 Welcome, Lindsay. Hi, how are you? Good. You're all set. Have a good one, everyone. Thank you, Athena. Let me know when you're ready, Lindsay. Okay, thanks. Sorry, I have a meeting at one right before this. So I try and get out, but I am ready. Okay. I didn't want to start when you weren't. Welcome Ben. Hello. Hi there. Hi, Shalini. It was nice staying up late with everyone last night. Thank you for enduring Ben. I'm impressed you guys are able to stay, stay sane through all that and still kind of process all the important decisions you're making. Yep. So I think we have everyone here. We're waiting on Rob. And Dave. Yeah. We've got about five, 10 minutes till we'll get to zoning. Because we're going to do minutes first, but if you want to check on that, Christine, that would be fine. Okay. I am, I don't, I need to leave around three. Just so you know, and. If I'm still sharing my screen or anything, I might, maybe I'll just email it to someone. Yeah, that, that'll work. Okay. I'm hoping to be done the zoning portion by then. So that should work well. So let's get started. So it is two oh two in the afternoon and I am calling this. November 17, 2020. Meeting of the community resources committee to order. Governor Baker's March 12, 2020 order suspending certain provisions of the open meeting law, and I'm hoping that the meeting is being recorded for future broadcast and any votes we take will be by roll call. At this time, I'll call on each committee member by name to confirm that you can hear me and we can hear you. Please remember to mute your mic after saying present. Shawnee Balmille. Present. Mandy. Joe Hanneke is present. Evan Ross. Steve Shriver. Present. And Sarah Swartz. Present. Thank you. And we will, we have some guests that will introduce as we get to those items. I switched our agenda order around a little bit today. To try some stuff out and we'll see how it goes. We're going to start with minutes. There are three sets of minutes on the agenda. We only have two of them. October 13 and October 27. Okay. I put in the packet the original minutes I received and also revisions. The revisions are very basic. I am going to share my revisions for the October 13th minutes. So people can see him. It was correcting the name of the committee. And then that might have been the only thing on it. Hold on. That I think was the only thing on the October 13th minutes that was correct. I don't have any revisions for the October 13 minutes. I am seeing none. I'm going to stop the share of that one and share the October 27 minutes. Because again, I was correcting the name of the committee. And then. I'm not sure what the formatting was. I added. And then I added to the end of the paragraph on section a, that Shriver mentioned the practice and other cities of posting a sign at the location subject to an application for a use permit. As we were talking about article 14. I corrected a Scrivener error error down here. The word in should be is. And then the only other thing was the hyphen in 90 day. Another of two or. And I think I changed if to weather. Down here in section C. And that was it. Are there any other requested changes of the October 27 minutes? Seeing none. I will make the motion to accept. Okay. Let me get to the right screen here to accept the minutes of October 13, 20, 20 and October 27, 20, 20 as amended. Is there a second. Second. Evan seconds. Thank you, Evan. Any discussion. Seeing none. I'll go through roll call. We start with me. I am a yay. And then we go to Evan. Yes. Steve. Thank you. And Shawnee. Yes, those are unanimously adopted. That takes us to our presentation and discussion items, which our first item is zoning priorities. This is where Ben gets to, to, I think, share his screen. The goal with these discussions before we've been share his screen and welcome Rob. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. And building inspector and. Ben breaker planner here with us for these discussions today. The goal for our committee, I believe, is to come up with priorities that we can then take to the council for, I guess, council action. To then be able to inform the planning department of. Priorities outside of their own priorities. The Council has a wonderful spreadsheet. Ben has created and modified after our conversation next week. And I'm hoping that within the next. Two meetings. Our next meeting is December 1st. We might be able to have something that we can take to the council for discussion at potentially the December 7th council meeting. About potential priorities. I think that's where we need to be thinking we're going with these discussions at this time. So. I don't know which of you guys is leading this is Ben. Right now in terms of sharing screen. Yeah, I'll, I'll get up the, the matrix on the screen here. And. Chris, how would you like to do this? I can kind of just run through the. Yeah, I'm going to go through the next one. So I guess there's some more feedback from last. Weeks meeting and the changes I made. That's on. Why don't you do that? And then we can start. General. Yeah. So there was a few. Kind of. Changes to the actual like numbers and, you know, language within the. So like, you know, I had taken notes, you know, people wanted to see, you know, small impact changes to large or to medium for some things or, you know, adding some time to so there's little changes I made, but only a few but the bigger changes I made were adding two columns I believe where, you know, one thing was a clarification on, you know, you know, some of the changes that are made are to zoning items that are waivable, such as like the parking bylaw is something that can, the requirements of that can be waived, whereas other things are, you know, you put that in the bylaw and it's kind of like a permanent change and not something that can be waived. So I thought parking bylaw and maybe signed bylaw were the two that fit under that category where, you know, the permit granting authority has the can waive some of the requirements of that and then the second column I added was the someone mentioned, you know, it might not be important townwide but it's something that's internally important to the planning department. And I think really the two items about recoding the bylaw and reviewing the bylaw were, I guess they should say hi as well. Yeah, so these two items were important to the planning department or had special importance to the planning department. I would say everything else we proposed isn't important but just that these are uniquely important to the planning department. And then secondly, or thirdly, I reformatted the columns you might notice there's more colors this time hopefully that doesn't make it more complicated but this is now done by topic as opposed to by, you know, the body that proposed the item, the zoning item. So, you know, previously it was all the planning department items all the planning board items and then all the town council items. But I also had this column all the way to the right that talked about whether it was a priority that was shared by another body. And so the way I organized it now is basically grouping those together so if if two or three different bodies propose that zoning item that I put them together and you know the language is slightly different, but they are generally the same kind of concept. You know so this is zoning, you know bylaw review and recodification. This is parking bylaws. So the three all have to do with housing development, you know increasing density and unlocking development. This is apartment and mixed use regulations. The planning board had a general item of improving downtown zoning and then town council three counselors said, you know, doing something around the BG district setbacks. So I kind of grouped those together. And then the remainder are all kind of standalone items that I didn't think fit neatly grouped with another item. So I think, you know there's certainly some discussion like you know BL district relates to downtown zoning as well maybe that could go in there. You know form based code or design guidelines for downtown that could be grouped there as well so this was just the first first go at it. So I think it's open to any feedback you know the my goal for this isn't to just like you know fixate on the structure of the table itself but this is you know meant to be a tool for everyone to use to help organize thoughts and you know priorities. So, that's how I see, see this being used. Thank you Ben, Christine it looks like you've got your hand up. It wasn't fast enough to raise it in the appropriate way. I think we didn't get very far in looking at this chart as a whole. Last time we got through the first portion which was the planning department priorities. And I don't know if we got through planning board priorities and we didn't get into town council priorities so maybe we should start at the top and review it. You know, line by line again. What do you think about that. I think we could. I'm not sure I guess I would leave it to the committee to see if they need a line by line review or if they have an idea of what each of these is referring to. There might be some that we actually do need a review of. But if we're looking at the top here, the blue, the comprehensive review and recodification we talked about last week. And bylaws we would have talked about last week because it's under planning department. And I don't know whether we got to housing and increase density at all last week. You know, I think we talked about buildings. Last week. I'm just looking at the things that have PD next to it. Most of that we talked about. We talked about the black demo delay inclusionary zoning. We could talk about, you know, I think the one thing I would like to talk about is the yellow and the gray actually the improving downtown zoning and the need for housing. Because as Ben mentioned I saw some of the white things that could go into some of those and that related and I know I have some questions about how they relate and would they be done at the same time type thing. So let me start unless I see any hands from committee. I'm going to suggest we start talking about the yellow section need for housing. The way the planning department worded it was need for housing and increased density planning board said unlock housing development and increased diversity of housing stock and the town council summarized it as expand the types of housing permitted in town, both by location and permit type. So could could Christine could you summarize you know sort of what falls under those categories in terms of zoning changes. Certainly, the upcoming topic that we're going to tackle later in the meeting 40 are would be part of need for housing and increased density, and that provides us a way of getting more housing units per acre, and therefore increased density. There are also other things that we would like to do such as redo the zoning if, whether or not 40 hours adopted. I think we should redo the zoning in the BL zoning district, especially the BL zoning district that butts downtown, because currently, there isn't really a possibility for providing housing in those areas at all that the lot area requirement per dwelling unit is too high. And so that really needs to be looked at and that would provide us with places where we could create denser housing in and around the downtown area. I think unlocking housing development and increasing diversity of housing stock. That was really something that the planning board talked about, and partially instigated by Maria chow, who's an architect and she's done a lot of research and different kinds of housing that's possible. And brought to the housing to the planning zoning subcommittee actually of the planning board, kind of a study showing how different levels of housing in terms of density and also height density in the terms of things being closer to one another, but also in terms of the number of dwelling units that could be contained in a building could get progressively greater as you move towards the center of town, towards the edge of town or in the outline neighborhoods those places would possibly remain either one or two family houses. But then as you move closer to the center of town, things can get more dense. She did talk to the zoning subcommittee about allowing duplexes in in the, some of the residential zoning districts like particularly the RN. And I believe in the RG. There are two different types of duplexes. There's the an owner occupied duplex and there's a non owner occupied duplex and depending on which one it is there are different criteria for permit requirements. So, kind of trying to make it easier for people to own a duplex, certainly in terms of an owner living there. It's, it's kind of a win win because the owner can gain income from the other unit to support the house as a whole. So that's something that the planning board and the zoning subcommittee we're looking at, and increasing the diversity of housing stock I think you know the town has gone a long way. Doing that, and one of the ways they've done it is to allow accessory dwelling units, particularly ones that are built out in the yard, it used to be that an accessory dwelling unit really needed to be part of the existing house but now we're allowing them to be out in the yard and that's something that there's, there's a project that's coming before the zoning board of appeals about that right now. So there are a number of different ways to unlock housing development, but those are some of them. And then expand the types of housing committed in town both by location and permit well, that's kind of what I've just been talking about the different types of housing that might be located in town. There's a lot of possibility, and you know we haven't really talked much about this before at all but triple deckers are really popular in the Boston area, and you really don't see very many triple deckers out here, or three family houses and again that's a way to allow a person to own a house and rent two units but still live in the house and be able to control what goes on so that's an example of different types of housing that can be permitted in different places right now. They would allow three family houses I believe only in the RG and the BG and the BL if you can get enough land area, but they wouldn't be allowed in our and or any of the outline residential districts. They wouldn't be allowed in some of the village centers and the neighborhood residential zone but just, you know, thinking more, more expansively about types of housing that might be appropriate in different places. The building was primarily written back in the 70s when people were very afraid of density and they were afraid of UMass expanding and afraid of all the new developments that were being built, many of our existing apartment complexes were built back in the 70s and so later on in that decade that town really put the brakes on different kinds of housing that could be allowed in different areas of town so it's just a, an effort to be more open minded and more expansive about possibilities at the same time, maintaining our open space and I think that's something that we really want to keep in mind because we have, you know, beautiful swaths of open space throughout town, and we don't want. We don't want Amherst to be developed the same way some of the near in suburbs around Boston are developed or the same way that Long Island is developed or Northern New Jersey we want it to remain a community that has a lot of open space but we need to think about places where we can put housing where it makes sense where it's near services and transportation. You know that's kind of what all of these three ways of phrasing this one topic mean, and I'm sure that others in your group particularly Steve Shriver has a lot of ideas about this being an architect. So we can talk more about that if you'd like at this time or go on to the next thing. Are there any questions or comments on this particular item on this list the housing density housing types and locations and all, before we move on. Just open comments or. Okay. Yeah, so actually really interesting. Chris and Ben, but you know housing density is a really tricky one, particularly when you have an established community. And the housing that or the housing market so it's not a place where people tear down housing and try to redevelop so that's not a phenomenon that's really happened here. And to my knowledge, ever. So, a lot of the goals are really incremental like triple decor is converted wellings you know all the tools that exist now. The fastest way to housing density and to increasing new housing is to allow multifamily. So the incremental housing on individual bots is each lot is a struggle right and the yield for that is limited. But the, the, yeah, so the best way to increase the housing stock is to, in my opinion is to look at multifamily, more than three units on on basically on brown fields on sites that are underdeveloped. Excuse me. Jack gemstick would like to attend the meeting and I wonder if Athena could send him a link to the meeting. Or if someone could send Jack gemstick a link to the meeting. Let me see what I can do as host. I'm not sure if it should be on the town calendar. Yeah, he can just join the attendee. Does he have the link for the attendee because I can send that to him. You send that to him. Yeah. Okay. Thank you Steve, while I'm doing that Evan you had a comment. So the that sort of suite of options that Chris just talked about are probably my biggest priority. So I guess there's a broader question here there's more for the committee about what does it look like for us to recommend priorities because all of these are broad enough that Chris just listed a whole host of things that could be considered increased housing and density. But so a couple things. One is that, you know, some of the things she mentioned, I think are probably easier to do both technically and that it's just they're fairly, they're easier to write the actual bylaw itself. So it also would be easier in terms of less controversial so so for example, you know I've been talking about duplexes and allowing them by right and all residential units, and even folks who let's say historically have not been the biggest positions on density and development have been in favor of making the easier to do duplexes and so even within these broad categories, there's there's stuff that still seems to me low hanging fruit and I'm wondering just how we sort of tease those out. The other aspect I think is correcting things and I this is I guess a part of response to Steve's comment, which is that there's not a lot of houses being torn down and rebuilt which is which is true. The other reality is half the stuff that I'm interested in if you did tear it down you couldn't even rebuild what's there right and so you know I was looking when we were looking when I was doing all of my reading for the 40 are I was looking at the Kellogg Smith Street which is our G basic minimum law area and our regulations 12,000 square feet. And I think there's only one house in that neighborhood that actually meets the current law area of our zoning and so there's an aspect of yeah we're not a market where people are tearing things down to rebuilding but even if we ever became one they literally couldn't even rebuild what is there now in many of these places in that neighborhood on some way on north. And so one of the things I'd also like to see us do is is even if we don't think that this is going to be, there's going to be a lot of tearing down and rebuilding. I still think we need zoning regulations that make sense right and so part of it is, to me is also fixing things and to me, if we have neighborhoods that we like I really like the Kellogg and Smith Street I think it's a great example of a, neighborhood feel it's residential but it is actually fairly dense and it's right on the outskirts of downtown. If we like that we should have our zoning actually reflect that which right now we don't. Thank you for that. I think I just, we're working together here Evan. Christine. I just wanted to mention a new way that we're kind of looking at the zoning bylaw and existing developments and I think this has been new in the last five years or so that there are developments in town that were built in the 70s and some of the larger apartment complexes and those are all non conforming uses in their, for the most part non conforming uses in their zoning districts. And previously we had thought we needed to come up with a new type of zoning to deal with those apartment complexes but it turns out that we have been genius developers and working together with Rob Mara building commissioner we've realized that since these places are already non conforming that you can take advantage of a certain section of the zoning bylaw section 9.22 and the zoning bylaws can expand their already non conforming developments via a special permit from the zoning board of appeals and this has already happened in the case of presidential apartments, which added 54 apartment units, I think they built either nine buildings. Towards the back of the property part of the property that hadn't been developed previously, but they were really able to add, you know, a substantial amount of units there, along with six affordable units because they were required to have a special permit since then other owners of large developments like that. I think South Point was one of them have come to us with the same idea, and South Point to the South Point or the boulders I can't remember which one, but is also adding a building and I think the building has 47 units in it. So, so that's an interesting way of developing property in already developed areas, adding to the housing stock and, you know, adding pretty substantially 54 units in one place and 47 and another, and both required the inclusion of affordable units. Thank you for that I'm going to take a chance to comment with some comments similar to heaven. I was struck, I don't know what meeting it was when Steve said the neighborhood he lives in couldn't be built today. And I went, why, because that's one of the favorite neighborhoods, you know it's one of the ones that's always pointed to as a great neighborhood houses are close together it's slightly, you know, houses are slightly smaller than what are being built now. It's walkable, it's close to town. And all I kept thinking was why is our RG requires such a large lot like that the residential general is supposed to be our densest residential why is it so large of a lot that's required. And so, to answer Evan's question as we come up with these priorities I think these discussions are what help us figure out what within need for housing. And so concentrating on if that's what we say is the next priority, you know that that's what we want our zoning to concentrate on or the next revisions to concentrate on would be, say the yellow section on this one housing density types of location and part of that I think would include we could go in and say, you know, expand where things are built, but also correct, you know, find the neighborhoods we like and figure out how to write the zoning that matches that. In a sense, like that type of thing so that's sort of where I am with priorities of. I think we have larger subjects here some of them are very specific some are not but we need to figure out through these conversations which ones are the council's higher priority over some other ones, even if some are somewhat quick maybe and then go from there. I think we're going, my plan is to split it between those that require consultants and those that not particularly with the ones that require consultants. Let's rank which ones we'd like to see worked on first we have a limited pot of money right now, which ones the higher priority to give some guidance to the planning department so Steve. I'm trying to solve the problems now so back to my own neighborhood so RG. It's one of the issues was that it was large, it was 100% laid out prior to zoning, and so it was laid out based on some system that who knows what normally, I think somebody on land, they divided it in quarters and gave it to their, their kids or whatever. So, there's a lot of odd lot sizes, but there are lots right near my house that are 195 feet frontage, which is a significant amount, and much larger than needed an RG, but that can't be split, because it would. It's not possible to split somebody has 195 feet into two lots in RG, you can do a five lot but you can't do a two frontage lots. So, I think that those things are worth looking at, in particular, when you're close. So there's no provision. Because of the table three there's no provision for pretty close. So we have the asterisk via the footnote a. So like somebody with 99 literally 99 feet of frontage 198 foot, what they can't split that into two 99 foot lots, because they miss by a foot, but an asterisk or footnote a would allow that to happen without going through the variance process which is a very expensive and likely to fail process. So, Shalini. Yeah, I was just curious how many zoning projects can planning department staff take on at the same time. I understand different projects involved different amount of work but just generally how many projects can you be working on at the same time. Christine, I know your hand was up before that question, but so you could say what you were going to say and then if you could try and answer the question. I wanted to slip in the fact that Jack gem sick is waiting in the wings. And if you wanted to you could turn him into a panelist and that would be great because then the board would know a lot more about what you're saying. So, what did you just say Shalini. I was asking how many zoning changes, can the planning department staff handle at the same time. One at a time is easy, but much more than that is is difficult, particularly since we have a lot of other things going on, but we have an intention to work our way slowly through the bylaw to make a lot of changes and eventually make them all at the same time so it's challenging to work on multiple multiple zoning changes simultaneously. You know we can try see how far we get. I mean this makes it even more important for us to be really sure about where we want to start because each project takes six to 12 months. And so, yeah, so that was helpful. Thank you. I just want to announce that I have moved the chair of the planning board into the meeting as a panelist. Welcome Jack we are discussing sort of this wonderful spreadsheet that Ben has created. And we're trying to talk about some of them in terms of potential priorities for the council and any recommendations we might have for the council as a whole, we're in the middle of housing right now Christine. So I wanted to make one more comment which has to do with the fact that Amherst is a university town. And so one of the issues we face constantly is developers who want to develop housing for students. And we had a proposal at one point, I don't know five or 10 years ago, to make it easier to develop property in the RG zoning district. And at that time, there were developers purchasing properties, particularly in the RG in the Lincoln area, but, and I don't know if they did it in the high street area but on what was happening is what they would they would buy a property and either build a single family house or buy a single family house and then they would turn it into a duplex, and they would rent it out. So I think that we have to go into this. This notion of making RG easier to develop and potentially more dense, we have to go into that with our eyes open that there will be, you know, developers who want to develop the properties not for people to not for families to live here and send their kids to school or whatever but for the purpose of renting them to students and I'm not saying good, bad or indifferent about that but I think that's something that people have to be realistic about and so and the other part of that is that when developers build houses. What happened in the Lincoln sense that area they don't consider aesthetics, what they consider is, how can I get a house up quickly, and rent it out quickly. Houses that are from the home store and just sort of plop down on a site. And that's not really the kind of development that want so we have to think about well how can we create standards or form based code or something that at least gives us the physical form that we want. I'm not sure that we can do a lot to control who lives there but in any event those are just issues that that come up when you talk about densifying the RG before I recognize jack that brought up a question I have which is, when looking at this list a lot of the stuff as you've said before is interconnected. And so, you know, there's things that we have as priorities but something like design guidelines, which is on this list down there, more than 12 months and consultant required. Is that something that goes hand in hand with some of the things we've been talking about about unlocking housing with something you just said is that something that the planning department would think, or recommend goes hand in hand with something like that because, you know, if you're going to unlock and sort of change an RG density requirement to allow it to be more dense or to add all of those housing types that you'd recommend doing it only after form based code, or design guidelines are in place, or is, you know, to be able to control it more or is that sort of ordering not necessarily something you'd recommend. So I think that if we're if we're focusing on one area, say the RG zoning district, we might be able to tackle design guidelines at the same time that we're looking at zoning for that particular district. I think that when we said that form based code was going to take more than 12 months and require a consultant, we were considering the fact that maybe we're considering all the downtown and all the village centers and you know wherever the development might occur so you know if we're more focused and only considering the RG, we might be able to come up with some design guidelines that would make it possible to densify and expand in the RG and incorporate design guidelines for that particular area of town. Thank you. Yeah. Thank you, Jack. You have your hand raised. I just on the subject of the lot size. I wanted to go back to that a little bit and I think that the only reason other than, you know, architectural for limitations and lot size are, if you have, you know, a septic or on site, you know, private well, those things, they require space. But other, other than that, I don't, I don't know that there would be any reason to restrict, you know, to restrict, you know, the lot size or frontage sort of thing it kind of. If we're in an area of Amherst that did not have water and sewer there, you know, you got to start thinking about area because you need, you need to be able to have, you know, adequate distance between the different subject systems and the wells and things like that. So I just wanted to bring that up from like kind of a point. That's my background anyway, you know, from, you know, groundwater perspective. That's, that's, that's why there's large lots, you know, in some rural areas. But I don't see that there's any reason for a lot to be a specific size other than, you know, from architectural or other, you know, perspective so I just, I just wanted to add that. So, I see two more hands I'd like to get move our discussion on to the downtown zoning BG BL that sort of no day all that soon but so so Evan and Steve Evan first then Steve and then we're going to move on to the gray and white sections of this chart. Yeah, so I'm just just to throw this in there, since we sort of coalesce this discussion around the RG. You know, I'm top of that I think they're probably also a conversation to be had about the boundaries of the RG. So we're talking about lot sizes and reducing lot sizes, you know, maybe it doesn't make sense for Lincoln and sunset to have significantly smaller lot sizes. And so maybe there's a conversation about, well do Lincoln and sunset really belong in the RN, as opposed to the RG. And sort of on the opposite side of that if you look at, say, a lot of blue hills and some of Dana, you know, they might actually make more sense in the RG than in the RN, because some of those lot sizes meet the requirements of the current RG but don't meet the requirements of the current RN, even though they're in the RN. And so just, I think it's a conversation about lot sizes within the RG but I think that conversation also needs to include. It are the boundaries of the RG what we think they should be at this point. Thank you, Steve. Yeah, so there are. So part of density is the built environment but part of density are the actual humans that live there. They're humans that live in the RG, at least my part of the RG, despite the fact that there's large lot sizes and that's in part because of some of the Amherst zoning or pre zoning that has allowed conversion of big houses to both the family and or allowed accessory apartments. Despite the fact that it looks like it's not dense it actually is dense in terms of people that live here. So that calculation also needs to come in to, you know, as we go through this that calculation also needs to be considered. So the other thing is that many humans that live in Amherst have cars and dealing with the cars is the vaccine problem. One of the drivers of lot size because cars are normally have to be accommodated off street we can we can certainly question that. But in particular we don't want Amherst has been good about, you know, especially in the downtown areas, not allowing cars to be parked in front of single family houses or duplexes or whatever. So they're, I don't know if it's where it is in the zoning but typically they have to be parked to the side or behind. So the one way to get to really narrow lot sizes to allow parking in front or that completely changes the aesthetic so some of this we have to be very cognitive of. We have not grown up as a community with allies, allies solve a lot because then parking and service can all be handled from the back, but we don't have any allies and Amherst so that also creates a complexity here. So we've gone to the gray and parts of the white last week we talked about demolition delay flood maps. I think we skipped inclusionary zoning I'm not sure and sign. But I guess one of the questions I have, you know, I think we understand what improves downtown zoning and BG district setbacks and all mean. This goes to what Ben was mentioning earlier, I look at the gray and I ask, does footnote a do BL district requirements. I look into that gray section, especially the BL district requirements because that's a sort of in my mind an essential part of the downtown zoning is the BL thing. And so, you know, when the planning board, and maybe this is good that Jack's here, when the planning board talks about quote improve downtown zoning is it talking about BL BG, the setbacks that we have here is at a footnote a thing. Is it form based code, you know, what, what is it, Christine or Jack. I'd say it's all of those things. Particularly the BL, and I think that could be potentially moved up to be closer to some of these other things improved downtown zoning and the housing business because that's really what it's all about is trying to get more housing into the BL. The BL zoning district. And, you know, many people want to view the BL as a transition zone from downtown to the RG and the outlying areas but it isn't really I mean physically it is a transition zone but in terms of its zoning, the text of the zoning by law it isn't a transition zone it's more like a highway strip zone. So that really needs to be addressed if we want to be able to identify housing in the, in the downtown area. What was the other thing you mentioned. A footnote a really applies all over town. It's a mechanism by which someone who wants to develop a property can ask to have a certain dimensional requirement waived. And if you look at the dimensional table you'll see. It's either in a, in a whole category of things like front yard setbacks. I'm just pulling things out of the air I don't know if it really does apply to front yard setbacks I think it does but anyway, or it could apply to a specific thing like height in the BG district. It's something that allows developers to, if they can't quite get it right within the box that they're allowed to build, they can ask for, you know dispensation to be allowed to build something closer to a property line or taller. And in the case of we just had a case of this recently which didn't have anything to do with housing. It was the Amherst media building which asked for a footnote a modification for its front yard setback in order to be able to fit their property in the area that was designated as appropriate by the local Historic District Commission. So footnote a applies to all different kinds of things it's not specific to housing. Thank you. Jack do you have anything to add about the planning boards. Priority for improving downtown zoning. Well, we're going to discuss the 40 our proposal which is getting a downtown focus tomorrow night. But, I mean, for me, you know, the BL zone really bothers me for the same reason that, you know, Steve Shriver wouldn't be able to build his house, you know, in kind. But anyway, it's just it's so broken and and I'm just I'm just wondering if 40 are is going to help in somewhat of a expedited manner. For for the downtown because I'm really concerned about the timeline of ours of the zoning bylaw changes and and what we're we're faced, you know, as a as a town with coven and things like that. And for me. That 40 are is an overlay, and it just seems like it kind of smooths out the, the huge problem we have with the BL, because most of the 40 arc has that, you know, BL overlay as long as well as some other the general business as well but I think, you know, and I really appreciate some of Evan's comments. From the last town council meeting with regard to, you know, comments with regard to that are against densification or building height and things like that because it just that that structural racism I think was the term. I don't know if I'm wrong, Evan. But I think those are things that we need to and then and then affordability I think you create these buildings and and and then if nobody can afford the rents, you know, that's that's a problem so we really I think the first copy just moved out. You know they're unhandling now, you know, it's kind of, I know the owner there pretty well. But we have, you know, a lot. A lot to think about with regard to how to make, you know, make things work. And by be very interested in the CRC's perspective in terms of the realistic timeline for zoning changes. I just feel like it's a tough. It's going to be a tough road. And I, I'm just wondering what your thoughts are, if a 40 hour overlay would expedite. At least that zoning aspect, versus the entire redo. Yep, so we'll be talking about that in the next hour starting around three o'clock. Yeah, I think we're going to be talking about that in a little bit more detail here specifically. I think now it's time we've sort of talked in brief about most of the stuff on here I know we haven't covered it all. But I want to pivot to the ones that are marked consultant and I think there are four of them on this chart, we saw three of them there. We have a pilot design guidelines and climate action goals into the permitting standards and other zoning requirements. And so I, you know, we have a pot of money already. You know, budgeted for some sort of planning consultant. You'll know whether it's specific to downtown, or specific to a, you know, a part of the planning but I think it's probably general enough to maybe cover at least three or four of these and so I'm, I'd like to hear from the committee of those four, which one would be their highest priority and I'd also like to hear from the planning department. You know, in terms of the consultant money, which one would be the planning department's highest priority. What would be the use of the money that's already been sort of budgeted for planning consultants. Evan. So I'm going to actually start with to me is not the priority and then I'll give a reason why, which is incorporating climate action goals into permitting standards and zoning requirements. And that's not because I don't view that as a priority, but because I think there are other ways. We could do that when I, when we were at a bunch of us were at NNA in January I intended a session on all the ways communities have used those MVP action grants. In the community, I think it was Cambridge use the MVP action grant to hire a consultant to essentially revise their zoning to build climate action and climate resilience into their zoning. And so, to me, that's a that's something that we could speak with Stephanie Chagarillo and ECAC about whether or not they would be interested in applying for an MVP grant to do that. And so then not depleting the money that you're talking about right now. I think I just think there's other ways that we could we could pay for that. To me my my biggest priority would probably be the form based code for other billet centers. Any other committee members at this time before I recognize Christine Steve. I second what Evan said. Yes, third. And just because I think that would solve so many different, it's like one thing but that's has such a huge impact on so many things including downtown vitality and with Jack just pointed out in terms of coven in terms of all the other issues that are related to downtown so I think form based zoning would really help with a lot of that. And Sarah. So we all agree because that it's definitely would be my number one and and I do agree that, you know, we're working on density. And like Shalini said at the same time, you know, if we're bringing all these people here. And I think we should catch up with a community like Hadley we don't need to be them or offer the same services but we also want to be able to start creating areas of interest for all the people that we're bringing here and I think that's a good way to do it and it gives it gives a community a lot more flexibility in a positive way. Thank you for that. Christine. So I wanted to just let you know that the money that we have right now was appropriated a number of years ago. It was right after the gateway project was looked at and the gateway if you remember was an area along North Pleasant Street stretching from roughly Kendrick Park up to the university. It was earmarked for zoning in the downtown and the gateway area. So I think, you know, we would be able to use that for form based code in the downtown and probably we could stretch it to the BL and gateway but that's, that's really what we'd have the area that we'd have to focus on so there are other projects within that area. We could also use it for that but it's only $40,000 so it's not a huge amount of money. I did ask for another 60,000 as part of the next capital round, but I don't know when that's going to be considered and whether that would even be positively looked at with all the other capital projects that are coming along so anyway right now $40,000 for the downtown and the gateway. Thank you for that I'm going to ask a few questions of myself I will say that that it sounds unanimous from this committee without taking a vote that form based is the highest of the ones that have been identified as needing consultants. Because that would be mine too. So my question is, I have a couple of questions design guidelines. So this one is for downtown and village centers. If we concentrate you know if we had the consultant and it was for downtown and it was for the gateway area. Could those design guidelines be transferred or reused and all in the village centers or do you need completely different design guidelines for each village center so that's one question. So the second question actually then relates down to the town council design review board where for counselors talked about design review board and they were incomplete. Some wanted to keep it some wanted to get rid of it. So my question would be design guidelines I'm not exactly sure what parts of town the design review board must review things for. Would adoption of design guidelines into our downtown village centers or even other areas of town and essentially get rid of the need for design review board. And would it sort of duplicate what the design review board does so those are my questions as it relates to that consultant. You're looking for an answer for me now. If you've if you've got some thoughts on that. I think the design review board, unlike some people I think the design review board is useful. One of the things they do is they look at, you know, minute changes to buildings particularly signs. But they also look at, you know, other things that are are not so minute. And they really scrutinize them pretty carefully and their, their jurisdiction goes beyond design guidelines, unless you have design guidelines that are like as strict as Nantucket you're really not going to get to the kind of detail that the designer review board looks at so when I'm thinking of design guidelines I'm thinking about the kinds of things that are contained within the 40 are zoning proposal where you're talking about, you know how is the ground floor treated with regard to windows and entry ways and things like that and then how are the upper floors treated and are they recessed or they flush with the ground floor and then how if you have a top floor if it's a fit story or six story how is that treated. Those kinds of things are design guidelines but you're not going to really get down to, you know, well if you have a sign for a restaurant that's on the first floor, what's that going to look like and who's going to review it so I feel like there is a role for the design review board and I think that they would still be needed even if we had design guidelines. Do you have an idea of whether if we adopted design guidelines for downtown they're transferable to other village centers or do you really need different design guidelines for different areas due to what those areas look like. I think the ideas of them the concepts of them could be transferable. I think you'd have to scale it down, because obviously you know design guidelines for a four or five story building are going to be different from what you might want for a village center. But, you know. So, the other thing is that we do have some ideas about looking at the village centers and doing plans for the village centers we haven't really gotten that project off the ground but each village center is pretty different and the way it was developed and so probably the design guidelines for village centers would go along with the planning effort for each village center. That would be my recommendation. Thank you. Evan, Steven and Shalini, and then I think we're going to conclude today and move on to 40 are Evan. Yeah, I guess so I guess my question was, given that we have, we keep referencing the design guidelines in the 40 our proposal, and given that we have those. Written not adopted but written. I guess I'm curious does that make it easier or at least lower the can we use those as foundation for design guide I mean we're talking about design guidelines for downtown. 40 are by 40 are by law that has designed guidelines that encompass an area that is a significant portion of downtown. I mean how much more is it to to be able to get to that next step. In other words, could you use the 40 our proposal to create your design guidelines and zoning for downtown. I, it's, it certainly gets you on the path. I'm not sure I haven't thought about this. So, but I'm not sure that it would get you the whole way but it would, it would certainly get you part way down the path. Okay. Any follow up Evan. Yeah, that was my question. Okay, Steve. I'll pass. I'd like to talk about 40 hours. Shalini. Oh, I just a quick question. Is the gateway project something that could be revived or can we never ever talk about that again. It became a little sort of a third rail. After the project was done. There was a lot of opposition to the idea of developing North Pleasant Street. It was described in the gateway project. And a lot of that opposition came from the neighborhoods that are, you know, closest to UMass and really feel the most vulnerable. Certainly, you know, the ideas that were in the gateway project I think they're worth revisiting at some point. But we have to expect that we will get a lot of pushback from the neighborhoods that are closest by. I just wanted to comment, Ben, I think I know you have to leave soon. You, you can share your screen and do that when you need to. I think we're good. Thank you, Ben. Thank you. For today. Yeah, can I just say the new table was amazing. It really was super. Thank you. Awesome. Good to hear. Dave. I just wanted to quickly respond to Shalene's question about the gateway. My, my take is that nothing should be off the table. We should be talking about everything. And what happened five or seven years ago is water over the dam. I think Chris is correct. There was a lot of neighborhood opposition, but it's a new day. We have a council. We have a new form of government. We have a pandemic. And we shouldn't be afraid to look at anything that makes our community better stronger, more resilient, provides housing provides jobs. So I think it should, everything should be on the table. Thank you. I want to note for Lindsay in case she didn't catch it that Sarah had to leave at three o'clock. So she is no longer with us. She has not lost connection. She had warned me ahead of time that she had to leave the meeting at three. And so we are down to four committee members. I think we had a good discussion. We've got an idea of where the CRC's priorities for spending money is. We would take a formal vote on that as we get closer to formal recommendations. The next meeting. I'm sort of going to next agenda. The next meeting will focus on potential ways to prioritize the rest of the list that would be done in house. And that'll be the focus of this portion of the discussion for hopefully being able to bring something to count council by the seventh. So moving on our next agenda item is 40 are again this was one that Steve had asked that we put on the agenda. Last week and there was clearly a lot of desire to discuss specifics. So it is back on the agenda this week I have not asked for presentation on the specifics I told our planning department that many CRC members had already attended many of the forums. And we didn't need specific new presentation we could watch the consultants presentation and start writing on questions and, and things like that. Unless there were specific questions about what it is and all but I was, I was giving us the benefit of the doubt that we've done our homework. I think I did ask Christine but Jack is here. I don't know how much he can add, but I asked Christine to be ready for sort of summarizing where the planning boards thoughts are on 40 yard before we get into all the questions we have. So, I know, I think the planning board's got a more in depth discussion plan for tomorrow night but if Christine or Jack could summarize where they are now and sort of those discussions, as it is before we move into questions and all from the committee. Christine. The planning board has a mixed feeling about 40 are. I think it was presented to them in a very preliminary way in May, and they had a lot of questions and concerns about it, and then it was presented to them again. They had a discussion sometime in August and then another presentation, more recently, and that the more recent presentation I think there was a better feeling about the 40 are I think that the planning board members saw that the consultants had made changes to respond to concerns of residents in the area, as well as concerns that were expressed by planning board members and as the public as a whole so I think the planning board had a better feeling about 40 are I think that there are still a few members who just feel like it's not. It's not the right thing for downtown, but they haven't, you know, arrived at a conclusion as a group about it. But I think that Mr. Gemsick is fairly enthusiastic about it so you may want to hear from him. I would have to say I can't believe I feel like we, I was talking to Chris, you know, when we met with the consultants, or they presented in March, was it or February pre COVID. And then Chris said well we're going to have another presentation, they that's there, it's on their contract and it's like why are we doing this sort of thing and, but I, I was just really struck by it was like night and day. They really tighten things up, they, they really took in comment responded to comment. And it was impressive, and I'm, you know, so I, I think Rio child is also, I think, has a similar opinion like we should listen to this. And, and again I respect Rob crowner so much and he's on the housing authority. He's kind of proponent of it I wanted to hear him out and, you know, and so it's solid it may not be for the extent that they, they have proposed but it may be, you know, perfect for a portion of the area that they have proposed but I, you know, planning board members I have no idea, you know, where the planning board is on this but I'm kind of eager to talk about it again. And I just, I just, I kind of feel have a sense of urgency. Now, versus back, you know pre COVID for the for the downtown. Thank you, Jack. So we're going to move to committee questions comments thoughts, I'm not going to try and segment between any of that so you know you conclude it all when you talk, Steve. So, I think that the town hired a cracker jack team to put together this proposal and I do think that they listen to, particularly the neighbors right the ones that will be affected, particularly by those ones that live adjacent to the BL zone. And also I've chatted offline with, you know, people like raw, but I think that there's a lot to the proposal and I really hope that that we move forward with it in some version. So I guess a couple of thoughts that I sent after the last presentation is one is, to me it seems like this will only work if it's accompanied by down zoning in the, the, the BN zone. In other words, because right now there's no, there's no particular advantage to someone to use 40 are because they can already do five story buildings, you know, etc. But it seems like, if we down zone the more by right zoning, and then had 40 are as a way of relieving from those zoning restrictions to make this a lot more likely to achieve the goals that we're, we're hoping for. So the other area is the BL zone so again there's no advantage for the 40 our proposal. And I know going up to four stories in BL is controversial so I understand that resistance. And I understand that it's going to loosen up housing but I guess my concern that what we'll do is only encourage non mixed use buildings in BL in some of the sites for like the site on Triangle Street across from Kendrick plays just seems like the most obvious for a mixed use commercial on the ground level residential above, but I'm not sure that the 40 our proposal has read will unlock that particular property. I totally understand the concerns of the cottage street neighbors who live right behind there, but it seems to me that the proposal could be written in such a way that there is there's a certain height if you're facing say triangle or major artery, but then there's another height, you have to step down to another height. If for that part of the building that see the rear of the building that faces a lower scale residential area. Thank you. Anyone else from the committee. Evan. Well I didn't Chris Chris just put a hand up I don't actually want to respond to Steve. Christine. Yeah, I just wanted to say that this is a framework on which we can build our version of a 40 are. So there's a lot of opportunity to change the dimensional requirements or allowances, and I think Steve's right that, you know, having a lower building closer to the residential roads and a taller building up along the roads makes perfect sense and I think Maria tried to address that in her. Her map that she sent around today I don't know if you all received it but you know it was a way for her to understand what's being proposed, but then it's also a way to understand how we might want to change it so we don't have to take this 40 our proposal from the consultants lock stock and barrel. We can take it and change it to our own specifications and really make it what we want it to be. Thank you, Evan. So a couple things I'll just try and run through them at once and hopefully not take too much time. I think overall conceptually 40 hours a really good thing for our community, I mean, I think that it has a little bit of everything that that we want in the community and on the council. I think in when I read through the violin, you know, for our last meeting I had sort of just skimmed it but I fully read it for this one. And I saw a lot of things that I like in there that I think we're not even elevating as as reasons we should do this including things like, you know, putting think parking in the back and minimizing curb cuts is something that's important to walk ability and the feeling of a community you want to walk in, you know, my least favorite part to walk downtown is over by, you know, where the pub was and the spoke because it's just you're walking along parking lots and it's curb cut curb cut curb cut and so I think that's, you know, we're always pitching this is just affordability density and design guidelines but I think there's a lot of other really important things that we need to make sure we're telling people about the other thing that we haven't talked too much about what when I was reading the guidelines was talking about things like mandating street trees and low impact design to deal with storm water, encouraging reuse of storm water for irrigation and I think when it comes to the climate action plan that eCAC is putting together and the climate focus we've had those are things that fit right in. We were focusing on reducing emissions but anyone who had ever attended an eCAC meeting which is I think no one in this group knows that I'm always talking about the biggest thing we need to do is storm water storm water when it comes to climate change and I think that there's a lot of things that talk about how to deal with storm water using green infrastructure instead of grain infrastructure in here and so I think that it you know it's also in a climate adaptation and a climate resilience proposal as much as it's some of these other proposals and I think we're not always elevating those things and I wanted to make sure we did that. Some questions slash concerns, though, you know, one is my concern from the beginning has been that we would view this as a way to fix the BL, which is sort of something that Jack touched on earlier. And I still think and I'm glad that Chris spoke to this earlier. I really don't want this to be the way that we fix the BL. I don't want us to say we don't have to fix the underlying zoning in the BL because now we have the 40R I think we need to do both. And so I'm hoping that we don't see this as the solution to the BL is oh well we'll just do the 40R and then developers have the choice develop under the 40R or don't develop right because they literally can't in the BL and I don't think that's what we want to do. You know I also I understand Steve's point of it becomes more desirable for the 40R if we down zone, but I'd really like to see this be a proposal that says, here's how we are incentivizing over our underlying zoning without us having to make our underlying zoning less development friendly like I really want this to be something that says to developers we're giving you something in return for you giving us design guidelines and affordable housing. And I don't want it to be a situation where to do that, we have to take things away in the underlying zoning. I think there are ways that it has up zoned in a few areas, which I think is good. You know I don't want to get too specific about some of the parcels but there's a few areas where it seems like it's actually going to be on that the overlay will actually decrease density versus the underlying zoning. There's a couple parcels around the one behind Rens I think it is and some along Kellogg that are currently in the BG but would it be in the second sub district. So I think that actually you get less density than under underlying zoning and I might be incorrect here because this is not my area of expertise. But I would be curious about that and then my one question I have a whole bunch of things but I'm trying not to hit everything my one question is you know I was looking at dimensional guidelines and they specify some of the dimensional guidelines for the districts. But of course there's a whole bunch of domestic dimensional regulations that aren't mentioned in the bylaw and so is the assumption that the overlay district changes the dimensional regulations that are mentioned in the bylaw and those that are not mentioned. The name isn't table three the dimensional regulations because if so I know you know I had a meeting with an architect, almost a year ago, and they said one of the biggest issues that they faced in doing the BL was the maximum building coverage and maximum coverage, which doesn't seem like this touches and so if it defaults to the maximum building and maximum lock coverage under the underlying zoning, I guess I'm questioning whether this is helping actually fix some of the BL problems so I know that was a lot and I do have more around trying not to pick up all the airspace but I am sort of curious about that idea of, of, does it default to underlying zoning where dimensional regulations aren't specified in the 40 are. Christine do you happen to know the answer to that. You're muted. It does default to underlying zoning so if there are things that we want to change about the underlying zoning, you know we can do that via the changes that we're working on as part of the overall zoning. So we don't have to live with the dimensions that we have in the BL I agree with Evan that we really need to look at the BL and change the BL. Even if we decide to adopt 40 are I think that's going to be important because there was the some developers who just don't want to get into the requirements of the 40 are they're just not big enough I've heard from some people that big developers will really be attracted to working under the 40 are because of so many different kinds of requirements so we want to be able to allow our, our local developers to also develop in in the BL. And I think it's important to change those zoning requirements to allow that to happen. I'm going to take my turn. I'm also going to suggest that everyone, if you have comments and all send them to a, it could be me or directly to Christine I was thinking if you send them to me I can grab them all and ship one document off to Christine and the instead of she getting four or five I think that would be easier to work with, because I also took a deep dive into this for really the first time and I was struck by a number of things some of which were, Evan mentioned, you know some of the why some sections of BG were designated sub district two instead of sub district one. You know some of that stuff. But one of the things that really struck me was the, I finally started looking at, you know, height requirements set back requirements and all of that and there are parts of the RG district that are labeled sub district to in this or plan to be a sub district. So they're near McClellan behind North Pleasant, some of them are on Kellogg, from what I could tell from all the maps. And what struck me is something we were talking about earlier which is, everyone refers to BL as a step down district between BG and RG. But RG were RG allowances are 40 foot heights and three floors. And so I was struck by that, you know, and that's the underlying zoning because that allows an RG to be taller than a BL yet everyone's afraid of a four story BL, but RG right now can be taller than BL. And so when you look at that underlying zoning, then I, I question the, the height limits on the sub district to, you know, they, the height limits I must say on some district to when kind of crazy in that they were different depending on where you were in sub district to and so it was really hard to figure stuff out but but what I was looking at is the the parts where RG is the underlying zoning. What I would tell is the height limits would be 25 feet and two and a half floors in, in the, that sub district to with the overlay, yet the underlying zoning is 40 and three floors. The height is not giving you your benefit under the under this 40 are I guess what would be giving and I'm not sure much else is giving you the benefit because when you look at what's allowed RG already allows two families already, you know, allows one families. allows multi families. You know, through a special permit so maybe you get a little bit that it doesn't allow mixed use but I wondered one of my biggest question was goes back to what does the 40 are give you and I think for sub district to in BL it might give you a little more because it allows you and BG it even if it's sub district to it allows you to build more than just a mixed use building there for BL you could build two families we don't really have a three family designation from what I could tell in the zoning by law. But it allows you to build more residential, but in the RG. It doesn't allow you to build more residential and in fact restricts you to lower heights. And so that concerned me. And I wanted to mention the climate action to because I noticed things exactly what Evan said and so I would encourage more thinking on that part on things that could be, you know, right now some of the landscaping design guidelines are encouraging of, you know, bioswales encouraging rain gardens encouraging native sweet species. And I wouldn't. I would suggest whether we ask whether we could instead of encourage require under these the bioswales the rain gardens and some of the stuff for, you know, stormwater management and all of that to start incorporating all of those climate action issues into that. And then the other one specifically Kellogg and Kellogg the parts that were designated and were designated as sub district to yet across the street from them are five story apartment buildings and so I was, I wasn't quite understanding why they were designated sub district to instead of sub district one, because you know some of them are already bg, but across the street is, you know, apartment buildings which seems to more match a sub district one than a sub district two. Those are briefly some of my thinking on this. And I don't know whether it helps or not and I've got a long list as I was trying to figure it out. Christine. I'd like to say that the RG zoning district is very restrictive in the terms of how many dwelling units you can get on a particular lot size. You need 12,000 square feet for the first unit and then you need an additional 2500 square feet for each additional So, the, the overlay district the 40 hour overlay district wouldn't have that that restriction so you could pretty much fit as many dwelling units as you could fit in the box, whatever box you're allowed to build you can fit as many dwelling units in there as you as you can possibly fit. So that really makes a difference in the number of units that you can get on a particular size property in the RG so it's, it's kind of, it's, maybe it's a little bit invisible that this is the case, but the density that's allowed by the overlay district the 40 R is much greater than the density that's allowed in, in the RG zoning district. So does that help. Yes, that does, even though the box has to actually be smaller, potentially. But I think that one of the things that develop that the consultants were looking at was what exists in the RG. And the fact is that there aren't really any. I'm not, I'm not going to say this as a blanket statement but take North prospect Street, there probably aren't 40 foot tall buildings there now. And we didn't want to create a situation where we were building things that were much bigger than what is right there now, whether or not it would be allowed in the future with regard to zoning and maybe we need to change the RG to be the less tall I don't know I haven't really looked at that but the point is that we didn't want to overwhelm the neighborhood that is there with new buildings that would be a lot bigger than the buildings that are there. Evan. Yeah, so I think Christine just answered a question. Part of part of this is, you know, a little bit of confusion. So the minimum law area and the additional law area per family is, is that eliminated. If you under the overlay district. Okay. So what I'm going to talk about if it doesn't specify the dimensional regulations does it. Does it default to underlying zoning. That was one of the ones that I know wasn't specified, but you're saying it. That one actually does those two dimensional do not default to underlying they actually are eliminated. That is my understanding I can confirm that but I think that would make a big difference in my understanding of this. That's my understanding. Shawnee. Thank you for the concerns I heard and I think Chris you briefly mentioned it is how because of all the paperwork it's really hard for a developer and small local developers to make use of this. So what is your service we can provide to developers or do we know how successful this has been because I was also reading another study. It was about Boston, but it was an MIT paper on 40 are and they said it wasn't very successful because the community didn't like it because of the density, the developers didn't like it because of the complications in the paperwork and so it didn't really get utilized so my question is, it's, if we are going to go through all of the work to make it happen then is this something that is going to be utilized by developers. So we've talked about creating a department or a person or some kind of administrative service within the town government to help people who are facing either requirement for affordability or desire to provide affordability. Right now when a developer has to provide affordability for his development say Barry Roberts on University Drive had to provide for affordable units well he has to find an entity or an agency that will help him to make the tenant selection and then monitor over the years that the tenants who live in those affordable units are in fact eligible to live there. And there's a bunch of paperwork that goes along with that. He absorbed the cost of that as did the people who are developing Aspen Heights or it's not really heights but it's Northampton Road which used to be the Amherst motel. So they're absorbing all of those costs if a smaller developer wanted to develop something in the 40 are, and he wasn't going to get, you know, 36 units out of it, then to provide the required number of affordable housing he would have to hire, you know, Amherst housing authority or higher Valley CBC or hire somebody to help him make do the lottery, and then help him to monitor things over time, and that is an expense so we have thrown around here in our department of the idea. Maybe we should have somebody in the planning department who can help developers do that, and especially if we're ever going to require inclusionary zoning across the board. So that could be a service that the town could provide, but that conversation hasn't really gotten much traction. So I think it is true that we could provide this but it would cost the town some money to hire somebody or some bodies to do this and and we would have to kind of be intentional about it. So does that answer your question. Yep. Can I just ask another question for Shalini. Yeah. Another question I heard was that in other and I haven't done enough study to see where the 40 are in other communities was in the heart of downtown. Does it make a difference whether it is in the heart of downtown or not. The only other community that I'm really familiar with is North Hampton and they have 140 are that's not in downtown it's on Hospital Hill. And then they have another 40 are that is in downtown on Pleasant Street so they've kind of gotten, they've done it both ways I think there has been increased density in both projects but it's to two different kinds of things. And I haven't really studied either one of them very closely. So there's nothing to say that there is a disadvantage to having a 40 are in downtown. I don't think so the only disadvantage here is what Steve was mentioning which is the fact that developers can already fit as many dwelling units as they are able to within a certain box. This is only limited by how high it can be and what the setbacks are and not coverage and building coverage. And so they're not really getting the density advantage by choosing to develop under 40 are in the BG zoning district, nor is the town getting an advantage of the differential between the number of units that could be built the underlying and the number of units that could be built under a 40 are. If you can show that there's a delta there, then you can get money from the state to pay you for that delta. And you don't have that in the BG we have it in the BL, but so that's an issue and that's why Rob crowner and Steve. And one of the reasons that you would want to down zone the BG before adopting 40 are because then you could show that. Oh yes you get a whole extra floor, if you use 40 are, and therefore the developer would be attracted to that and the state would be able to say oh yeah, these units wouldn't have been allowed under underlying zoning so we can pay you for those those additional units. We can go down zone first and then claim the incentive or whatever from the state. Interesting. I haven't talked to anybody at the state about what they would think about that but that's something that the consultants thought might be a good idea. So and they're interesting. I have a follow up question on that wouldn't doing something like that almost force developers to use 40 are instead of truly giving them a choice at least in the BG area if we down zoned all of the BG down to BL. That's something wise to do. I don't know if it's wise but it would force them to provide affordable housing in the BG and incentivize to do any kind of development if it's easier in other neighboring towns. Are there any other thoughts from the committee members at this time on 40 are I, I will say, I encourage the committee members to send their thoughts if they want to to me so that I can compile them and send them on to Christine, who can share them with whoever is appropriate to share them with, or just create our own file and if the planning board can desires to continue forward with this. You know, it sounds like, you know, for Jack's benefit here that CRC doesn't have a strong opinion one way or another right now now has more of a lot of questions, based on what we've seen and all. And so, and at this point, before we move on, I'll recognize Jack one more time Jack. Yeah, I just, I just want to say, appreciate the input and, you know, I don't know how the conversation is going to go tomorrow with the planning board, but I think the down zoning would, would be, it's a it's a difficult thing, you know, but we're, we're, you know, you guys are looking at the entire bylaws now so so anything is possible but I just, I'm just, I think the understanding was the downtown, you know, wasn't the spot for the 40 are. But I think, again, the recent proposal has, you know, piqued my interest. It's worth a discussion. But I would be interested in terms of, you know, the BL and the timeline. What do you anticipate that we would actually do something about, you know, the existing zoning and is it are we five years out, you know, three to, you know, and for me that's, if it's if it's going to be a long time because it's always a difficult issue, you know, in Amherst to make changes. So I just, I was wondering what, you know, people's gut feeling on the CRC would be with regard to and Rob, but they got the actual bylaw revision. I think we'll have a better idea on December 1 when we bring that discussion back from today's discussion it sounds like BL and housing are some of the more important ones for CRC so they may come up towards the top of beyond the recodification and all as that's going on the focus of the next sort of bigger changes to stuff but we'll have a better idea after the next meeting I believe. So thank you at this time we're going to move on on our agenda when we do not have any action items today. We're in a lot of discussion mode right now. The item after action items is general public comment we do have members of the audience at this time we will accept general public comment. For those who wish to comment on matters within the jurisdiction of the CRC for up to three minutes in order to do so if you have joined through zoom not through a phone number then all you have to do is raise your hand there's a button somewhere on the bottom, and I will recognize you and and if you joined I'm not sure we have anyone that has joined by phone we do not so I don't have to go through the phone raising hand instructions. So yeah if you'd like to make any public comment, it can be on what we discussed today and it can be on anything within our jurisdiction that hasn't been discussed today. Please raise your hand and I will work my way through recognizing everyone. So we're going to recognize Pam Rooney first. I think you should be able to unmute now. Pam Rooney, 42 Cottage Street. Thank you for talking about this topic I think you all had a really good conversation about it. I also appreciated the seeing the priorities that you were discussing in terms of zoning and having Mr jumpsick in this conversation is probably a good thing. There clearly are lots of overlaps in the topics. What has been going through my head is, you know, we're talking lots of little details about setbacks we're talking about lots of little details about height. And really, it feels to me that from a from a planner's perspective, what are all the cards on the table here. I don't know that I've ever seen from anyone, whether it's the zoning subcommittee or the planning department. A, a nice comparison of what are the pros and cons of a inclusionary zoning be fixing the downtown be see fixing the limited business district. D, 40 are the form based zoning. So, there are lots and lots of tools that we have, as well as you know the underlying, the underlying zoning that just feels like it wants to, you know, get our arms around and get down on a piece of paper, where we can see some of the comparisons between one form of zoning and another and what are the benefits to us as a town. Where do we have the most control. I was reminded of some of the issues, for instance, in the RG zoning where I think a couple of years ago a developer wanted to buy a couple of parcels on, or actually wanted to own a couple of parcels on Butterfield Terrace to RG so that they could take the houses down and build multifamily housing. So it's, it really is a very, it's a very intricate and very interconnected conversation here. So, I'm just wondering if it would be possible for a group on it be happy to volunteer to just get some of this all in one place so rather than saying yeah, we really love 40 are, but there are lots of issues with it or yeah we don't know if it's form based. How do we craft this. I would love to see some comparisons, you're struggling, you're all struggling to get into the details of it. So are we to just see where we can get what we want. We want some affordable housing. But we sure don't want to kill neighborhoods in the process. So it's sort of, and we don't want to kill the downtown in the process. So, is that possible. Thank you. That was a long question. Thank you for your comment Pam. I'm sure you'll be getting some answers or if you attend more meetings you'll be hearing similar questions and responses to to something like that as we move forward on the discussions. Is there anyone else that that would like to make public comment. I am seeing none that brings us on our agenda to whoops. We'll have in there. Announcements. Are there any announcements from anyone announcements next agenda preview will at this point I think we'll go back to zoning and then try and squeak in a little bit of housing policy and not put 40 are in. I think we'll wait await planning boards conversation on 40 are before we discuss it again. So not next meeting but maybe we'll consider putting it on an agenda. A couple meetings from now, if, if we hear from planning board that it's something we should be doing any requested items for the agenda from anyone not seeing any. So, oh, Christine. This has to do with the housing policy. Can you send me whatever the latest version of the housing policy is. I'm not sure where to find it. Do I copy it is an extremely rough draft with a long list of unorganized and not even called potential items in it so I will warn you now but also in your email that it is not. You know, while it is a public document because it has been, you know, posted for meetings and we've talked about it it is not something that has, it's very much a work in progress, I would say. And very much on the early end of work in progress over even mid end of work in progress, but but I will I will send you the last one that was in a public in a public meeting that was presented in a public meeting for you. Any other items related to agenda setting or anything. Seeing none, I don't have any unanticipated business does anyone else have anything that business that was not on the agenda. Seeing none of that, then I will let you guys out 15 minutes early. Thank you for coming to I'm going to adjourn the meeting. It is now 345 and CRC is adjourned for the day. Thank you.