 Hello, ready. Hi, Dave. All right, you're recording and Mandy, I've made you host. Thank you so much, Athena. Okay. And Lindsay, are you ready? Yes. Excellent. Okay. So it is 204 p.m. and seeing a quorum of the community resources committee present. I am calling this meeting to order. Pursuant to governor Baker's March 12, 2020 order, suspending certain provisions of the open meeting law, MGL chapter 30a section 18, this meeting of the community. Resources committee is being conducted. By a remote participation. At this time, I'm going to call on a number of people, not just committee members to make sure we can hear you and you can hear us. So when I call your name. Just stay present to confirm that you are here. are Steve Schreiber. Here. Evan Ross. Here. Shalini Balmilne. I'm here. And Mandy Johanicki is here. And Sarah Swartz is not present yet. I confused Shalini by not starting with her. She was so ready. And then I want to welcome. We have a number of chairs of various committees here that we have invited to talk about housing today. And so we're going to now call on them in no particular order. It is how they are on my screen. We're going to start with the ZBA chair, Steve Judge. Present. And the housing trust chair, John Hornick. Present. The CPA chair, Sarah Marshall. Present. Planning board chair, Jack Jemsak. Here. And ECAC, or Energy and Climate Action Committee chair, Laura Drucker. Here, thanks. Thank you. And Dave Zomek, you can hear us too. He holds his thumb up. So as I said, we have a number of chairs of various committees here. I want to thank all of those chairs for showing up. We are we invited the chair of the CDBG committee too. Gail Lansky, she works till 3.30, so she cannot join us today. So I will be contacting her, and we will be talking later this week to talk about what we're going to talk about today. With that, we are going to move straight to item 3A, which is presentation discussion items, comprehensive housing policy. The reason we are all here today. And it is the first thing we're going to do, and we hope to spend about an hour on this. If we finish it early, we finish it early. If we don't, we'll re-gage at 3 o'clock, or so, whether we should continue or move on to the other half of the plan. But we're going to start with feedback. So the history of this is the housing trust worked quite hard and came up with a draft affordable housing priorities policy that it presented to a number of committees, including the town council a while ago. And after that, CRC, this committee and the finance committee provided feedback to the council on that draft affordable housing priorities policy. And at that time, the council actually voted to use that feedback and the priorities policy draft and numbers of other documents and asked CRC to actually create a comprehensive housing policy that deals with all of housing, not just the affordable housing that the housing trusts work focused on. And so we've been working on that for about almost a year now, probably. And the draft that we were talking about today is the work from that referral. And it's been based on that draft affordable housing priorities policy as well as our master plan, the housing market studies, the housing production plan, and a couple of other documents. And from that, we've got what CRC thought was a decent enough draft of goals, objectives, introduction and moving forward to start getting feedback from the town, residents, counselors, and committees. And what we wanted to do was talk to the chairs of the committees we thought would have the most interest in this policy from the fact that this policy will hopefully guide decisions that each of your committees is making, as the council is the chief policy setting body of the town. And so we wanted feedback specifically from all of these committees. And the CRC committee has a whole thought that the best start of that feedback would to bring everyone to bring the chairs together to talk about how we want it, but also what you guys think about how we should get that feedback and how that works and timing and all of that. Because we didn't want to just send an email to all you say with a document that says, here's this. Give us feedback from your committee. We didn't think that might be helpful to you or to us. So we're hoping we can have a conversation today around how best to get feedback from your committees, what method, what that might look like, the timing of that, and all of that. But that's a little bit about the history of it. Does anyone from CRC want to add to that before we just dig right into the discussion on this? And I'm not seeing any raised hands. We all try to use the raise hand button since we have such a big committee. And not seeing that, I'll just start then. I brainstormed with a couple of questions that we could start with. And I know John has provided some heads up on some things he would like to talk about. So first, I want to talk about, I guess, or the things I have is, what do you guys need from us as CRC in order to best provide the feedback you're capable of providing as a committee or even as individuals? Was the document we provided good enough? What would you want to hear from us as a committee? Do you need more documents? Do you need more of a history and a memo and things like that to make our request to you for feedback valuable to you so that you know how to respond and all? So that's one of the first things I think we could talk about, although I'm happy for this conversation to meander around all sorts of things, depending on where people think their time is most valuable spent today. So John. OK, I'll respond to the question that you just asked. And I want to say that it will be difficult for me to ask the Housing Trust at this point in time to do a full review and provide feedback on the document that you have distributed. However, I do have an alternative, which I think, which I hope you will recognize as a valuable opportunity. For various reasons, Tom Kegelman has just resigned his position as a member of the Housing Trust. However, he was probably the most important person in the development of our affordable housing policy. Beyond that, he is a developer, a not-for-profit developer. He is the Executive Director of Home City Housing that is based in Springfield, and much of his career has been devoted to affordable housing. So I think you need somebody with that kind of background and experience to get into the detail and to help you move forward. Because I think you really do have an excellent start. I frankly appreciated the longer version of the document, which I understand is still drafty from your point of view. But my immediate reaction was that you need someone like Tom really to participate on an ongoing basis to improve that document and to give it, in a sense, the strength of someone who really knows about affordable housing and housing development. So that's my recommendation. I think having one person who you allow to be essentially a non-voting member of the CRC when it comes to discussing the comprehensive housing policy would be something that I strongly recommend. I think it's the best way, frankly, of getting feedback from the Housing Trust. Thank you for that. Have you finished? Sorry. That's my recommendation. As you said, I have other things to say. But since you introduced the question of how the CRC can best get ideas and feedback from each of us, that's my recommendation. Tom, frankly, would be better than me or is better than me because he has much more knowledge and experience than I have. Thank you. Sarah, so you need to unmute Sarah. Thanks for inviting me to this. So on behalf of CPA, I have two thoughts right now. And one is, what is your time frame? Because we've just wrapped up the major business of our committee, I can call the meeting at any time. And may in fact do so in January for some specific items we had put off until we had more time. So I guess I want to know, what is your time frame for getting our feedback? Second of all, am I right in thinking that you want kind of a formal document or email, whatever it is, from the committee as a whole, that we all deliberate about this or is just comments of individual members of CPA committee helpful or they can just send them to me and I forward them. And then thirdly, I'm curious, and I think this touches on a discussion Evan and I had a few months ago. I'm curious about whether you see this policy, whatever it turns out to be, as setting CPA's housing, affordable housing priorities, our direction, obviously the need is so great we could spend all of our money for the foreseeable future on affordable housing projects, at least once we've met the 10% thresholds. But of course, there are lots of private efforts that we have found very worthy. So we react to the proposals that are sent to us. So yeah, I'm wondering how you see this as directing or just informing our deliberations around the variety, the great variety of housing proposals we get. Thank you for that. So I will answer one question, but I'm actually going to throw a bunch of those questions back to the chairs themselves. One of the things that we're here for is to discuss that time frame. Because as a CRC committee, as I said, we've been working on this for a while and we're only about halfway done, if that. Because we haven't even been able to talk about the strategy section. And so time frame's a big one. I think this committee would like to see it get referred or recommended back to the Council for adoption by the end of this, I guess it's not this year, by the end of 2021, not in two weeks. But by the end of 2021, earlier, better, six months and all. But we don't want to, we recognize every committee has its own ebb and flow of a year. CPA is almost done. But I think CDBG is just starting up and ramping up. And then you've got Planning Board and ZBA that really do sometimes get a lot and pound it and then maybe not have a lot. So that's one thing I'd like to actually throw back to the committee. Chairs is how much time do they possibly have to provide this feedback if it's in a meeting? In terms of formality and all, that's another thing that we wanted to, I'm not sure CRC has decided how. And I think that's something we wanted to talk about and in terms of what do we, what do you as chairs think would be the best way to give feedback to us? The easiest way to give feedback to us, we're not looking to burden any committee with extensive requirements or anything. If the group of chairs believes that the easiest thing to do is to send it out with a memo from CRC to all of its committee members for a response back to us. And if they think that would be the easiest and most valuable way for us to get the feedback, that might be what we decide. If you would rather each handle it differently, John proposed that maybe we use, instead of the whole housing trust because they have a lot on their plate, we try and seek Tom Kegelman's input sort of in the housing trust stead, each committee could potentially decide to do this differently depending on where they think their time is used most valuably for this. And then to get to your last one, I see your hands, Sarah, but let me try to answer the last one, which is in terms of does this set the policy of the CPA? That is something in a new form of government. I'm not sure we could fully answer and we're still trying to figure out that the charter does give the council the policy as the chief policy setter for the town. We have adopted from Laura's committee, climate action goals, goals, plan, goals, we're goals. We're not at the plan yet, but they're gonna bring a plan to us. And those are something that we've then forwarded onto the manager. So I think that question can't fully be answered, but I think the goal would be that this policy when adopted by the council would not only guide the council's actions, but because we're the policy setter for the town may help guide the actions of the other committees. Hence, we wanna talk to the other committees because this might directly affect your work. That being said, that's just me speaking as CRC chair and a former charter commissioner, not the council as a whole. We don't even know what the council hasn't really talked about it is what I can say, but I think we're looking for guidance documents. This will eventually have strategies and measurables on it. So hopefully it would be used by everyone to guide their decisions. That doesn't mean it would dictate the decisions though, I don't think. So Sarah, and then I see John's hand again. I know Sarah, you were raising your hands. So I wanna go back to you and Steve judge. So we'll hear from Sarah and then we'll go to Steve and then John. Okay, thank you. So the feedback that you want in some form from the committee by some method committees, is that on the whole policy or just on this measurable section that is the focus for today? Because any of us as just residents of Amherst might have opinions about all kinds of aspects of this draft, but as CPA members, if our focus would be much, much narrower and we'll need to know what to tell folks, what the level of review expected is. So, all right, and now- So we would be looking at getting the feedback in the position of CPA member or housing trust member or planning board member, as opposed to potentially random resident and their thoughts on housing. Beyond that, that could be done through a committee discussion or it could be done individually. Steve. First, thanks for seeking input from the ZBA. I appreciate it. And it's something we're all interested in. I'm particularly interested in the town's housing policy. I'd just make a couple of points. Number one, like other committees, we pretty much finished up our work for the year. Last Thursday, we decided we weren't probably gonna meet again until late January. Now, we can meet in the interagnum if we need to. We can call a meeting, but we probably don't have anything from the board members' plans. They don't anticipate any kind of work in the first part of January. And then I think we have a pretty full schedule coming up in January and February. But so I think the way to get the best response from the ZBA members is to recognize that for the most part, it's a pretty new committee. Keith and myself are the only people that have been there for very much time on the committee. And most people haven't been involved with the town government. And so I think would be helpful for us would be to have some kind of a memo outlining the process you're using, how our comments would fit into that process and inform the work of the council and the CRC. And then have either Dave or somebody work with Chris and Rob and Maureen and have a meeting at which we could discuss this openly as a group after having a chance to review the documents that you asked us to comment on. And I think that would be really helpful. Probably the best way to do this is to give some education, allow members to have a chance to look at this and then have an active administrative meeting which would be open to the public, but it would be a way for the ZBA members to discuss this. And then I think that probably the best way to give feedback to you would be for the ZBA to empower me to transmit through whatever message I thought was best, transmit our goals and views back to you for your information. That would probably be helpful for us. Thank you for that. John. I just had two comments. One is when you said a deadline, I think it would be good to complete the work before the next elections for town council because it would be too bad if you completed the work and then presented it to a new council rather than the existing council because it would cause honestly, probably some kind of chaos in the sense that the new council would say, well, we didn't do this. And it's something that has to start over again almost. So I would encourage you to finish, if not in six months, then in eight or nine months so that it's not an issue with the new council. The other thing I wanna say is when I suggested or recommended that you contact Tom Kegelman and ask him to be a part of your ongoing process, I did not mean to say that I would not share draft with the housing trust members and ask them to provide feedback, which I could organize. But I do think the most important thing is that you have someone with that point of view as part of your ongoing process. And I think Tom is your best bet. Thank you for that clarification, John. I'm sorry, I misunderstood. Well, I wasn't clear. What that recommendation was. I wanna pull, I see Jack's hand. So Jack, and then I actually wanna pull the chairs on, the question Sarah asked, which was what parts are we looking for feedback on? So Jack and then Laura, and then I'm gonna ask my question. Yeah, I just agree with a lot what Steve said with regard to, we have plenty of planning board members that will have different opinions and kind of pulling all those together. We could do it as a group and have one list or have people directly report to CRC. It's an interesting thing. Peripherally we haven't really tried to tackle the housing policy per se, just I think we have general support for what the housing trust is doing and recognize the, I call it a housing crisis. And it's not only Amherst, it's Western Mass and the whole state basically. So I think we need to bear, keep that in mind. And on top of that, Amherst has all these outlier situations that make us even more unusual and more of a challenge, I think to make something work given all the higher education facilities here and the student needs and that. But I'm all, I'm open to whatever the CRC would like for us. You know, I'm not suggesting anything right now but you let us know what you think will be best. You've got a lot of cats in the audience right now. So. Thanks, Jack. Laura, you had your hand up at one point. Yeah, thanks, Manny Jo. Thanks for including ECAC in this discussion and for including some great thoughts on the sustainability of this policy, the sustainability pieces in this policy. You know, ECAC meets quite regularly. So collecting feedback probably won't be a problem. I think from a timing perspective, the challenges is that we are, as you alluded to, working on our climate action and resiliency plan which will have a section focused on buildings and will be finalized, I think, mid-year. So I think one of the coordination we might wanna think about is how to determine what's coming first and where I think what we don't wanna have is having language, inconsistent language, if we can avoid it. You know, maybe one's more specific than the other but kind of talking through which we would kind of, which would be the kind of the thing we're relating to most when we're talking about housing and sustainability is that the climate action planner is at this plan. And then the other, the one that it's not would be maybe more general. And so I think that that's something that I'm sure ECAC members would have opinions on it but it may be just a separate conversation as well to work through some of those ideas. So that's my main question, I guess, is just to, I agree with Steve, it'd be helpful to have that background information to share with the committee on how this was developed. I think the other point, piece that I would be interested in knowing and perhaps this is something you're planning on doing is what pieces, I think this is a really helpful policy at a high level, something we're thinking about with the climate action plan is, for each of our actions we're identifying who's the lead on that? Is it the town council? Is it the manager? Is it the state and federal government? Like where are we seeing the leading happening? And I think for this policy similarly, it'd be helpful to understand what groups are leading these actions and how these actions might take form. Thank you, that was great. So I wanna go back to, I think it's been hinted at by a number of people, but Sarah asked it sort of directly, which was what part are we asking for feedback on? And we originally sent out, I originally sent out at the committee's request, the sort of what I called the abbreviated portion of the policy, the introduction, the goals, the objectives and the moving forward section before you get into strategies and measurables. And that was done because we wanted to start getting feedback earlier instead of waiting for the whole thing to be at a position that the committee had been able to talk to, talk about. But then I heard, John asked me, where's the rest of the policy? I think I've heard it from a couple of others. And then obviously when I sent everyone the packet for today because everyone's welcome to stay for the second half of the meeting too when we're talking, starting the discussion, the first real discussion we'll ever have on the measurable section, everyone got to see the rest of it. And so I guess one thing that would be helpful to us as CRC was is would the committees wanna start with sort of a partial policy or would they want to see, do they wanna start with it in, I'm not sure how to word this but in that just those sections that CRC is comfortable with because it's had its time to go over them or would it rather start with something that might not be as finished and or would it rather wait to start giving its feedback until CRC is comfortable with the whole document which would I guess be more towards the end of a CRC process, but not the end because obviously we're still talking about it. But hearing from people, from the committee chairs when they got sent this partial policy and what the reaction to that was and how you think you could give feedback on that or whether you need the whole thing and if so when's the right time to start that feedback I think would be really helpful to us because it's something that CRC has struggled with. When do we start saying we really wanna distribute this out for feedback and when do we kind of hold back on that. Steve, you had your hand up. Yeah, so just to, you know, as part of the conversation everyone from the other committees here has a different lens on this particular subject based on the board that they're on like the ZBA and the planning board being the quasi-tugitial boards see projects that they think, you know, I'm sure that Steve and Jack have opinions about certain kinds of projects that come before them or that where they see glitches in the zoning by-law or whatever the various land use laws and have an idea of what could be tweaked in order to make certain kinds of projects more easier to accomplish. So we do hear from the planning board from Jack quite a bit, we hear less from the zoning board of appeals because they're less part of that process. But for me, that would be the really interesting part of this is to get the perspective of the, you know the boards that deal really deal with the front lines here on projects that seem sensible that cannot be approved or projects that seem not sensible that are approved and how we can then work together in addressing the housing issues. So the housing issues are both affordable housing but then also market rate housing. So we know we're talking about the whole spectrum of housing. So that's something that I would very much hope to get out of, you know our discussion with the chairs. Thank you, Steve. I'm gonna go to you, John. I know you don't have your hand up but I know you had an opinion on, you shared it with me early on you wanted to see the whole policy and you thought it would be really hard to at least I'm sure you will correct me. You had concerns about being able to give feedback on goals and objectives without actually seeing strategies and measurables. So could you talk a little bit more about that? Sure. Yeah, I mean to me just the kind of what I consider the highlights of policy are interesting but it really is hard to evaluate what you wanna do without the other material that I appreciate the fact that you added. I understand it's still draft, that's fine. I think from my point of view, drafts should be shared with us on an ongoing basis. I don't know whether that's maybe every month or every two months or every six weeks something in between so that to the extent we're able to we can give you feedback as you go along. I'm not comfortable with the idea that we give you some feedback now and then we give you some feedback before you think you finalized everything which is also one reason why I think it's important to have someone who really knows housing as part of your group. And I appreciate the fact that you have Steve Schreiber who I'm gonna say really knows zoning as part of your group since that's become a significant piece in what you intend to do. Something again that I appreciate. So there's lots of things in the extended draft that I think are very helpful and that are important and that I and probably others have comments on. So I think that's the biggest piece and there needs to be a way of providing not only comments now, but an ongoing basis. And as I said, you have Steve to look at Steve Schreiber to talk about what the consequences might be for zoning. And that's why I wanted you to add someone like Tom Cagle even as a non-voting member for housing. The other chairs may have people in mind who they think you might consider to add to your meetings on housing as a non-voting regular member. Thank you. We've got three hands up. So I'm just gonna take them in order. Laura? Yeah, I would agree that I think if you sent just the summary policy out for comment, you're probably gonna get a lot of comments that start to get to these other parts of the document that you've already thought about. So I think to the extent that even though it's draft and I'm assuming that because it's connected to this meeting it's already a public document as it is. Having the committee's comment now on this draft document or maybe a slightly updated version after your conversation today makes sense. I don't think ECAC would need to follow it super closely but I think we would also like the opportunity to review it again at the end. And then of course, as I mentioned before bring to you all drafts of our sections of our plan so that we can make sure that the language is aligned as much as possible. So I would vote for, yeah, like let's review. And I do think it'd be helpful to give us specific sections. I think for ECAC it's pretty clear what sections we need to review. That would also help. Thank you, Sarah. So the more I think about this, the more limited I think CPA's role is, although I'm happy to be corrected the policy addresses the desire to develop additional affordable and market rate housing, which is great. But the CPA statute lets us award funds or rather recommend that funds be awarded to other kinds of community housing projects as well like rental assistance or renovating or tending to the capital needs of some affordable housing that is already present and already owned by the town I would assume. So I don't see that we have a stake in what the policy says. I think our only need is to understand what it means for our decision-making process. Cause again, we don't have any special expertise in how to do this. We just review proposals in light of the Community Preservation Act law and practices. And so to me it's like, well, whatever the policy is that's what we take into account. But again, I think what I will be most concerned to understand is how we balance that policy against the other ways in which we can support or recommend that community housing be supported. Thank you. Steve. You know, I think that will be most helpful for the ZBA members to give you valuable feedback or worthwhile feedback would be to get to view the objectives and the measurables as soon as possible. I think the goals are something that we don't have a lot of expertise on. We're sort of where the rubber meets the road. And in many ways, I think Steve Schreiber is right. We're sort of an adjudicative body where we get the almost quasi-judicial. We get, here's what the zoning laws allow. We try to, by law allows, we try to balance off what we hear from the neighbors and from the applicant, et cetera, et cetera. We're kind of where the rubber meets the road. And I think your policy, your goals are great for the most part. I would add one or two things, but I think there's some value in the ZBA responding to that. But I think our expertise and the way we can help you the most would be when we get to the specific objectives and measurables. And I would like to have that available to the ZBA for comment to you sooner rather than later. And so I'm not sure if, because we just started the project last week where I asked them to take a look at the zoning law, zoning by law, because I know that's being looked at and see if there's any recommendations that we have for the planning board. And so we started this, trying to be involved in this process, but I want to use their time effectively and judiciously. And I think the place we can be most valuable is in the objectives and the measurables. So that's what, when you asked about what we'd like to see, I think that would be what we'd like to see. Let me clarify that before I go to John. So the goals and objectives are what you first saw. Are you talking about the objectives or are you talking about the strategies, the specific things that... I always had trouble between strategies and objectives my entire career. Because the goal would be to have a better language. It's not your fault, but that's across the board. So what I'm looking at is the second part, the second document that you sent, which are the... That has all... I guess the strategies and measurables were added to that. I just wanted to make sure I was understanding what you were saying and translating it properly. So... I guess many of us have that problem of not keeping that all straight, keeping that straight. Thank you. It's been tough for us too, so. Thank you. John. I have a couple of comments. Part of it is listening to Sarah. The housing trust says relied primarily on CPA funding. And quite honestly, I think that the CPA committee has been very generous in funding housing related projects. If you look back over the last three, four years, I mean, they're currently at a level that's close to half a million dollars a year when you include the money that goes to pay for bonding of past projects, as well as current money. So Community Preservation Act funds at this point are the largest source for doing the kinds of things that you wanna do. So it's also important to think about other sources that could come. For example, a real estate transfer fee is something that might help us out. A number of towns have, you remember what the right term is, have asked the legislature to allow them individually to do a real estate transfer fee. So far, the legislature has not acted on those or acted on a general transfer fee, although there is legislation to propose it. So that's one example of something that the town could do that would expand the available funds. And we need to think about other things. Housing trust members have asked, okay, where can we get more funds so that we're not just relying on CPA into the future? I think at the end of the day, there will be implications for what we want CPA to do and how we would spend the half a million dollars or so that they allocate each year. And so that's something I think that the CPA see what to have spend put on. I'm not sure agree with Sarah when she says, well, we just wait to see what proposals come in. I think they could have a role in encouraging more proposals of one kind or another. And that the overall housing plan that you're working on would provide some direction for that. Thank you, Sarah. Well, I would say my experience on CPA is just three years or at least three rounds so far. It's been less than three years, I think. And we have not in those three years certainly requested proposals that limit in any way what the CPA law allows funds to be awarded for. So to my knowledge, we haven't ever said we're really interested in housing proposals this year or we're really interested in buying up homes and convert. We have not given any specific guidance about, we haven't made decisions ahead of time about whether to focus or how to focus the recommendations. We do want to better publicize the CPA program and encourage just more applications generally. But we've not directed applicants to focus on certain kinds of projects. Also, I would say about the funding. I found myself hoping that there are ideas for other funding sources because I don't think CPA can keep this up. And nor might it want to given a large number of other kinds of projects, which have started to come our way and which the committee might wish to for a while maybe direct outsize grants to historic preservation or recreation and open space projects. So I don't think you're gonna get 50 units a year, new units affordable housing a year just out of CPA money. Thank you. I wanna give my committee, CRC members, a chance to comment, bring their thoughts given what they've heard. Are there any comments or thoughts on how we might continue this conversation and also continue to the feedback section before we're getting close to moving on to the measurables, but my second half of the plan for this meeting. But any thoughts from my fellow committee members on moving the feedback forward and progressing on it? Evan? Yeah, so first of all, thank you to all the chairs for coming today. This was actually really useful because I think that it has probably changed the way we were going to do feedback dramatically. And so I'm glad we're able to bring you all here today to hear your thoughts. Because it sounds like, I think I heard sort of unanimously across all chairs that you don't wanna get feedback to just the first two sections of the policy that it really makes sense to do the whole policy, even if it is still in a pretty rough draft form, which, you know, the strategies are in a pretty rough draft form still, because we really haven't gone through them. They're sort of like kitchen sink, like literally everything that people thought of good or bad, possible or impossible were sort of thrown in there. Although much of them did come from the housing production plan, the master plan, and the real estate market study. So I think that's useful. I think that what was interesting for me to hear is that also feedback might look very different from each committee and come at different times. So it sounds to me from what I heard Laura say, and correct me if I'm misrepresenting what you said, that the most useful feedback from ECAC might not actually come until they have a further draft of the climate action plan because that's when, because the most useful feedback from ECAC might be how similar and how consistent or at least making sure there's no contradictions or conflict between the two policies. And so ECAC might not, I don't know what the timeline is for the climate action plan, but it might not make sense for us to actually even ask for feedback from ECAC until they have a better sense of the building section on that. And then from CPAC Sarah said, you know, what are we looking for? And I think what I'm really interested in is if you looked at the draft, the longer draft document under the strategies for the final goal, which is a line and leverage municipal funds, there are a lot of things in there that I think would really influence the decision-making of CPAC, a lot of which came from the original housing policy that the trust sent us a year ago, things about adopting maximum, what was it, maximum per unit cost policies, things about giving precedence to preservation over new development. I mean, things that I think in theory would impact the decision-making of CPA if this was adopted. And I think hearing from CPA would be useful on that and hearing a little bit about what they see their role as in the implementation of this policy. Cause I think that Sarah brought up an interesting point that we had a lovely discussion about that I referenced in a prior CRC meeting without naming the CPAC member, but since she outed herself about what the role is between the council and CPAC and who determines CPAC priorities and that relationship. And I think that that's gonna be a really important thing that we as CRC and we as the council have never really taken on, nor has I think CPAC. And so, and that's I think this policy really highlights that relationship. And so I think hearing from CPAC about sort of what they see their role in this policy as far as implementation and what the relationship between the council is is really useful. And so for me, it sounds like our committee CRC needs to get the strategies very quickly to a place where we're comfortable sending them out. I think we're almost there. It's just we haven't actually even fully read them as a committee yet. So I think we have to at least have the committee have read them, but I'm actually fairly comfortable sending having had this conversation sending out something that is still a little bit rough, especially since as lower acknowledge it's already a public document. So it's already, it is already out there and getting feedback, but also letting the committees determine when they would best be prepared to give feedback and accepting that some committees might wanna do it in January and some committees might, it might not make sense to get it from them until March. So I guess my takeaways from this conversation, which has actually completely changed how I thought we would do this, but in a good way. Thank you, Evan, Shalini. Yeah, I just wanna also acknowledge all the work that everyone's put into it to get to this place. And I think I have a clarifying question which might help us move, which would also inform the process is there like a lot of suggestions taken from different places. For example, let's say the housing production plan and which makes sense that it feels like work has been done earlier, maybe affordable housing trust, all these different places and we're kind of putting it all in this housing, it in this one document. And my question was that when the housing production plan, for example, made those recommendations, were they based on, we don't know what the impact is gonna be on. Let's say making, allowing duplexes and this and that and I think they're all of these different strategies. And so at what point does the impact of that, when is that studied? Like we're providing these strategies that we're saying we should moving forward, study the impact of that or that's gonna happen later. Like what is the purpose of these strategies? Like they're supposed to guide who to do what. Is I'm like, I'm not still clear about the impact of these things. And then something that John brought up in as one of the questions was like, I think it's really important is also we might have ideas strategies, but what are the challenges in implementing them? And I mean, even like having spoken to people about incentivizing developers to build more affordable housing. And so even though we may have subsidies and incentives, it seems like the paperwork and all of that is so challenging that many people don't, they prefer not to go that route. So like really also including listening in when we're talking about feedback, talking to developers and maybe having, as John was saying, Tom on board or someone who can reflect that way. So hearing the challenges from the people who are gonna be implementing some of these like developers and talking, bringing them, getting their feedback might be important at some point. And yeah, that's all. Thank you, Shalini. Any other thoughts from our committee, from the CRC members? It is almost three o'clock and I know a number of people have to leave by three. Any other last things? Any of the chairs want to give us at CRC members on thoughts in terms of feedback or process on feedback and all, or even feedback. And then Evan did actually a fairly good job of summarizing the conversation. So I'm not going to re-summarize it. I will just say, I heard what Evan heard in sort of the summary and I do think we will be changing our strategy as a CRC when we come together again to discuss how to do it and get things done. But let's, last thoughts from chairs, Steve. Judge. Just a good place just to comment on the goals. Yeah. That's what we're doing. Okay. I think the goals are great. I really do. I think that they, I think they respond to the way Amherst would like, as a town would like to deal with housing. They've got real problems. We've got to deal with, and we've got to provide more production and we've got to figure out a way to have more affordable housing and subsidized housing in Amherst. I think the goals are good. But I think we didn't address one elephant in the room that needs to be addressed. And that's on the last goal, Align and Leverage Municipal Funding and other resources is portable housing. I think we have to affirmatively engage UMass as a, and see them as a partner and hopefully a provider of more housing. And I noticed under the housing plan or the master, I think it's your recent document, the master plan for the town that we have about 35% of the housing is group homes, group housing or congregate housing. And that's normally in most of Massachusetts, it's about 3.5%. So we haven't, when we know that that's a lot of students living in big old houses. And I think we really need to affirmatively as a town engage with the university to see if there's ways we can creatively incentivize them or work with them to create more housing on campus, whether it be through, I don't know if they do dormitory bonds anymore or if there's a way that they can work with private developers to do that because that is one of the big drivers. It's a huge driver of the problems that we're facing is the growth and UMass and that growth in time. So I think that's something that should be one of our goals. I don't have the answer, obviously, but I just know that that's something that we ought to, I think that's something I ought to think about. So that would be my personal response to the goals that are enumerated in your first draft. Thank you, Steve, Laura. Yeah, just quickly, because I have to run to a meeting back to my regular job here. Thank you for including us. I think what I'll tell ECAC tomorrow in our meeting is that we have this conversation and we should be looking for more details in a draft review sometime in the new year and look forward to talking more about that as needed. I would say that's accurate. And I do wanna thank you for taking the time out of your day to come. I know you gotta get to another meeting. So thank you for taking the time, Jack. Yeah, I just wanted to follow up. Steve felt like we had a lot of input and from boots on the ground sort of experience. And we do. And I can go through a few of those items, but with regard to the goals, and I know this is a comprehensive policy, but I'm wondering if making it too comprehensive defeats the purpose. As Steve said, the first two bullets are right on. And I'm wondering about the third and fourth create safe, secure, environmentally healthy housing. Doesn't current building code kind of dictate that they're gonna be safe homes? I mean, I don't know how you cannot build a safe home. You wouldn't be allowed by code. So I'm just wondering about rising that to a level of your energy to address that when it's already kind of gonna be addressed by virtue of how we do things this day and age. And then when we have a housing crisis and certainly have climate concerns, but I don't know, it really, it's nice to have climate stated everywhere, sustainability and all that, but this is about housing. And I just, it's like, so to me, I would reduce the goals somewhat. Just my opinion, this is not a planning board thing, but this is my opinion. And then just to speak to what Steve has mentioned, when we get a project, we have lots of zoning issues. First and foremost is parking, second is setbacks and height of buildings, massing, amenities and all that. So when we're talking about housing policy, we're also talking, we've got the zoning, bylaw reform rewrite that goes along with this. And now we're staring at a 40R proposal for downtown that we wanna take very seriously. And that comes with a lot of heavy lifting in terms of what's gonna fit, what's gonna be consistent with what the town wants. And then Steve mentioned UMass being the elephant room. I also kind of like, tax revenue is another elephant in the room. The town needs to is limited in terms of where we're getting them out. We don't have commercial industrial over 50% is non-taxable with regard to our open space and recreational areas and land owned by higher education. So we're in a pickle. And so those are just my gut reactions in no real order. But I'm very interested in terms of what you're gonna give us for our marching orders. And... Thank you for that, Jack. John. I wanna comment on what Steve Judge said, as well as on what Jack just said, couple of things related to that. One is I do believe that the university is the elephant in the room. And the housing trust has made efforts to encourage the university to develop more residential units on campus. They had a plan to do that but the plan has been stopped by the COVID pandemic and I'm not sure whether they'll resume it. I also would say that the size of the plan was not very ambitious given the need for students to have residential options on campus. So I think, again, agreeing with Steve, that's something important that somehow ought to be considered in your document. Another thing that came up is that Steve mentioned was financing or leveraging town money and so forth. I do think that's important. And I think that the report should include both rough financial estimates of each of the initiatives to the extent that you can do that and also rough estimates of where additional resources might come to pay for them. I think at the end of the day, when you add up the two, which is resources that we need to implement the various goals and resources that are available, it's gonna be clear that it's gonna be hard to do the former because we don't have enough of the latter. And therefore priorities do need to be set. So I think that it would be helpful to tackle that issue because those are questions that the finance committee will certainly be asking when this draft document is circulated to the entire town council. With respect to Jack's comment about sustainability, we're now in the process of writing an RFP for hopefully new affordable housing development on the property we're in the process of acquiring on Belcher Town Road and the old state school. We include in that requirements for sustainable construction so that the buildings use or are most efficient with respect to what they do. We don't go as far as requiring net zero development but we go as far honestly as the Department of Housing and Community Development goes in financing these kinds of developments which is not nothing. There are various requirements and they promote in their requests for proposals the use of sustainable approaches to housing. So I think it is important and there is an issue to wrestle with honestly about whether developments like this that use some town funds should be net zero or should be consistent with the current requirements of the Commonwealth Department of Community and Housing Development. If we wanted them to be net zero then there's a question of where the additional resources to make that happen would come from. Thank you, John. Steve, Shriver and then Shalini and then we're going to move on to the second half of the housing policy discussion which is the measurable brainstorming. So Steve. Yeah, so the university is an elephant but it's also maybe a cow and by that I mean both a sacred cow and a cash cow. In other words, so I'm actually looking all around me and there's houses around me that rent to students and those guaranteed sort of rentals are enabling family members to stay in houses that they wouldn't be able to stay in. And they also create cause diversity in certain neighborhoods where if it's a balance it's a really good thing. So I think equilibrium is probably what we're looking at. We want the elephant to be able to not to be on one leg but to be on all four legs. So I keep wondering what the last, the pandemic obviously has shocked everyone but in particular it's shocked the universities because of the fact that they've had to completely clear out. So all of the huge losses that the university's taking are all almost completely related to housing. So they're the biggest landlord in town and they're taking the biggest hit in town during this. So I'm sure that the people much higher up the food chain than me at the university will take that into consideration when they are thinking about building housing. But yeah, so for me, the critical issue is how do we balance the fact that so many of our neighbors and so many residents and heiress are part of the university community both use that income source but also that the fact that there's so many 18 to 22 year olds and up in town to add to the neighborhood vitality. How do we balance that with the problems are when you have monocultures of a particular type of our typical monocultures of a particular kind of demographic in certain areas. Yeah, so the sustainability part, every new thing that we build, every new building that we build should be taken as little resources from the planet as possible. So we now know that. So that we know that we know that there's ways to be carbon neutral or even carbon positive. So the city of Cambridge actually just passed a new ordinance is all about affordable housing. They address a lot of the issues that we're talking about particularly student housing. So it's specifically about affordable housing with a theory being that if you're dealing with just affordable housing, then you are also addressing the student issue because typically affordable housing is off limits to undergraduates who are seeking housing in communities but it also deals very much with the sustainability issue. And so we might think of Cambridge a very dense community as a place that already has addressed it by the need by the fact that it's already dense but the fact that they're also making this a priority I think is worth looking at. So I set that out to actually some people from district four because we had a district four meeting last night where with a very similar conversation but that might be something worth sharing with this entire group that's here today. Thank you, Steve. Thank you for listening. Shalini. I think what was coming up for me is that as we were talking about the next year idea in buildings and whether we make it more comprehensive I do agree with the example that John gave that when you have the RFP is like we need to have this as part of our goals because it's easy to then not think about or that's where we give away or give in when it's not right in front of us as a goal. And that being said, I think we could invite the different boards and committees to look at this document and see what are the challenges they're gonna see with respect to environment. For example, if we want to expect the new buildings to be net zero they can provide us the challenges we see in that is where do we get the funding or whatever but then they can also provide us the solution like to get from zero to being net zero there might be a path forward like we have net zero ready buildings or like they could provide us the path that even though we can maybe achieve the full goal but how can the new development be done in a way that is ready for, I don't know because that's something that I'd read long ago is that even if you can't achieve net zero you can be net zero ready built construction so they are able to do that. But that's what I'm hoping is like whether it's zoning or whether it's environment or affordable housing you are the experts in that. And so you tell us like we're gonna see we're coming up against these challenges and also then provide us some ways that we need to think about it and what are some ways we can include that in our document as the path to moving forward. Thank you. I see your hand, John is it a quick response so that we can get onto the measurables discussion? Yeah, I just wanted to comment on what Steve said about the university. I live on a street that has roughly 25 homes. Eight or nine of them are occupied now by students. They were originally what I would call starter family homes and that's a problem that's occurring all around Amherst. So while there certainly is a good reason to allow rentals to occupy students, it's a problem when they drive out other populations that we'd like to see in town. The numbers of students or sorry residents that have people of school age living in them has dropped by a huge number since the year 2000. The number of available households or residences has also dropped by a very large number since the year 2000 and we don't want to have smaller and smaller numbers of school age children and adults aged 18 or not 18 but say 25 to 45 in our community because we lose a lot and therefore when the university doesn't provide enough appropriate housing for people on campus, it drives them off campus. And as a result, the town has a significant problem in the fact that we can't offer particularly starter family homes to people because the prices have been driven up by entrepreneurs buying these houses and taking advantage of the fact that there are students looking for something that would be at the same cost or even lower costs when they combine together to rent a house as the university's existing housing. Thank you, John. I know Steve you want to respond but we are going to move on to our next part of the housing policy discussion and this will hopefully help us get through CRC's first review of the entire policy as drafted because as Evan mentioned we haven't actually even as a committee read the whole policy at a public meeting even though I assume every committee member has actually read it at home in preparation of a meeting. So I want to talk about the measurable section today and there are things in the measurable section right now and I actually don't really want to talk about what's there, what Evan suggested we talk about that last meeting to talk about this meeting was what's not there. It is the weakest section of this document because it's the hardest section probably. And so I'm hoping that the committee members and those chairs who can stay and want to stay can help us sort of beef up this section as we begin drafting it. And before I recognize Evan I do want to say as we close the prior one and move on to this one I really want to thank John and Steve, Judge and Laura and Jack and Sarah. Did I get everyone? I got everyone for coming and for staying if they do stay to help us out. I think your feedback as chairs of committees that we're going to need to work with on this has been invaluable at least to me and it sounds like to the other committee members to essentially help us in some sense see how wrong we were on how to seek feedback in some sense. And I'm just going to put it that way because our conversation looked a lot different than what you guys were telling us. And I think we're going to be approaching feedback not just for this policy but for many other things that we do a lot differently having heard from the people who would actually have to formulate that feedback and how they would want to do that. So I want to thank you all for taking the time out of your day to come and give that to us and talk to us about that because I think that's a lot more valuable than us just sending an email and saying, hey, give us feedback. So that's why we're doing that and thank you for coming and doing that. So on to measurables. I know Evan's got his hand up because he's the one that was really wanting to push this. But yeah, I think the best thing we could do right now is sort of a brainstorming on what we could actually do to measure success or movement or moving forward on any of these goals. We'll start with Evan. Okay, I have a couple of things, although I don't know if Jack's hand is up for this or if he's trying to go. So if he was trying to make a statement before he goes, I'd yield to him. Thank you, Evan. I just wanted to say, I'm gonna listen and then I'm gonna take off video and if that's okay. Always fine. You can appreciate taking the time out of the day. So yeah. Thank you. Thank you, Jack. So yeah, so I was the one who wanted us to start on measurables because when I was working with Mandy to sort of edit and reorganize this policy, I felt as though the measurable section was the section that was somewhat lacking. And the reason I felt that way was that, so first of all, with the exception of maybe one or two bullets, everything that's in the measurable section is just copy and pasted from the Affordable Housing Trust policy that was sent to us. And so what they gave to us is just reproduced here, which is good. I don't wanna change that. But I felt like there was more that was needed because most of the measurables focused around production but the policy is much broader than just production. And so my two comments are this, having thought about this since our last meeting. One is measurables are there for us to literally be able to measure our progress towards a goal. And I think that that makes sense for some of these, such as the 100 units at 80 to 100% AMI over the next five to 10 years, that's literally a measurable. Some of these are not what I would actually call measurables, they're deliverables. And so they're things like publication of a regular annual report, right? A survey of local housing authorities, those aren't actually measurable. Those are actually, in some way we could actually maybe to move them into strategies, but they don't fit nicely in strategies, which is why I think they're immeasurable. So my first thought was maybe this needs to be called measurables and deliverables. But then I also sort of hate that because deliverables also means something different. So I think part of what we need to do is disentangle the bullets we have in here and figure out where some of these things actually go. And maybe we even have to create yet another section. I don't know. But the other thing having sat through, I spent a lot of time when I was looking at this trying to think of measurables that we could come up with. What could we actually use as a measurable? And things like, if we're trying to increase housing affordability, maybe it's actually looking at rents over time, right? Or maybe it's actually looking at median house price over time, right? It's tricky. Or I know the housing trust in there with a section that they call policy justification talked about, I think it was in that document or at least some document from the housing trust about the percentage of renters and homeowners who were cost burdened or severely cost burdened. So I think right now it's something like 60% of renters are cost burdened or severely cost burdened. And so depending on the regularity of that data, you could say, okay, well in five years we want that number to be 55%. The reality is I'm just going to be pulling things out of thin air based on data we have and just picking percentages. And so this gets me to my second point, which is given the conversation we just had with chairs, I'm wondering actually if we shouldn't put too much pressure on ourselves to develop these measurables. And instead that can be part of the feedback we get from committees. Because I don't know if percentage of renters that are cost burdened is a useful statistic to try to track over time to assess success at achieving these goals. And if it is, what the appropriate numbers would be as far as measurables go, but the members of the affordable housing trust would certainly have a better grip on that because they understand that data a little bit more. In the draft we have, I wrote the bullet under sustainability in the line note with Animars Climate Action Plan, a blank percentage reduction in emissions. And I left that blank because I literally don't know what that number should be but the members of ECAC probably have some semblance what that is. And so I guess I'm wondering if maybe we shouldn't spend too, too much time trying to, for us trying to come up with measurables and instead actually ask some of the committee and boards that have members with expertise in some of these things to suggest measurables. Because I think the ones that we have that are firmer, which are the production ones came from the affordable housing trust and not from the council or not from me which makes me have more confidence in them than if I just pick numbers out of a hat which is what I would have done. Thank you, Evan. John. I appreciate Evan's acknowledgement of the work that the affordable housing trust has done. And I do see when I read through it various elements of the policy that we had recommended. So I think that's great. We did have a set of, I can't remember, eight or 10 things that we included as data as justification, as Evan said, of the policy. Although we put it in an appendix because we were concerned that putting it in the main document might put people off. So we left it in an appendix for better or worse. But that provides some idea about what the measurables might be. As Evan said, one of them has to do with the percentage of renters that are cost burdened. There are others like how much new housing there is on the university campus to serve students, particularly as a ratio of the growth of the student body. And of course, there's nothing now really, frankly, that we can rely on. And there won't be until probably a year or so after the pandemic is under control. But nonetheless, you have a set of things there that could be potentially used to justify the policies that you are developing. And there may be other things that are available that aren't there that you could use to justify policies. And then they become potential measurables that you can also use to develop objectives. I mean, there are lots of things. So Evan did note that you adopted the number of, I think, affordable housing units to be developed, which was 250 in your draft document. But for other goals of production, which I personally think are important, there aren't any specific goals. So I think you need to go back and look at the general production goals and ask what numbers you would like to see and why. So that's my first comment on measurables. And I'll leave it there for the moment. Thank you, John. Sarah. Just wondering how you think this policy, how easily this policy will be able to change and grow over time. I imagine the more detail, if it takes two years to develop it and six months to, let's say, have council approve it, then that's not something you wanna be doing every year. So have you thought about how to incorporate what the town learns from experience? Maybe a policy is more high level and it directs some kind of regular updating as to the specific, what the measurables should be. Maybe you wanna, after a year, you discover, oh, well, it would really be useful to have these two other things. So just a thought. No, thank you. That goes to which statistics are the ones we should be looking at, I think, and we may not know until we try to compile them after a year and find out that that one's really hard and tells us nothing and this one over here tells us a lot more. And I think there are, I don't see any other hands. I'm just gonna throw out some of the ideas I had. Some of them mirrored some of what John said. Now, I don't have numbers, but I think for increase of production, we can really track how many units we're actually creating a year, how many through permitting and all of that. And it's just not there yet. Because I think part of that is we haven't actually put anything in there other than some of the things that were there in the housing trust policy. For something like safe and secure and healthy housing, things I came up with were maybe we can track evictions or rental registration complaints, violations from the inspections department. Steve mentioned that isn't, I think it was Steve judge, but maybe someone mentioned that much of this is building commission and something that the zoning by law requires or the building, I guess the building code requires. So could we track some of that through those complaints and I'm not even sure whether less complaints would be better or more complaints would be better. And that sounds really weird to say more complaints might be better, but if we're aiming for education on what people, what tenants rights are, hearing about violations is actually a good sign that you're getting that education to the right people. And so those were some potential options I thought about. For climate sustainability, it goes to the deliverables, has the zoning been modified? For some of these, when the strategies are actual zoning amendments, have we amended the zoning by-laws to that? And so that was some of the things I came up with as potential statistics. Anyone else have anything to add to the potential for some of these? You guys are all very quiet today. John. I'll just go back to something that Sarah said about the policy. I think it is important to get it out there. Now I'm losing my thought about what Sarah had said. Flexible it is. How open it'll be to change and modification from experience. Yeah, I think all of that is important. But also I remember now you talked about really implementation and kind of what happens after the policies out. One of the things I wanted to say is one of the great weaknesses of the master plan, which in many ways is kind of at the level of the major goals that you've set for yourself is that little or nothing is said about objectives and about how the plan would be implemented. And as a consequence for the most part, it sat on a shelf since it was completed. And I would not wanna see this plan sit on a shelf after it's completed. So I think it is important to think about when you have a goal and then you got an objective and then you have a specific evaluation that you'd like to do, how it's gonna get implemented, how it's gonna go from A to Z and think about why it hasn't been implemented before. Because when you look at most of these ideas, you'd think, oh, we should already be doing them. Why aren't we further along than we are? So thinking, for example, about why developers in general don't look to work on affordable housing. And I think as somebody may have said, it doesn't fit with their business model for the most part and they object to all the paperwork that's involved in trying to get the subsidy that would be associated with affordable housing. I mentioned Tom Kegelman before. I know he's had conversations with the for-profit developers who are in town and that's the feedback that he gets. And even though there are options to deal with the paperwork issues or understand how best to apply, in general, they're not interested. So we don't see that happening. Thank you. Any other thoughts on measurables? At some point, I guess I've been the one that's sort of been doing the main drafting. I know Evan has helped me. He's the one that reorganized the strategy section tremendously to get it to where it is now. We're gonna have to add stuff to it. I foresee next meeting as being the meeting where we try to get through the strategies so that we can get this out to all the committees at the request that they wanted the whole thing. And then even if we're continuing every meeting to modify it and regularly send it out to the committees for that comment, but we'll have that discussion at the next meeting in January. But any other thoughts on measurables, ones to add that people might want to see as I add things to the sections added? Again, it'll be probably with blanks in them too. As Evan said, we can say the measurable is this X number of houses, but we don't know what that number is supposed to be or what's a logical number or anything, but we can put in that as an idea. Steve. Yeah, I've been pondering the complaints. Ah, it says my connection's unstable. I've been partnering the complaint issue. So there is a map, property complaints that you can look at. And it's mostly, well, it's both zoning complaints and billing complaints, but what's interesting about that is in order to have a complaint, you have to have a complainer. So the complainers are more the kind of, actually John was talking about his own street where maybe there's a mix of owner occupied houses and other, you know, other renters. I'll bet that the studies show that the owner occupants are more likely to call in a complaint than renters calling in about other renters. So actually when there's a disappearance of complaints, that could be a sign that this monoculture that some of us are concerned about, you know, no longer a mix of housing or whatever, that could be a sign of that. But it's an interesting point that you brought that I'm pondering, but I also worried that a lack of complaints could be a sign that a neighbor has gone in a particular direction that's not necessarily favorable. Also the other thing is property quality. So I was actually looking at the property cards to see if that's true in Amherst, but a lot of property cards in some communities have a measurement of housing quality and the housing quality is used as a factor in determining the assessment. And I don't know enough about how to read the Amherst or Massachusetts property cards to see if that is a factor that's recorded, but that would be another thing to consider is the property assessor's indication of property quality. Thank you. Any other comments? Evan. Yeah, so I guess I'm wondering if maybe, where I put this? If it would be okay to just, we mentioned, I'm not being very articulate here, mentioned sort of a bunch of statistics, right? That we could use. And then of course the question is, are they useful? What does it mean, right? So like this, we're having this conversation right now about complaints, is less complaints a good thing or is it a bad thing? You could read it either way, right? And then if they are useful and if we do know how to read them, sort of what the numbers should be over the trends that we're looking for. And so I guess I'm wondering if it makes sense to just sort of, much like with the strategy section, we sort of just threw everything in there. If maybe between now and the next meeting, if we have ideas, we could just email you of, just a statistics, like I said, like medium home price, you could put median home price. And then we can sort of through this process of vetting through the CRC and also the committees, figure out sort of those three questions. Is it useful, what can we glean from this and how do we read it and then what the numbers should be? Because I don't know that I have specifics that I could give or I can give off the top of my head, but I could probably give more, but I hadn't come that prepared because I was struggling to figure out how to pitch it, but maybe if we do this sort of everything and then pair it down or refine, that could be a good way to do it. Yeah, I'm happy to take suggestions as I modify the section for the next meeting and add to draft, I think it'll be nine or 10, I don't know what number we're on. It'll be in the 20s or 30s by the time we finish it, I'm sure. But as I prepare new drafts, I'm happy to take suggestions on what to add to that section. John and then Shalini. Going back to the complaint issue, I have heard a lot mostly indirectly, occasionally a particular person talk about problems with their landlords that don't necessarily get transmitted to anybody as a formal complaint, but nonetheless are a problem. For example, things don't get fixed in an apartment that's rented. And even though that should be a requirement, nothing is done. So you do have those kinds of unspoken complaints, but they exist. We might develop or talk about developing some kind of survey of households that are renters particularly in the larger developments that exist in Amherst, which include both families and students. Related to that, one of the things that I can't remember if it got into this document, but was part of your earlier consideration of plans from other communities is the idea of providing an incentive program for landlords in which you give them money for improving the quality of their properties. And in return, they give you something else. It could be making the properties more affordable or it could be just improving the quality of those rental units itself is enough for you to wanna go forward with a program like that. Thank you, Shalini. Yeah, I just wanted to close the loop on a couple of things that have come up today. One is John suggesting the CRC non-voting number and just as an agenda item or something that we can decide among, but have a discussion on that because I think that's a really good idea. The other thing, I think we can send the email to different come now with this. Everyone was asking like, what comments do you want? But I think we have more clarity around what are some challenges they're seeing or goals that they would might like to add or remove challenges that they foresee happening in implementation of these goals and the path forward, like what would be the tentative solutions that they've already brainstormed earlier and then the measurable. So I think sending them that would be helpful. The third thing, yeah, I was thinking also was incentivizing landlords who take care of the rented properties because I've heard that as well that a lot of this houses that are rented out to students don't actually get taken care of as well, but there's no way, I don't know. So creating some kind of incentivization to reward the landlords who actually do care, take care of their properties. The other thing that was just coming up for me is regarding this, there's some developers like Beacon who've got it down, that's their business model is to process the papers and affordable housing and so forth. So is there a way for us to reach out to them? I mean, we live in a capitalist society and to expect that people are not gonna rent to students. When you have a house that's lying vacant and no family is coming in or you have students coming in and paying more, I can see that, I mean, it is our neighbors who are selling their homes to developers to rent it out and it is our neighbors renting out to students because yeah, so I don't know how we can ever compete with that living in a capitalist society where we are looking to maximize our own and everyone does have struggles and whatnot, so there. So part of the solution is again, coming back to something like a gateway project or something, we're going into a different strategy but I think that's there is one of the strategies is creating that students centered homes. It could be public, private venture on campus or somewhere around downtown, between downtown and campus where we do have, but we need to find some solution where students can have housing rather than expecting and thinking that we're gonna somehow be able to not have them continue to take over some of our starter homes because if we don't provide an alternative, nothing's gonna change. Yeah, thank you, Shalini. Steve. Yeah, so I think John, I think that was his opening statement about including the voices of developers. So frankly, profit developers or nonprofit developers, I think both voices are really important to understand and it's long been a frustration that there isn't a good avenue other than through the bid or something like that for people who are really in the housing development business can weigh in decisions that are being made by zoning decisions or whatever. I would very much welcome the voice and I would include the, so every for-profit housing developer becomes a nonprofit developer if they trip the inclusionary zoning bylaws. So there's lots of experience or increasing amount of experience with that also. I don't know exactly how to do that other than, I don't know how to do that. And I think probably some of us have had private conversations with developers who give us information about how to make our common goals work, but it would be great to do that in an open forum. I think that actually John hit on someone whose work was not, may or may not be in Amherst itself. So if the developers are working in Amherst and they're from Amherst, then that becomes, they get worried about certain issues. But if we have people amongst us that are working primarily not in Amherst but have lots of experience in affordable housing, market rate housing, I would welcome that. Thank you. Any other thoughts? So I will take this. I will add to the measurable section if anyone comes up with statistics or other concrete sort of items that could be potentially a measurable for adding in so that we could then talk about a little more specifically but also the committees could talk about themselves a little more specifically. Let me know for that. Our next meeting is January 12th. We are not meeting two weeks from today. We are not meeting between in late December. So we will have approximately a month till the next meeting. In the meantime, if this committee agrees, I will update the policy, but I will also send it out, back out to the committees that we've discussed so that they haven't updated one, the full policy, not just the abbreviated one with some of the questions that we've asked but also with a be on the lookout in the future that this is just a follow up to the December 15th meeting. We'll discuss a little more formally in January, more feedback loop type things, but here it is, feel free to begin discussions with your committees if you want and here's some other things that we thought might be useful. I will work on doing that in the meantime too. Evan. So not to add to that, but I think we heard from the previous discussion several things that some of the chairs felt were absent from the policy or could be useful to have. And so I guess I'm wondering at some point, it doesn't have to be now maybe inside the January 12th meeting, we should talk about whether we also want to include this. So what I wrote down and I don't remember who said which I'm not going to try to attribute, but there was some mention of barriers that it makes sense to have goal, barrier to that goal and strategies. So the strategy, we can understand the strategies instead of just going goals to strategies. There was a comment about identifying sort of who is responsible for implementing the different strategies. I'm assuming similar to the link that housing production identified responsible parties. There were several comments about the absence of UMass from the policy and something about the broader context of the policy similar to what the housing trust did with they, I think they labeled it policy justification that shows sort of the situation, the data to back up some of this stuff and they included it as an appendix. I don't know if we'd want to do that or work it into the policy. And then something that I believe came from Sarah which is I'm wondering, there's a question about how easy, how flexible it is to revise but also timelines for doing so and which made me, this is Jaco as you're saying, but made me think if we want to have something in there about or thinking or some conversation about revisions to the policy, whether or not it's something that's formal like we have in our charter, we get a new master plan every 20 years like a new housing policy updated every 60 years or something or if it's something informal but maybe start thinking about that. So those are the five things I heard from chairs that they felt would be useful or missing that I feel like at some point we should have a conversation about whether we want to include. Okay, thank you, Shalini. Yeah, and I think we didn't talk about when at what point we want to include public comment or include and have a way to maybe not just the usual hearings because not everyone, but like people who are impacted, renters and all who generally don't come. I don't know if you want to think of a way to reach out and create multiple channels whether it's online surveys, whether it's on the website, town website, we have a place where people can send in emails or something that's prominent that here we're working on the housing policy and these things or, and then also what specific questions do we want? Like, I don't, I mean, people can say, oh, I want this X, Y, Z. I mean, that's not what this is. It's not like people's wish list but it's more to understand where, what are the challenges people are encountering with respect to their homes as it pertains to the quality and safety of their homes or availability or, so we're going to have specific questions where we are looking for people's feedback on their lived experiences in town and then we use that to inform the solutions. Thank you for that. You're going to hate me, Shalini. Why don't you come to the next meeting with a proposal for public feedback. Love it. So instead of us starting from scratch, we're starting with a proposal to discuss on, how we would do it, what forms that might take, what multiple forms it might take and even potentially questions. Love it. Happy to do that. And I will make sure it's on the agenda. Okay. You suggest it, you get the work. Yeah, no fair enough. That's absolutely, I don't think it works. It's certainly for bringing it up. It's one thing I actually didn't get to ask the chairs of each of the committees which was we need public feedback and where are some ideas for how to do it. So let's start that discussion and full at the next meeting. We can send out what I create and send to you. We can send it out to them as a starting point but then they can add their questions or. Yeah, well, we'll start with us on the 12th. And then it's one thing I got from all of the chairs of the committees was more regular communication between us and the chairs on, and those committees on policy and what we want and what their thoughts are and all not just one time now and one time in four months, you know, almost so I'm almost envisioning the potential need for, you know, maybe a monthly email to all the relevant committees for here's the next update on this type thing to keep that line of communication open. So you'll come to come with a proposal that we can put in and have for discussion on public feedback for the next meeting. We have morphed into on the agenda agenda next agenda preview, we will come back to that because I wanna make sure we get in public comment for now. So for public comment, we're gonna move to public comment right now and it's anything within the jurisdiction of CRC public can speak for up to three minutes. And if you want to speak, I believe we have someone on the phone. So for the phone public comment, if the person on the phone would like to make public comment, you will need to press star nine on your phone. Otherwise, just hit the raise hand button if you've joined from zoom, not from the phone from just the computer, just hit the raise hand button and I will recognize everyone in turn. So if there's anyone who would like to make public comment, please raise your hand now or hit star nine now. It appears there is one person who would like to make public comment. So I will work on recognizing Pam Rooney. I think you should be able to unmute now Pam. Yep, thank you. This is a very, very mundane comment. And I thank everyone who's put a lot of effort into putting this policy together. In the past, when I've worked on goals and objectives and strategies, it's very helpful to have the goals which you start off by listing the goal, but then to put your priority statement under that and then you put your objectives, but to have to scroll down through four or five or six pages to get to some of the measurables that deal with the first objective is discombobulating. So in your organization of it, you have what, two, four, five goals. If it were possible to clump everything together, it just helps sort of you understand the linkage between your actions and your actual goal and not have to scroll back 20 pages to find that goal. Thank you for that. I think I'm hearing a vote for the previous format instead of the new format. We've changed this format a couple of times. So I think that's what Pam's going for is she liked the old format that didn't have them, that had the strategies and measurables directly under the listing of the goal and the objective. So it helps. Well, my mind works differently than yours perhaps. So it just helps link those things together. The other comment that I would make is that it's interesting to understand that you in your formulation of stuff, you sort of dump everything into piles and say, okay, we're going to sort it out later. We're going to put the impossible, the impossible, that I think Evan said, into that strategy bucket and we're going to let the committees sort through those and we'll sort through those later. I just want to reflect that it feels a little bit like the same approach that's being made with the zoning that you all are making recommendations on to council where it's like we've thrown all of these ideas into the bucket and we're now going to have to pull the part and see which of those little strategies works because right now there are over a dozen zoning actions and so far no analysis has been done on them. Anyway, that's a whole different topic. I think the work here is great and that certainly can help inform how some of the zoning should work in order to support these goals. So great job. Thank you, Pam. Thank you. Is there any other public comment? Seeing none, I'm going to recognize Sarah who may or may not want to make a formal public comment but she's in the meeting. Sure, there's a public comment. I'll grab your hand, Sarah. Thank you and I know you don't need to respond so I'll just say I'm curious about some of the concerns that have been folded into the or included in this draft document. And I just, well, I'll spell them out. The concerns having to do with evictions and with repairs to rental property or violations of codes. These things to me sound like matters of enforcing legal protections or regulations that are on the book. So I wonder why those need to be called out here as opposed to encouraging the town manager to have his staff get busy and whatever that they're already having use for dealing with those. And if there are no, let's say if the concerns with evictions or repairs go beyond what is required by law, whether you really think a policy is going to cause any change, that's one thing. And then there are, I think some hopes or concerns about the energy use of new construction. And I wonder whether, I mean, the town has a building code and maybe that's the place to fold in that kind of requirement as opposed to kind of putting in a lot of things that have to do with housing that aren't about creating additional housing. So that's my comment. Thank you. Thank you, Sarah. John. I just wanted to say the town manager I believe has no authority related to preventing evictions. We don't have an eviction moratorium. If we did in town and there are towns in Massachusetts like Somerville that actually do have eviction moratoriums that go into force because the state is not doing that. So it's important to recognize that. There are other things though that the town council could potentially do. For example, the housing trust is looking at the Housing Stability Notification Act that Somerville and I think Cambridge and Boston at least have adopted in some form. So that's also something the town could adopt and we're looking into it and we may recommend it. But there are things that other towns are doing that we can look at that will deal with some of the issues that you've raised. Thank you, John. At this time, I'm looking at our agenda. I will say we don't have minutes at all to deal with today. They weren't in the packet. They're just not ready yet. So we will deal with minutes next time. Are there any announcements? Seeing none, next agenda preview, we already previewed it a little bit. In addition to that, it is likely that, well, there will be the 2021 meeting schedule on the agenda for viewing and passing. I've already drafted it. It's just, it will go on the next agenda for January 12th, which is our next meeting. And then it is suspected that we will have potentially Sarah back here for, but I'm not sure who, for it might be John, Belcher Town Road. There's a CPA request that is out of cycle, I guess is what it's been called that is likely to be presented to the council at the meeting on the 21st, this coming Monday, for referral to both CRC and FINCOM for review and recommendation back to the council by the second January meeting for an appropriation for CPA money. I don't know whether there's borrowing involved or not for some housing, I think that CPA, well, a purchase of land, I think that CPA recommended. So that is likely to be on our January 12th agenda to review. So we might see, I'm not sure who's going to be doing that presentation if it gets referred, but it might be someone from the housing trust. It might be someone from CPA committee. We might see a few of you guys back on the 12th again, or it might just be staff doing that, I'm just not sure. So those are the other things I have for potential agenda items that I'm looking towards on January 12th. Are there any other agenda items besides what we talked about that people would like me to consider and try and get on the agenda? Seeing none, I know Athena published the addendum to the CRC report. So I just want to, in this meeting, since it is a CRC meeting for the upcoming town council meeting, I wanna thank Evan for his work on that addendum. I will thank him at the council meeting too. If you, it relates to the zoning provisions, recommendations that we made to the council, there's an addendum report. I recommend you read it, it's long. So thank you Evan for all the work you did with that. I hope that my hope is that it answers many of the questions that the councilors had at the last meeting regarding this committee's recommendations on zoning. But I thought I'd recognize Evan for all the work he did to essentially create that addendum with my editing review of it. So I appreciate you stepping in to do that Evan. With that, I don't have any unanticipated items. Does anyone else see none? I wanna thank again Steve and John and Sarah and Jack and Laura who left at three for attending the meeting, listening, giving your input, giving your feedback, helping us figure out how best we can incorporate your committees into drafting and reviewing and getting this housing policy to the council. So thank you all. I'm going to adjourn the meeting at 4.03 p.m. Thank you. Thank you everyone. Happy safe holidays. Thank you for involving us. Thank you for coming.