 Okay. Give a few minutes to see if anyone has actually. Our closed captioning is working now. Oh, cool. I will mention that too. That does, it does do it. No one up. Look at that. Okay. So thank you, Athena. Lindsay, are you ready? Yes. Okay. Okay. On December 1st, 2020 at 2.02 PM, seeing a quorum of the committee present, I am calling the community resources committee of the town council to order governor Baker's March 12th, 2020 order, suspending certain provisions of the open meeting law, MGL chapter 30, 20 allows us to hold this virtual meeting of the CRC. The meeting is being recorded for future broadcast. And we do have closed captioning. Working for those who want to do that, I believe you just have to set it up at the bottom of your screen. If you are connected by zoom. So at this time, I'm going to call upon each committee member by name and to confirm that you can hear me and we can hear you. Please remember to mute your mic after saying present. First, I'm going to call on the ones that are not here, who will join the meeting later. So she will not be here for the first about half hour. And then that leaves me who is present Mandy, Joe Hanneke and Evan Ross. Present. Steve Shriver. Thank you. With that, we will move to our first order of business, which is minutes. We do not have the November 4th, 2020 minutes from the joint meeting yet. I will work on getting them. As soon as I can. So we are looking at only the November 17, 2020 minutes. Are there any changes to those minutes? Evan is shaking his head. And Steve is shaking his head. So with that, I will make the motion to adopt the November 17, 2020 minutes as presented. Is there a second? Second. Any other discussion? Seeing none. We'll take our roll call vote. Mandy is a yes. And then we'll move to the second item. And then we'll move to the second item. And then we'll move to Evan. Yes. And Steve. Yes. They are adopted three to zero. With two absent. Which allows us to move directly into our first item of business, which is I listed as an action item this time. Zoning priorities recommendation. We're continuing our discussion. But I'm. I'm not sure if we can see that. I think we can see that. I think we can see that. So I think we can see that. We can see that we vote of some sort to make a recommendation to the town council on this. We did take a preliminary sort of assessment on the. Items that have to go for consulting. And where the CRC stood on those last week. And so I want to concentrate this week on. I think we can see that. I think we can see that the council would be to ask the town manager to prioritize. In terms of staff time and all of that over the next. We can look at it three months, six months a year beyond. We can pretty much craft any motion we want, but that's the discussion I want to have today. Yeah. And so I think Ben is Ben was here. Ben is still here. You have the most up to date chart, I believe. I have one in the packet. That you forwarded after the meeting two weeks ago. I don't know any changes have been done to it. No changes. Do you want to share that? Or do you want me to share that? Yeah. If you wouldn't mind. Do you have it up? I cannot. I can do it. If that would be. I just have to pull it up. So. Let me pull that up and then find my share button here. Okay. So, and I will. Make it bigger. So this is one. That has a second, an extra column. Well, I don't know whether there's an extra column here, but there was something that was forgotten on the last ones. Yeah. Added. Can you remind me of what that was then? Yeah. It was the small cell five G regulations that that was something that was included on the first. Table and then. It was somehow lost in the shuffle when I reformatted it. But something I wanted to make sure got back into the table. As it's a. Priority of the planning department and something we've. Taken a look at already. So. It's down. Yeah. Down at the bottom there. Okay. And I heard just before this meeting today. From Athena that you were asking that about. The demolition delay by law and that that's pretty much ready to, to come to council on planning board. I did, I did inquire with Athena. Yeah. But I would say it's, it's more like two months out from being ready, to get a piece of evidence from her of what it. What the process would entail. Okay. So let's start with a conversation on. I mean, how are we going to prioritize these? Or how, what in terms of the town council. Request to the town manager, what should our recommendation be? And so the first question, I think we have to answer is we have a beautiful chart here that indicates town council. Planning board and planning department priorities. And should we really be just discussing the town council side of that to, to give an idea to the planning board and planning department, what the town council wants as priorities. While recognizing that the planning department has its own priorities that it will be addressing in due course, or do we want to try and when we send a recommendation to the council. Do a comprehensive recommendation that takes it all into consideration and includes those items that the planning department has and is working on and had priorities that, you know, I'm mainly thinking about the ones that didn't show up anywhere else, like demo delay flood maps, you know, things like that that are going to happen. And so we're going to be focusing on that and do we want to put that in or acknowledge it somehow while also. Creating other priorities or listing other priorities. So thoughts on that. And there are only three of us. So Steven, Evan, and Evan never minds talking, but Steve, you're not going to get out of talking this time. And while there's only three of us, I'm just going to say just chime in, don't bother raising a hand. Does that apply to staff as well? It can apply to staff as well. So I would like to chime in and say that I think that you as council members should focus on the priorities that you think are important and bring those to the town council with the understanding that there are other things and you might want to list them or we can list them that the planning department and the planning board will be working on simultaneously to the ones that the town council thinks are most important. That would be my recommendation. Thanks for that, Christine. That's going to be helpful. Evan, I see you unmuted so. Yeah, so I went back and forth on this in the three minutes since you asked it. But I think I agree. Obviously something like the flood maps is going to be a priority to the planning department, but even me with my background in water resources and hydrology is not seeing the flood maps as my priority that I want to, you know, push in the council. And so I think that the, if there are areas that we see our priorities overlap, I think it's worth bringing that into the conversation of like, look, this isn't just the priority of the CRC or of the council, but actually a shared priority across bodies. But I don't necessarily feel like we should. List priorities as the council's priorities if they're only really playing department priorities. And I also don't want us to constrain ourselves to only the priorities where we, where we see shared identification as a priority across the three bodies, because I think, you know, there are things in that maybe the counselors brought forward that there really is a big part of the council that identified as a priority, but it might not rise to the surface as a priority for planning department or for planning board. But I don't think that means that we should pretend like it's not a priority for the council. So I would back up with what Christine said. And then I have a couple of thoughts on timing, but I can save those if Steve wants to talk about how we present first. And so really the goal here, we just chime in, right? Yep. And our goal is to say that this is what our group thinks should be the priority than the town council takes our recommendation and they can do whatever they want with that. Yes. That's. Yeah. The way I see the motion at council being is council directing the manager or I don't know the word would be direct, but it would be something to the town manager because that's what the council can do. So whether it's asking or directing or informing the manager that the council's zoning priorities for revision are as follows or something like that. Obviously the motion has not been drafted yet, but that's, that's how I see it. It's not. It would be something. Directed towards the town manager. Yeah. So maybe consistent with what Evan is saying, like, I am, I don't think we want to be known as the council that fixed the sign by law. But the sign by law should be fixed. So I think that that can. I think that that can and should move ahead with out. It necessarily being a priority of us. But the, you know, the ones that I hear the most chatter. To me, the places of conflict and opportunity. Are like the BG zone, right? So unlocking BG. I think is critical. And that could be unlocking BG through the 40, our proposal of the unlocking BG. And I don't think that would be a big risk. But I would think that would be a risk. That would be a risk risk or two for no day. But I would think that that would be. I think that that particular area is something of interest to everybody, you know, everybody. The town council slash planning board slash. Planting staff. So, so those that would be something. If you mean the beyond. Did you mean BL. I meant BL, I'm sorry. Yeah. Thank you. Yeah, BL. I'm sorry. Yeah. And then locking BT. No, I'm just joking. Well, at the same time locking BT. And yeah. So what I'm hearing is that maybe this conversation needs to concentrate on those that under the source column have a TC next to them. And potentially a PB planning board. But that we're going to, you know, based on Christine's recommendation and what I've heard from Evan and Steve. Sort of the planning board priorities will continue to move. At their pace with where they are. And then we're going to through the town, what the town council identified when it had the very first meeting on this and through our recommendation, try and identify those other priorities that the council wants to see the planning board work on. And then we're going to move on to the next meeting. And then we're going to move on to the next meeting. Before this council, before this council leaves office in a year. Which also tells me we should be working and looking at things that are in the three to six month. And maybe the six to 12 months, but not the 12 to 18 month section. Can I speak to timing a bit? So I was thinking about, you know, this is a big matrix. And there's a lot in here. So when I was preparing for this meeting, I was thinking about the timing, right? How, what, how are we going to do this? And we essentially have a year, right? More or less we have one year. And I was thinking about the fact that. The spring. If we're thinking, you know, predicting what the council is going to be consumed with. The early spring is likely to be largely consumed by discussions over the proposed library project. The early summer will be consumed by the budget into mid summer. And so where I see the council having sort of the capacity to grapple with zoning is in early winter and late summer, early fall. And so that I guess feeds into what you just said, Mandy, which is we're probably looking at, if we're looking at what can we get done in the next year? We're probably looking at the really low hanging fruit. And then the stuff that might take six months to develop that could come to us, maybe in August. And I'm wondering if you're saying, you know, how do we present this recommendation? And if that would be a way to almost think about it and segment it, which is, you know, I think that there is some stuff. And I know this always seems overly optimistic when I say it, but I really do think that there is some stuff that could be written and sent to planning board in January. And then there's stuff that is going to take more time, but could probably be done by the summer. And I can give you examples of what those are. So I'm wondering if it makes sense to think about the priorities in sort of that two tiered approaches. Here's what we want to do pretty quickly. To get our feet wet. And then here are the things that could be done. That we wanted, we want to accomplish in the fall. And that can help us think about the, the size of the task and the timing. So may I ask a question? Evan, are you proposing that the town council or the CRC would actually write the text of the zoning bylaws that you want to see instituted or are you saying that you would state what your priorities are and turn over the tasks of writing the text to the planning department. So my thought is the latter. I think that when it comes to sort of what I've described as the low hanging fruit. I think that some of those things in theory are fairly quick to write, but I do think that it's more appropriate for them. So let me give you just, let me just say this with examples, right? So for instance, if people are interested in issues of supplemental dwelling units, right? In theory, we could bring back the exact same bylaw that went before town meeting in 2018. It's, it's already written and maybe it could be tweaked, but that wouldn't take a lot to write. Steve just talked about unlocking the BL. He said 40 hours one way to do it, although you've heard my opinions on using 40 hours a way to fix the BL. But you know, the other option is, you know, just adding the BL to, to footnote B and maybe adding footnote A to a couple of the dimensional regulations that in my, in my mind at least doesn't take a long time to actually write that revision because it's just adding two letters to the BL footnote and maybe adding footnote A to say maximum lot coverage and maximum building coverage. So that's what I'm talking about by the things that I think could literally be written like very soon. I'm not saying that we should write it. The ones that I think are a lot longer is I think what we heard some consensus on in this committee and I think that there's consensus on this in the council is the idea of looking at lot sizes in some of the denser residential neighborhoods. We talked about that quite a bit in our last, I think it was our last meeting. And even I think Councillor Pam brought it up in the TSO meeting recently about, I think it was in a TSO, but maybe it wasn't a treaty about having smaller lots being able to build that, that to me is something where maybe there's consensus, but it, it takes a little bit more time because I think the question is how big of the lots, how do you change setbacks? How do you change frontage? And as I mentioned, I think last time, if you're going to change lot sizes in the RG, that might also mean you want to look at the boundaries of the RG make sense. So which is why I think to me that question, even though I would love to just say make RG lots 5,000 square feet, I understand that there's, there's more investigation there and there's more, which is why it's an eight month thing. And I think that it makes more sense for that to come from the expertise of the planning department than, you know, me and Shalini having coffee and saying, how big of a frontage do you think you need? And then Steve's telling me why I'm wrong later on down the road, right? And so I think to me, it's the latter of us telling what our priorities are, but I think the tech should always come from the planning department. Okay. But I'd be curious what my colleagues here thought. Yeah, so I guess with everything that you just said, I think some of it could potentially come from the counselors. I mean, Evan just set forth some, I think it's always better to come from the planning department or the planning board, those that deal with it more than us. And, you know, but I also worry that some of those that are deemed like Evan just said will be thought of as sort of a be all and all to fixing those issues. And, and I don't, you know, there, there's that let's get something done. Let's do it. But, you know, as Evan said with 40, that can't be the solution to fixing the BL because the underlying zoning is still. Bad. I don't, I don't know enough to say is adding footnote a to a bunch of other dimensional regulations. The solution. You know, if we were doing the whole thing, would that be the solution? If we looked at it, it might be a good interim thing to get done now and soon. But I don't, I don't, and that's where I'd need the planning department to say, Hey, this could work in the interim. But as we're looking at, say, you know, improved downtown zoning, footnote a might be deal with it now, get it done and improve downtown zoning takes another year. We're not going to see that for a year and a half. 18 months of having footnote a there gives us time to figure out whether that's good or not and incorporate stuff like that into the sort of foolish or more full rewrite of figuring out downtown zoning. So that's what I worry about doing stuff quickly that is those, what Evan calls the low hanging fruit of it, then. People think we're done and I'm not sure that. Finishes those items. Although I could be wrong since I'm not a zoning expert. Maybe that is enough. So that's, that's my concern. Steve, do you have anything to add? Yes. But you just, you just muted yourself. Yep. Yep. I was tired of pushing down the space bar. So there's another approach to some of the things that Evan and others have been talking about, like frontage and lot size. So I think that. Lot size will be controversial. No matter where it is, it'll be controversial. It'll be controversial. There's another approach to this, which is to take things that now require a variance, which basically is an impossible standard. And move them certain things into the special permit category. So, so now. Things like frontage is not waivable. You know, it's not, there's no provision in the bylaw other than a variance. You know, get a non conforming. Well, there's other legal ways, but there's nothing in the zoning bylaw that allows say a 99 foot lot and the RG to be approved unless that meets the standards of a variance. But you could move that into a special permit category to say that lot sizes. Frontages can be smaller by special permit. So that would be one way of. Incrementally dealing with some of the concerns that you have, but. Yeah, so that would unlock possibly. And especially if you said that within a range, like what frontage must be this, but if it's within 10% of that, then it can be by special permit that it can be smaller than that. Something like that. But that's an incremental way. A baby step up dealing with that, but moving to say from 12,000 square foot. Required lot size to 5,000. Square foot lot size will. Be such a jarring and dramatic change that the prospect of it ever passing and the prospect of getting buy-in from the community. Is difficult. Would be difficult, a very difficult sell, but through this other approach might be a more reasonable. So particularly when you look at all those say, 99 foot lots that are out there, which are actually a reasonable number of them, or 95 foot plots. Possibly. Steve in terms of some things can be done incrementally and have a really big impact. I think just one of the things that Evan mentioned before, which is to add the BL zone to footnote B would have a tremendous amount of impact, because no longer would a certain amount of frontage or a certain amount of lot area be required per dwelling unit in the BL. And that's exactly what's preventing. Development of the BL. So that kind of incremental. Change could have a huge difference. And allowing certain things like. Frontage. To be varied or modified within a certain range. And I think 10% is reasonable. Could also have a huge impact on properties that can't be developed now, but could be developed in the future. So that is not. It doesn't have a lot of shock value. But it could have a big potential impact. So I think what I want to do is talk about. Evan's three to three month range. If there's anything we think, and this is where we'll need Chris and Dave and Ben and all to, to weigh in on, on possibilities. If we could get something done in the next three months or out to the council in the next three months for hearing. What would our priorities be? My opinion. Yeah, sure. I think adding the BL to footnote B should be. One of the highest priorities. And it could be done really easily. In terms of wording. And adding footnote A for a lot coverage and maximum. Building coverage. It also be. Something that could be done very quickly. And the supplemental apartment is already written. So that could be done very quickly. Demolition delay by law could be done really quickly because it's probably 80% written already. And it may be a case that we want to actually remove it from the zoning bylaw and put it into the general bylaw. So that's something that we've been talking about as staff. We think it belongs in the general bylaw instead of the zoning bylaw, but it would have to be a two step process. Where you'd take it, you'd put it into the general bylaw and then take it out of zoning. But I think that could be pretty simple. As long as the historical commission gets the wording down pat. So that's another one that could go. Really quickly. I think. So can I ask a question. Of Christine and them. I see the town council, a lot of people wanted to expand the types of housing permitted in town, both by location and permit. So in the BL or in the RG. And then as a SPR instead of a SP. Is that something that we've got three to six months on here? Is that something where we could add, you know, and I'm throwing something out here that probably we would never do, which is add apartments to RO. But, you know, But, but is that, you know, it seems like the planning department, the planning board all had it various time frames for a whole bunch of how intensive we get with that. An extensive we get with what we're doing, but. Is this is an expansion of duplexes, triplexes, multi families into areas that aren't currently allowed. Something that could be done in the next three months. Similar to that. Adding footnote B is not that hard. In terms of language. Is this something that is also not that difficult in terms of language? The difficulty is. Figuring out which ones you want where and whether it's a special permit or site plan review. I think the wording of it's going to be pretty simple. But the impact of it is going to be high. And you're going to get a lot of pushback. So I think it's going to be very controversial. For instance, echo Hill. Single family houses. If you try to. Make duplexes allowed there or triplex is allowed. It's going to be. Murder. I'm just speaking because I live there. And, and I know, you know. So to me, it sounds like something that we might want to get language out there sooner rather than later. If that's something the council is serious about. Doing so that the conversations. Okay. Evan. Yeah, so I guess where you're doing, Mandy, Joe, which is sort of interesting is looking at, so one of the things we've noticed with this matrix is that some of these things are vague, right? Like need for housing and increased density could mean a million and a half different things. And so are there. Again, I think what you're looking at is within some of these vague things where a lot of people wanted them are there sort of small things that we can do. And I do think that's, you know, I think that if, if, if we did. Fix the BL. S to use and demo delay within the next like four months, that would be an incredible thing. But I also don't think it's bad to think of some of these other things. Around increasing density, increasing housing types. And so, you know, the other ones that I'd be curious to look at that you sort of touched on regarding apartments. Are options. Are other options to that could be simple. To unlock apartments. And so, you know, one that might be, you know, controversial. Would be moving them from special permit to site plan review in some of these districts. I think they're only special permit in. I'd have to look at the dimensional regulations, but I think they're only special permit. I mean, they're only site plan review in the BG and in other areas where they're allowed their site plan review. So that could be one option. And the other one that would be really simple. I don't know if it would be controversial or not. I hope it wouldn't be, would be rescinding footnote M. Which that would be a really simple one to write because you're just removing something. You don't have to actually produce any text. But what at least impact could, could have an impact on apartment development. Yeah. Removing footnote M would be huge. That would be very good. Right. I mean, that, that's one where we actually, it's, I think it's the only one we don't have to write anything because it would just be a removal. Like we could literally have a hearing on that like soon because it's, we don't have to produce anything. It's just removing something. And it could have a pretty significant impact on apartment development. So I think that the apartment development is more impacted by the fact that it's limited to 24 units per building. And has to have a mix of apartment types. I think that's one of the limiting factors. That makes people not want to use the apartment section of the bylaw. Instead, they resort to mixed use buildings or they resort to. Using. Section 9.2, which is what the Aspen Heights project on route nine used where they're taking an existing use and they're doing something that's similar and not more detrimental to the neighborhood, but making it really big. So I'm not sure that allowing apartments in the RG. Well, apartments are already allowed in the RG. They're just limited as to their size. So. Changing the mechanism by which apartments are allowed. I mean, allowing them to figure not just 24 units. For instance, the building on route nine is eight eight units. And it's, I think a really nice looking building, but to limit apartments to being only 24 units. Per building, you end up with things like the boulders and South Point and, you know, things that we're not. And presidential, which I don't think are really a very good use of land. So that's something. And it would make a big difference. And someone reminded me is footnote M where the 24 limit is, or is that a mix of units? Or it's neither. Neither. But note M is requiring 4,000 square feet of lot area and additional 4,000 square feet of lot area for each dwelling unit for certain types of uses. And the, the regular amount of lot area that you would be required to have in those particular zones is 2,500. So going from 2,500 to 4,000 is a pretty big jump. And that was. Instituted because of the spruce Hill development on high street. The neighbors were so horrified by it that they instituted that zoning bylaw, but there's really no, no need for that. So I think that could be done away with easily. Yeah, I wanted to. Just second the apartment definition one as well. I mean, I think that. Footnote M and the 20, the, the cap on units are again, when I say these are easy things to write, it's because for some of them we don't have to write any new. Text, right? Both of those would just be striking something from the zoning bylaw. And so it could be done pretty easily. But, you know, we could even pair them as a, as a package of these are two things to help. Unlock apartments in a way that I don't know if it'd be controversial, but there, there are two things that I think are both fairly arbitrary. And so would make sense also as a starting point of, you know, in addition to fixing the BL of here are things that are just sort of arbitrary or broken in the bylaw that we can fix. Are there any other suggestions for. A three month sort of potential items for three months. Dave, we put you on mute. I put you on mute because we were getting a lot of background noise from you for some reason. Are you saying I'm full of background noise? I don't know whether it was because it wasn't through your headphones and the computer. Mike was the one picking it up. I have no idea. But we were getting back to that. So what were you saying? No, no, no, this has been a great conversation. The three to four, three to five months. The only thing I would add is, you know, hoping that we. We add maybe one more lens, which is kind of the COVID lens, kind of coming out of COVID. What, what do these, you know, if we pick four or five or whatever the magic number is, you know, just applying the COVID lens, you know, how can that help downtown? We know it's going to get worse before it's get, it gets better downtown. I don't know. I don't have any specifics, but just kind of applying that COVID. Overlay. To these things. You know, I don't know. I mean, I'm not as owning expert, but. No demo delay has been on the list for a long time. Is it, is it easy to get through? Maybe it is. I'm not sure if I applied the COVID lens to demo delay. I'm not sure it really. Helps that much. I think it's a nice thing to get done. I think it'll help in the, in the mid to longer range. We've had a lot of complaints about the demo delay. But anyway, I'm curious if Chris, if Chris has any thoughts on. Kind of applying COVID to, to some of these things. I think that article 14 goes a long way to. Loosening up regulations regarding. Rebirth after COVID-19. Because article 14 is in effect until the end of December of 2021. So that means that businesses that want to start downtown. Restaurants. You know, small stores, whatever, whatever would have normally required. Site plan review or. Special permit would now be under. Article 14 and would be allowed by approval by the building commissioner. So I think we have. That in place, at least as far as the end of December of next year. And that's going to, you know, grease the wheels as far as getting businesses back in place. In the downtown. Elsewhere in town. I think that it would apply elsewhere in town too. For village centers and business districts. So we have that. So I'm not feeling a lot of urgency to. Make changes that would. You know, help businesses get back because I think they have that. At least in the short term. I think what I was going more for Chris was kind of the vision. Like. Applying the vision of a post COVID downtown and a post COVID village center, because. I'm not really sure, you know, article 14 is great, but. Certain retail is going to come back. Restaurants are going to come back. But I was kind of looking further and saying. You know, are there things we can do to set ourselves up downtown and in our village centers to be. Better prepared for a new and different. Local economy than the one we've had, because I think. Many of us are concerned that if we just rebuild what we have, it is going to be as vulnerable as it was to the pandemic. And I don't know about you, but I don't see retail coming back. I think it'll be weaker than it ever was in our downtown. Because I just don't think any of us are going back to retail. Even in the same way we did before the pandemic, which was local retail was dying. So I don't know. I'm just. I'm just free, free, free wheeling here a little bit. Probably. Not focused enough. But. Thinking about, for instance, connections to the university. Are we doing enough with our zoning? So that we. Are being visionary to say, you know, Are there ways that we can be more in sync with, with when the university gets back on its feet. That we. Are providing opportunities for spin offs then. And some of the things that are coming out of the university to actually land locally. I guess is where I was going. I mean, in my mind, Dave, that begs the question about one way down here, which is the zoning map potentially, you know, to land stuff coming out of spin offs coming out of the university. We need to prep. You know, the, I don't know whether it's the industrial, but certain areas of our zoning for. Things. And I'm not saying this very well at all. But. But that's that to me. Goes to do we have the right mix of each zoning zone. In town. And I don't know whether we could even do that in 12 months. That goes to what we were talking about with RG and RO and our, you know, RBC and all these things with lot sizes and everything. And up zoning or down zoning or rezoning to completely different types of uses. But maybe it is allowing more types of uses in random zones. Through special permit to help prepare for that. You know, we've heard a lot about. Professional medical offices that have problems getting into professional research parks and other things like that, that maybe what we need to look at is our use chart. And what is a no in all of these zones and to prep out of COVID to try and catch spin offs is to move things to a special permit in some of these zones. Instead of a flat out no. And all. So that's, that's where my mind goes with what Dave is saying. And I have no idea whether it's even doable in 12 months. Let's go back on the earlier track because I don't want to get a sidetracked on that. That might be a bigger. Longer discussion. And I think you guys were going in a really good direction. You're identifying those. Side track us to respond. And then we'll get back to our conversation. So may I say something? Sure. Christine. So I've thought about this. I've thought about this. And I think there are two ways to expand the. Use of land for spin offs from the university. And one of them is to expand. The PRP zone and expand the light industrial zone. But in order to do either one of those, you would probably be taking land that is. Zoned outlying residents or limited density residents. And those two zones are sort of. Sacrosanct in the minds of the public. And so you'd be. You know, kind of. Running into the wind to try to rezone some of those areas, unless they're right on the edges of PRP or right on the edges of. Limited industrial. I don't feel like people are going to want to. Change large portions of our residentially zoned land, which is a lot of it is agriculture and forest. To an industrial or. You know, office park type of zoning. It's something that we can look at, but I don't feel like it's really going to. Change things that much. I do think that allowing different units of. Some of these zones might make sense. And for instance, what Mandy Joe. Mentioned, we have research and development. We have a research and development overlay district along University Drive. Maybe we could. Look at the PRP zoning district and make sure that it can accommodate the same kinds of uses. That this research and development overlay. Accommodates on University Drive. And if not, you know, put that overlay over some of the PRP. Anyway, those are things that we can look at, but I guess I would. Kind of recommend against taking large areas of residentially zoned property and. You know. Making them into limited industrial or. PRP. Thanks. I went to before Evan, you speak. I know you. Unraised your hand. Sarah has joined us. So welcome, Sarah. We are talking about zoning priorities. And you're probably like, what is going on here? You just stepped into this conversation. But we are trying to take this chart and figure out what we're going to recommend that council have priorities on. And once Evan speaks, I will summarize where we are with a really short-term three month priority list. So Evan. Yeah, so I guess I just wanted to pick up on something that Dave said, you know, the COVID lens. And I think that what we've recognized in just the conversation we've had in the past seven minutes or so is that there's the COVID emergency lens and the COVID recovery lens. And so I think the COVID recovery lens is maybe the more interesting one. To me, and there's a lot of ways to look at it, some of which you've all touched on. One of the other things I just wanted to throw in there because I think that it merges a bunch of things is one thing that I think we've really learned in our emergency response to COVID is how valuable our outdoor spaces are. And God, we, we took away parking to do outside dining and an emergency response. And in the, what, two years that we've been counselors, I don't think there's anything that's been done that I've heard such positive feedback on. We, as improving the ability for people to conduct business, whether it's retail or restaurant outdoors, the public. And what I think we're going to see is, when COVID goes away, folks are still going to want that. I think that people enjoyed being able to eat at restaurants outside at restaurants that haven't historically had outside dining. And where this sort of brings me to is actually to some extent design guidelines. You know, when I read the design guidelines for the 40, our district, I was somewhat surprised because I always think of design guidelines just as the facade of the building, the physical look of the building. And yet the 40 yard design guidelines really delved into the streetscape itself. And I'm wondering, I guess, if going forward thinking about, I know we have BG district setbacks on here, but thinking about design guidelines, not just in terms of the building, but also in how we use the streetscape will also be important because what we can do is use design guidelines to build into our zoning. Development that factors in the fact that people are going to want to be outside more going forward. And so that when we have new developments, we encourage maybe bigger setbacks that we could put in the space where there could be outside dining and stuff like that. And so I think there's a lot of ways to think about COVID recovery, but I think one of the things we're going to see is that people really liked the warm, the warm weather outside experiences. And if there's a way that we can build that into our zoning going forward, I think that would be beneficial. So I'm going to summarize where we are for Sarah's benefit. And those are some of the things that we're going to be talking about. I'm going to summarize where we are for Sarah's benefit and those who may have joined us. We are trying to come up with some priorities. And last meeting we reached consensus on where the council priorities for consultant money would be, which is in design guidelines, form based zoning or design guidelines. However, you want to phrase that and refer to that. So I think one of the things that we're going to be talking about is what can we see in three months. And we're talking about mainly council guide, council priorities, not those that we see on this chart from the planning department. And we've talked about adding the BL to footnote B, adding footnote eight, a lot coverage and lot size. I think it was. Bringing back the supplemental dwelling unit bylaw from 2018. Demo delay is almost getting there. So that might be something we see. But we're going to be talking about. Starting a conversation on housing types and expanding where certain housing types can be built in town. Moving apartments into the site plan review section. Permit in more areas instead of special permit. Removing footnote N. Regarding apartments and department definitions in terms of potentially removing caps on units or enlarging the cap on unit numbers and types of, I guess it's no. I mean, I think there are multiple unit types that are required to be in apartments. I guess as a way to say it, they can't all be one unit, one bedroom units right now. Those definitions of what apartment is. So that's where we are at three month priorities. We were trying to circle to, are there any more on the list of three month priorities? And I put three months in as we would be able to see some, some language within the next three months. I think. I think that's really, they want to add to this list that is getting long and quickly out of the realm of being able to be done in three months on it. Well, that shows you what a limited tool zoning is. Cause I completely agree with everything that Evan was saying that the occupation of the outdoor space, particularly parking lots or parking spaces. it's fun. It's fun to see people eating out and it's attractive. I mean, this happens in big cities all the time, right? So it's relatively limited in Amherst until now and now it's everywhere. But the idea of those spaces becoming parking spaces again is kind of heartbreaking. So I guess this is not a zoning issue, which is where I'm going with this, but expanding though, you know, particularly that part of the week of my pleasant, right? North, east, no, north pleasant, you know, where Antonio's and all those, that string of restaurants is taking away that seating and making those parking spaces seems heartbreaking because it could become part of an extended sidewalk, which we already have in other parts of downtown. But I'm not sure how we deal with that with Sony. In other words, I think that that's more of a public way issue, but I also do agree that the one place that it is addressed is in the 40-hour also. I am not seeing any other requested additions to that three month list, which means we're going to move on to the six to 12 month list, which is as far as we'll probably get today on this. And when I say six to 12 months, that means potentially things that we could start seeing in, you know, August, September for potential vote, I guess by December, because in January, there would be a new council. December of 2021, January 2022, there's a new council. And so if you allow three months for it to get through to hearing three to four months to get through hearing and all, we'd be looking at presentation initially to council sometime in August or September. What what types of what priorities might we have for something like that? Or is the list we already came up with where we are? Evan? So I mean, the list, the three month list we came up with became pretty substantial, although as we said, some of those, at least to produce the actual amendment are pretty, doesn't take a lot of time. The two that I will say they're my priorities, but I also think that they are shared priorities amongst a number of counselors that I've spoken to. One is what we talked about earlier, the idea of taking a look at some of the dimensional regulations in the RG and I think also it should be the RVC. You know, one of the things I wanted to say, I forgot to say earlier about the COVID lens is one of the other things I think will be important is also really putting a lens on our village centers and not just on our downtown. And so I think the RG is important, but the RVC is also if we're going to keep the RVC as a separate district important. I think that's something that again, I think there's there's broad consensus across the council that there's at least interest in looking at, you know, do you need a 12,000 square foot lot and maybe the solution is, you know, my preference, which is to reduce the minimum lot size, maybe the solution is what Steve recommended about allowing a variation within reason through special permit, but I think looking at those dimensional regulations in some of the denser neighborhoods and then the second thing, which I know that the planning board is interested in, I'm interested in, I've talked to other counselors, which Chris mentioned earlier is the idea of lowering barriers to the development of duplexes and also potentially triplexes. I know this is something that the planning board was working on and I know this is something I'm interested in. Again, these are two things that I think take more effort than the things in our initial list because again, you know, Chris hinted at there might be some neighborhoods, maybe duplexes make sense in all residential neighborhoods. I certainly think they do, but maybe triplexes don't make sense in every single residential neighborhood, maybe just in some. And so both of those are more complicated, but I don't think that they're so complicated that they couldn't be done in a year. And those are two that I think could have potentially a significant impact on housing as we look to our housing policy next. And I think also send important messages about what we're thinking about around housing. And then I think maybe it would be controversial, but I think among the council, there will probably be broad agreement around those two things. Those are my two six to 12 months or eight to 12 month priorities. Steve or Sarah? So the first thing that Evan said was the housing, RG dimensions or RBC dimensions. What was the second thing I couldn't write? Duplexes and triplexes, lowering barriers. Adding the ability to build them by right in various different residential zones. Yeah. So one of the things that Evan and others talk about a lot is basically getting rid of single family exclusionary zoning. So in other words, any zone that you can only build a single family house by right. But we, the only places where we don't have that. So you can do it by special permit and pretty much every residential zone. Yes. Except for, so, so basically changing that to SPR. Is that what you're thinking or changing it to just a Y? I guess I'm asking Evan if that's okay. If you're asking, I mean, my ideal would be changing it to a Y, treating them the same as single family homes. But I think changing it from SP to SPR could be useful. And then of course with triplexes, we don't even have that's not even allowed at this point. So, so I think that that one idea of changing duplexes to SPR everywhere that there's an R zone, except for residential, our fraternity zone. To me, that makes a lot of sense. And, and then part of it is that I was thinking about, taxes. So generally, people are willing to pay taxes. If there are kind of no exceptions to that, like this is a tax that, you know, that everyone pays. And you, you basically know that you have to pay it. So to me, it never really made sense that certain our zones are SPR and other our zones are SP. Because to me, I always felt that if we're going to, you know, if we're going to take that hit, if we're going to agree that that's a good thing for Amherst is to allow the single family housing lots to be developed more intensely, double the density, then we should allow that everywhere. So I, I, that's one that I completely support. The dimension one, I have to think and I know that I've been the one that's pointed out my own house about, you know, how this can never be built today. But I also know that all around me are big lots that are filled with two family houses and three family houses and more. So I think that the density has been accommodated in other ways. So, but the first one I definitely support. I think the other one is more controversial needs a lot of study. When you get to really narrow lots, there are design problems that come up. So, but I, I guess I also stand by what I was said earlier that I do think that we shouldn't have a hard no at at the front edges that we have that we should have a soft no like a special permit in some cases to vary a little bit. May I say something about the duplexes? So a number of years ago, we did change our zoning by law to allow duplexes by right in the RG zoning district. And what we ran into was developers, investors, whatever coming in and buying them up and then not managing them properly. So we changed the law to say that if you were an owner occupied duplex, you could be you could have it by by right or by site plan review. But if you were a non owner occupied duplex, you had to have a special permit. And I think there was a reason for that because the houses that were being bought up by investors were not well managed. And so there has to be a way of kind of forcing these owners of properties to manage them properly, not to disrupt neighborhoods. So I'm throwing that out there because I think that the idea of allowing duplexes all over town in every residential district by right is going to run into a buzz saw. And I should be clarified that I was talking about the owner occupied duplex when I was Yeah, I'm not sure of, but not a non owner occupied duplex. All right. Thank you. Sarah, do you have anything to add? So for the most part, I don't have any issues with the things that we're talking about. You know, I think that it, you know, adds a lot more life and diversity in people, which is fantastic. The only thing I would say is somebody who lives in a village center is that I think the council also talks a lot about community, but forms community, walkable community. And so one of the things that I would like to see us try to do, and I'm not sure if it has to do, again, I'm not sure how much this has to do with zoning, but I think it might in some ways is that while we're encouraging diversity and housing and maybe more density, I would like us to also be looking at what kind of businesses we allow or encourage or what the spots are so that when you have a village center and you have more people living there that they also have a place to get food or maybe see an outside art venue or things that that make community and that your basic needs can be met if you need to walk into your, you know, your village center. And the other thing is also, if we're talking about getting rid of a lot of the parking, I think that we also need to look at how we're handling transportation, especially at night, so that if people are working, you know, later at night in restaurants or any other kind of building, they can make it back home. And also, if you live in North Amherst or South Amherst, maybe you decide not to have a car anymore, if you wanted to go somewhere in the middle of town at night that you could still get back home pretty easily later at night, 10, 11 o'clock at night. So those are just things I would just want to see as sort of a balance as we look into that density. Thank you. I'll chime in with my echoing the issues of looking at the single family zoning or exclusive zoning that some of our areas have. That's where I was going with the three month priority of start the conversation on housing type expansion. You know, and so that's one where I look at this chart and seven counselors out of I think I had 10 responses, 70% of the council was like, we need to figure this out. So that's why I look at that and say that that I think should be a priority for this council, because there's clearly some, some desire to focus on that. And so at this point, is there anything else people want to add to the three month or sort of the eight, nine month list from the council? I've tried to show everything I'm missing reviewing the zoning map down here. And I'm missing recodification up there. But I'm not seeing anyone jump up and say, here's something else. So I guess my next question is, are we ready with this conversation and with last week's regarding consultant money to take a recommendation to the council? And I ask that interpretation from the fact that I have no idea what this motion would look like. You know, I can read the list I've got again, because I've been taking notes. And then I just don't know what, you know, salt and money. This is big enough that we might want to be able to see a motion. Yeah. So, so this, this becomes the question, right? You know, um, so let me, there we go. Let me show, I'm going to stop this screen share and show a different screen share, which are my active notes. Let me see if I can make it bigger. So those are my active notes from today's conversation. I don't know how to put that into emotion. Yeah, and the COVID lens ones, I'm not sure need to be in the motion. That was just again, since it's my active notes, we had a little diversion to COVID lens. So I threw that in there, but I would be looking at these three month priorities here as part of a motion that has eight items on it. Um, the six to 12 month here. Um, and then the consultant money is form based zoning design guidelines. Well, I'd just like to mention the fact that in the three month priorities, remove footnote, it's Amazon Mary. I went back and forth like six times between Eminem. Thank you for that clarification. So demo delay is a council priority. So I'm going to highlight that, or at least I thought I was going to highlight that. That was one that Christine mentioned is something that could probably be done in three months, but that's not one that was on the council list of priorities. Evan, you were going to say something? Yeah. So I'd be fine with essentially, I'm trying to read this quickly, if we remove the COVID lens thing, since that was a little bit of a detour that we should return to later, making a motion that the council send this list of priorities to the town manager. Um, the only thing just to clean it up a little bit, um, adding footnote under three, adding footnote a, um, it's two, uh, I think it's maximum lot coverage and maximum building coverage. I think are the two surprisingly don't have the dimensional regulations open in front of me at this moment. But I think those are the two ones that we're looking at. That's right. You're correct. Well, would we remove demo delay from this list for our purposes? The only, the only reason I might keep it in there is because, Mandy, when you brought it up in that town council discussion, um, whenever it was, it, it, it did seem like the fair number of counselors, um, I know at least me and I think Dorothy and I think Kathy all sort of spoke in support of doing something. And so it didn't come out when people submitted theirs, but when it was, so it wasn't something that people thought about when they were asked to provide priorities, but when it was mentioned in a council discussion, there did seem to be at least multiple counselors who were interested. So demolition to me, demolition delay isn't important until it is, and it's becoming, so we're reaching an age where almost every building that is to be added onto or, or torn down or altered will be subject to the current demolition delay. In other words, we're reaching the period where there was a extensive building in Amherst, so buildings that are being renovated are all reaching the threshold. I'm not explaining that very well. So it's not like the days of where we were protecting the carriage houses and the, you know, the quaint buildings from, from long ago. We're coming, we're coming to a period of building where the, there was extensive amount of building done in Amherst that will all be subject to demolition delay if there's any altering of it. So anytime anyone goes for a building permit and there's a garage behind their house or whatever, the likelihood of that being subject to demolition delay is increasing. So, so it's actually a significant barrier to some kinds of development. And oftentimes it's a development of a house, you know, or something like that, or an expansion of a house. Well, the new demolition delay bylaw, am I muted or not muted? New demolition delay bylaw gives the staff the first crack at deciding whether something is significant and if it's significant, then it moves on to the historical commission. But if it's deemed not to be significant, then it doesn't go through the demolition delay process. So it's going to make it easier for people in the situation that Steve was just described to go ahead and, you know, take down the 1963 garage in order to build an addition onto their house. So Evan, do you have any idea of what a motion might look like? Can I just make one more edit is under a six to 12 month priority. I feel like dimensional regulations in the ROG and RBC covers the third bullet, which is frontage regulations for the ROG and other residential zones, unless the whole point is that that that bullet would extend to all residential, whereas the first one is just the RG and RBC. Well, I think Steve had been talking about like RO frontage regulations too, right? Which is why I put other residential zones there because he regularly talks about splitting an RO lot in two that has 198 or that's RG. But I think it's everything. I think that back to my theory about taxes that if we're going to allow a variance on any frontage, we should allow it everywhere. So then maybe just frontage regulations for residential zones. We don't need it for ROG. Yeah. And then and then that at least helps us understand what how it's different from the first bullet. Okay. Yep. I think it's more likely to be used in RG because most of RG is prezoning and most of the other zones are not prezoning. So I'll have to look at the map. Anyone got a draft motion? You had some wording about recommend the council recommend to the manager? Well, so we would be recommending that the town council would submit to the town manager the following zoning priorities. What's the but then what's the next half of that motion to or what we're actually essentially asking then is the planning department then to return to us zoning amendments. So what's the for revisions to be made in time? I'm wondering if is there any is there any necessity or interest in linking this you had one of the goals one of his goals as referencing zoning. Would there be any purpose in referencing that goal that you've already given him, you know, as per goal number 17 or I don't know what number it was, you know, we submit to the town manager the following zoning priorities, you know, and encourage him to direct staff to go forth and create and write. This is the problem. So I'm going to look up what that goal or see if I can find that goal. Do you have it easily accessible? Maybe. I have to find where all of that went. Because it's where did where did I file the town manager goals is the question. Give me a second, but if someone can work on some other language. If I could blab a little bit. So this is not tidy at all, right, because we definitely need planning staff to help with this. But in the end, and only the manager, the executive side is the planning staff rest in the executive side. But then the legislative side is the side that creates law. So we could just be directing ourselves. I don't, it's not a tidy. And then where does the planning board sit. So the planning board is appointed by us. But it's really serves a, you know, a whole different capacity. So who exactly are we directing? Or do we have to direct anybody? Well, the planning board has to hold public hearings on whatever they're given. They can also choose to initiate zoning amendments if they want to. Right. I think that the wording that Dave suggested, which is to encourage the town manager to direct staff to, you know, develop language to what implement or not implement, but make these revisions happen. That's not the right word, wording, but that's what you mean, right? And Councillor Ross could say, you know what, I'm going to make a proposal to add for no day and get the president to put that on the agenda. So then everyone would be obligated to hold the planning board to be obligated to hold the public hearing. So in other words, we could bypass the whole, and that's just something that we do at all. It's just not a, there's not a tidy way of explaining what it is that we're trying to, what we're trying to achieve. So we, we need the executive branch and the legislative branch to work together ideally, but it's not a requirement that they work together. Right. So there's the goal, just so you can see what it was. So the following zoning priorities, what was all the language to find for, to, for encouragement or, I don't know, what was the language to town manager to direct staff to X to develop zoning amendments. Right. That's it. Zoning amendments consistent with the following zoning priorities, something like that. Consistent with or reflecting or achieving the following zoning priorities. We need to reference that list. Yeah. I think just to, just to respond while we're doing this to respond to Steve, I guess, you know, my, my thought on this is we are expressing to the town manager that these are the things that we would like to see, these are the zoning amendments that we would like to see staff produce. But I don't, I think that the other side of that is that the council as the legislative body could in theory just move forward with something that a councilor writes, but I think that doing it this way gives deference to the planning department to originate zoning amendments. But if we don't, I mean, we don't necessarily have to adopt what comes to us or maybe if, if we say we want this done in three months and it's not getting done, you know, a counselor could take action. But I think starting this way at least places their responsibility with the planning department. I must say if I may that if counselors have language in any of these categories that they would like to send to us to sort of prime the pump or jumpstart us, I would welcome, I would welcome that. My note for the report. So there's our motion. The list is here. So, so I guess I'll make it we revised this so much to recommend in accordance with council policy goal. Three is what it was not to economic vitality and the specific one was facilitating the review and revision of the zoning bylaws to promote diverse not neighborhoods affordable housing and new growth in the downtown and village centers. The council to encourage the town manager to direct staff to develop zoning amendments in order to achieve the following zoning priorities and then under that is this list that is in gray now. So I'm going to make that motion. I'll second that. That's what you're waiting for. Yep. Is there any discussion? The only thing that I would say this is I think I don't envy you for having to write this report. Because I think that there's aspects of this that I just want to make sure explained so I think that use of consultant money form based zoning design guidelines that's you know we're really going to need to explain how we came to that decision which was largely that that's sort of what the money was appropriated for. Because I think there'll be you know a lot of people who say why not other things and so being able to justify that one and then also sort of explaining the idea of some of these three month priorities being sort of like incremental steps would also be useful. Any other comments? Seeing none we're going to vote we start with Evan. Yes. Steve. Yes. Sarah. Yes. And Mandy is a yes that is four to zero. I let me stop this there before we move on. It is tentatively scheduled for discussion on Monday's council meeting in less than a week with wondering whether we got to that today or not. So I will inform Lynn that we did vote today so that it will likely stay on the meeting for Monday night. I am going to let you guys know right now that there will be no report until Saturday. I will not have time tomorrow or Thursday to even begin writing it. So it probably won't get out till Thursday till Saturday. With that. Wendy just clarify something. I would expect then that you would want me to be at that meeting at that town council meeting if town council is going to be looking at this list or are they just going to see it for the first time and then discuss it sometime in the future. Let me check with Lynn on that and I will see you on an email on that. My guess is this is the first of at least two discussions because I can't imagine the council acting on day one on this but I can't also ever guess what the council will do. So I am guessing it would take at least two meetings but let me see what Lynn wants for that and I will include you on that email. Someone from the CRC would give a presentation and planning department staff would not be giving that presentation or that is not the right way to ask the question. If you want us to give a presentation please let us know. Thank you. I will rope you in and do that. My guess is the most more of being there to answer questions would be my guess but I will check with Lynn. We will get moving on that. I am going to switch the order of the agenda for now and take public comment now before we move on to housing so we know exactly how long we have to deal with the housing policy. If anyone is here for public comment, hit the raise hand button if you would like to make public comment and if you have called in, I think it is star nine that you would have to do but I don't think we have any callers in so I don't think that is going to be an issue. You will have three minutes to make public comment within the jurisdiction of matters within the jurisdiction of the CRC. Right now I see one hand so bear with me as I work on recognizing Janet McGowan and doing all the buttoning to get her allowed to speak. Am I here? We can hear you, Janet. Thank you so much for moving your public comment to this time. I asked this question a few months ago and I wanted to ask it again. When is the CRC going to go to the public with this priority chart and seek at their feedback and so is it after you go to this town council or just where is the public part of this process because I think earlier you had said that that would happen but I'm not clear on that where the public gets notified and also kind of how. So just wondering where that piece, what that piece will be and when it will happen. Thank you for that comment. We will figure that out at a time but there is always allowed public comment at any meeting of CRC and of the town council and these are just a list of items. They are not the proposals yet and so I would also say that when proposals come forward at least as it relates to zoning there is always a public hearing as well as many discussions at meetings. So thank you for that. Is there any other public comment? Seeing none we are going to move on to our next agenda item which I think I'm going to, before we do that and before everyone else leaves, Christine and Ben I want to thank you for your time. I don't know whether you guys are interested in housing policy or not. You're more than welcome to stay but my guess is this is not something that's going to involve you so if you wish to leave you may. We thank you for your time on zoning priorities and look forward to working with you as we move forward on a number of zoning issues in the coming year. So thank you all for this and for the chart and everything and Christine I'll be in touch with you on Monday and what all is going on there. Okay. Thank you. The next up is how comprehensive housing policy. So I want to thank Evan. I went to, I did a bunch of revising and then I, Evan actually asked if I wanted help and I said great and I sent him the revision I had and he redid it and did a fantastic job and stuff so I just want to acknowledge Evan's work on the document that we're going to put on the screen soon and then I also, back when Pat was on the CRC, Pat DeAngeles, Councillor DeAngeles, she was not just willing, excited and looking forward to working on a housing, a comprehensive housing policy. So when I got this back from Evan and was seeking, you know, comment I reached out to her and asked her for her comments which is why you see in the comment section of this document a number of comments from Councillor DeAngeles because I went to her and said, hey, we're getting there and you had asked to help and so could you make some comments? So let me see if I can put this one up and see if I can find it. Let me find it first. Get it so I can. And what I hope to do on this one, this meeting is look at the introduction and the, a little bit, but mostly concentrate on the strategies and the measurable section. We have done a lot with the goals and objectives and blurb under the objective sections and those haven't changed too much. The introduction was changed slightly. I don't think we've really, truly looked at it before and then some of the other intros, you know, sort of explanatory sections were also changed, but I want to talk about strategies. We have about a half an hour and if we can go through, I don't think we'll get through all the strategies. I want to leave the last 10 minutes to what we're doing or maybe the last 15, 10 minutes or so on. Is this in a form where we can distribute at least some of it out for feedback and how do we want to do that? So let's start with the introduction and all. There's a structure question. As you see, it changed structure completely. At some point we're going to have to decide on a final structure and all, but for now this is the structure we're having. It might facilitate us sending portions out sooner and splitting the portions out to send if they're separated like this and in the end we might decide to combine them back. But Evan? Yeah, so with regard to the introduction, the one thing that I noticed when I was reading through this, but I didn't change, which I wanted to bring up because I know Pat sort of brought up the same thing is if you just read, you know, we set this out as a comprehensive housing policy. It's not an affordable housing policy, but the introduction is especially this sort of middle paragraph is sort of really focused on affordable housing. And so I guess maybe two changes. One is the second sentence. This policy supports the development of new affordable housing throughout Amherst. I think should either be just new housing or new affordable and market rate housing because we are trying to do both. I don't have a preference if it's just new housing or new affordable and market rate. And then Pat pointed out that we say affordable how it comes with incomes less than 30% and 60%. But then we then it makes it sound like we're only focused on those two, whereas we are also focused on less than 80%. And we do actually in the measurables mention 80 to 100%. And so I would maybe even just take either we add the percentages there, I think, or we just take that out and say prioritizing funding with the free the creation of affordable units or something like that across a range of affordability levels or something like that. You guys should all be able to see them as they happen. So if you don't like a change, speak up. Any other thoughts on the introduction for now? It goes on over here too. Seeing none, we're going to move on. I said we would skip the housing policy goals and the objective sections today because those are what we've concentrated on the last two times we've talked about this housing policy. So we're going to move on to moving forward. Any thoughts on this one or any changes you would like to see to it before we move on to the actual strategies? Everyone seems happy. So we're going to move on. And this is where we saw a whole lot of change between the last draft and this draft. I went through and tried to combine everything. And then Evan not only combined stuff, he then organized it too. I tried to say, oh, this item was in both the housing market study, the housing protection plan and the master plan. So I went to one bullet point instead of four bullet points. And Evan did a whole lot to not only suggesting what priority level things are, but making it understandable and into paragraphs instead of random bullet points. It actually reads logical and understandable now probably. So Pat suggested that we look closely at each strategy and pose specific questions, including, you know, does this strategy that we have make it possible to have the kind of diverse housing stock we're looking for or might it unintentionally contribute to more high end housing being built? She was particularly concerned with tax credits and the unintended consequences that they might have. So, you know, I think as we go through these strategies, we need to talk about them specifically and whether they are something we want in high, medium or low priority and what those consequences may or may not be. Evan? Yeah, so the other thing, so what I, you know, Mandy summarized what I did here, but I want to mention that with very few exceptions, everything that was in the original list is in here. And if it was taken out, it's likely because it was duplicative of a different bullet. So if there were several things that said the same thing, I just did one. But I guess one of the things I'm also interested in, because I'm not quite sure where I stand on this, is some of these strategies are really vague and could take a number of different forms and some are really prescriptive. And I guess I'm not sure how prescriptive we want to be. And so do we, do we either want them to be very specific and prescriptive? Do we want them to be clear enough that they said that you could call the strategy but isn't saying here's the exact zoning amendment, which some of them do, or do we feel like it's okay to have a mix? Because there really is, I mean, some get down to here is the exact zoning amendment, and then some are like increased access and it could mean a million different things. And I'm not sure exactly where I stand on that. So I guess as we're going through, that's another sort of aspect that I'd like to hear opinions on. Thanks for that. So let's start with the first goal, which is increased production of housing throughout Amherst. We want to build more housing to create affordable housing and market rate housing. And so we'll start with the first high priority labeled is increased housing density in downtown and village centers. We were actually talking a little bit about this on zoning priorities. A lot of these we'll see intertwine. So are there any thoughts on what Evan just said and what I just said as it relates to any of these four bullet points? We'll start with increased units per building. This is one that is sort of in the middle on specificity. And I'll just say one of the things that I did here was add the which may include clause, which was an attempt to sort of dampen down how directive or prescriptive it is, which was here's what we overall want to do. And here are some examples, whereas I think in the original bullet points, each of these was just said do this, but I don't know if that's something that people like or you know. I get confused. So first, I think this is clear and generally great. I get confused around the building a large number of small units on a lot that allows one unit adding units to existing buildings altering the town's approach to calculating and regulating density. So maybe the part I'm not quite understanding is right, a large number of small units on a lot that only allows one unit. What does that mean? I think that's the right now single family zoning only allows one unit and start building cottage developments or up zone it or somehow change the zoning so that it could allow more than one unit. Is that is that what you're going with, Evan? That's a great question. I don't remember what the bullet point said originally. That's why right now I'm frantically trying to find my original document that showed where everything came from because I didn't write that that was taken from one of the bullets and so I have to figure out where that bullet originated from. And the reason I asked so I guess it's just a matter of what terms are we using. So a building to me is like a self-contained structure with a roof and you know walls you know and a unit is can be that but it can also be an apartment within a building. So it seemed to be like the major heading increase units per building is talking about a single structure with walls a roof and a basement or a slab. How many apartments can you put in there or how many whatever can you put in there? But then cottage units if that's what it's saying that's a different thing because those are separate buildings. Like if we're talking about small houses yeah or cottage developments on a single block or even accessory dwellings that's a different accessory detached dwellings that's a different discussion. I'm sorry it's a nomenclature thing. So I think what Steve is going at is this one is in the wrong section. Maybe. Because it's increasing the units per building and this one might be increasing the number of buildings on a lot. Right. And there is a lot of discussion in the various commentary about like in the BL you can build a building of a certain size but that it's never specified how many units there are so you can go there's a specification that there's a mix of units. But I think yeah I think this one's important I just think there's something misplaced there. Okay so we'll delete that section there because I think it comes out somewhere else. Any other thoughts on the increased units per building as a high priority for increasing housing density in downtown and village centers? Seeing non-infill development this is where SDUs and all. This is why? This could be where supplemental dwelling units although this is not what what Evan put as SDUs. Promote infill development for underutilized lots and land between buildings. You know it's interesting because infill means something different to everybody. And to me it means two of these things but to me it means underutilized land such as vacant lots and parking lots does not necessarily mean land between existing buildings. Could if that land between existing buildings is the parking lot but it doesn't necessarily mean that. So it's not infill like a missing tooth necessarily it's more infill to me really means building up to either aspirational densities or to densities that are nearby. So there's the proposed amendment. Yeah well once you do such as then that's fine it doesn't mean. Yeah shall we move on. But in particular particular I think one of the the real priorities is our brownfield sites so like some vacant lots are like a park could be seen as a vacant lot right so okay we have that. We have it as a low priority. Yeah. For the redevelopment of brownfields and if I had to. Yeah that means different things to different people too. Yeah if I had to guess the reason for that is we don't have a lot of that technical definition of brownfield or grayfield in our town. Like for me so let me try to explain what I'm talking about. So like the parking lot behind there's a the parking lots that are surface parking lots that are in sort of the north part of downtown near Brutucci's to me those would be sort of high priority infill sites but then there are other areas say the other side of Kendrick park where there are more single there are more apartment buildings on green space that would be less of a priority for development but maybe I'm just overthinking this. Comments on 40R because if I guess my thoughts on the we put that on here with a flat out adopted we're coming out with a bold statement that no one has actually made yet either at the town council or at the planning board as far as I know and so is this something that should be written as boldly as it is right now? I think you could say well you could say consider support here but you could also say adopt overlays or new zoning to increase allowable density so without specifying that we need 40R because I agree we have not vetted 40R I mean we as a council have not vetted 40R. Sarah so I actually would like it if we maybe came out with some softer language I feel more comfortable with that because right now without having the benefit of talking to the rest of the council initially I'm I don't know that I'm crazy about it I'm going to say that I also say if the rest of CRC feels like we need to make a stronger statement I wouldn't vote against it although I would tell the rest of you that right now I'm not a huge proponent right now of it. Yeah thank you for that Sarah I I am also unsure whether I like the current proposal or not on overlay district so let's see if we can modify this to consider adopting overlay districts in downtown and village centers to increase allowable density while ensuring affordable housing production is that a better wording Sarah? Yeah I would feel more comfortable with that and then we're on to adaptive re oh Evan. So I actually raised my hand for another point but I I'm okay with that language but I also sort of feel like if you say adopting an overlay district to increase density while ensuring affordable housing you're talking about 40R right I mean an overlay district that increases density in exchange for affordable housing is 40R so I'm okay with I'm okay with the size is I'm definitely okay with the softer language because you know I agree the council actually hasn't had a good conversation about 40R yet but to some extent I feel like you know we're talking about 40R so why not you know call it what it is um and just keep this smart growth overlay you know you don't have to you can say smart growth overlay district because what you're saying is consider adopting a smart growth overlay district which is a specific tool in the areas because even if even if we have differing opinions over the current 40R proposal we might like it for we might like a different version of that proposal or in a different location but I don't know it just seems weird to me to essentially call out 40R but to not use the name 40 to smart growth overlay district because that's what we're talking about but what I actually had originally raised my hand for was because again my one of my primary interest today is how specific should we be with the infill development you know are we are we okay and I know we move beyond that but I want to pull us back with the idea of this may include amending zoning by law 3.2 by adding infill development I mean that is a very specific recommendation it's not as specific as it that's directly from the housing market study it's not as specific as in the housing market study but it is fairly specific and is that are we comfortable with that level of specificity versus just the first sentence of promote infill development Sarah or Steve well see I guess maybe the issue I have is that it doesn't have to be an overlay district it can just be a change of zoning that also allows this the infill development units it doesn't have to be the 40R the 40R paragraph in other words overlay means that the underlying zoning is trumped but the we could just simply change the underlying zoning I think I'm going to say that Evan brings up a really good point that maybe we're making it softer but we're actually saying exactly the the same thing I mean if pressed we're like and you need to look at 40R so again you know I would have to say that if the majority of this this committee would like to bring that I wouldn't stand in the way I do think it's a discussion that council has to have I guess I would just say for the sake of maybe not being surprising to everyone later on in a in a you know a council situation you know I said yes and then later I'm like you know I really think we need to look at this carefully I'm not sure I'm sold on it that the rest of you don't go you know what she just sat there and was quiet and said and said yes you know I mean so I just I'm only saying it so that I give the rest of my committee an idea of the fact that I'm not going to stand the way of it going forward to talk about but don't be surprised if I just bring up some questions so that's and I do agree with Evan it does maybe the language seems softer but it's actually saying exactly the same thing so maybe we want to keep it the way it is right now so we're going back to 40R and the only adding the word consider to changing it to consider adopting instead of adopt and just leaving the rest as it was you could also use the word like investigate smart growth overlay districts in downtown which is really about having a conversation I mean which we've kind of already and the other reason I'm pushing back on this a little bit is like so adopting I get right but consider adopting we've already developed we've already put up the consultant we've hired consultants we've spent a large sum of money to develop a 40R proposal there's been four public hearings to something like we're already talking about this and so I get that adopt seems to put the cart before the horse right that's the same but I also sort of feel like we are actively doing this and so to soften the language and not mention 40R because we don't want to render judgment sort of ignores the fact that we're having this conversation anyway and I get Steve's point of well we it doesn't have to be an overlay district and so we could completely change this bullet and just say consider changing zoning to increase density you know but that that would be that's a very different bullet than what this is right now yeah I mean that that is pretty much the goal if you change the bullet to consider changing zoning to increase density that's kind of what the goal is and we're trying to get what you would do to do that so I've now moved it back to just consider adopting I'm fine with that sir are you okay with that yep okay um can we just take the word adopting out just consider smart growth overlay districts I think adopting is the word that's going to get people hung up there we go so back to Evan's question about specificity infill development units no one seemed to respond to your question they were all stuck on smart growth zoning um my response would be without that we've got a bunch of platitudes without any actual strategy in a sense you know and so when we know there was a recommendation relate directly related to infill development I think it's good to put it in there even if it still says may include because it gives you this is what that might look like um so I I'm okay with the specificity I'm going to move on to adaptive reuse which is again um that specificity unless Steve's not ready to Steve yeah so this is my thing about um if we're going to go for it let's go for it everywhere so if we're going to do it infill developments in any of the r zones let's do it and all of the r zones so infill infill is all relative right so infill in rg looks different than infill and ro because the existing density is different but um you know let's go for it if we're going to go for it and I think that what you just wrote looks good to me I just changed the specific ones to residential zones yeah Evan well yeah okay I guess I'm curious so I mean it's missing rld and ro and rf rf isn't rf is not a it's not really like three parcels that are rf um anyway so right so I guess what I was going to bring up I'm I'm re reading this and questioning why I put infill development in this section in the first place when the next section is increased housing density and neighborhoods surrounding downtown and village centers and I guess the other question which when we get we can wait till we get to that queen to do adaptive reuse first is should this be a separate section I sort of segmented out downtown and village centers and then the neighborhoods around them but maybe there's no need to segment that because if we're talking about infill development we might be talking about it also in the bl and the bvc and the bn right and not just the residential zones so Evan makes a good point this one is the non-residential zones of downtown and village center which is bvc and bg and bl none of the r zones are you right next one is the r zones yeah surrounding so we could just pull it out and pop it into the neighborhood surrounding we also have the problem with adaptive reuse too which is that one for r and rvc rg and any villager business okay so it it's sort of all which is why I guess and I remember having this internal fight with myself about whether to even divide this into two sections or to just lump everything that's on the screen now into one section that's just increased building density in business districts village centers and residential areas or something like that I separated them out just to create a little bit of space and blocking to help people better compartmentalize village center versus neighborhoods but maybe that's not a useful division I think it is I'm just going to move infill development down to here since that one is only residential and we're at 354 so I'm not sure we're going to move on past priority number one um you know I don't know why my hand is saying it is raised oh I'm not in the attendees either so that's odd um so we're not going to move on past that we will continue the discussion of strategies at our next meeting in two weeks I'm going to stop actually yeah I'm going to stop the share for now this document won't change substantially from what you've seen now is it time for us to send the goals and objectives off to various committees for review and comment and feedback thoughts Evan's nodding yes I think yeah yes too so is that just me shipping it off with a request um is it us having a discussion as to exactly what we're looking for um I think Evan had mentioned to me the possibility of inviting the chairs of various committees to a meeting so that we can discuss what we've been doing and what kind of feedback we're looking for um what what are thoughts on how the request for feedback should look so so I guess I'll just start and say you know I think um context is always important um to be able to provide um the context that what we're showing them right now is not the entire document um it's just the first step and also giving them some idea of um what kind of information we're looking for from them and that's where I felt like sometimes that's better done in a conversation than as a directive and that's where I suggested to Mandy when I spoke to her a couple weeks ago the idea of maybe bringing in of inviting in as panelists the chairs of a couple of the relevant bodies to just say here's what we're at here's what we've done and it doesn't have to be a long thing but it also gives them an opportunity to ask questions about what we're doing where we are in the process what we're looking for from them other than just sending it in a memo and it doesn't have to be a long discussion maybe it's just the first 20 minutes of our next meeting but I do feel like having a conversation with the chairs about because this is just a piece and because it's part of a big bigger document a bigger process having that conversation about where we're at what we're looking for and what the next steps are might just be better to be had as a conversation as opposed to a memo what are Stephen Sarah's thoughts on that I think that it would be a good idea to I mean if if we're assuming right that we're all going to be the same committees for at least another month or two months I think talking to the chair because that way it frames the discussion so we can tell them what we're thinking and doing and then when they send it to their committee right then they can ask more pointed questions or give some context or know how they would like to conduct the conversation to be more fruitful I agree okay so I will with us getting through zoning priorities this week I think we can dedicate I'm not sure there's much coming to us through a council meeting I'll have to check but I think we can dedicate most of the next meeting to housing policy which is in two weeks which is the 15th I will invite chairs but I need to know what committees we think we need to send this out to so I'm just going to throw a couple out of ones that seem obvious which is planning board the housing trust ECAC the zoning board of appeals those are the ones I can think of um CPA I guess because we're talking on some of the goals about CPA and CDBG money we could add the two of them to it lots but that gives me a list of one two three four five six committees planning and zoning uh ECAC the housing trust and CPA and CDBG I'm just getting nods and a whole lot of silence that's what happens in a Zoom meeting I'll take that as no one can think of any other committees that that this should go to I actually I do have a question about tech transportation one of our things is talking about you know I mean this is a housing policy but it deals with you know as Sarah mentioned in zoning priorities you know things like transportation are important to housing um and I don't know whether we have any strategies that deal specifically with transportation or not I think we do have a walkability bike ability section somewhere in there um is is tech something is tech a committee we think could be useful on this in terms of their expertise related to transportation as it relates to these housing policy goals I don't think so okay seeing that it is six committees I will send an invitation out to those six committees chairs to invite them to our next meeting for conversation as it relates to our draft housing policy in preparation for seeking their committee's feedback um anything and obviously I'll send them the I'll I'll fix up the first half the part I intend to send them is everything up to the strategies section we were just working on so through moving forward um is what what we'll be sending them as modified today and strategies and the beyond will not go to them because we haven't even been through that yet uh any other thoughts or requests as it relates to housing policy Evan real quick um just give people homework one of the things that I have struggled with a lot when I was editing this that I was hoping to improve but just didn't get a chance to is I think the real weakness of this document right now is the measurables um and and I guess I'd be curious um if we could make sure we spend some time thinking about that and talking about that next time because I think we have some very specific measurables and then some not and and figuring out how specific and how quantitative versus qualitative we want measurables is going to be an important piece of this so so that up there okay I will make a note that we deal with measurables or try to get to measurables next time even if we don't get to strategies if we we finish our committee chair conversations that we move to measurables and we'll come back to strategies because the strategies are as you say at least fairly well built out based on so many other documents we have and measurables are not um any other thoughts comments on comprehensive housing policy seeing none we already did general public comment um um I don't have any announcements other than I'm at this point unless some big surprise comes between now and or after the December 16th council meeting um or 21st council meeting or something I don't plan on having that meeting on the 27th or whatever day it would be the 29th um we've got a handle on our work we're moving along we don't need to meet between christmas and new years so you know unless something gets referred to us that has to be done before that january meeting that first meeting in january at the council I am intending to council that meeting the only thing I wouldn't is if we get something referred to us and they're like and it needs back by january 5th um and then we got to have the meeting um so that's my only announcement uh next agenda you've pretty much heard the preview in january we'll deal with a calendar I think we have meetings scheduled through mid january or the end of january uh I don't have anything unanticipated are there any announcements or unanticipated items from the members seen none I am then going to adjourn the meeting at 4 o 4 p.m thank you all great work today thank you lindsay