 Okay, Amherst Media, thank you for being ready. Thank everyone for your patience and we're going to now start the planning board meeting. Welcome all to the Amherst Planning Board Wednesday, December 18th, 2019, 7 p.m., Town Room, Town Hall. The first item on the agenda is minutes, but I believe we don't have any minutes to review tonight. Great. Item number two is public comment period. This is for any visitors here who would like to come forward and speak on something that is not on our agenda this evening. They have an opportunity. Is there a show of hands, anyone here who would like to speak on something? I see no hands, so we will move on to the third item. It is by my phone, 705, so we have a 704 public hearing for site plan reviews and special permits. So I would like to read the preamble for continuing the hearing for Riverside Organics against 704, SPR 2020-03, Jonathan Gruffine, Riverside Organics 555 Belcher Town Road. Request site plan review, approval to construct and operate a marijuana product manufacturer and marijuana micro-business under section 3.363.5 of the zoning bylaw, map 18D, parcel 2, PRP, zoning district. This public hearing is being continued from November 6th, 2019, November 20th, 2019, December 4th, 2019, and here we are tonight. Welcome back. Hello, good evening. Do you have any information or would you like to update us on where you're at? I purchased an O2 sensor. How exciting. I was going to bring it in, but it did not arrive in my house yet. No props. The other issues I think were just a matter of the town and the board clarifying contingencies. There was one issue which I had to provide the board in the town with stormwater calculations, and I have not been able to pull the teeth out of my civil engineer to do these yet. Add civil engineer. I will get it done soon enough. I have gotten all the information together, et cetera, et cetera. Ironically, the town engineer says he doesn't need it but wants it, and my engineer needs to give it to me but won't. Does that make any sense? But anyway, so that's it. Other than that, it's really just kids. I will get the stormwater report that I know Christine asked for some time ago. I asked my engineer for some time ago. I cannot strangle this guy and get it from him any quicker. Chris, where are you at with this right now? So I think there were two issues that we were looking for information on. One had to do with the performance bond related to the host community agreement. That according to the economic development director should not affect the public hearing here or your approval. We already have the host community agreement and the economic development director is working on getting the performance bond. So that's taken care of. The other issue has to do with the town engineer and getting comments from him. I have suggested a condition at the very end of this list of revised conditions to the effect that the applicant shall work with the town engineer to resolve any issues related to stormwater management to the satisfaction of the town engineer prior to the issuance of a building permit. This is similar to a condition that you had on another project. So I think that should do it. There really shouldn't actually be any change from preconstruction to postconstruction in terms of stormwater runoff because the building is being placed in an area where there's already pavement. So the pre and post runoff should be similar. In fact, it might actually be less after the construction because of the collecting stormwater in the cistern. Thank you for that update. Besides those two issues and buying your meter, any other updates for us? No, I don't believe so. The bond was actually issued. It's just a matter of every time I submitted it to the town, they want certain verbiage in there. So getting the insurance company to put it in there, I told them to talk to each other because they're also making me crazy. It's like splitting hairs over nonsense. I said, you know what? Making such a big deal about it. It's just some words. I told them it's issued. They just have to pull each other's teeth out themselves and then send it to us. The bond is issued and paid for. And it sounds like we don't have to worry about the details. No, right. That's the town. The attorneys will deal with that. That's it. There was the sign Ms. Chowd recommended with the camera stuff. I was going to buy one at Home Depot. However, I decided that items like that, the CCC will clarify what they want, what size, what size letters, if it's metal, plastic, et cetera. Because the one at Home Depot is plastic, they may want metal. That one says 24-hour cameras. The one I saw on one of the dispensaries in town says constant surveillance. So they might want different verbiage or dialogue, whatever. So I'm going to just wait till I get to that point. Obviously, all those fine things will be clarified with the CCC above and beyond the town, but that was it. Thank you. When a final sign or signs are chosen, do they have to submit pictures or something like that to the town? I think that's one of the conditions that we suggested. Let me see if I can figure out which one it is. But again, remember, those signs won't even, they're just going to be on my private road and those won't even be seen. 29, thank you. 29, great. Okay, so I'm going to open it up to actually the, if you're done, I'm going to open it up to the members for questions. Okay, Janet? I had a lot of paper on this and I was a little confused about where the management and operations plan is and where the security plan. And I was wondering if there might be residing somewhere on our side, or if it's going on the host agreement side, or I just was a little confused. I asked Ms. Bester about this right before the meeting. And the bits and pieces we have all received, and she is currently compiling them into one full document. And when that's completed, she will email it to us all. Thank you. Does, do board members have any other questions? Jack? Just for Chris, the stormwater report, that is necessary in this case? Does that come from cons com or? Mr. Gerfine has said that he's asked his civil engineer for a stormwater report and hasn't received it yet. I think the, the town engineer's opinion about this a month or so ago was that everything looked fine. He didn't need the stormwater calculations, but now that we've asked for them, he says he would like to have them. So we have a condition in, in the list of conditions, number 35, that would deal with that, which would, um, so I don't think stormwater is, is a big deal in this case, because like I said, pre and post is either the same or post is less. So we just need to get the town engineer to say yes, but that can happen before the building permit is issued rather than before you make your decision, in my opinion. Yeah, the town engineer told me verbatim. He says, I don't really need it, but give it to me anyhow, because I have it on all the other properties in town. Literally, that's what he said. He goes, the water goes into wetland, you're building on where it was asphalt, and you're using a cistern. So he goes, I don't, he goes, he really said, I really don't need it, but give it to me anyhow. That's exactly what Christine just said. I'm, I will get it to the town engineer. He just said it's just a technicality of getting it, that's all. So with that said, if all the board members note that Ms. Bestrup has added number 35 to the draft conditions, and just asking if you're all good with that, Michael. Yeah, I move we approve. The draft conditions revised 12, 18, 19, as presented to us tonight. Second, can we add, can we also go over the findings or take a peek at those and we'll add findings at, yeah, Chris, Chris, do you want us to go, can we do that or do we have to go through the individual things? You can approve the conditions, as Mr. Burt Wistel just recommended, and then you can approve the findings, and then you can approve the package as a whole and close the public hearing. It's up to you as to how you wanna do it. Okay, only because Christine also mentioned earlier that just the findings usually come before the conditions, but in this case, since if we have a second and we're, we can have discussion. Well, if that's a better procedure, I withdraw the motion and move that we approve. Since we have gone over these conditions and the draft of the findings at our last meeting. We did. And I don't think we need to go in individually. So I would like to move to close the public hearing and approve the findings as revised 12, 18, 19 and the conditions as revised 12, 18, 19. Just before you second, should I ask for public comment before we do this? Yeah, so hold that thought. Let me just address the public. Is there anyone here who would wish to speak on this issue, on this SPR? I see no hands. So, okay, so Michael has made, no, I think we can hold. You got it. And then I use second, I think Jack second. All right, so is there any discussion on yes, Janet? I have one limited thing. In the draft findings on section 4A, the first sentence, which says the application meets all of the permitting requirements of all applicable agencies within the Commonwealth of Massachusetts to the planning board's knowledge and will be as proposed in compliance with all the applicable state laws and regulations to the planning board's knowledge. The board finds that. I would just strike that because I actually have no idea personally or from the board whether he's complying with state regulations and I'm not sure what it adds. And so I would just start the sentence saying, the applicant has begun the licensing process with the cannabis control commission and has submitted evidence. I would just leave it to the state to sort out. I just thought it was kind of a, I just have no idea of the basis of that or I could say affirmatively that's being met. And I'm not sure why it's needed. Chris? It's taken from the standards and conditions that are listed below section 3.363. And I agree that making the statement that the applicant has begun the licensing process has gone before the concom and has filed the site plan review application. I think you should also say that the applicant has filed his application with the state because you did receive a document that makes that statement. So if you're comfortable with that, I'll change the wording and add that the applicant has filed his application with the state. Is that appropriate? That works for me and I have great hopes that he will comply with all those regulations. That's fine with me. Okay, so that was adjusted on the findings for A. Does anyone else have any? David? For the draft conditions, number 27. I think it's implied. I don't know whether it needs to be made explicit or not. I think it's implied that the title plan inspection that you've performed before and then before a bullet points issue. Do we need to say or should it be clear to say that any findings from the title plan inspection shall be submitted to the building inspector that that's just the affirmative thing? That's a question. I don't know whether it seems implied. I don't think that's necessary because the health inspector participates in the title plan inspection. So I think that that's fine. And the second sentence says shall be deemed either acceptable or improvements required. The adjoining is always sort of a nice passive thing so it's good to move somethings ahead before it. But no, it's not necessary, it's great, it's just a question. And Janet? Since there isn't an approved management operations or security plan, can we finesse the language in section four and 16 to say that it will be submitted and we can approve it later? Because I, or is it? Well, the security plan is a work in process. I mean, I have my parameters and my security system which is approved by the town. However, the end of the all the different aspects that chief will go over with me, the security systems, the fence, access, times, procedures. So that will be a work in process to the end to the whole security issue if that's what you were getting at. I, Chris, I agree on the security plan because that probably won't be really done until the project's closer to being opened. Yeah, yeah. The CCC will have to come in and clarify things. The chief will have to come down with his subordinates as already planned because he's been to the site with me, I've already had two meetings with him. So that, it's not so cut and dry. It's really a work in process that has to be evaluated by him and the CCC and to them to say, fix this, change that, whatever the case may be. Janet, which number is the security one? Let's see. The number four is the operations and management plan. And then number 16 is operations and management which I thought the security plan would be part of that but I don't know. I mean, I'm not saying let's add that but I just, I've seen bits and pieces of this. And so I mean, if the security plan is gonna be approved by the chief we could say that. Seems like the security is part of the operations but I don't, I think we could write it so we can see it later and approve it later. Yeah, that's both of them. Because it sounds like it's gonna come in probably more after even the building goes up. Way later, yeah. I agree. So Chris, you have that for, that's item four and 16. 16 I think can remain as it is and approved operations and maintenance plan for this use shall be in place at all times. So that one can remain and item four I will change to indicate that in its full form come back to you at a future date for review and approval. Is that okay? And does that include the security? Can we have that in there that that includes the, yeah. Board members have any other questions, concerns on the findings or the conditions? Okay, if that's all the discussion we have a motion on the table. If we're ready for a vote, let's see people reading. Give me a look if we're, all right. So with the motion, did we have to close the public hearing? Okay, great. All right, all in favor. And that's unanimous. Good luck. It just begins. Thank you guys. There you go. Thank you for your patience and your numerous visits. Oh, thank you. Have a good night. So we will now move to item four, public meeting subdivision Amherst Hill subdivision sub 1989-13 continue discussion on request by residents of Amherst Hill subdivision that the planning board rescind the release of lots that were released by the planning board on May 1st, 2019 from the approval with the covenant contract dated July 2nd, 2003, recorded in the Hampshire County registry of Deeds books 7555 page 61. Year on. Meaning Madam Chair, members of the board, Ms. Brestrup for the record, Tom Rede, attorney with Bacon Wilson here in Amherst, here on behalf of the residents of Amherst Hill subdivision. Again, I think as the chairwoman noted, reiterating our request for a rescission of the release of those lots, and then also an increase in the amount of security that you're holding or requiring to be provided by Tefino. We have provided an email, I think they did Monday, December 16th, which kind of lays out our position where you have the ability and we would say obligation to increase the security to make sure that it is reasonable given what has to be done on the site. I think you've heard last time from the town engineer, the amounts, if you do think, I mean, $930,000 is what he used. If you think that those are high, I think he said maybe 10 or 20% high. So we would suggest that you at least have increased security in the amount of $750,000. We prefer 930, but understanding that he used mass DOT data. We think that 750 is reasonable. We think that you have the authority under a slew of documents, case law, statute, your subdivision rules and regulations, and I think most pressingly the try party agreement, which amongst other things provides that the amount of security shall at all times be a direct and reasonable relationship to the expected cost to complete such work being the infrastructure, roadways, et cetera, including but not limited to the effects of inflation, delays in construction, and notably, damage to previously completed work. And so I think that's what your town engineer provided to you last time. And so we would just again, not to be the dead horse, but reiterate the request for the rescission and also the increase in the security and suggest that you have the obligation to do it. Thanks. Thank you. Are there any questions from the board to Mr. Reedy? I don't see any. So may I just say something? Yeah. We did receive Mr. Reedy's email. We did. I have, of course, distributed it to you. And I did go to ask Tafino through their attorney, Michael Pill, whether they would consider signing a new performance agreement. They have sent us back an email to the effect that they are not interested in doing that. They have said that they're going to be completing the road during the construction season of 2020. I think you all have a copy of this in front of you. And they, Ms. Gray-Mullen and I had had a conversation with Town Council the other day about how the planning board should respond to what's being requested of them. Town Council recommends against rescinding the release of the lots. Town Council goes along with the request to increase the performance bond, but then the question is exactly how much should you ask for? There had been a suggestion of hiring a third party to do that work and a suggestion to use the money that is already held in escrow to pay a contractor to, or an engineer to come up with a cost estimate. Mr. Michael Pill is saying that that is not appropriate because the money that is held in escrow is to be used for construction. So if you were to want to go ahead and try to get an estimate for the work that needs to be done, we would have to find the money somewhere to do that. So I think that's sort of the gist of what our conversations over the last few days have been and maybe Ms. Gray-Mullen can elaborate on that. No, I think you pretty much summed it up. So we were concerned, you know, we wanna get a correct number. You have to start with a number and then you, from there, figure out who's gonna pay for it. But getting this email today from Mr. Pill, it sounds very encouraging. I just wanna reiterate that I believe the roads are getting paved and the work that the town wanted to see done by the fall. Did we get confirmation? I think Mr. Skeels was gonna go out today and he had gotten word that the work had all been done and he was gonna go out today to take a look at it. I don't know if we heard back from him, but it's our belief that it's done and the roads are being paved. So looking at Mr. Pill's email, I just would like to say is there a way that we can make it a little more binding that this work is actually gonna, you know, this sounds great. Well, the planning board has requested that the building commissioner not issue building permits and the attorney from KP law thinks that's a very sound position for the planning board to take. So you do have that ability to control things because the building commissioner is not going to issue building permits for those lots. So it's up to you if you wanna go any further with this and try to get a revised performance agreement. That would be good, but how are you going to go about getting it given what Michael Pill has stated? So you could say we're not going to release building permits until we get this changed performance agreement. That's up to you to decide whether you wanna do that or not. And then do we take the number that Mr. Reedy has proposed tonight, the 750,000? Do we try to get a more realistic number? Again, that's up to you. So, but that's gonna take a little bit more work if you go that route. Well, what I'm asking you is with Mr. Pill's email, he's proposing to do the work next year, within the year. And it is his point. It's sort of irrelevant right now. If he's going to do the work, it's irrelevant whether it costs 300, 500, 700, or 900. But is there a way that, you know, this is an email. I don't know how, you know, and there's conversations going on with the DPW and the town engineer. So I don't know, is there a letter? Like, how does this become binding? How can we, you know, make it more legal that they're promising to do this work? I think the only thing that you have is you've got the building commissioner not releasing building permits. That's a pretty strong step, I think you've taken. And our attorney at KP Laws thinks that's significant and that will cause action on the part of the developer. And that may be enough to get him to finish the road next year, 2020. I don't really know what else to suggest. Go ahead, Michael. It has been suggested that the planning board has the authority to unilaterally change the performance bond, presumably upwards to the $750,000 that Mr. Reed is now suggesting, or the original, what was it, nine? That's $630, 930. Or the original number, or some number in between those things. Am I correct in that assumption? I think the planning board can ask for that. I think in order to enforce it, you probably have to take the developer to court. And you have the developer who would need to sign it and the bank who would need to sign it. So the planning board can make the request and demand, or however you wanna phrase it, but it may take more than just asking for it than to get the two other parties to sign. It may take legal action, which is lengthy and costly. And to follow up on that, if we were to make such a request, who in the town would be, there would be a negotiation that would then commence. Would that be our attorney, or would that be you, or would that be some other official in town that would begin to negotiate such an adjustment? The last time it was the planning board chair who signed the document after it was reviewed by KP Law. So KP Law made sure that all the languages was correct, but then Steve Schreiber actually signed the document on behalf of the town. But Mr. Schreiber didn't engage in the negotiations himself. I would say there weren't negotiations. There was a statement on the part of Tafino as to what it would cost to do the work, and that was backed up by cost estimates that had been obtained from the town engineer. So there really wasn't much of a negotiation. I don't know if you call it negotiation, but it's a three-party agreement. So if you look at the last time, there's two parts. There's the punch list that both the contractor or developer and the town engineer agree upon, and then they both agree upon the amount. If you look at the spreadsheet from 2013 or from the 2017 agreement, if you look into the information on that document, you can see that the last time it was ever edited, it was by Mr. Parker. Because so the negotiation is that the DPW or town engineer, and they agree together that this is the list of items to be repaired, fixed, installed, paved, and they agree to the amounts, and then they go to the bank. So in this case, if that was to go forward, again, I assume the same thing sort of happens. Mr. Skeels has started with a starting point, and as he said, he knew it was high, and he used Mastio-T numbers. So the usual protocol would be that the contractor, the developer would then counter that with his information, either doing his own estimate or well, probably doing his own or hiring somebody else's, and then you're kind of right, Michael, they negotiate down to a number and then they go to the bank. But where we are right now is it doesn't appear that the contractor or his lawyer, Mr. Pill, are recommending that they would even want to go into that negotiation. Janet. So when I read page three of the performance secured by a lender's agreement, it seems like we're exactly in a situation right now that was anticipated, and in the second paragraph, it says in kind of the third sentence, in accordance with the decision, if the obligations are not completed by June 30th, 2019, the planning board may require the applicant to provide additional security as necessary to maintain such direct and reasonable relationship to the security and the amount of work that's to be done, which security shall be a condition for obtaining further lot releases and or permit issuances. So we're past June 30th. We need more security to make sure that the work is done because Jason's skills list is very high, and if you take off 20%, we're still nowhere close to the amount that I have, and that we don't need to ask Tofino. We can require them to increase their security with the bank, and this is a term that they've already agreed to, and we're just enforcing that term. So I think that if we decided that tonight, or hopefully tonight, not to drag it out, that we wanted additional security and we picked an amount following Jason's skills or some lesser amount, then the next move would be for them to increase their security with Greenfield Bank. If they're gonna fix it anyway, it's not, they can just, we're just enforcing the agreement. They're saying they're gonna do the work, and then we're assured that if they don't, there's a fallback, there's a protection. So I think we're really at the situation that was anticipated by this contract, and since the ones that wrote it, I don't know what's, to me it just seems pretty clear, we can just say we need to increase the security, pick an amount, and direct Tofino to do that. And I would just ask the town council, town attorney to do that. Cress. I think you can say that, and you can ask for that, but there's no way of enforcing it. You would need to take Tofino to court in order to enforce it. That's what KP Law has told us. So you may wish to make that request or recommendation that Tofino increase the amount of the security, but how do you force him to do it? And the way you force him to do it is you've got the building permits that you're not gonna release, and you can take him to court. And taking him to court would take a long time. I think he said 10 years ago. It would take a while, and it would be costly, and the town would be paying for the attorney. So my advice would be to say, okay, Tofino is moving in a direction that is what we like, and it's a slow process, but why don't we see how it plays out for a while? You've still got the building permits that you're not issuing. That would be my advice. And that seemed to be Joel Bart's advice when Christine and I spoke with him yesterday morning. I agree. Jack. I'm just wondering in terms of, say we were to increase the bond tonight, and then the next step would be having them to agree that they don't agree that. So who makes a decision that it goes to court? And is that, you know, how immediate is that? I think it would be the town manager who would have to get into it to decide whether that was something that the town should be spending money on and spending time. And if there's an alternative method of getting to the point that you want, that seems to be preferable to me than to, you know, force a lawsuit. So, but again, it's not my decision. I'm just here to advise you and make recommendations. So back to what we have right now is in this email, what Mr. Pill is stating that Tofino's plan is over the next nine months, say. I'm just wondering if we can ask them for like a legal letter stating what they're stating in this, a timeline referencing the punch list from Jason's of the town engineer. And, you know, for the amount of effort playing this forward, you know, like you said, we're holding the building permits. You know, this part could all be done in the next eight or nine, maybe even earlier. I mean, what I would hope is by June or July, paving crews are open, weather's good. So this could potentially just be done in six or seven months. But I would want more than an email is what I'm saying to help guarantee that work. And then I agree, if next summer comes and this doesn't get done, I think stronger action needs to be taken. I also just wanna note that in Mr. Pill's, you know, there's another lawsuit going on outside of us. And I would hope that that through negotiations and arbitration would prove fruitful and sort the maintenance aspects of this out. I'm good with that scenario, where if they put in something, some form of writing, their intention to do improvements, referencing the RFP list, because for us to come up with an increase in performance bond, first of all, they're not okay. You know, they're not gonna agree to it. And second of all, we don't have an estimate to know the number to increase by and coming up with a random, I think you said 700. It just feels like it's pulled out of the air. So I think moving forward so that we have the actions that the neighborhood wants, which is improvement of the roads. That's why you came to us. That makes a lot of sense. Yeah, having something in writing so that next summer, if it's not happening, then it sounds like they're truly being dishonest and trying to do something. Michael? The problem with something in writing is that, as I've seen it, the developer Tafino has already ignored what was in writing, which was that this work was to be done by the middle of last summer. What additional guarantee we have from another piece of paper that says that it'll be done by sometime in 2020, I don't see that that's any greater security than we already have and that has already been violated. Jack? I just want to note that Tommy said, Mike Pilt said it was too high, but he actually put a number of 40%, which probably is probably a reasonable number if we were to pick a number, which is instead of 900,000 would be somewhere around 500,000 or twice as much as the current bond. But again, and the main reason it's high, Chris, just to confirm that this prevailing wage is double the labor wage. So if you got to extract the labor portion of all the mass DOT unit costs, and that's why we asked for them to come up with an estimate, but Michael Pilt said gave us a number basically, 40% less than, and so if I were to pick a number, I would pick that number. Having experienced in this, I also agree with that, that the number is probably closer to Mr. Pilt's estimate. And then just to remind that we do have 800, 288,000 already in a bond. And I think the other complication is the negotiation going on over some of the maintenance costs, which is sort of a different issue. I would be willing to stretch this in other six or seven months. The roads are being paved right now, the potholes have been filled, there's been other structural integrity improvements with catch basins and pavement. It's safer to plow now, so it'll get through this winter and then see them get the work done. I would like to see a legal letter from them and us asking them to try to do it earlier in the summer than later, and then them addressing that in the letter so that we have a date. So let's just say if it was by July 1st, then as a board I would then want to take this up again. I know that there were health issues and lots of other things that went on last summer, supposedly, that's why the work didn't get done. So I'm willing for the amount of work it's gonna be and potential more legal work, I'm willing to put it off for another seven months and give Tofino a chance to finish this work, but I do want a legal letter. Any other, Janet? So I'm not like in the mood for a lawsuit, but I think if we raise the bond, ask the attorney to set up and raise the bond to about 500,000, $600,000, and Tofino is going to do the work anyway, there's no real conflict, it's just we have insurance and that's what this clause in this contract is for. This is a whole performance bond is to make sure if everything goes bad, we're covered. And so if they're planning to do the work, they think 500,000 is reasonable and we just raise it, I don't see what their objection would be. And I don't think it would cost them very much to increase the performance bond from their current amount to 500,000. And so it's just insurance for us and we're just exercising our power under the contract. I don't feel like it's a big conflict thing, it's just sort of saying we want it done and we can, Joel Bard can negotiate the time that it will be done, but I think it's just time to just protect our interests and make sure we have a safe subdivision at some point. I don't see it as really a conflict or like throwing the gauntlet down for a lawsuit, it's just exercising, protecting the town's interests and the neighborhood's interests. David? I also don't think Michael Pilt said yes in that email, he didn't say no and he's offering another number. So if there's kind of a negotiation already going on in that, so. I think that it's premature for the planning board to get involved in a discussion about revising a three-way agreement which one of the parties to that agreement has not interested at this point. I think that there is litigation between the parties. I do not believe that if the developer is represented here, I would ask about the identify themselves. The developer has not been at any of the planning board meetings and so we have a silence there, an absence there that, but that's someone besides the point. The issue about costs are part of what is involved in the dispute between the parties and who is responsible for what costs for the planning board. I think it's premature for us to get involved in that. The point that I think we're at here, the decision to record at the registry a prohibition or a request for a moratorium on it. The issuing of permits is to notify third parties that there is a dispute about the land that they may be considering buying. So third parties are on notice, I think. Seems to me the appropriate, what I would be comfortable with as a planning board member is a consideration of the action that we took was the first step, the first part of the request made by council here tonight. Rather than adopting a position advocated by council by one of the parties that's interested in the litigation, I think we should consider the action that we took, rescinding the prohibition, wait rescinding the release of the lots that have not yet been bought. That seems to me to be within the planning board's purview to identify the interests of the homeowners and interests of potential third party purchasers to be notified that there's an issue here, a dispute. And that whether we acted or not with appropriate diligence that I think is the most the narrowest and most appropriate thing for us to consider rather than stepping into and grabbing numbers from the air for something. And so I would be, I'm not persuaded that we should be moving towards this role of intervening in this dispute and weighing in on the amount of the bond and who is responsible for the cost. That's, I think, underlying their dispute. Michael? I'm not sure I agree entirely. It seems to me that the amount of the bond is indeed planning board business, but at the moment it also seems to me that the likelihood of having a significant impact on that amount short of extended legal maneuvering is slight. So I'm wondering, David, would you be willing to make a motion to the effect of your original statement relative to the rescission of the lots as you were discussing in the beginning? Because I think that's probably the best way to go at this point. Before making, I'd like the opportunity for us to discuss rather than discuss only with a motion on the table. I mean, I think that there are a lot of issues involved and that we're not, we as a board haven't benefited from the opportunity for us to suss it out. We've had the opportunity to hear from a lot of folks who are interested and who have positions, but we haven't had the opportunity just for a discussion among ourselves. And so that's where I'd like to go before putting a motion there. I just want to comment that, I don't know if it was clear, but when Chris and I, when we brought this up with council yesterday, he was recommended against or ascending the lots. Further making me a little hesitant to propose a motion. That's Janet. So, Christine, could you clarify, because I thought you said that the town attorney was against rescinding the lots and for increasing the performance bond and suggested maybe using the money in escrow to get a third party estimate. Is that what he said, or did I just mishear that? I don't think he suggested using the money in escrow to get a third party estimate. I think that was something that Christine and I thought might work, but obviously Michael Pill is arguing against that. I think that the town attorney, Joel Bard, felt that it would be a reasonable request to request an increase in the bond. What he was cautioning us about was that it would be hard to get that to happen. He didn't think that Tafino and his attorney would agree to doing that. He certainly thought you could try, but that if you really wanted to enforce that request, you'd probably have to go to court. Because it seems to me that if we got the increase in the performance bond, which isn't that expensive, then we could release the lots because we'd have the guarantee of the performance bond and then they could sell lots and raise money to pay. So there might be something in it for Tafino to increase the performance bond and then we agree to release the lots and everything sort of, we're protecting the subdivision. So that might be another move. Torfino does not want to entertain a new performance bond. We've asked them. But it's not a new bond, I'm just saying we exercise. No, it's a new, we have to create a new bond for more money. You keep this bond with the 288 you'd need and then whatever the agreed upon higher amount is you get another bond with the bank. And they don't want to do that right now. And I just want to go back to finish out, remind you what Chris and I talked, when we talked to Mr. Bard yesterday, he kept reiterating that he felt that what the action we had taken thus far with holding the building permits as such for these lots was enough. And he felt that that was enough of us exercising control over the situation. And then there was additional conversation about getting a third-party estimate just because there is such a foggy area right now over the exact amount. And then just, yeah, Mr. Pill answered that back saying he just felt that that was a waste of money because they're just gonna go ahead and do the work. I think I saw Jack and that's okay. So I, Janet's been saying it's not a lot of money. I think just from a, I hate to say this, I hate to say this, but just Google what a bond would cost. I think it's for a $300,000 additional is probably $2,000, $5,000 cost to them. So given construction costs, that is not a lot true. But I guess in some sense I feel if we were to increase the bond or request that in some respects we're just deferring this to the town manager to act on it or not. But technically it should have been increased last summer given if we knew then what we know now. Michael? Yeah, I'm wondering what those of my colleagues who counsel of doing nothing right now would recommend when next June 30, 2020 comes along and the work has not been done because that seems to be Torfino's track record at this point. And at that point, are we gonna have this discussion again or what will happen? Well, my hope is that the work would be done. I think there is a sincerity here. No one was really complaining about Torfino until the summer when pot fulls didn't get finished and there was a threat of the roads not being plowed. And so this whole issue came up and a lot of this issue is between the developer and the residents on determining who is going to pay for maintenance and deterioration of time on infrastructure. What we're looking at here is to get the road to a point where it could be accepted by the town. I do think the amount of this work is probably closer to 600,000. As Mr. Pill's email also mentioned, some of the work that's included in this is already being done or has been done and half the money is in performance. So worst case is next summer, at the end of the summer, if it wasn't done, we would have to look at this in a more serious matter. And maybe at that point, we would have to formally request performance bonds and consider ascending lots and that kind of thing with the knowledge that it could be refused and we would have to go to the town manager and he would have to determine whether or not the town's gonna actually take legal action on this. I'm just saying at this point right now, I'm willing to give it another shot to give the developer a little bit more time and half of a construction summer to actually get the work done. But I am asking for it to be in a more legal sense written as an agreement, maybe not with money tied to it, but a formal legal letter that would help us in court if we did have to go to court. Jack? Well, also Michael Pill's letter at the end of the 2020 construction season, if it doesn't happen then it ends up like we're going through this, Donnie Brooke again, winter coming, repairs obviously gonna be needed again because that's the status of the road. So I'm not sure I like the timing with what's stated there in terms of, or else we'll just be in a do-loop. That's why I was asking in that legal letter to ask for something more like July 1st because you're right, in the email, it says Tofino has begun seeking bids if they're actually seeking bids right now for the actual work and it says and will begin scheduling contractors. Well, I'm saying let's get the letter to say you're gonna get it all done before July 1st. Maria? So I think that this letter you're referencing, this sort of unwritten letter is going to be more useful than that June 30th date that has passed because that date was predicted, was it three years before that where they assumed construction would move ahead in a normal way? A lot of things have happened, whether it was health or whether the housing market not going the way he thought. So that June 30th date passed and maybe I'm remembering this wrong but I think Mr. Skeels even said that date was kind of a hazy target. It's not like the town says, okay, June 30th has passed. They kind of give a little leeway just because construction is not a straightforward process. I think now that this developer has come under a lot of scrutiny in these last few months and they know they're under a microscope for them to do something immoral now would really be telling. So I feel like it's not like we're just giving them a chance. We're literally saying do what you were supposed to be doing. I think this is a good signal. I think trying to get something in writing is going to have more weight to it than that I think it was part of the performance bond that had that June 30th date that since passed. So I'm comfortable with that. I'm not as comfortable with the rescinding of the lots just because I do trust the council, the town council attorneys judgment. And I don't feel like, I feel like we were as a planning board pulled into this. I don't feel like we were supposed to be an enforcement party. I feel like we were supposed to be a planning board. We're volunteers to plan not to enforce. So that's my opinion on how I would proceed. Madam chair. Chris, do you have any input on what we could do for a letter who could sign it? How could we make it legal? Sort of that it would stand as a piece of evidence if it ever did have to go to court. Well, I'm certainly willing to speak to Mr. Pill and ask him if he will issue such a letter. And I assume that I would get an answer back before your next meeting, which is on January 15th. If he didn't respond or if he responded negatively, then you would have that piece of information to go forward with. So I think that's a good plan for now to request such a letter with a timeline. And so that's that would be my recommendation. And if you're also speaking with him, could you ask him also for specifics where it says he's seeking, they're currently seeking bids. Have they posted those bids? How are they, you know, are they doing RFPs? And what is their timeline for scheduling right now and voice to him that we would like to have it done spring, early summer and get feedback on that? Does the board have anything else that they would want Ms. Bester up to ask Mr. Pill, Jack. Are we specifying a timeline in the letter, letting them say? Well, first she's gonna go ask Mr. Pill about doing a letter and what kind of legal letter we could do and she's gonna say that we wanna have the work done in the spring or early summer and get feedback from him. They could say no, we're not gonna do that, but I'm hoping that they are reasonable and they realize that this is what they need to do and would be best for all parties. And then she'll come back to us on the 15th. Could we talk to our town attorney to see if a letter would have that effect? I mean, I'd rather get advice from him before we talk to Pill and start negotiating with him. I think that's a great idea to talk to Mr. Bard first and then Mr. Pill. At this time, is the board open? Can I ask to see if the public has any other comments? Oh, Tom, you should wave. I was going to, but I think it might be more effective if we just have the neighbors talk. Maybe at the end I can say something. Okay, so at this point I'm gonna ask for a show of hands. Your hands up, okay? Up or down? Okay, so I see five hands. I see six, oh God. Can we raise our hands again? It's like five. If you would like to come up for two or three minutes and speak on this, if you feel that you have some information to offer, and then after this first round, I will ask again, but I'm just trying to get a feel of things. So Mr. Master Alexis up first, and then please just show your hands one more time because I'm also trying to remember who you are. Okay, great, so there's six right now. Hello, welcome back. And when you come up, please say your name and your address, and Ms. Bestrips by herself today, and she's doing minutes, so really make sure she gets the nod that she got it, thank you. All right, good evening, Madam Chair, and welcome to the board. My name is James Master Alexis, and I live at 35, and I live in Ridge Rural in Alms. There's a couple things I want to say here. First of all, in the three-party agreement, it says, that the security in this matter in this subdivision shall bear a direct and reasonable relationship at all times to the work that needs to be done, and that's a document that three parties say. Should I start again? Want me to say that again? Thank you, Mandy. James Master Alexis, that's better. James Master Alexis, 35, Linda in Ridge Rural. Just for the benefit of the audience at home. The three-party agreement says that the security in this matter shall bear a direct and reasonable relationship to the work that needs to be done, and in other parts, and Mr. Reedy read this proportion to it, it shall always bear a direct relationship to the amount of inflation, construction costs, and damage, which you're calling maintenance, but it's reconstruction of the road, okay? Now, the first question I have for the board, and this is rhetorical, you don't have to answer this question, and I'm not. It's not my role to question you. But if you think that $288,000 is sufficient and reasonable surety for this project, then you shouldn't raise the surety at all. But we know that $288,000 is not appropriate surety in this matter, and how do we know this? We know this because when I came to you in, I believe, I first spoke to Ms. Preston in September, I believe our first meeting here was in October, I said to you, through my motion, that you released the lots and the work wasn't done in short, and you sent out your town engineer to take a look at the cost and what work needed to be done. Now, we know that the cost, as you said, sir, is higher because of the state values, but the town engineer that we hire through taxpayer dollars came back and said that $930,000 worth of work was not done. And even if we take $500, $600, or $750,000, whatever is a reasonable figure, we don't have that surety, even if it's 600,000, 500,000, we don't have that surety here this evening, okay? And Ms. McGowan read the portion of the three-party agreement that says if the work isn't done by June 30th, you can increase, and I'm just paraphrasing what she said, but just remember, before your involvement, okay, and I would slightly disagree with you, Ms. Chow. I believe, to some degree, you are an enforcement board because if we have covenants, which we do in this case, and if we have agreements, which we do in this case, that work needs to be done, how do we enforce those? I know you have building inspectors, you have your playing department, but when we have such a situation here that the roads were deficient such that your DPW engineer told two people in our neighborhood, those roads need to be reconstructed in December of 2018, and if you recall, and that's in my motion, if you recall, Mr. Moreing knew in December of 2018 that these roads needed to be reconstructed, and that's what started this ball rolling. And we had a decent relationship with Mr. Parker. We said, Ted, can you fill the potholes, and then it snowballed, no pun intended there, snowballed to filling potholes to reconstructing a portion, at least I would say 40% of the roads, okay? So we're talking about, not just maintenance, we're talking about reconstructing from Ask Your Town Engineer, I know you're looking at me in an quizzical manner, Ask Your Town Engineer, from half of Hawthorne Road, downhill, all the pavement needs to be dug up and reconstructed, that is, we are not a construction company, the good people behind me are not a construction company, but that may be a matter for the lawsuit that we've been sued on here. So first thing, before your involvement, our streets were full of potholes and the town was threatening not to plow, and again, go back to you, Ms. Chow. We come here and you take reasonable action, okay, by putting the moratorium on the building permits and saying this has to stop, and then what happens? Two days before you make your site visit, the potholes are filled. We're thankful that the potholes are filled, that's progress, we're thankful to Fina, we're thankful for your involvement. Today's Wednesday, Monday, two days before this meeting, the catch basins were fixed. I didn't see that, personally, one of my neighbors told me that, then it snowed and I couldn't see them, but he told me that they were fixed, okay? So your involvement has spurned this action, put a spur, a burr under the saddle of Tafino and move them forward, okay? I think you should raise the security tonight to a reasonable amount and, with all due respect, instruct your council to begin negotiations to do so, okay? Because we've got 42 neighbors, 42 people right now, that if Tafino walks away and we come to the summer and they walk away, there's only $288,000 to solve this problem, okay? Regardless of any letter that we don't have right now this evening, okay? I think we need to trust our town engineer because he's our guy, okay? We know his dollar amount is a little high, but just think where we were here, okay? In May, in May, Tafino presented you a document that said, the work on the ground, I'm paraphrasing from the covenant, the work on the ground has been done and asked you all to sign it. I think all of you were on the board then, maybe not, but all of you signed it and he said all the work had been done, but then you send your engineer out to release the lots, the document to release the lots, the performance bond and the work wasn't done. So I don't understand why when we come and we're here in the audience, we have our lawyer, we're presenting our case and Mr. Pill writes an email, okay? That you wait his email more than our testimony, our presence and the facts that your involvement have made this situation better. And I think the delay here really, why delay this? And I hope he does the work. I hope you raise the performance bond and you never have to reach the performance bond because your involvement here filled our potholes and got this project on the right ground. I don't see what delay does for us here because I think you need to take an adverse inference for the fact that Tafino knew about all of these meetings and didn't show up, okay? They're developers in the town. They come before the planning board when they want something, when they want you to release the lots, when they want particular things, but now when they've got a problem, they send a letter and hide, okay? We don't hide, we're not gonna hide in this case, all right? And I would ask you to take a look. You're part of the three-party agreement again yourself, the town, okay? And the work wasn't done, even if the June 30th date wasn't a drop dead date, no work would have been done unless we had come here in October and requested assistance on this matter, okay? If we hadn't said anything, we would have went on into the future until someone woke up, either the planning staff, us, and turned around and said, what is going on here, okay? But we came in October and that's when things started to move, okay? So maybe you think they're moving now and they are to some degree, but the 288 is not sufficient security. That's all I have to say. Thank you. I'll start on the left. I think there was a woman, yes. Good evening. I'm Laurel Smith Doar and I live at 15 Hawthorne Road. Laurel Smith Doar. Thank you for your service to the town. I really appreciate all the time that you've put into listening to us and I just wanna bring the security bond in front of you and ask you to consider raising that tonight. I'm a homeowner and a car owner and I have to have insurance on my house and my car for what they're worth and I feel like we need to have security for the road and it should be closer to what the costs will be to create the road. And I guess, so that's the thing that I would ask you to consider to do tonight and it's within your purview. So thanks for considering that. Thank you. I think there's a gentleman, yep. My name is Brian Scully and I live on, is it on? Yeah, just speak a little bit into it, yeah. Is that okay? Yeah. Closer. Closer. All right. Brian Scully, 22 Hawthorne Road in Amherst. I think you already have it in your contract, the one you negotiated with them originally, that Mrs. McGovern says you can automatically tell them you have to raise the bond. You negotiated that, I'm assuming, with your lawyers and everyone else, but for some reason you're reticent about enforcing it or demanding that they do what they said they would do. And they clearly aren't doing what they said they would do because we're all here. Mr. Pill is not here by accident. They're dragging this out. They're playing for time. I think that we shouldn't be as worried about what the lawyer costs to the town might be if you do have to enforce something that the planning department approved. You said that you don't think you're in the enforcement business, but the planning department is the department that gives permission to these developers to come in and put in roads and build houses and sell them to people like us. But if they don't keep their word and they leave us hanging at the end after they've made all of their money, well, who is responsible? I think it's a joint thing between the developer and between the people who set the developer's rules. You guys said they had to do what they were supposed to do. They agreed that they'd do it. Well, now they've made the money and they don't want to do it. And as far as the, I think the building thing is a great thing to have, but the reason I think that the sites should be rescinded and not available to sell, I think a sharp outfit like this might say, let's have a fire sale and sell those plots or lots for a couple hundred thousands, half of what they could probably get for them to build a house. And then just leave. Pocket a million dollars or whatever, two million dollars. And then that's it, they're gone. And the people who buy them, other developers will know that eventually they'll get permission to build. Whether it's because someone else, like us ended up finishing the roads or if some of those developers may have to make a deal with the town to get them so those lots can be used. So I think you're underestimating Tafino and giving them a little too much credit for good behavior or goodwill. I don't think it's there, I don't. And I'm not an unreasonable person and I was willing to listen to the other guy's side as anything, but they have been stonewalling us on everything. And I don't know that they're even talking about finishing the roads to the way Jason Skeels said they need to be finished. They just said they're gonna finish the roads. At one point they said they were just gonna throw a top coat on it. You don't know that that isn't what they're talking about here. I think you need first to boost the money up so they've got some skin in the game, more than they do. And I do think rescinding the thing, rescinding them, they're not gonna get less valuable as time goes on, but they can still sell those lots. And there's developers who would love to build in that neighborhood, who would take the gamble that that's not gonna be a lifetime no permit thing from you guys, 10, 20, 30 years. I don't think so. I think they'll gamble on the fact that once DeFino's gone and out of the picture, that they'll be able to get permits. And I just, we need you guys. And we don't need the town manager to tell you that it's gonna cost a lot of money to use lawyers. Well, lawyers cost a lot of money because we're paying them right now. And it's part of what our taxes go for. Right now, our taxes aren't paying for any of our roads. I mean, we're paying as much tax as anybody else in town, but nobody, the people that are fixing the potholes are either us or it's gonna be them. And this time they did it, but they're suing us for doing it. So we pay a lot of property taxes. Some of that goes toward lawyers. That's the fight. You fight for what's right. And you guys set up what's right when you planned this development out or you okayed it based on what they said they do. They're not doing it. And this guy, why do you think he's not here? You could ask him all those great questions you guys had tonight. And you had a lot of good ones. He's not here to answer them. He doesn't want to be. He doesn't want to answer them. And how long did you wait for that email to come? We were here a month ago. Was he just peppering you with emails? I doubt it. I went guessing that was his last little thing, drip or drab to get you to just push it on down the road. I'm sorry, I talked too much, but I'm telling you this guy is gonna pull the rug out from under everyone and the big losers here are us. But it's you too, because it's your word that they built this on. And so I think you are sort of enforcers. Thank you. I'm sorry I talked so much. Thank you. Hello, Blake Speerco 53 Conquered Way. I just wanna say a few points. One was that we are concerned that the developer is not, is just gonna sell the properties to somebody and try to liquidate. And the conversation is discussing like he's gonna do this and complete it. But I am worried that the roads aren't gonna be done. And what he's done so far is fill the potholes, which is actually almost a blessing that that problem occurred because that very little expense compared to all the milling and all what has to happen. And that hasn't happened at all. Filling the potholes is a very little part of this 900,000 or whatever the number is, $750,000 estimate. But if he could sell all the lots to another developer and I was thinking the same thing and they know eventually they can't let, we can't as a town or as a neighborhood just let the road never be finished because he sold them and whoever buys the lots knows they'll eventually have to get building permits. And now we're gonna have nothing to hold on them. And in the contract it says you can increase the securities. So I don't understand how that is in part of your responsibility to protect us. It just seems, it's written in the contract. Thank you. Thank you. Hi, I'm John Kennedy at 36 Lindenridge Road. We had an issue with our roads. We have been told in the neighborhood for about 15 years or so that there was a top coat gonna be completed. There are people here who Doug Cole himself promised that this would be done at some point. Jim Master Alexis talked about a good relationship with Ted Parker. We didn't have a reason to think there was an issue here except we were concerned every year about the potholes. We were concerned every year that this would get done. It began to get worse and worse. This year was one of the worst years. The Guilford Mooring mentioned to some folks in town that the town wasn't going to plow this year. So that's why this came to a head. It's not like this was just a wonderful situation where we thought it was never gonna be a problem. So we invited the developer to a meeting to answer questions for us, explain to us what the situation was, try to hold them to their promise. And then we came to the planning board. We exercised our rights as citizens to come to the planning board. And for this, Tofino sued us. This is all we've done. These are the people we're dealing with here. We're not dealing with a developer that has acted honorably, has fulfilled its obligations. And so we're just asking you, the planning board, representatives of our town, the town that we live in, center kids school and work in, pair taxes in, to look out for our interests, right? We're asking you to exercise the authority that exists in the contract, the three-party contract that Tofino already agreed to. And that contract explicitly states that you have the authority to increase the security. It's explicit. It even talks about increasing the security if in fact there's deterioration of the roads in the interim, right? It doesn't say you have to go to court to do that. It says you can withhold building permits and release of lots to enforce that. There's nowhere in there that says you have to go to court to actually request or require an increase in the security. So I know, I'm sure the town attorney's looking out for the interests of the town institutions. And I know Ms. Bestrup is doing her best job to look out for the town institutions. But who's looking out for the citizens of the town? Who's looking out for us, right? We've done everything by the book here. And we feel like we've come here for the fourth time. We have a sort of an ironclad contract that gives you the authority to do what we're asking you to do. And as someone mentioned here, all Tafino has done is send some emails, right? This is a pattern with these guys, right? We've had conversations with our friends over in the Hopbrok Kestrel neighborhood. They have a very similar situation for 15 years, right? Tafino put a top coat down on that neighborhood and then the town engineer came to them with a punch list, Tafino walked away from it. Those roads have never been accepted. And you're putting your faith in these developers, these contractors. The reason there's a security is just for that, to provide security. If they do the job, they get their money back. And if you, you know, is the town, no one's gonna force the town to go to court to enforce something. That's a choice the town will make. We're simply asking you to increase the security to align with what the contract, the three-party agreement, gives you the authority to do. The agreement that you signed and Tafino signed. It's very simple. So, you know, with that, again, I thank you for all the time you've put into this. We're not gonna go away. This is the fourth time we've come here. We do not have the faith in the way that Tafino has operated, that I think some on this board do, honestly. And I think the evidence of their behavior is pretty clear. And so, we're just simply asking for the contract that was signed by all three to be enforced. Thank you very much. Thank you. I'm Alexandra Mayew, 73 Linden Ridge Road. First of all, I would like to thank you for seeing us here for the fourth time. I'm appreciative of the opportunity to exercise my right to be here and talk to you. It is for this right that, as John said, we're getting penalized with this lawsuit. The text, it's funny, the text in the lawsuit and even a letter that Mr. Pill, the lawyer, sent to the Gazette explicitly says that this is a reaction for us coming to see you here. If we hear from you, you know, that the developer seems to show goodwill now and you're hopeful that this is getting resolved. We do not share those feelings. My neighbors articulated what has been going on in other neighborhoods as well. You know from what has been happening to us that action was only taken after we appeared before you and after you took action by setting these building permit restrictions. This is when our potholes got fixed just before two days before your planned site visit. Tofina is only taking action because of the pressure that you put on them. So you can't ease up on that pressure. This is the only thing that is motivating them right now. So I believe that this pressure needs to be on and not only with the securities, it is under your authority to rescind the lots as well. And ultimately, I understand, we understand that this is a complex issue and you're hesitant because you don't wanna make the wrong decision. You don't want to step into liabilities for the town. We get that. But you have to consider that there's liabilities from not acting as well. The safety of our roads and the situation in our neighborhood is a liability for the town as well. Aside from liabilities, you have to think about the precedent that something like this is setting. If Tofina gets away with this kind of behavior, if Tofina just sells these lots and liquidate and then move on, then think about what this says to other developers. I don't believe that this planning board wants other developers to think that they can circumvent the rules of this town and not complete work that they committed to and not live up to expectations. I don't believe that this planning board wants developers to sweet talk their way to lower securities that are inadequate for the projects that they're meant to complete and represent. I don't believe that this planning board wants the developers to think that they can pass on construction and infrastructure costs to the citizens. And I don't think that this planning board wants the citizens of this town to think that they're not represented by the governance structures that are meant to protect them and control these issues that are squarely under your purview. So I hope that you realize that the actions you choose to take or to not take have an effect not just on our case but the precedent that this sets to the developers, the towns and the subdivisions in general. Thanks again and I hope you're not gonna keep hearing me talk over many, many times in many meetings, thank you. Thank you. Is there anyone else who would like to speak? I see one orange arm in the back. Yep, come on. Deborah Kahn, 32 Hawthorne Road. I was thinking in terms of making a decision, if I were on the board it would be important for me to actually separate the emotional aspect of our lawsuit and protecting us and think about what this means to you as the planning board and what your relationship is with builders. Because it doesn't seem to me that extreme to ask for more protection, a higher bond to protect the town from a builder who's not living up to fixing the road. And think one more point is, I mean if you think about all the different scenarios and how they might hurt the town, one possibility is that the builder goes out of business, gives away the land or sells it for very little, makes whatever he makes. They sue us, we don't pay for the road. We say we don't have the money, they don't have the money. The town is gonna end up with a road that ambulances can't drive on, school buses can't drive on. And I think it's gonna ultimately hurt the town. And it doesn't seem to me that a bond is that extreme. Now I guess the enforcing it will learn what that'll take. But it doesn't seem that it's that extreme request or demand. Thank you. Anyone else who would like to speak? I see no more hands. I'll go back to the board. Chris, I just have one thing to add on that. When you ask about the letter and you go to Mr. Bard and Mr. Pill, could you and Mr. Bard officially reach out and ask Mr. Pill for Tortofino whether they're open at all to creating another performance bond? At the same time you're asking for the letter, just as another option. Because we could ask, but if they refuse, it doesn't do any good. And if we were to ask, we would then have to pursue getting the right number. I think I saw Janet's hand and I don't think anybody else is Janet. I appreciate people's comments. And one thing we didn't talk about and I'm kind of wondering in the back of my head and don't have the information about is what if Tortofino goes bankrupt and the lots are being held and you go into it? Like I just, you know, being a lawyer is kind of being a disastrous. And having been on litigation where everything has gone wrong and it goes on for years, which the courts don't really let happen anymore. But what happens then? Like where are we sitting if we don't have the performance bond and not? And so I just want to think about, since we haven't had Tortofino here to talk to, it's kind of, there is a silence and an absence of information, but if they did go bankrupt or they've stopped working in Amherst, are we left holding the bag with an inadequate performance bond? Just to add to that. So Chris, I think we're directing it at you. I do have a question about that because I don't know how it works. I mean, right now it's a private road and towns don't have to accept roads. So it's private road, but then we have this performance bond. I don't know how it actually works out. They're a private road, but the town gives the performance bond, whether it's enough or not or whatever, but that would be then given to who to spend it on the road. And then the town would then evaluate whether or not to accept it. I don't know how it works actually. The town doesn't have to accept the road unless the road is built to town standards. So it could be a road that is not accepted by the town. But how does the performance bond get spent? We want this performance bond. It's with the town though and the developer. How does that bond actually get spent? And if they go bankrupt, that money would still be there. The bank has the money. Right. So the town could request the money from the bank to do the construction. Even though they haven't accepted the road yet. I believe so, yep. Is that how? Yeah, so essentially going back to just like the genesis of subdivisions, right? So the subdivision is, there's no public ways associated with the subdivision. So what you have to do is you are creating those streets, you're creating the infrastructure, et cetera. And so then what you have four options under master of laws chapter 41, section 81U of how to secure performance because one of the things I'm gonna ask you to do is look at chapter 41, section 81M because that is the purpose of the law. And that is gonna lay out how you are the enforcement mechanism, how you are the gatekeepers. And it really is to ensure that you're creating safe ways, passable ways for emergency vehicles, et cetera, so that there's water infrastructure, sewer infrastructure, et cetera. And so the bond, and so you've got those four different ways to do it. You can do it through covenant. So you say there's value to these lots once the road is created. And if you don't do it, we can take these lots, turn around, sell them and then use those funds to finish what you didn't finish even though you're supposed to do it. There's cash that you can take. There's this three-party agreement that you can do. And then there's one other that I don't remember which ones I listed. So there are four different ways though that you can require that the developer has money set aside so that you can access it if they don't do what they said they were going to do. And so in this instance, if the Fino does walk away, those building permits, just because you withheld those building permits, they're still to Fino's. Those are gonna go into a bankruptcy estate. You can't get anything from that. So that value isn't there. If they were still under covenant, you could at least say we're gonna sell these lots, take that money, apply it to the roadway. So that's really why our whole thing is we need more security. And whether that security is through the rescission of those lots so that if they leave, you can sell them, take the money to finish it, or alternatively, you're in addition to increase that bond so that if they go away, you can access it to make sure that roadway is finished. That's what we're asking for. And I think to Ms. McGowan's point, if they're gonna do it, then it's no skin off their back. So what I'm asking is so the performance bond, who gets that and how does that? Because technically the road is still private. Correct. So it would still be a private road. It has nothing to do with the town's acceptance of the road as a public way. It has to do with your authority and position as responsible parties for the creation of the subdivision for these folks saying this is how we're going to do it. So if they don't do it, the planning board, because the private parties actually don't have a right to access that bond, it has to come from the board. That's what I'm saying, even though it's their road, technically, because it's a private road, it's not a public road, but the town would take it upon themselves to take this money and finish the road. Precisely. And that's what the subdivision process is about. So there are still lots that have not been released and have value. If a contractor was to go under, could those lots be sold for value to help finish the road? Chris. I don't believe those lots could be sold because there's no roadway, there's no infrastructure to serve them. So those lots would not be released by the town because there wouldn't be any way to get to them. I guess I'm saying who ends up owning them? There's still a value, there are lots. No, no, no, I'm saying if Nino goes bankrupt. Then it would be in a bankruptcy estate, and then the trustee of the bankruptcy estate would then say, okay, what creditors do they have? And then they would look to sell those lots, if there is value to it, and it might just be land, because, assumedly, if there's no road associated with it, the road would have to be finished, so there's a cost associated with that. They might have to come back before the planning board to get some sort of approval, but if it's just land, that bankruptcy trustee would then likely sell those, take the money, put it into the bankruptcy estate to pay off whatever creditors exist for Tefino, because in order to file bankruptcy, you have to show that your debts succeed your assets, essentially. And would it be possible for them to sell that the lots that don't have a road yet, but to a contractor who would continue that development and work with the town and basically do another subdivision in that part? I mean, effectively stepping into the shoes of Tefino through the bankruptcy estate, yeah. I mean, it could happen. Because those have value. Yes, but I don't think, yes, I mean, there's value, but I don't think there's, like, when we look at lots in that subdivision, you're talking about $150,000 plus per lot. That's with an assumed finished roadway. If you don't have a finished roadway and you just have bare parcels, the expense is going to be a lot of the cost, the value is going to be a lot different. So in a bankruptcy, and it's being liquidated, whatever, there are the creditors of the debts come forward. Would this neighborhood be one of those? Would you come home and set claim there's not enough money to finish our road? Would that be a debt? No, I don't think, I mean, you'd have to be a secured creditor, so you're typically looking at banks, those that have guarantees, which I think, if you look at your three-party agreement, that is like a secured, you're like a secured creditor. That's secure, right? Right. These folks aren't secure. They can't say, well, they haven't finished our roadway, and I mean that they're stuck hold in the bag. So has this ever happened in Amherst before? Like, has a subdivision ever ended up not accepted? Subdivision roadway ended up not accepted? Yeah, I thought we just heard that. Kestrel wasn't accepted. Another Tefino development. Kestrel hasn't been accepted, but I'm not sure that they've asked to be accepted. That's, I don't know of any case where someone has asked to have a road accepted and not had accepted, but I've only been in this position for 15 years, so there may have been things that happened prior to that. Does the board have, David? Mr. Lee. Yes. Are there lots that have been bought subject to the restriction of creating a homeowner's association? When you say subject to the restriction of creating a, there's a restriction that's recorded related to the subdivision. That is correct. A homeowner's association. It says that there will be a homeowner's association at some point in the future. I think it's been acknowledged by the developer that a homeowner's association does not currently exist. Do you, has a homeowner's association? Not that I know of, no. In how many years? It's like 15. I think there are certain triggering points, and I don't know that. I think it's a matter of the developer not owning a certain number of lots, because he doesn't want to be subject to that homeowner's association, those types of restrictions. Any other questions? So, Michael? It's not a question, but a comment. Is that in line in order? Sure. Okay. In regard to the question of whether this board has enforcement authority, as Ms. Chow was raising, I think it does. I'm looking at the Article 11 of the Zoning By-law, and 11.1 begins, the building commissioner shall enforce the provisions of this by-law as here and after provided. Now, I assume the subdivision regulations are subsumed in the by-law, because they stem from it. They're not? The subdivision regulations are separate from the zoning by-law. There's a subdivision rules and regs. What does that document? We do have subdivision rules and regs. The state subdivision law is under Chapter 41, and the zoning by-law is under Chapter 40A. So, there are two separate sets of regulations. Well, let me ask the question then, in the subdivision regulations, is there an enforcement clause? The building commissioner, oh, sorry. The building commissioner enforces the zoning by-law. Yes, yes, that's where I was going. There's one enforcement paragraph in the rules and regs. It's short, and I think it says, I think it's the planning director, the senior planner, and there's two other people that are directed to do the enforcement from us because we're bored, but it's pretty vague. I might have it. Chris, could you send the PDF to everybody? And it isn't helpful. I'll say that. I read it twice this week. It's, well, no, it's one little paragraph. I can probably try to find it right now, but that's in the rules and regs. I think it's page 34, or 35. Yeah, but it's around there. I have 41M, Chapter 41, Section 81M. This is the state. I was thinking about our own, okay. Yeah, let me look. Well, my point might be... I think I might have it. You do. Give me a second. I didn't print out all the pages. Oh, here we go. I can read it here. So this is from the rules and regulations governing the subdivision of land. It was adopted in 1972, last revised in 2014. There's one paragraph here. It's on page 36, Section 8, Item H, enforcement. The enforcement of the provisions of these regulations are any approval or condition of approval granted by the planning board under the provisions of these regulations shall be enforced by the planning director, the senior planner, or associate planner, or by non-criminal complaint pursuant to the provisions of Chapter 40, Section 21D. The fine for any violation disposed of through this procedure shall be $100 for each offense each day such the violation continues shall be deemed, or as the deemed, deemed a separate offense and each provision of the regulations or subdivision approval that is violated shall constitute a separate offense period. So that's all it says. Fine, that's exactly what I thought it said. And that suggests that we in fact have the responsibility to direct the planning director to enforce the subdivision regulations which includes the completion of the roads and includes the amendment of the bond that we have required to a number that is sufficient to repair the roads in the future if we deem that the current $270,000 is insufficient which I think everyone agrees is. The question of what the sufficient number is is somewhat more questionable. But the point is that I believe we should at this point move to unilaterally require a bond which is sufficient to meet the obligations of finishing the roadways to the point where they will be accepted by the town which is what was specified in the subdivision regulations which we or our predecessors approved and which we verified a few years ago. So I'm not sure what the correct wording this would be but you had the specific document in front of you a while ago and maybe we could work from that. Can I just remind you that the planning board, the planning department director did ask and they said no. So that's where we're in the spin. No, the question is enforcement. This question does not request the question is enforcement. Well, unfortunately the wording is you ask to go into a performance of bond and if they say no, that's where we're in a pickle right now. They've said no. So I've instructed Ms. Bestrup to go back with our town attorney, Mr. Bard and officially ask and do an official ask of Mr. Pill if they would be willing to create a new performance bond. If they say no, well, then their other option is for maybe a legal letter with the prompt, delineating out the work they would do this spring. Chris? So I know the building commissioner has the ability to enforce non-criminal disposition and enforce fines and apparently there's language in our rules and regs of our subdivision that give the planning director authority to do that. I have not experienced that so I would have to explore that topic and see what does that mean? Do I actually have that power to do that? So that's something that I can look into and it's, I know that the building commissioner has enforced fines of $100 a day on zoning by-law illegalities. I'm not exactly sure what the nugget of this would be. What is, what portion of the subdivision regulations would Tafino be accused of not complying with? They're not complying with the bond with the agreement but that's, so I'd have to explore that a little further. Would that be with Mr. Bard and other staff? That would be with Mr. Bard and with, probably with the building commissioner. Okay. Janet? I just wanted to read the language again but I also just, I wanna say something afterwards. In accordance with the decision, if the obligations are not completed by June 30th, 2019, the planning board may require the applicant to provide additional security as necessary to maintain such direct and reasonable relationship which security ship shall be a condition for obtaining further lot releases and or permit issuances. So I think we could require it. I don't know, it doesn't seem like we have the votes or the desire of enough of us to require that but we wanna do something. And so I would talk to Attorney Bard and see if there is an interim step between saying, hey, increase your bond or a letter that will have some legal heft. I mean, this is pretty strong to me and I think our whole goal is to get the roads done and not to be in court but I also think we need to continue to exert pressure and watching this hearing might be enough pressure knowing that we're moving towards more firm action but I do think we could ask for it. Not ask for it, we can tell them to increase the bond and then we could ask kindly and we can say we'll increase the bond and we'll lift off, we can lift this thing on the, we'll take away the, I can't remember what we filed with the registry of deeds so you could sell your lot still but we have a performance spot. I mean that might be a good, you know, this for that kind of moment too. So I would ask Jill Bard to try to negotiate something where there's some better security than what we have right now. Jack. Yeah, so just so everyone knows what I'm feeling, I'm feeling for the neighborhood here. What are you feeling, Jack? I'm, it's a, I really physically feel what they have been going through for such a long time and I just, I'd rather just like move on and they have a fair request. I mean, there's, I know we don't have the exact number, we'll never get the exact number but I feel like we should just propose what's a reasonable number, let the developer know what we're proposing and put that in the letter as well. At least some that we're considering and we're not, we have not voted on it but you know, say 70% of the number that Jason Skeels came up with and then it's on the town to, we're asking and then it's the town's decision of how aggressive they wanna be in terms of pursuing an agreement with the developer. Maria. Can I just ask again, that conversation with Joe Bard, everyone's been saying it's a simple ask to increase the performance bond. Well, was his response again, he said it was reasonable or he said it would pretty much lead straight to litigation? Well, he said it was reasonable to make the request. He wasn't sure how we could enforce it other than going to a lawsuit and that could be lengthy and expensive. So that was his response. Maria. So I guess I'd ask the board, is that, is that what your hope is? Is basically to push the simple idea of increase the performance bond to some number that's, you know, some percentage of something and then in order to enforce it, we put it on the town manager to go to court. Yeah. We just say, let's say that we'd like to have the bond increase to cover the actual costs, you know, a good number and we don't have to talk about our next step or strategy because they could just come up with a bond and we're all happy and we don't have to ask the town manager to sue on behalf of the performance bond that hasn't been given yet. Let's just take the next step maybe. Press. So what would your number be that you want to ask this to be increased to? I did a calculation for 70% of Jason's estimate because Phil mentioned 60%, 70% and if they can do better, that's fine. So that is approximately $360,000. That's what I got. In additional. I just did the same math, that's what I came up with. Maria. So for this letter, if we added that number, would that be more agreeable a thing to do? Or is that a number that's then just going to pave the way to litigation? I'm not sure what you're talking about in terms of the letter. I know that Ms. Gray-Mullen asked for a letter from Mr. Pill outlining what action Tafina would take and by when the action would be taken. So that was one letter. Is there another letter that? And a formal asking first, if they would be willing to do another performance bond. And then you have that number tied to that. And do you want me to write a letter to that effect or? I wanted you and Mr. Bard to formally ask Mr. Pill, representing Tortafino, formally asking, will you be open to doing a third party agreement? May not require a letter. It may require a phone call. But if your phone call was affirmative or negative, well, affirmative, we would want a letter, obviously, them saying yes. A letter from them. Yes, saying that they are willing. Whether or not there's an exact number, well, that's to be determined because there's certain options. Tortafino can go get their estimate and the town can submit theirs or redo theirs and that would be a negotiation to what number actually needs to be, which my guess would be under 650. But Michael? We have a town engineer. We have an estimate from the town engineer. And I think we should use that as our baseline minus the already bonded $278,000, whatever it is, and require that as an additional bond. Or I shouldn't say, of course. It may not cost that much, in which case, that's not a problem in the long run. It's only a question of providing the bond for it in the short run. It's not that all that money is going to go away. If, in fact, it requires $900,000 to fix the roads, then we're covered. If we ask for a bond that would get us up to $700,000 and it costs $900,000 to fix the road, then we're out $200,000 or somebody's out $200,000. And I'd rather it be Tefino than us. And it seems to me that that would be the way to approach getting to a number. The other thing I think is important is that we not go hand in hand to Attorney Pill. That we tell him that the planning board expects this as a condition of the original contract. And we begin from a point of strength rather than from a point of weakness of asking a favor of Mr. Pill, who I don't think is a favor grantor. So my other fear is that I do not want to open up litigation between Tortofino and the town because I have issues with how this has been handled by the town. And I actually would like you, Chris, to pursue some discussions with the DPW and the town engineer because numbers came to us that shouldn't have come to us. We had numbers from 2013 brought to us in 2019. And I don't understand how that happened, Jack. I would also say we should be concerned with Amherst Hill's neighborhood and the town. Sure. Janet? So I was just writing down some conciliatory and direct language that could go in an email or a letter. And it could be to the effect of the planning board is very interested in making sure the performance bond will cover costs of repairs and finishing the roads in the subdivision. The planning board would like to see Tortofino increase the performance bond and negotiate that amount with the town engineer, Christine Brestrup, and the town attorney. I mean, is that covering what we would like to see? It's not a threat of litigation. It's not a demand that they increase it. But it's showing that we're very, very interested in seeing some little more money on the table to cover. And if they're going to do that. So I could read it slower. The planning board is very interested in making sure the performance bond will cover costs of repairing, repairs, and finishing the roads in the subdivision. The planning board would like to see Tortofino increase the performance bond and negotiate that amount, that increased amount, with the town engineer, Christine Brestrup, and the town attorney. I guess we should say planning director. You send me that language in an email? Sure. Sure. I think it makes the point without rattling a saber. But it shows the direction maybe that we're going into. Oh, David. I agree with many of the comments and sentiments expressed by my colleagues here. And I feel for what you're going through. I do. It's been 15, 20 years in the making. However, I still think that I'm persuaded by a number of things that people said. But I still think it's premature to get involved in this, about the negotiating. Not about presenting a different security for this. The security is for performance. And in the agreement, and in the statute, I believe it's security before there's a release of lots. That's really what is the motivation by the developer and the obligation by the statute to have security for that performance. I don't believe that there is any hold on the lots being sold at this point. There is a moratorium that's been recorded about the issuance of building permits for those lots. Seems to me that the chess match that's going on between the homeowners or among the homeowners, the developer, and now the planning board, is that the question is about releasing the lots before there's a question about getting involved in what the dollar amount is for this or that. That, I believe, is going to be decided elsewhere. And until that scope of that dispute and the resolution of that dispute has been defined better for the planning board, I think we're getting involved in more detail than is warranted. But instead, what I would, and maybe not persuasively, but what I still remain convinced of before us is the initial thing about the permission for the developer to sell the lots, which they now have. And until that issue's been decided, it's premature to go deeper down this road about the demanding security, which is going to prompt a response and reaction from the developer, I think. So the thing is, I feel like we got new information here. And the lots released prior to where the bond was reviewed. So that was already a situation there. So I just want to make that point. What is the new information? The new condition of the roads that wasn't made light of during the decisions were lots released. And the bond was reviewed June, July. So we know a lot more now than we did when the decisions were made by the board last spring. And I think that we only made one decision, or in lots were released, which was April. It was in May. It was May 1. Michael here. I'm convinced. All right, I shouldn't say I'm convinced. I understand Mr. Levinson's objection. I wonder, is it fair to ask whether you think that we should do anything, the planning what should do anything at this point? Or should we just do nothing? I don't look at it as doing nothing. I mean, I would like a more sincere and aggressive reach out by Ms. Bestrup and whatever staff or town council is needed to ask some hard questions and get some firm answers from Torfino. And I would be willing to wait until January 15, our next meeting, and have this as the final. Chris, do you understand what I'm asking? I mean, it is dragging on, and we keep waiting for more information, but. I understand you want two things. You want a letter from Torfino stating, or from Michael Pil, stating what work is going to be done and what the schedule for that is. And you also want to request that they engage in a new performance bond for $360,000. Formal asking and formal response. And I'm asking for four more weeks. And if they don't answer or they don't give the right answer, we'll then fine. I'll feel better about moving on this. But up till now, it's been all emails and nice little conversations. I think we just need a firm hard answer from Mr. Pil representing Torfino. And then I'll feel like, all right, it sets the stage. And I would feel more comfortable with moving forward more aggressively. Madam Chair, could I just ask one thing? Could that just one? It'll be very simple along the lines of what you're asking for. Just that response, if there is one, occur soon enough before that January 15th hearing so that we can get it instead of the day of or a couple of days, something like that. So Chris, if that reach out could happen, say within the next week before, what do we, Wednesday? I would want to see it before Christmas. I mean, you know what to ask. Talk to Mr. Bard and move forward with this. And then looking at a calendar, if our next meeting is the 15th, everyone's back. I mean, by the 10th, I see no reason why there can't be a response by the 10th. Anything else, Mr. Redi? I know you said one, but. I'm a man of my word. Thank you. I appreciate that. If you'd like to come forward, sure. I just want to say. And do you have a comment too? I just want to say thank you. That's all I'm going to say. Thanks for your consideration. Thank you. Just say your name and address again. Blake Circo, 53 Concord Way. Reiterating, we're not asking you to get involved in our lawsuit. I'm actually more worried that's a developer who's suing everyone in the neighborhood is not looking to be a developer long term here. It just doesn't add up, right? I mean, all you're going to have to do is look that up and no one's going to buy from him any longer. It's like such a high risk. So we're worried that he is going to get liquidate and there is a time factor with that. And we're not asking you to get involved with our lawsuit. We think we have a good lawsuit there. That's not what we're asking. Please just hang in with us till the 15th. Luckily, this is not the time of year that people are out looking for lots. But does the board have any other comments or things to add? I'm seeing no hands. All right. So thank you for coming. I wish this could be easier, but we are moving forward. Thank you. Happy holidays. I'm glad your roads are being plowed. Yes, five minute rest break. Five minutes, Amherst media. Good night. Thank you. Amherst media, we'll start back up in about two minutes. Amherst media, can we start up again? Great, thank you. All right, thank you for that little break. We're going to start back in here on our agenda. We are now at item five, master plan update. Mandy Joe Haneke, chair of community resource committee, CRC, and Dave Jean-Mick of the assistant town manager to discuss recommendations on process for updating and adopting the master plan per charter section 9.8. Welcome. Thank you. So if for the sake of sake, everyone knows who you are, but just introduce yourselves. And then let us know what you come. We did receive your memorandum from today. Excellent. So I'm Mandy Joe Haneke. I am a counselor at large, and I happen to be chair of the community resources council committee. I'm Dave Zomek. I'm the assistant town manager. And I work very closely with the planning director, the building commissioner, and I oversee conservation, development, planning, and the zoning departments. And I am also the staff liaison to the community resources committee. I didn't know that. CRC. He's very helpful to us. So back in section 9.8 of the charter requires the town council to adopt the master plan after it is approved by the planning board. And we have two different words, so I'm trying to keep them separate because they can mean different things. Based on that language, the town council directed on November 18th, they directed the community resources committee to work jointly with the planning board to recommend a process for updating and adopting the master plan in accordance with charter section 9.8, the section that requires the council to adopt it. The community resources committee, you've got the memo we worked on today. I finalized today where the CRC adopted a proposed plan to go to the council. So I want to be clear that the council has not adopted this plan yet. It is a new memo. The process is slightly revised. We had originally talked about a process, and then we brought Christine, your chair, in to go a little bit about that process. And then she brought it to you to see and get feedback from you that was then communicated to me as chair of CRC. And then because of that communication, I proposed a revision to the original process that you saw. And that revision, I believe, was communicated to you last week in a revised memo. The memo you received today that was finalized today is a process that the community resources committee voted four to zero today to recommend that the town council adopt. That recommendation happens to be contingent, or the committee has reserved the right to revisit that recommendation, pending any additional feedback and requests, concerns from you. We did that vote in case there aren't any, so that this can be heard at the January 6th, 2020 council meeting because the community resources committee does not meet again until the 8th. We unfortunately meet about the same day you guys do just in the morning. So it's really hard to move stuff along that way. But the process as it stands from community resources, the proposed process from community resources view is an attempt to acknowledge the planning boards essentially first say and primary responsibility in approving a master plan. That is, as you know, a mass general law requirement that essentially you guys, what we tend to say, own the master plan. The charter commission put in the charter a requirement that the town council then adopt the master plan out of concern that past legislatures had said because the legislature had not adopted it that the legislature was not bound to adopt when things are presented to it was not really bound to say those comply with it or those don't and therefore we should or should not as a legislature vote for something. And so the charter commission was hoping that a requirement for the new legislature to adopt a master plan would put concretely in the public's eye to a joining of the visions between the legislature and the planning board. So that things like that wouldn't happen. So that's a little history as to why it's in the charter and in working on this process it has become clear that this could create problems and we're trying to limit that because we have to adopt something with or without amendments is how the charter words it after you have approved it, which is kind of strange as we get to implementation. So this process that is being proposed that I'm here tonight to present to you as sort of our version that we hope has accommodated all of your concerns at this point is an attempt to ensure that the town council has some ability to give you feedback but does not create sort of an endless loop of approval feedback amendments, approval feedback amendments before the town council adopts. So what we have done is we first recommended that the council delay the adoption under 9.8 that we're required to do until there are some revisions made to it. Then we ask as the proposal that the town council request the manager and the planning board to make some revisions without specifics to what those revisions are. And that's really important I think from this community resources committee point of view is that we're not here to tell you specifically what needs done. We're not saying here's new language that needs added. We are recommending to the town council that the revisions relate to what the term we came up with was necessary and obvious. We've changed a form of governments in the 10 years that the planning board that the plan has been approved by the planning board we've adopted as a town a number of initiatives that have implemented that master plan. And there have been in addition in that intervening decade some changes in town priorities specifically looking towards sustainability and climate action and all of that. And so what the CRC views is necessary and obvious is not a wholesale revision of a master plan. It's not a wholesale re-looking at a master plan. It is saying if the master plan refers to the legislative body, let's change it to refer to the correct legislative body now. If the master plan envisions an open space and recreation plan let's refer to the one that's been adopted. Things like that. So nothing that isn't justifiable. But we don't as CRC wanna get into writing any changes. That's not what CRC sees as the town council's role. Which is why we tried to put an explanation of necessary and obvious in there instead of you must put this in or you must put that in because we as CRC did not see that as our role. We hope you will accept the challenge of looking at and revisiting it every 10 years. We have been told on town council that it is good from town staff that it's good to look at a master plan every five to 10 years just in the normal practice of stuff. And we are now at the 10 year mark. After that happens, the third step in this proposed process is that while the planning board is discussing potential changes that the chair of the planning board and myself as chair of CRC figure out a way to keep the CRC updated. And therefore then my job as chair of CRC is to keep the town council updated on what you guys are looking at and considering. As one way of starting to educate the town council as a whole and the CRC committee as a subcommittee of the council on potential changes so that they can start thinking about what might come to us eventually. And that can be done in any number of ways. I think I put in here some possibilities of including the chair of planning board informing us when you might hold a hearing or when you might hold a public forum or something to bring the public in and get their feedback or when you might be discussing changes and asking CRC members to show up to those meetings not necessarily to participate but to be there as observers so that they keep themselves informed. Those are some possibilities. There's obviously others were embarking on a process that is a first run and a trial in a sense. And I was informed by the planning board chair that you guys would come up with a final draft at some point before formally approving a master plan or any revisions to it and that that is the preferred time to receive actual formal feedback from the town council and the community resources committee. So that's the portion where the biggest change in the original proposal that the committee had talked about comes which is that that final draft would be forwarded to the town council and then referred to the community resources committee for the formal comments before your initial vote. And it's at that time that the council one of the things we added actually to this process from the memo you received last week was a sentence at the end of that fourth paragraph that says this is the step in the process that the council will be able to provide feedback to the planning board to clarify that that's the time that is our time to say here's what we're thinking to give you that feedback prior to your vote. Then after the council gets the feedback it would send those back to you. And then we would request that in this proposed process that the planning board not vote to approve the master plan until it receives that update, that feedback. I don't know from a CRC point of view or a town council point of view how long the planning board normally keeps that final draft out for comments to various boards committees and the public but this proposed process requests that it be kept out long enough for the town council to provide that feedback and go through its process. Once we've sent you that feedback and you approve the master plan then the charter requirements start to really kick in. Unfortunately the charter is written in a way that it has to hold a public hearing and holding a public hearing is not unfortunate. The unfortunate part is the charter is written in a way that that public hearing needs to be held after the master plan is approved by the planning board. So while we might do a public hearing prior to the approval during this feedback period where the council might provide feedback to the planning board, the public hearing that is required for the council to hold under the charter cannot be done until after the planning board has held has approved the master plan. As I said at the beginning the charter commission may not have fully thought this process through when they put this in. So we're trying to work with it. And then the other big change from this process from the first proposal is that because the feedback would have already been sent to the planning board before it has approved the master plan, the new requested proposed process that is being sent to the town council is that once you have approved the master plan it not be again referred to the community resources committee that it stay with the public hearing at the town council and then the town council vote at that time not to send an additional referral back to the committee that would normally make a recommendation but that the CRC's recommendation to the town council on approval or not comes before the planning board has actually approved the document so that there's not a second referral and that will hopefully streamline the adoption process by the council between the planning board's approval after the planning board's approval. And I think that is a basic outline of what proposed process CRC is making to the town council. As I said the goal is not to, the goal is to be able to allow the council to provide some feedback and be involved in the process from a feedback overarching point of view but not to step on the toes of the planning board and to sort of, I think there's been some things of micromanaging or taking hold of the process or running the process and CRC is attempting to make it clear to the town council and its recommendation that that is not the goal that the goal is to be able to provide a nice collaboration where the town council is able to provide feedback at the appropriate time while also fulfilling its required role under the charter to adopt the master plan with or without amendments and the goal is to make it without amendments that has been approved so it is one document that is approved by the planning board and also adopted by the council without the amendments and without that circular sort of if the council wants amendments having to send it back for approval of the planning board to then come back, that's the goal of having revised this to put all that feedback prior to your approval. Thank you. Chris? I'm wondering if town council or CRC has comments while the planning board is working on the draft will the planning board be receiving any comments during that process because I guess I'm thinking that there's a lot of detail in the master plan and to wait until the very end when the planning board thinks it has a final draft to then receive comments from town council that may be not as efficient as it might be. So I'm just wondering what your thoughts are on that. We didn't discuss that specifically at the community resources committee but I think step three, which is during the planning board's discussions as it's working on the review prior to a formal draft of the two chairs talking to each other and keeping an update is an attempt to potentially allow comments to flow through during the process but it's not specifically in here because again the CRC committee was really trying to be cognizant that this is really a planning board process that the charter requires the council to get involved in in some sense because we have to adopt it. And so we want to be involved with it and work with you but we don't want to as a CRC be so involved. The partners. Yeah, we're partners. You're trying not to be partners. We're not trying to be an equal body of drafting this is CRC's trying to in this proposal say this really is a planning board document that the town council because we have to adopt it should have some ability to give you feedback because we do have to adopt it. We do have to vote on it but we aren't the ones that really own it and with the recognition that if we don't like the end product what we're trying to avoid is the charter says we adopt with or without amendments. We don't want that to happen but because that would create an awkward thing in the town where the planning board approves the master plan that is the governing master plan and the council has adopted one with amendments that is no longer governing it is not the one that governs the town and the town staff because that's what you guys approve. And so to try and avoid that it's within the town council's interest to provide feedback and I think it's also potentially within the planning board's interest to try and accept some of that feedback and listen so that we don't run into that process but again we as CRC in recommending this process we're trying to say but we don't own it that's you guys and we want you to have the authority that state law gives you without stepping on those toes. So if the planning board would be open to receiving that feedback throughout the process instead of just towards the end I'm sure CRC and the council would take you up on that offer but we didn't specifically put it in there other than for the educational purpose for those reasons. Chris. So I think in my opinion it would be worthwhile to be receiving input during the process not necessarily every single meeting when the planning board is discussing this but it would be unfortunate to reach the end and to have some major facet of the master plan not comport with something that the town council doesn't agree with or I didn't exactly say that correctly too many negatives but I think you get the point that we want to make this a process that when we get to the end point we're pretty sure we're going to all agree on it. I agree the end goal is what we're all hoping for. I think so we were supposed to have a zoning subcommittee meeting yesterday and we were gonna start defining the planning board process of this master plan and I think until the planning board knows how we're actually gonna be receiving it and how our review process is going to be going because the bulk of the work is going to happen with Ms. Bestrup and her team so she has to have her plan for the actual doing and then how it's gonna be disseminated to us for review. I think until we have that clear in our heads we can't really tell you how what we're gonna need from you or at what points exactly like will it be chapter by chapter or like I don't know. So do you agree Chris that once we get our internal process what we're gonna do then maybe we will come back to you either for change of language or just more an understanding like you said under number three I think it could fit into there but as the chairs figure out how that communication flow is gonna happen we'll know more but we appreciate you getting this started and us knowing the end goal and that we all have a similar goal that we want agreement and everybody to be able to approve this. If I could just add to that I think one of the reasons this is so vague on some of that is we were trying not to dictate how you guys have to do your process because that's not our job and that's it's for you to figure out but this proposal here is an attempt to say how are the two of us going to interact because the council needs to adopt it not which is why that revision request in the second paragraph is so vague and does acknowledge that it's really up to you guys to determine what does need changed if you think there are revisions that need done these are just suggestions from the council on a broad set of this might be good to do before the council wants to adopt it because we've heard in the town council that staff members and potentially planning board members believe there are some things that are missing from the master plan at this point that could use so it could use some updates or refresh because of things that have changed and but that's for you to decide how to do that. Just to reaffirm that that this is a master plan update and using your words for revisions that are necessary and obvious this is a try to stay out of the weeds and not make big sweeping changes that will happen or start up in probably about six years when we do the 2030 master plan this is a update or revision so hopefully it can be pretty clean and pretty simple. I would like to open it up to the board I know they're all really probably I think eager to ask some questions but thank you, do you have or? For the sake of time tonight given the hour I think Mandy covered everything. Okay and Chris if that's okay I'm gonna, okay great so I saw Maria's hand first anyway and you know what, well I saw Michael's earlier so Michael then Maria and then we'll see who else. Okay, thank you very much for coming tonight I appreciate it. Oh you're welcome. I have a couple of questions that maybe a professor might ask, an ex-professor. What does adopt mean and what are the implications of that verb? So I'll go put my charter commission hat back on as some of you may know and others may not I actually was the vice chair of the charter commission so I sat and helped track the stuff. Well you're not in that position anymore. I am not but so as the CRC chair what do you mean by adopt and what do you think the council means by adopt? So well this is why I wanna go back to what the charter commission was thinking but you know when, if you think about legislative language when something is adopted it means it's accepted in a sense you know we adopt policies as a town council, the town council you know essentially adopts bylaws but what, I'm not sure why the charter commission chose approve on one language and adopt on the other but they actually did so we got the language for what the planning board does accurate and then we chose to change the word but I wanna go back to what the goal was and the goal was to have buy-in from the town council and actual like not just buy-in verbally but a legislative action that shows the town council is on board with what the planning board has approved and that master plan and so the reason for the word adopt instead of approve from a legislative point could have been that approval isn't strong enough from the legislative standpoint to say we're gonna say this is how we wanna proceed and this is going to be our policy and of requiring the town council to adopt a master plan instead of just approve it can potentially signal no it needs to be the council's goal to meet these goals too but that's you know we as a charter commissions we're concerned that in town meetings there when say a bylaw amendment would come up that some people would argue that the bylaw should not be passed because it does not comport with the master plan and maybe in another time there would be an argument that says well even though it does comport with the master plan it shouldn't be passed because the legislature has never adopted the master plan the charter commission was concerned that those arguments kind of didn't agree with each other and wanted to avoid a council being able to do that by requiring the council to say well we've adopted this and so now this complies with it so we should do it or this doesn't comply with it so we need to have a reason not to do it that's where the charter commission was coming from and so I think the adopt was probably because it seems a little stronger than approve. Sure. Just follow up on that. If adoption means that then it becomes statute essentially doesn't it? Because you've adopted it and you're saying that this is our plan so everything we do has to comport with it, has to comply with it has to agree with it in some way aren't you passing it as then it's a kind of statute that's one question. The other question which is kind of against that what happens if the council doesn't adopt it, doesn't like it, doesn't want it, thinks it needs to be amended in such a way that the planning board then refuses to adopt it, agree to it, pass it, whatever we do, whatever action we take. This strikes me as being a complicated issue, I doubt that it will happen but we're looking at our national government right now and lots of things that we don't expect will happen that tend to happen. So what do you think about that? Can I just make one statement? Just to remind everyone that under mass general law when we approve it in the eyes of the state this is the master plan. And this is just an add-on to the charter and just to read what the word adopt means in the dictionary choose to take up, follow or use. So I think it's how you're looking at how this document sort of moves along in its lifespan. As the planning board, it's a living document, we update it occasionally, we revise it every couple of decades, but then we approve it and it becomes the master plan but then now in the charter where they've pulled the town council in I think it wouldn't have totally made sense for the town council to say approve it because it's not in their jurisdiction to really approve it, but it is within theirs to adopt it meaning to take up, follow or use it. And I don't think that means it's like you have to follow it like a bylaw because a master plan is not like a bylaw. It's a framework, it's a guideline. It's sending you down a road, it's not sending you to an exact address. And that's just what I wanna say. So I'll answer your second question because I think Christine can answer the first one. But the second question was what happens if the council doesn't agree? And that's what this proposed process that CRC is proposing to the town council is attempting to avoid. That does not mean it will avoid it. There's certainly a possibility that in the future or even now a town council could disagree with the planning board on what the master plan is. And that's what I alluded to before, which was the planning board would approve a master plan under state law. That is the town's master plan. And that is what town staff would be required to follow under law and implement and all of that. If the town council then when it's forwarded from the planning board to the town manager to the town council for adoption, the charter says we can adopt with or without amendments. Without means the two documents agree. That's what we're going for from the CRC point of view in terms of proposing this process. If there are amendments, there's obviously a couple of options. One is if the town council decides to want amendments, it could send it back to the planning board requesting that the planning board approve the document with the amendments the council wants. It's always the planning board's option to do that or the planning board could refuse to do that. If the planning board refused to do that and the town council still adopts with those amendments, then you've got in some sense, a council and a planning board that are at odds with what the future of Amherst might look like or what that plan is. That's not ideal, but it is possible. The charter, I'm gonna point to, I think it's section G of 9.8 and I'll just read it. It says action by the town council and this is on action by the town council and the planning board if any proposed bylaws, this is on proposed bylaws involve a matter addressed in the master plan concerning land use or development regulations. The council shall first refer the proposed bylaw to the planning board. The planning board shall report its recommendation and write into the town council on the proposed bylaw in accordance with mass general law chapter 48, section five, along with an explanation as to whether the proposed bylaw is not inconsistent with the master plan. So that would be the master plan as the planning board approved it. That requirement doesn't say, and if it is inconsistent with the master plan, then the town council cannot adopt that bylaw. It's again attempting to daylight. We've got a planning board master plan. The council has either at some point said, yes, that's our vision too of the 20, 40 year plan of the master plan or it's not. And here the planning board will say, well, that bylaw is not inconsistent or it is inconsistent with the master plan we approved and the town council can say, well, we adopted that master plan so we should use that inconsistency or not inconsistency to review our bylaw changes that we're going to vote on. And those bylaws might not be zoning bylaws. They could be general bylaws too. Or the town council can say, well, it's inconsistent with that plan but we wanted a different plan and so we're going to adopt that bylaw anyway. So there could be tension there. This process is an attempt to avoid that tension but it could be possible and in the next few decades, I'm sure there will be that tension at some point because this is Amherst. I apologize for bringing up a theoretical point but it strikes me it's sometimes better to bring up the theoretical points before there's an actual issue surrounding them so we can figure out where we are. Yeah, and I will be one of the first to admit that the charter commission was not perfect and this is an example of potential sounds good in theory and then when you try to implement it, you go, maybe there's some problems we didn't anticipate. So again, a little cart before the horse is going on here. We have not had yet a time to do this as a planning board but it's defining our scope and setting expectations and I think we all need to be very clear and observant of the fact that this is a revision. It's an update and there could be actions. Let's go to the end where someone asks for a really large change or really sweeping change. Well, we'd have to remind the town council or CRC that that is not what's happening here right now. We are not rewriting a master plan. That's gonna happen soon enough but and that idea that they want maybe very sound and that goes on the to-do list that we'll start five, six years from now and there's consultant help and you're using best practices. We have to really be clear on our abstract on what we are trying to accomplish here. So that hopefully will desensitize some of the bigger in the weeds type issues that we don't want to get into right now. And with that, if I could point out the community resources committee discussed whether to ask for changes that are desirable at one point and after discussion, and I think this goes to your point, Michael, after discussion to try and limit the scope, we said, well, the council may really disagree on what is desirable and for the purposes of this review and getting to the council being able to fulfill its requirement under the charter of adopting a master plan, we're not ready to tackle what's desirable. That is really for the 20 year review 10 years from now. We want to keep this to things that are necessary, are justifiable that you could point to and say, this town has adopted this conservation plan or the council's climate action goals that we just adopted and therefore these changes are being made or revisions are being made to the master plan to reflect that those climate action goals were adopted or what are some of the other things that have been adopted that the transportation plan has been adopted and we're now reflecting that 10 years later in this and that's why this particular change is being made. The CRC after discussion is recommending to the council that we don't recommend the council seek changes beyond that at this time because we'd really would like it to be a limited process from the CRC's point of view that can move along potentially quickly to fulfill the council's goal. Are you done? I recognize Maria and I did, Janet, I think I saw your hand up next, so you're next. Try to be quick because we've been here a long time. So that kind of went right to my point which was the necessary and obvious thing. So we're gonna make sure everyone giving input has that lens and is looking through that. So we are required to have public forums and I think one of these things actually said like a working session. So that involves public. We're gonna have to be very clear to them that if they make suggestions that are broad we'll put it on a to-do list. It's for that next stage but that this is really like a clean up kind of like the way we did with our general bylaws and zoning bylaw after the new town council. So I just wanna, that's the opinion of the CRC. We definitely are just doing this sort of clean up and it's not about new big ideas. With exception you were saying maybe the clean energy or the energy or sustainable element. So yeah, that one is one that the town staff has repeatedly talked to the council about as potentially sort of not well covered in the current master plan because 10 years ago it just wasn't as much on everyone's radar. And so one of the reasons the council's recommending this process and trying to do that necessary and obvious is because they're hesitant from the CRC point of view to adopt something that seems to be missing something that is so much in the forefront of what people are looking at right now. We in this memo to the town council as CRC suggested what our vision of necessary and obvious is but we also put in this memo and then this process that it really is up to the planning board to truly decide what it believes is necessary and obvious and we can only offer our suggestions as to our views of that. Janet. So I'm trying to clarify for myself about what you see as the importance and the purpose of the master plan. Like who's bound by it? We have a master plan in effect. Do you feel like the town council is not bound by that or town staff is where boards and committees are or I mean what is the document mean to you in government and also just legally? So I mean I can't answer that for the town council at this point, I can only answer that as a personal observation or as a charter commission observation and that question goes exactly back to why the charter commission asked the town council to put in the charter for the town council to adopt it because it wanted the council to feel more bound to fulfilling the master plan than it felt the prior legislative body felt. So does that mean the town council is bound to our current master plan and then if there's a newer vision and it adopts it and then new counselors come on, they're bound by it legally? Man, I don't understand it. Personally I would not say there's necessarily any binding, it's more of a trying to signal we are on the same page with the planning board and the implementation of this document. As I pointed out of the charter, the council by state law, while we need to on zoning bylaws get a recommendation from the planning board on any zoning bylaw, the council's not obligated to follow that recommendation, obviously. But my personal opinion is by adopting and requiring an adoption of a master plan by the town council, it might bring the counselors into the process and give them a little sort of feeling of, and I hate to use this word, but ownership of saying, yeah, we agree with this or we as a council agreed with it even if it's not a unanimous decision, even if it's not a unanimous vote, being able to say, well, the council has adopted this plan as something they want to respect and follow potentially is a way to format a debate or work, format the way a discussion happens in discussing a bylaw change or a different policy change or that as the chief policy makers that the council are. But again, that's my own personal thoughts. That's not something that CRC or the town council has necessarily discussed at all. I would just remind them, go ahead, Dave. No, I just wanted to interject from the staff standpoint, I think, we think of the master plan as a guiding document that is the umbrella for all the other plans. In fact, many of the ones that have been updated or new plans since 2010, like the housing market study, like the housing production plan, as Mandy Jo referenced, the open space and recreation plan was just updated a year, a year and a half ago. So our current master plan doesn't even acknowledge some of those new plans, the economic development work that Jeff Crouse has done and others. So from a staff standpoint, we look at the master plan as an overarching umbrella guidance document that we do refer to and we do use on a day-to-day, week-to-week, month-to-month basis as we're planning and each one of those other plans support the vision that is articulated in the master plan. So from the staff standpoint, that's the way we look at it. And I just wanted to remind everyone for your reference, the mass general law chapter 41 is in there describing master plans. And if you really just read the introduction and number one and number nine, that's telling you, it's a statement designed to provide a basis for decision-making regarding the long-term physical development of the municipality, identifies the goals and policies of a municipality for its future growth and development and specific municipal actions necessary to achieve the objectives of each element of the master plan. So again, it's a framework. It's like you said, it's a guiding document. It unfortunately doesn't give you the next steps to do. It's a contemplation thing as you're doing the plans and the next steps. So I think there's a lot left in interpretation but I just wanted to say that too. I think we could all read a section of the master plan and be getting different gleamings from it. I think I'll steal something from something that Chris has said in many meetings is that since 2010, one of the things we've talked about a lot of the staff and at various meetings is that if we could go back in time to 2010 to now, we would have spent more time, energy and probably money on implementation. However, as Chris has done Nate Malloy and others as we tick off things that were articulated in the 2010 in the master plan, we've actually accomplished quite a few things consciously, unconsciously. It's just happened. So this is an opportunity now to say, what has been accomplished since the master plan was adopted back in 2010? So we can look at our to-do list and say, wow, we got six out of 10 things done in that category. Are the other four still relevant in 2020? Are they? Yes. If they are great, we should tick those off and have a plan for getting those done. If they're not, because things have changed, demographics, whatever, then we could take them off the list and they're not relevant anymore. Thank you. I see Jack, I saw and then Michaels next. So we have all these, let's call them subplans. So these were all developed and approved by probably all different. And I'm not sure to what extent, I don't remember the plain board looking at any of these. So I'm just wondering in terms of what input was provided in all these individual plans, just in a general sense, but because we're now folding them in and updating. So many of them have actually been adopted by or incorporated into the master plan by the planning board. I would have to go back and look at minutes from different years to figure out exactly which ones and when they were incorporated, but that was a conscious effort to bring the planning board into the process so that the planning board would be conscious. And of course, the planning board did attend many of the meetings that led to these plans, but then at the end when the plans were finally finished, we presented them to the planning board and we said, would you incorporate these into the master plan? And they voted to incorporate them. So I'll have to look that up and I will do that, but I think that's an important thing to recognize. And just to add to the list of draft plans that are starting to come together, maybe note if it was approved by select board or town council might be helpful down the road. I don't think that many of them were approved by the select board or town council. You may know differently from that. Yes. So that would be, you and I should collaborate on that. Right, exactly. Cause there's other things like the economic development and the complete streets and other initiatives that are on that did go. I had acknowledged Michael, but then I also saw Maria's hand and then I saw Janet's hand. So go ahead, Michael. Okay, I hope you've thought about this and discarded it. I assume you have, but I'd like to know why you discarded it. The idea that I'm suggesting is that perhaps it might be more efficient to have the council at this point adopt the existing master plan and have us immediately move to as we were, as we were supposed to be doing by the existing master plan after 10 years be creating either a new one, not a revision, but a new one. I've spent some time in the last month since your initial memorandum to us looking at the master plan and thinking about it and what I would think about it in terms of changes or additions or subtractions. And particularly in the implementation section that you mentioned a minute ago. So why not just adopt it as it is works and all. And we all understand that when it says town meeting it means town council and all those kinds of silly little changes that aren't silly but are substantive. But we can all understand what they mean at least on a temporary basis since it's not a statute. And let us get on with the business of making a new master plan. CRC did consider making that recommendation to town council and decided we didn't take a formal vote but decided pretty much by consensus that it could not in good conscience make that recommendation to the town council. It obviously would have been the easiest path at this point in time. But given that the master plan was approved by the planning board approximately 10 years ago and that pretty much from the day that council took office and started being educated by town staff on the master plan there have been a lot of indications from staff that things are missing from the master plan. And I say much more concern about the missing and mainly the sustainability portion. And the town council's recent not just adoption of the climate action goals but its focus on climate resiliency, climate action addressing climate change at many of its council meetings. The community resources committee did not feel that it was prudent to recommend the council vote on adopting the currently approved master plan that many councillors in looking at it and read it say it's outdated with respect specifically to that that it, you know, unfortunately the councillors are political beasts we are elected, we have constituents to respond to and the CRC believed that adopting a master plan that was apparently missing such an important part of the council's first year making that recommendation to the council to adopt something that was missing a item that was a large focus of the council's first year of work was not something that the committee could in good conscience recommend the council do. And that is why we came up with this process. Can I just add, isn't it supposed to be like re-approved every five years? So we're already behind. Well, we have heard that council has heard from town staff that best practices is that every five years a planning board revisit the master plan for tweaks. And it has been 10 years since it was approved. And so that's another thing that the council has heard regularly is it's already been 10 years it's probably due for an update. And so again, when CRC considered, well, yeah we could go and just say to the town council our recommendation is to adopt as is and wait the five years or the 10 years until the charter requires the master plan be updated by the planning board every 20 years. So that would be another decade from now. We could just wait and go with it, but with what we had heard from town staff the CRC took that recommendation to heart and said we really shouldn't recommend passing it without adopting it without updates. You have another? Okay. I understand that the charter mandates that the council adopt the master plan. Could you or could we spend two years making a new master plan and the council not adopt a master plan until after two years and when we've developed a good one as opposed to this sort of somewhat haphazard fixing of the existing one? So I will go back to it as the planning board's decision on what and how much to potentially revise it at this time. This is the proposed process and here is simply a recommendation to the town council to have the town council recommend necessary and obvious updates. The charter itself does not have a time limit for adopting. It just simply says that after a master plan is approved by the planning board that the planning board forward it to the town manager for the town manager to forward onto the council and then the council must adopt with or without amendments. It does not put a timeline in that. I'll go with Dave and then Chris, but then I think was it Jack or Maria? Maria? Okay. And then there was Janet. So, okay. I guess I wanna say speaking from a staff perspective working with Chris and the rest of the planning staff and inspection staff and conservation staff, we believe that the master plan is a very solid document. The bones of this plan are excellent. Hundreds of people participated in this process. It took years to get to that point. So we believe in this document. We believe the foundation pieces of this document are solid. When you look at it, when you read it and you understand the village center concept, when you understand the community's commitment to open space preservation, to the preservation of agricultural land, active agricultural land. When you look at the housing sections, we believe it's a solid document. It is simply outdated at this point, sustainability, resiliency being one thing that I honestly doubt anybody in this room was really talking in 2010 like we are today about climate change and resiliency. So that's a major piece. And then, as we've said before, updating and referencing all the documents and plans and reports that have been done since then. So we think this thing has legs. If it can be updated in a straightforward process that is timely and efficient, then we buy ourselves a lot of time and perhaps we can focus on things that may need, frankly, more attention like the zoning bylaw. So that's from where I sit. Sorry, David, I see you, but you're in the queue. So Chris. You're in the queue. Chris. I was just gonna say that to redo the master plan is a huge effort. Last time it took from roughly 2004 until 2010, which was a period of about six years to come up with our master plan. There was a lot of public input. There were surveys that were sent out to randomly selected households. There were many, many public forums that were held. A large comprehensive planning committee was formed of, I think it was 28 people, and eventually it was edited by a subcommittee of the planning board, but it also cost a huge amount of money. It cost at that time $200,000. I can imagine that it would cost more today to do that same kind of thorough process. So that's certainly something that came up in conversations about the master plan when staff was talking about it are we ready to do this? Does the town want to appropriate 200, 250, $300,000 to redo the master plan at this point? Given the fact that town council had just taken its seat, there were many, many changes that were going on. It was determined that probably this isn't the best time to undertake such a large operation. It takes a tremendous amount of staff time, a tremendous amount of the residents focusing on this, caring about it, coming to meetings, and there's so many other things that are really feeling urgent to be done now. And so putting it off till the mid-20s to start, maybe 2025 or something like that, with the goal to getting a new master plan done by 2030, that seemed like a more reasonable way to approach this. And to update the master plan at this time. So that was our discussion that we had. Thank you. Maria, you were on the queue. No, I'm okay. You passed. Okay, so I have Janet next, then David. I have sort of three related comments. I think that Michael's idea of the council adopting the master plan, when I read this master plan, I see tons of language that would talk about energy conservation, transportation, you know, I mean, it's not screaming about climate change, but I think you could read all sorts of, all your sustainability initiatives can easily be found in language in this plan. So I wouldn't dismiss it saying, oh, you missed that. I mean, like, there's a whole section on transportation, but then the transportation plan comes out of that with much more detail. So I don't know if you can dismiss this plan saying, oh, we weren't talking about climate change 24-7 in here, but there's a ton of information here about energy conservation, sustainability, how you do your land use and to promote people's health and reduce car use and transportation and putting more money into the mass transit system, like all the sustainable initiatives, changing housing codes. I mean, you could find that in the master plan. So I wouldn't dismiss it outright as a strategy. I just happened to have the master plan and I was looking at this and it says objective IM-6, update the master plan at least every five years. The master plan shall be formally updated on a five-year basis. And then it says in the strategy, the implementation strategy, design the master plan updating process. The planning board assisted by the master plan implementing committee will design a process by which the master plan will be updated. The board will also work with staff to determine the resources necessary for undertaking an update and she'll recommend the funding and other resources needed to the select board. And so I think that if we had updated this five years ago or had this implementing committee, it would be actually be pretty easy. And so I think when we dig into it, it's gonna be awkward and tougher than we think at first. But I actually think that the town council could adopt this plan in good conscience knowing that we're on a good path and we're gonna do some supplementing or we could move into updating the master plan. I don't think it would take $200,000 in six years. This is a really strong document that we're working off of and we need to update the demographics because at that point we were building more housing than we had people and then UMass has sort of added 3,000 people to our community without us noticing in the last 10 years. And so that stuff has to change anyway. But I think when you're in that process, you might be in the process. And I think we should think hard about how an update should go, find out some information and move that. But I also think, so I think we really need to talk about what the update would look like and what resources are needed in terms of time. It could, this update could lead to a zoning bylaw overhaul which the town council is talking about or people are talking about. And how could we do that? And I wanna do everything we do really well. That's super important to me. And then tomorrow night we're gonna be talking about an overlay district for the downtown that will create a whole overlay zoning and design standards. And then meanwhile the zoning subcommittee has been working on three or four really solid zoning bylaw changes that we think are necessary. So I think as a planning board, we need to, this is an interesting timeline, but I think we have to look at this larger piece and talk about the resources that we need and what the processes will look like and how that's gonna affect the planning department and how we can kind of work together. There's like, this looks like a very heavy pull for a year or two to me. So I think we should look at this in a more holistic way, but I don't think we can just say, oh, let's just change the select board and turn that to the town council and we have an update. Cause if it's that easy, then I think the town council could consider just adopting it knowing that those words will be changed in the update. Do you know what I mean? So I think that's a very long-winded way saying, I think six months is a little short, but I think we have to as a planning board plan for how we're gonna do all this. I just want to remind everyone that we don't really do it. The planning department does it for the most part and then with our guidance and our suggestions and then they bring it to us to review. So it's not like we're rewriting a master plan. That's not our job. That would be their job. So if you're feeling the heavy load bearing down, I don't think we end up. I think the planning department is full out all the time from what people say and you said. And so I think that should be part of the calculation too. Actually, Chris is gonna be full time. This is in fact, Chris won't even be our only person, probably even helping us on planning board. I think Nate is coming on board too. So this is their job with helping planning board. We are currently contemplating some changes in the planning department, but I don't think they've really been solidified yet. So it's probably better not to count on. But my point is that you, it's your work. This is what you're hired to do. So you're gonna maneuver people to, and I think you're also saying that this is a priority that you have chosen. This is long, it's overdue. We need to update the master plan and they're willing to give us whatever resources they can. They will get the heavy work done and that's what's going to be brought to us is a priority and other things will maybe be pushed back. We still have our business as usual with our site plan reviews and special permits, but this is what is coming from staff and from town council that we need to do. This is our work for 2020. And then the zoning bylaw overhaul I keep on hearing about is coming from when and where. That will be later in the year we get this done first, but that is necessary. And that's one of the reasons why we're, we can't do a full overhaul because that also bears importance. So what's happening right here is the staff is trying to figure out their workload and what resources they have and what are their priorities. And then we're also figuring out our priorities. I think one of them is that it's overdue. We need to at least update. And like you said, there are a lot of references to climate and stuff and transportation, which is great. When you said that, the first thing I thought is great. There's less we have to do. Like, so I think it, you know, it's about defining the scope. We're not trying to rewrite. We're just trying to do what we're supposed to do every five years and give it a revision and an update. So it shouldn't be, if it's starting to take too long, then we've taken too big of a bite. And those things need to be set aside for when the redo happens starting in five years. So I would just add that the six month timeline, I think is an intention on CRC to also indicate a potential scope that CRC is recommending. The town council ask the planning board to do and a quick timeline like that does limit scope tremendously. And so it's another way to sort of have recommended the town council that this is not a complete overhaul. This is really a limited review that CRC is recommending the council ask the planning board to really just do a limited review that can be completed in six months. Did CRC talk to other planning experts or departments or towns that had done kind of an update but not to get a sense of what is involved and how long it took them? So CRC has talked to our illustrious assistant town manager over here and to Christine Brestrop and Christine Gray-Mellon and your planning board chair came to a meeting to discuss a little bit this. But CRC really has relied on the council of town staff on some of their recommendations on coming up with this proposed plan to recommend to the town council. So we haven't had our discussions really and it was supposed to come to zoning subcommittee. So what I'm hearing is maybe nervousness or worry of how herculean and effort this is and maybe it's just easier not to deal with it right now but I really think we can chunk this small enough and develop a scope that it's doable and we'll get it done in six, seven, eight months and we'll be happy that it's updated and hopefully town council will feel better about it and they'll accept it, adopt it. David, you were next in the queue. I'm not exactly sure where this discussion is going. It seems to me that, and I'm also, I just wanna, I'm not sure exactly what the role is that CRC is playing in all of this. Sometimes it seems that you're a surrogate for the town council. Sometimes it seems as if CRC is directing in a certain way, wants to be a partner without owning anything. It's not clear to me. However, it seems to me that in your memos, necessary, what you wanna avoid is that town council being presented with a master plan that it wants to, that it's not comfortable with, wants to either amend or not adopt. And so wants to kind of anticipate, wants to anticipate that so it doesn't happen, these potential inconsistencies between. And that what the memo comes up with is a necessary and obvious. If there's necessary and obvious, it seems to me that you've got those things in mind. If those things aren't there, then the town council will want to ask the planning board to revise or will propose amendment because those things aren't necessary and obvious. And you listed a few, a number of them. And so it would be my suggestion for to identify who it is that owns some of the things that are considered necessary and obvious. For instance, climate sustainability and resilience are the fruity tic-tacs are going around. It's all I got. I got all green ones. If the climate action plan is what's missing or needs to be updated, it's not missing because it's permeates throughout, but it hasn't been foregrounded or made more explicit or highlighted or updated in whatever form. Then the party, and I don't know who it is, the ECAC, is that another acronym? That is. Did I get that right? You did. It seems like perhaps they're the owner of that and could suggest the language too because everyone is out of capacity, suggest the language to the staff that compiles it. And I'm pointing to the planning department staff, perhaps. So that that can then be reviewed. So that it's not the efforts that have been made in these various climate plans or transportation plan can just be, we can stand on those shoulders, right? But the someone, actual people or departments or we're responsible for that and they can come forward. It seems to me to who, I'm not quite sure, the planning department, with we think that this is a necessary and obvious amendment. We propose that this be included in the review. And since we've defined a six month timeframe, we were asking for these proposed amendments to be submitted within six weeks, two months, three months, I don't know. And that that's a way, because it seems, so necessary and obvious, it seems like there are three different categories here. One is conforming changes, town council instead of whatever. Updates to plans that have been done. The housing section of the master plan from 2010 has been updated with housing things, housing production housing and the, and John Mr. Hornick's affordable housing policy and these seem to be the three highlights for that, right? But that can come from all of the people who've done that work already, it seems to me. And then, but the last one, so there's the change in the form of government, which seems to me to be conforming changes. There are changes that reflect work that's been done, whether it's been implementation work or what have you of reprioritizing. No, I didn't want to use that word. The work that's been done to update those changes. And then there's this fourth, the third category seems to be changes in town priorities since. Now that seems to be a different beast altogether. That seems to be, you know, we could, maybe the climate resilience falls into that, but what other priorities, you know, that's much bigger, bigger than these two other types of changes then, that have been proposed. And so I don't quite know where to go with those because I don't know who would propose those amendments. I don't know whether the planning board decides what those priorities are or through the working sessions. You know, that's what troubles me, but again, I think that as the Charter says, proposals to amend the master plan, not originating in the planning board, all of these things that you've highlighted as necessary and obvious are submitted to the planning board. So bring it on. But that seems to me to be a way to not overwhelm the capacity, overstretched capacity of the planning department and elsewhere and to reduce some of the mystery in this, I think. And also, I think for the people who are responsible for these things to just come and continue doing that, providing that service. Chris. I just wanted to note that we have reached out to Stephanie Ciccarello, who's the sustainability coordinator, and she works closely with the ECAC. So she and I are going to be working together to bring their concerns and the things that they're working on into the master plan. I've given Stephanie a hard copy of the master plan and she's gonna be going through it line by line and trying to figure out how issues related to sustainability and climate change and resiliency can be worked into the master plan throughout the plan. But I suggest that the going line by line, that intensity of work seems to me is different than the impression that's given to me in the presentation that's made. Here, about update, that seems to be much more if you go line by line to see where this issue and line by line to see where that issue. Now that is, that's a rewrite. That's not, I think on a level with, or perhaps I don't understand, and that's, I think, what we need to clarify if that kind of intensity is what is desired or expected. I just want to clarify, Chris said line by line. I think she means Stephanie would be reading it line by line looking for things like Dave had mentioned like our wins, the things that are already done that can be removed or this needs a reference to this climate energy goal. So it's not necessarily, it's not rewriting all the lines that's saying, oh, this is a good place to insert these two plans or the complete streets or this transportation. You know, and this will have, we need to do this, but narrow that scope that it's about updating. If you're actually rewriting paragraphs, then that probably should be tabled for the redo a few years down the road. I think there's some great added to what Chris said there. So I'd like to emphasize at least from the community resources committee's point of view in how it came to this recommendation to the town council was some of the things we talked about was taking these plans, the transportation plan and just referencing it and saying, oh, since, you know, for more information or for more details on how to do this, see the transportation plan that was adopted on this day. You know, that's the type of additions in community resources committee that were discussed as potential updates were taking, I think Christine has mentioned, trying to get a list of all these plans and initiatives and just sort of adding references to them. So that's where CRC is coming from in making this recommendation. I hear everything you're saying and yes, in looking at this one, that is a very ambiguous clause that could present some potential issues. But again, I wanna emphasize that CRC was tasked with trying to come up with a way to get the council to adopt a plan, to fulfill its charter requirement of adopting the master plan. And as I stated earlier today, we started with should we recommend to the council to adopt the current master plan? Or can we do that in good conscious and CRC ended up with a decision that said, no, we can't recommend that to the council in good conscious. And so then CRC went, well, if we can't make that recommendation, then where do we go from there? We're in a new form of government. We wanna be able to adopt something. We wanna be able to follow through with our requirement as a council under the charter. And how do we work with the planning board to get to that point where we can as a council fulfill that requirement without going through and saying, these are the exact changes we want to make because we as a community resources committee didn't believe that was our role. And the community resources committee after talking said, it's not our role to go to the planning board and say, these are the exact amendments we want. We didn't feel like it was our role to do that, which is why this process that is being proposed to the town council is so vague. And this wording necessary and obvious is very vague because we were trying to say, we can in good conscious as CRC ask the town council to adopt the current plan, but how do we signal to the planning board what we would as a CRC be able to then recommend the council adopt and what potential revisions that we might be seeking without going through and essentially saying, here's what we need and all because we don't see that in CRC as CRC's job. We think it would be potentially usurping your state given primary role with the master plan. The adoption is a secondary role that the charter happens to require and we're in a new day, it's been mentioned. And we have to figure out between the town council, the community resources committee, which is the town council subcommittee to talk about in greater detail and make recommendations on things regarding land use and zoning bylaws and the master plan. We have to figure out our own role in that and how we can collaborate with you and be, you know, work together on the many things that I'm sure we'll be working with because I hesitate to bring up zoning but the town council now has a hearing it must hold on all zoning changes, zoning bylaw changes in the prior form of government. The legislative body did not have to hold a hearing but now it does. And so there's a lot of new work with the planning board that because of the form of government we have, the town council has to figure out how that's gonna operate. And this is a first attempt, this plan is a first attempt to say, well, let's see how we can do this with still respecting the planning board's primary role in the whole master plan process and approval process. And so I understand it's a struggle for you guys to figure it out because it was a struggle for us to figure out how to even propose something that would fulfill those charter obligations while still recognizing you guys's role. Thank you for that. So it's 1038 and I just wanna say, we're glad you're here and if there's more questions from the board, that's fine but I wanna just bring everyone back to, I think a lot of the questions we have right now are about how we're gonna handle this master plan and what we're gonna do. And like I said, there was supposed to be a zoning subcommittee meeting but it didn't happen which was supposed to start the dialogue. So I think a lot of our questions right now are going to them and they can't answer them because they came to us, just to remind everyone with the memorandum, trying to delineate process from when we're almost ready to finalize it, final draft, get final questions and issues, hopefully from CRC and Town Council so that it will be better prepared and more readily approved, accepted, adopted in that final stage. And then it is still a little vague. We identified earlier where the actual communication updating but I think, as I said earlier, I think that will come after we figured out our own plan. So if there's any more questions to our guests regarding the memo and the process of interaction between Town Council and us and the master plan, please ask. Jack. Let's say it's past my bedtime but I just wanna note that an update is very, I know what an update is. It's really, it's a relief because that's really easy. I mean, from what, I understand there are policy changes that would like to be sought but an update is an update and I hope we don't complicate it any further than that because I think everyone has made it clear that that is, and the other good thing is that we have a master plan. The Pioneer Valley Planning Commission, their Southwick, Town of Southwick representatives said how much does a master plan cost? Oh, geez. And I think they were low from what Chris was talking about. It depends on the size of the town. And I just do, I feel like we have a good one, like Dave was saying and those are just some thoughts. Oh, the one question I had, other than having the master plan cited within the charter, is there a state level mandate that we need a master plan? But I know like Dave, when you did the recreation plan, you needed that for the CPAC, but really no municipality is required to have a master plan from the state law. We are required to have a master plan. I think there was a reference to the exact section of the state law. I wanna say 81, but I don't know which portions of 81. 81 governs, chapter 81, no, chapter 41, section 81 governs the planning board's role in all kinds of things, but one of those sections talks about the master plan. I can send you the exact references, and I believe that Ms. Hanicky has listed some of them towards the end of this memorandum, but there is a requirement by state government that you have a master plan and you get extra points on your grant applications when you can check the box that you have a master plan and it's been approved. So it's a good thing to have a master plan. And the only thing I would add is that there is no state requirement for a legislative body to adopt or approve the master plan. It's statewide, it sits solely with the planning board. The deal in Amherst is because the charter says the town council must adopt. It has nothing to do with state law as it relates to the town council. Any other questions for our guests regarding the memorandum and their process? Just that I think we'd be happy to come to future meetings of the zoning subcommittee to continue this conversation. We will keep that in mind, thank you. Yep, thank you. Okay, I'm lovin' item six. Planning and zoning, Zee, zoning subcommittee report. We didn't meet. We didn't meet. Okay, let's jump to old business. I have nothing listed, Chris. Good. Eight, new business. Okay, timing of receipt of permit application materials discussion. Oh, do we wanna have that now? I wanna just lay out the idea and push it off to the next meeting. Okay, so this is partly from something David said and something that I've experienced, which is kind of what seems, anyway, so I have found a flood of chaotic and last-minute things in my email that are submitted by applicants and part of the, sometimes applications aren't complete, which is part of the process. And if I'm not able to, so I'm getting a packet that is mailed out on Friday, it comes to my house maybe by Tuesday afternoon at the latest or Thursday after the planning board meeting and then there's been sort of different emails sent and sometimes they're very long and things. And so I thought that it would be better for the planning department and the planning board itself to, if we could set up a system where applicants submit their materials by a certain day and then they don't submit anything between that day and the planning board meeting and that would give us the planning department time to get the packets together, to get them out earlier for us to receive them, read them, mull on them and not receive like long things at the end or documents that are impossible to read on a computer. And then I don't think that would preclude reports from the fire chief and the police chief, but I would just think coming from a situation or a profession where there's a lot of deadlines and if there's a deadline saying you have to get to this board or this judge by this date, you just do it. And that will give us some time to reflect and collect information. And so that was the basic premise is that, you know, the same day of the hearing that we have or the day before or on Monday or on Sunday, we're still getting materials at the last minute. And the idea would be to require people coming to us for a permit to just get it to us by the dates or give the planning department time to process it, us to receive it, read it and reflect on it before we talk about it. So are you just talking about SPRs and special permits? Yes, yes. Or everything? Like meaning today, like? So an example might be getting a memo that was rewritten and I haven't read and someone's presenting on it. And so, you know, I'm sitting there kind of reading it and I'm not really listening. And so I haven't really, and I haven't thought about what the person's presenting because I'm kind of, you know what I mean, there's no time. And so I understand that I was in the meeting where they changed the memo and things like that. But I think that we need to get some control of what we're getting and when. And I think, you know, I've been in Boston sometimes on a Tuesday and so I'm looking at something and I'm at a CRC meeting on Wednesday. And I mean, you know, it seems very chaotic to me. And I just thought if we set up a deadline that on a special permit or a site plan review, it has to come to the planning department on a Monday. They have a few days to review. They mail stuff out on Wednesday for the following Wednesday hearing. That would be my proposal. But I don't think this is the great moment to consider it because we're all tired, but that was just the general idea. It's like a drop dead date that we're not getting a stream of information that we can't read or absorb or reflect on. So I hear you, Janet. We've tried a couple of new initiatives. Chris is now emailing the packets out also on Fridays now. And she's working on the ability to be able to put the larger files that can't be emailed like drawings into like a drop box for us. There's a similar situation that happens with the animal set select board. With town council, you know, they have a deadline and stuff has to go into their packet and that kind of thing. But maybe Chris can think about different levels. And the ones I'm thinking of is there is the permit applications that are very important and we have to make very often a vote and conditions and all that in that night. And it's hard to do on the fly. So maybe there could be rules for those, but then there's also rules for in-house documents. It's hard when we're getting something. I don't want to get so much up, but like a town engineer, we'll just pick on him again. If you're getting something at five o'clock on afternoon, so maybe in how, but it would be unreasonable. It shouldn't have to be like the week before for him, but maybe by noon or something or even the day before. And then other things like Amherst Hills, that's not really a permit, they're just here, but you know, I have to admit, it is hard when things are coming in in the afternoon. I actually think it will speed us up. I think we'll spend, my guess is that, so you know, I'm not criticizing anything in like people's behavior, but so if you get an applicant for a site plan review, and you know, you just, you know, if you had time to read it, first of all, you'd like to get more of the requirements in and not have them dribble in. So that's obviously sort of a separate issue. But if you had your packet and you read about it and reflected on it, I think the meeting, the font next week would go better and you already would have more clarity and more time to think and reflect. And I think we could say, hey, we need, you know, we hear what you say, here's what we need and we need it next week or in two weeks, but I think they will actually, our meetings will become more efficient because we'll have had more time to reflect and get materials. And you know, part of my issue too is like, I feel like I'm getting information in a packet. I'm printing out emails. I'm getting emails. I'm just like sorting paper all the time and it's still coming to me when I walk in. There's more paper in the packet or sitting on the table and I'm just thinking, maybe I'm just not that great at paper management, but I have four ways to get sometimes the same information and sometimes I'm like, oh, this has been revised on this date, which I, today happened. I realized, oh, I was working off an old copy. It just feels very chaotic to me and I think it will free up time for the planning department staff if you had the packets done and out and weren't getting this continual stream, you know, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, you know. So that's the idea, but it's almost 11 o'clock. So every idea at 11 o'clock doesn't sound good. No, no, I think it is good. And so my hope is that at the next meeting, maybe Chris can have a little proposal of some deadlines for different types of information. And I want these deadlines to be firm, but yet there is still at the discretion of the director of planning to say like, oh, I know this came in this afternoon, but this is really important. This could change someone's decision. So make hard deadlines for people and so it doesn't become the norm that, because now it is the norm that everything just keeps flying in on the last four hours. I also have to say, I think it's great that we changed the zoning subcommittee to Tuesday. I think this makes life a lot more sane for Ms. Bestrup also. So there are some changes. And like I said, I'm appreciative that my packet now arrives in my email on Friday. So I have the weekend to start looking at it. So I will keep the momentum and Chris, please put that on the agenda for the next meeting. Thank you. And thanks, Janet. Please no ANRs. Mr. Nielsen. Is that why you're still here? I was so afraid. I thought you just liked us. I'm like, oh, he wants to hang. Item nine, form A, ANR, subdivision applications. Really simple. And I have to stay even longer and sign them. So I just want to introduce this to say that it's on North Whitney Street. It's on the east side of North Whitney Street. East side of North Whitney Street. I'm going to pass a GIS plan along here. It's along the railroad tracks. So you can see where the location is. North Whitney runs between Maine. It runs north from Main Street. That's the railroad. So there's a hatch line right here, just garage. This is all, this hatch line is the property line. What we're doing is two things. We're moving that property line here to include this garage with this. Oh, weird. Yeah, weird. And then the second pieces, so then that would leave, if this wasn't, the line wasn't here, that would leave this being my lot. And then we're just subdividing this to get another building block right there. So at the end of it, there is one new, oh, thank you. At the end of it, there is one new building lot and all we're doing is modifying this block line over here. There is a sewer line that, there's a sewer easement that goes through here that surfaces this property and we put it out. So we sent it over to Jason's skills. And he said, Chris had a question as well. Yeah. With that sewer easement there. First thing I thought. So a couple of things. Is there sewer actually there or it's just the easement? I don't think that there's sewer actually there. I checked on the genius too. This doesn't appear to show up. So it's, there's a note that says that the owner of the property can relocate it at their sole cost and expense, provided it doesn't frustrate the intent or purpose of what they're trying to do. The practical effect is they might bring it this way and this way if they're gonna put their house here. They're not gonna build a house over in these. You wouldn't want to now. No. No. So, yeah, sure. So this is that sewer easement showing here. It's a proposed sewer easement. It's not like we too go there. But we have a note on the plan saying that a lot of them can relocate that sewer easement at their sole cost and expense and then provided it doesn't frustrate the purpose of why it exists. Which is actually the case that said they can do it. We don't have to put the note on the plan. It's just gonna make it easier for everybody. We put the note on the plan. Do you know what the slope is on that? You don't have to give me a number, but which way does the property slope? Just wondering. I assume that way because that's a downhill and that's where they go. And did Digg say for anyone take a look there? I mean, is there anything in that easement? No, I don't think anything. There's nothing in there. Right, so it is at some point before the time. Yeah. I don't see this as the building circle to show that they're gonna have to figure out exactly what's happening here. They don't have to come back to you for a new ANR because this lot would be approved. They would likely have to record a new easement. Show them exactly where that easement goes. But that doesn't have any variation. So you want to react to it? That's correct. In actual, not only to react. So the specific changes here are to change the property line to include the garage and then to subdivide that second portion. You've got it. Correct. That's it. Yeah, and the building circle fits. And it's really all right with that easement. Yeah. It just looks whack. Okay. It's a private easement. Okay. Oh, that's helpful too for that top property and they're not using it. No. I would imagine in the future they may, but that's between the private parties. Oh, that's what I was just thinking. ADU, I'm like, yeah. And so the people that are in the showroom is telling us we'll continue to own this and then a new buyer is gonna own this. If someone wants to buy it. Yeah, they're all like, yeah, it's 11 o'clock. Let her sign her life away. We don't care. Give her a sharpie. Give her a sharpie. God. I think I would have pushed back harder if it was eight o'clock at night, but I'm like, whatever. If someone wants to buy it. Okay. I've read these policies. Yes. Yes. I completely agree. And use technology where you can. Okay, item 10, upcoming ZBA applications. We don't really care, Chris. No, I'm kidding. Go ahead. Oh, no, we do, but it's. Bye. I'm sort of joking. I'm sorry, I'm being flipped at 11. Sure. There are two Marijuana's on University Drive. One for medical and one for retail. I don't think you need to look at those. Okay. Eagle Crest is gonna increase the number of residential units at 171 Lincoln Ave from three to four. I don't think you really need to look at that. 171. I don't think there are a lot of site issues. I think it's more management issues. Allen St. Hilaire wants a special permit to allow land to transfer a new court. I think it's very confusing and it's not worth your time because there really aren't any site plan issues related to it. I'm sorry, it's a new court, new court. Tom Mitchell wants a special permit to modify a previous special permit to remove a condition for 44 Belcher Town Road that requires the permit to expire upon change of ownership. So that's not anything that has to do with site plan. And U Penn Sang wants to remove a condition that requires owner occupancy at 321 Lincoln Ave. And I also think that that's not something that you would really wanna look at. So essentially no site plan issues related to any of these. But interesting, thank you. Number 11 upcoming SPP SPR sub applications. There is a dog park coming back to you. The dog park wants to move a fence and I think they wanna move the shed or something like that. Well, they also wanna present their kiosk to you where the signage is gonna be, where it tells exactly what all the rules are. So they'll be coming back to you but I think it's just at a public meeting and they're gonna present things and then you can tell them if they need to file an application but I don't think you're gonna be telling them. And when is this? That's January 15th. Oh, okay. John Roblesky is coming back with changes to his site plan at 462 Main Street on January 15th. And you may get a wayfinding sign location on January 15th. You're also gonna get a Chapter 61A release request for property up in North Amherst. Okay. Excuse me, what is Chapter 61A? I'm sorry, it's a tax, it's a section of the state law that deals with taxes. If you have your property in agriculture, you can request that the taxes be reduced if you keep it in agriculture and that's Chapter 61A. What property is this? The Zala property in North Amherst, it's on Sunderland Road, on the east side of Sunderland Road. I don't really know. Is that the one we just bought? No, there's another one up there that the town bought. This is one that's being proposed for development. Okay. Thank you. Item 12 is the Planning Board Committee and Liaison Reports. I'll just say, does anyone have any vital information to, Jack has vital, okay? Well, I can discuss this next time. But there's items, the top 10 resolves, the census and the tech grants or should be coming out, or technical assistance grants. I'd be look for those. There was a guy that, a bylaw specialist there that could seek his assistance. What was his name? Ken Komia, but he's only been there six months. He was with Southbridge or something like that, so. He's working for towns in the capacity of, you know, helping them with bylaws, people of the towns that have smaller planning departments or no planning departments, most likely, so. Yeah, no planning departments, right. Great. I think is that a resource that the town of Amherst is a larger, could you use? Right, it was folded in through the tech, but we can apply for a tech grant and we've done that in the past and one of the tech grants we had recently was for a pedestrian and bicycle network and we've had them for other things. Sometimes we get them and sometimes we don't. So if we think of something that we want to apply for, we can do that. So tech means technical, not technological. Technical. Okay. I miss, Miss. Thanks. If you wanna like the census, give it for the next, is it detailed or do you wanna do it? Just, it's interesting the census. The Mindy Dom is championing this, that, you know, get everybody counted. It's only to our advantage to get our population numbers as high as possible, but after all this work and all this canvassing, I think they, they guesstimate, I don't know, 30%, or I mean, they're just not, still not accurate after all these efforts and it's a little bit of a mystery in terms of how they come up with the number in the end. Interesting. Any other committee reports? Okay. Report of the Chair, nothing. Report of the staff. Thank you for your sustainability tonight. Yeah. We are resilient. I just wanna say happy holidays to everyone. I hope you and yours have a wonderful couple weeks here and I'll see you on the 15th. I think Mike Wistlow just got a huge volunteer award with Mass Golf and USGA, statewide recognition. Congratulations. Thank you. Golf ball. Well, congratulations. I'm glad you do something fun besides this. Do I hear a motion to close this gig? 11-04? It is. 11-04 motion. Are we done? Yup. Second. All in favor? Good.