 Right Okay, thank you, Pam. Welcome to the Amherst Planning Board meeting of September 27th, 2023. My name is Doug Marshall and as the chair of the Amherst Planning Board, I am calling this meeting to order at 6.06 PM. This meeting is being recorded and is available live stream via Amherst Media. The dates are being taken. This planning board meeting is being held in the town room at the Amherst Town Hall. However, this is a hybrid meeting. Members of the planning board and members of the public are able to attend via Zoom. Pursuant to chapter 20 of the acts of 2021 and extended by chapter 22 of the acts of 2022 and extended again by the state legislature on July 16th, 2022. The planning board has been given authority to hold meetings via Zoom. The Zoom meeting link is available on the meeting agenda posted on the town websites calendar listing for this meeting. Or you can go to the planning boards web page and click on the most recent agenda, which has the Zoom link at the top of the page. Be aware that the in-person meeting will not be suspended or terminated if technological problems interrupt the virtual meeting, unless otherwise required by law. Every effort will be made to ensure that the public can adequately access the meeting in real time via technological means. In the event we are unable to do so for reasons of economic hardship or despite best efforts, we will post an audio or video recording, transcript or other comprehensive record of proceedings as soon as possible after the meeting on the town of Amherst website. Board members, I will take a roll call. When I call your name, please answer affirmatively whether you are participating remotely or in person. So we know that Bruce Coldham is absent this evening. Brett Hartwell. He said present. Jesse Major present. Hi Doug Marshall and present Janet McGowan. Here. And I'll note that everyone who's answered thus far is participating in person and Johanna Newman. Here. And finally, Karen Winter. Can you speak? I know you are participating remotely. Here. Thank you, Karen. Okay, so six members are present. One is absent this evening. For those participating remotely, please use the raise hand function to ask a question. Or make a comment. I will see your request. Hopefully if I look up and I can actually see what's going on on that screen. And I will see your request and call on you to speak after speaking remember to remute yourself. Pam, if you're able to keep an eye on the screen and alert me to Karen's hand raised that'd be great. So many board members who are present in the town room should also raise their physical hands when they wish to speak and the microphone will be passed to you. We have two microphones at the table this evening one at each end. The general public comment item is reserved for public comment regarding items not on tonight's agenda. Please be aware the board will not respond to comments during general public comment period. You may also be heard at other times during the meeting when deemed appropriate by the chair. Please indicate you wish to make a comment by clicking the raise hand button when public comment is solicited. If you are participating remotely, or raise your hand if you are present in the town room. If you have joined the zoom meeting using a telephone please indicate you wish to make a comment by pressing star nine on your phone. When called on please identify yourself by stating your full name and address and put yourself back into mute when finished speaking. Residents can express their views for up to three minutes or at the discretion of the planning board chair. If a speaker does not comply with the guidelines or exceeds there a lot of time their participation may be discontinued from the meeting. Okay, so the time now is 610 and we'll go ahead and go into our first item which is public comment period. Do we have actually usually at this time I do read the names of the people who are present participating as public here in the town room I believe there's only one member of the public and that is Pam Rooney. The other members who are participating remotely. I see the name David Zomek, Lily Bruce and Mara keen. So we have a pretty small public presence this evening, but maybe. Yes, Chris. Dave Zomek is in attendance as an attendee but he asked to be led in as a panelist. He's the assistant town manager, director of conservation and development and I wondered if you would. Ask him to let him in as a panelist, please. Certainly Pam, could you do that. Thank you, Chris. So we're down to three members of the public. Okay. So do any members of the public want to make a comment on something that is not on tonight's agenda this evening. Okay. Do you see any members of the public on our zoom call raising their hands actually. Yeah. Yeah. So, no, I do see one hand from Pam Rooney who's here in the town room if you could as a citizen if you could come and grab a microphone and make your one less than three minute comment on something not on tonight's agenda. Hi. Thank you. I had a question about the RFP for the design guidelines and just wondered what the status of that project is. And when it might be coming out in the public. Thank you. So typically we don't respond to comment is are we do you want to respond to that Chris. I would like to respond to it only because it's a question that's come up before, and we have sent our RFP to accounting to the person who does the requisitions and and seeks input from them, you know, bidding. That's the word I'm looking for any event. I think she's been backed up but it is down in accounting as we speak so I'm hoping that she puts it out in the next few days or the next week or so. Okay. Thank you. Thank you, Pam. Nate, we can't see you but hopefully we can hear you if you unmute. Do you want to add to that. Oh, sure. Yeah, thanks. Yeah, I know the, the request for proposal will go live on Monday and be due at the end of October. So that's something that, you know, is it's all set. And then, you know, once it's public anyone can be referred to the link on the town's bid posting webpage. Okay, thank you, Nate. Okay, so we're now up to 614 I believe we're done with public comment period. Now we can talk about planning for housing growth. And I guess I'd like to say at the beginning. It's this, this meeting has in most of the meetings we've had with the board and including the board that preceded the current makeup of the board. We were, we've been kind of talking about how could zoning be changed in order to allow more housing. And I think that I mean, I guess at the last meeting I was kind of asked to say whether I thought we were reconsidering the sort of duplex and tripe triplex proposal that had come from a couple of town counselors. And I think I said that I didn't think we were going to revisit that that we were headed into probably in a larger scale dimension or direction for trying to allow some larger scale housing to happen in certain parts of town wherever that ended up happening. So that's how I felt about it and there wasn't a lot of conversation about that last week but I, if there's people who really don't want to go in that direction I would hope counselor or board members would say that at some point, because otherwise that's where I think we're going. So I just wanted to put that on the record. So, I was, I was pleased. I mean, at our last meeting two weeks ago we all got a preview of these maps that maybe Nate and Chris and the planning board staff put together with, you know, their thoughts about three different areas that the board has talked about where we might change the zoning in some way. One was East Amherst Village. One was University Drive, and one was I think North Press North Pleasant Street, kind of from Kendrick Park up to the university. So, Chris or Nate are there any introduction to these maps that you want to give us. I see your hand. What would you like to say before maybe Chris has an intro. Thanks. I just want to make a comment before we dive into the maps and it's kind of came up last meeting. I had sent the email but it lost in the shuffle. Definitely relates to the some of the goals Janet laid out here and the goals I understand in the master plan what we're trying to do. I don't want to give you all this conversation. But I think if our goals are to preserve neighborhood vitality integrity to look all the things we've been talking about some of the things on Bruce's charts there. We have to consider some kind of regulation as well moving forward so I hope that can be a conversation at a future meeting, meaning regulation around rentals. In order to do that feel like we have to have the data. So I'm not aware that we have data by neighborhood. So that feels essential in order to have a productive plan. Right. We can reason to allow more density but I'm not sure that's going to help us maintain the character of our neighborhoods. As we know there's a need for a lot more student housing please. Building more without any handle on what's currently happening also won't at all help with increasing workforce portability for our town. I just want to make that comment again and hopefully as a group can discuss this at a future end. So regulation when you say regulation are you meaning zoning regulation or other regulation. Whatever context that takes I feel like those are tools of planning board. Okay, able to use some way for long term plan. Okay, well the only thing I wanted to. Maybe well but but but there has been conversation before about what is our area of what are the tools that this board has to affect what the town is like. And my primary my understanding is that the primary tool we have is the zoning bylaw. And if it's not a zoning regulation if it's a different sort of bylaw. And that's some other group in town. I mean it's probably town council eventually but so I guess I'm struggling to see how we can make intelligent planning without that piece of it from us or from town council or from CRC I don't know. Okay, okay. Part of the conversation. Thanks Jesse Janet. Can you talk, can you talk. Oh, just hold it closer because when I was listening to the meeting, I could hardly hear you. So, um, so I've kind of missed a few meetings and so I prepared this sheet because I was just writing notes and I thought, well, you know, because I've gone to some of them and I just thought I put it together what I heard and I threw a few of my ideas in but I don't think that the planning board is limited to just zoning recommendations. And so I went back and looked at my chapter 41 section 81 C studies and reports of the board. It says the planning board established under section, but a shell from time to time make careful studies and when necessary prepare plans of the resources possibilities and needs of the city or town. And upon completion of the study shall submit to the city council or select men report there on. And so, and then under section 71 we're supposed to do an annual report to the city council, giving information regarding the condition of the town and plans or proposals for its development estimates estimates of the cost thereof. So I think we have a much broader mandate. We don't have to only limit zoning regulations and I agree with Jesse that, you know, we can up zone. You know, half all the village centers, and that's not going to help the neighborhoods. And I think that the RG is kind of an endangered critically endangered. We sit here a year after year hearing about, you know, student rentals overwhelming neighborhoods. And, you know, so I was thinking like it's a seesaw. So if we're going to up zone the village centers, I would say let's reduce the density and the RG and RN because, you know, the RG is now seven units an acre. No homeowner is going to say, Oh, I think I'll build six units and be a landlord. So I can stay in the RG, maybe one unit, maybe two, the people who are going to build that are going to be developers and they're going to aim at the market where they can get the most money, especially since it's really expensive to build. And so the RG is zoned for being turned into a series of apartment complexes or duplex complexes. And we're going to lose it as a neighborhood. And so I think, you know, we could recommend down zoning the RG, but we also have to deal with the recommendations that other towns have used or cities very successfully. And so we could recommend to the town council the minimum distance, you know, limiting the percentage of, you know, say no more than 50% of the units can go to students or whatever. And we can't pass that we can't pass anything but we can make recommendations after capital study, saying this is worked, or we could recommend to the town council to please implore UMass to build 3000 more beds because until that happens, we're just filling, we're turning into a dorm, our neighborhoods are turning into dorms. And that doesn't affect me personally, but I listen to people all the time where it really has affected them. Okay, Fred. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. As someone who came on the board at the beginning of July, and I was not part of any making a conclusion that we weren't going to want to look at the existing bylaw and where it could be changed and how it should be changed to meet a broader objective. In general, my experience, going back to the first time I was on the board and shared the zoning subcommittee, my experience has been that any zoning decision has to be, has to take into account a whole bunch of tradeoffs. They're never simple. If you only accomplish one thing, one public policy objective, it's probably a bad zoning decision because it didn't weigh tradeoffs. And so I am interested in the broader picture of the bylaw at our next meeting. It looks like we'll be taking some time to discuss the question of owner occupancy. But there are a lot of pieces to this and I am not comfortable saying that we're only going to talk about the overlay. Okay, thank you, Fred. Jesse. Just one more comment. What resources do we have to gather data? So just a question. So, the stats town staff is our primary resource for data and generating materials. And so how does that work if we decide we would like data on how many rentals are do we have the research to gather that. Chris. So we can do some data gathering. We, as you know, have limited staff right now. And even after we hire a new person, we're still going to have limited stuff so you can tell us what you want. And we can try to get the information. The HU Institute has a lot of information and other groups have information and Nate is actually quite good at getting that information but it we need to just be mindful of the fact that the planning board is planning department is down one person. So we're doing our best. So, let us know what you want to know and we'll see if we can find it, find it out but I would like to say, in response to some of the things that have been brought up just now and by the way I don't have an introduction. Perhaps Nate has some sort of introduction because he developed these maps, but I wanted to say that one of the ways of protecting neighborhoods I think is to create housing and other locations that are more suitable for student housing. So we will, we hope, draw students out of the neighborhoods. And so if you provide good affordable housing in on, you know, in this East Amherst Village Center on University Drive, or on North Pleasant Street. Those are the places that we've chosen to focus on tonight that can help to alleviate some of the pressure on the neighborhoods. So that's, that's the idea here. Okay. So, Janet, I know you put together a handout and I think Karen had put together. Actually, that's that's that's our second night agenda item. So did you want to talk about your handout at all, or was this just stuff for people to read and think about. Basically, this is not my ideas. I stuck in two ideas, I think I brought up before, maybe in March, but this was just what people were saying at this past meeting that I didn't attend. And then I cribbed a bunch of stuff off of notes from the March meeting the minute so I was just, I did, I did it. I was just doing it to take notes and I thought this would be a good exercise for us not to lose ideas. You know, because there's so many ideas and I tried to put them in kind of little buckets like, you know, when I listed the goals I heard people mention. One was to produce more workforce family and senior housing and Amherst. Another goal was to preserve neighborhood vitality and integrity. One was to control and mitigate the negative impacts of student housing and neighborhoods. Another goal was to produce quality affordable housing for students because I know students have trouble affording even on campus dorms. Keep Amherst another goal is keep Amherst attractive and to preserve its look in small town feel. And so then those were things I heard people say one of our goals is and I just love that because it keeps us focused. And then I just, I just created different buckets based on what people were saying. And so one was work with UMass on student housing problems because it seems inconceivable that we'll ever figure that out without talking to people who deal with it all the time. Create a designated student housing zones and there's just a lot of people have just it's very rich. The first three were strategies to reduce the number of student rentals and neighborhoods and a lot of ideas for that rezoning to increase density and height in village centers. A lot of conversation at East Amherst that seemed very rich other places for housing, things like that. So I just, I was basically basically capturing what I heard at the meetings and from the minute. I thought this could be helpful so we don't, I don't know if we can do things section by section like today it sounds like we're going to talk about village centers. And so maybe we could focus on the other parts at different meetings. Okay, thank you Janet. Karen, I see your hand. I think, you know, there's some urgency involved in moving ahead. And I like the idea of finding areas where a lot of housing could be added as quickly as possible. I like the three places that the staff has suggested, but I'm wondering, why did you leave out the Olympia drive area, is that not town property is it University property, because that seems like, to me, a really wonderful place to concentrate an awful lot of student housing. That's that's needed. I see your hand. I think that we agree that will be a drive is the best is one of the best places for student housing but the university controls all of that land. The two parcels that were available for development have been purchased by archipelago investments. They built one Olympia place up there already and they have permission from the planning board to build another dormitory, what do they call it apartment style dormitory up there but those are really the only parcels that are available to be developed other than UMass land and we don't really have control over UMass. So that that that kind of underlines why the planning board should have a little bit more contact with UMass I know we can't negotiate, but we certainly can have a little bit more information. We can plan how fast are they going to move. You know their reputation right now is not good the students are really angry because of the fact that they have so little options in housing, and I would think that the university would want to be really able to move on that quickly because they stand to profit a lot if, if they do a lot to have to have an enhanced student village there I foresee a wonderful broad bicycle path, which would go across to the west through their land, where Mississippi Park is now directly to the university. There could be space for kind of a north village which was so popular that that populated our, our schools with wonderful international students and eager parents. So I would think it hand in hand with the university we should really put a little bit of a burner under them, if we can't I or ask Paul Bachman to really get on it since he's the one that's negotiating for us. So but I understand why you left that off. Otherwise, of the three parcels. I, I would be in favor of really concentrating a lot on the university drive because I see that if we have public outreach I don't see there would be so much of a problem in disturbing neighborhoods there or feel people feeling pressured. And I like very much what Doug Marshall suggested as a vision at the last meeting where he said, could we conceive of a broad of our saying we want to make a broad boulevard to the university tree lined and expansive sidewalks for bicycles transportation and work hand in hand to have that be continued. That's, that's the parcel that I see that we could move ahead on with the most urgency, in my opinion. Okay, thanks Karen. And we will in our second item on the agenda tonight talk about the conversation with you mass. Chris I see your hand. One of the reasons that two out of these three areas are really important, especially in terms of you mass is that they about you mass land, the university drive parcel parcels, just to the north of them is a vast area of you mass land that you may encourage to develop for housing, but the town could make it easier for private developers to develop property along university drive which may, in fact, encourage you massive. The town is encouraging private developers to develop their you mass might feel that Oh, yes this could become, you know, one big area for student housing. This is North Pleasant Street which about university and if some of that land were made a little bit more flexible in terms of being able to develop that also could spur the university on to develop that portion of their campus so those two areas I think are really important to look at and, especially when we have this conversation coming up with two representatives, maybe three representatives of her lucky of the university on October 25, I think that it would be worthwhile to talk about those two areas in particular. And of course, East Amherst is one that we've been talking about a lot among ourselves. So, I guess that's all I have to say right now. Okay, thanks Chris. Jesse. Thank you for that comment and observation relevant to our upcoming conversation. So the new development on Lincoln and Mass Ave. That just opened the old stone slate. It's pretty clear that the, the rents there are quite a lot more than how houses, student rental houses. So that's the kind of development we're thinking of encouraging. That's not going to take pressure off the neighborhood houses until there's way more than needed, which is far off. So I don't know how much influence we, what tools we have to influence rents probably none. But that seems like it has to be part of the conversation and thinking about what's going to get built also. And that to me is why, gathering the data and trying to influence neighborhood stuff is also has to go hand in hand. Okay, I had seen Fred's hand next. I agree that the indicated area and university drive is comparatively low hanging fruit. I just want to take this opportunity to point out this is a classic example of a potential zoning decision that involves some serious trade offs. And I say this because as long as I've been active in Amherst town government, which goes back many, many decades. We have a real systemic problem in Amherst that we've never really been able to address and that is the fact that the tax base is overwhelmingly residential. A place like Northampton, the somewhat smaller population has a huge percentage of their tax base in commercial and industrial. We don't have that. And it causes no end of problems. University Drive is one of the few places besides the center of town, which is squarely focused on commercial development. And if this goes over into student housing, I think, yeah, there's there's certainly a place for some of this housing there but let's be careful, very careful about again trade offs. They're not obvious but they're here. Thank you Fred. I guess that might suggest that a mixed use building sort of typology and the university drive area might be more appropriate, requiring commercial space on the first floor and some amount of residential above it. Janet was next and then we'll get to Chris. So, I don't think we can focus on three areas and focus, but I think we should do. I mean, I would love to talk about East Amherst Village Center. I think University Drive is a great spot. I think what's not a great spot is North Pleasant Street. I think many years ago, Doug, you said, where can we build housing where it's not going to incite a buzz saw of descent. And I think, you know, this neighborhood. You know, kind of sandwich between Amherst Center and the university is coming to us again and again saying we're overcome by students. We're losing all sorts of family housing entire streets, you know, have converted since I've been here to all student housing. And then we're saying, well, let's build some more across from Kendrick Park and lead into the gateway and I do think UMass should use those spots. I think it'd be great for graduate student housing. Family housing, young professors housing, you know, perhaps undergraduates and that's their land and they should do that. But I think if you're going to put a whole series of three, four, five story buildings across from Kendrick Park, fill them with students. You know, I think it's going to, first of all, I think it's kind of, you know, it's, it's going to that area is being considered for historic district. I think it's going to create tremendous opposition. It's going to sound like the planning board is not listening to people. And it's going to push more people into houses because, you know, a studio for $2,000 is much more expensive than renting a room for 850. And it would push people to be not just four people in a Victorian apartment. It might push you to six. And I've talked to students and one of the reasons they live off campus is it's cheaper. And they don't have to go into the meal plan. And it's cheaper for them to cook at home. And I've seen the conditions in those apartments and they're not pretty. And so I think in a weird way, that would create more pressure. And I think, you know, we're already putting 800 students on the edge of that neighborhood. Let's not put another 800 a thousand. It doesn't, it doesn't make sense. But also, I think it's going to get huge opposition and we're going to just, it's not going to go anywhere. So let's focus on University Drive East Amherst Center, which is East Amherst Center is cooking. And so it'd be great to be able to put some design ideas or some zoning changes that make sure that what's there is something that's going to improve that neighborhood. That's very vital to begin with. Janet, I'm not sure what you mean that the high rents of the new project are going to, or any new construction would push people into houses. What do you mean by that? Because increasing the supply seems to me to be a generally a good thing of any sort, in order to provide more opportunities and more supply to this pretty high demand that we have. So, so basically my, from what I've heard from people in red is that, you know, when you're renting a room in a house, it's between like 850 to $1,000 per bed. And so that's cheaper than paying $1,600 for a better 2000. And so building expensive student housing next to UMass isn't necessarily going to alleviate it. You think, are you think, oh, we built, we just built a thousand units of housing and the prices everywhere have gone up. One of the things I passed around was the UMass, how they've increased their, it's only into 2021. I think it's even more now. And so we have like 8,000 students that don't have housing. And then we, you know, so I think that I mean, I think that's the phenomenon that, you know, these most people who can't afford these expensive apartments are looking in town for cheaper rates. People who can't afford $1,000 a month for a door room, plus the meal plan are being pushed into town. So you're suggesting that the town shouldn't build any more housing because it'll push people into houses. I think there's a dynamic going on. That's sort of what Fred is saying. It's complicated. So we just built a thousand units of housing and prices have gone up. Right. So we can build 2000 more units of housing at some hope that prices are going to go down. But I think that hasn't been happening. And so we have to be careful about where we place the housing and putting a ton of students near Amherst center around these two very sensitive neighborhoods under pressure isn't going to alleviate the pressure on them. Unless you do the things that Bruce is saying, which is reducing the amount of students, student rentals or the percentage of students on a street. I mean, there has to, it has to be sort of a seesaw. You know, you can, we can pack students along North Pleasant Street and then we're going to wind up packing the RG because it's just going to keep going on. I don't see how it's going to alleviate the pressure unless we say the neighborhoods can or can only take a percentage of housing of students. Okay. Chris, I think your hand was next and then Jesse. I just wanted to mention the fact that these new buildings that people may not be so fond of do pay a lot in taxes. And so, although we may not have, you know, industry and perhaps as much, you know, R&D as we would like that the new buildings pay hundreds of thousands of dollars in taxes and really keep our schools going and keep us from having to lay off town employees of which I'm one. I just wanted everybody to keep that in mind. Thanks. So you didn't declare a conflict of interest before this conversation, did you? Jesse, go ahead. Just to add to that conversation, I was trying to comment on this before. I have a good understanding until supply of housing is more than demand, pressure is not going to decrease. And that's why I think, yes, we should encourage more building in places we want it, focus for students. And we have to try and get a handle on the neighborhood rentals as well to reduce the pressure intentionally because if we just let it go, the pressure is not going to change until 8,000 more beds are built, which is 15 years away. So I think that's somewhat what you're saying, Jenny. Okay. Thanks, Jesse. Brad. I just, I think, is directed at Chris. It's the idea has been floated several times about some somehow reducing the density of students in a neighborhood and so many student rental apartments and for the life of me, I cannot figure out how you can. I cannot figure out how you could create that to happen legally. I'm just thinking of my own street. I have two apartments. Currently they're rented to students. Often they're not. But. Okay. You know, how do I assume that I can go on renting them if it's, you know, how do you, how do you do that? How do you have a lottery or something? I mean, how do you. Fred, Fred, are you asking how could we tell a landlord you can no longer rent to students. Yeah. Because that that what's been floated here is various formulas to reduce the density of quote unquote student housing. And legally, I don't know exactly how you. Enforcibly define that without. I can think of lots of problems with the law in terms of attempting to discern that information. In specific cases and. How will it work and Fred, I mean, I guess I the way I imagine it would happen is you'd put together some set of regulations with limits on number of students and distance between houses that are rented to students or something. And anybody who is currently renting students would be grandfathered. They simply prevent the situation from getting worse in that we're in that nobody additional could be showing up with a house that's been owner occupied. So this would be through the rental registration process and not the zone. Probably, I mean, I mean earlier. Yeah, earlier this year there was conversation about. Putting some sort of distance and density limits on rentals to students into the zoning bylaw and we never really pursued that. But, you know, we could come back around to that if that's where the board wants to go. Jesse. Also, I did find examples of few municipalities that had legally defined student housing. zones. Well, no, they had some kind of definitions which held up in their bylaws to say this is a student rental and it had to do with square footage for better a bunch of different metrics, but they really were able to classify. The units essentially as student versus not. And that really piqued my interest as something we should pursue again in the later conversation maybe. Okay. Karen, I see your hand. Yeah, I thank you, Fred, for bringing up those those cautionary things of developing University Drive. I want to zero in on it again because I think there's really an urgency not only to discuss things like limiting student housing in town which is which is really urgent because the student housing in town is being destroyed as we speak with more and more houses gone from the family market going to the student market, but also because there's such a need for, for a student houses so the University Drive yes, it is a prime place where this commercial space could be needed and would go but I think that you could really do both. We would need a really good professional planner that would make this kind of Boulevard to the University have large there's there's the land is there large complexes where students can live and remember when businesses are together. It also becomes loud and there has to be some monitoring. And it would be a prime place for certain kinds of commercial businesses certainly more restaurants that are needed, maybe laundry maps, who knows what kind of businesses could go in there. I think we should sterile in on on what we could do in this area to to move forward. All right, thanks Karen. I want to comment on one thing you said which was that when there's a lot of students together they get loud. And my perception of the new large buildings downtown 11 pleasant 11 North pleasant and the Kendrick place building is that they're very quiet. No, one of our one of our public public attendees disagrees that can Kendrick place is loud. Kendrick place is loud okay. Okay, all right so we have a neighbor in the room who disagrees so my perception walking by a few times a week is probably is not completely accurate. Maybe the commercial goes together. Sorry. Yeah. Okay. Thank you Karen. Janet. I'm just in terms of University Drive, I think that apartment buildings are taxed at a commercial they're considered commercial buildings but when you go down University Drive, you know there's that little low set of buildings with the bike store and a pizza place and you know it looks and then there's that you know there's an office building and then there's and there's a lot of really low buildings there that seem to me that could be developed further and be bigger. You know, the big why you know I think that could be a place for more housing actually because especially since that night there, you know, their parking lots aren't really being used and I've seen more and more housing going in around this trip development. It's a great spot if you I mean there's so many things going on there and there's so many transportation things that you know I don't know if it has to be a student housing area but it'd be a great you could walk to the grocery store you could walk to the urgent care for your broken leg you could get your blood taken you can visit your relatives in a nursing home or assisted living. There's there's a ton of businesses there but I feel like it could be more and if there are more people living near there. It would get more vital. And I think if you go up I know there's a lot of wetlands there but there's a lot of buildings that are just kind of low buildings that look like they could be bigger. Chris, why don't you go now. I just wanted to say that the whole area there is zoned BL limited business. There's a little piece of it that's owned OP which is office park, but the limited business area is really limited as far as the number of dwelling units that you can put So if we were to change that to something other than limited business or if we were to come up with some sort of overlay zone that we could put on that whole area that would allow more housing to be built I think you would find that those properties could be developed and they would be developed, you know, nicely and well and there's room for parking and, as you said there's transportation so I think it's a really great place to encourage development. Yeah, I lived in amity place when I first moved to town. And I could do everything I needed to do without a car I could walk to the grocery store I could write my back down to you mass to work I could go to the eye doctor I could do everything. You know I forgot to bring my zoning bylaw and look this up but does business village centers solve all our problems like what can you do there. I forgot to look this up before I but you know is, I mean, you know I'm looking for a zoning that's flexible with that is. Chris, do you want to. I just wanted to give you an example. Mr. McChie has got his hand up. Oh, and Nate yeah. Mr. McChie has developed the property on southeast street as a three story mixed use building. I don't think he's had success yet and getting tenants for the ground floor. But he's proposing something across the street and I think what he's proposing across the street is taller, but in any event those are in the BBC zoning district and you know have been allowed to develop and be developed there or at least the one that's built. Based on the BBC zoning. So I think it's a good zoning district for mixed use buildings but there may be some limitations on it that we don't want to have and I haven't studied it enough but Rob Mara thinks it may be more beneficial to create an overlay zone that would eliminate whatever problems there are with the BBC. And as I said, I haven't studied it well enough to know what those are. Okay, Nate I see your hand. Fair thanks yeah I mean my idea for the university drive area is an overlay that is more creative than BBC or any of the zoning district we have right so I think my personally I think we could have 1000 new beds down there for students and we call it student housing overlay. And we get creative in terms of setbacks and building design and streetscape design that really isn't encompassed in the zoning by law right now. And so, you know, the downtown design standards would kind of pick up on some of this but I think to tackle the housing problem we have to be a little bit more creative and so I think an overlay is something that I would be encouraging and something more than just, you know, a building here a building there like let's look at this whole area and say okay. How can we make it look nice and also maximize the number of beds only for students. Let's call it student housing, and that's it's a student housing overlay and then the other areas in town a stammer's. What other village centers, you know we could have some other types of zoning overlay or different standards. Because I do think the student housing market is so strong that most of the stuff we're going to build is going to be students and so it is difficult to control price and market. So, so Nate. When I've thought about this, the student overlay. I've almost felt the opposite like the new overlays we should do. To allow as much flexibility in the housing that gets built as possible. And then there are some areas where we'd want to do an overlay where we explicitly prohibit students like the university drive. I as a working professional could find that a really great place to live. Why would we prevent people from building housing that I could live in in that location. There's not a neighborhood really that that would object to having students there, but why limited to students. Okay, maybe not but I do think for instance like Aspen Heights. You know, provided affordable units and I actually think that that type of development. It probably best not to have any affordable units there right we've I've heard it from a few different people that some of the units remain vacant because it's really not. It was nice of a place in terms of a community setting and so, you know, some of my other ideas would be in other parts of town we could tweak our inclusionary zoning bylaw. We could change our definitions of apartment to change the different types of unit sizes into other things to encourage more than just, you know, studios and ones or whatever the market is kind of putting out there now at the highest rent. Maybe it doesn't have to be students only for this overlay but I'd like to think creatively about right how can we maximize density. And maybe it doesn't have to be, you know, if we want to have affordable units I think we have to change our hour on inclusionary zoning and have it be a bigger percentage and also maybe up to, you know, 150% am I or something. So that we get a better mix of people in the in the units. If we use the unit mix to sort of skew one way or the other in terms of towards students or away from students it seems like the, like the units in 11 East Pleasant Street are four bedrooms with maybe four bathrooms or two bathrooms. And they're laid out pretty much like they're laid out for students they're not laid out for for a family. Whereas. So if you had like on University Drive if you didn't have a lot of restrictions on the unit mix and types. You would probably get because the demand is there a predominance of buildings that were geared towards students, but you might get a couple of buildings that were not geared towards students in recognition that there's probably a market there too. Whereas, say up on North Pleasant Street you might explicitly say, you know, you couldn't have anything larger than a two bedroom unit, in which case, those are going to be units that are more, you know, more likely to be rented by, you know, young families or working professionals that want to live in an apartment for some number of years, maybe before buying a house or whatever. And at those won't have quite the same density economies of scale that that students would put up with. So that would be skewed more tour away from students and then down in East Pleasant Street, or East Amherst Village, you know, we could allow a variety of unit types yes there's a lot of students down there. The more students are there, the more PVTA is going to need to up their bus service. And just in terms of the geography, the less, you know, if I'm a student and I have an option of a unit near campus or a unit far from campus, I assume I'm going to prefer the one near campus if I can. You know, maybe it allows me not to have a car. I mean, so, I think there's slightly different, you know, maybe I'm East Amherst maybe that ought to be skewed toward families and working, you know, more affordable housing, and downtown, you know, has its own demand profile and we do it through units is kind of what I'm wondering. Yeah, but I just quickly I think that even if we have, you know, rezone East Amherst and University Drive East Amherst is just going to be filled with students because the demand is so high and so I think if we don't want East Amherst to be filled with students I think we could. We need to do a few different things like I think zoning could go up to 20% of units and set of 12% right now we could say that that additional 8% is that up to 150% AMI for any product over a certain number of units or something. Okay, all right. We're kind of mandating a range of incomes. Okay, I mean, and that sounds plausible to me. Janet and then Karen. So, I have to just say Nate and I'm sorry to say I hate the idea of an overlay to solve underlying zoning problems. Like, to me East Amherst Village Center and I understand how it got to be zoned that way but I think, to me, it, you know, adding an overlay to a really complicated kind of messed up zoning district. So, maybe it seems like avoiding a problem and creating more complexity. And so I would love to see, like, to do like an experiment like what if we turn that into BBC. And then you could say, okay, here are the problems with BBC. You know, we need more, it gives you more flexibility but it has these limitations and so maybe we have the East Amherst BBC, and we loosen up the criteria for, you know, classic zoning, you know, and then in terms of University Drive, I think, you know, it is a logical place to put students and we might say, okay, this is a student housing zone, but we want to give flexibility that young professionals or university staff also can live there too. So, you know, but I think to leave the BL sitting on the University Drive constraining regular development doesn't make sense to me. I think we should just, I think we have to go area by area and zone for that area. And, you know, we do have the tools in our kit but maybe, you know, we have a BBC on University Drive but you can go to four stories or, you know, whatever. Nate, I see your hand. I'm assuming you want to respond to Janet and then we'll go to Karen. Yeah, sure. Thanks. Yeah, I mean, I so the only place I really mentioned an overlay was University Drive. I, I think the other maps in my mind for East Amherst is that's the geographic extent of where we could look at. Do we rezone based zoning? Do we have an overlay? What are the techniques there? So, I agree with East Amherst. I think BBC could solve a lot. I think we might want to throw in a footnote A and make, right, you said maybe some minor changes. So I'm not proposing necessarily an overlay in East Amherst. That was just a map showing if we're rezoning what's the extent of possible rezoning, right? What is maybe some areas we consider? And so really, I, you know, and I agree. I think that there's these three areas are almost too much to do at once. And so, so I was really talking about an overlay on University Drive, not anywhere else, you know, not the other maps. Okay, great. Karen, we're finally to you. Yeah, I like, I like Nate's plan of having an overall plan for University Drive and not doing a piecemeal and bringing in really good people and also really doing this hand in hand with the university and having great expectations of how they would continue it because they really need to step up. Their reputation is on the line. They need to have the student housing. And one thing that does worry me is on University Drive, isn't there that that senior home in Lanes? Um, they're so we do have the arbors, the arbors is down there arbors, the arbors. So that's why we need a big plan student overlay. I like the idea. But where does it go? That's a long lane. And there could be an awful lot fit in there if it's properly done. If we do it piecemeal. Well, I don't know. I like the idea of really zeroing in on saying this is what we need. This is where it could be. And yes, Doug, I also like the idea of being an older person and wanting to live there too in an apartment if it's nicely done and it has a chance to say kind of feeling. You know, but I think creative planning can can we can really brainstorm and see what would be the best possible solution for this this avenue. All right, thanks, Karen. And Janet, I see your hand, Chris, are you do you want to respond to that or do you. If you have okay go ahead and respond and then we'll move to Janet. So I just wanted to point out that the town has some degree of control over things but not over everything so the town can open the door to certain things via zoning, and that allows private developers to make choices and decisions about their own property and develop them in the way that they think is best, but we can't force anyone to develop a property in a certain way or tell them that they have to develop it in a certain way. The only thing is we have control over the infrastructure so we have control over the roadway, whatever is within the town right of way. The town can make determinations about what it wants to do there, but I don't want us to get off and think that we can make a plan for exactly what we want university drive to be, and then think that plan is going to come to fruition, like I said you can open the door with zoning, and you have control over the infrastructure but that's really as far as the planning towards powers go. So you're trying to tell us we're not designers. Okay, and actually before we Chris, could you remind us of the limitations on the number of curb cuts on university drive between amity street and root nine. The ability to have six curb cuts between amity street and root nine, and then Barry Roberts came and asked town meeting to allow another curb cut which allowed him to build. What is it 70 university drive. And so that was allowed by town meeting. So anyone who wanted to have another curb cut on university drive would have to go to town council to get approval for that. And the limitation was established by whom for what purpose, the limitation was established by the town because the town wanted university drive to be kind of a fast moving road, they wanted to have, you know, slow moving traffic on that access road which is on the west side of the road. And they didn't want to have a lot of people coming in and out of driveways along university drive that would slow the traffic down. Now we have a different approach to traffic at this time. So we might want to slow down the town through the council can change that approach to the town to this road. Yes, so great. So it was a private easement or something that was not something we could appeal. It was something the town imposed on itself and now can not take it away in its wisdom. Yes. Okay, Janet. So I have a question for you, Doug, which is you were talking at the last meeting about, you know, a university drive extended onto the UMass campus and, you know, maybe doing a sort of visioning together with them and so I didn't. I feel like here's a list of things I didn't do this week. I didn't go down there and look there I've been I walked there and I've gone to games there and I know that it in state college. There's a lot of alumni housing that's been built around there, probably perhaps more successful football team. But, but you know there is there seems to be a lot of open land it seems flat I don't see I think there are some wetlands further down in the woods maybe but what was your idea about that like, would that be more student housing grad student housing faculty housing because it is pretty open land. The main thing I was referring to was when the university when the you three report was done which was the sort of where could privatized housing happen on. This was the report that was done sort of 2013 14 jointly by the youth three was the name of the consultant that was hired by the jointly by the town and the university. And they came up with three different potential places for a whole bunch of housing, one of which is this parcel on UMass is land that is now housing the big development that is open is just opened. The second location was along North Pleasant Street. I know where what the parcel that for a while was called the gateway parcel. And the third location was at the north end of university drive where there's a bunch of parking lots beyond kind of opposite Southwest on the west side of university drive. So, you know, those were the three things that that consultant came up with. You know, I think I in the in the meeting last in person meeting or maybe two in person meetings ago I had mentioned university drive as a place for fruitful conversation between the town and the university simply because it's a continuous road that comes from control by the land by the by the town into control by the university. And, you know, I was it was one of two, the other being North Pleasant Street to zones where there was real connection. And so that, you know, if the two parties worked together you'd be more likely to have a unified street, whereas some other parts of the UMass campus if they build a dormitory somewhere there. It doesn't really a but town land so there's no opportunity for the town to work together with them on that. Otherwise, you know, if the town did something that didn't a but UMass, then there's no point in talking to UMass too much about it because they're not impacted or they're not related to it. So, I mean, what, what would UMass do on university drive between those parking lots and amity street. I don't, I don't know. So, um, and so, I mean, I'm an end of that end of that end of that answer. But I wanted to come back to something, maybe it was Karen somebody mentioned the elderly housing and the health care that's at the corner university drive. I think that is kind of a little that's our little medical center. I mean, except for Valley, what is it Valley Medical that's on Belcher Town Road. But this is as much as a concentration of health care as we have. And I assume that part of the reason it's there is that it's right at route nine. Like it's a straight shot to Cooley Dickinson. So whoever whoever brought that up, I totally agree that even though the boundary of this area that staff has drawn encompasses those facilities. I think we ought to treat that corner, probably differently from the rest of it, just because we don't want to lose and push that function away. At least I assume we don't. I mean, if we want to have some health care facilities in town, rather than in Hadley. This is where they are. This is seems like maybe we could allow them to build larger medical facilities on that corner. And maybe, you know, I'd love it if Valley Medical moved closer to where I am. So anyway. Okay, so I'm just want to do a time check here is 11 after seven. We've typically tried to do these meetings as two hour meetings, starting a little bit earlier at six o'clock than our usual meetings so that we could let staff go home and have dinner. And so I want to be cognizant of that. So, you know, it does. I mean, I guess, if I had to just sort of off the top of my head summarize what we're hearing. It seems like there's probably a predominance of enthusiasm to look at University Drive, and maybe East Amherst Village. I think there's probably prudent concern about the North Pleasant Street area. Just in terms of the politics of town. So, you know, I think, I guess I would ask Chris and Nate. Given given the constraints of your workload and your staff. Is it reasonable for us to ask you to come back with any sort of developed vision, or the beginnings of a suggestion for conversation with the board. I will tell you, you know, earlier this year I had kind of noodled, you know, ideas for one area in town and I could certainly modify those noodles to apply to some of these, you know, because you think about something in one area there's stuff you learn that you can apply to other areas. So, you know, board members could come back with, here's what I propose for one of these areas. You know, it seems to me that, you know, it's all the facets of zoning. It's the dimensional, the setbacks, the, the, the heights. What type of use would be appropriate, you know, in terms of the sort of categories that we have now, hopefully those are, you know, there's enough there and you don't have to invent a new category. So Chris, why don't we start with you and Nate and just say, what do you think you could do and then the question that I'll, we don't need answers from the board. It's just, we've heard what Chris and Nate can probably generate. If you want there to be more that shows up as we continue this conversation. Maybe, you know, you need to think about doing something and proposing it. So let's let me let Chris answer and then Fred, I see your hand. Okay. And I don't want to lose something that Jesse brought out, which is, we need statistics and looking at the big picture. And I'm aware that generating these statistics probably involves a lot of time, looking through information and so on. I'm not even exactly sure how it would be done. But it strikes me it's probably the sort of thing that requires a lot of effort by that could be done by people who aren't particularly exactly trained in and you know, I would volunteer some time with, you know, some boots on the ground, doing this and so forth. Chris, if you if you could maybe consider that and I understand you are definitely limited in terms of professional time. Chris. So I think what I'm hearing from Fred and Jesse is that they want data on neighborhoods. And they want to know how many of the houses are rented and how many are owner occupied and non owner occupied and how many people live in the houses that are there. So we're talking about here with these three areas are not neighborhoods, they're areas of town that are already developed, and there are houses there but the houses are not the preponderance of the use. I think if we're going to focus on these areas University Drive and East Amherst Village Center my sense is that to do that we don't need as much data as Jesse was suggesting earlier. We would need that if we were going to focus on the RG zoning district or RN or something like that is that is that correct Jesse's shaking his head. Yes. Fred Fred would like everything. So what we've decided though may I just continue. So, I think there would need to be a more of a commitment on the part of the planning board to continue this conversation past October 25 if we were going to really pursue a lot of different ideas where we've, we've promised the town that we will have three in person meetings to deal with housing issues. Now we can decide that we're going to have more than that we actually set aside one Wednesday at the end of November as the fourth Wednesday. But if you want to continue this conversation and really make a proposal and do something we're probably going to have to go beyond the end of November. And if we're talking about going into next year, maybe we can start, you know, gathering data, but if we're going to focus on these particular areas. You know, I think you have to make a choice what do you want to do, what do you want to do for how much time do you want to spend on it and what do you want to do we can support you. I said we're not going to be, you know, we can't spend all of our time on this, but we can support you. Right. Okay. Thank you. Thanks for listening tonight. I am not interested in sending the staff on a wild goose chase until unless this board has like bona fide interest in actually then working with those recommendations and my thinking is change doesn't happen in giant leaps usually it happens incrementally. So, if we think the path of least resistance to add a lot of housing in town is by exploring University Drive. I'm a little bit inclined to keep it discreet focused on that. And see if we can actually move that ball forward and get that to completion and then move on to the next chunk. So, like Chris, I would love to have you and Nate spend that time but I think unless there's actual buy in and like working on that chunk in a bona fide way I wouldn't want you to spend the time in it. So, I don't know if it's like, I don't know if we can do straw straw poll of like, yes, do that or actually no spend your time on something else. Jesse, I see your hand but Karen, I see her hand too. I agree with Joanna and I, for one, am ready to go and commit myself to working further to really look at University Drive. I mean we've been asked to do something and find the best place in town where we can move ahead and I think we're all kind of excited about this possibility and and as Fred said we have to look at the down parts as well as the other parts. So, yes, let's let's go for continuing this University Drive exploration and concentrating on that. And in the meantime, in our other plans, we, we deal with all the other things which are equally important as Jesse said, we have to zero in on on some rules. How to protect the town from, from going under with this pressure from students. Okay, so that's one, that's two members who are supportive of focusing on University Drive. Jesse, I see your hand. Thanks. Yeah, I don't disagree. I think it's great idea to start with University Drive focus there. The comment is it doesn't alleviate the urgency, many of us are expressing about the other issues that that should be a quick second. I will tell you, I, I, at one, one point when I had a Sunday afternoon free I, I went, I had a neighborhood I was thinking about and how much was interested to know how much of it was rental housing, and I one by one went through the town property cards to see, is this owner occupied or not because it says on the on the property cards, I will tell you that I knew through the entire, I don't know, two hours that I spent I knew there had to be a better way to do it. I just didn't know what that was or if I had access to it. Yes, I was thinking the same thing in my neighborhood, you can just count who leaves their recycle bins out. And those are rentals. Yeah, yeah, it's pretty straightforward. And on Sunday morning and see where the red beer cups are. And you know what's going on. I would add that in the summer, what street has like nobody on it, which is, you know, a lot of streets, you know, between College Street and mess, I agree that we should focus on University Drive and I wonder if we could create a quick like two people to work on that with Chris and Nate, and then with ideas going back and forth or something because I, you know, we don't have a zoning subcommittee but it's nice to have a small group of people working on stuff and coming back to the larger group. I mean, I don't know if it's this moment to do a subgroup but I think it makes sense. It might make sense for in terms of assistance to. So remind me, I think there was one meeting back in the spring or summer that I missed and but when I watched the video. I thought I heard, maybe you, Chris say that if the board charges a subset of it to go work on something and come back to the board that when that subset meets it is considered subject to open meeting law. Before the public is invited. Minutes have to happen. A gen has to be posted. And all of those encumbrances I, I, there's got to be a more politic word than that are in effect. And for that reason, you know, we don't want to require the town staff to do new more minutes and have more postings and advertisements. All that stuff. And did I hear that right. I mean, it seems like you hear it right and maybe Nate can add to this but my understanding is if two members of a board want to work on something. If they're not designated as a subcommittee, then they don't have to keep minutes and post meetings. If so, it's more of a, if they volunteer, they volunteer rather than be charged. Exactly. Yes. So I believe that is the case. Nate, is that your understanding too. I found some decisions determinations from the state and that's considered a subquorum. And, you know, anyways, it's right so it's not official subcommittee so that's that's my understanding as well. Okay, Fred. Chris, can you hand me the microphone. Yeah, my having just subjected myself to the open meeting law training. I believe the, the, you're, you're good at three or fewer. Provided you're not deliberating. And so it has to be something that's informal, but if three members of the planning where that's where, as soon as you get to four becomes the court, then it becomes a deliberation. But three or fewer. Because they're not a named subcommittee or something that that's where the line is drawn, I believe. Okay. Chris, is there something else you want to say, no, I was just going to say that, well, there is something else I wanted to say, I think Nate and I could carve out some time to work with members of the planning board who were interested in working on this three or fewer. Okay, you need to, you know, volunteer yourselves and not be nominated and not be voted on. Right, we could do that. And we'll be working with Rob more on this project to. Okay, you also raised the question of whether we wanted to continue these fifth, whatever, fourth or fifth, whatever, end of month, meet extra meetings, longer. And that's one of the board's workload in the next couple of months. And I guess the, you know, because we, we originally set these up as an extra meeting each month. But if our workload is reasonably light, we could have these kinds of conversations during a regular meeting and not have to create another meeting with another set of minutes that, you know, you struggle to keep up with us on. We don't want to, we want to go into that with our eyes open if we are going that way. Chris. So, right now the planning boards. Heavy lifting is really recommending making recommendations to the zoning board of appeals on the shoots free road solar project and the two comprehensive permit projects that are coming along, and possibly one other solar project but you don't have a lot of applications that are directed towards the planning board right now, unless I'm missing something and we could ask Nate. The Jones library is a big one. Yeah, that was supposed to come in for October 18 that hasn't come in yet so that's probably something you're going to be tackling in November. Right now you have shoot spray road solar coming along on October 4. So far nothing on October 18. And then there's a first meeting in November which I can't remember the date of that. Maybe Pam could remember that but whatever the first Wednesday in November is, which might be November 1. I think it is November 1. So, you could come back to this conversation on October 18. If that would be just do it. Do people feel like doing it in person is beneficial rather than doing having trying to have this kind of conversation as a zoom. Okay. So, maybe we could think about trying to do the October 18 meeting in person starting at six instead of 630. And that way we could continue this conversation and limit ourselves to two meetings that month. And we all win. Jesse. Can I ask that we get this other piece on conversation agenda at some point soon to the neighborhood piece the yes and ways we can strategize around. Yeah, whatever word we want to use for right student housing in neighborhoods. So a big, I'm hoping that a big contribution to that conversation is going to be Bruce, because he's the one that's been calling around to all a bunch of other college town planning offices, and finding out what they what they've tried to do and what's worked what's worked what didn't work, you know, all that stuff. And so, I don't know what his progress is while he's, he's overseas but you know he's been plugging away at it at least. And when he put these boards together, you know he talked to five or six of the towns of the however many 10 you had on his list and it seemed like he was starting to learn something that might be informative. Okay, so, before we, I'm thinking maybe we've talked about this topic to not enough tonight. And before we go to item two on our agenda. I want to call on the public to see if there are any public comments that people want to make. I don't have the stopwatch that Pam usually runs but I have my regular watch. So, three minutes or less. Are there any members of the public who would like to speak. So we will start with the people in the room. And I see one hand, please give us your name and your, your street address assuming you still live in Amherst, and go ahead. Thank you. I'm Pam Rooney 42 cottage street. I'm actually speaking as the liaison to the town council now. And the fact that I wanted to inform this group that the community resources committee, which has been talking about rental registration and nuisance bylaw for the last year and a half. I asked of town staff for a list of rental units in town that being every unit that is not owner occupied. And that request has been made. We got an updated data sheet, not too long ago, but it was actually still only those units. We requested a permit. And so we know that that is not conclusive that is not comprehensive. Rob more would be a good place to start with this. And if any assistance could be given to him. It was literally a secondary task if someone had time to work on it. And we know they didn't have time to work on it. So that's a really good place to start. I truly would like that information the CRC would like that information. It helps us globally understand better the housing situation in Amherst. Thank you. All right. Thank you, counselor Rooney. The second hand from the public is a person named Lily Bruce if Pam if you could bring her over and let her speak. Welcome Lily. You have three minutes to comment on our discussion about changing zoning for housing in town. Hi, so yeah, my name is Lily Bruce. I am a student at UMass Amherst. So I'm on the student government association. And my role is to I'm the secretary of external affairs. So my role is to work directly with the town council. So just being here and listening to all this conversation. I want to give my perspective from a student. So students don't move off campus because it's cheaper we move off campus because the university does not guarantee housing past our first year being on campus. And just I live in Puffton Village now. So just being off campus. It is a lot more expensive being off campus. A majority of off campus students also do have meal plans that also adds to it. I just wanted to, I don't know, sort of just discuss about the how changing the zoning so that students aren't allowed to live on certain streets and Amherst. I think that is going to be a very, very difficult thing to do because students we don't have. We're not guaranteed housing on campus. So we have to go off campus and then limiting our ability and to live in certain places. We won't have anywhere to live unless more places are built. And I think the university tried to correct that by building the field stone building that is on Mass Ave and Lincoln. However, that building the rents are, I know it's not anything to do with the town, but the rents for that one. It's about $1,500 a month for a four bedroom apartment per person. One of my friends lives there. So I've been there. They also are not at capacity because those buildings aren't done yet. So I just have a lot of concerns about whether building these new buildings are going to help fix the problem with housing with UMass. And I think that discussion is really needed with UMass administrators to talk about this and come up with a plan to fix this just because there are more students coming to the university every year as well. And also, would these students not being able to live I have a question just a student is saying students aren't being able to live on certain streets. Would that include graduate students as well because I know a lot of the times graduate students aren't around the same age as undergraduate students so I just wanted to clarify if that was just for graduate students or undergraduate students as well. Thank you. Thank you, Lily. I will venture at least my answer to your question. I think many of the members of the town who object to students in their neighborhood. The discussions are coming from undergraduates who tend to be more boisterous and higher, louder. And the graduate students probably are more quiet and less less of a problem. So I see Jesse and Janet who have their hands up. Maybe you guys have a different perspective on that. Just a comment. I don't think there was any idea that of eliminating students from certain streets. I think the idea was more about limiting the number and really the number of new rentals that are increasingly a sort of positive conversion or a purchase for rentals conversion conversions from single family to student rentals so I haven't heard any conversation about no this street is not for students, not like that. Well, when you when when when we've had this conversation and we use the word students and we're talking about do we want to try to reduce the density of students in neighborhoods. Have you had any sense of whether you're really thinking about undergraduates or graduate students. Honestly, no. I feel like it's just about the density of non owner rentals. So that might be another way to talk about it without actually using the word students. Yeah, owner occupancy versus none. And that's already a thing in our zoning bylaw. So students are not a protected class under federal or Massachusetts law. And so, but we have laws against age discrimination and so if you say undergraduates that could be considered age discrimination or that there are undergrads who are obviously older so that's kind of a hairy line. You can discriminate in a positive way by limiting, you know, places to 55 plus for no reason to understand but the Supreme Court said it was okay. So that's kind of a hairy line or a fuzzy line there that you're starting to walk towards age discrimination if you're saying grad versus undergrad. I have a completely unrelated issue. Are we having a meeting on the 25th with the UMass people that would that be three meetings then in October. Yeah, we have October 25 is a plan and I had forgotten that when I said earlier G if we had this conversation on the 18th we could dispense with the last one. So my mistake. Thank you for Paul pointing that out. I want to say something and then I'm hoping we move on to these questions. So we can fill out the meeting. Yeah, I wasn't assuming that you made a mistake I was assuming that you wanted to add a meeting on October 18 to talk about the same topic and then have the meeting on October 25 as well. So, okay. So, okay, that's something that you could consider whether you want to have three. So right now, when our meetings scheduled October 4 and October 18. And tentatively October 25 because you've invited 20 extra one. Right. And so, I said to you that there's nothing currently scheduled for the 18th locations for the 18th. And then you said well, or maybe I said, yeah, we could use that as a time to discuss more. But maybe what we should do is eliminate the one on the 18th and just have October 4 and October 25. I mean, that's another option, which I guess. Our next meeting's next meeting is going to have that Wednesday. So you could think about that by zoom. So in the meantime, in the next week, why don't you and I figure out what we want to do. Okay. And if anybody has any input on that. Yeah, please just email Chris. Yeah. Okay. Okay, good. Karen, you have another comment or you're ready to talk about the next item. I have a message that Jennifer Tau has her hand up. Oh, yeah. Thank you, Karen. I did want to mention to Lily. I think it's so good that she spoke up. And maybe we can team together to really work together with the university so that they also really understand they have to accelerate their own building of student housing. Okay, thank you, Karen. Okay, Jennifer Tau, I see your hand now and why don't we move Jennifer with Jennifer over name and address please and whether you're speaking as a counselor or private citizen. Thank you. Yes, I'm Jennifer Tau that 259 Lincoln Avenue and I am speaking as a private citizen as a resident. I wanted, I guess to respond to a couple of things. I mean, first, I think starting off looking at university drive is a terrific suggestion. I think that would be. I think a lot of people would be in agreement that that would be a great place to start. I did want to say respond to I wanted to say this in response actually to the last in person meeting the planning board had and then also to respond to Lily that, you know, whether if we were ever to look at what they call in like state college Pennsylvania minimum distance requirements. It is definitely not in any way to say no students or anybody is allowed on a particular street. It's saying there would be a certain number of feet between what like in state college, they call student houses and what that actually does. It's not a concern with, you know, in any way with renters, the number of renters versus homeowners on the street that if every house can't be rented to students priced by the bedroom that actually leaves some houses. You know if there's a student house, a house that can't be rented to students and then a student house. So the one in the middle. If the property owner wants to rent it, it would have to be priced so that families or, you know, young workers, so that non student households could afford to live there and that it seems like, you know, it's hard to come up with how do we ensure that some rental housing is priced so that, again, non student households can afford to live there and that, you know, is one strategy that we might look at, you know, I don't know that it's the only one, but it's definitely not intended to in any way be anti renter it's actually to make more rental housing available to more different kinds of households in town, and certainly not to restrict have streets where there couldn't be any of a certain kind of renter. So I did want to respond to that and I just from my personal experience living two blocks from campus. That there is I'm just going to say if there there is a big difference that I see between, you know, on the whole I don't graduate students, there's really very little difference I think with, you know, non student households, and I think it's like I have two student houses 50 feet from my backyard. We meet with them at the beginning of every year it really. There's very good relations. I will actually Jesse lives on the street. But it's there have been two houses, and only two for many years and I think that we have a really good balance there. I think if many more were to go that way that we wouldn't have the balance and that would be the way life is on the street so I think it's very much a matter of balance. That's all thank you. Thank you Jennifer. Okay, I don't see any more hands. Oh, Fred, one more. We do want to get to these questions before we're done. Yeah, just a brief comment on the concept of the, the house between the two being with the rent at some rate that would be conducive to a certain income level. That seems to me to be a form of rent control and rent control in Massachusetts is contrary to law. I think that is a non starter in Massachusetts. Thank you Fred. Okay, so the time now is 743 hopefully we can get through this, not too long after eight o'clock, but the second item on our agenda this evening was to talk about questions that we might put to the two representatives from UMass when they come to our planning board meeting on October 25. And Karen, I think you put together this list that was included in our packet. So, board members I hope you've had a chance to look at this and think about these questions and whether you agree with them you support these questions whether there's more questions you'd like to ask, keeping in mind that I hope we don't have much more than an hour I would guess with with the two of them. Because we may have other things on earth to discuss that night. So we don't want to have a huge number of questions. Chris I see your hand. I just wanted to suggest that along with these questions you also talk to them about your intent to look at university drive as a place where more housing could go and then they can bring that idea back to the university and see if there can be a conversation that started based on that. Okay. Okay. So question for the current enrollment is that kind of mood based on this kind of stuff that's published online or you want the most up to date questions Janet. Okay. All right, so we still want that. So, okay, so maybe just going through these questions. So who are the planners at UMass that are involved with planning, what housing gets built and where. So I this was one question that I kind of questioned it because it was more about who are the players and and I had gets toward whether, whether the university would would ever allow the planning board to talk to anybody, other than the designated people that generally would want to talk to the town. And so my question in for this question would be more, could we replace this question with what are the questions you want to ask the planners who are involved with planning what housing happens. And well let's ask those questions of whoever it is at the university that's going to assemble the answers that are delivered by the people that usually talk to the town. Are there questions you want to ask those planners. Janet. I missed this. I mean I wasn't here at the last meeting but I'm. So, is there a problem with mean to just if someone in the planning board just called the planning department and said, Oh, who's working on the new housing. And you know whatever, like that's something I would do, just because of my personality. And so would that be a problem to the university I've talked to the off campus housing person, many years ago. And we had a big brainstorm about, you know, working with the senior center and maybe have helping students get housed with seniors and, and so is that is that a problem to do that kind of communication. Like an official proclamation it's just sort of like calling somebody up and saying hey what do you know, you know, are you planning new units or is that mean you work there so I mean, I am, I am not. I'm not supposed to talk for you man. That's part of the way I keep my two hats separate. So, so I don't. So I'm not really eager to answer that question. My experience is that the university has people in university relations who do the communication with town and with the public, and with the press and that all goes through them. So, Chris, and then Jesse. Donahue Institute is also a good source of information and what information they have is available to the public so people in the planning department often get information from the Donahue Institute so you could try that. Okay, Jesse. Thanks. Over your questions Karen, I agree this would be great information to get. I feel like the second three, they're just facts. They're just numbers. And I think yes, we should ask for that because as a planning board. That's useful information for us to know, be aware of the actual numbers that they can provide for us most accurately. I think the first three. I'm guessing they wouldn't want to answer those directly, frankly, and I think it's summed up as a different question which could be, what are your masses concrete plans to address the housing issue is that affects what we decide also. So I think if we phrase it like that, I don't know if we'll get any concrete answers, but I think that's the conversation starter. It really taps into all this because yeah, like you guys just said I don't think they're gonna say oh yeah here are the three people here their numbers to call them when you want that conversation that information flow won't happen. We might guess. Why do you guess that I'm wondering whether you could elaborate on your sense of that. I had some informal conversations with people and it was basically your response exactly the same which is you're not speaking for us in this capacity, and I think there are designated people in the administration who will provide information, and others won't. Right so, and I agree with part of what came up last meeting here was that there should not be 10 different lines of communication between the board and you mass it should be more of an official. Conversation route. Yes, we can try and gather information, but whether that's then going to be accurate in it. I'm not sure. Right. Okay. I don't know which you went first, Johanna. Thanks Doug. I agree that the first three questions about like who are the people is probably not that appropriate, but I'd like to build out some of these other ones. So, I'm interested in current enrollment at UMass this semester in the breakdown. If they have the 2022 and 2023 data that would be great to complete this table, and if they have projections. That would be great too. I don't know if they have projections through 2030 but that would be awesome. And I love the question of just what number of beds are in the pipeline and getting those same projections per year on campus. And then, I don't know how to ask this diplomatically and I don't know whether like, there's the assumption that the university ought to be able to house every single student that they bring to our community. I don't hear like, how do they think about it. So, maybe we can figure out how to package and ask that question. Can I add something? Sure, response. So, before I was on planning board recently, I had an exchange with a friend of mine who and I basically asked that question. And the response I got was, well, look, we're building 800 beds. There's no problem. So, I don't know what the official response would be, meaning, hey, you mass, do you think it's your responsibility to house all the students. My sense is the answer is not really. Well, there is a, I mean, we can ask you can, yeah, we can ask that question. There is a counter question, which the town and we could consider which is, do we want you mass to house all the students that are at mass. If we did that. Or, you know, if you mass did that would all with the housing prices in Amherst crash and then everybody who's frustrated that they can't find housing could find housing and there'd be a whole lot of new people that came to town who are not students. Would that just all be perfect. I mean, maybe, maybe it would be. That would be like 16,000 new beds, but from what I'm reading. So, this isn't, I mean, I think the, I think the honing in on these questions is really good, especially since we want answers and it's good to get them ahead of time. I was struck when I was listening to the international college, you know, whatever that thing is that how many of these college towns said, you know, we have there are the planners in the town college town who said we have really great relations with the university. And we're working together on these solutions. And sometimes it was a student housing district, you know, in a certain part of town. And, you know, they did zoning changes to facilitate that but I just thought like I heard that and I was like, that's what we want. You know, and so I think that, you know, we, that that's what I want to see and I don't I think we could lead the way in creating that more and, you know, like that more work for Chris but I think, you know, that I just heard that sentence and I was like that's what we need. That's what we want. You know, so maybe a question would be what can't how can the town and the university work better together on on addressing housing demand in Amherst. Yeah, I mean, you know, was it six or seven years ago there was that university town of Amherst collaborative, which went on for two or three years and then sort of seemed like it just fizzled out. That was one effort by the previous chancellor, and there's a new chancellor and maybe he sees things differently. So maybe he's got a different model, but that might be a good question. Jesse, maybe that question could be raised as we the planning board would like to work with UMass on some joint projects for more housing. Who is the right person to do that with or to try and get that engagement. So what does a joint housing project look like. I mean, so you were just real builds its things. So where developers built their land, but so strategic development together, like you're talking about the the north end of University Drive and the south end of UMass property. Right. Have a conversation with the appropriate. So it's not actually a project, right. It's not building itself. It's saying this is the area we want to develop. You know, try and get university buy in and right when the commitment, but for them to think about that as well. Right. So should Olympia Drive be part of the conversation to I mean that came up early tonight as an area that somebody I forget Janet or maybe Karen had identified as an area why can't there be more buildings there. One thing I remember about that area. That might be worth reminding everybody that Kyle Wilson said when he was here, you know, when when he came to the board to talk about his latest project. He said that there were a number of parcels off of Olympia Drive that by right as a property owner in that subdivision, he had the right for his people to park or recreate on those parcels. So part of the part of the limitations or the way that whole thing is set up. You know, if if UMass built a lot of buildings on all the rest of the parcels in University Drive then Kyle's tenants wouldn't have anywhere to park. So he might object to that and he'd have a legal right to do that. So that's just something to keep in mind as we talk about Olympia Drive. Janet. So you're saying a question about their plans or ideas about University Drive. I mean, Olympia Drive. Yeah, maybe what what would be opportunity what opportunities are there for more housing in an Olympia Drive. Nate, I'll call on you you haven't talked in a while and then we'll go to Karen. Actually, Karen's hand was up first so I don't mind waiting. Okay, Karen. Yeah, just briefly. Thank you, Doug. I think that we should include Olympia Drive in our conversation. And part of the reason why I had these questions is I realized we don't want we, we haven't got unlimited time. And I hope that Nancy and Tony come prepared with these just facts that would help us get clarity and in asking for who are the planners. So actually, my, my idea was not, you know, tell us all just who are they it would be nice to know how University goes about that. How, how do they come up with their numbers. Just a little bit of more information is what I wanted in that respect. Okay. Maybe the questions are more about what is what is the process. How do the different parts of the university contribute to eventual decisions about housing. Exactly. Exactly. Okay. All right, Chris. Chris, is it is a true we're likely that you're going to probably recapitulate these, these questions and then send them to Tony and Nancy before they show up so they'll, they can prepare. Okay. Johanna. Thank you. In addition to what is their process for moving forward housing. I would love to just get an overview of their planning department. I don't know enough about who, you know, how many people are involved. What is the scope of their planning, you know, so a little bit of a 10,000 foot perspective on how they think about building things on campus and then getting into the process for housing, adding beds. And I can share one memory from when I was on the UTAC subcommittee housing subcommittee, one of our early meetings of that subcommittee we was hosted at UMass. And I think I and a couple other people presented on the UMass master plan at the time. So it was at the offices of the planning campus planning group. And it's a precedent we might consider. I just want to mention that the master plan is on the university website. If people look at the campus master plan is on the campus planning master website. Nate, you had your hand up. Back to you. Thanks. Yeah, I like the idea of asking, you know, so what are their future projections. You know, I think it'd be important to ask, you know, do they plan any faculty or other housing, not just for undergraduate students. And then with their public private partnerships. You know, do they do they have any control over the rent that's being charged? I mean, that is the most expensive housing in Western Mass. I think another important question would be, are they aware or do they acknowledge the impact that they have on the surrounding towns in terms of the housing market. Just, you know, what, what are their thoughts on, you know, because they always say that they house 6061% on campus and it's more than most state universities, which is true. It's also there's a difference in scale between the founding communities and the university say compared to like Boulder, right. So right now I'm going to town in these international town gown association webinars to and the, the, you know, the communities that speak are granted their university campuses but the surrounding communities are 100,000 plus people so it's not. Boulder is a bit is a city compared to Amherst. So is it, you know, we looked at like Tulsa and all these other places it's like the scale of the surrounding communities are much is much bigger than Amherst. So I just be curious to ask that question, you know what do they do they look at this kind of regional impact in terms of their housing. That's it, Nate. Yeah, I mean I think everyone else has asked the other questions right like what's their plan for the next 20 or 30 years what you know what's kind of what's the decision making process I feel like it's just the beginning of a conversation, you know, Tony and Nancy have come to the housing trust, probably three times in the last five years and they're very willing to do it and I think that they do provide data I think that's important it changes right how they categorize students it's like, there's university without walls there's commuting students you know so I think the data point is is a fluctuating thing I think generally the question would be okay what is their trend right what is it are they going to maintain the 60% if they grow by 5000 in the next 10 years if that's their plan. Well then we can kind of extrapolate the data. I mean I don't want to get hung up on like the minutiae it's more about okay what's the general trend. And you know the demographic cliff to me is is hocus pocus because I think you mass as a system will funnel kids to Amherst, and you know maybe. You know, maybe other campuses would not fare as well but I think as the flagship campus, the university, you know an Amherst will be okay, you know I think other smaller schools or campuses may not but I think that the Amherst that the demographic cliff won't be as dramatically felt as you know people are saying and so, you know, I mean we can ask that you know what are they really consider with that you know demographic cliff that is mentioned and. Yeah, that seems like a reasonable question. But I yeah I mean I think everything people has been saying is a great start to a conversation and then it's just like okay, how do we tease out or try to get some more concrete information. And I'm saying university drive I mean, if people want to research like what they want it to look like and just send Chris and myself images or ideas I mean this will help with the downtown design standards as well but you know what is a boulevard what are the design standards you want to see and we can bring that to the downtown consultants but I feel like those are things that you know if you're doing research I mean I was just online like a PA has some nice kind of tutorials but if anyone has any anything just throw it our way because. It would be a missed opportunity if we don't both plan long term and then have some of these shorter term strategies or ideas because. You know this conversation happened you know 50 years ago and with the SCOB report and 73 and then in the early 80s there was a report you know college towns in Massachusetts and the impact of student housing and it's the same conversation 40 years later and so I feel like we kind of time we have some action. Well I'm sure car and has some photos of Berlin and Paris that she could send for what what what university drive should be. I like that. Okay, alright so I just want to say to people were after eight o'clock so think about winding down but Janet you're next. I have Bruce's question which is the number of students housed in off in outside of Amherst if they have numbers on you know who's in how many people in Sunderland or Hadley. Yeah and how many. And then I was thinking of asking any plans for on campus housing for families graduate students and faculty. Great. Chris is furiously writing down our additional questions. Maybe one suggestion on how to ask that could be can you help us capture that data rather than just saying what's one of the numbers. Maybe there'll be a little more engagement. I remember when we did when when I was on that UTAC subcommittee that was a question that nobody could answer, because the university had a lot of, you know, they had the home address for the for the for the undergraduates mostly. And there was no point in the registration process that was required to give a local address. Yes, but I think my idea is, yes, can you help us gather the data. They have mechanisms where we could gather the data. Send an anonymous poll to students, where do you live, what town do you live some stuff like that is possible, if they want to. Okay. Okay, so everybody's good for tonight. Not seeing any hands out Nate you've got your hand up. Go ahead. I think to Jesse's point I mean I like that if for instance there's missing data sets. Is there ways to capture that whether it's for future enrollment so you know it's kind of like a town's moving to an online permitting software and staffs been discussing what are there you know what our data fields we'd like to collect that it's hard to capture now and so maybe since COVID UMass has changed some of their, some of their reporting but I mean I you know if we're, if we're curious about some of this and they're you know maybe they are too like okay where does their faculty live. And so is there a way that they can move forward with capturing that and so you know it could be a one time survey or poll but maybe could they build that into you know some of their forms or something so that it just becomes a reporting mechanism. That you know could be shared as needed and so Janet your question you weren't here at the last meeting but Paul Bachman said you know they have weekly meetings I think with some UMass and then there's you know monthly I mean there's pretty consistent meetings and my thought might be that moving forward maybe you know there's a chance for the planning board to submit questions through the town manager's office that could be asked to UMass right so I think the one point of contact is is important and so. There's you know, other ways to reach out to them but if the planning board has specific questions I think there's five ways to get that to UMass and try to get answers and not necessarily have someone come to a planning board meeting we could try to get questions through those kind of conversations with the town manager. But I like the idea of missing data just you know if we think it's important is their way to start collecting it formalize that a little bit. Okay. You're reminding me of that report that you three put together which it had some statistics that I think it was like only 25% of UMass staff lived in Amherst and it was part and it was mostly the higher paid tenured professors, probably because it was an expensive town to live in. So, somehow that information was collected as part of that study, so I suppose it could be updated. Do you do Chris or Nate do you have that kind of final you three report. I think we have a link we have a link but I think the UTAC page if you search it online I think it's still an active. Okay, yeah, because it seemed like that might be something that was useful for for the planning board to see because you know that was kind of a milestone in town gown. And then on housing is probably kind of the last big one, and the, the big mess app project that's just opening now is really a pretty direct outgrowth of that effort. So, you know, this isn't a bad time to be saying well what is what's the next 10 years look like. Jesse, I'm going to call on you and then Janet quickly anecdotally I bet it's way lower than that conversations I've had with stuff. percentage percentage living in Amherst, and you must must have that information if they want to share it because they send paychecks everybody right so right. So quickly Doug yeah it looks like the UMass the UTAC website is still there and then there's related documents have I actually thought that was a great. I thought that was a great process and dialogue to and I thought that was a great way to have. At least, Chris, if you could send a link to that to the board, maybe in lieu of, you know, sending us specific documents but I don't know what's on that and how many documents there are but it probably get to point people to or add to the last, you know, the summary summary document. Janet. I, adding the 800 students to the 2021 numbers I have UMass is housing 45% of its students I think when they said that 60% they're talking about undergrads usually. And so I'm, they have like 7000 grad students so I think we should like that should be a clarity number. So it's not a question I'm just saying I was just thinking when we're talking about how many students because UMass always says we do 60% of their students but they're only talking undergrads, and there's 7000 extra students I think the number looks like 45% to me. Okay. Okay. All right so so Chris just said she would put together the questions and review them with me before she sends them to Nancy and Tony. Okay. All right I'm not seeing any hand any more hands and everybody's quiet and hungry. So maybe time now is 810. Unless there is objection why don't we adjourn. So are we good. All right, we'll see you everybody by zoom on October 4. Thank you all for coming. Good night. Good night Karen.