[SxgiOOMwDHY_SPEAKER_22]: So the meetings come to order we have a quorum Joe Chris Chris and Fred. And, and now I'm going to read the minutes from the last week's meeting, I sent to you Chris Bader I'll send out to everyone but they're simplistic but Fred was nice enough to send me a format of how that's done with the city masthead etc. And I'll try and track that better in the future and get it out earlier. So it just said it was January 12th was the date who was attended. Fred, Chris, Charlotte, Joe, and Miles Wheeler are there. That's who was present. Meeting started at 6 o'clock. We confirmed the minutes from the last meeting. It was approved. But we talked about the South Street Historic District. The boundaries confirmed. We had about $8,000 allocated for some special projects. Outreach committee presented, and then we talked to Chris Kelly meeting Chris Kelly. We proposed a meeting. This was our official historic district commission meeting, not the special other 1 we had with Chris Kelly. So it was proposing that and we actually implemented that. So that's the minutes.
[Christopher Bader]: Okay, terrific. Terrific. The. Did you take notes in the, in the meeting we have with Chris Kelly.
[SxgiOOMwDHY_SPEAKER_22]: I did as well, but I didn't know if I had to put that in as a separate.
[Christopher Bader]: Yeah, at some at some later point, you should you should put those together because. It would be it's it's best if all of our meetings, as many or as many as possible of our meetings about South Street are actually official meetings.
[SxgiOOMwDHY_SPEAKER_22]: I'll make that a second. I'll make that a second document, Chris, with that, with those line notes on it.
[Christopher Bader]: Yeah, perfect. OK, so. We got a number of items on the agenda. Do we accept the minutes?
[SxgiOOMwDHY_SPEAKER_22]: Do we have to accept the minutes, Chris?
[Christopher Bader]: Oh, yes. Right. So I'd have a motion to accept the minutes.
[MCM00001302_SPEAKER_02]: Motion to accept the meeting minutes as described.
[Christopher Bader]: Okay. Second? Joe?
[Unidentified]: I'll second that.
[Christopher Bader]: Okay. All in favor? Okay. Aye. I have to call the roll because it's online. Fred? Yes. Joe?
[Unidentified]: Yes.
[Christopher Bader]: OK, Chris?
[Unidentified]: Yes.
[Christopher Bader]: OK, and I vote yes. So yes. So unanimously accepted vote. OK, let's move on to 309 High Street. Ben Coy is here. He's the owner. Ben, tell us what you want to do.
[SPEAKER_04]: Sure. So I will share my screen. Give me a minute. Host disabled participants screen. One second.
[Christopher Bader]: Dennis, can you allow Ben to share his screen?
[SPEAKER_04]: I think I'm good, Chris. Can everybody see?
[Christopher Bader]: Not yet. Oh, wait. There we go. Now can everybody see? Yep. Yep.
[SPEAKER_04]: Okay. So for those of you that are not familiar with the house, that's a picture of the house. It's spectacular. So is everybody familiar with it? Oh yeah. Charles Brooks. Yes, sir. So in the, not the spring, sorry, at the end of the summer, early fall, we replaced these two chimneys. They're no longer painted, they're bare brick, but they look the same. Otherwise they have that nice feature on the top and they look the same, same dimensions, same everything. The reason why we replaced them is because the brick was getting old, causing some leaks in the house, causing mortar to fall in the yard once in a while, a piece of brick. Anyways, so basically I put in the application because I wanted to replace these chimneys now, the ones on the other side. So it's the same work that would be done on these chimneys, that was done on these chimneys, but now I wanted to get it done on these chimneys. And when it's done, I don't plan on repainting the chimneys. So at the conclusion of the work, all the chimneys will match. They'll be the same exposed brick. It'll look like, you know, they weren't able to find all historic bricks because the sheer amount of bricks that were needed, but they were able to match at least on this side, the bricks as close as they thought they were able to.
[SxgiOOMwDHY_SPEAKER_22]: Ben, Chris Donovan, what's a historic brick? What do you kind of term a historic brick? Did you find certain things that had a mark or something that you identified from the existing chimneys?
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, I mean, they tried to match the color as close as possible. On one hand, the color didn't matter so much, in my opinion, because it's all painted over. But they did try to match the color as close as possible to what was underneath the paint. And then they tried to match the brick, you know, it's old brick. So it's a little beat up in places. So they didn't, they didn't take like brand new smooth bricks. Like the bricks have a little bit of a weathered look to them. And that's about it. In some cases they did use actual old brick, but they weren't able to do that all over.
[SxgiOOMwDHY_SPEAKER_22]: You didn't find any insignia or have any, anything that said where they might've come from anything. They're just the dated and.
[SPEAKER_04]: No, no. You know, we got a lot of old bricks in the house. I mean, like in the yard and in the basement and some of them do have kind of like an insignia, like where they were made or, and things like that. But no, no, we did not. They not all like that anyways.
[SxgiOOMwDHY_SPEAKER_22]: So you're talking about replacing the next two. You've done two already, and now they're bare brick, and now you're going after the next two.
[SPEAKER_04]: That's correct.
[Unidentified]: They would all match. Does anybody else have any questions?
[Christopher Bader]: Joe? Fred?
[MCM00001302_SPEAKER_02]: Ben, this is a before picture, right? So do you have a picture of what the chimneys look like now as the right ones have been repaired?
[Unidentified]: Give me a minute.
[SxgiOOMwDHY_SPEAKER_22]: I got a, I have one on my phone. And how did that go, Ben? How'd the process go for the first two?
[SPEAKER_04]: It was very smooth. It was very, very smooth. The company was really good to work with. Let me try something. I have it on my phone. I'm going to stop sharing. I'm going to go back on my camera. Okay. So there's my camera.
[MCM00001302_SPEAKER_02]: I don't know, that's a little- As I come across? The most effective method.
[SPEAKER_04]: I mean, I can email it to myself.
[Christopher Bader]: I don't think that helps.
[MCM00001302_SPEAKER_02]: I'll email it.
[SPEAKER_04]: I'll email it to myself and then open it.
[MCM00001302_SPEAKER_02]: I guess my concern, Ben, is you have the two brick ends of the house and then the chimneys up above the roof. Have you done anything with the lower brick, the part that's not part of the chimneys but that's part of the house? Yeah, we repaired some of the bricks.
[SPEAKER_04]: And those we used actual, like they found old bricks to use there. So they were the same bricks as close as possible to the bricks that were there. And then they repainted it because it looked pretty weird to have like brick and mortar exposed and then the rest of it painted. It didn't look very good.
[MCM00001302_SPEAKER_02]: Yeah. So I mean, I think, you know, I'm okay with what you're doing. I'm wondering though, does it look strange? I haven't been by your house recently to notice, with the bottom heart being painted and the upper two pieces?
[SPEAKER_04]: No, actually I don't think it does. You know, originally I wanted to get the chimneys painted. Hold on, I'm just sending this photo so I can look at it. Originally I wanted to get the chimneys painted because I was worried about that, about it not matching. But I actually think it looks, in my opinion, it looks pretty good. I talked to some other people and they also convinced me that it looks all right. I think what helps is that you have the side of the house, it's painted red, and then the trim at the top is white, and then you have the bare brick, and that kind of gives you some nice separation. Again, my opinion, so it doesn't, yeah, so I think it kind of makes some nice separation and makes it look okay, but let me pull up this picture.
[MCM00001302_SPEAKER_02]: In our interest in yours to, you know, to get all the four chimneys to match. I think it's great if you could redo the two on the left side of the house.
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah.
[MCM00001302_SPEAKER_02]: So they look good. And, you know, it's a, it's a little bit of a quirky look to have the unpainted and the painted. So, but You know, I'd rather have the other two, the ones behind us here, the red ones look like these brick ones then. It looks a little weird now with the red painted chimneys versus unpainted. So I'm okay as long as you can use the same techniques. It looks like you got a good mason there and keep going.
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, I mean, personally, I don't know if I would have painted it. I mean, as you guys know, they painted this red to cover up some nasty looking brick, right? Right. I thought about maybe painting it yellow in the future to match the rest of the house. I thought maybe that would look a little better, but I don't know.
[SxgiOOMwDHY_SPEAKER_22]: You can do that digitally, Ben, right? Play around with it, see what you like. Right.
[SPEAKER_04]: Right.
[MCM00001302_SPEAKER_02]: Well, part of the architectural style of your house is sort of Georgian houses. All of them historically would have had exposed brick unpainted on that end of the house. when they built it. So, you know, I think the more it looks like brick, the more historically correct it's going to be, but we don't have a jurisdiction over your paint color. So you can, you can paint it, whatever.
[SxgiOOMwDHY_SPEAKER_22]: Exposing it. Yeah. Is that paint weatherizing that thread? Is that paint weatherizing that brick?
[MCM00001302_SPEAKER_02]: Well, the paint is meant to be basically waterproofing at this point with the original old colonial bricks had no water repellent abilities. So they absorbed all the moisture and they would pit and they would, you know, parts would fall out. It's a very common and disheartening problem. And now you would replace them with new bricks, but you know, they're fire, what are they, fire kiln and, you know, Iron spot brick and stuff like that, which don't look historic at all. They have a much different. Texture to them and a feel to them than the old historic colonial clay bricks, basically, they're probably made here in Medford or Somerville originally, so we have to.
[SxgiOOMwDHY_SPEAKER_22]: But you think exposing them is a it's could be water damage and. if you expose them, you'd want to replace them. And that's not what we want to do, you know? So maybe the paint is good for you, Ben, right? I mean, it's working for you, right?
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah. I mean, if I had more money to spare, I'd love to replace that whole wall, but yeah, I got a feeling the brick under there is pretty, pretty bad. And then I've talked to people about, you know, like sandblasting the paint off and that could really cause a lot of damage. potentially cause a lot of damage to it. And then you end up with like, do you replace the whole wall or do you put some sort of like veneer over it or something? And I don't think we want the veneer, right?
[MCM00001302_SPEAKER_02]: Right now we like the real brick and things. They do make some nice thin veneers that look good. If you want to go to an historic brick color, you probably could veneer it. I don't know. You'd have to run it by everyone to see what their feelings on that are. I think the way you've got it, at least let's get the chimneys repaired and up to up to speed. And, you know, over time, maybe you'll come back and reconsider what to do with those cable ends there at some point along the way.
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah. So the, the other thing on the applications to put a chimney cap on, I don't know.
[Christopher Bader]: Same as the cap on the other on the new chimneys.
[SPEAKER_04]: So there is one second, let me just pull it up. So, um, You guys can see, right? So before they did the work and now when the new work, these have concrete on the top, they're covered up because the fireplaces are blocked up. So we can't really use them anyways. This chimney attaches to a fireplace in this room that we, I don't know, use once in a while, not many years though, actually. So I wanted to get a cap on top of this. because we do get birds in there in the spring, which is really annoying. So this isn't the exact damper, but we wanted to get a damper similar to this style. So when the damper's closed, you won't see it from the street. It's not like the typical kind of other caps that you see in the neighborhood where it's like a metal plate elevated from the chimney. It should be low profile and not visible.
[MCM00001302_SPEAKER_02]: Well, I'm glad to hear you say that. I'm not in favor of bird screens on chimneys, but if it's not visible from a public way, I think that would be acceptable. And the only trouble I've heard with these types of things, if you get like a foot of snow on that and you flip your button down in there and you think it's open, it may not. And you start a fire and then you get all smoke in your house and things. And that's happened to I don't know. I don't know if there's any direct people I'm familiar with. So just, just be aware of that. If it's not visible from. High street. I think that'd be okay. And if you just, I just putting it on the one chimney or you're putting on all of them.
[SPEAKER_04]: That's one for now.
[MCM00001302_SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, I think just one, because you wouldn't want to put it on the ones that if you're serving your boiler or your. open it when you're, when you have an actual fire in the fireplace.
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah. The boiler actually goes to a fifth chimney, which isn't visible from the street.
[MCM00001302_SPEAKER_02]: Okay. All right.
[SPEAKER_04]: In the back of the house. Coming out around here. Yeah.
[MCM00001302_SPEAKER_02]: So I don't know, Chris, what other people think about the. I think. I like. I think.
[Christopher Bader]: I mean the, I think the. the new chimneys on the right look a little strange in the match with the wood, but I think, I'm sorry, the match with the painted bricks, but I think it's okay. And I think replacing the ones on the left with the same as the ones on the right is It's exactly what should happen, I think. So yeah, I'd vote to approve.
[Unidentified]: Great.
[Christopher Bader]: Joe, what do you think?
[Adam Hurtubise]: I agree. I have no problem with the cap. I think that rebuilding it, leaving it unpainted, I have no problem with that.
[SxgiOOMwDHY_SPEAKER_22]: Sounds like if the first half of the plan went well, you know, what we like to see, and you're happy, Ben, with them, right? We'll continue on with that look. Not sure that the damper with that, you know, issues are with that, but if it's out of sight, that's what I thought was one of the concerns, as long as it's out of sight. And other kind of caps out there that may kind of look nice as well, but that's a question for another day. But if you're concerned more about the animals, the birds, Ben, is that what you're concerned with, the damper? Yeah, yeah. And you just do that single one, it's not visible from the street. Right. Yeah, so I'm good with that, so I'm good.
[Christopher Bader]: Okay, so can I have a motion to approve?
[MCM00001302_SPEAKER_02]: I make a motion to approve the application as submitted.
[SxgiOOMwDHY_SPEAKER_22]: Okay, second? I second the motion. I second the motion.
[Christopher Bader]: Okay, all in favor? Fred? Yes. Joe?
[Adam Hurtubise]: Yes.
[Christopher Bader]: Chris?
[Adam Hurtubise]: Yes.
[Christopher Bader]: I vote yes. So Ben, you're good.
[SPEAKER_04]: Great. Thank you.
[Christopher Bader]: I'll send you the certificate of appropriateness probably next week. Great. All right. Thank you everybody.
[SxgiOOMwDHY_SPEAKER_22]: Hey Ben, I'd like to learn more about the house at another time, but that's pretty spectacular house you have there. So good luck and thank you for keeping it really spectacular when you drive down the street, it's really a showpiece.
[SPEAKER_04]: Yes. Thank you. Feel free to email me if you want to talk.
[Unidentified]: Thank you. All right. Have a good one.
[Christopher Bader]: Okay. We have Tim.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yes, hello. Hi. Thank you. Teresa DuPont introduced me and invited me to this event. Just quickly, I wanted to introduce myself. I've been actively working in Medford providing renewable energy solutions such as solar energy. I also set up a number of Mass Save Energy audits. I'm in Medford. My wife and I live in Somerville. So I'm in Medford six days a week so a few of the homeowners in the hillside district historic district express interest in solar energy, and they wanted me to reach out to your, you know, your department division and so Teresa was kind enough to allow me to at least attend this zoom event. So, you know, if there's any particular regulations, restrictions in place now for homeowners, because there's literally like six homeowners in that area that is curious to explore solar panels for their homes. Some are historic homes. Some are a little more modern, if you consider modern 1920s or 30s.
[Christopher Bader]: Yeah. So, and what addresses are we talking about, Tim?
[SPEAKER_02]: Specifically, there's several, but I shared a few with Teresa. So there's 36 and 16 Hillside Avenue. And then there's two on Grandview. I have the addresses in a notebook that I have. And you probably know Grandview and Hillside are right next to each other. But yeah, 36 and 16 Hillside, there's two homeowners that we're interested in. Uh, you know, having a design, but, you know, obviously wanting me to talk to your department first to see, uh, if there are some, uh, things they have to consider before they have a design and, you know, planning.
[Christopher Bader]: So, okay. Well, first of all, as a member, as a matter of procedure, uh, we do need to approve, um, uh, okay. any application for solar panels on a case-by-case basis. So you would need to submit, there's an application on our website, or I can email it to you, where you fill in for each property, what you want to do and maybe a sketch of where it's going to be on the roof and whether it's going to be visible from the street and stuff like that. Generally speaking, we're much more open to improvements like solar panels when they're not visible from the stream. So for example, if it just faces the backyard, you're probably good. We would still have to approve it, but you'd be much more likely to be approved if it was not visible from the front.
[SPEAKER_02]: And you probably know, for all our installations, our company is Commonwealth Energy. We're based in Peabody. We're a family-owned business. But for 12 years, we have hundreds of solar installations. And of course, every install, we go through the city of, if it's Medford, we go through, of course, National Grid. The designs are submitted to the city hall for, to your point, for approval or changes, modifications to the design. Obviously, our key is just to make sure we adhere to any of the regulations and laws because it's a very beautiful area, as you know, some of the historic areas of Medford. I know some homeowners are concerned of having something that may be aesthetically unappealing to them. I agree with you, try as long as it's generally not visible from the street level, unless they have a flat roof and you cannot see it at all. there's probably, as you guys probably drive around, there's probably hundreds of solar panel installations in Medford currently, and our company probably put 25, 50 of them in the last five, six years. And most of them are in the unhistoric neighborhoods. So thank you for that information. I will look at the website. And then obviously, if there's interest from the homeowners, naturally, an application would be submitted to your department for any corrections or modifications.
[Christopher Bader]: Okay, do you do solar shingles?
[SPEAKER_02]: We have a partner, we don't see many so far because of the cost of solar shingles. We definitely have a partner as a reseller that we can provide a proposal to homeowners. And it's interesting you asked me that because yesterday I was meeting with someone and she asked about solar shingles. So I was going to look into it for in terms of cost, because they're pretty pricey.
[Christopher Bader]: Yeah, they're more expensive than. Yeah. But I expect, I'm just guessing, but I'm guessing that the price will, the prices will come down.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yes.
[Christopher Bader]: As people, as people, as technology becomes available. And in my opinion, it is more, it's more suitable for historic buildings.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yes, absolutely. And that was her main concern, because she has a house from 1870s. Yeah, and she'd love to get solar shingles. So I'm currently looking into it right now for a partner of ours that we could potentially do an install of shingles, because they're probably four times the cost of, you know, the traditional solar panels, you know, that are the solar glass.
[Christopher Bader]: I looked online last night, it looks like they're unless you get the very high end ones, like from Tesla, it looks like they're less than, I mean, it's still substantial, but it looks like they're about 80% higher, not four times. But yeah, still that's a substantial difference in price. We're trying to preserve the look of these historic buildings. And in my opinion, that would be sort of a middle ground between just saying, you know, because a lot of these solar panels, to me, look like hell from the standpoint of historic building. And I get the idea to, you know, generate renewable energy, but we'd like to minimize the aesthetic aspect of this. Okay, anybody else have any comments, questions?
[MCM00001302_SPEAKER_02]: Okay. So. Familiarize yourself. The national park service puts out guidelines for historic reservation of buildings. Okay. They, I think they came out in favor of solar panels. And treat them basically as removable objects that you, you know, over time. If, if you want to go back to the historic appearance, you could remove the. And that one did get some pushback from other members of this commission. Maybe we're not in favor of it. But we did vote in favor of it and they're in place now. And, you know, you barely notice them after a little while. So it is a case by case basis and some, some members. Um, sure. If you are familiar with the guidelines and talk, we don't have to follow the national park service guidelines. We can, but we don't have to, but you might just want to, you know, glance through that and do a Google search and make sure you're using their language and their jargon for solar panels.
[Christopher Bader]: Thank you. Okay. Joe, any comments, questions?
[SxgiOOMwDHY_SPEAKER_22]: No. So Fred, they did approve at least one solar panel project in a historic district before.
[MCM00001302_SPEAKER_02]: Yes, we've done that. Just just in the mom, Simon's sister.
[SxgiOOMwDHY_SPEAKER_22]: Tim, your last name. Can I get some contact information for the record? Sure.
[SPEAKER_02]: My last name is Matt to Chesky. It's M.A.T.U.S.Z.E.W.S.K.I.
[SPEAKER_01]: Uh, can I get you at, um, uh, M a T U S isn't Sam. Yep. Z E W S isn't Sam. K I got you.
[SPEAKER_02]: Tim. And a phone is from Commonwealth energy. Yes. My number is 9 1 7 8 6 8 9 9 4 9.
[SxgiOOMwDHY_SPEAKER_22]: And you hear you representing some solar people who may be applying in the hillside district 13 and 16 and 36 hillside, maybe, and maybe a person showing grand view.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, they're, they want me to at least generate a design, obviously there's. Other discussions about, you know, the proposals, but before we went too far, I just thought, you know, just to share several homeowners in that area have expressed interest and they, some of them believe that they don't think they can do it, but they like the idea because of, you know, harnessing green energy, reducing their electric bill. As you know, National Grid went up significantly in November, so So that's good. I will definitely look at all the websites and guidelines. And then, um, obviously, uh, I can send Teresa has my email, so she'll probably can forward it to you or I can give it to you now, if you'd like.
[SxgiOOMwDHY_SPEAKER_22]: No, wait, I'll take that email for the record for Chris.
[SPEAKER_02]: Okay. It's, uh, Tim dot last name. If you, um, Matthew Chesky at CW. hyphen energy at CW hyphen hyphen energy.com. Yeah. Commonwealth energy around 12 years, we're roofing and solar energy. And we obviously sell battery packs and we have an HVAC division and we have a tree division. And, um, I joined them six months ago. Um, my wife, I used to live in Manhattan for 17 years and moved to Somerville a few years ago and joined the new England region.
[Christopher Bader]: Where did you live in Manhattan?
[SPEAKER_02]: We lived in Upper West, 71st and West End. It's a dead end, one of the unique streets with a dead end there. So yeah, we were there 17 years and before that lived in San Francisco, Chicago, and this is where I will retire in my solar energy career. Did you live in New York before?
[Christopher Bader]: No, but I have a friend who has an apartment, who lives in the, in Alphabet City.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah. Oh, yes. Yeah, sure.
[SxgiOOMwDHY_SPEAKER_22]: Tim, have you found anything creative?
[Christopher Bader]: Chris Bader, it sounds like shingles is a new alternative solar technology that I think is more appropriate for historic buildings. Yeah. I mean, this is just Tim, I'm just speaking for myself here, not for the commission. Yes. And yeah, I think it's more I find it more appropriate for historic buildings. It's it's it's it's more expensive now. but I expect that to change in the near future. Yeah.
[SxgiOOMwDHY_SPEAKER_22]: Are there other creative things like that, Tim? Are there any other things that you can hide this stuff or is it really, you need the rooftops?
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, right now it's, again, you know, obviously there's 2 million plus solar panel installs in the country and it's like an increase every like 5% a year. But yeah, really right now most people are just having the traditional you know, glass, you know, solar panels, mounting. They've definitely gotten thinner. They're very sleek. They're not the bulky blue ones in the past, but solar shingles, I would agree, especially for historic homes, that's the way to go. Because if I had a beautiful historic house in Medford, I would also wait for solar shingles. personally. There's a lot of tax credits, as you guys know. They're 30% off. You can write off your solar investments, which would include solar shingles. So those are really the only options currently for generating solar energy.
[Christopher Bader]: OK, well, Tim, we look forward to working with you in the future.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yes, thank you, Chris. I appreciate it. I like to attend this. If you have any confidential discussion, I'm happy to log off now if you'd like.
[Christopher Bader]: No, no, no. It's not confidential. This is a public meeting. All right. No, we don't. We don't exclude people. We don't.
[SxgiOOMwDHY_SPEAKER_22]: So, Tim, you understand about getting the application and then filling that out and going that process.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yes. Thank you. Yeah.
[Christopher Bader]: OK, so. Moving on, Fred submitted some proposed guidelines for historic districts and buildings in historic districts. Did anybody besides me have a chance to look at them?
[SxgiOOMwDHY_SPEAKER_22]: I did take a quick look at them yet. I'm going to pull them up too.
[Christopher Bader]: Okay. Okay.
[SxgiOOMwDHY_SPEAKER_22]: It was great, Fred.
[Christopher Bader]: Yeah, thank you, Fred. Joe, did you have a chance to look at Fred's guidelines?
[Adam Hurtubise]: Yes, I read them as well.
[Christopher Bader]: Okay, great. Perfect. So why don't we, do we want to go through these line by line? How about some general comments first?
[SxgiOOMwDHY_SPEAKER_22]: Chris, do you want to present Fred kind of like an overview?
[Christopher Bader]: Yeah, that's an excellent idea. Yeah.
[MCM00001302_SPEAKER_02]: I can't share my screen. I would.
[SxgiOOMwDHY_SPEAKER_22]: Yeah.
[Christopher Bader]: If someone can you let Fred share a screen.
[MCM00001302_SPEAKER_02]: Or Dennis, if you could share the screen.
[Christopher Bader]: All right.
[MCM00001302_SPEAKER_02]: Thank you. So this is a draft of the guidelines. I don't know if you saw that. It's a, it's a website. I directed. I've included in the email, but it lists every. District guidelines. In Massachusetts, I think, or at least the ones that are available publicly. So I looked through a lot of them. I looked through Arlington and Salem and Malden. I don't know if Malden had one or not, but the one I liked most was Somerville actually. And it had a pretty broad stroke of things. Some of the other ones are very specific about mill buildings in Lowell and historic buildings in Salem and revolutionary buildings in Concord and all that sort of stuff, which I didn't think most of it applied to us in Medford in a specific fashion. So I took the general guidelines and just kind of went through them and edited line by line, but to keep them open, just to keep them sort of a broad brush approach and not locking us or the homeowner into any specific requirement to do something when they come before us and not do something before us. It's all sort of individual case-by-case basis, including saying, if you've altered your house, if you have, I don't know if it's. You know, vinyl siding on there, or if your porch got torn down. We were not looking necessarily to, you know, Make you replace it to what it looked like in 1855, that sort of stuff. So the only, I read these over after I sent them off to you. As another sort of draft is there's a couple of references to colors, which I think I should admit. I don't know if our local guidelines previously had omitted color as part of our criteria, but I think we should sort of keep with that approach. And go from there, I guess, to if anyone wants to edit these things, send it back to me, feel free to. If anybody wants to say something added, just reach out to me and let me know.
[Christopher Bader]: Okay. Can you send us the word a word document so we can send everybody the word document.
[MCM00001302_SPEAKER_02]: You're more than welcome to have that as well.
[Christopher Bader]: Does everybody have access to Google Docs? Do you have access to Google Docs?
[MCM00001302_SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, I can put this in Google Docs to the one that Chris Donovan had laid out some. Is that the one we're talking about, Chris? The one that Chris Donovan has been using or we have a separate one?
[SxgiOOMwDHY_SPEAKER_22]: We have something else, Chris, do we have an in-house one? I create something for me just to put all the different pictures and things into.
[Christopher Bader]: It's a Google Docs folder.
[SxgiOOMwDHY_SPEAKER_22]: It is.
[Christopher Bader]: Okay. Yeah. Yeah. Can you send out, can you remind us, send us an email maybe after the meeting reminding us where the folder is?
[SxgiOOMwDHY_SPEAKER_22]: I will with the passwords and Joe, I'll send it to you as well. Joe, you just dial into it the password and you can share and see some of these things. It's kind of a scratch pad for photos and some of the stuff that we're doing with the South Street District. So I'll send you all an email on that.
[Christopher Bader]: Yeah. Is that going to work for you, Joe?
[Adam Hurtubise]: I'll give it a shot if I have time with it, I'll just email and ask for some help working through it, but I should be fine. OK, OK.
[Christopher Bader]: Yeah, yeah. So Fred, why don't you put it up on Google Docs? Because Google Docs supports essentially committee editing.
[SxgiOOMwDHY_SPEAKER_22]: And Chris Bader and Fred, can we call this, just what it's exactly titled, the Historic District Commission's Design Guidelines? Can we start referring it to as that or something else? Or can we use that term from now on?
[MCM00001302_SPEAKER_02]: Well, I've got this historic commission design guidelines. So it's design guidelines as opposed to, this doesn't go into detail, which is on our website of certificates of applicability in the application process and sort of the jargon. This would only, the idea of this is somebody comes before us, they want to change a window or they want to redo their chimneys. If we've got, then we should be able to reference our decision on some of the language in these guidelines, whatever decision we choose. So it's really meant to guide us when people come to us with applications.
[SxgiOOMwDHY_SPEAKER_22]: Okay. Okay. So this is kind of for us, our own little internal compass for some of these things.
[MCM00001302_SPEAKER_02]: But it will be public record. So it would be, we'd have to vote on it. We'd have to approve it. We probably have to send it to the city solicitor to make sure they're, you know, got the language and everything.
[Christopher Bader]: Absolutely.
[MCM00001302_SPEAKER_02]: You know, it's got to pass a couple different musters. And I included Chris Skelly in the email. And I'd be curious if he had any thoughts about it one way or the other as well.
[Christopher Bader]: I will ask him about it. Yeah. OK, yeah, so so. So, yeah, Fred, why don't you work with Chris Donovan to to get that up on Google Docs? And we can we can start you know, we can start designing our camel.
[SxgiOOMwDHY_SPEAKER_22]: Yeah. And the reason for the Google docs is because right now it's a static PDF and I could send that to everybody, but if there's any changes on it, that's when Google docs, I think Google docs is the way to go.
[Christopher Bader]: Okay. I've actually seen this, uh, at work, uh, actually two people can edit the document at the same time. Yeah. And it doesn't get confused. Yeah.
[MCM00001302_SPEAKER_02]: So I'll, I'll put up the original word in there and I'll, I don't know if I can enable whatever, you know, Track changes and that sort of stuff, which is in word. So that hopefully we would see what everybody did, what they deleted, what they added. Yes. Yes. And so be able to track it very specifically as to what, what we're changing.
[Christopher Bader]: Okay. Yeah. Sounds good.
[MCM00001302_SPEAKER_02]: Okay. I'll do that.
[Christopher Bader]: Yeah. So let's not go through line by line, but let's sort of put our changes up.
[SxgiOOMwDHY_SPEAKER_22]: Chris, Chris, can we table this for next week? So we can all sit and digest it, make sure everyone, because it's a lot and I love it. It's just a great idea.
[Christopher Bader]: I just have a couple of general comments. I'd like to see more emphasis on what you can do rather than what you can't do. It's just it's a question of emphasis, really, because we want we want. What we don't want to happen is developers to read this and just roll their eyes. We want to emphasize that we want to work with them and help them come up with solutions that will enable them to, well, basically like Seven Hillside. I think Seven Hillside should be a model. Chrissy and Joe, you guys weren't part of that, but I think there was, I was very proud of the work That we did with 7 Hillside working with a developer to come up with historically appropriate substantial changes.
[SxgiOOMwDHY_SPEAKER_22]: Is that is that right? Chris, can you just talk about that for a 2nd? So they came to with what a tear down or a change and they came to us.
[Christopher Bader]: Well, Fred, maybe you can tell us what what the. Fred took the lead on this, by the way.
[MCM00001302_SPEAKER_02]: Well, you know. I have mixed feelings about that, Chris, of what they actually did out there, but that's OK. But basically, Chris Donovan, they took a single family house that had been converted and chopped up into apartments over the years. But it originally started out as a single family house, and they converted it to condos. And so as part of the condo conversion, You know, they added dormers, they remove windows, they move windows around, they enclose the porch, they put in a driveway, for instance, for four cars to park in. And we went through step by step. They had an architect on board who came to every meeting and had drawings and things.
[SxgiOOMwDHY_SPEAKER_22]: Fred Fred, this is the building as you go up hillside across directly across from the library directly across from the library.
[MCM00001302_SPEAKER_02]: It's right on right behind the CVS. You can see it from the CVS.
[SxgiOOMwDHY_SPEAKER_22]: So they did a massive dig out front. They did something to transform their rock walls and things out front in the last year. Is that what we're talking about?
[MCM00001302_SPEAKER_02]: Yes, that's that house. Yeah. And so that's that's in the hillside district. And so we decided to put that parking space in because otherwise they were just proposing to park cars up like on the front lawn, right in the front of this house. So in order to compromise it, we suggested, hey, you know, let's carve out a space and put the things behind, you know, down low at street level and not up there on the top. So that was something we worked out with them. I think it was. I think it was. Nino was quite upset about the stonework over there. So, you know, that that's part of the deal, the give and take of these things. But. We went through probably three or four iterations and meetings and they, they came before us. I'm not sure about everything there, but that's, you know, that's part of the give and take of this game we play.
[SxgiOOMwDHY_SPEAKER_22]: But one of the big takeaways is that you actually were working with a developer or a contractor to find some mitigation to solve some problems.
[MCM00001302_SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, that we could actually have our say and just direct things in the way they're going, which I think is what Chris is hoping to come out of this. And I'd be curious, Chris, as to how you You know, just sort of manipulate the language a little to emphasize.
[Christopher Bader]: So I'll give it a shot, but that would be my that would be part of my goal is is just making, you know, accentuate the positive.
[MCM00001302_SPEAKER_02]: I would say all the other district guidelines is a lot of it is intimidating when you get in front of a lot of these. And I was trying to remove that intimidation as well by keeping it broad and all that. So I tried to. Do that, and I'd be curious to to see how we can make it even more sort of accessible, I guess.
[SxgiOOMwDHY_SPEAKER_22]: Well, I wonder, Kristen, Fred and Joe, it's strange with Tim here, just People are trying to do alternative energies. People are trying to do heat savings. So modernizing is part of what any homeowner is going to do. So maybe the idea of modernizing in a historical district is ways to do that. And people are doing that. And we encourage that. It's not something we're saying don't touch anything. So maybe it's that kind of energy efficiency kind of window to get people to see it as
[Christopher Bader]: limiting way of accentuating the positive. Yeah.
[MCM00001302_SPEAKER_02]: Yeah. And I think that specifically window replacement can be a very sort of tender when people come in with us and we gently try to guide them away from vinyl replacement windows and things like that. But that can rub people the wrong way. And you're making me replace all my windows. with something I don't want. And that's, I tried to weave it very carefully in this window and door section, for instance, on what we allow replacement sash, we wanna upgrade windows, we wanna improve efficiency, but you can just trash a house by just modernizing it with vinyl siding and replacement windows. And it looks nothing like any sort of historic house ever was. So we have to be careful about that.
[Christopher Bader]: Yeah. The other thing I wondered about, Fred, was penthouses. What are penthouses?
[MCM00001302_SPEAKER_02]: Well, that's specifically part of the Somerville. You know, people come with, they're in a three-decker, a triple-decker, and they want to put a roof deck on, they want to put a four-story on, they want to blow out a flat roof and put a penthouse up on the roof. So it's really, Maybe not so much penthouses, but roofing additions. We've got a lot of people come in front of us putting dormers on and wanting to put second stories or third stories on. So that's what that section is trying to direct and say, we want to preserve the integrity of the existing original house. You can put an addition on, you can put a dormer on, but we're asking you to respect the integrity of the original historic envelope of the house. Yeah, yeah. And the same for signs. We don't deal a lot with signs here, but I'm also writing this with the idea of if this would carry through, if Medford Square becomes a historic district, we sort of have to be able to cover those sorts of things with a broad brush with these guidelines.
[Christopher Bader]: Right, I agree. I agree, absolutely.
[Adam Hurtubise]: Okay. Just one, I'm sorry, one quick thing. I run into a lot from customers that I'm working for, you know, as a carpenter and, you know, historian and whatnot. It's like the bringing in some of the modern materials that are, you know, that look authentic, but, you know, PVC, you know, they're more, you know, they're like, instead of replacing trim boards with pine and, you know, if like a PVC trim board would be accepted, like me, like kind of what Chris was saying about like, Windows and in modern features like that. I think we should also talk about like You know PVC trim boards, you know replacement if that's acceptable like Vinyl like vinyl railing systems, but not ones that are you know ones that are authentic looking because there are companies that make You know railing systems that look you know more historically authentic. Maybe that's something we could talk about as well.
[MCM00001302_SPEAKER_02]: Well, I agree, Joe. And in this, I tried to anticipate that and say materials are approved if they have the look and feel of historic materials. And we've approved a lot of ASAC and synthetic. So we don't want necessarily vinyl siding, but somebody comes with us. No, no, no, no. We don't have to deal with that. We'll have to look at that. So I agree with you, and I think we can, and you guys can read this in more particularities, but it is saying, okay, you can put, you know, synthetic trim on as long as it looks like historic wood trim and paint it, whatever, you know?
[Adam Hurtubise]: Yeah. Sure. No, I think that's. You know, I'm sorry, one other thing too is, I think, you know, from a lot of like, like citing the, you know, if the house is on a property, maybe, you know, some of these older homes, when they were put on the property where, you know, it got divided afterwards and it kind of doesn't make sense where like the property is now, like you have a really cut up lot where, you know, there's nothing much left, you know, like possibly if the house had, you know, could be moved on the property, you know, something like that, that we would be open to it or, you know, maybe that's something we could discuss as well. A few houses have been available for sale recently that, you know, when I was thinking of purchasing them, I was, you know, wondering if, if that would be something that would be considered, maybe that's something we could discuss as well.
[MCM00001302_SPEAKER_02]: Yeah. Yeah. And, and Joe, I, I, again, I tried to do that as some of the people are aware of that. And this item C in this is. We acknowledge that. Things have changed over the course of time. It's really does acknowledge that this house is not sitting out in the field. Like it did in 1850 when it was built. And acknowledging that. added onto a building in 1960 may now well be historic because it was done by a famous architect or a famous writer lived in the house and wrote poetry that's known around the world or whatever. So this language in the Somerville in particular ones did sort of acknowledge that and say, it's not a marker in time from 1850. It's a history from the day it was built until The day you come in front of us in front of this commission. So I think we've tried to anticipate that here in these, in these guidelines.
[Christopher Bader]: Yeah.
[MCM00001302_SPEAKER_02]: Okay.
[Christopher Bader]: Yeah. Yeah, I would, I think that's absolutely right. I mean, basically what we want to emphasize in a general way is that our reserving it, we're not trying to turn Medford or a local historic district into a museum. Right. We're, we're, we're, you know, or a theme park. We're trying to create organic change that fits in with the character, the historic character of the neighborhood.
[SxgiOOMwDHY_SPEAKER_22]: I like what Joe is saying. Joe is trying to save the whole house, not just a couple of pieces of trim. Joe's saving the whole house. Yes. Pick it up and move it. It's even shocking when you look back at history, how many houses they picked up and moved. It's really, they did it pretty. Is that right, Chris? Interesting. So that's the guidelines. That was great, Fred. So that's a great starting point. If we put it in a Google Drive, it becomes a little more liquid that we can maybe add to it. But I don't think anyone should add to it without talking to Fred. But it does give you a chance to kind of look and play around with it on the Google Drive.
[MCM00001302_SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, just feel free to edit it. I'm hoping in Google Docs it will just track any changes any of us make and we can, you know, at the end you just say accept all changes or whatever and off we go, so.
[Christopher Bader]: Yep, yep, okay. All right, so Chris Kelly offered to meet with us the week of February 20th just for a walk around in South Street. Does that work for people? Are there days that are good? Can you guys send me days that work or don't work on the week of February 20th? And we can try and get something that works for everybody.
[SxgiOOMwDHY_SPEAKER_22]: Joe, are you available late afternoons? Joe, do you have availability in the afternoons, Joe?
[Adam Hurtubise]: Yeah, late afternoons. You know, late afternoons and Sundays work out well for me. Saturdays wouldn't work with a basketball.
[SxgiOOMwDHY_SPEAKER_22]: Chris Bader, Sunday, is there a possibility for Chris Kelly on Sunday morning?
[Christopher Bader]: I would have to check with him. He didn't offer to do any. He offered weekdays only.
[SxgiOOMwDHY_SPEAKER_22]: Weekdays only. And Fred, late afternoon. Sorry, we didn't hear you, Joe.
[Adam Hurtubise]: My speaker went weird. Yeah, I can do late afternoon. It's like, what's late afternoon for you people? Like five, is that, or are we into the, is that too late?
[Christopher Bader]: Okay. He wanted to come in midday. I don't know if that works for anybody.
[SxgiOOMwDHY_SPEAKER_22]: Yeah, I can be there midday, but I wanted to give other people an opportunity if it can push it back a little bit. Joe, two o'clock or so, is that possible, Joe, at all for you? Wednesday, Thursday, Friday?
[Adam Hurtubise]: Yeah, two o'clock I can do. Yeah, I can do two o'clock. And what about you, Frank?
[MCM00001302_SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, I mean, I'd have to leave work early or whatever, but I can do that if even enough heads notice to meet at two and walk around for a couple hours. Three o'clock is better than two o'clock for me. You tell me who works. Right now I don't think I have anything planned for that week. So it's fairly open right now.
[SxgiOOMwDHY_SPEAKER_22]: So Chris Bate, if we can get him later after two, after three latest, he can kind of go without losing the sun, but I think it would be a great day to get South Street kind of figured out by the time we finish.
[Christopher Bader]: I think you're absolutely right. Okay. I'll see what we can do. Okay. So do we have anything else we need to discuss?
[SxgiOOMwDHY_SPEAKER_22]: So Sharon and I talked a little bit about the South Street district and the people that were in it, there were 18 different properties. We made a little list of who is in there. We're going to reach out to some of them. Some of them we already have, but we'd like to present by the next meeting that we've really kind of done our due diligence of reaching out to most of the people. But if we want the official notice, we can do that too. But Sharon and I are going to go do a little door knocking and just let people know what's going on. These guidelines are great. I did make a little trifold brochure thing, but I'd like it to be approved. And Sharon and I are probably just going to use our networking skills first. But next meeting, to create a little bingo card, Tim is ready to speak. We're happy to present something formally to every address and put it on their doorstep. Tim, are you looking to speak, Chris Bader?
[Christopher Bader]: Well, just if you're going to do like a trifold, just run it by the
[SxgiOOMwDHY_SPEAKER_22]: I just wanted to show you the idea. I just grabbed some stuff from some other districts and used it, but it came out kind of cute. Chris, I think Tim was looking to speak.
[SPEAKER_02]: Oh, no, thank you. I just sent a little message in chat. I didn't want to interrupt, but thank you. It's great to meet everyone.
[Christopher Bader]: And I'll definitely look forward to working with you.
[SPEAKER_02]: Sounds good. Me too. Thank you. Bye bye.
[Christopher Bader]: OK, so. Right. So that's great, Chris. And yeah, let's talk about it at our next meeting.
[SxgiOOMwDHY_SPEAKER_22]: And when is that? When was that Chris Bader?
[Christopher Bader]: That'll be our regular March meeting. It looks like March 9th. I think that's right. Oh yeah, it has to be because February has 28 days, right? So it's March 9th.
[MCM00001302_SPEAKER_02]: One, two, three, four weeks from, Four weeks from today.
[SxgiOOMwDHY_SPEAKER_22]: Yeah. And Chris, baby, I'm thinking of talking to Chris Skelly about the February late February, maybe Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, two or three o'clock for a. Sometime in the week of February 20th.
[Christopher Bader]: He indicated he was pretty open for the week of February 20th. So, yeah, that's the week I'd like to shoot for if that works for everybody else. That's great.
[SxgiOOMwDHY_SPEAKER_22]: Like to make a motion to adjourn.
[Christopher Bader]: OK, second. Second, second. OK, all in favor of adjourning. Joe?
[Unidentified]: Aye.
[Christopher Bader]: Yes. Okay, Fred? Yes. I vote yes. So I'll see you all in March. And we'll, Chris and Fred, when you guys, when the Google Docs thing is up, why don't you let Joe and me and Melanie and Charlotte.
[SxgiOOMwDHY_SPEAKER_22]: I'll do that next. I'll do that next day at you.
[Christopher Bader]: Thank you. I will send Charlotte some flowers from the commission tomorrow. All right. Thank you. With a get well card. Excellent. All right. Bye. OK. Talk to you guys soon. Thank you. Thanks, Dennis. We'll see you in March. All right. Talk to you later. Right. Bye-bye now.