I am the author of this petition. I think you have misinterpreted it as you said you may have.

>It seems to mandate a lot of open space on lots. The 10-15 foot front yard would basically outlaw 3-deckers built close to the street like these

That distance is from the street line. It's mostly occupied by sidewalks. The table of allowed dimensions had equations for determining setbacks, but then there were footnotes that set a hard minimums. I removed the equations and moved the hard minimums to the table.

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>Is the minimum side yard on each side of the building? Even 7.5-feet on each side of the building would mean leaving 15-feet between buildings which is probably around a good bit more space than exists between 3-deckers in Cambridge

Each side, for a total of 15 feet between buildings. It seems like a lot, but it really isn't, especially once you start to consider things like safety, emergency egress, fire fighting. Either way, it's less restrictive than the current zoning. It's also the sideyard set back that the AHO uses. Additionally, depending on the zone, there are existing provisions in the zoning text that allow buildings to share what would otherwise be exterior walls if they have no windows. Zoning is complicated.

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>The minimum lot width is either 50 or 65 feet. That seems quite a bit wider than most lots with 3-deckers on them. Looking at the lots on Fayette St, they're around 40-45 feet wide. So I'd have to buy multiple lots in order to hit the minimum lot width of 50 or 65 feet

It's plenty of space for a double wide triple-decker like the one in which I live

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>Do driveways count as side-yards?

Yes

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>There's a 30% minimum private open space to lot area ratio in the petition. Do driveways count as open space? Is that 30% per unit or 30% total? Do shared yards count as "private open space" or does it have to be deeded to a unit? Do the front steps count as open space?

30% is a decrease in many residential zones. I didn't increase open space requirements in any zone. Shared yards do count. I believe front steps also count, but don't quote me on that.

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>Again, maybe I'm misinterpreting this, but it looks like a petition to severely restrict building compared to what already exists.

This is factually incorrect

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>Back when the petitioner was running for city council, they proposed eliminating minimum lot sizes so I'm a bit surprised that they're keeping minimum lot sizes in this petition

I did propose that, with a number of other things. There are unfortunate legal reasons why the lot area per dueling unit has to stay at or above 1200sqft. If you take a look at my reasonings PDF, you can see the full explanation. I was able to mostly get around that problem by adding a footnote that nearly sets it to zero for residential buildings.

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>At the time, they said they were "generally not" in support of the 100% Affordable Housing Overlay.

This is unfortunately true. I had misguided reasons for speaking against it, but I changed my mind in or just after December of 2020, then publicly spoke in support when it was reintroduced. It helped that the city made the main change that I wanted to see that was causing me to reserve support, which was increasing the minimum open space in residential neighborhoods to 30%.

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>They also seemed skeptical that Cambridge should be building more housing.

This is factually incorrect

Zoning is very very complicated. I tried to simply it, but the more I read the more I saw why I couldn't. You make one change here, and it cascades into a bunch of other changes. Before you know it, you've made an even bigger mess than what was already there.

Here's my website. It contains the summary, a FAQ, and links to PDFs of the full petition text and my reasonings behind each amendment.

https://franklin.cx/petition/

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Edit: I actually earned a badge of honor by having the CCC send out a notice saying to not support my petition