 Good evening. Seeing that there's a quorum in attendance. I'm calling the, what is today, the March 11th meeting of the town service and outreach committee to order at five ish. Governor Baker's March 12th, 2020 order suspending certain provisions of the open meeting law allows us to hold this virtual meeting of the town services and outreach committee. I am going to call on each committee member by name now to confirm that we can hear each other. Alyssa Brewer. Present. Darcy Dumont, present. Evan Ross. Present. George Ryan. Present. Andy Steinberg. Present. Thank you. And we've already been talking to everybody else. Those assisting the meeting will be monitoring committee member connections if necessary, we'll pause the meeting until we are reconnected. The Zoom meeting will be posted on the town of Amherst YouTube channel. So we still don't have any public. So we're not going to have public comment right now. So moving on. We do not have any appointments. Is that correct, Paul? And from my conversation with Paula, it looks like we are going to have reappointments coming up in the next two meetings. Is that correct, Paul? Not that soon. Well, when are they? Yeah, in the future. Before, I'm not sure exactly which means we put those on. Okay. Yeah, but we're in that process. All right, so moving on to town manager report update and questions. This is just a time when committee members can ask anything about the town manager report or if they have any questions. Anybody, I remember George, you had said that you might be asking about the shelter. George? Yeah, I apologize. Just a couple of quick questions. I believe Mary Beth Agolowitz has said she's going to be sort of leading this working group. Yes. Who else is on it? We haven't put together people yet. So we're working on the charge right now. Okay. So right now it's Mary Beth. And it has met, well, I guess since it really hasn't met formally yet. Oh, yeah, there are no people who are working on the charge and I'll share that out with you when I try at the next council meeting. And from your statement, Paul, at the council meeting, I got the impression it may be mistaken, but I think it was clear that your focus, as you said, is broader or more expansive than just finding a permanent place for Craig Stores. Is that fair to say? Yeah, so I think it's a two-pronged thing. One is the short-term immediate need of Craig Stores and what's going to happen going forward with that. And then the second is more of a comprehensive look at homelessness as well. We started that a while ago, but I think the idea is to bring the service providers and others into the room to start talking about how does this look for the town? How does this look for the region? I know they're involved talking with the state in terms of where the state's commitment is going to be moving forward in this entire area. They meaning the Craig Stores people or just? No, our staff. Your staff is? Yeah. And then finally, Paul, and I apologize to be so specific, but this has been asked to be a number of times now. Apparently there's some issue with a, what is it, basically a shower trailer that, and I'm just wondering if there's anything, any light you can shed on that, that it seems to be sort of lost in limbo somewhere. Maybe that's not true, but that's what I'm being told. And I just wondered if you can cast any light on this. It's apparently something that would be very useful to the folks at Craig Stores, but at the moment it's in the hands of the town and it's really, I'm just wondering where that stands. So we, when Craig Stores moved to Unitarian Universalist Church, we rented space, the yoga studio that had showers. We rented that for a fixed period of time and Craig Stores had the option to continue that relationship and they chose not to, which is their choice. In between that time, we did, we were able to, we've been purchased a shower trailer, but unfortunately it's not the only one we could get and short-term nose was not handicap accessible. So we're either going to make that handicap accessible or develop something at Craig Stores if the First Baptist Church will allow us to put a shower in there. We've looked at different options for that. And I know that those conversations were happened some time ago. I don't know where it stands right now. George, I can find out for you though. Right. I mean, it's been, since January, I think is basically the understanding I have. So it, anyway, so at the moment it's still in limbo. Right. All right. Okay. And they do have shower available at the survival. Well, what they do is they send people one by one up to the motel. It's not ideal, but it's something, but that's what they're doing at the moment. Yeah. That's it. Okay. Thank you. Any other questions? That's not another question, right, George? Okay. So moving on to presentations. We have the further presentation regarding the two different stormwater bylaws. We had asked for decision, decision points for help from staff to look at where in the bylaws, it would be helpful for us to look for our decision, our TSO decision. And they provided us with decision points on each of the bylaws today and an updated amended bylaws. So Beth is going to lead us, I think. Are we going to go one bylaw at a time? We could start with the stormwater bylaw. And I was just going to share my screen and share the most recent edited version. And we can look at that and talk about the decision points. Also then, you know, just go through the bylaw. Any other questions that people have about them? Yeah, it makes sense to me to look at your memo on the decision points first and then look at the bylaw to other people. So that we, if that's, those are the larger decisions, we could look at that first and then we can look at the more detail of the bylaw. If anybody has any, Alyssa had made some comments about, I think both of them, didn't you, Alyssa? Okay, so anyway, we'll get there. Go ahead, Beth. All right, so I'll share the decision document first for the stormwater bylaw, stormwater management bylaw. And everybody see that? Yes. Yeah, so with the stormwater management bylaw, there's really two decision points. The rest of the document is very standard from either templates that groups have put together or things that are required by the permit. So the first decision point is really the size of the project that the permitting would apply to. So just to give you a little refresher, the stormwater management bylaw has to do with review of construction projects, new and redevelopment projects, specifically the drainage designs that are being presented as part of those projects. And this bylaw gives the town the authority to establish a permitting system for those projects to require applicants of construction projects to put together a package that they'd be submitting to the town with a permitting fee. And then the stormwater design would get reviewed by DPW engineers mostly. So the bylaw basically gives the town to set up that permitting system. And so one of the decisions is what size project are we gonna require the stormwater permitting to go to? So that's section C of the bylaw. And what I did for the decision points was I took a close look at neighboring towns bylaws just to see what they've got and just as a comparison. So other towns nearby that have an acre or more, so similar to us, the only projects that have to apply or anything that impacts an acre or more are North Hampton, South Hadley, Long Meadow, East Long Meadow, and then towns, neighboring towns that follow something a little bit more restrictive. All three of these towns, East Hampton, Hadley and Chickpea use the exact same list. And their list starts off with something that's similar to ours or saying construction activities and subdivisions that disturb greater than or equal to an acre would be required. But then they also had multifamily residential developments with four or more units. So if that kind of a project was proposed on something that was three quarter acres, it would be required to get a permit or commercial industrial institutional structures, the same property under common ownership that have at least 5,000 square feet of gross floor area or 10,000 square feet of impervious surface. So again, a new project that could be under an acre, but meets these thresholds would require a permit. Similar for redevelopment, redevelopment of commercial industrial institutional, institutional, I think of as the university and the colleges. And then development or redevelopment involving multiple separate activities and discontinuous locations or on different schedules if the activities are part of a large common plan of development. And that was already in the by our first version of the bylaw. So that list, like I said, three different towns use that same list. Belcher town gets a little bit more restrictive. Anything over 10,000 square feet of disturbance requires a permit in Belcher town. And then I just added to how I felt about it and TPW in general, Guilford too, that the list that East Hampton Hadley and Chickpea use seems like a good answer because it sort of expands away from just an acre and it includes commercial and industrial properties, but it doesn't include residential. So in terms of increasing the amount of TPW staff that would be needed, if we get more restrictive, we're gonna need more staff time to review to review the actual designs and just for administration of the permits. But this just seemed to be a good answer. So yeah, so we need to discuss that. Do we have comments about that? Shall we decide this first? Comments, anyone? That is suggesting the compromise solution. Andrew Steinberg. Yeah, are there any standards within either federal or state law regulation is the one acre built upon some minimum requirement and then anything more restrictive becomes a matter of local choice or is there nothing, no guidance? Yeah, the federal permit, the EPA permit is that you must permit things over an acre, disturbance in over an acre. But the municipalities can be more restrictive. How many square feet in an acre? 43,560. One of those things you just get in your head, okay. Andy, I'm sorry, I interrupted you. Nothing, other comments? And should I assume that we all agree with Beth's suggestion, George? Just maybe just a bit more on why you think this sort of change is a good idea. Is it doesn't seem to, you're saying it doesn't really increase DBW staff time that much. So that seems like a plus. And this is better for the environment. In other words, the closer we look at these sorts of things and the closer we review what people are doing, the better for the environment overall is apparently the argument here. And to not do it would potentially involve some risks is that a clear sense of what behind this. Right, so there are a lot of lots within Amherst that can be developed that are under an acre. And I feel like commercial and industrial and institutional structures really tend to have more impervious because they can have parking and they can have a large impact on what's ending up in our storm drain system. I think in my memo, I mentioned the project on Spring Street that is I'm pretty, that's under an acre, that lot is definitely under an acre. So that's a large development project that will definitely have stormwater drainage coming off of it. It'll connect to our storm drain system. It'll have catch basins and whatnot. And yet it wouldn't be required to get a permit if we went with an acre. In this case, I think it would because I think it would have over 5,000 square feet of gross floor area. I don't know exactly, but I just think these requirements kind of hit the right types of projects that we might want to see reviewed. But at the same time, it has no impact on residential properties that may be over an acre. But again, those may be outside of town and they may just not have as much of an impact on our stormwater system or on our MS-4 system. Just a quick follow-up, Darcy. You're mentioning Beth Institutional. Do we actually have any say over Amherst College in UMass or no in this particular area? My understanding is usually they can do whatever they want and there's nothing we can do about it, but maybe because this is a federal, I don't know. I'm just wondering, because most of the institutions are institutions that pretty much do what they want to do, at least UMass. All right, well, yeah, UMass has its own MS-4, so they actually do maintain their own stormwater system. But Amherst College and Hampshire College all feed into our, especially Amherst College because it's right downtown, feeds into our stormwater system. And they would be subject to our permitting process. Yeah, thank you. Yes, in terms of this, yes. Hey, thank you, George. Evan? Yeah, so I like the option that's being proposed. I think you called it a compromise option, which I'm not quite sure what you meant by that, but to follow what Hadley and Chickapee do. And my thought on that, actually, I was thinking about this earlier today when I was driving down Main Street and I was looking at the new project that's going up on Main Street and I went home and I said, how big is that lot that they're building on? And it was 0.7 acres. And so my understanding is under what was proposed before that project wouldn't necessarily have to go through this. But when I looked at what it's doing, there's a whole lot more impervious surface there now than there was before, certainly. So this seems to make more sense to me because it would capture a project like that. I had, I think two questions, I'm trying to read my sloppy notes. One is I don't quite, to me, what matters is the increase in impervious surface. So I was kind of confused why it's 5,000 square feet of gross floor area or 10,000 square feet of impervious surface. I don't necessarily know that I care about square foot area, but I do care about impervious surface. Unless, and this may ask the question, I was curious if impervious surface counted only ground level or if roof area counted as impervious surface. And if they were to say put on a green roof, would that reduce, if roof area did count and they say put on a green roof, would that reduce the amount of impervious surface? I don't know if that makes sense. Oh yeah, that makes sense. How do you define the impervious surface on the parcels and that's a good point. I'm sure if you use an LID like a green roof or something that would decrease your footprint, so your impervious would go down for that. But the 10,000, again, this is a list that was in that other towns are using if we feel like those amounts are, it's up to us to decide what square footage we would consider impactful. Right, I guess my question is more when we're talking about at least 10,000 square feet of impervious surface, is that including impervious surface on the roof or is that just considering ground level impervious surface? I think it includes the roof too. Yes. Okay, thank you, that was my question. Alyssa. It's not so much a question as a comment and so I appreciate that Beth went back and looked at the different towns and then thought about how we compare to those towns because some of you have been in town government for a while as opposed to those who haven't might know that in the battle days we received many complaints about how un-business friendly we were so that we'd say, oh sure you can build something but we will make it really complicated for you to do it and from what I'm seeing in here, this is making it more restrictive, it's making it applied to more properties but when you consider that the towns that we're looking at for similarities are East Hampton, Chukapia and Hadley those certainly are not considered business unfriendly places. It seems to be working there and it's indicated in here that it is not a ton more work for staff but yet it feels like the kind of thing they wanna be able to look at. So it seems to me like we're striking a good balance here and appropriately protecting the environment not making it to not having it just be one more thing that doesn't feel entirely necessary but in fact does feel necessary because of protecting the environment. So it looks like we've threaded the needle pretty well here from what I can see. Is there any more discussion about this and do we have consensus? Do we, is there any objection to moving on and assuming that we have agreement that we will accept best recommendation? Okay, ready? Can you talk about the next one, Beth? Sure, all right. So the second decision point is exemptions. So these are types of projects that would be exempt from applying for a permit. And again, I looked at what's required or sort of what's allowed under the federal permit and also what neighboring towns seem to be including and there's a real sort of standard list of ones that all towns are including. These first five are standard. They're seen in all the towns that I looked at. These first four are all, we're all in the bylaw that you've seen before. This I added again, because it was in all the neighboring towns and actually looking closely at the federal permit this is one of the things, number five is allowed in the MS4 permit. So those are standard exemptions. And then what I've done here is just put in some of the other exemptions that we had in our bylaw and listed which towns have them and which towns don't. So it's really sort of a decision point for us whether or not we wanna include these things or not. My thoughts are, I think we definitely should include number one and number four was one again that is in all other towns bylaws that I looked at. Two and three in the end, I'm not even really sure what projects they necessarily would apply to that much, plus they're not seen in a number of other towns. So both of them are seen in Hadley's but not in some of these other towns. And I don't know if you want me to go through each exemption and kind of read them or if you guys wanna read through them yourselves. I don't think you need to. Oh, Alyssa, you have a comment? I guess not. So I think that I personally would like to look more at the second set to understand what the additional ones. George? I'm not sure what you mean, Darcy, the second set. Are you talking about the additional exemptions or I just didn't... Yes, additional exemptions. So yeah, I don't see any reason to include three. Doesn't, I mean, it just seems pointless. Four, I think is, you know, should be kept, I think that makes sense, right? I think Beth had recommended one and four. Three, I definitely think should go out. I don't know, I guess two is the only one where I think discussion might be fruitful. I would follow her guidance on one and four. Anybody have thoughts on two? Haven't. So I actually have a question that actually gets to applicability but might influence this. So the, and maybe I'm just getting confused here. So the language of the bylaw that we looked at last time said all new development and redevelopment, that makes sense. But then it also said land disturbance and any other activity disturbing the drainage characteristics. The list that we just looked at that I think we sort of had a consensus, it says construction activities and subdivisions disturbing greater than or equal to one acre. So my read of that is it's only disturbance to one acre or more that's associated with construction. Whereas what we looked at last time would be any land disturbance that might disturb the drainage characteristics. So is that correct? Yeah, so I forgot to mention that. So, you know, this list is again, what I saw in East Hampton, Hadley and Chickpea, that's their exact list. And I had thought the first thing, so A, where it's construction activities and subdivisions disturbing greater than or equal to one acre. I thought of replacing that with what we have in our bylaw, which reads what you just said, new development, redevelopment and land disturbance and any other activity disturbing drainage that's over one acre. So adding those to that first statement, sort of adding land disturbance and changing drainage characteristics to that first. Does that cover what you're asking about? Well, so the root of that question actually relates to what George just asked, which is if we were keeping the language that's on the screen right now as is, we wouldn't even need to, because we wouldn't need to exempt the maintenance of existing landscaping gardens because that wouldn't fall under C because it's not construction related. If we change the language, as you just said, to include the language from what we looked at in January, land disturbance or any other activity, then potentially including three, sorry, I'm clicking through a bunch of things, including three or two, maintenance of existing landscaping, we probably would want to exempt that because that could be land disturbance that would be land disturbance, but it would be land disturbance through maintenance of existing landscaping. And so I guess to me, whether or not I think we need to depends on whether we're taking the language exactly as is written in the memo or the language that Beth, you just said, sort of combining January with this. And so I guess that's my comment on whether I think this is necessary because I do think that we should exempt land disturbance that's disturbing land to maintain something that's already there, that's in existence. And of course my issue with this is the same one I had last time, which is I don't think it should just be associated with a single family. I don't think we should carve single family dwellings out and say if it's a single family dwelling, then it's fine. But if it's a converted dwelling or a two family or a three family, then it needs a permit. So that would, if we are going to keep this, I would like to just say associated with residential dwellings or, I don't know what the language would be, but I don't want it to be just single family. Andy. So I think that the question that I had was about landscaping, are there any types of landscaping that people do in their own gardens in a family dwelling that may in fact affect what we are concerned about patio breaking, paving over for patio purposes, things like that. And another example is, because I've seen the house has done this, is people get tired of mowing lawns and put rocks in instead so that they don't have to mow lawns. And then when the, I asked one of the people in our inspections department about that and they said that they're excused from us and it was landscaping. So I just was curious whether we have any experience that would cause us to be. What was the end of that sentence, Andy? Thank you. Anything that, anything in the way of landscaping that would cause us to be cautious and make sure that people are doing, there's a danger that people are doing something that might affect runoff in a significant enough way. Beth, do you have an answer to that? Well, what I always picture with this is somebody who redos their whole yard. So, you know, part of the permitting has to do with looking at stormwater drainage design for redevelopment and new development, but it's also construction site erosion control fits into this. So if somebody's proposing a project, we want to see the stormwater system that they're designing for their building, but we also want to see erosion control for construction time. And the only thing when I think of landscaping and at this scale that we're talking about would be if somebody had said, had a whole acre yard and they really hired a landscaping company to come in and redo the entire yard. So there's a point at which there's exposed soil, you know, they're replanting a whole row of trees or something. And so then you would want to have, you would want to at least know that it's happening and have them have some kind of erosion control up because say there's a catch basin in the road right in front of their house. And now they have what's almost like kind of, you know construction project going on, but it's only landscaping but it's because it's large scale. That's all I could think of in this case. So maybe we leave it in. I don't know how often that really happens, but. Thank you. Is there any way to define it? To define it? To define what you just described as far as there are these larger landscaping projects that might create some concern. Have you seen anybody attempt to legislatively define what that level of interference is? Well, you know, if we left it in as this and then Evan wants, we can add multi-family homes. But you left it as, if it's over an acre, which is, which we can do and it says Hadley and South Hadley have less than an acre. So that's exactly, it's the Hadley and South Hadley say you're allowed to do any of these things as long as you're not over an acre, which is kind of the way the bylaws written anyway. But to me, anything over an acre, you really are going to start to run into a potential for erosion problems during the landscaping event because it takes a long time for grass to re-vegetate and whatnot. But if it's under an acre, maybe we're okay with it. Thank you, Beth. Alyssa. So I've got, feels like three really random things here. So part of what's going on with that answer, I feel like we just got is goes back to the section in the January bylaw that says activities that affect less than an acre, but could adversely affect the municipal separate stormwater system or could reasonably be blah, blah, blah, may also require permits subject to the discretion. So that leads us back to the question we had. Well, if you're not, if you think it doesn't apply, then you don't say anything to anybody. So how would the superintendent of public works, you know, have their discretion if they don't know about the project, right? But this covers, so there could be things that we just didn't know about unless we of course make the acreage smaller to begin with. But that's kind of a catch-all in case it's found for some other reason, but it's not like every time you wanna move a wheelbarrow full of dirt on a process, you have to check on this. So I feel like we still have that sort of catch-all thing that says may require permits subject to discretion, but of course it will be difficult to know how that'll actually play out in reality. One of the other parts of this process that's just a little confusing is I super appreciate that Beth took what we said from the January bylaw and made changes to that and provided it to us days ahead of time, which was fantastic. But as we'd also ask, she wrote a separate memo, right? About our decision points. However, one thing that's slightly confusing about this is that some of the things that say that are under the additional section, right? Because they're not required by the state law, they were already in the January version, right? And so you can't just look at the memo as being, okay, we're adding this to January because half of it's the same. It's that certain she was trying to tease out what was required versus what other people are doing, but it doesn't necessarily say next to it. And that's already number X in our bylaw. So I just wanna caution us that we're not, like the only things we're adding are true additions, not what's listed as additions on the memo, because some of those are already there. So, and then on the other note, because I know I would found that pretty confusing the other day when I was trying to put this together, but it makes sense to me in terms of approach. It's just that we have to understand that what says additional is not all additional because half of it's already in our bylaw. The other thing is that when we talked about single family last time, the response was it seemed more typical that when it wasn't a single family home, that there was likely to be more impervious surface, right? Because if it was two units, likelihood that there was additional perking than there would be at the average single family home and impervious surface was again, the concern. And so while I am absolutely adamant that we're not privileging people with a single family home on ex acreage and just privileging people who live in a duplex, at the same time, I understand the concern that was raised then. So again, defining what it means or the size of it or the depth, so to speak of it like Andy's just been talking about as well, is really the rub. And I think it was simple to say single family home because of that concept about impervious surface, but it's not entirely accurate. I mean, some people have old driveways that are really big but have a lot of impervious surface, the first single family home and some duplexes don't, might just have gravel pads. So I think we're getting tied up in the single family part of it, but I think our bigger problem is how do we get at the underlying thing? And I guess a large part of that will be determined by whether or not we decide to go with a size that's smaller than an acre. Evan? So I guess I'm getting maybe too hung up on language here. If we're still talking about this too, which is, I understand Alyssa's point about there's probably more of a pervious surface and usually attached with multifamily, but this is really focused just on landscaping gardens and lawn areas, right? And so that's why I don't wanna necessarily distinguish between housing types. But to me, the example that Beth gave about someone who maybe is re-landscaping their entire property and maybe it's an acre property or an acre and a half property and there's gonna be a lot of exposed soil to me wouldn't even touch this exemption because that would be the new land disturbance and other activity disturbing the drainage characteristics that she said would be part of that list, right? And so to me, the keywords here are maintenance and existing. So like the example that Beth gave earlier to me wouldn't be considered maintenance of existing landscaping. That's re-landscaping. That's new landscaping. That's a whole new effort. I read this just as if you wanna do stuff to actually maintain what's already there and they're gonna be maintaining more than an acre of what's already there because again, the acre is the triggering point under C then you don't need to come get a permit. So to me, this could just be maintenance of existing landscaping gardens or lawn areas associated with residential use or something like that. And to me, I would wanna exempt it because I think if it's considered maintenance of something that's already there or you're not creating new gardens, creating new landscaping, then they shouldn't necessarily have to come and get a permit. Whereas if you are re-landscaping or creating something completely new, that would be triggered by C because that wouldn't be existing and it wouldn't be maintenance and it would be land disturbance of greater than an acre. So I actually do think that too would be wise to keep in just mopping off the single family and dwelling at the end. Okay, yeah, no, that all makes sense. Yeah, if you look really at the maintenance and existing landscaping and yeah, we can certainly leave it in. That's fine, I see what you mean if somebody almost has a farm type atmosphere and they do a lot of mowing and pruning of trees and whatnot, they certainly wouldn't wanna come for a permit. And yeah, leaving it in there makes it clear. Thanks, Andy. Yeah, I mean, Evan's comment may have gotten to the solution that I was thinking about just being unnecessary, but we kind of have this weird thing going on in Amherst that single family dwellings are being converted to multi-tenant dwellings and the key factor is a dwelling unit where rental registration is required. And so I was wondering whether there's any point in the bylaw where that might be a trigger to consider. And I get back to the example that I was giving earlier without saying what the address is during a public meeting though. And that is in the house that I was thinking of or a large portion of the front yard was... All of the grass was dug up and they just covered it with crushed stone which is not any different which makes it pretty much of an impervious surface. And I keep thinking about that situation and wondering whether that would have been something under the circumstances of the bylaw that we would have wanted to consider. Well, so if we change our list of what applies we have multifamily residential developments involving four or more units. So... You could add in there something along the lines and any dwelling for which a rental registration is required by a town bylaw. I mean, this is really for construction of these not necessarily just changing lawn into sort of a parking area because it sounds like the area you're talking about would be relatively, you know, definitely not close to an acre. Correct. And you'd have to look at it to make a determination as a professional whether there's enough of a change that might affect drainage. I'm not competent to make that judgment. Right. I don't know if we have an answer on that. Alyssa? Yeah, again, with some hesitance to not be too specific about which property. There was a rather large grassy area in front of a rather large home that had for a long time just basically a big tree in the middle of it. And then that tree was removed but then later a line of hedges was installed. That property may actually be an acre. Would we expect someone to know that if they suddenly just decided to put hedges on their very large property where it had just been playing grass before that they should do this? I'm just, again, I mean, I'm trying to not be too picky about individual things but I wouldn't want one neighbor to say, oh, I felt like I had to get a permit and the next neighbor to say, no, actually you don't need it for that. So remind us of how that would work for that single family homeowner. We're not even talking about multiple places that's on a very large lot that for a long time for whatever reason has just been grass and now they've suddenly decided to do various other things. How would they know that planting bushes would be considered similar to say they suddenly wanted to terrace it with stone walls and such, right? Cause like the second thing they'd probably think to ask but the first thing would they think to ask and is this a problem? Is there any way of, I just want to steer people in the right direction. Yeah. Well, letting people know whether or not to abide by all of our permitting and bylaws is always kind of tricky in general. I mean, certainly when I was the wetlands administrator time after time the reason I found out about projects was neighbors reporting on neighbors. I think I said when these come out the biggest group that I think we want to let know about these bylaws are developers and contractors and landscapers. That's a group that I always felt like and I tried as the wetlands administrator to send them flyers and keep them in the loop about what they shouldn't be doing because in the end, if they don't do it and someone reports them they're the ones that get the enforcement. And so yeah, so those are the groups I think that we would want to let know that this is a new permitting pathway to go through. But like I said, the wetlands stuff's been around for 25 years and there's still plenty of projects that get started across town that people start and oops, we don't have a permit and oops, we should have gotten one. So it happens, but yeah, education about it is gonna be the best way. We'll have to do that. Okay, Evan? Just to respond to Alyssa because to make sure I'm clear on this the example that she's giving it's not the size of the property it's the amount of the land disturbance. So those hedges wouldn't trigger this because the property you're describing is 1.2 acres, I looked it up. And so they would have to do complete landscaping hedges on one acre of that property before it triggers the bylaw. So the hedges they put in don't count even though the property itself is over one acre it's how much the amount of land disturbed has to be one acre. Right. So I guess the homeowners would just need to know that if they're disturbing more than one acre of land on their property, then they need to do this. But the hedges that were planted at this address that we won't say wouldn't trigger this because there was a very small portion of the property. Okay, I think we should try to move on a little bit. The up above bath, it looks in this second issue. It looks like we are in agreement to keep the standard exemptions that we agree that Beth is going to change A above in the first, wait a minute. All the way up to the first issue that she's going to change A, the definition to make it as it was in the January version. Can you read that again, Beth? Sure. Shall apply to new development and redevelopment, land disturbance and any other activity disturbing the drainage characteristics of one acre or more of land or as a common plan of development or construction that will disturb one acre or more of land. Okay, are we okay with her going back to that definition that was in the previous version? As part of this list that we previously agreed on. Okay, and then as far as if you scroll down again, Beth, to the additional exceptions, it sounded to me like we were in agreement that we should keep all of these additional exemptions, but that we should change number two to instead of saying single family dwelling, say what, what should we say, Evan? I was just going to say associated with presidential use, but I also think, I think we said that we weren't going to keep three. To be an exemption. Yeah, I think we said we were going to get rid of that. We didn't feel like it was necessary. Or at least George said that. Yeah, George is actually having second thoughts. I should speak up and correct him, but it does seem like if I just want to put in a fence that's not altering existing terrain or drainage patterns, why should I need to get a permit, right? So if I'm reading this correctly, and I misread it, I think the first time, this basically exempts that. So it says you can put your fence up, you don't have to get a permit. And that seems sensible to me. So I guess I would be saying three should come out. Am I understanding that now correctly? Or not? No. I'm not. It's okay, it's a long day. So somebody explain. Alyssa, why is he not? Because he's trying, what we're doing is we're adding that as an exemption. We're putting it in as an exemption to make it clear. If you're making a fence that will not alter terrain or drainage patterns, you can specifically point to this and say, okay, I'm exempt from this. If you don't have that in there, like the version we got in January, maybe didn't have it in there, I can't remember. It actually was in the January version too. If you don't have it in there, if you take it out as an exemption, then it lends the question of, well, what about a fence? So you just go ahead and address it in the exemptions and say a fence that won't alter terrain or drainage is fine, thus meaning other fences would need to be evaluated. I just think it's great when we can be specific with people and we are actually saying to people who are constructing a fence that they allege will not alter existing terrain or drainage patterns, therefore are not subject to this permitting process as opposed to somebody saying after the fact, hey, you build a fence, don't you think maybe it's covered by that thing? And since it doesn't say in here about fences, then every time it's a judgment call. Thank you, Alyssa. Yes, I read it right the first time, then I re-read it and then I got confused. So I'm sorry. And so, but we're in agreement that we should keep all of these additional exemptions, all of them, all four. Okay, so is there any more discussion on these decision points? Alyssa, is your hand still up? I wasn't sure how we decided to end Evan's sentence about maintenance of existing. We were chopping off so maintenance of existing landscaping gardens or lawn areas and does it just end there? Instead of saying associated with a single family dwelling or trying to come up with some other calculation. Are we gonna say associated with residential use? That is what I said, but I'd actually also be fine ending it after lawn areas because to me it doesn't really, if it's maintenance of something that's existing, it doesn't really matter what the use of the property is to me. Okay, so shall we flip to the by-law itself and just see if we have any other comments? Sure. Let me take a note. Beth, could you remind us how much, what's the deadline for our finishing with these by-laws? June 30th, it has to be approved by council by June 30th this year. Yeah, at this rate, we might not get through both of them in this meeting, but we shall see, because we do need to also talk about our outreach for Pomeroy. And if there's, if I may, after we're done with it, it goes to Chihuahua. Right, right. So yeah, well, it takes time. Can everybody see that? You make it a little larger. All right, so here's the Pomeroy Management By-law as it, with all the track changes. So the definitions and whatnot, we were just changing some of the footers. And the headers. And then we get to section C that we were just talking about, which is where you're deciding on the size of the projects that would need permitting. And I go down a little so I can see. I think the discussion we just had is gonna rewrite that section. Reword requested by GOL. I don't remember what that was. I think you wanted this, one comment on this from the January meeting was to split it up a little bit and reword this paragraph. And now we've sort of made kind of a significant change to what it's gonna look like. So that rearrangement will happen. And then Alyssa had split up that paragraph a bit and reworded in her comment here. And again, that's gonna all change. I'm assuming that I'll probably put together a new draft by-law that you'll look at one more time. Alyssa, was that all keeping the same language just reorganizing? That was the attempt, yes. And so, you know how just like the exemption section has all the little numbered paragraphs. I wanted the applicability section to similarly be easier to follow that way instead of kind of going back and forth within a paragraph. And so at like Beth said, we now have a longer list that's gonna be under applicability anyway. So it kind of forces the issue into more of a numeric system. And I think that that'll just be easier for people to work with and that'll be fine. So appreciate the redraft. So then T is the exemptions that we were just talking about and those will also change to the decision that we just made. The structure of that should look exactly the same. Let's see what's this comment. Single family. So we just addressed that. Administration, so I had removed that because as we brought up that it would make the by-law out of date. So town manager shall develop within one year regulations. So just we will establish the regulations. We don't need to have a timeframe because it does make for date situations. So this is all the administrative administration section. We had a comment on... Right, we discussed this during the meeting that if a decision is appealable, it isn't final. Right, and I still feel like you see that kind of a statement in by-laws and sort of what it's saying is the superintendent's decision is final. If you wanna go beyond that, then you go to the appeal. The appeal, you'd have to appeal, which section G7 has a whole discussion of how you appeal and you'd be appealing to the town manager. So it's a whole, it's a process that you would go to if you aren't happy with the superintendent's final decision, but I still think that makes sense that the superintendent, whatever he says is final. If you don't like it, you have to go, then you go to the appeal process. But that's just how I look at it. Yeah, I don't think that makes sense, but... Because it's not final if it's available. Is there any reason why we can't just take that sentence out? Sure, we can change it. You could say that the decision of the superintendent of Public Works is appealable and just take out the final. Yeah, yes. What laws are usually constructed of this nature is that there's a timeline given for how long someone has to appeal and it becomes final at the conclusion of that period. And if it is appealed, then you have to have the second question as to whether the matters, the decision of the superintendent has stayed until the conclusion of the appeal. But that's normally how these kinds of provisions then get phrased in order to kind of thread between what Darcy I think was concerned about. I'm not trying to put words in your mouth, Darcy, and where we were. Were people okay with this language? Alyssa? So can we just... I'm sorry, did we agree to just get rid of that sentence because it could just read six, appeals of action, further relief of a decision. Like we just don't even need that sentence. The decision of the department, like it just needs to go away because above this it said the superintendent of Public Works could take these actions and then it says appeals of action, further relief of a decision. And then it goes and then it has the time frames and such that Andy talked about, although it doesn't talk about a stay in the appeals section. But I understand why it's confusing to people. I understand why it's not confusing to them. But I think maybe if we just take the sentence out it just solves the problem. And it just says further, it says appeals of action period, further relief. Were you okay with that? Yes. In this section it said enforcing person and we just, at the last meeting, said should that be superintendent of Public Works. So I made that change. Hope everybody's all right with that. And that's it. You have another comment Alyssa? Okay. Well, that was quick. That was quicker than I thought it was going to be. So I guess we should, for each of these, have you come back with a new clean copy that we can make a motion on? I even though I know that Lynn has this on the agenda for the next council meeting to vote on. I don't think we're quite ready if we haven't seen the final version. And of course we need to see the other by-law. So I'm going to, I'm hoping that we can get that done by 630 because Andy, we have a hard stop at seven because of the JCPC meeting. And so I would like to, at the very latest move to the, to talking about the outreach by 630 because we definitely need to talk about that. Alyssa? So question about what we just did is given GOL's timing and given town council's timing, does it make sense that we say we're enough done with it that it can go to GOL without having to sit, bring Beth back to go through line by line with us again, what we just did. I mean, obviously something could get lost in translation but she was super diligent the last time. And I'm just wondering if in terms of moving it along that least the by-law part, the stormwater part could go on to GOL because we're done with it once those changes are made. Well, are we confident enough to move to recommend it now? I am. But if George says no, I think it's still too messy then I don't want to stick him with it but I thought she fixed everything last time. So you might very well be able to fix it and get it to George before our next TSO meeting, right? I am fine with doing that. Are we recommending to the council? Okay, so I don't remember the title of it. Does anybody want to make that motion? Where is the title that we're looking at? It's the stormwater management by-law. Okay, so I move we recommend that the time council approve the penalties for violation of stormwater management by-law as amended by the TSO on this stage. You'd want to adopt the stormwater management by-law because we're not just approving the penalties, we're adopting the by-law. Recommend the town council adopt. The stormwater management by-law. Although, yeah, although we know, okay, that's fine. Did you get that, Emily? I got it. Just so it says as amended by this committee on today's state, the 11th of March. Right. So, second? I'll second. Alyssa, you have a comment? Just that I think it's ready enough based on our experience thus far working with Beth, where it's clear that, you know, we've worked with other groups in the past that, you know, have been like, oh, I forgot that whole page of notes you wanted me to include. That didn't happen here. So I'm confident with moving it along, even if we're not quite, even if we don't get through the IDDE tonight, which hopefully we will. Okay, so we're voting. Alyssa? Hi. Darcy, yes, Evan? Hi. George? Yes. Andy? Yes. Okay, so we'll have at least one to send over to GOO. And let's look at the points on the other screen. Stormwater bylaw, which there's only one, I think. All right, so this is the decision point document for the IDDE bylaw. And in comparing that to other towns, though, the language is just identical across the state for these bylaws. There's templates out there and towns tend to copy each other. So the only decision point that I could really see is requiring a mediation. So for mediation, it would be in a situation where somebody either discharged into one of our catch basin, somehow discharged into our stormwater system or had been illegally connected to our system and had been polluting. And then we basically found the outfall where that was going and there was significant damage to the outfall, to the soils around the outfall. And so remediation would be something that we are requiring of this resident or this business. And other towns that had it in their bylaws were this list of seven towns. So most towns tend to have it. I did notice that it wasn't in the East Long Minow bylaw. It also just came up because in terms of what's sort of required by the EPA MS4 permit is so much of the IDD bylaw, everything is required by the permit anyway, but remediation is one part that's not required by the MS4 permit itself. So that's the one point. I don't know how people feel about that. Sounds like you're recommending it, Beth. Yeah, I guess I would recommend we leave it in, yeah. And does anybody have any issue with that, George? So how specific, I mean, is it just remediation on its left, that's it? Or is it we have some specific, you know, criteria or whatever you have to do or is remediation just mean you've got to make it right and we decide what that is. Well, we can look at the language in the bylaw if, should we look at that? Yeah, please. Just for a moment, please. Sure, this is the right bylaw, I think it is. Andy, do you have a comment? Yeah, I have actually a question for Beth. If there is pollution because somebody has violated this bylaw, is the town responsible under federal or state law to remedy the violation and to clean up whatever needs to be cleaned up as a result? Yeah, if it's an impact to a stream, River Wetland Pond, it would fall under the Wetlands Protection Act. So we could be violating that kind of an impact can be violating the Wetlands Protection Act. So then remediation could be being required under that, which then if we didn't pass it on to the source to a resident, then the town could be the one paying the bill to clean it up. Yeah, this was the kind of thing that the finance committee was feeling that needed to come to discussion through the TSO, but we wanted to make sure that the TSO thought through that kind of issue. So thank you, that's why I brought that up. We're now in the other committee. So this is the section that talks about it. Superintendent of Public Works may issue a written order to enforce the provisions of this bylaw or regulations, which may include but not be limited to requirements to eliminate illicit connections or discharges to the MS4, perform monitoring analysis and reporting, cease and desist unlawful discharges, practices or operations, remediate contamination and connection therewith. And then this whole section sort of gets into the details about the remediation. And like I said, that this language is the exact language that is in a lot of these other towns and is in the templates. As the superintendent of public works, determines that abatement or remediation of contamination is required, the order shall set forth a deadline by which such abatement or remediation must be completed. Should further advise the violator of property owner should perform a minimum specified deadlines. 30 days, so this gets pretty specific with deadlines for remediation. And then there's an appeal. Is there anyone who has, since this is the same language as all those other towns use, are we in general agreement that we should include the remediation section? Okay. Shall we go back to the beginning and run through what we can do in the next like 10 minutes because then we were going to stop regardless? Yes. So I'll just go, this is the definition section. We had no changes. We changed the header and footer again and the definitions. And we got to applicability. Let me look at, right? So this used to say, the by-law shall apply to all flows entering the municipally-owned storm drainage system and less explicitly exempted by the Department of Public Works. And the question was, well, what's the exemption criteria? So I think at our last meeting, we talked about just taking that out. By-law shall apply to all flows entering the municipally-owned storm drainage system. And the regulations, town manager may develop and periodically amend regulations, rules, written guidance. And that used to have a shell develop within one year and similar to the other by-law, we took out that time limit because it's just restrictive. So I took out one year because we probably won't, for the IDDE by-law, we don't necessarily need regulations anyway, but it's, I felt like it was good to have this in there in case down the road we decide we do. All right, this ultimate responsibility, why is it necessary? Does it limit liability? And this is something again that is in all other towns, that I looked at IDDE by-laws. And I just thought that maybe an attorney, if we still question it, an attorney could weigh in on what that exactly is all about. That sounds like a GOL issue. Yeah, just GOL just needs to know if you want us to do that. This goes to attorney for review. It would be helpful if there were specific places we could highlight it or not. Do you want us to highlight it? It's a question. I would seem to me that that is a question that we have. Yeah, I have anyway. I'm just looking for guidance from the committee. I'm not sure I have it, but that's not necessarily, you know, so if there's consensus, then yes, we will highlight it when it goes to the attorney for review. I don't hear anyone else. So, that doesn't sound like- I agree with you, Dorsey. Oh, you do? Okay. So this is, again, just remind me, this is section E, okay? All right. Responsibility, thank you. Okay, section F, prohibited activities. Under number two, illicit connections. The construction use maintenance or continued existence of illicit connections to the MS4 system is prohibited. This prohibition expressly includes without limitation illicit connections made in the past, regardless of whether the connection was permissible under law or practices applicable or prevailing at the time of connection. There was the sentence after that, a person is considered to be in violation of the bylaw if the person connects to a line conveying sewage to the MS4 or water course or allows such a connection to continue. And I think the question came up of sort of why, why is sewage explicitly sort of called out there? And I agree that, you know, that was, again, something that originally was in there. I probably found it and saw it if it was from a temple or something. And I agree that it doesn't, I would recommend that it doesn't need to be included. Exemptions, waterline flushing. So let's see. Oh, yep. People thought notification was a little, was vague and needed a little more specific. So we had a telephone or email and 24 hours to make that a little bit more specific and did the same down here where it says notification. Okay. And here, suspension of stronger than any person discharging to the MS4 and violation of this bylaw may have their MS4 access terminated. If such termination would abate or reduce adolescent discharge. Superintendent of Public Works issue. I think I just got rid of the word department and added superintendent of an added issue of written order and compliance with section K-4 of this bylaw. Notifying again, just clarifying how somebody would be issued some kind of an order. Just clarifying that. That looks like a non-substantive change. Yeah. So I changed petition to the Public Works Department for reconsideration with appeal deorder in accordance with section K-5 of this bylaw. I think we talked about, I think that was something we talked about and people wanted that to go through the appeal process. Thank you, Andy. Yeah, I think that just in prior discussion there had been some feeling that there's been back and forth on what the regulations require about whether some wells in houses were able to go into the wastewater. And the answer now is clearly no. And so that if there are any homes that had those connections when there was a vestige of the lack of clarity that now exists, that they would be required to come into compliance. So I think that it's important to know that there might be some homes out there unknown number. I think it's probably the right thing that we have to do. Yeah, I think the way that will happen is as we find contamination in outfalls, we'll be trying to find out where it comes from. Cause like you said, there's a number of houses out there that have sump pumps and other things already connected to our storm drain system. That's what you're talking about. Yes. Yeah. So I think it's gonna be more of a, as we find contamination using this bylaw as giving us authority to investigate. And if we find people that's connections are causing a problem, then we would do something. If there's people who have a connection, but they're not causing a problem. At this point, you know, if it's an old old connection, then we probably won't find out about it. Okay, let's see what else we got here. All right. Why are we under here? We're under enforcement. Right. I think this change was already in the, what you saw at the last meeting. Somehow this is having this in here had gotten moved around. And I put it back in here cause this is definitely something that that we need to have. So, you know, it's a big part of the bylaws that to give the town, the authority to investigate. Okay. Left at this section already. Yep. And we left at that already. Okay. Now. Move this section up. You know, we had looked at compensatory action and wondered what somebody had wondered about moving it. And I just suggested that we could add it to the remediation that's right above sort of adding compensatory action as an option for remediation. Everybody good with that? Okay. I think we just made it through the second bylaw. You did. Shall we any further comments about it? Shall we move to recommend? Could you scroll up to the title? Yeah, motion to recommend that the town council adopt the illicit discharge detection and elimination bylaw as amended on this date 31121 by TSO. Second. Any further discussion? Okay, Alyssa. Hi. Darcy, yes, Evan. Hi. George. Yes. Andy. Yes. Okay. Thanks so much, Beth. That was great. Sure. Thank you. And make a request that she send this to me as chair of GOL so that we won't be getting to it at our next meeting. I'm afraid it's already full up, but I will get to it as soon as we possibly can. Great. Great. Thank you for all your work on that, Beth. All right, thank you. Have a good night. See you, Beth. Okay, so we're... Paul, is his hand up? Oh, sorry, sorry, Paul. Quick question for George. Are you going to want Beth at your GOL meeting as well? That's a good question, Paul. Let me think about that. Probably would make sense, but let me get back to you. Thanks. All right, so we're moving on to the MassWorks Comeroy Village Project Outreach and so hopefully we're going to hear from Paul about what his plans are, what he's already done and also talk a little bit about the format of our meetings coming up. So Paul. Yes, thank you. So I think the memo summarizes where we are. We received an email today, noting that the Engage AMR site is up and running. Ben Brieger and Brianna Sunred worked on that. So thanks to Beth who's here tonight. I think the sort of outline is the same that you've seen before. I think where we would benefit from is it's a TSO meeting on the 25th and the 27th and it would be helpful to know how you would like to structure that meeting and Chris will be sort of the lead on our outreach efforts on this. So I guess that's, you know, our goal of the meeting is to hear from individuals and we're actually starting to hear it from folks already on the Engage AMR site. What their concerns are, what they'd like to see change, what they like about the intersection, what are the broader improvements they'd like to have us incorporate into this project. I guess I would look to Chris if there's anything you want to add to this, Chris. Well, I just wanted to say that we've already begun the outreach. We had a meeting with the Disability Access Advisory Committee the other day and they made comments and suggestions and they plan to solidify those at their next meeting. And we're going to be talking to the planning board about this on Wednesday, the 17th of March. And Maureen Pollock plans to speak with the Design Review Board late in March. So we've made some progress already and I think Guilford's bringing us to the Transportation Advisory Committee next Thursday. So we already have, you know, things in the works and yeah. I guess I would like to know from this group, from TSO, what kind of a presentation, if any, you would like from staff on the 25th and the 27th or would you just like to open it up to public comment? I got a little bit of an impression last time we met that you would maybe not want a presentation by staff, but I just wanted to have that clarified. I just have a couple of questions about the outreach. Is the, and everybody else can ask questions too, obviously. What, I know in the initial outreach presentation there was also, you know, expressions that you were going to do outreach to the local businesses and the local residents, you know, neighborhood associations and such. Is that happening or, and how, if it is, how would TSO get the results of that? Well, Dave Zomick and I are working on that. We haven't actually made outreach to those individuals yet, but we have a kind of a working list. So we're, we are definitely, you know, moving in that direction, but we haven't yet made the content. Yeah. And I think that the members, the people they talked to would be encouraged to write to the council or come to one of the public meetings or engage in a different way. Just, this is mostly about education and letting them know the venues that they can, where they can participate on this project. I just feel like the businesses that are actually right on the intersection, you know, they seem like they're major stakeholders in this. George. I wanna go back to the, I guess, the initial question is what do we as TSO want from staff? Do we want a pre, a formal presentation? It is, I guess part of the role here is education. Are we confident enough if we were on our own with maybe a slide deck at our fingertips that we could present things or are we just gonna open it up and have a discussion? Just let people speak is a question for my colleagues because I'm not sure myself. My inclination is that it's always nice to have someone in the room who actually knows something about what is happening. And I'm usually not that person, but maybe collectively we would be. So how do we wanna answer that question? Do we need staff? And if so, what do we want? All right. Melissa. So I feel like I'm a little behind in this process in that I think I've said now twice at our TSO meetings that I believed that Darcy would be talking to Paul and through Paul's staff about what these meetings would look like. And it seems like that still hasn't happened. And so how can we react to a plan that doesn't exist yet? So I appreciate that it's been added to engage Amherst. That's terrific. And that's part of the outreach, just like the list of things that you mentioned Darcy is part of the outreach that staff is doing because we had that conversation before. I think it's important that that outreach has been completed before those meetings. As Paul just said, when staff is doing outreach they can say, right to your town counselors go to these meetings because it does not make sense to me to sit at one of these two forums and say, we intend to talk to local businesses but we haven't talked to them yet even though we knew weeks ago we wanted to do that. So I wanna be able to assure people we already talked to businesses. Now we might need to continue the conversation or take a particular piece of it but that needs to happen before these meetings on the 25th and the 27th. So say, I don't know about design review board I'll leave that aside but when it comes to things like you say Darcy the business owners. So I'm feeling like one, the staff outreach has to be completed before the 25th and 27th not after and not reported at the meeting as, oh yeah, we'll do that someday soon. And then secondly, in terms of the actual format of the evening like I said, we keep going around about this and I thought you guys were gonna talk about what that format might look like and then you would tell us tonight and we'd say, excellent idea or did you think about this other thing but instead we're like having another brainstorming session and they don't know why we're in that position and I'm not sure how to move forward because we talked before, is there a length of presentation just as Chris just brought up and George saying having somebody in the room who knows the answers. We can't just say, hey everybody, we got a grant. What's your ideas about this intersection? I mean, we could be there for two days. So like somebody has to shape what the reality is without as we talked about at previous meetings as well including town council without saying this is about a signalized intersection or about around about, right? It's about the underlying issues that will cause us to choose one of those two things. So how do we get people to share those things in a productive way that doesn't just become a bunch of people came to line up to complain and say they wanna signalize intersection and the other half one around about and nobody's thought about the engaging part of it other than the people that have already been reached out to by staff. So I don't wanna just a giant random brainstorming session and I don't wanna lecture and I thought we made that clear a couple of meetings to go. So what does that leave us with? What are our other choices? I would just answer that briefly. Paul and I did talk about it and I think we agreed that we would have a short, pretty short presentation by staff just to give an overview of what the possibilities are and then definitely have staff there to be able to respond to questions and to focus a lot on the questions that Paul had brought up which were basically questions about what people see as problems with the intersection, what's good, what's bad and so on but also allowing them to ask other basic questions like you say this is going to be good for economic development of the area can you help us understand how either one of these options could do that or whatever. So because I think that people are interested in that or they're interested in, I'm interested in it. I'm interested in finding out what are the advantages of the different options or in general, like what's the best case scenario here? And so we don't wanna restrict people's questions but we also don't want them going way off into all sorts of details that are gonna be things that the consultants are gonna be working on after it even leaves TSO. So if people have ideas about how to confine the questions a little bit that probably would be a good idea. Andy? Yeah, I think that what I would like to see is the presentation be brief but to try and focus on those matters that require some level of technical knowledge in it may not be evident to most of the people who are participating like one of the design features of the two types of intersections and why do engineers recommend one over the other and in what circumstances? That sort of thing. Yeah, I think that makes sense to me. Chris, you have your hand up. Yeah, I wanted to say a couple of things. Am I unmuted? Yeah, so I got the impression, this strong impression from Melissa last time we met that she did not want a presentation. So that's why I'm trying to figure out exactly what kind of a presentation you do want. I understand that you don't want a half hour talking about listening to me talking about primary intersection but if you could give me some guidelines about exactly what you would like in the presentation that would be helpful. The other thing is that the planning department staff has been stretched to the limit lately. We have not had time to do a lot of outreach. We certainly plan to do outreach but I don't think it's going to be before the 25th or the 27th of March. It's just not possible. But all the other things we have on our plate including this new development that's coming into downtown Amherst. So we just have to be reasonable about how we're doing this outreach. I have envisioned it as a kind of rolling process where we're interviewing individuals and finding out what they think. We're meeting with boards and committees and finding out what they think. We're gonna have these public forums and find out what they think. And then at the end we'll put it all together. But I didn't really think that there were deadlines where we had to do this before we do this. I think it's kind of a more organic way of doing things if we just proceed the way we are right now and don't feel like we need to absolutely get those interviews all done before the meetings. So I just wanted to say that. Thank you. Oh, I said that's helpful Chris because I mean, we don't have to agree but I need to know practically what makes sense, right? Totally what makes sense. And so given where we are and given where we are with resources, the one, the other thing I wanna follow up with there and obviously the question that you asked first is if Alyssa doesn't want me to talk for a long time then what is it we're gonna talk about? And that's what I was trying to get at when I was saying, we're not trying to get people to line up on either side of a signalized or this. We're trying to get a kind of the underlying but I don't know how to ask that question because I'm not a professional planner and I don't know the exact scope of what we're trying to accomplish versus what Darcy's saying someday later, consultants will work on. The other part of this is that I think I must have misheard something about the meeting with the various groups and I made sense to me up until the point where it's talked about meeting with boards and committees, doing the outreach. It's a two S.O. at one point. And then I didn't hear it said that Lynn would pull it all together because Lynn wouldn't pull it all together. This is a town project that staff would pull all that information together which I think reflects back to what Darcy was saying back at the beginning is if we haven't like, for example, since we won't have the outreach done before the 25th and the 27th, we won't know ourselves nor will we be able to tell the people in the audience we talked to 10 businesses and these are the major concerns they had. We won't be able to say that at that forum. So they won't be able to be informed by that and we won't be informed by that until some later report comes out closer to the time of our decision-making. So I think that's part of what the information flow question is here to is are we just assuming that staff is gonna talk to all these groups and we'll never hear another word about it until a lengthy report is written about all those meetings because like you said, realistically, it can't happen in terms of just like informal reporting out on the 25th and 27th. So what's our end goal here? It's some big omnibus report of all the outreach that then is part of the package for when town council actually votes on it because TSO I would think would wanna be able to respond to, oh, if those are all the things you heard and these are the things that are in the package that's being presented, maybe we're not ready to recommend this to the town council yet. So I'm just trying to figure out where our points are for TSO or if we're just like sending it away for a while and then it comes back to us. We may get more information after the public forum. I mean, we're gonna have a couple of meetings after the public forum before we have to get our recommendation to the town council. And there's only so much that staff can do. So, they're going to all these meetings and so we may get some information after our public forum and that's just the way it is. So, George. Our recommendation to the council from TSO however is strictly about either a signalized intersection or roundabout and that's it, right? That's all, we don't say anything else. I mean, we obviously these discussions and everything that's happening will feed into that decision but in the end the recommendation is for one is either for A or B. Right. So on that topic, like to answer your question, Chris about the presentation, my suggestion is to have just a really basic presentation showing the two options and a very brief overview of what are the pros and cons, I guess, of the two options because people do not know about roundabout. They don't know what the pros are and they just have, they need like Andy was saying earlier they just need more information from people who have technical expertise and there probably will be people that are from TAC that come to our public forum that will speak to that too, that have expertise also but we saw that at our recent District Five meeting people don't have an understanding about roundabouts much at all. So they need to hear that and there may be questions that come from the public that you'll be able to answer in those areas too. Ben. Great, thanks everyone. Yeah, so I just wanted to been holding a few thoughts in my head and I'm trying to remember them but so I'll be there on the Saturday meeting and I can help run the meeting as well. I just wanted to say a few things. One is in terms of like the report that collecting information, the Engage Amherst page is a really powerful new tool for public engagement and kudos to Paul and Brianna for getting that set up and you can right now, I mean, there's a tool on there for people to just write their ideas and that's an easy way to collect information where I think we have planned to develop a survey just a brief survey for the Pomroy Village intersection and hopefully we get that launched before the public meetings but that will be a great tool to just be able to come collect people's thoughts, concerns, their vision for the intersection and that's not just limited. It's limited to, sorry, it's open to obviously business owners, residents, people who commute through, people who bike through so it's really, we're gonna blast it out there and I think what's really nice about a survey, the way we can structure it is, you can ask a series of questions like do you primarily ride the bus? Do you bike? Do you walk? Do you drive through here? And then, what are your main concerns about this intersection? And then, do you live around here? Do you work around here? And then you can begin to kind of figure out that like, oh, the people who live around here are most concerned about the lack of crosswalks or the people who bus generally are more concerned about the speed of traffic while they're waiting for the bus or something like that. So I think developing that survey will be a really powerful tool for understanding the different user groups and what their main concerns are. And I think for me, we were talking about like, do we want to say on the survey just like roundabout versus intersection? And I don't think we want to like make it that polarized just yet, but at this point just like figure out what are people's main concerns? Cause it could be that, you know, it's not necessarily roundabout versus intersection. It's, you know, if you do a roundabout, that's fine, but at least like put a flashing beacon there for to stop traffic if for at a crosswalk or something. So I think there's ways to like, blend the benefits and issues with both types of intersections. So I just wanted to give you a, you know, let you know that that's what we're working on with the Engage Amherst page. And then I also wanted to mention too, you know, I think doing this all remotely and over Zoom is challenging for public engagement and just recognizing that, you know, in my experience doing like planning studios and outreach projects in the past, it's really nice, you know, getting everyone together in a room, having maps to look at pictures, images and people just sharing stories and like getting together in small groups. Like that would be the ideal scenario for this type of meeting. And I think, you know, with Zoom, yes, we can technically do like breakout groups and stuff like that. I don't know if we necessarily want to do that. But I think what I was just going to say is, you know, we can definitely give a brief presentation, but I think maybe having a map like up on the screen or pictures of the intersection might be a good visual tool for people as they're talking so that they can, you know, not just talk on the abstract, but reference like specific points that they see on the screen. So I, you know, we have at this point a number of base maps for the Village Center. So I think, you know, it might be awkward because we're not seeing each other's screen. You're looking at the map, but it might be a good visual tool or maybe it can be pulled up and put down as needed or something. But that's something we can do for the outreach sessions. That sounds good. Yeah. Thank you. Mm-hmm. Chris. So I wanted to say that I was imagining that we would have multiple conversations with TSO as we gather information, as we talk to neighbors and we talk to business people and we meet with boards and committees and presumably after our public forums and we would come back to you and talk to you about what we have learned rather than just, you know, as I think George suggested submitting a report, we don't, eventually we'll submit a report, but I think it would be more useful to have, you know, a series of ongoing conversations before you have to finally make your choice and your recommendation to Town Council. And I think that's what Guilford Mooring is hoping that will occur also because he's talked to us a lot about, you know, rather than jumping to a conclusion or saying this or that upfront, why don't we find out what people like about this place or what they really don't like or, you know, how they use it? And so, you know, just gathering information, I think is important. And then that will help you to reach your conclusion about which thing you want, this or that. So I just wanted to share that. Yeah, and I think that people who attend these forums are, you know, they're going to base their opinions to some extent on data that you can provide. So to the extent that, you know, we can make sure that we have data, you know, like safety data about the intersection and usage, I think, you know, our residents are, you know, likely to ask questions about that is my guess in order for them to help shape their opinions. So anyway, other thoughts, Paul and I can talk more about this. We're gonna, I wish I can't remember when our next meeting is Wednesday. Anyway, we'll finalize the format before the 25th. Any other thoughts about what we should do, Alyssa? You'll have to finalize the format before then, since that'll be the first night you're doing it. So yeah. So I think that the two of the polarizing points that I really appreciated the things Chris and Ben have been saying about not just jumping to a conclusion, Paul's been talking about this too, and, you know, the underlying things that are then gonna drive us one direction or another. And you mentioned data, Darcy, but I think one of the things that's hard for people to quantify, but yet, they have very strong opinions on it, perhaps not necessarily based on the same data or history that our staff would have it on. And so thinking about two questions in particular, one is when people say it must be a signalizing intersection or it must be a roundabout. I think Ben brought up a great point about it could be a roundabout, but it could also have a flasher, right? It doesn't have to be one particular kind of roundabout. It doesn't have to be either Atkins or the one north of campus. And those are your only two choices, like there are modifications that can be made to address the concerns people have. Because otherwise what I hear already in the community is people saying the only kind of intersection that's actually accessible to people with disabilities is a signalized intersection. And that's not factually true, okay? There are lots of preferences, but there are also lots of modifications that can be made. You will also hear people say having a roundabout or having it signalized intersection will make a difference in how many businesses locate in that little area because a lot of people continually talk about we're already seeing it on engageammers. We wish we had more of a cafe there. We wish you had this. We wish we had the other kind of business and we do wish all those things. But there are people who already assume that having one or the other kind of intersection will produce that, A plus B equals C and it isn't like that. So anything you can do to sort of give people a bigger way to frame their heads around this. So it's not just if I want there to be more business that means I have to pick this option. Because that's not what we're trying to get at. What we're trying to get at is if you are of the opinion, as I believe many people are, we want more little businesses there. What makes that a pedestrian bicycle, et cetera, friendly intersection, given we want businesses there versus the state's attitude which was always run people through there as fast as you can. Okay. We're thinking about that because I think that that'll help people get out of their mindset. Right. Okay, so I think that we have exhausted this topic for today and that's 6.56. Do you all feel comfortable with us? I mean, we probably don't feel that comfortable but we're just forging ahead anyway. So... We will have more discussions about it between Paul and me, I'm assuming, before next, or two weeks from today. So we are gonna move on then and look at our minutes for the last two meetings. They're both amended slightly just for, like very, very minor corrections, non-substantive. People have a chance to look at them. Yes, I do. Great job. Thank you, Emily. Yes, I looked at them and I'm fine with them. I'm fine with them too. Okay, anybody wanna move? Let's do both. Move where? Move both of them at the same time. Sorry, it was a lame joke. I move we accept both minutes. If you have the date, Starzy, I don't know they've been in front of me. February 11th and 25th, thank you. Thank you very much. As amended. Second. Okay, we'll call vote. I'm starting with you every time, Melissa. Sorry. Okay, I abstained. Okay, Darcy. Yes, Evan. Hi. George. Yes. Andy. Yes. Okay, great. All right, any announcements? Our upcoming agenda, we dispensed with the stormwater bylaws, so we don't have to do them at the next meeting, where I'm just talking about the first hour of the next meeting. And we are, I think we agreed, Paul, that we could have the presentation from Guilford about the townwide residential parking during the first hour. I already heard part one of it at the TAC meeting and it was very interesting. Okay, and so the second hour we'll have our forum and their surveillance technology people are coming back at the second meeting in June because Paul is going to put together some kind of annual report type thing and he needs that much time to do it. And they're looking into getting a report from Cambridge about how their surveillance bylaw has been going. Other than that, do we have a public here? Any other questions about our upcoming agendas? Okay, do we have any, oh, George, sorry. This is quickly for my own sake. When we meet again, the second half of the meeting will be this public forum. Yes. And at this point in time, I guess the answer, we're just gonna do our best. We're gonna wing it. There'll be a short presentation and then we'll just open up the floor to questions and we'll take, we'll listen and we'll take notes and that sounds okay to me, but that's what I take it is what we're gonna do. We're going to, well, we're gonna have staff there that can respond. I'll make a short presentation and then we'll open up the floor for comments by the public. And we will not, will we engage them? Yes, the staff will. Yes, they will answer questions, okay. Yeah, I mean, I don't think we know enough. The staff will probably answer the questions. Yes. We'll not be talking that much, but staff will be. And yeah, so does that- It's my question, should we be talking at all? I guess it's my question in a public forum. Should we, the members of this committee be speaking other than hello and goodbye? Yeah, no, I don't think we're giving our opinions in this forum. I think I'm gonna be facilitating it, but I'm assuming that I'll just direct questions to staff. So, yeah, and do we have any public comment? We have a person, we have an attendee. If you would like to make a public comment, you need to raise your hand. Oh, she disappeared. You're he, and we have no items not anticipated unless any of you have any. Okay, so we're done, and it's 702. All right, thank you, Paul. Thank you. All right, I have to click on the adjourned. Thank you, Paul.