morning thank you for joining the Boston Z commission public hearing which is being held virtually to ensure the continued safety of the public staff members and the Boston Zing commission the open meeting Law requires that I notify the public that the virtual meeting is being recorded please be advised that an audio and video recording of this meeting is being made this point we'll take a roll call of zoning Commissioners Michael Nichols here Alison Royal here good morning David M how you doing David Ma I'm here present left here madori morawa Mador you here Ricardo ostrich here Jay Hurley is here madori she's muted unmute want to hit with the text CH texting or no all I apologize I'm here no problem thank you uh nine o'clock public hearing is it heing before the Boston Z commission to consider Jake we take some time to let the interpreters introduce themselves please oh I'm sorry I I totally screwed up that was my fault all good uh just I'm sorry at this point we're gonna have a introduction of the uh interpreters for sorry we'll start off with uh zindela and follow that with Jardine y hello good evening my name is zilda and I'll be okay for the evening uh for the morning I apologize thank you good morning my name is Jardine and I'll be your uh patient creel interpreter for this morning's meeting um terrific now we'll go to Bianca and Joan good morning I will be your Spanish interpreter for today good morning uh I I'm I'll be the C interpreter for this morning's meeting thank you terrific then we'll finish off with aan and new right good morning my name is aan I will be for this morning thank you good morning my name is new I'll be the Vietnamese interpreter for the meeting this morning thank you terrific back to you Jay thank you sir thank you everyone this a hearing before the Boston's only commission to consider a petition for the approval of text Amendment application number 524 honeybees articles 2 definitions eight regulation of uses and 89 urban urban agriculture the H is duly advertised April 18th in the Boston Herald in the Boston's only commission hearing on petitioners the opponent will first present their case and is subject to question by members of the commission only we are taking support in our position at the same time if you're planning to testify please take the time to verify the computer microphone is active click the hand icon in your Zoom control panel this will signal staff do like to speak in your hand is raise your hand icon will be blue if you're calling into the meeting and would like to testify please dial star9 to raise your hand when I call for public testimony a member of the staff will announce your name and allow you to speak you must unmute your microphone your webcam will not be active please give your full name any group affiliation announce with a support or oppose the petition each speaker will be allowed up to two minutes if necessary I'll advise you when you have 30 seconds remaining at that time please summarize your remarks so the meeting can continue and others may be heard finally The proponents Who allow a brief 5 to 10 minute period for rebuttal if they so desire please begin the presentation good morning everyone uh my name is ruie Luan and I am the President of the Boston city council I am so glad to be with all of you this morning I want to thank uh uh the Commissioners and I also want to thank the interpreters uh Messi as a Haitian American uh daughter of haian immigrants it's really always great to see language inter interpretation to make sure that our public meetings are accessible to the public so thank you to all of our language interpreters uh good morning chairman Jay Hurley and distinguished members of the zoning commission thank you uh for your service and for your time today to address the important Amendment uh I am the primary sponsor of the amendment before you and I'm here virtually of course to advocate for this amendment to our zoning code removing bees from the zoning code in order to permit beekeeping through Municipal ordinance across all the neighborhoods in our beloved City this issue is not just one that touches our City's Urban agricultural practices but also impacts the lives of many of our current community members as you'll hear soon let me Begin by thanking state representative and former city council Rob consalo of High Park he is the one who brought this attention this issue to my attention when constituents brought it to his attention um it was through his introduction that I met a remarkable constituent Jim Kirker a local beekeeper who thought who brought light to this issue he along with his fellow beekeeper uh beekeeping neighbors AC neighbor across the street Val mayo and Sheila king um had been inadvertently placed in a position of being unint unintentional scoff laws under our current zoning regulations and you'll hear from Val Mayo who is a dedicated beekeeper and educator in our community with deep family roots and beekeeping that Trace back to South Africa there was a really great uh beekeeping a really great Boston Globe article about her and her family which is on my wall um if you haven't seen it and like many other beekeepers um she's faced overwhelming regulatory hurdles and stress around beekeeping brought about by our restrictive zoning codes here in Boston our current zoning code and appeals process as I'm sure you all are aware um is often described by many as a nightmare to navigate and thus calls for a timely update because not only do honey bees play a crucial role as pollinators they boost the quantity and quality of our City's Urban Flora they also um offer entrepreneurial Avenues to the production of honey and wax in light of the global concern over the colony collapse academic epidemic and inspired by actions taken by cities like New York it's imperative that we revise our regulations to support Urban beekeeping this amendment is about more than just allowing our residents to keep bees it's about promoting a sustainable practice that enhances our local Agriculture and supports the production of locally grown food I urge Commissioners to view the proposal not just as a regulatory change but as a step towards simplifying the lives of our residents by removing barriers thank you for your attention and I look forward to our fruitful discussion and the positive changes I'm confident we can achieve together I'm now going to pass it to my director of policy Jesse pervis who has been engress in the details of this ordinance and Amendment thank you all right we can move the slides along sorry thank you uh next slide there we go all right next slide there's uh Jim Kirker Sheila King and Val May that the councelor was talking about earlier um next slide all right so um first of all my name is Jesse pervis I am the director of policy for council president Louis Jen um we've been working on this project for a few years now and I just wanted to give background on the the problem as we saw it so um before the adoption of article 89 which is urban farming uh beekeeping had long been forbidden in most Parts uh of Boston under the zoning code which had been historic grouped beekeeping with farming and other livestock animals um and the original Boston zoning base code use regulations keeping of animals with definitions such as horses cows goats poultry pigeons rabbits bees or similar animals other than pigs so it was allowed historically in a few districts that had um large butcher shops like Chinatown or South Boston West Rock very aome Brighton doorchester and in large portions of the Back Bay South Boston the North End and downtown beekeeping can operate under um very specific conditions um and then in Boston where the olding older zoning code refers to the base code such is Back Bay Beacon Hill downtown Fenway and South Boston um backyard keeping of hens and bees is generally conditional um and it's um and the base code has been replaced by you know recent articles such as Jamaica plane hide Park and and Roxberry where the keeping is conditional and in industrial zones is otherwise forbidden basically this map that you see in front of you shows that everywhere in the green is allowable everywhere in uh yellow is conditional and the red uh or beige is forbidden um and this map is from about a decade ago but I nothing has changed since then um so effectively the it is there's a current ban on the majority of the city that dissuades potential beekeepers from trying out a hobby that can reap large ecological benefits from Bron's Urban landscape now in 2013 the city simplified the zoning rules related to Urban Agriculture and tried to make them easier to understand however beekeeping was still required uh a zoning variance in a majority of the city and was not updated um it did not change the underlying use and regulations for keeping animals specifically bees that were already in effect prior to article 89 adoption what article 89 did was it just outlined specific numerical and conditional requirements for hives um when keeping bees as a conditional use so therefore we currently have a process where if you live in an area that utilizes the base cord code or you live in an area covered by a neighborhood article that affects whether beekeeping is forbidden or allowable you are still essentially shut out of the process um unless as you all are well aware you seek a variance or uh relief through the zoning board of appeals and I don't need to belor the point to this board how difficult that can be for the everyday resident um it often is almost insurmountable um so we can go to the next slide all right so why bees and why now um in the role as pollinators honey bees are essential to increasing the quality and quantity of plants around the city um what we're finding out through recent studies uh provided by best bees and urban be lab and many other organizations is that Urban bees are actually outperforming and healthier than many of their rural cousins um in other parts of the state State and Country um this is because there is actually a a very high diversity of plants and um Urban and environments in urban cities and there's lots of uh good places for them to find different types of uh food um the uh honey production as well as wax and honey is also offers an entrepreneur opportunity for beekeepers um recently the city has been working with small businesses and homebased businesses uh to provide entrepreneurial access for opportunity for many people throughout the city to have jobs while working from home so this offers another opportunity for uh economic advancement and then I lastly I just want to reference that um in the last few decades we've seen a dramatic decrease in um be beehive colonies and they've continuously gone down and this is extremely worrying given their important role as pollinators um in the last few years it sort of stabilized but it's still a very serious concern for a lot of people um and throughout the country and a lot of academics on whether or not B populations are coming back or whether or not this is the new normal okay next slide so what we at the what the council luisen and the city council did did is come up with a two-step process um they decided to move beekeeping to municipal code and then make the application to remove from zoning so um what we did is we started with the original regulations from bees in the zoning code and we moved it directly into the ordinance that was passed through the city council and eventually signed by the mayor um we also included updates related to beekeeping best beekeeping practices um that would not be suitable in zoning such as requiring beekeepers to maintain colonies in good working conditions ensuring adequate water access responding to take immediate action of any be swarms and to remediate Nu nuisance conditions um the ordinance requires enforcement um and is under the jurisdiction of ISD to provide any exceptions and exemptions and um there is a $25 regist simple registration fee and the text Amendment before you today is not part of that ordinance but it is tied to it because it is required the ordinance only goes into effect upon uh the passage of text Amendment so we didn't want to make any overlap or make anything harder for beekeepers um and I will just reiterate that the city council has held a hearing on March 20th of 2023 and a working session on February of 2023 both were publicly noticed um and both were approved by the council and signed by the mayor um we've had input on this text Amendment and ordinance from Boston area beekeepers from the bpda uh I also want to thank Jeffrey Hampton for some process uh guidance as well we've had help from Chris English at ISD shaie Fletcher who you'll hear from soon and Val Mayo of course who you will also hear from later on um and yeah as part of this we hope to hear from uh shaie and valo as well I think that's it from us that it Jesse all right thank you any questions comments from the he we none any uh public testimony Jeff uh if anybody would like to testify please raise your hand now I have a couple of raised hands Mr chairman Val Mayo B go ahead um thank you so good morning my name is B mayo and it's already been stated I'm a beekeeper I just want to thank you for allowing me to speak about this very important issue the bee ordinance uh in approximately 2021 two other beekeepers and I found out beekeeping was never legal in most areas of Boston we were shocked over the past over the next few years with the help of Representative Rob pvo and his team and then representative Ruth Z leun and her team we are where we are today hopefully on the verge of signing a be ordinance this is very important to beekeepers not only in Boston but all over the Commonwealth who are carefully watching us because they may also be dealing with a with regulations that are non-existent or in need of an update why is this ordinance important backyard beekeepers are the mom and pops of the beekeeping industry and are at the Forefront of Grassroots Environmental Conservation and by the way I just want to add that 50% of insects are seeing a decrease in numbers um with about third facing extinction this is not just about bees whatever we can do to save bees and help bees will also help other insects insects are going extinct eight times faster than all other species the impact on insects and every other species along the food chain will also have an impact on us humans especially us because so much of the food we eat and enjoy for our very survival is dependent upon bees and other insects beekeeping requires that we cultivate and promote habitats that not only benefit bees but other pollinators animals and human beings environments free of pollutants chemicals and pesticides environments with I'm sorry just you have um 30 seconds left okay okay um environments with a biodiversity of trees flowers and fruits and vegetables so um I'm also a member in on the board of Boston area Beekeepers Association also known as Baba Bara is here to support Urban beekeepers we provide a be school mentorship workshops in all areas of beekeeping and a lecture series that allows beekeepers or anyone who is interested to hear from the best and the brightest in science research and the care of bees and their habitat we just want to keep doing this legally thank you Shany Fletcher Shany go ahead thank you um and just to clarify I'm testifying as a represent ative of the administration um not a member of the public um but good morning Commissioners um city council president lisan community members and beekeepers thank you for having me my name is shaie Fletcher I'm the director of grow Boston the office of urban agriculture for the city of Boston grow Boston lives within the mayor's office of Housing and on behalf of Mayor wo chief chief Sheila Dylan and G Boston I would like to express our support for the removal of beekeeping from the zoning code we've worked with the city council and councelor Luis Jan's office in particular since spring 2023 on the ordinance and zoning text amendment that mayor W signed in March 2024 I testified on behalf of the administration at the March 2023 hearing as did Chris English Chief of Staff of the inspectional services department the councelor did significant Community engagement leading up to that hearing and gr Boston also reached out to beekeepers and other Urban agriculture practitioners to seek input on the proposed ordinance and Zoning text Amendment there was active Community participation in the hearing itself and we have been able to work with city council during and between working sessions to refine the language of the ordinance and amendment to meet both the interest communicated by community members and the oversight needs of the administration we also worked with bpda staff familiar with article 89 and its implementation and our development of this language as the city's office of urban agriculture gr Boston is excited about this opportunity to make beekeeping more Equitable and accessible across the city by taking it out of the zoning code we are eager to support this area of urban agriculture through future programming and technical assistance including as residents navigate the regulatory specifics of the ordinance and we look forward to working with our colleagues at istd as they navigate this new aspect of Code Enforcement as Jesse mentioned earlier currently with beekeeping restricted to the zoning code very few neighborhoods have beekeeping as an allowed or even conditional use and the vast majority of the city particularly neighborhoods experiencing low food security and environmental justice disparities are forbidden from keeping bees on their property removing beekeeping from the zoning code and placing it in the municipal code will mean that many more beekeepers especially those in low and moderate income communities of color will have access to this activity beneficial in many ways as the council and her team have discussed and it will also provide clear guidance on how best to keep bees in a way in ways that are well integrated in the increased number of residential areas and favorable to Residents we hope the zoning commission will pass this amendment which will allow the new be ordinance to go into effect thank you thank you Sean okay I got Hannah real Hannah go ahead and unmute yourself hi I I'm actually uh here with GB I was just hoping to ask a question about uh prior enforcement but that may be appropriate for later rather than now there'll be there's the hearing then there's the vote so okay but if you have a question you have two two minutes okay uh my question was simply if anyone uh here could share if there had been you know prior enforcement of this I'll I'll reach out to ISD directly as well I'm curious to to see if there have been uh f or you know private previous violations that be Coopers had been subject to that was my that was my question I'll put my hand back down thank you uh does anybody have an answer for that I um oh I see Val as well um thanks for the question Hannah not to my knowledge although I am not with ISD and I can't speak to whether there have been uh uh violations or enforcement but not to my knowledge but I see Val I don't know if Val if you wanted to add I'm just going to confirm what you're not to my knowledge either okay wonderful thank you so much I really appreciate it welcome also would like to mention that uh May 20th is World b day so I want to make sure that I mentioned that okay noted Jay I had one question go ahead um uh I'm supportive of um uh this effort uh but I did have one question if we started to see um large commercial beekeeping at what point would that be potentially of concern to the to the public um uh as opposed to I think in the in the curent zoning there there's something about up to three hives um is there some point when it's 10 hives or something that uh should be of concern and maybe that's something that ought to be in the uh Municipal Code but love to hear um people's thoughts go ahead that's a great question I the um uh the the ordinance as written allows for up to five hives um that we wrote um but you know I think that's a good question and there's actually a lot of interest and we actually see it already um commercial entities um engaged in some form of beekeeping I think that is a good question and I but I do think that this is a really good place for us to start around residential beekeeping I mean I'm not opposed to commercial uh Enterprise doing it but at some point it would be you know it might be disturbing at some scale it may be disturbing good people next door noted and definitely my office is going to be on top of all things bees and to make sure that we're not doing anything that would be of issue um and that's why I think ISD is also is an important equation here because they're they have the ability to issue regulations as well for the regulations um but that's definitely something that we're going to be keeping an eye on thank you thank you any other uh comments questions any more public testimony Jeff no more raised hands okay at this point we're going to close out this uh portion here and enter our business session questions comments motions um I actually I I want to say that um I'm familiar with best bees and their work and I think it's great and I think it's really terrific that it's true according to best bees that their data that the urban landscape provides a real fertile environment for bees and you know because of the diversity of plants that Urban Landscapes have so I think this is this is a win for urban Landscapes you don't often hear that so this is a win for that and I would move to support this amendment Tex Amendment application number 524 honeybees Article 2 definitions eight regulation of uses and and 89 Urban agriculture second the motion a second any discussion on the motion here we'll do a roll call Michael Nichols yes Nelson ro royal yes David Mah yes R yes madori morawa adori rrich yes uh I vote yes that's six votes uh madori Jeff got maybe shoot her another text yeah Jay you weren't able to see it she went off mute a couple times I think she's trying to cast she trying to jump problem can you hear me now can yeah oh perfect yes thank you J M said yes okay thank you I said yes all right that's seven nothing congratulations good luck thanks everyone thank youy thank you alrighty thank you pretty sweet vote yeah hone of a vote I'm so happy thank you would not have happened without you thank you B thank you you're and same to you thank you bye bye take care have a good day so the second hearing is uh postponed I believe Jeff yeah um due to uh v um we will not be able to vote on this Paula Deo from the development team is online so uh I'm going to let her speak I don't want to speak for her her or the development team about their request so Paula go ahead um great thank you Jeff and um chairman Hurley and through you to the members of the commission um because um one of the Commissioners recuses himself from hearings on on the dot which is what we're here for uh we're here for phase B appr development plan approval um there won't be enough members for um to vote on this so we have decided to postpone this and Jeff has let me know that it's going to be June 5th at 9:00 a.m. all right thank you Paul uh Jeff do we still gonna do something after the meeting no we're all set after this Che okay that's that's all our business right yes and then uh Jeff we've got the just an informational presentation on the um Adu zoning uh this talk we had a we had a uh schedule is 9:30 no yep anything think good so I think we can um go ahead and uh sort of pull that up and and begin that Flor is yours great um so uh you know this was um an important part as we embark on zoning reform and are working on major zoning initiatives um we are um coming to you all as a commission with these informational presentations at Key moments where we're going back out to the public um to try and U make sure you as a body can be engaged in zoning reform um not just at the very end when we're voting on an item um and so tonight we'll be having a uh public meeting uh sort of throughout the city uh inviting all kind of neighborhoods uh that are um both eligible for adus currently um and would be in the future um and sharing some of the analysis that my colleagues will and uh JP have done on building and LP patterns in the city and that question of how adus may fit in um Cyrus uh or Joanne I think they don't have the ability to share their screen um on this presentation and so need to um get that ability added for them yep I got and as you all know this is like we're taking no vote on this item so if this is something you need to drop off on this is just a informational presentation um to make sure we're responding to the requesting the commission on some of these major initiatives so we'll turn it over to the team okay thank you C all right thank you all it's a pleasure to be with you this morning um my name is Will Cohen I'm a planner working with Kathleen and the rest of the crew on um this Adu zoning initiative uh you know as Kathleen was just saying this is a component of many of the things that we're working on here on zoning reform uh we've been trying to set out the set of goals that this really is about and the biggest one is is goal number one this idea that as the mayor announced at the state of the city we want to allow adus to be built on most residential lots um in many other ways the other goals follow from that but they are still productive when it comes to housing production across the city um we want to think about how to better improve small scale regulations for other buildings allow small scale development to be happening um as um new construction and then through the process of that we're always trying to simplify and streamline the zoning text how that relates to Adu specifically um where it comes down to is in that sort of goal one and two the big question is around non-conformities and the relationship of the current zoning code um to presenting barriers when it comes to Housing Development as I think you all know uh non-conformities are a particularly uh substantive issue for adus because we're not talking about new development that could conceivably you know follow some find some way to work their way through the various restrictions we're at the situation where to whatever degree preexisting non-conformities happen on Parcels that presents a kind of fundamental problem for making renovations to those properties because as long as there are uh pre-existing non-conformities then further Renovations which basically is exactly what an Adu would effectively be in most circumstances that's the thing that needs a variance um which presents the fundamental barrier to allowing it to happen as of right and so this is something we see right now all across the city with other things Dormers balconies more rooms the roof but all those components are what go in in many cases to makeing an Adu and so this is sort of a a key piece of where we're working with that in mind uh one of the questions that we both as the zoning team and we suspect our general questions across the board is how we got to this situation in many ways we think that answer is fairly straightforward the zoning code uh uh originally well there was the one in 1927 but the zoning code that we live under these days was originally enacted in 1964 um of course with many neighborhood updates as we were just talking about with the with the be article um but what that means is with the updates or not uh the bulk by far you see it on the map over there um all the stuff in blue any housing that was built before 1964 which for all int and purposes is all of the primary residential areas that have you know historic Bostonian character those never had to follow the zoning and so the zoning uh through to now has never really had to interact in a particularly Cooperative way with buildings that were already built it always was sort of looking in a different direction for new kinds of construction or changes which allowed this nonconformity to happen in the first place um and just while we're getting into it we have many more maps maybe at some other point if you all want to nerd out on it we are happy to go into more detail we've taken a look at at least a couple of the sort of big non-conforming factors it's difficult to look at all of them but these are the ones that really stand out one of them is the idea of minimum lot size right there's a rule of in pretty much every subdistrict in the city of Boston zoning that if you are below a certain minimum threshold for a lot you can't build anything um which you know apps in any other context makes sense some way but when we actually look at the rules a third of the residential Parcels are already smaller than that so if you look there you know the blue means you're complying the yellow means you don't so all that stuff in yellow you're already like those Parcels do not meet the minimum threshold those Parcels just by that rule alone are already non-conforming and you know per the zoning code really shouldn't be allowed to do things as of right as written right now uh the bigger one though and note all the yellow means non-conforming here is uh setbacks as we've seen time and time again at our various appeals to the zba yard violations are the most common Z zoning violation we see uh for individual projects coming to coming to the zba um but what we're talking about here is really there's usually three separate sets of rules for front setback side yard and then rear yard yard or setback depending on how you want to think about it and um 87% basically of residential Parcels in Boston already do not meet the front side and rear yard set back this is an estimate there's of course slightly different things about modal setbacks and all the various nuances of the zoning code but this is a on on in the margins we think this is a correct estimate 87% where the building is right now zoning says it shouldn't be like that you can't make changes because you're a pre-existing non-conformity without a variance there's a lot of other ones that we added in stuff about um unit count f um and those are the four that we did for now just just unit count F Flur ratio lot size and setbacks those four alone mean that 99.7% of residential Parcels do not meet zoning you can see a couple little sprinkles here of blue there's a couple smaller properties that happen to meet those four rules now I I say this and I don't mean this tongue and- cheek that 99.7% is let's call it an underestimate um this is a generous way of looking at it we're not looking at a lot of other things in the zoning code we're not looking at parking we are not looking at you know screening and buffering requirements we're not looking at height whether it be feet or stories there's all that other stuff in the zoning code that we don't even need to analyze to know that pretty much everyone is hitting a violation one way or another so for the purposes of this this is a a fairly fundamental observation that we're making that the zoning code AS written does not allow or cannot allow as of right adus across the city because there's always something that gets in the way way you know if the metaphors is whatever about a good prosecutor can always indict a ham sandwich and the ham sandwich is the parcel you don't even have to be a good prosecutor here the zoning code does the work for you I'm gonna pass it to JP from here hi I'm JP Jonathan palillo I'm an urban designer and architect with the bpda so there are a few other highlevel observations we had when we were analyzing that the built form of the city and probably the biggest one for me was that there's great levels of heterogeneity in our built form in every neighborhood on every street on every block you have triple Deckers next to single story homes next to Old victorians like the the built form of the city is just kind of all over the place and this is part of that rich character that we know and love about the city and we perceive but it was just interesting to look at it analytically uh next will please um another observation that we had is that the the built form of the city doesn't necessarily accurately signal the amount of units or people living in the building so for instance up here in the top left we have two buildings that appear to be large bulky six-packs when in fact they're only three unit buildings and the lower left we have uh what look like single family Colonials or Dutch Colonials they're actually uh two family homes uh we have lots in throughout selfie where that are kind of just they're not signaling accurately the amount of units we have triple Deckers next to every other type of home you could imagine next and then on top of that we also have a great variety of the units that are actually happening on each Street on each block in each neighborhood it's just kind of all over the place you don't have a real consistency of units or unit counts in areas and then that leads into the next slide where this heterogeneity of unit count doesn't even match the underlining zoning that exists so everything in with that red X is a unit count that's not allowed in the subdistrict here um and if we come to the next slide and then another and this one is particularly interesting to me as an architect we have triple Deckers everywhere throughout the city they take many forms so like these are many different types of triple Deckers but the Triple Decker is a quintessentially important Bostonian and New England housing type that happens in every neighborhood on every street it's all over the place so it's important that we figure out rules for this Adu zoning that accommodate triple Deckers and make sure that adus are possible with this type of housing next so I want to take you through actually a real world example of how that how the existing code applies to Triple Deckers for example so this is a historic Triple Decker that we all know and love in a 2f 5000 district and if we go to the next slide it's got a lot of problems in our current zoning code so we've overlaid in this green rectangle what is allowable what that allowable zoning envelope is in the existing code everything that's shaded Green in the Triple Decker is what's allowed everything in that that translucent gray violates the code so here the building actually sits off center on its lot so it's already violating the sidey guard requirements it's longer than what is allowed so it's violating the both the front and rear yard requirements and it's also just taller and has more floors than what's allowed so this is this is the type of thing we're seeing um throughout the city and that we need to kind of solve for as we try to accommodate adus next so yeah exact this is exactly the point as we study the built form of the city um this is all with in mind of creating an envelope and creating zoning rules that accommodate adus so whatever envelope we end up with needs to make sure that it accommodates a variety of adus because adus not only they need to match the great variety of lots and buildings throughout the city next so just like a high level takeaway of all of those initial observations um every type of home there's a great amount of variety throughout the city and every neighborhood in every block um and that form doesn't necessarily signal or match up very well with the zoning code the number of units the height of the building the size of the building the size of the unit it doesn't really match appropriately to the existing code and adus are going to have to fit in with this great amount of variety uh triple Deckers are an incredibly important part of our Urban Fabric and we need to make sure keep them in mind they're kind of setting some of the the limitations that we're starting to look at and then the existing toolbox that the code uses for example Building height unit count in F they're not the most accurate way of describing our city the the built form of the city so we want to look at some other toolboxes as we explore Adu requirements next so then we want to take you through a more thorough analysis of the of the buildings that are exists throughout the city and the lots that they exist on and all of this is in mind to come up with a set of zoning rules to allow and accommodate adus in all neighbor hoods of the city um and if we think a little bit less about the building itself and more the space around the building we notice some three High Lev sets of patterns that exist um the first one are in these diagrams that you see in the yellow these are the small narrow Lots with not a lot of space or sometimes no space between buildings uh type B this is maybe the most interesting for me at least this one it's all sorts of buildings are happening here but the space between buildings gets to get a little bit bigger you have a little bit more breathing room and then type c these are the largest Lots um with the most space between buildings um and all of these patterns we're exploring and trying to understand it's again with the mind of making sure that we come up with rules that accommodate all types of adus for all types of lots and all types of buildings like the mayor said we want adus throughout the city so this is going to take different forms and it's really important to understand the patterns um the city-wide patterns to make sure we come with rules for the adus next so Type A the first highle set of pattern that we noticed these are occurring on the really narrow tight Lots um sometimes there's no space between buildings sometimes there are little yards like small side yards small front yards but there's not a lot of breathing room around the buildings and while the building form itself may be highly variable they are typically narrow and long to accommodate and fit comfortably on those narrow Lots next um so we're going to take you through some real quick examples these are row homes in Roxbury East Boston Charlestown there's no room between buildings here even when there is sorry well next slide even when there is space between buildings it's small it's narrow it's there's not a lot of breathing room between buildings next and here again even though the form of the building itself is sort of all over the place consistently there's not a lot of room between buildings sometimes there are generous backyards but sidey yards and front yards especially are either non-existent or just very small next um so we started to think about how adus might fit into these patterns so here on these small Lots with high lot coverage and not a lot of breathing room this might be a good example of where you have just a small bump out a very small intervention the existing building just to create just enough living space so that you can create uh an Adu internal to the building that has follows the building code and follows the city requirements for adus um this is also a great example of how an Adu can be used and still maintain the little bit of open space that is on a lot and protect existing trees and the city's existing tree canopy next so here in the the everything everywhere all at once this is the working title but really this is the part of the city where you have every type of home on every type of lot in every block and neighborhood of the city um here lots start to get a little bit bigger a little bit wider they're not overly generous but there is perceptible Breathing Room between buildings um the building form itself is all over the place so you've got triple Deckers next to small single family homes um but it's the real important part takeaway here is that Breathing Room starts to happen in this part of the city next so here just taking through again we have the Beloved triple Deckers we have two and a half story long narrow buildings we have triple Deckers next to every other type next um you still have smaller what are reading as single family homes although like we discussed before they may not be but really just every type of house is happening in this part of the city there's more examples here and then this is where because we're starting to get a little bit more Breathing Room between buildings this is where maybe the intervention for an Adu gets a little bit more generous you still don't have necessarily enough side yard or rear yard to put a whole new Standalone building but maybe this is where an Adu becomes an attached Adu style that um connects onto the house it has enough room to follow all the fire department safety regulations and the building code rules um but it's part of the house still next and then our last category the last highlevel P set of pattern that we were noticing this is where the Big Lots of the city are these are where buildings are far enough apart where you have a lot of room in between buildings um this is also where we noticed Carriage Houses and garages start appearing throughout the city um but lots are wider buildings are starting to be a little less dense but still every type of building is happening here next so again you can see it in the images it's immediately perceptible that there's a lot of space around buildings really generous front yards more generous side yards and what you're not seeing in these images backyards start to get very generous is a lot of room behind a lot of these buildings next um again and here you see every type of home is existing you have the long multi family two and a half story buildings but they're on really significant lots that that house in Rosendale has a huge backyard it's ripe for an Adu next so again because we have a lot of space around buildings in this part in these parts of the city maybe you have a garage or a carriage house that can be um sensitively uh renovated into an Adu or this is even where we can start to see Standalone adus that are new builds that are done sensitively next we're flip flapping a little bit between the parcel scale and the city-wide scale which of course is the task of any good zoning planner uh but this work that the Urban Design Team and Jonathan and everyone has been doing to think about what's happening at the individual parcel level is critical for us to be able to have an informed conversation um and you know additional analytic process around what could and should be happening at the Citywide scale and a a primary takeaway from this is from these different kinds of lots with those General types is that um we can really get a lot of information around that kind of property that we have and the kinds of uh buildings that happen to likely sit on it using really two primary pieces of information the width of the lot and the area of the lot and so our way of getting from the individual parcel scale to thinking about this at a more Citywide level has been to use uh these sort of buckets of parcels with different levels of width and total area to break down the city into different groups so we can see how these patterns make their way across Boston um so uh the exact don't Focus too much on the exact details of the various thresholds we're still working on those a little bit but more generally speaking you know what you can see is the at the red side of the spectrum those are the little Lots they have less width and less overall area and then we sort of stagger our way up as we get towards large and we have sort of they get bigger bigger bigger with you know various amounts of constrained this amount of yard as we go from extra small all the way up to large and you see the pattern that um I think is probably familiar or perhaps even intuitive to many of us who live in the city um when you're in the more inner uh downtown neighborhoods it's primarily super skinny remarkably small fairly constrained between different parts or between uh one parcel and another as you work your way towards those initial neighborhoods outside of the downtown core um you hit that uh area where you get a mix of everything um in Mission Hill Rock spray Dorchester you've got some of every single type from extra small all the way up to the large and then as you work your way out to the um neighborhoods a little bit further to the South you see not a consistent pattern but a good General pattern of distribution the key piece here of course is that every neighborhood is showing up differently with the pattern um there's no one neighborhood that's all one exact type um and that's going to be critical for us as we think about how these rules could eventually make their way to zoning because we need to find a way where this can be thought through systematically across the city which brings us to a different kind of analysis and you do not need to fully understand this chart we ourselves are trying to understand it here at the bpda um but it is informative for us as we think through these different kinds of parcels what what you have here just for a basic explanation is each dot represent the number of parcels at a given size so the bigger the dot the more Parcels there are like that the x-axis the horizontal axis is um the width of a given type of parcel and the Y AIS the vertical axis is the depth and so for any given width you get the number of parcels or width and depth combo you get the number of parcels so you can kind of see um there's kind of a big long horizontal line at 100 feet deep there's a big vertical line at about 50 ft wide and in the middle there in the middle of the yellow there's a Big Blob right so that's sort of an observation that the 50 to 100 parcel 50 by 100 parcel is uh a a paradigmatically Bostonian lot if you will um but more importantly for us uh the key is that those categories of smallish mediumish largish do happen they occur all across the city in great frequency the large ones get kind of they spread themselves out there's a lot of variation the mediums have a high concentration and then the Smalls Get You Know extra extra small and so as we work on how zoning could apply we can use different analytics around what's happening across the city and neighborhood by neighborhood to make sure that we're hitting the Mark um and ensuring that our zoning is reflecting what we what we know and love about our community um so so with that um this is really the first step of many steps this is not news owning yet this is our informational interview we are trying to keep you all informed as we go with it we've got a lot of facts and we have a lot of hunches but uh from here we need to do a couple different things we need to take this zoning work through it some more we're going to present this information at a public meeting this evening um we're going to keep working through this and come to a broad set of recommendations we think could make sense for for the city to enable um zoning across the city for adus um we'll have a a substantial amount of Engagement with the public both to answer questions and Collective information around people's experiences to date and or interest in adus and our goal as as we stated you know three months ago and this earlier this meeting is to try to get this um you know enacted and completed over the course of this year so we have a lot of work ahead of us but we feel like we're going in a in a good direction one key piece which I'll just also want to note at the very bottom it's not act it looks like an uh an after note but it's actually critical to this whole thing is you see at the very bottom of that box about the Adu guide book that's a critical other piece that we're working with the consultant on not only to update zoning to make sense to allow these things but also to create um a set of common ways to build adus that's um a target for not only homeowners but also Architects and other interested parties to help simplify this process because even after we change the zoning there's many different steps and so we want to make sure that um our understanding of how and what makes sense for an Adu is as clear as it can be for everyone else who's you know working through the process of making these things happen and so with that I will stop sharing thank you will JP anything else scotle or Jeff no we just appreciate the opportunity to um share with the zoning commission how these types of efforts are going particularly when they are you know going to we represent big substantive efforts with a lot of Engagement um and you know if you have questions along the way that we have an opportunity to hear them from you um and incorporate them into the work so thank you all for your attention and time on it thank you Kathleen Jeff next meeting 18th is it 22nd 22nd I'm sorry two weeks from today yeah uh I had a quick comment about the ad handbook um and uh excellent presentation guys um that's terrific I think this is great um when you do the handbook is it going to be in multiple languages is it going to be sort of in Haitian cre Creole and Spanish and stuff so you can because I'm imagining kind of an immigrant family who owns a double triple Decker or something wanting to take advantage of this so is that is that in the works or in terms of how this is going to be made accessible to um diverse communities uh I think you know this is something which we found to be true across the board is accessibility in all different languages is key um it's actually very similar to the kind of conversation we just had about the other hearing to the zoning change we need to make sure that this is something which all community members can do the point of adus is not to be something that only you know some rarified set of property owners in Boston can achieve and so um we we still need to figure out we we we still need to figure out exactly the right way to make that information available but we we agree that that is critical and we will work on that I will say I think one of the big goals of moving to the pattern book right that makes it different than the zoning is being able to use like pictures and diagrams and numbers not just um that are labeled rather than write the text of the zoning code um and I think the other thing we've really been working on um as we think about accessibility is um the difference between I still like things uh I'm a little bit of a leite I like things on paper right like the PDF that can go on paper is great um but there are some big advantages to sort of Hosting online in terms of ability to use different translation or text to readability tools that are also part of how we evaluate how we kind of use that material yeah and make it available yeah but but I could see maybe putting and I don't need to tell you guys how to do this so but yes thank you all right thank you everyone thanks see you on the 22nd