 Yeah, I'm surprised that couple now. Oh, good. I gave you the host. I'm probably going to drop off here in, in a few minutes. Thank you. We're here last night and Susan must. Susan must Brett was here last night. Good. So we'll wait a couple more seconds. We seem to have stabilized at a surprising two. So last night. Last night had. About. 13 to 17, depending on who you count. Dave was in the audience. He was one of the 17. Things like that. It was somewhere. So it was not as large as I had thought either last night. Okay. We're stabilized. So I'm going to get this going. It is four 30. One p.m. And I am seeing a presence of a quorum. I'm calling this community resources committee meeting of the town council to order. This is the March 3rd, 2023 meeting. Pursuant to chapter 20 of the acts of 2021 and extended by chapters 22 and 107 of the acts of 2022. This meeting will be conducted by a remote means members of the public to access the meeting may do so via zoom or telephone. No in-person attendance of members of the public will be permitted, but every effort will be made to ensure that the public can adequately access the proceedings in real time. This meeting is also being recorded at this time. I'm going to make sure we can hear everyone and everyone can hear us. So I'm going to call the roll to do that. Shalini. Present. Pat. Present. Mandy is present. Pam. And Jennifer. Present. Thank you. We're going to take the agenda slightly out of order so that we know how much time we have for the public hearing. So we're going to do everything but the public hearing first. And then I'm going to pass the. Presiding officership to the vice chair. And so we have no action items. We have no discussion items. We're going to start with the minutes. And then we'll go back to general public comment in case we get a couple more people. Instead of starting with general public comment. So we have three sets of minutes to adopt tonight. Or this afternoon, February 9. Regular meeting February 13 special meeting, which was the listening session. And February 16 regular meeting. Are there any requested changes to those minutes? Jennifer. Let me unmute. Yes. For the. February. 16 minutes on page two. I think it's the sixth paragraph. It said that I opined. That students are not a protected class, but it actually. I wasn't opining. So you're seeking to just delete the opine. Or something. And then I guess further up at the top of the page. It said. I supported. I. Also on the same page. I think it's the sixth paragraph. It said that I opined. That students are not a protected class, but it actually. I wasn't opining. So you're seeking to just delete the opine. Or something. So. Also on the same. What page. Oh, page two. I'm sorry. Page two of the February 16th minutes. Let me get to it. It just said. That I voice support for expanding student housing options. I mean, not that I oppose that, but I don't think I, I don't know if there already are a lot of student housing options. I don't know that I said that. So are you requesting sort of deleting that? I don't know. I don't know. I don't know what you just read. No, it was just. Like a clause at the end. So you'd like to delete the clause. Yeah, I'm not sure what. I think what I was saying is in the general residence. Districts. They're already zoned for all kinds of housing. Okay. You know. Yep. Any other requested changes? Wait a minute. I need to find that because I have it open. And I'm making. Okay. We'll make sure you find it to Jennifer said that one, that that clause was at the top of the second page. Whereas the opining was the sixth paragraph. Yeah. So it says, it's actually. There's a paragraph from the previous page. That is at the top of page two. And at the end of that. So it says, um, Trying these changes first in general residence neighborhood of voice support for expanding student housing options. And you would like to take off voice support for expanding students. Yeah, I guess I'm not sure what. I don't think I said exactly that. I mean, it's not that I'm opposed to it, but I don't think I made that statement because I think. We already have a lot of student housing options. I don't think I made that statement. I don't think I made that statement. It's nice to see. It's nice to be seen more on campus, but. Clear cam. I don't think I said that. Um, so I would just, I would just. Take it back to invoice. And take that off. Yeah. That would be, I mean, I think that would be accurate. Okay. Any other changes. See none. I'll make the motion to adopt the February 9, 2023 meeting minutes as presented. And the February 16, 2023 meeting minutes as amended. Is there a second? Second. Okay. Any other comment? We'll vote. Shalini. Yes. Uh, Pat. Hi. Nandy's an I. Pam. Hi. And Jennifer. Hi. Those are adopted. Thank you for the close readings. Um, I have no announcements. Um, the next agenda preview pretty much at this point remains the same. We'll see. Um, where we go with other things, except we will be adding in, believe it or not. It is time to start the process for ZBA and planning board appointments for the July one new appointment. So what we'll show up on the next agenda will be the bulletin board preview that the. The policy requires that the. Committee see before it gets posted. So that's the only thing that will be on the next agenda, something that'll be quick, but, um, we're going to start that process. That will be the other thing added. Um, and I don't have any unanticipated items. Uh, so at that point, we're going to go to general public comment. This is public comment. Not on the zoning by law public hearing. This is, this is anything, but because everyone in the audience who wants to speak on the zoning by law public hearing will get a chance during the hearing. So if you have general public comment on anything, but that that's within our jurisdiction, please raise your hand at this time. Um, we will accept, um, comments for up to three minutes and bear with me as I do all of the name calling and then do the unmuting and all. So, um, I see one hand. So Susanna must prat, please unmute yourself, state your name, where you live and make your general public comment. This is Susanna must spread. I live at 38 North prospect street. And I have a question. I'm not sure you can answer it, but I want to put it out there. And I hope that someone will be able to. Eventually give an answer. And that is what do we know about UMass's plans for increasing its enrollment and who in the town is charged with talking to them about what they're planning to do about increasing their enrollment. Thank you for that question. I will send that along. Um, and maybe we can get an answer to you after the meeting or something, but I will send it along. To the appropriate people. Okay. They've answered that. I don't know whether Dave can answer it now or not, but I think a written answer might be a better place to provide an answer simply because it provides more time. Um, but I will make sure I send it along. Okay. I do not see any other hands. Um, and so. With that, then, um, I am going to, as promised, pass the presiding off. We're going to close general public comment and we're going to pass the presiding officer ship off to Pam Rooney to deal with the public hearing. Um, Wrong choice of words. It is, uh, 430 looks like 439. And, um, I am opening public hearing in accordance with the provisions of mass general law, chapter 40 a, this public hearing of the community resources committee. Of the Amherst town council has been duly advertised and approved by the city council. The city council is being held for the purpose of providing the opportunity for interested residents to be heard regarding the following proposed amendments to the zoning by law. The zoning by law, article three use regulations. Article four development methods. Article nine nonconforming lots uses and structures. The town will vote to amend article three use regulations to change the permitting requirements for owner occupied by duplexes, affordable duplexes, non owner occupied duplexes, converted dwellings and townhouses to create more streamlined permitting pathways for these uses. To remove the use category, subdividable dwellings to add a use category. To add a use category, three family detached dwelling to add a permitting pathway and standards and conditions for triplexes to modify standards and conditions for other housing use categories to amend permitting requirements for housing use categories in the aquifer recharge protection overlay district. To amend article four development methods to add three family dwelling where appropriate. To amend article nine nonconforming lots uses and structures to add a reference to three family dwelling. To amend article 12 definitions to add three family detached dwelling unit, triplex and finally to delete subdividable dwelling. The public hearing order for comments and questions. First, we will ask if there are any, any committee member disclosures. Are there any committee member disclosures? Seeing none, we would go next to the sponsor, the sponsor presentation and then there will be questions taken from the board or the committee. And then finally questions from the public. So you could, you could ask a question and then also come back in the next section and, and actually make a public comment. So you have two opportunities. If you have questions and then sponsors, sponsors, you can ask a question. If you have questions, you can ask a question. If you have a public response. And then questions from the board and committee to the sponsors. I'm also going to ask if the staff has any. Questions or comments that they want to make as well. So I will turn it over to sponsor presentation. I'm going to do a quick check in with Mandy. Given that all the attendees were here yesterday at the planning board. So what are your thoughts on that? And where do we have to go through the whole presentation? Um, you know, So, well, I guess what I would ask is I, Jennifer did not see yesterday. Pam did. I don't know about Shalini. I don't think they've seen it yet. So I would ask them whether they want to see the whole thing. If not, we can probably just put, make sure that the record indicates that the. Power point. Is in for the hearing because, you know, I, I want to make sure that that's in there. And so I'd maybe almost check with Dave and Chris to see if that's okay. To sort of skip it. Or to see if Jennifer or Shalini would like to. Hear the whole thing or a smaller portion that just talks about what's changed since the last time to save some time. So. Jennifer, let's ask Jennifer what she would prefer. If you could just ask if you could present what was different. That would be great. You don't have to present. We presented last time. Yeah, likewise. I saw some of the meeting, but couldn't complete the whole meeting. So, but definitely a highlighting the changes would be helpful. And Mandy, I'm going to ask you to take that on. Okay. So I will do that. Bear with me. We will. So through it, but Jennifer. No, I did want to add that I did see the second half of the meeting last night. So we're not, we won't go through the whole thing. We'll get to the parts where there are changes, but I'm going to page through the whole thing. Just so it's on the video. Okay. So, you had several new slides from your original presentation. Oh, we can go through those. If you'd like that. Yeah. So this one was, there's a little changes to that, but this is basically the same slide from the original presentation. This is a new slide. And, and one of the things we included this one for. I'm going to show what's within a half mile of the village centers, which is part of the master plan of where we want to do infill and more dense density. And, and what it shows is pretty much every residential. Zone is within a half mile of at least one village center, if not more than one village center. So I tried to sort of indicate what they were in the best I can do with GIS. I'm not the best with GIS, but that's, that's really what this is. If you look at Atkins, which is this one down here, it's basically surrounded by RO and RLD, our least quote, development, development, least dense residential developments. If you look up in Northam, this one's Pomeroy. Pomeroy also has, Pomeroy has almost all of them, except for the RG. It's got RO, RLD, RN, RVC. That's pretty much it all. This, the middle one is North Amherst that has a lot to the RLD, I think is North Amherst community farm. And I don't, I'm, I'm, this one might be Swartz family farm, actually this RLD over there. This is East Amherst and Gateway. They kind of overlap. So I overlapped them in the, in the maps that has a lot of stuff too. And that's where you pull in some of the RG. So this is sort of self-explanatory. So I'm not going to go over it, although it's a new one. It's just to sort of get us thinking about who lives in duplexes and triplexes. This is one of the new ones. Pat, do you want to talk about this one? No, go ahead. Okay. So this is, this is just getting the committee and the planning word to think about what the purpose of zoning is. And so we've quoted a part of a Massachusetts Supreme Court decision that says it's deal that zone, the fundamental principle of zoning is that it deals basically with use without regard to ownership. And then we talk a little bit about what zoning creep is. And that's where you're trying to regulate nonland use problems. And we've talked in this committee a lot about nonland use problems. And so what the next slide is, is what, what should we be doing to regulate those nonland use problems as we talk about zoning changes and nonzoning changes. And that's things that this committee has been doing. Rental permitting updating, right? The nuisance bylaw that we just started. The council has talked about what do we do about enforcement, right? The council's talked about how do we get pilots, right? More pilots, more what, how do we get the universities and all the pay for some of this. And so this sort of, we recognize that there are major neighborhood concerns. Regarding certain types of housing and certain behaviors that some housing leads to or, or tends to, or behaviors that tend to come or appear in certain housing areas or housing types. And we, we, we say that there needs to be a multi-pronged approach and we have to look beyond zoning to address those problems that we shouldn't be trying to do it all within zoning. Yeah. And I will say that there is this really in CRC, looking at a balance and working on them simultaneously. Mandy and I working on the zoning changes with the planning board. And the planning department and this committee working on residential nuisance behavior, et cetera, et cetera, rental registration. So these, again, is a summary of the changes of, of what each of these building types are that we're dealing with and talking about duplexes. This slide has not changed to dwelling units. One change from the original proposal to the new proposal is we heard a lot about when we changed, when we, when we were trying to create this triplex category, we removed them from apartment complexes, but we had chosen not to remove them from town homes so that town homes would remain three to 10. And therefore our definition of triplex was basically an up-down vertical building because town homes were side by side. So we heard that there was some concern about that and the limitations that provides. So we've actually proposed a change to our original proposal of triplex to say any three dwelling unit building, one building, three dwelling units, no matter how built, no matter whether the entrances are shared or not. And we've changed then or proposed a change to the town house definitions within where it applies so that town houses would be four to 10, not three to 10. So that is one change from the last time, hoping to address concerns of do we really only want vertical triple-deckers as seen a lot in Cambridge and Somerville and the Boston area, would our definition, original definition been too prohibitive and prescriptive about things like that to try and expand what we think of as a triplex. You see here in highlights what that means for town house, we've proposed now a new change to the town house definition so that it is only four to 10. So there aren't now overlapping sort of triplex and town house and their town houses and apartments kind of overlap, but they're different building sort of looks completely and how you enter the buildings. Converted dwelling has not changed. I just added pictures of actual converted dwellings in Amherst. Each one of these is permitted as a converted dwelling now, or at least part of it might be, I don't know how the middle one, the conversion is behind the tree. I don't know. Proposed conditions. This is where we had a lot more changes. Pat, do you want to do this? Yeah, sure. You can see the general requirements or the exterior appearance and footprints are compatible with single family dwellings. And then there is compliance with zoning article seven, which really covers parking driveway access, design standards and landscape standards. And those are really important issues that we want to have looked at as we as duplexes and triplexes are built. And then there's also the dark sky lighting, which is requiring that lighting for the property, the homes, the residents on the property is downwardly directed and it eliminates glare or trespass onto streets or butters. And these, the general requirements, we're saying that owner occupied with a deed restriction required should have. And then we, I'm sorry, that's I hate presenting. I don't know why, but anyway, if we look at affordable, there is a deed restriction also required, but then we start getting into multiple management plans being required in compliance with rental permitting and the application of zoning section 1124 and the written decision. That stays true for the non owner occupied duplex. And then we move to trip triplexes. Then you add their sewer connection located is required. And also there's a location requirement. It can't be built anywhere. One of the things that came up in, in Chris's critique of this. And it was an important issue. How do you make a deed restriction permanent for an owner occupied duplex. And that's something that we're going to continue to look like to look at and try to understand as we work with them. Mandy want to take over. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Just to Pat pointed them out, but the changes to what you saw the last time are actually in that. There's, there's two. There's the, it was on the first slide, the design guidelines and the next slide talks more about that. But in triplexes, the sewer connection for no matter where you're located. And this locational requirement that we copied from, I believe the townhouse section and copied it back up into the public public public space. But this is a new one. That talks about that they should be located near bus routes. Other multifamily housing or retail and all of that. So go, go to the packet document that has the actual bylaw language proposal in it to see exactly what it is, but we heard some concerns about. Building triplexes essentially in the middle of nowhere, that relates to sort of that RO area that spans a wide variety of locations in town, including near village centers near downtown but also away that it might ease some concern about that. So design guidelines, we heard no one was happy we had originally proposed removing them so they are back in. We wanted to spend a little bit of time talking about why we were concerned with them in there in the first place and it's not because we don't like design guidelines or don't want necessarily design guidelines. It's because the design guidelines that are in our bylaw were written specifically with where they would apply in mind and that is our business district downtown business district and around the town common. So they have a lot of things in there that don't necessarily apply to residential buildings because in these areas duplexes aren't actually allowed in the BL or the BG. And so you didn't have to think about what a duplex go in and would these design guidelines work for a duplex say because they weren't really allowed in much of this area and the rest of the town common is mostly Amherst College on that's in the RG. So things like sign standards you don't find in residential buildings but they're part of these design review guidelines that currently apply to duplexes that we had proposed removal. Other things like directional expression, make a lot of sense in a business area that has a lot of retail commercial pedestrian process but when you're looking at applying them across the board in various other zones, like the RN, or especially neighborhood areas, or outlying areas. They don't always make sense. You know, I, as I said last night I drove down Southeast Street yesterday and today actually and I was looking at these directional expressions and many of the houses don't actually have their front door facing the street. The directional expression guideline indicates that things like that should happen. And so what we basically are saying is if we, if we have these in there, we kind of, we want the planning board to either review them for their appropriateness of how they expanded the use of these particular guidelines to many areas of town that maybe they weren't written for. But also maybe as they apply them some assurance that they do consider that that differential and change and stuff that that doesn't necessarily make what's written there logical for a residential building in an outlying area. We did not change townhouse at all converted dwellings while we didn't. I don't think we changed anything from the original proposal. We want to spend a little time here because there was a little bit of confusion about what we were doing and some concern about what we were deleting. The next slide shows what we were deleting, but this is the slide that shows why we felt we could delete those which is the adding column here of saying that the conditions for the closest eventual use shall apply to any converted dwelling permit system means that if you're converting to a three unit triplex we already have the management requirements in there. I don't think you need to then separate out and list management plan required, because it's required due to this condition and so a lot of those deletions were either because we were allowing converted dwellings or proposing to allow converted dwellings in the ARP, or because we felt that those specific conditions were sort of duplicative of the condition we added. And then the only other one that we deleted people were concerned about the minimum open space requirement deletion and and what we felt when you actually look at our dimensional table is that it added nothing to what our dimensional table already requires for open space so this was not in some parts of the bylaw there's a minimum additional open space requirement, which reduces the amount of lock coverage maximum lock coverage but this was not that it's not written right now and so as you can see from this slide, the the what was already in converted dwelling required an additional 2000 per square feet per unit or not an additional but required a minimum of 2000 square feet per unit of open space on a property for four units that's 8000 and that was in the RLD and RO well for four units you're you're well above 8000 even for a two unit property just because of the minimum the dimensional table. And in the RN it was 1000 square feet per unit so that's a max of 4000, you're still well above that and so we again, in some sense looking to clean up the language of something that's duplicative doesn't need to be there. And make it a little easier to understand the requirements and see what's what's there pathways, we will go through and just talk about what changed so nothing changed in the commercial districts from the last time we talked about it, nothing changed in the business zoning districts of bgbl or bvc. Nothing changed in the bn district this count that this committee seen a lot of the bn you're looking at exactly what is the bn right now. And in the RBC and RG, we did not change any of our proposal. So it's still what it was the last time we talked in the residents neighborhood district again. This is where we started changing some of the stuff. This is a district that is wide ranging. There are pictures here of some of the district but it includes Echo Hill it includes the northern half of Amherst Woods the old farm road area the kestrel lane area it includes nearly every apartment complex large apartment complex in our town. This is a very wide ranging area and so where we changed stuff was actually in the aquifer recharge protection district. We had originally proposed for duplexes and triplexes a site plan review in the ARP, and we've backed off of that proposal to a special permit. And in the townhouse we originally proposed to not to not, we originally had a proposal that did not change that townhouses were not allowed in the ARP in this zone. We have proposed to change that to allowed by special permit and so that's why the whole thing is in green because the parentheses changed in the RO and RLD they happen to be in the same column. The changes also relate to the ARP area. I actually think we might have changed converted dwelling to solely special permit I think our original proposal for converted dwelling had in this area a site plan review. And so duplex triplex converted dwelling and townhouse in the ARP would all be special permits now. And they were at various states of not allowed and special permit in the prior proposal. The other big changes. There were no changes to this part, which is the sort of fall fall, you know the cascading changes for when you add a use category of triplex. This highlights the definitional changes to the definition section we had to add a change into townhouse. Because that's where it says three. So we've proposed an additional change there. Okay, I kind of went over what the changes are they're highlighted here from what our original from where we were. And so I think that is basically subdividable dwellings we didn't change anything we're still proposing deletion. I think that's basically the overview of what has changed since we last talked, did I miss anything Pat. I don't think so. Good job kid. We did that. I appreciate it. Good. Thank you. I'm going to open it up for questions from the committee. Any, any questions for Mandy, Pat. Thank you. I appreciate the presentation again, and I'll make more comments later but the question right now just came to me was when I was looking at who uses the duplexes and you had a whole list of different range of people who use. Is that a general observation or was that something pertaining to Amherst in particular and, you know, a particular way that you found out who is living in Amherst in duplexes. I mean, I know people who are living in duplexes both in Pellum and in Amherst both students, student residents and other residents elderly and some young families. And I've also related to my experience, lived experience in Boston Cambridge, and the things that my son and his friends are going through who are in their early 30s, who are trying to buy their first homes and things like that. So one of the things that I wanted to add to potential renters is we have town counselors who are renters. And we've had on both iterations of the council. And that's really important and when we talk about students we're talking about undergraduates and I think that's where a lot of the behavioral issues lie. But we're also talking about graduate students and graduate students with families. And that's important. And for potential owners we say families. And that's true. And it also, who are buying their first homes. And this becomes critical in a community like Amherst, in terms of our schools in terms of who gets to be able to buy or live in Amherst in Amherst, whether you're an essential worker, whether you're a firefighter or a police officer or a member of crests or a librarian, you know, we really need. We need that availability. Bandy, did you want to say anything or is that still comfortable shall we. I would have answered the same way. That's very helpful. Any other questions from the board are the committee. Jennifer has a question. Jennifer, sorry, I was looking down. This is, this is a general question. At what point will we, you know, make, you know, suggested or request for changes in some of this as a committee before. And, you know, if there was, I mean, I'll, you know how I'm going to keep coming back to this because, no, because I live, you know, I represent a district that already I have no has all kinds, you know, triplexes duplexes zone for apartments and has townhouses so it's not an issue or concern or a change, but I do, I'm going to keep coming back and saying I would like townhouses to retain the special permit. It just doesn't it's townhouses are built all the time in the RGs. It's not been an issue I feel like it's a little ask. I think that that was it was changed for the RN. And why not keep, keep what's not broken and just keep it in the RG where a lot of this activity is going to continue to happen. I don't know if now's the time to ask that. So I'm just kind of wondering because that's really, I was wondering if I could ask you a question into your question, which would help me is. I think in this particular issue around townhouses that having it be site plan review or special permit, why, what is critical, I'm going to let Jennifer answer and then I'd love to hear from you to pan. I'm really meaning it because you're asking for a change so I want to understand why I'm not asking for a change I'm asking for the status quo remain. Yes, and actually Chris breast drop answered it beautifully and we keep going back to because you know it's in the process of happening so there's a big townhouse development that's being built on Sunset Avenue at the corner of fearing. And it did have, you know, first it had to go to the local historic district commission so in one of the RGs, we already have design guidelines will be retained through the local historic district commission. But it then went to the zoning Board of Appeals, and we were really the kind of careful review that happens in the ZBA. And I think the developer like residents and the developer and the ZBA worked really closely together and everybody felt like what came out at the end was much. You know, it was really the best that it could be. And I get I would like Chris elaborate on that even so to us were like wow we just had this really positive experience, and to tamper with that feels like why. Yeah. Okay, thank you that's helpful for me to hear. It also calls up for me 132 Northampton Road. I think it's East Gables now in terms of the intense neighborhood resistance. And the process going through ZBA and, and special, you know, really working on the issues that that I don't know if I could quite agree with Dorothy came that it got completely better, because it limited and made some costs. Some expenses, increased expenses but in some ways, but the project did get better, and it got more and more acceptable to the community so you might be moving me. And, you know, we did say to the developer, we really welcome it for, you know, if it could be for, you know, like your, your son, and his wife, if it could be for young faculty, you know, coaches, retired people, you know that we hope it would really and not be all for students, because that would also bring a lot of people, you know, students are part of the community, but people that really, you know, want to like there's a lot of families with kids on the block would be great to have, you know, and so we actually ask like one thing they put in this development now is, there's a playground, which wasn't there originally so that's pretty great. Thank you. Yeah, I was, you know, I was happy to see the emphasis on the multi prong strategy and utilizing different strategies here and I was wondering if there was a kind of if they're if you're thinking or is any conversation at the regional level, like thinking about Hadley which has single zoned only for single family homes. And so there's a, you know, opportunity there then UMass like University of Vermont created workforce housing. So encouraging and I think you listed that already but like having UMass not build new student housing necessarily but also think about workforce housing so that was one question. That's and then the process question like in terms of when do we get staff input and how do when do we go into a deeper conversation and like what might be the process. Mandy want to respond to that. Sure, I'll try to do on both so you know, you make a good point about Hadley. Hadley does not allow anything other than single family homes as residential buildings. We, we can't force Hadley to change that they have their own planning board and town meeting right. We would love them to change it, although it's interesting that at the planning board meeting a little over a week ago where they were talking about where might density be best and Amherst. One of the planning board members mentioned that. Maybe it would be good to get Hadley to change their zoning to and could we advocate for that. And another planning board actually disagreed with that. Hadley is a farming community with some of the best farming land out there. And, and so wouldn't we want to build not on as good a farming land and I'm just repeating what the planning board member said so you know it's an interesting thought. Yeah, I, I think we do need to better chat with UMass. Unfortunately, a lot of that conversation happens on the executive side in our town right it happens with the manager and whoever the manager. Assigns to talk about pilots and all of that so we as counselors aren't really involved in that I think it would be useful maybe if we were more involved in that. And then to your next question of where do we get staff input and, and, you know, sort of have the deeper conversations. What I would say to that is Chris, I know has some thoughts, I assume she will want to read them as she did last night at the planning board. If she's recognized and so I hope Pam will recognize her at one point and if she doesn't raise her own head I'll raise the hand and actually just ask her myself. Because she has some thoughts about our proposal and, and we are very happy as sponsors to talk with Chris and meet with Chris to do that. Last night at the planning board the hearing was continued until April 5 to give us a sponsors time to talk with Chris but I think you were thinking, when do we as a committee have deeper conversations. Historically, the hearings have been for questions about proposals. I think as I told Pam in preparing for this. We try not to get into debate about a recommendation but I'm, I'm a little more lenient to Jennifer's question, if you phrase it as well would you consider this change or would you consider that that's a question. And so, you know, phrasing things that way to get us there I can also as a chair, as we prepare the next agendas and think about this, consider putting more conversation instead of just the hearing on. Even if we technically don't close the hearing or close the hearing, having conversation maybe at a more general level that's not just this proposal. I think the planning boards working on doing some of that themselves. So I can think about, you know, trying to do some of that about more of this. Yeah, I think, I think it would be critical for us as a group, just CRC to have some of these deeper conversations, because we know we're divided. But what I really feel like we can do is move from those positions. And, you know, I've worked in when I was involved in Pine Street co housing before it was built. We worked with consensus and I thought this is really stupid. But what I learned was by hearing each other, we can find the places where we agree and usually something stronger more creative work, something that's really better evolves that none of us quite have got all of the reins of right now so I'm looking forward to us doing that in CRC. Thank you. Any, any of the rest. Anyone else want to ask a question before I asked Chris Brestrup if she would please share her thoughts with us. Chris. Thank you. Yeah, I put some thoughts together and share them with the planning board yesterday so I would like to share my thoughts with you today and, you know, we've had evolving conversations in the office and the planning board did have a long conversation last night so some of these comments may be evolving themselves but anyway, here goes. So I'm Chris Brestrup, the planning director, and I'd like to talk about five different items that came to mind when I looked at the Sony amendment. The statement is incomplete and it represents just a portion of what we have discussed here in the planning department but we've had some some pretty good conversations Nate Malloy and Rob Mara and myself about what's being proposed so here, here goes with the five topics that I wanted to cover. First topic is that the proposal does not currently have the robust support of the planning department. The planning department has tried to take a neutral stance on the zoning amendment and to spend time learning about it, understanding and thinking about its ramifications and how it would work, and whether it would accomplish the goals set forth by the requirements. And at this time we feel that we are not ready to recommend this proposal. It's currently too all encompassing too complicated and the consequences and ramifications have not been clearly identified. The second point is that we believe that the proposal is unlikely to accomplish what the proponents set out to accomplish that is making home ownership and rental units available to lower and moderate income individuals and families. The planning department believes that the goals of the proponents are worthy and that the town should work to accomplish those goals. However, we believe that this zoning amendment taken in its entirety is not the right mechanism for accomplishing those goals. After many hours of discussion, we haven't come to a clear conclusion that this proposal will help the town reach the goals that have been set forth by the proponents and some of the examples of this are the following. One example is that we think there's kind of a disconnect between the proposal. For owner occupied duplexes and the goals that have been stated. The proposal to make owner occupied duplexes by right. In other words, yes. In all residential zoning districts seems to make sense. However, when we look at this a little more deeply we realize that an investor or developer could purchase a property. If an owner occupied duplex get it approved as an owner occupied duplex by the building commissioner as a building permit. He could live in it for a short time and then apply to have it changed to a non owner occupied duplex. And if there were no proposed exterior changes to the structure, the non owner I do non owner occupied duplex could then become permitted by administrative approval by the building commissioner. So we need to take time to establish a waiver and thereby a new non owner occupied duplex could be created without any public hearing or public input and without conditions being set forth that would protect a budding properties from potential problems. We feel that we need to establish, we need to take time to establish standards criteria and conditions for duplexes and figure out how to monitor and maintain owner occupancy when it is required, and how to monitor changes in ownership and occupancy. So this is just one example of unintended consequences. Going on, allowing triplexes in the RLD zoning district, this is something that Mandy mentioned before, is another example that may not have the desired effect of providing housing for low and moderate income individuals and families. In order to permitted duplex in the RLD zoning district you would need 100,000 square feet of property to meet the lot area requirements and that's equal to about two and a quarter acres. And it seems unlikely that someone with a property that large would build a triplex, but would more likely subdivide the property into two frontage lots and sell the lots for single family development for large expensive houses. Let's see if I can get my pages to work here. In the RO zoning district you would need 50,000 square feet or 1.15 acres to build a triplex and again with someone with a property that large want to build a triplex and rent it out or would they sell the property to be developed for more expensive single family homes. And we feel again it's doubtful that this change would have the desired effect of providing housing for low and moderate income individuals and families in these areas. In addition, the RO and RLD zoning districts tend to be located in areas that are not well served by public transportation and other types of services such as stores. So these zoning districts aren't ideal locations for multifamily housing, such as triplexes, especially for people who and families who may not have multiple cars per household. Another concern is an area that was brought up by Rob Mora and I think this is kind of important. Would low and moderate income individuals and families actually take advantage of the streamlined permitting process. Could they, due to the expense of buying property and building a house. In our opinion it's unlikely that this would happen that they would be able to afford to purchase property and Amherst and build an owner occupied duplex. Rob, who is in the building industry knows a lot about building and financing and, and we talked about the fact that without a stellar credit rating and a history of having previously developed or and managed properties. The bank is unlikely to make a loan for such a project, and only people or companies entities who will be able to get the loan to build this type of development are investors and high income individuals and families, and they're unlikely to want to live in a duplex and take on this type of project. They would be likely to rent the second unit for the highest possible rent, rather than renting it out to lower moderate moderate income individual or family. Although they might do so for altruistic reasons, but we don't really believe that that's going to happen. I believe that Amherst adopted an ADU bylaw recently to allow ADUs by right in most situations, and that we should see how the new ADU bylaw plays out over time, and what the issues are in enforcing the owner occupancy requirement as well as other aspects of the new ADU bylaw. And we said, let's take time to review how this bylaw has worked before we launch into a full blown zoning amendment that would treat other types of uses the way we're treating ADUs. So let's find out how many people have taken advantage of the ADU bylaw and how it's being enforced and what the results have been for ADUs. And this may give us some insight into how other zoning amendments would play out. The third point I wanted to make is that the proposal appears to run counter to the master plan in that it would encourage development of properties outside of the downtown and the village centers and outside of areas already developed. The master plan encourages growth and density in the downtown and village centers and in already developed parts of town and encourages preservation of outlying areas. And in our opinion, this proposal seems to encourage small scattered developments throughout town, including in parts of town that we've worked long and hard to preserve such as the Bay Road area and other rural parts of town. We feel that development should be focused in areas that are already developed and we should promote infill in those areas, which is in line with the master plan. So aspects of this proposal do that, but as a whole the proposal does not protect our outlying areas and doesn't focus development in downtown and village centers where the master plan says to do so. The fourth point I wanted to make is that Emerson is not like other towns that have done away with single family zoning. We've been reading a lot about towns throughout the country that have done away with single family zoning. But more than half of our residents are students and there's a tremendous pressure on our housing stock to be occupied by students. We have a student population that exceeds the year round population and we can't assume that new dwelling units created throughout through the zoning amendment will be occupied by permanent residents and their families. It's more likely that investors will take advantage of the zoning amendments to create housing that will be occupied by students. We don't have anything against students. That's just a fact. And as we know, students and developers of housing for students can outbid and outpay middle and low income families and individuals. So we believe that the new units will be created by the proposed zoning amendment and will be occupied primarily by students and owned by investors and developers. So we're saying we should carefully plan for locations for student populations for housing for student populations and place conditions on such housing that make it likely that those units will be managed to maintain to the advantage of neighbors and the town. We should also be creative in allowing and encouraging housing for low and moderate income individuals and families and would be homeowners such as the project that's being proposed by Valley Community Development Corporation on Ball Lane and North Amherst. This project is coming before the ZBA in the near future. It's a project that will be subsidized by the state and so the cost of land will be lower per unit because the developer can take advantage of Chapter 40B which allows the zoning board to approve more units per lot and would ordinarily be allowed by our current zoning. We feel that loosening permitting processes for so many use categories as the zoning amendment does in so many areas all at once will produce a flood of proposals by investors and developers and is unlikely to result in owner occupied homes being built by and for moderate and low income individuals and families as envisioned by the proponents. And there's the last point that I wanted to make that there are aspects of the zoning amendment which have merit and should be developed into a workable set of proposals. As a whole though it's too broad and all encompassing but some of the aspects that we feel do have merit are things such as making owner occupied duplexes by right in all residential zoning districts. But we need to couple that with making non owner occupied duplexes by special permit in all residential zoning districts so we don't have this kind of sneaky way of creating non owner occupied duplexes that I described before. This will prevent that type of conversion. We don't want to have owner occupied do non owner occupied duplex is created without a public hearing and without good conditions. We also create a list of standards for owner occupied duplexes and non owner occupied duplexes such as we did for ad use and I think Mandy and Pat say that they have incorporated those types of conditions so we need to look at that. More carefully, but we want to make sure that these properties are managed and properly maintained. We agree that we should create a new use category of triplexes, separating three unit buildings from the apartment use category and also from townhouses we agree that that's a good idea. And again we should establish criteria and conditions to make sure that they'll be well managed. We agree that eliminating the category of subdividable dwellings is a good idea category has only been used once since it was established about 20 years ago. There may be more we do agree that there may be more aspects of the zoning amendment that should be pursued with proper criteria and conditions worked out for each and with unintended consequences recognized and mechanisms put in place to avoid them to the extent possible. So. So I've just presented a few pieces of the proposal that we feel should move forward. And the planning department is ready and willing within our time constraints that you're all aware of to work with the proponents to further develop these parts of the proposal. And the planning department recommends slowing down proceeding with caution and examining how each of the proposed changes will play out. We don't recommend adopting the proposal holds wholesale in its current form. We recommend against making hopeful assumptions about the outcome without carefully studying potential pitfalls. And we do recommend moving forward with the more promising aspects of the proposal and we look forward to working with the proponents to do so. So thank you very much. Thank you Chris. Thank you Chris. Very well stated. So, excuse me, so we are at a point where we could take questions from the audience from the public. But this is different than public comments. So I guess there are, if there are any specific questions that you'd like to ask of the sponsors, let's do that now and then come back and recognize you can always have a second try at making a public statement itself. And I do not have the ability to let people in but somebody else. I do. So just when you call on all my will. I see Fred Hartwell's hand up. If you have a question, please let it in. Fred. Hello. I hope my audio is working today was not working yesterday. It is perfect. Thank you. I have a question about what exactly constitutes professional management. As it's used in a number of places, including triplexes. I happen to be a owner occupant of a three family house. And I have lived here for over 50 years in Amherst. I have some formal training in law. I have a lifetime of experience in the skilled trades. In that 50 years I have never lost a month's rent. And so I'm really curious whether or not what constitutes professional management and whether, you know, I would qualify. I'm just curious. I'm curious if you can answer that. I'm just curious whether you can answer that. So we pulled that language from current language in maybe apartments. So I'd actually ask if Chris can, can sort of explain what the ZBA and planning board. What criteria they use for that determination. May I answer. So usually they expect that there will be someone. And it often takes the form of a professional management company. There are a number of them in the area. However, the zoning board will speak with the applicant and determine if the applicant himself or herself is capable of managing a property. If so, we'll allow that person to act as the manager so it doesn't necessarily have to be a company. It can be an owner. But the zoning board when it considers a special permit just needs to be comfortable that that person has the ability to manage that and maintain the property in a good form. Thank you for any, any follow up. No, thank you. I understand that. Okay. We have a next, the next question looks like Susanna must practically bring her in. She should be able to unmute. I thank you very much. I have sent in a written comment. And this question is in that comment, but I hope I can ask it here too. I'm just very troubled every time I hear about this housing crisis, because I'm not sure what you the sponsors have in your mind as to a kind of quantification of what we're trying to accomplish here. I mean, how much housing is enough housing, everybody who wants to live in Amherst needs to be provided for. You know, maybe 15,000 maybe UMass students who aren't living in town and aren't living on campus. You know what, with affordable housing trust we know what quantities of housing they're looking to produce and we can sort of congratulate ourselves that we've done it. I have no sense of what you people think is enough. Susanna, do you want to respond to Pat or Andy Joe. Pat. I'm trying to figure out how to respond. You know, I'm learning a bit about the housing trust and affordable units and how a developer can have three affordable. I don't have the numbers correct and maybe Dave or Chris can help me here, but they can have a small number of affordable units in a large complex. And that somehow rather that makes all of the units be counted as affordable units. We're talking about affordable. We're talking about low income people, moderate income people. We're also talking about people who are over 100% of the area median, who cannot afford to buy homes in Amherst. But there's a move and there's movement right now for people to build smaller. There's an online movement. And, and it's more sustainable, it makes it's less expensive. So, it really has the potential to eliminate the starter home gap, which would bring more families. So, you know, we have so much to deal with with UMass, and I am not denying that. But they're, they're not the only people who live in Amherst I'm older. I'm going to be dead soon. So who's going to come in, you know, who's going to come into my home I'm hoping it's a family. You know, I, so I'm not answering your question. I don't have a quantity. And yes, we can say it's going to all be students but I think that we can work around that and bring families back to Amherst. Mandy, do you have a more articulate answer. You know, so, so you said what what do we have in mind with this proposal. You know what I have in mind is allowing more opportunity for the housing that is not single family homes and apartments to be built. You know, and, and allowing that opportunity to potentially build them cheaper. You know, there's a every cost that goes into building a building or converting a building that already exists raises the eventual purchase price or rental price or mortgage of that property. You know, if if you want to convert a single single rental building from one unit to two units. If you have a mortgage, potentially adding a second unit might decrease the depending on how you're converting but the cost of that conversion is going to need to be recovered by someone. Right, you know they're not going to not cover the costs of that conversion and the costs of the mortgage and the costs of the property taxes and all of that and so every thousand 2000 $10,000 we add on to the cost of doing that which includes the cost of getting the land use permit and adds to the, the cost of living in that building and so, you know, one of the things we're hope I'm hoping to do with this proposal is lower some of those costs. Does that do we know that it will automatically translate into lower rents or lower purchase prices. Economics says it might right. Economics says the more housing supply there is unless there's higher demand the lower the price of the house that we have a unique situation in Amherst so I can't say that's that economics will be followed right but economics says the higher costs the higher costs there are to build something the higher the sale price will be. You know, because you're going to have to cover the cost of that building if you're building a single family home or a duplex and it costs you, and you thought it would cost you 150,000 to build it and suddenly it costs you 175 because you added 25,000 on to the time unit took to get the land use permit and the extra attorneys and studies and everything you needed. Well, you can't sell it for 175 anymore, because that's how much it cost you you're going to sell it for more. What will our proposal do something like that I don't know we asked how much housing is enough housing. That's a hard one to answer we all have different views. And then it's hard to answer because we all say we want cheaper, we want it to be cheaper to live in Amherst we want people who want to be able to live here to be able to afford to live here to be able to that attainable housing is one of the words I like to use because affordable you think mandated affordable and all but attainable we want people to be able to attain housing. But how many people. Like you said that's I, we can't answer that we know we have a housing study that said we were below on housing. We've barely built enough to make up for that lower that what we were had a housing deficit of a decade ago in the last decade we've built enough to from a decade ago meet that housing deficit, whatever that demand it has increased and then and now we haven't made up those numbers I don't know what those numbers are we haven't had a recent housing production plan or study. You know I don't know what our system can handle we don't know those things and frankly what we don't know is what we as a town want as a size, or what you mass one of the Shawlani asked or something about what you mass once right, or what their plans are it's not what they necessarily want but what their plans are, we don't have those answers so I can't really say what is enough, but we know what we have now is basically too expensive for some of the people who want to live here. And so this is attempting to find ways to address that concern. Chris Brestrup has her hand up. So I just wanted to mention that we do have a housing market study and a housing production plan online that people can look at the housing production plan was done in 2013. And we're planning to have it redone but we were waiting for the new census information to come in so that will be done. Probably within the next year. New housing production plan. We also have a housing market study that was done in 2015. That's also online that talks about more broadly who would like to live in Amherst who wants to be here, and then acknowledging that how many units do we need the housing production plan talks more about how many affordable units do we need so those two reports will give us some idea of how many units we need but those numbers have grown in the last, you know, what is it, 10, eight or 10 years. So as we have those two reports updated will have new numbers but for right now that's what we have so I would encourage you to go online and read those and if you can't find them online. Email me and I will send you a link. Okay, thank you. Thank you very much. Suzanne, any follow up questions. Yeah. Could you also share with us the numbers of units that we have built in recent years the numbers of apartment units the numbers of single family houses the numbers of ad use. I had a sheet about that, maybe four years ago but I haven't really been able to keep track of all of the new additions, how many have been permitted how many have actually been built. It would be really helpful so we could feel that there's some kind of shape to this endless housing crisis that we seem to have. We have a student housing crisis and I'm sorry that that is a problem that seems to be landed in the town's lap I think the there should be a lot of pressure on the university to take care of that one. And I think we do all want more middle income housing, but we have to find ways other than zoning to make that happen. There's going to be government money, state money coming in because there is a big concern about this issue nationwide. And I would like us to be looking at creative ways to do things other than rezoning to make housing more affordable. Thank you. Thanks, I see Dorothy Pam's hand up as a question. I wanted to make a question or comment that why do you think that we keep bringing up at these hearings that the ads are all over the country, saying, come invest in Amherst, that this is not a fantasy this is a fact. And we keep bringing it up. And yet when we listen to the zoning reports, that disappears the idea of these outside investors with no commitment to Amherst disappears so I understand that in one world, reducing costs reduces rents and prices of houses. But in another world, a profit mode of world that has nothing to do with it with what you paid to build the house or the unit of the duplex doesn't mean you will therefore charge a rent based on what it costs you. People will charge what they can get if they're people who are not town residents, not committed to the town. People who live in the town, you know, often want to keep the rents down if they are if they're renting units or they have, you know, two family houses, because they want to have neighbors that they like, you know, and they want to keep have a middle class town where people can find a place to live but outside investors don't care about any of that. I, the speeding something up therefore thinking speed will reduce costs, and we certainly had some bizarre stuff in our four capital projects and seeing our costs rise. I mean, we know that we know that costs have risen. But we'll assume that that will result in lower prices for rent or for buying a house I think is naive. Thank you Dorothy. That was sort of a question. If you have, and if you have any comments in this next round. Please, please say your comments as well. I am going to transition into public comment. There have been some good questions posed. I would love to hear from the attendees if, if you have public comment to make about the proposal concerns support whatever you want to add. Red heart will I see your hand. Bring it in. Myself. Hello. You're in. Thank you. I would like to give full throated endorsement to the concept of the subdividable dwelling I happen to be the person who put it in the bylaw to begin with. Oh, well, and I invented it. And I understand that there's only been one formally done. But it is to my way of thinking, an absolutely intelligent way to accomplish the goals that I've seen here. My wife and I, we have lived in a building in a three family that is effectively not legally but effectively a subdividable dwelling for 50 years. I've carefully made it that way. The, you know, the real estate lobby hates these things because their idea is that while you get married and maybe you start having kids, you're in a starter home. And then you have to move to a bigger home. And the real estate interests get a commission when you sell the home, and they get another commission at your new home. After you're in the new home and bigger home. Well, then your kids leave home and you don't need that much space. And so the idea is okay, well then you sell that and you buy another house that's smaller. And the real estate lobby collects another two commissions. I've been here for 50 years. Well, when we moved in, we moved into one of the three units. And after we had to our first two kids, which was about 12 years after we were married, but Well, we said, you know, We don't have enough room. So I didn't renew the lease in the upstairs tendency. And we exhale we reopened the old formal staircase and went with all Victorian furniture, wallpaper. And the upstairs apartment kitchen became our master bedroom. And the two veteran townhouse on the back of the building continue to help support the the operation. Well, as we had another two kids total of four, and when they grew up and older kids take up more room, we said, you know, we need some more space and we're now in our peak earning years. We didn't renew the lease in the rear apartment, and we put doorways in from the second floor into that space and in the first floor into that space. And we use the place as a single family home for for many years. And then, as our kids left home, we said, you know, we could like to recoup some of that potential. And the we we closed off the doorways on the first and second floors, replaced it with the, you know, the doorways are still there there they're still framed. And there's just there's fire code sheet rock because you have to have an occupant, you know, fire separation. But, and now that's once again, an apartment and we. It has, you know, I think that is very much in the public interest we have, you know, we've been here for over 50 years, anchoring the neighborhood with stable tendencies and a stable occupancy. And, you know, what harm is there in keeping the subdividable dwelling on the books, and it is an incredibly intelligent way of accomplishing the goals that I've heard expressed here. And, you know, I'm not at all clear that people understand really what it is and how it works. But, you know, I, you know, at least keep it. And I think it is incredibly useful as a pathway for, you know, my neither my wife nor I inherited a penny from our folks. What we had was what we could earn. Yeah, I don't want to lose that. Thank you, Brad. You want to say something. Fred that that kind of flexibility and resilience that you're describing is what I would really like to see all over Amherst and know. So you've left me with some real thinking about subdividable units and I'd love to hear from Rob Mora, because if you're the person that did that. And I'm hearing the path that you took, and in terms of supporting your family renting, you know, it's that resiliency is what I want for housing in Amherst and I'm really Thank you for sharing. And I'd love to maybe get together with you over coffee and you can, if you don't have much to talk more about this Mandy and I might both do that. And you can reach us through our town emails but I would like to talk more to you and your wife. Thank you. Thank you. Are there any other hands any other folks in the audience who would like to make comments. And I forgot to mention that we should state our names and where we live. Susanna. Oh, let's let's go with Janet Keller because she hasn't spoken yet. Janet Keller and then Susanna must pass. Thank you. I would actually, I realize I should ask a question. Mandy Joe, did I understand you at the opening of the meeting to tell us that you were thinking that the farm land up in North Amherst was mostly the community farm I did I did I get that right or did I get that wrong. So I made a comment that I think a lot of at least that one portion in the North Amherst Village Center is the one community farm but I don't I don't know whether it's all is but I think at least a portion of that is I was in no way implying that that should be redeveloped if you were thinking that that was the applicant implication but I was just commenting that that's what I thought that RLD section was it is the Schwartz family fun. Yeah, and then the other one is the Schwartz family farm I believe. Okay. I was going to go in another direction and I thank you for clarifying that. So, if I'm, if memory serves me. The simple gifts farm is 38 acres out of 165 that the Cecil group identified as farmland up up here. And I want to segue into something that go back to maps but also segue into what the maps tell you about North Amherst and, and because we have so much. Apartments and so much density in the southern part of North Amherst closer to the university people forget that in the northern reaches when you get get from Pine Street to the town line. So, you are looking at, you are looking at resources, unique resources, scenic resources and unique features that are outlined in the open space and recreation plan as very important for a variety of reasons whether we're talking about flood plains, which we, we have the North Amherst agricultural block, which is preserved farmland that's part of part of the, the complex of farms that stretches into Hadley. We've seen, you know, and we've talked we've seen the flooding. The, the cannabis site had flooding two years ago in the, in the summer. And possible forest reserve, a wildlife corridor, but mostly what we have up here is water resources that are important, including aquifers that if, if, if need be, we might need to use for drinking water so I do want to make a plea for sticking closely to, to mapping and understanding what's on the ground first as we go through this exercise to identify, identify places that can have more development and keep them away from resources that we're going to need for flood control or to feed ourselves on as the case may be. Thanks. Thank you, Janet. Appreciate that. Suzanne, I must probably come back in. Thank you, Suzanne, I must brand and I still live at 38 North prospect street. And I just wanted to thank Christine Brestrup for her very thoughtful and excellent comments about the problems with this proposal. And they basically boiled down to a bunch of thoughts about how it's not likely that the proposal as written will accomplish the goals. And what's important it is to think ahead about the unintended consequences and take the time to do that. I think Mandy Joe pointed out one weakness in our design guidelines in that they really are developed for commercial areas of town and not appropriate to residential districts and I'm reminded that the master plan says that we should design guidelines before undertaking densification and a lot of zoning changes. So I would like to support the notion that we should have a set of design guidelines drawn up that is pertinent to the residential districts and to the housing types there and we can do that before we start in on changing the zoning and permitting, changing the permitting requirements and making it easier for a lot of stuff to be built that is going to really be upsetting to the feeling of this town. Thank you. Thank you, are there any other folks in the audience in the attendees that would like to speak. Dorothy Pam. Okay, Dorothy Pam 229 Amity Street. I really enjoyed hearing Mr. Hartwell story about his three family house, because that is how my friends live in Sunnyside garden and in Queens and we go there every year two or three times for a week at a time. And the houses grow and expand you rent out when you when you need to and when you need to take it back you take it back. But sunny side gardens was started with some subsidy. I really would like to see and they are attached one two and three family homes owner occupied around common interior greens no cars in the backyards. Okay. Parking would have to be separate and to a side somewhere. It is an incredible neighborhood. It is a wonderful place families people stay at all ages. You know I wish that we didn't hadn't had to sell our house in order to buy the next house when we made our move, because it would have been the greatest investment ever in our life. But most people I'm afraid could not today afford to build that three family house, the cost of construction is so high. But I do think I love the idea of the two in the three family house growing and expanding. I think that we have our accessory dwelling thing. I don't think it's going to be used as much as we had hoped because it's so expensive for a regular person, a homeowner to build that dwelling. I mean people who have looked into it that I know were shocked at what they were told, you know they were they weren't going to have to pay anything for land because it was on land they already owned, they're going to convert a garage. It's $400,000. So that's kind of hard for most people to do. So I really would love to see our energy spent on, as I said yesterday moving more towards the ball lane area where there's going to be some home ownership opportunities, but it involves some outside money. I don't think we can expect the market to build the housing that we really want and need in Amherst. We'll just have more speculative housing going at the highest possible rent, and we'll be continue to lose a year round residents so anyone who ever wants I have a lot of books and material on sunny side gardens, I willing to take people on a tour there. I'd love to get that concept going because it's it was, you know, that's the years that we live there when we had zero money when we came in as renters, and I had with one child left with three children but we were at that point, we were living in the little one family house. So it's it's housing which grows and keeps a community. And I'm really saying I want to I want to talk about community building more than a lot of, you know houses sprinkled around, because community is what makes Amherst a great place to live. We can disagree on a lot of things but at least we're disagreeing with people, you know, and we're not just disagreeing and playing games on our phones or something. This is a community. We want to keep it as a community so those are my suggestions, but I really do appreciate the work that Mandy Joe and Pat have done I understand the aims. I just have a probably a more darker view of the market forces. So, thank you. Thank you Dorothy. You have your hand up. Thank you. The sunny size garden sounds incredible. And I moved to Amherst to live at the Pomeroy Lane Cooperative on 34 Pomeroy Lane. And it's it was an incredible community we were one of 25 families that moved in at the same time. It was mixed income, market rates, section eight and low income. The units were built so that they faced a common courtyard and there was a small common house and parking was off to the side. So if you want to see something like sunny side, you might want to walk over and maybe we could go eat at Comolito El Comolito and Dorothy and I'll tour you guys still know some of the people who live there. But here's the important thing about this community. We have five homes that included handicapped accessible three bedroom to bedroom and one bedroom units, it included townhouses and apartments. It has four, four banks all facing each other which I kind of said and the other thing is the master deed required. Not to say this mix of income, but the fact that it would integrate people with cognitive and physical disabilities. It was a tremendous community and an incredible learning experience for me. And I've carried some of the things I've learned to the dead end street I live in off Amethyst Brook, you know, and, and what is what is community so there are places we can agree Dorothy. And one of the things that we, I hate to say this Dorothy but you're a little right about the darkness of the capitalist system, and what profit is and what we think is value, but I think that we can find ways to counter that. All of our work I think really is to find new ways to integrate housing in places that we didn't think we could have it, and to find ways to fund that and support that. So, I think maybe we're on the same path. But we're, you know, we're new walk at one speed and I walk at another. But I think we can do some traveling together. It's a metaphor probably, but anyway. And, you know, it's the lessons I learned about people with disabilities, the lessons I learned about my own racism, and, and other people's fear of me and my wife and our three year old son because we were queer we were lesbians. And the way that within six to nine months that community changed and became incredibly supportive and people we were all in different ways transformed and that's what should be happening in all neighborhoods across Amherst. You know, and, and I'm on a soapbox but I'll say, you know, it's like when we allow people coming out of homelessness, or people of low income to move into nice neighborhoods in Amherst, we all learn and we all benefit. I mean, I really want us to be less afraid and acknowledge the resistance of capitalism to any real care for people and find a way to create that together in Amherst and now I'll get off my soapbox. I'm sorry. I'm going to actually ask a related question which it's not really a question but a, but a comment that we've talked a little bit about owner occupancy and some of the pitfalls of enforcing that retention of the owner occupancy occupancy from the original need and I think it applies to your 34 Elaine as well. You know, can we look at that as an example of how we've applied. I'll just say, I'll call them restrictions but but enforcement of conditions, and, and how do we, how do we apply that how can we put our brains to making owner occupancy. As a long term rather than someone coming back in two years saying, okay, I'm done with that. Can we create a penalty system if someone essentially violates their, their commitment to owner occupancy can we can we make it a bigger hurdle. That's sort of the question I want to pose to people. We've got Janet Keller and the audience Mandy Joe you've got your hand up but you, Mandy Joe respond to whatever. And then we'll call Janet Keller back in. Mine isn't actually a response I actually have questions as a committee member slash sponsor for Chris. So you can go to Janet. Okay, and you've got another comment. I too would look forgot to thank Pat and Mandy Joe for a huge amount of work and for wanting to I'm hoping that that the work would lead to more affordability I share those goals 100%. I also want to site two places that came up when the planning board board did its first map session. They talked about how some of the complexes became very supportive communities for a wide variety of people of all ages, ethnicities, nationalities. And also income levels at North Village and puffed in village and and weigh in on another example which is where I live which is Cherry Hill co housing we've got 32 acres 32 houses housing houses here. We have a number of single duplex and triplex and pat and Mandy Joe and if any of you want to come, come see what we've done, I'd be be happy to show you around. And we do have it's divided up part of the land. It was a 40 B project, part of the land is permanently preserved and the town oversees that. We've raised a lot of food here we've raised more and more with each each year, and we do it ourselves and I'd be glad to show you that to you and some of that model could work, but it would take probably government support or a very well off private donor these days we it was done in those days with people helping the other families, people who had a little more money help the people who had less. But today it would unfortunately take government money and and or big private donor, but I'd be glad to show it to you and see if it sparks anything. Thanks. I'd be glad to visit. Okay, deal. Mandy Joe, and then I think after Mandy we need to just see if there are any next steps and talk about the rest of the process. Thank you. I have a couple of questions for Chris that I think, you know, go more towards, you know, Chris and I, I think are going to meet Chris pat and I are probably going to meet along with maybe some other planning staff at some point and I obviously have a lot of questions for that that more go to the particular proposal but the some of the questions that go towards sort of just general zoning stuff that came up while Chris was speaking today. You know, we've talked about this before that our RO, our RO and our RLD districts are on the same use column. And so I'm curious whether those columns could be split. And at least at a minimum for residential use, I'm actually curious if there's a history as to why they're on the same column when they really are in some sense to completely separate types of zones that might want different types of density. You talked a little bit about the administrative review process and the concern about duplexes, the difference between an owner occupied duplex and a non owner occupied duplex and building an owner occupied and then it going to administrative review if we move non owner occupied duplexes to site plan review. My question is I haven't read that section too closely since we did the ADU change. And some of the most more recent changes related to the temporary zoning that we just updated, but is that a mandatory process or if something falls with an administrative review can the building commissioner choose to not do an administrative review and send it back to the planning board. Because I think that if it's mandatory and you can't send back to the planning board that's a different discussion than if it's discretionary and the building commissioner could say oh hey it might fall under administrative review, but I'm not going to do an administrative review this this one goes back to it and so that's sort of different approaches so those are sort of my questions that relate to how we might approach some of this and thinking about that. Christine. So as far as the first question goes, I don't know how our own RLD got put in the same column in the beginning that that happened a long time ago, but I do know that BL and commercial used to be in the same column, and we separated them out a few years ago so it's totally possible to separate those two zoning districts and I think that's a good idea because they are obviously quite different one has a 30,000 square foot minimum lot size and the other one has an 80,000 square foot minimum lot size so they're really, you know, kind of a completely different animal. So yes, in terms of the administrative review review process, it's pretty clear that for projects where there's a change of use and there's no exterior, exterior change proposed that those are administratively approved and obviously the building commissioner may have a certain criteria that he uses to approve these things, but I don't think there's a way around that unless there is, you know, some aspect of an exterior change that may come to pass for instance, I know that in the past there's a proposal to change something, change the use and the applicant isn't proposing an exterior change. The building commissioner may decide that an exterior change is needed, such as, oh this place needs more parking or this place needs more lighting or this place needs something that he isn't seeing as being proposed right away and then he can refer that to the planning board. So that would be the way to, you know, get it before the planning board. Thank you. So we have, I understand the planning board has continued its hearing until April 5. And I am, I think I should make a motion that we should also continue this hearing until April 6, which is the following evening or afternoon. I would like to hear back the direction that this is taking and understand that this puts a lot of time pressure on the planning staff between now and April. And I don't think that was anyone's intention at least I hope it wasn't to put things on your plate that you didn't anticipate. So, it makes sense to continue our hearing. We, I suspect that we will see a very different, a very different use the same phrase animal in a couple of weeks. I think what is going through my head is part of part of my review of this, of this document was there, you know, there are ways to go about it just saying, this isn't really working for me. And then, you know, or and or getting into the detail of line by line changes that would be required to make me feel comfortable with it. So I think we're essentially talking about a brand new product that will show up on April 5 and April 6. I don't know if that starts a clock at a different time. If it, you know, if somebody could explain that to me perhaps the rules keeper person being Mandy Joe, maybe Mandy Joe could elaborate. Thank you. A couple of emotion has to have a time certain to. So we normally pick 435 five minutes after the meeting typically starts so I just asked that that be added to the motion. But so, so the time limits within Mass General Law are different for the planning board and for the council committee that's holding the hearing. So the planning boards hearing the council can't vote on a proposal until a minimum of 21 days after the planning board has closed its hearing. Or if the planning board reports its report before those 21 days until it gets the report. Sort of whichever one I don't want to say is, or I guess it's earlier whichever one is earlier the receipt of the report or 21 days after the close of a planning board hearing. There's no from the planning board close of a hearing there's no mass general law requirement to have the council vote within a spurt in time so the planning board hearing could in theory be closed. You know, pick something else like we could have if there was something that was closed last September, there's no deadline for technically the council to vote on whatever the planning board closed its hearing on. But under the law, the council also has to hold a hearing. And the council has to, once the council's hearing is closed which is the hearing we're holding is CRC, the legal council hearing. The council has to vote the proposal, or a proposal related to that hearing within 90 days of the close of the hearing. If it does not vote within the 90 days of the close of the hearing, the council has to hold another hearing. The planning board does not, but the council has to hold another public hearing. CRC has to we've done it actually I think once in our four years here where CRC had to hold another hearing. We didn't meet that 90 day deadline. What we have done since that time is try and wait to make sure that the planning board has closed their hearing before CRC closes it. And that that when those hearings are closed, the proposal is sort of at the point where it's not necessarily facing more major revisions. It's hard to explain what that is but like if we're going in. We saw the parking garage was originally a change of zoning for a zone and then what we did is we kept that hearing open once we heard that the sponsors and the planning department were working on sort of a new proposal. The planning board would not have to be called until that proposal was basically ready to go to a recommendation. It's obviously up to this committee what it wants to do about closing hearings and all but that's sort of the basis for legal stuff. We have found it's helpful for CRC to at least keep the hearing open as long as the planning board has their hearing open for various reasons. In the 90 day CRC had made its recommendation on whatever that was but the planning board hearing was still open and we couldn't actually vote until the planning board hearing was closed and 21 days later. And we ran out of that 90 days because it just took them longer to get to theirs. It also helps CRC to hear the planning board recommendation before we close our hearing. A couple things in the last four years of keep ours open until they're kind of done, because then we get the benefit of their recommendation as we discuss ours. Okay, and that was that was 90 days within the CRC hearing. From the CRC close of hearing so it's not from when we opened it. It's when, whenever we close it so essentially there's no timeline from what I've read to get these hearings done. In some sense, Chris might have a better idea but I don't think there's as long as you keep moving forward you can keep continuing the hearing, as long as something is happening to get stuff done. I would confirm that. I will confirm that. So I would. So in turn, thank you. Thank you. So in terms of the CRC involvement in this April 5, April 6 you come back with new material new presentation I'm assuming, and I would certainly speaking for myself, like to be able to look at it, think about it, ask questions, make comments. So we just assume that by continuing this hearing we just keep adding to whatever, whatever gets thrown and then we'll just, we'll just chew on that one for a bit until we figure out what it's looking like. Okay. Pat. Yeah, I just wanted to say that April 6 would be additional CRC meeting because we have one on March 30, and we have one on April 13. So are we unless I've got the wrong dates in my calendar. I think you've got the wrong dates. Check the online calendar. Yeah, I can do that later. I have the sixth on my calendar. I don't show the sixth on my calendar I had one for the 13th and the 27th. Okay, because I show the 30th to six and not the 13th. I'm wearing there. Okay, it's getting close. I make a motion to continue. That's the calendar we pass. Hold on. I got to change my book. Wait, no, wait, hold on. That one says approved November 17 2022. Oh wait, no, that is when we approved this calendar. Okay. So I'm going to hold it still April. Sorry. April 6, April 27. So is this, is this in our packet? I mean, in. It was probably in the November 17 packet. But it is online. Athena's posted it online. Yeah. On the committee webpage. Yeah, because I have, okay. Okay. So this would be a normal meeting for the CRC. Yes. Okay, good. So I make a motion to continue hearing to April 6 for 30 PM. And the seconds. Second. Thank you. And I will turn the meeting back over to the two. Jo Hanneke. We need to vote. Oh, right. Thank you. Let's see, let's start with Shawnee ball mill. Yes. Jennifer town. Yes. And I'm going to take the opportunity to make this. And I'm going to turn it over to the committee. And I'm going to turn it over to the committee. Jo Hanneke. Yes. Had the angel of. Hi. And Pam runny is an eye. Sounds unanimous to me. Tollany. Before you turn it over, can we make some comments and questions? Or should we just keep them for next week? Oh, I thought I, oh, I'm sorry. You didn't get your chance to make comments and questions. to continue the hearing, so we've closed it. I suppose I couldn't wait for. But I just want this to be, you know, there's just so many questions and comments and for Chris and for Madi Jo and Pat and for all of us. And so I'm just seeing this as a start of a conversation. It's not like a yes and no, like, oh, it's not this or it's this, but it's like a lot of work put in, obviously by Madi Jo and Pat. And I thank you for that. We all thank you for that. And I think it's really nudging us to take a closer look because my comment is just that not doing anything is also causing and exasperating the problem. So we have to look at the issue. I know some are saying, if it's not broken, why fix it? But it is broken because we all know many workforce, people who are working in that town cannot afford to live here. And I was just at the Black History Month celebration and just talking, you know, informally with people, what would you like to see? We're creating a reparations fund and just generally and inevitably I would hear affordable housing and not affordable for like 30% 80, but for people who are working and people of color and then home ownership and starter homes. And also I think all of these are what I'm hearing all of us say, but I think the approach might be slightly different, which is like, we don't, this is not agreeable. So it just feels like for a very long time, we haven't, we worked, made good progress in affordable housing, but in terms of workforce housing, and it seems like there are specific strategies, including some that Pat and Mandijo brought forward in the missing middle. So just having a more deliberate conversation and forcing ourselves to really look at the issue from different points of view and not agreeing. I'm not saying we should agree, but let's find what are the ways to offset some of our concerns. So I will send my questions though in more detail and encourage everyone to read some of the articles that I sent out and I sent it to Chris to share with any, you know, the planning part and anyone else just to look at what other towns are doing. What are some strategies that strong towns recommends? Okay, that's all. Thank you. For example, thank you. Jennifer, before we close, go for it. Yeah, so I totally agree with what Shawnee just said. I mean, nobody would say it's not broken and I know when I'm always, you know, going, you know, sort of beating that drum about losing our year-round non-student population is declining. That's because a lot of it has to do with housing that, you know, we've been, so I totally agree with Shawnee. It's just that we have been building a lot of housing that has just happened to be expensive housing for students and because students share the rent, the housing can be that much more expensive, but we absolutely have to have strategies to retain the housing that we have, you know, for low, moderate, missing middle and to create more housing for that population. I think we all agree on that. And the only thing, I don't know if we can, I would just, you know, like to add as, you know, the sponsors, you know, meet with the planning department that, you know, the permitting process is a way of, it's not created to be a burden for developers, but it provides safeguards for the whole town and the surrounding community. So I hope, you know, we can find a balance that, and I don't think that the prices are what the market will bear. So I think a Kendrick place or a One East Pleasant charges what they can, not because of what they had to go through during the permitting process, but they're charging what the highest that the market will bear. So I hope that we can see the permitting process as something that we have to provide safeguards and that they weren't designed to be burdensome to the builders. Thank you. Thank you. Shalini. I don't know if I should keep this comment, but I just cannot not share this, but like the permitting process, I know Chrissy said it doesn't increase, like we talked about specifics between special permit and SBR and the cost doesn't change. But I know having spoken to several builders that Amherst is known to, because of the difficulties in zoning and permits and whatnot, they add 10% to the cost. If you go to a bank to ask for more, you'll say, oh, which town Amherst, they'll say, okay, 10% increase your cost by 10%. That aside, the other thing I was gonna say is that what it does though is it doesn't detract the developers because they have built it in and they will pass on the cost and whatnot. But what these additional costs do do is make it hard for people like you and me to build a home, a safety for our old age. Like if I'm not able to live in this house when I'm older, making it easier for me to build a duplex just makes it possible for me to have that. And so it's distracting people like us from building family homes and whatnot. And I have such a beautiful, and in all the examples we heard today were so inspiring. And we have a great example of a person, a family who moved in into South Amherst because of the ADU law that we passed. And that's the story of success. And this person moved from California, was looking into East Hampton and all of these places, and they chose Amherst because they bought a bigger land and they want to be able to build an ADU. And so it does make a difference in families, in the family zoning, not in the downtown district only because our focus is just on where do we do more housing for students, which is great. But in the family areas, how can we make it possible and more inviting for families to make it affordable for them to build in these areas while creating the safeguards that it is inviting to families mostly. Okay, that's all. Great, thank you. I now turn the meeting over to Amanda Johannike. I'm not sure you totally needed to because all I'm gonna do is adjourn the meeting. It's 6.31 PM, but thank you. Thank you, Pam, for running the hearings and continuing to do that as we get through all of the proposal that I'm sponsoring and co-sponsoring with Pat. I want to thank Chris in particular for not just last night at the planning board, but today and being open and your comments and all of it. I hope, I think I speak for all of CRC when we say thank you for your wisdom and everything and all you're willing to do to sit through these meetings with us as we go forward and expand on these conversations. She's sitting in such a lovely spot, you know. I'm always jealous. That's her backyard. She's sitting where I want to be. I am. I'm sorry. I move that we adjourn this meeting. I already adjourned it at 6.31. Okay. So I'm gonna stop there. Thank you, and thank you, Chris and Dave. Thank you, everyone. Enjoy your time away, Jennifer. Okay, thank you very much. Bye. Thank you.