 The chair notes the time is six o'clock. I call this meeting of the Amherst Zoning Board of Appeals to order. My name is Steve Judge, a ZBA chair. I want to welcome everyone to this meeting. We'll begin with a roll call of the ZBA members. Steve Judge is present. Ms. Tammy Parks. Here. Mr. Dylan Maxfield. Here. Mr. Craig Meadows. Here. Mr. John Gilbert. Present. The quorum is present. I want to note the presence of our new associate member, Mr. David Sloveter. Thank you very much for joining us. Welcome. Thank you. We look forward to working with you. Thank you. And Jordan Helzer told us he was not going to be able to attend tonight. So we'll greet him the next time. Also attending tonight's public hearing is Christine Brestrup, planning director, and Mr. Stephen McCarthy, planner for the town. Pursuant to chapter 20 of the Acts of 2021 and extended by chapter 22 of the Acts of 2022, this meeting will be conducted via remote means. Members of the public who wish to observe the meeting may do so via Zoom or by telephone. No in-person attendance of members of the public will be permitted. But every effort will be made to ensure that the public can adequately access the proceedings in real time via technological means. The zoning board of appeals is a quasi-judicial body that operates under the authority of chapter 40A of the general laws of the Commonwealth for the purpose of promoting the health, safety, convenience, and general welfare of the inhabitants of the town of Amherst. In accordance with the provisions of Massachusetts general law, chapters 40A and Article 10, special permit granting authority of the Amherst zoning bylaw, this public meeting has been duly advertised and notice thereof has been posted and mailed to parties at interest. All hearings and meetings are open to the public and are recorded by town staff and may be viewed via the town of Amherst's YouTube channel and ZBA webpage. The procedure is as follows. The petitioner presents the application to the board during the hearing after which the board will ask questions for clarifications or additional information. After the board has completed its question, the board will seek public input. The public speaks with the permission of the chair. If a member of the public wishes to speak, they should so indicate by using the raised hand function on their screen. The chair with the assistance of the staff will call upon people wishing to speak. When you are recognized, provide your name and address for the board for the record. All questions and comments must be addressed to the board. The board will normally hold public hearings where information about the project and input from the public is gathered, followed by public meetings for each. The public meeting portion is when the board deliberates and is generally not an opportunity for public comment. If the board feels that it has enough information in time, it will decide upon the applications tonight. Each petition heard by the board is distinct and evaluated on its own merits and the board is not ruled by precedent. Statutorily for a special permit, the board has 90 days from the closure of the hearing to follow a decision. For a variance, the board has 100 days from the date of the filing to follow its decision. No decision is final until the written decision is signed by the sitting board members and is filed with the town clerk's office. Once the decision is filed with the town clerk, there's a 20-day appeal period for an aggravated party, excuse me, non-aggravated, an aggrieved party, potentially aggravated by an aggrieved party to contest the decision with the relevant judicial body and superior court. After the appeal period, the permit must be recorded at the registry of deeds to take effect. Tonight's agenda, a public meeting, presentation and discussion on zoning amendments, proposed zoning amendments, article three, use regulation, duplexes, townhouse converted dwellings and presentations by counselors Mandy Johanke and Pat DeAngelis. Followed by general discussion, followed by discussion, those concerned zoning bylaws, article three, use regulations, article four, development methods, article nine, non-conforming lots, uses, structures and article 12 definitions. Following that, there'll be general public comment period on matters not before the board tonight and other business not anticipated within the past 48 hours. So our first order of business is proposed zoning amendments. We've invited counselors Hanakie and DeAngelis to be with us. And I don't see, I don't see the participants. I don't see that they are here. Oh, Ms. Brestra. So I'm not sure that Mandy Johanakie knew that this meeting started at six because she has another meeting that's started at 4.30 and is going till 6.30. I'm just going to text her and see what her plan is for attending this meeting. And here I go to text her. Okay. Too many meetings. That is, I think that's the state of people involved in town government is too many meetings. It takes a lot, there are a lot of meetings. I'm asking her if she will be here around 6.30. All right, we'll just hold for a second and hold the meeting in abeyance for a few minutes. Yeah, I just sent her the, I just sent her that text. So you can talk about what you saw, what you heard from me last time, which was last Thursday. If you want to, if you want to start talking about it and if you want Steve McCarthy to bring up parts of that, he can do that while we're waiting to hear back from Mandy. Would that be helpful or? Yeah, well, you know, I think it could be helpful, but let's see what she says. It may come in, if she responds quickly. I think in the meantime, we do have something we can do, which is to welcome Mr. Slobetter to the board. One of the things that we did last week when you were not there is we talked a little bit about the role of the board members and associate members in particular. And one of the things I just wanted to share with you is some of the thoughts that I had expressed to the associate member that was there. And I'll summarize them and I won't go through it all, David, but Ms. Parks. I just want to say really quick, there's a question in the chat, someone's asking about the procedures. I'm wondering if we should handle that. What is, I haven't seen that. What is it? If you look in the Q and A, someone is asking about the Wilson property group, whether that's being continued. Shall I answer that? Yes, please. There was an error in the publication of the meeting notice. And so we have postponed the Wilson properties day. To March 23rd. That's the Canton Avenue project. We probably should have stated that. So we are going to re-advertise it in the newspaper. We're going to resend the butters notices and post it on the town website, but we apologize because the first time around, I think we neglected to publish the notice on the town website 14 days in advance, which is required for a public hearing. So we've arranged with Mr. Wilson and with Tom Reedy, his attorney, to hold this meeting on the 23rd, and everyone will get another a butters notice and there will be another legal ad in the paper. Okay. Do you want me to write something in the chat about that? No, I think the person can only ask a chat, I think if they're an attendee, if I'm right. So I think that's right. There are other people here who are probably more familiar with Zoom, but I don't think you can chat without being on the Zoom. So, all right, David, I just, just a couple of things. First thing is, one of the things that I think is important for all members of the board is to understand the how significant it is when somebody appears before the ZBA. A lot of times it's their most important, they're talking about their most important asset, whether it's their home, their business, their neighborhood. And it's really important that we provide the impression and indeed do consider what they care about and what they're saying very seriously. That we give a great seriousness that it provides legitimacy for the ZBA and for the decisions we make is that the town understands it. So I take that, that's our most important role is that at the end of the day, people believe that they had a fair shot, they were heard, they were listened to. These are things that are important to them and we have to realize that. So that's the first thing that I would say. The second thing is, we try to be collegial as possible. And one of the ways we try to do that is first, if you get a chance, please try to read this stuff. If you're on the panel, read the material beforehand. We try to get that to you several days ahead of time so that you can have time to look it over. It doesn't always happen, but that's our goal. And it's been difficult with some people, we've been short staffed at the town right now, but they're struggling really hard, they're working really hard to try to get us the information ahead of time. So that's something that is important for you. And lastly, try to be on the call at five or 10 minutes ahead of time as possible. 10 minutes ahead of time, just so we know everybody's there, we know that we have a quorum. It's the only time we can kind of say hello to each other and find out unofficially what's going on, otherwise we're in a meeting and we have to abide by the open meeting rule. And lastly, I would just say the last thing is that I really value and I think everybody on this board values a very civil and collegial body. And so one thing I don't wanna, I haven't seen it very often, but I won't tolerate and I wanna abide is criticism and untoward language either towards each other or from the public towards the board. And that's really important. We don't see that very often, but I think it's important that we not have that on the board. And so all those are the kinds of things that I'd like to introduce new members, associate members to the board and remind them of that. And we've had a very good, I think very collegial board. And I expect it'll continue and we look forward to that being the case with you. So if you have any questions in the next few minutes until we hear from the town councilors, please ask them, it's the time to do that. I don't have any questions. I appreciate everything you just said and I understand it and everything makes sense. And I assure you of my compliance in both tone and content. So no problems, not from me at least. That's good. So if you're aggravated, you won't be looking to me hopefully as the source. I hope that I'm sure that's true. And you're gonna fit in just fine. That's great. Good, thank you. All right. I guess I would ask if it's any other bits of information you wanna provide to David or if it's bits of advice, otherwise I had some comments I guess I could make about the matter we're gonna have before us. Mr. Maxfield. I just wanna say hello, David. Great to have you on the board and I look forward to working with you. Thank you, so do I. Thank you. Have you had a chance to review this outside of the last meeting? Have you had a chance to review the proposal? Has anybody had enough time? It's an extensive piece of work. There's a lot of changes. There's a lot in this. I've spent some time looking at it and I've listened to a few of the planning board meetings. And so I've spent some time on it. And I think it is important for us to understand that what this means for the zoning board of appeals, but more importantly, what it means for permitting pathways in town. Tammy, you were nodding your head. You had a chance to review it, right? I did and I'm mostly interested in whether this, in how this will solve the affordable housing crisis. So I'm very interested to hear that part of it. Like, what are these changes going to address and solve? So I'm interested in hearing that. Okay. We have another chat from the request to turn on transcript. Steven, do you know? I think it's been turned on. I see something at the top of the page who can see this transcript, so. Okay. Oh. I believe that should be enabled if anybody cannot see that, you can let me know. All right. Good. Mr. Meadows, I think you've been traveling, so you made a chance to review it, but I'd recommend it to you. I did have an opportunity to review it. Okay. At this point in time, I find it, looking at the constant flow of requests that we get in to essentially convert what used to be single family and double, two family complexes here in town to student housing. And if we, I think avoid that responsibility by suggesting that this document be enabled, I think we're doing a disservice to the town. I think Irobrick's letter was very appropriate that we are seeing an influx of student housing in town that is driving people out of town. I've heard of someone else from my daughter today who said a friend of hers is planning on moving out because of the student, the student's overwhelming other people within her neighborhood. Too many houses are being converted. And it is realistic to think that a house, if a house is converted, its costs are gonna go skyrocketing per apartment because they're gonna go to the highest possible bidder. And we're gonna get more and more people from investor groups coming into town to buy up properties to convert them, particularly if they don't have to go through the ZBA. Those are my feelings at present. I'd like to hear if there's some rationale beyond that. Well, I really, I do wanna give the proponents of this, the sponsors of this, a chance to make their case, was to listen to it. And I think there are two questions, I see two questions, two buckets of questions. The first is, what's the reason for the change? What in the special permit process needs to be, is a problem or needs to be revised or needs to be abandoned in some cases? That's one thing. So those are sort of process questions and why the adjustments to the permitting pathway are being made. That's one set. The second set is sort of housing policy and economic policy. What's gonna be the effect of these changes? And that's the things that you were speaking to there. I think those are two things, both legitimate things for us to discuss. The first, I think is core to the body, to us. And I think we can provide some valuable information and insight as to the permitting process that we currently use in special permits. The second is, I think we all can have some opinion that's informed by our experience, doing this job and working on being on this board for the last several years for some of us. So that's how I view this. And I wonder, Chris, have we heard back from Mandy? No, we haven't heard back from her. She still has another 11 minutes in her other meeting. I didn't realize, she may have told me that she was going to be late, but in my current state of being all things to all men, I have possibly missed an email from her. We're forgotten about it, so. Well, let me just say one thing about the 23rd. Why don't we, when does that notice go out for March 23rd? That goes out on the third of March, we'll say that. So let's talk about that date before it goes out. Can we, you and I have a conversation about that? Yes. I can't be there for that. Oh, you can't be there. I cannot be there on that date. Is there, do you want to then postpone that? You know, I'm not familiar with the project and that's what I wanted to talk to you about it. If it's a long-term project, I would. If it's not going to be very complicated and it's not going to be several meetings, then I think somebody else could, we could have the meeting without me there. We've got good people here that can handle the ZBA if I'm not here. But if it's going to be several, it's complicated in several hearings, then I would want to move it to a different date. So that one I think may not be complicated. It depends on how many members of the public and butters attend and have comments. My guess is it's not too complicated and the house is more or less in its original location, but it's been twisted a little bit and the driveway has been straightened. So it's not very different from the one that was previously approved. But there is another case coming up that night that would be a big case. It's probably going to take multiple nights and that would be 515 Sunderland Road where there's a proposal to put in a bank of battery standalone what they're calling BESS, Battery Energy Storage System, which is large and there may be people who are very interested in that and there may be a lot of questions from the ZBA. It's already gone through the Conservation Commission, but I suspect that there will be a lot of members of the public who will want to attend that meeting and possibly just to learn about these battery storage systems, but also maybe to comment on it. So that probably should be moved to a night when you are available in the spirit, Judge. All right. So let's see, then we'll continue the, we'll have the first item for the 23rd and our Vice Chair, Mr. Max, you will chair that? Good. Good. All right. And we'll figure out a associate member to put in that position to take my place. You and I will talk, we'll talk about that, Chris. Okay. Okay. Mr. Meadows, I thought I heard, oh, Ms. Parks. Forgive my ignorance, but how, what is going to happen with these amendments? Who, how, I know there's some forums to discuss them, some public forums, but how do they get voted on? I mean, yeah. Here's my understanding of them and Ms. Brestrup, you can tell me if I'm, if I've short circuited it. These have been proposed and given to the council. The council then referred it to the CRC committee, the community resources committee and the planning board. Those two bodies are supposed to take a look at those and make recommendations back to the council as to what they believe the disposition of this proposal should be approved, disapprove, amend and approve, whatever. There's a timeline for them to have their, have that start their first public hearings that's set by state law. That timeline has them starting, I think, before the middle of March, before March 15th. So coming up next week or the week after, I think there's going to be a public hearing in the planning board. And then I think there'll be a public hearing in the community resources committee. And they were required, I think they're required to report back. Ms. Brestrup, I don't remember. I think they're required to report back to the council sometime on a date certain. Are they not? May I answer? Yeah. So yes, the planning board is holding its public hearing. It's opening its public hearing on March 1st. And the CRC is opening its public hearing on March 2nd. They'll both be held via Zoom. There is no deadline for getting back. The planning board and the CRC can continue their public hearings until they feel that they have enough information to make a recommendation. And in fact, last year, I think there was a public hearing that was held open for about six months until the planning board finally made its decision about how it was going to recommend. So my guess is that there will be a couple of sessions of planning board public hearing just because this proposal is complicated and people have a lot to say about it. And there are a lot of members of the public who are interested. So the planning board will hear a presentation on March 1st. And then planning board members will have an opportunity to comment and then members of the public will. There have already been two meetings with the planning board. One, trying to remember. Anyway, the planning board did hear a presentation from Mandy Jo Hanneke. And they had another chance to discuss it. I guess they heard a presentation a few weeks ago and then they had a chance to discuss it on their own with Mandy Jo there for a little while, but not as long as we had thought she would be. So they've talked about it twice, I guess is what I'm trying to say, but now they'll have a public hearing and they'll talk about it again. And the idea is that they would come up with a recommendation that they would write up and pass on to the town council as far as what does the planning board think should be done with this? And the planning board could say, we think it's great, go ahead, pass it. The planning board could say, this really needs a lot of work. Bring it back to us and we'll work on it or the planning board could say, we like this part of it, but this part needs more work or we disagree with it. So they could come out with a number of different responses, but the process I believe will not end on March 1st. I think that there will be more discussion about it after that. Ms. Parks. So I guess, so the town council has the final say on whether these get passed after the recommendations of the planning board and the CRC? Yes. So if members of the ZBA want to have input, would they then attend the planning board meetings and the CRC meetings and give input there? Or is there some other avenue of input from the zoning board? First of all, we absolutely you can attend individually and as to any of those meetings and provide public comment because there will be public comment added. This proposal has not been referred to us as a matter from the town. So we don't have anything in front of us tonight is really for us to try to understand the proposal and then give feedback to the sponsors of the proposal that could perhaps inform there how they view it, maybe change it, but we don't have anything referred to us. It is, I'm not sure that it makes sense. I don't think it makes sense for us to take a position as a board on this because it's not before us as a matter of referral. We're looking at it because it affects what we do but we don't have jurisdiction over zoning changes. And I think in some ways Ms. Parks, we are supposed to apply the zoning bylaw. We're not, our job isn't to set the policy. That's really the planning board in the town council but I think that we should feel free to comment individually. And I'm gonna comment, I'm sure certainly as chairman of recognizing that I'm chairman but not in my role as chairman of the board of the zoning board of appeals. Now, if the board shields very differently and they wanna make a statement, we can check and see if there's any legal inhibition to do that or reason not to do it. But what I'm thinking now is we don't have it before us. We're just looking at this and informing ourselves and so we can provide feedback to the people who have the decision-making on this. Can I say something? Yep, please, Chris. Anyone is welcome to send comments and writing to me and I will pass them on to the people who are sponsoring this as well as to the planning board. So if Ms. Parks would like to send comments and writing to me, she's welcome to do that. And any other ZBA member is welcome to do that. And I've also asked Steven if he'd take some notes, I'd send him an email and ask him if he'd take some notes just to jot down what people are concerned about and the questions they asked at the meeting to summarize them, not to, it isn't a full minutes, but just so we know what issues were raised and we can use that also as something that might be helpful to you, Chris, to send to the planning board members of the questions that are raised by members of the ZBA. I'm gonna check my email and see if I've heard anything from Mandy, Joe. No, I have not. I can call her in about five minutes. Okay. So I don't wanna forget one bit of procedure that we normally do when we open up discussion on a specific topic is that we cite the submissions that we've received and I haven't done that yet. Even though it's not a hearing, I think it's important for transparency to cite what the submissions we have received. Those include a presentation from the counselor, from counselors, Hanneke and DeAngeles and including a proposal, a sponsor statement, which was dated December, 2022. We also got an email from Mr. Ira Brick dated the February 14th, 2023. I don't think we've received any other public comments or any other public letters or submissions that I'm aware of. You did receive sheets of text and a use table taken from the zoning by-law that has been red marked. I guess it's been, what do you call it, track changes. So that did come along with the presentation, the PowerPoint presentation. There were extra sheets that showed specific changes that were being suggested. All right. I guess I thought that was part of the presentation, but yes, you're right. May we take up any other business at this point since we, rather than just waiting? You know, we just have counselor Hanneke just appeared. All right. So thank you for, thank you for appearing. Thanks for taking the time to, to talk to us. You're busy. I know you had another meeting tonight. And we appreciate you taking the time to, to review this with the minimums of the zoning board. This is an extensive, this is a really extensive proposal. It's lots of implications for us, lots of implications for the town. And I think it's important that we understand what you're proposing. I also think it's important that we give you some feedback on the concerns that we, questions we have, concerns we see. And I am, and then at the end of our comments, I'll open it up for public hearing on the public comment on the proposal. But I really look forward to number one hearing from you. And also number two, giving you the opportunity to hear from us. Some of our, the concerns that we may have about the proposal. So with that, I'll turn it over to you counselor to, to make a presentation. You've done this several times. You've got it down. Thank you. Thank you, Steve. For that. And I'm glad I could come in right when you were trying to figure it out. I came right from my community resources committee meeting. So I'm sorry I was late to your meeting, but that one didn't until 631. I have, you've seen the presentation. It's been in your packet for a while. I will try to go through it somewhat quickly. I think it's like 15 minutes, but I'll try to make it even quicker than that. Because I think you've heard from Chris last week about some of the, about what the proposal is. And so the goal here, I think for me is to talk a little bit about what we're proposing, but not exactly what it is, but the reasons were proposing some of it. If, if it would be possible, I don't know whether you want me to pull the presentation up on the screen or not. If you do, I'm going to need permission to share my screen. Excellent. Thank you. I think that'd be helpful. Yep. That's helpful. So there we are. I'm going to try and go through it quickly because I know it's a lot of slides. But I'll spend a little bit of time on this one because this is what really drove Pat and I and I am a co-sponsor with Pat DeAngelis who cannot come to the meeting. Pat is dealing with a recovery of a health issue that limits how many meetings she can attend. And she was just in a two hour meeting with me somewhere else. So, but we are co-sponsoring this. And we approached our proposal thinking about the comprehensive housing policy that the council passed. And just our housing crisis in town. We all recognize we don't have enough housing and we all recognize we have expensive housing, both rental and home ownership type housing. We know we've been building a lot of apartment complexes. Single family homes are also regularly built. And occasionally we get other things, particularly in the converted dwelling area with buildings that are all that already exist. We've also had recently some town homes. Get permitted as you know, and then a number of affordable housing projects, but it's not enough in terms of to bring prices down or to provide the amount of housing for the people who want to live here. And so one of our approaches was if we don't change something, we're never going to get ourselves out of the housing crisis. Doing nothing won't help. And so what can we do? What can we propose that would encourage more housing opportunities from a zoning perspective? And the key word is encourage. We don't know what would actually happen, right? We can't speculate by changing from a special permit to a site plan review. Will more housing be built? We can only say that streamlines a process. It might result in more housing. And so we're trying to encourage it. We want to address some of this demand by adding the supply. And we thought about equity and housing. There is a long history that zoning is enacted to exclude people from certain areas of places. This is not just an Amherst thing. It is a nationwide thing as to why zoning has been enacted. And so we want to eliminate some of that exclusionary policy in our town, particularly as it relates to the only type of building actually that can be built in town without going through a public hearing as a single family home. And we would like to expand that to eliminate what we consider that as single family only zoning. And add in duplexes, certain duplexes, not all duplexes into that ability to build a building without going through the permit, the public hearing permitting process, you still need the building permit and you still have to abide by zoning. So one of the purposes of our proposal is to treat owner occupied duplexes and in most senses, affordable duplexes, the same as single family homes. We believe it would help eliminate economic and social segregation, single family only zoning. That means there are neighborhoods and portions of town that you only see single family homes because others aren't allowed or they're too hard to build. And we want to fix that and fix it, meaning we want to address that and say we want, through the housing policy, we want neighborhoods that have economic diversity. We want neighborhoods that have social, not that aren't socially segregated amongst different groups. And when you only have single family homes in a neighborhood, you're more likely to have that economic segregation. And so opening up permitting pathways, we hope will help eliminate it or help address some of that. Multifamily housing is more sustainable than single family housing. So if we build multifamily housing on lot, we create a little bit and improve a little bit on the sustainability. And then we were just looking at the youth table in general, and there were some permitting pathways that didn't, that didn't seem logical to us. And so we tried to look at the youth table. In a logical manner. Meaning, you know, if, if a apartment complex is permitted. In a RG zone. Or an RVC zone by site plan review. And I'm not saying it is right now, but if it were, if it were to say, well, a town home is a better use in that area than a. Apartment complex potentially because of the medium density zoning. Why would we require that as a special apartment? You know, and so, so we asked some of those questions when we saw things that. Required a higher level of permitting than something else that we thought was a more intense use, or that something we thought was a less intense use depending on the zone we were looking at. And I can point some of those out as to some of the things we looked at as I go through, but those were some of the things we brought to this. I'm going to skip the permitting systems other than to say, as you know, your, what you deal with them ZBA, the special permit is a discretionary permit. You can say no. And you have a lot of discretion on whether to say no, you're looking at not just the zoning bylaw, but you're looking at the zoning map and saying, is this use appropriate and suitable for the location in the zone? It is being proposed to be built. Site plan review is considered a by right. It recognizes that. That use is suitable in all areas of the zone. It is. It is allowed in. And so that's, that's how we approached this is, is a duplex is a triplex is a town home. A suitable use in X zone. Or is it a use that is only suitable in parts of. Y zone. And those are the questions we asked. This was set in as a reminder of what density means and what our residential zones do. We ran into a problem in looking at this and proposing this because RO and RLD are in the same column. And so I just wanted to point that out that, you know, we recognize RO and RLD are completely different zones. And have completely different density and intentions, but they're in the same column. And so when we thought a use was appropriate for portions of an RO, we needed to allow at least a special permit. Even if. Had they been in separate columns, we would have said no to the RLD, but because they're in the same columns, it, it, and it relies on you as a ZDA to, to really use that discretion on use in certain areas of the town. Duplexes. Basically what we, there's some pictures of some duplexes and there are three categories in the zoning by law, owner occupied, non owner occupied and affordable. And as I said earlier, we looked and we believe that in all of our residential zones, RLD through to the RG, our lowest density to our highest density, that a duplex is suitable. Whether it's owner occupied or non owner occupied, we're proposing a yes, a permitting pathway that does not require public hearing for only non owner occupied duplexes and affordable duplexes. We are requiring, we are proposing the site plan review for non owner occupied duplexes, but we approached it and said duplexes are suitable in our residential zones in all areas of our residential zones. We've got the dimensional table to limit the density there, but a duplex is a suitable use in all of our residential zones, low density to high density. And with that, I'm going to page through the duplexes to try plexes. This is a new category. Right now, if you want to put a three dwelling unit on a property, you're either a townhome, a townhouse or an apartment complex. And we thought three, three dwelling units should not be treated as apartment complexes. And so we're proposing a new use category. We've gotten questions as to why it has to be vertically. We chose not to propose a change to the townhome definition, but to the townhouse definition that is three to 10 units side by side. And so that's why we've proposed only vertically. We are willing to go back on that consideration and maybe. Change the proposal for townhomes to be four to 10 so that all three family, three unit dwellings would be considered a triplex. And when we looked at this one. Excuse me. The new category we had to propose all zoning districts. And so in the, what I call the commercial sort of zones. We've proposed the same as every residential use except hostile and concrete your housing, which is a no. In the business zones. We believe they match. Triplexes match most closely to duplexes. And therefore we propose the same pathway as the non owner occupied duplexes, which we're proposing to change to site plan review and then not allowed in the other more dense business zones. In the residential zones again, we believed it was close to the duplex category. And so we proposed the site plan review. Conditions for both the duplexes and the triplexes in our proposal match mostly the conditions of the ADU bylaw that we just modified as a town council about a year and a half ago. When we made ADU's accessory dwelling units. Permissible without a public hearing at all with just a building commission or building permit grant. So, but, but it's not, it's an accessory use. So it doesn't show up on the use table, but we matched the conditions that went into that bylaw when we made that change for triplexes and duplexes. And so we were planning a new use category means we wanted to, we looked at all of the rest of the zoning bylaw to see where duplexes were mentioned. As I said, we thought duplexes were most closely related to. Triplexes are most closely related to duplexes. And in some of these section for development methods, duplexes were listed as permitted uses. And so we add, we're proposing to add the triplexes to those uses. So, we're going to add the triplexes to that. So, we're going to add the triplexes to that. So, so the triplexes are, as I said, three to 10 units, private entrances on the ground level. And basically what we're trying to do here is in the business areas. Say that they're appropriate in the less dense business areas, those sort of transitional business areas, the business limited business, village center and neighborhood. So moving from special permit to site plan review. And so we're proposing to do the same thing. The council just did to apartments approximately a year and a half ago, which was change apartments in the BG, from site plan review to special permit. And so we're proposing sort of that downzoning there, almost for the townhouse in the BG, but recognizing that in the more transitional business zones, a townhouse is, is suitable in those areas. In the residential, our medium to high density residentials, our village center and RGS, the ones next to all of those commercial areas, we're proposing a site plan review for the same reason. In the RN neighborhood, this was an interesting one that I spend a little time on. Town homes aren't allowed right now in the zoning bylaw in the RN neighborhood. You'll notice that I highlighted in pink apartments aren't allowed in the RN neighborhoods. But as you saw in this presentation, our RN neighborhood has most of our apartment buildings. And so we weren't necessarily completely looking at just the use table here. We were looking at what's on the use table here. We were looking at what's on the use table. And so we weren't necessarily completely looking at just the use table here. We were looking at what's on the ground in the RN. And on the ground is a whole lot of apartment buildings. And if we have a lot of apartment buildings, a town home is a nice transition from apartment building areas to non apartment building areas. And so we wanted to allow them and give you the ZBA, the discretion in allowing them in certain parts of that RN neighborhood RN zone. And so we wanted to allow them to be in the center of the district. Probably nearest the apartment complexes that already exist. But that means we had to take it away from not allowed at all into that special permit range. And same with the R. O. R. L. D. district. This is one where if the R. L. D. district had been. A separate column. We might have left it a no, but it's combined with the RO district. And so we wanted to allow them to be in the center of the district. And so we wanted to allow them to be in the center of the district. And so we wanted to allow them to be in the village centers, particularly the one on this slide. And we believe that if you're going to be walkable to a village center, which this neighborhood is. A townhouse is appropriate. And so again, moving from that not allowed to that special permit to give you the discretion to say, yes, in this area, town home is appropriate. No, in that area, it's not. It's not appropriate. It's not appropriate. And so we wanted to create the potential for housing in appropriate areas than to not allow it at all. The conditions were not proposing changing at all other than the language. For converted dwellings. It's good to remember that this is a building that already exists when we're talking about converted dwellings. We're talking about a building that already exists and that in the residential areas, you can't add up to more than four. You can't add up to more than six in a converted dwelling and no more than six in the business areas. And you can't add a. Residential dwelling unit. Stole by building new using this use category. And so we believe that this is a. A use category that really achieves what our master plan wants us to achieve, which is infill development. You're adding density where buildings already exist where residential buildings. You're not adding a lot of new lot coverage to do that. The bylaw limits how much new lot coverage you can add and how much new construction you can have. And so this is a use category. We think we should really preference. Which is why we've proposed to change it to site plan review in all of the. In all of the zoning districts. And so we're going to talk a little bit more about. The conditions. If you've got questions about them, I can talk a little bit more about why we made the changes we did. The ARP is this blue hashed zone down south to protect our swamp aquifer aquifer. Our water supply. And so this is where the parentheses come in and the RN and RO and RLD districts. And basically we're proposing site plan, but we're also proposing to do some more water supply review. We're also proposing to do some more water supply review. And that works because we believe a public hearing and a board should look at all of the proposals there to ensure that we are protecting the. The water supply and then for. Convert for town homes specifically. And converted dwellings. We recognize that those can be larger. You know, converted dwellings in these areas can go up before the water supply. And so we're proposing to do some more water supply review. And you know, you need that special permit. We need to be in front of you, the ZBA. And for townhouses right now, we've proposed not allowing them. I just came from a conversation at the community resources committee where people were questioning the no as to maybe it should be a special permit because, you know, for one reason in converted dwellings, we've moved a lot of. Some of our neighborhoods choose public sewer. And so I think that that would be a special permit for town homes in these areas is also appropriate. As long as we have that sewer requirement in there and all. So we'd be willing to consider that. The only thing I have to say about subdividable dwellings is that Rob Moore, our building commissioner, when we proposed, when we talked to him about this proposal before we made it formal. Said, let's delete it because it's only been used once. So I can't talk much more about it beyond that, but we went with his recommendation. I want to say thank you so much. And I am looking forward to hearing your comments and questions. Great. Thank you. You know, this, this is clearly a, this is a very extensive proposal and it's very logically built. I mean, you build on a foundation and you move from one use to another and you try to, I think you try to make an effort to, to connect all the different uses by. Sequentially across different residential buildings. So if it, if there's a special permit, one place in existence and you move to site plan review, you try to do that throughout the course, moving a step up, shall we say, in the pathways and the permitting pathways. But one thing that strikes me is that this proposal. This proposal really does reduce the amount of special permits and with that as a pathway. And I'm wondering what it is in the special permit process that you feel is inappropriate for the small, a calm, small residential uses the, the duplexes and triplexes and the owner occupied duplexes. We do a lot of that now. And I wonder, I'm wondering what is it in the special permit process that causes you to believe that, that is unworkable for the smaller residential buildings. So it's, if I may. Yeah, please, please. You know, it's, it's not necessarily that we believe the special permit process is unworkable or is particularly problematic on a general scale. It goes back to a special permit is discretionary. A site plan review is not technically as technically a by right use. And so from an outsider looking in or someone looking in and saying, what does this town of Amherst want to build or want to allow to build when they see a special permit on the use table, they say, oh, they don't really think it's entirely suitable in that zone. Maybe they don't want it. It makes it a little less sure that, that the permit will be granted. I know you grant a lot, but I also know that there are applicants that withdraw their applications after months and dollars and all, because they've determined you won't grant it. Whether or not that's an appropriate decision or not, I, I'm not going to comment on, but the grant percentage, I would say is not always accurate as to how many applications are actually granted. But, you know, what, what I would say is so, so part of it is what message are we sending to the community when we say a duplex needs a special permit in the RG are most dense, that's supposed to be the densest residential zone. What we're saying is, well, duplexes, we're not really sure we want duplexes in our RG. Versus when we say site plan review, we're saying we want duplexes in our RG. And so part of it is that, you know, we have heard from Chris that the timing and the length of permit, the length of time it takes to move an application through the ZBA versus the planning board is not necessarily different. We have heard from others that it is. And the, when you're looking at trying to create housing that is a little more affordable, trying to lower housing costs, the length of time you spend in a process, contributes to the costs of housing. And so if there are differences, which like I said, we've heard some people say there aren't, and some people say there are in terms of the timing and costs of the two systems. If there are the site plan review system is cheaper, and that would potentially result in less costly housing. So the, to summarize, I mean, I think what you just said is that some people believe that the special permit is discouraging people from wanting to build a board, expand the house in Amherst. That's one thing. And that it may take longer to do that, under a special permit than a site plan review. And that seems to, so if I'm right, what I think I hear you saying is that this movement to site plan review facilitates an ease of building new houses or expanding residents over the site plan review, over the special permit. That's really what it is. But you know, Councillor Hannake, I've looked, I think that is a, there's an impression there that I don't know if it's true for in a couple of things. And I would ask you to think about this. The first is that the site plan review is by right. The site plan review have in the, in the bylaw site plan review has the planning board has three options. They can approve it. They can disapprove it or they can approve it with conditions. I mean, that isn't by right. They do have the, they have the ability to disapprove something and it's not only because they didn't have the enough information. They can disapprove it because it didn't meet the requirements of section 11.2, which is their section, which is the equivalent of ours 10.38. So they have that ability. I mean, maybe, maybe what's happened is that the culture has been that site plan review moves more quickly because of the people on the planning board or historically a reason there, but they are, they are not by right. And they do have that same discretion that we have to, to, to decline an offer or to condition it. And it can be based on the application not being sufficient or that they didn't meet the 11.2. So I think that's, I think that's an impression that may not be accurate in terms of the differences. And I think that we've worked pretty hard to try to facilitate the ease with which people can come before the zoning board of appeals and we've tried our very best to have that be a smooth process as possible. Sometimes it just takes a while. And it's because it's complicated. But I guess is, do you have any response to that to the, the differences there? I think maybe may not be statutory, but they may be impressions. So in all of my research and by what I've read at state law, including the housing choice legislation, a site plan review is considered a by right use. You know, and there are much more limited reasons a planning board can deny a permit than a ZBA. I looked at section 11.2 and then the equivalent. I don't know what number it is for you guys, but I actually in, in making these slides, I read those closely and you have a lot more things you can look at than the planning board can look at. They're not, you know, they, they might seem slightly equivalent, but they're not identical in what things can be considered. And so, so under state law, an SPR is a by right use despite that limited amount of ability to deny and a special permit is considered a discretionary permit that doesn't have to be granted. And one of those big differences is suitability of location. A site plan review, I believe I, I don't have the zoning bylaw directly in front of me right now, but I believe the, the planning board does not look at suitability of location in determining whether to grant a site plan review or not. And one of your first things to look at is suitability of location. I might be using the wrong words, but, but that one wasn't in from my memory, the planning board. I think that was as, as distinct as it was in the ZBA side, because a site plan review is considered already suitable for that, that use is already considered suitable for that location by definition. And that's one of the biggest differences between the two and what Pat and I in considering where we were going to propose changes really considered is a question that we should be able to use in the RG or in the RN, or is it not always suitable and asking that question, we, we concluded it was always suitable. People may not agree with us. But that's okay. I appreciate that. I have other questions, but I want to make sure that everybody on the board has a chance to ask questions. So I'm going to just run through each member and answer some more questions myself. Ms. Parks, do you have a question? I guess I'm just trying to figure out how allowing a duplex makes it more affordable, because in my mind when you say you can, you know, we'll make a duplex easier for an owner. I understand it's more affordable for the owner to own their property, but for the most likely for students who are moving in for $1,000 a month, that space now becomes that cost. And so the housing in Amherst is so extremely high because of the student cost, because if you put four people in one spot, that's four times more than if you put one family. So I don't see how that makes, that affects affordability for people who would like to live without students. So it's hard to describe. And we don't know whether it would immediately affect affordability, right? Part of affordability is supply versus demand. The more supply you have to address the demand in theory, in economic theory, the less high rent you can charge or purchase price you can charge. If you're looking at a duplex versus say a single family home, if a builder buys a plot of land for $200,000 or $150,000 and can only build one house on that plot of land, they have to recover that cost with just one unit of dwelling units and say they're going to sell it. They have to, if they build it and sell it, they can sell it to exactly one person who has to be able to pay all of those costs. If you can build two units on that piece of land, that land cost has now been split in half. If you think about it like that, the land cost is now distributed over more dwelling units. And so it can be slightly cheaper. We have examples of friends who go in together to buy a plot of land and build a duplex and one set lives on one side, one set lives on the other or one lives down, one lives up, and they've gone together as friends and they would never have been able to buy that on their own without sharing those costs. Now they have their own units, their own living spaces that they can own and live in that they couldn't have done with a single family home. An owner-occupied unit might be able to only afford to buy that piece of property, that parcel because it is a duplex and they have the ability to rent one dwelling unit while living in the other. So it's not as, it's not an easy solution and it's not an obvious solution, but that's where we're coming from. I understand that point of view. I just don't think that it's, it makes housing affordable because anyone who has a duplex, if you have a choice of renting to a family or four students, you're going to rent to four students because you're going to get three times more money or four times more income from that. And so it's for my son who's not a student who's looking for an apartment to move into, there is nothing available that's less than two to $4,000. So I'm just, that's my concern about the affordability of Amherst. I don't see that, that this is, we'll make a difference towards that. I think it will actually not help that. Ms. Parks, should I move on to Mr. Mr. Maxfield? Mr. Maxfield, do you have a question? Or comment? All right. A couple of comments. Couple. I guess a question. My first comment is, yeah, I mean, I'm no, I'm no economist, economist here. So I can't say how this is going to impact it, but I think the general idea of new things that are going to be built are certainly more expensive, but usually as you have more supply, that's going to make what already exists here cheaper. So I think that's going to be a good idea. I think that's going to be a good idea. But I think that the supply that's going to make what already exists here cheaper. My only real concern, and I serve over on the board of licensing as well. And maybe this is, as part of that is addressing that concern is I have lived in, in some of the student housing, the off campus student housing. And there are just an absolute, a large amount of slums, just absolute dumps that I think landlords who really should have no business being landlords are coming to somewhere like Amherst where you know you can, as it currently stands, buy a single family home, convert it into rental units and just pack people in there. That's already a problem. The one thing I worry is, can this expand that that you can have even more of a financial incentive for these people to, to come here and try to make more money on that. And I think I guess from understanding this, the idea of we're looking to address that with, what are we calling it, the rental registration bylaws is, is trying to address that problem. I correct about that. Yes. And that's what I was going to say. I think that the, the taking care of a house, a rental in particular, Pat and I don't believe belongs within the zoning that that belongs within a rental permitting system and CRC has been working for over a year to revamp our rental permitting system. And one of the biggest changes will be when it finally gets out of committee and into the council for debate. I think it's important to report and request of our building inspector that the inspections department inspect, be the inspector, no more self-inspections of any rental units that the building department becomes the inspector and inspects and that the units have to pass the inspection before they can rent their building or their unit. And so that, that I, Pat and I would argue with sponsors that are concerned about habitability and upkeep and all of that, not the zoning bylaw. Mr. Maxfield. Any other questions? We'll give other members a chance. Mr. Meadows, do you have a question? I'm not so certain that it's a question. I think it's more a comment point. I definitely have a comment. I agree with what Pat was saying. I, I think you're well intentioned. I think we're, I think we're, I think we're, but your methodology is, is, is totally incorrect. I don't believe that allowing, allowing permit by site plan review is going to cause any affordability in town. What it's going to do is raise prices. For those that are here now, particularly the students. It's going to drive homeowners out of town. Who are very displeased with the influx of students into their neighborhoods. It's going to push more duplexes and triplexes into areas that don't have them now. And consequently students will be four to an apartment, four to a duplex, excuse me, eight to a duplex, 12 to a triplex. The building commissioner has not got enough time now to look at what is already there. There's no way that they're going to be able to keep up as that progresses. And we're going to find our town. A student town, which it is now, but, but with very, very few individuals who want to live here and no one who is looking for affordable housing. Good intentions. But not an appropriate means. Should I. You want to respond or should I move on to the next person? My response would be, we don't happen to agree. So. Mr. Gilbert, do you have a question or comment? Yeah, I mean, I'll make some quick comments. I appreciate all the work that, you know, you guys have done. This is, it's a big undertaking. And it's a complicated nut to crack. There's not really one. I think clear cut solution. Looking at, you know, the zoning is, it's tough. But you've done a great job here. I think, you know, I mean, from, from what I've seen presented in, you know, from sort of like paging through the packet to, to sort of let some of it sink in a little bit. I mean, I do think that there's some aspects of what you're proposing that, that do work actually quite well. But, but I do think that some of the comments that we're hearing, you know, for example, from Mr. Meadows here, you know, I almost do believe that there is maybe a middle ground between some of what is being proposed on, you know, a pretty heavy handed. I mean, I think that's a transition, let's say from, from ZBA to site plan review. You know, maybe it's just some of the use cases. You know, don't art aren't allowed to sort of offer him. But, but with that being said, I mean, I do, the intention is certainly, you know, well received and, you know, I mean, yeah, basic economics, you know, supply and demand. I hear all that. I mean, you know, I personally work in affordable housing. There's, you know, there's an enormous need for that out here. Amherst, however, I mean, the market is, it's, it's students, right, as, as, as everyone's kind of talking about. I mean, I personally believe that some of the requirements that you have in place with respect to, you know, homeowner occupancy with, with some of these like upgrades, right, let's say upgrades of current zoning without having to go through ZBA. I don't think that's a complete sense to me. I don't see how anyone can really argue against that. If the homeowners and play, you know, in, in a house, you know, it comes down on them. It's not this, you know, argument of having third party private equity firm step in and scoop up our housing supply and, you know, drive all the Amherst locals out. That's not the case. But I do think that that fear comes from a place of understanding that, you know, when you start to open the doors a little bit, how wide you open them does, in fact, have some other, you know, more consequential impacts, let's say. And so, you know, there's, of course, two concerns. There's the concern of, you know, changing the demographic of, of the town for, you know, the long-term residents. And there's the need for housing, right. And I don't think those necessarily have to be mutually compatible. It's just a question of sort of how and when we look at some of the, let's say, existing, you know, laws or laws or zoning laws, basically, in order to incentivize, you know, some increased housing stock. You know, I mean, if students aren't living here, where they live in, you know, Hadley, probably not very many in Belcher town, you know, the options are a little more limited. You go out to North Hampton. It's even slightly more expensive in most cases. So, you know, I do think that there, I do think that there is an approach here that, you know, benefits and takes, you know, awareness and stock of the, you know, of course the constant concerns of the long-term residents of this town, the permanent residents, right. But also does allow, you know, for some increased housing stock because it certainly is a problem. I mean, I happen to live in a, you know, a little bit of rent, you know, at this point in my career, but, you know, a pretty nice place in downtown Amherst and, you know, my landlady lives right in the rear. Like she, she's a separate unit technically, but her and her husband and her family live back there. And I mean, I'll be honest, she would much rather prefer to rent to, you know, me as I was a grad student when I entered here, then, you know, for undergrad is, you know, sort of some of the commentaries going, but she lives here, right. So I mean, there's a point in time where when she had rented to those undergrad populations, you know, they were renting knowing that their landlord is basically on site. So, you know, there's a sort of like policing effect in, in place. And I guess the point that I'm trying to make here is that the, you know, loosening some of these restrictions while still requiring a homeowner to be present, you know, in the property and allowing additional rental, sort of a streamline is, is a win in my, in my opinion. And I don't, again, I don't think that loosening everything up is, is going to necessarily solve the problem. And I don't think that's the argument that you're trying to make. Of course, you know, yourself, it's, it's, we'll see kind of what happens, but, you know, that, that idea again has to be cognizant of, of course, the long-term residents and, and so when and where that application and loosening occurs, I think is certainly a more appropriate, you know, realm for, for conversation here. But with all that being said, again, thank you very much for your time and, you know, putting the effort into investigating this. And I think a lot of what you have done is actually quite, you know, impactful in a positive way for, for the town itself. Thank you. Mr. Slovater, you have any comment? No, I actually have a question more than a comment. Yep. The first thing that you mentioned in your presentation was a reference to a housing crisis as a basis. For this proposal. Can you explain about the demographic that your proposal is attempting to help. And how it will result in more affordable housing. Given that recent history seems to indicate that new residential units end up as student housing. And do not result in providing. Affordable housing for lower income. Residents or employees of the universities. Or any, anyone else in the community other than students. So. A housing production plan that was done a decade ago now. We probably need another one. Indicated that we were, I believe, at least 1600. Units. Dwelling units shy. Of accommodating the desire and need and. Demand in Amherst at that time a decade ago. I don't believe we've built those 1600. We're demanded or needed to supply the demand from a decade ago. And the demand has just gotten worse. That's the housing crisis. The demand is not just from students. The demand is from people who want to live here. Want to go to our schools here are workers at the universities and the colleges and. The universities and the universities that are in town. Our employees are professors. Are not perfect non professors employees just staff. So the demand is there. If we don't build, we don't ever supply the demand. We don't ever. You know. Yeah. We don't ever. Cut that demand down. We don't ever. Have enough housing for the number of people who want to live here. And I'm not saying. And I will be clear. I don't know. What. The appropriate. A number of housing units for a town Amherst size. Are right. What can our water supply. Come, you know, supply, right? I don't know some of those answers, but the housing production plan made it very clear. And our comprehensive housing policy that the town council adopted. About a year and almost about a year and a half ago now. Made it very clear. We have a housing crisis because we are not providing enough housing for the number of people who want to live in town. So our proposal is trying to address that housing crisis. It's with all demographics. It's with elderly. It's with seniors. It's with low income. It's with middle income. It's with everyone. And so our proposal is I talked a little bit. In response to Tammy's question is Park's question about. You know. What might it address? Well, part of it is to provide housing. That people want. All demographics one. Housing at various types of housing. You know, our comprehensive housing policy. Says we don't want neighborhoods that. Are segregated and segregation of a missing middle. Well, it said we had this missing middle. We have apartments. We have single family homes. There are some areas of our town. That have the stuff in the middle where our proposal sort of concentrates the requested revisions, right? The duplexes, the triplexes, the town homes, the conversions of dwellings. And various demographics want that type of housing. We can't guess who will actually go into these because I'm not the builder. I'm, I'm proposing that. I'm proposing that. To create the possibility that these types of housings will actually get built. You know, they don't get built very often in town. At least as compared to apartment complexes or single family homes. When you look at the mass housing partnership list of. What types of housing we have. We are woefully underprivileged. Compared to the average town in the state with duplexes. We have about half of the percentage of duplexes that most towns do in this state. According to the mass housing partnership. This proposal is trying to. Build, create the. Possibility to build them. Will it help provide affordable housing or workforce housing? Hopefully that's the goal, right? And that's one of the reasons if you look at our duplexes in particular, that it's the affordable duplexes that must have at least one unit on the state housing inventory. To do that. And the homeowner duplexes, right? The ones that would have a homeowner in one of those two units are the yeses. Because those are the types of units and the types of buildings we want to build most. Places that, that, that we hope would. Provide a home, right? But we do have these three categories of duplexes. And affordable. State housing inventory affordable duplexes cannot be occupied by students from what I've been told. And Homer homeowner occupied duplexes as Mr. Gilbert just seemed to indicate. Are more often than not. At least half not occupied by students. If you're concerned about building housing that is not going to be built. But if you're concerned about building housing that is not going to be built. Those two sets of uses. Are the most likely beyond single family homes to not be occupied by students if that's your concern. I hope that kind of answers your question. A lot of this is just creating the pathway. In hopes that things will be built. Well, if I can follow up quickly with something, I'm not questioning whether or not there is a housing crisis. I'm asking how your proposal. In. In loosening the ability of the zoning board of appeals to. To have control over what is done. How will you, how will your proposal provide housing for. Or make it easier to provide housing for university employees, the elderly, the other people that you listed. Who are not students. The, the recent history seems. To indicate that every time. A do. Single residents is subdivided. Or anything else is built. It is snapped up by students at. 12 to $1400 a bed per month. It's a very lucrative return for developers. And I'm, I'm asking you basically who are you. Who are you trying to help here. And how is. Loosening the protection and oversight. Going to increase. The availability of housing. For. Grad students associate staff at the university, elderly. Seniors who are downsizing. How is that going to work? Why is your proposal needed? I mean, I think I've tried to answer that. If we don't build housing, we're not providing housing. And it's demonstrated that we don't have the housing for them. And so if we refuse, if, if the current zoning isn't providing that housing, we're trying to make it potentially. Give it more potential to provide that housing by building more housing. We can't guarantee anything, but right now the zoning we have is not providing that housing. Okay. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Councilor Hanneke. Thank you again. First, I do want to, I want to stress one, one last time. This is an incredibly long amount of hard amount of work. So you did a, I mean, this is a lot of work and we appreciate that and respect it. And thank you for the dedication of the town. You have, I mean, this is a lot of work. But I do think there's some problem. I have a question and a comment about your response to Mr. Councilor Hanneke. I think that this plan has yet to demonstrate that the reason that you don't have enough housing in town is because of the special permit process. I don't think that, I don't think we've proven that yet. And I think that we've done. And I think that's kind of what is the basis of the, a lot of this. Proposal is that, and I'm trying to be fair to it. We don't need a special permit in places where the owner, non-owner occupied duplex is allowed. You just, it's going to be by site plan review. And we don't need to have the, we don't need a special permit in that case. We don't need the hearing. We don't have the special permit hearing. And that's essentially what you're doing. And I think, I think what that does is really, I think I would like to, to provide you with an alternative view of the special permit process, which I think would be, I hope would inform your view. I think there's a real benefit to the special permit process. I think that's especially true in more dense areas where a given structure can have a dramatic effect on people very close by. And it can do that while still, and we can have a special permit process that tries to balance between the, the desires of the owner and the concerns of the, and that's exactly what the special permit process that tries to do. We bring the public into the discussion. We try to, we bring the town engineer, we bring the safety of the police and fire. We bring the concom in. We bring everybody that has to have an opinion or a thought about the project into the, into the discussion. We, we oftentimes see that the results are of that special permit process where you have public comment. You have a, a well thought out application. You've had a lot of staff time working with the, with the applicant that you find that the special permit reveals concerns of the neighborhood that can be addressed by the, the applicant. And you also find that the concerns of the neighborhood Tom sometimes are ameliorated by what they learned about the project if they were wrong. I mean, we, I've seen this time and time again in the six years that I've been on the board, that the special permit project process educates the community about what a fear that they had may not be valid, but it also helps to the applicant to respond to, to those legitimate fears. And it creates legitimacy for the special permit process. It creates legitimacy for that building. And it doesn't inspire the kinds of concerns that I think we've heard from several people that this is just ramming a lot of people down the throats of the community from, you know, some private equity investor who wants to put 12 kids in a, in a house next to your house. I mean, that's, that is a real concern on people's part. And I think the special permit itself, the process really adds to resolving those. And we've seen that time and time again. We, a great example of it, I think is on faring avenue where that 59 units were put in right at the corner of faring and sunset. And it was a special permit process. And we worked with the developer. We worked with the community. It was, it was a very, it was a given take at 59 units took three hearings. I don't think that, I don't think that bankrupted Mr. Roberts to do that. I think it was reasonable of the, because it was a significant, a really significant development in that area. But I think people at the end of the, at the end of the day felt the process was fair, felt the process heard their views. And Mr. Roberts and thought, I think the developer thought we treated them all fairly. And that result is we've got 59 units, 59 beds or 59 people that are going to be having a space to live right downtown across from a dorm in the UMass campus. And I think that's exactly, and it doesn't have to just be done with large, large projects. The same thing happens when you want to take up from a, a non-owner occupant wants to move a single family home to a duplex. We see that all the time. And we're single family home now to a triplex. We'll see that. And we go through the same process. And I think, I don't think that that process. Determines people from coming to town. I think in the long run, that process provides support for appropriate development in residential neighborhoods. And I, I don't think I hear that in the representations that you make, and that have been made about, I don't mean to personalize it, the representations that have been made about the special tournament processing process. Um, Mr. Maxield. Um, Mr. Chair, I guess it's actually had a little bit of a counterpoint there. They agree with, with a lot of what you said, but the, the proposal that you were referring to on, on, on fearing street is something that I've certainly thought about where, you know, we're talking about somebody who, if you can hire, you know, Cune brittle architect and, and, uh, Bacon and Wilson to come in and represent you before this board, people who have a lot of experience before this board and other boards like ours in the area, um, who are really able to give us everything we would, we would possibly ask for before we can even ask for it. I think you see a very smooth, easy process, um, in that regard, but I think at this board, we've also seen smaller developers, really kind of mom and pop people come to us and have a very difficult time, um, for both them and, and ourselves and, and trying to navigate it. And I think we have seen members of this board have seen people come before us for, for months and then. Withdraw and I think that has to do with, I think a little bit one of the nature of the ZBA is an all volunteer board that does cycle through people and, and we do lose experience over time. And as I said before, you're going to have these, uh, law firms or architect firms that can come before us that they retain their people, their professional staff coming to, to, to coming before us. So I think, I think in a lot of ways you could see smaller developers being able to build these types of buildings. I don't think I would ever be able to be somebody who could afford to, uh, come before a ZBA to, uh, try to build something like a duplex. But under this, uh, you know, I kind of, maybe this might be a little bit anecdotal, but I know for myself and, and a lot of people of my generation, when it comes to the idea of home ownership, the only thing that even looks feasible is doing something like a duplex or a triplex or even a four unit home as the only way, only path to affordability seems to be if you are doing an owner-occupied or you're renting out other units to pay for the mortgage, otherwise a single family home and some in Amherst is just completely out of reach for somebody like myself. It's, it's renting or move, you know, 20 miles in either direction before I can get to affordability again. And is, is this, uh, you know, this proposal that's being put forward going to be what, what addresses and fixes these problems, I don't know, but I know what we have been doing, hasn't been working. And I, I definitely, you know, I've been with the, the ZBA now for almost three years. I like, I like the special permit process. I do think we treat people fairly, but at the end of the day, it is a bureaucratic process that does take some know-how and can be costly and cumbersome for a lot of people. And I feel like sometimes for people were able to handle simple requests pretty easily, but other times I feel like people can get bogged down in a process that they just don't understand that can end up being costly. And I don't know, I'm obviously speaking for myself here, but I think that I think that these changes are on the whole good. I think that it will do a lot of, a lot of good for the town. So I know we ultimately don't have any sort of vote. We're just kind of giving feedback on this, but I mean, I don't know my feedback on this is for the most part, I really like this. I think, I think it will. I think narrowing where we're dealing with special permits, especially where it is going to be. You know, non owner occupied for profit duplexes that you definitely come for the CBA. That is undoubtedly some profit driven enterprise that's trying to do that. There should be input for the public on something like that, but owner occupied duplexes, a site plan review as far as, you know, I'm concerned with something like that. I think that does make sense to move in that direction. Oh, Mr. Meadows. Mr. Meadows. I just wanted to cite an example. Similar to what you were saying, Steve, we had someone come to us on pine street who wanted to build and the neighbor feeling like the student housing on that site was very objectionable. Got an attorney to try and move against it, but the ZBA was able to bring the person who wanted the upon the permit and the neighbor together. The neighbor was also saying that if they, if they did have someone move in, they were going to move out of town. And by the ZBA encouraging these people to talk with each other and reason with each other, they became satisfied with what was going to be happening and the permit was granted and they were building something that was beneficial to the town and beneficial to them. This wouldn't happen via, we would have lost another town member had this been on a site plan review only. And the special permit process was very valuable in this case. Without the special permit process, again, we lose people, we don't have affordable housing and it's going to be turned into even more of a student populated town. One of the things that I think is important is that we often will condition a special permit, we'll approve a special permit with conditions and those conditions always come from the, almost always come from the findings we have to make under 10.38, which are extensive. And we'll talk, I do have a question about that, but the conditions that we come up with a lot of times are first off negotiation with the staff, with us, with the applicant, right? That's the first point. Okay, you got these concerns. What about parking? What about gatherings? What about amenities, et cetera, et cetera? That's the first thing. We have a public hearing. We hear from the community. And we find that I think the things, the kinds of conditions that we impose, they make sense in most cases. We talk about gathering size. I think of exactly one of the things I would worry about if I lived in an area where there was going to be a non-owner occupied duplex or triplex down the street is how many people are they going to have at any given time at a party, right? And that is not something that is considered in a site plan review necessarily. It could be. I think they have the discretion to do that, but it isn't typically done. It's done with us all the time. And the result of that is there is less opposition to those kinds of buildings, because you don't have wild parties every Friday night. You have a limit on that. And it's not just done by the homeowner. If he's a owner occupant, he or she does not want to have a large gathering all the time. But if you're a non-owner occupant or you're an investor, that really doesn't come to the fore of your thoughts. So those kinds of things, whether it's gatherings, the length of overnight stays, something that we all the time have limits on, because often it's just used to get two or four or six people in what should be one, two or three people in a bedroom. You have additional people in the bedroom. We just dealt with that last week, whether you had eight people living in a four-person unit. And it happens all the time. And this is a way that you deal with that is by limiting through the lease, limiting the length and the number of overnight stays. Parking is a problem. I used to live across the street from a large, a large student place. And while they were able to handle some of the cars for the students, they were always parked out in front of the house. If you came sometimes parked out in front of the driveway, especially on weekend nights, you come out, you couldn't get out of your driveway because your driveway was blocked because students were parking down there. And it just, it is a real issue. And so we deal with that. And you would consent the homeowner, the applicant, to enforce parking by having, you know, a parking regime of some site with stickers and towing. Those are the kinds of things that we work on the kind of conditions that only are available through a special permit. Amenities. We did this in two of the three most recent ones, large ones we've had. We talked about gardens and barbecues and community amenities. Those are just a few of those. But the intention here is that we really want to try to find a way in which to satisfy the need for more housing, try to meet the needs of the neighborhood, which is part of what Amherst is, is a community of people. And we're trying to find a way, and I think we do it pretty successfully, find a way to facilitate the housing that we need, but yet not disrupt the neighborhood too much unnecessarily. And I think that only gets done. I've only seen that be done in the special permit process. I haven't seen that. I don't know that the, that the building commissioner can do it on his own. And I'm not sure that in the end, a really overworked planning board, which is going to have all the work that we do from residents imposed upon them, plus all the other work they do, is really going to have the time to do this. And so I, that is a concern I have for the, for this proposal and removing the special permit, permanent permitting process. Thank you. If possible, I would ask if Chris is willing to talk about what types of conditions the planning board regularly puts on their, their site plan review grants, because I know the planning board regularly puts on a lot of the conditions. And I think many of them are the same things you just talked about. And I have hearings and all, but Chris is probably much better able to describe that. Go ahead. Yes. Oh, yes. Yeah. Yeah. So the planning board does, um, does have a long list of conditions that it puts on site plan review permits and the latest one that people might want to look at is the permit that went for, um, 446 main street. But I think, um, the planning board doesn't focus as much on behavior and, um, controlling activity as the zoning board of appeals does. It focuses more on, um, the built environment, what the building is going to look like, how much parking there is, what the landscaping is. It's really kind of an exterior, um, view and, you know, um, I think, you know, we're going to be looking at that in the future. But I think that's, as Mr. Judge has said, the zoning board does focus more on, um, how is the property going to be used and is the use going to be appropriate and are there going to be nuisances and is there going to be, you know, are they going to be loud parties? The planning board wants to see a lease and they generally ask for a lease. And then if they see something that, um, just, you know, that doesn't please them, they ask for a lease and they ask for a lease. And the other thing that we do is we do have a lease that we get, have provisions for, you know, no more than 10 people can, can be in a particular unit at any one time. And that kind of limits the number, the number of people who can come to parties. Um, but I think in general, the ZBA has more experience with that. And the planning board is, as I said, in terms of, you know, how the building fits in with other buildings around it, what's the architecture. Um, so that's, that's just my perception of how things are different. I don't want to dominate this. Um, and so I want to make sure that other people have a chance for questions if they have them or comments. Um, Mr. Sloveter. I had a question last time. Now I just have a quick comment. I think that a fairly inconsistently applied scrutiny is an appropriate way to protect the community. It should not be short circuited or minimized. The current procedures seem to be working. And I don't hear yet a compelling reason to make any significant changes. Thank you. One of the things I just want to. I want to highlight. Counselor Hanna key is, is 10.38. The, that is a section of the zoning by-law that we really have to make our findings on in order for, for a special permit to be granted. We have to make findings on 19 conditions, 19 findings for 10 in 10.38. And that sounds like a lot. They aren't always, always applicable. Um, there's some time if you're not in floodplains, some of these don't apply, et cetera, et cetera. There's, there, they're pretty well thought out. They're pretty good. And I, when I look at those findings, I can't imagine that I want to live in a home that doesn't meet those findings, whether they existed or not. I mean, those are, these are principles that makes pretty good sense. And I wouldn't want to live in a neighborhood and look next to some, a house that didn't also meet those findings. And I would, so they're not the, it's not the bill of rights, but it's a pretty good shot at what should be a good way of, of having a good standard for housing and things that we, that the, that a board should find. And so I'd encourage you to, again, to take another look at 10.38, it really does provide for the way in which the, the board can make a decision that can have a, the community can be involved in that, which I think is an important part of, of, of citing housing in the area that makes a lot of sense. It provides more support and I think easer eases in for, for developers and appropriate development, but there are times when it just isn't appropriate. And there are times when even of use that is normally allowed in the district may not be appropriate in a specific, on a specific lot. It just may not be appropriate. And we've had those where a converted dwelling could work out, it is permitted and could be there, but it just wasn't going to work out for whatever reason, sometimes it's safety, sometimes it's, it's, it's not a lot coverage so much, but it could be drainage. It could be a lot of different things. And I think taking away the ability to make those decisions when that is necessary is really, is short circuiting something that I think the town has benefited from quite frankly, rather than has been harmed by. And so that would be my comment is really the, it's 10.38 is a good guy. May I? Absolutely. Absolutely. So if you live in a single family home, you live in a home that doesn't meet those findings potentially. Because single family homes aren't required to go through the process and get a special permit or a site plan review. And so whether you rent or own a single family home, if you live in one, you don't meet those findings. And my co-sponsor and I believe that. It's not just people who are fortunate enough to have the economic ability to live in a single family home that should get the benefit of not needing to meet a lot of those findings, that people that might not be able to afford to live in a single family home may also have a desire to be able to hold a kids birthday party that has more than 10 kids present. But if a lease is required to limit in that rental, a gathering of no more than 10, they would be violating their lease if they invited 10 kids to a four year old's birthday party. But your single family home doesn't have that requirement. And so one of the things we're trying to do is say a duplex, especially an owner occupied duplex and an affordable duplex, are nearly identical to single family homes. They're not the same. I'll say that. But we don't require even a public hearing to build a single family home, no matter what you think it looks like, no matter how big or small it might be, no matter how many bedrooms it is, as long as it complies with the zoning bylaw on lock coverage, dimension and everything else, you can build it and then you can have your gathering of more than 10 or you cannot have that barbecue that you just talked about, or you can have the deck or not have the deck. You can have your own parking plan without getting someone else's approval to do it because it meets the zoning bylaw. And part of our proposal is to say duplexes aren't that much different that they have to go through and meet all of those findings, especially the owner occupied ones and the affordable ones. We admit that the non owner occupied ones need some level of review, which is why we've proposed moving them from special permit to site plan review. That there are findings and other things required and written decisions required for planning board site plan review. But again, part of creating diverse neighborhoods and diversity of housing is allowing not just and eliminating single family only zoning is admitting that single families houses are not the only ones that should be treated special. And right now we treat them special by not requiring them ever to go through this process. And we're trying to say they're not the only ones that should be treated special. I don't think anybody's arguing with you about owner occupied duplexes. I think like you heard in the owner occupied duplexes, I think most people here find that that's a pretty common way for people to move up to build equity. It's common in university towns, a lot of places or ADUs. I don't think people are arguing with you about that. What we're saying is that there are times, especially with non owner occupied duplexes where you don't have the kind of concerns about the neighborhood when they are, especially when they're owned by out-of-state people or out-of-state institutions, then there's a reason for the, there's a reason for a greater oversight on the part of the community and the town over that. But I don't think that people are arguing with you about the owner occupied duplex. I just didn't hear a lot of that from this group. And I've misinterpreted a lot of the people that have said that the whole proposal is not good and won't do what we want to do. Apologize for that misinterpretation then. And I misinterpreted your comments, chair judge, about not wanting to live next to a place or live in a place that doesn't have those findings because an owner occupied duplex for proposing wouldn't necessarily need those findings. Well, but owner, that's true. You're right. That was perhaps it was insensitive for me to not specify that it could be for the owner occupied duplex. But the fact of the matter is that I think those are very good conditions. And I think they are very good conditions and very good findings that we need to make for most things. And if they're going to be non-owner occupied in the town, non-owner occupied or large, I think those kinds of findings ought to be made, ought to be required. At some point you've got to draw the line. At some place it's going to be impactful. In other places it's not going to be impactful. That's a judgment call. And that's a judgment that the town council has to make. What we're doing here is giving you some feedback about what we think is the appropriate, or what concerns we have. And in some cases what we think is appropriate or not appropriate. And I appreciate it in my cosponsor will when I share it with them where we, you're not the only board. We've been hearing from a lot and trying to, to synthesize much of it, some of which contradicts itself. We're hearing, but we're all of it helps. That's, that's the human condition, isn't it? Are there any other comments from members? Mr. Maxfield. Yeah, I just want to kind of echo just to make sure, sure my position or just general opinion on this is clear. I, I love the idea of non owner, or owner occupied duplexes and triplex even any, anything we're owner occupied is there or affordable. Category is there to be able to be done with site plan review, but something like a triplex or even a, a non owner occupied duplex. I don't necessarily have an objection. Or you should try to say I have a supported still coming to the CBA, because it is something that you know is a profit driven enterprise. This is somebody who's saying, you know, I'm, I'm coming here to make money. I'm not coming here to necessarily improve the community. You know, whatever is the cheapest way I can, can make money. I'll do it. And if the cheapest way involves them coming to the CBA and then having to meet certain conditions neighborhood would want. I think that is something that is still very valuable. But if it's, if it's somebody who's like, Hey, I'm trying to live in this community. Why do I have to jump from all this red tape, jump through all these hoops kept through all this red tape just to, to be able to live somewhere where I can actually afford it. I think that is a very beneficial change. This parks. I was just going to say, I feel like this town has an affordable housing crisis. And I feel like UMass has a student housing crisis and it's come together so that Amherst has a housing crisis because of UMass's student housing crisis. And, you know, and it's made it so that Amherst is not really affordable anymore. If I sold my house, I wouldn't be able to move back here. You know, it's, and my sons, I have two sons who live in Northampton because it is cheaper in Northampton than it is in Amherst. And I wish that they could live here. That would make me happy. But so I, I, I'm actually, I agree with Dylan about owner occupied duplexes, you know, make that site plan review. But that, what's happening unfortunately is that investors are buying up houses so that other people can't buy them. And that's also driving the prices higher because they could, they know that they can get $1,000 per bedroom minimum. And so I wish that any of these things that you were doing would increase affordable housing. I wish we had a system and Amherst to make more affordable housing. And when I say affordable housing, I don't mean low income. I mean, housing that people can afford. You know, we don't have that. And so I, I, I see that as, as a crisis in this town, I see that our general population is being reduced. And it concerns me. And so I'll just say, you know, I, I, I wish there was something that was, that was going to make the town easier for people to live here. Other than students. Councilor Hanneke, I, you've heard a lot from, from the various members on the board tonight that is critical of, of, or questioning some of what you proposed. I want to make sure that you know that we, we value the work that you did put into this and we respect the motivation for it. I think we all share, we all share a desire to have more affordable housing in town. We all share a desire to reduce economic and social segregation in town. De facto, we're real. We all want to get rid of, we all want to have the ability for people to build equity and grow. We all want those things. And we all, and at the same time, we want communities and neighborhoods that we're comfortable in where we, where their kids can grow up, where they can go to school. We want all those things. And I think we share that we have, we may have different ideas about how to get there and what's the best way to get there. But in this case, I really, I really do believe that the process that we have for most, for anything contentious really helps to work out and resolve problems rather than, rather than makes it, makes it worse. I don't think it adds that, I don't think it adds that much cost. It may add in one case. I've heard people talk about, but I don't think it adds that much cost. And I certainly don't think that it is the reason that, and I don't think that eliminating it is going to reduce the cost of housing, anything but by the most marginal amount, the most marginal amount. And I think it actually will increase the house, increase cost of housing, because I think you will find institutional investors will move quickly into moderately priced homes where they see that they can, they can make a non-occupied duplex sewer a more, an easier, an easier regulatory process or even a triplex that raises the cost of that house, that makes the, puts it out of the market, out of the ability of working families to afford that. It raises the price every place. And I think it really ends up, this case, it ends up costing us, creating more costly housing rather than reducing the cost of housing. We have a real, I mean, I spent 14 years working on housing policy in the U.S. Congress when I was a kid, and that was a long time ago, but houses still, there's a couple of things that are really true. Number one, we have a tremendous demand that's not met. A lot of that excess demand is students. We have a tremendous, we have a wonderful institution that doesn't house them. And so then it comes on the town to do that. We don't have the supply, and this isn't going to increase supply. We have to look at other things to do. This proposal isn't going to increase supply. We're going to have to find other ways to do that. There's some good things here. I think the owner occupied duplexes, but I really, I have some problems with other parts of it. And I just wanted to make sure that you understood what that is. He gave an opportunity for the members of the board to express that as well. And I hope that as this process moves through, we will continue to have a conversation about how we can increase housing. I respect that. My co-sponsor and I knew that we would start conversations and that not everyone would agree. And, but we need to have the conversations, right? And so this has been lively. It's, it's been appreciated. I hope, you know, throughout town we can continue these conversations. And I do want to say that my co-sponsor and I, Pat, and I know that this is not the only solution, right? Like this is not going to solve anything there. We have to take a multifaceted approach, a multi-pronged approach to addressing our housing crisis. This is just one thing we saw. We could propose that could help, which is why I've always said we hope it would help. Right. And, and there's other things we need to be doing too. And so I certainly appreciate the conversation. We've had all of the comments that have been given to us critical or not, you know, we, we know we're supportive. We, we know, we knew we were, we were going to create a lively conversation among many people with this proposal. And that's always worthwhile. We have intended to have public comment. But I know that. You've already had one meeting. You may, I don't know if you're going to stay for it or not. That's up to you. But you've had a lot of, you probably had several meetings today already. So. And you want to be able to go, you ought to be able to go home and have a, have your dinner. But we're going to have some public comment. And you're welcome. You're more than welcome to stay for that if you wish. But I want to get, I will stay, but I will turn off my camera because it's, you know, because I'm a guest, but I will stay at least through the public comment. Absolutely. And if there's any other kind of wrap up comments from members. This is the time to do it before we go to public comment. Mr. Max. I just want to say thanks a lot for, for coming down here and talking to us today. I really appreciate it. And I'm really appreciate your, your hard work on this proposal and your hard work you've done for the town. I appreciate it. Thank you. Thank you. I appreciate your, your hard work on this proposal and your hard work you've done for the town. So thank you very much for coming on down. Great. All right. Steven, it looks like we have, I see one hand up and Alex Kent. Can we bring them in? Hello, my name is Alex Kent. And I live at 83 North prospect street with my wife Felicia Savine. I'd like to start by. And Mr. Kent, just a second, just take a, have about three minutes to your, I didn't introduce the restrictions, but have about three minutes to your comment, if you would. Yes, I'm aware. I appreciate the questions from the members of the board. I think they were on point and spoke for many of the concerns that my wife and I have about this proposed change. It seems to me that. I agree if the goal of this change is to encourage the creation and construction of more affordable housing in the town of Amherst, and that includes infill, that's something that we wholeheartedly support. On the other hand, if the change makes it in any way easier for investors to purchase and convert single family houses, duplexes or triplexes into student housing, which they will not occupy, we are vigorously opposed to any such change. The requirement that these properties go before the ZBA and go through the special permit process is a reasonable check on these sorts of activities. We live on a street that is increasingly occupied by undergraduate students. It is ruining the quality of our lives, and there is nothing it seems that can stop it. There is a duplex just to the south of our home. It has been recently purchased by investors from Brooklyn, New York, who have no intention of living in the town of Amherst, who have no intention of abiding by the four unrelated persons cap on rental properties, who have every intention of putting as many undergraduates into that property as possible. These sorts of outside investors, the type of mom and pop investors that were mentioned in the conversation, need to be stopped. Their activities do not need to be encouraged. There should be nothing that would make the process easier for them to purchase properties like this and continue to destroy the quality of our neighborhood. I appreciate very much the work done by the members of the ZBA to call into question the motivations of this proposed change, and we are opposed to the change. Thank you very much. Thank you, Mr Kent. I see Dorothy, Councillor Pam has her hand up. Please give us your name and address. I am 229 Amity Street. I also would like to applaud the work and the discussion of the zoning board today. I think that you gave a full and thorough discussion, and it was very good. I had a lot of things to say, but I just thought I'd pass on something that, I guess it was Kitty Axelson Berry sent, listened to Mayor Woo's State of the City speech and said there's some great vocabulary in there. And here's one, need to focus on building community, not just buildings. I think that's something that we've really been talking about. Our residential neighborhoods are communities, and we certainly don't have any problem of having some students join us in our community, but we wanted to stay a community where people can talk with each other and work and entertain and have fun together. She said the need to benefit all of our communities the need to plan for community stability. You hear a lot of fear about the community becoming unstable and flipping. And certainly the worry about the new development proposed in the middle of a residential block on 98 Fearing Street was worse than we thought. We originally told that this density would be at corners and at intersections. And that's not true anymore. So the plan is really kind of like aiming at the heart of the community need to plan for sustainability. That means keeping, keeping grass and trees. So that's some of the words it said and the urgent need for resiliency affordability and equity. And we're all concerned about the fact that young families and people who work at the university can't afford to buy a home, let alone rent a home in a neighborhood where you would like to raise a family. So I think that we have to really think about limits. What I'm my feeling is owner occupied duplexes. Great. We have that. They fit in the neighborhood. I wish that more of us could afford to do the accessory dwellings which we're allowed to do now, but building costs for the individual person are so high which is why we're kind of wide open for the out of town investors. They have very big deep pockets. And if we're not careful, that will kind of destroy the neighborhood. We need to maintain some year round people. Our taxes are supporting the town. We have high taxes. Our taxes are going up and we're going to be asked to vote to increase them further. And people are saying to me, it's like a tax rebellion is going on. They're saying we pay the taxes. We haven't complained, but now it seems that nobody cares about us. And nobody is listening to us. So I think those are important things to think about. And I'll leave you with the last phrase that I gave started with that. Focus on building community, not just buildings. Thank you. Thank you, Miss Pam. I see that Jane is a killer or Janet Keller. It's got her hand up. Is that okay? I try to sound. Yep. Janet, please give us your name address and keep your comments about three minutes, if you would. Thank you. Janet Keller. 120 pulpit Hill road. In beautiful North Amherst. And I, for many years was the chief of strategic, strategic planning and policy. For the Rhode Island department of environmental management. And I've been a founding member of several organizations. That have provided community. And provided housing and built. And created community. At the same time. I heard. Several people say we wish we had a way. To supply more affordable housing and more diverse housing. And that has been something I've worked hard on as well. And we do have ways. To provide such housing. And I, two of them are zoning related. Developers can do this through. The inclusionary zoning that was adopted. And. Also through 40 B reviews. Provisions that are reviewed by the ZBA. So I counted. I just did a quick count of some recent ones. And came up with 176 affordable units that are. Actually built or in the pipeline. In the public. With the inclusionary zoning or, or will be built with it or 40 B. And then there's also the nonprofit sector. Which I've worked with. And the public donor. And public and donor funded units. Like the ones that the municipal housing trust has. Put forth and Valley CDC. And I think that there are ways. And folks like Amherst community land trust are providing. And so I, I think. That there are ways and. And I 100% agree. That the kind of review that the ZBA provides. Is critical. Of their home to mean not worried. To bits about. The declining value of their home. When they're surrounded by noisy neighbors. And. I. My final thing is to put in a plea. To not get rid of a butters notices. Because. It's critical that people. Can comment. On. New, new developments that are coming. To their neighborhoods. And. People should not be deprived of that right. Thanks a lot for all the work you do. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Which is very impressive. And for the opportunity to comment. Thanks. Thank you, Miss Kelly. Um, Ranny Parker. And please help me if I've mispronounced your first name and, but repeat it. Give us the, uh, Your address and keep it to about three minutes. If you could. I'm sorry. I'm sorry to interrupt. I have a question for Ranny. Ranny, okay. On North Prospect street. Um, I have the feeling that this is really important, but I'm having a very hard time understanding the scope of the changes that are recommended. And when I saw the paragraph in the agenda, I was really glad I was coming to hear a counselor, Haniki explain it herself. And in fact, I still feel a little overwhelmed by all these complexities. And I think that this kind of treatment of the subject matter in and of itself is a problem because citizens cannot understand what's being decided when something important is being decided. So I did get out of today that the problem that this is trying to address is the high prices of homes and the lack of sufficient stock of homes. And the solution is to facilitate more building by fixing the process of approval for building. And the fix is essentially moving it out of a process of engagement between a board such as yourself and the parties involved replacing that with one person, a commissioner who's going to say yes or no. So I could be wrong there, but I think the real problem with that approach is that it prevents or loses the opportunity for people to build trust with each other. And I see that there's, from having lived here just over a year, I'm learning about lack of trust. And in this community, I think it's really important. And when I hear you talk about how you work with two parties that are in disagreement and help them come to resolution, I just, I feel that's so very important. I would not give that up for any speedy building. Buildings, once they're done are there for generations. So I don't, I'm wary of rushing about things that are permanent. And the second thing I wanted to say is really one was the trust issue that we need trust. So processes that allow people or even require people to engage with each other are important. And the second one being this whole question of abutters, it's unimaginable to me that abutters don't matter. How is that even possible? I think that people who are near some change that's going to happen are in the best position to predict the outcome of that action. And especially when I hear that, oh, we don't know what the impact of this is going to be. It's really scary because the people who will know the impact of a structure rising up next to them are the people who live right there. So I think excluding people in general in the interests of speed in this instance is probably a mistake, but I look, I thank you for the discussion and I look forward to reading more and understanding more and participating in more of the discussion myself. I do believe that the problem that had instigated this proposal is important and needs to be addressed, which is more sustainable environment, more affordable housing, more diverse, more people friendly and environmentally sensitive. Thank you. Thank you. Jenna Keller already spoke. Alex Kent already spoke. So I see no new comment, no new hands. Is there any response to any public comment from board members? All right. Given that, I think we're completed our consideration for tonight of the zoning proposal. The next order of business is public comment on any matter that is not before the board tonight. And so we'll open it up to public comment on anything other than the zoning proposal. And I don't see any hands up. Great. All right. There's no other business. Is there any new business, any business from the members to bring up? We have a, I guess Chris, could we just go through this, what we have for the next meeting schedule for the next couple of, for the next month? When is our next meeting? And then we have the meeting on the 23rd. So we have a meeting on... You have a meeting on March 9th. Yep. And what's on that agenda for that? On March 9th, you'll take up those West Street projects where we had a problem with the public notice back in early February, I think. Anyway, we are making sure that the legal ad was sent in today. We're gonna send out a butters notices and post the public hearing. And the West Street projects are projects for which you've already received a packet and a project application report will make sure that you get that again. But you did have an opportunity to become familiar. It's two duplexes. One that already exists and some property is being taken away from that one to add to a second property that will, that is requesting to become a duplex. And those properties are going to be managed by Alan St. Hilaire. And I think you're familiar with him. The next one is March 23rd. And that's the meeting that Mr. Judge is not able to attend. And so far we have Canton Ave, which is the one that I described to you before. It's a public hearing about moving a house and there may be one or two other changes to the site plan that are being proposed there. The next date that you have for a meeting is April 13th. And originally we had scheduled the spoke. And actually it's called live at the spoke. And what this is, is it's a, you probably know what the spoke is. It's a nightclub that is along East Pleasant Street and it takes up a building that used to have a copy shop and a pizza shop as well as the spoke anyway that the owner of that business is proposing to open a nightclub in the building that was occupied by Old Town Tavern. And so he's proposing this under the new bylaw. And this is a special permit that comes to the zoning board of appeals for this new nightclub. So that was proposed to be heard on April 13th. And now we also need to find a date for 515 Sunderland Road. And we had thought that would go on March 23rd but that won't be able to go then because Mr. Judge will not be here. So we could put that on April 13th with the spoke but that might be really overloading that night. And the next possible night would be April 27th. Well, we'll give, well, that's, we've got, and I know we have kind of things, we have applications sort of in the waiting room. We do have applications in the, yes. In the waiting room, you and I have talked about them and I'm impressed that we have a lot of work to do in the next few months. There's a lot of things that are waiting almost ready to drop. So we're gonna need to. Would you be willing to add a meeting in order to accommodate both the spoke and 515 Sunderland Road? Like I don't know when Mr. Judge is coming back from his vacation, but. I would just be gone for the, for a few days. I've got some, I've got some, you know, we could add a meeting. I don't know if people have the ability to do that. I know that Dylan has another board that you serve on. We can, we can flick with that at times. But is that a Thursday night board Dylan? It is. It's Thursday night, but we had one tonight before this meeting. Now Steve had been on that board with me and now that he's here with the CBA. I don't, I don't even have to think about conflicts anymore. Steve, Steve lets me know when there is one because it's the same conflict for him now too. McCarthy's doing two things, right? Yep. Between, between the March 23rd date and the April 13th date, we have two Thursdays. One is Thursday, March 30th and the other one is Thursday, April 6th. And April 6th is better for me. The 30th, I do not anticipate being here on that, on the 30th. So we could schedule the 515 Sunderland Road for Thursday, April 6th. Are people available for that night? I'm seeing people nodding. So far, I am. So Steve is available and Tammy and Dylan. And what about Craig? I can't hear you. He's got my earphones. That's the trouble. You can actually my phone. Must. You got my earphones. Not loud. Give us a yes or a no. Can you thumbs up for the, or do you not? Okay. So Craig is available for the 6th and what about John? Yeah, my schedule seems to be available for the evening 6th. So all of you are available for the 6th. So we could 1, 2, 3, 4, 5. We could have 515 Sunderland Road on April 6th. Yep. Okay. All right, let's do that. Okay. So then we have the 23rd with Dylan with chair, right? Dylan chair. Yep. On the 23rd. And then on the 9th, we have a regular meeting. On the 9th, you have the West street. And then on the April 6th, you have 515 Sunderland Road and April 13th, you have the spoke. Okay. That sounds great. I hope the planning board doesn't get any applications. This is really a busy time. Oh, well, I do want to, it's important to note that you guys are working double time and filling several jobs. And we appreciate how difficult that is. You're doing a great job. And we appreciate, I just want you to know, I think it's, speak to the board. We appreciate the work you are doing, Chris and Steven and everybody. Steve, yep. Thank you very much. We appreciate your appreciation. A lot going on. Thank you. Mr. Chair, real quick, as we're sort of projecting out, was that March 23rd, Thursday, March 23rd that I think we had just referenced there? Yes. I will be out of the area. I will not be able to attend that meeting. Look at my calendar. That one does not work for me. March 23rd, so we'll need just a fifth person, March 23rd, are other people available? March 23rd? So we'll work on the associates. Chris, you and I will talk about how we make sure everybody gets a chance to serve, because we'll need two associates for the 23rd. Because I won't be able to serve, and Mr. Gilbert won't be able to serve on March 23rd. But Craig is up or down for the 23rd? Craig is up, I think. Craig is gone. Craig is gone. Well, we will get. I'll send him an email. I'll send him an email. You and I will talk about how we want to make sure we can give the associate members a chance to serve. So you and I talk about how we assign that. Okay. And what did Dylan say about the 23rd? Is Dylan available? Yep. That works for me. And the 23rd you're going to chair, right? Yep. Oh, that's right. Yep. Excellent. Okay. And now Mr. Meadows is back. You can save yourself an email. Oh, Mr. Meadows. Oh, thank you. Yes. On the 23rd, are you available on the 23rd of March? Yes. Okay. And what I was saying about early April is I'm going to be in Columbia, but I've taken meetings there before so I can do it again. Okay. Oh, okay. All right. All right. So I need to talk to Steve about associates. I'm just going to say if there's going to be any site visits, if we could find out ahead of time, because I work full-time and I have to arrange around those. So if any are required, let us know. Has it worked out pretty well for everybody to have those eight o'clock, straight forward, do them at eight and then be done? Eight o'clock. Even if we had to do two different days, but do them at eight. Does that work for people? It works for me, but I'm not working. So I'm an early morning riser. Okay. Okay. Good. It usually works for me. Good. Very good. All right. Great. Okay. Any other new business? Good. All right. I'd entertain a motion that we adjourn. Don't move. Oh, we got two of them. All right. We got a motion and a second. I heard them both. Tammy moved and who seconded? Oh, Mr. Maxfield moved, part seconded. It's... Next field. And Craig came in a little late. I think he didn't hit the buzzer on time like everybody else. Oh, too bad. He just missed the buzzer. All right. Okay. The motion is not debatable. Chair votes aye. Ms. Parks. Aye. Mr. Maxfield. Aye. Mr. Meadows. Aye. Mr. Gilder. Aye. We have a unanimous vote. Five votes for the motion passes. We are adjourned. 827. Thank you. Welcome aboard, Mr. Slavitter. Thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thanks for your commitment to the town. And we'll see all of you soon, I guess. All right. Thanks for your help. Thank you. Bye bye. Bye soon. Bye.