 You're all set. Have a great meeting, everyone. Thank you, Athena. Thank you, Athena. So we have everyone we are expecting. So I am going to. Start the formalities here. I'm calling this meeting to order. On September 29th, 2020, seeing a quorum of the community resources committee present, I'm calling this meeting to order. Governor Baker's March 12th, 2020 order, suspending certain provisions of the open meeting law, MGL chapter 30 a section 20 allows us to hold this virtual meeting of the CRC. I'm going to call upon each committee member by name so that we can confirm you can hear me and we can hear you. After I've done that, please mute your mic. As we move on. And. I'm going to get my list here. Steve Schreiber. Here. Evan Ross. Yeah. Andy Joe Hanneke is here and Shawnee Balmillan. Yeah. Excellent. And Sarah Swartz will not be attending today. I'm going to call him. I'm going to call him. I'm going to call him. Because a giant vulture right behind Dave. I don't think it's a vulture. I think it's just weird arms. It's really interesting. Yeah. When you move, it kind of. Yeah, there it is. It's right behind you. It's going to attack him soon. I'm hoping there's no vultures flying over me right now. At this time, we're going to go into general public comment. Public comment on matters within the jurisdiction of the community resources committee is it. Is allowed at this time. Residents are welcome to express their views for up to three minutes. And we seriously will not engage in a dialogue or comment on a matter raised during public comment participate in public comment. We have no call in people. So if you want to make a public comment, please raise your hand and I will recognize you. Okay. No hands raised. We will move on in our meeting. The next item up, we have three items on our discussion items for today. Each one will take, I'm hoping. Well, we are allotting approximately. 35 minutes for each of these items. I'm not sure we'll get through every item. In that 35 minutes, but that's what we're aiming for at this point to, to get the conversation started and see where we are. The first item on the agenda is the CRC policy on recommending appointments to the planning board and ZBA. In the packet is the process that we adopted and also comments received from candidates. I'm not sure that they are in the packet, but I'm happy to answer those. I saw a few comments as I solicited those comments. Last week I gave until Sunday night to respond. I received a few responses. Those are in the packet anonymized. As I had promised they would be anonymized. So. I think we can start a discussion on if they're, what we think worked well, what we think might not be. any thoughts from individuals? Evan. Oops. I'll say, you know, I'll always talk given a chance. So, yeah, so this was the first time CRC implemented this. And so having seen it run a couple of times with OCA, I was obviously very interested to see whether sort of our one experiment in having the public meeting group interviews would work as it did with Planning Board and Zoning Board under OCA, and two, to see the utility of the statements of interest, which were something that we knew. I personally found, and I think we saw reflected in the comments that the decisions we made to hold group interviews, I think it needed a good decision. I know there was a lot of concerns when OCA first revealed that part of the process about whether a group interview would make things harder for people, but I think being able to do them all at once and be able to hear people's responses back to back was really useful. I think it also allowed people to build off each other. And I think we had at least two comments that said it sort of created a collegial atmosphere, which was something that actually went, OCA was deciding to do group interviews that was never one of our objectives and never discussed, but was pointed out to us after the first Planning Board interviews. I want to say, I think we did a really good job with questions. We spent a long time coming up with interview questions and you never know how a question's gonna go until you ask it. And I think certainly in the two OCA interview processes I went through, there were questions that afterwards we went, and okay, that didn't really work. I thought that all of our questions worked. I thought we got really unique responses to some of them that were really interesting and that were all different from just what we would have had on a calf or what we had in the SOI. And the last thing I wanted to say is that I found the statements of interest to be incredibly helpful, more useful than any CAF has ever been through any of the three OCA rounds of appointments that I went through with that. I found myself going back and reading them during the deliberation, especially when the deliberation got tough to inform and to compliment the interview. So I think that using the statements of interest was a really useful thing that I hope we continue to do. At this point, I don't necessarily have anything that stood out to me as needing a change. I know that we got criticism from at least one counselor regarding our deliberation process. I disagree with what was said and I personally think that the way we went about our deliberation was thoughtful and I think that we did a good job. Thank you, Evan. Shalini. Yeah, yes to everything that Evan said and actually, unfortunately, it's too bad Sarah is not here because I actually wanted to touch back on a comment that she made at the council meeting and we obviously didn't discuss it there but I think it's a very important question that she raised about the fact that the planning board is, I mean, the CRC is working really closely with the planning board and making recommendations to the council about important issues and then planning and the CRC is the appointing or not the appointing but making the recommendations for the appointments. So just from my auditing background, it was never a good idea, not even not a good idea, it was not good practice at all to have the single person or group be in charge of the full process from beginning to end. So there are no checks and balances in that and I don't know what are everyone's thoughts were about that, the fact that, yeah. Steve. Yeah, so, I mean, obviously what's different is the, so I've read some of the letters in the Gazette and what's different is that the residents now know who is applying for these kinds of positions. They never had that knowledge before. So that's very different and it may attract a different kind of person who's willing to step forward for these positions. And I think that, unless we change the process, we'll have to live with that, that it's a very public process. I think that you may know one of my concerns is that it doesn't have to do other own process but it had to do with what followed ours is that what can and can't be considered. So I think that maybe it even goes back to our process. So we had really two things that we, three things that we could, well, two things that we could consider. One are the statements of interest. The other one is the interview. That's it, right? So really our decision should be based on those two things. So we shouldn't be introducing other things including personal knowledge of the candidates which I think that I brought that in because I may have brought that issue in. So we might consider, do we want other information? And I guess I'm thinking specifically of letters. So if we think that letters are a good idea like from one, two or three people, then we should all ask all candidates to have one, one, two or three letters of reference. And that should be what's considered. But I very much subjected to what happened after our recommendation which was sort of random new information that was brought in. So we can't control what happens after us but we certainly can't control what happens on our process. And I think that I would be more comfortable if we had just a little bit more information maybe triangulation from someone other than the candidate him or herself that says that this candidate is a, this is why this person is a good candidate for that particular position. Thank you, Steve. Any other thoughts at this point before I summarize what I've heard and then give some of my thoughts? Evan. Yeah, so I just wanted to respond to things that Shalini and Steve said. I know Shalini express what had been some concern about is too much vested in the CRC. Of course, the reason we put this in the CRC was because they were the body that was most familiar with the work of the planning board. And I think I stand by that. If you remember actually early when we looked at restructuring the very first proposal put all appointments in GOL. And one of the reasons that appointments for planning board and ZBA were moved to CRC is because we in theory would be the members most knowledgeable about the proceedings. And I think that's still useful. And I found that having that knowledge and to some extent for me being forced to feeling a responsibility of going to more planning board meetings and going to the public hearings as a member of the CRC I think gave me even better background of the operations of the planning boards and the deliberations that I didn't necessarily have as a member of OCA. And I think that helped make my decision. So I understand the concern but I'm not sure I share that concern. And with regard Steve's idea of more information one place that we did not get information and we only ever have once before was from planning staff. And that's sort of an interesting one that I wanted to just touch on. The very, very first round of appointments that the council made in spring 2019 when OCA had the process that was later panned by the entire council. Part of that was that there was an unofficial interview team that conducted those interviews that consisted of the OCA designate, the town manager and then the staff liaison or whatever staff members most closely associated with that committee. And so for planning board in the spring I believe Chris Brestrup sat in on all of those interviews and then she was able to provide input to the OCA designee who at the time was Sarah Swartz on what she thought of each candidate from the perspective of a staff member. And Sarah said later during OCA conversations that she thought that that was very useful. The problem of course is that was all able to be a private conversation because it was just Sarah. And I would be uncomfortable putting our staff on the spot of having to give their personal opinions on individual candidates, especially candidates up for reappointment in a public meeting. I think that puts staff in a really uncomfortable position that I wouldn't be willing to put them in. But I do think that when Steve's talking about sort of what other information that's actually a piece of information that would be very useful. And it's sort of unfortunate that we don't necessarily have a way to get that information. But we did have it in the past and Sarah did say that it was really useful to have Chris Brestrup's input when doing those first rounds of interviews. Thank you. I'm not hearing a lot of requests or any requests to change any of the current process. So if I have missed that in my hearing of what people have said, please let me know. I did, I wanted to say two things. Number one, when we were doing the deliberations it came up some questions about well, do any of the candidates, would any of the candidates accept less than a three-year term if we're not doing three-year terms or we had advertised for three-year terms and all. And so I was thinking it might be good not to add a question, but as we go into a process next year to make a note somewhere for the chair as the chair or the person who's doing all the communicating with the candidates, either we add a question during an interview or we add some basic question to a statement of interest or we have the person doing the communication reach out to all the candidates and say, hey, we might not appoint for a full three-year term anyone, some terms we might be doing a vacancy so it might not be a three-year term, but to reach out and say, are you willing to serve less than three years as just a blanket sort of standard question somewhere? Whether that be done through email or during the interview process, I don't know, but it came up a couple of times over the last couple of months in terms of are people willing, are they not? And no one had asked the question. And so I think we should make a note of that somewhere and decide where maybe a question like that is appropriate during the process, especially if, especially if, since these are all advertised as three-year terms, if we're looking to fill a off cycle vacancy, say, due to either a resignation, essentially due to a resignation where it's likely not to be a three-year term to make that clear. So that was one observation I had and then the other one doesn't necessarily relate to our process, although it sort of does, it goes back to the one item in our process that was changed significantly from the OCA process that was forwarded to us, which was the term limit section that was removed term, the words term limits have been removed from it. We reworded it and the letters that Steve and all were referring to and a lot of the comments that we've received during this process related to whether a person, what that standard is for someone seeking essentially a reappointment. I say I don't think it necessarily relates to our process particularly because what people are referring to is a document that town council has never adopted, which is the appointed committee handbook in general and the council as a whole has never adopted that or adopted any type of regulations or any standard regarding term limits or term appointments or anything like that. So my question I guess for the committee would be is this something that we as a committee believe should be brought forward to the council for a full discussion on that item, not just as it relates to planning board and ZVA, but as it relates to all, I think we do at least three appointments, finance, planning board and ZVA because it comes up in all three. And so like I said, I don't think it's something we as a CRC should have any authority to make a decision on, but the question is do we want to make a recommendation to the council for the council to discuss something like that? Steve. So the words original list and textual list and legislating from the bench have all been very much in the news in the last couple of days. But I feel that we shouldn't alter, I feel that we shouldn't try to alter by policy what's said either in the charter and or the zoning bylaw, which I believe state that the term is three years so that the planning board terms are three years. So that's all it says. And so I don't think we should, if we want to change that to say that really it's six years but at three years you get a review and you might be kicked off, which is what some people were implying or it's six years and we mean six years then we should advocate for the bylaws to change to reflect that. But I feel very uncomfortable trying to give any other direction other than what's given in the actual laws that are written either through the zoning bylaw or through the charter. Thank you. Anyone else? Shalini. This is not in response to your question though. So should we, I just wanted to give everyone time too. Continue on and we'll kind of a free flowing conversation. I'm sure if people have a response we'll get back to it eventually. Okay. Yeah, I'm still thinking about that one. I'm still thinking of the question that I had like just to put a closure to that I do appreciate Evan's perspective on that, that the reason why CRC is the authority to appoint the people is because we know the issues the closest. And that is the reason why in the first place I had supported that. But now that we are getting more involved with the changes in zoning and a lot of the important issues can someone just articulate? Like how are we explaining that? Not only it's not like a justification thing but I'm just thinking long term they're gonna be different people. I'd really trust the integrity of everyone in this group and our intentions but just moving forward we're gonna have different people. And so we're just saying that the people who are gonna appoint the planning board are the people who are gonna also be part of let's say zoning changes, make proposed zoning changes and whatnot. And is that a conflict? Not conflict of interest but it's the same people who will propose the same people who are gonna say we want these people. Of course the town council in the end makes the final choice. So there is that. But I just wanna make sure that we all can see what makes this okay. Because from an auditing lens it's not okay to do that. But I know this is not an auditing situation so can someone just articulate that and so that we're all on the same page and then as far as we speak to residents and what we're saying is the same thing then. Evan. I was gonna comment on something else. So Steve wanted to respond. I'll respond to that but I'd rather have Steve go first and see how to stand up after. Steve. Yeah, I literally don't think we can overthink this. We're advisory. So what we're doing is we're presenting us, we're like a nominating committee. So we're presenting a slate to the full town council. The full town council makes the decision. Of course we have, I mean we're, we are this body because we are trying to advance certain issues in the town that we think are important. And of course we would like to select a slate that will help advance issues that we think that are important. That's what our job is and that's how the charter is written that the town council selects the planning board. The town council selects the zoning board of appeals. That was made in part for that reason that so that, so that I'm not sure how to explain it, but we as a body of 13 can make a decision. Do we want the team of rivals? Do we want the, you know, how exactly do we see that team being formed? But I don't see there to be a conflict of interest for the reason that we're only advisory. We're a nominated committee. Yeah, so again, I would just go back to my original point on this, which is to say, you know, I think that Oka did a great job in doing these appointments. However, I do think that the conversations in this committee looked very different from the conversations in Oka. And I think part of that was born of the fact that we had greater knowledge of what was going on in the planning board at the time, what they were tackling, what was upcoming, what their deliberations had looked like. And I think that gave us a better idea of what the needs of the planning board were at that time. Oka had members on it who had never been to a planning board hearing before, who were helping to select someone to serve on the planning board. And I think that what that meant was that when we were thinking about the needs of the planning board, we were entirely reliant on what the chair said. So the process is always involved, input from the chair, we did that again. What I think was different was because this body had sat in on, had participated in joint hearings, had followed the planning board, had a relationship with the planning board. We also had our own view or perspective of how the planning board operated and what makes it effective and what it needed. Whereas Oka didn't have that, didn't have that sort of background knowledge. And so when it came to what does the planning board need, it was entirely dependent on the word of the chair. And to be honest, that got controversial at times because at least one member of Oka disagreed a lot with what the chair said and wanted to strike from consideration certain things that the chair said. I think that the ability that this committee said, look, Steve was talking about different information we have. I think we have input from the chair, we have the SOIs, we have the interviews, but then as the body that works with the planning board, we also have our own experiences with the planning board. And I think that makes for a more informed decision and can help put forth appointments that really fit in the needs of the planning board at that moment based on what they are tackling at that time or in the foreseeable future, which a different committee just might not be aware of. But I was also originally had raised my hand for Mandy's question. I'm realizing I would dread a conversation in the council about terms and term limits. And I say that because I went through that conversation in Oka and it was a difficult conversation and it was a long conversation. That said, this has been a recurring issue every time we've had appointments. And I think there's some concern that, you know, Oka came to some consensus around appointment, reappointment, term limits, all of that after a grueling debate. And then it came here and this committee changed it. And then in January, the president may change out this committee membership and then we might change it again. And I think that that's caused some concern among counselors on the council. And I think partly because the decision of how the council treats appointment and reappointment doesn't necessarily belong to any individual committee. So there are a lot of reasons why we would come up with interview questions, why we would come up with selection guidance. Making the decision on having individual committees come up with a decision on the policy of the council regarding reappointment, I do think is a bit of a stretch. And I've actually always thought that and when I first became chair of Oka, I had this vision of creating a town council appointment handbook that would be adopted much like our current appointment handbook which has never been adopted and some of which is not relevant to the council because it's really an appointment handbook that's meant for the town manager. We never got to that. And I also, Oka wanted to maintain the independence and autonomy of committees. And so was very clear that the process was the Oka process. But as much as I don't want to have that debate, I do think if we had an adopted council policy regarding reappointment, and it might be what Steve said, it might be, look, the charter says three year terms and so that's that, that doesn't mean de facto six years you get a reappointment. It could be that, but I think if the council itself had a policy that would cut down the debate that any committee's gonna have every time there's an appointment about the process. And it's just caused so much concern in questions that to some extent, as much as I hate to have that debate in the among 13 people, it might just be nice to have it as sort of settled policy so that we can move on from it. Steve. So we're basically asked to engage in what would be called the qualifications based selection process. So our job is to recommend who we think is the most qualified. So some qualified qualification based selection processes like the selection of architects give weight for experience. So if you've done, if you have experience doing this before you're given 10 points or whatever it is that nobody else has given 10 points for. If we were to give points for experience that would be the only qualification now that we're giving extra points for. So if we're gonna do that, then I would say that we don't do that unless we also give points for everything else, your education, your other kinds of experiences. So experience on the planning board or zoning board of appeals, five points, other experiences, five points, et cetera, et cetera. But giving weight to that particular qualification in a qualification based selection process to me seems odd. And I would highly not recommend that because it's not gonna get you the best outcomes. Any other thoughts? So what I'm hearing is it's a possibility that maybe we should ask the council to take up at some point in time well before the next sort of round of appointments next May, June, July, April, May, June, the, an issue regarding a policy surrounding reappointments, but we're not, that's only a possibility at this point. And this is not on for a vote and we don't have five members here. So, and it would not be specific to planning board or ZBA because there's also finance. But I'm also not hearing any need to revisit any particular policy in the policy we've adopted for recommending appointments at this time. Shalini. Just like when clarifying question about the process where it says input from the body's chair and we, the chair, the CRC chair will get this information from the chair of the planning board about skills and characteristics of a successful member, knowledge, expertise related and then preferred knowledge to meet the current needs of that body. I think that was what was really important in my decision making this time, which was like what is needed right now, like what's missing in the planning board and what is. And so, is that for me and was that question made public with the chair of the planning board had stated? Because I wonder if a lot of awkwardness could be avoid, that was made public. Yes, it was part of the document that was sent to all candidates on selection guidance. It was part of the selection document that we voted to send to everyone. And it was also then published in the packet and given to the whole council. Right, okay. But I don't remember any, I guess that was not seen as an important skill, but I kept thinking that we need someone with a business perspective, but that was not something that came from the chair, I guess. I was just trying to think like what would make it less awkward? You know, like someone mentioned one of the candidates, I think mentioned the awkwardness of the discussion about in front of them. And I was wondering if everyone just kept the focus on what it wasn't about an existing member versus new or any of that. None of that should be relevant. What's really important is what is needed right now, especially given the current environment that we're working in. It so turns out right now we are working in an environment where economic crisis and social crisis is on top of everything else. And so we are working within those constraints and within those constraints looking at what skill sets do we are missing in our current planning board for them to be effective and all the discussion, if it was just, I think it was pretty much around that. We kind of avoided naming individuals or anything. The only place where I think it got more individual was concerning someone who was already there. And so it was like, oh, why are we, but it wasn't about that. It was more about what's needed. So I was just wondering if there's a way to make that more clear that these are the skill sets we are looking for, but maybe that's already clear. So then nevermind. I think we're both trying to lower your hand at the same time, Johnny. I got it. I got it. We were both clicking at the same time. So I think the next steps on this one are to potentially next meeting, depending on agenda, put on the action items portion and discussion as to whether we do want to actually recommend or ask the council to take up the issue of reappointments and a policy surrounding reappointments to bodies that the council appoints. But we're not going to finish that now. I will make a note in the agenda that that could be an action item for next meeting. Beyond that, I think we've covered what we're looking at and we will not put this back on an agenda because we're happy with the process as it happened. So with that, we move on. And we are ahead of schedule, which we might be able to have some time, longer time on one of these. The next item is zoning bylaw priorities. And for this item, we had a good meeting, last meeting on zoning bylaw priorities. We heard from the planning department. We heard from the planning board what they voted. We heard from a number of counselors at the meeting itself and also through emails and all. I have updated that document and I updated that document in two ways. I attempted to add everything that this committee members had said at the meeting in terms of their priorities. I'm not sure I did it well. I tried based on my notes. So please, if you know, obviously it's a compiled document that doesn't identify people, but if you think something's missing, let me know. But I also then added sort of an executive summary to it because it's a long document. And what I went through is, I went through the groups of responses from the counselors and I think that document includes responses from 10 counselors and I looked at each and then I tallied how many counselors mentioned certain things. And that's part of the executive summary in terms of when things, how often something came up from a counselor. And I did that because I thought it might help us in our discussion in terms of as we move forward with trying to recommend priorities. So I think today's discussion on this item should be based on what we heard should be focused on what I'd like to focus on is figuring out our next steps on this. Do we believe our next steps that we've got enough information to make a recommendation to the council on priorities or do we need more information? Who do we need that information from? What do we do about and how do we get input from the community on priorities and things like that. So more of a process discussion going forward to understand how we're going to make a recommendation to the council instead of sort of starting to drill down to make that recommendation. That's the part of the discussion we didn't really get to last meeting is what the next steps are in making a recommendation and what we need to do to get there. So thoughts on what our next steps are in getting to helping making a recommendation to the council in order to help guide the planning department as it moves forward on what it's already looking at but also maybe what it's not looking at that the council might want it to look at. Evan. I actually just had a question first. The document says from 10 counselors. We had been told last time CRC counselors hold off on sending because we would be able to discuss them. I guess my question is I know that at least Shalini and me and maybe Sarah, I'm trying to remember offered comments and priorities. I know I never sent mine in. I don't know if this committee did. So I guess I'm just curious, does that tend necessarily includes members of this committee? But I guess I don't know if what I said during the meeting or what Shalini said during the meeting are included in this or not? I attempted to include them in this document. That doesn't mean I did a... It means it was based on my notes not based on how the individual counselors would have written them. That makes sense. That was my question. Steve. Yeah, well actually it's a really amazing job you've done in helping try to organize it. So I keep thinking of trying to put the rocks in the pail. So you've got a bunch of rocks that you need to put in a pail. So you start with a little rocks or you start with the big rocks. So if we start with the big rocks then we can get more rocks in the pail but then we might have a harder time getting into the little rocks which are actually also important. So I see a lot of things that seem to be an asterisk or a footnote and those footnotes and asterisk have big meanings to them. But there seem to be some little things that we could take care of if we all agreed on that. But then there are some big macro things like what do we want downtown to look like and how do we get there? And in a way those are the most critical and those are probably the things that we all campaigned on. So I think probably all of us, all 13 of us talked about the look and feel of downtown as an issue that we wanted to address during our three years in office. So I guess I'll put that on the table that if we go back and look at what we said as we were campaigning two years ago maybe that should help us figure out what the priorities might be. So, Melanie. Yeah, I was approaching this. Yeah, and again, really appreciate your manager for a lot of work putting all that and then figuring out the executive summary was really helpful. I will definitely look at it again to make sure all my points are reflected and send them to you if they're not. But as I started to look at it I was thinking more from the perspective of the town manager's goals. I was seeing as a council what are our goals and the closest we can come to that is what we have for the town manager's goals and out of those the economic vitality and the housing, affordable and mixed income housing seem to be the two most closely related to planning board work. So I started making a table with those two as the goals and what were the suggestions from the town councilors that fit related to economic vitality. And then I made a planning department and planning board what were their recommendations with respect to economic vitality and housing. And so we just put all of those together and see which ones had the most common like which the planning board also is recommending the departments also recommending the council also most council members also talked about it with respect to one of these two goals to me that seems a very logical place to start. And so for example, I think if you look at economic vitality, we definitely have comments from planning department and our council at least and actually planning board haven't yet filled in but about the downtown and how to revitalize that. So that's just an example but we can see that across the board that was something that was stated at every level. So we can start with the broader things like that but then see within that what is implemented speaking to what Steve is saying within the broader thing what are some immediate things that can be corrected or rectified based on our feedback from town staff that this is what they're hearing from people all the stakeholders including residents including businesses and I don't mean just the big developers when I say businesses I mean the development of course in terms of housing and all of that but also in terms of the businesses what are we hearing and last time I didn't share this example but I've spoken a lot so I'll give my voice a break and I'll come back and share the example because someone was like what is small business have to do with planning board decisions and zoning decisions so I wanted to give an example for that. Evan. Yeah so this is already a very interesting conversation because you're right we have this very long document that you did a great job summarizing and then we have to say so now what do we do with this and what even is our role are we giving to planning staff a directive of these are the things you have to work on here's our priorities but I mean there's a lot to sort of a lot of nuance here to figure out but one of the things that I first approached was and I've been talking a lot about needing to really prioritize planning department staff as really the main force for changes has been a lot of conversation of should these things come from the council should they come from the planning board and I think my argument has long been that really I'd like to see them come from planning staff and so I went actually first to the document you put together of notes on planning department presentation because that was most important to me and what stood out to me was the demolition delay by law because that was identified as Rob Mora as problematic and we know it's already in process of being revised and in fact your note is with it almost complete I don't know if that means like in the next month or in the next six months but you know if it's almost there that makes sense the flood maps because that's something and the new section to do that because that's going to be something that we need to do and then the other thing that stood out was the signed by law because it's been incredibly hard to enforce and possibly unconstitutional. You know in fact you all remember that when we did the general by-law repeal and replace from the by-law review committee we actually just stripped the signed by-law out completely and just reserved a section for a rewritten signed by-law because it was determined by that committee and especially by Bob Ritchie who had a lot of experience in this that there is no way it would have passed legal muster. So those were the three that jumped out as like oh we should really do these. And then I went over to the town councilor list and realized that none of those three were in the council list because they're sort of the unsexy zoning things that really need to be done but Steve said when did we run on no councilor ran on the signed by-law. I mean listen but probably no councilor ran on the signed by-law, right? No councilor ran on updated flood maps but they're sort of the things we need to do. And so that's where I'm finding sort of a struggle here is some of the stuff that in my opinion probably should be priorities are not the big rocks that Steve identified that are the things that I know that the council is passionate about and finding a way to balance like the necessary because all the, you know our planning department only has so much capacity, right? And so the signed by-law itself is will be a big undertaking. And I think we know in there even said possibly needs consultant support. So just those things alone are gonna take time but no one on the council wants to deal with those, right? Because they're not the fun stuff, fun. And so that's where I'm having a little bit of trouble is if I was to give initial priorities I'd say demo delay and signed by-law and yet those aren't the things that we saw that our colleagues on the council really want us to prioritize. So I think finding that balance is gonna be difficult. I do like, I did like that you tried to tally the numbers. And so I guess, you know to some extent the top two that have seven which is a majority of the council makes sense to also consider as priorities recognizing of course that there might be disagreement within some of those. So this is tough but I do wanna make sure that we're looking at planning staffs priorities. And to me, I'm sort of hiding those holding those up above even though they're not necessarily the stuff that our colleagues said that they're interested in. Steve. Yeah, so I don't see 40R mentioned as a priority and then maybe that I searched wrong. But so 40R is a very sort of advanced idea that is working its way through the planning, at least the planning process. And in a way 40R also covers a lot of the issues that are being talked about from form-based code to affordable housing to the look and feel of downtown, et cetera, et cetera. But I would think that would be and I think that that was on the planning board and I don't have the planning board list in front of me but somehow I think that was on their list. I'm not sure. But that would be something that I would think that we could get our arms around and because it really does check a lot of the boxes that are on this list of things that counselors are concerned about. So just to answer your question, Steve, the three items on the planning board list were improved downtown zoning and unlock housing development and increased diversity of housing stock and the recodification of the zoning bylaw. So they didn't mention 40R by name either but I mean, that's really what 40R is intended to do is some of the things that you just mentioned and it can settle the issue of inclusion in Arizona and the height of buildings and things like that. So that's really what the 40R proposal as I last saw it is trying to do. Shalini and then Dave. Would Dave like to go first? I just wanna hear what he has to say first. That's fine, Dave. Yeah, no, I just wanted to comment on 40R, can you hear me? Yeah, I think it'd be important to hear from Chris Prestrup in particular on 40R. I hear what Steve is saying is that the intention is that 40R can do a lot of things. I think there's question among planning staff as to how effective it will be in our downtown in particular. So not to say it's not a tool that we could use but I'm not really sure it falls in the top five priorities for planning staff but I think it'd be worth in a future meeting having Chris talk a little bit about that but I just wanted to add this is a great conversation and I appreciate you all having it so. Thank you, Dave. Shalini. Yeah, I see the CRC as being the central hub in some sense like we're listening to the planning staff and the council and the planning board and kind of keeping this conversation going and I appreciate what Evan said. We do wanna pay attention to the planning staff because they have the most experience as we identified. None of us even thought of what they thought of because they're dealing with that and they know it and that being said I do feel like we're under very different circumstances right now as we all know I don't have to remind anyone but I think we really do need to look at what is most critical right now to support our existing businesses and housing needs and what are some zoning issues that changing that will send a message out to them that hey, we're gonna work with you in this time and that's why, okay, I'll give the example now because I think it makes sense to show that connection between zoning and small businesses and especially small doctor's offices or lawyers and how that's connected. So I received this email from a local professional who said that as the problem is that PRP the professional in research park zoning so this person's office is obviously in PRP zoning are so restrictive that unless you plan to have a small research lab you have to go through the site plan review which cost me tens of thousands last time as multiple meetings with engineers, lawyers, architects, et cetera it is all designed with the image of a rich corporation who can afford such bureaucracy. Meanwhile, the person who bought the land which contains a residence isn't allowed to build residential units on it either because it's PRP so this plot of land can't really be used by either of us. Okay, now that I'm reading this I feel like I've read this example before but anyway that kind of ties into the idea that this is a local professional who is struggling and has paid thousands of dollars and lost thousands of dollars of revenue because we took so long to allow this person to start operation. And so our research park zoning is something perhaps that need, I mean it's just, I don't know what the answer is but my point is what are some of the zonings that need and the other one I heard when I spoke to a person who understands urban planning and her perspective from that list I can tell you, oh yeah the fact that we have only downtown is one of the only business general zones which is again very limiting. So I mean if you look at the map zoning map and only downtown is business general it looks like and maybe a few small areas other than that which again makes it really hard for businesses to have residents and business at the same place. So those are my examples of where zoning might be limiting. As it is we have limited land for development and business use because we want the conservation and that's an asset we don't wanna disturb that or we don't wanna change that. We want to keep our residentials with this extensive spaces but we need to figure out where we can allow for more business general to happen. So I'm gonna take before I recognize Dave I'm gonna take my earn. Something that struck Evan is also what struck me the items that the planning department staff identified is coming up and priorities in terms of the substantive manner are almost not congruent with what the council identified or even what the planning board identified. I mean the recodification was there. Some of it's sort of there the apartment mixed use type things that the planning staff talked about the inclusionary zoning, mixed use conundrum is the need for housing and increased density and footnote A but in general what the council seemed to want to work on was not necessarily the same as what the planning staff wanted to work on and similarly with the planning board of the unlock housing and work on downtown. So I struggle with again and how to balance those and I think that's what might be our role as CRC in trying to give some guidance or make a recommendation to the council that would then give guidance to the planning staff is okay of what you think is important and what we think are important, how do we meld them and how do we think we should meld them in a way that in say the next year we can get some real stuff accomplished both what might not be on the radar of the council things like the flood maps that are gonna be mandatory need to be done and stuff that other committees and commissions that have been working hard on get done but also how do we bring in something like form-based zoning that a majority of the council mentioned in some manner design guidelines, form-based zoning for various parts of towns, how do we put a focus on that again and all. And so I think that's what we have to figure out here is that and the question I have for the committee is are we ready to start figuring that out to make a recommendation or do we need to speak with more people and go out and have more forums or meetings before we can get to that recommendation would be a question I have for the whole committee. That's it for now, Dave. But yeah, again, this is a great conversation and I really appreciate Evan pointing out the staff list, that piece about demo delay, flood maps, sign by law. These are things that staff have been working with the planning board and in the case of the demo delay with the historical commission for quite some time and each one I think is in a state of readiness they're a little bit different and the timeline for each one is a little bit different but I do think it's very important and instructive to note that there's really not much overlap between what the council said are your priorities and having those done. I think, again, this would be a great conversation to have with Rob and Chris at your next meeting about. So are there ways to move those forward without taking too much bandwidth from the CRC and the council? In other words, flood mapping has to, it's been moving forward, it is just going to move forward. It doesn't, I don't think that necessarily has to be a mammoth lift or take a tremendous amount of your bandwidth or staff bandwidth. I think sign by law is a bigger lift. Demo delay, I'm of the mind that it doesn't have to be that big of a lift, but I could be a little bit wrong on that. We certainly will have some spirited discussion about that in the community. But I think I wanted to go back to, I'm losing my train of thought here a little bit. Just so, if we were having this conversation nine months ago, 10 months ago, I think it would be completely different. And I go back to what Chaloney said a few minutes ago, I think we all have to fully recognize that the world changed, the country changed, the state changed, Amherst changed, and it's going to change more unfortunately in a way that we all are gonna be, we're gonna struggle with and we're gonna be shocked by when more and more businesses go out of business. So I think as you look at that list, I think it's imperative that you and the planning staff and all staff, we're gonna be involved in this. Really look at this with a COVID lens and say, what are the things that can best position Amherst when to help us come out of this pandemic? So I think looking at downtown is critical. It is the core of our commerce, our retail, our restaurants and looking at village center zoning. So I know you know that but I just wanted to insert that again that I think this seven page list, we need to really look at it with kind of a COVID lens and make sure that those things that we are gonna work on in the next year are gonna help us be positioned to as Shalini said, help those businesses that survived the pandemic or new ones that might come in that say, hey, there's, you know, sadly there'll be space available, there'll be retail space, there'll be commercial space available and we wanna make sure we're poised to accept and welcome them here and help them to be as successful as possible. So I hope that doesn't sound preachy. I know you know that, but I just, I'm feeling that every day in the work we're doing here in town hall, so appreciate it. Thank you, David. Evan. Yeah, first thanks, Dave, because I agree. So I guess your question is what's the next step and do we feel like we have the information we need? I feel like we have the ideas and suggestions we need. I'm not looking for, I think we have more than enough on this list of potential changes. I guess what I would be interested in doing relates to exactly what today's said in the first part of this comment, which is hearing sort of timelines for some of these things. Cause I guess I'm thinking, Steve went, go back to Steve, I really like Steve's Big Rock Small Rocks metaphor. And I'm thinking some of the Small Rocks will, are easy to do and have a big impact and some of the Big Rocks will have a big impact but take a big period of time. And I think that's useful information for us to know. And so for instance, off the top of my head, if we're combining impact time and COVID lens, to me, fixing the BL district is like the number one priority. Because to some extent the solution to fixing the BL, I mean, this is my personal opinion, but the solution to fixing the BL district is either rezoning BL as BG or just adding the BL to the footnote B. You don't need consultants for that. You don't need to take any time. I could write that by-law by the end of this meeting, right? I mean, it's literally that simple and it completely transforms the potential of the BL as a district for housing for economic development. And so that's useful to know, right? That the BL will take no real time to actually draft a revision to the by-law. We already know what needs to be done. We just have to agree, is it option A or option B? And it can have a huge impact. Whereas like inclusionary zoning, while it can have a huge impact, we know that that's not even something that likely our planning department staff is gonna write if we're gonna look to redo inclusionary zoning, that's gonna need to go to a consultant. That won't even be done in the remainder of our term of office, right? And so I think knowing that helps because then to some extent, we can say, here are three month priorities, here are six month priorities and here's our one year priorities. Because I literally do think like fixing the BL, like I said, that could be introduced to the planning board within the next couple of weeks if we had, because we already know what needs to happen, right? Like if we don't need to do more research, we don't need to hire a consultant. That's easy and it will have a huge impact. So I think maybe having Chris and Rob just to say, here's sort of the priorities. Where do you say are the like, we could bang these out really quickly and where are the ones that are gonna take a lot more staff time and where are the ones that you're gonna say, you know what, we really need to hire a consultant for this, we need to allocate money because that'll give us a better idea of timelines and then we might be able to prioritize by impact versus time instead of saying, because like I said, looking at the BL, it's only four counselors, but form-based code is gonna take a long time and probably a consultant to do, whereas the BL could be done again, literally next month could be introduced to the planning board for consideration. Alani? Yeah, I think I agree with what Dave suggested and what Evan is saying is inviting the planning staff and running by what they proposed and what's coming up here and asking, you know, kind of having them back and forth in terms of impact, timing and cost. I think when he said consultants will be needed. I think if he could break down things of what is gonna have the most impact using the COVID lands, especially using the COVID lands, what's gonna have the most impact for our businesses, for our housing needs and then what is the timing related to each and what is the cost gonna be, like which one's gonna require a consultant. And I think that will help us to then also work with them to figure out the priorities. Dave? My students, I teach a junior level architecture studio and we often choose sites in downtown Amherst as case studies. So last year we used the Brutus, well, the Laporta site. And then this year we were working on the Primo Pizza, whatever those, you know, Bresnihan Insurance block that's owned by, the Brown family realty and that's BL zone. So it is really jarring that on one side of the street you have a certain amount of ambition. On the other side of the street you have much less ambition in terms of everything, creating a street, creating a streetscape, creating more housing, et cetera, et cetera. So the BL zone, our particular BL zone is in the, we don't, there's no requirement for parking on that site but then the amount of basically housing you can put on the site is very limited. So I did read something that Evan had written about all of that and I found that really interesting. I didn't go back and look at the town meeting because the town meeting, this came up at town meeting I think was basically to change BL to BG and that failed but it was, you know, quite a vigorous failure but I think that it's definitely worth discussing. So I'm not sure I'm ready to take all of, I actually agree with, I'm sort of agreeing with Evan that the BL, because there are so few parcels that are BL that it's worth, it kind of is something that we could really work on, sort of unlock those. And that would really help change the look and feel of downtown. So we need to make sure that that look and feel is, you know, consistent with what, where we are right now. I think there's some flaws in BG that would have to be addressed if we were to do that. So I'm not so sure that it's just a matter of changing BL to basically to BG but the flaws in BG would also have to be addressed. But I'm seconding the motion that that would be a very interesting and manageable kind of task that would also address a number of the things on the list. So what I'm hearing is we might have enough information to do something, but we do want to be able to compare timing, impact, COVID lens, that type of thing in order to make a recommendation. In the next five or six minutes, so next meeting, Dave and I will work together to figure out how we can get Rob and Chris in with that. I will take the, in order to give them a heads up for some of this discussion, I would take the items that they obviously presented last meeting, but also the list in the executive summary where there were at least three counselors in the priority so that they have something to start with and plan for and think about in terms of timing and impact to help them frame a discussion and us frame a discussion so it's a better discussion and the planning board priorities, those three sort of lists together. My next question for the committee is when we get there, what, I guess, what goal are we aiming for in terms of what's our end game in this discussion? Is it really a recommendation to the council on here's what we asked the council to adopt as priorities? As Evan said, is it a adoption by the councils? Is it a recommendation to adopt priorities? Is it a recommendation to the council to instruct the manager to get working on these? Where do we foresee, what do we foresee that motion being at this point in time knowing that that can obviously change in terms of not not what's in the motion, but is it a recommendation to adopt a priority or is it something to instruct the town manager? Is it something else completely that I don't think of that that would I think be helpful for us to discuss or have keep in mind as we continue this conversation. So thoughts on that. Evan. I'm a little uncomfortable with it being sort of an order or directive to the town manager. I feel like that sort of, it's basically saying we want you to tell planning staff that these are the things they have to write and I'm a little uncomfortable with that feeling a little overstepping. At the same time, I feel like just saying here are our priorities is a little bit blander than I'm hoping for. So I'm wondering if it could be free. I haven't thought this through because I hadn't actually thought about this until this meeting as sort of a request of planning staff that they investigate these six issues or something like that or a request that they prioritize. So it's clear that we're not just saying these are our priorities because we are asking planning department to do something but I don't want it to be us directing planning department to do something that difference is sort of subtle but I do think it's important between us saying planning department do this and us saying, hey, here's what we would like to see you working on. One thing I wanted to say just while I have the floor as you're kind of planning the next meeting one question I would ask Chris and Rob so you can just give them the heads up is of the 10 things on this council list on the however many things on their list and then planning board, they're so broad that it's sort of hard but on those which of these could you get a new or amended zoning bylaw to the planning board by January one? And I know that sounds like a really aggressive timeline I think Dave's point of this is a moment where it's time to be bold and aggressive and not drag our heels and also again that some of these we already know what to do some of these there have already been drafts of these written that have just failed in town meeting that I'm sure could be revived with a new audience. Some of these are probably ready to go now and it would just be nice to know not just like which of these could be done sooner but just putting somewhat of a timeline on this of like which of these could you have in front of the planning board by January one? Just to set because I want us to make a point that we're not just like talking we are actually looking for stuff to get done in the next year and not just like one thing. Dave. So yeah, I guess what I was thinking Mandy we're kind of following up on what Evan said and his feelings about how directive to be to staff. I mean, I think I would be very happy to set up a meeting with Rob and Chris where you and I could meet with them and kind of convey some of this to them if that would work for you. And we could really bring kind of the spirit of this meeting into this kind of like what Evan said about impact timeline, the COVID lens, looking at kind of three months, six months, one year and then having Chris and Rob respond to that maybe at your next meeting to have something back to you. And I don't want to promise two weeks from now but get something back to you that you could then have some response to and say, yeah, that's what we're looking for. You know, this is a very high priority for staff. I know it's a high priority for Paul, it's a high priority for me, Rob and Chris are poised. So I agree, let's get going. Thank you Dave, Shalini. Yeah, I mean, I feel like this whole process started because the planning staff asked us to find out what our priorities was. So they're inviting us to work with them. So I don't think we are ordering anybody and also just the idea that we will now, now that we have collected this information, going back to them and saying, okay, this is what we've gathered from the planning board from the council and getting that back and forth feedback and then based on the timing impact cost, we start working on things. So I think we've got a plan. I will work with Dave to see when best we can get Rob and Chris in here on their schedule to continue this conversation, whether it be the next meeting or the meeting after, we'll have to work with them to do that. With that, I think we are ready to move on to the next item on our agenda. We are again, still on time. You guys are doing great, which is comprehensive housing policy. So I think I need to give a little bit of an introduction to this. What I was tasked with doing for this meeting was taking our discussion from the last meeting and starting to put it into a format or document that we might be able to see something and start working on as a housing policy. So I attempted to do that. I looked at a number of samples and examples and all. And so what you've got in front of you is a draft obviously that starts with an introduction and then sets forth the goals that we discussed last time, those five things, a couple of things were combined, but that housing policy goals are sort of the bulk of what we discussed last time to say, let's start putting this into a policy. And then the next section, the objective strategies and measurables are what we discussed would sort of flush out those goals of we've got a goal. Now, what does that goal mean? And how are we going to get there? And how are we gonna measure that we got there? And you'll see in there what I worked on in terms of better language, in terms of sort of more put together language was the wording of the goals and in some sense, some of the objective. And then there's always a little description under the objective and some of that description. The strategy section, how I came up with those are from our discussion. When things might have been mentioned, I tried to put them into the right section, the right goal. And also, and the strategies and measurables came from our discussion. It came from the draft affordable housing trust priorities, affordable housing priorities document that was originally presented to us last year. So I tried to pull as much of that language out as possible and stick that into this document where appropriate. And also from the document we were just looking at, the compiled list of zoning priorities from the council. A lot of times those zoning priorities, not all of them were zoning, first of all related, not all of them related to zoning bylaws, but many things in there touched on housing. And so if I thought it touched on housing or a goal we talked about with housing, I tried to throw it into the strategy or the measurable section depending on what I thought was best. So those things, those sections are just right now sort of a dump of ideas. They're not organized, they're not anything we've even talked about in terms of what might go in there. It's just right now sort of collecting things that have been mentioned. So I think what we should talk about in the next 30 minutes or so is thoughts on this, some sense this document and its style, but more importantly the goals and then what our next steps with those goals are, are they to send the goals out to people for feedback or do we wanna flesh out more of this document in terms of objectives and strategies before we send it out to feedback? But if we're going to do feedback now, sooner rather than later, who we send it to. So that I hope frames our discussion for the next half hour or so. And if people want me to put this up, I can put this up on the screen, but I think we're not quite ready to be talking about specifics. So I'm not sure we're wordsmithing enough to have this up on the screen, but I'm happy to do it if people want. So thoughts, Evan. First of all, thank you for putting this together. This is a lot of work, especially paired with all the work you did for the zoning priorities list. I can't imagine how many times you've had to read through that 10-page list of council zoning priorities. Structurally, I wanted to say that I really like how you laid this out. I like how you identified the goals. The one thing I would say in just reading through the sections, and I know obviously the strategies and all that are literally just copy and pasted a lot of times from that other document. But I do think we need to make sure, if I'm looking at bullet two, promote a diversity of housing types and access to homes at all income levels, and bullet three, promote creation of housing throughout all neighborhoods to support the inclusion of all communities. We just have to make sure that people understand the difference between those is, and I would actually say, maybe switch the order of those, because one is really about creating housing, just like literally production, and the other is about then ensuring that that production represents a diverse housing stock, that it's not a monolithic production. At least that's how I interpreted it. I think the content that was put under the promote creation of housing all is very similar to the promote diversity of housing, and it kind of muddies the water between the two. And so I think we just have to make sure with those two bullets that we're very clear in how they're different, because I think even some of the strategies are the same, like they're a little copy and pasted the same, and it's probably you were looking, you were going, yeah, which one does this belong to? But I think what that actually showed me is that we need to have a firm understanding of what distinguishes these, so that which clear what a bullet goes to. So I think that's my first comment, is just making sure that we can differentiate those bullets before we send this out, so people aren't coming back and saying, I don't get the difference between bullets two and three, they seem to both be about the same thing, because in my mind they're very different things. Making, then there was something else I was gonna say, oh, and then I was gonna say, I think a conversation we need to have just at some point is how specific we wanna get in this, that's probably not a conversation we need to have now, but obviously some of these things are very broad, and then we had some very specific like policy solutions in there, and we have to think about, I think we're on that range of super broad and theoretical to an actual policy proposal, where we want the strategies, I like the idea of having strategies, but where do we want them to fall? Because if you get too broad, it's like they're meaningless, right? It's like promote housing that's affordable, and it's like, that doesn't mean anything, but on the other hand, if you get too specific, you're basically getting into sometimes zoning debates about a particular zoning by law, that I don't think we ever envisioned this policy would be, and I think would also make it very hard to get what I hope will be a unanimous adoption by the council. And then as far as process goes, the goals I think are broad enough that they're not, they don't do us too much value to start sending the goals out. I think we probably wanna refine the document just a little bit more before we send it out. Thank you, Evan, Shawnee. Yeah, I just wanna acknowledge tremendous work put in here, and I love the way it's organized. But again, my question, I think it's what Evan was saying about how specific, especially when it comes down to strategies, I think I want to see that in, and especially because that's what dictates the measurables then, but what is a process for arriving at those strategies? Like why this and not something else? And yeah, I'm not clear about that. How we're coming up with the strategies and the process for that. So we're not sure we have one yet, which is why we need to talk about the process. Right now, like I said, that strategy section is just a compilation of things from many different. So, Shawnee, I guess my question to you would be based on what Evan has said in my original question. At what point do you think we need to start pushing this out for feedback before or after we've refined? I mean, Evan seemed to fall on the refine the goals, objectives and blurb more and maybe a little more strategy refinement before sending it out. And the question to the rest of the committee is, where do they, where does everyone stand on when we send this out in terms of refinement? I don't know. Steve. So kudos to really getting this conversation going by all the work you've done. So it's not ready for prime, it's not ready for distribution yet because it's really all of the spaghetti on the wall. And so something, so what I would not want to get to is a point where we have somebody's a particular counselor's idea on a list, a draft list that's distributed. And then that goes off for some reason. But there, you know, there are some things that, and then I didn't, because we weren't really getting into the details of the zoning discussion, but there are some of the counselor ideas that I think actually would be anti-housing that would actually prevent housing from happening. So I think that we need to vet it, quite a bit actually before we distribute it. That's my feeling. But I think that the work that you've done to put it all out is amazing. Oh yeah, the other thing is in terms of, so there are the, and I can't have both that up and the Zoom screen. So I've taken that off my primary, I can, but I don't, but we have the objectives, which are like the five major, those are called the objectives, right? The goals. The goals. Yeah, so those would not necessarily be the order that I would, and I know that they're not a priority order and everyone always says that, they're not numbered, they're not, but they always are, like what's our number one priority? So I think private resiliency is a really important one, but I actually think the creation of, I actually think some of the lower bullets in a way are more important, not that we shouldn't be building climate resilient housing, but I think that looking at where we build is probably the critical issue and what types of housing we build to me is a critical issue. And then also what we do with existing housing stock that was just rambling. No, no, I'm hearing a lot of good things. What I'm hearing is we need to do more with this before we send it out for comment. So we won't, we'll stay away at this point from who we would get those comments from until it's a bit better, not just organized, but also vetted in terms of not necessarily just a full list of everything people have mentioned in terms of anything, it would be a little more cutback. I'm also hearing at this point that goals two and three probably need reworked and wording and that I can tell you, I think the order is just the order I had them in my notes, which means it's the order we talked about randomly that we might want to reorder these to start with so that they're listed in a different order. So those are the things I'm hearing right now. I think some of that we might be able to discuss now so that a second draft can come back in terms of a better order wording, we can not necessarily wordsmith now, but we can talk a little bit more about two and three. I must say, as Evan said, as I was doing it, I was like, well, some of this fits into both. And so yeah, we probably need to better word those to make clear what the distinction between the two are. The objectives are that hope. So maybe we can focus on for the rest of this meeting the objectives, the description under the objectives and the order of the goals, first of all. So, Shalini and then Evan. I was thinking that we've hired so many consultants in the past, like we have that housing production report. I think there's two of them out there. And then we, I've noticed you've already taken the suggestions from Mr. Hornick's suggestions to us. You've already incorporated those, but I wonder if it would make sense to go through and we can divide this up and that could be some of the homework that we do that each of us can pick up a different report or something and go through the strategies that the consultants have suggested and maybe highlight those over here that are already here and those could be used. And then also the master plan also has certain priorities and strategies, I think in that. So we could just draw from those instead of creating a new sort of. Okay, thank you Shalini for that suggestion and Evan. So with regard to the goals and the order, I agree it's easy to say, you know, oh, this is no particular order but everyone assumes there's an order. And so I always think you have to justify the order and it doesn't have to be prioritized. But to some extent it seems to me that it's almost like we want you to create housing. That housing should be diversity of types. It needs to be safe and secure. It needs to be sustainable and we should use municipal resources to do it. That's not necessarily a priority order. That's just literally like, it's almost like the building blocks, right? Like you can't talk about diversity of housing stock unless you're actually creating it, right? So I just wanted to offer that as one potential reordering that the first thing should always be creation of housing because none of this matters if we're not creating housing. Although we do talk about sort of rehabilitating, renovating and stuff like that. But even that, that's still sort of new growth in some ways. I guess I'm fine going through you suggest, my comment went up before you suggested that we focus just on the, I guess I'm fine going through you suggest but I really did want to look at, just having a conversation at some point again, doesn't have to be today about how specific we want the strategies to be. And I guess sort of one of the first steps to that, in my mind was much like you did, I think what you did for the zoning list that we just looked at, actually works really well for the strategies, which is see where there's common themes and then see how there can be sort of an agreeable way to frame that theme. And so, you know, like I was looking at on the seventh bullet under climate, ensure that any new development is, nope, that's not the one I was looking at. Oh, require. Oh yeah. No, that was ensure that any new development is close to services and public transit in downtown is sort of a new development. And public transit in downtown is sort of like a, when you say ensure that any new development is close to services and it makes it sound like no, nothing that's not close to services or nothing that's not downtown can be developed, right? But that could easily be just encourage and promote development that's close to services. And that's like a really agreeable thing. And so at some point it seems like it makes sense to make these not super specific in my mind and just go through and say, what are sort of the general messages of each because then those will inform actual policy later. And so, you know, I like the words of always encourage, promote, incentivize, and then make what we're incentivizing somewhat specific, but that then sends a message because you have something in the introduction somewhere about how this policy will be used to guide the work of the committees and town planning staff. And so it's sort of almost justification for what they're doing, but I'm also happy to go through objectives and the little summaries. So I was thinking this, the objectives and summaries, at least for now, simply because we have about 15 more minutes left, 15 to 20 more minutes left to discuss. And I think the strategies might take a little bit longer and, and all. So if everyone's okay with, you know, we'll, we'll reword the goals is, let me just first ask. Evans. Order of the goals. Is that, um, sounds like a decent order for everyone for moving forward. I'm seeing a thumbs up from Steve. Um, Shalini has turned off her video, but, um, is that a thumbs up Shalini? Yes, it is. So we'll, we'll go with that order in the next draft. Um, but, but we'll, we'll do the order in this draft because that's the order we've got right now. Um, and so the first, the first bullet point in this draft is, um, and, and for this, I'm actually going to share my screen. Um, because on the video, this will help people. They won't have to pull up a different document. Um, I'm not going to modify on this document, but we'll just share the screen here. Um, and so the first one we were looking at, you can see I left yellow because I wasn't sure where to go on from here on the little description. Um, mainly because I didn't have a cheat sheet from some other town that had this. Um, but, but the objective on this one was to ensure that new and rehabilitated housing is constructed to address climate action, including sustainability and resilience. Um, thoughts on whether that is inclusive enough of this goal. Um, and, and then there's obviously the description underneath that probably needs a bit of work. So I guess my, my suggestion on this would just be, it says address climate action, including sustainability and resiliency of housing and residents. I would say, um, get rid of the including because it's, because sustainability doesn't always mean climate, right? Like sometimes there's sustainability things that aren't necessary. You could probably circle everything back to climate in the end, but it's different. Um, and then to be honest, when I first read this, I had no idea what resiliency of housing and residents men, especially resiliency of residents. And then as I started to read through the strategies, I saw things like create, standard, literally it's on the screen right now, create standards for livability requirements for fresh air, air circulation. And I started to wonder if that was meant with resiliency or residents, which is really more about like environmental health. So I'm wondering if it should just be insured that new rehabilitated housing is constructed to address climate action, sustainability and environmental health. Other thoughts. I think it could simply say address sustainability and resiliency. In other words, I think that because this is a housing document, we know that it's referring to housing. And we. So at this point, we know that the climate change is the critical issue. So. So I think. Yeah. Sorry. So for me, this means like building codes. It means where we, how we zone land, like where we, where we allow people to build. So, so, and. Whether or not we live in single family houses. Or in multifamily houses. So I think that. You know, if you ask anyone what sustainability resiliency means, you're going to get a whole. A lot of different answers. But for me, it means living compactly as possible. Out of areas that are likely to be susceptible to. The effects of climate change. And with. Within housing that. Is. Built to be flexible within wild swings in. And actually I literally mean that flexible and adjustable. I mean. Within wild swings and weather. So. Not dependent on fossil fuels would be another way of saying that. What I was going to say with resiliency is, you know, when you look at, you know, when you look at coastal living, which we are not really coastal living. They are doing building codes where the houses now have to be on stilts essentially. That's resiliency. To respond to climate change. And make sure the buildings as the oceans rise or as the weather gets warmer or, you know, Drought less water that the buildings. And that's what I was going to say. And I think that would be as affected as they would be if they were built. Prior. So, you know, maybe leave resiliency in, but I do like. Evan's wording of. Environmental health. To. The first question you should ask is why the hell are they allowing people to build their. I liked my idea of environmental health too. And I think that that seems like actually it fits more in the goal about safe and secure housing. So I'm wondering if really we just keep this objective strictly to. Climate action and resiliency and just say this is about. Housing that will reduce our dependence on fossil fuels and housing that will be able to withstand the consequences of our past reliance on fossil fuels and sort of leave it at that, not try to include things like access to fresh air, because really that's sort of about safe and secure housing that comes later. Okay. Steve. Yeah. And I completely agree, but I also think that. So I'm trying to think. What are the susceptibilities in Amherst? So we get. You know, we get hurricanes that have been dissipated as they come up through the Connecticut river valley. We get tornadoes. No one, you know, it's hard to build for that. We don't have that many areas that flood, at least not that aren't protected. So really are, I mean, we do have vulnerabilities, but I think most of it has to do with. Power loss trees coming down on power lines. And so I think that in a, in a weird way, I don't think it's, you know, I don't think it's, you know, I don't think it's, you know, I don't think it's, you know, I think planning for lots of power, you know, for 10 days or more, I think it's kind of a critical. You know, part of this. So that's actually where I like the balconies and the green space, but. But I think it makes it too complicated. There's also the planning for hotter summers because New England has generally not planned for many 90 degree days. Sometimes on the same day. So I, I welcome any other suggestions as we move to a second draft of this, feel free to send them to me on this one, especially as we try to expand the little blurb under the objective before we get to strategies. I think we're going to move on to the next one. I think we're going to move on to the next one. Which I think only have one objective. Yeah. Promote diversity of housing types and access to homes at all income levels. So this is the non-production one. This is the, what does housing look like in Amherst, but not. What does it look like and how. Costly is it, but not. Actually producing it. It's, it's a unique thing. It's a unique thing. I was trying to look at it. So thoughts. Evan and then Steve. So first I actually wasn't done on the climate action thing. Sorry. You can go back. Don't scroll back up or anything. The only thing I wanted to add is that the little summary below, we should probably reference the council's adopted climate action goals. And probably also reference the climate action plan that should But, you know, at some it probably will be and so it should at least be included here because I think that the little summary paragraph that you heard of had the yellow ending to some extent it just it really just needs to say that we want to promote creation and rehabilitation of housing that allows us to meet our climate or adopted climate action goals and aligns with our climate action plan. And kind of what we did. I really liked what I'm GOL did with the town manager goals and sort of trying to tie them all back to an action of the council. And I think for this one we do for this for this objective. I like promote the creation of housing in a variety of types to create housing that will appeal to many residents at all stages of life. I don't I don't understand to end the appearance of monolithic construction of one bedroom units in town. I would like to see that removed. I think it feeds into a fortunate narrative about development here, especially because I've been driving around and all of the new development I've been seeing down in South Amherst and on Henry road has been single family home so I would, you know, argue that we've had more single family homes in the past couple years then of one bedroom units. Um, so I'd like to stick, I'd like to strike that and then, you know, not to get nitpicky but I often am on create housing that will appeal the word appeal just sort of rubs me the wrong way there because I don't think it's that will appeal to many residents. I think it's that's accessible to many residents at all stages of life and incomes because we're looking for sort of generational and racial and social economic diversity, but it's not like we need to appeal to seniors it's just it needs to literally be accessible. Often financially to seniors. Thank you Evan. Steve. Yeah, so the number one of the number one ways. So housing becomes unaffordable when the demand exceeds the supply. So the one of the ways of addressing affordability with a small is to increase the supply. There's no better way of increasing supply than multi story buildings. So single family housing will never get us there accelerate accessory dwelling units will never get us there. So. This is not the creation of housing new housing. Yeah, so that's my comment there that in some ways we I don't think we even need to have single family houses here because I'm not sure that that needs encouragement nor do I think that makes any sense in a housing policy guideline. Yeah, but a lot of this I like need of housing affordable the residents and many stages of life sizes of families and definitions of families, different types of families. Yeah, I don't under. I don't understand the monolithic one bedroom, because I'm not even sure where those are. I'm not sure that we have any monolithic one bedroom. I'm not sure that we have any housing. And I also don't think we've had a boom. I think we've had buildings built, but those are the first buildings built in many, many decades so I'm not sure we're quite at the boom stage. I think the boom comment came from the housing trusts draft document. Yeah, that or the master plan. Yeah. The master plan that that first sentence came from. So the master plan that'd be even more surprising because a master plan was higher to the, it might have been the housing trusts document pulled that first sentence from but I will relook at that first uptick in multi family housing or multi. Okay, how we all have different lenses isn't it. Yep. No, I will, I will revisit that sentence. Not at all. I think Evan is next. Well, I was just building on that just gonna say just strike that sentence. It doesn't really it's not necessary, but I think Amherst is in need of housing affordable to residents and many different stages of license sizes a family, and then listing all of the different types. I guess what's important. But yeah, this idea of one bedroom units and that first sentence and in the objective I think we should just get rid of. Okay. We ready to move on. Actually, we're, we're almost, we got about five more minutes before we have to move on. I think so let's see if we can do one more. And this is the creation one. Evan. So this is where I think we need to really make sure we're distinguishing between the two. And that's where and so this is where I would say, um, the variety is this variety of housing I think gets a diversity of housing stock. And that's where it starts to muddy the waters and so we should just get rid of that and same thing so that neighbor, it's become integrated in all areas including I think all of that has to do with that former goal. And for me this is at least how I initially read this and if people on the committee disagree please tell me as we also we need policies that make sure we have a diverse housing stock, but we also need policies that literally make sure that we have enough housing and so I always saw this as the first is let's create housing. And what are our strategies to just literally make sure that housing is being created. And then also the next the other goal that we just looked at was making sure that the housing it is created is diverse that it has a different types. And so to me this should be something like, um, this really needs to reference what I think Steve said earlier which is the supply and demand problem that Amherst has, and needs to go. I think it needs to be something about promotion of promotion like creation of housing to meet the Amherst housing demand or something even just as simple as that. And then I think that the little paragraph really needs to focus on the fact that right now our supply is going to quit against our demand and I think it could pull from you know shall we referenced the different studies that's been done I think that this is a place where we could really pull from the housing market study, which looked at the demand which looked at vacancy rates and talked about how they're unsustainably low in our community. To me, all of that is what informs this goal and that's how I interpreted it was this isn't about this is about making sure across the entire town. We're seeing housing being produced and we're implementing strategies to make sure that housing is being produced so that it can better meet our demand and help lift some of the burdens that are there. So, I, I'm going to, I'm going to make a comment here. I think maybe the promote integrated communities is then a secondary objective of the prior goal. Because the integrated communities is this this particular one is not necessarily well related to it's related to the creation of housing but it's more related to we don't want single family homes all in this part of town and apartments all in this part of town and all of those apartments are affordable units only we want neighborhoods that have all price points throughout we don't want these monolithic neighborhoods where there's only one thing here and there's only one thing there. Dorothy's talked about this a lot as a counselor in terms of you don't want to, you know, if you look at where the SRO is going on Northampton Road, it's, we don't want a neighborhood of just SROs we want those SROs integrated into other neighborhoods and stuff like that and I thought, and as I was drafting this that's sort of what this sub goal was was that mixed but that doesn't really relate to creation it relates more to the prior goal. The creation one, so I think we have to redraft this one then maybe the expand affordable home ownership options was more of a creation one, but but maybe we just need to rewrite the whole thing is to one. One, one goal not multiple sub goals under this one and that goal is create housing, build housing and the sub goals more belong in the prior goal. I'm getting a thumbs up from Evan on that one and from Steve so I will work on that and to sort of rejigger those two to make that clear will obviously be continuing on and this this this discussion and working through this at many of our meetings coming forward so this is not the end of the discussion I'm going to stop the share right now. At this point will pause the discussion we will come back to it next time. We have on our agenda. No action items we have minutes from the last meeting, September 15, 2020, are there any requested changes to those minutes. Seeing none, I will make a motion to adopt the September 15, 2020 minutes as presented is there a second. Second, Evan seconds is there any discussion. Seeing none we will take a vote we're going to again just for the fun of it going reverse, reverse alphabetical order. So we're starting with Steve. Yes. And then Evan. Yes. And Andy is a yes and Shalini. Aye. That is a four to zero vote adopted. Are there any announcements. There are no announcements I don't I do not have any. Next agenda preview will be if we can if Robin Chris are available and they can do it we will put zoning bylaw priorities on it. The next agenda will be on the agenda. The agenda policy will be on the agenda going forward. And I will talk with Shalini and Dave about the discuss the item we talked about earlier on term limits or reappointment policy for the council. As to whether that should be on the next agenda or maybe two agendas from now. And from the council as far as I know. So this is what our meetings will look like. Pretty much every meeting until we get through them. Or until we have a referral for some other bylaw change. Oh, I don't think it'll be next meeting. It won't be next meeting, but I sent out an email. Mark your calendars for, I think it was November 4th, 8pm for a joint planning. We will be joining the planning board in the middle of their meeting. For a hearing on as yet unknown potential changes to zoning article 14. We're trying to get it planned now, even if we don't know what they look like. We've heard planning staff might want some changes to that. So that the timeline fits to get those changes adopted and effective prior to the actual expiration and sunset of zoning article 14 in case the, I think the desire is to also extend the, the application of that zoning bylaw so Mark your calendars for November 4th for the joint hearing. I don't know whether we'll have language. I don't think we'll have the language as of this coming Mondays meeting, although it will be on Mondays Council meeting. The goal is to allow that a direct referral to when the language is ready to us and planning board for the purposes of holding hearings and recommendations. I don't have a great timeline since we don't have a language yet, but Mark your calendar for that. That is one zoning thing I see coming. Beyond that I don't have any items anticipated, not anticipated 48 hours in advance does anyone else. Seeing none. Is it possible for us to stay on for a minute just to exchange calendar to see when we can connect with Robin Chris. Yes, I can stay on for that. Yeah, thanks. So, seeing nothing else I will adjourn this meeting at 358pm. Thank you all and thank you Lindsay. Thank you.