Uh it being five oh six PM on uh today Monday.

September fifteenth September fifteenth, two thousand twenty-five.

Um please note that this is a uh public hearing with the planning board for the town of Bourne.

This meeting is being recorded for live broadcast and televised replay by Bourne TV.

If anyone is audio or visual recording, please acknowledge at this time.

Thank you, Owen.

The meeting ID is eight four nine, five three two six, four seven four nine, passcode two seven four, zero one five.

And you can dial by location at nine two nine, two zero five, six zero nine nine.

All items within the agenda are subject to deliberation and votes.

We will call to order the open session.

The sole agenda item for this evening is the public hearing on the proposed zoning bylaw amendments for the special town meeting to be held on October twentieth, twenty twenty-five.

The proposed amendment is to add a multifamily overlay district.

Um and I'll just walk over there and I'll load it to other people and actually.

Yeah, I think that's helpful.

I have time for the presentation quite a bit at a lot of the different planning board meetings and the selected actually planning board meetings and the housing trust and the housing partnership.

But just a quick summary of this.

It's the in January of 2021, the Massachusetts legislature adopted an economic development bond bill that made changes to the zoning act.

So the new law is chapter 40A of Mass General Law and its Section 3A.

And it requires MBTA communities.

Sorry.

It requires MBTA communities to have at least one zoning district of reasonable size in which multifamily housing is permitted as of right.

The MBTA communities law creates zoning that encourages the new missing middle housing in areas served by public transit.

Housing created under this law provides opportunities for people to live, work, and thrive in walkable neighborhoods closer to transit.

Bourne is one of 177 communities that are required under the MBT zoning law to create zoning for multifamily housing.

And the planning board obviously has selected the downtown district of Buzzards Bay in order to be compliant with the MBTA Communities Act.

So there's a multifamily overlay district, and we have a multifamily overlay map as well.

So it's just one uh proposed zoning bylaw, which I have up on the screen that I'm sharing with everybody.

And it's amendment for review and consideration at the October 20th special town meeting.

And go through this.

This uh adds a new section to 110 types of districts.

So it's a multifamily overlay district.

The purpose of it.

Um I did add town council's comments to that first paragraph.

You can see the multifamily overlay district is to allow multifamily housing as of right in accordance with section 3A of the Zoning Act, Massachusetts General Law Chapter 40A.

The district is to create a higher density of multifamily housing in the downtown near public transit to promote an environment that's desirable place to live, work, and socialize.

All regulations of the underlying district shall apply, except to the extent that any such requirement is specifically modified or supplemented by the MFOD.

The summary of the zoning article is that it addresses the need to create the missing middle housing options for people with incomes too high for income restricted house affordable housing, but too low for single family homes.

It creates a multifamily overlay district with two areas, area one and area two.

And it would allow for multifamily housing.

And the parking requirements for the multifamily dwelling is reduced from 1.5 spaces per home to one space per home.

And the base residential density is increased to meet the minimum requirements of 15 units per acre.

So the next page I'll go to is section uh what we did because the multifamily overlay district MFOD is within the downtown district of Buzzards Bay.

Uh we created a new section 2821A, which is um is comes after the use table and it allows for a new use for apartment buildings and workforce housing to be permitted by right.

It also adds in functional standards.

And then uh this is section 2821.

It actually it amends the two family dwellings to allow them to be permitted by right uh before it required a special permit and base residential density.

And then section 2835 changes the amount of um parking spaces from 1.5 spaces to one space, and then we would insert the uh the M FOD map at the end of the section.

Oh, at the end of this.

Right?

In the in the warrant.

Um in the zoning bylaw.

Oh, okay.

Okay.

Right, we're saying insert a new map.

Okay.

Like how we will it be available though at the meeting too.

It'll be yes.

Um it will be an appendix to the warrant.

It'll be like an additional handout.

Yeah, I think I can mention that in a park.