Planning Commission - Regular Meeting

Thank you.

Recording in progress.

Anyway, good evening, everyone. This is a regularly scheduled meeting of the Zoning and Planning Committee on April 13th, 2026. I'm Lyle Baker, Chair, and I'm joined at the start of the meeting in the room by the Vice Chair, Councilor Wright from Ward 3, the President of Council, Councilor Oliver from Ward 1, Councilor Albright from Ward 2, Councilor Goetz from Ward 5, Councilor Gordon from Ward 6, and we are joined in person by the vice president, Dr. Taylor, and I'm also online by the representative of the law department, Mr. Henry Lee. And I think that is everybody also, Mr. Dorringer from the planning department, I believe, I mean, planning board. So we have two items on the agenda tonight. And let me just start the First item, by reading it in a record and then introduce it, and then we'll turn it over to the planning department and then have a conversation among the committee members. The first item relates to the request for discussion and possible amendments to enhance the preservation of existing homes. I'll explain that in more detail. The second item is ordinance 30 change in chapter 32 allows raised beds on the front and rear setback under certain conditions. So the first item is 2026, Councilors Baker, Wright, Oliver, Malachy, Farrell, Goetz, and Kalis, requesting a discussion and possible amendments to Chapter 30 zoning or other state ordinances to enhance the preservation of existing homes over their replacement by larger and more expensive structures. Let me just say, as the first doctor in the list, it was my intent as part of this and the council members who have been in the council in the prior term, I recall we've been trying to figure out what we can do about the smaller, older homes that are starter homes and to see if there are ways to... enhance their preservation so that they're not torn down or modified so they become so expensive they're not available for purchase by young families or people who want to move into the city. And so the item is really focused on that tonight. And I've asked the planning department to look into two areas and further ones can come at a later meeting. and I do expect to hold this item at the conclusion of our discussion and we continue it so that we can see if we can make progress on this term. But the question they are looking into are two specific ideas that were presented at an earlier meeting and what they mean and what potential implications they may have for us. And so with that background, I guess I would like to turn it over to whoever's going to make the presentation for the department to entertain questions and comments from members of the committee. Ms. Colello, are you going to do the presentation?

That would be me.

And I'll just say that we- Just introduce yourself again for the public. We all know who you are, but- Absolutely.

Nora Colello, I'm the Chief of Long Range Planning for the department.

I'm Regent Doran, by councilor Donovan.

And I'll also note we're joined by the commissioner and the chief zoning code official officer.

So I will be deferring to them on a few points, as well as the .

So tonight I will be walking through the planning department's analysis following up on the February 23rd presentation given by counselors Oliver, Wright and Goetz addressing as the chair stated docket item 2026, the preservation of existing homes. We wanted to ensure that we were responding directly to the councilor's ideas. So you'll see the slides presented on February 23rd, which have the dark blue with the white text and the department's analysis, which will have the light blue boxes with the gray text. So the stated objectives are to increase the diversity of housing stock, increase production to better address Newton's housing needs, provide climate change resilience by maintaining and increasing open space standards and existing tree canopy, lessen negative impacts from new builds on abutters, and shift incentives towards development types that we do want. As the chair stated at his direction, today's presentation will focus on concept two, the loss of modest-sized home to large single-family homes. Since aligning zoning with intended use is part of a separate docket item, we won't be discussing that this evening, but we've kept the slides to refer back to when the time comes. And the presented concern about the this issue this pattern of development, where more modest homes are torn down for larger single family homes again as a refresher. This does not further Newton's housing goals. or increased density, it does not reduce it reduces usable open space can result in homes that are out of scale with the neighborhood. and can increase the purchase cost of single family homes in Newton. So to better understand this pattern, we've analyzed home sales from 2017 to 2024, comparing homes that were demolished and rebuilt with those that were retained. And the key takeaway from this data is that teardowns occur most frequently on larger lots with smaller mid-century homes, particularly in the SR2 district, which accounted for 36% or 160 of the teardowns in our data set. And so we'll look at addressing this issue of teardowns with two different tools, a sliding scale adjustment to FAR and large house review. An area of further analysis could be looking at old lot, new lot standards, but first we're gonna dig into sliding scale FAR. So as a quick refresher for anyone who's online and is less familiar with all the dimensions in our zoning code, F.A.R. is the floor area ratio or the ratio of building area to lot area. And I think this diagram is always helpful because it can show you how the same F.A.R. can look different on different sites. So this is all an F.A.R. 0.5. It could be a one story. structure on a half of the lot, or it could be a two-story structure on a quarter of the lot. So it really is this kind of interesting fraction. With that in mind, a sort of central question that we're exploring today is if sliding scale FAR reduction could be a tool for preventing teardowns. And also if it can be effective in reducing the size of newly constructed forms.

Just one clarification. So we don't want to prevent teardowns. We want to reduce teardowns. It's not stopping all teardowns, but reduce.

Prevent some. or reducing, reduce the amount of teardowns. So to start looking at that, we need to look at the economics that lead to teardowns in the first place. And just a quick note, this slide is slightly different than your packet. Looking back, I realized this way of expressing it might be a little bit clearer, but- What page you said?

Page 17, the replacement for page 17.

So excluding the kind of rare cases where a homeowner wants to tear down their own home and rebuild it, most teardowns occur when the resale value exceeds the acquisition plus construction cost. And ultimately far effects that equation by limiting how large and therefore how valuable a replacement home can be. So taking a look at the thresholds. We have now you can see that a majority of the tear downs in our data set occurred in that tend to 15,000, 20,000 square foot lot range in the SR2 district. And that FAR allowance in that SR2 district is 0.38, or it's a nice round number for us, 3,800 square feet of gross floor area allowance. In this lot signs range where most tear downs occur, Newton already allows less buildable area than Lexington after their recent FAR reduction. So what this indicates at first look is that to meaningfully impact tear down activity, Newton would need to reduce FAR in a more significant way than Lexington did to capture the majority of the teardowns.

Just for clarification, the definition for working purposes of FAR in both communities you're assuming is close enough?

Yeah, in the appendix there's a side-by-side comparison of the definitions. I appreciate that. But they include the addict in the basement in their FAR, but we don't. It's the same calculation based off of the feet and height. Um. So two ways FAR reduction could kind of go. The same tool produces really different outcomes depending on the scale. So option one, and obviously there's nuance, this is the very beginning of this conversation, but a modest reduction in FAR would be expected to reduce in smaller by right replacement homes. So that's kind of getting at the first part of the issue defined. A significant FAR reduction could change land use economics around teardowns and redevelopment incentives. So that gets more at the actual preservation disincentivizing teardowns. A modifying scale FAR reduction, as I said, it's really amassing control. We wouldn't expect to see teardowns significantly reduced. It would just work in conjunction with the recently passed zoning amendments of facade ratio, the change in height measurement, retaining walls, garage ordinance to reduce the size of those replacement homes. Pros of a modest reduction in size of replacement homes or pros of a modest reduction in FAR is a modest reduction in that size. And then in turn, that modest reduction in site alterations. Ultimately, the cons are we would expect to see minimal preservation of existing homes. And if this is a modest change, given the discrepancy that we're seeing today, Replacement homes may still significantly exceed the home size of the previously existing home. And I will also note that the fiscal impacts of this type of change have not been studied at this time. Um, In order to really try and prevent teardowns, we would have to alter the development economics by reducing FAR so significantly that the resale value was less than or equal to the costs that are incurred in the process, basically taking away the incentive to tear down or redevelop properties. and potential pros for this more significant change. would be reduced frequency of teardowns, basically by reducing potential profit, significantly reducing the size of replacement homes and maintaining that kind of existing neighborhood scale. Potential cons are that it could significantly increase the number of non-conforming homes, adding cost and time for existing homeowners. That's if we are unable to treat new versus additions differently and I will pause to let the commissioner and the chief zoning official sign speak to that if they'd like to.

If you reduce the FAR. Let me just ask you to identify yourself again. Anthony Ciccarello, commissioner of inspectorial services about reducing the FAR and what it would do to the existing home stock as far as non conforming making them. I mean, it would make a, especially for all the projects that have been happening in recent time, possibly not conforming. Most of the time, what we've been seeing is they almost go to the square foot for FAI. And it would cause a, I think, a large number of homes that are now conforming, as did probably the facade ratio did also.

And then depending on how drastic the change was, there could be a potential legal issue. I know Attorney Lee is on the call, and I'm not sure if he wants to speak to this.

Mr. Lee, are you with us?

Yes, I would like to make a quick comment or a quick note with regards to potential challenges and conflicting with statute if there was a significant change in the FAR reduction. So basically what the city has to make sure that we avoid doing is reducing it so far that a buy-write project is not feasible and leaving the property owner's only real option if they want to develop it to seek a special permit. Because under state law, we can't require a special permit for basically every project. And if that's the practical outcome, then it would be conflicting with Chapter 48. So it's just a note of caution. I can't say what exactly that calculation of the FAR is, but it's just something for the committee to keep in mind as they discuss this potential option.

Okay. Thank you very much.

And then for this last bullet, I will... look to the Chief Saniswaso to talk about this kind of concern that came up through her conversations with folks at the counter who are existing homeowners looking to do additions or alterations.

Jane Saniswaso, Chief Zoning Code Official. What we've found sort of anecdotally through conversations at the counter and DRTs that we have each week with people who are seeking special...

Sorry, let me just say we're DRTs.

I'm sorry. Again. Development review team meetings. So anybody who needs a special permit or a variance meets with staff to sort of go over the project so that we can, you know, point out any red flags that we think are insurmountable or make suggestions to help guide the project. to a more conforming project if possible. What we found, what I found, like I said, anecdotally is that when people are doing these additions and say, we make a suggestion, what if you did it here so that you could avoid, you know, needing that retaining wall or exceeding the facade ratio or whatever is that, you know, in these existing homes, the layout already exists. And so where you're trying to put things is guided by the dimensional requirements and now retaining walls, height, etc. And it limits where people can do things. And so I had mentioned to Nora that I think that by imposing these greater FAR or lesser, I should say, FAR requirements, you might actually increase teardowns because people can't work with an existing house. You know, we want a family room off the back of the house where we have our kitchen and we all hang out. But I can't do it there because now I'm conforming to height, but I'm a slope lot. My addition will increase my height and I need a variance, so I can't do it. Or the layout doesn't work or what have you. And so if you can't make it work, you say, well, I guess I'll just tear down and start over. And because this isn't, I cannot get it to work with what I have. So people who might want to actually preserve a home, can't do it now have this other insurmountable thing where we want an addition off the back we can't do it because we're going to exceed far too much then we go this other route let's just start so then i'll just note here as well that the fiscal impacts have not been studied

So in relation to the stated goals presented by Councilors Oliver, Wright and Goetz, an FAR reduction could provide additional climate resilience through reducing impact on open space and trees. and lessen the negative impact of new build on abutters by reducing massing. A significant FAR reduction may deter teardowns and help maintain the existing diversity of housing stock, but it would not increase the diversity of housing stock. And more broadly, FAR reductions do not shift incentives towards the type of development we want to encourage. Instead, they function by limiting or disallowing the types we do not want. So in that sense, this is a regulatory stick rather than an incentive-based carrot, which is an important consideration as we think about the cumulative impact of added regulation that I know has been docketed in Docket Item 8426 as an area for this committee to look at.

Let me pause for a minute. We have two different items. I mean, two different ideas being discussed. I think it would be appropriate for a pause for a minute to see what members of the committee have for questions about this. Counselor Wright, I'd say recognize you.

So I just looked up Lexington FAR. And so they include if the basement's six feet, eight inches or higher, but we only include The basement. If it's above four feet. Exposed so it's not quite the same thing. I would expect that most of the FBI is in Lexington is including that in their second floor. Can only be 40% of, I mean, the third floor can only be 40% of the second floor and greater than five feet. So would be interesting to take a house like in Lexington and what their FBI is and And what we would define as FAR because they're not the same.

It's right there.

But even that, there is some difference. So like including the finish attic, if greater than seven feet of height, only that area is 50% or more of the floor beneath it. So if it's only 40% of it, it's not included in the FAR. In Lexington? No, here, in us.

Well, that's not how it works.

How does that?

story in uh far so basically the area at seven feet can't be uh if it's fifty percent or more than the area at five feet far will count at the five foot square footage that's how it works uh the uh half story rule is the area above the second floor cannot be more than two-thirds of the floor below uh directly below at uh seven feet right yeah yeah yeah the seven foot area of the Half story, we'll call it. Can't be more than two-thirds of the floor directly below.

So it's not quite the same. Yeah, it's a little bit of apples and oranges, but that's every town defines it.

But it would be interesting, Blake, and I didn't have time to do it, to do an example of a house in Lexington. This is their FAR, and this is what we would say in ours. So I'm going to go... We do have questions at the beginning. So on page 11, I didn't understand this data here. We said the home sales in April 2017 and February 2024. How is the two different dates used in that data? I didn't understand that table.

Yeah, so this is homes that were sold in that time period. So it was a way of capturing just a chunk of homes in order to be able to try and compare tear downs to not tear downs.

Between those two dates? Okay, because it said and. And so that's why I was like, you took a month here and took a month there. Between those dates, yeah. Okay.

Before you leave that one, can I ask another one? Yeah. So can you explain what's happening here?

So this is trying to compare the year. So the right is homes that were then demolished.

It is homes that were demolished.

Yeah, the orange. And so what you can see is that the majority of homes that are demolished were built in the 1950s and 60s, whereas typically homes that were maintained were more frequently built in the 1920s to 40s. So that's just kind of giving us a clue of, OK, what's getting torn down? And it's these homes that were built during the 40s, which was a kind of, you know, different type of, I'm sure Councillor Donovan could speak to this more than I could, but a different style of architecture and a different quality of architecture.

Thank you.

And excuse me, I want to clarify something too. The right side says these are the year, the age of the structure torn down, right? But on the left it says preserved home year built, meaning What is going on in those bars? Are the houses sold or just what do they represent?

Yeah, so those are houses sold that were not torn down in that same time frame to try and compare against each other.

That's good.

It says you're built.

Yeah, but I guess I'm trying to get an understanding is that if a house that was built in 1920 is sold but not torn down, it would show up was in 1920 and was sold and torn down, it would show up as an orange one.

Exactly, yep.

I just want to understand what the two said.

Could you also explain the percentage? What is it a percentage of?

The percent of that subset. So this is the percent of teardowns. So for example, you know, 1960, that's 25% of the teardowns were built in 1960. Okay. And this is on the preserved side? 20% of the homes that were what? That were sold between those time periods and preserved were built in 1930. Okay.

How many total houses are we talking about between those two?

It's roughly 500 to 5,000. So about 5,000 homes total on the preserved side, about 500.

roughly 5,500 were sold and between 20, 2017 and 24. Okay. Okay. So, so one thing I think, I think wasn't clear, at least from what counselor Oliver and I were trying to do about this sliding game scale FAR is not to use it for existing houses. So people want to Added addition, they get to the font if they are that we have now, so they can make a bigger house. So that's the whole idea behind it and it's only if they tear down and that's a definition that we need to define the tear down. Is then they would have to have the sliding scale, so you can add that that you know room in the backyard and you know audition for your family room or whatever. It's only if you tear down the whole house.

Right. Yeah. And I'm glad you brought that up because that was there's a lot to cover here. But I did want to make sure we have that discussion. And that's part of why I wanted to make sure the commissioner and the chief of zoning was here. So Originally, we were unsure of the legal precedent for that. That was something that we were able to resolve. I think the biggest hurdle in terms of my understanding is then the administrative process for distinguishing between something existing and having that addition versus existing.

And again, and I do have, which I need to get to you, is a definition from some of the local architects what they would like to see as a definition of a teardown. Because you don't want to just say the house has to be completely gone because you know developers will leave up a corner or a wall and say, oh, that's not a teardown. And so they can use that. So, you know, want to kind of include that. And so in... In doing that too, in like page 17, one of the things he said, the maximum FAR can impact resale value and purchase price. I think that only impacts it if you plan to tear down the house, because that's where you're having a smaller FAR, because you still have the original FAR that's there. So it only... impacts that small number of houses. It's not like it's impacting the whole entire city.

So yeah, this slide was trying to get at what leads to teardowns.

Yeah, and what you have on here, which is different. Yeah, maximum FAR can impact resale value and purchase price. That's only if you're going to tear down the house. Right now, because that's where you're going to have a smaller, smaller FAA. So for most houses, it wouldn't have an impact on the price. It's only if you're going to plan if a developer buys the house and plans to tear it down.

I'm going to let you finish and then go to counselor over.

So I actually, I should go.

Excuse me. But I'm not going to be following.

One of the things that Lexington does is also include their multifamily, and I think we'd like to extend this to MR, too, not just SR, but to extend whatever we do to MR. And then, let's see. Next time I should go last.

Well, I'm glad to. I'd like some other people. You're bringing up good questions that we can work off of, so...

So, and then slide like 23, sliding the scale just into FAR, the lower FAR such that no incentive to tear down, redevelop existing properties. That's not what we're getting at. You know, you got a, you know, a cute little Cape on a 15,000 square foot lot. That's going to get torn down. You know, we're not going to be able to say that. We don't want to make that FAR so that nobody could do that. We're not trying to stop teardown, but to reduce it. We want a middle ground.

Yeah. So I think this, I'm really glad you brought that up also because the challenge, and that's why I kind of started with the, what are the characteristics of a teardown? they really are happening on those large lots with those small homes. And so that's why you would need a really drastic reduction in FAR in order to capture the majority of them. You might be able to capture a couple where it just happens to be a bigger house on a medium sized lot and the condition of the house is really falling apart with a minor reduction, but in order to capture A substantive quantity of what's being torn down. Now you have to really reduce that if they are.

Well, I mean, what we're looking at more is like Oak Hill Park today and went and drove by one in Weston. I love them line and the 70 200 square foot long, you know, that's kind of what we're going after. Like I said, we're not going to be able to protect the small houses on the huge lots, but on the more you know And they're more attainable for people to buy.

Yeah, I think that it is those houses that are the small homes on the large lots that, again, the differential between what the current FAR is and what the allowed FAR is, is the greatest, the bigger the differences between the size of the lot and the size of the home. So that's where, you know, A lot more work is needed.

One more question.

So on your last page, the last line says further regulate rather than incentivize billable area to deter development types we do not want. How do you suggest to do that? You just kind of put that in there, but you don't have any backup on that.

That's the asterisk of shift incentives towards development types that we do want. I was saying that a sliding scale FAR adjustment wouldn't shift development towards what we do want to see but it would shift development away from what we don't want to see. So it was just kind of saying it doesn't technically meet that goal, but it kind of meets maybe a different goal. I just wanted to kind of nod to that distinction.

But what we're trying to do with the sliding scale is not tear down, you know, not rebuild and not all of it, but for some of all. Right.

So it's regulating against what you don't want. instead of incentivizing.

You can do it both.

It's double negative instead of deposit.

Are you all done? No, you don't have to be done. I've learned that we don't know. Anyway, let me go in order.

I don't think I have any questions. And you said you haven't done any fiscal analysis yet. No, but I think we need to understand the impact on new growth. What percent of our new growth is because of these teardowns? And I don't think you're going to know. I don't expect you to know the answer to that, but I think it's something we need to know.

I'm trying to remember. I think I do know the answer to that. Building permit combined with new growth for single and two family homes brings in roughly 10 million a year to the city.

Everyone wants special permits.

That's single and two family. I don't know about the other.

It's not happening very much lately. We're not doing as much of that as we used to do.

But that's good, 10 million. Which is the building permit combined with the net new growth revenue from single and two family. That could be some additions as well.

So I guess to count the rights question, we need to know what percent of new growth does that account for? So that would be good too if you could figure that one out. Yeah.

Because we are talking roughly 100 of these a year-ish. It varies, obviously. Yeah. And which is, well, that's what the analysis would be.

We'll stop there. So what small homes on large lots are the most

impacted by this or that's what would be most impacted by this is that right not quite so it depends this is why i thought it was helpful and it you know this is complicated so i kind of put it into a binary path a a modest reduction wouldn't impact really those small houses on large lots it might result in a slightly smaller end product um but it would require a really significant FAR reduction in order to actually prevent the teardowns of small houses on the large lots.

So enhance the notion of why don't we incentivize what we do want instead of, because if they're going to tear it down anyway, maybe we can get them to build something else.

Yeah, so I actually just did a little extra analysis today and I'll send this to you, Myles. But here you can see the distribution of FAR of preserved homes versus those that got torn down. And this is for SR2 lots, 10 to 15,000 square feet. And that the FAA are the ones that are getting torn down is closer to point to whereas the ones that are preserved are almost normalizing right on what our FAA are allowances for an SR two on a 10,000 square foot lot, which is point three eight. So it's going from What and it's going from point two to what to point three eight to the maximum allowed. Okay. Okay.

And are these all in single family?

Yes, there is.

Yeah, I'm just making sure.

OK, let me see. I think that might be on the questions for now.

We have the other section too, remember. You can always come back for the CODA to the

Okay, good.

I'm good for now.

Thank you, Chair. So I think I do have as many questions.

Well, you go and then I'll go.

I'll keep it specific and strategic. Okay. So one question, if we could go back to the orange and purple diagram that I think we all had a couple of questions about. And maybe this is a question for Chief Saniswaso, which is, I'm curious to know, do we... I'm trying to phrase this exactly right... people's taste in buildings change and our tolerances for what we deem to be historically valuable changes. Pretty quickly, actually, like within a decade. And so looking at this from data taken across about eight years, I'm kind of curious, if we took a sample in 2017 or ideally in 2015 and then a sample in 2025, would we see the teardowns be more? Shift. Like shift forward, basically.

because people might you know in 2000 1960 didn't feel historic um but in 2026 it does do you understand yeah i think that's um i think there's kind of two pieces to that one of that is very subjective right and you know we all have our own personal taste i will say that i think that so i quality of architecture changed because of what was kind of happening in the world and just because of the speed at which they built those post-war houses. That's not to say that there aren't wonderful post-war houses, but I think maybe the quality of the construction that was happening pre-war is standing up a little bit better, which would indicate that this might stay as it is, but that doesn't account for the

President has to go to a finance meeting for a minute, and I want to talk about more, maybe more in a minute. Would it be helpful to have Nora do the second part just of the presentation and then come back, or what would your preference be?

Oh, thank you. No, let me, you all should carry on. Like, I hope this won't be terribly long. I hope. I would carry on and I'll come back.

But just so the public and other people know that by operation of our rules, the president is an ex-officio member of finance. And so if he's, it matters if he's showing up occasionally. So even though we miss you.

All right. All right.

I guess. Okay, carry on. I'm sorry. No, no problem. I guess my point there is I would just be a little bit curious to understand if that has changed over time. Yeah. And the other thing is a little bit of a clarifying question. We all were kind of real time trying to process Councilor Wright's question about Lexington's FAR versus ours. It might be helpful to have just like a really simple sectional diagram of like... what the commissioner was saying of like five feet, seven feet, what counts, what doesn't.

Yeah, I would say, I mean, I defer to those experts. I think it's pretty close in terms of what it counts, give or take a margin of error. What would you say?

I mean, a lot of the builders will build to, they build around the ordinance. That's what they do, okay? That's their job. Their architect's job is to build a house that will work in without triggering or going over the F.A.R. if possible. And so as far as Lexington's and our F.A.R. So basements, they're going to include a basement at six foot eight height. For us, it doesn't matter. It could be a crawl space and it could include. So I think there are a lot more chances of FAR counting in Newton than in Lexington. Also in the attic area, also the area above the second floor, they will design, like I said, to beat the ordinance. But I mean, that's their job. You set the rules and just like any football game or anything like that, you have the rules and we're going to make this play. As long as we have a good umpire in the mission.

Yeah, I think my point is just that having a visualization would help to understand, even if it was just ours.

Yeah, I think that could be helpful for many people at the counter too.

Confusing, to say the least. What I'm hearing is that we have one tool that might meaningfully help in an effort to preserve in particular small and therefore more affordable homes. um and then we have one that likely is not how you know well we haven't gotten there yet but you know but we will have that presentation second well it seems like the more more the significant versus moderate change here we haven't talked about our test review right right but just of these two is that one is more likely to be impactful in one area than the other and to me it starts to seem like a question of like If we, I mean, if we were to limit the, if we were to go with a more drastic increase or implement a more drastic increase, that would start to be a limitation as Councillor Wright mentioned on the sort of development capacity there for the sale price. If we didn't want to impact people's nest eggs, then it would start to be a question of allowing FAR, but what do we allow it to be used for effectively? Am I understanding this correctly?

Yeah, yeah. aligns with my understanding.

As you mentioned, just as a matter of history, the scenario of people, we used to have a situation where the FAR applied a new construction, but if you were doing an addition, you didn't count it because you were maintaining more than half the house. What developers were doing were saying, I'm maintaining more than half the house and then building this enormous structure around it. That's what led us to modify the rules so that FAR applied across the board. And that had, in effect, limited some of the value that those properties had because we were saying that FAR applied whether you were making an addition or whether you were building straight out. So we have the precedent of having modified the market forces because we thought as a matter of public policy, it was a better result. So that doesn't mean that You know, we want to go here, but I just want to say that this has happened in the past in the city because we have been concerned that things are oversized and not fitting into the context, just like all that we've talked about. The particular framework here, I think, that is somewhat a little different is we're looking really at the question of are there homes that are more modest in size that are available to people who want to buy into the city that are effectively being diverted from the purchase opportunity into reconstruction and redevelopment in a much bigger and the more expensive homes. Other people buy into the city, but they're a different cohort than we might want to preserve. And just being from a historical perspective, we work very hard on all sorts of efforts for affordable housing and one or two units. And here we have 100 units a year, not all of them deserve preservation, but are lost to that sort of purchase market. And so the question is, is there something we can or should do in this land? And this is why this analysis is going on.

But yeah, you are correct. Allusion to counselor rights comment that unless we allowed it in a different way. And by it, I mean, a similar amount of buildable area, it could impact the nest eggs.

But we're not changing that they are for existing houses. This is only for tearouts. That's what I'm saying in a different way. Well, you know, there's more than that that's sold every year. There's what 5,000 that were sold in seven years. So from their standpoint, the FAR is not changing. They can add on to the maximum FAR. It's only if a developer goes in and tears down the house, then it would be smaller.

Right. So if I have a small cape on a very large parcel, I could add on up to the FAR maximum. Yeah.

which would then make that house less affordable to purchase than it was before um but i similarly i could just demolish it and build something you're gonna get something but it's also right you also need to consider all the other regulations the 60 facade the everything everything else that we've done so are we impacting one house set or grouping of houses more than others and what is that impact So when you say, but it's only impacting a certain number of houses, well, what are all these other ordinances impacting and how does it impact the set of houses?

That's a fair question, but if you don't mind, I want to sort of move down the line. Do you mind if I go ahead?

Yeah, this even got more complex as you started. Just because it started showing me things, it seems as if the 1930s were when People really had the money and the, you know, the architecture to create homes that are going to live for 100 plus years. So there's a tendency to preserve those. And then you see, you know, it's telling you all this information. The 50s and 60s may have been the post-war rapid builds that you know, came up and as quickly as they come up, they can come down. But I actually just generally, I have so many questions, but I didn't even know for the first question was, can we make the distinction for a house that comes down? Can we have a new set of rules? you know, in terms of all of the regulations for a new build on a tear down lot. That's a, you know, an Andrew Lee question. I didn't think that we could do, you know, I don't know if we can make that subset or that distinction.

I will let Andrew speak to the legal precedent.

Thank you, Nora. So it's a very fair question, Council Gets, because under Chapter 48, Section 4, there's a requirement that within a district, there's uniformity, meaning that Each kind of structure are all treated the same. I did some preliminary research with regards to whether or not the city has the legal authority to essentially make a distinction between something that's existing versus a new construction. Based on that research, it seems likely that the city does have that authority. I would appreciate the opportunity to dig a little bit deeper into it. But from what I found, I can't say as of right now that it is not allowed.

Not good to know. Or Winsington is doing that.

Yeah, and we checked. They did get their ordinance approved by the AG. I don't know if I would recommend doing it the same exact way. And that's where I really want to speak with.

I just parenthetically mentioned that in historic districts, houses are very difficult to tear down. So it's not that there's A entire barrier to regulating on. But the question of the distinction is a problem. Yeah.

Well, I just said the uniformity issue is the real issue for me. Then the next question I had was just, you know, because this is telling me that if 34 or 36.4% of the total in the SR2s and the SR3s are the lots that are getting torn down and redeveloped, it's saying that there's inherently much more value in those parcels.

You know, so there is a quick caveat that I will just to make sure that the data is clear. You can see the redevelopment rate in the zone. So partly there's more teardowns in those zones because there's more parcels.

That's what the other question I had. I needed to know the total number of lots in each of those resident homes. The, you know, yeah, the nations. So I needed to know what the total number was like, how many SR ones we have, how many SR2.

So you can kind of get a sense of that. I'm happy to go back in and provide that. But you can see about 10%. It's pretty evenly distributed in terms of all of the teardowns. It's almost 10 across, you know, rounding across the board in terms of what's happening where.

So redevelopment means teardown?

Yeah, so in this context it's teardown. So compared to the SR2 lots that were preserved, about 10% were torn down.

See, I was seeing redevelopment rate in zone as how many of the total number of SR2s there was, you know, you're saying comparatively in terms of the total number. Of you know in that subset of preserve versus redeveloped is that is that where you're.

No, I think the way you just described it is accurate okay it's about 10% in that in that zone and so it's it's 160 because there's. That many more parcels in sr to ban let's say Mr three.

But what i'm suggesting is that there seems to be a tendency to tear down in. It's higher in SR2 and it's higher, you know, down in Oak Hill. Because I know that Wabun is right behind, you know, Oak Hill in terms of the number of teardowns.

Right.

So it's telling me that it's, what are the factors that lead to, you know, what is happening, you know, and what are the specific, you know, we have to narrow this so that we understand what are the levers, what are the tools that we can use in order to effectively reduce you know, incentivize keeping the houses.

And I think I all definitely get those numbers to you. I think part of it too is lot size, right? If you look at the minimum lot size in each of these districts, it's SR2 is kind of the mid-range of those larger lots that make that FAR more enticing because if it's a smaller home on a larger lot, it's more likely to be torn down.

Right. But I live in an area that's designated SR2. I have lots around me that are 22,000 square feet. Yeah. You know, so we've got, I call it like residual or, you know, FAR, you know, in the sense of like there's a significant amount of FAR. Yeah. And that's why it's incentivizing the houses coming down so that new builds can go up. Totally. Yeah.

If I can add to your question, which is what I'm thinking, is that if you look at the proportion of the properties that are demolished, a big chunk of them are in SR2 and SR3, and MR1 to some extent. But the blue zone, as you've highlighted it. And what that raises a question, as I think Councilor Gans is asking, is the FAR in those situations more generous than it might otherwise have been because it's producing this impact in those zones, not in other zones. Is that what you're asking?

Because I know that if you look at the 2011 recalculating that they are. You know, the sliding scale is the lots get smaller, it goes higher, you know, but the lots, the houses themselves are so old that, you know, the bars are usually a third, if not a half. There's a residual far left on the lot. Absolutely. So it incentivizes tearing down the house. Yeah. And we've got to figure out how to solve this so that then they are incentivized to keep the house and do an addition rather than bringing it down.

Right. And I think that it's helpful to speak to that in the context of this equation because that smaller home means that purchase price is lower. And so it's both a smaller home, making it less expensive for the developer to buy it, and then they can turn it into a larger home so they get more of a profit. And so as you said, the residual FAR basically translates into profit.

We've basically created that value by our table. Whether we've adjusted or not is another question.

But then we have to disassociate the cost of the land and the land value, you know, and then the home value. And you see that in real estate listings. Right. You know, and I sort of see this as, I don't know that we can solve this problem. Seriously. I'm very, it's tough.

This is why we're having this discussion. I want to give everybody on the committee a chance to ask a question if they have any, and then come back to the second presentation, and we can re-conclude any of this. But let me make sure people haven't heard from Councilor Gordon.

Thank you, Chair. I'm just thinking that this was a very big issue in the election, right, for the mayor. And my guess is most people weren't worried about the smaller capes on bigger lots. But we're really looking at a lot of these houses from the 10s, 20s, 30s, and 40s that are being torn down. And in my neighborhood, it's significant. They're all MR1 and MRT. and they are building unaffordable houses. So even though we're talking about smaller houses that we would like to preserve, and you were saying it doesn't increase the stock, but by stopping the demolition of the areas, we're affordable for Newton, right? A million dollars is not affordable for most of the country, but in our area, a million dollar house might be a bargain for some. I think we have to be mindful of that because what's happening with some of these MR1s is that a house is being sold for eight, $9 million and being torn down and then a gigantic house is being put up that goes right out to all the lot lines. And I think we have to think about that when we're looking at how we want to structure this. I'm also curious, do we know how many homeowners are tearing down their own house because they're not able to do what they want to do, because that's been mentioned a few times. I know of one person who tore down their house and rebuilt a two family. And so I'm just curious if we have that. And I guess what I was hoping to hear is a little bit more of a recommendation on, you know, what we we can do to try and preserve, especially some of these older homes that I think a lot of people are concerned about. If you drive in Newton Center and Newton Highlands, there are beautiful old homes that are being demolished. On Dudley, there was nothing wrong with it. So I will admit I'm new to this, so I'm learning. I have a very steep learning curve, but I am guessing there are people who are watching who may know as much as I do, and I think it would be helpful to really think about what real solutions there are to try and disincentivize tearing down a home.

Yeah, let's see, I can kind of try and remember what to address. I think in terms of, Jane, I don't know if you want to speak to, I don't want to speak for you, but when you were mentioning the houses that homeowners might be Kind of just starting over with if they can't make work that was if we were to further increase regulation or are you seeing it frequently now.

See, I mean, we see, excuse me, the ones I'm looking at are only going through the special permit process. I'm not looking at the buy right ones. Would you say it's like a quarter. I would say about a quarter of the special permits that go for FAA. They're going for FAA are because they are probably homeowners tearing down their own homes and rebuilding new.

I just don't know what the like Delta is after they purchase the home. Yeah, you know, I don't that's the one variable. I'm not sure.

And then just to get to your kind of looking for recommendations. That's really where I hope to end up. We were asked to look at two specific tools. And so we were kind of just saying, how do these tools work? What could they do? I think the concern about older homes specifically is a really important one. And I was actually just talking about it today where we've got this kind of two part issue of we're losing smaller homes to really big homes that are out of scale of the neighborhood. But then there's also a third issue of we're also losing some really architecturally beautiful homes and really, you know, old homes that might not be in a historic district and maybe they're just waiting out the demolition delay. And so I think that could be another tool that maybe I'm not presenting tonight, but definitely looking to work with our historic planners on that.

The scope of the ordinance, the docket item is non-zoning matters. Um, but I think I just want to make sure that because I'm sitting facing this way, I had a question that was, um, dressed by other. Thank you. All right. Um, All right. I recognize myself, but I'll come to you.

So just in answer to your question, having been on the council for a while in 2015, it was the same problem. It was the 1940s. Actually, it was also the 1940s because it's the Oak Hill Park, but there aren't many of them left to tear down. A lot of them are gone. But it was the same issue, the same time period that was being primarily torn down. And this other issue that you just raised about the large homes that are getting larger. I mean, I've never seen so many homes on Commonwealth Avenue be torn down and rebuilt. They are right now. And those were nice, beautiful 3,000, 4,000 square foot homes that are turning into 5,000 square foot homes.

Rachel Road.

That too. And the final thing I want to say is that I wouldn't be ready to vote anything until we see what adaptive reuse, you know, might do to incentivize people to, if they're going to tear something down, what might they do with it that we could really use? So I've gotten to some point, Chair, that we asked Nora to study that issue too.

Well, I'm going to say that I'm not prepared to go there yet because Adaptive reuse, I think, is not formally within the scope of this item. It can be another item. But I think the problem that I'm concerned about, and I want to recommend myself for this point, is we have people come to us constantly and say, what are we doing to save the older, smaller, or even affordable houses, the ones in neighborhoods, and not having them be replaced that are not affordable by people who want to live there? And I think we have an affordability challenge here. And adaptive reuse enables you to build more bigger and more expensive.

Not if you do it in a way that creates two units instead of one, two smaller units, or three smaller units instead of one.

Well, but that's turning it into a different structure rather than a structure that people want to preserve.

Well, it's like it's the MRT idea.

I understand, but I want to see... I want to see what we can do with what we've got. Because this is the item that's been before us. We've had plenty of discussion of ways you can add to buildings and add to opportunity for building in the city. But I want to see if we can, as a committee, look seriously at the challenge that people are asking us about, which is this one. And what can we do about it? Now, if we come to say there's nothing we can do, And then we go on to something else. That's fine. But I don't want to, I don't want to go to another alternative until we really exhausted this one and figure out where we are, including historic, excuse me, the demolition delay or any other tool that seems appropriate. But I'd like to, I'd like to go to the second presentation, if you can, just so we have both things before you have one more clarifying.

Well, two things. So like adaptive reuse, we're talking here about smaller houses. And I don't see them being adaptive reuse. They're 2,000, 1,800 square feet, whatever. That wouldn't be hard to do adaptive reuse. Well, then that's going to a different thing. And I agree with the Chair Baker. That's kind of a separate thing. But the other thing is, and I don't know if we can address it at all, there is a house, beautiful, nice house in our neighborhood And it never goes to market. It goes directly to, you know, a developer. And I was at a meeting and three people said, I would have been on this house, but they never got the chance to do it. I don't know if there's anything we can do that they would have to go to market, you know, but like for my house that I bought, thank God it did go to market, but developers came in and the guy didn't want to, It was a higher price, but he didn't want to sell to a developer. He wanted to sell it to a family. But there's a lot of these houses that don't even get a chance.

Okay.

So is it clarifying?

Yeah, clarifying, and then let's go to the next thing. Then we can circle back on both.

Sure, yeah. I guess in my professional experience, adaptive reuse typically means changing the use. So an office building that becomes residential, or a residential building, or a brewery that becomes an office or something.

I don't think that's what I meant.

We're not talking about that. We're talking about the same program, residential.

OK, OK. In my neighborhood, I finally did. That's what Donald said.

You get a lot of support with more beer opportunities.

I had a small, big brew pub. OK. So do you want to go to the second to talk about large house review just so we understand the idea?

So the second option we were asked to analyze was large house review proposed as a way to mitigate the impacts of large house new builds and additions. Wellesley was referenced as a model. So we met with our counter.

Hold on there.

Oh, sorry.

Go back. When when did we when it was that was 2014 way back yeah it never did it ever get discussed it got discussed was you remember. You don't think it did that just turned.

I looked at the report, I can tell you the report, it was at the end. yeah but that was after discussion right, but it had literally one one kind of like you know around Robin wonder why, though.

It might have been after San Gio tried to stop all housing development.

Well, she wanted to put an interim moratorium.

Moratorium, a moratorium.

Yeah, that he was going to have a start and a stop date.

I remember this.

Yeah, it was around the same time.

Isn't it fun to see your old rocket items? You had a great idea 10 years ago, or at least an idea where they were. Here we are doing it again. All right, carry on.

So as I was saying, Wellesley was brought up as an example of a community who has large house review that's fairly comparable to Newton. We met with our counterparts and we conducted research on how they conduct this review. And the key takeaways are that it's primarily focused on stormwater drainage and tree impacts. And then the other piece is that it only applies to conforming lots and structures. So then what I kind of did, I said, hmm, that sounds a little familiar. What does Newton have that's similar already? And so I looked at Newton's FAR special permit compared to Wellesley's large house review. And the primary focus of of our special permit to exceed the allowed FAR's neighborhood context while theirs is stormwater and trees. This is using an example again of that SR2 10,000 square foot lot. The threshold for review in our case special permit is 3,800 square feet measured through FAR. Theirs is 3,600 square feet measured through what they call TLAG, or total living area plus garage. Properties under purview in our special permit, it's all lots and structures, whereas Wellesley's, it's conforming lots and structures. And so, as I'm sure the commissioner and the chief zoning official can tell you, there's a special permit process. I also wanted to see, okay, if their primary focus is stormwater, what other regulations are kind of in the mix? So Newton stormwater ordinance, in short, is triggered much more quickly than Wellesley's, at least for the kind of more thorough level of review. In Newton, it's triggered for any addition of more than 400 square feet of impervious surface. So pretty much any redevelopment will trigger our stormwater ordinance. Whereas in Wellesley, it's triggered by, at least the higher level of review is triggered by their large house review at 3,600 square feet of TLAG. And then our tree ordinance regulates all trees on the lot, whereas theirs focuses on perimeter trees, unless it's part of that large house review. So the pros of large house review, as we kind of saw it playing out in Wellesley, is addresses site impacts directly in terms of stormwater and drainage. It's more flexible than a change to a dimensional regulation. Yeah.

Okay. I'm almost done.

It seems to be a, it's a bit of a misnomer. It's a pretty weak control for limiting the actual size of the house. They said the only real design change they've seen is like some minor modifications to dormers. It's review only. So it means boards have limited authority, which can lead to some frustration from abutters who might think that someone could And then it also creates some ongoing regulatory complexity. Any future modifications trigger re-review. So if somebody built a house through large house review in Wellesley 15 years ago, sold it, someone else bought it, and they want to add a sunroom, they're going through the large house review process again. Ultimately, I think some of this is captured in Newton's stormwater ordinance and our tree ordinance. So there's that, and when we compare it against the stated goals, really it just gets at providing climate change resilience, open space and trees, and And yeah, so I think unless we were to invent our own review process, we have this special permit process. I think in terms of getting at what we want, that would be the place to look.

I'm going to just ask a clarifying question. That last point is, I think, important. If the large house review in this model does not seem to capture anything that we already don't do, or we already do this through the special permit process. But if you wanted to say, aside from special permits, if you're building an As of Right house, and the As of Right house is a big house, because this is a large house review, let's leave the definition aside, is there a possibility of this tool having some benefit independent of that? Or is our special permit process really capture In other words, you could say there's the universe of houses that are subject to as a right construction and then the universe of houses that need a special permit to get bigger. You could say, is there some subset of that as a right where some intermediate review would be appropriate? And is that because of its size? That's a large house, but not special permit review. And that's not what Wellesley does, but is it something we should consider?

I think... the folks in current address that. I think we have the special permit process. I think it depends on what the goal is. I think it could seem nice to have something called large house review. I'm not sure how much material impact it would have.

Yeah. I mean, so a special permit is a discretionary permit, right? The and his committee can say no. Whereas if it's a review, it's merely a review. And so they might say, well, you know, make your dorm or smaller, add more trees, but it's not a yes. No. So it would be minimally impactful.

That would be that. Yes. I think the downside really is that it could be misleading, um, where a butters could come to a meeting where this large house review is happening and say, hey, I really want you to make this smaller. And as Jane said, it's a review, and the developer can say no.

Okay. All right. Before you go, I want to get Counselor Kalis since the lab surviving doctor.

So can you go back a slide there? So what we just talked about is probably why it was. to dimension requirements. And I like what you just talked about chair, the idea of inventing something that has teeth. I mean, if we're gonna start thinking about this seriously, it could be an add on to our existing special permit process. It could be something completely separate. It could be something completely new, but I think I mean, we've been talking about this over 10 years, and it makes me nervous to actually develop ordinances when we don't allow flexibility. Um, it's interpreted by one person, uh, which is fine. He's a good person, but, but when you have, but something that is implied by a review, um, I mean, we could, we could state that our, what our goals are. So people going in know that if you're going to buy a small house in a large lot, you're going through this review and this is why. And you're probably going to be limited by what you can build. And we could do it by different types of lots. I mean, there's ways to do it, I think. But yeah, it's a lot of work. And it would be inventing something. We'd probably have to look at other communities than just Wellesley. There are probably other communities that have something. But I think there's something here that could fit Newton specifically if we create it.

I'm going to recognize the commissioner.

So we're talking mainly by right projects, correct? I just do want to make a statement that we're already getting complaints that from the time to issue a building permit in the city is taking a rather a long time. And I believe that this would also add to the permitting process and would delay further issuances of permits. I'm just speaking frankly from my department on issues that I've run into in that they're looking to see how we can issue permits quicker. But I think adding another review for a by-right project, which almost looks similar, very similar to what we do already as far as engineering, you know, drainage, things like that.

But I just want to respond because on the face of it, yeah, it seemed like you would add, but if you, if we had, If we worked out what the specs are and we said, okay, if it is a small house on a large lot, you've come in, here's what you can do. Here's what you can't do. So they know right away. So it's no administrative time. We've already put that time in. They'll already know. And so I think there are ways around that.

I just think we can tell them what to do on a buy-write project. That's the problem.

Let me just clarify. I think part of the challenge is that The building department, or the special services, sorry, operates with objective criteria. The building this high, the building this wide, the building this other than the number of square feet. If you say, I'd rather you not build an ugly building that's too big, that requires discretion because you have to have somebody to go through a process like special permit or an historic district. Somebody has to review that who has the ability to say, no, that doesn't look That's an ugly building and you're not going to be able to build it. But the commissioner of inspectional services can't say that. He can say, your building is this tall, this wide. And that's the difference between rules and standards. And part of the challenge is that we are wrestling with whether we modify our rules. And also perhaps there is a standard we want to add to our special permit process or something else that might make for very large projects and additional consideration that ought to be considered. And if that's the case, Then you've got a mechanism already in place in the sense of a body who is used to making discretionary decisions and applying standards rather than rules. So I just want to say you've got a good idea. I don't want you to lose it. I just want to distinguish the two mechanisms because I think they make a difference in how you sort out where you go with this.

um okay uh let me make sure uh counselor yeah i just want to finish up the presentation oh i'm sorry did we interrupt now okay all good um just going to finish out the the powerpoint um the kind of third concept presented by counselors oliver wright and debts were incentivizing additional units. This is a nice opportunity to give kudos to the committee. We accomplished this update to the ADU ordinance to increase the flexibility actually slightly beyond what the state required. roughly this time last year. And then adaptive reuse, as we've stated.

But yes, I think in this context, just to clarify, adaptive reuse is saying

Okay, let's keep this building, this residential structure, and maybe it is now two units, whether that's fully inside of it, or whether that's keeping it as it is and adding an addition and adaptively reusing it to go from a single family to a two family on that lot. I think that's my understanding of what, but I don't know, Councillor Wright, was there a different

Oh yeah much different okay. We have a much different definition and something right bigger houses and three or four units and only 10% addition and. A lot more parameters around it so yeah not like your 2000 square foot house that's going to be three units so it's it's it's adaptive reuse of the bigger.

homes right right getting a kind of the the comment made by counselor what i view is that both of these are not necessarily within the scope of the item as we have it we're trying to figure out how do we deal with the preservation of the existing houses that are affordable if if they're affordable at all that's the point that counselor gordon made about what do we do to deal with those um so um let me ask the members of the committee we've got i think i would like to keep a move a motion to hold at this point on this item so that we can continue the conversation because i'm the counselor uh president oliver's back just for a motion to hold yeah no it was one of those oh yeah before we close it up yeah yeah no but i'm going to just say that i would entertain a motion to hold but i want to have people have a chance to ask questions and comments about how we go forward. Because it seems to me that the two ideas that have emerged are, is there some form of reduction in the FAR scale at an appropriate situation, which I'm going to use Councillor Wright's issue, is it a demolition by itself, you know, and you're tearing the house down, as opposed to adding to it? Is there some version of that that is worth pursuing for further analysis? And second, is there some iteration of large house review, perhaps in special permit standards or otherwise, to pick up on Councillor Kalis' point, that might be worth pursuing? Again, neither one necessarily has to be, but I just want to say what I think the conversation has brought us to at this point, and then have people ask questions about either or go forward from there. Okay. And then not on the table tonight, but I would entertain a conversation about it at the next meeting if we can, is your question or idea about historic or the demolition delay. There may be something else that's not part of the universe that we've been talking about tonight. But again, trying to get at this basic issue. So questions, conversation now. Okay. Yes. And I will go down the road.

I just wanted to pursue a little bit more about the lodge house review because it seemed as if the criteria that you spoke to, you know, in terms of the stormwater management that we currently have, but there seemed to be a lot more criteria that was in place for Wellesley. So it was the preservation of the landscape, the scale of the building, the lighting, the open space. And even in the circulation on the site. So I didn't know whether or not they're just not applying that or, you know, I just didn't understand what had been sort of put into the listed criteria.

I'm going to take my guess. And then I can, I can, well, Jane has a comment as well. I think part of it is, and to the commissioner's point, it's a review. And so I think there'll be... Right, but they can't deny, so they have less leverage, whereas they have a stormwater ordinance that it's triggered by, which gives that aspect some kind of teeth. That said, you know, it's a different community. Anecdotally, we heard that the size of the buildings haven't really been changing. I don't know, Jane, did you have a comment?

I was just thinking all of the things that you mentioned counselor gets are addressed when a project goes through the special permit process. So if you're exceeding the if they are you're you're and you're going through the process they're going to be looking at landscaping impact to the neighbors etc yeah.

Yeah, well, I, you know, I mean, it was the Urban Design Commission in reading through some of the prior notes was a potential place where you know they would be the review body, you know, in terms of just if you had established criteria and the people understood. But it's also, you know, thinking about contextual, you know, you've got like 38, not even 38, maybe 24 in the rural area down the street and then in comes the, you know, around the 5,000, there's like this jarring kind of like we need to think how this is going to really fit within the context of the rest of the homes in this area. So that became another issue, you know, because we do the 60% max frontage build out now. You know, we have the garage. So we are somewhat, you know, addressing the streetscape. But I also think there's a higher level when we start doing this exceedingly larger home in a street that's gone, it's going to incentivize the other homes being up to be the next one. In the buy right context or the special? In the buy right. You see it all the time. You know, Fuller Street's a great example. You know, bing, bing, bing, bing, each house, you know, gets redeveloped. And it's why bother preserving my home or maintaining it, you know, because it's going to be the next one. So it's that kind of discussion that I think we're trying to sort of figure out what is the best way, what levers can we pull, you know, in order to, you know, promote the idea of keeping the existing home, housing stock.

Okay. I don't know if that's a question.

I understand, because I understood that our stormwater management, yes, is addressing some of Wellesley's, you know, what they put in place, but they seemed like there was a lot more that they were asking for, you know, and I was, because I sort of see this as theirs by right, you know, it's not special permits.

this is a good question well i'll start there maybe i hadn't planned to but it's i mean it seems like our tree ordinance is another thing that's kind of part of that math that helps us kind of get there but it also kind of seems like what we're really talking about is a sort of binding-ish site plan review for large houses large defined based on some metric uh that are also by right is that kind of what we're talking about getting that and and i don't know how i mean that also seems tricky because every name if it's contextual every neighborhood's going to be a little bit i don't know how you would design the parameters to pull that off you'd have to do a lot of study yeah so i'm just i'm not necessarily against it i'm just saying i don't know what the what how It seems like tonight we were talking about preserving existing homes and the tool that I feel like, I think Councilor Goetz said it, I think Councilor Gordon did it, how do we incentivize that? We talked mostly about sticks tonight, I think. And it seems to me like the carrot potentially is the one that was kind of at the end of the presentation of how do we, you know, when we're talking about extra, as you said, extra FAR, it starts to be a question of what do we want you to use that FAR for? Do we want you to use that FAR to build a much bigger house, a new, much bigger house, or do we want to use that FAR to keep the existing house and either do an addition that makes it also a much bigger house or do something else, add additional units that make it possible to preserve it. I think in my experience, I have not heard, I haven't heard from anybody saying, I'm very upset that they kept that house. I have heard what you said, Councillor Gordon, which is I'm very upset that they knocked it down and built a bunch of things there that were also very expensive. So I guess I feel like we're kind of missing the incentive tool.

I'm going to ask you to hold that. We will have a chance to talk about that, and we're going to review the experience in the MR districts. But that's a different concept than I think that I could understand speaking to. And I want to try and, I don't misunderstand it. It's a conversation we've had with the planning department, and I think we need to head. But in the process of trying to do justice to this question, the question is, can we preserve the existing smaller houses in some way that preserves their affordability? If you're putting somebody into the business of developing into a bigger house or bigger structure, that doesn't automatically do that. So that's a different docket I have in mind then.

Yeah, I guess I would just say that if we're, I think that the tool for preserving a building and it's close to its affordability, close to its level of affordability is if you buy something for $300,000, no, that's not realistic, sorry, if you buy something for $900,000, and you're able to quadruple what's built on that parcel and then each of those things then is you know sellable for nine hundred thousand dollars and you've preserved one of them the original one you've maintained a certain level of affordability approximately small increase of for renovations and then you've also you've preserved that building which is the thing that abdul is that's why i would like to see this that idea kept as part of the incentivized

Just to clarify, though, if you're doing something, if it's a single-family zone, you're creating basically a multi-family unit in a single-family zone. Now, you may want to do that, but that's a different model than we currently have. I'm talking about how we take the existing zoning structure we have and try and make it work in the context we have. Now, that doesn't mean we can't change all of that, but I'm just saying that's different. Understood.

OK. We do have a docket item for looking at preservation in MR zone. Yes, we do. So maybe that's the time.

We'll have a chance to talk about that. But I want to make sure, because it's very easy to go to the development options. I'm really interested in what we do right now on the non-development options that will preserve something. And until we exhaust that thread, I don't want to go to the other trees. Okay. Councillor Oberg.

So I was thinking about the Urban Design Commission and how they behave with the projects, the large projects that they're doing. And they do a very good job of, you know, change that into a turret that's rounded at the corner. Don't do this, don't do this, do this. So they don't change the size of the building very much. They change the look of the building and the character of the building. So to the extent that that's the solution, that's what they'd be good for. I'm not sure they'd be good for other things.

That's not their charge, though. No. They're doing what they're charged to do. So I just want we have to think.

Expensively, that's the other half of what I'm saying is that if you really want people to review it, you got to take some stuff that we do by right and throw it into special permit. Because we have a process for reviewing things that we don't that we don't want to do by right and it's called special permit process. I'm not sure we want to add to that. But that's really what you're talking about. I don't see any point in creating a new review process when we have one. And then we'd have to be careful to make sure we give them the right criteria.

Even if it was just for small houses on big lots?

Yeah, I mean, we get a lot of small special permit reviews that are, you know, they want to go over FAR and they want permission for that. So I think that's a pretty common one, isn't it? So we have that process and it doesn't make sense to me to add another process that does the same thing.

Other questions?

Yeah. Yeah. I just want a clarification that was said earlier, and I must have misheard it, but in this wheel, or maybe I see here, is that you said 25% of the owners tear down their houses and that are part of the special permit. When I go to land use, most of the special permits is yeah, they are, but it's adding. It's not necessarily new house.

I don't see a fair amount of new construction in special permit. I don't think anecdotally. When Jane's reviewing, she quoted the 25%. We can look into that.

OK, that just seemed kind of high. And the tree ornaments that we have is a hindrance or it's a speed bump. They can still take down the tree. It might cost them something, but they can still take down those trees. And what we're discussing here is preserving a single family home. So not making it three townhouses, but a single family, having people having the option to buy into Newton in a single family homes. Because right now, most of them are condos and some people would like to be in a single family home. And so that's what we're trying to do here, which I think. I was wondering in the large house review, it says, what percentage of wealthy structures are non-conforming and how does that compare to Newton? Because you just mentioned that. I don't know if it's kind of similar or not. And then what percentage of new plots are non-conforming and are these being torn down? the the houses that are non-conforming those are getting torn down anyways and then whatever they have to build they have to build according to you know our far and our setbacks and things like that so i think it's more the non-conforming lots that's an issue not so much as the structure um jane do you want to speak to that for katie i'm sorry can you repeat the question so so one of the things that came up here was lots under um preview um and it says a large home review does not apply to non-conforming lots or structures i think in wellesley but um we're talking about tear downs and and The large house review with what goes on there, so they shouldn't be non conforming or otherwise they're gonna have to do a special permit anyways and so. The other part was the lots are not conforming, and so I was just in according to I think Leslie they don't do this large house review.

A non conforming last I didn't know how many of our lives non conforming lot like what would you define like the size of the law or a lot that has a non conformity.

She's on page 28. That's a number I think we can give to you because of a study that was done a number of years ago.

And it's a good majority of the city has a non-conforming lot and or a non-conforming structure.

So the structure could be non-conforming because one side setback is for the front setback. I was wondering...

But what we were talking about for the large house review is you're going to tear down the house anyways. So whatever is going in needs to be conforming unless they're going to do a special permit. So the question is, how many lots are actually non-conforming? So what I see as non-conforming, I don't know if it is, is let's say an SR3 lot that's 3,000 square feet because we have a minimum lot size or a minimum frontage. Those are not conforming. But I don't know if that's what you're talking about here.

Are you trying to understand comparing our special permit process to Wellesley's large house review, or what's the goal?

Yeah, comparing to Wellesley's large house review.

So I think it's basically the takeaway there is just that our special permit captures more properties than their large house review does, even of the same size.

As I understand it, the Wellesley process is advisory to a certain extent. Our process is binding, and it involves discretion to say, no, thank you. They don't have that discretion. They can say, we think this would be better, and if you agree, that's fine, but if you don't agree, too bad. So, all right. Excuse me. Counselor Gatz? Oh, no. Counselor

I'm listening to you, Councilor Baker, that there's two approaches to this. One is a very narrow approach, which is there's a, we can identify a home by price and by size that we're trying to preserve as a single family home purchase of opportunity for somebody new to the community to come into, right? And that, probably we could come to some rough agreement on what that looks like. 800,000, 900,000, you know, above that, we're probably getting out of even our kind of fuzzy affordability. If that's what we're doing, the large home review isn't going to preserve that. You really have to do the dramatic FAR review. And all of this, these other considerations are about kind of tamping down the huge structures that we see. And, you know, some of the larger homes are being torn down and built as new structures, right? So I think probably we're worth the committee to say do we think there is a real meaningful opportunity to preserve 2 000 square foot homes for 750 000 800 000 where the lot is large enough and i think counselor gets is you know i i've used the term kind of latent development potential but it's that residual far on lots where there's two aspects of it. One, we really think that that can happen. And two, is it politically feasible to take away what Consular Dominant has referred to as the nest egg that people have in these homes that would go away if we said developers can no longer compete for these properties because they can't do anything with them. So I think what you've described as the goal here is very narrow and really has but one solution, which is, you know, pretty radical reduction in that they are.

Well, I appreciate that, but I'm not prepared to do that. I think part of what our investigation is to look at what I thought Councillor Oliver and Wright began with was saying, can we look at those teardowns that are going on in the city every year, that universe of 100 properties. And is there some way to look at those teardowns and avoid the impact that they are having on the community that's around them? And so it may involve a reduction in the FAR in those situations, but it's not for everybody's nest egg. It's those houses that have poured down that we're trying to deal with, as I understand it, not necessarily those houses that are bought by somebody who expands them. So that's a different universe and a different impact, it seems to me.

It's 100 people every year. It's 100 people every year.

Yeah. And that's, over time, that adds up.

And so it seems to be some number of, some part of the 100.

Yeah.

We already know, like, Sorry, but it's not a hundred, it's a piece of a hundred. So because we already know that, I mean, unless we go crazy, crazy, you know, the really small house on a really large lot, probably not, I think, within the realm of, you know, a stick as you're referring to it. But there are instances where, and I'm not convinced they don't exist because I think we've seen them from time to time. We've got a moderately sized house on a reasonably sized lot, i.e. under 15,000 or something like that. Again, we need help trying to figure out where these sweet spots, I don't know if that's a wise way to say that, but for lack of a better term, it does seem to me that there's a there there without getting

punitive so we saying it's okay to tear down 4000 square foot house and put up a 5500 square foot house but it's not okay to take a small house on a large lot and put up a 5500 square foot house is that what we're saying no no no no but that's really the two the two when you say it's not 100 the other bunch of them are these large houses that are coming down and becoming even larger

So, and again, I'm not trying to, this is, this has never been about stopping tear downs. I know everyone wants to jump to that. We see it in writing all the time. That's not what this is. This is, how do we make sense out of tear downs that are leading to massive homes? And I guess, I guess I would consider 5,500 square feet, regardless of what came before it to be Massive in my world, but like it's it's. We keep going to the extremes and my find that a little bit frustrating because it's not i'm not trying to figure out the extremes. Only i'm trying to find a pathway to balance out what we've all been doing in this city for a long time at least six years now five years and some amount of time. that I've been on the council, it's increased density, build, baby, build. And there's a part of me that's like, well, but hang on, why does it always have to go that way? And if we look comprehensively at all of the levers that we do have, and I don't think we've exhausted them by any means, at least I hope we haven't, I'm hoping to find places where it makes sense for us to say, you know what, lots of a certain size, In certain parts of the city, you know, SRs or different zones, it makes sense for us to preserve the homes as a single family home or if there's a two family, well then keep it as a two family. Again, it's, I don't know all the answers, but I do know that, like, look at what MRT has brought us. In some cases, we have adaptive reuse of existing homes. with density, with increases in density. So, okay, we have that. We've identified where that makes sense for us as a city. Well, what else can we do that and where, perhaps, is an even more important question, and I'm bummed I missed 25 plus minutes of this conversation, but There's room for all of these things. And even if there's a small amount of a stick, if you will, involved, I'm actually okay with that given all the other carrots that we have on the table. It's not like we're literally saying we're going to abandon VCOD and we're going to abandon all the MR so that we can retain single-family homes. We are talking about 100-ish homes. And I'm not even sure we're talking about all 100. I'm not, like, I see the charts and I appreciate what's in the data, but I still see the opportunity to get at a little preservation.

So let me summarize where I think we are, and then I'm going to make my move.

So, yeah, I mean, I just think that we do have to consider what Councilor Roach nest egg of people of course and you just said you don't have all the answers i do okay well then i'm gonna go here's the thing there isn't one answer that's the thing so you know we've been doing this for 20 years or whatever because there's been went back to 2014 but it's before that And we go round and round, but we haven't thought about something that allows us to tell the Community that we are treating small houses. have a board that is going to look at that and not just look at the development opportunity, but they're going to look at your nest egg. They're going to look at all the different factors that are involved as a large house review or as a small house review, whatever it is, and come up with something that works for both parties, the developer and the homeowner. I mean, this is like utopian, I know, but it's not a one size fits all. And we've got to be, the flexibility is, is that's why I love that one slide. And, but so I just, I just think we need to think about this review a little more and maybe it's when we go home, we'll think about it, come back and talk about it. But that's, that's all I'm playing for. I'm sorry.

So I want to, I think that I'm going to, again, try and summarize where I think we are. I think what I'm hearing, I think, I mean, to speak from my perspective, and then I'll try to speak from the chair's perspective. First, from my perspective, I think still we need to figure out, is there something that will affect some opportunities for building? Because that's what we're seeing consequences in the city. People constantly come back to us and say, we don't like that. We need to figure out how to deal with it. It may be that the kind of situation like Councillor Gordon has talked about is the sweet spot that Councillor Oliver has referred to. There may be some dimension of the teardowns that are going on in the city that we can modify by appropriate additional controls. I don't know what that is. But there's also the question of even the big houses that get built that are not part of that subset, is there an additional criterion that would reach some of the concerns that the large house review in theory is designed to reach, but hasn't in our model because we don't have specific criteria for that. We don't have a threshold for Councillor Albright's situation where somebody is building a very large house and the question is the impact of the very large house. You know, a very large house would be a large house. The point is that I think that this is really the beginning of this conversation, but not the end of it. And that's why I'm going to move hold on the item, as I did before, and then continue the conversation with the planning department and also look at other tools that they haven't discussed tonight, such as historic gardens and so forth to see where we go from there. So that's what I'd like to do at this point.

I just want to get a clear direction of where planning should go next. I'm hearing a lot of different ideas, but I'm also hearing that some of those are not in this docket. However, they were presented the first time within this docket item. So I think I'd just like to hear where you would like our efforts focused and what we should come back with.

Well, I will tell you where I think the focus should be. I think it should be on these two dimensions that i've described which is again trying to preserve a single family house not go into multi-family houses as an adaptive use that's a separate item that i don't think is within the scope of this one so as far as i'm concerned i think sure i want to have us try and see where we can go with the item that is framed it may not be that we have an easy path forward But we've been at this for two years and people have been talking to us about losing these houses to tear down and being replaced with other houses, which are the same, you know, use, but in much bigger. And I would not like to abandon that quest. So that's where I think we're going.

So can I ask for qualifying? So this tonight's the first night that I heard that we're really only trying to preserve the $900,000 house on a large lot. I thought that we were preserving all, trying to preserve teardowns in general, because frankly, in my neighborhood, even though there are big houses becoming bigger, people are just as bothered by that as they are about small houses becoming very big. I mean, nobody likes these big houses when they encroach on them and they feel like they are encroaching on them. So I feel like I'm not clear anymore what we're doing. Are we really only focusing on the small houses and not wanting them to get bigger?

No, I don't think necessarily. I think the item is large enough to include the larger house that's torn down.

But at least the whole hundred.

Yeah, the whole hundred. We may, to pick up on Councillor Oliver's point, end up saying that the subset that we're going to be most concerned about may be some something that is not the whole 100, but a subset. But at least the question is, can we look at that demolition population over time and figure out if there's something that we can do that we haven't done that will impact the city in a positive direction?

I think we need more clarity on what the rest of the 100 is like. We know that the majority know about the small houses and large lots. What's the rest of them like?

And I think that's part of the analysis that I think is important to do is to really take a look at our teardown history in a way that we haven't had a chance to do and figure out exactly what is being torn down and what is being replaced by. So I want to move. We have another item to discuss, and I want to have a break opportunity.

Can I just clarify? So the goal is to look at preservation in the single family only context

without additions yeah yes well i'm not sure that i would say that's the way to go but well i think that's part of the that's the hard nut i think that we can always have the mr district uh excuse me the uh uh model of the of the bcod and we can come back and look at that but that's a different that's changing the use the density in the situation i'm looking at trying to respond to the concerns referred from the community of tear downs of existing structures replaced by same use but much bigger so this is going to be the contrarian issue but i seem to be pretty good at that from time to time i personally don't like if it's a two family that's coming down

I want to, I want to look at that too. Oh, yeah.

Replacing with the same use.

Okay, so it's not just no, no, it can be.

Yeah, smaller MR and smaller two family houses. I mean, the point here is we're losing the existing housing stock to bigger housing in the same district for the same. Okay.

Increase in density. Yeah, at least.

Yeah, no, it's not increasing. I just want to say that we're not trying to change the density. We're trying to see you escape.

All right. Well, I just wanted to look at the other side because I sort of feel as if, you know, it would be good to understand, you know, the drill down on the tear down history. And also, too, what are the levers with demolition? You know, is there something that we can actually incentivize keeping the house? Do we have that question about demolition fees or not? So that then you approach the problem from different angles. And if, in fact, we can increase the fees for demolition so that then it doesn't cost you 10 grand, it costs you 100 grand as a fee to haul away that. Because that's actually, there are multiple places where you really do not want demolition in the sense of keeping for environmental reasons.

All right. I'm going to continue working with the Planning Department and the Vice Chair to assist me. We're going to continue to try and press forward on this. Councillor Kalas?

I'm going to move hold. OK. Oh, yes.

But anyway. Yours hasn't stopped.

And let's not lose the fact that he has all the answers.

In that case, that's great. He's had them for 12 years. All right. All those in favor will say aye. Aye. I'm going to suggest we all take a five-minute break, try to open the windows a little more, and then come back and deal with the next item. Commissioner, we're going to need you on this one.

Recording stopped.

Thank you. Thank you. you Thank you. Thank you.

recording in progress

We've got one more item on the agenda.

Just in time for me to get my seats in.

It's only 9 o'clock. We've got only time. This is item 4226. Organizations change in Chapter 30 that will allow raised beds in the front and rear setback under certain conditions. And I want to indicate this is not something you sleep in. This is comfortable. All right. And Kelly requesting a discussion and amendments to chapter 30 zoning to exempt raised beds four feet or less from the definition of a structure and allow them to place within the setback. So, um, I'm sorry. All right. You're the lead doctor who is here. You want to explain the rationale for this and then I'd ask the planning department to present what they have in the materials that they've given us so we can understand the idea.

I just asked the commissioner to make sure I understood. So you can't put raised beds, which is really, I'll tell you the purpose of it in a second, but you can't put raised beds in the setback. So if you have a 25 foot setback and your house is 25 feet from this, correct me if I'm wrong. And if your house is 25 feet from the property, from the sidewalk, is that right? Property line. You can't have a raised bed.

And would you just describe what a raised bed is?

I have some that are 8 inches, 10 inches, 10 inches high. And the purpose of that is that if you don't have soil underneath, you can make it higher than the property line, put good soil in there, and you can grow wonderful crops or flowers, whatever you want to grow. Now, there are beds that are higher than that because there are a lot of older people that have a problem bending down or being on their knees. So people do build beds that are higher than that so that they don't have to bend as much. They can just work at sort of standing level. That's what a raised bed is. It just provides an opportunity to not have it directly on the ground, not have your plants, flowers, tomatoes, whatever they are, just growing on the ground. So that's how it helps a lot of people because it's better soil and you don't have to bend down.

Okay. All right. Thank you. And this is with allow this in all setbacks?

Well, Nora has worked with law and I guess ISD to come up with some proposed ordinance for us to look at.

Yeah. All right. Are you ready to... Take us through what you've got ready.

Yes. So as I was just saying, it kind of comes down to this definition of a structure. And so given that here it's a combination of materials affixed to a location on land, technically that encompasses a raised garden bed and structures aren't allowed in the setback. So One, we talked through different aspects of this and came up with the following requirements for allowing raised beds in setbacks. So in the front setback up to two feet in height, no nearer than five feet from the front property line. So it couldn't be going right up to that front property line. And that helps with things like sight lines as people are pulling out of driveways and just gives a little buffer. Raised beds in the side and rear setback up to 3.75 feet in height and no nearer than three feet from the property line. As Councillor Albright was mentioning, We looked at this 3.75 feet is kind of the standard ADA compliant raised garden bed so somebody could wheel underneath. It's less onerous on the back if somebody kind of needs that at a higher level. um and then no nearer than three feet from the property line again just to give a bumper and also to give um maneuver room so that if let's say somebody's neighbor had a fence right up against their own property line someone can still maneuver around that raised garden bed um A length no greater than 10 feet and a width no greater than four feet separated by at least three feet. This puts some reasonable parameters around the size so it couldn't turn into almost like a large wall. And the total combined area of a raised bed may not exceed 80 square feet. So basically, reading between the lines, you can have two of those really large ones or you can have a bunch of smaller ones. We also wanted to account for trellises. So, you know, I'm currently growing peonies and I'm going to line them up to something once they're big and beautiful. And so we said allowing trellises up to five feet in height from the ground that is attached to the raised garden bed. And law was kind enough.

Before you go there, just to clarify, would the five feet be on top of the bed or the five feet? From the bottom grade.

From the ground. From the grade.

From the grade.

And law was kind enough to help us out with some definitions. So defining the raised bed as a freestanding planting area constructed above the existing grade and contained by rigid edging or walls with a defined footprint and height measured from the adjacent finished grade to the top of the planting surface or surrounding containment, whichever is greater. So that is a lot of legal language that gives Anthony cover. So if somebody's arguing about how tall their garden bed is, He can point to exactly where they're measuring from and then defining a trellis so we don't end up with a pavilion and someone says, well, I'm growing a rose on it. A freestanding or attached open framework structure, lattice, slats, rods, wires, or similar materials or configuration design and use solely to support the growth of climbing or spreading plants. That is all I've got.

Okay. So let me start around the table.

Can you explain to me a little bit more about why it is that we think that raised beds are a structure based on that definition? What we've

Basically, that is the definition of structure in the zoning book. Also, it's hard to draw a line on what things as structures can be allowed in the setback. I can't pick and choose things that can't and will be in the setback. So I need a definition of something to base that on. So a structure would be an assemblage of material at a fixed location upon the land. At one point, we got a call. This was probably just before my time here in the city, where someone called up and asked if they could grow tomato plants. And we said, absolutely, you can grow tomato plants. Well, he put them along the entire front of his yard. Um, and he built a trellis system, uh, obviously to, you know, uh, hang tomato plants. And it, it was, it was quite a big structure and we got complaints about site visibility and how can people, you know, put these structures in the setback. Uh, and so at that point, again, I wasn't here at the time, but an enforcement had to be done. And, um,

Yeah, I think I'm just struggling to understand why. When I hear the word fixed, that means it's not particularly movable. And then I see the word tent in there and I say, okay, tents, I guess they're not movable because they have to be tethered. And so you have to put a little stake in the ground and tie it down. But a garden bed is none of those things. And as far as I am, I mean, if I were to take a wheelbarrow and move it into my front yard in the setback, fill it with dirt and plant tomatoes in it, have I now broken the law? I'm just not sure that this counts. Yeah.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I was just going to make an attempt at not having too much discussion about the definition. There's no doubt in the law department's mind that the way the structure is defined actually does include garden beds. Garden beds could be, you know, they're not one size. They're not one material. It could be something that is, for example, eight feet tall, and you call it a garden bed as long as you throw some dirt in there. So this structure definition is really a catch-all so that those kinds of things can happen. So as far as garden beds are concerned and how it's treated in the zoning ordinance, they absolutely are structures themselves. Could you exempt them from that definition? Sure. But currently the way that the definition is written would capture it. Let's start from that assumption, if that's okay.

Yeah, okay. All right. Now, I think Councillor Gordon had her hand up next and then I'll come back to Councillor Kaye. Councillor Gordon.

Well, I just want to make sure I understand this right because it's a great height exceeds four feet and the definition of a structure, but then in the allowances it says two feet and 3.75 wouldn't that already make them okay?

I think that four feet is just referring to the retaining walls. Oh, just for retaining walls.

I'm just wondering, A, how big a problem this is. We've been getting a lot of complaints about raised beds, so I'm kind of curious why this is here. And then two, I would feel a lot more comfortable if we measured from somebody's house and not from the property line because... In my experience, if we're going to start allowing this, you've got people who want to stick things closer to their neighbor and away from their house, and I've got concerns around that. I'm also wondering why we included the side when it was just for the front and the back, especially in housing that is multifamily and very dense. The side yards are not very big. And so when you start measuring that way, I think then you're really encroaching on neighbors' peaceful enjoyment of their own property.

So, Dr. Albright, you can speak to the origin of this.

The origin of this was, I mean, several, over the years, people have asked for help with this because um people all over the city have raised beds all over the city and it's the only problem if a neighbor turns you in and asks ISD to go look at it and then he comes and then the commissioner will go or his representative and he'll say you have to take it down and it you know if you ask if you ask folks out abroad in the land did you know that raised beds aren't legal in Newton they'll say what It makes no sense. So it's an equity issue that everybody should be treated the same way. Well, it's an equity issue that everybody should be able to have raised beds if that's how they want to grow their vegetables and flowers. That's the only, that's the issue.

To clarify, you can put a raised bed in your yard. You just can't put it in a set bed, right?

I know, but most people don't have large lots where they have access to more than a set bed.

Well, I'm just trying to understand though, point is you're saying the setback is an available site as opposed to all the other sites you could yes you could but if you didn't have i mean you're talking about 80 square feet you don't have any square feet in addition you know i mean you have a choice if this passes otherwise you have to make the decision to put the raised bed inside you know within the setback right i mean you can do it it's not illegal it's just if you have space you can definitely do it yeah i just want to I WANT TO CLARIFY WHAT WE'RE TALKING ABOUT IS ADDING AN OPPORTUNITY FOR THE SETBACK RULE, NOT JUST THE SITE. IT'S NOT LIKE RAISE BEDS ARE ILLEGAL. THE PUBLIC TO GET THAT. OKAY. COUNSELOR OLIVER AND THEN COUNSELOR WRIGHT. I'M SORRY. YOU WERE TEEN UP.

I JUST THINK THIS IS SAD THAT WE'RE EVEN TALKING ABOUT THIS. I THINK THAT THEY SHOULD BE ALLOWED ANYWHERE ON YOUR PROPERTY. I have on my street people growing things right up to their property line. It's fine. And to me, this is ludicrous that we're even thinking about this. Why side yards? I'm a great example. I only have a side yard. So there's no opportunity in the back. And I don't want to put it in the front. This one situation was this one young guy on... parker not parker uh i don't know he's next to my my cousins though and he he was making some type of a point it doesn't happen that often i mean i can't imagine because my neighbors didn't his neighbors didn't complain because they were fine with it but people driving by might have been you know had a problem with it but i i just feel like i mean what are the the instances of complaints around this. I mean, I just can't imagine.

There aren't many complaints. I mean, we're actually doing an enforcement right now on this. But if someone does complain, I still have to do the enforcement. If right now they're not allowed, the way ISD sees it, they are obstructions in the setback. I can't go and say, well, you know, a lot of times you get complaints. Place structures. I could drive by on my way home today and see five to six of them in the front seven. But nobody's complaining. Nobody's complaining. Okay. And, you know, I have also been called the minister of hate in this city. So, I mean, it is what it is. I can't pick and choose. I've never heard that. I can't pick and choose. And that's the problem. So if you want these planting beds in the setback, these raised beds, then allow them and we won't have to have this discussion anymore.

Make sure I'm not getting people out of order following me. Councillor Oliver, I think, and then Councillor Jeff, and then Councillor Wright.

I'm going to write it down.

In immense deference to- Excuse me, Councillor Gordon, I had a question for Councillor Taylor.

I have a problem with people growing vegetables. I think that's great. I understand that you have a personal anecdote about your neighborhood but I would like to share that there's a lot of personal anecdotes and sometimes having a raised garden bed under somebody's bedroom window causes problems. And that would be an example of someone sticking it far away from their house, but close to somebody other when you're in a densely populated area. So I was trying to avoid anecdotes But I just think if we're looking at this, we have to think about all the possible implications. But I did want to state for the record that I don't have a problem with people growing vegetables and flowers.

Okay. Thank you for that. Okay. Now, Councillor Oliver and Councillor Guest and Councillor Wright.

Thank you. So without going in, going down the anecdote road, which I shall not, it does seem to me that someone in their infinite wisdom created the notion of a setback to create what I'm going to just glibly refer to as white space between two properties or two structures on two different properties. I don't necessarily agree that it's always far away from someone's house. I don't always agree that it's the only place to put things. like a raised bet. I think we've all seen perfectly reasonable examples of this, and we've heard some obnoxious examples of this. I would personally prefer, and I'm terribly sorry about this, Minister, however, it does seem to me that setbacks are there for a reason, and it's not to put or build things in. Regardless of what that thing is, I don't like the idea of raised garden beds because we're still not in the setbacks. I'll be very clear about that. Setbacks are setbacks, and there's a little white space there. In some neighborhoods, that's five feet. In some neighborhoods, that's 25 feet. And if somebody builds something in their setback and nobody complains about it, no harm, no foul. That's how I look at it. However, having the ability for someone to say in some anecdotes, hey, somebody's pushed something so far away from there. It's now three and a half feet from mine. That's not kosher in my, pardon the expression, but I'm against this simply because these things are, I don't know about prolific, but you see them all over the city. And if nobody has a problem with video one fine, but there should be a pathway if someone does have a problem with it to get it off their property line when they don't own it. I would not support this, the way that this is before.

yeah Okay, so the one piece and an appreciative of the five foot setback in terms of the font setback, but I also feel like. The first thing I would be doing if I were going to be putting a raised bed is following the sun. Meaning I would localize it where I'm going to get my max sun during the day, you know, and then excluding the house shadows, you know. But the other part of this is that there's a lot of opportunity here. If you have a total combination of the raised garden bed within one setback may not exceed 80 square feet, you could be starting to load your lot. with all of your raised beds and your setbacks. I mean, there needs to be stronger limits here. This is excessive. I would hope one person would have one or two, but the potential in this, the way it's written, is quite a bit in terms of raised beds.

Well, I think the maximum is 80 square feet.

But it says in any one set bed may not, the way I'm reading it, with any one within... Any one setback may not exceed 80 square feet.

Period.

Or, no, but you've got four setbacks.

I thought you meant in one particular setback you could exceed 80 square feet.

No, just one. So you've got four sides. So you have a lot of raised beds. Right? So that's a lot of raised beds. But I also feel like I'm appreciative of the white noise idea. Because I think that we need to be conscientious of, like, The because I anecdotally have heard a lot of complaints about side setbacks at seven and a half feet, the proximity to somebody else's house, you know, with, you know, three, three feet, a little over, you know, 3.75. That's pretty close to somebody else's house. Under somebody's window. Right. But again, the sun maps are going to dictate all of this. So we need to have a public hearing, we need to hear people.

I have a question on this. So this is talking about these raised beds that are in the setback. I wonder if it's partially in the setback and then out of the setback. How does that relate to it? It's only like the portion of it that's in the setback?

Correct. In the setback is in the setback. So if you are four by eight foot bed, a raised bed, and two feet of it is in the side setback, then it would be a six by four foot bed. That would be allowed as long as you were outside of the setback.

And one thing that I brought up in the past, because I see this sometimes not so much as a raised garden bed for vegetables, but sometimes people kind of make a boundary and they go along the property line, a boundary of just one side, you know, stones and throw some dirt in and then they have their plantings along there. So if they only have, and there's a fence against there, and so they need to be whatever, three or five feet off the one side, but then is it on the other side, you could throw some dirt in there and something like two feet.

So let me answer to that. You might be even creating another problem where runoff between properties may be impacted if something like that is done, which would require a brand new 12-1 or a stone 1-minute.

Okay. So some of this, so the raised bed, some of it is pretty high, and I can understand for being able to you know, garden and not bend over. But I was thinking is if the raised bed is less than two feet, some of it wouldn't apply the maximum like of 80 square feet or something like that. But I'm seeing just more as a border of flowers. And then you have them three feet between it, you know, versus continuously along your property line that you have. So to me, some of this doesn't quite make sense.

That's different.

Yeah, but yeah.

Why? Why? You would have these beds and you have to have three feet between them. You have your flowers in the front.

So I want to get people's views in the committee who haven't spoken yet. And you want to speak to the mayors?

I guess I have a clarifying question because I think I'm kind of with Councillor Kalis and I'm struggling to rationalize a significant amount of effort sent on this. So I guess my question is, if I were to go to Home Depot and buy a very large pot, Could I put that pot in the setback? Yes. And if I cut the bottom out of that pot, can it stay in the setback?

I can't see why not, because it's a pot.

Okay. If I made a pot myself.

I'm kind of serious here.

You can put pots in your front yard, you can do things like that, okay, but when you're assembling a garden bed, okay, an assemblage of materials, okay, that becomes an issue for the zoning as far as structures. There's got to be a line drawn somewhere. I don't care where, if you want them in the setback, that's fine. I just need something concrete to enforce against.

I think this would be an unpopular opinion here based upon hearing the conversation go, I would be inclined to just exempt, use the definition of raised bed that we've developed and then exempt that from the definition of a structure.

All right. I'm going to recommend myself. All right. I can't support this. I am in the keep the setbacks open department. I also see it in the historic district. They have review process, review jurisdiction over structures. We went through a lot of trouble to try and deal with people who are building and building up retaining walls. And raised bed is a structure made out Timbers and holding up soil and it is have all the assemblages of the definition and it seems to me that this is something that we shouldn't automatically allow so I'm not prepared to support this.

So one of the things that we didn't do is provide information. about other communities and what they've done. A lot of communities just let them be by right and that's that. But there are other communities that have rules like ours about structures and they've got rules that they've created. It might be worthwhile seeing some of those, so I'd be happy to provide those to the committee if you would like to see them.

Well, I think that's our question. We ought to decide about where we go with this.

Well, the other thing, I would like to schedule, I mean, we've heard what people say. Some people hate it. Some people, eh. Some people say it's okay. So could we go to public hearing and hear what the public says?

I'd like to have some more information. I understand the growing season point that you're having mine. But I'd like, at least institutionally, I'd like to have some scenarios and some examples of what this looks like on the ground, what it appears like on a plan, because this is a significant change in the definition. And I don't think we should take something to public hearing until we've had more. We've got draft language, but we really have no examples. Traditionally, when we do a zoning matter, we try and have some examples to look at. and see what the impacts are and how they work and whether the draft is the right thing. I don't want to say take something to public hearing until we've cooked it as much as not entirely, but we try and do some homework on it. You know, the tradition is until we get it fixed in the point where we're comfortable enough to send it out, recognize the public hearing may modify that view, but I'd rather not go to public hearing until we've sorted this out. But I'm hearing a division of opinion among members of the committee. Let me just see a straw vote. Who would Who would like to see more work done on this? I just, if you do, just hold up your hand. On this draft of some version of this, of a raised bet exemption.

I'd like to see more examples, you know, just like, you know, and also I'm a little concerned about being allowed.

but i mean we can adjust it but if you'd like to have more work done on it as opposed to is this a non-starter oh yeah no i think it's a little bit more okay um so those are like some more work on this i assume you would well i'll i'll do whatever it takes it takes more work to get no no i just need to understand the point of view of the committee i'm i'm i may be maybe just counselor oliver and me i don't know Would you like pictures of them?

I think we can talk about that. My sense is that the majority of the committee would like to send more information.

Are the pictures going to be of things built in setbacks?

I guess that's the question. Is the information going to make a difference? That's what I'm trying to get at.

What's that? No. Sheds, swing sets aren't allowed. Wait a minute.

We had a whole video about swing sets the last time. We don't want to go there.

Can I point out that sheds are allowed in the setback? Or they're five feet?

Accessory buildings.

Yeah, accessory buildings are allowed. Sheds are so much prettier. It's so great to dance. The question is,

We have a definition right now that says that waste beds are not included and they're not allowed. The question is what information members of the committee would like to see before we decide whether or not to go to public hearing on this. All right. Councillor Oliver and I think are in a position that additional information is going to move our point of view because we like setbacks to be left setbacks. But others may be influenced by information to say yes or no. So that's what I'm trying to figure out.

So, I mean, it sounds like you don't like the side setback. So it'd be interesting to know where are most of the complaints. I mean, maybe we don't allow them on the side setbacks, but in the front and back setbacks.

I mean, we don't get a whole lot of complaints, but sometimes we'll do an enforcement on a property. And when we're there, We see things that aren't supposed to be there, and we can't not unsee them at that point in time.

I want to recognize that the planning department has other things that I think we're working on, and I don't know how much we want their time on something like this, but that's the committee's decision.

I think the only thing that matters here is what Councilor Wright gets and Gordon needs. So to me, it's like, you need more information. What is it?

I can visualize what these would look like. I don't need to see paper. No, but the other piece of it is I would like to actually amend an offer. Well, but that can come in. That could be a working session.

What information would you like to see? I mean, you don't want to see any of this.

Well, the other thing that I'd like to know, if you were asking specifically about the ones that are violating, but once you start digging, you're going to find them everywhere, I'm sure.

I'll see them, trust me.

But I'm sort of thinking about, like, you know, I have a little bit of concern about the side ones, especially in smaller lots, because I think that that's a little bit too invasive to see 80 feet of structure, you know. The 3.75 feet from someone else's home. I mean, I think that's a lot, a lot.

So that's a concern for me. I don't think they can be 80 feet in a row. It's an 80 square feet.

So it's 8 into 10 feet.

Yeah, so it's to be deep there before you get off. Right.

No, it can't be that deep. Oh, well.

Within any one setback.

So it's going to then be. to four by tens, right?

So that could take up quite a bit of a side property, you know, next to... Is it fair to ask the planning department, can you generate some at least some schematics from scenarios and some photographs? You've got some, right? You can take a photograph of the one in my front yard.

I know it's I don't think it's.

Oh. yeah just so you can see what. I know what they look like i'm i'm mostly interested in two family.

properties and the side setbacks. I think that that's a much bigger concern than it is in single family neighborhoods. And I am concerned because this is for everybody. And two family houses are closer together, largely. And I just don't think it's cool to have.

There are some single family houses that are close together, too.

Yeah, OK. But I assume you're going to be looking at single family. So I'm just requesting that we also look more densely populated two-family neighborhoods.

Yeah, I could draw out like an example of a two-family and where the property line is and where the two buildings are and where three feet is and then where four feet is.

Yeah, because that's why I originally came at this not to negate it, but because it's easier to know where it is from a building. much harder from the property line and how that affects a neighbor.

And driveways. Say that three feet from the property line is going to give you more space than if you measure from the building.

Right, but if there's driveways in between, I don't want to go into, I can also talk to you and ask you about specific neighborhoods without taking up everybody's time.

Typically people look for where the sun is. That's where they want the raised beds, where they have sun. And they don't want it to be too far away from their house.

Thoughtful people who are gardening do that. But not everybody is thoughtful. Not everybody's into gardening. There's a lot of circumstances that we're trying to capture here. And I think it's unfair to say that we're assuming that these are all gardeners.

So as Council Kalis was suggesting, we could exempt two family houses from this, if that's the concern. saying two family houses can't have base beds.

But this is a definitional change. That's part of it, at least as proposed. I guess what I'm trying to figure out is where we go forward from here. I'm hearing enough sentiment in committee that people are interested in having some examples presented of what this would look like, right? And if the department thinks they can generate some examples for next time, they will explain what the impacts would be. It may not move me or may not move Councillor Oliver, but it might move the middle of the committee. That's okay.

I would second the idea that we have those examples or whatever else we need, but also a public hearing. I mean, it is great. right at the growing season, so it would be great to get this done. I don't see the, I mean, what you were saying, kind of dancing around, we want to see these. We've all seen them. I don't understand why we wouldn't have a public hearing.

Well, we don't have a public hearing until we've had an understanding of what we're dealing with. change, but I'm not prepared to schedule a public hearing until we have a chance to see what we've done.

Final language right before you advertise? Oh, okay. You can't put it out until it's done.

That's part of my concern. You can't put a concept out. You can't figure it out. That's why... Well, so...

I think that language should be done...

I mean, we do this all the time. The language is done in such a way that you can make changes after you hear what the public has to say.

But you're going to put out ordinance language, correct?

Yeah. And then they say, I don't want it to be two feet, I want it to be five feet or whatever. Okay.

Pardon me, Julie.

Where's Andrew? Is Andrew still here?

Yes, I actually had my hand raised. Councilor Albright has the right of it. you can create the public notice language broad enough that even if you have text, you can modify it after the fact, as long as the language that's in the notice itself indicates that, you know, is broad enough that it could be something that's changed.

What's our timing for public hearing?

It's generally four weeks out from when you... public hearing at the city council on the docket, because it has to be advertised for two Mondays before the- Yeah, we gotta go to the council before we have a public hearing.

I'm just concerned about this, I'm not- We wouldn't be going to the full council before we have a hearing.

No, no. I mean, you'd have to go to the council to schedule a public hearing. We have to wait for that. And then we have to have enough time. And we don't have another meeting until the middle of May.

No, excuse me.

We have a meeting in two weeks. But we couldn't have a public hearing in two weeks.

Correct.

But there is a city council. Yeah, we can meet on the 23rd.

Schedule something for whenever our next meeting is in May. We can schedule a public hearing in the meeting. No, no, no.

We've got to go to the council.

Then we schedule a public hearing. That would be fine. That would be moving along. So, Councilor Kalis is That's the question, Councilor Albright. We scheduled a public hearing with a broad notice to clarify that we're still working on it. I would like to work on it at the next meeting, if we can, to have some idea of what we're going to actually talk about. But if that's the sense of the committee, I will entertain a motion to set this down for a public hearing in May to be asked up at the council at the next meeting. and but we would still have a conversation at the next meeting about the item so they're going to get clarification with that term yeah okay so um i know the planning department is just eager to do this but there you are all right um uh all those in favor of sending a public hearing one two three four go ahead i'm not sure Okay, so that's the majority of the debate. So we'll set the public hearing for the May meeting. Assuming, does that give us enough time? Yeah, I may allow them. Even if we set it on the council meeting? Yes. Okay, I just want to know. Because remember, in May, we only have one regular meeting. We've got the budget meeting, and we're on odd nights for both of these because of the budget schedule. Just be aware of that. So next time, I hope to continue the conversation that we started tonight on the issue of what to do about the teardowns, small or big, and then also the question of the raised beds, and then see where we are. Okay, any questions? I'd entertain a motion to hold.

So moved.

Okay, all those in favor say aye. Aye. Opposed? Abstention? Okay, that's it. Thank you, planning department, and all of those, and the commissioner, and all of those who came out on a hot night. Thanks, everyone.

And I think we're adjourned. Thank you.