 Okay, the meeting is being recorded. Oh, sorry. Thank you, Stephanie. Okay. Very good. Welcome everybody. To the. May 26, 2023 meeting of the 10 of Amherst solar bylaw working group. Appreciate everybody being here. And yeah, we don't have Chris. We have a little bit different agenda. Best trip with us today. She's on vacation. So we'll have a little bit different of an agenda. But, which has been circulated. In the packet. Which I'm getting in front of me now. So thanks. Okay. So first up on the agenda. Is to review. We have been on. I think we're on the minutes we have. Welcome Martha and welcome Bob as well. Great. We have. I think we're caught up with minutes except for the last meeting now. So for the meet, we have minutes to review and approve. If we wish. For the last meeting, May 12th. Have people had a chance to look at that. or concerns, or edits, or a motion to move. Janet, yeah. I had an add, a sentence to add on the second page on the section that said applicability and definitions. It's like a lost. And so I was hoping to add, just because I thought it was a good idea, is the sentence suggestions included a solar overlay district and the John Lane basalt mine as a possible site for a large array. Yeah. Those are my suggestions. So, so. Any objections on that? I do recall those comments. Stephanie, is that sufficient for you to add or do you need language from Janet? Sorry, Janet, if you could just send that to me. Sure. And I'll, I'll get it into the minutes as long as people vote to amend it. You can do that, right? Yeah. Okay. All right. Any other thoughts or edits or do I hear a motion to accept those minutes? As amended. As amended. Yes. I move to accept the minutes from our last meeting as amended. I will second. All right. Okay. And then we need a voice vote in no particular order. So, please be sure to unmute yourself. Corcoran. Yes. Brigher. Yes. Hanner. Yes. McGowan. Yes. Brooks. I have to abstain. I wasn't there. Okay. We still have a quorum, so they're approved. Super. Thank you everybody. Okay. Next up on the agenda is staff updates, which would be for Stephanie now. Sure. So I did send you all the GZA report. I don't have a lot to say about it only because Adrienne did a presentation and I think she presented most of the content. So really it's just the content that she presented, but with the supporting graphics. So, so you have that now. I wanted to give you an update about the mapping process. I spoke to Mike Warner, who is our GIS. Sorry. Sure. No worries. Interrupt for a moment. We didn't designate the minute taker for today. Oh, right. And apologize for that. So let me look at my magic spreadsheet. I did it last time. Dan did it last time. Right. Yeah. And then and Martha went out of order and did it, I think, the time before that. So we're down to Jack, who's not here today. And next up is Janet. Are you okay? Okay. Very good. Thank you. Okay. Sorry, Stephanie. That's okay. No worries. Yeah. So the mapping exercise, I just wanted to let you know that I spoke with Mike Warner. He has been working on it. I, as I mentioned, he is and was in the middle of a very large town scale effort. So he did, he has gotten to it though. He is incorporating some of the information. I wanted to make sure that he included having the prime agricultural soils mapping that the state has done that he had that available. There are some limitations to what he can provide. So it's not going to be everything. He's going to do what he can, but I did say that that was a specific layer you all wanted to see. So that option will be included as something you can turn on. So in any case, I'm hoping that we will have some kind of a draft of it later today. And I think Duane is a final technical review. We should meet with him for our final technical review of that mapping piece just to make sure it's what we said we were going to provide. And then I will make that available to the group when Mike sends me the final version. So I would anticipate it's within a week or so. I think we should get it within next, you know, by next week at the latest, and we can meet earlier just to make sure that, you know, it is what we had asked for. Great. Yeah, I will point out before we go to the other comments is that time permitting today, we have an item where I thought it would be helpful to sort of discuss amongst ourselves even before seeing the maps of what are the types of questions, queries that we might want to pause it and analyze with the map mapping tool that we will be in receipt of just going into it and then having being being prepared in that way. And so I thought that would be helpful towards the end of today. Okay. And Stephanie, if you can just clarify, then is this is the intent of this tool is that it will be user friendly enough for us to use either individually or together collectively during this during the working group meeting. Absolutely. That was a whole that that was one of its purposes. It was also something for the general public to be able to utilize in case they were interested in solar on their property on their house or their business, you know, was just the idea was what do we have that's feasible. I mean, and again, it was to sort of try to eliminate some of the things that might prevent solar. So areas where it's blacked out are areas where obviously it's not potentially feasible right now based on various reasons. So for instance, conservation land, or not or endangered species habitat, those have been blacked out. So that's people can see automatically what's left. And then they can sort of go from there to sort of, again, address whether it's feasible development in that location or not. But I will also say that, you know, all of this comes with a caveat that everything is site specific. And just because it shows up on the map doesn't even mean that it's absolutely a given that it can be developed because there's still permitting processes that people need to go through. And, you know, there may be other, you know, there are other reasons why they may not be able to develop solar on that property. So. Great. But but for a non GIS, and I'm not sure if any we have any GIS experts or users on in this group, but I'm not. But would allow a user to do some queries like, you know, I want to see land that is not under conservation, but in parcels greater than five acres, just as a random example. I don't know how specific a query you'll be able to do with this again, because this is something that Mike is building and there might be sort of you might be able to look at it sort of on a parcel by parcel basis. But I'd have to once Mike finishes the tool, I think I think that's what that technical meeting will be helpful to sort of find out is, you know, Mike will probably give us a very quick run through initially, just to make sure it's kind of the things we were looking for. But then I think either I or Mike, probably me will then give a presentation to this group on how to use the tool, which will then be available to the public as well in the recording, so that people can have an idea of how to use the tool. But it should be pretty user friendly. I mean, it's literally a base map. You can select a parcel and then you can turn layers on and off over that parcel so you can get a better idea. And one thing Mike and I did talk about was that with the aerial, you know, sometimes people think it's, it's easy to have the aerial view on, but it's actually in this case more challenging to have the aerial view on. So it's going to show up as kind of the base on the base community map. I'm forgetting which layer that is. I apologize, but just the sort of property boundaries. So it won't show up. It's not an aerial photograph. It'll just be sort of like a mapping. Yeah, visualizes a mapping layer and then you can turn on the aerial layer. So it won't automatically come up with the aerial layer and that'll probably make it easier. Yeah. Yeah. Okay, great. All right. Thank you. I think Janet has a question. Yeah, I'm Janet. Yep. I had the impression from past meetings less that Adrian Duncan was going to come and give us a presentation on the final report. And then I'm personally less interested in the sections on the survey because I think we covered that pretty well. But I would like to have her come back and talk about how things were sectioned. So, you know, and, you know, part of this is, you know, I, you know, I went through the map and stuff and I was thinking, okay, how do I get a closer look at this area? You know, something's white, something's green, something's like, you know, some different color. Like how do I get into that? And then also, I had questions about like what open land was or bare land or lawns, like how does that get delineated? So I just, how they kind of, how that was grouped was unclear to me and how could I say, oh, you know, what's open land that's not being farmed or, you know, what's bare land? Like I was trying to think of what bare land I knew of in Amherst versus, you know, a grassland and things like that. So I think it would be helpful, maybe if she came in and just showed us basically how we can use and look at and how they divided up these different sections that I don't think our IT person will know. So yeah, I don't know that she'll be able to do that because at this point, I think we've expended our grant, our funding for, for the project, we've kind of wrapped things up with them. So I think if you had a specific question though, I would be happy to, if anyone has questions in the group, feel free to send them to me and I can just shoot them to her and ask her for clarification and that can be made available to the group at the next meeting, but I don't think she's going to be coming in for another presentation. That was, the presentation that she gave was pretty much the presentation to the group. So that was just on the survey though, not on these, I mean the assessment is the meat and bones of this contract as far as I can tell. So, and then is there a way for me without to look at the map and get it, you know, I know where I am. Can I like focus in without, I mean I just think, you know. The report and the assessment are two separate things. The report is only about the community outreach. The assessment is the mapping itself, that map is separate from that assessment. I mean I'm sorry, from that report. They're two separate projects, really. They're related, but they're separate. So the report has nothing to do with anything about, I mean it just sort of identifies the process that they went through, but there's nothing, there's no sort of map. I mean there's no, no there's a map, but there's no, but there's no, she, they didn't do this to, they just sort of summarized basically what the mapping exercise was and what it came up with, but there's no like, what am I trying to say? There's no analysis, if you will, greater analysis. It's a very straightforward, you know, this is what we did, this is what we got. There was no theoretical investigation of anything. It was just very straightforward. I think I'm just lost, but I mean I looked at the section that includes the map, the mapping section, and it has maps on it, and it describes how it's divided things up, and it wasn't clear to me where, you know, the bare land was, the lawns were like, is there another map that I could go on to and get that level of detail on that isn't in the report? Everything, she provided everything in the report, so I don't think there's another level of mapping that was provided, so I'm not sure, I mean did you, if you read through the port, I would have to say that she probably somewhere has that identified what that is, so if you haven't read through the whole thing, maybe if you do that and then have specific questions, I would be happy to share those with her, but she's not going to come in and do another presentation. Okay, so maybe I could come in maybe with you or Chris to sort of like Sure, happy to. Yeah, happy to, absolutely. I'd be happy to do that. Great, thank you. Martha. Yeah, I think I think the conversation and Stephanie, your reply has kind of answered my question, but I think that what would be helpful then is perhaps when the time comes to have Mike Warner actually come in and maybe wait till Chris is back and so on and so Stephanie and Mike and Chris probably all together would be able to answer Janet's questions and all our questions and present the basics of the map, so that sounds good because I too was confused by the report and sort of oh my, is this all there is in terms of the mapping? So, okay, thank you. I know we're going to talk about this later, but I don't know, we're going to talk about this more later, right? Because I was just going to make this suggestion that we might want to be in person with a huge map on the wall because my computer screen is not generous so anyway, that's it. Well, are you talking about the mapping exercise with Mike Warner and so forth? I'm not sure. Well, why don't we start off with doing it by Zoom and see how it works if we want to do a meeting and if it's feasible and kosher, if you will, to actually do an in-person meeting or some sort of working group to look at the maps together on a larger screen and quote unquote play around with it, then I think we can work with Stephanie to schedule something like that. But I'm not sure how that would work in terms of our meetings, whether it would be a meeting or an open to the public and so forth, but we could work with Stephanie on that and Chris. But let's first see how what we learn, what we can learn and to the extent to which we feel like we need to come together on a larger screen. I think yeah, I think when we actually present the overview of the mapping tool itself that some of the questions you have will, those would be the times to ask those questions. I mean, it's not even done yet. So honestly, it's hard for me to answer anything specific because I haven't seen the finished product. So and I know the report references the base map. It doesn't, it only references the base map. But again, I think some of that will be clearer when we have the final product. Great. Okay. Thank you. Any other staff updates or is that it, Stephanie? That's it. Funny. All right, great. Thank you. Any updates from members of other committees that would be helpful for this group to hear? Yeah. Janet is muted. I don't know if this is for Stephanie or Dwayne, but could there be an update for us on the community aggregation? I'm going to get the language right. Community choice segregation. Thank you. That would be me. Okay. I heard you giving that at ECAC and I thought it'd be useful for us to hear too. Sure. Just that we are beginning the community comment period, June 1st. It will run through June 30th. There is a community presentation that our consultant mass power choice will lead on June 6th, which is I think, I want to say Tuesday, I'm sorry. I don't know which day of the week, but it is June 6th and it will be held from 6.30pm until 8pm and it will involve three communities, Northampton, Amherst and Pelham, which are the three communities that are working together to put together this community choice aggregation effort. And so that will be an opportunity at that time for people to basically voice their support or concerns, just gives people an opportunity to respond to the idea of the aggregation. So we're not committing to anything yet there. We haven't even submitted the application. This comment period is required by the Department of Public Utilities in order for the application process to move forward. They need to know that the community is in support. Okay. Thank you. You're welcome. Okay. Anybody else? All right. So let's move on to the next statements. And what we've circulated in the packet is some additional drafting that I did and Martha provided. And then some comments that have been integrated from Bob, I believe, though I'm not sure if that's in the version that was circulated. But and what I'd like to sort of put forward is going through those next statements and getting people's input on those. And then there's a couple steps to follow, which I don't know if we are best to do live or I'm happy to sort of take it back and work on it. But that is trying to connect together in a way that makes a lot of sense the next statements that I put together that Martha's put together in a way that flows naturally and consistently. But then also to go back also to the statements that Chris had put together and we discussed and reviewed last time and integrate to the extent that we need to integrate some of that stuff as well to then come up with one more coherent and flowing a set of next statements that sort of set us up well or sets up the bylaw well in terms of what our purpose intent and direction is that we're looking to go forward with the bylaw. So does that sound okay with folks? Janet? So I read the different nexus statements and then also the email that just came in and I think in a way I feel like we've lost like the idea of the nexus statement, which is a term I hate, but it's sort of confusing like we already have a paragraph in the beginning of the bylaw says here's the intent and here's the problem like the solar you know obviously climate change problem and the nexus statements you know so I went back in red tracer lane and the purpose of the nexus statement is to whatever we decide we're regulating right in the terms of solar we need to sort of justify it and connect it to public health safety and welfare and when you look at the supreme judicial court decision in tracer lane it's not enough to say oh we decided to do dual use required dual use or you know a 50 foot buffer because that's you know that's important to public health and safety and welfare of Amherst. We need to give a list of reasons that are reasonable so here's what we're regulating here are the reasons why and here's how they connect to public health safety and welfare and so I have cheerfully volunteered to make up those reasons or you know that's what lawyers do right and so those justifications but I don't think we really need to have a formal statement about the problem of climate change and you know what we need you know the solar you know the town you know I don't think we need to sort of lay out the whole problem what we really need to do is decide what are we regulating and what's the just what's the connection between that regulation and public health safety and welfare and so I kind of you know and I pulled out a great quote from the SJC so I think that I took Chris Brestrup's draft as saying if we want to regulate solar have restrictions on forested land or agricultural land here are the reasons why and she literally had a list of reasons why and then Martha took that and kind of put it in more you know prettier form and maybe more comprehensive form so I think that I would sort of defer this discussion until we figure out what we're regulating and how and so if we want you know a 60 foot or 200 foot setback or a 20 foot setback if we are requiring a buffer the SJC really wants to know how that connects to public health safety and welfare and then I also went back and I read the minutes from the town attorney whose name completely is I can't remember and he was saying put in those reasons in detail and so that's what I think the next it's not like it's not a statement about the whole bylaw but with each thing that we're regulating we have to specifically say you know the reason why we are putting this glare section is is so you don't blind people or there's like traffic safety there's I remember Athol saying you know it can't be you can't come around the curve and get hit by these things well that's a public safety issue you know glare is dangerous to drivers or you know someone's sitting in their house and they're being baked you know kind of thing and so I think that's what the next the next statement isn't like an overarching statement for the bylaw but it's going to be a series of reasons why we're doing that and I don't know where it belongs and I think that's a good question for the town attorney should we do a long wearers clause like whereas we decided to regulate X for these reasons and that's how it connects to public health like say you know food fresh food is good for public health or if we have to say it like as a little preparatory thing to the paragraph where the regulation is but so I kind of would love to defer this discussion or the like reasons for the next you know what's the connection to when we get to a really specific like what are we regulating does that make sense to people because you know and and then I was going to read you know um so in tracer lane like the final statements of the SJC like all municipalities while them maintains the discretion to reasonably restrict the magnitude and placement of solar energy systems an outright ban of large-scale solar energy systems in all but one or two percent of a municipalities land area however restricts rather than promotes the legislative goal of promoting solar in the absence of reasonable by reasonable basis grounded in public health safety or welfare such prohibition is impermissible under the provision so we have to say we're regulating this and this is how why and this is how it promotes public health or protects public health you know what I mean and so I don't think we need to spend a whole bit of time right now until we figure out what we're regulating and why that's a lot to say I would agree and to some extent in that I was even when we were discussing it last meeting I was a little bit unclear about the differentiation between the intent section of the regulation and then the nexus section of the regulation and I'm not sure legally or technically whether they need to be separated because they seem fairly connected with each other so I at least when I was doing this drafting to add some language which I called sort of nexus statements around the climate emergency and and commitments and so forth I was writing them sort of with a dual purpose one in terms of the intent but also with regard to how they influence our our zoning and our and our restrictions or lack thereof I'm a little bit concerned about you know thinking that we need a nexus statement for every zoning restriction we put in because then it's like almost every every paragraph needs a reason for public health safety and welfare to go along with it which I don't think is doable or the way to go and sort of these nexus statements so they're kind of straddling being somewhat broad but also somewhat specific also I guess I would push back in terms of you know while zoning from my you know what I've learned is more about restriction than allowing things I think I think it's really important in the nexus statements if that's what we'll call them to be really strong on the the the reason why we because it's also a reason why we're developing these zoning bylaws and the levels of restrictions is because you know well obviously food and so forth is public health so is addressing the climate emergency satisfies I think satisfies or at least I think we should argue satisfies the importance or the impact on public health and welfare so I wouldn't I wouldn't want to shy away from those in the nexus statements as well we don't have to justify no restriction so if we had said okay this is our solar overlay district you know blah blah blah you know you know because we have these we have these things in zoning all the time it's like this is our residential district build houses right you know that's where it can go and so we could say here's our overlay district and we can build by site plan review or whatever so that's we don't have to explain why we're letting the solar doing and we don't have to explain everything we regulate in terms of solar because you know even the SJC is you know like you know the the was it the religious institutions and educational institutions has very like we're only allowed to regulate you can't do the interior or the use of it but you can you can regulate through zoning the bulk the height of structures yard sizes areas setback open space parking and building coverage requirements so even on the much more strict things those are like you know that's like the you know how far how close it is so the SJC is going to let that go through because they're already letting that go through for religious institutions and educational institutions and daycares but when we're saying something else we need to say you know you know I don't know farming is health right but it's also economic development and you know whatever so we can just an economic development as part of the health the public welfare of our town so I think that my question for the town attorney is when do we need to point it out you know and then but the first question is what are we regulating and I don't think we're kind of there yet I mean we're sort of talking about dual use we're talking about what to do with the forest we're talking about whether we want to set asides but I think until we get there we don't need the the next statement is really saying here's the connection to public health here's the connection to public safety here's a fair the fact is and the thing is is that we don't have to say you know I mean we're obviously always balancing right that's what we're trying to do but I don't think we have to say we're regulating you know we're requiring dual use because there's a climate emergency and we want to be able to eat but I don't that the climate emergency stuff could be in the intent or the wearers clause like here's how we got here unfortunately but if we don't need it in the next statement about because we wouldn't don't keep you know I mean the the SJC isn't asking us to say why we're allowing solar because it's you know the legislature is telling us put it in so I just think it's kind of okay we can discuss that but I don't know if I see any harm in having them in there and I think I'm also obviously we have several audiences one is sort of the developer so they know what the rules and regulations are with regard to the zoning but also I think we want to you know write write you know either intent or wear as is or next statements that also address justify our draft bylaw to the town council when it goes there as well as to the constituents as a whole yes I would would I don't know if we can or would want to obviously the the the SJC decision and the state rules allow for solar solar development unless restricted by zoning in ways that meet the SJC but I wouldn't it I wouldn't I don't think that means we don't need to mention the or helpful to mention the benefits of public health and safety and so forth associated with solar development but let me move on to Dan Dan yeah you're muted if you're are you calling me or sorry yeah um yeah I like to like that point about how this next statement shouldn't be finalized at this point because we don't know what what we're going to need to put in it yeah it makes a lot of sense to me to just make this a living document that we develop alongside the rest of the bylaws we're writing sections of the bylaw where you go okay hold on why are we regulating this this is reason why okay put in a next statement just have the two side by side as we're writing yeah I think that's a good a good point to really view this as a living document I would agree if we if we decide to write a paragraph about zoning certain things and we think that is that deserves to have a next statement then then this will be a living document for sure okay Martha yeah I mean I I agree that it's probably premature now to try to wordsmith and get a perfect section until we've we've actually done the regulations the way I would envision is sort of a maybe you'd call it a preface or something or an introduction to the bylaw that would have maybe just three paragraphs that would first have a brief paragraph on you know yes there's a climate crisis and what that is specifically you know excess of greenhouse gas emissions that we must do something about one brief paragraph that relates to the to the commonwealth's master plans here because after all we are part of massachusetts and presumably we're working in concert with them once this paragraph that mentions the carp and the town's master plan because they're both well documented and that they generally agree with the state's goals and the overall response to the climate things and then you know those are the three general paragraphs and then go on you know as we see the need to just to you know discuss the health safety and welfare of the of the specific things and that as we say we have to do is a living document and fill in as we go along with you know the forest the farmland the you know whatever else we're we're regulating all right and i think i think that's um we had the structure of that at this point with some of the drafting that we've done um all right janet so i like i like the idea of having that part of the conversation as we go on and you know i kept on thinking about these kind the connection or the nexus language it's sort of an inoculation like we're trying to like you know the sjc is the thinking court or the appeals court the they're the judges that sit down and they're like how does the law apply and so the district courts and spirit courts a little less conscientious and so i kept on thinking i've done a fair amount of appeal work and it's like you know we need to justify this under these three things and what's the connection what are the reasons for that and so as we go along i could provide that and people could come up with reasons like how does this promote public welfare and health and safety and stuff like so i think it's a good idea maybe to keep it like as two running columns you know as we're regulating this and we're coming closer we can say okay here we justify it and it's just like inoculating it from a lawsuit and a successful lawsuit you know we had you know the town thought about these things they they picked they made decisions they weren't unduly regulating solar so like it can't be anywhere and you know here's here's what they're doing you know and so i think that'd be great i like the idea of just keeping that in mind and keeping kind of a running list of reasons on both sides so i also hate the idea of like words fitting a document in a large group but that's personal and separate yep i yeah i i'm with you there yep i'm not a camel okay um well what's the thought in terms of making use of their time today with regard to the draft drafting that's been done to date um do we want to go through not wordsmith but review what we've drafted so far um and get some comments on on those on what we have um not wordsmithing but just sort of general sense um or um or leave this as a living document that we'll just continue to work on and pull it together at the end janet i would kick it down the road and kick it to christine more and so making making her sort of the center of you know comments and stuff like that and you know it's always good to give somebody an assignment when they're not at the meeting but just you know like you know she is already sort of you know at the seat of a lot of the drafting and so maybe sending comments to her but i would love not to talk about this in super detail now that was good to me okay um i'm not not opposed to that um any any other thoughts on that i guess what i wouldn't mind from and maybe christine is the best to to walk us through this is um sort of look as we were talking about before looking up a little bit at a higher level in terms of where the structure of this presentation with regard to um um where these different this whole thing is about balancing as far as i see um and how i i guess i'm a little bit uncomfortable with suggesting that the next statement which is kind of where the lawyers may focus um is strictly on you know more more focused on on the um um protections that we might or the regulations we might have and restrictions we might have and and point out you know the public health safety and welfare uh of um the important things in in Amherst in terms of forests and soils and farms and losing track in some way of the importance of to public health safety and welfare of of um getting rid of all our fossil fuels uh and and and contributing to the state's master plan uh um and and that that doesn't seem to be the balance that we want to strike um uh and that the town would want to strike um so i'm a little bit um uncomfortable with um uh you know separating these things into two different categories where where we're trying to to um purposefully confront this balancing of public health and welfare and and uh public health and welfare um on both of these issues simultaneously um so um you know again i think we have good language i'm just not sure where it all goes and and connects together um um yeah um martha i think first yeah dwayne i think i'm i'm not too worried i think it will sift out and sort itself out as as we go along and get the the draft of of all our specific sections done i think we will be able to uh you know eventually get the balance right for the the introduction or preface but you know i i will say that right now the most urgent ways that we need to reduce fossil fuel use are transportation and buildings i mean if you look at the state which means a lot more electricity generation yes yes i mean so that means long term like by the by 10 years from now that's when we're going to really need you know the the electricity generation to come to the forefront but the the most immediate crisis i see is the 47 percent of our state greenhouse gas emissions that come from transportation the 27 percent or whatever from buildings and as i recall from the last year that they had the plot it was just at that time just 19 percent of the greenhouse gas emissions were from electricity so yes it's all in the balance and we do have to emphasize that solar has an important goal but but i think it'll all fall out as as we go through and i think we'll be able to uh strike a good balance in our introduction finally when we get to the end of this uh process so that would just be my two cents here yeah so i wonder if um maybe chris and i could talk to the town attorney about where should the nexus statements go because i that was one of my questions because i i can't remember i talked to chris or in my many hours of coughing and thinking that i just thought i talked to chris but about whether it should be aware as clause which i remember from town meeting so at least it's a justification or you know i think in the minutes the attorney was like put it in the provision and so i think it'd be good to talk to him at length or some very specifically like where should this language show up because you know even in the bylaw like in sections you know there's like a little prefatory like intent and then you know they might even in the very specific provision say you know you know why that is being done but i don't think it's usually that wordy and so i don't know if the wordy stuff goes into the wearers clause you know where it's like we are doing this because of the terrible climate you know and you know and all the health emergency and all that stuff i mean i think we just need to get better sense from him where and how this should show up so i'd be happy to talk with him with chris and then report back to the group i'm not sure what Stephanie thinks about that but if that is the case i'd like to be part of that as well i was just going to say i think actually it would probably make sense for people to sort of have specific questions for the attorney and funnel them through chris and i think chris will be the one to speak to the attorney okay i've done that before with chris on other issues like years ago like kind of because it's like the attorney talk it's like you kind of like you kind of run through this thing so right i hear you i just i mean typically you know because the town pays for the time of legal counsel um we don't typically do that so um let me i would just check in with chris about that so at the very least i would say if people not everyone's going to be meeting with the town attorney unless really what you could do is just invite him back to a meeting you know maybe if you want to have him have him show up at a meeting and then people can ask their questions ahead of time and then he can respond to them in a meeting would probably make the most sense okay you think that's something that the town would be willing to spend yeah i think we could bring him back in if you have some very specific questions about about that piece it just makes sense to have him at the meeting so everyone has an opportunity versus one or two members only having time with the attorney separately shall we in the meantime Stephanie um individually just feed you um some questions maybe cc chris but she's out for the moment she's going to be out for the next meeting as well so if you want to start generating questions i'll compile a list and get them together i won't be at the next meeting either but um yeah if you want to start getting questions together yeah i i would suggest maybe waiting then until we're farther along with the draft and then then i think by that time we just we really have our our questions really you know concise and and straightened out and in the meantime you know when chris gets back maybe she can talk to the attorney if we have a couple of specific things but really i think uh now you know it's until chris gets back um you know then we'll get going step by step marching through this whole draft now and trying to get each section really thought through and really right um step by step i think we're about to that point and maybe uh dwayne if we want to segue into the other agenda item which was talking about well what we're going to do at our next meeting uh you know we had suggested that perhaps uh since both chris and stephanie will will not be there we really wouldn't be making progress on the on the maps and the and the draft but that that might be a good time to talk about the agrivoltaics and and really try to get a good sense that we're all hearing the same message about you know what are the pluses and minuses and how would be the best way to regulate it and so on um yeah we'll get to that in a moment okay i'm jumping ahead a little i realized but okay okay so um any more comments on the next statements or the um introduction purpose section um or the outreach to the attorney no um okay so we will feed uh stephanie with any uh questions around this structure of the of the uh of the bylaw um and and and sort of how these um this these initial sections fit together and and sort of what's what's the standard or or optional ways in which that can be structured together in a way that's consistent with with these owning documents as well as sort of sets it sets it up well in terms of legal review uh and we'll get those to stephanie uh over the course of the of the week though stephanie you're gonna not be here at the next meeting either um uh but maybe we can then the following meeting sort of have some feedback on that yeah i'll i can um i'll only be out the day of that meeting so i'll be here the week before i'm not going on vacation i'm just thinking a day for something so um so it's just that one day so you can send me comments through the week okay okay sounds good and if you wanted if you are going to have a meeting i could compile the questions and send at least a draft of the questions for that next meeting ahead of time if you if that would be helpful to you all i'm sorry what questions about what i kind of missed i think it was questions that we wanted to put in front of the town lawyer oh okay sorry the town council oh the other town council you know okay um okay uh sounds good um before we get to the talking about the next meeting um i did just want to um open up a little bit it sounds like we will soon have the opportunity maybe it's not the next meeting because stephanie won't be there but maybe the next one might have the opportunity to have to work hands on during the meeting with the mapping tool that the town has is prepared and it's going to be a tool in front of us but it doesn't do anything unless we ask it to do something and so um you know i thought it would be maybe helpful at this point just being a bit prepared we can continue this a bit next week as well but um be prepared to um uh to to to um think about ahead of time what sort of queries or or or maps we want to extract and and and be able to see from this mapping tool maybe maybe this will be an iterative process because i think we'll learn a lot more about the mapping tool um from uh from the presentation on it um when it becomes available uh and then we may better understand what are the what are the really the types of questions and and um analyses we can do with the tool uh but uh that being said um i'm just put it out there in terms of if there's any sort of thoughts or ideas of what are the types of things we would want to make use make this make use of this tool for um and so that we can maybe um you know be prepared to step through some of those things if they're simple enough uh during the presentation and and early exercise uh and training on the tool uh or then be prepared to do um in between meetings and maybe maybe be prepared to present uh at at subsequent meetings is any thoughts thoughts on that or ideas um yeah janet so um one thing i wondered looking at the report was um i'd like to know where the um the locations of the transmission lines that can take capacity now are and then um ones that could be upgraded so i know you know there was like two cuts on that and i just wondered will we be able to say oh these transmission may i kind of know the transmission lines next to them but they're really big and they're really brown you know and so but i i wondered you know i wanted to be able to say i i really wanted to be able to look at parts of town and say oh the transmission line is here um i'd like to get the google earth view because that's you know i kind of at least have that that is super useful to me when someone says bare ground you could be like well actually that's a cornfield every other year or something like that or not and then um so i wanted to be able to look at the landscape as it is and houses and trees that are you know like when they say there's lawn lots of us have lawns but lots of us has trees and i wondered how that was counted and then um i wanted to see the transmission lines that you know like they'll probably be upgraded in the future and then i think Stephanie you said we could look at lot lines and stuff um and then you know of course the soils things like that will we we will we be able to see the endangered species suffer that's just off it's already blocked off that's just blocked off because it's you know again this was just for where is it feasible could could and so we'll be able to see what's on the ground and then it's locked knocked off or do you mean like so when you have the map there'll be a whole section that will be just basically identified as being sort of not feasible right that's if you want to break it down to the most simplest bare bones look at the map it's like this is feasible these are areas that are feasible this is not so anything blocked off in black is not feasible so so one of the things i wondered about was i know hampshire college is selling some land next to adkins right and since it's hampshire college land that would be not feasible right or it's not feasible it's just not included so i wonder if those kind of plots could i be like oh you know hampshire college um trying to my directions east of 116 they were going to do meridian village on a lot of land they're obviously not using so could i could we look at that land anyway even though it's amherst college i mean hampshire college land like or is that you have maybe not with this tool i don't think you'll be able to look at the areas that are blocked off because the base map is the one that gza provided so if they blocked it off that's kind of the base map but you can always go on to the town the town's map is available all the time and you can always go to the town's map i mean what might be nice is like if you kind of did a side by side and things are changing all the time i mean you're going to come up with this for you know the information is as good as the information that we have at the present time so some of this is going to change over time and it's not always going to be you know there might be i talked to mike about that you know there might be some updates that he might do but you know it's only going to be as good as when it was updated in that moment so you know but and that might that's a great example you know if some land suddenly comes out of you know the the institutions of higher education's portfolio and suddenly it's available for sale you know that might not be reflected on this map but you can certainly i think once you have some familiarity with this tool it'll make it easier to like piece it together through other layers from other sources yeah i i guess a couple things when i i'm a little bit i'm not sure if we're comfortable sort of going parcel by parcel on private property parcels and sort of look at it at that scale because we're not developers we're we're regulators trying to find trends and and sort of rules rules to guide the the developers in certain directions and i'd be a little bit concerned to sort of throw up a map and start looking at you know person x's property and come to some opinions about whether that's a good site for solar or not that being said we may you know it may be just natural to do some of that because you're kind of you know working around seeing where where the but i think we want to work more statistically and analytically and look at trends as opposed to sort of individual parcels is my sense but then we are going to make a priority map that's part of our job so i you know i'm not saying we're going to tell hamster colleges sell this land but i'm just saying is we are putting together a map saying these are the priority sites for solar so i think we do have to look at parcels the other question i had is my jack gem set question is will we be able to look at the open space recreation plan where sites can do an overlay for that because i know jack kept on bringing that up yeah i mean that's what i was going to raise that you know i'd like to sort of see a mapping that looks at all the feasible if solar feasible land but then an overlay of okay what is currently in conservation um say that robert nothing okay it's already i think that's already taken account for so conservation land is blacked out that's already taken so when you look at that base map it's going to be blocked out already yeah can we look but i guess maybe going back to the original map um not the blacked out map which may not differentiate between different reasons why it's blacked out um i would like to get a sense of of um you know the the extent of of the town of amherst um conservation land um that we we already have taken off the map if you will but to look at that to get a sense of where that is um how extensive that is how that's contributing to our health well health safety and welfare uh by providing the services that it does okay so that's a different map that's the map that that's the existing like you have access to that information today yeah you could go on the town's gis you know mapping but i think it's it's part of what a store the part of the story we want to tell collectively as you know you know i'm seeing a series of maps uh that sort of weaves together the story of that deals with these nexus statements okay we want to preserve health safety and welfare that includes recreation land we've done some we've done some of that we've done conservation land we have that um you know because um you know then the question is do we do more uh or is that enough um and and so forth and so i think that's part of of the story uh we want to be able to unfold uh and think about as we're developing the the restrictions as well as the nexus statements but i get you stefanie that that's actually already um available to us but um i'm just thinking more of the context of everything put together okay that this is a maybe a a different conversation and i think it would be helpful to have chris here for this conversation because i'm really honestly don't think there's additional mapping that's coming um so if you are talking about something specifically that you all want to see i think that has to be another conversation yeah okay okay um but you're saying that um we we have access to do that ourselves anyhow um and so um absolutely yeah okay absolutely yeah okay great um yeah martha yes so so following up on on what dupe been saying dwayne i agreed that it would be helpful to then you know see a different map that that showed the use of the sections that were blacked out uh and maybe it's possible even in one of our discussions downstream we'd have two side by side we'd have the one that shows the blacked out map and then we'd have the conservation map that shows ah those reasons were conservation land and i would also uh like to see just for you know instruction purposes uh that's applied to the to the college lands because you know as we all know an awful lot of our land area is blocked out by our large you know universities and two private colleges and it would be interesting to see say for hampshire college which has you know lots lots of open land uh to just to see the map that shows well how much of the land is open or fields or or this or that you know you see sheep grazing as you drive down 116 there and you think gee you know this would be a good place for uh dual use solar right over the sheep and uh so on so i i think it would be helpful to at least see that at one point on a map and as you said way in the conservation some of the other uses so we get kind of a side by side picture of of our land area and uh okay what are the regions for for solar and uh not along the you know prime soils and so on but i think that's all going to come as we get into the mapping and we we have chris and hopefully uh maybe mike uh warner and stephanie all kind of uh helping us to display the maps in a in a meeting here yeah i just wanted to say that i think when we were developing the map there might be some inability to access some of the information about the transmission line locations because they're the utility company and that's not readily available to the general public some of that information i don't i can't recall it specifically what it was and dwayne you might recall the conversation we had with adrian during one of our meetings but they as a consultant had access to information but the general public doesn't so they couldn't be specific so i don't know that we will have as detailed information as you might be looking for yeah yeah and these would be more the distribution lines i think than the transmission lines what is the transmission lines that matter for for large-scale development right well we pretty much know that the transmission runs you know north and south through town so it's pretty that's why we were saying like when they were when we were doing this mapping exercise access to the transmission lines is pretty much anywhere in town because it's you know you're within a few miles or less of getting to the transmission lines yeah but i think typically the solar projects you know unless they're like tens of megawatts would interconnect on the distribution lines the three you know the three phase distribution lines which i think um gza looked at but but yeah i'm a little bit unclear in terms of what the public view of that will be okay all right well this has been helpful just to sort of think this through a bit um as we start to take a look at the maps in the coming weeks okay any other thoughts on that all right great let's um then uh yeah talk about the next meeting um we are expecting a quorum is from what i understand um in terms of vacations and so forth but um a lack of of a staff which is logistically not a problem or legally not a problem um Stephanie will be able to set us up with somebody else to help conduct the meeting uh at least the zoom the zoom part of it um and so the idea was to and chris won't be here but uh but um use some of that time to um the one suggestion that's been on the table has been to bring in some guest speakers um or guest speaker um the agrivoltaic area is one issue um i am prepared to reach out to jake marley um to ask him if he's available if that's of interest um um but i think we would also want to um uh see who else might be able it might be uh appropriate speakers on on um on dual use uh or other topics uh jenet so you're you're doing your institute um is doing kind of is doing a series of meetings on this issue for western mass so are there people um you know from like cisa or nofa or some you know farm organizations that could come in and talk about solar and farming and dual use are there farmers specifically who are doing dual use right now like can we you know you know i have i keep on offering fred betel who has a slideshow but um you know i could also ask him just to send me the slideshow to see if i think it's useful and i could send that along to you um but i i think it'd be you know like if we can kind of um use the people that you're reaching out to um if we can get like a few guest speakers in that list it'd be great yep uh we we haven't really put together speaker list for the uh fall form that we're uh developing um and that's not specifically on or not specifically on agrivoltaics but a range of of issues that we're all talking about anyhow um on solar and siding and so forth um uh but yes in addition like i mean two organizations come to mind um we work closely with aft american farmland trust they do a lot of work on agrivoltaics um across the country but no locally as well um and then um as part of our doe research grant we do have a steering committee and i'm blocking offhand on the person's name from um i think it's um nofo uh but i'd have to double check uh but we do have a steering committee member who might be a a person i could call on to see if they're available also what is i always forget sisa nopha like i've used so northeast association and community in supporting culture community engaged in sustainable agriculture or community engaged yeah i know okay yeah one okay yeah i think actually i think our steering committee member is is in on sisa nophas is uh specifically organic farming okay that'd be great okay um yep this would be for um two weeks from today yeah yeah that sounds that sounds interesting i think i think we could all learn a lot from from that and uh i think if some local farmers would be able to you know at least attend and uh you know make any comments from their side i think might be helpful after the hearing the presentations and but i think we would we all feel better educated if we have all that in public and then we kind of have a good sense of how to write whatever we want to do about uh the you know regulations for the agricultural land or and what to say about the uh dual use and so on so thank you all right i think we want to um and i i'll have to check with jake if he's able to talk about this but um you know the state has very detailed regulations with regard to agrivoltaic installations um if you want to get the incentive the smart incentive the adder which typically it'd be press to do a project without that yeah and so yeah um so that would be uh uh something i could see if a jake could handle that'd be great yeah good good um stephanie yeah i just wanted to suggest that if you want to do this more like and i know martha you've brought this up before if you want to do it more like an education series where you're actually providing this as an opportunity for experts to come in and for farmers to come and join the meeting and ask questions i think you would want to put it on the agenda that way because this isn't public comment this is a very specific educational format so it's different it's not you know typically in the middle of a meeting allow public comment and feedback right you have to you have a very dedicated opportunity for the public to provide comment otherwise you're doing your business of trying to create the solar bylaw so but if this is a sort of different format that you want to do for this meeting as an educational opportunity then we should um someone could put together a flyer once you know who your speakers are going to be and we would want to get that information out and you'd probably want to do that sooner than later so that we can get it out on our social media um put it on the town's website and um and post it as such yeah that'd be good just the way you were doing for with the eca city and the and the heat pumps and right because that's an educational series aimed at the public so they're not necessarily doing their business of deliberating over initiatives they're just providing information for the general public um and offering that as an opportunity for people to hear from experts and ask questions so um i mean i know that you're doing a very specific thing in developing a solar bylaw but maybe this one meeting is a one-off where you do it as an educational opportunity yeah it's it's kind of a it's a hybrid so to speak it's for our information in this case but also i think it would be helpful to to make it more of an open opportunity for the public as Stephanie suggests i think that's a good idea would um i mean hesitation is that i'm vacation next week in terms of pulling this all together um which i can certainly reach out to the speakers that i mentioned um today or or or monday or something to see if we have a quorum of good speakers um and i don't i don't want to overdo it but i'm thinking of somebody jake if he's available somebody from aft and somebody from cisa for example um i think truthfully that from my perspective that's a little bit more helpful than having uh sort of just farmers who want to uh um state their perspectives or thoughts uh though i do like the idea of then having the the farming community or any and anybody uh to then engage in a bit of an educational dialogue with the speakers and ourselves um after that so um i mean i'm good with um inviting the speakers and trying to get those speakers available this time um say for the first hour particularly of the of the meeting next week um but um could use some help in terms of um outreach um i'm not sure if there's a um uh a particularly good outreach up avenue for the farming community in amherst um some of our speakers may know but um i could tap into my ultimate frisbee farmers who seem to know everybody and and day so max overlap between farming and ultimate frisbee i don't understand it but okay there's a correlation yes it sounds like i guess they zomac would be it might be causation i don't know oh wait it sounds like if you can provide uh you know confirmation that yes we'll have speakers we just give it a general title and say you know they'll be open for a question and answer set at the end and um you know Stephanie if you need help uh it sounds like the rest of us would be able to help publicize it to uh groups that that we know whenever you'd like us to help i think what would be helpful is if someone generated the flyer okay um but we need the speakers yeah send out the information then as soon as dwayne as soon as you haven't give it to Stephanie Stephanie send out the information and maybe some of us will um try our hand at a flyer all right all right sounds good yeah um all right any other comments or thoughts on that for the next the next meeting all right super okay um let's um can i ask a question yeah so it seems like this could be a really good discussion and it could take up the whole meeting is there anything else that we need to talk about at the next meeting so we won't have any bylaw is there some other um burnt issue we could put in there or yeah okay so in terms of any other agenda topics i mean i think we could have this presentation and and and uh community q and a and so forth and then um and that and formally end that process and then go into um more uh discussion about what what did we learn from all that with regard to the bylaw um and sort of set that up for uh then working with christine when she's back um on on on on what what that section might start to look like uh is one thought okay so um this will still officially be a meeting so you're still going to have an agenda and a meeting format yeah so i would say that if you you know with the ecac what they typically do is they do their business in the first hour and then in the second hour is when they have the presentation and public comment um or question and answer period at the end of that if you want to sort of do this differently and start the meeting with an educational event and then sort of launch into the meeting at the end you'll just want to be really cognizant of your time to allow for the format of the rest of the meeting so you'll want to make sure that it starts at 1130 and ends at 1230 if you decide that it's going to be an hour um so is i'm trying to if we want to sort of spend the full two hours and we don't need to spend the full two hours um if we want to take a little bit of a shorter meeting uh but if we did want to spend the full two hours i mean in my mind it might make sense to hear the presentations first hear some of the comments first and then and then have that to deliberate as a as a work back as a working group though we may have a larger audience audience listening to us which would be fine um to um then talk a little bit uh as the working group on what we learned from that um so that would be your agenda item so your agenda item would first be the presentation with q and a identified as part of the subject line for that session um but then you're going to be going into your discussion afterwards which would not have public comment you would just have your staff your group committee discussion would be the second half of that meeting and then you have public comment period at the very end as you normally do yeah yeah but i don't think one would necessarily have to put in the agenda the a time limit so the way and you could decide if if the experts were saying some really interesting things or the comments were very interesting that you you could have your discretion at the time to allow it to go somewhat longer than an hour if you know if you thought it was being fruitful you know without having to have a strict cutoff in the agenda would that be okay i think stephanie's worried about like the public noticing of when we're doing a discussion so my guess would be you know every speaker that we've had singly has talked for like we talked with them for like an hour so i would do an hour and a half if we have several speakers and for comment and then say the last half hour is our discussion and i i i think it wouldn't be bad i mean if it was like this amazing discussion and everybody had comments it wouldn't be bad for us to say okay we're gonna we're gonna do our discussion at the next meeting but i think we do have to notice the time that we're as a group meeting i think that's what i think that's what stephanie is worrying about i'm just worrying about getting the agenda to cover what you're going to discuss and then also you want to make sure that you leave time i mean quick there's q and a that's part of this educational event but then you want to leave time for public comment at the end of the meeting like you always do so you need to make sure that you have that time identified you know and leave that time so if you're going to have a discussion 15 minutes of you all having discussion with potentially 15 minutes of public comment might not be enough so you might want to limit it to the hour um well let's let's let's wait and see why don't you dwayne why don't you see about who you get for speakers and you know ponder it over the weekend and um and yeah yeah i'm not i'm not opposed to um you know just having the extent to the meeting of this public education thing uh and then uh and then um the next meeting we discussed what we learned um and and i would yeah it ends yeah okay i think that makes more sense yeah because the q and a then you don't have to sort of set aside a time it just sort of happens as you naturally go along and yeah um so we would probably notice this public event i mean obviously it's all it's still a meeting it's still going to be a meeting because you're a forum so it has to be educational education event with q and a uh from 11 30 um can we say till one o'clock yeah um and that that would be the extent of the meeting okay and and i guess we would have you know the the presentations q and a um and then um and then just uh public comment after that for any you know public comment that related to that or or relate to other things yeah and it will still be things like review of the minutes from today's meeting will show up but you don't have to do it you just okay but we do have to sort of know it's still going to be a meeting format yeah okay it still has to be because you're a quorum we still have to notice it and do all of the things that we normally do but it'll just show up as it'll say educational event whatever we title title that to be and then who will be speaking and then that it will be followed by q and a okay and it will still have next meeting schedule and agenda items it'll still have public comment okay and adjourn but it doesn't you know say that we're going to do the educational event first right uh and then um state that we didn't get to the other agenda items we'll kick them to the next meeting correct yeah and so then Stephanie or Dwayne whichever one of you then communicates the agenda and so on to our our solar bylaw working group please do stress then that this is an official meeting and we need a quorum so you know urge urge all seven of our members to try to attend right now you all said that you I mean if if everyone sticks to what they sent me you have a quorum yes you have a quorum at that meeting but we wouldn't want to give to the impression to anybody that this was instead of a regular meeting okay it'll show up and that's why I'm saying it's going to be formatted like a regular meeting it'll look the agenda will look like it always does it's just that it's going to say educational event but it's still going to look like the same agenda right good thanks Stephanie you're keeping us in line Stephanie I try but all contingent on me uh wrangling these speakers right so if you get you know that's the one thing is you need to make sure you have your speakers okay great all right good um let's move on then to close out the meeting first with any comments from the public and we do have four folks on participating with us today so thank you for that so if anyone has any comments or questions for the committee could you please electronically raise your hand to speak okay Eric you can go ahead and unmute thank you Stephanie I thank you all for your continued hard work on a very difficult but critically important topic for the town and for the world I've been following meetings regarding the climate mitigation for many years starting initially with the with with ecac and I wonder at my question or observation is more about process um early on in the um in ecac's existence the niche report was released and it identified quite a number of acres of available rooftops as well as brownfields that could be developed and I'm wondering what how how the town could proactively embark on um deploying so I mean my wife and I have a very tiny array on our roof and since 2014 the reports that we get daily or as if we wanted to um uh indicate that that this tiny array has already reduced 130 000 pounds of co2 has um has um captured 130 the equivalent of 130 000 pounds of of of co2 has saved 80 trees so I'm imagining the the acres and acres that were identified oh I would say four years ago if they were fully deployed how many millions of pounds of co2 would have been captured how many hundreds and hundreds thousands of trees have been saved I'm wondering how the town would would proactively embark on deploying solar on already identified roofs and brownfields I guess is that I guess that's kind of me well also maybe comment from uh from ecac um and I'm not sure Erica if you were at the meeting yesterday I was yeah yeah so there was some discussion about um uh a role that ecac can play um you know while we're developing these and um separate from but but related to you know developing these zoning bylaws and so forth which is the purview of this committee and it's really more focused on ground mounted array arrays um what what might be a role for ecac uh to help um move forward the opportunities for the built environment um and so that you might have recognized that in the discussion yesterday there wasn't sort of a discussion about specific actions but that is a topic that sort of teed up for ecac to to start thinking about so that's one thing but maybe Stephanie has has some thoughts certainly on the town town properties yeah I was just going to say that I think um you know as with anything one of it becomes um investigating where we can um achieve the greatest good with the most economically so um and we've had that report for a little while but that was a very the niche report was very very limited in scope I mean it does identify some areas but we don't really have a lot of brownfields and amherst and so we don't I think part of the problem with things like when you identify parking lots we understand that we could build parking canopies but when we discuss that when it comes up it's often um very cost prohibitive and it's not as straightforward like even so for instance I'll just throw in an example as like the parking lot in front of town hall is at a slope it doesn't look it but it is for a solar you know for a solar canopy so um that requires a lot more cost to sort of make that an even grade so these kinds of questions come up so it's not that the town never looks at these reports it's just that in the scheme of trying to look at everything as a where are we where do we allocate our funding it becomes a bit of a challenge so I think we're also um with this solar assessment and the development of the solar bylaw I think we're in a different place and at a different time um that's sort of more trying to get more of a handle on to what you said about prioritizing you know and sort of looking at the town from that perspective and with the ECAC support I think that's kind of like the next step great um I Janet did you have a comment on that um one was just that I'd love to see the niche report um and then also I think I think Eric might be talking about how to get other like individuals or companies um to deploy solar on rooftops and stuff I'm just guessing it wasn't just town properties yeah that and that's um what ECAC was talking we didn't go into details but for the ECAC um you know we don't have any particular um rules and regulations but you know we do do um look to do public outreach and and education so forth and uh so our purview would not be limited to town own properties but um but the constituents and Amherst yeah I guess my concern is that once a bylaw is written it really it it certainly codifies what a what a private landowner and a private developer can do and I'm just wondering how the town as an entity that has uh has potential to deploy how it can proactively engage in uh in utilizing what we already know exists and have that we can that we can control so it's it's um it's a question of what what is the town capable of embarking on climate mitigation projects or is it really are we looking at um corporate America corporate to do it for us is my question we've already identified in the niche report that there was a brownfield across from the Hampshire admissions office on east of 116 a large tract of land that I think in the report indicated it was a former gas station where I had some kind of blighted um blight problem um so um where it's where four years down the road and as I indicated just as a per as a private land house owner and with a tiny rooftop solar we've been able to stave off 80 trees of being stave off cutting of 80 trees and also sequestering 130 000 pounds of co2 and I can't imagine what if you multiply this tiny tiny hosted stamp part of an acre on a roof what that what it would look like we would magnify that project so it's really a question of again can the town does the town have the ability to proactively develop solar projects or are we relying on corporate America private landowners to do it for us I would point out and all good points Eric appreciate that but I would point out that between the landfill project and the hickory ridge project coming which were proactively done by the town that's I suspect is the majority of solar capacity we have in the in the town so those two projects um are what probably 10 megawatts in total of the 2025 or 27 I think megawatts that we have in town um and so there has been that proactivity by the town to stimulate and and and facilitate those projects thank you which took a long I mean not hickory ridge but we all know the story of the landfill that took a long time hopefully they won't all be that difficult thank you yep thank you sorry I just want to jump in to to respond to Eric that the cca may address some of this once it's um once it's actually um been the application's been accepted by dpu and once it hopefully gets approved we assume that it will and I know it's a few days on the road but you know um one of the goals of the group has been the three communities has been to have a joint powers entity that would house that program within it so that it might allow for some projects like microgrid development um of renewable energy resources not only solar but you know potentially others so that's kind of one of the missions of that work as well all right thank you um any other comments from the public participants great seeing none um any um final comments or thoughts from the group otherwise we'll end a bit early seeing none um I propose we adjourn any objections okay thanks everybody and we'll be in touch uh and and look out for emails and updates on the speak potential speakers for next next meeting all right thanks all thank you have fun weekend yeah enjoy the long weekend yep bye bye