Planning Board - Regular Meeting

Hello. All right.

So it being seven o'clock and all members of the board do we expect to be here? Being here, Mr. McLean will be away this evening. We can get started. So, pursuant to legislation H62, Chapter 2 of the Acts of 2025, extending the suspension of certain provisions of the Open Meeting Law, General Law Chapter 30A, Section 20, this meeting of the Bedford Planning Board will be conducted to the greatest extent possible. No in-person attendance of members of the public will be permitted, but every effort will be made to ensure that the public can adequately access the proceedings in real time via technological means. In the event that we are unable to do so, despite best efforts, we will post on the town's website an audio or video recording, transcript, or other comprehensive record of proceedings as soon as possible after the meeting. On the agenda for this evening, the development session, one item, public hearing for 145 Davis Road, definitive subdivision plan for four lots off of Jeffrey Circle. Middlesex Development LLC is the applicant. After that, update on the comprehensive plan. And then business session items there. Preliminary discussion of the concept for the Bedford Plaza Hotel at 3340 Great Road. Also set asides for a dark sky I'm bylaw. I'm light pollution. I'm bylaw. I'm small clean energy facility permitting, data center permitting, and accessory dwelling unit ownership clarification prior to reports from board and committee members and staff updates. And the goal is to adjourn by 9 p.m. So with that, I'm onto the development session. I understand that the applicant has requested a continuation until July 28th.

That is correct. The subdivision for 145 Davis road and Jeffrey circle is still tied up in, um, securing, uh, peer review of the design. And that is not complete for this week. And therefore they've agreed to postpone their testimony until the next meeting on July 28th.

So do we have a motion to continue? So moved.

Yes, how are you?

I'm also here with Austin Smith, who I think I saw in the room there. And Austin will be sharing his screen.

Very good.

Yeah, well, we're happy to be here. I'm a planning consultant. I've seen you before. And Austin and I have been working with the committee for, I don't know, maybe almost a year at this point. So we have a lot to share with you. And I'll just go through a little bit of background just to make sure that everyone who may be watching is up to speed on what's happening. And then I'll focus in on the phase that we're just kind of coming to some conclusion around the strategies before we move into the final phase of laying the plan out and creating the implementation matrix and all of that. So why don't you go to the next slide, Austin? So again, I'm Jen, Jen Goldson. I'm serving as the project director and I'm the founder and managing director of my firm, JM Goldson, which I created 20 years ago. We're a women business enterprise and we've done a lot of comprehensive planning over the years, particularly in Massachusetts communities. We also do a lot of housing production plans and housing work and housing strategies. And we work with housing trusts as well. We also do a lot of community engagement. So we were excited that this project had a really good amount of engagement that we'll talk quite a bit about in a few slides. And Austin, why don't you do a quick introduction of yourself and then I'll mention Lucy and Flavio as well.

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Thank you. My name is Austin. We've all met at least once before, either in these kind of virtual meetings or some of you in person. Obviously, the committee members present. But I've been working with Jen for a few years now. I've been working on a number of different projects I've done just about some of everything that jen said so i kind of touch touch all the firm's work and i have a broad kind of expertise in local municipal planning in massachusetts so it's been it's been great fun working on this project you guys have a great committee um and it's been it's pretty fun so far

Great thanks Austin and two members of our team who who aren't here they're really more working in the background, helping us put everything together and. Lucy Corlette is a project assistant and Flavio Vila is a project assistant as well alright, so the next slide. So I first just want to say a big thank you. The project team from Bedford has been fantastic. We've been working directly with Tony and the planning department and Catherine, of course, before she retired. The comprehensive plan advisory committee, a couple of you are on that. And they've been really, really kind of rolled up their sleeves and gotten right in there, getting the outreach done, going to so many of the community meetings and the road shows and the working sessions and also all the wordsmithing and considerations around the draft plan and the strategies and vetting them. And then, of course, the Bedford community, which we'll talk more about how we've structured the engagement and what we've heard as well. So the next slide. So tonight I'll talk just a little bit of just an overview to kind of anchor us in where we are in the planning process. And then I'll talk about the key engagement themes and then I'll hand it off to Austin who will talk about the themes and each of the six themes of the plan. And then just a kind of a subset of what we're seeing in each of those themes. i believe you got a comprehensive list of the strategy ideas so we won't go through everything because there are a lot but um but we'll just touch on touch on a little bit for each theme all right next slide so the heart of the comprehensive plan uh as i know you all know but just to set the stage a little bit is to create a shared roadmap that the town will look to to align decisions among boards and commissions and committees and to really anticipate change in those trends and pressures that a lot of communities are facing in a similar way to Bedford, but of course every community is a bit different. And then connecting investments, decisions around investments, to the community priorities. I like to say a lot of what we do at JM Goldson is we bring the voices of the community, of the people, to the ears of local officials. And so that's what we hope that this plan is doing, where we're connecting those community decisions to the community priorities. Next slide. So our approach is very community driven, which I think is why you identified us as the winning firm a year or more ago. And we really focus a lot on public engagement. And one of the things that we believe in from the years we've been doing this is that varied approaches and giving people multiple opportunities in all different formats is really important. So I'll talk a little bit more about that. We also like to say that it's data informed. And so we look at all of our engagement. What are we hearing? What are the key themes? And we look at the qualitative data that's coming out of that and then grounded in those aligned and actionable strategies. So we're really the committee has really spent quite a bit of time and is still doing so with what we're calling roadshows. I'll talk about in a moment. to really vet those strategies to make sure that they're both aligned with community priorities, with what we're hearing, but also actionable, that they're feasible, that they're ambitious, but not overly ambitious, that you can't reach them. And that's still ongoing as the committee and the planning staff go through the remainder of the roadshows. All right, next slide. So we are in phase three. Phase one, we started over, or I guess about a year ago now, where we were looking at what is shaping Bedford today? What has happened leading up to this moment? And what characteristics are we observing? And there was a big data poll. We looked at census data, but we also looked at local data. We did quite a bit of mapping, and that's a full separate document that I'm sure you've seen several months ago. And then we focused really starting last fall into the winter, kind of heavy hitting engagement where we're trying to understand what does the community value? What is the community's 10 year vision? Where are they looking to go? What are they looking to stay the same? What are they looking to improve? And then we also created goals that are the conditions to meet locally so that the vision can be realized. So that was all phase two. And now in phase three, we've been vetting strategies. We came up with a long list, too long of a list on purpose of strategy ideas in January, February, and first shared it with the committee. And then we did several technical sessions. We call them working sessions or strategy sessions. And And we've also done something we're calling roadshows. And that's really a focused review on vetting those strategies. Are they good ideas? Are you already doing them? If so, we probably don't need to list them. Unless there's a risk that it might not be finished or it might not be, you know, the stage two or whatnot might not be followed through it. So then we might list them. We vet for, you know, what does the town have capacity for both funding wise and staffing wise and are they integrated with other things going on. including across the different themes of the plan. So that's phase three that we're just kind of leaving that phase and entering into phase four. They overlap a little bit. And phase four is really finalizing the plan. That's when we make the plan look pretty and give you a final product that is well reviewed, both with boards and committees, as well as the committee we're working with, at the staff level as well, and by the public. And then along with that, you'll also get something we call an implementation matrix. And that's something that will be used by department managers. It's an Excel spreadsheet. It just basically lists all the guts of the plan, all the policy guts. and town managers as they're working over the next decade can use that spreadsheet, adjust it very easily, sort it, identify different funding. If the funding we identify in year one is maybe no longer there in year nine, that's why it's a very flexible spreadsheet document. So that's a companion document to the fully laid out plan. All right. So next slide. I really want to get into kind of just an overview of the details of what we've been doing. I won't go through every line here, but you'll see that we started last summer and, you know, phase one took a few months and then we focused in on phase two and three as being really the policy decisions. and the meat of the planning effort. And then we're here in phase four, and you can see that those phases all pretty much overlap. All right, next slide. So I've mentioned a bunch of terms that I do wanna define a little bit. One is the vision, which I talked about how the community engagement really shaped the vision. Well, the vision is really just the fuzzy picture of where you're trying to get to. in the next decade. It talks about both things you really want to preserve, keep the same, minimize changes to, and things that you want to see improved or leveraged or strengthened. And it's really more painting a picture and its intention is to be aspirational. Then there are themes, which you can think of as the chapters of your plan. And the themes, we don't believe at JM Goldson that the themes should be predetermined before we work on the plan. We like to determine, well, what are those themes that are coming out of the engagement? What are the things we're hearing that are important to the community? And how should we describe those in a way that would resonate with what we're hearing from the community? So we customize those themes. And you'll see that you have six themes or chapters of your plan. And then there are the goals. Under each theme, there are two, three, four goals for each theme that looks at what does success look like under that theme? What is the condition you're trying to reach? It doesn't tell you how you're going to do it, but it just says, what are you trying to reach? And along with those goals, the plan will have metrics as well to measure your progress against those goals so that you know if the strategies you're implementing are helping you reach those goals. And then the strategies are very specific actions, things that you can do, could be zoning changes, could be investments or capital improvements, it could be programs, it could be capacity, it could be all sorts of things like that. And we'll touch on a few of those ideas. All right, so let's go to the next slide. So I do want to talk about engagement. So the committee has done really a terrific job with the community engagement process. We've had the community survey, an open house early in the process. Then we had something we called meetings in a box that were basically do-it-yourself meeting kits that many of you probably participated in or even led. And then we had something called the crowd map. It was an interactive online map that people could go on, you know, at their own pace and participate online along with that survey. And we had a great time working with Depict as well, who came to the working sessions for the strategies. And this is just some of the artwork that Depict captured while people were presenting different ideas, the resource people. All right, next slide. So what we heard so so far we've exceeded your prior plans comprehensive plan outreach the total outreach and we're not even done, we still have a whole nother phase, so we keep on counting participants, but already you've exceeded what you did during the last plan. And we just have some quotes here to see some of the things that we heard one here is expanding opportunities for older residents to downsize within town would benefit everyone. Another one, traffic in town is awful. The only way it's going to get better is if residents and commuters passing through have better ways to get where they need to go than to drive. Next slide. A few other things we heard, Great Road's current mix of big box stores and dated buildings was viewed as inconsistent with Bedford's desired identity. The bus should go to more places in Bedford versus just through the town center. And Great Road facing small shops to create a visually appealing walkable shopping center like Concord Center or Lexington Center. Some of these came, for example, oh wait just go back to that some of these like the last one here. Some of these came from the meeting in a box, as you can see, we try to identify the tool that this quote came from, but the last one was from. The crowd map where people pinned ideas and you can see all those those pins all those different color pins were pins from the crowd map each with ideas and comments behind each pin alright next slide. So then I talked a little bit about this, the strategy working sessions, and that's where we really did a deep dive. For each core theme, we held a different working session where people who were interested in getting into the real detailed discussions around zoning and capital improvements and programs and all those things that could be within the category, strategy list rather. They really worked in small groups for a good solid hour just talking to each other in these groups, in some groups even more than that. And they reviewed basically all the strategies in that particular core theme. And then we held six of them over two weekends. And yeah, it was really great and very informative. So next slide. So based on all of that input that's been being collected over many, many months, the survey, the crowd map, the open house, all the meetings in a box, the strategy working sessions, the team created the vision statement, the themes, which are the chapters, the goals, and then the strategy. So all of that was derived directly from that input. Next slide. And I did mention earlier on a few slides ago that there are these something we're calling road shows, kind of like the dog and pony show going out to as many boards and committees and commission, you know, whoever we can get on their agenda. And so the committee is doing a lot of that work, as is Tony, the planning staff. And really we're sharing draft strategies with those boards and commissions and committees, particularly focused on ones that they would be involved with. and getting their ideas, trying to understand their capacity, any alignment with other priorities, things like that. Who should lead these or having those conversations? Is this the right board to be involved with this? Or is there another board that you need to get into the mix? Or are there even uh local organizations that may not be local government but they have a you know have a stake in in in this strategy so trying to understand who should lead who should support who should be involved we also want to understand staffing needs so we're also speaking with department managers having them uh look at the the strategies uh in particular with that implementation matrix that i mentioned they'll be really looking at that in great detail but also looking at what funding is available outside of you know town or local funds what kind of coordination needs to happen between boards committees departments and do we have any capacity concerns about any of the strategies and then we also want to think a bit about sequencing looking at short-term mid-term, long-term, or even ongoing efforts and trying to be very strategic about that as well. All right, next slide. And that is it for me. So I'm going to go ahead and hand this off to Austin. I do have another meeting. I'm going to stay as long as I can, but if you see me pop off, it's to slip away to that meeting. But I appreciate you all listening to that first part. All right, Austin. Thank you very much.

Yeah, and I'll take us from here. So like Jen said earlier, I'm going to give kind of an overview of each of the six themes of the plan. And because there are more than 60 strategies, I'm absolutely not going to keep you here all night. I know you've got other stuff to talk about and have the next ten years to be working on this plan. So I'm going to touch on some of these themes, touch on some of the strategies in each of them, get your brain moving and get some ideas flowing. So the six themes, and again, like Jen said, these were drawn kind of from the ground up from exactly what we heard from engagement, because we don't like to write a comprehensive plan that says you have to include X, Y, Z, even though that's, you know, we follow the statute, but we like to make it community driven. So these are directly drawn from the things that we've been hearing from folks. Theme one is safe and easy ways to get around. Theme number two is vibrant village centers and a stronger local economy. Theme three is design, history, and a strong sense of place. Theme four is homes that support choice, dignity, and belonging. Theme five is community connections, civic life, and shared spaces. And theme six, the final theme is outdoor recreation and environmental stewardship. So in that first theme, which is safe and easy ways to get around, there are three goals that kind of set what success can look like in that theme and 12 strategy ideas within those goals that are kind of arrows in your quiver for how you can be working over the next 10 years. And there are ideas like updating the 2019 regional transit study that you did with Lexington and Burlington, updating it for kind of post-COVID traffic trends and taking a closer look at how you can work together to build regional transit. Fast tracking some priority bike pet improvements through some updates to town processes and creating a great road corridor management program for things like traffic safety and access kind of building on the work that you are currently doing and have been working on over the last several years. Beam 2 also has three goals, and this one has 14 strategies within those. And those are ideas like planning for the future evolution of the Middlesex Turnpike and Crosby Drive as those kind of uses if there's changes in the biotech market. If the property owners are turning over and there's kind of new uses that folks want to get into those spaces, you can look at zoning changes, making sure that you have the appropriate emergency response capacity for any kind of future evolution of that area. and also monitoring redevelopment potential of large institutional parcels like Hanson Air Force Base like the Middlesex Community College or the VA hospital because those are kind of key institutional anchors for the town and if if those property owners choose to do anything else for those parcels it'll just be of key interest to the planning board and to the town as a whole Theme three, which is design, history, and a strong sense of place, has three goals and 10 strategies within it, strategy ideas. And some of them include continuing to work on town's design guidelines and kind of building those out to have new developments kind of contribute more clearly and organized way to a design sense of place. Right-sizing the zoning in Bedford's kind of village areas to more closely match the historic kind of village building patterns and reduce noncompliance for both parcels. And also incentives for a store preservation and renovations if structure kind of maintains a substantial amount of that historic facade or other features, they can receive some kind of incentives. Those are kind of ideas that you can be working through over the next several years. theme four is homes that should support choice dignity and belonging this one has two goals and nine strategies and some of those ideas are like considering different ways to integrate form-based zoning into your zoning code relying more on the building form to regulate what kind of density looks like around town rather than the number of units or other things like that Also ideas like expanding the areas of village-oriented zoning districts. So that's like the Great Road Zoning District, the Depot Area District, exploring ways to kind of grow the physical geography of those so that more village-oriented areas can kind of grow over time. And also encouraging modern prefab and modular homes, you know, the old school kind of trailer parks. The tech is very different now. They look different. They feel different. And it's a great way to kind of have more affordable options for new home construction for folks looking to start a home, downsizing options and things like that. In five is Community connections civic life and shared spaces, so this one has three goals and 12 strategies in this one. And some of the ideas in here are using more on site signage when the town is working on projects if there's a big development project or like the Wilson park project using more on site signs to let folks know. what's going on, what the timeline of the project is, how to get engaged. It's kind of one of the ways that we've been doing engagement in this project. There's online ways to get involved, in-person ways, all sorts of stuff like that, just to make sure you're reaching everyone. Another idea is a new mini grant program for resident-led events. This would kind of pair with the cultural council's work in grant making. And the other idea is better digital communication. This is covered in a few different strategies in this one, both on social media and the town website, but kind of across the town's approach to engaging with folks online. And theme six, which is the final theme of the plan, has two goals and eight strategy ideas in it. And some of the ideas are to develop a formal open space and recreation plan. And although the town's been doing all the work to kind of develop these plans and plan for key projects over time, but developing a formal OSLP is a great way to kind of articulate those in a very organized way. Another idea is exploring some incentives to grow the tree canopy. This is kind of just coming right off of the urban forest plan that you guys have. But we continue in that to look for ways to incentivize the preservation of mature trees and also planting new trees. another one is community stewardship through partnerships both with the schools through local organizations and to work on things like invasive removal trail maintenance etc to get folks engaged in stewarding their community to learn about the natural environment and also to kind of build those connections in a way that doesn't doesn't drain town resources by requiring additional staff So those are the kind of six themes of the plan and some of the ideas. I don't want to take too much of your meeting time, but those are some kind of ideas that we're jogging through with the committee. And like Jen mentioned earlier, each of those themes, we're going to be proposing a set of metrics for each theme and working with the committee to kind of identify what feels right to be measuring in the future. But we want to give you some kind of fuel in the fire and arrows in the river to kind of look at how to measure progress on each of these so these are some things like for safe and easy ways to get around you can be measuring the number of pedestrian bicycle and vehicle crashes each year or for the other thing that's more about kind of village oriented zoning and kind of village centers commercial vacancy rates new business formation rates and kind of adaptive reuse projects that result in kind of new business spaces are things that you can be measuring to see how well you're performing in that one um and another one is kind of a percent of new homes located in village summers so as Jen mentioned through the road shows we're we're aiming for as much board and committee input as we can get because this is obviously a plan voted on and approved by the planning board but it's Bedford's plan as a whole so we want to make sure that not only did folks get a chance to kind of feed the input from the ground up, but then they also get to kind of do some vetting from those responsible parties at this stage in the plan. Like Jen said, looking at if this is a community priority, what kind of timeframe do we think we can accomplish it? What do we think it might cost? if we're going to move forward with this, do we need another staff member or do we need to revise some people's job descriptions to incorporate these responsibilities in a few different people? So that's the kind of input that we're looking for at this stage. And all that input is going to help us revise the strategies themselves with the committee, but also to kind of inform the implementation metrics, which, like Jen mentioned, is that spreadsheet that is kind of the guts and the brains behind the public-facing document. And we always encourage our client communities to make the implementation matrix a public document. It's just a spreadsheet. So as complicated as it is, it's also quite simple and easy to navigate. So it can be formatted as a kind of progress tracker. So you can see which strategies are in progress, already completed, or haven't yet been started. And space to kind of note any comments on what that status is. So I always encourage that kind of public-facing transparency over the 10-year duration of your plan so folks can be checking in and knowing what the status of all their kind of strategy ideas are. So that is kind of the high-level overview of where we're at in the process and some of the ideas that we've been working through with the committee and with the community. I definitely want to thank you for your time. I'm totally open for any questions, comments, or ideas that you have. We're here to chat. I know Jen's here, I think, for a few more minutes, and I'm here as long as you need me.

So I'll open it up to members of the board. Any questions, comments? Don, Steve, you were involved with the process, anything?

No, I thought it covered it pretty well. I have no additions or comments at this time. Okay.

Yeah, same for me.

Todd. At the risk of stating something obvious, I think it's just really impressive and I really like the idea of the metrics. afterwards to be able to kind of gauge and have a tools to see how we're doing along the way. So I'm very excited about this. This is a great work. Thank you. Everyone that's done worked really hard.

Appreciate that. Thank you. We've been working really hard with the committee. They've been doing great work.

Yeah, it's really nice to see this coming along. I attended a couple of sessions and felt that those were really positive. So happy to see this moving along. All right. Since we're doing pretty well for time, I will open it up to members of the audience if anyone has a question or comment. Going once, going twice. All right. Well, there'll be future opportunities. Austin, Jen, thank you very much for your time this evening and for all your work on this.

Thanks so much for having us. Appreciate it.

Thank you.

All right. All right. So with that, we are on to the business session. And leaving off there, I'm discussion of 340 Great Road and the Plaza Hotel. I have some slides to present with background information. And Scott cope is here. I'm who presented the concept at last meeting. So I'm going to speak to my charts and I, he can jump in. If I, if I captured, if I incorrectly captured any information from I'm Mr.

Chair, a trivial book question. Who's Kyle Raymond. that's up as a panelist.

I didn't do it at the beginning of the meeting. Kylie is Catherine's successor. So this is day two. for Kylie. So hopefully you do not query her with complicated questions this early in the system, but we look forward to Katie joining the staff or Katie, I'm sorry, Kylie joining the staff and we will hopefully be embarking on a variety of things in the near future.

Well, I'm really glad that I asked. Welcome Kylie. Welcome.

All right. So I will share my screen. Let's see how this works. All right. Can you all see the slide? Yes. Thumbs up on that. All right. Very good. All right, so for this section of the meeting, I outline, I'll give some background and an overview of the concept that Mr. Cope presented at the June 23rd meeting, an overview of district improvement financing, I am an opportunity for Tony and Scott to present new information since the last meeting. I have a period for internal board discussion. open it up for public comment. And things have been moving along, so I anticipate that there will be time permitting. And then we'll talk about any next steps that the board should take. All right. So for the benefit of folks who did not see the discussion at our last meeting, I am and who are maybe viewing later on YouTube. 340 Great Road is the Plaza Hotel. It's in the Great Road-Shawsheen mixed use district. The redevelopment concept that Mr. Cope presented, there's detail available if you watch the YouTube recording. And I've got a link there on the page here. I'll provide these charts to the department office later this evening, so they will be available. And at the end of the meeting, the board expressed a favorable opinion of the land use concept. And the map over here, for those unfamiliar, the Plaza Hotel is on the corner of Shawshank Ave and Great Road. And then there is a parking lot a little less than an acre across the street from that. So there are parking requirements which constrain what can be done with that property at 340 Great Road. Because of the parking requirement for the hotel, there needs to be the lot across the street ends up getting used as parking and can't be converted to a more productive use. So the idea is that if you eliminate the hotel, then you eliminate the requirement for the parking in that lot or that parcel. And that opens up possibilities for it to be redeveloped. I'm of the concept presented, envisioned outcomes. Bedford gets a park. The parking lot and likely nearby parcels would become a mixed use development consistent with the Great Road Shawsheen mixed use district. and additional property tax revenue from the new development would cover the cost to town of acquiring the property and building the park. So the concept presented was that town would acquire the Plaza Hotel at fair market value, tear it down, construct the park, would cover the cost of that via bonding. The bond would be paid entirely through district improvement financing revenues. revenue above and beyond what's currently taken in from those parcels, with the idea that there'd be no impact on the general fund, no need to use community preservation funds, or for there to be any additional tax levy. And with the hotel parking lot gone, with the hotel gone, then the parking lot could go away and be redeveloped. For those interested, district improvement financing is codified in state law, Chapter 40Q. What it does is it captures... additional property taxes or property taxes above the baseline that you would have from the existing use of the property and doesn't divert. existing tax revenue or increased tax rates for revenue for residents. The base levy keeps going into the general fund and only that new revenue from new development is captured. I'm paying for a bond and the like. Let's see. At the end of the 30-year district improvement fund bond period, then the full tax base would go into the general fund. Yeah, town directed the new funding increments. Yeah, it's revenue that wouldn't otherwise exist and we can put it towards a public purpose. In this case I would be acquisition of the land of the property for the park, the demolition and then the park construction. Notional bond amount came in about $11.5 million. Breakdown you see here in the table. And the rule of thumb is that the increase in the additional revenue from new development would be at least one and a quarter times the value of the bond. Let's see. So near term, potential next steps would include getting an appraisal of the hotel property. Longer term, a town would look at bonding the cost of acquisition, demolition, and park construction. That would require a two-thirds vote by town meeting. So I'll pause there. And Did I make any misstatements?

Chris, that was, I think, a lot clearer than when I presented. So you did great. All right. Very good. Thank you. Can I make you just two, if you just go back maybe two slides to the numbers, this one more maybe.

Okay.

One more maybe.

Yeah.

One more maybe. Okay. Maybe I was looking for the table. Yes. Here we go. There it is. Without an appraisal yet being done, we don't know what that number would be. So I'll just put that as a qualifier as number one. And then number two, the standard 1.25 of the bond value, that being the rule of thumb, I think that may end up being higher. uh if the town were to elect to go in this direction based on the type of project that would increase the tax increment so meaning when towns use a diff bond for a municipal water treatment plant people will use water no matter what. And so it can be as low as like 1.2 of the projected revenue to pay for that bond for the water treatment plant because they know the demand on water is not going anywhere. For something that was more residential or things like this, towns have historically been a little bit higher. So it would probably likely be above 1.25 as I've talked with people People, it seems like we wouldn't know that number. Eventually if the town elected to go in this direction, they would have to talk to bond council and all those numbers will be worked on. So anyways, just wanted to say great presentation. Those would be just the two things as far as an update that I would probably give on that. All right, great. Thank you very much.

So with that, new information since our last meeting. I was thinking, Tony, you might comment first, and then Scott, fill in as well. Is that good? All right.

So I guess the, I guess some of the points we were gonna bring in is that, uh, off and on over the years, as we've looked at potential redevelopment scenarios in this neighborhood, uh, there has been off and on suggestions by some residents, but not all residents, you know, that the, the existing hotel structure, um, It could be made more attractive or, you know, could it be knocked down? Uh, but because of this, you could not, if you're looking at just the hotel property, you couldn't replace the hotel or the density of development. If you take the two parcels that make up the hotel, you could not recreate that density. Uh, and so the board, you know, previous members of the board over the years, you know, have expressed two things. One is an interest in this neighborhood evolving into a mixed use neighborhood. but also that if we needed to create some kind of incentive for the hotel triangle property to become either landscaping or open space, Uh, would we consider something equivalent to transfer of development rights so that we would allow denser development on the other side of Shawshank Avenue in exchange for holding this part of the redevelopment as more green space? Um, The town is also open to discussion if a sufficient number of parcels ever get to discussion about redevelopment scenarios. The town is also open to potentially abandoning some or all of Shawsheen Avenue so that it could be used in the redevelopment. And I think that kind of changes some of the ideas where, you know, the the concept presented at the last meeting kind of worked in a it was working towards town ownership of the triangle so it became a public park but it isn't necessarily a feature that in my mind that the town owned that property in order to turn it into some kind of open space whereas the you know, some or all of the property could be kept as green space in a bigger redevelopment scenario. Obviously, one of the issues we have today is that, you know, for pedestrians walking along Great Road, the sidewalk kind of runs between the edge of pavement and the building walls. So there's not a lot of comfort for pedestrians walking through there. And so somewhere down the road, we would prefer that there be a little bit of some kind of green space and buffering so that pedestrians walking through this part of the corridor uh feel a little more separation from the traffic in the street but that doesn't necessarily mean all the property needs to be open space on the other hand you know we've even had i'm calling dreams of could we put a landscape statement here that says welcome to bedford or even a you know a key piece of sculpture or public art that might also you know signify that you've uh that you're coming into bedford you know but there's no no specific plans ever been created for that um but it's just that um in thinking about it i think you know as the board did at its last meeting saying yes we agree i think you said that you know that you support you know the evolution of of these properties into mixed use redevelopment the mechanism or multiple mechanisms of how we get there is open for discussion and i you know i think the the the intent was to encourage mr cope to keep keep working at trying to assemble these parcels and whether we you know use existing zoning or even modify zoning because it's been a few years since we wrote the zoning for this neighborhood and clearly times changed with covid in the the resulting impacts to the cost of development. And so looking at the potential redevelopment, whether it's the hotel properties by themselves, or if, if somebody could magically assemble, you know, eight or 10 of these properties, uh, so that a bigger project could evolve, uh, you know, that way, rather than individual properties redeveloping, as we're seeing with, uh, MBTA communities, overlay district, you know, uh, Clearly, the more land area you can assemble makes for a more cohesive redevelopment. So there are some options here that that can be continued to be pursued for redevelopment. But we just wanted to also make you aware that it need not necessarily involve town ownership or the use of district improvement financing to get there. Don.

yeah i'm just curious what would it take for the town to give up interest in shashi now do we have any concept of of what that would you know how to how to get there if that's where we're going so there's been we've had some discussion on that issue with you know dpw staff and town manager staff um

just as preliminary preliminary concepts but basically you know it's kind of if if somebody um was looking at redeveloping kind of both sides of the road um we would look at um you know would we consider abandoning at least the western part of it or the the part closer to the hotel frontage in the park, closer to Bedford House of Roast Beef and Steve's Pizza. And then in the bigger scheme of things, it depends upon whether or not some of those other properties end up in a redevelopment concept. And then we'd have to face questions like, would the town reconsider allowing McDonald's Assuming McDonald's is not part of the redevelopment, would we consider allowing the McDonald's exit to come back out onto the Great Road versus having it somehow still run around up to Shaoxing Road? But, you know, and same thing for the four unit office building where Quinn Insurance is, again, if that's not part of the redevelopment, they need access to get into that property. So we'd have to look at some of those issues, but it doesn't mean that some or all of the road area, couldn't be added to the mix for consideration for redevelopment as an incentive for for redevelopment and do that in lieu of or in addition to bonding the the redevelopment and and acquisition of the triangle thank you tony

All right. So with that, Scott.

Well, maybe twice now. I don't know if I can say much more than Tony said. Chris, you started us off well and Tony likewise. Yeah, I think from my perspective, you know, based on the existing comprehensive plan, based on. Chapter 10 of the current zoning bylaw, based on the future comprehensive plan, I think there's been this. consistent desire for these mixed use walkable villages. And so I, maybe to take the focus off of this particular parcel, I think I would be of the opinion that a public park would be a public good, that it's not just, you know, private shops, private homes, private businesses, but there really is a community gathering space. I think it's Wendell Berry who says, you can't have a community if there's no community gathering place. and so you know maybe again the focus doesn't need to be on this particular parcel but if we want this to be a village and we think about what bedford was 200 years ago um i mean where would we be as a town without the town common you know and the plant fair there and you know the lighting of the tree and just all that that that is for us as a town so um again not that this has to be though i think this based on its location, it really could work. I think from my perspective, that's what I'm trying to think about. what would be best for this district for its revitalization. And I should maybe offer one massive qualifier, which is that I do not represent the current owner. And so those are conversations ongoing. And so I just want to kind of maybe make sure that that is out there as well. So I'm just eager to hear more from you all. As I've talked with folks around town, I've heard very positive feedback. And so I hope in weeks to come, I'll continue to be before you on Tuesday nights and be able to share kind of more details. But probably for now, that's probably all I have to share that's new. Yeah.

Thank you very much. And yeah, I share your interest in creation of public spaces. And I'm yeah. I think the value of third spaces, and for those not familiar with planning terms, places other than work or home where you gather with friends, with community members, and have social engagements which help bind the community. And when... When there are opportunities to create those, we're short of those spaces now, I would argue. And when an opportunity presents itself, we should look hard at whether we can act on it directly or indirectly by enabling someone else to do the heavy lifting. Yeah, I was thinking too, in addition to this area, when the current fire station ceases to be used, gee, we should be looking at that as a potential third space as well. That's my two cents. Other board members, staff, thoughts?

Todd. Super excited about this as well, and just interested in hearing more, so every update is great. Just to mention, Chris, I just heard today that we have a new town manager, no, town planner? No, what is it? Planning project director, project manager, project manager, that's it, whose one task is working on the old fire station, what to do with it, so it's one of his tasks. Anyway, Scott, I'm excited to see more.

All right, so other comments, questions from the board? Seeing none, I will open it up for public comment. Please direct any questions or comments to me, and I will redirect as appropriate. Try and keep it to three minutes per person. And if three minutes isn't enough, then just get back in line and we'll cycle through. That was perhaps a more relevant rule during the MBTA community zoning discussions where there were many people lined up to comment. All right, so seeing no hands in the audience, again, I will make these slides available. Please feel free to contact the planning department and share your feedback. Oh.

Todd. Yeah, just one quick question. I thought maybe I misread. Tony had put something in the meeting preview about potential different funding sources for this. Is anything else being researched? And I'm not saying it needs to be or not. I'm just curious in terms of that aspect of things or is like now this is the way, this is the right way to go.

we actually haven't identified a way, which of multiple ways to go. So, yeah. those still tbd still investigating yeah still right to be determined in part you know i mean i think the from our side the the initial like talking with you know the financial players in town like the initial shock of simply like you know nine million uh i'll back up so the current owner of the hotel has an appraisal that's a couple years old we think but it's you know for something like nine million dollars And we're like questioning whether that's really an accurate appraisal. And if we're going to try to buy that property for open space, like like $9 million, we've never spent $9 million for a piece of property, especially one that's less than an acre. So the the initial reaction is kind of like, well, before we start any kind of discussion, we'd need an up to date, accurate appraisal of what that might be, you know, and it is this is a district improvement financing simply would be a way to pay for the acquisition by really deferring future tax revenue. So you're not really you're not actively spending money on it as opposed to when we spend money from the CPA from the community preservation Act funds, you know, that we're spending money out of a savings account to buy property, or the other alternative is to raise an appropriate money from the taxes. But this, you know, the DIF process is an alternative to spending what I call live money, and it's kind of it's just one of those alternatives but it's there are you know there would be other ways to to consider getting control of the property if if and if as this thing moves forward we agree the town should be the owner of the property But like some other places, you know, like for people that enjoy Bedford Farms and like to sit in the middle of the beach tree, right? The beach tree is privately owned, but they make a publicly accessible open space on the side of the beach house in order for the public to enjoy that amenity. And there's other examples of that. privately owned public amenities like that in town so so those options are there we're just saying really it comes down to you know kind of an agreement that the the current hotel owner wants to sell and if we're not going to if we don't continue use of the property as a hotel what you know What kind of things are we ready to explore?

Thank you, Tony. So what I'm hearing is there's no immediate action that the board needs to take. We will continue to have 340 Great Road on the agenda and discuss as appropriate as things move along.

Thank you, Chris, very much.

Well, thank you, Scott, for your time and for all your work on this. My pleasure. All right. Let's see. We are now on to dark sky lighting. And once again, I have no new information to share. I apologize for that. So we can move to small clean energy facility permitting discussion. Tony, anything new there?

So I'd hope to have the second draft of a bylaw ready for you for this week, but I do not. So really, I'm for the point of tonight's discussion is to kind of just confirm that I think this is important given the state deadlines for having a permit process in place this fall and so creating the regulations permitting process and so on needs to keep moving forward so that we have something ready for fall town meeting which kind of means having a draft ready by september and we'll um as i say i hope to have i should have draft two hopefully ahead of the next meeting so that we can continue to frame at least the points of regulation that we want to make sure we're aware of as battery storage facilities and or solar energy facilities get proposed around town.

I'm when I when we look to have public hearing.

So we, um, we, um, as much as I might try to set a public hearing up in August, we might also want to make sure we continue it into September so that people who might be on vacation in August would, um, would have a chance to have input during, um, September and, and, or even into October. Um, we just need to make sure we have. have the hearing closed and the final product ready ahead of, well, ahead of town meeting. But if we've, assuming we have the draft done, so long as we're not making changes to the draft after it goes to print, although we're not printing, we do print a few warrants anymore, but since we are now going to electronic format for the town meeting warrant, it's um perhaps a little more lenient on the timeline but typically the warrant will go to print in around the first week of october so so generally we try to have at least the template ready to submit to the select board by the end of august and we try to have the bylaw polished by the end of september

Thank you.

Steve, question, comment? Yeah, a couple. First comment is I did read over the state regulations as well as all of Tony's miscellaneous, you know, a lot of reading time. I'm glad Tony's writing the first draft or second draft. But my question then to Tony and everybody else is right now, data centers are getting a bad name and towns are getting upset about it. For this subject though, the clean energy, this is solar, wind, battery, et cetera. Do you know, Tony, or anybody else of any town resisting coming up regulations for this new state regulation? Is this a sensitive subject or is this going to be a automatic take it to town meeting and everybody loves it?

There are towns who are heavily concerned about the impact of battery energy storage systems.

Yeah. I think I saw that.

More so than the others. There are communities that don't like windmills. Under current technology, there isn't sufficient wind. In Bedford, when you look at wind patterns and so on, there isn't commercially viable wind power here. But solar arrays, I mean, it might depend. I think there could be support for solar arrays on parking lots and canopies that are overpaved parking lots. What we don't want, which some communities are having issues with, is cutting down a forest in order to make room for a solar array, which is happening in some of the Western mass communities. or putting the arrays over cropland and the crops don't really grow. And so the question, there are places where it kind of works with certain types of livestock grazing, but there are communities concerned about the loss of forest and farmland for solar generation, but it's the battery storage that has some communities concerned because you know, those handful of examples of batteries catching fire, because a lot of the technology is still lithium batteries and there's, you know, there's a handful of red have caught fire and, and, um, dousing the dousing and lithium fire is, is extremely difficult. Like, um, when an EV catches fire, They sometimes pick the vehicle up and immerse it literally in a pool. You can't necessarily do that with a battery structure. I mean, a lot of them are like shipping containers. It's a 20-foot box, and they build as many boxes as they're trying to create power for. And there's concern that if one catches fire and it's cited, you know, and its location is near a wetland or a water course, and they're using water, you know, they're trying to hose down the flames. Is there anything in the runoff getting into the environment? Um, so, uh, so there's kind of those concerns. There's others who say, you know, do these things generate heat? Um, But also, I think we have a company moving to one of our buildings off of middle sex turnpike that is, uh, doing research and development on carbon battery storage. And it doesn't like carbon doesn't generate heat the way lithium does. So it doesn't like it doesn't catch fire. So there are some technologies out there that will come there that, that may help overcome some of these issues, but. Uh, and then there's just the question, you know, there are, there are communities that don't want battery storage facilities next to residential houses or, or multifamily structures. So, um, the question of whether or not you have to allow them in every zoning district, or can you limit them to some reasonable percentage of the town is still kind of not a fully answered question, but... It's something we're still looking at. The state is still offering some training, as are some other organizations running webinars. And some of the state officials are coming out to give guidance on how they envision the regulatory process to be. But as I say, trying to end, you know, because they're trying to say, you know, every they're trying to tell the cities and towns that you need to package all your permits into one consolidated permit is really going to be a difficult process in my mind. So I'm hopeful they end up extending the deadline just because it's they timed it. uh, poorly in relation to town meeting schedules and it's, um, as I say, they, they didn't really, when they created this part of the statutes, they didn't really look at a couple other statutes that, um, kind of. have their own rules. And I still question whether what they've written overrides the wetlands protection act, for example. So I'm not part of me would, I could make a solid legal argument that the conservation commission could still separately issue a notice of intent or at least hold the hearing for that process, despite the goal of having a consolidated permit. So, um, I'm waiting for all those high-powered attorneys to work that out.

I'll comment that having been trained as a chemist and spent 15 years of my professional life addressing responses to hazardous air pollution, there are legitimate safety concerns with large scale lithium battery storage. And so I look forward to addressing those with the level of concern that they, attention that they merit. All right. Anything else or moving on to data center permitting?

So, similarly, data centers are raising similar concerns over various environmental impacts, heat islands, noise, runoff, consumption of energy or diversion of energy that might otherwise serve housing and other development goals, the use of water for cooling. And there was an interesting article in today's Boston Globe, if anybody reads it, there's a headline out of Westfield where one of the residents says that she'll chain herself to the bulldozer if they keep moving forward with this proposed data center in Westfield that at the moment would end up being the biggest one in New England. But it's an amusing headline that the residents are so emotional about the potential of this thing moving forward. It's a topic that we need to stick to the science of it, but it does get very personal and emotional at ground level.

Thank you. Accessory dwelling unit ownership clarification.

I gave you some notes about a couple of situations that have happened in town where builders didn't pay attention to the rules we had created, where we had said that the rule actually says that none of the units on a property with an ADU are supposed to be condo-ized, condo-ized. Um, but we do elsewhere in town. We have two families that over the years have evolved into condo ownership. So each half of the duplex is owned by a different party. And, um, I think we intended for that to be a possibility when we enabled to fit me to be by right. Townwide. And then when the state also changed the rules and said every property, every residential property is eligible for one protected ADU. We had initially written our ADU regulations on the presumption that you have a single family house and you can either add an ADU or you could create a full two family homes, but not initially, not both. And that's why when we wrote, I think when we wrote that part of the bylaw when we said you can't condo the house to create separate ownership of the ADU because the ADU is an accessory use and it needs to be accessory to the house. But we have some builders who've been hopeful to try to take a duplex with a freestanding ADU and make each of the units a condo. i think the philosophy of you know if you elevate the adu to a condo does it lose its accessory status because it's now a voting member of this three-unit condo association i mean it's not an accessory and so what uh what the building what the building inspector and i've been talking about is can we at least clarify that the the, the duplex could be divided into condos, but the ADU needs to be accessory to at least one of them. Um, you could probably legally set it up. So accessory to both of them in case they want to split the revenue stream from the rental, but in order, if we, if, if the goal or the intent is to keep them accessory and we want to keep them as a, Uh, if, if the board agrees that they should be kept as, or one way to keep them accessory is to prevent them from falling into separate ownership. It's, um, it's simply trying to clarify that one sentence in the bylaw that, um, that a simple interpretation would say, no, none of the units could become condos.

I don't know if we need to go that far in terms of non-community condos, but I definitely would like to clarify this bylaw so that the accessory dwelling unit remains an accessory unit for at least one, if not both of them. Same.

All right. Any other comments or questions from the board on accessory dwelling unit ownership?

Oh, I should speak and say, yes, I agree with you.

Wonderful.

Thank you.

So with that, I'm moving on to reports from liaisons to boards and committees.

Todd. So this morning I presented to the Commission on Disability, Disability Commission, regarding sidewalk safety, snow removal, and I think there was a member of the DPW there as well as the town. I think overall the conversation was very good. It was nice to have the conversation. A lot of good discussion, a lot of good information shared. I will say that the enthusiasm or the lack of enthusiasm for a bylaw was apparent. At least, not necessarily from the Disability Commission, but from other people that were there. DPW included, from what I could tell. They wanted to go with education first and see where that goes in data gathering, which I do understand. I, as a resident, am a bit miffed and confused because the state says the town is responsible for 100% of the sidewalk clearing. The town says we do 54% of the sidewalk clearing. The town also says we do it within 72 hours. In my opinion, that is just not acceptable. I do understand that there's limits to what the DPW can do in terms of staffing and everything. I totally get that. That's why I was trying to get more residents involved. The question is how to do that. Education is one way. But also with Tony's memo or, you know, in terms of what is on our plate for November town meeting. Seems like it's a bad idea to push this anyways at this point because we have enough to do. And so there's also that too. So anyway, still more data gathering, but we'll see where it goes. I'm glad there's discussion going on. I'm glad, you know, one thing, Steve, I can mention that the bus, sorry, bus stops that The DBW is changing how they're doing it. It is now totally on their schedule. They've added it. They've had feedback and they're like, okay, we have to have a different sort of crew go there because they need different, you know, shovels and so forth. So anyways, I think the bus stops will be much better improved this year. They have the feedback and they're going to improve that. So that's one good thing as well. So more discussion going forward. Thank you.

Other reports? Going once, going twice. Nothing to report.

All right.

Thank you. So do staff updates.

Um, no, my staff updates were simply going to be really that, um, Kylie has started this week. Uh, we are still interviewing, uh, for, uh, our other position. We have a second round interview coming on Thursday this week and, um, we'll see how long, how much longer that might take to fill that position, but we're working. Um, otherwise, um, uh, chair referred to the fire station reuse. And I think most, most of you know, there's a virtual meeting next week to talk about the reuse of the fire station. Um, there's a lot of support for turning it into a community center of some sort with space for artists, with space for, um, children's activities. And by that probably most like tween programming. So the, you know, not the, not things related to like kids club, but things for children that are a little bit older, but not old enough to drive yet. Um, there's, um, uh, we are using the metropolitan area planning council as a consultant to help, to help walk through all the ideas that are being, uh, debated for reuse, because there's some consideration for, uh, expanded town offices and maybe in at least part of the building, um, you know, um, I did jokingly suggest that the fire bay might be big enough for a volleyball court, but I don't think they're going to do that. But anyway, there's going to be an opportunity. next week for that there'll be another meeting in October in person uh there should also be an online survey for anyone who is unable to attend the virtual meeting next week there will probably be a an online survey available for at least a month shortly thereafter to also solicit input from the residents on the reuse of that Uh, the pavilion that's being built between, uh, town center and the back of the, uh, town hall parking lot is under construction. And, um, so those of you that attend any of the summer concert series and other there'll be that, that pavilion should be available next summer for use and, um, we'll, um, We'll hopefully see the cultural district partnership, uh, take advantage of its presence to do other things there. Steve, question, comment? Yeah, I was going to say, since John's not here, I would just say also, most of you know Chris Lasky retired as inspector of buildings. Joe Reddy, who was one of our local building inspectors, has been promoted to be the department head. So the town will shortly be, I assume, searching for another building inspector to be on the staff. But Joe's been here a year, and working with him, I think, will be equally as good as it was working with Chris before him.

Excellent.

Steve, you had your hand up. Yes. As part of welcoming Kylie, So, not knowing when I or any of the rest of us will be in the office, if it's not too much to ask, did you transfer from another office in town? Or you came from another town?

No. So, I most recently worked in Acton through the Cal Fellowship program. I was doing a lot of work primarily with the sustainability office, but also with planning. I have a lot of knowledge on solar wind clean energy technologies i have a master's in urban environmental policy and planning for tests and some experience in campaign management volunteer coordination community engagement and i'm really excited to be here great to have you thank you and now i'll be careful you know a lot more than i do so i'll be careful what i have to give

All right. So I think we've made it through our agenda. So unless there are other comments, questions, poetry to read. All right. I'll entertain motion to adjourn.

So moved.

Seconded. All right. Moved and seconded. Steve. Aye. Don. Aye. Todd. Aye. And the Chair votes aye. Thank you all for a productive evening and see you on the 28th. Have a good night. Good night.

Nice to meet you all.

Nice to meet you. Nice to meet you too.