 And do you tell Amherst media to go or Pam Amherst media should be all set. I'm just going to text them. I know that they're there. Oh, they're we're live. Okay. Okay, great. So, Pam, if you can bring up the agenda on the screen. That would be wonderful. And I will begin Call to order. Welcome to the Amherst planning board meeting of May 20 2020 based on Governor Baker's executive order suspending certain provisions of the open meeting law GL Chapter 30 a section 20 and signed Thursday, March 12 2020 this planning board meeting is being held virtually using the zoom platform. My name is Christine Gray Mullen and as chair of the Amherst planning board. I am calling this meeting to order at 634 This meeting is being recorded and available live stream via Amherst media minutes are being taken as normal. I will now take a roll call board members as you hear your name called unmute yourself answer affirmatively and then please place yourselves back on you. Michael Burt whistle. He's waving. Okay, I recognize his wave. Maria Chow. Here. Thank you. Jack gem sick. Yes, I'm present. But did we I didn't get the email for the link for this zoom. There was a little technical issue. Nobody did. So that's why every sent it to you. But okay, great. Glad you're here. Thanks for figuring it out. David Levenstein. I'm here. Thank you. Doug Marshall. Present. And Janet McGowan. Here. Board members of the technical difficulties. If they arise, we may need to pause temporarily to rectify the problem and then continue the meeting. If you do have technical issues, please let it tonight. It's Sean or Pam know discussion may be suspended while the technical issues are addressed and the minutes will note a disconnection has occurred. Please use the raise hand function to ask a question or make a comment. You will see your raised hand and called and be called upon to speak after speaking remember to remute yourself. Opportunity for public comment will be provided during the general public comment period and other appropriate times throughout the meeting. Please be aware the board will not respond to comments during the general public comment period. If you wish to make a comment during the public comment period, you must sign in the meeting via the zoom teleconferencing link. This link is shown on the slide and can be entered into a search engine by typing https 92012497678. This link can also be found on the meeting agenda, which is located on the town website in two ways. One way is through the calendar listing for this meeting on the homepage and find the link within the event details. A second way is to go to the planning board web page and click on the most recent agenda link for tonight. The agenda there has a link a zoom link that is towards the top of the page where it states virtual meeting. Please indicate you wish to make a comment by clicking the raise hand button when public comment is solicited. If you have joined the zoom meeting using a telephone, please indicate you wish to make a comment by pressing star nine on your telephone. When called upon, please identify yourself, stating your full name and address and put yourself back into mute when finished speaking. Residents are welcome to express their views for up to three minutes or at the discretion of the planning board chair. If these guidelines are not complied with or the speaker exceeds their allotted time, their participation will be disconnected from the meeting. Moving onward. The slide will show now show the meeting agenda for this evening. Again, note the virtual meeting zoom link at the top. So we will move right on to the agenda. First one is minutes. We did receive minutes for March 4. This is for a second time. Janet McGowan want to add some comments. It was around four o'clock it went out did everybody have time to go through those and read them and if anyone didn't. You can click raise hand, or I have to get that part up on my screen. Christine I can put those up on the screen if you want. Yeah, we could do that. So I'm looking for hands for anyone who didn't have time to read the minutes. I see Jack's hand I see Michael's. So if you can unclick your hand so I'm going to just ask first off should we wait and go another two weeks so that there's a lot of comments in there so if you if anyone raise their hand for wait two weeks or do them now. I'm going to raise my hand from Jack and one from Michael. Okay, so we'll just give this we'll just table this for two weeks. Chris, do you have a mask, you know, I know we're trying to expedite these and get them up. Can we wait and do that. Is that alright just, I mean we didn't get them till four o'clock this afternoon. My hand was up to say that I think it's time we should we should review the minutes I read them I think they're appropriate. I think we should approve them. Alright, Jack, was that what your hand is up or do you want to wait for two weeks. Um, can you hear me. Yeah, I can hear you. I'm sorry. So it's just, I just briefly skim through it but I just, you know, I think the language was perfect to whatever it says, you know, in terms of saying very or, or, you know, many, I just was uncomfortable with some of the terminology that was in there. However, if everyone's good with it. I'm good with it. But I do feel like we're kind of going over the top in terms of editing these minutes. Really. That's my opinion. Um, so we can go over them if everyone's comfortable with it. I was also uncomfortable with some of the changes to the point where I spent an hour today, reliving the dream and watch the Amherst media to reconfirm what was being said. Um, so I do have some issues and it will take some discussion to go through these suggested. All these changes. So, um, David, I recognize you. I see your hand up. Thank you. I agree. I think that that I'll be happy to vote on the minute the minutes has drafted now. I do believe that there is that that there do. I think that they're going more towards transcript than towards minutes and that they are encapsulating where they're trying to capture more editorial con content, rather than the substance or just of the meeting, which is what I would think that the minutes would do. So I think we're, we're getting close, but for the purpose of staff time and our own time, I'd be, you know, willing to vote and approve them. But I do think that we should be cautioned about going overboard in trying to represent such detail and inevitably capturing one or two points of view rather than just the gist of the meeting. Thank you. I just want to add part of so I did go back and watch video and minutes are not exposed to express personal opinion of ours. That's one of the reasons why we don't do the minutes and like Pam does them and tries to capture the general flavor. One of the words that have been suggested when I went back and watch the video. It's not exact, it's not exactly what happened. The other part is some of it is she's adding comments to other other people what they said. And I just want to make sure, you know, like she altered things that like Michael which Michael says he's fine. I don't know if Doug has looked at the paragraph that she wrote about what he said. So I just want to make sure that people are comfortable with that. I know when I go over minutes, I mean, especially these were talking 20 pages of minutes here. I mostly look the hardest on what I was quoted and saying because that's what I remember best to I can't always remember what other people said exactly. But I see a visual hand, I'll call on you and then I see Michael's next. Well, if you went back to review the recording and if things were captured in the revise minutes that did not your review of the recording were not present that I'm not comfortable approving the minutes as draft as currently drafted. So I would rather than table it within the work to do to review the meeting. But I think then we've crossed over a line in the, the detail that the minutes are trying to capture again rather than the chest. This is not a transcript. That's the purpose of the recording. Thank you. So I would, I would rather table the vote of the minutes if there is an apparent uncomfortableness between the actual recording and the currently revised draft. Thank you. Thank you. I recognize I think Michael do you still, I see your hand went down but do you still want to talk. My hand is up. I have to sorry I got so many screens here. Oh yes, you're rolled up there. Yes. And then next is done. Go ahead, Michael. I did not review units and watch the video of the meeting at the same time. I review the minutes basically having a having felt that the original minutes were reasonable and reviewing the the questions and additions that Janet had put in, particularly, you're looking at the, the minutes, the section of the minutes that was attributed to me, I found that reasonable. The attribution to my to what I said found that reasonable. Again without reviewing the minutes in terms of what I said I think that's what I would have probably would have said would hope to have said. I approve the minutes I would suggest we approve the minutes based on that if other people have not reviewed the minutes relative to what they individually said, then I think we should wait until people have a chance to do that. But it seems to me the minutes ought to reflect what the primarily what the individual members of the board believe they intended to say, whether in fact they said those exact words or not I think is less relevant whether it represents their position on the issues. So I would think that we ought to again, following along with what David said, everybody ought to look at what they said what they are quoted as saying or referenced to say, and seeing if that supports what they if that represents what their position is, and then if so within we should approve the minutes. If not, those individuals should adjust what is attributed to them. Good points, Michael. I just want to add that. So most of the comments I want to a little bit push back on were beyond what we were saying. It was what Mr. Reedy was saying what Mr. Mora was saying. I don't think some of those additions were exactly, you know, it's a little bit, it's perception. And so right here, like I'm uncomfortable, you know, I don't want it to be she says she says if I'm like, Oh, you know, Janet wrote this but then I went and looked at the video and that's not how I see it. I think I would rather just, I'd be comfortable with just sending an email to Chris and Pam on the, the comments that I have an issue with. And why and that they can go look at the video or go back to their minutes and adjust, because there should be a continuity in these minutes to. That's where I'm at right now. I, you know, I don't want to waste more of our time debating on like, Oh, well, you know, and me reading what actually was said at the video it's can we just do that and then I'm going to recognize Doug next and then Janet and Chris and Pam think about it, you know what you think might be best here at Doug. I thought I had reviewed the minutes but I'd only looked at the first few pages and it was unaware of the rest of it. So I am one of those who didn't get a real chance to look through the whole thing. You know, we've, we're close to having a full conversation today about the minutes, you know, if, if we were not ready to vote on them with or without those amendments, then I think we should table and move on. Okay, Janet, I recognize you. So, um, I, you know, when I first looked at these minutes I thought that some of the things the information I presented on parking at Main Street LLC. All that information wasn't there and that kind of got me wondering why that wasn't there and so I did listen to the transcript I didn't listen to the whole thing. As I went ahead to the discussion on the master plan looking for Michael's comments because I remember him saying something I always started to really listen to the meeting and what Rob Mora was saying about the process for working with closely with the zoning subcommittee and the planning board and none of that really came out in the minutes. And it seems really important to me that that process that he was outlying, which is flexible and working closely with both committees. And the need for consultants for the bigger issues and the need to work with people in the town to get their support for the bigger questions about like how big should be links being in downtown. And it wasn't in the minutes and so that seemed really important to me so I actually, I, maybe I should do this more often I found that discussion on the master plan very rich and very deep and I felt like, you know, maybe because they're very long minutes, all those things weren't captured. Another reason it sort of popped out as being important to me is I was at a CRC meeting and they were talking about maybe getting rid of the zoning subcommittee and you know, kind of pushing back a little bit on the planning and zoning changes and I just thought, you know, that is all fine, I guess. But, you know, when we talked to Mr more it was a very different understanding of how the planning department. Mr more and the planning board and the zoning subcommittee are working together so that seems important to me to put in so I didn't expect to put that in there I just saw it as very important but I really do think people should be comfortable with it. And not vote on something they don't know. The other thing is is that minutes are supposed to help people who are like for people who aren't the meeting should understand what what was said. And so I know we have different views on that but it seemed to me most of the things I put in were important things that people said so that's all I have to say but I do think we should postpone till everyone's read it. Thank you. Doug I still see your hand up I don't know if you still want to speak or just now I should put it down I will do that now. Okay, thank you. So Chris, can we do that. Chris best for you there. We can't hear you as your volume is your might turned on it just turned it on. So, you, what would you like us to do include the edited minutes and your next packet. I think everybody should review the added comments. This is hard because we're talking about two and a half months ago. I mean, I can barely remember sometimes in covert what I ate yesterday. So that's why I did go back to the video but everybody should look and like Michael said I mean if it's what you're saying as long as you're comfortable with it but if you want to make edits send them to Chris and Pam. So that turns about what was added. Like I have a couple just because I watched the video that I will send. So if you could incorporate those and then reassure them and then hopefully we can get these past at the next meeting. Does that sound okay Chris. And if anyone has a problem or I forgot something raise your hand and I'll call on you. I look I see Michael. I think we want to make a point make it clear that those there will be a deadline on those submissions to Chris. Yep, yep calendar good point Michael Chris how about how about we just do it by next Wednesday. I mean let's just do it once. I mean, I'm joking saying well it's fresh in our minds. How about by next Wednesday you have to get the comments to Chris please review them and let's really try to do it so that we're not here two weeks from now I'm like, Oh, I still haven't looked at them. All right, I think we can move forward. I don't see any hands. So I'll move to item to public comment period this is. Okay, this is where Pam and I work together here. This is where people, the public can call in or zoom in and give a comment on something that is not on our agenda tonight something different. So you'll have opportunity to speak later I'm looking you'd have to click your raise hand and I'm not seeing any and Pam I'm checking with you that we do we have anyone on phone calls right now or we have someone on phone call but they are not requesting to speak. Great. Okay, I think we got that great so we will move on. Thank you. So we're going to go to public hearings site plan review. It's 652 so we can open first public hearing. So, in accordance with the provisions of mgl chapter 40 a this public hearing has been duly advertised and notice there have been posted and is being held for the purpose of providing the opportunity for interested citizens to be heard regarding SPR dash C. dash 08 dash Russ Wilson 11 VISTA Terrace Apple would cluster subdivision request site plan review approval to amend SPR dash C 2017 dash 14 to add a three season room to an existing house. 16 by 20 feet with a fireplace screen clear poly movable panels floor decking frame roof with asphalt shingles, including a wooden walkway to connect to an existing wooden deck map 25 b dash 76 r dash LD zoning district. So hearing is open first thing I'm going to ask I'm looking at for hands. Are there any board member disclosures. Nope, no hands going up. I don't see any board members saying they have a disclosure but I do see Chris Bester pass her hand up I recognize Chris Bester. I just wanted to mention that the person who's here as an attendee on the phone is Russ Wilson. So, he would be a good person to recognize now and have him make his presentation. And then Pam will probably have to tell him to hit star nine I guess is that right. I just allowed him to speak. Can he hear he is down here. Can you hear us. Yes, I can hear you. We can hear you. Welcome. Thank you. Welcome. If you could just introduce yourself. I'm Russ Wilson. I'm a building contractor. Doing a small subdivision cluster development down in South Amherst. And a contractor working for Paul Cole, who owns it. The house that we're talking about. We're looking to put on a three season room. It will be on peers. It's basically a deck with screening under the deck. Posts going up to the roof and in between the posts will be a combination. Very top poly panels and screen. The poly panel to be able to move up and down. In sections. There will be a cathedral ceiling with a pine paneling on the ceiling. A couple of skylights attached to the house. We'll create a couple of valleys. Up on the roof. And then we'll be putting a deck. Connecting the new three season room to the existing deck. Sounds lovely. It will be. We originally designed it as a free standing unit and the owner was talking to her sister and her sister. Pretty much insisted that it get attached to the house that it would get a lot more use. And I think from the, you probably have the 3D drawings and so forth. One of which is from in the house looking out into the three season room. And it definitely pulls you out toward it. It does. It looks beautiful. And this is, this kind of thing doesn't usually come to us, but it's coming to us, I believe, and Chris Bestrup can confirm this. It was part of the conditions, the record of decision for the subdivision. The second one that condition says the applicant should return to the planning board for approval. At the public meeting if there are any significant changes to the footprints of the building. I think it's a three season porch, but this is expanding the footprint. And that's why you're here asking for this site plan review. Correct. Okay. And hopefully after this approval, we will then go and have the wording changed so we don't have to come and do this every time somebody wants to add on to one of these houses. Okay, if you don't have anything to add at this time, I'm going to go and ask for one of the members who attended the site visit. I don't know if that was discussed if someone was willing to do it or if they want to raise their hand, Michael. Oh, Michael. Michael's a bit. Five members of the planning board were at the site, at the site plan visit. And we saw at the back of the house, the house fronts on Mr. Drive there on the back of the house. A neatly staked out area which showed what the footprint would be like for the proposed addition, and how it would connect to the existing house and to the existing deck on the, what it would be, I guess the west side of the addition. And observed the relationship of the addition, proposed addition to the back of lot line and to the side lot line. And that's about what we saw. Sounds good. Thank you. Thank you. At this time, I'll open it up to the board. If they have any specific questions to ask the applicant or miss best trip. And I'm watching for hands here scrolling. I don't see any hands raised. I mean, this is pretty straightforward. So at this point, I'll ask the public. Any one who wants to ask a question or make a comment about this. I see nothing. So at this point, there's nothing for the applicant to respond to. So we're moving to find new comments and questions. Chris, do you have anything to add or can we move to make a motion here? I just wanted to say that I received a nice phone call today from a Mr. Jacques who lives on a West street and he, his property is directly adjacent to this property. And he said he and his wife are fine with what is being proposed. His only hope is that they don't have any loud parties. Unless they're invited. That's right. And it won't be till after COVID. So. That's nice. Thank you, Chris. Is there anything else that we need to acknowledge or. We're not really dealing with the condition right now. We're just doing this SPR and now we're going to. Vote on it. Yeah. I did send you information about the lot area and building coverage and lot coverage. And that all looks good. And I sent you some suggested conditions. Yeah. I can read this if you want me to, if you start reading, then I can take over. Let me just, I'm logging in to pull it up on my other computer. Yep. Go ahead. Okay. So the suggested conditions are number one, the three season room and wooden walkway shall be built substantially in accordance with the plans submitted to the planning board and approved on X date. Number two, the three season room and wooden walkway shall be built substantially in accordance with the management plan submitted to the planning board and improved on X date. And then the finding is the usual generic finding the board finds that the proposal meets all of the relevant, relevant requirements of section 11.24 of the zoning bylaw. That seems very straightforward. I do see two hands at this time, Chris. I see, I recognize Dave. I don't know what or you came in. I'm sorry, but I'm going to recognize David and then Michael next. Hi, thank you. The, the, the suggestion of expediting future site plan reviews for changes of footprints makes sense. Mates was, was suggested yesterday and makes sense to me. However, in thinking about it, this one lot in the cluster subdivision somewhat is somewhat unique from the other lots in the space that it has to expand its footprint. And so I'm a while, while wanting to be efficient, effective for the developer and for the board. I'm also a little bit concerned about, about having a blanket approval for changes to the plans as previously submitted because the other lots. Did not have the same kind of lot coverage and, and frontage and side setbacks as this lot. And so, and so I'm a much more ambivalent about, about the blanket approval for subsequent changes. Then I had been yesterday looking at this one site plan. And so that, that, that, that, that's all what that's worth. Some good points. David, I just want to say that we're not voting on that right now. That would be something in the future. It could be handled. Have we handle a lot of things now? It sort of goes through like the building commissioner or, you know, the director of planning and they could make a judgment call. That can be sort of written in there. You know, I agree. I agree. This was just on that second future further point. That's all great. Great. And I'm sure Chris took that down. She's nodding her head. So Michael year. Oh, well, first I'll just, Chris, do you want to speak to that? Yes, I wanted to say that if, if the applicant wants to change the conditions of the previous site plan review, they would file a request to amend the previous site plan review to allow future changes to be made. And the way it might be approved is that things would come to the planning board for the, for at a public meeting. So they wouldn't go through the public hearing process. And then the planning board would make a determination about whether the change is big enough to require them to go through a whole site plan review process. So that's probably what I would recommend, but that's not part of what you're reviewing tonight. That would be for a future application. Thank you, Chris. I'm going to go back to Michael now. Yes. I'd like to move to close the public hearing and approve the plans as proposed with the conditions and findings that Ms. Brestrup mentioned a moment ago attached. Someone want to raise a hand to second that. I, I see a physical hand of David being raised and Doug's. All right. Thank you. So now are there any other questions, comments from the board? Does the applicant feeling needs to say anything? Cause I can't see your face. So we're doing this sort of. No, I don't, I don't feel like I need to say anything at this point. Okay, great. And I see no hands. So if we're ready to take a vote. I see no hands would come to a roll call. So I will start with. I had my list and then I moved it. Well, I can start. Here we go. Michael. I think that was a yes. You got a little chopped up there on my side here. Yes, I approve. Okay, great. Maria. Yes, approved. Okay, great. Jack. Yes. David. Approved. Doug. Yes. Janet. Yes. And I also say yes, approved. So that's unanimous seven. We'll move forward. Great. Thank you very much. Good luck. It looks beautiful. I, I'm looking forward to the parties. All right. Well, thank you very much. It really does look beautiful. Thank you for coming. Thank you. Okay. So, Good night. Good night. Thank you. So we had all I see is just like the picture of a phone. Bye. Thank you. Okay. So, um, that's done. We're going to move on to reopening. An old hearing. Just looking at my. Going through the paperwork. Okay. So, excuse me. Oh, thank you. When I'm looking down, I can't see. I'm looking for, um, Nate. And if. You're looking for what Chris? Nate Malloy. He's there. There he is. Okay. Cause I didn't want to have to give the presentation. Thank you, Nate. Thank you for listening. I saw you hiding in there. There we go. Oh boy. Okay. So, um, are there slides for, for this. Pam, do you have those? I was going to share my, I was going to share my screen. Um, are we ready for that? Okay. I'm going to pull that up on, as I read the, uh, open up the hearing again. Okay. So it is now 707 in accordance with the provisions of MGL, chapter 40 a, this public hearing has been duly advertised and noticed there have has been posted and, uh, is being continued from the planning board meeting of May 6th. This hearing is being held for the purpose of providing an opportunity for interested citizens to be heard regarding SPR 2020 and that is being approved by the public. So, um, we have a public hearing of the city of MGL, which is the city of M. 177. Town of Amherst, East pleasant street, Kendrick park playground, request to approve our approval request approval to construct a playground, walkways, seeding areas, and other site improvements for a public park under section 3.335 of the zoning bylaw map 11 C dash two, which is the city of M. 177. Um, the first public hearing two weeks ago, we're going to go right to the applicants presentation. So I can see that we're trying to. What is going on? Oh, they're in the process of sharing. Can everyone see it? I can see it. I can barely hear you. I can hear you, and right now I'm seeing half of the agenda. I can hear you. So, um, I can hear you. I can hear you. I can hear you. I can hear you. I can hear you. And launching zoom. So whatever you're looking at, Pam is not what we're seeing. I have. I have the, the, the, the current screen schematic. Yeah. So, yeah. So. Yeah. So you try them right now, or is it Pam? It's Nate. I thought it was me. Want me to try and share it. Uh, so it's. So what do people see now? Just. I see half of an agenda. Oh, I'm sorry. I see. Yeah. This is not. I'm sharing. I've launched it again. So there should be a colored, uh, schematic, you know, a plan. Is that visible to people? I have that. That's what I say. Yes. Yeah. I can see it too. Christina doesn't. Okay. No, cause. Sounds like most people. Hold on here. I see nothing, but give me a second here. It looks like you're freezing up. I'm going to, I'm going to come back in. I'll be right back. No, no, it's okay. I'll just, I'm just going to pop out and then pop back in. All right. See you in a minute. I guess we'll wait for the, uh, the discussion until Christine comes back. We've lost our leader. Still here. I'm trying to like get out of this thing. Ah, I'm telling you, we're going to be zoom experts by the end of this. We don't seem to be like that now. Someone could just email Christine that image. Um, good. Hold on. Okay. Can other members of the planning board see the image? I can see the image. I can see it. Okay. I think I fixed it. I see it. I'm fixing everything. So I'm like, things back. Can you hear me? All right. Yes. Yes. And good. Okay. Yeah. Sure. Great. Thanks everyone. The, um, I'll walk through this plan. And then, uh, we also, um, went to the designer view board earlier this week. Um, and I can talk about their comments. And so, you know, if we're, if you can see the, my cursor, you know, the, the play area, someone called the ochre. I'm not sure how it looks on your screens, but. This area hasn't changed much. What has changed is heading north. So north is to the right. So north is to the left. So north is to the right. And then, you know, we had talked about the plans last time, there was a rough sketch and then the plans actually showed a hillside slide up here. With some topography and really what, what's happened is we, we've eliminated any hillside slide and you've made this. Pathway. That is essentially a grade. To create an accessible loop. You know, walk way that connects here. So this becomes a nice accessible path. So on the left is a small, a small path. To the right is a, a grass and a large data. In the hillside with. With seating in the rock stage area. As you move further north. There's some planting beds in the circles here. That connect across the path. These are vertical stumps that are in the ground. This grass area is actually. Earth, you know, So it's an undulating surface, that would be sod. As you come over here to this part of the pathway system, there's some seating, and in this darker area, this is actually a keystone, loose keystone gravel area for kids to play in in lieu of a sandbox with some seating around it. And then one other big change that's happened is this area with the circles, this is all, these are all vertical logs. Here's logs that are on their side that would be staked into the ground. But this whole area now to the east of this play area is a naturalized play area with wood fiber. There'll be stumps and rocks and logs in there. So this area will, there'll be a connection from the manufactured play area to here to the gravel area. So this becomes a really integral part of the playground design. And what's not shown here on the plans is we're considering two picnic tables or a few picnic tables that would be located in this area. If we look around the plan, things shown in, I'll say it's like pink, those are stone seating walls or stone blocks, but all 18 to 22 inches high that would be used for seating. And if we're looking along this western boundary, along with Pleasant, we have an arrangement of sitting walls, benches here in brown, and then plantings and then sitting blocks and plantings, boulders and then a sitting wall. But this is really forming a natural barrier rather than a fence and it also offers sitting opportunities. There's, if we continue around, there's more stone sitting and then there's benches. There's a total of five or six benches, a number of stone areas to sit. The benches range from six to eight feet in length. They'll all have backs and arms and I'll show an image later. And it may have arms in the middle too for helping people get up and down. This sitting area, this pausa area, at the last hearing, there was a suggestion if it could be made much bigger. It's hard to see but there's an existing really mature tree with its canopy coming in here. So we're already encroaching within the drip line of the tree. So we're really trying to minimize and save it as a 30 inch maple. So we're already encroaching a little bit underneath it and there was a decision not to make this too much bigger also because of topography. So in lieu of really enlarging the sitting area, the idea is having some picnic tables that could be placed around the walkways. As we move further east here, again, just as a East Pleasant Street is down here, the idea is to have planting beds, boulders are shown in orange and the agility area that has stumps and logs to create another natural barrier for fencing and for visual interest and for sitting. There's only three trash cans here. There's one at the main entrances and one up here at the north. The idea is that they'll look like the depth, the trash cans downtown will be half recycling and half trash. This walkway has shown in the gray, this is the east-west walkway and it will be illuminated. There's some light poles shown along the walk here. There's four or five of them. So this becomes a sidewalk that is maintained year round. There's also plans to run conduit. There's a number of possibilities of putting light posts further into the park. And so as part of this project, we're gonna run conduit with the anticipation at some time that maybe there'll be some light posts further in the play area. That's not happening now. For the light posts going along this walkway, we're gonna reuse some existing lighting from downtown. So the acorn-style lights that are in downtown and when, if there's a plan for another lighting design within Kendrick Parker, this area of downtown, we would just swap out the light posts and the headlights, the lantern pieces. But for now, we'll reuse what is seen downtown. I think one thing, this design does really respond to. There's a lot of existing trees. So some of this circular paths or this shape, this pattern is really working with existing trees and topography. And it was also decided that keeping this mostly at grade allows for future connections to the north or across the park a lot more easily than having a mound with a slide. That became an expensive option once we started talking to vendors and it wasn't really, it may have only been a four foot long slide and it would need to be on concrete posts with rubberized surface around it and it just wasn't as nice of an implementation as an idea. So I think, if you wanna line and if you've Googled hillside slide, you might see some really great images but we really didn't have the height or the space to make something that you'd see online. When we went to the design review board this week, they asked about having some demarcation in this play area of a walkway. And so this whole area in, well, I don't know if it's yellow or orange on your screen or, anyways, this is all rubberized and that's because some of the play equipment, the fall zones come within what would be if there was a five foot walkway but it's easy enough with this surface to have different colored treatment. And so we would have an offset here to show a five to six foot walkway around the perimeter of this area to match the width of this walkway. So it's still be a rubberized surface and it's only equipment is not right in this area but that way it indicates that there is a continuous walkway that connects to the east-west path. So that's something that would be a visual cue that someone could walk through here. And it's rubberized. So it's accessible, it's smooth, it's all these, there's no lips or steps here. It's a pretty seamless transition between materials. I'm gonna start another presentation just showing the amenities I would have on the site. So this is the style bench we're looking at. It's not necessarily the color but this is, it's an all metal bench with arms and there could be a middle arm. It is that they'd be set either on concrete or there'd be footings, concrete footings underneath just the feet of the bench but this is the style bench. I can make this a little smaller if it's, I don't know how visible that is. Within the plaza area, the round table and chairs, this is again the style we have for an accessible table with chairs, I'd just be missing one chair, but it's all one piece. But here's the type of trash can that we have downtown. So it's a 40 gallon trash can with half recycling, half trash. And for the picnic tables, I guess there's a trash can twice. For the picnic tables, it's something similar to this. It's an all one piece. We'd probably get flat seats and a flat top and it would be all metal. You can get it in recycled plastic or have wood components, but we're looking at getting all metal for durability. These could be staked into the ground and they'd be six to eight feet in length. The colors we're looking at are, there's three colors. The company offers probably about 18 different colors. Most of them are quite bright or it's like silver, metallic and black. So we're looking at either like all of Carl's Bads, Sudan or Juniper Green, but they're muted color. We've asked for additional images with these just to confirm if we like them in those bench styles and table styles, but it'd be something that would be not too dark to attract the heat and nothing too off putting like a bright red or a bright blue or green, which they do offer. And maybe in a thematic park that would be fine, but that's not what we're asking for here. So there is this style, these color options. One thing just to, it was in the plants that I'm just calling out separately. There's this little planter island here. It also serves the purpose of holding a welcome sign. And the idea would be that it complies with the zoning. So it would not exceed 12 square feet. It'd be three feet by four feet or four feet by three feet. We're looking at having it a two-sided sign that is set between four by four stone pillars. There's a great comment at the design review board to acknowledge the CPA funding. We also have to acknowledge the park grant and also the playground on the backside would be rules and regulations. And I've heard from the vendors that we also need to have some signs describing kind of the safety of the equipment which they provide, which could be mounted on the back of the sign. So there's, it would be a two-sided sign. I think I've showed this before, but this is again, just showing what we'd be considering for the stone seating. So this is what could be actually the square stone blocks. Here's the type of stone sitting wall that would be around the amphitheater and on parts of the walkway. And when we're looking at, placing boulders around certain parts of the edges, and here's keystone. So you can see how this type of material would interact and how stones interact along an edge. For the grass mounds, we really are considering something, maybe not quite this big, maybe closer to this picture, but having a few of these on that north area in place of the hillside slide. So it would be an area with natural grass and something that kids can play on and roll around. And I think as you mentioned, the logs, the naturalized area now is quite is bigger. And we'd have about eight inches of a wood fiber on the ground. We'd have logs that could be stacked up a little bit. They'd all be secured to the ground with threaded rod. So they'd be anchored with a rod that goes into the ground. And people could sit on them or climb on them. These are images of Pulaski Park. And so these logs are over here in the image. Here's some wood, they used some wood fiber. And then here are the vertical logs. And so we're gonna have a similar element in connecting the different areas of the play area. In terms of the manufactured equipment, we're still keeping some of these major elements we've met with the vendor today. And this is an accessible spinner, which we like, it's accurate and it can hold a number of people. The colors can be changed. So we've asked for a different color palette, but these two play structures, this is a pretty large play structure for five to 12 year olds. This is two to five. We've asked for a different roof material here, a metal roof, but we like the idea of having a roof here to provide some shade. This is a spinner. We've asked for a different type of rocker here, not something that looks like a tractor. And to the north where the walkways are, right now they've shown two musical drums and we've asked for different types of something at grade that can be used, something that maybe moves or is mechanical. And so they were looking at possibly a sundial or some other things, but what's nice about this is it's outside the fall zone of this equipment and if it's at grade, it can also be accessible. So we're looking at some features there. This is just other views of the equipment. There is a lot of each one of these structures offers, each has a climbing wall, a few slides, a net or overhead climbers that people can use, places to sit underneath and on top. And so we've asked for just a few modifications to these structures, but not a lot. We do like the idea that there's many different play elements. And we think that changing some of the color palettes will lessen the, you know, kind of the, you know, maybe the fact that it is manufactured. We're not trying to go with a synthetic or faux looking tree trunks, that's cost prohibitive. And I think we think it would actually look worse. And I think that's it for now. I mean, there's a, you know, a detailed plan set. I won't go through if there's questions, I can use those. But I think that's it for now. Nate, if you could just, just to enhance something you were talking about, go to sheet five that shows the grading excavation plan. Just it has two mounds there. If you just, it's a few, but I see one is about five feet grade. Yeah. And the other's just like three. Right. So, you know, yeah, it, you know, it would be looked at, there'd be, you know, a little hill like this, you're following my mouse and then, you know, another hill here, right? So there is two, just two. And I think, you know, the slopes are three to one in there. I think there was a four to one. So they, you know, they are, you know, if they're too much steeper, they won't support grass and it could get dangerous. So we're keeping that, these here. So that's why the bigger one is like five feet and the one, the small one is only like three feet. Three feet, right. Okay. Yeah. I mean, a five foot hill, I mean, I still, I think that would still be pretty fun for kids to play on. Oh, when you're two feet tall, that's a mountain. Thank you. I'm going to open it up to a board question. So I'll be watching for hands. If anyone has any questions on what we're being presented with and questions on the new information that has come on these drawings. So I see one hand so far, I see Janet. So I call on Janet and I'll be watching for other hands. I'm not sure if this is the right moment, but I was hoping that Nate could review the management plan quickly. It might be later after the diagrams. I just wanted to hear that. Jesus, we have a core of volunteers who are going to be out there every day. No, I think, you know, we, we said it was, you know, there had been a lot of questions about maintenance of this, of the park. And so, you know, I will say that the plantings we're looking at, if we, if I go back to this plan, there were some questions about the plantings. And so there's a mix of ground cover, small trees and shrubs, and then some, you know, we're planting some, what would become shade trees. And, you know, we're working with Alan Snow, the tree warden, and other, and Paul Dethier, and Barbills, and we're looking at Barb from LSEC, but we're looking at, you know, plants that are once established are pretty tolerant of condition. So, you know, the thought would be that they don't need a lot of maintenance or water, and they're pretty hardy in terms of both climate and use by the public. In terms of maintaining the park, you know, DPW goes around daily to the parks and opens them up, you know, does some trash pickup. And, you know, just does a quick inspection, a visual inspection of places. So it would be a similar routine. And then, you know, there's weekly mowing or other maintenance. You know, the idea is that the park would not be, would be open seasonally. You know, we wouldn't be paving anything other than this walkway in the winter. So, you know, this becomes, you know, essentially closed in the off season. It's, you know, for now, there's no lighting. So it would be open just dawn till dusk. And so, you know, there's some daily work and then weekly work. And then, you know, at every park, there's seasonal kind of startup and close up. And then sometimes like a mid season work day, you know, where there's, you know, there's a little more in depth cleaning or, you know, if there's capital work that needs to be done, capital improvements, they do that. So I think it's kind of daily, you know, there's chores weekly and then seasonally. Nate, just to put it in a bigger perspective, we've got some other things. I know you're familiar with Goff Park and that's progressing. And there's a dog park and we have other playgrounds. So this park would just become part of a larger management plan, I'm assuming, but Ellen Snow and the DPW, they may have to maintain all of these things. So- Maybe, right, right. And I think, you know, I think, I don't know if I mentioned it last time, but you know, I think there's an awareness that as the town makes improvements to the outdoor spaces, whether it's for recreation or conservation and other parks, passive recreation active, you know, there may need to be a budget increase. You know, there is seasonal staff and then there's, you know, permanent staff, public works that maintain parks. And so, yeah, I think if this becomes part of their rotation, I think, you know, like I said, I think once everything, I think for the first year, you know, there's gonna be some watering and there'll be a little bit more effort to establish the park. But once things, once, you know, the plants and vegetation are growing, the really shouldn't be much maintenance. The playground equipment is, you know, it's supposed to be durable and the surfacing is supposed to be all good for, you know, I don't wanna say, you know, they'll say 25 years, I don't know if it lasts that long, but you know, everything is really meant to be, you know, maintenance-free in terms of large capital needs for, you know, at least 10, 15 years. Thank you. I do see Maria, I'm gonna call on Chris first and then Maria. So we did, as I said previously, we did do this plan with Ellen Snow, the tree warden who's also in charge of parks maintenance and Paul Dathere, who's on the staff of the DPW, he's a landscape architect and an engineer. And so they have a, you know, a sensitivity about maintenance issues. We also, I remember last time Jan had asked a question about watering. And so we did ask that question and Guilford Mooring, the superintendent of Public Works said that they may install a hydrant here where someone could, you know, make a connection and have a hose and water things. They also have a water truck that they can bring around. And according to Ellen Snow, he thought that the plantings would really need watering during the first year, but since they are hardy and a lot of native plants, he felt that after the first year of watering that they would be pretty self-sufficient. So I just wanted to let you know that we had looked into that. Thank you, Chris. I recognize Maria. Okay. First, I just want to say, I think that this design by committee and every, oh, I'm sorry about that. Oh, jeez. This is my iPad I'm trying to use instead of my laptop. The design by multiple, you know, groups and committees has been really successful. I hope this is a model for like how other public projects can happen because it really seems like you've taken the feedback and incorporated it. And I really like the multiple seating options because this is a really sort of community building space. And it's not just for the kids. Obviously it's for the parents and anyone, you know, to come and just sit and mingle. And so I think that it, I think you've added a lot more seating from the last time we saw it. So I really appreciate that. And the only question I had was maybe it's not worth talking about now, but art or maybe I missed it, but what is this little art display parallelogram you have on the sound? Did you already discuss that or did I miss it? No, I think when there was the art installation at Kendrick Park. Can you put the mouse on it? So people... I'm sorry, yeah, it's further. It's not within our project scope, but there's this area here. I don't think we can see that it's to the, you know, it's to the south or to the left on the screen. You know, there has been some consideration for public art. There had been some discussion, you know, of trying to have a space within the sitting area, which originally there was this little area here which you remove, but we've always considered that there could be spaces along the edge for display of public art. I think this one is there because when there was the outdoor sculpture, there was a few pieces that were put in the park. And so this is an area that works for having a piece. So that's something there. Something off of what Maria said, I wanna double that that I do think I see extra seating. And I wanna, one of the people who was concerned that the only table eating area is that circular section to the west. So I was really glad to hear, Nate, when you were saying that you were considering putting picnic tables by that 30 inch maple in the dead center, you know, cause I do, you know, we hope that it will be used and people will come and be hanging out and spending the day and picnicking and letting their kids play. So I thought that was a good fix for that. Yeah, I think the idea would be to use, have two picnic tables, two eight foot tables to start. And then, you know, Alan and everyone agreed that if this becomes a really popular destination, it's, you know, we can add more. That sounds great. Thanks. And I was also glad to see the bike racks. That's great, the bike lockup. So I'm gonna recognize Chris in case she has a comment and then I see Michael. So I just wanted to mention that Nate and I actually had a Zoom meeting with some interested members of the public who have been following this project. And, you know, one of them was really hoping that we could incorporate some playground equipment that she had seen in Europe. And Nate did make an effort to find out about some of that equipment. And, you know, European accessibility requirements and liability issues and different things like that make it difficult for us to incorporate those kinds of play equipment here. It may be possible in the future to incorporate some of those as, you know, our manufacturers look over there and see what they're doing and try to, you know, adapt it to us. But I just wanted to let you know that we did reach out and we had a, I thought it was a very good conversation with three people who have been following this project all along who had feelings about wanting more natural play equipment and more European style equipment. I think that they, I came away from the meeting feeling like they understood, you know, that we were trying to balance things. We wanted to make sure that the equipment was safe and that it would withstand liability issues and that it was handicapped accessible. But at the same time we are providing this agility area to the east or down at the bottom of the, of what you see as a colored plan, just kind of balance out and make people feel like there are natural features here that children can play with. So I just wanted to let you know that we, we didn't not hear those people. We heard what they were saying and we tried to incorporate some of their ideas to the extent possible. And it may be possible in the future to put other features in as the park develops further. Thanks, Chris. You know, Chris's point, I think, so I just want to jump in right now. No, go ahead. All right, one was, I can't see everyone. One was a ground level trampoline, which may, you know, if you online, you can, you know, some of the images were from Berlin and there's some abroad and they do look like fun. So the vendor said the compliance engineer had said that the, you know, the US and this is looking at it, but right now it doesn't meet the standards and he thought it could be a year or two away. So he listed a number of things of why it, you know, wouldn't necessarily be, they couldn't, they wouldn't install it now. So we couldn't find a vendor who would install it. And another one that was a nice suggestion, if we, you know, may or may not happen in this phase, but I'm going to share a new share was outdoor ping pong tables. People can see these now. They can be made out of concrete. Portland has a number of them and, you know, certain, I guess there are, you know, there are a number of cities that have them. So that was a nice suggestion. And so it's, you know, we had it, you know, if we haven't necessarily incorporated it into the design, it was just mentioned today, but that's another feature that could be installed later or, you know, part of, you know, incorporated into Kendrick Park as a whole. So if it's not within this play area, we like the idea of having some other features that could be, you know, incorporated into all of Kendrick Park. So that's something that we, you know, we're taking under consideration. Great. Thanks. Michael, and then next will be David. Yeah, I want to echo my appreciation for where the process has evolved, the project has evolved through all kinds of different inputs that's been excellent. And particularly with regard to the addition of more seating in the general area. And to perhaps go further than is our purview, I would like to suggest that the picnic tables that Nate showed with the rounded seats would, I think, be much more, much better than the ones with the flat seats. Because they would encourage people to be able to sit both directions on the picnic table, which often happens when you're in park-like settings. So I would urge you to not go for the flat ones, go for the curved ones. I think the project is exceptional. Oh, great, thanks. So the rounded seats, and that's good feedback. It's funny, you know, sometimes, you know, you have something in mind and you're not, you know, I'm not sure what works better, but that's a, I like that point about the rounded seats that it's probably actually more comfortable and then it facilitates different sitting options. David. Hi, thank you. I'd like again to commend Nate and the team and Chris for bringing this together and being as responsive as they have been. I would like, I would propose a motion to approve the park, the presentation and the proposal as presented with the design review board comments, the differentiation of the colors for the walkway around the play area and then the sign with the acknowledgement of the CPAC money. Thank you. And thank you, Nate, for all the work that you've put into, try to maximize the funding and maximize the play in downtown. Thank you. Michael, are you seconding? I second the motion. Okay, I just, I think we can do that, but I have to open it up to public comment and just check for that. And then we'll come back to this. I don't know if we have to say it again, but let's, we've got that there. So at this time, I'm gonna ask if there's anyone that the attendees that would like, I just saw one pop up. I see one hand. So at this time, and Pam, is there anyone on the phone or is this all that I see? All always see is Ms. Pam. Okay, so I'll recognize Dorothy Pam. Hello, can you hear me? We can hear you, hello. Well, I just wanna say that was extremely agile of Chris to have had that meeting today because I got a call email earlier in the afternoon about Karen Winter, who's really been following this and she's, and having suggestions. I wanna know how to get through the meeting. And I said, well, I don't think you're gonna have a hand. I don't know. And she said, what about chat? I said, we've turned it off for zoom bombers reasons. And I guess you must have had to have had that meeting today, which I think is fabulous because when interested people have questions and they get a really good answer, then it keeps them happy. So I do applaud the changes that you've been making. And I think this will be a great park. So thank you. Great, thank you. Now I see Karen Winter's hand. I recognize her. Karen, oh, you're still muted. Pam, are you undoing her? Okay. Okay. I wanted to thank Dorothy for being so accessible and the whole committee. You've really been open and gone out of your way to hear me and I'm also impressed with the way you've followed up on all this. So thank you very much. Thank you. At this time, these are the only hands up I see. Dorothy's hand is still up. Right. Put it down because I think, okay, great. Okay, so I'll go back to us and I see Chris's hand up. I recognize Chris. And then I do see Michael's hand up, but yeah, Chris. So I wanted to just make a note that there were some conditions that were sent to you, some proposed conditions, built substantially in accordance with the plans, managed substantially in accordance with the management plan. And then the usual one about landscaping shall be installed in accordance with the planting plan. And once installed shall be continually maintained. And then I wasn't sure if you wanted us to come back once we have a complete idea of what we're doing with the equipment. So you could add a fourth condition stating that once we have finalized the equipment choices that we would come back and show them to you at a public meeting. I'm gonna ask the board members. Well, Michael, can you put your hand down for a sec and then I'll come back to you. I just wanna ask board members, raise your hand if you want playground structure to come back to us, or if you're good with the planning department and the DPW at this point, selecting it. So raise your hand if you want it to come back to planning board. One, two, three, I don't see any hands. So I think we're good, Chris. I think we've seen enough. So I'll go back to Michael, you had your hand up. Only to continue the second if that was relevant. Okay, so we do have a motion on the table and it's been seconded and we've done public comment. Is there anyone at this time who has something else that'd like to say or add or comment? I don't see- What's Chris Strupp has right now? A physical hand up. It's hard for me to watch both, Chris. Just to include the finding that this plan meets all of the relevant requirements of section 11.24 of the zoning bylaw. And does it or do I need to pull that out? No, I think it does. Okay. So that and the conditions. That's part of the motion and they were seconded. Okay. Okay, I'm not seeing any other hand. So at this point, I think we can take a vote. I'm still watching. So members, I'll call your name and say yay or nay or abstain please. So I'll start with Michael. Approve. And I'm going out of normal Maria. Approve. Yak. Yes, approve. David. Approve. Doug. Approve. And Janet. Approve. And I also approve. So that's unanimous seven votes. So we're done with this hearing. Okay. So we're going to move on with our agenda. I'm just going to, Christine, I just want to. Yeah. Oh yeah. And thank you, Nate. I was going to think, you know, I think there's a, you know, Paul Death here at DPW has been doing most of the design and really working with the team and incorporating the comments. I think he and Alan really deserve, you know. Shout out to Paul and especially Paul and also Alan and all of the DPW staff all the way up to Guilford who's been working on this. Yeah. And also Barb Bills from the LSSE. She's been with us every step of the way. So yeah, I think it's been a really nice collaborative effort. So thanks for all the comments and thanks. I'll stop sharing my screen, Pam. And then I guess I'll go back to you. This has gone on for so long. I kind of can't even believe it's happening. I'm really excited. Okay, so Pam, do you want to put up the master plan? We are going to go on to the master plan. Okay. So we'll move to item four. Whoops. Yep. Do you want the document first? Or do you want Ben's slides? Put the document first. All right. You got it. So I'm moving to item four, master plan update. Christine Bestrup planning director report on the master plan update with a focus on chapter three land use followed by questions and comments from the planning board members. We won't at this time be taking public comment on this. This is more of our first run. We're just feeling out Christine Bestrup, the director of planning's first attempt at one chapter and feeling out the style and how it's being done. And then depending on how that goes tonight, we will move to, whoa, things are changing here. We'll move to the public process and how we're gonna actually start doing this as different sections come out. So Chris, oh, there it is. Great. Okay, thank you Pam. So we have decided to update our master plan and do necessary and obvious changes. And that was determined by a joint agreement of the planning board and the CRC and I believe town council as well. So that's the approach that we are taking. And there are actually two or maybe more parts to the master plan. The first part is the text which everybody is familiar with. There are 10 chapters and the 10 chapters are, most of them, the subject matter is defined by the state. The state tells us what we need to include in our master plan. And then the second part of it is a series of appendices and the appendices provide additional information, existing conditions, et cetera, that relate to the topics that are in the chapters, in the text chapters. So when I first started updating or thinking about how I was gonna update the master plan, I was really focused on the text portion and wasn't thinking so much about the need to update the appendices. But I think now that we've really begun to get into it and have studied it, we realize that we do need to at least make some changes to the appendices. And one of the appendices is appendix chapter six, which is called land use. So as I've been going through the text here of the land use section, and I should say I chose the land use section because it's really the section that I'm most familiar with. I mean, that's what the planning department is all about, land use. The other chapters having to do with economic development and housing and demographics and natural and cultural resources, we certainly touch on those, but we're not as intimately involved in those topics as we are in the topic of land use. So I chose to go through the land use section first and really just went through each paragraph and thought about, well, what have we done in the last 10 years in terms of some of these topics? Now, so that my approach was to sort of in response to the notion that people will wonder, members of the public are gonna wonder, well, we had this master plan and did it just sit on the shelf or did we actually take actions in regard to what was recommended here? And I remember that came up when we met with town council and the CRC early on, like, well, what have you done with this? So going kind of step by step through it, I annotated this chapter of the master plan to point out what we have done and to suggest areas that we might do more. So I'll go through some, I don't know if you want me to go through all of the annotations, but I can go through some of them. So with that said, I did receive a response to, we had sent out this section of the master plan to the planning board. Actually, I think we sent it out in March because we were supposed to have this discussion on March 18th. And of course, everything was shut down on March 16th. So we couldn't have this discussion then, but I did receive a very thoughtful set of comments from Michael Burtwistle. I received them, well, I think he sent them late on Friday, this past Friday. I believe that's when he sent them. Anyway, they were very thoughtful. He went through this really carefully and came back with a lot of thoughts. His approach would have been different from mine. It would have been actually simpler. And I didn't send his comments to you, but I think I will for the next time we discuss this. So the only set of comments, aside from a few minor comments that I received from Christine Gray Mullen back in March, which I can tell you about. So this was the set of comments that I received. His Michael's approach would have been to not focus on what we've done in the past and really make this a more forward-looking document, just talk about what we're gonna do moving forward and not get into too much detail about what we have or haven't done. So that's a different approach. And once you see Michael's comments, once I send them to you, you'll understand that. And those would be included in the next packet when we talk about the master plan. But going back to the way I approached it, it was really to try to fill in some of the gaps in knowledge, for instance, on the first page of the land use section down at the bottom of the page, existing conditions. Well, the existing conditions of the current master plan were really determined back in, I would say sometime between 2006 and 2010. That's when this master plan was written. So it was based on the GIS, the mass GIS and the town's GIS that were existing at that time. And it was much different from the GIS that we have today. And for those of you who aren't familiar, I'm sure you're all familiar with, but GIS is geographic information systems. It gives us a tremendous amount of information about what's down on the ground. So what this master plan relied on was mass GIS from 1999. So that was really 20 years ago. So not only has the condition on the ground changed, but the way of measuring it, the way of mapping it, what to map, et cetera, has all changed. So when I asked our new planner, Ben Breger, whom I'm hoping that you will see more of him as he starts working for us full time, I asked him to work with the IT department to develop the new information about current land use patterns. And so what he found out was that it's really hard. He can come up with what is here today, but he has a hard time comparing it to what was here in 1999, because in some ways we're comparing apples to oranges. And we can talk about that later when we look at the information that he's given me. So that is part of the introduction here is, we're seeking updated information about our land use patterns, but it's going to be a mixed bag. And we're gonna have to put in some sort of disclaimer about what information we had back then, what information we have now, and how it doesn't always mesh. So Pam, maybe you could move to the next page. And when we're talking about land consumption, here's something that really, actually this is a question that didn't really make much sense to me. Go back to the 3.2, I think it is. There we go. So there was a statement here about the size of lots. And I'm not sure we care about that. Maybe we care about it, but maybe we don't care about it. This is a very confusing sentence to me. Since the year 2000, the total developed land area in Amherst that consists of residential lots, larger than half an acre grew by 65%. Well, Amherst's population remained relatively stable. Maybe that's something that we wanna know about, but it seems like a pretty obscure thing. I guess the idea here was that our population was not growing, but at the same time we were eating up more land to house the same number of people. And I guess you can see some examples of that if you look at some of the outlying subdivisions in town, they probably have bigger land lot areas per house than we do in some of our inner subdivisions. But that may or may not be something that we care about. So I did make an annotation about that, but I'm not sure it's something that we're all that interested in. My observation was that most of the development in the last 20 years seems to have been in the downtown area and in some of our more developed places. In fact, we've experienced quite a bit of that since 2010. So I would be interested in having input from planning board members about what they think about that phenomenon. The next paragraph, land preservation priorities. We talk a lot about the rural landscape that we have and how we've protected a lot of it. Well, we do have some information about new protections that we've put on. And again, we're seeking updates from the IT department and our staff. Increasing land values and affordability concerns. I don't know if I had anything to say about that. And you can keep scrolling down, Pam, until you come to the next. If you say what section you're on, Chris, that will help us follow along too. Okay, section C, it's on this page that Pam is showing right now. On the need to protect community character, that's a pretty important one. You can talk about that a lot. Amherst has wonderful community character and that's why a lot of people move here. So my comment was that Amherst was currently exploring the concept of design guidelines through planning for housing production. We're really just doing that in the downtown area so far. We're working with a consultant on the chapter 40R project. But I think that that may lighten us about design guidelines that we can use elsewhere. So that's in fact what I said, their lessons from this project will help inform efforts to amend the zoning by-law and to incorporate design guidelines and form-based code. We don't necessarily have to go through chapter 40R and adopt it in order to learn from the design guidelines that are being presented to us. Need to revise zoning codes in the next section. Well, we're all quite aware that we need to revise zoning codes. The zoning code was amended quite a bit after 2010. And that's what allowed more development downtown. Maybe we want to reconsider some of that and get a little bit more control of it, but that's something that probably will be on our plate going forward. So keep going, Pam. Yep. So what do we have here? We've got some blue. What is the topic here? I should be looking at my paperwork instead of looking at the scrolling screen. This topic is preferentially direct future development to existing built-up areas. I think we're doing a pretty good job of that. Chris, can you just say like what section is it LU? LU1B. Okay, thank you. That helps us follow on paper too. The strategy is evaluate built-up areas on the basis of their character, quality, and priority, and then identify the areas to do various things. So at the bottom of that, I'm not gonna read this whole thing, but there was a comment about strengthening code inspections revising existing mental registration regulations and encouraging alternative student housing efforts. I think the town has come a long way in the last 10 years in regard to that. We've really, we've hired inspectors. We've enforced our building code. We've put in a rental registration program. And I think we can all see that the look of the town has improved vastly since 2010. And that's partially because we had, oh my goodness, there was a task force that was set up to address safe and healthy neighborhoods. That was it. And I don't know if I mentioned that in particular here, but in my mind, I think it's important to tell people what we've done to change things and make things better. So that's something I would be looking to you to tell me, do you want that in the master plan or don't you want it in the master plan? Do you think that's history? And we can just put it aside and go on to the next thing and looking forward or is it beneficial to point these things out to people? In the next paragraph, LU1C, use flexible zoning techniques, such as form-based code to promote mixed use development. I think we've done quite a bit of that and we've seen success in North Amherst Village Center with the Beacon Project in the East Amherst with the new development that I'm here, McChie is building and also in the development that's just by the railroad tracks that Mr. Robolesky is building. So those are a result of using more flexible zoning, I think. The next page, page six, 3.6. You can stop me at any time if you have questions, just raise your hand and Christine can recognize you. I am watching for hands. Undertake rezoning efforts. This is LU1D, undertake rezoning efforts that direct more intensive development to appropriate areas and limit development in key resource areas. So what I said was zoning amendments passed after 2010 allowed more density in downtown and village centers, including mixed use buildings by side plan review and eliminating the lot area requirement per dwelling unit for certain zoning districts, such as the BG, BVC and VN. I think that was really important because before 2010, it was really hard to build buildings in the downtown that had residential units because there was a requirement for lot area per dwelling unit and that would have been really hard to accommodate in the downtown. And restrictions in height were also amended to allow five-story buildings in the general business district. Now that's something that some people don't agree with and that may be something that people want to look at and reconsider, but this just points that out. The next one is LU1E, revise existing zoning to encourage and include incentives for well-designed energy efficient infill redevelopment projects. So we have experienced more infill redevelopment projects and one of them is the new project that's going in where the Amherst Motel was built. And that is actually kind of a re, I won't say it's a rezoning, but it's a reinterpretation of the zoning code to allow something like that to happen, to allow an existing non-conforming use to be transformed into a new non-conforming use that's actually bigger. And in my mind, it is not more detrimental to the neighborhood and that's something that the zoning board found when it reviewed that project, but I think that's a good use of a property that was relatively derelict in the past. So a new interpretation of the zoning bylaw allowed more dwelling units. I think there are probably twice as many dwelling units as were in the Amherst Motel and they're going to be nicer and more modern. Let's see. LU1F. LU1F, okay, where's LU1F here? Established programs to encourage economic development in existing developed areas, IG economic opportunity area type programs. Well, we did have some economic opportunity areas back in the, I guess it was the 80s and the 90s somewhere established. One of them was around Atkins Farms Market and it allowed Atkins to expand. Those are not as far as I know, very active in this day and age, but we do have something called an opportunity zone and Nate and the former economic development director applied for a designation as an opportunity zone for North Amherst. We saw a lot of interest in this in the last couple of years. We haven't seen much interest in it recently, but it allows developers to reduce their capital tax burden if they develop in these opportunity zones. So that's something that we applied for and we did receive the designation. We just haven't seen any development resulting from that yet. The next one is LU1G, reduce energy use by encouraging new residences near supporting goods and services in transit. So the zoning by-law was amended and special permits have been granted to allow more residential development in downtown and village centers, which are the areas that already have supporting goods and services. And since 2010, the town has seen development or proposed development of housing in North Amherst Village Center, East Amherst Village Center and the downtown. I think I estimated that there are about 228 units and also along the Hampton Road and University Drive. So we have gained a large number of dwelling units in the last 10 years in multifamily developments in places that are already developed. Here's one that Michael had an interesting comment about. This one is LU1H, create mechanisms for transfer of development rights, TDRs from key resource areas and agricultural lands to village centers, downtown and other specific districts and neighborhoods where denser development is more appropriate. So I made a note that we actually received a grant from Pioneer Valley Planning Commission and we worked with them back in 2012 to try to figure out if this mechanism was appropriate for Amherst. And what we discovered was that there may be a lot of areas in town that are interested in giving their development rights to someone else, but there weren't very many areas in town that were interested in receiving the development rights. So for instance, in North Amherst where someone might own large tracts of land that potentially could be developed for residential subdivisions, potentially landowners could have sold their development rights to someone who owned property in a more dense location like the North Amherst Village Center. But it turned out that people who lived in the North Amherst Village Center weren't enthusiastic about receiving those development rights. So this was kind of, it was dropped. So Michael's comment was, well, why even leave it in here in the master plan if we're not intending ever to do it. So I thought that was a really good observation and my next iteration here will probably be to just take that out entirely. I was a little bit reluctant to do that on my own but since I've received comments from Michael that that would, in his mind, he thinks that that should be eliminated and perhaps other people would think that too. Let's see, where are we now? Chris, can I interrupt one second? Because I know, I believe that you had said if people had questions to go ahead and raise their hand. Yeah, we do have two hands raised. So I don't know if we just want to take a minute and check in with Maria and Doug or if I'm misunderstood. No, thanks for noticing those hands go up. I'll start with Maria and then Doug. All right, I'll try not to knock over my iPad this time. This is a great first stab, Chris. And I'm glad that I heard you both a few things before I sort of, you know, commented on my notes. But generally, I think I see a direction where you're taking examples of where this master plan is outdated because now we're in a different time, like that example you showed early on where we're not doing sprawl anymore, we're doing more downtown development. So that's something worth changing versus another type of change, which is like Michael Burtwistle mentioned. But for I have a new direction as far as how we want to look forward, that's another way to change the master plan. So there's sort of the get rid of the outdated sort of notion of what we've been doing versus put in more things that look forward and that we want to do. And I agree that just putting facts of what has been done isn't really master plan material in my mind. It's sort of just, unless it's saying we've done this and here's how we're going to take a next step, I'm not sure it's worth putting in. So for example, yeah, that last one you mentioned, I found one, sorry about the TDR, I found one further out about, I forget where it was, but there are examples where, yeah, it's probably not worth just listing things that have been completed unless it leads to a next step. So I think you were asking for like input from us as a board about like, and so I feel like that's my sense is if it's just something that says we tried it and it didn't work, I'm not sure that's master plan where the versus, let's see, what was an example you gave? The OU1C, where you sort of explain the history of North Amherst and Atkins were unsuccessful with form-based zoning, that's true. Maybe it's a way to instead say we are currently looking at form-based, sorry, form-based zoning with 40R downtown as a way to learn from for future guidelines. So I think that's a better, not spin, but a better sort of way to word, all that sort of red stuff that you're adding. But otherwise, I think you're in the right direction as far as just maybe it's an organizational thing for you that you're just writing down what you have done and what the, you know, department and the town hall has done. But I think the next layer is to think what would be the master plan text for what has been completed. Because a lot of it was just sort of, this is what we've done. And maybe we could send a list of like, where we think you could just literally remove sections and then we could discuss that as a group because some things, yeah, are pretty important and I might think it's worth removing but other people might think, well, I don't think that's appropriate. We need to write something about next steps for that rather than just remove it. So I'll try to compile my notes where I think some sections just simply are outdated or should go away. But generally, I kind of, yeah, I did a really quick skim today and that's my general take. But I do think that the current form-based zoning exercise happening downtown could be referenced a lot more because a lot of the issues have to do with streetscape and scales of things. And I think that that exercise can teach us a lot to learn from. And then I guess my last point is just, as you go through this, what is the goal for tonight? Do you want us to comb through paragraph by paragraph and give you feedback or is it just a way for you to explain your rationale? Because I'm a little worried it might take four hours to go through this. I'm just wondering like, what kind of input do you want from us tonight? I'm not too late yet, but... May I respond? Yeah, absolutely. So this is the first chance you all have had to look at these annotations that I've made and I wanted to get a sense from you about whether you thought I was going in the right direction or whether there was something else that you thought I should be adding. And so, Michael's take was that we should be leaving out things that we don't care about anymore. And Michael and Maria are both saying that we should be talking more about what we're going to do proactively in the future having to do with any of these strategies and not so wedded to what we have accomplished or what the past has to say about this. So that's... Unless... Oh, yeah, sorry. That's good feedback for me. I think it would be very helpful not to go through step by step page by page tonight, but if everybody could do the kind of review that Michael did and I'm reluctant to send his to you because it'll color what you say. So what I would like to do is get all the comments and then send them all out, right? And we can have a robust discussion and when we send them all out we'll put them online and the public can see them. So I think it'll be a more rich discussion about this. At a future date and that might, maybe that would occur sometime in early July and I'm thinking right now because we've got so many other things coming up in the near future. And I had just one more question. Was one of the tasks of this master plan like light revision, it was to do the sort of updating you're doing but also to fold in more green initiatives? Was that something that's part of the task or was that something that was like rumored that town council wanted to focus on? No, that was something that we were going to do and I didn't manage to incorporate it into my notifications here. Stephanie Ciccarello who's the sustainability coordinator is reviewing the master plan and she's told me that she's going to give me her comments and her additions or whatever she would like to include and it would have to do with resilience and sustainability and climate change but I haven't heard from her. Yeah, about that. Just to expand a little on that, Chris, from what I'm remembering, just to remind everyone, yes, this is a master plan update light. So we were trying to stay out of anything that's context and adding stuff that is like what we want and think now because as soon as we open that door, well, then we're all going to be in debate about is that included, not included. So we knew the safe way to go at this point was to at least update this document to make it more current because it's old right now and to make it better, not a full new master plan and we want to keep it clean like with rules how we're updating it. I am on the fence with removing things that are historical because this one thing I have learned in my many years of being on committees is things are forgotten because people change, staff changes, people change, committees change and it's hard for us to remember as a planning board what happened four years ago, nevermind 10 years ago and if anything's referring to some of the new plans and initiatives guidelines that have happened in the last 10 years, I would like to see them actually hyperlinked in the document because a lot of people are only going to be looking at this online and not looking at a paper document and that way it almost becomes a repository of information where you can go to find more. So back to the environmental thing, it was my understanding Chris that the environmental committee, I forget their acronym, that they're actively working on a report right now and our hope they had planned before COVID to be done by May or June. So maybe that's taking a little bit longer like all of our initiatives but that when that came out again, it wasn't work that we were going to determine about we're just gonna reference that document, create a link and if people wanna see some of our green initiatives they would go to that. So it's a document, it's a resource but anyways we're all gonna think about that and I also agree now I'm thinking Chris we shouldn't send out Michaels until, I mean everybody and I'm, this is our thing everybody planning board. Bylaws and all that public way it all goes to town council but this is our thing. So we need to do our homework and we really gotta try to stick to these deadlines because it will just drag on months and months and we're gonna fall way behind. So that was an odd, I'm gonna call on Doug and then there's Janet and I, well, Chris your hand is up right now. Do you have something that you wanna say right now for? I wanted to say that in terms of the environmental and sustainability things, I think I am expected, I am expecting Stephanie to write some text with regard to that. Of course she will refer to the plan that she's working on with ECNAC I guess they call themselves ECNAC. That's a group. Yeah. So she's going to be working with them and we can refer to their plan but she will also be providing me with the text to put into many of these sections here but I just haven't received it yet. I recognize that but I also knew that there was a report that she's worked like that they're coming up with so that we know in the time we would be able to refer to that because we won't be done till after they're done. So thank you. Yeah, that's probably actually not gonna be done till next, till December. I think they were initially supposed to have it done by June, then they got an extension for their grant. And December's okay because we won't be done by December either. So that's all right. But we knew that they will probably be done before we're done. So keep that in mind. Thanks Chris. So I acknowledge Doug and then there's Janet and then I see Jack. Okay, so I read through it and my first thought was, gee, this is really uncontroversial. You've basically recapped what has happened. I guess if I step back from it, I could say this looks like a report back to town council, kind of an interim where the state of the town in terms of the master plan we approved 10 years ago or whatever. So it doesn't, it seemed like it would, if this approach would be pretty easy to accomplish, it's a fair amount of work to pull together the facts, but it would be easy to accomplish and easy for town council to endorse. I agree actually with Michael and with Maria that it might be more useful to have, maybe without changing the 2010 text, the 2020 text could be, here's what we've done and based on our experience, we're gonna wanna put more emphasis in this direction rather than that direction just as this is the way the world looks to us now rather than we're gonna take things out. I think that's a mistake because it does, it goes a little farther and starts to open the door toward, gee, we should reconsider the whole thing. Yeah, yeah. And Chris, if you're trying to keep to a deadline like we did for the comments on the minutes, it would be, if you want our comments on what you've written, it'd be nice to have a date by which we need to provide them. Thank you. Okay, good, may I follow that up with an email, give you a date and an email? Maybe we should do that because we did set a date, a couple meetings back that we were supposed to give her comments by last week but maybe Chris, we probably need to see it twice because sometimes people miss something in these meetings so a reminder from you would be good. Okay. So thanks, Doug, are you done, Doug? Okay, and Janet, and then I see Jack. I appreciate everybody's comments. I've been struggling, I found it really useful to see Christine Brestrup's commentary in text because you read the texts and you read what she says and you reflect on it and I do agree with the comment that it probably doesn't belong in the master plan at the end of the day but it is kind of a useful history and it gets you thinking and looking ahead. I also think we need to look ahead. I was putting the hat on of thinking a little bit to the future when we have the master plan on the webpage and we've gone to the public saying, here's the land use section, here's what the master plan says and here's what's been done, here's what's not been done. And so my thoughts went to the implementation matrix that I think is part of chapter 10 and I thought maybe Christine's commentary or history or updates on what was done should be a column in that matrix that list of steps and strategies and then you could say something like completed, partially completed, not done with no shame and then maybe a column of next steps were a hopeful dates for completion and then the missing piece on that matrix now is who's responsible for getting it done because if nobody's assigned the job or thinks they're assigned the job no one's really going to do it. So I wondered if looking at the implementation matrix and using that as a document that could guide the public in ourselves as we kind of sort through things would be useful. So that's one big question. Like how are we going to talk about it in a constructive way and maybe the implementation matrix would be a good structure for that. The other problem I question I had was I think in previous planning boards have incorporated the Amherst housing market study and housing production plan as part of the master plan. And so those are really long documents and they do have strategies that would directly affect land use. And I wondered how do we put that into the plan if we just reference them and then there's like a hundred pages of this and 60 pages of that. Is it a way that and is it become unworkable or will anyone be able to understand it all unless they're like people who like to read something complicated like the text code and things like that. So I was struggling with, I was even personally struggling them but if I'm going to send comments to Chris like how do I put them into, you know, kind of things. So I just had a lot of questions about structure and what's the best way to present to the public or for us to talk amongst ourselves. And so I'm glad we're having this discussion. Thanks, Janet. Yeah, Chris, I do think, I know we're not working on that tonight but I think Janet's points on implementation matrix that really is a key part that could quickly show what's done, what's have done and a couple more columns might be needed. And I just wanted to remind everybody that when this got passed, it's the 2010 and there was supposed to be this master plan implementation committee that was kind of doing this every year and reporting back and creating a report that said what had been done or investigated to be pursued or not pursued. And those reports would have been referenced in this update, except we don't have any of them. So in a way, Chris is doing double duty. She's updating the master plan but she's also filling in this gap that didn't happen which hopefully now will happen after we update this. And the next 10 years, there will be a master plan implementation committee with their reports and that will help drive the committee that does the big redo in 2030. So I just wanted to put that historical context out there. I see Jack and then next is Michael. So yeah, I really like the detail of the comments and kind of struggle with how the update should be without rewriting it. And I love using footnotes and these would kind of be like section notes, how Chris has them in and a lot of them will probably be or just thought provoking that may be deleted but some of them, I like the historical explanation in the last 10 years. So I'd like to keep the historical sort of thing just for the sake of expediting completion of the update. I think the use of these notes is good. And lots of you have been saying the same but I guess some sections will need to have more strike out more heavily editing versus just a note. And I'd be very interested to see Mike's comments at this time to help me in terms of reviewing this because this is a lot of work. You could spend weeks on each section as a planning board member, which I don't have. So I would recommend that we send Mike's comments for the benefit of the whole board. And then some of the things I just saw like brownfields that aren't applicable. I mean, it gives the master plan a little bit of a boilerplate feel if that's really the case. We should just get rid of some of that stuff. So that's a different kind of edit or update but basically those are my comments. Thanks, Jack. So may I ask a question here? And this is going to be for Pam. And ideally, and Christine Gray-Mullen and I will talk about this later when we get to the end of this discussion. Ideally we're going to have a master plan webpage where people can, the members of the public can see what the latest thing is and then comment on it. But in the interim, would it be possible to have a section on the planning board webpage about the master plan and maybe post this thing that I've written as a very rough draft, post Michael's comments next to it so that other members of the planning board could see it and the public could see it and we're not breaking any open meeting law. I guess that's what I was worried about. I was worried about breaking the open meeting law by sending out Michael's comments. They weren't part of the packet and they were, you know, his thoughts about something which we're not supposed to send in between meetings except if we post them, then it's okay to send them. So anyway, I wondered if Pam could advise me on whether it would be possible to make a little corner of the planning board webpage. Well, can I just interrupt Chris? Why don't you just put it on the master plan page? Is that to be allowed? Well, we could. It's kind of obscure though, isn't it? Maybe not. We can think about it. But you can make a link then to the planning board page. Okay. But we can talk about this more later. I mean, if we're ready to go on this, then Brianna, I mean, I've been just waiting until she had air but it can probably be done next week. Okay. The way I see it with the website, it's pretty much the sky's the limit because you just can create pages and link them. I have to be honest with you, I haven't been paying any kind of attention as to what's been going on with the master plan webpage because it wasn't on my plate and my plate has other things that I'm thinking about. However, we can absolutely get something up there ASAP if need be. So maybe we could just start putting this stuff up there and it's going to be chaotic. And when we hear from the public, like what does this mean? What are you doing? What are you talking about? We're gonna have to be ready to defend ourselves and say, we're putting it out there. We want everybody to see it and it's a work in progress and eventually it'll get done. It's not in any way finished. It's rough and we'll have to be willing to take the slings and arrows about that, right? Well, you can just put a disclaimer on there. Just saying that it's, it isn't finished and you expect to be having public meetings and... And that way when I get some other comments from somebody, I can put them up there and then everybody can see them. And then the next time we meet, we can talk about all of these things. Sort of, yeah, Chris, we'll talk after because that's not the process we've laid out for the website that can go up in a week. So, I don't wanna start another system and then have to change. And it's about collecting people's comments. If we start doing it this way, it's the same way we've been sort of half-hodging it for 10 years. I think we want to be orderly and collect the comments and everybody be seeing the same thing that everybody else is seeing. So, the process of tonight was not to start the whole public process. That's why we're not taking public comment. The main thing we were to do was to get Chris' comments on what we thought of what is going on now with her first light draft. So, I think Chris is listening to all of us and looking at all and actually, I mean, looking at each other's comments probably isn't super important right now. It's about what each of us is thinking and she's listening to all of us, but she's the one working on it. So, I'm sure you've got a lot of thoughts in your head right now, Chris, about, oh, maybe I'm gonna alter this and add this and do this. So, I'm already getting eager to see when can we get another first, a second draft of this, where you're like, okay, I heard you all, this is now how I'm thinking to do this master plan update light. Yep. So, I think we can talk about that when we get to the point of talking about our schedule for the next couple of months and maybe that's gonna be later in the meeting. Because I'm very interested to know when do you think you could get another draft done with this? I mean, we had set a very aggressive schedule six months ago on how to do this and I know times are strange, but we need you to communicate with us on what is achievable and what's not realistic. So, here's what I can say about the next month, June. Here we are at the end of May. So, June 3rd, we have a meeting where we have two public hearings, one about all about learning, which is a preschool and the other one is about the common school. They're relatively lightweight, but still we have to have the process. Then, we were going to receive comments on chapter 40R from planning board members on that day or hopefully before that day. I think we had set May 27th as the day we were gonna receive 27 comments. Present them at the meeting on June 3rd and have some kind of probably not terribly in-depth discussion but somewhat of a discussion. Then we're also going to have Mandy Jo, Hanneke and possibly some of her members, her co-members of CRC come to us that night and talk to us about the zoning, how we're going to update the zoning bylaw, revise the zoning bylaw, whatever you wanna call it. So, that's a packed night. It is. Then we have, so eventually we're gonna get- I think the 17th looks okay. The 17th looks okay, yeah. We have a joint hearing we have to do first off the bat probably with CRC, but then as far as I know, we don't have anything else that night. I think that is the case as of right now. So, we could do the 17th. And that's enough time for you to redo this and bring it back to us. I don't know. I mean, because we've got a lot of other things going on but I could try. Well, I mean, you don't have to answer right now but think about, and so the next option is July 1st. So, I think you just have to look at your workload and contemplate what you're hearing tonight and realistically, when can you come back with another draft? So, I'll have to think about that. July 1st, we're planning to have the Amherst Media Project. Right. I think I had talked at some point about having it on June 17th but right now I don't think that's reasonable. So, July 1st would be Amherst Media and we can be sure that that's going to be what shall I say? A popular night for the planning board. Planning board's going to be very popular that night. Meaning we'll have a lot of public interest. Okay. All right. So, I'll think about that. So, maybe by the 17th but given what we're going to talk about later, you know, I'm still a little tentative about that. So, a whole month away. So, maybe. Okay. You can just, you know, think about it and then as we're making the agendas as the weeks go on, you know, let us know. We're not trying to be unreasonable here but we are saying, you know, we have an aggressive schedule. So, what would that mean as far as getting comments from planning board members? That would mean me getting comments in the next two weeks by June 3rd. Oh, no, you should only get comments in the next week, Chris. You gave us a deadline of last week. So, we're already past the deadline you were asked. So, let's give it another week and by next Wednesday, people will give you their comments on this current chapter because then you need, you're not going to really start moving on the next draft until you've heard from us and thought about that. So, if that's already next week, you know, if you're looking at the 17th or July 1st, you need time to actually then come up with a new draft. So, next week is the 27th. So, we already said that we were getting comments on 40R. Yes. On the 27th. So, both. Comments on the master plan. Okay. And 40R. So, we have our homework. Yes, I know everybody. They're going to be busy this weekend. Good reads. And, I mean, with the master plan, I mean, neither one of them are like detail comments. You're looking for, you know, thoughts and. My overall. I'm not looking for you to edit each sentence here. And just tell me, what do you think about this approach? Should we go more towards what we need to do in the future? Do you still want me to include some of these historical facts? General approach comments. Yeah. Okay. Michael's been very patient. I see his hand up there and he's going to say whatever he wants to say, but I also am throwing it out there to people like, do you want Chris to go through the rest of this document or can we just move on from here? So, I recognize Michael and at this time, that's the only hand I see. Thank you. Can you hear me? Yes, we can. Yes. The reason I ask is because I was, I crashed when I was offline for about 15 minutes. So, and I left about or I was dismissed about the time Chris was talking about the beginning of the land use chapter and referenced what I had sent her a couple of times. And I'm not quite sure whether maybe this is all irrelevant because she's already said that or not, but bear with me. The way I went through the document was as you're suggesting to make it seem more forward-looking and less historical than I thought that it was. And I had basically three kind of strategies when I did that. One was to change some specific wording, things like LU2A says change zoning. And then I changed, I've suggested that be continue to pursue zoning changes which allow suggesting that we have already made some progress in that area, but not completely. And that the lines and the additions in red, which Christine had put in, I edited that a little bit to suggest how that might work. So I had a fair amount of those continue to do something or pursue or rather than start over, continue the revision of instead of undertake zoning efforts, continue zoning efforts, that kind of thing. That was one approach I took to making the specific edits within the document. The two things that I really felt were central to what I had in mind. And the reasons why I would really like everybody on the planning board to get this document and respond to it as part of what their own responses to the document might be is because it really does take a slightly different, maybe even a significantly different approach. I think that the document really needs to think about what we should, it needs to read as if it were written today. And it's what we want to do over the next 10 years. That's what the town council seems to want, a document which represents the current thinking of the town. And as far as the planning board is concerned, we are sort of that part of the whole process. So I think we really, rather than try to say, well, we've done this so far and we now need to do more of this, we just need to say, we need to do this, we need to continue to do this or we need to start doing this, one of the two. Depends on what the issue is. The other part of this process, and this is where all the historical annotations really come in, is this implementation matrix, which is buried as an appendix. And I believe really needs to be chapter 11. And the implementation matrix, I don't know if you've all seen it or not. Maybe you haven't, maybe you haven't. But it really, it boils down each particular objective, states it and then has a column for who should do that. And then another column for when it should be done by. And I think that implementation matrix is the place for all of this historical documentation. I think that's where we should put responsible, identify who ought to be doing these things and then indicate in the other column, how much of it's already been done and when the rest of it should be done and how we might imagine this happening over the next 10 years. So that's the way I approach editing the document. And I would hope that this doesn't violate meeting laws because if everybody has to look at this document at the moment we're talking about it in a meeting, then I don't think we're never gonna get anywhere, either that or the document's gonna be ignored. And I hope it isn't ignored. I didn't spend an enormous amount of time on it. I spent maybe six or eight hours on it. But it is complicated and it needs thought and it needs a way of thinking about it that focuses your ideas on a plan. So that's what I think. And I'm sorry to be taking up so much time. Now that was really helpful, Michael, thank you. I see Chris. So I was wondering, and this is a question for Pam again, can we somehow incorporate Michael's comments into our packet from last week? Like could we have packet appendix one and just put it on the webpage with the packet that you put there last Friday. It came in too late to incorporate into our packet, but if it had come in Friday morning instead of Friday evening, we might have put it into the packet and then put it up on a webpage, which means that it wouldn't have violated open meeting. So that's a question for Pam. Could we do something like that? I believe so. And I'm actually gonna be in the office tomorrow. So I think it would be its own separate little package. And I would need to title it something like additional documents. Yeah. Let me see if I can point out of that. I'm very excited to hear that because this has been an issue that I felt has always been there. The packet goes out, which by the way, I didn't get till four o'clock today. The packet goes out, but then there's lots of things you send us through emails after that moment all the way up until the meeting. And those never get included in anything that gets posted online and they don't get included with the minutes. So I've always felt there was a drop of transparency there. So if we have the ability to do a followup packet and then just post it, that would be fantastic. It covers a lot of this. So not only this, the comments from Michael, but any of the other documents that had to do with the public hearings or whatever, just PDF it just like you do and put it up there. Can that happen? We're getting off topic here, but I got so excited. I was like, oh my God, can we do this? We can do almost anything. We can talk offline. If you guys just say, yeah, we can do that. Great, we can make this happen. Fantastic. Oh, we're moving into the digital world. Great, thank you. I'm gonna recognize Doug. Yeah, Chris, you had asked whether we thought that we needed Chris to go all the way through all seven pages of this with all of her annotations. And my answer would be, no, I really don't need that nor do I really want that. Thank you. And I think a bunch of us feel that way. I'm gonna recognize David in a second, but Chris, just if you could talk about, there was one thing I wasn't sure about this. You put your thoughts, and I knew this was just a first draft, but I'm sort of looking at what's up on the screen. I can only see half of it, but like LU1H, we have the old writing, and then I'm thinking about what Michael was saying, like how you wanna maybe update that so it's like continue to or we have, but then you had your stuff in red, and I wasn't sure if you're just redlining and then later you would just accept it and it would become like a second paragraph in black below the existing paragraph or... You know, I really hadn't thought much about formatting. I was just like putting thoughts down on the paper. So, but the other thing was I was reluctant to mess too much with the existing text. I thought that whatever we were adding should be added in a way that people would know what was added. So... Can we redline? Like can you do the track changes? Track changes, but that disappears, right? Only if you turn it off. But what I'm saying is that once we publish this, how will people know what's the old master plan and what's the new? Maybe we don't care about the new. We can keep saving it as individual. We'll talk about that too. That could, because then we'll actually see what's gonna be the end product. Like right now it's like you're add-on thoughts to the end, but we can talk more about that in process. I know we just talked about that a little bit months and months ago, which seems like forever ago. All right, thanks Chris. All right, so I see David and then Michael. Hi, I agree with Doug. I think that we can, I would enjoy moving on. I think we're getting very much in the weeds, as I understand it. The planning board has a hard deadline of next Wednesday to return comments to Chris Brestrup on both this chapter of the master plan update and the 40 R comments. I think that, you know, big picture and not weeds. This is not a master plan review. That's gonna happen in 2030. And so I would again, urge us to... I think that this is a great presentation and I look forward to digging deeper. Thank you, Chris. But I'd like to move on because we have, I think more pressing new business to do so. And then before I give up the mic, when we do move on, I would like to request a five minute break. Thank you. Okay, great, and all hands one way. So why don't we just take a five minute break here? I have 8.52. So it will resume at 8.57. And we're gonna move on to, at that point, item five, old business. We good? So you can put your video down and your mic off if you want. And I'll see, we'll all be here in five minutes. I'll stay live so that the public knows that, and maybe Pam, if you don't mind staying up. So they know that we're here. Oh, okay, I'll stay up. I was just gonna turn myself off, but no, I will be back. You can all turn off. Just in case someone came in on the Zoom. I don't even know who we have there right now. They'll see my quilt. Yeah, your quilt is beautiful. It was made by a woman from Amherst. Oh, nice. Is Chris Bestgriffe taking a break at the moment or is she? I believe she is. Chris, are you there? Yeah, she probably ran away. And Pam is gone. Yeah, everyone but you and I. Okay. And just to tell the public, if anyone's watching on the Amherst media, we're just taking a five minute break and we'll resume at 8.57. I'm back. Welcome back. Thank you. So it's 8.55 and if anyone is watching or just tuning in, we're in a five minute break and we'll resume at 8.57. Oh, Pam. Yes. I had a question about the packet that was sent out, which I also just got this afternoon about four o'clock. There's a series of four or five pages that were stapled together called master plan update and it shows a series of maps and M-G-I-S land use information. I'm not quite sure what that is in reference to, what that relates to in terms of the master plan discussion. Can you let me go? You know what, Pam, let's wait till the meeting resumes so others are here because it's part of the meeting and Chris can, that was going to be part of her talk, Michael, but we cut her off. That's probably a long offline, I'm sorry. But we'll ask Pam, we'll ask Chris to just address that maybe during her report of staff. We'll just ask her what that was. So thank you, Michael, for pointing that out. Michael, I kept seeing you go into the attendees and I kept putting you back into the panelists. I don't know what was happening, but from what I could see. I was operating on battery and then it failed and I had to plug in and then I had to reconnect. And for some reason I reconnected in a different way. And I don't know why it wasn't a need forever to try to figure that out. But I think everything is the way it's supposed to be now. You conquered it, Michael. You did good. Good job, Michael, it's not easy. And I had to put up a different background too. I had to turn the whole thing around and I could see the other half of my room. I have a question that I meant to ask in the beginning, which is when you said Christine, like, contact Pam or Sean, I thought I don't have their, like, would I contact them by text or how would I contact them? I just. We talked about that in the very beginning, Pam. Did they ever get phone numbers? I think some, I mean, I did. I believe everybody has been sent phone numbers, but I can do that again. Can you do that again with yourself and Sean's? And worst case is I think put mine on there too. I think most people have my phone number. You know, I do watch the phone too, because Janet, you've done that. You've texted me. Yeah. Thank you. Yeah. You start reaching out to anybody. Oh my God. So yeah, Pam, if you could do that, that would be great. So it's actually 857. I don't know if everybody's back. If you can just click your raise hand members if you're here. So I'll know that you're actually here. I see Michael. I see Janet. I see Doug. I see Maria. Does anyone, I'm pretty old. Do you remember that, that in the magic mirror, this, it was like early kid TV when we were, I was like four. And it was something about, she looked in this magic mirror or something on PBS. I see Jimmy. Robert. Yes. Robert, yeah. Was that what it was? I don't even remember what it was called. I see. And that's what I feel like. I'm like on TV going, I see. All right. So we can start back again. So Chris, we do have a question for you later that we'll ask you in your report of staff and we'll come back to that. And so now we're going to go to item five, old business. And there's nothing there, Chris. Do we have nothing? No business. Okay. We like that. We'll go to item six, new business. We do have something. Or I thought we did. We do, yeah. Yeah, we do. It's not on here, but you're going to talk about something. Well, there was a revised agenda. Yeah, I've got the one from the packet. That's the problem. Let me go back to the other one. So may I speak? Yes, yes, you have the floor. Go ahead, Chris. So the revised agenda includes a new idea that came about in the last two weeks. And it was really Rob Mora who came up with this. And it was an effort to, we realized that the businesses in town were having such a hard time with COVID-19 and having to close down. And, you know, we were really trying hard to think of something that could help them. So Rob came up with this kind of three pronged way of helping the businesses. And Paul Backelman thought it was a good idea and he presented it to town council on Monday night. And it was presented to the CRC on Tuesday and now we're presenting it to members of the planning board. You did receive the memo from Paul in your email. So you have a little bit of advanced warning or I shouldn't say warning, advanced notice as we think it's a good idea. So the idea is that we would try to figure out how to, how to amend the zoning by-law to allow certain uses to have a little bit easier time to start up or restart. And right now, as you know, well, there are a lot of restaurants that are operating or have operated in downtown Amherst. Many of them are closed now. Some of them probably won't come back online there will be empty storefronts and some of the businesses will come back and we're hoping that that is the case for more than, more than, you know, most. But in any event, what we're trying to do is think of a way that we can adapt our zoning to make it easier for them. Right now with the current zoning, it takes a long time to get a business established, especially if the business is a restaurant that serves alcohol and has to go to the designer, sorry, not the designer board, but the zoning board of appeals, if they're open laid or whatever their situation is. So even if they're going to the planning board, it can take, you know, two and a half months and the zoning board of appeals sometimes takes three months to get a permit. And if someone steps in and says, permit, and if someone started now, they wouldn't actually have their permit until probably sometime in September. So we're trying to think of ways that we could get, kind of jumpstart this process. And Rob came up with the idea that perhaps for the next six months, well, I actually didn't go, well, I'm trying to figure out what's the best way to describe this, but okay, so the first aspect of this is. I think it says 180 days, Chris. Yeah, the first aspect is zoning, second aspect is use of the public ways and the third aspect is amending the liquor license laws. So the first thing is zoning and what we would try to do is for 180 days or six months, probably starting sometime in July, we would adopt temporary zoning and the temporary zoning would be related to specific uses. And I think if you go to page, it's not this page, but the next page of the handout PAM or not even that page, this page where it starts draft, this is the draft zoning bylaw that we're bringing to you. So the purpose of it is to encourage and facilitate the reopening of existing businesses and the opening of new businesses and to stimulate economic activity in the aftermath of COVID-19. So it would affect uses, new and existing uses in the general business district, the limited business district, business village center, business neighborhood and the commercial zoning district. And it would also deal with pre-existing non-conforming uses. The uses that we're talking about aren't mixed use buildings and apartment buildings and hotels or anything like that. We're very limited in the uses that we're talking about. It's really retail establishments, clothing stores, bookstores, that kind of thing. Personal care establishments, hair salons, I suppose tattoo parlors would be included but in any event, personal care establishments and food and drink establishments. And that's the main section here that we wanted to help out. The restaurants, the class one and class two restaurants. So those are the uses that we're zeroing in on. And then any accessory uses that are associated with them. And accessory uses could be outdoor dining, live entertainment and what we're calling drive-through facilities, but we're really not expecting someone to set up a drive-through window like they'd have at McDonald's or something like that. We're really trying to capture the curbside delivery where someone comes out and hands you your tray or your bag of things that you've already ordered. In Rob's mind, the building commissioner's mind, those are really drive-through facilities and we have them now, but they haven't been permitted in some way. So this would also include waivers and modifications from things like parking requirements and signed by law. They could include waivers and modifications. Design review would be suspended for certain things. It would be suspended for signage, lighting, placement of outdoor furnishings and other non-permanent building or site alterations. So we're not talking about, you know, putting a new addition on your building or just talking about making it possible for people to have outdoor dining of some sort. The application process would really be similar to what we expect for site plan review and special permits. There would be an application form. People would have to submit plans. They would have to give us management plan information. And the building commissioner in consultation with me as a planning director would review the applications and be able to issue administrative approvals instead of requiring site plan review and special permits. And we would review these applications using the criteria in 10.38 and 11.24. And I think we're both pretty familiar with how the planning board and the zoning board of appeals use those criteria for these types of uses. We would also solicit comments from other public officials and staff, including the fire chief, the police chief, the public health director, superintendent of public works or the town manager. And the building commissioner would issue a decision to either approve, approve with conditions or deny the request within 10 business days. And that's really a vast change over the current situation. Right now, when we get an application in, it takes three weeks to a month to have a public hearing. It could even take longer than that. Then once we have the public hearing, we have to write the decision and then get the decision signed and filed with the town clerk. And if it's a special permit, it has to go through a 20 day appeal period. So this is an attempt for a limited period, for the period of 180 days, be able to allow things to occur that would normally take much longer. And then if someone objected to a decision that was made by the building commissioner, that person or entity could appeal the decision to the zoning board of appeals, just the way they currently can do. They can appeal any decision to the zoning board. So we think this is a good idea. And what it requires is it requires a zoning amendment. And it would be, we have a space in our zoning bylaw in article 14, which had been used for phased growth, but we did away with phased growth a number of years ago. So now that section is reserved. So we could just put this new zoning section into that portion of the zoning bylaw. We have had the town council look at this draft that we've come up with, and he made several suggestions about how to improve it. We're gonna send it back to him this week for his secondary review. And the proposal is to hold a joint public hearing about this proposed zoning amendment on June 10th, and the joint public hearing would be with the CRC. As I said previously, the CRC has already seen this and they appear to be in favor of it. So why don't I stop there and you can ask questions and make comments and then we can have a conversation. I don't see any hands up yet, but Chris, can we carry it a little bit further on? You know, I sent out that email to everybody asking about June 10th, so. So I am going to carry it a little further in the sense that I forgot to talk about use of the public way, and I also forgot to talk about the liquor licensing. So in many cases here, people who have these establishments would be able to use portions of their own private property to either have outdoor dining or potentially outdoor displays of books or clothing that they wanted to offer. And part of this is in response to the fact that we know that restaurants and retail stores that come back into business aren't going to be able to have a full complement of customers in their establishments. They're gonna be limited to 25% initially and maybe 50% later on, but they're not gonna be able to have 100% of their normal customer load for quite a while. So the idea is that they could use portions of their own private property in the vicinity of their business or they could spill out into the public way. And that might mean, you know, taking a parallel parking space along the edge of the road and turning it into something similar to a parklet. I think you've probably read about parklets. And in fact, we had a couple in downtown Amherst in the last few years. So the idea is just to sort of cordon off parking space and let people sit there and be served by the workers in the restaurant. People might also be able to use parts of the sidewalk where the sidewalk is wide enough. And there might be little alleyways here and there that could be used or parking lots behind buildings. So there's a wide variety of places where this could occur. And it could occur, as I said, either on private property or on public property. If it occurred on public property, the second part of this request, not part of the zoning, but part of the request to town council is to authorize the town manager to allow these businesses to use the public way to accomplish some of these uses. And then the third part of it is to try to work with the Board of License Commissioners and the state to expedite the expansion of premises. So when someone gets a liquor license, they have a particular limited place where they can serve alcohol. But if you're talking about allowing people to serve on the sidewalk or in a little park that's created in the parking space, that would require expansion of premises. So the state is talking about this, about allowing an expedited process with the ABCC and the town has also started to talk about it with the Board of License Commissioners. So those are the three aspects, the zoning, the use of the public way and the liquor license. So I think Christine was starting to talk about schedule. So why doesn't she pick up there and talk about schedule about when we're gonna be doing this? I don't know a whole lot, but what I do know is this will be a bylaw change that has to go all the way to town council and they have to approve it. So ironically, maybe there'll be more questions at our next meeting when Mandy Jo, Henneke and CRC is coming with that flowchart to discuss, because this is going to be our first living example of sort of living through that and what it requires is a joint hearing with planning board and CRC to both approve the proposed amendment, which we will have. And from there, then it goes to town council where they would give it final approval. So it will be during a planning board meeting and they come and join us. And that's why I had asked for your availability on June 10th at 6.30. And why it got pushed, some people are like, why aren't we doing this right now? As Chris can further explain, she's got a file notices and the final wording and everything. It's sort of like a rush to town meeting, getting this article ready and set and have it go through the proper processes and notifications so that we can have that joint hearing. That's what I know. Chris, do you have anything to add about that? This would be the only thing on the docket for June 10th because you already have meetings scheduled for June 3rd and June 17th. So this would be a specific night that was just set up to consider this zoning amendment with the CRC. Both bodies are required to hold public hearings to change zoning. So, and the town council has determined that they would really like to have these public hearings held jointly to the extent that that's possible. And it seems like in this case, it will be possible on June 10th. So- And the notifications will be done by then so we can have it. Yeah, the notifications will be sent out on this Friday with the expectation that there'll be an ad on the paper next Wednesday and the following Wednesday. So on the May 27th and June 3rd, there will be notifications in the paper. We also have to send notifications to all of the abutting towns and to the Pioneer Valley Planning Commission and one other entity, I think it's DHCD, that's right. So those are two state quasi-state organizations that we have to send notifications to. So that's it in a nutshell. Do you have any questions? I see three hands. I'm gonna recognize Doug, then Michael, then David. Okay, Doug? Yeah, I confess I didn't scrutinize the draft clotfully but I wanted to just ask, is this envisioned as a permanent change or if it's a temporary, well, you have a temporary process for approval after during 180 days. Does that mean the approvals sunset after 180 days or how do you put the genie back in the bottle once you've approved all this and everybody has a business plan based on using sidewalks in public ways? Thank you. May I respond to the question? Chris, if I can just tag on and add to his and what would happen if it was needed to be extended? So it is envisioned to be temporary to the extent that that makes sense. And probably many of the outdoor operations would cease to exist or would be given a condition that they needed to expire Thanksgiving or the beginning of December or something like that. I had a conversation with the building commissioner about this though and for somebody who's starting a restaurant, say it's a new business and they're taking over an existing restaurant that isn't operating anymore, they're taking over an existing space, well, they're gonna have to invest a fair amount of money in getting that space up and running. Maybe they don't like the furniture inside or maybe they wanna change the grill or something where they're gonna have to spend money. So we don't wanna make these things go away after six months if they're a viable business. So as I said, the building commissioner and I will be reviewing these things based on the criteria that the zoning board of appeals normally uses and that the planning board normally uses. And we have a pretty good sense of the kinds of conditions that you usually impose and that the zoning board of appeals imposes. The building commissioner is actually very conservative in my opinion and very strict. And so he will be very judicious in allowing things to be approved. But I think that the answer to the question of whether it's temporary or not, it's somewhat on a case by case basis, does it make sense? If someone's using for an accessory use, a parking space out in front of Antonio's, well, once the winter comes, it isn't gonna make any sense anymore for them to continue to operate a part of their restaurant out in that parking space. But if someone has redone the inside of their building in order to have a new restaurant, that does make sense for them to continue. If the person who's redoing the inside of their building also has a patio next to the building that he can use for seasonal outdoor dining, well, probably that would be approved as part of his business operation because it would be on private property and it wouldn't need any further approval from the town manager. So it really would be kind of case by case and so I think that's what I have to say. Thank you, Chris. And I also just noticed in here on the draft, it says that this is only for 180 days unless extended by action of the town council. So it sounds like the town council would then have the power to extend this. I don't know if they can tweak it, but that's another question that I would love to know. So I see Michael and then David and then I see Janet. Michael. Thank you. Three things. First of all, I think this is a very good idea and I think we should move as quickly as we possibly can on it and I think we are doing that and I applaud that. Secondly, I have total confidence in this breast strip and Mr. Mora to make the decisions in lieu of the long deliberations and torturous processes that this board frequently goes through. They do indeed understand what the zoning bylaw says and will not make decisions just for the hell of it. They'll make decisions based on the zoning bylaw and that's fine, I'm perfectly confident that they'll be able to do that very well. Thirdly, while I think this is a great thing that have happened very quickly, I would hate to have see this be used as the precedent for the way in which the planning board and the CRC operates on a permanent basis. Let us please not say that because this worked, this emergency process worked, it is the right process because it is not. Thank you. David. I agree with the comments just expressed by Michael. I'm assuming that substantive comments about the proposed draft zoning bylaw are not relevant right now, but really just moving forward to that June 10 joint hearing and that the time in between is when we might be able to make some suggestions or some express that. So that, but giving the green light for endorsing flexibility to support the recoupment, the revitalization of the town is what's imperative. And then finally, I just wonder, given that the June 3 meeting sounds packed and given that the CRC folks are coming to the June 10 meeting, I wonder whether that presentation might be pushed to be a part of the June 10 meeting rather than being added on to the June 3 meeting. That's a matter of scheduling. And I just put that out as a suggestion, as a possibility in order to condense the June 3 meeting and to make more robust the June 10 meeting. Thank you. May I say something? Sure. I would appreciate hearing any substantive comments now because I think the time that we have to deal with this is very short. So if you do have substantive comments, please let me know. And I will try to work on finding out whether they're legal, appropriate, whatever. But there is time between now and June 10th to make appropriate changes to this. And I wouldn't want us to get to June 10th and then be saying, oh my goodness, if we'd only known that ahead of time, we would have checked with the town council and, so if you have substantive changes that you wanna let me know about, please let me know. May I follow up then? Follow up? Oh, go ahead, David. Christine, you know, these are just thoughts. These are not proposals that are half-baked. Again, I think the goal is, the goal is what I want to achieve. I have, I would like to encourage the reduction of any, of, and this is outside of the planning board. So let me just speak that in any way possible to enlarge the public's pedestrian space to enhance the possibility of social distancing, to encourage greater commercial use of the space while maintaining safe public health parameters, distancing is if there's any way to reduce vehicular traffic in a circumscribed area as suggested by the bid in an earlier presentation, I would encourage that. A car-free pedestrian only zone downtown sounds really attractive to me personally. In terms of the Mattermore within the purview, I think, I have concerns about personal care establishments in enhanced outdoor space because I just don't know what that means. Again, in public health, in terms of public health, I don't know about things flying that may be on to fly. Enough said on that, okay? I think that a third point, the ability to, since this is, these will be decisions that are going to be made quickly as appropriate. I believe that building in an ability to review and update conditions on a regular, ongoing basis would be important not to incur unpredictability or for the business owner, but to be able to respond to all unintended consequences or unintended effects of these temporary measures, that ability. And then finally, and I appreciate you are allowing my long-windedness, the issue about whether after 180 days, a new use becomes a permanent basis. I think that that's an important issue to consider and to wrestle with. However, I think it also could be something of a red herring in that during those 180 days, those 180 days, the new use, the new restaurant or the new establishment that's put into an otherwise vacant space, will have an opportunity during that initial period to prepare its more proper and formal application per the zoning bylaws as they exist prior to adoption, potential adoption of this temporary measure. I hope that that was clear enough. And again, I think that the goal and the effort is what's really important and that all businesses should be given all signals that this would be going forward in order to try to get us back on our feet. Thank you. Thank you. Janet, and then after that is Maria. So I would like to support what people are saying about the need to support our businesses and help the businesses in town get back on their feet. I've already sent an email to Chris with some of my comments, so I'm actually gonna go through them quickly, but one of the things I didn't send to Chris is I understand the need for speed for waiving parking requirements and for outdoor dining, seating arrangements, and on the public way, I could see that as a priority that has to happen very quickly to get to so people can capture summer business when they're able to serve again. On the other hand, I know summer is a slow time for Amherst businesses and there's probably not gonna be a lot of camps and it's probably gonna be slower than normal. So I think that perhaps we'll buy some more time for a slower process for approving new businesses. So I wonder if we can sort of tease out those two issues because it seems like a new business can go through the usual process. And I think the planning board and the ZBA can prioritize these new businesses and expedite their own processes for approval and things like that. So I do have this concern about approving new businesses or new uses and having regrets later. Going to my hit list of changes I'd like to see in the proposed by-law is yes, to put a time limit on all the permits and required them to be renewed. That would give us a chance in six months to go through the usual process, see what's working. Maybe having outdoor dining was really hellish for the toy box or some other business and we can kind of revisit that and how it worked. Maybe the new business, there's something really odd about the way they're operating or it's incongruous, maybe it's a sex toy shop or something. It's not all hopefully just restaurants downtown, I'm not advocating for that kind of business. But I think that requiring a renewal, knowing that if they're complying, it will just go through, would give us time to sort of address problems in a slower way. I would eliminate the 10 day time limit for the inspector to act. I think that's too fast. I think that I trust the building inspector and Christine, our planning director to go as quickly as possible. But 10 days is pretty quick and things can come up, like maybe the fire chief doesn't get back in time, maybe someone takes a vacation and gets sick and also you're required to approve a plan and a change that maybe you don't have support. So I would say maybe a 15 day time limit, knowing that your goal is to go faster. You might get 10 applications after a dining and can't really sort them out in that time. Maybe give the applicants a choice of going through the regular procedures because it might go be faster going through the planning board and then not to create a whole new set of application procedures and requirements. I don't think our procedures for applications are, they're actually seem very clear to me. And I sort of had this Guantanamo Bay issue where they didn't wanna use, when they were doing the people they held there, they didn't wanna use the federal criminal procedures and they didn't wanna use the war crimes people or they didn't wanna use the procedures for war and they made it the third set of procedures and they've been arguing and litigating it ever since. So I thought in a way it'd be faster just to use our current application procedures and you're all familiar with it. And then I had a question about the notice to a butters and it sounds like there's no hearing and so how would a butters or businesses and neighbors know that the application has been made, that they can have some input and then even if they dislike the outcome to appeal? Like how did those notification requirements and participation requirements met in this informal procedure? The other thing I just thought of as Christine was talking is I don't really understand the status legally of an administrative approval versus a special permit and a permit for site plan review. I don't know what if it said, well, this was an administrative approval under a temporary thing, like what's its legal status? Is it different from a regular permit? So those are sort of my hit list, thank you. But I do very much support the need to help these businesses and I know we're all trying ourselves but we're probably not enough people and bringing more people to town with outdoor seating and kind of fun stuff sounds fantastic. Thank you, Maria. Sorry, I thought someone was gonna answer Janet. I think that we should definitely do this expedited process and not go through normal hoops for this period of the social distancing. And I think that as we reduce the social distancing, businesses will be able to figure out how to get their normal sort of plan with the space they have. My questions are more administrative, Chris, for you to ask as you're writing the bylaw, what are the, I know it says the required application and submission requirements are temporarily suspended, but then what is it, is it a hand drawn plan? Is it you can ignore providing lighting or traffic or parking like what is the, I guess, submission? Because if it's something that they are still going through the normal hoops of like hiring a civil or architect or interior designer, or are you actually making the process like a very shortened, yeah, I guess I just, I'm not clear on what the submission requirements are. So maybe if you're drafting that up later, I'll see it, but it just sound like it was like everything was temporarily suspended and I wasn't sure what exactly you and Rob Warner would be reviewing, but I don't need to know the details now, but just to make sure that's clear in the draft. Yeah, in the bylaw that you come up with. Good, thanks. Jack, oh, are you doing right now? Do you all want me to try to answer these questions and concerns now to the extent that I can? I can go back and review the things that Janet asked about and also review what Maria asked about to the extent that I know what the answers are or not. I think that's the point you're saying you only have an extent right now and all this hasn't been ironed out. You're going to various people, you're going to legal counsel, like it's just like a normal article. So I'm treating this like when we used to have pre-town meeting, all the members are giving their questions and their concerns and you're scribbling madly. So we're hoping that when we see the next one come out and when this is presented, because normally there'd be a little bit more time in the presenting, but I'm sure CRC has a lot of the same questions that you all are asking too and town council will probably have the same questions if they're not answered. So this is really good. It's sort of like priming the pump for what Chris and Rob and Paul and everyone's going to have to deal with. So this is good. This is really good to give her this impact and this feedback. So the only hand I see Jack right now, do you have more to add to this Jack? Oh, I'm totally behind expediting provisions that allow businesses, especially the restaurants to be able to capture some fraction of what they would normally be making during this pandemic. But I guess the question I have is we've been talking about downtown. Take a South Amherst example and I'm wondering how businesses, restaurants outside of the downtown would be able to take advantage of this say like a Mission Cantina that has limited space if they're going to keep the social distancing and using their parking lot and then maybe not having enough parking sort of thing. How does this work for the businesses and locations that are outside of the downtown area in concept? Does this work for them, I guess is a question to Chris? I, Chris, I mean, if you want to answer, but if just take it and then maybe he's got a good point that there needs to be some examples. I think when this comes back to us, there needs to be a few examples of how different way, like a few examples of how it would work. So I think that gives everybody like a different view than just reading this, you know, legal memo kind of thing. So maybe what I'll try to do is put together a list of the questions and comments that you've come up with and talk to the building commissioner and try to get back to you with something in writing before June 10th. Now, I didn't watch the CRC meeting, but did they do something similar to this and ask a lot of questions to go be followed up on or? I don't think they asked a lot of questions, but there's been a lot that's been happening in the last 36 hours and I don't remember everything. So I'll go back and review what they asked. I don't know if Janet was there at the CRC meeting. Yeah, I didn't go yesterday, no. Okay, well, then if they didn't ask, well, this is great that you all gave all this feedback and questions to Chris because this is priming and getting ready so that the stuff doesn't come up the last minute when we're trying to improve things. So thank you. I see David and then Janet, do you still have your hand up, Janet? Or no? I can take it, yes. You do. Oh, no, it's gone. David, you wanna come back? I just wanted to respond to Jack's, one of Jack's questions, which I think makes a lot of sense. However, it's not our job. So for the Mission Cantina, what their proposal is, that's their proposal. The, this temporary, this action by the town, if it were to take it, enables them to make the proposal. They make the proposal and then it's authorizing whoever it authorizes. The current draft is the building commissioner and the planning director to review it and condition it, approve it or not. But it's on the, it's on the business to go, hey, for us to try to make this work, given the situation, this is our proposal. You know, that's not on our, I don't think that's on the town's shoulders. It's for the town to go that, okay, let's see how that works. Go for it, you know, save jobs, make money, save jobs. That's just, I just wanted to respond to that one point there. Thank you. Great. And just to remind, like, you know, everyone's got good points going here, but part of this is businesses asking to do business in the public way. So they may propose something that takes up the whole way, but then I am assuming that it will be Chris and Rob and Paul Buckleman who tweak it and sort of negotiate it out and then a final agreement is made. So I think there's gonna be so much of a case by case basis with this. It's gonna be a lot, but at least we're doing our part with this and we'll get this moving and it will come back to us. Chris, I assume we will get like later drafts of this. Is it sort of cooks out before the 10th when we actually have to vote on it? Yep. Okay. I see one more hand, Michael. Yeah, it's important to remember based on Jack and David's comments, this bylaw is not gonna help every business in town. There are some businesses that aren't gonna be able to make use of outside work or public way or any of these other things. Some will, but there may be some that won't and I think we can't worry about and feel bad for those businesses that are in such a constrained physical location that they can't take advantage of this bylaw, but there will be some that can't, I think and we have to acknowledge that. It's so true. This isn't gonna fix everyone. I was talking to one of the hair salonists at Hair by Harlow and was like, oh, could you ever make use of the outdoors or extra space because I was thinking of this. And as they said, they need power for hairdryers which has that blowing stuff, David, that you were talking about, but they need water and they're using chemicals. So this won't really help them, but it might help somebody else. So we might as well try something. So Chris, thank you for fine tuning this and continuing to work on this. And if anybody has more comments, they think of something in the next day, can they send you an email? They need to need the email, yeah. All right, I see Janet has her hand up and then we'll move on. Janet, we cannot hear you. Your mic is off. I can try to. Well, my hand, I kind of raised and it kept on lowering. So I should just say that. I was at a bike store today and there were five people waiting to be served and there were three people. I mean, they made five sales with like two or three sales people just bringing things out. And I began to wonder if a reduction in options actually would facilitate businesses. But I do think it can be done and things can happen outside that usually happen inside. And then obviously space is needed. I feel like this is such an important by-law and I think it's a huge waiver and I wanna really get it right. And so I was hoping that maybe we, I don't know what we've been talking about this schedule and I've kind of lost track of it, but maybe to get more information on the different drafts and the answers to questions and put that on to our next planning board meeting to discuss in a deeper way. Or I just think this is so important. It just seems more important than almost everything on our list. So I don't wanna change the schedule too many times but that's my plea. That's out, Chris. So I just wanted to say that, it's really up to you when you wanna discuss 40R. As far as I'm concerned, 40R can be put on a sort of mid burner. It doesn't need to be on the front burner. I agree. And that is something that you did have on the schedule for June 3rd. So if you wanna drop 40R to a different later date, then you would potentially have more time to talk about this topic on June 3rd. I'm up for that, Chris. If that's all right with others, all we were gonna be doing is just taking some more comments and looking. We're not moving on anything with that. So if that could get pushed a couple of weeks, then we can open up a space to have the latest and greatest of this amendment article come to us and some discussion for questions being answered. And if we're preparing 40R consideration, we could defer a little bit the responses to Chris about the 40R. Yep. All right, so we'll adjust that's agenda, Chris, later. And I see David. I just wanna, again, speak directly to the point. Bicycle stores are considered essential businesses today. Understandably, and in the past three days, I've seen stories in the few publications that I still am stupid enough to read about how if you wanna get a bicycle, you're gonna wait long in line. And so it's creating a kind of panic to get your bicycle stuff. And so it's great that the vice stores getting business and it's great that they're getting the business outside. It's all those other ones that have been shuttered and all the other workers who I think expediting this where we're trying to enable, and that's all. It's great that the bikes stores are getting the business, but there has been these stories the past couple of days and they're essential. And that's all. Thank you. So at this time, I don't see any more hands. So I am gonna move on. And I'm gonna move on to item seven. Are there any ANR subdivisions, Chris? Yes, and then we'll be able to show it to you. There isn't either. It's an interesting situation because it hasn't actually been filed with the town clerk yet, but yeah, we're having a little trouble getting things into our system. It hasn't been filed with the town clerk and it hasn't been sent to Jason Skills Town Engineer. But the idea is it's a property that is Colonial Village and you're all familiar with Colonial Village. So if Pam can get that up on the screen, I think it was one of the last things in our packet. Yeah, there's a map. Can you see that I'm scrolling through the packet? No, I see you, Pam. Okay, here we go again. But that's nice too. Oh, look at Dave. Thank you. Nice of you. All right, let's see. I can hold it up. Oh, geez. It is in their packet. It is, so we all have it. It's one of the last things in your packet and it's essentially Colonial Village owns a lot of property. And they have different parcels. I think they have three or four different parcels. And they're trying to consolidate it into one parcel. But they're also doing a little bit of a land swap with Amir, Amir McChie, who owns property to the north of Colonial Village. There it is, Pam. Okay. I was gonna say, can you see it now? Excellent. So we've put a yellow line around the outside of the proposed parcel. It's a little daunting to try to figure it out. But what I'm asking you to do is to authorize Christine Gray Mullen to sign this as an A&R because yeah, I'm not gonna be able to show it to you in person. If you wanted to look at it in person, you could come and meet me in the parking lot behind Town Hall and I would show you the plan and I'd be happy to do that. But this is the best we can do for now. So you can see all the buildings in Colonial Village. The road that goes sort of slant wise is Belcher Town Road and the road that's at the bottom is Southeast Street. There are, there is at least one parcel. I think it's map 15 C lot 42 that is currently a separate parcel. And that one would be combined into this bigger parcel. You can see a little inset over to the left. So you see map 15 C lot 42 right there. And that is going to be added into the Colonial Village parcel. It's already owned by them but they're just going to put it all together. And then, and this is gonna be a little hard to explain. They're doing that land swap with Amir. They're giving him a little wedge shaped piece up on the left hand side. It says it's called lot two and it's kind of a skinny little piece. So they're gonna give that to Amir. It's in the inset. Can you see lot two over on the left hand side? Yes. Pam, you can maybe see that. And then Amir is giving them lot three. And lot three is the kind of wedge shaped piece down below. Pam, can you put your mouse on lot three there? I haven't even found it yet. So you tell me if I'm hot or... Oh God, how do I... Yeah, oh, little bit down. Oh, here's two, here's three. There you go. All right. I couldn't find it. So I do lot three. You can kind of... And they're just doing a swap, Chris? They're doing a swap. You can see in the yellow, there's a little chunk out. So lot two... Actually, I said it backwards. Lot two is going to Amir. I think I said it backwards. And the wedge shaped piece is coming to Colonial Village. Yeah, there's so much shape piece. Yeah, wedge shaped pieces. Right there with Pam and Esther at our own. Why? Why? I think that a Colonial Village has a desire to... Well, they're gonna do two things. One is very small and the other one is pretty significant. The very small thing is that they're acquiring playground equipment from North Village. North Village, which has been, is going to be vacated and will be demolished and rebuilt. So they're getting some playground equipment from North Village. And in addition, that's the small thing they're gonna do. The big thing they're gonna do is they're going to add buildings to this property here that's surrounded by yellow. And that really hasn't... They've just had a preliminary discussion with us about it. And they will be refining their proposal and then coming back and talking to us. It would be a zoning board of appeals application. And before it goes to the zoning board, you would have an opportunity to review it. But that's what's being thought about here. So again, we don't have any proposal on it yet. I don't have anything in my office about it, but they're talking about doing that. It's actually something that, I would say the town, in the form of Town Hall, would support because it's an existing property that is a non-conforming use. I'm not exactly sure what zoning district this is, but I think it's a residential zoning district. So it's a non-conforming use and they'd be expanding the non-conforming use to add apartment units to a property that's already developed. And that's what our master plan says. Our master plan says that we want to focus development in places that are already developed. So with that, as I said, that's not really what's coming to you tonight. What's coming to you tonight is this proposal to incorporate all of this land into one parcel and do that land swap with Amir. I think it's also a lot four down below. You see the lot four? So I think they're gonna be giving that little sliver of lot four right there. It's just there, yeah. That will also go to Amir. Okay. So questions on this, Janet, I see your hand and Doug, I did see your hand, but it's down there, but Janet. I'm gonna lower my hand. Okay. Okay, so at this point, raise your hand if anyone has a problem with this and doesn't think I should sign this or they have another question. I don't see any hands. So Chris, I think we're good with this. All right, so you and I can make an appointment to meet in the parking lot and get your signature. And yep, sounds good. David, your hand just popped up. My hand did just pop up. Is there any time sensitivity to this? Chris is talking to you now. Is there time sensitivity? Well, I'll tell you what. We received this application. I'm gonna say it was a while ago. It was probably a week or two ago. And technically we have in the old world before COVID-19, we would have had 21 days to review this. So the new world says that deadlines like that are what we call told, meaning that they don't really exist during COVID-19. So if you wanted to wait till June 3rd to endorse this or think about it or whatever, you could probably do that. I did tell Tom Rede that I was gonna bring this before you tonight, but I don't think there's any big rush to do this. Probably two more weeks isn't gonna kill anybody. So. Tom Rede is representing whom? Tom Rede is representing Alan Cohn, who owns the property. Alan owns this property and he owns presidential apartments and he may own other apartment complexes in Amherst. Colonial village, that is. Colonial village, that's right. So this is for colonial village to unite all their properties into one property and do a couple of those tiny little land swaps. David, what would you want Chris to bring back to us two weeks from now as the sort of the game changer for this? I don't know. I'm just thinking about and perplexing on a map here. Well, let me make it a little bit easier for you. What an A&R is, is approval not required. It's a statement made by the planning board that this whatever is being proposed here does not require subdivision approval. So subdivision approval usually involves building a roadway and creating lots off the roadway and putting utility infrastructure in the roadway. And so in my mind, that is not what is being proposed here. So I think the statement that subdivision control law does not apply in this case and subdivision approval is not required is a reasonable statement to make. That's why I'm comfortable with signing it. Michael? I was just gonna ask back or sorry, David, what the issue was? Why he was somewhat reluctant? Problem with it to be honest with you. No, no, no, reluctant because I'm looking at this map with bad light in my third floor office here and I'm trying to and I think that that's it. That's an excellent explanation. How about this? How about if David meets me and outside of the town hall and I show him the map and we talk about it from a distance? No, actually I'm comfortable with it. I just didn't want to with an extra three minutes because I'm slow or 10 minutes because I'm so slow just to be able to think about it and rather than rubber stamp it. But I feel comfortable with it. All right, I do too, knowing in what context it's for. So if David's okay, everyone's good. Chris, we can make a time and I'll sign this. Okay, and I would do wanna hear from the town engineer. Pam's gotta put it into the system. We'll hear from the town engineer so it probably won't get signed until sometime next week. Okay. Okay, with everybody. Yeah. Thank you. Thank you. We'll move on to item eight, upcoming ZBA applications. Pam? Pam, I don't have time to do that. I'm not aware of anything new, Chris. Do we have new? Well, I probably told you all about Elsie Fetterman wanting to convert her one family house to a two family house on long time. Oh, a long time ago. Yeah. I probably told you about Valley CDC coming with 28 units and plenty of village playground and 32 North Prospect Street building a deck. So yeah, you've heard about all those things already. All right, thank you. Item nine, upcoming SPPSPR, SUB applications. Things I've already told you about all about learning and the common school paving. Okay. And item 10 is planning board committee and liaison reports. I'm just going to ask for a show of hands at this time. If there's any hands that want to go up and report something. Yes. Michael. Okay. Go ahead. Oh, there it is. My audience for the design review board. We last week reviewed the Kendrick Park proposal which we've already acted on tonight and approved the change in two signs on the bank North, no, TD bank on and for the community preservation act committee. There is no report. Thank you. I don't see any other hands. So at this time we'll move on. Reportive chair. I don't have anything. Reportive staff. Chris, do you have anything? I don't have anything right now. No. Then I'm just going to cue you about a couple of things. One was, I'll do the easier one first. We had talked the other day, if you could ask, if Pam could set up a doodle poll for the meetings to the summer for the planning board members to expect that to. So, you know, I know a lot of people probably not going away, but some people do still go away. So, and there is the possibility that if you have good Wi-Fi, you could still zoom into the meeting. So it's thinking about that. Can you attend a Zoom meeting because the meetings will still be Zoom through the summer? So thank you, Pam and Chris for sending that out this week. And the second thing Chris was, just Michael during our break had brought up this. The GIS, you had this in our packet and he was just wondering, I know it was a part of your master plan. You know, these are great GIS maps and whether or not, you know, appendices, you started to touch on it. But I assume Ben had been working on these. Yes, Ben was working on them. And I think they're pretty self-explanatory. If you read them, they look sort of daunting when you just glance at them. But if you want me to, I can quickly go through them. And if you have them in your hands, you can look at them. The first page is indicative of the kinds of anomalies that we see where, and he's taking different years of the GIS maps and comparing them to one another. So if you look at the one on the far left, we're looking at Echo Hill, which is exactly where I am right now because that's where I live. So in 1999, Echo Hill was the first the top one, Pam. Yeah, this one right here that you've got. Yep, that's good. Okay. The one on the far left, Echo Hill appeared to be bare like a desert. And Echo Hill wasn't a bare desert in 1999. It had plenty of trees. In fact, I lived here then, but it was shown as residential use. So it was shown as all bare. In the next slide, we have 2005 Mass GIS, just get where it is. Yep, I see. Went to the right of the first one. And that's the 2005 rendition of Echo Hill. And you can also see Jenks Street up there to the north. And it makes it look like all of a sudden, there were the trees grew like mad between 1999 and 2005. And that's obviously not true. So it's showing little pieces of yellow where the houses are. And then the next slide over, 2016, it makes it look like Echo Hill is in the middle of the national forest. And so you can see the problem we have in comparing years of maps. If you compare 1999 to 2016, what is in yellow in 1999 is residential use. And what's in yellow in 2016 is residential use. So you would, under the impression that we had lost a lot of residential use in Amherst, and that we had gained a lot of forest land. Well, the forest land and the residential use occupy the same place. So we have to figure out how to explain this in our master plan update. That the information was characterized differently 20 years ago than it is today. But the place is the same. It just appears completely differently in these maps. So that's a conundrum that we're discussing with the IT department and our new fellow, Ben, who happens to be very knowledgeable about GIS. That just gives you a sense of the kinds of things that we are wrestling with. I think you can review these maps at your leisure. They're not that hard to figure out. The later ones have a table next to them that explains what they're all about. And the next time we talk about the master plan, we can talk about some of these maps and tables. So how's that? Is that good? Thank you. I see Michael's hand up. The reason I asked the question was because I wasn't sure how they related master plan document. Are they supposed to be an appendix to section three or are they gonna be incorporated in section three? Or what exactly is their ultimate use? And also I have a hard time. I don't, I have a pretty decent magnifying glass. And even with that, I can't read the text in the legend on the page. So this is part of a question I have for you. Initially I asked Ben and the IT department to fill me in on the information that's in the land use section of the master plan where it says X number of acres are now agricultural land. And this is an increase of 20% over 1999. I asked him for simple information like that. So in order to get that simple information, he went back and looked at how the information was compiled back when the 2010 master plan came about. And he realized that the information in the appendices was where he had to go to try to figure out how they got that information. So he got really involved in looking at the land use chapter in the appendices and trying to figure it out. So that's where these maps came from. So one of my questions to you is, do you think that people are going to care about updating the appendices? And I'm hoping that you'll say no. And that what is important is the information that we and my staff can glean out of it to put into the update, such as how many acres are currently in conservation? How many acres are currently in residential use? So the numbers that were in the original master plan in the text portion, where we're comparing one thing and another is what we're really interested in. And we don't really care about updating all of those appendices, because I feel like that is a big project. That's probably something that would require the help of a consultant to do. We're probably not, we don't have the staff to really do all of that during this update. So does that, does that answer? Yes, that's exactly what I was thinking. The maps are very interesting as a study of maps, but they don't provide any more information than we would otherwise come from the current map and the information that could be gleaned from the current map. And I think the information in text form for this purpose is much more useful than the information in visual form. Okay, good. That's what I thought you said. And oh, no, I don't see any more hands. Okay, great. Thank you for that, Chris. All right, so at that point, I think we have adjournment. Do I hear a motion to adjourn? So moved. I know someone's gonna second it. Great. So thank you, thank you Amherst Media. Thank you Planning Board for all your time and hard work. We're covering a lot of stuff. So I'll see you on the third. And remember, Chris will be sending out emails with lots of deep things. Thank you. Thank you, Amherst Media and Chris. And thank you, Pam. Thank you, Pam. You're welcome. Good night. Thanks, everybody. Have a great weekend. It's you. Yes. Okay. Hi. Hi. I'm going to end it. Oh, wait, I gotta stop recording. High five. High five. Boom. Boom. Chris. Now we're done recording. All right, Jack, one thing. Remember I said three hours and 15 minutes.