the pledge of allegiance of the United States of America for it stands one
nation indivisible for to without a roll call roll call please Carol Hof is present Rob present Andrew shepher present and Laura present sorry I moved
ahead and we did the Pledge already you should I was late but I didn't do roll call and you perfect came just in time so you can do roll perfect I'd also like to thank all of our veterans all of those currently serving and all of our uh
emergency um response individuals and their families anyone on Zoom please mute the meeting is being recorded in up uploaded to the town of towns and
YouTube channel is anyone else recording none 1.4 um approval discussion of the meeting minutes for December 9th 20124 and February 10th 2025 would you like to take them
individually or together um we all set to do it together together is fine yeah I'm okay I'll make a motion to approve the meeting minutes of December 9th 2024 and February 10th 2025 is there a
second second okay any discussion no discussion no changes okay we've all rebed them they were online thank you Beth uh we'll take a vote all in favor I I okay we do not
have any members virtually um Lance is absent um with notice so we are two minutes before I think I can start our 6:35
right um Y is Mr rigan there is Mr rigan there I don't is he going to be online he's supposed to come in person so he may be in traffic um he's not yeah
so he did today he might have he might be a little bit later so if you don't see him in person then he's probably gonna be a few minutes late okay had today right
sorry uh Colby was actually just on but now he's off he's the conservation agent he is yeah I met him this afternoon and uh let's see
Mr oil is on as well and that's um Aon should be here um so the uh Chapa representative is not not
here you have him at 6:35 and he did confirm with you right yep I spoke with him at like 4:30 so yeah okay and I'm checking my email I
don't see anything um from him okay why don't we give him a few minutes and I'll go on to another thing because we have Aaron will be here at 7 or she'll be virtual at 7 yeah she'll be
a virtual y so that's our next agenda item um correspondence I haven't pre-read them so this will be exciting be a could be a surprise um you can bull it whatever you can doesn't look too bad it doesn't seem
Choo no okay um this is oh we got a letter this is to the towns imp Planet board from blatman brosi Harvard tree Harvard Harvard tree and Silverstein LLC attorneys of the law let's see application for site plan
review special permit 324 Main Street towns and mass dear members of the board this office represents 324 Main Street Partners llca Massachusetts limited liability company with an address of 310
Main Street town in Massachusetts the applicant regarding its application for site plan review special permit pursuant to section 145 42b of the towns and Zoning bylaw the applicant hereby extends all statutory requirements to
open the public hearing until April 14 2025 we look forward to working with the board thank you for your attention to these matters very truly yours Christopher J alen Beth can you just fill us in which property is that uh 324 Main Street it
was the gas station okay yeah so it's a Redevelopment yeah through the bo is he asking for an extension of the public hearing or is he asking for a public hearing so um the board is required to
open the public hearing um within 65 days of the town clerk stamp and um the applicant wanted to open the Hearing in April which was outside of that window so they provided that letter which
grants the planning board an extension from the statutory requirement of opening the public hearing um yeah they needed some some spokes on their team to be available so uh and just an update Town Council will also be available for
the planning board throughout that hearing process and that um decision process as he was for the zba okay so well uh the 24th is a Thursday um should say I might have
wrote the wrong date but it should be April 14th oh it's the 14th 14 that's a Monday Monday okay so that is our meeting okay okay okay all right next
one this this seems like from the towns and planning board this is a oh nice this is a public notice the towns and planning board associate member vacancy um all that are listening should apply to join the
planning thank you are the funnest board in the town of town Zone and we certainly have a lot on our plate and we love to share we love sharing we love sharing the next one is from the
town of gron um this is from their office of the planning board it was a letter to their town clerk theat planning board will hold a virtual public hearing Thursday February
27th at 7M uh this is to update the flood plane regulations to comply with the requirements of the Federal Emergency Management agency FMA and the national insurance program nfip yeah thanks for highlighting that you're
welcome is the also from the zoning board of appeals from the town of gron to their town clerk this is a public notice that the zoning board of appeals will hold a public hearing on Wednesday February 26th at 6:30 pm at the gron
Town Hall second floor meeting room this is for the application of Tim sparker off for a variance to the front set back to erect a 4ft x 17t addition to connect
renovated space to connect renovated space to existing great room the proposed project is on assessor partiel 112 D 125 46 Willowdale Road gron
Mass here we have the town of peril planning board a notice of public hearing the public hearing will be held on March 17 20125 at 6:30 p.m regarding an application submitted
by Maple Leaf Village LLC requesting a special permit major site plan review and a land disturbance permit for the expansion of the existing Maple Leaf Village a 55 and older retirement age community
the proposed work includes the construction of 26 new manufactured home units supporting access driveway and utilities the subject property is located at six
Mason Street is the ownership of maple leaf Village LLC and is shown on tax map 20 as parcel 100-1 the applicant request waivers from the town of peppol bylaws there's specific numbers but it's the
subdivision rule planning board rules and a portion of their storm water management regulations there's a plan there yeah that there is I'll pass it around how many 26 26 I think you said yeah that's quite of in
it must be in addition to what's already there there must be and I don't think P's an MBTA okay no they're not it isn't and I believe they have they may have public water public
sewer there oh really pepp does have Sun oh it does have Sun oh yeah and Mason is near the Mason Street Mason Street it's off of
um 113 113 yep Bas streets off of 113 yeah we have sewer and water public sewer public water okay so there's there's the difference that's good for them
yeah increases their tax Bas to pay for the schools it does um this is the final one from the town of peal board of appeals notice of public hearing will hold a public he regarding an
application submitted by Matthew J steel requesting a special permit to allow a change of a non-conforming use to convert the existing single family dwelling into a two family dwelling the subject property is located in the
industrial zoning District at 1A Chapel Place eil Mass shown on tax map 23 is parcel 1060 the public hearing will be held March 12th at 7:05 p.m. as a remote
option thank you okay um Beth how about if we go to administrative report 4.1 okay um I left a copy on the table if you want to review it later but um as
far as applications slash anticipated applications um as Andrew just mentioned we have 3 324 Main Street the planning board has an application under review it's for site plan review special permit they're also planning on filing the
storm water management permit um I'm kind of waiting on that um apparently they they weren't aware that that was also required but we're getting that from them soon um so that hearing is scheduled April 14th and does the board
want a site visit I mean it's right off of the high you know I can arrange a site visit if You' like um it's to yeah okay with that I mean you can drive by and pretty much see everything from
from the road but you can walk behind too I guess if you want you look down well I just drive by buy it all the time yeah used to be us to still there or whatever
yeah a gas station oh yeah they're going to expand it they're going to expand the building h how much land is there with that actually actually I don't know how much land there is but they are going to tear down everything there now is a tear down and a rebuild and they're going to
rebuild with a um commercial um drive-thru plus a little office space um so I think 20,000 square foot building um and then the carports at the fueling stations plus the um H
canopy for the fueling station so yeah um I can I'll um send you guys the application packet so you can look over the site plan but sounds exciting yeah it's great it's a great project something not there at
all and an isore it's an isore yes it has yeah um well we all agree it's an isore so right okay so that's that so site visits and compliance I have nothing at this timeit we don't read a site visit
okay the board agrees that we do not need a formal site visit okay thank you fine okay good all right so under miscellaneous the land use department is soon to be in transition again due to two upcoming vacant staff positions one
the use coordinator and to the grant administrator um the number two the new flood plane maps in the Nashville Watershed that project is ongoing staff um are working in amending the flood plane District bylaw and that is slated
for spring um toown meeting and the uh public hearing notice that Mr Shepard just read from gron uh I just want to put it in as an FYI uh they are basically presenting their amendments for the same reasons that Townson will
be doing so if you want to tune in um he said there was a a public link um I will be I'll take a look you know and just see how they're doing it I know their bylaw set up a little differently but I'll just Chim in and you know watch a little bit anyway the annual oh I'm
sorry amendments to 145 uh 54.1 age restricted development Article 19 at fall toown meeting was left dangling it is now on the March 10th 2025 Springtown meeting warrant in the
same form to finish discussion the planning board May at its discretion draft floor amendments um these should be pre-written and pre- reviewed by Town Council and select a planning board member to present at the March 10th 25
special town meeting uh that's um later on in your agenda too you can have that discussion the annual Town election is going to be held on April 28th at uh Town Hall from 8:00 a.m. to 8:00 p.m. the master plan implementation is
ongoing and I've just noted that we did receive the DTA grant for the economic development project um the hmp MVP implementation is ongoing uh we have an action Grant that's entitled the climate resistant
drainage master plan and we're working to apply for nature-based solutions to help mitigate effects of flooding and help with storm water Recycling and soaking back into the soil um that same plan needs an update
uh that is ongoing and the outgoing land use coordinator will look at laying a plan for funding uh sources for this um for this prior to her departure Weston and
Samson will provide a quote to the town for that update um so we have one to use while we're applying for Grants so the Adu accessory apartment bylaw well now it's the Adu bylaw passed at btwn
meeting um we need to formulate an administrative process and application process inform staff and community of the new rules and regarding construction of Abus site plan approval passed at fall toown meeting um again an application
process needs to be formed with the planning board and the building department um planning Grant award waiting still on this from mrpc to amend uh 14242 site plan review special permit and all other references throughout the
zoning bylaw to remove slm modify where there is misinformation about which type of site plan review is applicable to which project NBTA communities uh we are waiting e hlc review and Town Council
review staff did um meet with eohc and representative representative from eohc and Mr Bole from mrpc to discuss our unique approach that um Townson has made informing our MBTA community's
multif family overlay District apparently we are non-conformists but no um I say that with tongue and cheek we do have a different approach and it was flags and Mr Bole is here tonight and um I'm going to just finish my report and
ask him if he could fill you in a little bit more on what is is the hangup there um and how that's going um our official zoning map is still under development with mrpc to include those historic overlay districts um the open space and
Recreation plan mrpc is working on it to make the changes that were requested by State we currently do have conditional approval and um as far as the up we have conditional approval and um Aon just do they have is it the Adu that
they have questions with because the only piece that was left was the Adu SE not the Adu section the uh Ada the Ada yeah yeah um so I I don't know the details but I did have Arin did
follow up with an email and she'll be online in a few minutes and we can get a maybe a little more information from her on that um but yeah yeah you're welcome the corridor study um the upw project uh
we I did report on this before staff has met with mrpc to uh kick off the the scope and the uh Define the study area and talk about uh concerns um which will be rolled up into the project study
and um planning board member shareport resource folder is always at your um access with all kinds of updates and self-placement only Riders can book a day in advance um of pickup from both
shuttle stops town hall or Fitchburg inter modal and the Flyers on the website and there is some talk about tying in or trying to high in with the new Health Service shuttle that runs from Shirley to Emerson Hospital um and
I and again that's still in in planning stages but we're going to try to tie Townsen into that so you know Townsen will go to earlier air and then on to Emerson and have some sort of a loop so we could do out patient medical visits
yeah which would be really nice through the March shuttle it's a March shuttle exactly yeah and it's already it's already starting February 20 today but it doesn't include Townsen at this point it's just Shirley a and one other town
I'm sorry I can't remember but we're I think we're trying to get it started today uhuh we have a mark shuttle that's on schedule or on call or demand however you want to
put it are they going to use the same shuttle to try to do that that I don't think they can I think that is covered by different funding source so what I think is going to happen is they're going to try to somehow fund the
shuttle to come to the senior center so hopefully you know we could do the senior center back to air back to Emerson and do the whole Loop so you could do medical appointments and that would be primarily the best spot you know the library Senior Center so that's
I haven't heard about whether it's it or not but I did hear it was being planned or studied so hopefully that'll come to you soon um and then the draft amendments to 14548 which is the um affordable housing
conditional density bonus and that's for discussion at today's meeting when Aaron gets gets here and then is um Mr rig in there yeah hi I'm here yay hi but we are
are like six minutes away from um Aaron and Mr Boyle uh who's on the schedule so do you want to just start and then I mean I can wait until afterwards whatever we're free all are you sure do
you just want to rest for a bit well well I want to put Mr Bole on the spot just to try to explain because he so eloquently um and he probably only take a few minutes right BR okay just before before you start I did want to interrupt you and if you
would for the record just um State the name of eoh LC what what is that agency that's the executive office of Housing and live livable communities it's the new name of what used to be dhcd Department of
Housing and Community Development yes is a new name okay thank you and the MBTA communities office is in the eohc the MBTA communities act office the one reviewing uh compliance is in the in the eoh
hlc okay all right so uh a rundown on what happened um the town received a uh response from the MBTA community's Office uh about their um pre approval review that
uh pre about the uh um the bylaw and the map and they had two comments you all you saw that you you all saw that email right I don't think I did I don't think I did either oh oh okay all right then
uh they had two basic questions the first one was why does your compliance model say it's 7.9 units per acre you're required to have 15 and the second one was uh was
about the um one or actually two I believe of the of the parcels that are included in this Zone do not have Frontage and they questioned whether uh
those were actually developable by right so those are the two issues they brought up we had a meeting with them and uh uh I answered and uh I oh okay I should set this up by saying this was
not Nate carluchi who we've been dealing with the whole time and who wrote the um who I discussed uh this uh this bylaw with and got the okay and got the guidance from about the oversized district and the unit and the use of the
unit cap uh this was apparently uh this is is apparently Nate's replacement so uh he wasn't familiar with this history so I sent him the email I do not know I think um onward to
Greener pastur I assume he uh so I sent him the email history and sent him an explanation and he got it right away and he buys it and yes he thinks that uh this is perfectly legitimate um we are going to help him out with uh the
compliance model um running the compliance model and putting that unit cap on the District of this size causes it to come out with 7.9 um but what we did is is split the
district for the purposes of modeling in as if it was two subdistricts and applied the unit cap to each of them and in doing that you can see that oh okay yeah this is this comes out to 15 so uh that's that this I I I
think we're definitely okay with that one the other but the uh question about the back lot we had a conversation about that too and I made reference to the fact that
you know right in the zoning act it says that you're not allowed to consider lot ownership uh in in in your zoning I basic and look my Takeaway on this was
that uh you know his his basic argument is that a Backlot is not developable by right because your zoning still requires it to have uh lot Frontage now this is all brand new there was never anything even close to this guidance that was
provided at any point in the process uh the district needed you know they talked about what the district needed to have but the individual lots that that each individual lot in the district need to be uh by right this is
like this would kind of be moving moving the goalpost a little bit if they came back with this however a couple of caveats on that is first of all he mentioned over the course of this
meeting a couple of times that these instructions uh were coming from above and at one point he said not eohc so that means the governor's office I believe and basically he bought
everything that I had to say as a planner and I could tell thinks that we are right on the merits and is going to go back and make the case um at the bottom the concern here is
people thought townend was trying to cheat and you know do a uh is Townsen just trying to do one of these they comply technically on paper but they're creating one of these unbuildable districts because there are communities that are doing that they're like drawing
their entire District on top of their 40 BS or um something like that and they there was clearly some concern that oh is that what Town's trying to do here and he came away from that meeting
confident uh not only no Townsen isn't trying cheat here but actually Townsend is going above and beyond to uh and is creating a district that is better and more buildable than they're required to I talked about the idea of the allowing
of the small lot single and two families and the and the uh spreading out of development on the site to take advantage of the uh and to take advantage slash make up for the difficult terrain and how this it actually has the potential to create the
mixed residential neighborhood with the different types of residential large lot single family small lot single family two family small multif family and large multif family all in one all in one neighborhood and he seemed genuinely excited at on the merits of that and
seems to be on our side but right now we're in a position where we are waiting to hear back from them he's got to go back and make the case but uh the most important what seemed to me like the most important question that he needed
to go back with with was is Townson trying to pull a fast one here and he's going to be able to go back and say no they're not trying to pull the fast one here this is actually a really good plan uh the the we'll have to see what
the non-planners uh above him come back with but I'm afraid that's where we are okay um I also made the point to him that uh we could solve this problem very
easily by adopting a much smaller District that's only barely the size that it needs uh with lots that uh have the frontage and it will be a much less buildable district and they will get a lot fewer units out of it and we wouldn't even be having this argument
and uh but would be contrary you know do they really want to do that and he seemed to take that argument find that argument very very convincing so I think that yes you are the you are the Pioneers here and showing the way and I think they're going to come back with a
latory feedback but we'll have to see okay thank you very much Mr Doyle um now we are past seven and Aaron is here so um I'd like to hand it over
to Aon I'm not will from Chapa sorry chair Sheran um is it all right if uh Mr chap Mr rigan doeses his presentation he's come from quite a distance that is fine with me
yeah well you know it's always nice to be in person and meet folks face to face so I thought why not been out here while where did you come from uh summer mil so oh yeah of a drive but I me sorry I'm late the rout rotary is nastier than I remember it's really prettier out here
during the day I know I wish I made I mean I spent some time in the area it's beautiful so wish I was here in the day just driving through it's nice at night too okay thank you um but yeah I'm happy to present hi Aon good to see you um
so we can um maybe put the presentation on on View mode and I can go through it but um yeah I can tell you tell you a little bit of what Chapa does which is the nonprofit that I work for um and then kind of I have a whole presentation it's
pretty long but I be nice to hear a little bit from you about like what's G to be most helpful what questions you have um so to give some background um I work for the citizens housing and Planning Association which is Statewide nonprofit um dedicated to encouraging
housing affordable for people with moderate to low income so kind of from from middle class all the way down the Spectrum um and we work with communities around the state as they work on plans that are going to achieve those goals my job
for coming up on the year has been um to educate about the MBT communities act and um how to message effectively about it um so working with planners like Aaron um local planning board like yourself select boards um because you really you got two jobs right what
you're doing right just a minute ago was deciding where the best place for housing to go is but the second part is once you've figured that out most yourself you have to commin the community that that your plan is a good one and that and that's a good thing and that we need housing at all and that's
sometimes sometimes a challenge um so uh I I work to educate around the state both um presed the planning board but also public meetings information sessions about what the law is what it means um and how you can work to make it the best most effective plan for your
town um so what I understood from Aaron is that um you're kind of looking forward towards your public engagement process once you get your um proposed District settled which you're almost at at this point um so I thought I'd go through a little bit about like how we
present about the MBT communities Act and why it's a important you know NE necessary thing or at least creating new housing is an important necessary thing um as a way to kind of prepare you for that engagement process but uh if that
does not sound like what you need right now and you want to ask other questions of the law or other subjects uh let me know and I'm happy to cover other things too the affordable aspect sure oh affordable housing more
generally or of this the NBTA communi act yeah yeah happy to talk about that um maybe I can I think I have do I have that the end of this presentation um I I don't think I have slides on it
but I can talk about it talk about it all day um but maybe and we can put this in presentation mode and I can go through the the first few slides and then we can talk the affordable element and then um any other questions bks have
but um Beth do you want to put it in present if you press view top oh press view on the top menu like that like that yeah all right
and if can you guys see that or no am I doing that wrong you can try hitting present in the upper uh right as well that might work okay ah perfect there go yeah yay thanks a lot um and we we can move
on to the probably two slides ahead now because I told you who I am next yeah okay next and one more so here's my primary of the law and my at this point you all know what the law is pretty well right so um I think
what I really try to emphasize about the law is um one that it was extremely bipartisan um it was kind know developed in partnership with like a Republican Administration um their dhcd passed almost unanimously through de Democratic
legislature um and signed by Republican Governor so kind of all the the fear about this being this kind of like far left far right extreme idea really isn't is unfounded it was developed through um a very bipartisan political process in Massachusetts um and what it does
requires 177 communities to develop some area of town where multif family housing is going to be allowed which is pretty rare in Massachusetts right now um that's a big problem that I'll get into um and I think what's unique about it as opposed to zoning reforms that many other states are trying right now where
they're just kind of changing the zoning Statewide um Massachusetts has decided to kind of respect our history of local control and allow communities to have the option to go through this process deciding where it makes the most sense and that's something I really try to emphasize um folks worried about
government overreach many other states are doing this in a much more kind of direct prescriptive way m Massachusetts wants to allow towns to go through the process themselves um so we can continue on um so why was this passed I think this is really important to answer um
it's called the NBTA communities act folks think this is all about Transit um but really it's about making housing more affordable in Massachusetts um early versions of this bill were um looking at applying a Statewide option for all communities to allow some multif
family housing and through the political process it got Whitted down to this point where we're at today where communities along the MBTA um or next to it like towns in are encouraged to build more housing because uh that's where the most demand is also it makes sense for a
lot of reasons to try to put housing at least close to Transit and close to jobs um we can keep moving sorry I wish I could just click it myself I don't keep saying next slide go ahead yeah
so I understand the relationship with MBTA and high density housing sure but I don't understand why all of this isn't funded and focus on the communities that
already have train stops directly there yeah like we're just we're so remote from it that it really doesn't offer a big ad Advantage for
anybody in our community and so my question is how do we as a more rural area get caught into this whole process because it would seem far more
appropriate that the urban centers or the more densely areas where the transit already is would be the ones that probably need more housing than we do yeah you make a good point right and I think that's kind of one of the reasons
I wish it wasn't just called the NBTA communities act because although deciding housing near Transit is a part of it the the reason at the end of the day why the law was conceived was not to make our transit system stronger it was to solve a housing shortage and that's something that I mean I'll talk about
why housing prices are so high in Massachusetts um it's like towns in 84% since 2016 increase in housing prices Massachusetts 73% at the end of the day that's because we have not been building at a at a fast rate work building a very very slow rate um you know and that's
that's a problem near transit in in you know Newton Arlington Milton but also it's a problem everywhere um and I think some more rural communities further west in the state recognize this issue as well
um but the kind of the way the law was hashed out in the legislature they ended up focusing on the MBTA because [Music] um focusing on places that are closer to Transit at least in our towns that's not exactly well served by transit totally
understand that um you know for environmental reasons for traffic reduction reasons those are better places but at the end of the day we need housing everywhere in the state um and towns and require you know are kind of proportionate to how much Transit access it has um
places like Newton Cambridge Somerville face requirements that about five times as high as proportion of their current housing stock is Townson so the the goal is to make um what the state asks towns to allow for in terms of housing proportionate to the kind of Transit
service they have so you live in Somerville how many homes are being required in Somerville Somerville I mean it's a lot so um Townsen is required to zone for 5% their current housing stock I create like theoretical capacity so that the
housing stock could grow by 5% um in Rapid Transit communities like Somerville that's 25% so yeah in Somerville we've 80,000 people something like 25,000 housing units so that comes out to like 5,000 more we have public
water public sore of course right and that's why it's so much higher among among other reasons yeah and we have wellwater and have and septic system and septic systems of course right that's those are challenges no doubt about in expensive right so that adds to the cost
of housing in those areas where you don't have the Public Services yeah of course of course of course um and of course you know the the community of Townsen isn't obligated to provide sewer and water to developments that are in
areas you Z for multi family housing that's at the expense of the developer so uh it's probably going to be harder to build in Townsen zone no matter what you do then it will be in somewhere with Public Water and Sewer but um kind of your job as planner for the community
isn't to pay for all those services for the developer you create the conditions and hopefully someone will come in and will make it financially feasible to create some housing which we we've seen at a slower Pace but certainly is possible and I I can I have some more
slides on watering later I'm just upset if we go to the next time to ashrey they don't have the burden we have and they do in one in one section they do yeah do like one little tip of
it and they have to go through this they have to have the zoning bylaw because of one little tip okay yeah can you explain the relationship with the MBTA and all this yeah I will so may I'll get to that
in a little bit later um I think the short answer is like the law was not written by the npta the legisl legislature won to try to put housing in places that are at least closer to Transit service and so they wrapped communities that are within
adjacent to communities that have uh Transit service into this law and they mandated it yeah yeah I mean it's a i well go into like we've been underbuilding across the state for decades um and unfortunately communities
kind of as a whole have it been able to coordinate and create opportunities for new housing so the state's kind of stepping in trying to to solve that problem which you know isn't easy every place has its own conditions it's you know you're facing different situations in in towns than you are in
Ashby than you are in Harvard littleon Etc um but the fact is ac across the state we're moving at this really slow pace and the state is trying to to speed that up which I think is a a goal we really need and the reason why I I I care so much about this and and want to
um share of this work is just the fact that our really slow paac ability in the state is making housing really really unaffordable um and I'll talk about what I mean by affordable housing to like show you that de data um at shaa we consider housing affordable if you're
spending uh no more than 30% of your gross before tax income on it um and then if you're spending 50% of your income on housing it's called your you're considered um highly cost burden so your cost burden interest any more than 30 highly cost Bur if you're
spending more than 50 um and in either of those cases you're cutting back on on groceries food healthare school for your children education Etc um if we go to the next slide I can show you some of the data we can pull for any town in the state in towns in uh and that we're
seeing here is that you know 25% of homeowners are struggling to afford their mortgage already um and many of the people bought decades ago when House Press were much lower um whereas renters are often facing kind of current housing prices in a much more face to-face way
and we're seeing in towns and over 50% are are struggling to pay their rent so kind of giving you an idea of this medior increase in housing prices is really struggling is making people struggle to afford their homes and um if we keep moving um what I want to try to
share with you is that the reason housing price have so far that people are struggling to afford having so much because of our our slow rate of production um and the consequence we're looking at that's that's really concerning and really I think why the state has honed
in on this so much is that these high housing prices are driving people out of Massachusetts at a really a really quick rate um we lost more people than we gained in 2023 um the Greater Boston Chamber of Commerce has done surveys of young professionals U and they found that one
in four people are looking to leave the area in the next five years uh and cost of rent job availability and ability to buy a home were two of the were the top three reasons so two of those reasons are really about inability to buy a home
um and what's really significant is people that are leaving at the fastest rates are between ages 25 to 44 so right in that period of life where you're like you're getting your getting an apartment you're maybe buying your first home starting a family getting launched in the world starting businesses
contributing to the economy um people are leaving and that's if you want to have a strong growing economy you just can't be leaving all those people especially when we spend so much money and resources educating people at all our schools universities and then they
go and leave for Texas North Carolina Ohio somewhere with cheaper cost of living well I don't think anyone here denies the price of housing whether it's ownership or rental I don't think anyone here denies
the fact that we have a housing shortage okay sure what disturbs me is the approach that was taken here okay so from and I'm a member of the planet group in
Massachusetts and if you look at cities like fitburn and lemonster um there's an abundance of housing there that's not habitable
and that would be where the most convenient places would be to use the transportation systems but instead of focusing on distressed communities and trying to help them fund
housing they're coming out to our areas where it's further away from where the intent of traffic is supposed to be and forces us in many instances to
consider virgin land to develop to allow for this to happen and so I don't think anybody's challenging the purpose and the reason here but it would seem to me
it would be beneficial to focus on existing urban areas and and focusing their that's be most beneficial not only to the towns that are in financial distress on that
those areas but also to the the housing that's already there that's just not being it's vacant and and and then dis repair um so a city like fittsburgh could have used the tax revenue from
improved properties where here we don't even have the resources the city of Pittsburgh has sore water uh better equipped in in you know life safety uh equipment and
Facilities then we are here um so I it I think it's just misguided on where it really should happen and and the other Factor here is that all of
this is um nobody's looking at the housing cost of building construction and Technologies they just coming to communities to help subsidize it all and it's at our expense and our expense of
of of choice of where we want to live in the kind of environment we want to live in and so that's what angers many people in this community and um and then to have it as a mandate where we didn't even know it
was coming so the whole process was not a palatable one at all um and so that's I'm speaking for what you should expect when
we present this stuff sure right and I mean you actually you raised a lot of good points there I think and I think I can kind of like I can answer a lot of those questions in ways that maybe will will help you explain this in the future um like I think the Fitchburg one
talking about like vacant underutilized properties first thing like fitzburg lemonster all of our kind of Gateway cities that are post-industrial are included in this law with higher requirements with three times High building yeah but it all could be
achieved right in those same communities that's the thing right so um let's see if we go probably two or three slides forward sorry I don't control um the fact is it's not kind of it's not
either or um for meeting our housing needs it's really we can go one one back actually it's really both both and because the the hole we're in in terms of housing production is really hard to
overstate um the latest economic analysis that was done said Massachusetts is 222,000 homes short of what we would need to even stabilize prices where they are right now for Contex MBT communities act if every Community goes through this projections
say this will lead to about 40,000 okay so this is one small step and towns in like pretty small right 100 130 homes or so pretty small portion of that is is an important but pretty small part of the overall solution um renovating
underutilized properties is crucial really important um and it's something that the affordable homes act there there is funding for in that okay so the state the state is thinking about that um also like uh these urban communities have face these requirements as well and
many of them are going above and beyond what the requirements are to allow for more housing so there's funding for developers yeah there actually is there is funding for developers so there's there's um tax breaks that uh the legislature has passed for um developers
in what we call Gateway cities or our post industrial cities like fishburg lemster Worcester newford Etc like towns no no and the idea is exactly what you highlighted that a lot of these towns have like big in under utilized land
that um is really right for development wouldn't lead us to uh need to develop any undeveloped natural lands um it's often like a light on the downtown and so getting that developed is is a cheap top priority for the state so I know it kind of feels like is towns in the best
place to be solving our housing crisis and the answer is no it's I mean it's not it's there's so many other places where it's important but it's a Statewide issue and every Community has some role to play in this um and frankly other communities have a much bigger role but towns still has a role
um so hope that ansers a fewer questions if you have kind of other other thoughts on um you know what else the state could be doing that's besides this I'd love to hear those because in many cases those are things that are in the pipeline right now a lot of the the other things
people think the state should be doing and this is the administration is like really full gas on this right now and I think they'll be coming out with a lot more in the years to come so it's not as if this is the end all be all and that we're expecting towns in to solve this PR for the
St well I I think I've already stated what I think is important and I mean you look at the City of Fitchburg for
example how many vacon units are already there and you've got buildings in that City that have been paying taxes for decades and have vacant spaces and the landlords are being
smothered because of taxes low revenue and code requirements to upgrade those buildings okay why don't why don't we let him finish his presentation Robert okay
well I I'm just I think there was a better way to do this all around and um and it was I think it was hastily put together without considering all the
issues of local community and other Alternatives that could have achieved the same results so I I we have to present this to our
towns and my argument to my town is I don't know howse to tell you people we did our best here and it's a law and if we don't do it we're going to be punished so that's not a good message to
your community it is not no it you know it's not it's it's true it I mean it is the law we don't I don't think it's perfect I think there's ways it could have been done better absolutely but you know this law was written and signed somewh maybe two years before I had this
job right it's been it's been around for a while it's developed through a long time a good process right I mean an extensive process very at least uh and it is what it is now um and if you're you're thinking about how to present this your community what we see time and time again we've worked with over 70
communities now um only four failed in that time which is pretty good considering how many have failed across did you work with Milton no we did not work with Milton uh I didn't work with Milton they may have been one of the four actually yeah they were someone else in the office has a bad track
record marel Milton is uh uh right outside of wer um well it just wasn't done properly you know what I mean I think how it was presented without any awareness to the
communities or even approaching the communities I had a time it was just a mandate it came down I was sitting in shock here when it first came up and the member of the board of selectman said oh it's the wall I mean that just went
right through me um and so and then that kind of activity generates greater concern if they can mandate that then they can come right back and this down and say mandate
you're going to put a septic system and we're not helping you you know you know no it's that I wasn't that that was an overreach they could not do that I mean I think one one thing to keep in mind is like there there are I think it's easy to fall into this
kind of slippery slope of like okay they've asked us to reone what can they ask to do next um but there are pretty clear laws on like what the state does and doesn't have authority to do um zoning is an area in which the state does have authority to change to make zoning policy for towns in the state um
but like asking you to install sewer systems that would be an unfunded mandate if they did that they would have to provide funding for it not unfunded mandate this is an unfunded they don't provide funding for the mandates for the school we have unfunded mandates and they that
we have to follow and they do not provide the funding so to say that that's that's not true they can mandate anything and not fund it right because they've done it and they've done it of our tax problem in this state right now
impacting our financial budget is the school district we in where the state was supposed to pay for the transportation and hasn't done so 20 years like 20 years right yeah so so don't don't go down there State excuse
me all right you got me there got me there okay yeah I look I'm not the state I don't I don't I'm not claiming to say they're perfect at all okay well that's all right finish you're gonna have a tough time but anyway this is a good presentation let him go through his
presentation I think the point you made that I'm trying to help you with is you do need present to your community okay um your community does benefit from getting this done um you you maintain eligibility for all these Grant funds you also create housing for people in your community which I think is a an
important goal that's a threat the fact that we remain eligible for Grant funds that's the threat to us yeah if we don't we no longer get the grants so is the town supposed to go and receive a ship if we don't do this this is what it it
means to us so it's important I mean it's important to get done and I understand like that kind of you know we can the time can go broke trying to come up with this especially for the schools especially the schools which the school is gonna make us go
broke but any go ahead finish finish my point it is important to get this done we can we can all agree on that right like whatever we think of the law it is important to get it done uh what I want to help you with is like how you message this to get it done and what
I would not do under any circumstances is focused on kind of this is a threat we have to do it we have no choice people don't like that you clearly all don't like that feeling right um and instead focusing on why creating new
housing for your community is a positive thing why people in your community do need it and that's kind of I want to equip you with like all the statistics showing what an issue it is affording housing in Townson right now the fact that it's driving younger people out of
the town in the region uh that older folks can't find Opportunities to downsize um you know local teachers firefighters um public servants can't afford to live here um those are the those are the points I want to focus on
and I would encourage you to focus on um rather than kind of getting into this conversation with your whole Community about whether this law was written in the perfect way and whether um you like you see it as the best solution because there's always going to be arguing about
that but when you have to comply with the state law you have to think about what's going to resonate with the community so um so yeah I'll get back into some of those stopping points anyway so something emphasiz to
you um let's see we'll go back one slide that should get me back on track Aon for B okay so um the reason this is focusing on zoning reform is the fact that we're not building um right around the
1980s uh we used to be able to have we had pretty permissive zoning across Massachusetts multif family housing was allowed in at least a portion of most communities uh right around the 70s to 80s there was this process called the big down Zone where communities across the state um adopted these really
restrictive zoning policies that made it illegal or impossible to build anything than a single family home uh on large loss sometimes one or two acres like you have in a lot of what happened in town right and what you saw is that we are building a whole lot of housing both single family and multi family through
the 80s and in the 90s that almost chopped in half and significantly we have almost no multif family housing which is just naturally if you're buying market rate housing tends to be cheaper and more affordable than single family housing um and that hasn't gotten much better in the last 30 years since then
so you at first that didn't cause big problems we had building been building for years we still have enough housing kind of saw like the gentle appreciation people were happy with that uh but then what we're really seeing right now is the effect of 30 years of underbuilding um especially multif family
housing uh and that's why it's so important to try to add the supply across the state it's like like any other product supply and demand when you don't have enough something the price goes up um and when you don't have enough of something that should be cheaper like multif family housing you end up with no cheap options at all and
that's that's where we're at um so moving on the question question of why we were not building more housing Chapa Works kind of as a convenor for people in the Housing Industry we um convene a lot of forums for people in government people in development uh in nonprofits
and over and over what we hear is why is it hard to build Massachusetts it's still the zoning it's still that we just provide so so few places where it's allowable or legal to build um new housing that isn't a big house on a one
or two acre lot and that is just that is never going to be affordable for someone uh with a middle income in in this point time also two they keep changing the building codes and adding more and more stuff to the building that's a greately my son is a general contractor and he
gets more and more expensive to do any kind of additions or buildings so the state keeps adding to the building code which drives up the cost to developers so developers only want to build mini Mansions where they can get their money
back they don't get money they don't make money they could lose money by building affordable housing so the state is part of the problem when they keep adding to the building code and making it hotter and hotter and more expensive
for developers I'm I'm 100% on board with you there like zoning is one zoning is over is regulation right it is regulation what you can build building code is regulation of how you build those are both issues no doubt not I do not disagree and one's done by the state
so this so the state is is causing a lot of this problem so and saying you know because we don't have enough housing and the reason we don't have enough housing it's because it's it's so expensive to build stuff to match and the co my sonone
tells me the code can get updated every week every other week sometimes depending so yeah so maybe you need to bring that back to your office and say get the coding people that's what I'm trying to that's we areay we are paying attention
to that that is top priority um there the and also I think the current governor I think the baker Administration wasn't really paying attention to that current Administration is really focused on that there's just a commission that was appointed called the commission unlocking housing production
looking at ways we could um like slash regulations that are making it so difficult to build and a lot lot of those recommendations are about ways to simplify and streamline the building code so that is that is important that said kind of before you can build cheaper you need
more places to build right and so that's why talking to all these developers what they told us is that the first barrier is zoning and then there's all these other barriers right there's like the cost of materials cost of Labor um the the building codes that are overly
complex that regular what kind of buildings you can build that make them more expensive all problems too but they're all Downstream of just the fact that there are very few sites where you're allowed to build it it goes on there's there a whole chapter and things
that impact cost on buildings and most of them from regulatory standards and requirements what a developer has to invest even trying to plan a project the time it takes to plan it and then
you know in the meantime they have make legislation against fossil fuels so now you have a limited competition on buying electric appliances or whatever so it doesn't make it for free enterprise
where you can reduce costs by buying a gas rise because it's cheaper than electrical you know what I mean it's that kind of it's just it's it's uh it's hypocritical and one hand
they're I'm sorry you know but like I don't I actually don't think we're on different sides of this issue okay I it might might feel like we are but everything you're saying about billing codes I'm in complete agreement
with um but I mean this is this is not coming from a vacuum the zoning issue is coming from people who work in development saying this is their biggest barrier right it's not we're not making St out of thin air oh you're not making it we
all have been in it longer than a year yes so we understand everything we spent a lot of time on this enormous amount of time on this and we looked at all different Alternatives where we could deliver this and every time when we had
a reasonable practical sensible approach they said no we don't want that you can't break it up over town it all has to be concentrated in one area and I'm like why
why we have distress properties that would probably contribute a whole lot here but that can't be included so that kind of blindness there's no com is frustrating because we looked at
different scenarios that would have been wholesome for our town but with all all these you know reviews and oh no not there we don't like that we don't like this we ended up
ultimately with two final places to even consider that would do this and you know what they were the best Apostles of bland in the entire town our best real
estate that's what was frustrating I mean we tried hard you know what I mean I'm I'm really upset about it because there's absolutely no latitude and I have somebody that do understand anything
about social order or you know relationships of things just sitting there absolutely ignoring the whole thought process on it and just making a mandate no
without any excuses or reasons justification that's what's upsetting speaking of the EC looking at your proposals yeah yeah I mean really we worked hard on this yeah almost two
years now yeah so since anyway would you finish please yeah I'm sorry this is we just want to get this done I know I know you do okay I'm trying to help you okay and and you have a long ride home too I do
okay but oh so I would suggest emphasize there's a reason for doing this zoning has been proven to be a barrier we're trying to relax zoning standards it's giving property owners more options with what they can build their properties it's not eminent domain Etc which I can
talk a lot more about um I think you all know what zoning is so maybe we can get to someone more like the common concerns you're going to hear from residents and how to address those um so we can advance like two or three slides well we'll move on
um I got to that um that's okay you know let's keeping we'll Mo I know we've been here a while already this um we'll keep moving I have way too many slides here this
one uh and let's this is yeah I I'll prove this I think this is something I suggest you include and I know you've already you're pretty settled on District but one thing I try to emphasize in every presentation about this issue is what kind of housing we're shooting for here I think when people
hear high density housing they think of this one they think of like this big massive complex um but the reality is what this law is trying to do is legalize everything between the single family homes we have now and the big massive complex so everything from
duplexes triple Deckers Cottage courts um town houses uh and those types of housing are often kind of a lot less threatening and to people than these giant apartment blocks um those can really fit into your community in a way that doesn't feel out of place uh and I
think showing local examples and we can move to the next slide uh can help illustrate that really well this is something I do in every presentation is I will find examples of existing housing in a community that already our 15 unit breaker so I just found two that are
like pretty much right next to door to us right now um 4308 Main Street 3 unit property2 Acres exactly 50 units per acre looks like a pretty traditional all right so look at that illustration you have right there okay that's exactly
what we wanted to do when we started okay taking properties like that and add them them up for the total without disturbing a whole character of an area of town and so these are great
illustrations that's what we were trying to do when we started and we were going to have it in different portions of town so it wouldn't be this big bomb in one section of town um you know and and midrise
buildings okay but in this town we may not even need mid rice buildings if we can do something like that but that was told no but mon well look I'm not going to argue with what the state should or shouldn't have told you because that's right a process you've already been
through but it sounds like you're settling on a a plan now that's going to allow like several smaller um developments within a larger parcel which seems like we work very hard and this is the best that we can
offer to meet the state and for the town's benefit for this kind of scale correct I mean that and if you're trying to sell that kind of scale then show what it could look like right show what four units on uh a 0.1 acre LW I mean
that's Way Beyond what you even need but um show what three units on a02 acre law actually looks like um and that's what you're trying to create right because that is what that's you work really hard to get to that point right yes um so don't let people come to town meeting and say this is going to be a 10 store
apartment building make it very clear this is what you're trying to create um you probably know people that live in buildings just like that so let's not demonize that kind of housing um let's create more because it's the most affordable we can create and it's not and people often like they
think of this law they think like it's affordable housing it's it's only for low income people um but really it's mostly focused on market rate housing um but it's trying to create types of microw housing that are more affordable than uh mansions on 2 acre l right and
this kind of housing is more naturally affordable so it's really trying to create housing that's for people you probably know in town right like your children potentially buying their first home uh parents who are trying to downsize teachers firefighters Etc focus on the people that are actually going to
live here not on this the kind of abstract version of a giant building come to your town because that's that's not what this is for it's for actually providing homes for people okay we can move on to a few of the the common concerns we'll move on past that that's cover
that bit already um so yeah common concerns we hear a lot often how will this affect School enrollment you hear this everywhere that the schools are becoming overcrowded and this is going to overflow them uh and this just huh ours are reducing right and so I you can find
the graph of any any community's school enroll online in towns and you've seen yeah this really serious decline so new house is if anything going to help stabilize School populations hopefully bring them to a more sustainable consistent level but also it's not going
to explode anything at once right rezoning ideally leads to gradual development over time um and the fact is multif family homes um statistically lead to fewer children per household in single family homes um because you're often getting young couples or older
folks downsizing rather than families with a whole bunch of kids um so as adding new multi family housing typically has a pretty limited effect on School enrollment maybe modest growth but you're not going to see um this sudden onslaught of children that's
going to overwhelm your schools which I mean in town seems very unlikely but a lot of people even though like if you know that school enrollment is is declining people have this idea that for some reason the schools are about to overcrowd so just having the graph on hand and being a to point to it is a
really valuable way to respond to those concerns so just encourage you to keep that in mind um go to the next slide please uh the other one that I know you all touched on a bit already is that people fear because you don't have
public water and sewer the town is going to be on the hook for public water and sewer themselves um which just simply isn't true um developers are responsible for develop developing that themselves um towns aren't going to see their budgets overrun by uh developers wanting
to build without public water and sewers um but they can right they can build up to 90 bedrooms which isn't something that you're really considering on on private Water and Sewer yeah anything I I just have a comment on
that so the word affordable means zero here okay okay because really what's happening is the town is allowing high density to to lower the cost to develop the buildings right of course okay so
everybody's saying that's making it affordable but then the developer has to provide the water and seore so it's a net zero situation so it doesn't make it more affordable it just generates more
housing right but if we have a looking at the big picture the shortage of housing is what's making housing so unaffordable so adding more across the state wherever we add it is helping us stabilize prices or bring them down that's a good argument oh thank you for
that I'll take that uh and the other thing I mentioned too is that although new multif family housing it's new like a new car it's going to be probably more expensive than an old car right but um new multif family housing is always going to be cheaper than a new single
family home and if all you're allowing these new single family homes you're definitely not creating for options this is going to be more affordable than that right we're not we're not going to get to the bottom but we can hopefully get the class I don't know about that in chungu they got these tow houses that going for
$750,000 and they're like four or five units attached and they're right on the route three entrance ramp and I look at them and I'm like holy cow but they're housing but it's somebody's buying them somebody's buying them so but I think my
there is and they have a ton of I mean chs's like building like crazy I mean they got multi every corner there's a multif family house but they're not cheap and they get I mean they've been building and building and building and
it's not making the prices cheaper I mean I mean a couple things in that one it's a it's a Statewide shortage so just billing in chelsford alone is unlikely to bring prices down that much um the other thing is that um
again what like new housing is almost always going to be more expensive than old housing new cars are always more expensive than old cars homes aren't aren't different in that sense the third thing I'd say is look at the price of a new build single family home in chelsford how much that costs right 700,000 sounds expensive but a lot of
people trying to get their their foot in the door of home ownership will be really gr glad to find a $700,000 condo when all the homes are 2 million it's I it's a sad reality gu not me but but I mean not a lot of us but
many of us who own our homes already can't see doing that but if you grew up in Massachusetts want to stay here it's often your only option um kind of well then you must be making a really good salary to afford a $750,000 town home yeah I
mean but still not enough to buy a single family home right like we have a big problem here and it it takes a long time to fix it I I mean I I guess look I'm young I want to buy house Som day and I would $700,000 condo is not in reach but how
am I ever going to get a home unless we build more of those you know unless unless we create more Supply how are we gonna bring those prices down buy a dump fix it up but look at the price on dumps too right not $700,000 either we make good points um
and you'll hear that from your for your audience so one way I'd respond to that is um I think the new car used car metaphor is pretty good dumps right now are really expensive and you can think if we stopped making new cars how expensive old cars would probably get
and so if we stopped building new condos those old rundown houses would just keep getting more and more expensive there's no option to buying anything nicer go with that argument okay okay I'll try look it it's it's kind of hard to wrap your head around right like you want more
affordable housing $700,000 condos are going up that's not more affordable housing so what are we achieving but if we're not building anything everything's just getting more expensive and that's that's situation we're in right now so we got to start jumping away um okay property taxes I I know
I've been at this for a long time now um but a big fear folks have like at the shorten version of this is that building new housing is going to a financial burden on on communities um and there's been a fair amount of research big study by the massach taxpayer foundation on
what the municipal fiscal impact of new housing has been um and we can go to the next slide I'll give the the real long and short of this um we keep moving on um the long and short is that they found that uh
communities that have allowed more housing development in the last 20 years or so um have seen uh lower cost per resident for municipal Services they haven't seen property tax
increases um well I'm I'm trying to go on Fast Forward right now but there is a pretty good study here would you like me to walk through if so you can use it yourselves well if you have housing growth you have a bigger tax base so it's going to be less per
house to share that the taxes do yeah we all know that but when you've restricted building through various mechanisms the people that are left are going to be paying more because everything goes up the cost
of everything goes up for the town right so that's exactly what we're trying to avoid by allowing new housing are we on the same page okay okay so but I think it is important to show these show these studies and I can get more into it if you want because many people seem to
believe that building new housing will increase their taxes when generally speaking um it's neutral or the opposite it allows the tax bur to be spread more evenly so um I have the study I can get into it if you want uh but I keep that
as a tool in your roster I'll send you this afterwards um because you'll probably hear that from your audience that like this is going to raise my taxes and that is you never know exactly what the impact will be but there's not strong evidence to say that'll happen and it probably going to have a positive
impact on your local finances well the presentation I mean we had a chance to see it before you even showed up okay it's a great presentation it's all pro this
program right and so you have to present something like this to even get support but nobody's looking at the opposing arguments for all these line items that you have it's also another
side of the story so this isn't a wonderful thing okay it's a presentation in favor and supporting it okay but I can go through that whole list of items and give you a counter argument on so
many different things um so our issue will be helping to get this approved town meeting which this will be do a lot to help do that
but if somebody pops up with some of these other questions I don't know if we'll be prepared to address them you know well we're not gonna lie either H you know we're not gonna lie you know no you
that's what it is if I could jump in for just a second sure Aon hi everyone so I worked with Will's colleague Lily in my past Community um where the MBTA communities BW that we put together passed um we had a wonderful experience
working with Chapa and found that a lot of the products that they have for lack of a better term um there you know there's informational sheets there's educational information they can provide to us to provide to the community that was incredibly helpful um I changed it
to uh reflect the that I was working in and people found it very uh information heavy and very useful and it it really helped to to sell this because in the you know at the end of the day we're still working towards the same thing
here and we're all trying to get this passed at town meeting so that we can have those Grant funds and that's we have that opportunity for affordable housing um whether it is you know people that are no longer having to spend 50% of their income or even higher on their
housing but we're also looking out for the seniors in our community the people that you know are um young professionals that are looking to come back to where they're from but they can't afford to live anywhere in near where they grew up we're trying to create that housing for
people and this zoning is that way is that path forward it it's at least a path that has been presented to us and so um Chapa has done a really good job of putting together materials for us to use utilize um and I think that we'll
probably talk a little bit about what those materials are and how he can really help us move forward to town meeting to make sure that we are successful um they've had a really great success rate and like I said I had a wonderful experience working with Chapa um and am thrilled they're helping town
in now because I I truly believe in what they're um and what they're pitching here and think that they have a really great methodology for helping people understand um both the the law what our bylaw can help the community do and how this will help U Massachusetts in
general and uh all of our families find places to live if you really want to sell this at the town meeting come up a way to convince the people of town that this is
going to save them on their taxes if you can demonstrate that here yeah if you can demonstrate that I think they'll go for it you know okay how how would we save for our taxes I don't know but I mean put that in somehow you know show I
bet will has something that would show you it's right in front of us all right well then that's a big salary okay that's one yeah great so I'll go through that right now and thank you eron for the kind words um but I will tell you that there are residents that will say I
want the town to stay the way it was I don't care if my taxes go up that will yeah or find another way to bring Revenue to the town versus yeah that that's guaranteed to happen and you know I understand kind of
maybe based on the feedback you're hearing in town it might feel like this is impossible right now but um map at the end if you look at your surrounding communities all the ones that have had deadlines at the end of last year in this region have passed it it's not like it's an impossible thing
right right St why it has an 81% passage rate I'm sure it's going to pass the bylaw itself is going to pass yeah so this will we see fruit from the plant I don't know no that we don't know right but your job is to to make a
plan that works and that you can pass and so I'm trying to help you do that I'm trying to help you sell that plan and it can do can be done it is not hopeless I'm happy with the plan we've come up with yeah will pass too well I
don't want to I'm not in a position to cut you short but maybe you could Buzz through really quick the argument of increasing the tax base and revenue yeah absolutely absolutely and we actually if anyone's interested the author of this study is giving a presentation on Wednesday and you're all welcome to attend it and I can send that to you
because it'll give a better um summary of it than me but um going over the study this was done by the N taxpayers Foundation which is a nonpartisan um think tank that analyzes how various policies will affect
taxpayers um so it's not not a hard as in gend look into them I think they're pretty well respected um and what they did is they identified 57 communities with popul between 20 and 40,000 so larger communities but these things generally hold um and they split them in
half into communities with the largest population growth and the smallest population growth which is pretty well correlated with housing development um and then they compare those communities in terms of their tax Val Levy home value taxes a percent of income and um
non-property tax revenue sources um and the I don't have the I don't have the state aid for schools portion of this in this presentation but they have that they did that analysis as well um which I can share with you later um so if we can go on to the next slide so first home values which is an
important part of your total tax revenue I think people are concerned sometimes that adding new housing will reduce their own home values and that has turned out not to be true the communities with the highest um the highest rate of growth um saw home values increase by about 6% more
than than towns with lower rates of growth so it's pretty clear across the state that I new housing is not depreciating surrounding property values and it's actually tending to increase the more um I'm going to the next slide uh and then property taxes the share of income this is usually what
people care about the most right just what applies to them um and they found out that uh in 2007 these communities that were of similar populations um had uh similar property taxes with percent
of income um a little higher in the top ones that later grew um and then by 2022 communities with uh higher rates of growth um had not seen a uh significant
growth in um property tax of the share of income whereas you've seen a slightly larger growth very slight in communities with low growth so that's not showing that property taxes were going down as a percentage of income but it's at least showing that new housing was not driving
people's property taxes up as a percentage of their income um moving forward in terms of the total tax levy unsurprisingly uh communities that grew more more the top 28 saw a decent bit
higher growth in total tax levy about 7% than um communities that were on the lower end of growth and keep moving on and then again growth in total local receipts you're seeing about a 20% higher
um higher local receipts for communities in the uh the top half for grow so can you contextually so particularly in this area where as with many throughout the state having budget shortfalls these top 28 bottom 29 what were their rates of
housing growth do you know or what size of growth did they have like to to have this increase in local receipts yeah I think I have to I'd have to pull the full study which I have but I don't have it right now but um yeah I don't those numbers off the top of my head yeah but
I can definitely get it to you and after if you have question about anything you want a statistic reach out to me I'll try again for you um okay go on to the next slide maybe I bridg this too much okay so I bridged it a bit but um they also have some more research on how state aid
for um schools has changed and that one's especially significant in that communities that have seen higher housing growth have seen much more aid from the state for their schools um so that can be a really positive influence on local finances and I'm not the expert
on this so if you're confused see some looks confusion the author of this study president of massachusett tax Foundation is presenting on Wednesday um and you can hear it right from the source not uh not having read the study I think a common theme you've heard throughout here is that being outside 495 in a more
rural community without septic and uh water and all public water in all places there's a general sentiment even with our schools that you know Boston inside 495 that whole city area makes a lot of policies and programs that focus more on
them yeah yeah and um you know it'd be interesting to read but I would imagine most of the sample size for this doesn't focus on more rural communities like us and may Focus greater on the inside 495 area which is
fine and you know relatively valid but certainly for us um I don't know how I don't imagine the public will get too deep into that but um there may be similar Trends but it may not be as replicated yeah
I think these were all done with communities with populations between 20 and 40,000 so um not Royal not as Royal communities certainly um but I don't think a study's been done on just Royal communities or not that I know of yet although we can ask the pack Foundation doubt it I would doubt it too I would
doubt it um I think it's difficult because of kind of the smaller sample size right like you might get one development that causes some big expense or one development that is a huge boom to the town's tax base and it might kind of make it harder to to but for us particularly in terms of like the argument of school funding which you
know us and a lot of other communities are experiencing shortfalls it would be a probably a less valid argument for us to make that uh we for a less valid argument for the public to believe that we would receive increased funding from
the state given that we've seen a decrease in overall funding decrease in funding and a decrease in enrollment right decrease in enrollment but percentage wise uh I believe I read like The contribution from the
state went from 60% you decades ago to down now the town is picking up almost 60% most of almost 60% of our town budget goes to of our receipts tax receipts go to
the school schol because the state has refused to give us the funding yeah but that's not a problem that's not a problem for but but it is a problem for the yeah and so if I remember the last bit of this it's that communities that have
seen population growth see their state increase new housing again might lead to like modest population growth in town but realistically you're not going to have a huge increase um so I should I should get back to you with more information of the state a because it could be a good talking point for you if that's a major concern in
town well I don't think it's going to be the primary up swing thing that subject because the impact it would have even assuming it wouldn't you know help with the school budget is not going to be the
significant Point here true yeah but you want to have that response right you want to kind of have all the Talking Points you need um oh yeah and this is something this is this is more for you than your community although something you can share with your community too as I was saying before you look at the whole kind of like Western Central Mass
region a lot of your surrounding communities are adjacent small towns they haven't had a chance to vote on it yet but um we're pretty you know every Community that's had to vot so far in these kind of like Northwestern suburb to rural areas has passed this so kind
of the regional sentiment seems to be going pretty well um other folks are finding way to do this this guy does not yet appear to be falling um still waiting for that so far seems good um and also like your surrounding
communities Harvard's aent small town as well they passed it about a year early ahead of time uh and they found a way that was tolerable for the people that live there so just want to give you some confidence that it seems like communities in your region that are similar to you are having success
passing this um and oftentimes not particularly controversially um I think Harvard was a pretty not maybe not a landslide but a pretty dominant majority of time meeting so um one thing is helpful too if you want to be connected to any of the planners or planning board members in those communities and and
share some um information we're happy to do that one thing we do for planners um we actually had this today but I think um Aon wasn't be able to make it is that we have cohorts for planners from similar communities where they can kind of trade information about what community engagement strategies are
working so I know you'll be looking for a new planner if any of you want to join one of those cohorts in the meantime um you're welcome to uh and exchange information with your local and your by planners that are facing the same concerns okay and I think I I'll call it
there um no I've talked a lot of you so um thank you of course yeah really really happy to be here and I'll say going forward that we are if you want me or someone else to come in and present at public sessions we can do that we can also just equip
you with presentations that you can give yourself which if someone kind of feels confident doing that and um you're not facing a lot of blowback from the community already that can often be best so often ifan give presentation it's because kind of you like an outside
expert who can be a Authority on questions that you don't have to face that blowback yourself um but that kind of depends Community by Community I think it's often good to either have someone from Chapa come in like at the very beginning as like an authority on the law first who folks can ask
questions for or if you're kind of losing control uh and getting a lot of blowback you can kind of put me into to get yelled at for a bit and then take it back yourself that might happen so yeah really really here help you get this done I know like there's a
lot of like to be there and have the Public's trust yeah and if you can handle a lot of that
stuff that we just went through and then we can be on the other end saying how zealous we were in locating the district um I I think that's what we can handle
because what we had control of the effort that we put in in trying to make this work for the town and the town being aware that we met with you and our planner here and so
that we're saying to them we've had all these Consultants to help us with this you know and consequently we recommend that we go forward with that vote I think that I don't know how you feel
but they're better prepared to defend this stuff than I am M fact is showcasing the multiple agencies that have been involved so this wasn't just yeah this is taken to and a half years to even get to here
so yeah that really another thing i' have me everyone pardon me everyone if I could jump in here I'd like to say that you uh also still have me on contract as one of your Consultants so please do think of how I can be helpful in this
process of selling to the public I have um I have done a couple of pres of MBTA presentations um I did uh did one in Westminster the one I did in lemonster went over very well uh that was a city council it's a little
different situation but um yeah I uh you know all the way through this I've been thinking uh we should put our heads together to get a little more local uh a little more
um of what came out through this process um into it um I think talking about the um the um provision of rental housing and housing diversity as a benefit to the
town uh people being able to stay here and then that also feeding into the fiscal argument by talking about how uh rental housing produ puts fewer kids into the schools than large lot single
family homes and and things like that um talking about the neighborhood that would be created by this and it's not just a big multif family campus they worked very hard choosing a site and developing it you know to allow the small singles and and uh two families as
well as allowing the 15 unit per acre multifamilies to create a uh uh to so to uh create like a mixed residential area that will have different styles of residential housing in it together you
know I yeah I I think there's you know the the the the 30,000 uh um foot view about the housing market is really really helpful but the and then bringing it more specifically into North
Central Mass uh where there is the such the like the one of the worst rental housing in particular markets in America I think that's something that really that really needs to bring in but you know we're worse than greater Boston when it comes to a rental market so yeah
I think that we could do that that I'd like to put your presentation together with some of the stuff I've done okay well thank you very much eron do you have anything you want to say to close
here I think the will does has done a really good job of covering that and I think that yeah will if you and Lily can work with Joe you guys are going to come up with something that's really helpful in um presenting to the community and showing that this is something that's going to be really beneficial in the
long run and just remember it's zoning it's not a mandate to build anything um and I think that there's a really um I think the there's a lot of really strong messaging that we can do to show people that this is really beneficial to the community in general yes there are
downfalls it's not a perfect nothing's ever going to be perfect but um I think this is a step in the right direction okay thank you Arin um thank you all for coming we do have some business that we have to get done tonight before our March 10th uh special
meeting thank you of course yeah thank you all for having me it's great safe issue but um sounds like you're making great progress and I am here to support you so please reach out thank you thank you thank
you okay um 3.1 in our work session now is to discuss Article 19 oh uh may I just say uh Erin is here
for uh business appointment 2.2 IAD to might as well keep going with the affordable housing [Laughter] right so sorry to to keep bringing this up guys but this is the inclusionary
zoning bylaw so this is something that is already on the books in townzen but we are looking at um altering it so this would make it so that it is um more effective and when I say more effective I mean the the one that is currently on
the books in Townsen has never been used so we want something that may actually be utilized um so there's several things that we have looked at doing um I'll just start by saying that in order to um create this bylaw which is very much in
draft form um I took uh language from other surrounding towns bylaws so these are things that have already P passed states must these are not things that we're just going to you know throw spaghetti at the wall and see what sticks these are things that have been done in other
communities um I looked at communities that had uh all surrounding towns and and said okay who has passed who has actually had affordable housing built um what what sort of uh inclusionary zoning do they have and then also looked at um
other communities that I thought uh had zoning that maybe um hadn't been utilized as much but I think would be really beneficial to towns and so that's kind of how I uh pulled those pieces together um so one of the biggest things
is uh making some of this mandatory which I know is a scary word but sometimes the the carrot is not enough um clearly the carrot is has not been enough in towns and is the inclusionary zoning bylaw has never or the afford what's it called now the affordable housing conditional density bonus has
never been used um so we're looking now at instead of just having a a carrot providing a a mandate but for things that will um make it more useful for developers so some of the things that we're looking at thank you Beth um some
of the things that we're looking at changing are um making it so that when somebody is creating a development instead of saying you could have a higher density and we will uh or if you create more housing we will allow you to have a higher density
for instance on your Parcels we're instead saying okay if you're going to be making a a huge development right um we're not talking one two three houses um I think in here I put eight because that was what a neighboring Community
head us as their number you might choose a higher number um but say you know if it's eight units so that could be eight uh Cottages that could be eight um apartments that could be eight Mansions if you are putting eight uh
units into a development then you would if you go over that then you would trigger a 10% affordability so if you built nine then you would have one that would be affordable so that's kind of the um the idea so that we are actually increasing our stock of affordable
housing um because as it is right now it has been pretty stagnant and we're actually losing a lot of units um especially in the next few years we're going to have quite a few come off of our subsidized housing inventory so we're looking to see how we can sort of combat that and also create affordable
housing because as will was just talking about we know that we need housing and we need housing that people can afford um both big a affordable and little a affordable um so some of the other things that are in here are uh addressing non-conforming Lots so that's
something that is uh also being discussed with the um uh with the age restricted development uh bylaw and something that you know went to town meeting this would actually address that as well so this would take a lot that for instance is um
an acre and a half instead of two acres right and if you are putting one unit that is Affordable in there then you would have the ability to uh to build on that without having that same um
requirement for the two acre zoning so it's giving uh you know that carrot once again but something that might actually be really useful in a for a developer that might actually lead to um utilizing some of the properties that might be closer to walkable areas or something
that has been sitting for a while because it's 1.9 acres and not the two acres that you require um so this would allow for other uh properties that are in sort of the denser areas to be utilized um to make housing that may be
for people that are starting out or people that are trying to downsize um what else do we have in here oh the retention of the housing um so this is something that we're looking at right now as items are coming off of
our um stamp uh subsidized housing inventory the Shi um because once something comes up for sale it has to be um sold at the affordable price but if we do not get an affordable buyer somebody who qualifies
for that um then it goes on at market rate after a certain amount of time so this would um sort of pause that and give the town the right of first refusal as written here which would allow for the town to either the housing authority to say we want to purchase that and add
it to our subsidized housing inventory or if it was sold at market rate um that difference could be added into a um a Bank Of Money essentially for the Housing Authority or the Housing Trust to use to create affordable
housing um again these are things that I've taken from other towns that have worked so I think there's some really interesting things here um try to remember if there's anything else that I missed um I think that is most of what is
changed in here um so once again this is something that um the Housing Trust asked me to put together um we could take some of it we could take all of it we could take pieces of it but I think that there's um
the way that the inclusionary or the affordable housing conditional density bonus bylaw is currently not working in its present form and we need to look at how we might be able to change it and I think that some of these changes could be real really beneficial to the town um in creating affordable housing and also
utilizing lots that somehow um have not been able to be utilized now and keeping um more homes that are affordable um yeah I think that's about it I think it's a great job Aon Aon I
like everything I saw here this is Absolut I'm glad you like it work hard yeah the only part that I have a little I need to spend a little more time in is how this deed structure stuff works and
and the formulas related to them but overall uh it's excellent it's a great program I think so and how we need to change so that it can become something that's viable versus something that just
sits on the books right um I think what the hardest part of this is the affordable process the affordable it it's it's
costly so if you only have eight units or you'll allow eight units and then a developer from and the same parel I think it can be done um actually I think you can use an acre and a half and
have more than nine units you know depending on how you work it out and what size and then you could probably have more affordable in that so you add the affordable unit but that developer has to be able to afford a Chapa
affiliate to do the whole process of getting the affordable buyer that can be 15 to $25,000 for one unit how do you get how do you get out of
that so that would be a question um that we'd have to do a little bit more research on that is not something that I have been a part of the process um however there you know we've seen it done we've seen other
communities that are working on this and having this work so I think that there is certainly a way to move forward and a way to explore that we just have to do a little bit more research okay because when I did a little bit of digging on this about two years ago when there was somebody in
West Townson who today can do it all by themselves because of by right the agencies that I talked to were $25,000 and you had to do that if you and this person wanted to didn't mind the Restriction of the affordable unit
was happy to do it but wasn't going to pay 25,000 to have a tenant to have a tenant that's affordable because you have to go through the process so maybe when I I talked to this person and I was talking
about it she said well 15,000 would be the lease yeah you have to go through somebody with an accessory apartment that's happy to have an afford use as an affordable with a in within that affordable price range as a
tenant was it was cost prohibitive so he said no now he's got somebody for free so I wonder and this is process to be counted as an affordable unit yes it does so you can't just say I'll rent it
for $500 a month no you don't even have to do that because we're in Middle sex County so he gets 15 16 178 a month but in order to become you have to go through that whole state process correct and why should we do that for the state
just to appease one of I'm I'm PL Devil's Advocate why should we do that for the state and I was on affordable housing for a long time I worked seven years on towns and woods so I know what it takes to get there but in that case
it was HUD that did all the lottery we the town didn't pay right and we got those units in perpetuity or 100 years whatever okay but how do you make the argument even to the
town how do you make the argument that we should impose such a restriction and a cost Factor just so that we comply with a mandate of the state yeah I
I so I 100% hear you and that's why we talk about um big a and little a right so big a affordable is that being on the Shi right um and the little a affordable is things that right you're renting that place for $500 instead
of $2500 um so what it could be also is that um and I this might be something that's a larger conversation something that we have to discuss with Adam um but does it have to be something that goes
onto the subsidized housing inventory or is it something that is merely deed restricted to be at a certain percentage and that's one thing that actually I forgot about and I'm sorry um so one of the things that we added into here is
that um we will have uh the pricing looked at when so every five years as we're supposed to do the housing production plan we're also supposed to look at um what those um affordable
levels are because we can dictate what that affordability level is to a certain extent it does not necessarily have to be dictated by the state by Hud as we um I spoke uh Veronica Kell and I had a meeting with the Massachusetts branch of
Hud and they said that we could um make it a town bylaw that essentially shifts that um so that we could have a deeper affordability or a different affordability um and have that I would have reviewed with the housing production plan so it's not something
that is you know you hear stories about you know rent control departments in New York City that are still stuck on $200 a month because they've been passed down through families it wouldn't necessarily be that we'd have to revisit it so that it is something that can be
maintained um but something that we could continue to look at and we don't necessarily the Housing Trust has said that they're not necessarily interested in producing units that are appearing on the Shi because it is costly and it is something that is
um it's prohibitive and that they're trying so hard to get units onto the Shi that they're not necessarily focusing on creating units that people can live in and so I think that if we can add that in somehow and maybe that's like I said a conversation to have with Adam if we
can say you know it's affordable by deed restriction and that it has to be at I'm making this number up 70% of what you would uh you know charge market rate or something like that so that you can have that affordability without having to go
through that whole process I have no problem with trying to do a actual affordable housing and and us as a town wanting to have a percentage available to people but not at a prohibitive cost to the
owner it's not fair it's just not fair it won't happen it won't yeah understandable I like how I I do like everything that you outlined here and I don't know I I just might go with
10 units or more and 10% you know um because again if we have areas that have water and sandy soil we can certainly make that happen as long as the Board of Health says you know that and of course here we're looking at affordability we're not at we're not looking at age
restricted did um or Aging in place kind of things um so thank you sure absolutely I don't know if you want to pass
that uh particular discussion along to Adam and see if this could be presented I'm not sure if um also inclusionary is the right word
yeah um that didn't hit me well well when I first read it um I would almost with the verbiage that's in here go back to quote unquote affordable you know that that is the goal what does
inclusionary mean I mean incl AR is um looking at being able to uh have all people be able to afford it right so seniors who are on a budget young family starting out or somebody who is um uh you know moving out on their own for the
first time or something like that young family so that's I think affordable would cover it yeah okay um and let's just say what it is yeah okay and and everybody agrees that we would like to to be able to say
um there is affordability of housing whether it be rental or purchase in town in are we I think that's what the board feels so you don't need that word but
um the rest of it great I I be I mean I read this once and um so everything that's been presented
is is well presented and I I kind of like everything I see my concerns are understanding these deed restrictions and how they work and how
these values are determined and I think I'm okay with the deed restrictions you know the attorneys will take care of it and it will be explained that if somebody wanted to do this right they're um approving or accepting the fact that
there is a deed restriction you know in that property for when they buy it yeah right um and again that doesn't make it the type of process that there is now right okay but it's just more of what
um one of our goals is as a town to be able to instead of what the state mandates but as a town to be able to say that we're we're working towards um helping people do this in town right and
related to the economics or the income is in this town right the other question I have is I want a Clear Vision of enforcement when there's a violation how does it work and what do we do well I think the fiveyear look
back um are there fines or who enforces it or well that can be added to whatever fine schedule that we have okay I don't think it should be within the bylaw remember we set a separate I don't mean a specific
F okay how it will be enforced I think it's a fiveyear look and then if there's a problem then what I don't I think if somebody is going to agree with doing this unit
under this guideline versus the state's affordability count you're not going to have a problem of abuse what kind of abuse are you looking at like what do you well I mean
just right now um you know we have special permits for different kinds of situations and then we have applicants that come in with different
situations and they violate the bylaw and it's never enforced and it's it's and the town physically doesn't have anyone monitoring or enforcing that
or even seeing that so you can have it as a requirement but if nobody's going to implement or do it then you really have to gain nothing um well I imagine they would need to get a permit to do this to begin with right they would have a
permit but who what happens permits issued with some kind of re requirement on it and that individual violates
that at what at what point were you talking in the process because it would be the Building Commissioner right well we've had that happen with the Building Commissioner okay acknowledging a
violation citing findes right number one tap of mind right yeah you know who I'm talking about know you're talking about so like what was the good good I mean I just don't look at this as the same thing as
that situation at all well I just look at in the town as it is today doesn't really have a fine enforcement so so what do you say
so no I presented this at an old Board of selects meeting maybe two years ago okay and the answer was the time didn't want to pay the we cost right oh that was that situation
right um so that's what I'm like uh Beth any comment on how you think the process might be if there was an issue or on the enforcement uh if it's a special permit is the planning board the
spga in this case is this a planning board process a in so basically like special permit I would imagine so unless the planning board believes that it should lie with a different entity but I would think that it's it's yes planning
board yeah so like any other special permit I guess the enforcement would be the building inspector right and then yeah that's what I would imagine it it could be too especially with the deed restrictions that it might be something
that has to be reviewed more closely but we could have them submitt that I mean that is something that's you know it has to be registered with the registry of deeds anyways we could request a copy of that um to close out their building permit and otherwise issue fines or
maybe the Deep restrict portion which is for an affordable unit goes to the trust the Housing Authority or the trust yeah if they yeah if they hold the deed
right or for that yeah for that unit be a lean on a deed would it be a lean on a deed if they violated it yeah I think so but then you have a lawyer for that I mean I would give it to the trust this this
is we have an A housing authority and we have the a Housing Trust affordable trust right so just give it to the trust let them deal with the situation after the
bylaw just a thought I I don't have say here having them be in charge of the process or you mean in charge of the the deed after the the project has been built for instance yeah the there would be a deed
restriction for the affordable unit it should go back to the trust the trust should be the one watching the amount of of affordable homes that we have in town this is just their path to get
there yep my thoughts we don't need to see it again they can take care of it the only thoughts I guess that I would share that I haven't shared yet but basically I do really agree with Lori in terms of
the the Chapa Associated process of you know $20,000 or so for a developer or trying to avoid that and I know when we had Adam in here for a former meeting I guess I I don't know he made some comment about you know when you use
the word affordable housing legally it means something so yes if I guess I'd want to make sure that the verbiage is clear that you know we're not requiring that um well I think
we would have to Define affordable in terms of this by law not in terms of a state St yeah that I don't know but whatever would be other words in our own bylaw we can Define what it means the dictionary has many
definitions sure sure right so what is a restriced deed you would say you could only sell it for so many dollars is that what a restricted deed would be or when you saying there be a restricted I mean deed how does that work that deed
restriction stays with that deed no but what is the Restriction I guess I'm not really that it stays within whatever guidelines you have affordable range classification and so that would be
specified in that specific deed so if they had 10 units and two of them were affordable the affordable Deeds would have those restrictions on them that they always have to be abordable and within this formula okay
yeah okay you could also do that for um developments that they were all rental units okay they don't all have to be affordable but say you're going to build a 12 unit building and two of them are going to be
affordable that's in that's in the deed for that building for those rentals same thing right it bu it builds the opportunity to have something of that a lower income person could
afford no I I I know the purpose and the intent and how that would work the question I always ask is all right so what happens when an incident occurs so when you have a multif family unit let's say
rental 12 units for example and two of them are affordable MH um who's the enforcement officer there we have our own Housing Authority we can use as an enforcement officer but when you're dealing with a private
entity that could be a whole different matter well not if there's a deep restriction for affordable all of that will oversight will go to the trust I'm just painting a scenario okay I can't dress the twins before they're
born that was told to me many many years ago and so I wait for the birth all right okay all right and then we take one step at a time all right um so are we good on that think you have enough to work with yeah yeah definitely yeah okay so the
only other thing that I really feel we need to do tonight is Article 19 and I I had asked if you would look at the meeting itself and then see the
objections that came up um which again were for the inclusion of an affordable aspect that was uh Veronica and I don't I don't know if
maybe this might satisfy the trust this separate bylaw versus putting it in well that's the age restricted okay I was going to add the affordable to that but I think this um the changing
of 14548 I think takes care of that in my mind I miss watching the video to which Veronica specific Egyptians aside from what she came and objected to in our meeting same thing same it was the same thing oh
we do have in here the reference the not is for discussion write any amendments you want for March 10th that we would send to um Adam before the meeting and then you had for
reference was uh the meeting minutes of January 9th which has Veron well Veronica's comment my comment about affordability Clause was not part of the public
hearing um and the Veron Veronica was uh about the Adu bylaw [Music] do you want to guide us on this Beth oh well
uh it's GNA be tricky but I'll try to explain um at the end of the Fall town meeting uh discussion was in full role and uh somebody noticed there was a problem with a quorum so there was a
quorum count or was a um attendee count and town meeting was dissolved in the full bolt discussion of this age restricted development bylaw so um if you watch the end of town meeting the town moderator they didn't really say
anything about this article so um I did talk with Town Council and um it is allowed to be brought back on the special at the next special town meeting is in its same form without a public
hearing and um so that's what's happening here it's back on uh the March 10th warrant in this form that it was in originally and the planning board May if you are
interested um not change it at all it may also make a floor Amendment which will be pre-written and pre reviewed before March 10th um and change any of
the Amendments that are uh listed in the you know in the in the warrant article so there are a number of them I'll I'll screen share you know the idea is if you felt that you didn't want to change anything and you just wanted the discussion to
continue on town meeting floor as is you could do that or if you feel that based on what you heard at the first part of the discussion maybe one one of the proposed amendments was too contentious
and you could potentially um change that somehow um so it it was just a discussion you know where you um felt that you know if this were not going to pass where do you
feel that would have been the case and do you want to make a proposal to change it you can you know I'm talking with Aaron ain's still on she felt that it could be changed either by adding or by removing right am I right Erin I don't
know if I'm explaining that well but so that tonight yeah okay I don't know what that so just so everybody knows I insisted that this article be article one on March 10th okay
because originally it was sent to me as selectman um last and I said haven't we learned our lesson I'm not putting the school budget first I'm not putting the override first
no we're going to finish up the business that they couldn't hang around for at the last meeting when it was last so we're not doing that so it is number one so I think we have enough opportunity while everybody's fresh and
not bored yet or whatever to make an impact and try to get this right okay here's before the Quorum call came there was a lot going on and a lot
of people were really emotional about what was happening and I my general impression was the bylaw needed more work okay so from
my posture on that I think it'd be better to withdraw it redo it and submit it at another meeting okay but redo it to what what did you think was the biggest
objection well there were a lot coming a lot that was coming out and a lot of questions that were coming out where I was getting the consensus that it would be shot down
anyway do you know what I mean so um I that's well you spoke against it yourself I did yeah so that was uh not representing the planning board I wasn't speaking as a member of the planning board but here you are you know well you
were presenting you were presenting it yeah [Applause] um and so so don't don't take me as being obstructive there all right um basically when I'm telling everybody here it needs more
work right before and um and some of these things should be addressed so they don't this town meeting could be all about this one article and go on for a long time you do it yes
but I'm saying that kind I think what I heard was nowhere do do is there definition of age restricted yet our intent in Our Minds
when people come before us it's 55 and over 62 and over it is that's the age restrictive part but it doesn't say that anywhere in the amendment not only that people were very confused about a LW thought of the terminology and what it
meant well part of it was um the in wanting the inclusion Veronica's part una affordable and I really think that that now is transferred to the other zoning bylaw this has got to be
age restricted it has to spell out what age restricted is that was the biggest question just I thought it doesn't say I know but does it didn't it say I meant to bring with me but I didn't it say 55
in there we say it when when when we've seen plans come before us they're doing 55 and over they're saying it they're going to do Aging in place okay so in in my mind anyway I'm thinking I'm looking
at 55 and over at least 55 and over or 62 the problem that came in and I don't see why we cannot fix this the problem that came in was well what if they die or why do you just have one it's not
limited to yes they're two bedrooms but it's not limited to like little 10-year-old Susie can live there you know and that's true and it is it doesn't spell that out that's what I'm saying I that doesn't take that much to fix well but that's what I'm saying
let's withdraw it fix it and then present it you have an opport to fix it here that's what we're that's what we're saying you have that opportunity well do that already I was trying to get the I tried to contact the
Westford planning guy I actually sent an email because I know Stone Bridge is a 55 community it's pretty it's a pretty large community and I asked them for the B but I never heard back from but I know
when I got when I looked at that I was 54 I just got divorced and they were just building them and I went down and they said one person has to be 55 in order to buy it and then you can have any other
age living there so it wasn't like everybody has to be certain 55 and over like the mobile homes that are out there mobile home parks they have to have at least one person that is um but they can't it's not a family type living it
really isn't um the Restriction may not be there but this I think our intent is for Aging in place and and people 55 and over it is not for I'm just GNA ask this group all right I presented something
tonight for you to read okay get it so you'll see that I have a motion to remove it completely because of the concerns that I presented in the narrative okay so those are the things that need to be
addressed all right and a big part of it is the enforcement of this because once they're built and they're condo and sold we don't have any control on any of that stuff no but if you have if it's if the
bylaw is written for age restricted and they give the age and and they one one adult can be under that you then cannot have you restrict the children whatever it is whatever it is make it clear so
people can look at it and see and believe it okay so I have other things that I thought should be included those are things that I would think should be required but the basic thing was the
question about well how do how do we know who's going to be there uh is it always going to be that way so my point is the town is giving a break to Developers for something that we want
to see in this town all right so in the last three applicants we've had and we can't judge the price range we cannot judge the price range we're doing age restricted we're not doing affordable that's why I'm saying it's
not not working all right it's not meeting the intent the intent was that be for age restricted in our community not for the world you can't restrict who's going to buy it you can't even do
that in the affordable units they won't let you that's why I'm saying why are we doing this I think we should have age restricted Z so one person has 55 if it's not going to help our why are we
doing it it does help indirect it does and what aspect of it yeah helped a lot I think it does it will help our our community to have old to have smaller
housing whether it's affordable or not but smaller housing two bedroom one and a half bath two bed whatever they want to do that our senior residents can live in that what senior residents can live
in yeah senior by Design By Design yeah another Point what did you say by Design By Design By Design that's what that's what it was done originally but you want to take it a little further you know the design isn't enough it doesn't make it
age restricted it's it was the intent and that's good I see I'm gonna be right up front here well just because you don't like them there's something no that's not true don't turn that around I'm not opposed to this right I not
opposed to any type of housing so I'm making that very clear tonight all right how can we change it that pleases you I'm we went through three of these recently everything that was given was to the benefit of the
developer okay the last one what was the common outdoor space a picnic table the previous one where was the rubber removal the farthest part from where the
tent the occupants would be these are people in wheelchairs and Walkers are they going to walk there these developers are only focused on what they want to give you why you know what not all elderly
are disabled who knows who's going to be there that's right right but believe me if you're elderly the odds of you being on a walker or in on on a wheelchair are far greater than if they're 45 years old I'm not listening to that well I'm sorry
I'm thinking of I'm living there right so that's what's going on I mean look at the first one that came in I had to it them on the on the elevation of the for height that's what you're here for that is what you're here for no they
I shouldn't have in other words no we need somebody on the board that's able to do that because not all of us would point that out right and I'm not gonna be here forever okay right but the point is they need to focus on the occupants
of these buildings okay not just how many units they can get there all right and that's what angers me the most they're creating they're not giving us what we expect they're creating housing but if it's if the housing's not
appropriate for the age then then it's not aging housing it's not I mean they come in with a floor plan and say I have a handicap bathroom and they think they did everything they needed to right that's not no we caught them on the first floor
laundry I don't want to nickp pick here but like if you talk about trash you know if you're in a wheelchair and need a walk not taking out your TR you're going to have your nephew or your somebody else or a volunte okay but really I'm trying to
get a point here and it's not just about age restricted housing I wanted to introduce another bylaw about multif family housing okay where but there can be another bylaw again I'm just trying to point
things out to people so that the next planning board comes in here and just have something to base something on when they look at us a presentation and um I know what you're saying about the picn cable and that you
know the fire pit at the other place but can I don't think we can enforce them to do some kind of more elaborate you can't turn down a whole project because they wanted to put a picnic table or a fire pit
you I the sella exploiting that whole situation rubber stamping houses forcing them in a lot that wasn't suited for his house profile asking us for Rel from ability had lots of plus right but
he could have had less units he we still gave him more than he was entitled to all right so he was getting away with murder why why do you say that when it was creating another unit that we we ourselves can't do well
maybe but we can't do wait a minute we have a bylaw right now that bylaw is a minimum standard we didn't even honor our own minimum standard which was restrictive and shouldn't have been in
with town there was a bylaw that the town approved and understood that's where it starts they've done a lot of them which have which have got before me got waivers well that doesn't mean we keep doing the same thing over no but we
can make it better we can make the bylaw better we shouldn't Force to buy no we should we should go with the flow and make the bylaws better not on
that page I'm not on that I I can't be I'm not hardn I'm always looking for win-win so sorry I'm sorry I'm not a hard noos and I'm always looking for a win-win there's got to be some give and take with everything that we do the give
is the break on the real estate that's the give you have a developer who's willing to build in this economy with the cost of everything today and you want to make it more difficult for them why would they come here you have a
developer that comes that knows a minimum by law and has the erve to ask you to give him greater breaks all right that's not what the intent was that was a minimum standard if that
was ledge you'd only get one unit it's sandy soil why aren't you going with what the product is but he never presented that argument all right what he presented was I want to use the same plan
when I could see myself he had other options to get what he wanted it wasn't the number of units even though it was more than was allowed in the bylaw it was his wanting everything every kind of benefit available to him and offering
nothing back okay so there have been many other plans come before us and they've all had a waiver of this or that or something else after review of the planning board so it's not the first one but and I understand that you're very
upset with this particular situation does that mean that from now on nobody gets anything excuse me I've been on this board I approve two of them okay so don't say I'm a post no you well
I'm saying because you are you're very upset by what happened with this one does that mean now you nobody's going to get any no what it meant is he go back to the drawing board and come up with
something that works that's what it meant but what if it's not cost effective to do that are spelling anything to you about how much it cost him to get that far and he doesn't want to invest any more money he doesn't have to belly ache to
me anybody who comes in here has got to spend a lot of money before they come sit in front of us and I'm not only upset with the applicant I'm upset with the consultant because the consultant should have read
those bylaws and say well you can't do that without getting a special permit or you can't do that without meeting a zoning relief okay so that I know what happened if that develop that
consultant was responsible and professional he would have told that applicant right away he couldn't do what he wanted okay all right the then then let me finish please all right so
then the applicant said I don't care they're pretty lenient let's give it a shot we'll see what we get well shoot for the moon and you know shoot for the stars and settled for the moon and that's exactly what happened it went from a greater number of units into and
made a concession of the mediation okay and then a mediation on the on the side yards okay and then a picnic table for the elderly so there's something called
highest and best use and when you're engineering something for somebody or you know like this they're going to give you look at the plan and they're going to to give you well this is what I think is the highest and best use but we
will have to go for some waivers so you have we God is not making any land anymore I said there was an opportunity here to make a statement this is our bylaw you want relief from it you want
the special use make it work he had options so even but the concessions he wanted were not just on one thing they
were on multiple things okay that's what angered me I don't mind helping a guy out I'm sorry and I respect your opinion I do thank you but I I respect yours still because this but you know
somewhow it seemed it just seemed to me like it's out on the street now go to towns and you're going to get what you want you know what I mean that's what bothers me the most I think that's it at all they again they have to spend a lot of money with their own land I can't
even imagine if they had to buy land today okay because it's astronomical and then think they can build something on it I mean you're frontend if it's a single I mean 500 I mean with the land just to build it like $500,000 the market is going to be
intact in three six months whenever you finish it it isn't like you have a ton of people coming in you're wanting to work with I understand okay but look at what's really happening all right you me
taxpayers are subsidizing this from our own town okay asid everything I know everything all right so that's okay and I don't have a problem with helping people and contributing to a cause I think
you'll find them one of the best advocates for that kind of thing okay the problem here is that's only the answer there's Technologies there's techniques that can deliver the same
product or the same results and that's what upsets me okay because that developer made no concessions right and then we approved a
plan that wasn't even revised he never even resubmitted I I was I felt comfortable with the process that we had and what we did and I know we may disagree you know throughout this board and that's okay no I'm just trying to get a policy here so
that this doesn't repeat itself and and I'm not in in confrontation with my peers okay that's it we have to agree on a policy and stick to it I have a hard time kind of what Lori mentioned earlier saying this is the law I mean like
there's absolutely zero exception for anything unless you're the president and pardon and you could be aent you can hide a laptop with the FBI so all right d I mean there's big things in this world and we can only
control a little bit of it why can't we be common sense the only thing I can say it's out on a form we have an opportunity to discuss it and think about it and make a decision I I'm I'm not trying to be obstructive I just want to have proper oversight so we can walk
away tall knowing that we looked at it and this is what we came up with all right and I don't want it to be a divisionary thing with you people you know what I mean um but again it's another it's another view it's another
perspective and another opinion and collectively we all should benefit from all of that information um Beth I really want this age
restricted um and can you ask Adam what can easily be put into what we have already presented and was not voted on y but what could be
put into this that will Define what the age restrictive is can we have no children or no one under 40 okay with this 55 and of course now
we're saying we can't have the big age yeah difference but you know I I don't know just ask him what I know that he must know about other bylaws that have age restrictive definitive like other towns must have
age restricted bylaws they have the state does too yeah but and and the earlier version yeah the earlier version we were working on had it I think so got to go way back but he was right he said it at town meeting that earlier version
had that in there okay I made some commentary on that in other words those are the topics I think we should consider all right and those are things that it's not just the Age
part it's other components to make that better we already have design in there which we have to we have the purview of right so out of that I think should be
included in our multifam bylaw but that's a different bylaw can let just get the age restrictive out of the way would we we addressed a see what you think to do with any of it if it applies or not you know okay but I'm really
looking for the kiss method what keep it simple keep it simple stupid don't embarrass me so that's I mean are you in agreement is the board in agreement with trying to
get something with the kiss method that can attain our age restrictive definitive age restrictive bylaw multif family I would like to see
that okay all right okay my my only point is if we want to get this passed okay look at those topics and see if we can eliminate some of them at that town meeting okay from your your comments you yeah what comments I took
it um did does everybody have this I didn't have that I have copy did you send it to Beth all was it in the portal no no I brought it here okay can you send it to B
uh yeah so it's the narrative that's important all right it's not the motion okay um Beth I'm gonna leave it on the table with the rest of this in the packet for tonight and would would you please send
it to Adam yes and and what is that that is it's it's Robert's comments concerns yeah this those those topics surface at the town meeting okay okay so the yeah what you want to
do tonight though is you gotta really drill down and decide what you want to leave in or take out because the meeting is March 10th and what's going before town meeting is what you're seeing on
the screen right now and that that's the original wording so the planning board has to decide I mean I'll take it to Town Council but you don't have a lot of time between now and March 10th so if you want to meet again I mean you can meet next Monday and and discuss it
again but you have to decide what it is you want to take in or what it is you want to pull out and from what I'm hearing so far you want to Define age restricted which makes sense so you can amend the motion to add a section I
believe to Define what age restrict it is so that it's not a misnomer huh are you available to meet March 3rd just for this topic Monday yeah I mean if we have
to probably March 3 why don't you post for March 3D for us to review this bylaw please all right and ask Adam if he could send us some stuff or to uh be
with us okay I think we'll have a quum okay that and that will be the only topic I'm not doing another three four hour meeting just yep okay March 3D no
problem and I can ask him to I can actually ask him to draft motions if I have a specific you know Topic in mind so in terms of defining the age restri Ed portion of this bylaw I can go ahead
and ask him to draft that motion right now and then you can review it okay is there a state um law for in when you do senior housing that um children are not allowed
to live there okay is that discriminatory but it's senior housing I I think he would know yeah yeah was the consensus at um the town
meeting not to to prohibit um young children living with their grandparents they okay so part of part of what they said was well who's to say who's going to live there if only one person has fe55 and
what if that person dies and the daughter who's 21 is now living there with her 5-year-old significant another 5-year-old or whatever audience went into a
wild so watch I just haven't the so that's why it's the age restricted they kept saying well what's age restrictive there's no it's nowhere in the bylaw it's nowhere in the bylaw and it was
always age restricted was always in my mind that that's 55 and over there what's the question but the question was it doesn't say that okay that was the biggest discussion yeah
okay yeah the most challenging one yeah excellent all right well I think that you know we're pretty clear on on how to clear it up and then I will talk to Town Council and I'll have him ask him to draft a motion and um we'll meet on the
third okay I'm leaving all these this paperwork here but that doesn't mean that I'm done with all of it okay okay okay thank you and the thing that's right on top is Robert's concerns okay
thoughts but some of those might be handled some in other parts of our bylaw you know and I'm not to make this more burdensome it has to be the biggest thing is the age restrictive definition but if there are other things on that
list that can clarify things uh it might be smart to see okay so we went excellent so I don't think that we did 3.2 or 3.3 4.3 I don't think there were any
other anything else received from bachus Regional Planning Commission and other agencies um Ed 5.1 take a comment from the public excuse me can you take a comment from the public regarding uh the age
restriction development sure sure who is I don't think the uh are you addressing conservation restriction removal tonight we can't see you we're trying to see you who who are you this is Colby
streer oh Colby I did see you before yeah having some issues with technology did we have conservation restriction before us it was yeah it was part of that bylaw
you're going to remove the permanent conservation restrictions that were required on the property is that not part of the discuss anymore that is part of the amendment and it will be on the warrant again what's your question about
that well I like to make the argument to maintain the conservation restriction requirement on that bylaw that's the age restricted one no yes age restricted development um what the board is proposing is to remove the
conservation restriction on the open space because Parcels yeah because they're like half acre law you know parcels and stuff basically it's a undo uh that board felt it was unnecessary in the um
in the permitting that has been done because the parcels are so small yes but the way it's written it it removes that requirement for all those all properties of all sizes and not just the ones that would
be one acre um the removal of the conservation restriction um line um you know obviously would go to um the maximum
amount uh that the property could be which which there isn't a limit um my my um argument uh for that is that you're it's possibly removing a um design element of the property which is most
useful to those occupants um that that's who it would affect the most is the inhabitants of of the age restricted property um and and then uh in it's still in
there that you require um the developer to have it in the plan but by removing the uh permanent permanence that the conservation restriction presents um you know you're opening up
to having that um element removed completely and and that happens all the time with the you know the selling of the property the changing of hands um and uh the property owners having different um prerogatives
um I think uh you have to consider uh the usefulness of the this deed restriction and that's what where the Perman comes from in a conservation restriction it's deeded um you have to
consider the importance of um what these areas can do um um not only for the the people who would use it um as outdoor space but um you have to consider as Wildlife corridors um and
habitat well that's probably why because the ls are so small they wouldn't be considered a corridor what if you had what if you saw a developer came in restricted development oh then I understand that I
mean because there are some places that have huge you know 55 old if that would happen here um I would it make sense then since we have not addressed anything that big to have um
have it be uh eliminated say under five acres I don't know I don't know the answer to that to be honest five acres is a pretty sizable area especially um if it's in a densely populated
area that that represents a a good siiz property um yeah maybe 30 % is a lot um of a I think uh in in that same line um it requires 30% of the property to be um
maintained as open space um and that can't be more than 25% of of U what L area or drainage um I'm not an expert at to say five
acres only address that you can't have something um protected in five acres maybe we we've done three and under nothing has been bigger than that but maybe because you never knowed maybe say for under five acres it doesn't
apply and anything over five acres it applies think I mean I mean there are there are Maybe he'll never come here but I know I have relatives that live in very large
55 and older communities um you know that maybe have 50 to 100 units but I can see me I think five sounds like a lot
just considering it at some point quickly if somebody did propose a large parcel of like 40 acres maybe you do want to have that in place um and maybe we say five acres or
less so you don't have to apply it I you have a density limit though right if it was 40 isn't it like eight tow houses per acre or something isn't that in there written in there did we change that oh here's another you do have the
if the waiver part of it passes then you would be able to leave the CR in and wave it for small projects is that possible under the waiver section that you're looking at you're hoping to
add so maybe you could I mean it's a lot of Shifting around but leave the CR requirement in there and then if the second part passes you know the waiver requirement be able the way that is part
of a review I thought this occurred to me as well that that is a way that that that could be applied um but it could also be applied in Reverse too where you know conservation restrictions could be
um not um included with that waiver as well so well and I think it applies to all the elements that waiver well just how you know Kobe every every um department and board and commission is
uh giving a mandatory referral or a opportunity to Aline so it's a yeah a certain project will come before the Conservation Commission for review but it's under the planning board so they'll take all the comments from every board
and committee and they will take that into account in their public hearing so you know that that point is generally it's it's not you know the planning board takes every comment into consideration um when it does its uh
decision so it's generally not the case that they would wave away something that important I I think maybe as so many different profile project profiles could surface here with different acores and
different percentages of lots and things I think that maybe some language there that would allow relief based on a specific
situation that um rather than having a universal thing that applies to every applicant every site is different you're you're right what it can allow right and so in other words if for dealing with a
very tiny lot then it'd be very easy to say that's insignificant impact or less versus a larger lot that 30% of it is Wetlands or
something um in those instan maybe the opportunity is to swap conservation for buildable and like one applicant came here recently
they wanted to give part of it to the town and therefore the tax liability wasn't on the wetlands part and stuff so having the planning board have that flexibility without a formal formula
or um you know I think would work so then in other words you might want to leave in the conservation restriction so you might want to delete that proposed amendment on Monday it
could be wavered yeah they would be wer so you would leave it in the body of the bylaw and if that waiver planning board you know may be W May yeah yeah so but that should be
stated there because iron tent under five acres is not not to do that no it hasn't been working on yeah well it's always going to be a product of what the actual lot profile is to
wave better option okay so thank you thank you for listening to me oh [Music] thank brought a very Val yeah thanks for waiting
okay so we are through the uh four and five and our next planning board meeting now will be scheduled for March 3 next week goodness and the
17th and April 14th and the special town meeting is scheduled for March 10th and I will entertain a motion to adjourn At 9:34 p.m. I'll make a motion to adjourn At 9:34 p.m. I'll second
it is everyone in favor absolutely okay