 The appointed hour is 6.30, having been reached. I welcome everybody to this meeting of the Amherst Zoning Board of Appeals. My name is Steve Judge. As chair of the Amherst Zoning Board of Appeals, I call this meeting to order. Pursuant to the Governor Baker's March 12th, 2020, orders suspending certain provisions of the open meeting law, Massachusetts General Laws Chapter 30A, Section 18. And the Governor's March 15th, 2020 order imposing strict limitations on the number of people that may gather in one place. This public hearing of the town of Amherst Zoning Board of Appeals is being conducted via remote participation. No in-person attendance of members of the public will be permitted. But the public can listen to the proceedings by clicking on a link on the town's webpage. In accordance with provisions of Massachusetts General Laws Chapter 40A and Article 10, special permit granting authority of the Amherst Zoning Bylaw. This public meeting has been duly advertised and notice thereof has been posted and mailed to parties at interest. We will begin with a roll call of the regular members of the ZBA who have been in panel for consideration of the items on tonight's agenda. Steve Judge is me, I'm here. Mr. Langsdale. Here. Ms. Omira. Ms. Parks. Here. Mr. Maxfield. Here. And associate ZBA members, Ms. Sharon Waldman. I'm here. Mr. Barrick. Mr. Greeny. Mr. Meadows. Also in attendance is Marine Pollock, Christine Brestrup, and David Wachshevitz. The Zoning Board of Appeals is a quasi-judicial body that operates under the authority of Chapter 40A of the General Laws of the Commonwealth for the purpose of promoting the health, safety, convenience, and general welfare of the inhabitants of the town of Amherst. One of the most important elements of the Amherst Zoning By-law is section 10.38. Specific findings from this section must be made for all of our decisions. All hearings and meetings are open to the public and are recorded by town staff. Each petition heard by the board is distinct and evaluated on its own merits and the board is not ruled by precedent. The procedure is as follows. The petitioner presents the application to the board during the hearing, after which the board will ask questions for clarification or additional information. After the board has completed its questions, the board may seek public input. The public speaks with the permission of the chair. If a member of the public wishes to speak, they should so indicate by using the raised hand function on their screen. The chair with the assistance of the staff will call upon people wishing to speak. When you are recognized, present your name and address to the board for the record. All questions and comments must be addressed to the board. I want to remind applicants, my fellow board members and the public to seek recognition from the chair before speaking. The board will normally hold public hearings where information about the project and input from the public is gathered, followed by public meetings for each. The public meeting portion is when the board deliberates and is generally not an opportunity for public comment. The following is a statutory timeline for ZBA actions on comprehensive permits. Within 40 days from closing of the public hearing, the ZBA must render a decision, denial, approval or approval with conditions based on a majority vote. Within 14 days of its decision, the ZBA must file a copy with the town clerk. And within 20 days from the date that the ZBA decision is filed with the town clerk, the public can appeal the ZBA's decision. I want to review the ways in which the public can be informed about and comment on this application in addition to these public hearings. Residents can sign up to be notified of any additional information recorded by the town concerning this application through the notify me feature on the town website. Copies of all submissions can be found on the town website. Go to the ZBA page, click on the link for 132 North Hampton Road, and that link will bring you to a page which will allow you to navigate all the public information regarding this application. Public comments can be submitted on the 132 North Hampton Road page or an email to marine Pollock planner at Pollock M at amhurstma.gov. Amherst Media will not be broadcasting tonight's hearing, however, check their website for information on when it will be rebarked cast or you can view a recording of this meeting on the town's YouTube channel. Tonight's agenda is as follows, a public hearing to consider ZBA FY 2020-39, Valley Community Development Corporation, 132 North Hampton Road, request a comprehensive permit under Massachusetts General Laws, Chapter 40B to construct a new two and a half story residential multifamily building containing 28 small studio apartments and related common areas on an approximate 88, 100th acre property located at 132 North Hampton Road, map 14C parcel eight, general residence RG and educational ED zoning districts. This meeting is continued from September 10th, 2020. Items on the agenda are as follows, responses from the September 10th questions from the board to the applicant, discussions on the density of housing of the proposed project, the applicant will present site amenities, architectures and layout. We will have a public time for public comment. The board will also continue its compiling list of questions, requests and possible conditions and other items that the ZBA Chair deems appropriate. As always, we will have a public comment period at the end of the meeting. The public may comment on any matter that is not before the board tonight. And of course, any other business not anticipated within the last 48 hours. We have a full agenda and I intend to provide time for public comment. If by nine we have not finished with the presentation and questions for the board, we will dedicate time for public comment at our next meeting on this application in two weeks. Since the September 10th public hearing, the board has received the following submissions. A PowerPoint presentation from the applicant, responding to questions from the board at our last meeting and on other matters. And public comments, an anonymous comment submitted via the town website dated September 11th and a second anonymous comment submitted via the town website dated September 15th. The first item on the agenda is the answers to the questions we asked at our August or at our September 10th meeting. Before we begin, I want to mention something. We received almost 50 page PowerPoint presentation from the applicant this morning. I'm in a position that I can dedicate this my day of the board meeting to reviewing that submission. Several of my fellow board members work and cannot dedicate sufficient time to reviewing the submission if it is presented to us on the day of the public hearing. Our last meeting was two weeks ago and Valley CDC should have submitted their presentation sometime in the last, sometime last week. I understand that Valley CD is a nonprofit organization and this application is a tremendous amount of work but we all need to be able to fulfill our responsibilities to fully review all the information we receive. We are also trying to complete our consideration of this matter by the end of October. So if Valley can't provide the submissions several days in advance of the public meeting, you have to let us know. We have to balance our desire to move forward in a reasonable timeframe and at the same time carry out our responsibilities to the town in a prudent manner. With that being said, Ms. Baker, are you representing Valley today? We'll be starting us off, yes. That'd be great. Just identify yourself for the record. Sure. My name is Laura Baker and I'm the real estate project manager for Valley Community Development Corporation. We're located at 256 Pleasant Street in Northampton and we wanna tender our apology to the board for the late submission of materials. We'll do better next time. Thank you. So we have, your PowerPoint presentation has two answer to our two questions that we submitted from last week's meetings. What I would like to do is deal with each of those separately and then move on to the other items on the agenda. So if you can proceed and deal with the first question which I think dealt with the smoking area. Right. So I don't see an opportunity to share screen yet, Maureen. You don't have that option. Oh, wait a second. It's coming. Sorry, folks. I am not seeing the thing that I need to share. All right. Let me check my Rachel or anyone from your team. Do you see the option to share? All panelists, yeah. I'm checking my settings and panelists can share. I can certainly share my screen. So bear with me. Okay. Thanks a lot. While we're doing that, I do wanna mention that John Whitten who is the outside counsel to the board for this matter has joined us. Nate Malloy has also joined us. He's with the planning department. Okay, whenever you're ready. Okay. Can I forward it or do I need to tell you to do that? Yeah, I'm gonna have to make one in this. Okay. Next slide. So one of the things that we talked at some length about at the last meeting was trying to find an appropriate best case scenario location for a smoking area on the site. And this slide is showing you what we actually covered last time, which was the original proposed location, which is right here. And then the second proposal to have to designate the entire property is smoke free. And we talked a bit about the pros and cons of those two options. So next slide. So on this slide, you'll see a couple of other potential locations. There's location C here and location D here. And I don't know, Rachel, if you can run through the pros and cons of these different spots. Sure. Yeah. Location C is similar to a location that was suggested previously is just outside of the stormwater area, which is outlined in that green outline. It's off the corner of the building. But it does kind of fall within the front yard zone just barely. And one thing that we had been trying to do is keep these supporting structures out of the front yard because that looks more like an institution and not like a residence. But in that corner, we could screen it with some vegetation. Another pro is that it's away from the residential neighbor to the east. And it's away from Amherst College track. The con though is that it's really close to our air intake area. We have our ERV air intake on the front of the facade facing Northampton Road. So that's where our air coming into the building is coming from. And then alternative D was suggested by a member of the community. Again, if we follow the structure, a similar structure to what was proposed before, this would not really look like a residential setting. However, the team got together and brainstormed a little bit. And we think we could provide an alternative seating area with say images in the lower left hand part of the screen that show an arbor that could be planted with vines and a bench of some sort in front of it. That would feel a little bit more residential and garden scale in that location. The pros there is that it might be more fitting with the character of the neighborhood. And it'd be perceived as a garden element. The con is that it's highly visible in the front yard. So let's do the next one. And then we can have more discussion maybe about the different options. And then another alternative would be location E, which is directly across the main entry of the building, but really close to the neighbor and within the setback. The con there obviously being is that they were much closer to the neighbor. And then it is closer to the neighbor and that also someone would have to cross the parking lot to get to the smoking shelter. The pros are that it's not in the front yard. It's back from the face of the building. It's away from the patio area. And it's away from the ERV handling unit. Another location is location F in the rear corner of the property behind the patio. The pros are that it's not within view of Northampton Road at all. And it's away from the residential neighbor to the east. It's away from the ERV intake. However, it's closer to Amherst College track and closer to the parking area for Amherst College. So I was going to make a suggestion that as a way to kind of organize a conversation might be to think about the preferred location without thinking originally or thinking then after that about the style of the structure. So we wouldn't want something in the front yard that looks like a bus shelter. So we would want to modify what that type of structure would look like. But I kind of think that's something we could do once we came to some kind of consensus about what's the best overall location. Then we could design something suitable for that location. And of course we could bring that back to the board as well. So one of the things that Rachel tried to outline on here is distances from different things. So distance to the nearest window, distance to the nearest door. We weren't thinking that distance to the building was necessarily the most critical measure. It seemed like distance to the openings into the building was probably more relevant. And then also the distance to where we have our fresh air intake seemed pretty important to us as well. I guess that's a good way to proceed is to talk about the areas and not spend our time right now on the design of the shelter or the bench. So are there comments from the board on any of the six, five or six potential locations? Mr. Chair? Yep, Mr. Maxwell. Yeah, so again, I'm still very much partial to A. I like A the most. But if any of those other options there, option E, I also like, but kind of on the condition of, I know there was some discussion of, I don't think we ever totally settled the discussion on what's happening with those trees and putting up of a fence. But I know if a fence was going in there, those trees were moving A and then at least eight foot fence was put there, I would also support E. And I'd like to hear from the rest of the board, but one thing I know this will be, voted on in conditions, but I hope we can at least reach a consensus about this tonight. So that way, if we all agree, E is the place, they can come back to us with a design. And then we can all just kind of agree on that. But I'm partial to A and he has an alternative. Like everyone else has to think about that. Other comments? Tammy, I miss Parks. So you were talking about the air intake that C would be close to that air intake, but the feeling is that D is far enough away from that. It seems, I mean, it's a little farther away and it seemed a lot farther away to me, would it, but that would make a difference. The farther away we can get from it, the better. I'm going to ask Tom, if he can just talk for a minute about how high we think those units would be on the face of the building and whether there is an opportunity. We haven't gotten to the stage where we've done final mechanical drawings, but the initial ones place the air intakes here, whether those could be relocated somewhere else. All right. And also, I guess I can't remember exactly why A was not acceptable, was that it was too close to the building in some interpretations. Is that correct that there was a building restriction or am I misunderstanding? There's no restriction per se, but my memory is that there was concern that it was too close to the building and potentially too close to this property line here. All right. I also, I guess I would agree with Dylan that A and E would be my preferred positions. I just want to throw that out there. Any other comments? Mr. Langsdale? Yeah, a couple. A is not conducive because it's only 11 feet from the building and therefore close to three stories of windows which can be opened. And it's right next to the gardening thing. It's six feet away from the gardening. One of the things that could happen since the introduction of benches is that you could move A like nine feet back and put a bench or two there, which would move it 20 feet away, at least 20 feet away from the building and 15 feet away then from the gardening area. E could certainly work again, maybe with just a couple of benches. There's also a place if the air intake cannot be moved, I mean, C would be a great area if the air intake could be moved. However, if it can't be then it's probably too close. There is however another area I think that would work. Excuse me, in the northeastern area, there's a couple of trees there just outside the stormwater area. And there could be a couple of benches put there. And I know that they were talking about keeping things out of the front yard zone. However, one of the pictures that they have provided shows the, oh gosh, I forget the name of the house, the one in Northampton, which has a bench right up against the fence, which is like a foot or two at most away from the sidewalk. If they had a couple of benches under these trees in the front yard zone, they would be further away than that benches at the other house. So I don't see what the objection would be to having benches in the front yard zone since they've already done that in another building. So I would say for me, A is at the moment with the pavilion and everything is not viable. It's too close to the building and to the gardening areas. E, certainly. And then this other area in the front yard zone where there could be a couple of benches. Yes, Mr. Maxfield. And then I'd like to go to Ms. O'Mear if she has a question, if she has a comment. Go ahead, Mr. Maxfield. I'm sorry, I just wasn't entirely clear. This is for Keith Langstail. Where exactly on the front yard zone? Were you pointing to it? And then you said northeastern area, but were you referring to a compass wise or are you... That's west. It's near the parking area. The southwest. No, that's west. No, northwest. Over here, up by the word says Amherst College. I think you mean... This is north, just so you know. So if you look at this compass right here, this is north, so which... Go in, go a little bit west. No, no, not under the stormwater. Now, just down right there. Two trees right there. As it's, I mean, they don't have to be those two trees, whatever they're gonna plant there, but that area could certainly be used. And it's away from everything except the sidewalk, but it's not right up against the sidewalk as the bench is at the other house that they have. Ms. O'Mara, do you have an opinion? I'm listening to Keith's idea and I kinda like that. I don't like E because I'm not sure what's happening with those trees and I don't want the neighbors to have smoke floating their way, even though with Keith's proposal, it could still float their way, but that's a ways up the hill. Yeah. And my opinion is that a modified A, that perhaps moving a little bit farther away would not be bad, it may be able to get consensus around that. D may work, nobody else has mentioned that one. The only problem I see with the new suggestion from Mr. Langsdale is that it's a long ways, or it's not, it's a short ways from the road and it may not be sheltered from the road, but I think that I can go with almost, whatever the majority would vote for on this, I think we're getting into the weeds here. We should solve this, give them some directions tonight, but not, and then hopefully they come back, give them some directions so that they can come back with a design. Mr. Chairman, Matt, if you could comment. So the garden areas which are here and there are some here and there are some here are one of the more fungible elements in terms of where you can put garden beds. So I wouldn't, some things are easier to move around than others. And I think gardening areas are one of the easier things to kind of shift around on a site. I would say we were really trying to stay away from, this is the main outdoor space for residents. And we really didn't want to have this bench be so close to it that if you're a non-smoker and you're outside, you're heavily impacted by other people smoking. I will speak for the abutter here who I assume is on the call, but may not be was very, very concerned about smoke really almost I think on any this side of the property. And then we had neighbors and abutters who use the track who felt like just the combination of smoke and people running was just kind of a bad combination. So I just wanna share with you some of the constraints that we've heard, some of the things that we've been trying to work around. The image that we shared for Sargent House, can you show that Maureen? I think it's the next page is an example of something where we had much less room to work with. Hold on, sorry. It has like a delayed. And what it shows is that the smoking area is actually quite a bit closer than 25 feet to the building because that's what there is. We happen to have, this is a historic district. So we happen to have a historic fence here. And so the bench kind of ended up here. It's actually working really well. And I would say that when people are sitting here and you're driving by, you really don't see them. And even when you're walking by, it's kind of a brief encounter that you have with the smell of smoke. And so it's working pretty well. I would wanna, I hate to put people like on display, smoking in front of a building. So this achieved that. I would wanna achieve the same thing in Amherst where we're not creating any kind of stigma that people are sitting out smoke. Oh, that's the building where people are sitting out smoking. We wanna kind of give some visual buffer between the main road and people when they're out smoking. I think that's all I had to add. So perhaps if I'll propose, not a decision, but I'll propose a direction for you to go. And then I'll see if my fellow board members wanna follow this. It seems like we had several people like a, with Mr. Langdale's modification of moving it a little bit farther away from the building. And if you say you can move the gardening a little bit away from, you can move that away from the smoking area. You haven't impacted the neighbors. You haven't impacted the event. You're not against the track. You're not in the front yard where they are, where they'd be seen by the street. It seems to me that that would be a good option to come back to the board with. I would think that having a second option is also probably helpful to you. But if my board members, fellow board members, feel that that is a good resolution for at least the first option we could indicate that to you. So, Ms. Parks, do you think that's a good idea? All right, there's one. Mr. Langdale, can you live with that? No, I would like the area that I talked about to be also investigated. Go ahead, I'm sorry. Because they've already got this one, the Sargent House, where they put a bench right up against the sidewalk. So, to have a bench or two in this area, it wouldn't be up, first of all, it wouldn't be up against the fence and near the sidewalk. Yes, there would be people smoking in that area, but if you change the vegetation, you can certainly block that. True, very tall trees may not be the way to go. It may be a change of vegetation. But what it does is it takes it completely away from the building, away from the residential neighbors to the north, to the east. If people don't notice or people aren't bothered by it at the Sargent House, when it's right up against the sidewalk, they're not gonna be bothered by it if it's 10 or 15 feet away from the sidewalk. And then the road is wide enough that people driving by wants that. And then anybody on the other side, the butters on the other side, will probably never even know that people are there smoking. It just seems to me that it's a very viable area place to put it so that it's completely away from the building, away from the gardening, away from the patio, away from the butters to the north, to the east, and away from the Amherst College parking lot track, all of it. Mr. Maxfield. Yeah, if I'll say if the butter there has expressed they do not want smoking, especially right on that property line, E is out for me. I definitely support A, even if we just moved it to the other side of the sidewalk, moving it slightly further away, I support that as well. And Ms. O'Mara. I am liking Keith's idea again of creating a barrier with trees or shrubs so that folks are not totally exposed to visibility from the street. I do think there could be plantings there as well. And is this gonna be a covered, enclosed space? So we had originally proposed a simple bench, kind of like the one that you did see at Sergeant House. So what happens when it's raining and snowing? So we had neighbors, people use umbrellas. So when we had neighbors suggest that it should be covered, we added something kind of like that little post in beam pavilion that you've seen images of. That seemed appropriate for the side of the building. It might not read as well right in the front yard. And so that's why we're trying to nail down location because if I was putting something personally, right in the front yard of a very traditional kind of classic looking house, I would want it to fit and I would want it to sit lighter because you don't see pavilions and gazebos and things typically in front yards. It's just, it's atypical. So we would look to do a trellis or just something that would sit more lightly on the property than if it's really kind of pretty well sheltered and tucked over here. So I'm gonna try to end the discussion if we can. I think you've gotten, we've gone from six possibilities to two. I think that's, we're not gonna make a decision tonight. I think we've given you some direction. It'd be helpful if at the next meeting you come back with what you do in A and the new, or I guess we've had seven possibilities, A and the new possibility and see what you can come up with. It's G. Okay, yeah, we can call it G. G. All right. Thank you. I think we can work around with these and bring you something back. Good. Let's move on to the next. The tenant referral on selection process. I'm gonna hand it over to Jane who's gonna talk about this. Good evening, chairman and board members. So... Just identify yourself for the record. It's Lekler. It's Lekler, Valley Community Development, 256 Pleasant Street, Northampton. Thank you. You're welcome. In our previous meeting, we were discussing the selection plan and the procedures for screening criteria and tenant selection. And so, as the first lines here are just repeating, the summary of how we described how an applicant's rental history, credit history, references, interview and follow-up communication are part of how an applicant is assessed or suitability for a site. And then we also discussed that an applicant needs to cooperate with and provide information and documentation to support their eligibility and background check. So during that discussion, the board members had asked about exceptions and types of alternatives or situations that come up during the screening process. So we've collected some information to describe what happens in those situations and some of the regulations around that. Next slide. Thanks. So first, I just wanted to describe the regulatory guidance related to screening criteria that is used in all affordable housing projects that are publicly funded. So the industry resource for this guidance is the HUD Occupancy Handbook, 4350.2. This is a regulatory guide and that guidance will be applied as it is across Valley's properties that are managed by HMR. This guidance is used and applied with the entire tenant selection plan and screening criteria for the proposed property. This is required because we are publicly funded. So HUD's guidance on selection plans and screening criteria is built on three primary aims. First, and the quotes are from 4350.2, the occupancy manual. First, it must be consistent with the purpose of improving housing opportunities. Second, it must be reasonably related to program eligibility. Third, it must address an applicant's ability to perform the obligations of the lease. I will say that it is not at all uncommon when applicants are interested in a property, either at lease up when there is, tends to be a lot of interest in marketing happening and a large group of people interested, but also just ongoing with operations. It's not at all uncommon that applicants will ask property management ahead of time to see if something from their history is gonna be a cause for them to be rejected. And property management in order to be in adherence with fair housing law will not respond to those inquiries as single items. They will encourage people to apply because their application will be viewed as a whole. And because the process that we started to describe last time, and I'm gonna describe a little more tonight, will be used to evaluate them. Next slide. So here's some excerpts. I'm not going to read all of this, but what I wanted to point out were just a few highlighted phrases that are leading up to our description of how exceptions might come up during this process. So these are excerpts from the HUD occupancy handbook. This section is about screening for credit history. And the two things I just wanted to point out here, you have the materials to read every word of it, but examining an applicant's credit history is typically a big part of screening in market rate housing, in affordable housing. It is one piece and only one piece. It is not the primary piece, but we do look at credit history. But a credit check is a part of what's happened, happens as a background check. And while an owner can reject an applicant for poor credit history, a lack of credit history is not sufficient grounds to reject someone. Secondly, the guidance states that the written screening criteria in order to ensure that everyone is treated fairly should be described as general criteria that will be used for distinguishing between an acceptable and unacceptable credit rating. It goes on to say that a perfect credit rating is generally too strict of a standard around credit history. Next slide. Also, it goes on to say that owners managers are the same. I just wanna make sure that that's clear to folks. Managers work for us as agents. Bali is the owner, HMR would be the agent or property manager. So we can look at how far back in overall screening criteria, we would look at an applicant's credit history, but typically we look at more recent history, which is the past three to five years. It is a good practice to look at more current activity rather than older activity, because sometimes people's lives have changed and we're looking for recent evidence of suitability. So then it goes on to have a section on screen for rental history. And rental history, similarly, owners cannot reject an applicant for not having rental history, but can reject an applicant for having poor rental history. Again, as part of the written screening criteria, owners should describe the general criteria they will use for distinguishing acceptable or unacceptable rental history. Next slide. So what I've done here is give an example. The board was looking for examples of exceptions, but I'm just trying to lay the groundwork here to describe how those exceptions are handled. But this would be sample written criteria that if you weren't an applicant, you would see this list of items and you would know that this would be what you would, your screening would involve. So it's a very high level list. It does not go into details of every single time period or the actual bar that is set for each of those. And we'll go on to describe a little bit more about the process and how it supports this type of a list of criteria. Next slide. So that, as I mentioned, that type of list on the first page, usually there can be an application packet with a cover page that will show that criteria right up front. People might have an application package that's two pages of describing to come and get more forms or they might get a 30 page application packet. It depends on the timing and the type of marketing that's being done. But that screening criteria is written and shared with applicants so that they do have transparency about what the criteria is in general. But the key phrase in the HUD occupancy manual is about taking that screening criteria and consistently applying it to all applicants. The key phrase here, and as we continue to talk about a few more examples and regulations is that it really is about a process that trained professionals in property management, working in affordable housing, constantly are going to compliance, screening, leasing, craning to understand the processes to be adherent with fair housing law, which is a number of best practices and it is a professional. There are certifications and there are experience levels that people in property management of affordable housing will have to apply the criteria consistently. Next slide. So here is where I'm gonna describe mitigating circumstances because there really is no way for a property manager or owner to anticipate every possible situation or spell out those details for what types of exceptions any applicant might experience during the screening process. So the written screening criteria and procedures are expected to be distinct enough as was cited in the occupancy handbook. General criteria is what's written. So those criteria should be distinct enough and consistently apply to determine eligibility but also allow for a range of reasonable methods for documenting acceptance or denial. Here's another citation from the mass housing tenant selection plan. This is a reference guide that mass housing published in 2018. And here again, the language is about carrying out the selection of tenants under the tenant selection plan which we've discussed quite a bit in previous meetings but in a manner of consistency with the guidance. The guidance here meaning the HUD manual. So the agent must consider mitigating factors that rebut the presumption that an applicant shall be unable to meet the requirements of tenancy. There's some double negatives in there maybe but hopefully you're following that if there is an item that might cause someone to be denied mitigating factors are allowed into the process. So mitigating factors might include a showing of rehabilitation or rehabilitating efforts and must be balanced against potentially disqualifying behavior or circumstances. Now that can be a number of screening items but what you're looking for is an improvement to offset a negative mark on someone's background check. That could be any aspect of a background check not just credit or rental history that this would be allowed. But in considering both that something that would be a disqualifying factor then you wanna balance that with a mitigating factor so that the agent owner manager can determine if there's a reasonable risk that the applicant would be unable to meet the essential requirements of tenancy. So just to take that more into lay person's terms this is where there's a judgment call and there's a judgment call that is based on consistent practices, a general criteria that's set and then that opportunity for someone to be given a second look of how can you offset maybe a mark on someone's record that you can say this other information helps us to know that there's an improvement in that past behavior that should be given a second look. So in evaluating those mitigating factors to determine those exceptions, property management again utilizes uniform procedures with all applicants to prevent discrimination and avoid any fair housing violations. So this is just a method and a practice that's what's good for one is good for all so you don't cherry pick some people get a pass because I think they look good or I got a really good feeling about their character that's the type of thing that is not allowed in these practices because in the old days and the source of discrimination was exactly that. People would just make that call a judgment call but it would not be always fairly administered. Next slide. So here would be a sample of the type of language that you would see in HMRs. This is pertaining to an existing SRO owned by Valley and managed by HMR. So this again would be the type of language that an applicant would see. They could see this as a part of their process and this is just describing that in the area of credit as an example, an agent can consider an applicant's credit history but that can only be used in lieu of rental history to determine an applicant's ability to pay rent when rental history is not available. Now again, just to keep it simple, rental and credit history are two things that kind of go together. One can offset the other because we're looking at a very particular behavior which is how can we determine whether this applicant appears to be someone who is going to be a good renter and handle the obligations of a lease and rent payment. So that's the reason that the two are looked at together. So when bad credit is the basis for rejection you might have mitigating circumstances such as a representative payer or a reliable third party who would take written responsibility for payment, evidence that poor credit was a result of a disability that is now under control or evidence that credit problems were the result of other circumstances that no longer exist. And there's a reason to believe that an applicant would now pay rent promptly and in full. This could lay out a number of very personal situations and the mitigating circumstances or the balance to these things might be as I think the board was getting at, someone who's coming out of homelessness does not have this history, someone who has maybe struggled in their past but is now working with a case worker or with other support, personal or community support. And there's some evidence that you're seeing a balance of some past behaviors that are now improving or you have something like a representative payer which sometimes there are some rental programs for instance, raft or community action types of programs where someone will come in and say we've been working with this person we're going to help pay their rent for a certain period of time because we believe they have what it takes to stabilize with that kind of assistance. So those are the types of things that you might look at to help balance some of those past behaviors. I think there's another slide. And again, and this is I think maybe I'm hoping building up to kind of the crux of what the board members questions were about which is that mitigating circumstances again are not just a verbal presentation by an applicant these are to be verified. So that's where an applicant might have a story to tell you but then you're going to have to work with them to get some verification of what they're saying. So the individual person, again agent, owner, property manager who is verifying the information they have to corroborate the reason given by the applicant for whatever that unacceptable item is on their record and then indicate a good prospect for lease compliance in the future because the reason for the unacceptable behavior is no longer in effect or is an otherwise under control. So here again, the agent, and this is quoting from HMR's book, HMR screening criteria, the agent will have the right to request information reasonably needed to verify a mitigating circumstance even if such information is of a confidential nature. So that means you could go to medical professionals or other service providers who would provide confidential information to help understand what this person has been doing in their life to improve these circumstances. If the applicant refuses to provide or give access to that type of information then the agent can choose to not consider the application. So this is the place where the applicant needs to cooperate with and understand the need to meet this criteria because we're looking for a consistent set of screening factors that will hopefully prove that folks are gonna be successful in their lease as renters. And I don't know if there's one more slide. There it is, okay? Yeah. So best practices are used during lease up and ongoing rentals. This will be the case at 132 Northampton Road in accordance with fair housing law and with the HUD guidance, the occupancy manual I described earlier. And so just sort of in conclusion, again, just to repeat that the procedure is used for verification of mitigating circumstances just like all of the screening criteria are handled in a way that is consistently applied to all applicants and the goal, the aim is to determine that an applicant it will be able to perform to the obligations of the lease. There's one more excerpt here from the HUD occupancy handbook. And that's just to again, just reiterate the language around mitigating circumstances, extenuating circumstances. You will see both of those phrases used in compliance manuals that we can consider those extenuating circumstances and evaluating the information again as a whole obtained during the screening process to help assist in determining the acceptability of an applicant for tenancy. If the applicant is a person with disabilities, the owner must also consider extenuating circumstances where this would be required as a matter of reasonable accommodation. Not sure how familiar everyone is with reasonable accommodation. I'm not gonna go down that path, but it is a process to make sure that anyone with a disability has a chance to ask for any accommodation that will help them through a process or to have a fair access to any policy of the property. And then finally, any notice of rejection does include specific reasons for a denial, the right to request a reasonable accommodation and the opportunity to appeal. I believe that- Thank you. I have a couple of questions and then I'll open it up to the rest of the board members. So this criteria that's still developed applies to all tenants, including the two units that are associated with the Department of Mental Health. I want to be careful there to just say there can be selection criteria that is attached to a program. One of the early slides described a programmatic aspect of the aims. So there can be some exceptions that then must be fairly administered within that particular program if it only applies to some units. Got it. Okay. And secondly, HMR as your agent will be the one that's, will be the entity that's administering the selection process and not Valley, correct? That is correct. But you at Valley, you are with HMR as your agent, you're responsible for and signing off on what those criteria would be. That is correct. As is DHC, yes. Yep, right. So Valley is responsible for that. So you were talking about the credit history, rental history, the ability to look back to use rental history if credit history was bad and the ability to look at mitigating circumstances. So one thing I'm thinking of and perhaps you can deal with the hypothetical and that would be a helpful way to describe the process and what you go through because it sounds good, but I wanna deal with sort of a hypothetical situation. You've got an individual who became homeless because they couldn't afford their housing and they're applying for one of the 10 units on that list. How do you deal with that? How do you look at, do you look back at their employment history with other histories that they have or I don't understand how you deal with that issue but the reason that they are needing help is because they couldn't afford their rental and they got evicted. That's right, that's right. So I think the most obvious way that you can make a case for a person in that situation is if they're coming into a project-based subsidy or they're going to have a voucher, they've now changed from a circumstance where maybe they were paying $1,800 a month for rent which they could not afford and now they're going to be paying 30% of whatever their current income is. I kind of fumbled with that in a previous meeting of trying to describe that but that would be an obvious way to say that they maybe didn't have enough income to pay 1,800 but 30% of their income, that would work. That in itself would be a programmatic way of saying that is addressing the mitigating circumstance becomes the presence of a voucher or subsidy. Another way you could do it would be to say, let's say someone's coming and they are gonna pay rent at an amount that, again, that sort of bar, if you're not on a subsidized either project-based or a voucher-based subsidy and you are looking at enough income to support the fact that you can pay your rent, you have to pass that bar in that case. So we would not rent a unit to someone who does not have the income to pay full rent on it. If it's $900, we need to be able to prove that the income is present or that some other form of assistance. Like I said, the, I can't remember the term there, the representative, like a- Pay representative, yep. Yeah, so those would be two examples of it. I think there what you would be looking at is they would have an unfavorable rental history. They might also have an unfavorable credit history. And so you might end up rejecting them for that reason. So I don't want to have the, I don't want it to come across as though every possible attempt is made to make every possible applicant, find a mitigating circumstance. It's those applicants who actually have them and then you can verify some sort of an offset or balance. Okay. On page six of the handout, the title is referral and selection process continued. You referenced the tenant selection plan. When is that finalized? What you've given us tonight are general, six general principles, that's helpful. But when do you finalize the tenant selection plan that you'll be used by Valley, or you use by HMR, your plan used by HMR to actually select the tenants? So in my experience, what is typical is that as in the case with Valley and this project, a draft tenant selection plan is proposed with the original application. So that is what the group has seen with the PEL, that that draft is based on current practices, a similar property, but until all of the programs are finalized and you have the entire deal configured, you can't finalize a tenant selection plan. I want to make the distinction that a tenant selection plan is the overall description of the program and the property, whereas the tenant screening is the piece that's about background screening. So there is that difference. The screening is a part of a tenant selection plan. So this would be finalized at the time that all funding sources were in place well before lease up happened. DHCD as the lender and overseeing institution on this would be the ones to make sure that it all fell in place with fair housing law and good practices. So would that be done? Just one note is that this, for example, if a community wants local preference, that becomes a kind of key ingredient in a tenant selection plan. So we need to know all of those characteristics before we can get to the final version of it. Right. So I guess I need to go back to the PEL and look for something that has more detail than the six criteria that you listed in the PowerPoint tonight. I had just haven't done that. I didn't realize it was there. There's something more detail in the PEL, is that right? More detailed in what regard? Well, then the six criteria that you had identified earlier in the presentation. Let's see, it would be on sample written criteria. Well, though it's eight, but there are eight written criteria. No, it's a good question. And I think it's a good point of clarity here to say that that type of written criteria is the general criteria that is referred to in the HUD occupancy manual. So you won't necessarily see more detail than that. What you will have are the consistent practices to back it up. That type of a set of eight criteria, plus practices that say we will go through these procedures and gather information if we is needed to verify an extenuating circumstance. That is what's done on a case by case basis. So I wanna make sure that no one's looking for anything that lays out this equals that or this balances that or particular types of exceptions. There's just too many to enumerate. And one last question then I'll turn it up to everybody else. So when will the town see the finalized, the most detailed document that you are going to provide? Is it before buildings occupancy is granted? Is it before construction starts? Is it before lease up? And then it's almost too late for us to review it. So when will the town see that? Go ahead Laura. So it's commonplace that in the Comperment decision there are checkpoints to return like with final architectural plans, something like a final lottery process, final tenant selection plan. So it's something that you can write into your conditions. We usually end up having a final version when it's called construction closing. So it's something that happens just before we break ground is the point when we've vetted that full plan through the Department of Housing and Community Development. It's one of the items on our closing checklist that has to be done. Okay. Great. I'll open it up to questions from other members of the board. Mr. Maxfield. Thank you, Mr. Chair. So one of the things I'm thinking about here was I'll just give kind of a brief example. I know a couple of years back I'd been laid off from my job and I was collecting unemployment. And while I was doing that, I'd considered working while collecting unemployment but I would have then been eligible to make unemployment and would have essentially made less money by working. So it kind of created an incentive for me to not work. I wondered something like this where if you accept somebody in there, they're on some sort of voucher program and they're paying 30% of their income. What would happen if they became ineligible for the voucher program? We've already signed a lease with them. They're already there. They're paying 30%. What happens if they are no longer eligible for a voucher program and say it comes time for renewal of the lease? Do they lose their ability to continue living there paying 30% of their income? What happens to that person? It can happen, but let me give you the two scenarios. So first of all, to clarify that a project-based subsidy stays with a unit and does not leave a unit. So in that case, a resident would not lose their subsidy. They might not be performing to their lease. They might not be performing to paying their 30% of the income, in which case that could lead to the action that would be an eviction because they're not paying their portion of the rent. If a person had their own voucher, it's rare, but it does happen that if a resident who has a mobile voucher does something wrong, that can be damaging their unit. It can be a chronic housekeeping issue. It can be something that they've shown an inability to be successful at their responsibilities as a voucher holder, then a housing authority could take that voucher away. And when that happens, I have seen households that are then unable to pay rent. They typically then work with a caseworker or a service provider to find the next best option. They might wanna relocate to a property that has project-based, but they may or may not be able to do that. I'm not gonna say that we wouldn't do everything we could to keep that person housed, but I'm not gonna say that I've not seen a person like that lose their housing. So can I add something? If your income fluctuates, so you have a project-based voucher because your income is below a certain level. If your income goes down, your share of rent goes down. Go and you say, I have less money, I'm unemployed, I now I only have unemployment and they reduce your rent payment. If your income goes up to the point where you're over 30% AMI, you may gradually increase your proportion of rent until you're basically paying the same rent as everybody else, but you're not gonna be evicted from that unit because you are succeeding and making more money, but your subsidy component might be zero if your income, and we have had that happen with people. They get established, they start earning more, they work some overtime, and they're still in a voucher unit, but they don't have a subsidy component anymore. But if they then lose that job, they have the safety net of being able to go back again and say, my income changed again. And people's incomes these days, especially these days, but even before the pandemic are very fluid, they really are moving up and down for people who are kind of living on the margins. Mr. Maxfield, follow up? Yeah, just to follow up on that. So maybe it's been explained, and I'm just kind of missing it, the voucher program, so you let somebody in one of those 10 units, the 30%, who's paying you this voucher exactly? So we're proposing, there are two main voucher programs. Section eight is the federal one and MRVP is the state one. These are proposed to be state vouchers. So the State Department of Housing and Community Development is, they usually have a local vendor like Wayfinders. They're paying the landlord, all of the, they compensate the landlord for any rent that you're missing because your tenant's only paying 30% of their income. So it's a cost share. Okay, and what would cause somebody to become ineligible? Do you have a case where somebody who might become ineligible for that voucher while still not making enough money to make up that difference? Is that ever a case that could come up? Yeah, but it probably wouldn't be a financial case. So the voucher really deals with someone's financial and economic situation. So if they were violating the lease in some other way, they could still be evicted and therefore lose their voucher. Yeah, I can see many reasons. I only am talking about, I guess, eviction for nonpayment. So they pay 30% and then this voucher program makes up the rest of it. Right, if they don't pay their 30%, if they have it but they don't pay it, they could be evicted. But let's just say somebody's getting, $600 a month, let's take that as the, they're gonna give you $200 in this voucher program. We'll give you the rest of it. Any case where this person's, their income wouldn't change. They're making $600 a month. Every month that doesn't change. Could something happen that could cause them to lose their voucher that has nothing to do with being an unruly tenant or violating the terms of the lease? What happens if that person loses their voucher? Is that possible? How does that happen? And what do you guys do if they no longer have this voucher? Right, it doesn't typically happen. So I can't say never, never because we all live in a world where state and federal funds are subject to appropriation. So typically the vouchers come in maybe five-year contracts and then they get renewed every five years. So if there were a cataclysmic failure at HUD or at the state level and they said we don't have money for these vouchers, we'd all, I mean, this question has come up before in this, from this board. It's, it would be an extreme situation that we haven't seen before but it wouldn't be a fault of the tenants that they couldn't pay it. We still have to serve by the deed restriction that we have, we still have to serve people who are 30% AMI. So it would be a very challenging time, I think for landlords and tenants if our safety net of vouchers failed. And I would go one step further even in that to say that the voucher program project-based mobile, the MRVPs Laura is describing about, these are precious commodities that come out of the HUD budget that has been cut extremely over the years. They've become more and more precious. And so for that reason, the understanding that bipartisan anyone understands you cut down voucher programs you actually have social pandemonium. I mean, you have massive homelessness if there's not an ability for people to have that type of subsidy. So as Laura said, it's not happened before. And, you know, we live in these uncertain times but it's not one of the first things that anybody is gonna send back in as any of the mobile or project-based subsidies. I guess, last follow-up in this and I'll yield to anybody else who has questions here on this. I just really want to understand this process because I think it very much could be a possibility that we see more federal funding of HUD getting cut. I worry, let's say the extreme kind of happens there. We do see deep cuts and we do see the federal government not being able to honor that voucher. So now you have somebody in there under the 30% AMI $600 a month, they're paying you $200, but now you're no longer getting the voucher from either the state or the federal government. What happens to that person? Would they then be evicted because the funding fell through? Is that now on them? Nothing's changed for them financially. Can, will they no longer be supported? Laura, you want me to go first? Sure. I think it's a very interesting question. I think what you have to understand is that there's a business model at that point. There's a business model for rental units that exist. So we're just going to say the hypothetical here is a project-based subsidy goes away so a number of units in that project no longer get that subsidy. So now you have a business model that is saying we would like to run this property well with the amount of rent it takes to run this property well. All of those residents just lost their vouchers. This is a horrible shame and we need to displace them because in order to run this property well we're going to need to collect more rent. And we would then work with, if it were Valley in place and that were a horrible situation we never want to face we would work with people to help find a different location for people to live if they were not able to pay their rent. Some of them might figure out how to pay their rent. Some of them might, you know maybe they might do that above board. They might do that, you know in a way that they've got a friend staying over that we don't know about a bunch of things could happen at that point that they would come up with their rent. So that could be the scenario. The other scenario would be the types of housing that existed in the past and that do still exist around shelters where you would have a very mission-based person try to figure out how to subsidize that property in another way to continue housing those same residents and somehow replace that subsidy. In the past, those have been maybe faith-based organizations they've been very, what do I want to say tenaciously dedicated organizations who have wanted to house people at any cost create shelter but some of those conditions were not good conditions. So the models that we have for this business now are good quality housing with enough income to sustain good quality housing in perpetuity because of the government programs that support it. It's an interesting philosophical conversation, no doubt. Yeah, I think I could get into the weeds on this for the rest of this meeting. So I'll yield the floor for now, thank you. Maybe we'll chat one day a little more, Dylan, about it. Are there other questions from board members regarding the selection process? I have one, so when do you apply these selection criteria? Is it to get on the list or is it if you're already on the list then to select people from that list to be able to select them as potential renters? So is everybody on the list, do you go through the selection process to get on your list for the housing or is it done after the list is created and you start picking the names of the lucky winners so to speak, the lottery, you pick the names of lucky winners and then it's applied? I can answer that, it's a little bit of both. So when we do a lottery, we try to get enough basic information that we believe that people are eligible, but we do the harder look if they're coming to the top of the list. When people apply to a property that has 100 people already on a wait list, they're gonna do a really simple what we call a pre-application because it's just not humane to make people do a long application to get at the bottom of the waiting list and by the time they come to the top their circumstances have changed. So it's a little bit of both of trying to get just enough but then do the really hard look when someone's actually gonna be offered a unit. So the goal is to have a reasonable expectation if you're on the list, you meet the basic criteria and then at selection time, you dig down. You do, and time may have passed and your income may have changed and again, people's income is pretty fluid. Okay. Mr. Chair, just a real quick followup there would just be to say that that is the reason I wanted to include that the transparency piece of the selection criteria, we don't want people being disappointed. If there's a way that they see selection criteria, some people will look at that, we hope they would still apply if they had a chance but we would want them to know that. We wouldn't wanna hide that from people and have them be surprised later. So applicants. Thank you. Mr. Maxwell, you had your hand raised. Yes, I just have one more question here because even where I'm working on this and really going step by step with the process, I'm not 100% sure. I guess if you just give me kind of an example here where there's not using anyone's names but I know of some homeless folks in town here who when I see them as this process is going on, I might say, hey, there's a supportable housing going on, you should apply. I'm talking to them out in the center. Where would I walk them to to start the actual process of where do they file the paperwork? How do they get their name in the lottery? What would really just actually happen day to day try to get someone in there? What would I do? To try to connect them with the property like at the time of Lisa? Yeah, if I just said, hey, I'm aware of this, you should apply for it. Where would I take them? Where would I send them to talk to? What's just kind of a general example? What do you think that process? I will give you an example for Sergeant House because that has homeless units and it just leased up. So we did marketing for that and we sent information to all the shelters. We saw places like Amherst Community Connections. My God, I think they felt like 100 applications for people. So that I would say is if I saw someone on the street, Ian Amherst, I would say just go there. They have the, they'll print things, they'll copy things, they'll help you do it. Craig Stores did the same thing, Elliott Homeless Services did the same thing. Sometimes people show up at our doorstep in Northampton and we help them fill out applications. So there's numerous points of entry. The applications would be on our website, but of course not everybody has computer, printer, but in specifically in downtown Amherst, you have two locations where people can walk in and get help with an application like this and we will make sure they have these applications available. Fantastic, thank you. Okay. Mr. Maxfield, I would just also include in response to your question that we do make sure that we anticipate reasonable accommodations. So as Laura was just talking about, those locations would have paper applications available so that people could see this criteria without having to go to a website. The other piece that I just wanna remind the entire board, the critical piece of the, one, another critical piece of the tenant selection plan is the affirmative fair housing marketing plan where we are required to do outreach to reach as many people as we can to have a good diverse population aware of the opportunity. Thank you. Are there any other questions about the tenant selection plan? And there are not, we can go on to the two subjects that we were gonna discuss today, but I don't wanna leave this with anybody still having a question that they didn't get the opportunity to ask. Okay, thank you very much for answering those questions. The next item on the discussion is the density of the proposed project. And I understand that Valley is going to speak directly to that. Yeah, I'm gonna pick it up from here. So much of this has already been presented to the board. So it'll be a little bit of a rehash. So one thing to realize about affordable housing is it's very often created at a higher density than surrounding uses. And this project is no exception. Because in this particular example, each unit is really small and intended for a single person. We did a comparison early on of the density of proposed development with the density of bedrooms and other properties that were along North Hampton Road. And we saw a range of density of 1.21 bedrooms per acre to a high of 62.9 bedrooms per acre with a median of 10.56 bedrooms per acre. The proposed development is 32 bedrooms per acre. There is a six unit rental condominium almost right across the street that has 14 bedrooms. And so because they're apartments and not just single tiny studio units, likely the occupancy in a typical multi-family apartment building might be 14 to 20 persons. So we're really just putting this out because 28 units, if they were three or four bedroom units, would be a very different animal than 28 really small studio units. The comparable that we think is more relevant is the number of bedrooms. Next slide. So we are primarily located in the RG zone. This particular parcel or lot, it's composed of two parcels, has sufficient area to accommodate seven townhouse or apartment style units. Townhouses and apartments are allowed in RG with a special permit. In RG, the minimum basic lot area is 12,000 square feet and each additional unit in an apartment building requires an added 4,000 square feet. And both of these dimensional requirements can be modified through special permit. So you can apply for a special permit to do an apartment building and you can ask for flexibility in these lot size requirements. The lot size of the property at this location is a little over 37,000 square feet. So just doing the math, the first unit requires 12,000 and the balance would be 4,000 and that leads us to our seven townhouses or apartments without asking for any dimensional modifications as to the required area. So if we built seven units and there were three or four bedroom units, the property would likely house at least 28 residents and have a similar density of occupancy as the proposed development. According to the Amazonian bylaw, up to four unrelated individuals can live in one dwelling unit and there's no, I don't think there's any limit on a group family, group of related persons. Seven apartments would require two parking spaces per unit or 14 parking spaces in total. And this is not to say that this is the same as a seven unit building with multiple apartments. It's just kind of trying to provide some comparisons with things that are already kind of allowed within the zoning bylaw. Next slide. So when we first looked at acquiring this parcel before we purchased it, we looked at what was buildable on this property. We acknowledged that the immediately surrounding properties have fewer units than the proposed development. We hired an architect, the original architect Kathy Ford to do what's called a fit test to determine how many units could be constructed on the site. And I'm gonna show you those slides in a second. Given the site size and the absence of unbuildable areas, the availability of public water and sewer, the fit test showed that as many as 50 or more small studio units could be constructed at the site were kind of built out to its maximum potential. So sometimes you get a site that is larger but it has wetlands or extreme slope or other things that mean that your buildable area is really quite a bit smaller than your total lot size. In our case, there really aren't any unbuildable areas on this particular person. Because the size of a 50 plus unit building felt out of proportion, not so much the units, but the actual physical size, we selected a smaller build out of 28 units with an overall building square footage and number of bedrooms closer to the neighboring properties, still higher but closer. And again, as we've talked about, what's the gross square footage of this building, compared to our immediate neighbors, we're kind of in the middle of a larger building, the field house, and then a little bit smaller building, the Victorian that's next to us. Next slide. So these, again, these we've showed before, but these were early, the early very first fit test that we did. This was a reuse of the original house with some units added, and a two-story and a three-story option were considered. Next slide. This, again, was a reuse of the original house with more units on it, and it's actually too small for me to read, but I think the largest number of units here is, I don't know, 45 or 50 units for a three-story building, which is allowed under the zoning bylaw. And then the third one was, we really kind of started to maximize and built up into this front lawn area. At only a two-story building, we could get a significant number of units on the property. And again, these are just point of comparison, kind of general discussion of density items. Next slide. So one thing we're thinking a lot about these days is making eco-friendly housing. So small housing units built at high density are more eco-friendly. So small units in a highly energy-efficient, compact, dense configuration are desirable from the perspective of energy use per person. The dense units can serve land area and allow for more open green space. Nationally planning policies shifting to favor denser multi-family development. And there are even some cities and towns no longer allowing detached single-family home construction because this type of housing is associated with the highest level of energy use per person. So the proposed development represents a highly energy-efficient way to provide safe, affordable, adequate housing for 28 single-person households. Next slide. Housing density in an area of high property costs. So we find that there's an inverse relationship between the cost of property and housing density. So the more expensive a housing market is, the greater the financial pressure is for higher density. Amherst, we could provide data, but I think you know it as well from your own experience as being one of the most expensive property markets in the Pioneer Valley, which creates some market pressure toward higher density. And this is exponentially increased, I would say, for affordable housing, which has limited resources for property acquisition. So we typically look to spend between $0 and $15,000 per unit for acquisition costs. And we've often developed properties provided by municipalities for a dollar or for zero. So for example, Valley built 11 units, it's called Valley Main Street, that was a donation from the Amherst Housing Authority as an example. So we didn't pay anything for the cost of the property. The current property, at 132,000 of Hampton Road, has a fixed acquisition cost of $14,553 per unit if we build 28 units. Greatly reducing this density would drive the acquisition cost beyond reach for an affordable housing use. Next slide. I think that's it on density. So I'll pause here and see if people have questions or comments. I think what the key factor here is that regardless of the zoning bylaw and the ability and how it restricts the number of units and the number of people that can be in this property, the comprehensive permit process allows us to waive those things and those restrictions. And the real question for this body, it seems to me, and I'm speaking mostly to my fellow members, real question for our board is whether this development with this number of units, this density is appropriate in the area, meets the master plan, meets the needs of the community and is appropriately situated there. I think that's the real issue. It isn't so, in my opinion, it's not so much about whether the zoning law permits this or would allow it under a special permit. Those aren't the issues when we're dealing with a comprehensive permit. We have the ability to waive those restrictions if we believe that this project meets the needs of the community and it's consistent with our master plan and consistent with the area. And that's the judgment we have to make. Are there any questions about density? I don't want to cut that off. That has been an issue, but it looks like there's not a question on it. So we'll move on to amenities, architecture, and site layout. Sure, this is- I understand that you're gonna present on this as well. Well, I'll be partly. This is kind of a broad category. We weren't exactly sure what was of interest. We feel like we've had a lot of discussion about the site plan and the site amenities. So I just wanted to just share the current site plan and run quickly through it. If I can, just for a second. I mean, some of the questions we've pushed back some questions from board members on these issues. And so that's the appropriate time. And that's the reason we wanted you to speak now. It's things like the bike rack, what the outdoors are gonna look like. People may have some more questions about landscaping. I think we've gone through that, but they may. So it's the time for our members to ask questions. Generally about the architecture, the design, the layout. Okay? Okay. So we thought we'd start with the site plan. The one change that we definitely would like to make from the original site plan that came in is down here. Simply reorienting the bike rack, it would be the same size and appearance as the drawings that you've seen before. This came out of our discussion about snow storage and just allowing us to maximize this little kind of trapezoid here for snow storage by shifting this location. As we look more closely at the smoking area choices, that could also impact the layout of the site in hopefully some pretty minor ways. We have essentially a double wide, a two-way driveway coming in. As we've talked about, we have 16 parking spaces. This is the area for vans to drop off and pick up. We have a dumpster area here that's fully surrounded by a cedar fence with gates that would open. We have a turnaround for a packing truck to come in and smaller emergency vehicles to be able to turn around. We have a small shed here for miscellaneous yard equipment and gardening supplies. On the exterior of the building, we've noted locations where we think condensers will be located for the heating equipment. We do have this outdoor patio space that's connected to the common room on the ground level. We're showing some tables and chairs. We're showing a couple of movable, kind of large gardening pots. When you come over here, we show another suggested area for gardening as well as there's one back here. We've talked about the fact that we expect all of the walkways to be fully handicapped accessible. We won't need any ramps to get into the building. This main walkway will be concrete and these smaller walkways will be kind of a recycled rubber type of material. We did have a recommendation that came from the accessibility committee to actually not use brick on this patio, but to use something more like a poured concrete that wouldn't heave over time or have a little grooves in it that someone's cane might get stuck in. I think that we want to follow that advice and do some kind of maybe a concrete with a stamped pattern and a color. We have talked quite a bit about landscaping. Happy to go back and talk some more about that if people would like. What we have proposed, and I know that the board went back and forth a little bit on its opinions about this, is the removal of the row of evergreens that are currently here, plantings on either side of a new eight foot high cedar fence that would travel from back here all the way around to here. And I suspect if we end up with a smoking area here, we might want to do a little corner fence or something here, but I don't know yet. We would return to you with ideas about that. Anything else you wanted to add, Rachel? You're muted. No, that was a great. Laura, thank you. Miss Luffler, we just give your name and for the record, please. And address. I'm Rachel Luffler, principal at Berkshire Design Group for Allen Place, Northampton. Thank you. It's odd that your, your introduction of yourself is longer than your comment, but we need to do it for the record. She can talk more if you want. No, that's fine. She has, it was a really good statement right there. Thank you. Both your identification and your substantive statements. Thank you. All right. So let's move on. Architecture plans. Oh, for God, I put these in. So wanted to give you something new to look at because we've looked a lot at the building. And these are actually the photos that we took before the building was designed. So. I'm going to show you a little bit of what we've called. So these are houses. This one happens to be right across the street. Houses in Amherst and do the next one. Another house and nearby in Amherst and a third house nearby in Amherst. And you can see the scale of this house is, you know, you're looking at the two full stories. We're looking at these kind of steep roofs that are broken up with gables. We're looking at some porch elements. Next slide. I took these photos early on because it, to me, was a great example of a building that's fairly massive. I mean, this is a large structure. Probably has, you know, maybe have 30 dorm rooms in it on the Smith college campus, but it has this nice residential feeling to it. And that was important to us. Next slide. Same with this one. I was looking at how the massing, you know, we picked up this idea in our plan of having, you know, the first round floor level be a different type of material, exterior material to kind of break up the massing again, of a fairly large structure. Again, using bump outs and different kinds of roof lines to do that. Next slide. So again, something new to look at. When we were going to reuse the original little house that's there, the cape. This was the set of plans that were originally developed. And you can see many of those themes from the photographs showing here, you know, lots of kind of different roof angles, very traditional pitch to the roofs. Again, a different type of exterior material here on the, on the bottom level. Next slide. Then the architect decided to retire and we brought a new architect in. And that architect strongly recommended demolition of the existing house, which I think was a very smart decision, although sometimes a little sad to take things down. It improves the handicapped accessibility is probably more cost effective to build. So this was their first iteration of what they thought could be an efficient building of the same. It's actually the same floor plan as the building that we ended up with. Next slide. These are more looks at that. It's a very modern contemporary building. I know there's a number of these that are actually in Amherst being built now. Next slide. And the next one. We decided the owners group decided that we really wanted, we didn't want to Uber modern looking building at this location. And people may have different opinions about that. We wanted something that was much more similar to the buildings that were around it and gave kind of that traditional New England flavor. So next slide. So then we kind of morphed into this, which started to pick up again, some of these nice gables that you see in the, the inspiration photos, you know, the windows are a more traditional style. But it's, but it's kind of plain and boxy still. Next slide. You're going. And so then you. So then you come to what was the set that was proposed for the zoning board to consider where, you know, you can see that we're picking up some more details. We actually have some more detailed. Elevations to go through with you. This is just kind of the, these are the renderings to see how it sits on the land. Next slide. And I'm going to let Tom talk through some of the features of. The building design as it was presented with zoning application. Thanks, Laura. I'm Tom Chalmers from Austin design. I live in Gil, Massachusetts. So the, the, those, um, the first renderings that we did with the, the modern did not go over very well as, as Laura mentioned, but it puts, they're useful to put in perspective. What, you know, what we're proposing, which is radically different than that, but much more consistent with what is, what's in the neighborhood and in the, in the general area. So the features that really carry on that on the building are. The overall massing, which is trying to. Break up while it's a large building. We make an effort to break it up into, into smaller pieces that are articulated through the roof. So the, the, the various bays that carry up the, the end bay facing the front bay facing the street. And then the series of bays along the sides are all about the same proportion. And as those rise, they're all about the same proportion. So and so that's a significant change in the way that we started into Gable dormers coming off the main Gable roof. Um, the roof pitch is a 1012, which is pretty consistent with most of the, of the similar kinds of buildings in the area. We've. Again, the windows are very similar to over one windows. design that was kind of presented plainly what's really missing there and what's in the new one which brings out a kind of richness and depth the character is thicker wider trim bands both on cornerboards freeze along the roof water table at the base window trim kind of fattening that up to give us sort of like a little bit of flour added into the soup clabbered siding which is very very traditional and then the stone band that that goes around the base we had a comment earlier probably one of the initial meetings about the rendering and the proportion of the stone base to the rest of the building do can we move on to another slide I'm not sure if you have yeah do you have the do you have the exterior elevations on this is the renderings no I just have these guys yeah okay so we we also said these are rendering some model that we did we did work up flat on exterior elevations based on the drawing file and the the position of the stone band to the siding we we modified it's quite different in that I can if you'd like to take if that's a something you'd like to look at in detail I can I could share the screen I could bring those drawings yeah can you I would like to see that yeah bring those so let me get into here right piece okay can you see that plan on my screen yes yeah okay so these are the floor plans but let me scroll down here so here's the the roof plan this is what I was talking about by having the bays carry up to the top it results in a in breaking up the volume but this is I think these drawings are together yes so this is this is the this is from the sketch up model that we had and this this area in here the sort of proportion between the base and the windows was was the question we have this was developed so that we're in the line drawing of the CAD program and we we brought that base stone base up more reflective of the change in floor level so pretty much this band is along the first floor and that reduces this this massive area in here that was shown on that other model is not there anymore so I think this this this to me this looks quite a bit better this band works out well with the porch roof this is the street side facade again these are front on elevation so that you don't you know these built these sections on the back of are very far away but that's the I can so if we scroll back and forth that's how this one was and then we worked on it and in the other drawing came up with this we have not yet gotten back to revising the other model to reflect this change in banjo so this was a suggestion that came from the planning board the planning board invited us to come in and do a presentation to them and then they wrote a letter of support to the zoning board of appeals that had a few comments in it and one of them was you know kind of correcting this you know this issue of proportion we thought it was a good comment so we will be integrating that into the plans as we move forward yeah I mean really where we are now I think you know the design at this phase is really it's a it's a process and a lot of drawings the drawings are not fully finished so they're not fully consistent so there are things on on for instance on this drawing we have so we've worked out a little bit more on how we would like to see this heavy band work here but on the other one we have more that's missing that character that we haven't put that on there but this is sort of the overall massing is more the way we like it in the strong that's most of what we wanted to say about you know how we got to this particular the building that looks like it does so I have a couple of questions thank you for your presentation I have a couple of quick questions number one when I know under the comprehensive permit process we don't need to see build ready drawings at this stage but I'm assuming that that those have to be provided before you get a building permit you have to provide it the town correct it's up to you to decide what I've seen most often is that yes the building permit becomes the trigger that you can't get a building permit without back to the zoning board they review the final plans and bless them yes okay so I want to make sure that's your understanding as well as mine yeah that's my experience secondly at that time we'll know more about materials but on the exterior of the house are you looking at clappers are you looking at wood what what kind of material are you look and what is the the stone below is it brick is it is it you know what is I know these aren't final but what's your thought process on that so our thought process we almost never use wooden clappers we tend to use they're called hardy panel they're a cementation yeah they look you can paint them you can get them in colors that are pre-painted but they're incredibly durable so we would likely but they do look exactly pretty much like you can get them with a texture without a texture and then where we have some trim elements like we might use some shakes somewhere again they would also be of that same material for the trim trim work itself we tend to use either cementation trim or kind of a solid composite material and then the band at the bottom you know I really was trying to pick up we're trying to pick up the the stonework next door at the field house which has this nice gray kind of granite looking stone so it wouldn't be real granite probably and it would be stone but it would probably just be a facade of stone that would be applied that was kind of that that was the inspiration for how it would look but the notion is to try to reflect something in the neighborhood yeah with tighter okay yeah I can I can say this it would not be brick I think this we're not thinking of it of using brick in that at that height but stone is more contextual and it's it is as long as that is a veneer it would be applied over over the wood framing okay it's actual stone and it looks like stone and I'm sure it's what they used at the field house as well something similar great questions from board members regarding the architecture site plans amenities we've talked about this is a good place if we we've talked about closet size we've talked about a lot of other things but this is the best opportunity we're gonna have to go into those details at this time so mr. Maxville let's see your hand raised hey mr. chair so first would be I know there's some discussion about the trees and the lighting there we had landed on we were thinking was it eight foot or ten foot lights for the part they were originally 12 foot and then we scaled them down to 10 foot yeah and then as far as removal of the trees I remember the the butter there had said they had asked for a 12 foot fence you guys applied for an 8 foot fence was there a reason you you folks applied for an 8 foot rather than a 12 foot yeah we I don't see many 12 foot fences in residential settings and we didn't think it was really appropriate for the neighborhood we thought 8 feet wood is much more common in residential areas 12 feet to me begins to look like some kind of you know highway fence or just something that was more commercial and institutional and can I add one one thing there by the time you go up to 12 feet or even 10 feet the structure of the fence in order not to end up you know fallen over and stuff has to be very substantial and it does end up appearing much more like a real barrier a sound barrier or something else like that than an actual you know essential fence yeah I just raised the question because I know I am very sympathetic to the point of not wanting lights shining into your windows at night but I guess because I know if we really can't lower those lightings below 10 feet and then have an 8 foot fence yeah because they're they're all full cut off lights and they only shine down and the neighbor is sitting up on a hill I really don't think they're gonna have lights shining in them especially when Amherst college but we really it we we have the advantage of that height differential because their houses sitting quite a bit higher yeah that's my question thank you other questions miss Amira thanks for your presentation question about your bidding process in terms of I know you have many buildings successfully done in Northampton area as well as other places do you typically try to use local contractors is that a consideration it is a consideration and honestly our jobs don't tend to be so large as to attract general contractors from far-flung areas but it is Valley's a private non-profit so we can do we typically do a request for proposal style of bid for for contractor and we usually will send that out to people that we know are have the scale and the experience to do it if someone contacts us and wants to be included we will look at their bonding capacity and have they done residential construction and things like that so it's not an exclusive list but we we tend to be hiring from the western mass area thank you yeah other questions regarding the architecture the site the amenities of the of the building okay the next order I think we've completed the what we were just gonna discuss on the agenda item there's one other thing I'll just mention for the benefit of my fellow board members there has been some discussion about local preference we're going to ask we're asking the applicant to provide a written submission to the office to the town on local preference and we're gonna ask our arch of council mr. Whitten to review that and and submit something to us as well so we can have a discussion on that when we have the legal dot we have some legal documents as opposed to us trying to weigh into this which turns out to be a fairly arcane and complicated subject but for a later point in time when that consideration comes up under conditions we will have some considered legal documents to look at and positions to review and and for us to for our judgment but we're not going to go into that tonight because it's a we don't have enough information at present to make decisions or even a good presentation the next order of business is public comments and so Maureen would you open that up and so that people can have the opportunity to comment on on what the project what they've heard tonight on in general in general what they care about in the project and I've asked you to do is to indicate that you're that you wish to speak by raising using the raise hand function of zoom I think most people by now know how to do that I'd encourage you to do that and if you do wish to speak please identify yourself your name and address for the record and try to keep where it's only a 30 try to keep your comments to four or five minutes something like that if you go long I will try to to remind you I don't have a buzzer and I don't have a green light but we're gonna try to keep the comments fairly short or within four to five minutes so that everybody who wants to speak has an opportunity so if there are people that wish to comment this is a time to do that I'm gonna give everybody just in a minute to figure out the raise hand function if they haven't done it already it may be why we're not seeing any but if in a short while we don't see any public comments we will move to the next item on the agenda I see someone's hand yes I do see one yes Erica can you can you speak Erica can you hear me yes my name is Erica Pia Dodd and I live at 480 oh sorry sorry I pressed the wrong button sorry hold on sorry okay say that again sorry can you start over there she goes Erica can you start over again sorry I pressed the wrong button sorry Erica that's okay thank you mr. Chair thank you for allowing me to speak my name is Erica Pia Dodd I live at 488 Montague Road so north of where the project is I'm also a member of the Amherst Municipal Affordable Housing Trust so I want to be transparent that I'm a volunteer there and I volunteer there purposely because I wanted to ensure that our community has the ability to provide affordable housing and that we address what I would consider to some extent huge privilege to live in this town but very very difficult to live in this town I've rented in this town as well as I've I now own a house in this town I know that there are some members that feel that this project may not be appropriate for their neighborhood I wish I lived in the neighborhood there so I could purposely say that I would love to have it in the neighborhood what I've heard a couple of times in terms of presentations here as well as at the affordable trust is a very very comprehensive thoughtful well thought out plan to provide affordable effective supportive beautiful environment architecturally sound fitting right into the community project and I'm actually very very proud to be part of the community that wants to address affordable housing which has huge implications on homelessness and I'm glad Mr. Maxfield talked about the homeless people that he has spoken to in downtown Amherst I've also spoken to people as well as people who are teachers and people who work in this town who can't afford to live in this town and would love to live in this town and would love to raise families in this town there are individuals as well as families who really really want to be part of this community so I want to commend this board for asking very very in depth questions that have solicited wonderful responses very thoughtful responses this is a project that has accountability I actually work for the state so I'll be very transparent as as part of that I do work for the state and to I think it's really critical to understand that this nonprofit organization has excellent experience and as well as has to be accountable both to a federal criteria as well as state criteria and so in just hearing all of this I do hope that all of you will support this project I think this is a wonderful project in terms of addressing what I've considered classist structural classism where people can afford to actually have an opportunity to live in this community and so this is really an opportunity for us to do something right in addressing homelessness as well as affordable housing here the one last thing that I want to say is that I work in public health and addressing affordable housing is addressing homelessness and I think it's really critical it's a human right to have housing and we don't have enough affordable housing affordable housing plan but very few options so I I do hope that you do support this plan I think it's very well thought out and I think there's a lot of accountability and I think it's perfect for the community and it fits in the plan in terms of increasing affordable housing so thank you thank you very much anybody else wish to make a comment well I think that's we have no other request to make comment we can move to our next item on the agenda what the next item the agenda is compiling a list of questions requests possible conditions something we've been doing the last couple of meetings we want to add to that the thing to do tonight would be to take what we've what we discussed tonight and if you have ideas for for um questions for the applicant or for additional conditions that we should consider this would be the time to bring them up to give you an idea of the process that we're going to go through the next meeting on this subject is two weeks and we're right marina it's in two weeks yep so it'd be we think it's we'll talk about that in a second but it'll be two weeks out and between now and then we hope to put together a list of of conditions potential conditions and we already have the request of waivers and my my intention would be at the next meeting that we go through waivers and conditions to extend possible it'll probably take more than one meeting because those conditions tend to be long and numerous for a comprehensive permit but we begin the process of going through conditions and waivers over the next couple of meetings and to do that we need to get your input so if you have ideas for that this is a great place to to put them you can also individually send an additional idea about a condition or a comment or a concern you can share that with the staff not with each other but with the staff if you have additional ideas because you don't want to violate the open meeting law but you can set you always can talk to the staff so i know that there were so next in the next week you will get before the meeting you will get a copy of the draft project application report for lack of a better term which will have some conditions and will have potential conditions that the ones we've used in overtime and the ones that are unique to this site so for tonight i noticed one i had a couple of conditions that i thought we should be thinking about the first is the tenant selection criteria that is something that i'd want is i'd want to make sure that that a copy of that final tenant selection criteria is submitted to the town and that if any significant or substantial change is and that is submitted to the town and that we see it before at some point in a public meeting and that in the future if there's any significant change or substantial change to that tenant selection process that the town is notified and if in the the building department's judgment it is significant that we review it in a public meeting so that's one condition that we should that i'd like to have considered in the next in terms of the the next meeting um are there other conditions or that people would like to discuss would like to suggest at this point in time and as i said if you don't have to have them all now if you have other conditions that you want to you want to suggest you can bring them directly to marine mr. maxfield i think you mr. chair um going back to i think what i was talking about earlier about with the um the way that the the funding comes through from the state and the federal government i know we've been talking about it like it's it's something so farfetched that that funding could could dry up but i i think it might be a good idea for us as a board to consider that to some degree as a possibility um as as the way things are and have been going in in the nation speaking federally i i think we can should definitely give that some thought of of what could happen should that funding run out and i'm not terribly comfortable with the idea that we are putting up um both the state and the town are putting money into a project that could ultimately end up being that there could ever be a situation where we could say well well too bad so sad for for these people who who get in there they play by the rules as well um the the tenants and then there could ever be this this situation where they could be evicted and i understand that this is a private entity that that also might might be a nonprofit but does need to uh does have to worry about their income is again not to get terribly philosophical on it it's it's a little i think it is a little strange that we live in a world where uh we use public funding to give to a private entity to then provide a public good but that is the world that we live in um so i i think we might need to give some consideration for kind of that extreme possibility of what would happen if funds run out uh something from HUD if it's if it's a remote possibility great then i i hope that any condition related to that never comes up but if something like that were to ever happen uh it it it wouldn't sit well with me knowing that i'd approve this project and then say 10 15 years down the line something happens with funding and then people are being evicted because that that funding had run out i don't know necessarily a responsible way at this point we could put on some type of condition but i i think it's something that the board might want to consider for that possibility that uh no one would be evicted by essentially playing by the rules that that were laid out at the time that they they signed the lease they came in um i i'd like to see if there's any way we can work in some type of protection where we don't have to worry about that in the future because i don't think it would sit well with me knowing that i had approved this project missed that opportunity and then the worst-case scenario happens and then people are being evicted who we approve this project specifically the house yeah i i guess mr maxiola are you looking for some kind of a sort of a lack of a better term of what happens if we we have that up the um one in a million chance or one in a thousand chance that there's no funding available no dedicated subsidies available and what would be their response and you want them to do you want them to describe that we can't prevent it with a condition right we can't prevent the removal of money with a condition but we could you're asking them to describe what they would do in that situation i don't know how we can i don't know how we can affect what the federal government's going to do or the state government can do in an economic downturn or with a governor a governor or a president or congress they're just going to support this stuff farther on but we could ask them to to plan something i guess is that what you're looking for are you looking for some way to because i don't know what i think i think you need to think that through a little bit before in preparation for next week when we can talk about it again but i think you got to think through it a little bit how you're gonna how you're gonna have a condition that is going to reflect or that will um impose upon them responsibly to keep that keep this this housing available and open when neither them nor us can affect what happens with the federal government or the state government funding yeah it might it might be just just out of our purview as you know local town zoning board of appeals and that that just might be the case but i i'm certainly going to give it a thought between now and next meeting if there's really kind of any way that that can be implemented responsibly and you know if that's that's something any of the other board members consider important as well i'd certainly appreciate them at the rest of the board as well kind of giving thought to this issue and and you know maybe someone can come up with a better idea than i could about this if if you also value it as an important issue mr chair uh mr restra by solid mr restra had a question or had your hand raised i think she's um i just wanted to say that i believe that pardon i believe that federal and state money come into play very construct and into we're we're getting uh late it's a project we're getting some latency running um to support the project uh chris could you repeat that um your your internet is choppy yeah um um so if i hold my computer up in the air then it's not so it's still bad i'm going to the room okay or yeah sure and if it's still choppy you could uh submit an email the board all right so try once more oh that's better already working all right so i believe that the federal and state money comes into play during the development part of this project and helps with the construction but once the project is up and running they rely on the income that they receive from the rentals and that's what they've shown in their pro forma so maybe you want to go back and look at the pro forma and see how they propose to support this project in the future after it's up and running and that might help to answer some of your questions and concerns laura is raising her hand that the main subsidy for this project comes at the front end in in capital grants um it and it's true for the majority of the units that that's true that the rents are set low because of that infusion of capital at the beginning however there are 12 units proposed that are are intended to be linked to the massachusetts rental voucher program i think it's those particular tenants that mr maxfield is talking about is that if that rental voucher program went away 10 years from now two years from now what happens to those individuals and it's a scary question i mean it would it would play out not just in this project but throughout our landscape and throughout the public housing authorities which also rely upon subsidies so it would be a pretty big deal um and i you know i think we should all think about it because i'm not sure what the solution is you know i think i we don't want to evict people that's not what we're in the business of doing um but we need to kind of balance the books at the same time so how do we achieve that in this kind of worst case scenario situation and i don't i don't know i don't know the answer to that mr maxfield i guess i'll just ask it at this point um just throwing out just kind of an idea here um the idea of maybe setting up some sort of you know rainy day fun but sometimes that would be when this project goes in and you start collecting rent that would have to go into a trust specifically to cover worst case scenario should be some delay that there could be from that trust something like that is that something that board members and the project developers here is that something that at this point sounds reasonable or is there some reason they do have a capitalized reserve that they began at the beginning and they they modeled out with a smaller increase in rent and a higher increase in operating costs how that capitalized reserve would be drawn down and that's a very i would say it looks to me like it's a very conservative estimate that um but it shows that you in that you i think you've anticipated that out eight or twelve years you're going to have to be dropping uh going into your capitalized reserves and i don't know if that's uh that seems to me that that's um realistic and so it's done some of it already maybe yeah maybe you want to i think i would look at that mr maxfield in the pro forma and see if that might solve some of your problem i think they're looking at a worst case scenario for the capitalized reserves but miss baker please there is there is a capitalized operating reserve that is to cushion downturns um but not necessarily catastrophic ones and the state does limit how much we can sock away at the front end they actually have standards and caps that they put on those things so we can't just take a million dollars of public money and say we'll just save it just in case um you know as we've seen in this this covid period the government has implemented some unusual things to provide an added safety net for people now that may not be adequate um but in in extreme times we don't know exactly what all the resources will be the state will certainly try to protect the very lowest income tenants as will valley um we all are kind of in the boat together with with trying to preserve those tendencies and maybe the town would too i mean the town has resources as well so it's like where would you look in this hypothetical to try to make sure that you are protecting those 12 people to whatever degree they needed protecting so that we could get enough rental income to just kind of break even which is pretty much our goal mr chair um oh sorry mr. malay thank you thanks marine sure thanks i'm on my phone so there's no uh i don't think there's any video i'm gonna but i i think you know i think the the scenario is such a um you know it's kind of like when you talk about something defaulting it's really the worst case scenario and as jane said it would be pandemonium because it would affect you know thousands of units so i i don't think necessarily having a condition that addresses this for instance the permit would always say that the units are affordable and perpetuity and you could say that it you know will fall on the voucher program or any successor program and there's ways to kind of have you know some language in there and then the affordability restrictions usually have a default clause or some clause where amorster the local municipality or state would have an option to try to retain affordability in case something like this happened you know and that's a very expensive option but it would you know it's always written into affordability restrictions or can be so i think it'd be really difficult to craft a condition that this would be met for this you know because in the likely scenario if that actually did happen i'm not sure that can get condition could actually be met you know if like the voucher program just totally disappeared you know what you know what kind of condition could capture those types of scenario so i think the idea that there's a condition saying that the units are affordable and perpetuity and maybe have some other language in there maybe sufficient and then you know like i said there's other documents to try to safeguard some of these some of these detailed scenarios but i think that's a really difficult scenario to capture in a condition good news is that unlike public housing most of the units in this development are subsidized as chris was saying at the front end and not through an ongoing source so your public housing in amherst is i mean it's probably a hundred percent reliant upon annual subsidies and we're partially reliant the sad fact is that subs that support for subsidized housing in this country over the last 40 years has dropped it's it dropped and it's a mere shadow of what it was before and even the good news is even with edit being of just a sliver of what it was at one time there's still are long-term commitments that are being made and being lived up to by the government but by both state and federal governments but it's a much smaller pot and pool of money that's available it's it's it's a shame okay um so give that some thought and we'll we can talk about it again next week but if you give it some thought mr maxfield will list it as one of the conditions and we'll have to you'll have to flesh it out a bit more but it provoked a good discussion if nothing else thank you any other thoughts on conditions questions for the applicant for next week okay um so marine we're going to have some conditions and waivers distributed to the members before the beginning of next week we want to make sure that that the applicant has seen the valley has seen some of those beforehand so that we get quick response so we can turn it around quickly to our our members and we hope to have something to all of you early earlier in the week then later in the week because the other thing i want to discuss is that um i know that um mr langsdale cannot attend the meeting on wednesday on thursday that we're trying to have a meeting on the seventh i think that would it's my marine that's my understanding that that works for everybody to have the meeting on the seventh as opposed to the eighth the wednesday as opposed to the thursday yes that's correct everyone um has indicated that they're available on wednesday october 7th either and the other and the other option is that we could start the meeting at six because i think that miss almeras um schedule has changed and we might be able to start it earlier and maybe um then we could have a full three hour meeting is that miss america can you meet at six on wednesday of next week and can everybody else um definitely at six in two weeks in two weeks excuse me in two weeks yes on the seventh great yeah my schedule is changing and i can do six o'clock great let's mr waskevitz uh is raising his hand mr waskevitz please uh yeah um was the board happy with the elevations that they saw tonight or would they like to see something a little more clear and more closer to what we're going to be seeing in the when it's actually built elevations of the building and when could that happen if it is happening in the near future that's when do you when do you anticipate providing a more detailed more detailed elevation well i'll let you're gonna have to do it anyway right you're gonna have to do it before it goes to the town yeah we we certainly wouldn't make any revisions until we got through this zoning process because sometimes people ask us to change things so we deliberately don't go too far down the plan the road of architectural drawings until we hear fully from this board um yeah we would advance plans when we're going in for funding typically so it would probably be this winter so you know i don't know that there there's a lot of interest in the details of the interior but i think there might be some more interest in the in the details of the exterior of the building both in the community is there a way for us to i guess that one of the one of the conditions that we may want to impose is is looking for a quest we have and not a condition that wouldn't work that'd be too late is to look at additional elevations more detail on the exterior um i don't want you to do something you wouldn't otherwise do right if something you're going to have to do and i i can see the concern that you have about spending money that is then going to for design it's going to subsequently change and we don't want but i think that you there hasn't been a lot of this there hasn't been a lot of opposition to the general design and i think it'd be beneficial for us and for the community to know a little bit more about the exterior design of the building and i would would be helpful to us if you could come up with a more detailed exterior elevation so there's a better feel from a better understanding of what the the building would look like and i think that would be a benefit to the community and to us so let me ask you this an elevation is a two-dimensional look flat of one side of the building it's really for builders the rendering are those kind of 3d model kind of images that you've been seeing that give you more of a sense of the proportion the massing what it might really look like i guess i'm wondering what what would be valuable for the committee well i think i i don't think the rendering that we saw today which was the blue colored yeah blue colored outdated since changed yeah rendering gives us much feel for the building at all i mean it gives me a sense of the of the mass it gives me a sense that i like the style it's it seems to match with the with the community and with other other buildings in the area and that's all good but i think it doesn't give me any sense of what the building is going to look like if you and i think an elevation is probably what is more more appropriate and more and it's more information and i guess i'd ask mr waskiewicz if that's if i'm using the right term or not but i'm trying to get a feel for a better um i'm trying to get a feel for what the building looks like is going to look like from the outside and is that is the elevation the right way to do that or is a rendering the right way to do that uh to miss baker's comment i think the rendering might be better because it gives you more of a 3d actually more of a pictorial view of what it will look like yeah an elevation is really straight on but it might be nice if the board could get a visual of what it would look like to be standing from the road or you know that kind of thing scale-wise and also what the sides facing the road will look like as you approach you know coming up route nine that kind of thing how long did it take to produce that tom so just as a quick background just to explain how how we work and why there's two sets of drawings so we we actually work in well we have a number of different platforms that we work on but initially uh we have two CAD different CAD systems one is a um two slightly two across the 3d very precise CAD drafting program which ultimately produces the we use to produce the construction documents that is a little cumbersome during you know early design phases to really get an idea of how the building the massing of the building and be able to spin around it so we we go back and forth and use a sketch-up modeling program to get make you know to make the massing images that you saw and generally it about this this is sort of what I would call the schematic phase of our design at this point generally we shift from the sketch-up model because it's not very it's not it's it's not really very precise over to the the CAD system which you know gives a which is very precise drawings and and this the CAD system that we use to um to make the other plans and elevations so basically all the floor plans and elevations and sections and roof plan that's all in the CAD it is possible to I mean we could work within the rendering and try to bring that up uh you know to reflect the the proportions and detail in in the CAD program um we generally would sort of abandon that at this phase it's more of a sort of pictorial thing we would move on to the I would say the real building but the disadvantage to that is that it shows the building but it does not show the context so it really it's it's it shows you the the plans and elevations and the building it does not show you anymore how it you know how it sits in the site with but it's it's a pretty extensive process to I mean the the site that's in that in our low renderings is very abstract it's it's a pretty quite extensive process to take the uh carefully take the contours and the that in the plantings that we have on the site plan and get those proportionally correct into the model um and the only issue with it is it's not something that we really use going forward yeah so what we would be developing more would be construction drawings and they don't include renderings at all there's no 3d look it's all flat um so we could share those at the point when we kind of are naturally kind of developing those we can easily send those along to the board to look at at your convenience that would be after we make our decision right is that what yeah and that doesn't help us much with the decision with the decisions any board members can you hear me can you hear me now yeah okay I don't know which one I guess that one went out um I guess does any board member not feel this is um unnecessary requirement upon the applicant now I'm back can you hear me now yeah does any board member feel this is an unnecessary um condition on the applicant or expense to the applicant I I guess I need to clarify yep go ahead Ms. Parks so I'm not exactly sure what you're asking I I know that for me I don't remember seeing any renderings with the the neighbors um and the relationship is is that so are you asking is that a necessary thing to see the renderings or not enough what are you asking I'm asking do people think it's necessary to see further drawings before they can proceed or are they satisfied with what they've had so far it sounds like you want to see sounds like you want to see more um drawings as to how it fits in the neighborhood is that right that's I I would like to see that when you were talking about elevations that what is what came to my mind as it's on a sloped property and so to be able to see the renderings you can see what it looks like in relation to the neighbor's property with the eight foot fence and in relation to the parking lot and the uh I don't know the building the truck building how about a section elevation instead of um with that uh satisfy the board's need of showing so we've we've this has been requested of us and we've responded early on that this is a hugely big ask so I just want to make sure that and it's it to me it feels beyond the scope of preliminary plans which is what's required for comprehensive permit we don't have the topographical survey data of all of our neighbors I mean this would probably be three to four weeks is what we said before thousands of dollars to be able to accurately depict where these different properties are located um so I I mentioned that again Miss Brestrup yes Miss Brestrup um am I muted or not I guess I'm not so I think you hear you a simple line drawing using GIS topo to show how this building fits in with the surrounding topography and the building up the hill um and maybe the building down the hill too and I've done these in you know in grad school and I've done them throughout my career so they're not that expensive as long as you don't have to include an elevation with it all you do is include the outline of the buildings and you show the a slope via a line and you might show trees via lines and you show the fence how tall it is and I think you can get a pretty good uh view of things using that method it's as I said it's pretty simple and it's just a line drawing and then I think what Mr. Waskevitz was in originally inquiring about is the suggestion that the planning board made about um uh altering the relationship of the um first story with the second story with regard to that white um panel that goes across it and I think that could be done using just elevations and so you could get a pretty good idea of what this thing is going to look like using elevation drawings and as one thing and using a simple line drawing through the site showing the showing the fence showing the trees whatever you're going to plant there showing the outline of the new building and the outline of the adjacent buildings and then the uh zba could have a pretty good idea of what it's going to look like and I don't think that would cost a lot of money so you you can deal with I'll ask Rachel so some of the buildings sit close to the road obviously our building sits way back so it becomes very small in relationship to the view along that line that you're drawing is that what you're talking about Christine you try to reflect that scale I'm talking about a cross section and a cross section would potentially be through the building the Wilbur's house up the hill but if it doesn't exactly go through that building then you could sort of jog the cross section and I think Rachel would know what to do here it's it's pretty easy to draw a jogged cross section line on a plan so you know exactly where the cross section is being taken and then you just do a simple line drawing of Wilbur's house this building the fence and whatever is down the hill we would just have to guess a little bit about the height of the buildings that's okay that's reasonable and you have um there's uh we have an oblique a way of looking at our buildings off throughout the town in an oblique way and you can measure the buildings using a measuring tool Maureen could probably show you how to do that and it's not that difficult because I've done it and I'm not very technically savvy so I think we could help you figure that out how tall the buildings are yeah I think a cross section through the buildings could be helpful to show height and width um I think if we do a cross section elevation at the street there's going to be a lot of distortion as Laura was indicating you know looking at the site now it's it's so far back that due to perspective um the building looks much smaller because it's further back than than a house that would be closer to the road so that to me that's if people are asking to see like what they're really going to see what they're really going to see in real life is not that all these buildings are in the same plane right you know the one house is close to the road it's one house is set way back it looks teeny that's what you see I think it would indicate though what the relationship of the size is and what the relationship of the height is if you did that kind of jogged cross section it doesn't have to be exactly what somebody would see from the road but it would give an impression of relative height and mass so it seems to me that that what would be helpful is for Rachel and Chris and Laura to have a conversation about how this can be how this can be accomplished and I think it would give us more information and most of us don't know what you're talking about right now and so I mean we don't understand the technicalities at all but I think you understand the kind of desire that we have for more information so why don't we why don't we leave it up to you guys there we go can you hear me now to um staff and the applicant to come up with something over the next two weeks that does not impose a huge duty on you and a huge cost but gives us some more information okay Rachel did you want to say one last thing yeah if I could speak Mr. Chairman to clear for people who are not immersed in the in all the technical part anything that looks photo real and like a bird flying over the site that's very labor intensive for us but what Christine just outlined is a very specific specific drawing that's measured without a lot of detail and that's something that's much much easier to achieve so I think I think just so people know if you want it to look like a like like real like a photo like you're flying around that's that's what takes a lot of time but what you guys described made things much easier and then Mr. Wozkevic? Wozkevic? yeah I I don't want to place a lot of burden on the applicant it was mostly just so that the board could get a better sense of what the scaling of this building is going to look like in regards to the neighborhood but also there was some conversation about changing the stone line and the banding on the top by the roof I guess but we don't see that currently in this in what we were shown tonight so those things probably should be updated so that we'll actually know what this is going to look like the original so can I say one thing quickly yeah the original set that was submitted did have a sheet with exterior elevations that had the the stone line the way the way we're proposing it that is that is different than the rendering ones and we can without you know we we can add we can take that those elevations what they don't have is is very good definition of the of the trim and stuff and we can add you know we can add that and get we can make those elevations realistic to to what we're proposing and that would be I think a better way to go than trying to adjust the model to reflect it which partly for us because we're moving forward on those drawings anyway this part so so we could take that we could take the the elevations that have the stone the way we're going to propose it and just flesh those out and add trim the proper trim details and everything else make sure the windows the way they're going to be and facials and stuff like that Lockler thank you mr chairman I I think this this part of the conversation is very useful for us right now because I think that reminding the board of some of the things we have presented to get at some of the things I'm hearing is good I think that if we are going to produce anything new I would really like to make sure that we are not guessing at what that result will bring to the board so any other comments from board members are helpful for us to say if I see this it will help me to make this decision whatever you know because I think we have presented many of these things in partial form and at different times so I guess I just really would like the board to be very clear about the outcome you're looking for from whatever we might produce thank you miss Brestra is raising her hand so I just wanted to reiterate what Tom Chalmers said with regard to the elevations I think if you if you change the elevations to reflect what the planning board asked for and whatever changes you wanted to make in windows and doors and things like that that would be that would be excellent that would be really helpful in being able to see what this building is going to look like and then the cross section as we talked about and I will discuss that with miss Loeffler as we are moving forward okay all right I think I am comfortable relying upon staff to get to us what we what is I think the type of information that'd be helpful to make our decisions so why don't we leave it at that and see what you can come up with in the in a short time okay all right any other questions conditions or requests of the applicant we've talked about if not we've talked about the next meeting and the next meeting we'll be dealing with conditions and perhaps waivers and you'll have information from on that earlier in that week before the in the week that we have the so sometime around the fourth of the fifth of October you'll be getting some information on conditions possible conditions Mr. Chair I just want to say it would actually be flipped first the board would it would make sense for the board to review the waiver requests and then that's right we talked about that and I got it turned around we'd want to do the waivers first and then the conditions the last item on the agenda is the well we're going to close the we're going to we're not going to close the hearing we're going to suspend the hearing until our next meeting continue continue the hearing until our next meeting on october 7th um at six o'clock do I have a motion so moved is there a second second this is a roll call vote I vote I Mr. Langsdale I Miss O'Meara I miss parks I Mr. Maxfield I uh motion carries we will reconvene on this subject on october 7th at 6 p.m the last item on the agenda is the opportunity for public comment on any matter that is not the subject of this public hearing um is there anybody who wishes to make a comment on a subject matter that's not the subject of this hearing okay um with that is do I have a motion to adjourn I move to adjourn is there a second second um is there any discussion all right this is a it's a roll call vote I vote I Mr. Langsdale I miss O'Meara I miss parks I Mr. Maxfield I motion carries unanimous um thank you all for your time tonight and we'll see you um on the next meeting Maureen is October 1st right October 1st next Thursday for non 40 b items yep non 40 b items all right thank you very much thanks for your time