 This program is brought to you by Cable Franchise V's and generous donations from viewers like you. Welcome to Amherst Planning Board meeting of February 17th, 2021, based on Governor Baker's executive order suspending certain provisions of the Open Meeting Law, GL Chapter 30A, Section 20, and Sign Thursday, March 12, 2020. This planning board meeting is being held virtually using the Zoom platform. My name is Jack Jumpsick and as the chair of the Amherst Planning Board, I'm calling the meeting to order at 6.35pm. This meeting is being recorded and is available via Amherst Media Livestream. Minutes are being taken as normal. For members that will take a roll call when I call your name, unmute yourself, answer affirmatively, and then place yourselves back on mute. Maria Chow. Here. Tom Long. Tom is not here. Andrew McDougal. Present. Doug Marshall. Present. Janet McGowan. Here. Johanna Newman. Present. All right, and myself. For members of technical difficulties arise, you may need to pause temporarily to correct the problem and then continue the meeting. If you do not have technical issues, please let, if you do have technical issues, please let Pam know. Discussion may be suspended while the technical issues are addressed in the minutes. We'll note if this occurred, please use the raise hand function to ask a question or make a comment. I will see your raised hand and call on you to speak. After speaking, remember to remute yourself. Opportunity for public comment will be provided during the general public comment item and other appropriate times during the meeting. Please be aware, the board will not respond to comments during general public comment period. If you wish to make a comment during the public comment period, you must join the meeting via the zoom teleconferencing link. The link is shown on the slide and can be entered into a search engine. The link is also listed on the meeting agenda posted on the town website via the calendar listing for this meeting. Or you can go to the planning board web page and click the most recent agenda, which will list the zoom link at the top of the page. Please indicate you wish to make a comment by clicking the raise hand button when public comment is solicited. If you have joined the zoom meeting using a telephone, please indicate you wish to make a comment by pressing star nine on your telephone when called upon, please identify yourself by stating your full name and address and put yourself back into mute when finished speaking. Residents can express their views for up to three minutes at the discretion of the planning board chair. If a speaker does not comply with these guidelines or exceeds their allotted time, their participation will be disconnected from the meeting. And we can get on to the agenda here and I don't believe we have minutes. Is that correct. Jack, I finished up and said it about five o'clock, but I didn't think anybody would have a chance to read them. So next time. That's fine. I think, you know, we're kind of caught up so that's basically or do we have any that that are outstanding more than like a month or two months. I am not exactly sure because I've been so busy with other things this past week, but I think we have one from July 1 and I take responsibility for that. Okay, well, we'll get that one done. Alrighty. So we can initiate the public comment period and I actually have to get that view up. Sorry, participants. All right, there is one hand I see up in the attendees. I see Susanna and I will allow her to speak. Okay. Hi Susanna I've allowed you to speak. Can you unmute yourself. I have done so. Can you hear me. Yes. Yes. Hi, I'm Susanna Musprat, 38 North Prospect Street in Amherst. And I would just like to commend both the zoning subcommittee and the planning board for the excellent analyses on footnote B and footnote M that you've done in the past couple of weeks. And I would also like to commend those who are still trying to get up to speed on zoning. I particularly appreciate the visuals, the drawings, and the chart that kind of distilled down what the findings have been. And I think many other people in town will be interested in those. I read a few weeks ago that the planning board was going to put up a website somewhere on the town website about tracking the progress on these various zoning studies. And where there could be these images and maybe some hot links and even a place for people to register their comments. I hope at some point in this meeting, someone will update us on where that project stands. Thank you. Very good. Thank you Susanna. And I don't see any other hands. Chris, do you want to speak to that in terms of. Hi, I'm Chris Brestner planning director. We have had conversations with the CRC about this and they are doing outreach and they are planning to put up a website about the zoning amendments and we need to coordinate with them. So our intention is to put something up on the planning board webpage but we just haven't figured out exactly what that should be given the fact that CRC is also doing the same thing. But I think that now that we have, we have three PowerPoint presentations that we could probably put up on the website and try to create some kind of comment space for people and maybe Pam could speak to that a little bit because she's more of a website guru than I am. I'm just kind of waiting for some real solid concrete direction of how CRC's webpage is going to complement what we're doing in the planning department and the planning board. However, currently, all the documents that are included in the planning board packets, as well as additional presentations are posted and you can find them by going to the planning board page on the website. So if you're looking down when you're looking at the computer is down to the right hand side you'll see a little spot that says PB packets and everything in there is up to date including tonight except for I had difficulty right before the meeting. So we're doing the updated presentation that Maureen Pollock has done about footnote. So we're going to work on that and I promise it'll be up there tomorrow in the morning. Very good. Thank you. You're welcome. We have Ira or brick. Hello, Ira. Hi, how are you. Very well. How are you. Good to thank you. So I'm Ira brick from 255 Strong Street. I'm not going to surprise you with anything I have to say, except to say that when you're trying out a big idea, like Obamacare, it's good to look to where it has worked for instance, Romney care in Massachusetts. Before McDonald's tries anything new of McPancakes or McLopster, they try it in their secret test kitchen in Chicago. And I would just suggest if the planning board and the town council are dead set on making some changes, make them in a village center, not that the village centers are, you know, ripe for destruction but downtown is not the place to try a big environment like removing footnote M so that you could fit more housing, where in my opinion more business should go everybody's complaining there's not enough ways to build more dense housing in that area on triangle and pray street and all of that but people want more business downtown and also to just challenge some of the assumptions as I have said before the housing study is quite old. I heard somebody who's been involved with town politics for many, many years saying that she heard today that there's been enough student housing in town and the several hundred additional dwellings that have been built since the housing study really changed the picture. So I'm just requesting one more time that we slow it down, figure out what it is that we want to do not have this ready fire aim approach of where you shoot arrows at a wall and then paint targets around where the arrows landed we really need to figure out what kind of town we want. And I know that there's some effort on the town council to get that feedback system going, but you would not be a representative government if you found that a lot of people in town don't want the repercussions of what would happen if you remove this footnote or allow this, you know, kind of vague aesthetic design element. So, I'm just saying let's slow down and do some planning. Before we do some executing. And I know that you are doing planning and I'm not trying to insult anybody's hard work and I can see it's hard work. But I think we're heading in the direction that a lot of people think is bad. So thank you so much. Take care. Thank you. And at this point we can get into our next item, which is the zoning priorities again we're hitting this pretty much on a weekly basis in February and March. And our first topic is a continued discussion about removing footnote M. Table three zoning bylaw additional lot area per dwelling unit for townhouses and apartments in the RG zoning district. So I will turn this over to Chris. Hello. We have Maureen Pollack tonight to present an update on footnote M. And following Maureen's presentation, there'll be questions from the planning board members and then there's a 10 minute public comment period. Hi everyone. Thank you. Hi. Hi, is everyone everyone ready. Yes. Well, thank you to everyone for inviting me back to tonight's planning board meeting. As you know, I attended last Wednesday's planning board meeting and provided PowerPoint PowerPoint presentation beginning the conversation about footnote M, which is part of the dimensional regulations found in the zoning bylaw. And as Pam had mentioned, those slides are from last week, I guess I would be the February 10th meeting should be available on the planning board webpage. And tomorrow morning, these slides will be made available on the planning board webpage as well. Okay, so tonight, we're going to pick up where we left off from last week and we're going to talk about the history of footnote M and how it was adopted into the zoning bylaw. We'll touch upon the percentage change of a net change of number of units per parcel with footnote M and without footnote M. We'll discuss the topic of determining how many additional units can be added to existing parcels that also maintain the existing use on the lot. And I will provide the board a example that accounts for various factors such as lot size existing use parking requirements, building and lot coverages and setbacks. So I'm going to, I guess, pass the baton over to Chris who has done some research about footnote M and how it, how and why it was adopted in the zoning bylaw in the first place. So I'm Chris Brestra planning director and hello everybody. The history of footnote M begins in the spring of 1993 when John Roblesky filed a special permit application with the zoning board of appeals to construct a 16 unit development at 22 High Street. That's the location of the current Spruce Ridge townhouses. There was an existing house on the property that contained three apartments and an existing barn. Mr Roblesky proposed to construct 13 townhouses at the rear of the property and retain the three dwelling units that were already in the house. After the public hearing the zoning board of appeals granted a special permit to construct a reduced number of dwelling units, only 10 new dwelling units, and to renovate the existing house into two dwelling units for a total of 12 dwelling units. The neighbors appealed the ZBA decision and the court upheld the granting of the special permit, but sent the site plan back to the zoning board of appeals for review regarding an issue related to a lot coverage. And the appeal was finally resolved and a building permit was issued in 1998. Meanwhile, while all that was happening in the fall of 1993, which was right after the special permit was initially granted. And before the appeal was resolved about five years before the appeal was resolved, or actually, it'd be more like three years but anyway, the neighbors filed a petition to amend the zoning bylaw to require that there be. A petition to the 12,000 square feet that we know for the first unit that anybody who was going to come in and create a new development that there be 15,000 square feet for the first additional unit, and 6,000 square feet for each additional dwelling unit of lot area for new townhouses and apartments in the RG zoning district. In article 15 of the November 1993 special town meeting and simultaneously the petitioners filed a petition to ban the construction of townhouses and apartments in the RG zoning district. The goal of the first petition was to cap the number of units per acre at around seven units per acre rather than the 13 units per acre that were allowed with the existing zoning bylaw. I held a public hearing on the proposed zoning amendments on October 6 and October 20 of 1993. And the planning board voted not to support the ban on apartments and townhouses in the RG district because it was too restrictive, but to send it back for further study. The planning board voted to support the revision of the dimensional table by a vote of five to one, and that was out of nine members total with final wording to be worked out between the petitioner and planning staff. So the plan that ended up coming to town meeting was a proposal to not to require the 15,000 square feet for the first additional unit, but to require 6,000 square feet for each additional unit. In addition to the 12,000 that is ordinarily required for one dwelling unit on a property in the RG district. The meeting was unanimously approved by town meeting on November 8 of 1993. About 12 years later in November of 2005 town meeting voted to reduce the additional square feet per additional dwelling unit to 4,000 square feet. And I still need to research the reasons for this 2005 change. And I'm hoping to have that information for you by next meeting by the next planning board meeting. So thank you. All right. Marie. Here. So thanks Chris. So continuing on. So this was a chart that I showed last week and I just wanted to just sort of repeat it. Because I'm about to show you a figure that is based off of this. So on the left side, you'll see this chart figure one. And then on the right side is figure two. So over here on the left side is really outlining the lot area requirements for units using the existing footnote. Which remember, on the top of the screen, it shows you what the basic minimum lot requirement is in the RG, which is 12,000 square feet. And the additional lot area per family or additional unit with footnote, which is 4,000 square feet. So over here, it shows if you what the requirement for a lot area for three units, you would be required to have 20,000 square feet or almost half an acre. And on this on the right side of your screen is figure two and it shows the lot area requirement for units with footnote removed. And that would be the requirement as shown up here it shows the additional lot area wouldn't be 4,000 square feet any longer it would be 2,500 square feet would be the requirement for the additional lot areas per unit. So here it shows the three units would would require 17,000 square feet. So you could see that the the lot area is decreasing while is decreasing from what is required with footnote. And then the chart just shows what what the differences are for each amount of units. So if they'll hear for for eight units, you would need 40,000 square feet, which is less, you know, just shy of one acre. And on the right side with footnote and was removed and you wanted eight, eight units still you'd be required 29,500 square feet, which is also converts to 0.68 acres. And then next slide. I'm having columns again. See here. Okay, we got the next slide is just showing what you know the requirements would be for for these additional unit types up to 24 units in total here. And so you can see the with the footnote and then with it removed. And so in figure six, this is taking those two slides and showing it a different way and it really sort of gives a good give visual and understanding of taking those tables and now applying them to a column table here. So here, again, you would see, you know, the same information from the previous slide would show that you would need 20,000 square feet with footnote and in order to have three units. And here you can see the small incremental decrease of the of the lot area required for three units. It is to note that I you see these lines going up here. And so I'll walk you through that. So this bottom line and it's listed down here below the chart as well. The bottom line represents point five acres. This gold yellow line is represents one acre. This blue line represents 1.5 acres, the green line represents two acres, and perhaps this is black line represents 2.5 acres. So you can see as the amount of and then of course the blue column represents what the lot area requirement would be for each given amount of units and the orange red represents if if footnote and was removed. So as you can see, as the as the amount of units increase with the removal of footnote and you can see that the lot requirement decreases and so you can see that while, you know, between units, maybe three and eight or nine, they're pretty incremental changes in that the lot area requirement is reduced while the amount of density allowed on that unit is increased. And when you get past eight, nine units allowed on a parcel, you can start seeing a more expansive increase of difference and of between the lot area requirement and the amount of units allowed. And so I wanted to show you sort of that visual in your for your consideration. And then here in figure seven, this shows the number of unfortunately this isn't my way. So the number of units allowed per lot per lot by lot area requirement with or without the footnote. And let's see here. So this is just another visual. So this is actually this figure. So let me back up to this figure is just showing you just what the requirement is for footnote and without footnote and for the amount of units by lot size. This is not looking at any parcels in Amherst. This is just math. So here in figure seven, this is using as we is using the sample size that we discussed discussed last time, which is that I am looking at 343 parcels. That ultimately are part of the study and in the previous slides I list out in the in a few in in the presentation of what was excluded as part of the study. So for instance, lot sizes that that only could accommodate a single family home that was removed split zone lots were removed removed. What else church properties I have churches, town of Amherst properties cemeteries, parks, things of that nature. We're all removed from this study. And so the study is only looking at properties that could realistically be, you know, that could accommodate more units. And are, you know, not churches and etc. Those, those are, well, who knows, but sort of institutional properties that are not going anywhere. So, so anyways, I digress so Oh, and I guess over here I guess I I cut this is from the slide from last year so I didn't even realize that until now. So this list what what is excluded. And so this is showing that in the RG, which is, you know, surrounded by the downtown area is primarily a very are small or small lots. You know, there's a lot of lots that can accommodate, you know, single family homes but here we're not we're not looking at that we're, we're specifically looking at, you know, what can accommodate three or more units. So here the blue again is representing the amount of units allowed per per lot with footnote and the vertical axis here is showing the number of lots. So, in this first column here 76 units would be 76 lots could accommodate three units and the orange footnote and was removed, it would actually slightly decrease to 72 units. And, but you can see this is sort of exception of why it sort of decreased, I think, because it jumped to the next available amount of units, but here you can start seeing that there's a gradual increase of amount of units on a lot. If footnote and was removed so you can see the small incremental change for lots that accommodate that could accommodate three units, four units, five units, six units, seven units, and then you actually see a pretty dramatic decrease for properties that could accommodate eight units and that might just because there's just not enough of those specific parcels in the RG that could accommodate that type of development. And, but again, there's the, the majority of lots that are part of the study are smaller lots. And here you can start seeing that there's actually, you know, here is a small incremental increase of units that could be added to lots. Here you can start seeing maybe he would argue that this is a moderate increase of the amount of units that could be allowed on each parcel. And while there are not a lot of them of larger lots that could accommodate this, it should be said that, and which is outlined here that the larger lot you have actually accommodates a significantly amount of more of units. And that's something that should be considered here why why kind of gets a little vague here is just because there's just, there aren't any larger lots so I did consider it actually just chopping this off and not including it but I wanted to be consistent where I'm all in each slide if I go up to 24 units. So, thus far we've only looked at lot sizes. In respect of the amount of units that could be allowed with footnote and or or without footnote and that's only solely based on the lot area we haven't factored in anything else. We haven't analyzed what the existing uses are on the parcel, what the parking requirements are, what the building and law coverages are setbacks floors, building height, the possibility of combining parcels and demolition of existing structures. So here. This shows. So at the last planning board meeting. Planning board members had asked so you know I like your maps but is there a way that we can sort of combine them and show sort of the net change. And so, this is what I came up with. So this shows. So here shows with this color range here shows what the number of units allowed per lot with footnote M currently. So this is what, again, we're not looking what the uses are currently or setbacks and building and lock coverage so this is purely just looking at the lot size with with the footnote M, which requires 4,000 square feet. So you can see that that overwhelmingly a lot of the parcels that are part of the study that are in the RG zoning district are this are smaller lots there they're you know, they're half they're half acre lots. A lot, you know, I would say a half acre to two acres are are the majority of lots that are part of the study. And so the net change and you'll see all these little numbers I'll explain that is that if footnote M was to be removed which then would require that the additional lot area would be then 2,500 square feet instead of the 4,000 square feet that for instance I'm just gonna randomly pick one that this like if you can see where my mouse is sort of circling here, which is along the southern side of Chestnut Street is that that lot currently, you know, could, you know, provide, you know, maybe three or four parcels, three or four lot units, sorry, currently, and the number represents that they could add three more. And so that would be the net increase. And so you'll see these gray ones, gray parcels where you can see my mouse, hopefully, that's hovering over the eastern side of Lincoln have that gray parcel represents that that's a do that a duplex could be currently impacted there or, you know, that could be placed there, and that we have footnote M was eliminated that you could add actually one more so that would be a total of three. And so you sort of get the sense of how many additional units could be allowed. And this data, this map shows that on average, we're talking about for for a good chunk of these sample lots if you will, you know, you're going to typically see two or three additional units could be provided. And, and, but then you do see that there are some lots that could accommodate more, you know, this one on. I know that street, I forget that street is called, but you can see that there are some that could accommodate more. And here's a here's one on triangle or Mass Ave. Oh, this is the vacant property that the old frat houses used to be on. So they could actually have 11 additional units, if they, if they ever decide to do anything with that property. You can get a sense of of how many additional units could be added to these properties in in the RG. And so this next slide shows I wanted to break down and provide a visual of of the properties in the RG that are part of the study here. This lighter green represents the properties that are up to and half an acre. So you can see these sort of lighter, proper, lighter colored parcels along Lincoln. And they're sort of, you know, sprinkled around the neighborhoods, and then the brighter green are parcels that are with are between a half an acre to one acre. And then the red represents anything that is over one acre. And the reason why I did this was with the thinking of I look forward to our discussion at this end of this slide show is, is that if we go back to this slide, which where is the line here this is the this represents one acre. You know, once we sort of get to one acre, you can see that the amount of units allowed or the opportunity to add additional units per lot really increases in a in a in a more expansive way than for what could be allowed for lots that are under one acre. And so, another consideration to think about is combining lots. So, oh wrong one. So, say if you have three or four small little lots, and then you combine them and then suddenly you have an acre and a half or two acres. You know, that could be something that could be great, or maybe, maybe for some people that might not be great. And as I had just said in the or showed in the previous slide is, once you kind of get over an acre, you can see sort of a real, you know, increase in amount of units allowed. So it's just something. It's just data. So I wanted to just mention that. And then here I wanted to provide. I was all I ran out of time I was able to provide one example. And I wanted to provide a couple more but here here it is here's my one example so this this property or let's see here. So, before I get into the property, I wanted to look at the existing use on the on the parcel. I wanted to look at the parking requirements and then dimensional regulations set such as like a lot frontage building a lot building a lot coverages floor and building height. And so, here I wanted to give a little calculation so everyone can follow along here so I am in this example. I was proposing that this this to family home, which is located along Amity Street, perhaps could could this turn into a six unit apartment building. And so we want to look at what the what would the lot requirement be a lot area requirement be so again you would take the basic minimum lot area. We use for the first unit so that would be 12,000 square feet. And then the additional lot area per each additional unit would be would be 2,500 square feet. So that's if footnote M was removed and multiply that by five. Five being the five additional units. So that would be 12,500 square feet. So the 12,000 12,500 square feet plus the 12,000 square feet equals 24,500 square feet or 0.44 acres. So that would be the lot area required for six unit apartment building if footnote M was removed. Okay, so I guess. Yeah, so we know that it's a two family home. The lot is 20,000 that is 20 20 27,900 in 18 square feet or 0.64 acres. And that you know the the lot area requirement for a two family home is 14,500 square feet and they could add up to four additional units and so that that was we already know that so let's see here so this is I'll just walk you through this quickly here. This is showing 15 feet if you see this line here that represents the front set back the 10 feet on the western least side of the property represents the 10 foot side set back side and then rear set back is also 10 feet. And on the East release part pretty line that's also 10 feet. And I calculated what the the building and law coverage would be for the existing use here. And so let's see here so the existing building coverage is 9% or 2,624,000 square feet. And the, if you go to your table three, the requirement would be let's see here 25,000 square feet or 25%. Sorry, it would be 25%. So they meet that and the existing lot coverage is 19% or 5,314 square feet, and they meet the law coverage requirement for that which would be 40 40% and just to say they meet all the requirements for the law frontage the setbacks and the law area. I'm unfortunately I actually don't know what how many floors are the floors associated with this house or the building height. I believe anecdotally it's a two has two floors. I'm not sure what the height is, and there's at least two parking spaces provided and so for each per dwelling unit there are there's a requirement for two parking spaces for each unit. So they meet that as well. And so here. And I also would like to put a disclaimer that this I used GIS viewer, which is a on the town website. It's a web based GIS, and it is a planning tool and so this is just a concept and is not I'm not a surveyor or anything like this. So this is just a quick and dirty estimate of, you know, what the setbacks and coverages are. And so here I am, again, propose, I'm not proposing anything but I am seeing you know, could six units be put on this property, total. And if so, what would that look like. And so. So as I had said, two parking spaces are required per unit. So they would be required to have 12 parking spaces. And so, you know, I line around here, you know, who knows it could wrap around this is just a, just a visual. There is also a parking in the zoning bylaw, you know, an applicant could actually ask for a parking reduction for parking spaces, you know, to from like two parking spaces to one or or something similar to that. And so but that's, that's a whole other conversation. And let's see here. So, and also I, this was the original footprint of the building. And I added another section which is additional 900 square feet, which would total it to be a building with a footprint of 531 square feet. It would meet the building and lock coverage. And, you know, there would be enough space for open space for stormwater treatment on the property. You know, if if they had like a trash pickup that came and you know if they had a dumpster or what have you or just bins that you know that, you know, there. I would say that there should be enough room for that vehicle to also come down and turn around, you know, maybe that would get expanded out here. But since they are well below what the, what the building and lock coverage requirements are, you know, if needed, they could expand the building more or the parking area or, you know, have provide more walkways or what have you. And so let's see here. So that is just giving a snapshot of what could a redevelopment project look like on on a property in in the study area. And so for next steps. Let's see here. I would love to hear your input but I was I was thinking, you know, do we can does the planning board want to consider a footnote and should be considered for a lot sizes that are more than one acre or does the planning board want to limit to, you know, less than one acre. So I would also, you know, be curious to determine how many additional units could be added to existing parcels that maintain the existing uses. So that example that I just walked you through does address that it'd be interesting to see, seeing what a whole neighborhood would look like in reality of looking at what are the current uses and providing more examples to get a real sense of what, what, what could be possible given the parking requirements and the lock, the law and building coverages and requirements and all the, all the, the dimensional regulation requirements. And, and then, then of course, maybe if the board wants to see other examples. And it'd be interesting to see what what would what would look like if, if parcels were combined. And I think that was it. Questions comments. So, just that last slide was informative I was going to do. We have this presentation marine. You will. I think it was emailed to you in the last couple hours. And Pam will upload it to the planning board webpage tomorrow morning. Okay. Well, well, Chris, you have some comments first. Yeah, I just wanted to note that when we planning staff and Rob more we're looking at this. We realized that there was kind of a break point around one acre and beyond one acre of lot size you started to get more and more dwelling units per property. And so we started to consider the idea of removing footnote M for properties that were one acre or less. And that would allow infill but it wouldn't, it wouldn't be large scale infill it would be on the order of, you know, 1234 units per property. So we were not taking footnote M away for properties that are over one acre and that would do a couple of things. It would discourage large developments, but it would also discourage, you know, sort of combining of properties and knocking down existing buildings. I thought that was kind of a good direction to move in. And we wanted to make that suggestion to you that that's something that you might consider or we might consider in proposing, you know, not eliminating footnote M for properties that are over one acre but potentially eliminating it for properties under one acre that would give you the kind of developments that are more in scale with the neighborhood. So with that, the number of lots that are eligible greater than one acre is it what a dozen or so. Yeah, it's not a lot I could let me pull that slide up give me a second. Let's see here, which one would be a good one. This your question was how many, how many lots are greater than one acre. Yeah, and yeah, that are eligible. Let's see yours. Yeah. So this map shows that you know the majority. Oh, I forgot to point this out. I pointed out last week. So the lighter green shows that there are 117 parcels that are less than one acre. There's 100. 100. There are 180 parcels that are between a half an acre and one acre. And then there are 46 parcels that are between one acre and in six acres. Thank you. Thank you. Yeah, that sounds like a good, good proposal, Chris. Doug. Thanks for that presentation, Maureen. Whoops. Am I still? Yeah, I'm fine. Can you hear me? Yes. Yes. Good. I guess it your if we're one example made me think, you know, I don't know if that's enough of a of examples, but I think the question is whether parking and the setbacks would temper or reduce the apparent increase in units by removing this footnote. The example you showed suggested that parking in the setbacks are not a drag. You know, they don't, they don't reduce the actual number of units that could be added or, you know, the capacity of the lot. Is that have you looked at this enough to know that in fact, that's generally the case that setbacks and parking are not going to be reducing the numbers you've been showing us. Well, I would say that since the majority of lots are on the smaller end, that providing additional units, it's only going to add, you know, one or two or three more units. I think for the majority of the parcels. So there wouldn't be a dramatic increase of parking spaces. I will say that the larger lots, the lots that were shown in red and lots that are greater than one acre. That's where you start seeing that there's a real sort of increase of units that could be allowed, which then would, you know, factor in a greater need of parking. So, if you have now a unit, a parcel that requires that could you have, sorry, that you could have 20 more units, that would be 20 times two. So that would be 40 parking parking spaces, which that is, you know, that's, that's a good, good amount of parking. But I would say again, the majority of units, majority of lots are on the smaller end. I don't think that parking would be an overwhelming concern. That being all said, I mean, you would have to look at, you know, where the house is placed currently on the property, what the building and lock coverage looks like. But I guess that's, that's like another conversation. So it's everything affects one another. But yeah, I think for the smaller lots, parking or setbacks wouldn't be impactful. Thank you. Is that, is that good, Doug? Yeah, I guess so. Thank you. Janet. Thank you for that presentation, Maureen. I can't tell you how much that helps me and just seeing the different ways and the lot. Just going lot by lot that, I mean, everything you've done has created a better picture in my mind about the effects of this change. And I do think we could look at it more ways in terms of build out and things like that. I'm just sort of wondering like what, what is precipitating this change because it looks to me that, you know, when I look at the current zoning and RG, it's zoned for a lot more density that we see. And some, you know, some of the houses do have, you know, four or five or six units in them. You know, the idea of adding three or four more, I think would really, you know, change the character of the RG. And so I just don't know what the impetus here is because we have a district that's zoned for a lot more density. And now we're zoning it for even more density in a way that would sort of push for more apartments and townhouses. And then we're doing it without inclusionary zoning, protection of historic properties, no design standards, you know, questions of no real owner occupancy and then we know that there is a huge demand for undergraduates to live close to the university so that will have another impact on neighborhoods. So I'm just kind of like wondering like, you know, why are we there and so the way I kind of look at it is when I was looking at Maureen's chart about the lot area requirements for units under a footnote and then removing it. And if you could pull that up Maureen, maybe the first chart for the smaller. Sure. Oh, sure. You might have to guide me. I think it's figure one. Oh, perfect. Although I'm looking at a note, you're good. Thank you. Oh, I can go back to the last. Do you want me to go back to the last week? No, no, we can just stay with yours. I'm looking at one but whatever. I think it was on pay. It's the one that says lot area requirement for units using existing footnote one and starts with three and goes down. Oh, yeah. A little bit maybe. Oh, but it was. Next one. This one. Oops. So, you know, the way I could visualize it is I live on three quarters of an acre. And so I see that under the existing zoning, I could have six units in my house, you know, or, you know, on my lot. And then if I look at three quarters of an acre point 73, I have nine units. And so to me, I think six, six units of housing on three quarters of an acre seems pretty hardy. You know, that's a, that's a lot of people and you know, if there's three people in the house that's 18, if there's four, that's 24 people living on three quarters of an acre. And then when I go to nine, that's a lot more people and some just kind of wondering like what, you know, isn't this, you know, you know, we, it seems like town meeting and the neighborhood have come in and sort of said, you know, we can have increased density to a certain level. I'd like to see, we still haven't seen build out in RG. So, why are we here, like looking to increase density again, in a way that I think we'd really fundamentally change the character of the neighborhoods, even at the smaller lot size or, you know, between half an acre to an acre, you can go up to, you know, from nine units on an acre to 13 or 14. And that's a lot more people, that's a lot more density, that's a lot more cars, that's a lot more building. And if it all looked great, maybe that's where, you know, maybe in 20 or 30 years, we might think that's okay to be there. But I don't really understand why, why we're, I don't, I don't understand what the goal is or what we're trying to do here when we already have a zoning area that's done, that is zoned for a lot more density. Thank you. Sure. Thanks. Can everyone, I was, you know, hiding for a minute. The, I was going to respond to a few comments. Doug, I think, you know, about the parking and lock coverage, I think there's a lot of variables there and I think the difficulty is, you know, how would someone determine if they're going to tear down the existing structure and add on. So in Marine's example, you know, it could be likely that someone may run up against lock coverage if they, you know, if they don't do such a compact development. So, you know, you know, there's just so many variables. So I think that, you know, in parking, you know, may or may not be an issue. So, you know, this, this lot is pretty big here. It's, you know, it's, it's almost, you know, it's almost three quarters of an acre. So I think on some of the smaller lots, depending, you know, I don't know if it would be profitable for someone to tear down the house just to add to two more units. So my thought is they would add on outside the existing footprint. And so, I mean, that, you know, that's just an assumption. And so I don't, you know, at some point, you know, someone would have to do the math in terms of is it worthwhile to tear down the existing structure and add a few units? Or, you know, can you do that with a lot of building coverage or not? So I think that, you know, I think there's, I can't say that staff's examined it enough. I think there are so many different options that could happen with, you know, redeveloping a property. And then Janet, most of the properties in Maureen's map, it, you know, along Lincoln, there's 200 properties in the local historic district. And so it's outlined in kind of a dark gray on this map. But, you know, many of those properties would be subject to review by the local historic district commission. So if any of these changes are visible from a public way, which I imagine they would be, you know, it would have to be approved by the local historic district. So, you know, although there aren't necessarily design standards for apartments or townhouses, you know, there is the local historic district bylaw that would be reviewing, you know, changes and then there's a Dickinson district. So, you know, that encompasses, you know, 260 properties or so that would be 250 properties that would be subject to a local historic district review. The, yeah, I mean, I guess that's it. I think, you know, the local historic district can be a really good tool. And so, you know, there's different layers of review that would happen. And so it's hard to say, you know, if the ZBA also has the design review principles they could use to as a review project. So there are some standards that could be applied. That's all. Yeah, and just to piggyback off of Nate. You know, well, I think that the sorts of projects, you know, two or more units would be required to go through the planning board or the ZBA for a special permit. Yeah, I was. Okay, Andrew. Chris, do you want to go first? To note, and I'm glad that Nate is here, that our housing market study said that we needed, like, I don't know how many Nate 700 more units. And that was back in 2015. So what we're doing here is looking for potential for infill, rather than having, you know, large apartment buildings at the outskirts of town, or, you know, on the highway or whatever. There's potential for infill in the neighborhoods where people could walk to services, walk to the bus, walk to UMass, walk to Emerson College. So, you know, infill in the RG district is a good thing, as long as we don't overwhelm or, you know, change the character of the RG district. So I just wanted to add that. Good to know. Thank you, Chris. Andrew. Thanks, Jack. Maureen, I never really thought provoking presentation, and I'm, I'm still absorbing it. So I don't have like many formulated questions at this point, but one, I was wondering just based off of Janet's comment. If I've seen, if you show this and I missed it, then like sincere apologies, but we, we have, this is all sort of geared towards the number of units allowed. Do we have, do we have good data of how many units are currently there? I'm glad that you're asking that. I need to. I need to get that data. So, which is available. I just, there needs to be some data cleaning to get to that. So that's going to take a little time to get, but I think that is an important question to have for the board's consideration of what's there now and, you know, what's there in reality and, you know, if, if someone wants to add more units, what would that look like, and to provide sort of real, real examples. And to see that on the site scale, but also to zoom out and look at the whole stamp of the whole study. Yeah, you're reading my mind. I think we've been, this is, I like getting the delta between footnote and not or removing footnote and but it seems like we need the first piece right of like, here's what you have today the delta to watch it today with footnote and without footnote and I think pretty fascinating and then, and getting some aggregate summaries of that so like, we are just with our current zoning we could accommodate on paper and additional 300 units. And by making these changes that increases by, you know, another two or 300. I'd love to see that. And yeah, with I was pulling down some of the data myself and it's, there's a lot of cleaning that needs to happen so like, I will just acknowledge like the effort that you put in here to probably clean this was significant. I know I was running into a lot of challenges so anyhow, again great visuals. I like the story and I would just make that that at least right now that that one recommendation of getting the baseline units added if you can. Thanks. Thanks. Yeah, I like that Andrew. So, you only had a week right to kind of pull this together because we just great. Yeah, yeah, that's good. But so maybe, you know, one or two more slides and we'll be home. But yeah, I see that good. Doug. Yeah. I guess I had a couple of comments. One is just kind of thinking about what Andrew just said. It's interesting from it's just interesting to have the existing number of units and the existing number that could that is the capacity of the district. And I guess the question is, what would we see more units being added in our G if we took away footnote M and allowed a couple of more units. On lots of these little parcels that might spur a little bit more infill building. And it might actually be profitable. And then it might happen. And I guess the question is what would we see more units being added in our G if we took away footnote M and allowed a couple of more units on lots of these little parcels that might spur a little bit more infill building. And then it might happen. Because it's not happening now. So then the second thing. I guess there's kind of a lot of dancing around, not changing the character of the neighborhood. And, you know, I think it's a question of the pace of change. And what we're talking about is, would this would this would removal of this footnote result in a change that was dramatic enough to be highly objectionable and, you know, spur a lot of distaste in town and resentment. You know, we could, we could allow a lot of development and it would happen. And then we'd have a solution to the 700 acre or 700 units that we need. And we'd have a lot more people who aren't driving around. But I think it's a question of whether we and particularly town council think that what they're going to allow is politically palatable to their constituents. Very good. Very good. Doug. Chris off the top of your head. Do you know how many, you know, lots in the RG have, you know, done, you know, expansion in the last couple of years, pursuant to Very few. It's one unit here and there and Maureen could probably speak to that better than I can because she deals with the zoning board of appeals. Yeah. And they're the ones who have to approve, you know, converted dwellings and two family houses and all of those things. So I don't think there's been much development on that scale in the RG in recent years. Okay. But I like your comments, Doug, because you know, yeah, there's not been much going on then. Yeah, it's a good good observation. I'm Maria. Thanks, Maureen. This was great change that you from what you showed last week. And I agree with Andrew. I wanted from last week just to see that delta that change from what we have to what we could have. And I know that's a ton of work, but maybe you can just focus on like a street in the local historic district or, you know, certain certain areas not all 300 parcels. And then the other point that keeps coming up that I want to make sure is not taken as fact is that every time people say like, Okay, it goes from six units to nine units. That's the difference of 24 people to, you know, 36 people. Those square footages in particular that option you showed. You know, you can't really get four units for people per unit for all these scenarios you're showing so people kind of keep saying you know each unit could have four people and then that's you know that many more parking spaces. So be careful that we're not assuming like worst case scenario every single time because the point of this, I think is unlocking more info housing and it's doing exactly that and I'd like that suggestion Chris gave where, you know, the staff study that really for one acre or less. Those kinds of impacts would be more in in tune or in kind of with the neighborhoods and I think that's a good point and maybe one study marine is to just take one of those larger parcels and see if you know that prediction you have in your chart actually can come based on setbacks and parking because it's, it may not be like that. You end up actually having that number of units possible due to site constraints for parking and setbacks but overall I think he's getting really close and and showing us like the path ahead and I really think the green and red chart you show but I think like Andrew said just one more step is just like what's actual versus possible would be great because I think that one is just showing math right now but overall I think yeah it's incrementally getting there every week so I'm so excited. Thank you. Yeah. You know, no, I would just add that like, you know, in these examples, I'm not getting into how many bedrooms are in these units. So it could be a one bedroom apartment, or it could be a three bedroom apartment. So it's like that could also dictate how many parking spaces are required so or could if they wanted to ask for like a parking waiver for instance. So I could play around with that sort of breakdown for some of the examples to. Thank you marine and Maria. Thank you. Janet. So, um, I'm hesitant to say, you know, why, you know, I don't know how much build that has happened, you know, I know when I was looking at property cards there seem to be some condos and two families and things like that. I'm hesitant to say that more build out hasn't happened because it's financially infeasible because I don't really know the answer to that. And so I don't want to like jump to conclusions like I think people own those properties could probably answer that question more. I imagine that, you know, when I was looking at property cards, a lot of them are owned by the owners live there and so they may not want to have build a, you know, for unit apartment in their backyard. I have seen those, you know, and I see increasing condos, you know, close to the core. So I don't want to jump to conclusions and say it's not financially feasible because I haven't seen any numbers. I don't know how much that would cost. I, it's very likely that people really liked living in the RG and they're happy there or don't want to, you know, put the money into that, you know, they don't want to invest the money because, you know, it might be financially feasible that just don't want to do the project. So, so I just wanted to say that, and then the other thing is, is the reason I brought up inclusionary zoning and protecting historic properties and neighborhoods historic neighborhoods are the quality and character, small town character of Amherst and design standards, and talk about owner occupancy and the issue of students is because the master plan talks about all those. I'm wondering why, you know, I feel like I support increases in density but there's no controls, we have no controls on that on what it will look like. We have no inclusionary zoning that's comprehensive. There are historic properties that are protected in the RG. And it's largely been a very defensive move by the neighbor, the owners who didn't want to see the changes that were coming around them and, and when you're in a historic district you can add the density of the apartment you can add on to your house, you just control the look of it and someone's overseeing that. You know, the entire downtown is historic. I mean it's built with historic buildings the RG is built, the entire RG, most of it is historic buildings. We can make it into a historic district. And the master plan does call for the downtown properties to be protected. Or we can protect it with design standards too. We're not doing any of those things and so, you know, the master plan doesn't say just increase density without these other things it's saying consider all these things and do them simultaneously. And so if the town council had said, let's do let's let's do some RG planning or you know let's do some downtown planning or let's protect the character of Amherst. You know, do the inclusionary zoning let's have design standards as we increase density. I'm completely behind that. But I'm bringing up these issues not to be a naysayer, but just to say that's what our master plan says we should do. So I think we should do that. Yeah, I mean, Janet, do you have a like with inclusionary zoning do you have some sort of a concept of, you know, that in mind that that you want to propose. You're muted. Thank you for the rule. The housing production plan in the housing market study all called for a comprehensive inclusionary zoning, a 15% for 10 or more units. In the zoning subcommittee over a year ago we were looking at two three options for you know how we would do a comprehensive inclusionary zoning I've actually sent to to Chris and I think Rob. There was one that almost passed town meeting that you know has I see some problems with it but it's something we could do it's it's not, it's not super hard I think to to, I mean there's ways we can just expand our existing zoning to cover all permits, you know the language change is very simple. And there's they there's a density increase that you get for that or you can get a tax benefit or a tax break so you know to me. I think we're just going to keep on bumping up against this issue of let's but I also I don't think they're competing interests I don't think the character of a neighborhood, or historic protection is like anti density I think that you can do both. But we can't do the density increase without the design standards and you know I keep on sending those excerpts from the master plan because I'm just kind of like saying like let's do that let's do that simultaneously. So Chris, can you help me out on this a little bit. Nate has his hand up maybe he'll speak to this. Nate. Yeah, I can't speak to everything but I will say that staff is looking at updating the inclusionary zoning by a lot to capture, you know, all development except for the subdivision of land. I think Janet you raise an interesting question. Most of the thresholds are 10 units or more so most inclusionary zoning by laws and communities wouldn't capture an incremental change in units. You know I just want to note to myself you know is it, would there be a different formula for ownership, you know, compared to rental development so you know there is some things to consider but typically, you know anything under nine units is not captured by inclusionary zoning. Just, you know, it's such a small, you know, there's not a lot of numbers there. I was going to say two more things one is Marine was really gracious and saying she could get the actual number of units. And I don't want to say our data is flawed but it's not really well kept in terms of number of units on a property. So, you know, there isn't a simple place in our permitting software where it says you know, this property has three units this property has four units it's, it's, you know, based on the property card is based on permitting and so it does take a lot of work and so, you know, you know, I just want to say that and Maria I like your idea of maybe doing a sample area because it really isn't a way to just aggregate the data and then filter it it's really I mean Maria almost has to read like every property card and go through permitting history to verify the number of units because a supplemental dwelling on a property, you know, may not be on the assessor's record so it might just say it's a single family home, but it has a supplemental dwelling so it's actually two units. So it actually is a really difficult thing to do. And, you know, she said she could do it but I just want to say thank you for speaking up. It is a lot of work. It is a lot of work and I think, you know, the town's getting some new software and you know we've discussed this with staff that it'd be great to have some of these fields that aren't necessarily permitting requirements but would be great for, you know, planning studies or reporting out on data. So there's a number of things that you know I've been speaking with the assessor that she loved to have in software just so when we ask for these numbers or these statistics we can gather them a lot quicker. The other thing I was going to say is that almost every use that Marine has or that we had envisioned happening with new units would probably be regulated by special permit. So, you know, we haven't, we're not changing the permitting path yet. So, you know, unless it's an affordable duplex everything else typically would be by special permit, you know, to add these numbers of units. And to Jenna's point I mean we could have a requirement that they all have an owner occupancy requirement so I don't know if that's necessarily been considered but I agree that there's probably conditions that we could write into, you know, the use standards if we think this would move forward and we're worried about, you know, changing from ownership properties to then all rental properties. So, you know, I think that there probably are conditions if this moves further along that we could have you know maybe there's a standard set of conditions or parameters we could apply, you know, to different uses if, you know, this moves forward. But I like that idea of having, you know, having a few different conditions. Raise my hand. Thank you. Thank you, Nate. Oh, Maureen, you had your hand raised. Yeah, I was just going to say, I think that part of the zoning amendment work that the planning department is doing is that we're also going to look at the definition of apartments and perhaps townhouses and to look at the actual section for each of those. So this could be a really great opportunity to, you know, consider everyone's comments tonight as the town is, I believe is going to also look at those sections. Very good. Yeah, the owner occupied stipulation. I've heard mixed things from some folks on the ZVA that that it's, you know, really enhancing that particular property that they're, but I can't really put my finger on what the exact conversation was but Andrew. Thanks, Jack. I was just reacting or thinking, Nate, about what you'd mentioned about the difficulty of getting that information. And I guess is it so a couple part question is, is the difficulty just getting that down to the parcel level. Right. Or is the issue like we don't really have it. It's, I was going to say, so it's in decisions, it's in special permit decisions or site plan approval decisions and for whatever reason, it's that some of these land use types are reflected in decisions and are not being translated into our like parcels layer that, you know, in our attribute table. We're speaking, we're speaking in language now, but like no one else can understand but it's not getting it's not getting exported into Excel into programs that we can just, you know, easily click up a button and identify that there's a supplemental dwelling unit on a property or that there is, you know, a six unit building. And the way that I would have to look into that, for example, would be going to the rental permit, which is on our web based GIS program. But it's, but it's, it's, it's dive it's, it's researching different links and different documents to find the answer it's not in just one database already, which is unfortunate, but as Nate had said that you know the, you know, the planning departments, you know, we're, we're very interested in coming up with a uniform system that when there are permits that are, you know, coming through that that be recorded. So for scenarios such as this, we don't have to waste, you know, or spend not waste but spend, you know, a decent amount of hours of now researching it so. Yeah, I would then I would sort of echo Maria's point of, you know, doing that small like a deep dive for a small subset that I think that would be particularly useful because it, it does just make me sort of squeamish that you're like, I think to Janet's original question of like why are we even here is, is, do we really have a sense of what the problem is like we know that there's a, there is a shortage of housing, but I'm, I'm now like questioning how the math was actually able to figure that out. And I think, being able to say well this is what we have for actual units this is, you know, again what we think we can build won't really help us understand the stuff much better. So, thanks. One comment I have is like in terms of the, the, you know, reviewing these things, you know, looking to simplify the bylaws, and with the stipulation that we have it for, you know, we keep zone footnote M for, for, you know, lots of that are larger than one acre. It's, there's still going to be a footnote M sort of thing. So, but again that that's more just, you know, a logistical point to this but lower case or uppercase and instead. There you go. Jack, I just, I wondered if Nate could or Chris could talk a little more about situations with owner occupancy. I guess I'm a little bit hesitant to try to make that a condition of, of most zoning regulations because it seems like, you know, if you have somebody who is the owner occupant and they die. Everybody else get kicked out, you know, or, and you're you're probably depressing the value of the property because if you have to be the owner occupancy to have all of the units occupied. You know, there's only so many people who want to actually live in a multi family lot. So I guess I'm just curious whether anybody on town staff has, has had good experience or bad experience with owner occupants versus non owner occupants. I guess I could also see that if owner occupancy is really required, you know, an owner might contract with a property manager to just manage the complex for them. And they'll just stay living there but they won't have to deal with it. Thanks. Thank you Doug. So some things are automatically owner occupied like supplemental apartments if you have a supplemental apartment one of the two units has to be owner occupied. If you have an a duplex that was permitted by by site plan review in the RG zoning district and it therefore needs to be when are occupied that's part of its permit. The plant the zoning Board of Appeals chooses to put an owner occupancy condition on some units but for the most part that's not a very common. It used to be a common condition but I think these days it's not a very common condition because of the rental registration that we have. The CBA has become more comfortable with a resident manager, which Maureen could speak to in more detail, but I think, you know, commonly, we don't require owner occupancy unless there's some peculiarity about the property that would, you know, that would warrant that. So that's that's kind of my answer but Maureen may have more detail about that. So in my experience with working with the zoning Board of Appeals and hearing from, you know, inspection services frequently that sort of the problem properties have nothing to do with the owner or whether the property is owner occupied or not. So I think that the real issue that has been observed is that, you know, the sort of problem properties are properties that don't have any special permit or site plan review associated with it. So for example, do single family homes are by right use regardless of its owner occupied or not. And that means that there aren't any conditions that are placed on that property for upkeeping and for noise and parking and lighting and and things of that nature. And so inspection services has difficulty, you know, enforcing these properties that don't have a special permit associated with it. And they're, and so when there is a special permit, for instance, placed on a apartment building a duplex a converted dwelling a supplemental detached unit list goes on that it gives teeth for, you know, dbw fire police inspection services to go out and enforce complaints that they've heard from a butters or or whatnot. And so it gives it more sort of teeth or power for the town to enforce. So, as Chris mentioned, there are, you know, do duplexes, you can get in the bylaw there could be a owner occupied duplex or non owner occupied duplex for converted dwelling. You know, there is criteria that could require that that could be owner occupied or that there's a resident manager. Really the other ones apartments townhouses. They don't get into whether they need to be owner occupied or not. And so there are, you know, it's, it has been pretty common for for a lot of a good amount of special permits have come through that professional property managers are the ones that are maintaining these properties. And again, when there are conditions put on place on these special permits. That's when we see that that there is more maintenance and orderly conduct being provided on these properties and has nothing to do with the owner occupied occupancy. Permits are good. Permits are good. I kiss my life very busy. I'm just circling back on this owner occupied in the master plan. And the only thing that I saw was that the master plan asked that we make it easier. The owner occupied, you know, properties to expand in and add, you know, this kind of loops into the next item with the accessory dwelling units but so are we making it easier. I guess is a question we need to keep in the back of our minds. I'm going to go back to the group and discussion because that speaks to the master plan, unless I'm missing something Janet. So, so anyway, we do need to look at the impact of undergraduates on neighborhoods and that's part of the owner occupancy thing discussion for sure because we are a town with 70% of our population are students and I'm sure people in the RG and the RG can talk about how that can work for them or not work for them depending on who's living next door. So I'm wearing, I was, I was hoping, I know this, I know this is a hard ask but did you say you could do sort of a build out of a neighborhood like a 3D build you know, I mean, not, not the entire town, although I think there actually is a build out of Amherst that I saw it a thing at UMass, they did a presentation like a year or two ago but that would be useful and and I would I would max the lot or building coverage because if you're going to, you know, build six units or nine units on a, you know, three quarters of an acre an acre you're probably going to want to fill up as much as you can and get your stuff as big as you can. So is that, is that something you could show in a 3D format or I could show that for a few parcels but maybe next to each other or something. Yeah, some yeah, I could do a couple parcels when you get into discussions of like how about the whole neighborhood or that that would be very time consuming. Yeah, when I say time consuming like weeks or months so at UMass I was at a conference and they did have a build out of Amherst like you know I was pretty remarkable and you know under their current zoning. So the other thing I did recently is I drove around the RG and parts of you know like I think sometimes dipping into RN and I was looking at different townhouses and apartments and infill and things and some places were really pleasant and some places were really kind of unattractive. And so I could send that list around to the planning board if people want to in their COVID times a little extra time for that. And then also I think you know I think there's all of these changes that we're looking at there's time to mull them but I do think we need to get the impact of the community and neighborhood and was being affected and figure out a mechanism for that so Okay, well I see no more hands and again we're getting we're an hour and a half in and we're going to talk about footnote and again with with some with help from Maureen so I suggest like we wrap this up and if there's any, you know, objection to that or anybody has, you know, one, you know something more they want to say I'm putting on them. But then I can open up to public comment I see one hand up in the attendees. So any other planning board members have comments on this. Good. See none. Alright so we'll move it to public comment and we're again this, you know, definitely want to keep, you know, to three minutes. And who do we have here Pam. So we have Pam Rooney first, followed by Dorothy and Hilda and Susanna. Sounds good. So we got who first. Pam Rooney. Hi, can you unmute yourself. I can. Thank you. Welcome. Thank you. Good evening everybody. I heard, I heard a couple people mentioned that again that net the net between what is currently on a property and what its total capacity might be and I totally appreciate that. That could be a lot of work that maybe that's something that a horde of volunteers could walk around the RG and try to take notes on how many units that appears are in each of these buildings. And I think it's, it does give us a little bit or a little bit better sense of what additional growth actually, you know, might look like. Just in looking at a quick question for Maureen on her sheet eight. There the title is net change of units allowed by lot size with footnote and removed. In the legend it's number of units allowed per lot real footnote M. And so I was sitting there looking, I picked one example. This is the North Pleasant Street UMass property that you pointed out I think Maureen and your conversation which shows an 11 and it's a bright orange. And if I were to read the 11 that to me says that it really should be green. And so I'm not sure if I should read it as 16 or 17 or if I should read the number and and think of it as green. So that's just a question I don't know if I'm confused or the map is confused, probably me. I think about the, the conversation that you had about footnote and applying to things over over one acre. I did some quick math on page. I think it was page nine. And the numbers of parcels. Under one acre are almost 300. So we're talking about 40 or 50 parcels that are greater than one acre. Things 46. Pardon. I think it's 46. I said, I said approximately 50. And under under one acre is approximately 300. And so if, if, if it were up to me, I think I would. I think we're going to be talking or you are going to be talking about accessory dwelling units. And my gut feeling is that with 300 parcels that have some capacity perhaps for accessory dwelling units that we're really, we really are covering that base of providing and allowing for infill should people choose to do that on their properties. Thank you. Just like on the acres above are the parcels above one acre. I would like to see footnote am retained and kept in place. I think there are not many people in the RG neighborhood who really do want to see a nine unit or a 12 unit apartment building being built next to them. Thank you, Pam. Except, except along perhaps the corridors that Doug and Maria's maps showed a couple of weeks ago. Thank you. And we have Dorothy, Pam. Hi, Dorothy. Could you unmute yourself please. Did that work yet. Hi. Yes, we hear you. Good. Thank you. I have a couple of questions. In terms of discussing on our occupancy and problem apartments. We've had several presentations in precinct 10 with John Thompson from enforcement and I have different information roll calls from did a study of apartments in the RG, which is between Amity and the university. And the problem houses were the ones that were non owner occupied with one exception. The owners were away on a sabbatical every every house that was not owner occupied whether it had a resident manager or not had two things where police were called there often student problems and also deterioration of property. And you can just tell by walking up, you know, if you're delivering a flyer walking up the stairs, you know whether you're entering an owner occupied property or not so those are but that's why the rental registration program was set up. And that has allowed if the inspectors to get in and to say okay, you self certified yourself as having these things. Now let's see how they go. So that rental registration program helped stop this massive buying of private homes and turning them into, you know, small mini student dorms. It's still going on but it's slowly greatly. The other question I had a problem with chart seven or eight. Looking at and I do love being able to see the individual lots and so I look at my lot. And I know from your blue and white chart from last week that right now I could have three three units or some sort, but that that that without footnote M. I could have nine, because I'm on point 70 points 73 acre and you noticed that on your chart you said that that level three quarters of an acre was in fact the mean of properties in the RG the historic district. So I was confused by that because the number that you had written on it was still three, which is not you know it's not that disturbing. But my big question is, I thought that the impetus was more affordable housing that by increasing the number of housing units somehow we would bring down the cost and we'd be able to have workforce housing, people who work in this town could we could have more families coming in, but I don't see that with removing footnote M I see it really making it very attractive to developers to come in with it takes a lot of money to build these additional units to come to come in and to build more things. And recent comments have been made about, did rents go down with the new apartments and the answer that I've heard was no, the rents are high in the new apartments, and it kind of set the tone and maybe have increased rents in the RG. So I see a lot of difficulties with this footnote M. And I think keeping it in for properties above an acre is good but I think the exponential nature that you're showing in your your bar chart which is really really interesting. It starts a little bit lower than that, going from three units to nine extra units on a three quarters of an acre is a pretty big increase. So, thank you. Look at that some more. Thank you. Thank you. I have a series of things that I picked up that I first of all, when they were talking about rezoning out North Amherst about five years ago. I did a cross correlation with the 2010 census with the street list and got a big blow up of Xerox the huge enlargement of the area on the map and call it it and I did not have the software it took me days to do this. But I filled in every single law north of Hobart Lane to see what the proportional rental housing the home ownership at that point, which as I say I think was about five years ago. We were 12% owner occupied housing in North Amherst north of Hobart Lane. And that's one reason that I've sort of been pushing for more owner occupied, because in, you know, we have very low voting turnout in precinct one up here for the most part unless there's a presidential election. So, I think that the owner occupied and workforce housing will bring stability to the town and allow people to develop equity but basically the reason I brought up and making the map is that I'm willing to do that again when the 2020 census comes out, if people will help me with it, or if there is software, but but I learned a lot with the map and just be able to see the rentals and then the Maralyn black and the couple owner occupied were in red, and then I had the duplexes in there and the apartments a different color and I still have that map of my closet I don't think I threw it out. So that was one thing that I wanted to say that that census, whenever it comes out has incredible amount of information in it that may not necessarily be in the file of permits. So, the other, other two things I wanted to bring up was now might be a good time because Maureen did put her finger on it, the size of the units now is a good time and I've been plugging this one for 25 years is that the impact of a studio apartment of one bedroom is not the same, or even for studio apartment so for one bedroom is not the same as one for bedroom house. And especially downtown you don't need to have eight cars with four studios. This may be a real good time when is considering footnote and and they get around out about infill is to maybe getting rid of the dwelling units as a, as a datum and and look at the number of bedrooms or the number of possible people and I'm thinking sort of in terms you can look at the parcel that you have and what would be the maximum foot print that could go there and how it would look and people determine how many dwelling units would go in it by by what building you could put there and that way you may get more smaller units for for are you please don't interrupt me. Well, you're a three minutes all. Oh well I have one more comment. And that's the fact and this is because I've used it myself that most of the older houses that were built pre zoning by law pre 1925 are not conforming in the RG and 9.22 was used a lot and especially in the area of the house I'm it was 738 Main Street which is 7500 square. I think 7500 square this might be that small, and like 60 feet of frontage, it was a personage for the second church, and we, we were able to apply 9.22 because most of the buildings. Within at least five or 100 feet or 1000 around it were all multifamily housing so when you think about these units on the size of the lots down time you got to think of how many people gone go in and say that it's not substantially different from what's and it's not going to be more detrimental to the neighborhood if if you've got a six bedroom house with two three bedroom units in it or a six bedroom house with however many people are living in it without a person. So I mean you've got to think of the how many people of those lots that are under an acre are going to come in and say, I want to apply 9.22 because it's not substantially more detrimental. Those are my points. Great. Thank you. Susanna. Hi Susanna. Hi there. This is maybe he'll just answered my question but I'm not sure because I don't know what 9.22 is. A lot is not conforming because it doesn't have enough frontage. Do these do all of these calculations about how much could be added to a footnote and was removed and do they apply to that or not. Someone want to answer that Chris or I'd say it's a case by case basis we'd have to look at why it's not conforming. And whether that would be applicable to what the person who was applying for something wanted to do. So you can't really make a blanket statement about it. I was just going to suggest that if they don't apply that those properties be eliminated from your analysis but if it's case by case, I guess you can't do that. Thank you. Thank you. And Ken Rosenthal, please. I can. Hello, I'm Ken Rosenthal. I live on Sunset Avenue. There's always a tension between housing for students and workforce housing for year round residents who will be in Amherst and contributing to the economy of Amherst. An additional way we might think about this is for subsequent units to be built with or without footnote note M is to change the definition of family in those subsequent units to be no more than three unrelated individuals rather than four. I would encourage those units to be for a smaller groups with fewer cars or perhaps make it easier for small families or young couples with no children to move into those units and help to serve the workforce in the community a little better. Thank you. Thank you, Ken. Okay, so I think that wraps up any other comments from planning board or the planning staff on this item, which we're going to talk about next week again. Good. Okay, so we will move on to item 3b discussion about expanding size of supplemental dwelling units from 800 square feet. Which is 900 square feet of its fully accessible to 1000 square feet, including potential changes to the permitting process. And we have a presentation from the planning staff. I have Ben Breger who's a planner in the planning department who's going to present information about the supplemental dwelling units and the potential increase in size. Great. Thank you, Chris. And thanks, Jack. And thank you to the planning board. Hello everybody. So let's see here I can share my screen I have the PowerPoint up. Let's see here. So yeah, I'm going to be talking about the our proposal for adjusting the ADU bylaw that's a accessory dwelling unit or supplementary dwelling unit. This was a recommendation from the CRC, I guess a directive to the planning department to put together a proposal for supplementary dwelling units. And I guess, backing up a little bit. I just want everyone to kind of transition from footnote M, which was focusing on just the RG and really focusing on townhouses and apartments, whereas supplemental dwelling units are, this is a proposal townwide. And it's really for the provision of one accessory dwelling unit on only lots that have a single family dwelling. So we're looking at single family lots and adding an additional dwelling unit to that lot. And this is townwide. So looking at the clock now I mean it's 830 I had a long pretty long fairly long presentation plan, I can go quickly through it just for the sake of time. There's some background. Right, Ben, you know, take your time. Okay. It sounds good. Thanks. So, yeah, I'm just going to start with a little bit of background information just to make sure everyone's on the same page about what we're talking about here. So accessory dwelling units. And I will say to as a just so everyone knows I'm using accessory dwelling units and supplementary dwelling units pretty interchangeably. Our bylaw says supplemental dwelling units pretty much every other bylaw I've seen says accessory dwelling units. And that's actually a change I'm proposing we're proposing to make is just changing the language and terminology a little bit. But when I say accessory dwelling units I'm referring to the supplementary dwelling units in our bylaw so accessory dwelling units are small dwelling units or apartments that exist on the same property law as a single family resident. They're a fully contained living space with a kitchen bath and sleeping area. And they're often, you know, three categories they can be fully located within the primary structure they can be attached to the primary structure or detached from the primary structure. These are very common and they're often referred to by many names throughout the years carriage house a back house a backyard bungalow, granny flat in loss we guest house so lots of different names do all refer to the same idea. So ad use accessory dwelling units ad use are an important piece to the housing helping alleviate the housing crisis. They help with housing affordability in a lot of ways, as they can generate rental income to help own homeowners cover mortgage payments ad use are less expensive to construct because the land is already owned by the owner of the primary structure so you're really just paying for construction costs. Furthermore, this is a way to provide small scale housing in majority single family neighborhoods, and it's a way to do that as an infill into an existing neighborhood fabric and furthermore, it's this kind of sweet spot where it's not as small as an apartment but it's not a large home it's kind of the size of a small it's a small small dwelling unit and it's important middle housing between the apartment and the large home. Ad use also help with multi generational housing and add to kind of housing flexibility. There's a lot of different ways ad use and a single family home can work together. So ad use offer young families entry level housing choices ad use enable families to expand beyond their primary home for empty nesters that are looking to downsize but don't necessarily want to leave town or leave their neighborhood. And then downsize into the smaller accessory dwelling unit and then rent out their larger home or vice versa you know ad use you can have your, your grandparents or your parents live in the backyard in the in the backyard bungalow and be there to help with the family and taking care of the children so they really offer a lot of flexibility and opportunities to just make it easier for families to live together and for generation of rental income. Furthermore, they have a lot of environmental benefits and sustainable development principles. There are a way to, you know, include smaller relatively affordable homes and establish neighborhoods with minimal visual impact and without adding to sprawl. They require fewer resources to build and maintain. And then furthermore for ad use that are especially the ones that are fully contained within a primary structure it's less energy to heat and cool them. So where did you know this isn't this isn't a new concept at all these accessory dwelling units it's been a long standing, you know, idea and development. You know, in the pre zoning in this country people often bill as many homes as they wished on their property it wasn't they weren't only allowed to build one home. Moving into the early 19 or 20th century, you know, larger homes often had a lot of associated outbuilding such as barns and carriage and carriage houses. Many of these carriage houses have subsequently been converted into rental homes. Likewise, you know, car garages were built with housing units on top or subsequently have been converted into housing. With the onset, you know, the first post World War two superb suburban development boom, you know, lots were off, you know, with the onset of zoning. It was often very ad use were often highly regulated and in a lot of cases made illegal, because it was a simple like one home per lot regulation. However, in the last, you know, 20 years. Ad use have really come on the scene again. AARP and the American Planning Association have taken a lead on advocacy in this regard and releasing a lot of resources for states and local governments to update their codes. You know, some states California, New Hampshire are pretty much requiring all cities and towns to allow ad use completely by right. Oregon as well in Massachusetts. I'd say we're a little bit behind the rest of the country. However, the Massachusetts Housing Act that was just passed. Geez, I think within the last month has some language in there regarding accessory dwelling units. In the Boston area, you know, it's kind of a mixed bag of towns of the 100 towns in the metropolitan Boston area. You know, 37 allow accessory dwelling units, you know, and 32 have no accessory dwelling unit zoning at all. And the towns that do have ad use they often have a lot of zoning and dimensional regulations permitting requirements that restrict this. So, you know, it's two point five permits annually per town so it's a really not adding a lot at all to the housing in the Boston area. Looking at this area in particular. Comparing bylaws for ad use for towns. Cities and towns in Western Mass Amherst North Hampton East Hampton Greenfield Montague, and then just to in Eastern Mass Lexington and Somerville. What I found was, you know, Amherst is kind of in the ballpark with a lot of these other cities and towns. The types that we allow the permitting requirements. Special permits for most types of ad use square footage requirements. This is one area where Amherst was we had a smaller square footage maximum than most others. We do allow 900 right now for ad accessible units. Often 900 or 1000 is seen. And I will say, you know, just a quick Google search of what other mass towns are doing right now like, I came up with a lot of cities that are reviewing their ad bylaws, you know, now or have in the past year. Barnstable Salem Newton are all kind of looking at the this issue right now. Most bylaws have designed requirements for the accessory dwelling unit as well. And I'll get to that. So now I'm going to focus in on Amherst and accessory dwelling units, the history of ad use here and kind of what we're proposing. So, I found that in 1968 is when the AD supplemental dwelling unit first appeared in Amherst zoning bylaw. And at that time, it was only allowed in the residential outlying district, and only for fully contained supplemental residents. Between 1968 and 2014 this was amended multiple times and it was eventually expanded to all residential zoning districts, excluding the RF district. So 2014 is how when we amended updated the bylaw to get to where we are now. We added these new categories supplemental apartment one supplemental apartment to and supplemental detached added these exit added the requirements that they had to be one one unit had to be on your occupied. Additional lot area required no more than three adults in the accessory dwelling unit. They can't be used for lodging. And then we also added the dimensional regulations, the planning board endorsed this change seven to zero and it passed on meeting. And then subsequently in 2018, there was a proposal to increase the maximum square footage allowed only for detached dwelling units to 1000 square feet or 1100 for ADA accessible units. The supplemental one and two, they would remain at 800 square feet. This change, this proposal had unanimous support from the planning board and was viewed as a way to allow a wider variety of living arrangements, such as two or thread three bedroom units, which normally might not be possible in an 800 square foot unit. And would add house add to the housing stock, especially for family families looking for rental units and neighborhood settings. The amendment received a majority of town meeting support but not the two thirds that was required to pass. And my understanding it was town meeting kind of thought that this was after the charter was passed and they felt like town council should be the ones to make this change. And just briefly ADUs are, you know, referenced in the Amherst in various plans that speak to this proposal. Amherst master plan talks about making it easier to create attached and detached accessory apartments. Amherst housing production plan talks about possible by right provisions for supplemental dwelling units, adding design guidelines and reducing parking requirements. And then finally the Amherst housing market study recommends to allow supplemental apartments by right and all residential zoning districts as a way to meet the housing demands and Amherst. And just briefly this is what we pulled up for the number of units, number of accessory units permitted in Amherst over the past five years 2015 to 2019. You know the 2019 numbers they maybe didn't that we made this in February of 2020. It's about a year ago so it may be that the 2019 numbers hadn't been counted yet for whatever reason but you know it's on average three to five accessory units permitted in Amherst per year. So, if you're like me, you are confused. I was confused when I first started looking at this about the difference between ADUs duplexes and converted dwellings, all which are included in the Amherst bylaw. I just wanted to quickly clear up any confusion about different, how they're related and how they're similar different. ADUs don't require additional lot area for the single unit, whereas for a duplex or converted dwelling, you need an additional lot area for that added unit. The ADUs are capped, our proposal is to cap them at 1000 square feet currently they're capped at 800 square feet, whereas for a duplex or converted dwelling there's no cap on the square footage however you know you have to meet building coverage lot coverage setbacks all that, and that that goes with ADUs as well. For ADU, there is an owner occupancy requirement for one of the units, either the primary dwelling or the ADU itself, however it's not required for a duplex, it's required for converted dwelling or you can have a resident manager on site. For an occupancy limit ADUs are limited to three adults, whereas duplexes and converting dwellings are limited to four unrelated. As you'll see in our proposed bylaw change we're proposing to change the ADU to three unrelated individuals as opposed to three adults, and we'll talk about that later. So we're just going to quickly bring us around town to show us some of the ADUs that have been permitted in Amherst over the past, I guess, 12 years at this point, I can go kind of quickly through this but this one is on Page Street as a 724 square foot converted garage that's two stories, one bedroom I believe. This one is on Best in Street you can see the ADU at the end of the garage. It's a studio and is 422 square feet. This is a 900 square foot ADA accessible detached dwelling unit on Logtown Road. So those three were all detached. The next one here is an attached accessory dwelling unit. So it'd be a supplemental to. It's 425 square feet. And you can see this is the old, an old image of the house and then the proposed rendering and I believe this was built. So they basically added an addition and bumped out their garage and added a 425 foot square foot studio. I'm going to show you that you can add a supplemental apartment that's fully contained and you might not even see it at all from the, from the street you know that there's a 560 square foot one bedroom apartment in the basement of this house and you wouldn't really even know it at all looking at it from the outside. This is on Wildwood Lane. Also the Grist Mill in South Amherst on Mill Lane. I found out that had a fully contained one bedroom supplemental apartment attached to it as well. So you can add, you can add these things and they don't really change the character of the neighborhood and they don't add much visual clutter, especially for the fully contained or attached units. So now I'm going to just jump to our proposal so we were tasked with looking at the 2018 proposal that failed that town meeting and looking at kind of reviving that and then the more we looked at that we subsequently made other changes to the bylaw to allow to basically reduce the barriers to ADU development. And so I will go over those now. The 2018 bylaw proposal, all that did was changing the maximum square footage allowed to 1000 square feet. And so what we did is we're building on that bylaw proposal. So this bylaw update proposes to increase the maximum square footage of ADUs, create a more streamlined permitting pathway and add additional design guidelines. So what we're proposing is to increase the maximum square footage for ADUs to 1000 square feet for all three types and that provides an opportunity for ADUs with more than one bedroom. We proposed to streamline the permitting pathway to reduce barriers to ADU development and reducing costs, especially costs associated with going through the permitting. We add design guidelines to ensure that ADUs are compatible with the scale and the character of the primary structure and the surrounding neighborhood. And then lastly, simply simplifying the bylaw structure to make it easier to interpret as well. So now I'm going to go through the specific changes. So like I said, changing from the terminology, changing the terminology from supplemental to accessory becomes consistent, making it consistent with federal, state and industry terminology. Now, even as I was going through town by town looking at their bylaw, I would just do control F and go for look for accessory dwelling unit. And if I didn't see it, then I assume they didn't have anything in their bylaw. And I imagine there's developer homeowners that come into Amherst and quickly want to see, oh, can I build an accessory dwelling unit in Amherst and if they see, they might look through our bylaw and not see those that word there. And so I think replacing supplemental with accessory could make that just a simpler way to search the bylaw. Secondly, we have kind of a confusing terminology in addition to the supplemental and accessory issue we have supplemental apartment one and two and then detached supplemental dwelling unit and so what I'm proposing is to just have three discrete types of ADUs contained ADU attached ADU and detached ADU to simplify the bylaw, even more. Thirdly, we're proposing to increase the maximum square footage for all three types of accessory dwelling units to 1000 square feet, and also to eliminate the minimum square footage. So, I'll talk about the first one, increasing one to 1000 square feet, like we mentioned allows for the development of not only, you know, sizable one bedroom dwelling unit but also to and maybe even three bedroom units. And that's in line with a lot of what what other states and towns are doing across the country. And we also felt that eliminating the minimum square footage which is at 350 right now allows for the development of very of small dwelling units that you know sometimes you need to fit a fit something within a building or attached to a building in a garage that might not be, it might be less than 350 square feet so we felt there's not really no reason to limit the smaller size units. I'll say there are building code and health codes that you know stipulate the smallest a unit could be based on like livable area and you know amount of space for a bedroom so it's not like you know they can build, you know, there are still limits that come into play with building codes. So, I will go to the fourth bullet point now. We're proposing to kind of adjust the definition of the supplemental to which is kind of analogous to the attached adu right now the way supplemental to is written is that it's, it's limited to a 10% increase of a prime of the primary structure of a square footage. So that means you could, you could really if you had 1000 square foot house you could really only bump it out 100 square feet to meet this requirement and so if we're allowing for larger attached dwelling units then we thought, you know, there's no reason to limit the size of the attached dwelling unit relative to the primary structure, it's it's simpler just to say that the attached dwelling unit needs to be attached to the primary structure. Because from the exterior, if you have a, you know, for example, if you have a very small house say 800 square feet. And it's a single family home you could add, you know, a 2000 square foot addition to that house, you could add a sorry, you could add a 1000 square foot addition to that house. You know, and call you know, and it wouldn't trigger any it would trigger you need a building permit wouldn't need any review. And so, whether or not it has a dwelling unit in it. It's, it doesn't necessarily matter if it's a 10% increase I guess from the attack from the primary structure. So we just thought it was simpler to say that and it's again still limited to 1000 square foot maximum. So for permitting pathway, we're proposing to make attached and contained accessory dwelling units allowed by right, whoops, attached and contained accessory dwelling units allowed by right. And those would still come with a host of requirements that I'll get to. And if they don't meet those requirements then they would be subject to review by special permit and could be denied as well so we felt that, you know, reducing these barriers to permitting could promote this type of development in our in our neighborhoods. So basically, we propose to allow detached accessory dwelling units by right with those requirements. If it's a less if it's less than 50% of the primary structures habitable space. And so, for example, if it's a, let's see 1800 square foot home. If they had a 900 square foot ADU by right, but if they wanted to go above 900 between 900 and 1000, then they would need to get a special permit from the ZBA. And that's a way of kind of controlling the scale of the detached dwelling units to make it so we can add we can enforce these design guidelines and make sure that the detached dwelling units in scale with the primary dwell. And then furthermore we add these design guidelines, requiring that the architecture and the scale of the accessory dwelling unit is compatible with and secondary to the primary structure. So I know that was a lot. Those are all the changes that we're proposing I have the word document as well that kind of shows the line by line things crossed out and things added and I know that's probably easier way to show it. So this table that I included that kind of shows in gray the existing bylaw and in black the 2021 proposal that we're talking about today, showing the, you know, new names for these things, the square footage regulations. Right now, we're proposing to have them all capped at 1000 with no minimum. And then contained and attached by right with with the requirements and then detached by right, if less than 50% of the primary dwelling and special permit more than 50%. So the habitable space has come up a lot. That's how we're determining the square footage so 1000 square foot max of habitable space, and also the you would have to be 50% of the primary structures habitable space. We didn't just come up with that term it's a defined term in our bylaw and is one that's used throughout it so just to remind people it's the gross square footage of pretty much the living sleeping cooking or eating of space with those purposes. So it excludes. And everything that's not these areas. So that's, it's different than square footage. And it's a way of capturing the space that's actually used for living. I guess it doesn't include garages, for example, or unfinished basements. And then moving through this I guess I just wanted to show the kind of some examples of what these could look like in different neighborhoods. And again so this is in Lincoln Avenue house that has, you know, the square footage is written here 1500 or 1850. However, these are, you know, two or three story building so they have 2280 square foot of live livable area. So these how these units these properties they could build a 1000 square foot ADU detached ADU in their backyard. By right is what we're proposing. Here we this is an orchard valley, another neighborhood where it's all single family homes, often on lots that extend quite far back. And then there are some in the backyard for accessory dwelling units. This house is 1200 square foot of livable area. So they could build, you know, 625 square foot accessory dwelling unit by right. And if they wanted to go up to 1000. We're proposing that would be by special permit. Over here they have way a much more livable area, so they could go up to the 1000 square foot limit if they wanted by right is what we're proposing. So those are a few examples, and I'll almost at the end here. You know, will I assume we'll post this PowerPoint online. Here's a host of resources, all about accessory dwelling units if you're curious about what's going on nationally, or in the state, you can click these links for more information. And with that, I conclude and I just want to thank you all and welcome your questions or feedback. So thank you for bearing with me through that long presentation. Appreciate it. Ben, that was very good. Appreciate it. Thank you. And we can open it up for discussion. Maria. Thank you so much, Ben. I was part of that whole 2018 start. And so is Jack, I think I think we might be going to a part of the original dwelling unit increase to the town meeting and I think adding the by right is a great thing to add because it unlocks it and then when you added that up to 50% it's still by right. It's a good protection layer because I think we sort of thought through like what if you have a small 800 square foot house and then you put a 1000 square foot supplemental dwelling unit that doesn't make sense. So I think all the little tweaks you made make a lot of sense and I hope this moves forward because it was already close but now you've improved it even more so yeah thank you so much for the presentation. That's it. Thanks, Maria. Doug. Yeah, I had sent some questions to Chris, a couple of days ago and I'm, we don't need to go through them now but I'm just hoping Ben and Chris can send me replies to that to that email. Thank you. Good, Janet. Doug, I'm interested in your questions. I have a couple of questions myself. One of the questions was. So if, if this is by right. Does that go to the building to the building commissioner or is it going to come to the planning board. Are they, are they, is it just, you know, they're just looking for a building permit or In this case that's what we're proposing. Okay, I thought so. I just pictured a lot of planning board hearings that makes me feel better. And then I have some concerns about the, I'm getting rid of the minimum of 350 square feet. I'm channeling my grandmother who grew up in a tenement on the Lower East side, and I'm picturing three people living in a very small house and so, you know, or a family, you know, if they're related people, and I just wondered, it just seems like, you know, how small can it go under like state codes and things like that. So I have a concern that going below 350 it might just become inhabitable for large groups of people and we're back to a situation where led to zoning. Right. So is there a minimum size for a unit under state law that That is somewhere in the building code and I'm not sure offhand. 350 wasn't maybe it's 300. So I'd love to get the answer. It's, it's whatever it is, it's less than 350 because there's been cases where that minimum comes into play and people are. The health code that has a minimum on the size of habitable bedrooms. I think it is the health code and I think Rob more quoted to us something like you could have a dwelling unit that was like 150 square feet. So he's, he's here if he's interested in answering that question. Okay. He's got his hand up. I did have a hand up. Yeah, so, you know, the building code does allow a drawing unit to get pretty small can be down to about 180 square feet. We've worked that through multiple times with the idea of a tiny home. You know, so, you know, there are it gets complicated because, you know, each space in a dwelling unit has a minimum square footage but that's what it amounts to. The sanitary to the state sanitary code that are helping inspectors in force has a little different standard and that that's based more on the occupancy. So, you know, that starts at 150 square feet and then goes up 100 square feet for every occupant. And you know that might have been years ago where maybe the 350 was generated from but we thought it was a good idea to think about eliminating the lower threshold because in every other use group, you know, that we typically deal with these types of permits like converted dwellings, the smaller size unit, the minimum is there at 350. So this would be something different that that could be offered in a buyer right use. And we know units can be that small and be successful. I mean, I think we know spring screen is permitted with units that are, you know, about 240 260 square feet on the smaller side. So this is something that, you know, could be done to create a usable dwell a little dwelling unit. Okay, that that's very helpful thank you. The other question I had was, I can look at my window and I can see three houses that are 1000 square feet. And there's like that that's probably the predominant square footage of my neighborhood. And so, so if they want to build a house that was more than 500 square feet, they would have to get a special permit. But would, would you probably, would they probably be building like a two story cottage. I mean it seems sort of strange to have like two ranch houses on the lot like, what is it that you would expect them to do differently or why do you want to do that extra protection and scrutiny. Who wants to take that. Rob or Chris or Ben. Well, I'll go to shot and then connect to it but you know I think what we're envisioning is, you know, the situation that we can't account for a sloping lot that maybe, you know, there's an expansion of a footprint but the square footage gets bigger because there's a lot of resources incorporated into that. We know we've seen examples of spaces over garages that can, that can be part of an improvement to a property that includes something both for the primary residence and for creating an accessible or accessory So I think we're just trying not to limit or totally lock out the potential for something to be expanded if it's appropriately done to a design and standard. You know, to limit that possibility and what the zoning board of appeals to the special permit process, find that it's, you know, suitable for its location and the building that is being associated with. So just kind of going between thinking like two ranches on the same property would look weird so maybe you would want to design it in a way that doesn't look so strange and, and then the other hand I feel like, if you have a thousand square foot house and you want to build the 750 square foot ADU, why would they have to go through more procedure than somebody with a larger home because that seems sort of unfair to me on the other side. So I was kind of bad. I was just kind of going between those two things. My, my last question is, what the phrase secondary to the primary structure like what does that mean. So we were playing around with that for a little while. The idea is that kind of gets to your point exactly that it. The detached dwelling unit, you know, should look secondary or, you know, to the primary structure I guess maybe secondary is not the right word but I guess it should be clearly like not the main house it should be, you know, something that's I don't want to say subordinate or just like, yeah, yeah. That's fine. It's a fancillary. Yeah. Is it a legal term or is it just like a, I just didn't get it in a way. So, I think it gets to the scale and it gets to the scale of the house I guess. Okay. And then my, my comment is I thought that I would tighten up the language about the design maybe saying the same architectural style or match the appearance of the primary house and, and, you know, so I felt like that would be make it kind of fit in more. And then I also wondered thinking about Maria, like maybe you would want to have something that looks a little different. And so I just kind of tossing that fact that's just a comment. Thank you. I believe Maria. Yeah. Oh, you had something. Okay. Sorry. I was going to mention tiny homes really quickly that that those are a new type of home that's under 400 square feet and there's an appendix queue bylaws specifically to that type of housing and it's a new trend for people who don't want to build ADUs but build really tiny homes so I am glad that minimums take it away. That's it. Very good. Nate. Sure. Yeah, I think the Daniel questions are good. I think the difficulty with some of these is, you know, how do you regulate the design and do you really want to prescribe something that has to look like the existing single family home. You know, so when this was discussed previously by the local historic district commission and then the historical commission at one point for a property. Some of the members felt like why, why wouldn't we want to promote contemporary design like what's wrong with, you know, a structure that has a different type of siding and roofline then, you know, why have it be a gable and, you know, Greek revival style. Like, why do we have to match that style for an accessory dwelling unit. So I think that it's a really difficult thing to have, you know, some design guidelines and then, you know, the balance of being overly prescriptive so I understand right secondary to the main house, you know, may not really say anything. So then is it, you know, is it the massing is that the entry ways, is it the location on the lot so for instance someone could put an accessory dwelling unit on the front lawn. And that's permissible. You know, they could put an addition on the house so you know those 1000 square foot ranches you have someone could buy it and tear the roof off raise the roof make it a whole you know second story house and then also put a two car garage on so they could you know almost triple the size of the footprint of the house without even doing anything other than a building permit. And there's not many design guidelines there so I think with the accessory dwelling units it's interesting. Right the balance of how much do you regulate the design and character and then what do you allow for creativity of the homeowner or developer and so you know we've at one point we're talking about doing some 3D mock ups. It's really difficult because if we show something. A design people might say oh that's what it'll look like but it may not at all I mean it may look completely different it could be a modular structure that's brought in or it could be, you know something different so I think, you know I think those are good questions is you know it's, you know how much do we want to regulate that or have some design guidelines if not if they're not standards you know what what do we have to help with, you know staff make those decisions when there's an application. I have a general question, say you want to convert your two car garage into this ad you, but then you want to, you still want to garage and you do. You know, an unattached, you know structure out there for garage is that that be a by right situation. I'm seeing Chris and Rob not their heads. Yes, yes. I mean because you know you've got all the water and sewer, you know within the main home. Yeah and again just to clarify you know we're still talking about meeting setback requirements building coverage lot coverage all of that is still still in play it's just I guess the only difference with an ad you is that the additional a lot area per unit does not come into play. By the way, my computer must be really buggered up because I see nobody's pictures right now. Yeah, I see knows I see no videos except myself. Sorry about that so people are nodding, and I don't see it that's that's why. And any other comments from the board. I see none. We can go up. Yeah. Thanks. Sorry, I've been quiet tonight just kind of taking it all in. But I don't know I'm really impressed with the work that the planning staff has done and I really appreciate all the presentations and the thoughtfulness that has gone into preparing these proposals. Absolutely. And so I think we can open up to public comment on this. I see Dorothy Pam. Hi Dorothy. I meant I didn't do it yet. Oh, sorry. Hi Dorothy. Hi how are you. Very well. I love this little presentation and even the pictures on the front page with the orange part showing where the addition is. It just clarifies it so much. What I like is this is family housing it is workforce housing. It's affordable. It's designed guidelines and it's connected to owner occupied. So I see it as really being very, very suitable to the RG. I have a lot of grave doubts about removing footnote M, but I think this would be great and I think giving the examples was wonderful so thank you very much. Yeah, especially where you know applies. It's as Ben said is townwide. I'm going to allow Pam Rooney to speak next. Okay, we have two more. Yeah, I see. Hi, Pam. Hello. It keeps the pams differentiated here. I know. Nice presentation from Ben. Thank you very much. The charts were really great in just the owner occupancy differential between ad use deflecting converted dwellings. That's very handy. So those two tables went to the heart of some of the questions I bothered Chris breath. I'll start with earlier earlier this week. So thank you very much for those. I support accessory dwelling units in the many shapes and forms that are being suggested here. I think it's very much. Very much new England tradition. I actually, I actually am more in favor of the attached and and what the other one contained simply because that is in fact more the style than having a detached building again it's greener it's the reduction of perimeter in envelope is makes sense, all of that. And it's very easy to make the add on look like the back room of an old farmhouse. So, thanks for all the hard work on that I'm sure there'll be some time to go through the text and, you know, look for little odds and ends but I think in general it seems really solid and should work very nicely in every residential district except fraternity. Thank you. Thank you. Hilda. Hi. All right, I'm going to put another bug in your ointment here. It's coming again from my 60 years experience in this town, and that's what's an owner. What is an owner and apparently there's no site plan review involved here and also there's no conditions on any kind of a permit, it would be Rob who would decide. If I ask what is a young owner. We have houses that are bought by daddy who lives in Boston and whether who both maybe live somewhere else, and have a kid that goes to you mass, who he and three friends live in the main house. And they just bought this house and there's a thousand square foot outhouse in the backyard, which that's a lot of kids in that thousand square foot so is this kid considered that the house is owner occupied. How are you going to define it and how are you going to enforce it and how are you going to limit the not to become a student complex with no no parents or anybody around supervising whether the trash gets taken out. So I'm just raising that as an issue because I say I've been there done. Ben or Rob looks like he's stunned. We, we also want to say the same thing can happen now. You can have a house that's a single family house and the supplemental apartment detached department can be built in the backyard whether it's a garage or whatever it is. And, you know, you can have that kind of situation now so you know we kind of rely on rental registration and other things to control those situations and complaints from neighbors etc but maybe Rob has a better answer. Not, not a better answer but you know it is something that we have encountered our bylaw does define an owner as someone that establishes principal residence at the property. Principal residence is also defined on how you achieve that. So I guess the, the scenario that we're seeing is that the, you know, in very few cases but we have seen students be named owners of the property. So it isn't as simple as a parent buying a property, which happens all the time but that's not an owner occupied situation but where a student is, you know, either a member of an LLC or an owner of the property they could establish principal residence there and satisfy the order I can see the fireman that has happened. Great. Onto Ira, please. Oh, Ira. Thank you. Again, I'm Ira Brick 255 Strong Street. The idea of tiny houses and yards strikes me as more feasible as Dorothy was saying then removing footnote and it seems more of a controlled and deliberate thing that an owner would want to do for the various situations within their family. I was a homeowner that wanted to consider building a thousand foot building in my backyard and even though I own the land. It's not cheap to build a building. I would still want to know the supply and demand situation. I would be students that are mostly knocking on my doors is there enough housing now so that all of these little houses that it will fulfill, you know, the dream of lowering prices because it's such a glut. So this morning that's been involved in town politics for many years was just describing that there actually might be a glut of student housing. If we permit something to happen to increase the supply like this and don't understand the demand. That's a disservice to every homeowner that's going to invest in one of these buildings. So, again, it needs to be studied. I commend the study and then I thought that was a really good job. So, thank you so much. Very good. Thank you. Going back to the planning board or Nate you have your hand up. I think Ben mentioned it and I just wanted to reiterate it that these accessory dwelling units, you know, we, you know, we would call them lowercase a affordable not capital a affordable so they're not deed restricted. And they wouldn't necessarily count on the town subsidized housing inventory so they wouldn't be affordable. They're not recognized by the state. It's just there's too much, you know, too much work to do this for an accessory dwelling unit so even the housing production plan, you know, had said that these could be affordable because you know by their size or what have you they could be rented or purchased at a lower price so there's nothing. I think the mayor was talking it just, you know, it's interesting, you know, and pant Dorothy said that they'd be affordable and I think they could be, but you know, these aren't necessarily deed restricted units, and I think in most cases they never would be. You know, they would just be affordable possibly because of their smaller size they would not be rented for as much or, you know, I just wanted to say that because it'd be very difficult to have these be a unit that's on the town subsidized housing inventory. You know, there's a lot of work involved there and they're typically not that type of unit so, you know, the land trust or there could be other mechanisms that could be used to keep them affordable but in terms of the town, you know, the state recognition of them that's unlikely. Thank you, Nate. Okay, I see more. That ends up from attendees Dorothy and Hilda. Is that just a quick follow up or. I don't know. I generated, I generated some comments. Hi, Dorothy. Hi. Yes, I think that's it. I meant small a affordable. It made me think when the this was brought to the town council was it there was a talk about more affordable housing and I think most of us thought oh housing that doesn't cost so much so people can afford to either buy it or rent it. I think I'd probably have to go back and look to see what that charge was, because when you talk about affordable with the capital a. I know that, for example, if the small number of units at 132 North Hampton, they have to hire a company to do it. It's, it's huge searches all kinds of paperwork, and you're right a homeowner is not going to do that for one or two accessory dwellings in the backyard. It's not really in position to do that. So there was I thought the connection was that I really have to double check it that if there was an increase in the housing supply that the cost would somehow go down, but not be capital a necessarily affordable. That is done in a more formal process. So that's thank you for bringing up that possible confusion. Thank you. Thank you, Pam. And Hilda has another comment. Hi, I just was card to me listening to this because I keep thinking about owner occupied. Would it be possible down the line via other sections of the bylaw that this accessory dwelling unit could be also on a block occupied as a co-op arrangement. Could there be like two code or would that come under a duplex by law. If somebody wanted to make two owner occupied units on the parcel. Is that is that going to be something that what might be possible down the line, like under 50 age 52 50 or something like that. And I can't, I can't see people. Chris, Chris Breastrup has her hand up. I think the permitting might need to be changed. But my first initial reaction is that the zoning bylaw doesn't really deal with the types of ownership like condominiums. We don't talk at all about condominium. So if that's what you're referring to or condominium could be possible, but it would be illegal, illegal mechanism outside of zoning. And that would be my opinion. So would the zoning allow that to happen. If, if you've got an extra unit that's not becomes non conforming as a duplex. We probably need to ask our legal counsel about that but it seems like it would be possible, unless Rob has a different point of view. Yeah, there's nothing that prohibits the condominium with a form of ownership as Chris said isn't regulated by zoning so there's nothing that would prohibit that from occurring even right now. It's like a good idea when you get two units without the out of square footage required for duplex to owner occupied humans. Thank you. Very good. Janet. I was going to say, which seems strangely pertinent right now is I went to a presentation by Chris Lee about backyard ad use and he did point out that you could have an ad you and then you could turn it into a condo so you know the property would be owned in common and they could be the condom, you know the ad you could be sold as a condo or the original house and so, you know, there is a way to change the, you know, change that from owner occupied with the ad you to just to condo sharing the same property. But that is something that just is not covered by our zoning. And I will say I'll just jump in, you know, habitat did that on the duplex on 235 East Pleasant Street, and they did that also further up on North Pleasant and I think, you know, it's like a convex it can be difficult if there's common areas like the driveway. You know, if there's not, you know, if it's a shared driveway and shared, you know, storage areas for trash or other recycling, then it can be difficult to come up with a condominium association just on two units. So, you know, habitats done it, they, you know, it is a lot of work the town work with them with the one on, you know, the Hawthorne property. And it is a lot of work for two just for two units, and especially depending on how the properties configured, you know, it would be easier right if it's a detached structure, accessory dwelling. But you know I do think that something that the zoning doesn't regulate in it, you know, I think legally it depends on. The number of things, number of factors with the property owners and also the banks, depending on how they would view it, you know, the mortgage holder on the property but it is possible. Good, good. Rob. Yeah, I just wanted to clarify an earlier comment that, you know, I was responding to what I thought Hilda was asking about a duplex example. And we're talking about the accessory dwelling unit permitted under this section, even the way we're drafting it now. When you create a condominium and put them both into private separate ownership, it's no longer an accessory situation. It's essentially two principle dwelling units essentially. So that would be something different. So I think we'd have to, to Janet's comment if we wanted to embrace that possibility, we want to build we would have to build that into the bylaw that doesn't wouldn't permit that now because just the simple relationship between principle and accessory use. So I see no further hands up so I'm wondering, we're definitely going to take up footnote and next week. What's, what do you see the action item here, Chris for for this item, the ADU item. Is this an action item I think people need to have a chance to look at the material that's been posted and sent to them and then maybe next week they'll be ready to decide if that's what they want to go forward with. Okay. Good. So I'm also, you know, so we're like three hours into this and the next one the BL big one I'm wondering if we could, you know, take a poll here do people want to gut out, you know, more complicated item. You know, at this time at night. So that that's just my opinion. I'll forge for it but I feel like the there's been a lot of a lot of heavy lifting here by everyone. And I just want to make sure that it you know it doesn't fall on deaf ears if we're doing this presentation given you know it's 930. So I'm just going to do a quick straw poll. Is that sound reasonable to you Chris. My recommendation would be to ask Nate's forbearance and put this off till next Wednesday if Nate is available to present it and I think we'll all be, you know, much more bright and ready to accept the new ideas. Okay, Nate, what do you say. Sure. Maybe maybe I'll even update the presentation a little bit then. You know, again, I know we have a lot, but I just. So I mean, I think, you know, I think the slides were at least emailed to the board and you know, like with the ad you if there's comments, you know, board members have comments individually can also send them to staff. And that could help, you know, refine the presentation. Okay. So they weren't in our package. I know I'm, they're, they're in my email. I'm sure if you say so. Any here, let me get anybody want to put a hand up on the board with regard to moving forward with it with the next item which is dealing with the BL. Janet. I would love to start next week with the BL. I'm tired. Good. And Maria. I wonder if we could just do two topics per meeting. So, you know, three was a bit of a stretch, I think. So maybe next week start with BL and choose one of the other two. Well, yeah, I guess, you know, we can always do what we're going to do tonight. It looks like Andrew. Yeah, I would like to postpone it. I think actually Maria, that's a pretty good suggestion just to help keep us focused. Yeah, I would support that. Okay. All right, with that, let's put the BL and we can kind of discuss what's in order because I feel like we're close on them. And I know BL was the first one that the zoning subcommittee took on. So, you know, maybe we can talk Chris and work out what, what order we want to do and kind of get some feedback on that, but we'll be meeting next Wednesday on these zoning priorities. With that, we can skip to old business. Business, no new business, and you don't have to do any reports and we have a form a that's coming in but it's not here yet and As far as new things that are coming in. I know that the North Amherst library is probably coming in tomorrow. So that's something for you to look forward to for mid March. And there are other things out out there in the wings. Sure. Okay. And then you put in the packet that there's a little summary from the Planner Valley planning commission. I did. Yeah, on the highlights. So, And I want to apologize to Doug for not having answered his questions. I think I did forward them to the planning board members. Did I not. Oh, afford them to Ben. I directed him to answer them in his presentation. So we'll look back at those questions Doug sorry. And another good reason to to push this to next week is Tom, never. I was able to make it. He gave us warning that he's he was dealing with a personal issue. So with that, I mean reportedly chair I have nothing. I think my wonderful planning staff for all the work they've been doing in the last few weeks. It's really impressive. Thank you. It sure is. All right, I think we're going to adjourn. We'll see you all next week. Thank you.