 Go folks. The chair notes it's 601 p.m. I call this meeting of the Amazonian Board of Appeals to order. My name is Steve Judge. As ZBA chair, I want to welcome everyone to this meeting. We'll begin with a roll call of the ZBA members. Steve Judge is present. This is Tammy Parks. Here. Mr. Dillon Maxfield. Here. Mr. Craig Meadows. Mr. John Gilbert. I can see him. Here. Present. They're just taking roll call, Steve. Yeah. Yep, you got it. Great. So with that, we do have a quorum present. I want to note the presence of our associate member, Mr. Sarah Marshall, who will serve on the first panel tonight. I also want to welcome our newly appointed members, Mr. Vince O'Connor and Mr. Slavittor and Mr. Helzer, who cannot be at this meeting tonight. We'll have a more full-time introduction later in the meeting. Also attending the meeting tonight is Ms. Christine Brestra, Planning Director and Mr. Stephen McCarthy, Planner, the town. We may be joined by Mr. Rob Mora, Building Commissioner at a later point in the meeting. Pursuant to Chapter 20 of the Acts of 21 and extended by Chapter 22 of the Acts of 2022, this meeting will be conducted via remote means. Members of the public who wish to observe the meeting may do so via Zoom or by 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 that, in real time, be a technological means. The Zoning Board of Appeals is a quasi-judicial body that operates under the authority of Chapter 48 of the General Laws of the Commonwealth for the purpose of promoting the health, safety, convenience, and general welfare of the inhabitants of the town of Amherst. In accordance with the provisions of Massachusetts General Laws, Chapter 48, and Article 10, Special Permit Grading Authority of the Amherst Zoning By-law, this public meeting has been duly advertised and noticed that Rob has been posted and mailed to parties at interest. All hearings and meetings are open to the public and are recorded by town staff, and may be viewed via the town of Amherst's YouTube page and ZBA webpage. The procedure is as follows. The petitioner presents the application to the board during the hearing, after which the board will ask questions for clarification or additional information. After the board has completed its questions, the board will seek public input. The public speaks with the permission of the chair. If the member of the public wishes to speak, this is so indicate by using the raised hand function on their screen. The chair with the assistance of the staff will call upon people wishing to speak. When you are recognized, provide your name and address to the board for the record. All questions and comments must be addressed to the board. The board will normally hold public hearings where information about the project and input from the public is gathered, followed by public meetings for each. The public meeting portion is when the board deliberates and is generally not an opportunity for public comment. If the board feels it has enough information and time, it will decide upon the application tonight. Each petition heard by the board is distinct and evaluated on its own merits, and the board is not ruled by precedent. Statutorily for a special permit, the board has 90 days from the close of a hearing to file a decision. For a variance, the board has 100 days from the date of filing to file its decision. No decision is final until the written decision is signed by the sitting board members and is filed in the town clerk's office. Once the decision is filed with the town clerk, there is a 20-day appeal period for an agreed party to contest the decision with a relevant judicial body in Superior Court. After the appeal period, the permit must be recorded at the registry of deeds to take effect. Tonight's agenda, a public hearing on ZBA FY 2023-07, Mohammad Maliknaiz to request an appeal under section 11.42 of the Building Commissioner's Decision of a Notice of Violation under sections 11.45 and 12.172 of Zoning Bylaw, located at 25 Nutting Avenue, MAP 11C Parcel 104, General Residence RG Zoning District. This is continued from both November 10th and our January 26th meetings. We understand there's a request for withdrawal. We will then have a chance to introduce our new ZBA members. We will have a public meeting, discussion of the legal ad fee, and a presentation and discussion on the zoning from the department staff on two sets of zoning amendments, one proposed and one adopted. Following that, there will be general public comment on matters not before the board tonight, as well as other business not anticipated within 48 hours. We hope to adjourn before 9 o'clock. The first order of business tonight is ZBA FY 2023-07, Mohammad Maliknaiz. I hope I'm going to ask to pronounce that correctly when it comes on. To request an appeal under section 11.42 of the Building Commissioner's Decision of Notice of Violation under section 11.45 and 12.172 of Zoning Bylaw, located at 25 Nutting Avenue, MAP 11C Parcel 104, General Residence RG Zoning District. This is continued from 11, 10, and 126. Ms. Marshall was impaneled on November 10th for consideration of this matter. She will replace Mr. Gilbert for the purposes of this consideration. We have received the following submissions, the January 23rd, 2023 email conversation between Mr. Robert Seiko, attorney for the applicant, and Ms. Brestrup seeking to withdraw the appeal. I think that is the only submission we have received on this matter. Is that right, Chris? Ms. Brestrup? I'm sorry I was muted. You received documents in your packet for January 26th. And those documents included You're correct. Yep. We can tell you what's those were. Do you have them, Mr. Judge? Yes, just a second. I put them aside just so I could do this and I misplaced them, of course. Do you have them before you? I had them and then I guess here they are. I'm sorry. Yep. So I can read them. You had a special permit application that was signed by Mr. Maleknias as the applicant and the property owner. And the application was to appeal a decision of the building commissioner. Yep. You had a management plan that went along with that, which didn't really have any information on it. All the things were considered to be not applicable. You had a letter from the attorney, Mr. Sacco, dated October 13th. And that included an application to the zoning board of appeals and supporting exhibits, the application being for the appeal. You had a letter dated September 29th. I'm sorry. I'm going back in time. It's okay. And that letter was from the town to the town clerk. And that was a letter requesting that the notice of violation be appealed. And that was signed by Mr. Sacco. You had a letter dated August 30th from John Thompson, who's one of our building inspectors. And that was to Mr. Maleknias. And that was a letter stating what the complaint was. And the complaint was that he had more than four individuals living at his property at 25 Nutting Avenue. And it was a notice of violation. And the fine for the violation was supposed to be $100 for each offense. And each day was considered a separate offense. And I think he was given until September 14th to meet the requirements of having less than, well, to have four or fewer people living in the house. Then I think some of this is repeated. There was a residential lease and rental agreement. And the date of that was the 30th of February 2022 signed by four people who were purportedly the tenants and signed by the management. There was a request for an emergency order under pains and penalties of perjury. And it was an action against Mr. Maleknias. And it had to do with having more than four people in his unit in the unit. There was a letter of September 26th. I'm not sure if I mentioned that one already. I don't think I did. And it was from Mr. Sacco to Declan Quinn, who I think might have been the person who was the additional occupant notified to vacate, deliver at the end of the month, the end of the tenancy. And a letter to Mr. Christopher McLean, also a notice to vacate. And a letter to Mr. Robert Early, which was also a letter, a notice to vacate the apartment. So since Mr. Maleknias, who owns the property, wanted to be able to take care of all this business in a kind of a not tumultuous manner. He wasn't able to meet the timeline that was set forth in the original complaint. And he did appeal the decision of the building commissioner to to have the property be vacated of the tenants who were over four tenants. And he was working on getting things straightened out. And so he asked for an extension of the time to hold the public hearing for the appeal. And that was extended to January 26. Unfortunately, there was a problem with the public notice for the January 26 meeting. So that's why we're holding this meeting today. I did expect either Mr. Maleknias or Mr. Sacco to be here tonight. But I think they might have gotten confused as a result of the January 26 meeting being canceled because of lack of posting. So if the zoning board of appeals would be inclined to do so, they could accept the withdrawal of this application for appeal based on my explanation and based on the paperwork that you had in your packet for January 26 and based on this email that Mr. Sacco sent asking to withdraw. Yes. Thank you, Mr. Brestrup. That's gives us some details on the reason for the appeal. And it does also identify their written request to withdraw the appeal. We don't have and you're right, we don't have anybody representing the applicant at this point on the call. I don't see anybody in the participants or attendees I mean that are doing that. So we will just proceed without a specific comment. Are there any members of the board that have any questions regarding this matter? Ms. Marshall? I do because I did not look back at the most recent materials, I apologize. So I'm not clear. Well, they filed the appeal. So now they want to withdraw it. But they wanted the fines postponed because they said it was they could not legally get rid, evict those tenants until anyway. So could perhaps Ms. Brestrup summarize what has happened and and state whether the town has any objection to the withdrawal? The town may I Oh, Rob Morris here, he can probably explain this much better than I can. So if Mr. Judge will recognize him. Mr. Mora. Yes, thank you. So this matter has been resolved. And there weren't there were actually no fines issued. There was a violent notice of violation that as they typically do, they indicate that fines may be issued if the, you know, the violation continues and the owner doesn't take the proper steps to bring it to resolution. What we found was that the owner in fact did take the proper steps. They notified their tenants and went into housing court and took the steps necessary to bring this to to a place where it's in compliance with these types of matters where when there's tenants living in houses, it does take time. So it took until December 30th. And that was an agreement that we participated in the drafting of between the tenants and the landlords that the tenants leave by December 30th and bring the property into compliance. And because they did that and work towards that solution, we did not end up imposing any fines to this owner. Go ahead, Ms. Marshall. They're not in violation. And as far as the town is concerned, they they did what they needed to do. Is that correct? They're they were not in violation as of December 30th. And given the the, you know, the the limitations and what a property owner can do to to remove occupants from the property to get compliance, we were satisfied with the approach they took. That wouldn't have, you know, we didn't have any other better option in eviction process or otherwise wouldn't have been able to been had been resolved that in that timeframe. So we were satisfied with the December 30th. You know, agreement that was made between those two parties to bring the property into compliance. Thank you. Are there any other questions from members of the panel? If not, this is a public hearing. And members of the public can comment on this. I'll open it up to public comment. Are there any members of the public who wish to comment? And if so, please raise your hand and indicate so on the screen. When you are if recognized, please identify yourself and your address and speak, try to have your your comment be limited to about three minutes. I don't see any people that wish to speak to you, Chris, or Steve looks like it's clear. All right. If there are no further comments from the board, you have no comments from the applicant except for his written request. The question before the board, and I would entertain a motion is that we accept the request for withdrawal of ZBA 2020 ZBA 2023 dash zero seven. So moved. Is there a second? Second. Ms. Marshall seconds it any discussion on the motion. If not, the vote occurs on the motion. This is a roll call vote. Chair votes aye. Ms. Parks. Aye. Mr. Maxfield. Aye. Ms. Marshall. Aye. Mr. Meadows is on this panel, but he's not attending. That's four votes. Four votes are what's needed to approve this. The motion carries four votes for one absent. All right. That's settled. Next order of business is introduction of our new members. So we have Vince O'Connor on the call. Good to welcome Vince. David Slaveter and Jordan Helser both cannot make the meeting tonight. We hope they'll be we'll have another chance to meet as a board to zoom in the near future where we can welcome them. But I had just a couple of thoughts that I prepared for the new members, Mr. O'Connor. And so I'm going to ask you to suffer through it just for a minute or two, if you would. ZBA the ZBA has a very busy schedule this year. And I look forward to working with you on the many applications we are we anticipate considering. I know we've all served on committees and boards before and your ability to work collaboratively on committees is part of the reason the town council selected you to serve on the ZBA. And I want to mention a few things that I have found important for all full members, as well as associate members of the ZBA. First, we conduct ourselves with full recognition of the role placed upon the board by the town. We are quasi judicial body that applies and interprets the bylaw. We do not create new bylaws. We operate within a framework that requires us to follow certain procedures and make numerous findings and making our decisions. But our findings and decisions also require us to use our judgment, discretion and experience in applying the bylaw. We are not in a straitjacket, but we operate within a framework in which we have all been appointed to use our best judgment on how to apply the bylaw. Second, it is important that we conduct ourselves in a manner that furters the legitimacy of our actions. We want the applicants as well as the general public to believe that we are acting in a fair, transparent and impartial manner. We should remind ourselves that often when a person comes before us, whether as an applicant or as a public commenter, it is often the most consequential interaction they will have with the town. They may be speaking about their most important asset in their lives, whether it's their home, their business or their neighborhood. And they have a right to be heard and their concerns fairly evaluated. Thirdly, it's important that the board conduct itself in a collegial manner. And I think that involves a couple, a few things. If you're on a panel for a manner, please try to attend the site visit and read the material prior to the meeting. We will try to get the material to use several days ahead of time to give you time to review it. Please try to sign on to our Zoom meetings five to 10 minutes before the meeting starts. That way we know we have a quorum to start the meeting. Please maintain a respectful dialogue with your fellow members. This has rarely been a problem in the ZBA, but as chair, I will not abide disrespectful comments to other board members or to the public. As an associate member, you will benefit from observing the meetings that you're not, even though you're not appointed to a panel. It will help you get up to speed faster. Also, as associate members, your principal royal is to fill in when a full member cannot serve on the panel. I'm confident that with work schedules, vacations, family commitments, and conflicts of interest of full members, that will provide associate members with a chance to serve on panels. I think Ms. Marshall can vouch for how often she's been asked to serve on a panel if he only served as an associate member for six months, I think. So with that, I want to welcome you to the zoning board of appeals. Thank you for your commitment to this public service and give you a chance to ask any questions you may have of me or other members of the staff. Okay. You need to get in or anything. That's okay, Mr. O'Connor. I just open it up to you if you had any questions. I've read a lot of the material that I was provided with and I don't know, as some of the members may know, I actually have appeared before the zoning board three times on appeals of the building commissioners' rulings twice successfully. A number of years ago, though, a number of decades ago, actually. So, and I've attended very many planning board meetings over the years. So I'm pretty familiar with how the board conducts itself and how important it is that we are interactions with the public are respectful and attentive. And so I'm happy to have, you know, to be available to the board in case you need me and, you know, bring what I can to the process. Thank you. It sounds like you're ready, willing, and able to help us and we appreciate that. Great. But welcome aboard. And if you do have questions, we have a great staff. I know we're a little short staff right now, but you guys are filling in very, very well in spite of a couple of vacancies. And I'm sure that will continue to be excellent. So you have staff you can talk to and they can really be of help. So I also have a couple, I have some materials from earlier seminars that I can give to Chris and she can she can pass it or Steve and then they can pass it on to you as well, Mr. O'Connor. So anyway, we can help you up. We will. All right. Any other questions regarding from the the members regarding what I just said or any questions regarding the business of the board before we go on to our other three items on the agenda, legal ad fees and two zoning changes, one proposed and one adopted. Just wanted to say welcome on board. That's glad to have you. Great. Thanks, Mr. Maxwell. All right. Next order of business is legal is a discussion about legal ad fees. I think if you were if the board members will recall, it was last August or September that proposal came before the ZBA to a change our bylaws to increase the legal ad fee that we charge applicants for special permits. The reason being is that the fee that we were charging was I don't remember if it was 75 or $150, but it didn't come close to covering the cost of the legal ad fee, which sometimes runs in excess of 800, 900 or $1,000. So the town was losing was costing the town a lot of money. And what we did at that was recommended to us that we increase the legal ad fee to 300, which partially covers some of the cost, but wouldn't be a burden to wouldn't be an undue burden on homeowners that have smaller projects that they wish to that require a special permit. In that discussion, we came up, I think what I know we came up with a consensus among the board members that we should try to number one differentiate between owner occupants, single family homes and owner occupied duplexes and try to minimize cost on them and that the fee for the legal ad fee would be greater for non owner occupied properties or income producing properties. And that was the we wanted to have a sort of a bifurcated fee structure. We also wanted to have a fee structure that was similar or at least harmonized with the planning board's fee structure that would it wasn't confusing and there wasn't a preference to go one route over the other because of the structure of the legal ad fees. The board voted to do that and the board voted to empower me to to instruct me to go to the talk to the planning board chairman try to achieve that. I did speak with the planning board chairman along with staff who were in that meeting. And as I recall, we came up and this was in October September. We came up with a package that would increase the fees, the proposal that would increase the fees to $500 for all applications except for owner occupied single family homes and owner occupied duplexes for that fee would be I think it was was it 150 Chris? Is that what we agreed to? Do you recall? That's correct. But I didn't remember the $500. So I'm remembering this a little differently. So that's that's yeah that's a it was a while ago so I thought it was I thought we'd agreed to $500 and you thought we were keeping it at $300? Oh I know what it was. You know we talked about going to $500 and then if I recall correctly you wanted to run past the staff wanted to run past the other staff members and see if if that was more than you wanted to charge. If the $300 or $500 which made the most sense. I think that's what we discussed and that's the reason that we didn't act on it right away is that you guys want to take a look at the fee structure and that in the planning department and you're in the middle of budget process and how it would impact the budget. And I guess that's what the and then you you guys had a chance to to do that since we had that meeting with the planning board. I wonder if have you given for the thought has the planning department given further thought to the the fee that should be charged for all but single-family homes and owner-occupied single-family homes and owner-occupied duplexes. May I speak? Yep please yes please. We have given some thought to it and I've had a conversation with the chair of the planning board. We did settle on a fee of $300 for all planning board applications and the planning board doesn't have very many single-family or two-family applications. It turns out that we have had two recently. We had one where there was someone who had a two-family house and he wanted to build a single-family house on the same property. Actually that turned out to it be a zoning board of appeals public hearing but the planning board had considered that project and made a recommendation to the zoning board. So that was one that they did consider of course they didn't charge a fee for that because that was just a recommendation and then recently we've had a two-family house on Spalding Street which is a case where there is a single family or there was a single-family house. It became a two-family house and the owners of the house are renting the second unit but they're also renting three other bedrooms. So my most recent conversation with the planning board chair is that the planning board doesn't really have the kind of small projects that the zoning board has and when it does have a two-family house it tends to be something where someone is potentially making you know a thousand dollars a month per bedroom on the on the extra unit. So he didn't sound like he was very very eager to lower the fees for single-family or excuse me owner occupied homes. We don't get the kinds of applications that the CBA does with regard to non-conformities and things like that if it's just a non-conformity those tend to you know the single-family house with the non-conformity would go to the CBA ordinarily or it could be dealt with by the building commissioner. I think that's exactly the way it is currently dealt with and maybe Rob Mark could speak to that a little bit more but I think if we're going to change the planning board's current legal ad I would have to go back to the planning board and talk to them about it and I haven't done that yet. I could put it on the agenda for their meeting next week so I think there's more to be said about this and I don't feel like we can necessarily reach a conclusion tonight but it sounded the last time I talked to the planning board chair it sounded like he was satisfied leaving the fee at a flat 300 for now. Okay so there are two things here seems Ms. Bressrop. The first is there doesn't seem to be as much overlap as we thought when we first began this process between the kinds of applications that the zoning board of appeals receives and the planning board receives and therefore the need to harmonize the fee structure between the two bodies may not be as great as we thought originally is that would that be a fair assessment? I think that's a good assessment yeah. Okay and so then despite our efforts to do that it may be it may be something that's not worth pursuing if we wish to change our fee structure and so the next question becomes we've adopted the $300 so if we if we no longer feel a need to harmonize with the planning board because it just isn't a lot of overlap then the question becomes do we leave the fee structure as it is of $300 per application as we have in our as per the recommendation of the staff and as we have in our bylaws or do we wish to increase it and differentiate it some way or and I guess I would leave that up to the to the the board to discuss and in our meeting back in September I know that Mr. Maxfield and others on the board and I think Mr also Mr Meadows talked about wanting to cover more of the cost to the town for income producing property and less cost to individuals with a single family homes or single family or owner-occupied homes and owner-occupied duplexes then I'm I'm also of that opinion question is and it's in our power to increase the fees the question is do we want to do that as a board increase the fees charged by the ZVA at this time or do we want to study it and I would open that up to members of the of the board to consider this and on this matter it's the the full members of the board that will vote on this all members associate members as well we'll can discuss on it but full members of the board are the ones that are allowed to modify our bylaws and that's what this would be is a modification of the bylaw but everybody all members of the board can speak to it Ms. Marshall you were up first yeah I think in general that it's helpful to have things in writing because I don't remember what they're kind of what what the range of options might be but but also and maybe I misunderstood this when it first came up I thought the town's goal was to have the applicants cover the full charge of the ads and as you said it can be as much as a thousand dollars so 300 wouldn't come close to covering that so did I misunderstand is the town still hoping that we will raise these fees substantially so but in any case I think it would be useful to have it all written down yep either Ms. Brestrup or Mr. Mora what is the you last time suggested 300 as an increase from 75 or 150 and does Ms. Marshall remember correctly that you wanted to cover it all and if not what was the reason for picking the 300 I guess may I yes Ms. Brestrup please yeah so we felt that the 300 was kind of halfway there to go all the way from 75 up to paying the full amount it was really a jump and if we could get to 300 we'd feel better about it having the applicant pay the full rate is problematic because it's hard for us to you know when we send in a legal ad to the Gazette they send back what it's going to cost to run the legal ad but we can't then run out to the applicant and get a check from him to pay the Gazette we have to you know kind of figure out how to administer it and it's very complicated and the conservation commission does do that but they their fees are lower because they only advertise once that doesn't really have anything to do with this matter but it's it is complicated for them to chase down the applicants to get them to pay and if you wanted to know well in advance of when the legal ad is going to be run you know you could do that and you could send the legal ad to the Gazette three or four weeks ahead of time get the amount that was needed to be paid then go chase the applicant and have the check in hand but again that adds to the burden of the planning staff so we figured that the three hundred dollars was kind of a compromise it's better than it was when we were charging seventy five and maybe in a year or two we'll want to reconsider this but we figured it was kind of a fair number to start with so that's kind of how we ended up with this and and there are towns that do require applicants to put in their own legal ads but then you have to worry about well are they are they saying it properly you know are they covering all the sections of the bylaw that they need to cover are they you know doing sending it in in time you know for the public hearing so we felt that it was better for us to control that and there aren't any publications I know Rob Morris says he does business in Belcher town and other towns where they put their legal ads in places like the reminder which are a lot less expensive but Amherst the Amherst reminder doesn't really have a robust legal ad section as yet so that might be an option in the future but for right now the Gazette is really the the game in town where the people actually read so that's kind of how we ended up with the Gazette so I guess that's all I have to say for now but Rob may have something to offer I certainly if I would add one thing that I don't think we have to require the exact coverage of the costs if that's our goal I think there's no reason to impose additional burden on the staff trying to either chase people down paying it themselves or actually going out and seeing what the dollar down to the last dollar is getting some approximation of whatever the number is is fine with me so one thing we don't want to do is is put more work on you and your team Ms. Breastrop and Mr. Mora but the question is where is it so it sounds to me like you're saying that 300 is where the town wants us to be at least at present is they're comfortable with that is that what's in the budget is that you would get enough fees from 300 dollars to in the budget we have a certain amount in our budget to cover legal ads we went over it significantly now I guess it was in FY 22 because we had a lot of zoning bylaws as well as applications so we're trying to catch up to that we don't want to go over it but we do have it a certain amount in our budget to to pay for legal ads so if we get a little boost from applicants of 300 dollars per application we feel like that is is going to get us do a good place okay other comments from board members Mr. Chairman yes Mr. O'Connor even though I don't vote on this I'd like to try to understand so the is the 300 dollars proposed for those applications which are not single family homes or duplexes or or is it for everything it's for everything that's our current bylaws are $300 for everything our current our current bylaw is $300 for everything yes for legal ads and the proposal is to have a reduced fee for certain applications below the 300 that was one part of it and then there was some discussion about increasing the other she's to a higher number and 500 was one or leaving it as it is at three other people wanted to have a higher number than that but yeah there was discussion about increasing it yeah I would I would be inclined I mean I think it's we need to maybe have a I mean I would think of perhaps an intermediate step between 150 or 75 for owner occupied single family and duplexes um but just to go to 300 for a 100 unit apartment building and and charge the same amount for 100 unit apartment building that you would for a a four unit building I think would be a problem for me and I'm my other concern would be is we're talking the the differentiation was with regard to owner occupied single family homes and duplexes do we have this the same kind of differentiation has been discussed for certain types of business applications which we might get versus others that are far more extensive the you know the I'm you know some of the small shops downtown as opposed to a big why supermarket for example um I think it wouldn't be seen as very fair to have somebody who has a small you know shop in the center of town or in one of the outline village centers to pay the same application fee as stop and shop and that's where I would say we we need to differentiate the business business application as well if if if there are enough applications of that nature but I would I would be concerned about having a much higher fee for for example 500 500 is okay for me for you know for 50 to 100 unit apartment building I'm not too sure that I would feel as comfortable with charging 500 to a small business in a village center or in the downtown thank you Mr. Maxfield um but my question here is is there any way we can just do something like upon application if somebody can check off something like is this commercial it's something that they plan on being a rental to generate income or it's going to be something like an edu or some type of variance just to their own home and just being able to split it off that way and then having say a cheaper path for somebody who's just making some modification to their own home that needs to go through the cba versus somebody who is doing any sort of commercial development if they're trying to make a rental unit or something like that to just split that and have have that one be something like a $600 fee where another one someone needs to yeah something some modification their house maybe that's like a $150 fee where the town is eating more of the cost on that is that something people would be amenable to and that's something that we can do you know I'd let other people comment on that I think but my comment would be I think Ms. Marshall made a good point that we if we're going to go down this road we probably ought to have something in writing and have and Dylan or Mr. O'Connor or anybody should could propose something at our next meeting or in two weeks something to that effect if we wish but I think there was what I will say Mr. Maxfield is that there was it seemed consensus on a bifurcated simple bifurcated structure because there's already there's lots of other fees that are charged as well not just these legal ad fees there's other fees that are charged to the to people who are you know depending upon their impact on the of the project so there are differentiated fees we were looking to do something simple single family homes and duplex owner occupied duplex is the one thing everybody else who's making a profit off the the change would pay a higher fee and trying and trying to balance off how high that would be and trying to bring some additional revenue into the town without being without being discouraging applications that's the other thing it's all all a balance so I guess I'd like to hear other comments and then it seems to me we're not ready to make a decision on this this week it probably makes sense to have to have proposals come to us in two weeks or in four weeks and we can look at it then but I would welcome any other comments from board members comment I'll just make is basically what would you've been mentioning and you know Mr. Maxfield and Ms. Marshall here I think seeing it in writing is helpful and that'll give us the opportunity to you know sort of review when and where these are you know sort of imposed all right I think I saw Ms. Parks nodding her head in agreement as well as well as a thumbs up perfect okay so let's do this why don't I suggest that we take this up not in one week not in our next meeting but in the meeting after so we get and that gives everybody time to work up something work with Ms. Brestrup and Rob and Steve on coming up with a plan what you want to work on and then provide it presented to us in in two meetings which I think is is it March the next probably March 3rd I think would be the meeting that we would have because we we have a meeting on this on the 16th could I hold on yeah you're a little bit off schedule if you don't mind my saying so so you have a meeting on the 16th and then we were thinking that you could cancel the meeting on the 23rd and then your next meeting would be the 9th of March because it's really the second and the fourth Thursdays of the month yeah so let's let's shoot let's shoot this for this topic to be discussed on the 9th of March okay is that work for everybody yeah it I think it works for me but I I'm not sure I understood what you said were you asking members to submit their ideas to Ms. Brestrup or she's heard them here or or no no to work however you want to do it you I'm sure you can work with Ms. Brestrup to to work it out but come back to us on the 9th if you have a specific proposal with something in writing and it'd be easy to for us to to consider at that point make sense all right good enough great the next order of business is presentation from the staff on two proposals for zoning changes one deals with duplexes triplexes and townhomes and the other which is proposed by the by commission town council people Hanna key and the angelist and a second one which is already adopted which changed the treatment of certain food establishments restaurants and bars so I've asked Rob and Chris and Steven to prepare a presentation so that we can understand this my and I think the first thing would be to to discuss what the status of this proposal is I saw it at the first of around the first of the year I know that the town the CRC committee community resources committee has had this preferred to them and to the planning board I've watched one planning board hearing on it there's another one which I have not watched and I think the CRC committee has had one or two hearings and they have another hearing coming up on this the new zoning proposal so that would be helpful to to give us a status report when it's likely to be looked at by the town council and and what our role in that process is and then go through the proposal itself so Chris, Steve or Rob whoever is is going to take the lead on this it's we look forward to your presentation okay well I think I'll take the lead and then Rob and or Steve can jump in if they are recognized by the chair I am going to give you kind of the quick and dirty version of this and Mandy Johanicki is coming next Thursday the 16th to give you a more formal presentation so my intention is to introduce you to this topic and then you've received a lot of information in your packet and I'm sure you'll have a lot of questions so anyway I made up a little a little script here and Steve is going to help me as we go along so my name is Chris Brestrup and I'm the planning director and I want to introduce you to this proposed zoning amendment on housing types you received material on this in your packets for this meeting and the planning board has also received material the zoning amendment was first sent to town council by two counselors in January and on January 6th town council voted to refer the amendment to the planning board and the community resources committee for public hearings I'm not here tonight to convince you to support this zoning amendment I think that Mandy Joe you know will be in that role next week I'm just here to introduce it to you and to explain it to you the work of the ZBA will be affected by the changes proposed by this amendment and I believe that's Mr. Judge recognize that fact and for the most part the work of the ZBA will be reduced if this zoning amendment or parts of it are adopted so I've already said that at your coming meeting on February 16th you'll receive a more full-blown presentation of this somebody's screen I think Steve is trying to help me out let's see anyway so Mandy Joe Hanneke when she meets with you on the 16th will tell you why she thinks this zoning amendment is necessary I'll give you a brief synopsis of that so the zoning amendment was proposed by two counselors Mandy Joe Hanneke and Pat DeAngelis the reason they propose the amendment is to increase the number of housing units in town and to make it easier to get permits to build housing units they are focusing on small housing types like duplexes triplexes converted dwellings in townhouses and the reason they're making the proposal is that they believe that housing is not affordable in Amherst and I'm sure that many of us believe that too and they also believe that the lack of affordability has a disproportionate effect on low-income, middle-income people and members of the what is known as the BIPOC community black, indigenous and people of color so counselors Hanneke and DeAngelis are proposing to streamline the permitting process for various types of small housing developments hoping that a more streamlined process will encourage people to build more housing and enable more low-income middle-income and members of the BIPOC community in Amherst to live in Amherst and to rent and own property some of the changes that are proposed would take housing types out of the ZBA jurisdiction and put them into the jurisdiction of the planning board and some of the changes will take permitting out of the jurisdiction of both the planning board and the zoning board of appeals and put them into the jurisdiction of the building commissioner so first I wanted to look at use categories but before we do that I'd like to look at page four of the PowerPoint presentation that you received as part of your packet and Mr. McCarthy Steve McCarthy has brought up page four so I wanted to describe to you the different types of permits that we use in town there are basically four of them there's yes which means it's allowed you don't have to go through any land use permitting process there's site plan review which is a process by which the planning board reviews things on the exterior of a building but they don't really review what's inside the building there's a special permit which is generally from the zoning board of appeals and the zoning board of appeals gets deeply into the use of the proposal as well as what's going on on the site and then there's no no you can't do that in this zoning district so the yes is we call it by right it means the use is appropriate anywhere in the zoning district the building inspector building commissioner issues a building permit for the use if the zoning requirements are met in other words if the setback requirements and the lot area requirements are met there's no public hearing involved and butters are not notified and to give you an example of a use that is you know that that fits this category it's a single family home in a residential district but also things like forestry orchards conservation in all zones are allowed by yes and you can look through your bylaw and in the use table which is I think it's section 3.3 use categories and you can see that there are a lot of uses in the very beginning of it that are yes the next type of permit is the site plan review from the planning board and some people call this by right but it's really by right with a review with a land use permit and the land use permit is called site plan review approval so essentially it's a use that is appropriate anywhere in the zoning district but the town wants to have input into what is it going to look like how many parking spaces is it going to have will there be amenities on site what about the planting plan so the planning board holds a public hearing to review the project it can it really is only denied when there isn't enough information given in the application for the planning board to make a decent judgment or if the project doesn't meet the requirements of the zoning bylaw or doesn't meet the criteria in section 11.24 generally speaking there's no appeal period of course anybody can bring anything to court but generally we don't have appeals from site plan review decisions there is a public hearing and there is a notification of everybody who owns property within 300 feet that there's a public hearing and they can come and make comments so it assumes that the use is suitable in the zoning district and it also assumes that the site plan review will be granted and this is a typical type of permit throughout the bylaw um the third type is in is a special permit and this is generally granted by the zoning board of appeals and this is discretionary that's why it's called a special permit so the zoning by board of appeals has the right to approve or deny this type of application it is generally that the use is appropriate in some parts of the zoning district but may not be appropriate in other parts because it may have an effect on adjacent properties that's not a good effect you have to make findings to grant the permit and the findings have to do with suitability of the location and compatibility with existing uses whether or not it's going to inconvenience of butters and whether it's in harmony with what's going on around it there is a 20 day appeal period after a decision is filed with the town clerk and this type of permit acknowledges that the use may or may not be suitable that thereby it's discretionary and it requires a careful look at what's being proposed this is also typical throughout the bylaw and the fourth thing is no you can't build whatever it is you're proposing to build in this district so it just means it's not allowed and generally speaking there aren't that many uses that aren't allowed but it depends it depends on the district so this PowerPoint presentation notes that single family homes are not allowed in non-residential districts you do find the occasional single family home in a business district but that's really an anomaly leftover from a previous time there are certain business uses that aren't allowed in residential districts the proponents note that radioactive waste storage is only allowed in the LI district which may be of interest to you I don't think we have any such storage here but there are certain uses that are definitely no so okay thank you Steve for letting me leave that explanation both Steve's we should also take a look at description of the residential zoning districts so if Steve McCarthy can bring that up that would be helpful so this describes what the residential zoning districts are and some of them are very close into town center and some of them are very far out and so let's go through these there's the RG zoning district which is the general residence it's supposed to be these are descriptions that are taken from the zoning by-law generally speaking they may not be word for word but it's the spirit of these is taken from the zoning by-law they're medium to high density they're near the town center they're between the university and the town center and they're convenient to services facilities institutions or employment opportunities so an example of this would be the high street north whitney street area gray street around the high school that's general residence also Lincoln Ave and I believe Sunset Ave is also a general residence although you're probably starting to get towards our end when you're getting farther to the west so let's just say Lincoln would be RG the next one is RVC which is residential village center and that tends to cluster around the village center such as North Amherst Village Center and Pomeroy Village Center and I think there might be some down in the actually I won't go any further than that Pomeroy and North Amherst so the resident they're residential neighborhoods within an adjacent to village centers they have medium density a limited mix of residential and office uses and they provide a transition between the business village center district and surrounding residential districts RN is the neighborhood residents and these are medium density areas they're appropriate for lands that are adjacent to higher density residential districts and they're near arterial or primary residential streets an example of this would be Echo Hill if you know Echo Hill and Heatherstone Road which is adjacent to Pelham Road and so that's a fairly dense neighborhood but it's not as dense as neighborhoods in the RG zoning district RO is outlying residents and these are farther from the center of town they're lower density residential areas they tend to be along roadways many of them are kind of the frontage property in farming districts and they're a transition between low density RLD and medium density RN so again a lot of them are along main roadways such as Bay Road although you would also find that the Orchard Valley neighborhood it's a long meadow drive and that area is in the RO zoning district even though it's fairly dense but it's not as dense as say Echo Hill and then there's RLD which is the lowest density residential zoning district that we have and those tend to be the farming districts and they tend to not be right on the road you usually have a strip of RN or RO along the road and then RLD is behind that and those are mostly along South East Street, Northeast Street, Bay Road and those outlying rural areas so now that you know all about residential zoning districts and all about permitting let's go to the chart that Steve has that is a one page chart you can bring that up Steve and we'll show you some changes that are being proposed by this proposal it's the chart that doesn't that's it yeah it doesn't have too many words on it so here we are with the residential uses listed down the left side of the page and then across the top are all of the zoning districts that I just talked about and we're really going to focus on the residential zoning districts which are the four columns to the left but there are a few others where residential uses are allowed so what the proponents of this zoning amendment are trying to do is sort of take each use category and make it slightly easier to get a permit and in some cases they're not just jumping one step easier they're jumping two steps easier so one family dwellings they're not changing at all but owner-occupied duplexes they want to make those as easy to build as single family one family detached dwelling so in other words if you're living in the house and it's a duplex the proponents of this zoning amendment feel that you should be able to build it just with a building permit so in the RO, RLD, RN, RBC and RG districts the mechanism for getting approval would be a building permit and that's why this says why for yes so in all of those districts it would be why for yes what you're seeing just below the why in the case of the RO, RLD and RN are some letters in parentheses and the letters in parentheses refer to developments in the aquifer recharge protection district which is a district that's kind of large and it's down in the southeast corner of town and it's really around the Lawrence swamp but there's a lot of area aside from Lawrence swamp it's also in the ARP district so what the proponents are saying is rather than saying no to building an owner occupied duplex in the ARP district they would like to see those by site plan review so you would have some planning board review of what's being proposed how much parking you know how much paved area whether it was planting there and all of those kinds of things moving down to can I just stop you first just a quick second tonight sure I'm not as familiar with the aquifer district does the what other agency in town or commission in town takes a look at has a responsibility for protecting the aquifer of districts is it the COMCOM the conservation commission or or is there another aid is there another body that will will judge whether a house or a use is going to imperil the aquifer the water supply protection committee looks at the aquifers and what's going on and around them but I'm not sure that they would get involved in reviewing something that is being proposed there if it's only a single family house or a duplex we could ask them to as part of our review process if people thought that was important and so you know we could bring them into it but generally speaking they they wouldn't get into site plan review we do send all of our applications to the DPW to both the superintendent of public works and the town engineer so if they spot something that doesn't look great you know they would respond but of course they're very busy so they might not notice everything so I think that's that's a good question that maybe we need some further review or some you know particular listing of the water supply protection committee on projects that are in the ARP district so I apologize for interrupting you I'll I'll let you go that's okay yep I'll make a note of that ARP review so the idea of the proponents is to make the all of these things a slightly easier in the ARP I think initially most of the ARP was not on sewer it was all on septic and I think that there would be a relationship between you know having a septic system and having you know density areas that were in the ARP and now a lot of those areas are on sewer so that's been taken into consideration here so affordable duplexes that's a particular type of duplex that has one of the two units at least affordable and that would be that would be on the state housing inventory so it's kind of hard to get duplexes on the state housing inventory although we do have a couple of them we have one two of them that were built by habitat for humanity one is on east pleasant street and one is on north pleasant street so they would then instead of having site plan review in these residential zoning districts they would they're proposed to be a yes in all of those zoning districts let's see non-owner occupied duplex is the next one and we all know what that is so those are currently required to be special permit in three out of four we're actually four out of five residential districts and the proposal is to make them by site plan review by the planning board rather than special permit by the zoning board of appeals and then in the BN zoning district which is a business neighborhood district these non-owner occupied duplexes would also be allowed by site plan review instead of special permit then the proponents of this zoning amendment are hoping to add another use category called triplex so currently a three unit building would be considered either a townhouse or an apartment and we've long talked about creating another category and allowing triplexes to exist similarly to duplexes and not have them be lumped in with apartments and townhouses so that's what the proponents are doing here and they're saying that the triplex should be allowed in all the zoning districts that are residential by site plan review and that they shouldn't be well they're not allowing them in a fraternity residential district and that makes sense and they're not allowing them in the business district except for business neighborhood which is BN and then they're not allowing them in the other business districts which are listed to the right of this chart I'm almost finished with this part converted dwelling is a kind of what should I say it's a different it's a different it's a horse of a different color I guess you could call it it's got a kind of confusing description in the zoning bylaw but essentially it's an existing house that is able to be converted into two or more dwelling units without making significant changes to the exterior or it could be a detached building like a garage or a barn that is built before 1964 so that's what a converted dwelling is and right now converted dwellings are only allowed by special permit in all of the residential zoning districts except for RF where it's not allowed at all and the proponents are saying that this should be allowed by site plan review by the planning board so every time we're saying something goes from special permit to site plan review it goes from zoning board of appeals review to planning board review and then converted dwelling is allowed by special permit in the limited business village center business and neighborhood business by special permit and the proponents are saying make those by site plan review as well I think Mandy will give you more of a sense of why they're making these proposals I'm just telling you what they're proposing townhouses townhouses are buildings that have between three and 10 units in a building so townhouses are generally not allowed in the outlines residential districts such as the RO the RLD and the RN currently so they're not allowed along Bay Road they're not allowed in Orchard Valley they're not allowed in Echo Hill I think they wouldn't be allowed in Emerson Woods which would be RN but now the proponents are saying no those should be allowed by special permit in some places it might make sense to have a townhouse in those locations but you can see N in parentheses which means in the case of a property that's in the ARP they wouldn't be allowed it would be a no in the ARP district and then in residential village center and general residents they would be allowed by site plan review and in some of the business districts they would also be allowed either by special permit or by site plan review in the BG which is a general business district downtown they are proposing to change the permitting from an easier path to a more strict path from site plan review to special permit because the idea is we don't want the BG which is very small to be taken up by housing developments unless they include commercial space and then there's a final kind of oddball type of dwelling which is called subdividable dwelling and this was created for one particular property owner and I'm going to say it was probably about 20 years ago that this was created and it's essentially a converted dwelling that can go back and forth between being a converted dwelling or being a single family dwelling without having to come back to any board to declare it one or the other and as I said it's only been used once and so the building commissioner and the planning department have recommended that this use is not very useful and it should just be eliminated so they're proposing to eliminate that use what else do I have to say um so so for some of these uses could you switch to the chart that has a lot of words on it Steve I'll just make a few more notes about this there would be standards and conditions added for certain uses descriptions of two family and three family dwellings would change and they would be more coordinated with each other owner-occupied duplexes would require a deed restriction that would be placed in the registry of deeds to let future owners know that the property is required to be owner-occupied this is currently done for accessory dwelling units and it's worked so pretty well so far non-owner-occupied duplexes would have certain conditions placed on them similar to those placed on accessory dwelling units affordable duplexes would also have standards and conditions triplexes would have and townhouses no triplexes would have standard conditions townhouses there would be no changes and I said we've eliminated subdividable dwellings let's see what else do I have to say so there are just a few more housekeeping things so that in article four which is it regulates development methods like subdivisions cluster subdivisions PURDs and open space community developments those sections of the bylaw which are in article four would be changed to add a triplex so that you wouldn't just be allowed to have a duplex but you would also be allowed to have a triplex and then article nine which deals with non-conforming lots would be changed to add reference to three family dwellings so I'm just going to wrap up and say I encourage you to think of questions and comments to offer to Mandy Joe Haneke and Pat DeAngelis when they meet with you next week so read through the material that you received in your packet it'll make more sense to you as you read through it again and then I'm able to take questions tonight if Mr. Judge feels that would be worthwhile and I can answer them to the best of my ability but knowing that I was not the initiator of this and the planning department was not the initiator of this zoning amendment it was really the two counselors so they they know it backwards and forwards and I know it as well as you do by now so thank you Ms. Brestrup I really appreciate you're going through all this and coming up getting up to speed on something and I know the town staff did not did not initiate but trying to get and it's exactly what I wanted to have done is an analysis by you guys that would help us try to evaluate this I had one question the last thing you talked about was non-conforming lots and triplexes can you explain what that was you said it was in in article was it article four it's article nine article nine it's really it's in your packet and it's yeah there's this section then has a lot of writing that you're looking at now and if Steve would flip to the last page of that scroll to the last page of it I think it's page 11 of this section there you go so non-conforming lots is a section of the bylaw and there's one particular section where we're just adding instead of just having one family and two family residential uses talked about here we are adding three family or the proponents I should say are adding three family here just to make that clear and this section I think has something to do with what is chapter 40a section six oh chapter 40a is the chapter 40 that's comprehensive that's comprehensive permits isn't it no I think section six is the non-conforming and special permit section but Rob if Rob is here I'm not as completely facile with chapter 40a as Rob is you're correct Chris that's that's the section for non-preexisting non-conforming lots and uses and structures okay so Rob may I ask him a question does this section 9.10 of the zoning bylaw is that the section that describes what the building commissioner can approve and that doesn't require going to a board can you talk about that a little bit so 9.1 is just for lots non-conforming lots okay 9.2 is what did they make an adjustment for 9.2 no no okay it's just 9.1 all right okay so yeah this it's a pretty minimal change it only has to do with a non-conforming lot okay thank you thank you so anything else I would have one quick suggestion and I know this Chris this Ms. Brestrup this is not your document you didn't create this document but if I think it would be really helpful to have pages on it page numbers on the document if this if there's 44 pages and it's really hard to run through if there's a way to if you can have that read numerator in some way it makes it a lot easier to try to identify it I know that that this is the proponents document not yours but it's it's a complicated thing otherwise we're talking about then describing pages with lots of writing on it versus and that's you know that's hard hard to decide which that is so page numbers would be great I'd like to open this up to members of the of the board to see if they have questions about this or there's things that we'd like to have answered prior to the meeting next week Ms. Parks um I it's just a point of clarification I'm looking at the different types of permits and I'm looking at the site plan review and down near the bottom it says that there's a public hearing and a butter notice and I'm just wondering where do those occur are those in the paper or is there where's where's the public hearing the public hearing may I answer that yes it's the same as a ZBA public hearing it occurs currently it occurs on a zoom meeting and the legal ad for that would be in the Gazette the Dilly Hampshire Gazette and then a notice would be sent via the U.S. mail to all the people who own property within 300 feet of the property that's being considered so it's the same process as the zoning board of appeals goes through you also publish your notice of a public hearing in the Gazette and then you send notices to the butters the property owners within 300 feet so this would be a planning board meeting and the site plan review is a planning board meeting yes so it but it follows the same process that the ZBA special permit process follows the main difference is that there's you don't really have as much opportunity to say no in a site plan review as the ZBA does in a special permit process which is discretionary and then the other differences that there isn't a specific appeal period for site plan review where there is an appeal period that is specified for the special permit that the ZBA does and that's a 20-day appeal period okay so just so I know so at planning board meetings is there a portion of the meeting where you are talking about all the projects that have come up for review I haven't been to a planning board meeting so I don't know what that looks like may I answer that yeah oh yes Ms. Preston go ahead yeah so the planning board has a has a schedule or an agenda that's similar to the zoning board agenda in fact we actually put a time on our public hearings so if someone were proposing something that required a site plan review it would be listed on the agenda and it would be given a certain time and it would be a public hearing that would be opened and then the applicant would give a presentation and the planning board members would ask questions and then the public could make comments and once all the comments and questions are answered the planning board closes the public hearing and then it goes through a list of criteria similar to your 10.38 but the planning board uses 11.24 and the planning board makes findings based on that and then they also put conditions on things so it's very similar in terms of the process but the planning board doesn't really look at the use of the project as carefully as the zoning board does and yeah I'll stop all right thank you so I think you just did a lot of the you answered a lot of questions that I was just going to ask ask chris but they do have an essential difference between the site plan review and the special permit as listed in the presentation is that the site plan review assumes approval or you go in with a higher certainty of approval and the special permit is purely discretionary depending on what the board decides they don't have 10.3 they have the same notification to a butters and public notice they don't have to use 10.38 or 10.3 as we do they have a different standard do they have I'm not as familiar obviously with 11 and that's something I think we should all review before the next meeting is to see what requirements and findings they have to make I'm assuming they have to make the same kind of findings that do they have to make the same kind of findings that we have to make under 10.38 the findings are very similar the wording is different but the essential topics that are covered are almost identical I don't think there's something in 10.38 that isn't included in 11.24 although maybe Rob could correct me on that okay I'm Mr. Chairman yep and can you and just just second and can and can they one of the things we do in the ZBA is we often impose conditions on on applicants and as a requirement of the approval of the special permit is that routinely done by the zone by the planning board are they empowered to do that yes they are and they do often come up with many many conditions you know 20 30 40 or more especially projects yep and when they deal with single family homes or duplexes have they done the same thing I know a lot of their their work is big projects is is do they tend to impose conditions on smaller developments of single family homes duplexes they do in fact the one that I mentioned before 51 Spalding street just went through the planning board it had been a ZBA project but it shifted to the planning board and the planning board did impose many conditions I think there might have been more than 20 conditions on it and if you'd be interested I could send you that decision it was just recently signed by the planning board members and I'd be happy to send it to you so you could see what a planning board process is like why don't I do that that might be okay that'd be helpful and so then all right I want to make sure other people can ask questions I see that Miss Marshall's hand is up yeah first of all and and maybe it's I don't know I need some convincing or I'm just not familiar enough with the planning board but the differences in the process do not seem enormous to me so so maybe it's the the town counselors who will need to persuade me that this does in fact make it moving from SP to SPR makes a process easier yes our special permits are discretionary but we we can only deny it understanding it is based on the findings we can't I mean we don't have discretion just to not approve things we don't like right so so that's one issue for me but but more specific question that perhaps Mr. Bresser can answer is what is that if it's if it can be done briefly maybe what is the difference between converted dwelling and ADUs which I know we've also tried to make easier recently because some of the examples you described for converted dwelling I thought those were accessory dwelling units so well ADUs there's a whole new section of the bylaw on ADUs and they're in the accessory uses section I think it's 5.011 or something like that but anyway it's quite extensive and there are three different kinds of ADUs one is that's totally contained within the building in which it is built the second is it's in addition to the building that it is connected to and the third is that it's a standalone but in any case in order to be approved only by the building commissioner with the building permit it has to be it has to meet certain criteria which are listed in the bylaw and it also has to be a thousand square feet or less and if it deviates from any of that then it has to go to a special permit which I believe is this ZBA special permit but if you're interested you could look online in the zoning bylaw and read that section that new section of the bylaw about ADUs and that explains it but I agree that it can be confusing because you might have a garage that somebody wants to turn into a converted dwelling but currently I think if you so another thing about ADUs is that the property has to be owner occupied so if you had a property that had a garage and you wanted to convert it into a dwelling unit but the property wasn't going to be owner occupied you would choose to go the converted dwelling route because I don't believe converted dwellings have to be owner occupied although I could be wrong about that and the ADU property has to be owner occupied so you could have a garage that you change into a dwelling unit to make it into an ADU and as long as it's less than a thousand square feet or a thousand square feet or less and the property is owner occupied then it can be an ADU and be approved by the building commissioner so that makes sense well the only part that stuck with me as maybe distinguishing the two is that if you want to have an ADU you have to live on the property yourself and maybe that is not true for converted dwellings but otherwise it seems like as far as the structure is concerned they could be the same thing it could be a a dwelling a smaller dwelling unit within the original house and it just depends on whether the owner is living there or not is that did I understand that that may be a question for Rob that may be a good question for Rob Mr. Mora yeah the owner occupancy is one and the other is the limiting size at a thousand square feet so converted dwelling can be bigger it certainly can be smaller but it but it can also be bigger than the thousand square feet Mr. O'Connor yes my approach to this discussion is fairly simple and straightforward I believe that I think we all have may have individual opinions about the proposal or the proposals but um as a member of the Zoning Board of Appeals I I don't feel that it's it's a matter that should be discussed by the Zoning Board of Appeals I think it's actually it involves are having a discussion about the merits of of a legislative enactment really violates article 30 of part one of the Massachusetts Constitution which asks which basically says that the legislative executive and judicial branches of government should stick to their business and so forth the analogy that occurs to me about this discussion is what whether Congress might invite the Supreme Court to have a discussion about whether with regard to campaign finance or voting rights this that they asked the Supreme Court's opinion about whether the Congress should enact under article three section two paragraph two the second sentence restrict the Supreme Court's jurisdiction over particular pieces of legislation addressing certain issues I mean this is as far as I'm concerned I have no opinion about the legislative activities of the town as a member of the Zoning Board I have an opinion as a citizen but as a member of the Zoning Board I don't think it's my business to have a Zoning Board member opinion about legislative activities the Planning Board is certainly and in fact they are the initiator of these proposals but I don't believe it's it quite frankly is the business of the Zoning Board of Appeals to weigh in on what I think is a purely a legislative matter and I think we could save ourselves this is very different from from sec from number B where legislation has been enacted and I think the staff would like us to understand the the new sections of the bylaw so that we can enforce it in a fair and understanding way that I have no problem with but I think asking the Zoning Board opinion about proposed legislation I think really puts us in I think an untenable position and I think that the proponents would be better served by addressing other bodies the public in general and so forth and I think we would be better served by with regard to changes to our jurisdiction and so forth maintaining our silence I don't believe that it's our business to to have a zoning board opinion about this matter we can have personal opinions I think I think probably everyone's zoning board will end up having a personal opinion and the proper way for us to deal with it is probably to express those opinions to the city counselors who represent us and and you know enact as ordinary citizens but acting as a zoning board I think is not what we should be doing with regard to proposed legislation unless we I understand your your point Mr O'Connor thank you is there other comments from board members Ms Parks I just have a question that I've wondered about for a long time and I have looked in the zoning bylaw and I don't see it but is there a minimum amount of square feet in a unit per person I'm just wondering if such a thing exists not in the zoning bylaw but I believe it exists in the building code no the state sanitary code excuse me maybe Mr. Mora could address that issue Mr. Mora the the square footage per occupant is part of the health codes the state sanitary code the building code defines this minimum square footage for spaces how big a kitchen how big a bedroom needs to be but per occupant is the state sanitary code do you know what that amount is not off the top of my head it's something like 100 square feet plus 60 per additional occupant there's there's some ratio like that but I don't have the exact number off the top of my head okay I just this this kind of question comes up for me when I'm thinking about people converting garages or and I have a chicken coop in my backyard you know it's kind of like what you know what's the minimum size that you can put for for unrelated adults and so I would just be interested in in that number so I can look it up I can look up the state sanitary code thank you I think yeah I think it's 150 per and then something like 100 for each additional 150 150 square feet per person and 100 additional for each 250 for two 150 for the initial and then 100 and 250 for two correct okay but you know granted that's not livable spaces right that that's not that's not bedroom I would just say that you know compared to the size of a dorm room I think that's what we're you know I think that's kind of what the thinking is when we're talking about the possibility of creating more housing for students is comparing the size of a dorm room which is pretty small for two people Mr. Chairman Mr. Hanam I want to give other people a chance and we'll get that we will get to you sure Mr. Maxfield or Mr. Gilbert do you have comments or Ms. Parks do you have any further comment only comment I'll make is thank you for taking the time to put together you know this document it's a lot of work and you know I I do think that there's a lot of positive in here there's there's a lot to be questioned and I think you know we'll come to discussion on this in I think the next two ZBAs it sounded like but needless to say obviously a lot of time and effort's been put into here and you know I I for one am am always on the side of the fence of sort of questioning some of the zoning law and you know making sure that it works in a contemporary fashion and I think this at least opens up a discussion to consider that so thank you for the time and effort here all right Mr. Maxfield yeah I'll just also kind of echo we'll just Mr. Gilbert said thanks a lot for taking the time to do this it is good to know really kind of changes that are coming down the pipes and how it's going to be impacting us at the ZBA so we can really start thinking about that now kind of what's going to be coming to us so I appreciate the time in the presentation Mr. Connor yeah I think that the some of the minimum standards in the state sanitary code involve the amount of square footage in bedrooms and I think there may be two there may be two standards one for the total unit but I'm not sure that there is such a thing and the other for bedrooms and but it you know if it would be helpful to the members I think we could it would be useful to have that information in front of us in front of the zoning board the next time this is discussed but I think what's in the state sanitary code has to do with square footage in bedrooms as has been said I appreciate that the effort that staff has put in to try to explain this I want to be clear that the staff didn't create this document I don't think I think this document was created by the the proponents but they're interpreting the document that was given to them so that took a considerable amount of work I have looked through it as well and it's it's it does require some a lot of effort if you're not intimately familiar with the zoning bylaw on in Amherst to go through this so I I want to echo the things that rest of my colleagues have said thanks for putting this together my impression of this is that there's lots of there's real implications for our our purpose and jurisdiction as a as a BZA as a zoning board of appeals and I think it's important for us to understand and so that we can respond if asked by the town council or by the town the CRC committee we can respond in an informed manner as to what we think the effect of this would be that's currently what I hope that the next meeting will do is give us a better sense of what the proponents how they feel this will accomplish their goals and I think it's our responsibility to try to inform them because to the extent that they are unfamiliar with the work that we do because nobody's going to be as familiar as we are because we do it all the time and they have other things that they're doing that people can help to educate them if they need it as to what what our process is and what how we feel the process of a special permit currently benefits the town if we do so that's what I hope to achieve in the next couple of meetings and I hope that we have more information from from the proponents and I look forward to hearing more about it but I would like to do unless there's other comments from the board I'd like to open it up to public comment this is we have time tonight we're not running over this is not not making any decisions tonight Ms. Parks Ms. Park I just wanted to ask I mean are we voting on this no so we're just we're learning about this and next time it's just going to be a proposal about it next time we're going to hear from the proposed I'm sorry, Ms. Parks but I didn't make it clear there's no there's no motion before the ZBA at this time and all we're doing is learning about the proposal it affects our work we want to know about it and the second thing is next week we want to hear from the proponents why they are proposing this why they think it will work at that point you know people could suggest that we take a position but that's not what we're asked to do it is not our core function is to do that if that would be as a body that advises the town council if we want to do that but that's not what's it hasn't been remanded to us by the city council and it hasn't been we haven't been authorized to make a recommendation so as the planning board has been okay and then I would also throw out that on Monday at seven o'clock there are the community resource committee is holding sessions about these changes in case anyone's interested in checking that out I think those are the rent is that on Monday that's a rental new rental program in this park and I think on the 16th the same day as our hearing that they're going to have this matter up before them as the the CRC committee has this matter on the zoning uses before them again I think yes you're right you're right it's the 16th for the the zoning right and maybe okay an additional date yep all right I just have one last comment and that is I can't find it right now but I know in here somewhere within the presentation they talk about one of the issues or one of the reasons they're thinking about this is because of a zoning board decision and I'm just wondering if we can remember try to remember what that decision was I noted that as well that there was there was evidently a decision that as an example of a process that troubled the the opponents the only one I can think of is was the converted it was a garage that was going to be converted to a second unit second dwelling unit on a piece of property over by the university right and we had there were several hearings on it it was it was very contentious in the neighborhood and the applicant eventually withdrew the application after I think three here I think we had three hearings I forget the exact address of that that's the only one I can that seemed to resonate with me is that what they may have been the case that may have been alluded to there was another one where someone was talking about putting a studio in their yard as a detached dwelling and then it was changed into a kind of a bed or an apartment yeah that was a that was over on yes that's true that was over on that was earlier but that was while so withdrawn there was an ADU there was going to be a separate a separate unit ADU that was withdrawn after some again that was a controversial application but it was that was withdrawn I hadn't thought about that one Miss Parks that's right yeah I just that was when I read that that kind of stuck with me okay yep okay we have two any other comments from board members before I go to the public comment okay two on first counselor Rooney I see her hand is raised Steve can you bring in counselor Rooney counselor Rooney should be able to speak now great thank you very much Pam Rooney 42 Cottage Street thank you for letting me listen to them on your conversation I had a question that came to mind and that has to do directly with you all and that is if a proposed duplex or triplex is is proposed for a non-conforming lot given all the other considerations does that not kick that immediately back to the ZBA is there any point in saying it's by building commissioner only when in fact it would otherwise be a a non-conforming lot it would and it would come to you automatically so I'm just confused about the jurisdiction would would lie you know I that's a good point counselor Rooney that's is that 9.1 that we were talking about earlier Rob and is the is the counselor right so currently for one and two family if there's a non-conforming lot that exists and the proposal is to build something that otherwise meets all the other zoning requirements it would not come to the zoning board for that that application you know that proposal it would be it would be built to meet setbacks and coverages and be a use that's authorized by a yes let's say that would not come to the zoning board say a single family how single family house on a non-conforming lot what this proposal is doing is adding in triplex to the one and two family ability to do that so I in those three instances now meeting all the other requirements the proposal would follow whatever path is in the table so it'd be site plan review so there'd be no need to come to the zoning board I'm sorry to say that again at the very end so if you have a triplex on a non-conforming lot you have a proposal to build a triplex that would normally if it didn't if it met all the other zoning requirements setback everything else it would it would have a yes or would it have a building or would it have a site plan review I believe in the table that was up earlier as the site plan review and it would follow it would follow whatever whatever the path is in table three it would follow that path and I think I think it was site plan review for triplex and and I think same duplex would be site plan review as well or with the similar I think there's there's both there's both cases right so there's some that are site plan review and there's some that are yes and then there's single family that are all yes council take up your maybe you had another question but I had one more question for Rob if I could can you for the benefit of all of us on the call would you describe what is a non-conforming lot how does a lot become non-conforming other than minimal to square footage yeah so it's typically either square footage of the total area of the lot or the frontage of the lot being deficient from today's standard it might have met the layout 50 years ago when it was different and the one that comes up now once in a while is that it doesn't contain the building circle right which is more like a lot with requirement that the building circle doesn't fit where the the construction of the building is being proposed got it what's a building circle I never heard of that buildings Mr. Moran yep yep so every every lot has to contain a building circle that's equal to the frontage for that zoning district so it's to prevent a lot from starting off at the proper width and then squeezing tight too quickly and the building circle has to be placed on the lot be able to fit on the lot where the building's being proposed once you get past where the building's being proposed a lot can go into any different shape that it wants but it has to contain the circle where the building's being proposed at a minimum yep and we dealt with that in numerous special permits where we had to assess the building circle Councilor Rooney I'm sorry I took over your your time there and I and if you have other questions or comments please go ahead no that was that was the question I appreciate the consideration of it thank you you bet other comment public comment is Ms. Hilda Greenbaum can you bring Steve can you bring well the green round 298 Montague road and I'm attending this meeting as writing an article for the newspaper but I'm speaking for myself I will just comment I think Ms. Fox asked the house that was an intention that was withdrawn without prejudice was on the corner of Strong Street and East Pleasant Street I listened to every one of those hearings and wrote it up that's where it was 295 East Pleasant Street the other thing that that I have a comment that one of the things this is very contentious article as you can probably guess for lots of reasons and so I was thinking that some of the issues that they're trying to solve might be solved by allowing more uses in the RF area so that we don't have to call an apartment style or a building that there really is a dormitory an apartment style dormitory because apartments aren't allowed there maybe because it was a bust as a fraternity park and it's been there many many years and the few fraternities are being converted to apartments why not allow more housing in that area there and get rid of some of those smalls and make them yeses rather than putting them in historic districts like the Emily Dickinson District or the Lincoln Avenue District which are really assets to the town and bring to origin that's just one thing that nobody's mentioned and that's been on my mind that the RF area has not been useful and it should be rezoned or keep keep the name but allow more uses there and then I have a question from Mr. Morrow very quickly at Triplexes considered like three bedroom I mean three unit apartments in terms of the building code do they have to pass the fire suppression systems on various more enhanced building codes than the duplex Mr. Moore are you going to do that if you can the answer is yes they do that's what I thought and that's why they have them built thank you thank you Mr. Greenbaum all right if there's no further comments from the public and no further comments from members of the board I'd like to move on to well Ms. Parks go ahead just very quickly I did look up the sanitation code and it is 150 square feet plus 100 square feet foot per person so 550 square feet minimum for four people 550 and that includes that's total living space right yeah kitchen, bathroom, bedrooms, everything for four people I don't know if it's specified that which which is impossible yeah oh well that's that's a 20 by 20 foot space or more yeah just 25 by 20 it says each dwelling unit shall contain at least 150 square feet of floor space for its first occupant I'm sorry for its first occupant and at least 100 additional so I'm wrong it's 450 for four people yeah yeah 450 for four people so that's 20 by 18 or so yeah okay but again bear in mind Mr. Gilbert that's a that's a bare minimum prior to you know looking at building code and minimum requirements for rooms etc lighting requirements all of that so you're always going to be up from that that's that's sort of that's a good benchmark for you know sort of thinking about circulation and and the like when you start putting multiple people in a room yeah I just trying to get an idea of like when we're talking about converted garages and things like that if someone's got a 20 by 20 foot garage can could it be become an apartment gotcha good all right can you guys hear me my earphones just died so somebody say something we can hear you you've just got some uh go a distance to your I'm just gonna turn up the volume a little bit you know I I put new earphones on my Christmas list but nobody in my family bought them for me because they didn't they don't suffer this every week that every two weeks the same thing that you guys do so I'll have to do that myself all right I think we've completed our discussion on this matter it's going to be we'll have the proponents of this before us next at our next meeting which will be next week if I'm right Chris I'm in this mess Ms. Bresberg we'll have that at that time yes Ms. Marshall why why are we meeting next week I missed that's the third Thursday why may I talk about that yeah I didn't have that on my couch so generally speaking the ZBA meets on the second and fourth Thursdays of the month since I I mentioned that we're having a little bit of a rocky road starting out and Steve and I are doing our best but we missed we missed a public notice for we were supposed to have a public hearing on the 16th and we missed the public notice but since we thought we were going to have a meeting on the 16th we asked Mandy Johanna key to come and explain her proposal on the 16th so we're going to have those two things well the the first thing went away because we didn't do the public notice but we still have Mandy Joe invited so we thought we could meet on the 16th and then not have you meet on the 23rd if that would be agreeable to you all why was it thought there would be a notice well you probably don't want to get into the here in the office all right so I see so the invitation is out to the counselors to come that day the two counselors at least Mandy Joe will come and we hope that Pat will come as well and there is some there's a need to respond to this fairly quickly they have been asked to respond back to the board this spring so I don't want us to be behind behind the scene on this so when the opportunity came up I thought let's take the time to do that it's not Ms. Prestrup's fault it's more mine I asked Ms. Prestrup to keep this going so that's the reason okay the next item on our we could take a break but I don't think we need to because I think that the next matter won't take a long time we have some changes to the zoning laws the zoning bylaw dealing with food and commercial establishments and I would hope I think that Rob or Chris is going to explain what those are and the effect that it had on ZBA jurisdiction and our work if Steve can bring up that PowerPoint presentation that was in the packet on food and drink I think that would be helpful and we can just go through that quickly and there were other documents there was a a memo to the town council from the CRC and I think there was also a memo to town council from the planning board on this proposal and this proposal was it followed in the wake of Article 14 which you may or may not remember but Article 14 was temporary zoning that was established during the pandemic to allow certain things to go on and not to have to have people go through the public hearing process for certain types of uses mainly restaurant uses but also some other uses and there was so much what can I say good that came out of the changes with regard to food and drink establishments that the CRC and the town council and the bid and the chamber wanted us to look into how could we make some of those things permanent and how could we make it easier to deal with food and drink establishments going forward so this effort came out of that I'm not saying that it's exactly the same as what was in Article 14 but the thought process started us to go down this road and this is a proposal that was worked on by planning the planning department the planning board and the CRC throughout the fall and eventually it came to the town council and it was passed adopted in December I think it was adopted on December 29th or excuse me December 19th I'm not mistaken so why don't we just go through this PowerPoint quickly and I think it'll explain things and if you have any questions you can ask them so as I said this was something that grew out of the planning department and inspection services we had long talks about what to do about food and drink establishments in the zoning bylaw because things didn't exactly match the classifications in the bylaw didn't really match the uses as they were lived in the world and the staff wanted to update the standards and conditions which the staff had been working with the zoning board of appeals for years and had developed a really good set of standards and conditions that the ZBA used in dealing with food and drink establishments and we wanted to make them sort of codify those standards and conditions in addition to food I already said this the community resources town staff and business community wanted to make certain aspects of article 14 permanent so next slide please so some of the goals were to have the new classifications in the zoning bylaw that correspond to the actual uses of food and drink establishments to clarify and improve the permitting process for these businesses in the downtown and village centers to apply some of the lessons learned from article 14 and the best thing that came out of article 14 was the ability to use the sidewalks and the outside for dining and I think that was a really popular thing so some of those things are incorporated to this proposal to encourage existing businesses to stay in Amherst and expand in Amherst and attract new business to come to Amherst and to formalize and strengthen the administrative approval process so the building commissioner was able to approve certain things under article 14 and we've clarified those things in article 11 of this proposal and we did have the support of the bid and the Chamber of Commerce and we wanted to support them so the next slide please so these are some of the projects that were permitted under article 14 the temporary zoning one of them was the drake which ordinarily would have gone through a special permit process but it was able to come to pass using just the administrative approval of the building commissioner and it's been very successful and as far as I know it hasn't caused any trouble for anybody another one is the spoke the expansion of the spoke the spoke took over this whole building that is is next to one East Pleasant Street or no next to Kendrick Place and as far as I know well I think that issues related to the spoke expansion have been dealt with and corrected so this is one of the one of the projects that we think of as a success the Mexicalito Taco Bar which is the former Rayos was also opened under article 14 as was Garcia's Garcia's took over the old Bertucci's building and that's really been successful too so those are examples of things that have been able to come to pass with only the building commissioner reviewing them next slide please so we wanted to show you where in town these food and drink establishments can occur so this is a map of Amherst and the white space is showing all of the places where food and drink establishments cannot occur and the red and striped and dotted places are the places where these can occur and one of them is in North Amherst up by Coles what used to be Coles Lumber and is now Coles building supply and the North Amherst Village Center of course in the center of town food and drink establishments can also occur and to the west over on University Drive that's that little area that's kind of striped to the left in this map and the few places along College Street and Main Street are Village Center and commercial districts where these uses can occur there's a little one out on Belcher Town Road and that's at the intersection of Gatehouse Road there used to be a little business there but right now there isn't any business there the one in the middle is where the farmer's supply is that little elongated rectangle and then if you go south there's a kind of odd shaped one at the intersection of Pomeray Lane and 116 that's the Pomeray Village Center where what's there Monon Dove and Mission Cantina is there and then if you move on to the south we have Atkins Corner and there's I guess there's a small food and drink establishment that's associated with Atkins Market so that's where these things can occur just to give you a sense that they're not like all over town they're just localized next slide please so this slide compares what existed in the bylaw prior to the new zoning we had three types of food and drink establishments we had class one restaurants which were restaurants cafes lunch rooms and cafeterias they closed before 1130 they could serve alcohol they had to close before 1130 and they were mostly allowed by site plan review and some of them were allowed by administrative approval if a previous use had been in in a particular place and people weren't making any changes to the exterior of the building that kind of a new use could be allowed by administrative approval and then there was class two restaurant or bar which could be open after 1130 and that could also serve alcohol and that required a special permit and then there was a class three drive-up restaurant which required a special permit well we don't really have a standalone drive-up restaurant we do have Dunkin Donuts which has a drive-up component but that's a an accessory use and there may be others as well that have drive-up components but there's no standalone drive-up restaurant in Amherst so we are going to eliminate that particular use so the proposed uses which have been adopted are essentially taking class one and class two restaurants and kind of combining them into one use which is called restaurant cafe bar with food or other similar food and beverage establishment and that is allowed in the new bylaw by site plan review or if such a place has been existing already and they're not making any changes to the exterior it could be allowed by administrative approval the second category is a bar with no food and that would only be allowed by special permit and that would be the spoke the spoke doesn't serve food and so that would be a bar with no food another example of that would be the moan and dove in South Amherst which you may be familiar with I think that's a pretty popular spot down there of course you know some food is required I think you have to serve some packaged things like peanuts or popcorn or something but that's something that the Board of Licensed Commissioners requires rather than the building rather than the zoning code but it's they don't have a kitchen so they can't serve you a meal or a sandwich or anything then there's a nightclub which is low lights loud music and crowded atmosphere I think those are three things Rob's not here anymore I don't think and he could definitely describe the nightclub better than I can but essentially we have I believe we have one nightclub here now it's called Hazel's Blue Lagoon and it's in back of buildings along Main Street it's kind of tucked away some of you may be familiar with it and so that's that's a nightclub and that would be allowed by special permit and then we have another fourth category which is establishments with more than 200 patrons and actually I think it's changed to be more than 200 well I don't remember the exact wording whether it's 200 occupants or 200 patrons but in any event it's a large establishment and an example of that would be the hangar or ABC which is down on University Drive and that would be allowed by special permits so these special permits would all be zoning board of appeals special permits they are now zoning board of appeals special permits next slide please oh so we have examples here so I didn't need to tell you that ahead of time so the restaurant cafe bar would be an example would be Johnny's Tavern which has an an occupant load of 174 El Camolito which is in the Pomeray Lane Village Center and that has an occupant load of 80 a pita pockets which is near the Unitarian Universalist Society and that has an occupant of an occupancy of 21 and then the House of Teriyaki up in North Amherst which has an occupancy of 56 so those are the kinds of places that would be allowed by site plan review a bar with no food as I mentioned would be the Moan and Dove by special permit nightclub hazels blue lagoon by special permit and establishment with more than 200 patrons the hangar by special permit next slide please so we also had some changes to the zoning bylaw with regard to Article 3 which maybe Steve could bring up there's a page I think it was page 37 of the zoning bylaw but I can kind of talk about it it lists these four uses that we have already talked about restaurant cafe and bar with no food and nightclub and any of the other establishments 200 patrons or more and then it has it includes 11 standards and conditions and I will read through them so these establishments it says as applicable here it is as applicable thanks Steve all food and drink establishments are subject to the following standards and conditions and again these were taken from the history and experience of the zoning board of appeals and dealing with some of these establishments they would be subject to review and approval by the board of licensed commissioners if necessary you know if they serve alcohol they would be subject to other local or state codes and regulations accessory uses of seasonal outdoor dining live or pre-recorded entertainment involving music and drive-through facilities would be permitted in accordance with Article 5 accessory uses the establishment would operate and be maintained in accordance with an approved site plan a floor plan a layout plan with an occupant capacity for indoor and outdoor patron management interior and exterior i.e. queuing and that's important for some places that are open late at night management plan a parking management plan and a traffic impact statement so all of those plans would need to be submitted and approved for any of these types of establishments the management plan would have to include hours of operation specific management strategies for alcohol service such as hours of service and patrons leaving the establishment and that's important too especially for late night operations trash and refuse storage outdoor dining if there is any queuing signage lighting deliveries noise containment and response another response plan for complaints and strategies to screen and buffer adjacent properties from noise and other impacts and employee parking and other requested information so that is a pretty substantial management plan they would also need electronic ID verification if they sold alcohol they would need onsite staff training and current certification for crowd control and tips which has to do with service of alcohol reusable tableware would be used for outdoor table service so we wouldn't end up with a lot of trash all around these places and the areas would be cleaned daily outdoor furniture shall be placed to meet clearance services and egress requirements in other words you couldn't put outdoor furniture in front of a door so that people couldn't get out of the establishment if they needed to leave quickly and in the BN zoning district and there was a lot of discussion about this and in case you're not familiar the BN zoning district is just a few properties I think it's four properties and they're in the vicinity of elements hot tub spa which is on main street and so they're really mostly on the north side of main street and it includes the area that the Amherst media purchased and has gotten a building approved for that site and a few more properties in that area but anyway the sensitivity was that it's kind of embedded in a residential district so even though it's a business district we wanted to make sure that it wasn't going to cause problems for people so we did limit to the number of seats in that district to no more than 50 seats both indoor and outdoor and that the service of alcohol would cease at 9 p.m. and just for your information the lumberyard which was a popular restaurant in that location was not in the BN district that was in I think that was in BVC business village center so anyway this would be kind of on the other side of the street and then no service of alcohol after 1 a.m. so those would be typical standards and conditions for any of these establishments what else want to talk about oh yes accessory uses are you interested in maybe you are interested in going through what we've changed for accessory uses we have accessory uses include seasonal outdoor dining and I wonder if Steve could bring up that Article 5 sheet there it is yeah so we've allowed seasonal outdoor dining dining as an accessory principle to any principal use authorized under section 3.3 so we're not any longer limiting it to restaurants cafes bakeries etc but we're allowing it in relation to anything that is allowed in those zoning districts and it would have the same review process as the required principal use in section 5.0410 any structure that is part of the seasonal outdoor dining could remain as it could remain outdoors we had had a provision that you couldn't leave these things outdoors in the winter between November and April well it turned out that people did actually want to use the outdoors for dining in those colder months but we're saying that you can only use these pieces of furniture outdoors and leave them there if the accessory uses actually active and operational so if someone is actually using these places to serve their patrons they can leave the tables and chairs out there section 5.0413 has to do with HVAC systems so prior to this we didn't allow any heating and cooling devices as part of seasonal outdoor dining but once we went through the pandemic or entered into the pandemic we realized that if people are going to be outside dining you know in the winter time they may want to have a heater and we did the town actually purchased heaters with some money that we got from the state for some of these restaurants that allowed them to serve well into the fall and early in the spring so we didn't think that this was a this requirement that they not allow heating and cooling devices was reasonable since we saw the benefit of having these things so we've stricken that and let's see then I don't know if anybody has any questions on that section but why don't we just run through the whole thing and then maybe people have questions for live and prerecorded entertainment we say that that could be allowed for any principal use that's allowed in section 3.3 or bed and breakfast allowed in section 5.0 102 with either a special permit or site plan review whichever is allowed for or required for the principal use and in the bn district there would not be entertainment allowed outside of the building I forgot to mention up above in section 5.041 in the bn district any outdoor dining would not be allowed closer than 100 feet to any residential dwelling in a residential district what else there's just one more thing in drive-through facilities I think it's the next page 5.043 we've stricken reference to drive-in restaurants since we have eliminated drive-in restaurants so there are accessory drive-through facilities as I said but no more drive-in restaurants we've made some changes to article 11 if Steve would bring that out and in article 11 it was more of a chance to clarify what some of the things that were already going on so in the in the bylaw that existed before December 19th the building commissioner was already allowed to waive site plan review if there were no physical changes to the exterior of a building or a site so this clarifies that he was allowed to waive site plan review if the only change to the exterior of a building or site was the installation of signs and compliance with article 8 or if a change of use is proposed and no physical changes to the exterior or the site will occur and then the building commissioner determines that the change will not conflict with the purpose of the bylaw so it's really clarifying language that was already in the bylaw and then the next section for minor alterations to building exterior the building commissioner may authorize work to proceed without site plan review and then he has to follow these criteria and then in section 11.212 there's an administrative approval in instances where site plan review is not required no work shall commence until the building commissioner has authorized work or used to proceed the building commissioner may approve approve with conditions or deny the approval and decisions shall be made in writing they have to be filed with the town clerk and kept on record with our department and the building commissioner can consult with the planning director and be authorized to apply any of the design review standards found in article 3 section 3.204 which is design review principles and standards and this is this section is really just making it clear what are the requirements for administrative approval in other words there has to be a written decision and it has to be filed with the town clerk and he can deny the approval and he can approve it with conditions so it it's really just it's not giving him more power it's just clarifying what he has to do with the power that he already has I think that's it for section 11 and then article 12 is really just deleting drive-up restaurants and renumbering things and in the definition of bar which is the first one that's in red there a bar is defined as a food and drink establishment or part of such establishment devoted primarily to the service and consumption of alcoholic beverages on the premises and in which the service of food instead of saying is only incidental we're saying may be incidental just to clarify that and at the bottom of the page you can see we've deleted drive-up restaurants so do people have questions about this this is the new bylaw that's been adopted by town council and it will be making life a little easier for you all because you won't have so many class 2 restaurants coming before you do you have any questions or comments um I just had one Chris when is the most recent publication of the town bylaws June of 2022 so this is not in the town bylaw yet and Steve is working on that in fact he's sent the version to me and Nate to be approved and we have not done that yet so it's sitting with me to approve that but this will be published shortly and we're hoping to get it up online soon good and when you do you'll send us a copy yes which because I'm looking at a January 4th 2022 copy of the zoning bylaws and so when they're ready we'll get a copy that'll be good yes definitely and I'm sorry that you don't have the June of 2022 you know I may have one but I know I don't have one more reasons than that so I'll look for the June of 2022 if I don't have it I'll give that you don't have it I'm just realizing that the latest paper copies were January 4th of 2022 and the June copy never came out in paper because we were working on zoning bylaws to change it so now we've got those all wrapped up and we can publish this yeah great and two other two other questions number one can you create a zoning map I've talked to Steve Steve and McCarthy about this can you create a zoning map that distinguishes that you can give to us on paper that distinguishes the various different residential zoning districts either by color by cross hatching or whatever because when I look at the map now most of the residential zoning districts all are in white with they have a boundary around them but it's hard to discern RG from you know our our end so that would be really helpful for us in especially looking at this most recent zoning proposal that would be really good um I think that was the only thing I had okay we'll have to work with IT on that yes don't have that right now yep I know you don't have it now but if you can work with somebody to come up with one I think would really help our work because a lot of our work is in that residential districts thank you Ms. Marshall yeah I'm just curious as to whether Article 14 was withdrawn at the same time that basically everything in it was moved into the move forward in the zoning code in article 14 sunsetted on the 31st of December 2023 that's how it was written it and in fact it was written to sunset at the end of 2021 I think and then it was extended it was extended twice in any event the last extension went to December 31st of 2022 so it's sunset it's over okay it's over yeah great and one last question are you done Ms. Marshall I'm sorry is that one last question is the the drake of the neck club like like um hazels I think the drake is a bar with no food okay bar with no food I'm just trying to I know it's subtle the difference is between the two and I haven't been in hazels but I've been in the drake and it feels like a nightclub but it's a bar with no food all right and I don't think it's I don't think it has low lighting and crowded conditions and I don't know I haven't been there yep that's all that that's helpful thank you very much all right any other questions for Ms. Bresba okay well I think it's instructive that we have oh Mr. McCarthy did you have something yeah to comment on that I'm trying to find the the exact building code definition nightclub and I wasn't able to pull it up but that's how this new zoning bylaw section defines it is in relation to an addendum to the building code and Chris pretty much hit the nail on the head there is a more precise wording to it but it involves low light conditions music being played especially live music or any amplified music you know yeah dim conditions and so well the drake was not permitted as a nightclub because that didn't exist that point per the building code it was considered a nightclub and that just includes some additional safety measures they have to put in I believe the spoke was also so classified after the last round of renovations so there are a couple in there although of per zoning they would be pre-existing in a different category great thank you very much okay um this is good to know the changes are happening in town and how it affects our with the work we do and good to know we still what we're still involved in in the special permits for some of the food and commercial establishments so thank you very much lastly the next order of business for the tonight is a public comment on any matter not before the board tonight so this is the time when the public can talk to us and express their opinions on anything except that which was before the board tonight and um I would see if there's any attendees that wish to speak and there seems to be no hands raised from the public okay all right I think we've completed our business for the night we meet next next thursday and on the agenda is the presentation on the zoning changes and um that's what else chris that's it right I believe that is it yeah that's it okay we have that those two things before us next week and if the new other new members new associate members are here we'll make sure to introduce them should I put that on the agenda no let's let's wait and see if no we'll just I'll just do that if they're on I don't want to disappoint anybody if they're not if they don't show up you know those people that read our agendas I don't want to disappoint them so anyway unless there's any other business before the body I'd entertain a motion to adjourn so moved this park's moves mr maxfield is I did I see you seconding it that's second and I heard you too all right this is non-debatable and but does require a roll call vote chair votes I this parks I mr maxfield I mr gilbert I that's four out of five it passes thank you we'll see you all in a week thank you everybody thank you