 Okay, Mr. Marshall, I think we are good to go. We are recording Amherst Media's here. I have made you a co-host along with Nate Malloy, who is also here and the attendees are starting to come on in. We're good to go. Okay. Welcome to the Amherst Planning Board meeting of March 2nd, 2022. My name is Doug Marshall and as the chair of the Amherst Planning Board, I am calling this meeting to order at 6.33 p.m. This meeting is being recorded and is available live stream via Amherst Media. Minutes are being taken. Pursuant to chapter 20 of the Acts of 2021, this planning board meeting, including public hearings, will be conducted via remote means using the Zoom platform. The Zoom meeting link is available on the meeting agenda hosted on the town website's calendar listing for this meeting or go to the planning board webpage and click on the most recent agenda which lists the Zoom link at the top of the page. No in-person attendance of the public is permitted. However, every effort will be made to ensure the public can adequately access the meeting in real time via technological means. In the event we are unable to do so for reasons of economic hardship or despite best efforts, we will post an audio or video recording, transcript or other comprehensive record of the proceedings as soon as possible after the meeting on the town of Amherst website. Board members, I will take a roll call. When I call your name, unmute yourself, answer affirmatively, and then place yourselves back on mute. Maria Chow. Present. Jack Gemsec. Here. Tom Long. Present. Andrew McDougal. Present. Janet McGowan. Here. Johanna Newman. Here. And I, Doug Marshall, am also present. Board members, if technical issues arise, we may need to pause temporarily to fix the problem and then continue the meeting. If the discussion needs to pause, it will be noted in the minutes. Please use the raise hand function to ask a question or make a comment. I will see your raised hand and call on you to speak. After speaking, remember to remute yourself. The general public comment item is reserved for public comment regarding items that are not on tonight's agenda. Please be aware the board will not respond to comments during general public comment period. Public comment can also be heard at other times during the meeting when deemed appropriate. Please indicate you wish to make a comment by clicking the raise hand button when public comment is solicited. If you have joined the Zoom meeting using a telephone, please indicate you wish to make a comment by pressing star nine on your phone. When called on, please identify yourself by placing, by stating your full name and address and put yourself back into mute when finished speaking. Residents can typically express their views for up to three minutes or at the discretion of the planning board chair. If a speaker does not comply with these guidelines or exceeds their allotted time, their participation may be disconnected from the meeting. All right, so first item on the agenda for this evening is minutes. And I believe we have two minutes for consideration this evening. Is that right, Chris? Sorry, yes, that is right. I sent you the amended minutes of November 3rd, sometime around noon time today. I promised Doug that I would have them to you by today, but that doesn't mean you have to review and approve them today. Okay, thank you. And thank you, Chris, for getting those out today. And I think in our packet, we also had the February 16th minutes, which was our last meeting. So why don't we start with the February 16th minutes since we've had those longer and those may be a little bit quicker to go through them. Does anybody have any comments? Anybody on the board have any comments on the February 16th minutes? Not seeing any hands. Would anybody like to make a motion to approve the February 16th, 2022 minutes as written by Chris and Pam? Tom, I see your hand. So moved. Thank you, Tom and Johanna. Second. Great. Any further discussion? Not seeing any. We'll go through that on a roll call. Jack, I'll start with you. You want to approve the February 16th minutes. I'm having, can I defer just a couple of minutes, be at the end of the roll call. I have some computer difficulties pulling it up, so sorry about that. All right. So then we'll move to Tom. Approve. And Andrew. Approve. All right, Janet. Approve. And Johanna. Approve. And I am in approve. Maria. Approve. And Jack, are you ready or do you want to just abstain? I'll just abstain. I'm sorry, I just... Okay, that's fine. I have a very slow laptop here. All right, well, thank you. Okay, so Chris, we'll move on to the November 3rd minutes. Do you want to have any sort of introductory conversation about those or? Sure, I think that Janet felt that we didn't really flesh out enough what Maureen Pollock had said in her presentation about article seven. So I went back and listened to the presentation and I wrote down what seemed to be what filled in the places that weren't already there. And then I also looked through or discussion and added some things from my notes. So after Maureen's presentation, it's really based on my notes that these things are put in here, but it's strictly things that happened during the meeting. So I don't know if people had a chance to review them, but there's nothing... I didn't add anything other than what was said. Okay, well, I do see a lot of red text. So you made a number of changes. Do you want me to go through them individually? No, well, not necessarily. I guess so you're comfortable with them at this point. I am, yep. I assume you were comfortable with them before, but you're still comfortable. Okay, any board discussion? Andrew, I see your hand. Yeah, I'm just gonna say I have not had a chance to look at those amendments. So if we're making a motion, I will be abstaining just ends up. Okay, all right. Would you... I mean, we don't have to do them tonight. Unless you want to clear them off the docket, I would say let's just wait till Mexico round. Okay, all right. Janet, you had your hand up. Yeah, I just wanted to say that I appreciate Christine for taking the extra effort because I think she really did flesh it out a lot more about what Maureen was saying and what the changes were. So it'd be easier to understand. So I appreciate that. I know it's a pain and it takes a lot of time. All right, and Tom. Thanks, I was just gonna say I have not had a chance to read them yet either, the revision. So I wouldn't be abstaining from the vote. Okay, well, why don't we just set them aside and we will try to vote on them at the next meeting. All right, next on the agenda, we have the public comment period. So, let's see, I see we have 12 attendees from the public. Do any of the attendees want to make a comment at this time? So this will not be about items that are on our agenda for later in the meeting. I see one hand from Jenny Callak. Please state your name and your address. Let's see, there she is. Now you're a participant. Hi Jenny, can you hear us? Yes, can you hear me? Yes, we can. Okay, good evening planning board. Thank you for the chance to speak. Wasn't sure if it's the right time folks, but I believe agenda item three needs to be cited with a problem point of order procedure. So I thought I would bring it up now. My concerns come from the subdivision regulations. Part 3B states that abutters will be notified seven days prior to a meeting of the planning board. It doesn't specify what kind of meeting, but none of the abutters are aware that this meeting is going on unless they happen to be looking around closely like myself, a few others. That's one point of order. Second is that the procedures for subdivisions, part 3D called approval states that there will be 45 days after submission and the board has the possibility of approve, disapprove or approve with modification, but there's no mention of extension of that 45 days. And the third point of procedure is that the packet includes four letters from the lawyer and four maps, but those are not the filing maps. There's some sort of substitute. So it shows a map of the town, puts a little location designator with an outline, but the actual filings are not in your packet tonight. So I'm thinking that as a point of order agenda item 3 is defective on procedural grounds. All right, thank you. I think that is the next item on our agenda. And I think for future reference, those kinds of comments I'd like to get when we get to that point in the agenda, but since we're basically there, Chris, why don't you, do you wanna say anything in response to that? I know we typically don't require or respond to public comments, but do you have anything you wanna say? Yes, I do. So these four preliminary subdivision plans were filed with the intent of freezing the zoning on four properties in North Amherstown by W.D. Coles. And the reason that they were filed was to, so that the properties did not need to adhere to the solar moratorium that was being considered. Now that the solar moratorium has been dismissed, it hasn't been adopted, the applicant for these four preliminary subdivision plans wishes to withdraw the application. They have the right to do that. These subdivision plans have not yet been advertised. If the public hearing were to have occurred, it would have occurred on, I think we had it scheduled for March 16th. The 45 days would have been up on March 24th. So the applicant was waiting to find out what happened with the preliminary subdivision plan before he wanted to go ahead with the public hearing. I'm kind of mixing things up here a little bit, but in any event, we would have had to submit a legal ad last Friday for a public hearing on March 16th. Legal ads are very expensive. The town probably would have spent $2,000 on legal ads. In any event, that's kind of beside the point, how much it costs, but we would have had to submit the legal ad last Friday for an ad to appear yesterday. So the applicant, knowing that their vote was going to occur last night, said, well, we'll request an extension and they're allowed to do that. The planning board has approved extensions of the 45 days for a preliminary subdivision. At least, oh, I'd say half a dozen times last fall, you approved it for the archipelago project on East Pleasant Street and you also approved it for John Roblesky on Main Street. So that's something that you have done in the past and you've spoken with, I believe that Rob and I spoke with the town attorney and confirmed that that is satisfactory that you can do that. In any event, these four subdivision applications were never even advertised. And normally when things haven't been advertised, an applicant can just withdraw. Nobody knows about it. But in any event, people did know about this. And so the applicant has come forward with letters requesting withdrawal of these applications, their preliminary subdivision plans. The planning board could, even if it reviewed these preliminary subdivision plans, it could deny approval, but the applicant could still move ahead with definitive plans and keep their zoning frozen. So I guess what the bottom line is, there's no point in continuing discussion about these four subdivision plans because the applicant has requested withdrawal and I've submitted letters to you to that effect. So really I would recommend that you accept the withdrawal. All right, it seems like we've already entered into part three of our agenda. The time now is 6.49. Chris, I was hoping you would explain why we are not in violation of our regulations with respect to the seven day notice to butters and that we don't have the 45 day notification that's not in effect yet. And I believe if I'm incorrect, if I'm correct, the reason is we haven't actually advertised a hearing and that that seven day notice applies to notice about a public hearing and that there has not, we haven't held the public hearing. Tonight's discussion is not a public hearing. So we were not required to provide seven day notice to a butters for the discussion this evening. That's correct. And it's a 14 day notice. So butters would have been notified 14 days in advance of the March 16th meeting which would have been today. They would have received a notice today if we were advertising this for March 16th but we didn't do that. The first step that Mr. Reedy, the attorney for the applicant took was to request the 45 day extension of the review period. And as I said, you've already had a precedent of extending review periods for Archipelago and for John Roboleschi last fall. So that was another case of being asked to extend the review period. It's common when an applicant wants to extend a review period that he comes and asks for planning board approval. And so that's what he was doing. In this case, it ends up that he doesn't really need that because he's asking for a withdrawal. And then the third thing that our commenter said was about the absence of the actual preliminary plans in our packet today. And I believe the reason for those not being included, I mean, we weren't required to include those because we're not holding a public hearing this evening. That's correct. And that whenever the public hearing would happen, we would have the actual plans in our packets. That's correct, yep. Okay, all right. Yeah, right, yes. So, okay. So we can continue and have a conversation about their request to withdraw. But before we do that, Janet, do you wanna say something? You know, just as to the issue about whether it was appropriate for Ms. Khalik to bring this up during public comment, it seems to me, it kind of makes sense that she did because if she had waited until the item was on the agenda and we had a long presentation of the subdivision plans or talk about it, you'll have her comments and questions. It's kind of too late for her to say this is out of order and we didn't have notice. There's defects in how it was done. So I think it kind of made sense, it makes sense for her to say it early. So at least that alerts us to that this is a big issue. So we might start talking about it in the beginning of the topic as we are now. So I think that something like that, it's like, if you're in town meeting, you can say point of order and you get listened to, but when you're in the public, usually you have to, I mean, I think we're good at listening to the public, but usually it's at the end of a presentation or own discussion and that would be kind of, she would lose kind of that point of, we shouldn't be talking about it at all. So that's it. Okay, good point. All right. So, Chris, do you need a formal vote from us this evening to accept the withdrawal of these preliminary subdivision plans? I would like a formal vote. I don't have a definitive answer from the town attorney that you actually need a formal vote, but I would like to have a formal vote. Okay. All right. So, and obviously the caller is correct. We've seen the letters from Tom Reedy and we've seen the, I will call them screenshots from the town website of the parcels that are proposed to be subdivided and that's all we've seen. So, is there any board discussion about accepting the withdrawal of these preliminary subdivision applications? All right. Then I see no hands. So I will ask, Chris, can we do this as one vote of all four of them together? I think as long as you list them all, you can do it. All right. So, all right. So can I get a motion to accept the withdrawal of preliminary subdivision plans as follows? SUB 2022-03-04-05 and 06. All from WD Coles for various properties owned in town. Jack? So moved. All right. Tom, you got your hand up next. One second. Thank you. Chris, was that adequately detailed for the vote? It's not. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. The vote? I think so. Rob, do you have an opinion about that? It's okay. It's fine. I think it's fine. Okay. All right. Okay. Any further discussion by the board? Not seeing any. All right. We'll go through roll call. Tom, I'll start with you. Oh, group. Andrew. Hi. Janet. Hi. Johanna. Hi. Maria and Jack. Approve. And I'm going to prove as well. All right. Chris, do you need anything else from us on that topic this evening? That's good. Thank you. Okay. All right. So the time is 6 56 and we can go on to item four on the agenda. Discussion of proposed article 13, demolition, delay, bylaw revisions. Chris, do you want to introduce this? I'll say a few words. And then I'd like Ben Berger to give a presentation. We met with you a few weeks ago and presented a draft of the bylaw turning the bylaw from a zoning bylaw into a general bylaw and renaming it to be called preservation of historically significant buildings. Then we'll go into greater detail about this, but since we last met and when we last met, Janet suggested that she had a number of comments and concerns. And since that time, Ben and I have met with Janet and she's given us her concerns and we've incorporated them into the bylaw where appropriate. And then again, we met today to discuss further issues. And so we have a draft of the bylaw that has, well, again, Ben's gonna go into greater detail, but in the draft of the bylaw that was slightly amended today, which Ben will present. And we also have Jane Wald here, who's the chairperson of the historical commission. And the historical commission is actually the body that is putting forth this amendment. And I don't know if Jane has some introductory words that she wants to say before you start your, before Ben starts his presentation. Jane, do you wanna say anything? Just a couple of things. One is to just to thank you for a very good and robust discussion of the draft at your last meeting. And I'm glad we had that opportunity and we've tried to incorporate your feedback as much as possible. I think the bylaw draft as it's been developed over the last, well, few years gets better and better. So I'm optimistic that this is going to be an improvement to this process for the town of Amherst. Okay, thank you, Jane. And so Ben, I guess you're on. Sure, awesome. Good evening, everyone. And thanks, Jane and Chris for the introduction. Yeah, so I think just backing up a little bit, in the past few weeks since we last spoke, as Chris mentioned, we've met with Janet twice now, I think. And I've gotten some really helpful feedback from Janet, both big picture discussion and kind of some smaller inline edits. We've also met as town staff, Chris, Rob and Nate and myself to kind of go over kind of some of the issues about really walking through how this new bylaw would be implemented. And I'll go over some slight changes that have arisen out of that conversation. And then I think it was two weeks ago, we had a historical commission meeting where the kind of commission, we reviewed some of the changes that have been made since last meeting and got the blessing of the commission to move forward with this latest draft. So we've been hard at work kind of refining this bylaw and getting it to a better place. And I think, as Jane said, it gets better and better each time. And I really think, I hope to think, I want to believe we're kind of just putting the finishing touches on it now. It is a fairly complex bylaw, just in terms of all the procedural steps. So I appreciate everyone's patience and kind of attention to the smallest details because it's almost, you know, every word matters in a bylaw like this. So, and as Chris alluded to, there were some very small changes just made today that came out of a meeting with Janet. So I will go over those, but for the most part, 90% of what I'll show you today was what was in the packet that we worked on last week. So I will share my screen and I'll show you the version with track changes, just for ease of kind of showing what's changed and what's stayed the same. So I'm on a wide screen, so I just want to make sure that the resolution works for everyone, or do you need me to zoom in at all? Yeah, at least for me, you could blow it up a little bit. There you go. That's good. Great, so the first change we made was this is not new language. This declaration of policy statement is from the current article 13 in the zoning bylaw. The historical commission, we went back and forth about whether to keep this or kind of get rid of it altogether. It serves a similar purpose as the purpose statement back down here. However, in talking to Janet and with staff and the commission, we felt that it is distinct from the purpose statement down below in that it is a fairly strong declaration of policy that the town, essentially the town of Amherst can be best maintained and enhanced by due regard to the historical and architectural heritage of the town and by striving to discourage the destruction of such cultural assets. It is hereby declared as a matter of public policy of the protection enhancement, blah, blah, blah, blah. I won't read it all. So, yeah. You touched on the fact that this language is in the current article 13. Correct. So what we're seeing with the black text in this is not the current article 13. It's some earlier version of this proposed replacement article. So correct. Yeah, sorry. That is confusing. Okay. So the red text is a change from the version we saw a couple of weeks ago? Correct. Yeah. Okay. And all of it is new from in terms of the current bylaw. For the most part, yeah. Okay. Thank you. Yeah, I appreciate it. That's a good point of clarification. So, yes, what you're seeing in red here is existing text from the current article 13, but it's new as of the last time that we presented to the planning board. I see Chris with her hand up. Do you want to speak, Chris? May I speak, Doug? Sure, sure, Chris. I just wanted to point out that because this is being proposed to go from the zoning bylaw into the general bylaw, this document that you're looking at has the formatting of the general bylaw. So it has been almost completely rewritten, although there are certainly words and sentences that were taken from the previous zoning bylaw. But this is the general bylaw that we're looking at now and it's proposed language. And so that's the black and the red is what we've added since the last time we met with the planning board. And whenever the vote of town council happens, there will be two votes. One to adopt this as a general bylaw and one to strike article 13 from the zoning bylaw. That's correct. Okay, thank you. Yep. Yeah, no, thanks for the clarification, Doug. Yeah, so essentially we just felt it was important to not lose this declaration of policy. It's already established as a town policy, I guess voted on at the town meeting I think the last time article 13 was updated was 2005, I believe. So it's just an important statement that yes, some of it is within the purpose statement below but it's a strong statement and we just didn't want to lose sight of that. So that's the first section. Go on to the purpose statement. The definitions have mostly stayed the same except for the definition of demolition. And so this was one of the more major changes that resulted in conversations with town staff and with the historical commission with Janet from last week. So we're sorry from last meeting. So essentially we had some concerns about how parts see. So backing up a little bit. The current bylaw has a very vague definition of demolition. It is essentially any act of raising or demolishing, building or a portion thereof. And so we felt that it was important to really clarify and be as specific as possible really how we are defining demolition in this new bylaw. And so we went with a three-part demolition definition, A, B, and C. So the first part of the definition is initiating the work of total destruction of an entire building. So essentially taking down an entire building. The second definition is any act of pulling down, destroying or removing 25% or more of a side elevation essentially. So that would be considered more partial demolition but it's still a significant act that you're taking down an entire side of a building. And then so part C was meant to capture some of the more distinct and unique architectural features of a building that you might see such as a cupola or a nice trim or a distinct porch or railings that have some unique qualities to them. And so the idea was that, that might not trigger the 25% or more of a side elevation of a building as in part B but we wanted a way to capture some of those unique and special features of buildings. And so, but in practice, how that could work is, there are, I think Rob and I did some calculations about how many building permits come into town hall for exterior alterations to houses and that could be anything from a door to windows to a roofing to chimney work. And when you look at a town wide, that's hundreds and hundreds of building permits that come into the town. So we were looking for a way to kind of narrow down how many structures in the town have this part C definition apply. If that makes sense, hope you're still following me because it's a lot, essentially, it would be a lot of work and staff time to review every single building permit that came in for an exterior alteration because the first step in that process would be, is it 50 years or older? If it is, check, yes. And then the second threshold is to determine significance. And so, that could have the significance, determination of significance. It takes a little bit of time, certainly. We wanna be thorough, do research on the property, understand its role in the history of the town. And so if we're getting multiple applications a week for this type of work, it begins to really add up and bog down the staff and commission. So that's a long way of saying, we were looking for a way to narrow down how many structures this applied to. And so, the approach we chose was to essentially develop a list of historic, an inventory of historic buildings in Amherst. And that list, as it stands now, is kind of housed at the state. At the state level, they have an inventory, it's called a MACRES, Massachusetts Cultural Resource Information System. I'd encourage you to look at their website. They have a new mapping platform, which makes it really easy and user-friendly. And so, what we're proposing is, we would develop something we're proposing called the Amherst Inventory of Historic Buildings, and we would take what is currently held at the state level on MACRES and essentially download the information and house it on the town's website and promote this as the town's Inventory of Historic Buildings. And right now, there's around, I want to say 1,000 to 1,300 structures listed on that site. There's been inventory efforts in town going back to the 1970s, 1980s or so. The Pioneer Valley Planning Commission has been heavily involved in those efforts to inventory historic homes in Amherst. And so, essentially, what we're proposing is that this part of the definition of demolition only applies to the 1,000 to 1,300 buildings that are listed on the state inventory, which we will download and call the town's Inventory of Historic Buildings. So I'm happy to kind of just pause there for a little bit. That's one of the... I see Jack's hand. You may have a question about that. Yeah, I don't mean to be funny or anything like this, but Ben, I really need your 30-second elevator speech on this. Can you be concise with regard to what's going on here with this? Yeah, I can try. So essentially, the Historical Commission and staff, we think it's important that there's a review process for the demolition and removal of very specific architectural features for historically significant buildings in town, but we don't wanna review every single exterior alteration in town because that could be thousands, potentially in a given year. And so we're finding a way to narrow down how many exterior alterations we're looking at at a given time by really only looking at the most historically significant buildings in Amherst. Nope. Okay, so you mentioned that if this list would be based or derived, let's say, from the mattress inventory, that's kinda how you presented it first, but then later it sounded like maybe it was gonna be identical to mattress through its life. So I think I'd like to get some clarification on that. And Jane, I assume you could give us some clarification on that. Well, yes, I'll try. So there are actually, so the town of Amherst has an inventory of historic buildings that is an appendix to a preservation plan created in, I believe it was 2005. That inventory of historic buildings is almost identical to the contents of Amherst buildings in mattress, but not entirely identical. So the Historical Commission proposes to use the state database as the primary authority on what an historic building has been identified to be, but over time wants to update its own inventory of historic buildings and see whether there are buildings identified in that inventory that actually should be elevated to the mattress database. So they are very close right now, but there is a little bit of work to do to make sure that historic buildings in an existing town inventory assume a place in the mattress database. Does that help? Yeah, that helps. I guess one question that prompts for me is if your commission identifies a building that ought to be on the mattress list, why wouldn't you nominate that to mattress and get it accepted and then base this provision on mattress? Well, I think at the moment it's because there are buildings in our own town inventory that do not appear on mattress. So to be, you know, to sort of try to exercise responsible stewardship, I think we would want to have access to both sources of identification of historic buildings. The process for nominating historic buildings that don't yet appear in mattress is to complete what's called a form B inventory form. So that takes a little bit of research and writing and then submission to the State Historical Commission. So, you know, I believe over time the two inventories will become closer and closer and in time actually almost identical. One other thing about the mattress database is that it is not only a historical commission that can complete a form B for a historic structure. So any other citizen can do that. So the Historical Commission will still have a role in assessing, you know, that actual significance of these these more discrete architectural elements that don't rise to the level of say 25% of a demolition of a side of a building. Okay, thank you. I see three hands. Ben, is there something else you wanted to say before we go to board comments? Yeah, sure, I was just gonna build off of what Jane had mentioned. I think another reason we chose this Amherst Inventory of Historic Buildings versus Macarus is more just thinking about it from the applicant's perspective. We, you know, yes, we could put a link to Macarus in here and say, you know, go find if your house is on there or not, but we just felt it would be easier to just have essentially have housed the list on the town's website and refer to it as the Amherst Inventory of Historic Buildings just to make it more user friendly and to make it easy to find even if, yes, the information will be more or less identical to what's on Macarus and get also the other reasons Jane had mentioned too, but I just wanted to mention that as well. It's thinking of the user friendliness of the bylaw was something we had in mind as well. Okay, thanks, Ben. Andrew. Thanks, Doug. Thanks for the initial review here, Ben. So I had a question, I guess on the demolition piece for A and B, wouldn't A be just included in B? I mean, could you just collapse those? Is if I'm reading it right, like demolishing the whole building is more than 25% of it. So is that an opportunity to simplify? So I guess I'll pause here and then have a quick follow-up as well. Does that make sense? Ben, do you really need A? Well, it seems at least they could be merged, right? If maybe there's like some language you want to keep in A and B, but to me it would seem like you could certainly combine them and then it's maybe an easier test just to have like you're either one or the other. Right, yeah, because certainly if you're taking down the whole building, you're meeting the definition of B as well. Yeah. So then the other question is just I'm wondering like where did the 25% come from? Is that like a generally accepted standard? And the reason why I ask is I've got a garage that's really more like a barn that's over 50 years old. And I've at times thought about taking the back wall off because there's some issues with just the condition of the structure. So the 25%, I guess first of all would be is it calculated on the total square footage of the vertical elements? I guess like to get to the math, I see Doug sing now. So that'd be one quick clarification. And then I guess does it matter if it's not facing the public? If this is in my backyard and nobody can see it and I'm taking down one out of four walls, is that of any significant concern where I'd have to go and seek bring this to the historical review for their consideration? Ben? So maybe I'll let Rob answer the question about how the math is calculated, but I think in terms of the public view versus non-public view. So the historical commission, that is not a factor, that's not a threshold in getting it under review. But I think that would be factored in the determination of significance because certainly a prominence on the street and the public interest has a lot to do with the determination of significance and certainly whether a delay would be placed on the property, but there's nothing in the bylaw currently or as it stands now that specifies that buildings out of the public to you are not applicable here. Okay, and then Andrew, I think the way this reads, you would, it's based on each elevation of the building. So you would be taking down 100% of one elevation. Is, okay, so maybe, all right. So that's a, I might have just misread this then. So it's 25% of any one of the four elevations. Yes. Correct. Okay, and then if there were some relief in the, I mean, I guess if it's not a rectangular building or it has some weird kind of trapezoidal quality to it, like. Somebody would have to make a judgment call. Okay. All right. You good? Yes, thank you. Okay, Janet. So actually now that that question was asked by Andrew, I think you might help the language by saying any side elevation instead of 25% of side elevations. So it might be more specific or do any side elevation of a building. So that's the nitpicky stuff. I think Jane Walden may have just answered this question, but I think I just, I'm not sure if we got it. So there seems to me that there's probably a lot of homes that are 50 years old or more and have beautiful features and could be found to be significant but aren't on the Amherst inventory or on the Macras. And so if I had one of those homes that wasn't on the list but it's, you know, say some beautiful Victorian and I thought, you know, I'm just taking the porch off. You know, it's just been rotting and I don't like it. And then, you know, or, you know, or I'm taking some features down like the nice looking little, you know, things that make a Victorian a Victorian and it's less than 24% and I'm not on the inventory. I can just do that. I would fall through that crack, I guess. I think I'm worrying about there might be a lot of homes that we could see a lot of features disappearing because they're not on the inventory but they're old and beautiful, you know, like if they're not doing 25% destruction, it's 20%. Do you know what I mean? I'm just wondering if you're losing too much. And I do appreciate the problem of not wanting to be flooded with constant applications but I wonder if we're missing buildings that are important, they're significant but they're not on the inventory. I guess you may have wrestled with this. We wrestled with this a lot and I keep going back to my house, which is built in 1963 and it has a very nice wooden front door and a wooden screen door. And so if we broadened the approach on item C here the way it was initially, I suppose my house could be found to be significant because it's a nice cape in a, you know, PURD neighborhood that was true of the era of 1963 and there could be reasons why the planning where the historical commission would find it to be significant. And then I would need to come to the historical commission to get permission to change my front door. And those kinds of things are the things that we're trying to avoid here because my house is one of, you know, hundreds and ammers that were built around the same time period but maybe they all have nice front doors. My door happens to be an original wooden door so it's, you know, potentially historic but if you include those kinds of things you end up with way too many applications and the planning department would probably have to hire an additional person to review all of those and the historical commission would be meeting every week to review them. So we're trying to narrow this down to the things that we think, you know, the people of the town of Amherst would really be sorry to see go, you know, and those are things like, you know, a beautiful pediment over a home that's on the inventory. And we're gonna be adding buildings to the inventory as time goes on. It's not a static inventory. So there's plenty of opportunity for that. And if you think your house is worthy of being on the inventory, maybe we should put it on the inventory but we didn't wanna get bogged down with all of these houses applications that really, you know, don't rise to the level of, you know, significance for the town. So that's just kind of my example. Okay, thanks, Chris. Jane, did you wanna comment? Just quickly to reinforce a couple of things that Chris just said. One is that we were looking for a reasonable filtering mechanism. And this seemed to be the most reasonable because it's a bit more of an objective standard, you know, that these buildings on the inventory have already been looked at. And there's been agreement that there is some significance or value to them as part of the cultural landscape and Amherst. And the second point Chris made is important, I think, that the inventory won't be static. So as there are resources, whether they're volunteer resources or commission resources or, you know, Pioneer Valley Planning Commission personnel, the inventory can be expanded. And it's our hope that we can make the identification of these buildings ever more accessible to their owners and potential purchasers. So I guess the final thing is that the historical commissions kind of perspective on this is that, you know, Amherst and other towns like Amherst are just full of buildings that are more than 50 years old. And it's not necessarily the goal to prevent change to all of those buildings. The goal is to make sure that the architectural history of Amherst and the cultural landscape are preserved so that they're, so that what they can tell us about the past remains accessible, but it's not necessarily to completely stop any kind of change to all of the buildings in town. Okay, thank you. Maria? Thanks for that, Jane. And I appreciate that comment because I appreciate the sentiment that we do wanna preserve what makes Amherst sort of this really quirky eclectic town full of a lot of historical buildings. But then at the same time, I would caution against being a little too specific about limiting, I mean, I like this wording here versus including, so small, including but not limited to. So meaning like not every single necessarily, you know, this is, I guess what I'm saying is the more flexibility you have to both sides, which means both homeowners and not having the whole commission to have to meet over a fence or something is good because, you know, kind of like when we remove trees on a scenic byway versus not, it's kind of like you gotta think about where is it located? Is it in a thoroughfare that has a lot of history and a lot of other homes similar? Or if it's like Andrew was saying it's in my backyard, no one sees it. So I'd really, I think from our last conversation, same thing, I really don't lean toward the more like let's preserve and let's not change. I'd rather have it be flexible if that, if people are willing to improve their own properties but not necessarily keep exactly every little dental, every little wooden piece that's rotting away. I think that's a better way to move forward than to have to, you know, have everything in amber because a lot of it's cost-prohibitive. I mean, a lot of these arts and crafts detailing, you know, it's a hard to replicate. And so I guess as long as you're building in flexibility and the ability to, yeah, not have more hoops. I think that's what you're doing. That's the spirit of what you just said. So I'd really appreciate that. And I haven't combed through every word but I'm hoping that that just is the spirit of what you're doing. That you're allowing change and you're allowing good change. And I think that it's been pretty prevalent, you know, we can see in our town. It's not like all these historic films are just disappearing. So I think it's working, but I think also, well, let's not make it so not add more and more and more that, you know, we want to preserve, preserve because I think you've done a lot already. So I would caution against adding even more elements or even more defined pieces that, you know, you know, if people hire architects and designers, they will be careful about it. If it's just a homeowner who is kind of like staring at their own house, maybe they're a little less careful about that. But I would, yeah, I always have this issue with like people's private property and not being able to change their own, you know, private property. It just seems strange and doesn't sit well with me. But I appreciate what you just said. And I hope that you stick to that sentiment. Okay. Thanks, Maria. I guess I don't see any more hands. I'll make one more, two more comments. One is kind of coming at it from the opposite side as the property owner. Would I have any influence on whether my property gets added to this inventory? I don't see anyone that wants to answer that. I can just make a comment. Yeah, yeah. If your question is about whether you would like for your property to be on the inventory, probably the most straightforward way to do that is as I described these two lists, the MACRAS list and the town inventory list coming together would be to complete a Form B inventory form, which you can send directly to the State Historical Commission or you can come to the town historical commission and say, look, I'd like for my property to be listed as an historic building. And the historical commission would certainly work with you to evaluate its history. So there are certain descriptions of the property and its significance that need to be completed and give you assistance in having that property added to MACRAS and to the town inventory. And if I don't want it on the list and I'm concerned that the commission might put it on the list, do I have any means to protest that? Well, you can certainly not tell the commission about your property. Well, I'm not concerned about that situation. I'm thinking, I think part of why I was talking about why not just use the MACRAS list earlier is that I guess kind of along the lines of the concern about property rights that Maria was mentioning, maybe I'd want to have a little more friction and a little higher threshold to get properties added to the list that we're using. And so having to get MACRAS or the state to buy into that might prevent what might be perceived as a more casual process for adding properties to our local town list. Well, I have a comment about that, but then it sounds like you want to... Yeah, I was going to offer up two things, Doug. One is at the very end of this by-law, we have a new administration section and it does refer to a process of amending the Amherst Inventory of Historic Buildings. That would take place at a public hearing. So if we want, when we get to that section, we could kind of dig into that a little bit further and talk about notifications and how that process would work at the public hearing. The second one I would add is, I wouldn't assume that the Massachusetts Historical Commission has a higher level of review than for a high level of review for MACRAS. Just a few months ago, we submitted a form for the Sorority House on Olympia Drive and we definitely did our homework and looked into the property as constructed in the 1970s and we did a little background research, but it was accepted within minutes or like a day or something like that. So... So they didn't do anything independent? No, I don't think they have time to do a thorough review. I mean, they're probably getting dozens of these a week, maybe, you know, statewide. So I would like to think that the Amherst Historical Commission would look a bit more thoroughly on each property in the state would. Okay. Well, thanks, Ben, and thanks for reminding me we haven't even gotten through your whole my life. Yes. Andrew, why don't you make a comment and we'll try to move on. Yeah, mine will be very quick and maybe you'll address it later. It's just for the buildings in Amherst where we know the age, how many are more than 50 years old? Like a general percentage, she said it. Mr. Ogger, Jane, they have a sense. You don't have to answer that now, but I guess it's like, you know, just wondering is this impacting, you know, half of the housing stock, two-thirds of the housing stock, a quarter of it. Yeah, I mean, there was definitely a building boom in the 1960s and 70s. So a lot of those houses are becoming close to 50 years old at this point. I mean, all of Echo Hill essentially, right? Yeah. Yeah. Cool. So just as a reminder, Andrew, so that is the first, the 50 year is the first threshold and then there's the determination of significance. So just because a structure is 50 years old, it wouldn't necessarily be determined to be significant and thus be subject to the buy-off. Yes, I understand that, but thanks for clarifying. Yep, okay. Okay, thanks Andrew. And so Ben, let's let you proceed a little bit farther. Yep. I'll inch my way down and go to the next. This is a change I just made today. I thought referring to a demolition dual ID lifted. I thought, you know, reduced was a better term rather than lifted. So this is another change that is made in a few places. And I think Janet for kind of pointing this out is we, I think I've mentioned this a few times. We want to move towards this two-step process where the determination of significance happens outside of a public hearing because as we have it now in the current bylaw, the determination of significance and the decision to put a delay on the demolition happen at the same public hearing and which is sometimes unfair to applicants because we want them to get notification earlier in the process that they don't need to go through public hearing. So with that being said, we settled on a initial review for significance that would happen. Our first idea was basically a member of, you know, the commission staff liaison meeting with a member of the commission to determine amongst themselves whether the building is significant based off of criteria in section D of this bylaw. And that is still our intent to have that process. However, we thought it was important to kind of give a little bit of flexibility moving forward if for whatever reason the commission wanted to change how the property is determined to be significant or not, you know, at a later date, if they have a less trustworthy or reliable staff liaison who they don't want to be making that determination, they might want to retain that ability as a commission to do that at a public meeting or, you know, they might want to have it be a designee such as, you know, another member of the commission as opposed to the chair, for example. So by essentially, you can see what I crossed out here. A building found by a member of the commission designated by the commission and a designated town planning staff member. So that was pretty wordy and also very specific. And so the proposed language is a building found by the commission or its designee or designees to contribute to the historical or architectural heritage of the resources of the town. So essentially it's, it encompasses what we intend to do for now moving forward for the determination significance but also is flexible enough to allow changes to be made in the future without needed to amend the bylaw which we all know is in the along process. So that was the intent of this change here. I can pause there to see if anyone has any questions so I guess I liked having involvement by the town planning staff. And so I feel like, you know, the commission could designate who represents it in the process but wouldn't we want to allow the town planning staff to still participate and in fact, require them to participate? Because this could make it so that the, I mean, the commission is the sole arbiter of who is making this decision. Is that right? Yeah, so later on, once again in the administration section. Okay, all right, I'll wait. Well, no, it's good. I think it's a good point to talk about now because the admin section basically says out of public meeting the commission designates or can designate authority for this decision. So, and in that section, it says it can be municipal employees and commission members. So are you implying we should make it specific that it has to be a municipal employee on part of the process? Well, I guess the thing that I liked about the planning staff being involved is that it felt like, I mean, I have had no contact with the historic commission except through these hearings and when I've seen Jane here with in other situations. But I, so I don't know that well about the capacity and the inclinations of the historic commission, but it seemed like it could be composed of a group that is sort of got blinders on about, we need to save every old building that might contribute to keeping a historic or a neighborhood exactly the way it's been. And it seemed like by having planning staff involved, you're gonna get a little bit broader perspective potentially on what's going on in town and how is town changing and maybe a little more openness to letting some older buildings go as long as it's kind of controlled in a gradual way and when whatever's replacing it is likely to be equal or better in terms of the quality of the physical environment it creates. So I think it was the broader perspective that I liked whether it's the planning staff or planning board or somebody else. I don't know, but that was my reaction. So Jane or Janet, what would you like to comment? So when I looked around at the model, mass historic commission model, and then there was like a summary of like, 40 million mass towns and what they did. And there was a lot of differences in terms of who made these kinds of decisions. Like, you know, some towns had the planning staff had two people on like, I think Brookline has two people on their planning staff that just handle historic buildings and the historic commission doesn't make this designation. And I thought, and then this language of flexibility that you'll see later is just to give the, is just to give the commission a chance to make adjustments. I've only watched one meeting between the historic commission and the planning staff and it seems like a very strong relationship and very respectful. So it made sense to me that, you know, it would be good to have one staff, one person from the staff and one person from the historic commission. But it also made sense to me that it might just change in the future and that, you know, if you say it's just one person and one person, then what happens if people disagree or what happens if, you know, as we say, all good will has been lost between the commission and the planning department, you know, then the plan, yeah, I guess the historic commission could take this back, but it just looks like they just, it doesn't look like that situation at all. It looks like people are just trying to figure out what's the easiest and fastest and best way to figure out what's significant and whether this, you know, and then to go to the more, the other public hearing. And I just think, I just pictured like, okay, all good will has lost and the historical commission comes back in front of town council and wants to make this change. Or maybe, you know, the planning department, staff, you know, the historic commission's like, we don't want to be making this decision all the time. We trust you, we'll have two planning staff or one person do it. I just thought, just give them the chance to move it around. And just, I base that on the fact that I saw so many different variations. And I thought, you know, just let everybody go and do, and it looks like a very, it looks like they're going to go with that model and it looks workable. Okay, thanks, Janet. No other comments. So, Ben, do you want to move on? So here, once again, is the commission or its designate that language continuing from the definition. Here, so, you know, ideally there would be an odd number of designees so that there wouldn't be a situation where there's disagreement. But if for whatever reason, there were two designees or an even number who are making this determination of significance, there would be a provision that if there's disagreement amongst the designees, the building will be deemed to be significant. And that language was in the last bylaw, or sorry, the last version we saw a few weeks ago. I just added this clarifier amongst the designees, the building will be seemed to be significant. Jane, do you want to insert something here? Yes, thank you. I think it would be perhaps clearer and more workable if that phrase was expanded slightly to say if there is, if disagreement is somehow evenly divided, so that it's a case of it. So that if there is a majority leaning one way or the other, then it doesn't, not any disagreement needs to deem this significant. Yeah, great, great point. I didn't totally catch the words that you used, but it sounded insane. I think it was if at least 50% of the designees deem it significant, it shall be significant. Right, okay. But if you know, if you've got three people who are voting on it and only one thinks it's significant, that wouldn't result in it being significant. Okay, I will make that change. So the remainder of the changes kind of in this middle section are mostly procedural, just clarifying kind of who's notified when after what decisions are being made. It's the kind of stuff that would probably be done anyway, but we just thought it was important to spell out as explicitly as possible, because in 10 years, we just want to make sure that the commission and the planning staff can clearly see who needs to be notified after what decisions are made. So for example, like when the building is determined to be significant, the commission obviously would notify the applicant and the building commissioner and then hold a public hearing 45 days after the complete application they received. So just putting in that notification section. And then certainly we didn't have this in here, but we did take the question, what happens if the building's not found to be not significant? So we just thought it was important to certainly add a section here that the applicant and building commissioner gave a notice of that determination. And then the very clearly stating that the building commissioner may then issue the demolition permit once that is applied for it, so that he's authorized to grant that demolition permit. Ben, I see Andrews and Andrew, do you want to make a comment? Yeah, thanks, Doug. I was just curious, is there, and I'm sorry, I don't have someone paying me for your addresses in the last five minutes, apologies, but is that good for a certain period of time? Right, so it's deemed non-historic today, but maybe in five or 10 years it could be considered historic? Or more significant, I should say. I know if that should be time bound in some manner. Yeah, I believe that is addressed in a section coming shortly. Okay. But yeah, once we get to that section, I'll make sure it's in there. I think it's a year. So the other kind of, thanks for the comment Andrew. The other change that came about today was a clarification, and I'm gonna try to keep this as simple as possible. I hope it's not too confusing, but the public hearing, when the commission, once a building is determined to be significant, the commission would then hold a public hearing to determine if the delay should be placed on the demolition of the property. Here's the public hearing procedure for that. There's other reasons a public hearing could be held. The other reason could be to lift or to reduce a demolition delay period. If during the 12 months delay period, the applicant has exhausted all their means of trying to preserve the property or to sell the property to an owner who could preserve it. Then there is a provision to reduce the demolition delay period and allow demolition to go through. There could also be an instance where they have money to rehabilitate the building, but that rehabilitation might involve taking down a wall, for example, so they need to lift the demolition delay period. So that type of review could happen at a public hearing. Previously we had, and that's number three right here, previously included in the public hearing procedure was that the determination of significance could happen at a public hearing, and that's what you see here. And so that is no longer the case, the determination of significance happens before the public hearing, as we were just saying, saying it's the commission and it's designees who make that determination. So we took out this language because just to make it very clear that the determination of significance happens previous to the public hearing. And if there's disagreement amongst the designees, then it would be determined to be significant. So under no situation or circumstances that we can think of with that determination of significance happen at a public hearing. So we took out this language, which allowed us to also delete this paragraph down here. So we'll get there in a second, but as we go through the public hearing procedure, if during the public hearing, the commission determines that the significant building shall not be preserved, preferably preserved, the commission shall grant a demolition authorization to the applicant. So that's your demolition authorization as your golden ticket, if you will, to bring to the building commissioner to get your demolition permit. So if the commission determines that it shall not be preferably preserved at a public hearing, you get that demolition authorization. Secondly, this is a language added today just to clarify, if during the public hearing the commission decides to reduce the demolition delay period, the commission shall issue a demolition authorization to the applicant, essentially stating what we saw above, that if you come to the public hearing to have your delay lifted, you would be granted a demolition authorization. You can then bring that to the building commissioner and take down the structure or proceed to the next steps. And then finally, if during the public hearing, the commission determines that the significant building shall be preferably preserved. So we're gonna put a one year delay on the demolition. The commission shall issue a preservation order to the applicant. So that preservation order is essentially a document that would be signed by the chair of the commission filed with the town clerk sent to the applicant and it states very clearly that you cannot demolish the property or for the demolition delay period, which in this case is 12 months. And then just clarifying that it's filed with the town clerk, both demolition authorization and preservation order. So these are the, I guess I don't need to go through the things that haven't changed since last meeting, although a little bit more quickly. We have exemptions, standards for designation as a significant building. Again, the commission or its designees shall determine that a building. And then Andrew, here is the section I was referring to before. If the building is not determined to be significant or if the commission issues a demolition authorization, demolition must commence within one year for the decision or that determination will lapse. So I hope that language clarifies a previous question. And then moving on down here, we get to the administration section. Can you back up to the following paragraph of the one you just read? Yes. Go up a little farther. Yep, here it is. It's right there. On one B, why would demolition be required to commence? So if a delay is placed on a building, they get through that 12 month process. It's basically saying that within one year after that 12 months delay, demolition must commence within that one year after the delay period, or else they need to kind of start the process. Well, then why don't you say that? Or else you need to restart the process? Because it seems like you're not, you're requiring somebody to tear down a building. You don't want torn down and not allowing them to change their mind and decide to save it after you've imposed this delay. Yeah, no, unless I'm missing something that seems like a valid point. That's how Jane's. Jane? Yeah, I see your point, Doug. And I think what you're looking for is a combination of points B and C. Okay. Yeah, and I think it would make sense to combine them because points A and D are, that's different circumstances. Okay. Chris. I was going to say the same thing. Thank you. Okay. Yeah, thanks for pointing that out, Doug. And then moving on to the administration section. So this language is the same. The commission is authorized to adopt the rules and regulations to carry out the studies and functions under this bylaw. And then the next two are new additions. So first, the commission may delegate authority to make the initial determination of significance to one or more members of the commission or municipal employees at a public meeting. And I think Jane pointed out to me that this clause at a public meeting should maybe go up here just to make it clear that the commission is delegating the authority at a public meeting. It's not making the determination of significance at a public meeting necessarily. So essentially, periodically, whether it's periodically the commission can at a public meeting can say, oh, we want Jane and Ben to make, or Jane, Ben and another member to make determination of significance. And then maybe at a future date, they're like, oh, we don't really trust Ben anymore. He's not doing a good job. So we wanna have it be three commission members or we wanna have it be a full commission making that determination. So this is kind of just granting them that authority to delegate responsibility for the determination of significance. Okay, Ben, I see Tom's hand. I guess my question on that, Ben, is has the commission had the authority to determine who makes these decisions in the past? Because that's what it seems like it's happening here, is that the commission is fully in charge of who determines what is significant or not. And it's not the planning board or not the planning department or anyone else. The commission determines who and if something. And I'm just curious if that's been historically the case and if not, why the change in this particular situation. Thanks, Tom. Ben? Yeah, thanks. So the current situation is that the commission has that responsibility to determine significance. So it's not really up to them who does it because they may make that determination. And that's done at a public hearing. So I guess it is a new authority that's being granted to the commission, but it's not like previously the decision was more distributed among other bodies in addition to the commission. That in fact, this is consistent with what's been the case. That the authority resides within the commission right now with the commissioners, but now giving them the flexibility to designate someone to act on their behalf. Jane? I understand that, yes, you're exactly right about that, that it is the commission itself that makes those determinations right now. I understand that at some point in the past, there was a kind of procedural, I don't know if it was an ad hoc procedural arrangement whereby the entire commission was not necessarily involved in that first review. So this actually formalizes some procedure that was used at least informally. I don't know, maybe 20 years ago, 15 years ago, 20 years ago, something like that. Okay. All right, Ben, are we done through this by last? One last point, it's straightforward. So back to where we started with the Amherst Inventory of Historic Buildings. So the last point in the administration is the commission may adopt and periodically admit the Amherst Inventory of Historic Buildings. Buildings proposed for this inventory shall be added following a public hearing advertised in accordance with Section C2B. And Section C2B is essentially a legal ad and posting on the town's website. There's no information on the public hearing. Okay, thanks, Ben. Chris, do you wanna say something? Yes, I wanted to ask or I wanted to say that I think this addresses Doug's concern about whether a building would be put on an inventory without the owner knowing, but maybe we should say something in this paragraph about the owner of the property must be notified of the public hearing. Then he would have a chance to come and speak to that issue at the public hearing. I think the bulk of my comments are really about a fear of overreach by the commission or getting out of balance with other life or development needs in the town. But since this authority has rested with the commission historically, I don't see, it seems like it would be reasonable to keep it with the commission. Okay, Chris, are you expecting this to be our last discussion of this bylaw before it goes to town council? And do you, what do you want from us, anything else tonight? Thank you. I think I had been imagining that this could be your last review before it goes to town council, but I've been made aware that the CRC is interested in seeing it before it goes to town council. So maybe you might as well have one more look at it if you would like to. Okay, but we have the option of passing on that opportunity or you definitely want to bring it back to us after CRC looks at it. Unless they make changes, we don't need to bring it back to you. It would be, maybe you want to have a sense of consensus as to whether people feel that this is ready to go to town council. And when it goes to town council, what that means is that it's presented to town council and then town council would refer it to the planning board for a public hearing and refer it to the CRC for a public hearing. And they may also refer it to GOL for a public hearing because it's going into the general bylaw. So you would have another opportunity at the time of the public hearing to see it. So I guess a sense of consensus, if that makes sense. On a procedural ground, why would we hold a public hearing on a general bylaw? Wouldn't our public hearing solely be about striking article 13? Yeah. So it'd be sort of half the conversation which could be kind of awkward. Janet, what would you like to say? I would like to release the historical commission and let them go on their journey. We've had this for, I don't know, it's almost been eight or 10 months and just been a lot of revisions to it. I'd be happy to look at it again and come through it and things like that. But I do think it's a really good draft. To me, I see it as a roadmap. So hopefully people who read this will think, oh, this is what happens and this is what notice has to be given. So the building commissioner knows what is gonna happen, the applicants know what's gonna happen, the historic commission knows what's gonna happen, what the steps are. I think this is much more clear. And so I think, I'd be happy to vote in support of this being sent to town council. I know it has other places on the journey. And I wouldn't vote to get rid of the old one unless I knew what we were substituting was good and strong. And so I don't know, I just, I think it's ready to go. And if it gets radically, if the historic commission radically changes that I'm sure it'll come back to us, but I do think this has been a six year odyssey for them. And so if we can, if we can lighten their load a little bit, I think it's a good move. Otherwise we could wait and see what happens to it. Jane, what's helpful to Jane or the commission, I think. Well, it does sound like Chris would like to have at least a sense of the board. So Janet, we've heard you're ready to move it on. Maria, you've got your hand up. I just wanna ask like Chris, Ben and Rob, your opinions on if there are any items that in your mind, you're kind of like, well, I guess we should do this. Sure, I'll put it in, but you were kind of hesitant to or if there are any things that you were kind of like still kind of not really a hundred percent behind. I just curious about your opinions because you guys are closest to this. And I honestly, I just, I'm not as familiar with every piece of text or thing that has changed, but are there items that you were still kind of like torn about or kind of had an opinion where like, you know, I'm not sure this is the right thing, but I'm gonna go along with it. I just, I'd like to hear the staffs if there are any things like that. All right, Rob, I see your hand. I'll just say that my only hesitation was with the last draft on the demolition part C. And I think, you know, the new work to, you know, help focus that on certain properties, definitely lessens my concern. And it really does have to do with the volume of applications that we receive and would be sending to the historic commission staff or the designees for the initial review. Otherwise, I think it's in a really good place. And I like the new structure of the bylaw. All right, thanks Rob. Ben or Chris, I see your hand. I think it's in good shape. We've looked at it again and again. And I wanted to thank Janet for going over it, you know, very carefully with us a couple of times. And I think she pointed out some things that were needing to be adjusted. And I feel confident that it's a good bylaw at this point. Okay, Ben, did you want to say anything? No, just I echo what Chris and Rob mentioned. I feel good about the bylaw. And I think even beginning with Nate many years ago, you know, town staff have taken a close look and been involved throughout this process. And it's one been to make it easier and more straightforward to implement for town staff, but then it has been a main goal of ours. So I think this bylaw accomplishes that. Okay, good. Maria. Great, that's perfect. That sells it for me. I'm behind it then. And also I want to mention Johanna hasn't been here. Did she say she was leaving? I just noticed she wasn't in the room. But thank you for that, all of you. Okay, and thanks for pointing that out. So I guess I'm going to go through a roll call. I don't know if we need to call this a vote or just I want to hear kind of how people feel about it. We've heard from Maria and Janet that they're ready to let it move on. Tom, are you okay with that? Yeah, yeah, I'm okay with that. All right, Jack. Yes, from what I've heard in the wrap up here, sounds good. Okay, thank you, Andrew. Yeah, I'm good as well. Thank you. Okay, and I'm fine with that too. So Chris. Good, thank you. I think we're set and we'll leave it to you whether it needs to come back with changes from CRC, I guess. Okay, so the time is 8.12. Why don't we take our five minute break? Jane, thanks for your attendance and contributions tonight. You're welcome to stay longer, but I suspect you think you're finished for tonight. I just want to say thank you to all of you for your attention to this over, well, some period of time. So thank you. Okay. All right, so the time is 8.13. We'll take a five minute break. Please turn off your video and your microphone and we'll see you back at 8.18. Okay, clock shows 8.18. So if you are back, you can turn back on your video. Okay, it looks like we've got all the board members back. We're still missing Johanna. There's Chris coming back into the, into the view. And we're still missing Pam. All right, there is Pam. Okay, Pam. It looks like we're all back. Thank you. Okay. All right. So the time is 8.20. And we'll go on to item number five on our agenda for this evening. Discussion of the rapid recovery plan. Chris, I assume you'd like to introduce the topic. Yes, I will introduce it. This plan was created based on a grant or with help from a grant that the Amherst bid received from the state. And it was really the bid who worked with the. Consultant. And the consultant was civic moxie. And it was, you know, I don't know if you've heard about it, but they were helped by Dodson and Flinker. And Stan tech. So it was really, you know, an effort to try to figure out, well, how do we get back? How can we recover. From COVID. And it's many, many pages long. I think it's, it's over a hundred pages long. So I only gave you the executive summary. Which I hope that you had a chance to read. I don't know if you've heard about this, but there are a lot of good ideas in the, in the plan. We did send you a link to the plan. So you did have an opportunity to read the whole thing if you wanted to. But I would be interested in hearing from you, you know, what you thought of it. If you thought there were particular things that we should focus on. Or if you would like to have a meeting with Gabrielle Gould, you know, as I said, you know, worked hard on this with civic moxie. Put this plan together. There are some recommendations with regard to zoning in here. So those things might be things that you're interested in picking up on, but I guess I'm really more interested in hearing from you about what, what you think of the plan that I am in presenting it myself, because I'm not, I wasn't intimately involved in, in writing it or preparing it. So Chris, you, you said you provided a link to the plan. But I did. On the 24th of February, you sent us the entire report. Is the plan different from the report. I think I sent you the entire report. I sent you about 10 pages of the report, including an executive summary. But the entire. On the 24th of February. Did I email you the entire report? Yeah. Okay. That's good. So there isn't any other separate plan. No. It was an attachment rather than. Yeah. It was a nine, nine megabyte 151 pages. Yeah. Okay. All right. So. Did, did any board members have a chance to look at this and have any sort of reaction? I guess. Chris, I guess I'll ask one other thing. So does this have any official status within the town? Or is this simply. A use of our taxpayer dollars. In the recovery act of the federal government. And provided some employment for people and. You know, is this a report that's that the town is likely to. Refer to an act on. Regardless of what we say about it. I don't think so. I think that the town. As I said, the town was only peripherally involved in preparing the report. It was really the bid who worked with this. Consultant civic moxie to prepare the report. So the town doesn't have an official role in this. And I don't think the report is going to be brought to. Town council to have them adopt it. I think it's kind of a working document that. The bid can use to, you know, go through the list of strategies and recommendations and figure out what are things that. Might be helpful for particularly for the downtown. So it's. So the bid is likely to use it as they advocate for. Improving downtown. That's correct. Yeah. And okay. All right. So does it, does Maria, I see your hand. Yeah, thanks. I guess I'd be willing. Are interested to hear what zoning. Changes can be made to help downtown. I did not read the report, the 180 phase report, whatever it was, I, but if, if Gabriel Gould has like specific zoning issues that could be helpful about the useful for us to hear, I suppose, but I don't need to hear a summary. All right. Well, I went up when I looked through the report, I found the Dodson and Flinker review of the, of the zoning code. To be the probably the most interesting part for me. And that starts on page 86. Of the 151 page PDF we received on February 24th. And I don't know, maybe there's 10 pages of commentary on our zoning code. Think, you know, kind of how they perceive it. Things that are working seem to seem to be appropriate. Things that may need more clarification that are confusing. So I thought that was really useful to have an outside. Perspective on our code. And so I think, you know, I'd be interested in talking in more detail. Maybe at a later meeting. About just what they saw and, you know, kind of hearing from Chris from you and the other town staff about whether you agree with some of this and should it be on. Priority lists or should it not. Chris, I see your hand. So would you like me to. Include that portion of the report in an upcoming planning board packet. So you can really, you know, focus on that. And then I'd be happy to make a presentation about that, about things that staff thinks might. Be helpful. Yeah, I think that I think that would be great. And it looks like it's really only about. Six pages. So that wouldn't, that wouldn't be a too heavy a lift for most of us to look at. Nope. So I'd be happy to do that. And would you have. I'll get, I guess I can tell Gabrielle that we will be talking about it. And if she wants to join us, she'll be welcome. Yeah. Okay. Janet, I see your hand. I did manage to get through the entire thing, but I don't think I'm going to go into that. I don't think I'm going to go into that deeply because it was just, it was kind of like a novel, you know, I mean, it's really long, but I did see a lot to like about it. You know, I like the idea of the buddy businesses, like somebody who's starting a business and Amherst kind of budding up with somebody who already has a business in Amherst. And then the, there was some kind of like business speak back, but I don't think I'm going to go into that. I don't think I'm going to go into that. I don't think I'm going to go into that. I don't think I'm going to go into that. I don't think I'm going to go into the town about how their permit process is going or whatever problems that they're having. And that seems like a good conduit to open up that kind of communication. Hopefully friendly and happy. I thought that was, and then the economic. Development person. I don't know if we can afford a staff, but it just, it does seem like. I don't think I'm going to go into that. I don't think I'm going to go into that. I don't think I'm going to go into an economic development plan, but this is what this is, I think aiming at. I. If we're going to, I love the Dodson Flinker. I didn't read it in super details. I was just trying to get my eyes over everything. If we do that section. I think we should talk about. The recommendation for a consensus vision for downtown. And the recommendation was, let's just commit to looking at downtown. And figuring out what we want to be that what we want there, what it should look like, you know, the heights, all that kind of stuff. And, you know, zoning changes, the BL. And, you know, that, that made me kind of weep for joy. I think that's a real need. And, you know, they were suggesting either that could go in-house or a consultant product process. I feel like if we add one more thing to the planning department, your heads might blow off. So maybe that would be more of a consultant process, but I do think we're doing all these bits and pieces with that, like a vision of where we're going and agreement or consensus in the way of like almost everybody, but not every, every single person. So I like that piece a lot. I loved all the stuff about public art and the murals and, you know, people painting everywhere. I thought that was fantastic. I thought we should throw in some street performers and music. So, you know, I just thought there was a lot to like in it. A lot of it really does focus on the downtown. I kept on wanting the lens to get bigger because I think we're going to, the downtown is so physically constricted. I keep on thinking we might want to go to a Newton model of having, you know, strong village centers and not be so focused on one spot to generate all our economic development. One thing I thought was kind of missing was UMass and Amherst College and Hampshire College. Because, you know, in terms of, you know, arts or entrepreneurship and partnering, I just thought those institutions are filled with students who it'd be great to have them start businesses here or, you know, I have a friend who does, she's at BU and she does a lot with the arts economy and they do a lot of entrepreneurship classes for art students at BU. And she leads those classes and I just thought it'd be great to take in all the resources we have from the universities to kind of like say, you know, stay here and build a business or stay here and be creative and open a creative business. And here's some space for you to do that. So I kind of thought that piece was kind of missing. Because I think that's, you know, and then I'm a little, a little bit on that same line. I know that, you know, they had these focus groups and I kept on thinking like they kept on talking about students in this very generic way, but did they talk to students about what they would like to see in Amherst or downtown. And that could just be part of maybe a downtown vision or something like that. But I worry about it, like the year round economy, because it gets very empty in the summer, which I kind of like, but I don't think it's great for the businesses when so many people leave. And I just wondered, you know, focusing on that a little bit, but I think that'd be like an economic development staff person focusing on that also. I mean, there's not, you know, they put a lot into this. But that's my broad view. But I really did like the idea of a consensus vision for downtown. Like, what do we want to be? What do we want to look like? What do we want to be there? And I think inviting students or faculty into that in terms of developing businesses is kind of a good idea. All right. Sorry. Thanks. Thanks, Janet. No apology needed. Chris, I see your hand. Yeah, I just wanted to say that I think some of the things that Janet was mentioning are going to be covered in the. Design standards project that we're working on, even though, you know, we're calling it design standards. It's really more than that. It's really kind of thinking about our downtown in terms of what do we want there? What do we want to see there? What do we want to do there, et cetera? So there's going to be a lot of public. Public input public, you know, seeking input from the public about that. So I'm hoping that that is definitely included in that project. The other thing is that the reason this focuses on the downtown is because it was the bid that put it out. We're put out the request for it. And so they are focused on the downtown. And more so than, you know, the Chamber of Commerce or another entity. So, you know, I think it is a good idea to involve. The Library of Congress. Um, so I think we can ask and Amherst College as much as we can, particularly Amherst College, since they're part of the downtown. But the, the, the reach of this was really focused on the bid. So that's all I wanted to say, but thanks, Jen. If we're reading it so closely and, um, We'll try to really get into it next time around. Okay. Any other comments from board members? Board members. Yeah. You are muted. Yeah, my computer must be a buggered up. Sorry about that. Anyway, you hear me. Yes. Yeah, so, you know, I love this. It seems, you know, very organic with, with, you know, the stakeholders. And I'm putting a lot of input. Into the, you know, downtown vision. And I'm just, I'm just wondering, you know, maybe Chris, you know, can speak to this, but, you know, I was very happy to see Amherst College, you know, making contributions to the Drake. I'm not sure I've seen similar sort of, you know, actions by, by UMass in that respect, but I'm just wondering, where are we with the, with the town gown sort of thing, because I mean, it's, it's wonderful to see, you know, 100 K 200 K contribution, you know, from, from a local college. But we, you know, we know there's probably so much more, you know, given their tax exempt status. And I'm just wondering, you know, where are we with, you know, fully kind of, you know, integrating the, the, our, our, you know, the local colleges and universities into, into the town and, and the business and, you know, in downtown. Thanks, Jack. Chris, do you want to respond to that at all? Yeah, so the, the higher ups in town, higher than me, are talking, working on strategic, strategic agreements with the university and Amherst College and Hampshire College. There are, you know, the three efforts to work with those groups. And so, you know, that's kind of an ongoing process right now. But I know Dave Zomek is heavily involved in that. And so is the town manager. So I think, you know, there will be discussions about how we can cooperate and, you know, how the entities, the institutions can contribute to the town. So that's, that's one thing. There was another thing about, I think it was at the town. Maybe it was at the finance committee meeting. Yes. I went to a finance committee meeting. I think it was yesterday morning. And the finance committee was talking about. Trying to figure out how to. Approach the institutions. In a conversation about monetary. Arrangements. In other words, they were talking about the fact that other. Other private colleges around the country. They were talking about how to make substantial contributions to the towns or cities where they're located. And, you know, it hasn't been the case in the past here. And so the finance committee is. Discussing how do we approach this topic? How do we figure it out? And they were. Talking to the assessor about, you know, different ways of assessing land and buildings, et cetera. It's a topic of conversation at that level. I'm not really involved. You know, in those conversations so much, except I was at the finance committee meeting yesterday. So if you are interested in that topic, you might. Tune into finance committee meetings and see where that. Where that conversation goes. But anyway, they are working on these strategic agreements with the. Institutions. Okay. Thank you. Jack. You're still muted, Jack. Oh, okay. I feel like such a clutch. But, um, But Chris just mentioned, I think, you know, we have seen other, you know, what other colleges do, you know, with regard to their local communities and Chris hinted at that. And I think that is. Kind of like sticks with me is like, you know, why is not that not happening, you know, with our town? I don't know if it's BU or Northeastern or. Um, but they're, you know, tough, right? But it's, it's, it's amazing what some of the local, you know, contributions are made by, by the colleges. And it just seems like. We're celebrating a hundred K sort of contribution from, you know, for a piano or whatever at the Drake and, but it just seems. Like we're missing out. And I hope the town is, is pushing hard on our. You know, higher education. So. As institutions see what they can do to help because we need to help obviously. Okay. Thank you. Janet. Yeah, I hear this conversation going on for years about this and. You know, isn't, isn't there just a list of schools and what they give? I mean, UMass Lowell gives a million dollars to Lowell. That was in the Boston Globe. Smith gives a lot of money to Northampton. Williams gives a lot of money to. Williamstown, I always get the name that, you know, and so, you know, MIT, you know, these are, you know, whatever. So Chris has the town ever just pulled together a list of, you know, who pays what Bowdoin, who, you know, who gives, you know, that kind of thing. Cause I think that's the, the starting point is what it, what's, you know, you know, where are you on the chart, you know, and if we're not on the chart, that's kind of odd, you know, I don't, I wouldn't put Hampshire college on the chart right now, but, you know, maybe someday, but I just think it's sort of like it's the information we just, I feel like I'm always taught this is always talked about in this kind of abstract way. And I think if we had a list of, you know, we have, I don't know, maybe 100, 200 colleges in New England, you know, in universities, what do they pay in pilot payments? You know, I don't think it's a secret. I mean, some schools are juggernauts like Harvard and, you know, Brown and stuff like that. But, you know, there's small colleges that pay a lot of money too. So I just think, I think that would help maybe not just start the conversation, but move it forward. Like what are we talking about here? You know, and, you know, I love Amherst College and New Mass and Hampshire college, but, you know, there's a lot, there's a lot of need we have because we have so many nonprofits. And a lot of strings from that too. All right. Thanks, Janet. Chris. So I think that the term pilot payment is one thing that they're aiming at this group in the finance committee that, you know, they want to have a conversation about that. We don't, as far as I know, we don't receive pilot payments. I believe that we receive some sort of remuneration, but I don't think it's called a pilot payment. And so a pilot payment is payment in lieu of taxes, right? So there needs to be some understanding of, well, if you were taxed, what would you be taxed? And I think there are institutions and there are municipalities that have agreements where the pilot payment is, you know, 25% of whatever they would have normally paid if they were paying tax. So I will, I think Janet has a good idea to come up with a list. I don't think it's the planning department's role to come up with that list, but I can certainly pass that suggestion along to Dave Selma. I can see, you know, where it goes. And I might add that, you know, we have three very different institutions in town. And so I would not limit my list to small private colleges in New England. I would include large public universities around the country. If you're going, if you want to have that conversation with UMass, you know, use, you need to be referring to people they consider their peers. And are at the scale that they're at. All right. I don't see any more hands. And I guess we've agreed that we will take, we'll look more closely at the Dodson and Flinker part of the recovery plan at a future meeting. But it sounds, it looks to me like for tonight we're kind of done with this topic. Is there anything else you would like from us tonight? Not on that topic, but I will certainly bring back that portion of the plan to you in future date. And at some point I should probably talk to you about what might be coming up at your upcoming meeting. So maybe I'll do, do that during report of staff. Okay. Great. Janet. I was just thinking we haven't had public comment. And so I wonder if people had, I mean, they missed their chance on demolition delay, but if, if anyone has a comment or something. Okay. All right. Do any of the public want to talk about the recovery, the rapid recovery plan. That the bid prepared. Okay. I see one, one set of hands, two set of hands. Okay. Okay. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you very much. Susanna. Must brat. Why don't we start with you. Pam, if you can bring her over. Susanna, please start with your name and your address. Hi, Susanna. Susanna, are you there? Yes. Can you hear me? Yes, we can. Okay. Susanna must print 38 North prospect street. I'm just curious if anybody knows. Who always. Does anybody know who's been putting together this report? Because was there any. Attempt to speak to people who live in the town as opposed to business owners. Well, I believe that the report includes. A list of the participants. Yeah. Like the cinema director, but. How can we get a little more public input into these plans and surveys and things? I mean, I know this was not your doing, but we in the public feel kind of like. We're left out of all of the. Opinion gathering that's going on. Yeah. Since this process was not. You know, managed by the town. I think Chris is going to have a hard time. Yeah. Yeah. So what I'm telling is how. The public could have been involved in that one in this one. Yeah. Chris, do you have any comment at all? I think, I think you really. Susanna, I would suggest you talk to Gabrielle about. Yeah. About their process. Right. Thank you. Okay. And we have as a second hand, we have kitty. You are now a participant if you can give us your name and your address. Yes, kitty. Axelson Barry and I'm at 89. Stony Hill road. So I'm curious about the origins of this report, how it came about that the bid, I guess, applied for the rapid recovery money. And that. And put this together without. Without, I mean, Gabrielle Gould in the bid there. It's a kind of semi private semi public organization. It's not really the town. And I did notice that there is a kind of. Handpicked list of. Local participants, but it doesn't seem to be very wide ranging in terms of people's points of view. So I'm just wondering whether you know what that is. And I do have a second question. And that is how would. Do you have any, do any of you have any suggestions of how the town would go about. Finding out about pilot programs. In other New England universities and small, you know, private colleges. Like, where would you start? Who would, who would you start contacting? What department. All right. So Chris, we had two comment, two questions in there. The first question being the origins of the report and how did, how did Gabrielle get going on it? I think she saw that there was this money available for downtowns to get some help in trying to recover from COVID. And she went after the, the money for it. So this was a, this was a grant. This was funded by a grant. Yes. And there was some interaction with the town manager. And I'm looking at the second page of the report and it says, George Ryan, a town counselor was also involved. But as I said, we didn't have any involvement. The planning department did not have any involvement. So whatever involvement was had was on the upper third floor. Town manager's office. So I can't really talk about the origins of it. And, and we asked for a copy of it and that's how we got it. And then I think we told you about it, or maybe it was in the newspaper or something. As far as how would we go about finding out other towns? You could talk to the assessor because she's, you know, the person who is interested in, you know, figuring out how to get more money for real estate. In town and she may, you know, be aware of the arrangement between Williamstown and, and Williams College and other, and maybe Lowell and, and the city, the city of Lowell and UMass Lowell. But those are, we don't be involved. We're not directly involved in taking in money or figuring out how to get money other than grants to do our work. But, um, yeah, you could ask the assessor her name is Kim, you, she's new and she's very lovely and she is cooperative and would probably be happy to speak with you. Okay. Thank you, Kitty. And I don't see any more hands for public comment on this topic. Any final board comments about the rapid recovery plan for the city of Lowell? I don't see any comments tonight. Not seeing any hands. Okay. So the time is 849. And we'll go on to a type topic six on our agenda, which is the solar bylaw. And other zoning priorities. Chris, you had as your first item, the zoning amendment discussion. And I'm thinking maybe we should start with the second item that we're going to talk about. So we can start with that. Janet, do you want to talk through the document you sent in and was included in our packet? So I basically just called Linda Laduk, who's the Palmer. Planning director. And she told me that she had been at the pioneer valley planning commission meeting. I think she had heard that Amherst was looking at the solar bylaw. And she said, she was, she almost raised her hand to say, you know, I could help you with that because she had just gone through this whole process. And so the call seems sort of like pre-ordained in some way. So basically. So, you know, she had collected a lot of information, but it's, you know, basically my memo pretty much says everything that she said, which is, you know, Palmer was inundated with solar projects. And so she said, you know, she said, you know, she said, you know, she was inundated with solar projects. That only had site plan review. And then the townspeople felt like the arrays were just overwhelming the landscape. And she said that Palmer actually has a lot of transmission lines going through it. And that might have been the attractant for projects. And so, you know, they were just, they were just, you know, they 12 came in and they really had no regs for it. Visitors were filling up and it just felt out of control to them. And so, you know, she said, you know, she was inundated with this six month moratorium, which is pretty short. And they drafted their bylaw in that time, which I think was kind of a thing. And they, they use the state model by law as a basis, but I'm actually now realizing I'm not even sure what that is, because there seems to be like three or four floating around. So I'm not sure which one they based it on. And then the great phrase was, she said, we polymerized it. So they just put their concerns onto it. And so they had a set of plans for guidance and things like that. And so I think what really jumped out of me was that they had problems with all the, those 12 solar facilities. And, you know, like, basically the developers had a set of plans they had submitted. And then they cut outside the limits. They had, they cleared large areas and the, you know, they were so large that they really, there were all these erosion problems. And that, you know, there was like what she described as explosions or runoff during, during storms. And then we also discussed a little bit about how, you know, storms are worse. And she said the state standards are decades old and really aren't up to date or accounting for everything is getting kind of worse. And so, so they, they, you know, she said, that was a really negative experience. And so they wanted to sort of get in front of that and get more control over it. And that's what their bylaw did. And so they have, you know, it's different standards and things like that, but you could see they have, they, they, they basically set a whole area of town just to, that no solar facilities could be in. And that was their sending area for transferring development rights. And it's also their, it's meant for, it's meant for the area for water protection of drinking water and service waters. And so I think they have a transfer development rights program where developers can sell, you know, like whoever owns that land can sell the rights development rights to people who want greater density in the receiving area, which I would assume is, you know, somewhere near town center or in the town center. And so they just protected that area from any. What else. They did also decided not to allow solar facilities in industrial or business districts. Unless it was an ancillary use like it was just, you know, producing energy for the building or the site, the activity on site, because they wanted those, those districts to basically be job producers and, you know, part of their economic development strategy. So they allow solar arrays in all their residential, and pretty much all he has left is the residential areas. And so they allow the rays in those areas. And I can't remember, but I think that, you know, rooftops, they just have a building permit, but, you know, they have standards. And then they have, I think site plan review, oh, they said site plan review for parking lots, rooftops and canopies and special permits for larger projects. And then they have their famous 100 foot setback of a vegetative buffer. And that was really just to block the view of the solar facility and to create a barrier to it. And because that was part of what people were really upset about. They just felt like they're kind of a, you know, semi rural town and they were just losing that, that part of it. They also had limits on slopes because they had a lot of problems with runoffs on slopes. And they, they had a requirement to set up side green space. That's 1.5% times the project size. And that was just to, you know, kind of get a limit on the size of the thing and make sure that there's a buffer around it. And then I talked over with her, they were limiting each project to five megawatts. And, you know, I had mentioned to that we had discussed that. And we thought that was a weird limit because what if the panels get more productive, you know, per panel, you're kind of limiting that. And she said, basically, that was an interesting point. They hadn't run into that yet. But it was basically, that was a way of limiting the size of the facility. So that was the purpose of that. And they also require, they don't let earth leave the site or come in. I think that was, they had people, you know, they had runoff on people's yards and on the street. And, you know, it just seemed like a really frustrating situation. And they also required visualization of, of the projects from different viewpoints, like high points and low points, like what would it look like? And I think maybe that buffering when, you know, they probably would put conditions on that buffering. They do not let, allow battery storage as a primary use, just secondary. And they don't want to be like a bad battery storage place for Palmer, because it doesn't bring in jobs. So that's what they had to do. And I think that sadly is considering a bad battery storage facility. So they just made some very clear choices. I think about what did they want to see and where. And let's see. You know, I talked over the farmland issue and she said that, you know, that wasn't really a big issue for Palmer. They don't have really good soils, but she could see how that would be a, that, you know, Amherst has so much high quality soils. So, you know, I think that's why they were in their, in their moratorium, who filed subdivision plans to, you know, freeze the zoning. But she said the projects basically followed the new guidelines. I think they put one put in a large buffer. I'm not sure about the second one. And one is, it was seven megawatts or 7.5 megawatts. They didn't follow that, but they pretty much worked with the town about what they wanted to see. I think that was Blue Wave, the company that, that was doing the two projects and that Tom Reedy was their attorney and she found that to be a good product kind of back and forth. And she did notice, she did say that, you know, 100% of the town government needs were covered by one solar facility. And they, they're not, they don't have a good process for monitoring projects. I don't think they're a really big town. And so they're trying to figure out a way to like, you make sure that whatever they approve is what's happening on the ground. And that, that was like a missing piece for them. Yeah, that sounded like that was a big. Part of the problem they were having is that people weren't following the plans. Yes. And, you know, sort of surprisingly, so, because you kind of, you know, so. Um, and that, you know, that actually made me think like, oh, you know, I know there's been problems and Plymouth, you know, with their pine barrens and, you know, I just thought like, you know, I'm sure that, you know, people tend to talk about the problems, but I feel like there's our bio, we should see what those are, you know, like eight out of 10 arrays might be perfect, but the two that aren't, you know, it could be real problems. So I thought that was worth further study. Well, then there's the, you know, what, what are the requirements you put in the bylaw? And that's the framework you set up. But then it's a completely separate question of what's your enforcement process. Yeah. You have the resources to, to enforce whatever it is you put in the bylaw. Yeah. Yeah. Oh, one thing she talked about that, um, was telephone poles because there's a lot of poles that show up, you know, to carry the energy off to, I'm forgetting the word, um, the transmission lines or something. And she said, you know, like somebody would have a house across some facility and there's like in the middle of their, you know, they would look out and it'd be like six telephone poles. And so that was one thing, an issue about where the poles would be. You know, of course, everybody wants everything underground, but you can't always assure that, but that was another thing that kind of drove people crazy. Um, but you know, you know, just reflecting on Doug, you keep on, you know, you've been talking about how these, you know, more rural towns, you know, will become site, could become sites for solar facilities because they have open land. It's cheaper to build there. And it looked like maybe that was happening to Palmer. And they were just like, they, they felt like they had lost control of, you know, basically what was happening in their town. And they made some, you know, it was process decisions, but also citing decisions like where should it go? We want to protect our water. Um, and we want to, we want to protect our industrial zone, you know, because we want different kinds of jobs there. So it was very clear. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. And thank you for doing that. Um, So board members. Any, uh, oh, Jack, I see your hand. I'll let you go. And you're, you're not muted. So go right ahead. I was like, you know, kind of, you know, jumping ahead there, getting my mute off there. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I'm going to run down from Palmer. And, um, you know, I did, I, I missed the last meeting. Um, so I don't really know where we, you know, where exactly we are in the conversation. With the solar, you know, bylaw. But I do believe that. Um, you know, when it comes to the ground mounted solar, these things are, are, you know, they're fairly simple, you know, and when it comes to the ground mounted solar, you know, when it comes to the ground mounted solar, you know, it matters that I think we, you know, that we include this third party, you know, engineering sort of oversight. That would take care. Of any of the sloppiness. You know, because of the plans. That the engineers come up with it. They're solid. Uh, but they need to be implemented. And it just seems like the majority of issues. That I have, you know, heard of is just lack of oversight. a very big part, you know, to our bylaws that we, you know, have this, you know, not the town, it doesn't have to be the burden on the town, but but a third party, you know, you know, looking after making sure stormwater is being taken care of properly, you know, but again, I'm on the water supply protection committee, and we're going to be going over some, you know, like a white paper for for this bylaw. But for me, there's really not a groundwater concern, because they're just not leachable contaminants associated with the installation of of of these, you know, the solar panels. However, you know, you do have trucks with gasoline, oil, you know, during the construction, you know, certainly that's that's a deal. And then the battery storage, that's a that's a different deal as well. But I just want to say that I would like to see us be firm on third party, you know, inspection review of these types of projects. And I think that would solve going a long way in terms of solving any sort of risks that we're looking at. All right, thanks, Jack. I guess, Andrew, before I call on you, Chris, I see we've lost Rob. But, you know, has it been your impression that the projects we've had in town that the building department felt unable to properly monitor those? I have not heard anything about failure to monitor or problems with monitoring. And I do know that the conservation commission and the conservation staff is very good at monitoring things from a well in point of view. But also that, and this was interesting to me on a mere McChese property on Southeast Street. The town actually hired a third party inspector to go out and monitor that property. So there's a woman who knows a lot about wetlands and about, you know, construction and run off and all of those things who's monitoring that site. And she sends reports to our wetlands administrator. So I think that that kind of thing could be put in place if we felt that we didn't have enough of our own inspectors and our own, you know, wetlands experts to do that, that we could hire outside parties to do that. And it would be at the expense of the developer. So I think that's something that we should keep in mind. So would that be something we explicitly put in a bylaw or would we leave it up to Rob and his team to say, oh, this is a project where we need a third party and we'll just make it a condition of the building permit? I don't know whether it should be included in the bylaw or perhaps mentioned in the bylaw as something that could be included in conditions. That's, you know, sometimes bylaws include recommendations rather than, you know, you must do this. So but that's certainly something that we can talk about as we move along. Okay. Andrew, you're on. Thanks, Doug. And thanks, Janet. I echo what Jackson, that was an awesome summary. And thanks for reaching out. I was curious, did Ms. Laduke say, I guess, was there anything that that she wished that they did that didn't make it through or any like lessons learned in terms of the actual the language or the feedback they sought from the public that that we could incorporate into our process? Janet, you are muted. Are you asking, are they having problems with the bylaw now? It sounds like is there anything now that they passed the bylaw? Is there anything she wishes she had included or done differently? I didn't ask her that question. That's a good question. Yeah. I do, I do also, I used to work in Palmer and I don't know the land that well, but they had they definitely had problems with slopes. And so, you know, she was talking a lot about the requirements for slopes, like, you know, for their for the roads were and what, you know, they limited the slopes because I think that was a lot of the erosion problems. Well, I know a number of the bylaws we've looked at had, you know, had maximum slopes for where you could put canals and over a certain limit, you you couldn't go there. Yeah, I got the impression that she just thought, you know, a really large array would just, you know, like if you're clearing that much land, you're just not going to control the erosion. But I could ask her that specifically. And I can ask her, you know, what, you know, what do you in retrospect would you change something, you know, or something? All right, thanks, Janet, Chris. I understand that some some towns require phasing of projects and that that can cut down on erosion problems if you, you know, build a certain section of the array and then you make sure that the ground is stabilized under it before you go on and build the next section. So that's something that we could consider. OK, I had Janet. So I did I talked to her today and I did ask your question, Doug, I said, you know, one of the planning board members had this idea about using utility public utility, because if you have all these transmission lines, you have all this open land. Her impression was that the utilities really want to control that land. But I said, well, what about the utility putting it in? I mean, they're the ones who are trying to generate energy. And she said, you know, that would be something to talk to them about because and then she said, you know, even though your areas serve by, you know, Wemiko or Eversource, they may not actually own those power lines. So it'd be interesting. She said it'd be interesting just to talk to somebody who own them to see if that would be something they would want to do. Because I've been I've been walking those lines a lot lately in my neighborhood because they're all open and they're actually have wood, you know, wood things because they're working on them. And I was just like, this is, you know, this is even it'll be more shaded in the summer during the winter. It's like it's all sunny and stuff like that is very and they keep it open. They keep the ground covered down. So I do think it's an idea to see how that would work. And then, you know, if animals can't get by, maybe the fencing could be adjusted. And then I also read that sometimes, you know, panels aren't always fenced in, which I thought was interesting. So I think your idea is worth pursuing. OK. Well, I kind of expect the utility or the owners of the transmission lines will say we need the clear area underneath those lines in order to service those lines. But I think it's worth at least asking. Yeah, at some point or proposing and let it let them come back and tell us. It might be one of those things like, wow, we never thought of that. And you're like, really? But it could be, you know. OK, Maria. But everybody probably saw that article by Kate Atkinson. But I think she might have answered that question in her sort of here are some facts, bullet points. One of them was. Hmm, where is it? The electrical substation is as she said, it costs millions of miles to connect solar arrays to substations. The solar rays have to be nearby the substation and shoots. But she's given an example of that. In other words, I think you can't just make huge swaths. You have to have infrastructure every certain, I don't know what. But it sounds like that. I don't know where she got her facts, but she said, here are some facts. And I thought it was really interesting. I thought one of them actually, but now I don't see it. I thought she actually addressed that one about, like, the idea of putting arrays along miles and miles of already cleared area. But no, I'm almost done. Yeah, OK, yeah. It was a pretty short, like an op ed. Right. No, I thought that was an interest. It was interesting, you know, what it said, and it was interesting actually coming from her. Yeah, yeah. Jack. Yeah, I just, you know, I know from business relations and friends and things like that, the interconnection is this huge, huge. And it's kind of interesting that, I think, Chris on this, the what is it, DOER? You know, we're going to do a statewide siting study, correct? Yeah, that was in the Gazette. And it's like, holy cow. So it's just going to be a GIS effort, basically. But when it comes down to it, they need, you know, there have been projects I've been affiliated with that have been sitting there for like four or five, six, you know, years, because they can't get the connection, you know, and they're ready to to have the installation there. So this, this is a big deal. And it's, you know, it's beyond, you know, beyond me. Beyond me with regard to, you know, what's going on with the decision making there, but, you know, it's, there's definitely a tug of war with regard to the traditional electric, you know, providers, National Grid, Eversource, but that is huge. And I don't know how you account for that, you know, because it just seems right now, it seems very political. Very political to me, in terms of getting that, you know, interconnection. Okay, well, I'm glad you mentioned that statewide survey that was in the Gazette. Chris, it made me wonder, you know, if we hire somebody to do a solar survey of Amherst, are they going to be duplicating effort that the state is already going to do? And it seemed like the timeline was almost exactly parallel with, with ours. So what do you know about that? I don't know any more than I read in the article, but what I think is that when the state does a survey of that type, they do a kind of general broad brush survey. And what we want is, you know, a really site-specific survey here, we want to be able to get down to some of the areas that the state is going to be doing. We want to get down to some of the particular properties and assess them as to whether they're, you know, suitable or appropriate or whatever. So, and the other thing is that the state often takes a long time to do whatever they're doing. I don't know what their timeframe is in this case, but if we want to get this thing done by, I think the town council is going to take a vote on this coming Monday. And we're going to have to work on a solar bylaw and a solar assessment and have that all wrapped up by, I think it was March of 2023. So if we're going to be put under that kind of time constraint, and I think we also are very eager to move ahead with this because we want to put something in place. So the next time a solar installation is proposed, we have, you know, regulations to deal with it. So we have the feeling that the state, based on previous work that I've seen from the state, it's going to be a more broad brush approach. And it's also going to take a while. You know, so that's just my opinion. But Johanna may have a different point of view because she's more in tune with, you know, what's going on at the state level, I think. Yeah, I will say that in the first article that you forwarded to us. It said it contemplated starting this June and ending in June of 2023. So, you know, maybe they'll be slower, but they're pretty closely tracking us. Okay, Jack. I don't know if Johanna was mentioned by Chris, that she wants to kind of leapfrog me. She's back there. I'm sorry, I had a work thing pop up. It's good to be back. But I was just saying that if Johanna wanted to, to chime in because it's for continuity. Okay. Well, Johanna, we are talking about generally about solar bylaws. And so, you know, Janet gave her overview of the document and her notes from her conversation with Palmer. And the conversation has sort of drifted into the fact that the, we saw the article that Chris forwarded about the state doing a solar assessment of everything in the state, I guess. And so, you know, we were talking similar to the Amherst effort. And we were just kind of talking about whether there was going to be any overlap. And whether in fact our study would even, you know, be necessary or the fact that it's probably more detailed means we should still proceed with it. So I think that's, that's, that's my overview. So after seeing that article on the paper, I actually started drafting an email to Chris and she and I had an email exchange kind of to this effect because I was like, if there's the state study and there's our study, and if they come out with findings next summer, but we are writing a bylaw now. Will we then have to like, you know, it seems like we'd want to potentially revise that bylaw based on whatever the findings of the study are. And that makes sense to hold off a little bit on the, you know, development of a bylaw until the studies are done. But I, I get the sense that there's enough. There's a lot of support in town to do, you know, have clear criteria for solar project specifically. And that was, I think kind of what Chris was suggesting to that, you know, we should continue on this parallel track of. Yeah, the studies are happening and we're putting together bylaw language and, you know, whenever the two meet will, you know, that'll be what it is. And then, you know, it can always be opened up later if we need to, but that there's a spirit of urgency to actually getting this bylaw created was my impression. Okay. Jack, I think your hand was up next. So I just wanted to say that again, if we're doing solar siding studies, so, you know, solar is, is involves a landowner, you know, involves a developer, and then you've got ever source or national grid. So this, you know, the whole concept of the solar siding study without, you know, because it's a business agreement without this, you know, the kind of participation of, of the, you know, electrical, you know, producers. This doesn't make sense to me, I guess, because I, again, I've seen a lot of frustrated and projects is just haven't gone anywhere, because it requires that interconnection, you know, agreement, and that's a big deal. It's a big deal for, for these things. So, um, so I'm just wondering what, what, what's the sense of, Jack, it does seem like there's, that the town is moving toward appointing a working group to at least participate in some way on the development of this bylaw. And so, you know, Chris could at least take your comment and to Paul Backelman that we, that he includes some utility representation on the working group. Yeah, sounds good. Okay. Your hand was next. Thanks. I was going to say it's possible that it should be the utility. It's also possible it should be ISO New England, which is the grid operator. And I think Chris forwarded the article, but the utility grid just south of us PJM. They have had so many, you know, proposals for solar that like they can't keep up with the interconnection. They are thousands of projects behind and they're, you know, now proposing, I think a two year moratorium on interconnection while they streamline their permitting process and train more people. So I don't know that somebody from ISO would go to the Emmerstown working group, but, um, you know, the more that the grid operator is thinking about this on the front end, the better it'll position us to not end up in the same place that PJM ended up. All right. Well, you've also reminded me of, of Chris, that woman, Sarah Matthews, who had done it one of the early columns in the Gazette about solar and sounded like she was part of a law firm that might work with developers on getting projects off the ground. So, you know, even if ISO wouldn't come to our working group, maybe somebody who's related and works with ISO might have that perspective to offer. Janet, I guess you're next. So I have the same question. Um, or I mean, I think we all have this issue, but what Johanna was saying is sort of like a chicken and egg, because it seems like, um, as we've learned on the demolition delay bylaw, it's not that easy to write, you know, text, but it's, what are we writing it to say, you know, we do have model bylaws, we do have other towns, we could just say, okay, we're going to use your framework. Um, but all these choices have to be made, like, you know, do we want to set aside certain areas for larger arrays? Do we want to, you know, say no arrays here? Do we want, you know, we might want a different level of regulation for obviously a lower level of regulation for rooftops and stuff. But I, you know, when I'm reading all these things, I'm always thinking, well, what choices is Amherst going to make? Because Palmer made some pretty quick choices. Um, you know, they, you know, and other towns have also made choices. And so I think that what are we writing the bylaw to say? Like where, where are the off sites, where are the good sites, you know, we don't have that information, what are the value decisions, you know, are we going to make? Um, and then, you know, I've been doing some research on farmland stuff. And I kind of get really lost in the UMass thing and I'm on the state and I'm like, well, this is all really interesting. But, um, you know, I can, I can read that for a long time. And I keep on thinking this is what the, um, the solar study is going to do. Right. So I feel like, okay, I'm collecting resources. I'm getting a good background. But who, you know, how are these decisions going to be made? Or can we write a bylaw without knowing what the choices are going to be made? Or what the group is leading towards? Or the, what are the town values? So I'm willing to keep going, but I kind of wonder like, you know, I mean, I imagine I'm just articulating what everybody's feeling. Or, you know, are we just learning up to figure out what the framework is? Or are we learning up just to learn the issues when the decisions are made? We can write to it or. Well, sorry, go ahead. That's, that's where I, this is, I keep on spinning in a circle mentally. And then I keep looking at stuff. And I'm happy to talk to more people and things, but. Well, I can tell you that I, I view it kind of. That there's sort of two parts to this one is. There's the kind of enforcement and. Discrete requirements for each array. So setbacks, fencing. You know, slopes. Whether we require a bond so it can be removed at the end. So we're going to be able to do that. All of those things. Probably we could craft a bylaw right now. And we could, we could send it to town council and just say. You know, we're not changing the areas in which solar arrays can happen, but we're going to have this bylaw to control how they happen. So we could do that now. And we could do that. We could do that. And we could do that. Shoot spurries bylaw. At Amherst eyes. Or, you know, like you. Polymerized. And we could just take a pass at some of those decisions. But the, but the piece about exactly where do we want to say that by law or the arrays are allowed. That's what we need the solar study for the sort of geographic. Um, the purpose of where in town should we stay away from. Um, and not permit. So. You know, that may take longer. So, but, but if we want, you know, we could ask Chris to come back in a month with. Here's a first pass at Amherst's bylaw without any reference to a map. That's, that's my opinion. Chris, you've got your hand up before Tom. Yeah, um, so I think it's going to be really important to work with this committee that the town manager is going to be setting up. I don't know if I sent you the, um, description of the committee, but it's, it's evolving. And the town manager, um, I think he's going to be doing this in the next week or so. Um, it's really important. I believe he's going to look at it either tomorrow or Friday. Get back to Stephanie and I are the ones who are kind of putting this together. So, um, I think we're going to be working on that. Mostly Stephanie. And then we'll bring it to a town council and see if they want to create this body. The body's, um, purpose is to. Learn all the things that we're learning now. And work on the solar bylaw and work on the solar sighting assessment. And work with a consultant. Actually, I've been asked not to use the word consultant so often, but I'm going to use the word technical expert now. Um, I think it's important for us to evaluate the land in Amherst to determine where solar rays. Might go. And there are all different kinds of things that we need to consider. Some of which are constraints that are already on the property with regard to. Agricultural preservation restrictions or conservation restrictions or. Wetlands regulations and all of those things. So, you know, I think it's important for us to have a public conversation about our values. And what do we value? I mean, um, do we value all farmland? Do we value prime farmland? Are there certain prime farmlands that we value more than others? What about forests? What type of forests do we most value other things? You know, do we value not having solar arrays be visible? We're not having them be near homes or, you know, We're not having them be near homes. I think there was an article that was sent to me by, I believe it was shallony ball known that talked about, you know, how, how you go about. Determining where these things should go. And part of it is to have a conversation, a community conversation about values in the beginning. I'll see if I can find that article and send it to you. I thought I might have sent it to you previously, but maybe not. Um, Another thing is that UMass, as Jenna has pointed out, UMass is a great resource for this type of information. ECAC, I don't know. I don't really like to call it that. But anyway, ECAC has one of its members is Dwayne Brigger, who happens to be the father of Ben Brigger. So we're really, you know, capitalizing on their expertise of this family. But anyway, Dwayne Brigger is, is working at the university to come up with processes to help municipalities figure out how to have more solar, but also do it the right way. And so that's kind of like his professional life that he does, but then he does work with ECAC on the side. So Stephanie is tapping into his knowledge about, about that. And, um, trying to determine, you know, exactly what do we want this technical expert to help us with. And I think he'll have a pretty good idea because he's been, you know, as I said, working on this as his, um, professional job. But the other thing I wanted to do is, um, kind of address what Janet was saying, what are we doing? And to me, what we're doing right now is we're all of us reading, you know, we're not all reading the same things, but we're reading lots of different things and we're educating ourselves about this topic. And, um, you know, I didn't know much about this topic. All I knew was what I had seen the zoning board of appeals do when they had reviewed the projects that are, you know, that have been approved, but now I know a lot more because I've been reading about it for, you know, two or three months. So we're educating ourselves about what are the kinds of things that we need to know and what are the kinds of things that we need to do and what do we need to put in our bylaw. And I think one of the values we have to figure out is, do we want solar in our town? And I personally, I live in this town. I think I do want solar in this town. So how much solar do we want? And does solar outweigh, you know, farmland, or does it outweigh some types of forest? So those are all conversations that we need to have about the values, but educating ourselves about those questions, I think is important. So we're just all learning. And we're, we're being told that we shouldn't put a bylaw in place without having this solar assessment done, because the solar assessment will bring up issues that will inform what we want to put in the bylaw. And the other thing is that the solar assessment may end up producing a map. I hope it ends up producing a map and the map could be a zoning map. It could be an overlay map that we put on our zoning, our zoning map that shows us where we prefer to have solar and where we prefer not to have solar and where solar absolutely shouldn't go. So those are things that are going to be related to the text that we put together. So I don't think we can do one without the other. So anyway, that's a long way of saying we're in this educational process. We have a ways to go, but I think we've come a long way since November when this solar moratorium first, you know, came to our attention. We've all learned a lot and we'll continue to learn a lot and hopefully we can help each other. So anyway, that's, that's all. Hey Chris, thank you, Jack. Yeah, I'm, again, I guess I just kind of re, want to reiterate, I think this, the solar assessment study aspect of this is, you know, going down a wormhole. I mean, I just, I just think it's a waste of time. I mean, there's really not that many parcels that lend themselves to large ground mounted, you know, arrays. And again, there's so many other factors. I just think it's to really pursue that. I just let the developers figure it out and let it be reviewed by the ZBA or the planning board. But it's, I just, I think it's a complete waste of time for, you know, a town to do a solar sighting or a solar assessment. You know, study, there's just, it's just ridiculous. My opinion. Okay. Strong opinion. We hear you, Jack. We hear you. Janet. So I, oh, I have Chris, I have questions. In terms of mapping, do we have maps that list like all the vernal pools and wetlands areas? And do we have maps about like that, that say where the prime soils are versus the soils of statewide concern or importance? Do we have those maps? We have maps that show where the prime soils are and soils of concern. We don't have maps that show where all the vernal pools are because they're discovered on a property by property basis. As something is proposed and we don't have maps that show where all the wetlands are, because again, those wetlands maps are developed. When someone wants to do something on their property, then they have to go out and map the wetlands. And the mapping of wetlands is only good for a period of three years. After that, you have to do it over again. So we try. I think that GIS people try to incorporate some of what we map into our GIS system, but it's certainly not complete at all. So that's not, that's not something that we have access to. And I don't imagine that we will have access to it, even as part of the solar assessment, because we're not going to map all the wetlands and hammers, but the solar technical expert can help us figure out where we're likely to have wetlands and when something is proposed, if something is proposed, wetlands have to be mapped before you can get a permit to do anything. Okay. So I've always wondered this because I, you know, I could, I could point you to, you know, eight to 10 vernal pools in my dog walking area and the fields around me. And I don't know if you know Harvey Allen who grew up here. I just thought like someone should just give him a map and say, where are these things? Cause he's been walking this for, you know, 80 years and stuff like that. So that seems really key to me in terms of information. I don't know if I live in a particularly damp area. I think we all feel this way, you know, but it does. So that, that's interesting to me, but it'd be good to, I think it'd be great to see the farm soils map or, you know, have the forest been mapped or I guess those are maps of the. I want to say the water protection proposed water protection districts. So that must be some, I just, I would love some maps and just information to kind of mull Amherst. Also, I also, what are UMass and Amherst college doing? Like that would be seen really important too. Their plans or what, what they're thinking about, because they're, they're half the battle here. Okay. Thank you, Janet. Thanks, Doug. I was going to say, you know, I am, I am sympathetic to Jack's sentiments about, you know, developers are going to like landowners are going to look for opportunities to proposals are going to come. The moratorium has like is voted down to some extent, the market will decide. That being said, I do think that this decade. Is a critical decade for clean energy implementation in America. And I think the degree to which we need to scale up renewables is going to be jarring to a lot of people in America. And I think the more that we as a town can have a road map. For how we want to be part of the clean energy transition. The more that will make that transition less jarring. And so for that reason, I think the idea of the siting study is an is an important one. And like Chris, I think your idea of a zoning overlay is an elegant one. And then I don't quite know where this happens, but I think we also need to have a conversation about permitting. And streamlining the permitting process. So that proposals that are kind of in accordance with the plan can move relatively quickly and not get bogged down in red tape. Okay. And I have some ideas about that, but I don't think this is necessarily the time or the place for that. Thank you, John. Tom. All right, I'll be brief. I think I'm kind of on the fence to somewhere between, I think with Jack and your honor saying, and I, I think it has a lot to do with the fact that we can say where we want solar and where we might not want solar, but we don't determine where solar goes unless it's on Amherst property. Amherst owned property. It goes on private property and people have to. So we can say we want all of it over here, but nobody over there wants to pay for it. So then what do we do? Oh, then we can't meet the demands that we need to get to our climate action goals, right? Because we're saying, no, we only like it here and we can't touch this and we can't touch that. So I think we need to be really careful about. How precious we are about these spaces when it's mapping, because we're not in charge of it. We're only, we need to set like, I don't know, this is a random number, but if, you know, we set a certain area, it's only likely that maybe five, three to five percent of that is actually going to get developed, not 60 years. 80. And therefore we're not going to get close to our goals. So we have to understand that there's limitations in ownership, but we're not in control of where these things are installed. Unless we're incentivizing. Those places here. Here's 10%, 20% discount. We're going to pay for it from Amherst funds to put it in this place and not that place. Otherwise, I think we're just shutting down our capacity to get it. So I think we have to be really careful about why we're turning down certain areas and how we're using this study. Going forward. So anyway, this is my thought. So I think I'm somewhere in between. I think it needs to happen. But I think if we use it too strictly as a guide for what's good and what's bad, I think we lose the opportunity to get to where we need to go as a. As a town. All right, thanks, Tom. I guess I'll sort of echo that. I think we ought to be. We ought to end up with a bylaw that says where we absolutely do not want solar. And everywhere else. You know, we'll go through whatever permit process makes sense. And we, we are open to solar everywhere else. But, you know, no wetlands. No critical habitat with. You know, endangered species and everything else. We'll talk. Jam it. I just wanted to sort of, you know, one of the things that could come out of the solar assessment is like how much. Can we produce locally? And, you know, the, you know, I think this is probably ecacs. Purview too. It's like, we may decide to buy into a solar field in another town or to, you know, like they're the decision. If we do a community aggregation. Plan. That's when all these towns get together and they purchase green energy from different sources. So it does. I don't, I think we, I just kind of don't want to, I don't want to say no solar and Amherst. Of course we should do that. But we don't have to produce all our energy on this land base that we're on. We could, there could be different choices. The town is making that might be more economical. Or easier or whatever. And I don't want to push the large facility problem on to another town, but there, there, I don't think we know where we are. You know, where we're going without this kind of longer view, but I don't think we have to have solar. We have to produce all our energy. Green energy by solar. It could be, you know, through the ground, it could be from other towns. It could be wind power. You know, let me, we'll have some mystical thing. Maybe people will reduce their energy use, you know, more. But I do think it would be great to say these are sort of no fly zones for solar facilities. Because the values of this land is higher. And then here are the places that it can go. And then we may need incentives or, you know, low, no interest loan programs to encourage landowners to put that in, you know. Okay. Thanks, Janet. Chris. We've had it. We've, we're having a discussion about solar. I see that it's 20 of 10. And so I'm starting to feel like how long do we want to go this evening? We can stop now. You and I didn't really talk about what the, what we wanted out of this discussion. It sounds like you're thinking we should be. Kind of continue to educate ourselves, but not taking definitive steps on drafting anything. Until at least the working group is a part of the discussion. I think we can stop now. Yeah. You and I didn't really talk about what the, what we wanted out of this discussion. I think we can start drafting something. But I don't think we're going to. Get it finalized or adopted until after. We've. Done. We've gone through the solar side assessment. So I'm happy to start drafting something. And yeah. Is that something you would have time for? I will, but not. Let's see. Yeah. So I wanted to report to you on what's upcoming. Okay. Well, what. So that, that could be under, um, report of staff. So. Yeah. We'll come back to that. Yeah. So I will fit it in with my other things, but I can't promise it on a particular date. Okay. All right. Uh, Jack. So I'm just wondering if, uh, You know, based on your recommend recommendation there, Doug, can we kind of scale back a little bit on the, on the. Assessment part of this. With regard to just like. You know, restricting, you know, the, the no brainer type areas within the town. As, as no, you know, Solar, you know, restrictions versus like. Favorable. I just feel like, again, there's, there's. Just wondering what your. Tactic is. Well, I mean. I think I agree with your Hanna that. The town is going to now expects to be doing a solar by law. A solar. Survey. Or assessment or whatever. And that's probably not a bad thing to help get buy in and. You know, agreement and acceptance of wherever we end up. Um, nobody's, you know, nobody's pressing us to do something in the next month or two. Um, so maybe we should turn our attention to some of the other priorities and spend a little time on those. Um, you know, that was the third, third item on this agenda. For, for, you know, on this particular topic for this evening. I'm not sure I want to spend very much time on it now, but. You know, we could certainly spend more time on it next time and not talk so much about solar. Yeah. I think that's good. Um, Andrew. Yeah, I'll try to keep the brief. I'm just wondering from that assessment perspective. Um, I mean, I know that, you know, solar companies have their own sort of websites where you enter your address and it sort of assesses the quality of it. Is that. Is that something that. You know, might be made available. Like, I don't know if that's something that we could maybe reach out to a company and say, we're, we're trying to do this. And would you be willing to. Share that information. I think. To me, the assessment piece that I think what. I think the important part is that like there's. We should be putting solar in the best locations, not just in any location. And I imagine that you'll get much better officials. In those best locations. So. I think, I think it puts us on a path to. More effectively meeting goals. Then just kind of a buckshot. Everybody can. Could put. Something wherever they want. Um, so just, just that thought. And then I would, uh, I would echo. I think what everybody else said in terms of the. The no fly zone idea. I think it's just. Makes a ton of sense. And also, I think it's important to. Important signal to, you know, the market. Then we are hoping. Okay. Thanks, Andrew. Janet. I, I actually, I'm starting to think about like practical steps. And I think we could put together what I think of it as like an outline or a skeleton of a bylaw. And, um, you know, like different provisions and maybe living the numbers blank or saying, you know, This town has this provision and we might want to do it. So I could sort of seeing doing like a very broad outline. So you're ready when, when decisions are made, or you're kind of considering taking with language or looking at other examples. So I could see how that could progress. Alongside. This I'm sort of trying to figure out that you go forward with that. So that's it. Thanks, Janet. Jack, I'll just mention. I see a couple of public comment. Hands. So. Go ahead, Jack. Again, I apologize. My computer is a little buggered up or something, but. So I just want to speak, you know, with regard to. You know, just from a technical standpoint, I have, I have a great Southern facing roof. And I have solar panels on there. And so when we talked about efficiency. I've got it. And it really is only. Like a, a fractured roof. I've got it. And it really is only. Like a, a fraction of the equation because. We got weather. We got clouds. We got temperature. We've got, you know, so when we, you know, we're talking about the optimal sort of location. Again, I think we've got a scale back because most. Land, whatever it is, is going to be great for solar. Okay. We're not killing. It's just. I just had to say that. All right. Because it's just a fact. And then there's another point, but I can't really remember. Well, why don't we go to have a couple of public comments and then we can come back to board comments. And maybe close this one out. Let's start with Steve roof. Why don't you give us your name and your address. And Pam will run the three minute timer. Steve roof here live in 1680 Southeast street in Amherst. I'm also a member of the ECAC. And I guess my main. First of all, great conversation. You guys are asking a lot of great questions and. Really good discussion here. But I would like to suggest that in terms of drafting a bylaw that you hold off. Until this committee can get formed. My understanding from Stephanie reporting to us last week is that this is the last version of it that I heard of. There's going to be a public committee. It would have very diverse representation on it. And I think a lot of the questions that you've been struggling here. You know, I think a lot of the people that are positions on that committee could help with those questions that you're struggling with. I think a lot of different perspectives would come in. And I think particularly some of us from the ECAC could answer questions about the purpose and the value of a solar study. Solar assessment. And perhaps even convince Jack that it would be worth doing. I think it is because I think we need to know what, how much land we have available. What different kinds of land are available. And then we have to begin to rank those, depending on how much solar we might want. In the next 30 years, we might have to start ranking those lands from the best to the worst. And who knows how far down the list from the best, we might end up needing to use over the next 30 years. Some of those questions are. I don't know if you can convince me. I just want to say Steve convinced me right there. So thank you. A bunch of these things that you're talking about to our value judgments. And those are going to have to go out to the community. And I think as Stephanie just described that this committee would be putting together a lot of the factual basis. And then the technical expertise. And our own expertise would then bring that to the public for public. Discussion to come to those values. I'm not sure how much energy we need in town. I'm not sure how much energy we need in town. I'm not sure how much energy we need in town. And others are saying, you know, how much do we need? Do we feel we need? How much solar or how much renewable energy do we feel we need in town? So those are really important to get those value judgments from the community, but supported by strong technical evidence. So looking forward to much more conversation and development on this. And I think. I think it's a great opportunity. I think it's a great opportunity. I think it's a great opportunity. I think it's a great opportunity. I think it's a great opportunity. Conservation Commission. Watershed Protection Committee. Expert that I think someone who's worked to the solar industry, not in the solar industry, but has worked with it. Forest ecologist. I think is slated to be on that. So. Don't do too much work on drafting a bylaw, especially if you're using other towns, restrictive approach. Until we have a chance to think more about it. Thank you, Steve. All right. Our next public commenter is Kathleen Bridgewater. Why don't we bring her over and if you could give us your name and your address and keep your comments under three minutes. Hi, I'm Kathleen Bridgewater. I live at on shootsbury road. And I'm really excited about this discussion that's been going on tonight. I think it's a great opportunity. I think it's really trying to get into the weeds and find out what some of the problems are. I am part of the group of smart solar Amherst. And we have been working on these issues for two years. And, and unfortunately, we certainly have a conflict of interest by being neighbors. On the other hand, we also have collected a lot of data. And, and although we don't have. A lot of the data is in ecology or water issues. We have done a lot of reading, including of the companies who are doing solar work, solar. Development and what they have done all over the country and in our region. So I think that some of the things that the Palmer people were talking about is more. A lot of the things that we have done in the past. I think it's much more in the case than not that very often, unless you're down in South Carolina and some, some flat cotton field. Where there is no danger of runoff or. Nearby houses and wells and things of that sort. Things get pretty simple in those places, but even there up there and in Wisconsin. So I think that's a good idea. I'm going to go back to the, to the question of water. Groundwater being polluted. I hope I'm going to get more than three minutes because you've said so many things that I'd like to respond to them. I want to start with who's going to be on this working committee. And I'm going to personally. Object to the idea that Sarah Matthews, who is the lawyer for most of the. Many of these solar. Residents should be on any committee in mass, in Amherst to make decisions or to have a vote. The idea that the Fox and. I just do want to let you know, I would like you to stay under three minutes. Okay. Well, I think that this, this committee and other committees such as ecac and such as the town council have a fiduciary responsibility to the town. And to the residents. We don't have a responsibility to the soul solar developers who really are there to make money. They don't care if there is a, a fertile farm or a forest that is, is doing a great job of sequestering carbon. That's not their issue. Their issue is give us some place where we can put down these, these panels, and we can make some kind of quick pilot agreement with a town so that we can get a lot of money and have to spend as little as possible. The amount of money they're going to have to do, for instance, on the shoots very road to go and put in that the connectivity, the electric can connectivity to the substation and to upgrade the substation, they're going to be putting in a lot of money and they are putting in a lot of money because they expect to make a lot of money. Their issue is not about saving the planet. Their issue is about making their, their, their stockholders happy. They are a money making organization, all of them. And some of them do a better job than others. So it is our responsibility as a town to make sure that we are protecting our resources and following through on our values. And just because it might take a little bit longer, I think we have to be very, very cautious. And, and we really want to, we don't want to, the residents don't want to be the last people who are consulted after everything is all written up. And everybody has made deals with people, you know, Sarah Matthews comes to mind. She's one of the people who have real conflicts of interest. As a concern solar. And she's, thank you. Chris, I see your hand. I don't see any more public comment. I just wanted to let people know that they don't have to say everything that they want to say tonight. There'll be plenty more times for people to talk to the planning board and talk to the ECAC and talk to this committee. So we'll be having lots of public meetings. So just be reassured that you'll have a lot of opportunity to say your, your piece. Thanks Chris. All right. So maybe we can. Close that topic for tonight. So the next item we had on the list was to talk about some of our other. Zoning priorities for 2022. Chris, I see you included the. The revised list from the planning department. Anything you wanted to say about that briefly. We're continuing to revise this list. And, you know, I really, I think I reported on it last time. The, what I could say that's new is that we did get the DLTA grant, the district local technical assistance grant from PVPC. So we will be working on trying to figure out how to allow breweries and wineries in Amherst and also how to allow incidental activities such as weddings on farms and things like that. So they're going to be helping us with that. And we're also, we've added. Attention. That was in the first phase that we've added attention to 5G, which seems to be getting more and more press lately. Town manager had asked us to look at that a few years ago. And I think that was the time it didn't seem like it was. Kind of rising to the surface as much, but now it is. So what is, what is 5G? 5G is a new form of communication. Our cell phones and our cars and our. You know, all kinds of things. Cellular technology. Cellular technology. Exactly. So it's a way of communicating. I don't understand it obviously, but. It's a way of communicating. They're cities and towns at the eastern part of the state are talking a lot more about it these days because. They're being asked to. Host. You know, 5G apparatus, and they have to be every few hundred feet. They can't be spread out like cell towers and things like that. So it is a topic that is coming to the four. You've probably heard about it recently because of restrictions that can't be used within a certain distance of airports because it interferes with. Flight communications. So anyway, that's another thing that we're putting on our list. So we, we can talk more in depth about this list. Next time around, but it is something that continues to evolve with. Within the planning department. And then also in conversations with the town manager and CRC. Okay. Thank you. All right. So. Unless anybody has any other comments. I think we can close item six on our agenda. And move through the, the last few items relatively quickly. Item seven is old business, Chris, any old business we haven't touched on. No old business. Nope. All right. What about new business? No new business. Okay. All right. Form A and R subdivision. No form A's. Okay. So I don't have to meet you in the parking lot. No. Oh, well. Well, yeah. It'll be the topic of another conversation. Okay. Maybe I do upcoming ZBA applications. Item nine. Then to report tonight. And to report tonight. Upcoming SP, SP, SPB applications. We do have a few of those coming along. One at 463 West street at the Amherst office park. And one at 19 research drive, which is right near Kate Atkinson's office. Kate Atkinson or the one near research drive is a fairly small. Change, but the one at, and also the one at 463 main West street is small, but it's not a big deal. It's not a big deal. It involves making changes to the site plan. To reflect changes that have happened over time. So he'll be seeing that. I think you'll be seeing that on the. Sixth of April. April. Yeah. Okay. Yep. All right. So. Item 12 planning board committee and liaison reports. PVPC Jack, do you want to say anything? No, I don't. I don't know. I don't know. I don't have anything significant. So. Okay. Thanks. Andrew. CPAC. Okay. Design review board. Yeah. All quiet. Okay. And Chris. CRC. Yes, we met with the CRC. I think it was last week. And we talked to them about two things. One was the transition plan that they have. And then they're working on that right now. And the other thing we talked to them about. The new CRC. In the same with town council and trying to figure out what things that town council was working on in the past, particularly with regard to things that are under the umbrella of CRC, like zoning. Do they want to bring forward into this year? So they're working on that. And then the other thing we talked to them about was the of the plan and what pieces of the strategies have been accomplished already and what are currently being worked on. And they're gonna be talking about that and how to move that forward in the future. They're having another meeting, I think, on the 14th, or no, excuse me, the 17th of March. That'll be their next meeting. And I am supposed to be speaking to them about something but right now I can't remember what it is. Okay. By the way, I had attended a district four meeting with Pam Ernie and Anika, I think is the other member. And Pam mentioned she was hoping that there would be some sort of housing working group. And I don't know if that's her personal initiative or it's her CRC initiative. Have you heard anything about that? Yes, there are members of the town council who have been talking about that. I think Jennifer Taub is one of them and I don't know who the others are besides Pam, possibly Dorothy Pam. But some of them have been talking to the building commissioner about various initiatives with regard to housing, mostly having to do with kind of controlling housing in the downtown area and the neighborhoods right around the downtown. So that's a conversation that's been going on beyond me. It might also include aspects of the comprehensive housing policy. So it's not directly related to the item on your list of priorities in phase two called student housing district. Well, I have crossed that item off. I think that for the planning department, I don't really think that's a huge priority. We had put it on the list because we often hear about problems in the area just south of the university and there was discussion. I think it was in the housing market study and it was also mentioned in the comprehensive housing policy about how we might wanna establish a student housing district and try to keep student housing kind of confined or focused in that area. But I think that it's probably not a topic that has much chance of being adopted by town council at this time. So we're not gonna keep that on our list anymore. And I had also added group living in certain larger homes but I think we're gonna drop that as well. So we'll be focusing on, if we do get into talking about housing, we'll probably be focusing on duplexes, triplexes, converted dwellings, townhouses, apartments and multiple detached single family homes on a single parcel. Okay. Janet, do you have a brief comment? Yes, I'll send to everybody John Hornick, the housing trust has kind of a piece on the housing plan and what they like, what they're focusing on and what they're doing and what they think should happen. So I think it's not very long. I think it'd be good for us to read. Okay. No, send it off to Chris. Okay. All right. Report of chair, I don't really have anything to report this evening. Chris, do you wanna go into your staff report? Yes, I wanted to just let you know about a few things. So we did talk about what's coming up on April 6th, which will be Ron Laverde or coming forward with his project on West Street and also the other project on Research Drive, which I've said are fairly small. We also have John Roboleski coming with his definitive subdivision plan for his property on Main Street. So I think I had told you about that in the past. But going back in time, on March 16th, I'd like Nate to come to speak to you about our work on the flood maps and the flood bylaw. It'll be a kind of introduction to you to or reintroduction for some of you have seen this before, but we need to move the flood maps and this flood bylaw through town council pretty much by the end of the summer, possibly into September, but we've got a fairly short timeframe on it now, getting it approved. So we'll be talking to you about that on March 16th. The other thing that I'd like to talk to you about is raising our legal fees for legal ad fees. Right now we only charge applicants $75 for a legal ad and the legal ads often end up being much more than that and so the town ends up paying for that. We've never gone the route of the conservation commission, which actually charges applicants for the exact price of a legal ad, which as I said, can be pretty high, but we wanted to raise our legal fees from $75 to $200 and we need to get approval from the planning board to do that. So I'll be bringing that to you on March 16th. And then if you want to, we can continue our discussion of the rapid recovery plan on March 16th. Okay. Anything else in your report? Yes, Pam Rooney has been appointed as the staff, excuse me, as the town council's liaison to the planning board. So she will be attending planning board meetings she had done so in the past. And now she's kind of been added to the list of contacts for the planning board and so she'll be attending our meetings and she is a planner and a landscape architect. So she will have a lot to say about, well, she's not actually supposed to say anything, I think, but she'll have a lot to think about what you're talking about and a lot to report to town council. So anyway, I'm glad to have Pam as one of our partners. And who was the previous liaison? I actually don't know. In the past, Connie Krueger was one of the liaisons. And I don't think that I knew who was the liaison prior to this in the town council. Okay. All right, anything else? That's it. Okay. All right, so the time is 1009 and I think we can adjourn. Thank you all for a robust discussion about demolition delay by law and solar by law. Thank you. And we thought this might be a short meeting tonight. Thank you too. Pull it up. How wrong we were. Good night, everybody. Thank you, Doug. Thank you, everyone. Have a great night.