 Okay, Mr. Marshall, we are good to go. Yes, we are good. All right, I'm gonna start. Welcome to the Amherst Planning Board meeting of January 18th, 2023. My name is Doug Marshall and as the chair of the Amherst Planning Board, I am calling this meeting to order at 634 p.m. This meeting is being recorded and is available live stream via Amherst Media. Minutes are being taken. Pursuant to chapter 20 of the acts of 2021 and extended by chapter 22 of the acts of 2022 and extended again by the state legislature on July 16th, 2022. This planning board meeting, including public hearings, will be conducted via remote meets using the Zoom platform. The Zoom meeting link is available on the meeting agenda hosted on the town websites calendar listing for this meeting or go to the planning board webpage and click on the most recent agenda, which lists the Zoom link at the top of the page. No in-person attendance of the public is permitted. However, every effort will be made to ensure the public can adequately access the meeting in real time via technological meets. In the event we are unable to do so for reasons of economic hardship or despite best efforts, we will post an audio or video recording, transcript or other comprehensive record of proceedings as soon as possible after the meeting on the town of Amherst website. Board members, I will take a roll call. When I call your name, unmute yourself, answer affirmatively and return to me. Bruce Colvin. Yeah. Tom Long. Present. Andrew McDougal. Present. I dug Marshall and present. Janet McGowan. Here. We believe that Juhana Newman will be absent this evening and Karen Winter. Here. Board members, if technical issues arise, we may need to pause to fix the problem and then continue the meeting. If the discussion needs to pause, it will be noted in the minutes. Please use the raise hand function to ask a question or make a comment. I will see your request and call on you to speak. After speaking, remember to mute yourself. The general public comment item is reserved for public comment regarding items not on tonight's agenda. Please be aware the board will not respond to comments during general public comment period. Public comment may also be heard at other times during the meeting when deemed appropriate. Please indicate you wish to make a comment by clicking the raise hand button when public comment is solicited. If you've joined the Zoom meeting using a telephone, please indicate you wish to make a comment by pressing star nine on your phone. When called on, please identify yourself by stating your full name and address and put yourself back into mute when finished speaking. Residents can express their views for up to three minutes or at the discretion of the planning board chair. If a speaker does not comply with these guidelines or exceeds their allotted time, their participation may be disconnected from the meeting. All right, time now is 6.37 and we'll go ahead with the first item on our agenda. This is minutes from our meeting on December 21st. Board members, do you have any comments on the meetings as drafted by Chris and Pam? I do not see any hands raised from the board. All right. All right, in that case, could we have a motion to accept the minutes as drafted? Hey, Tom, whoops, Tom? Oh, so moved, sorry. Okay, thank you, Tom, Andrew. Second. All right, board members, we have a motion to accept the minutes and that's been seconded. Any further comments? All right, we'll go ahead with our vote on that. Overall call, Bruce, we'll start with you. I approve, but I should say that perhaps I should abstain because I wasn't here for the last third of it, but the consequential first two thirds, I want to acknowledge that I endorse. So what would you suggest? Vote yes or abstain? I probably would recommend or I think you can go ahead and vote if you wish to. I will. All right, thank you. Tom, approved. Andrew. I missed the 100% consequential version of this as I was absent, so I will actually abstain. Okay. Janet. I'm gonna abstain because I wasn't there either. All right, Karen. I approve. All right, and I approve as well. Chris, we have a simple majority of the members who have voted in favor, four members out of a total of seven with one absent and two abstentions. All right, so at this time, I'll go on to public comment period. And before I do that, at this time, I usually mention how many and who I see in the public. So I'm seeing 20 attendees. One is Pam Rooney, Amherst Media, Kathy Axelson-Barry, Connor Burgess from ServiceNet, Dorothy Pam, Eileen with no last name, Elizabeth Veerling, Eric Bakrock, Hilda Greenbaum, Jennifer Taub, John Varner, Josna Reggae, Ken Rosenthal, Mandy Johanicki, Martha Hanner, Mary Sayer, Mara Keane, Ryan Nelson from RLA, Sharon Weissenbaum, and Tom Miranda. And I know that several of those folks are here as applicants for the public hearing we'll be holding immediately after public comment period. All right, so I see two hands up raised from the public. At this time, we will accept public comments. I will remind everyone, this is limited to items which are not on our agenda. So this should not include be a comment on ServiceNet or the application at 20 Belcher Town Road. It should also not include the proposed zoning revisions to duplex town homes and converted dwellings. So Pam Rooney, you got your hand up first. Why don't you bring Pam over? Pam, please give us your name and your address. My name is Pam Rooney. I live at 42 Cottage Street. This is perhaps a point of order given that there's quite a bit to discuss about duplexes and triplexes. Would the chair be so kind as to allow for some input from the public at the time that you are talking about it since you're pretty clear that you don't want any input now? As in, will you allow some time for public input at the time of discussion? All right, thanks for that request. I just said that the board will not respond to public comment at this time. So I will take your comment under consideration. This is kind of a point of order, not a, thank you. Okay, Janet, I see your hand has gone up. I think she's just asking if people can make comments during the agenda items. And I think the answer is yes. I mean, that's generally the case. Yes, is there a concern that we won't? I think that's what she was asking about. So I think, I mean, so I think the answer is yes, I guess. All right, one other comment from the public. I have see a hand raised. Dorothy Pam, let's bring Dorothy over and Dorothy, if you'd give us your name and your address. Dorothy Pam, 229 Amity Street. Again, I'm asking for clarification. Will there be public comment on the zoning issue after in relationship to the discussion tonight? Thank you, Dorothy. Chris, I see your hand. Yeah, I just thought I would offer this comment. This is an introduction for the planning board to this topic. It is not a public hearing. The planning board will be hearing about this proposed amendment from one of the proponents. And I'm sure the planning board will have questions and possibly comments. The planning board will be scheduled to have another session hearing about the same zoning amendment before a public hearing is scheduled. So there will be another opportunity. And I think that we need to be mindful of the fact that some of these meetings can go on for a very long time. So in the interest of making sure that all the planning board members were aware of this proposal, we put it on the agenda. But as I said, this is not a public hearing. And so the chair can decide later on in the meeting depending on what time it is, whether he wants to accept public comments. Thank you. Thank you, Chris. We have one more, Mr. Marshall. Yeah, let's see. Oh yeah. Ken Rosenthal, why don't we bring Ken over? Please remind us of your address, Ken. Thank you. My name is Ken Rosenthal. I live at 53 Sunset Avenue. I am a former chair of the zoning board of appeals and a former member of the select committee on goals for Amherst. And I want to speak generally about something I'd like you to consider as you consider items such as the one but not exclusively the one concerning the zoning that's coming up later on. This town is very much a university town and we are very, very conscious of the need for university folks to desire of university folks to live in town. Many, many thousands of students do. And lately we seem to have been creating places for those students to live. But I just want to remind you, I don't have to tell some of you who are related to the university that the university is many more than just its students. It is many thousands of people who work there as academics, as in other roles. And many of those thousands of people also want to live in Amherst. They want to be able to easily commute to work. They want to work, they want to walk to work. And the advantage of having university people who are living elsewhere come to town is that they will be registering their vehicles in town. So therefore the motor vehicle excise tax will come to Amherst, not to Hadley, for instance. They will be year-round residents rather than students spending their money here, spending their holidays here, bringing their families here for holidays rather than as students going elsewhere and evacuating the town and leaving us empty. They will be bringing their assets as well as their income to town. And it's important that when you consider matters that affect zoning and other issues for residents that you think not only of the students who might want to live here, but of the faculty and administrators and other workers who would like very much to live in this town and be part of our community. Thank you, Mr. Marshall and the board for listening to my comments. Thank you, Ken. I guess I will respond to Ms. Rooney and Ms. Pam. It is my hope that we will allow comments during the conversation about the proposed zoning public comments that is. I do want to see what time it is at that time. And I also will have to figure out how long those comments will be limited to. So if you do have comments you want to make, please have prepared your elevator speech for an elevator that goes between the first floor and the third floor. So say 30 seconds or a minute. So I don't think we're gonna probably have time for three minutes of comments from 20 or 25 people. So if there aren't any more public comments, we'll go on to the next item on our agenda. All right, thank you all. Now the time is 6.48 and we'll go on to the public hearing for ServiceNet. All right, in accordance with the provisions of mass general law chapter 40A, this joint public hearing has been duly advertised and notice thereof has been posted and is being held for the purpose of providing the opportunity for interested citizens to be heard regarding SPR 2023-02, ServiceNet Incorporated 10, 12 and 22 Belcher Town Road. This hearing is continued from December 7th of 2022. Public hearing to request site plan approval to renovate the existing building and provide 12 efficiency apartment units for transitional housing with office space for associated staff. Site improvements include resurfacing and striping of existing parking for 39 spaces, including two handicapped accessible spaces, demolition of one building entrance and the installation of new pedestrian access walkways, new doors and windows into the building. This is located at map 15C, parcel 19 and parcel two dash 19 and map 15A, parcel 43, all located in the commercial zoning district. Any board member disclosures this evening? I do not see any hands raised. All right, in that case, we can go on to the applicant and their presentation for this evening. Looks like we have Ryan Nelson and Connor Burgess brought in to our panel. Ryan or Connor, would you want to start? Hello, everyone. This is Ryan Nelson from RLVEC Associates. Thanks, Doug. We had submitted last week revised plans with the revisions that were requested at the last planning board meeting. I will attempt to share my screen so you all can see. I'll just run through the revisions list real quick and then we can talk about some of the more in-depth items. Number one was the parking area on the west side of the building. There was question as to what was going to be happening with those striped areas that weren't actual parking spaces. So we are now showing those areas to be converted to lawn. That's approximately 897 square feet. And then curbing would be installed on that parking lot there. Number two is the row of arborvites along the southern boundary of the property have been moved farther away from the parking lot more of an L-shaped parallel with the property lines. This will provide room for snow storage from the parking lot as well as provide more green space for the residents and perhaps employees of the site. Within that green space area we're also proposing additional shade trees that were requested. One is a tulip tree. I apologize there's a mislabeling on the species but this should be a tulip tree here and then two flowering dogwoods located here. We've added additional spot grades to the curbing and transition between the parking and the sidewalk. So it's more clear as to what the site is doing with grades under proposed conditions. We have verified and cross-referenced with the revised architectural plans what the materials of these walkways would be. So the sidewalk immediately adjacent to the parking lot will be concrete and all of these stairs and ramps will be pressure treated wood with treks decking. And that's also noted on the architectural plans that were submitted. We are showing the existing dumpster location on a different unit but unit one has legal rights to but regardless we're using or proposing a dedicated dumpster pad for unit one but it was requested that we show the existing dumpster location. So that is right here on the north side of the building. Landscaping between the individual unit walkways. Previously we weren't showing anything but now we're clarifying that between these individual walkways to the units will be mulched planter beds and the plan to consist of creeping unit bird which is a low maintenance, low shrub that service net shouldn't have too much problem managing. We've also added bike rack locations to the plan. There's one bike rack proposed right here adjacent to the front entrance. And then there's another bike rack proposed on the west side of the building over here. Mr. Moy requested that we show a dimension between the existing sidewalk and the existing edge of pavement of the parking lot on Beltertown roads. We've added that it's 7.2 feet roughly. It varies within a foot as you go along that roadway. And then one thing I do need to clarify when we were revising these plans we were against the time crunch obviously to get everything in time. And I was preliminary showing a electric vehicle charging station and all that was brought up by one of the members at the last meeting. However, since the time we've submitted these plans service net told me that that would not be a possibility for them to install that at this time. So we can strike that from this plan. I apologize. So that's it for site plan changes on our civil site plans. Let me switch to the architectural plans. So our architect tonight, Hart was unfortunately out on bereavement and he was kind enough and attentive enough to get us these revisions while he was away. So on the architectural plans we've added the HVAC or the mini split units on the north side of the building. Those are shown. We've also are showing the individual apartment entrance lighting sconces at each unit entrance. Railings have been shown on both sides of all stairs and the individual apartment floor area has been added for each unit. So like apartment number seven give the various apartments gives their floor area and square feet. So that's it for plan revisions. I think the last outstanding item I believe had to do with lighting and I can go ahead with that unless Christine heading inputs you want to introduce first because I know she did go out to the site. All right, Chris. I could say that normally the board requires that lighting site lighting be downcast and not shine onto adjacent properties. In this case, the applicant is proposing something different. So they have some photographs that they want to show you and discuss this and see whether you are willing to let them live with the existing lighting. Thank you. Yes, so this is a Google street view showing the two light locations. First one is immediately adjacent to Belcher Town Road on utility pole. You can see the spotlight is aimed back towards the building in the parking lot. And then the second location is over by this fence. There's another utility pole with two light fixtures coming off of that pole. And keep in mind that there's a gas station to the south and then also one across the street which introduces a lot of, I guess, light that spills over from adjacent properties. Give me one second. I will pull up some photos that Tom Miranda took last week from the site at night and it gives a good, it's pretty visible. Okay, can everyone see that? Yes. So this is from Belcher Town Road or the driveway entrance looking east. I'm just gonna flip through the photos here. And this was at about maybe 5.30, 6 o'clock at night. As you can see, there's lights from other sections of the property and other properties that are spilling over. That's the light by the fence towards the stream. And then this is a video that was taken. So it's of service nets position that the existing lighting is adequate. There's more than enough light for residents to see at night going to and from any vehicles or transportation or just walking on the site, perhaps down the sidewalk into town. And we think that replacing these lights with your typical dark sky compliant would not be as effective and would require multiple or more light locations that would be an additional expense to service net. And we're not so sure that, providing these downward cast light fixtures and the overall scheme of things would make a difference considering all the adjacent commercial uses that already light up the area. So that's all I have for pictures for that. So Ryan, the hypothetical photo lighting plan that you provided, was that simply replacing the existing fixtures in those two locations or was that additional light poles? That's correct. So that would be replacing the existing light locations with modern downcast lighting. Basically, you'd end up buying two of these viper fixtures. Right. And are these a $20 fixture or is this a $2,000 fixture? Or are we talking serious money here or is it really probably $1,000 a fixture at the most? Sure, I can answer that. So the lighting locations are these red dots. And this is a theoretical plan if they were replaced with those viper lights. And as you can see the effective range is outlined in green. So it doesn't really provide lighting for the important parts of the property. So additional lights would be needed. And the lights are a few hundred dollars, but the greater expenses, how to get electrical lines to those light pole locations. So it'd be trenching through the parking lot, putting up new poles, that would be the greater expense. So yes, it would be in the $1,000 I don't know if I took a contract to do that. All right, thank you. Ryan, have you presented all your material and we can go on to board questions? Yes, please. Okay, Janet. Thank you for these new drawings and the lighting plan. It's much clearer for me to understand. I went out to look at the site last night, which sadly was dark at like 5.30. I didn't understand, like my first, the lights that are along Belcher Town Road, those sodium, whatever's, and they're just super bright, super yellow, super glary. And I noticed that the other lights along Belcher Town Road were those vipers and they had cooler light and it was just going down and it wasn't as like blinding to look at. So I was hoping that the one on Belcher Town Road could be replaced. And it seems like you could just put it on the pole that's there. So maybe not so expensive. The two lights that are on one pole by the stream, I don't even know why we need them because it seems to me that that's gonna be a grassy area. There's no vehicles near there so you don't need to see the parking. And it seems like it would just have really negative impacts on the wildlife, fish, moths and such. And so I was just wondering, my idea was just to eliminate the lights on that polar, just turn them off. So that you don't need that lighting, you'll have plenty of lighting on the building. Although that got me to wonder if people using the trash bin at night had any lighting because I didn't see any lumens around there. So I wondered if you could put some lighting on the side of the building. So people have where they're walking over to get rid of their trash at night, they could see, have a way there. And I think those could just be a fix to the building. So first comment is, please replace the one on Belcher 10 Road with a Viper hoping that you can economically. I don't see the purpose of the two lights on the pole over the stream. So I would love to see them turned off or taken off. And then some lighting for around the, around the, now I'm blanking on the word. Around the dumpster. The dumpster so people can get there at night. All right, thanks, Janet. Ryan, why don't we let a couple more comments come along and then you can give us your thoughts. Bruce. Yes, I just wanted to clarify. I was making notes when I think Ryan was saying that the photometric plan assumed replacing the fixtures, the existing fixtures on the existing poles. And then I heard as I was writing something about considerable expense associated with digging up and trenching. And I, so that's suggested that perhaps I didn't understand what he said. So I, because it seems to me that replacing the fixtures on the poles wouldn't require any excavations or anything, it's a switch out. Is there, so I don't understand why there would be any excavational expense. What did I not understand? Ryan, do you want to answer that? Yes, I can answer that. So here, let me pull up this plan again. So if we were to replace the existing light poles with these viper beacon lights, the internal would be less effective in terms of the coverage across the site. So therefore we would need additional light poles. So we'd have to install new light poles in addition to these locations if we would use modern compliant lighting. So Bruce, that's what I was referring to, the trenching for new light locations. So this photometric drawing shows that there's 0.1 lumens per square foot and 0.2 across that end of the parking lot. So this photometric drawing is done simply with lights, replacing lights on the existing two poles. Is that correct? It's not assuming any. Well, as I read that drawing, it would seem that there's a minimal reasonable amount of light there. But I agree that with Janet's suggestion that a gable end light in a building mounted light on the western gable end would be quite serviceable for the dumpster area. I guess I can understand that if you wanted more lighting than would be available from these existing two poles, then yes, that is going to be expensive. But do you think that you could that? I mean, the photographs that Tom Miranda took and you showed a truly spectacular amount of light across that from my history or understanding of photometric drawings. The amount of light that's shown there, that photometric readings is satisfactory for the eastern end of the parking lot. So you could do a reasonable job, I think, for replacing lighting on those two poles unless you really want, for some reason, that saturation that's given with the existing. I would have thought that the existing situation would be horribly disruptive to the residents because you saw one of those showed that lighting S14, SL4, showing a direct beam light right in all of those windows on the south side of the building. It seemed truly horrible. So I'm sort of confused because I thought that one would be seeking approval to take those search lights off those poles or certainly the L4 pole. So do you believe, I guess, the board down to a question, would you not be satisfied with the illumination level as shown in this photometric drawing for the part of the parking area that's most commonly used? So it's hard to answer in its entirety based on just the lights on site because there are lights from the butting gas stations that's all over. But that's going to add, not subtract. So it'll make the situation better. And there's also going to be some lights at the entry and so forth, which presumably aren't contributing to this photometric study. So it seems to me that your photometric study is demonstrating the reasonable level of light. I mean, this is the kind of lighting that you would have in most parking areas that are said to be illuminated. That with the lights you've got, plus what's coming in from the side plus whatever's already on the building or would be on the building, that you've got a satisfactory solution and certainly not what would seem to me to be a highly disruptive one for the poor people who are living in those units unless you're providing shades on the windows. But even then, it seems that it'll come through. It just seems horrible to have that L4 light operational where people are trying to go to sleep. Yeah, I'd have to defer to service not as to what they wanted to provide for the residents if they're shades and what, I guess, is it within their budget for replacement? Well, new shades, new lights would be cheaper than shades, I would guess. Well, it does seem, Ryan, you've now heard two members say they would really like to see those existing fixtures changed over to dark sky compliant. Janet clearly doesn't even think we need the second one, although Bruce didn't mention it. I do see the zero foot candle markings at the west end of the building. And Bruce's suggestion to put a building mounted fixture on the west end of the building seems to be a reasonable proposal. So it seems like the wind is blowing toward requiring the dark sky compliance. Andrew. I agree with the dark sky compliance piece. I think I'm with Janet also on the east end that maybe that's not even necessary. The only question I had in the gable would just be, I'm just trying to remember the kind of road lineman is, making sure that that it would seem like it would, if we're lighting from that, is it going to obstruct vehicular traffic going eastbound on route nine? I'm trying to remember, would they be staring right at that light as they're driving through? And if so, would just want to do, we can't either baffle that, position it in a manner where it isn't directly in there, adjust the height. I'm just not sure offhand, but I certainly would agree with the idea that we need to have something there for people bringing trash out at night. I also. I would think if it's dark sky compliant that it wouldn't be shining directly in any driver's eyes. It'd be oriented down, I would think. I would think so too, I guess, just relative to the gable, the peak of the gable. And being able to get the angle, like I imagine the light would be sort of at that peak, 15, 20 feet above the ground. It may be fine. It's just that that was what popped into my mind for this is, does it conflict with the road lineman? Or does it set yourself up? And a quick look at a map would probably answer that. I also just have one quick comment on the bike rack, which is great to see it there. I'm just trying to determine whether is that going to interfere with access? Looks like it probably doesn't, but I can't tell how large the pad would then be for folks who are trying to enter in to the main entrance there. So what's the proportion of the pad at the base there? There's a four foot landing at the bottom of these stairs. A four by four? Yep, four by four. And then to the right of that is the bike rack. Is it four by fours? It looks more like four by less than four. Well, it's all contiguous with this sidewalk out in the front. So I know it's at least four feet deep in line with the stairs. OK, OK, great. All right, thanks. OK, thank you, Andrew. Bruce. Just to allay Andrew's concerns about the wall-mounted flood on the west end of the building. I think the best way to do this, and this is the way I always did it, was certainly you don't stick it. You mount that light so it washes down the wall, and then the illuminated, the reflections off the illuminated wall illuminate the area. And they do it without glare. So it's a much better way of doing it for the point of view of people walking to the dumpster. And it would absolutely allay any concerns about the glare of the light going into motorists. I think that's a good way of using those washes just to illuminate the end of the building and let the secondary light provide illumination for access. All right, thank you, Brian. Thank you, Bruce. Andrew. Just quick for Bruce. So that's a thanks for making that comment. Would the door still create shade? Like if you're opening the door with the light cast in, is it going to create a shade zone? Hi, I'm sorry. I'm not clear. I'm talking about I think I'm talking about the light on the west end of the building, which, as you said, is 15 feet up in the air. I don't know how high I'm just wondering whether you mentioned aiming at the dumpster. But as you have the door there, as you open the door, is that going to just actually create more shade? You mean the door of the dumpster? The dumpster door. I'm sorry, the dumpster door. No, I don't think so because this is not like being light. This is diffuse light off the walls. So it's lights coming from everywhere at a very low and even level. And so it means that a lower light level can is you can see better because you're not finding the glare of the light. So there would be no shadow in the normal sense. I don't think not as much anyway. I guess if it was, you would open it up wider. All right, thank you. Appreciate that, Bruce. OK, Brian, I'll thank you for changing the asphalt at the western end to grass. I guess one other comment I have is about the architectural elevation in that it does not show any plumbing vents coming out of the roof. And I know Chris and her conditions had a line about the siting of those plumbing vents. So we may come back to that. Board members, are there any other comments? Mr. Miranda, I see your hand. Here we go. Thank you. And I'll, from my discussion with Connor, and if he has anything to add, my understanding is that we're not entirely certain where all these vents are going to be because we don't have access to the building to know how the actual configuration will be for the plumbing on the inside. And so I think at this point, we aren't able to show you exactly where those vents are going to be. But I'll defer to Connor on that. One other comment I think that the Gable light is a good idea. And I expect that we have no problem with that type of an installation. That's all I have from there. Thank you. Thank you, Tom. Connor, I see your hand. Yep, I just want to make a brief comment behalf of ServiceNet that the request for the Gable light and the changing of the existing light fixtures on the poles will not be an issue. And Tom Rand addressed our concerns regarding showing the placement of the pipes on the drawing as of right now. OK, thank you. Glad to hear you're open to making them all dark sky compliant. OK, don't see any more comments from board members. I don't see any hands from the applicant. Do we have any public comment comments from the public on this project for this hearing? I do not see any. All right, Chris, I know you have drafted some conditions. And I think maybe you made some revisions to the findings. Do you want to walk us through that? Yes, I'd be happy to do that. If Pam can bring up the findings first, that would be helpful. I can. Something is going a little crazy here with the sharing. So, Ryan, can you stop sharing your screen? Thank you. Pam, we're seeing the decarbonization roadmap. OK, hold on. I think Ryan and Tom Miranda both have copies of the findings if it would be easier for them to share. I don't know, Chris, hold on. OK, can you see the conditions now? Yes. All right, so where is we can go through the conditions first if you want to do that? Yeah, let's find that. Let me get the findings. Here we go. All right. Can you see them? Yes. OK. I don't think we reviewed these last time, did we? Because I had just sent them out so that you've had a chance to read them. So these are findings under the site plan review section of the zoning bylaw section 11.24. Pam, can you blow this up a little bit? Yeah, I can try. We lost our share. Hold on. Let's see. Well, Pam's looking. Are we going to, is Chris going to be able to edit these as we go along if comments make that possible? I'm not facile the way Nate is. So I just write it down and Pam is recording it. So I think we'll have a pretty good idea of what we're saying. Yeah, it's fine. Thank you. Yeah, that's good. That's good, Pam. All right, finally, let's go. All right, thank you. Chris, before you start, Janet, you have your hand up? I have a question or two questions. Are we planning to vote on this tonight? And then the other question is, did the CONCOM like vote and approve this or are they still trying to reach quorum? Because I would prefer to vote after they vote. But if everything's kosher and they're having problem scheduling, I think I'd be OK voting. All right, good question, Janet. So I'm hopeful that we will vote on this tonight. Chris, where are we at with the CONCOM? CONCOM approved it. I didn't attend the meeting, but they approved it last Wednesday. They haven't issued an order of conditions yet, but they essentially approved the plan that was shown tonight. OK. All right, Chris. So we went through the findings last time, right? Or was it the conditions? I don't remember, but there might be some changes. OK, I thought we went through the findings. And then maybe I'm wrong, but I was hoping we could just focus on your changes. OK, so there weren't any changes to 11.2. So I should say that these findings were part of your packet, but they were written before we received the latest set of drawings. So with that in mind, the first finding, 2-400, no changes. And now we are seeing edits on the screen here. But those were edits that you received on January 4th. Now, I think I don't remember going through all of these. Then maybe we should go through them. All right. So 11.2-400, the project is in conformance with all appropriate provisions of the zoning bylaw and goals of the master plan, with the exception that the property is non-conforming as to lot coverage. And the project is requesting a waiver from requirements in Article 7 of the zoning bylaw, namely 7.111, which requires landscape islands in the parking lot. The project is proposing a multi-unit residential building under Section 3.336.1 of the zoning bylaw, philanthropic or charitable medical or residential facility as transitional housing, which is allowed by site plan review in the commercial zoning district. The property is over the minimum lot coverage, but the lot coverage is being reduced. And the number of parking spaces exceeds what would be typically required for this type of development. OK. All right. I see no hands. Go ahead. 11.2-401, town amenities and abutting properties will be protected through minimizing detrimental or offensive actions. The proposed use of the property, residential and office uses, is unlikely to create detrimental or offensive actions. These uses are both allowed in the comm zoning district by site plan review. 11.2-402, abutting properties will be protected from detrimental site characteristics resulting from the proposed use. And this is something that I wanted to confirm tonight. So we're saying that lights will be downcast and or shielded. It sounds like the board is pretty clearly in favor of maintaining that requirement. Yeah, OK. 11.2-403, provision of adequate recreational facilities, open space and amenities has been addressed. A small area on the east side of the site will be improved for passive recreation by removing asphalt and providing a grassy area with shrubbery next to the stream outlet. 11.2-410 is not applicable. There are no unique or important natural historic or scenic features on the site. 11.2-411, the project provides adequate methods of refuse disposal as described in the management plan. Trash will be collected in the proposed dumpster in the enclosure on the west side of the building. 11.2-412, the project will be connected to town sewer and water. 11.2-413, the proposed drainage system within and adjacent to the site will be adequate to handle the stormwater. A stormwater drainage report has been submitted. The town engineer has reviewed the project and has not expressed concerns. The conservation commission has also reviewed the project and the site plan has been revised in response to concerns of the conservation commission. So now we could also say that the conservation commission has voted to approve it. Yes. OK. 11.2-414, provision of adequate landscaping has been addressed. The project includes new plantings on site. And this part I'm not sure of. That's why I wrote, is this true? As well as preservation of some existing mature trees. I think that is not true. I think the existing mature trees on the east side of the property are going to be removed. But I would look to one of the applicants team to confirm that. OK. Andrew, I see your hand. But let's let Ryan respond. Yes. The mature trees on the eastern side of the parking lot near the head wall of the stream will be removed, cut, flushed, and green. OK. So we'll change that to say, to eliminate as well as preservation of some existing trees. OK. 11.2-415, the soil erosion. I'm sorry, Chris. Let's hear from Andrew. Thanks, Doug. Yeah, I just, relative to the landscaping provisions here, I thought there's a letter indicating that the planting plan would not be completed, or we should not consider it complete, that that was something that ServiceNet was going to maybe finish at a later time. Does that email letter sound familiar? Well, there was a letter from them talking about a couple of things that they didn't want to. Yeah, I thought they said that they would address the specific plantings at a later date. And I know that they have made some changes in the site plan, so I don't know whether that maybe there's just a sequential timing issue relative to that letter, or if there is, in fact, thoughts of modifying that planting plan. Ryan, do you know the answer to Andrew's question? I can't speak for ServiceNet as to what they... I did find the... So this letter is dated January 12th. And it says, given the unique nature of transitional housing and our timeline for this project, we feel it could slow down the process to commit to any specific plantings at this time. So maybe that's in response to the comments at the last meeting that the area between the building entries ought to be available for the occupants to tend. And it sounds like at least what we're seeing tonight, the plan is just to put those creeping junipers between those areas. Ryan, do you think there's anything left to decide about the landscaping? So Connor has his hand up, Doug. Yeah, I would defer to... Okay, Connor. Yeah, I'd like to just jump in here. It's sort of a combination of the two, if that makes sense. So ServiceNet does want to go forward with the planting as presented. We were trying to address some comments about potentially putting in some additional gardening in the area. We always like to work with our clients on their interests. And if somebody showed an interest in wanting to garden, we would try to work with that person to accomplish that, but we really don't know who's gonna be residing there. So we didn't want to commit to that level of planting at the time. Okay, that helps a lot. So this is really in regard to the individual planting beds, not the larger site level planting plan. We should consider that to be final. That's correct. Okay, great. Thank you, appreciate it. Okay. Thanks, Andrew. Thanks, Connor. All right, Chris, I think you can continue. I was just waving somebody to come into my office. All right, let's see. 11.2415, soil erosion control methods appear to be adequate to control soil erosion, both during and after construction. The town engineer and the conservation commission have reviewed this project. 11.2416, adjacent properties will be protected by minimizing the intrusion of various nuisances, including air and water pollution, flood, noise, odor, dust, and vibration through appropriate site and structure design, and the use of appropriate design and materials for containment, ventilation, filtering, screening, soundproofing, sound dampening, and other similar solutions. No such nuisances are expected from the proposed use of this property. 11.2417, adjacent properties will be protected from the intrusion of lighting because the condition of the permit will require that exterior lighting be downcast and or shielded and not shine onto adjacent properties. So we've established that. 11.2418 is not applicable. The portion of the property that is being developed is not located in the FPC flood prone conservancy zoning district. 11.2419, protection of wetlands by building in accordance with the provisions of Wetlands Protection Act chapter 131, section 40, and the Amherst Wetlands bylaw has been addressed. The project has been reviewed by the conservation commission and the plans have been revised to respond to the concerns expressed by the commission. 11.2420, is that right? Is that where we are? Yes. That is correct. Within the BL, BBC, BN, COM, OP, LI and PRP district and any residential zoning district where the project in question occurs within the boundaries of a National Historic Register district, the permit granting authority shall, if it deems the proposal likely to have a significant impact on the surroundings, be permitted to use the design principles and standards set forth in sections 3.2040 and 3.2041, sections one through nine to evaluate the design of the proposed architecture and landscape alterations. In this case, the planning board did not choose to use the design principles and standards set forth in these sections of the bylaw. This is an existing building and there, that should be there, are minimum changes, minimal changes proposed to the building other than new doors and windows and improvements to pedestrian circulation. 11.2421, the development. It should say exterior of the building because there's massive changes to the interior. Exterior of the building, thank you. Minimal changes proposed to the exterior. 11.2421, the development is reasonably consistent with respect to setbacks, placement of parking, landscaping and entrances and exits with surrounding buildings and development. The development complies with most of the dimensional requirements of the zoning bylaw. In instances where the project does not comply with dimensional requirements, the changes will make the project less non-conforming. That has to do with the lot coverage. 11.2422, the project avoids to the extent feasible, impact on steep slopes, flood plains, scenic views, great changes in wetlands. The project has been reviewed by the Conservation Commission and impacts to wetlands are not expected. There are no steep slopes, flood plains, scenic views. There's no significant grading proposed for the site, so great changes will be minimal. 11.2423, there's more than one building on the site and the buildings relate harmoniously to each other and architectural style, site location and building exits and entrances. 11.2424, screening has been provided as appropriate via an enclosure around the proposed dumpster. 11.2430, the site has been designed to provide for the convenience and safety of vehicular and pedestrian movement both within the site and in relation to adjoining ways and properties. The parking lot is not changing other than to be reduced in size at the eastern end in order to provide green space. Pedestrian movement will be improved by the provision of new sidewalks, a ramp and new stairways to the units. Chris, I guess I'm not sure, are we changing anything about the western end? I know they took some of the pavement away and put grass in, which I thought was great. Ryan, is the parking changing at all at the western end? Is the arrangement of parking spaces changing at the western end? No, we're just defining it. Right now that area wasn't really defined, but we're converting some of the pavement, but the parking essentially staying the same. Okay, thank you. So do you think there needs to be a change to that wording? Yes, it's fine. 11.2431, the location is not changing at the western end. A number of curb cuts is not changing. 11.2432, the location and design of parking spaces, drive aisles, loading areas and sidewalks has been provided in a safe and convenient manner. Then we're gonna strike there are no bicycle racks provided because that is not true anymore. They are providing bicycle racks in two locations. 11.2433, provision for access to adjoining properties is not an issue here since the uses are separate. 11.2434 is not applicable. There's only one driveway for this site and it is existing. 11.2435 is not applicable. There are no joint access driveways needed between adjoining properties. 11.2436, the requirement for submittal of a traffic impact statement will be waived. I assumed that when I wrote this, the number of vehicle trips to the site will be less than the previous use as a restaurant. So one of the waivers that was requested was the waiver of the traffic impact statement. 11.2437 has to do with the requirements for a traffic impact statement. So that would be not applicable since you're being asked to waive that requirement. So the waivers that were requested were waive the traffic impact statement requirement and waive the requirement that asks for landscape islands in the parking lot. And that would be section 7.111. Okay, so that's the end of the findings and waivers. Shall I go on and read the conditions? Yeah, why don't we go ahead? Okay. If Pam can bring them up. Thanks, Pam. All right, these conditions, I think we need- Hold on, hold on, hold on. The same thing just happened when I tried to make it bigger. Okay, let's do it again. Okay, can you see it? Yes, yeah, if you boil it up a little bit more again. Yeah, I'm gonna give it a go, yeah. I think it's under view. Yeah, and I can't see my view. Here we go. And zoom, there we go, that's good. Okay, all right. Sorry for the stumbling guys, I really apologize. All right, these are draft conditions. Number one, development shall be built substantially in accordance with plans submitted to the planning board and approved on, and today's date would be put in there if you approve them today. Yeah, Chris, there were a couple of things that Ryan said in his presentation tonight that he already knows needs to change on those drawings. The location of the EV charging station. That there would be no EV parking charging station and that I think that the one tree in the middle of the Southern line was the wrong species. Is that right, Ryan? Should be a two. Yes. So I'll make note of those changes. Were there any other things? I think the addition of a light on the side of the building and the swapping is, do we need to talk about the swapping out of lights? Replacing the existing lights with the viper or whatever. Vipers, but we could also get that submitted later, right? Right, you could just ask for the lighting plan to be submitted before the building permit is issued. Yeah, it'd be probably faster. So this says it does say substantially in accordance with the plans, so. Okay, all right. Number two, the development shall be managed substantially in accordance with the management plan submitted to the planning board and approved on blank date. Number three, upon change of ownership or if the property is no longer managed by service net, the new owner and or manager shall submit a new management plan to the planning board at a public meeting for its review and approval. The purpose of the meeting shall be for the board to determine whether conditions of the permit are being complied with and whether any modification to the site plan review, approval or management plan is required. Number four, the applicant shall submit a lighting plan and photometric plan for the site for review and approval by the planning board prior to the issuance of the building permit. Would you like to keep this condition in here or do you feel that the lighting plan that they've given you is adequate? I don't think it is because you want that light at the end of the building. So you do want them to submit a lighting plan, right? Yeah, I agree with you. Yeah, okay. Number five, the applicant shall submit catalog cuts of the exterior lighting fixtures for review and approval by the planning board prior to issuance of the building permit. I think they've already done that. They've submitted catalog, well, except for the light at the end of the building. So I think you probably do want that. I think this is reasonable to include in the package before the permit. Okay. Even if it's the same fixtures. Number six, all exterior lighting shall be dark sky compliant. Exterior lighting shall be downcast shielded and shall not shine onto adjacent properties or streets. Number seven, the entire parking lot that is proposed to remain shall be resurfaced and striped appropriately for parking spaces. Are you happy with that one? Okay. Delighted. Number eight, the property shall be registered and permitted in accordance with the Amherst residential rental property bylaw. Laws or suspension of a rental permit shall constitute a violation of this condition. Number nine, changes to the project and or substantial changes to any approved site plans or to the exterior of the building shall be submitted to the planning board for its review and approval prior to the work taking place. The purpose of the submittal shall be for the planning board to approve the change and or to determine whether the changes are de minimis or significant enough to require modification of the site plan review approval. Number 10, landscaping shall be installed in accordance with the landscape plan and once installed shall be continually maintained. All disturbed areas shall be loamed and seeded unless otherwise specified. Number 11, railing shall be required on both sides of stairways and ramps unless the architect can prove to the building commissioner that railings on both sides are not required by the building code. They're showing railings on both sides. This was prior to them showing railings on both sides. So you can leave it in or not. We don't really need it. But you don't really need it. So strike number 11. I think we could strike it. Okay. Number 12, venting of bathrooms, laundry and kitchen shall be to the roof or to the rear of the building. You might want to ask them if that's going to be a problem. Well, I wondered whether it really should be to the rear roof of the building. So, you know, to the northern side. Well, I think some of the venting could be out the back wall, couldn't it? The rest, the bathrooms are on the southern wall of the building. So, I mean, maybe they could be, but Bruce, I see your hand, do you want to weigh in with us? Yes. It's pretty easy to take a vent through roof. VTR is what we're talking about across in the attic to the north side of the ridge. I put my hand up because I just wanted to confirm that the intention here is to keep the southern plane of the roof available for effort-free installation of PV panels, right? And something we should be doing at all buildings. And so, this is a good condition to carry. I think it shouldn't be too difficult. It's just a matter of, I'm sure there's an attic space in this building. So, I think it should not be difficult to achieve the letter of this particular condition. Although real point is it could be the rear, the north. Yeah, I think we should say the northern roof or to the north side of the building. North side of the ridge. Well, I mean, the laundry might vent out the north wall. Can you vent through a wall with a plumbing vent? The dryer vent? Oh, oh, I thought we were talking about plumbing vent through the roof. Well, that's a lot of it, but it would also, bathrooms, laundry, and kitchen. Oh, those would be through the wall. Yes. Kitchen fan could be, I think the reason, Rob Morrow was the one who suggested this and he didn't want fans blowing out, venting through the front of the building. So when people are walking by the front of the building, they're not assaulted by, you know, vents from kitchen fans or whatever. So. Oh, that's a bit, that's a bit fussy, I think. Northern roof or the northern wall? Yeah. Ryan, do you think that'll be OK? All right, could you please repeat that? That any venting from the bathroom's laundry or kitchen shall be through the northern slope of the roof or through the northern wall of the building? In other words, we don't want vents out the front wall on the south side and not out through the southern slope of the roof. Yeah, I understand what the aesthetics you're trying to preserve, but I'd have to defer to the builder or the architect. I can't confirm that, but it makes sense to me if possible. Could I say something more? Sure, of course. I'm thinking we should separate these into two conditions because we're confusing the desire to have roof venting clear of the plane for solar collection on the south side and where, for an entirely different reason, for different types of venting, the bathroom and kitchen and laundry exhaust ventilations. That's a different type of venting from the plumbing venting and for different reasons in different places. So whereas I think it's pretty easy to get the plumbing vents where we want them and we should condition it, it's not clear to me that it's going to be at all easy to achieve that with the exhaust ventilation for those spaces. And it does seem to me rather fussy to be worried about that because it's not going to happen much. And it's very low, particularly with the bathroom vents, which is worth that along that room. It's not much air and it's not going to happen much. And I think it's going to add a lot of cost and complexity and maintenance problems if we force them to have very long ducts on these things. So I really don't approve of that. I think we shouldn't require that at all. But I'm absolutely in favor of venting through the roof on the north side of the bridge. So should this be limited to plumbing? Venting and plumbing? Well, we could simply say any roof vents of any sort need to come through the northern slope rather than and not through the southern slope. And I would ignore the exhaust ventilation as opposed to the plumbing ventilation. So strike laundry and kitchen. Yes, plumbing venting, parenthesis VTL, because everyone is with them. Chris, you need kitchen. You're probably better off just saying plumbing venting because you'll have plumbing coming out of the bathrooms and the kitchen. Any plumbing venting shall come through the northern slope of the roof of the building. Yes. Thank you. OK, good. Thank you. The next one is 13. Actually, it's probably the numbers have changed because we eliminated one. But this one I think they've done a lot of the things already. So the way I had this worded was final architectural and site plans shall be submitted to the Planning Board for review and approval prior to the issuance of the building permit. I think that's still reasonable. But final plans shall include, well, they've already coordinated A, they've coordinated the use of materials. So I don't think they, I mean, they should include that on their final plans, but it's not a problem anymore. B, the coordination of the use and type of railings on the architectural and site plans. I think they've done that pretty well. We have two B's here. An elevation view of the building showing an elevation of the ramp, including the elevation of the railings. I think they've done that. Yeah, we've done that. Location of bike racks, they've done that. Location of EV charging station. Are we going to take that out? Yeah, that's not going to apply. OK. Location of site lighting, if any, and there is going to be site lighting. So I'll strike, if any. The material that will be installed on the ground between the stairways to the 12 dwelling units. Well, they've already specified that. So we can strike that. And location of the HVAC units, they've got that on the plans as well. So this is really, I guess, what this boils down to is that they should submit final and architectural and site plans to the planning board for review and approval prior to a building permit being issued. And we don't really need to list all of these things, right? I don't think so. OK. All right. So I'm going to scratch A through G here. All right. Number 14 is standard one hard copy and one digital copy of the final revised plans shall be submitted to the planning department. And then the construction conditions are all boiler plate. So I don't think you need to go through those unless you want to. No. OK. So that's that. All right. So board members, having gone through the findings and conditions are there and we've made some edits as we've gone along. So those will be part of this. Are we ready to vote on this or do people want to have a further conversation? Not seeing any hands. All right. So so Chris, let's see how many how many motions are we going to need? We're going to need to accept the findings as discussed and if edited, the conditions as discussed and if edited. We're going to need to approve the two waivers for the traffic impact report and the 7.11 of the bylaw. We're going to need to close the public hearing. And what am I missing? Anything? And approve the application? Approve the site plan review application. Can we do all that in one motion? Or we can. OK, excellent. All right. I see two hands. Tom, you just beat Bruce. The mood. OK, Bruce. Second. All right. Any further any further comments from anyone, whether you're on the board, whether you're part of the applicant team or whether you are in the public? All right. I don't see any hands. All right. We'll go through this motion, multi-part as proposed and seconded Bruce. Vote to approve. Tom. Hi. Andrew. Hi. Janet. Hi. Karen. I abstain. All right. And I'm an I as well. So the motion passes five in favor, one abstention, and one member absent. Mr. Miranda, Ryan, Connor, thank you for your time and working with us on this project. Can we look forward to your getting it completed and taking care of this population? Thank you, everyone. Appreciate your time and input. All right. Good luck. Thank you. All right. So the time now is 7.53. We generally take a break around 8 o'clock for five minutes. So if everyone can mute and turn off your video and come back at 7.58, just before 8 o'clock, and we'll resume with the nest decarbonization presentation. All right. Time is 7.59. If you are hiding behind your blanked-out screen, please un-blank it and let us see your face and we'll know whether we're ready to resume. Chris, I do see your hand. So just two things. Martha Hanner is waiting and she was just... Yep. She's now among the panelists. She's among the panelists. And I wondered if, Doug, you would like either Janet or me to give an introduction to Martha. Maybe Janet would like to do that, since I think she suggested that Martha come and talk to you about this mass decarbonization plan. OK. Janet, are you prepared to do that? I'm not prepared, but I will. OK. Well, Andrew doesn't look like he's back yet. So you have 30 seconds to prepare. Or however long it takes, Andrew. You suppose that... Martha, are you sharing your presentation? Yeah, could I perhaps practice and try that one way? Yes, you can. Absolutely. It's the share screen and there. OK. Beautiful. All right. And I'll put it to slideshow when it's time then. Sure. It's beautiful. Andrew, are you there? Chris, do you think we'd be out of... Oh, there's Andrew. OK, good. All right. Janet, I guess... What time do you have, Mr. Marshall? I have, OK, 8.02. And at this point, we can go to the next item on our agenda. Item number four, a presentation by Martha Hanner on mass decarbonization roadmap. Janet, would you introduce Martha? Sure. Martha and I are on the Solar By-Law Working Group and we are tasked with drafting a Solar By-Law for Submittal to Town Council. And in the process of that, to also reach out to the community of Amherst and find out what their preferences are and desires in terms of where to site large-scale solar arrays, like large, ground-mounted solar arrays. And those can go over parking lots. They can go over fields, you know, anywhere. You see, we see a few of them in Amherst. There's one on the town, the town at the transfer station. So Martha is a former, a retired NASA scientist and she has summarized the... Well, I haven't seen this most recent thing, but the state's Clean Energy and Climate Action Plan for 2025 and 2030, which is really interesting. And now we have the 2050 plan coming out. And so she had made a presentation to the Solar By-Law Working Group. She's presented it all over town and I thought it'd be great for us to hear it because we will also be looking at the Solar By-Law that is gonna come out of the committee. And also we're, you know, obviously people who live in Amherst and hopefully will participate in the community survey and different events that will hold to find out what the community values are and where we'd like to see solar sighted. So Martha, please, and thank you for coming. Welcome, Martha. Thank you very much. Let me see if I can get there. There we go, our height. Yes, so first the disclaimer. Yes, I am a member of the Solar By-Law Working Group and I researched and studied the state climate plans in order to do a presentation there, but I speak as an individual. And so anything I say, any opinions or views or so on represent just my thoughts from having studied this and they're not positions taken by the Solar By-Law Working Group. So with that, I'll go ahead. I'd like to give a generalized overview of the 2050 decarbonization roadmap that was published a couple of years ago and then discuss the updates and the goals of the Clean Energy and Climate Plan for 25 and 2030. And the new one that just came out last month called the Climate Plan for 2050, which I will simply refer to as the latest report if I refer to it in the air. So excuse me while I try to make this a little clearer for me. Yes, right. So in January 2020, Governor Baker committed Massachusetts to an aggressive target of net zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050. But if you read the fine print, it says at a minimum an 85% reduction from 1990 levels and net zero means that any residual emissions that are left by then do not exceed the amount that is removed from the atmosphere each year. And so that's a key point, the difference between totally reducing emissions 100% versus compensating for any residual emissions. And so let's see. Well, let's see if I can even get things, there we go. And so to show this in schematic form, that would mean that any leftover emissions, such as some heavy equipment that might still be diesel powered or making cement, reduces carbon dioxide or we might still need some backup natural gas electricity generation for peak loads and backup and so on. And other things. And so it's all of those emissions that then have to be matched by the amount of carbon sequestration. That is the amount of carbon dioxide that are natural world, our plants and trees and so on can pull down out of the atmosphere each year. And so that is the key then to our 2050 climate plan. So the roadmap was supported by quite a number of technical studies. The key ones here would be the top one, the energy pathways to deep decarbonization. It was the most basic analyzing various strategies for conversion to renewable energy to answer the question, is net zero feasible? And is it cost effective? And so the red dots are the basic reports that I'm summarizing here. And the technical studies then, let's say, here we go. So first let's look at what are the greenhouse gas emissions by sectors. This plot over the course of 10 years and you see transportation is the highest portion of our emissions. That's not a surprise. Then buildings comes next, the green plot there. Electricity generation, as you can see, has reduced quite a bit over 10 years. Note that that's not electricity use, but it's the amount of greenhouse gas emissions. And that's because the whole fired plants have been closed and the oil fired plants have pretty much been closed. So the electricity generation, today really relies on natural gas, which still emits carbon dioxide, but per kilowatt hour, the emissions are less. So what are the strategies for decarbonization? Well, we have to increase our energy efficiency. We have to electrify everything. Our transportation system is the same. We have to increase our energy efficiency. We have to electrify everything. Our transportation system, buses and trains and cars. And then we have to decarbonize the electricity generation, switch to renewable resources that do not emit greenhouse gas. And then we have to use the carbon capture, that is pulling the CO2 out of the atmosphere to balance. Well, there were technical report calls these the four killers of decarbonization. As I just said, we have to talk about what's the end-use energy and can we electrify everything? That means transitioning to electric vehicles. The state has already declared that they're not going to sell anything but electric cars after 2035, for example. Energy efficiency in buildings. We really have to make a concerted effort to convert to heat pumps for heating, which then rely on electricity, solar panels on the roofs to help provide some of that electricity. Anything we can do then for improving the energy efficiency and building codes and so on for buildings. And then of course we have to decarbonize the energy supply with wind energy, hydroelectric, solar panels, those are the three main ones. And then we have to plant trees and really protect our natural lands in order to sequester the carbon. So the technical report modeled eight different pathways to reach the goal. And so they put in as much data as were available on technologies that we have today and so on. And then they had to extrapolate and predict how the technologies might change, how our people's habits might change between now and 2050, how the climate might change. And so we have to bear in mind that although these models were done as analytically and carefully as possible, they do rest on assumptions because you're having to project from now to 2050. But basically offshore wind is going to be the backbone for decarbonized electricity here in Massachusetts. And this is something that Governor Baker and the legislature were all very enthused about. And I'm sure our new governor is going to continue this push and so on because they see it also as really good job creation. And there are contracts well underway already in the offshore area south of Cape Cod and much more. And much more to come. And so the latest clean energy plan estimated a higher amount by 2050. Then in addition to offshore wind or when that was, when the wind wasn't blowing imported hydroelectric energy from Quebec is going to still remain important. And they also considered that some of the new generation smaller, safer nuclear power plants might also be cost effective. And solar, both of Altaics was predicted to make up 25 to 30% of the electric generation. And you know, there are several challenges with that as I'll go on to talk about, but both rooftop and built environment solar and ground mounted solar will be needed. But the more that you can put in the built environment on rooftops and parking lots, then you reduce the land requirements. Right. So behind the meter solar. This mean energy and storage systems, particularly the photovoltaics that directly supply homes and buildings with electricity before passing through the electric meter. And this has quite a few advantages. It's the point of use generation. You don't have to be sending the power over transmission lines. It's a distributed system, which can be more reliable, more independent, depending on how it's hooked up. If we have a power outage and so on, depending on how the system works also installations on this relatively small scale can really support local businesses. I'm sure you all recognize advertisements from local businesses that want to install solar on homes and so on. So there really are quite a few advantages to that. And then the more that you can put over parking lots or shoe horned in here and there in the built environment, then the less land requirements you need for the ground mounted solar. So what are the characteristics of our regional grid? Well, Massachusetts is part of the northeast electric grid, which includes all of New England, adjacent areas in New York state and some of Southern Quebec and New Brunswick. And the characteristics are that there's a high population density, which means that there are challenges for the resource siding. We of course have large winter heating loads. There's a large offshore wind potential that's known as a world-class wind field south of Cape Cod. And so there's high hopes for a really robust development there. We have moderate solar resource quality, given our year round weather and the fact we're up at 40 degrees latitude and so on. And then we do have the significant tie in with the hydro-Cabex hydroelectric systems. And the electricity currently relies on natural gas. So some of the challenges, as I said, siding the renewables, both wind and the solar, because of the high population density and the scarcity of just open land lying around. And then siding the electrical transmission lines for the same reasons. I'm sure you've seen here in Amherst, some of these tall poles that are going up. Because if we're going to convert to electricity, we really are going to have to upgrade our whole transmission system in its capacity in Massachusetts. Another challenge is that wind, solar, and hydro are not located near our end users. Again, more work for the transmission lines. We have extreme weather events, blizzards, these sleet storms in the winter and higher and higher temperatures in the summer. And then we have the other problem that the peak production, say from a solar panels during the day or for when the times of the year that the wind blow best, do not necessarily correlate with our peak loads. And there's a real effort now to have battery storage. And certainly there's requirements then for battery storage for any large solar facility that then also have to be taken into account. And when we do our zoning and other considerations and permitting, we have to take into account the storage batteries as well. So going on then to the clean energy and climate plan for 2025 and 2030, as well as the newer one for 2050, both of those set specific goals for the target years. And then they go into some detail to describe the strategies to reach the goals for each one of the sectors. And both of those also show more emphasis on the need for the carbon sequestration and preserving natural and working lands compared to the original 2020 report. So looking again at this plot of the emissions, because I'm going to show it again in a different format. So the transportation is on top with the highest part, buildings are next, and the electricity emissions have been decreasing, although the electricity use has not. And then there's a small amount of other sources to down there at the bottom. So now I'll show this in a different form. There. And so again, it's a plot of these different sectors. Now it goes from 1990, which was the reference year, all the way out to the predictions for 2030. And you see transportation is still the biggest chunk there in the pale green, and then buildings, and then there's electricity at the bottom, which has decreased quite a bit in its emissions. And the blue diamond on the left then is the reference number. That's what we're comparing to when we talk about the reductions. And then you see a blue diamond over by 2020. And that was the goal for 2020. And as you can see, we reached the goal. But you also notice then around 2020, that the reason we reached the goal was there was a abrupt drop in the transportation sector emissions. And why do you suppose that was? Well, we had a certain pandemic come along, right? And so for a whole year or so, people were staying home. They weren't driving as much. People were working from home. They were not commuting. So there really was a significant drop in the amount of car usage in 2020, which enabled us to meet the goal fairly easily. And so now that the pandemic is over as it's going to be, and we hope there won't be any more, we have to consider how we're going to then reduce the transportation. And as you see, the levels look like they're fairly flat in 2025. And then there has to be a really steep drop to meet the goals for 2030, a steep drop both in vehicle emissions and in building emissions, which means a lot of effort to go into the conversion to electric vehicles and to the conversion of heat pumps and solar panels for buildings. Okay. Now I'm going to show you another plot. And this comes from the latest report. So this is the predictions out to 2050. Sorry, the plot isn't as clear, but it's the same data starting again with 1990 on the left and transportation and then electricity in the middle and buildings on the bottom. You see that nice little dip for 2020. And you see the previous goals that are set by the bars for 2025 and 2030. But then you look and you see what the curves have to do if we're going to meet our 2050 goals. There has to be this drastic drop. And the red line that goes all the way across there is the net emissions. That means after you take the residual emissions and you subtract the amount that's being pulled out of the atmosphere by our natural world. And so as you go down toward 2050, you see that that red curve for the net emissions goal is dropping below the amount of emissions and the green down there at the bottom that's negative is the amount of sequestration. So the prediction is from the latest report that in order for us to meet our goals for 2050, we do have to increase the amount of carbon dioxide that's being pulled out of the atmosphere. And in fact, that's consistent with climate models in recent years starting 2017-2018 that really predict that we're not going to get there from here unless we can increase the amount of CO2 that we're pulling down out of the atmosphere if we want to stabilize the climate. And so that means worldwide really making an effort to increase the amount of forest, wetlands, so on that can do this kind of thing. So these are the plots that are really the basic things to kind of remember because it's the data plus the predictions of how we get there from here. Okay. So for the short term, yes, we met our goal for 2020, and then you see there's rather ambitious reductions for 2025 and 2030. And Amherst's target goal for 2030 is also a 50% reduction in our local usage. So how do we get there from here? Well, sort of locally then for transportation, we have to convert our bus system and our school buses and all to electric vehicles. We have to try to maybe analyze our bus routes better and say, can we increase the amount of vehicle miles? I mean, the ECAC's CARP report and general talk is for a decade that there's no direct bus service from the Hadley Road, East Hadley Road apartments to any grocery store. You have to go to a long hassle and change buses and takes hours altogether. That's something we need to do something about if we're serious about reducing the growth of vehicle miles just as an example. And we have to persuade our consumers to start buying electric vehicles, which means improving the amount of charging stations both locally and then the charging infrastructure across the state, say on the freeways and everywhere, if you're going to make a long distance trip. And that certainly is part of the state's plan. But these goals are ambitious, as you can see, even for 2030. Buildings. And this is where I think, in my opinion, that Amherst really needs to concentrate for this next decade is improving our energy efficiency in existing buildings, enhancing the energy codes and so on for new buildings, and then really transforming how our buildings are heated by converting to the electric heat pumps, perhaps battery storage, solar panels on the roofs and so on. And to do that, financial incentives are probably going to be needed. And it's my understanding that there will be considerable financial incentives from the state, as well as from the current federal initiative this past year. The question is how we can implement that here in Amherst, you know, who's going to help, you know, what are we going to do and so on. And in that line is an interesting study and Chris, I will send you the link to it. It was, I came across it on the Internet, it was Forbes Home did a survey of people's attitudes toward residential solar on the rooftops, why they either had gone ahead with it or what their problems were. And the biggest problem really was the upfront cost. And the second biggest problem was trying to get enough information to figure out how to do it and so on. And so those are the things that I think we need to deal with locally. Okay, then our electricity generation, the demand obviously is going to go up, but it's going to be gradual. And our transmission and distribution systems are going to have to rise to the occasion with increased capacity and so on. I said wind energy will be the dominant renewable. The numbers I heard last fall from a Zoom session with the legislative committee was that they're aiming for about 40% of Massachusetts energy eventually to be generated from wind energy. And then there's this new emphasis on trying to do rooftop parking lot built environment solar just take advantage of that as much as possible. That's really kind of the low hanging fruit and that land conservation for the sake of storing carbon has a new urgency. Yes. So just quoting a couple of statements from the climate plan for 2025 and 2030. So here about the solar. And the storage. That yes, we wanted to definitely promote solar development, but the two challenges are how this all gets connected to the grid with the distributed systems and then the impact on natural and working lands and how we can balance that off. And again, another quote just quickly. Do we are there are rebates and so on often control, you know, where who's going to be interested in developing solar. And so the message to do we are now is to actually be able to manage that to balance the working lands versus the solar installations. And they talk about having 2 million systems installed on rooftops and parking lots and so on. So you can talk about what's our share of that. Yeah, okay. And then this is the from the clean energy and climate plan for 2050. And just kind of a heads up that they state in there what I underlined here that there may be that they actually try to develop some solar sighting guidelines statewide to consistent with the protection of land and habitats and perhaps set additional regulations. Regarding forest clearing. So that may be in our future. Yeah. Okay. All right, so I'll let me digress from the reports to show you what I consider a very interesting plot here and that's a plot of the measurements of our atmosphere is carbon dioxide taken from a measuring sensor that's located high up on monaca, I mean, monoloa in Hawaii. It's a 14,000 foot volcano. And the, the sensors are located at 11,000 feet, which is high above the normal atmospheric inversion layer. And there's no vegetation at all. It's just a barren volcanic and so on. And so also the numbers will be in parts per million, which is just a fraction of a percent. So here we are. Here is then the plot taken ever since 1957 in a consistent record from this one single site. And so the black line is the yearly averages, the red lines are kind of the monthly variations and so on. And this is a site where clean dry air is coming down out of the stratosphere. It's one of the best sites in the world for that purpose. I can attest to that because I've spent many a night at 14,000 feet on the adjacent mountain of monaca, which has the astronomy observatories. And it is indeed clean air and very, very dry. So, okay. So now I want to, I'll just pass over the chart, but go to this chart, which shows the past six years of carbon dioxide measurements. And the red line is the monthly average. And one can see how the carbon dioxide varies on a yearly cycle due to the seasonal photosynthesis in the northern hemisphere. And when it's spring and summer, the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere drops. And then in the winter, it rises again because there's less amount of photosynthesis and so on. And this amount is actually, in fact, about 30% of the annual human caused emissions are being drawn down by our forests and wetlands. And thus preserving our forests and wetlands really is important to controlling the level of carbon dioxide in our atmosphere. And that's this fourth pillar of decarbonization. And I just want to go back for a minute, though, to tell you, again, these numbers are parts per million. And so 420 parts per million where we are now is 0.04%. So a little bit of carbon dioxide in our atmosphere is doing all this work or damage or whatever you call it. And our atmosphere needs a little carbon dioxide. The number for thousands of years prior to the industrial resolution was 280 parts per million or 0.028%. And that gives our planet enough warming to make it comfortable for humans. But just adding a small amount more, you can see what the difference it makes. So our climate situation really is serious with the global warming, but it's really a tiny percent of our atmosphere. Compare that, oxygen is somewhere around 20% of the atmosphere. So, okay. Well, back to Massachusetts then. So here is a plot or a map of Massachusetts natural and working lands. The red is the settled area. That's about 25% of the land area. And obviously it's clustered mainly around the metropolitan Boston and eastern Massachusetts, except for the area around Springfield, which you see out there in red. Forest land is more than half, about 57% of the whole state. And then obviously it's concentrated more in the western half of the state, our area, and then westward. And I was very surprised because the cropland is only about 7% of Massachusetts land area. That's what's shown in yellow. And guess what? It's right here in the Connecticut river valley, most of it. And I was surprised because when I was growing up, I was accustomed to farmland and my grandparents had farms and so on. Or I go to the store now and buy local milk and think nothing of it. But really, there's relatively little farmland and it's concentrated right in our area. And so I think one of our questions to consider as we go forward is what is our obligation to protect our trim agricultural land in this area? And you might also ask, well, what about our obligation in our area to protect then the natural lands that are holding the carbon? And along that line, I was, I listened to the ECAC meeting this afternoon and they were talking a great length about our share of solar panels and how many acres were, you know, where we ought to put it on the open lands. And they never mentioned our share of the carbon sequestration. I was kind of surprised at that. So, okay. So again, this was just the summary of the forest and more than half. And the croft land is a meager 7%. But the protected agricultural land in Amherst is 18%. So, they're doing very well. And so then the state of Massachusetts in, according to these two climate action plans is committing to increase the amount of conservation on least state land, on developed land from 28 to 30% and then by 2050, 40%. And note that 30% of the land in Amherst is permanently protected. And that's mainly the Lawrence swamp in the area in the southern part of Amherst and where some of our water wells are. I think that's the main part is, am I right, Chris? Yeah. So, yes. Do you want me to answer that? There is also a lot of agricultural land that's permanently protected. Yes. APRs. Yep. Yes. And that's also then a question for our future. Should we try to do more with that? You know, what, what should we be doing? Yeah. Okay. There's a few additional goals that are in these plans. I mean, if you're going to try to get the admissions as low as possible, you have to, you know, go after all the little things too. You have to plant more trees and plant more acres. Even in Amherst, we could plant more trees. And maybe there will be more financial incentives from the state to help privately owned forest and farms, you know, still make a profit and preserving their land and so on. So these are just some of the smaller goals. They want to reduce solid municipal waste burning by 90% by 2050. So, and then to just finish up. Environmental justice issues. We do want to make sure as we make our decisions locally that we have an equitable distribution. And one of the challenges is the high upfront costs of new technologies like the solar photovoltaics on roofs or heat pumps and so on. And what about renters? I think in the new state legislatures law for 2022. There's provisions for allowing renters to share in the electricity rate savings if the owner of the building is placing solar panels on the roof. And then, you know, environmental justice as far as any citing decisions for large installations. So I'll just close then with a few of my questions and thoughts and actually these builds on what Chris presented to you and you discussed a year ago in February having read those minutes and so on. She asked a lot of the fundamental questions. So she's Chris was really ahead of the game and thinking about all this, but we have to think locally. What are our goals? I mean, overall we want to reduce the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. That's the overall goal. And so some of it means what kind of renewable electricity we can put in town, but also, you know, how much we should preserve our land to draw down things. How much we can do with just conserving and reducing energy. And how to so how do we incorporate those four pillars of decarbonization and what metrics are we going to use to make decisions. If you put up solar panels, you can very straightforwardly say, oh, you know, five acres, so many megawatts or whatever, but for a forested land, you know, it's not easy to say, oh, how much carbon dioxide do we preserve if we, you know, save these five acres of forested land. We can also ask, what's our share of the offshore wind or the hydro or the other renewable energy coming from different parts of Massachusetts? How much should we be focusing on producing quote all of our own energy? And how do we promote residential solar and for to me, from the people I've talked with locally, it seems that people just need information is confusing. The upfront costs seem high. And it seems we really need some kind of a local point of contact or clearinghouse for that information. And one of the challenges here is, you know, there's a lot of work that could be done. And we have our hard working. Town staff that are already pretty stretched out of, you know, who's going to come to the fore and help with as we go forward. And then how do we value prime electric time agricultural land and how do we balance large solar installations with preservation of forests. And so I will stop there and happy to take questions. Or thoughts or. Thank you, Marcia. Yeah. All right. Let's see. Board members. Do you have any relatively brief questions? I know the time is 840 and we have a somewhat controversial topic to continue later. Andrew. Thanks, Doug. Thanks for the presentation, Martha. I found it really fascinating. And I think it's just more of a comment. Because I do want to keep thinking a little bit long. But to me. You know, as I think about those pillars, one of the. The items that. That seems like maybe the elephant in the room. It's just like, how do we use less energy? Period. Like coming with all these techniques to make things more efficient and so forth. But if we just use less energy. And I think we're going to be able to do that. We're going to be able to use these techniques to make things more efficient and so forth. But. If we just use less energy. Then that nullifies the need for some of these remediation tactics. So. Yes. Really, really great presentation. Thanks for walking us through. Thanks. It's the charts, you know, it's it. I guess it's in your. You know, resource folder or something, but it's those two plots that are really the key going forward. Yeah. All right, Bruce. I agree with Andrew a great deal to say, but I think under the circumstances, probably just say the most important thing to Martha, which is thank you very much. This is. A lovely wonderfully well condensed briefing on the context that we'll be working in for the rest of our lives on this planning board and those of our successes. I'm I was particularly. Informed by seeing the sequestration plotting. On this on the, on the grass that shows how you're dropping down the consumption things, but the, the kind of negative line that's there is an interesting addition to the kind of plots in one form or another that I've been seeing for years. So I felt that was for me anyway, particularly important addition to my understanding. Thank you very much. Thank you, Bruce. Karen. Has there been any kind of study about what kind of trees are better to plant? Say we have a lot of land and we're, we want to start planting trees. Is there a difference? I mean, do pine trees sequester less. Carbon dioxide, for example. Yes. I don't, I don't know the details. I know there have been studies done and I know. I've seen that in the past. I've seen that in the past. An extended family member about the C three versus C four. Carbon sequestration and which is. You know, more important. I read today in the Wall Street Journal, there was an article about. Some. Some in the farm industry trying to increase the carbon sequestration in the crops that farmers grow. We can say right away is that large trees sequester the most. Combination of they have the large trunks that stores a lot and they have more leaves that pull down the carbon. I don't know the answer about the pines and so on which are year round versus the leaves in the summer but people are studying that. Okay, Tom. Hey thank you and thank you Martha for the great presentation, it's super helpful. I read it ahead of time and it was great to hear you go through all the details. I did have a question about the sort of seeming absence of any references to bike lanes, bike infrastructure and that throughout the entire transportation section which is one way to really reduce this and especially in a town like Amherst where that might actually have a drastic effect. I think that's something that I like to see studied or thought about in this process. Yes, yes and I think that's a good point. I sort of didn't go into some of the smaller details. You know, I was looking at the biggest statewide. But here in Amherst, I mean, it's up to, you know the planning board and council and all of us really to think about how are the best ways to help drop down our whole energy consumption as at the same time we then try to see how much of our energy we kind of generate locally or what's going to happen. You know, it's a, it's very, very challenging. And there are great models of it, you know around Europe and other parts of the country too. So it might be something that we should definitely look into and the other comment I had was you know, just doing some peer-reviewed research. I keep coming across numbers around animal agriculture producing between 18 and 25% of greenhouse gas emissions and that has to do with deforestation and no kinds of other effects obviously and monocropping to support that. But given that agriculture is such a key part of this area I wonder if the percentage of that is more on the global scale than maybe on the Massachusetts scale and might be something we want to consider. Maybe it's in your leading question about how we value prime agricultural land here as well but I wanted to bring that up. Yes, I mean in the text of these climate plans it does talk about how we also have to do research and understand better how to reduce emissions from our natural and working lands which includes agricultural lands. Also read recently about a different diet for cows so they don't gulf as much methane which of course is a big greenhouse gas. There's also discussions of dual use for the agricultural land. Can you put up solar panels and still do some farming? Pictures of sheep grazing underneath. I don't think we have the sheep so much here. I don't think haying and cows would work too well. Some vegetable crops could be grown underneath as long as you can figure out how to harvest them. So there's possibilities for dual use. It would seem like there should be some discussion with our area farmers as to what they would like to see and some discussion I don't know whether it would be in the solar bylaw or some other way of how we do value our agricultural land and do we want to let just large amounts get covered with solar panels. Just one last comment, sorry. I also, there's been a lot of conversation around solar versus forest and I think what we don't have is a bylaw talking about forest preservation. So this may not be a solar bylaw that we want to talk about but rather something that has to do with what are our values in Amherst and how do we want to preserve that? And we don't want more golf courses or we don't want more of these other things that also clear land. And I think making a distinction between solar use versus just general clearing I think should be part of the discussion in terms of where these issues fall in our bylaws. Yes, and as I mentioned, I was concerned listening to the ECAC meeting today where they talked so much about solar sighting without talking about, you know the values of preserving our forested lands and this does need to be a bigger discussion in Amherst. I, in my opinion. Thank you so much for your time. Yeah, thank you. Thanks, Tom, Janet. Very quickly, there are ways to continue logging land that actually leads to greater carbon sequestration and part of that is like saving some of the older trees. New growth takes up carbon more quickly obviously bigger trees, older trees hold it better but if you keep the soils around the forest really strong, there are also places where carbon is held. So and the same is true for agriculture that the more organic matter you keep in the soil the less you open it up, the more carbon is retained and also like Brookfield Farm uses animals to keep the soil rich and they kind of rotate pigs and cows and haven't seen the chickens lately to keep this to fertilize the soil and keep it strong without using chemical fertilizers. So in the final plug, which I didn't realize is, you know, wetlands even which plague us all in Amherst are actually great carbon sinks and so disturbing them releases a huge amount of carbon and so our wet damp soils are doing a great job holding probably the most carbon in any kind of soil. So those are the things I've sort of picked up. All right, thanks, Janet. So thanks again, Martha. I would certainly echo the comments about how do we just reduce our energy use and certainly the one of the interests I've had on the planning board has been how do we densify the areas where we all can live together more closely and use our cars less to access the things we need? Yes. Okay. Okay, well, thank you. Let me stop by sharing. All right, thank you, Martha. And we'll wait to hear from the Solar By-law Working Group. Yeah. All right, the time now is 8.50 and we'll go on to the next item on our agenda. Chris, do we have any old business not anticipated? I'm seeing her shake her head now. Sorry, we don't know. Okay, and then we'll move to item six, which is the first item is new business, the proposed zoning revisions to duplex townhomes and converted dwellings. So I believe we have Mandy Jo and Patricia DeAngelis to give us an overview of that. Chris, is that right? Do we go directly to them? That's right, yep. Okay, so let's bring them into the panel and we'll hear from our two counselors. Welcome to the planning board meeting. Thank you. I'm not sure you can see me, but I just have a short presentation. I'm Mandy Jo Hanneke, one of the co-sponsors, Pat DeAngelis, I believe is also either here or able to speak, but I will be doing the main part of the presentation and answering questions today. And it's just a, what I'm gonna say is basically a summary of our reasons for doing this and then I can answer any questions you have. So Amherst, as we all know, is facing a housing crisis. This crisis has been fueled by a shortage of developable land, a lack of housing units for low and middle income families, high property taxes and longstanding restrictive zoning that has inhibited housing production. These challenges are being compounded by increased demand for student housing, rising land and construction costs, workforce challenges and overall economic uncertainty. Zoning policies and practices across the nation have historically restricted housing production and excluded people by building durable walls between racial and socioeconomic groups, keeping many from home ownership opportunities. Exclusionary zoning and single family zoning policies that limit residential uses and density by requiring permits and public hearings for all but single family home residential construction are associated with decreased housing production, increased housing costs and higher levels of racial segregation. Amherst has not been immune to these policies. Easing the housing crisis in Amherst is going to require multiple solutions and depend on a variety of factor, many of which are outside our council's legislative authority. Yet in the last year, we've taken some key steps towards zoning reform, which is within our authority to ameliorate some of these issues. The biggest one in the last year was when we approved with the support of the planning board the creation of accessory dwelling units by right with only building commission or review. We believe owner occupied duplexes are not much different than these ADs. Our proposal to relax the permitting requirements for duplexes, townhomes and converted dwellings while maintaining requirements that are compatible in scale with single family homes and other requirements that this body and the zoning board of appeals use for many of their reviews is the next logical step for Amherst to meet its goals. So our proposal is congruent with the objectives of the town's master plan and the comprehensive housing policy that the council adopted a few years ago. These changes have the potential to make the town more affordable by expanding the supply of housing, make the city fairer by reducing racial and economic segregation, combating climate change by reducing commutes and making housing more environmentally friendly. The changes may enable us to create a mix of housing that meets the physical needs of and is affordable to the broadest possible spectrum of our community and that minimizes the impact on the environment. Those are our goals. We welcome any questions you have to expand more on what our proposal does or to answer any questions you have regarding potential outcomes or reasons why we've made these proposals. All right, thank you, Mandy Jo. So board members, we did receive the proposed bylaw in our packet. I hope you've all had a chance to look at it. Chris, I wondered whether at this time you could give us just an overview of how you expect to structure our review of this. Obviously, this is not the public hearing. And you mentioned earlier, we're likely to have this topic on another meeting prior to opening a public hearing. But what are the statutory requirements for when we open a public hearing and what else might you tell us about the process you envision? Well, tonight is really just an introduction. I thought it was important that you all become familiar with what's being proposed. I know we've had questions in the past about starting a public hearing without having the planning board have an opportunity to learn about something and then discuss it. So this is your first introduction. I'm envisioning that there will be a meeting in February where you can hear about this proposal in detail, I hope from Mandy Jo or from Pat DeAngelis. And then you'll have an opportunity to ask questions and make comments about specific items. So that would be a second public meeting. And then the town council has asked that you hold a public hearing, which means open a public hearing before April 1st. So in March, I'm envisioning that you will start your public hearing. You have two or three, let's see. Three dates in March, if you need them. March 1st, March 15th and March 29th. So one of those dates would be opening a public hearing on this proposal. And then at that time, you would be able to, you know, receive comments from the public to whatever extent the public is available. And then if you felt like you didn't have enough information, you could continue the public hearing. You can continue it for quite a while until you feel like you really understand what's being proposed. And then you would close your public hearing and make a recommendation. And we write a report that summarizes what you've talked about in your public hearings. And we present that report to the town council. CRC will also be holding a public hearing, the Community Resources Committee. I don't know what their schedule is, but they are held to the same timeline really. They need to hold their public hearing before April 1st, or at least open it before April 1st. And then they also can continue until they feel that they have enough information to make a recommendation. So that's what we're proposing here. And I think that's my explanation. Okay, thank you. Board members, are there any questions you want to give Mandy Jo this evening? Janet? I kind of feel like I have a couple of, several comments, but I wonder if she could explain the changes that she's proposing. So we have a, for the board itself, because they're actually fairly complicated, but at least more detailed than just the goals. And then I think helpful for the public. I feel like there's been an introduction, but then we missed the meat of what's happening. Mandy Jo, do you want to give us the overview of the actual changes? I can do that. Before I do that, I just want to say, in terms of the April 1st date, Pat and I had expected this to be at the council on the 23rd. So when we asked for the April 1st, that was the 65 days, I think, from the 23rd. And so we missed the correction. I was doing it for my CRC chairmanship today in terms of public hearings. The 65 days is actually March 15th, not April 1. And I apologize for that, for not catching it before the referral went through. But I thought I'd mentioned that here regarding that. But a summary. So as I said in the introduction, one of our goals is to relax the permitting requirements for certain parts of the zoning or certain residential uses. One thing that, and so we focused on duplexes, which has, have their own categories, owner occupied, non-owner occupied, and affordable duplexes. And so we are proposing to take owner occupied and affordable duplexes from site plan review to yes in all non-fraternity residential areas. And let me just get my chart up too. And that, and what I wanna say is in all non-residential fraternity RF areas and in the Aquifer Recharge Protection District, they're right now, they're not allowed at all. And so we are proposing making them site plan review in those areas, the owner occupied duplexes and the non-owner occupied duplexes. Non, sorry, and the affordable duplexes. The non-owner occupied duplexes were proposing to go from special permit in those same areas to site plan review. And then in the business neighborhood district, we're proposing to take them from special permit to site plan review. And we are- Would it help to have the chart up? Yeah, the chart, that's what I was looking at right here to do some of that. Maybe Pam could pull that out. If we pull the chart up, that would be great. It looks like the affordable duplex, the chart may not be fully accurate on affordable duplexes, because there should be an SPR that I probably didn't transfer when I made the chart. That chart, the one that has passed. This one. That one, yes. And so, in this, we're treating owner occupied duplexes and affordable duplexes, the proposals to treat them the same. And to treat non-owner occupied duplexes as sort of a harder intensity or a higher intensity use. And so the proposal is to make them all site plan reviews, not special permits. We're proposing adding a category of triplex. Right now, as you all know, triplexes aren't a thing in Amherst in terms of their own separate permitting use. They are considered apartments. Apartments are three or more units. And then they could be considered townhomes, depending on the entrance for how the building has entrances and egresses. We are proposing to make a separate category of triplex to remove them from the apartment designation. And so there's definitional ads in this proposal too. And then we would make the proposal is to make them all site plan reviews in the residential areas except for RF, site plan reviews in the business neighborhood and then not allowed in the other business and comm type areas of town. And we are proposing at building commissioner Rob Moore's request to delete subdividable dwelling as a use category completely. And that was at the building commissioners request. And so all we have is he requested it while we were looking at this proposal. So we put it in and for converted dwellings we are proposing to take most of them to site plan review from special permits. And except in this recharge protection district, the aquifer where we would make them from nose to special permit. Recognizing that in some areas in the aquifer recharge protection district there are some areas that are under are now served by water and sewer that might not have been served by sewer at the time this chart was adopted and the uses were adopted that a triplex or a duplex might be more might be more available to construct in those areas if they can be on sewer. Whereas in at one point there weren't really many areas in these districts that were on sewer. And then townhomes we are proposing to change to site plan review in certain areas special permits in certain areas we are proposing to keep them nose in those aquifer recharge protection districts those are the ones in parentheses. And then site plan reviews in some of the less business intensive places BL, BVC, BN, but changing to conform with apartments in the BG from site plan review to special permits. So when you look at this chart you'll notice that it's not an order of section number. And we tried to order it in section of intent what we believed were intensity of uses going from a least intensive use to a more intensive use and then we tried to look at the permitting pathways to make them logical such that a more intensive use wouldn't have a less a more relaxed permitting pathway. So if we believed an apartment was a more intensive use it wouldn't be easier to permit an apartment than say a duplex. And so we were trying to make some logical in addition to some of our other goals one thing was to look at this chart and make it more logical I would say from a flow chart point of view in terms of intensity of use least to most and ease of permitting pathway easiest to hardest I would say or not allowed at all which is why we organize this chart not by section number. So that is what the use changes are proposed but in addition to that we are as I said we are adding the triplexes as part of that duplex category and then for converted dwellings we actually added a number of general conditions and one of which would be to if you're converting a dwelling which already has a maximum of six units from six residential units in a converted dwelling to match the conditions of that to whatever it's most closely use would be because converted dwelling is more of a pathway to construction not necessarily a use and so if you're converting a single family home to what would become two residential units we would say you should follow most of the conditions the conditions that are required for duplexes if you're converting a single family home or say a business downtown block building from all commercial to commercial plus some residential maybe you should follow the mixed use conditions and so we've tried to make that and put that into this too and then we've added some conditions or taken and done stuff with conditions within the duplexes recognizing that site plan review and yeses should have some conditions associated with them so that's not shown on the chart that is being shared right now because this is just the permitting pathways not the additional conditions that is in a different document that shows all of the changes and then because we added a triplex category you'll see there's a lot of little word changes of adding the word and triplex to parts of perds and other types of other developmental development types so whenever a duplex was mentioned in those sections of the bylaw we added triplex into those sections too since they would have no home in the section if they're not apartments and they're not duplexes. All right, thank you Mandy Jo. Bruce, I see your hand. Yes, there's a lot here of course and this is much the beginning and probably all of us I'm sure will commit to writing and revising and trying to hone our thoughts more precisely but my first reactions to this firstly I support and applaud the objectives the goals and objectives of creating more affordable housing and putting it in places where it's appropriate which are existing settlements so maybe not so much in the RO and ALD but for everywhere else but so whereas I can understand and support the goals I don't entirely understand a couple of things and the first is how does changing from approval by special permit to site plan review achieve the goal of bypassing the stated impediment of public hearings as a kind of an impediment to incentivizing housing and making housing happen because both public hearings is by one board and one is by the other. Now my sense is that that reflects a lack of understanding on my part about the subtleties, details and fine grained facts on the ground of what is the power and process and so forth of a site plan review by the zoning board and a special permit site plan review by the planning board and I've got a general sense of what that is but I think in order to make a well-deliberated decision on this all of us really have to understand in fine grained terms the difference between those two processes because as I see it at the moment I don't see why changing from one to the other is going to achieve the goal. Bruce? Yep. For owner-occupied duplex and affordable duplex neither is required, it's a yes. Oh, I know. I know, I'm looking at the whole chart. So that should be, I shouldn't need a hearing. No, it doesn't and living in a duplex that is our whole co-housing community is based on duplexes and we had to go through elaborate procedures through a special permit to get that but what's more for every adjustment that we've had to make to our house or our houses or any of our houses here in the past 30 years we have to go back to the zoning board so we're not only making it easier by going to a yes we're making it easier at the outset we're making it easier for the continued maintenance and existence of these places. So generally speaking I'm in favor of that kind of change for certainly for owner-occupied duplexes and probably affordable duplexes but I'm looking further down the list at townhouses, triplexes and non-owner-occupied duplexes and so forth and so that's where I don't understand how moving from a special permit to a site plan review achieves the goal and I'm not looking for an answer now I'm saying that I have to understand this difference in order to be able to answer that question and I think we all probably do. I'll make one more comment and that is that it also seems to me that the problem in town for housing and for affordable housing is not necessarily going to be solved by doing this or at least I didn't fully understand again how it can be solved by creating more housing because the market in this town is driven at the moment certainly heavily by student housings and the demand for it. And so how do we know that making it easier to create more housing is going to satisfy the demand for affordable housing by low and moderate income families as opposed to just satisfying the seemingly insatiable market for student housing. And so that is another question that I think is important to resolve and understand in consideration of the proposal here. There's a lot more to say but I'll limit my comments for the moment to those too. Thank you, Bruce, Tom. Thanks Doug. And thank you Manjo for your presentation and for all the work you've done I agree with a lot of what Bruce said in terms of where you're making things easier and how you're streamlining that process. I think one of the things I keep looking back on is the goal and one of your goal one primary goal that sort of outlined in the memo is to promote pathways to home ownership. And when I look at the owner occupied and affordable duplexes I feel like a lot of those are not necessarily going to be items that are purchased but rather second units on a property that are more likely to be rented. So I'm curious how some of these changes or where you see the changes that you're proposing will promote more pathways to home ownership. So I think that's an important part of a good point, the diversity and ownership in Evans. Okay, Tom, I don't see any other board hands at the moment. Janet. So I have questions. One of the questions is, what is the ZBA doing wrong in terms of their special permits? Like they seem very careful. They seem to consider a lot of factors. We have seen recently in the planning board how a duplex previously approved could go wrong and sort of needs readjustment when we did the Spaulding Street thing. And so I think that as a fellow board, I can see why we need some careful consideration of lighting, placement of parking lots, management plans, concerns about who are you renting to and things like that. So that's one of my questions. Because to me, they seem like they're doing a good job. I am concerned, like I think the basic premise is, you know, first of all, I just wanna say we have a lot of density in our zoning already unlike most towns. And so we're not, so, but the premise is somehow that if we keep on building more and more housing, home prices and the rents will drop. And we have seen in the last few years like hundreds of units coming on to our market, you know, mostly almost all of it is student housing or has become student housing and rents have actually gone up. And, you know, a lot of the student units are so expensive like, you know, Aspen Heights is renting a studio at less than 500 square feet at $2,000. And the impact of the student housing has that and the expense of it is actually raised rents because the ceiling is now higher. And so lots of landlords have raised rents because their apartment now looks kind of cheap. They know the ceiling is higher and they raise rents. And so I don't know that just keeping on building and building and building will achieve the goal because UMass has added like 10 to 12,000 students and only built 1,500 beds in the last 10 or 12 years and now they're building 400 more. And so my impression is that, you know, when someone can pay $1,000 or $1,500 to $2,000 for a studio or their parents can pay, it's really, it makes Amherst more and more attractive to investors and investors will go and pick up the small ranches in my neighborhood on one acre lots and just convert them into student housing or now town housing that would not even be allowed. So I don't know like, I think the cause of the housing crisis is the escalating demand for student housing. And this doesn't really address it. It's just gonna give more places for students to live. And we already have the phenomenon of many neighborhoods particularly in South Amherst and North Amherst neighborhoods that have, you know, economic diversity smaller homes, you know ethnic and racial diversity having more and more student housing coming in because someone could rent a small ranch for three to five, $4,000, you know. And so I think without considering this the market that we're actually in and looking into college town so how they address this issue I think this is just kind of blow up a little bit in our faces. All right, thank you, Janet. I will say that your numbers for UMass's enrollment growth over the last 10 years I think they are overstated. It's not 10 to 12,000 students. Andrew, you're next. Thanks, Doug. Thanks for the presentation, Mandy Jo. I, yeah, I mean, brief comments. I agree with I think aspects of everything that my fellow board members have mentioned. I am curious whether this solves the kind of the root cause of the issue or not. And I personally would like to just think upon it more. I will say though, I love the idea of the triplex carve out. I think that that does, I think pulling that out from apartments is a logical thing to do. But that said, I do reserve the right to continue to research this more. I think that all the points made in terms of solving the root problem are very well made. Is this going to in fact maybe pull students who are living in, Belcher town or Monoghue closer to town now, right? Cause they would have lived in town. They just didn't have the housing. They were still willing to pay the amount. It may just end up being kind of a boon to landlords and maybe not actually providing the benefit that that is intended. But I very much appreciate the effort here. And it's certainly something we need to solve. Andrew, I gotta say, in light of the presentation we had from Martha earlier, wouldn't it be a good thing for people who are now commuting from Belcher town or East Hampton or North Hampton to be able to bicycle the UMass? If they would actually do that, then yeah, right. I mean, that's why it's a complex issue. It might solve one and impact the other, but the point well made. Janet, your hand was up. So actually what would really reduce the commutes is if they lived on campus. And so I've talked to students who are not super excited about paying $1,500 or $1,000 or $2,000 for a bedroom or an apartment or an apartment that is a lot of the substandard apartments I've talked to grad students. They would prefer to be on campus and closer. That would reduce their commute. And so I think we are zoned for a lot of density. The other thing I see in this is the RO and RLD lands, which are rural low density and I'm an outlying residential, outlying rural. And those are intentionally low density zoning districts to protect farms and wetlands and forests and sensitive areas. And so you can convert your house to four units or less already that cap gets lifted. You can't build townhouses there now. You can't build townhouses in RN. Now you could do it in RO and RLD. So a townhouse can be up to 10 units. That could be four bedrooms, that could be 40 people living next to a farm, which can create conflicts and also just create sprawl. Like if we increase density in every part of Amherst, we're supposed to be, the master plan is sending density to the village centers, to the Amherst center. We're seeing that phenomena. It doesn't say put it everywhere. And so I think we're just gonna have sprawl and more traffic on the roads, especially, but especially with the RLD and the RO. Also, this proposal lifts design standards, design review standards for duplexes, which also applied to RO and RLD because of their sensitive thing. And so increasing density, reducing design standards. I just think there's so much going on here and so many kind of moving parts. I don't think one more talk about it. I feel like we need to really look at this in depth and say, yeah, we can accept this in exchange for these good things or no, these are possible unintended consequences and see how everything fits together. So those are just things I saw looking at it for two hours and getting a slight headache. All right, thank you, Janet. Karen. Yeah, the goals that are stated in this are good goals, making Amherst affordable for a variety of people. But I think that Janet's point about this, I'd like to see how these goals are accomplished by lifting a lot of the restrictions and whether these restrictions really make it less desirable for developers to come in. One thing that I think we have to be really careful about is to preserve Amherst as a diverse community, not having one house after another be something that attracts students. Yes, students need a short commute, but we have to really be sensitive how we're going to do this. If in neighborhoods close to UMass, you have people moving out, as it seems to be the case, you see that there are less and less children in the elementary schools. It's been a one-way street, young families deserting Amherst for a variety of reasons, mainly because it's not affordable. I see that there are no safeguards to prevent these duplexes one after another or triplexes being rented out to those people that can afford them. And how really are you going to make them affordable if somebody can build them and they're going to try to get the most money that they can. So if you can tell me how you're going to be able to restrict rent or how this is going to really help make it diverse and affordable, then I think it would be really a good thing, but I have yet to see that. All right, thanks, Karen. Okay, we don't have any more board hands at the moment. Why don't we go to the public? So members of the public who have stuck with us through this meeting up till now, now is your chance to give us, why don't we just, Pam, I'm not seeing your camera. I know it, it disappeared. If you can set the timer for one minute, why don't we have people offer people one minute to make comments on this proposal? So I see two hands so far. Mr. Marshall, I, my timer has also- What's that? The timer has also disappeared here. All right, well, then I'll just use my, the second hand on my watch. So, all right. So, Pam, could you bring Josna Reggae over? Hi, Josna. Hello. Ms. Reggae, if you'd give us your name and your address in town. Yes, my name is Josna Reggae. I live on 96 Farview Way, just north of the UMass campus. And I'd like to request that you don't cut me off after a minute. I've been waiting for three hours. I've trimmed down what I wanted to say and written it down. So I'd like you to do me the courtesy of not cutting me off. I won't- I'm sorry, ma'am. I may let you go a little bit over, but I'm not gonna go very far. All right, let me get started. At this very early stage, I'd just like to speak to the proposed by-law changes in broad terms. My neighborhood is one of those that have been specifically named as a potential site for new duplexes, triplexes, townhouses, et cetera, largely designed to be student rentals. Four years ago, when my husband and I moved to this little enclave of interlocking dead-end streets, it was a diverse neighborhood with a healthy balance of residents consisting of UMass families with young children, retirees, owner-occupied homes, sometimes one or two rental units in them, rented homes whose owner also lived in the neighborhood and a sprinkling of student rentals without of town landlords. It also had an income balance with affordable starter homes for young families and homes owned by elderly people on fixed incomes. But while it was so recently, a healthy balance is now tipping dangerously towards a situation that favors corporate landlords who can pay top dollar and can anticipate high returns from student rentals. When a house goes on the market, these bidders can drive up the price so high that a single family couldn't possibly afford it. So quickly- One minute. That's it. So I would, the concerns have mostly been named, have been mentioned by the people who have spoken. So I would just like to end by saying in positive terms, I'd like to see efforts on the part of the planning board to limit the number of apartment complexes in town, limit the construction of new student housing to places where it wouldn't impinge on existing settled and diverse neighborhoods and make provisions for families, not just students when approving new construction. For me, it's a problem that there would no longer be a need for a special hearing with the opportunity for a butters to raise legitimate concerns before they could- Thank you. Okay. Pam, would you bring over Dorsey Pam? Hi Dorsey. Hello Dorsey again. Hi, I'll be really quick. I think that the objections to the carrying out of the goals have been raised very well. The goals are fine, but I think there's a lot of magical thinking going on. There's almost nothing, there is nothing about ownership and there's nothing to guarantees anything be affordable. I'm also concerned about the absolutely no questions being asked for owner occupied duplexes, which is great as long as the owner lives there, but I don't see how that gets carried on into the future. So if you want to have faculty members, college workers, families to live in town, you've got to keep the investors who are finding a heyday and advertising it far in a field saying, come invest here, student housing, so much a bed. Families cannot compete. And I think that if this is not a family town, it's not really a town. Thank you. Okay. Thank you Dorsey. Are there other members of the public who would like to speak? Pam Rooney, let's bring her over. Welcome Pam. Thank you Pam Rooney, 42 cottage street. I appreciate the work that went into this. I think the separation or the categorization of structure with three units is quite different than something with four and above. That seems to me a much more commercial type of business that's about as far as I go. I think I'm not sure why a triplex being introduced when we already have a subdividable dwelling unit, which allows up to three units. That is for new construction, it's already in the book and it has worked at least in one situation. I think people just aren't aware of it. And then the townhouses, which are a very different ball of black. And as someone mentioned previously, it could be up to 10 units per building, not in total. There's no cap on the total number. That's more a case of density and a lot coverage. But the townhouses are a very different ball of black. And I'm not sure why we shouldn't just maintain a special permit across all districts and not try to relax any kind of review of townhouses. I think- You've exceeded a minute. Please try to wrap it up. I'll have to repeat that sentence. Thank you. Okay. All right. Are there other members? Jennifer Taube, why don't we bring her over next? Good evening, Jennifer. If you'd give us your name and your street address. Jennifer Taube at 259 Lincoln Avenue. So I live in an RG district, which is already zoned for duplexes, triplexes and townhouses. So that for me personally and my constituents in this part of the district, that would not be a change. But I can say from experience that all the single family houses that have added additional units, all the duplexes and triplexes are rented to students at very high prices. There's one small one-story house with four bedrooms. They added a unit on the back with four bedrooms. That house rents now to eight students in two different units for $8,100. So there is, I don't see any incentives in this zoning revision proposal, any incentives for renting at the low market rate. And as others have said, market rate in Amherst is driven by our student market where thousands of students need to live off campus every year. There are the townhouse development theme built on sunset and fearing. The residents as actually, Karen Winter lives down the street from this. We were all very excited by this development. We thought it would bring in families, young faculty, coaches, retired people. It was this expansive multifamily dwelling. But when we heard what the rents are going to be, the developer said there would be market rate rents. And in a letter written to the planning board, the developers representative said market rate in Amherst is two bedrooms range from $2,200 to $3,020, a three bedroom from $3,000 to $3,900. And the four bedroom units in this development were rent from 3,700 to 4,500 a month. So this by opening up the zoning and easing the permitting process so that we can have more duplexes, triplexes in townhouses at prices that only students sharing the rent can afford. I don't see how it accomplishes the goals stated by the sponsors of this proposal. And I would also like to say that for this townhouse development in an RG district, the project changed so much for the better as it went through the ZBA and special permit process. You know, the developer worked with the neighbors. I'm sorry, Jennifer, you're over about two and a half. I'm just saying it was very collaborative. And I don't know why in an RG district, we don't, wouldn't continue to deserve to have townhouses by special permit when other districts could. So I would, that is a concern. I don't see why the special permitting process is very important to all zoning districts. Thank you. All right, thank you. Any other members of the public? Okay, Chris, see your hand. Yeah, I just wanted to find out from Doug and from other planning board members when you think you would be able to have another conversation about this. I would like to have Mandy, Joe and Patty Angelis come back and present this in a more complete manner. But, you know, sometimes that might work, we have February 1st and February 15th. We now understand for Mandy that we need to start a public hearing by March 15th. So I would suggest that you have another meeting about this soon. And so February 1st or February 15th. I mean, I would suggest February 1st. That sounds good. Any board members disagree and wanna do it later? Okay. And is Mandy available on February 1st to come back and talk more with the board? Mandy. So I regularly have Wednesday night commitments. So Wednesday nights are always a problem, but what I'm gonna say is what I would just request is that if it can be a time certain, so I can manage my dual commitment and potentially be able to do both or as much of both as I can, I would appreciate that. Chris, can we do a 630 or do you wanna, we have something else already scheduled to go first? I don't think we have anything else scheduled for February 1st, do we Pam? We do not. So it could be six. So we could do 635 or? 35 on February 1st. Yeah, it might be a few minutes after that. Depending on our minutes approval or something. So Mandy, we try to bring you in first on February 1st. That would be greatly appreciated. I would thank you for that. Okay, Janet, I see your hand. So I'm interested, I don't know about in format or I feel like we need to kind of do a workshop on this and a really deep dive because I think that there's a lot of detail. And so, if this was like the zoning subcommittee, we would go section by section, talk as a group, try to figure out impacts and how it interconnects. So I would love to just really look at line by line on it. And then also, I think would also be really helpful in the different zoning districts would be to get renderings. Like what does a 10 unit townhouse look on a five acre lot or in the RLD because you've looked at this requirement, that requirement or what it would look like to have, I think in RN, where I live, you can have four units on a one acre. So what would be a four unit townhouse on one acre in the neighborhood like mine? And how that would look, because I think that was really helpful when we're talking about lifting footnote M to see how does it play out in the ground with the parking, the lot coverage, maybe the parking gets waved. What does it look like visually a three-story townhouse, four unit townhouse? I mean, we have lost the planning staff that did most of the graphics for that effort. Yeah, I just think we need to like visualizing it makes us understand it. So I know that we're in difficult shape, but I do think we need to have a really deep look at this. Well, at the moment, we don't have anything else planned for that evening. I mean, we spent three hours looking at it. Andrew. Thanks, Doug. I guess some information that I would love to have and I, as you mentioned and remind us that we're downstaffed is just, you know, as we look to relax some of the permitting requirements, historically do we know, like are there many situations where we had site plan view or special permit where a project was killed through that process or does it just lengthen it, right? And so does does relaxing these standards just speed things up or might it actually affect different outcomes? I'm not sure, you know, Chris, maybe for the next meeting, if you even have just some general anecdotal observations, I'd love to hear that because I understand that this is reducing process. Is it actually changing the outcomes or just affecting the velocity of them? All right, Andrew. I mean, it certainly is the case that site plan review, it's basically impossible for us to say no. Whereas with the special permit, it's entirely within ZBA's right to just deny it. Bruce. I guess my question or comment is similar to Andrew's. I was gonna say, is anybody feel as I do that understanding the differences, as I've said, in fine grain between the special permit process and the site plan review process is really important to this since much of the consequential changes that have been proposed I think involves switching from the zoning board to the planning board. I don't know whether there is a document that gives a side-by-side analysis of how the planning board handles something and how the zoning board something. And I also know that the staff is down. So I wonder if it's just a matter of me reading the documents or is there a way, is there something that'll help me understand this? Chris, I see your hand and I think one of the things that's kind of mixed in with Bruce's comment is about when does a special permit come to ZBA versus to the planning board? Because we've certainly been handling special permits on occasion. It seems like most of them were dimensional rather than use. So how do you decide when something goes one way or the other? There are special permits for use that the planning board handles and they're marked SPP in the use chart. The special permits that the planning board tends to see more frequently are special permits associated with dimensional requirements. So if someone wants to get a dimensional special permit for a setback or a height or something like that, that comes to the planning board when the planning board is already reviewing the project under a site plan review. And you've had this pretty much every archipelago project requires site plan review and then they ask for a special permit for some dimensional modification. So that's when the planning board sees the special permits. The essential difference is that, it's just what I think it was Bruce who said or someone said, maybe it was Doug, that you can deny a special permit. It's perfectly fine to deny it. You're supposed to give reasons for your denial, but even if you don't give any reasons, you can go ahead and deny it. The other thing is that a special permit has a 20 day appeal period tacked onto the end. So it allows people that time to consider whether they want to appeal the decision or not planning board, site plan review decisions generally are not denied unless there's a specific thing that the applicant didn't provide to the planning board making it difficult or impossible for the planning board to make a decision and site plan reviews don't have an appeal period and they're rarely appealed. I remember in 20 years, I remember one site plan review that was appealed. So that's kind of the difference. However, in Amherst, most special permits that go before the zoning board are approved and that's not true in other towns. So the fact that something requires a special permit often dissuades a developer from coming to town and proposing to do something. And I've heard this from Rob Mora and I've heard it from other people. So if someone has the ability to go to Northampton and build something without getting a special permit and they come to Amherst and they decide and they see that they need a special permit they'll go to Northampton and do it. So that's a kind of dissuading thing even though as I said, the ZBA grants, I believe it's more than 95% of the special permits that are requested. All right, thank you, Chris. Janet. I would be happy to do kind of a side by side chart comparing SP and SPR and maybe with like a little blurb at the top. And I would love to work with Nate if he has time on that. So, because I've often felt like this issue has been really important and we should look at that and be more clear about the difference in criteria. You can deny an SPR if it doesn't comply with the bylaw. I mean, it says that in Article 11, I think. So it does say that, but I'm always getting 10 and 11 confused. So I'd be happy to do that. Put it together side by side, a little summary and work either with Chris or Nate to make sure to have everything covered. You can appeal an SPR when the building, you basically are appealing the building commissioner's permit. So you'd have to sort of get the SPR and not like it. And then when they go get the permit then you can appeal that and there's a short appeal period. I just don't think that happens very much. I've never heard that. All right. Thanks, Janet. Karen. Am I correct in that if we just go to the site plan review, we really are eliminating the butters and they're being notified and being aware of what's happening. No, I think there's still notice for the butters. Is that right, Chris? There's still a special, there's still a public hearing and a butter notification and the legal ad that gets placed. So the process itself, aside from the appeal period at the end, the process itself is essentially the same. We follow the same pattern with our site plan review that the zoning board of appeals follows with its CPA. With its special permit, I'm kidding, my acronyms mixed up. Thank you. All right. All right. Well, maybe that's, I don't see any more hands. Maybe that's enough conversation for this evening. Mandy Jo and Patricia, thank you for joining us and for your efforts. Thank you for having us and we'll try to respond to some of the questions you asked today at the next presentation. All right, we'll see you February 1st. Thank you. Okay. So the time now is 9.45, continuing with new business. Chris, do we have any new topics not reasonably anticipated 48 hours in advance? We do not. Okay. Item seven form A and R subdivision applications. None. All right, ZBA applications. I'm going to say no, but Chris might say different. We have some ZBA applications that have been submitted, but they haven't been put into the system yet. So I'm going to decline to tell you about those at this time. So nothing's ready for us to think about. That's right. All right. Item nine upcoming SPP, SPR and SUV applications. Again, we have one or two things that have been introduced to us, but they're not complete yet. So again, I'm going to decline to tell you about them. Okay. All right. Item 10, Planning Board Committee and Liaison reports. Bruce or Chris, any progress on getting Bruce on PVPC? On my, I'd not seen any email. So I'm still on the out, but I did note, I think, and maybe all of us received something that was addressed to Valkyman, Paul Valkyman, that is basically informing us about the Transport Improvement Program and its five year plan. So there's apparently some initiative in that direction, although I'm not reporting it as a member of the commission. Chris, I emailed Paul once. Do I need to do it again? Obviously the first time it didn't make any difference, but I can do that again. I think that would help. I've emailed him a few times. Okay. I'm also going to call PVPC and find out more about what they expect from a town. Yeah. I mean, we're going to have to start inviting Jack to come to our meetings again. Yeah. Because we don't know what's going on. Okay. Andrew, CPAC. No updates from CPAC. We're essentially wrapped up. So I've been going to the PVPC meetings and having a great time. Great, Tom, DRB. No, nothing. Nothing more to report. All right, Janet, Solar Bylaw. Anything beyond what we heard tonight? You're muted. On Friday, we're going to be talking about, we've been working on a survey of the community for to find out, determine community values and their preferences in terms of citing large scale ground-mounted solar arrays or, and then, so we have a presentation, we're going to be working with the consultant on Friday. And then we have a draft bylaw section to look at that Chris, that Chris or Nate did. So. Okay. Hey, Chris, at some point we might need to find out whether Janet can continue on that group if she leads the planning board before that is done. I think I have two years left. Do I have one year or two? I can't keep track of it. Oh, you're making fun of the board. We are going to go late, right? Yeah. Okay. All right. And then Chris, anything on CRC? CRC is still working on rental registration and now they're going to also be looking at this zoning proposal by Mandy Jo and Pat. Okay. All right. The time now is 9.50, report of the chair. I guess the only thing I'll mention is that the last meeting my report was that I hoped we could work on where we might be able to up zone in town. And I was actually thinking about places like where we have student housing complexes now and whether they could become more dense, you know, instead of only allowing two or three stories, could they be five stories or less parking in more buildings? Thinking that that at least would not displace people who are now in single family homes. I'm not given this new proposal. I'm not sure it makes sense for us to divert our focus, but that was kind of where I was headed. So I guess I'll just ask the board. Is it something you want to think about it at the same time or should we just hold off on that thought, Janet? I love that idea partly because I've been thinking about it for years. There's a lot of, you know, apartment complexes, you know, in South Amherst and around town that I think definitely can become more dense, you know, adding a floor or just maybe less parking. And I think they could even kind of stronger communities, but I think focusing on already developed land makes a lot of sense. And I think this would be a good time to talk about that because we're facing the issue, you know, the zoning change. We have a lot of density zone in our neighborhoods, but our master plan is saying, build the density by the village centers where most of the apartment complexes are and focusing on, you know, transportation and services there. And so I think it's a great thing to talk about simultaneously. All right, well then, let's see. Let me hear from Chris, your hand is up. Do you want to say anything? Yeah, I wanted to point out that the current building commissioner has a more liberal view of already developed housing developments. So apartment complexes, when they're non-conforming as to their use, he views that as an opportunity to expand the use. And we've already seen that happen. We've seen it happen with presidential apartments. We're seeing it happen with what was South Point and we may see it happen with Colonial Village. So those are already happening and don't necessarily need a zoning change to happen. So I just wanted to report on that. Well, I guess then the question would be if the town actually enacted a zoning change, wouldn't that be a clear indication to developers that, you know, they can be reasonably confident we'd welcome that kind of project? May I respond? Sure. So those places are already, the zoning district that they're in is RN. So you would have to actually change the zoning on the map and to allow those to be something other than, you know, more developed. If you keep it RN, you can use this kind of mechanism by going through the non-conformity. If you change the zoning district and then make more use is allowed there or change how those properties could be developed, you could do that, but you couldn't do it if they remain RN. Right, okay. Bruce. I'm with Janet. I think Doug on your suggestion, I was gonna say if you would produce one pager or two or three paragraphs, that would make it easy for us to understand in more detail what you're talking about. And then we could decide how and whether to integrate it in my discussion. Okay. Andrew. Thanks Doug. I absolutely wanna continue with that. I think, you know, as I considered what we've done as a board since I've been on here, it's more about sort of putting out fires than really systematically and proactively planning for the future. So I would love to do that. I also would love to have an opportunity to do that. Janet's mentioned many times doing things in person or workshop. Like I would love to be able to stand around some maps and actually point to maps and talk about stuff together and think where this, see kind of where this makes sense. We were doing a site visit for the Belcham Road project and we talked about zoning down the street, right? The Maplewood Farms project. What could happen there? And I think that there's a certain sort of serendipity that'll happen if we can be together looking at things, making some connections. And I think this, frankly, you know, the zoom format for these past few years has made it very difficult and we're reactive more than proactive. So I think this is a wonderful opportunity to really be proactive about making a long-term change. That also, I'm sorry, also just like, if you're a developer listening to the planning board calls, it's like we hate developers. It's like the sense, but we are open for business. And I think that, you know, crafting that message is something that we should think of as an outcome of our work is how we can design a zoning by-law that encourages development in the right places where we can meet lots of needs in the community and continue to be vibrant. Okay, Tom? Thanks, I'll really piggyback on all that. I mean, I really get a sense that while there are aspects of Mandy Jo's sort of the work that they've undertaken, it seems like we're presented with things that are cutting scalpel holes in the zoning laws rather than trying to tackle these kind of larger scale problems. And so how does housing in one place compare with housing in another? How do we build density where it belongs? But now where it doesn't, like how do we think about the city as an ecosystem or the town as an ecosystem rather than a place where we're just gonna make these like nips and cuts? So I strongly support the idea of having a workshop or a powwow or a planning session or other people that Bruce asked you to write a paragraph, okay? Like I think we all probably have some other ideas that we could probably put it into a paragraph form and come together and talk about as well. We all drive past the same places and look at them in different ways. So I'm all for that. And like it's more work for us, but I also think it would be much more productive for us as a board to try to solve the problems rather than react to these kind of micro proposals to get to the bottom of this. So I support your proposal and some other ongoing broader conversation. All right. Karen. Yes, that makes me really, really excited this whole idea of being proactive and pointing to places where the planning board thinks we really need to encourage more density. And along with that, of course going with the presentation we had on decarbonization is also connecting it to the transportation. If we have those centers, we can certainly push for planning for a dedicated bicycle path, not those little marks off the street, which are dangerous, but really a dedicated bicycle path, as for example from the fraternity village to the university, so that students can take their little kids or feel really safe going back and forth. It has to be sort of encouraged. And she really said, this is what we need planning boards to do to head us in this direction. So I really applaud your idea, Doug, of presenting an alternative and looking at them side to side and seeing how we can be encouraging for developers rather than just censoring them from what they plan to do. All right, Bruce. Well, it certainly sounds like there's a broad consensus here for, I was thinking as all of the past three of us have said, when I was on the board last time in the 90s and the early aughts, we had an annual planning board retreat. It was on a Saturday starting, you know, it was a whole day. And it was entirely and specifically for this kind of conversation that Andrew and I also miss and that doesn't happen so well on Zoom. But we typically met in the university horse farm over on North Maple. And it's a very good location, actually, because you look out on the broad, you can see a lot of the town from there. So I echo every, I support everything that's been said and perhaps add the suggestion that we could codify it annually with a retreat for a day if we felt like it. And if you felt like it as the leader of this, because we'd have to have an agenda and some ideas and so forth for the well-led gathering like that is really terrific. And it brings us together in ways that Zoom meetings don't. So I would suggest, I would recommend we think about restoring that particular event as well. Thank you. Okay, all right. Thank you all for your comments and support, I guess. Chris, it sounds like I should talk with you about how we might do a separate meeting outside of our usual Wednesday night. You know, I assume it would be subject to open meeting and, you know, let's talk about when we could arrange that. We might need a board member to take minutes. I will warn the clerk, which is Johanna, I guess, who's not here to object. But all right, thanks for that feedback and I'll see what I can put together a few thoughts of my own. And obviously it sounds like a lot of us have ideas. All right, so that's all I had. Chris, it's now 10 o'clock. How about report from staff? I don't really have a report. There's lots going on here. It's amazing how much there is going on here. So that's my report. Well, we appreciate you guys keeping your heads above water with your reduced staff. We're still smiling most of the time, right, Pam? That's right. Well, it's probably good we gave Nate the night off. Mm-hmm. Okay, so the time I have is 10 o' one. If anybody has, unless anybody has other, something they want to say, I think we can adjourn. Thank you, everybody. Thank you all. Good night. Good night. Good night, everyone. Thank you. Thank you.