[Speaker 1] (0:56 - 6:37)
Welcome to the 2022 meeting of the Swanscott Zoning Board of Appeals and now being after 7 p.m. we are going to get started on our agenda and the item on our agenda this evening is the continued public hearing of petition 2101 for Elm Place. So we'll get started on that. I do want to just take a minute to let everybody know first the process.

We are both, we're in a hybrid format today so we're in person at the high school and we have people attending via Zoom. I think that some of our peer review people are via Zoom. I think Ezra, is Ezra here or is he on Zoom?

I assume. Yep, Ezra's on Zoom. So what I wanted to do first was to allow the petitioner an opportunity to update us on the open peer review items since the last hearing and whatever else they would like to have for their presentation.

Then through that we'll see if there are questions from the board then we'll open it up for some public comment. We had some at the last hearing and we were able to really keep our focus on the open items that existed. So now I expect that we are going to get to a conclusion of this petition.

We have a limited window by statute to complete our consideration of this petition and to vote and then 40 days thereafter to write and approve a decision. So it's my hope that this petition that we started in November of 2021 will complete tonight. I will give an opportunity for public comment asking that we've heard a lot of public comment thus far from mainly people in opposition.

I don't think there's a need to repeat your comments. I know there's not a need to repeat your comments in your opposition if you've noted you're in opposition, but I'd like to ask that you please consider focusing your public comments on the items that remained open for peer review. If you haven't provided comment that you think is pertinent, I'd invite that comment and we will also I expect to hear from a couple of other people with comments about the petition.

I know at least one board from the town wanted to be heard. So we will do that. And then I expect that we will have a motion to close the public hearing, have some debate amongst the board.

I expect it will probably have some type of straw poll after the debate within the board and find out where the board members stand if there is a majority of the members because this petition requires a simple majority for approval, not a super majority of four members as most of our petitions do. So if there were a motion for approval, I would expect that there would be a motion for findings of fact and for approval and also conditions and waivers and review of the proposed decision and then have a vote on that. Alternatively, if there are three members who indicate that they would vote to deny, it would be a similar type of process.

There would be a motion for findings of fact to support the denial and there would not be conditions or waivers because the petition itself would be denied. And then I would look to, normally what we do after we have a vote, either allowing or denying a petition, the board member who has made the motion writes a decision. In this case, what I would like to do is have the decision not done in that process but rather at our next public hearing, it doesn't need to be a special one for this, it could be our next one that we have provided there's enough time for the board to put the final decision in place, that it be circulated before the meeting and then we vote on it so that it's clear as to the findings of fact that are made.

It would be those that are made in the final decision, so as to confirm in case anything is missed in the vote, so we would have that opportunity there. So, I just want to ask Ezra if he agreed with that process, a procedure for this evening.

[Speaker 4] (6:40 - 6:41)
Can you all hear me?

[Speaker 1] (6:41 - 6:42)
Yes, good evening.

[Speaker 4] (6:42 - 7:46)
Thanks. I think that's a very clear summary of a process and I always have to be careful to say I'm not town council, you should always check with them to make sure it's consistent with whatever they advise, but that sounds perfectly consistent with a thoughtful 40B decision making process. And I think the general idea is the first vote is not finding because it's really the vote of the decision that will make a decision, but there's no point in putting a whole decision together if you don't have essentially the will of the board to vote for approval, so I think that makes sense.

I think that the vote you would probably be taking today would be after hearing all this and seeing the modifications made and the conditions that have been proposed, can we imagine approving this? And then of course you would still then fine tune those conditions and review those findings of fact and vote to finalize it. That sounds fine to me as a process.

[Speaker 1] (7:46 - 7:56)
So let me ask, do we need to reopen the public hearing for that final vote? Or is that a question for town council? Or I could ask Peter that question.

[Speaker 4] (7:56 - 9:26)
It would probably be a question for town council, but my understanding would be as long as you're done collecting new information, you can close the public hearing. You can continue to debate amongst yourselves about the exact wording of the decision, the exact wording of the conditions. Some town councils recommend keeping the hearing open in case you realize along the way, oh geez, we really do need a little more information to form this condition.

Let's say you had a condition in there about upgrading a fire hydrant and you realize, geez, we're not sure is there a specification they were supposed to get from the fire department. In theory, leaving the hearing open would allow you a chance to get that additional spec from the fire department. I think different boards choose different ways.

I think it's important, not so much whether or not you decide to close the hearing, but do you sort of say we're done considering new. We're not taking this in a new direction once you kind of finish what you want to do. If you keep the hearing open so you can get small technical information, that's fine.

I think a lot of councils assume you can do that as a deliberation anyways. I guess I would check with the applicant to see which they would prefer because if they're okay with leaving the hearing open, it may be easier for the board. If they would prefer to have it closed, remember we're kind of hitting up against the deadlines and we have to close the hearing.

[Speaker 1] (9:27 - 12:56)
We do have a meeting later this month. We can put it on for that date if one way or the other. I was thinking if there were a positive vote for the petition, one thing that I would like to make sure that gets addressed would be the proposed easement.

Perhaps looking to have a further draft of an easement agreement that would be attached as an exhibit. I guess we can figure it out really after we have our straw vote. It might be premature to be thinking it may go one way or the other.

I'm going to get started. I think I was just going to, I think maybe at this time I should say, knowing that we're going to get to the finish line essentially tonight, that I thought maybe there might be some people who weren't here when we started this process. When we started it, I gave a brief overview of the law that controls our jurisdiction in this for 40B.

I explained that that law, which was enacted in 1969, overrides municipal zoning authority to promote affordable housing. Swamp Scott falls below the 10% threshold of supply of affordable housing. We're therefore subject to this law and this proposal for a comprehensive permit.

We have jurisdiction over health, safety, planning, or open space issues created by the proposed project. There needs to be a determination as to whether the local need for affordable housing essentially overrides those particular areas that we have jurisdiction over. That needs to be the focus of this board in making our decision.

Issues of health, safety, planning, and open space. We have had an opportunity to have peer review paid for by the petitioner as is required in these types of projects. We've had that for traffic, including parking, for engineering, for stormwater, sewer, water utilities, architecture for design, shadows, sound, vibration, open space.

We've had comment and review from our planning department with respect to a proposed rail trail connection. And we've had the opportunity to consult with our consultant, Ezra, who is an expert and provides boards with advice in the process. And I've told you that we don't need a super majority one way or the other for a decision here.

It's just a simple majority. So with that, I'm going to ask Attorney Drukos to give us an update on where we are currently since the last hearing. And what else for evidence the petitioner would like to present.

Good evening.

[Speaker 23] (12:56 - 12:57)
Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Chris Drukos.

[Speaker 1] (12:57 - 13:07)
And I should just make sure if anybody can hear and they needed to come closer, I would welcome them to. And maybe, Chris, if you could bring that microphone a little closer, it might help out.

[Speaker 23] (13:09 - 13:13)
Good evening, Mr. Chairman. Chris Drukos representing the petitioner with me tonight.

[Speaker 1] (13:14 - 13:42)
I can see I had a bunch of hands. People can't hear. I might have to ask you, Chris.

So I don't know if this microphone is just picking up for the hybrid. I don't know if you have to use the other microphone. Let me find out about that if I can.

I think they're checking on it. Okay. And this microphone here, does that have audio for the room?

[Speaker 6] (13:45 - 13:46)
Sorry, the door needs to stay open.

[Speaker 1] (13:51 - 14:01)
Yeah, the open meeting law requires the door stays open. We could ask whoever's, yes. Awesome.

Thanks so much.

[Speaker 23] (14:06 - 14:49)
Thank you, Mr. Chairman. With me tonight for the petitioner are Deb Colbert, Mike Burnett, Adam Stein, Gilbert Winn, Peter Freeman, Angela Guile, John Smolak, Bruce Barry, and Andrew Stebbins. I don't think I've missed anybody.

You're correct. We have gone through the process with peer review and had comments back and forth since our last meeting. With that, I'm going to turn the meeting over to Peter Freeman, who's going to walk you through that.

[Speaker 1] (14:50 - 14:51)
Okay, thank you. Good evening, Mr. Freeman.

[Speaker 2] (14:52 - 19:06)
Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Good evening to the board, and thank you, Chris. Just quickly before a summary and introduction to Angela, who will go over a few things, I just wanted to respond to the outline that the chairman gave as to the process on the vote and deliberations.

I do agree with that. We certainly hope to and would like to get to that point of concluding the hearing tonight. We don't think that there would be any additional information that would need to be forthcoming unless there's some surprise tonight, something unexpected.

My preference would be to have the hearing closed and then to proceed in the fashion that you described. I think the debate among town attorneys is, especially since you have a draft decision, once you are closed on the hearing but deliberate both tonight and if necessary at a future hearing, a rather public meeting, not a hearing but a public meeting as you described. In my experience, some town attorneys say that it's perfectly fine as long as there's no new testimony or information submitted, it's perfectly fine to engage in dialogue between the board and the proponent because they're just the language on the conditions, especially since we assisted in drafting.

Some town attorneys, I will tell you, candidly say no. Once it's closed, there really should be no input, even discussion on conditions. I leave that to you to determine.

With that, I'll go on to my brief introduction. As the chairman said, we've been here pushing a year, not quite, but actually 18 months. My client has been at it when you count the time prior to applying to the zoning board with the community and with informal staff meetings and all of that.

We've been at it for a long time with the back and forth and assistance from the town. We have listened very seriously to all of the public comments and to the peer review comments, naturally to the comments from the board, the board members. We have made changes over the amount of time that we've been here.

We think improving the project. I would just note briefly, by the way, that we did submit some additional materials, a few design changes. Angela will go over those.

We also submitted a response to the Dan Hill letter. We covered all of the points that were in his letter and we made responses to those and which we believe that they're very sufficient and thorough responses. But moving forward to what we hope to do tonight, one of the things that is clear is how important the rail trail is to you.

And so what we have done, and as I said, Angela will elaborate briefly on the actual changes, hoping, as the chairman himself expressed, that we will be able to wrap this up and close the hearing tonight. We actually have made some final changes, some proposals to you that we are willing to live with for the project, reserving our rights as we need to do, however, because we don't know how the final vote from the board and the conditions will come out. But assuming that it's a good decision, a positive vote with conditions that are acceptable to us, as well as depending on whether or not there's an abut or appeal, because all bets are off if there's an abut or appeal.

It will delay things and that causes great problems. But in a nutshell, we have some substantive changes that Angela will go through. The quick highlights are that we will reduce, conditionally, the number of units to 114 units.

Where we can make changes in the building, we'll free up space to increase the rail trail width to 25 feet from the present 10 feet. We also have, and there's a few more things, but the final highlight I'll give is about the parking. We've found ways to add some parking spaces and to have some additional proposal, we think, to your satisfaction on Pitman Road.

So, really, that's my summary as to what we have done for tonight. Angela will give details. Just to end where I began, the process that you outlined, I think that makes sense.

Without further ado, I'll let Angela just provide a few of the more details. Thank you.

[Speaker 1] (19:07 - 19:07)
Thank you, Peter.

[Speaker 5] (19:09 - 26:53)
All right. Good evening. Thank you all.

So, as Peter said, I'll elaborate a little bit on some changes that we think will continue to, you know, improve the existing project and address the ongoing, you know, concerns that we've heard from you all in this process. So, we, I'll start with, I'll go in the same order here. So, for the rail trail, right from the beginning, we've always committed to providing a space, an easement for the town for a future connection, whether that be underpass or overpass, and that space has been 10 feet.

But as Peter said, we'll increase that to 25 feet. So, from property line in. And in order to make that accommodation for open space, that is necessitating a reduction of six units.

So, for a total of 114 with a goal to keep the unit mix as similar as possible to the unit mix that is there today. So, reducing things across the board. And the project will also continue to do the additional structural work needed to support an underpass option, which was what we committed to a few meetings ago, which is dropping our foundation footings in the back to accommodate an underpass option if that's what ends up happening in the future.

And for the, on the parking note. So, we understand and have heard all of the concerns about parking issues on Pitman Road. And so, what we'd like to propose is maintaining and keeping five of the 11 parallel parking spaces along Pitman Road for the project to be included in our parking ratio.

And the other six remaining spaces for town for public use for neighborhood resident parking. And we think that achieves a nice compromise. There are going to be five, you know, thoughtfully designed units along Pitman Road with direct entries.

So, we think keeping five parking spaces there makes sense and helps us achieve a desired parking ratio. But six units for neighborhood parking, we think would be helpful. And in addition to, so I'll go through the numbers here in a moment.

But so, we're losing some along Pitman. The reduction for the rail trail also will lose four parking spaces in the first floor covered parking in addition to the units. But what we were able to do is negotiate adding additional spaces in what we call the connected lot 27 Elm Place.

And we were able to figure out a way there to add 14 parking spaces. And so, all in, the grand total of total parking spaces will be 131 parking spaces for 114 units, which is a parking ratio of 1.15. For background, our prior parking ratio had been 1.06. So, it's an increase on the parking ratio. And, you know, on the note for units, right, when we started this process, the proposal was 128 units at 0.89 parking ratio. So, we do think that we've come, you know, a long way reducing the number of units by 11% and finding a lot of creative ways to increase the parking. And do so in such a way, going back to our January ZBA meeting where we proposed a lot of improvements for the parking layout and site access and pedestrian and safety improvements when it comes to Berks and sidewalk, just more sidewalks and crosswalks. So, we're pretty happy with all of these changes.

And let's see. The last thing that I can go over is, as the chairman brought up at the beginning of the meeting, is just where we're at with all of the peer reviews. And I'll try to be as clear as possible.

So, the architecture peer review, the Davis Square architects ended up getting in recommendations for conditions that essentially matched his comments from his first review letter. And what we did was we took those recommendations and we made a chart similar like how we did for VM Consulting's chart. And we put down if the recommendations from Davis Square had been met through incorporating them in a site plan or the architecture plans or conditioned in our condition.

And the draft conditions does have everything incorporated from the Davis Square recommendations. So, those two documents, the matrix and the draft conditions, those sync up. In regard to the traffic conditions, those have remained unchanged from February, all of the traffic and transportation demand management conditions.

World Tech has reviewed all of those and has no comments or additions. Between the last meeting and this meeting, World Tech did review the easement language for easements for sidewalks and crossings. That was something they had called out in their last letter.

And then last for the sewer water, storm water reviews between VM Consulting and our engineers, there's been the most back and forth on that since the last meeting and this meeting. And the final, what we call the answer matrix, does also sync up with the draft conditions. And essentially, you'll see in that final matrix that VM Consulting does agree to the fact there is capacity for sewer and agrees with the overall design of the storm tech system.

And they've conditioned both of those things, as well as some water related conditions. So, those are all in our draft conditions. And that is where we're at.

So, just to summarize all of that, all the peer reviewers have reviewed all the conditions that are in our draft decision for you all. So, there should be no outstanding items there. And I think that covers it for now.

Peter, do you want to?

[Speaker 2] (26:53 - 27:21)
Yes, I do think that covers it. Just one thing that I neglected to note related to the changes that we both just described. I submitted a draft decision, which is the same as what we had submitted before, but updated with revisions to the conditions related to these items that we have now agreed to conditionally.

So, I submitted to the chair at the start of the hearing before the hearing opened. So, everybody knows that I submitted that tonight. Thank you.

[Speaker 1] (27:23 - 27:45)
Thank you. So, I did have a couple questions. I just wanted to make sure the affordable unit percentage, that's going to be 42% of the units, even with the reduction in number of units.

So, 42% of them will meet the criteria for affordable. Is that correct?

[Speaker 5] (27:49 - 27:55)
Yes. So, the reduction in units should have, should maintain the same percentage. Yes.

[Speaker 20] (27:56 - 28:02)
So, none of the units that are going are the affordable? No. Thank you.

[Speaker 5] (28:04 - 28:06)
Well, sorry.

[Speaker 1] (28:06 - 28:15)
Yes. So, 42%. So, if it were, say, 100 units, we'd have 42.

It would be considered affordable. So, a little bit more than that. The other 14.

[Speaker 19] (28:16 - 28:19)
It's a reduction of two affordable units.

[Speaker 1] (28:19 - 28:49)
Okay. Just because I was a little confused on the proposed decision about the language of the number of affordable. So, that's why I just wanted to make sure that it was clear that 42% are going to meet that definition.

Okay. So, first, before we get started, is there anyone on the board that has any questions for the petitioner?

[Speaker 6] (28:49 - 29:04)
I have a question. You had mentioned the, adding the 14 parking spaces at 27 Elm. Is that a recordable instrument?

Is it a lease? What exactly, what's the nature of that?

[Speaker 2] (29:06 - 29:15)
We agree that it has to be recordable. It would be either a ground lease or an easement. I'm not sure that's a big distinction, but, you know, certainly it would be one or the other.

[Speaker 20] (29:20 - 29:23)
What's 27 Elm Street now? Sorry, I was trying to look it up on my phone, but it's not there.

[Speaker 1] (29:23 - 29:30)
That's the, on the other side of the, would you want to describe where the parking, the additional spaces are?

[Speaker 5] (29:33 - 29:43)
So, that's the, what we call the connected lot on all our plans. So, if you're looking at our plans, the lot past Berks, all the way to the right.

[Speaker 25] (29:43 - 29:43)
Okay.

[Speaker 5] (29:43 - 29:44)
That whole parcel. Yep.

[Speaker 1] (29:47 - 29:55)
Okay. Any other questions, Brad, or anyone else? Right now?

No. Any further opportunity for questions?

[Speaker 7] (29:56 - 30:15)
Maybe, just with respect to the rail trail option there, is it still viable to go under the rail? Is that, how realistic is that? Is the T, and I understand it's the MBTA, says they don't want to go under.

[Speaker 1] (30:16 - 30:28)
No, there's been a couple different communications with the T. Yeah, I'm a little unclear on that. Yeah.

So, maybe we could ask the petitioner there. I have an understanding, but I should make sure the petitioner's understanding is the same.

[Speaker 19] (30:29 - 31:20)
Yeah, it's a great question. Gilbert Nguyen. Oh, Gilbert Nguyen.

So, the short answer is, I don't think anyone can predict what the final decision will be, but the preliminary indication was that an underground pass would be easier because of future electrification of the line, that they want to avoid overpasses that might mess with the electrification. However, they have not made a final decision on which is better. So, what we're trying to do by this recent change is allow for either the underpass or the overpass, and by moving our building, by cutting back the length of our building, we allow the 25 feet for the landing on an overpass, while also maintaining the ability to do the underpass if that's what the MBTA wishes.

[Speaker 7] (31:24 - 31:41)
Yeah, I did understand that going under seemed much easier, but the going over seemed to be just not feasible from what I've heard. So, I'm just concerned about the situation if the T says, well, you have to go over. No, I think then, what then?

[Speaker 17] (31:42 - 31:50)
I think the understanding is the 25 feet will allow for switchbacks to go over, whereas the 10 feet would not have allowed for that.

[Speaker 7] (31:50 - 31:54)
There's going to be a lot of switchbacks, and it's going to be very expensive, and it's going to take a lot of land.

[Speaker 1] (31:54 - 31:56)
Yeah, the over is a tough thing.

[Speaker 17] (31:56 - 32:04)
The over is going to be tough no matter what, but the plan that they have at Town Hall has the switchbacks within the 25 feet.

[Speaker 19] (32:06 - 32:22)
That's the understanding. We wanted that. We didn't wish to have something we did preclude either option, so that's why this is really going to be up to the Town and the MBTA in the future.

All right.

[Speaker 1] (32:23 - 33:12)
If you remember, there was a memo back in April from communication. I think Gilbert had it with the MBTA, and they were talking about the ability. First, we were hearing under wasn't going to work, and then there was some communication where a person at the MBTA said that subject to the jurisdiction in engineering, but it looked like that was something that they would consider and prefer.

We have the ability for it to land either way, but it's up to the Town to coordinate it from there. Anybody else have any questions now?

[Speaker 6] (33:12 - 33:18)
Just a couple more real quick ones. No garage door, is that the final analysis?

[Speaker 5] (33:24 - 33:31)
Yes, our current design does not have a garage door going into the first floor covered parking.

[Speaker 6] (33:31 - 33:34)
The individual washer dryers, they're going to be in the units?

[Speaker 5] (33:35 - 33:36)
As planned, yes.

[Speaker 6] (33:37 - 33:41)
The EV parking spaces for is the commitment?

[Speaker 5] (33:41 - 33:42)
Correct.

[Speaker 6] (33:42 - 33:48)
And that's included in the 114? Sorry, 131.

[Speaker 5] (33:49 - 33:54)
Yep, the four are located in the first floor covered parking.

[Speaker 6] (33:54 - 34:07)
Okay. The screening of the mechanical equipment on the roof, I know that was sort of left a little bit uncertain, at least in the final analysis. I was just curious, is there a commitment to screen that?

[Speaker 5] (34:08 - 34:10)
Yeah. Mike, do you want to?

[Speaker 24] (34:12 - 34:30)
Yeah, again, the majority of the architectural team, the majority of the rooftop units are actually very low residential scale. There's really only two air handlers, and we're prepared to screen those, assuming they're out of the sightline. We're trying to situate them out of the sightline in the final construction design.

[Speaker 6] (34:30 - 34:35)
Okay. It just looked like on the matrix that I didn't see that that one was checked.

[Speaker 24] (34:36 - 34:44)
Again, the mechanical design hasn't progressed to that level to understand exactly where those are going. But if they're going to be within the sightline, we're happy to screen them.

[Speaker 6] (34:47 - 35:14)
The last question I had on the architecture was the bike parking. I know that the original plan was fairly limited, and the agreement was that it was going to be monitored and then adjusted. Is there any more kind of concrete metrics or benchmarks or something, other than we'll see how it goes?

Is it a space issue?

[Speaker 5] (35:16 - 36:41)
Yeah, so the change that was incorporated from Davis Square's review was, I believe the first iterations had only bicycle parking on the exterior, which is still there. With comments, we created a space inside for bicycle storage and also one of those bicycle repair stations. I think it is priorities and what's going to be the best use.

I think at the end of the day, the project is built, and we have the bike parking for, I think it's upwards of probably around 30 with indoor and outdoor. But 60 residents have bicycle parking. I mean, at any property, we would find a solution.

Like, okay, clearly lots of people are using bicycles. We'll find a solution. It could be the other way, though, too, where we're seeing three residents have bikes, and we don't need to add or increase.

So I have seen conditions like this before, and I think we have another one in the transportation one where it will be monitored. So I guess my answer is I think we're comfortable with that. We would be monitoring it regardless of if it was a condition because we don't want bikes in the hallways.

We don't want bikes just locked up to street poles. We would be finding a solution.

[Speaker 6] (36:43 - 36:45)
So, again, the question was right now how many?

[Speaker 5] (36:46 - 37:15)
So right now, Mike, I don't know if you can pull up plans. Give me one sec. So the interior is the bike repair station and bike racks for 15 bikes.

[Speaker 24] (37:35 - 37:48)
There's another 24 outside? Twenty-four outside. Yes, and with this opportunity, with the additional 25-foot setback from the building, there's a little bit more land to be able to do that, again, pending what the railroad solution ends up being.

[Speaker 6] (37:50 - 38:08)
So 39. And, I mean, just given that it's a transit-oriented project and there's so many one-bedrooms and studios, you know, I think that is an important consideration. All right.

I'm good on the questions.

[Speaker 28] (38:09 - 38:09)
Okay.

[Speaker 1] (38:11 - 38:32)
Anyone else or can I take some public comment? So, first, I promised to Kim Martin Epstein, who's up by Zoom.

[Speaker 8] (38:37 - 38:38)
I'm here.

[Speaker 23] (38:39 - 38:39)
Hi.

[Speaker 8] (38:41 - 43:39)
Okay. So I prepared statements on behalf of the Swamp Scout Affordable Housing Trust. I'm just going to read them.

So bear with me for a moment. On behalf of the Swamp Scout Affordable Housing Trust, I'm appearing today to provide an official comment on the Elm Place project prior to the ZBA's final decision on the funding of the project. The Affordable Housing Trust comments today are limited to the aspects of the project that directly relate to the creation of affordable housing units and the likelihood that this project would receive substantial federal, state, and local subsidy to aid in the development of the affordable units.

DHCD publishes its Qualified Allocation Plan, the QAP, each year to update and reiterate the criteria for subsidizing development with grant and soft loan sources and state and federal projects to promote the creation of new affordable housing units across the Commonwealth. In addition, Swamp Scout is in the process of updating its housing production plan, which will continue to emphasize the need for affordable rental housing in our town. The final version of the plan, when released, will specifically cite Elm Place as a project that is meant to improve the affordable housing shortage in Swamp Scout.

According to the 2022-23 QAP, the Department encourages developers to structure projects that emphasize certain characteristics. I'm enumerating the ones here that already do, or could, apply to Elm Place – some of them by definition won't apply – and encourage the ZBA and WN to focus on these criteria when finalizing the plans and conditions for this project. Projects that create new affordable housing units, in particular units suitable for families in locations with job growth potential and locations that constitute areas of opportunity.

And we all acknowledge that Swamp Scout is seen as a community of opportunity with an exclusive look at safe neighborhoods. Swamp Scout is also convenient to Boston for the purpose of employment, social and cultural opportunities. Projects that actively promote principles of fair housing.

These are federal housing principles that are applied to all subsidized developments. They include the tenant selection and marketing plans, which are required to ensure broad reach and target vulnerable populations. Projects that are consistent with sustainable development principles.

In our seaside community, this has to be a primary requirement of all buildings that are permitted by town bodies. Projects whose sponsors incorporate green, sustainable, and climate-resilient elements into their design, including passive house design. And at this point, DHD requires nothing less, I think, than LEED certifications, but most projects should and do exceed these standards.

Projects whose sponsors are deeply committed to MWBE participation, that women in minority enterprise participation, and to diversity within their development teams. WING has a reasonably good track record hitting WBE and MBE goals, and this project will be scored critically on this topic by DHD. Projects that are a part of comprehensive neighborhood improvement plans or initiatives.

The CBA should refer, in this case, to the Swanstown Masco plan and the new housing production plan, if that's not already been introduced into discussion for final conditions. Projects that include units for individuals or households with incomes below 30% of area-needed income, including homeless families and individuals. The Affordable Housing Trust Fund would be very supportive of diverse affordability, including deep affordability.

Projects that include both affordable and workforce or market-grade units. The proposed income tiers, I believe, already hit this, but again, the Affordable Housing Trust Fund would support deeper affordability. Projects that include more units than required, that would be excessive to persons with disabilities.

Projects located in communities or neighborhoods with expanding social or educational opportunities. Projects located in communities of less than 12% housing stock as defined by the Commonwealth Subsidized Housing Inventory. Swanstown is obviously, hopefully, under the percentages for 40B and for the community scoring, and this project would create significant improvement on this statistic.

All of these attributes are reasonable for this project, in this town, at this time. It is the Affordable Housing Trust Fund's goal in making the statement that the CBA carefully consider this and ensure that these achievable attributes are included to the extent possible. By combining the attributes outlined in the QAP and the housing production plan, the Affordable Housing Trust believes that Elm Place would be a credit to the community that the Affordable Housing Trust Fund can enthusiastically support.

The trust really encourages Wynn and the town to resolve any remaining density, parking, rail, and other engineering issues in a manner so as to ensure that the project can have the support it needs to move forward. Thank you very, very much for allowing me this time.

[Speaker 1] (43:40 - 43:56)
Thank you. Kim, there was one thing you said about referring, a condition about referring the developer to, I don't know if it was your group, the Affordable Housing Trust, or something else as a condition. I missed that.

You went by a little too quick for me.

[Speaker 8] (44:00 - 44:04)
Were you talking about referencing the Swanstown Master Plan?

[Speaker 1] (44:04 - 44:10)
No, no. I thought it was referring the petitioner as a condition.

[Speaker 8] (44:12 - 44:21)
Well, I did speak about the income tiers and the levels of affordability.

[Speaker 27] (44:22 - 44:22)
Yeah.

[Speaker 8] (44:23 - 45:17)
I think from the Affordable Housing Trust perspective, again, we're really focused on the affordable units, so to the extent that a project with already diverse income tiers could maximize the deep affordability, I mean, I think we all understand that there's a pretty wide range, including market units. So in my experience, you know, the ability to dig deep to affordability is easily offset by higher income tiers. So from the trust perspective, we would really encourage the deepest affordability possible.

I know that that's not usually the purview in comprehensive permanent. It would be more in line with what kind of application with good ends in the HCD, but I think our perspective is that it's possible that this project could support an even wider range of affordability.

[Speaker 1] (45:19 - 45:22)
Okay. All right, well, thank you very much. You're welcome.

[Speaker 8] (45:22 - 45:22)
Thank you.

[Speaker 1] (45:25 - 47:32)
Okay. So what I am going to ask, first I should tell people who are joining us remotely to please not use the comment feature because that's not going to be part of our public record and we need to make a record of the proceedings. So it's not constructive and the reason we have the remote participation is because of people's inability to get here and we want to afford that, but we also don't want that being used as a tool to try and interfere with the process.

So please don't use the comments on Zoom, but please feel free to use the raise your hand feature so that you can be addressed and given an opportunity to ask questions of the petitioner about any of the evidence they put forth for their petition or to our peer review people who I believe are all with us this evening. I should ask that if any of our peer review people felt that they needed to be heard on any issues. I'd ask them to use our raise your hand.

I see we have Victoria. She's here. I know we've worked out everything with traffic.

He had no further comments. So, okay. So now I'll ask anyone from the public who wanted to be heard is either here in person or remotely.

I'll probably rotate. We'll probably start here in person. I'll ask that you come up to the microphone, identify yourself, and then we'll take your comments.

I'm not sure. Is that one on?

[Speaker 17] (47:32 - 47:33)
I don't think so.

[Speaker 27] (47:35 - 47:36)
Is it on now?

[Speaker 17] (47:36 - 47:36)
Nope.

[Speaker 1] (47:46 - 47:47)
Thanks.

[Speaker 27] (47:49 - 47:50)
Test, test.

[Speaker 1] (47:51 - 47:51)
That's good.

[Speaker 3] (48:00 - 54:39)
To the proposed project. I was here at the last meeting and I raised some outstanding issues. From my count, we had outstanding issues with respect to sewer capacity.

There was a drainage plan that was filed in April where the bottom of the drainage chamber was actually at a lower elevation than seasonal high groundwater. The fire protection plan did not meet the fire protection code. Your architect raised an issue about train noise.

I raised an issue about conditions. You can't impose conditions that require further approvals or reviews. So these are the outstanding issues that I had on my list.

And this morning, I discovered about 10 documents that were uploaded onto the SharePoint drive. I can't really tell when they were uploaded, but we did not see them until this morning. It looks like they were filed by the applicant perhaps on Thursday.

I thought, Mr. Chairman, you would actually ask for a week notice with new filings. I would respectfully ask the board to not close the hearing tonight. We have not had an opportunity to do a deep dive on this.

There appears to have been a lot of back and forth with peer review engineers. We were never privy to that information. I don't know if the board was.

So, you know, from our perspective, you still have plenty of time. The deadline to close the hearing is on June 12th, I believe. So we would appreciate an opportunity to be able to review the plans that were filed.

And I do note that even tonight, you heard from the applicant about even more changes to the plans that aren't even shown in the current plan set. So I don't see how the board can close the hearing without even having those reviewed. One of the big omissions that I can tell is that I don't see any...

I don't see any memo or letter from your own peer review engineers basically signing off on the project the way the applicant just described. The applicant has made it sound as if your peer review engineer has accepted the design changes. And these changes include the stormwater system that was apparently revised in the last few weeks.

I see a matrix. And I see typing in the matrix. But that's not Eileen's work product.

That's not Victoria's work product. The board should have a memo or a letter from your own engineers saying, these were the outstanding issues on our list and we're satisfied with the applicant's responses. Or if not, identify what outstanding concerns there are.

I would note that even in the matrix, there do seem to be some outstanding concerns as characterized by the applicant. Several of them are, you know, suggesting that there could be a post-permit condition confirming certain things. You know, the applicant's attorney tonight made a comment that it's...

I'm not sure if it was tonight or in the letter that he's filed in response to my memo that it's actually okay to do post-permit conditions as long as we consent to them. But the conditions that are in the draft decision, which I saw this morning, basically say they have to file these plans with the zoning board for consistency with this draft decision. That's not the same as what Eileen was recommending, supposedly, that a plan be reviewed to make sure it complies with general engineering practices or that it's...

that allows some discretion whether to approve the change or deny it. So there's a big difference between a post-permit condition that gives the board or some other town official the ability to say no and to say this is not acceptable, this doesn't pass muster for whatever reason, and a condition such as what Mr. Freeman drafted, which sounds to me like you can just review this for consistency with our decision. I don't even know what that means.

That's a very dangerous assumption that the board would make, that you can put all these conditions in the decision and they're not going to be challenged. I can tell you that from experience, and I've worked on a lot of these projects around the state, an applicant can say in a hearing, you can trust us, we're not going to appeal, you can put these conditions in there, but then after the decision gets issued, there's buyer's remorse or there's a disagreement over what was intended, and then an appeal is filed and those conditions get stricken. I had a situation in another town where after the public hearing was closed, there was some discussion over the conditions, as Mr. Freeman suggested, a discussion between attorneys. After the decision was rendered, the developer filed an appeal to the HAC and claimed a constructive approval, arguing that the discussion that happened after the close of the hearing basically meant that the hearing was still open. So I think my recommendation, the most prudent course of action, would be to keep the hearing open until all the outstanding issues are resolved, keep the hearing open so that you can talk to the applicant and talk to us about the draft conditions. We're happy to provide proposed language.

You've got proposed language from the applicant. I'm assuming you'd like to see some proposed language from other folks. And I'd also submit that I really think you need to have a letter or a memo from Eileen or Victoria on all these issues, the sewer capacity issue and the drainage, most importantly.

So those are my comments. I did want to just address one thing in particular, which is the swept path analysis plan. So one of the issues that I raised at the last meeting was fire protection, adequate of access for fire equipment.

I don't know if it's possible for Marissa to put the swept path plan on the screen. It's one of the sheets in the 10-sheet plan set. I don't know, is she even here?

[Speaker 1] (54:40 - 54:54)
Wait for Marissa to go. I'm not sure where she... So I don't think we can get that one up right now.

[Speaker 3] (54:54 - 56:17)
Well, we can come back to it. But the swept path plan was intended to show that your largest fire truck can maneuver around the parking area without crossing into buildings or crossing into parking spaces. Basically means that it's a swept path.

It's an unobstructed path that the fire engine can turn around. So what the applicant showed you was a plan that shows a ladder truck taking a turn into the parking lot and then going out through the parking area that's reserved for the tumbling academy. But the plan...

This is a computer simulation model, right? And so the plan is based upon the dimensions of a fire truck that's put into the model. The lines on the plan intersect with things like curbs, parking spaces, and buildings.

So the plan itself actually proves that the project doesn't comply with the state fire code. And I would ask that you ask your traffic peer review consultant whether I'm right or not. Because I think it's...

I'm just a lawyer, but I can see where lines intersect. And the lines aren't supposed to intersect. So I think that's another outstanding issue.

So I guess I'll stop there, Mr. Chairman. I appreciate the time to comment. We would like to have an opportunity to provide draft conditions and to review these plans and provide comments back to the board.

[Speaker 1] (56:18 - 57:35)
Well, I appreciate that. And I apologize for not... being on top of you not getting the documents when they were submitted to our board.

I didn't realize that you hadn't. I would have liked to have been shared with you knowing that you were representing the neighbors. So if I had caught it, I would have looked to have made sure the petitioner or peer review, anyone had you on the list.

Give me one second, Peter. So... I think that our board...

We do have Victoria here. And perhaps at least... I don't know that...

her answers would be enough to satisfy our board about the need for any written memo or not. But I at least think it might be timely to ask her about those two major issues that you brought up about the sewer capacity and the drainage plan from April lower than the seasonal groundwater. So...

Marisa, can Victoria... Does she have...

[Speaker 14] (57:35 - 57:37)
Okay, great.

[Speaker 1] (57:37 - 57:38)
Hi, Victoria.

[Speaker 14] (57:38 - 59:30)
Good evening, everyone. So I'll start by saying I guess we didn't know the best way to provide our formal response. To us, that decision matrix is our formal response.

And actually, my colleague Eileen Cahill is in the audience there with you guys, and she did the bulk of the engineering analysis. But to give a quick overview, and Eileen can chime in, I think, is on the sewer capacity, when we had done our calculation initially, we didn't have flow data from flow meters. So we did it the way we would design a sewer by estimating flow from the number of homes that fed that sewer diameter, sewer slope, and so that's where we came up with our first capacity.

So once Hancock performed the flow metering, and we got some more details on the inverse of the sewer along the way, we did our calculations, and all this is in our matrix table and attachments. All Eileen's calculations are there. It was determined finally after running back and forth about the inverse that there is capacity.

So that's why our tune changed from then to now, is because we have better data and parameters to do those calculations. And as far as the stormwater design, it's a brand new design to reflect the change in the seasonal high groundwater that the attorney talked about. So we did do a review on that redesign, which Eileen did also, and if there's specific questions on that, we can certainly respond to them.

[Speaker 1] (59:32 - 59:33)
Okay. All right.

[Speaker 6] (59:33 - 1:00:04)
Any questions anyone on the board has for Victoria It's just that Attorney Hill had said that he felt it was necessary for the board to have the benefit of, he had suggested memos or some sort of written response. But just so we have the benefit, I guess, of your analysis, you have reviewed the final, with respect to the sewer capacity, you've reviewed the final changes in the plans?

[Speaker 28] (1:00:05 - 1:00:06)
Yes.

[Speaker 6] (1:00:06 - 1:00:10)
All right. And you're satisfied that it meets the health and safety standards?

[Speaker 28] (1:00:11 - 1:00:11)
Yes.

[Speaker 6] (1:00:12 - 1:00:16)
And same for the stormwater plan?

[Speaker 28] (1:00:17 - 1:00:18)
Yes.

[Speaker 6] (1:00:19 - 1:00:23)
And you're satisfied that it also meets the health and safety concerns?

[Speaker 28] (1:00:23 - 1:00:24)
Yes.

[Speaker 6] (1:00:28 - 1:00:34)
Okay. Thank you. All right.

Thanks. Okay.

[Speaker 1] (1:00:40 - 1:02:37)
Attorney Hill, I do appreciate your comments, particularly about the idea of keeping the public hearing open to be able to take proposed conditions if there were a favorable vote. And I think that would work fine with the process in terms of the ability to substantively comment. We do have our peer review that's given us opinion on both the sewer capacity and the drainage, stormwater.

On the fire protection plan, and that swept, we had the fire chief here in person. We asked him about the whole hammerhead design. We've had extensive conversation back and forth about the ability to go through the abutting property that residents are against, even though it would be arguably beneficial to them for fire safety and life safety.

But the chief was satisfied with the hammerhead design as far as my understanding of it, and I received that in writing and still asked him to come in to address. I do agree we have more time. I did obtain a letter confirming the June 12th date from Attorney Freeman on behalf of his client, as I had requested at the last hearing.

I would like to hear from Peter what he says about the post-permit conditions that Dan raised.

[Speaker 3] (1:02:38 - 1:03:18)
Could I just ask you a question about the sewer before we move on? One of the comments that was in the matrix, if that's going to be the document, is that Victoria and Eileen had recommended that there be a condition that required a closed-circuit TV analysis of the pipe, and then she says if the inspection reveals that there's necessary sewer rehabilitation work, that that be done. That's exactly the kind of condition that I'm worried about, is that that is going to put discretion in the hands of somebody like Peer Review or DPW.

[Speaker 1] (1:03:18 - 1:03:22)
They said that it would be done at the town's expense, not at the applicant's expense.

[Speaker 3] (1:03:23 - 1:03:24)
Well, that's even worse.

[Speaker 1] (1:03:24 - 1:04:07)
What I understand, if you can help me there, is these system-wide, town-wide issues off-site, if there was incapacity, then it's not. I read in some of the text on the subject that you can't put that on the petitioner. So perhaps you have a different opinion about that, but what they said in the matrix was if there's a problem, it's at the town's expense, so tell me what's wrong with that type of opinion from the engineer and the Peer Review engineer.

[Speaker 3] (1:04:08 - 1:05:08)
Yeah, I've never seen a 40B decision putting the burden to make an infrastructure upgrade that's directly caused by a project onto the town. To me, that's completely inappropriate. Probably not even a big cost item.

There should be something that the applicant would agree to do, because they're the ones who are putting a significant increase of flow into the Pitman Road pipe. That Pitman Road pipe today only serves the limited number of houses that are on Pitman Road. That's it.

So now we're adding 114 units worth of wastewater into an existing pipe that may or may not be adequate. This is something that's typically borne by an applicant. And in the ordinary, even in the conventional 40A and subdivision context, in the ordinary course, it wouldn't be a big deal to put a condition on the permit that would require subsequent approval by somebody.

But that doesn't work under 40B. This is just one example of a condition that I think is going to be problematic.

[Speaker 1] (1:05:10 - 1:06:53)
So, I was on that issue, and I looked at the text Low and Moderate Income Housing and the Anti-Stob Zoning Act Linkage, Inclusionary Zoning, and Incentive Zoning Mass MCLE 5-1 And they talk about denials based on impacts on municipal services. And it said a common reason for denying a comprehensive permit is the fear that the project will exceed the capacity of municipal services, such as water and sewer, or overwhelm the local schools. The HAC has consistently held such concerns are not valid reasons for denying a permit.

School overcrowding, water supply problems, or an increase in traffic alone are insufficient to outweigh a regional need for affordable housing. They went on to say in one case the zoning board of appeals the Housing Appeals Committee municipality cannot rely on its own failure to remedy existing drainage problems as a grounds for denying permit. So, I'd love to hear how we can condition an issue like a stormwater or sewer that's just servicing one area that's now not going to be sufficient because of this 114 units, how we can condition the upgrade on the petitioner.

I was under the impression we can't. So I'd love to hear how we can.

[Speaker 3] (1:06:53 - 1:07:35)
Well, I think what you were reading, Mr. Chairman, was examples of denials and not approvals. And there's plenty of cases where the Housing Appeals Committee has affirmed conditions that have been imposed by zoning boards to require upgrades of infrastructure or other conditions that are necessary to mitigate and to offset the impacts of a project. The burden is on the applicant in these cases to prove that these conditions render the project uneconomic.

And so, I'm happy to provide some draft language and cite the cases that where these kind of conditions have been affirmed or you could talk to your town council and I think he'd agree.

[Speaker 1] (1:07:36 - 1:07:59)
Well, right. I mean, I read that. It sounds like you can't.

But that makes sense to me. I'd like to hear what Peter has to say about that. If he agrees or if he disagrees.

Because I was under the impression that it was difficult to require that through a condition. But maybe I'm wrong about that. So, Peter, would you agree or disagree about that?

[Speaker 2] (1:08:01 - 1:10:02)
You are right. I agree with you. However, there are always the specifics and in particular the pivotal question is always are the proposed mitigation conditions that a board may want to impose and this is not a denial situation.

We're promising this discussion on the fact that there will be conditions. But in such a situation, what Mr. Hill is talking about is sure when a project has been shown to cause some impact on a municipal system, then some type of mitigation could be imposed pro rata. So, I disagree with what Mr. Hill said. We actually have the details of conditions on consulting site and civil conditions are in Exhibit D to the draft decision. D as in David. And it says VM consulting site and civil conditions.

And on the sewer design comment, we actually have comment 1B, which is referring to the VM letters. The third point, which we have not objected to, it's limited and perhaps we should be more specific. It says if the Director of Public Works determines from this CCTV review that there is groundwater infiltration, then the applicant with the Department of Public Works assistance shall perform a limited amount of sewer rehabilitation, i.e., slip lining or similar process of the portion of sewer which is affected by groundwater infiltration. And my understanding is that that might be 300 feet of an 8-inch sleeve. And perhaps we were missing not specifying that. So, if we're willing to live with that, Where is that condition?

It's in Exhibit D. So, I meant the sewer, the comment 1B, the first sewer design comment condition. Comment 1B and there are three items and I read from item number three.

[Speaker 1] (1:10:03 - 1:10:06)
Oh. I was looking at the required draft.

[Speaker 4] (1:10:09 - 1:10:12)
If you search for the CCTV, you'll find it.

[Speaker 27] (1:10:14 - 1:10:14)
Yep.

[Speaker 4] (1:10:24 - 1:10:25)
I think it's page 19.

[Speaker 1] (1:10:26 - 1:10:28)
Okay, thank you.

[Speaker 6] (1:10:44 - 1:10:50)
Out of my 19. Almost there. 19 of the PDF.

[Speaker 1] (1:10:51 - 1:11:00)
Yeah. So, it's there. Oh, okay.

Exhibit D. I'm looking at the condition D. There we go.

Okay.

[Speaker 2] (1:11:03 - 1:14:49)
Okay. Okay. If I may, while you're looking, Angela just told me what I referred to as the 300 feet is the reason it's not in there and we would suggest that it be added is that the actual results of the CCTV video came in this morning and I believe shared with the town.

Yeah, with Gino. So, these conditions had been back earlier as I said and we were willing to live with that. Now, we know the specifics.

So, it's kind of a moot point. The general principle that the chairman stated is certainly true. You can't just require under 40B an applicant to repair existing town conditions that are not impacted by the project.

In this case, it says we've always tried to do. It's trying to accommodate the town and help out here because that's the spirit in which Wynn has conducted itself and always has and always will. So, if I may also just respond to the other items that Mr. Hill mentioned. The conditions where he talked about final approval further, as he calls it, condition subsequent for review of plans for conformity to make sure that they're consistent or in conformity with the terms of this decision. That is absolutely an extremely typical condition that applicants, at least my clients, and I've only done about 150 of these, agrees to and what it's meant to say is there is no discretion. It's not leaving something wide open and it's not the kind of condition subsequent that Mr. Hill elaborated on in his letter at the last hearing that the HAC has found objectionable. In fact, it's completely different. It just says that you want your peer review and administrative review folks to approve the final, more detailed plans because before you get a building permit, the construction level plans, both on civil engineering and on construction, the building plans are way more detailed. So that condition is just another safety check, if you will, that doesn't create open-ended discretion.

That's why the term for consistency, review for consistency with the terms of the decision is used. And those conditions are not objectionable at all. And now that we have heard quite definitively from Victoria, there's no open-endedness.

The information and plans and data submitted already show that we satisfy the two important aspects of sewer and stormwater design. So there's really no open-endedness. So I don't really see the legitimacy to Mr. Hill's objection. I would also say in terms of his urging that the hearing not be closed, again, the information that is now before you shows that we have adequately supplied all the information. And to his point about he'd like a chance to draft his own conditions, well, if I may say respectfully, this draft decision including conditions has been public record for approximately two months. It was also discussed, not in detail, but it was mentioned by me at the last hearing and certainly Mr. Hill at any time, certainly after he attended the last hearing, I think it was three weeks ago, he could have taken pen to paper or fingertip to keyboard, as we say today, and drafted whatever conditions he wanted or more appropriately probably commented on the proposed draft conditions from the applicant.

He chose not to do so.

[Speaker 1] (1:14:49 - 1:18:15)
In fairness, he didn't have a, he raised, he gave us a letter on April 12th where he raised issues about the stormwater specifics and if he didn't receive, if it was uploaded, I'm not saying it was the petitioner's fault. Petitioners work very hard to get things done timely and I said I'd look to take some fault for not being certain that Attorney Hill received that information knowing that he was interested in it. So I don't know that I could put it on Attorney Hill that he should comment on items that he's raised but could not have possibly reviewed until the matrix was uploaded to the website.

What I think might be a reasonable approach here is from hearing this and understanding now about the way 40B treats the conditions for the off-site stuff when I was reading it as though it were a denial and if it were an approval so perhaps as part of this process we have a straw poll after we conclude our public comment and then if it is an affirmative vote we leave the public hearing open, we get all these conditions, we make sure we're going to get agreement from the applicant if it's the positive vote on the decision on these conditions and then we at the next meeting have that final vote.

But you have an idea if it's a no vote if there are three no votes on this board then I'd suggest it will be a different process that there would be findings of fact that need to be made based on the evidence to this date and we would have the decision voted on at that time but an opportunity for whoever is making that motion to put those findings of fact together and then have our final vote before that June 12th date. So I think that's how I'd like to do it, I'm not sure if the board agrees with me that we don't have a final vote just subject to the final decision but we just have a straw poll and the final decision in motion will be made at the next meeting.

But for all intents and purposes, so Attorney Hill, I would suggest you're going to know at the end of this tonight which way this board's going and if it's a no vote you might want to submit before the next meeting proposed findings of fact I don't know that, yep I say proposed findings of fact on the evidence that we've received, the public hearing is still open. If it's a yes vote and you're looking to put in revisions to the conditions, I would say the appropriate spot to do it would be to do right in in Peter's proposed decision the updated decision to submit a red line on those conditions or additional conditions.

[Speaker 6] (1:18:16 - 1:18:50)
Can I ask a question? Before we get too far from some of the points that Attorney Hill raised I just didn't know if Victoria heard them and had any response. I would just like to hear substantively he raised, or Eileen I guess you know that he raised an issue about this stretch of sewer which services apparently just this one street and that it's now going to be another 114 Yeah I think she's okay with that, but yeah Victoria's still here.

[Speaker 17] (1:18:50 - 1:19:11)
You said something about the CC TV results are in Yes I sort of missed what you said or if either of our peer review had to have a chance to look at those So we got the results this morning.

[Speaker 5] (1:19:11 - 1:19:40)
That was the getting a good company out there that can actually produce something usable is very challenging so they got out last week and we got the results this morning and we shared those with Gino today to review and that's what's recommending the 300 feet of slip lining

[Speaker 2] (1:19:45 - 1:20:27)
Also Mr. Chairman if I may Just picking up on your point which I sincerely appreciate your courtesy and approach which is clearly intended to be fair which it has been all along. I don't really disagree other than a clarification I think in keeping with what you said what I would say is I believe it would be appropriate to close the hearing but to allow an exception for Mr. Hill, really anybody but Mr. Hill and the applicant to submit any further proposed conditions or revisions to the draft decision as you suggested. I think that's the appropriate way to handle it.

[Speaker 1] (1:20:27 - 1:21:03)
I think I'm leaning to keeping the public hearing open Believe me, I want it finished tonight with that process I don't expect to take any further public comment. I want to leave it open so that we can take, you know, we have this 300 feet, you know, we have a representation from the petitioners what it is and I suppose we could condition it but I wouldn't want to get tripped up because I closed the public hearing and there's the evidence I should have listened to and heard and considered in formulating the condition so I just think I would rather err on that and be cautious so I do want to get back to Brad's question

[Speaker 6] (1:21:03 - 1:21:17)
I just want to hear, maybe this whole issue is moot, we have experts that are familiar with this I assume, I would just like to hear their thoughts on it if they have any, I don't mean to put anybody on the spot. So you want to hear from Victoria?

[Speaker 14] (1:21:17 - 1:21:24)
Victoria or Eileen I can start Eileen is there so she can weigh in after me.

[Speaker 1] (1:21:24 - 1:21:26)
Yeah, I didn't realize she was here now I see her.

[Speaker 14] (1:21:27 - 1:21:46)
Just to clarify, we haven't seen any of that CCTV so before we could agree to that 300 foot number we'd have to review the CCTV ourselves and make a recommendation on the original location but as far as the refining of the sewer capacity calculation, Eileen can definitely talk about that.

[Speaker 1] (1:21:47 - 1:21:58)
Okay, so Eileen do you want to talk about that? Yeah, that'd be great thank you Oh, we have one for you

[Speaker 13] (1:22:02 - 1:24:32)
So, are you specifically talking about the Pitman Road sewer, that's the one closest to the property or in general how come the numbers, basically so much of the sewer capacity is based on the slope of the sewer which is like, everything in sewer goes by gravity so the minimum based on the minimum slope the lowest, the flattest it can be laid, then you can have less flow through it so that's how originally it was calculated, like when you have a clay sewer, like now we put in sewer that's plastic so it flows quicker through it but clay, there's more friction so it's less capacity, so this is old sewer we're talking about, it's clay so we accounted for that so when you have one laid at minimum slope, which is 4 feet per 1,000 feet for a drop of 4 feet over 1,000 feet distance then you can only have a capacity of 340 gallons a minute so the new property would be like 70 gallons a minute at peak and then the sewer that's closest to the property I don't think it has many other properties going into it, it's once you get onto the borough street where you have like a lot of neighborhoods flowing into it and that's where the concern was but based on the slope it has a capacity of like 650 gallons a minute and so that's where we say, okay, we agree even with the engineering our engineering design calculations say if you're putting in a new sewer, you assign 110 gallons per day, per bedroom per number of bedrooms and that's how you come up with an engineering flow and that was higher than what was measured, but even with that, it was still like we still, I would be concerned if the engineering number were up against the calculated flow number, but it's still higher, the capacity in the sewer is still higher when it was measured, it was also interesting like the depth of the flow, looking at that was interesting, and it was just over 50% in the 12 inch sewer at max flow so it's certainly it has some capacity so it does have the capacity for the new 70 gallons a minute, just not an empty sewer, for sure

[Speaker 6] (1:24:32 - 1:24:40)
so the existing this 300 or so feet the idea to have to reline it or whatever

[Speaker 13] (1:24:40 - 1:24:48)
yeah, I'm not sure where that is located where the CCTV like where they're recommending the 300 feet of slip lining

[Speaker 6] (1:24:48 - 1:24:53)
it's the Burrell Street sewer between Dougherty Circle and Railroad Ave is that right?

[Speaker 5] (1:24:54 - 1:24:55)
Yes, portion yeah

[Speaker 6] (1:24:57 - 1:25:06)
alright, so it does seem like this is an issue that we should allow our reviewers some time to, and if I

[Speaker 5] (1:25:07 - 1:25:52)
clarify sorry the conditions, just to clarify, so as I mentioned scheduling this work had been really hard and we did not know when we would get the results, if it would have been today or next week so the way that the condition is drafted saying the public works director shall review it once it's done and we'll work with the director of public works was assuming tonight would get to an end result, then we'd get the footage and theoretically there would be no more peer reviewers and it would just be the town when we did get it this morning, that's why we shared it with Gino quickly, but I think that's just where all this has come from, we weren't expecting to get it in time if that makes sense

[Speaker 1] (1:25:53 - 1:26:02)
okay, I do want to hear from Ezra he's had his hand raised, and it's probably about process, which I definitely am interested in sure, thanks so much

[Speaker 4] (1:26:03 - 1:29:39)
it was about process I guess about two things, one is this, the question of whether to close a public hearing and the second is this question of what attorney Hill is calling post-permit conditions in terms of closing a public hearing I think the chair has stated it pretty clearly, a desire for how he would like to run the meeting I think that makes sense, if you're concerned that there hasn't been every single opportunity for additional input especially on these latest documents I think then you should keep it open I would encourage you that this can have a process of, as you've seen in other zoning board meetings there can always be more questions and more information and often you're in charge of that process in this case, once you're up at your deadline, the applicant really can say, look, I need a decision so you do want to be sure you're clear to attorney Hill and everyone else that when this little window of additional input is for comments on what's been submitted not for opening up new issues, raising new questions, and really, that's not to lift the public, that's to help the board when they when they get to crunch time and need to make a decision, you want to feel confident that you've heard everything you can and you're in the mood in terms of the post-permit conditions question, I think there are relatively few in there, and I think I would tend to agree with the applicant, this is a fairly standard process in the sense how reasonable people solve problems when they don't have all the information at their fingertips I do agree with attorney Hill, you could imagine very complicated and very problematic post-permit conditions I'm not a lawyer, so I'm not going to say which ones are problematic and which ones aren't we can certainly check with town council on these I suspect that most of these come up in a situation where you've raised an issue, you generally agree it's been solved, we're not entirely sure what the right solution should be, and there's a condition saying here's a reasonable way to do it you can actually get around almost all of these if you have to, if you're really worried or town council advises you to for example with this one, if they hadn't done the CCTV and didn't know what the infiltration was going to be, we could instead have a condition that just said the applicant needs to escrow $50,000 to be used by the town for infiltration work and the balance returns to the applicant after it's done that's a fine condition, there's no post-permanent dispression, it's just a confusing process similarly with the bike bomb we could say exactly one day from the opening of the project, the applicant must create 20 more bike bombs unless this condition is waived by the board prior to that date and then the applicant would have to come back to you and show evidence, look we don't need it, and you waive it so you can, it becomes always just a question of logically how are you going to structure this, you know I think it's hard for me to imagine a condition that the applicant said they were completely happy with, and then challenged, but if you know, if your town council takes Dan Hill's position and is worried, then I could usually work with them and we could rewrite these conditions to still protect the board's interest but avoid the end concerns.

[Speaker 1] (1:29:41 - 1:30:00)
Hang on one second, so Ezra so you think it's appropriate if I were to look for town council, after we have our straw poll, if it were an affirmative vote or a negative vote, having town council take a look at our decision at this point before we close our public hearing and have the final vote on and get comments from town council

[Speaker 4] (1:30:00 - 1:30:03)
I would say, if you

[Speaker 21] (1:30:03 - 1:30:04)
are leaning towards denial

[Speaker 4] (1:30:04 - 1:30:56)
you absolutely better consult town council to get them, you need a you know, solid airtight decision there but I think the same goes true for an approval town council will certainly help to make sure they feel that all the findings in there that you need, that this will stand up and they'll be concerned that the conditions are well written you know, a lot of these are kind of standard but it never hurts to have them included you know, and most of them are fairly technical things you've gotten from peer reviewers you know, I think that town council is the expert in the law the peer reviewers are the experts actually understanding the engineering or the architecture or the traffic, so we start with that most of them are fairly standard sort of things though, so that I think is a reasonable process.

[Speaker 1] (1:30:57 - 1:31:03)
Okay so I'm going to ask first, before I get to you Dan Gilbert was asking to make a point did you still want to address something?

[Speaker 19] (1:31:05 - 1:31:28)
Sure, I understand what Ezra said and I would ask the board, you know, if there were something we could say, for instance the idea of an escrow, Mr. Chairman for $50,000 to resolve this issue, if that were to allow the board to take a vote tonight that would be something that we'd be willing to offer

[Speaker 1] (1:31:28 - 1:32:54)
I don't think it's that type of issue I don't think we're there yet, I think we're going to have a straw poll where everybody stands, which I think people at this point, after all this time on this project and all the documents, all the peer review all the arguments all the neighbor concerns I think everybody on this board probably has an idea where they're going to be so I think that if we have a straw poll and have an idea about that I think that will give us a good direction of where it's going to wind up I don't know that the problems are with a great deal of the conditions but I think that if it were an affirmative decision that some of these conditions I would love to have Attorney Hill's comments on the conditions and I understand the decision's been out there with proposed conditions for a while but he had specific questions and those seem to be the specific areas where we clearly have jurisdiction on these public health, safety, welfare types of issues so I think it would be beneficial to everyone and then also to have town council taking a good hard look at the decision and giving us comments so I'm going to go back to Attorney Hill.

[Speaker 3] (1:32:55 - 1:33:44)
Thanks. Just on this closed circuit TV question since we have our peer reviewers here if I could ask a question through the chair my understanding of when you do these sewer capacity analysis is that a big factor is the inflow infiltration that gets into the sewer pipes and there was a comment that the metering that was done was done during a period where there wasn't a significant rain event and I thought that the purpose of the closed circuit TV was to capture the flows perhaps during a rain event and I don't know if that was addressed in this. Can we ask was the closed circuit TV monitoring did that occur during a time when there was a storm so we could actually see on the videos how high the water would rise within these pipes or perhaps the question should be to the engineers is that the right question to ask?

Is that a relevant issue?

[Speaker 1] (1:33:44 - 1:33:54)
I agree we have everybody here so why don't I ask first from the petitioners expert and see if our peer reviewer has any comments.

[Speaker 10] (1:33:54 - 1:36:08)
So Deb Colbert from Hancock Associates. Thanks Deb Welcome The CCT inspection is to look to see what the condition is of the pipes today and is there a chance that groundwater or rain water is getting into them and if that's the case where there are old sewers in the town, we've spoken with Gino, they have an ongoing program to slip line these old pipes so the intent of the CCTV inspection because the flows were not done during rain events wasn't to do a CCT inspection during a rain event it's to actually which would be way more beneficial not to do it during a rain event so that you could actually see the condition of the pipes and the results of that CCT inspection that happened on Friday, not a rain event was that the first two sections of pipe, approximately 300 feet, were showed cracks in the pipe, showed birth in the pipe and we're recommending and agreeing with the town and with the reviewers that 300 feet and with Gino, that 300 feet be relined the section of pipe of the 12 inch line showed no fractures, no birth movement and a clean pipe, so our recommendation of the 560 feet of pipe or 568 feet of pipe that the peer reviewers were asking for the CCT to be done because that's the crucial pipes that we're adding flow to, we agree that with the town two sections of that pipe needs to be replaced, not replaced, relined and Gino is in agreement with that he saw the review of the 300 or the 600 feet of pipe that was recommended.

[Speaker 1] (1:36:08 - 1:36:16)
Okay, so I was going to ask Eileen, I don't think you've seen the CCTV because it sounds like it just went to Gino, I don't know if he shared that with you.

[Speaker 26] (1:36:16 - 1:36:22)
Yeah, but to answer the question, I agree with you don't want it to be raining when you're TVing.

[Speaker 1] (1:36:22 - 1:36:25)
Okay, great. Okay.

[Speaker 10] (1:36:25 - 1:36:44)
And if we want to take a break, I have the results, I can give them to Eileen and she can look them over right now, but the condition that the peer reviewers were asking for was the CCTV inspection and then a condition to assist the town in rehabilitation.

[Speaker 1] (1:36:45 - 1:36:52)
Okay. Alright, I think we've got a good response about some of that information. Dan, do you have any other comments right now?

[Speaker 3] (1:36:52 - 1:37:02)
Well, just now that we have the, is it Marissa or somebody's back on controlling the screen can we see the fire, the swept path plan and ask the applicant to explain how that complies?

[Speaker 1] (1:37:02 - 1:37:12)
Sure, she can put her hands right on it. So Marissa, it's the plan that shows the turnaround for the fire truck.

[Speaker 20] (1:37:13 - 1:37:22)
Does this plan change now that the capacity is reduced in the housing? Now that there's less, is there more room to turn or?

[Speaker 1] (1:37:22 - 1:37:36)
Yeah, how does that change with the, is the footprint moving at all for the structure to make any, the street's the same size, nothing's changing there for this turnaround, right? For the hammerhead.

[Speaker 10] (1:37:36 - 1:37:38)
The hammerhead has not changed.

[Speaker 27] (1:37:38 - 1:37:38)
Okay.

[Speaker 10] (1:37:38 - 1:37:49)
And the swept, yep, nope, and the swept path analysis has been reviewed multiple times from the fire chief and has been accepted by the fire chief.

[Speaker 6] (1:37:49 - 1:37:52)
And the fire chief's the authority in the jurisdiction, right?

[Speaker 1] (1:37:52 - 1:38:11)
Well, he's the person who we've looked to who should have the stakeholder that'll be responsible for the fire truck turning around and making sure that it does what he expects when there's an emergency.

[Speaker 3] (1:38:13 - 1:38:14)
It's sheet number eight.

[Speaker 1] (1:38:15 - 1:38:17)
That's state fire code.

[Speaker 5] (1:38:17 - 1:38:18)
C8?

[Speaker 1] (1:38:19 - 1:38:38)
So where does the, where does this whole analysis, the standards that are promulgated for this type of turnaround, is that from the state fire code or is there some other?

[Speaker 10] (1:38:39 - 1:38:46)
The standards, we're required to do the swept path analysis of the largest truck in the city of town of Swampscott.

[Speaker 6] (1:38:47 - 1:38:51)
Are you required by the local bylaw or are you required by the state fire code?

[Speaker 10] (1:38:53 - 1:38:55)
State fire code.

[Speaker 4] (1:38:56 - 1:39:00)
And I don't believe the applicants asked for waiver from anything there.

[Speaker 24] (1:39:01 - 1:39:07)
The state fire codes do ultimately bring things back to the authority having jurisdiction.

[Speaker 6] (1:39:08 - 1:39:18)
And so I think our jurisdiction is limited on state issues which are reserved for just like certain environmental conservation.

[Speaker 1] (1:39:19 - 1:39:28)
Our jurisdiction, this is a life safety. I'm sure that we have jurisdictions that regulate this. If it didn't meet the requirement, this would be a reason for a denial.

[Speaker 6] (1:39:29 - 1:39:34)
Determination as to whether it meets a requirement I think is... The opinion of the fire chief.

[Speaker 1] (1:39:34 - 1:39:35)
I get that.

[Speaker 3] (1:39:36 - 1:39:43)
I'm not asking the board to determine. I'm just asking a question as to how this complies because I'm seeing lines that intersect with buildings.

[Speaker 1] (1:39:44 - 1:39:59)
I'd love to see it now because I heard from the fire chief. I heard it was okay. I've heard from the petitioner it's okay and I've concluded it was okay.

If there's an issue, it would be an appropriate time to address it.

[Speaker 2] (1:39:59 - 1:40:57)
If I may just real briefly as to what Mr. Croft said, certainly it is a health or rather a safety thing but the appropriate condition which is the law anyway is that we must comply with all aspects of the fire code. And the one thing I do agree with Mr. Hill about is the technical term in the fire code is AHJ authority having jurisdiction which is either the chief or his designee which sometimes is a deputy chief. So we certainly know we have to comply.

I don't want to go so far as to say that we're beating a dead horse but the fire chief has both to the applicant and in testimony to this board said he's satisfied in all respects. I would agree with the chairman. It's not that you can't inquire but based on the opinion that's been expressed by the chief, I simply think you put a condition as to complying.

Simple as that.

[Speaker 6] (1:41:05 - 1:41:09)
Is there something you wanted to demonstrate on this picture or ask about?

[Speaker 3] (1:41:11 - 1:41:12)
Are you asking me?

[Speaker 1] (1:41:12 - 1:41:25)
I don't know if I had an ability to use a pointer but You're welcome to come up here and show us because it doesn't really do much for me to just looking at it that's for sure.

[Speaker 3] (1:41:28 - 1:41:54)
So this is a computer model and this truck is traveling this is the root of the truck. One of these lines is the wheel base and the other line is the front, the overhang of the truck. So the body of the truck is this outer line.

The inner line is a wheel I believe and again I'm not the one who did this but that's usually what we see. And so this line here Sorry.

[Speaker 25] (1:41:55 - 1:41:56)
I'm trying to zoom in.

[Speaker 3] (1:41:58 - 1:42:17)
So this line here you can see crosses into the building itself. This is the building footprint. Here this line crosses into parking spaces.

So I mean typically when I see these plans the engineers are very careful to make sure these lines don't intersect with anything because that's the whole point of a swept path analysis.

[Speaker 1] (1:42:17 - 1:42:26)
I think it has a legend there. Does it say left turn wheel? Do you see that?

Able to on the building Do you see on the building the legend? Yeah, left turn within aisle.

[Speaker 3] (1:42:29 - 1:42:30)
Yeah, that's what it says.

[Speaker 1] (1:42:30 - 1:42:42)
And then below there's another Do you see the one right below that on the building pointing left turn wheel aisle to This right here? Yeah.

[Speaker 3] (1:42:42 - 1:43:20)
It says left turn within aisle to Burke's parking area. That's the outside. So again I'm just looking at lines and I'm seeing them intersect.

I've seen a lot of these type of plans in my practice. I've never seen a swept path plan where the lines don't stay within the fire access lane. The requirement of the state fire code is that there be a fire access lane that's unobstructed.

This is clearly obstructed. So I understand the chief sent you a letter. I don't know if the chief actually addressed this specific question.

[Speaker 1] (1:43:20 - 1:43:22)
Well maybe we should take a look at the chief's letter.

[Speaker 6] (1:43:22 - 1:43:49)
I asked the chief, I believe, last meeting whether he had seen a swept path analysis and I thought he said I remember asking about the hammerhead but I don't remember the swept I'm not saying he did it, I just don't remember it. I asked if there had been a swept path analysis and the answer was yes and we then asked the question specifically whether or not he was satisfied with emergency access for fire. Yep.

He said he was.

[Speaker 25] (1:43:50 - 1:43:53)
I believe I saw Chief Archer is here.

[Speaker 1] (1:43:53 - 1:43:57)
Oh awesome. Look at this, everybody's here.

[Speaker 25] (1:43:59 - 1:44:01)
Chief you should be able to unmute yourself.

[Speaker 1] (1:44:02 - 1:44:04)
Oh he's got his hand raised and everything, perfect.

[Speaker 15] (1:44:05 - 1:44:06)
Good evening.

[Speaker 1] (1:44:06 - 1:44:07)
Chief, how are you?

[Speaker 15] (1:44:07 - 1:44:46)
I'm well, thank you. How are you? Good.

I apologize for not being here today. I fully intended on being there but work intruded so I was not able to be there in person. Regarding swept paths, the last meeting I was there the discussion centered more on the hammerhead and that access and the preference between that and a pass-through.

The fire department has reviewed the swept path analysis. I have spoken with the Deputy Chief and we'll work with him again. Last week, the fire department is satisfied with the swept path analysis.

[Speaker 1] (1:44:47 - 1:44:50)
Can you see the screen, the plan that's up on the screen?

[Speaker 15] (1:44:51 - 1:44:51)
I do.

[Speaker 1] (1:44:52 - 1:45:13)
And the area that Attorney Hill raised is the area of concern. It looked as if the wheel or the body didn't have room where it needs to make the turn near the structure. That's the way I think he pointed it out.

Do you see that?

[Speaker 15] (1:45:13 - 1:46:09)
I see it. Okay, so I have designated the Deputy Chief. I'm not sure it's my decision.

I am the AHJ on it. I do designate the Deputy Chief who is frankly more experienced in it than I am to review them. I can speculate that part of that what you're seeing as an impinging line is the bucket of our ladder truck which is 18, I don't know, which is 13 feet up in the air.

There could be a part of the ladder truck that's just too high up of a concern. In either case, I did have the Deputy Chief who is the Code Enforcement Fire Prevention Officer review it again and he's assured me that he's satisfied with this analysis.

[Speaker 1] (1:46:12 - 1:46:21)
Chief, would you have the ability to call him now and then come back and report on this issue?

[Speaker 15] (1:46:21 - 1:46:25)
I had it on the phone three minutes before I was done reviewing it.

[Speaker 1] (1:46:28 - 1:46:29)
Okay.

[Speaker 15] (1:46:29 - 1:46:31)
I was on the phone with him this evening.

[Speaker 1] (1:46:32 - 1:46:33)
And asked him about this issue?

[Speaker 15] (1:46:34 - 1:46:34)
Exactly.

[Speaker 1] (1:46:34 - 1:46:36)
And he said he was satisfied?

[Speaker 15] (1:46:36 - 1:46:37)
Yes.

[Speaker 1] (1:46:39 - 1:46:42)
Okay. Anyone have any questions for the Chief on the board?

[Speaker 7] (1:46:43 - 1:47:00)
I'm just wondering, is it the same question as to whether or not the Chief or the Deputy Chief is satisfied with the analysis as opposed to whether or not the analysis complies with the state fire code and state law? Aren't they two separate questions?

[Speaker 1] (1:47:00 - 1:47:02)
It sounds like it's two separate questions to me.

[Speaker 7] (1:47:02 - 1:47:03)
That's what it sounds like to me.

[Speaker 10] (1:47:05 - 1:47:06)
May I answer?

[Speaker 7] (1:47:06 - 1:47:12)
Is the Chief just saying, oh, it's all good, we can get through there, or is he saying that it complies, that it's consistent?

[Speaker 1] (1:47:12 - 1:47:14)
I don't think he's given an opinion that it complies with the state fire code.

[Speaker 7] (1:47:14 - 1:47:15)
I haven't heard that.

[Speaker 1] (1:47:15 - 1:47:17)
I've heard satisfied.

[Speaker 7] (1:47:17 - 1:47:19)
I've just heard satisfied.

[Speaker 15] (1:47:22 - 1:47:30)
I'm not quite sure how else to put it other than we've analyzed it, and we believe that it adequately accesses our firearms.

[Speaker 7] (1:47:32 - 1:47:39)
Right. What has been the analysis? When you say that you've analyzed it, exactly what analysis have you done?

[Speaker 15] (1:47:42 - 1:47:55)
I'm not quite sure how to answer that. We've analyzed the width of the truck, the width of the alley, the radius of the quarter of the turns, turn radius of the address.

[Speaker 27] (1:48:00 - 1:48:01)
That's how we have it.

[Speaker 1] (1:48:02 - 1:48:07)
Let me hear what Deb has to say. She was probably involved in putting this together.

[Speaker 10] (1:48:07 - 1:48:39)
Yes. The pinch point that he's talking about, that underground parking is all open. It looks like it's going into the building, but it's actually going under the building.

The pinch point that he's talking about for the curb, that is an overhang of the truck. Both of those are overhangs of the truck that meets the swept analysis.

[Speaker 1] (1:48:39 - 1:48:40)
It meets the state fire code?

[Speaker 10] (1:48:40 - 1:48:54)
It meets the state fire code. It's the best engineers can do for two-dimensional plans. We can't get three-dimensional plans on there.

[Speaker 1] (1:48:55 - 1:49:05)
That's helpful in understanding how what looks like it wouldn't be compliant, how that opinion became such.

[Speaker 10] (1:49:07 - 1:49:33)
Again, this is analysis based on how the driver is going to drive the truck. A lot of times, fire trucks come in and there's no cars parked. They have full access around the building.

They can make the turns. They can make the radiuses. That's what this plan shows you.

[Speaker 3] (1:49:37 - 1:50:01)
I respectfully disagree with that comment. The plan does not show that the fire truck can satisfy these turning radiuses. If there's overhang in the building, it's interfering with parking spaces that are on this plan.

The response I'm hearing tonight is unsatisfactory from my perspective. It's your call as a board. I understand the chief has reviewed it.

This does not make sense at all from my perspective.

[Speaker 1] (1:50:05 - 1:50:10)
I appreciate that. Thank you, chief. Any other questions about this issue?

[Speaker 6] (1:50:10 - 1:50:53)
We do have a motion. It's a fire prevention memo. It does say that it creates a hammerhead turnaround.

This plan meets the codes required for fire department access but does not enhance fire department access. Ultimately, that is the plan they went forward with, I believe. This is the only plan I've seen.

It says this plan meets the codes required for fire department access. I'm assuming that's the state fire code but it doesn't say state fire code. I don't know what other codes...

[Speaker 1] (1:50:54 - 1:51:03)
I think Ezra's going to tell us that we need to condition it to meet the state fire code. Ezra's got his hand raised. I want to ask him for his help.

[Speaker 4] (1:51:04 - 1:53:15)
Sure. Actually, I was going to say this needs to meet the state fire code regardless of what you say. 40B has no...

There's no power in the app that can overrule a state code. Whether or not you say anything, it needs to meet the state fire code. That's on the applicant to worry about.

If you're worried about it, that's why they showed you the amendment. You could certainly add a condition kind of belt and suspenders. We know firefighters love suspenders.

You could put that in. Just to make it clear, you're acknowledging for the abutters and yourselves that this has to meet state fire code. Your findings will indicate that they provided a swept path analysis and the fire department said you reviewed that and the fire chief said, I think on three occasions now that this meets it.

To me, of course it's up to the court to decide what you want to do but you're now in a position where you've got your own expert has said this meets it. We know that it needs to meet the state requirement and an attorney for the abutters has said he doesn't think it meets it. I guess you need to decide which experts you want to go with.

It's a this is a difficult position for us to find ourselves in because in any case if there were someone who disagreed, I guess you want to try to go with the finding that you feel is most defensible. I guess the only other point I would make is I think this does introduce the hazard I was mentioning about keeping the hearing open. I do think you very clearly want to keep it open.

I think that makes sense but I think there is a real possibility that even when you have information, even when questions have been asked and answered, at the next hearing people may ask the same questions again at some point. I think you're going to run out of time answering the same questions over and over. I guess the whole reason we consult the town officials and the peer reviewers is to get good, solid answers to their findings.

I think at least in this case we have those answers. That was all I was going to say.

[Speaker 1] (1:53:17 - 1:54:28)
Thank you, Ezra. I do appreciate that the neighbors engaged Attorney Hill who's provided great analysis and opinions. I think the neighbors were very effective in presenting some of their concerns and questions by engaging him.

Instead of we can hear a lot of the same comments and questions he was very tailored in what he was looking to address. I don't think that was a productive exercise. I learned something important about what I understood incorrectly about the ability to put on certain conditions on the applicant.

I wasn't aware that I could condition for some of these specific improvements that are caused by the project. With that, I think it's time to let some other members of the public comment. I'd ask people that are here if they have questions about the project.

Yes. I'd ask everyone first state your name and your address before you begin for our record.

[Speaker 21] (1:54:28 - 1:54:30)
Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Can you hear me?

[Speaker 1] (1:54:31 - 1:54:31)
Yes.

[Speaker 21] (1:54:32 - 1:55:32)
My name is Ann Driscoll and my address is to Upland Road. First, I'd like to thank Wynn for the accommodations they've made. They have listened to concerns that have been expressed.

I think that there seems to be a rush here to close tonight on the part of Wynn when it's clear to me that there's still a need for people to have time, specifically our attorney, to have time to review some of these reports that came in at the last minute. Since you have until June 12, I see no reason not to extend the public comment and continue this process and allow Attorney Hill to be part of the draft review.

[Speaker 1] (1:55:32 - 1:56:06)
I told them I just want to vote on this board, but my opinion is we're going to give them that opportunity. We're not going to close the public hearing. I seem to feel that I had consensus from the board on that.

I understand Wynn. They've been at this a long time. Our board's been at this a long time.

We'll likely have a straw poll tonight, but those aren't necessarily set in stone. Perhaps there's, while the public hearing is open, something that's going to change our minds, but I don't think so. I am going to keep the public hearing open specifically for that.

[Speaker 21] (1:56:07 - 1:56:08)
Great. Thank you very much.

[Speaker 1] (1:56:08 - 1:56:15)
Sure. Thank you. We go over here.

Great. Thanks so much.

[Speaker 22] (1:56:16 - 1:57:11)
Hi. My name's Mary, excuse me. My name's Mary DiCillo, and I'm not an abutter to this project.

I live over in 7 Rockland Street, far away from the neighborhood. I have two questions. One is a procedural question.

What does a straw vote mean, and what's the purpose of a straw vote? The second is in terms of conditions, it's been my understanding that there have been several projects in Swampscot that have had conditions placed on them in the past, and that for whatever reasons, the conditions were not adhered to. What kind of relief is there, or enforcement is there around conditions that get placed on a project?

I do have some concerns around that. Thank you.

[Speaker 1] (1:57:11 - 2:00:42)
Thank you. I can tell you that my opinion, oftentimes by the time we close the public hearing, we have debate amongst the board members, and we poll the board to see where they stand, and we don't get many 40 B's here. We haven't.

It's been quite a while since we've had our last one. But on a project where we need a super majority of somebody putting a deck into their side yard, we'll have an idea as is it going to be a yes vote or a no vote, and they need four votes in that case, so that a person, if there are enough votes, we move forward with someone making a motion. Here, it's a majority vote on this petition, and we are going to have a struggle because our time is coming close to an end.

If we don't decide this case by June 12, the petitioner could get a constructive approval without conditions. So there's a very tight time requirement that's required by law, so I, as the chair, am looking to poll my members and to see where they stand on the petition. They're not required to say whether or not they're a yes vote or a no vote.

That's their individual decision that they need to make at the time that we have a final vote. But I think that we've heard enough evidence in this case that we can get an idea as to whether or not there are three votes that are yeses or noes so that we can move forward to our next meeting in having the 15-page, 20-page document that's proposed, findings of fact, and perhaps conditions and waivers that is part of what we need to decide here and do it at the next meeting. So it's there's a lot of work that gets done outside of the public hearing and drafting that decision and we need to make sure we comply with the time.

So I think now is the time that we have to be looking at this and saying, are you a yes vote or a no vote on this? You're not necessarily locked in but I would think it would take something very persuasive to change that vote of a member. On your second question on conditions, we're not the board with jurisdiction to enforce the conditions, the building inspector would, and if the building inspector, if someone was aggrieved of the building inspector's determination, they could file an appeal that would get back to our board and then we would have jurisdiction.

So we put conditions in just about every petition that we decide. And in terms of a building inspector appeal, it hasn't been that many that I've had in the past 10 years on this board. I can tell you 15 years ago, when I was on this board, we had a lot of building inspector appeals for questions about conditions being complied with.

So there's a remedy if conditions aren't complied with. So I'm going to have to see, let me go to somebody who's on Zoom for the next public comment. Please use the raise your hand feature.

[Speaker 25] (2:00:44 - 2:00:46)
Okay, I have Aaron Beardolfi.

[Speaker 27] (2:00:47 - 2:00:47)
Okay.

[Speaker 12] (2:00:49 - 2:02:32)
Hello, this is Aaron Beardolfi from Levenger, Peru. And first I just want to voice my support for this project. I would completely agree with the Swansdale Affordable Housing Trust when they're saying it's a net benefit and a win for the town to put this through.

And I think that should be duly considered with this decision here. And second, I just want to point out to the board, you spent how long going through this process throwing spaghetti at the wall. And you say your top concerns are things like the rail trail, but you spent 90% of the time talking about parking and traffic.

And your actions aren't meeting what your values, stated values, are. So you really got to re-look at this whole process and try to understand what's gone wrong. And really I want the board to look in front of you, look at the win.

Employees there, probably with the exception of the owner, just mentally calculate what their hourly rate is, and how many hours they've spent on this. Calculate that out, how much money has been spent on this for this process. And know that that's no different if this process were 30 units, if this process were 16 units, if this process were 80 units.

So if we want smaller projects because this one supposedly is too big, then we need to make some changes to our zoning laws. And I don't believe that the zoning board has written a letter to the planning board yet to ask them why they haven't done it yet.

[Speaker 1] (2:02:33 - 2:03:03)
Have you? Well, Mr. Burdoff, I think you confused some of the process and procedure and rules that we have here. Number one, the state law that we hear with jurisdiction to decide this petition strips much of the power from other boards and has this one comprehensive permit.

So I've gone over some of that. I'd encourage you to look on...

[Speaker 12] (2:03:03 - 2:03:15)
No, I'm familiar with why we're doing this right now. I think my comment is more that if we change the zoning bylaws, we're going to have less of a need for 40B projects to come in, especially of this size.

[Speaker 1] (2:03:16 - 2:03:19)
So I'd encourage you to join the...

[Speaker 12] (2:03:19 - 2:04:35)
I'm already doing that. I want the zoning board to... because it's been frustrating, I can tell from you guys, to go through this process.

And you've noticed some faults in the process. So I would encourage you to write to the planning board because your voice is actually going to be larger than mine, to write them a letter to encourage them to change zoning bylaws, to encourage small and multi-family housing, allowing them by right to come in to avoid some of this process. And one of the things you didn't mention, Mr. Chair, at the beginning of why 40B was enacted was to correct some of the things about redlining that happens, especially back in Boston today. So I know you guys think you're going and dotting all the I's and crossing all the T's here, but you're really just upholding systemic racism. And it's astounding to me that I don't think people get that, that you're denying multi-family housing in Swampstown, which we haven't had in so long, and it's denying people the voice or the ability to live here in Swampstown. It's increasing housing prices, and I don't know why.

[Speaker 1] (2:04:35 - 2:04:49)
I don't know why you're concluding that we're denying anything. I appreciate your comments. Thank you.

I only have so much time, so I'm going to move on to the next comments. So anyone that's present here, thank you. Do you have your name and your address, please?

[Speaker 16] (2:04:53 - 2:07:17)
Hi. I'm Mike Wood. I live on Upland Road.

I've lived here all my life, except 13 years I was in the Army. I understand the need for affordable housing, but this project's way too big. I think we need to be careful of the precedent we set here.

I know four other projects scheduled to happen in the near future. One on Pine Street, one on Spinelli Road, one on Archer Street, where we're always garages. So the size of what we do here is going to be important for all those projects.

They're all watching to see what happens here. The Select Board, the Planning Board, the Town Administrator, they're all opposed to the size of this project. There's zero open space.

There's no definite plan for the rail trail. I haven't heard anything definite about that. Parking's still inadequate for 114 units.

We could very easily have 200 cars, and they're going to be competing with parking at Berks Tumbling Academy. I think you saw those pictures we submitted about Berks Tumbling Academy, what the parking lot looks like when they're in session. It's full.

I don't know about the sewer. Like I said, I've lived here all my life. I know when it rains, underneath the tracks, it floods.

I don't know if that has any bearing on this testing that's going on, but I think it should. I think with these other projects we have, we'll be able to meet our 10% goal of affordable housing. So I don't think we need to be bullied into doing anything here that we don't want to do.

I know they don't want to have smaller apartment building, but I think that's what we should be shooting for. Something that's more in line with the fabric of the neighborhood. It's just too big right now, the way it's proposed.

I appreciate all your work. I've been going on these meetings.

[Speaker 1] (2:07:18 - 2:07:41)
Thank you. Anyone on Zoom next that wants to be heard about? Anything with this petition?

Anyone present here? I don't see any hands up on Zoom, so someone here.

[Speaker 9] (2:07:41 - 2:12:05)
Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Members of the Board, my name is Robert Bradley. I live at 8 Littles Point Road in Swamps Creek.

My previous statements to the Board, I've been coming for over a year now, I referenced the two reports that were previously prepared by the town. I'm sorry, I'm just having a little trouble hearing you. In my previous statements to the Board, I referenced the two reports that were completed by the town in 2016.

One was the Swampscar 2025 Master Plan. The other was the Housing Production Plan. In both of those plans, the key elements described were one, affordable housing, diverse housing stock, housing for persons with disabilities, and the development of underutilized areas.

Those were the four primary goals in each of those reports. They were comprehensive reports. This project, as I mentioned before, clearly checks off each and every one of those issues.

I'd also like to add that since that report was put together, there's been a new movement in transit-oriented housing, something that wasn't around at that time. This is also an added benefit to this project. Living near public transportation means easier access to jobs, albeit Boston, while taking cars off the road and lowering carbon emissions.

I would, contrary to the previous statement that you just read, like to commend you on what you've done. On two occasions now, Mr. Chairman, we've explained to the residents the process. It is a difficult process for the board, but I appreciate that.

One thing that you won't find in the 40B laws, if we all look, is the types of 40Bs. There's what we like to call friendly 40Bs and hostile 40Bs. I think the lawyers would probably agree that there are two types.

In this case, as I've said before, we have a friendly 40B. On every occasion since I've been coming to these meetings, the developer has responded positively to any questions or comments, albeit back to the day when we were 128 units and they asked to be reduced. They went to 120.

We were told that the building looked like a big box. It wasn't of the right vernacular to swampscot. They went, hired a local architect who was familiar with the area and changed the design drastically, adding significant cost to this building in doing so.

The following meeting came up the rail trail. They volunteered to provide land to work with the town to come up with a way to make the rail trail work. Most recently, today I hear for the first time, they now lowered the units once again for 120 and 114 and increased the easement from 10 feet to 20 or 25 feet.

It seems like every time something comes up, they've always addressed it positively. I think that's a key thing to not lose track of. I honestly think if we're faced with a hostile 40B, it's going to be someone coming in wanting to put 300 units and fight you the whole way.

I don't think this town's ever going to meet its 10%, contrary to these other developments you referred to. I think you need probably, what, 340 more units. Since this 2016 report, all of the developments that were put up in this town from the handover property to the assisted living down the end across from Walgreens to the middle school, I don't think there's any affordable units.

Our numbers have only gotten worse since the town spent all this time putting together two extensive reports. Whether we just throw those reports in the trash and completely ignore them or we try at this point from this project going forward to try and find a way to get to that 10%. Again, 10% is gold.

It's not like, hey, we reached it. Let's celebrate. It's a point that we should be.

Being at, what, 3% or less, it's rather embarrassing at this point. I know, real quickly, I'll be done. The last thing I mentioned, and there were several comments afterwards, why does someone from another neighborhood care?

Oh, he's from the other side of town. Why does he care? Well, I do care.

I've been a 30-year resident of this town. I've raised four kids in this town. I'd love nothing more than to have any of them be able to live in this town when they graduate college.

But guess what? There isn't diverse housing in this town for kids graduate college. There isn't an opportunity to take public transportation into the city with housing adjacent to it.

This project provides housing for that quote-unquote missing middle, that group of kids out of school. As a result, I've got one in Los Angeles, one in Portland. I get a chance in my next year, maybe one could live in this town, work in the city and commute.

I just hope that this board consider this and approve this project. Thank you.

[Speaker 1] (2:12:05 - 2:12:22)
Thank you very much. Is there anyone on Zoom that wanted to address the board? I thought Mr. Perry was going to look to address the board. Is he remote? I promised him I'd give him one last...

[Speaker 25] (2:12:22 - 2:12:28)
Yep. And I also have a hand raised from Justina Oliver. Hers went up first.

I don't know if you want to take them in order.

[Speaker 1] (2:12:28 - 2:12:30)
Whoever was first is fine.

[Speaker 18] (2:12:34 - 2:14:11)
Hi, Justina Oliver. I'm the chair of the Toms-Brett Historical Commission and town meeting member of precinct four. I just wanted to bring up to the board I'm sure you probably don't know that we are actually placed a demolition delay on the house at 35 Pitman Road.

We have brought in Habitat for Humanity who is interested in taking this house essentially lifting it off its foundation and moving it to a lot in Swampscott about a quarter of a mile away from this location. Habitat would essentially renovate this house that is currently being used as a two family potentially into three affordable housing units that would be home ownership. Part of that process would be the acquisition of the land for the relocation of the house and also the moving costs.

We have already done some estimates of the cost for relocation would be around $150,000 to $200,000. The direction met with the affordable housing trust tonight at 530. Hopefully we'll maybe give them some money from the affordable housing trust.

I'm just wondering from the board is there any condition that we could possibly obtain funding for the relocation of this property in particular?

[Speaker 1] (2:14:13 - 2:14:35)
I think I could ask the petitioner their comments on... I don't really know right now. I wasn't aware that there was a demolition delay and historical involved and I'm not sure if what 40D does about waivers on that.

Ezra do you have any experience with that?

[Speaker 4] (2:14:40 - 2:16:34)
I have a little experience. Certainly if it's a local preservation restriction or demo delay like that, then 40D could allow the applicant to request a waiver from it. If it's any sort of federal protection or state protection then they couldn't.

I think what Justine is speaking about is a local historical preservation commission requirement. There was something in the file about this I was just quickly trying to look it up. That there was they have interest in donating it.

I guess to speak to her question I mean the idea of a condition requiring a contribution to help offset the costs you can always put a condition like that and they can always appeal it. I guess you would want to see does the board have a compelling reason to feel that there's a problem created that the applicant has and that this would offset that problem. I think typically the goals of 40D are exactly what you mentioned earlier about compelled safety, welfare, that kind of stuff.

I'm actually not familiar with the case law about what's been upheld in terms of historic preservation as something that is a compelling interest. I think I might refer the applicant because I know they've been in discussions since I think almost a year on this with the town and the historic commission I'm not sure what they have already worked out. You might want to start with that as a baseline to understand what their willingness was to do it.

If that makes sense. If the board felt they needed a condition of such and such I'd say as I said before, check with town council to make sure it holds up. You could require something.

[Speaker 1] (2:16:35 - 2:16:37)
Peter? Thank you, Ezra.

[Speaker 2] (2:16:38 - 2:17:31)
What's being discussed if it is the demolition delay ordinance is definitely a local ordinance and is definitely subject to the zoning board taking action on it and to grant a waiver. Number one, we have requested such a waiver. It's included.

Number two, Angela or perhaps our architect can correct me I thought we had been through those discussions if not formally with the notice to the historic commission as to the demolition delay, which by the way is only a delay I mean even worse case it will not, cannot prohibit even on a non-40B project the demolition. It just is either a six month or a one year I can't remember which amount of time this ordinance in Swampscott has but it wouldn't prevent the demolition anyway so we believe that it's satisfactory simply to issue a waiver as we have requested.

[Speaker 1] (2:17:31 - 2:17:53)
What if we didn't issue a waiver and there was a delay is it in the petitioner's best interest to not have the delay financially to I think the delay is October and it starts October 30th for nine months Yes, that's correct So it's essentially a moot point.

[Speaker 2] (2:17:54 - 2:18:19)
I mean as to Habitat I can only say I don't think it's appropriate to have a condition and I don't know if it's at all feasible but if Habitat or the town committee wants to talk to Wynn, you know that's certainly fine but it's really outside the domain of what should rightfully be a condition it just, you know, it's a nice idea it sounds like but it's just not something that I think the Zoning Board should get into. Thanks.

[Speaker 1] (2:18:23 - 2:18:34)
Mr. Perry Mr. Chair, can you hear me?

[Speaker 11] (2:18:34 - 2:21:57)
Yes Good evening, sir. Terry Perry, 60 Berkeley Road My apologies for not being there. I'm stuck on my couch with the flu so I couldn't really make it tonight I'm glad you're by Zoom Yeah, me too I really wasn't planning on speaking, Mr. Chairman. I'm surprised you called me out so I guess I will comment very briefly. I want to first off thank the Zoning Board. This has not been easy.

This is a difficult mental health situation and obviously a lot of differing opinions so I do appreciate the work that all five of you have been doing, the peer reviews as are everybody else. I also want to thank you, Wynn he's been a real gentleman. His staff have been pretty good with us and have really been kind enough to talk some of this through.

We don't agree on everything but I do want to thank them too. I really have said just about everything I can say about this. I appreciate our attorney, Dan Hill, has articulated far better than I can some of our concerns and some of the legal issues and I'm kind of happy, Mr. Chairman, it sounds like he brought to your attention some options that may assist you in your final deliberations so I thought that was a good thing I'm going to end my comments with what I said a year and a half ago and I think it's too big of a project.

I don't think they've addressed the Berks parking is a concern I think we all agree even if you're past this it could be problematic and I really take it back. I think you'd have to give some due consideration. When the town administrator voices concerns about it that's something you have to consider in your final thoughts because it's going to really challenge the community on a host of issues but hey I can't argue about the affordable housing issue.

All that stuff is good stuff. We'll get around that but I've maintained all along the project is too big. I appreciate them dropping units but the bottom line is I think it's still too big for this neighborhood as you've already heard The only thing I would add, Mr. Chairman, I really don't know enough about this I'm not an expert in this area. I discussed in the past the whole open space I think we all agree there really is an open space with this project It seems to me that the developers who want this project they should be investing in the community in some sort of open space I don't know what you can if you should approve the petitioner's request but it seems to me that the petitioner should make a bit of an investment as opposed to the taxpayers picking up the tab here It seems to me that the petitioner for establishing goodwill within the community should work with the team and whatever is necessary to get the permits to go under the railroad bed and pay for that I think if they were to do that it would be extremely well received as opposed to the taxpayers If they're going to come in and build this large project I think they have at least a moral responsibility to invest in open space I would suggest if you can make that as part of your conditions should you approve this, I would ask you to do that Mr. Chairman, I guarantee you this will be the last time I speak on this I thank you for allowing me to speak quite a bit, I thank you for allowing the abutters of the names to speak and I wish you nothing but any final deliberations Thank you very much

[Speaker 1] (2:21:57 - 2:22:16)
Thank you Mr. Perry Okay, is there anyone else before we have our internal debate and our straw poll as I describe it Okay Seeing none So

[Speaker 2] (2:22:18 - 2:24:06)
Mr. Chairman just a couple of real quick points because somebody mentioned near the end about the Burks parking and the photos that was very anecdotal, there was testimony from the owners that that was some event that was not just that facility as I recall but more importantly we did submit data we didn't go over it tonight because we had a lot to talk about but we did submit the raw data that showed from actual studies over the last several weeks of the parking number of cars at the Burks facility and it's always in the time frames that were listed for many days, just about all hours of the day when it was open very very low use of the parking lot so number one we've answered that specifically, number two as we said earlier we have added parking and also made accommodation on Pittman Road the point about open space that was just made we responded to that as part of our response contained in our overall submission but specifically to Mr. Hill's point about that item and the public should remember that we do have fitness room we do have community room we do have the roof garden which is on the top of the building, outdoor although not on the site and there are some spaces on the site for areas for children and of course making the accommodation for the bike trail does create the opportunity for access to the bike trail so we think we responded to all those points and the final thing I don't want to belabor it because I would never criticize a chairman of a board bending over backwards to have a fair process I would like just to ask in terms of whether or not you're comfortable closing I don't really think that there are any open items, I mean everything really has now been addressed, even the point about the

[Speaker 1] (2:24:06 - 2:24:40)
file sheets. I see it as a very narrow area that swayed me from Mr. Hill that the documents were uploaded through no fault of the petitioner the petitioners worked extraordinarily hard to get through all the peer review questions to get through all of this but it was uploaded late I told you I take a portion of the fault for not being sure Mr. Hill received that information so just on that alone I can't give you the conscience

[Speaker 2] (2:24:40 - 2:24:43)
I would give you the same

[Speaker 1] (2:24:43 - 2:24:47)
courtesy on the other side I would give anyone that came before me that same courtesy.

[Speaker 2] (2:24:47 - 2:24:58)
As I say I cannot criticize that and no blame being placed by us, by the applicant so I just wanted to give that one last shot and I respect what you said, thank you.

[Speaker 1] (2:24:58 - 2:26:57)
Okay well thank you. We're looking to close. Well did you see the data that we alluded to, I don't know if you could hear back there, there was a study that was done of the Burke parking I believe on three different days and there were counts at various times showing the cars going in and out.

It showed a volume of cars going in and out but at no time were there more than 28 cars in their lot during those three separate days. So that only proves it was there those three separate days. We've seen pictures, we've seen photos, so I think the board is well aware of the demands of parking from the Burke Tunneling Academy, the cycle, the gym, everything that's going on there.

So I don't know that we need to have any more evidence about that I think everybody heard a lot about the project, seen a lot of data, evidence, and I think it's time for us to really get an idea because time is short for us with the clock running and having to be done by June 12th. Okay you're welcome. So with that is everyone comfortable with having essentially a straw poll about where they stand on the project and I'm not looking to force anyone to make that decision.

You don't have to make that today. You don't have to make it until there's a vote after we close the public hearing which would be on the next date. So if everyone's okay with that, I don't mind, I'll put my thoughts on record first although I could do it last I don't want to sway anyone, I don't want to dominate as the chair I feel like so much

[Speaker 17] (2:26:57 - 2:27:58)
I'll go first if you'd rather I'll go first if you'd rather I the recent changes have swayed me I really think there's a sweet spot with parking I didn't want too much parking I didn't want too little parking I had this in my mind if it fell between 1.1 and 1.19 and they end up at 1.15 that solves that for me the rail trail was another concern I had and because we had that conflict between under or over that's now resolved and I had concern about the Pitman Road people losing all their street parking and they've resolved that. So those were my three standouts and also we do gain a bonus of a little bit of open space by cutting off those six units. And we do improve our density so all the changes that showed up today have changed my mind to make me AS

[Speaker 1] (2:27:58 - 2:28:07)
Well thank you very much Heather I can lose to the more senior person who's been on the board for 20 years

[Speaker 7] (2:28:09 - 2:33:26)
I'll make some comments that I want to make it's kind of scattered so I don't have anything prepared but I was initially opposed to the project and then gradually when really won me over the gentleman in the back there I agree with him he said that they always had a positive response to all the various issues that came up and I appreciated that and they came in with more positive changes today which I did not expect it was a nice surprise I've been on the board for 20 years which is unbelievable and I've never had so much paper as this case and I think this is a good case that really points up how difficult it is for a local board to deal with 40B especially like this 40B because there's three lawyers on the board but we are not experts on 40B not like Dan Hill not like Peter Freeman not even close and we're not going to and we can read the handbook that's online on 40B projects and we can read some cases but that's not going to make us experts on 40B so we're at a real disadvantage and we're not engineers and we're not traffic experts and we don't know about groundwater and wastewater and pipes and lining of pipes and all that we're not experts in that and these are some complicated engineering reports that we're expected to read and matrices and all this and this also reminds me of the history and is this project perfect definitely not it has a lot of serious issues I don't think the I used to think that the traffic would be an issue and I thought that when the landing was put up there with 184 units I think I remember I couldn't believe I thought that was going to be a major traffic nightmare and I don't even have never even noticed the landing once in a while I see a car pull out and I see a car pull in and there's 184 units in there so I don't think that traffic's going to be an issue I really don't but parking is definitely an issue I think those 23 spaces way down the end is really illusory I don't think anybody's going to park down there so that's a big problem that I have I mean I drove down there and parked my car down there and I looked back to see how far up the building's going to be I would not park down there if I had a car on a cold winter night so I don't know how that's going to shake out but it's an issue but there's going to be issues there's not going to be any good place in town for this this reminded me of the going back when the town was planning the high school and I remember hearing about all these missed opportunities that the town had for years I guess I don't know how many years it was but there were many years 20, 30 years I guess maybe longer that the town passed up sites that might have been better for the high school passed up opportunities and the land was gone and it couldn't happen again this reminded me of that this isn't the perfect spot but there is no perfect spot in Schwannstadt it just doesn't exist so whatever site is going to be selected for affordable housing or large multi-family buildings we're going to have issues we're going to have issues like this and but I just don't think that these issues are insurmountable they're not deal breakers I think they can be dealt with with conditions I think that some improvement can be made in the conditions I'm glad that we have attorney Hill representing the neighbors because I think that helps a lot to have somebody on the other side who's an expert also one of the conditions that I did have a problem with was the one having to do with the acoustic study I didn't like the way the applicant chose to deal with that which is a general I forget, I don't have that in front of me but I know I think that consultant wanted an analysis procedure that in accordance with the noise guidebook, whatever that is and which is a very specific condition but the applicant just wanted to be very general and I didn't I think that can be, I didn't like that I think that it should be conditioned along the lines suggested by the consultant and it's too bad too that we only get with all these units and with the number being affordably, we get really a small uptick I think from 3.7 to 5.7 percent I guess and me getting to that 10 percent, we're probably never going to get to that 10 percent is the reality I'm probably forgetting some other things I wanted to say but those are my general feelings at this point

[Speaker 6] (2:33:26 - 2:33:27)
Fred?

[Speaker 7] (2:33:33 - 2:33:38)
I didn't vote I haven't voted We'll vote when the time comes

[Speaker 6] (2:33:39 - 2:39:23)
So first I want to thank Mark just before I say my thoughts because this is a daunting process and I think the way that you have administered it has been helpful not just for the public and for the petitioner but I think for the board members as well so I appreciate that I second that I think that I think it was Aaron who said the larger point here that we've spent so much time not talking about, we've talked about parking, traffic, rail trail we really haven't spent much of these six, seven meetings talking about the affordable housing element and just how important that is and what a crisis it's become and how underperforming Swampscot has been for years When we have a project like this you hear somebody say oh it's too big or I'm in favor of affordable housing but, I think we heard that 25 times over the past six months I see the need for it but this project's too big Our jurisdiction here is limited and it's limited for a reason, that's because I believe the need is so apparent for affordable housing that the reasons that we can come up with to deny it are limited and so one of the reasons to deny an affordable housing project is not because it's too big, now if by nature of it being too big that factors into health or safety or open space or the design part, sure but just in and of itself the fact that it's a big project, yeah it is big, and yeah it does create a certain density but that is in and of itself not a reason in my opinion to vote against it when I look at our specific criteria and I ask whether or not this applicant has met those criteria I believe it has and again, like Dan said, this is far from a perfect project, but that's not the threshold that an applicant needs to meet and so, you know one of the examples for example was parking that was a definite concern of mine from the beginning and I've seen how the project has evolved to satisfy those concerns one of the points I'm still going to be concerned about are those bikes because bikes, you know if this is a transit oriented project and it's near a commuter station you know, it is really designed for that sort of commuter and alternate transportation and the more bikes there are, the less cars there are the more people riding bikes instead of driving, the less the traffic concerns and congestion hopefully would be so I don't think 15 spaces are, you know, what did we get to tonight 39, I still am concerned about that, I'd like to see some specific conditions that are measurable and I think Ezra had proposed some language that I thought was a good start you know, I had specific questions on the sewer and the storm water, but again I'm not an engineer and so it's to me important to hear what the peer review experts have said and I'm comfortable with their analysis, I do want to hear a little bit more about the lining and the 300 feet but I do think you know, I'm comfortable with that and lastly, the fire safety I mean, there's no more important you know, issue than whether or not a fire engine can reach this building especially a building that is going to have hundreds, you know 150 or so people in it so that was very important to hear from the chief last meeting, I'm glad he participated again and I really appreciate that you know, I think it is helpful to know that as well, it has to meet the state fire code so you know, I do have a couple other comments but overall, I feel that the larger point here being the need for affordable housing does it get us to 10%? No. But it almost doubles what we have you know, I mean, it gets us to gets us part of the way there and I think that should be, it's not just in a document, I thought your remarks were right on target you know, it gets us closer and it's not like, you know this is not part of a deliberate intended result you know, this is what this town has set as its goal and so, you know, if not now, when?

So again I want to thank the applicant, I think, you know, you've done a very good job coming back I didn't hear you say once, no, we're not going to do that. It's always, thank you for that comment, I think that's important we'll follow up. Again it's not a perfect project but I think all things considered it is it's met the threshold in my opinion.

[Speaker 1] (2:39:25 - 2:39:27)
Thank you Brad. Paula?

[Speaker 20] (2:39:30 - 2:40:28)
I've really disliked the size of it from the very beginning and my heart goes out to the neighbours who are going to be hugely impacted by this but I also want my cake and eat it too and I think the town does need 40B housing I don't like I mean, I wouldn't be too happy if I was living next door which is the truth I would really want someone to be on my side when fighting for it but also if I was looking for housing in town I'd want someone fighting for that as well so yeah, I think you've met the criteria I hate the size of it but I feel I also feel sad that we're losing six more units and some of them are the affordable units. I get the ratio, I understand why that has to happen.

I would have loved it if we lost units that weren't the affordable housing units so I am a yes but I, you know I'm not happy about it

[Speaker 1] (2:40:29 - 2:45:52)
Thank you Paula There's already you know definitely it appears on the straw poll, three votes which is it's a simple majority but I will give you my comments because this is the opportunity really for the public to understand the rationale a bit you get a decision, the decision is written, the proposed decision by the petitioner with comments by the abutter on conditions comments that come from other board members but you really don't know necessarily what truly the board members are thinking and I think that particularly the abutters are entitled to that and the abutters you're going to be impacted more than anyone with this petition and I've looked myself personally to do what I can to protect your interest with the limited jurisdiction that we have and in my experience practicing law as a litigator for close to 30 years tells me that I can make you feel real good if I look to steer this all the way and try to push everyone to deny it or to put on reasonable conditions on it but my reading of the law tells me you might feel good for a little while but what would happen is it would be overturned on appeal and it would be built much worse than what we could get through a negotiation of conditions so it's reluctant that I look at this as a yes vote, I think the petitioner has done a very good job with their petition with trying, my big issue right away was the connection of the rail trail, I brought it up I think at the first or second meeting and they came back with initially the agreement that they would have an easement almost immediately and I absolutely 100% agree with Brad that the need for affordable housing it's not just a need that we can recognize locally that's needed, it's codified in law that's why we're here with this comprehensive permit because we've done a very poor job with the zoning law which requires restrictions for lots of a certain size for lower density and this is a project that exceeds what they're required to do 42% of the units, which is much more than what they're required to do would be affordable so between the connection with the rail trail, the 42% the fact that our peer review experts have told us that they have met satisfactory essentially all of the issues of concern with engineering, traffic architecture all of these things that I am not an expert on to second guess not only the petitioner's experts who are extremely qualified but our own experts who are extremely qualified so it's far from a perfect project all of these 40B projects are far from perfect but I think given what we have I think that it's as good as this board's going to be able to do to get any further in terms of making the project better so I'm going to be a yes vote on this. I wish it were better with open space I do though weigh that connection to the rail trail heavily on my analysis of the open space and I don't think that we could meet our burden that we have with a limited jurisdiction to deny this and not wind up with a project ultimately that would be approved by the housing appeals committee and it would be back potentially to 128 units and less parking and everything that we didn't want in the project so I thank everyone, first of all I thank everyone for the neighbors the public the petitioner for extraordinary professionalism asking that decorum be protected and abided by and the respect that I've seen between everyone neighbors who are going to be so impacted by this project who are commenting first that the petitioner has listened to them, maybe couldn't do what they wanted but has listened and been respectful and I do appreciate that it's a long arduous process I am relieved that we're getting very close to the finish, I think what we need to do now is to set the date that we're going to have our continued public hearing which would be to vote on the final decision so what's the next meeting that we have?

[Speaker 25] (2:45:52 - 2:46:05)
The 24th, I would not recommend doing it that night we have a pretty packed agenda including the Pine Street project we have which one? The Pine Street project yeah

[Speaker 1] (2:46:06 - 2:46:57)
but we've already we're not going to really take any more public comment, I think this is really a I think it's unlikely we're going to have we're just going to have the decision that will circulate in advance I think this is really a 15 minute process for this petition to say no I would just the findings of fact that I would look to make would be those contained in the written decision that's been circulated to all the members and to adopt that decision I don't know that I need to have I'm going to ask Peter if he thinks I need to have to go through the exercise of having a motion stating everything that's in the decision if I can just refer to the decision

[Speaker 2] (2:46:57 - 2:47:05)
you can certainly just refer to the decision I believe, well it must be because we submitted it, it's already part of the public record which means that the public has had

[Speaker 1] (2:47:05 - 2:47:42)
I'm going to make changes what Dan has to say for proposed conditions and I would look to get to a version before we meet and then I would look to make a motion to make those findings that are part of our record and to approve the decision with those conditions and waivers and I'd ask my board when we circulate that to submit any comments they have red line the decision so that we get to just have a 15 minute hearing on this

[Speaker 17] (2:47:43 - 2:47:46)
or if the two weeks is enough time do you think for the back and forth

[Speaker 1] (2:47:46 - 2:48:04)
well we have a draft I don't know if Dan has had enough time for you I'm just worried about if I put it on for another date in June and what if I don't have a quorum and I'm worried about the constructive grant I want to leave myself with a little bit of room

[Speaker 3] (2:48:11 - 2:48:23)
yeah I think it's I think it's doable that I could have something to the board by the end of next week it doesn't the problem is I'm in trial this week and I'm not going to have any time this week to do anything

[Speaker 1] (2:48:24 - 2:48:41)
I'm not going to ask that it be one week in advance for you you didn't get that same courtesy so you can have a little more time than that I would just ask that when you circulate your changes you also send a copy to Peter when you send it to Marissa

[Speaker 3] (2:48:41 - 2:48:48)
I think I can give you some conditions by the 20th and that gives the weekend and I'll talk to my clients to see if they want me to do this but assuming that they do

[Speaker 1] (2:48:49 - 2:49:16)
and I'm going to look to do that remote I'm not going to require anyone to be here in person want to just show up remotely you can but I definitely would appreciate having at least remote having Dan here and having Peter here and Chris here because I think it's going to be discussion about potentially deliberation about the conditions okay

[Speaker 25] (2:49:18 - 2:49:19)
Ezra has his hand raised

[Speaker 1] (2:49:19 - 2:49:20)
oh Ezra go right ahead

[Speaker 4] (2:49:20 - 2:50:03)
oh sure sorry you sort of got to it already I was mostly just going to suggest that so you don't have things coming right up last minute that you have some time to review this and also that maybe you suggest you can never say public comment is only allowed in some things if your record is open people can send in letters but maybe you can say really what you need to consider here is just the draft decision and the draft conditions or else you're going to have trouble focusing your discussion but I think you basically said that I might suggest that slightly earlier than May 20th might really help you focus your review over that weekend but if you're all willing to

[Speaker 1] (2:50:05 - 2:50:06)
I'm not much

[Speaker 4] (2:50:06 - 2:50:17)
that in terms of planning on submitting if it's a couple recommended changes to the conditions that's pretty easy for you to consider if it's a complete overhaul then it's a lot

[Speaker 1] (2:50:19 - 2:50:27)
right well I'll ask you to do your best so I'll ask you to do as best as all I can do

[Speaker 3] (2:50:27 - 2:50:33)
and I just want to actually also note I actually have a conflict that night on the 24th so I'm not sure if I can

[Speaker 25] (2:50:35 - 2:50:38)
it's the 24th that's Tuesday

[Speaker 1] (2:50:39 - 2:50:40)
so you have a conflict so you can't be here

[Speaker 3] (2:50:40 - 2:50:48)
I won't be able to attend I can try to have someone pinch hit for me and I can certainly do the drafting I can give you the conditions I just may not be able to personally attend the meeting

[Speaker 7] (2:50:50 - 2:50:50)
right

[Speaker 1] (2:50:52 - 2:50:57)
we could do we could do it just by zoom and just have a very brief meeting just for this hearing

[Speaker 3] (2:50:57 - 2:51:01)
unless you started earlier my conflict is at 7 so if you started at 6

[Speaker 1] (2:51:02 - 2:51:12)
let me just look at that that sounds like a great idea is that okay or not it's fine

[Speaker 6] (2:51:14 - 2:51:20)
the 24th 6pm yep that's good too because that won't backlog

[Speaker 17] (2:51:21 - 2:51:22)
and everyone else will stay on track

[Speaker 6] (2:51:23 - 2:51:23)
ok

[Speaker 1] (2:51:23 - 2:51:44)
the 24th at 6pm thanks everyone ok so I'm going to make a motion to continue the public hearing to the May 24th at 6pm one second on that we have a roll call Paula yes Brad yes yes Heather ok thank you everyone thank you

[Speaker 25] (2:51:45 - 2:51:49)
just an adjournment Mark an adjournment

[Speaker 1] (2:51:49 - 2:51:52)
motion to adjourn second all in favor aye