 Pursuant to chapter 20 of the acts of 2021 and extended again by chapter two of the acts of 2023, this meeting will be conducted via remote means. Members of the public who wish to access the meeting may do so in the following manner. By emailing stevemakarthias at amherstayma.gov that's m-c-c-a-r-t-h-y-s at amherstma.gov. 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. In the event that we are unable to do so for reasons of economic hardship and despite best efforts, we will post on the Amherst website an audio or video recording transcript or other comprehensive record of proceedings as soon as possible after the meeting. And if that done, we'll call the meeting to order at 5.05 p.m. and take a quick roll call. Dylan? I'm here. Hallie? Here. And I'm here, so three here and two absent. We have a quorum, so we can go on ahead. Okay, public comment. This is general public comment unrelated to anything on the agenda. If you have something like that to say, please raise your hand using the raise hand button at the bottom of your screen. Anyone here? No attendees. No attendees. Okay. All right, moving on. So licenses, special short-term liquor licenses. And these are all, Steve, top of the campus. These are from UMass, these are all UMass, right? Yep, so this is just- Except for Gabrielle's. Another, yeah, except for the last one, these are all just kind of part of the same batch from last time, just events in the Fine Arts Center in Boucher Auditorium. All right, so does anyone have any questions? Steve forwarded some helpful maps and license application examples. If none, shall we just, do we do Gabrielle separately? Yeah, let's do that. Yeah, okay, all right. So is there a motion to approve SST-23-46 through 36.731, through 51? So moved. Thank you, Dylan. Is there a second? Again. Thank you, Halle. Any further discussion? If not, we'll take a vote. Dylan. Aye. Halle. Aye. And I vote aye. That is three to zero with two absent. Those licenses have been approved. And next up is SST-23-52, which is the Amherst bid. This is Bant Ober, right, Steve? And this is the same as last year. Another Bant Oberfest, I believe the same as it's been run the last two years. Gabrielle was unable to make it today, fortunately because the block party is right now. So she did send an email along with some explanations, but I believe will be pretty much the same as it has been the last two times. Okay, great. Everybody look at Gabrielle's little note and any questions, any issues? If not, is there a motion to approve the short-term license for Bant Ober? So moved. Thank you, Dylan. Second. Thank you, Halle. Further discussion? If not, we'll take a vote. Dylan. Aye. Halle. Aye. And I vote aye. That is three to zero with two absent. The license has been approved. Okay, discussion topic. So Steve, what's going on with Hazel's? So I was able to speak with Junior, the owner of Hazel's a couple of times this week. And he passed along, he is looking for a new location. He'd like to stay in Amherst if he could. His pickings are kind of slim out there. Unfortunately, we actually have a very high occupancy rate for restaurant commercial units or even anything that could be used as a restaurant. But he is looking and I talked to him about, the ramifications of licenses and how the ABCC does have guidance that there needs to be the control of the premises to hold the license and that the board was unable to issue any other licenses for his former location. Well, he still holds this license and he did elect to surrender the license and I will pull up this, I will pull up his email right now if you give me a second. Steve, thank you for taking the time to continue reaching out to him. Yes, thank you, Alli, it's very sad to see him go and I hope he's able to find another location somewhere. But thankfully we do have eight all alcohol licenses available. So if he is able to find another location, he should be able to go right through the application process and get one without a problem. Oh, great, that's good news. I only eat there once, but I will say his food was very good. Oh yeah. It was very good. You take it for granted, you'll be like, oh, I'll be there, I'll eat there again sometime. And it was unique too. Not that we have nothing but good Mexican restaurants in town, they're all good, but it's nice to have a little variety. Okay, so that's, he will be giving up the liquor loan with surrounding the liquor license. So what do we do? The board could vote to accept the surrender. Okay, is there a motion to accept the surrender of the liquor license for Hazel's Blue Lagoon? So moved. Thank you, Dylan, is there a second? Second. Thank you, Alli. We'll just take about Dylan. Alli? Aye. And I vote aye, three to zero with two absent. The surrender of the liquor license for Hazel's Blue Lagoon has been accepted. So thanks again, Steve, and we hope that he will be back soon and that he finds another spot. Okay, great. So marijuana regulation that was Dylan and Gaston, what is going on over there? Yep, so I had a very long talk with Alissa Brewer on this topic about the history that's been going on at CCC, what had was gaining traction, what lost traction, and now it's kind of lost to the sands of time and have to be redone from scratch. Again, it sounds like. Oh, really? Yeah, it sounded like, from a little bit of the history I was hearing about that, there was some discussion of like a recreational youth facility, marijuana. There were certain towns that were volunteering to kind of be pilot programs to state. I guess Amherst was among those and that all kind of fell through and that's kind of gone nowhere. And what I'm thinking, and after this long talk, take away of a direction I think I'm gonna be going with marijuana regulations. You can all tell me if you think differently, but I think it's gonna be very, very similar to just the way we regulate alcohol. I think our regs are gonna be pretty bare bones in the sense of we're asking who you are, telling you what your fee is, you're gonna be telling us what your hours are, what your locations are, all that kind of basic information because from what I could find, I did try to reach out to the folks over at Red Cardinal and I couldn't really get in touch with them in any meaningful way. But I don't think it makes a lot of sense to put forward regulation that's just already what the state says, especially as I think that's kind of in flux. So I'm thinking probably pretty bare bones in the regulation, if something that there's kind of glaring that maybe, oh, we should include, say this, we can. Like we wanted to say something like, it can't be this distance from this type of building, stuff like that's already included, I believe in state regulation of how close it can be to a school building, sort of all that stuff. So my approach to this is gonna be, I'm gonna be putting together something that's pretty, pretty bare bones. And if somebody thinks you guys have a suggestion of why that might not be a good approach, I'm open to it. Otherwise I think next meeting you guys are gonna be getting, that's what's gonna be on the table. What do we think? I think it's a great idea. Oh yeah, sorry, go ahead and Haley. I was gonna say the only thing we encountered and it was before your time when we were taking the Porta license away is that it's nice to have some sort of guideline for infractions is part of that bare bones because we kind of felt like we were not lost at sea but that there was no precedent for what we were doing. Yeah, I agree. And I appreciate you mentioning that because now that I think about it for even just a moment I'm like, yeah, that kind of falls into bare bones of making sure that we do have kind of, what is our reprimand structure in there of what happens for violation. So yeah, I will definitely include that. I think again, I'll be looking to kind of what we've done with alcohol in that manner as well. But I think kind of the big ones are gonna be setting sea structure. I'll probably work with that on Steve because now that we are all well informed it can only be for the administrative costs of it. And I think it's all gonna be the regulations if we should we adopt them would kind of be contingent on passing with the bylaw that it would go into effect once we also adopt the bylaw and perhaps do away with host community agreements should the state go that direction. So that's what I'm thinking. If you guys think of anything else that should kind of be included in there I'll go ahead, I'll put something together and then have that for everybody. And then if we wanna just make some amendments to it I think that would work but I think I should be able to have that together by our next meeting. That sounds great. I think keeping it simple is a good idea and also including that what might go wrong, Allie? You know, like how to... And then also one other thing I know Steve has mentioned before it helps too to say what we're looking for when we grant a license too. It just gives, I'm not gonna say cover but kind of a framework to look at when we have applications. Doesn't have to be huge, but if you look like there's a statute for granting alcohol licenses what they look for it's in the guidelines. So you might wanna use that language because I would guess if there's litigation the courts would probably use similar to terminology. Yes, I plan kind of doing almost a copy and paste changing alcohol to marijuana and just making sure it fits. I know Steve, I'd reach out to you to see about getting some of that info but I know you are a busy man who is in demand but anything you could even send me on this topic too between now and the next meeting would be very helpful just so I can, you know, don't have to reinvent the wheel on a lot of this stuff. Yeah, we can definitely touch base on that and Howie, you know, we did put together that great liquor license regulations last year. I would just kind of caution that a lot of what goes into liquor is this kind of state regulations that we inherit so it wouldn't be built into our regulations it would just be kind of, you know, from patchwork of CMRs or state laws or just kind of practice so we'd wanna make sure to kind of add some of that like all the notice and everything I believe is in our regulations that's prescribed by state law so we can take a look at that but yeah, we should schedule a time to talk next week and go over some things. Yeah and I don't have any objection to putting in to reiterating state law in our regulations just for the reason of making it more simple for applicants but the only reason why I'm more hesitant to do that with marijuana is I don't wanna mirror today's state regs and then as those change for, you know, whatever reasons now we kind of have cumbersome regulations when the state decided to, you know ease up on certain things like I know when this was all first coming I remember when Red Cardinal came to us at CBA they had to have a whole parking management plan involving somebody to wave on traffic and all that stuff that now today would be ridiculous to make somebody do that because it's just kind of a regular business now but I think something that, you know obviously is going to be staying in state regs or that we just think is a good idea currently in state regs I wouldn't mind reiterating it in our local regulations as well. Okay, sounds good. Thanks Dylan. So we can look forward to that at the next meeting. Any other questions for Dylan about this? Super, okay. Fantastic, sounds good. Next up, lunch carts and food trucks on Pre Street followed by lunch cart and food truck regulation and Steve you've been meeting lots of people about this, correct? Yeah, so I did meet with a lot of people individually but last week I was able to meet with the representatives of the police and fire department and the DPW was all the town manager and just kind of went over what we have been thinking and going over and the ideas and there is definitely some support to try that out. So I think Paul would be willing to accept an idea for a conceptual plan for the, you know maybe call food truck Fridays program or something like that maybe started off on Fridays as a pilot and see how it goes. So I have prepared that and I thought we could kind of go over it together and see what else we may wanna add. Okay. But I have, so I have, this is kind of the conceptual layout for the site. Okay. And so we'd wanna make sure the trucks are kept up against the side here so that there can be fire department access through here. Maybe queuing can take place going down this way so that the sidewalk won't be too crowded but the fire department could get through pretty easily if there was an emergency. And do have a conceptual plan too. So I'm happy to hear what you guys think should add to this if anything but I tried to just kind of capture what our discussions have covered. So on our concept, you know and there was the licensing authority for the town of Amherst just kind of talking about what the board of commissioners does and the history of kind of revising the lunch cart food truck regulations and the experiment last spring with the late night but how there was some concern that it was a little too close to residential neighborhoods and how that idea kind of came up to put it onto Phrase Street and talk about the authority implementation. So we started out as a temporary pilot program to evaluate safety, success, and the impacts. So under section 5.03 of the lunch cart food truck regulations Rob, the building commissioners authorized to approve short-term lunch cart food truck license applications in the municipal parking district, which this is and since it would just be a pilot program he could approve those with the support of the board and then the closure of the public way the town council controls that and I believe there's authority delegated to the town manager for short-term temporary events and we could certainly try that out for I think it's up to 14 days we could certainly try this out for a couple of weeks and on Fridays and see how it goes and then maybe kind of circle back and see what the next steps are and then just kind of covering some of the operation here hours of operation, the road would be closed at 7.30 allowing the food trucks to arrive and set up their internal equipment food service would begin at 8.30 and continue until two o'clock when they would break down their equipment and be in clean up of the area and the road would reopen at three o'clock. Site safety, the area of Phrase Street would be blocked off of saw horses and metal barriers. The Air Force Police Department would do the road closure and opening the trucks, we talked about that earlier. For sanitation, they'd always be required to provide trash cans and recycle bins to their customers. I think sanitation is a challenge it's in terms of policing litter. The person who was mostly operating in Kendrick Park last spring was really good about going out to do to go and do litter and there's a risk of kind of a tragedy the commons type situation where it's easier for one person to kind of say well it definitely all came from my truck and clean it up but if you had more than one there could be a challenge so I think the board will have to be really strict with requiring the food truck operators to kind of collaboratively clean everything up and make sure that gets done. And they'll be asked to provide minimum packaging with their food to minimize the potential for litter. The DPW might, if need be, install additional public trash cans along common forestry and corridors leaving the site to make sure that the trash is deposited in containers instead of being littered. For noise mitigation they wouldn't be allowed to play music or using any kind of speakers or amplifiers. They're always asked to use battery powered for advanced modern, or battery powered or advanced modern generators that have a minimal sound signature and fumes. And future goals if the pilot reviews successful the program will also be expanded to operate on Saturday nights and a priority of the program continue to be allowed to enable electrical hookups for the trucks to minimize noise and carbon emissions. So this is something the board could put its impremature on and I can pass along to the town manager and potentially begin all of these upcoming weekends. That's great. It is fantastic. Just the sanitation. So do we have, so the food trucks that they would have do they know, would you tell them about this program and say, hey, you can be here till two o'clock and then would we have a chance to, I guess you can tell them about that they have to collaborate on making sure that it's clean. Yeah, I mean, I think we would Is that what you're seeing it? I think we would reach out to anybody with an existing license, either health or, or, license, license and license. Let them know this is available and we'll have to kind of take a look at a, you know, kind of managing, you know, time, you know, who gets to come when if we get started to get more demand. Right. For spots, but. Okay. And so that site can only, I saw three food trucks, it can only hold three at this point. That's, you know, talking with the public safety departments and the town manager, I think that's, that seems like a, a good amount to start out. Okay. And then can they still park over by Kendrick with this or that, with this supplement that, like what they would eat? Well, nobody would be, any existing authorizations would continue. I don't, but I think there was one recently that we just approved for up to two AM, right? Yes. She had a, what did she do? She had shoes from somewhere in Springfield. Yeah. Maybe that was. Oh no, it was soups and sandwiches. That's right. Soups and sandwiches. Yes. So like, say we had four people and three of them show up and somebody else decides to go over to Kendrick. And is that still? Well, her existing, her existing approval, you know, stands. Okay. But some of them expired, right? Yeah. The other ones were all disauthorized temporarily in the spring. So, Right. Something the board would, you know, consider as if they want to continue. If this, if this does, you know, catch on and continue, you know, if they want to, the board want to continue doing that. Okay. Over there. So we would have to authorize these anyway. They have to just turn up and, or at least, is that right? Or let me just do it. So for, for right now, I mean, this is just going to be a temporary pilot program. Okay. And the board would just, Sorry. Oh, go ahead. No, go ahead. Go ahead. So the board would just have to, you know, approve this, this conceptual plan and pass it on to the town manager. And thankfully, just the way the regulations are written, Rob has the ability to administratively approve temporary events in the, in the municipal parking district, which this is. So we would just be able to administratively approve whichever one truck. Oh, okay. I got it. Gotcha. I mean, I think, I think we should try it and see. And it might be, we need more space and, you know, someone with kids, maybe the hours would be expanded to at some point. Okay. Yeah. I think definitely. Sorry. Dylan, go ahead. I was going to say something else to think about is, I think if we have food trucks right there, I think this might actually be popular. We should probably come up with some idea of how we determine what ones get there. And I, the only thing that comes to mind is preference for variety. So if, you know, five people applied for three spots and, you know, two of them are, I don't know, ice cream trucks or something. I, it's, I think it's, it would be kind of implied that we'd only be picking one ice cream truck, like maybe just putting in something like that should, should it be, should we be so lucky that it gets so popular? I was going to say, maybe mention that there's offsite Kendrick Park with an application through us. Yeah. Well, we did mention up here that part of the reason to consider moving over to prairie street was just kind of concerned that Kendrick Park might be a little bit too close to the neighborhood. So. Right. It is right outside of residential home with a generator and it's not super loud, but I can't imagine it's, it's quiet either. Cause I've heard it and it's like, I'm, I'm glad it's not right outside my, so. Oh yeah. Okay. Well, let's get it up and running. And the best case scenario is actually that we have too many food trucks and we have to figure out where to put them. That's right. Okay. So do we just need a motion to approve the conceptual plan? Yeah. Just with any, I think there was a couple of notes you guys had for me here. So I'll just make those and permission to make any other couple other tweaks if I see anything. But yeah, just approve the, the general conceptual plan and I will pass that along. Okay. With current and possibly future emendations. Yeah. So just, just an idea. Just an idea for now, but we'll, we'll see if it can move forward. I think the, there was a little, the police and fire and DPW and town manager were all supportive of giving them the try. So. Great. I'll definitely keep you guys updated on where that goes. Okay. So do we need to vote on it? I mean, you could approve it by consensus. I don't know if there needs to be a formal motion. Okay. Are we all in consent? Oh. I like it. All in favor? I think it's great. All right. All right, Steve. Good. All right. Thanks so much for doing that. Great work. Great. Thank you. Yeah. Fantastic. Looking forward to that. Okay. Oh, okay. So that covers now we're into upcoming meetings and agendas. So next up we have Oh my gosh, October already. October 5th, Thursday at five o'clock. That works for everybody. And then we have Dylan, your marijuana regulations and possibly his guest on still working on the bylaw. Yep. Last night checked. Okay. And then do we have anything else? Oh, I guess we'll hear another update on the lunch cards. And I can't think of any other discussion items that we're working on. Is there anything else coming up, Steve? Like the new license application for the spot where Hazel's was. That may come in. Yeah. I think they would, they would, they are working on that. Okay. All right. Anything else? And then let's say we have the 5th of October and then the 19th. I don't know, meetings for October. And if there's no, nothing else for upcoming meetings and agendas, topics not reasonably anticipated 40 hours prior to the meeting. Any topics? No. Okay. And next up is adjournment. Is there a motion to adjourn? We'll make the motion, but before we adjourn, will I see any of you guys over at the block party after this? Oh yeah. Maybe. My kids are very excited. Yeah. Excellent. All right then. I'll hopefully see you all there. I'll make the motion to adjourn. Okay. There's a motion. Is there a second? Second. Thanks, Hallie. We'll take a vote. Dylan. Hi. Hallie. Hi. And I vote aye. That is three to zero with two absent. We're adjourned at 531 p.m. Thanks everybody. Thanks, Steve. Thank you all. See you. All right. Bye-bye. Thank you.