 This program is brought to you by Cable Franchise Vs and generous donations from viewers like you. Welcome to the Amherst Planning Board Wednesday, March 4th, 2027, well now 707, Town Room, Town Hall, Agenda. Okay, here we go. Item number one is minutes. We do have one set of minutes from the 29th of January. I see only David, you weren't there, but we have five other members. Did everyone review these minutes? And does anyone have any comments or corrections? Michael? Yes, on page three, the final paragraph before item B. It says the bid is offered to build a parking garage behind CDS and a ban shell in the common. I'm not sure that's exactly what was intended by Ms. Gould's comments. They're certainly considering that. I'm not sure they're offering to actually do that at this point. And since Ms. Gould is here, perhaps she could amplify that if that's appropriate. Can we just add the word proposed or? We actually haven't proposed it either. It was part of a five-part destination Amherst presentation that was presented to the Town Council on January 23rd or 24th. Okay, that's good. Thank you. So we're just doing the minutes here. So can we just strike that line or something? Suggested the possibility of. There you go. Would that work to make it a little? Again, what the Town Manager suggested that we were just part of the five-part. Our parts were not that. That was from the Town Manager. Well, how about because you can't speak because you're not at the mic. Sorry. But let me just say, Chris, this was you speaking. So how about you just clarify what you were saying in the minutes? Because it wasn't like we had a presentation. The bid wasn't here or anything like that. It was just Ms. Bestrup trying to report on what it says provided an overview. So you should just have that sentence reflect what you were saying. And if she did say that, well, then it would be an error. But it's what Ms. Bestrup was summarizing. So I think Mr. Gertwistle had an idea, which was I suggest or the bid was suggested the possibility of building a parking garage. Is that okay? The bid has suggested the possibility of building. Okay. And Chris is comfortable with that. I think that solves the problem. Thank you, Michael. Anyone else have any other comments or corrections? I see none. So I'm waiting for a motion. Move to approve the minutes as amended. I need a second. Any more discussion? All good. All in favor? And I think that's unanimous for what's there. Great. And one or would it be two abstentions? Yeah. All right. Great. So we'll move to item three, public hearing, site plan reviews and special permits. It's 710. We'll do SPR 2020-05462 Main Street LLC 42 Main Street Center East Commons continued from January 15th, 2020 and February 5th, 2020. Request to modify previously issued site plan review approval SPR 2020-01 to change the unit configuration on a mixed use building to add more one bedroom and studio apartments and increase the number of units from 16 to 24. To increase the building footprint by approximately 800 square feet and the building size by a total of approximately 2700 square feet. To adjust the location of certain site improvements to rebuild the back section of the existing office building and to request waivers of the parking requirements and modifications requested so as to be in compliance with conditions one and seven of the decision for SPR 2020-01. B and zoning district map 14B parcel 68. And I just will add that there was a special permit with this, but that has previously been approved. So, Chris. Did you ask about public comment before opening this public hearing? I didn't. And that's important. So, did I officially open this yet? Or is, or can I put it on hold? I think you could put this on hold and ask if there are public comments about anything that's not on the agenda. And this is important because I wanted to state in public comment. This is where you can come up and I know I got thrown off because our guests were already set up. So I apologize to everyone. This is when you can come forward and talk about something that's not on our agenda. And I want to bring up one thing in particular. There was some miscommunication in the newspaper that this planning board meeting was going to discuss parking and parking specific changes to like bylaws or any and that's not on our agenda tonight. So if anybody is here to talk about parking now would be the time to come forward. A show of hands. Is there anyone here who would like to do public comment? All right. Nope. There isn't. So that's good. You don't have to move. All right. Thank you. So we'll go back to the public hearing and Miss Bessar. Is there anything you need to say? Chris or should we just go? Okay. So I will just want to ask one more thing. Are there any board member disclosures? So I do want to say, so should we mention at this time that we have one member who was not in attendance for the, was it the January 5th or? February 5th that Mr. Gemsick was not in attendance. And we're utilizing the Mullins rule. So that has been, yeah, you can say. I signed a statement there that I watched the video. Amherst media. Thank you. Amherst media. So that means that you're eligible to vote on this hearing. So thank you. I assume I am still ineligible to vote. Correct. That's another good. Yes. Thank you. Because I don't think Mr. Marshall was a member of the planning board when this public hearing began. The January 15th is the one that was, but you were here, right? And feel free to ask questions and such. You just won't be able to vote at the, at the one we vote. So, thanks. Okay. So now other boards. Okay. So thank you. Okay. Great. Talk away. You brought us some information back. We have it in our packets. So I guess for the record, good evening, Madam Chair, members of the board, Ms. Brestrup, Ms. Field Sadler. I'm Tom Reedy, an attorney with Bacon Wilson here in Amherst, here on behalf of 462 Main. And its application is the chairwoman noted for the modification of the site plan review. With me this evening is the owner and manager of 462 Main, John Robleski. So we were here back in February. I think you sent us away with really two pieces of homework. One of those was to take another look at the landscaping and screening of those front parking spaces and of the transformer, which we've done. And so there's a rendering either in front or behind you, whichever way you want to look showing the screening that we would be providing of both the transformer and those parking spaces. And then the other piece, excuse me, that we were going to talk about was the parking. And so I think you have in your packets, John put together a narrative essentially that includes a parking management plan, his experience, so basically his testimony based upon High Street. And then he also went and collected data that I think he articulated to you verbally last meeting, but now he's got it in written form in an Excel spreadsheet that essentially the result of which suggests that the bedroom to parking ratio of the actual cars there is around 60%, I think 61%. And John went out last night or early this morning, I suppose, and it was at 62%. So we were right in that 60% range of what the actual bedrooms to the actual number of vehicles in the parking lot. And so that's what we were working with was that 60%. For 35 beds at John's 462 Main Street development, even at 62%, which is that higher end, we need 22 spaces. And as you'll recall, we're proposing 32 spaces on the site. So we think based on that data, and I think you also received a letter from and a butter supporting the request for the waiver. And we think that the data supports the waiver and we think that we meet the requirements twofold, not only the site, the aesthetics and the safety, but also these are complementary uses. You've got the office space and then you've got the residential spaces. And then John's also got a parking management plan. And that management plan amongst other things involves prohibiting five tenants from having vehicles. And while that is not specifically articulated in the bylaw as one of those requirements, as I read the bylaw, it says you shall provide four, but it's not limited to, you know, ride sharing, carpooling, PVTA, et cetera. And so we would suggest that given this location, and as John mentions in his narrative, this is in the downtown with its proximity to the PVTA, right along a sidewalk, plus what we've seen as trends with vehicles that the parking that he is providing is sufficient for the use on site. And so we would ask for your approval as presented. We're obviously happy to have a conversation about any of this stuff. So at this time, I'll open it to the board for questions or comments. Maria. But thank you for the rendering. It's doing exactly what I was hoping for, which is basically, you know, not mask the building or the signage, but the cars. And so thank you for that. And also thank you for this. This is really useful for us and timely. We're going to be looking into the zoning bylaws regarding parking. And so, yeah, we'll add this to our, we've been trying to get data ourselves, I think, and so we'll add this to our inventory. Sure. You know, as part of that parking management plan, I think 462 Main would agree to do some sort of monitoring just to make sure that in fact, you know, there is not a parking problem and then obviously provide that data to the planning department for its use. Janet, I saw your hand first and then Jack. So as you know, I'm not in favor of having leases without parking when there's a provision in the bylaw that it's to parking spaces per unit. So this is this, I do appreciate this spreadsheet because we need data, but this is a moment in time. So I've gone out and looked a few times and I was looking at 22 High Street, which has 12 units. And there were 28 cars in the parking lot. And so how does that affect your calculus or understanding? And then I also went and on Sunday morning, I figured Sunday morning is a good time to try to get there early enough that people weren't gone. And I found several situations where there were 13 cars with a six and a building with six bedrooms, you know, six apartments. And so I was going along Main Street and on the south side where there's a lot of big buildings, the parking lots were almost full. They're like large houses, they're dirt parking lots. And so I have information here that shows that there's more than, you know, one, you know, parking space per unit being used. So are we supposed to base the use of this building over time, over decades, based on one day? Is that reasonable to you? And then is it unreasonable for me to say, listen, I saw 28 cars on a 12 unit building. So we should realize that. And there was enough parking the lot because there actually are 34 spaces. So I guess two responses. I mean, I think 4.30 a.m. on a Wednesday morning is probably a more accurate representation of what the use is going to utilize than a Sunday morning. And Sunday mornings are likely to have guests or visitors stay over because it's the weekend. I think the practical effect would be if there's not parking for guests, guests aren't going to park. And so if we're concerned about tenants and leases and having spaces for the folks who occupy it, I think the reality is, and it's somewhat of a business decision by Mr. Robleski, that guests will have to find another means of transportation. And whether it's an Uber or a Lyft or a bicycle or a scooter or PVTA, I think if the parking is there, yeah, it may get filled up, but we don't think that it's needed for this use. So my relatives come and visit me and they bring two cars where they park. Do they Uber from Boston or New York? I mean, I don't understand this. But why does John need to think about that? I think it should be something that the tenant thinks about when they're finding a place to live and say, boy, I have visitors come in from Boston or New York. Where are they going to park? Oh, this isn't the right housing for me. And I think it's as simple. I think it's as simple as that. Just from the last presentation, there's discussion about the bus line being overcrowded. And I was just wondering about the PVTA and that there was some suggestions of communications being made to them. And I was wondering where that stands in terms of this responsiveness of PVTA to provide adequate ridership where there's a demand. Yeah, I did touch base with the fellow Alex Forrest. And he's in charge of, I think, the route planning and so forth in Springfield for the PVTA. And he realizes that Route 30, which starts out at Old Belcher Town Road by the old landfill, stops at a number of apartment complexes. He then laid to the board at that meeting that one of my tenants from High Street had walked across 462 Main to the bus stop. Couldn't get on because it was full. Had to go back and he got a skateboard and went to UMass. But Alex Forrest said they're aware of that. And he appreciated that I was relaying the information that there's a new apartment place going on Southeast Street with possibly 57 units there. That's part of the route and now possibly another 35 bedrooms being added here. So he says, yeah, we have to work on that and we're going to increase the capacity of this Route 30 or divide it up some way. So they are aware of it. What they're going to do, you know, probably depends on their funding and so forth however they operate. But I don't know if there's a bid getting involved with anything on there. So I think it's, you know, a town effort. PBTA effort probably Pioneer Valley Planning Commission UMass. All working together. Any other questions from the board? I don't see any at this time. I'm going to open it up for questions to the public. Is there anyone here? Can I see a show of hands who would have a question to ask about this project? I see. I have one. Feel free to come up, sir. One of these gentlemen will bring up a seat. So say your name and street. So the minute takers can get it. So I am Frederick Griffiths 21 Gray Street. I'm in a butter. I also have a letter from other butters. May I read it? Sure. Okay. So first that from Rob O'Conn. Okay. Okay. You N and 80 B Mac B M a K who are 33 Gray Street. They were unable to come tonight. They had hoped to. So they sent me an email. I can give you a copy of this. Thank you. So to the planning board. We live adjacent to the new apartments. John Roblesky is proposing to build while we couldn't be with you this evening. We feel strongly about the issue before you. Mr. Roblesky has been courteous, responsive and thoughtful in his relations with neighbors throughout the planning construction. Of the new units. We have been neighbors to the existing apartments on high street and have only the highest regard for how he has managed his property. Speaking specifically about the parking lot for the new apartments. We support Mr. Roblesky's position. Not only does the data support the contention of the number of spaces needed. He has demonstrated his intention to be a good steward of the land surrounding the parking area. Leaving and enhancing green space. Maintaining decades old trees. And constructing a building that will be beneficial for its tenants and neighbors alike. At a time when more and more people are reducing the numbers of cars. They drive and increasing their use of public transportation. We want to go on record as enthusiastically endorsing Mr. Roblesky's parking plan. ADB Mac and Rob O'Conn. And I would agree with all of that. So personally, Mr. Roblesky has been a very good steward. I have lived through the whole life cycle of the high street unit. And it's been very well managed. And he's been very forthright with the neighborhood as he has in the planning. A particular concern to me with the added parking spaces. If we want to go from 32 to 35 is you lose two mature maples. Which is the only landscaping in the middle of that block. Which is a major problem in the neighborhood. And the time I have lived in that neighborhood, which is 40 years. About half the trees have disappeared in various ways. It's getting quite denuded. And that would be a major loss. That's what the middle of this block in terms of amenities. So for those three extra parking lots, that would be a very large loss for all of us. But otherwise, I do support the petition for, you know, the revision of the site plan. Mr. Roblesky has been very straightforward with us. He's been a considerate neighbor. And he manages things quite well. So thank you. Thank you for that. Are there any? Do we have a copy of that letter? Oh, is there anyone else here who would like to speak on this hearing? State your name and welcome. Gabrielle Gould representing the downtown Amherst Business Improvement District Board. John's parcel is in our bid district and a part of our downtown. And what we consider an integral part of our downtown. I don't think a lot of people understand the district lines and how far they do go on a couple of different directions. We were really excited to hear about this project when it was first brought to me. And this is an opportunity to create more residential density within walking distance to the core center of our business district, which is always exciting for us. But also we have several businesses down on Main Street. And the density of this apartment dwelling and, you know, others that could be proposed for down in that area is really something that we're looking forward to, especially with a new restaurant hopefully coming online in 2021. These are businesses that deserve more foot traffic. Also, again, absolutely within walking distance to downtown, but that PVTA stop right there is such a wonderful natural transition. And as I stated earlier, we are in talks with the PVTA. We do know that some of the routes are getting overcrowded and we are talking to them. So it's not just coming from one person with a parcel. It's coming from several different business owners as well. Thank you. Thank you. Is there anyone else here to speak on this? I see none. So I'll bring it back to the board. And if there's any comment, the applicant wants to add to those comments. No, I think it's well stated and it's not so often that you have a couple of butters come out to support a project that's looking to increase density over what it was. I mean, I think that's pretty telling. You know, one of the folks did mention extra parking. And so what John did was put together what a reserved parking plan we would call it. We could get an additional six spaces in there, but that comes at the sacrifice of a couple of really nice old trees. And so we would prefer not to do that. We think that the parking that we have is sufficient. I know I need five votes. I don't know where on the board I'm going to get them. So I guess we'll see where it ends up. But I mean, this reserved parking is always something to consider if a board member is set against voting in favor of exactly what we have. And if they wanted us to come back at some, you know, 12 months from our certificate of occupancy and wanted to revisit the parking at that time and say if it hasn't worked after we've collected the data and it's proved that it doesn't work, then they could say, that board could say, okay, now we want you to put in these spaces. Ideally it wouldn't happen, but just know that that's somewhat of a release valve if that's what gets some of the members over the edge to vote in favor of this. So I think other than that, I'll keep my mouth shut. So it like we're saying this trees there and such and you don't want to take them down and we just heard that from some neighbors. Trees do have a lifespan and down the road. This is part of your parking management that, you know, if there are if there shows a need, even though trends are showing that as we look at this 1020 years down the road, if anything less parking will be needed. But it's good to have that kind of safety buffer there for some other options. Again, does the, I see one hand any other question? Okay. So Janet. On the issue of reserve parking, did you have you talked to any of the property owners across the street like the VFW or the red barn or there's a lot of unused space at night. So if people are having people guess over or visiting, they won't be forced to move out of their apartment or put them in a no parking zone. I was wondering if that, that to me is a very appealing option. And so it seems easier than taking trees down is to have the space available. And that, you know, my concern isn't that this is going to be a poorly run building because I'm sure it will be especially under your management. But, you know, 10, 20 years down the line, we don't know. But also I'm really concerned that this building works for the tenants without them being forced not to have a car if they need it. Or if they get a car, a job with a car, they have to move out meeting a town when there's hardly any apartments available. I don't understand that thinking, but I'm just wondering, I'm always, I'm looking for the alternative and I see a lot of black top across the street at night. Yeah. I don't know if you read the paper, but the VFW is kind of closing down. They served their last drink there, so there's no more functions or whatever going to go on there. So I would assume at some point it's going to transition to some other use. We do have that letter, if you remember, in the beginning from the VFW for contractor parking there. The red barn, I'm not sure who owns that. I haven't really dealt with them, but my property on Lower Main Street at 734, but the Jewish Community Center there. And when we have a big storm or something, or like graduation parties, I always call them and say, look at, we might have like six or eight extra cars. You might have to park in the back of your lot, you know, just for the day or to clear snow, that type of thing. And we've always kind of worked together on that. So yes, I suppose I could, you know, contact somebody in that red barn. Is that owned by the architect? I'm one of the architects there. I'm not sure, but I can look it up. So I can certainly look into that. So that's good to hear that you're open. I mean, I think what you're really harping on is it's good communication. And, you know, you are a local and you know the people who live around. And the opportunity for the future, you could always have some shared parking agreements, especially where you're so close to downtown. There are parking lots that are empty. And somebody's backyard, basically. So, and that's what we did on Main Street. We rehabbed a three family building there and paved the parking lot to a big tree down. That was an old willow tree. And, you know, people were appreciative of that. And so yeah, it's a matter of the neighborhood working together. Thank you. Are there any other questions, Michael? This is more a point of information. I didn't realize until a few days ago that the property under consideration was part of the bid. Is the VFW across from the street also a part of the bid? I believe it is. Well, I think part of their parking lot is. I looked at it at one time. It crosses the railroad. Sorry, it's a big head on the railroad. Right here. Can you repeat that? Or she has to come up and say it. Sure. The bid ends. If you follow this purple cursor across the screen, it ends at the railroad tracks. So everything to the west is within the bid. Everything to the east is. Actually, the railroad right away is in bid. Are they paying? I don't think they'll let me park there though. Thank you for that clarification. And actually, maybe Chris, you probably know where does the downtown does not require the developers to. The municipal parking district. The municipal parking. That's only a block or two away. Chris. Municipal parking district is really confined to the BG and the BL surrounding the BG. So it doesn't come down in this direction. But I think there is. Within a walking distance. Yeah. On street parking. I think there's on street parking a lot like on gray and high street. Other than during a snowstorm. Gray and high street. Say that again. I think there is on street parking allowed on both gray street and high street. There is. Probably not. The winter parking band, but we no longer have that. Yeah. Just when the lights flashing. Right. Just when the lights are flashing. Janet. So there isn't parking allowed along high street until you get a bit of the ways. Faster rail. North. You have to go up a bit. But so to me it seems like you could talk to the red barn people. The person. There's a business that owns the Amtrak station. That's very lightly used even during the day. So I would be. Would you be interested in contacting them and. You continue the hearing and see if those. I think the. The railroad station is owned by the railroad. That would be caught. It's owned by a friend of mine. So. But not all that land. That's there. That's the parking lot. But Chris, you could. I think that it gets a little complicated because if you start. Parking sort of in a permanent way. On land that doesn't. Belong to you then you have to. Deal with. Offside parking and get permits for that. So the people who would allow you. To park on their property would have to get. Some kind of a permit to allow that to happen. So it's not as. Easy as it sounds on the face of things. Even a shared parking agreement has to have legal documents. Drawn up. But the whole point is it is possible. And if you were having a problem with parking, there are options. That's what's the point. I think that there are options to be able to find more parking. And fix the situation if it ever. My tenants are having issues that night trying to deal with them. You know, so. Their life is happy and my life is happy. And I would like to thank you. Thank you. I want everybody to be. Yeah. Yes. Are there any other questions, David? I don't know. Excuse me. I'd like to thank Mr. For the rework. And for the data, the going around at 430 in the morning. I hope that that's there this morning trip for you. And then I'd like to move to close public hearing and then. I'd be willing to make. A motion to. Approve the request for the waiver. For the modification. Of the parking requirements and. As presented. Today. Approve the site plan. Okay, so we have a motion. Is there a second? Thank you. At this time we can. Debate or discuss the option on the table. We have a motion to vote. Or are we ready to vote? Chris. Would you like to review conditions and findings before you vote? For that close. Does anyone have any other questions besides that? Or can I read the findings? Yeah, Doug. I have no other questions. I since I won't be able to vote, I thought. I would at least inform you that where I able to vote, I would probably vote in favor. Thank you for that. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. So I'll review the draft findings first. We have those in our packet. So the. Board found under section 11.24 of the zoning bylaw. Site plan review as follows. And if you. Have a comment to add on these, the board members. Raise your hand or sort of. I'll be looking at the paper. 11.2400 the project is in conformance with all appropriate provisions of the zoning bylaw. 11.2401 town amenities and abutting properties will be protected through minimizing detrimental or offensive actions. The proposed use of the property residential and office uses is unlikely to create a detrimental or offensive action. These uses are both allowed in the BN zoning district by site plan review. 11. Yes. Sounds good. That was on the first line 2400. Do you. Go ahead. So when you make a waiver, do you present findings about how it met the waiver standards? You can if you would like to. I don't have anything written about that, but you can certainly discuss that. Okay. So 11.2402 abutting properties will be protected from detrimental site characteristics resulting from proposed use lights will be downcast and or shielded. 11.2403 provision of adequate recreational facilities, open space and amenities have been addressed because there is adequate space on the site for recreation. 11.2410 unique and important natural historic and scenic features will be protected. The historical commission has reviewed the proposed demolition of the garage and has imposed a 12 month demolition delay on the removal of the garage. The historic building that now houses offices will be retained except for the rear shed, which will be removed and replaced with a new structure. A special permit has been granted for the alteration of the existing nonconforming structure. 11.2411. The project provides adequate methods of refuse disposal as described in the management plan. Trash will be collected in a closed structure at the rear of the existing building and will be picked up by the Amherst trucking twice weekly. Doesn't Amherst trucking have a new name? USA waste. I think I did change that in my plan. 11.2412. The project will be connected to town sewer and water and the town engineer has reviewed and has not expressed concerns about the town services or their ability to serve the proposed use. 11.2413. The proposed drainage system within and adjacent to the site will be adequate to handle the stormwater. This town engineer has reviewed and not has not expressed concerns about the proposed stormwater management system. 11.2414. Provisions of adequate landscaping have been addressed and the project includes new plantings on site as well as preservation of some of the existing mature trees. 11.2415. The soil erosion control methods are considered adequate to control soil erosion both during and after construction. 11.2416. Adjacent properties will be protected by minimizing the intrusion of various nuisances. A construction logistics plan is required to be submitted prior to the issuance of a building permit. 11.2417. Adjacent properties will be protected from the intrusion of lighting because a condition of the permit requires that existing lighting be downcast and or shielded and not shine onto adjacent properties. 11.2418 and 11.2419. Not applicable. 11.2420. The planning board did not choose to refer to the design principles and standards set forth in section 3.3040 and 3.2041 of the zoning bylaw because the planning board members determined that the project was well designed and fit well into the surrounding neighborhood. 11.2421. The development is reasonably consistent with respect to setbacks, placement of the parking, landscaping, entrances, exits with surrounding buildings and development. The development complies with the dimensional requirements of the zoning bylaw. 11.2422. Not applicable. 11.2423. There is more than one building on the site and the buildings relate harmoniously to each other in architectural style, site location, and building exits and entrances. 11.2424. Screening has been provided as appropriate via a fence along the western and northern property lines and via landscaping at the front of the property. 11.2430. The site has been designed to provide for the convenience and safety of vehicular and pedestrian movement both within the site and in relation to adjoining ways and properties. The parking lot has been carefully designed to allow backup and turning movements and pedestrian circulation and a condition of the permit will require that vegetation at the entrance drive be trimmed to improve site distance along Main Street. 11.2431. The existing curb cut on the property will be retained and improved. 11.2432. The location and design of the parking spaces by gracks, drive aisles, loading areas, and sidewalks have been provided in a safe and convenient manner. 11.2433. 11.2434 and 35 are all not applicable. 11.2436. The requirement for submittal of a traffic impact statement has been waived. However, the applicant did submit a statement from the F.A. Hesketh and Associates Inc. with estimated trip generation figures. 11.2437 not applicable. So those are the findings. I think everybody's good with those. Then if we go through the draft conditions. I'm going to have a bit of water before I start this one. Okay. General draft conditions. First section general 14 items. Number one, development shall be built substantially in accordance with the plan submitted to the planning board and approved on whatever date that is in substantial field changes may be approved by the building commissioner. Two, the development shall be managed substantially in accordance with the management plan submitted to the planning board and approved on the date. Number two, the development shall be managed substantially in accordance with the. Oh, Chris, just so you know, these are misnumbered. So there's actually 15, I think, but so this. It will be three parking shall be managed substantially in accordance with the. Parking management plan submitted to the park planning board and approved on the date. Number one, a change of ownership or if the property is no longer managed by John Wolbelusky, the new owner and or manager shall submit a new management plan to the planning board at a public meeting for its review and approval. The purpose of the meeting shall be for the board to determine whether conditions of the permit are being complied with or whether any modifications of the site plan review approval or management plan is required. Number five, a sign plan shall be submitted to the planning board for its review and approval at the public meeting prior to the installation of the new signs. Existing signs have been approved as proposed. Number six, all exterior light shall be dark sky compliant. Exterior lighting shall be downcast shielded and shall not shine onto the adjacent properties or streets. Seven, this property shall be registered and permitted in accordance with the Amherst residential rental property by law loss of suspension of a rental property. Number eight, changes to the project and our substantial changes to any approved site plans or to the exterior of the building shall be submitted to the planning board for its review and approval prior to the work taking place. The purpose of the submittal shall be for the planning board to approve the change and or to determine whether the changes are de minimis or significant enough to require modification of the special permit or the site plan review approval. Now we're back on to correct numbers. So number nine, landscaping shall be installed in accordance with the landscape plan and once installed shall be continually maintained. All disturbed areas shall be loomed, seated and unless otherwise specified. Number ten, one hard copy and one digital copy of the final revised plan shall be submitted to the planning board for its review and approval. Number ten, one hard copy and one digital copy of the final revised plan shall be submitted to the planning board. Eleven, the office space shall be available to be rented by a member of the public and shall not be used solely as the management office for the proposed mixed use building. Is that actually true? I had no idea. Number 12, shrubs and vegetation that block the site distance on the east side of the driveway entrance shall be cleared. Number 13, the applicant shall install an electric vehicle charging station with two charging ports. Is it two or three? Is it two? Okay. Fourteen, applicant will investigate the installation of solar panels and install solar panels if feasible. Construction section number 15, prior to the issuance of any building permit a pre-construction meeting shall be scheduled with the applicant, the applicant's contractor, the town engineer, the building commissioner, the superintendent of public works, planning staff, the fire chief and any other staff personnel that may have a role in the construction of this project. Sixteen, a written construction fire management plan shall be submitted to the fire chief and building commissioner prior to the issuance of a building permit. Seventeen, construction logistics plan shall be provided at the pre-construction meeting and shall cover the following items. A, construction timeline expected completion dates for each phase. B, location of parking for contractors. C, location of on-site and off-site staging such as for construction vehicles including cement trucks. D, location of fencing around the construction site. E, details and locations of directional marketing and job signs related to construction. F, emergency contact information such as name and cell phone numbers of the developer and the contractor. G, information about construction signs including advertising signs for contractor, developer and architect. The company affiliation, name, address and business telephone number of the construction superintendent who shall have the overall responsibility for construction activities on the project site. I, proof that digsafe has been notified at least 72 hours prior to the start of any site work. J, any other relevant information that they may request. Eighteen, the construction logistics plan shall be subject to the following conditions. Construction A, construction activity shall occur only between 7 a.m. and 7 p.m. Monday to Saturday unless written consent is provided by the chief of police. Interior construction activity may be allowed on Sunday if written consent is provided by the chief of police. B, parking for contractors shall be restricted to the project site unless written permission is submitted to the building commissioner for parking elsewhere. There shall be no parking or idling of construction trucks or equipment in any public right of way. C, any blasting or hammering of rock or material shall be noticed to town officials and a butters 24 hours in advance and completed between 9 a.m. and 3 p.m. Nineteen, as part of the building permit application the applicant shall provide the building commissioner of the name, addressed business telephone number on the project manager or on-site manager who shall be responsible for all activities on the project site. Twenty, there shall be no exterior construction activity including fueling of vehicles on the project site before 7 a.m. or after 7 p.m. Monday through Saturday unless written consent is provided by the chief of police. There shall be no construction on the project site on the following legal holidays. New Year's Day, Memorial Day, 4th July 4th Labor Day, Thanksgiving and Christmas. The applicant agrees that the hours of operation shall be enforced by the Amherst Police Department and or Inspection Services. Twenty one. The project site shall be fenced during construction. Twenty two. Appropriate measures shall be taken to control dust, dirt, debris and other construction materials on site. Twenty three. Prior to and during construction physical barriers should be installed to provide tree protection along the limits of the clearing line. Erosion controls and tree protection measures shall be continuously maintained throughout the course of construction. Twenty four. All catch basions shall be protected from soil and debris contamination during construction and shall be cleaned at the end of construction. Twenty five. No stumps, demolition material or construction debris shall be buried or disposed of at the project site. Twenty six. The town engineer and the building commissioner shall inspect the construction of the entry driveway and all on site paved areas for the conformance of town standards. Twenty seven. The applicant shall provide as built plans, sorry, as built plans as shown on building locations, grades, access ways, parking areas and sidewalks and walkways, curbing, stormwater management facilities, lighting and utilities to the building commissioner, town engineer and to be placed with the site plan review decision in the planning department. Twenty eight. The final certificate of occupancy shall not be issued until A, the final top coat of paving for all driveways and access areas, sidewalks and berms has been completed B, landscaping as shown on the plan of record has been installed and C, as built plans have been submitted to the building commissioner and the town engineer by all design professionals for the site and the building construction has been approved by the building commissioner and town engineer. Okay. Yes, Doug. So I'm hoping I'm still in my honeymoon period and I can ask what may be stupid questions. I have two questions. First is why number 14 is necessary? It doesn't seem related to the site, the site plan at all. And then my second question is about the entire section following that started with the word construction and why that is part of a special permit rather than just one of the town's regulations for doing any project in town. Seems like a project as of right would want to be following those things rather than only when we do a site plan review. Thank you. And I'd have less to read, but yeah. So in answer to the first question about item 14, I think the applicant stated in perhaps some response to a question from one of the board members that he would investigate the use of solar panels. So this is going to encourage him to investigate and remind him to do so. But if it's not feasible, he's not forced to do it. So that's the answer to that one. And the other one about the construction conditions, I was just thinking as we were reading through them that those would be great conditions to include in the zoning bylaw when we rewrite it for this type of building, these are the conditions that you have to follow. And then we wouldn't have to do this for each mixed use building that we encounter. So that's a good question. These are peculiar to mixed use buildings. Other types can be constructed on Sundays. I mean it seems like any construction project would want to follow pretty much everything here. Go ahead, Chris. I shouldn't have limited it to mixed use buildings. It's really any large project. So when we get into rewriting the zoning bylaw, the building commissioner will be able to help us to determine which buildings this type of thing should be applicable to. Obviously it wouldn't be applicable to a single family or maybe aspects of this would be applicable to a single family. But currently we don't really have any other way of making sure that all of these things happen. And we have run into situations where buildings are being built and this was a couple of years ago, people weren't doing any of these things. And it really caused a lot of problems for the town. So the building commissioner has been suggesting in the last year or so that the planning board incorporate these conditions into the decisions so that people are all aware of them ahead of time. Thank you for asking that. It does beg the question of what happens on and as of right projects, you know, that don't need to come through any review and don't we simply have regulations for how to build in Amherst? Maybe not. Does some of this get tied into when you're pulling a building permit? Yeah. In fact, we have the expert on this in the room right now if you wanted to really ask that question. Do we want him to come up? Or if you have anything to add? Not at all. Please introduce yourself. Rob Moore, Building Commissioner. So we do not have any general bylaws or anything that would cover this type of activity overall for all activities. As far as the only thing that's regulated is a 7 to 7 work time Monday through Saturday and that's handled by the police department through general laws, Massachusetts general laws, not town by laws. Thank you. It's not a perfect system, Doug. Chris. I wanted to ask if you wanted to add a condition about the applicant coming back in a year or two to review their parking plan, the number of spaces they have and whether or not it would be possible to review their parking plan, the number of spaces they have and whether or not it would be worthwhile to investigate using the reserve's parking spaces. Would that be agreeable? That's fine. I think it's not a mandatory thing but I would love to see this become more of a norm. It's a good idea. Janet? So I was wondering when you were reading the conditions if the planning board separately approves the parking management plan or would you like to review the parking plan and review the parking plan? The parking management plan or is it ahead? How does that work? I think you can approve all of it altogether. You don't have to approve each thing that's been submitted. Oh, right. I mean, normally you submit the, you approve the management plan, the site plans, whatever waivers have been requested. You sort of do a blanket approval. If you wanted to split it up, you could split it up but that's not what you've traditionally done. Okay. Thank you. Michael? Reference to number four about the sign plan. Is it our expectation that a change in individual building occupancy that would be reflected on a new placard on the existing large sign would have to come back to the planning board? I would hope that's not the case. Yeah. I think the idea is they have an existing sign that they're proposing to use and if they change out names of particular tenants that wouldn't come back but if they change the whole look of the sign and the placement, et cetera, then they would have to come back. It's more about the structure of the sign. Good question. And the lighting. Okay. Thanks. Thank you. Any other questions on the findings or conditions? Any other speak now or should we move to a vote? Janet, I see a hand. I'm very unfund of the idea of telling tenants they can't park. And so we talked about this with the Southeast Commons is that if the parking is sufficient on this site for 24 units, then we don't need to assign spaces to people and there won't be any problem. Right? And so there's kind of, there's 35 bedrooms, there's 32 spaces. If I don't think that's sufficient, but I'm wondering if the parking management plan could be opened up where it's not a lease condition, you know, if the members of the board think that this is enough parking for 24 units, then I don't think it has to be in the lease. And the parking management plan could also say collecting data in a way that's described like, you know, we'd like to know the highs and the lows and then to come back if more parking is needed and seek it, you know, alternative parking across the street. And so that way this plan would have some flexibility and a little bit of control by the planning board saying, okay, we, you know, guest, as you said last time, we're guessing what the units are or how many parking spaces per unit, the guest was wrong, so we need to provide those tenants with the spaces they need and the parking management provides that you go forth and find your special permit and talk to the red barn or whoever and find spaces. So I was just wondering if the management plan could be altered to be more flexible, require an update, you know, keeping track of how it's being used if you're able to get people on buses or van pools, and then if it's not working to seek, you know, overflow parking area. I'm not exactly sure what you're asking. I mean, they have submitted a parking management plan and then we're asking them to come back a year later and just, but to me that's not about providing data, it's, they're going to say whether it's working or it's not working and if it wasn't working what they did, they're not actually going to do like a report, they're just going to kind of report back to us on whether or not it's working and if it isn't working, well, it's their job to fix it. In the waiver section, it says periodic documentation of reductions in vehicle trips and parking utilization as a result of the parking management plan may be required as a condition of any permit granted under this section. So I was thinking, first thing, don't exclude people from having parking through their leases and then give them some flexibility that they may need a car and maybe someone doesn't need a car. So if it's sufficient, it's sufficient, you don't have to prevent from people from having cars and leases. Then requiring documentation, you know, figure out is this working and then if it's not working in the management plan or in the conditions of the permit, come back with a different plan that provides the parking that's needed. Well, I'm still not quite sure. The periodic that's stated in there, I thought what we're saying is the periodic is that in one year they're to come back and tell us whether or not it's working. And in their plan, they're already saying that they're going to have units that will opt to not have parking. And if that situation was to change, what you're worried about, I assume they will go to their landlord and the owner and they'll discuss it and work it out. So I don't think we're trying to get into the what ifs of tenant-owner relations. I mean, we've heard nothing but this is a very reasonable owner and good manager. So what is it you would want to change specifically or I guess that's I want to get it more specific. What are you actually asking for? So in the parking management plan, I would suggest that it's just the parking spaces are available for tenants as they need. A requirement or an agreement in the plan to collect data on the high, the uses. I'm not sure how quite to word that. And then as a condition that if the parking is insufficient, that the owner find overflow parking space and arrange for it somewhere, off-site parking as a condition. I'm still not exactly sure what, I mean, how often do you want them to, I mean, we'd have to spell all that out in the plan, how often you want them to collect data. I'm comfortable at this point that if they come back a year from now and tell us how it's working in the general numbers of what's in their lot, that would be informative. I mean, we're just, Jack? To me, it seems like it should be self-directed by the tenant landlord relationship and the tenants are already going to be occupying there with an understanding of their parking and if their life changes, they're probably not going to renew the lease, I mean, because they have different parking. So I see this as being for the right kind of people and the lease ends and there's an opportunity for that person to get a more comfortable parking situation and there will be some other potential tenant that would come in that desires everything that this proposed development has and they march forward like that versus the effort of trying to accommodate someone that doesn't necessarily fit into that particular living arrangement as proposed by the developer. Michael? Do you expect to have a rent adjustment for people who do not have access to a parking space? I guess if there was a problem that developed, you know, and we had not enough parking, then I would throw that out. I think I mentioned that in the last management plan that that was an option. So in the bottom line is I would try to work something out and make everybody accommodate whatever their needs are. But according to the parking plan that you've submitted, some space, some apartments will not be able to have a parking space. Well, some tenants versus some tenants will not have a parking space. Look at the bedroom situation. Yes. Should those tenants be subject to a reduction in their rent? And why not? No, because a lot of this I think is going to happen the way it's been happening over the past quite a few years now next door is I don't know if they have a car until I get their application. It's not something that's asked on the application. Well, it is a question on the application, but that's not how you can screen somebody. So I can say that over the past eight years that the number of cars next door on High Street has gone down quite a bit. And it's been consistent. Now I just rented, as I mentioned in that narrative, I rented the end of May. There are six cars with those two units. There's seven bedrooms between those two units, and now there's going to be four cars because three bedroom units being rented by an individual who's a consultant and he's using it for office area. He's got one car. And the four bedroom unit is going to have three cars. So that's another reduction of two vehicles starting in June. So I think what's going to happen is when I see the applications and they say you're not going to have a car or they'll have a discussion with them and say, okay, you're not going to have a car during this term. Are you agreeable to waive this right to the parking space? Not that they have a right to the parking space, but I think that's how it's going to work is they're going to put on their application and they don't have a car. So if I could, it sounds like it happens organically. And if there's an issue where it's he needs to reduce parking, then I think there would be a rent reduction accordingly when he needed to reduce parking. But I don't know that he would go and offer it and say, if you don't have a car, then you're not going to have parking. That just opens up too many management issues. And then if I could... Well, would it open up more management issues than simply having this addendum to lease that you're proposing, which is a signed statement that they will not have a car during the term of their lease? It seems to me that if you're asking people to sign a statement which prohibits them from having an automobile parked on your premises during the term of their lease, then there ought to be some kind of rent reduction because everybody else has the opportunity to have a car parked on that place, except those five people are however many units it is. It's an individual decision on their part. They're applying for an apartment without a car. If that changes, when they ask for one at some point, then we would address it then. Maybe I could just talk about the data collection for a second. I mean, we know we're going to be back in a year and we know what the expectation is at that year mark, so I think naturally we are going to keep data to make sure that we are able to come to you and say in the first month and the second month and the third month and the fourth month, here's what it was like. So I don't know that we have to, I think it's built in organically to what your condition is that these are the types of things that we're going to do in anticipation of that 12-month date from the certificate of occupancy. And there's going to be exterior cameras. That's the whole thing now. We've got to have cameras pretty much everywhere. So we'll have video monitoring basically and be able to see different times a day what the in and out is. When is this building anticipated to be done? Like open? Realistically, probably not until next spring. So it wouldn't be for a home of a year from that. Well, we're saying a year from that. Right. I'm just trying to get everyone in their head that it's not actually a year from that. You want to get kind of like that first turnover. Yeah. So, you know, it would be two to three years away before we would actually get this data. And the bylaw maybe changed by then anyways. Data is king. So if there was more data, great. But at this point, the way we have it written is that you would come back a year later with the summary of how you're parking. And I think, you know, lessons learned happens over the year. And then the hope is that you're saying that it's enough. It's working. It's fine. And if it isn't, this is what we've done to adjust it. And it could, you've got a bunch of different options on the table here that you could do to solve that problem. But just, I just want to say, you know, there is a point where it is their choice not to have a car. And then they sign this agreement and they're one-year leases. So if someone then at the end of the year said, I do want to get a car, you would make that work or you just change it. Yeah. I mean, most likely, like Tom said, it's going to happen because another tenant may come in and they don't want a car. So I think there's going to be that balance effect that has been taking place next door. And even on Main Street, my three apartment building on Lower Main Street, this morning when I was there at 430, there was only five cars parked there. And I have 10 bedrooms there. And that's been going down. You know, years ago it's been pretty much 10. And now there's only eight cars listed to the tenants there. I think February, that morning I went there, there was six. And so this morning there was only five. And you'll have a, you'll be tracking who has, of all the apartments who has apartments to not. I'm used to towing cars for a number of years. So if someone did have this agreement and they came to you and they wanted to change their mind, you would go and look at your data and maybe there's enough spots that, right. So again, it's a communication thing. Exactly. David. I'd like to move again to approve the site plan with the waiver of the parking requirements. I would think, thank you Chris for drafting up the findings and the conditions. I'm not quite sure. I believe, Janet, you may be proposing an additional condition about returning a year after the certificate of occupancy to report on how things are going. But I'm not quite sure what you're doing. But I'd like to, you know, we have other business to attend to here. We do have that included in the conditions. It was just how detailed it was going to get, which I think were her points. So if the general consensus is the way it's, could you read it to us, Chris, the way it is right now? I took some notes that you were going to add a condition about the applicant coming back in a year after the certificate of occupancy is issued to review the parking plan that's been put forth to review the number of spaces that are being used and to look at whether it's worthwhile to consider putting parking in those reserved parking spaces. I think there were six of them that were outlined on the plan. So that's pretty much it. Thank you. Are there any other members who would like to add something to that? Jack? I'm just wondering about the timing. Is year adequate or should it be a year and a half or two years? Because, I mean, if he's open in spring, people don't get into the apartments. You know, the big change over is August, isn't it? And I know I'm not sure a year. I think it makes sense to go through one turnover, period. So you could say 18 months or something. So 18 months? It would be better that, I think, if he went to 18 months. I'd be okay with 18 months. Okay. So add that into the condition. Okay. So back to David. You were sort of saying that yes. So we're back on the motion. And are we ready to vote? Yeah. It was Maria a long time ago. That was before the findings and conditions. So we're, yes. So I appreciate this. And I think that I appreciate the data. I think we're looking at one day. I think I've offered my other days when there was more parking. I think that the king isn't the data. The king is the bylaw and the requirement of the bylaw. And I don't think the conditions of the waiver have been met that you've shown that there's not a need for parking. And it's almost a 50% cut in what would normally be there. And so I just want to say that I do think that this, the decision about parking was made by the bylaw sending it to the select board, sending it to town meeting. The language has meaning. And so I don't think we've met that waiver criteria. But I appreciate the effort. And I also hope that it works out. I just don't think the tenant should have to bear that. So are we ready to vote at this time? All in favor? Affirmative? Raise your hand. And we have five. No. Okay. One. And one abstain. I don't count as an abstain. So five one one. Thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you very much for your patience and expertise and the time you people put into the board. I was on the municipal building committee in Waitley where I lived. And I can very much appreciate it. We appreciate that. Thank you. Now you have lots of hard work to do. Oh yeah. Thanks again. Thanks. Okay. So we will move to. It's eight. Eight fifteen. We'll move to. SPP. Twenty twenty. Zero three. John and Jessica Brown three eighty nine Bay road. While I get my dog and pony all set up. Sorry. I still have more to read. Oh good. Yeah. That's great. Okay. Preamble you get organized hearing SPP twenty twenty zero three. John and Jessica Brown three eighty nine Bay road. In accordance with the provisions of MGL chapter forty a this public hearing has been duly advertised and notice thereof has been posted. This hearing is being held for the purpose of providing an opportunity for interested citizens to be heard regarding SPP twenty twenty dash zero three. John and Jessica Brown three eighty nine Bay road. It is eight seventeen. Request for a special permit under section seven point seven two two of the zoning bylaw to allow a common driveway longer than four hundred feet and an individual driveway longer than twelve hundred feet as specified in section seven point seven one three of the zoning bylaw to allow a screen as section of the driveway to exceed a ten percent grade as required by section seven point seven one five of the zoning bylaw map twenty six a parcels thirty seven are. Oh and our LD zoning district first off are there any board member disclosures. I see none. And we will move to the applicants presentation. Welcome. Please introduce yourselves. Thank you. Hi. My name is Bucky Sparkle. I am the design engineer for this project. And at my side I have the applicant and owner of three eighty nine Bay Road Jack Brown and twenty two myself for this. That's okay. That's okay that he introduced myself. Oh absolutely. That's fine. And if you speak make sure your green lights on and you have to sort of like speak close sometimes they turn off. The frequent flyer is nowhere to do so. Yeah. Welcome. We did get lots of information in our packet and you do have some. Sorry I've been talking too much already. Well I can alleviate that here. Good. So if you can just refer to what we should be looking at that's helpful. Sure. I'm going to scroll down to one of the pages here to do my little introduction and maybe I can make this a little bit. Let's see if I can get in a little better. That's not going to do it. All right. So as stated we are we are looking for some permissions for the common and individual driveways for this property and I'm going to go over the existing conditions first. Presently the property there's an awful lot of land involved in this plan just because it's part of the it's all part of the ANR process but the 17 acre flag lot that currently exists is this purple line basically everything that's not shaded and down here. So this is the property that we are considering. When it was laid out from a survey perspective it was laid out with the intention of another flag lot being divided off of it so it has a very wide pole as part of the flag and that was done some years ago. The property is quite lengthy. It's about a half mile from Bay Road all the way to the back so it takes quite a bit of access. Just the first part of the pole to here is just over a thousand feet. So this is one reason that we're asking for permission to go a little longer because that's what we're working with. The property in the front is zoned RO, the outlying residential to about here and everything to the left on the screen which is south all of this is low density residential. There is technically an overlay because there is instrument and stream that runs through here so there's an FPC overlay that's just 25 feet wide or maybe off each side of the bank. That's about a football field away from everything that we're doing so it's not really part of the project but it does exist because we have to mention that. Currently the site is primarily wooded. Right here is Jack's home with his grandfather's home. His father lives right here so this has been family land for quite some time. And so Jack's home in his yard is this is the only section that is not wooded presently. As I mentioned there's a stream so that also means there's a wetland. This is also south of the area that we're working. We kept all the disturbance north and out of the 100 foot buffer so we can not worry about dealing with the conservation commission and protect the resource area. The entire area is also being quite rural and backing up against state lands and the beautiful mountains back there. It is part of a priority habitat as listed by a natural heritage endangered species program. So we know that there is we had them assess the site a little while ago and they say box turtle is out there. So we have prepared a turtle protection plan and submitted that as well. So there are some requirements when and we still have to continue to coordinate both now and during construction. The mass wildlife says that it's fine as long as you do the certain protection so we'll be doing those and bringing in a qualified biologist when it comes time for construction. And I also want to mention that just the currently the combination of the common drive to hear and the individual drive to Jack's house is just over 1900 feet long. And that's meaningful because as we get into our proposal it's not a big difference from what's already there. So what we're hoping to do is add this slightly dashed purple line and create another ANR lot. So we're going to be out in front of the ZBA pretty soon and set a home back here. So in order to access the property at this location we're going to need to do a couple things here. First of them is to convert a portion of what is now an individual drive to a common drive legally. So the common drive now ends here and then we would just take this individual drive and add it as part of the common drive agreement. There's an agreement for the property owners that make use of this road. So we're going to turn this into common drive and then put a turnaround suitable for the fire department to get their largest apparatus to make a Y, a three-point turn there and then build an individual drive that would be this blue dotted line through the path of least resistance through the woods saving as many trees as possible and then jumping on to an existing woods road again being conscientious of the trees to put a home site here with the septic system and well that would be necessary. In total the new drive would be just over 2,100 feet from beginning to end so we're about 10% longer than is the existing condition even though we're going a good deal farther south and there is a section so there's this area that's in yellow that's the converted common drive and let me zoom in here a little bit. I'm going to get into more details. Hey, words you can read. So the conversion of the individual drive to common drive is this sort of yellowish orange dashed area but the section between the arrows which is 307 feet long is an area that will be once we tweak the grading a little bit it's going to be over 10% but less than 15% so that's another reason that we're here is because we can do that only with your permission. Presently there is about a 40 foot section that is about 16% in steepness so we're going to cut that back and sort of smooth the grade out we've got plenty of room to do that so then we're going to be under 15% and actually it's 10 or 11% through most of this and 10, 11% through most of this so there's just one little hump and that when many members of the board were able to make the site visit earlier this week during muddy conditions so you kind of get to experience it and as it's worst case scenario more or less for this time of year and it was same manageable. Additionally we do have letters a letter from the fire department indicating that they feel that the design is adequate for their apparatus they can get the access that they need we were already planning on doing a residential sprinkler system for the house which when you get over a 150 foot long driveway and you don't want to make it 20 feet wide that's one of the options fortunately there is one option so the fire department seems to be on board with this from a safety standpoint so what I want to do is kind of do the formal request and you know kind of wrap up my little presentation here so section 7.713 over the bylaw says that a common drive can be more than 400 feet with your permission and we're looking to go from the common drive of a thousand with 1420 feet which is the conversion of this yellow line here about 400 feet bylaw 7.731 says the combined individual and common drive normally would not exceed 1200 feet we're looking to go from 1920 feet to 2130 feet so about a 10% addition over current conditions to basically then append this long driveway through here to the very private building site and 7.715 of the bylaw says a drive any drive over 10% but less than 15 would require permission of the planning board so a 307 foot section that's this arrow region we're looking to go the average is probably going to be around 12% for that run and I don't need to pair all the aspects of your bylaw back at you but we do have comments well I'll pair it down 7.722 indicates that the planning board canber give permission to make these adjustments provided that we follow the provisions of bylaw sections 6.330 to 6.335 which I've always kind of enjoyed that section because it doesn't have a 6.334 as I always feel like I have less homework when that's the case so these conditions and I and that we have I know Chris Brestrup provided possible findings relative to these that that mirror the letter submittal that I made with the application so the first of these talks about no adverse impact to the overlay district the FPC is the only overlay district on site and it is not within the project limits so we have no impact on that then we have no undue safety hazard and as Chris pointed out the letter the fire department's already taken a look at this we're already making sure that the building has a 13D residential sprinkler system we're providing a larger turnaround now so actually the fire apparatus only has a 55 foot diameter circle at the end of the common driveway and what we're going to be is providing a much larger turnaround it's a different shape I can actually scoot down a little bit so just did that to a detail so here is a section so this is the conversion of the individual drive to common drive this is the new drive and on the first plan it just shows as a dash line but really it's 72 feet wide here so the existing turnaround would end about here and it's just a little circle like that that is not enough for the fire department so what we're doing is actually increasing the safety for all the homes along this property by providing a relatively consistent place where they can bring their giant apparatus they can't quite do a quite circle so they have to do a wide turnaround but that's also permissible here so they'll be able to back in and around from two different directions actually three different directions depending on how they decide the need through approach because it also could be for the benefit of the existing home and not just the proposed and then after the steep part of the driveway let me zoom out a little bit here so this plan has a match line on this side to this side so if you would come up the existing driveway and then turned into the new driveway it's very flat so we've got about 100 feet where it only changes the foot in grade the steepest section here we've got about a 40 foot run that's about 6% but normally the driveway is about 2 to 3% so it's very level and if you were on site once you get out of the woods it's nice and flat up there another point in the bylaws 6.332 talks about environmental impacts so we are aware that turtles may be present on site we are making sure that the still fence barrier also is adequate as a turtle protection barrier we will have posters out there letting the contractors know that the turtles might be around we have a biologist who will be on site making inspections and making sure that they have to use sweeps every day look around this site so the turtles are going to be kind of the star of the show if they're present we don't actually know if we'll see a turtle or not but we'll be ready for them we'll have erosion controls in place we know that there are wetlands in the area and the erosion control also doubles as the turtle barrier and because this is an application going out to the ZBA ZBA is always interested in what's going to happen with your stormwater even for single family residential projects the state law says you don't have to worry about your stormwater for the first four homes at all the ZBA still likes to see you're going to do something so we have dry wells added to the site in two locations so all the roof water and a good deal of the water from the parking area by the house and the first section of the driveway is all going to be filtered and then sent back into the ground as infiltration so we're not going to be sending very much water downstream at all it'll be a gravel driveway as well. 6.333 talks about damaging natural features or views the project is not visible from the public right away there are no significant natural features lots of beautiful trees the vast majority of which are going to be staying and all the really good ones we make sure we're driving around we're not taking out anything that's super impressive and there aren't any particular views from the public way of the site I think once you happen to be the person living here you might have a very nice view to the south but that's a different issue than what we're talking about and lastly the bylaw talks about historic archaeological issues and there really aren't any in this area that we are aware of a bunch of woods right now that's that is my end of the spiel so I'm happy to answer any questions and listen to public comment should there be any tonight thank you at this point we'll report on the site visit which happened on Monday does someone want to volunteer to report I hear almost all of you were there so I know somebody's eating thank you Michael there's very little to report beyond what Mr. Spragler just had told us we tramped the woods and followed the line of the proposed driveway and found it to be as it was described slight elevation and a couple of points and otherwise relatively flat area and indeed lots of trees hopefully most of them can be spared but even if they can't all be spared there's still plenty to go around and I think that's about the extent of the needed site visit report thank you do you have anything else to add Chris I just wanted to add that we did see the one place on the common driveway that is quite steep that is seven what is Mr. Sparkle said it was 15.7 percent and he's going to lower that to somewhere between 10 percent and 15 percent so I wanted to just let you know that we saw that and were there any other questions or anything that were asked at the site visit that haven't been addressed okay great at this time I'll open up for questions to the board are there any questions to ask the applicant Jack this is not for the applicant but I just wondering for the ZBA and the common drive limitation what it seems like it's just the bylaws are discouraging use of a common driveway for as maximum for as long as like this is practical just wondering why is there a limitation for a common driveway I think this bylaw was written a long time ago and there are probably accommodations that we have now that people didn't have back then such as the type of sprinkler system that can go in a residential building so we're more equipped to be able to handle that type of situation than we were a long time ago which may be why the length of driveway was limited again we have Mr. Moore here who may be able to explain that a little bit more if you prefer to get an answer he's good unless someone else wants more detail now we're good okay thank you Doug did I hear you write that this is this will be would be served by water from a well yes it's well it's part of town does that impact the operation of the sprinkler system if you had a fire in the middle of a drought not to my knowledge is my understanding that these things work just fine and the designer the system I'm not a fire sprinkler designer it's a different type of an engineer so I'm guessing a little bit here but normally in water systems there are reserve tanks and if you're on a well you will have a reserve tank to begin with that's how you can keep your water flowing in a constant pressure because it's not the well itself that makes the water come out of your tap there's another pump rate so there with a tank and a bladder so there is a certain amount of pressure on site to begin with and reserve gallons that tank like up in that top of the house or something no it's not like you know Manhattan buildings with those towers up there no it's a pressurized it's a pump it's a second pump is what operates that. In Ireland they put it up in the top of the house too that's what I was wondering in Ireland they put it in the attic. Gravity is very reliable I will say that. Yeah it is that's why they do that. I'm not sure that the modern sprinkler systems will work so well just off of a gravity feed I think they actually need higher pressure so I think they're looking for that the mechanical boost there. Thanks. Any other hands questions? Nope I don't see any. Oh I see two Maria first and Doug. Sorry this isn't an idea but the site plan review so the house isn't designed but part of the requirements will be a sprinkler system for whoever is designing it and building it. Yes. Doug go ahead. So I'm I'm two I guess until a few minutes ago I had misinterpreted your property layout sheet two I wondered if you could go to that sheet. Yes. And tell me that in fact the house location is not. Three this sheet is that the house location is not that circle. No no no. That circle is the review of the property with the house location shown on it at this scale. On this sheet no what I'm going to do is I'll skip down one more if you want to see the whole the whole potential flag lot almost all of it is here. Of course there's the flag that goes all the way down to Bay Road. Actually what I'd rather see is go back to sheet two and make it clearer for me where the house actually is. The house will be at the end of the driveway right here. So north of the hundred foot setback. Yes. And far okay thank you. Yes you're welcome. Questions. Actually I have one more. This is aroused my my latent interest in box turtles. It's been dormant. Yeah. So if so is there an edge to the box turtle habitat. Like there's a hundred foot setback from a stream. In other words are we damaging the box turtles by building a house on this lot at all. Is the box turtle not better to have your current house as the closest disturbance to its habitat there. We don't actually know if there are turtles there or not. And the way the way the natural heritage endangered species program works is that basically they they find an area that contains some amount of habitat that they're pretty sure has the species of concern. And then they will take you know so you have you know wetlands and waterways and ponds. Okay these are big turtle areas but they go through the woods too for mating for foraging. So the if you look at natural heritage maps you will find that what they do is they take all right we think there are turtles here and then they're going to put a line around every single contiguously wooded parcel of land and say that entire area is a red flag. Now we're in that area so that red flag required us to make a submittal and pay a fee and have natural heritage come out and take a look at the site and say are there actually turtles here? And they said there probably could be turtles here sometimes. And often this stuff is seasonal too so during mating season you're going to see turtles running around a lot more is my understanding other times you're not going to see them at all. So they evaluate whether or not this project because we have to tell them the limits of disturbance and the nature of the project is this going to be a problem and they come back and they tell you if it will be a problem and to what degree it would be a problem. In some cases they really put the brakes on. In this case they say well you need to put up a turtle barrier so we don't run over them during construction. That was the limit of what they felt was appropriate for this species and this habitat. That was a really good explanation. I just have to say it. No that was really good because it's very complicated and very vague and that was good. Any other questions? I was just going to add that I grew up here based on my whole life in this entire section and I've never seen a turtle in my life. But in case. My home is also in a priority habitat as well. There's a salamander. I've never seen a salamander but if you walk 1,000 feet away there's water. But my woods are very contiguous with that. Janet? I have a question. I'm just picturing. I know that your property is at the far end of the fire station. Amherst woods isn't well covered by surf. I do wonder about ice and snow and fire trucks on that road. What is the maintenance of that road during icy conditions or snowy conditions that keep it safe? I mean we sand and have it plowed and you know it's I don't get a pretty gradual increase the whole way so I don't think it's never really been a problem for us. If there's no more questions I'm going to open it up to the public. Is there anyone here who would like to speak or ask a question about this project? I see no hands. So back to the board. I could, if there's no, does anyone have any concerns with this or could I move to the findings and conditions? Okay, good. Chris, do I still, Mr. Sparkle did such a great job going through all the findings. Do I have to read them again? So I wrote my findings before I re-read Mr. Sparkle's letter. So what I propose is to put together, I have some reference to his findings in these findings but I propose to sort of incorporate everything that he's written into this if that would be... And build them even better than what you provided us. Yes, that would work out with you. Is that agreeable to the board? Okay, great. Thank you. You're welcome. So I will read the possible conditions for a special permit for the driveway at 389 Bay Road. Number one, final grading of the driveway and the turnaround area shall be subject to review by the fire department prior to the issuance of a building permit. Two, the design of the turnaround shall be approved by the fire department prior to the issuance of a building permit. Three, there shall be a 13 feet 6 inch vertical clearance from the driveway surface to the overhanging tree branches to permit access by emergency vehicles. Four, no stone walls or major planting shall be installed at the mouth of the driveway as it exits onto Bay Road that would obstruct access by emergency vehicles. Five, the proposed house shall be constructed with an NFPA 13D sprinkler system. Does the board have any other additional conditions that they would like to add? Michael? Question about the overhanging tree branches. Presumably that has to be maintained in some way. Should that be addressed in the conditions or should we just assume that's an ongoing part of the maintenance of the driveway? Right. It all times a minimum of 13.6. It adds something about maintaining that clearance. Sure. To maintain a minimum of a 13.6 because I think the point is if you cut it at 13.6, if it's June to, yeah. Any others? And Chris, you haven't had anything else additional. This is the complete list. All right. So, yeah, please. So the zoning board of appeals is going to have a chance to review this whole thing. So don't worry if you don't catch absolutely anything. Okay. They can bill. Sorry. I don't want to ask you while you're talking. So in our packet we do have a memo from the fire department and the town engineer. There's a butter, a couple of butter letters. Common driveway memorandum. And that's just a standard thing that common years still. That's for the agreement to maintain. Okay. And then we have the turtle information. So I think we have everything. Is anyone feeling like a motion? Michael? We grant the approval of special permit for this driveway at 389 Bay Road. As proposed. And close the public hearing. Sorry. Just sorry. And yes, Maria, I think you were about to grant. Thank you. Any other further discussion, comments? Anyone want to make a statement? We're all good. Okay. So I think we can take. Yes, Doug. Could you clarify what the zoning board needs to prove about this? And also I'm interested to know this is in a low density area. Has that is that defined anywhere? You know, one house per 17 acres or one house per three acres? Thank you. So the zoning requires for a single family house that's on a frontage lot. It requires 80,000 square feet, which is almost two acres. And because this is a flag lot, it requires doubling that amount. So it requires four acres or 160,000 square feet. And I think there's well over that. I'm looking for the number. 7.4. Yeah, we're over seven acres for the smaller parcel. And it's 3.67 acres required as a flag lot in the low density. And so the other part of that question was what else does the zoning board look at? And the zoning board is going to look at the placement of the house and the grading around the house and removal of trees and the width of the driveway and the construction of the driveway and all the things that are not great of the driveway and length of the driveway. So they're pretty thorough in their review. And they'll look at where the well is going to be and where all of those things are. They're the fine tooth comb. Sounds like a site plan review. They're easier. All right. So at this time, I think we're ready to take a vote. If I could see a show of hands for an affirmative. Yes. No. And abstain. I'll abstain. So we have six zero one. Thank you so much. Thank you. Welcome. Thank you very much. We're going to move to item four. Zoning bylaw update and rewrite. Point a is Rob more a building commissioner for the town of Amherst. Presentation and recommendations on plan for updating and rewriting the zoning bylaw. Good evening. Thank you for your patience. Thank you for having me. Rob more a building commissioner. So here tonight to talk about the possibility of a comprehensive review and rewrite and redesign of the zoning bylaw. Some of you have heard this part of this already. But we I thought it was interesting that a little bit of the history that over the past 10 years we've proposed 93 amendments. Most of those went to town meeting except for the last one and 60 of those amendments were adopted over that time frame. What we're talking about here about is doing this now and why it's a good reason to do it now. We have no indication that development is slowing down. We certainly have many reasons and examples why the bylaw could be improved. There's a lot of good technical work going on, technical studies, upcoming master plan update that we can align with and some other opportunities here that are worth pursuing. So thinking about getting started, reviewing the bylaw page by page, section by section, I'll come back to that in a minute. Overview and and outlining an approach working with the zoning subcommittee and the planning board. Just important to know that everything that we're discussing tonight in its possibility would always go, whether it's staff or wherever consultant level activity that was occurring in this review, would always be funneled through the zoning subcommittee ultimately back here to the planning board. We would be looking at how we assign staff tasks in this big project and having working with the zoning subcommittee on updating the priorities. That's the sheet that you're probably familiar with that has been worked on over the past several years. So this page by page review, I want to talk a little bit about this in a little bit more detail than we did last night. For those of you that were at the zoning subcommittee meeting. And I thought I'd go through each of the articles really quickly and just talk about it. It doesn't include everything that we possibly would be addressing. These are not things we want to discuss in detail tonight, but just to give you maybe for your benefit the scope of this project as I see it at this point. Some sections will require quite a bit of work and some not so much. Starting off with article one, our purpose, this is a pretty easy section to work on. There certainly are areas to accomplish and have the by-law goals be and objectives. Moving on to article two, districts. There's some boundary interpretations that could be improved. There's a possibility of looking at some of the districts, the commercial district being one of them and understanding its purpose and making sure that the standards and criteria do align with that purpose. I'm wondering if there's a need for the flood prone conservancy district moving forward long-term after the new flood maps are adopted. And then there's always possibility of some zoning map adjustments as an outcome of that review. Article three uses. Now this is one that really in my opinion needs a pretty major overhaul. The tables could be improved. There's a possibility of a proposal to redesign by districts. This would add criteria and standards. Possibly reduce the need for special permits for certain types of uses. Bring clarity to the role of the land use boards as we just listened a few minutes ago. That was a case where that applicant has to go to both boards in order to accomplish what they need to for a residential development. So there's still areas of the by-law that could be improved. Updating the design review boards procedures. Looking at the educational district. I've been pointing out that the educational district does not have any dimensional standards that go along with it. Not really much of an issue as long as everything that happens continues to happen the way it has on those for the institution and the colleges. But when you look at the possibility of land being conveyed to a private developer we need to be prepared for that. Mixed use standards, apartments and townhouses are some of the bigger items to look at and there's more. Moving on to article 4 the development methods. We actually don't see a lot of activity in this section as far as projects coming forward at the moment anyway. I would suggest that we review it for conflicts and inconsistencies. Possibly some minor updates and improved graphics. Back to the uses. I had a couple of points to make here is that when we're looking at article 3, there's a lot of information. Possibly designing the bylaw to be formatted with the districts dictating how you set your criteria. There's often the possibility of being repetitive in that information. If you start looking at other examples you'll see where that occurs with parking requirements, tables and it adds pages to your bylaw. I think that's okay because it's not easy to read and understand bylaw that we don't have necessarily today. Accessory uses. This is a section of the bylaw that's been much improved in recent years but it still needs a little bit of updating. We could see some additions and updates regarding supplemental apartments although the overall section of the bylaw works very well. Outdoor dining and accessory uses on farms. Graphics would be a great help improving those and adding some perhaps. There's interpretation issues. For example coverage, this is one that comes up all the time particularly with split districts. How do you calculate the coverage from one district to another and also in building coverage and structure coverage what counts and doesn't count such as solar panels themselves. Do they count in coverage? We're not clearly answered by the bylaw but we've had to take a position on it. Flag lot criteria, you didn't get into that on that last case but the zoning board will and that could be some standards and criteria could be improved in that section of the bylaw. Table three, footnotes is always, footnote A is always one that generates a lot of discussion. Is there a need for it? Is there a need to accomplish with it? Should we consider down zoning in certain areas with possible bonuses for maybe affordable housing or sustainable building? All things that we're just thinking about and these are the types of items that we would be bringing forward for discussion as we got into this project. Seven, parking needs a lot of work. I think everyone is aware of what we're talking about. We're going to be talking about driving access criteria mainly to align with fire safety requirements and state law. Signs again, complete overhaul, nonconforming uses. It's pretty good section of the bylaw. There's a couple of areas where we can improve the language to have better ability to understand what's going on and what's going on in the areas from the older language. Article 10 is our special permit granting authority section. Maybe modernize the language through the 10.3 findings that are used every day in the zoning board of appeals process. Article 11, you might have some ideas here. This is the section of the bylaw that kind of talks about this. I'm sure it could do some minimal updates. Definitions, we could use improved meanings and adding quite a bit to the pages of our additions. Definitions. How are we going to do this? There's quite a bit of work that could be handled by staff and working day to day to get this started. The formatting that's needed to design the bylaw starting to build the framework for all the various sections to be updated as needed. The amendments that have been worked on in the past by the zoning subcommittee continue to be working on and future subcommittee work would go on. Then there's definitely going to be the need for an outside consultant. We won't have the ability to work on this, but we certainly can get started and have the planning board decide what those priorities are and work on bringing in that professional assistance. Staff work. I talked about this a little bit. We can identify the inconsistencies and conflicts, look at improving graphics, standards and criteria that we're missing or could be clarified. Work on definitions and other things. The zoning subcommittee has a long list of things that they have always been working on. We'll continue to work on and possibly some of those items could become big enough that we would look to have a consultant help in some areas. We're quite certain the consultant would be interested in having a consultant for things like parking downtown signage and so on. I think that's a good point for the process that has to occur in order to change the bylaw. It's a little different than it was in the past dealing with the select board. So that brings me to the end. Where do we want to go next? I'm hoping for the planning board to consider that this is a good thing that will be a major improvement and I want to make just stress the point that this doesn't if we did move forward with this this doesn't stop anything else from occurring that's either in process or the planning board or zoning subcommittee feels is necessary to occur this year more immediate than when this project would be completed and staff is ready to start working on this and setting goals and working with staff to bring this project forward. Thank you. Will you take questions? Absolutely. Does the board have any questions? Doug? Do you have a timeline in mind? Not at this point but it's more than a year for sure. I think as we get into the really doing that page by page review we're talking with the zoning subcommittee laying out our priorities and understanding what we want to accomplish specifically by doing this how deep we're going to go then I think we can start to think about the timeline that would be necessary. Janet? Other cities that have done this do you have a sense of how long it took them? I know Somerville was nine years Northampton is planning four years just to deal with their downtown and they've already done an overhaul how long that took? I'm not sure how long Northampton took but I've seen anything from one year to seven or eight years as you've suggested. Any other questions? Jack and then Doug. So how is the zoning map and you know it goes kind of hand-to-hand bylaw how are changes made of the zoning map? Again I'm not part of the zoning subcommittee I shouldn't probably know this but I think how would they occur? Yeah the process I mean it's the same process that would occur for adopting a new bylaw. So the zoning map be reviewed concurrently? Yes I think as we get into certain sections of the bylaw the district being the boundary interpretations it'll the standards and criteria in some of the districts it'll force us to look at the map along with that and determine whether or not there's any adjustments needed. Yeah because I just want to state as everybody knows the BL district is unworkable and there was an amendment presented to the town meeting backed by Jerry Gidera you know just kind of reinforcing that they're not billable lots basically based with the current zoning bylaw restrictions that they have so that's a big chunk obviously to handle. Would that get broken down some ways like you just focus you know you did an article which was section by section but like downtown or villages or? I think so I think that would be part of the priority setting that would occur with the zoning subcommittee and the planning board I think that what talked about there is the transition zones that I had noted up there you know that might be something where the BL you know consultant for the BL could be useful in helping there but it's also a part of downtown or adjacent to downtown so could fall into a couple of different areas of review. And we're doing the master plan update section by section and sort of reviewing it section by section and it sort of goes out to the public section by section and we're going to have like a website where the different drafts and sections are there for people to come and also they can comment on it do you expect it'll be something like that with the zoning bylaw that you'd release it and how do you see public forms or any part of that? Yeah I do definitely there'll be a web presence of the work and reporting on what's going on most of the activity will occur between staff and zoning subcommittee I'm imagining and there'll be decisions made when something needs to come to the planning board for a presentation beyond the zoning subcommittee's normal report to the planning board and then there'll be another decision to be made when do we go to the CRC so that they can be properly updated so that they can update the council and then I would also for certain you know some of these topics would probably benefit from district meetings throughout the town you know as we get as we get into we'll be able to identify where that makes sense but I would expect there to be some and then when we bring in a consultant the public forum and typical process that we would follow with a consultant would likely occur. It's good to hear thank you. Any other Michael? I'm interested in the question of why the there seems to be a lot of emphasis on the sign bylaw the sign section. I can understand the emphasis on all those other areas that you're highlighting and I'm a little bit of a lost understand why the signage bylaw seems to be so important important enough to seem to need to have a consultant about it. Why is that such an issue right now? Well the sign regulations are very troubling for a state-of-the-day so there's a little bit there's a lot in the zoning bylaw there's a little bit in the general bylaw for temporary the A-frame style signs that you see around and it's very restrictive both of those are very restrictive we actually enforce the bylaws it's written zoning and general bylaws a lot here. There's annual permitting requirements for a lot of these signs that have never a program's never been established for that so years ago when we identified this as an issue you know we kind of we went around to talk to the bid chamber area businesses the select board and we talked about well let's do we don't want to ignore it entirely we know it needs to be worked on but we're going to deal with certain things the signs that are stuck in the ground and all over the place when the store facades are covered too much with signs and we decided to frame what we would pay attention to at the moment while we're waiting for the sign bylaw to get looked at. Our sign regulations are not consistent with some federal case law that's occurred having to do with displaying the messages and having to read the content in order to decide whether or not enforcement action is necessary so we need to align there to make sure that we're legally sound with our bylaw we've gotten some guidance on this we've had our bylaw looked at so we know it needs to be addressed and then it gets down to what do we want it to accomplish and you know does it do that and I think we'll have a whole wide range of opinions on that and I've been through a sign major sign enforcement and rewrite during my time as a building official and it's a very sensitive matter it brings a lot of emotions from business owners and people of the community so we want to make sure we do that right and that's why we're suggesting that we probably need a consultant to help guide through that somebody that is experienced with signage and help us with that. I was doing some research on different municipalities who are trying to do recodifications or rewrite their bylaws and I have to say I noticed many of them their bumps are the same kind of bump in the road that we have and many had either bids going out for consultants for the sign bylaws or they were bringing stuff to their town meeting and it's always a stand alone issue so that always tells me that it's fairly complicated good luck Janet so this sounds like a massive undertaking and I like the idea of it not being that way but it seems to me that we could take it at different levels but it seems like we're looking at form based owning redrawing district boundaries or rezoning the map which is needed we need to do something with the village centers I didn't know the sign was such a big thing and so I got interested and then consultants and Christine Brestrup last night yesterday had talked about how you got $50,000 to start this process a bunch of years ago but didn't get it the next year and so I'm concerned about how long this will take the staffing needs the cost of it in terms of consultants and is there will that money be there like why start a process with consultants year after year so what's the budget for it and then I'm really worried about the staffing and the planning department because I know how you guys are flat out and so would that be a staff person or one and a half people you know what's what will that look like over how many years and then I'm really interested in making sure the public is involved from the beginning and knows what we're starting and what the goal is and then how they can participate and so those are my major ones and again I would love to know how other towns and cities did this very successfully because I would like to learn from their experience of the bumps in the road and I'd like to skip those Sure all great questions some of those aren't answered yet and they will as we get into the process as far as the funding goes as Ms. Brestrup mentioned there's some prior capital money that's available for this purpose had any indication from the town manager that this is not a good project to move forward and we do have some money requested in this year's capital plan and I'm sure we will I think it's another $60,000 Ms. Brestrup So we have $40,000 from a few years ago that was designated for downtown planning and zoning and I've asked for another $60,000 for FY21 so if you combine those amounts we can go ahead with this project So I'm hoping that's a good start and not at this point anticipating a 5 or 6 year or looking forward to a 5 or 6 year project but we'll know more I think once we do get into it and we decide as a group what do we want, how deep how far do we want to go what do we want to accomplish with this you can see from those slides through the articles you know half of the sections of the bylaw need very little work and can easily be accomplished others are going to take quite a bit of time Doug? Yeah I was mostly interested in hearing from Chris I don't know what staff you had in mind to work on this but if Chris is part of that plan you know you're going to be writing our master plan and do you have time for this or you know how does this work for you? I think you know we're we've been asked to do this and this is something that we are committed to doing and we will make it work and fortunately Rob is going to head up the zoning portion of this which is probably a lot more complicated than the master plan portion I'm heading up the master plan portion I've already gotten a pretty good start on that and I think I know what I need to do there so little by little we'll get through it initially we had hope to finish all of this in the year 2020 but I think as we're getting into it and you know becoming more realistic about things we're realizing it's going to take longer than that but the other thing is that we were lucky enough to add I shouldn't say add I should say replace someone who left last June so we've essentially been down a whole person in the planning department for the last you know eight months now we're going to be replacing that person and start full-time in June and that will be a big boost to our department to give us you know a good foundation to move forward with projects and so maybe we'll have to be a little judicious about adding other projects like we tend to do but we'll work on this together and I'm sure we'll make it work so Mr. Moore will you be working on this full-time half-time like what what time I'm just I'm just I mean it seems like a really large project and staff time and budget and length and like I'd like to know what we're doing and deciding to do before we just embark on it so we'll be working on it regularly and continuously do you think it'll be like half-time for you or I don't think it'll be half-time for me I don't think it could be half-time for me but we also as Ms. Brestrup mentioned we have some very talented planners on staff and other support staff that would be able to assist with this some of this work will rely on our IT department to help us get started with just how the basic formatting of the bylaw so there's you know there's a lot of people involved and I think as a team it's something that we could accomplish I do believe you've worked on the recodification and reworked bylaws in some other town a couple in your past I have I've been through it twice in one example there was a large zoning subcommittee that did a lot of the work and another was the town attorney that did a lot of the work with staff so it was two very different types of rewrites as far as process goes so different players for different areas but both ended with a repeal and replace of the bylaw nice Jack? It may be funny but has the town considered interns for this from the many universities and colleges we have in the area? I think this is going to require a certain amount of expertise and you know Rob and I know the bylaw really well we know it's ins and outs and how it all relates to different parts of it and so I think an intern would be completely baffled by this project and not really very useful I'm sorry to say but maybe we could use interns to do other things to free our time up to do this Is it possible that you know I know Amherst is unique and special but you could go look at other people who have recently done recodification of bylaw and that must be guidelines and you could sort of start with that and use it as a boiler plate and then tailor it to Amherst so all of this isn't like have to be created and we are starting with our document and working that the direction we want it to go but I think as we get into every each section or each topic we do look for examples and we talk to our colleagues and other communities and get ideas and learn what worked and didn't work and I don't think we're there yet to do that but I think we will absolutely be in that position as we're going through this process. And that was one of the beauty that's good about consultants they usually have the best practices and they've worked with lots of municipalities so they can point your right to where there might be a good example Maria. I just want to reiterate what we've been talking about at previous meetings where I'm really excited about this because we've been sort of using this priorities chart and rearranging it and I think working with the staff and the expertise about what our problem area is, what's coming up in the pipeline, things we should be focusing on so that as a team effort like you're saying we can figure out how to prioritize the bigger, more complicated things as far as where to put money and the consultants and where to put like the smaller things that maybe there's only stuff to make and take on in small bites so I'm really excited about just trying to prioritize our millions of issues that we have going on with I think just diving right in and seeing what we're up against is probably the best way rather than talking about the process and how long it's going to take let's just give it a go and we will come across roadblocks and difficult areas but we know that's going to happen so I think I really appreciate your proactive let's do this because we've spent hours deliberating on things that are just flaws in our bylaw so it would be great to just finally get it where we're hoping to get it I know you don't have a timeline but and things go through the zoning subcommittee before they come to planning board when do you anticipate the zoning subcommittee would start seeing things come out of your department I'm ready to get started on this so unless the planning board said you're crazy don't do this we're ready to start looking at our availability immediately to start figuring this stuff out and working with the zoning subcommittee and attending more of those meetings and getting going on this Michael yeah I presume if we're talking about a brand new zoning bylaw essentially which has to be approved by the council that there will be requirements for public hearings the official public hearings at what point in the process of you're writing it of the zoning subcommittee reviewing it the planning board reviewing it the CRC reviewing it and going to town council at what point in that path are public hearings appropriate are there going to have to be lots of them on the same question or can they be arranged so that they happen when there's something really specific to talk about as opposed to general ideas how do you think this is going to go public hearings meaning the actual public hearing when we're getting ready to adopt a bylaw is a process that the CRC is working with the planning board on right now so I think we're still trying to see what that process will look like with joint public hearings before something ultimately gets to the council along the way there's going to be as many public discussions about this as necessary and I'm going to rely I think as I bring things to the zoning subcommittee and they're working on their own things you know when is it appropriate to come to the planning board to have a clarification channel with the staff support to the CRC you know we'll be able to keep the CRC updated about the work that's occurring and understand when it's the right time to bring things forward and then we'll just know when there's a topic or a subject that we need to get out there and work harder at getting public input on so I think it's going to it's hard to map that out right now but it's going to occur quite a bit and as much as needed ultimately we need this is a planning board proposal this is going to be sponsored by the planning board and we need to make sure that we when we get to the end we have the support that we need Doug? So I'm imagining that your interest in this is because you work with the zoning bylaw every day and you have to make changes on gray areas or fill in gaps on emissions or that your interest is predominantly about working day to day with the existing document that we have that is just outdated so I guess my question maybe for the board or for Chris and even for you Mr. Mora is we have some information for where the town is going through the master plan but there's a whole lot of potential interpretations about what that master plan said says and will say once Chris rewrites it and how that gets expressed as a zoning you know do we want to have five story buildings all the way through downtown I mean or do we want to extend downtown all the way to UMass I mean those are pretty big questions and I'm assuming we need to have some sort of vision from the board that gets tempered by public hearings and feedback from you guys so that we're not just sort of tinkering with we're not tinkering under the engine we're buying a new car I mean I'm not sure what metaphor to use but you know where do you think we are on that since you brought up the subject well I think we're going to have those discussions starting pretty soon and setting that priority and for you know just you're specific to your example there downtown is one of the areas where we're hoping to bring a consultant and help us figure that out does the boundary work the density work and those are that's absolutely going to be part of this process if you want it to be if you tell us that that's a priority then we will write an RFP and work to engage a consultant to start that process so this is you're bringing this proposal to us and then you know this is a presentation of your ideas of how this should go and then someone has asked you to do what you're going to do I'm assuming I've been trying to figure this out for months and so the question that you're asking about what's the board's vision for this process and how we want to design it and what our goals are part of it could be just to be implementing the master plan because it does call for a lot of changes in zoning but I think that I really you know I think your questions what's the goal what's the vision is really what's the purpose is needed and important to involve the public because we're terrible at that I mean nobody comes to our hearings basically and the master plan process had an excellent public participation so I'd like to see that put to get something like that put together for such a large undertaking but I can't even know how we describe it at this point or what our focus is or why we're why this proposal you're suggesting is our proposal and what we think about it I think which is I think what you were talking about Doug may I miss understanding yeah I mean I mean we I've already noticed there's no definition of mixed use building and zoning you know so if you stick one office on the end of a residential building it's a mixed use building so I in a month seen a few problems but and you guys know all the rest of them I'm sure but I'm less interested in I'm really thinking is there how does the process happen or how does the vision get hammered out and is it really does it include the consultant and the staff and where does it originate you know you can hire a consultant to come in and help us conduct a process whereby we develop our vision and that's one expense or you can if you have a vision and you say to the consultant come and write a code that realizes this vision that's a much cheaper process I guess we'll see where it goes we need to we need to get started and and get to that discussion and we're not there yet but I assume no matter how fast this process goes we can't give it to the town council until we've given them the master plan because they don't want to see zoning changes from us until the master plan is done they would prefer that that the master plan effort be done before this effort but it sounds like it would be by a fairly big distance of time we'll be done with the master plan within a year and then this would take over a year so probably a couple years to make sure that that happens that we can just delay the zoning until the master plan is done I don't think that means that no zoning bylaws will be going till the code whatever the rewrite is done I mean other things will probably come through the pike I think zoning bylaw amendments could go now if there was something that needed to go part of what they have and not is the next thing on our agenda is coming up for the first time developing the process that bylaws actually get changed because it hasn't happened since we changed from a town meeting to a town council and with that it totally changed the system so that is actually the next item on our agenda before we moved to that I just for us are you are you coming to us and looking for our support to start this initiative are there other groups you have to go talk to do you want a recommendation from us or support I think it really is trying to understand the board's support to get started on this because it would be going through the process as a sponsored amendment or bylaw by the planning board well sort of what Maria was saying earlier I'm really excited to get going on this and I feel like we've been waiting a really long time and I know all the criteria and scope of work isn't exactly delineated right now but we know good work needs to be done whether it's the recodification which is more a little more simple or touching some of those more substantial issues that might trigger a consultant and usually trigger some controversy so there's more need for public outreach but you gotta get started somewhere and I think you're very confident and know exactly where to begin for the first step Jack so for clarification the master plan is not a rewrite it's an update which I feel like are pretty straightforward changes and now with the bylaw it is a rewrite this is an aggressive overhaul and will take place subsequent to the master plan update is that the right correct it will take a while to do this Michael I'm troubled by what the public process might be in regard to what Doug mentioned a minute ago about what the vision is or should be or how it might get developed couple of years ago we had a series of sessions involving the public trying to imagine what downtown would be like should be like there were I think four four just two okay well there were two sessions and they're well attended by a large number of people and lots of proposals or lots of ideas were suggested and as far as I know nothing really ever came of that am I correct in that Chris yes you can answer that you are correct that nothing ever came of it but that doesn't mean that that information isn't still with us we still have all of that information in our office I think we got a little bit distracted by the change of government and I think the last time we met for downtown was probably in December of 2017 then we had the vote to change our form of government in March of 2018 then we went through you know a whole year of changing our government so we've been in a little bit of a turmoil so I think now that we've got our new government in place we can retrieve some of that information that we were so happy and lucky to get before from the public about what they wanted to see in the downtown and start to incorporate some of that in some of the changes that we're going to make I would like to see changes to the downtown zoning I'm troubled by the setback of some of the buildings I'm troubled by the setback and height together for some of the buildings and the lack of sidewalk room and various things that I think other people are troubled by and I think we really need to look at those things we're going to be experiencing more and more development as time goes on we're aware of some parcels that are being looked at and so I think we really need to get going on this otherwise we're going to just keep spinning our wheels and I think kind of in that mode for a while now and this gives us a chance to get going and start doing some things so definitely we will bring back some of that input that we've received from those two forums which I agree we're very good and incorporate some of those ideas I was going to say that I appreciated those forums but I felt that the overall collection of opinions lacked a consensus on what the vision for downtown would be particularly on the questions of what the boundaries of it might be and it leads me to wonder exactly how to structure a series or a public meeting or a series of public meetings, sessions whatever we want to call them but not only can individual views be aired but where you and the board and the zoning subcommittee can take the information and proceed on it with some reasonable assurance that it represents the view of the town as a whole and that's what I'm concerned about because there are many people in town who are very vocal about what they think the town should be there are many other people who have very strong opinions and are not vocal they prefer to exercise their influence in other ways and I have a hard time figuring out how those two constituencies which are certainly not in full agreement with each other and maybe in total disagreement with each other I'm not sure somewhere in between those two places how that could get resolved in a way that would lead to a successful vision of what the town would be like which would then result in a successful rewrite of the zoning bylaw and I'd love to hear from other members of the board and from you how that might better work than it has worked in the past I'll say one thing that I think it will be impossible to get everybody on the same vision or the same hope but what I do realize is what's happening right now is things can be built and things are being built and we could all have different opinions on this board on whether those buildings are likeable or not likeable or attractive or not attractive but the truth is they're being built and they're going to continue to be built but I bet there are things that we all agree on that we know need to be improved and could be improved a few of them a few minutes ago I think everybody, I mean what's not to buy in with wider sidewalks or not just a flat front on a building and maybe have a little bit something to soften it or you know, different heights I mean even the look of a building can change the height they could all be five-story buildings but all have like a different feel when you're walking down the street so my point is I think we can all I hope find a common ground that we may not find a perfect decision for everybody to buy into but can we improve what we're doing right now and I think we can and by fixing some of these bylaws even if we don't, I think Mr. Moore has a huge job ahead of them and the truth is though in two or three years when this gets passed it may not be all done or all perfect and there will still be parts that have to be worked on but hopefully areas will be identified and broken off for consultant help and that you will do a huge load in improving it so right now it's hard to get in the weeds and trying to find a common vision but I'm just hoping we can all get on board here and say yes you know what our bylaw could really use some improving and let's get doing it because I feel like we've been waiting for years and anyways I think I saw Doug earlier and then Janet anyone else want to speak and Jack, okay I was just going to offer a motion of that the board vote in support of Rob's proposal and maybe as a way of going on record and moving on to other parts of the agenda. I would love that. Consider it so moved. Is there a second? Is there any more discussion? I know other people have their hands up that we could vote to support this effort and start moving forward. I just have a question. Do we have a historical account of the development of the bylaw over the years just for reference because I feel like it's a very old document. It's nice to know where we were and where we're going to arrive. I could put forth a summary I'm not right now but I could write up a summary of how we got where we are it started in 1925 and then it was altered a lot in the 40s and 50s and in the 70s it was altered completely when a lot of development came to town so we could sort of make a timeline about that and that might be interesting to people and the zoning map changed completely so describing in general how things got to where they are I think we could definitely do that. I don't want to create more work but it's always something in the back of my mind of how do we get here sort of thing. I agree with Jack's point and I don't want to suck up a whole lot of resources but I think doing that timeline could actually be used over and over again in public presentations or forums or whatever it would be informative. Do you know when was the last time the last overhaul did happen of the bylaw? Was it the 70s? I think it was the 70s. Janet? I'm hoping that two weeks of a delay to get some more information about what process they handled it what process they put together I understand it's a very urgent situation but I think that we could wait a few weeks and digest a little bit some more information about different options like even you said that you used a steering committee in one town and the town attorney and the other and I'm wondering which was better process what was more effective I know Northampton has gone through this again they're doing big changes and how they did that and then the Somerville process too I just want to have a menu of choices because this one just seems like oh let's go and I don't think there is a common vision even on the board I think we see the common need for changes in the bylaw I just need to know what the process is and what the goals are and what are the options of how to proceed and I understand your sense of urgency especially about the sign but I think we should wait two weeks and wait about more than an hour on overhauling this owning bylaw sure a big part of the work is figuring out how we're going to display this new bylaw how we're going to redesign it structure it format it that's going to be quite a bit of work on its own we need to get ourselves to a point where we're talking about identifying the items we need the vision for we need the planners to come in here and meet with you and talk about that to give direction to how the language develops I don't think I'm going to do anything in the next two weeks that you're asking for that'll be useful and maybe that's something that you can work on as this process goes forward and be prepared to give direction to how that language gets developed as part of the planning process as part of that visioning I'm not sure I'd be able to do much in the next two weeks I feel like you can take a vote to support the effort without knowing what all the details are going to be and there's a lot of time to collect more data and more information and investigate how other cities and towns have done this but it doesn't mean that you don't think that this effort should go forward in some form so I would encourage you to support this now and we'll kind of work on the details as we go forward Michael I hope my comment a minute ago didn't get misinterpreted I'm in no way against the idea of moving forward quickly with this process and I hope you didn't misunderstand me all I was trying to say earlier was that it is important for the success of this project that public buy-in be substantial without knowing how to define that exactly that means somehow figuring out a mechanism by which the public has consistently informed one but two more importantly listened to as opposed to simply being informed too much of the too much of the dialogue between the town and the citizens is related to the town telling the citizens what is going on we need to have more in the other direction and I really hope that this process which is absolutely important and should be pursued quickly has that kind of aspect to it Janet could we just wait on this vote for two weeks and collect some more information and reflect a bit for another member who would like to wait another two weeks or so I don't so at this point if there's more questions I'll take them I think that again to echo Chris's earlier comments I think that encouraging with a vote to start the ball rolling does not in any way and Janet any work that anyone does to go here was what happened there wouldn't be helpful especially early days but I think that just I think that what Mr. Morris looking for is just the encouragement to start and with the confidence that will ultimately figure it out as we go along do the members want to take a vote or talk about this more I move the previous question okay show of hands in favor I see six no and abstain I hope that helps we're looking forward to you coming back and we'll see it zoning subcommittee sounds good thank you thank you you're critical he designed it and built it there you go so I'm going to move item B of the zoning by law update and rewrite yeah that's great is that alright Amherst media we're just going to take a four minute break okay great thank you we're going on to item four I think item B discussion of proposed draft zoning by law amendment process so we do have a proposed flow chart for zoning by law amendments in our packet with some backup information behind it on reasoning why the flow chart looks the way it is Ms. Bestrup do you have a introduction on this item I can give a quick rundown on this process here it's really not too different from the process that the planning board used when we had a town meeting form of government but we will be interacting with the CRC at various points along the way so I'll just start at the top of the page the town council starts the process that's when they receive a by law amendment from either the planning board who's been working on it or a counselor might submit something or town staff or a resident who is submitting a petition once the council receives a zoning amendment they pass it on to the planning board and to the CRC the community resources committee of the town council and then the CRC and the planning board so once the planning board receives the amendment well excuse me the town council has to pass it on to the planning board within 14 days of receiving it so that's part of the time frame it says the deadline is directory not mandatory which means that if you don't follow that direction it's not a fatal flaw but it's well recommended to have 5 days in which the planning board has to hold a public hearing so if the planning board is initiating something you wouldn't really send it to town council unless you were pretty sure you were ready to hold a public hearing on it you wanted to have it pretty solidly drafted so the town planning board receives the document and then starts the review process including whomever they think would be an appropriate body to review it with the zoning subcommittee would be the most appropriate body but presumably the zoning subcommittee has seen it already meanwhile the CRC is keeping in touch with the planning board and making sure that they know what is going on what's being proposed and try to understand it the CRC will send feedback to the planning board if they think that would be useful then the planning board once it decides it wants to hold its public hearing it needs to notice within 14 days and send that notice to cities and towns and the DHCD the department of housing and community development and the pioneer valley planning commission and all the planning boards for the surrounding towns we have to hold it within 65 days like I've initially said and then we have to publish it 14 days in advance of the public hearing and then usually about 7 days in advance of the public hearing so one unique thing about having this town council form of government is that the town council has made a decision that they think it would be a good idea if the CRC and the planning board held a joint public hearing the town council is required to hold a public hearing on zoning amendments and they're designating the CRC as their body to act in their behalf to hold a public hearing so why hold a public hearing, why have CRC hold one and the planning board hold one why don't we get together on that so that's what this middle section where the two large boxes are then the planning board does its final review and revise whatever is being considered and the planning board votes on the proposed amendment with input from CRC and submits a final report to town council now that's the same as the final report we used to submit to the town meeting and often the planning board members would take a role in doing that but often staff would also do that I'm looking at Maria because she wrote a few of these reports and then once we submit our final report to town council then it's really up to them to work through their process the CRC will vote to recommend to make a recommendation to town council and they will forward the zoning amendment to the GOL and I'm afraid I don't remember what those government organization and legislation committee and that's part of the charter that the GOL needs to review and act on this so the GOL finalizes its review and votes and the town attorney obviously reviews all of these things we want to make sure that we report with the state law then the GOL passes this on to town council for a first reading then the town council does its second reading and votes and the vote must be held within 90 days of the CRC public hearing so this process seems very complicated but it's really not we went through a process very similar except I don't think we had CRC back in the summer when we repealed the old zoning bylaw and replaced it with the zoning bylaw that we have today the zoning bylaw that we have today reflects all of the changes that were required by the town charter so we've been through this process once before we work with the town clerk and the CRC and the town council to make sure that we do everything correctly but it's not as complicated as it seems does anyone have any questions Michael before we get to the box at the top of the page if the zoning amendment originates from the planning board we've been through the zoning subcommittee and the planning board before it is before box the top box now are we we're not holding public hearings at that point the zoning subcommittee is essentially writing a new bylaw amendment and zoning bylaw amendment and the planning board is approving that without any real public hearing is that correct all zoning subcommittee meetings and all planning board meetings are public meetings I understand that but not a public hearing as it's defined there isn't any public hearing until further down the line but if the planning board feels that they want to hold a meeting that would be focused on a particular topic a particular zoning amendment they can hold a separate planning board meeting and invite the public specifically for that purpose so that might be something that you want to consider doing did we not went back in the old town meeting days did we not hold public hearings prior to submitting the on a zoning amendment prior to submitting it to town meeting so it was a little bit different back in the old days what generally happened was that things were initiated by the planning board the planning board held a public hearing and then passed it on to the select board to put it on the warrant that's not exactly the way it should have gone according to Hoyle if you will it should have gone to the select board and the select board should have passed it back to the planning board I've spoken with our town attorney about that and he said that a lot of cities and towns miss that step they don't go upstairs and then have it come back down again they just started at the planning board level the planning board holds a public hearing then it goes up to be put on the warrant so it is true that we did hold public hearings prior to submitting something to the select board in the old days but in this rendition we're not going to be doing that we're going to be holding public meetings then after it goes to the town council and comes back to you then you'll hold your public hearing I think that's much clearer because I was thinking about the old way and the fact that we did have public hearings official public hearings before we went to town meeting Mandy Joe she I think worked a lot on this and how it was described to me is there's you know two different ways but if it's created in the zoning subcommittee and then it's this planning board review it's going back and forth between like zoning subcommittee and planning board and then planning board's like oh we think this is pretty much ready to go sort of like what we used to do before town meeting we were like oh yeah this is getting close this is probably ready she was saying at that time we would send like a memo to town council at the top saying we have something that's pretty much ready to go and then that's their trigger to sort of think about are they ready to receive it right in this moment because one of the questions I had concerns is that the way it was is twice a year we had town meeting you had it in the spring and we had it in the fall and it really created a heavy rhythm for planning board but also for staff they knew we always knew when it was about a month before town meeting because Chris would kind of be like okay I gotta start focusing and getting this stuff ready for town meeting but what could happen with this is I don't think the intention is that every little bylaw either coming from people or coming from us would be inconstant cause this could be constantly going and constantly being fed to CRC and town council and have multiple ones going on at the same time at different stages which would be awful so I had just asked I don't know if there was any more discussion about it you know maybe it doesn't say this in this flow chart but maybe it will be only like three or four times a year I have no idea but so that they would collect them a little bit so we would tell them from zoning subcommittee we've got one that's ready one that's almost ready whatever and they would start to prepare how they were gonna initiate this flow chart and that it isn't just always like an open door to start like every week of the year does that did you follow any of no I've been following the CRC and I'm following it now I'm actually more confused so so so zoning subcommittee we actually have a bunch of things in the batch and so you know say we decided okay you know even though we had this other process going let's do the mixed use building and whatever and so we could say to the planning board you know vote you know like it's time for public hearing like you know talk to the planning board planning board says yeah if you're ready to go then we have to send it back to the town council and then they send it back so we can have the formal public hearing exactly because that could go on that you know because I kind of thought that the process would be the planning board would hold the public the formal public hearing send it off to the town council and they can just batch it and decide what they do with it they don't there's no time constraints on their part we could just keep on sending stuff sending it to them and they can decide okay we're going to focus on zoning in you know whatever so I'm a little confused so it seems like are the timing of the formal hearing is really triggered by the town council I hear you so part of it is if zoning subcommittee working on it and then you think oh it's ready to at least go to planning board and of course all of our meetings are public you know so it's announced it's on the agenda it comes to planning board and then planning board talks about it and says oh yeah you're right this is perfect or no what have you thought about this this and this and it goes back to zoning subcommittee and then we could take a vote just that we think it's ready to go to town council and then it would go up to town council and then then it starts this process so part of the thought of having the joint hearing is it's it twofold one it helps the public so they don't get confused and show you know like it's one meeting and it's broadly announced so people who are following CRC or town council might know about it or people who are planning planning board they might know about it and they comment it streamlined so that members of the public don't feel like they have to come to two different meetings to voice their opinion and they can just come once the other part is if you start sending if we just cook it and we're like yay it's done and we kick it off to CRC or right away if they haven't been involved enough in the process and have another meeting with other people coming and bringing things up it's just setting up that process where they're gonna have to keep sending it back to us so we're trying to reduce some of that send it back to planning board by doing it together so we're all hearing sort of the same stuff because we haven't approved it yet if you notice the red box is further down the whole joint hearing so potentially after that joint hearing it could go back to zoning subcommittee to get like a little more finessed or tweaked and then continue on again. Okay so that so I sort of get that better and so then once we have the joint hearing and the planning board we decide this is fantastic and then we send it off we've had you know we've had our formal joint hearing we think it's fantastic we send it off to the CRC and I assume at that point we sort of just have no control over it right and so the CRC could say we like most of it we want to amend it they could probably I don't know if they have the power to do the amendments and then they go to the council maybe they send it back to us so at some point we just hand it off and just shake hands and say good luck we hope it passes and then obviously be involved with the reporting and presentation presenting so but the town council has the authority to amend it and decide what the final looks like so there is a handoff. It's not too different from the way it worked in the old days after the planning board held their public hearing and they wrote their report to town meeting it would go to the warrant review committee and the warrant review committee would put it on the warrant and then the moderator would say oh there's a problem you better fix this so we would work on fixing whatever wording needed to be fixed and then sometimes when it got even farther along until it got to the final warrant it could be adjusted so you know there's always that opportunity and then even on the floor of town meeting we didn't think this was a good idea but on the floor of town meeting things changed so I'm sure that once they get to town council there's the possibility that something wrong with what's being proposed things will change so it's not like it's you know locked in or carved in stone or something so they could refer back a little but you have to remember there's taught like so this is a flow chart it's not a timeline which also shows you a different criteria that hold it in you know you have like it says in the bottom box vote must be held within 90 days of the CRC public hearing so that's yet another reason why they're trying to tag in tightly what works hearing and seeing and working on and what CRC is updated on because you know it can go back and forth to us but not that much because we're working under this built-in timeframes I also think that once it gets to town council town council can vote to agree with it and adopt it but they can vote it down where they can vote to send it back to the planning board for more work just like the town meeting used to do you know they can send it back if they don't feel like they can adopt it at that time. Oh Maria go ahead. I don't want to discuss this item tonight but I just want to pose the question to ask either the CRC or town council could they give us a sense of the bundling of this like do they want to see six at a time two at a time like just for us to sort of know path moving forward like for the zoning subcommittee or like how we should sort of target our sort of work ahead but I don't want to discuss it I just whoever's in cahoots with the CRC and town council. We do have some CRC here. So it'd be great to get a sense of that so we can know how to move forward. Yeah and how they would want to do it the first run like do they just want one something kind of simple do you want to test it one time and then then how to bundle it and if we are giving thought to how often like would it be quarterly or something like that because I know there could be other amendments that come from other sources to that so it's not just us. Any other questions so I'm not sure what CRC wants I wasn't going to get you involved in this but I'm not you know we're looking at it we've got a little feedback I appreciate the questions yeah do you want to come up either you can say no state you know we'll get back to you or do you want to come up okay so at this point this is all we have to do are there any other last thoughts that you want to send to them? I would like to see a series of boxes above the first box which says which recognizes the fact that many zoning amendment proposals will come from the planning board directly through the zoning subcommittee and that should come before town council receives it seems to me because I think that would make clear that the planning board and perhaps the zoning subcommittee will have to be dealing with these things these amendments on at least two occasions after we think they're finished which seems to me to be too often and unnecessary from both our point of view and from the council's point of view because I think while there may be technical changes and there may be some specific objection to proposals that come out of the planning board and the zoning subcommittee and the planning board it's the town council's responsibility to vote them down or dismiss them if they're not appropriate so rather than sending them back to us on a regular basis I understand that it might happen occasionally but rather than making that an assumed part of the process it would be I think more helpful to everybody if that were an unusual part of the process rather than the assumption I think if it's the assumption then it's simply making more work for everybody to do that I may be wrong but that's my sense Doug Chris so I just wanted to say that there's I probably didn't emphasize the right hand side of the page that much there's an opportunity for the CRC to be involved all along the way and one of their responsibilities is going to be meeting with the planning board figuring out what the planning board is doing and reporting to town council the whole time so I don't really feel like something's going to get to town council without the town council having a clue about what's being proposed or not having had some opportunity to give input through this whole process even before it gets to town council because we are going to have a CRC representative who's going to meet with the planning board one already who's meeting with us about master plan issues and then the CRC is going to designate one of their other members to come and talk to us and be aware and transmit information about zoning bylaws so there will be a lot happening before town council receives the document but I think town council will be well aware of it by the time they receive it well like I said it's just the oh sorry Doug go ahead it's getting late I know I'm like you don't want to talk no I'm kidding go ahead so what I was going to say I think was just negated by what you said Chris because I was going to disagree with Michael that we needed the process after we sent it up to town council we needed them to send it back but at that point we started to get comments from CRC and town council I mean they're they're not going to want to approve anything that they think they're all going to lose their get voted out of office for approving right I mean even if we think it's the greatest slice bread there ever was well you don't? we're not elected officials and I think earlier there was some conversation about how public is going to be able to be involved in zoning changes and well we have enough we have a process that lets enough of that come through well it'll come through during the hearing and then it'll come through in scads of emails to town councilor inboxes and so I mean if the process leading up to the top of this page doesn't include significant CRC communication then we definitely need a place for that to happen and that's what this suggests is where it happens I'm not sure I did anything but waste everybody's time with that but sorry so I think I'm just very tired but I think what Michael was saying and I see the need for is to do a flow chart about what when it starts planning board so this first thing it says town councilor sees proposal zoning bylaw from planning board whatever and I don't know if I'm just tired but it seems that it'll be sort of a different process for when we are sending things up to come back again and loop around and it's just a little hard for me to see right now it might be helpful to pull that one out on a smaller chart I think Mandy Jo did have two charts one of the charts started with the planning board and one of the charts started with others but in the end it looked like the process was exactly the same once it gets to town council so this is really something that we're sharing with CRC and town council about how the overall process is going to work how the planning board process works itself is completely up to you and it can work just the way it's always worked which is zoning subcommittee comes up with the initiative and creates the document and then presents it to the planning board and talks to the planning board and they say no it needs more work and then you go back to CSC and they work on it and then they bring it back to the planning board so there's a lot of back and forth between the CSC and the planning board before it ever gets to town council but that's not really reflected in this you might want to do a separate part that describes what the planning board process is before it goes to town council just she tried and she ran out of room but I don't know if anyone, it's not really part of the flow chart but on the bottom left above the draft box is one that says CRC aims for a collaborative process that includes information and feedback sharing on potential proposals while they work their way through the planning board process prior to the process shown on this chart so that was sort of the and again Mandy Jo has been here before she was like I'm not going to tell you how to do your business and this is the zoning subcommittee and planning board's business so that box is sort of the yep we've got to figure out how we're going to fit into their structure which is mostly mandated by various charters and law and such which is some of it is if you really want to get like stimulated on this the back three pages are just full of details so yeah go ahead I wanted to say what the back three pages are it's a book they're good stuff it's a book that Bob Richie who used to be the town attorney and then was the assistant attorney general for the state looking on with former planning director Bob Mitchell to try to make sense out of land use in Massachusetts it's called the guidebook to Massachusetts land use so this is their attempt to plot the path of zoning amendments as they make their way through a city or a town council a city council or a town process and so this is really based on state law and that's what Mandy Joe was basing her chart on to try to hit all the requirements of state law and also to hit the requirements of the charter and this chart here that Bob Richie and Bob Mitchell worked on is also annotated to show how it fits in with the charter the little red writing refers to charter sections so you have to read this with kind of an open mind and think about state law and the charter both at the same time but we have to meet both sets of requirements and that's what this is about it's very detailed but it is really good if you really want to know then get a good drink and soak it in is this enough for tonight and we'll wait for CRC to come back with more maybe they'll even tweak this I don't know alright thank you thank you for hanging out with us alright we'll move to item 5 master plan update Christine Bester planning director progress of the master plan update so I have been working on the master plan update and we'll tell you a couple of things I've done but let me get a drink of water it's dry in here so I'm starting with the land use section which is chapter 3 because that's the chapter that I know the most about and I thought I would approach it that way and try to just get as much done on the land use chapter and then I would move on to something else but immediately when I started I realized I was going to have to reach out to other people to get input from them, get information from them you know people who have information about demographics or land use or all the various topics that's covered by the master plan so I wrote a pretty what, involved email to many department heads including the school department and DPW and town manager and I don't even remember all the people I wrote to just outlining what it is we're doing and the fact that we're going to be spending 6 to 9 months on this and we will be reaching out to people for information input and help all along the way the impetus for this was that I started into one person and I realized that person has no idea what kind of a project this is, how long it's going to take how many times I'm going to go back to them for same type of information so I just sent out this email and captured what it is we're doing I think I copied Christine Gray-Mullen but I may not have so anyway that was one step that I took then I spoke with the IT department about the different ways that they can help us and they have a tremendous amount of data available through our GIS system so they're very much on board and they're going to fit in our requests to them with all of their other work but not feeling like they have to do it immediately they're going to be able to work over time we also have our new staff member who happens to be very good at GIS so I am asking him to work with IT to gather a lot of this information and particularly for land use it has to do with how much more land do we have in conservation restrictions than we had back in 2010 how much more land do we have in APR than we had in 2010 how much more land has been developed for mixed use buildings or any number of things there are all kinds of things that they can help us with so they're currently getting up to speed and working on that in mean time I've been going through the text of the land use section and just sort of putting in things that I know about that have happened and trying to assemble information about all the various plans I think we have a list that Christine Gray Mullin asked me to put together a few months ago a list of all the plans that have been done since 2010 so we're going to incorporate those so little by little I'm getting a handle on this and I'm hoping to bring you a kind of a rough draft of Chapter 3 by the 18th of March of course it will have to be before then because you'll need to have your packets for your meeting but anyway that's my goal and it's going to be rough and I'm sure that you'll have a lot of suggestions about different ways to handle it different information that needs to be put in I've received some input from Mr. Levenstein which is very helpful things that he thinks need to be talked about in the master plan and if you all have ideas about that please send them to me but I'm feeling good about it I'm feeling like I'm on my way thank you I hope the next chapter you pick is a shorter easier one did actually none of the chapters are very short except open space and recreation is 8 pages but the others are all over 10 pages and land use is 23 pages but that's what I do all the time so I figured if I can't do that I can't do the others so that's where I started thanks any questions for Chris Janet so are you thinking like the land use chapter with the implementation section like what I'm doing is I am putting in wherever we have implemented something if we have done an action that's based on that strategy I'm noting it and you know trying to bring people up to speed about what have we accomplished in the last 10 years so that's the kind of thing that I'm doing or if you know if we've done the opposite I would mention that too so you know just all the different things that I know about I've been here for 15 or 16 years now so I've seen a lot over that time period so but I'm sure that you all will want to add to it or maybe change it or whatever but that's the whole point of this process so the other I hate to ask something about 25 I struggle to find all the plans the town has done can that all be just put on the planning department web page or our web page or both because I sometimes can't remember what committee did something and I'm always kind of fishing around and then you would do the search and then you come up with these odd things so that'd be great thanks great so we look forward to seeing the first draft roll out thanks Chris we'll move to item 6 planning and zoning item a z s c report we've discussed everything but I do want to add that the zoning subcommittee meetings or joint meetings with the planning board so everyone's welcome to come in it's going to be a lot of meaty stuff coming around any public comment about the zoning no there's not okay other nothing seven old business decision signing I sent it out late this afternoon and I acknowledge that you may not have had an opportunity to read it if you don't feel comfortable signing it tonight you can read it and come in and sign it later the reason that I'm sort of rushing this is because Mr. Robleski who was here tonight has a special permit that you approved on February 5th so it's taken until now to draft this decision and he's eager to have this signed and filed with the town clerk so that he can move ahead with his project now that he's got his site plan review approval so in any event if you feel comfortable signing it tonight you could do so if not and you want to you know read it and then come in and sign it during the week you can do that if you have any big major changes to it I guess I have to bring it back to the planning board but if they're just auditorial you know typos or whatever anyway how do you feel about signing it tonight I'm happy to sign it tonight it's pretty short so do you want to just pass it down and whoever can sign it they can sign it and if you don't want to and read it come back when is the when do you want people to come back in to sign it I would like to have it signed soon because I'm going to be working on the site plan review approval now that you've approved that I would say in the next week by Wednesday by next Wednesday you can manage to do that so try to come in before Wednesday morning or something I assume I don't need to sign it that's right this is the special permit this is the one you want to sign it because it's your first we don't take them home and frame it now the special permit you voted on didn't you? we started it after you came voted on it on February 5th it was a one night it was a one night public hearing and it was just about the little addition to the back of the white house at 462 Main Street and everybody agreed that that was an okay thing to do and this is a pretty skeletal decision so great on that topics not in recently anticipated 48 hours prior to the meeting can you give a really short update to everybody about Amherst Hills because we've been pushing it off every week and every week so yes I can talk about that if I can still talk so Jim master Alexis who kind of leads the group of residents approached me with not along a five question list of questions that he had for me and for town council Joel Bard about why things weren't moving ahead faster so I sent that list to Joel Bard who happened to be out of town at the time and I offered to meet with Jim master Alexis yesterday morning with two other members of the residential group from Amherst Hills and it just so happened that Joel Bard was available to talk to me on the phone yesterday morning so I spoke with him for about a half hour and then I met with the residents and I managed to kind of keep Joel Bard on the phone while I was meeting with the residents so they had a chance to talk to one another and it was really useful because they got to understand why Joel was giving us the advice he was giving us so in the end what Joel advises is really the best form of security for a subdivision and he would recommend that the town consider reimposing the covenant that's something that the applicant or the developer is actually agreeing to but there's a question about how worthwhile the lots are that would go under the covenant there are allegations on the part of the residents that many of the lots aren't worth much at all because they have wetlands on a road that's not developed yet so what we're currently thinking and the residents whom I met with yesterday seem to more or less agree with this plan that once we get the conservation commission to tell us what the significant wetland issues are on these lots then I can reach out to a realtor or an appraiser or somebody and get a pretty good idea of what the lots are worth and then the planning board can decide if that form of security is worthwhile is what you really want Joel reminded me that a covenant doesn't allow the planning board to acquire the lots that are under covenant all it does is it gives the developer an incentive to finish the infrastructure so that he can get the lots released so he can sell them and make some money so if the lots aren't worth anything there's not much incentive but if the lots are worth something there is incentive so that's one option for the planning board to take we won't know about whether that's a worthwhile option for a few months because the conservation commission can't determine anything about vernal pools or wetlands right now probably late April and this was actually something that Jim master Alexis brought up was well maybe we're better off staying with what we have right now which is $288,000 in a three-party agreement and a strong recommendation to the building commissioner that he not release building permits on those lots which has been filed with the registry so that is something to keep the governor's feet to the fire to continue to work on the infrastructure so I think the residents are going to go back and talk among themselves about what they think about this and the planning board will need to make a decision at some point a few months down the road about which option you think is more worthwhile but it's something that you don't really need to face immediately and I'm hoping that we'll have some good information for you late spring or early summer thank you for that it's good for us now because it was kind of hanging out there and it's good to know any questions are real good okay eight new business item a discussion and potential vote to move planning board meeting to 630 so this is something our new member had suggested and I think we all went home and thought about it what are the thoughts here are people up promoting to 630 or do they want to keep it at 7 any strong preferences David well if we move to 630 we'll continue to move to 11 so I mean to keep the purpose is there a way in which we can consider this as well as putting a limit to the because they're just relevant I can't concentrate on that so the zoning board of appeals has been known to put an upper limit on their meetings sometimes they come into a meeting and the chair will say we're not meeting past 9 o'clock or whatever the hour is and they really stick to it so that's an option for you to consider if we do that then we probably ought to put a time frame on each item on the agenda if we do that then we're going to put a time frame on the agenda if we do that then we're going to put a time frame on 5 35 minutes something like that I think if I may what happens is you just don't get to the other things that are on the agenda you just postpone them to the next time so would people consider like 6 to 9 I could meet at 630 or 6 I just don't know what's going on with the board and I felt good first of all our agendas are light and a lot of them go to like 11 o'clock or later I was horrified I was like looking at brain trees and another point is in general they're 5 people but they still go long because I was thinking like I always knew we were a larger board than most towns the average is 5 and I thought oh well maybe ours go longer I don't want people to talk but that doesn't seem to be the case and when I looked at the ones that were going late they just have a lot like believe it or not think about these towns around Boston that they just have so many special permits and site plan review that they're just totally loaded and I mean we already meet twice a month sometimes we meet three times a month I will say three hours I really want to be done and three and a half I feel is a max like right now I'm feeling crispy if we moved it to 6.30 that's 6.30, 7.30, 8.30, 9.30 I mean we could and 10 maybe is a drop dead date time for us dropping dead go ahead I wonder if we could just try it once or is it still going till 10.30 just give it a test run or is that do we have to officially post it and I'm just wondering if it does make a difference or not I'm willing to meet at 6.30 if it means we can leave at 10 or earlier I'm willing to do the 6.30 just to take a little off the the truth is we haven't gone 10 that many nights like it's just recent I'm not and I think it's just because we have so many we have initiatives now along with our regular business of permits but I don't know what do you think Chris because this is your realm too well I think it would be easy to try it if you decided on a date then any public hearing that came on that date we would just have the time for starting the public hearing so you should tell us if you want to try it what date do you want to try it on I think there are three meetings in April the first the 15th and then 29th so you could choose one of those or you could choose the 18th of March I'm willing to try it right away we can do it on the 18th and we have a tree hearing scheduled for 705 but we could do our other business before the tree hearing if you want to start the meeting at 6.30 sure I mean is everyone want to just try it so what do you do like do we have to have a special announcement or just posting it's good enough even though it's always been 7 and okay I think I was going to give an update on the master plan that day so we could start on that update and then go to the public hearing at 705 and then go back to the update so on the agenda or something can you make sure you like bold the new time or maybe even put a little parenthesis like new time or something like that so that so people might notice we're going to do 6.30 on the 18th how does that agenda look so far like I knew tonight would be bad but it looks pretty light it's just so far it's the tree hearing for Trees on Leverett Road it's signing of Mr. Robleski's special site plan review if I can get that done and it's me talking about the master plan wow and an A&R that sounds like the old days okay A&R so let's start at 6.30 am I done you do need a site visit yes okay so you'll be sending stuff out on that alright so at this point we'll just change the next meeting to 6.30 and see how that feels any other topics not reasonably anticipated new business nothing okay 9 form A&R subdivision applications upcoming ZBA applications that we need to hear about okay good 11 upcoming SPP SPR SUB nothing committee reports does anyone have a committee report Michael CPAC is finalizing its recommendations to Town Council tomorrow I think in which case I will report the outcome to you all at the following meeting thank you any other committee reports nope I see none report of the chair none report of staff glad that it's nighttime and we're all going home yeah have a nice night adjournment do I hear a motion someone we're adjourning at 10.40 second thank you thank you Amherst media